this letter to Norman Court

this letter to Norman Court is a novella consisting of 22 sections (each between 1000 and 1250 words) I am releasing by way of the following experiment: I am trying to serialize the piece across blogs, by reader request. If you read and enjoy the section below and have a blog the readers of which you think would enjoy a selection, as well, please get in touch with me to be an upcoming host. A little hub site is set up at www.normancourt.wordpress.com that will have a listing of the blogs that feature sections, as they are posted. Each forthcoming section will include a link to this hub so that readers can have access to the entire available novella as well as see what other sites have served as host.

It is my simple hope to use this as a casual, unobtrusive way to release this material to parties interested. There is some suspense, in that if a new host does not appear after each posting, the train comes to a halt (back tracking to previous hosts is not an option in this game). So, if you enjoy what you read and would like to host an upcoming selection, please get in touch with me via unburiedcomments@gmail.com . I welcome not only invitations, but any and all comments on the piece (positive, negative, or ambivalent) or general correspondence about matters literary.


Cheers,


Pablo D’Stair



this letter to Norman Court
Pablo D’Stair




one




One of the girls working behind the counter—I think maybe the one who’d wrapped my burger, passed it to the guy working the register to set on my tray—she’d made sort of quick, flirting eye contact with me while I’d been in line, but she hadn’t looked up to see where I’d sat down or anything. It had been flirting, though, like she’d for a moment, anyway, thought I was attractive, was probably even having a little fantasy about me, who I might’ve been, what I might say, do to her, but it was the sort of thing she knew it’d be ruined by looking at me again. I kept my eye on her anyway, kind of, not even so much thinking about anything.

I’d taken a large bite, was taking a drink to help me swallow it, when some guy sat down right at my table, nodded at me, smiling and it wasn’t until I’d mashed the swallow down, caught my breath and was saying Can I help you? I realized it was the guy I’d stolen his wallet about two days before.

-Sixty, seventy dollars, it isn’t much money, he said

I coughed into my hand, had another quick sip of my drink, wiped the excess from my lip.

-It was forty dollars.

No point in playacting the innocent for this guy.

-Forty? He hardly seemed like he was paying attention, his saying Forty might not even’ve been a question.

-It was forty, forty-two, something. Look, it’s gone, it’s spent. And I’m sure you probably canceled your credit cards, everything, but I don’t bother about those and I don’t leave them around for people might take them.

-Why not?

I didn’t like this person, he looked like the clothes he was wearing and nothing else, that’s all somebody would describe him by if he went missing or robbed a bank or something.

-Because. I don’t know why not.

-You can’t sell them to people or something?

I shrugged, glanced over to the counter, behind it, the girl not looking up, still.

-Why would somebody buy a credit card someone’s just gonna cancel?

I knew there were reasons, knew what he was talking about, but I didn’t know anything about it, in a practical sense—this guy’d probably watched a movie or some news magazine, had all sorts of little ideas about everything he’d picked up here and there. Thing was, he could chit chat it up, whatever he thought he was doing, I didn’t care. There was obviously certainly nothing he could do about it, unless he was gonna shoot me, cut me down at the Wendy’s or whichever place this was. The wallet was gone, it’d been forty-two something dollars, it’d been two days ago. Even if he was tape recording me, spy camera glasses, I didn’t know what he thought, like he was being tricky.

-Well, forty dollars is even less money, then.

I nodded, back to my burger, the bite I took shoving wet bread up, wedging it up into the gum of the tooth I was missing and I dug at this with my tongue while he went on with his bit.

-How would you like to make some more money than that? How about we talk about that?

I sighed, vaguely interested—at least it wasn’t what I’d been thinking, wasn’t so banal.

-How about we talk about it? Fine, talk about it.

-I’ll pay you two thousand dollars to deliver a letter to my brother.
I grinned.

-A small fortune. But what else is it for?

-It’s not for anything else. Though, I suppose there’s the stipulation that you don’t tell him it’s from me.

My mind drifted to cinematic pretend, trying to weasel around how he’d be edging me into something I didn’t want into, but at the same time I didn’t so much care, really, because it was going to be either he gave me the money, all of it, in front or there wasn’t going to be anything about me delivering any letter to anybody and so I could just walk off if I got feeling something was askew, money in pocket, dust my hands of it all.

-What’s he going to do with me I give it to him? I’m suppose to have a chat with him or what?

-Just in case, just in case he asks you something. I just need you to put it into his hand, personally, that’s the only important thing, no reason you have to say a thing to him after that, but just in case.
I ate my last bite, the girl wasn’t even behind the counter anymore so I did a phony stretch to see was she maybe wiping down some table but she wasn’t anyplace, was in back, employee toilet or something.

-And so how would this letter have gotten to him somebody didn’t steal your wallet?

He chuckled, very real chuckle, said he didn’t know, he’d been thinking about it all for awhile.

So it was something, it wasn’t normal, not like he could mail it from a pretend address —send it to a hotel inside another envelope, little note asks them to send it along so that the postmark is someplace strange — nothing that could be left to chance or have a straight third party involved with.

It was pointless, making it all a little mystery—I wanted to know about the letter, I’d say Yes to the guy, take the two thousand, open the letter and have a look. I was no more certainly reliable than a hotel clerk, this little scene must’ve just given the guy a kick, this little intrigue, maybe he was full of it.

-And sort of mind reader, he out of nothing said I like you, I think you seem the sort of person who could do this and know that’s that.

-I seem that way, yeah?

-He nodded. Yeah.

-You know you have to give me that two thousand, that’s first, then

I take your letter. What’s your brother, gonna kill me I give it to him?

He shook his head, face a scrunch, a real genuine expression of it’s-nothing-like-that. In fact, I didn’t think it was—the suit of clothes I was striking the deal with, it was just too earnest for that, it was just something I’d never decipher and it was right, I really didn’t care and probably I would deliver the letter.

I said Alright, tilted my drink cup back, got an ice cube I broke and swallowed in two chews, looked over to the counter, behind the counter, the girl wasn’t there, still.


Pablo D’Stair is a writer of novels, shorts stories, and essays. Founder of Brown Paper Publishing (which is closing its doors in 2012) and co-founder of KUBOA (an independent press launching July 2011) he also conducts the book-length dialogue series Predicate. His four existential noir novellas (Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate; i poisoned you; twelve ELEVEN thirteen; man standing behind) will be re-issued through KUBOA as individual novella and in the collection they say the owl was a baker’s daughter: four existential noirs.