The Many Ways in Which Honey Drips—Ep.6
a completely rationale short story
This short story series is a crossover episode, where literature meets other art forms. Stay here for the curated art, keep going for its personification
Featured art: British artist Alabaster DePlume and his Album, “To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol.1” (pictured album below)
Appearance also by Japanese Jazz Artist, Shintaro Quintet
Rules don’t apply inside the Oceanside Flea Market. People sell and eat trinkets and drugs and dance with critters and do things out of accordance of laws and physics. Some of the vendors are friends. One of them, Jo, drives a 1991 Ford Ranger that can fly and float and do Pirate-y things. With it, he collects different trinkets of art from the creative world and sells/shows them at the Oceanside Flea Market.
For back story and Character list, go here.
Ep—6 The Many Ways in Which Honey Drips
Their eyes had long, hairlike fingers reaching out of them. Translucent with a yellowish tar hue, the fingers could not be seen against the backdrop of the dry suburban coastline, but they were felt.
Louie’s 1992 Jeep Cherokee sat parked on the Pacific Coast Highway bridge. He was behind the wheel with Manny in the passenger seat and Kevin in the back. An Alabaster DePlume tape played through the speakers. The cassette player clicked every handful of seconds. A swap meet churned below them in the Oceanside Harbor overflow parking lot. A couple of perched up alley cats, they observed the swap meet with both hisses and licks of indifference.
Their touching sight scurried across the skin of the observed. The swap meet workers felt the faint feeling of spider legs running across their tatted arms and the back of their sun-baked, fruit leathered necks. The sensation of the distant sight on them was too soft for a scratch or a swat and instead brought on slow investigative glances over their skin. The fantom touch returned often, and they kept checking, but could never identify the source of observing eyes. It forced some exchanged looks amongst them, but nobody verbalized the shared feeling. To the new and trendy swap meet crew, appearances remained their ruler, and nobody wanted to stand up to crazy.
Manny had been fiddling with loose items in the car between his passing glances. He found a tub of creatine under his cloth seat and began pouring some out on the back of his hand as they continued to rifle through what their eyes found.
“Stick on callouses.”
“They eat parfaits out of cast iron pans.”
“Subarus with knobby tires.”
“They give themselves bed head after waking up with perfectly combed hair.”
“Cloth pants only.”
“They pat when they hug.”
“Septum rings.”
“Fucking septum rings.”
Manny snorted the line of creatine on the back of his fist. Louie looked at him and held in the laugh that Manny mined for.
“Suppository would have been more efficient,” said Louie.
Manny nodded and looked back down over the bridge. He threw his thumb in that direction and made a long falling cartoon whistle sound, finishing it with a splat.
“There’s your efficiency,” said Manny. He wiped off the back of his hand, then pinched his nose and sniffled. “Can’t take the fun out of it, though.” He grabbed the tub and twisted in his seat to face Kevin behind him. “You want some?”
“Why?” Kevin rolled up his sleeve and flexed his bicep in Manny’s face. “Does it look like I need it?”
“I said did you want some,” said Manny, placing the tub back down at his feet.
Kevin leaned back. He looked through the car seat headrest for a while before looking back down at the swap meet. He knocked his knuckle against the car glass. “Nobody likes to do tasks on a Saturday. Their cloth pants will lose their softness. Their blond streaks in their hair will fade. And the butterflies will get tired and all the shoppers will land back on us and our Sundays, where bargains belong.”
Louie looked at Kevin over his shoulder. His chin led with his crown tilted back. Air rushed in through his nostrils. “I’m not worried.”
The Whisky Story Time song came on. The speakers kept clicking. Attendance at their flea market had plummeted. Their overflow of stock leaked out of their homes and cars. As they sat from their perch above the swap meet, the whys this had happened, why the swap meet workers came, why the shoppers chose to go there, snorted and prowled around them in the jeep. More of an unfortunate condition, an instinct, than a choice, they colored the whys threatening. And when they looked down on the swap meet market workers, they drew horns where their septum rings were.
Jo had handed the Alabaster DePlum tape to Louie right before he left to hunt down some trinkets in Myanmar with Mason. After Louie took it, Jo clamped his hands around his cheeks and smooshed his face together before yelling, “Jazz is back, baby!”
And it was true. It was there, playing on the bridge. And it helped pour out the creatine, helped them turn their heads, and allowed for some licking peace between their biblical judgments. The jazz injected play. It placed a comedy, made some dropout nihilist for the zoomed-out perspectives, and brought them down into the moment, into the cuddle puddle of the jeep parked on the bridge with all of its improvisations.
Louie found a straw in the door pocket. He tapped it on the shifter to break the paper wrapper free. Reaching between Manny’s legs, he grabbed the tub of creatine. He dumped out a pile of the powder on top of the steering wheel, carelessly letting clumps of it fall on his knees and the floor. Sticking the straw in his nose, he snorted through the creatine. He accelerated away after several quick karate chops on the horn.
An ease blanketed over the swap meet. The booth workers smiled without knowing the source. Percolating sweat retreated on their fruit leathered necks. Their skin was touched by nothing other than the soft sting of the salty ocean air. In one of the booths or in one of the parked cars or in one of the nearby condos, a Shintaro Quintet song came on.
Later that afternoon, both groups unknowingly convened together and chose to surf the same sets of waves breaking off the same south harbor jetty. The swappers flipped their septum rings up when they surfed so the flea market crew did not recognize them.
Manny rode as if people watched him from a bridge. He did not share waves. He unknowingly and indifferently stole a wave from one of the swappers. The swapper took the slight on the chin and watched with a marked indignation as Manny sprayed water off the back of the peeling wave. It was out of character for Manny, a surfer always aware of his fingerprints, to miss seeing him despite their proximity.
The ocean did have a large amount of loose floating seaweed, enough to catch fins and leashes and hairlike fingers. So Manny’s stolen wave had rationale—as did the septums and the overflowing stock. The whole lot, North County, fat on rationale, had enough to lay their heads down into Sunday, enough for the car speaker’s next click.