I have another story up at Six Sentences, “Gun Street Girl” which the music savvy amongst you will know is a references to a Tom Waits song. Yes, another to add to the playlist Inspirations: Songs that Spawned Stories. It’s getting to be a long list despite all the videos that inevitably get pulled down for rights violations. I probably have forgot some. Someday when I have a PA…

So, you ask, why is there a Buick in the story when he clearly sings about yellow Corvette? I’m glad you asked (no, I’m not). You will note, too, that after a hole gets blown in the Corvette’s hood (bonnet) he buys a second-hand Nova (no va, ahahaa), then goes into hiding for a long time.

Drinking kerosene, he is sitting by the Erie canal and blaming all his poor choices on that woman, getting mean and bitter (more mean, more bitter). But then he hears the news about her getting with that skinny millionaire and maybe it’s the weather and maybe it’s the bourbon but he just can’t live with her getting away with it all and being rich, too.

Living well is the best revenge after all.

So he gets himself another gun and plans to knock off both her and the millionaire and if it lands him in prison with a tin cup, he doesn’t mind at all because he resents her happiness more than he hates his own self-imposed misery and that’s what it’s really all about.

Oh, but hey, what if those stories were just that. She’s not with any millionaire after all, but maybe he wants to try it again and maybe she says she’s willing but maybe there’s no trust between the two of them, so he shoots her in that fireman’s yellow raincoat and anyway her hair’s no longer blonde but red. And he takes off in that cheap ass Buick he hot-wired back in Indiana and it’s only when he’s flying down the hill towards the city centre and all its traffic that he realises her smile was because she cut the brakes when he was asleep, dreaming his dreams of that Gun Street girl and all they would do together.

[Six paragraphs about six sentences because it’s that kind of morning.]