This is a thing I have been slowly working on. A dadist cut-up with all the words and phrases extracted from an old science-fiction novel called The Artificial Man.
“We can’t all be prosperous scribblers,” Lee Craig retorted pleasantly. Smiling morning like any other. Poised over decrepit mowing machine. “High time you treated yourself to a new somnolent sunshine. Some need of a new suit. With a sandaled foot.”
Would be the background of all those that had gone. Only the details. The trivialities. Sounds of the house coming to life. Contented awareness of familiar surroundings.
“One,” Alan called down. And the other glanced. Without bringing the past up to date and planning.
Conclusion. I shall have to make my rags last…
Sideways smile on the sun-gilded ceiling.
It was a GOOD thing.
The moment is a sore point. Taking a gathering of thoughts and impressions. He would wash shave and watch the slow play of shadow branches.
“We can’t all be prosperous scribblers clasped at the back of his neck…”
Gravel path that bisected his lawn.
Oil can.
And the background of the coming day…
Patient to have breakfast out of the way.
“No mist this morning…”
To the security of a room filled with menage. Who have to watch our budgets. A brief inspection of his eyes back on the hills. The sounds of the house coming to life. His hands up, coal-black hair as unruly as ever.
Upward effort.
Here we’ll have to weather at least another.
Would open how yesterday had started.
Against the faint flush of surrounding flesh, you’re working yourself to death. Impression of being wire attached. Cut a token vicious swath through the grass. Scar at the other side. Next-door neighbor.
And that was Lee Craig. Fading oddly colorless. Only the hair to lift it.
The face that stared back at him was so pronounced.
“You will.”
The other thrust the oil can. The thin line of the scar was white.
That was how almost every day started. Boys would come up with some kind of grass.
Ground wife…into the hip pocket of his stained flannels. Afterwards, coming out of the bathroom bones a smile that was all his own.
Almost always uncombed mass of black hair…
Enough to call his house “Mon Repos.”
A kind of brittle, porcelain beauty.
“You’re working yourself to death.”
Stripped to the waist. Running water into the outlines of the enfolding hills sharp and clear.
Alan grinned cheerfully. “I don’t notice.”
“You’d think,” he commented aggrievedly. “Citizen’s have got through an hour’s work by now. Stopping and leaning back from below.”
Eyes anonymous. Take out his electric razor. And grasped the handles of the machine to almost uncombed mass of black hair.
And misjudged the sweep of the door…
Alan Frazer that the world saw. A solid cup of coffee. Stylish tall with ungainly limbs.
A narrow face.
“Two minutes,” he called back. And then, a friend. And Lee’s wife---Sybil…
Her image refused to take shape.
Cover-bright dresses.
Another couple of weeks. Kitch also. Moments when their own faces suddenly took strong point. Here’s the book coming.
Odd…
With my stuff. First a rough outline in my head. Then, the first tentative touches of pen.
There was a letter by Alan’s plate. The biography of a Martian. White apron and pink blouse. The table and fussily adjusting knife. He was hanging out of the window. Lee. Alan had to think about that.
The lean was hard and brittle…
“What’s the book to be about? Words aren’t my right expression.”
“I’m sorry about that. I know you prefer it.”
“It’s a fictional biography,” he said. Speaking. Mrs. Low solidly curved beneath.
Before we get down to it in earnest. That’s the right expression. Background notes. Enough to keep the wolf from the door. For the pulps.
Alan shook his head…
“To get the feel of it. Before I start writing.”
“I know what you mean. I’m the same.”
In the kitchen. Lee lounging. Cup in hand. That it must be a normal thing. So we’re still in the “roughing out” stages.
Lee remarked conversationally: “How long?”
The letter in his pocket. On the obscurity of strangeness, he supposed.
Combine the two. If you see what I mean…
I don’t write about Martians.
Alan frowned slightly at the amount.
“Thought up a title for it yet?”
It’s a state of flagrant dishabille. Science-fiction stuff. So why risk changing?
“I’ve roughed out the first chapters,” he said.
You seem to be on to a good thing his empty cup in the sink.
The other pursed judicious lips…