The Counselor ~ A Capsule Movie Review

The Counselor

The Counselor ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp 

American writer Cormac McCarthy won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Road. Another of his novels, No Country for Old Men, was adapted into a movie that won Best Picture honors for 2007 at the Oscars. As if those aren’t accolades enough, the 80-year-old writer has written the screenplay for the new movie, The Counselor.

Michael Fassbender plays the title role. He is never known by any name other than “counselor.” He lives in El Paso, Texas, near the Mexican border. He has a pretty girlfriend named Laura (Penelope Cruz), whom he wants to marry. He buys her an expensively ostentatious diamond engagement ring (she doesn’t want to know how much it’s worth). Because he has pressing financial needs (which are never explained), he decides to enter into the business of illegal drug trafficking, where he believes he can make huge sums of money. (He is warned about what he might be getting himself into, but doesn’t heed the warning.) He has a spiky-haired friend named Reiner (Javier Bardem) who lives lavishly from drug-trafficking proceeds. Reiner facilitates the drug deal that the counselor will take part in, and it turns out to be a huge one: twenty million dollars.

Reiner has a creepy girlfriend with a lopsided hairdo and tons of eye makeup named Malkina (Cameron Diaz). Reiner says at one point that all that women want is to be entertained. Malkina apparently wants more than that. She has her own private agenda and doesn’t know the meaning of the word loyalty. She prates on and on about how bad she is. At one point she goes to a Catholic priest to confess her sins, but when she tells the priest she isn’t Catholic, he tells her he can’t give her absolution. When she starts talking dirty to him, he leaves the confessional.

As expected, the drug deal doesn’t go well. The twenty-million-dollars worth of drugs are hijacked and stolen. The counselor, Reiner and another intermediary in the deal (Brad Pitt, with another unflattering hairdo) are all in deep trouble. The men who own the drugs (who we never see) are ruthless and unforgiving. They will not listen to excuses. They will only exact revenge and it won’t be pleasant. There is no way out for the counselor. The people to whom he turns for help are unwilling or unable to assist. He is told: You did this; now you must suffer the consequences.

The Counselor was directed by renowned director Ridley Scott, whose impressive list of credits, going back more than thirty years, includes Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator. With all the talent behind and in front of the camera, why isn’t it a better movie? While it’s very slick and pretty to look at, it’s talky and predictable. There are no surprises, other than the fact that the two hours running time seems like it will never end.

Copyright © 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Horse Face

Horse Face image

Horse Face ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

I bought only two items, a pound of butter and a jar of pickles. I could have gone through the express lane and been on my way in thirty seconds, but I waited twenty minutes or more behind an old lady with a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff in an overflowing cart. When my turn finally came, I smiled at the checker and placed my items on the conveyor belt. When she looked at me, she blushed a little. I know she did.

Her name, displayed on her name tag for all the world to see, was Patricia. She was twenty-eight years old, wasn’t married, and lived with her mother the same as me. I knew these things from hearsay. I had been seeing her in the Food Giant for two years. We had been on a first-name basis ever since I had told her my name.

“Hi, Patricia!” I said, hoping she wasn’t catching any bad smells coming off my body.

“Hello, Morgan. All alone this evening?”

“I’m just stopping by on my way home from work.”

“Most people go through the express lane when they only have two items. It saves time.”

“I know, but I prefer your lane.”

She laughed and pushed her glasses in place up her knobby nose. “Why is that?” she asked.

“You’re my favorite checker.”

“I didn’t know I was anybody’s favorite anything,” she said with a little deprecatory laugh.

The trouble with buying two items is that it takes such a short time to pay for them. It was over all too fast. I gave her a pained smile, took the bag with my two items in it, and left.

When my mother and I were having dinner that evening, I decided to bring up the subject of Patricia to see what she would say.

“At the Food Giant,” I said carefully, “have you ever noticed a checkout girl named Patricia?”

“I don’t pay any attention to their names,” mother said. “The only thing that matters to me is whether they’re fast or slow. The fast ones I like. The slow ones I don’t.”

“Patricia is the one with brown-blond hair that looks like a curtain that’s about to close over her face.”

“Does she have spots on her hands?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is she the one that’s so fat it looks like she’s eaten half the food in the store before she started her shift?”

“No, mother. The one I’m talking about isn’t fat.”

She thought for a moment. “I know who you mean!” she said. “She’s the one with a long face like a horse.”

“Well, if you want to be cruel about it, that’s the one.”

“What about her?”

“I’m thinking about asking her over for dinner.”

She was speechless for a moment. Then she laughed as though I had made a joke. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked.

“I think she’s lonely.”

“Why should that concern you?”

“Maybe I’m lonely, too.”

“Do you mean you’re thinking of asking her out on a date?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“You don’t know anything about her. She might have filthy habits. She might have insanity in her genes. She might have diseases, for heaven’s sake!”

“Yes, the possibilities are limitless, are they not?”

“Why her?”

“I seem to feel some kind of connection between us, and I have ever since the first time I saw her.”

“The last girl you dated turned out to be a man!”

“That isn’t fair. She was a girl stuck in a man’s body.”

“She could be a frog stuck in a man’s body and she’d still be a man. It’s the body that counts.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves you have poor judgment.”

“My judgment is as good as anybody else’s!”

“I don’t care what you do. It’s your life.”

“Thank you!”

“But I refuse to stand idly by and see you ruin your life on…”

We went on and on in that way until she couldn’t stand to look at me anymore and retired to her room to watch her TV shows, leaving me to wash the dishes on my own.

The next day I again stopped at the Food Giant on my way home from work. I bought a bag of peanuts in the shell and a bottle of maple syrup and stood in line to pay for them. When Patricia saw me, the pained look on her face went away and she brightened.

“Back again, are we?” she said.

“Always the loyal customer,” I said.

“If you buy only two items at a time, it’ll take you forever to finish your grocery shopping.”

“What are you doing Saturday night?” I blurted it out before I lost my nerve.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought about it. I’ll probably catch up on my sleep.”

“Would you like to have an adventure?”

“What kind of adventure?”

“Come to my house and have dinner with my mother and me.”

“Well, um, I don’t know.”

“I’ll make lasagna. Tell me you don’t like lasagna.”

“I do like lasagna.”

“Well, then?”

“What time?”

“You mean you’ll come?”

I gave her directions to my house and told her to be there around six o’clock.

My mother was still peeved with me that evening. She didn’t chatter on about her soap operas and the things that had happened to her that day, as she usually did. She hardly spoke at all and when she did speak, she let me know how much it pained her.

“Is horse face coming for dinner?” she asked, looking down at her plate.

“Yes. And her name is Patricia.”

“When?”

“Saturday.”

“I’ll make it a point to be gone. I’ll go to a movie or something.”

“I’d like for you to be here. I want you to meet Patricia.”

“Why would I want to meet her?”

“Because she’s a friend of mine. I think you’ll like her.”

“When she ruins your life, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

On Saturday I cleaned house, or at least the parts that Patricia was likely to see, and then I took a long bubble bath. I put on a brand-new plaid sports shirt and pants I had been saving for a special occasion. I set the table for three with the good dishes.

Patricia arrived right on time. I gave her a glass of wine and we sat on the couch and talked about small things—the weather, traffic, and her job at the Food Giant. Then we went into the kitchen and I showed her the place at the table where I wanted her to sit. She pulled out the chair and sat down with a set-in-place smile.

Before I took the lasagna out of the oven, I went upstairs to the door of mother’s bedroom and knocked softly. I could hear the voices coming from her TV.

“Mother,” I said, “dinner’s ready and we have a guest.”

She said nothing so I thought maybe she had fallen asleep. I knocked again, this time a little louder.

“It’s time for dinner, mother,” I said. “Please come to the table before the food gets cold.”

I heard her say, seemingly from far away, “I don’t want anything.”

“You have to eat, mother,” I said. “You haven’t eaten all day.”

“Go away and leave me alone,” she said. “I have a headache and I just want to be alone.”

When I went back into the kitchen, I smiled at Patricia and said, “Mother is doing the Greta Garbo routine this evening,” I said. “She just vants to be alone.”

“She what?” Patricia said.

“She has a headache and doesn’t want any dinner.”

After we ate, Patricia helped me clean up the dishes and then we went into the living room and watched Now, Voyager on TV. I had seen it maybe ten times, but Patricia had never seen it. When it was over, I could see she was puzzled about something.

“Did Charlotte Vale really kill her mother?” she asked.

“Not literally,” I said. “Only figuratively.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

I could see then that Patricia wasn’t as bright as I might have wished.

The dinner went well, I thought, in spite of mother’s refusal to come to the table, and the next time I saw Patricia I planned on asking her out on a real date.

Mother was fine the next day, her usual self. She went to church with her girlfriends, Pansy and June Ellen, and when she got home she was laughing about some gossip she had heard involving the minister’s wife. She didn’t mention my dinner with Patricia.

After my third date with Patricia, I realized that if mother was ever going to meet her, I was going to have to force it.

It was Sunday again and she wanted to drive out to the cemetery and put some plastic flowers on my father’s grave. Before we left home, I called Patricia without telling mother and asked her if she’d like to join us for a drive in the country. She said yes, so I told her I’d stop by and pick her up on our way out of town.

As soon as I deviated from the expected route, mother knew something was up.

“Why are you turning here?” she said. “This is not the right way.”

“I have a little surprise for you,” I said.

“You know how I hate surprises!”

When I pulled up in front of Patricia’s house, she came out the door in her coat with a big smile on her face. Her mother, who could pass for Marie Dressler, was right behind her in her bathrobe. She waved to us from the front porch.

“Would your mother like to go with us?” I asked Patricia as she climbed into the back seat. (Mother wasn’t about to give up her spot in the front.)

“No, she’s having a bad day,” Patricia said. “She’s got the twitches.”

“Patricia, I want you to meet my mother,” I said.

Patricia pulled herself forward on the seat back and reached awkwardly for mother’s hand with her left hand. Mother shook her hand and then looked at her own to see if anything had been left behind.

“I’m so happy to finally meet you, Mrs. Fenwick!” Patricia gushed. She seemed about to climb over the seat and crawl into mother’s lap.

“Hello,” mother said.

“You have a wonderful son!”

“I know.”

“And isn’t it a beautiful day to be out of the house?”

“I suppose so.”

Mother seemed disinclined to speak further, so Patricia shut up. I knew what mother was thinking and I was glad that Patricia didn’t know. I was hoping we could get through the day without mother calling her horse face.

At the cemetery when we were standing over my father’s grave and mother was fussing with the artificial flowers, Patricia wanted to know all the details about his death.

“Was it a painful death?” she asked.

“I’m afraid you’d have to ask him that,” I said. “He was in coma for the last ten days of his life.”

“The gophers have been digging again,” mother said.

“How did he die?” Patricia asked.

I mimed dying, the best I could standing up, but that’s not what she meant.

“Silly,” Patricia said.

“Do you mean of what did he die?”

“Yes.”

“He had a heart condition.”

Patricia seemed disappointed that there was so little drama surrounding his death. “Don’t you feel sorry for the people who kill themselves?” she said.

“That’s enough of the chatter,” mother said. “This is a solemn occasion.”

“What’s the occasion?” Patricia asked.

“Anytime you’re in a cemetery, it’s a solemn occasion,” I whispered.

“That’s my place there, right next to him,” mother said. “It’s waiting for me.”

“You’ll outlive us all,” I said.

“I’m going to be cremated,” Patricia said, “unless, of course, I die in a place where my body is never found, like outer space.”

When we were walking back down the hill to the car, Patricia took my hand and twined her fingers through mine. She giggled like an adolescent girl on her first date and whispered in my ear. Mother was right behind us taking it all in.

After I had dropped Patricia back at her house, mother said, “I don’t like her.”

“You haven’t given her a chance,” I said.

“It’s not what I see that I don’t like. It’s what I don’t see.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“I think you should get rid of her.”

“I’m thinking of asking her to marry me.”

I continued to see Patricia on a regular basis. On the two or three nights a week I was gone, I knew mother knew I was with Patricia, but we didn’t talk about it. She filled in her time alone like the stalwart she was, with her lodge functions, TV programs, and phone conversations.

Patricia won a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip to a lakeside resort in the mountains for two. She asked me if I’d like to go with her and I said yes. I planned to propose to her in the romantic setting of the resort. When we returned from our three-day trip, we would announce our plans to be married. There was no turning back now.

“When I told mother I was going to be gone for three days, she said, “With her?”

“Yes,” I said. “With her.”

“I’m not going to let it upset me,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

“I’m not going to try to interfere because you are an adult now and you have your own life to live apart from me.”

“That’s very sensible of you,” I said.

She sniffled a little into her hanky but that was the end of it.

Patricia and I had a wonderful time in those three days. We indulged in lavish meals, swam in the lake, rode horses, hiked, and just got to know each other better. It was a sort of preview of what our future life together would be like. On our last night there, I asked her to marry me and she accepted.

I couldn’t wait to share my happy news with mother. I was sure she would overcome her reluctance and would come to love Patricia as much as I did. We would be sure to include her in all our future plans and would, of course, expect her to live with us.

When I got home on Sunday evening, I knew right away that something was wrong. All the lights were on, but there was an abandoned feel to the house as if it had not been lived in the whole time I was away. Mother wasn’t in the kitchen or in any of the downstairs rooms.

I found her upstairs in her bedroom. She was in her bed, wearing her pajamas, barely breathing. She had taken a bottle of sleeping pills and had timed it, apparently, so I would find her when I arrived home.

On the bedside table was the empty bottle, minus the lid. Underneath the bottle was a suicide note: “Dear Morgan,” the note read, “If I’m going to lose you, I don’t want to go on living. Love, Mother.”

I called an ambulance. They came and took her to the hospital, where emergency room doctors pumped her stomach. I sat beside her bed for twelve hours until she regained consciousness. When she woke up, she had a terrible headache and a sore throat.

When I told Patricia I couldn’t marry her and wasn’t going to see her again, she took it well. She said she never really believed me anyway. I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I didn’t press it any further.

Now when I go to the Food Giant, I use the express lane. If I have more than twelve items, I use one of the regular lanes, as long as it’s not Patricia’s. I keep my eyes down and don’t look her way. I’m sure it’s all for the best.

Copyright © 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Gravity ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Gravity 

Gravity ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp 

Gravity, with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (why can’t I ever take him seriously?), is about two astronauts on a space station hundreds of miles above the earth. On this particular day that the action begins, Dr. Ryan Stone (yes, even though she’s a girl, she has a boy’s name) and Matt Kowalski, brother of Stanley (just kidding), happen to be “spacewalking,” meaning they’re working outside the space station when they receive a warning from “mission control” that a “satellite debris field” is headed their way. Dr. Stone is reluctant to leave unfinished the job she has started, so they don’t make it back inside fast enough before the debris hits them. And it’s a good thing they don’t, because the debris has hit the space station (their “home” in space) and ripped it apart, killing the other crew members. Dr. Stone and Matt Kowalski aren’t much better off, though, because they are left adrift in space with their limited oxygen supply. From that point on, it becomes a question of survival. Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into. Does anybody have any bright ideas?

Dr. Stone would be dead right out of the gate if it wasn’t for the more seasoned, cool-headed Matt Kowalski. When she is spinning uncontrollably through space, head over heels, he catches her and tethers her to himself. Off in the far distance (too far) they can see the Chinese space station. Their only chance of survival is to go there and get help. It will be like “swimming” through nothing to get there. Will their oxygen hold out? Probably not, but they have to at least try.

Of course, while all this is going on, they have the panorama of earth, hundreds of miles below them, to look at. All they can see are the swirls of cloud formations and outlines of continents, but still it is a beautiful sight that the vast majority of us will never see except in pictures.

Gravity is only ninety minutes long (including the expansive end credits) which, I read, is the time it takes the space station to go around the globe. (Ninety minutes seems short compared to the length of other movies.) The theme of the movie is perseverance, not giving up in the face of overwhelmingly adverse odds; experiencing a kind of “rebirth” after terrible things have happened.

While Gravity is expensively made and worth seeing for those who are so inclined, I don’t really buy George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts. Instead of two besieged humans in an inhospitable environment, they seem like nothing more than two middle-aged movie stars trying to justify their twelve-million-dollar salaries. Other problems involve plausibility. When they are in such danger and have so much time for talk, why do they not mention God or at least the possibility that God exists? Wouldn’t most people who know they are likely to die in the next few minutes offer up some kind of prayer for deliverance, or is that concept too offensive nowadays? And, on another note, why are the Chinese and Russian space stations abandoned and accessible to American astronauts? Are the Chinese and Russian astronauts just “out” for the moment? If this is explained at any point in the movie, I must have missed it.

Copyright © 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

John 14:27

Autumn 4

 

John 14:27

~~~

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

~~~

All earthly things disappoint. Our need is deeper, more sublime than any possession or accomplishment can satisfy. 

 

 

 

 

by allen0997

Cat Scratch Fever


Cat Scratch Fever image

Cat Scratch Fever ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(This is a slightly expanded version of a story I posted earlier.)

When Miss Cudgel walked into the classroom, the laughter and loud talking stopped at once. She shot a stern look to the class at large to let them know they weren’t getting away with anything she didn’t know about, removed her sweater and draped it over the back of the chair. After sitting down at the desk, she waited a few seconds for absolute silence and began calling roll.

“Phillip Abbot.”

“Here,” Phillip said.

“Junie Adler.”

“Present, teacher.”

“Eli Babb.”

“Wah-wah-wah! Here, teacher!”

Everybody laughed.

“Very funny,” Miss Cudgel said. “Anything for a laugh. Who are you supposed to be today?”

“Nobody, teacher,” Eli said. “I was pretending to play the trombone.”

“Well, you play your imaginary trombone someplace else. The classroom is not the place for it.”

“Yes, teacher.”

“Wanda Baggett.”

“Here.”

“Clarabelle Beers.”

Silence.

“Clarabelle Beers!”

She looked up from the roll book, about midway to the back of the room and saw Clarabelle Beers in her usual seat with her head down and her face hovering over her desk. “Clarabelle, why don’t you answer me?” she said. “Can’t you hear me call your name?”

Veronica Stompers, sitting to the right of Clarabelle, raised her hand timidly.

“Yes, Veronica, what is it?” Miss Cudgel said.

“She wet her pants,” Veronica said. “There’s pee all over the floor.”

At this the class laughed uproariously. Everybody jumped out of their seats to see. There was nothing like somebody wetting their pants in class to spice up a dull winter morning.

“Sit down!” Miss Cudgel bellowed in her finest authoritarian manner. “What is this? You know not to get out of your seats without permission! We’re not a bunch of animals!”

“Oh, yes we are!” somebody said, but she didn’t know who said it so she chose to ignore it.

She stood up and walked back to where Clarabelle was sitting and bent over her. “Clarabelle,” she said softly. “Did you have a little accident?”

Clarabelle looked miserably into her eyes and nodded her head.

“Come with me and we’ll get you fixed up, then” she said.

She took Clarabelle to the nurse’s office down the hall, where she knew there was an abundance of paper towels.

The school nurse, Maxine Phegley, who was not really a bonafide nurse but a sort of medical assistant, was sitting at her desk reading a magazine. When she looked up and saw Miss Cudgel open the door and come into the room with Clarabelle, she quickly stowed the magazine out of sight.

“What’s this?” she asked, standing up.

“We had a little accident,” Miss Cudgel said.

While Miss Phegley went to get paper towels to help Clarabelle get herself dried off, Miss Cudgel went to summon the janitor to come with his mop to clean the mess up off the floor in the classroom. When she returned to the nurse’s office, Clarabelle was snuffling into a paper towel held to her face.

“I’m cold,” Clarabelle said.

“I’m afraid her clothes are soaked through,” Miss Phegley said. “I think you should send her home.”

“I can’t send her outside in wet clothes,” Miss Cudgel said. “It’s five degrees outside. She’ll freeze to death.”

“Well, call her mother, then.”

“You wait here, dear,” she said to Clarabelle, “and I’ll go downstairs to the principal’s office and get your mother on the phone.”

She asked the secretary to get the phone number for the Beers family. When she called the number and got the busy signal, she waited two minutes and tried again. Still the busy signal.

She went back upstairs and informed Miss Phegley that she would drive Clarabelle home herself, in her own car, to get into some dry clothes. They would be back as soon as they could.

“Would you mind,” she asked Miss Phegley, “to sit in on my class and make sure everybody behaves until I get back? Tell them to read in their social studies book the chapter on Peru. Take down the names of anybody who thinks of it as a play period and doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do.”

“Just as you say,” Miss Phegley said.

Miss Cudgel helped Clarabelle into her coat and led her outside to the parking lot. She opened the passenger-side door for Clarabelle, thinking vaguely about the pee on her car seat, and then got in herself.

“Where do you live, Clarabelle?” she asked.

“We live out in Scraptown,” Clarabelle said. She had brightened considerably outside of school.

Miss Cudgel sighed but didn’t say anything. How could she not have known that Clarabelle lived in Scraptown? If she had ever given it a thought, she would have known.

Scraptown was on the southern edge of town, across the railroad tracks near the sewage processing plant. It was where the poorest people lived, the ignorant and hopeless of the world. The one thing the people in  Scraptown could do properly, Miss Cudgel thought as she jolted her car over the ruts in the road, was have lots of children they were in no manner prepared to take care of.

The Beers home was the last dwelling in Scraptown, a miserable little gray square of a house set on a hill, surrounded by winter scrub and an assortment of car and major-appliance parts.

“You can pull in there, by the fence,” Clarabelle said.

It hardly seemed like a driveway, but Miss Cudgel turned off into a little scooped-out space that had been washed away by the rain just big enough for a car.

Clarabelle ran on up to the house with Miss Cudgel behind her. When Clarabelle came to the front door, she stood aside and waited. Miss Cudgel knocked, expecting a slatternly, fag-smoking mother to answer the door, but instead it was answered by a frizzy-haired girl in her teens.

“Who are you?” the girl said.

“I’m Miss Cudgel, Clarabelle’s third-grade teacher.”

“Did something happen to Clarabelle?”

“Here I am!” Clarabelle said, coming around behind Miss Cudgel.

“Clarabelle had an accident at school and she needs a clean change of clothes,” Miss Cudgel said. “I’m going to wait for her and then take her back.”

The girl seemed hardly to care, but she stood aside for Miss Cudgel to enter.

“Are you Clarabelle’s sister?” Miss Cudgel asked.

“I’m Rosalie,” the girl said.

“Is it all right if I sit down?”

“Sure.”

She sat down on a sofa the color of mold.

“What kind of accident did Clarabelle have?” Rosalie asked.

“I went my pants!” Clarabelle said proudly.

“Oh, brother!” Rosalie said. “Anything for attention.”

Clarabelle disappeared into the back part of the house.

“She needs a bath, too,” Miss Cudgel offered.

“Take a bath, CB!” Rosalie yelled.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Miss Cudgel asked, smiling to soften the question.

“Well, ordinarily I would be,” Rosalie said, “but my mother is in the hospital with cat scratch fever, and while she’s away I have to stay home and take care of Winchell.”

“Who’s Winchell?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Too young to go to school?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Well, why…”

“He’s retarded and doesn’t go to school. He used to go to retarded school but he flunked out.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in his room. I gave him a pill to quiet him down. Would you like a beer?”

“No, I…”

“My mother says I should always offer visitors a beer.”

“We have to be getting back to school as soon as Clarabelle finishes dressing.”

“Before you came,” Rosalie said, “I was sitting here by myself wondering and wondering. Do you think I ought to get married?”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“I think you should finish school before you think about marriage.”

“That’s what everybody says, but I don’t think I’ll wait that long. My boyfriend wants me to marry him and he’s not going to wait years for me. He’ll find him another girl if I make him wait that long.”

“Is he a classmate of yours at school?”

Rosalie laughed. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t go to school. He’s twenty-one. His name is Ricky. Don’t you think that’s a cute name for a boy?”

“Does your mother know about him?”

Rosalie laughed loudly, throwing her head back. “She’d steal him away from me if she thought she could!”

Finally Clarabelle came out of the back room, wearing a stiff corduroy dress three or four sizes too big for her and a knit cap with all her lank blond hair tucked inside. “I got dry,” she said, “and I took a bath, too!”

“That’s the first one in about a month, isn’t it?” Rosalie said.

As Miss Cudgel and Clarabelle were going out the door to go back to school, Miss Cudgel said to Rosalie, “It was nice talking to you.”

“Yeah,” Rosalie said. “You too. I’ll invite you to my wedding. Haw-haw-haw!”

When they were on the highway headed back to town, Miss Cudgel looked away from the road to Clarabelle and said, “Somebody needs to speak to you and I suppose it might as well be me since your mother is, um, in the hospital.”

Clarabelle looked solemnly at her, believing she was about to be scolded.

“I won’t be able to do this again,” Miss Cudgel said. “Bring you home to change your clothes, I mean. This has disrupted everybody’s morning, including Miss Phegley’s. You’re supposed to go to the bathroom before school starts in the morning or during recess. If for some reason you don’t go during recess and you have to go when you’re in class, come and tell me and I’ll let you go. Please don’t sit there in class and let it build up until you can’t hold it in any longer and it comes out on its own!”

“Are you mad at me?” Clarabelle asked.

“Of course not.”

“Could we stop someplace and get a hamburger?”

“I’m afraid not. They’re waiting for us back at school. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

Miss Cudgel looked at her watch. “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “You have your lunch money, don’t you?”

“No.”

“When the lunch bell rings, go down to the lunchroom and get yourself a good lunch. Some roast beef and mashed potatoes. Cooked carrots. Tell the head hairnet to put it on Miss Cudgel’s tab. Can you remember that?”

“The head hairnet.”

“That’s right.”

“I like you, Miss Cudgel,” Clarabelle said.

Miss Cudgel turned her eyes away from the road for a moment to smile at Clarabelle. That’s when she hit the icy patch that she should have slowed down for. The car spun around two times like a carnival thrill ride and slipped rearward into the ravine that could not be seen from the road.

Copyright 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Lola Fenwick

Lola Fenwick image 1 

Jasper Dill Loves Lola Fenwick ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(This is a slightly expanded version of a story I posted in January 2013.)

A woman in a trench coat and a stylish hat ran down a city street in the rain, ably but not fast in high-heeled shoes. When she came to a certain apartment building, she ducked inside, stopping just inside the door to shake the water off her coat.

“Elevator’s busted, Miss Fenwick,” the clerk said from behind the desk. “I’m afraid it’s the stairs tonight.”

She gave the man a tense smile and hesitated for only a moment before crossing the lobby to the stairs. She nearly fell on the first step but caught hold of the railing and righted herself. The clerk turned around and watched her until she was out of sight up the stairs. He smiled but there was no telling what the smile meant. It could have meant that he knew something she didn’t know but was about to find out. 

When she came to the sixth floor, she wasn’t out of breath from running up the stairs, but she had an anxious look on her face. She went along the deserted hallway to the door she wanted and inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. She stepped into the darkened room and turned on a lamp.

“Hello, Lola,” a man’s voice said.

She whirled around, drawing in a sharp breath, and faced the man. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you!”   

“Glad to see me?” he asked with a devilish grin.

“I thought you were…” Everybody thought you were…”

“Dead?” he asked. “No, I’m not dead. I’m very much alive and I’ve come back to pick up where we left off.”

Music began faintly in the background and swelled dramatically. With the two of them standing there looking at each other, not speaking and not moving, the picture slowly faded to black.

Dorothy switched off the TV before the commercials began and turned to Jasper. “I knew something like that was going to happen,” she said.

“How did you know?” Jasper asked.

“Oh, the signs were all there,” she said. “The mysterious phone calls. The anonymous letter. I knew Palmer was alive all the time.”

“You did not! You couldn’t have known!”

“Well, anyway, our Lola is certainly in a fix now!”

“He’s going to take that money she has saved for her nephew’s eye operation, I just know it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know about the money.”

“Of course, he knows! Why else would he come back from the dead?”

“Maybe he really loves her.”

“Bah! He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He’ll only use her to get what he wants and then run out on her.”

“Just when she was all ready to marry Dr. Blake.”

“Well, she can’t marry Dr. Blake now unless she wants to commit bigamy.”

“I shudder to think what Dr. Blake will do when he finds out that Palmer isn’t really dead and has come back to torment poor Lola again. You know what a temper he has!”

“I hope he kills the son of a bitch,” Jasper said.

“Oh, I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to see what’s going to happen,” Dorothy said.

“Today is Friday. You’ll have to wait until Monday.”

“Oh, dear! I wish I could just snap my fingers and make it one o’clock Monday afternoon.”

“Wishing your life away, you cluck.” he said.

Dorothy had to go downtown to do some shopping, so Jasper went upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed and covered up with an afghan. In a few minutes he was asleep.

He slept much longer than he intended and when he awoke it was early evening. He wondered if Dorothy was back from shopping yet. As he yawned and started to get up from the bed, he realized there was somebody else in the room with him.

“Hello, darling,” a woman’s voice said.

He turned sharply toward the voice and saw Lola Fenwick from To Live, To Love stand up from the chair in the corner and walk toward him in her stiletto heels.

“How did you get in here?” he asked. He knew it was a stupid thing to say but it was the first thing that came into his head.

“I’ve been here all along,” she said.

She smiled indulgently with those ruby lips of hers. She was dressed in a stunning wool dress of a tawny color, showing her trim waist and large breasts. He could smell her perfume that smelled like the lilac bush his mother had in the yard when he was a boy.

“Has Dorothy come home yet?” he asked. “She’s got to see this!”

“Now don’t worry about her. She and I had a long talk while you were asleep. I gave her a nice drink and a pill and she’s sound asleep in her bedroom.”

“I’ve been watching you on To Live, To Love for eight years. You’re more real to me than anybody I know.” He realized as he spoke these words that he had been in love with her almost from the first moment he saw her.

“I know, darling. That’s why I’m here.”

“Darling,” he said. “I’ve imagined many times, by some sort of magic, being able to hear you call me that.”

“Now, I don’t want to rush you, but there isn’t much time and we’re going to have to get a move on. They’ll be here any minute.”

“Who will be? Is it that son of a bitch Palmer Belvedere?”

“Yes, him, and all my other past husbands, the good and the bad.”

“But what can we do?”

“I want you to take me away from here before something terrible happens.”

“All right, but where to?”

“I’m thinking Mexico.”

“Mexico! But what about Dorothy?”

“She’ll be fine without you. She has often wished that you would go away and leave her in peace.”

“I’ve always wanted to see Mexico, and with you! I must be dreaming!”

“Now, please hurry and get dressed! You don’t need to worry about packing a bag. We’ll buy what we need when we get to where we’re going. I’ll call a taxi and will be waiting for you downstairs.”

“All right, dearest,” he said.

When he went downstairs, she was waiting for him by the front door in her mink coat. She was more lovely than Kim Novak and Rhonda Fleming put together. He felt a thrill that he hadn’t felt in at least twenty years. She took him by the arm and they went out and got into the back seat of the waiting taxicab.

“Bus station,” she said to the driver, “and please hurry!”

“I figured we would go to the airport and fly down in a plane,” Jasper said.

“No, that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do. They would never think I’d go on a bus. It’s the perfect dodge.”

“But isn’t it an awfully long way to go on the bus?”

“Several hundred miles. We’ll be there in no time.”

“Well, I’m sure you know best,” he said.

When they got to the bus station, they had to wait for over an hour for the southbound bus they wanted, so they went into the diner and sat at a secluded booth in the back and had a bite to eat.

“Oh, I do hope we can get on that bus before anybody tries to stop us,” she said.

“I think we’re fairly safe here,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Nobody’s paying any attention to us.”

“There are spies everywhere!” she said.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”

“Oh, I just knew you would.” She reached across the table and put her hand over his.

“Maybe I should call Dorothy and tell her where I am,” he said.

“Now, don’t you worry about a thing,” she said. “I took care of all that while you were asleep.”

“You didn’t kill her, did you?”

She laughed the tinkling little laugh that he loved so well. “I can tell when you’re not being serious,” she said. “No, I didn’t kill her. I have some scruples, you know.”

“But what about Dr. Blake? He’s expecting you to marry him. He needs your help with the life-saving serum he’s working on.”

“The marriage to Dr. Blake is off, I’m afraid. When I told him last night that we were finished, he threatened to kill me.”

“He’ll never find you, dearest.”

“You’re sweet,” she cooed.

“I’ve seen you through all your marriages, your miscarriages, your near-drowning, your trial for murder, your brain operation, your kidnapping, your amnesia, your car going over the cliff, your alien abduction and your stint in women’s prison. You always look stunning, no matter what terrible thing you’re going through, but I have to tell you that you have never looked any lovelier than you do right now.”

She looked across the table at him and there were tears in her eyes. There was nothing she could say that was equal to the moment. He thought he might be able to lean across the table and manage a little kiss, but the departure of their bus was announced over the loud speaker.

He took her by the hand and led her to the last seat in the back of the bus where nobody would look at them. She slipped off her mink coat and he put it on the overhead rack for her and sat down beside her. She slipped her arm through his and put her head on his shoulder.

They rode all night without getting out of their seats, talking little and sleeping fitfully. When he awoke and felt the warmth of her body against his, he knew he was as happy as he had ever been in his life. This was, perhaps, his last chance at happiness and he intended to take it.

He thought about their coming life in Mexico spread out before them like a sun-drenched dream. They would lie in the sun to the accompaniment of the splashing surf, drinking exotic fruity drinks out of coconut shells. He would rub suntan oil on her shoulders, and everywhere they went people would admire her beauty and envy him for being her man.

Just as the sun was coming up, the bus stopped for a fifteen-minute rest stop. Lola was still sleeping, using her mink coat as a pillow. Jasper stood up so as not to disturb her and tiptoed away to the front of the bus. Most of the other passengers were sleeping, unaware that there was a celebrated international beauty in their midst, slipping away to Mexico with her man.

He stepped off the bus and was making his way to the little building that served as gas station, restaurant and bus stop, when two men came from around the front end of the bus and stopped in front of him.

“Are you Jasper Dill?” the larger of the two asked.

“Who wants to know?”

He pulled a badge from his pocket and flashed it in Jasper’s face. “I’m Officer Harry Holt and this is Officer Tom Green.”

“Very impressive, I’m sure,” Jasper said.

“We have to take you in, sir.”

“In where? For what?”

“I’m not an information bureau. We’re just supposed to take you in.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well, completely off the record, now. When your wife ends up poisoned to death and you take it on the lam, it looks like you might have had something to do with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My wife is perfectly fine.”

“That’s a good one! It’s a little stale, though. You need some fresh material.”

“What if I refuse to go?”

“We’ll take you anyway. We’ll hurt you if we have to but we’d rather not.”

“There’s been some terrible mistake.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you can get it all straightened out when you get to police headquarters and then you can go on your pathetic little way.”

“Wait a minute,” Jasper said. “I have a traveling companion, asleep on the bus. I can’t just go off and leave her without telling her what’s happened!”

Officer Harry Holt considered for a moment. “All right,” he said, “you can go tell her, but I’ll have to come with you.”

Feeling as if his heart and lungs had been pulled from his body, Jasper stepped up the three little steps onto the bus and walked down the aisle with the officer close behind him. When he came to the back of the bus, Lola wasn’t there. No one was there. He looked for the mink coat but it wasn’t there, either.

The nearest person was a Mexican, asleep several seats away. Jasper grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him roughly awake.

“Where is the lovely young woman that was sitting with me in the back of the bus?” he said. “She was wearing a mink coat! You couldn’t miss her!”

The Mexican sat up straight, alarmed. “I see no one,” he said, holding up his hands as though he would be struck. “No one there. Seats empty. My eyes they are not so good.”

His legs failing him, Jasper sat down heavily on the nearest seat. Officer Holt pulled him to his feet and led him off the bus to the back seat of the patrol car. As they sped away, Jasper craned his neck around to get a last glimpse of the bus. He began to cry, not for himself, but for the lovely Lola. He was leaving her and he didn’t even have a chance to tell her goodbye.

Copyright © 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories ~ A Capsule Book Review

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories cover

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

More than any other American writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the age he lived in, especially the 1920s. He coined the term “Jazz Age.” If you want to know what it was like to live in the twenties, with its good times, easy money, Ivy Leaguers, extravagance, sexual freedom and booze in spite of Prohibition, read the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In his relatively short time on earth (44 years), he wrote four completed novels—one of which, The Great Gatsby, is among the three or four greatest American novels of the twentieth century—and dozens of short stories, which were mostly written for magazines.

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories is a collection of ten of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories. Some of the stories in the collection are much longer than conventional short stories, which should run about 5,000 words or less. If a story is much longer than that, I think it technically qualifies as a novella. This collection runs over 250 pages. With ten stories, that’s an average of 25 pages per story. One story in the collection, May Day, is 50 pages. I think the shorter stories are better plotted and more memorable.

The best and most famous story in the collection is, of course, the story for which the collection is named, Babylon Revisited. It was written in 1931 and is about a man, Charlie Wales, who has passed through the 1920s but not unscathed. He is a reformed (or trying to reform) heavy drinker who used to spend money freely when he had it. He had an unhappy marriage to a woman named Helen. Charlie and Helen had a daughter, named Honoria, who is nine years old when the story takes place. Helen has died of “heart trouble” and Honoria lives with her aunt (Helen’s sister, Marion) and Marion’s husband, Lincoln, in Paris, since Charlie is seen as too irresponsible to care for her and give her a proper home. Now that Charlie has a steady job and has his drinking habit under control, he wants to take Honoria back and have her live with him. He must, of course, prevail upon snooty Marion, who doesn’t like him, to give up Honoria. This isn’t going to be easy since Marion has legal custody of Honoria and still sees Charlie as an irresponsible drunkard. When he just about has Marion convinced to give up Honoria, his past catches up with him in the form of two drunken profligates he used to associate with, reawakening Marion’s doubts about him.

Other memorable stories in the collection are The Ice Palace, about a girl from the warm, sunny South who wants (or thinks she wants) to marry a boy from the cold North. When a frightening episode occurs when she’s visiting her boyfriend’s home in the icy North, she calls off the marriage.

A Diamond as Big as the Ritz is the not-so-happy story about the richest man in the world who owns a mountain that is in reality a diamond. He and his eccentric family live in splendor, apart from the rest of the world. When his son takes a classmate from boarding school home with him for vacation, the visiting boy comes to know this family first-hand. What he discovers about them isn’t pretty.

Absolution is about a “beautiful” eleven-year-old boy who comes from a strict Catholic family. He is confused about his religion and believes his sins are much graver than they really are. When he confesses to an old priest—the priest is struck by the “beauty” of the boy’s eyes—he finds the priest is just as confused as he is and isn’t capable of offering him any comfort.

The Freshest Boy is about a boy named Basil Lee who is attends a fancy boys’ prep school. His family can barely afford to send him there and he is very unhappy because he is so unpopular and disliked by the other boys. It seems that everything he does makes him even more hated. On a trip to New York to see a show, however, he has a revelation about his life. When he has a chance to leave prep school forever and live in Europe with his mother, he decides not to take it.

The shortest story (five pages) in the collection is The Long Way Out. It’s about a woman who has had a nervous breakdown and is a patient in a mental hospital. She is waiting for her husband to come and take her on a trip, but he has been killed in an accident on his way there. The nurses don’t want to tell the woman her husband is dead, so every day they tell her he has been delayed one day but will be there the next day. The woman believes that the arrival of her husband is just one day away. Always one day.

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories is a good sampling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short fiction. It gives the reader a sense of what he was about as a writer. There are many more stories to be had for those who are interested in delving further and, of course, there’s always The Great Gatsby, which, as a novel, is about as good as it gets.

Copyright © 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Prisoners ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Prisoners

Prisoners ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp 

Prisoners is a relentlessly bleak (gray clouds, rain and snow, no bright colors, somber background music) story about two young girls,  Anna and Joy, who vanish in their own neighborhood on Thanksgiving Day. Anna and Joy are friends, as are their families. The two families have just shared Thanksgiving dinner together when they discover the girls are missing. The only thing different that anybody notices that day is a camper truck parked on the street in the neighborhood that doesn’t belong, with sounds coming from inside.

When the police have a suspect in custody, a child-like young man with the mental age of ten years named Alex Jones (played by the ever-strange Paul Dano), they have to release him after 48 hours because they cannot produce any evidence against him. The father of the one of the girls, Keller Dover (played by Hugh Jackman), is outraged that Alex Jones is being released because he feels certain that he at least knows where the girls are. Keller Dover takes matters into his own hands. He abducts Alex Jones and takes him to an abandoned apartment building he owns, where he repeatedly beats him, trying to get him to tell what he knows. If Alex knows anything, he isn’t talking; he barely seems to know what is going on.

The soulful-eyed police inspector on the case, Detective Loki (played by Jake Gyllenhall), investigates every possible lead, trying to make sense of the senseless. What he lacks in fashion sense he makes up for in dedication to his work. He wants to find the missing girls as much as the parents do but is frustrated every step of the way. 

Prisoners is gripping and involving. If it’s not one of the best movies of the year, it’ll have to do until the real thing comes along. It will keep you guessing right up to the end. It might also make you feel like crying when it’s over. The first couple of minutes will probably make you cringe, if you, like me, can’t stand the offensive sight of a deer being shot and killed. I’m assuming, however, that it’s a computer-generated deer since we are told in the closing credits that “no animals were harmed in the making of this picture.” Fake deer or not, I would have liked it a lot better if the bullet had missed and the deer had run off into the woods.

Copyright © 2013 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997