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Free Drinks

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“Ok,” Tuke said, rubbing his hands together, “What’s up for tonight?”

“I don’t know,” said Hipps. “I’m feeling kind of blue. I’m thinking I just lost my long time faithful companion and well loved family dog Jasper.”

“Seriously?” said Tuke. “That’s a drag. And, didn’t we kill Jasper off three months ago?”

“That was Whiskers,” said Hipps. “Family cat.”

“Still…what a downer.”

It was Free Drink Tuesday. Tuke and Hips sat in parking lot of the Carmalita Bar and Grill trying to invent their next story. It had to be real enough to elicit sympathy or celebration, there had to be just enough backstory for them to make it believable, but not so complex that they got lost in the details, it had to be something they didn’t have to prove and it had to be strong enough that they would ultimately score free drinks.

“Look,” Tuke said, “If you want to kill something, how about your beloved Uncle Tilk?”

“We killed him already.”

“Yeah, but that was months ago and don’t you remember how he loved to drink and tell jokes and…I loved Uncle Tilk.”

“He wasn’t real.”

“He was real to me,” Tuke said. “And I’ll never forget him. God rest his soul.”

“I’m just not feeling that up tonight,” Hipps said.

The two in invented Free Drink Tuesday about a year and a half ago as a way to have fun, stay edgy and ultimately…cut down on the amount of money they spent on drinks their monthly outings. They liked drinking.

The idea bubbled up between them one night as they worked their way through a number of Couldersville’s prime drinking establishments. It seemed bartenders and servers were generally happy to part with a few free drinks when someone was celebrating something, or trying to get over something.

They tried it themselves and found great success on their birthdays. The problem was they only had two birthdays between them and their birthdays that sat months apart from each other. It hardly provided a regular opportunity for them to score free drinks on a more frequent basis.

It wasn’t until a simple off the cuff remark from Tuke put them on the path to drink prosperity. The moment of realization was still fresh in his mind. Tanya, server extraordinaire at Barker’s Pub on route 33, tipped the scales in their favor.

Hipps was blue, again, and after grabbing their table, Tanya approached.

“Good evening gentlemen,” Tanya said while smiling and placing small napkins before them. “What are you all celebrating tonight?”

Tuke looked at Hipps who looked down at his napkin and wallowed in the eight seconds of silence that passed between them as Tanya looked on.

“He’s depressed,” Tuke said causing Hipps’s head to shoot up. “Yes, he depressed because his girlfriend…his long time girlfriend…his fiancé…of seven years just left him…to join the Marines.”

Another moment of silence passed as Tuke felt Hipps’s glare burn into him. The moment seemed an eternity until Tanya tilted her head to the side, stuck her lower lip out in a pout and said, “Well that is just about the saddest story I’ve heard all day. This first one is on the house.”

Ding! Free Drink Tuesday was born.

Since that moment, and every month since then, they have celebrated various life events well worthy of free drinks including such glorious moments as Tuke’s liberation from his capture by Somalian pirates, buddy colonoscopy, the passing of dear Uncle Tilk, the passing of Whiskers, buddy vasectomy, Tuke’s being stuck by lightning eight times and Hipps’s awakening from a coma that coincided with the passing of the comet Maltese on leap day.

Hit Song

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Toby Gerling knew that if he could write that one song, everything else would fall into place.

Toby had been banging piano keys from the moment he could reach them. He studied. He practiced, even when he didn’t want to. He learned enough to start writing his own stuff and he shared his songs with anyone who would listen.

So far the response was a very consistent, lukewarm, and noncommittal ho-hum; a judgment he didn’t embrace because the people he was getting to listing to his stuff were usually people consumed with there own problems. Getting them to sit and listen, really listen, for the four and a half minutes it might take was just too much of a commitment. It was more of a polite dismissal of him than the music itself.

He was good enough to join several bands in high school and he’d put together ‘Still Fackin’ with his friend Dinx (actual name Dexter Napoleon) Capstone after college. They were getting regular gigs and making enough money to keep Dinx in guitar strings, but he wanted to make his own music.

Much like the pleasant noise he got the first time he brushed those piano keys, he knew he wanted to be a songwriter the first time he heard Wonderbomb on the radio. It moved him and while he had yet to admit it out loud, the bit at the end where the orchestra just seems to explode can still bring tears to his eyes. If he could create something even half as good as that, he would be satisfied. Or, so he told himself.

Writing the next Wonderbomb bordered on the incredible and near impossible, as Dinx kept saying. And the problem wasn’t so much writing the next Wonderbomb as it was not rewriting the original.

The first few Tony Gerling originals had a sound very close to other songs that already existed. He tried hard to avoid it, and he never really heard it. But time and again, he would stumble on something that would be amazing only to have Dinx come into rehearsal to list all the artists and songs he was subconsciously copying.

It seems his Velvet Jacket borrowed heavily from Swinging Mama by the band Blueberry Cluster. His Tenuous Heart reminded Dinx of Smile that burns by The Radical Twins and pretty much everything else fell under the heavy influence of Wonderbomb by Max Henry.

He didn’t want to steal those songs. He wanted to be original. He didn’t even think of those songs when he wrote. He knew he was close. He knew it.

 

Poke

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When Chesley Biggins found the glowing, smoldering lump of rock in his backyard, his first impulse was to poke it with a stick. This was not a new idea for Ches. Over the years he had poked a great many things with a great many sticks. It was pretty much his first response to all things. In fact, in the foregone conclusion that he was going to poke something, the only question that ever rose within him was what kind of stick this particular poke required.

In the summer of his 13th year, Ches came across a dead owl and a dead skunk along Old Stickley Road. As he recalled, it was June and the sun was just picking up its summer steam. He found the owl early in the month and it was fairly fresh. In the lottery of dead things on the side of the road, an owl was pretty rare, so it took him a bit to identify the thing. Even then it wasn’t until a successful stick poke allowed him to see the beak that he was sure it was an owl.

That stick was probably about 18 inches long and even that might not have been long enough, for when he poked it to get it to roll, the essence of unsettling the dead seemed to shiver up his arm and into his spine.

The skunk came later in the summer and had spent a bit longer on the road. You didn’t get as many points for finding a skunk. They were super easy to identify and fairly common in Gimpmann’s Hollow. Still, with the memory of nudging the owl carcass over the tarmac still fresh in his bones, he felt the skunk required a much more substantial stick. He recalled it was a nice piece of birch that took both hands to swing into place. It certainly proved long enough to prevent the skunk’s death shivers from reaching into him. He also allowed that by the time he found it, the death shivers had time to escape.

Looking at the smoking, glowing rock thing, a thing that he was able to trace as it dropped from space and crashed next to his begonias, the poke was set in stone, but the stick…what stick would work best for an extraterrestrial poke?

The rock thing looked about a foot and a half wide. Peering at it with the inadequate glow of his porch light, he saw that the surface appeared smoother than he first suspected. He could kick himself for not bringing out that flashlight, but he wasn’t convinced that it had good batteries in it. The thing in the shallow hole didn’t move so he didn’t think it was alive. And because he was convinced it wasn’t alive, it wasn’t a far stretch to say it probably wasn’t dead; a key factor in determining stick length and girth.

The diameter was one consideration, but then he thought about weight. He quickly recalled something from Mr. Truman’s science about element density and how that could make even a small object misleadingly heavy. Then he recalled he never paid much attention in that class because it was the time when he obsessed over Donna Callingdale.

Next, there was the heat to consider. When he first got to it, he could feel the warmth on his face that reminded him of a campfire. He couldn’t squelch the notion of cooking a marshmallow over it, even if only for a moment. Still, it seemed to be cooling at a steady pace.

With his evaluation just about complete, he realized there was probably nothing in the immediate vicinity that would work. He figured the stick needed to be wood and taking into consideration the depth of the hole and the way it sat, it needed to be at least 36 inches long. It needed to be thicker than a yardstick, but something he could get a good grip on.

His mind tore through his available inventory. There were some two by fours in the garage, along with some branches he trimmed from the old apple tree and the shovel he borrowed last spring from Jennigs McCoy. There was an old banister that he replaced from the basement steps, but that would be too long.

Ah! As soon as he discarded the banister, he thought of the perfect stick for this poke, and if anything went wrong as a result, he would be ready to respond properly.

“Martha!” he said, turning his head a bit toward the house but keeping his eyes on the space thing. “Get me my Louisville Slugger!”

Superstar

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At nine years old, Maxie King was already a superstar, at least from within the confines of her bedroom. Her performances were legendary. She was a giving artist and the legion of stuffed animals and dolls clustered precariously on her dresser at the base of her full-size mirror created the most appreciative audience an artist could want.

The venue was practically built to her personal specifications. She aimed a couple of flashlights carefully taped to two small coat trees and placed on either side of her dresser to converge on her standing spot, her center stage. She saved a sheet of blue cellophane that once wrapped a present from Grandma Nell and cut it to cover the lights when she needed to ‘bring everything down’ for her slow songs, usually dedicated to one of the many non-blinking, eternally blissful stuffed creatures that stood before her.

Her wardrobe was enviable. Comprised of thrift store glitter dresses and a mosh of Halloween costumes from bargain bins next to newly placed Christmas decorations, Maxie made enough costume changes during her performance to put Cher to shame.  It made her shows both a spectacle, and often, exceedingly long.

Her microphone was real; a gift from Uncle Cal who said it didn’t work anymore. To Maxie, after she tucked the end of the cord into the bottom drawer of her dresser it worked fine for her. Tammy Dillard used a fake plastic one…amateur.

Rage

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Dart plopped himself into the driver’s seat of his car. He slammed the door with great authority and enjoyed the extra noise it made in the parking garage. He forced a calm into his hand so that the key slid into the ignition easily. His teeth clenched harder to take up the slack. The car came to life and he backed it out carefully, but his grip on the wheel was tight and unforgiving. He pulled around to and through the automatic gate and stayed relatively silent until he hit the street. At that point, he was free to unleash.

He started with a solid string of expletives, low and slow at first, but long enough to build to the point where the last few raked his vocal cords. His hands clenched the wheel tighter and as he stopped at the first traffic light, he let out a scream that both released an initial wave of frustration and a spray of saliva that dotted his windshield. Dammit! How he hated a dirty windshield.

Moving past the level of primal expression, he strung together actual words that formed hateful, yet basic rhetorical questions the car certainly would not be able to answer.

“What the hell was that?”

“What did they mean by that?”

“Who does that?”

“What kind of…”

Another primal shriek filled the enclosed space.

The radio had avoided drawing his attention that was, until the first words of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” seemed to hit him in the face. He hated Tainted Love.

“SHUT UP!”

Dart punched the dial, dropping the radio into silence. A tiny sense of reason rose from the back of his head. He hoped that he didn’t pop it so hard that he broke it. In general, his radio was his car ride companion and they logged hundreds of thousands of miles together in times far worse than this. He would miss it if he broke it and would be extra pissed to have to fix it.

Protector

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During the day, Johnsonville City promoted itself as a family friendly, family oriented, one-stop destination place for wholesome family fun. During the day, the music was bright, clowns and cartoon characters, littered the streets available for photo opportunities and the scent of candy and fried dough filled the air, almost like an overgrown county fair.

By night, Johnsonville City changed as completely and quickly as if someone flipped a switch. It was as if the moment the darkness of night put the sun to bed, the neon ignited to call the night people from the holes and crevices where they slept, or lay in waiting for their time

With the night, Johnsonville City unabashedly stepped away from its daytime self to embrace a darker persona. Still promoted as a one-stop shop for the ultimate entertainment experience, the focus shifts to the promise of delivering on the more base human needs and desires, the promise of luck, wealth, intimacy and anything else to make them forget their troubles, if only for a moment, and always at a price. The music was louder and angrier, the once pleasant smell of the day faded into the stale smell of garbage and smoke attacked by artificial scents that aim to complete the illusion. Dangerous men and women hawk their wares offering anything to anyone, they just needed a dark corner to discuss the terms.

Anne Kringer had no use for the day. Like the dark people, she closed out the light. She slept. She ignored the cloying façade of the city’s daytime image. There was too much history between them for her to buy in. If you came to Johnsonville City with your eyes open, it was easy to see what the city really was. You would either play by the rules as you knew them and take your chances, or better yet, you’d decide to go someplace else to find your fun or cure your soul.

A few years ago, she almost shook the stink of this town from her heals. She left the force with the bloodied face and lifeless body of Alisson Tudor burned forever in her memory. For as much as she yearned to leave, it was her failure, and the failure of the force sworn to protect all the Alisson Tudors, that kept her bound both to the city and the darkness.

The people deserved better and she swore to do everything she could to prevent the truly innocent souls from falling victim to the evils of the darkness, or die trying. Sometimes it took as little as shadowing someone to make sure they got where they needed to go. Sometimes, it required her wearing a mask.

Snob

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Carrington Phit was not a fan of the general public. It’s not that he hated people. It’s more that people, in their inherent predictability, never failed to prove themselves capable of even contemplating their true potential. More often than not, they preferred wallowing in their mediocrity and complaining about why they didn’t have more. They made victims of themselves.

Being successful took work. Even though his own path to success featured struggles and challenges that brought him to the brink of bankruptcy, both in money and in spirit, he could proudly say that he made it through and he was a better person for it.

Now, having achieved a certain stature in the human pecking order, he felt entitled to proceed through the rest of his years as he saw fit. In his mind, there were ways of doing things.  Some might consider his ways old-fashioned, you dressed for dinner out, you supported the proper community groups, at least monetarily, and you conducted yourself with a modicum of grace and refinement when in public.

His work required that he travel regularly. Often enough that he could access many of the various airline perks afforded the frequent flier. Still, it was not enough to keep him out of the flow of the general traveling public. He didn’t consider himself an elitist, but he did often wonder what happened to some of the refinement that used to come with traveling. It used to be special. Now people are treated like cattle and they often behave much the same way. They seemed all right with it. He was not.

Carrington viewed the lack of smart dress and diminished interpersonal skills as evidence of the ongoing social decay he felt all around him. Thanks to some idiot who tried to set his shoes on fire on a flight some years ago, he now had to go through the degrading practice of practically disrobing in order to get to his flight.  He worked to streamline the time he spent in these lines, but there was only so much he was willing to do.

That was another problem with people generally, their willingness to forego certain graces in the name of convenience, especially at airports, subjected him to a flood of ill-fitting clothing and more bare feet than he ever wanted to see beyond the boundaries of some Oceanside resort. Worse still, was the apparent lack of hygiene these poor feet enjoyed. Nauseating.

Paradise Gone

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George Pullman pulled into his driveway at the end of a long day’s work, three days after his vacation. It took a day and a half for the sheen of his time in the islands, that post-vacation euphoria, to evaporate in a cloud of reports, statistics, ratings and fiery circumstances allowed to develop in his absence that needed his immediate attention.

Fortunately, for him a gift awaited on the front step of his house, a gift to himself that he hoped would continue to connect him to the peace and tranquility of those glorious days in paradise, five cases of Manticoopa. Manticoopa was an island favorite and George fell in love with it the moment it crossed his lips. It wasn’t really a soda and it wasn’t really juice. It tasted heavenly any way you served it, straight, on ice, or as a mixer. In one case, he enjoyed a delightful dinner of delicate field quail marinated in Manticoopa and served with a light island fruit chutney.

Manticoopa held within it, the essence of the islands. A delicate balance of fruits mixed with a mango base that was never too sweet or too dry. It had a pleasant, light orange color, an ever so light effervescence so as not to disturb the flavor and the subtle scent of coconut reminiscent of the island breeze. Just thinking about it, he could almost feel himself drifting back to heaven.

His mood perked up considerably. The day might not be a total wash after all. He parked the car, rushed inside and brought the cases into the kitchen. The cost to bring these five cases to Cornington was ridiculous and impulsive. But he so wanted at least the notion of his vacation to continue that he was willing to do the work and pay the cost. One afternoon, he found a distributor willing to ship to the states. George made all the arrangements so that the shipment would arrive safely after his return so he was there to receive them. His work quickly consumed him and he nearly forgot that the cases were on the way.

Now, safely in the privacy of his own kitchen, he prepared to transport himself back to tranquility. He put on some island music, another small gift to himself, a CD of the hotel house band’s most requested songs. He pulled out a special glass intending to highlight the color and let the delicate beverage breathe. He opened case one and pulled out the first of 240 cans that he planned to meter out over the next few months, or whenever he needed a quick escape. He closed his eyes and breathed deep with anticipation as he snapped the top open to release this glorious nectar.   

The Manticoopa tumbled from the can into the glass, a bit darker than he remembered and with a bit more foam. The expectation of a subtle essence of coconut seemed lost in a cloud of fizz, but no matter, this is what he was waiting for. He let the beverage settle before bringing the glass to his lips and taking a full, deep sip. He held the fluid in his mouth and awaited the magic. 

His pursed lips that held back the fluid puckered. His eyes, once closed in anticipation squeezed tighter together as his brain tried to weed through the bombardment of messages coming from the mouth.

His mouth filled with a sour flavor half-reminiscent of a plum well past its prime and a healthy dose of a lemon based furniture polish. Whatever the taste, an immediate flood of saliva mixed with the unsettled concoction and forced him to move the fluid around in his mouth. Pushing it into his cheeks, the flavor transformed again into something more beer-like than fruity and the ever-present essence of stale, wet paper.

George forced himself to swallow. The after taste that coated his mouth forced him to run to the fridge, pull out a beer and cleanse the residue from his palette. He slammed the beer can down on the counter. He looked at the can of Manticoopa. He looked at the full glass minus one healthy swig. He looked at the expensive cases holding the 239 remaining cans, cans which he knew in that moment he would never drink. He looked at the floor. His vacation was truly over.

Matter

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Chalmers Penn began to think he didn’t matter anymore. He knew he still existed, but even when he looked in the mirror, he seemed a little less there. Not mentally, that was all good, but he could almost swear that he was fading.

This required some tests. He started on Monday. Something small, just in case it was a mental thing, he wore tennis shoes to work. Not is decent, casual Friday ones, but the ones he used to cut the grass, air-conditioned from a few holes and dyed stark green from the blood of a million blades of grass.

He had no meetings. No deliveries and his lunch pal, Bill was out of the office for two days so Monday seemed to be a bust. There were no opportunities for people to see his shoes, except for maybe Betsy whom he stopped by to ask a question, but she was deeply entrenched in a phone conversation, busily handling one of her standard fires and neglected to see him.

On Tuesday, he decided to bump things up a bit by wearing his old college Hawaiian party shirt and his grass cutting shoes. He had a fairly big meeting with Jolsten that afternoon and surely it would be a topic for discussion. Unfortunately, just as he got to Alice’s desk, Jolsten’s admin, she was cancelling his meetings for the rest of the afternoon and was informing Bolger, Jolsten’s boss, since his afternoon was clear, golf was a go.

On Wednesday, Penn decided to keep the shirt and the shoes and bump things up by getting drunk at breakfast and staying drunk all day. Not boomingly, stupidly drunk, but impaired enough to be noticeable. Near lunch time Bill swung around as he normally did, peeked over the rim of Penn’s cubicle and then wordlessly, hastily stepped away.

Did he see me or did he see me? Chalmers wondered. “Hey, Bill…” but Bill was gone.

In the cafeteria, by himself, he filled his tray with pretzels and three orders of fish strips. He stopped hiding his vodka bottle and left it right there on the tray next to the two cans of lemon-lime soda he would use to mix it in. He noticed no stares, no slight comments…nothing. In line to pay, the cashier offered a smile and a pleasant exchange to the lady before him and then visually skipped him to greet the man after him. He stood at the end of the line while she took three more customers before deciding to leave.

Thursday he avoided the mirror. He was afraid more of what he might not see than what he expected to see, less of him. His phone never rang. It was eight days since he received a text from anyone, and he was nearly run over by that bicycle delivery boy. He decided that he must take one more, potentially catastrophic test. He went to work entirely naked, with a few drinks in him for courage, and went about his day.

On Friday, Chalmers Penn’s apartment was quiet and empty. A few dirty dishes stood in the sink unattended, a clock on a bookcase ticked as it had dutifully for years, but Chalmers Penn was nowhere to be seen.

Dinner

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Lewis opened the door to the fridge with a sort of blind ignorance tied to a wish that maybe this time, there would be something there he might not be responsible for,  some kind of gift left by fairies, or trolls, or leprechauns.

Wrong again.

A quick visual survey confirmed the only things in there were things he put there and hadn’t used yet. Most of the things he couldn’t use without getting more things. Swinging the door wide, the light came up on three beers, two pounds of butter, an expired jar of green olives where the remaining two olives were floating in a murky brine, a dried up carrot, a tiny jar of orange marmalade someone got him from a recent trip to the sunny south and one slice of American cheese where the corners were getting hard because he neglected to close the Ziplock properly.

What was he doing with so much butter?

He grabbed one of the beers, now dinner, and the carrot. He tossed the carrot into the garbage bin, snapped the top off the beer and held it to his head. It was so hot he was convinced there was a sizzle when the can touched his skin.

The air conditioning blew out earlier this morning and being a bit late on the rent certainly didn’t seem to motivate the super into coming up to have a look at it.

The first course of dinner went down fast. He barely tasted it. He opened the fridge again, grabbed a second beer – the main course – and forced himself to slow down enough to make it last. He would try not to get at the last one tonight. What could be dessert might have to be breakfast in the morning.

He plopped himself down onto the chair of his nook-sized kitchen table and stared up at the bright, naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Sweat dripped down his face.

“What a mess,” he said softly to himself. It might have been the fifth time he said it in the last thirty minutes and he lost count of how many times it rolled across his mind this week. It was only Wednesday. There were still many more eye-opening moments of full failure realization to go before he had two solid days to wallow in his unfortunate circumstance free of the burden of weekly annoyances.

Of course, the rent was due on Friday, really two months worth now, and while part of his mind churned on any one of a number of creative excuses for not having the full amount this month, the other half was scheming away at how he could get the money in two days, and how getting the money would certainly turn things around…or at least start to turn things around.

All of his thoughts began with phrases like, “if I could just,” or “if only.” Phrases you might hear on a Saturday morning cartoon where Scooby and the gang are about to be done in by this week’s mystery, when “if only” results in a misstep, that results in an accident, that results in everything working out and the kids becoming heroes for saving the day.

Lewis had some pretty big “if onlys.” Short of running around his apartment shoving bookcases and trying to turn light fixtures to possibly reveal a secret passage or untold wealth, he was pretty certain there was no neat and clean Scooby ending awaiting him at the end of a 90 second commercial break.

He got up and walked to the fridge. It was probably just as good a night as any to have a little dessert.

That’s Crisco!

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Jake kicked his heels into the dirt at the base of the tree and leaned deeper into the shade. Biscuit sprawled out on his back across the grass and pulled his ball cap over his eyes to keep out the glaring summer sun. It was another glorious summer day, but after hitting the ice cream truck, riding their bikes through Mrs. McCatanney’s sprinklers and then all the way across Montgomery Field, they found it was a good time for a break.

“We should invent our own language for stuff,” Biscuit said

“What do you mean? Like a code?”

“Kind of, sort of, not really. A code is something that only we would use. Like when we came up with ‘Sparlez.’ We had Charles, who is a spaz, and we mixed them up to make Sparlez. That’s a code. If we made up a language, everybody could use it.”

Jake squinted up the sun then clamped his eyes shut. He traced the remnant aura back and forth under his eyelids. “Oh, you mean like how people say, ‘cool.’”

“Yeah.”

“That’s dumb. Why would we do that? Who would use our language?”

Biscuit rolled over onto his elbow letting his hat drop to the ground. “If it was good enough, everybody would use it. We’d be famous!”

“You’re a dork.”

“Shut up. And you just proved my point. Who do you think came up with dork?”

“I don’t know. Some dork. He’s certainly not famous.”

“Just because we don’t know him, doesn’t mean he’s not famous for coming up with the word. That could be us.”

“You want to be a dork? No, a ‘dork-maker’?”

“No, I want to make cool names for stuff that other people will use liiike…Crisco!”

“You are now a super-dork!” Jake said laughing and resetting his feet. “Crisco is already a word.”

“Yeah – but we can use Crisco to mean something is slick. ‘That’s pretty Crisco!’ That’s pretty slick. See?”

Biscuit rolled over onto his back again and reset his hat.

“How about, gelatinous?” Jake said.

“Hm…gelatinous,” said Biscuit. “Good word, but what’s it mean in our language? Use it in a sentence.”

“Ok.” Jake paused in thought. “The plan to get Jerry Brigg’s Jonathan Tyler rookie card was gelatinous. It means, the plan is good, almost super solid and can work, but it might be a little shaky.”

“That’s not bad,” Biscuit said. “How about, needs soap? Like, you know how Chester Ding always smells like armpit? We could just say, ‘needs soap’ and leave it just like that.”

“That’s like code.”

“I guess, a little,” said Biscuit. “At least until it catches on.”

“I don’t know,” said Jake. “It all sounds pretty paper to me.”

Biscuit sat up. “Paper?”

“Yeah, paper, super thin. Probably not going to work. See what I did there?”

“I see. That’s Crisco!” Biscuit said pulling himself up. “Let’s go write these down. It’s too hot out here.”

“You mean it’s…solar!”

“I guess. Let’s go.”

“Don’t you mean let’s…zoom?

Biscuit straddled his bike. “I think I created a monster.”

“Do you mean you created a…jumpdog?”

“Shut up already!”

“Are you telling me to…pop mouth?”

“Come on! Shut up! Let’s go…let’s Zoom!”

 

Fourth Date

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Corvis suspected the date could have gone better.

It was their fourth official date overall. They had done things with groups of people and there were several events where they both showed up and did the “hanging out” thing, so his association with Melody had some time behind it. Up until now, he felt there might even be some roots here from which they could grow a strong relationship.

That thought made him pause. He wondered why, when he thought of relationships, his analogies always involved farming. Being a middle manager at Allus-Smith made him pretty much the farthest thing from a farmer, and the very pathetic looking “lucky bamboo” on his desk sealed the notion should there be any lingering doubt.

Mulling over the evening, he was hard pressed to put a finger on where things took a turn. Dates one through three went nicely. They built on each other as one might prep a field for planting. (There it was again.)

The fourth date seemed polluted with missteps and awkward moments. Maybe they were both off their game a little bit. The conversation seemed forced, the jokes – stale. They ate a quiet dinner and the evening capped with his grand statement about the suffering souls in third world countries and how things wouldn’t be so bad for them if…

He couldn’t recall the exact remark now, but once it left his lips he knew it was bad. Like stepping in something unfortunate, he knew it was not where he wanted to be, but his foot was right in it.

Her recoil to the remark, which he was sure he meant as a joke, was contained, yet her face let slip a certain amount of hurt or discomfort, he couldn’t say which, as if he said something pointed and hurtful at her directly. He learned in date two that she was born and raised, like her entire family, in Muncie and lived there until almost recently. This stint in Chicago was the farthest she had ever been away from home, much less a third-world country.

Dates one through three ended with shy smiles, and “let’s do this again…soon,” sort of phrases. This date ended with thank you, I’m tired, drive safe.

As he pulled away from her building, making a mental note that third-world country jokes were straight off the table, he feared he was being immortalized in her diary as another example of what she did not want her future mister to be. That her impressions of him, certainly unfair at this point, would be added to however many men she made notes about, that when considered collectively would guide how she moved forward into future relationships. That’s what women do right?

If date five happens, if by some miracle he figures out what triggered the chill and she is able to resolve his callous thoughts in her own mind, he resolved to step more carefully. If he can figure out what the error was, he will apologize. Unless bringing it up re-stirs the pot, then he would let it go. Then of course, he runs the risk of not acknowledging the error, cementing the notion that he is an uncaring clod and being definitively and officially marked in her diary as Mr. Wrong.

Storm clouds seemed to come from nowhere and while the promise of rain is good for the seeds of a new relationship, a torrent, a flood will only destroy them.

A scowl crossed his face. What was with the farming thing?

The List

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Percy Collins had a list a mile and a half long filled with things he had to do. He wasn’t sure how many items actually fit on a list a mile and a half long. Of course, it was theoretical. If there were an actual list, the font size used to create it would be critical in determining the number. It was easier to just say, a million.

Of that million, missing amongst the stare at the moons, the climb the mountains, the take exotic trips to Canada, was ‘become a successful businessman.’  

He didn’t care much about becoming a successful businessman, and by much he meant, not at all. That said, he seemed to spend most of his time working toward just that. He joined his father’s business shortly after college. After his father got sick, he took on the whole of the business full-time. He worked hard. He worked long hours. He was good with people, and he supposed to some degree, he was good at business.

Still, when he rolled out of bed in the morning he was about as excited to get to work as one might be excited to go to the doctor, a doctor who kept trying to find the elusive cause to a dull and nagging pain or a spreading rash. There never seemed to be a cure or resolution. It never ended. It just led to another series of appointments, pokes, prods and tests.

A younger Percy fancied himself an artisan. He was good with his hands. He liked the notion of looking back and seeing something stand for a day’s work. He liked tile. He liked baking. They were simple concepts and honest trades, but often seen by some, mostly in the business world, as ‘less than” because they rarely garnered the potential of huge deals, huge payoffs, and a businessperson’s warped sense of professionalism.

He went to work. He did his job. He was honest, and dedicated and worked to improve himself. Then he would go home, eat dinner, have a nightcap and nod off in front of the evening news thinking of his list. Canada…

Into the sea

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Candice Wingmare stood before the collected group of 20 second graders, her kids.

Until this moment, they had never met. She knew little about them and she suspected that looking back on this moment years from now, she might realize she knew very little about herself. Still, here they were together in room 110 of the Tannis Valley Elementary School, and from this moment until June 12th at 2:25 pm, these were her kids.

The fresh faces hovered over crisp and clean, first day of school outfits. Some smiled. Some sat expressionless, but their eyes offered a touch of apprehension at the newness of if all. All were quiet. All of them were…waiting.

This was Candice Wingmare’s first day. She was launching a career. She envisioned herself smashing a bottle of champagne on the door of her classroom, like they might do before releasing a new ship into the sea. She was like a ship. The classroom was like the sea. There were maps and charts and plans on how to get across it. There ways to tell when trouble might be brewing, or when one could expect smooth sailing.  She should be fine.

Tricks and tips.

However, like the sea, the classroom held within it mysteries untold and lurking dangers. Like the sea, all the maps and charts and instruments in the world become useless when the forces that lie within decide to assert themselves. Like the sea, we can only prepare for what we know and hope that what we know is enough, and that we are clear enough in thought, and determined enough in spirit to weather any storm the sea may produce.

These 20 strange faces looked at Candice Wingmare with hope, expectation, fear, and anticipation. They silently threw down a challenge.

Teach us.

She drew a deep calming breath and placed her hands on the top of her desk for support.

“Good morning, cla…class,” she said softly. He voice dropped a bit near the end forcing her to say class twice, almost like she forgot what she was going to say. Not at all like she had practiced.

The silence of the room seemed to expand as the sound of her voice stifled the last few shuffling feet and bits of paper.

The heat that worked its way up into her face brought a sort of light-headedness with it that made her clench the edge of the desk a bit harder. She drew another deep breath hoping against hope that she would not pass out.

“My name is Miss Wingmare and I’ll be your teacher this year. I’m so happy to see you all, because I think we have a great year planned and I think we’re going to have a lot of fun. We have a lot of special things you’ll get to do this year. We have two new computers in our class. I understand there are a few of you who are new to our school like I am. This is my first year, and I’m so very excited to get to know you and have you get to know me better. Is there anyone who would like to lead us in the pledge?”

By the time she got to pledge, Candice’s head was swimming. She said all that on one breath. She swallowed a deep breath as if she just rose up from a long swim underwater. Her head cleared and she tried to replay the last moments over in her head to try and remember what she said.

The class sat quietly for a second and whatever blurriness that came to her vision during her brief opening rant started to fade. Then, 20 hands shot into the air.

Right, the pledge.

She smiled, she relaxed and as she raised her hand to select the smallish girl in the middle of the third row, the ship of Candice Wingmare’s teaching career headed out to sea.

Life Must

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Tenard had few preconceptions. He was not a religious man. He had very little use for the concepts of luck, fate or karma. Life was. Things happen. You roll with it and move on or get caught up in it and get washed away.

Still, after a particularly lengthy string of events, which many might categorize as “bad” or at least “carrying the potential for negative impact,” Ten decided he need to change…something.

He named his new game, “Life Must.”

The rules were simple. Taking into consideration every new age, self-help piece of drivel he ever read, he knew the only thing he could control in life is how he reacted to things as they happened around him. And since his doctor said it might be good for him to find a higher level of tolerance for things he couldn’t control, rule one was: Life must want you to see this. Take in what you can and learn from it.

Rule two.  Look beyond the hassle to find the opportunity.

Rule three. Look down the road. What are the long-term goals, benefits or repercussions of how you react to the things that happen.

Rule four. Shut up. Very few things require immediate evaluation, categorization and commentary. Observation is like eating a giant piece of hard candy. It takes time.

That was it. Four rules in and out, unless he needed to add more, which, since it was his game, he had the full authority to do. He planned on playing the game for 30 days as he read that is how long it takes to make a good change or, at the very least, create a new habit.

He was 4 days in.

Day four – Having already overslept, he took a deep breath in while in the shower and uttered his mental mantra. Life must want you to be late today.

Running late, of course meant more traffic, but Life must want him to slow down. Coming up to the next exit, he realized there was another way to get to work and he could either sit in traffic or move. Life must want him to move.

Pulling off, he got about four and a half blocks before some roadwork on a broken water pipe forced him yet again to alter his path. Life must really think being late to work is a great idea. He took some deep breaths and listened for his pulse. Be calm lad.

The new detour led him to Barney’s Fresh Donut Emporium and Exotic Bakery. Ten had never been there, and with as quick an impulse decision as he ever made, he turned into the parking lot and into the drive-thru lane. As he pulled up to the menu, he decided Life must want him to try one of Barney’s signature Organic Banana-Walnut Imperial Joy Muffins. He paused after collecting his bag and paying. Life must want him to bring in some donuts for the crew at work. Ten drove around again to the drive-thru window.

Once he arrived at work, nobody seemed to notice the time. They were thrilled with the donuts, except for Lewis who needed to share, in detail, why he couldn’t eat donuts and what, in detail, they did to his system if he did.

At that point, Life must have wanted Ten to call Lewis an ass under his breath. Day four was shaping up nicely.