Women Up to No Good

Pat Murphy

Description

What do women want? Well, if Pat Murphy is to be trusted (and we're not saying she is), women are looking for trouble. And in this collection of powerful stories, they find it - at an archeological dig in the Southwest, in the urban alleys, in California suburbs, in the old West, in ironic fantasy settings.Over the past 25 years, Pat Murphy has been writing stories that garner critical attention and win awards. Her work is difficult to categorize, living on the boundaries between genres. But her characters are easy to recognize. They are troublemakers, every last one of them.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Short story
• Science fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Untreed Reads
• Date de parution: 21 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611876222
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Copyright
Women Up To No Good
Introduction
Section 1: Looking for Trouble—And Finding It
A Flock of Lawn Flamingos
One Odd Shoe
On the Dark Side of the Station Where the Train Never Stops
Section 2: Love and Sex
Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates
The Eradication of Romantic Love
Section 3: Wolves and Women
Points of Departure
South of Oregon City
Ménage and Menagerie
Section 4: Stories and Storytellers
The True Story
Dragon’s Gate
Section 5: Out of This World
A Cartographic Analysis of the Dream State
Exploding, Like Fireworks
Recycling Strategies for the Inner City
Section 6: Changes of One Kind or Another
Games of Deception
Iris Versus the Black Knight
Going Through Changes
Women Up To No Good: A Collection of Short Stories
By Pat Murphy
Copyright 2013 by Pat Murphy
Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Also by Pat Murphy and Untreed Reads Publishing
Bones
Rachel in Love
http://www.untreedreads.com
Women Up To No Good
A Collection of Short Stories
Pat Murphy
Introduction
I love writing short stories.
It is, I freely admit, a foolish vice. As a career strategy, writing short stories is just barely better than being a poet. There’s no money in it. If you want to make a living, better write a novel or two-or better yet, a series of fat books with similar themes. Short stories get no respect. Novels are reviewed; short stories, not so much.
But I love reading short stories. When I have fifteen minutes to spare, I can dive into a short story-experience another world, live another life-and emerge in plenty of time to get back to my real life.
And I really do love writing short stories. I can carefully examine every word and nuance of a short story, polishing each one. I can keep the entire piece in mind at once-no sprawling plot lines and extra bits that dangle off the edges. I can take risks and experiment-it’s only a short story; why not try something daring?
In many ways I think short stories are like the first little mammals in the days of the dinosaurs, way back in the Mesozoic Era. Short stories are hot-blooded little beasts, packing a lot of energy into a very small space. These furtive critters are always looking nervously over their furry shoulders at great hulking novels that could accidentally stomp them flat with one enormous reptilian foot.
Until recently, the life of a short story has usually been wretchedly short. Most of the stories reprinted here first appeared in magazines, enjoying a brief moment of glory when the magazine came out, then vanishing with publication of the magazine’s next issue. Short stories are the mayflies of the literary world-appearing briefly only to vanish again, ephemeral, a flash of light in the darkness.
But that’s changing.
With ebooks like this one, a short story can have a new life in electronic form. This, I think, suits the nature of the short story-ephemeral, experimental, a flash of light in the darkness.
Untreed Reads, the publisher of this collection, has been publishing some of my early short stories as ebooks. New readers and reviewers have been discovering and appreciating work that was unavailable for years.
As a lover of short stories (my own and those of others), I celebrate this wonderful new world. I say leave the bookshelves to the novels, those great and lumbering beasts. Let the short stories, small and agile, occupy the new spaces as they quietly plan world domination.
-Pat Murphy
Section 1
Looking for Trouble-And Finding It
A Flock of Lawn Flamingos
Live Oak Estates was a pleasant little townhouse development in a pleasant little California town. I lived there peacefully enough, until Joan Egypt moved in and everything changed.
I met Joan Egypt on a sunny autumn day. I had just pulled into my car port when I saw a moving van pulling away from the townhouse next door. It was late in the afternoon, and I was coming home from work-I’m the librarian at the local elementary school. I had spent the day preparing for the first day of school.
Cardboard boxes were stacked on the front lawn of the townhouse. From the sidewalk in front of my house, I could see through the open front door into the living room. The room was crowded with more cardboard boxes. From where I stood, I could read the black scrawls that identified the boxes’ contents. “Dance masks-Tibet & Mongolia,” read one. “Zuni fetishes,” read another. “Shrunken heads,” read a third, “Handle with care.”
I was hesitating on the sidewalk, wondering if I should welcome the newcomer to the neighborhood, when Joan Egypt stepped out the door, heading for one of the stacks of boxes on the lawn. She was a tall woman with a tangle of curly white hair. She wore khaki pants with button-flap pockets and a flame red shirt. She grinned when she saw me on the sidewalk. “Hello, neighbor,” she called.
“Hello.”
“It really isn’t all shrunken heads,” she said, waving a hand at one of the boxes. “A few shrunken heads, a few blow guns and darts, and some other artifacts from the Jivaro culture that I picked up on my last trip to Ecuador. And a few pickled heads from New Zealand. But I thought the movers might handle it with more care if they thought it was all shrunken heads.”
I managed to nod in agreement, while wondering how and why anyone would pickle a head. “I suppose you’re right,” I said slowly. “Movers can be so careless.”
She held out her hand, still grinning. “I’m Joan Egypt. Just call me Joan.”
I shook her hand. Her grip was solid and confident and I could feel callouses on her palm. She was not, I thought, the usual sort of person to move into Live Oak Estates. “I’m Nancy Dell, your next door neighbor.”
“Glad to meet you, Nancy,” she said. “It’s nice to be back in the States.” She told me that she had just returned to the USA after spending the last decade abroad. “Field work in a variety of places,” she said. “Indonesia, South America, Nepal, Tibet, Siberia.” She was an anthropologist, it seemed, and she’d come to our town to teach at the community college. “I thought I’d settle down for a time,” she said. “Just for the hell of it. This seems like a nice, quiet place to live.”
“It’s very quiet,” I agreed, wondering how she would adapt to the quiet life. The townhouse complex was a very orderly place. Several acres of identical houses, painted in earth tones, each with its own tiny front yard. Once, a young couple had painted their door bright red, but Mr. Hoffer, the head of the Live Oak Estates Home Owners Association, had spoken to them about it. They repainted it brown and moved soon after.
“I need a little peace and quiet,” she said, gazing into the distance. “I had to leave my last post rather quickly. There was an incident….” She stopped in mid-sentence and waved a hand dismissively. “Let’s just say it was time to leave.”
I was trying to think of how I might tactfully find out why it had been time to leave when I heard Mr. Hoffer’s footsteps on the sidewalk. “Hello, ladies,” he called.
Mr. Hoffer was a retired minister. Every afternoon, he strolled through the development, alert to breaches of the regulations established by the Home Owners Association and to any other changes that might adversely affect his property values. He wore, as always, brown polyester sansabelt slacks and an immaculate polo shirt. He had a bad knee so he carried a burnished wooden cane, with which he gestured when he wanted to make a point. He was a stern, uncompromising man who showed too many teeth when he smiled.
“I’m Pete Hoffer,” he said, holding his hand out to Joan. “You must be the proud new owner of this lovely corner house.”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” Joan agreed as he pumped her hand.
“Welcome to the community,” he continued. “As you probably know, I’m president of the Live Oak Estates Home Owners Association.”
“Why no, I hadn’t realized.”
“I certainly am, and I wanted to make sure that you’d been properly apprised of the regulations by your realtor.”
“The regulations?” Joan looked faintly bemused. “I suppose they might have been in the papers that I signed when I bought the place.”
“It’s really quite simple,” Mr. Hoffer explained. His voice had the soothing tone of a man who had offered sympathy and counsel in a professional capacity. “You’ve agreed-just as we all have-that you will not alter the external appearance of your home. The regulations list some of the troubles we’ve had in the past. You’d be surprised at the sort of things people will do. There was one family, for example, who left a packing crate on their front lawn for three full days! I finally had to ask them to remove it.” He was staring at the boxes on the lawn as he spoke, and he thumped his cane on the sidewalk for emphasis.
“I can’t imagine what they were thinking,” Joan murmured.
“Of course not. Well, if you notice any irregularities in the neighborhood, please be sure to call on me.” Mr. Hoffer shook her hand again and walked briskly away.
“Interesting,” Joan said, watching him turn the corner at the end of the block. “Is that true about the regulations?”
“It certainly is.”