Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
It All Might Be Seasonable
For years and years, actually decades and decades, I kept saying that one day I would do a Bryant Street collection or two, and I just never got around to it.
Finally, in the winter of 2023, I decided it was time and told the fine folks at WMG Publishing I was going to do this. Stephanie Writt came up with the cool street-sign logo and I was off.
I thought it would be cool to have Bryant Street be a television series with four seasons of ten episodes each season. (For those of you who don't know, a short story usually has enough story for a single thirty-minute episode of anything on television.)
So I sent the idea of four seasons to Stephanie at WMG and back comes the four wonderful covers using seasons of the year. I was about to object when it dawned on me that four seasons of the year would be a lot easier to explain than four seasons of a television show.
And these would act as ten episodes of a season, but each season would start on the first day of the named season. A full year of Bryant Street.
So I started with the forty stories together and then put them into seasons.
Often a story is set in the title season. Or the story is dark like winter. Or hot like summer.
Or a character in the last days of their lives like winter, or fading like fall. In one way or another, all the stories fit into a season.
But think of them like ten episodes per run. The winter season run, the spring season run, and so on.
Sort of like ten episodes per season of a series like The Twilight Zone television series used to be. Every episode different, yet every episode set on Bryant Street.
A Long Way Down
Lacey Temlin hated her husband. She called him Dead Man. He cheated on her. She waited and watched.
Her plan to kill him seemed perfect.
Lacey needed everything to always be perfect.
Until it became clear they lived in the twisted world of Bryant Street.
* * *
Nude, standing in the center of her kitchen, Lacey Temlin let the lukewarm and slightly bitter taste of her morning coffee settle her nerves. She drank it black, no cream or sugar to mar the desired taste. But now the coffee had sat too long after she had made it. It was the only thing not perfect around her at the moment.
Her modern, light granite kitchen counters shone with a polish she doubted they had when installed. The dark tile floors were like a mirror and every handle on the cabinets had been wiped down at least four times.
Every dish in each cabinet had been washed and put back carefully in perfect order after she had wiped down the insides of each cabinet.
The modern steel appliances didn't have a fingerprint on them and a person could eat out of the sink it was so clean.
The kitchen smelled like a combination of lemon juice and bleach. She had a hunch the smell was far stronger than she was noticing, considering how many hours she had been using the cleaner.
She eased her shoulders up and down a few times to loosen them and took another sip of her almost-cold coffee. She had made the coffee after her shower, then had spent too long in the bathroom working on her brown hair trying to get it perfect. But after three hours of intense cleaning, she had to get herself clean as well.
And perfect.
Everything had to be perfect.
And now, finally, it was.
She turned slowly in the kitchen, studying to see if she had missed any detail at all. She had even climbed up and cleaned off the top of the refrigerator. Any blood drops would be easy to find now.
She let out a deep sigh that seemed to echo in the large, suburban home. She had so loved this house when she and Dead Man had bought it. They had been so happy.
Three bedrooms that they talked about using for future children, a two-car garage where her Mercedes lived beside his Lexus, and a kitchen she always described to friends as perfect.
They had even had the back lawn that looked out over the city below refurbished and put in two swings. She had spent many a summer's night sitting in that swing staring out at the city.
She had someday hoped her children would use the swings. Now that would never happen.
And last night, she had once again sat in the swing after she discovered his affair.
She had actually walked in on Dead Man and his secretary having sex on his desk in his office after hours. His desk stuff and some papers had scattered everywhere on the floor, making an awful mess, and Dead Man and his secretary had both been so preoccupied, they didn't notice Lacey peeking in and then filming them for a minute with her phone.
The secretary had blonde hair, much larger breasts than Lacey, and a slight roll of fat around her stomach. How could Dead Man even be interested in such a woman when he had a perfect-bodied wife at home?
Lacey had no idea what had gone wrong with Dead Man's thinking.
She and Dead Man were both thirty, both successful in real estate, both in love with each other.
Clearly not enough.
The sex had slowly faded to nothing over the last two years, even though she was going to the gym every day to keep fit and trim just for him.
Yesterday, she knew that their ideal marriage in their perfect home was over. Dead Man was sleeping with his secretary and there was no returning to marriage bliss from that.
In fact, in short order, there would be no more marriage. Period.
Perfect had been ruined for good for her.
