Allen Kopp – Page 44 – Literary Fictions

Versailles ~ A Capsule Book Review

Versailles: A Biography of a Palace ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The Palace of Versailles is possibly the most famous structure of its kind in the world. Situated about twelve miles outside of Paris, it was built in the 1680s by Louis XIV. For the next roughly hundred years it served as the seat of French government and home for the royal families and royal courts under three kings: Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI. Versailles: A Biography of a Palace, by Tony Spawforth, is a history of the Palace of Versailles, a history of the people who lived there, good and bad, the court intrigues, the adulterous affairs, the arrogance, the corruption, the extravagance and the bad press that eventually brought down the monarchy and replaced it with a republic. After Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were deposed and eventually guillotined in the 1790s, the Palace of Versailles came to represent tyranny and extravagance to the French people. There were calls for it to be demolished as a hated symbol of the repressive past, but it still stands today, a monument to what once was and never will be again.

Louis XIV, who built Versailles and made it what it would be for about the next hundred years, was a monarch down to his fingertips. He believed in the divine right of the French king, that the kind should live extravagantly and luxuriously. Up until the time of Louis XIV, the seat of French government had been the Louvre in Paris, but Louis wanted something different. He moved to the French countryside outside of Paris, to a little town known as Versailles. He destroyed three small villages to build what would become the sprawling palace that housed thousands of people at one time: courtiers and aristocrats, family of the king and queen, office holders, ministers and functionaries, appointees, cooks and lackeys, servants and attendants. Many of the people who lived in the palace were essentially leeches and served no real purpose, but were part of the elaborate system that comprised the king’s court.

After Louis XIV’s death, the reputation of the king and royalty in general began to deteriorate with the public and the press. Whereas Louis XIV was beloved and an inspiration to his people, Louis XV, his successor, was less punctilious in his kingly duties. He wasn’t so particular about his public image and openly engaged in adulterous affairs with many women, including the infamous Madame de Pompadour and Comtesse du Barry. He would flaunt his affairs of the heart to the world and didn’t seem to care about the ramifications. The image of the monarchy began to suffer.

Upon Louis XV’s death from smallpox in the year 1774, his grandson Louis XVI became king. Louis XVI resembled a pudgy schoolboy and wasn’t much interested in being king. He seemed feckless and completely bereft of the attributes necessary to run a great country. The worst thing that ever happened to him was being married off to an Austrian princess, who would later become known as Marie Antoinette. After her function of providing a male heir to the king was fulfilled, she indulged in her whims and mostly locked herself away from court functions and her role as queen. She wanted her own privacy and a good time and she didn’t care who knew it. She developed a terrible reputation with the public and in the press, which only became worse as her extravagances were revealed, and this while many “regular” people were starving because economic conditions were so bad in the country. Fairly or not, she came to represent the excesses of the monarchy at their worst. She and her husband, Louis XVI, were eventually beheaded in a cruel public spectacle. She was hated and reviled for years after her death but remains a compelling figure to this day, around whom a cult of admiration has developed.

If you’ve ever visited the Palace of Versailles, as I have, Versailles: The Biography of a Palace will make compelling reading, but it will even if you haven’t been there. It’s a readable history for the “casual” historical reader, never dull or academic; full of anecdotes and the “small” moments that history is made of. If you are a fan of the 1938 MGM movie, Marie Antoinette, you can’t help imagining Robert Morley and Norma Shearer as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and Tyrone Power as the queen’s would-be boyfriend, Count de Fersen, who remained sympathetic to the end. As Count de Fersen hears the cheers of the crowd as the queen is beheaded, tears fill his eyes and he looks off into the middle distance, filled for the moment with thoughts of what might have been.

March 10, 2016March 10, 2016 by allen0997

Sylvia Dell

Sylvia Dell ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

In 1926 Mrs. Bertha Indelicato of Burbank, California, took her son, Sidney Indelicato, to a movie studio to audition for a part in a motion picture. She dressed him up in a light-blue jumper and a yellow shirt, with pork-pie hat and strapped, patent leather shoes. With Sidney’s cherubic face and naturally curly blond hair, he looked as much like a girl as a boy.

At the audition the casting director, a man named Perkins Belmont Perkins, wearing knickers and argyle stockings, separated the boys from the girls so he could get a better look. When Sidney was herded in with the girls, Mrs. Indelicato didn’t dare object, afraid that doing so might cost him a part in the movie.

When Perkins Belmont Perkins, eyeing Sidney critically, asked for the name, Mrs. Bertha Indelicato stepped forward quickly and gave the name as “Sylvia” Indelicato.

“She’s rather fat,” Perkins Belmont Perkins said, “but I think she has the “look” we’re looking for.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Bertha said.

“Have your daughter here at eight o’clock sharp on the fourteenth and I believe we’ll be able to use her.”

“Oh, thank you!” Bertha said. “We’ll be here! Of that you can be sure!”

After they left the studio, Bertha took Sidney to a drugstore down the street to get a banana split.

“Just think!” she said to him as he stuffed ice cream into his mouth. “We’re in!”

“In where, mama?” he asked.

“Why, didn’t you hear the nice man say they were giving you a part in the movie, honey?”

“What do I got to do?”

“Just look sweet and the director will tell you everything to do. Mama will be right beside you every step of the way.”

When Bertha’s husband, Buster Indelicato, came home from his job as a Ford salesman, Bertha told him the good news: Sidney landed a part in a movie.

“There’s just one thing,” she said. “They think Sidney is a girl.”

“What?”

“I had to think fast. I told them his name is ‘Sylvia’ Indelicato.”

“And they believed that?”

“Yes.”

“You always did dress him more like a girl than a boy.”

“If that’s the only way he can get a part in a movie, then a girl he will be!”

“Well, I always wanted a daughter, I guess,” Sidney said, reaching for a beer.

In the few days she had before the fourteenth, Bertha took Sidney shopping and outfitted him with complete feminine attire, down to the lacy bloomers. She fluffed out his hair and gave it some extra curl, insisting that she and Buster call him “Sylvia” at the dinner table and refer to him at all times as “she” and “her” instead of “he” and “him.”

“You’re going to confuse him,” Buster said, “and then we’ll have a mental case on our hands.”

“He’ll be fine,” Bertha said. “I guarantee it.”

“Why do I got to be a girl now?” Sidney asked.

“Because you are an actor,” Bertha said. “You will someday be a great actor. This will be your first acting lesson. Great actors pretend to be who and what they are not.”

“I don’t think I like being a girl.”

“Just remember that underneath the laces and frills you are still a boy. It’s only to the outside world that you are a girl.”

“If I’m an actor,” he said, “I want to be a cowboy.”

“That will come later, dear, after you are an established star.”

“What’s ‘established’ mean?”

On the morning of the fourteenth, Bertha had Sidney at the studio an hour early and was forced to wait nervously in an outer office to be called. Finally, when Sidney was called for a wardrobe fitting, Bertha was given a copy of the script. It was up to her to familiarize herself with the story and tell Sidney, as Sylvia, what he (she) was supposed to do.

The picture was called Baby Bountiful and starred that lovely young motion picture star, Arlette Joseph. She played a young mother who, when she loses her own baby to illness, goes with her handsome young husband to an orphanage to pick out another child. There are so many adorable children to choose from that the young couple can’t decide which one to take. That’s when the orphans show off their singing and dancing talents to help them make up her minds.

The young couple still can’t decide, so they go home, assuring the orphans they will return later and will, most assuredly, choose one of them to take home with them. That night, all the orphans dream of being the chosen one. The next day the young couple returns to the orphanage with some very exciting news. The young mother’s rich uncle has died and left her his millions. Since she will have all that money, she can take all the orphans and they will all live together on a fabulous Long Island estate with their new mommy and daddy.

Sidney was the orphan named Lulu. He wore a white dress and white stockings, a long wig with a large white bow. When the director told the orphans to jump up and down with excitement or to act sad, they did exactly as they were told.

Bertha stood behind the director and the camera, watching. She believed, of course, that Lulu stood out from the other orphans and that her acting was the most realistic. Her eyes brimmed with tears and her heart ached with pride. After all her years of dreaming, her own little Sidney was finally in motion pictures!

When filming was completed for Baby Bountiful, Arlette Joseph thanked all the children personally for playing orphans and everybody packed up to go home. A few days later Bertha received a fat check in the mail for Sidney’s appearance in the film. When she showed the check to Buster, he whistled and said, “That’s more than I make in a month!”

A week later the casting director from the studio called Bertha and asked if Sylvia was available to act in another picture. Bertha nearly dropped out her dentures on the kitchen floor in saying yes.

They hired Sylvia an agent, who promptly changed her name from Sylvia Indelicato to Sylvia Dell. The agent procured parts for her in five pictures the first year and seven the second year, with each part progressively larger than the one before it.

Buster quit his job and began staying home all the time, “seeing to things.” He managed Sylvia’s career from the sidelines with useless advice that nobody listened to. He began wearing double-breasted suits, smoking big cigars, and hosting luncheons at all the fancy restaurants around town.

Sidney, for his part, went along with what was expected of him. When he was at home he could be Sidney, but the minute he went outside the house he had to be Sylvia. Any time he became downhearted, Bertha presented him with a big bowl of ice cream and waved the most recent studio check in his face. When she went to the bank to cash his checks, she always took him along so he could see the big stacks of green and come to know how important they were to his family.

In 1929 the Hollywood studios stopped making silent films and converted to sound. Prepared as she was for any contingency, Bertha hired a diction coach to work with her Sidney. After all they had been through, she wasn’t going to let the advent of sound end her baby’s film career.

The diction coach, aware of how much money was to be made, declared Sylvia a “natural” after a few lessons. If he knew that Sylvia was really a boy instead of a girl, he never let on. He was accustomed to the ways of movie people and wasn’t squeamish about such things.

Sidney’s first sound picture was a big success. He had five lines, which he spoke with a convincing girlish intonation. After that, there were more offers for parts in other motion pictures. The money mounted up as Sylvia’s fame and popularity increased. Sylvia Dell fan clubs sprang up around the country. There were Sylvia Dell coloring books and dolls, an entire line of Sylvia Dell merchandise.

Sidney began to put on a lot of weight. The doctor advised Bertha to put him on a low-calorie diet, but she refused, certain the “pudginess” was part of his appeal. People had come to know him as fat and if he was no longer fat they would no longer know him.

When Sidney inevitably began to show outward signs of becoming an adult male, Bertha and Buster began to panic. They took him to a doctor and wanted to know if there was some way he, the doctor, could medically “alter” Sidney to enhance his feminine qualities and subvert the masculine ones.

“Are you suggesting I castrate him?” the doctor asked.

“If that’s what it takes,” Bertha said.

“Ask him if he wants to be castrated and I can almost assure you what his answer will be.”

“But he’s too young to know what’s best for him,” Bertha said. “He’s only a baby.”

“Good day to you!” the doctor said.

Luckily Sidney was fair-haired and the whiskers on his chin and cheeks could easily be covered up, but his deepening voice was more of a concern. Bertha began plying him with pills that she bought from a “medical consultant” and giving him cognac and whiskey toddies to “calm his nerves” and help him to sleep. In a few months he was a child alcoholic. He took to smoking prodigious numbers of cigarettes, even when he was in character as “Sylvia.” The sweet little girl had turned into a monster. The movie offers began to dry up.

Right before Sidney’s sixteenth birthday, he disappeared. Bertha believed he had been kidnapped and that soon the kidnappers would make their exorbitant demands for his return. She would pay any amount—every cent if she had to—for his return.

The police searched for Sidney but found no sign of him and after a year they gave up. They would keep his file on record, though, and if anything came up they would reopen the case. Bertha began walking the streets at night, looking for him in alleyways. She was certain he was all right and wasn’t very far away. All he needed was for her to find him.

Thirty years went by and Sidney didn’t return home. Bertha and Buster spent all the money and then there was no more. Buster died, leaving Bertha alone in her home with her memories. Her walls with lined with “stills” from Sylvia Dell movies. She never stopped thinking about Sidney.

Small packages began appearing on her doorstep, a packet with fifteen dollars in it and then one with twenty, a potted plant, a loaf of pumpernickel bread. She didn’t know who was leaving these little gifts, but when a box of chocolate-covered cherries appeared, she knew it had to Sidney. Only he would know that had always been her favorite kind of candy.

March 6, 2016March 6, 2016 by allen0997

Undermajordomo Minor ~ A Capsule Book Review

Undermajordomo Minor ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Undermajordomo Minor is a novel by Patrick DeWitt set in an unidentified and unidentifiable time and place. It might be a European country and it might not. The characters travel by train, but there is no mention of cars, electricity or any other modern convenience, so it’s a story that could have or might have taken place a long time ago. It’s set almost entirely in a castle, Castle Von Aux, that is owned by the absentee (at first) Baron and Baroness Von Aux. A seventeen-year-old boy, Lucien “Lucy” Minor, has left his not-very-loving home and traveled by train to Castle Von Aux to take up a position there as a servant. Since his job will entail many and multifarious duties, his title is to be “undermajordomo.” The “majordomo” (if there is one) under which Lucy will be employed is an odd gentleman named Mr. Olderglough, who has been at the castle for many years. Lucy finds out that his predecessor, a Mr. Broom, met an untimely end, but he doesn’t find out for the longest kind of time exactly what happened to Mr. Broom because nobody wants to talk about it.

In the squalid village down the mountain from Castle Von Aux, Lucy meets an odd old man (everybody in this book is odd) named Memel. Memel is a pickpocket and thief of sorts and he has a daughter named Klara, with whom Lucy falls in love. There’s just one problem with Klara, though. She has a boyfriend, an “exceptionally handsome” man named Adolphus. In the inexplicable war that rages in the hills around Castle Von Aux, Adolphus is an important player, a general or something. Adolphus is forceful and is everything that Lucy is not. He claims to love Klara and doesn’t like it that Lucy loves her, too.

At Castle Von Aux, Lucy becomes aware of an oddly deranged man who skulks about the castle at night, filthy and practically naked. Lucy believes at first that this might be the mysterious Mr. Broom but discovers in time that it is Baron Von Aux. When Mr. Olderglough receives word that the long-gone Baroness Von Aux is returning for a visit, it’s up to him and Lucy to take Baron Von Aux in hand, get him cleaned up, and make him seem as “normal” as possible. (This isn’t going to be easy.)

Baroness Von Aux arrives with much fanfare and Lucy sees that she is very beautiful. He learns, then, that Mr. Broom was in love with Baroness Von Aux and took his own life by throwing himself into the “Very Large Hole” up the mountain from the castle. Much to Lucy’s surprise, though, Baron Von Aux has undergone a transformation and is ever so much more presentable than he expected him to be. He can even speak and wear clothes. When Baron and Baroness Von Aux entertain out-of-town guests, the Duke and Duchess and the Count and Countess, Lucy witnesses the strange goings-on of the three couples in the ballroom, which includes a sort of free-for-all sex orgy. Considering what Lucy already knows about Baron and Baroness Von Aux, he can’t be too surprised at their behavior.

Eventually Lucy’s jealousy for Adolphus leads him to the thought of murder. He attempts to kill Adolphus by pushing him into the Very Large Hole, but Adolphus sidesteps him and Lucy falls in himself. He falls for a very long way but, since he lands in water, the fall doesn’t kill him. What he finds in the Very Large Hole is unexpected but makes absolute sense in light of what has gone before.

Undermajordomo Minor is quirky and thoroughly engaging reading. It takes us where we hadn’t expected to go, but when we’re there we find it’s a good place to be. Like The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt’s earlier novel, it is breezy, almost effortless, reading and goes down like Rocky Road ice cream.

February 25, 2016February 25, 2016 by allen0997

Risen ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Risen ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Risen is a fictional story surrounding the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Joseph Fiennes, who doesn’t look much older now than he did in 1998 when he played Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, plays a Roman tribune named Clavius. Clavius doesn’t seem to believe in much of anything except his own ambition. He’s present at the Crucifixion, and when he sees the suffering that occurs and the devotion of Jesus’s followers, something is stirred deep inside him. He looks long at the face of the man on the cross.

After Jesus’s body is entombed, the trouble seems to have ended for the Roman government, except that three days later the huge stone that was covering the entrance to the sepulcher is rolled away and the body is gone, leaving only the shroud that covered it. The guards who were supposed to be guarding the tomb were found to have been in a drunken stupor. The story that’s advanced is that Jesus’s followers stole the body and have it hidden somewhere to advance their own agenda. Pontius Pilate, in a tizzy over a visit by the Emperor that is supposed to take place in a few days, charges Clavius with finding the body of the man some call a king and thus ending the stories about him that are embarrassing to himself and the government.

Clavius doesn’t believe that anything supernatural has taken place. He admits that the one thing in the world that scares him the most is being wrong. He begins looking everywhere for the body of a 33-year-old man who has been crucified. His investigation leads eventually to the followers of Christ, those who call themselves the Disciples. He finds that these men are sincere and, although they can’t explain what they believe and what they have seen, they believe it wholeheartedly. When Clavius and some of his men burst in on a meeting of the Disciples, he finds sitting among them the living image of the man he saw die on the cross. He is mystified but has no explanation.

To satisfy his own curiosity, Clavius begins traveling with the Disciples. Christ appears to them miraculously at times and Clavius witnesses firsthand some of his miracles, including the curing of an outcast leper. When Christ appears to the Disciples for the last time, he tells them to spread his message to every country in the world. After these events take place, Clavius, if not quite a believer, at least admits that he has been changed forever by what he has witnessed.

Risen is not for everybody, of course. Either you’re a believer, or you’re not. If you aren’t a believer, a movie isn’t going to change your mind. If you are a believer, no further explanation is needed.

February 21, 2016February 21, 2016 by allen0997

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

The fluttery, husband-hunting Bennet sisters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice are back, but with one important element added: Now they are intrepid zombie killers, trained in the art of war. That doesn’t mean they’re not still on the lookout for suitable men (spurred on by their mother), but they are always at the ready to defend themselves, their homes and their England with sharp knives, guns, swords or whatever other weapons come to hand, from the dreaded zombie scourge. Welcome to the zombiefied, but still genteel, world of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was first a novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (who also wrote Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) and is now a movie.

It seems that zombies began to proliferate after a plague epidemic; the plague victims arose from the dead as zombies. How inconvenient that is for non-zombies, because the zombies eat the brains of humans—that’s how they become full-fledged zombies—and their goal is to turn all humans into zombies. Once a person is bitten, he has no other choice but to become a zombie and succumb to his desire to eat brains. (The “Zombie Apocalypse” is upon us!) Zombies are easy to kill, however, if you know how (have been trained) and have the proper weapons. There’s lots of zombie death in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but none of it is overly graphic. This movie doesn’t go in for squirting, splashing blood. The gore is restrained and the zombies are not like other zombies we’ve seen. They have parts of their faces missing and we can see the bones and tissue underneath. Pretty creepy but all part of the fun.

The two principal Bennet sisters, Elizabeth and Jane, are as pretty as Mr. Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley and George Wickham are handsome. Mr. Darcy is drawn to Elizabeth but she rejects him at first because she has been misled about him and believes he is something that he’s not. (These romantic complications will work themselves out in due course.) There’s something a little peculiar about Mr. Wickham, though (played by Jack Huston, who was so memorable as maimed World War I veteran Richard Harrow in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire). He is sympathetic toward the zombies and he advocates appeasement. He just might turn out to be the anti-Christ the zombie hoards are waiting for to lead them in the Zombie Apocalypse against the human race. This brewing war between good and evil is where we are left at the end of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If it generates enough revenue at the box office, there is certain to be a sequel.

February 18, 2016February 18, 2016 by allen0997

The Sisters Brothers ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Sisters Brothers ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt is a novel set in the American West in the 1850s. Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired guns (glorified errand boys) working for a powerful man in Oregon City known simply as “the Commodore.” The story is related in the first-person voice of Eli Sisters. Eli is more passive and inward-directed than his brother Charlie. He is sympathetic toward animals and doesn’t take very well to killing. Charlie, on the other hand, is an expert marksman and doesn’t mind killing whenever the occasion calls for it. Eli is on the fat side and has freckles. Although we aren’t told much about the way he looks, we get the impression that Charlie is better looking and has better luck with the ladies than Eli. Charlie is the leader and Eli the follower.

The Commodore has his panties in a bunch over what he refers to simply as “the formula,” which he doesn’t bother to explain to Eli and Charlie. He only tells them he wants the formula and he sends them to San Francisco to get it. He has previously sent a hireling known as Morris to get it, but Morris has apparently defected to the other side, as represented by one Hermann Kermit Warm, the inventor of the formula. Eli and Charlie have picaresque adventures as they travel from Oregon to California and, once they are in San Francisco and find Morris and Warm, they discover, through a “journal” left behind by Morris (how convenient!), what the formula is all about.

California has recently been gripped by gold rush fever. Thousands of people are flocking to the West with the hope of becoming rich. The prospectors who don’t extract the gold from the ground pan for it in mountain streams, a tedious pursuit, at best. The formula is a toxic mix of chemicals that, when poured into the river, cause the gold nuggets to “light up” in such a way that they can be easily extracted from the dirt and rock. There are some problems with the formula, however. The gold lights up for only about fifteen minutes, and the formula, when it comes into contact with human skin, is highly corrosive, causing painful, oozing blisters and serious injury.

Morris and Hermann Kermit Warm have a story of their own. When Morris was back in “civilization,” he was a perfumed “dandy,” rather effeminate and obviously gay, although that word is never used. He and Warm have discovered they are simpatico and have allied themselves with each other. It is an unusual “friendship” for the time and place. Although Eli and Charlie are supposed to kill Morris for the Commodore, they join up with Morris and Warm in an alliance that they believe will make them rich and independent of the Commodore.

The Sisters Brothers is a “noir western,” definitely on the dark side but with a touch of “gallows” humor. What happens to Eli’s horse, Tub, is not in the least funny; nor is the fate that befalls Morris and Warm or Charlie’s shooting hand. All in all, though, it’s a breezy and entertaining 325 pages. For the compulsive reader like me, it’s a compulsively readable novel.

February 16, 2016February 16, 2016 by allen0997

Somebody Waits for Me

Somebody Waits for Me ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

I was standing at the window. Inside it was still winter but outside it was spring. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and birds were singing. The woman with the hanging mole on her upper lip came up behind me. I heard her shoes squeaking on the floor and then smelled her perfume.

“You shouldn’t be wandering the halls,” she said.

I ignored her but as she walked away I turned and looked at her and she turned into a puff of blue smoke.

I went back to the room that I had come to identify as my own and lay on my back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. I knew there was something wrong with me but I couldn’t remember what it was. I couldn’t even remember what place I was in. Oh, well. If it mattered at one time, it didn’t matter any more.

I heard somebody coming and picked up a magazine and opened it and pretended to be reading. I wanted to look busy so they wouldn’t ask me questions or try to engage me in conversation.

It was Theo, all dressed in white as usual. If I saw him in any other color, I wouldn’t recognize him.

“Where’s Miss Deloite?” he asked. “She said she was coming in here to help you with your bath.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking a bath on my own without a female present, thank you,” I said, not looking up from the page.

I should probably have told him I just turned her into a puff of smoke but I would have to let him figure it out on his own. He should be lucky I didn’t do the same to him.

I crossed my ankles and wished I had a cigarette, and in came Louie from next door. He was wearing a lady’s red kimono with white dragons. I didn’t like Louie and I let him know it.

“What makes you think you can just barge into my room any time you feel like it, Louie? I’m supposed to be taking a bath.”

“I already took mine.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

“Do you have any candy?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Shouldn’t you be having your nails done or something?”

“I’m going to tell Miss Deloite you were snotty to me,” Louie said.

“You’ll be telling it to a puff of blue smoke.”

“What?”

Before Louie could annoy me any further, I raised my eyebrows and turned him into a little spider. I laughed as I watched him run on his touchingly small legs across the floor to the wall. He crawled up the wall to the ceiling and looked at me.

“You’re a medical phenomenon,” I said.

I was thinking about taking a nap, for lack of anything better to do, when Theo came back, bearing clean towels.

“Since Miss Deloite is temporarily not to be found,” he said, “I’m going to help you with your bath.”

“I already told you I don’t need help with a bath,” I said.

“Stand up now and take off your clothes, or I’ll do it for you.”

“I don’t want to take off my clothes for you any more than I do for Miss Deloite.”

“Do you want me to go get Stan and Sylvia?”

“Oh, please! Not Stan and Sylvia! I can’t tell them apart. Oh, I remember now. Sylvia’s the one with the mustache, isn’t she?”

“Cut the comedy now. Stand up.”

“Theo, I don’t like your tone of voice!” I said. “It’s not a polite way to speak to a man who isn’t well.”

He came at me with the intention of pulling me off the bed by my arm, but before he knew what was happening I raised my index finger at him and turned him into a blue jay.

Now, I had always though the blue jay a most attractive bird, even though people said he was mean and liked to eat carrion.

Theo flapped his blue wings a couple of times and flew up to the ceiling and ate the tiny spider Louie in one gulp. Louie didn’t even have time to try to get away.

“Good boy!” I said.

He flew around the room a couple of times, bumping painfully into the walls until I stood up and opened the window for him. He didn’t have to be coaxed to fly out and then away over the treetops.

“Be well!” I called to him.

I lay down again. I did not want to take a bath and would be just as obstinate about it as I needed to be. I recalled the good old days when the decision to take a bath was mine alone.

Before I had time to draw another breath, Nurse LaPeezy was upon me with my meds. I eyed the pills suspiciously.

“What if I don’t want to take that stuff?” I said.

“Doctor’s orders,” she said.

“So you’re saying I don’t have a choice?”

“I could call Stan and Sylvia if you like.”

“Oh, no! Not that!”

She handed me a cup of water and I pretended to take the pills. I put them in my mouth and swallowed but I held them under my tongue. When she bent over to pick something up off the floor, I spit them into my fist. The hand is quicker than the eye.

As Nurse LaPeezy was leaving I felt a strong dislike for her. I flicked the little finger on my right hand at her and she turned into a mouse. Realizing she was a mouse, she scurried across the floor the way mice do and disappeared into a conveniently placed mouse hole in the corner. I envied her because I knew she’d find her way to the kitchen where she’d have plenty to eat and find lots of other mice to keep her company. How sweet the life of a mouse must be! Much better than that of a nurse.

The next time somebody came in to help me take a bath, I was going to tell them I had already taken it while everybody was occupied elsewhere. I wanted them to know I had been taking a bath on my own since I was three years old and didn’t need help from anybody.

I was almost asleep when a slight change in the air currents around the bed made me open my eyes. Dr. Felix had come in silently and was standing at the foot of the bed looking at me.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said.

Dr. Felix wore glasses and looked like Franchot Tone. His hands were folded in front of him. I looked at his hairy wrists and his expensive wrist watch so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.

“If you don’t mind, doctor,” I said. “I don’t really feel like talking to you today.”

“Anything wrong in particular?” he asked.

“No. It’s just that I’m here and I don’t know where here is.”

“Here is where you need to be at the moment.”

“I must have a home somewhere, even if I can’t remember it. I want to go home.”

“Everybody feels that way sometimes.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m going to increase your antidepressant medication again.”

“You doctors think drugs are the answer to everything, don’t you?”

“You’re spending far too much time alone. That’s not good. I’m going to assign you to some group activities.”

I groaned and closed my eyes. “Don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I won’t be here.”

“Are you planning on going someplace?”

“Well, you never know,” I said.

He chuckled in his knowing way and turned to go. As he started to put his hand on the door to open it, I blew out a little puff of air in his direction and turned him into a cockroach. He ran under the door and out into the hallway. One of the nurses would see him and scream and step on him and then take a Kleenex out of the pocket of her uniform and pick him up and throw him in the trash can. How fitting is that for Dr. Felix?

Before anybody else had a chance to come in and annoy me, I dressed in some clothes I had been hiding in the bottom of the closet. It was a uniform the maintenance men wore that I had stolen one day when I was exploring in the basement. In the uniform and with the brown cap pulled low over my eyes, nobody would recognize me. Also hidden away in the closet I had some ninety dollars and a pack of cigarettes, which I stuffed into the pants of the uniform.

I took a good look at myself in the mirror over the sink and went out into the hallway. Everything was quiet and nothing out of the ordinary. I made my down the stairs to the main entrance.

The receptionist at the front desk looked up from the magazine she was reading and then looked away. I knew she didn’t know who I was. If she had known, she would have been screaming for help.

I walked out the door into the bright cool air and down the steps, wanting to run but not running because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I followed the concrete walk to the driveway and along the edge of the driveway a quarter-mile or so to the main gate. I saw nobody and nobody saw me.

I turned right at the gate out of the place, which seemed to me a better choice than going left, and began walking. I walked for many blocks and saw nothing that looked familiar. I might have been in a foreign country or on another planet, for all I knew. Still, it felt good to be free and on my own.

Checking my pocket to make sure the ninety dollars was still there, I remembered the cigarettes and how long it had been since I had one. I lit one up and as I walked I puffed out a cloud of smoke behind me.

I stopped at a bar that looked inviting and had a beer and a hamburger and after that I kept walking deep into the city. It was a big city but I didn’t know what the name of it was and I didn’t know if I had ever been there before. I saw many people but they seemed to not see me, which altogether suited me.

After what seemed like hours of walking, I felt tired but pleasantly so, and I felt good about the distance I had put between myself and the place I had left behind. When I came to a faded old hotel with a sign that said Clean Rooms and Cheap, I decided that getting a room was the most logical thing I could do.

The desk clerk signed me in without asking for identification or money in advance. He gave me a key to a room on the tenth floor and I went up in an elevator that must have been a hundred years old.

The room was clean and pleasant. There were two windows, a bed, desk, dresser with a large mirror, chair, closet and tiny bathroom. I liked the feeling of being up high. I opened the window a couple of inches to feel the air and to hear the traffic noises from the street, which at that distance I found soothing. After checking the door to make sure it was locked, I lay down on the bed and fell into a deep and restful sleep.

I spent two days and nights in the room, sleeping a lot during the day and walking around the city at night. Nobody ever approached me or bothered me or seemed to find my behavior in any way out of the ordinary. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so free and unencumbered.

More than anything I wanted to go home, but I knew that was never going to happen. I had developed a smoking habit and I preferred tea instead of coffee, but those were about the only things about myself that I knew for sure. My past was like a slate on which nothing had ever been written.

Did I come from a small town or a city like this one? Did I grow up in an apartment in the city or in a house in the wide-open spaces with a big yard and a view of the mountains? Wasn’t it likely that somebody, somewhere was wondering about me, waiting for me to come home? A mother, maybe? A wife? A lover? A son or daughter? Whoever he or she was, I could feel them and I knew they could feel me.

I also knew the people from the place I had left behind were going to come for me. I had done some bad things, including turning my doctor into a bug. I didn’t see how anybody was going to forgive a thing like that. They would take me back and probably never let me go free again.

On my third day in the room, I had the window open as high as it would go to let in the warm breezes. At any one time, there were as many as five pigeons on the ledge outside the window. They cooed and danced and seemed happy. When I got close to them, they weren’t at all afraid of me. If I had had something to feed them, they would have eaten right out of my hand.

I sat on the bed, looking at myself in the round mirror on the dresser. Wait a minute, I thought. I don’t have to go back to that place or any other place like it. I can do to myself what I did to the others.

I pointed at my reflection in the mirror and turned myself into a pigeon. I flapped my wings on the bed to try them out. From the bed I jumped to the floor and then to the window ledge. There were three pigeons already there to greet me. They knew I was somebody they had never seen before, so they were curious about where I had come from. After introductions were made, they were all eager to show me around the city.

February 14, 2016February 14, 2016 by allen0997

Six and a Half

Six and a Half ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

A loud, insistent knock. She opened the door, quickly, so as not to have to hear another knock like that one, and there, standing on her doorstep, was a strange, blonde-haired woman holding a young girl by the hand.

“Mrs. Tovey?” the strange woman asked, smiling, or trying to smile.

“Yes,” Mrs. Tovey said, already annoyed by the sight of the woman. “If you’re soliciting for something or trying to get me to vote for a certain political candidate, I’m not interested.”

“Oh, no!” the woman said. “It isn’t anything like that! I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

“Do I know you?” Mrs. Tovey asked.

“No, but you might know of me.”

“What is this about?”

A car went by on the street and the woman looked nervously over her shoulder. “Can we come in?” she asked.

Mrs. Tovey sighed and stood aside to let the woman and the little girl enter her home. Closing the door, she gestured toward the couch like a TV hostess, where the woman sat down, pulling the little girl down beside her. Mrs. Tovey remained standing.

“First off, I’d better tell you my name,” the woman said, leaning forward on the couch and crossing her ankles. “I’m Gilda Gray.”

“I’m sure we haven’t met,” Mrs. Tovey said. “What can I do for you?”

“I was at your husband’s funeral last week. I know you didn’t see me but I saw you.”

“There were lots of people at my husband’s funeral.”

“I was a friend of his.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware that my husband had any friends that I didn’t know about.”

“Of course you didn’t know who I was or anything about me, but I figured you at least knew that I existed.”

“Why would I know anything about you at all?”

Gilda Gray put her arm around the little girl beside her. “This is my daughter,” she said. “She’s six and a half. We call her Ta-Ta.”

“That’s a ridiculous name,” Mrs. Tovey said.

“Her name is really Tatiana.”

Mrs. Tovey sighed. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but I’m awfully busy and it’s taking you a very long time to say what it is you want to say.”

“Does Ta-Ta look at all familiar to you?”

Mrs. Tovey drew in her breath and lowered her gaze at Ta-Ta. “She looks like thousands of other little girls I’ve seen. I’ve never seen her before, either.”

“The shape of her face or the way her chin sticks out?”

“Where is all this leading?”

“Your husband and I have been very good friends for about eight years. Right up until the time of his death.”

“I’m trying to be patient,” Mrs. Tovey said, “but I’m quite sure I don’t have time for this. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Gilda Gray drew from her purse an envelope and handed it to Mrs. Tovey. “This might help explain things a little better,” she said.

Mrs. Tovey opened the envelope and withdrew a little packet of pictures, which she glanced through and quickly handed back.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” she said, “but it’s not going to work! That is not my husband in those pictures!”

“They were taken when we—your husband and I—were in Florida together.”

“My husband was never in Florida.”

“I assure you he was!”

“How do I know those pictures are real? Anybody can change a picture to make one person look like another.”

“I also have these,” Gilda Gray said.

“And just what is that?”

“It’s letters your husband wrote to me. He had a very distinctive handwriting. Are you going to tell me that’s not his writing?”

“I have no intention of reading your letters!” Mrs. Tovey said. “And if you don’t get out of my house in about five seconds, I’m going to call the police.”

“Your husband made me a lot of promises. He told me he would get a divorce and marry me. I was young and naïve and I believed every word. Of course, none of it turned out to be true.”

“If you proved to me in a court of law that my husband wrote those letters, I still wouldn’t believe you.”

“You’ll believe what you choose to believe.”

“What exactly is it you want?”

“I’m not a very good mother.”

“That I can easily believe! Your daughter is overweight and has far too much curl in her hair.”

“I don’t have a job. I can’t take care of her. I can’t even take care of myself.”

“Why should that be my concern?”

“You have this big house and property, and know you have plenty of dough in the bank.”

“That is no concern of yours.”

“I’m appealing to your sense of decency.”

“What makes you think I have one?”

“I’d like a hundred thousand dollars.”

“I think it’s safe to say that anybody would like a hundred thousand dollars.”

“It’s what your husband would have given me if he had lived.”

“You should have taken it up with him before he died.”

“I can get myself a lawyer if you refuse to play fair.”

“I can get myself a lawyer, too!” Mrs. Tovey said. “In fact, I already have one who was a good friend of my husband’s. He won’t stand for any kind of a shakedown like this.”

“You really think it’s a shakedown?”

“Indeed, I do!”

“You can’t see that I am in any way entitled to a hundred thousand dollars?”

“I cannot!”

“I could cause you a considerable amount of trouble. If I wanted to.”

“I’m sure you think you could!”

“So, you’re refusing the hundred thousand dollars?”

“I most emphatically am!”

“I have a counter-proposal, then.”

“You are in no position to propose anything! I believe you are only a thieving liar who heard about my husband’s death and are conducting—or trying to conduct—a scam.”

“I propose that you adopt Ta-Ta and raise her as your own daughter.”

“What? Why would I do that?”

“Because I believe you know in your heart that what I’m saying is true and you wouldn’t want your husband’s child to live a disadvantaged life.”

“The kind of life your daughter lives is no concern of mine!”

“If you adopted her, I would completely remove myself from the picture. I swear I would never bother you again!”

“You are a lying, thieving tramp! It’s written all over you!”

Little Ta-Ta looked from her mother to Mrs. Tovey and back again at her mother and then began crying. She sobbed and wiped at her eyes with her knuckles.

“There, there, darling!” Gilda Gray said. “We’ll go in just a little bit. Mother is just finishing up here.”

“There’s nothing more to say!” Mrs. Tovey said. “You might as well take her and go right now!”

Gilda Gray stood up from the couch. “All right, I’ll go,” she said. “I won’t give you the satisfaction of throwing me out.”

“And if you ever think of coming here again, my door will not be open to you!”

After Gilda Gray was gone, Mrs. Tovey tried to put the episode out of her head. She knew, or thought she knew, that there was no woman like that in her husband’s life. He was too conventional, too boring. No young woman would ever have found him attractive or even mildly interesting. In the morning she would call the police and tell them what happened and she was sure they would be sympathetic. She hoped they would tell her that there had been a rash of these cases and it was nothing to worry about. It happens all the time and all you can do to protect yourself is be a little bit smarter than they are.

Just as it was getting dark that evening, there was another knock at the door, a small, timid knock. When Mrs. Tovey opened the door, there was little Ta-Ta looking up at her. She raised her little fist in greeting and the corners of her mouth turned down as though she knew she would not be welcome.

Mrs. Tovey looked behind Ta-Ta, but there was no one else there. “Why, where’s your mother?” she asked.

“They let me out of the car and drove on,” Ta-Ta said.

“Who did?”

“My mother and a man.”

“And I bet they’re laughing their socks off about now.”

“Can I come in?” Ta-Ta asked.

“I guess you’ll have to,” Mrs. Tovey said.

“My mother said you would love me and take care of me. Do you love me?”

“Why, child, I don’t even know you.”

“I’m very smart.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Can I have a hot dog?”

“I don’t think I have any hot dogs, but come on into the kitchen and we’ll see what’s there.”

Mrs. Tovey pulled a chair out from the table for Ta-Ta to sit on and went to the refrigerator to see what she might fix for her to eat. There was some leftover liver and onions and some congealed spinach, but she was sure they weren’t appropriate for a child. She fixed her a ham and cheese sandwich and slathered it with mayonnaise.

After Ta-Ta had taken a couple of bites, she said, “This is so good!”

“You haven’t eaten for a while?” Mrs. Tovey asked.

“I don’t remember. Can I watch TV?”

“Finish eating and then we’ll see.”

“Can I stay here forever and ever? My mother said I could.”

“You can stay the night.”

“Can I sleep with you?”

“No. You can sleep in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs.”

“I might get scared.”

“That’s a chance you’ll have to take.”

February 6, 2016February 8, 2016 by allen0997

Hail, Caesar! ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Hail, Caesar! ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

We’re in sun-drenched (except when it’s raining) Hollywood in 1951. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a decent fellow who goes to confession a lot and loves his family, is an executive at Capitol Studios. His job involves getting his “stars” out of trouble when they go astray and seeing that production runs smoothly. His trampy “aquatic” star, DeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), is going to have a baby and doesn’t have a husband. This isn’t good for her screen image, so it’s up to Eddie Mannix to find a solution. Mr. Skank, head of the studio, wants cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), who speaks with a decided Western drawl, to star in a “drawing-room” drama based on a Broadway play. Hobie Doyle is in no way suited to such a role, but Mr. Skank is the boss, so what he says goes.

The studio’s biggest star is Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). Gossip columnist Thora Thacker (Tilda Swinton) is threatening to publish a potentially damaging story about Whitlock in his early days in Hollywood that involves “sodomy.” It’s up to Eddie Mannix to make sure this story never sees the light of day. As if this wasn’t enough drama, Baird Whitlock is kidnapped while Hail, Caesar! is being filmed. He plays the lead in the film (the studio’s “prestige picture of the year”) and production can’t go on without him. When the kidnappers (a communist “cell” of disgruntled screen writers) demand a hundred thousand dollars in ransom, it’s up to Eddie Mannix to deliver.

Hail, Caesar! was written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the most innovative filmmakers around, so it’s about as wry and sardonic as you might expect. In spite of a subplot about Communism and a bizarre scene with handsome tap-dancing movie star Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) boarding a Soviet submarine with his small dog just off the coast of California, the tone throughout is light and frothy. We see a couple of big 1950s-style production numbers, with dancing sailors in a bar lamenting not having any dames at sea and a big splashy pool number with swimming star DeAnna Moran and dozens of girl swimmers (think Esther Williams). There are even some moments of slapstick, as when as when cowboy star Hobie Doyle is being given direction by prissy director Lawrence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) and when cigarette-smoking film editor, C. C. Calhoun (Frances McDormand), gets her neck scarf caught in the editing machine and nearly strangles. Those two scenes alone are worth the price of admission.

February 6, 2016February 6, 2016 by allen0997

Android Karenina ~ A Capsule Book Review

Android Karenina ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Android Karenina is set in Russia, but it’s not the Russia that exists or that ever existed at any time in history. It’s a “steampunk” world, an “alternate universe” where every person over eighteen has a “beloved-companion” Class III robot that is a combination pet, servant, confidante, counselor and alter-ego; where ill people are put into orbit around Venus to help them recover; where people vacation on the moon; where robot technology has become so sophisticated, thanks to the discovery of a metal called “groznium,” that every task is performed by a robot and robots have advanced to the stage where they are unidentifiable from humans. The Tsars are gone, the horse and carriage are gone, old-fashioned steam-engine trains are gone; people travel on a conveyance called the Grav that runs on a magnetic bed. A group of lizard-like aliens erroneously called the “Honored Guests” threaten the world and the human race while incubating inside the bodies of sick people. This is the “Age of Groznium,” the world of Android Karenina.

Of course, proper credit must be given to Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina. A writer named Ben H. Winters has taken this masterpiece of Russian literature and cleverly transformed it into a steampunk, sci-fi adventure, using Tolstoy’s characters and situations but making them original enough to claim a lot of credit on his own. Beautiful society lady Anna Karenina is married to the cold, mechanical Alexei Karenin, an important official in the government. Karenin doesn’t appreciate Anna and can’t love her the way she wishes to be loved. When Anna meets dashing Count Vronsky, she enters into an illicit love affair with him that shocks society and humiliates her husband. She finds out then just how villainous her husband can be. His bitterness toward his wife makes him take revenge on the entire country by trying to nullify the Age of Groznium and returning to the old ways of doing things: steam-driven trains, telegrams as a means of communicating, horses and buggies for getting around in, real people doing the menial jobs that heretofore had been done by robots. Most cruel of all, he takes away everybody’s Class III “beloved-companion” robots, including Anna’s beloved Android Karenina, because he believes that robots are antithetical to the direction he wants the country to move in. Instead of moving forward, he wants to revert to the past. Wait a minute, though. Maybe Anna Karenina has a higher purpose in life than just being an unfaithful wife. Maybe she has been chosen, because of who her husband is, to render a service to her country and to the human race. We must read through to the end to find out what is really going on.

Like Anna Karenina on which it is based, Android Karenina is a pleasure to read. A little bit on the long side, at 538 pages, but well worth it. It’s a clever hybrid (a combination of two worlds), not for everybody, but certainly engaging, especially if you are a fan of the original novel and also an aficionado of the offbeat, the unusual, the quirky and the imaginative. You might end up envying the Class III robots and wishing you had one of your own to always agree with you, sympathize with you and do anything you want without complaint.

February 4, 2016February 4, 2016 by allen0997