Marvin, part 2 (429 hits)
Category: GeneralLabels: Marvin
Rating: 1.66 on 10 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Caulfield (View user info) at 2008-04-03 16:38:21 EDT
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/115848
-----------------------------------------------
Marvin awoke the next day feeling the residual traces of what he called "a ghastly depression." He remained in bed for a time, stretching himself awake and murmuring happy grunt noises with each twist and crack. Outside, the sky was bright but featureless. Staring through his bedroom window he delighted in the steady blue backdrop, with its lack of variation reminding him of minimalist art. This observation pleased him and he smiled to himself. "Ah, the artist's eye does not die, but waits a time for things gone by." He said it softly, barely above a whisper. He usually did this to make his comments seem more dramatic.
An hour later he finally plopped out of bed and wandered to the kitchen, half-intending to eat a scrambled egg if he had any. To his surprise he found he wasn't alone. Teddy was lying inertly on his floor, watching "Hollywood Squares." The remote lay before him like a supplicant.
"What are you doing here?"
"Huh?"
"Why are you on my floor watching TV?"
"It's cleaner than your couch."
Marvin looked over at his toothpicks. They seemed to be in order, though he couldn't really tell.
"When did you come over?"
"Last night."
"Did I call you?"
"I don't think so."
"How did you get in?"
Teddy shrugged and pointed at the terrace. "Climbed."
Marvin knitted his brow and rubbed his head. Then walked past the couch and sidled through the glass door, peering over the rail so that he might see the assent through Teddy's eyes and reacquaint himself with the distance. It was three stories down to the hard concrete below, and looked every bit of it. He stared at hard sidewalk for a few moments before returning to his living room/kitchen/entranceway. He latched the door behind him, fearful of a stray breeze.
"Did you touch any of my toothpicks?"
That Marvin didn't ask about his climb wasn't a surprise to Teddy.
"That stop-motion thingy? I wouldn't dare."
"Did you go over there at all? Did you have to use the sink or anything?"
Teddy drew a perimeter around his body. "I haven't strayed from these..."
Marvin raised his eyebrows.
"I swear. I didn't."
Marvin sighed, accepting the intrusion, the denial, and the sheer lunacy of his half brother all in one expressionless breath. On the TV, someone stumbled upon the secret square.
"I have work to do, Teddy. How long are you staying?"
"I don't know. " He pulled himself up onto the couch and wrapped Marvin's brown Salvation Army blanket around his lap. It was rough and uncomfortable, with bits of lint and tangled fibers dotting the ragged surface like tumbleweeds. "Mom kicked me out last night. Caught me smoking a joint."
That meant at least a week. Their mother was very protective of Sarah. Sister Sarah, they called her. She was Marvin's half sister, Teddy's full. In time, their mother would calm down and call, and the deviant could come back. But not before then.
Of course, if Teddy didn't have an older brother with his own apartment, he might not have been kicked out at all. Marvin thought about this, found it a delightful observation, and smiled.
"What are you smiling about?" Teddy looked around. "Is there a tourist hiding in the walls?"
"Hope not."
"Why? Am I an embarrassment?"
Marvin ignored this. "Did you bring anything?" "I assume I have to drive you to school now."
"I can walk. It's only a couple of miles."
"I'll drive you.
"Forget it, it's 10 o'clock.. I already missed 3 classes."
"You can't be here. I'm busy with my work, and you're going to distract me by watching TV all day and saying stupid things. I'm also having lunch with Snitch, and I'll be damned if I'm bringing you with me."
"Finally going to give it to her? Huh?"
"Please don't." Marvin looked like he had eaten a bullfrog.
"Whatever, asexual."
"You don't even know what that means."
"Sure I do. It means you're a sexual. Either a homo or a hetero. You haven't made up your mind yet."
"So clever." Marvin, exasperated, walked to the bathroom. There he opened the medicine cabinet, took out his toothbrush and toothpaste, and began brushing. The sound was chaotic and rose above that of the soft stream issuing from the tap, all the way out to the living room. Rough bristles chiding anxious enamel.
***
Snitch was involved with wastewater. Human waste, industrial waste. Her great commitment to the excreta of humanity was in itself a noble thing, and Marvin saw it as that, finding it to be an essential profession of which any young lady should be proud.
Unfortunately she didn't do any of the grunt work. None of that wondrously turbid muck passed through her hands; and this was a slight detraction, at least in Marvin's eyes. His artistic side demanded an element of interaction, a give and take between creator and created. Clerical work was writing that had lost its way, as painting does when it's used to sell razor blades on twenty-foot-high, smog-piercing billboards. Art as a vehicle, not an end in itself.
Marvin waited for her outside her building. The afternoon gleam off the facade made him squint, and he had no choice but to turn his back to it and hope that she could recognize him by olive pants and cropped haircut. A few feet away, Teddy was bunched up against a statue, one of a civil rights activist reciting a sermon he had given on that spot many years ago. Embraced by the shadowy arms extended about him, Teddy read a comic book—more art gone wrong.
Others were there, but no tourists. Marvin didn't feel like giving them a show.
Scattered clouds finally made their appearance overhead. Drifting westward, they created Morse code blips of shadow and sunlight on the quad below. Marvin's eyes relaxed whenever the shadow passed over him and only then did he realize that he was still squinting. The feeling of relief was delicious, like cool water on his eyelids. Fearing the return of the sun, he called over to Teddy.
"Got any sunglasses?"
He shook his head. "Got a hat, though."
Marvin deliberated. If he had a hat on, Snitch might not be able to recognize the back of his head. But if he didn't shade his eyes soon, his eye muscles would surely deteriorate, leaving his eyelids permanently up or permanently down. Neither option sounded pleasant.
"All right."
Teddy put his comic down and dug through his small satchel, sifting through other comic books, a shirt wrapped around a ceramic pipe, his Math textbook, and a plastic sleeve packed with CD's. His CD player was by his right side, shiny and unused. Finally, after a few seconds, he found the hat, pressed and folded into a ball at the bottom. He tossed it to Marvin, who dropped it, then swiped it off the ground.
Placing it over his head, he pulled the brim low over his eyes. It helped.
Marvin took a breath. "What did Mark think about your punishment?"
"He agreed with mom. He always does. It's when were alone that he gets all apologetic, and says, 'Your mother and I are a team, but that doesn't mean I don't see where you're coming from,' blah, blah, blah. Then he gives me money and winks. He's hip. He can dig it." Teddy laughed.
Marvin didn't seem to think it nearly as amusing.
Teddy went back to reading, which meant he went back to viewing the sneering, dripping demons lurching from gory panel to gory panel in his comic book. Marvin watched him as a tourist would, wondering what the future would hold for such a rebel. In this world, the real one, Teddy was fearless, from free climbing apartment buildings to sneaking rides on his best friend's rice burner; yet fictional realms, even the poorly written, put a tinge of fright in him. To exemplify this point, Teddy had brought his knees up as if to shield himself from the pretend dangers in his hands. Comic books and dark movies gave Teddy shivers, and sometimes, though he never admitted it, he slept with his monitor on, the glow from the screen his friend against the terrors of a lightless world.
Teddy was 17. Bad grades, bad attitude—but caring. He saved lunch money and bought Christmas presents. And pot. He had no idea what he wanted to do after high school, and in that Marvin could identify; but he also didn't put any effort into the search. His life was what happened to him, and in that Marvin found wasted potential. Marvin wasn't one for speeches so all these worries went unsaid. He put his energy into his own uncertainties, hoping one day he would latch onto meaning, either in his pen or brush. Some meaning. Somewhere.
Snitch didn't come out until 1:45. By then Teddy was getting bored with his comic and had begun kicking a soda can across the cobbled surface to Marvin's right just beyond the statue. First he'd kick it toward his brother, a few feet at a time. The broken progress of can over ground was almost as infuriating as the noise it made, like baby banshees caught in a tussle. Closer and closer he got, and as soon as Teddy got to handshake distance, as soon as the noise became most disruptive, he would swipe it to the side missing his brother's foot by inches. Then he'd turn away and begin marching back, kicking harder, walking faster, so he could do it all over again. Snitch arrived at the tail end of Teddy's third lap and watched as he marshaled his strength and launched himself one last time into the can—leg back one moment, fully extended the next. She laughed wildly as he missed, his foot scuffing the surface in front of the can, his body nearly thrown off balance by the force of his miss.
Marvin heard her laugh, saw her appear beside him, and straightened up while she shouted jokes at Teddy.
"Sorry," Marvin said, joining Snitch as she seated herself at a nearby bench "He wouldn't go to school."
"Tsk, tsk. Those children can be trying at times, eh?"
"Quite."
Teddy was far away and couldn't hear this. He pretended he had done his slip on purpose, doing it again with exaggerated movements. After a applauding whistle by Snitch, he returned to the statue and sat down, his blush hidden by exertion and bright sunlight
"Mother kicked him out," Marvin said looking away.
"For what?"
"Marijuana."
"Ahhh."
"And then he went and climbed my wall."
"Excuse me?"
Marvin shrugged. "He scaled my building and broke in through the sliding glass door. He could have called but he has to make a show. Thinks he is Spiderman or maybe the human fly. The kid is a danger."
She removed a small brown paper bag from her blue-white canvas carry-all, the former surfacing like an egg out of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. As she unrolled the end, the rings on her hand flashed and danced and caught Marvin's eye, almost as sharply as the sun off the building the their rear. She wore many, more than most girls. Gold, Silver; some set with diamonds, others birthstones, and some with nothing at all; or with glass, which was hardly better than nothing, really. One that was larger than all the others, a coal-black onyx ring on her right pinkie, didn't shine; and she often used it to tap it on her desk when she was bored.
"I went to boarding school. That's what he needs. Fixed parameters."
"Strange to hear that coming from you, Marvin." She took a bite of an egg salad sandwich, offered Marvin the other half, but he declined. "Doesn't all that jazz put a damper on one's creativity, a stopper in the old mental flue? I remember you telling me how much you hated it. In fact, I distinctly recall a conversation where you said that the best person to look after you is you.
"I wouldn't say anything so pedestrian."
"Wouldn't you? Well, whoever said it, it sounds about right."
Marvin shook his head. "I didn't say he'd like it. But it's like painting. You shouldn't start working abstractly unless you have a foot in realism. You need perspective. He needs perspective. Teddy has none."
"You're generalizing."
"I am not."
"He isn't that bad. He doesn't need maturity. He's 16"
"17"
"He's 17. Ten years down the line he'll be different. A job, a girlfriend or wife, possibly kids. Give him time."
Marvin raised his arm and waived the subject from their conversation.
"All I know is that I'm busy and he is interrupting my work.
Snitch rolled her eyes and swallowed a bite. " Don't you want to hear about my night last night?" She extended a leg and dangled her shoe off her toe. "I can't believe you haven't asked me about it yet."
"I was hoping to avoid it altogether."
"You're the one who needs to learn a few things, Marvin Meggler. I've never seen someone who was so squeamish." To prove her point, she reached in her bag and pulled out a tampon. She shook it in front of his face."
"Run! Hide!"
Marvin fought it off as if it were a mosquito that had buzzed to close to his ear. "Don't!"
"Is the big bad tampon going to hurt you?"
"People can see, Snitch. Stop it."
"Didn't you take an art class once. Didn't you have to paint a nude?" She held it like a brush and began outlining a cloud overhead.
"The model didn't assault me with her sanitary products, Snitch."
"Maybe she should have."
"That makes no sense."
Teddy looked over, saw the tampon, and started laughing.
"Christ, look what you've done. He's going to be intolerable."
Snitch put the offending tampon back in her bag. "I have to go anyway."
"You haven't finished your lunch. It's only been 10 minutes."
She looked at her watch. "Five, actually. There's a big project and I'm behind on my part of it. I have to catch up.
Snitch threw away the paper bag and a morsel of uneaten sandwich.
"Call me tonight."
Marvin sighed. "All right."
"Take the kid to the driving range and buy a couple baskets for him. That should keep him busy."
Marvin nodded, as if this had been his plan all along.
"Ok. See ya." She called over to Teddy. "Watch your step!"
He smiled, said that he would, and Snitch walked back into the piercing glimmer of the building, the flash of her fingers trailing at both sides like fireflies.
User Reviews
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2008-04-25 11:42:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
More minor mistakes, and a few sentences that seemed a bit awkward to me, but, what Jack said.
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-04-09 23:38:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by DreamWeaver (user info) at 2008-04-06 16:21:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2008-04-05 03:17:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-04-04 08:34:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-04-04 03:45:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I for one, cannot be bothered to read your posts, therefore please use some colourful language, pornographic photos OR LOL Catz to capture my attention.
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2008-04-03 21:20:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
As promised.
Submitted by Caulfield (user info) at 2008-04-03 21:09:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Marvin is a pain. He says he will be famous (and believes it to a degree), then shows that he doubts himself at every turn. And while he hates change, deplores immoral behavior, and is largely afraid of women, he has aspects of his life that run afoul to all three.
If you're having trouble keeping up with him, trust me, so am I
Submitted by rillins (user info) at 2008-04-03 20:35:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I'm giving you a one mostly because I felt that this part of the story is going in a completely different direction than the first part. I really enjoyed the first part and am not really seeing the same person in this one. Keep it up though, I want to see what happens next!
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-04-03 18:46:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Boy, the loneliest post on uber today!
There's a lot that needs fixing, but it seems like honest work going on here, so +2.
Besides... there's an actual STORY here. Quite rare on uber.