Everything is Fine

EVERYTHING IS FINE

Grant Stone

Copyright © 2015 Grant Stone

Cover photo Copyright © 2015 Penny Claridge

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-473-33322-5

Publication History

Apart originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #36

Wyoming originally published in Comets and Criminals May 2012

Dick Whittington's Blues originally published in Semaphore Issue 6 March 2009

Better Phones originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #56

Wood originally published in Semaphore Issue September 2010

White originally published in Baby Teeth: Bite-sized Tales of Terror

The Salt Line originally published in Unfurled - New Writers from Manukau and Papakura

When Her Wings originally published in Prima Storia

Bordertown originally published in Eye To The Telescope Issue 2, August 2011

Coat originally published in A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction

Starting Over originally published in Semaphore March 2010

The Living Dead Boy originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #41

Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984) originally published in Strange Horizons May 2011

Dead Air originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #46

Introduction

This is the first introduction I've done in print. My first introductions overall sprang three-quarters-formed from the blood of my brow while moderating a debate in twelfth-grade English class. I was in full Matty mode, improvising fake biographies for each of the participating students. The low point (for everyone else) was when I stated that one girl had been training for the debate by adhering to a strict diet of cabbage and urine. Throughout my performance, my classmates alternately cringed and shook their heads. I received an F.

For Fantastic, am I right?

Grant Stone prepared this collection while adhering to a strict diet of cabbage and urine. No, forget that. For some reason that statement strikes me as undignified.

Grant's from New Zealand. I'm from the United States. At least once in every story set in his home country, I have to ask myself, Is that a weird element he made up for the story, or a New Zealand thing? I never ask him. Whatever answer he might produce would ruin it for me. Occasionally, I'll mutter, What the hell goes on in that country? His New Zealand readers have my condolences. They know the difference between the unreal and the NZ and his work doesn't hold the same degree of wonder for them. Poor New Zealanders, with their beautiful vistas and healthcare.

Speaking of not understanding, although I sometimes understand as much as ninety-seven percent of what's going on in a Grant Stone story, there are other times it's more along the underside of seventy percent. I'm okay with that. A friend who recently disagreed with me on the brilliance of Brooke Bolander's work (I'm pro-brilliant) said that he prefers to understand everything. I explained that I don't read to understand. I read to trip.

I look forward to not getting it. I can't understand subtlety by and large, and Grant can be subtle sometimes. Sharper lit-heads than mine appreciate this sort of thing. His sparse style is a net that contains an ocean-deep world. I'm aware of his skills the same way scientists are aware of dark matter: Something is leaving its mark on the universe of the story, so even though I can't see what it is, it must be there. I call it Grant matter.

The subtlety I can see is greatly appreciated. His aliens aren't Star Trek bland nor wildly incomprehensible. My favorite Stone pocket is his weird fiction and his weird fiction isn't Cthulhu, thank Christ. His work has seen the bottom of the mud bog called Suburbia, the spouse, the kids, the pets, the job, the taking out the garbage, the trying to squeeze the real life in around this structure we've all built together, and its characters are grounded in it. You don't get finger-wiggling megalomaniacs or whacky neighbors here.

His are the types of people you know and envy for seemingly having their shit together. It's the world around them that has spun off kilter. And they don't even feel it's any more nuts than the insanity of our world. They don't waste precious pages slowly coming to accept their weird situations, like every spec-fic protagonist ever created in the 1950s. Grant's characters just jump in and deal, with the same unspoken, right-under-the-surface Raymond Carver turmoil you and I feel as we're about to go into a Monday morning meeting.

Also, his normal people can be scary as shit.

If you want creepy, you're about to get it. If you want uplifting, you'll get that too. You'll get funny and melancholy, you'll get love and . . . well, if you have a passion for the 1980s, bring a change of pants. In an art form in which it sometimes seems the only work that can be considered serious is that which is dark and depressing, some of my favorite moments in Grant's false histories are those that give us hope. It's a glass of cold water to someone who spent the morning buried alive. You're dealing with a multi-trick pony here. He can lock into a mood and hold your head under for the duration and with the next story yank you into a completely different atmosphere and do it to you again.

All this is to say you're going to like these stories. You'll see. If you're just exploring Grant's work for the first time, or maybe you've read a story or two, you'll be a lifelong fan before this book is over. I'd like to say you'll be a fellow Stoner, but that seems undignified for an introduction.

-Matthew Sanborn Smith

21 November, 2015

Apart

Everything is fine until I get in the front door and see there's a message from Rachel on the machine.

Hey. Something's come up and I have to stay here and sort it out. Put my dinner in the fridge and I'll catch up with you later. Sorry babe.

I drop my bag in the hallway by the phone and go back out to the car for the groceries. Organic salad, bottle of red, fresh tortellini, and I mean real fresh. Place I go they make it in front of you, if you have the time to wait, which I didn't, not today, but even so. Tastes amazing. Not so great reheated.

After dinner I tidy up, cover her plate and put it in the fridge. I sit and relax: turn on the Cartoon Network and curl up with my battered copy of Don Quixote. When I hear her outside I flip over to the Discovery Channel. Meercats again. Her footstep on the driveway, then I hear the cat flap swing and she's home.

Well, I say she's home.

Her left foot hops into the lounge. Her right hand is perched above it, clinging on. I reach down and take off her shoe and give her foot a quick rub. Then I lift her hand and put it on the couch next to me. It scurries over on red-nailed fingers, climbs my shirt and strokes my cheek then jumps back down to the cushion, splays out, lays still. Her foot hops off to the bathroom for a soak. I heat up her dinner and put it on the couch. She's not hungry.

This is happening far too often.

I asked her, once. Did you learn this from one of those CDs you listen to in the car, that Harold Robbins guy? This some secret trick of the corporate executive ninjas or something?

Tony Robbins, she said, but she was already tying her laces and then she was out the door. Tuesday evening, jogging. I shrugged. She'd left her right hand and one eye, but they were doing something on the computer and didn't talk to me, so I got another beer from the fridge and switched over to the Power Puff Girls.

She's still not home, not all of her, by eleven. I click off the television and go to bed. Her hand clambers up to the pillow. I wake some time around three, desperate for a piss and she is there; I can see her silhouetted in the soft green glow of the radio alarm clock. I go to the bathroom, come back and lie in the darkness beside her, just watching her breathe in and out. Her long black hair is fanned out on the pillow and part of me wants to shake her awake. She'd be furious, but an argument would be better than nothing. At least she'd be all there. But I roll over and go back to sleep. I'm not completely stupid.

I don't know how she does it, but I know when it started. Last September, when it all became official. She didn't look well back then. What do you expect me to do Michael, she said. They're merging two companies. That means twice the work, but it doesn't mean twice the people. There are going to be redundancies, and I don't intend to be let go. I'll have to work some long hours until all this is over and the dust settles. After that, things will go back to the way they've always been.

She didn't get made redundant. Not much later she was promoted, given a pay rise. The hours continued. I didn't like it, but I understood. Hell, the only reason I was working at the bookstore now was that I'd been made redundant after the dot com crash. I'd adjusted, and selling books suited me far more than writing Java code ever had, but our mortgage payments were high and we needed her income far more than we needed mine. And when she started this new thing — part of her staying to work part of her coming home — well, it was better than nothing.

I'm going to keep up my fitness, though, she said. I refuse to become one of those sad mid-level executives you see, all wrinkly and flabby and old before their time. I can handle the workload, as long as I stay fit. Which she did, for a while at least, still going to netball practice on Wednesday night, then a game, perhaps two on the weekend. Until a month later when Bronwyn called.

It's just not working, Bronwyn told me. It's like she's not all there. And the game last Saturday started fine, but her mobile rang at half time and it all went to custard after that. How are you supposed win when your goal defence is just a couple of legs and a left hand? We got creamed. Tell her she is going to have to commit one hundred percent. Or not at all.

I did. After that she abandoned the netball and started going to the gym in her office building, which resulted in her coming home even later.

At least with the netball I knew she was getting some fresh air.

Saturday night, I say. Let's go out. How long since it's been just you and me?

She's standing in the kitchen, eating muesli and drinking coffee, while simultaneously reading the newspaper and keeping an eye on the morning news show. She is, for once, all there and now she turns and looks at me. I wait while she parses what I've said.

Sure, she says, eventually, and smiles, but it's not her usual smile. It's the smile a travel agent gives you with your tickets, outwardly friendly, but behind that there's bitterness that you're the lucky bastard going off to New Caledonia while he stays behind and reconciles the BSP report. But then she's picked up her laptop and keys and phone and she's out the door, calling, See you tonight, even though she won't.

Saturday night comes and initially everything is great. How do I look? she asks, coming out of the bedroom in a new red dress. Stunning, obviously; so stunning it takes me a few seconds before I can reply.

We take her car. I hold the passenger door open for her and jog around to the driver's seat, turning the CD player off before I start the ignition.

I've made reservations for the restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower. Unoriginal, sure, but it's where I took her on our first date and it seems appropriate. Auckland slowly rolls by beneath us. It's a dark night, moonless, the only illumination coming from streetlights and buildings and cars.

After entrees, Rachel excuses herself and goes to the bathroom. She's gone a long time. I look out the window, seeing myself reflected. Slow-beat, trip hop jazz drools from hidden speakers. I try to follow it, but the rhythm is all broken, un-syncopated and cracked, as if two songs are playing at once. The thought brings me up short, so after that I try not to listen.

Our mains are on the table by the time Rachel returns. She sits down, motions for me to start and shovels food into her mouth. It seems odd, but then, the food is very good. Soon I'm doing the same.

Seems like forever since we've been able to do this, just you and me, I say, between mouthfuls. She grunts and nods her head. Then I notice.

Her hair falls in front of her face and she reaches her right hand up to tuck it behind her ear, but it falls onto her face again. Her ear is missing.

I put down my knife and fork and just sit, watching her. Finally she notices. Looks at me with one eyebrow raised and says something that sounds a little like what? through a mouthful of food, though she's not eating now. Her tongue's gone.

I don't say anything. Unsurprisingly, neither does she.

A few minutes later, she goes back to the bathroom. This time she returns with ear and tongue intact and puts her mobile phone meaningfully on the table between us. After that there's not a lot of conversation. During dessert her phone vibrates across the table, first toward me, then back to her when another call comes in. Finally she picks it up, turns it off and puts it in her purse.

On the way home she turns on the CD player.

Bloody Harold Robbins.

Ever seen those pictures of spontaneous human combustion?

Technically, Neal's my boss. He certainly earns a lot more than me. For a bookstore that is supposed to cater to the discerning intellectual, Neal doesn't seem particularly well-read. Maybe he's amusing himself with some kind of postmodern performance art. Maybe he's just taking the piss.

Huh?

Those pictures. Black and white, from like the Fifties or something. There's the one of that old woman sitting in her chair, and there's nothing left of her but feet in black shoes and some wrinkled stockings. Everything else, Neal does a little mini jazz hands gesture to represent an exploding bat.

Monday mornings are quiet. We don't open until nine. By then the whole city is already one coffee down and checking email, so things don't pick up until lunch. In the absence of customers to take my mind off things, I'm trying to read Cervantes.

They had these magazines, when I was a kid. UFOs, ghosts, all that crap. Loved it. Wonder what happened to the rest of them? I mean, sure, most of them burned, but what about their hands, or heads? Think they just went kablam, body parts flying all over the room? What do you reckon?

Bloody hell. Going out, I say and I'm out the door and walking up High Street before he can open his mouth again.

I walk, not really thinking about where I'm going. Up High Street, then right, down Durham and on to Queen. It's not until I've paid for my coffee and I'm sitting at an outside table that I realise what I've done. Directly opposite, on the other side of the road, six floors up, is Rachel's office. I sit and stare at the mirrored windows while the bubbles shrink out of my coffee. The windows are opaque. Finally, I leave the untouched drink and walk back to work. Neal doesn't say anything. Five minutes later, he starts up about Bigfoot. Bloody hell.

A few weeks later I'm sitting watching Cartoon Network and drinking a beer. It's nine-thirty. Rachel doesn't complain, but it's only her legs and an elbow here tonight, so she's hardly going to. Her body parts have occupied the couch. I'm sitting in the old chair that once belonged to my grandfather. Ugly as sin and completely out of place with the rest of the decor, but it's the most comfortable seat we have.

I don't think we've said more than a few words to each other in the last week. I try and distract myself, try to think of something else, and find it surprisingly easy.

I wake that night and she's lying next to me, asleep.

Not quite whole.

I can't get back to sleep.

Next morning I wait in the kitchen and when she emerges from the bathroom, still toweling her hair, I pounce.

Where's your left hand?

She shrugs. What do you mean?

All the time you've been…splitting up, you've always been back together again when you sleep. But last night your left hand wasn't there. So. Where is it?

She's already turning away from me, back to the bedroom. Look, I've got a lot to do this morning and I'm already late. Let's talk about this tonight.

Sure, I say, Later. Will you schedule me in? Stick an appointment in your phone? What's my priority? Will I be bumped if there's an important meeting?

She looks at me for a long time. Finally she says, I think we should consider a trial separation.

If it wasn't so depressing it would be hilarious.

The building was once a department store. It's been converted to apartments, but only in the most cursory fashion. I take one look at the ancient elevator, complete with rusting iron grille, and take the stairs. Naked mannequins litter the stairwell and hallway. Neal lives in a couple of rooms on the top floor. Three weeks later, I live there too.

My new room has cracked white walls, plastered with French movie posters left by a previous tenant. The rest of the apartment is littered with old McDonald's wrappers, Maxim magazines, clothes and assorted crap. I no longer wonder if Neal's taking the piss.

It's not like I don't have friends. There are plenty of other places I could stay, with people who care about me, care about Rachel and