Some Collected Works by Victor Kane
An Interactive Chapbook
Strictly Middle Class
Short Story
word count 1731
--That's not being "arrested", bundled cold into an open van in the dark and never seen again... We sat bored in the bar, blond Paul and the rest of us, the night Amalia became terrified and rushed off to the bathroom, horrified as she looked from one face to the other, her eyes trying not to roll, a social addict these past three years, hiding yet fearful of receiving back no bounce, transparent and aghast, entrenched amidst blind haze, ununderatanding, smokescreen. Fred had been talking politics again and everyone was sure he'd be on to human rights in no time. And sure enough, just as he started in, Amalia rushed off to the ladies' and we were five, four men with no way through to her. We looked around for someone we knew, sure that she was already banging her head against the soft coldness of the unanswering mirrors sticky from her crying, for all the world in a padded cell. But there were only a couple of old ladies at an adjoining table, sitting waiting. But the one I was really afraid of was the great lounging lout over opposite them, gazing at everyone out of the bland black executioner's prism squashy wedged hard into the corner of his eyes. He was almost too big for the straw bar chair he sat in, but had he heard us? Fred was shouting in a whisper, now, with words like kidnapping and torture seething over his brim, angry drops of words falling into his dirty cup. The lout looked half-illiterate, anyway, he couldn't have heard us. But blond Paul was free to speak now. --But they wanted a shooting war, didn't they? So what's all this mealy crap about human rights? He lounged, pouting, scraping crushed biscuit crumbs from his waistcoat, —And where is Amalia? Why's she taking so long? Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice, his head swiveling round at us all in a dim flare: --Nobody's given me a decent answer to that one yet! The thudding black eyes of the blind lout had not been attracted, yet. They were beckoning, vacant as a fart, to some imaginary waiter hovering somewhere behind blond Paul's head, whose neck still twisted and swiveled in its chair. Fred stared hard into his cup, full of sodden butts. He imagined Alicia snug against her man's warm forms, starting in fear, hate and wonder prickling her ears at the sudden pounding on the door, tiny spiders of it crawling all over her. When the blind lout waved at a black hole somewhere outside the nightless café windows, then slouched cut in a broken huff, blond Paul took hold of Fred's arm: --Just shut up, Fred, Go tie up your crying worms and cut ‘em in pieces with a rusty old pair of broken scissors for a change, won't you old chap? I'm plain tired. --Change? Fred blinked as he spoke. --Listen to this. There was a couple. Alicia and Mauricio. Alicia studied at the university and Mauricio worked at a bank. They'd just begun living together. One night, soon after they moved in, there was a knock on the door. A loud knocking. Alicia went to the door quietly. She was afraid. She looked through the peep-hole and whispered "one minute". She tiptoed back to the bedroom, slid on Mauricio's robe, carefully shut the door, then let her friends in. --Come in, please sit down. What's the matter? Uh, please don't make any noise, Maury's sleeping. How did you get my address? And uh, please don't put on any records. Maury doesn't know about anything. Why have you come? Please. Shhh! Let me make sure he's sleeping. She knew he would be stirring when she slipped back into the bedroom and out of her robe against him. All his body was so warm. She kissed his waist as he stirred, smiling. She was proud of herself, of her man's limp smile, of the smell of her on him, --It's just some friends from school, Pato, we're going to study for that test, ok? Gonna put the kettle on, you sleep, all right? Reassured, she unstuck herself from him, His arms fell to the bed and found their resting places. Alicia dressed in the cold. Then she went out and gently closed the door. The bedroom was dark inside, quiet and shut. Alicia came out, tiptoed. She saw Raymond's oily head resting against the clean peach walls and remonstrated, half timidly, scratching with her fingernail at a latex spot on her jeans. --Just, uh, painted, Raymond. Say, what's going on? Um, nobody else knows you're here, do they? ~-No, just Mario. Sally took hold of Alicia's wrist and pulled her down next to where she was sitting. ~-Raymond, don't lean your head against the wall, like that. Alicia, we've got something to tell you. Raymond sat up suddenly and made a noise. Alicia glanced nervously towards the bedroom, and stood up. The crawling over her was wandering. She took a step in the direction of the bedroom, then stopped, turned. --I'll make _mate_, I'll put the kettle on and prepare the green _mate_ tea gourd. --No, wait. There's no time. Come and sit down a minute, come on. Sheila's sister's been hit. --I was with her. They tortured us with the picana but then they let me go. Look, they asked me where I had met Raymond. She lowered her head, a brave soldier's face pose, grave, hanging in crisp folds around her bleating breasts and heart. Alicia stared at the girl, and the crawling shivered in waves. This girl was a ball, had been in their hands and at their hands, but had somehow bounced free. Had been tortured and come _here_, to her peach house. Alicia sat, for all the world a mannerist portrait, Alicia numbed and buzzed. --They asked me how I met Raymond. Forgive me. --What for? What happened? I'm sorry, I didn't hear. What did they ask you? Alicia looked at the mounted poster of the red carnation in the barrel of the rifle. Mauricio had put it up twisted. They had spent half an hour looking at it until they were cock-eyed and half-blinded by the shimmering right-angles, yet it still wasn't straight. It was half an inch off. How come they hadn't been able to put it up straight? Raymond was shaking her. --Sheila had to tell them about the party. --Forgive me, Alicia, but I had to tell them. Anything else would have been unverifiable and would have sounded suspicious. She was blinking and they were shaking her. --So I just mentioned in passing about your party... --My party? What party? --Your birthday party. Your birthday party where Raymond and I met. --But you told them about _me_? You mentioned me, for nothing, but you could have said anything. Why my name? --Had to. It was the safest thing. Don't worry, nothing will come of it, it was the most logical move. They'll check out your parents' address and they'll see I was telling the truth. She was squeezing Alicia's hand and squeezing her shoulder. Then she was patting her shoulder. --Listen, we gotta go. It's ok if we leave a couple of things here, isn't it? --Where, what things? They all stood. Alicia looked at them, looked at their hands, They were empty, Sheila and Raymond were carrying nothing. Alicia looked at Sheila's face. --Why did they let you go and not your sister? How come? But they had kissed her and were gone, the door was shut, the room was empty. She sank down onto the sofa and realized she had been unzipped the whole time. She stood and zipped up her jeans. Then she was frantically searching through drawers and cupboards, drawers and cupboards that she didn't know yet, that were half empty. She found a loaded revolver in a sideboard drawer, near the cutlery. Gotta get this thing out of here, get this thing outta here and get back. She gazed around and around the room, but the frantic spiders crawling about ushered her out and down the stairs, onto a bus, and off the bus. She was left off in front of her old friend Claudio's house. He was home and insisted on accompanying her back. Just in case, he said, and he wanted to help her break the news to Maury. By the time they were on their way back it was almost day and the neighborhood bars were opening, And the porter at Alicia's apartment house was beckoning her from the window of one of them two blocks away from her unit, his face pale as if he was seeing a ghost. They went in and sat at his table, and all three were fidgeting. The waiter was in a back room somewhere. --So they made me lead ‘em up there, to your apartment, he explained. --They stuck a gun in my ribs and said “you go first". I asked ‘em, I said, you sure you got the right people, those two can't involved in anything, as right as rain they are, known Mr. Mauricio for years, must be a mistake of some kine... But they said they found a stack of maps or papers under the sofa and three sticks of dynamite in a carton of books that hadn't been unpacked yet. I dunno. Look, I gotta get back. Don't come after me. Then Amalia came back to the table just as Fred was blithering, --look for her own good we've got to treat her just like she was anyone else. We all hated Fred and sipped, the cool edge of our brandy dissolving our burns. --Go on talking about whatever it was you were talking about before I came back. Fred said --I think she went back up or, er, the other guy did. I don't know what happened after that. A few hours later we found out they had killed Mauricio, when we read the paper and saw his name on a list of guerrillas killed in an attempt to rob a bank or something. --I don't know what else happened, to the girl or anything. Upon leaving, we tried not to be aware of the two brittle lines where Amalia's lips should have been as Claudio led her shivering outside and away along the street.
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About Victor Kane
Victor Kane was born and raised in London, England and dutifully ran around the lakes at Hampstead Heath in grey vest and running shorts with his classmates.
Victor Kane was born and raised in San Diego at the age of 12 and in Los Angeles at the age of 16 and in New York at the age of 21, where he arrived on a motorbike dressed in gray jeans and parked a couple blocks from Columbia University in what was gonna be ’68.
Moving right along and skipping a bit here and there (his first novel planned to come out in serial form one day soon in the coming months will tell you more), he was born and raised in Buenos Aires at the age of 27, where he taught English as a second language, and his eyes and mind were opened wide by the literary workshops there and the activists that populated them.
Still is.
And he’s been writing all the time.
Now he’s looking to publish what he’s written.
Then he’s looking to publish what he’s writing.
And he’s seeing about writing and publishing as a practice. Sort of like a legal practice. Or a medical practice. But no, as a writing practice.
Victor Kane is excited and eager to let you know what that will look like.
Then he’ll know and be in the thick of it.
Hoping we’re all in this together.