1893-1993

Standing on a crack that (ultimately) pierced the water table, the tiny Mexican unfolded his plastic table, intending to array some East Asian artesanal products. A trivial task to some, the tan man's short arms needed to scale, prop, rotate and skew in a very ... sigh ... very short amount of time. This wasn't magic, it was chemistry, biology, physics, and calculus. As he entered phase three, The Rotation, his arms crossed right over left, knuckles facing each other, preparing for an epic 540.

A crowd of insects tuned their buzzes to a roar around him, flying in narrow ellipses that mimicked the three-dimensional maneuver that the little man had less-than-halfway completed. A small red creature with a raindrop thorax and asymmetrically-extending, yellow wings came closest to the world's best amigo. The red and yellow bundle bug had just removed some bandages that the local tattoo artist had instructed her not to remove for another two weeks. The tattoo, done by world-famous fruit-fly-wing artist Miró J. Chianese, evoked Yuan pop culture and a certain glossectimitable impotence.

Also in attendance for the Magnificent 540 was the very Miró J. Chianese that had performed the delicate wingjob. Wearing a brand new necklace from the Qdoba collection and showing it off, Miró was deeply entranced with the whole scene. The corners of objects dripped with tropical coloration. Every color abandoned any of its passive instincts. Everything boasted a rich sheen of elation, of supreme effort, of consummate kinetics. The artist leveled his gaze intently on the red and yellow former customer.

He grew nostalgic. He got melodramatic. A giant red curtain opened and his mind stood alone on a stage lost in the floodlights. "Those circles ... those colors ... " Gradually, Miró started talking to himself, painting pictures. In a hall white string-frays stained in blood hung beside black slacks. Beneath the slacks, tattoos...right-to-left cursive, poppy sprinkles and thick eyelashes against brown flesh. The American president! Twenty-seven for the blue and orange! A small bed in a small apartment with comfy pillows, me and her, red and yellow and light blue and light violet, and a seemingly useless white linen. He kept his eyes on her as she wheeled around and around near the little Mexican man completing a quadruple axle. Determined to speak to her and bring up their past, he creeped ahead.

Out of the corner of one of his eyes, he saw an old business associate...it died.
It's dead, AHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Having stumbled upon the definition of a term that I learned earlier this year, I have tried to stray from employing the roman á clef technique in writing but have ended up with pathetic drafts and a 15-day drought. The crux of my problem with it is how dishonest it is. Whoever wrote about the term in Wikipedia pinpointed the technique's ability to mask meaning behind ridiculous symbols. So I tried, unsuccessfully, to do something more honest but have come to accept that I can't do it yet.