"James Patrick Kelly - Candy Art" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Candy Art
James Patrick Kelly
Asimov's (2002-12)

The author returned for the sixth time to "the summer swelter of East Lansing, Michigan, to teach
the 2001 Clarion Writers' Workshop. Maybe it was nostalgia for the heady days of my youth,
when I could pull an all-nighter and laugh about it over breakfast, or maybe it was the heat, but I
decided I would try to write a story, too. 'Candy Art' was composed largely between the hours of
midnight and two a.m. A deeply flawed first draft was completed in time for the last workshop
session, thereby affording my students the chance to see the emperor, if not without his clothes, at
least in his underwear. I have attempted to put their criticisms to good use. I revised this story
over the course of a couple of months, and added a new scene just before I submitted it to
Gardner and Sheila."


So I beep my boyfriend Mel, who hasn't been a boy since television died and ought to be more than a
friend by now, since for the last five years we've shared an apartment and a bed and a dreamscape. I tell
him the news about my parents.
"They want to what?" It's four-thirteen in the afternoon and Mel is down-town at the glorified closet
he calls his candy lab. His hair is a bird's nest that somebody stepped on and he sounds as if he has just
woken up.
"Move back in," I said. "With me. Us."
"They're uploads, Jennifer." When I first met Mel, I thought the sleepy voice was sexy. "How can
they move in with us when they're not any-where?"
"They bought a puppet to live in," I say. "Life-sized, nuskin, real speakтАФtop of the line. It's
supposed to be my Christmas present. Bring the family back together for the holidays and live unhappily
ever after."
"A puppet." A puzzlement glyph pops up at the bottom of my screen. "As in one puppet?"
"It's a timeshareтАФyou know. They live it serially. Ten hours of him, four-teen of her."
"Not fifty-fifty?"
"He's giving her the difference so he can take extra time off for his bass tournament in June."
When Mel reaches offscreen, I am certain he's about to click off. His typi-cal reaction to bad news
is to hide. Instead he produces one of his favorite cinnamon-stripe pineapple lickwixes and peels the
wrapper. "How long are they going to stay?"
"They didn't say."
"Probably forever." He waves the lickwix under his nose and sniffs. "With our luck."
"Yeah."
He isn't expecting me to agree. "You could tell them no." The panic glyph starts to blink.
"Mel."
"It's your life." He pops the lickwix into his mouth and twirls it.
MY LIFE! I want to screech. MY LIFE IS PUTTING UP WITH A PSYCHOTICALLY
BASHFUL CANDY ARTIST FOR ALL THIS TIME WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT BUT
A SWEET TOOTH AND DIRTY TOW-ELS. I'M FORTY-TWO WASTED YEARS OLD AND
NOT ONLY AM I CURRENTLY SLEEPING WITH A FLAB BUCKET WHO SAMPLES AS
MUCH PRODUCT AS HE SHIPS BUT NOW MY DEAD PARENTS ARE GOING TO BE
MEDDLING WITH MY PATHETIC LIFE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A
WEEK, THREE-HUNDRED-AND-SIXTY-FIVE BLEEDING BLUE DAYS A YEAR.
But I don't.
Instead I say, "But Mel, sweetie, it's their apartment."