I really dig present tense. I hear comments on how it can make or break a story, but it always improves it to my mind. The immediacy is somehow more satisfying.
Jot notes, lose details, which the story has in spades. Little things. Descriptions of patches of skin. Fuzz on beans. It’s easy to forget details to get the immediate information. Forget the good parts in favor of the parts he needs.
The extra detail is voyeuristic. The bath tub is a practical relic. An indulgence. A romantic opportunity and a serial killer’s sincerest hope. A place with a bath tub.
I only think ill of the man because he’s a male. If it were a female character there’d be more understanding. A curious woman.
It’s something, trying to know people from the details of their lives. Develop a database of information about them. Is the sum of a person’s life the person? Can we construct a person from knowing things about them? We try, I think. We sure as shit try.
I don’t even know the color of cobalt, but it strikes me as dull. The kind of shirt one wears to blend in. Cobalt-colored shirts. That’s a hell of a detail. She wears white. The cobalt man and his white woman. She decides that.
She doesn’t need warning. I don’t get that from this story. He thinks she does, of course, because he needs to save her. Needs to win her.
What does the author want to stir up in the reader?
Products all over the place. It’s unavoidable, digging through garbage.
The neighbor’s being pathetically pursued.
Calling it quits. There’s always that thing. Booze, drugs, whores. Always trying to stop.