The Parking Lot Sparrows (4)

And, no joke—a kid comes in. The bell rings and everything. He stands there, blinking, his hand cupped out in front of him.

First part should be: "And, no joke, a kid comes in." or "And --no joke -- a kid comes in."

“They’ll believe you. They have to believe you—because it’s true.”

“But what if I did kill him?”

“You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t, even to some little terrorist like the ones who killed your father. Because you’re a nice boy, and that’s that.”

“I’m not a nice boy.”

“Stop talking nonsense. You’re innocent. You would never do such a thing.”

“Ma, they’ll find my DNA. They’ll know it was me. Stark will tell them it was me.”

I find this part highly ridiculous. I see that the widow doesn't want to believe what her son's done, but when he himself counters it, I don't see her realistically being able to even feign ignorance.

In general, this too seems disconnected. Like none of the people have anything to do with each other. Except they do; they're all in some way connected to Karim and Stark...

Granted, my memory’s not so good anymore, but I’m an old thing. They should forgive me if I did something like that.

I don't understand? First, she was talking about how these things didn't happen when she was young, and now it's starting to sound like she's guilty of something?

“There were.” She looked down at her hands, clasped above the table. “If you’re approximately the same age as me, you would have been growing up when they took a man from my hometown, tied him by his hands to the back of a car, and dragged him two miles. Like Hector. Like animals.” The corners of her mouth curled into a smile. “There were foreigners and homosexuals, we just killed them all.”

Hector? And I don't like the short sentence/phrases here, the "Like Hector. Like animals" they seem... almost full of false sentiment (and then in the next paragraph, the "Not in Lincoln").

All subsequent life with Karim was surreal—possibly from the residual shock of falling, hard. When we laid in bed post-coital we talked of existential things. I don’t know why. I think it was an effort on my part to understand what the world had become, and from what. Before Karim, I had lived in a sanitized little snowglobe world with smiling children in mittens and fires in the hearth and snowfall every day without the car accidents. I saw him, big and distorted, from my plastic evergreen forest and pounded my fist against the glass until it broke, giving way to a world of light and sound and messiness, where the same problems did not fall down around our feet, recycled.

Careful of paragraphs like these, the summaries that tend to drift off into nothing. The snowglobes following is a better technique, more often than not.

I don't know if this could be a novel. The actual story seems too self-contained to warrant a whole novel, I think; wouldn't it be more character exploration like the last part of this chapter? While it's interesting, I don't know if it could hold its own as a story. Besides, I thought you'd finished it already ^~

Sometimes it’s [remove comma] I slept with my secretary, I stole a hundred dollars from the old woman next door.

I wrapped my hand round the cross at my neck and prayed—for the boy, for the one he had killed. It smelled like thick dust in that booth [comma] dust that managed to find its way into my throat.

Change "round" to "around". We both love to say "round" but even I can only pull it off when it seems fitting to the era. No one but you and I says 'round anymore,haha.

How does one respond to to the sinner driven by the sinning?

It's why you're brilliant.

I asked. Maybe he was just drugged up—or drunk from some house party down the street.

Comma, not a dash.

I found myself with not only a People and a Diet Coke at five AM

I thought she had something from Starbuck's?

They were doing quite well when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket, with a number I didn’t recognize.

No comma. I know that seems strange, but yeah. Think about it. You'd have a comma if it was something liike, "in my pocket with a strange number, one I didn't recognize." but here, what is the comma doing? Nothing, really.

In all honesty, he looked just like his father, [s]from the pictures in our high school yearbook.[/s]

It works, but I really want you to cut out the last phrase. It doesn't flow, and it would be fine without it--right? It's a detail, but one that may not matter that much.

You wouldn’t, even to some little terrorist like the ones who killed your father.

That makes no sense. I think it is the "to" part.

with red stains

red is leading, but dried blood looks more maroon, or dark brown, not red--if you know what I mean.

When he bent over, his shirt collapsed against his chest like there was nothing left.

I don't understand what you mean by collapsed? the visual doesn't work in my head.

The nervous ones are always [b][no comma] guilty, aren’t they?

Tie all skewed, he was my boyfriend. Kind of. We were making out, and then… Goodness gracious!

I understand this, but it looks weird. I think if you attached the italics to the end of "I'll bet you," it would work better, because "Tie all skewed" doesn't have much to do with it, but the first sentence in the paragraph does.

None of this traipsing around in parking lots; doing unnatural things with unnatural people.

I adore the reference, both to what Karim and Stark did, and to the murderers.

Taking away hard-working peoples’ jobs.

this looks weird, I want to make it singular. "Taking away the hard-working man's job." It just looks cleaner.

My husband, first—and then the six nice boys on the defendant’s side, with pressed slacks and combed hair.

No dash, a comma if anything.

They certainly didn’t murder that foreigner—even if they thought about it, their mothers loved them too much to let them.

Is she talking about just the other people, not the "sketchy" one? If she's talking about the sketchy one, this feels inconsistent. Reason would have it that if she thinks that the boy was raised improperly, than he also might be able to kill someone. Unless she has more sympathy for someone not a foreigner, which could be what you are trying to present. If so, clean it up. ^_~

There are clever young people, but none among them were it annoys me that you don't properly write out this thought! I know what you mean but it makes no sense in grammar. Leave it if you want, but it sounds ugly., but for another lady down at the end of the table.

“In the Victorian era, they used Greek symbolism in letters. Like a code. Maybe it’s something similar.”

WILDE! Sorry... heh, and you're quotation mark looks like it was italicized? It looks strange.

I'm confused. Is the Juror scene going on in the room where they make their decision, or in the court room? Clarification!

And if the sketchy kid is Stark, I completely didn't know that. You might want to make that more obvious. Or something.

She shook her head. “It isn’t. I’m merely curious. When I was growing up, they murdered foreigners and homosexuals all the time.”

“There weren’t any when I was growing up.”

“There were.” She looked down at her hands, clasped above the table.“There were foreigners and homosexuals, we just killed them all. We were the murderers."

This got confusing, because they're both shes. Might want to make some difference between the narrator and the other.

“He was nineteen. He murdered people. He murdered a lot of people, actually.”

“He killed for his girlfriend, didn’t he? That’s what my brother said. For Caril Ann.”

“He never murdered her. He murdered for her. Stark didn’t murder Malik—the other boys murdered him, for themselves.”

I'm lost again--who's saying what?

She shoved pushed the transcript across the table.

Shoved. Pushed. Indecisive, are we? ^_~

Chewing the frayed edge of the candy and watching him flip pages for hours

or if I had been sitting on his counter long at all.

I want you to change that to "his counter for a long time". Opinions.


I hate you so much and I love you. That was amazing, and the end, and I'm mad it's the end, and you have to make it a novel. I really, really want to find a corner and cry. You're beyond brilliant. Symbolism, humor, sadness--yes, you can do sadness, darling--and all these meaning so tightly packed into a style only you could master and only you will own. Sure, there were parts I poked at, but those are easily fixed, no problem for you what so ever. I'm left...wordless. I'm babbling, true, that's words--but what can I say in response? What sums up how I feel after reading this? How happy I am that you're such a good writer? That I actually know you?

Nothing.