The police hadn’t found the missing baby. In one corner of the crib, the big teddy bear just sat and smiled and said nothing.
Month: February 2014
Fiction: Vacation
The last of the four doors closed, and Jay heard seat belts clicking.
“Everybody ready? We’ve all gone to the loo, gotten a last drink, got everything we have to have for the coming week?”
He was rewarded with affirmatives from the others in the minivan.
“Okay, then, we’re ready to go.” He pulled out his phone and began to speak into it. “Captain’s log. Day one, zero hour.”
“Dad, what are you doing?” Jayson asked.
Jay stopped recording. “I’m going to make a log of our entire vacation experience.”
“What for?”
“Yeah, why do you wanna do that?” Molly asked.
So that when we get home, utterly exhausted and angry with each other, I’ll be able to pinpoint the precise moment this stupid, damn, expensive, unnecessary vacation went off the rails, he didn’t say.
“It’s just what I want to do.” He pointed around the seats. “Your mother said she wanted to go to Florida this year. The two of you insisted that somewhere include Disney World. So you’re all getting something you want. I simply want to make a log of our travels. That can’t be too much to ask, right?”
The children shrugged, and Malinda smiled encouragingly at him.
Jay started over. “Captain’s log. Day one, zero hour. The van is set and we’re pulling out of the driveway headed to Orlando, Florida, on our family vacation.”
He put the phone back in his shirt pocket and started the van.
Though he later spent a month listening to it, the log didn’t help Jay figure out where the vacation had gone off the rails. He should have started recording when he said, “Fine, we’ll drive a thousand damn miles and go to Florida.”
Quotable 190
First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that’s not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?
– Harold Ramis (November 21, 1944 – February 24, 2014)
haiku 302
hot sauce
on the burrito –
cold north wind
#quikfic 89
A bullet whizzed past the bartender’s string tie. He calmly reached out and took the gun from his assailant. “You’re cut off, Ma.”
Quotable 189
I never started from ideas but always from character.
– Ivan Turgenev
haiku 301
parking lot –
sippy cup lid
in the snowmelt
#quikfic 88
“You should be hard at work on Valentine’s Day,” the bartender said. “Give me a Manhattan and hold the shop talk,” Cupid groused.
* * *
There are some other stories about Cupid in the archives, here and here. Also, note that this is #quikfic 88: 88 is amateur radio shorthand for “love and kisses.” It’s a nice coincidence today.
Quotable 188
Poets go to bed earliest, followed by short story writers, then novelists. The habits of playwrights are unknown.
– Ann Beattie
haiku 300
February –
freezing drizzle on snow
on snow