2/22/1999 Geoffrey Ashbrook
Chad Wilber was out sanding off his mail-box flag when Sandy Duncan pulled up across the street. It was a grey sky day, with a damp air mixing with barbecue mesquite. Her car was an old pink piece of shit, whenever she opened the door there was this thudding sound where the bent metal clicked against the door frame. She slammed the big door with a swing of her hips, and Chad watched as she lugged two big grocery bags in her thin arms up the walk and in her front door. Turned back to his work he kicked over a mason jar filled with screws and stepping on his pastrami sandwich sitting there on a triangle of brown waxed paper. Coming back out to get the other bags she waved to him, and he could hear then how long the street extended in either direction, and how there was only that one Plymouth pulling out of its driveway. He liked her long copper nickel nose, and the sweeping lines from the nostrils arching above the eyes. The glossy rubberpink lips and one red eyebrow. The way her knees seemed wobbly when she walked. Titanium orange yellow eyes, two piece two tone ceramic head, a French model.
The eyes were an incredibly intricate part. Jay Fulsrow sat back in his chair and looked back and fourth between his slanted desk and the view from the window. Outside acorn cabs were fluttering around on dragonfly wings between the buildings which rose miles above the ground weaving around eachother and branching like tree limbs, speckled with lighted windows, mini balconies, air ducts and industrial sized fans. Clouds of all and any make and model meandered through the fibers of the meta-framework.
On the Ground floor Bettn was tilting her head back and fourth a bit as she looked over her work and scribbled in a few lines. Her triangular face was almost entirely flat, and her large liquid eyes were the size of golf balls. Her nose was a rectangular ridge which belled out and faded into her face just above the eyes. She stroked an imported cashmere eyebrow with a long semi-retractable finger, and brushed her steam-curled porcupine quill eyelashes bouncing on springed hinges.
Just then the phone rang. She picked up the receiver and helloed, and over came Ron’s voice, like a cross between a Kazoo and a cat’s plea.