As-of-yet unnamed writing

[Turn 360 and walk away]

Chicago, inner city, September 1946

Stuart Delacourt lay sleepless in his room. It was not a new thing; when an insomniac sleeps is the rarer case. When a man does not sleep for long enough, the world begins to look thin. Look like paper. Copy of a copy of an imperfect copy of the world, except someone burned the earlier copies; there was no going back to the world which had color and meaning. There was this, and the copy his eyes were writing now, in their jagged and uneven hand, forgetting a few details from the last.
He turned over, then turned back onto his back. His mouth began to gnaw at his fingernails as he shifted once more. His mind turned over the day previous. Outside his single window, the city seemed darker than usual.

The day before tonight, the night that he was sure would be his last, like every night before him, had not gone right. It simply hadn't been well from the time of him waking up. But he couldn't tell the how much until tonight, with the thought of his end growing, snarling and biting, in the back of his brain.
But maybe it hadn't been the day before, that snowy September 19. Maybe it had been earlier. Or maybe it all is just another fouled copy of reality his brain was trying to grasp. maybe he would wake up on the morning of September 20.



Upstate New York, September 20, 1946

The clock had struck midnight five seconds before Virgil Castellano entered his extravagant vacation home in the foothills of the Appalachians. His rough hands held a blanket and a shovel, both muddy with the rain, light for this part of the country, but still heavy for a shovel he would destroy and a blanket to burn. But the ground was soft, and he could be thankful for that, right? Tony "Hawk" Vitrianni didn't have anyone to thank. He was going to squeal. Virgil doesn't have room for a rat anywhere near him.
that bastard Tony was supposed to drive some drugs down to Jersey. It isn't a hard job. Tony thought that he'd get caught, and Virgil put up extra protection. Tony still didn't do it, and worse, he was planning on driving the whole car, merchandise and all, down to the police the next morning.That bastard Tony had chased him out of two houses already. He had to blow up his apartment in Queens, and now this damn cabin will have to go. Later. He'll sleep first. But before anything can happen, he needs to cover his tracks. The blanket will be thrown in the fireplace, he decided. hile the fire's growing, he went to the garden, and spit on Tony's face. His eyes were closed, like he was sleeping. Only the sleeping breathe. Virgil threw the shovel into the hole and finished filling in the grave with his hands. Tony made sure to ruin Virgil's new suit in this mud.
The fire was strong, and the blanket went up in it easy, despite the rain. It smelled like cooked flesh and smoked out the whole house, though.
Virgil opened some windows and slept. he didn't enjoy sleeping, but rather, did it dutifully. His dreams, however rare, seemed to bring him always back to that day he met Stuart. Despite their diluted, often confusing distortions of what really happened, he could always make out Stuart in the driver seat of that crappy cab, some four years ago.

[Turn 360 and walk away]

Somewhere in the Atlantic, May 1942

Stanko De La Courte Could not bear the idea of leaving his home. Yugoslavia, was, despite it's no longer existing, all the wars it's been through, home.
"And even when a home is burning to the ground, a mother always finds a reason to run back inside to fetch something important." He mouthes, and smiled weakly. Through the sickness from the sea, and from the warring, and from her loss, his mother's words lingered, and in their one-of-a-kind, rudely cynical way, made him laugh. He was laying in the cot of the lowest passenger deck of the ship, all at the same time praying that they stay up and that someone, probably German, would torpedo them and just end it. All the sickness.
"No fighting in heaven," was another saying his mother was fond of.
Stanko's mother had been from France, but left at a very young age, bound for anywhere but her abusive parents. His father was a proud Serb, who died in the war when Stanko was three.

No great loss

Then, just three days ago, exactly a week before his 23rd birthday, Momma De La Courte was walking back home from the market when a team of Bosnians jumped into the road and sprayed bullets into the crowded streets of the town.

No great loss

Somehow, Stanko had decided that America would be the solution to all his problems. Now, aboard this steel deathtrap, he found that he missed the landmines and the feuds and the death. At
"least, over there, you knew that you'd die. Here, it's a total 'crapshoot', as Americans seem to say a lot." he realized he was speaking out loud again and clapped his hand over his mouth, in a half-yawn-half-oops gesture. He hadn't slept much since the time he stepped onto the floating grave. The sea sickness kept him awake. Yesterday, three men were thrown overboard when they drunkenly decided to sleep on the bow. Now, shivering against the steel wall of his room, he hoped America was everything Momma and his cousin, Dragan, thought it was. Dragan was with Momma at the market that day, three days ago. He had been the one with the gun. He said that he hadn't seen Momma that day. Stanko knew that was a "load of crap," as the Americans on the boat liked to say, and threw him into the Mediterranian Sea, bound with some rolls of duct tape.

No great loss

Queens, New York, June 1942
"You ain't no nice guy!"
Virgil Castellano cast this off with a shrug and a quick feel between the woman's thighs.
"What the hell are you doing? I said STOP!"
"last night, you liked it. And you're still not dressed."
"Shut up! You ain't no nice guy! Why should I stay?"
"I don't know! Get out of my apartment before I call security!"
"What the hell, Virgil? What the hell?" She was walking towards the front door, bending over at her waist, to gather her clothes. As if to put a period on her long-finished sentence, she bent over, shook her body, and picked up Virgil's bathrobe, which she tried to leave with. Virgil tried to get up off the chair and stop her, grab her arm, something, but she hurried at his moving and was able to slam the door in his face and get away.
Virgil ran to the window and screamed, "Bring back my crap, you tramp!"
"You ain't no nice guy, Virgil! What's your problem!?"
Just as he was answering from his second story apartment, an empty beer bottle left her hand and came sailing towards him, smashing dramatically against the wall just to his left. "You can't do anything right! Crappy throw is what that was! That's my problem!" He slammed the window down, muffling repeated shouts of "You ain't so nice!" with interlaced "bastard!"s. In the kitchen the stove was still on, and he could hear the sausages cooking in the skillet. He turned it off and threw away the pan, breakfast and all. Dumb broad thought she could use his old cookware, the ones that were his keepsakes, his heirlooms, his prizes, to cook such a lowly, dirty, disgusting food.
"And she forgot that the damn grease gets everywhere!" he fumed to the empty apartment. He grabbed a mop and began cleaning.
Everything in the place was perfect. everything was straight, everything was clean, everything was where it needed to be. The whole place was furnished in black and white; the walls were a stark white, all the furniture upholstered in black leather. All the pictures were beautiful non-color photographs, of Yosemite, mostly. The carpet was white, with a black rug at the entryway and the space between the living room and kitchenette. It looked like you were walking into a television show when you entered his house. But that woman (Virgil came to realize that he didn't even remember her name) came in and fucked it all up.

Later, after the house was put back in order, he remembered that the dumb broad raided the refridgerator. He needed to run to the market, and fast, if his family was visiting that night.
Virgil walked off the sidewalk into the street, waving his arms for a cab. When one finally pulled over, Virgil got in without hesitation.
"Thanks Mac. I need to get to a grocery store. Don't matter which, just make it snappy."
"Alright. Here we go."
Virgil looked at the name badge of the driver, "You sure don't sound like no 'Stuart'. You sound like your a Soviet or something."
"I am from Yugoslavia. My real name is Stanko. Americans at Stanton gave me 'better name'."
My mother was from Italy, but I grew up here. She says they made her change her name, too."
"Yes. To make people feel more 'American', they say. Bad idea, if you ask me," The cab slowed to a gradual stop, and Stuart said, "here we are, friend. It was a nice talk."
"Thanks, Stanko."
"'Staurt', my American friend."
The door slammed and Virgil strode into the market. The cab drove away, almost noiselessly in the midday traffic.