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April 28, 2003

Blogvel, Part 5

Ok sportsfans, here it is, our installment of Vector Girl's excellent Blogvel. While previous contributers have professed their inexperience at fiction, and then gone on to write kick-ass chapters, we will admit that we've dabbled in fiction a bit. We provided significant contributions for Girl-E's first short story "Murder, She Choked," and we'll have you know that it was very well received by her third grade teacher Ms. Draz. So that should set your expectations for this at pretty much the right level. Oh, and if the blogvel is what first brought you to the Boo-blog, thanks so much for visiting, we hope you'll come early and often. And please do the same for all the bloggers that lend their crafty fingers to this tale.

To keep you up to date:
Part 1 is here, April 8th entry
Part 2 is here, April 9th entry
Part 3 is here, April 13th entry
Part 4 is here, April 22nd entry (scroll a bit)

And now, Part 5...

Paige froze, everything around her suddenly out of focus. That, the central question of her life it seemed, and a dozen possible answers ricocheted through her head… I’m going to Thailand… I’m going to the zoo… I’m going to hell… I’m going mad… She saw Eddie glance briefly at the familiar contraptions she was collecting, and a sly grin spread across his face in the memory and anticipation of their use.

“I got the message from that over-protective brother of yours that you didn’t want to see me for a few days. But come on, baby, you can take care of yourself. So what, you going somewhere?”

And suddenly, Paige thought of the one answer that would keep Eddie right where she wanted him. “Yeah, I’m going to Marne’s for a reading, she just called, wanna come?”

Eddie’s grin straightened into an icy stare. Where most women would fall under Eddie’s tainted spell before they could think of resisting, Marne Joseph was the one woman who had humiliated him. She had been a lecturer at the college in his department, specializing in Victorian poetry. Before Paige got involved with Eddie, he and Marne had had a brief affair which ended with him threatening her standing at the college if she didn’t agree to indulge certain whims. She had reported him to the personnel committee, albeit with selective details, and the result had been a postponement of his tenure. Marne had later resigned from the college to do research at the state university, but she still kept in touch with former students for readings and workshops.

Of course Marne had lost all respect she may have had for Paige as a writer when Paige picked up with the supreme prick. She hadn’t called Paige in about 18 months.

Still, Eddie couldn’t get angry or accuse Paige of lying, because the fact was he was still afraid of that woman, and if she and Paige were back in touch, the whole thing was poison to him. And the risk of him agreeing to come with her was none so high.

Eddie collected himself to affect the upper-hand, and tried to look some combination of scornful and bored.

“Well, you tell that cunt I said howdee-doo.” Then he went to the fridge and took out a Keystone. He’d never seemed more disgusting to her.

Paige grabbed the small bag she’d been packing, glanced at her watch, and headed purposefully for the door. “See ya later,” she said, trying hard not to choke on her anxiety and self-pity.

As she climbed in the car, still intending to drive to the coast, it suddenly occurred to her that maybe it didn’t have to be such a lie after all. Maybe the fact that she’d been contemplating murder meant things had gotten bad enough for her to admit she needed an ally stronger than her sorry-ass pride. She’d been to Marne’s one-bedroom house by the lake about two years ago, and knew she could find it again, although she had no way to know whether Marne would still be there. She drove into the dusk, smoking furiously, Janis Joplin’s “Cosmic Blues” blaring on the second-rate sound system.

When she got to the house about 45 minutes later, she could hardly breathe from nerves. Going to Marne was like wrapping her tail between her legs, over her shoulder and all the way back down and around. But her family had reached the limit of their power to pull her out, and maybe this would be like detox. Or maybe profound humiliation. Or both.

She forced herself out of the car, stubbed out her cigarette on the driveway, and pushed her hair behind her ears, like that was going to help something or other. There was one light on in the front room, and she knocked on the door.

The door opened, and Marne Joseph stood tall in front of her, wearing jeans and a long white linen button-down, blond hair loosely pulled back in a claw-clip. She was holding a copy of Trilby in one hand and a Diet Dr. Pepper in the other. Marne could always manage to seem totally down to earth and yet utterly superior to everyone around her.

Marne’s face went from startled to a sly grin not unlike Eddie’s an hour earlier. “Well, would you look at that. What the fuck do we have here?”
****
Part 6 will be from Matt here, but as usual please give him a few days to pick up the mantle.

Posted by The Twins at April 28, 2003 01:50 PM

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