The moving truck left yesterday. Sue still hadn’t ripped open a box or positioned her sleep-inducing armchair. Sue, aka Dr. Ringwald when her lab coat transformed her curvy body into a tube and when her long, blonde hair was in a ponytail, had slipped several rungs after one of her students tried to boost his marks by spewing raunchy fiction, instead of rigorous fact. Sue wasn’t much into unpacking a re-arranged life.
A university researcher, obsessed with seismic waves and plate tectonics, Sue made the big mistake of getting too close to Ralph, Ralph, with tough questions snaking from his sinuous mouth. What Sue noticed were his hands, big mitts that looked like he’d been digging all day, so unlike the baby bottom hands of his classmates. Why did she let him in her room?
They were in Japan, studying the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Instead of subduction zones, her hotel room became a seduction zone, foreplay, not foreshock. And now, Sue, who wouldn’t give Ralph the grades he needed to graduate with distinction, had lost her job because of the Made in Japan escapade, Ralph’s ploy to wring out high marks for a mediocre performance.
Grandpa Miles was on his way. He’d agreed to help Sue arrange furniture. Grandpa, who considered the newspaper as his best friend, knew that Sue lost her job. Now, it was McDonald’s coffee, not Starbucks’.
The seismologist without a lab, heard her security buzzer.
Fond of pants that fit like compression stockings and shirts that made him easy to find in a crowd, Grandpa blew in.
“Hello there, my little shaker,” said Miles. “I’m anxious to see your new place.”
Here was 170 pounds of tightly-packaged, old man meat.
“Well, I see we have lots of work. What’ve you been doing? You look awful. Boy, we can’t even have a cup of tea. Where’s the damn kettle? Any food in this place?”
“No energy, or desire Grandpa.”
“Ahhhh, desire — what gets me through life. Heck, last night after Eva, my latest girlfriend, left, well I couldn’t get to sleep. She should have stayed.”
“Grandpa, let’s get to work. I have only so much spark and I don’t want to waste it, listening to how you turn women into a man’s piece of jewelry.”
“Well then, maybe you could talk, tell me about that trip to Japan, how you and that student shacked up for a weekend. Pretty funny, there you were, looking at all the places that were ruined by the big quake and big wave, and you were doing shaking of your own. Come on, give the old man something to think about when he wakes up in the middle of the night. What kind of research was it, sweetie?
“Gramps! I want this space organized, today. Let’s figure out where the big stuff goes first.”
“Sure, but we can talk while we work. So, whatever possessed you to wrap your brain and then your legs around that guy?”
“I’m going to ignore questions that make me want to throw a box at you. You know, there’s software we can use for furniture arranging. What do you think?”
“I don’t care. I’m the muscle … see them rippling under my shirt?”
“Ahhhh, I can’t be bothered to use software to position my hardware. Let’s just eyeball it, okay?”
“You did more than eyeball in Japan, didn’t you Suzy-Q?”
“I’m going to ignore your comments, Grandpa. Let’s start in the living room cum dining room.”
“Cum dining room - great intro for me, sweetie. Cum-de-dum-dum …”
“We’ll keep the window clear. Now, what do I want as the focal point? It’s easier now that I have less stuff. The couch - let’s move it against the wall, then we’ll put the table beside it.”
“Sure thing, Suze. What was your room like in Japan? I figure, you were on the university dime, so it wasn’t one of those places with the bedspread that looked like it was from the Salvation Army. Was the bed on the floor? Probably cut down on the noise, eh?”
“I don’t have a lot of space, so everything has to be pretty square, I can’t angle the furniture like in my old place, where I didn’t worry about blocked aisles. Room to wander, that’s what I had. Now we have to figure out where to put the lamp. Let’s put it by my armchair, my newest refuge, okay?”
“Shed some light on this. Why didn’t you invite a Geisha girl over when you and the stud student were cramming? When in Rome…”
“Gramps, shut it. You’ve read the newspaper stories. They were pretty accurate. I made a mistake, okay? I was overwhelmed. I wonder what you’d do after sloshing around fishing villages that looked like dismantled Tinker Toy creations, places that looked like the bottom of a dirty tub or the nuclear plant, that twinkling death beacon. I figured, here I was in post-quake Japan, so live a little in case the ceiling squashes me like a tomato. What have I got to worry about at home? Where to hang the painting you gave me?”
“Hey let’s hang the picture over your couch, high-up. It’ll make the room look bigger. What about
this mirror? Shall we put in your bedroom? The wall or ceiling? Which room do you want to look the biggest?”
“The mirror goes in the hallway.”
“Okey, dokey. Glad this place came with curtains. You sure as hell don’t want a reporter with a drone or something, getting an update on the disgraced scientist, what kinky stuff she might be up to now.”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
“I almost forgot. Why the opium? Did it make the weekend more fun?”
“That was the pipe dream that burned me, Gramps, one more career-destroyer from Ralph, the smokey cherry atop his concoction.”
“Too bad so many people swallow poisoned tidbits.”
“Lets go get some sushi, Gramps.”
Judges’ comments
Yvonne Blomer
The Japanese earthquake and subsequent trauma is the catalyst for this story of a research scientist who gets involved in a scandal, her sex-story-scandal starved grandfather and a Wiki on arranging furniture, which I find, in itself, hilarious!
The first paragraph is a bit overloaded with -ing words, which weakens the beginning. Something to keep an eye on, but I love all the puns/metaphors: “Ralph with his tough questions snaking from his sinuous mouth” and “seduction” over “subduction” and “foreplay” over “foreshock.” This writer had some fun with language and its many implications. My favourite, because I can’t believe there is a wiki on rearranging furniture, is: “Ahhh, I can’t be bothered to use software to position my hardware.” I snorted with laughter! And then how her grandad takes every opportunity to make a sleazy pun and get the dirt on her. Too fun!
The piece unravelled a little at the end … as if the writer (in the short time given) couldn’t find a way out. With time, and edits, the writer will find additional depth beyond the puns and find a smoother or abrupt but more apt exit.
Dave Obee
Characterization is the strongest point of this story. We don’t know much about Ralph the student, and we don’t care to — he seduced his prof, ruined her career and is gone from the story. Good riddance. Grandpa Miles is not so different from Ralph, but he manages to be likable, despite his lecherous ways. We want to hear more from him, as we do Sue, the rueful prof. The author’s portrayal of her elicits not approval of what she did, but sympathy for her plight.
This is an enjoyable read, and the required elements work together seamlessly. It is the story of someone who made a big mistake, tying in with a major world event and a nosey, somewhat dirty old man, and it is fascinating.
D.W. Wilson
I’m concerned about the opening description of Sue — curvy body and long blonde hair — and I’m concerned about the haphazard way the story introduces her plight, as if sex with a student was something anyone of her standing would do so casually, as if university professors the world over aren’t cautioned against exactly that kind of relationship from the moment they start. I simply don’t believe, fundamentally, that she would do this. Furthermore, I’m not sure it’s ethically suspect enough, as in, there’s no suspicion about it; nor is it a “practice” so much as just bad behaviour. It seems like the easy way out.
The piece could do with a proofread. Numerous typos, comma faults, formatting errors, etc.
The dialogue between the two characters is over the top, and not in the goofy or funny way: it doesn’t run true, as in not emotionally true. The whole scene is simply one extended joke about the old guy making raunchy remarks to his granddaughter, which I could maybe believe if it were more subtle, or if either character were more well developed. As it stands, they are both one-dimensional, and no effort has been made to give them depth or contradiction. We’ve all seen movies about horny old men, and we’re all pretty much bored with seeing them.
The assignment is designed to give an external task into which internal conflict can be instilled. This piece does not do that. We can’t see the space, and there is nothing at stake in the physical world. Furthermore, there is nothing at stake between Sue and her grandfather, and therefore there is nothing that can propel them to change.