infinities by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Scott Nicholson, Garry Kilworth, Eric Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Kaitlin Queen, Iain Rowan, Linda Nagata, Keith Brooke Page B
Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Scott Nicholson, Garry Kilworth, Eric Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Kaitlin Queen, Iain Rowan, Linda Nagata, Keith Brooke
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flickering black-and-white images, dark clouds and darker aircraft. Even as I strolled along the sidewalk, munching my hot dog – the frank had been overboiled, as usual – I was fully cognizant of the fact that I had been hooked. Whatever my mother's remembered voice might say on other Mondays, there was no way short of a broken neck I was going to miss another of these World War II double bills.
~
That night I phoned home – collect, of course – just to see how the folks were getting along and perhaps, if the conversation went along the right lines, to hint subtly that a cash donation would be joyously received.
"Hi, Mom. How's it going?"
"Very much the same. Your father's still got his indigestion. Have you met a nice girl yet there at the university?"
"Not quite, Mom. There aren't many girl students, you know." This was true, but it was an evasive answer to her question. I couldn't afford a girlfriend, and anyway, a late developer, still hadn't gotten over my adolescent neuroses about getting too close to any member of the opposite sex. My love life was confined to fervent and anatomically inaccurate imaginings about the body of one of the girls at the checkout counter in the local supermarket, to which mental images I would industriously manipulate a penis that I was convinced was too small. "I'd hoped Dad would be better by now."
"Well, it's all the stress, poor man."
My father had been retired for eight years, during which he'd done nothing more stressful than mow the lawn and complain about his indigestion. My mother, fifteen years his junior, put up with his self-pity rather better than I'd ever been able to, and was constantly ready with an excuse for his perennial and probably imagined ailment. This week it was stress. Next week it would be food additives.
"Glenda Doberman still often talks about you, Kurt. She's such a nice girl, don't you think?"
People often talk about dogs and their owners resembling each other, but Glenda Doberman was the only person I'd ever met who had come to resemble the dog after which her family had been named. The whole of the rest of her face seemed to have been designed as a pedestal for the prognathous thrust of her jaws and nostrils. And the similarity didn't stop there. I'd once been forced into taking her to a prom, and dancing with her had proved to be like dancing with a sackful of conger eels, all solid and unpredictable muscles. The obligatory necking session in the car afterwards, outside her home, had been a nightmare I preferred to forget. I had nursed a sprained shoulder for weeks afterwards.
"And I'm sure she'll soon meet someone ... worthy of her," I said, in what I hoped was a smooth deflection of the subject. Mom didn't know – and I certainly wasn't about to tell her – that soon after her eighteenth birthday Glenda had become known as Hershey Bar Doberman because that was reckoned to be the maximum a boy had to invest to get inside her pants.
"So like you, Kurt. Always wishing the best for other people." My Mom had illusions about my father, and they extended to me as well. Who was I to destroy those rosy visions of hers?
"But you should be looking out for someone nice for yourself," she said. For her, people were either "nice" or they didn't qualify for an adjective. "You're going to be twenty-five next month ..."
"Mom. Dad was forty-one when he found you."
"Yes, but that was different."
There was no way I could argue with this.
"What's the weather like at home?"
"Oh," she said, "just weather. It's been hot for September."
"Same here."
There was a pause during which all we heard was an electrical rendition of someone's burger catching fire on the barbecue.
"Are you feeding yourself properly?"
"As well as I can, Mom. Money's a little bit tigh—"
"Make sure you eat plenty of vegetables."
"Well, vegetables are pretty expens—"
"And fruit. There are some nice apples in the supermarkets at the moment."
My hot dog lurched inside me. Under
~
That night I phoned home – collect, of course – just to see how the folks were getting along and perhaps, if the conversation went along the right lines, to hint subtly that a cash donation would be joyously received.
"Hi, Mom. How's it going?"
"Very much the same. Your father's still got his indigestion. Have you met a nice girl yet there at the university?"
"Not quite, Mom. There aren't many girl students, you know." This was true, but it was an evasive answer to her question. I couldn't afford a girlfriend, and anyway, a late developer, still hadn't gotten over my adolescent neuroses about getting too close to any member of the opposite sex. My love life was confined to fervent and anatomically inaccurate imaginings about the body of one of the girls at the checkout counter in the local supermarket, to which mental images I would industriously manipulate a penis that I was convinced was too small. "I'd hoped Dad would be better by now."
"Well, it's all the stress, poor man."
My father had been retired for eight years, during which he'd done nothing more stressful than mow the lawn and complain about his indigestion. My mother, fifteen years his junior, put up with his self-pity rather better than I'd ever been able to, and was constantly ready with an excuse for his perennial and probably imagined ailment. This week it was stress. Next week it would be food additives.
"Glenda Doberman still often talks about you, Kurt. She's such a nice girl, don't you think?"
People often talk about dogs and their owners resembling each other, but Glenda Doberman was the only person I'd ever met who had come to resemble the dog after which her family had been named. The whole of the rest of her face seemed to have been designed as a pedestal for the prognathous thrust of her jaws and nostrils. And the similarity didn't stop there. I'd once been forced into taking her to a prom, and dancing with her had proved to be like dancing with a sackful of conger eels, all solid and unpredictable muscles. The obligatory necking session in the car afterwards, outside her home, had been a nightmare I preferred to forget. I had nursed a sprained shoulder for weeks afterwards.
"And I'm sure she'll soon meet someone ... worthy of her," I said, in what I hoped was a smooth deflection of the subject. Mom didn't know – and I certainly wasn't about to tell her – that soon after her eighteenth birthday Glenda had become known as Hershey Bar Doberman because that was reckoned to be the maximum a boy had to invest to get inside her pants.
"So like you, Kurt. Always wishing the best for other people." My Mom had illusions about my father, and they extended to me as well. Who was I to destroy those rosy visions of hers?
"But you should be looking out for someone nice for yourself," she said. For her, people were either "nice" or they didn't qualify for an adjective. "You're going to be twenty-five next month ..."
"Mom. Dad was forty-one when he found you."
"Yes, but that was different."
There was no way I could argue with this.
"What's the weather like at home?"
"Oh," she said, "just weather. It's been hot for September."
"Same here."
There was a pause during which all we heard was an electrical rendition of someone's burger catching fire on the barbecue.
"Are you feeding yourself properly?"
"As well as I can, Mom. Money's a little bit tigh—"
"Make sure you eat plenty of vegetables."
"Well, vegetables are pretty expens—"
"And fruit. There are some nice apples in the supermarkets at the moment."
My hot dog lurched inside me. Under
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