Tempus fugit or Veni, Vidi, Cream of Wheaties

For D.L.

For the rest of the world, it was just another year of normal duration. For my father, it was the year during which nearly every room in my grandparents’ plantation house was festooned with a small red box featuring a cheerful black chef holding a steaming bowl of what resembled grits that miraculously went from pot to spoon in a mere two and a half minutes. However, Grandma Viny drew a line in the tiger maple floors refusing to have that box in her kitchen.

Grandma Viny eschewed her European roots, identifying herself solely as a Southerner. She would have you believe our people emerged from the dank southern soil, just in time to fight in the War of Northern Aggression. She had anecdotes but no documents.

She regarded the 1859 house to be our ancestral home, however the title deed dated December 11, 1929, listed my great great grandfather as the buyer and Cyrus Nutter as the seller. Despite the applicability of the surname Nutter, we were not related. Grandma Viny insisted the title also conveyed Cyrus’s heritage to us, never acknowledging that heritage mostly consisted of his being an adept alcoholic who was reduced to accepting pennies on the dollar for the house and surrounding two-acres. He had already drunk and sold off the plantation’s other 58 acres. For Grandma Viny, there was no inconsistency between her story and reality. “Somethings have to be felt as opposed to known.” If one argued further about our birthright, such heresy would be rewarded with a swift slap of her enormous wooden grits spoon.

“The important thing about grits is the grit it takes to make it. We Southerners have it, those up North don’t. “Anyone can scramble eggs, fry bacon, toast toast and call it breakfast. That’s not breakfast; that’s laziness. Grits require you to stand over a hot oven for half an hour committedly stirring.”

She wiped her dewy brow; sweat always seasoned our grits. Not just Grandma Viny’s, but also Lucy who served our family for at least two generations. Once Grandma Viny was done with her history lesson, she would hand the wooden spoon to Lucy who was expected to stir the grits for the remaining 28 minutes, only to watch Grandma Viny run her spoon over the grits’ surface, like a sapper, searching for lumps.

“But patience is a dual-edged sword as it can easily slip into contentment—the Southern man’s malady.” Despite the chill running down my spine, I was not the target of her disappointment, but rather my father and his father, Grandpa Gerald, who shared a single epithet: “contently content.” Grandpa Gerald was a quiet man with a small probate and trust law practice in Charlottesville. “How a man who spends his days concerned with other people’s legacies, could be so ambivalent to his own, I will never understand,” Grandma Viny sighed. When courting, Grandpa Gerald found Grandma Viny’s dogma to be invigorating; now in the twilight of their marriage, he found her tiresome and was forever checking his pocket watch for the time when it would be considered acceptable to go to bed without criticism.

Grandma Viny had once been pleased that my father received a Bachelor’s in agriculture from Virginia Tech. She had visions of him restoring the plantation’s lost lands, even though this would require leveling the post-war housing development. She imagined him seated triumphantly on a tractor knocking down those horrid little houses as rows of corn bloomed behind. She was crushed when he opted for the security of a research position at a food company that was responsible for “the-abomination-of-a-breakfast-cereal-that-pretends-to-be grits-but-is-made-with-wheat!” My father knew there was no point in arguing with her and simply pined for the day when we either moved out or Grandma Viny moved on.

This changed the day my father burst into the house, announcing that the Food Industry Association had bestowed on him their highest award: the Adler Bowl for Achievement in Processed Foods (Breakfast/Brunch Division) for his invention of 2 ½ Minute Cream of Wheat.

Grandma Viny looked at the silver bowl as if it was contagious. Instead of congratulations, Grandma Viny was stroke silent, feeling the wrath of generations of Southern women who slaved over stove or fireplace stirring their grits until their wrists ached. She was determined to be their voice.

What Grandma Viny had not anticipated was the ovations her son’s accomplishment afforded her. “No more endless stirring,” her friends would say, as if they had been paroled.

Even Claire Beaulieu, a true woman of the south, was impressed. Claire had unimpeachable credentials; on her mother’s side was an ancestor who sailed up the James River on the “Godspeed” in 1607. Her father’s people had been expelled from Canada and morphed into Cajuns who would one day send one of their own to Congress on the eve of the Civil War. With the acrid taste of gun powder in his mouth, he galloped south, was appointed a colonel, rallied a battalion of New Orleans gentlemen, and sped back north. While Colonel Beaulieu may have been an eloquent speaker, his words did not save him from a sniper’s bullet as he tried to enthuse his soldiers to be the first in the field. His barely used sword hung over the mantle in the Beaulieu mansion sitting room, above their family crest: Semper Citius (Always Faster). When Claire Beaulieu requested your presence, you couldn’t decline nor dither.

Grandma Viny fully expected Claire Beaulieu’s censure for her son’s sin. Her surprise was almost lethal as Claire Beaulieu, who traditionally did not acknowledge any accomplishments not attributable to a Beaulieu, flashed Grandma Viny a smile wider than a Mississippi oxbow. “Felicitations, my dear Viny. What your son has accomplished is nothing less than a triumph! Now every Southern child can have a warm meal on a cold day. A mother’s love in less than three minutes, imagine that. If only my good-for-nothing grandson, Billy, who I believe is some sort of subordinate to your son, could invent such a wonder.” What was Grandma Viny to do except take all the credit? She thanked Claire for her kindness and explained that the brains and tenacity were from her side.

Armed with Claire’s praise, Grandma Viny welcomed my father home, heaping praise on him like cinnamon sugar. Poor Dad expected a lecture that lasted way after Grandpa Gerald’s bedtime. Instead, she rewarded him with a warm embrace and a ruby kiss that remained on his left cheek for days. Grandma Viny led him around the house, showing him the rooms decorated with boxes of the miracle cereal, never noting its absence in the kitchen.

As the recipient of an annual award, my father felt time’s dash across the calendar. As the second Thursday in November approached, he knew his term as the holder of the Adler Bowl for Achievement in Processed Foods (Breakfast/Brunch Division) would soon be over and he would be required to announce the next recipient. He affected Granma Viny’s insincere smile as he practiced handing the bowl over, imagining congratulating the smart money’s choice: the inventor of Breakfast in a Jif: Ready-to-Eat-Bacon-and-Egg-Sandwich.

Fearing he was on the precipice of losing her admiration, my father invited Grandma Viny to the award ceremony to demonstrate his resilience and magnanimity. Across the table, he witnessed her receiving the last dregs of fame as attendees congratulated her on their way to the bar.

The final second of his tenure knelled; he checked his blazer buttons and took one final look at his reflection in the silvered side of the Adler Bowl. All things must end, but even time could not steal his legacy; he would always be the 2 ½ Minute Cream of Wheat king.

Standing at the lectern, one hand on the bowl and one hand on a note card, he looked as if Damocles’ sword had cleaved his heart in two. With a drowning man’s gasp, he croaked: “The winner of this year’s Adler Bowl for Achievement in Processed Foods (Breakfast/Brunch Division) is Guillaume “Billy” Beaulieu for his invention of 1 Minute Cream of Wheat.” Snot-faced Billy Beaulieu who was known to root around my father’s desk whenever he was away, smiled at his Grandmother who tried to look surprised.

Like a bruised child, my father sought Grandma Viny’s eyes. He craved comfort or umbrage; what he got was betrayal as she watched people throng towards Claire Beaulieu to offer their felicitations. Imagine, a hot cereal that took less time to cook than to sing Dixie. Do wonders never cease?

Grandma Viny’s head spun like a weathervane in a hurricane, first looking at Claire Beaulieu, then at my father and, finally at me. Swiping a spoon from a waiter who was doling out dollops of trifle, she skipped my father and pointed it at me like an accusation. The torch had passed to the next generation and I felt its embers.

The Knob to the Door of Opportunity

The treatment room of an unpopular, now former, dentist reeked of mint, abrasion, and resignation. We sat in silence as if one of us had the wrong address. He nervously fumbled a piece of paper with which he could not find accord. Eventually, he stood up, straightened his navy-blue slacks and jacket, and needlessly adjusted the executioner-tight knot of his red tie.

“Hi, I’m Mike Pence. He held out a hand for me to shake. When I did not reciprocate, he looked dourly at his lonely hand. “Are we still not doing that?” I rescued him from embarrassment—shaking a stranger’s hands for the first time in nearly a year.

“I should shake more hands. There are still a lot of people who blame me. Look, I pardoned him; it’s not my fault he doesn’t understand I have no control over state courts. But, if you want to wear a mask when no one is around, that’s fine.” His smile was supposed to be welcoming, but it looked pained. “Can I say how happy we are to have you on the team?” Team? With the exception of a bored Secret Service agent who apparently drew the short straw, there was nothing that could be characterized as a team.

If necessity is the mother of invention, desperation is the annoying older sister who needles you when you forget your failures. I have always been a hard worker but had a track record of picking the wrong business: film developing kiosk, a Spencer’s in a dying mall, and a Long John Silver’s that both the health-conscious and the obese eschewed.

Money, like hope, readily runs through our fingers. Eventually, I needed a job. My friend, Jeff, (who admitted to not only voting for Trump, but went to several MAGA rallies without a “face bra”) told me of a position which he was sure was a good fit. Being two months behind on my mortgage, four on my car payment and God-knows-how-long on my credit cards, I couldn’t afford pride. Even though I was one shopping trip away from generic ramen, I had to ask: “this guy was president for like two months and he still gets a presidential library?”

Jeff shrugged and said “it comes with the job. Trust me, it’s a good gig—executive director of the Michael “Mike” Richard “Dick” Pence Presidential Library is nothing to laugh at.”

But I laughed. The idea of the Pence Presidential Library being remotely interesting to someone not named Mike Pence was, at best the definition of self-delusion.

“The guy’s pretty beat up. Trump blames him for everything. Republicans think he’s a sell-out. The evangelicals…well they aren’t happy until they find an apostate. And the rest of the country has moved on. He needs somebody to commiserate with.”

“You mean a loser like me?”

“Let’s just call you experienced. Can you imagine what it is like being him, having to relive his last four years? It’s enough to drive you nuts. What do you think?”

I couldn’t even muster a shrug.

“Great, Jerry said, “he’s in the atrium.” Jeff pulled on the doorknob, it came off and he handed it to me. “Who knows what doors of opportunity it will open.” He stopped and added: “But you probably should have maintenance take care of that.” I pocketed the knob as he shoved me in and retreated.

Atrium conveys a light-filled sanctuary; this room was dark and musty. A decrepit dentist chair, held together with duct tape, sat next to a battered water cooler without a jug. Next to the door was a bookcase with a collection of dental tools that could extract not just teeth, but also a confession during the Inquisition. Plaster casts of former patient’s mouths lay smashed on the floor, destined to be forever mute. The aroma coming from the third room promised, a rarely used and less often cleaned bathroom.

The once second most powerful man in the world sat at a card table, resembling a paperweight. After our illicit handshake, he orbited a stack of chairs, passing file drawers without a cabinet, a tin of generic coffee, a jar of nondairy creamer and an accordion of crushed Styrofoam cups. Predictably, there was no coffee maker.

He narrated his vision as he shambled about the room “I am eager to move forward and present a positive view of my presidency. Not just my life in politics, my life in Christ. The conscience of a righteous conservative, as it were.” If there had been a W drawer, he could have filed it under ‘Wishful Thinking.’

“You have experience in fundraising, right? Probably need to bring in your contacts as mine have been a little squirrely lately.” He should look in the G drawer for ‘Good, Luck with That.’

He stopped by a feeble chalkboard with faded admonition to floss daily on the side facing us. He unsheathed a two-inch chalk baton like he was going to conduct a chipmunk orchestra. “Your doing the fundraising allows me to concentrate on planning.”

“Are you ready for the big reveal?” He reached up for the top of the chalkboard, trying to coax it over. One good tug and it swung down liberally, knocking the chalk to the floor, snapping it in half. Undeterred, he picked it up. “I guess I will be short,” he laughed alone. “You are probably used to white boards, but all they left was a black board. Black boards. White boards. All boards matter, right?” I made a note that he should not try to be funny.

On the chalk board, he scrawled out three basic squares. He placed a crooked cross in the middle of the first square. “We are here,” he said, pointing to a square that represented the room in which we sat. He scrawled “Xstian” in the first room, “Conserv” in our room and “Rep” in the bathroom. Xstian. Conserv. Rep.

“Christian. Conservative and … Rep?”

“Republican, get it? I am known for saying I am a Christian first, a conservative next, and lastly a Republican. You see, my library will be laid out in line with my beliefs. You enter the Christian room and there will be pictures of me at church. As a deacon. As a Sunday-school teacher. I have my father’s bible and believe me it is well-worn. We could put it in a glass case in the middle of the room. And then you come to the Conservative Room and tour the display of how my huge tax cut turned Indiana into an economic powerhouse.” I nodded, but Indiana and powerhouse were as compatible as New Orleans and temperance.

“And then you end up in the Republican room. I have a great picture of me with President Reagan.”

“Are you going to hang it above the toilet?”

“No, we will renovate the bathroom and turn it into a gallery.”

“Look, I get that religion is your top priority, but what about a bit of panache?”

“Panache?” He had never heard of the word.

“You know showmanship.”

He leaned forward, looking like I was offering him the last lifejacket on the Titanic. i have to admit, I was getting excited. What if I could make the Pence Presidential Library a success, redeeming not just Pence, but me as well?

“If it were me, I would start with the Republican room, leave this room for Conservatism and put Christ in the bathroom.” I wasn’t trying to be funny. Much.

His face was the color of an early May tomato. Clearly, I had picked the wrong business once again. His voice quavered like someone who had been forgotten on the cross. “Do not. Do not insult my Lord and Savior.” We had reached the point when the pitiful collides with the pathetic. One of us needed to dominant and it wasn’t going to be me. “Get out,” he said, struggling to remember self-esteem. “You’re fired,” he blurted as the tomato ripened.

I have been let go for less but how pathetic must I be to be fired before I started. And by Michael “Mike” Richard “Dick” Fucking Pence of all people. We shared a moment of embarrassment as he involuntarily recalled what Trump’s invitation to sychofantize for four years had truly cost him. I sopped up the dregs of my self-esteem and exited through the Republican gallery.

“Wait,” a desperate voice accompanied by the clattering of leather-soled shoes echoed from behind me. His skin was now paler than the soggy page he waved. “I forgot to have you sign a NDA.”

“Sorry,” was all I could offer. “But you can have this.” I fished out the doorknob and deposited into his hand. “Who knows what doors of opportunity it will open? But you probably should have maintenance take care of that.”

The Pathology of Immunity

“But without our frailties, we couldn’t traverse this veil,” Dad said the second to last time I saw him.  We sat on the crumbling stairs of the cottage that he claimed a distant and obviously poor cousin willed to him.  Half the porch had surrendered to nature.  The unsteady uncollapsed portion we sat on was not far behind.  

“Our family suffers from four maladies: alcoholism, philandering, prevarication and hope,” he said.  “And let me tell you, baby girl, hope’s the worst.  It woos you with smiles and sweet nothings that come to nothing.  Hope is a magician; one second the coin is in your hand and the next, it is gone,” he spoke quietly as if he was revealing a secret he had only just learned. “Most people get one or two of these maladies; my problem is I got all four bad.  Especially hope.” 

He wasn’t looking at me, but at Patterson’s wheat field that, too, had seen better times.  As he grew older, he found it hard to look you in the eye.  His gaze was always trained on the horizon as if salvation was no more than a half-of-a-day’s walk away. I also suspected he had disappointed too many people to make eye contact.  Especially his youngest daughter; the only one in the family still speaking to him.  

The last time I saw him, he was in a “borrowed” suit in the charity coffin at Penn’s funeral home.  Clearly, the mortician was not a fan of Dad and sent him into oblivion with mussed-up hair and his eyes half-open and askew. 

There wasn’t much in Dad’s estate: three pairs of pants, four shirts and six pairs of boxer shorts and socks, a Bible with Proverbs and half of Ecclesiastes torn out, a bank account with $237.14, 15 shares of a company that had gone bankrupt years ago, a gold pocket watch missing the hour hand and the title to a 1972 Pontiac Bonneville that I did not know existed.  Knowing Dad, it was probably rusting in some pasture. 

His will was obsolete. It named his second wife, who left years ago and contained no mention of his third wife, Natasha, also gone.  His last girlfriend, Katie-Ann forged his signature, cleaned out his bank account and disappeared last year.  My brother Jem died in 2013, meeting as his end as most drunk drivers do, losing an argument with an oak tree. My sister Eveline, who is God knows where, made a final appearance in his testament.  She fought with Dad last Christmas Eve, slammed the front door and ran off with the latest in string of men who were both bad for her and married to someone else.  Wherever she is, she isn’t coming back.  That was probably a good thing because Eveline was fond of drama and who knew what she would do at the funeral. 

I buried the bible with Dad and burned his clothes in a barrel out back. The bank account was split between the undertaker and the lawyer (both of whom said they were cutting me a great deal), the watch was pawned for less than twenty bucks and the Bonneville would be mine if I could ever find it. There was no title to the cottage, so the gift and the distant cousin may have been one of his prevarications. 

With Dad gone, I was alone in a landscape full of history but no present nor future.  Dad said there had been Osbells in Burnt Corn, Alabama for as long as anyone could remember.  Now, I was the last one to remember and, when I am gone, we would be gone; lost to the early morning mists that haunt the pine groves.  

Not that Burnt Corn was worth remembering.  There was debate about the name. Either it was the corn that the Indians laid out in the sun to dry or it was the corn that the white settlers burned during the Creek War.  There was even a Battle of Burnt Corn, our only source of civic pride.  But it was more of a 19th century version of a fender bender than an actual skirmish.  The whites surprised the Creeks and drove them off, but then got so interested in plundering the Indian’s ponies that they were surprised by the Creeks and themselves were driven off.  Technically, it was an Indian victory, but it was more the inattentive being vanquished by the incompetent.  Not much to hang your hat on, but it was all Burnt Corn had.  

Beside the battle, our only claim to fame was that we were not the road to Monroeville of To Kill a Mockingbird and Harper Lee fame.  People would roll down their windows and get annoyed that they had to go back to interstate to start over. 

As few people had read and ever fewer liked the novel, there was a lot of good riddance as we wondered why someone would ever would want to drive 26 miles out of their way to see an old courthouse.  Of course, Burnt Corn didn’t have one and the town office was a desk in the back of the one filling station.  Not much to build a bright future on.  But it was home and Dad insisted there was nobility to it.

“You are not just any Osbell” Dad said, when there was no important drinking or philandering to be done, “you are descended from Colonel Zachary Patterson, killed in the Revolutionary War.”  He puffed out his chest as if there was something to be said about getting in the way of a musket ball.  When his blood was up—usually before he learned a sure-bet investment was something far less—Dad would pack us kids into the back of the car and drive us into the country.  Usually at the end of dirt road that, judging by the startled scurrying of the rabbits, raccoons and possums, had not hosted a car for decades.  

He pointed with pride at a house more kudzu than brick with columns straining like an exhausted Atlas to hold the remnants of the sky.  “This is your ancestral home,” trying to expand his chest over his gut.  “As soon as my ship comes in, it is where we end up. Not just our family, but your children and their children, too.  Generations as far as the eye can see and then some.”

There were only two problems with Dad’s conjuring.  One, we were nowhere near a waterway with sufficient draft for a ship large enough to rescue the crumbling edifice.  And two, he claimed at least three different relics as our ancestral home.  It would take a fleet to make our history and progeny whole. 

Now that he is gone and I have just enough money to take me about twenty miles from Burnt Corn, I envy his maladies.  I have never taken to alcohol.  Half a can of beer and I can’t keep the halves of my brain on speaking terms.  I’ve had my share of lovers but I always seem more sinned against than sinning—left behind like a dumb dog on a dirt road. Although the truth never did me any favors, I cling to it like driftwood in a roiling river.  It will not protect me from the rapids, but it is all I have to keep me afloat. 

And hope, well hope doesn’t even know my name.  Today makes no promises that tomorrow will fulfill. While my Dad could fervently and faithfully look to the glorious past or the golden future, I am stuck in the gloom of perpetual gloom of right now.  Whatever was the root cause of Dad’s maladies, I remain steadfastly immune.   

Hurt

Lani had to be at least my age: 52.  But the outfit she wore: flannel shirt, tied in a bow over her thick waist, jeans tight enough to power a small town with the abundant static electricity and a straw cowboy hat tilted rakishly over her heavily-lined eyes—wistfully spoke of the desire to be someone much younger.  Her freckles, like disobedient Israelites, were swallowed by the lines on her face that became mellifluous when she said: howdy.  

I shook her bony hands and explained I was not a visitor, but rather the newest employee of the Johnny Cash Museum and Event Space.  Her face went blank and then, as if she was a computer rebooting, offered a wider smile.  “Well, howdy indeed.  Welcome aboard, honey.”  Her smile may not have been sincere, but still posed a risk to diabetics.  “Where they got you working?  Admissions?  The gift shop? In the office?”

“Guard,” I said, fishing for the slip the man in the office gave me.

“Niiice.  What exhibit?  Early childhood?  Seventies Room?  The later years?”  She spoke with the intensity of a witch trying to conjure a spell she was sure would be ineffective.  

I unfolded the paper and read “Hurt Room.”  Odd name, isn’t it?  It’s not like Johnny was into S&M, right?  I know he did some drugs but that was as bad as it got, right”?

Her face went from lily white to ashen.  She chewed on the chapped flecks of her lower lip. Narrowing her eyes, her pupils pivoted rapidly in case of being overheard.  “Have you ever been to this museum?” She asked quietly and quickly.  Was I supposed to nod or write down my answer?

“No, ma’am,” I said.  I’ve never been to Nashville before.”  Ma’am?  Where the hell did that come from? I was born in New York, grew up outside of Boston, went to college in Michigan, moved to Ohio and left my broken marriage and children there when I was transferred to Nashville. The company didn’t even give me a chance to unpack before informing me that both my new and my old job back in Ohio had been eliminated.  They offered a severance pittance, but it was far from ideal for paying for housing and food.  And that’s why I took the help wanted sign on the front window of the museum as a sign from the Fates that I could earn some cash from Cash before I made any choices about what came after next.

“They didn’t give you a tour of the museum, did they?”  She shook her head and muttered angrily about not knowing how they expect to keep anybody if they are going to play tricks on the unsuspecting by throwing rookies into the Hurt Room.  

Watching my impending discomfort, she coaxed an unconvincing smile.  “We should get you into a uniform.  What size do you wear?”

Being unusually tall and slim, what she gave me looked more like a FEMA tarp than a uniform.  “Sorry, we just keep the more popular sizes in stock,” she said, as if my body shape was a matter of choice. “I am sure they will get you something more fitted if…” Her voice trailed off as if she had suddenly fallen into a deep hole mid-sentence.  “Come on, dear, let’s get you to your post,” she said, clearing her throat as if she was recalling a sad sad memory.

She led me into a small door behind the counter and into the childhood of Johnny Cash.  Dirt poor, broken mementos without the slightest hint of the man he was to become.  “Isn’t it just wonderful,” she said, pointing at a broken rattan chair.  “It’s like we were there.  No matter what we went through was nothing compared to what the boy in black went through.  Though humble, our roots could never be humbler than JC’s.” She took a deep breath as if in an opium den. Her voice became dreamy in an “ain’t-gonna-happen-but-that’s-okay kinda way.  “You have to think—if Johnny could make, why not me?  Do you know what I mean?”

I didn’t. But I nodded to be polite and tried to find a desiccated cotton bush branch interesting.  “Move along,” she said, suddenly giddy. “That’s going to be your job.  Move ‘em along, especially the Japanese tourists.  They love Johnny and they chatter like chipmunks and you gotta keep ‘em moving or will have a traffic jam.  But then again, nobody really stays long in the Hurt Room.  Except you, of course.” 

She surged me through Johnny’s early life, though his military service, through his marriage and moving to Memphis and singing with the million-dollar quartet.  And then it was a blur through the many successes and many slippages.  Relics of his friendships with Elvis, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis beckoned behind glass cases.  Past a couple of mannequins wearing concert apparel and a display of well-used guitars.  

Suddenly, it became cold and quiet as if a shroud had been cast.  Simple sad guitar strumming and heavy piano keys throbbing.  A voice came from the bottom of grave as they were shoveling the dirt in.  It wasn’t so much as singing as a grating wailing.  Lani looked like a mouse trapped mid-floor by an encroaching cat strategically placed between her and the safety of her hole. The voice clearer, but no less gravely:

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

The Hurt Room was darker than the rest of the museum in lumens and mood.  I did not suspect that anything could be more depressing that Johnny’s hardscrabble childhood.  I stood corrected, because according to Lani that was where I would stand for four hours at a time with a 15-minute break.  The sentence cut in half by a 30-minute lunch hour.

The room’s grotesque gloom was lit only by a few anemic can lights and a widescreen television mounted on the black back wall.  It blinked to life with baroque images that would make Roman Polanski shiver.  

There was Johnny, weeks away, I assumed, from playing in the Grand Ole Opry in the sky, cackling about a needle tearing a hole from a crooked and ragged mouth that looked like it was added as an afterthought.  The video started off wrist-slashing depressively, and steadily embraced an ever-expansive hopelessness despite interspersing home footage of what alleged to be happier times.  

There’s Johnny, old, frail, depressed, looking like he had the wrong date for the Last Supper.  June stands on a staircase above him, either ashamed by the exploitation of their decrepitude or simply lacking the strength to get off the set. Jesus shows up in time to get nailed to the cross while Johnny’s life passes in front of his and my eyes.  Johnny closes the piano fallboard like a coffin lid and the television fades to black only to reanimate seconds later an eternal loop that made me feel like a drowning man grasping an anchor for buoyancy.  

Lani pointed to the door that led out to the gift shop, explaining my job was to hustle people out.  Hustle them out?  The space had all the charm of an Auschwitz dressing room.  Only the feeble and the sado-masochistic could last more than 20 seconds, glad to part with whatever remained of their credit line to wash themselves clean of the existential dread that awaits us all soon enough. 

They were the lucky ones; the survivors of the flood.  They got to close the door behind them, leaving me and the next lambs-to-slaughter behind.  As I stand there, face to face, with a singing momento-mori, Lani’s words haunt me.  If Johnny overcame poverty to become a world-wide celebrity only to slip into the void—what chance did I have when twelve dollars and fifty cents an hour didn’t buy much in the gift shop?

Leftovers

It sounded like thunder: A bang.  A flash.  The lights flickered.  Everyone in the Lily Room held their breath, waiting to be plunged into darkness.  When the lights resurrected, I looked at Jillian, my wife, who looked at Jerry and Nadene, her parents.  Jerry was, of course, unhinged and loud.  He was still physically imposing with a neck so thick that it could be driven into a river bed as a piling.  His eyes were that ice blue that could still bore through me as they did when Jillian and I were dating.  But I knew—and he didn’t—there wasn’t anything behind them.  The bowl of cottage cheese on the table was far more capable of cogent thought than Jerry.  “This is Hell,” Jerry bellowed.  Nadene blanched.  Jillian bowed her head.  

Why we had to drive two and half hours from Chicago to the heart of tornado alley so Jillian could treat her father to his previous favorite restaurants was beyond me.  “This could be the last one he has,” she said.  “He loved Haber’s broasted chicken.  In his day, he could eat a whole chicken by himself.” 

“We could take him to KFC around the corner and he would be none the wiser.”

Her withering look was sufficient to privatize my opinion.  This is what happens when an east coast Jew, who escaped the hypoxic clutches of a family who treated holidays as an opportunity to circularly criticize, marries a Lutheran girl from a family who exchanged Arbor Day cards.  

I waited in the driveway of the assisted living factory as Jillian coaxed her parents out of the prairie dog den apartment.  Nadene did not like to go out with Jerry, afraid that his Tourette’s invectives would embarrass her.  Before dementia addled his brain, the worst curse Jerry would utter was darn. Now, when agitated, he could intimidate a sailor with his vocabulary, creativity and agility.  Abby, Jillian’s youngest sister took Jerry’s descent to infirmity as karma for a childhood of disapproval.  Although she lived a half a mile away, she would have nothing to do with her father.  Margaret, the middle daughter, had married a man from an enormous and energetic suburban Italian family.  She was perpetually going to a christening, wedding or funeral. 

Waiting in the driveway for half an hour, I prayed that Jillian will come down, her face awash with tears, to tell me Jerry was gone.  I suppose there is some selfishness to this wish, but I knew Jerry would not want to be the way he was.  He had too much pride to descend into an angry toddler.

But as toast always lands butter side down, out came Jerry, cursing and twitching.  Nadene, prayed the ground would swallow her whole.  Jillian looked like Atlas had taken a long lunch and asked to hold the world for him.  With a Honda-full of discontent, I pointed the car west, towards the dark sky that portended nothing good.  It was a race to see who would rage more, the thunderheads or Jerry.

Haber’s Farm disappointed.  Morbidly obese white people scuttled along “The Museum of America,” which was really a collection of rummage sale shit.  Everyone carried a yellowed tag waiting for the PA to crackle and a voice that could challenge a rooster for discordance to call their number.  

Finally, our number was called and we were instructed to go the Lily Room.  We went through two sets of doors that had not been lubricated in years. We were seated by a sullen teenager who cudded her chewing gum as she invited us to “enjoy ya dinners.” She was replaced by an enormous apple dumpling of a woman, whose name badge clung precariously to her voluminous bosom, announcing her name as Tina.  

The dinner was predictably bland.  My cocktail was erroneously called Haber Farm Famous Old Fashion unless it was famous for as “flat Sprite with an orange wedge and a diabetic grenade for a maraschino cherry.”  The famous Haber Farms relish tray looked the relicts of a pathetic pantry: cottage cheese, kidney beans and canned beets. The famous broasted chicken tasted of depressed fowls that willingly ended their misery to increase mine. The vegetable choice was some variation of a potato, be it fried, baked, mashed or hashed. The only thing green was an odd stain in the middle of the tablecloth.

What the meal lacked in taste was made worse by the conversation of the table.  Jerry was grousing loudly about some unseen demon that taunted him.  Though a Lutheran, Nadene crossed herself, looking for any port in an ecclesiastical storm. I was willing to offer a card with the Mourner’s Kaddish that I had in my sport coat’s pocket.  

After clearing the dishes and declining “doggy bags” (I loved my dog too much to inflict Haber’s on him), I had a chance to look at our fellow diners.  At the next table, an Aryan father and son ordered basket after basket of rolls that they squirreled away for an impending famine.  While their tattoos were not matching, they both gave off an ominous air that they were planning something pogromish.  

At the long table in the corner, a family of seven that looked like they had taken a wrong turn on their Grapes of Wrath road trip.  The younger children ran around the dining room in feral glee with no thought that they might be annoying the rest of us. 

Rounding out the diners, a couple and their infant daughter with matching freckles and a beatific aura as if they just moved into a Norman Rockwell painting.  The rest of the tables were empty save for the cheap utensils wrapped in paper napkins. 

And then bang.  Not a cataclysmic, stop-your-heart explosion.  But something not so quiet enough to ignore.  We felt it in our stomachs.  The ice rattled in our glasses. The dust flurried down from the hand-hewn rafters.  It was disturbing, but not frightening. And we soldiered on through dinner.

It was getting late and Jerry was growing coarser. The Nazis next door looked simultaneously insulted and impressed.  Nadene was fidgeting, checking her purse often.  That there would be a Jerry-storm was a given. I looked at Jillian, whose eternal guilt always prompted her to stay longer than required.  I knew better than to suggest we leave, but a few well-timed eyebrows raises eventually elicited the desired effect.  

She nodded once and I leapt into action, signaling Rita that we were ready for our check.  She smiled and deposited a few bags “for leftovers just in case” and headed towards the main room to print the check.  Laughing with the busboy with the faux hawk, she pulled the door open.  She screamed, staggered back and would have capsized if it wasn’t for the busboy catching her and simultaneously copping a feel.  It was as if Rita had turned to Jell-O, but mustered whatever solidity she had to point towards the door. 

As if she was auditioning for one of the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, she moaned: “They’re gone.  They’re all gone.  Everybody..everything is gone.  This got our attention and the “Dads” except for Jerry stood up while the moms, save Nadene, comforted Rita and relieved the busboy who was starting to weaken.  The Dads walked quickly to the door to see what was beyond the threshold.  

“Gone” was the operative word. Not only was the Rose Room and the Ivy Room and forever-lost-to-history other rooms were gone; everything we knew was gone.  Starting at the threshold and for as far we could see, the world, as we knew it, wasn’t.  The earth was black with pots of flame-red bubbling ooze.  The sky was vomit green through which the sunlight could barely penetrate.  There was nothing familiar. It was as if we were picked up and transported to another planet in the process of forming or falling apart.  The “Grapes” father crossed himself maniacally, trying to cover his multiple children’s multiple eyes.

Mr. Rockwell walked into the kitchen on the opposite side of the room and returned ashen.  “It’s the same that way, too.  It looks like the apocalypse and we are the ones left behind.”

Looking around the room from the Aryan Senior and Junior, the Rockwells and Jerry’s demands to go home now “fucking now” ringing in my ears, I realized we were the leftovers and just as desirable.

As-Is

“This is it,” Gillian said to me, trying to meld with her Adirondack chair.  “We’ve earned this, sweetheart, we’ve earned this,” she sighed, her blue eyes shimmering in the sunset.  “It’s perfect.”

I followed her eyes down the field in which our former city mutt, Joe, meandered like a senior citizen.  I had no idea of how many years he had left, but those remaining would be just where I would want him to be, chasing any bird that had the temerity to intrude on his territory. Beyond Joe was a small inlet of the St. George River that meandered into Muscongus Bay.  One small spit of land, porcupined with pine trees and there the Atlantic Ocean loomed.  Behind us was our dream house—three bedrooms, two baths and gleaming maple throughout.  Being thoughtfully situated on the peninsula, nearly every window had a view of water.  Often Gillian and I would lose each other when a short errand was cut off by a spectacular view that wouldn’t release us.  

After more than twenty of years of teaching in the Chicago Public Schools, this house seemed to be the gift of a benevolent God, with an asking price south of $250,000.  Yes, it was being sold as is, but, judging from the pictures, any renovations were not regarded as burdens but rather as empowering challenges.  

The house needed no major work or any work at all.  But when Gillian called it perfect, I could not disagree more.  Inevitably, something would happen to bring her back to earth like the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs.  

Our asteroid was named Stan. He lived in the basement and would continue until the day he breathed his last onion-scented breath.  Stan was the “as-is” clause.  Whatever he had on the two previous owners was lost to history.  But he clearly had an air-tight lease that gave him the exclusive right to live in the basement for the sum of $179.75 a month.  He was to have access to one shelf in the refrigerator and two shelves in the pantry.  He had his own pot and frying pan, but could request use of our cooking utensils with at least two hours notice.  He could have guests until 10 pm and one overnight guest who would have access to the guest bathroom.  He or she would be entitled to one bath towel, one hand towel and one washcloth that we were required to wash and replace within 24 hours of his or her departure.  The Ancient Mariner was less burdened.    

Like the inevitability of rain on a picnic, we heard Stan’s tuneless off-key whistle.  He pushed open the doors with a force that threatened to knock them off their hinges. Of course, he did not have the decency to wear a shirt.  His torso was a maze of moles, bristled hair, sagging breasts and a distinct hump growing out of his right shoulder.  Of course, he could have used the towel he carried to cover his deformity, but, as he was fond of saying, “I am the way the Lord made me, if he ain’t got a problem with it, why should I?”  

“Jesus,” Gillian said, watching his ill-fitting self-made denim shorts undulate like the tide.  Even Joe, who was fond of leaving dead animals at our feet, gave Stan wide berth. Stan descended into the water, dropped his shorts and began to lather himself with a bar of soap.  Even from this distance, we could see the tide carrying Stan effluent into the bay.  “I’m going in,” Gillian announced, slamming the door.  I waited in vain for the Coast Guard to come screaming up the river to arrest him.  Unfortunately, our lawyer said neither indecency nor polluting was cause to break the lease.  

While Stan was a horrific sight, his appearance was his most redeeming quality.  If he was a dog, Stan would make an excellent doubt hound, sniffing out our insecurities or misgivings. In the morning after which Gillian and I had clumsily engaged in coupling two floors above his head, I was greeted by the sight of Stan messily eating cornflakes.  “Maybe you should try Viagra,” he said. 

One afternoon, after I received a disturbing email, Stan mentioned a former student of mine who was an incredible poet and a lousy judge of people.  The choice presented to him was one of creativity or death at an early age.  He chose the latter.  “Lose some, he said, eating the last peach, “lose some. If only you tried harder.”  

After Jillian’s sister left with her three adorable kids, Stan looked at Jillian and announced: “some people aren’t destined to be mothers.  Maybe that’s a good thing.”  

Initially, we fought back.  Told him he was rude. Told him we would be speaking to our attorney.  Told him he was not welcome in our part of the house.  Everything, but he was wrong.  Because he wasn’t. 

During one of Stan’s rare trips to town, I went down to retrieve a roll of paper towels.  It was always a good day to get supplies whenever Stan was out.  God knew what insecure scab Stan would pick.  Gillian was in the kitchen with her friend Lani.  

In the pantry, I heard muffled voices that grew clearer as I neared Stan’s bed. It always struck me that odd Stan placed his bed against the wall in the middle of what was his small sitting room.  Whenever anyone visited him, had the choice of standing or sitting on his sour mattress.  
Apparently, the air conditioner ducts wound through the house like cancer before coming together as a tumor in the adjacent room, separated by only two panels of drywall.  Despite the roiling nausea bubbling in my throat, I laid my head on Stan’s pillow. I could hear Gillian and Lani’s voice as clear as if they were standing next to me.  So that’s how he knew our secrets.  The one’s we admitted to each other and the one’s we muttered to ourselves when we were alone.  

At first, I felt the thrill of discovery, which quickly dissipated. So what if he had no superpower? Did that make it anything he said less true? 

I must have been pale when I came back into the kitchen.  Both Gillian and Lani stopped speaking and Gillian stretched to catch me. I whispered not to speak.  He could hear everything.  

“Who can hear everything,” she asked, before I whipped my finger to my lips.  I motioned with my eyes to the floor.  

“Him,” I hiss.  The next day I called my lawyer.  Surely, this was enough to break the lease. Stan was spying on us. He sighed for the umpteenth time and told me the lease was explicit and snooping was not cause for breaking it.

This evening’s respite was disturbed by Stan’s naked frolicking in the sudsy surf.  I looked at Gillian who set her jaw to rigid.  “Not tonight,” she said from between clenched teeth.  “I am not going to let him drive me in.  This is my house. I worked too hard to let him ruin these golden years.”  I placed my hand in her steely grip and we watched as Stan began his moist return up the hill. 

He steered towards us and stood so our faces were level.  “Notice anything different about me?” he asked.  He was still repulsive, so that hadn’t changed.  His hair always looked like a heavily used Brill-o pad so that could not be it.  I had no idea how many moles covered his body so I could be excused for not noticing a malignancy.

“My eyes, my eyes,” he said, nearly poking them out.  

We leaned forward. He leaned forward.  Maybe it was the sunset reflected in his eyes, but I thought they looked a bit off.

“They’re yellow!  My eyes are yellow!  I went to the doctor yesterday and he tells me my liver is rotten with cancer.  And it’s spread to my spine and my brain.  He said if they had caught is sooner maybe.”  Didn’t you notice?  I swear I have never met two people so involved with themselves that you couldn’t bother to look at me.  Now I have like six months tops.”

Gillian, being the kinder of the two of us, muttered a string of apologies and promises to do anything to make his remaining time easy.  I, being the less kind of the two of us, did the math in my head.  By Christmas, he would be buried and I could turn his room into a woodshop.

Gillian, helped him up the stairs. “By the way, I saw my lawyer after the doctor,” he said.  “The lease is part of my estate.  I’m gonna will my room to my nephew, Laird.  Strange boy.  Don’t worry, you’ll get used to his screaming.  Just accept him as-is.”

The Darling

For A.C.

Once you know how, you can freshen your makeup without seeing your reflection in the mirror.  It took years of practice and a Herculean effort to ignore the plummet that deposited her in room 207 of the Heart o’ Chicago motel, where, even at 11 on a Friday night, you couldn’t go a minute without hearing a discontented car speeding by.  Three more for the night and then she could walk the two blocks home, hoping no one would notice she was in a dress increasingly inappropriate for a woman of her age. 

She could be any age from the seemingly innocent, yet highly experienced, ingénue, to the English teacher with the whip-fast ruler to whatever age was sufficiently old enough to absolve them both so that, when it was over, neither one felt the need to speak. 

First came Brad, former classical trumpeter and now perpetually flailing salesman who traveled too much to justify how little he made—as his wife kept pointing out.  They met in Cleveland when he was a student at the Conservatory and she was a business major at Case Western.  She loved the artist’s life and supported his assent up the orchestra ladder until he stalled at the Skokie Valley Orchestra.  She had never mastered a poker face and her disappointment was even greater when he took a job selling hospital-consulting services.  He didn’t make much of a dent in that industry either, leaving both with unspoken, but fully acknowledged, disappointment. Oh, for someone who would forgive him, comfort him and give him a blow job.

He never minds the long-haul flights. Once he has a cocktail, kick off his shoes, close his eyes, and dream of bigger things.  He is content. In the morning, he could look forward to being in a city, Boston, Miami, Dallas or Los Angeles—a city of importance to match his prospective own.  It is the short trips that suck him dry, not only can he never truly relax on board, but he ends up in a place he would never want to visit or be associated with: Buffalo, Des Moines, Grand Rapids or Midland.  Basically, he has thirty minutes max before his ears start to pop and he searches the dark Earth for something that looks desirable.

The woman next to him stretches her legs and rubs against his.  Sorry not sorry.  Soulful brown eyes greet his.  She has such a nice, sexy smile—friendly and completely indifferent to the cause that put him on a flight to western Michigan.  The beverage cart pulls up.  He usually does not drink on short legs—but if a cute woman, who is obvious tipsy, offers you a drink, why not take it?

She stretches and their legs touch again.  This time she leaves hers there.  A smile mirrored on her face.  She rubs his legs through her stockings. Is it her pulse or his? He can feel himself blushing. My lord, how good it would be to feel her arms around him. Her hand slips across as if driven by remote control and slowly unbuckles his lap belt while he looks around to see if anyone is watching.  She slides across his body and whispers: “count to 30 and join me in the back.” 

When he left, she ignored the bill on the table, pretending it was his business card.  She had learned long ago to let men leave before retrieving the money; it preserved the illusion of normalcy for a few moments more. 

She poured two fingers of vodka in a plastic cup, rinsed her mouth and spit into the sink.  She looked at the mirror and saw her makeup could use touching up.  She wanted nothing so much than to scrub her face—as if she would ever feel clean again.  She knew she wouldn’t and tidied her lips. 

A knock on her door. Ira, the night manager.  For the first couple of months, he convinced her he was the son of the owner and that one day the motel will be his.  And from here, he will launch his empire of boutique hotels.  But she saw Mustapha, who really owned the motel, reaming out Ira and realized there was no relationship and no plan.  It is just a pathetic lie he tells himself in the early morning gloom.

He looks through the stained and threadbare curtains.  The parking lot is drowning in harsh amber light, revealing only three cars in for the night.  They will lose less money turning on the no vacancy light than paying maids to clean clean rooms.  The only money coming in that night will be from the stoned kids who descend on the vending machine after the clubs closed.

It is enough to want to hang yourself, if only there is anything in this damn motel sturdy enough to hang yourself from.  If there is a dead-end, this is it.  Even the nearly empty parking lot is an enormous cul-de-sac that leads out to a one-way street that ends at a warehouse.  The only way to leave the motel is to go the wrong way down a one-way street.  Says it all. 

He wants someone to recognize him for the ambitious and intelligent man he is.  The man who is going places.  Someone to share the dreams, he mutters to himself alone in the early morning office.  A few furtive glances and then mad passion—on the bed and off.

She watched him walk to the door, look at the table and then snort, knowing it was merely her cost of doing business in the motel, where from 10 pm to 7 am, he was the petty tyrant. 

One more. Gary the depressed therapist who mounts her while psychoanalyzing her—insisting her chosen profession was the result of possible abuse by an alcoholic father and/or detached mother.  He was wrong, but she let him believe in his diagnosis, just like she let him cuddle up with the illusion that he was a generous lover. 

At any moment, a flood of thoughts would overwhelm her.  Why was this the closest thing to a real relationship he had?  Two wives came and went and the current one who was more like a sparring partner than a spouse.  He admitted he went into psychology just to feel superior.

But that isn’t what she is thinking.  She remembers when she was 14 years old, feeling like a mouse walking the peeling halls of high school.  Her family had moved from Pittsburgh just six weeks ago and she knew all of one person, Christine Alhbers, who lived down the street and already hated her.

She watches the hormone-soaked kids pairing up, knowing it is merely a game of musical chairs and she will forever be the one standing when the music stops.  When she looks in the mirror, it is not hard to see why.  She is built like a leafless shrub with enough acne to be confused with an alien landscape.  She has bad asthma and it takes but the slightest whiff of an offending odor for her to cough uncontrollably.  Who would want to kiss those chapped lips, caked with blood and whatever she had for lunch?

Why is she thinking about these memories that have been buried deeply under the strata of disappointment and misfortune? Why go back thirty years to dredge up these memories when there were so many fresher, more troubling memories?

A quiet knock on the door.  She prepares to confess her unquenchable desire for Gary.  He averts his bushy eyebrows and steps aside to reveal a wispy boy—anemic and obviously chronically ill. “Please,” Gary whispers, “the boy’s never been kissed.  I just thought, you know, you could make him feel better for a little while.  Please.”

Like a leaf in the slightest breeze, a nod.

Gary’s face brightens.  “You are a darling.”  He walks the door, fumbles with some bills, thinks better of it and winks.  He closes the door so silently.

She takes a step back, pushing the robe off her shoulder.  To revel again in awkward teenage coupling.  Both terrified.  Both excited.  Both briefly unaware it will never be this good again. 

Le Déluge

For Andy Finkle

The sulfurous stink assaulted my nose. The Thzarton’s collection vehicle bleated one street over.  The now-awakened now-angry New Madrid fault shook the ground gelatinous under my feet.  That the world was ending was bad enough; the fact that I had to endure it Walter made it worse. 

My lifetime membership in the Skeptics Society had been paid-in-full years ago.  Watching the cloud of brimstone blowing in from Skokie, I had to admit I might have been too dismissive of the tinfoil hat brigades.  For now, the race was now on to see if I would be anally probed or spirited away by one of the black helicopters circling overhead.

You could see the fires in the neighborhood dancing in Walter’s glasses as he nodded at the man who bore a striking resemblance to an ancient JFK rolling down the sidewalk in a motorized wheelchair. “I told you we were doomed,” he simply said.  He was unfazed by the prospect of either being ground up for food, or put to work in the aluminum mines for the suddenly sentient gorillas on horseback.

From the moment I met Walter, he wondered how I could sleep at night, let alone smile.  It was Kathy and my first house; the place we feather our nest for the eventual arrival of our daughter, Miranda and our son, Milo.  Knowing then what Walter knew always, it was a wonder we would ever consider bringing children into a doomed world. 

I was carrying the last boxes into the house when a man who bore a striking resemblance to my late father (bald, horned-rimmed glasses, salt and pepper moustache) introduced himself as my next-door neighbor.  Of course, my father never wore coveralls nor carried a small radio, clipped to his belt, blaring out the weather forecast.  “You moving in?” he asked, trying to get a glimpse of the contents of the box.

I nodded and shrugged in one motion, making the international symbol for being unable to shake a stranger’s hand.  “Yep,” I said, “we just bought the place.”

“Hope you have better luck than the couple that lived here before.  They tried to have a baby, but couldn’t.  Believe me they tried and tried. The walls aren’t as thick as you think.” He looked over the rim of his glasses at the shoulder-width space between our bungalows.  “Heard every argument.”  He raised an eyebrow.  I couldn’t tell if it was a warning or an expectation. 

I told him it was nice to meet him; I did not want to inconvenience him; and I needed to get the box in my house or an unspecified dire consequence would occur. No worries, he was free for the rest of the day and walked into the house uninvited.  He did not offer to carry a box.  He did, however, share with me the horrors of the New Madrid fault lurking below us.  “It’s way overdue.

I have always been a fearful person: heights, confined spaces, spiders and infected doorknobs. But in all that time, I had never considered earthquakes. I accessed my fear inventory, waiting for a tsunami of dread to inundate me.  Amazingly enough–nothing.  

Walter stood at the door, looking over my shoulder at a lighting fixture that I was in the middle of replacing. “Oh, you have old wiring; that cloth insulation will go up like a firework with the smallest spark.”  That one hit pay dirt. I did not sleep that night, holding my breath, listening for the walls to ignite. 

I had to get rid of Walter.  I stood by the door and told him I was expecting guests, the plumber was in the basement, my wife was sick (and highly contagious) and, I might be wrong, but I thought I heard a woman’s voice outside calling “Walter.”   

He blocked my way to the unguarded U-Haul truck, which had caught the attention of a couple of shady-looking kids.  According to Walter, in addition to the fire hazard of the wiring, I also had to worry about radon gas in the basement and rabid raccoons in my attic.  “I trapped one in my attic. It took animal control three days to shoot the thing. Sometimes I wonder why I pay taxes.”

Thankfully, the phone in his chest pocket rang.  One of his tenants had a clogged toilet.  “The things I found in the plumbing—tissue boxes, stuffed animals, plastic bags of God-knows-what.  I even found a guinea pig in there.  Dead, of course.  I just hope it was dead when they flushed.  With my tenants, you never know. None of them would win any awards for anything.” 

I told him I did not want to stop him from tending to his duties.  Walking out, he warned about the dark SUVs with federal plates driving around the neighborhood.  “It makes you think somebody is up to something that they don’t want us to know about.”

For the next nine years, my life was an exercise in ducking Walter.  It did not take me long to figure out that asking the meaningless question “how are you?” condemned me to at least a fifteen-minute jeremiad about what was waiting in the periphery to kill, slice, abduct or infect me. 

When I managed to get in the house, I speculated Walter was the missing Roman triplet.  “There was Romulus, Remus and Walter. Romulus built Rome.  Remus taunted Romulus.  Romulus killed Remus. Walter looked at his bloody and bloodied brothers and said, “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

The final proof of Walter’s lupine origins was his inability to take a cue.  “I have told him directly ‘Walter, I have to go and you are standing in my way.’ Nothing.  No apology.  No acknowledgement.  No getting the fuck out of my way.  Who, but someone raised by wolves, could be so clueless?” 

Today, it was a bicyclist run over by the city dump truck.  Walter was convinced it was no accident.  The truck driver deliberately ran her over because she was a paralegal at a law firm that just won an excessive force case against the Chicago Police Department.  “It wasn’t an accident, it was a warning.”  A warning?  To whom?  Lawyers?  Plaintiffs? Anyone who dares challenge city hall?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  The only time Walter was positive was when he was being negative. Instead of being upset a poor girl was run over and the truck driver must live with the guilt, Walter saw a conspiracy—just another log to throw on his pyre of idiocy.

That was it; the last dram of patience drained out of me.  “Oh, for God’s sake, Walter.  Why is everything doom and gloom with you?  Why can’t there be a simple solution instead of your cockamamie conspiracy theories?  It was an accident.  Nothing more.  In all the years I have known you, the sun has always risen in the east and always set in the west and none of your crazy ideas have ever…”

As if on cue, the sun was blocked by an enormous silhouette.  I looked up at a gunmetal behemoth that steamed malevolence.  Even the bright lights at its base looked dour. “Shit,” I thought, “I am never going hear the end of this.” 

The Thzarton collection vehicle pulled over and got to work. Despite having a tentacle wrapped around his neck, preparing to deposit him into the vat of glowing goo, Walter looked smug.  “You see? You see? Yu thee? Yu…splurt.”  Before the Thzartons turned their attention to me, I saw Walter’s face pressed up against the transparent wall, pointing with an arrogant finger at the asteroid bearing down on me. 

The Museum of Maladroit Conversations

“Do you feel it,” Pete asked, pulling back the mid-century-Danish kitchen chair.  Despite my permanent cynicism, I had to admit there was something there. Sweat?  Embarrassment? Suddenly, I was back in my room, pants down to my knees, tissues in one hand and the Playboy I stole from my father’s bedside table in the other, opened to Miss May.  My father didn’t think to knock. He just stood in the hallway; hand on the knob with a look halfway between fury and shame. 

“I call it: ‘Mom?  Dad? I’m gay,’ because that is what happened in that chair twelve years ago.  Sit in it and you will feel like you are six inches tall.  That’s what so special about this museum.  It is not visual; it’s experiential.

I met Pete in sixth grade.  He was the middle child of a divorced mother who moved him to Chicago to be near her family and as far away as possible from his father.  A shy, freckled kid who grew up on an Iowa farm, never seeing anyone not pale.  He looked at the class of African Americans, Latinos, Japanese, Chinese and white kids watching him find his seat in the back, behind mine.  Once the teacher returned to the blackboard, there was a tap on my shoulder and I turned to come face to cake with a chocolate cupcake. 

“50 cents,” Pete mouthed.  I was a pudgy kid with a health food freak for a mother.  Nothing in our house had added sugar and dessert was either a piece of overripe fruit or moldered cheese. 

I shook my head and Pete pushed it closer.  “Come on,” he whispered, “you know you want it.”   We completed the deal in the hallway as soon as class was over.  The change was out of my pocket and I inhaled the cupcake.  “Plenty more where that came from.”

That was always Pete’s genius; always selling the last thing someone would admit they needed.  “He frowned at Vince Santavasi who sold pot behind the dumpster as lacking in imagination.  “Anyone can sell pot.  Who doesn’t want to get high?”  Pete specialized in servicing the subconscious.  He sold Dodie Williams tissue paper to stuff her bras.  He sold Bob Ferry travel-sized bottles of Head and Shoulder’s shampoo to arrest the dandruff that piled on his shoulders.

“Try this one on,” he said, slipping something around my neck.  Why did I hear ticking?

“This was your grandfather’s,” my mother said, dangling an antique pocket watch in front of me as if she were trying to hypnotize me. “He wore it every day he was in court. He was the genuine self-made man.  Came from nothing made something out of himself.”  What she did not say, but need not was: “And look how quickly you unmade it.”

My mother, who was frustrated in pretty much everything, childhood, marriage, housewivery, and the slow and futile fight of stage IV breast cancer. Knowing I was less accomplished in math than language, my life was papered with virtual highway signs telling me of all the benefits I would reap when I graduated law school; among the booty was my grandfather’s watch. 

The irony was my mother hated lawyers.  She spent most of her life missing her father who preferred the office, court and his club to spending time with his only daughter.  But should she have been so disappointed that I ended up with a degree in creative writing and in the Development Department of a small Midwestern college?  Every so often, she retrieved my grandfather’s watch and sighed as if it was a miscarried child with oh so much more potential than me. 

“You feel don’t you?  The disappointment of a father physician who just learned his son just quit pre-med to major in dance.  I’m telling you, this one gets to me.  You know my Dad dealt pills and went to his grave disappointed that I was doing nothing.  To him, what’s the point of doing it if anyone can?  Any one can, no one else does.  What a prick. Sometimes, I put on the stethoscope and I want to hang myself.  And then I wish my father was still alive so I could hang him.”   

All I wanted was to leave the museum gulp the winter air and vomit; throw up until there was nothing left in my stomach.

But Pete had other ideas.  He sidled up way too close and put his arm around my neck.  His breath smelled of pepperoni and conspiracy.  “There is one more thing I want to show you.  I don’t usually share it with anyone; it is not only priceless, there will never ever be its like.”

He beckoned me to a small office in the back that contained a metal desk and a small gray filing cabinet.  He fished keys from his pocket and unlocked the second from the top drawer.  He withdrew a package, about the size of a medium pumpkin, wrapped in multiple layers of bubble wrap.  He motioned me back as if it was explosive. 

Pete treated me to something that was between an autopsy and a striptease.  Under the bubble wrap was butcher paper and under that was a gallon freezer bag that contained a battered Lucite box, the kind used for displaying baseballs.  But inside was no baseball.

“Here, put these on,” he said, handing me a pair of insulated lineman gloves.  “It will burn your skin right off.”

“It is best if you don’t look at directly.  Look around it.  Not at it.”  He reached over for a pair of tongs and pulled the top off.  “Hold out your hands.  There,” he said, pulling the tongs back. 

All I could feel was the racing of my pulse in my fingertips. It was maybe two inches across.  Shriveled with a small stem sticking out of the top. On either side there were two small holes, maybe ¾ of an inch across and ¼ deep as whoever bit into knew they were doing wrong.

“Helen.  Lithe. Beautiful. Unobtainable.  Font of my desire during my college years.  Long blonde hair.  Almond-shaped brown eyes.  A figure carved by Pygmalion.  Since we met at orientation at college, she was all I thought about.  But I possessed neither the language nor the courage to approach her. 

Three beers followed by two shots of vodka, a hunk of my mother’s dense apple cake, and my stomach felt inundated by a tsunami.  The nausea allowed me just twenty-five feet from my dorm room door.  Dressed only in mostly-clean white briefs, I sprinted down the hall.  Vomit spewed like Vesuvius.  I slipped in my sick, landing with an embarrassing splurch.  There was raucous laughter, but I heard Helen’s voice saying gross.  Not ideal timing, but my alcohol-figured brain told me better now than ever.

Pulling myself up from the vomit, I wobbled towards her, hand extended.  “I’m Stuart.  I love you.” 

Like a pyrite miner, I panned for pleasure on her face, but found only revulsion.  “Your thing is showing,” she said, pointing at my crotch.  I looked down and saw my penis, like a sick worm, peeping out of the flap.  “Gross,” she said, walking forever out of my life.

I was undulating in the middle of the ocean slowly being pulled down.  I must have swooned as Pete was suddenly behind, holding me up.  “Careful there, cowboy.  Don’t drop the apple.”

“Apple,” I asked him, seeing nothing but fog. 

“Not just an apple.  The apple.  He reached up and pointed at one side and then the other.  “Adam.  Eve. The birth of embarrassment.  Imagine that conversation.”   

Without a net

Roscoe referred to himself as ‘county royalty.’ “You got your real royalty,” he said, ticking each item with a grimy index finger, “state royalty – that’s your governors or attorney generals, city royalty—mayors and bankers and then county royalty.  That’s what I come from.  You wouldn’t know it, but mention my name in Spencer County and you’re saying something.”

It was a mystery how a man who owned two pairs of pants and three shirts and slept in his car could brag about his status. Spencer County was more decrepit than my own Nelson County.  Like all of us, they had seen better days. 

Whatever was in Spencer County had no gravitational pull to keep Roscoe there and, like all things downhill, brought him to Chapin and Diane’s Diner where, in exchange for unloading the early morning truck and doing the breakfast and lunch dishes, he got three square meals of whatever did not sell. 

“Look at this,” Roscoe said, rustling through his pants pockets disgorging a couple of coins, a dented bottle cap, and a yellowed piece of newsprint that had been folded too many times to still be legible. The only words I could read was “angel of the trap...”  The photo was dark with smudges as if someone had fondled it.  A faceless woman stood on a narrow platform attached to a pole. 

“Isn’t she beautiful?  That’s my mother, Edith.  They said gravity didn’t apply to her.  My father never forgot the first time he saw her sparkling through the air.  Most people do not believe in love at first sight, but I am living proof.”  He held his arms out, revealing a hole under his right arm.  “My father brought a young and appropriate young woman to the circus, who he immediately forgot about when he saw the bedazzled woman above his head.  She had to get a ride home because he drove into town and bought every rose they have.”

“Things were different then,” he said, tearing into a day-old doughnut. “My father was upper crust and my mother owned nothing more than leotard and a change of clothes.  Neither side approved of them as couple.  My father’s family had high standards and my mother’s family assumed he wanted one thing and one thing only, leaving her to raise the baby alone.” 

“My mother had been warned about young rich men.  But the next day, when she climbed down the pole, there was Dad again with another bouquet.  He was a perfect gentleman, keeping his hands behind his back as they walked along the river until her father caught up dragged her back to the circus.”

“I don’t want you to think that his family was any purer than my mother’s.  There’s plenty of ‘cousins’ walking around Spencer County who look a lot like me.  But those kind of girls were for practice, not for marrying.”

“My grandfather threatened to disown my father, but he really couldn’t if he was looking for someone to carry on the family name.  I have three aunts and two uncles by marriage. Blood can be passed down to girls but not a name.” 

“My parents were happy.  Whatever my mother wanted she had before she asked. She would stand above him when he sat on the porch so the sun wouldn’t burn him.  He encouraged her to travel with the circus, always waiting for her when the train pulled up.”

“There were children before me.  Well, not exactly children, but miscarriages, a still birth and an older sister who didn’t live a week and never had a name.  The doctors blamed my mother’s work.  ‘The human body is just not supposed to fight gravity,’ one of them said.”

“My mother wanted to quit.  But my father wouldn’t hear of it. She was born to the sky. That is where he fell in love with her.  He could no more imagine her not soaring than seeing the sun rise in the west. They would keep trying and she would keep flying.  Maybe he thought flying made her happy.  Maybe he didn’t want to be married to just a woman with her feet on the ground.”

“I was born prematurely in my grandfather’s parlor on Christmas morning. My mother was sitting in one of those big armchairs and I tumbled out in a bloody mess.  My grandfather never forgave her for staining the Oriental rug. He would point out my birth stain and tell me how he much he spent trying to get it out.” 

“Things fall. We might not like it, but gravity never asks our opinion.  You will never know what it is like for a child to see his mother tumbling above his head-- the sparkling beads, her hair flowing.  She somersaults into the grab of a strange man.  It is only natural for him to be scared?  It is only natural for him to scream, right?

He stopped, lifting his unshaven chin like a cornered porcupine.  “I was four.  I was scared.  I called “Mama!” He said the word loud enough to startle the other three diners. 

“One word, said at the wrong time, when her attention was on the grab.  When her momentum took her out past the net, arms flailing until she disappeared from view and the crowd screamed.” 

“The doctor said she didn’t feel anything. In a blink, she was a bird flying free and then a quadriplegic with a broken neck.”

“There was no way my mother could get up the stairs to the second floor.  My father had the help bring down their bed and a small wardrobe that held the six housedresses she wore for the rest of her life. My bedroom was still upstairs and terrifying at night.  My father had to hire a nanny to spend the night.” 

“A week before she fell, they found out she was pregnant.  The room next to mine was supposed to be my brother or sister’s room. That room became Marie’s, then Sophie’s and then Jeanette’s, until my father, not being able to afford a nanny any more, said I was old enough to cry myself to sleep.”

“Not only was my mother confined to a wheel chair, she barely talked.  Most of the time her jaw would tremble and her tongue would loll about like an exhausted dog on a hot day.  Whatever was going on behind her rheumy eyes, all she said was ‘no.’ She must have said it 20 times a day.  She didn’t want to eat.  She didn’t have to go to bathroom.  She didn’t want to go outside.”

“At first, my father said nothing would change.  We were still a family and he wanted us to be as normal as possible.  He probably thought that somebody somewhere above would notice his decency and take pity on him.  But heaven remained silent.”

“My grandfather was no help. He said the accident was the result of when people stray from their own.  He offered no help, financial or otherwise, and the few times he showed up at our house, he could barely unfold his arms.”

My father descended into the crutches of the disappointed Southern gentlemen—alcohol and infidelity.  At first, he tried to hide it, smelling of peppermints and eau de cologne.  I am sure my mother was not fooled.  Her “no’s” were quieter, slower and sadder.  Eventually, he gave up, staggering about the house and cursing at anything that would listen.  He took lovers up the back staircase to their old bedroom in which he had a sofa brought in.  It was right above my mother’s room so I am sure she heard it all.  I did.”

“Appalled by the talk of scandal, my grandfather dropped dead in mid rant in his parlor, not far from my birth stain. Most of his money went to a second cousin and the rest to a home for wayward women.”

“It was the last straw and my father let go, knowing that there was nothing beneath him.  They found his Chevrolet wrapped around an oak tree on the road to the reservoir.  He was probably on his way to drown himself and missed.”

“My mother was shipped off to a charity nursing home that didn’t think it was important for her to see her son or tell him she had died until the day of the funeral.”

“I went to a distant cousin who thought there was some inheritance waiting for me.  When she learned there was none to be had, she threw me out at 15, saving me the trouble of running away.”

Roscoe smiled and pushed himself up from the table.  He smiled while wrapping a filthy apron around himself. “Well, that’s my story.  Every day wandering back and forth.  Back and forth. Going nowhere.”  He slipped behind the counter and added “But, then again, you can’t fall when you are already at rock bottom.”.

Reparable

They come as soon as soon as the mall closes.  The Christmas lights that have been there since October and will still be up in a month, go off.  They throw the tarps over and slide the cables and locks into place as if anything underneath is worth stealing.  Then they come to me.  Sometimes it is get a watch fixed, but mostly it is for advice.  Juan who sells vinyl siding, is thinking in getting into his Uncle’s ice cream business.  Tanya, who sells cellphone cases, is in a bad relationship, but doesn’t know if she can do better.  Kevin, who sells timeshares, is starting to hear angry voices in his head. 

“I work at a mall kiosk,” said no one ever who hoped to get a date.  If the girl has extraordinary resilience, she might let me explain I do not sell phone plans, vinyl siding or even wooden religious item.  I am basically a jeweler. I am sure people at Kay Jewelers or JBR would disagree.  I don’t technically sell jewelry except for the watches that people have left for repair and never returned for. Their customers would be surprised to learn that the professional jewelers sheepishly come down after hours leaving me with repairs that their “experts” can’t fix. 

My kiosk is not one of those down a dingy arm of the mall, but smack in the middle of the main concourse, outside of the Foot Locker and the Rue Claire.  Enter from the east parking lot and head west; it’s impossible to miss me.  There is another kiosk closer to the center of the mall, but it is basically a cart with shelves.  It has sold bangles, hot tubs and key chains with all the popular names.

I have seen the other kiosk residents come and go.  They show up early one morning with boxes full of products and optimism.  They tell me how excited they are to sell [insert useless bauble here] and how this is just the beginning of their road to success. 

First comes the kiosk, then a small store and then stores in other malls.  I look up from whatever I am fixing and nod.  I have heard this all before, but what would be the point of being an asshole?  They’ll figure it out soon enough. 

And when they fail, they will wait until I throw the tarp over my worktable.  They wave to me as I walk by, as if they will still be the next day.  They never are.  More than one has left a Post-It note with an apology on my tarp.  I don’t judge. It is tough to make it working in a kiosk.  Focus and low aspirations is the name of the game.  Me?  I fix watches from crystals to gear work.  But I mostly sell and install watchbands and batteries.  Nothing sexy.  But for someone who needs a working watch, it’s important.  There is nothing better than to watch them checking their wrists as they walk away. It may sound corny, but it gives me a thrill to see that.  I know—undatable. 

Since I could hold something in my hand, I was on a mission to fix it.  At first, it was simply the top of a vitamin bottle.  Then it was blocks that were arranged in a neat line.  I lived in a word that was divided into the broken and the fixed.  My father, a physician, had dreams of me being a surgeon.  It didn’t take him long to realize his dreams were mere fantasies.  Most smart kids distinguish themselves in elementary school.  I was in third grade when Miss Temmie declared to my parents there was nothing wrong with being ordinary.  I was pleasant enough and I could fix anything she put in front of me.  Some people work with their brains and some people work with their hands.  My father looked like he had been stung by a wasp and was unsure whether he was allergic.  He transferred his dreams and expectations on my sister, Susan.  Susan ended up being a psychologist, which wasn’t what he wanted, but was a hell of a lot better than someone whose office is 24 square feet and perpetually smells of grapefruit due to being downwind of the Bath and Body Works. 

It never bothered me—my father’s disapproval.  The one thing learned from him is there are things that you can fix and somethings you can’t.  Every so often someone brings me a watch that fell into the water.  The gears are inevitably corroded and it would cost twice what the watch is worth to try to fix it. 

The one thing I have in common with my father is the ability to deliver bad news quickly with the right amount of sympathy, without being drawn into debate. I’ve had customers yell at me and insisted that I must have done something wrong or that I was incompetent.  I shake my head and go back to my work.  They can be upset at me, but that still won’t bring back their watch or fix the fine filigree of the necklace.  If he could, my father would have been proud of me.  Being mad or sad, somethings just can’t be fixed.  The secret is to know the difference.

Somebody knew somebody who knew my friend Brad and told him that there was a job fixing watches and jewelry.  Being the person that everybody brought their stereos for fixing, Brad though this would be a good job for me. As I could never make college fit, I figured why not.  Brad conveyed that message back down the line.  I don’t remember what I expected the Watch Stop to look like, but I certainly as hell did not imagine it to be a glorified fishbowl, defined by shelves and cases that contained watchbands, surrounding a bench with tools and a lamp and a small table with a cash register on it. 

If there was a place that deserved the sign: “Dead End,” the Watch Stop was it.  This is where my lack of ambition had deposited me.  What could be worse than “worked at a mall kiosk” on one’s resume?  It would be better to feign unemployment.  Swallowing what little pride I had left, I opened the half-door and sat on the chair that someone had duct-taped a pillow to the seat. 

I was overcome with surprise when I discovered that I liked the work.  I liked to fix things and not think too deeply about it.  Replacing a watch battery is just about the right tools and a supply of batteries.  At first it seemed meaningless—anyone with the right tools could do it.  But that was the point—they didn’t have the right tools.  I could tell by the scratches on the bezel that customers tried screwdrivers, knifes and maybe their teeth.  Admitting defeat, they come to me and looked relieved when I say nothing, pop the back off, insert the battery and handing it back to them without comment.  At most 30 seconds at all and with a simple charge of $9.  Technically, if I worked constantly, I was making over $500 an hour.  Not too shabby.  Watch bands took even less and people seemed to appreciate me not saying anything when they chose the cheaper lizard over the more expensive alligator.  An expensive band goes on as easily as a cheap one. 

I have fixed phones, calculators, glasses, blenders and pretty much anything that required at least two parts to work in harmony.  The hardest part was figuring out how much to charge and explaining to Mr. Schneider why the underside of the table was packed with parts not related to watches and jewelry.  He didn’t mind; I made him more money than he reasonably could expect. 

When you take the emotion, such as frustration or fear, out of the repair equation, making repairs is easy. That goes for watches, necklaces or relationships.  The answer I offer as the night-time visitors wait their turn is the same and is in the form of two questions: Can it be fixed? And: Is it worth it?  Other than that, I have no other solution and no other answers.  Most of the time it is enough. 

Jumping Jim

I have always been a nervous, black cloud, half-empty glass kind of guy. I have been startled by the cat brushing by, causing me to reach for the least lethal weapon—a wooden spoon, a peeler, an empty milk carton.  

I come by my nervous disposition honestly.  My mother calls it the “Southern malady.”  She has the same condition, only worse.  She grew up in a formerly wealthy section of Montgomery, Alabama in a house and neighborhood that reeked of possession.  The house had been in her mother’s family for over a hundred years and once was stately.  When she lived there, it was more haunted than alive.  Pictures of her two elder sisters who had both died before they were seven littered the house.  

We know of at least three occasions when my grandmother was institutionalized.  Back then, institutions were more for avoiding scandal than treatment. Grandpa Elliott was not much of a source of comfort my mother.  “He was sad,” my mother said, encapsulating drunken philandering and profligate spending in three words.  It is no wonder my mother ended up a fragile woman who drove two husbands away.  She lives in a small apartment with double deadlocks.  When I pick her up for family events, she stares out the window as if she is on her way to an abattoir.  My kids call her “your mother” as opposed to my wife’s mother who they call “Nana.”

It should not come as a surprise when I heard a thump, a curse and rustling coming from just outside the kitchen door, I succumbed to hysterical blindness.  I imagined the back door kicked in, gun raised and fired. I was dead, slumped in a kitchen chair with a peony blossom of blood in the middle of my chest.

The fact he knocked in no way comforted me; all it meant was that he preferred to torture before killing.   My hands were so sweaty I could barely operate the locks and knob.  But the last thing I wanted to was make him wait a second more than was necessary.  

He was at least four inches taller than me, which made him around six-foot two, even without the army helmet with the two stars on it and his boots, coated in mud.  His face looked like it had been carved out of stone by a lazy sculptor with only barest strokes for eyes, nose and mouth.  He took one step forward and grimaced.  “May I,” he asked, pointing at one of the kitchen chairs. He wasn’t the sort of man one told no.  

He walked past me, dragging his parachute like a coronation train.  He also dragged in an uprooted rhododendron that somehow I would have to explain to my wife, Karil, who was asleep upstairs.  He plopped into the chair and tilted his helmet three-quarters of an inch up as if this was the only relaxation he would allow himself. “Landed on the pavement, again.  Did it on D-Day, fractured five vertebrae, but don’t tell anyone.”

A soldier who parachuted both seventy-two years into the future and onto my front yard was worried that I would betray his sore back.  Who would I tell?  Who would believe me?  

He leaned forward and held out a hand that made mine feel like it was made of limp pizza dough.  “Jim,” he said, “Jim Gavin.  General Gavin of 82nd Airborne.  Jumping Jim.” 

I had registered for the draft when I turned 18, but that was the extent of my knowledge of the military.  “Hello?” was the best I could offer.

He reached out into his shirt pocket and took out a small well-used leather notebook that had a pencil attached to it with string.  “It says you have problem with confidence” he said, quickly closing and returning the notebook to his pocket.  

Saying I had a problem with confidence was like saying dogs bark and cats don’t. I was perpetually pestered by doubt like sweat flies annoy a wildebeest.  If my family had a crest it would be the Latin for “Is this okay?”  I could do nothing, be it deliver a report, make pasta or offer cunnilingus without asking if it was okay. 

He shook out a cigarette out of the carton and in one fluid motion perched it between his lips, lit it and took a deep inhalation.  All without asking permission. Another thing for me to explain to my wife in the morning.  Hopefully she would be too upset about the shrubbery on the floor to notice the acrid remnants of an unfiltered cigarette. 

“You may not believe this,” he said, using the glowing end of cigarette like a laser pointer.  “But there were times over the drop zone when we were in the dark except for the Germen’s search lights and the bursts of flak all around the plane.  I knew as soon as I jumped, I was going to be lit up like a Christmas tree; the Kraut machine gunners drooling to get me in their sights. Believe me, those are times when a man could consider losing confidence in himself.

Consider it?  My God, it was all I could not do but assume the fetal position at his feet.

He looked around at the kitchen.  To me, it was full of warped cabinets, incontinent plumbing and general decay that spoke of a rehab project now in its second decade. “Nice place you have here.  Cozy.  Warm.  Dry.”  

“Thanks,” I said, unsure if he was making fun of me.  I plopped into a chair like a paratrooper with a defective chute hitting a bog.  

Grimacing he stood up and walked behind me. He put two competent hands on my shoulders that could either provide comfort or snap my neck.  

“Son, you have to stop comparing yourself to people.  Yes, I was one of the youngest major generals and my life story deserves a News Reel of its own: father of the paratroopers, I was at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, the final push to Berlin, part of the occupational government of West Germany and then a highly successful career as a businessman and finally Ambassador to France.” He inhaled like he was enjoying the aroma of a fine brandy that would make me gag.  “That was my life and this is yours,” he said, we a broad sweep of his hand.

“Look, son, not every boy who jumped was brave.  Some of them were simply pushed out and the static line hook, gravity and prop wash did the rest.  They would scream all the way down. More often than not, the Kraut guns got them or they snapped their necks landing in a tree.  Never understood why they screamed.” 

I knew exactly why they screamed: the weight of the past, the doleful present, careening to a certain and dismal future.  With regret’s heft, it was a miracle their parachutes could slow them at all.

He swiveling my chair until our faces (granite and putty) were aligned.  “But most fellas just jumped without saying a word.  They jumped because they weren’t so obsessed about history, because you don’t have a past at 12,000 feet.  Even if you did, it isn’t like you could go back and fix it.  They didn’t give a damn about the present either, because every moment could be your last.  And the future?  Who knew if you even had a future?  Hero or not.  Fate’s got your number.  So why worry about it?”

He stared at me, daring me not to be transformed.  Plummeting felt like absolution. Just let go and let gravity take the blame.  The past would recede into the sky as the future rapidly encroached. I had been afraid of too many things in my life, too many to ever have happened. It wasn’t elegant or even planned, but I had stumbled into a life that was by most standards good.  What had all that dread given me?  Nothing but bad advice and sleepless nights.  

I nodded like it was the first time in my life.

He patted my shoulder.  “Sometimes you just have to jump, Pete.  No questions.  No doubts.  Just jump.”

Wait, what did he call me?  “Pete?” I asked.

He frowned.  “You are Pete Chozick?”  He reached for the notebook.  “This is 208 Greenfield, right?”

I shook my head and pointed at the open door.  “No this is 207 Greenfield.  Pete lives across the street.”

“Damn,” he said, gathering his parachute.  “Wind must have made me drift.”  He left muttering, “figured you for a screamer.”  The only remnant of him or his advice was a dead rhododendron splayed out on the kitchen floor like an unlucky paratrooper.   

It

When the whistle hit the bar with a dull, metallic thud, I knew Plan C was worse than Plan B.  Plan B was to get off the Kennedy, which on this Friday afternoon resembled I-75 heading out of Atlanta after the Zombie apocalypse.  It was simple—just get off at Touhy and drive east until I could find a reasonable alternative heading south.  Either I was one of many great minds thinking alike or there was simply no way to reach work by quitting time.  

That is when Plan C—in the form of some non-descript vaguely Irish pub—appeared.  Stopped at red light, I saw a Cubs game above the sparsely populated bar. I could call my boss Brad and lament the terrible traffic until he told me not to worry about coming and wish me a good weekend.  Besides, there was parking right in front.  As a borderline agnostic, this was as close as I was to come to a sign from above.  God nodded his assent as I got Brad’s voice mail that announced he was out for the afternoon.  What’s good for the goose, right?  So much for giving 110% 24/7/365 and whatever nonsense was at the bottom of Brad’s emails.

I forgot the bar’s name by the time my eyes adjusted to the gloom.  There were four men, including the man standing behind the bar.  A row of three high boy tables waited in vain for a crowd that would never appear.  At the far end of the bar, an old man nursed a pilsner-glass while annoying the bartender with his constant complaints about everything.  Opposite him was a thirty-something man drinking a can of Diet Pepsi while eying the taps that were apparently off limits to him.  

Then there was the coach.  From bottom up: Nike running shoes that never did anything but walk, bulbous sweatpants and matching sweatshirt with the name of a local high school emblazoned on the chest.  The mascot was distorted due a distended stomach, partially supported by the bar’s brass railing. His only other adornment was a whistle on a lanyard dangling from his neck, surrounded by a halo of drool.  

I was completely anonymous in a bar I would never visit again. It was the closest I would come to being invisible and thus free of my constant companion—Irrelevance. I would enjoy a beer or two and watch the end of the Cubs game without the need to engage in conversation or even think.  The bartender poured me a beer without asking.

The beer was nondescript, but cold.  The Cubs were down to the Cardinals by one in the bottom of the ninth.  Two outs.  Kris Bryant was up with a 1-1 count.  Remarkably, I didn’t interpret the Cubs as a referendum on myself.  My thoughts were flat line until the metal whistle hit the bar and a being a great heft plopped on the stool next to me.  I didn’t have to look over to know who invaded my oasis. If I were a dog, I would be an American Blowhard Pointer.  

Despite my silent cringing prayers, he spoke.  “That Bryant kid has ‘it.’”  He punctuated the sentence with an elbow to my ribs, just in case I could not tell he was talking to me.  I swiveled my stool and surveyed him. He guzzled whatever was left in his mug, with two rivulets of saliva cascading down his chins. 

“You play?” he asked, priming himself for disappointment.

“Play?” 

“Baseball?  You play?”

“No.” 

“Didn’t think so.  I can always tell a player.  And before you ask, it has nothing to do with having physique.  I had this student once.  Adnan.  He was from either Iraq or Iran.  The one we didn’t fight.  It doesn’t matter.  Adnan showed up at the first day of spring training, wearing dress shoes, khakis and a polo shirt. Poor kid.  He had never held a baseball.  I looked him up and down and I said: ‘Adnan, I don’t care if you can hit or throw.  What I care about is effort and attitude.  You give me everything every day and I won’t cut you.  And you know what?  That boy played all four years for me. True, he held a bat like he was playing golf.  He couldn’t throw at all and shagging flyballs was an adventure. When I used him as a pinch runner, he ran like he was ducking a sniper.  But I didn’t care.  You know why?”

He raised one of his eyebrows until it looked like one caterpillar was sodomizing another.  He obviously had nothing better to do than to wait for me to say something.  

I took a leap. “Because he had it?”  

He jammed a thick index finger into my chest until it hurt.  He punctuated each word with a poke.  “He. Had. It. I could only pray that the rest of my players had a dollop of Adnan’s It.”

“God damn it,” he said, looking up at the television on which Kris Bryant had just swung at ball in the dirt.  “What the hell was he thinking?  He can’t lay off the breaking stuff. He guzzled half of the mug, looked at his watch, and looked around.  “Screw it.  It’s the weekend.  I don’t need to spew this crap until Monday.” 

“Tell the truth, Adnan wasn’t worth a damn. I know we are supposed to tell stories about kids like Adnan who got by on desire only.  But what I would give for a team of Seth, my star pitcher.  He has more talent in the pinky of his non-pitching hand than Adnan has in his fat body.  But I have to keep pointing at because ‘It’ matters.” He made air quotes with his Vienna-sausage fingers.  “Between you and me, it is just the caboose for S.H., if you get my drift.”  He lifted his mug and drained it.  “I was spelling “shit.”  In case I didn’t get it.

“It didn’t used to be this way.  When I was a kid, the good ones played and the bad ones never made the team.  But not anymore.  We are all winners.  Hooray!  Who cares if we lose in the process.”  He motioned for another mug.  The bartender looked like he was debating the revenue versus liability. 

 “You’ve always been a bencher.  Am I right? I’ve been doing this so long that I can tell with just one look.” His head bobbled up and down, his tongue lolling about like a mongrel with fleas.  He narrowed his eyes as if he was seeing multiple me’s and managed to land his fat index finger just above my left nipple.  “You. Are. A. Bencher.  I wouldn’t be surprised if your keester is full of splinters.  Am I right?  You are a bencher, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to answer.  “I knew it.  A bencher, pure and simple.”  He crossed his arms over the medicine ball he called a stomach.

I plotted the line from “shut up, you fat fuck” to where I punch him in his ruddy, pudgy face. But I didn’t do anything.  The same phrase was running around my head like a squirrel caught indoors.  “A Bencher.” Was he right?  I could look at the long list of triumphs in my life, and unlike my disappointments, they seemed handed to me out of pity.  The academic award for a solid B average.  A certificate of appreciation from the boys’ basketball team for excellence in stacking basketballs after practice.  A dingy gold ring because staying married was easier than a divorce.  Finally, several rumpled business cards that identified me as a senior sales manager at a mid-tier medical supply company with no junior salespeople.

He reached over and rubbed his stubby fingers in my hair like raccoons rutting around the garbage. “Don’t worry.  There’s nothing you can do about. Some are born with it and most aren’t.  You have a whole bunch of company.  He motioned with his chins at the others in the bar.  “No one here is going to set the world on fire here either.  Adnan?  I hear he is working for some accounting firm.  Don’t know if he is a success or not.  At least he was good at sitting down.”  He looked down at my butt on the stool and said nothing.  He held up his near-empty mug and shook it.  The remaining beer sloshed like stale dreams.  

There’s Something Wrong with Morton

"There’s something wrong with Morton,” I said, wiping my feet at the door.  I had been kneeling at the pond’s edge; I probably had half of the backyard on the bottom of my shoes.  I could be excused the travesty of tracking mud into the house today because my best friend was dying.  But Christ himself could return and Be would have yelled at him for getting blood on the carpet.  You don’t name your daughter Beatrice and provide her with an exhaustive and inviolable list of inviolable etiquettes and expect her to be laissez-faire.  My shortening her name to Be did nothing to loosen her up.   

“I think this may be…” I tried to say, but my throat tightened.

“He’s a fish,” she said, wiping the counter down, but also dabbing her eyes.  Weakness to Be’s mother was not to be tolerated. She whispered, “how can you tell?”  She looked around in case her dead mother walked in.

“He’s glassy eyed and swimming in circles just like the doctor said he would.”

“Again, he’s a fish,” she said, rearranging the condiments on the top shelf of the refrigerator.  “How can you tell?” she asked again.

She said she never understood my relationship with a carp and yet, in our twenty years together, she never questioned his presence.  Maybe she knew too well what it was like to be confined. 

I saved Morton from the ignominy of my grandmother’s gefilte fish.  My grandmother should have been banned from entering any kitchen; the gefilte fish she made should be classified as a war crime.  Everyone in the family had their special way of crushing the patty to make it look like more than was actually consumed. 

I was a lonely child as my father was a vice president for AT&T and we moved a lot, mostly to get away from his family.  My older sister Brenda was allergic to basically everything and so there was no chance we would be getting a cat, a dog or even a hamster. I spent my days building Lincoln Log villages populated by imaginary pets. 

When I was nine years old, we moved back to Philadelphia where my father’s family lived.  He felt guilty that he had been to one to escape, something my grandmother could smell on them.  That Passover, my father took my grandmother and me to buy fish.  I had no idea of why she wanted me to go along so I defaulted to my common fantasy of a puppy. 

We went to South Philadelphia, which had one time been a Jewish neighborhood but was then the dictionary illustration of urban decay.  The store did lousy job promoting the sale of fish.  The windows behind the grates were covered with old newspaper.  The store that was lit by five bare light bulbs dangling from the ceiling and smelled like an abandoned dock. 

The counter was an old wooden door balanced on two barrels.  Behind it, barrel-shaped as well, was a man in a tight stained tank top.  There were scales on his hairy arms, in his thick beard, in his ears and his bushy eyebrows.  There were no signs or a cash register—just an old cigar box jammed with damp bills.  You entered, muttered and gestured the approximate size of the fish you were looking for.  The monger jammed his arm into the squirming barrel of fish and came up with an offering.  Once confirmed, he would place the fish with one arm on the counter and then the other hand would reach for a bat with which to brain the fish.  

All of this was horrific to a young boy who just wanted something to cuddle with. Each fish, freed briefly from the roiling tempest only to be dispatched by a blow to the head.  I was not much of an existentialist then, but there seemed to be some crushing futility to it all.  

My grandmother pointed into the barrel and said “towards the back.  Not too small.”  The monger nodded and plunged his arm in up to the elbow.  He brought the fish up, writhing and arching---a look of terror in its clear eyes.  He placed the fish down and lifted the bat over his head.  

“Bubba.  Papa,” I said, grabbing my father’s arm as if he was the one with the bat.  “Please let him live.”

My grandmother looked at me as if I had accepted Jesus.  My father leapt at the opportunity to demonstrate his moral superiority.  “Wait,” he said to the fish man.  “We’ll take it live.”

“Live?” the monger and my grandmother chorused.  

“Yes,” my father said.  Just put some water in a bag and we’ll take the fish with us.”  If his goal was to embarrass my grandmother—mission accomplished. “Here you go,” he said, handing the writhing bag to me.  

My mother assumed that Morton would have a life expectancy that could be measured in days.  He spent his first evening in the bathtub as my grandmother angrily consumed her chicken soup, eyeing the unused plates she had set aside for gefilte fish.  

The next morning, I was delighted to find Morton still alive.  I placed my hand in the water and he swam back and forth like a cat.  My mother came in, already on edge from spending the night with my grandmother. My father had not consulted her when he called an audible on Morton.  Just another “long distance decision,” he made for which she would have to bear the consequences.  

Morton was moved to the laundry sink in our basement and to a galvanized tub whenever my mother did laundry.  Morton defied the odds and survived, when we moved to Cleveland, then to Seattle and back to New Jersey.  We bought an aquarium in which he would watch the world go by as we traveled to each new home.  

Every day when Morton heard me drop my school bag, he would plash about downstairs.  He surfaced, waiting for me to rub his head.  My mother once asked a veterinarian how long she could expect the fish to live; she nearly vomited when he said 40 to 50 years.  

She probably bided her time for when I went to college.  All she would have to do was forget to replace the plug and there would be a sorry-not sorry call to me at BU.  After all, I had left Morton with her when I knew my father would be traveling most of the time.  

Mom could never pull the trigger.  Maybe she saw in him a fellow traveller who had no say in where he went.  She even shed a tear when I moved into an apartment on Commonwealth Avenue that conveniently had a claw-footed tub that none of my roommates used.  Morton excused beer cans in the tub and an occasional drunken game of “Toss the Carp,” if it meant we would be close. 

Morton and I moved into our own apartment after college and I knew that Be was the one when she didn’t think it was odd to have a 35 gallon galvanized tub in the living room with two wooden shelves across it to serve as a coffee table.  She had grown up in a house in which conforming was the only goal.  A carp as a pet could be the silver flag of her rebellion. Morton sensed it, too, as he surfaced whenever she came out of the bedroom.  It is not often one chose one’s mate based on pet preference; but I have seen a lot of relationships built on less.  

When we bought our first house, a bungalow in Berwyn, I dug Morton a pond out back.  In the winter, I moved him to a tank in the basement, even though the vet assured me he could survive the winter with a de-icer and an air stone. I set up an old television on my workbench so we could watch television together under the low ceiling.

I guess Morton didn’t get gotten the memo that he had another twenty years left.  Three separate vets said there was nothing to be done about his lassitude and suggested a peaceful end. I remembered the shocked monger, bat now dangling impotently from his hand as if he won a one-way ticket to Brigadoon. I remembered my father’s smile, finally forgiven for escaping. And then tears in my grandmother eyes, surprised by a rare beauty in an ugly life.

I looked over at Be, who was crying, trying hard it by scrubbing harder.  Poor Morton, he was the only one fine with being confined.  

Rhonda in Perpetua

No one could constantly agree yet remain so disagreeable. Rhonda nodded her head, rattling the bangles that hung from her ears and encircled her goose neck.  She said she understood, that she completely agreed, but her icy stare said she did not understand nor agree.  

But she could not express her thoughts.  Her job as realtor required her to keep us happy, while trying to convince us that it would not cost much to renovate the condo she just showed us.  Yes, the second bedroom was too small. Much too small.  And the building did have an odd smell.  But we had to consider the building was almost a hundred years old and we could not find the building’s special features such as a butler’s pantry, coved ceilings and leaded glass windows that sparkled when the sun set.  I agreed, but of course I did; I loved vintage, which Troy called old while he loved modern, which I called soulless.  

The only thing Troy and I agreed on was that we picked the wrong realtor.  Troy’s ex, Stuart who had the wherewithal to buy a home in Lincoln Park and a vacation home in Saugatuck recommended Rhonda.  Yes, Rhonda was old enough to be an actual daughter of the American Revolution, looked like an apple cob-head doll and dressed like she shopped at Rhoda garage sale. But she knew every realtor in town and had the tenacity of a badger. 

Rhonda had every reason to be exasperated.  Troy wanted a condo in the center of the action. I wanted a bungalow where I could have a garden and maybe a dog or two.  Troy patronized me as being the world’s oldest 38-year-old octogenarian. “No worries,” she said, in a cheerful voice that macerated insincerity, “I will show you a number of places in your price range, some condos and some houses.  She winked at Troy conspiratorially and then blinked at me with the same eye.

“In your price range” was the universal response of why she could not show us a place in which we could actually imagine ourselves living.  “Well,” she said with a dismissive wave of her Bakelite bracelets, “at your price range, you are going to have to make some compromises.”

While Rhonda was rifling through the homeowner’s mail to check for envelopes from collection agencies (“it is always good to know if they have to sell”), Troy and I would amuse ourselves doing Rhonda impersonations, trying to find common ground.  Maybe the novelty of being so different was what motivated us to become friends, lovers and eventual homeowners.  There remained significant differences.  He was an extrovert with a congenital inability to put clothes in the hamper or dishes in the dishwasher. I was quieter and could only express my disinclinations in pouts or sighs.  Troy wished I came with subtitles and then, looking at my distended lower lip, decided perhaps not.  I suppose we would be better off apart, but being gay men on the wrong side of 35, we would best adhere to Rhonda’s advice to compromise.

The more places we saw, the heavier Rhonda’s shoulders heaved.  She never disagreed with our assessments of too old, too new, too little, too open, too smelly or too stark.  She nodded her head as if we were debating philosophy, but would always manage to slip in something about not always getting what we wanted.   

And then a small miracle occurred.  Somehow we agreed on a townhouse that was close enough to the clubs for Troy but on a one-way street with speed bumps for me.  He could take the El if he overindulged and I could coax a couple of tomato plants to grow in the backyard. The townhouse was nearly a hundred years old, but someone with taste had renovated it to Troy’s standards.  The only downside was that the stairs were obviously not up to code.  They were narrow and steep. Troy and I vowed to look it as a positive in that we would have to be careful how much we drank when ascending the stairs to our third-floor bedroom.  Rhonda was thrilled and whipped out the offer sheet before we had a chance to find the typical uncommon ground.  

The purchase process went smoothly and less than a month later we answered the door in midst of unpacking to welcome Rhonda holding a warm bottle of warm domestic sparkling wine.  She wanted to see what we had done with the place and our mistake was letting her go beyond the ground floor.  After oohing and ahhing her way upstairs, she pronounced the place “perfect” from the top stair of the second floor.  She promptly slipped on a scarf that had become unraveled and wrapped around her feet.  She cascaded down the stairs, breaking her neck on the third tread, coming to rest face up.  

Our initial thought was to pack her into the trunk and dump her somewhere.  It is not that we were unsympathetic, it was just that things were going so well with Troy and me.  He tended to stay home instead of going out, intrigued by the possibility of hosting parties on our roof deck.  We didn’t need the turmoil right now. 

Rhonda stared at us with vacant eyes and a frozen grimace.  Troy called the police while I tried to make her look more comfortable, only to be yelled at by the cops for tampering with “evidence.”  So that is the way it goes—one minute you are Realtor Rhonda of the plethoral scarves, the next moment you are evidence. Troy could not wait until they bagged the evidence so he could “Lysol the house.”

Early this morning Rhonda appeared on the second floor landing.  Just my luck as I was already feeling like God’s little fool.  Upset by Rhonda’s death, Troy and I reverted to form, arguing about what to do at night. He wanted to go out and get drunk.  I wanted to calm myself by staying in, eating take-out and watching a movie. We compromised with him slamming the door on his way out and me eating a large Ma-Po Tofu by myself and watching Rear Window.  

To make a point, I turned off every light in the house before turning in at 10.  Troy’s bumbling and cursing on his way up the three stories woke and amused me. Booze made Troy horny and he crawled into bed smelling of Velvet Orchid, gin and cigarettes.  Assuming I was equally aroused, he started mounting me like a bull in a paddock.  Even though I welcomed the attention, I pushed him off and told him to jerk himself off as he clearly didn’t care what I wanted.  I slid out of bed and made my way downstairs for a glass of water to wash down another Ambien.

And there she was, in the same gaudy dress and long scarf she was wearing when she took a tumble down the stairs.  The only thing odd about her—besides being dead—was the obtuse angle of her head, which conformed perfectly to the tread on which she had come to rest.  

Once I could breathe and confirmed consciousness via pinching, I staccatoed my way through a question: “you…here…why?”

She smiled at me wryly.  “Scared you near half out of your boyfriend, did I?  Never understood gay sex.  Always seemed a matter of a round peg and a square hole.  She shivered and her head bobbed about like a buoy on a stormy sea.  “Ooh, that felt good.  All those years of holding my tongue while clients wanted it all: ‘I want a pool, a great room, three-full baths, in a good school district. And I don’t want to pay more than $200,000.’ Oh God, years and years of smiling and nodding and gently prompting them to return to planet Earth.”

“Why are you here?”

“Here, at the top of the stairs? Don’t you know?” she asked in a ghoulish voice.  Ghosts haunt where they died, doomed for a certain period of time to walk the earth at night until the regret they stockpiled in life is purged.  And believe me as a realtor, I got a lot of regret: The lies.  The exaggerations.  The concealing.  The strategic steering away from the cellar door.

Unbidden, she unraveled the purple scarf from around her neck and laid it at her feet.  She cart-wheeled down the stairs, coming to rest at the bottom.  She repositioned her head, wrapped the scarf around her neck and hiked up the stairs like an exhausted toddler pulling a sled.  “Now, let’s talk about that boyfriend of yours and why he’s such a bad idea.”    

Mea Culpa Inc. (LTD)

Mea culpa.  Mea maximus culpa.  My name is Mary.  How may I help you?  No, sir, this is not a joke.  Yes, I get that question at least five times a day. The road to innovation is paved with suspicion, right?  Now, how may I help you? 

You bought a Groupon for our basic service?  Sure, I can help with you that.  Would you be interested in learning a bit more about our deluxe services?  You would?  Wonderful.  

So the Groupon you bought is for a one-time basic expiation.  Basic is defined by a run-of-the-mill infraction.  You forgot to pick up the dry cleaning.  You cut someone off while driving.  All the way up to a misdemeanor defense of accidental shoplifting.   Of course, the Mea Culpalgorithm will make the final determination of whether your sin qualifies for the basic service.  But most of the time, you go right to expiation.

Here’s what happens when you expiate. Think of it as attending confession or taking communion in a far more efficient and customer-friendly manner.  No getting dressed. No embarrassment.  No judgment.  If you download our iPhone or Android app, you will be absolved wherever you have a signal.  Otherwise, all I have to do is transfer you to the Mea Culpautomaton and you follow the prompts.

Expiation occurs nearly instantaneously. Trust me, you will know when it works. While I have never had the experience, I heard that it is like waking up on a beautiful spring morning without a single care in the world.  It is like losing five pounds with your feet never touching the floor.  You have never felt so easy as when you have been expiated. Doesn’t that sound nice?

You really are curious, aren’t you?  Most people aren't.  They simply hit submit and they’re done.  No, I am not suggesting you are trying to hide anything, just complimenting your thoroughness.  

So how do I explain what happens? First, you should understand that I am just a customer service representative.  I have been here for slightly more than a year. Although I have been completely trained, I am not an engineer or a programmer.  I won’t be eligible to be a Mea Culpasultant for a year.  As I understand it, sins are like matter.  You can neither create nor destroy them.  Your sin still exists; it is just not your responsibility any more.  Your sin is lifted off your shoulders.  You can’t feel bad about them as hard as you could try. It is simply gone.  

Where does it go?  We have facilities all over the world. Mostly in Asia; in Malaysia, China, Singapore, but our main expiation facility is outside Bangalore, India.  We have nearly three thousand expiation contractors here.  It is quite an impressive facility. Clean and modern. Full of happy well-paid people.  Well, not happy, but that’s the point, isn’t it? You can’t feel happy until they don’t.  But they are well compensated, especially for the more deluxe services such as Mortal Sin Absolution, one of our most advanced services.  Would you like to learn more?  

All staff in our Mortal Sin Division are top notch, thoroughly trained and fully prepared to assume the gravest infractions.  You can see the weight resting on their shoulders. It is almost heroic. Before we changed the rules, some consultants would assume the guilt of five people at the same time.  

Poor people, they look like they haven’t slept in days with great pig purple bags under the eyes.  Their skin is like an elephant’s with big dusty wrinkles all over.  They can barely look you in the eye. When they speak, it is barely more than a whisper.  They just sit there and pant.  A body can only take so much.  

You saw the 60 Minutes exposé about consultants skipping lunch to expiate sins under the table—as it were? And, while it pains me, the rumors are true.  Certain managers offered overtime to those who took on more than the approved allotment of sins.  Strictly against policy and I can assure the managers were fired—after having their own complimentary expiations revoked and all the quote unquote multisinners were taken immediately to the infirmary. 

Long-term effects?  None that I am not aware of.  I assume they live as long of life as befits their environment.  Please remember, they are paid way better than their neighbors.  Their children are educated at excellent schools and they get a pension and life insurance. I can’t tell you what the line looks like when we have recruiting events, which we do once a quarter, but are thinking about moving up to monthly.

Eventually absolution takes its toll on the strongest and they have to stop.  They aren’t thrown out on the street; they can always move to the Culpable Division. Unlike absolution, there is no actual transference of guilt.  You simply have somebody to blame.  So long as it is not considered a crime in your legal jurisdiction, we will take the hit. For a slight upcharge, we will sign any document to attest to your guiltlessness and, for ten dollars more, we will send you a certificate suitable for framing. 

Now, how can I help you?  Expiation? Absolution? Or Guiltlessness?  We also offer package deals.  Why did I ask? No reason.  I just wanted you to know. 

Resurrected

I remember the light.  Not the warm glow of a soft tunnel beckoning towards home or heaven.  Rather a blinding blaze that burned through the gauze wrapped around my head.  If I wasn’t bound by bandages, I would have thrown my hands over my face to protect my eyes.  Accompanying the light was a soft warm fresh breeze dispelling the sour smell.  A vaguely familiar voice said “Arise.”  And then again “Arise.”  

Who was he talking to?

And finally, “Lazarus, get up!”  This was a different voice.  Most likely my sister, Martha, who elevated impatience to an art form.  

“Arise, my son,” a voice as soft as a feather said.  

“Jesus?” I wanted to say, but with the bandages in my mouth, it came out as “Cheeze-um?”

“Yes, my son, arise.”

“C’mon Lazarus,” Martha said, almost in my ear.  “People are waiting for a miracle.  Get up!”  

What Jesus, Martha and the people susurrating somewhere beyond the illumination forgot was that I had been swaddled tightly and if I tried to get up, I would have rolled off onto the rock-hard ground.  

“Oh for God’s sake,” Martha said.  I assumed she was the one ripping the gauze off of me.  The light was even more painful.  I would have tried to hide my eyes, but realized the only clothing I was wearing was the bandages.  

“Wait,” I tried to fight her off, but she was not to be deterred and soon I was buck naked in front of my two sisters, my savior and a crowd of people who were drawn either by faith or entertainment.  

A child’s voice laughed.  “Look, it’s shriveled.”  I managed to position the bandages in front of my groin before anybody else saw it.  

“Oh, thank you Lord, he’s alive,” Mary, my quieter and more considerate sister, said, wrapping her thin arms around my neck.  “Say thank you to Jesus,” she whispered in my ear.  If I had any idea of where Jesus was, I would have been happy to do so. But everything was a blur and my head felt like it was encased in dried mud.  

“Shank shu,” I said.  Even though my mouth had been liberated of the gauze, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.  I tasted something worse than rotten anchovies.  

“You are welcome,” Jesus said.  “I’m sorry I was late.”

“Shit’s k,” I said, trying to pry my tongue free.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  I had no idea how how I ended up here.  One moment, I am walking to work when someone said “watch out!” and the next I am standing in a cave wearing nothing but gauze and embarrassment.

“Here, let me help you.  Take it easy.  You’ve been dead for two days,” Mary whispered.

“Wuh?  Ted? Me?”

“Yes.  Please take it slowly.”

I tried to nod, but my sodden head felt like it was tenuously attached to my shoulders.  

“Look,” Martha said from somewhere near the light, “are you going to walk? People are busy. Nobody’s going to believe that you have been resurrected if you don’t walk or speak.  Move, you’re embarrassing me.”

“Thorry,” I said, trying to move my legs. “The meek shall inherit the Earth” was meant for someone else.  “Here,” she said, sighing, “let me help you.”  She shoved Mary out of the way and pushed me forward and I staggered like a drunken sailor.  The crowd groaned, probably thinking they had been duped by another Messiah-wannabe.  

Martha bent down and slipped her arms under mine and began to pull as if she was trying to extract a reluctant stopper from of an amphora.  “Walk or else,” she hissed in my ear. 

With extraordinary concentration, I ordered my legs to support me.  Of course, Martha was no place to be found when I managed to scramble two steps.  Mary was all the more willing to prevent me from tipping over but she was like a a sheaf in the wind. Jesus saved me from toppling over.  We one hand he held me up by the chest and with the other he waved at the crowd and said “ta da.”  They hooped and hollered and Thomas, who had been dating Martha off and on for a couple of years came over and poked me a couple of times.  He turned around and said “yep, he’s alive.”  

“Ta da,” Jesus said again.  He said that a lot.  “Ta da, loaves and fishes.”  “Ta da, look who’s walking on the water.”  Martha groaned, but John who used to be in advertising told her not to worry, they would clean it up in the Gospels.

People streamed towards Jesus, jockeying to have him touch them.  He let me go and I started to teeter, but was restrained by Martha’s nails digging into my arm.  “Don’t you dare,” she said.  “Don’t you dare.”  

Mary retreated to help me. But Martha warned her: “Don’t.  It’s not a miracle if he doesn’t walk on his own.  And if it isn’t a miracle, we won’t make a dime off of this.”  Jesus who got a cut of every miracle, turned his back to the crowd and hissed “whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” and then under his breath added “or else.” With every ounce of concentration, I could muster, I balanced myself and held my hands out to demonstrate I was walking independently.  “Ta da,” Jesus said and the crowd cheered. 

Jesus stepped aside with a grandiloquent gesture, allowing the crowd into the tomb.  They were divided into three groups: those who followed Thomas’ example and were sticking their fingers where they didn’t belong; those that circled me like I was some sort of circus freak.  Maybe they were looking for the corpse hidden in the back of the tomb.  The last group jockeyed for my attention.  They had more questions than a spring rain has drops.  Did it hurt when I died?  Did I see a tunnel of light?  Did I see their mother, husband and/or child?  Did I see God?  What did he say?  The most common question was “was it worth it?” I could offer nothing more than a well-intentioned shrug.  

Eventually people got bored, figuring that I had been resurrected from the dead, what did it really have to do with them?  Martha grabbed Thomas and headed out to the merch table before another messiah showed up.  Jesus was late for a parable and asked me if I needed anything else before he left.  I was pretty sure he was insincere.  That left Mary and me. She stood tentatively next to me, unsure if she should be supporting me.  Mary could dowse for guilt from a mile away.  

“It’s okay, I’m fine. I just have to take it slowly.”  I shielded my eyes in the bright morning light, having figured that I would never see it again.  We turned west and made our way past our neighbor’s huts until we stopped in front of the one our late parents built.  I suppose we could have asked Jesus to resurrect them, too.  But neither Mary and I suggested it, remembering how unpleasant it had been to live under the same roof with them.  

For better or worse, I was home.  I reached out for the wooden latch and was intercepted by Mary.  “Before we go in there’s a couple of things you should know.” She stared at my dusty sandals, afraid to make eye contact.  “This may come as shock to you.”

“Mary, this morning, I was dead and now I’m not.  Not like I was asked in either case.  I doubt there is anything that could shock me.”

“You have to understand.  We thought you were dead.  Of course, we believe in Jesus.  But there was no guarantee you would come back.  You remember when Mr. Ginsberg got hit by a rock in his head and how we thought he was dead, but then he woke up, but wasn’t the same?  We weren’t sure you would be you if and after Jesus raised you from the dead.”

“Understandable,” I said, but she still wouldn’t let me open the door.

She looked side-to-side as if we were being watched.  “Martha was concerned that without your salary, we would have a hard time making ends meet.”

“And?”

She sighed as if she had nothing else to say.  “We sold your clothes.”

“You sold my clothes?”  

She nodded silently.  “And the rest of your stuff.”

“All of my stuff?”

“Except your bed.”

“Well, thank God, that’s one thing.  At least I will have a place to sleep.

She shook her head.  “We needed it to rent out your room.”  Before I could say anything, she added.  “His name is Elisha.  You remember the Shunammite widow's son? He already paid us a month in advance.” 

Sad Hour

Most bartenders leave the bar before the bar leaves them.  Either they graduate from college or realize their band/art career has arrived at the business end of the cul-de-sac and it is time to find a real job.  Or they get in a fight with their boss or the wrong drunk and come in to find their last check waiting under an old-fashioned glass next to the cash register.

I have had the misfortune of closing two bars.  Emma’s Place went from a neighborhood bar with stale peanuts to the Drake Bar and Eatery that served overdone burgers unsuccessfully.  It became the Chancellor Street Inn, but everyone called it Suzy’s until Suzy died and the family sold whatever was worth selling.  I went to Emerald Isle that did well enough in the weeks leading up to Saint Patrick’s Day to be bought out by an East-coast restaurant chain.  I was too short and stout to be considered for continued employment.  They offered me a recommendation that was a form letter on which the “would rehire” box was checked.  

Having no other appreciable skills and a dearth of ambition, I found myself walking down Christian Street in the Queen Village section of Philadelphia when I stumbled upon a small brick building with a faded wooden sign that announced itself as Sigmund’s, Home of Sad Hour.  A help-wanted sign advertised for an experienced and empathetic bartender.  Another sign listed Sad Hour offerings:

Monday - Guinness and mother issues
Tuesday - Beer, shot and quiet desperation
Wednesday - Half-priced wine bottles and free-form whining
Thursday - $5 well drinks and psychosomatic maladies
Friday - Hot Wings and cool relationships
Saturday - Dos Equis for exes
Sunday - Come as you are, leave as someone else

Curious and desperate, I figured it was the one job for which I was actually qualified.  The bar was quieter than a funeral home and darker than a cave.  Albioni’s Adagio for Strings slouched from the jukebox.  Six stools outlined the the bar.  Five tables with empty placard holders formed a semi-circle in middle of the room.  In the back, where one would expect a pool table or a video game, were two couches and arm chairs, separated by a Chinese screen.  

It was 11:30 am and experience told me there would be people who just got off the night shift and were looking for a day cap before they went to sleep or a couple of businessmen who needed liquid courage for an afternoon presentation.  But with the exception of a bartender who was refilling the refrigerator with beer bottles, the place was empty.   When he surfaced from behind the bar, all I could see was the silhouette of an older white man with a full-beard and thinning grey hair pulled back in a ponytail.  He couldn’t have been more than five-feet tall and I wondered how he reached the top shelf.  

I found out as he suddenly gained eight inches.  He would alternately gain and lose height as he made his way towards the right. He had strategically placed boxes behind the bar that made it possible for him to reach everything a bar patron could want.  Height aside, he had two metal crutches dangling from his arms and he propelled himself by leaning forward and dragging his legs.  He had added a homemade claw to the end of the right crutch that was operated by a string that ran down its length to a four-inch wooden dowel. 

"It looks pathetic," he said with a smile that was simultaneously warm and creepy, "but it adds to the ambience and that," he said pointing at an etching of Dante touring Hell, "is what pays the bills.  Hi, I'm Irv.  I assume you are here for the bartending job.  It might not look like it now, but soon this place will be full of depressives and therapists."

"Therapists?"  

"MDs, PhDs, LCSWs, LCPCs, you name it: an alphabet of misery.  They hand out palliatives and business cards and I get a steady stream of people who believe In Vino Remedium. The more they drink, the more they despond.  As close to a perpetual motion machine as you get.  I am their momento mori, as in ‘look at the midget with polio, things could be worse. What's my excuse?  Sigh.  Drink.’” 

“But even a momento mori has to slow down.  All this up and down is killing my knees.  I need someone to help me out.  But it can't be anybody.  I don't need some hunk with muscles doing a bad Tom Cruise impersonation.  Neither do my customers.  They come here to water their sorrows, not be entertained. I need someone who has been around the block a couple of times and been lapped even more."

He slithered around the bar on his crutches, dragging two children-sized boots behind him.   He stopped when he was close enough for me to smell his unique odor of sweat, dust and sauerkraut.  He narrowed his eyes, examining me from bottom to top as if he was a python and I was a rabbit.

Apparently my getting this job was dependent upon me being pathetic.  Were the other bartending jobs out there?  Sure.  Most probably paid better and only required me to grow a beard or affect a vest and fedora.  There would be plenty of sad people to contend with there, too.  Some might seek my advice on a problem or two.  But for most part, I would simply be the dispenser of drinks and then be expected to withdraw into the penumbra of behind-the-bar to revel in my irrelevance.  But this job called me, in the same way my mother’s screeching voice called for me to get up on school days—annoying but familiar.  

I tried to simultaneously smile and frown, which probably made me look constipated.  Irv hobbled up to me and looked like an ambitious alpinist about to ascend a sheer cliff.  “Is that the best you can do?”

“Do?”

“Sad-wise.  How was your childhood?  Were you beaten?  Were you ignored?”  He spoke with the staccato of a semi-automatic; I could see little flecks of whatever he had for breakfast on my chest.  Moving back seemed unwise.  

I shrugged.  On a scale of one to ten, my childhood was probably a six.  My parents were more interested in their careers than in raising children.  But on the other hand, they were successful and we had a vacation house in the Poconos and plenty of frequent flyer miles to keep us occupied.  

Irv was staring at me and I wondered what I could offer that was both the truth and would get me the job.  “I dunno, I guess it was pretty rough. I mean, I had to see a shrink in college and well, I’m a bartender.  So much for ambition.”  I sighed heavily which delighted him.

“Married,” he asked, and then narrowed his eyes and spat “happily married?”

This was an easy one. I had been almost engaged, but Robin soon figured out my self-loathing schtick was a permanent feature.  “Nope,” I said, nearly rocking on my heels like a proud school boy.

“Girlfriend?”

I had been seeing Margaret for a couple of weeks now.  She was an associate at a big Center City law firm and hadn’t have enough time with me to be disenchanted.  I nodded slightly and frowned.

“How about illness?  Anything chronic?”

“I had asthma as a kid and I sometimes get killer headaches.”  I pointed towards my right temple as if my suffering was evident.

“Headaches,” he sniffed. He rapped the metal braces with one of his crutches. “Try dragging one of these around.  Try being repulsive to your parents and any woman.  Look, you seem like a nice kid, but this ain’t your father’s bar.  This is a place of despair and heartache.  The last thing I need is for my clients is hope, even if it is just a sliver of a splinter of a glimmer.

So this is where the cobble strewn path of my life had led me, incapable of getting a job as a bartender in a bar that specializes in depression.  If I could have been a bigger loser, I did not know how.  I turned to face the dim door that led to nowhere fast.   

“Wait, that’s it!” he said, doing his version of a palsied jig.  “I knew it!  I knew you were fooling yourself!  Average Joe, my foot.  You’re one of us.”  Before I could argue, he shoved out a hand with a crutch, the claw dangling from it.  “Welcome aboard.”  Whether getting hired at Sigmund’s was a bad thing or a worse thing remained to be decided.   

The Last Damn

Care hangs about my neck like a rusted anchor—defining my days, hijacking my dreams.  I am an old man, most likely in my late-seventies or early-eighties.  They didn’t want us Tinkers to be burdened by personal worries, which includes birthdays—not when we have the whole world to worry about.  But I am burdened. As the last Tinker, I am burdened by the thought that I will be the last person to have an opinion.  

When Carlton, who takes such care of me, comes in on the fateful morning and sees me lying rigid and cold, he will smile kindly and refer to the notebook in his tunic pocket that provides him with a decision tree for every eventuality.  Dead Tinker?  Call 0110 to report.  Other caretakers will refer to their plastic coated spiral-bound notebooks as what to do when they receive this call.  More calls will be made with the end result of me being moved from my lonely bed to the mausoleum in which I will lie in repose with my brother and sister Tinkers.  The last instruction will be for Carlton to turn off the lights and we Tinkers will fade into obscurity in a world that forgot care.   

It seemed like a good idea.  Just 50 years after the invention of social media, the world had descended into a chaos of umbrage.  Decency had been trampled under effrontery’s feet.  All were vigilant for every possible sleight, assuming their rights were moments away from being expropriated.  Arabs blamed Jews.  Jews blamed Christians.  Fights broke out between Republicans and Democrats in Congress and on Capitol Street.  France and Germany took turns claiming and reclaiming Alsace Lorraine. Even the Swiss were pissed off. Africa grabbed an AK-47, jumped into the beds of dented pick-up trucks and took off down dusty roads to settle ancient grudges between tribes that no longer existed.  Even the UN General Assembly was rife with fist fights, lobbed insults and small paper fires.  Karl Nigron, the last Secretary General, broke his gavel slamming it against the podium; the head flew into the UN’s seal, dislodging Australia and it clattered to the ground to the delight of the New Zealand delegation.

Something had to be done.  And that something was Ambivia.  Ambivia had been developed to alleviate physical pain but was found to be ineffective for that purpose.  What it lacked in analgesic quality, it more than made up in fostering ambivalence.  I barely passed high school chemistry and always nodded off when Tinker Ted, who was a pharmacologist, tried to explain Ambivia’s properties.  I believe it inhibited the limbic system, the part of our brain that is responsible for the basic emotions (fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (hunger, sex, dominance, care of offspring). All the things that caused the world to burn on a daily basis.  

Like so many things, putting Ambivia in the drinking water started as an Internet rumor.  A couple of tweets here, a Facebook page there and a suggestion from Iceland’s UN representative.  Nobody took it seriously and soon Ambivia talk was displaced by news of another domestic mass shooting or international bombing. 
Somebody in Cleveland took it into his or her hands to purchase a large quantity of Ambivia and smuggled it into the Nottingham Water Treatment Plant, turning the eastern side of Cleveland and the south-eastern suburbs into an indifferent Shangri-La.  While Ambivia remained in the the water supply, crime ended, automobile accidents fell precipitously as everyone waved each other on.  Most high school basketball games ended in ties.  People weren’t particularly happy, but they weren’t upset either.  They woke, went to work, watched TV and, when it was time to go to bed, conjured transparent dreams.  No one was suspicious, but they wouldn't be.

As usual, the experiment was ruined by a Case Western University sociologist who decided something was wrong as calm is not usually the byproduct of nihilism.  Eventually, the source was traced to the water treatment plant, which was taken off line and scrubbed while bottled water was trucked in at great cost.  Crime resumed its steady rise, car accidents reached new levels.  There was a pervasive lament about the death of sportsmanship and the corrosive effects of tenure on college campuses.  All remaining stocks of Ambivia were taken off the market and supposedly burned in the Nevada desert.  

As civilization dragged its way towards Armageddon, world leaders convened a summit to deal with human misery.  For years, the crazy bemoaned a conspiracy to enslave the world with all eyes fixed squarely on the United Nations.  What most people did not know was that they were right, but the UN was a red herring.  

The true world government met underneath a Quonset hut in the dusty outskirts of Springfield, Illinois.  The sign on the door said “Tricounty Garages” and every window was hazed over with grime.  There were several entrances to the compound in Springfield: in a janitor closet in the state capital, in a stall in the women’s room of a Qik-n-EZ gas station and, strangely enough, the front door of Tricounty Garages.  Lifting up the calendar from 1987, revealed a small wooden panel that hid an impressive retinal scanning device.  

It was a quick elevator down to the Plenary Hall where the world government met in emergency session.  A certain amount of violence, internecine or international, was necessary to the commerce that made delegates outrageously wealthy. But at some point there was a zero sum gain when the violence, the prejudice and the general acts of cruelty that had defined humanity for millennia got out of hand.  Clearly something had to be done and that something was the introduction of Ambivia into the world’s water supply.  

Of course, there were the mandatory debates about free-will and cautionary tales about slippery slopes.  The vote was far closer than anyone suspected, which was unfortunate as the executive committee had already given the green light to commence the mass dosing of Ambivia.  

In an effort to assuage those who still had doubts, the delegates decided to segregate a number of people who would not be dosed with Ambivia.  Clearly, it was wise to have someone not under the influence, who would be able to make decisions during the times when having an opinion was critical.  By the time they got around to naming the group, the entire communications department had received their Ambivia and the best they could come up with was The Council.  

The Council was made up of twelve men and women who represented politics, business, science, the arts and literature.  I was selected due to my scholarly work on nihilism.  We were locked in a safe room tended by Ambiviaed assistants who would make sure we were fed, watered and isolated.  Though they were profoundly indifferent, the instructions for our care were clear and easy to follow.  Before the heavy door came down, separating us from humanity, we were assured we would be released after a year when a new Council would be appointed.  The door shut with a heavy shudder and we dubbed ourselves the Tinkers because we were the last people to give a damn.  

We spent the first twelve months in academic debates that kept us occupied until the day when the door would lift and we would have the burden of care lifted from our shoulders and placed on the next cohort of Tinkers.  

The day never came.  The door refused to budge, despite our desperate banging and incessant intercom button pushing.  We could see the face of our keepers who blinked incomprehensibly on the other side of the airlock as we tried to explain that something had gone wrong.  We spent the next year angrily debating what happened, accusing each other of being somehow to blame.  The business people were blamed for cutting corners.  We humanities people fostered a culture of laxness.  As we had no way to prove the rectitude of our position, we went to bed snug and smug in our convictions.  

After all these years, placing tinker and tinker into the airlock, I still try to figure what went wrong. Perhaps the delegates didn’t realize they would be too lackadaisical to pick the next group of Tinkers.  Maybe they had been surreptitiously double dosed by terrorists.  Or maybe the plan all along was never to release us, making us opinionated sacrificial lambs. I can’t help but feel that I am being punished for my role in the Cleveland incident.  After all, who asked me?  I toss and turn in my early morning bed, unsuccessfully trying not to feel like the butt of a cosmic joke. Whatever happened beyond the doors forever condemned the world to be a wonderland of indifference and made it my job, my fate, my dubious honor to be the last person to care.

Blurry

There is a stump at the end of the beach that I trip over with such frequency you would think I was doing a pratfall to impress some Polynesian beauty.  But there is no Polynesian beauty on this island upon which I have been marooned for the better part of a year.  At least no Polynesian beauties I can see.  Of course, my functional vision is confined to mere inches so they might be just over a sand berm, frolicking silently.  Just my luck.

My family is the living embodiment that evolution is a myth.  If it was true, the ancestral Jacobson would have squinted his way off a cliff millennium ago.  We were a family of hypermyopics; we were all gripped with a terror that we lost our glasses. It was a miracle that our parents found each other.  A geneticist may have warned strongly against my parents reproducing, but the world’s opticians sent flowers each time my mother gave birth.  I remember waking up as a child in the cloudy terror of night and hearing my mother’s thumping as she searched her bedside table for her glasses. 

Last April, Brynn, a childhood friend who had made millions developing and selling Krztl Klr, a photo retouching app, told me of a round-the-world raced solely for Internet millionaires.  The race organizers provided the boat, crew and food. Brynn and his ilk were supplied brightly-colored bad-weather gear and the honorific Captain.  They were even allowed to steer or pull on lines when there was little chance of doing damage.  A videographer was stationed onboard to document the adventure on Vimeo in high definition.

“Wanna race around the world,” Brynn asked me one day.  Brynn had adjusted well after he sold his company.  Once a man for whom the term 24/7 applied, he dismounted elegantly off the corporate merry-go-round and some days would only observe only one ten o’clock.  He was always asking me if I was up for an adventure, whether it was a safari in Africa, a balloon trip in the Southwest or a drinking tour of Scotland.  

Although I was in the same field as Brynn, I was simply the coder of other people’s ideas. Most of the time, I had to explain my boss took a dim view of employees taking off three months.  To his credit, Brynn was always sympathetic. It didn’t deter him from going off on his adventure, but he would always send me a picture of him raising a glass of the local alcoholic beverage in my honor.  

Luckily (for them) and unluckily (for me), the founders of my company were able to follow Brynn into early retirement.  The acquiring company was interested in my company’s intellectual property, but not in the workers’ intellect.  I was tossed out along with office furniture, with just with as much concern.  

Brynn probably saw the acquisition coming and I hadn’t adjusted to the cold when my pocket started to buzz.  “Wanna race around the world?” he asked.  For once, I could say yes.  It wasn’t like I was in a relationship or even in a long-term lease.  I could disappear off the face of the Earth and no one would notice.

Unfortunately for me, fate took “disappear off the face of the Earth” literally.  Three days out of Qingdao, China, the boat shrugged into an enormous storm that shook us like a snow globe.  In addition to the headache – the result of careening into the mast – I was subsumed by nausea, courtesy of the dinner of lamb chops, fingerling potatoes and asparagus tips, washed down with an aged French wine I could not pronounce.  All frothed about my stomach, seeking the quickest way out.  

Even though I knew I could make it to the railing without actually seeing it, I put my glasses on, fearing that the pitching boat would toss them God-knows-where.  What would I do if I never found them?  I did not relish spending the rest of the race in a blur.  My churning stomach didn’t leave time for debate. Just as I was about to lose the lamb chops over the port side, a wave hit us from the starboard, I was thrown against the railing and the glasses slipped from my nose into the drink. Not thinking, I leaned over the side as anther wave sealed my fate.  I managed to land in a puddle of my vomit, swearing I could see my glasses spiraling down into the briny dark.  

The boat, now reduced to a ghostly blur sailed on, unaware it was one myopic short.  Convinced I was going to die, I wondered if I could see my life flash before my eyes clearly. A white blob came towards me; it could have been a chair, a box, a goat or basically anything of a similar size.  Drowning in an angry sea, I didn’t have the luxury of being choosy and I pulled it towards my face.  

Three inches away, I read the stenciled letters on the side and discovered it was an emergency raft. All I had to do was pull the red tag to inflate.  What red tag?  Everything was basically grey and I grabbed anything I could reach and yanked. I must have found the red tag as the white blob flew open like a hatching egg and smacked me in the face. The blob became a bigger blob into which I crawled.  Lying on my back, all I could see was the rumor of waves about to crash over me.  If I knew what direction to shout into, I would have.  Instead, I stopped trying to make sense of the fuzzy figures around me and since celestial navigation was out of the question, I closed my eyes figuring I could not see my doom approaching anyway. 

I awoke with something bright in my eyes and something crawling in and out of my pants. I jumped up and saw a dark green mass of what I assumed were palm trees, to my left and to the right was all beige, which I figured to be beach.  There was something black to my left that I hoped was a building but it was probably just rocks.  Further inland, a triangular shape rose above the tree line. I had to choose between volcano or a pyramid in which the natives offered human sacrifices; Neither appealed to me.  I looked at the ocean; it was just a big blue.  

“Hello,” I called. Then in a quiet voice, “help.” Then in an almost whisper “me.”   

I groped towards the tree line like a anosmiac bloodhound.  I tripped over a rock and decided to consider my fate and options; the former inexorable, the latter minimal.  

Months later, the headaches have subsided and took hope with them for company.  Anything that can fit in my mouth is held close to my face and consumed if it looks benign.  I was lucky to find a small stream winding its way to the ocean.  The water has an oddly bitter taste that I attribute to the monkeys or whatever is gamboling and giggling upstream.  I have no choice but to stay near the beach in case of a ship sails by.  I sleep under a palm tree that fell years ago, making an imperfect lean-to.  As shelter goes, its only redeeming quality is its convenience.  For all I know there is a dry, warm cave 30 feet from me.  It might as well be in Cleveland.  

Making fire is often a nearly impossible task as I can find the kindling, but not the dry wood.  When I find the dry wood, I misplace the sticks I rub together.  On the best days, I make a conflagration that can warm a mug of coffee, but a would-be rescuer would have to be two feet a way to see.  I tried spelling SOS on the beach with a collection of rocks, but I couldn’t remember if I already wrote the O.  I ran out of readily accessible rocks half-way through the final S and I fear my message will be interpreted as So? from space; attracting the attention of the most ambivalent astronauts.  

About once a day, I stumble onto the beach to check my fish weir.  I invariably see something white where the horizon should be.  A ship!  “Hey,” I shout. “Goddamn it,” as I step on something sharp. “Of fuck,” as I trip over a branch that would be obvious to anybody not me.  “Over here!” I wade out into the surf, my feet finding all the sharp marine life.  “Help,” I say, as the boat splits into a flight of seagulls, laughing their way overhead after stealing the contents of my trap.  The only thing for which I am grateful is I can’t see how ridiculous I look.