Sebastian Malloy – Page 7

Paranormal Tinglies

The clock on my phone reads 1:40am, and I finally give up on trying to sleep and crawl out of bed. I slip into the walk-in closet and get dressed by the glow from my phone before heading downstairs for coffee and breakfast. My mood can not in the slightest...

No Take Backs

Rivi is crumpling junk mail newspaper fliers into balls and packing them around the drinking glasses in the box on the counter. “I still find it impossible to believe you guys are moving,” she says. “We’ve been talking about it for years,” I tell her. “You should have been listening,...

So Irritating

We are hiding in the blanket fort that Rivi has built in her living room, a semi-permanent and elaborate construction, stretching from chair to chair and bookshelf to bookshelf, nestled in the corner near the door to her bedroom. Christmas lights dangle from binder clips at the top of the...

Twenty Year Storm

The rain is pouring outside, Biblical and a little unsettling. It pounds against the window of Viola’s attic, and the window rattles in its frame against the wind that whips down from the atmospheric river currently pummeling the west coast. “Well,” Viola says. “Guess we aren’t going out on the...

Funereal Hillbillies

We are in the California Central Valley, about a half an hour north of Sacramento, and we are tired of driving. It’s farmland here mostly, trees and low plants that I can’t identify without vegetables or fruit growing on them, and fenced off grazing land with cattle wandering about. It’s...

Rocket Man

It’s snowing as Rivi and I walk along the path beside the creek. She has been staying with us for a week, and has spent most of the time in the guest room with the door shut. Hibernating, she calls it. Hiding, I tell her. Either way, I’m glad that...

I find parking along the houses on 45th Avenue, around the block from the coffee shop. The rain is still falling, pattering like pebbles against the roof of my car. I have Arthur’s umbrella in the seat next to me, but I am not rushing to go out into the storm. Are these second thoughts that I am having about meeting him inside the shop? Possibly. Also likely is that I am having regrets about everything that’s happened which led up to me being on the beach where Arthur saw me this afternoon. Regrets about Christopher. Regrets about coming to…

Monkey Uber

Rivi stands at my living room window and looks out, tapping her fingers impatiently on the windowsill. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go!” I am sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, and eating an onion bagel. “I’m having my breakfast. You can wait five minutes.” “I can’t wait. You can eat on the way.” “You can wait. You’re not going to die.” “We have to go! It’s going to be dark soon!” “It’s eight in the morning,” I say. “The only way it will be dark soon is if the apocalypse comes.” “Fine,” she…

The Ubiquity of Wallflowers

Tina looks out the window of the BART train, as the scenery of the East Bay rolls by. The day is dark and dreary, and I can tell by the way she keeps touching her finger against her lower lip that she wants to have a cigarette. She will have to wait until we get to our destination. There is no smoking on the train. She needed to go to Concord, she told me, although she didn’t say why. I am going with her, because she hates taking BART alone. She said she doesn’t like going through the tunnel underneath…

The Immediacy of Ancient History

It’s too cold outside for the dress I’m wearing, but I don’t really care. It’s only autumn, and the coldest November in San Francisco is still warmer than the warmest one back east. Goosebumps never killed anyone. I have my shoes in my hand and I am walking the sandy edge of the Pacific Ocean, leaving footprints behind me which are dissolved by the relentless washing of the waves almost as soon as I leave them. The sky is cloudy and dark, but I don’t think anything will come of it. The drought in California is tenacious, and I doubt…

Deleting the Dead

“There’s something remarkably sad about a website that belongs to a person who is dead,” Tina says. Her bare feet are up on the dashboard of my car, the window cracked so that she can periodically ash her cigarette out of it. I don’t let anyone smoke in my car, but Tina is the empress of the passenger seat. Her reality is as she wills it. She has a flower in her hair, some pretty blue thing she had picked from the floral display at the grocery store, snapping it off the stem and putting it behind her ear as…

Donuts of Evil

The light through the bedroom window is bright, horribly bright, and focused through the bent slats of the Venetian blinds like East German spotlights during the Cold War. First thing I do is get new curtains, I think to myself, once I am awake enough to be somewhat coherent. Or at least hang up a sheet. I fumble for my phone on the small table beside the bed, and check the time: up at the crack of noon. Too early to suit my tastes, but seeing as I’m awake already, I decide I might as well get up and have…

Crime Scenes of Christmas Future

Rivi insists on helping me to unpack, although I try telling her that it isn’t necessary. “Shut up,” she says cheerfully, and starts taking my books from the banker boxes in the living room. “Go do something in the kitchen,” she says. “Make yourself useful.” It’s a change, this apartment, but it’s temporary and necessary: one bedroom, kitchen, bath, living room. Space enough for living and for writing, which is all that I am in need of just now. The plan is to stock up on unhealthy boxed meals and caffeinated beverages, adopt a flexible bathing schedule, and…

Paranormal Tinglies

No Take Backs

So Irritating

Twenty Year Storm

Funereal Hillbillies

Rocket Man

Alain Delon and la Dépression Française

Paranormal Tinglies

Coffee, Toast and Ill Omens

Monkey Uber

The Ubiquity of Wallflowers

The Immediacy of Ancient History

Deleting the Dead

Donuts of Evil

Crime Scenes of Christmas Future