Testing

Here is an example of how this can be done. I happen to like doing colors and fonts in ways that make the comments stand out sharply from the main body of text.



What I worry about is the quality of the comments; they are only the reflection of my personal aesthetics, to be taken as suggestions for alternatives, and/or discarded when they go against the intended flow, or are just plain inappropriate.



Because this is an introductory part, I’ve gone over this with a fine-tooth comb, picking out tiny nits that at a later stage would never stand out.



Over all, I have to say that I enjoy your particular style, the abruptness, the way it realistically echoes interior monologue and thought processes. What I’ve tried to do here is find ways to highlight that. As far as story line goes, I’d say this promises to pack more than an adequate number of punches, and I’ll be glad to read on. (Of course, as I’m a slow typist, and this can be a little time-consuming, I’d be doing this piece-meal.)



Code:
[ ] is a suggestion to delete for bits that may not be essential

( ) to insert, include or otherwise intrude



(Since this is the first time I’ve done this through « Blogger, I don’t yet know how it will show up. I may need to use another color or font another time.)





Nine steps from the door of the courthouse down to the sidewalk. Granite? Probably. Marble was too much to hope for (to “hope” suggests an emotional investment on her part regarding this detail. Is that really the case? Maybe something like just ‘not marble’ would suffice. Other than that, this description “shows” Brookfield very effectively) . Brookfield was too small for that. [They were some sort of grayish stone and it didn’t really matter what kind of stone]. The (steps?) were solid, slick with ice in spots, crunchy with salt in others. I focused on that sound, my boots crushing the salt, because it was better than hearing the judge’s gavel echoing in my brain. ( good intro/segue )

Coat pocket. I felt for my keys with mittened fingers, [still] crunching along. Twenty-one steps from the bottom of the stairs to the parking lot. Thirty-three more to the car. I turned the key in the ignition, turned ( repetition here. How about another word, like ‘switch’, ) on the front and rear defroster before I realized I hadn’t been gone from the car long enough for it to frost over. Even though it was only twenty-eight degrees outside.



9:17. ( Though the time reference can be very useful, here I’m wondering whether I missed a previous one that would tell me how many minutes she was inside. Have I missed it? If not, how about putting one in right at the start?)



Eleven-and-a-half years of marriage. Took only ( How many – exactly?) minutes to end it. [And] Jason hadn’t even bothered to show up. Probably( I would suggest using this word sparingly. Worked well in the first line on its own. ) he was at work right now. Was he looking up at the clock at this very second? Waiting, nervous, wondering if it’s( tense switch?) finally all over? Only four-and-a-half miles away from where I was sitting right now. Or maybe it was forty or four hundred. And-a-half. ( Nice stylistic touch)

I pulled onto the main road, headed towards Hillside Café for coffee and a newspaper. [And,] with luck, maybe a little pick me up. ( Perhaps the missing ‘and’ can be compensate by a rearrangement of the words in this sentence)



I was in luck. The sign ( What does it look like ? neon? Special colors? ) beside the road was lit.

[I walked inside and] the place was empty like I knew it would be mid morning on a Wednesday. By lunchtime it would be packed. Specials: turkey club; cheeseburger basket; spaghetti with meat sauce; and for dessert--of course--the latest gossip. Hot and juicy and fresh. I’d be gone( I’d suggest some sort of emphasis on this for the punch at the end of the sentence to be clearer ) long before then anyway, either asleep or floating on a cloud. Or both.

The shelves on the far wall were filled with basketball trophies, pictures of champions. (The?) Glory days. Jason, king of the champions, was there,.

He was everywhere.

“What the hell do you want?”

I jumped. Coach Poulin. Why was he here so early?

No cloud today.

“Black coffee. Newspaper.”

Hard eyes, silver stare. And I was there alone. Small ( as a… ) . He gave me a cold smile.

“You fucking whore. Go get it somewhere else.” ( Boy am I hooked here ! )



Too tired for rage, too empty. Too cold. Not even a flicker. [And in that land of numbed unreality a dispassionate realization. ] I did the backwards math.

He’d been waiting for eighteen years to say that to me.

Congratulations, Coach. Job well done. Another trophy for your shelf.

I turned away from the silver man, walked to my car. Lost count of the steps after sixteen. I drove to the Qwik Stop where [there were] curious stares ( greeted me maybe? ) but no open hostility. I brought the paper to the car and snapped it open right there in the parking lot. A bold, black lettered headline on the front page read:

Murder in New Mills.

I skimmed through the story, only vaguely interested [because]

Brutal slaying...small lakeside community shocked...home invasion...rampant drug problem among local teenagers...

while it was tragic, this wasn’t the reason I’d bought the paper. But one sentence jumped off the page.

The victim, Catherine Arsenault, 42, operated a local cleaning service...

Cleaning service. Small community. How many cleaning services could one small community support? (Hooked again !)



Section D. Classifieds.

New Mills: One bedroom apartment. Affordable. Rural setting. One mile from lake.

One more question. I opened my glove compartment and dug out my Gazetteer. New Mills was sixty-two miles from Brookfield. Sixty-two glorious miles. From my mother. From Jason. From everybody. It seemed like the closest thing to a sign from God that I could ever hope to receive. Sober at least.

I dug out my cell phone and dialed the number. An old man answered, very thick Downeast accent. “Ayuh. The apartment’s still available.”

He quoted the price. Cheap. Almost too cheap. What was wrong with the place?

“Nothing. It’s small, but it’s a good little house. Me and my wife raised our family there. Cut it in two after she died. [Oh,] ‘bout fifteen years ago that’d be now.”

Duplex? In the middle of nowhere?

“Sounds good, Mr. Baxter.”

“Charlie. I can give you a tour tomorrow. Can you be down here [‘bout...] ( 2 ‘bout’s’ 2 close together ? Maybe some other colloquialism?) ten thirty?”

Sure could. Might as well, [even] though a tour was a formality. The only thing that would prevent me taking the place would be a rat infestation.

I hung up the phone and hurried back to my brother’s house. I’d [held] ( been holding? ) it down long enough and I knew it was coming. Better to have the breakdown in private. At least, as private as I could with my sister-in-law at home.

Deep breath. That’s it. Good, you’re ready. Now, walk into the house. Just. Like. That.

“Hey Kim.”

“How did it go?” Sympathetic eyes. Sepia eyes.

Will the baby get those eyes? ( I am so curious now about which baby will get whose eyes. )

I shrugged and gave her a brief smile, then trudged on to the bathroom. I closed the door silently and leaned back against it, closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see Jason’s face. It didn’t work. It was still there, blonde and blue, covered with the trim, gorgeous beard that I had always loved. I could still remember the way it felt beneath my fingertips, on my face, my breasts. Scratchy and rough and perfect and…

Oh, God. Here it comes.

I turned on the exhaust fan to drown out the noise, then dropped to my knees and

He didn’t show up.( even… at the court house, for the divorce or something ?)

vomited quietly. Vomited forever.

I washed my hands, brushed my teeth and tongue vigorously, relishing the mint, then bleached the toilet clean and washed my hands again. Lavender soap. Mint and lavender. They danced together in my mind, ( the scents became… ? ) more colors than scents, and that was even better.

I looked at my reflection, practiced my smile and walked back out into the living room. Kim and I talked for a few minutes about infant car seats, then I excused myself. I wandered to the guest bedroom, my home for the past five months, lay down on the bed and fell asleep in my clothes. Slept forever. ( 2 two-word forever sentences, 2 close? )





This was a smooth and enjoyable read. I already told you that I think you’re publishable, and this confirms it.

Nano Snippet

Gradually, as though someone had brought it near me, I heard the sound of the phone ringing. “Are you alright, Kate ? ”

What could I answer? The question made no sense to me at all. Alright? When everything was all so wrong?

“They’ve found his… He …”

“ I know, honey. I know. Do you want me to come over?”

After they’d given up looking for him, Kevin’s body had been found wedged against the river bank, stuck between some rotting logs. His mother had called me. She thought I would want to know, but I didn’t really. I wanted not to know, I wanted the truth to go away.

It was a clear, brilliant afternoon, Friday. Kevin had been missing for four days and I’d known for two hours where he’d gone to by then. But it felt like it had happened a long, long time ago. To other people. Not to me, not to my Kevin.

“Do you want me to come over?”

I must have let the question hang for a long time, or maybe she repeated it again and again. At some point I noticed that the phone had gone dead. I replaced the receiver slowly, like I was afraid it might shatter.

When Ella arrived, I was still sitting on my bed, staring down at the telephone. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t ringing. I remember thinking that Kevin would be calling me any moment and I didn’t want to miss his call.

She put her arms around me and gave me an awkward hug. Neither one of us was in the habit of touching, being touched. I had to repress the urge to push her away. Even in the state I was in, I knew that if I moved so much as a muscle, I would slam her against the wall, throw her to the floor and strangle her. Anything to keep the tide of pain inside from rising any further.

“You must feel so awful, Kate. I mean, he wasn’t my boyfriend, I know. I barely knew him, right? Still, I can’t stop thinking about him either. How will I ever – I mean, how will you ever get over him?”

Only then did I focus on her face. But only for a second or two, because I couldn’t hold onto the image. In my mind, it kept being submerged. Just like Kevin, I thought, who would have floated around on his own in the river after he fell. Did he die right away? Before he hit the water? Or had his heart stopped before he’d reached it?

Despite the care with which she’d applied her make-up, her long lashes thick with mascara, I noticed then that Ella’s eyes were puffy and red. I envied her then. I hadn’t cried yet. I hadn’t screamed, I hadn’t even moved since Kevin’s mother had called with the news of her son’s death. When I finally started to cry, would I feel better, or worse?

“It’s just like him, isn’t it? If ever I’d had to guess how he would go – I mean, on purpose, you know – that’s exactly how I would have imagined him doing it. Slipping away quietly into the water like that, without even leaving a note.”

Had he not made a sound as he fell? Did he drop down without taking a leap, or had he soared in an elegant arc, stretching his body as far as it would go, as though he were getting ready to fly?

Ella kept on talking. I guess she thought she was distracting me, being a good friend by staying by my side and waiting until I finally broke down so she could offer me her shoulder to cry on when I did. But I wasn’t about to. I was going to keep my pain to myself. It was all I had left of him now. I even regretted having told Ella so much about him, about us. I hoped Kevin would forgive me for all I’d told her about him already. As though he were standing before me, I promised him that with time, she would forget, just as I vowed that I would not.

But I was wrong. Not only did Ella’s memories of Kevin never fade, it seemed to me that while my own pictures of him eventually grew fainter as the years went by, hers acquired crisper edges. Details about him – little things I could barely remember about him – resurfaced. Long after I’d managed to let go of him, Ella would continue to bring him up. It felt like she didn’t want to let me forget him.

But it wasn’t about me. It was about her. Ella was the one who wouldn’t let herself forget the way Kevin died.