1000 words from
The Apocalypse of Curses and Llew
Previously on Curses and Llew
Here’s what you need to know about Curses and Llew:
Curses (the boy) met Llew (the girl) through their mutual friend David Them. Curses was David Them’s roommate. Llew was David Them’s source for arty reference books. One thing led to another. Curses and Llew became a thing.
Curses and Llew should have gotten married. Everyone said so. Curses said so. Llew said so. Their mutual friend David Them said so. David Them’s wife said so. Their bishops said so. The guy with the nose ring said so. The spam psychic said so. Curses and Llew should be married. This was unanimous.
Also, they liked kissing each other.
Also, they were best friends.
Also, this was Brigham Young University and getting married has always been the thing to do at Brigham Young University. (It’s the no-premarital-sex thing. Even if they hadn’t believed it, though they did, they had signed a contract.)
Time passed and old friends would forget that Curses and Llew were not married. Then, Curses and Llew too began to forget they were not married. And Curses and Llew would be surprised when the evening ended and it was time to say goodbye. Because they did not live together. Because—oh yeah—we’re not married. And—that’s right—we’re twenty . . . five . . . year-old . . .virgins . . . and. Why?
So, as Curses and Llew were good Mormons, they prayed. And, being Curses and Llew, they said Hey, God. We’re going to get married. Is that okay with you? And, as God is wont to do, he answered. And God said no.
Beg pardon?
Suspecting miscommunication, suspecting crossed lines, suspecting user error, they prayed again. And God said no.
God said no!
Curses and Llew did not know how to react. Were they not Curses and Llew? Were they not made for each other? Were they not already married, in every way but marriage? Why would God say no?
It was awkward, after that, to kiss. And, slowly, they stopped. And, then, they graduated. And—well. What was left? Llew moved to New York to start auditioning. Curses moved to Austin, to work at KVUE where he had interned the summer before (although when he interned they were KVUE 24 News and when he took a salaried position they had become simply KVUE News). In eighteen months he was the head producer of their morning show. A month later he had to fire a cameraman which both broke his heart and made him a grown-up. And so he joined a band. Which led to becoming the assistant program director of SXSW. Then the program director. He started producing movies directed by local friends. He wrote scores for those movies. He taught the fourteen-year-olds at church. He bought a house and soundproofed the garage, put in a studio. He rented it and his services out to local bands and one track went Top 40. He won a regional Emmy. Diane Sawyer sent him a Christmas card. He directed a PSA for the Coast Guard. One of the church kids put his bio on Wikipedia. Ten years pass. And in all that time he has never seen Llew never talked to Llew never written to Llew and she’s never written to him. What would they have to say?
Currently, on Curses and Llew, he and she live one thousand seven hundred fifty-five miles away from each other. They are not lonely. They have no need to be lonely. They may not have each other but they live in towns filled with acquaintances and friends. They may be a few steps from dreams-come-true but they have a strange sense of satisfaction in knowing that Curses and Llew listened. Curses and Llew listened when I said no.
After Church (not sex)
They may have been married, but they still spent their first Sunday meetings of togetherness together at Llew’s old YSA ward, though when it came time for the sex split, they just gave each other knowing glances and Llew gave her girlfriends and the bishop hugs and she and her husband went back to Llew’s went back to her apartment and had sex and lunch and a shower.
And now they are on a tour of Manhattan. Llew has already taken him to [big tourist spot] and [big tourist spot] and now she is showing him a sizeable crack in the concrete in front of an otherwise unremarkable skyscraper.
“I call it Charlie.”
“Hello, Charlie.”
“I tripped over Charlie shortly after first arriving in New York onto a blustery day.” Llew mimes pushing into the wind and a passing gentleman grips his coat closer to him.
“I’m surprised you’re on such good terms.”
“Me and Charlie? Why shouldn’t we be?”
“I suppose it’s been ten years.”
“No, Curses, dahlink. Tripping me is the only means Charlie had for getting my attention. How else did you suppose cracks in the sidewalk communicate? Western Union?”
“Of course. Your point is well taken.”
“Look.” She grabs his hand and pulls him to sit with her on a tree planter where they can sit out of the way and watch Charlie. After a moment, Llew sighs and pulls Curses’s hand into her lap. “I sat here for easy a hundred hours that first month, watching the light pass across Charlie over the course of the day, how he imperturbably sat, still and ancient, yet constantly changing his mind about how to cast shadows. Right now he looks like a thin gray line. In a few hours he’ll go from that to smudged line to spilled black paint. Charlie is solid and unmoving yet utterly mutable.” They watch in silence. A woman in a broken heel stumbles by, the edsges of her shadow warped and swallowed by Charlie, changing her form as she passes by.
“Sort of,” says Curses, squeezing her hands, “like a Mormon artist in New York.”
“Yes.”
“Hello, Charlie.”
“He’s been a good friend.” She stands and runs her hand through Curses’s hair. “Come on. I need to show you my alltimefavorite ant farm roller derby.”
“I’m there.” And he stands up and sticks his hand into her back pocket and she sticks hers into his and off they walk.
Spoiler alert! They got married!
This is chapter one and (one version of) approximately chapter six in a book that was first planted in my head circa 2004, when I finished the first draft of Byuck. It was at my eldest’s t-ball practice that I figured out how to write the story of Curses and Llew.
My eldest turned twenty about four and a half hours ago.
Curses and Llew (the title I keep returning to, but not the one I’m leaning on today) could never sound like anything else I’ve written—that much I knew from go—and so, following that breakthrough t-ball practice where I worked out the first three chapters in my head which I then recorded myself speaking and later transcribed, I spent several years audiorecording bits and pieces to keep the sound right. But this, as it ends up, is a terrible way for me to write a novel. All I ended up with was dozens of fragments locked inside the hellish task of transcription. Add to that a scattershot of additional fragments written in spare moments across a dozen notebooks and I may well have lost half as much Curses & Llew as I have compiled into my working draft.
I’m always looking for ways to make a work interesting to myself and I hope this translates into a good experience for the reader as well. For this novel, I’ve made God the narrator. He’s a distinctly Latter-day Saint god, in my opinion, but his personality may not match most folks’ interpretation of scripture. One thing I think is hard for humans to avoid is recreating God in our own image, and as I read scripture I see a God with a sense of humor and a bemused but endless love for his children. I also see someone who may see everything but does not get involved that often. And all that needs to come off in the narration. I hope people forget for long stretches that God is telling them this story and then, when they remember, it matters.
I’ve only written maybe a third of C&L but, as I’ve just finished up a couple projects that interrupted its recent momentum, I hope that the remaining two thirds won’t take nearly so long as the first third.
Then maybe I can figure out things like just how old these people are. In chapter one they’re the same age. In other chapters, Curses has a few years on Llew. Both those things cannot be true.
Fiction, man. Not as easy as it looks. 🕮