"Van Cleef" by Caroline Giudice / BULL Lit Mag
- Short Story Shoutout
- May 27
- 6 min read
A study in expectations.
The first thing that jumped out at me about “Van Cleef” (3,100 words) by Caroline Giudice’s in BULL, is its period-piece-ness. It feels like it’s trapped in the amber of some long-ago, while somehow remaining a tale tailored for today.
That old-timey feeling is there in church halls that “smell faintly of hymn books,” in characters that are able to feel “scandalized,” in valises at the station, and the dropped receiver of a telephone transmitting bad news.
While it could be a contemporary tale, there’s a hint of sepia in the thought of men in fine suits hoisting pints at the village pub to the sound of darts striking cork. And this is the setting in which we meet our man Van Cleef…
But not before an extended set-up; a gathering of the ladies of a church congregation for tea after service. “Every Sunday,” we are told, “the talk turned to Van Cleef,” the “only bachelor left in this town.”
He’s “embarrassing” according to one, “if perfectly content” according to another. “People are beginning to talk,” warns one more, before talk turns to his work, which no one can seem to articulate. “And what is this work, exactly?”
This is where our protagonist, Jane—who has been listening, silently, patiently—plants her flag. “If no one knows what he does,” she offers, “perhaps I should ask him myself.”
Then we are with Jane as she enters that village pub (“The Swan”), where we get our first glimpse of Van Cleef Fairchild. He quickly reveals himself to be every inch the fair-haired son in his “suit cut too fine” for the pub, the embodiment of the kind of unflappable self-confidence that comes with wealth.
As soon as his blue eyes meet Jane’s we’re on our way, rolling along the well-defined tracks of pure romance—a genre it’s very easy to settle into with such an elemental question at the story’s core: what exactly is this guy’s deal?
Jane pushes for answers and Van Cleef replies coyly at every turn. His is a life of leisure, one of late breakfasts and lingering library time, of afternoon naps and gym sessions capped off by “evening duties until midnight” at The Swan.
Jane calls him out on his “nonsense,” on his absurd “work conditions.”
“And yet,” he replies smiling, “you’re still here.”
In the span of a few hundred words, Giudice has established a full set of story expectations in us. We’ve seen this movie before, and I don’t think I’m only speaking for myself in being fully taken in again by the premise, especially when it’s so efficiently and artfully rendered.
While he seems a lay-about, Van Cleef’s confidence must signify some great capability, some hidden reservoir of talent or wisdom that was, no doubt, hard won. Van Cleef will woo and win Jane’s affection. We want him to because he is playful, mischievously so. And it seems that Jane wants the same, because she visits him again at The Swan a week later to continue her line of questioning.
But met with the same casual trolling, (“I tried a new nap position. Left side, not right. Transformative.”) she snaps and blurts out the unvarnished truth:
“You’re an unemployed grown man still living with his mother! That’s what you are! You’ve turned idleness into a bloody job description and expected us all to clap along.”
Outside of story, there’s so much in this. Especially for our times. Calling out the entitlement of wealth, what often reads as the free-ride that comes with this-is-a-man’s-world. But in it, still, is the expectation of genre.
And Giudice fulfills that expectation. The story turn having arrived in Jane calling Van Cleef out, the balance of power shifts. Acknowledging that (“You may be the first honest woman I’ve ever met”), it is now Van Cleef calling on Jane, a week later, at the local café. The pursued has become the pursuer. Fully smitten, he drops the “L” word, speaks of her truth-telling being “clarifying.” He’s going to travel, head toward “new duties, broader duties.” And he’s doing it all, it seems, because of her.
And it’s here that the story takes off, because Giudice, on approaching the next, fully expected story turn, chooses to take a hard left.
She chooses the third path. Not the first, where the couple runs together toward fairy-tale bliss. Not the second, where they flame out in acrimonious confrontation. But the third way.
I won’t reveal what that third way is. I will say that it’s unchartered territory, as the romance genre goes. It’s brought home in the potent image of an empty valise. An image that’s worth one thousand words in what it reveals about Van Cleef. And about Jane.
And like all strong stories, it sent this reader off on one hundred imagined journeys, through Van Cleef and Jane’s unrevealed pasts, their unexplored futures. It got me thinking about my own predilections, my own expectations. Why is a man like Van Cleef coddled? Is it because we want to know that this is how liberating great wealth can be if we achieve it? Maybe, because wealth translates to power, we’re better off with solipsism in the Van Cleef’s of the world for what havoc their power could wreak?
And what of Jane? Why does she feel compelled to pull Van Cleef off his mount? Will “truth” light a more noble path, or will it shine so brightly that it blinds us to all we should be grateful for?
Ultimately, my thinking brought me back, as it always did for Van Cleef, to “The Swan.” There’s so much in that name. Swans mate for life (get with the program, Van Cleef.) Swans are graceful, their motion in water seemingly effortless (despite furious paddling beneath the surface). Someone who swans can seem casual, aimless, self-important…
But finally that pub name put me in mind of the “swan dive.” A dive that requires, above all else, confidence and resolve. You throw yourself headlong from a great height, spread your arms wide and, in plummeting, embrace your fate.
A swan dive also implies a sudden drop in value.
And a swan song, sadly, is a final act.
Bon voyage, Van Cleef.
BULL magazine “is dedicated to rewriting modern masculinity from the voices that most often get drowned out amongst the shouting and posturing—voices that often struggle in silence and shame.”
Their mission “is to make BULL be a place where non-assholes can come to the table and share their complicated stories about masculinity and not be shamed or shouted at.” It “is not for glorifying, peacocking, posturing, or nostalgizing of masculinity, but BULL is for stories that explore the nuances and contradictions of masculinity’s expectations to glorify, peacock, posturize, and nostalgize every other shitty thing our culture associates with being ‘manly.’”
What are they looking for in fiction submissions?
Longer prose up to 3,500 words per piece.
Flash prose up to three pieces or 999 words per submission.
Only one submission at a time (in any category) and wait at least 3 months to submit after you have been accepted or rejected.
According to their Submittable page, they open for submissions on June 1st.
Furthermore, according to BULL:
“Honestly, we believe that the whole idea of what it is to be considered ‘masculine’ these days is a silly, absurd, farcical, weird, fucked-up, lunk-headed, ugly, heart-breaking, traumatizing, morally-fubar, existentially depressing, confusing, complicated, nonbinary, paradoxical, hypocritical, and nonsensical endeavor.”
“And we want stories that convey this.”
“Oh, and also sentences. Not ‘pretty’ sentences. We love weird fucked up sentences. Loopy ADHD sentences. Rough and ready sentences, backasswards sentences. Grammatically incorrect sentences…. We just love sentences and we want authors who share our love of sentences. We really don’t care what kind of genre you’re writing as long as it has weird fucked up, loopy, no-bullshit, ugly, backassward, grammatically incorrect sentences.”
More of Caroline Giudice’s work can be found at her website, Tales of the Hidden Hour.
Many thanks to Caroline Giudice and BULL Lit Mag for pulling a pint and pulling up a stool for us alongside “Van Cleef.”
~*~
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