The Perils of Watching

By Bruce E. Weber

The settings for these stories range from the steamy riverbanks of Thailand to the hallowed halls of classical music, from the torrid deserts of the southwest to the streets of Boston, from the mountains of Montana to dusty villages in India, and from a snooty club for the rich to the potholed streets of a rundown, crime-ridden barrio.
Regardless of the setting, human beings are always doing the same things; hating and loving, sinning and redeeming, devils one minute, angels the next.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce E. Weber
• Release date: Sep 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310640247

Bruce E. Weber

Bruce Weber grew up in Indianapolis, in the neighborhood that is the setting for Dark Manna. He moved to Arizona in 1998. He lives in Tucson, where he is self-employed. Bruce says the writer who has influenced him most is James M. Cain, who wrote the Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. Of Cain’s work, Weber says, “Cain told more story with fewer words than any writer I know of, and from reading his books, I became imbued with his own worst fear: a gnawing terror of boring the reader.”

Book preview

The Perils of Watching

Short Stories by Bruce E. Weber

The Smashwords Edition

The Perils of Watching

Short Stories by Bruce E. Weber

Copyright © 2014 Bruce E. Weber

revised 10.29.2015

Rights Reserved

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Disclaimer

This is a fiction book. Any resemblance to real persons, places or events is just a coincidence

Smashwords License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you want to share it. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Cover photo courtesy of Bigstock

Cover design and interior formatting by Debora Lewis arenapublishing.org

Contents

Wouldn’t It Be Lovely?

Bamboo Walls

My Strad

The Perils of Watching

Saturday’s Rose

Orn’s Bookstore

The Augsburg Concerto

Rubble, Chickens, and People

Wal-Mart Baby

One More Elk

No Balm in Gilead

Let Us Pray

About the Author

Wouldn’t it be lovely?

The first thing Jackie did every morning was walk naked into the living room and turn on the Weather Channel. Then as she watched the screen, she slathered baby oil on every part of her cute little body that she could reach. Fulfilling his part in this ritual, her husband Dan would come in, take the oil from her and rub it down her back.

On a day in early April, while Dan was oiling her back, Jackie said, My God, look at that! The dew point is down to minus six. You know what that means?

Same thing it meant yesterday when you asked. The temperature has to drop to at least minus two before we can have fog.

And the humidity’s only nine percent and it’s the dampest time of day. God, Danny, I feel like I’m gonna shrivel up and die.

After Dan finished rubbing Jackie’s back, his right hand eased around to her stomach, then, ever-so-slowly, down to her navel, then a little lower, but before he got to the Promised Land she slapped his hand, grabbed the baby oil from him and stomped off to get dressed.

She’d been going on like this since last summer, when the monsoon veered around Arizona and dumped buckets of rain on New Mexico. Then no rains came during the winter, just wind—constant, drying wind. There hadn’t been a flake of snow in the mountains, the canyon creeks were awash in dust, and there was no hint of rain in the forecast.

On this April morning, Dan stared bleakly at the Weather Channel’s map of Arizona. A blob of yellow signifying extreme drought covered the state. The prolonged dry spell was sucking the life from the land and turning his marriage into a desert of sexual frustration, at least for him; Jackie didn’t seem to miss sex at all. I’m only 32, she kept saying, and I’m dry as an old lady.

Dan sat on the couch and waited for Jackie to finish her business. He knew she’d have more words for him when she came out.

It’s gonna hit a hundred degrees today, she said. One-o-five by Friday and it’s only April. I hope you’re happy, you and your Seasonal Defective whatever. You know it’s been raining all week in Seattle? They’ve had almost twelve feet of snow this winter in the Cascades. Twelve feet!

Jackie scratched behind her leg and then under her arm. Dan noticed some new wrinkles around Jackie’s eyes, ones that weren’t there when they’d moved here the year before because of his winter depressions. She stood at the doorway looking out at the beige landscape. Though it was only 7 A M, heat waves were already simmering from the parched ground. She let out a long, hopeless sigh. Oh God, Danny, wouldn’t it be lovely if it rained?

Dan had lost count of the number of times she’d said this. And none of his efforts to help her had worked. He’d taken her up to Mt. Lemmon that winter to ski, but the fake snow just made her long for the Cascades. On a trip to the Rainforest Café in Phoenix, they drove into a massive haboob, one of the towering dust storms that rolled in from the west, and they’d had to turn back. Dan was afraid that if he didn’t come up with something soon he’d lose his marriage. His frustration was reaching critical levels, and the girls who came to his shop where beginning to look better to him every day. He loved Jackie, despite her finicky ways, and he wanted to be faithful. But he was a man, and he had his needs.

Jackie turned from the front door to pick up her purse. Then she looked at the Weather Channel. A wide band of green was forming way to the north. Look at that, Danny, it’s raining in Oklahoma.

She sat on the couch beside Dan and leaned close to him. I’ve got an idea. Let’s skip work and drive like hell and go on up there. We can stand outside and let the rain pour down on us. After that, we can find a motel. I’ll make you the happiest man west of the Mississippi.

Dan rubbed his forehead and frowned. I’d be glad to, but by the time we got there, the rain’d be gone. Besides, I got a new client coming in for a whole body of new work. I have to be at the shop.

Jackie jumped to her feet. So, tattooing some stranger is more important than keeping your wife from going insane. I see where I stand in your world. She stalked out without kissing him goodbye, something that was happening more frequently these days.

Later, at Dan’s tattoo shop, the customer who arrived for new body art was Imelda, a pale Mexican woman with lots of money and nothing to do but wait for her rich old husband to die, and in the meantime, spend his money on her personal pleasures. Dan had drawn up some sketches for her. She stood very close to him as she surveyed his drawings.

She pointed to the fangs of the snake that wound its way up her leg, wrapped around her body, then drooped from her navel to her crotch. It is so erotic, she said. It makes me wet just to look at it. Imelda didn’t seem to suffer from the all-pervading desert dryness. Her moist lips and glistening eyes made Dan feel damp just standing next to her

He started on Imelda’s body art and worked through the afternoon, stopping frequently for her to get up and go to the restroom. It was hard to keep his mind on his work. She kept rubbing her hand over his left arm, whimpering now and then because of the needle’s stung. Dan was glad he’d worn an oversized T shirt: he didn’t want her to see the drooling boner that bulged in his trousers.

On his way home, Dan picked up six gallons of distilled water for the humidifiers he had to keep running, just to keep the humidistat reading above 30%. He was paying about forty dollars a week for the water, but it kept Jackie’s eyes from drying up and her nose from bleeding during the night, and it also helped keep the doors and windows from shrinking and letting dry air in through the gaps.

Jackie was in a sour mood that night. She sat in front of the T V watching a rerun of her favorite movie, Rain Forest Love. It was set in Brazil and dubbed in English. In every scene, the actors were dripping with the incessant rain that fell in torrents and poured off trees and pooled in ankle-deep puddles. Jackie watched, mesmerized, sometimes muttering, Wouldn’t it be lovely? Dan was still throbbing from his afternoon session with Imelda, so he avoided contact with Jackie and resigned himself to a long cold shower.

But when he finished the shower, his mind kept drifting to the next day’s work. It would be another long session with the pale Spanish lady, when he’d be filling in the snake’s head and the long forked tongue that descended from Imelda’s navel down to her shaved womanhood. To banish these nagging thoughts he went in the living room, sat beside Jackie and nuzzled her ear. She elbowed him in the ribs. Don’t touch me. It makes my skin itch. Oh, Danny, look at that rain.

Dan didn’t know how much more of this he could stand. He knew Jackie hadn’t made dinner, so he grabbed a bag of chips and went out to the wide tin-roofed porch. He listened to the crickets and wondered, if Jackie didn’t give him some relief, how much longer he could keep his hands off Imelda. She’d given him her cell phone number that afternoon, saying, You look lonely. Please to call me if you like to have chat.

Next morning, as they repeated their ritual, Dan was rubbing the baby oil on Jackie’s