Flip Phone

“Laura Stewart's eyes fluttered open to see Charlie Adams' hand hanging limply from the side of the examination table. She was still huddled on the floor, one arm gripping the pipes below the sink as if they were a life preserver. For a second, she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there. She looked at the hand with confusion. His index finger was extended, reminding her of that painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was at this moment, with Charlie's finger pointed delicately toward the tiled floor, that Laura remembered George Rayburn. He had disappeared, sucked into the mini-universe that had unfolded across Charlie's body.”

                        --From my novel, “The Secret of the Sky”

 

I own an old Razor3 flip phone. It’s about seven years old, has the original battery and refuses to die. I have a love/hate relationship with cellphones. My wife insists I have one. I drive down a lot of isolated country roads on the way to work and back. I also have some physical problems that make it necessary that I have one with me at all times. But other than that, I hate the suckers. A couple of years ago I thought I had lost it. My first emotion was one of relief, but then I found it the bottom of my backpack. Bummer.

Why would I feel this way about cellphones and electronics in general? I mean my writing obsession depends upon a computer and the Internet access. I’m using my computer now to write this spectacular piece of prose. Yet a part of me hates it.

I like to say I’m an analog guy in a digital world. Chevrolet says I should have something called a tablet. Oh, they love tablets, that General Motors. They harp on it continually in their training videos. They assume that all the Chevy salesmen out there want one or already have one. It’s one of the conceits that show how out of touch they are with the guys on the front line selling their iron.

 

But that’s another story.

This whole thing with Smart Phones bugs the crap out of me. I cringe when I see one. I was at the doctor’s office the other day. There were twelve people sitting in the waiting room, and seven of them were staring at their phones. Six of them were women. Can someone tell me what they hell are they looking at?

I suspect that my old Razor has lasted so because I don’t use it much. At one time I had 4000 unused minutes in my ATT&T account. I don’t like talking on the phone. I have a nephew that will confirm that. The battery always goes dead on me because I forget to charge it. It usually gives up the ghost when I’m driving down one of those country roads I mentioned earlier.

I miss party lines. (Look it up.)

This brings me back to my writing. Without a computer and a little help from Microsoft Word 2010, I would still be dreaming of red ’57 T-Birds stuffed in the corner of my backyard on Lark Street. The magic of a keyboard opened something up in me I didn’t know I had. To be honest, it gave me a reason to struggle on when times were at their roughest. It’s doing the same thing for me now. I am eternally grateful.

But I refuse to ever consider a Smart Phone. I don’t want to check my email, go on Facebook, surf the net and whatever the hell there else there is to do while waiting to see the doctor. That’s why God invented books and magazines. My good friend Scott McDonald bought me a Kindle, and I’ve never used it. Here I am hawking to anyone that will listen to buy my books, but I don’t participate in the process at all. As I said, I’m an analog guy in a digital world.

There’s something sick about that, isn’t there?

Keep Reading

There is more than meets they eye at the 4Corners Cafe. I encourage you, dare you to read my older posts. You may find something interesting there. Maybe even a story of sorts--or is it real? I have recently rearranged them in ascending order. Try it, if you dare.

David

God, the Universe and a '57 T-Bird

“Liz knelt and carefully picked it up. It was heavier than she expected. The edge of the glass had a delicate bevel that highlighted both the wood and the mirror itself.  She looked at her reflection and an older woman stared back. Not old, just older. Her youthful face, the face she had known for all these years, the one that carried the horror of pimples as a teenager and later beguiled Burt Smith was gone. In its place was another face, a face still pretty but one caught in the apex between youth and middle age. Fine creases were starting to appear on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth that no amount of Oil of Olay could banish for long.”

 From the story, Mirror, Mirror, from my upcoming story anthology “unexpected pleasures”.

  

As it happens my first experience with storytelling coincided with the discovery that the Universe was not what it seemed. I was eight, the youngest member of a loving but insulated Portuguese family from Hawaii living on the “Mainland” as it was called, a place so very far from home.

My uncle, Jim Teves, had a bright red 1957 Thunderbird. He was single then, and the world was his oyster, as they say. He’d come over to our house on Lark Street to visit us and park the beauty at the curb. The T-Bird mesmerized me. I remember standing on the sidewalk in front of it thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Every curve and angle was perfect. How could something be so beautiful?

I wanted one.

That’s when I began my campaign for God to give me a miniature version of it. I would lay in my bed at night obsessing about it (and the actress, Sandra Dee, but that’s another story). I concocted a story about it. The government was experimenting with allowing a few select young people to be allowed to drive, and I was perfect for the project. I would have my red T-Bird. I would proudly drive it around the neighborhood, perhaps all the way to Assumption Church, were the pleated-skirt Catholic girls would greet me with love and kisses….

The plan was carefully laid. I instructed God to deliver the T-Bird to a bush at the very back corner of our expansive yard early Saturday morning. That way I’d have the entire day to enjoy it. There, next to creek where we played on lazy summer days, it would be waiting for me. So beautiful. So perfect.  So red.

I awoke that morning and announced to my parents the wonderful thing that was about to occur. I remember them laughing. I thought they might be mocking me, but I suppose now it was one of those “oh, how cute” laughs. Whatever it was, they didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. God was going to fix me up.

I remember bounding out the back door and down the steps. It was one of those wonderful overcast Bay Area mornings; a chill in the air that made you feel so very alive. I ran toward the bush. The T-Bird wasn’t readily visible, but I imagined that God had carefully hit. But as I approached, there was a sinking feeling within me. The space between the bush and the fence was empty. Apparently God had screwed me, and I was devastated.

It was one of those “aha!” moments. A great revelation that I had no control over God, the Universe or anything else. It was at that fateful moment that I realized that life can be cruel, and as the Rolling Stones would later say, “You can’t always get what you want.” 

But I got a story about it; not written down but in my head. And over the weeks and months that followed I would lie in my bed and expand it to my own private underground subway system and a bowling alley that spit out packets of money every time I bowled a perfect game.

So God had given me something: a rich fantasy life that would stay with me throughout my childhood and into my adult years. And then, one day when I was thirty-eighty, I began to write them down.

Greetings from the 4 Corners Cafe 2.0

Starting next Wednesday, July 2, 2014, I will be starting a new addtion to this blog. It will be about my life as a writer.

I posted on my Facebook page that I would delete the old entries and start afresh. I now think I won't do that--writers don't like to delete things unless they don't work. When I looked back at those writings, I remembered what great fun I had writing them, and that's what writing is all about.

I am posting below what I wrote on my Facebook page--slightly modified. I hope you will stop by on Wednesday to see how deep I can put my foot into my mouth. I haven't even started yet, but I've already done it.

David Teves

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First entry for my new writing blog that is not a blog as of yet. 

So I’ll start from the beginning then. A writer’s journey. My journey. Call it part biographical, part bullshit. I’m supposed to try to use this to promote my writing. To get you to help me get out of my day job and have a little peace in my life. But going in I gotta tell you that probably won’t happen, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

This is the way it will be. I’ll write one post once a week. I could write more, but it would keep me away from the real writing—if that’s what it is. I’ll post it let’s say on Wednesday mornings. Just before I go to my chemotherapy. There I said it. It needed to be said. It would be a lie to myself and to you if I didn’t. But that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. This is about writing, not cancer.

Next. I will go over the post one time before I publish. If I catch errors, that’s great. If I don’t, well that’s the way it’s gotta be. I obsess too much about the finer things in a sentence than to worry about it here.

Did I mention I’m a bullshitter? Keep that in mind. I’ll tell you something interesting. I didn’t discover I was a writer until I was in my late thirties. That’s a kick isn’t it? I spent a lifetime not quite fitting into things. I thought I was just emotionally flawed, but it turned out I was just—different.

Last. Despite of the heaviness of the last few sentences, I intend to keep things light for the most part. Fictions supposed to be fun, right? But still the same, I am going to try and seduce you into getting me out of the car business. That’s the price of admission.

It will start next Wednesday, July 2, 2014.

 
David

Starbucks

I hate Starbucks. I say this even though I go there about once a week during the winter to order a medium cup of coffee, just a little room for cream please. This hate/like relationship with the place has been going on for several years, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. Sad thing to say, isn’t it?

The reason for all the thinking is because I have wondered if my almost phobic dislike for the place has something to do not with Starbucks but with my deep-seated personality flaws in general. I tend to be an anti-social, semi-asshole some might say. For the most part I dislike most people—especially the pompous ones, and let’s face it, Starbucks is crawling with them. Every time you go into one there they are: guys hunched over laptops of iPhones, women with their shoes off, curled up comfortably in an over-stuffed chair having meaningful conversations with their friends.

Starbucks likes to go for the ambience of a hip coffee shop. Smooth jazz lulls you over the lousy overhead speakers. Over-priced CDs are available for those gullible enough to buy them. $17.95 for a CD? Hello, haven’t you people heard of Amazon.com? Expensive coffee makers, To-Go coffee cups that won’t fit in any car cup holder designed to date, all wrapped up in a politically correct, social responsibility, let’s start tweeting package. Now I ask you, who’s kidding who?

In their view, Starbucks is not just selling coffee and coffee accessories, they’re selling a lifestyle. They call it “The Starbucks Experience”. As for me I think any title with the word “Experience” in it should have “The Jimi Hendrix” in front of it. As a still slightly rebellious child of the 60’s, that oh so pretentious lifestyle comes off as obnoxious and fake.

In my opinion a real coffee shop (as opposed to a diner) is a place filled with cigarette smoke, rude waitresses, and guys in berets reading awful poetry while the listeners click their fingers in approval. In my book that is the definition of cool. Smelly, but cool.

When I go into Starbucks I get claustrophobic with the yuppie vibe of the place. I plan the trip carefully. With exact change in hand I will only go in if I don’t have to wait in a line. I place my order quickly a succinctly. No thanks, I don’t want a brownie or a scone. Just give me my damn coffee. Then, paper cup in hand, its one package of Equal, a little half and half and I’m out of there. I don’t want to spend any time wondering as I survey the crowd if I am, in fact, just like them.

I can hear you laughing. Why the hell do you go in there in the first place if you hate it so much? It’s pretty simple. Sometimes on a cold winter night when I have to drive thirty miles to get home, it’s great to get wired up, and believe me; Starbucks is great for getting wired. One properly ordered cup can make you feel like you’re on a South American holiday. At my age a hit of cocaine would probably kill me, so this is the second best thing.

One last thing before I end my rant. I went through a period when I was fixated on not using Starbuck’s names for the sizes on their coffees. I mean, what ever happened to a simple small, medium or large? How can a small cup of coffee be called a tall? What idiot thought that one up? So one evening I ordered a large cup of Joe to go. The “barista” (another word I hate), a blond, doe-eyed young lady with a butterfly tattoo on her neck, looked at me and said. “Sir, at Starbucks we say Venti”. I was so taken aback at the thought of using that word, I was temporarily frozen. Then, after a long few seconds, I turned around and left.

I guess I didn’t need to get wired that badly.

Tee-Shirt Mortality

The other day I figured out that I had enough tee-shirts to last me the rest of my life. This revelation came to me while sitting at the edge of my bed examining my beloved “The Sopranos” shirt with the mysterious hole at its bottom. Do I wear it, or should I contemplate retiring it? God knows I can afford to part with it. I have an entire drawer dedicated to my tees in addition to the dozen or so hiding at the top of my closet.

This was when it hit me. At age 60, tee-shirt wise, I had hit the tipping point. If I never acquired another one, I had more than enough to last until they ship me off to… To where? Ah, that is a good question.

On my days off I dig around for an appropriate tee to wear that day. My current favorite is a black one that says, “Still Pissed At Yoko” in white Beatlesque letters. It gets attention. More than one person has commented on it while standing in the checkout line the Super Wal-Mart.

There are many others, of course—way too many to list here: a Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” shirt that all true children of the 60’s should own. Then there’s the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” shirt, my son-in-law, Tom, gave me. It’s a little tight, but it works. A “World’s Greatest Dad” shirt my daughter, Laura, gave me one Father’s Day. A few more honoring local events: the Rio Vista Bass Derby held most Octobers in the town I live, Hayward’s annual Ukulele Festival. A couple more from the now defunct Isleton Crawdad Festival.

Lots of shirts. Lots of shirts to remind me of minor events of my past; enough shirts to remind me of the transient nature of life.

When I was a young man, I never gave the tee-shirt collection slowly growing in my dresser a second thought. The stack of Corona beer shirts building up in my drawer (Are they somehow reproducing in there?) never crossed my mind. You just threw one on after a shower and went about your day: playing with the kids, mowing the lawn, watching television, drinking a beer. Little did I know that the tees were a symbol of my own mortality.

You can’t count white tee-shirts when you noodle on this equation. With no words or images emblazoned on their cotton surfaces, they are meaningless and transitory. But my two Yosemite Mountaineering Society “Go Climb A Rock” shirts are timeless. The shirts are an identical blue; one bought about five years ago, the other circa. 1971. I have used the latter several times as proof to a person younger than myself that “I have tee-shirts older than you.”

Go now to your closet or drawer where your tee-shirts await to let you know that quite a few of them will be around after you are gone. What do they say? What do they mean?

Something to contemplate as I sit in the 4 Corners Café of my mind, drinking a cup of hot Joe.

George of the Rain Forrest

Somewhere along the line the jungle was taken from me. The mysterious, dangerous territory of my youthful imagination, filled snakes, tigers and an infinite number of dangerous creatures and foliage was high-jacked, replaced by a tedious, castrated damp place called the rain forest.

Yawn.

In these boring, politically correct times it’s not polite to call a rain forest a jungle. No, no, no. A jungle is a dark forbidding place. A rain forest, on the other hand, is a place of gentle greenery and cute, precocious endangered animals, a perfect place for your next vegan picnic. When they talk about those bad people trying to carve out a little farmland in the Amazon, they are destroying the rain forest! It doesn’t sound right if they’re destroying the jungle because the term jungle sounds like it deserves to be cut down!

So Tarzan’s parents didn’t crash in a treacherous foreboding jungle filled with dangers at every turn. Their son became “Tarzan, King of the Rain Forest”. Don’t you like the way that rolls of your tongue? Either way he was raised by apes. And what about my good friend George, the monkey of my childhood musings? Can’t you hear the children singing, “George, George, George of the rain forest”?

Speaking of songs, you all remember that classic Creedence Clearwater song. Sing it with me now, “Better run through the rain forest, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. . .”

I don’t care what anyone says; the crew of that PT boat in the movie “Apocalypse Now” wasn’t going up the Mekong River into the depths of a rain forest. That, my friends, was a damn jungle!

I wonder do they still have the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland? If they’ve changed it to the rain forest cruise I might have to slit my wrists.

I find it interesting how our language is being subdued all for the sake of political correctness. Garbage men became sanitation engineers. Housewives are now homemakers. I live on the west coast where it’s often foggy in the mornings and afternoons. I just discovered that it’s no longer called fog; it’s now the marine layer! The next thing you know, car salesmen will be referred as transportation consultants!

They’re making a pussy out of our colorful English language!

Never again can I sing a rousing chorus of the theme from “The Flintstones” at my local bar. The ending, “we’ll have a gay old time” might be misunderstood. Someone might beat the crap out of me and dump my body in a rain forest!

In the summer it’s not hot any more. No way. Its climate change. (Climate change has replaced the term global warming, because apparently the globe hasn’t gotten any hotter in the last ten years.) Instead of just getting some lemonade or a cold beer, and watching a ball game on the tube on a lazy summer afternoon, we’ve got to feel guilty that it’s a hundred degrees outside. We’re responsible! And how can you enjoy the game anyway when there are dead polar bears out there and it’s our fault? And moving them to the rain forest won’t help!

So I say we’ve got to take a stand on this stuff, and I’m here to put forth the proposition that we start with our beloved jungles. I don’t want to go on a safari (oops, I’m sorry, I meant to say “photo Safari”) in a rain forest. I want a jungle. And throw in a little quicksand while you’re at it.

Or is it now called liquid earth?

Rod Serling Changed The World

The 4 Corners Café has a jukebox that only plays Patsy Cline and Led Zeppelin. I asked Betty Jo the waitress about this. She was standing behind the counter appraising me like a bug. She doesn’t know how to take me. I don’t know how to take her. She’s a mystery. I suspect she is younger than me, but a lifetime of Pall Malls and Miller High Life’s have aged her beyond her years. Or at least that's what I think.

Betty Jo shrugged; a subtle upturning of the shoulders that said the question wasn’t worth answering. Then she went out back for a smoke. I gave up on the question. The jukeox like Betty Jo and the café itself remains a mystery to me, and as a result I suspect it will be to you.

At the time I was sitting at the ancient Formica counter eating a slice of cherry pie and drinking a cup of hot joe when it dawned on me that Rod Serling had changed the world. For those of you too young to remember, Rod was the creator of “The Twilight Zone” the early 60’s anthology series that introduced my generation to the possibility that reality as we knew it was not necessary what it seemed.

I swear I remember the night it premiered in October 1959. I was nine years old. My father and I watched it on our humble black-and-white in the little house on Lark Street. The story was about a man who found himself in an unfamiliar town all by himself. There were signs of life everywhere but not a soul to be seen. Panic ensued. In the end it turned out he was slowing going crazy in an isolation booth that was training astronauts to go to Mars.

Dad didn’t say much about it. Then again, dad was not a talkative guy. He just sat in his easy chair considering what he had just seen, rubbing his thumb over smooth surface of his silver Zippo cigarette lighter. I was quiet too, but inside I was trembling with excitement. What had I just seen? It sure as hell wasn’t “I Love Lucy” or “Wagon Train”. No sir, this show rocked!

I was already suspecting that something was up reality-wise. There were those bomb drills we were having every other week or so. “Duck and cover” it was called. Unseen by the students, George, the ancient school janitor, would bring out an old WWII hand-cranked siren. There was a painted metal v-mount for it, screwed into the wooden railing in the open hall between the rows of classrooms. Suddenly, in the middle of a math lesson, the siren would wail the call of impending death. The sound scared the crap out of me.

(Don’t look at the flash! the defense films we watched advised. If you’re out on your bike, throw it to the ground and yank your jacket over your head!)

The teacher would close the curtains and turn off the lights to heighten the paranoia effect while we scrambled under out desks. We were instructed to turn our faces to the floor with our foreheads resting on back of one hand while the other hand protected the back of our necks.

Somewhere around this time, “The Twilight Zone” came to my mind, and I began to suspect that this was all bullshit. Somewhere I had heard that a strategically aimed H-Bomb exploding in the nearby San Francisco Bay would vaporize us all instantly, “duck and cover” be damned. Our fourth grade teacher would have been better off handing out beers than feeding us the illusion we could escape a nuclear attack.

And Rod Serling confirmed it all, infiltrating my mind with the notion that the universe was a dangerous and mysterious place, and the mystery could spill into my life at any moment. There were space aliens who thought we were the ugly ones. There was a fourth dimension in the wall behind my bed that would grab me if I wasn’t careful. Somewhere down a train track there was a town called Willaoughby where life was simple and perfect. Yes, there were other worlds out there, independent from the humdrum reality of my post Eisenhower life. There were things out there that were wonderful, but there were also things out there that might bite me.

As the 60’s progressed, my generation was invaded by the Beatles not the Russians. Fueled by the lessons of “The Twilight Zone” and the naive notion that we could change the world, we went forward to rediscover life on our own. Rod Serling was the father of a revolution of sorts. And though things didn’t go as we planned, he helped open our minds to the endless possibilities of life.

Damn him.

The Religion Gene

Yesterday, a customer asked me what church I attended. I wasn’t amused with the question. He was an ornery old cuss, and he had just revealed that he was a Dodger fan, a state of being that is equal to discovering your wife’s a hooker in my opinion. I looked him square in the eye and said, “I wasn’t born with the religion gene.”

“You an atheist?” he persisted.

“No,” I replied, trying to avoid an argument.

Maybe there was something in the way I said it that made him drop the subject, except for a parting shot about me attending church and something about judgment day. I avoided the skirmish and managed to deliver the car. Whew!

The problem was that I was looking for a fight. You see I enjoy talking about God and religion as any Mormon missionary or door-to-door Seventh Day Adventist can attest. When they come preaching at me they discover a soul who as done a lot of thinking about his place in the universe and has some definite opinions of the subject.

I was born a Roman Catholic. That in itself speaks volumes about why I am religiously challenged. I remember the terror of being seven-years-old going into a darkened confessional to confess my sins to the personal representative of God. I remember making up sins because I couldn’t remember doing anything wrong!

The whole process terrorized me. I envisioned the soul as a cosmic petridish, the sins building up like bacteria. Confession cleaned the dish, but if you had the bad luck of being hit by a truck with a few swear words on there, off to Hell you go!

Being a nice Portuguese boy, I tried to live with the concept that God was just waiting for me to screw up so he could torture me for eternity. But at the age of fourteen it finally dawned on me that it was all a bunch of bullshit.

Over the years the concept of religion has always fascinated me. I developed a theory that God, or whatever controls the wheels of the universe, had very little to do with religion. I decided that the reason religious institutions exist is because of my theory of the religion gene.

In my opinion you are either born with a need for religion or not. It’s in you DNA. Sometimes the gene is buried deeply only to come out when a person decides its time to clean his act up in order to avoid an eternity of fire. People who are extremely religious have a need to have the mysteries of universe placed in a tidy, easy explainable box. They don’t want any mystery in their life, and no surprises at the end. They are not content that the cosmos (both literally and figuratively) is something far beyond human understanding. They want the sucker explained.

Religion by its very definition is the worshiping of concepts that can’t be proven. And since this lack of logic is in itself a dichotomy, they pass off the things that don’t make a lot of sense as faith. Faith is the “inconvenient truth”. It attempts to explain away the unexplainable. It makes the illogical logical. It allows hair-brain theories to take root, wars to occur in the name of God, and general mayhem to ensue.

So let me get this straight. God is a being who along with creating the universe enjoys a little torture on the side. In general he loves you, but if you should screw up he is perfectly okay with barbequing you for eternity.

I don’t think so.

Now let me say that I have nothing against a person needing religion. As Stephen Stills once said, “whatever gets you through the night”. If you need the mysteries of the universe explained to you in human terms in order to make you feel safe, that’s okay by me. Just don’t look at me cross-eyed if I test to your ideas.

I looked out the window of the church called the 4 Corners Cafe wondering why I waste my time thinking about things like this. And as my coffee cooled, I pondered the universe and my place in it.

Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies

Dear Bob,

I’ve been a fan of yours for most of my life. As a young teenager I was a folk music enthusiast, and I discovered you early. My formative years were spent listening to “Blowing In The Wind”, Times Are A-Changing”, “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and dozens of others. I have a button from those times that says. "Relect Bob Dylan God". Love you man!

When you turned electric with “Bringing It All Back Home”, I became electric too. You turned me on to the infinite possibilities of rock and roll. That’s why when a spectacular idea for a business opportunity came up, I thought of you. Think of it Bob: Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies.

Don’t laugh; I’ve thought this through. There are enough quirky lyrics in your songs to last us for decades. Heck you may never have to go on tour again if things work out right. As for me, I can see a time when I’ll talk to my last flake on the used car lot. Won’t that be a great day!

Now let me paint a picture: The young couple has just had their full of Pork Chow Mien and reach for a fortune cookie. Instead of saying, “You will soon have business success”, it says, “The answer is blowing in the wind”. Now wouldn’t that be something?

The great thing about Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies is that as time goes on they will be more and more effective. As we baby boomers die off, less and less people will be aware of your songs and their impact on our generation. So when they open up a cookie and it says, “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, don’t criticize what you can’t understand” it will sound as fresh as it did when you wrote it over forty years ago.

My favorite line of Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies will be called “The Subterranean Line”, after the classic song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” That one song is chuck full of great fortune cookie lines. Here’s a few touching examples.

“Don’t want to be a bum, you better chew gum.”
“Get sick, get well, hang around the ink well.”
“You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.”
“The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.”

The possibilities are endless, I tell you!

The cookies could be used for special occasions. For example, a great “date” ice breaker fortune cookie: “Lay, lady lay, lay across my big brass bed.” For that college fraternity party: “Well I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned”. For political campaigns we can mine the song “Masters of War” for several relevant nuggets

Bob, we’ve got a home run here. I’m so excited I could spit! With you and me partnering up on this project we will make history and a truckload of money. In no time at all we’ll be goin’ down Highway 61 like a rolling stone with the Memphis blues again!

Call me Bob. I’ll be waiting.

David

Sharp As A Tack

Note: I wrote this blog post a couple of years ago for my other blog, Confessions of a Car Man. (I have since deleted all non-car business posts from that blog.) I present it here for your enjoyment.


I’m rapidly approaching the time of my life when people will refer to me as “sharp as a tack”. This label is usually attached to an older person who has a full grasp of what’s going on around him. The term is meant as a compliment, but if you think about it, it’s a sad day when people have to compliment you on your ability to reason.

What brought this to my mind was a conversation with my mechanic friend, Tim Robbins. Tim, who shuns the moniker of technician, is also sharp as a tack, but he’s in his mid-thirties so this is a state of being that is still standard equipment. I find him a great foil for expressing my sometimes way-out-there musings.

On one particular hot August day I was ranting about my most recent health issue as being a preview of coming attractions of old age. The “David Teves Mortality Tour”, I dubbed it. I am currently issuing back stage passes for my fans. “Access All Areas” they say. With this pass you have complete freedom to roam about back stage and hang out with the band so to speak.

Along with heart, hypertension, diabetes, and general state of ennui, life has been sending a yearly health bomb as if to remind me that my days are numbered. A year or so ago I developed a condition called, “Bell’s Palsy”. This delightful disorder causes half your face to become paralyzed, your arm to hurt like hell and a speech impediment also from hell. The whole package screams “Igor” to friends and family and those ups that were forced to face me on the lot.

Luckily, this is not a life-threatening disability. Oh it takes about a year to clear up, but eventually most of it goes away. The only residual effects are one dry eye and a nostril that likes to twitch for no apparent reason. All and all not the most delightful of experiences.

My most recent adventure into reminders of my mortality is a condition known as “Labyrinthitis”. This disorder is a virus that attacks your inner ear. It cannot be treated. Like Bells Palsy it will go away on its own in time. It came on me suddenly the morning after my granddaughter, Brooke, was born. I woke up in a hotel room in Jackson, California with the room spinning to the right like a top. (I wonder if I were in Australia would the room spin to the left?) Suddenly I was four years old spinning myself into a dizzy, a child’s first attempt at getting high.

I spent the next week, ironically a vacation week, barely able to walk. Over the last month, the symptoms have receded sometimes making a return engagement at the end of my workweek. Like the palsy this will pass, but I wonder if it will leave any long-lasting reminders of its visit.

I’m talking about this not to bitch. Well, I guess I am bitching. I won’t go into the depressing details of what goes around in my mind when visited by these maladies, but it does make me wonder what the hell is next.

The scary part is that when in the clutches of dizziness, I am no longer as sharp as a tack. Write a blog entry? Hell, I’m lucky to be able to watch an episode of “Ice Road Truckers”. I forget what I’m saying, names of people I love and have a hard time putting a few words together in a logical sequence.

I suppose you know where I’m going with this: Alzheimer’s disease. I once knew a man, now passed on to that great used car lot in the sky, who liked to say, “Having Alzheimer’s isn’t too bad. You get to meet new friends every day!” I have no idea if that’s in my future. There isn’t shit I can do about it if it is. I suppose writing will help me keep the brain cells circulating for a few more years, but I’ve been clearly given the idea that the end of the demo ride is in sight.

Guess I’d better try to lay away a few people while I still have the time.

Dazed and Confused

Sometimes the 4 Corners Café is not where it’s supposed to be. Sometimes it’s across the highway from its normal location. Sometimes it’s not there at all. Many times I have chased down back roads searching for it, my mind twitching for my country oasis. I’ve never been able to figure out these oddities. Betty Jo the waitress is no help. And as for Mac, the grizzled owner, we’ll, he’s barely around.

I have often wondered if the other patrons have the same problems I have. I’m not talking about the anonymous truck drivers who pull off Highway 5 for a quick coffee and pie. (What’s with the bow ties and caps? I’ve never seen them anywhere else.) I’m talking about the regulars, the farmers and storekeepers from over in Thornton taking a break, eating BLT’s at the counter, or talking quietly in one of the booths. Do they notice that the place is not quite right? But like the café itself, sometimes they’re there, and sometimes they’re not.

Why am I always so desperate to find it? The answer is simple: I do my best thinking there. Sometimes when the world is feeling especially oppressive it is my shelter; my place to let my imagination go. It was there that I wonder why I write at all. No one reads my stuff. If you have stumbled upon this blog you’re in an exclusive club.

One day I put a quarter in the jukebox and pressed D4. “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin came blasting out the speakers like a song on a mission, and I was transported back to 1969. I was 19 and had just purchased “Led Zeppelin”, their first album. It was the greatest rock and roll score of my life. I Iocked myself in my room in the house on Lark Street for two days listening nonstop and “Dazed and Confused” became my anthem.

“Been dazed and confused for so long it's not true,
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you.
Lots of people talk and few of them know,
Soul of a woman was created below. yeah!”

The greatest rock song of all time in my opinion.

It’s winter. My friends Larry Ulrich, Patrick Lynch and I are cruising down Palomares Canyon Road on a cold and drizzly night in Patrick’s ‘66 Datsun. Robert Plant wailing my favorite song on the 8 track. I am in the back seat, and we are playing cardboard. Cardboard works this: you rip off the top half a book of matches, and roll in your hands forming a “crutch”. A crutch was used to hold the diminishing end of a joint in order to make it smokeable to the very last. (No roach clips for us. That was for wusses.) You keep smoking in the dark, passing it back and forth, the roach getting smaller and smaller, until someone finally hits pay dirt and starts coughing. “Cardboard!” you yell between gasps. You just won. Let’s go get something to eat!

“You hurt and abused tellin' all of your lies,
Run around sweet baby, lord how they hypnotize.
Sweet little baby, I don't know where you've been,
Gonna love you baby, here I come again.”

I’m alone in the café. Betty Jo is in the back doing what I don’t know. I look out the window, and it’s dark. Funny, it was daytime when I came in a few minutes ago. The truth is that time doesn’t pass right inside the 4 Corners. The old clock on the wall just doesn’t travel in its orbit around the dial in a normal manner. You come in at eleven in the morning for a quick cup of joe, and when you leave it might still be eleven or maybe ten thirty, a half hour before you got there, or four in the afternoon.

“Every day I work so hard
Bringin' home my hard earned pay
Try to love you baby, but you push me away.
Don't know where you're goin'
Only know just where you've been,
Sweet little baby, I want you again.”

Then there’s that killer guitar solo, a soaring blast of kinetic energy. The one that even after forty plus years gets my pulse racing. How many times have I played air guitar to it? How many times did I embarrass my kids when they were growing up? Pure ecstasy complements of Jimmy Page.

I don’t smoke dope anymore. Those days are long behind me. Today I get high by writing. There’s nothing better than a well turned sentence or a piece that makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. But I’ve taken a page of my writing down to the ATM and have never been able to get any cash out. Tragic but true.

“Been dazed and confused for so long, it's not true,
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you.
Take it easy baby, let them say what they will.
Will your tongue wag so much when I send you the bill?”

The song ends, and I’m no longer 19. I’m an old man of 60. Got two grandkids for Christ’s sake! I’m sitting at the counter at a café that I suspect might only exist in my mind. Am I crazy? I just might be. I’ve suspected it for years.

But that’s just life at the 4 Corners Café.

Who Will Get My Records When I'm Gone?

At any family gathering, my wife and kids know that somewhere around the half way point of a bottle of excellent Dillian Vineyards wine, I will bring up the same subject: who will get my record albums when I’m gone?

All my life I’ve loved music. If I could figure out how to do it there’d be music on this blog. I started off buying comedy albums in the early 60’s when I was about 12. This quickly graduated to folk music, folk rock, rock and roll, jazz and a little classical thrown in for good measure.

Until their demise in the mid-80’s I bought hundreds of records. During my wild years I apparently gave a lot of them away to friends. My ex-wife made off with all my Fleetwood Mac albums. How many I haven’t a clue, but it appears to have been a lot. 584 of them remain. They’ve been encased in protective vinyl sleeves, cataloged in a database, and sit in a sturdy wood cabinet solid enough to withstand the blast of a low-yield nuclear weapon.

Each album holds a memory for me. I can pull one out at random and most of the time remember when I bought it and relive the pleasure I had listening to it. They have been my friends and allies during good times and bad. Ever faithful, they haven never passed judgment on me or my life. I love those records even though I don’t play them much anymore. I have about the same amount of CD’s that are more convenient and frankly sound better, but CD’s don’t have the same emotional hold over me as vinyl. I don’t fret over their future.

But I am painfully aware that I’m getting older, and when I pass the albums will remain. Who will watch over my old friends when I’ve gone to the big Auto Mall in the sky? Will they be cared for? Cherished? I know this sounds stupid, but I fear, really fear that they will end up at a thrift store, sold off to strangers who can’t possibly realize the tales of my life that these records hold in their vinyl and cardboard.

While in the grip of Zinfandel, I warn my loved ones that if my records end up in a garage sale I will haunt them. I’d like to be serious about this, but I can’t imagine asking God to grant me shore leave to go poltergeist on my family because they gave away my copy of “The Jimi Hendrix Experience”. Somehow I don’t think the universe works that way.

All inanimate objects, with the possible exception of a Chrysler product, have the potential for immortality. That doesn’t mean I think my record collection will be around in 2000 years like a bunch of mummified cats in an Egyptian tomb. But it does mean that they have the potential for being around for a while, at least into the 22nd century when my life and essence will finally fade from the memory of my predecessors

So far no one in my family has shown any interest in vinyl records. I can only hope that some grandchild will have a little geek in him or her, and discover my treasure trove of rock and roll and Bob James jazz albums.

A couple of years back I purchased a brand new turntable and two cartridges. My wife thought the purchase was silly since I have rarely used it. What she doesn’t know is that I bought it with the future in mind; a time when someone who shares my DNA might venture into my cabinet, pull out a record, and listen to a piece of me.

Thinking Of Winter

I’ve been thinking about winter lately. I’ve always been the type that romanticizes the seasons, even though out here in California the weather is rarely extreme. No snow, for example. In the depths of summer I often think about winter--just as in the middle of winter I think longingly of summer. But while driving home down Highway 113 one night as the sun was setting and the headlights of my aging Nissan starting to take hold of the night, I thought of the winter season ahead and the sound of cars on rainy streets. I thought, what a lonesome ound that is, the swishing noise that, if your standing at a curb, changes tone as the car rolls by like the redshift of light in the cosmos.*

As a kid, I remember opening up the window in the bathroom at the rear of the house on Lark Street. On winter nights if the wind was right, I could hear the cars on busy East 14th Street five or six blocks away. Swish, the sound of tires going to where I didn’t know.

I was a weird kid. The world around me astounded me, scared me. I couldn’t comprehend the idea that I would someday leave Lark Street and strike out on my own. The distant sound of the rain and cars seemed like a world a million miles from mine and a reminder of the mystery that is life.

When you’re a kid your life is surrendered to your parents. They direct where you go, what you do, and why. You’re just along for the ride. For what seems like an eternity you do nothing but live in the now with little responsibilities or comprehension of the world around you.

I remember wondering where electricity came from. You plugged something into the wall and presto, you had power. Back in those days people didn’t think a lot about where their energy came from. In a time of seemingly endless abundance it didn’t matter. My dad once went on a campaign to have us kids turn off the lights when we left the room. I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.

We were six people living in an 1100 sq. ft. house with one bathroom. I was the youngest. My brother was ten years older than me, so by the time I became aware of things he was out of the house hanging with his friends. He was an enigma. (Did he haunt the streets on winter nights, his car splashing in the night?) That left me with two older sisters who both loved me and tolerated my presence.

Being the last child born had its advantages and disadvantages. I was the youngest, therefore I was someone to protect. Not that it mattered. My parents did their best to keep the harshness of life at bay from all us but especially me, the baby. They were lucky people, my parents. They never argued, and they raised four decent kids. The few heavy incidents of my childhood, like the time my brother came home with a tattoo, are etched in my mind because they were so few and far between.

Swish. The sound of rain. The sound of tires lifting water from the streets and throwing it out into the world. It’s a sound that I remember well, and to this day when I hear it, I am taken back in time to a place where everything seemed perfect and the outside world a million miles away.


*In physics (especially the physics of astronomical objects) redshift happens when light seen coming from an object is proportionally to appear more red.

Irby

I met a man at the 4 Corners named Irby. He was standing outside the entrance as I parked my Chevy at the side of the road. It was early evening. The sun had just disappeared on the horizon, but the lights of the café had not yet claimed the night. I had told my wife that I was going to the local McDonald’s for a burger--something I had really intended to do, but twenty minutes later I was sitting in front of the “cosmic coffee shop” as my mind had lately been calling it.

Irby was a man of about seventy, I’d guess. He was dressed in faded overalls and wearing what I thought at first glance was a battered John Deere hat. But as I got closer, I could see that it had a saying on it: “Love is like two dreamers dreaming the exact same dream.”

I smiled, and he spoke. “Ever notice that Marie Osmond looks like a high-price hooker?”

I paused. Here is a guy I can relate to. “Ever notice that no matter when you turn the TV on Valerie Bertinelli is there hawking something?”

“Perhaps they should have a show together.” he said thoughtfully. “Kinda kill two birds with one stone.”

I laughed and stepped onto the broad covered porch that protected the entrance.

“I’d be careful in there,” he said, his voice lowering. “Betty Jo is on the warpath.”

I peeked in the window, but Betty Jo was nowhere about. “What’s eating her?”

“Some people came in a bit ago that weren’t supposed to be here.”

“What do you mean, weren’t supposed to be here?”

“They weren’t invited,” he replied. “Name’s Irby by the way,” he said, holding out a huge callused hand.

“David,” I replied.

“I know, I know. I’ve heard of you.”

He’d heard of me? I didn’t recall ever mentioning my name to anyone during my visits to the 4 Corners Café. The place was either empty or filled with farmers who didn’t even seem to notice my existence. As for Betty Jo, she could give a shit who I was or where I was from.

“That’s not exactly true.” Irby said with a smile.

Had I spoken? Or had the man just read my thoughts?

He opened the door. I stepped in before him. The place was empty except for the two of us. Whoever the unwanted intruders were, they were gone. Irby gestured toward a booth, an invitation to sit. I’d never sat at one of the booths before. I’d always planted my ass on one of the red vinyl stools at the counter.

I sat, and when I looked up Betty Jo was glaring at me an order pad and pencil in her hand.

"Just coffee, dear," Irby said

“Coffee and a piece of apple pie,“ I said.

“When you going to step up and order a meal?” she demanded.

“Now, Betty, be nice,” Irby said. Betty Jo turned away.

“You’ve got to excuse her,” he said. “Her bark is bigger than her bite, as the saying goes. But make sure you don’t make her bite. Hurts like hell.”

“Irby, you are the first person I’ve ever spoken to in this place.”

“Well, I hear you’re not much of a conversationalist. That’s kinda why I’m here.”

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I’d always suspected that there might be consequences for hanging out at the 4 Corners Cafe. I mean, the place wasn’t like going to Denny’s...

Betty Jo returned with our order. She looked down at me; her wrinkled face looking more like a prune than ever, then turned away.

Irby stirred sugar into his coffee. “How did you come on this place?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“What brought you here other than that truck you drove up in?”

“I, I saw the sign. I’d driven past it for months on the way to visit my daughter up in Plymouth. I didn’t notice a restaurant at first. Just the broken sign and the phone booth. There was something about it... Then one day I looked down and discovered there really was a restaurant here. So I stopped and came in.”

“How many times have you been here?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Dozen times, maybe more. It gets—“

“Confusing,” he said, finishing my sentence.

“Yeah. I guess you can say that.”

I glanced up at his hat. It now said, “Got the werewolf split, when the moon's full I howl at it.”

“Coming here ain’t free you know,” Irby said.

“I know. But I always pay my bill. Say, is Betty Jo complaining about my tips?”

“Got nothing to do with money, and you know it.”

Strangely, I did know it. Knew it from the first time I opened the door and heard the bell above it announce my arrival. Knew it the first time Betty Jo poured me a cup of hot joe and looked at me as if I were a bug.

“So what are you saying?”

“Nothing much, my friend. Except to say that the 4 Corners doesn’t need any publicity, and we know you’ve been writing about us.”

I had no idea blog readers frequented the place. No Wi-Fi here, I was sure of it. There was nothing in here that was built after 1979 that was for sure.

Irby signed. “You’re welcome here but be careful. Some people aren’t too sure about you or your motives.”

I opened my mouth and discovered I couldn’t speak. My throat was dry, and the words felt like sandpaper as they failed to make their escape. We sat in silence for a time. I poked at my pie, but my appetite was gone.

“Go home to your wife,” Irby said. “Think about what I said. And come back when you are ready.”

Ready for what? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t.

I found myself standing. I reached into my pocket for some money. Irky raised his hand. “This one’s on me, my friend.” He smiled broadly. An oddly welcoming smile as if I was now a part of the family. “This one’s one me.”

Down the road there was a wreck, a terrible wreck. Car in the river. Fatalities. As I passed it I shivered. Could they…? I stopped, the question unfinished. It was not to be asked because I didn’t want to know the answer.

Back home, Trish didn’t seem to notice that I’d been gone a couple of hours. She never did. That was what is like when you went to visit the 4 Corners Café.

Later, I went into my bathroom, closed the door, and looked at myself in the mirror. "David," I said to my image, "Maybe you're making a big mistake."

I keep rewriting my previous post, trying to clarify my memory of that evening. More than once I’ve tried to delete it, but I just can't--even tough it feels dangerous to me, and I have a creepy feeling that it might be dangerous for you, too. But as I said, I can’t delete it. There’s something in it that needed to be said. And though it doesn’t want publicity, I don’t think the café wants it deleted either.

So I’m going to keep on plugging and try to write about something else. Something to distract me. Something to prove to you all that I’m a clever bastard and worthy of your time. Something that won’t make you think, “This guy is losing it!”

One more thing: It's been almost a week, I haven't seen anything in the local papers about a car crash into the river.

Two Tickets To Eternity

I have two granddaughters: Brooke, who’s a little over two and now April, just over a month old. They are, quite simply, the loves of my life. Having grandchildren is an oddly wonderful thing, and it’s taken me a while to figure out why. After much contemplation, I have come to the conclusion it’s because they are my two tickets to eternity.

Having grandchildren is different than having children. The enormous task of getting my two, Laura and Joe, to adulthood was a daunting one. Like many people, my life has not gone smoothly, and I once hit hard times that nearly brought me down. There was little time to appreciate the fact that my two offspring made sure that a part of me (and my wife, Trish, of course) would live on.

I think this is because my children's lives are in the vicinity of my own. By this I mean that they will live many years past our time on earth, but the grandkids, well they are something else. They might live to see the 22nd century, and their children, my great-grandchildren surely will.

As I think about my own ancestors, I only have a vague idea of who they were and where they were from. My grandparents and great-grandparents were from the Azores Islands and the island of Madeira. I know their names. I know where they were born. I know they were probably poor people who sacrificed all to immigrate to Hawaii in the late 1800’s to make a better life for themselves and their children—and me.

But that’s all I know.

Now my granddaughters, if they are ever interested, will know a lot more about their past. They will not only know the names of their grandparents, they will see color photographs and videos from when they were young. And if they deem it important, they will be able to tell their children and the children that follow about us. And my wife and I will all live on through them.

I don’t know why the hell this is so important me. I know that their interest in me—if any--will be more of a curiosity than anything else. And it may not be until later in their lives when the prospect of eternity faces them in the eyes that they might care about those who came before them.

I come from humble beginnings. I have lived a simple life. I’ve loved. I've listened to a lot of rock and roll along the way, and I've tried to do the best I can to be an honerable person. I have a sense inside of me that the universe is vast and wonderful. And the day is coming when I will discover all the truths it has to offer. I want my children and grandchildren to remember me my wife and to have productive happy lives of their own.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

David


4 CORNERS CAFÉ UPDATE: I have elected not to go to the café or even drive past it since the incident with Irby. I now take a different route through Walnut Grove when I go to visit my daughter. I feel like I’m living an episode of “The Twilight Zone”. It’s not a good feeling. I also think that the café is not through with me. I think it’s been knocking on my dreams. More than once I have awakened in a cold sweat not knowing why. And just last week I swear I saw Betty Jo in Lira’s supermarket in Rio Vista. I turned the corner of an isle with my basket, saw her still wearing her uniform. I jerked back, and when I managed to look again she was gone. Had I really seen her? Don’t know. But I sure as hell care.

The 4 Corners Café And Beyond

So I guess you’ve been wondering what’s been going on with that damn café. After the conversation with Irby and the paranoia that followed, I laid low for a month or so, thinking that I had stumbled upon something terribly evil. Now I’m not as sure about the evil part. I suppose it does have a healthy dose of that, but there seemed to be a lot more going on there. So much so that it got me hankering to investigate.

During that time I hallucinated the café everywhere. It started with the slow curve after crossing the narrow bridge that leads into Walnut Grove. The sign on top of the store says “Boon Dox”. For years my mind has always seen at as “Boom Box”, a joke that always makes me smile, but has long worn off with the rest of my family. One day in late November I rounded the corner and instead of “Boon Dox” I saw “4 Corners Café”. Surprises like this are not good for a man my age or physical condition, but when I shook my head the sign had returned to its perplexing normalcy.

So what was it, a trick of the mind or a friendly reminder that I am helpless against the forces behind the café? I’ve never been able to figure out which. In the weeks that followed I saw that café’s sign everywhere: old abandoned gas stations, a boat repair shop on the side of the river, banks, department stores, In-Out Burgers. In my dreams. I saw it so much I was sure that I was doomed.

After much contemplation I felt I had no choice but to take a little visit to the 4Corners Café itself. So one Tuesday morning, I loaded myself into my aging Chevy truck and trekked up river. I left while Trish was taking a shower. I didn’t tell her where I was going. Somehow I felt it didn’t matter. When I eventually returned she wouldn’t say a word, probably not even noticing that her husband of thirty years had been gone most of the day.

Twenty minutes later I pulled the truck over across the highway from the café’s wonderfully enigmatic sign. The abandoned bird’s nest I had photographed in the spring was gone. A victim of a winter storm, I proposed. There were two old trucks sitting in its small parking look, a battered 70’s Datsun King Cab and an older Ford F100. I used to sell those trucks when they were brand new. Coincidence?

Got out of the truck. I looked up and down the empty road and started across. The crunch of pea gravel greeted me as I stepped onto the parking lot. I tried to clear my mind. I stepped onto the porch and opened the door. The bell above it tinkled a greeting. I counted eight people inside: six sitting at the booths, an elderly couple at the counter. I looked around for Betty Jo. She was nowhere about, nor was Irby. I breathed a sigh of relief at that; the old coot freaked me out. No one took note of my arrival. It was as if I was invisible. I moved to the counter and sat down. I nervously pulled out a menu stuck between the napkin dispenser and a catsup bottle. I opened it, glancing at the invitation to enjoy their delicious chicken fried steak, or BLT sandwich.

A hand placed a coffee cup in front of me.

That was when the fun began.

I first thought it was the young waitress I had encounter a few months back, but it was someone else. Brown hair in a pony tail, slender build, hazel eyes flicked with gold. She was not beautiful, but there was something compelling about her. In the back of my mind I asked myself if I had seen her before.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

I watched as she filled the cup.

“What can I get you hon?”

“Got any pumpkin pie?”

“Sure.”

She went to the display case and cut a healthy slice. “Whip cream?” she asked.

“No thanks. I’ll take it straight up.”

She placed the pie before me but didn’t leave. “Where have you been, buster?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Where have you been? Did Irby scare you off with his stories? We could give a crap what your write in that pathetic blog of yours. No one reads it anyway.”

I ignored the insult. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

I looked at her closely. In a moment it clicked. It was Betty Jo, a young vibrant Betty Jo.

“What the hell?” I said.

“Looking’ good, aren’t I?”

Silence.

“Oh, I saw you taking a healthy once over. Did you check out my new and improved ass?”

“But how…?”

“Fringe benefits. Comes with the job. Comes with the café.”

I said nothing. Words had left me.

“Eat your pie, hon. Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

I could think of nothing else but to do as she said.

Betty Jo left me to tend to her other customers. I watched as she delivered burgers, coffee, and cleared dirty dishes from a booth. On the juke box Zeppelin was playing “How Many More Times.” The music was weirdly out of place with the farmers and retirees that populated the café. It occurred to me that I’d never seen a young person in the café. In the times I had visited my fellow diners were always my age or older. I wondered what that was about.

The pie was delicious. I wanted another piece, but my diabetes said no. Eventually Betty Jo came back and refilled my cup.

“What the hell is this all about, Betty Jo? It’s driving me crazy.”

Betty Jo laughed. “Oh, the writer doesn’t understand, huh? That’s a hoot! You mean that creative little mind of yours can’t figure it out? Such a waste, just like the way you wasted your life selling cars and pretending you were happy.”

“Ouch.” I said.

“So you want to know, so I’ll tell you. See that hallway that goes to the back?”

I looked to my left and saw the hall that led back to the restrooms and storage area.

“She that door at the very back?”

I nodded.

“Beyond that door…

…is death.”

About The Door

“Death? She said death?”

I nodded.

Irby chuckled. “Well, technically she’s correct. A little melodramatic but correct. I hear you can get your ass killed pretty easily on the other side of that door.”

We’d been talking for about a half hour, I’d guess. That morning as I left for work there was a note tucked under my wiper blade: “Foster’s. 8:00. Irby” it read.

The note surprised me. I figured Irby was only a 4 Corners Café phenomenon. In my mind I doubted he even existed beyond its doors. Foster’s Big Horn was a convenient meeting place. The bar was only two alleyways away from my living room. Wait. Irby knows where I live? The thought was unsettling, but what could I do about it? Still I wondered why the proposed meeting was here in Rio Vista and not the café.

“’Cause we’ve got things to talk about in private,” was his reply to the question. He was staring intently at a gigantic mounted moose head as he talked. Foster’s boasts one of the world’s largest private collections of animal trophies, most bagged by the late Bill Foster, a Great White Hunter long gone from this world.

“So what’s it all about, and what does it have to do with me?”

“You know, my friend, you didn’t choose the café. It chose you. Just like it chose me and all the other poor schmucks that go in there for pie and coffee.”

Irby paused. After about thirty seconds I couldn’t stand it anymore. “So what are you saying? Why did it choose me, and what does it have to do with that freaking door?”

“I don’t know why it chose you. You’re going to have to look into your heart for that one. As for me, I was leading an aimless life out here in the delta, living on a run-down twenty-two foot sailboat in an equally run-down marina out on the loop. I was fishing too much, drinking too much. I’d abandoned my family and everyone else to brood about how much I’d fucked up my life. As for you, who the hell knows why it wants you. To be honest, I don’t give a crap.”

“Do people actually go through that door? Do they go there to die?”

"Since I’ve been going to the café, I’ve seen eight people get up from the counter, stop to take a leak, and go through that door. Two have come back.”

My jaw dropped, my mouth went dry. I waved a finger at Paul the bartender for another round.

“What did the two that came back say about it?”

“Bill Mackenzie wouldn’t talk about it except to say that he’d never been so scared in his life. He left the 4 Corners, and I never saw him again.”

The second person was a woman named Rita—oh, shit I can’t remember her last name. That’s what happens when you hit seventy; you forget things. Irby looked at the moose again.

“And…?”

“She said that on the other side she was a man. She said there was what she called a “great trauma”. Didn’t elaborate. She said when it was over she was offered a second door. She passed.

“That’s it? That’s all she said?”

“Yep.”

“Not a hell of a lot to go on. And you’re telling me that the café wants me to go through the door?”

“I don’t think the café cares that much about you. It’s like a bus stop. The door is the express line to something. I don’t know.”

“So you’ve never been through the door.”

“Me? No. I touched its handle once, but I didn’t turn it. Like everything else in my life, I’m just a chicken, afraid of my own shadow. That’s always the way it’s been.”

Irby might see that in himself, but I, for one, didn’t. I didn’t know this man, sitting there in those same faded overalls, but it seemed to me that there was more going on there then failure.

“So why did you call this meeting, Irby? You and that damn café are confusing the hell out of me.”

“I’m just here to tell you what the door is all about. You won’t get anything out of Betty Jo. She’s more interested in her new and improved set of tits than givingyou the skinny.”

“So I’m supposed to go through the door?”

“You don’t have to do anything. The door is there. Go in, go out, it don’t make no difference. It’s just that…if you have a hankering to prove yourself you might consider it. Just be forewarned that you may not come back. You may not want to come back.”

“For someone who doesn’t know anything about the door, you seem to know a lot about it.”

“Been going to the 4 Corners for years now. I listen closely. I pick up on things. That damn door is like a loaded gun put up the side of the head of a guy thinking about ending it all. It calls you, it scares you, it’s just there.”

“So that’s it then? You came here to tell me about the door and its possibilities. You claim in might change me; you claim it might be a death sentence. So Betty Jo was right. Beyond the door is death.”

“More like the promise of death, in equal amounts of life thrown in with good measure. As for yourself, what kind of life have you led? What kind of life do you have left before you? Are you happy with the way things have gone so far? Or will you go into senility thinking there was more—much more.”

Irby stood to leave and threw a twenty on the counter.

“Irby, the people that went through the door, how long were they gone?”

“Well like the café itself time doesn’t work the same way it works in this bar. Bill was gone about an hour, I’d say, but when he came back he said something about being there for a week. Rita was gone a day and a half, but on the other side she said months went by. So I’d say if you do decide to take the trip, wear comfortable shoes.”

Irby smiled. “Take care of yourself, David. See you around.”

And with that he went out the door and left.

Should I, or shouldn't I?

I’m not one to air my dirty laundry in public, especially not on a blog. Let’s just say that without the love of my family, I would have nothing. I’ve made a few dubious decisions in my life, my choice of careers just one of them. I didn’t discover I could string words together in an entertaining fashion until well into middle age, a tad too old to abandon my obligations and live the life of a writer. Generally speaking, I’ve never been satisfied with the way things have gone, but then again, who is?

So the 4 Corners Café is offering me something. Maybe death, maybe something else. My sense is that it may be some sort of redemption, my Mount Everest so to speak. So the question is: do I do it? Do I put on a sensible pair of shoes, drive over to the café, and walk through that door? Or do I count my blessings, my children, my wife of thirty hears, my two beautiful granddaughters?

What’s your opinion, all two or three of you who graciously read my words? What do you think? Should I, or shouldn’t I?

Whatever I decide I’ve got to do it soon. My window of braveness is a small one.


David

I've made up my mind. I'm going to walk through the door. If I come back I will write down what happened. Wish me luck.

David

Writing About The Door

I’m sitting at the bar at Foster’s Big Horn drinking a beer. I have my battered notebook and pen, and I’m trying to make sense of the situation. So far the page is blank. Over the last day or two I have gone back and forth about what I should do. Should I tell you what happened? Or should I just shut this damn blog down and pretend the whole thing never happened? It's all been so freaking bizarre!

Well it’s self evident that I got back okay. I was in a state of semi-shock for a couple of days, but it's begun to wear off. I still haven’t sorted through all of it to figure out what exactly happened and more importantly what it meant. I haven’t spoken to anyone about it. Irby has been absent, making me once again wonder if he even exits. Then there’s the story itself. How do I write it?

Here’s the thing. Don’t laugh. When I went over there I was a woman. The events that unraveled were so strange that I find myself unable to comfortably write about it. The first thing is just saying, “I was a woman”. You see I wasn’t a man trapped in a woman’s body. I wasn’t just witnessing what was happening to me like I was watching the female hero in a movie. For a brief time I was a woman. I had the thoughts, fears, and desires of a woman. How do you write about that? How do you convey that when on this side of the door I'm a man?

I started writing down what happened, but it sounded ridiculous! I kept using the first person “I” and it comes out so weird that I have deleted the text three times! When I use the word “I” I’m thinking of myself, David Teves, a 61 year old man, not some young female thrown into an improbable adventure. What the hell do I do?

Second beer. Things are jelling a little. I got into a brief conversation with a tourist who was gawking at the animal trophies as if they might jump off the walls and attack him. I started thinking about what a member of PETA would think if they stumbled onto this place. I had a conversation with Howard, the owner of this establishment, about the Beatles. Howard is a big Beatle fan. So am I when my mind isn’t screwed up.

Third beer. Made up my mind. I will tell you the story about what happened up to the time I walked through the door in the present tense. I will tell you what happened on the other side of the door like I was writing a story about another person. That’s the only way I think I can pull it off without sounding like an idiot. Then the end part? I’ll think about that when I get there.

Give me a couple of days to begin. Be patient with me. It may take a few days or weeks for the whole damn thing to unravel into something coherent. And don’t worry. I promise it will be worth the wait.

Fourth Beer.

Through The Door And Beyond

I awoke early. As was our morning ritual, Trish and I drank coffee and watched the news together. A couple of days before, I told her I wanted to go on a little road trip. This wasn’t unusual for me. Each year I take at least two or three solitary trips either to the mountains or the seashore to clear my mind. It was okay with her as long as I promised to be careful. She knows that my driving skills aren’t what they used to be.

Be careful. Could I keep such a promise? I wondered. I was suddenly aware that what I was about to do was something both incredibly selfish and stupid. I have a responsibility to her, my wife of thirty years. I have children, grandchildren to think of. Yet, I guess I was just hell-bent determined to be stupid. I kissed her at the door. Nothing dramatic, just one of those “I’ll see you later” type kisses that long married couples exchange like handshakes.

I decided to take my work car, not the truck. The truck is really Trish’s, and taking it didn’t feel right. So I drove my aging Saturn across the Rio Vista Bridge, a half-mile span that crosses the Sacramento River. I made the left turn at the light and followed Highway 160 the twenty miles up river through Isleton and Walnut Grove to the 4 Corners Café.

I pulled into the gravel parking lot. The rusting sign greeted me like an old friend. It was a cold, bright day, a great day for the ultimate road trip. From inside I could hear Patsy Cline singing “Crazy”. I laughed.

The bell above the door rang, though the place was empty. No Irby to wish me a farewell. No going away party for David Teves. The new and improved Betty Jo looked at me from behind the counter. I could see on her face that she knew what I was about to do. I sat silently before her. She poured a cup of coffee and presented me with a healthy piece of apple pie.

“Going away present,” she said. Her face was expressionless.

I drank the coffee, but only nibbled at the pie. Not good for the diabetes. I giggled at the thought. My diabetes, my high blood pressure, my illregular heartbeat, my general state of depression may not be relevant in a few minutes. I decided not to think about it any longer. No use dwelling on things. No use being melodramatic. It is what it is and nothing more.

I slid off the stool, nodded at Betty Jo, and walked toward the rear of the restaurant stopping briefly at the restroom for one last pit stop. When I finished my business, I washed my hands and glanced at myself in the scratched mirror. My hair is still mostly black, though my beard is gray. My face is lined and cracked, the face of an aging man. It was my father’s face staring back at me, though I have my mother’s narrow eyes. I forced a smile and said, “Its show time!” to my reflection. I exited the restroom, turned right, and went to the door. Its handle was ice cold to the touch. I turned it, opened the door, and went in.

At first there was nothing. Along the back wall metal shelving held big restaurant-portion cans of coffee, pie filling, and the various condiments needed for a healthy farmer’s lunch. I stood still and waited for what seemed like an hour, though I knew only a couple of minutes had past. Perhaps this was just a false alarm. I looked back to the safety of door. It was gone. Then I felt myself falling, falling though endless nothingness--

--into a body not my own.

Ellie Awakes

Ellie Lewis opened her eyes. Sunlight was streaming through a window, falling across her face. She blinked hard. The window was dirty, framed by limp, worn drapes imprinted with the wispy ghosts of flowers. For a moment she thought, who am I? Where am I? She rose with a start, springing upright on a squeaky, lumpy bed.

"Ouch!" she cried, grabbing her head. She moaned softly and rubbed her throbbing temple. Her mouth tasted stale and bitter, and for a moment she feared nausea would overcome her.

She steadied herself and looked around. She was in a small, disheveled room filled with shabby furniture. Pale green walls rose in a slow oval to form a cracked, conical ceiling. From the end of the room Ellie heard the sound of running water coming from behind a closed door.

Ellie looked down at herself. She was lying naked under a white sheet. “What the hell?” she said. She wasn’t… But the thought that had begun to form in her mind of someone else, someone very different from her, faded just as a dream evaporates when you awake.

A flimsy bed stand stood crookedly beside her. On it a clear, glass ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts. Some had the faint impression of red lipstick.

Ellie couldn't remember ever smoking, nor if she had ever favored red lipstick, but she had the sudden revelation that she couldn't remember anything else, either. She felt certain her name was Ellie, but beyond that, there was nothing except for vague faces floating at the edge of her memory.

Next to the ash tray was a half-full glass of a foul, muddy-colored liquid. Ellie didn't have to pick up the glass to guess its contents. The reek of cheap whiskey was thick in the room.

"You've overslept," a voice within her said. "You should have been back hours ago,"

The sound of water stopped, and the door opened. A man emerged. Ellie tensed, her nakedness doubling her feeling of vulnerability. She clutched the thin sheet against her breasts and held her breath. The man was dressed in loose-fitting charcoal slacks and a sleeveless undershirt. He tossed a sodden towel carelessly into a corner and moved assuredly across the room. He picked up a white, long-sleeve shirt from the dresser.

Ellie couldn't move, couldn't speak. She sat absolutely still and watched as the man buttoned his shirt and pulled up a pair of bright yellow suspenders.

"Hope to see you around, doll face," the man said, grabbing his coat and tie. He looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror. A satisfied smile indicated he was feeling pretty good about himself. "Not every day a guy screws a royal whore. I'm just glad I got to nail you before it was too late."

He reached into his pocket and produced a wad of colorful bills. "Godspeed, thanks for not rolling me," he said. "Between you and the hootch, my head was swimming pretty good." The man looked at his pocket watch. "Lords of Mercury, look at the time! I've got to get back to my berth before The Reckoning."

He tossed a bill on the table. "Here's an extra twofer for being such a great sport," the man added. "Buy yourself something pretty." he said with a satisfied laughed. "Better do it quick if you plan on enjoying it!"

Ellie gaped at the man as he adjusted his narrow black tie. He didn't seem to mind her silence. Royal whore or not, his business with her was over. Already she was fading from his memory like the cigarette butts in the ash tray. The man opened the outside door and without a look back, he was gone, leaving Ellie blessedly alone.

She sat for the longest time, trembling under the sheet. It was late in the day. Almost too late, she thought for reasons she couldn’t remember. Outside, the sun looked tired and golden. In her solitary room each moment seemed to tick away like a single picture frame of time. She tried not to think. She tried not to move. The world she found herself in felt so unbearable, she couldn't take it all in. She waited patiently for it to change, like a dreamer waiting for the next dream, but it didn't change and Ellie began to fear it never would.

Her return to reality occurred for strictly biological reasons. She had to pee. Slowly she stirred from the bed and stood groaning on painful pins-and-needles legs. She looked down at her nakedness. The sight startled her. Another thought, “I’m not…” teased her mind. Her body seemed foreign, strange. Could anything now be remembered or believed?

She noticed a black bra and matching panties hanging from the bedpost. A red and black dress was draped over a chair, black pumps askew below it. Ellie looked at the clothes and wondered what woman had bought them. Not her, she prayed! Surely not her!

She limped her way to the bathroom hoping that all evidence of the man who had left her the twofer was gone. Inside the door frame her hand found a light switch. She flipped it on, and a bare bulb blazed. Ellie squinted, her headache flared. Water was dripping into a rusted porcelain sink. A small cracked mirror hung precariously on the wall behind it. To her right was a grimy shower stall, to her left, a toilet. Against her better judgment, Ellie looked into it. A pale, translucent condom floated like a dead fish. She quickly slammed the handle and watched it flush.

She looked into the mirror. The image in the split reflection made her gasp. It was a heavily made up face. Small black rivulets of mascara had cascaded down her cheeks. Her lips were smeared with garish red lipstick. Ellie cringed. The man had spoken the truth. She was a whore!

"What have I become?" she asked the mirror. "Oh, sweet Lord, what have I become?"

Ellie wanted to survive this, and crying like a wounded child wouldn't help her cause. With great effort she shoved her despair deep within her and tried to focus on the tasks at hand. She went to the toilet and quickly did her business. Then she filled the sink with hot water and scrubbed away the makeup. When she was finished, she dared a second look. Water dripped from a surprisingly youthful face and a strange thought took hold. "This is what I looked like forty years ago," it said.

Ellie turned away. She stepped back into the bedroom and dressed awkwardly. She found she couldn’t exactly remember how to put on a bra. The red and black dress fit her a little too snugly (she struggled with its zipper), but she guiltily admitted its smooth, silky fabric felt wonderful against her skin.

Ellie spotted a large black bag below the bed stand. She dumped its contents onto the bed searching for clues to her identity. There was a small oval mirror, a makeup kit, lipstick. Under a bottle of perfume was a pair of black nylon stockings still wrapped in its package. None of the brand names looked familiar. She discovered a money clip, straining with a thick wad of colorful paper money. A fresh pair of panties. A box of condoms.

Ellie picked up a coin about the size of a nickel. The stern face of a woman was stamped upon it. The face looked at her accusingly. On the flip side was the number twenty-one. Twenty-one what, she wondered. Cents? Pesos? Rubles? And below the number was a name. "New Colony," Ellie read aloud.

She stared at the coin as if it might speak to her, to tell her what twenty-one meant, to tell her what any of this meant. She wanted it to reveal where the New Colony was and how she had gotten here. But the coin did not speak, nor did the money she pulled from the gold clip. With the exception of a bill she recognized as a twofer, all were multiples of seven: fourteen, twenty-eight, and at least two bills with the designation of seventy-seven.

The front of each bill was adorned with more grim, unfamiliar faces. The rear displayed engravings of large, black horse-like creatures with huge membrane wings, soaring over a city skyline. Ellie stared at the bill, pondering its meaning, then squeezed the money back onto the clip and put it back into the bag.

Under a pack of foul-smelling cigarettes, she discovered a flat, plastic identification card. "New Colony" was written across its top in large block letters. To the left was a hologram image of her looking sullen and unhappy. To the right was a name and statistics.


"Ellie Lanore Lewis," she read aloud. "Unit 28 Mercury. Limited Access Only. Prostitute C."

So there it was, spelled out for her to see. The name Ellie Lewis seemed false to her. It was not her real name, she felt. She was someone else. "28 Mercury." An address, possibly? "Limited Access Only" meant nothing to her. "Prostitute C." Well, she already knew that, but seeing it in writing greatly unsettled her. She stared off into the distance wondering what this all meant. It was a mystery. A sad, dreadful mystery. She gathered up the other items littering the bed, and tossed them into the bag.

Time passed. The setting sun added to her depression. Ellie had to force herself to move. She went to the window and looked out. Across a narrow alley was a long row of squat rooms, twins to the one she had found herself in, she guessed. Was it some sort of sleazy motel? The alley was still and vacant. She felt terribly alone.

She turned from the window. Another tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it with the back of her hand, looking momentarily like a lost, forgotten child. She picked up the black bag and went to the door. There she paused and looked around the room one last time. On the table sat the lone twofer. Ellie started for it but stopped. Her days as a whore were over, she told to herself, and she boldly went out the door.

The Reckoning

Ellie stepped tentatively into the alley. The nearly spent sun cast the rooms in a shadowy, golden glow. Between the rows, crumbling pavement had been haphazardly repaired with coarse gravel. Her eyes followed the trail of quilt-work patching until it ended at a street.

Ellie looked at the street apprehensively. She knew there was nowhere else to go, but fear gripped her. She had to force herself to move, walking stiffly past the lifeless, sullen rooms. Some had tattered drapes drawn tight against the world. Others were thrown open; their hazy windows staring empty yet defiant.

Ellie approached the street timidly, stopping apprehensively at the end of the alley. She found it alive with activity: people bustling about, shopping, working. But something was wrong. To Ellie, it seemed as if these people were racing about in a near panic. She could see the tension etched on their drawn faces. One overweight woman, clutching a bag stuffed with groceries to her bosom, broke into a frenzied trot, nearly staggering down the sidewalk until she turned the corner and out of Ellie's sight.

From up and down the street came a cacophony of sounds. The shuffling of feet, hasty goodbyes, shouted warnings. From the shops came the sounds of slamming doors and iron security gates being lowered into place.

Ellie turned at the braying of a horn. From up the street an eerily silent automobile barreled past her, its occupants grim-faced. As it passed, Ellie noticed a large, crimson stain on the pavement in the middle of the road. Her eyes locked onto it and her heart began to race. Blood. Its edges streamed out in violent streaks like the rays of an evil sun.

"Godspeed, you must hurry, miss!" a man's voice urged from behind her. "The Reckoning is almost upon us!"

Ellie turned with a start, the stain in the road forgotten. For a split second she thought it was the man from the room, but it was not. He was a shop keeper dressed in a dirty white apron. He was a big man, his dark, greasy hair parted in the middle. He was wiping his hands on a towel.

Again, Ellie was unable to speak.

The man looked her up and down appraisingly. When his eyes finally reached to her face, she saw a flash of disgust. "Hurry, you crazy whore! The Reckoning! Do you wish to die?" He turned and scurried away.

Ellie blinked. The word whore had roused her. "28 Mercury?" she blurted out after him. "Please, sir, do you know of such a place?"

The man turned briefly. "It's around the corner, crazy whore!" he spat. "I don't know why I wasted my time with your kind! Be food for the Nazgul for all I care!"

Ellie watched him rush away, unnerved, but she had felt the urgency in his words, the raw emotion they conveyed. Something terrible was about to happen. These people were more than just afraid. They were scared to death.

"The Reckoning," she whispered. The man in the room had mentioned it as he left, now this man, too. It sounded ominous. She was in no condition for ominous, but she couldn't ignore it now, could she? The man in the apron had been rude, but he had not been lying. The Reckoning was coming and whatever it was--it was bad.

The street was almost empty now, and as Ellie began to hurry toward a place called 28 Mercury. She hoped she was not too late. The sun was now below the horizon, and within minutes it would be fully dark. The Reckoning was tied to the darkness, her mind told her as she ran. Something to do with the dark…

Sirens filled the air; low, growling howls that ascended the scale until they reached a high-pitched whine. They awakened a deep, instinctive fear within her, a soul memory of another time and place. "The Reckoning!" a voice within her cried. "The Reckoning! Any minute, any second! Now!"

Panic engulfed her. She ran as wildly as the others now, her black bag bouncing against her hip, a scream choked in her throat, still unsure of where she was going. Her panic should have invited death, but it didn't. Somehow Ellie found herself standing in front of a heavy bronze-colored door. Its highly polished surface glimmered even in the failing light. On it the number 28 was mounted in large, hefty numerals.

She lunged toward the door. "It will be locked!" her mind chimed in strange harmony with the siren. You will be locked out to face The Reckoning alone!"

She leaned her full weight against the door, and to her dismay, it slid open as smoothly as a well-oiled gate into a flowery garden. She fell forward, sprawling onto a massive foyer. The door closed behind her with a bang. Ellie yelped with surprise. She raised her head from the tiled floor to see a pair of black, thick-soled shoes standing in front of her.

"Godspeed, that was not very smart, Ms. Lewis," a woman's voice said with a smirk. "In less than a minute the door would have locked automatically, and you would have prematurely perished."

Ellie looked up. It was a stout woman of about sixty, short gray hair, a deeply lined face. She wore a limp gray dress with a white collar.

"Ms. Lewis, we here at 28 Mercury pride ourselves in observance of all laws of the New Colony," the woman said. "I am proud to say that in the eight years I have managed this facility, not one of my people have succumbed to The Reckoning by accident. Not a one."

Ellie held her breath. Behind her, heavy cylinders clanked loudly as the door locked. The woman looked at Ellie and frowned.

"When we allowed you your limited time here, it was under the strict understanding that you would abide by the rules. We allowed you here even though your kind should be at 42 Mercury with the rest of the riffraff. Now, aside from the fact that I find you and your present occupation personally repulsive, your presence here came in the form of a command. A command from Her Excellency the Mission Controller, no less. Humph!" the woman added for emphasis.

"Still, your residency, even if temporary, is nonetheless probationary. Command or not, you may find yourself out on the street where you belong. Do I make myself clear, Ms. Lewis?"

"Yes," Ellie replied.

"Yes, what?" the woman demanded.

"Yes--ma'am?" Ellie replied, as she climbed heavily to her knees.

"Better. The evening meal will be served in one unit. If you wish to attend, please be sure to shower and change those tawdry clothes. Do you understand, Ms. Ellie?"

"Yes, ma'am, Ellie replied.

The woman turned and started down a long corridor, her black shoes clicking across the spotless tile floor.

"Ma'am?" Ellie called after her.

The woman stopped, the echo of her shoes lingering for a long moment. She turned and glared. "What now, Ms. Lewis?"

"Which, which, apartment is mine?" Ellie asked nervously. It was a dangerously revealing question, but she had no other choice.

The woman sighed with disdain. "Godspeed, you are a pitiful creature, aren't you, Ms. Lewis?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am," Ellie replied. "I suppose I am."

The woman turned away. "91, Ms. Lewis," she called as she walked, her heals once again clicking. "Berth 91."

Ellie watched the woman until she disappeared through a doorway, then pulled herself up on shaky legs. She looked back at the door that had delivered her to 28 Mercury. It had shut and locked with a dreadful finality. What was this Reckoning? Ellie wondered. What horrible things were going on outside that door?

Ellie pushed her sweat dampened hair away from her eyes. Tears once again threatened, but she willed them away. Fanning out to her left and straight ahead were two more hallways. She considered which way to go.

"Straight ahead, Ellie" she told herself. "Hold your head high and go straight ahead."

The room numbers were once again multiples of seven. Midway down the hall, Ellie found berth 91. She dug around in the black bag, found the identification card, and slid it into a slot above the doorknob. How she knew this would work, she hadn't a clue. There was a soft click and the door opened. Overhead lights flickered on automatically. It was a small room, long and narrow; no more than ten by thirty feet, painted a pale shade of yellow (Like his suspenders, she thought). There were two opposing doors at the room's middle, right and left.

Ellie entered apprehensively. The room revealed itself as an amazing example of efficiency; everything compact and cleverly planned. At the rear of the apartment, a narrow bed was recessed into a wall, across from it a retractable table and two folding chairs.

The door on her left, she discovered, led to a tidy kitchenette. She glanced in briefly then turned to the opposing door. It was a bathroom. Ellie dropped her bag to the floor, and mesmerized, entered the room. Everything that had occurred since she had awakened in that seedy room was forgotten. She quickly threw off her clothes and stepped greedily into the shower. She needed to wash away not only the grime that permeated her body, but the filth and heartache that was lodged within her.

Ellie took her time. She washed herself carefully, shampooed her hair, then stood hungrily under the hot, soothing spray. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wander. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was two people in one. The other person, the one lurking at the edge of her memory, was not remotely like her, but somehow in their hearts the two were the same. They were like twins joined in a weird cosmic dance, and for reasons unknown, a part of each life had leaked into the other.

She reluctantly stepped from the refuge of the shower. Before her was a large mirror mounted above the sink. The mirror was bordered by small decorative drawings of the same odd-looking birds that were on the currency. She counted seven across the top and seven more down each side. On the counter top were all the things a woman needed to ready herself for the day: toothpaste and brush, deodorant, make up, a hair dryer and a brush and comb set.

She looked down at herself feeling uneasily like a voyeur. To add to her unease, she found her nakedness pleased her, as she was sure it pleased the men she apparently serviced. She sensed then she was a woman who could arouse intense passion, both in herself and in those around her. The knowledge filled her with a strange mix of power and sadness.

Ellie carefully toweled herself and combed out her long brown hair. In a cleverly concealed closet she found ample clothing, some blatantly sexy, the trappings of a whore, others practical, even utilitarian, in design. Ellie selected a modest, light blue jump suit and slipped it on over simple, white cotton underwear. On the closet floor she found a comfortable pair of shoes. She laughed. Comfortable shoes. Why did she find the concept so funny?

Once dressed, the image of her as a prostitute began to fade, but she knew this feeling of well-being would be transitory. She needed to solve the mystery she found herself in before she went mad. She looked around the apartment hoping to discover any clues. At its far end her eyes locked on a window covered by a strong iron shutter. Ellie stared at it wild-eyed.

"The Reckoning," she whispered with a shiver. She went to it feeling both repulsed and compelled and placed an ear against its cold steel. Screaming. She heard distant screaming and the trampling of feet. There is mayhem outside, her mind told her, and cold panic. Terror in the streets that leaves blood stains in its wake.

She ran her fingers down the shutter's unyielding steel until they found a latch connected to a long safety bar. She toyed with it, testing the pressure that would be required to release it. What terrible secret did it hide?

"Godspeed, get away from that window!" a male voice said from behind her.

Ellie whirled around. There was a man, no not a man, a teenager perhaps, standing in the doorway. He was slight, surely no taller than her with closely cropped black hair. He wore thick glasses framing an acne scarred face. He was looking at her with concern.

"Who, who are you?" Ellie stammered. "How did you get in here?"

The young man frowned. "He's, he's, sorry, Ellie," he stuttered. "The door wasn't shut. Benny saw the light, so he came in."

Ellie looked furtively around the room and cursed herself. The thought of a hot shower had mesmerized her so much she had forgotten to secure the door, forgotten about her safety. Her mind raced. She had to be careful how she spoke. She had to be careful not to let this young man know she was a fraud.

"Tell me who you are and what you want or I will call the authorities," she bluffed in the boldest, most confident voice she could muster.

The young man looked at her oddly, wondering if Ellie was joking. "Why, he's Benny," he said, pointing at himself. "Benny Knuckles. He lives across the hall in berth 98. You and Benny are friends," he added hopefully.

Ellie relaxed a little. In spite of his odd way of speaking, the young man didn't appear to be a threat.

"What's wrong with you, Ellie?" he asked with genuine concern. "You okay? Benny thought you'd still be asleep. Did some guy hit you or something?"

Ellie ignored his questions. "Benny Knuckles, you say? Is that really your name?"

The young man shrugged and looked faintly embarrassed. "Who'd make up a name like Benny Knuckles?"

Ellie felt bad for teasing this young man. "I suppose you're right," she said.

Benny pointed at the steel shade. "You weren't really going to open the window, were you, Ellie?" he asked grimly.

"What if I did?"

Benny stared.

"What if I did, Mr. Knuckles?" Ellie demanded. "Tell me, what would happen?"

Benny cleared his throat. "Well, it's still early. It's said they leave the mountain nests until the sun is fully down. Probably nothing would happen. But then again..."

Ellie took a step forward, urgency prodding her. She wanted to know more. She needed to know more, and she damn well would know more! She stopped. Something had caught her eye. In the kitchenette, a square message board was mounted on a wall. Tacked to it was a badly worm photograph.

"Oh!" Ellie moaned with dim recognition. Benny and The Reckoning were forgotten.

Ellie went to the photograph, her arm outstretched, fingers anxious with anticipation and yanked it from the message board. She held it close, tears welling, her lips trembling, her fingers moving lovingly over the image. It was of a little girl in a bright yellow dress. Yellow like the color of her room, the color of a stranger’s suspenders. Her precious smile broke Ellie's heart. She had long ringlets of golden hair and sea green eyes that gazed at the camera with innocence and love. Ellie felt weak in the knees. There was something wrong. One thin leg was strapped in a heavy steel brace. She was sitting awkwardly on a bench, her injured leg looking uncomfortable.

Ellie looked at Benny. "This girl," Ellie said hoarsely. "Who is she?"

Benny paled. He looked as if he wished he had never entered the room.

"Tell me, Benny," Ellie said fiercely. "Who is she?"

"Why, it's, it’s your daughter," Benny Knuckles stammered. "Or at least that's what you've told Benny. Don't you remember her, Ellie?"

"Where is she?" Ellie asked. "Where is my daughter?"

Benny gulped hard. He didn't want to answer that question. Maybe he could dash back to his room and hide. But he liked being with her, even in the grasp of her despair. She made him feel alive and meaningful. The gulf of silence grew, and he knew the question would not go away. Ellie would not be denied the truth even if it was horrible. He had to answer.

"She's..." Benny stopped and began again. "Why, she's dead, Ellie. Don't you remember? She's dead."