Blase Eight by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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BLASE
EIGHT
Edward Drobinski
Copyright © 2016 by Edward M. Drobinski All rights reserved
Table of Contents
S’il Vous Plait Entrer Ici..................................... 1
# 1- You Can Leave If You Want To. We’re Just Jammin’. That’s
All. You Can Leave Right Now. Thanks........................... 4
# 2- Near Sunrise at Jack’s- No Exit.......................... 27
# 3- Jurisdiction With No Appeal Whatsoever................... 61
# 4- Little Big Men........................................... 87
# 5- Sketchy “Scenes From .........” Ingmar?................. 99
# 6- A Few of the New People on their “New” Green Land....... 116
# 7- The Palest of Maestros.................................. 130
# 8- A Sunday Stasis......................................... 150
# 9- Clandestine Views from Two Disaffected Sides............ 173
#10- An Evening With Propicio’s New “New Age” Guru........... 213
#11- Oh That Magic Feeling, Nowhere to Go.................... 236
#12- Conspiracy Entertainment................................ 263
#13- A Station Break......................................... 316
#14- Cars, Guns, Girls, Books and Bad Notices................ 368
#15- Humdrum Ways Make Humdrum Days.......................... 410
#16- Chillin’, Duckin’ and Hidin’........................... 437
#17- Drinkin’, Superficially Thinkin’........................ 458
#18- Beth III................................................ 504
#19- Po Paris (Approximately Imagine Approximately).......... 535
#20- Another Sunday Stasis; an Almost Interminable One....... 571
#21- A Continuation After the Half-Time Break................ 667
#22- Enemy Fingered.......................................... 763
#23- Anemogram VI............................................ 788
#24- Shadows in Future Tense................................. 805
#25- Memories Like the Corners of My Mind.................... 818
#26- Youth Surrounded........................................ 873
#27- The Old Man and the Slick Machine....................... 924
#28- Meta?- A Dead Caterpillar is a Dead Bug, That’s All..... 942
#29- It All Passes Before You Chop-Chop-Swallows on Ritalin.. 960
#30- Crunch or Peck Time?................................... 1009
#31- Natty Dread- Meetings at a Very Little Bighorn......... 1067
#32- Infinite Disguises- Shedding One More Layer of Skin.... 1099
#33- Stade de Sortir a Gauche Quand Vous Voudrez............ 1131
#34- In Dripping Black Calligraphy.......................... 1152
Page 1
S’il Vous Plait Entrer Ici
“Theme for an Imaginary Western" is a song which the group Mountain performed at the historic, summer 1969 music festival known as Woodstock. The days were hot until the rains came. From its inception, the song was particularly relevant to the young people of the time; the ones we now sometimes refer to as Generation One. Just as in the song’s lyrics, they were just starting to embark on a journey which would change them and the world for that matter, forever. Just as in the song’s lyrics, the journey would be both corporeal and imaginary.
This book is not about that time. It was just the time which gave birth to many of the issues with which people still grapple a half century later in 2016. The procession has continued to lurch onward; the compass reading ultimately someone’s value judgement.
1965-1975 is a period of time which many people have difficulty in speaking or writing about. Me too. When it is mentioned, people invariably refer to the drug aspect. There is no doubt that drugs were made increasingly available to the white community at the time, but I’ll add that that it seems
“sure as shit” obvious that drugs were not the most important
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part of the period; being a resident of fourth place at the generous highest. Not to belabor the biased aspect, for one thing, stopping a war is a bit of a big deal accomplishment.
DUH!!! However, it also seems obvious that the drug aspect is apparently easier to talk and write about; especially by the most minor of players.
What this book is about truly escapes me; maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s a struggle, maybe it’s an acquiescence, maybe it’s a celebration, maybe it’s a disinterest, maybe, maybe, maybe .......... Maybe I just felt like it. Suffice to say that everything has to have a starting point. At the bottom line, since this is my book, I chose to write it this way. That’s all.
“Theme for an Imaginary Western" was written by Jack Bruce
and Pete Brown; the former a member of Cream, and the latter his
frequent writing partner at the time. Their contributions were substantial to both Cream and Mountain, but were largely overshadowed by Eric Clapton’s guitar virtuosity in the Cream period, and West’s penchant to blast during Mountain time; some crediting the latter group with being the inventors of heavy metal.
Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi; TFAIW’s vocalist, were early Mountain mainstays, though the group was somewhat mercurial, at times having Jack Bruce on bass rather than Pappalardi, one offshoot called “West, Bruce and Laing.”
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It would have been nice if I could have just included the lyrics, which are available on about twenty internet sites, to speak for themselves. But, blah-blah and blah-blah in the twenty-first century.
“They don’t want to hear me speak with any eloquence.
They just want to see me act like a crazy nigger.”
Mike Tyson
“By the numbers.”
Colloquial
“By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his work.”
Genesis 2.2
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# 1- You Can Leave If You Want To. We’re Just Jammin’. That’s All.
You Can Leave Right Now. Thanks.
On his back and moving at the speed of a land turtle similarly situated, he saw the sky; enormous, to his left and above. It appeared to have been painted by an artist with either a palette deficiency or a preference for plumes of red, scarlet and cherry. He mentally chuckled as he knew that he had successfully fooled them once again. He was certain that a portion of his mind was gone, but that posed no particular concern as he never used 90% of it anyway. He was still alive and expected that soon some people paid to do such things would show up in a convoy of blaring panel trucks and set him right.
Chirrups of the blissful choir were drowned by the inadvertent and miscalculated detonation which preceded the subsequent stasis. There was a silence until Duke Ellington blew away any naïve, pompously phony and ultimately bogus rivals without knocking himself out. He disarmed them with a smile; a genuine smile. He didn’t care, but yet he did. He took care of an entire orchestra. He called his music “beyond
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categorization.” Uptown nights at the Cotton Club were sufficient definition for his notes.
Turning back a few less pages, those present, past or hoping to come; have, will have, or will not have, briefly enjoyed the thoughtful and joyful entertainment provided in the season of Donovan Leitch. Those not there at the time will never be able to understand why or how it happened or how close it came. Those not there at the time are also blessed not to have had that particular dream shattered in slow motion. The
“authorities” frantically pulled out all stops to persuade people how terrible this was and it worked; especially when backed up by their guns; which blew away the nearby flowers, sending the others back to the safety of their books and studies. On Donovan’s behalf, it might be fairly noted that in his all too short-lived time of “The Hurdy Gurdy Man,” “Epistle to Dippy,” “Sunshine Superman,” “Mellow Yellow,” “Atlantis,”
“Jennifer Juniper,” and “Season of the Witch’s” popularity; in the obliterating rush unfairly imposed, he neglected to cover the serenity of “Harlem Nocturne.”
The Duke has done that on numerous occasions. However, his low-keyed accomplishment has been blessed or cursed with WWW’s common and all too typical (mis)information concerning his participation with that song. Information overload? “Too much information!” is an increasingly common cry. Too many Eleanor
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Rigbys? This quandary exists despite the clear existence of versions attributed to him; available from AmawayOnSteroids, ranging from an MP3 solo priced at $.99 to eight boxed sets which peak at $48.99, ostensibly in consideration of the superiority of the antiquated vinyl grouping.
The non-materiality of the electronic debate is consistent with anything fueled by a lack of substance married to too-much-time. The children of the night have come to expect this type of repetitive lack of performance. They were born to the poorly prevented permutations, which propose that the paradoxical pastiche presented is just another play of an old procedural power grab. Probably proper. Sorry, Vlad; please don’t try to impale me. Most have come to find it vaguely amusing at their toddiest of times. Those choosing to affect a “dangerous”
posture often “bug out” and take up guns. The smiling Duke man died before the “I” word took over everything. Maybe his heirs give something of a damn, but have yet to make public note of that. He lives in the plethora of on-offs; and is yet to grace the Franzenian diode form of existence.
The appropriately named Duke coached his orchestra in
“American” music. This sound of this one; “Harlem Nocturne” is the depiction of a merciful sleep; though it could also be a cover for a noir adventure. This is an accomplishment regarded as magical to those possibly residing in the “borrowed” Rubber
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Soul world from overseas Harry or the equally well-publicized,
“I-hope-the-angels-come” world of Sal.
In “The Big Apple” the night sky was black. The light was provided by the radiance generated by the incandescence sitting atop the fifty foot metal poles; seven per brown-stoned, side block. If there were any stars in the sky, they could not be seen. They were all on the ground; and very, very likely inhabitants of David’s court.
Whether it is deconstructionist, duplicative, duplicitous or just plain stupid, The Flaming Telepaths sang; “And the joke is on you. And the joke is on you. And the joke is on you. And the joke is .............................” The unlikely morning starts with the weatherman, stock market report and a “nice human” interest story presented by smiling Katy’s cards, on syndicated WEND in Albuquerque.
A Time Constrained, Commercially Interrupted Presentation of a Parochial, Sunday Morning, Space Odyssey, Re: “Pure” Reason Cant said; "What goes up must come down,” adding a bit of a lengthy if.
Al said; "That entirely depends upon how you define things,” adding a bit of a lengthy if" before proceeding to be a tad insulting.
Overlapping Circles said: "There are any of a number of
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answers which will correctly solve for X."
The Frenchman on Stilts said: “To use reason to critique reason is the equivalent of using a banana to critique a banana."
Paul said; "Let’s all get up and dance to a song which was a hit before your mother was born."
Harry said; "I can expand on that and better yet, sell it in the big store."
Yeshu said; "I am the alpha and the omega. No one can get to the father, except through me."
Pete said; "The hell with the father. I like the mum better."
Fred said; "Mama's boy."
Rudy said; "If."
As he left the room, still wanting to be liked; David confused all present with his buried thought; "This banality is so un-entertaining, I'm out of here forever."
The Thin Man took copious notes and wondered what he’d say if and when he got home.
The one eyed midget said; “Now!!”
The Reader remained seated beneath the window, turned to The Marvel Man and said; “The clever erudition is reminiscent of a proletarian Terkel reporting the events having taken place in
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senior Philosophy-Math class at Cliff U. It is recommended to geriatrics sporting bi-focals. Three stars.”
Hercules entered through the open front door and said; “How could you possibly know?”
Desolate Bobby said; “Pound and Eliot are at it again.
Jeez. Singers laugh. Fishermen bring flowers.”
The writer said; "Please stop it. My mind is on the verge of an explosion."
Peebles said; “This shit could go on forever.”
Vlad showed open derision when he said; "It's all in the technique. When I put my pencil to paper I am making art. That is all."
Patti said; “That’s all?”
The aloof coldness of winter gnawed its way into the land, and sea, making optimal use of jaws armed with the refinement of its sharpened teeth. The winter had exerted no effort to have acquired these useful choppers. Allowing the natural aging process to progress was sufficient preparation.
The initial absurdity was that after two frigid days of the old man’s presence everything upon which he might have bitten had taken refuge in burrows and other forms of difficult-to-access ground dwellings. He was left hungry, with only an unreachable, disinterested gray sky to stare at. Despite the ease of his
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refinement process, most people referred to it as an acquired taste. The second absurdity was that rather than having made any sort of acquisition, it seemed more likely that something was lost. For the billionth time he thought; “If only the little creatures would get used to me. I’m not the villain.”
Simultaneously a loud cracking sound came from above and unique white flakes started to silently congregate on the ground. With no other diversions available, Jack Frost started to count them.
At three billion he ceased, for as they blended into one consistent mass, he could no longer determine any sense of individuality. It was as if the sky itself had fallen and put on dry, washed clothes.
The land merely winced the slightest bit. It was an experienced, surviving veteran of the game. The sea paid homage by producing ice at its edges and donning white caps; the degree of tribute growing each day. The obscenely confident, ancient, fanged choppers of the invisible, yet un-deniable presence were well worn. But the consistently “efficient,” ripping experience of the incisors had made the butcher-temporarily-in-charge capable of extracting more blood than the ghost had ever imagined in its pre-Freudian, pre-Jungian and pre-“New Age,”
“un-sophisticated” youth. It was perhaps another false memory.
On a practical level, the lingering thought was how a deleterious event could qualify as a certifiable memory. Modern
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studies suggested the possibility that the characterization of a vague reminiscence seemed more than adequate. Perhaps this was a fine line; and somewhat confusing at best to the non-sophists of the realm. The now acquiescent firmament safely played both sides of the coin. Rather than exhibiting summer’s wild expanse of sapphire with asymmetrically designed crimson fringes, it opted for the limitations of the dropped gray ceiling.
Wall Street hedged again; a scientifically proven best bet.
The firmament borrowed money it didn’t ever intend to repay. Its due diligence suggested that it should prudently hold back. Its decision was consistent with acceptable social behavior, as exemplified by the current Atlantic Monthly version of Ms.’
Mary, married to the current Nebraska Times holder of the Midwestern propriety chair. Norms strongly suggested making an attempt to appear competent at meeting the rigors of math; exemplified by the ability to correctly count the US greenbacks.
Subsequent to the Wall Street report, brought to you by those friendly folks at BullStuffAnon.com, two brief moments of clarity rudely imposed themselves.
Startled memory woke in a penetrable, dreamy fog. In the imagined wink of someone’s eye it fancied itself in a new day.
Now, undecided the sky withheld its flakes. It wanted to either
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snow or let the glow come through. However, the “ministrations”
it thought it had been “taught” clearly concluded that it was in the best interest of the expanse to restrain itself and thereby impose an allegedly desirable limitation upon the others below.
The total mass retain. Allegedly desirable. Allegedly desirable.
Likely sociably derived. ......... To be pragmatically non-committal, do-nothing-but-threaten, drear was the safe order of the day. The strips, straddles and/or collars were “displayed”
on a high definition, wide screen, irrelevantly available in high definition Technicolor. Peaks required rendition of a palatable blending of blue, grey, and off-white, previously artfully made available to the Seven Sisters as Lysol Spray with a Crisp Linen Scent can, executed in tandem. This was an un-dismissible, short revelation a half century prior. However, since it has not been yet surpassed, it remained un-dismissible to the constituency characterized as the “fiery devotees of redundancy.”
Mid-day expectations are that the noon mixed palette of the low sky will almost want to snow, but won’t be able to pull the failing left cord. It will almost want to shine, yet will not be able to get a hold on the failing right cord. It will most likely want to hibernate with the rabbits until some assistance with the boiler switch is contracted. It will remain silent, concerning the matter, giving the boiler man the scantest of
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opportunities. From experience it knows that to speak the truth was guaranteed to be another annoying-as-in-droning-mosquito-ear-buzz, diagnosis of depression seen through the only lenses available to the first level judges, who seem to operate as if there were no court of appeals. The implications of “Just doing my important jobby,” is the credo one would suppose preferred.
The first in a series of lengthy, contradictory “operation manuals” said so on page 10. Yeah, right. Well-read or well-skimmed by currently, dumbed down standards, and sufficiently practical for one to eke out a “living,” the pun either too obvious or too obscure.
Narcissus’ pond ripples in the unconscious breeze providing an even more imperfect image. But, if the wind stopped blowing the result would be the dreaded stasis. It’s truly sad for her to imperfectly view the further imperfect reflection; unless she steels her mind to the simple math which says that the multiplication of two negatives result in a positive. We think that Estes can truly portray it, and then wonder if that is of any significance, beyond the precise moment of its sighting, and only to be pronounced dead by the museum acquisition of another extraneous corpse, financed by the well-meaning, rattlers of jewelry.
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She immediately concludes that this is just another testimony to the supreme bastion of elusive time and the jealousy of the calculator-mired time value of money; decreasingly hopeful of remaining spiritually innocent of the limitations imposed, while simultaneously entertaining the belief that business is always more successful with at least one partner. Her biggest fear is that everyone except her knows that; excepting the days she spends with the financial statements. Regarding the former, they do and they don’t.
Regarding the latter, it can and does go on a bit too much. It is kindly unsaid by those who know. Consequently, she is precluded from the other’s knowledge or limitations, depending upon the circle of hell achieved by the polling media. Yet she strongly suspects that everyone knows of her financial and emotional demise, and is afraid of being publicly embarrassed, more than happy to pretend the feigned commitment of years gone,
“When Harry Met Sally.”
True commitments are not yet adequately written and will never be. The better documents get bogged down in definitions; the good are contradictory; the adequate are unenforceable in court; and the worst are completely irrelevant because one party is gone and has left no assets behind.
Agreements are imperfectly felt and understood at best. To successfully do something otherwise would be to make an easy
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quid pro quo of the entire system; as designed, administered, tried, sentenced and incarcerated by the powers we have allowed to exist in our own imperfect image. Besides the US BAR would never allow anything which diminished the need for lawyers.
“Blasphemy, blasphemy,” as threatened by Vincent Price, as he tried to depict one of Edgar Alan Poe’s horrors. It’s OK, better than most, but ultimately almost as half assed as a suicide bomber, after the fact. “The Conqueror Worm” can easily outdo any current zombie or vampire populated, YA classified attempt to horrify. It shows an uncomfortable migration toward the real, as it’s based on an old Brit actuality they’d like to forget. There’s a scrap of a Heller defined double bind present as the process which requires the knowledge of a history was lucratively eliminated through the dumbing down process. Many say this was initially introduced as a non-priority-by-product under the economic guidance of Thatcher-Reagan antiquities or iniquities. Register your opinion regarding the possible distinction if you dare. Don’t be afraid. They say; “It’s COOL
to be dumb.” It’s extremely gauche to say; “It’s even cooler to have a choice in the matter.” The incompetent teachers make long essays 80% of the final grade in order not to be deemed deficient themselves, and the performance on the “objective”
multiples of five choices is thereby easily over-ridden.
Precision is so out of style. Under what might be rightly or
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wrongly interpreted as a post-modern analysis, the teacher cannot fail everyone without those failures simultaneously being construed as a testimony to her inability to adequately “teach.”
So, if you have not yet figured out this little game, it is in her interest, decreasingly so with age, to grade the essays highly, and with cursory regard to content.
If one is asked what they think of ignorance and apathy, the most efficient answer is; “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
It’s considered funny and cool.
Lost; maybe self-servingly so. .......... Maybe lost in time. Maybe lost in space. Maybe both. I can’t tell the difference. Can’t tell. Don’t care. Even Einstein waffled. Know I’m bored to death with the same old story. ......... Who among us does not know that that which is the product of the contemporaneously credentialed thought version, is produced by those in need of Hamiltonian remuneration and Mandela-like recognition, and consequently pretend, like a Prince, to be blind to its point’s existence as another insignificant one in an infinite supply of points, hoping to appear as clandestine in its primary goal of serving its masters, acting as if it were truly unaware that it will be inevitably revealed to be a miniscule fragment in a circling line; “advances” and
“regresses” purely a matter of judgement as weary Zeke keeps the wheel turning; the concepts of right and left, up and down,
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rendered devoid of any meaning whatsoever in the spinning gyroscope doing an old PT Barnum circus act in the illusory air, before we get to the end when Zeke’s wooden stilts give way to the rot and collapse? ................. There was supposed to have been an engaging question or two in there somewhere. I thought. Wasn’t there? Oh, just forget it. Never mind. Almost digressed. Maybe.
If there is some sort of doubtful and ultimately unconnected point, it could well be that we all know that this outward purveyor of boonies-schoolmarm countenance thinks she has succeeded in making herself seem to be a gracious Eve and not an “evil” Lilith, the center of a universe, not yet defined in science. She is substantially correct. Substantially.
As is always the case with the proper paper possessing proprietors of propaganda, her current prognostications of brilliant fact will soon again be superseded by the prognostications of brilliant fact induced by the inevitable discovery of the next more advanced, “state of the art” lens. At that point the games played will have to undergo further adjustments and corrections.
There is brief, comedic respite in the repeat
“entertainment” provided by “The Education Channel.” The thing, in a somewhat indecipherable fashion, seems to suggest the
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necessity of something akin to regular, ritualistic Voodoo sacrifice or the observance of the requirements imposed during the season of Lent in the Christian tradition; wherein, among other things, one gives up something they like for the forty days prior to Easter. This can be a difficult decision as we like things in differing degrees and there are porous borders.
Ignoring the always difficult discussion regarding relativity inferred in the former part of the latter instance; one can contend in the latter part of the latter instance, that if I like my job and give it up for 40 days I’ll have some problems with the tithing requirement. In the former case I won’t get too bent out of shape if someone in heavy makeup beheads a chicken; as they’re made of rubber these days. According to the Olde English, Lent derives from the word spring and I don’t even want to think about that one. But, they try to scare you into complying; as it’s either some sort of victim-hood or an ad for
“affordable” cremation services keeps inordinately turning up on the screen in a statistically significant fashion. For the most part, as the entranced parishioners tried to not be a further burden to the others they again sucked it up, in “righteous”
deference to the oneness conveyed in the concept of the never seen, never heard, great man; despite being physically portrayed by his said-by-some-to-be son’s claim of being both the alpha and the omega.
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What was easily apparent to those higher and lower ends of the spectrum; and what was found lacking and a source of couched, non-sequitorial amusement in the middle; and what was found to be dismissively archaic to the most current of another and another and another of generations; and what was once dreamed, if not experienced by those condemned to what they could early gather from the books they read and were unknowingly, exceedingly cruel and by their progenitors, knowingly brutally torn from much too soon, was that they sat at the kitchen table, with a fork and a plateful of the broken glass from the window above, in need of a check.
The observation is deemed much too wretched to be duplicated in seriousness; mirth the clown’s miserable, broken wheeled chariot, hidden under paint of any color available at the time. The surveillance performed would likely be construed as another patented ploy to obtain something malodorous of a desired invocation of the beast with two backs or its permutations. Hung up? Without question, a resounding truthful
“Yes” is screamed by those who think that they have departed the travail of earshot. “No” is said in ludicrous political speeches. “With reservations” or “We need more information”
works well for those seeking election.
It seems obvious that if one were to be kind to those one loved it is best to forget, forgive, avoid any sort of
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“analysis,” and not truthfully present the false position of one’s muddied, broken heart; a form of advertisement cheaply purchasable. In other words; “Just shut up.” Your partner understands this all too well. It is something shared. The unimpeachable silence. Any foolish attempt to articulate only makes it worse. ........... Yet your heart makes you want to try, and as far as you can tell, not primarily for you. Jung.
Maybe young. A bit unclear. For the benefit of your partner you intellectually know that it is better for her to not hear anymore. Yet, you need her so much that you will draw at any straw of communication. You soon see that some of these straws hurt her. ........... You are further confused at the lack of another prayerful, pillow entreaty. In the popular, current, yet centuries old, big-print regurgitations you laugh; .............
at yourself as well as the rule makers. It could be worse or it could be better; the lack of alpha-omega measurements most prominently considered. Might it? Might it? Might it? Might it be different this time? Mathematicians currently and historically think or pretend to think that they have proven the facts; which must requiring ignoring the fact that something new and contradictory is introduced every few years. If they were truly brilliant they would easily see that, at any given point, they don’t have anything other than a shrieking, well-practiced, temporary, Chris Rock intro.
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There were a number of times when my spotted white dog and I came to the end of the meager wolf paths. She always seemed as confused as I. Being somewhat taller, I could always see over the tall grass and knew that a hundred feet away seemed to be the start of another path. From a stance closer to the earth, she may have seen the same thing or may not have. She never told me. The immediate problem was that in between the two were potential hazards; large rocks, things which grew with flesh ripping spikes and sometimes there was discarded, barbed wire lying on the ground. Since she was the bravest and smartest of Dalmatians, I tend to think that she was giving thought to my safety. She’d look at me and then head in the right direction every time; and neither of us ever got hurt.
At any point in space, time or inevitable, subsequent revision with some jack assed excuse opens a concern
............ Might it be destruction? Well, maybe? Very well maybe, as traditionally viewed. The answer depends on what you think you have. If it good-heartedly results in some sort of end that is also an end to any kind of human pain; it sounds pretty good, especially in context of the existentialists, yet to be disproven; only rendered less popular. Could be death? Worth the risk? ............... I guess the query was best put by Dirty
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Harry, when he said; “The question is; ‘do you feel lucky, punk?’ Well, do ya?” I always felt lucky when I was with Daisy.
Believe that.
Various “intelligent” versions of the “I’ve seen it. I know”’s proliferate. And then my dog wakes me up when she sees the shadow produced behind the mountain. I want to stay under the warm covers until I am faced with the choice of either getting up and stumbling to the bathroom or pissing all over myself and the bedding. My dog has no conception of my physically imposed needs. She usually waits, often with paws up on the brick ledge below the windows. There are animals out there; rabbits, squirrels, road runners, cats and coyotes.
Ostensibly, as a result of their experiences with the human race, they have chosen to be nocturnal and at this first inkling of dawn hurry home; like the times when .............. Read some splatter-gross out-surplus-punk if you crave the details, which are the height of hilarity to a dumbed down fifteen year old.
Sometimes she wakes me; usually in winter. We are of differing species. Mine hibernates and I guess hers doesn’t. The mornings are often cold by November in the low lying Sonoran desert, often in the teens with a northern wind, and she tickles my face with her whiskers, and I pick up the double or triple blankets.
She eventually joins me. But, before that happens, most often the process goes back and forth a few times. She starts in, and
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then backs out. I lower the blankets and again close my eyes, until she again tickles my face. This “dance” can go on for some time. I guess that she eventually opts for the blankets after she again determines that I have no intention of moving until either there is AM light or the bathroom urgently calls. I never told her, but suspect that she knows that I’m afraid of the dark; the incessant nightlight a possible giveaway. Every morning. Every morning. Every morning with
........................... the local channel’s “funny”
weatherman grinning as widely as the Joker, as he tells self-deprecating “jokes.” This might be mildly amusing in its easy banality, if the weatherman didn’t make it so obvious that he considered himself a “star” playing down to the lesser ones; his talent at reading something other than that provided by the National Weather Service, yet to be determined.
Might it be better? Invariably, the answer is a laughing and mocking, loud “NO.” While I petition for an end to winter; and even fall (no double pun intended), I also know that all that’s left is only you and I, and I can’t be the last one to leave. But, I always am, as the sky continued to play the safe side in fifty shades of grey.
To the unknown writer of this which is deemed classically redundant, boring or incoherent; the contradictions remain
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conveniently indiscernible. Precision infatuated studiers of Gogol and Blake wind up on the barroom floor in the company of Charlie and Benny. They didn’t mind as it’s a highlight. David, Jonathan, George, and their admirers watch the show from side stage.
So, here’s another attempt at the rendition of the old, old story. “How old is that?” Ed dutifully asked Johnny. Johnny put his notes to his forehead and replied; “It is so old that the Aramaic scribes had not yet written of the second season in which largely unpopular Lilith was written out, and Eve starts the successful cycle, spun off and spun off, leading to
‘Bewitched.’” There was absolutely no laughter whatsoever from the audience. There were no boos either. Just polite smiles with furtive glances to neighbors. Johnny took an imaginary swing of his golf club, and said a drawn out; “Okay. ...... Okay. What you may not have known is that Sumerian is a language no longer spoken, though it is what the Bible, inasmuch as it has evolved, was originally written in; and the joke is that ...........,”
His eyebrows climbed an inch. He cut off his ill-conceived sentence and looked offstage right and said; “Scotty, I’d like to see whoever wrote this in my office right after taping. I mean like right after. ........... Little joke, folks.” He
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turned back to the spectators and said; “Golly, gosh and darn. I assure you.”
The polite audience was primarily comprised of middle-aged, white visitors on holiday in the architecturally designed canyons of the big apple for their collective first times. The last thing they wanted to do was to appear as rubes. The vacationing group had taken all the free tickets available from the kiosk located on the triangular island in the middle of gentrified Times Square; which sought attention by displaying an overhead sign which intends to entice the grinning travelers with a blue on cream, flowing banner with the surprising exclamation of; “FREE TICKETS.”
The time-lapsed lack of audio mechanically triggered a silent, invisible, luminosity in the black box; a signal which induced the taped laugh machine to kick in with its own predicted result. Johnny peered off-stage and said; “I hope the editing talent employed here doesn’t show the taciturn audience while the laugh thing is going. ....... Or, vice-versa, I guess.
... Anyway, we’ve got a great show for you tonight. We’ll kick off with Johanna McCluskey and her amazing dancing bear.”
Indecipherable sounds emanated from somewhere indeterminate.
Head down, Johnny eyed the cards in his hands and says; “Okay.
Johanna’s not here. Could the bear make it?”
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Though not asked, Jane Austen, in her brilliance, once offered a bit of a fine distinction regarding Charlotte Bronte, regarding what is “real,” as opposed to what is “true.” The brevity and inadequacy of attempted articulation has not raised the bar in more than a century. Or was it also vice-versa? Or IS
it ............?
Avid watchers and readers may have noted the porous segue from sky to earth over the water. Here sits the utopian hermit monk, side saddle on the golden calf. Here begins another old ensemble story; this time dressed by the discount outfitters as inexpensively designed by the un-noticed duplicity of Machiavelli’s sister; and this time with characters from more than one social category. Ready for the David Elmore married to Zadie, Joan, Emily, Virginia and Patti wedding pictures. It’s okay; they’re all Mormons.
Hollow, vague allusions make way for the banal. To be an unstable, omniscient narrator has its advantages. Now, back to Katy with how it played in Peoria yesterday. Take IT away, Katy.
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# 2- Near Sunrise at Jack’s- No Exit With the bulk of his confusing dream already faded into the plain woodwork, Jack stood next to his kitchen sink; steel well stained. He had earlier showered and dressed in his currently useful uniform. He was reluctantly somewhat ready for the tasks of the day. The coffee, sequestered in a green, plastic cup, which he held in his left hand was still too hot for him to risk scalding other parts of himself he considered more sensitive. He sipped slowly, and with a delightful trepidation, which required a concentration he enjoyed experiencing at the expense of his mouth and tongue. He patiently anticipated that the heat would gradually subside. It always eventually did. This wasn’t his first cup of coffee and it wouldn’t be his last.
He stared out the still dark windows above the sink, and managed to see something of a poorly depicted rendition of his head and neck; as if it was contrived by an artist of pretense; gray and un-clear in its incompetent mockery of what he once thought undeniably true, now settled into an indistinct wish for no criticism. Despite the timeworn, buoyant visions he thought he had earlier seen through the unknown-to-be-imperfect lenses with which he was provided, they were day by day becoming forgotten memories, un-replenished by the overly ripened, modern
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instruments of observation. Once they were naively considered youthfully clear. Now, he was once again shaken in his adjusted maturity. Doubt rode in on the waves produced by the undeniable thing right in front of him. Only the sequestered blind might be able to claim that the tide had not come back in, without drawing derision.
It was some sort of instinct. It was something confirmed by experience. But, he knew that it went further back than that.
Once again, he momentarily and helplessly gave it credit for more than its ambiguity deserved. It. It. At the core what is or was an it? It Lives? Clara, the It girl? ........... Just fuck it; that’s all.
Jack turned away and slurped. He felt no burning sensation.
The infernal rite was just another short-lived fake, now reduced to tepid, calculable inconsequence. Another day on the fringes of the authoritatively credentialed, stated view of “life” was on the way. A Dylan-esque sneer seemed appropriate. However, it was of habit withheld as another, well-practiced, intended appearance of deference to the socially programmed necessity of appearing sickeningly nice, required by the currently playing Ludlum farce. It was a requirement and could not be harmed by over practice. As usual, for a fraction of a second, he attempted to differentiate the real from the true, or even more likely from the insipid, collectively induced wish to not offend
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those posturing as the “sensitive,” arbitration society, headed by Nicky, arm in arm with Mary. Appropriate thank yous were extended to BF, FM and TV.
The ritualistic duplication of Jack’s morning never produced the desired magic of an evangelist’s pointed gun; yet the routine had not yet required him to kill anyone; detainment of the easiest of targets his specialty; a practical modus operandi.
As the reluctant, mid-week, morning sun slithered out of the darkness and deigned to provide a semblance of light over the rugged, un-moving mountains, Jack’s coffee became palpable to a not-particularly-gifted toddler. In the wake of 9-11 he wondered why the uniform which supposedly allowed him to do most anything, didn’t allow him to feel happy. Out of the feebly reflecting dark and quickly diminished, electric heat, Jack’s mind wandered.
“So, lie to me,” he thought. “I’ll desperately pretend to believe. Everything in my stupid heart makes me wish. You have correctly calculated not to give it any chance, yet you will not afford me the solace of sleep, through the tiny cuts of your hidden knife. Kill me or go away! But, apparently it either couldn’t or didn’t wish to kill, and it would not go away.
Sometimes it seems the height of cruelty. If you never did anything other than fake, please tell me. The doubt hurts me
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more than the ‘reality’ ever could, no matter the visuals provided. An understanding of a correctible ‘truth’ would help me and you greatly. I thought that I asked so little, as I am compelled to counter that thought with the one that asked everything. Help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help.
Please help me. I can’t understand the popular, cutting, runaway, suicidal, digressions into dystopia. I hope them to be merely theatre, though I know they are not. A male is not permitted to cry; yet ............... there were the most private of moments until Jonathan and Edward advised me otherwise.”
And there the children of dark Night have their dwellings; Sleep and Death, Morpheus and Muerte; rehashed once again; this rendition in brusquely painted blond. The unconscious watchers perceive the pair as awful gods; and wait for the fickle gong to awaken the asses which have stupidly paid money for the right to occupy a transient seat; thereby defensively seeking to excuse their own clandestine crack.
Yet those incorrectly seen as gods are nothing, if not seasoned pros. They are well accustomed to the rigors required by the act of performance; and have handled that time and again; it nothing more than just a job requisite; the minor turning of a screw; with the correctly headed screwdriver. Any thespian
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related foibles are caused by his imagined audience mind read and is clearly directly proportional with his “free” time; a supposed luxury. The burdens of those placed on the stage most often manifest their presences in the shackles rattled by Marley. The great expectations of those caught in the spotlight are truly merciful and besides, Chuck Barris took away the gong and quit quite a while back. He even appropriated the dancing machine and brought it with him to Carmel.
The glowing sun has become disinterested in the boring, intellectualized ruminations; becomes distant and washed-out, and now chooses Lear over Hamlet. Wan is triumphant as it displays the non-color of water choosing to harbor a week old tea bag; described by DFW as Pale, like in King, overly explained for the benefit of non-fans. The yellow man borrows from the rotten, and says; “I try so hard to be nice.”
He, once again, vows to never again grace them with his beams and seeks an eight figured museum deal. The stated colloquial and societally based inhibitions, even when perceived in the best of currently available lenses, find that satisfactory; any possible reservations withheld. The disillusioned orb displays his own intellectual and philosophical difficulties in his highly interpretable posture.
He can’t turn completely away from the reflecting pond. He is already weary of being viewed as merely tea colored; though it
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was his un-recalled choice. It doesn’t matter whether he ascends the east, nor if he comes down the clouded, western slope, to a lower, psychologically contrived hell. And the former of them roams faux-nicely over the earth and the sea's broad, long forgotten back and despite that, he is still kindly to men and women; but the other; the shadow; the supposed “realist,” has a heart of iron, and the spirit within him is as pitiless as cold bronze. He is adjudicated as schizophrenic by the majority of the damning, disinterested mainstream; and sentenced to time served. Yes, yes, yes and yes. Whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast; and he is hateful even to the best ignored inferior, closest, and ingratiate deathless, immortal gods.
Judgment day has been voted upon and chosen in a democratic landslide, but not by either of the two out-voted ancients. The former serves merely as a merciful, reluctant executioner; with a sad “Goodbye” or a shyly whispered “Hello,” tears hidden. The latter serves as the silence of materiality, motivation unknown.
It doesn’t really matter to him as it has already been democratically chosen by the populace; and inevitably someone will be paid to carry out the wishes tabulated in the crooked polling place. It is only to be further demonstrated to the credentialed or faux arbiters of the over-their-head-weather-monitored sky, as their failure of trust toddy and disallow.
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Downbeat jazz. Broke Dexter Gordon in the flash forward American Museum currently called Western Europe; backwards, yet that which rules. Dexter plays the hand dealt. Find a way to live with it or fold forever. Joke with the coke. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Pleased to be here. Appreciate the polite, non-STD
claps. No sarcasm intended. Smile as best you can. It’s a good beat. Jack yourself to play. Give them dreams. Later, they’ll conjure their own desired nightmares.
No objectionable complaints. No fuss. The front row lady in the designer dress is showing the runners all the way up her stockings; her left shoe ready to fall from the toes from which it hangs. Dex has been told that he is free; free to blow air which drifts to the sky. What is beneath is digitally re-mastered, “enhanced,” high definition visuals of the clubs, diamonds and spades. Hearts remain absent or incognito. They have learned that to do otherwise risks suffering the scorn now endured by last year’s “ridiculous” height of fashion.
Dostoyevsky’s idiotic friend has become acquainted with Gogol’s colors. Deal with it. There is no real going back without lobotomization. Anti-depressants and morphine temporarily dull the dull.
A cold glance shows dissipation, masquerading as something incorrectly classified as meta; the recognition of the “oh-so-sad” reversal of possibility. See Obama’s classical pose for
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further details. Anti-meta has made its presence known, though it has cleverly chosen to give itself an undefined name, rank and serial number. It knows one gigantic thing extremely well; and that is enough. It knows that while it was once true that to divide is to conquer; in the “democratic” Age of Information to define is to conquer. It has infested the late day, winter sky with some semblance of illusory light; affording the “solace” of discount store, yellow happy faces to the desperate on the check-out line. “Thank you. You have a nice day too.” The radiance is pallid, but effectively serves as bogus illumination to the striving faithful’s, tithe backed and “Sunday gift”
wishes for an Eden never seen. The crack between Aphrodite and Hermes widens as she dreams an optimism which has no precedent in reality and he wisely calculates likely outcomes with deft keystrokes. Effectively playing the odds has assured him that he and she will have a fruitful life and comfortable retirement.
The later discovery of being wrong while well intentioned is humbling; but is paid for by the kids.
The sun flip-flops its significance with the bulbous gray, displaying time proven, wearisome acceptance. The battle lines of the drear are secured and stationary, perhaps the popular, efficient result of proven covert military strategy, well known, but only stated in a faux pas. The now, black hole wishing sun seems compelled to keep moving toward its obliteration at the
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horizon. This scientifically proven to be, optical illusion falsely foreshadows the darkness of being buried alive. Another day has passed over the land of milk and honey, reflecting for a mere instant on the jocular, erudite pretensions of the silver spoons at toddy time. The lucky one quickly knows that trying will only uniformly produce fatigues manifested in varying hues.
The discount store collage “education” was the un-elected birthright of the strivers. Standardized Oriental high schoolers scored better in all colors except green. Armed with purchased papers signifying “credentials” masters and doctors plied their wares, dispensing kick back drugs and unapproachable economic superiority. Voted-in crooks spun webs of fraud; lucrative scams, perennially “invisible” to the wish-to-be-seen-as-nice, socially conscious, “good’ believers and those in need of a ride. Invest in the proven. Organized crime has beaten disorganized freedom every time. The guiltless dreams of a meth fucked kid were the best available compensation; an ambulatory speedballing escapee; for a while; a very short while. The young adult was too soon confronted with the gloom and repetition of an unavoidable, wickedly laughable reality of impossibility. The good old boys at the county seat go to the bank knowing that there ain’t all that much time; and they are yet to be proven wrong.
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Another name. Another plane. Another place. Another identity. Another start. Another approach. Shutdown of any conception of reality. The joyous fantasy of her eternal presence was already smashed like the earthquake china on the shelves of San Francisco. Eden was written and preached through the eyes of the overbearing, sexless, excepting-altar-boy oriented ministrations, presence of the mercenary blind in pious cap and gown. Was that a trip or a fall? Good guess. The stoic adult survivors trudged to work and mall with the dynamism of zombies with withered right legs. The sickly old disappeared to peruse offers of marked down cremation services. “Reality”
became a dream of a merciful end. The end. The end. The end? No more games. They’ve all been played ad infinitum anyway. Freeze it; drown it; burn it; bury it; whatever. It only takes normality and a dash of understandable larceny. Just don’t stick more ashes into the revered fireplace urn. Everyone knows the old joke. Maybe a merciful oblivion comes. Overly optimistic, perhaps. Yet, here stood all that was known; inherited by the beleaguered new; contaminated by the unseen, useless watcher.
Maybe gentle sleep sans nightmare. Ha. Better shot at waiting for Godot or Lefty.
In the brave, struggling world of irrational hope, Calle de la Congelacion was a refuge, a sequestered haven, a quarantined boneyard, a loved union, a hated community, an irresistible
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beauty, a ghastly dread, an eternal presence, a temporary thing, a home for the white robed, a home for the unapologetic sinner, a place where people stood tall, a place where people dropped to their knees, a home of understanding, and a home of confusion.
It was far from unique.
Jack lived there because he could afford to.
Each house bore no resemblance to its neighbor. Each property was a thick forest. Each house stood alone. Each property displayed the uniformity of a renewing, continuous nature. Each house was poor and showed the deterioration of time. Each property was rich with a timeless patience, waiting for the predictable renovation of spring. It was far from unique.
Jack lived there because it was a good place to hide.
It was a confession booth. It was a denial of the pious. It was perverse. It was ordinary. It was isolated. It was in a crowd. It loved. It hated. It bought. It sold. It lived. It died. It was far from unique.
Jack lived there because it was near his job.
One could easily go on and on with Calle de la Congelacion’s traits to tiresome perpetuity. However, it would merely be indicative of a total, tragic, comic and ludicrous
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disregard for the harsh reality now brutally manifested in the street’s world of today.
Of most tangible and practical significance; Calle de la Congelacion was a perfectly straight, two lane dirt road; though a surveyor peering through his finely discriminating glass would note the persistent, naturally inspired undulations, immaterial to the naked eye, and of no significance to anyone, except those who take some sort of “status” from their desperate need to show their possession of a functional, state-of-the-art lens. What would become of Saturday night barbecue “parties” without the likes of new pools, decks and gadgets?
With full realization that their consciously considered, possibly insulting spin could be taken negatively by the residents of the road, town officials of the Village of Propicio chose to leave Calle de la Congelacion off the maps they distributed to tourists. The pariah road was shaded with elms and was no longer in keeping with the sunny gardens recently established. Besides, there were no registered voters living there. Besides, there were periodic, un-confirmed accusations of an open disregard for the law. Besides, to ignore, and to encourage the ignor-ance of Calle de la Congelacion was deemed the safest pursuit for those who; ironically; would have been the most benefitted by the road’s inclusion. While this kind of irrational thinking was apparently unknown to the under-
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represented residents of Calle de la Congelacion; had they known of it, they would have pragmatically considered that “insult” as being conducive to their desired privacies.
Jack lived there because he could find a rental. .......
Back off, just a bit. Though, it is distinctly a consideration; no; a likely impetus, that because he also found it a quiet place; a place where one did not have to be bothered with rude intrusions, his gladly sequestered, prior lack of experience made him unaware of that characterization. An old song flashed in Jack’s as well as in someone else’s head located somewhere else. “As You Said” was a little noted Cream song, likely because it called for an acoustic guitar. Its gloomy themes of
“tides, beaches, trials and never again” did not make it a fan favorite in hopeful 1968. Bad timing. It should have been put out in “schwere dusternis” loving 2016.
Whether one was walking on the right side or the left side of Calle de le Congelacion was almost impossible to discern. The lack of a white painted central limit precluded any thoughts of borderlines, until one got way over it. Pragmatically ignoring any possible esotericism, it also depended on which way one was walking; perhaps whether one was coming or going. Coming faced the Rio Grande River at the end of the road and going faced Propicio Road at the other end. On the other hand, if one was
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walking backwards ........... This is going on a bit longer than necessary. The majority of those who had made the journey were likely to have spent as much of their anxiously seeking, unconscious time on the right as on the left, as defined, in their pursuit of an ever increasingly elusive, twenty-first century, un-degraded nature, totally oblivious to the mercifully, non-existent, restrictive rules of the road.
Trekkers with the impudence and hopeful need to make the trip thought nothing of the lack of a line of demarcation. Without the aid of cultured analysis, they just continued on as they intrinsically thought they were intended, simultaneously believing that any notion of destiny could be represented by any of a number of mathematical symbols and equations including the infinite decimal representation of Pi.
Jack lived there because he was an American.
The road was never blessed by the powers that be with a defining, and thereby limiting, street sign. This was not originally meant as any sort of insult or neglect. It was standard operating procedure back in Propicio’s rural days. But, it had become unique in the developed Propicio of 2016, replete with shiny black signs with gold lettering posted at every other intersection. The only way to get to Calle de la Congelacion was for one to instinctively know where it was. Despite its space-based, high vantage point, even the Google navigator missed it.
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Knowledge is currently advertised as attainable by institutions which make vague claims of being able to provide higher guiding wisdom, if your grades, standardized testing scores and “life experience” essays meet their high standards. Don’t be the least bit concerned if one says “No.” There are countless others, all subject to the “dismal science.” Don’t be the least bit concerned about the outrageous tuition; loans can be easily arranged.
If a person followed the traditional advice and committed to that one inevitably biased approach, the Specter Encapsulating Likely Failure is “uncannily” attracted. SELF has seen the same thing so many times; it takes no particularly extraordinary spectral effort to be a few steps ahead. Old “S”
went on automatic pilot and loomed, like the bucketed pig’s blood over Carrie’s head, only waiting for a small tug from its sister, “Fashionable Cruelty,” to make its next splash; while the foreign professor watched and sent money back home.
Most trekkers cared nothing of these considerations. They were unconsciously brave and perilously self-taught sufferers who could not tolerate things any other way; and only felt absolutely deserted, when not on the boundary free dirt of Calle de la Congelacion. Their bravery may have stemmed from the fact that they had been wrong so many times already, one more time wasn’t going to be any big thing.
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Jack lived there because he wanted to.
Not very long ago most would have characterized the Village of Propicio as a rural, southwestern, farming hamlet, with a human population of 800; and a tractor population of 400; bordering a southwestern city with a human population of 600,000. In 2016 the Propicio-resident-resisted, honest assessment was that Propicio is a suburban, southwestern, gardening colony; with a population of 8,000, and a lawnmower population of 3,000; bordering a cosmopolitan city; with an alien population of 1,200,000; most Propicians in agreement with at least the last segment. See; it’s just the same old story.
The farms grew houses instead of wheat. Any farmer worth his corn will tell you that houses are a much better cash crop.
However as a result of their openly communicated economic rationalism, the Village seemed to be struggling with an identity crisis.
In the remainders of a thought sense of privacy, incorrectly comprehended, the old timers resolutely joked of the increased traffic, the naturally ill-informed newcomers, and the attendant congestion. Wary of the possible unwanted suggestion that their experience produced understanding they stated no reducing definition. Instead they were content to say that;
“Propicio ain’t Propicio no more,” and make an infectiously obligatory smile. Every morning they precisely counted their
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cash, evaluated the other paper online through websites designed to sell, and couldn’t help but pray to Jesus for favorable numbers. As they offered their prayers for the reliability of the currently in vogue capital asset pricing model, their commonest of senses sometimes kicked back in and suggested that something may be way out of balance. A former farmer does not hear any specifics. His experience has taught him that an investigation was in order when the cornstalks were six inches higher in one area and when something just didn’t look, smell, or sound right. But now, there is only a humming silence, which seems to emanate from his improperly installed, plastic module.
He has been conscious of the whirring sound made when a CD is inserted, but this vibration is different and inconsistent. He is not even certain that it is there. When he listens for it, it is not there. When he forgets it, he thinks he again hears it.
It is ultimately regarded as so annoying, that he chooses to drown it out by turning on the banal announcements of Murdoch owned mainstream TV. It serves one purpose well.
As farmers; or more currently termed former farmers, they still think that they retain that common sense humanly inherent, and in that belief, devoid of any known translation into numbers, they are confused and angrily frustrated in any attempted account reconciliation. Their nod to the profit maximizing notes, which are ultimately no more valuable than the
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collective faith in their issuer and the recognition of the time value of money, nuanced by academic theorizations and future predictions of the expected risk free interest rate, as defined, results in a precise calculation which changes every second, coupled with that frightful vision of something not human and not fully understood, with a dull maroon tail and horns. It is either a symbol used at high school graduation; perhaps Salinger’s prime fear; or, or, or .......................
something which can and has been depicted visually, and excepting JD, is yet to be explained in pointed words.
On good days, rather than risking the possibly useless consternation, the former farmers luxuriate poolside, near the now effortless fields once a cornucopia of sweat and plenty; now a tract housing development continually in view. In their friendly, laid back, and businesslike way they had faux-grudgingly accepted the change which inevitably came back to the home they inherited from their hard working and enterprising ancestors. Times change. Adding a bit to that, a long time ago, Bobby said; “THINGS have changed.” Their former farmer’s passion was relegated to telling cheery stories of “better” times when;
“That housing development used to be a cattle ranch, which was purchased cheaply by Joe Cleverly, because of the rumors of it having once been a toxic waste dump. Once had 200 head of Holsteins. Boy, when the wind was blowing the wrong way, whooo.
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Joe’s now busy watching futures reports,” snort, snort; followed by a head turn to the side, pupils aimed up.
The new coming strivers reveled in the antediluvian, incorrectly remembered and made-up tales, and were thrilled to call Propicio rural, justified physically as most of their houses were on a whole acre. Each thought that their area continued the traditions of the supposed glory days. Having come from the jam-packed cities, to them it did. But, seeming to be unconsciously contradictory, after having been attracted to the Propicio of former times, the new residents became active in trying to “improve” it. Calle de la Congelacion was one of their most widespread and common considerations. Though no one stated this openly, one of the things that may have annoyed the newcomers was that because of the five acre lot sizes, the width of Calle de la Congelacion overwhelmed its narrow, one acre, suburban neighbors.
Jack just lived there as he had for some time and he was oblivious to the surrounding changes.
Elm trees, in general, and the thickly packed elm trees on the nonconforming road, in particular, were openly disdained by the village neophytes. The veterans had either ignored them benignly or simply mowed over encroachers while clearing their fields. Since no one had farmed Jack’s street in recent history, the vulgar and indiscreet Propician gardening weeds had not been
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controlled and were allowed to grow on Calle de la Congelacion for as long as anyone could recall in their present biased memories.
The few old timers who thought about such things believed that the hardy trees were deemed objectionable for precisely the inescapably endemic reason of their ability to adapt and proliferate no matter what; and the fact that they were not native. To point out that they pre-dated the majority of the current village population, now dominated by non-natives, was not going to make anyone popular, and was better left unsaid.
The Siberian Elms had grown to heights of thirty feet and threw off their seeds in the wind, inciting the particular consternation of all within a half mile. In summers they afforded substantial and welcomed shade to their hosts and asked for no maintenance. In winter their thick branches partially blocked the indirect sun offered, and served as an obstruction to any snowfall’s inclination to land and accumulate into a white blanket. Still, some got through and in the infrequent blizzard, much did. The icy skin of the year’s concluding season made the road a difficult drive, as Propicio made no use of plows.
Jack lived there because; still unknown to him; it was his destiny; his choices severely limited by that which was, that
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which is, in the dark regarding that which will be. He was not like any other. He was just like any other.
However, the elms with their season-dependent, navigational treachery, their multiplication capabilities, their disregard for newly significant local tastes, and their demonstrated abilities to withstand any change in nature were the “Austen real” and not the “Bronte true” derivation of reason for local scorn. They were merely easily discerned surface “truths,” which served to compel those with a magnificent grasp of the obvious and those inclined to being devious. The true derision was the result of the Propicio new-comers’, collective, unspeakable opinion of their preceding heftier habitat; so de classe in the
“light and airy” fashion. However, in substance, there was no question that they were different from the majority of current residents of the intolerant, newly, mall affluent village. Most ironic was that they seemed immune to being considered aberrant and conversely they were also immune to being considered part of what became another keep-up-with-the-Jones’ suburbia.
Of course, Calle de la Congelacion was under the steely eye of other documented “facts” which required the admission that some of the residents had felony records and some were still engaged in activities they considered none of anybody’s business. Like the trees, they didn’t seem to have a need to consider any conception of the eastern direction of the current
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wind; considering “new” and “eastern” too oxymoronic to bother dealing with on a mental level. On a practical level, it didn’t matter to them, and they thought that it should not matter to anyone, as they thought that they paid their debts and went about their business with no effect on the clustering invaders well into the process of circling. They may have done well to have watched a few westerns. They adamantly resided in the land of the free, the home of the brave, the dwelling of the benignly neglecting, and all that stuff written about by those long gone English aristocrats who first deemed it necessary to poison the Red. They magnanimously thought; “We all make mistakes.
Forgiveness is all,” “Live and let live,” and similarly sentimented phrases, even as they became less prevalent. On a practical level, they had to believe that as the occupants of Calle de la Congelacion were no longer young and they had no other better option than to play out the string they had spent decades rolling in. They found amusement in the newly-arrived-proper parents’ directives to their children not to go near their road of iniquity, as very predictably, that unenforceable edict, made a visit to Calle de la Congelacion the coolest thing the kids could possibly do in a town insistent upon relentless and inhibiting parental supervision. The dictates gave the long term residents of Calle de la Congelacion the ludicrously undying impression of being so commonly human. The pattern was
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painfully clear to those with eyes yet undimmed in their
“improvement” tendencies. It continued the time-worn tradition of the graying and fearful survivors of another era, now, due to their less-than-ideal outcome, feeling silently contrite and finding safety in the regurgitation of the initially disregarded advice of their suddenly-wise parents. The dizzying about face was again directly proportional to the degree of suffering experienced by those now mature in years, their placement point on the worry spectrum, and their love for those in their charge.
The geographically-only-shifting populace had again cycled from stultifying repression, to perilous absolute freedom, to contemporary scholastically credentialed and persuasive, hopeless confusion. The un-important dichotomies were available in nauseating detail, with a regularly delivered, monthly mail box event. Inertia Conducive Equivocations and Infinite Condescending Elaboration commanded the zeitgeist of the airwaves.
The book-no-one-reads-authors augmented their incomes, by offering pretend-the-bathroom-mirror-is-a-TV-camera, daily practiced, off-the-point, dissertational diatribes to the few viewers of thoughtful programming; convincing, especially to those devoid of another voice, including the many duplication oriented, media hounds desperate to fill air space. The earth bound recipient of the corporately costless “service,” scanned
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it with behaviorally trained, glazed eyes, and with a pedestrian and un-investigated glance, the weary placed the $110.39 bill in the scheduled-for-payment pile.
Jack just lived there.
Eight houses on 5+ acres each lined the forbidden road, four on each side. The new Propicio kids especially liked to hang around Lotte’s house. Third on the right, her tiny, red, tin-sided A-frame stood out as one of the area’s last monuments to 1960’s “alternative” ideas. Long ago, the “hippies” who constructed it, moved on to traditional jobs, traditional houses and traditional caskets. Some insisted that this 49 year old, somewhat portly, long, gray haired, part Native American woman, with no visible means of support, was a distributor of non-medically approved marijuana. Some said she was a prostitute.
However, her house had been twice stormed by the Propicio police, who had found absolutely no reefer; not even a roach, not even residue, and no johns. What they did find was that they had wrongfully intimidated this woman, on a legal as well as an ethical basis, to a point where she had to engage psychiatric help in an attempt to get over her fear of being illegally assaulted in her own home by men with drawn guns. What the cops also found was that their department was out $100,000 for each of the unlawful break-ins; which resulted in a severely
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inhibited paymaster the following two years. Afterward, Lotte’s source of support seemed clear.
Calle de la Congelacion was right off the main thoroughfare, which was un-imaginatively named Propicio Road.
Most locals considered this marginally preferable to its other possible designation of County Road 666, as it could be easily viewed as an extension of the road so numbered in adjacent Mesa Grande; which in turn was an extension of the road so numbered in Bernalillo County; which in turn was an extension of
......... et cetera, et cetera; ending 2,000 miles away in the now and temporarily Crip controlled south end of Chicago. It did, once upon a time, extend further. But, then there was the bomb and the crash; and, with the guesswork necessitated, is an overly long story in itself.
Calle de la Congelacion did not participate in any of the
“grandeur” it’s better travelled, t-squared companion enjoyed.
It backed to the Rio Grande, and was down river from the
“accident” prone waste treatment facility operated by a private entity named Brownwater, Ltd. for the benefit of the jam packed Borough of Rio Lobo, to its north. The opaque water’s constant tumble over rocks was softly invigorating during most days. But, at night, the same old flow was magnified in the stillness, and was said by many to be source of discordant, murky and gravely
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gloom. The Rio Grande was fortunate that the new-comers had no idea of a way to remove a river.
Most people also thought there was only one way in and only one way out of Calle de la Congelacion. But, its long term residents knew of the gate. The fourth and last house on the right, long the completely fenced dwelling of the ancient, reclusive Dietrichs, had a hardly recognizable, perennially unlocked gate, right on the road. The green tubular, horse fencing obscured its existence and the thick elms behind it obscured its purpose. The road’s residents accepted it as common knowledge that the Dietrichs didn’t mind anyone using it and that by following the path beyond it, one could get away to Camino de las Brisas. The effectively permitted, though possibly trespassing journey was utilized once in a blue moon. It was a refreshing, necessary, and most of all, an elusive visionary trip.
Jack Greenhandle had resided on Calle de la Congelacion the last thirteen years, third house on the left. The four room, 100
year old adobe provided everything he needed. He kept the three doors locked and the windows were barred and clasped by an internal hinge. At 48 years of age he was the road’s resident adolescent, which celebrity he enjoyed as it seemed to offer the illusion of youth to a man who was well on his way to settling into a life of rebounding museum echoes; replete with jelly
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faced women. He was comfortable and contented when he managed to stay busy enough to avoid the unaccompanied reflection on the mistakes of his early years. Unknowingly, he had tons of other reclusive company.
He had woken to another freezing morning. As Jack dawdled over breakfast, in no rush to enter the frigid, he looked out the kitchen window. The paltry sun had been out for an hour, but you could have fooled Jack. At best, the visibility provided by the sinister shadows it created, approximated that of a monochromatic sunset over the mountains. Though the view wasn’t dissimilar, Jack found the late day dimness preferable; perhaps since by that time the rising temperature had expanded the mercury. While his perception may initially seem somewhat incongruous, Jack found the late day black more desirable, as he would soon be under his three warm covers. But these un-invigorating mornings portended an overly long day of consciousness demanding drear.
Though Jack could not see it from his current vantage point, he assumed that once again the tinted, visual outlets of his recent model, black Chrysler had gone as opaque as the river. This was the unfailing winter result of the exterior, nocturnal coldness having infiltrated the car’s shut down of the heater generated, internal warmth. With no garage for shelter, the Chrysler was parked in the elm bordered driveway. The light
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of the star filled night sky provided no heat whatsoever. Left alone to suffer the inadequacy of that which was light years away, Jack’s car had again become as frigid as the filtered outside air. It required warming up before it could possibly allow safe driving in the luxury of a warm, comfortable berth.
This was the Propicio seasonal norm. Spring was a long way off. Jack’s winter routine of shivering down the path and turning on his icy car was the single most productive thing he could do at this time of day. He kept the thermostat at 80 and the house refused to pass 71. However it was reasonably warm with three layers, and as a consequence the hostile shock of the sub-freezing was brutal, but perversely, never served to wake him. It was not the least bit stimulating. The harsh winter reality only functioned to make him yearn for a return to the comfort of the thick covers of his warm bed.
It was merely one of many, typically, clouded New Mexico, early December daybreaks. Christmas mocked of its own coming with the flicker of low artificial light displays “cheerfully”
provided by the tract houses mercifully in the distance; marginally capitalizing on the spaces between the tree trunks.
Jack was impervious to the artificially lit displays of seasonal
“merriment” also known as bogus pleas for cheer. It seemed to require the obligatory grin one makes when one hears the standard Brit salutation and farewell. It seemed to him that the
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people who prided themselves upon the proper use of the English language would have been able to come up with two different words for opposing events. Using only one suggested that the perpetrators did not know whether they were coming or going. It was much too reminiscent of that shit eating laugh obvious to all but the grinning fool; which is cruel to ignore while cruel to encourage. Jack took personal, negative solace in his awareness that he was not in Minnesota or Surrey and that he was in the vicinity of his world opening, trusty laptop.
That was the common way of those willingly addicted to the illusion of having all things available at all times. Jack endured the celebrity of a solitary misfit’s chosen aloof existence, remote on Calle de la Congelacion; struggling to display conformity in public requirements. He felt the seclusion strongly on those deeply blue days uninhabited by interesting people to touch, people to talk to, and things to do. It actually rivaled the loneliness he felt in a crowd. “The Elephant Man” can be viewed just so many times until it becomes only a failing-tug-at-your-frayed-heartstrings rendition of that which is. It was his favorite movie. He thought that in its black and white cinematic virtuosity, its real-worldly view of the corporal abandonment and cerebral, abstract and emotionally lost actuality was truth. With the push of a button Jack’s materially dependent existence was now inadequately replaced
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with an infinite supply of ons and offs, quantum mechanically theorized to be operating at the speed of a black light, whose existence is yet to be proven. The movie’s astute portrayal of a heart, destined at birth, to be rejected foreclosed all hope of a happy ending. He thought it evoked an unreasoning need for that which has never existed, and never will.
He was not in full realization of his unconsciously condescending attitude toward those addicted to the company of constant “entertainment” manifesting itself in the safety of commercially viable re-runs as he was one of them. Time and again he had seen that by choosing to dwell in his own antiquated and admittedly deficient confinement, with the foolish thought that his hopelessness would be alleviated with the next mouse click which invariably left him merely static.
After having had his fill of isolated, non-feeling, and heart-breaking incursions into a world which was over-ripe to supply him with an infinite supply of more, he had retreated to his home and property. His fill consisted of the brief yes-no-yes-no relationships he had with Madeline the Mafia Princess, Math Professor Urszula, and oddly Susan the Kierkegaard Dilettante.
Each of the three all too soon reminded him of Godard’s
“Breathless” and his lost Beth. Often he rushed home to find comfort in the sights and sounds provided by his electronic buddy. It didn’t matter what was on the screen. It talked to him
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and occasionally said something interesting. Despite the proliferation of contrary opinions, at the core Jack was an optimist.
Sometimes he hated the machine. Sometimes he considered getting rid of it. But, without it he couldn’t watch “The Elephant Man” anytime he so chose.
Jack poured the coffee and removed the eggs from the insistently beeping microwave, placing them on the kitchen table on top of a hard covered copy of Vonnegut’s “God Bless You, Mr.
Rosewater,” useful expressly for this purpose. He threw on his tan, quilted, discount store, winter jacket, which initially seemed to take down his already run-down temperature a few more notches. The surfaces of his supposed protection from the elements was rudely infected by a long night in a built-in, all encompassing, clothing closet; sliding doors shut away from the shield of the little house’s baseboard hot water heating system.
As he had been necessarily conditioned by a lifetime of requisite compensation, Jack withstood the shock of his recurrent cold repulsion, when he donned the cross-stitched, tan article of momentary, ineffectual expedience. Shaking uncontrollably, he scurried down the icy path to his black Chrysler. His body was further hounded by the chill when he sat on the plastic seat and with some apprehension about big black’s willingness to start, turned his key in the ignition. Jack
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smiled through chattering teeth and welcomed the millisecond delayed sound of the agreeable engine and its subsequent roar.
It was not always so. He had experienced sufficient dead batteries to truly be thankful for one which was capable of surviving the winter night. It was the first of the new day’s events Jack faithfully hailed, simultaneously and morosely thinking that it would be his last cause for cheer in this lackluster day. His six foot, 190 pound frame recklessly dashed back to the relative swelter of his modest, outmoded house, decorated in knockoff early Spanish.
The warm air struck his face as if it were a gentle, Floridian, Gulf breeze. Jack removed his frosty jacket, sat at the kitchen table and re-engaged his patiently waiting scrambled eggs and coffee. While the statistically likely constancy with which his morning nourishment’s temperature had maintained the way of balmy summer could be reasonably calculated, the occurrence never ceased to amaze and be valued by Jack. No matter the wait and the winter morning atmosphere, his daily entree was still warmly waiting to be eaten and drunk. From experience, Jack knew that this was going to be the best part of his day. His motor running, he took his time, savoring all of the texture. He lifted his cup and again saw the title of; “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.” The context produced a smile, before the breakfast was too soon gone.
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In his now nonchalant acquiescence, Jack gazed through the window and saw it packed with elm trunks, stoically persevering in the close vicinity of long-time friends. Jack wanted to give his black Chrysler adequate time to get toasty and stared at what he could make out of their oval grained rings. He found little similarity as each had a unique pattern, yet they all solidly stood together in the face of the worst winter could offer. He thought; “Extremely splendid.” Jack slowly shook his head in admiration, but in the corner of his eye he saw the impassive, silent, digital clock indicating that it was time to go. He thought; “So soon? I just got here.” Reluctantly, he again donned his still cold jacket. While he slowly walked away, he looked back; then looked back again. The relentless timepiece had moved further on. There was no question that it was time to go. Jack considered turning the appropriate knobs to set the unsolicited herald back an hour. He quickly realized that this would only result in a farce, fooling only him. Besides, the clock was near the ceiling, and Jack would have had to have gotten a ladder to reach it. He didn’t remember where he had left it. It was sadly, but undeniably time to go.
To avoid any sentimental second thoughts, risking a fall, he briskly walked to his Chrysler. Or, so he thought. When he got to the gravel driveway, he saw that there was no Chrysler in it. He looked down the road and saw that his tinted, black car
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was moving down Calle de la Congelacion, heading for Propicio Road, without any directional assistance from him.
Out loud Jack said; “Son of a bitch.” The car kept going anyway. Jack was pissed as he had to get to work. He was also extremely embarrassed, as he was a plainclothes cop.
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# 3- Jurisdiction With No Appeal Whatsoever Jack wasn’t one of Propicio’s finest. He was one of the finest in the big city of Mesa Grande, seven miles south. Though only physically separated by the distance easily covered by a healthy German Shepherd, the two towns were philosophically disconnected by their distinct “moral” positions. To Propicians, the residents of Mesa Grande had none. To Mesa Grandians, the Propicians reveled in eighteenth century witch hunts.
On the average, Propicians were better educated, many having proudly attained professional status. However, of necessity, to maximize their hefty-mortgage-paying wages they were dependent on the unrestricted largesse of the big “wicked”
city. Their oft stated complaint served as a blessing to the castaways on Calle de la Congelacion, as the good people of itinerant Propicio sometimes focused their complaints on the
“irregular conduct” of those many had to “suffer” on a daily basis. They never admitted to their concomitant mental stimulation.
Jack walked back to his front door muttering; “This isn’t supposed to happen here and certainly not to me.” He called his partner and arranged for a ride, saying his car was “in the shop.” Then he called his “Good morning” friend, Loud Mouth
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Beverly, 911 operator in Mesa Grande and reported the theft.
When she was able to speak clearly, through the giggles, she told Jack that this was a job for the Propicio police. It was their territory.
Jack dreaded having to deal with the local dispensers of traffic tickets more than he disliked having made the report to Loud Mouth Beverly. He considered them candy-assed nuisances and they considered him a jerk. He put his hands in his pockets and took another look at the elms. Before he could see their finer points, he realized that he had another problem. Not only his car key, but all of his keys went the way of his Chrysler.
He searched his kitchen drawers. He knew he had another set in there somewhere. He had a panic attack while he rustled through old Christmas and birthday cards, mixed with forgotten knives, forks, wrenches, glue, screws and screwdrivers. He found them near the back of the third repository he tried, but was still un-nerved by the realization that criminals now had effortless access to his house. He took some solace in the fact that his “official” police revolver occupied his right pants pocket. He called the Propicio Police Department to make the report and hoped Ashby didn’t answer the phone.
He recalled his prior run in with Officer Brandon Ashby.
While at home Jack had gotten an emergency call to pursue a metallic blue Chevy. The occupants had just pulled an armed
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robbery of an ice cream place in a Mesa Grande strip mall on the border of Propicio. The perpetrators were reported to be making their attempted getaway down Propicio Road. Numerous thoughts raced through Jack’s mind. The most significant one was that Propicio Road is a five mile stretch with speed limits ranging from 25 to 35. Any turnoffs led to dead ends. So the criminals are either stupid or didn’t do their homework. Not doing one’s homework was either a sign of stupidity or desperation. So, this could well be a dangerous situation involving nuts with guns.
Returning the likely irrationality, Jack felt challenged and wanted to do whatever was necessary to haul in the perps. He really didn’t give a damn about the money taken from the ice cream store in the strip mall and he could have concocted any of a number of bogus stories as to why something prevented him from intervening in the dangerous situation. But back in the old days or rural Propicio, animals would often find their way to the lightly travelled “main” road. Dogs, cats, chickens, goats, sheep, and even cattle and horses were being endangered by these
“outlaw” jackasses; and Jack wanted to nip the invasion right in the bud.
In plain clothes, and gun ready, Jack jumped into his black Chrysler and waited at the Calle de la Congelacion intersection.
The suspects sped by at 50 and Jack got behind them. He was
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hyped, with adrenalin flowing faster than the waters of the lazy Rio Grande.
He quickly saw spinning red lights in his rear view mirror and heard the whoop-whoop-whoop-whaaaaaa blare of the DefCon siren. It was a Propicio Police car. He kept going and kept hearing the hammy siren, perhaps encouraged by the continual red lights. He still kept going. The Propicio cop car pulled alongside him. He flashed his badge and still kept going. When the Propicio cop pulled ahead of him and cut him off he slammed on the brake without having had much choice in the matter.
Jack got out of his car, mad as hell, and sprinted toward his obstacle, flashing his badge. He pointed at the quickly disappearing metallic blue Chevy and yelled; “I’m in pursuit of a thief.”
With his hand on his gun, Ashby said; “Get back in the car.”
Jack said; “Don’t you understand. Mesa Grande Police.
Chasing a crook. Comprende?”
Ashby pulled his gun and said; “Get back in the car.”
Jack got back in the car and very audibly intoned; “Useless fucking asshole.”
Ashby walked to Jack’s car and said; “Do you know that the speed limit here is thirty?”
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“I told you. I’m a Mesa Grande cop chasing a crook.” He reached into his pocket to again retrieve his badge.”
Ashby said; “Careful!”
Jack knew that he had lost his prey and slammed the back of his head against the headrest. He left his badge in his pocket.
Ashby said; “Just sit tight, okay?”
Jack didn’t think it was okay and accordingly did not say so.
Ashby said; License and registration, please.”
Jack gingerly used two fingers to remove the items from the little door-less compartment above the ashtray. He held them out for Ashby in the same manner, while surveying the two story adobe to his right. The man and woman, now in the front yard, surveyed him back.
Ashby took the items, looked at them and said; “Calle de la Congelacion?”
Jack didn’t think that required an answer, but he was glad Ashby could read.
Ashby said; “I’m going to check this out, okay?” Not waiting for a response to his trained and now habitual ersatz questions, he returned to his car and cradled a phone between his shoulder and bent head.
Jack looked out the closed passenger’s side window at the staring couple and briefly did the same in kind response, but
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with an indecipherable mocking tone as right now any notion of good intentions existed only in the unproven theory in someone else’s head. Jack was in full realization of the virtually assured incomprehensibility of his joke, but still found it preferable to focusing on the dismal, intervening, extremely un-entertaining Propicio flat head, uniformed up and down in curling, unwashed deep brown, interspersed with the dried out remnants of Whattaburger red.
Ashby sat in his car for what seemed like ten minutes to Jack. Jack amused himself somewhat through making finger wiggling hellos to the staring couple. Initially, the Ludlum-esque overture resulted in a reciprocal, but not duplicate arrangement. But, by the third performance, the couple must have sensed that something was not quite right, as they disappeared into their house or backyard.
Finally, Ashby came back and said; “Okay, you check out.”
Jack took a deep breath, appearing as relief, but actually that of disgust and boredom, the latter two only detectable in the never viewed eyes.
Ashby said; “You have to understand. We got a report of a metallic blue Chevy vee-hickle coming through here with alleged armed thieves.”
Jack said; “Do you see two of me? And does this look like a metallic blue Chevy?”
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Without a hint of a smile, Ashby said; “Color’s close.
Look. I’m going to do you a favor and not cite you. Okay?”
Jack tried to think of something bright to say and drew a blank.
As he walked back to his car, Ashby said; “Have a good day.”
Jack thought; “As soon as I get away from you, I will.”
The two have not spoken since. Their cars have criss crossed on Propicio Road numerous times. Jack always got irritated because Ashby was always smiling. Jack’s knew that it was expedient for him to play the smile and wave game and pretend to have gotten over the old misunderstanding. However, something in his thought of performing that particular action made him feel as if the ceiling had flown away, and vomit was on the way; and then there were the animals which needed protection.
Jack filled a glass with water and took it to the phone.
His hands shook and some water spilled onto the brick floor. He got captivated as he watched the accidentally dropped liquid splatters take on a human shape. As the water blended with the dirt absorbent brick, in its pockmarks and scars, he thought he saw a woman in a provocative position. It appeared as if it was a shifting depiction of his former and favorite lover, Beth. He wished he would once and for all be able to forget about the bi-
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polar, Prozac-swallowing devotee of danger. But, imaginarily, watching her evolve or devolve into a sedentary, unclear, praying, hooded monk, right here on his home floor, was more cruelly amusing than the thought of his impending phone call.
While initially repelled by their hardness, he had come to appreciate the almost maintenance free aspect of the common Southwestern flooring material. He particularly appreciated the brick floors as he didn’t have to wipe up his frequent spills.
He knew they would quickly fade into the multi-colored surface until they were nothing, leaving no trace of their brief former existence.
He further delayed the call he didn’t want to make and pushed a series of buttons on his IP3 which brought him to a section he had titled; “For Bad Days.” He pushed another one and listened. Van Morrison sang “Foreign Window.” It was Jack’s Beth song, though he didn’t “discover” it until she was long gone.
She always used to ask; “What song do you have for me today?”
She said that she liked many, but the look on her face always said that it wasn’t the special one. He couldn’t be 100% sure, but Jack thought that this would have been the one. Why was he torturing himself this way? Simple. It was just a matter of lessers of evil. The level of misery he got from listening to this song was less than the misery of talking to the Propicio
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Police Department, including the possibility of having to endure Ashby again.
The song ended and Jack reluctantly pushed the off button and further reluctantly dialed his phone.
“Propicio Police Department.”
Jack breathed a sigh of relief as the male voice didn’t sound like Ashby’s fraud of a good natured chuckle. He remembered it well and was often reminded of the bogus joke, as it was perpetrated by the many, ad infinitum. “Good morning.
This is Jack Greenhandle, over on Calle de la Congelacion. My car was just stolen.”
“Just stolen?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you witness the event?”
“Umm. Sort of. I was warming it up in the driveway and when I went to get it someone was driving it away.”
“Bad idea in that neighborhood.”
Jack was slightly miffed at commentary about his home, but considered it more practical to say; “Yeah, I guess, but I don’t want to get into a frozen car.”
“You can get a steering wheel lock at the auto place in the strip mall. Then this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Yeah, yeah. Good idea.”
“Get a description?”
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“No.” Jack heard someone knocking at the door and assumed it was his partner, Manny Hermosillo. He said; “Excuse me a second. Someone’s at the door.”
Jack opened the front door and there stood his partner of five years. His belt length, brown leather jacket wrinkled as he hunched over protecting himself from the cold morning air. His 5’10” frame had lost a few inches to his fleeting spell in the weather and his belly stuck out more than usual. Hurriedly, Jack said; “Manny, thanks for coming. Come in and just take a seat for a minute. I’m finishing up a call I made.”
“Should have put it on the cell, man. We’re gonna be late.”
“You’re right. You’re right. I’m not thinking straight today. I’ll be right back.”
Jack went back to the adjoining room and Manny paced.
Jack picked up the phone and said; “Sorry. ...... Hello.”
“Yeah, hello. Wasn’t the crook I guess?” It sounded as if he smirked in a manner he wanted to be detectable.
“No, it’s my partner, my ride. What were we up to?”
“No description of the perpetrator. Makes it rough. ......
Can you describe your car?”
Jack thought he detected another twinge of sarcasm in the question. To his consternation as he gave all the particulars, he saw Manny leaning on the door frame with a big grin on his face. Jack turned his back.
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“You’re the big city cop guy, aren’t you?”
Jack just said; “Yeah,” and noted what he was certain was a snorting chuckle. As Jack was extremely embarrassed about being a cop with a stolen car, he made a quickly thought “evasive”
maneuver. He put his hand over the phone, looked at Manny and whispered; “Fucking asshole,” hoping Manny would conclude that he was talking to some lame brain from the repair shop. Manny nodded slowly and then reflexively broadened his smile.
To further complicate Jack’s attempt to keep a secret, the Propicio cop ended the conversation with; “All right. You’ve got a ride. Stop over here. I’ll need you to sign the report. It’ll be at the desk.” He hung up.
Jack put down the phone and said; “Shit,” making the word sound like it ended in three t’s. He put on his leather jacket as if he was punching his way through the arm slots. He said;
“Let’s go, man. I gotta make one more stop.”
Manny said; “Don’t tell me. Let me make a wild guess.
Propicio Police Headquarters.”
Jack stared.
Manny laughed and blurted; “In the shop, huh? It’s in the god damn chop shop!”
“How did you figure that out?”
Manny put one had over his mouth or scratched his nose, chuckled and snorted the way the cop on the phone did. He said;
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“It was easy for a cop. Why would you call me in the morning to tell me your car was in the shop? Like it broke down this morning and you had it towed already.”
“It’s possible.”
“Yeah, it’s possible. But then I heard all the crap on the phone and you got very defensive.”
Jack playfully grabbed Manny by the back of the neck and said; “You’re a good cop.”
“Nah, you’re a lousy liar.”
Jack thought, but didn’t say; “I don’t sweat the small stuff.”
They drove down Propicio Road, heater on full blast.
Manny’s mood remained tickled and he hummed an off tune version of “Oye Como Va.” He interrupted his rendition to say; “You’ve got to watch it on Calle de la Congelacion. I know where you can get a good steering wheel lock.”
Jack monotoned; “Me too,” and turned on the radio. They heard a weary male voice say; “We have police confirmation of the breaking story reported by Roswell school officials. Three grammar school children are confirmed dead. Ten more have been taken to Presbyterian general Hospital and the 12 year old shooter is in police custody. Names are being withheld. The shooter is reported to have stated his motive to be; ‘I hate
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winter.’ This is the fourth school shooting this week in the US
and has involved the fewest number of victims. This kid will not get a very popular website. In other news, in Israel a suicide bomber ........”
Jack turned the radio back off, saying; “No place is safe anymore. Roswell? Shit, man. Roswell?”
“Hey, those farm boys got guns you know.”
“Always have. But this crap wasn’t an everyday thing when I went to school.”
“Those muskets might have been a bit too heavy for the kids to lug around.”
“Shows how much you know; some were light.”
“I don’t know. It’s like once somebody starts it, everybody wants to get in on the act. It’s got something to do with the socialization process. I’m telling you this friend of mine has wheel locks a key has a hard time undoing.”
“Professor Hermosillo does not consider the ADD and anti-depressant drugs a factor?”
“Fuck do I know, man. They taught us this shit at the Academy.”
“I must have been thinking about that Sociology professor’s legs. You remember the one. What the hell was her name anyway?”
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“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The white chick with the long red hair. I didn’t cut one class. Ah, I can’t remember. Some weird name like Miss MacIntosh or something.”
“I didn’t know you guys liked white chicks.”
“Shit. When they got legs and hips. You can keep the skinny ones.”
“Hey, pull in here. This is it.”
Manny jammed on the brake and without using his directional made a fast, sharp right. They heard the long, gradually fading honk of the car behind them as it passed.
Jack said; “You can’t think when that white stuff gets into your head.” He exited and went to the front door. He entered a small foyer of sorts, two chairs against the wall, below a bulletin board with more pins than messages. He had approximately five feet in which to walk. On his right was a locked, windowed door bearing the sign; “Propicio Executive Board,” shielding the pitch black interior. On his left were a diminutive locked door and an outsized safety glass, with a slot at the bottom and a tiny counter. Through the smudged glass he could see an unoccupied desk with a nameplate bearing the inscription; “Magdalena Torres, Propicio Police Department.”
Jack knocked at the door to no avail and was about to leave, when a Spanish woman on the far side of thirty came out of
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somewhere in the back and said; “May I help you?” muted by the thick, safety fitting.
Relieved, Jack smiled, crouched down to align his face with the slot, and said; “Yes, please. I’m Jack Greenhandle, and I understand that there are some papers here for me to sign.”
Who Jack presumed to be Magdalena sat down and perused the documents on the desk, taking her time and responding to some with widening eyes, heavy with mascara. Her facial expression appeared as if she had not previously seen the documents.
Jack thought that it was still early in the day and that she had probably not yet polished off her wake-up morning coffee.
She came to a solitary piece of paper, looked at it a second time to be sure, then said; “You had your car stolen this morning?”
“Yes, yes. That’s me. ............. I guess.”
“Jack Greenhandle of Calle de la Congelacion?”
“I plead guilty.” Jack thought that was funny and grinned at his unresponsive audience of one.
Magdalena pushed the form through the slot and said; “Just sign at the yellow highlighted areas. ............ Is this the first time you’ve had your car stolen?”
Jack finished putting his signature on the document and perused it for more yellow highlights. He was less than thorough
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in his inspection of the brusque manuscript as his eyes, he hoped secretively, wandered to Magdalena. She was leaning forward, cheerfully displaying a bountiful supply of brassiere free, light brown cleavage.
He thought; “That’s no accident. She knows precisely what she’s doing. ........ Maybe she doesn’t. Or, maybe she just likes to flirt and feel un-obtainably attractive.” His pants grew two sizes and at the same time he was reminded of his isolated demise. He pushed the signed document back through the slot, saying; “I hope I didn’t miss anything,” strongly suspecting that he did and hoping that she would respond in a way which indicated she was on the same wavelength.
Head down, Magdalena quickly eyeballed the paper and efficiently said; “No, that’s all that is needed.” Jack’s blue jeans returned to “normal” dimensions. He involuntarily sighed, looked into her businesslike dark eyes, and turned away, taking one last fleeting gaze at her. She surprised him by continuing the awfully ephemeral discourse by calling out; “Living on that road, you should really consider getting a steering wheel lock.
I know a place .........”
Jack cut her off by saying; “So do I. So does my partner.
So does everybody I talk to. I’ll add you to my list. Thanks a lot.”
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As Jack went back the short distance toward the entry door, Magdalena coldly stared at him. Jack hoped that she was not offended and would put the concise summary in its right place.
He left.
He withdrew from the domain of officialdom and walked back to the car Manny was running in an attempt to maintain the heat.
Jack sat in the passenger’s seat. Jack shivered and looked at the instrument panel, noting that the least-cost gauges installed by the penny pinching manufacturer ebulliently communicated a comfortable internal environment. This was not the reality that he was forced to experience. He said; “Manny.
Does this old piece of shit recognize the existent conditions?
...... Or is it just some fucked-up thing about me? I’m cold in this car and I can’t stand being that way. It’s like I have some terminal disease.”
Manny smirked. His pursed lips had the effect of causing his brown eyes to half close, like an Oriental peering upward at a movie screen. Only Manny had a shot at knowing whether this abbreviated posture was a sophisticated contrivance or a genuinely friendly and necessarily theatrical prompt to what he was soon planning to respond to his long term, troubled friend.
Might. Maybe. Yet, he was virtually certain that the biased words he most wanted to say had no meaningful relevance to his partner. And if they did, Jack would act as if he had no
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understanding whatsoever. He knew his long term buddy. There were no words that would make Jack’s thermometer okay.
He also was certain he had no adequate response as he knew that there were no words that would make his own life okay.
Escaping into work or a masked party were the best things he could find to cope. He hardheadedly continued his jolly facial demeanor and safely said; “The car is fine. It’s your heater that is out of whack.”
“All right. Well, get this thing moving. We’re gonna be fucking late.”
Manny paid Jack no mind as he knew that if anyone wanted to take issue with their timing, it was documented that the cause of the lateness was not him. He maneuvered the old red Toyota out of the parking lot and back onto now tranquil Propicio Road.
The rush hour had ended and they were in a falsely pregnant mental pause, validated in the corporeal by a clear main road.
He offhandedly navigated the ease without thought. He eventually said; “I got a real prize for you. This’ll warm you up.”
Jack eyed Manny askance from the corners of his eyes, thinking; “More fucking couched advice?”
“Rosalita has not yet hooked up with anyone suitable and she wants to.”
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Jack knew he was on the borderline of what is acceptable, but chose to say; “You Spanish guys. Meet my seesta. All the time. I don’t want to meet your seesta.”
Manny showed no affront and continued; “She knows how to take care of a house and gets around the kitchen as if she had a degree in the culinary arts. I know she likes you and she’s a good girl.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem. I found that out the last time I bought your sales pitch.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky this time.”
“She gonna wear that floor length dress with the swinging tassels all over?”
“I don’t know. It’s what’s inside that matters. ........
You know you’re not getting any younger and you’re not exactly a prime catch on Calle de la Congelacion.”
“I’m so tired of hearing unsolicited evaluations of my home. I like it there.”
“There’s a common perception and that’s more important than your personal idea of reality.”
Jack looked out the passenger window as the car passed into Mesa Grande. The tin storage units which dotted the road were particularly hideous in the gray morning, no matter the “patina”
caused by the worn colors. The poorly behaving sun did a half assed job, and highlighted the surrounding trash bins. They
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overflowed with last week’s discarded supply of items no longer considered worthy of space in the $19.95 per month, homogenous cemetery of once desired items, which had made their way from the house, to the garage, to this forgotten state, one step before the fires of the junkyard. The top items sat within reach of the possible escape over the edges. All they needed was a trifling breeze to send them to whirling freedom, but stillness prevailed.
Jack was brought back to the inside of the car when Manny said; “Jack, Jack. You all right, man.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just thinkin’. That still allowed? Shit!”
Manny silently watched the road, which was becoming increasingly congested every block into the big city.
Jack said; “Yeah, I’d like to spend some time with Rosalita. I’m glad you brought it up.”
Manny stoically replied; “I’ll see what I can do. After last time, I don’t know.”
Out of words, Jack silently sighed in exasperation.
They mutely drove into the heart of the city. The buildings became taller and in the gutters, empty cigarette packages overlapped one another, hoping for a continuation of the dry spell. For those unsuccessful in attaching themselves to something secure, any precipitation meant the final swim into the packed sewer. Indistinguishable people wearing dark and
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shadowy sweatshirts with hoods which protruded from under their long winter jackets huddled in the empty store fronts. Their knowingly concealed identities were only possibly discernable to those they were standing next to today. The young waved their arms around in a contrived, agitated manner. They spoke of today’s foolproof scam or they rationalized why yesterday’s foolproof scam went awry. Their harangues convinced no one, with the possible exception of themselves. The concerns of the old were simpler and much less frantic; they thought of what they had to do to get off today. Proprietors of the occupied stores remained inside, where they experienced the first warming waves of the heating systems, which were economically left off all night. They stood near their gritty titanic windows, being obvious in trying not to be obvious about their “furtive”
surveillance of the hoods; a low-tech duplication of their constantly running street cameras.
Manny said; “What’s our reason for being late?”
“I was born that way. No changing things now. .........
Clock broke. ............ Flat tire. ........ You hadda take your kid to the doctor. Let’s be novel. Let’s tell the truth.
They’re not used to handling that one. My car was stolen. I already told Beverly and she probably broadcasted it when she was through laughing anyway.”
“Why’d you tell big-mouth-Beverly of all people?”
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“I thought I had to. I forgot all about the rules of jurisdiction.”
Manny turned left into the parking lot. It was heavily occupied, but the “stars” had their own semi-permanent, designated spaces, only infrequently violated by the sightless, the frantically hurried and the foolish, risking an expensive tow. The Mesa Grande Police Headquarters unobtrusively occupied the largely glassed, entire first floor of the ten storied, weathered brick office building. This home base was the result of one of the “condolences,” which the Mesa Grande governors granted to a local real estate “magnate,” who was unable to lease the low level retail space, but was competent at knowing where to make “political” contributions. Most of the topping nine floors were now filled with doctors, lawyers and bail-bondsmen, who, in their parasitic businesslike, standard operating procedure, made it their practice to fraternize with the business generating cops on the lowest level. The
“bandwagon” effect was in full display. They say that; “One hand washes the other,” but keep silent about how a dirty hand can dirty the other.
Jack and Manny were of special significance as they were the recipients of the city’s “Most Arrests” honoring citation, eight years running. Their detractors pointed out that, were such awards given, the duo would also have received citations
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for having the lowest jail-time-served-per-arrest rate despite having a high conviction ratio. When they deigned to speak seriously to them, Jack and Manny told their detractors that they were merely advertising their jealousy. In fear of enlightening their obtuse competitors, the award winning team never told them that the name of the game in the 21st century was simply gross numbers. Net considerations were for the inconsequential chit-chat amongst the bean counters. It seemed nursery school obvious to them that their commander loved gross numbers more than anything, and if the others were too stupid to see that, all the better for them.
Manny took Jack’s freshly painted white-line delineated space right in front of the automatic, sliding entry door. Jack found that unexplainably amusing in its “I can do anything that you can do” irrelevance. They withdrew from Manny’s car and Jack stared at their shared destination. With the sun not yet above the tenth floor, it appeared almost more dismal than winter usual. The brick structure, which on good days approximated the dullness of Jack’s rented house’s not-recently-oiled flooring, today appeared even more lackluster in the sky fart. He relaxed and consequently bored his bit into his long thought, seemingly extremely reasonable anticipation of another tiresome, played out show. He thought he could handle the situation with appropriate alacrity, if he were on a binging, over-indulgence
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with the aid of some thought-numbing opium derivatives supplied by Big Pharma with an MD script. But, he knew that would only last about 30 days; no greater than the sentence given the repeat DUI’s. His sober ease was as comforting as it was mundane.
As the partners made their way to the entrance for the hundred thousandth time, Jack visibly laughed at his deep-rooted thoughts which he incorrectly considered pedestrian throughout his mature existence of compensating balances. The hard edged reality he had sadly learned was that their articulation required interminable and perhaps willfully misunderstood postures requiring further explanation, often laughingly deemed necessary as the product of the inadequacy of his un-credentialed, common origin. After early futile efforts to clarify, at which he was totally inept and uncomfortable in attempting, in its implied suggestion that he had any uncommon wisdom, he practically learned to keep his visions to himself.
Perhaps at the core, due to his “Mommy never loved or held me,”
childhood induced shyness he retreated into books, music, and dreams of Plato’s intangible world of ideals. Extremely depressed, yet without the nerve to commit suicide, marooned in what he considered a mistakenly, self-defeating travesty, he tried to learn of the everyday postures and concerns of those around him. All he could see was that the attainment of large
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quantities of money, status and achievement, as simply and self-servingly defined by the worshipped powers that be, were the overpowering worldly answers to everyone’s perpetually loathed guilty desire to survive as well as Gloria Gaynor. He thought his smirk was imperceptible.
As they walked side by side Manny deadpanned; “Fucked up again?”
Jack was surprised at the reaction that Manny had to his tiny snicker. He knew he was getting manageably “out of sorts”
with his flawed overview of the simple situation at hand, but was taken aback to gather that his untreated mental deficiencies were so easily detectable. He attempted to avoid the discussion he had always found pointless and inadequate by simply saying;
“What?”
Manny concisely snorted, but otherwise made no response.
As an attempted diversion Jack said; “Don’t you know that as soon as that Red Sea of a door parts for us Beverly will be waiting there to lay on some pitiful joke about how stupid I am.
And Reggie will be offering his condolences while he offers me some waste-of-time ‘help,’ as he sneers, without the nerve to straightforwardly show it. ....... I don’t know. The whole thing hits me as funny. ....... Don’t you agree?”
Manny kept his head down, his eyes diligently so, but probably over cautiously focused on the seemingly clear path to
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the front door. He finally said; “It’s different when you have a family. Margarita, Paulie and Susan depend on me. Sure, they don’t think of it that way, but they do. You don’t know what it’s like to have that kind of responsibility for the ones whom you love. If you fuck up, big shit. You fuck up yourself. It’s your American right to be independent. But, don’t you ever feel alone?”
Jack’s laugh did a one hundred and eighty degree turn. He tried to conjure some words which would adequately convey his falsely self-assured, being-on-top-of-the-situation clown act.
Something stuck in his throat. He choked out; “All the time. All the fucking time.”
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# 4- Little Big Men
Flurrying activity was the road running rule of the day as Jack and Manny passed through the one second-delayed, yet ultimately obedient glass doors. They dodged the scampering carriers of paper prominence on their ways to their desired hard working appearances. Jack’s sense of humor made an unsolicited reappearance. He laughed as he called out; “Hey, Grady. Watch out for the pillars.”
Grady, a short cop in his thirties, fully bedecked in uniform and weapon-holding paraphernalia, glided through the plastic “lawn” chairs and broke stride for a millisecond. He displayed the briefest possible of grimaced smiles. He efficiently and faux-sociably said; “’Morning, Manny. ‘Morning
............... uhmmm, Jack, right?”
Jack showed his disinterest when he monotoned; “No, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, paperboy.” He wasn’t sure whether or not he had been accidentally truthful. “Make sure you don’t drop any of our arrest reports. ......... Hey, Beverly, baby! Is there anyone you haven’t yet told about me?”
The fortyish, over youthfully dressed, divorced woman looked up from her screen visions generated by the outmoded PC
on her computer equipment dominated desk. She said no words, but
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sarcastically widened her eyes and opened her mouth in her best imitation of a gaping jar of strawberry preserves. Jack continued; “You know it’s your own fault that you have this bad reputation. I wasn’t going to tell anyone about our little get togethers. Not even Manny.”
Without missing a beat, Beverly replied; “Well, that’s all over with now that you don’t even have a car.” She blew a bubble and put her hands back on the keyboard.
Jack and Manny walked right, turned the corner and were almost to their wobbly, as-the-result-of-a-perp-crash, damaged cubicles, when they heard; “My two superstars. I have good news for you.” It was the loud, overly cheery voice of Reggie which made no attempt to mask his mocking good humor laced with his perennial cynicism.
More properly said, it was the voice of Reginald D Clymer, who absolutely hated to be called Reggie. Jack always gladly accommodated the insistent wishes of his Narcotics Captain; when they were face to face, or even ass to ass, primarily because Reginald D was his immediate superior and wrote his annual reviews. After a few drinks Jack would even admit that he liked and respected Reginald. Maybe it was because his Captain had spent most of his career heading up the lower status Narcotics group. He had watched younger men from Homicide, Grand Theft and even Vice pass him right by on their way to top management.
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Finally, now at age 58, the powers that be had tardily recognized that significant segments of the citizenry of Mesa Grande were virtually addicted to things still deemed illegal and the remainder to something still deemed legal; like the captivating box on Beverly’s desk. The detached, ivory towered masters’ consequent recognition of the importance of the overlooked Narcotics unit was news to them only. Benefitting Reginald was their “New Directive,” which, apparently unbeknownst to them, could have been better articulated decades prior by any un-retarded-man-on-the-street in Mesa Grande.
Jack and Manny had been sending Reginald’s monthly arrest reports through the roof as a consequence of their stinging of the pathetic small fry; while they ignored the one-or-two-step-removed activities of the VIP’s of the industry. In the infrequent privilege of moral moments, the best that Jack could fantasy hope was that the well-paid predators would kill each other off in their standardized territorial disputes. He was always reluctantly prone to shadow that short-lived, wishful fantasy with a cop’s hard headed view of what truly is. He couldn’t help but know that if the big fish annihilated each other, the small fish would soon assert themselves to fill the void. He took solace in the thought that it was not he who created this system. He merely had to find a way to exist in it.
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Reliable rumor had it that Reginald D was being seriously considered for Chief; Chief of the entire first floor! The whole fucking thing! The long-waiting Captain plainly and patiently recognized that the unapproachable merchants of the nocturnal opacity were now, conveniently and tragically, much too late shining their black light on him.
Reginald D, perhaps in a time worn recognition of the ways things inevitably play-out, and perhaps in worship of the ecclesiastical demons which always have their say, at the very least was now, on the surface, making the best of his prolonged, deferred, previously thought inferior position. Jack, without a touch of sarcasm, characterized that as commendable; a tribute to persistence.
On a pragmatic basis, Jack also appreciated that Reginald D
had been around long enough to know the game. It would have been much tougher to have been obliged to deal with a rookie out of State U. Jack thought; “What more can one ask of a boss? .......
It’s just weird how much he hates being called Reggie.” At times, he re-iterated his long term, never realized goal of inquiry; but not today.
Jack answered in kind, saying; “Pray tell. What might that be?”
Reginald’s oft amused mask appeared un-indictably sincere, an effective counterpoint, just as he wished, but showed no more
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true joyfulness than it had any time in his career’s recent past. Without inviting the risking burden of awkward explanation, it retained the calcified, compensating effervescence of one immune to a lifetime of being wrongly overridden; a deceptively attractive and comfortable space for the exceedingly tired. Through pursed lips, his marginally bloated, clean-shaven face said; “My people have made me aware of your demise and I am here to lend assistance.” The bald spot which dominated the top of his round head seemed to reflect the blinking, fluorescent lights which lined the dropped ceiling, as they too, did their jobs with some shortages. After a seemingly obligatory, brief nasal snort, replete with clenched lips, he continued; “A long term observer is incredulous at the pedestrian oversights made by one so adept in handling the practicalities of an existence in a perilous city, yet without the ability to effectively manage the more elemental concerns of a much less urbane, yet perilously sheltered rural road.”
Jack considered the commentary yet another uninformed manifestation of an outsider’s view of what living on Calle de la Congelacion entailed, but chose not to address the blindly perceiving observation in its obvious jest.
Manny spoke up, saying; “Do you have records of any other car thefts on Calle de la Congelacion?”
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Reginald D fluttered his eyes in a manner which would have implied unaffected thought to the ambitious-Captain-wannabe-Chief un-initiates. He answered; “Such matters are not within my jurisdiction. Your inquiry would be better served by asking the Propicio Police.” He mock-innocently peered into the eyes of his subordinates, as if he actually would have welcomed a rebuttal to his abstaining position.
Jack was well-accustomed to derogatory commentaries about his residence. He ceased being phased years back. He attempted to put things back to the “assistance” part by breaking the momentary silence with; “So, of what assistance dost thou speak, my anointed one?”
Reginald D came dangerously close to a real smile, but managed to avert the position detracting, open display of candor. He said; “We received the report of your stolen car.
Chances are that the thief brought it to Mesa Grande; always do.
The Propicio cops never locate anything other than their traffic ticket booklets anyway. So, I’ve pulled a few strings and a couple of our Grand Theft guys are on the case.”
From somewhere buried in his throat, Jack let out a hesitating; “Thanks,” waiting for the next shoe to fall.
Reginald D nodded and continued; “I do know the owner of a local business which retails steering wheel locks. Given your location, it might be a worthwhile investment.”
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Jack officiously retorted; “I’m considering a number of similar options. Do you have his card?”
Reginald D shrugged and said; “No. ....... Name is Rogers.
Worth a shot, right? ....... Now, don’t you two Styrofoam cue balls hang around here all morning.” He pointed at one of the impenetrable, clouded, leaded and iron barred windows and continued; “The criminal junkies are out there. ......... For the most part. Go get me at least three more today.” He turned and took three brisk steps toward his centrally located office.
He stopped and said; “That lock-man I mentioned carries an excellent product. If you give him my name he’ll cut you a good deal.”
Jack scratched his un-itchy nose and replied; “I told you I have it under consideration.”
Reginald said; “Don’t use car problems as an excuse to show up late. I don’t want to hear it again.” He made a bee-line toward his office. His flurry scattered the documents on the three desks without paperweights.
Slowly shaking his head in a disparaging manner, Manny silently looked at Jack.
Jack shrugged and said; “He’s all right. He knows the game.
I just can’t understand why he insists on being called Reginald.
It’s kind of a silly name.”
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Manny replied; “I don’t know. Ever since Jordan insisted on being referred to as Michael everybody uses their entire first name. It’s getting commonplace.”
Jack said; “Not with us. .......... Let’s get some coffee and then we’ll go round up a couple of the local losers.”
They drove through the rectangular grid which was Mesa Grande’s headquarters for blatantly flaunted, petty, nefarious activities. Manny’s assigned, unmarked, deep purple Caddy stood out to those with whom its presence conveyed luxury. There was a small geometrically understood and depicted, set overlap with those sufficiently coherent to temporarily cease and desist, and was undetected by those too far gone to see anything. The last expressed wayfarers were the easy prey of Jack and Manny; the street criminals everyone saw, feared and reviled. The untouchable perpetrators of the big money crimes were sufficiently business savvy to have gunned or purchased the appropriate veil, which if one looks close enough, always artistically bears some derivation of the number five tattooed in the most severe of calligraphy.
With offhanded, polished, yet un-recognized old-hat mirth, the lords-of-the-techno-challenged-wind-up drank the economic freedom from the harried existences of the gotta-pay-the-bills, chasers of the well-defined, yet elusive and moving prize. The
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pilgrim’s sack of lusted-for goodies had a liaison, as the brief nocturnal interlude of Hermes and Aphrodite, with the unreachable stars which were seductively dangled in front of everyman and everywoman’s face, on a joking stick attached to the tops of their heads. The voters called Aphrodite’s issue demonic. The worshipped, removed, and disinterested masters only consideration was to distance themselves from the predestined, Plato-aged, human corruption recognition; thereby remaining electably clean. Deities, known as bogus only to themselves, chuckled over the democratically chosen of those attracted to the practicality and pleasure of staged or ignorant DeSade subordination; as their appointments were for life.
They appeared colorful, as shining trinkets to innocents soon to receive the bubonic plague blankets in trade; to the 21st century faint of heart, in a time proven, untruthful, limited supply of a palate of fawned over, mixed grays. To most of the zombies who considered themselves as alive, their prominence was unquestioned, efficiently, conveniently, and momentarily expedient in the hope of a commercial consideration. Their overly obvious artifice was clearly seen and used by the uncaring masters. For the few genuine rebels and loonies, the long winded diatribes necessary to convey another cerebral version of the truth only served to preach to the popularly insignificant, genre based choir. The dreary and conventional icons, like those
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on the side of an electronically activated “home page” screen, firmly and daily, established the masters’ irrevocability at being necessary, useful, efficient and “good,” at least until the beneficiaries of non-discriminating and admiring public approval were “surprisingly” and unequivocally caught with their hands in the money freezer. As envied-from-a-distance citizens, leaders, and reluctant-to-be-copied, role models they lived on the high ground in the sprawling suburban areas outside of the grid and seemed to be of little consequence, and under no scrutiny of anyone other than the “bohemian” writers for the freely distributed and “radical,” “Village Scene.” The experienced and world-wise runners of the land-mined road well knew the perverse game, yet, in their resurrectionally based, impossible-to-prove Christianity, believed that one day the teasing stick would one day break of its own hard and thus brittle, lifeless nature. It was long ago cut from a living tree. For three thousand years of recorded history they have been wrong. “They” take no side. “They” take no risk. The stick was supposed to break of its own weight with no outside
“assistance.” A few reached these conclusions through true faith, while the majority reached them through practical cowardice. The chained melody said that there is no reason, yet there is an illogical desire to convey feelings which give the
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few remaining astrologically condemned lovers a chance at happiness.
In an alternative venue Poco played “Keeper of the Fire,”
and someone efficiently shut it off after the first two lines.
Excitedly; Jack wheeled on his seat and said; “Did you see that?”
Manny looked in the direction Jack’s eyes had pointed. He said; “Ah, shit. Bernadette’s back hookin’ already.”
“Well, she’s obviously fucked up on crack again and looking for an easy score.”
“We ran her in twice in the last two weeks. If we bring her in again, even Reggie will laugh.”
“You make a major mistake, my friend. People like seeing the same old shit over and over. It’s when you bring them something new that they freak.”
“........................... “
“Come on, man. This is how we make a living; numbers.
That’s all that matters. Since when have you started evaluating things?”
In temporary command, Manny kept driving and Bernadette’s consciously and blatantly solicitous activities faded into the distance, beyond the reach of his stationary and well-adjusted
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rear view mirror. He thumped both of his gloved hands on the fabric covered, weather protected wheel and said; “Since I got control of the wheel.” His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, as if his long term, pragmatic partner was not of any concern.
Jack thought; “We could have had some business helpful, fun with her,” but kept the thought to himself as Manny seemed puzzlingly resolute in his departure. He saw no point in saying anything and was silent.
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# 5- Sketchy “Scenes From .........” Ingmar?
The locally christened name of “Sand Dunes” was an area on the northern Propicio border of rio-less Rio Rancho, where the shifting winds coupled with the shifting sands to produce an unstable topography. Once considered “difficult and undesirable” terrain, the recent building boom seen in Propicio, as in much of the nation, propelled builders to make incursions into the cactus patch. They were aided by purchased, permitted variances which outfitted the pockets of the powers-that-be in office at the time of the grant. If the likely continuation of future windstorms made foundations unstable or exposed septic leech fields it was legally “an act of god; not gog or golligog,” and the “responsible” parties would have their money, armed with the oh-so-sorry-faced excuse that; “It was okay when we approved and built it,” adding to that a mournful; “What can we do to help?”
In anticipation of the continuation of the seller’s market engendered in a large part by the FNMA and GNMA elimination of requirements for residential mortgages, the builders bulldozed the cholla cactuses, and built huge houses in the Sand Dunes.
The bigger the house, the higher the price, the higher the potential profit, and the higher the “status” afforded the area.
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As a consequence, the ignored portion of Propicio now rivalled the internal, irrigated and so called “green” sections. In some sort of misunderstanding illogic, derision, craven deference to the time proven or white-flag-waving capitulation, the “Sand Dunes” had become a more or less equal partner in spirit.
Politically, the residents may have become less than equal. Even though their numbers and potential voters grew at a quicker pace than the older part of town, they were still a minority of sorts, as their starting point was zero. In an uncomfortable way, proper people from the other parts of Propicio became progressively pained with using the term “Sand Dunes.” Many thought it politically incorrect, because of its former dismissive connotation, yet could not come up with an appropriate euphemism. While the area was once an add on for farmers with antiquated water rights and some trailer based meth labs, it was now widely thought of as something better than “up and coming,” with the ill-defined, unspoken handle of American arriviste.
The new “Sand Dunes” residents became aware of their dubious “status” in the eyes of other Propicians. A half serious defiance and a sense of unanimity were the likely incentives which compelled them to favor the term “Sand Dunes,” over the terms which the builders had named separate developments. “High Oasis,” “The Overlook,” and “Desert Recompense” just didn’t cut
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it for them anymore. Among each other that was how they referred to the area. Kids had torn away the original builder’s signs and no one sought replacements. This dynamic also compelled them to make efforts to show that they were quite proper and lordly people by coming down from their perches and attending community events. The substantially Eastern retirees well learned procedure was to say nothing in an attempt to appear social and managerial.
Ten years ago, in 2006, stoutly derriered, now fifty-five year old, Richard Lawson III sold the family farm, the last sizable tract bordering “Sand Dunes” Propicio; one with grandfathered, valuable water rights. The sale was to a national, publicly and New York Stock Exchange traded “high flying” real estate developer, with an overstated national presence. Richard was once the soiled-blue-jean, down-home Village Mayor. Out of the personal and spousal inflicted shame of being possibly considered a traitor, he hadn’t sought elective office in many years, and now sort of preferred to spend his days at the Propicio Bar and Grill. He chose to be adorned in the well washed, shiny polyester attire purchased at Dilly’s, a cornerstone of the new mall just over the Propicio line into Mesa Grande, while he got sloppy.
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Surprising no one other than the “Magical Reality”
enthusiasts on the far left of the IQ spectrum, today was to abruptly be another one of those days. While breakfasting alone in the kitchen, over the microwaved ham and eggs provided courtesy of Con-Country Frozen Delights, Inc., his wife of thirty years, Stephanie entered the room. She greeted him with the flat, factual reportage, gleaned from her traditional laptop provided revelation. In staccato with a weary tone she said;
“Stock is down again.”
“Rick,” as he preferred to be called, and was formerly known as, cringed at the overcooked observation. He privately worried about the value of the “letter,” restricted, common stock he had taken, in an effort to maximize the profit on his lineage-deserting windfall; and the increasing debt against it.
The loan started out relatively small vis-à-vis the value of the stock pledged as collateral. However, he had been borrowing more and more to pay the interest on the loan, and the margin was reaching his discomfort level. Sure. He could have cut back on household, auto, travelling, and a number of other expenses.
But, he didn’t think this was a good time to give Stephanie more reasons for mawkish complaints. He tried to be effusive in his effort-to-be-somewhat-original reply of; “The day to day electronic blips produced by those with the narrow, momentary orientation of insects have no lasting effect on value.”
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“Steph” poured herself a cup of coffee from the communal decanter and gazed through the window over the double sink. Her own artificially backlit, hazy reflection caught her attention immediately. After her fascination with the transitory, inadvertent, self-indulgent image ran its fleeting course, her eyes re-focused on the unattractiveness of the fallow field. Its varying shades and shapes of brown lumps, now home to only a few clusters of straw colored projections seemed to implore a tractor’s tilling. In a vindictive memory ever present, sans the lumpy piled reminders, this used to be their field’s post-harvest condition every corn farming year at this time. It was formerly unobstructed and patiently waiting for the arrival of the red mechanisms now gone courtesy of the auction process.
They had yet to come to terms with the blatant fact that their productive days were over; but they seemed to sense that some sort of change had come in the vagaries of the insane-asylum-escapee wind. Maybe it was the inaugural impositions of the vulgar tripods brought by teams of exacting surveyors. Maybe it was their insertion of orange-night-glow-ribboned sticks marking the boundaries of one acre lots. Maybe. Steph said; “You gave up this for these declining numbers. It seems like yesterday that there were cornstalks reaching for the sky.”
Rick often had second thoughts about having followed the lead of the other veteran farmers. He kept them to himself as
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their re-consideration only served to depress. It was a done deal. He wished that his wife would curtail the constant second guessing. She raised no objections when the transaction was in the discussion stage. It seemed eminently unfair and unproductive to continually harangue him now. He looked toward her with contempt in his eyes, but thought he detected the hint of a tear in hers. He went to her and put his arms around her waist. She bolted away, saying; “No, no!” feigning that she immediately needed something from the refrigerator. Rick sat back down and wolfed the remainder of his Con-Country food.
He went to his room, donned his Dilly’s outfit, told Steph that he was going for a walk, and walked the half mile to the Propicio Bar and Grill. He unsuccessfully attempted to be totally oblivious to the real estate which wasn’t about to receive his next foot step. He thought; “If they didn’t intend to finish the job, they never should have started it.” He got to heavily travelled Propicio Road and was assaulted by the grind of rubber on asphalt, the boom-boom of hip hop music escaping through cracked open windows, the impatient blares of horns, and the flashing neon signs of the commercial establishments. The low level wind created by the barrage of vehicles went to the bone and had a toxicity index reading. He walked faster and veered toward the buildings, thinking that they had use as protection from an errant Lexus. A bit out of breath he came to
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the Propicio Bar and Grill front door. He didn’t take the time to disparage its purposely poor, purple paint job, affected to impersonate age. He pushed open the portal to his escape and was relieved to enter the twilight of its darkly shaded windows.
With a seeming will of its own, the heavy door shut behind him.
The street sounds were replaced by the room-stereo-system’s incongruously adjusted-to-the-inoffensively-muted, version of Coltrane’s upbeat “My Favorite Things.” He opened his coat and took his choice of seats at the bar.
Mary, the barmaid-waitress-sympathetic, ear-vomit mopper of the establishment, made a wry grin when she saw her best customer. Her head was down, her eyes fixed on the utensils she was washing in the deep, stainless steel sink. She said; “Double Jack?” with only the slightest intonation of that being a question.
Rick didn’t smile when he replied; “Two of them. It’s cold outside.” He didn’t watch as she mixed the drinks. He stared into the bottle-lined, smoky mirror behind the bar, seeing the few patrons seated at tables; but focussed on himself. He knew that the lighting was designed to give false impressions which made clients feel good about themselves. But, he didn’t care. He needed to do precisely that. He started to think; “It’s just a matter of staging. In the right light ..............”
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Mary brought over the two glasses. She placed them in front of Rick and silently walked away, when he made no eye contact.
He seemed a bit put off at having had his daydream interrupted.
She was used to the routine. She thought; “After he has a few belts, he’ll be all right.”
Rick took a long gulp; then another. The initial, bitter, face-contorting-taste quickly transformed into a warm glow, which slowly worked its way through his digestive system. After a few more, less frantic swallows, the warmth seemed to have spread out all over his body and head, bringing the relaxed feeling that everything was absurdly funny. He stood from the stool, which he thought was only minimally useful, as all it supported was his butt. He thought it amusing that the one part of him which needed no support was the one that got it. He got a more comprehensive view of himself in the funhouse mirror.
His glittery leatherette, black belt was, of necessity, positioned below, and deceptively seemed supportive of his bloated belly. Bellies were admired and oft-self-palmed status symbols among the bulls of Old Propicio, possibly because a fat one inferred the luxury of abundant crops and of not having had to spend much recent time in the fields. However, they were now relegated to the you-can-never-be-too-rich-or-too-thin culture of healthy lean and mean. Rick felt terribly out of style.
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His gut imposed itself upon the bar. He sat back down, pulled his red, green and blue striped iridescent shirt out of the restrictions imposed by his pants and drank.
Rick was well known at the facility and it was usually somewhere around this time that he was scheduled for his fame producing specialty. His loud, drunken rants filled the potted-palm-filtered air with barmaid-tolerant views of Propicio’s fall. He often said that he was considering a comeback and claimed to have the support necessary to do so. Other patrons of the chic, year-old facility found him either entertaining; or accidentally amusing; or the relic of a disputably glorious past with no present or future other than the Jack Daniels bottle; or someone as amusing as an Olympic runner with a prosthetic leg; or the pale ghost of a self-sufficient, bucolic past; or someone they could latch onto if he were to re-establish his local power; sometimes combining or re-vising their thoughts, somewhat a function of their feelings toward their present company and their present state of inebriation. Rick considered all of these scenarios and decided that whatever the motive, he liked the attention.
After finishing his second double, Rick raucously intoned to no one in particular; “Look at these walls. That’s what I’m talking about. Puce. Puce. Look at it. It’s right in front of you. What the hell kind of color is puce? .......... Please
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excuse my profanity. It won’t happen again. .......... At least I don’t think so, but sometimes I lie. And these palms. They belong here as much as the profligate, water sucking elms do.
This is New Mexico, if you haven’t noticed.” He held high his empty glass and bellowed; “Mary, get me another.”
With a few second delay, Mary, who made it well known that she was a 25 year old college student “making tuition ends meet”
broke away from her heated conversation. She was talking with Josh, an irregular patron of the establishment and a patent attorney. He was describing his brilliant courtroom dramatics which curiously mimicked the evidentiary squabble which appeared on last night’s installment of “Law and Order.” He had gotten her interest, both romantically and economically, a distinction she did not recognize. She said; “Ricky, Ricky, Ricky. You got an early start. If you don’t watch it the late game will be horrid.”
Rick slurred; “Horrid? Horrid? Tell me about horrid.” He waved his arms around in an all-encompassing pattern and added;
“Look at this farce. You’re in it every day. Have you become imperviously acclimated to the sick joke?”
Mary shrugged and grimaced as if the query was too banal for a mentally competent woman beyond the age of fifteen, and monotoned; “Yeah, I guess. ........ Another double Jack with soda?”
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“Yes, ma’am, and don’t be stingy with the good stuff.”
A boy of fifteen busted into the bar and said; “Mom, they expelled me again and I didn’t do a fucking thing this time. I swear. But, you gotta go see the principal again.”
Mary quickly ushered him from the room, saying that; “We’ll discuss this later. Go on home.”
As Mary washed a glass, her head down over the sink, she audibly mumbled; “Kid thinks it’s hilarious to call me ‘Mom’ in public. Little brothers are quite a nuisance.” She squirted two shots into the clean glass. Then, with a frightful looking instrument, she tongued accompanying ice cubes from the waist-high freezer into the tumbler.
Through his characteristic, Jack Daniels, numbed lips, Rick managed to whine; “No, no. I’ve had all the ice I can handle today. Baby, it’s cold outside.”
Mary gave the man an evaluation with a piercing glimpse.
She was initially startled by his seeming sincerity. But, Mary rationally recalled that she was at work where the manager correlated the missing liquor to the monetary take and reduced her wages accordingly. She quickly forgot the heart-break-conducive sympathy of her ignorant youthful days and said;
“Without the ice I can’t fill the glass. How about water?”
“No. Soda and water don’t mix well. Give it to me half empty if you have to. I can get all the ice I want outside.
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............ Or from my wife. Please be generous with the soda.
....... You know I’m a good tipper.”
Exhibiting the countenance of one experienced in the ways of transitory relationships, Mary supplemented the soda with free water, not yet within the purview and penny calculating capabilities of her manager; and thinking; “Rick’s too numb to know the difference.” With the balance between her heart generated feelings and brain insistent, monetary considerations a thing of the past, without thought she safely leaned toward the latter and placed the resultant glass, brimming to the top with an abundance of plentiful appearance, in front of Richard; a hopefully unaware, thinly disguised, yet obviously old and melancholy man. The boisterousness of his thankful bravado fooled only his desired duplicate perception of a persona, the original having been left somewhere he no longer remembered.
In an effort to conceal and negate any possibly perceived, foolish, post-modernist sentiment, Mary brashly said; “Drink up, old timer.” She mirthfully smirked in a facial contortion which served to make oblique any observed inference.
Rick ignored the pulp fiction inspired act; put both hands around the offered glass and greedily drank of the cheaply improvised presentation. The blessing of his numbness precluded his detection of any inferior taste. But, the overly pale color informed his eyes. He closed them as he drank. It was not his
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dream, but since his dream was not anywhere in sight and not likely to again materialize, the cost-effectively prepared concoction was his best intoxicant. He realized that his willingness to thirstily settle for what was available could be construed, by the ever present, diagnostic observers, as being a personal flaw. While this human flaw was something Rick was not reticent to display to those familiar with the comings and goings of a lived life, he balked at the possibility of disclosing his “defects” to those who had made a “life’s”
mission of watching and offering unsolicited and uninformed commentary.
In an unknowingly absurd and instantaneously regretted effort to appear as if he was confidently at the top of his game, he called out to the few patrons of weekday afternoon, Propicio Bar and Grill; “Follow me. I led once. I can lead again. We’re going to take this town back. Our birthright is our birthright. Paradise will be reclaimed.” He immediately thought;
“Oh, shit,” when he received five stares, two with pursed lip grins. He realized that he had just invited precisely what he sought to avoid. Without having achieved monetary reward, he had obtained the derisive scrutiny of strangers.
Josh left Mary to her unnecessary, nervously prompted, tidying chores and approached Rick. His thin, slight build was masked by a turtle necked sweater and a bulky, open LL Bean
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jacket. He extended his right hand and said; “I’m Joshua Marshland and I’d like to see Paradise. Haven’t had the pleasure for quite some time.”
Rick had the distinct feeling that he was being put on and knew he deserved to be. But, he also had two readily available ears. He stood to shake the man’s hand, which required one balancing step, saying; “Rick Lawson. I keep telling them to fix this tilt in the floor.” He sat back down with a thud.
Josh sat on the stool next to Rick and said; “Mary tells me you used to be Mayor here.”
“Yes, sir. Back when Propicio was still Propicio. You new here?”
“Less than a year. Did you grow up here?”
“Sure did. And my daddy before me. And my grand-daddy before that. Five generations in all. Where are you from?”
“I’ve kind of been all over the place. ....... Chicago, just before here. Listen, I’ve been here long enough to know that next year’s Mayoral election is wide open. What kind of support do you have?”
“I didn’t say I was running.”
“Then what Paradise are we supposed to follow you to? The Seventh Day Adventist Church, tax free school and shopping mall?”
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Rick laughed. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with giving the impression that he was denigrating religion. But, when it came to the Seventh Day Adventists, he and most of the old timers had their reservations about the religiosity of the nuisance, freeloading enterprise. He called upon his previous political experience and ducked the direct satirical question with a silent wrinkling of his brows. He paused to wait for the desired, back-off-look-away effect; then said; “So, let’s say for the sake of argument that I am open to running. What’s it to you? Are you some kind of political guru seeking an appointed job?”
“A mind reader as well as a policymaker. I’m impressed.
Appointees get paid well and I have no aversions to the coin of the realm. Anybody you see here not a parasite? .......... Look, point is we’re sitting here in this overpriced saloon talking trash to duplicitous drunkards. If we’re going to do that, why not make it worth our while? You think you can do some good and I .............. I’d like to come along for the ride.”
“Why do I need you? I’m not even sure that you’re not a scoundrel.”
“I’ve not yet invoked patriotism. The simple truth is that you need me. You’re the issue here. Today I’ve heard you railing against puce, palms, undefined sick jokes and an even more undefined Paradise. Others have heard the same thing. They no
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doubt have told their friends about it. These kinds of things won’t get you elected Freshman Class President. You have to stick to concrete issues which the majority of new Propicians can easily relate to; and then proceed to be vague about them.”
Rick grimaced and held his arms out to his sides, displaying a combination of distaste and disagreement, which covered for a feeling of annoyance at the rude over familiarity.
Josh shrugged and added; “Unless you think you can find one with a better than 90% approval rating.”
“We were straight shooters! I got elected four times saying exactly what I thought.”
Josh became the one with the grimace, his indicating a disbelief he thought it better not to verbalize. He said; “The past tense is correct. Even if. That was in old Propicio. Times have changed. Appearances and persuasive skills have taken over.”
“We made it into a much sought after place.”
“And now the seekers are here with the bulk of the votes, and they seek to turn Propicio into the hated place they left.”
“That’s just stupid.”
“Sure is. But, that’s the way things are. They come out to their heaven and quickly proceed to convert it to their hell.
Maybe it’s this Christian fascination with suffering; I don’t know. Haven’t you seen that yet?”
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“I don’t know about that.”
“It’s obvious that you spent your whole life here.”
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Mesa Grande.”
“Case closed.”
Rick was insulted and stormed out, hoping he could still find his way home. Josh called out; “You’ll be back. You need me and you know it.”
He made no response. He considered Josh harsh and uncouth, but had strong suspicions that his directness had its place. He stumbled along the road. While mis-steps were the priority, he thought of Stephanie. He hoped that she had calmed down in his absence. No, he hoped that she had stirred up. He hoped, not knowing for what.
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# 6- A Few of the New People on their “New” Green Land Tyrus A. and Cynthia Woodson woke to their new surroundings a bit physically tired from the previous day’s bustle of activity. However the emotional exhilaration of their spirits overrode any deficiencies in their bodies. This was the day they had been dreaming of for more than ten years, fighting off the nagging doubts of it being a Harry Potter fantasy. Camino de las Brisas was real, touchable, in full view, and they were finally there.
Ty and Cindy had grown up together in landlocked, Plainfield, Long Island, New York, New York in a development grandly titled “Barrymore Estates,” the fading sign at the northern entry the first signal of its being ordinary. They were occupants of two of the many homes on the water-view-deficient interior strip of the island. As a result, since birth, they were surrounded by the reluctant-to-show-happiness-plodders, who were dwarfed by a timid deference to the worship and/or jealousy of those a mile away in either direction; either on the Ocean or on the Sound. The couple found the strip club uninteresting to the eye and intolerable to the brain. Rather than broadcasting their thoughts, Ty and Cindy were muted, disdainful rebels, who might have been more at home in the many down to earth
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neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx and didn’t feel particularly deferential to anyone.
Since having gotten to know each other better, in the exploratory sophomore year of detention at Roosevelt High School, they were inseparable. Roosevelt was a regionalized facility which also interned kids from the much more affluent, Long Island water bordering, NYC suburbs of Great Neck and King’s Point. The type of cars in which one was driven to the fortress of intermediate learning was a generally un-photographed production of scenes from Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” replete with the self-effacing, yet surface confident grotesques. Arriving in a new Italian sports car was a guarantee of popularity. Balding fathers in Lamborghinis and dyed and lifted mothers in Mazzeratis were not a source of amusement. Ty and Cindy’s arrivals in old Toyotas brought accolades only from Sam Despoto, the janitor; who often defensively pointed out the superior reliability of the efficient, boxy machines. Ty and Cindy couldn’t wait to leave.
And here they were, bleary-eyed and locked arm in arm, cups of coffee in the other, staring out the living room, set of triple windows. From their newly attained vantage points they saw the river flowing to their left, the well-tended, freshly pocket-sized and ornamental landscaping, professionally installed on the grounds of homes to their right, and the forest
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of wild, mature elms at their rear. Their eyes were un-focused and darted from sight to sight, showing no preference for any particular manifestation, appreciating the diversity of it all.
The Woodson residence was custom built for Ty and Cindy.
Through internet images and infrequent familial vacations they had “seen” most parts of the US, ultimately deciding on the New Mexico neither had visited as the place they wanted to put down roots. They had a Southwestern adobe constructed, both because they were attracted to the style and because, being easterners, they had never previously seen anything like it domestically. It had a mustard colored, rugged stucco finish, radiant heat hidden under the multi-colored brick floors, and titanic, double paned windows in the living areas. Though it was more expensive the couple insisted upon using adobe rather than the currently oft used, cheaper, stick method of construction. They felt it was authentic and liked the texture and contrast provided to the inside walls. There was a partial second story which left un-complicated room for future expansion. The second level was accessible inside by a twisting, black iron staircase. It was easily removable as it was held in place by only two bolts at top and bottom. There was external access by a weathered ladder situated on the portion of the roof which was one level. But, their favorite feature was the absurd cupola sitting on top of the second story. There was no obvious access anywhere. But, if
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one lifted the other to the trap door in the ceiling of the main bedroom .............
The furniture was lightly stained and eclectically styled.
It was still kind of disordered and all over the place. Books, CD’s, clothing and general bric-a-brac lay in brown cardboard boxes strewn throughout the house. The Woodson’s thought that there was plenty of time to put things in order; just like the un-landscaped dirt on their property.
Their attention was rudely drawn to the speeding, strident, metallic-blue colored Mazda, which had exited the driveway two houses up Camino de las Brisas, and was heading in their direction. The apparently rushed, middle-aged female in the driver’s seat didn’t look their way. She wedged a flyer between the red flag and the green body of their mailbox; made a three point turn at the end of the road; and drove away, gunning her halfhearted, sluggish engine.
The first words of Cindy’s day were; “Must be important,”
said with a twinge of playful sarcasm.
Ty let go of her arm and replied; “They couldn’t have found us objectionable already.” He tickled her belly and her coffee poured onto the brick floor.
Her uncontrolled squeal made her briefly disregard the finer points of social proprieties. Cindy jumped back to avoid the splash and chastised; “You’re going to have to clean this.”
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“It was your cup. You clean it.”
“You made me spill it.”
“I’ve got to go to the mailbox.”
She eyed him sternly.
”All right, all right.” He went to the kitchen, retrieved the paper towels, got on his knees and removed the moisture. He took her cup and poured her another coffee. He said; “All right?”
She smiled and said; “Good boy.”
He went down the front walkway to unshackle the flyer.
He returned with a curious look on his face. Cindy said;
“What?”
“I thought we were getting some kind of official ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ type of thing. But, they’re asking us to get involved in politics already. It seems that nobody likes the elms on the road behind us. Here, read it for yourself.”
BRISAS AREA GARDENING SOCIETY
Dear neighbor; We who live on Camino de las Brisas and its environs enjoy a lifestyle attained only by the lucky few. The glorious new houses complement the glorious new, friendly people; their kids, dogs and other exceptional pets; well contained of course. Most of us are, or will be, actively engaged in horticultural endeavors, refining this barren and neglected
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desert land to an oasis of beauty. And, quite frankly we all paid a more than modest sum for this privilege, and have a significant interest in protecting the value of our investment.
This is why I’m writing. It has come to our attention that adjoining Calle de la Congelacion does not share these same values. They have allowed the foreign, generally Siberian elms to grow and propagate at will. Not only do their tiny leaves leave something to be desired aesthetically; but they are invasive water hogs and limit our abilities to regulate the light received by our tender, transplanted babies. They are killers. An elm with three inches of surface growth has eighteen inch roots. It is virtually impossible to remove them in entirety. Once they invade, our fledgling Birds of Paradise struggle to remain properly hydrated. Adult roots suck directly from the precious and stressed water table, taxing the very life support of us all. Isn’t that shocking? I know that was my reaction when I discovered this fact last week. It smacks of intrusive barbarianism! Is no one in Propicio guarding the gates?
I urge you all to attend the Propicio Village Council meeting Friday at 3:00PM. Other towns have ordinances banning unwanted interlopers. We intend to determine what is being done to protect us here; and if this is not rudely stated; to have it done.
Sincerely; Patricia (Penny) Primstation; President Pro-tem
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In a high pitched voice, Cindy said; “I like the elms.”
“Me, too. But, it seems that social considerations are being imposed on us.”
Cindy handed the flyer back to Ty and said; “Here. Insert the sarcastic comment of your choice. You must have many.”
Ty took the flyer back, crumpled it, and aimed a jump shot at the nearest opened cardboard box. “All net. Too easy.” He paused and gleaned that Cindy took this flyer more seriously. He said; “There is no full escape; only degrees which shift with the wind. Back east we couldn’t avoid the money counters. Out here, I guess, that the gardening club has notable significance.
Appearing anti-social does have its negative consequences.”
Cindy grimaced in an obvious manner, rolled her eyes to the right and actually stamped her foot, and said; “We just fucking got here! Can’t they wait just a little bit? I don’t give a flying about some old bag’s gardening problems.”
Ty shrugged, cuddled distraught Cindy and said; “Love you babe. You’re the greatest.” He then let go and affected a pragmatic posture. “Maybe nobody else cares either. We can check it out this once. No big thing. Apparently, everyone here may not be a resident of the Nirvana we innocently imagined. Seeing something on paper is not the same as seeing it every day real life. Surprise, fucking surprise. Rather than risk being viewed
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as non-conformists, it’s probably better to attend the stupid meeting, stay quiet, and try to figure out where the prevailing wind comes from.”
“So, back in the same old shit.”
Ty sighed, made a phony, exhaling laugh, and said; “Just a little bit. This shit comes from the ‘new west,’ by unrecognized way of the same old eastern shit. Maybe shit is shit is shit. Such is life, I guess.”
“As soon as we get here? Isn’t there a break? You’re like saying; ‘Start down the garden path.’ No matter how you phrase it, it still smells like shit.”
“I’m not condoning it. It just seems reasonable to go with the flow, at least while we’re new. ............. Later, who knows? Besides, today is Saturday. So today and tomorrow I don’t have to go to that boring bank job. You don’t have to go count beans at Touche. And we’re out of that old trailer and in our new house. Life is good.”
“Yeah. And it will further improve when strangers learn to keep their distance.”
“The southwest is new for us and so far it seems to be the exact opposite of the northeast. There were some things that we liked there, so there will be some things we’ll dislike here.
It’s so weird. At work they call me Mr. Woodson and I’m tempted to tell them that; ‘I’m Ty. Mr. Woodson is my father’s name.’
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But, I’m afraid they might be offended, or worse just stare at me.”
Cindy, out of some habit, un-necessarily put her hand in front of her mouth to half hide a giggle, when she said;
“There’s a couple of people at Touche who make me laugh silently. Often when I say something I consider innocuous, they look at me funny for a second. Then they say something like;
‘Well, ah don’t know much about that, but ah do know that
........’” I mean like, these people went to college and all that. .............. Or so they say.”
“And majored in Accounting if they went at all. ...... I get that too. But, maybe it’s just some weird southwestern sense of humor; an acquired taste we have yet to acquire.”
“There are some things I don’t want to acquire.”
Ty put an arm around her waist and sighed, saying; “There are just some things you have to put up with at least a little bit; or appear to. That’s the way it goes unless your name is Rockefeller ................ and I’m not even so sure about that. There are times when I’m tempted to say something at the office; but I stifle myself when I simultaneously remember that if I get canned from this job, there are no other banks sufficiently large in this area to employ someone with my high end skills.” He let go of her waist and held her fingertips with his. He laughed. He slightly bowed when he said; “Tyrus A.
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Woodson, Vice President in charge of Governmental Relations at your service, my Lady. If my dear Lady Guinevere is sufficiently appalled at the thought of attending this bourgeois gathering I am prepared to send convincing condolences. In actuality, that is also my preference. However, in that case, my fair lady, you recognize that Tyrus Lancelot may be obliged to shed considerable blood.”
Cindy smiled as she looked through the still un-smudged kitchen window. Her eyes fixed leftward, in the direction of the river. Unlike the stagnant sounds and bays to which she had become accustomed in the east, the Rio Grande discernably flowed. It was as un-mistakable as Ty’s admiration and imitation of the gallantry of Sir Lancelot du Lac. The muddy water established a seemingly infinite number and variety of triumphant whitecaps as the rushing stream continued and continued; seemingly un-deterred and un-phased by the vulgar and stationary obstacles mired and hidden in the rocky bed. Each of the countless displays of whitecap occurrences visible at any given moment was similar when viewed in a coarse manner. Such perfunctory view seems to be reasonably expected and reasonably cursory as is the necessary, reactive, visionless hardheadedness adopted in the moment. What is less often seen is the brave, fully expectant of being denied but continuing, infinite varieties of the caps. Their temporary amorphous forms reflect
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the light like prisms, glass onions, and rainbows when the sun is high; and co-operative darkness when under the clouds. So much history tells them that like the countless excursions of so many before, that they must know that they will break in such a short time against the shore; yet they go on until they can no longer.
It’s no time for debate. It’s time for the traveler to do just one thing. He must find shelter when on the road a long way from home, suddenly covered by a loud, threatening darkness, and immersed in a blizzard of freezing snowflakes which quickly pile up. Duh??? Igloo construction instructions seemed much too obvious a need to state out loud, at the risk of being ignored for rudeness.
A “brain” and eye blessed with the incorrect vision of limitless time, thereby rendering the snow irrelevant, might use that falsely conceived luxury to pontificate something much less immediate and refined. A distinguishing visage, so misinformed as to be so providential, effectively uses that vantage point to illuminate their papered observation. It is based on current scientifically approved methods of observation which will be re-defined next year. That is not a condemnation. That is merely a fact. In the meantime, those less visionary, who are enveloped in the blizzard are heartened to be advised that it seems likely that the whitecaps and snowflakes are all of unique design;
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perhaps the result of polishing; the significance of that the subject of further study, not expected to be concluded in this generation.
Cindy laughed or didn’t; the expression on her face that of an Alice who refused to believe that she had gone through the looking glass. Her heart objected to Ty’s pragmatism, but her mind concurred. She thought; “Things just keep going. They have to.” She said; “Okay. Let’s go to the meeting with the community group. Maybe we can learn the art of sabotage.”
“You’re beautiful, baby.”
“Wicked, too.” Her bedroom eyes gazed directly into his as her cup shattered on the brick floor.
On the other side of town, the “Sand Dune” residents had obtained a copy of Penny’s flyer by surreptitious means. It was duplicated and sent throughout the community. The phrase
“ordinances banning unwanted interlopers” attracted significant attention. It was decided that it was necessary for the “Sand Dunes” area to send delegates to the meeting. An oft heard phrase heard locally was; “This sounds like it could be a backdoor way into the same old shit.”
A snippet of a subsequent Woodson communication;
“A greedy empath.”
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“Exactly. You too I think. But you ain’t seen infinity yet; only dreams.”
“You might be surprised.”
“Hope so.”
“Daddy’s back east.”
“Momma too.”
“You gonna burn baby.”
“That’s the easy part.”
“What’s the hard one?”
Laughter. “Can’t tell?”
“50 Shades is so limited.”
“Plebian taste.”
“Yeah, taste.”
“Who’s talking?”
“Lost track. Matter?”
“Fuck no.”
Giggles. “What are you thinkin’ babe?”
“Africa.”
“I’m there.”
“Umnnn. Yeah.”
“Where’s the smoke? Great, great.”
“You’re so kind. Do you always say that?”
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“Yeah, always. ............. Always with you, fuck-head.
........ How about me?”
“Can’t imagine anything better. ............ Well, if it lasted longer, .................”
“You go crazy on that thing. I can’t help it.”
“Maybe an indirect route next time.”
“Ooooh, very dirty. Nice. ........ Just don’t kiss me afterwards.”
“Kiss you where? Hangups?”
“Teasing. Like my preliminaries. Got a thing about the bush in full bloom.”
Giggle. “Me too. Why’d they ever cut it back?”
“Scared little men.”
“Defies nature.”
“Your mother.”
“Don’t complicate it.”
“Just a possible analogy, I think.”
“Best forgotten. Come on. Roll it.”
“I’m rolling.”
Cream sang and wah-wahed “Tales of Brave Ulysses,”
sculpting bottomless azure undulations.
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# 7- The Palest of Maestros
The Propicio Village Council meetings were held on every Friday at 3:00PM. The Council members said that the timing had
“no significance whatsoever” and was merely in accord with the tradition established by the founding fathers. The infrequent, individually, voiced complaints about the scheduling were “taken under advisement” without commentary. A few petitions, bearing the alleged signatures of a distinct minority of residents always got bogged down. They were bogged as if buried in quicksand, by an interminable signature verification procedure handled solely by the appointed Village Administrator, “as other duties permitted.”
The present day reality of the 3:00PM meeting was that the timing effectively precluded attendance by working people, those charged with the responsibility of picking up school children, and the codgers in need of an afternoon nap. But, no longer did anyone complain about the inconvenient timing for a number of good reasons; 1) They knew it would get them nothing other than a property re-evaluation; 2) They had no interest in attending anyway; 3) They were bored to tears listening to engineers discuss the rates of septic poopy flow, tested and projected for the new subdivision; and most of all; 4) Their nap took
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priority; and most significantly; 5) House prices were noticeably rising every month.
The old-timers circulated the rumor that their Winchester-toting ancestors celebrated at 3:00PM on a Friday, over 100
years ago, after having routed the last of the Native Americans, who were at the time referred to as the “thievin’ Injuns.” Some part of this fairy tale provided them with chuckles at every telling, effectively masked behind impassive, fleshy faces. The fertile, river irrigated, “horn of plenty,” was then named Propicio. It became entirely the domain of European immigrants by way of South Chicago.
On Friday at 2:45PM first term Mayor Vincent Pignatelli, a Propician by way of Bensonhurst, surveyed the meeting room. He stood in the open doorway at the left side of the platform, his forefinger nervously stroking his lips and chin. He had received a copy of the flyer distributed by the “Brisas Area Gardening Society” and initially thought little of the entreaty to attend this meeting. He thought it was merely the inconsequential whims of a few old lady horticulturalists with nothing better to do.
His corrected eyes peered down at the growing throng of citizens milling around the metallic folding chairs three feet below him.
The seats were set up in neat rows and columns. But the people were less compliant with rules of decorum and seemed to
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haphazardly establish their own fluctuating zones of newly essential discomfort.
In anticipation of the coming onslaught, he thought; “I have no authority over the elms. Their existence is grandfathered in. You can’t make something illegal today and then charge someone for doing it yesterday. But who wants to hear that the Mayor is powerless?
The increasingly nervous Mayor calculatingly realized that he was in unsystematic virgin territory, though he was denied the ability to hide the physical aspect of his plight. The unpredictability of what was impending made his pockmarked, swarthy face secrete nippy debilitations, which had the nasty habit of congregating in his craters. His well-used handkerchief dabbed at his faux confident façade, restoring a momentary, dry cool; only to be immediately replaced by the uncontainable, embarrassing, hidden and drip producing mechanism of his most reviled part; his sociopathic subconscious. He was not new to this experience. The dichotomy of appearance and reality was old news. Yet, damn it; despite eons of study, no one had come up with a methodology competent to produce the desired results.
With no learned aid, he again sweated it out, while cursing the scientific failure of the paper framers. He thought; “Assholes don’t seem to understand that there is money at stake.”
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With only his own conceptions to guide him, he attempted to chronicle what was in undisputed evidence. He thought; “Usually there are about seven regulars in attendance. Invariably they seek to advertise their mental acumen by making arcane points regarding inconsequential, time-delaying, legislative, procedural matters. Like an academic at the elusive core, they merely showed an ignored-one’s need to inconsequentially be heard. This is easy to deal with. Smile and capitulate nothing other than a few minutes of obligatory, artificially cheerful time. But, the growing and unstructured rendezvous with the crowd is right in front of my telltale, sweating face. This does not appear to be business as usual. Maybe, I’m overly alarmed over a mere display of bodies, but goddammit, today really does seem different. I feel it in my gut.”
The definable observation of what seemed to be weighed like an unforgiving, uninvited albatross over his planned considerations. His biased view of the gallery might have had some relevance when their innocuous statements were originally made, but was not very helpful now; especially in terms of his suggested actions. Today was observably atypical; maybe not having any importance other than the fleetingly detectable numbers. Maybe it was merely the sophist in him, circling around the often arcane consideration of anecdotal versus empirical; at first level ignoring the overlap on stage three. No big thing.
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Both forms of evidence were acceptable in court, though an appeal was sometimes necessary; if it could be afforded. At that point the competence of the presentation became the single most important determining factor and Vincent had access to the mob lawyers. One would be sitting right below the stage, competent and ready to obscure any voter complaints, and was called
“Village Counsel.” But, other than a conveniently veiled, cryptic Nostradamus, who can predict the future? The mouthpiece had allegiances and shifting games of his own. Surprises, regular fucking surprises. With the money on the line it was only prudent to have at least plans A, B and C in place.
He thought of his own contrivances. The edgy man insisted on being referred to as Mayor Pignatelli or Vincent. He wasn’t particularly pompous, but as a result of his rationality, he would not answer to “Vinny,” as it was a name he had seen used in too many Mafia movies. He was up for re-election in just a few months and desperately wanted to remain in office when the Village’s lucrative garbage collection contract was up for renewal three months later. Citizens with concerns were a nuisance at best and an impediment at the worst.
“Daydreaming?” came the baying, mocking voice of Councilman Thomas Higgins. He was on his way to his gold-leafed, nameplated place behind the elongated, darkly stained, pressed
“wood” desk on the platform; which was always covered with
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documents which served no other purpose. He attempted to brush by the hefty, 240 pound Mayor. The open door did not accommodate both of them. Vincent was compelled to maintain his position and didn’t move, blankly staring at his political nemesis-ally-opportunity hawk.
Thomas feigned amusement and mumbled; “Think you’ve taken up permanent residence, chief?”
“As permanent as anyone’s.”
“The voters are restless. They must fancy that they’re natives.”
No response.
“They always blame the man in charge.”
“Maybe they came to bestow their praises.” Vincent side-stepped. Thomas made a brief, snorting smirk and ambled to his seat, eyes fixed on the ground, careful not to trip on the curling edges of the floorboards.
Vincent turned his head toward the overhead clock and saw that it was 2:57. He then scanned the audience to see that their numbers had grown to approximately 90; overflowing the perfunctory seats provided, which they had re-arranged to accommodate their impromptu meetings. Into only themselves, they saw nothing of Vincent and Thomas, as they exchanged “wizened”
strategic insights, and greetings. Both sides of the room were lined with those deficient in the game of musical chairs and
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those wanting to keep a quick getaway a viable option. Some continually checked their wristwatches against the simple, black and white, circular clock at the rear of the platform. They grimaced as if their time was pressed and soon had somewhere more important to be. A held baby cried. Another in a backpack immediately echoed the refrain.
Ty and Cindy remained by themselves, seemingly aloof, standing at the back of the room, silently wearing bewildered expressions. The turnout, larger than hoped for, was disappointing to both.
After 30 seconds, which, to them, seemed as if an age had passed, Ty said; “Shouldn’t we mingle or something like that?”
“Doesn’t showing up satisfy our neighborly obligations?”
“Don’t you have to infiltrate before you can sabotage?”
“The best saboteurs wait to see if the prey will perform the feat on their own.”
“Wicked, wicked, wicked lover.”
Cindy briefly stuck out her tongue.
Various notices, proclamations and informational documents were “read into the record” by the Mayor at a speed which approximated that of a baby carriage in loose sand, carrying portly triplets. Ordinances which had been previously passed
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containing mis-spellings were re-passed after reading their entirety, to be certain of no misunderstandings.
The little hand was on the three and the big one was on the eight as Mayor Pignatelli was sitting in his customary center seat reading in a slow monotone; “Ordinance number 14-40078, allowing Treacle and Sugar, Inc. to alter their vending machines located in the elementary school is under consideration. All those in favor say ‘Aye.’”
Three voices grunted what sounded like; “Mmmm.” The silent one’s head was fixated either on his crotch or the fly perched on one of his lower shirt buttons. An unkind person, rushing to judgment would have accused him of nodding off.
“Those opposed?”
One of the handful of regulars, Martin Pescaderia bolted from his front row seat and vigilantly strode to the podium. In no uncertain terms he said; “It behooves us to be made aware of the proposed changes.”
Vincent thought; “God bless you, Martin.” Three hours prior, the Mayor had been effectively considering his plans A, B
and C. For almost two hours he had been meritoriously executing B. The last resort, D, was a faked heart attack. A was out the window because of the attendance. In B he intended to bring out every conceivable piece of time consuming “business” in order to drag out the meeting, in experienced expectation of many of the
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attendees leaving. He couldn’t help but show a welcoming smile as he looked to the podium. His smile broadened when he glanced around the room and saw no one standing and a healthy supply of empty seats. The original contingent of potential “trouble makers” had lost forty percent of their numbers with little effort and with Martin on the case he could beat this vending machine business to death. Even better, he wasn’t on Treacle and Sugar’s payroll. It was Thomas Higgins’ deal, and if anyone was going to appear remiss in the protection of the kids, it would be Tom. For the first time, he was on Martin’s side. He said;
“Excellent observation, Mr. Pescaderia. I’m sure you have many more precise questions, and you might direct them to Councilman Higgins, who proposed this ordinance.”
Having received his first encouragement to speak, and from the Mayor himself, Martin stood tall and beamed. He said; “While the questions are many, perhaps I should start with this. Are the machines themselves being replaced, the contents thereof or both?”
Councilman Higgins continued to eyeball his crotch or the fly on a shirt button. Vincent was openly amused and bellowed into his mike; “MISTER Higgins. Do you intend to respond to this gentleman’s concerns?”
Thomas looked up and saw all eyes gazing in his direction.
He felt as he did in high school when the teacher called on him
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when he was watching TV on a portable device. He said; “You’ll have to excuse me. I was pre-occupied reading the particulars of an ordinance I’ll soon be proposing. My apologies. I think you’ll be glad to hear that it will require the leashing of dogs on all public property.”
Martin repeated; “Regarding Treacle and Sugar’s vending machines. Are the machines themselves being replaced, the contents thereof or both? And I have follow ups.”
Though his pained expression belied his words, Higgins said; “I’m happy you asked that question.” He forced a grin, hoping to convey friendliness rather than incompetent, low level thievery and went on. “I’d be even happier if I could fully answer it.” His un-shared grin became an un-shared chuckle. “As in so many areas, we’ve been made aware that there have been technological advances made in the mechanics of the machine operations; essentially enabling the replacement of gear devices with circuit boards. There have been numerous incidents reported of children not getting the item they paid for. This should alleviate that. Regarding the items stocked, I would have to strongly suspect, that of necessity, they are changed from time to time. Poor selling items are replaced with ones deemed to have better potential and more satisfied young customers. This ordinance makes no issue of that. The invisible hand of economics has a way of working those things out.”
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Childless and domiciled-with-parents-at-age-45-Martin asked; “Wouldn’t it be a benefit to our children to monitor the items carried in order to eliminate harmful ones with no nutritional value?”
In a display of the skills required to pass the standardized test given to students of Political Proficiency 101, Higgins stifled a choke in its infancy and almost sounded sincere when he responded; “Yes, most definitely. However, we are governed by laws, and we have no more right to do that than we have the right to tell your local convenience store what to sell. None.”
“A convenience store is one thing and an elementary school is another. It would seem to me that it could be written into the contract.”
Vincent again thought; “Bless you, Martin.” He saw that many of the diminished crowd was checking their wristwatches.
With tiring legs, Ty and Cindy took seats. Cindy whispered;
“We can probably leave. We’ve put in our appearance. We’ve been seen. Lots of others have left already.”
Ty answered; “Let’s stay a bit more. This is starting to strike me as amusing.”
Cindy said; “That is so weird.”
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Ty responded; “And you love it.” The playful, smiling, gentle slap his face received drew the attention of a few of the weary.
Higgins said; “That sounds more like a statement than a question. I’m an attorney. Are you one?”
Martin said; “No, but my stupid brother-in-law is. Perhaps I can re-phrase. Why can’t there be some language in the contract stipulating what may be sold? A menu, if you will.”
Higgins laughed and said; “On a practical basis, it’s because the contract has already been written, signed and approved. Perhaps our Village Attorney, Jeffrey Goldblum, who drew up the contract can shed more light on the matter. Mr.
Goldblum?”
Seated just below the platform, Jeffrey extricated himself from the “texting” operation he was performing under the table.
Somewhat annoyed to have to sign off as Marilyn Fellaciontelli, just when he was really getting into it, his face twisted, as he requested a repeat of the question. Martin was more than happy to respond, extending his time of glory. Jeffrey said; “One can write anything they so choose, which is legal into a contract.
Key word; Legal. To prescribe certain suitable items to the exclusion of others is unfortunately not. While we may be able to enforce such a clause right here in Propicio, Propicio merely legally gets its rights to make law from the state, who in turn
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has received that right from the federal government. The point is that if we tried to impose any illegality on Treacle and Sugar, we would thereby open ourselves to expensive lawsuits in the state or federal courts, which we would lose. Propicio taxes would have to increase and we’d be sitting here with more than one irate resident, correctly chastising us for our incompetence.”
Undeterred, and uncertain whether or not he had been put off with some sort of legalese, Martin proudly chose to prolong his time in the sun by asking; “Will these modifications be a reason for increasing prices? And further, doesn’t our contract stipulate what may be charged? In anticipation of a negative response to the last question, shouldn’t it?”
Time and rhetorical banality passed at the speed it does when one is incarcerated in County Jail; the highlights there being somewhat grander with access to one hour of afternoon handball and one pages-missing soft cover copy of Dostoyevsky’s
“Notes From the Underground.” At the Village Council meeting the competing competition included the widow, Ms. Clark’s crying complaints that once again Mr. Barr’s septic tank was overflowing onto her property and that she was concerned over the deleterious effects it would have on her two pet Corgis; George and Martha. She brought pictures of the two right in the
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puddle, apparently thinking it something worthy of investigation. She gave copies to the Mayor, the four Councilmen and even Mr. Goldblum, who nervously dropped his cell phone revealing a photo which Ms. Clark found shocking. She took back her picture and sniffed.
To the delight of Mayor Vincent Pignatelli, such was the tone of official business and it was now nearing 8PM. He eyed the remaining audience and estimated that the original 90
attendees had dwindled to 25 diehards, and that many of them appeared to be thoroughly worn out. Some actually seemed to have found comfort on their metal folding chairs; those with the option, resting their heads on the soft shoulders of neighbors.
He banged the gavel softly and said; “Unless anyone has further business to bring before the Council, this meeting is adjourned.”
The remaining portion of the “Sand Dunes” contingent, smiled, stood up, and took a step or two toward the exit.
Abruptly, and almost as alert as an artfully animated amusement addict, Patricia Primstation provisionally pilfered perpendicular position; predominantly pushing pedestrian, podiatristic pace; podium possession a prize-worthy purpose. Pat proceeded to pop a preliminarily privatized, pricey pill.
Her stumbling approach prompted her to mumble under her breath; likely only discernable, and intended as such, for no
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one; “For all the taxes we pay, they ought to at least get the swell off the floor of this strange place. Thank you very much, bizarre Mr. Saunders.” When she arrived at the podium the warm rush in her head made her feel as if she was composed, and she confidently said; “I; I mean we, do have further business.” The groan which emanated from a number of sources, even including Martin, was the evening’s most magnified, united sound. The
“Sand Duners” chimed in the loudest and collectively sat back down. An audible version of “Shit” echoed through the room before someone cut the power supply. Higgins genuinely smiled for the first time anyone had recently noticed, and said;
“Please proceed.”
“Thank you, Mr. Huggins. Councilman Huggins? ........
That’s it, right? ....... Anyway, we ....... or I, whatever; understand that the Village has an ordinance against the planting of elms, and we or I believe rightly so. Many of us or I ......... For the sake of concise, clear candor permit me to try to momentarily escape the confusing, supposed exactitudes of ones and twos. ......... You know, at the bottommost of lines, it has to have been two, simply because one can’t multiply.”