A Torrent of Thudding Pain…and Not-Nurse-Ratched to the Rescue

[Just a note, Dear Readers:  Today is the 100th post at Dy’s Mind’s Eye! WTF?! I thought to wax quixotic about this milestone with you all…and maybe post something seriously ranty-ravey in my purest political uprisingness style. However, that is not to be. We’re in a happy cozy mode at El Castillo tonight…my marvelous Sky martinis, hot roasted smokehouse almonds, chilled prawns & cocktail sauce, BBQ ribs, coleslaw, Mr. RockStar and Fantabulous Daughter in Da Haus. It’s way too nice & mellow for a ranty-ravey-type hooplah. So sip your Friday Night Poison of Choice, and read this here little blurb of an installment in the continuing story of Jill & Thol. Short and Sweet tonight. We’ll catch ya later and Have a Fucking Marvelous Friday Night! 🙂 ]

“Jillian…darling…Jill, honey?”

Her Mother’s voice continued its irritating intrusion through the fog that was most likely some sort of sedative that had kept her asleep for…how long? What time was it now? What day? How many wasted hours had she been in this gawd-awful hospital? Had she missed many classes? She hated missing class and having to make up and catch up. She tried to sigh without letting her parents hear her.

“Em…” Now it was her father’s voice. “Emilia, leave her alone. She’ll open her eyes when she’s good and ready. Just…Em… I mean it. She’s fine. Come…let’s get some lunch, I’m starving…and we need to continue our discussion where it won’t disturb her. She needs her rest and we aren’t helping anything here.” He made his way toward the door, trying to steer his wife by the elbow in the same direction.

“Jill, dear, we’ll be right back, okay?” Oh, take your time, Mom, really. “You need anything…anything at all…just call the nurse. The nurses’ station knows how to reach your father and I…” Her voice faded away as she was gently pulled out the door by her husband.

Oh, thank god, thought Jill. Finally.

She gingerly opened one eye when she was pretty darn sure they were long gone down the antiseptic-smelling hallway. Good. The coast was clear. Now for the other one. Jeezus, her eyes stung like the insides of her lids were made of sandpaper doused with lemon juice. And her throat…she tried to swallow the golf-ball coated in crushed glass stuck between her tonsils and her collarbone. She needed some water, juice, something, that was for sure…anything liquid and cool to soothe the swollen scratchy painfulness of her throat. She looked around for the little plastic pitcher she was sure was nearby…there always was one in these hospital rooms, right? She’d seen them in every soap opera she’d ever tried not to notice on the televisions in her friends’ apartments and dorm rooms. There had been a one by her bed when she was a little girl of seven and she had her appendix out. Yep, they still used them…there it was on the little rolling table just out of reach. She struggled to sit up and reached for the puke-yellow/gold plastic pitcher and the matching cup beside it. Empty. It figured.

She pushed the button to call the nurse, despite her desperate need to shut out any and all persons at the moment. She needed to think, to try to remember what had happened, to try to figure out what she needed to do. Was her apartment completely toast? Was she going to have to move? Did she have anything left to move? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as that…maybe it was just a matter of repairs and replacing those possessions that were damaged in the fire. She brightened at that thought. If that was the case, she could hole up in a hotel for a while and not have to…she shook her head not wanting to think of the horror of the alternative, and released a torrent of sharp thudding pain throughout her skull. Ouch. Better remember not to do that for a while.

The nurse that answered the call was a heavy-set, older woman…probably in her late fifties to early  sixties. Jillian’s first impression of her was that she was not exactly a sweet grandmother type, yet not quite a Nurse Ratched, either. She was something in between, no-nonsense, with an air of “I’ve been doing this longer than you were even an egg in your mother’s ovum” about her. Tired maybe, but not weary, and to use the word efficient in describing her was probably the understatement of the year. She took one look at Jillian in her upright sitting position, saw the rolling table had been moved closer and knew exactly what was needed next. She swiped up the pitcher without a word and went to fill it from the tap. Jillian could only hope…in vain, she was sure…that the hospital had some kind of automatic water purification system of the Britta/Pur type throughout the building that would transform the water flowing from the tap in her particular room into something other than all the other tap water in the city. Yeah, right. Well, any water was better than no water at this point. A little chlorine right now wouldn’t kill her, but she longed for the sweet H2O of her Pur water filtration system at home even before she let the cup touch her lips and she could smell the chlorine and other unfamiliar miscellaneous chemicals used to treat the city’s water, to make it “drinkable”. Ugh.

Oh, but it did feel nice flowing down her raw irritated throat.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

All that Glitters is Actually Platinum

Emilia Rosalind Amhurst Kingfisher was a piece of work, to put it mildly. In her early mid-fifties, she easily and consistently passed for forty due in part to good genes and in large part to one of the most expensive and exclusive plastic surgeons in the world. She thought nothing of jetting away to The Continent (as she called all of Europe) for a few days…or sometimes a few weeks…just to have Dr. Sebastian, her médecin extraordinaire, take a nip here, make a tuck there, inject, siphon, sculpt and plump as she felt necessary. In addition, her arsenal of vitamin supplements, prescription medications, ointments, creams and spa treatments added to her defenses against the all-evil eternal enemy: AGE. Her daily routine five days a week included at least three different exercise sessions…yoga, weight training, and various cardio workouts…all in the comfort and privacy of her own home, all by separate private coaches and all at least two hours each. Add to that her own private dietician to map out and plan her each and every meal with her own private chef and there was no way the enemy was going to sneak up on her. Being independently wealthy from before the day she was born, with no need to do anything whatsoever to stay that way, keeping up her appearance was her job. Hell, it was her duty, as she saw it.

She was, after all, Emilia Rosalind Amhurst Kingfisher, daughter of William Bertram Emerson Amhurst III, sole heir to one of the largest fortunes in America and overseer of over a dozen charities and trusts. Her grandfather, William Bertram Emerson Amhurst II, or “Bertie” as he was affectionately called, had grown up among the East Coast Elite and had been educated in the very best educational establishments money could buy…and money was definitely something the family had in great abundance. It flowed like water…or rather, it flowed like expensive champagne and the highest-end gin…and no Amhurst ever went parched.

Despite the exclusive clubs, the Washington connections, the dizzying array of parties and accompanying hob-knobbing with the elite of every corner of the globe, Bertie had wanted to set himself apart and lobbied his formidable father extensively to let him travel out to the west coast upon completing college on the pretext of temporarily overseeing the various oil interests the family held there. He wanted to see how the money was made, how to optimize the profits, to set himself apart and bask in the victory of millions of dollars bent into submission of his rule. Oh, but these were not reasons for going out west that he highlighted to his father. Heaven forbid he would want to dirty his hands and reputation with actual work! Even though he would really only be overseeing figures and visiting the various oil wells, overseeing shipping and sales arrangements and making business connections…of course, no actual “work” would be done. The mere association and implication of “work” was completely beneath any Amhurst. One hired others for such things. An Amhurst’s place was at one of his various social clubs…yachting, riding, tennis matches, and attending social functions with others of their bored class. No, he didn’t let on his true aspirations. He stressed to his father the importance of travel and a well-rounded knowledge of the country. One couldn’t be expected to end up in the White House if they didn’t know or understand anything of what lay west of Chicago. He’d be back after a few months…maybe a year…and father’s continuous schedule of brandy and cigars would take him over. So, scandalous though it was considered by his family and peers to actually do or even oversee any actual “business”, Bertie eventually won out and got his wish. He left by private rail car to points west the year he turned 23…and the year the country went dry…in nineteen-twenty. And the rest, as they say, was history.

Emilia had been the apple of Bertie’s eye…everyone’s eye, really. Silver spoon? Oh, no…more like a Platinum spoon, and a new one for every course of the lavish dinners that were the Amhust trademark and specialty. The only girl and youngest of only three grandchildren, everyone doted on her and there was nothing she couldn’t have or do. Her two cousins were awful boys, with no ambition and no real intelligence. All they cared about were sailing and cars and which girls they could impress with their old money. Grandpa Bertie knew it from the start, from when they were not even old enough to go off to prep school. It was Emilia that got Bertie’s personal attention, Emilia that went to Bertie’s offices during vacations from her East Coast schools, Emilia that Bertie thought of when he met Raymond Kingfisher and hired him to rethink his business portfolio.

Straight out of college with dual Masters degrees in finance and public relations in the early nineteen-seventies, Ray had been a seven years older than Emilia. She was only eighteen and not yet started at college herself, but Bertie knew he knew best and saw an opportunity he was not about to pass up even if his son, her father, couldn’t see it and wanted her to wait until after college to settle down. Over the course of the next couple years, Bertie made sure that Ray was invited to the same dinners as Emilia, was at every family holiday function, attended every polo match…and set him back east on business during the school year whenever possible. Eventually it stuck. The Christmas she was about to turn twenty years old…halfway thru her junior year at Bryn Mar…Ray asked Emilia to marry him in front of the entire West coast Amhurst clan. Grandpa Bertie had a light in his eyes that most in attendance thought was wistful beaming happiness, but it was the glint of money Bertie saw…the continuation of power as he molded it, as he wielded it even from his impending grave. They were married that June and Grandpa Bertie died a mere two months later in August…and Emilia never went back to finish her degree in Art History, as had been planned. 

But no matter, as she saw it. She had married Bertie’s own protégé with Bertie’s blessing…and inherited a large portion of his estate. It was not as large as her father’s share, of course. William Bertram Emerson Amhurst III was heir to the company and all its holdings, but she received a sizable sum as well as stock options…and in all, it was more than double what had been left to her two cousins combined.

She was pretty much set for life.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

Upon Waking in the Most Uncomfortable Bed…In A Most Uncomfortable Situation…Amongst The Parentals.

Jillian awoke to the sounds of her mother & father arguing in hushed tones by the side of her hospital bed…hushed, yes, but arguing none the less. Although her head pounded & felt as if gripped by a vice in the worst way, and she couldn’t yet bring herself to open her burning eyes, she could guess what it was they were arguing about: Her. Oh, most definitely they were talking very urgently about…her. For a moment she cringed at the promise of her father’s impending lecture about the damage to the new Lexus, her beautiful Lexus (his words) that he had wrapped in ribbon to surprise her for her birthday…but then she remembered: it had all been a dream. The car was fine…well, she assumed that it was fine. Very most likely it was still parked in the secured garage under her apartment building. Next to the bicycle cage and mere feet from the door to the basement “lobby” as she called it. Not the real lobby of course, but the elevator landing accessible only to the tenants of the building through the garage. Might as well be a lobby, she thought. Sconces on the wall and a rug with an air not suited to muddy boots…but what was her mind doing rambling around about such things! The current urgent reality was vastly more important…and quite grim. She almost rather the Lexus was bashed to a pulp, completely totaled, compared to her current state of affairs! Her apartment was toast…literally. He refuge from her father and his continual urgent expectations, her inner sanctum…burnt to a crisp, probably a gutted box of charred filth…as also were all her belongings, she was sure.

She mentally heaved a huge sigh to muster the courage to open her eyes. She just needed a few more moments to hash out a plan…a story…something that would stave off the vultures, uh, her parents, she meant. She knew that this was all they needed to…

“Oh! She’s awake! Ray, honey…stop, just stop. Our daughter’s awake…”

Jillian chanced a peek from one slitted eyelid to see that, yes, her mother had noticed she was conscious. Hell, her “mental sigh” had probably been a REAL sigh and audible to everyone in the room. Crap.

“Jill, darling…Jill? Can you hear me? It’s Mother. How are you feeling?” Emilia’s elegant fingers with extremely well manicured nails adjusted the thin blanket around her daughter. Jill inwardly cringed. When would she just stop treating her like a child? She felt she was just some mobile real-life accessory…a doll, a pet…to her mother’s never-ending parade of fashionable moments. She was merely something precious to be shown to all on Emilia’s whim, her mother never seeing the real person that was there, the daughter as a force of nature in her own right and not just some extension of the Grand Emilia Rosalind Amhurst Kingfisher. She was an expensive knick-knack to be gloated about or embarrassed about or…worse yet…to be disappointed and annoyed about.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

The End…

Looking back over the whole ordeal, the months and days and never-ending minutes of every hour, Thol felt as if a whole lifetime had happened to him. A complete cycle from beginning to end, birth to death, with all its peaks and valleys of stress, adventure, paralyzing monotony, ecstatic happiness, hope, fear and ultimate exhaustion that saps the life right out of a person. He felt…no, he KNEW…that the person he had been at the start of it all and the person who was sitting here on the front steps of this burned-out, gutted apartment building now were so very different as to not even  be related by blood, by time, by space. He felt alien. And somehow vacuous.

He buried his head deeper into the space between his knees, long fingers gripping his scalp, nails digging, pulling on his matted and greasy hair intermittently. He was sucking in air in disjointed huge gulps, each one larger and more ragged than the last, trying to keep the tsunami of shock and emotion from engulfing him. The calm methodical exterior that he had subconsciously yet meticulously exuded during the past few months was cracking in a multitude of long running jagged tentacles like ice on a lake after one expertly thrown javelin hits with a deep *k-thunk!* in the most perfect spot. Or a windshield of safety-glass that crumbles into a heap of gem-like, ice-like bits left scattered across the asphalt after a crack-head jacks stereo from the parking lot of an unfamiliar girl you went home with from the bar one night.

Oh, he couldn’t let it happen. It was over. It was going to fine…or it was eventually. And he had others to think of, others that still needed his help. Yes, it was over. And yet there was so much left to do…

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

Shards and Sirens, Jackhammers and Bells

The sound of the jackhammer seemed a bit off to Jillian. Oh, it was loud alright…very loud…and the closer she got to it, the louder it got. But it wasn’t the decibel that was different. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. As she turned the corner at the light she shook her head. “No matter,” she thought to herself. “I’m turning the other way…away from it. Not going to get caught in that construction zone today, so I guess I won’t be figuring out what it is exactly about it that’s so…” But wait. There it was, louder than ever. She could have sworn the clamor had been on her right. And she had turned left…away from the obnoxious hammering, not toward it. Maybe it was just bouncing off the walls of the buildings downtown, she reasoned. That had to be it. Funny how when there were so many towering walls of concrete and glass and stone and metal at every which way angle, one just really couldn’t be sure from which direction the sound…any sound…was coming from.

She signaled to take another left at the next corner, waiting for the red light to change, and glanced anxiously at the clock glaring in the dashboard of her new Lexus…a recent birthday gift from Daddy. Crap, she was going to be late to her meeting with…who was she meeting? She couldn’t remember. Damn that jackhammer! It was really distracting…messing with her head. Would it never stop? How could it be that she hadn’t passed it, left it far behind by now? It seemed to be following her…and getting louder and…she covered her ears while she banged her head on the steering wheel. They must be hammering on a steel beam in the road because it was starting to sound almost like a bell, the incessant piercing irritation that was metal hitting metal over and over and over again bouncing around her skull as to make her crazy. But they didn’t make roads with steel beams in them…did they? Skyscrapers, yes…but city streets?

The light changed and Jillian swung left into the far right lane, getting ready to take the next right so she could get on the express lanes toward the university. She was really going to have to hurry if she was going to make it to her interview on time. Wait. Was it a meeting or an interview? What was wrong with her! And she suddenly felt awfully warm…too warm for the season and the day’s weather. She flicked on the air conditioning and choked as a waft of hot, smoky, dusty breeze hit her in the face. What the…?! Had it been that long since she used the air conditioning? She apparently needed to have the vents cleaned! But wait…this was a new car. It wasn’t even two months old yet…

Suddenly the jack hammering was impossibly loud…and damn it, it WAS a bell it was hitting! A dull flat-sounding bell being hit with a huge motorized mallet on high speed. She coughed again, couldn’t seem to get her breath. All of a sudden a crash through her passenger side window made her jump from her skin…and as she glanced at the clock on the dash again she realized it still said exactly the same time it had all those blocks ago. No way. No fucking way. The green digits of her dashboard clock were frozen at four twenty-three…four twenty-three…A.M.! Somebody large and strong grabbed her and lifted her bodily out of the smoke and broken glass and into the fresh, very cold air of the dark night that was very early morning. Everywhere were flashing lights and men shouting to each other and people standing in clusters or just milling about. Had she been in an accident? How could she? She didn’t remember hitting anything or anyone coming out of nowhere to hit her. She was always such a careful driver, that’s why Daddy had gotten her the new Lexus…kind of a reward, you know?…and…

Jill rubbed at her eyes, choking and coughing. She felt that her lungs were on fire and there was ground glass in her eyes. One of the men put a plastic cup over her mouth and nose…wait, it was an oxygen mask, wasn’t it?…while another laid her on something firm and pulled a thin flimsy blanket over her to her chin. Whole lot of good that did…she felt frozen, and slightly numb. Jill marveled at how quickly the EMTs had gotten to the crash scene. Something not quite right with that either. Oh Hell! Daddy was going to really give it to her for crashing the car after less than two months! She struggled against the EMTs to sit up to look back at the car, hoping against hope it wasn’t too badly damaged. “Oh my god,” she thought to herself. “It better not be totaled!”

What she saw floored her more than a thoroughly crumpled Lexus ever could. Some of what she had assumed to be flashing lights of the ambulance and police cars weren’t lights at all. It was fire…lots of fire…tearing though a building on the other side of the street. She blinked. HER building. HER condo. With dawning realization, the accompanying overwhelming anxiety threatened to suffocate her more than the smoke billowing out her bedroom window like fluffy grey clouds of dryer lint. Suddenly Jillian realized that the jackhammer…the downtown buildings…the flashing green numbers of the clock in her Lexus dashboard…all of it…had all been a dream. She tried to call out to the EMTs assisting her but all she could manage was a whimpering moan as she sank back onto the gurney as she lost consciousness again.

And still that jackhammer fire alarm on the outside wall of her condominium…right outside the window of what used to be her bedroom…continued its call to Hell.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

NaNoWriMo: Part 13

As I turn the key in the lock of the front door to my old brick apartment building on Summit Avenue, I breathe a sigh of relief. That had to be the weirdest bus ride of my life, I think to myself. What the hell was that about with that homeless guy? There is no way he could know anything about the pink-haired girl. What was this I will help her thing? Bailey, you are totally losing it, I muse to myself as I pull out the mail from my clogged mail box and thumb through the stack of junk mail and overdue notices that are crumpled due to the fact I haven’t checked my mail in days, maybe all week. That was just one really weird, mentally off-balance dude in need of lots of meds that probably can’t tell reality from his waking dream trance that he so obviously was in…probably perpetuated by too much Thunderbird. Wacked, I tell myself. Totally wacked and completely not worth your consideration.

I trudge up the stairs to my apartment. The hallways and stairwells of this old place perpetually smell of burnt veggies, pine sol and mildew and I momentarily wonder how many years of odors are floating through the air into my nostrils. The carpet is worn, very worn. In places you can’t even tell what the color the fibers are supposed to be because it’s worn down to the warp. I open the door to my one-room studio of smallest proportion and toss the mail on a table by the kitchen. My mother would shit if she ever saw the place. There’s only a tiny closet-sized kitchen with a half-size refrigerator and a three burner gas stove, the tile in my bathroom needs replacing, like 10 years ago, but the water is hot so I don’t worry too much about it. The rent is rock bottom and as long as you keep your scraps cleaned up and your food in Tupperware or Ziploc bags, the roach problem is not a problem after all. What the hell, it’s a place to be alone and the steam heat is free.

I turn on the tube and flop on my bed that also serves as a couch on the rare occasion that I might have someone over…like never…and flick through the channels, trying to find something to zone out on…

I apparently fall asleep because in what seems like no time, the phone is ringing and it’s totally dark outside third floor window. I look at the clock on a table next to my bed slash couch and it reads just after 9:00 p.m, so I sit up rub my eyes and pick up the phone.

“Hello?” I say into the mouth piece, my voice thick with sleep.

“Hey! Dude, where are you? I thought you were coming over here to help me stretch some canvas.” Oh. It’s Toby. “Remember? You said you would be over here around seven…” Oh shit. I totally forgot.

“Oh…yeah…sorry…I fell asleep.” That’s what I get for drinking on an empty stomach and then having a panic attack. The crash after a panic attack always tuckers me out and coupled with the fact I didn’t eat all day before hooking up with Brian…well, you get the picture. “Do you still want me to come over? I can hop on a bus…”

“Sure, sure. Yeah…get your ass over here. I can’t paint without anything to paint on. Besides, I have something to tell you that is better in person.”

I say okay and hang up the phone before going into the bathroom to splash my face awake. In the kitchen I drag a plastic jug of milk out of the fridge and take a big swig, only to choke on the clumps that hit the back of my throat and I spew it into the sink. Ugh. Nasty sour shit. I up-end the jug in the sink and pull out a can of Pabst, pop the top and chug half of it to get the awful taste off my tongue. When was the last time I actually bought milk, anyway? I look at the jug. The date is two weeks past. No wonder. I chug the rest of the beer, grab my keys and a jacket head out the door to Toby’s place. This should be fun…it’ll take me two busses and who knows how long to get to Toby’s place. First downtown, then a switch to get to Fremont. I really hope I don’t run into any pseudo-psychic bums this time.

© 2008 D. Kessler

 

NaNoWriMo: Part 12

As the #49 bounces along its route, over the University Bridge and alongside the freeway, heading south towards Capitol Hill, I try to theorize again what may have happened to Shayla. In my paranoid mind, I’m sure that something bad had to have happened to her. Why else would she just not be anywhere to be found when I got here. I know I’m basically beating a dead horse until I can actually talk to someone that may have any information at all to help, but this is my mind: it just will not turn off until I either drop dead, fall asleep or come to a conclusion I can live with…at least for now.

Okay, I tell myself. What if you’re wrong and nothing bad has happened to her at all? I mean, what if, in the three years that Shayla has lived here…the three years that I have not seen her…she’s totally turned into a flake? Could be, you never know, stranger things have happened. So, if that’s the case, then she could have just picked up and gone on vacation or something, right? Right, I answer myself. Geez, this is getting bad…I’m talking to myself in my head. What’s next? Am I going to start talking to myself out loud like some of the freaks that wander around downtown and smell up the bus when they ride it?

So, focus, focus…what really are the possibilities here? One, something bad happened. No, no…remember. You’re trying to figure out the other possibilities. So, she could have gone out of town on a whim…maybe another friend of her’s was going somewhere, just for the week, and wanted her to come with and…I stop. This is always where I get when I try to come up with alternative ideas about what happened to Shayla. Wouldn’t she have called me? I mean, I don’t have a cell phone, but she could have called my old house to let me know…left a message, even? Oh. Hmm. That would have turned out bad, I guess. Either I wouldn’t have gotten the message, or there would have been a freaked out situation after such a message was left because I was taking off without saying anything about it. But would Shayla have realized that? Maybe….maybe not. So…a big shouting match did not happen ergo there was no message left. And if no message was left, it is possible that Shayla didn’t leave one because she knew the deal…mum’s the word, although we didn’t really specify that when we made our plan.

So, like Todd and Chris have said, it’s possible that Shayla took off for a few days. Except, wouldn’t she have left word with her land-lady slash apartment manager? I mean, something like “Look my friend Jessie is coming to visit but I can’t be here when she gets here so can you please let her in and give her a key so she has a place to stay until I get back next…” Next when? Week? Month? Okay…I’m getting worked up again. This is never going to do.

I look outside the window, trying to think of something else for a little while. The clouds are a big grey mat hanging in the sky like huge a roll of laundry lint taken from the lint trap of one of those industrial-sized clothes dryers, but it’s not raining…yet. I haven’t figured out yet how to tell if it’s about to dump or not. The clouds look pretty dense despite their fluff, and if you ask me it will probably be raining any time now. But Aliah would probably laugh at me…or at least break out one of her smirky smiles…and tell me, no way, those aren’t rain clouds. It seems she must have a sixth sense about if it will rain or not, I swear.

Thankfully, the little old lady with Eu de Depends & Roses got off the bus not long after she got on, but not so thankfully is that now there’s a woman with a trillion shopping bags: one from the U Dub bookstore, another with what looks like a couple boxes of shoes of some kind, yet others with a plethora of unknown objects, and still others with groceries. The bags are on her lap, falling into my lap, and on the floor in front of her, making me feel extremely boxed in…claustrophobic, even. Why she didn’t go for a real seat farther back in the bus where there is room for all her shit, is beyond me. Well, that leaves one of those seats for me. I get up from my prison and make my way toward an empty seat about halfway down the bus, grabbing at the railings as I go so as to not fall on my ass or bump into anyone along the way.

Flopping heavily into my new home on the #49, I dig in my bag for my iPod and tune out from the conversations around me. We’re stopped behind a line of cars at an intersection where the oncoming traffic is turning across our path onto I-5 and I notice an old house…or rather, a mansion?…on our left. It’s white, with greek colonial columns in front, lots of trees and a stone walkway up to the front door. Talk about out of place, I tell myself. Very cool, but it looks west over the freeway and probably gets about as much noise as the house in the U District that I’m staying at now. Obviously, it was built in a much quieter time, when the occupants would look out their windows to a rolling valley now desecrated by concrete, asphalt and a constant parade thousands of motor vehicles zooming north or south, each with only one or two occupants. Sad…plus the architect is probably spinning in his grave.

Back to thinking about Shayla, I expand on the probability that she took a break out of town. A trip to B.C. seems likely. Vancouver is pretty close and she could have taken the train or even driven up with this as yet unknown friend. The weather hasn’t been horrible yet, so she could have even gone to the coast for a sweet off-season deal at one of the normally touristy places out on the Peninsula. Aliah did say that a lot of artist-types do that this time of year, before the real storms start to hit, because it’s so dramatic with the drift wood and varied light…etc. And maybe she did leave a message with her land lady…I haven’t been able to talk to her yet…and it’s been over a week now since I got here. She could be back. That would totally fix everything.

Okay. So I’m a little more calm about this whole thing. Or maybe it’s just the Ladytron coming out of my earbuds, I dunno, but in any case I’m feeling better. All I really can do now is follow my plan from this morning…go by Shayla’s apartment and see if I can find her land-lady slash apartment manager and see if she left a message with her, or she can tell me where she works so I can check there. Or maybe Shayla could even been home by now. Or…a big sigh escapes from my until now very tight chest and the person next to me looks over at me, probably wondering if I’m okay. I tend to worry people without meaning to, I’ve noticed. I smile at the middle-aged business-type woman and shrug my shoulders. No worries, I mean to convey. She smiles an unsure smile back at me and goes back to her book. There. I dodged that one, thankfully. I really don’t need to have to hash anything out with another total stranger.

The bus rumbles along a mostly residential thoroughfare: cool old craftsman homes, single-story bungalow-style apartments probably built in the 1940s and 50s, occasionally some newly constructed modern condos scaring the flow of comfortable visuals. I check one of the street signs as we stop near an intersection…10^th Ave E, it says. Then all of a sudden as we continue on, I catch a glimpse of this huge blocky cathedral on our right set back from the street behind a large parking lot. Before I know it, it’s gone and I’m left wondering what kind of church it is, if there is a tour I can take, if they’ll allow me to take photos …Wow, I didn’t know this was here, I think to myself. I make a mental note to come back and check it out later. I’m sure Todd will know something about it.

Eventually, we make it to Broadway and I get off the bus at Broadway Market, thinking I’d like the walk a few blocks down the street rather than the start-stop of the ride as it snails toward my destination. Broadway is one of those streets that seems to have traffic at all times of the day, and it never goes quickly. The blocks are short and the lights don’t seem to be exactly synchronized to optimum flow. But then, it’s not really so bad as the sights are often worth the snail-pace. Broadway is kind of the heart of Capitol Hill, with freaks of all kinds doing their grocery shopping, pan-handling, meat-market pick-up, a place to see-and-be-seen. I think of Todd and his obsession that he can never go outside his apartment without making sure he is ultimately put together; he never knows who he’ll run into and to be seen in a ball-cap and ratty sweats just to go to the store, even in the middle of the night, for a little something forgotten on a previous trip… oh-my-gawd he’d just DIE. I smile at the thought. He really is a piece of work…and I do really like him. More than the fact that he helped me find a place to stay, I think he’s sweet and a hoot to boot.

Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear, I muse to myself. There, as I am standing in front of the flower shop on the corner, rummaging desperately for a smoke in my bag to replace the one I had to ditch before getting on the bus in the U District, and as being bumped into by some skater-types, I notice Todd coming up the sidewalk, small entourage in tow: a couple of boys I groggily remember meeting at four a.m. the other night after they came in to the apartment for breakfast after they were at Neighbors, an overly made-up slightly heavy-set girl (or is it that she has the biggest boobs I have ever seen in person that makes her seem so? I wonder…) who looks like she’s ready for a night at the club a few hours too early, and a geeky artsy girl with shortish hair and horned rimmed glasses. Todd sees me and it’s all over.

“He-ey!” He waves. “What are you doing down here?” He turns to his fan club, “Hey, everybody, this is Jessie. Jessie, this is Jennifer and Stevee…and you remember Brad and Trevor, right?”

I nod and say hello.

“We were just going to get some breakfast, I mean lunch.” He giggles. “Whatever, something to eat. You have to come with us!”

I try to tell him I just ate a few minutes ago in the U District…

“Oh, come on! We’re not really eating, are we kids? Well, some of us might…just a little bit…but really we’re just going for drinks and maybe a little nibble. Come on…you are coming with, right guys? We’re not taking no for an answer…”

No, of course they weren’t. I was quickly learning that Todd did not ever take no for an answer. So, I tag along to some place I’d seen as I’d passed it the other day…The Broadway Grill…and there’s hugs and hellos between the guys and the maitre de/host before he shows us back to a table in an open and airy sunken area with a ceiling entirely comprised of large skylights. Abstract copper-pipe fountains line the walls, one for each table against the wall under them, and the floor is made of flagstone. There are large plants in the corners of the room and large wall at the back houses what is obviously their entire wine selection, stacked like a wine cellar behind cabinet doors that are just framework with chicken wire. Along one side of the sunken room is a railing separating the bar on  the original/upper level of the room from the rest of the dining area. There is a neon sculpture all along the wall above the bar and clubby dance music fills both the bar and restaurant areas. The whole place seems like a cross between a Mediterranean atrium with a hint of 80’s disco, depending on where you lay your eye and how good you are at ignoring the background music.

An uber-fit, too-tanned straight-from-the-tanning-bed, perky bleached blonde boy/man is suddenly at our table, nipples poking at his slightly too tight polo shirt that has “The Broadway Grill” embroidered above one of those nipples. “So, is it Black Orchids for all?” He asks.

What the hell is a Black Orchid, I wonder. Well, I am obviously soon to find out, due to the enthusiastic response from Todd and his boys. What the hell, I ask myself. Todd is apparently picking up the tab. I buckle my proverbial seat belt and hang on for the ride, hoping the track is intact up ahead.

© 2008 D. Kessler

 

NaNoWriMo: Part 11

After the bus pulls away, away from the girl that freaks me out for no reason, I start to calm down. I’m on the way to Capitol Hill, on my way home. I can deal with this. I plug in my ipod and veg out, tune out, watch the various scenes around me…detached. It’s like watching some movie with the soundtrack off. Or rather, with the soundtrack of my choosing…Neurosis, Sepultura, Tool. Very different than most of the persons in the visual backdrop in front of my eyes. That’s what makes it tolerable…the paradox of society versus sound…

At the first stop, one of the business-type robots gets on, early thirties, hair haphazardly pinned up in back with some sort of plastic clip, her feet in tennis shoes, bright white like they just came out of the box sometime this week. Her charcoal suit is ill fit, shoulders a bit too wide, and she doesn’t fill out the bust properly. Probably got the thing at some discount second-life store like Ross or The Rack and doesn’t even realize she should get it altered to fit; she’s not going up the ladder too quick like that. She’s bogged down with too much shit: an over-stuffed handbag, a laptop case and an armload of something that looks like a portfolio stuffed with miscellaneous files being brought home to slave over until midnight. Well, maybe she doesn’t realize that it’s not just how hard you work or how good you are at your work…she still needs to look the part for that promotion. Stupid robots. Exactly why I don’t want anything to do with that shit.

Some kids rudely push past her going the other way in the aisle trying to get off at the same stop. Loudly bickering amongst themselves about something, I can even hear them a bit over my music. They don’t care that as they bump past her, they knock the portfolio out of her arm and it falls to the floor, scattering papers everywhere. She squats down to gather them up and the bus lurches forward at the same time, knocking her on her ass. I catch a glimpse of thigh where it meets a more private area and notice that she’s wearing bright blue underwear. Lovely. One of the guy robots in the seat next to where she sits struggling to get up bends over to help her, and also picks up some papers just out of her reach. He scoots over to the seat by the window so she can sit down next to him and I notice he’s introducing himself, hand extended. I wonder if he saw the blue panties too and chuckle to myself. Yep. Just like a stupid movie.

Just the other side of I-5, the bus stops again to let off more people…and let more on. Things are getting pretty tight and I’m glad that I got on at the stop that I did. Seats are at a premium now and most of the newbies are having to stand, gripping the rails above their heads with whitening knuckles. This driver isn’t the smoothest ride…I wonder how long he’s been doing this job.

A little old lady is wanting to get on the bus, but with her walker she wants the bus driver to lower the handicap lift. Its piercing annoyingly high-pitched beeping noise invades my audio world, then a pause as the old crone wheels her metal walker on in front of her and then up the contraption goes, bringing her with and resuming that gawd-awful sound. Once on the bus, she looks at the passengers sitting at the front on the seats facing inward, waiting for one of them to offer her a seat. A lady with a toddler picks up her snot-nosed kid and plops her in her lap so the old lady can sit, her walker in front of her, blocking the aisle. She looks like she’ ninety, hair covered with one of those plastic rain caps…even though there’s not been a drop of rain today despite the clouds. The little girl in her mother’s lap starts to cry…I can’t quite hear her, thank god, but I can see her face all screwed up and she’s squirming violently trying to get down off her mother’s lap. The passengers across from her are looking very uncomfortable, annoyed even, as they look away, or glare at the child and/or the mother. Mommy is obviously exhausted and ineffectual at curtailing this obnoxious behavior…it’s all she can do to keep the child in her lap. I feel sorry for the kid rather than the other passengers. I mean, how must she feel cooped up on this contraption with lots of strangers around her, giving her the evil eye, and some weird old lady that probably smells of Bengay or worse sitting so close to you she’s actually touching you? Ick. I’d scream and cry, too.

Somebody nudges me in the shoulder. I ignore them. Leave me alone. I don’t know you. They nudge me again, harder this time, so I turn my head to look at the person responsible for interrupting my made-for-Metro movie. Some shaggy guy…great, looks like a bum… is saying something to me, his broken teeth and chapped lips moving in silence…or rather I just can’t hear what he’s saying over my private soundtrack blaring through my earbuds. I shake my head at him and look away again, out the window at the first-story retail storefronts going by: an Italian restaurant that’s been there forever, a nightclub or two, an overpriced “antique” store, a coffee house on the corner, and an Indian store with a window filled with textiles, beads, spiritual books, statues of Ganeshas and Buddahs, and world music CDs. Dude, just leave me alone, I think. I don’t have any spare change for you, don’t want to hear your crazy talk and I definitely don’t want to catch your lice or scabies or whatever virus your saliva is carrying.

Apparently he really wants to talk to me because he’s not letting up, pushing me harder this time. I pull out one of my earbud and look at him. “What?” I ask him, most annoyed to be bothered.

“You will help her.” He says. “You don’t want to, but she needs your help, so you will. It’s your true self.”

What the fuck is he talking about? I just glare at him, roll my eyes and turn away, replacing my earbud. But he grabs my wrist and yanks it back before I can fade off into my own private Idaho again.

“No!” He insists urgently. “You will help her! She bothers you, makes you uncomfortable…but you will keep seeing her until you resign yourself to your task.” His breath smells like a dead wet dog that’s been in the alley under a trash dumpster for three days. It makes me want to barf…but what he’s saying suddenly totally is freaking me out. Who is he talking about? It can’t be…I mean…what does he know about it? How can he? I haven’t even barely admitted it to myself yet…keep telling myself it’s coincidence, I’m imagining it, there’s no reason I should be freaking out on it…

“Who? What are you talking about, old man? You’re a freak…”

He’s shaking his head, eyes bleary yet filled with some weird sort of compassion. He’s really weirding me out now. “You know.” He pauses. What, for effect? “You know. She will help you too.”

That’s it. I can’t take it. This is too much, too weird. I jump up, pushing him  away from me as I pull the next-stop cable. Shoving past where Miss Blue Panties is sitting, talking to Mr. Nice Stranger, I accidently bump into her portfolio and the papers scatter again, this time under her seat and the one in front of her. Fuck it. I gotta get off this bus! I bolt as soon as the doors are open, stiffing the driver for the bus fare. He shouts after me but I’m long gone, running halfway down the block before I realize it.

© 2008 D. Kessler

 

NaNoWriMo: Part 10

“So, I guess I have an admirer.” Aliah tells me as we sit down with our lunch. She  looks like she’s about to crack up.

“Oh, yeah?” I wipe at the mayo trying to escape the certain death that is my digestive system by jumping off my lower lip to the plate below.

“Yeah,” she continues, eyebrows raised high. “I guess we just missed him the other day. That day when you came by for the first time? Dale said he and a friend came in like 15 minutes after we took off. He sat at the bar and kept looking around like he didn’t think anybody could tell he was looking for someone. Well, okay…not that bad, but Dale picks up on these things quick, being a bartender. You know, reads people pretty well?”

“Did he say what this guy looked like, at least?” I ask. No use getting worked up over an admirer if they don’t measure up, you know?

“Oh god, you know guys can’t give you a decent description ever! All I got was average to tall, sandy blonde, kinda skinny, with dirty finger nails…but like multi-colored dirty, like with ink or paint or something.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewing as she went on. “I guess he said he’d been in the Friday before while I was working…that’s when he saw me… but what Dale described didn’t ring a bell with me. Anyway…” she swallows, “I guess his friend had some sort of freak-out as they left. Like, just all of a sudden cut Dale off and bailed out the door like he saw a ghost or something. Weird.”

“Whaddaya mean? He has no idea what triggered it?”

“Nope. One minute he was asking more info about me…you know, probably for his friend who was in the john at the time. Like, was I into girls or guys and were you that kind of friend or what…that kind of stuff. And then the next minute he just, poof! Freaked out. Dale said he was telling him about how he didn’t know you, but that I didn’t usually go for girls…and he didn’t think your were my type or some nonsense. How do guys determine this shit anyway? Do they just get some idea in their head and let it sprout into a full-fledged theory based on, what? Spirit dust? Whatever.” She takes a drink of her soda. “So, anyway…the one guy bails out the door and Mr. Loverboy comes back from the bathroom all cartoon-like, looking first at his friend’s back walk through the door then at Dale, then back at his friend outside, before asking Dale what that was about. ‘Course Dale didn’t know; he was just as confused as Mr. Loverboy! So, Loverboy paid the tab and followed after his buddy.” She shrugged. Apparently that was that. End of story.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“But, what about this guy…he didn’t try to find out your schedule, or leave a message or phone number for you…or anything?”

“Nope. Must be love for real then, don’t ya think?” Her eyes wide, eyebrows high on her forehead, she stifles a laugh. “I mean, I guess he was a bit distracted by his buddy’s freak out, but…still…”

“Do you think he’ll come back?” I ask. What a stupid question. Of course he’s coming back. Probably not with his freaky friend, though!

“Oh sure, probably. Unless he’s as freaky as his friend apparently is, why not.” She’s collecting the dishes and stacking them to take them to the kitchen. “Who cares, though, really? I mean, I’m not like aching for a date or anything. It’s just kind of amusing and all.”

Yeah, she was right. Who needed a couple weirdos hanging around, anyway. We…well, I, anyway…had enough on our plates right now. I help Aliah bus the table and say I’m going to venture out towards Capitol Hill or Downtown, maybe look for more work to fill in the empty spaces in my schedule. She looks at me hard before asking her question.

“You’re not going to go digging too deep and get yourself too worked up, are you? Really.”

Yep, I’m one really shitty actress, alright. I heave a sigh. “Alright, okay. I am going to check in at the other Twice Told about adding to my schedule…and I was thinking that I could try to get a hold of Shayla’s land-lady again.” She’s looking at me with that look again. “What?” She just continues to look at me that way. “Every day I don’t try to find her is another day something bad could be happening to her. I have to do this!”

“I know, I know.” She wipes down the table. “Just…take it easy, okay? I promise…you, me and Todd…Chris too…we’ll all sit down and figure this out. I mean it. You can’t do this by yourself. You need help. Depending on what we find out, we might need help. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it…”

I let her go back to work and tell her I’ll see her later back at the house. Digging in  my bag for a smoke, I head out the door to find a bus going my way. Of course, just as I get to the bus stop, only three puffs into my cigarette, there’s the bus already and I flick the fag in the street. Frickin’ waste of a good cigarette. Oh well…what do I keep telling myself? I don’t really need to keep smoking? Yeah…whatever, okay.

I plunk down in what is actually only half an empty seat next to an old lady up front…one of the seats that face inward toward the aisle instead of forward. She has one of those wire folding carts parked in front of her, obscuring the aisle, with old wrinkled plastic bags over flowing from it. Her swollen ankles in support hose, with shoes tidy and in good repair, but look like they’re from a 1970’s Sears catalogue…like in those weird chain emails that get forwarded all over the place with big fashion “don’ts” from years past. They’re plastic, caramel brown, and would look like nurses shoes if they were white.

She smells of feces and rosewater. I just don’t even want to think of why…

© 2008 D. Kessler

 

NaNoWriMo: Part 9

A few days after the fiasco at Flowers with Toby, I’m kickin’ it around downtown  and I run into Brian again, this time coming out of The Whiskey Bar. It’s around 5:30 pm, the sun peeking from behind the clouds hasn’t gone over the horizon yet, but it’s making tracks, making the light reflect on the buildings in such a way as to make them seem a bit surreal. Windows gleaming, metal shining, concrete glowing, trying to keep up with the other mediums around them. I’m sure they are even more surreal to Brian, if he’s been at The Whiskey for any length of time. The thing with Brian is that you never really know how much he’s had to drink or how if he’s toasted yet. He holds his Beam-and-Coke-no-ice pretty well. Many a time I’ve had conversations with him at some party or bar or other and later he doesn’t remember seeing me at all due to his inebriation…and I was sure he was lucid at the time. But then there’s the whole thing last week on the bus  where I run into him and he’s clear as a bell that he saw me at Toby’s more than a week previous to that. I shake my head thinking about it. You just never know with that guy. The only thing you do know is that he’s usually scoping some girl out.

“Hey, Brian” I say as I come up to him on the sidewalk. “Sorry about the other day on the bus. Didn’t mean to cut you off and bolt like that.”

He pulls out a smoke and offers me the pack. I take one and lean towards him, passing the tip of the cigarette through his Zippo flame and pulling the calming stimulant deep into my chest. What an oxymoron, I think in passing. Calming. Stimulant. Fuck Nicotine, man. One of these days I had to quit, but not today.

He blows out his own grey cloud of death and smirks. “Oh, no problem. I know, wrong bus, whatever. I do it all the time…” We walk together for a bit and I ask him about the two girls from his story last week. He frowns in concentration, then, as if smacked on the back of the head, suddenly brightens.

“Oh yeah! Those two….almost forgot. Yeah, they were pretty crazy. We went back to one of their apartments, I don’t which one’s it was, somewhere on Capitol Hill…I think it was up by The Canterbury, but I could be wrong…maybe it was on the other end by down by The Comet , I dunno. I lost track after a while. We hit both at some point during the night and the one girl…the blonde…had a car.” He laughs, remembering. “Dude! A blonde and a red-head…together! Hey, let’s go in here…I’ll buy you a drink.”

We walk through a little metal gate separating the outside smoking area in front of a bar from the sidewalk and he pushes open the glass door under a dark green awning. Oh, I knew this place…two dollar happy hour well drinks. Looks like Brian was willing to forgo Jim Beam in favor of cheaper well whiskey, but I didn’t care one way or the other. A drink was a drink, as far as I was concerned.

We order at the bar and take our drinks over to a big circular booth by the front door. It’s already full of a plethora of persons: a dread-locked bike-messenger type, an older hippy guy with graying hair, a geeky-cute girl with horned-rimmed glasses and a lip piercing, a gothy hippy girl with tribal tattoos trailing down her arm and a few Indonesian silver beads braided into bits of her hair. Although they all seem normal enough to me and just like anyone I would know, I don’t know any of them. Brian seemed to, though, so they scoot around to make room for us. Brian names them off, gesturing to each one with his drink, but I don’t really catch all the names. And it’s not like I really am going to remember them or need to anytime soon, I tell myself.

I look around the bar at the artwork on the walls…some sort of surreal Dali-does-Japanime stuff in muted dirty pastels and charcoal hues on small- and medium-sized canvases, mostly. It’s not bad stuff, way better than anything I’ve seen done by Toby, and I lean closer to the one closest to where I’m sitting to get a better look at the artist info. Damn! They want how much for this one? I never even heard of the guy before. But someone obviously thought it was worth it…more than half of them had sold stickers on the info cards under each piece.

“What do you think of that one?” A voice in my left ear is asking me. I turn toward it to find the horned-rimmed girl looking at me, her eyebrows slightly raised as she sips from a glass of what looks like cranberry juice with vodka. On the spot, I shrug.

“It’s okay, I guess. I mean…I dunno…”

“You don’t think it’s a bit trite and trying too hard? I mean, what’s with the skelton birds on the telephone wires? And the pink panda sitting on the curb?” She takes another sip and gulps it down before going on. “And the whole fractals in factory smoke pouring from a skyline of smokestacks in the distance. What do you think the artist is trying to say…is it an environmentalist statement or just a bad acid trip?” She tilts her head at me, waiting for something profound to discredit her synopsis of the painting sitting on the wall just above our heads. She was wearing a t-shirt…white with lime-green baseball-style sleeves just past her elbows…with some cheesy 70’s-esque glitter iron-on design. Her hair looks like it used to be a pixie cut, but it grew out rather quickly since the summer and now its varied shades of dirty blonde and honey curl a bit into her ears and eyes, making her fidget with it a lot, sweeping it out of her eyes from behind what look like vintage eye-glass frames…tortoise-shell with slightly dulled rhinestones at the corners. A skirt of indeterminate color hinting at the khaki spectrum…maybe a faded café latte?…and a pair of well-worn Vans round out her ensemble.

“Uh…I dunno. I don’t really think about art…too much.” I start off, somewhat haltingly. “I mean…I don’t think that I’m really qualified to judge…what the artist was thinking when they painted it, I mean. Or what statement they’re trying to make… if any.” She looked at me kinda weird, so I go on, stumbling ever closer to the precipice that was me looking like even more an idiot than I felt. “I mean, I like art…and I guess I kinda like some of this stuff here…but…I don’t try to pick it apart…really…”

She gives a little laugh, a cross between a chuckle and a giggle.

“What?” I asks her.

“Oh…nothing.” She sits her empty glass on the table and goes to dig her wallet out of her canvas book-bag, a smirk on her face.

“No …what?” I press her for an answer. I guess I just don’t get girls; they tweek me out, and this one is starting to get on my nerves. She stands up to go to the bar and order a drink, so I move my knees out of the way so she can get by.

“They’re mine.” She says matter-of-factly and leaves me watching her walk away, totally confused. Her’s? So she’s the artist…is that what she’s saying? I looked at the name on the artist info card.  Steve. See, she’s full of shit, it’s a guy. I do a double-take…wait…Stevee?  What kind of name is that? And what the fuck was all this what-do-you-think-about-blah-blah-blah about then? Was she fishing for compliments or just fucking with me for fun. Either way, she’s pissed me off.

I look over at Brian; he’s totally talking to the hippy guy, no plans to leave anytime soon, it seems. I catch his eye and gesture something about thanking him for the drink, that I have to take off, I’ll see him around, okay? He nods, mouths something that looks like “sure, sure” and raises his hand in farewell as the hippy guy talks his ear off.

I’m through the door and on the sidewalk before the geeky artist girl can come back to the table, walking at a good clip toward the nearest bus stop to take me to Capitol Hill. It’s about to pull away as I run up to it, banging on the sides as I try to catch the driver’s attention to keep him there long enough for me to get on. Then while walking down the aisle to find a seat as the bus lurches forward, almost knocking me over, I catch a glimpse outside of that girl again, walking down the sidewalk. Not the artist one from just now; the weird one from the other day last week with pink hair looking for the bus tunnel. What the hell? Why does she keep popping up…in person, in conversation…? It’s really beginning to get on my nerves! I flop in a seat at the back and pull my hood up to block out the world. I just need to zone out and clam down…I’m not making any sense, even to myself…

 © 2008 D. Kessler