Having written more than his share of low-sales non-fiction, and having just completed his derivative memoir, Rubblemaker: Life as a Destructive Force, after returning from his 43rd trip to Equatorial regions, C.E. Finn has turned toward derivative fiction. These passages are from his forthcoming collection of short stories.
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Excerpted from "Changing of the Guard"
Roy Roamer-Rover was a man of parts. He had been in Europe for several years, fighting Communists. Fascists, occasionally. Someone told me that he also fought bulls, and I'm not sure I doubt it.
"Hello, Fin."
"Hello, Roy. Have a drink?"
"Okay."
I summoned the waiter. He was young. The sun was hot.
"Pernod, please. Two of them. Better make it seventeen, actually."
Two pretty girls walked by. They were laughing. One smiled at me, I thought, but I couldn't be sure. God, it was hot.
"Fin, one of the candidates said ‘school' to a reporter the other day."
"I heard. Wasn't he talking about fish, though?"
"Probably. I don't really know anymore. We want to extend the classroom day, but the days here are so long as it is."
Traffic passed on the Rue Tabac. A construction crew was mending a pothole. One man worked a jackhammer, another didn't. The waiter returned with five glasses.
"I will bring the other ten, Monsieur," he said, and walked back inside.
"Can't do math, Fin. Nobody can anymore. Math panel said it. PISA, too."
Roamer-Rover took a drink. He was sweating. The sweat beaded on his forehead, little droplets sparkling.
"Roy, why don't we get the hell out of here? Get out to the country. Fish and kill elephants. You know. Leave all this behind. The math and all of it."
"They're expanding AP. Merging the classes with special education. Pushing the whole thing down to kindergarten."
"Don't you want to leave it all?"
"Do you?"
Roamer-Rover got out his chair and pushed it back underneath the table. The table was crowded with glasses. He turned left and walked down the sidewalk and the pigeons scattered.
***
Excerpted from "Petrillius"
(Scene 1)
Enter two bureaucrats
BUREAUCRAT 1
Who's there?
BUREAUCRAT 2
Long live Spellings! 'Tis but I, Bureaucrat 2, and this frightful wind.
BUREAUCRAT 1
True 'nough. Never hath it whipped thru the Lyndon Baines Johnson
Department of Education building with such hideous fervor.
BUREAUCRAT 2
Any sightings?
BUREAUCRAT 1
None on my watch and much thanks for that. 'Tis something curséd about, I am
sure.
Enter Ghost
BUREAUCRAT 2
Zounds! There look!
BUREAUCRAT 1
Yon spectre is he who once was king, Paige of HousTown!
BUREAUCRAT 2
Spellings save us!
Enter Petrillius
PETRILLIUS
What, ho, and all this c'motion? This vile noisesom-ness?
BUREAUCRAT 2
Lord Petrillius, take ye care. The app'rition round about lurks. I flee! Come
Bureaucrat 1, for our counsel here is none to wont.
Exit Bureaucrats
PETRILLIUS
State thy interests, creature. What be thy intent?
GHOST
Ears I desire, lend them me in forthright earnest.
PETRILLIUS
And them have you shall. The ear's the thing.
GHOST
I am the spirit of he who anciently commandeth this Lyndon Baines Johnson
Building! No Child Left Behind I did toil for. Oh fie! Disaggregated data were my
work, like the songbird singeth his flightful tunes, tis so. Unnatural treachery
now wafts. Revenge is to be sought. Growth models most foul. The sting of
Spellings hath hurt this messenger. Low deeds and mischief abound. Teething
First, the like. Sol Stern knoweth, and
PETRILLIUS
Yeah, yeah-brevity, dear ghost, soul of wit and such. What talk is this? Of
treachery and Teething First? Something is rotten at the Lyndon Baines
Johnson Department of Education.
GHOST
Witchcraft! Adieu, adieu. To sul'frous HousTown I return.
Exit Ghost
***
Excerpted from "Cabbage Comes to Call"
It was one of those most dreary, foggy mornings, the kind that when you gaze out the window you think that it appears to resemble pea soup, which then occasionally is exactly what you feel like eating. I was out and had just stepped in.
‘Hallo, Jeeves!'
‘Good morning, sir.'
‘Splendid morning, Jeeves, despite the weather and all that, I'm feeling chipper as a woodcock, if that's the creature I want.'
‘It is, and very good, sir. I've your tea and papers ready in the drawing room.'
‘Tip-top and toffee! Any messages?'
‘Yes, sir, one. Ms. Fiana Cabbage called, sir, from her home in Olde Brooklyn. She said to tell you that she's resigning again.'
‘Dash it all! Resigning? From what this time?'
‘She didn't specify, sir. She said only that she just couldn't bear reading anymore of the rot you keep forcing on her.'
‘It is as I suspected, Jeeves. Ms. Cabbage wants nothing more to do with my monthly book club. This is a setback of paramount-ness. She was supposed to host our next gathering!'
‘Perhaps, sir, Mr. Tlick Mess would be willing graciously to offer his home as a meeting spot, on account of Ms. Cabbage's sudden withdrawal.'
‘Not bad, Jeeves. I'm off at once to see Mess!'
Tlick Mess was one of those fellows who seemed impervious to the strictures of the polite society in which he was always mucking about. He cursed frequently and unabashedly and at cocktail hours could always be spotted in unfashionable garb drinking the most awful plonk, sloshing it around and saying things like, 'Ah, yes. But will it work at scale, dear fellow?' Yet he was enormously productive--could churn out books faster than most men churn out, well, perhaps butter, I suppose--and a good 3 of the most recent 8 weren't half bad. Some bracing stuff about free markets in several of them. Ideas like that, I always say, can invigorate a man. Mess had a think-tank shop of his own, OUandsometimesY, it was called, at which he employed an army of perfervid research assistants that he merrily plucked from the ceiling echelons of ivied halls. He greeted me now at his door.
‘Fin, boffo to see you as always. Have you heard the news? The secretary of the Secretary of Education is rumored considering resignation and plotting an application to be secretary of the governor of Texas!'
‘Come off it, Mess! It's quail excrement. I've more pressing news: Cabbage has tendered resignation from the book club. I'll need you to offer up your flat as a meeting-spot for next week's potluck affair.'
‘Can't do it, old sport, I'm afraid. Hosting my own book-release soiree that day, so I'll be absent from your little pow-wow myself.'
‘Quite unfortunate to hear, Mess, you abandoning ship like that. Who'll be at this thing, I wonder. Just me and Botherman?'
‘Botherman rang earlier, actually. His country home is under attack by disgruntled geese, can you believe it. Bulgarian geese, I believe he said, with much excrement of their own. Doesn't seem likely he'll be capable of motoring into the metropolis for several days. But I know you'll have a boffo book club even if it's just you. Someday I myself intend to read the Hortus Deliciarum Salomonis. And maybe review it in Education Never.'
by C.E. Finn