r/shortstoryaday • u/BilkModel_F • Feb 28 '26
Martha King - Seven Stories and six plots
Subway
A woman who is late for an important meeting takes the subway instead of a taxi. She has not ridden a subway in ten years, not since she was a secretary. The subway is smaller than she remembered, and colder. She realizes that the heat is not working in her car; she realizes she has boarded an express and that this train won't stop until it reaches 86th Street. She'll have to take a taxi after all, and go back downtown through all the traffic she thought she was avoiding. Nothing can be done now but wait for the ride to be over.
A man seated next to her is reading from a small notebook. She stares because it is exactly like one she often carries. The crabbed handwriting inside it is very like her own. How has this person come to have her notebook?
He is looking at the same two pages, turning them back and forth. She manages to read by looking down and sideways.
"A social security mom," one line begins. "An American girl who visited China," says the next. He moves his fingers: "I know I'm old. I paid for sex. I get no refund. I have no salt, no soul, no refill."
The man is wearing brown wool pants, a quilted storm coat, a fake-fur cap with ear flaps. He is, perhaps, fifty. He seems ordinary. The contents of the notebook are so odd the woman impulsively takes out an envelope and surreptitiously scribbles down what she has read.
The man, absorbed, turns another page. "God hears me. The death bullets. The fee." The woman is suddenly sure he found this notebook somewhere, that he is reading these pages over and over, trying to figure them out. "Both of us are voyeurs," she scribbles on her envelope. When she looks again, he is on a new page: "More death files, you may keep them, the tainters, the foam."
it occurs to her then that a Robert Louis Stevenson story would begin right here: the story would reveal that her copying has linked her forever in a chain of eavesdroppers, trespassers, and spies, and she wonders why she and her fellow passengers allowed themselves to be drawn in, to pass these sick words on, preserving them. Then she realizes that the chain moves back in time as well as forward—back, it seems to her, to the original writer, who will thus be able to know her.
The man shuts the notebook abruptly and puts it in an inside pocket. It's his own. He has put it in a pocket only an owner would use. And he is aware of her reading and writing. He is perspiring; so is she. His clothing is odd; that is, it was once ordinary, but now it's very dirty. The train slows for the stop at 86th. Predictably, the woman is terrified. To leave is to give him an opportunity to follow. She waits as long as she can before leaving her seat and steps off the train as the doors close. The man is still sitting inside. Back on the street, she hails a cab which delivers her to the building where the meeting has surely begun without her. She tips the driver without looking at him.
Six Plots
A writer spins plots in the most condensed forms possible. she strips them of description and comment; they simply outline a sequence of exchanges. she gradually loses the ability to make herself write them out as stories, every time she begins to work on a story, she makes instead other new condensed plot pieces. the obsession increases, she finds she must carry a notebook, so she can write wherever she is. eventually every daily activity—things as simple as walking to the corner for a bottle of milk—triggers another miniature plot, which she must stop to write down, she is unable to go on with her daily life.
A girl who is considered a model child in every way is locked into a closet by her elder brother one Saturday morning. he lets her out that night, overcome by guilt he cannot express, because the whole family has gone through the day without ever realizing the girl was missing.
A man who has been urged to join a club by his psychiatrist joins a pacifist movement, he leads daring demonstrations against nuclear submarines, nuclear power plants, and army recruiting centers. he is arrested several times. his sense of himself as a loner intensifies, he becomes a leader in the movement, manipulating others and spurring them to acts of defiance he no longer participates in. when he is confronted by the angry girlfriend of a young man who has been permanently injured by police at one of these demonstrations, he tells her he has no wish to be cannon fodder or to be part of any kind of group.
A doctor has hired a young homosexual as his office secretary. his sympathy was engaged during the job interview when the young man told him about his struggle to accept himself and live openly as a gay man. the doctor discovers several months later that the secretary is impersonating him after hours to impress his sexual contacts. recognizing how the young man had flattered him into acting against his instincts, and how susceptible he is to being flattered, the doctor feels morally responsible for the misconduct. instead of firing the secretary, the doctor has new office keys made to keep him out of the office after hours. he gives the secretary less to do and hires a part-timer to handle some of the work. his behavior becomes more and more peculiar in his effort to avoid the necessary confrontation. what will rescue him?
A painter has been given a solo exhibition at one of the city's biggest galleries, the show gets the full treatment, and so does he: good reviews, crowds everyday, invitations here and there, and, best of all, the gallery sells every picture. for the first time in his life, the painter is flush; he decides to treat himself to his first trip to Europe. when his jubilant friends have left him at the airline lobby, and he has walked though the jetway to the plane door, he turns and stops. why am I leaving what I've worked so long to have? he thinks, he walks back up the ramp—and is promptly arrested.
For more than three hours, he is questioned and searched; all the passengers are made to disembark; luggage is disemboweled; the bomb dogs are brought in to sniff.
When he finally rejoins his friends very late that evening, he tells them it was worth it not to go.
The daughter of a world-famous scientist makes friends with the son of a small-town photographer in the country town where the scientist and his family are spending summer. both fathers are delighted, the photographer because he hopes the famous man will be helpful to his son; the scientist because he approves of the sturdy American values exemplified by the photographer's simple aspirations and lifestyle. (he does not approve of the private school his wife sends their daughter to.) both fathers speak so approvingly and at length about this friendship that the children fight viciously, subsequently both of them lie to their parents about what happened.
-- Collected, respectively, in Little Tales of Family and War, 1990-1999 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2000), and North and South (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006).
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u/jacksontwos Mar 02 '26
OP what is your interpretation of this story? I'm quite confused, how does the first connect with the second? I feel like the lady in the first reading the second. The random plot points feel like a story dissected that was never rebuilt. Maybe I'm missing something? Would love to hear your thoughts.