Release date: April 21, 2020
Subgenre: Dark fantasy collection
About Velocities:
Excerpt:
From PAS DE DEUX by Kathe Koja
She liked them young, young men; princes. She liked them young when
she could like them at all because by now, by this particular
minute in time, she had had it with older men, clever men, men who
always knew what to say, who smiled a certain kind of smile when
she talked about passion, about the difference between hunger and
love. The young ones didn’t smile, or if they did it was with a
touching puzzlement because they didn’t quite see, weren’t sure,
didn’t fully understand: knowing best what they did not know, that
there was still so much to learn.
“Learn what?” Edward’s voice from the cage of memory, deep voice,
“what’s left to learn?” Reaching for the bottle and the glass,
pouring for himself. “And who’ll do the teaching? You?” That smile
like an insect’s, like the blank button eyes of a doll made of
metal, made from a weapon, born from a knife and see him there,
pale sheets crushed careless at the foot of the bed, big canopied
bed like a galleon inherited from his first wife—the sheets, too,
custom-made sheets—all of it given them as a wedding present by his
first wife’s mother: Adele, her name was and he liked to say it,
liked to pretend—was it pretense?—that he had fucked her, too,
going from mother to daughter in a night, a suite of nights,
spreading the seed past four spread legs, and prim Alice could
never compare, said Edward, with the grand Adele, Adele the former
ballet dancer, Adele who had been everywhere, lived in Paris and
Hong Kong, written a biography of Balanchine, Adele who wore
nothing but black from the day she turned twenty-one, and “I don’t
understand,” he would say, head back, knee bent, his short fat cock
like some half-eaten sausage, “what you think you can teach me,
aren’t you being just a little bit absurd?”
“We all have something to learn,” she said, and he laughed, left
the room to return with a book, Balanchine & Me: Balanchine in color on the cover, a wee black-and-white of Adele
on the back. “Read this,” putting the book into her hands. “Find
out how much you don’t know.” Whiskey breath and settling back into
bed, glass on his chest, big hairy chest like an animal’s, he liked
to lie naked with the windows open, lie there and look at her, and
“Are you cold?” he would say, knowing she was freezing, that her
muscles were cramping. “Do you feel a draft?”
No, she could have said, or yes or fuck you or a million other
responses, but in the end she had made none of them, said nothing,
got out. Left him there in his canopied bed and found her own
place, her own space, living above her studio: dance studio, she
had been away for a long time but now she was back and soon,
another month or two, she would have enough money maybe to keep the
heat on all the time, keep the lights on, keep going. Keep on
going: that was her word now, her world, motion at any cost. She
was too old to be a dancer? had been away too long, forgotten too
much, lost the fascistic grace of the body in torment, the body as
a tool of motion, of the will? No. As long as she had legs, arms, a
back to bend or twist, as long as she could move she could dance.
Alone.
In the cold.
In the dark.
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About Kathe Koja:
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and
produces immersive fiction performances, both solo and with a
rotating ensemble of artists. Her work crosses and combines genres,
and her books have won awards, been translated, and optioned for
film and performance. She is based in Detroit and thinks globally.
Website | Twitter
About Meerkat Press:
Meerkat Press is an independent publisher committed to finding and
publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction. And despite
the previous sentence, we frown on overuse of adjectives and adverbs in
submissions. *smile*
