Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 19 Read online

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  CONTENTS

  Welcome to the nineteenth issue of

  Tubs

  How the Burkhina Faso Bicycle Fell Apart

  Grebe's Gift

  Dropkick

  Phone Call Overheard on the Subway

  The Troll in the Cellar

  You Were Neither Hot Nor Cold, But Lukewarm, and So I Spit You Out

  Things That Make One's Heart Beat Faster

  The Bride

  Dear Aunt Gwenda

  Lady Perdita Espadrille

  The Slime: A Love Story

  Sliding

  Such a Woman, Or, Sixties Rant

  The Entertainers

  * * * *

  Lady Churchill's

  Rosebud Wristlet

  No.19

  Welcome to the nineteenth issue of

  Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

  Which is also the tenth anniversary or so of the first of these foolishnesses. Perhaps there will be an anthology of fictions forthcoming from these pages. Perhaps.

  In the intervening years we have come to abhor editorials. After all, does not the work speak for itself? Yea, verily, it doth. And, be it not seen that editorials can take on obnoxious registers and be fill'd with utter twaddle? Readers of the Wall Street Journal will all please nod in agreement.

  However, this being the anniversary issue we will take a moment to pick out a few facts perhaps of interest to our readers. We commissioned two polls* (from Gallup and Zogby) to consider the vast swath of our national and international readerships. Both polls told us that readers thought the title (pending further research) should be changed to Lady Churchill's Snake Tattoo Wristlet. This, however, neither rolls off the tongue nor opens itself up to as many misspeakings or as many abuses of the acronym. So the title stays, or will perhaps be foreshortened to LCRW. All other poll results ("Send more chocolate!” “More funny stories.” “Less of your so-called humor.” “Why are there no stories in other languages?” “For the best new ring tones, click here!") were suspect due to the lack of polls taken and will be ignored.

  Apologies for the lack of recipes, crosswords, happywords, naked centerfolds, and drawings of deceased writers in recent years. When we began this zine we had no idea that this was the way to increase circulation and since we learned this we have been too busy perfecting one recipe (a secret until perfected) to work on any others.

  We also dropped the “occasional” part. We discovered that regularity is perceived as a strength by those outside our galactic HQ: hence the switch to twice a year. Or thrice if and when we fall behind.

  Lastly, in a very small typeface, we leave you with our stolid, uninspired, falsehood of an editorial from the long out-of-print first issue of this zine.

  * A lie.

  Welcome to the first issue of

  Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

  Except, we decided not to run it. After all, it can be read on our website. It is also not very good as well as being conscious of that very fact.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Tubs

  Ray Vukcevich

  1. Nobody Knows

  Nobody knows how many rooms there are in the mansion. We don't even know if it really is a mansion. We call it that because the room we share has a very high ceiling, and there is a carved cornice made up of chubby winged children playing stringed instruments. Harps, of course, but way over there is a little fellow with what looks like a guitar. None of us can get close enough to him to confirm that it really is a guitar. Maybe it's a shadow or a spider web.

  Nobody knows how we came to be here precisely. It may have been something we said. We know we are criminals. We know this is our punishment. We also know we are alive. This isn't Hell, as Hell is usually understood.

  There are no windows in our room, and the door cannot be opened. The light comes from frosted panels in the ceiling. After lights out, no matter how hard you look, you can never detect even a glimmer in the absolute darkness. But we think there must be many tub rooms just like this one, maybe hundreds of them, because you can hear lives being lived elsewhere through the walls and beneath the floor.

  * * * *

  2. Tubs

  Our room might have been a parlor or dining room at one time. It's big enough to contain the five of us and our tubs. Our tubs are also items you'd likely find in an old mansion. I'm thinking Victorian or maybe earlier. They are claw-footed white porcelain bathtubs—one for each of us. When you run your hand down the outside of your tub it's like the cool smooth belly of some animal—a cow or a horse, or maybe it's more like a big porcelain pig with little stubby legs ending in claws. Well, I suppose pigs don't have claws. All of our claws are different. I can tell that by sneaking quick looks at the claws on the tubs of the other men. It's a bad idea to be openly staring at the claws of another man's tub. It would probably cause a fight and we'd all get shocked. But from the little peeks I've taken over time, I know that the claws do not seem to be based on the same animal. It's like they went to a used tub store when they built this place with all of its windowless rooms filled with tubs and men in tubs.

  We sit naked in cold water and carefully avoid looking at one another. Sometimes our gazes do cross, though. Sometimes it's on purpose, and a huge fight breaks out, if you can call grown naked men sitting in Victorian bathtubs shouting at one another a fight. We seldom get physical, but it is not unknown. When that happens someone somewhere flips a switch or twists a dial and shocks us all senseless.

  * * * *

  3. Rule Number One

  Rule number one is that only one man can be out of the tubs at a time. This arrangement is supposed to give each of us time to squat over the hole in the far corner and do our business. If more than one of us touches the floor at one time, we all get shocked.

  They don't care if we share our food or not. It comes through a food slot at the bottom of the locked door one tray at a time spaced out by an interval calculated to give the eater time to get his tray and get back into his tub. The five of us have come to an uneasy truce about food. We all know that if someone doesn't get his, he will take every opportunity to jump out of his tub while someone else is already out and shock us all.

  Our ancestors might have looked like this—stringy hair and ragged beards, no animal skin clothes yet, no fire, no tools. But they would've had women, too, and no tubs, and their Rule Number One probably wouldn't have involved getting shocked.

  * * * *

  4. Holding Down the Dead Guy

  The reason we know we are alive is because one of us isn't. He died some time in the indefinite past, and now he's really stinking up the place. We have discovered the smell is dampened a little if someone holds him under the surface of the water in his tub.

  We take turns. One of us gets out of his tub and runs to the hole and does his business if business is what he needs to do and then hot foots it over to the dead guy's tub and pushes him under the surface. When it was my turn for the first time, I discovered pushing the dead guy under was like trying to hold an inner tube under the surface when you're a kid and your dad gives you an old patched tire tube and lets you go down
to the gas station and get it blown up. You roll it up the hill and down the other side and throw it into the pond and jump in after it, and your hands slap down on it just in time to keep you from going under, because you don't know how to swim yet, but you almost do almost. Soon you'll let go of the tube, but for now you can push it under, but you can't keep it there for long. It pushes back just like the dead guy. I always look carefully at his face under the water. I used to think he looked scared, but now I think he's developing a smile.

  * * * *

  5. My Feet

  It's Digby's turn to hold down the dead guy. I'm settled into my tub with the cold water lapping around my chin, and I see my feet rise from the surface down there by the knobs like two sea monsters. Maybe they're brothers. Maybe they're lovers. I would be the one on the left. Maria would be on the right. Maria always had an unattractive streak of the right in her, but I loved her anyway. We would still be together, I'm sure, if I had not said something and been seized, beaten up, and dumped in this tub. I nuzzle my right foot with my left, and she slaps playfully at me and moves away but then floats back looking shyly the other way and then boldly leaps on me, and we make a tremendous splash! The alarm sounds one sharp warning. It's like being jabbed in the ear with a stick. Or both ears at once. Two sticks. Splashing is not allowed.

  Why splashing is not allowed is a mystery. It's not like they're worried about the water that flies up and out over the edge. Surely we drip more than that from our bodies when it's our turn to get our food or do our business at the hole in the corner. I think it must have something to do with attention. They want us to be paying attention to the here and now. A playful splash probably indicates that we have gone off in our minds to somewhere more pleasant with Maria who even now rises back to the surface and peeks up at me.

  The others are muttering curses at me for that splash and the resulting sharp blast of the warning buzzer. I hope two of them don't go crazy at once and rush me or we'll all get shocked. If they conspire to send just one man after me in revenge, I'll leap out of my tub, and we'll all get shocked.

  "I won't be pushed around!” I say just loudly enough so everyone can hear me. Whoever watches us doesn't really care if we speak loudly, but we've noticed that when there is a lot of activity, the chances of a random shock are much greater. It's like we get noticed, and whoever is watching gets bored and sooner or later shocks us just to see our teeth chatter.

  Sometimes we talk about past crimes and plots. We go into great detail. We name names. We hope we will say something that will please the people who watch and listen. This strategy has its dangers. If they decide that one of us is just making stuff up, we all get shocked.

  Sometimes we sit on the edges of our tubs. You'd think we'd spend a lot of time on the edge, but these are not your modern tubs with flat edges. The edges of these old tubs are artfully rounded and that's pretty hard on your naked butt. Sometimes when I'm sitting on the edge, I use my hands to raise my butt up a little, but who can stand on their hands like that for long? No one. A trained gymnast could only do it for a little while. Then it's back into the water. After trying to get comfortable on the edge, it's a big relief to just relax down into the tub again. It's not a pure feeling, though, because the water is so cold.

  * * * *

  6. Nomenclature

  The dead guy never had much intelligent to say. That's probably why we're still calling him “the dead guy” instead of whatever his name was when he was alive. Aside from me, the guys still living are Digby, Doolittle, and Snell. I've arranged them that way so it would sound like a law firm. I may have forgotten my crime, but they were surely lawyers. Or I could call them Tom, Digby, and Harry. But I would be lying about Harry. There is no Harry. His name is Mike. Likewise Doolittle. Nobody would ever admit to being named Doolittle in a place like this. No one knows if Digby ever had another name. If it weren't for me, there would be only three, and they could be the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Boy, my head voice is humming down to a kind of low moan like a crowd of people very far away. Maybe I'll get my feet to have sex again. Not that they really had sex the last time. Well, there's a first time for everything.

  Digby is still holding the dead guy down. He's been out of his tub for a long time. A very long time. Too long, in fact. It's my turn to be up and about and doing my business and then holding down the dead guy. The upside to holding down the dead guy is that you're up on your feet without standing in cold water.

  "Digby,” I say. “Your time is up."

  Digby looks at me, and then he looks above my head. It's like a slap in the face. I know he's looking at the cherubs over my tub. He must know I can't let that go by. He's reminding me about our argument over the word “entablature.” He's bringing it up again with that look of his. We'd come to a truce, but he's broken it.

  Once again, he's telling me I don't know what I'm talking about when I say the ridge of cherubs is called a “cornice."

  "Entablature,” he says and looks right at me.

  "You idiot,” I say. “To be an entablature a thing has to have columns! That's the whole point of being an entablature!"

  "Nonsense,” Digby says. “What kind of dumb ass thinks entablatures have to have columns?"

  I put my hands on the edge of my tub and tighten my entire body like a spring. I will come up out of my tub like an angry badger now.

  Digby makes a disgusted noise and lets go of the dead guy. He walks back toward his tub.

  "Your brains have gotten so soggy you've forgotten everything about architecture,” he says as he sinks into his water.

  If we had not been naked men in tubs, prisoners, we could have walked across the carpeted library and taken down a dictionary and settled the argument like civilized people. Or we could have used a search engine if we were having this argument by email or one of those sites where you can post your opinions on absolutely anything. I remember people used to find common ground in those electronic places. Except when they were talking about politics. People never budged an inch on politics. Or religion. Or the kind of man or woman they wanted to meet. Or global warming. Or world hunger. Or universal health care. Or whether you should use this kind or that kind of operating system on your computer.

  Maybe we were already doomed before we got here.

  * * * *

  7. The Meaning of Life

  We are all the time trying to make bargains with invisible powers. We tell them we surrender! You win. We'll talk! What do you want to know? What do you want us to say? Whatever it is, we'll say it, sign it, go on TV and confirm it. You name it.

  No response.

  In that respect, things here are no different than on the outside. We do stuff. We always just do stuff. And the question is can you ever find meaning in life given where you are and the stuff you have to do?

  Digby is not done with me. Now I'm holding down the dead guy, and he's looking at me from his tub. It's like we've switched places. Probably because we actually have switched places, but I'm not looking at the cornice over his head, and, to be truthful, he's not really looking right at me. If he were pointedly putting his eyes on me, it would be like he was touching me, and that would mean I would have to respond, and everyone would get shocked. Instead he's stealing little glances at me, letting his eyes linger just a little too long on all the wrong places, and he knows that I know he's doing it. My knowing he's doing it is the whole point of him doing it.

  Digby's constant picking at us, well, at me mostly, is just the way he passes the time. It's what it means to be Digby in the Tub Room, but today his glances go way beyond the usual. It's like he's made a decision that today things will change.

  "Your crime,” he says, “was probably mixing up your building terms."

  It isn't possible to hold all of the dead guy under the water now. There are flakes sloughing off of him like wet bits of paper, and you have to shake them off your hands when you let go of him. I sometimes think Digby likes it when we all get shocked. I
hope he doesn't, because it's about to happen again.

  * * * *

  8. Hope

  We can't hold down two dead guys.

  What are we going to do?

  The air is already bad enough.

  The others aren't speaking to me. I'll get no help from them. They are waiting to confirm that what I've done is really an option. I bet they're thinking that if there were only the two of them, they could better coordinate turns at the food slot and at the business hole. Cooperation is always easier when there are fewer people.

  But here's an idea! What would happen if we moved Digby's body into the tub with the other dead guy?

  My cell mates don't offer any ideas, so I decide to go for it.

  "Be still,” I tell them. “I'm going to move him. Hey, this could be good. Digby will hold down the dead guy and give us a little break before we have to start holding him down."

  "You'll just get us shocked,” one of them says. The other one makes a noise that sounds like agreement, but neither of them moves.

  I discover that getting a naked and wet dead man out of a bathtub is not so straightforward as you might think. Just getting a good grip on him is a problem.

  I pull him up to a sitting position and lean him forward. I try to get my arms around him, but his butt keeps scooching out from under him, and I can't get any leverage. I get in the tub behind him and wrap my arms around him and lock my hands. He is not a small man, and now I'm beard to beard with him. He has a funny smell that I can't place, but then I decide it's just that I haven't been this close to anyone for a long time. Maybe I'll stay like this for a little while, just a little while, a couple of minutes, maybe. He's so smooth and rubbery, and he's still warm, solid, more than just a concept.

  I'm thinking this is the time when it turns out he's not dead after all. His eyes spring open and he jerks his head around to look at me. He'll be kicking and screaming and pretty soon I'll be the one in trouble. No. Not this time. He's meat, and I'm still moving. I get back up on my knees and struggle his top half up and over the side of the tub.