Blood Of My Enemies, The Beginning
Bunco in this neck of the woods is beyond interesting. I know because I’ve something to compare it to.
First, what is Bunco? It’s a game played with dice. Four people at a table, take turns rolling five dice until they get as many dice as they can to land on a specific number, like ‘rolling for two’s.’ If you don’t roll the required number, the dice are passed to the next person at the table. The first person to roll all five dice into ‘two’s’ (or one’s or five’s, you get it, right?) yells Bunco and the players add up points of some kind and then move to other tables.
It’s an easy game to play and makes room for the much needed talking and laughing the players need, usually the women of the neighborhood just needing a little girl time and this is all they can manage in and around their busy lives.
When I lived in the suburbs, the conversations were suburbian and mostly centered around husbands' careers, vacations, and kids. Looking back I laugh at how benign those conversations were, even as I spent the majority of my time with those women laughing my ass off.
Especially now, since moving to another state to live a more rural life. I and many of my neighbors have ranches, animals, horses mostly. Some big, some small, but all of us have responsibilities that make us, in my opinion, a little tougher than those city girls back home.
The things we get in to out here, of course, are different than what happens where there’s more concrete than dirt. Besides caring for the men in our lives, most of whom still travel to that concrete jungle to earn the living required to sustain such a lifestyle, many women in my Bunco group have created very interesting lives, even way out here in the sticks.
The gatherings wax and wane as the weather changes and people come and go. Some move, some travel, some forget and some just take a break. This allows for new people to join as space allows, bringing new blood to the group which has been how this group has managed to meet fairly consistently for nearly a decade.
As a founding member of the group, I’ve claimed the second Thursday in March and the second Thursday in September as the dates I host. I’ve pretty much rearranged my furniture into ways that make Bunco set-up and storage a breeze. I have the right amount of glassware for drinks and have mastered the art of the no-host cocktail bar with a three drink make-it-yourself instructional menu for guests to DIY it. It’s always been a hit.
Tonight’s ladies are a small bunch. As we gathered around just three tables leaving the other three empty, we discussed the shrinking group, where everyone else might be and the topic on everyone’s minds at the moment, the holidays.
This brought up all kinds of funny stories, some tinged with sadness too, shared among friends who listened, laughed, and comforted when needed.
We’d made the rounds, everyone getting a chance to share or vent as needed, and the evening was turning out to be good for us all.
Until it was the turn of a woman I’d not seen at our gatherings in a while. She’d always struck me as an odd sort, someone who spent more time watching people than talking with them. I’d never really had a chance to talk with her myself at Bunco, but I’d seen her around the neighborhood once or twice, passing her on the two-lane road in and out of the valley where we live, or at the Circle K or Walgreens at the top of the hill.
At first, she was reluctant to share, shrugging off the holidays and all the stress with a nonchalant, “it’s just my husband and I this year, very low key.”
The woman sitting next to her must have known better because she prodded the woman to tell more, “oh no, that’s not all and you know it.”
“Well, okay, to be honest,” the woman, whose name I believed to be Claire or Carol, at the moment I couldn’t remember, leaned forward to put her elbows on the refurbished vintage folding table, a favorite of mine, one of the first of many similar projects I’d taken on since moving out here. I took pride in seeing how the thick layer of varnish reflected the soft white of her Angora sweater.
“I got a book deal three months ago. And ever since then I’ve been killing off people left and right.”
Her eyes darted to and from silent and surprised faces, all eyes were on her. She chuckled, “in my stories, of course.”
The collective exhales were amusing. We all chuckled too, but then the questions started. “What kinds of stories?” “What kind of book deal?”
Her voice was full of laughter as she told us about how she’d started one day to write, stories that had been swirling in her head, stories she’d come close to writing before, but had always pulled back for fear of, of what, she really couldn’t say.
“But one day I decided, Fuck. This.” Her perfectly manicured nail pointed into my table. Short red nails, rounded corners of a square, the same way I like mine filed. “I decided I was going to tell my stories, all of them. All of it. I wasn’t going to hold anything back anymore.”
“Hold what back?” The question was out of my mouth before I realized I had said it out loud.
My question had her smiling, and I realized how pretty this woman was, is, underneath her years. She had to be about 60. The wrinkles around her eyes and other lines in her face I knew could be liars as to her age. The sun has a way of doing that, especially to people who spend a lot of time in it. I know. Her hair is natural, grey weaved in with black, brown and hints of copper I can see it reflecting in dining room light.
She’s tall, not thin, but not heavy, she fits her frame. Her smile is bright, her lips are painted the perfect shade of red against her freckled skin. And her deep brown eyes are dancing, I can tell she wants to share this story.
“The truth!” She exclaims, her hand going into the air. “I am so done with trying to cater to other people’s feelings, or should I say, things I know nothing about!”
This revelation brought a murmur from the rest of us. So true, so true, we agreed.
“My stories are from my experiences, things that actually happened to me. But I’ve turned them into fictional tales. But, but,” she pointed to everyone, “I’m using the truth. I’m using what people actually said or did.”
“Won’t that get you in trouble?” Another woman asked.
Carol, or Claire, I still wasn’t sure of her name, tilted her head. “I’ve given much thought to this and no, I don’t think I’ll get into any trouble because if anyone says, ‘hey that’s me you’re writing about,’ I’ll say, prove it.”
“But really, that’s not why I write. I write because it’s fun to kill people off.”
This really got everyone’s attention.
“I’ve been writing forever, always believing I was writing the next great American novel or some Literary masterpiece. Then I realized I just wanted to tell stories, they didn’t have to be anything big like Gone with the Wind. Just entertaining. And how do you entertain people? By telling their darkest secrets and then, showing them how to solve the problem. Most of the time the solution?” I liked the way she controlled us, her audience, with her voice and her expression. She really is a pretty woman. I made a note to ask her about the skincare products she uses.
She continued, “To kill them off.”
She fingered her wine glass again and I realized it wasn’t one of mine. Who brings their own wine glass to Bunco?
As the writing on the glass moved slowly into my vision, each letter revealed as she turned the glass around little by little, I shuddered and I tried to laugh, but the expression on her face wasn’t funny at all. Was she serious?
The group finally broke the ice, giggles started at they all read the writing on the glass too, and more questions like, “where can I get a copy of this book?” erupted.
The glass was lifted into the air and we all raised ours to meet it. “My ladies,” Carol, or Claire, I’ve got to remember this woman’s name, toasted our little group. “Here’s to The Blood of My Enemies.”
This is the beginning of a series of short stories, the prologue if you will. And here is a link to the table of contents. Thank you for reading!
Nanci Arvizu writes from a chair with a view of wide-open spaces, non-fiction essays on Transgenerational Dysfunction, Surviving Narcissism, and Sexual Trauma, and mind-twisting fiction, dystopian to satire, short stories, novels, and screenplays. She is currently rewiring her brain by reading 200 Books in a Year. Visit www.nanciwrites.com.
