Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Deus Ex Machina

   1.

   Fuck, fuck, fuck, there I was, perched on a wooden chair of uninspired
punishment, writing a love story with not a whiff of success.  My
characters were pale, colorless, deprived of feelings and I hated them
both. Their love was an automated routine.  More love would be shown from a
walking English Hungarian dictionary if it only had real legs instead of
those under `L'.  Well, my characters knew how to speak.  Well, that was a
start.  They found themselves in a set of awkward situations and that was
fine.  If they only knew how to use them to grow love and then copulate
madly in a supermarket or somewhere.  What I needed today was a well-armed
Cupidon to serve me and my audience as a fussed-up deus ex machina.

   Fuck, children of God, fuck now -- was what the angel would tell them,
frustrated that they just stand there and talk about New York fart art and
what not.  But there was no higher instance to address the sorry-asses
characters, and it was left to me to guide them believingly.  How lousy I
did that; how shallow my fantasies were.  How all this stank.  Maybe I
should just write: it's one year later and there they are waking up
together after a good fuck.  How've they finally got the knack of it, God
knows.  There, a deity again...

   There was a knock on the door.  `Tis some stranger, I thought.  I got
up, got there, got the door open and gaped.

   And there she was, the young gorgeous thing, a stranger to my heart, but
not a stranger to my eyes as she lived down the street in another sub-urban
house, white like mine and clean like mine.  Well, from the outside at
least.  She was all there, all in cellophane-like clothes of younger
generations, with her home-grown breasts flourishing from under the
provoking crack in her garments, easily winning the battle with Earth's
pathetic gravity.  Her curly hair was a palette of different chocolate
specimens in strings.  Oh, her face was a bronze peach of a pagan queen,
with a small pyramid of a nose spotted with ice-cream pigments, her eyes
wide, gargantuan and far separated, like you could see on a cutest bug in
the world.  I loved her image.

   Under the perfect geometry of her upper body, her hands were holding
something smelly hidden under the silver wrapping, something that she no
doubt wanted to sacrifice to me for some reason.  When I first saw her on
my door then, her face just lost the commodity of wondering if she's doing
the right thing and now, confronted with the lord of the house she's
visiting, she sported a Volkswagen smile.  She was a manga cartoon sexed-up
heroine on my doorstep.

   I lost my cool there and then, like if I ever had it when in social
proceedings with most beautiful of God's children.

   - Hi!  - said I and waved cool and friendly like a hip-hop guy.  Huh! 
Did older hip-hop guys dress like De Niro deer hunters at home?

   - Hi!  - She said and briefly laughed, hysterically instead of
apologetically.  I loved it.

   - I can help you.  Tell me how?  - Was I ever gnomic that day.  She of
course knew something was wrong with me and frowned a bit trying to process
what I wanted to say.  I could see her mind carefully storing the awkward
situation in her memory against its will.  The mind said to her listen,
this old guy is probably a fuck-up crazy jerk, in eighties a nerd, always
to remain a geek, but we now have a social function to fulfill, so let's
not panic yet.  We'll do it in our maiden room; we'll carve it with a pink
fluffy pen in our diary, its hard covers dressed in other tender colors.

   - I brought you this!  - She said solemnly and insecure.

   - Oh, thank you.  - I said and cocked my head politely, like the most
polite and most bearded rooster of a man in the world, studying the edible
contents which she was extending to me during this not so cold afternoon.
The year was the year in which I successfully already divorced.  She
couldn't take my writing seriously anymore.  We didn't have children, she
wanted to be free.  She still edited my stuff sometimes; she still even
fucked me sometimes.

   - Oh, thank you.  - I said again now, taking the food in my hands.  It
was probably a cake.

   - You're welcome - she said.  Is there a Lenore, she could freely ask.
It would've dawned to me in a snap what she's talking about, and I'd
cockcrow, I'd tell the crow on my doorstep that I was alone and that she
could join my writer's soul for a cup of tea which I'd not drink without
rum and then we'd try the cake and worship it.

   - Oh, please come in.  - I said.

   - Oh, uhm... - she was caught off guard - I don't know, you know...

   - How did I deserve this?  - Ask this, I thought.  Now is the time to
ask.  Ask something rational, that's always good if you want to break the
ice.

   - You saved my Ben.  - She answered.  - My dog.

   - Oh?  - I asked confused

   - Oh!  - I exclaimed with sudden flush of understanding.  That's why I
had a PhD, so I could ask and exclaim, wasn't that true?

   - Yes.  The stupid dog ran out on the street and you reacted very
quickly.

   - I should've been driving a bit slower myself - I said with what
modesty in a driver can be found when the driver in question has been
drinking almost none, and then avoided a stupid dog and kicked the hell out
of a nearby garbage can, pealing the paint of the protective shiny white
bars of his 4WD wheels.  Not nearly the spinning garbage bin falls into the
front yard of some neighbor who is also a retired police officer spilling
its guts on the fresh mown lawn and you're already in your driveway
thumbing the remote of your garage.  And that's exactly what happened. 
Thus the cake.  It's not so much that we lost a lawn as we gained a black
lab and I delicious smelling cake.

   - Oh, no, you were very good.  - She said, and let's not forget her.

   - Please come in!  - I said with an authority of the older one in the
conversation, also the one for whom it was told that he was very good.  I
kicked the door behind me, but the stubborn thing bounced and kicked me in
the ass.  She laughed to that and then went pass me and in.

   - It's a very nice house - she lied.  Did she know I was an almost
famous writer?

   - Thanks.  I live alone, so I try to keep the corridors orderly and free
of objects.  Did you make the cake?

   - Oh, don't be stupid!  - She said and caught me gaping again.  Now this
was out of blue.  She said my house was nice, an utter lie, and now she
changed the logic of our narrative in stating that it's stupid being polite
and inquiring if she made the cake, when it was obvious she hadn't.  I
could see how she confused and teased the boys.  She only smiled.  Well,
I'd get even for that.

   - My granny made it.  She was visiting and I told her that you saved Ben
and we decided to make you a cake.  It was all very exciting.  - She gasped
breathless after a longer discourse.  All very cute.  So, the wise grandma
made the cake.  It was probably entirely her idea and the girl just trotted
along having fun in the cake awarding ritual.

   - Good.  Don't call me stupid, little devil.  - I said a
matter-of-factly and winked.  She raised her tastefully plucked eyebrows.

   - Sit down.  You wanna beer?  - I demystified my fridge without waiting
for her answer and tossed her a can.

   - You're different now.  - She said and played with the can, but without
opening it.

   - When I'm confined to my pretty house, I'm a monster in a cage.  - I
said.  Yes I was a monster now, what after all this stupid character in my
book talking bullshit and doing nothing in particular.  I was frustrated.
And then the brat called me stupid.

   - And you didn't save my dog, you just didn't hit it.

   - That's a smart observation.  How old are you, cutie?  - i was a
standing cobra wathing her intently and hypnotically as she sat on my
wooden chair.

   - Are you going to rape me?  - She asked.  I was so shocked by this I
don't even remember now what kind of voice she used and what kind of face
she made.

   - I'm not raping 16 year old girls.

   - I'm 19.  Almost 20.

   - Can you prove it?  You're behaving silly for a 19 year old.

   - Oh?  How would you know?  You were 19 once?

   What should've I answered to that?  I wasn't used to having arguments
with young girls.  She lost her attention span to this and spotted my
laptop on the table, with all that text over the screen.

   - What are you writing?  - She asked.

   - A story about two 19 year olds who cannot get to bed because they are
tragically asexual - I lied.  They were probably about 25 and they probably
wanted to have sex, but I didn't let them.

   - That's a strange thing to write about.  Can I read it?

   - It's not finished yet.

   - Well, when is it going to be finished?

   - I don't know.  - I said.

   - Will they have sex if you fuck me?  - She asked.

   - What?  You want to help them?

   She just shrugged.

   - Only if you're a virgin.  - I played along.  Of course, this was the
last thing I wanted her to be.

   - Are they?  - She asked.

   - Uhm, I don't know that.  - I said.  That was actually a good question.
Maybe he was and she wasn't.

   - I think we shouldn't fuck just like that.  That want help your story.
We should get to know each other first.  But then, maybe I won't like you
at all when I get to know you better.  And maybe they'll spit without
having sex.  It's possible, you know - she said.  I was beginning to be
amazed with her.  There indeed was something else in her.

   - Maybe this, maybe that.  We have five days.  After that I have to take
it to my agent.

   - What agent?

   - To the publisher.

   - You actually publish?  - She opened the beer.

   - Yeah.  - I sniffed and scratched my beard.

   - I have an idea!  We can watch a porn movie.  - She offered.

   - How would that help?  And what are we helping actually?

   - I don't know.  But listen, I have a tape of my parents.  They taped
themselves then.  I stole it ten years ago.  They asked me carefully about
a missing tape of some sort, but I told them I had no idea.  They are
probably still shit-scared that the tape is somewhere around the world.  I
think they've stopped taping themselves then.  I tried to watch it once,
but I didn't like it, it was gross.  But that was long time ago.  We can
watch it together now.  They've changed since, anyway.  It'd be easier for
me to accept it.

   - Tape of your parents having sex?

   - A-ha.

   - You are totally crazy.

   - I thought you liked crazy.  - She said disappointed.

   - Well, I do, but...

   - But not when somebody else is crazy, huh?  - She had a point again and
I said nothing.

   - Off I go now, see you tomorrow?  - She added jumping out of the
kitchen, her breasts bobbing slightly.

   - Why not.  I'll be...  amused - i said crestfallen, for she was leaving
and i wasn't happy with what i've managed to say during our encounter, but
excited that this strange being and I have some kind of future.  She left.

   - You still have a VCR?  - She yelled out of sight.

   - Yeah.  - I said.  She slammed the door.

   {I'll continue this if you like the characters and/or style}
   deck_under@yahoo.com