A Kiss for a Dead Film Star and Other Stories by Karen M. Vaughn

Author:Karen M. Vaughn [Vaughn, Karen M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC061000, FIC029000, FIC019000, FICTION / Magical Realism, FICTION / Short Stories, FICTION / Literary
Publisher: Brain Mill Press
Published: 2016-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Lower East Side is the backdrop against which our miracle is set. Over the past decade the area has undergone a revival, so that exclusive nightclubs and trendy boutiques now coexist with payday loan stores and homeless shelters. Sooty parking garages moon and sigh over freshly restored Federalist-style brick buildings. There are topless clubs, gallery clubs, leather clubs, rock clubs, billiards clubs, cocktail clubs, both low- and high-rent comedy clubs, even a burlesque club. There is a movie house that used to be a boxing venue. There is a tenement museum, and there are hundreds of examples of the genuine article all around it. (It is said that nineteenth-century chimeras lurk behind those eerie, punched-out windows.)

Corrine walks through all this as if in a trance, one ear held to the pulse of the air, until at last she arrives at a shabby little saloon she has never seen before.

She notices first the strange quality of the light. The burnished afternoon sun is pouring in through the open door—drowsy, mysterious, and bathing the floorboards with the lush hue of infinity. The beam is like the cross-section of a comet trail. Within its span she can see millions upon millions of dust motes, and her first thought is that the music in this place must have somehow taken physical form, that each particle she observes is actually the reified remnant of a note, the word made flesh, so to speak.

Soon her eyes adjust and she is able to take in the details of the eclectic decor. The bar, for starters, is nothing more than a battered, antediluvian pickup truck with a wooden counter jutting out from it. There are Christmas lights strung along the counter, and the barstools are covered with faux cowhide. A full-sized statue of Johnny Cash stands guard outside the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Along the wall there are a number of shallow niches, arch-shaped depressions that are lined with shells and pieces of sea glass. Each one contains a treasure: the beads Janis Joplin wore to Woodstock; an eye patch from one of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust costumes; a promotional photo signed by the original members of Pink Floyd; Tom Petty’s sunglasses; Freddie Mercury’s leather cuff; Beck’s harmonica; and half the lyrics to “Jane Says” scribbled on a truck stop diner menu.

Under other circumstances, Corrine might have the presence of mind to wonder if these artifacts are authentic, and if so, whether the bar owner could have possibly come by them in an honest fashion. But such suspicions do not even enter her thoughts at the moment.

She is already spellbound by the music.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.