Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

Lillian bites his neck lightly.

Emery chews himself out because his battery is down and he didn't bring a spare. Shit. He works in metals and wonders if he can brush aluminum to get that nacreous effect he sees through the window, and he sees, in the metallic light, form after form of possible pieces in copper, in steel or bronze, coursing through the firmament. Wren attaches herself to his arm and squeezes close as she hasn't for many years. She often uses sequins in her art strung like fractals or graphs of prime numbers or randomized constellations glittering there, and she wonders if that effect of the occasional meteor could be possible, or even desirable.

Hilda and Alexander watch as section maps one after the other, with pulsing property lines, display themselves across the heavenly vault. They have spent many days looking at maps of properties in Port Hood. “That one,” Alexander whispers to Hilda.

Tessa and her mother step onto the verandah to look at the sky. “I never saw this,” Tessa says. “Did you ever, mum?”

Crispi looks up and shrugs. She can think of nothing to say. It is rare that she has nothing to say. Marvin slips behind Crispi and places a hand on her shoulder. He sees the light, and finds it strange. “Do you know what this is?” he asks. Crispi turns to him, a mischievous smile on her face. “It better not be snow. If it snows in August I'm coming up to the States to live with you.”

“Do you see them?” Tessa asks. She sees a stage backdrop with a whirl of ballerinas spinning past on point, or leaping into the arms of men with powerful thighs. “See what?” her mother asks. She really doesn't know how to talk about what she is seeing.

As the darkness comes, Molly is wrapped around one of the posts. She feels she has perfected her titty bar routine, and has made something different out of it, something to show her husband, Raoul, when he arrives from Pennsylvania. She sees no reason to do it in the dark. She finds her way out to the verandah, and climbs off the deck, a move that's usually against the rules, and heads past the last row of old mining company houses, through the newly planted grass, down towards the sewage treatment ponds. She flops into the grass and looks up at the bright silent splendor. This sky is for her , she thinks. It was her idea to advertise herself and her friend, and this was like their reward. A light perfume of processed sewage wafts across her face. The grass prickles more against her bare back than she might have expected. The pulsing iridescence, so sexy, so silent after all the music, and the occasional rush of a meteor, also silent, is all happening for her , she thinks. This is a signal of something in her life. She didn't expect or even want anything, but here it comes, and it is good. She closes her eyes.

When she opens, she sees, albeit dimly displayed, a panoramic Monopoly board in the sky. As the youngest of six kids in a family that played Monopoly fanatically on holidays, she started off at a disadvantage. When she closes her eyes she can see the little Monopoly man she called Mr. Pants, even before she was old enough to play. In their super-deluxe set he had striped pants, and she loved his top hat too. She often had dreams that she danced with Mr. Pants. She recognized the actual game on the board in the sky that was the first game she had ever won from her brothers and sisters. She had hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk. She held all three of the greens with three houses on each, and she had Baltic and St. Charles Place, as well as all the utilities and the railroads. Her siblings paid her and paid her. That game, she realizes, was the start of her life as a whole, confident person. She closes her eyes again. Mr. Pants is coming all the way to Canada to dance with her. She doesn't understand why she is crying. She is an artist, and maybe the tears are for the art she hasn't yet made. And here he is. “Hello, Mr. Pants,” she says. Monopoly , she tells herself, is not just a game. Monopoly is forever .

Kevin stands up, his jaw slack. What he sees he has trouble believing. What he makes out is horses — fine Belgians and Percherons, Norics and Clydesdales, each of them pulling a plow across the empyrean, striating the night sky into glowing furrows. “I would do that,” says Kevin. “Do what?” Alice rises and sips her vodka and cranberry. She blinks. She can't believe how the sky is unfurling in a broad tartan of light. It stretches as far and as silent as her smile.

Jamie sees something else. The whole sky-school of cod swims north before his eyes, returning themselves to the waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and to the Grand Banks. He sees this, and it is happening with little explosions in the sky, each explosion a small fishing boat casting out to drop some lines into the restored abundance.

For Gordon this is all a great pain in the arse. It is hard enough to keep the place afloat when the electricity is on, but nobody buys anything in the dark. He's almost sold out of wings, so he doesn't stand to lose much if the refrigeration is down for a long time. Warm beer is a consequence, but Hell, in a lot of places warm is how they like their beer. He's just losing money for every minute of darkness.

Emily sees the sky through the window and finds it hopeful. After the WTO protest she went with Brendan to Nevada, to the Rainbow Gathering. His head was still bandaged, but she loved being with him even better when he was hurt. It was the first time she'd been to the Rainbow Gathering, and the first time she'd taken ecstasy. The crowd was a hugging and kissing crowd. She liked it, and immediately wanted to take more X, but she didn't. When she thought about it, she didn't want to make a career of it. She keeps looking to the window, and what she sees in the sky is hope, bright hopeful tomorrows. That is where she wants to be, not behind this bar trapped in the darkness, and not even in this town where she has no more family, and has so outgrown her friends. She wants to go outside under the pearly sky of hope. Perhaps it is time to quit, maybe go up to Halifax and work there. She stoops under the counter to leave the bar and starts to work her way in the dark to the verandah. “Emily, I need you to stay here,” Gordon shouts after her.

“That sounds a whole fuck of a lot better,” says Cameron Fitzgerald, who has somehow worked his way to a seat on the stage, and is commencing to squawk out a slow air on his unvarnished fiddle. It makes him smile to hear its sound without amplification, without microphones.

Marilyn sees nothing out the window. Nothing shines for her as she chants in her high crying style. She doesn't mind the screeching of the fiddle beside her, because below it she can hear the singing of the drum. This is a big southern drum. It sings a deep and powerful song as it is struck by many powerful drummers. And she hears her voice multiplied around the drum as she sings an intertribal song. Her voice is a ring of singers around the drummers, and she can't see too well into the dark, but she feels the dancers and hears their ankle bells, and the clatter of shells that hang from their vests. The drum sings its song into the darkness, and she recognizes it, she remembers it. This is a song of alsumsimkewey .

fearless wordslingers! break out ! flee the workshops!

make sense not! like moths in the honey jar writerlings

perform dreary veridical conventions over and again delusion

persists that the map is the territory there's gold in that there

map but a panda looms in this parking garage fixing to strip

your bamboo heart or tiger, tiger is it the lean into violence

that garments our time go have fun kiddoes thugs in our gov