And why not? Someone must—so let it be me.
The late, much-lamented, Michael Crichton (author of The Andromeda Strain, Prey, and others) wrote a novel titled State of Fear (2004), a devastating indictment of how government, media, and corporate mandates conspire to make us believe in the so-called Dangerous World Syndrome. For those not gripping the book at this moment, State of Fear will not only scare the sloppy joes outta you, it will soberly inform you why such fear is (mostly) unwarranted.
Despite Mr. Crichton's obvious high-level intellect, writerly skills, and bar-none research, he never had the experience of attending the 1973 Grabowski family reunion. Ah...if only he had, civilized people might have been spared the horrific events of that dark summer.
A mere slip of a lad at 15, I knew nothing of future safety guidelines—nor did any of my relatives. Uncle Steve, a tad over six-feet-five and roughly 270 pounds, seemed cheerfully in line not only with roaring out a greeting ("Billy! Where's yer girlfriend?!), but youth-oriented by vising my hand in a manly shake that left several of its 27 bones functional. Pretty much everyone didn't notice when I sprinted into the house to change my underwear. Cold water arrested the swelling of my fingers, and before I knew it I returned to the kielbasa and sauerkraut-laden picnic table for more of his aggressive blandness.
Thank God for Aunt Dottie. If not for her, my face never would've known the greasy smear of her ruby lipstick, nor her Polish-accented cry: "Beely! BEELY! You are so BEEG!"
Nothing personal, but probably a dust speck looked as large as a manhole cover in her Hubble Space Telescope-sized glasses. We all should be so loved, eh? At least she'd brought her fruitcake, a stomach-imploding disc seemingly composed of walnuts, honey, and NASA-sanctioned epoxy resin. Even our dog ran in terror from the slice I dropped. At least she'd planned ahead, even providing the game of Jarts—steel-tipped "darts" weighing each a solid two pounds, including blue plastic fins as large as those on Uncle Steve's 1968 Cadillac. Trust me, these babies could penetrate armor on a Soviet tank, or my neighbor's aluminum shed. DOH!
Perhaps I protest too much, as thrice-divorced Uncle Fred saw potential in handing me starter fluid for the flying saucer-shaped grill. "Bill, I shit you not," he slurred, resting his 9th beer on my freshman photo. "This stuff'll light up a Cleveland police station." I took him at his word, because I'd seen the article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. Inexplicably, my father's liquor cabinet was found pried open shortly after this ritual grill-lighting.
Minutes before noon, all 20 of us settled down to eat kielbasa, sauerkraut (really delicious), hamburgers, hot dogs, cabbage salad, cole slaw, stuffed cabbage, baked beans, bean salad, egg salad, fruitcake (except for my mother, who knew better), and Uncle Fred's patented gin-marinated blue-gill fillets (don't ask—ever). My favorite Uncle—Ted—was very quiet, until dessert. "Dottie," he rasped, "this fruitcake is...is...IS—"
To this day, none of us is certain whether some chemical fermentation occurred between various species of cabbage, meat, beans, etc., and Aunt Dottie's signature fruitcake. But I can say my dearest uncle's WWII experience paid off, because he ran through our screen door without a blink on his way to the bathroom.
I loved them all, and we had a good time—until the beer ran out, and someone moved Uncle Fred's Chevy four blocks away so he wouldn't be pulled over for DUI.
Thanks, Dad and Mom. I love you, and miss you. Dad (Stanley), you sure understood your brothers. Sorry about the liquor cabinet.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Clean Reader: Please Exit the Fuckin' Planet
The title of this blog pretty much covers it, people. Some "moral" morons have decided that profanity doesn't sit well with them and, therefore, should be ripped out of eBooks to protect the precious bodily fluids of all children and adults. How noble!
I realize you and your app are the easiest of targets, and others have responded by effing this and effing that and mothereffing everything about you. I applaud them. But that's too obvious and easy, like letting a bully know his horses**t is getting under your skin. I make my living as a writer and editor, and reside in America. Despite all I loathe about my birth-country, the benefits still outweigh the hazards. Are you not aware that "censorship" in America ended with the supreme court ruling William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch not obscene? Do you even know the work of Burroughs? Perhaps not, and that's okay. It isn't for everybody, and I would never hold that against you. Some people like anchovies, some don't. In my experience, if I don't care for a thing, I avoid it. Period. I certainly don't presume moral superiority over any man, woman, or child. It's not my place; nor is it yours.
I'll even spot you a bit of agreement. Sometimes profanity bothers me. It's all about context. You're mature adults and should know this. There's a vast difference between my writing, in a fictive work, "That motherfucker pissed me off, and I'm gonna fuckin' kill him," and me in "real life" having so severe a problem with someone to go so far as to utter that specific threat. In a book, it's okay. It isn't real. It's fiction. It ain't true. It's a dramatic device to evoke genuine emotion. Not to mention our quickly dying Bill of Rights sorta allows this freedom people in other countries lack, and can in fact be killed for employing.
What's wrong with you? You should be thanking your stars to have this freedom, and not tied up in some imagined privilege that's supposed to protect you from harsh reality. You don't have the right to project your fear and intolerance on others. You do have the right to express those fears, and that should be enough. Be very glad of that—thanks to you, it might not last. I'm not important enough to even show up on your filth-radar, but I fear for your children.
If you slip, and the hammer hits your hand, what do you shout? "Gosh"? "Golly"? I doubt that very much. You don't know me, I don't know you. But I'm reasonably sure you're just as human and prone to pain as the rest of us.
I'm begging you, get this Clean Reader notion out of your very human head. Please. Because if we lose our right to swear, curse—call it what you f***in will—what's next?
Think about it. Please.
I realize you and your app are the easiest of targets, and others have responded by effing this and effing that and mothereffing everything about you. I applaud them. But that's too obvious and easy, like letting a bully know his horses**t is getting under your skin. I make my living as a writer and editor, and reside in America. Despite all I loathe about my birth-country, the benefits still outweigh the hazards. Are you not aware that "censorship" in America ended with the supreme court ruling William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch not obscene? Do you even know the work of Burroughs? Perhaps not, and that's okay. It isn't for everybody, and I would never hold that against you. Some people like anchovies, some don't. In my experience, if I don't care for a thing, I avoid it. Period. I certainly don't presume moral superiority over any man, woman, or child. It's not my place; nor is it yours.
I'll even spot you a bit of agreement. Sometimes profanity bothers me. It's all about context. You're mature adults and should know this. There's a vast difference between my writing, in a fictive work, "That motherfucker pissed me off, and I'm gonna fuckin' kill him," and me in "real life" having so severe a problem with someone to go so far as to utter that specific threat. In a book, it's okay. It isn't real. It's fiction. It ain't true. It's a dramatic device to evoke genuine emotion. Not to mention our quickly dying Bill of Rights sorta allows this freedom people in other countries lack, and can in fact be killed for employing.
What's wrong with you? You should be thanking your stars to have this freedom, and not tied up in some imagined privilege that's supposed to protect you from harsh reality. You don't have the right to project your fear and intolerance on others. You do have the right to express those fears, and that should be enough. Be very glad of that—thanks to you, it might not last. I'm not important enough to even show up on your filth-radar, but I fear for your children.
If you slip, and the hammer hits your hand, what do you shout? "Gosh"? "Golly"? I doubt that very much. You don't know me, I don't know you. But I'm reasonably sure you're just as human and prone to pain as the rest of us.
I'm begging you, get this Clean Reader notion out of your very human head. Please. Because if we lose our right to swear, curse—call it what you f***in will—what's next?
Think about it. Please.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Words and Phrases We Need to Vaporize, Dude
Pre-Internet, our world was relatively free of highly annoying verbal tics and cliches. Now, of course, we're deluged with them. I'll preface this "rant" by admitting to frequent use of "cool" throughout the 1970s—but that's all we had.
Examples: "Hey, Vince's parental units are gonna be outta town all weekend. He's havin' a PARTY!"
ME: "Cool."
"Our douche-rocket gym teacher fell and broke his arm!"
ME: "Cool!"
"They're showing Bava's BLACK SABBATH Friday night on the Ghoul's show, man." [The Ghoul—Ron Sweed—was a late-night TV show host in Cleveland and Detroit.]
ME: "Cool!"
"Tom's sellin' some cosmic trip-weed in the park—I got the live Hawkwind eight-track too!"
ME: "Huh? Oh—cool..."
You get it. We easily could have substituted "awesome" for "cool," but that had two syllables—one too many for our stoned, orange barrel mescaline-zapped brains. Social media consisted entirely of telephone, TV, and tell-yer-pals in the park. Computers were seen only on Star Trek, and in science fiction films. Oh, and in that second-floor high school room only pure future geniuses were allowed entry, the machine itself an IBM card-puncher roughly the size of a Chevy.
Compared to this, our present world might as well exist in some other-dimensional universe. Cool.
While I completely understand that language is a plastic, ever-evolving (well, maybe) aspect of human existence, infinitely complicated by the poetic cultural mulch, it does get stuck in OCD-type ruts alien to my 1970s self and associates in casual intoxication. "Cool" wasn't an all-size-fits term for things "uncool," in the way "awesome" apparently is today. Awesome, accurately used, defines that "1. Inspiring awe. 2. Displaying or marked by awe. 3. Outstanding." Webster's II says so. Cool.
This does not include: 1. Shoes. 2. Meals. 3. Pets. 4. Clothing. No, for these are the quotidian elements of life. Well, in that case, what does qualify as awesome?
1. The Chelyabinsk asteroid fragment (aka superbolide, or luminous meteor) that caused serious human and infrastructural damage on 15 February 2013, lollygagging through the atmosphere at 42,900 mph, exploding the equivalent of 500 kilotons of TNT—20 to 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima. Awesome.
2. The forthcoming water-cooled NSA supercomputer, capable of processing 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one quintillion) operations per second. Terrifying. Awesome. It's now reading this blog.
3. Every time someone wrongly uses the word "awesome," my life-span loses 1 year. Awesome. But not so cool.
4. I might have been a bit harsh with my take on "dude," as it seems to have become an accepted mark of punctuation. The instant Obama utters it, I'll convert to Dudaism. No fair bringing my love for The Big Lebowski into this.
Along these lines, there is never ever a reason to employ the phrase "That being said." Ever. That being said, the phrase is inherently redundant. Akin to saying: "Hey, man, even though I just said your new spatula is awesome, well—it's awesome." I mean, WTF dude?
Finally, why must weather reporters (some of who are certified meteorologists) refer to atmospheric phenomena as "Your weather"? Aren't we all subject to living in it?
Cool. That being said, dude, I'm stoked we had this little "talk."
Yours in awesomeness....
Examples: "Hey, Vince's parental units are gonna be outta town all weekend. He's havin' a PARTY!"
ME: "Cool."
"Our douche-rocket gym teacher fell and broke his arm!"
ME: "Cool!"
"They're showing Bava's BLACK SABBATH Friday night on the Ghoul's show, man." [The Ghoul—Ron Sweed—was a late-night TV show host in Cleveland and Detroit.]
ME: "Cool!"
"Tom's sellin' some cosmic trip-weed in the park—I got the live Hawkwind eight-track too!"
ME: "Huh? Oh—cool..."
You get it. We easily could have substituted "awesome" for "cool," but that had two syllables—one too many for our stoned, orange barrel mescaline-zapped brains. Social media consisted entirely of telephone, TV, and tell-yer-pals in the park. Computers were seen only on Star Trek, and in science fiction films. Oh, and in that second-floor high school room only pure future geniuses were allowed entry, the machine itself an IBM card-puncher roughly the size of a Chevy.
Compared to this, our present world might as well exist in some other-dimensional universe. Cool.
While I completely understand that language is a plastic, ever-evolving (well, maybe) aspect of human existence, infinitely complicated by the poetic cultural mulch, it does get stuck in OCD-type ruts alien to my 1970s self and associates in casual intoxication. "Cool" wasn't an all-size-fits term for things "uncool," in the way "awesome" apparently is today. Awesome, accurately used, defines that "1. Inspiring awe. 2. Displaying or marked by awe. 3. Outstanding." Webster's II says so. Cool.
This does not include: 1. Shoes. 2. Meals. 3. Pets. 4. Clothing. No, for these are the quotidian elements of life. Well, in that case, what does qualify as awesome?
1. The Chelyabinsk asteroid fragment (aka superbolide, or luminous meteor) that caused serious human and infrastructural damage on 15 February 2013, lollygagging through the atmosphere at 42,900 mph, exploding the equivalent of 500 kilotons of TNT—20 to 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima. Awesome.
2. The forthcoming water-cooled NSA supercomputer, capable of processing 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one quintillion) operations per second. Terrifying. Awesome. It's now reading this blog.
3. Every time someone wrongly uses the word "awesome," my life-span loses 1 year. Awesome. But not so cool.
4. I might have been a bit harsh with my take on "dude," as it seems to have become an accepted mark of punctuation. The instant Obama utters it, I'll convert to Dudaism. No fair bringing my love for The Big Lebowski into this.
Along these lines, there is never ever a reason to employ the phrase "That being said." Ever. That being said, the phrase is inherently redundant. Akin to saying: "Hey, man, even though I just said your new spatula is awesome, well—it's awesome." I mean, WTF dude?
Finally, why must weather reporters (some of who are certified meteorologists) refer to atmospheric phenomena as "Your weather"? Aren't we all subject to living in it?
Cool. That being said, dude, I'm stoked we had this little "talk."
Yours in awesomeness....
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
WTF: WHY TOLERATE FOOLS?
I'm not sure, but could Twitter conceivably be boring?
I don't know. It sure is annoying, even though I need it to exist if only to promote my work. Gosh.
I had an idea only to write Zen koans there. You know what those are, right? Brief, enigmatic word strings that might mean something you'll never figure out. Like a Kelly Link story, but shorter.
Example: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Now you get it.
Here's the thing: very few on Twitter would "get it," and might blow them off as self-indulgent noodling. They'd be correct.
Akin to the writing style I'm using here. Precise. Lean. Fat-free. Dead.
My initial awareness of "koans" came via Hollywood, and the 1970s TV series Kung Fu. Great show. Carradine before...whatever. Kicks and punches delivered with some humanity to the torso and face, as such things ought to be. Quietly too, as was I during those years. One of my favorites: "There are three parts to a man. How he sees himself. How others see him. And who he really is."
Still digesting that as genuine wisdom, and I honestly believe it is. Bit of the old-school Existentialism, with no binders. Feel free to use it while standing in line at the grocery store, DMV, wedding buffet, etc. It's fun. True, not quite up there with "My powers are beyond your understanding."
But how to employ this ancient wisdom on Twitter with the twit-nits? One of which I am whom. Not easy, Skippy, when every other 20-something waxes wise-ass and stamps same with inexplicable "hash tags," which remain utterly incomprehensible to me. Say your deal, and shut up. Word. Log off, please, and go back to capturing moody images of your new shoes in order to flummox people like me who'll say "Why the screamin' hell should I give one actual fuck?"
If at first you don't succeed, go read a book.
I don't know. It sure is annoying, even though I need it to exist if only to promote my work. Gosh.
I had an idea only to write Zen koans there. You know what those are, right? Brief, enigmatic word strings that might mean something you'll never figure out. Like a Kelly Link story, but shorter.
Example: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Now you get it.
Here's the thing: very few on Twitter would "get it," and might blow them off as self-indulgent noodling. They'd be correct.
Akin to the writing style I'm using here. Precise. Lean. Fat-free. Dead.
My initial awareness of "koans" came via Hollywood, and the 1970s TV series Kung Fu. Great show. Carradine before...whatever. Kicks and punches delivered with some humanity to the torso and face, as such things ought to be. Quietly too, as was I during those years. One of my favorites: "There are three parts to a man. How he sees himself. How others see him. And who he really is."
Still digesting that as genuine wisdom, and I honestly believe it is. Bit of the old-school Existentialism, with no binders. Feel free to use it while standing in line at the grocery store, DMV, wedding buffet, etc. It's fun. True, not quite up there with "My powers are beyond your understanding."
But how to employ this ancient wisdom on Twitter with the twit-nits? One of which I am whom. Not easy, Skippy, when every other 20-something waxes wise-ass and stamps same with inexplicable "hash tags," which remain utterly incomprehensible to me. Say your deal, and shut up. Word. Log off, please, and go back to capturing moody images of your new shoes in order to flummox people like me who'll say "Why the screamin' hell should I give one actual fuck?"
If at first you don't succeed, go read a book.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Signs of the Apocalypse
No one else seems to be noticing the following, so as usual it's left up to me to point out the latest (of course, for at least the next week) signs that we're all doomed—DOOMED!
I know I'm a tad older than those I'm about to criticize, but did you ever think I might be RIGHT? Huh?
When 20-somethings fetishize coffee, pens, Converse, food, cats, etc., are not these signs of the coming APOCALYPSE? I ask you. Forget all that zombie shit, that's nothing more than so-called creative types emulating what's popular. (But Bill, didn't some guy in England PAY you to write two zombie novellas? I mean, c'mon! What are you, a friggin' hypocrite?)
Answer: No. I am not a hypocrite—friggin' or otherwise. I am a person who must eat, whether I like that or not. And I once stood beside Tom Savini (special-effects wizard for DAWN OF THE DEAD, DAY OF THE DEAD, and many others) for like 5 hours at Randall Park Mall in Ohio while he waited for fans to show up (in 1983) to buy his book. I've earned my Z stripes—as has Tom. My friend John just stood there muttering like Butthead: "Huh huh huh, huh huh huh, this is cool..." Savini and his poor wife kept shooting glances at their expensive watches. John said: "Have you ever, like—huh huh huh—seen actual, like, DEAD people?"
Bless him (or damn him), John was ignorant (or just too high) of the fact that Savini was a combat photographer in Vietnam, so had definitely—huh huh huh—seen real dead people. Hence the shocking realism of his effects work.
Frankly, the only zombies that matter are "busy" ruining—I mean running—our country. All else is mere entertainment. Think about that.
Here's what really scares me. Visit any Instagram page maintained by a young person, and witness the eerily similar cats, shoes, food, My Amazing Bedroom, etc., and tell me the APOCALYPSE is not at hand. I double-dog dare you. Triple-dog, even.
And hipsters. DON'T GET ME STARTED. Too late. A true "hipster" (in the Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg sense) would never refer to themselves as "hipsters," nor give a rat's ass about whether they were wearing the correct Converse, etc., taking pictures of their every coffee sip. Kerouac and crew would've wanted to kill you had you the poor reasoning to send them Polaroids of such mundane things. Trust me.
Have you discovered a fossil? Caught a genuine UFO on your cell phone? Perhaps documented some loser hopping over the White House fence? If so, those images belong on Instagram. Not your cat Mr. Stinky Head upside-down on the couch, nor your Taco Bell lunch, or even your BFF pointing at his paint-spattered Converse while sipping Starbucks' latest Instagramaccino double-espresso mint twirler.
Just don't. I'm too tired.
Those zombie stories aren't gonna write themselves.
Whoa. What's that I'm hearing out there?
HEY! You damned kids—GET OUTTA MY YARD!
I know I'm a tad older than those I'm about to criticize, but did you ever think I might be RIGHT? Huh?
When 20-somethings fetishize coffee, pens, Converse, food, cats, etc., are not these signs of the coming APOCALYPSE? I ask you. Forget all that zombie shit, that's nothing more than so-called creative types emulating what's popular. (But Bill, didn't some guy in England PAY you to write two zombie novellas? I mean, c'mon! What are you, a friggin' hypocrite?)
Answer: No. I am not a hypocrite—friggin' or otherwise. I am a person who must eat, whether I like that or not. And I once stood beside Tom Savini (special-effects wizard for DAWN OF THE DEAD, DAY OF THE DEAD, and many others) for like 5 hours at Randall Park Mall in Ohio while he waited for fans to show up (in 1983) to buy his book. I've earned my Z stripes—as has Tom. My friend John just stood there muttering like Butthead: "Huh huh huh, huh huh huh, this is cool..." Savini and his poor wife kept shooting glances at their expensive watches. John said: "Have you ever, like—huh huh huh—seen actual, like, DEAD people?"
Bless him (or damn him), John was ignorant (or just too high) of the fact that Savini was a combat photographer in Vietnam, so had definitely—huh huh huh—seen real dead people. Hence the shocking realism of his effects work.
Frankly, the only zombies that matter are "busy" ruining—I mean running—our country. All else is mere entertainment. Think about that.
Here's what really scares me. Visit any Instagram page maintained by a young person, and witness the eerily similar cats, shoes, food, My Amazing Bedroom, etc., and tell me the APOCALYPSE is not at hand. I double-dog dare you. Triple-dog, even.
And hipsters. DON'T GET ME STARTED. Too late. A true "hipster" (in the Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg sense) would never refer to themselves as "hipsters," nor give a rat's ass about whether they were wearing the correct Converse, etc., taking pictures of their every coffee sip. Kerouac and crew would've wanted to kill you had you the poor reasoning to send them Polaroids of such mundane things. Trust me.
Have you discovered a fossil? Caught a genuine UFO on your cell phone? Perhaps documented some loser hopping over the White House fence? If so, those images belong on Instagram. Not your cat Mr. Stinky Head upside-down on the couch, nor your Taco Bell lunch, or even your BFF pointing at his paint-spattered Converse while sipping Starbucks' latest Instagramaccino double-espresso mint twirler.
Just don't. I'm too tired.
Those zombie stories aren't gonna write themselves.
Whoa. What's that I'm hearing out there?
HEY! You damned kids—GET OUTTA MY YARD!
Monday, October 27, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
JOHNNY FLASH: Free Novella Excerpt! It's Fun!
JOHNNY FLASH
WILLIAM J. GRABOWSKI
Oblivion Press
2014
JOHNNY FLASH
Copyright © 2014 by William J. Grabowski
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9749628-8-7
"God's away, God's away, God's away on business..."
—Tom Waits
Chapter 1
Johnny Flash stood slicing tofu for Korean barbecue when Palmer burst into the kitchen. “Johnny—oh Christ! Man—where's Moody, huh? Where?”
Johnny dropped his vanadium Global, glared at the other. “Fuckin-A, man—almost amputated my fuckin hand. Calm the fuck down.”
Gray Palmer hugged himself as if freezing, despite the kitchen's predawn heat. “Sorry, sorry, it's just...I need Moody.”
Johnny ripped a paper towel from the roll above the sink, dried his hands. God. Was Palmer crying? “Okay, I'll get him. He's in the back on inventory, so—”
“Good, good, that's good.”
Palmer looked as if he'd just dodged al Qaeda.
“Yeah, Gray. Relax, willya? What's up? Wait—I probably don't wanna know. I got tofu to marinate.”
Johnny trotted past the other and his wide, shifty eyes. Jeez! Rehab—table for one....
Passing the restrooms Johnny could see Just Moody's lanky silhouette beside the walk-in cooler. He held a Spanish onion inches from his nose. “Johnny, you think these reds are better than Pittsburgh's? Hey. What's wrong?”
“Hell if I know. Your favorite ufological author is haunting my kitchen and shitting nail-guns. Needs to see you like last year, apparently.” He flicked a tofu shred from his shirt, became abruptly aware of two aromas: bacon, and musky rot...old mushrooms?
Goddamn Billy would hear about that when he clocked in at seven!
“Great,” Moody said, “like I have time. Take this”—Johnny plucked the onion from empty space—“and check out the others. All of it, actually. Don't forget to marinate the tofu.”
“You got it.”
Moody shambled down the dim hall toward his best friend.
***
When Moody saw his twitchy pal Gray, complicated feelings tweaked his 67-year-old nerves. He'd seen Gray angry, depressed, drunk, stoned, stressed over poor sales, but never like this.
“The hell, buddy,” Moody said, stepping toward the coffee-maker, “Johnny says you're sort of—”
“He's right! Can we talk in your office?”
“Good question—hahaha. Sure, sure we can. How bout a cup?”
Palmer twitched. "Coffee? God, no. Last thing I need. This is bad...we have to consider this, please.”
“No problem. Let's head on back.”
Moody snatched a Monster from the employee fridge, and led Palmer down the hall toward Johnny's thumping, cursing review of the week's produce delivery.
Moody's joke of an office (until recently a "prep kitchen" he couldn't afford), 14 feet left of the humming walk-in and “lounge,” bled out odors of a neglected bacon sandwich and decades of cooking.
“Take a load off,” he said, waving at a folding chair leaning against the desk.
Palmer did this. “Thanks. Whew...” Found sudden interest in his wet shoes.
Moody eyed the aging sandwich warily, eased back in his leather chair, creaky as his spine. “Sooo...what time did you start drinking—or, more likely, smoking?”
Palmer sat abruptly straight, clenched jaw pulsing. “Hey, pal, I'm as sober as the Pope.”
“I doubt it.”
“That I'm sober?”
“No, that the Pope is.”
They both laughed. Two guys sharing a joke.
Moody popped his energy-drink, took an extended, deliberate taste. Clunked down the can beside his breakfast. “Okay, out with it. Why are you like this? I'm milking my own damned clock here."
The other hugely sighed, gazed at the abstract Tabasco poster behind Moody. “Yeah...see, you're gonna have to suspend the old disbelief, okay?”
“You know it. Don't forget, I've read your books—even the good ones.”
Palmer nodded. “Ha-fucking-ha. Thank you, sir. Well, I was threatened not one hour ago by someone who either is one of the Men in Black, or someone trying—and succeeding—to mimic one.”
Moody's mouth dropped open—he couldn't help it. “Jesus Christ. What're you talking about? Use short sentences.” His poker-face and its hard angles hid unspeakable dread. No one, not even Palmer, must see this.
Palmer tried a brave smile, which made him look even more desperate. “Knew I could count on you to be objective.”
Moody huffed. “And observant. What happened to your neck? And why aren't you wearing a coat? It's November in southwest Pennsylvania. Don't tell me you walked here.”
“Ran. Talk about long sentences. Moody, look, I...I had to get out of the house. No gun, no nothing. That freak threatened me, man!”
Moody took another fizzy sip, wished for a shnoot of Billy McKee's absinthe. Too bad he wasn't here yet. “Okay. Now I'm really worried. Tell me about this guy. Everything.”
***
Gray Palmer had been at it since two in the afternoon: answering emails sparked by the recent publication of his latest book, Cold War UFOs Over America. In truth, he feared publishing the slick trade paperback ($12.95, Gray Sky Press, 277 pages). For this, unlike his 11 previous, chronicled the “ultra-covert” machinations behind the great UFO flap that besieged Seven Pines and Westmoreland County from 1967 to 1968, events still seething with controversy, ruin, and even death. Gray had been 12; a real wise-ass, nosy as hell, and crazy-smart. Pretty much like he was now.
A few ticks short of four-thirty ayem, he stood, backed away from his work-station and stretched—vertebrae popped. Man, he needed to brew another pot of Tanzanian peaberry. This was no beer night—too bad. His brain felt as if strapped to a rocket-sled. Ah hell, maybe a few later to take the edge off.
Stepping across the study (actually, a long book-walled living-room) toward the kitchen, Palmer heard something odd. “You gotta be kidding me.”
Halting, he listened.
Someone knocked on the front door.
“No...” He turned, squinted and—with a rush of fear—could see a blurred shadow at the door's glass inset. Who could it be? At this hour, no one Palmer wanted here.
Get a grip, he told himself. Center.
He swallowed hard, clenched his teeth, and stepped toward the door. Goddamned coffee!
Whoever stood on the porch knocked once more—aggressively.
“All right,” Palmer managed, “all right for crap-sake, I'm on my way. Christ...”
Best to get it over with.
He gazed at the floor; would not look at the door's inset. He feared to see something there, glaring in at him.
Palmer gripped the knob, turned it and opened the door.
A grinning man in a dark suit stood there, green eyes cunning and cold. “Greetings Gray Palmer, we have much to talk about.”
Palmer cried out, immediately regretting it. But something—everything—was wrong here. “No we don't,” he muttered as if through a ball of phlegm. “Who are you and what the hell do you want?” He stepped backward into the living-room, stomach roiling.
The stupidly weak porch-light tinted the stranger's dark hair blue. “I am crazy-big fan of Cold War UFO book you write, yes.”
He grinned and grinned.
Palmer's heart hammered his ribs. “Sure—sure you are, pal. It's four in the morning...”
“Thank you Gray Palmer, yes.”
Palmer had to say something, anything, distracting enough to get the door shut and bolted. "What is that?" he said. “The accent. You Russian, or just trying to sound like one? Don't get too many around here. Mostly Polacks, and in fact—"
The other rushed in, clutched Palmer's throat with a hand like iced iron. “Yes, I am here for facts.”
Hot breath foul with cigarettes fogged Palmer's face. He was going to die. Freezing air gushed through the room.
All at once Palmer was released—fell gasping into a bookshelf, sending reference tomes crashing to the floor.
Paralyzed with fright, he said, “What the fuck? Huh? What the fuck? What was that for?”
The other grinned. “Oh, just because.”
Palmer somehow got to his feet. Moody...goddammit Moody set this up. Unbelievable. What a superb gag!
Now Palmer grinned. “Okay, comrade. You've earned your twenty or however-many bucks Moody paid you. He did pay you, right? Or is this pro bono work for some acting class in Pittsburgh?”
The other smirked. “Who is Moody, yes?”
“Uhhh, yeah. Friend of mine. Say, how bout a cup of the ol cafferoony?”
Something smashed into Palmer's chest—knocked him into his computer chair. After a few numb seconds, he realized the stranger had shoved him there, and now stood glaring down. “Tell me Gray Palmer, where is document?”
Countless visions flashed through Palmer's mind. Shit. He means it. “Document? I don't understand, you—”
The grin returned, and the maniac aimed a black handgun at Palmer's groin. “Oh, I understand, just not enough. It's all on the Google. Someone leaked, yes. All about UFOs here in sixties. Rumors of spies, industrial and science secrets of pussy-head Americans like you, blame on us.”
Palmer felt a desperate urge to urinate. “You, you saw this on the Net?”
The gun held still, as if clamped in a laser-sighted vise. “Of course. With link to your book. Nice. The one-stop-shopping, yes. In ten seconds you will die.”
Palmer's mouth dropped open and he shifted his gaze over the other's shoulder. “Johnny! What're you doing here?”
The gun whipped toward the door, long enough for Palmer to fast-ball his steel pyramid paperweight at the uninvited visitor's close-cropped skull.
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