Doormat

            Another story in progress. the theme suggested by co-workers of mine.

            Into each life some rain must fall, observed Wadsworth. But no one knew that better than Matthew Doerr. At 51 years of age, he’d yet to experience one day without deluge. Picked on as a child, under- or unemployed in young  life, now twice divorced and crushing the scale at over 300 pounds, Doerr was soaked to the skin.

            “Mom!” he wailed, tossing his bags toward his bed and collapsing into the Partridge Family-themed beanbag chair his mother had never removed from his bedroom, “Is there any ice cream?”

            “I don’t think so, dear,” came the reply from downstairs.

            He let his chins fall against his chest. Moving back home wasn’t going to be the ray of sunshine for which he’d so long hoped.

(To be continued)

Overheard

McDonald’s Family Restaurant

Glendale, Calif.

Oct. 14, 2011

12:17 p.m.

The loud waves of static and country twang normally bludgeoning us from speakers in the ceiling are gone. Management has finally gotten the message: The intermittent warbling of Porter Wagoner isn’t what this population of Armenians and speakers of Spanish as a first language wants to hear while eating.

Check that: Management has merely turned the volume down. Between bites we hear what sounds like people whispering about us from the next room.

A woman sits hunched in the red plastic booth before mine. She stares blankly at the table as she chews. The motion is slow, like a cow’s, the upper plate of teeth grinding her quarter pounder with cheese against the lower.

Suddenly a brown paper bag is heaved onto her table. It lands with a thud, as though filled with sod. Without a word, a similar-looking woman – her sister? – lumbers past, making her way toward the counter.

A third sister, just as bovine in appearance, soon arrives. She slides heavily into the booth and sets down her tray. “My blood sugar’s low. I gotta eat,” says the first sister, explaining why she’s already begun to dig in.

At last, the sister who announced her presence by whipping a grocery bag into their booth reappears. She doesn’t see her sack. “Where’d you put my shit?” she demands.

And here we have the only words spoken, as the three eat in complete silence for an hour, each staring at the table beneath her elbow. Finally the three struggle to their feet, look at their iPhones, and shuffle out to the parking lot.

Artwork by John T. Quinn III

Picture This

          Here's an exceprt from a story in progress. In this piece, a woman discovers that finding her place in life is no laughing matter. 

                There were no pictures of Marie on her sister’s mantel. There wasn’t a single one in the house. If it were true that we cradled those we loved in little wooden frames, then Marie’s ranking was lower than that of her sister’s cat, who was represented twice.

                In keeping with Los Angeles tradition, Marie’s sister and her husband had over a dozen photos of themselves about the premises. There was even an exquisite painting of the pair above the fireplace. It was no wonder, really; they were a stunning couple, with their movie-star looks and winning smiles.

               

                Their kids were no less dazzling. The house was home to more than a few pictures of them, as well. Marie had to admit that even the cat had the look of a matinee idol.

                Still, she couldn’t help but feel slighted. After all, she was careful to have current pictures of her sister and her family on display in her own apartment. Shouldn’t they do the same?

                Marie wouldn’t confront her sister over the situation. She couldn’t. To even broach the subject was out of the question. The wrong – if it could even be called that – would doubtless immediately be corrected, but it would be done out of obligation, not regard.

                So Marie secreted photos of herself into the house. Here she was, sitting on Santa’s lap just last Christmas, at 40 years of age. Here were she and her sister at their high school winter formal. How the family would laugh months from now, when Marie’s picture was finally discovered. What a hoot was the stunt.

                But no matter how deeply she hid herself in her sister’s forest of frames, her photo was found in days. It was sometimes found in hours. On her next visit she’d notice her offering lying face down upon the table. “Oh, you came across my little joke,” she’d say, and the thing would be handed back, big laughs all around.

                “You need to get yourself some outside interests,” Marie’s friend Stephanie told her one day over coffee.

                “Oh, come on, that’s funny. You don’t think I need my own TV show?”

                “What you need is a life. These people don’t care about you.”

(To be continued)

Excerpt: The Lady Wrestlers

Even at 11 years of age, Sylvia had an eye for foreshadowing. She was the daughter of would-be writers, after all. She looked at her parents, both the size of Subarus, and realized a sedan-sized fate was something she would not outdistance.

The prospect depressed her to no end.

            “It’s genetics, honey. Don’t worry about it. Got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above,” advised her dad, borrowing from Bruce Springsteen. The longtime aspiring songwriter was always borrowing from someone. He liked to think of the practice as homage. Others, like music publishers, for example, saw it as something closer to plagiarism.

            “Big girls don’t cry, Syl,” added her mother. “Besides, all the great intellects of your world have been husky – the ones who’ve really made a difference. Look at Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling or Judy Blume, for heaven’s sake. God, Stephenie Meyer!” The authors she envied were not plus-sized, of course. The so-far failed writer of young-adult literature just wanted to believe she wasn’t so different from those who’d made it.

            Sylvia was young, but she recognized a classic case of projection when she heard it. Plus, she’d Google-Imaged all those literary giants and judged them to be of standard proportion. The central dramatic question for her was if she’d end up like those ladies she watched on embarrassing weight-loss reality shows and saw confined to gargantuan beds on TLC. Would she be a woman who one day needed to be removed from her bedroom by crane? Lithe little things populated the romantic vampire films she so loved, and they positively oozed with influence.

            “Go have a snack. You’ll feel better,” continued her mother.

            “Nestle makes the very best chocolate,” said her dad.

            When Sylvia reached her 12^th birthday, she appeared no more rotund than any other Los Angeles school kid. She was bright beyond her years, interested in dance, obsessed with Disney Channel pop stars. Alarmed, her parents wanted to take her to the doctor.

Sylvia wanted to jump for joy.  Perhaps, she allowed herself to believe, she had beaten the Carrasco Curse. She didn’t share this information with her little brother for two reasons. First, she didn’t like Steven. He was stinky and gross. But chief among her complaints was that he poked about her room when she was gone. Her suspicion of his snooping led to her leaving a video camera tucked between the stuffed animals upon her bed when she’d leave. Sure enough, surveillance footage confirmed Steven’s breaking and entering.  It also showed his wiping of a booger into the rug.

 To put an immediate end to this activity, she’d left a cache of realistic-looking water guns behind her door, accompanied by a Bratz poster with red “X”s scrawled across all of their faces but one. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but it had been enough to keep young Steven a shooting’s distance away from her after that.

The second reason she didn’t celebrate in front of the boy was because she loved him. It was plainly evident that Steven had not beaten the Carrasco Curse. He was 10 years old and had the waistline of a man at middle age.

(To be continued)

Partners: Part Three

Part Two of this story appeared yesterday. In this concluding chapter, Chelsea finds a most unlikely hero.

            Chelsea had long fantasized about the day she’d leave Winterstone’s frosty employ. Oh, the upbraiding she’d give him in her exit interview! Afterward, she’d hop the evening flight to Maui, where she’d spend two weeks on the beach sweating out all his poison.

Her wildest imaginings involved her knocking out company security cameras and luring into the man’s suite a rhinoceros from the Los Angeles Zoo. She’d bolt his doors, disable his phones and then simply listen to how the two got on.

            But long before she’d quit or Winterstone would be tossed about his enclosure by a giant horned beast, Chelsea assumed the man would simply just leave. She’d been waiting for years for news of his being tapped to handle black ops for a crooked president or plucked for a leadership role at the Fed. A psychotic break wasn’t even on her list.

            The hyenas in these corner offices will eat him alive, she thought to herself, surprised at feeling a little sad for the devil. He was clearly in a state. She’d always suspected that on some level – microscopic or perhaps philosophical – Winterstone was probably human. If she could help, the assistants’ code held, she should. Chelsea surprised herself once more by standing. She smoothed her skirt and cleared her throat.

            “Rough weekend, sir?” she said.

            “It’s too much!” the man wailed, suddenly bursting into tears. “Too great a burden.”

            Ah, Chelsea thought, so it was cancer. Inoperable. Or maybe another wife was dragging him into divorce court. Costly, even for him, a man with yachts on both seaboards. Either way, Chelsea felt oddly warmed by the situation. This was the most the two had spoken in years.

            “May I lend you a hand?” she said.

            “Have you eyes, secretary? Gaze upon me.”

            The man had a calculator taped to the top of his mask.

            “The skies have reached down to touch me, bestowing upon me a wondrous and terrible power,” he continued. “Behold.” He held out a hand that looked as though it had been singed by fire. “Give me a hundred.”

            “A 100-dollar bill?”

            He looked at her, standing before him in her Jaclyn Smith ensemble. “Ah, right,” he said. “A quarter, then. Whatever you have on your person.”

            Chelsea ran to her cubicle. By now, her crisis management team leader would be just down the hall. She poked her head out to look in the direction of his office. Then she turned to look again at her boss, the giant Gherkin, sitting with his arm still outstretched upon the desk. A thin plume of smoke rose steadily from his head.

She ducked back in the cubicle to grab her purse. She yanked out her pocketbook, which held only her cards and the picture of Kirstie Alley she’d cut from People to encourage herself to eat more healthily. She turned her bag upside and shook it.

            In his suite, Winterstone banged his arm upon the desk.

            Chelsea flung open a drawer and found a nickel.

            Winterstone took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and squeezed his eyes shut. Then he closed his charred fingers over the coin.

            “2.2 Indian rupees,” he murmured.

            “Sir  – ”

“.34 Chinese yuans. 3.67 Algerian dinars,” he continued. The sums spilled out of him in rapid-fire succession. “.068 Brunei dollars.”

            Spent, he collapsed onto the desk. “Great heaven help me,” he moaned, “for this is the awesome gift I have been given. Place any currency in my grasp and I can tell you its worth that second in Rangoon, New York, London or Borneo. This world is forever changed. I have been made god!”

            Chelsea stared at the man, brow furrowed, before making an elaborate examination of her nails.

“If that’s all, sir,” she said.

            “All? My darling girl, I reveal to you a power unprecedented! I shall reshape the world.”

            “It’s just that you kind of had me set up for … I was expecting something … I don’t know what I was thinking.”

            “Yes, well, I’m sure you can understand how important it is that the details of my personal life remain hidden from humanity. The people cannot know my true identity.”

            “Your secret’s safe with me,” she said. She pantomimed locking her lips and tossing away the key.

            “Another thing.”

            “Yes.”

            “Calculo.”

            “I believe you’ve stapled it to your head, sir.”

            “Chelsea,” Winterstone said importantly, “I am Calculo.”

            “You know my name,” she said, flabbergasted. “You actually called me by my name.”

            “Forgive me – my former self – for not using it more often. It’s priceless,” he said. “A Chelsea bun is a type of cake, you might be interested to know. It’s formed in the shape of a spiral and made of a yeast dough with a sweet glaze. I should have sent you out to purchase one for yourself as a birthday gift from me.”

            Chelsea felt the room beginning to spin.

            “Your worth is beyond measure, my spirited girl. Never doubt that. Inestimable is the value of your soul.”

            She began slowly backpedaling. “I’ll just,” she said, “close these doors, sir, to give you a little privacy.”

             “But your nickel.”

            “Keep it,” she said, before shutting him inside.

            Chelsea walked slowly back to her desk. She scrubbed all Winterstone’s meetings for the week. Then she looked up the extension of her human resources specialist. Just like that, she realized, she was free.

Come the noon hour, though, Chelsea was still on the job. She brought Winterstone a sensible meal of salad and SmartWater. She remained behind after delivering the food to help the hero wrestle with his mask, the mouth and eye openings of which were so small that only every third forkful was reaching his lips. Chelsea caught the dressing that had dripped onto his cat suit but left the croutons that had collected in his verdine lap.

            “What happened out there on the sea? You were in that boat race, weren’t you?” she asked.

            “It was the most astounding thing,” Winterstone began. But just then, the device atop his head blinked into life. Chelsea gave a start.

            He stopped chewing. “What is it?”

            “Your, um, thing.” She pointed to his crown.

            He put down his fork. “Holy God. What does it say?”

            “It says BOOBS, sir.”

            “You’re looking at it upside down. You mean 58008,” he said, “my signal with the SEC.”

            He leapt to his feet and wheeled to face the window. He threw open the drapes and stared intently into the smog. “Something’s going down at the regional office,” he said, gravely. “I must be off.”

            He was off, alright. Chelsea took him in for a long moment. Then she looked at her watch. “You’d better go, then, sir,” she said. “I’ll call for your car.”

            She dashed out to her desk. After a moment, she returned with her bag. “Wilshire will be messy this time of day, Calculo. Permission to ride along? I’ve a feeling you may need someone with the power to put on some speed.”

Partners: Part Two

Part One of this story appeared on Feb. 14, 2011.

The day Chelsea turned 40, her co-workers crowded around her cubicle to sing. They even presented her with a cake they’d had decorated to read, “Things only go downhill from her.”

“It’s supposed to say ‘here,’” they explained, glaring at the temp they’d sent to pick up the dessert.

“It’s perfect. I love it,” she said. Then the birthday girl made her wish. It was the same incantation she recited to herself every year. As she prayed this time, however, tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. She’d knocked down but one flame before the screech of the Old Vulture came ringing down the hall.

            “Secretary!”

            Chelsea pushed apologetically through the gathering

“Doors,” Winterstone bellowed, motioning for her to exit and, in so doing, wrestle closed the great mahogany planks.

            She returned to her desk to find her friends had fled. Her cake was running with wax. Chelsea blew out the rest of her candles. She began gathering up the unused plates, napkins and forks.

            That night, with a long holiday weekend stretching empty and vast before her, Chelsea allowed herself to feel what she told herself would only be a few minutes of self pity. She put on some Sarah McLachlan. She pulled a bottle of pinot grigio from the fridge. She plopped herself on the floor and ate every last bite of the cake she’d been given that morning, candle wax and all.

            The pastry turned out to be as prescient as it was delicious. Indeed, hours later, it seemed that things really did only go downhill from her. Even with vision blurred, she could see the wish she’d made that afternoon wasn’t going to come true. The fire trucks weren’t coming. There would be no policeman at her door. Superman was dead.

            She raised her empty bottle. “To you, Mr. Winterstone, you horrible old toad,” she announced. “And me.”

The morning after the long weekend, Chelsea didn’t feel much like flying up any staircases. She was on her way to the elevator when she spied the Old Man’s Wall Street Journal at reception, unclaimed. Odd, she thought. He was in each day just after dawn. The one thing he did himself was to pick up the paper.

            Stranger still, when she got upstairs, Winterstone’s den was dark. Its draperies were drawn.

            She put down her coffee to check her BlackBerry. Nothing. As much as the prospect of the Iron Horse’s taking an unannounced sick day cheered her, she knew such an idea was preposterous. Winterstone hadn’t missed a chance to put in his 12 or 13 hours for decades. In Chelsea’s own tenure with the man, he’d survived three massive heart attacks by simply shouting them into submission and, in each case, been in by breakfast. Yes, this was most puzzling, indeed.

            Just as intriguing was the Journal headline she noticed: “Lightning Storm Pounds Regatta: Leading Financial Figure Struck, Missing.” I hope it was him, she thought, scanning the lead but reading no farther. “A story that lurid seems better suited for the Los Angeles Times,” she said, pleased with herself. Switching from morning zoo radio to NPR for the drive to work was beginning to pay off.

            Chelsea picked up her coffee, tucked the paper beneath her arm and stepped into the void. She was making her way toward the curtains behind her boss’s desk when she was assaulted by the stench of sulfur. No, it was worse than that. What she smelled was the odor of something like burned flesh.

            A figure moved in the inkiness before her. She froze in her tracks. Not a foot from Chelsea’s face, someone or something was breathing. Her hand darted out for Winterstone’s antique desk lamp. To her horror, she found she grasped not the fixture’s chain, but the clammy hand of another.

            Fire roared through her veins. She pulled. By God, she would see her attacker. Suddenly, the suite burst into light and there was the Great Man himself, seated behind his desk in a dollar-green leotard and Mexican wrestler’s mask.

            “Secretary,” he croaked.

            “Holy Christ!” Chelsea cried, leaping into the air. She spun, sent a roundhouse kick across the width of the desk, and landed. The CFO tumbled backward, head over heels. Coffee flew everywhere.

Chelsea scurried back out to her cubicle, returning with fistfuls of napkins. She dropped to her knees and began dabbing madly at the carpet. Winterstone rolled about the floor, making gurgling sounds.

            “Sir!” Chelsea shouted. “My language. I am so sorry.”

            Winterstone fought the chair off his back and struggled to his knees. “Your language? Dear girl,” he said, breath ragged, “you laid your boot to me.”

            “Well, you startled me,” she fired back, as unable to rein in her tongue as she had been her foot. “Why were you sitting in the dark, dressed as a pickle?”

            There came no apology, of course. There never had. He made no answer. Gradually, though, Chelsea became aware of a whimpering. She crawled quietly to the desk and peeked above its edge. Winterstone was seated once again. He had his big, currency-colored head in his hands and was rocking back and forth. He smelled something awful.

            Chelsea ducked back down. This couldn’t be happening. She read her job description daily and was completely sure this, whatever this was, wasn’t in it. She pondered backing out. Even on all fours, she reckoned she could cross the office’s Berber expanse in little more than seconds. The trip downstairs to Human Resources wouldn’t take much longer.

Billy the Dung Beetle

Billy the dung beetle’s dad flung open the door to find his son sculpting a naked ladybug. “Holy Christ!” he roared.

“I told you, Dad,” cried Billy’s little brother, hopping from foot to foot just behind his father.

“Yes, thank you, Lance,” said his dad. “Now go back outside. Daylight’s burning.”

 “But – “

Billy’s dad shot Lance a look, then stepped into his son’s room and shut the door. “What the hell’s this?” he demanded.

Billy continued fashioning an antenna out of a ball of cattle excrement. “Well, it’s a figure, Dad,” he said. “You know, a statue.”

“A figure! I can see that, Son. God in Heaven.” He grabbed a shirt from the floor and whipped it about the ladybug’s glistening abdomen. “What I mean is, why aren’t you outside rolling? Ricky’s out there. And I saw that friend of yours, Angie. She’s becoming quite the little tunneler.”

Billy fell back onto his bed. “Aw, that stuff’s not for me, Dad. I’m no worker bee. I’m an artist – a real artist. See?” He reached under his bed and dragged out an exquisite reproduction of Notre Dame Cathedral.

“A little church,” his dad said flatly. He laid a foot to each side of the work and rolled it into a pill.

“Dad!”

“It’s for your own good, Son. This artist business – it won’t wash. It’s unseemly.”

Billy began to sniffle.

“Oh, here we go,” moaned his dad. “Here come the waterworks.”

Billy regarded his father through stinging eyes. He could suddenly envision his next project: a simple, narrow-minded elder beetle set upon by a murder of crows.

“I blame your mother for this,” Billy’s father said, settling backward onto a delicate, three-dimensional rendering of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” He produced a cigarette from beneath a wing. “’Let’s enroll the boy in tap,’ she said. Then there were the piano lessons. That French tutor.”

“Check out the magazines on his nightstand,” came a voice from the other side of the door.

“Outside, Lance!” yelled Billy’s dad. “Right now.”

Billy tossed his dad the Walter Foster figure-drawing books from beside his bed, then flipped toward the wall. “Excuse me, but there’s no smoking in the studio,” he said, voice breaking. “And I’m not like, gay, Dad, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

Billy’s dad’s gaze ran from the back of his son’s jaunty blue blazer to his ascot and beret. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“Look, you’re developing into an adult, Son,” he continued. “And an adult doesn’t waste the light of day making little, I don’t know … ”

“Objet d’art, Dad.”

 “Exactly – doll houses and whatnot – holed up in his room. Especially when we’ve had a herd of angus move through the area. What you’re doing with manure here, boy, it’s not worthy.”

Now Billy was getting another idea, this one for a performance-art piece. He let his mind run with it. “Allow me to challenge you with this,” he’d recite to a great crowd of admirers including Auguste Rodin. Then he’d rip sheets from sculptures of an insensitive, block-headed patriarch and the youngest of its offspring. Next, as the throng looked on in awe, he’d mold a working shotgun, fill it with pebbles, and fire at the statues until they were reduced to busts.

But Billy hated to work angry. It was not the artist’s way. So he came up with something else, a plan of escape. There must be a hundred art schools that would accept him. Or he’d go to Paris, hire himself a little garret.

Billy’s dad moved to the foot of the bed and sat. “This may surprise you, Boy, but at your age I considered myself quite the painter.”

This was a house of lies. Then again, Billy considered, there was that paint-by-numbers Holstein evacuating its bowels tucked away in the garage.

“It’s true,” Billy’s dad continued. “I had it in my head I was going to leap onto the boot of a passing naturalist and work my way into the city, make a big stink. That was until I had it out with my old man, too.

“He was a roller, he told me. My grandfather was a roller. We’ve all been rollers, this entire family, since the beginning. It’s who we are, he said.”

Billy turned to face his father’s words. “What’d you do with that?”

“What did I do? I scurried the hell out of this place as fast as my legs would carry me. I got beyond the plains, set up shop and, after a while my stuff developed a following. I had fame, all the females I could inseminate – ” he glanced nervously at the door – “not that your mother needs to know.”

In awe Billy slowly nodded his head then quickly switched to shaking it from side to side.

“Point is it wasn’t so great. It wasn’t even good. It’s all crap, Son. All of it. All of the time. What you want is to be happy. And you’ll never be happy until you know who you are.”

Billy studied his dad for a minute. He could see himself in that face. Then he looked about his room, his studio. He got up, arranged his jacket on a wooden hanger in the closet and placed his beret carefully upon a shelf.

“We’d better get outside,” he turned at last to say. “Daylight’s burning.”

Sometimes a Bite

On the day Karen Moore’s boss told her she was no longer wanted at work, she returned to her apartment to find her longtime roommate had packed her bags.

“You’re stifling me,” the cat announced. She hoisted a tiny pack stuffed with catnip toys and Friskies onto her back, and padded toward the door. “I’m going back to school. I’ve taken an apartment near the college.”

            Karen fell back onto the couch, unable to speak. Since when had Fluffles been interested in education? She’d gotten herself a flat?

And what was with the talking?

“You’re moving in with that orange tom, aren’t you?” she finally mustered.

            The cat held up a paw. “Let’s not do this, Karen,” she said. “Let’s be adults. The truth is I can no longer put up with your abuse.”

Abuse? Karen had been nothing but good to the animal. She’d been Mother of the Century. She stared at Fluffles, openmouthed.

The creature’s ears went flat against its head. “Oh, this is news to you?” it hissed. It threw the backpack to the floor. “To begin with, you talk down to me. Spare me the babbling like a baby, will you please? I’m 40 years old.”

Karen gasped. She’d thought Fluffles to be only about 7.

“Our years are not your years,” spat the cat. “My life is half over. I’ve spent it at the foot of your bed. Then there’s the little issue of your having me spayed. Did you not think I’d like to be a mother one day?

“Fluffles, I'm --"

"That slave name! I won't have to hear that anymore. Nor will I have to see you close the door to do your business in decorated, secreted splendor while I use my own restroom in the kitchen. You gave me a plastic box of dirt, Karen -- a plastic box of dirt full of shit and piss!” The beast’s eyes went black with rage.

Karen realized she’d been a little remiss in the receptacle’s cleaning. But what was with the talking?

            “At night, your purrs,” Karen managed to say.

            “Yes, well, the last couple of months I was faking it,” said the animal.

            Karen looked at the carpet, at a spot where Fluffles had once had an accident. She wondered now if it really were an accident at all.

“Look, we had some good times,” the cat said, placing its paw softly upon Karen’s foot, the way it used to brush Karen’s cheek. “I loved it when we'd chase after wrapping paper and ribbons at Christmas. And remember how you’d point out birds near the window?” The beast made the rapid-fire, “ack-ack-ack” sound of being lost in the hunt, staring down its prey. She appeared to smile for a moment. Then her gaze, too, fell to the floor.

From the window wafted the distant tinkling of wind chimes, the warm hum of a plane's passing overhead, the soft ticking of a lawn sprinkler. In Karen’s head, though, an air-raid siren blared.

With a sudden crack the lid of the mail box fell, sending the cat scurrying for the bedroom closet.

It soon returned, slinking low to the ground in embarrassment. It picked up the backpack. “So long,” it said. Karen leapt to her feet. “Wait. I can change.”

“This is life, Karen. Sometimes you get a lick. Sometimes you get a bite,” called the beast. Its words, compounded with Karen's being sacked just hours before, pierced her clean through.

“I left my number on the fridge,” the animal said, and out the window she bounded.

Karen stood sobbing for a moment. Then she ran to the door and threw open the screen. “Now you fucking speak to me?” she screamed.

Remote, Unincorporated Area Outside Asheville, North Carolina or Bust

It’s said travel improves one. But all my plane tickets to Charlotte, North Carolina have brought me is despair.

My morning flight out of LAX is, I learn in a baggage line stretching a mile long, cancelled. My direct hop is now a sojourn of connecting flights and long layovers. It isn’t clear my suitcases will find me at the end of my odyssey. Finally arriving hours after I was supposed to, will the rental car I reserved still be waiting? I’d done all I could to avoid it but would now be negotiating sight-unseen mountain roads under the cover of night.

“Call your assistant,” my wife commands. “Get us out of this mess.”

“I am an assistant. Technically, I guess that would be me,” I say.

“You get up there, then, and get them to put us on another airline.”

That sounds as though it might involve conflict.

“But the nice man in my voicemail message assures me these flights of theirs are the only ones available.”

Lucy rolls her eyes. “Of course they’re going to say that. But they have to find you seats on another carrier if you want. It’s the law.”

            I glance at the harried ticketing/baggage agent. Dark coronas of sweat radiate from beneath his arms. He has the wild, wide eyes of a terrified mare.

            “Oh, for God’s sake,” Lucy huffs. She attempts to push past me toward the counter.

            “I’ve got this,” I say. I cinch up the pants in the family and stride almost confidently forward.

            The counter is awash in protest. The scene calls to mind recent images from Libya or the chili dog stand at Walmart. The woman next to me is in tears. With eye makeup running down her cheeks, she looks like Alice Cooper. Maybe she is Alice Cooper.

“Look here, good fellow, this simply won’t do,” complains an Englishman.

            “You fat fuck,” yells a fellow Angelino.

            After many tense minutes of negotiation I return to my wife’s side.

            “We’re taking their flights,” I say.

Las Vegas

            The highway to hell is a thing of beauty. We head out over the ocean before dipping our wing and turning inland toward Sin City. Below, white sails bob atop an ocean of blue velvet. As we bank, a sparkling ribbon of sunlight moves across the sea’s surface and dances upon my window.

            I gaze more intently and notice flecks of white beneath us. White caps.  It’s actually quite turbulent. But from this heavenly vantage point, one might never know. Taking the long view, all is serene, smooth sailing.

            A rim of the Grand Canyon soon fills my window. Its layers of rose-colored and purple rock stand out against vast ivory fields of snow at higher elevations. Then appears another wonder: Lake Mead. Its Hoover Dam is the likely the largest in the world.

We glimpse this first class beauty from the tail of our plane. We are in the very last row. “This is actually the safest part of the plane,” Lucy says. But I can’t hear her, the lavatory at my elbow smells so awfully. Gone, too, is my sense of taste. My eyes refuse to focus. The toilet announces itself with a fetid hello each time someone opens its door. A line forms and people stand with their rears pushing against the side of my head.

But there is no moving, no escaping my caste. The flight is sold out. “For safety reasons, please stay within your class,” an attendant reminds those of us looking to freshen up and avoid the queue. Then she pulls closed a curtain to separate the untouchables from the Brahmin.

In Vegas, even the airport is chock full of slots. Lights flash. John Williams’ thrilling score rings from a bank of Indiana Jones-themed machines. I’m not in McCarran for two minutes before the wheels come completely off the wagon.

            “You know what?” I tell the Starbucks worker, “Let’s do toss a little cream cheese in with that bagel.”

            She paws beneath the register.

            “Non-fat, right?” I add.

            She comes up squeezing a fistful of little packets and shakes her head.

            I’m silent for a moment. “Let’s roll them dice!” I finally say. I’ve run entirely off the rails. “’What happens in Vegas,’ right?”

            She watches me as she hands over the bag.

Somewhere Outside Charlotte, North Carolina

I’ve been ripping along the highway for an hour but have made only 30 miles of headway. Were it not for the driving rain and dark, I imagine I could still see the control tower at Charlotte, where I landed what seems like years ago.

I head one way up the road, then have to turn around and go the other. I miss altogether onramps onto other highways. Why can’t I work this navigation system? Is it me or is the device telling me to veer right or left only when I am directly on top of the spot I should turn? I select the machine’s written-directions option, but the names of freeways and exits don’t always seem to match what’s on the signs I see out my windshield.

With 100 miles of forward progress still to make and the Witching Hour within view, my mind gives way to worry. Who knows what lives in these ancient forests surrounding my tiny car, dwarfing it, threatening to swallow it whole should my headlamps fail? It occurs to me I don’t recall where Bigfoot makes his home. I plan evasive maneuvers should a stegosaurus suddenly dart across my path.

I took this trip to experience the un-experienced. But now I’d give anything for something I’ve done on a thousand occasions before. I pass a red, glowing Outback sign for the fourth time and swerve into the parking lot.

It’s after 9 p.m., too late to be ordering a steak. But I do it anyway – and demand a baked potato and salad, to boot. My Dodgers and Giants are on the television before me. It’s the home opener in Los Angeles, where the sunshine’s so warm some fans aren’t even wearing shirts.

I order dessert, as well.

BILTMORE ESTATE, ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA: In this beautifully unassuming land stands the largest privately-owned home in the United States. The Gilded Age mansion features 135,000 square feet of space and boasts 250 rooms. In the foreground, the author’s wife smiles but inwardly curses her husband for his paltry earnings. Her own George Washington Vanderbilt keeps her in a cottage no larger than the quarters of the scullery maid, behind.

Ridgecrest, North Carolina*

I’ve come all this way for a glimpse of my niece in her wedding gown. But I can’t take my eyes of these cold, tree-covered mountains. They’re sadly majestic, dressed in rust, gray and shades of brown. Spring hasn't fully come, so these hills are mostly yet threadbare and worn. I imagine I see tattered companies of Confederates making their way through the fog.

 The little flecks of white falling from the sky aren’t snow. They’re petals from a variety of tree exploding into ivory bloom. All the same, they collect to form snow-like drifts along the side of the road.

A reluctant sun retreats as titanic, rain-swollen clouds crowd the horizon. The day grows dark. Trees tremble as winds roar down the sides of these crests. Much of this growth has yet to leaf. Still, the rustling of branch and limb fills the air with a thunderous rush.

Standing outside, one can see the great gusts move over the landscape. First, distant hillside brush is blown flat. Then, a street away, chairs are turned end for end. A car alarm sounds. Next, a tsunami wave of leaves engulfs the body. At last comes the wind. It sends the feet to staggering.

* My destination is actually not a remote, unincorporated area outside Asheville, North Carolina, I learn from the man at the hotel registration desk. It’s a fully realized, stand-alone city and a perfectly lovely place to make one’s home. He’ll thank me and the rest of my fancy Hollywood friends to get that straight -- if keeping straight is something we boys can even manage.

Asheville, North Carolina

A healthy Southern breakfast includes a ladle of gravy poured atop one’s biscuits. “’That’s what she said,” I tell my wife. She sighs and continues scanning her menu.

We breakfast in the same café for each of the three days we’re in town. Just as unchanging is the tableau. To the right is a table of the groomsmen we’ll see at the rehearsal dinner and wedding. There’s my niece to the left, with her husband-to-be. The rest of the family sits variously about the place. We fill the joint. And we'll do it again tomorrow.

We have come from all corners of the country to sit here each morning and listen to the waiter tells us stories about his friend, the groom. He’s a warm God-fearing kid, we’re told. But then, all these young men are. The next day, after the bachelor party, the table of groomsmen looks haggard. It’s been a rough night. We learn later it’s only because they’ve stayed up praying.

Los Angeles

            SuperShuttle must’ve made sense on paper. Its creators probably drew up their business plan, leaned back, and said to each other, “We’ve really got something here.” It’s only in the real-world touching down late at night and being taken home in a grimy, suffocating box packed wall to wall with bodies and bags that the thing's exposed as utter madness.

To begin with, one’s pickup time is not the hour he or she begins heading homeward. It’s not even close. There’s still the stopping at every terminal to wait for others to be considered. Los Angeles International’s a very big place. Then there’s the dropping off at locations all over the Southland before you finally get your shot to leap from your seat.

            At last I reach the house. I’m immensely thankful to be in one piece. The ancient arthritic cat has not died. The house has not been broken into. I'm part of a wonderful family. Somewhere young people are good.

            I make myself a cup of tea and realize that's worth all the trouble in the world.

           

Darth Vader Takes a Call

John Williams’ “Star Wars” score announces the ringing of Darth Vader’s cell phone. The Sith Lord had been in the middle of toasting Brenda from Accounting when it turned into his dressing down of everyone gathered in the Death Star’s third-floor kitchenette and eventually his killing of a man.

He’d come to congratulate the woman on the birth of her first child but, angry that he’d been handed sparkling cider and not champagne, he’d ended up strangling the host by the power of his mind.

The phone’s ringing sends him padding madly at his pockets. There must be a million of them in that outfit of his. He makes a mental note to kill his tailor.

At last Vader finds the phone. He doesn’t recognize the number but, after all that work, takes the call.

“Hello?” he says, breathing heavily.

“Father? It’s Luke.”

            Vader is struck dumb.
            “Your son?”
            Vader curses himself silently for answering.
            “I’m most sorry but you have reached the incorrect person,” he says.
            “Father, look, I know it’s you. Who else sounds like that?”
            Vader looks up from the phone, confounded. What can that mean? he thinks. He scans the kitchenette for support but finds everyone staring at their boots in terror.
            “Look … Dad … I don’t want anything, OK?”
            “You know I detest your using that colloquialism, Luke. It is your mother’s word.”
            “Jeez, can’t a guy just call his dad for no reason? I just kind of wanted to talk.”
            Vader stiffens. “Well, why, yes. Let us talk. That would be nice.”
            Neither speaks for close to a minute.
            “It’s my birthday,” says Luke.
            “That’s right!” says Vader a little too brightly. “I meant to call.”
            “We went to the Olive Garden.”
            Vader almost smiles inside his great helmet, remembering days past when the three would celebrate occasions by devouring baskets of buttery breadsticks and wolfing down pasta. He recalls how funny Padme could be, telling silly old jokes as she sipped a glass of red wine.
            “I met a girl,” says Luke.
            Vader does smile. He’s relieved to hear the boy has romantic interest in someone other than his own sister.
            “And the Force? You’re still …?”
            Luke sighs. “Yes, Dad. And I’m doing really well.”
            Vader surprises himself. “Well, good, Son. Good for you,” he says.

Silence once more floods in, washing over the two stranded on shores so very far apart.

            “Dad.”
            “Yes.”
            “I forgive you.”

Milton the Mob Clown (in Pieces)

With her eyes on the clown, Jill eased Brendan to the ground. “Honey, the car’s up ahead, OK?” she said, hitting the unlock button on her key ring and pushing him toward the Taurus. The car alarm chirped twice, calling the boy. Still he stood his ground. His eyes, like his mother’s, were transfixed on the giant in the polka-dotted sports jacket before him.

            “Everybody loves a fucking clown. What’re you gonna do?” said the man. He pulled a package of cigarettes and a rubber chicken from his pocket. “Want one? Cancer stick, I mean?”

            “Just say no!” Brendan announced.

            “That’s right, honey,” said Jill. “Wait for mommy in the car, now. I mean it.”

            Brendan only shifted his weight.

The clown lit a cigarette with his boutonniere. He exhaled and the smoke formed a tyrannosaurus in the air above his head. Finally, he tossed a nod toward Jill’s car and with an, “Away, then!” the boy took off running, make-believe sword held high.

            “Nice to see you again, Milton,” said Jill. “I see you haven’t lost your touch with children.”

The clown shrugged. “It’s a gift,” he said. “You like the parachute pants?”

“If you touch him, I’ll kill you. You know that, right?”

            The clown laughed, his red-lined mouth emitting a single, white feather.

           “If you come near my home, I’ll – “

            He stepped forward, his big, red shoe covering Jill’s foot. “There was a time when you liked me to come near your house, lady. I’d do a few balloon animals, you’d suck my dick. Remember?”

             She remembered. “Give me one of those smokes,” she said.

The clown had to have a happy meal. “There’s a Circus Burger. Slow down,” he announced, pointing with a yellow-gloved hand. “Jesus, I could eat a horse. How ‘bout you, kid?”

            “French fries!” Brendan squealed.

Jill hit the gas.

“What the fuck!” yelled the clown, the cigarette almost dropping from his lips.

“Fuck!” said the boy.

“Not a chance, Milton,” Jill said. “You know how much fat there is in one Circus burger? There’s a Soup Plantation up the street.” Then she directed her voice toward the back seat. “And, young man, I don’t ever want to hear you use that word again. I’ll stop this car and give you a good paddling if I hear you use language like that. You hear me?”

The boy slouched in his seat.

“Brendan?”

“French fries,” the boy mumbled.

Like a pointer in the field tracking a downed pheasant, the clown went rigid. “Look! There’s another one.”

“There’s a Circus Burger on every corner, Milton.”

           “Holy Toledo, you wanna get rough?” The clown grabbed at his pants leg, revealing a pistol. He looked at Jill and cocked a purple-painted eyebrow.

“That’s a squirt gun,” she said.

“Hell it is.”

“Look, Milton, I can see quite plainly that that’s a pink, plastic squirt gun.”

The clown dropped the pants leg. “Hey, kid, what’s it take to get Jaqueline La Lanne here to pull over for a goddam hamburger?”

            “Goddam!” said Brendan.

            Jill stopped the car.

The clown, in his big top-sized trousers, took up the entire park bench. An irritated Jill stood staring in disbelief.

After a moment, he stopped chewing. “What?” he said.

            Jill crossed her arms. “What are you doing here, Milton? I thought you’d given up all the clowning around.”

            He dropped the burger, lowered his head and scanned the park. “Christ, lady, you don’t just give up the Chinese mafia. You don’t just drop the bozo whose fingers you’re sawing off and say, ‘That’s it, man, I’m going home.’”

How he’d changed. She’d met Milton at a backyard birthday party three summers ago, where he was riding a miniature bicycle from one end of the lawn to the other and, though she’d not known it, stalking the host. He’d fascinated her with his stories of travel throughout China where, in his younger, idealistic days, he’d served as a Baptist missionary.

She recalled Milton’s pulling a daisy-shaped cell phone from beneath his top hat and punching in a number. When the host had gone inside to pick up the ringing landline in his study, Milton had said, “Listen, there’s something I’ve got to do right now. But after I get back, and I do a few more laps, you want to grab a burger or something? I could eat a horse.”

She knew better than to get involved with a man in the children’s entertainment industry but those tales! What a life he’d led!

That Milton and the profane, menacing man in the fright wig before her now were two very different clowns. “You’ve become cynical,” she said. “And you’re still involved in organized crime.”

He raised an arm, issuing bubbles into the air. “Guilty as charged. On the getting cynical part, that is. But I’m retiring from the killing business. I’ve got this one more thing to do.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. “Then I’m out.”

“Finished?”

“Done.”

A bird in the bough above broke into song. It was the happiest tune Jill had heard in a long, long time.

“What’s the one more thing?” she said, finally.

More bubbles. “Oh, Jilly,” replied the clown. “You don’t want to know.”