A diverging chapter, maybe enough for a cup of tea.

[Paul \\ Every Night]

Chapter 5

The storm seemed, if anything, to be growing even stronger now. The world beyond the confines of the train seemed to have disappeared behind layers of driving white snow that streaked by on the other side of the glass, but suddenly Rebecca sensed that the train was moving along more slowly than before.

Sam was asleep again, his head on her lap, and she couldn’t help but rub his temples. His body seemed to relax when she did, like his body seemed to completely fall away into her enveloping touch, and she found she enjoyed giving him such a gentle respite from his pain. He hadn’t been able to hold anything down, but at least the Zofran was controlling his nausea – and the fentanyl patch was helping him rest a little.

The lumbering car moved over a switch and lurched to the right and he stirred, then opened his eyes a little. She looked down at him and smiled when he caught her eye, and then a little boy’s smile crossed his face. Innocent, not a care in the world.

The she saw a tremor of pain crease his brow and his eyes shifted.

“Have I been down long?” he asked.

“Maybe an hour. Are you feeling any better?”

He sat up gingerly and immediately closed his eyes as waves of vertiginous nausea came for him, then he took a deep breath and held on for a moment, waiting for it to pass. “Light headed,” he sighed as he tried to come to terms with this latest development. “What the devil is going on?”

“The Zofran. It’s not a common side effect, but it happens. Take it a few more times and your blood pressure ought to stabilize.”

“I’m having the weirdest dreams. Really lucid, like wide screen technicolor epics…”

“That’s the Fentanyl.”

“Damn, I think I like that stuff. Great ideas for new music in there,” he said, suddenly grinning at the thought. “But I guess a lot of music has been written ‘under the influence.’”

“You think that still goes on? I thought that was kind of a sixties thing…”

He chuckled at that little slice of naïveté. “I think you almost have to be under the influence of something to write good music, but…I don’t necessarily mean booze or drugs…”

“Oh, what do you mean…?”

“Well, writing anything is on one level a reflection of the moment, and all our moments are under the influence of…something. Things like love or anger…or despair…” His eyes drifted as he said that last word, and she saw another change come over him.

“Is that what you feel right now? Despair?”

He closed his eyes, drifted into her question and tried to feel his way to an answer. “I guess I do, yes. Maybe a lot, but it comes and goes. Not so much since last night.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“I think running into you changed something. Something about the direction of…or maybe…”

“Maybe…what?”

“I’m not sure…I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something feels different…”

“Could you, I don’t know, maybe put these feelings into a song?”

“I don’t know,” Sam replied, his voice now little more than a coarse whisper as he turned and watched the streaking snow.

“I think maybe you need to, Sam. To me…it feels like you’re holding onto your feelings, not letting them go.”

He nodded in understanding, but then he shrugged, and she saw an ambivalent toss of his shoulders and wondered where that had come from. “Maybe some feelings are better left alone,” he sighed.

“Not if holding them in makes you sick.” 

“Do you really think that’s possible?”

She gently shook her head. “Are you kidding? Sam, stress will wear anything down, and it affects people in all kinds of unexpected ways. Stupid things like skin problems when you’re a teenager, but heart attacks and stroke when you get to be our age.”

“One of my oncologists told me that stress can impact survival rates.”

Rebecca nodded.

“So,” he continued, “what stresses you out?”

The question hit her hard – because suddenly she couldn’t recall ever experiencing stress, and she knew that wasn’t possible.

“Well?” he added, now prodding her, wanting to reassert some kind of control over his dwindling reserves of emotion.

“You know…I can’t remember feeling…anything…”

“What? You can’t remember…?”

“No, Sam, that’s not what I’m saying. I can’t remember anything. Anything at all.”

He looked at her again, scowling as he watched waves of sudden fear cloud her eyes. “You alright? You look kind of pale…”

“Images. Sam, it feels like I’m seeing images flash by. Images – like memories – only I don’t think they’re – my memories…”

“What?”

“Like old eight millimeter film clips, the colors are all faded and I can see splotchy flashes of light…”

As he watched the snow he also took in her reflection in the glass, and she seemed to fade away.

+++++

She went to the record player and gently laid her ancient copy of West Side Wind onto the turntable, then hit the ‘play’ lever to start the mechanical ballet that seemed hidden within, waiting to be called into action; she watched the platter spin-up to speed, then the tone arm as it lifted from it’s cradle and then swung out over the platter, settling over the opening track on side one before floating down to the shiny black surface of the pressed vinyl recording…

“Do you remember when he wrote this one? You were still so little…” Rebecca asked Tracy. She held out her arms as his daughter came back to her side, and Rebecca closed her eyes as his music came for her once again.

And as Tracy held onto her mother, she too closed her eyes and waited…

And then, as her father’s voice filled the room once again, there he was. Soft, flickering images from the camera in her mind, her father sitting on the stone hearth by the fireplace, gently cradling the old Martin guitar that had never been far from his side, his strong fingers finding their way to the perfect chord. She felt his love coursing through his fingers before his words took shape and began streaming through the air to her soul, and once again she felt the eternal connection he had created for her. For them. 

She felt her mother beginning to sway as his words caressed the air around them, and Tracy couldn’t help but move with the sudden reunion, and she felt like she and her mother were as waves of wheat bending to a wind that had just passed over the fertile prairies of his music.

Her memory was completely alive now, and in her mind’s eye her father was sitting across from her – his music playing in her mind’s eye as he watched. He had by then been fighting his cancer for almost two years, and she remembered wondering about that. She’d been too young to really understand, yet even so his pain had shown on his brow, even now – in her recollections of him.  He had lost all his hair, even his eyebrows, and though he had always been quite thin, as he sat there in the stereopticon’s flickering light he radiated an emaciated sickness – yet his voice was, and would always be sonorously clear. His voice…as imprinted within the vinyl grooves of remembrance…would always be pure to her.

Her mother was trembling now, Tracy knew her own tears would come soon enough. They always did, and she resented her weakness. She wanted smiles to come when she listened to her father’s music, not sadness, not the memory of him slipping away into the warm embrace of Morpheus. Most of all, she wanted to be strong for her mother.

When the last song on the first side played, a quiet piece of lights and trees that spoke to their last Christmas together, she gently pulled away from her mother and walked to the fireplace – and sat where he had. She felt the solid stone underneath give way to the moment, her fingers searching for communion within the rock, her face upturned, her eyes closed as she searched for him, and she watched again as he opened his present on their last Christmas morning together.

His smile. Always that smile.

That’s what she remembered most of all – that smile when he opened the beribboned box and watched in utter amazement as a puppy, a fuzzy-black Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, bounded out of the box and into his arms. He’d always wanted one and there he was in her flickering memory, all smiles with his arms around the pup, and right then and there he’d promptly named the little critter Max.

Then she remembered that afternoon a year later, holding onto Max as she watched her father slip away from the light, then burying her face in the pup’s neck, feeling his soft tongue chipping away at her denial, and she’d wondered then as she wondered now if she’d ever really be able to feel anything ever again.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, every last word of it…

[Randy Newman \\ Red Bandana]

Gnews \\ Inflection Points

It’s been a while since I openly got on my soapbox about the various things going on around us these days, but there’s just so much of interest happening right now…well…I hope you’ll indulge this little diversion.

First, a few words about life here at Chaos Manor.  Mention has been made concerning Erica’s health and the amount of time I’ve not been writing as a result. That’s just a function of age, I think, but she’s ten years younger than myself and I had hoped that this differential would work out for both of us. Such has not been the case. She’s had a handful of surgeries this year, but a new heart condition now means that more surgery is problematic – so we are walking on eggshells here.

Last August, I palpated a small tumor on my beloved Heidi’s neck. Springers typically live ten to twelve years and she was ten at the time, so these things aren’t completely unexpected or out of the blue, yet even so this development hit me hard. Perhaps the anxiety I’d felt concerning Erica contributed to all my angst, but regardless, we took Heidi to see various doctors and surgeons and soon we had to come to terms with her cancer.

Heidi and I met in Oregon when my oldest sister was dying; in a sense she became my therapy dog. As my sister slipped away I held onto Heidi with a ferocity I’d never known, yet she absorbed my pain and gave me an endless supply of love in return. She was with me when I moved from Awaken, my boat, to Colorado, and still with me when we moved to Wisconsin. Not to make too much of it, but in ten years she never left my side. When I had to drive into Steamboat Springs on an errand she was by my side, and when I pulled out my trusty Honda snowblower to clear the driveway…well, yeah, she walked right along beside me. When our day was done she’d hop up on the bed and nestle into my neck and we’d fall asleep listening to each other breathe. In a word, we were close.

When the day finally came, we took Heidi to the vet and she knew what was coming. She hopped up on my lap and buried her face in my neck while the doctor did his thing and I held her as she passed. The last thing she heard was me telling her to check out the trail ahead, and that I’d be along in a little bit. I could not let go of her. I still haven’t been able to…not completely. And I doubt I ever will.

Heidi taught me about souls, and all about unconditional love. And though I miss her terribly I have two of her children, and one of her granddaughters, by my side. Suzy, her daughter, understands what has happened, and she is with me now, by my side.

[Andrew Weathers \\ High Tide on the Land Ocean]

So. Inflection points can be quite personal. Still, there is so much going on right now that is not, and yet so much appears to be unreconciled chaos, but then again…

Let’s look at a couple, okay?

Point 1: Kriegstüchtig

The Gnews from Ukraine depresses, unless your day job takes you inside the Kremlin, or to an office deep inside No. 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. If such is the case, well…good for you. Funneling all that money into operations buying off Republican Party operatives on The Hill is finally paying off (just ask Lev Parnas). Felix would be so proud. Really, he would. You pulled it off. Political polarization is now endemic in Washington, thanks to you – and your efforts via the clan Murdoch.

The current iteration of the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War (which commenced when Russian commandos infiltrated Kiev on 2/22/22, for those into numerology) had for a time appeared to be headed for a stalemate, but thanks to said operatives in Washington and its poisoned environs, as well as the concerted efforts of El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, Prince Vlad appears to be having his Neville Chamberlain moment – leaving Ronald Reagan to spin ever so slightly in his grave. 

Echoing recent comments by leaders of the three eastern Baltic states in NATO (those would be Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, for those not keeping up with the score), the German defense minister Boris Pistorius said last weekend that Herr Putin would not stop when he is finished with Ukraine. He stated (and quite plainly – for a politician, anyway) that the people of Germany would need to become kriegstüchtig, which translates in the current context as “fit for war,” adding that Germans needed to decide – and rather quickly, too – “whether we want to prepare ourselves for the real threat from Putin or whether we want to make it easy for him”. Pistorius invoked Churchill, and if you can’t find the irony in that…well…heaven help us.

And now, into this caldron of uncertainty, enter, stage right: El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago. Despite his absence from Washington, The Orange One has decided that American foreign policy would best be dictated from south Florida. Ukraine’s lifeline, vis-a-vis the Congress of the United States, has been dutifully severed by Herr Putin’s rightfully purchased politicians. With aid to Ukraine, as well as Israel and Taiwan, all now tied up indefinitely by El Caudillo, all Herr Putin needs to do is sit and wait for the next shoe to drop. 

So shoe…you ready to drop yet?

[Hayden Pedigo \\ The Happiest Times I ever Ignored]

Point 2: Die Täuschung

Putin’s problem has been simple, at least so far. After festivities commenced on 2/22, neither China nor Iran were ready to commit to the next phase of Vlad’s operation, so he had to entice them a bit…reel them in slowly. First, he had to let Xi help him build up his military industrial complex (ahem, he had to sell his oil somewhere, didn’t he?), letting China become a little more dependent on Russia. And a desperate Iran needed an export market for its military drones (to raise needed capital), though their drones were clearly inferior to models made by Turkey and South Korea, and they were cheaper, too, so the Ayatollahs got onboard with Putin, made their deal with the devil they knew and started shipping their products north across the Black Sea. In exchange, the Ayatollahs agreed to stir up the hornet’s nests in Syria and Yemen. 

Why? To annoy the Big Bad Wolf, as Biden is known around Dzerzhinsky Square.

So Iran got Hamas involved, and the Israelis got their October Surprise. Then Putin and the Ayatollahs sprinkled in a dash of Hezbollah to go along with some spicy disinformation aimed at gullible students in New York, Massachusetts and California, and all of a sudden the Big Bad Wolf was all wrapped up in “domestic political considerations” – because, after all, there’s an election looming. But then, to Putin’s surprise and utter joy, the Israelis went after civilians in Gaza with completely unexpected savagery, so much so that further disinformation in the United States was proving unnecessary. Now all Vlad had to do was get Iran to stir up some new trouble in Yemen and just like that, two aircraft carrier battle groups that had been lending their air wings to operations around Ukraine disappeared, heading south to the eastern Med. Then Netanyahu & Co bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus and quicker than you can say casus belli the Israelis handed Putin the gift he had hoped for – and suddenly the Iranians were ready to commit to their part of the grand bargain.

[Ulrich Schnauss \\ A Forgotten Birthday]

Point 3: Das große Schnäppchen

The operational tempo on an aircraft carrier under such conditions is, to say the least, exhausting on both personnel and equipment. Six month deployments under these conditions are debilitating. Steam catapults, like those found on all US carriers except the Ford (CVN-78), are especially needy (and, FYI, the next Ford class ship, the JFK [CVN-79], won’t be commissioned until 2025, with the Enterprise [CVN-80] due in 2029); ships on patrol need to return to Norfolk after extended periods of intense activity – or things start to break.

Which brings us to WESTPAC, or the Western Pacific TOE (theatre of operations).

Where all of a sudden it looks like Xi is ready to put some real pressure on the Philippines. The Fat Boy in North Korea is up to real mischief, too, with intel weenies in Ft Meade aghast at the revelation that Iran has been inquiring about the possibility of getting their hands on a nuclear warhead, and you have to wonder what Xi thinks of this. “Is Putin moving too fast?” he might wonder.

The second world war in the Pacific was a carrier war, and Japan knew this better than everyone else (aside from FDR, anyway), which explains why the Japanese are busily building a new carrier, their first since the debacle at Midway in 1942, and wouldn’t you know it…the Fat Boy is getting ready to resume nuclear testing…

This is where the frog in warming water starts to squirm.

So China is making noise in the Southwest Pacific (requiring the attention of at least one US carrier) while the Fat Boy is freaking out everyone in Japan and South Korea (requiring another US carrier to remain in the Northeast Pacific).

See a pattern here?

America’s carrier forces are being pulled away from…both the North Atlantic and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and this is now A Very Bad Thing.

That Putin, Xi, the Ayatollahs and the Fat Boy are all coordinating these efforts is well known. What is not currently known is the timing of their planned festivities. Their known objective, to replace the American world order established in 1945 with one of their own design, ain’t exactly news, but most everyone in Ft Meade thinks the party will begin in 2030 or thereabouts.

But what if they’re wrong.

[PM \\ Junk]

Point 4

These inflection points converge somewhere in the future, but while that time is locked away somewhere inside Putin’s mind, there are more than a few things going on right now that lead to troubling conclusions.

The first of these will be upon us on the first Tuesday of November 2024. Putin’s last best chance of avoiding a large land war in Europe comes with the possible election of his bought and paid for agent, El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago. Putin must assume that if El Caudillo emerges victorious and resumes his employment in the oval office, the US will simply hand over the keys to the empire…and who knows…he may be correct in that assumption. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party fought FDR right up to Pearl Harbor, so this group has long history of short-sighted obstructionist behavior in congress to fall back on, but what if the isolationists have the White House? That would be the perfect storm Putin could be counting on.

But what if El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago loses in November?

Well, El Caudillo has stated that any election he loses is rigged, and he’s convinced about thirty percent of the people in this country that the system is rigged against them, which brings us to an even more interesting scenario. He wants a bloodbath this time.

And a movie was released last week, Alex Garland’s Civil War, an amusing bit of fiction that speaks quite openly about a subject most people in this country would, at this point, rather ignore, to wit: the idea that United We Stand (and divided we fall). If you’ve not seen the film, you should do so. It is loud and viscerally shocking, but the film asks a question we should all be willing to answer: Is this Union more important than one man’s ambition.

But back to the main point.

If the US were to fall into some kind of post-election chaos, and if the civilian chain of command was to be called into question, would that not be the perfect time for Putin and his axis of evil to make their move?

So, think about inflection points in those terms.

Vlad’s invasion of Ukraine has had the exact opposite effect of the thing he wanted most, disunity and chaos in NATO. And now European leaders are united in the common knowledge that there is b-b-big m-m-money to be m-m-made undertaking a crash rearmament program, and these European efforts could begin to bear fruit – in a few years. 

A few years? Europe united AND rearmed? 

“Dare I wait?” Putin asks the aging face in the mirror.

And why is it that Russia’s most advanced new weaponry, including the Armada tank, the Sukhoi-57, and all those new submarines have all been conspicuously absent from the present conflict. And why have the most well trained units of his army remained well away from the front lines of the battlefield? The war has provided some of his NCOs and low level commissioned officers a venue to gain valuable combat experience, but their value now is to return to the Urals and pass on that experience. 

Will they have had enough time by November?

But then an interesting thing happened late last week, and not in Israel or the Western Pacific.

No, it happened off the Swedish coast.

When a Russian Air Force Ilyushin Il-20M violated Swedish airspace. The aircraft is an ELINT variant of the old Il-18, redesigned to snoop out all kinds of electronic signals intelligence and, more importantly, to perform radar imaging and mapping of coastlines. The aircraft spent most of its time flying around Gotland, the Swedish island at a chokepoint in the Baltic that was once referred to as the largest aircraft carrier in the world. Also, those Russian submarines have been snooping around the area recently – which is curious, given that until recently they have been lurking around the undersea cables that connect the US to Europe.

So you need to ask yourself…Why now?

If you take Gotland in your opening move, then take the Suwałki Gap, you cut off the three Baltic states – and then you force NATO’s hand. Is Article 5 invoked? Does the third world war commence? Or is everyone too afraid to take that chance. If so…Putin wins.

So here we are, with more and more inflection points plotting all kinds of new curves. Connecting the dots, points on a graph that seem to be leading to – what exactly? These points can lead in several directions all at the same time, but in the end we’re watching an orchestrated performance, the last act of the Soviet Union, because nothing much has changed since Reagan called the Russian culture out as The Evil Empire (and George Kennan told us so, too). But here’s the real question. If El Caudillo is indeed a true Putin ally, is he not evil? But how could this man take the throne again without Putin’s and Murdoch’s machinations. What the hell is going on?

And here’s some more irony: if Russia and China still feel like they need to run the world, why do they still blame the United States for all the flaws in their economic systems. Are those faults really of our design? And if Iran hates the US because of our support for Israel, surely they understand that we still hate them for 1979 (and yes, I know, they still hate us for 1953). And let us not forget…the poor Fat Boy hates the US because, presumably, we never franchised Weight Watchers over there.

I doubt Karl Marx would like anyone in this rogue’s gallery, but there you have it – they are what we have and there are no deals to be made with our fate. Personally, I still sort of like Joe Biden. He’s a decent man, and he looks you in the eye when he shakes your hand, but there is a very real possibility that he really could be too old to handle what’s coming his way, and let’s not forget: he’s an Old School Democrat like Dukakis and Mondale, which means he may be in way over his head. Still, I doubt he’d hand over the keys to the kingdom, which is exactly what El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago has been told to do. Bought and paid for, you might say.

Me? Frankly, I’d rather James Stavridis was somewhere in the White House, but that’s just me. I think Mr Putin would think twice if Stavridis was standing watch, but that is not to be.

But, be that as it may…as you go about your day think about these inflection points, and where they might be taking us, the few I’ve pointed out here, and the ones sure to come between now and November. There’s so much going on and it all really is quite interesting…in a way like watching moves on a giant chessboard. I doubt there’s much anyone can do to affect the outcome at this point in the game, so you might as well just sit back and enjoy the next move. 

In Conclusion

I still hope to keep on writing. It keeps me busy, keeps my mind working and there are too many loose ends in these stories that need to be tied up.

But I’m reading more. Check out Punk’s War by Ward Carrol, and Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen. I waded through Rural White Rage by Schaller and Waldman so you wouldn’t have to, and you probably shouldn’t either, unless your blood pressure is under good control. Admiral Stavridis published 2034 a few years ago (imagine a naval war between the US and China, then India gets the last word) and it’s worth a read, and he recently put out 2054 (not read yet) which deals with AI and warfare.

If you’ve not watched The Three Body Problem on Netflix I think you might find it worthwhile (I’m starting the books now). Also on Netflix, Leave the World Behind ought to provoke a little existential dread (especially considering the Obamas produced it), or try Don’t Look Up for a laugh. The Adam Project is great to watch with any teens in your life, and gain, I think the new Civil War film is worth taking in.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. It’s funny, but little Suzy gets up on the bed at night and she lays with me for a while, but every now and then her head pops up and she looks around and I think she’s a little confused. I know she’s looking for her mother, for my Heidi, and I know she’s still waiting for her to come back to us. I keep Heidi’s ball handy, so the next time I see her I’ll be ready.

[Dominic Miller \\ Urban Waltz]

While you prepare your cup of tea think of a forest, a cool rain forest at twilight. You’re walking on an ancient trail that winds through and between thick ferns, the air is full of the scent of wild orchids. There are no sounds save for your breathing and the wind passing through the impossibly tall redwoods that tower overhead…

Are you alone?

Is it possible to ever really be alone?

[Blind Faith \\ Can’t Find My Way Home]

Chapter 4

“Why, Mom? Why’d you do it?” Tracy asked her mother as they walked home after school.

“Mr. Murphy thought it would be a good idea. So did I – at the time.”

“So after all these years not telling anyone, now everyone knows he was my dad?”

Rebecca nodded as she walked into the house, then she walked straight into the living room and up to the huge window that looked out over the water. The afternoon fog she’d felt building was now rolling in and she held onto herself, warding off the coming chill. “Maybe we should get a few logs. This feels like a good night for a fire.”

“You’re changing the subject again, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what to say, Tracy,” Rebecca sighed. She remembered an afternoon just like this one, only with Sam standing next to her as they’d watched another thick fog rolling in. She closed her eyes, could almost feel him standing by her side, feel his heart beating next to hers. They’d known each other only a few weeks but already she was sure he was the one.

“It’s getting cold out,” she remembered him saying. “Don’t you need a sweater?”

“Let’s put on a fire. My dad’ll be home soon and it’ll be nice to have a fire going.”

They’d gathered armfuls of split logs and Sam had stood back and watched as she got the fire going, then they’d sat and waited for her father to come home from work.

And they’d waited. And waited.

Until the assistant station master called and told Rebecca that her father had been taken to Tacoma General Hospital. It wasn’t all that far away but Sam drove her anyway, and when they arrived at the emergency room they learned her father had been rushed straight to surgery.

Yet no one there could tell her what had happened.

So she and Sam had sat and waited.

“What are you thinking about, Mom?” Tracy asked.

“Another foggy evening. A long time ago.”

“You look lost, Mom. Is everything okay?”

“I feel lost, Tracy. Lost inside an echo, like I’m caught inside a hall of mirrors.”

“Mom?”

“Hm-m? What?”

“You want me to cook dinner tonight?” her daughter asked.

She smiled at the echo, remembered Sam saying almost exactly the same thing when they’d finally returned from the hospital. The fire in the fireplace had grown cold, so cold that not even embers remained, and she’d felt so hollowed out by the pain of her father’s passing that the clinging fog outside had felt ambivalent. Without saying a word Sam had rebuilt the fire then disappeared inside the kitchen and made their dinner. He held her through the remains of the night and didn’t let go during the many gales that followed.

In the aftermath of it all, Sam’s oldest and best friend, Dave Mason, had driven up from Santa Barbara to lend a hand. There’d been the inevitable lawyers and the hospital bills and all the other paperwork Rebecca needed to sort through, and yet all those things had seemed to dull the reality of her father’s passing – at least for a while. But Dave had always been good at such things and as spring turned to summer the three had grown inseparable. They drove up to Paradise and walked the trails on Mount Rainier’s sun facing flanks, camped under the stars as the west wind carried them deeper into the night, and one weekend the three ventured north to Port Townsend and went sailing on a friend’s boat.

Then the boys – as she’d taken to calling them by then – did what they’d done since high school: they pulled out their guitars and their notebooks and they began writing songs. Rebecca sat and listened as their efforts took on a life all their own, and she knew those star-kissed nights and days on the sound had become a part of the tapestry her boys had created with her. 

She was majoring in English. She understood poetry – and it was over that magic summer that she realized Sam was something of a genius. A quiet Shakespeare kind of genius. He pulled words from the sky the way magicians conjured rabbits from hats, words that spoke to the soul, phrasing that seemed rooted in a deep understanding of life. And she was smart enough to keep her distance during these marathon writing sessions, contenting herself to sit bare-footed on the sofa and listen as the boys’ imaginations took on the shapes and forms of their summer together.

They made a demo reel and set off to downtown Seattle in search of someone who might listen to their work and perhaps lend a helping hand. They talked to other struggling musicians working the coffee houses, managed to get a radio disc jockey to listen once, but it wasn’t enough. They weren’t ready yet. Dave was shattered and limped back to Santa Barbara and as autumn approached Sam and Rebecca drove down to Portland to start their last year of college…

…yet something had changed…

…though Rebecca felt that change soon enough. Morning sickness and missed periods, followed by a trip to student health services, and she learned that motherhood beckoned. Sam smiled the smile of the terror-stricken, told Dave he could see his whole life unspooling in the dark like a cheap Saturday matinee and then someone told him that health services could point the way to an abortion – but the word hit him like a hammer blow, left him breathless and inexplicably sad. Rebecca had never once mentioned the word before and so he knew she wanted the child too, and there was never anything else said about the matter. They were going to have a baby; it was as simple as that.

They graduated from college and Sam moved into Rebecca’s father’s house on North 11^th Street in Tacoma, Washington. Dave came up again to lend a hand; Sam and Dave painted the baby’s bedroom and then they pulled Rebecca’s old baby furniture up from the basement and she scrubbed all the old bits and pieces until they were squeaky-clean – and Dave watched as Sam slipped into the role of expectant father while not giving this change in life so much as one carefree thought. 

‘So, that’s what love does?’ Dave Mason asked himself as he watched the change overtake his friend.

And then, a few weeks later Tracy came into their lives.

Rebecca turned away from the window and the fog and looked at her daughter. Sam had been gone for years, and Dave too, so Tracy was all that remained of that impossible love, of that unlikeliest communion. “I guess I thought our past might get in the way of the future, but Tracy, don’t take that secrecy to mean that I didn’t cherish every minute I had with your father. I think I wanted…didn’t want all of the confusion I felt…”

“Mom? Please don’t cry…”

Rebecca looked at her daughter, at Sam’s daughter, and she still recognized his eyes in Tracy’s. “It’s not easy, Tracy. Even now.”

“I remember him, you know? Every now and then I catch a flash of memory and I can see him again – just for a moment. Almost like I captured him inside one of those…a stereopticon, I think…and he’s with me again. It’s weird, Mom, because I can feel him. Like he’s really with me, even though I know that can’t really be true…”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What?”

“Are you sure he’s not still with you, maybe on some level you couldn’t possibly understand?”

“Mom? What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything, Tracy. I’m asking you a question. Can you really be so sure?”

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, every last word of it…

[Sting \\ Down Down Down]

Life is getting very complicated here at Chaos Manor…let’s just say Erica has not been well and leave it at that. Finding time to write has been quite difficult; hopefully with the coming of spring things will get better.

[10cc \\ I’m Not In Love]

Chapter Three 

She shook away remnants of the dream, felt the side of the stranger’s face on top of her thighs and he came back to her in a disconcerting rush of truth. 

Stillwell…Sam Stillwell…I met him at dinner last night…we had drinks in the lounge car then came back to the room to talk…

But here he is – in the here and now. Dying. Running from death. In search of a way to get away from the…from the what? The inevitable? But why doesn’t he seem frightened…?

She ran her fingers through the bare remains of his hair and he stirred – then he too seemed to recall where he was and as suddenly sat bolt upright.

“Damn,” he sighed as he stifled a yawn, “I’m so sorry…didn’t mean to fall off like that…”

“Don’t be sorry. I was enjoying the moment.”

“The moment? Rubbing patchy chemo-hair?”

“Feeling you let go. It felt like maybe it’s been a while?”

He shrugged and looked out the window. “This storm isn’t letting up any, is it?”

“They can get bad this time of year,” she said, smiling.

“My mouth tastes awful,” he said as he stood, looking around the compartment self-consciously. “What time is it, anyway?”

“A little after five,” she answered, now a little hurt by his sudden evasiveness. 

“How long was I out?”

“I think about six hours. How’s the pain?”

He looked at her now – the first time since he’d awakened – and shook his head. “Just fine – as long as I ignore the fire in my back.”

And with that new snippet of information she now knew that his dissection had involved a kidney, or perhaps the aorta, so his had been a post-chemo RPLND – and she tried to push that knowledge to the back of her mind as she watched another grimace take shape on his face. “Sit down,” she said gently. “I’ll get another patch ready.” And to her surprise he did, and without any protestations at all. He didn’t ask for privacy – he simply demurred then sat and offered his right side, but to her his capitulation almost felt like a show of defeat. 

She removed the old patch and cleaned the area before she applied the new one, and he nodded his thanks as she pulled his shirt down. “How’s your appetite?” she asked.

“You mentioned French toast?”

“It’s good, at least if you go in for that sort of thing.”

He grumbled something unintelligible then excused himself and went into the bathroom, and she suddenly realized how intrusive her presence must have felt to him, and she felt a little ashamed of herself.

“Maybe I’ll see you there,” she called out as she made to leave, and she heard a muffled “Okay” come from the small bathroom. She let herself out then walked down to her compartment and slipped inside, then stood there in mute disbelief at what had just happened. A part of her felt like a giddy teenager, maybe one who’d just met her favorite rock star, while another, deeper part of her mind reeled at the professional risks she’d just taken. He wasn’t her patient, and even doing something as simple as changing out his fentanyl patches carried ethical and professional obligations and responsibilities that most people couldn’t relate to or simply did not understand. Shaken by this lapse, she decided to shower, to wash away the remains of the night before she went back to the dining car.

The sun was just barely making a showing as she walked into the dining car a little after six, and not unexpectedly she wasn’t the first person there. Train buffs usually took the Empire Builder because of the spectacular crossing through Glacier National Park, though in winter the westbound train usually traversed the park under cover of darkness. Still, that didn’t keep the diehard ‘rail-fans’ from filling up the train almost all year round, and everyone ‘in the know’ was dialed in to the French toast whipped up in the dining car, so an early crowd was virtually guaranteed.

And just like the night before the steward escorted her to a table, and a few minutes later an elderly couple from back east joined her – Pat and Patricia Patterson, from Roanoke, Virginia. Pat was of course wearing a well-worn Burlington Route baseball cap and Rebecca knew the type: Pat would have a huge model railroad layout in his basement and bookshelves loaded with books on all kinds of old passenger trains – and while he’d love nothing more than to talk about this or that route for hours on end, Rebecca just wasn’t in the mood this morning.

She remembered notes she needed to finish working through. She had pre-op consults to prepare for, too – not to mention office hours come Monday afternoon…

…but suddenly she realized the train wasn’t moving along at its usual 79 miles per hour…

…and then she saw that wet, sticky snow was building up on the dining car’s windows. Indeed, it was impossible to see anything beyond the glass, yet with the abysmal sunlight filtering through dense clouds there was little to see beyond the hazy white veil that was now, apparently, covering everything.

Yet the train was still moving. She could feel the swaying motion, hear the distant clickety-clack of steel wheels over joints in the iron rail, and Pat seemed to have been reading her mind…

“We’re poking along about 45 miles per,” he said, consulting an app on his smart-phone. “My guess is they gotta plow up front. Minneapolis already had two feet of snow from this storm when we went through there last night, and I think it’s snowing harder now.”

“Do you know where we are now?” she asked.

Pat shrugged. “Fargo is the next stop, but we’re already two hours behind…”

“Have you heard a weather forecast?” Rebecca added.

“At least another two days of this stuff. An Alberta Clipper is pushing an arctic air mass down and it’s colliding with that atmospheric river that just slammed San Francisco and Oakland. The Weather Channel says this will be a historic snow event from the Rockies through the upper mid-west.”

Their waiter came by and poured coffee and took their orders – French toast times three – then Rebecca turned to the window again, instinctively reaching out to brush the snow away before remembering it was on the outside. “So, you’re a Burlington fan?” she asked.

“Yessiree! My old man worked in the Chicago office all his life.”

Rebecca smiled. “My father worked for the Northern Pacific, out of Tacoma.”

“That’s a beautiful building, one of the last great ones. But ya know what? I’ve never figured out why we’ve always been in such a hurry to tear down those places…”

Rebecca nodded. “Chicago sure had a bunch of them. I would have loved to have seen Chicago back around 1900.”

“Isn’t that the truth! Dearborn Station…the original!” Pat said, but just then Rebecca noticed that Patricia simply nodded from time to time but otherwise stared ahead vacantly, enough so that she was beginning to suspect the woman had Alzheimer’s, or perhaps dementia. And Pat noticed too…that Rebecca had caught on, and he sighed as he acknowledged the obvious. “Yes,” he said quietly – almost in defeat, “she got Alzheimer’s. But you see, she wanted to take one last trip together.”

Rebecca nodded. “It’s difficult to be the primary caregiver,” she sighed. 

He shrugged. “It’s difficult to watch someone you’ve known for almost fifty years as they disappear right in front of you. You can read about it all you want about it, but the reality of it…well, it is the saddest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

There was a blast of icy cold air and then the surly old conductor walked into the dining car and sort of like an old crustacean he skittered from table to table, explaining that the train was now three hours behind schedule and that the route through Glacier National Park “might not be clear this evening,” and that he’d “keep everyone informed” as he learned more.

“What happens if they close the route through the mountains?” Pat asked the red faced old man.

“Depends where we are, I reckon. Between Minot and Whitefish…well, not too many options out there. Maybe stop in Havre or Shelby; we could bus you down to Great Falls and try to get you out on airplanes, but it depends on how much snow there is and how long it’ll take the crews to plow it out.”

Rebecca felt a chill of apprehension run up her spine as she recognized the evasive tenor of the conductor’s remarks. “And what happens if we get stuck out here, like maybe in the middle of nowhere?”

“We wait for the plows to reach us, Ma’am.”

“Is there enough food on board if that happens,” Pat asked.

The old conductor smiled a little as he nodded with knowing self-assurance. “We laid on extra in St Paul, and there should be plenty of French toast, too. Should be no worries at all, sir.” The old man skittered away after that, talking to the rest of the passengers in the dining car, reassuring all the ‘Nervous Nellies’ huddled around their tables with expectant, upturned eyes.

“If they laid on more food,” Pat said, his eyes now full of concern for his wife, “I bet they think it’s more than just a merely possible.”

“Maybe so,” Rebecca said – as she suddenly started thinking of Sam Stillwell, “but it seems a reasonable precaution to take almost any time of year.”

Their meals came and they ate in silence, Pat doing his best to feed his wife – and doing rather well, too. Rebecca looked out the window from time to time and shook her head in disbelief – as she’d never seen heavier, wetter snow in her life – and at one point she even thought the snow looked like that hideous Christmas tree flocking they sprayed on trees, if only because this snow seemed to be sticking to everything. Still, about ten minutes later the glow of more businesses appeared through the snowy mist, and when they passed a clanging railroad crossing signal they could tell the train was stopping at the next station. Rebecca looked out the window and could just make out a bundled-up man pushing a snowblower along the platform below the dining car, clearing the way for passengers waiting in the station.

Then quite suddenly she felt concern for Stillwell.

So when the steward came by she signed her chit and left another generous tip, then took advantage of the stopped train’s lack of motion to walk back to her sleeping car – but she just couldn’t help herself as she walked by Sam’s compartment. She knocked on the door and thought she heard a commotion inside; she knocked again and heard him call out ‘Help!’ 

When she tried to open the door she felt his body blocking her way and now knew he was down on the floor.

“Sam? Can you roll over? You’re blocking the door…”

She heard him moan and then felt the door give way a little; she squeezed into the little compartment and then helped him stand up next the sofa – and she smelled it then. He’d soiled himself, and now he really needed a shower – but then it hit her…what he really needed was to be back in the hospital. Locked up in this compartment without a nurse to assist him was a recipe for…

But no. He had her, didn’t he. He needed to get to Palo Alto, and though he’d chosen not to fly she was more than capable of getting him to Seattle. One look out the window at the blowing snow and she knew there’d be no air travel out of Fargo for a while, perhaps days.

With that decided she helped him into the small bathroom compartment and started to undress him, but his hand blocked the way. “You don’t need to do this,” Sam sighed, clearly dejected as the sharp, pungent odor assaulted his senses.

“And you need to let me get to work right now. We’re stopped and this will be a lot easier if we get it knocked out fast.”

He started to unbutton his shirt while she got his pants and boxers down and into a garbage bag, then she got the shower running and once it was warm she washed off his soiled thighs. “Can you hold the shower head for a while?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Okay. I’m going to get rid of these clothes. I think they’re done for.”

He nodded and she went off in search of the sleeping car attendant, who was out on the platform helping a passenger disembark. 

“I’ve got some soiled clothes,” Rebecca said to the girl. “Got some place I can dump them?”

“Sure. Right over there, by the other trash. What happened?”

“Oh, the guy up in A is not well. I was just lending a hand.”

“You a nurse?”

Rebecca shook her head. “No. Physician. We could use some extra towels in A.”

“You’re in E, right?”

Rebecca nodded then turned and went back up to Sam’s compartment. He was just holding onto the shower head and his head was leaning against the wall, the water running down to the drain in the floor, but he looked up and tried to smile when he saw her standing there.

“Nice to see you again,” he said through a wry grin. “What kept you?”

“How’s the water? Still warm?”

“Blissfully so, yes. Care to join me?”

She smiled and shook her head, then shut the bathroom door. The train jerked and slowly began pulling away from the station, and a second later the attendant knocked on the door and handed her a pile of towels. “Need anything else just let me know,” she said.

“Could you bring some French toast and scrambled eggs. I want to see if he can hold down some food.”

The girl nodded and disappeared, leaving Rebecca to towel him off, but he stood with his back to her, apparently ashamed of the huge, midline scar running from his sternum to his groin. After she finished his backside she turned him around and patted his wound dry, then tackled his unruly hair. “You need help getting dressed?” she asked.

“We’ll see, Mom,” came his sardonic reply.

His breakfast came and with the help of the attendant she set up the small table under the window and poured a bottle of water into a cup, then helped him walk out to the sofa.

“Food? Really?” he asked as he stared at the suspicious plate of toast and eggs on the table.

“I’d be happy if you could just get a little down. You had some pretty fierce diarrhea, so we’re going to get some water down, too.”

“Oh? We are?”

She smiled. “I’ve had mine already.”

“Ya know, that’s not exactly what I meant…”

“I know what you meant, Sam.” He looked at her and nodded before she helped him sit, then she sat across from him and sliced up some of the French toast. “Ready?”

“How ‘bout some water first?”

She helped him drink and – predictably – he pulled back from the table and leaned against the sofa. “Do you get sick every time you eat?” she asked.

He nodded. “Pretty much. I did okay on those protein shakes for a while, then even those turned on me.”

“Do you have any omeprazole? Maybe with some Zofran onboard you could hold food down for a while.”

He shrugged. “Tried that already. The basic problem, Doc, is accelerating mortality.”

She nodded. “I know. Now, let’s see if we can get one bite of French toast down.”

“Lots of syrup, please. My mouth feels like the Sahara.”

He ate a half slice of the toast before he gave up and leaned back again, but this time he leaned over and curled up in a fetal ball with his hands around his knees – and then he closed his eyes.

She pulled a fresh blanket down from the storage bin and gently covered him, then she sat down beside him. The deep empathy she felt in that moment wasn’t all that unusual, but for some reason the feeling she experienced now seemed much more personal.

But when she sat beside him again that seemed to be the signal he’d been waiting for: he leaned over until the side of his face rested on her lap again – and then he promptly fell fast asleep.

And once again she ran the sides of her thumbs in little circles on his temple until she felt the inherent tension of his dis-ease fall away, and she found herself wanting more than anything else in the world to make his suffering go away. 

And for some reason she heard the mournful, soul caressing notes of West Side Wind in her mind, and when she felt sleep coming for her she knew the dream wasn’t far away. She could feel it out there, lurking patiently in the shadowlands – like a wild beast stalking her in the blinding snow.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, every last word of it…

[Sting \\ A Thousand Years]

A brief chapter here, just a few pages as the seeds of an idea take shape.

[Famous Blue Cable (Nick Drake) \\ River Man]

Chapter Two

She woke with a start, the alarm clock’s grating bell jolting her out of deepest sleep. Still not fully awake as she swung her legs out of bed, she walked quietly to the bathroom even as wispy filaments of the dream lingered. She sat on the toilet then reached in, turned on the hot water and pulled up on the diverter valve, turning on the shower. Pulling off her long t-shirt, she stepped into the shower and turned around, backed up to the spray until it was beating down on her neck, and for a fleeting moment she felt the tension in her shoulders ebb away – as the last fragments of the insistent dream remained suspended in the mists clinging to her skin. She ran shampoo through her hair – twice, because it felt so good – then soaped down and rinsed off the important places before she let the hot water beat down on her neck again. She stepped out of the shower and dried her hair then slipped into the old terrycloth bathrobe that hung on the back of the bathroom door – still unable to shake free of the dream’s lingering remains.

The train. Always the train. And then there was Sam – he was always in her dream, always walking into the dining car as she sat watching him come back to her. Always in pain, always alone. Tall and lanky, yet somehow almost emaciated, just as he had been near the end. The unspoken truth that cancer was eating him alive remained between them. Just like her father’s cancer – when he too passed. Everything about the man in the dream reminded her of the man who had raised her, even the measured way he spoke. But not when he looked her, and definitely not when she looked at him. Everything felt so real in those moments, especially when he fell asleep with the side of his face resting on her lap – because she felt consumptive electric explosions in her mind when his skin rested on her. She had never wanted that moment to end. Never wanted to wake up, just so this last moment together would last and last. When the realization came that he was indeed dying, that he would soon be gone, the dream turned into a nightmare from which she could not escape – and even then the sudden irrational fear of his looming death haunted her as she dressed for the day.

She went to her daughter’s room and gently woke her, then went to the kitchen to put on coffee. With that out of the way she turned on the television and flipped over to a channel that talked about the weather – 24 hours a day – and she groaned at the prospect of more wind and rain. She put bacon on to cook in one skillet and scrambled eggs in another, then she toasted bread and got everything sorted on two plates. She set things out on the little table that looked out over Tacoma and Puget Sound. The table that had been meant for three.

It had been her father’s house, once upon a time. He’d left it to her among the other things that followed with his passing, and she knew she would leave it to her daughter someday. She had taken root in this place, just as he had once. Perhaps as her daughter would, but that remained to be seen. In another dream, perhaps.

Tracy came out of her room ready and dressed for school; she sat down and looked at the weather on the television then put bacon on toast and spooned some scrambled eggs on the bacon, making a sandwich that disappeared in a few quick bites.

“Finish your homework?” Rebecca North asked.

And Tracy nodded, coughed once then took a quick sip of orange juice, clearing her throat. “Yup. Can I ride home from school with Ken?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

This was met with crossed arms and a stoney, petulant stare.

“I’ll pick you up at the library, at four-thirty,” Rebecca added.

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“I don’t care for the way he drives.” This said with an easy smile.

Tracy shook her head. “You’re such a…a mom.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, even if it wasn’t meant as such.”

“Why do you always have to talk like an English teacher?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because I am an English teacher?”

“Oh. Mom, why didn’t you take up physics, like your mother?”

“Would you rather I spoke to you like a physics teacher?”

“I’d rather you spoke to me like you belonged to Hell’s Angels.”

“Sorry. You’re fresh out of luck with that one, kiddo.”

“The story of my life.”

“Let’s get the dishes in the washer. I have…”

“…yes, I know, I know…you have a faculty meeting at seven-forty-five.”

They drove across town to Silas High and Rebecca parked in the faculty lot; Tracy came around for a hug before she darted off to meet up with friends before the first period bell, leaving her mom to her day.

They had stayed after school the day before, the two of them, decorating Rebecca’s classroom walls for a complex new assignment – one she was particularly excited about. Working with the school’s Social Studies department, she was going to introduce a new, multidisciplinary assignment to her senior AP English and Creative Writing students, an assignment that was planned to dovetail with both the senior level AP Postwar US History class and the junior level US History class, which was currently also focused on American history in the late 20th-century.

Breaking their combined classes into small groups, she and Mr Murphy, the social studies teacher she was partnering with, were going to look at music as a barometer of cultural change from the 1950s up to the millennium. To do so, each group of three to four students would be assigned a decade and then each group would try to determine the dominant cultural trends in their assigned decade; with that done each group would pick a musician or group and one song that – in the group’s opinion – best represented the trend they’d identified. 

But before these groups were cut loose to do their research, Mr Murphy had convinced Rebecca to provide an example to their combined class.

“Do the nineties, and Sam,” Ben Murphy pleaded. “There’s no better representative of the period,” he continued. And of course there was no need to add that Rebecca and Sam Stillwell had lived together for most of the 90s, or that Stillwell was Tracy’s father. “What could be better, ya know?”

So she had brought her copy of West Side Wind to school that morning, and she would play the eponymous title track for her students before she explained the origins of both the album and the song – and then how Sam’s music best encapsulated the decade. And somehow she had to get through it all without breaking apart and falling down into the black hole that always seemed to be waiting for her when she remembered those days. 

When the cancer first came for him he had been determined to fight. Surgery. Chemotherapy. Then the weeks and weeks of nausea, followed by radiation – yet he had fought his way to a brief remission, and West Side Wind had been born from that struggle. Dave Mason, his best and oldest friend, had come up from Santa Barbara for a visit, and the rest of the story had become something of a legend in the close knit community of musicians in and around Seattle.

How quickly the songs came together, how easily the words came. How vanishingly brief was that time.

And later that morning – as she stood before her AP class – she described watching Dave and Sam working together. She took her time explaining how West Side Wind was a series of recollections, but that the song itself was a more intimate exploration of growing up in the 70s and 80s, and about how people came together and fell away from each other. And how, in an almost offhand way, the people she and Sam had known began to fall away as his cancer returned.

She wasn’t aware she was crying when she told this part of the story to the class, and in truth very few people knew about her almost ten years with Sam Stillwell, but then one of her students raised her hand.

“Yes, Marsha? You have a question?”

“Uh, Miss North? Do you know you’re crying?”

And Rebecca had looked at Ben Murphy and shrugged, because she really didn’t know what to say. So Ben laid it all out there for her: “Marsha, Sam Stillwell and Miss North were, well, they were together for years.”

The news came as a shock to the class. Then another hand shot up. “Is Sam Stillwell Tracy’s father?” someone asked.

And Rebecca had simply nodded – before she smiled and excused herself, leaving Ben Murphy to lead the class after she walked quietly from the classroom.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, every last word of it…

[Yes || And You and I]

A short little riff today, just a few ideas to consider.

[ELP \\ Take a Pebble]

First You Make a Stone of Your Heart

Part II

C2.1

There is a rhythm to life, and to death, and perhaps there is purpose in the rhythm.

C2.2

Time, like an arrow. 

Like red and orange leaves drifting on a cool autumn breeze; their life under the warming sun has come and gone – and now they are left to drift along gray cobblestones, waiting.

But the arrow does not care about the passage of time, and who knows what leaves feel?

Time, in the human realm, had almost always been a relative measurement; when the sun was highest in the sky it was midday – and that worked – most of the time. When the smallest human settlements formed, clusters of buildings encircled open areas where sundials measured noon, and soon enough markets and trade fairs developed in these open areas. Time became an organizing principle even though time was still relative to place; the sun might be highest overhead at noon along the banks of the Thames estuary while along the banks of the Rhein it would already be mid-afternoon.

But that relativity was hardly worth a passing thought. There was no need for such precise measurements of time as most humans lived their entire lives within a few miles of their birthplace. 

Mariners at sea were the first to need a standardized locus of time. While it was easy enough to determine a vessel’s latitude by taking a single measurement of the sun’s angle above the horizon at local noon, deriving that vessels longitude was another matter. The globe had to be partitioned into 360 degrees, and time at zero degrees longitude had to be precisely known for meaningful calculations of local longitude to be made.

At that same approximate point in time, iron horses began pacing along evenly spaced rails, and soon enough both passengers and freight began moving faster than humans had ever moved before. Interconnecting railway lines converged at distant stations and soon enough railway companies, as well as their agents and passengers, needed accurate timetables, and for those tables to provide meaningful information local sundials would no longer suffice. Clocks, and clock towers, began to appear as humans continued to redefine their relationship to time. In time, the telegraph and then radio waves sent out their standardized time hacks, for the first time allowing coordinated human activities to occur over distances unimaginable even a few decades before. Traders in New York City could coordinate their economic activities with their counterparts in Tokyo or London almost as easily as they could converse with neighbors across the street. 

Time, in a sense, was no longer relative to place, and man’s understanding of his place in the cosmos began to change.

+++++

An old man walks along a waterfront crowded with merchant ships; the night is still and a thick fog is settling over the water in the bay. Sailors sing shanties in distant taverns and horses seem to sleep in their harnesses, waiting for the whip. Streetlights cast flickering pools of light on damp cobblestones as fallen leaves gather in gutters, while amber light bathes the scene in sepias and gold. Cargo from the latest ship to berth is being unloaded into horse drawn carts, and a handful of passengers walk down the gangplank and gather in the pools of light, and as it has been a rough passage most seem more than grateful to be back on land. 

The old man watches these passengers intently before disappearing among the leaves and shadows; a blue sphere no larger than a Danish kroner hovers over the ship, it’s sensors focused on just one of the passengers, a rather pleasant woman in her twenties.

The ship had just arrived from Königsberg, perhaps a half hour ago, and while the woman feels more tired than she ever has before, there is a hopeful patina of joy covering her lingering fatigue. She is a music teacher, yet in her heart of hearts she longs to write symphonies; she has been engaged to teach piano at a school for girls in the heart of Copenhagen, but even now she longs to travel on to Paris. Her name is Anna Regina Kant, and she was born in the small coastal city of Memel, just north of Königsberg. She has recently graduated after studying music at the university in Königsberg, and this at a time when few women gained admission to such schools, but there had been no denying her gift. Even now, as fog pressed in from the harbor and as sailors back to their ships, she felt the possible frameworks of a new composition taking shape in her mind, for in everything she found music – but most especially the sea. Still, she could not break free of the black and white ‘whales’ that had frolicked beside their ship for hours earlier that day, because one of them had seemed to stare at her for time without end.

As she stepped from the gangplank onto the bricked walkway beside the ship she looked for a carriage from the school, for they had promised that a representative would be on hand to help her out to the school’s grounds. She had all her worldly possessions with her, all that would fit into two steamer trunks, anyway, and as she had no desire to return home again, she had included all her earliest compositions.

So she felt some modest relief when a carriage pulled up and a young man called out her name. Her trunks were located and loaded atop the carriage, and soon she is on her way into the city.

And curiously, no one noticed a small sphere hovering over the wharf, even as the young woman in the carriage looked out over the harbor – where a large male orca circled patiently in the night.

The old man looked after her carriage as it rattled away from the wharf. After the carriage was out of sight he turned to the creature standing by his side and sighed.

“And so it begins. Again,” the Old Man said quietly, patiently.

“Yes. Again,” the creature said. He stood just more than two meters tall, his skin was the purest white, and his name was Pak. “We cannot fail.” 

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | fiction, every last word…

Let’s start a tale most fitting for this bitterest season, a simple song for the unrequited among us.

[Al Stewart \\ End of the Day]

Her Book of Dreams

Chapter One

She finished taking notes then put away her writing materials; she turned off her Olympus Pearlcorder and slipped it into her briefcase, making sure that everything was just so, that everything was in the exact place she liked them. One of the physicians sitting next to her shook his head as he watched her rigid routine unfold and take shape, but she simply didn’t care what other people thought. Maybe she had once, but not now. Once her materials were secure she left the conference room and made her way to the elevators, then rode up in silence and walked to her room. She picked up the itemized bill that had been slipped under the door and looked over each entry before nodding and placing the envelope in her carry-on, then she grabbed her rolling suitcase and made her way back to the elevators, and from there on to the taxi stand beyond the ornate lobby entrance. She didn’t have to wait long and was soon on her way.

She was a physician, an ophthalmologist by training, though she considered herself a surgeon first and foremost. She had long ago decided to specialize in ophthalmologic trauma medicine, and so she spent most of her time working on eyes damaged in motor vehicle accidents – or perhaps even the occasional sliding glass door. Her’s was a most difficult specialty and few physicians chose to embark on the long journey required to gain even basic proficiency, but she had been driven to succeed in this field during her earliest training. After four years of medical school and a two year internship, she had spent a further eight years in various residencies and fellowships – and even now she spent at least a two weeks each year attending conferences such as this one in Chicago, learning about the latest research or absorbing new surgical techniques.  

She watched people hurrying along on crowded sidewalks as the taxi drove through the always congested downtown area between The Drake and Union Station, and only after she had exited the rancid old Ford did she notice that a light snow was just beginning to fall. She paid the cabbie and made her way inside the massive old station, and once inside she handed off her suitcase to one of Amtrak’s red capped attendants. She was in due course directed to the Metropolitan Lounge but, after checking the time on her phone, made her way to the upstairs food court. She’d been buying fresh roasted nuts from a vendor up there for years – every time she made this trip to Chicago, anyway – and today would be no exception. She purchased walnuts and macedamia and pistachios and put them neatly into her carryon.

The Metropolitan Lounge was just about full this time of day – it was mid-afternoon local time –  but she found a seat and looked at all the various departure times on monitors scattered around the room. Storied trains with legendary names like the California Zephyr, the Southwest Chief, and the Empire Builder all departed within a brief window of time in the late afternoon, and even a few overnight trains headed east were already showing up on the departure board – though they wouldn’t leave until later in the evening. She always booked a so-called Deluxe Bedroom, because the included bathroom space had private showering facilities, not one of the communal shower cubbies down on the lower level. And while meals were also included with sleeper service, she usually had these delivered to her room.

A half hour before their scheduled departure an announcer came on and advised that sleeping car passengers for the Empire Builder should line up by Door 6, and the usual collection of disoriented tourists shuffled over to the locked doors – but there were, she noted, a few oddballs waiting there, too. Twenty-somethings with skis headed to Montana, a wheelchair-bound woman in her twenties, and a couple of singletons like herself: business travelers who simply loathed flying, or who grew faint at the mere idea of having to board an aircraft – any aircraft – and all had queued up and were waiting anxiously. Another red cap appeared and escorted the group out onto the platform, and almost everyone remarked how much colder it suddenly seemed.

When she made it out to her assigned car she stepped aboard and made for the steep stairway that led to the upper floor, and once up there she made her way to the same bedroom – E – she almost always enjoyed this time of year. Located near the center of the car, Bedroom E was most isolated from the vibration and noise that plagued rooms over the trucks and nearer to the vestibule, a lesson her father had imparted decades ago.

She unpacked her overnight bag and found her dry-roasted macadamia nuts and had a few, and she watched as a nearby Metra commuter train pulled out of the station and headed north just as her room attendant came by and introduced herself.

“Let’s see…you’re Dr. North and I see you’ll be with us all the way to Seattle?”

“I am indeed,” Rebecca North, M.D., F.A.C.S. said. “Is the dining car back in full operation this trip?”

“It is, yes! You’ll be one of the first to try it out, too!”

“Could you put me down for the seven-thirty seating?”

“The dining car attendant will be by in a few minutes; just tell him what you want.” And with that the attendant disappeared, leaving Rebecca kind of flummoxed. Sleeping car porters had always taken care of little things like this in the past, but things change, and she knew that all too well. So had her father.

She slipped her laptop out of her carry-on and then pulled out her hand-written notes from the conference, her immediate desire being to transcribe these notes and go over the week’s high points. Almost immediately the train’s conductor knocked on the door and stepped inside her compartment.

“Ticket, please,” the gruff old man mumbled, the effort required to smile apparently too much for the old man.

She handed her travel documents to the conductor and he punched her ticket here and there before he handed it back, then he too departed wordlessly – and without smiling even once.

She started in on her notes and hardly looked up when the train pulled out of the station, heading for Milwaukee. She looked out at snow now blowing almost horizontally over the river then turned back to her notes, looking up again only when the dining car steward knocked and stepped into her compartment.

“Will you be joining us in the dining car tonight?” the polite old man asked. He was black though his hair was as white as the snow falling on the other side of the glass, and his smile was big and bright enough to warm even the grouchiest curmudgeon’s stony heart.

“Yes. What times are available?”

“Your attendant told me you wanted seven thirty. Does that still work for you?”

Rebecca smiled and nodded. “Do you happen to have the trout?” she asked hopefully.

“You know, I think we have a few steelhead. Should I put your name on one?”

“Oh, could you please? That would be wonderful!”

The old man smiled and nodded as he scribbled notes on a pad. “We’ll see you at seven-thirty, then.” She knew these old timers survived on tips, so she made a mental note to make sure she left him a nice one.

The car swayed and rumbled through a series of switches as the train made it’s way through the vast yards north of downtown, but soon enough they began picking up speed and a series of north side suburban stations reeled by as a feeble sun gave way to the evening. Lights came on in the sleeping car and the conductor made a few announcements as Rebecca resumed working through her lecture notes. She looked up from time to time, saw lights wink on in distant houses and she realized they were out of the city now, streaking through rolling farmland on the way to Wisconsin – and she found it easy enough to wonder what life was like out here on the prairie in the dead of winter – like how the warmth of a wood stove and a hot dinner waiting on the table would be the biggest reward for another day tending small herds in their milking barns. 

She’d hardly ever treated rural patients like these, she thought. She’d studied medicine in Chicago and completed her training in Boston before returning home to Seattle, so had spent her entire career helping urban “city dwellers,” not farmers and ranchers. People were people, however, and eyes were eyes, but she’d recently grown more and more aware of a divide between people that lived in large cities and their rural “cousins,” a divide she recognized but hardly understood.

Rebecca leaned back in her seat and soon enough her eyes closed as her mind began to drift on other currents, and it seemed as if only a few seconds had passed when the sleeping car attendant poked her head in the door to inform the doctor that her seven-thirty dinner seating had just been called. Rebecca sat bolt upright as the momentary disorientation that had gripped her began easing off, but she nodded and smiled and stood to make her way forward to the dining car.

The kindly old steward met her as she entered and graciously escorted her to an empty table at the far end of the swaying car, and she noted this table was empty and sighed in hopeful relief. One of the few things she disliked about travel by rail was having to share a table with – more often than not – complete strangers, and she found these chance encounters awkward – at their best. Pleasantries were typically exchanged, followed by the usual banter: ‘Is this your first trip on Amtrak?’ or the dreaded ‘So, what do you do?’ That question invariably led to unwanted rants about the ills of Social Security or a recitation of bad encounters with “obviously incompetent” physicians, so when asked she usually shrugged and said she was ‘Just a housewife,’ and let it go at that.

The steward helped her get seated and poured a fresh glass of ice water, then asked what she wanted to drink with her trout.

“What are you serving with the fish?” she asked.

“A salad to start, and I’d recommend the Caesar. The trout is served with rice pilaf and broccoli. We’re having wine tastings tomorrow afternoon, so we have a nice selection from Oregon and Washington state onboard.”

“A chilled Riesling, by any chance?”

He nodded and beamed proudly. “Should I bring out a bottle? What you don’t finish this evening will be ready for you tomorrow,” he added.

She thought a moment and then nodded – just as a lone diner appeared at the far end of the car. The steward raced off to greet the man, then brought him along to Rebecca’s table – and all the while she peered out the window at the raging blizzard on the other side of the glass. As they approached she turned and gazed at her new companion and inwardly groaned.

He appeared to be about her age – in his mid-50s or thereabouts – and the man was wearing pressed jeans and a white button down dress shirt, but what really caught her eye was his purple rag wool socks and teal green Birkenstocks. Eclectic, to say the least. He had to be about six-foot four, but he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds. He was pale, his face hadn’t seen a razor in a few days, and he was moving stiffly, as if his joints ached. The man smiled at her as he sat and his eyes pulled her in, if only because there was something vaguely familiar about them. About all his features, really.

“Howdy,” the man sighed more than spoke, but he made good eye contact and held her there – before turning to the steward.

“Could I get you something to drink?” the steward asked.

“Ice water will do me fine,” the man replied, his accent hard to place.

A waiter appeared as soon as the steward walked off, and he gave the man a menu and a form to fill out before he too disappeared.

“Anything good on this menu?” he asked her.

And she shrugged. “I understand the flatiron steak is pretty reliable. I’m not sure about the salmon.”

“What are you having?”

“I asked earlier if they had trout available. Sometimes they do, but it’s usually not on the menu.”

“Kind of a secret, then?” he sighed before he changed position a little. “Not in the mood for fish, anyway. What am I supposed to do with this form?”

“Name and room number up top, then you just check off your selections.”

He scribbled his name and room number but then gave up. “Could you handle the rest for me?”

She smiled and took the form and looked it over, noting his name was Sam Stillwell. “So, you get a salad, choice of garden or Caesar, then with your steak – let’s see, that comes with a baked potato and broccoli – and you also get dessert – cheesecake or the apple crisp, which I recommend.”

The man nodded. “I guess a Caesar salad and the crisp.”

“You may have coffee or tea, and they have wine available.”

He shook his head absentmindedly. “Just water for me tonight.”

She had already measured his pulse by watching his carotids, and counted his respiration rate as she checked out the color of his lips and nail beds, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that the man was in pain. A fine bead of perspiration lined his forehead and upper lip, and his right hand was shaking a little.

“I’m having wine, a Riesling, if you’d like to try a glass?” She couldn’t believe what she’d just done and was more than a little disoriented by this reaching out, but she heard a voice inside telling her this was not the time for inhibited reticence.

But he once again shook his head, then suddenly taking deep breath he steadied himself by holding onto the edge of the tabletop – before he closed his eyes and slowly let go of the inhaled air. “Sorry,” he said.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s troubling you?”

He looked at her and shook his head. “Sorry, but no. No pity parties for me.”

“Alright,” she said as she handed the man’s selections to their waiter, then she looked at the man and held out her right hand. “Rebecca North. And you are?”

He looked the woman in the eye again, then at her extended hand, and a moment later he reached out and took her hand in his. “Sam.”

“Sam? You running from the police or something?”

He shook his head and shrugged. “Where you headed, Rebecca?”

“Seattle. You?”

“Palo Alto. Santa Barbara, eventually, but I wanted to walk around Seattle again so I’ll probably hang there for a few days.”

“Oh? Did you live there once?”

“No, just visited a few times. Always thought it would be a good place to live.”

“It is, despite what you hear these days.”

He shrugged. “I don’t pay much attention to the talking heads. All they seem to be peddling is fear.”

The steward brought her bottle of wine and poured her a bit to taste, and after she smiled her approval he filled the glass with a modest amount.

“Are you sure you don’t want a glass?” she asked the man again.

And again he shook his head.

“So,” she began, “what’s in Santa Barbara?”

“Home. I grew up there – and I just wanted to see all the places that used to be important to me.”

“Things change. When was the last time you were there?”

“Fifteen years ago. When my dad passed.”

“Your mother?”

He looked away. “She died a few years before he did.”

“Any friends there?”

“We’ll see.”

“Sam? Do you have any friends – anywhere?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “Used to have all the friends in the world, but like you said – things change.”

“What are you on, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Fentanyl, a patch. Why, does it show?”

“What’s it for?”

“Retroperitoneal dissection.”

She closed her eyes in a deep grimace for a moment, then looked at him again. “Seminoma?”

“Mixed. Seminoma and teratoma.”

“Chemo?”

He nodded. “You a doc?”

She nodded and smiled. “Sorry,” she sighed. “I hope I haven’t ruined your evening.” Again she stared into the stranger’s face, and again she felt something familiar about him. ‘Sam Stillwell…where do I know that name from…?’

Their salads came – just as a wave of recognition washed over her. ‘Of course…Mason and Stillwell – and their second album. West Side Wind, released in the 90s. She’d worn out that album, listened to it all through med school, and a few of the songs on that record were still among her favorites…

“So, Dr. North, what kind of doc are you?”

“Eyes.”

“An M.D.?”

“Yes. I pretty much just do trauma surgery.”

“I guess you’ve seen it all, then,” he said, and she noticed his easy going smile fade away, but for a moment she had seen the same smile that was on that album cover.

And now she felt a little flush of her own, and maybe she was a little weak in the knees too – and she really didn’t know how to respond to her feelings. As her mind struggled she found her fork and took a bite of salad, then she met his question head on. “Most of the time I deal with the results of MVAs, car accidents and the like. What about you?”

“Me?”

“What are you doing these days?”

He hesitated and she looked at his hands. Long fingers, just like her own. Clean, well kept fingernails, so at least that part of his personality was still intact. “You mean before I became a full time cancer patient?” he finally said.

Once again she met his gaze and held it, and she decided to change her course. “Where’d you go for treatment?”

“Sloan Kettering.”

“Can’t do better than that. Did they give you a prognosis?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact they did. And that’s why I’m on this train.”

“Oh?”

“I guess you could call this my farewell tour because, you see, they gave up and now I’m off to see the wizard.”

“The wonderful and all-knowing Wizard of Oz? So, you’re following the yellow brick road?”

“Something like that. I’m going to stop off in Palo Alto and see someone there. You think maybe I could have a few sips of that wine?”

She caught the steward’s eye and waved him over, asked for another glass and the old man smiled as he walked off to fetch another wine glass.

“You ought to try your salad while it’s still cold,” she said, taking another bite of her own.

He tentatively reached for his fork but she immediately saw the problem: his hands were shaking so badly he could barely grasp the thing, and he instantly looked defeated as it slipped from his hand.

So she took his fork and speared some lettuce, then looked into his eyes again. “Meet me halfway?” she asked.

And he leaned over the table and let her feed him.

“Good?” she asked.

He smiled and nodded. “You have no idea.”

When she had a second wine glass she filled it halfway, then leaned over and helped him drink; he closed his eyes and sighed. “Riesling, did you say?”

“That’s right.”

“God, it’s been a while. That tastes just like heaven.”

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten real food?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve been drinking those protein shakes…”

“Ensure?”

“That’s the one. Dark chocolate. Um-um, so yummy,” he said, his sonorous voice dripping with honied, well intentioned sarcasm. 

She laughed a little but saw the pain in his eyes and backed off, then she fed him the salad before she finished her own.

“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked, his eyes locked on hers once again.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, the fact that you don’t know me comes to mind. That, and I’m probably ruining your evening.”

“You don’t strike me as a cynic, Sam. What’s wrong with lending someone a hand?”

“Nothing. So, tell me something…I assume you know who I am?”

She nodded slowly, gently, almost imperceptibly. 

He sighed and looked down, then slowly shook his head. “I guess I already knew that,” he sighed.

“And I assumed you didn’t want that to intrude,” she countered, smiling gently when he looked up again.

“Intrude?”

“It’s been my experience,” she said, “that celebrities often prefer anonymity – at times like this.”

“You’ve dealt with many…celebrities?” 

“A few. Last summer comes to mind. A child ran through a sliding glass door on a large yacht. She was helicoptered in with her parents, and keeping the media walled-off was a priority.”

He shrugged.

Their salad plates were taken away and their entrees were served, and he of course looked at her plate, then his. “Looks good. Why don’t you go ahead,” he stated.

And she reached over and slid his plate close, then she sliced the steak and fed him a piece before she sliced a piece of trout. She speared this and fed the fish to him. He rolled his eyes a little and shook his head, but he never broke eye contact with her. “Which do you prefer?” she asked.

“Is that a steelhead?”

She nodded, then she took another slice of trout and fed it to him.

“I think I like this more than salmon, and that’s saying something.”

“Less fishy,” she advised, “but the texture is similar.”

“You must get great salmon in Seattle?”

“The market at the Fisherman’s Terminal. They unload every morning at five-thirty.”

“I always thought Pike Place was the place to go.”

“Too touristy, too many people.”

“You have kids?”

“No. Never went down that road.”

“That’s surprising. You give great fork.”

She smiled with her eyes, then helped him take some wine. “Which do you like more?”

“They’re both decent, but I think the trout agrees with me.”

She cut more fish and started to lift it across to him but he shook his head. “I’m not going to take your dinner…”

“You’re not taking it, Sam…I’m giving it. There’s a difference, you know?”

Again, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this to you,” he said, suddenly getting ready to leave.

“I wish you’d stay,” she said, startled by this retreat.

He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms protectively, then he looked out the window at the lights of a big city just visible through the raging blizzard. “I wonder where we are now?” he muttered to his reflection there in the glass.

“Milwaukee,” she replied after she checked the time on her phone. “There’s usually a station stop here, ten minutes or so for the smokers.”

“You’d better eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

“I will if you will.”

He nodded, then leaned forward to take the next bite. After he finished chewing and while she was cutting more steak he looked at her anew. “So, tell me about Rebecca North. What’s her story?”

“Simple, really. My dad worked for the Northern Pacific Railway until he retired, and my parents had a house in Tacoma. Mom was a teacher, high school chemistry and physics. I have two sisters and they live in Seattle too.”

“Where’d you go to med school?”

“University of Chicago, and I did all my post-grad work in Boston.”

“Married?”

“No, never. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of school, so I think I conscientiously just decided to put all that off until I was through with school and, well…after I moved back to Seattle my life became more and more hectic. There was a time, I think, when I realized I’d never be able to devote the time necessary to be either a good mother or wife, so I turned away from all that.”

“Regrets?”

She nodded. “Never getting close to anyone, never experiencing…that kind of life…”

He looked at her and nodded. “And if you could do it all over again?”

She too looked out the window, then back at him a moment later. “I think I’m doing what I was meant to do, and while I’m happy with what I’ve done with my life there’s still an empty place inside me. I guess I’ll never know what was supposed to…” – and then suddenly she stammered to a jolting stop.

“What is it? You looked a little shocked?”

“Gawd…I’ve never talked like this to anyone. Really, I’m so sorry…”

“You don’t need to apologize…not to me…”

“I can’t…I shouldn’t unload on you…”

“Gad, are you crying?” he asked, grabbing an unused napkin off the table and leaning across to wipe her cheeks, even though his trembling hands got in the way of the gesture. 

She took the napkin and dabbed her eyes, then looked at him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me?” she sighed.

“Well, it sure isn’t the wine. You’ve hardly touched yours,” he said, smiling innocently now. “And who knows, maybe you’ve been holding onto your feelings a little too tight, and maybe for too long. You got to get these things out from time to time, you know? Take ’em for a walk…”

“But you’re a complete stranger…”

“And who better to listen? In a few days we’ll go our separate ways and no one will be the wiser, and the only regret you’ll have will be not eating that trout!”

She laughed at that, then leaned forward and sliced more food for them both. “How about we just share. You know, like surf and turf!”

“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t,” he said conspiratorially, now smiling broadly.

“So, tell me about you?” she said as she resumed feeding him. “What’s your story? In a nutshell?”

“Mine? Let’s see, I grew up in Santa Barbara and music was always my thing. I grew up listening to Tears for Fears and The Police; by the time I was getting good on the guitar the big groups were all slipping into metal.”

“But not you?”

He took a deep breath as he reflected on the cascading memories that came for him. “You know, I liked Nirvana – a lot, really. I really, really liked the Stone Temple Pilots too, but I couldn’t see myself going down that road. For a long time I felt drawn to Sting and Pat Metheny, but when I think back…none of us could escape Paul Simon’s gravity. He turned folk into something new, but at the same time he was reaching deeper and deeper into the past, and he kept coming up with…with strange new languages. All those guys up on Laurel Canyon, really.” He paused as he thought about meeting those people. “Stephen Stills. I think I kept coming back to Stills probably more than anyone else, but Seals and Croft, Loggins and Messina, all those guys were impossible to ignore.”

“Laurel Canyon?”

“It’s a street in Bel Air, above Beverly Hills. Close enough to the scene on Sunset and the studios in Culver City and Burbank. Lots of bungalows back in the 60s, rents weren’t bad and it was close enough to UCLA so every drug known to man was available. I heard they made acid in the organic chemistry labs late at night…”

“I think that’s an urban myth.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Anyway, then came The Graduate and The Sound of Silence and Mrs. Robinson and then The Beatles splintered and for a while the universe shifted to Laurel Canyon. Stills met Crosby and Graham Nash and then Love The One Your With morphed into Judy Blue Eyes. Elton John was English but by the time he was ready to record that little corner of the universe had shifted from Penny Lane to Hollywood and Vine, and like everyone else he came to California.”

“Why California?”

“Brian Wilson is as good a reason as any. The Brits had Lennon and Paul McCartney; we had Brian Wilson. The music scene in LA would have never come together the way it did without the Beach Boys. Then things shifted north for a while, to San Francisco. Seattle didn’t really happen until the late-80s.”

“When did you get serious about music?”

“In the womb. Mom always said I came out the chute with a twelve string in one hand and a pick in the other.”

She smiled. “How does cheesecake sound?”

He nodded. “You know, I’m picking up the vibe that you know my work.”

She looked at him and shrugged. “West Side Wind got me through med school.” He nodded, but then he looked away and she thought he looked disappointed. 

“Mason was the real deal. He wrote all the music on that one; I did the lyrics.”

“You’re a poet.”

“Thanks.”

She assumed he must’ve been used to the constant adoration of a million lovelorn teenagers at some point in his life, but now he seemed almost embarrassed by the compliment. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through when he died. A motorcycle crash, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “His girlfriend was with him too.”

“You knew her too, I take it?”

“We were close.”

“It never goes away, does it?”

He looked at her and held her in his eyes for a long time, then he smiled. “You sure are easy to talk to.”

“Two ships that pass in the night,” she sighed. She noted the train was stopped now, and that they were inside the new station in Milwaukee, the concrete around them bathed in bilious yellow sodium vapor light – and very little snow was visible in this part of the station. She ordered cheesecake and coffee, and she wondered – hint-hint – if the steward might find the makings for Irish coffee somewhere in the kitchen, then she turned back to Sam.

“So, your dad worked for the railroad?” he asked. “Is that why you’re on the train?”

“I hate airplanes. It’s a genetic thing.”

“Understandable,” he said knowingly. “The airlines have grown into monsters.”

“We all have, Sam. We let them treat us the same way we treat each other. We used to expect more from them because we expected more of ourselves, I guess.”

“So, you are a cynic!” he said lightly.

“I may well be – about some things, but I usually consider myself a realist.”

“When you find out the difference between those two, let me know, will you?”

“Why did you give up on music?”

“I don’t think I did, really. After I moved to Maine I usually played for coffee or a bowl of soup. No advertising, no tours…”

“And no new albums?”

“You know, oddly enough I started producing and that was enough for me. New faces, then I got into all the new recording technologies. I got into session work for a while, until rap and hip-hop came along, anyway. You can’t fight the big labels; they want what sells – nothing new about that. Even so, I still make enough to live comfortably.”

“Will there ever be a new album?”

“From me? Hell, I don’t know. I never stopped writing but my voice ain’t what it used to be…and don’t you dare tell me voices mellow with age.”

“Like fine wine?” she teased.

“Gawd, how many times have I heard that one.”

“How many people have asked you to put out a new album?”

“Okay…okay. Point taken.”

“Maybe at some point you’d consider it a gift to all the people who loved your music.”

He nodded. “Nice thought. So, what do you do when you’re not working?”

“No such thing, Sam.”

“You’re always working?”

“I have a pull out sofa in my office at the hospital, and my own shower there, too.”

“Dear God. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but that sounds just awful.”

“I know. The thing is, I’m in my fifties and my hands won’t last. A few more years and I’ll be done, only able to take on the easiest cases, and I’m not sure I’d like that.”

“What’ll you do then?”

“Teach.”

“That’s it? Burn out your body then put yourself out to pasture?”

“Interesting way of looking at it.”

“Well, pardon my French, but what the fuck! You’re fixing eyes so your patients can get back out and see the world, and guess who’s never going to see the world?”

His words slammed home and she seemed taken aback for a moment, then she collected her thoughts. “I’m not even sure what I’d go looking for. I wouldn’t know what to do?”

“And that’s the beauty of it all, Rebecca. The uncertainty. Not knowing what’s around the next bend in the road. The complete mystery of going to the airport and getting on the first plane to anywhere, then getting off the plane and looking around for the unfamiliar. When one direction looks more interesting, or more mysterious than the other directions, you head off in that direction…”

“Where would you go?”

“The Dolomites. Never went, always wanted to. I’d get my camera and just go, walk those mountains until my legs gave out.”

“Would you write music?”

“I always tried to listen to the mountains, tried to hear what they had to say. I haven’t done that in a long time, but yeah, I might try to put that into music again.”

“Maybe you ought to do it, then.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to it now.”

“Would it hurt to try?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said softly, looking down at his shaking hands.

“There’s no one in your life?”

He shook his head. He never looked up and simply shook his head like this was a shameful admission, and for a moment she thought he looked like a little boy.

“No one?” she asked again.

He looked up at her for a moment, then turned and looked out the window. “When did we leave the station?”

“A few minutes ago,” she said, looking at the now empty dining car. Only the steward and their waiter remained, and they were cleaning up the car, getting it ready for breakfast in the morning. “Sam, I think we closed the place down. We’re the only ones left…”

He looked at his watch and shook his head. “Nine-thirty. We’ve been here almost two hours.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess.”

“Do you think that’s all this is?” he asked, his eyes unfocused. “Two ships passing in the night, I mean?”

“What? You mean why it’s been so easy to talk?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, Sam.”

“What’s the deal with breakfast?”

“The dining car opens at six. The French toast is really good.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience talking again,” he grinned.

She smiled too. “I look forward to it, actually.”

“You going to be here at six?”

She shrugged – with a bit of larceny in her eye. “You sleepy?”

“No, not at all,” he answered.

“In the lounge car, well, downstairs there’s a little café; they usually have a few liqueurs on hand. Want to try our luck?”

“I’m game if you are.”

He tried to stand but she saw he had to use both hands to steady himself on the table, and it was obvious there’d been extensive nerve damage – and she knew his cancer was in his spine so the worst was yet to come. She went around and took his arm in hers and led him to the next car forward, to the lounge car, and after she got him seated she went down the steep stairs to the little café. They had Irish whiskey, Tia Maria and Gran Marnier in tiny bottles behind the counter, so she picked up three of each as well as two little plastic cups filled with ice. With these in a little box she marched back up the stairs and found him staring out the windows at the blizzard raging away in the night.

“The snow looks so strange flying by,” he said, lost in thought as he watched the ghostly streaks flying by, then he held fingers up to the window and placed his open palm on the glass. “So cold,” he whispered. “Do you remember Saint Judy’s Comet?”

“Paul Simon?”

He nodded. “‘…and leave a spray of diamonds in its wake.’ Man, talk about poetry…”

“I loved that album, too,” she sighed.

“What was your favorite? Surely not Kodachrome?”

She smiled. “Something So Right.”

“Oh, so you are a romantic after all.”

“You didn’t know that already?”

“I was leanin’ that way but I wasn’t quite sure yet. So, what did you find down there?”

“Tia Maria and Gran Marnier. And it looks like Jameson’s Irish Whiskey if you want something a little less sweet.”

“Tia Maria for me,” he said. He made a fist and pumped his fingers a few times, then reached out for the little plastic cup – but his hand was simply trembling too much and he shook his head as he fought back the anger of impotence.

“Let me give you a hand,” she whispered.

And again he let her baby him – if only because she seemed to enjoy herself – then he leaned back and rolled the liqueur around under his tongue and closed his eyes as a memory came back to him. “First time I had this stuff was down in Mexico. Puebla. I have a place down there, for a while, really. Big courtyard, palm trees, noisy birds. Have a housekeeper and a cook. The cook makes fresh tortillas every morning after breakfast; I remember the soft slap-slap-slap as she shapes them with her hands. The smell as she fries them for just a second. And she made guacamole just about every day. Went to an open air market every morning. Both of them live in the house, and the cook’s little girl lives with her. Already teaching her to cook. On weekends they would make tortillas together.”

“Sounds a little like paradise,” she sighed. “How long have you had the place?”

“I picked it up twenty years ago.”

“What? You mean…”

“Yup, I usually go down in October, stay through Christmas. Didn’t make it this year. Really wanted to. I need to make arrangements for them.”

“Arrangements?”

“I’ve been putting money away for them, so they’ll be able to stay in the house after I’m…you know…”

“Do they know?”

“No, not really.”

“Do you have a lawyer down there?”

He nodded. “I guess I should call him, you know?”

“I think you should go down and talk with them. Obviously they’re important to you.”

“Chattel,” he sighed. “They literally conveyed with the property when I bought the place. Almost like any other part of the house. They were being paid about fifty bucks a month.”

“What about the cook’s daughter?”

“She was supposed to be trained to step into the job when her time came. I sent her to school. She’s in college now, in Mexico City. I spent more Christmases with them than I did with my parents growing up.”

“Really?”

“Spoiled her rotten, I reckon, but I loved every minute of it.”

“Why didn’t you move there permanently?”

“Too hot. Now the cartels have made life down there a little too dicey – for everyone.”

“Drugs…don’t get me started,” she snarled, her anger right out there on her sleeve.

He shrugged. “Drugs aren’t the problem; they’re a symptom. People take drugs to escape reality, or to somehow make their reality more palatable, more bearable. You’d think after thirty thousand years we’d have figured out how to do that.” 

“So, is it ironic we’re sitting her sipping a drug?”

“Ironic? No, I don’t think so. This tastes good; it’s socially agreeable. A needle in the arm is neither.” 

“Many of the people I see on the operating table are there – indirectly, most of the time – because of alcohol…”

“Moderation,” he sighed. “Somehow we forgot how to live – well…I’m thinking of balance and harmony – not just with the material world but with each other. Everything seems out of balance right now, at least it feels that way most of the time. Everything started coming too easily, and maybe we forgot that sometimes it takes hard work to maintain that balance, that there are relationships we just can’t take for granted.” 

“But we do, don’t we?” she added. “So, you were living in Maine?”

He nodded. “Camden. Kind of a quiet place these days, or at least it’s getting back to quiet.”

“Oh?”

“Same thing, Rebecca. A credit card company – MBNA, I think – moved a lot of their operations to Camden and Belfast, built these huge facilities and pretty soon everyone in the area was working there. Then the bottom fell out and all those people lost their jobs, but worse than that, there were all these massive buildings suddenly sitting empty – almost overnight. Everything was out of balance, boom-bust only now the town was in trouble – only there wasn’t anyone around to pick up the pieces. It was hard to watch, and it’s taken ten years but things are finally getting back to something like normal.”

“Sounds hard to watch, but Boeing was like that in Seattle, then MicroSoft and all the rest. Savage inequality, I think they call it.”

“Which is just people being people, and I’d have never made a dime without music companies and radio stations and MTV.”

“I don’t know if I should ask, but what’s in Palo Alto?”

“Some research going on with immunotherapy.”

“Did they stage you?”

“Four.”

She nodded and looked out the window. noted they were already past the Dells. “Brave,” she said. “Most people would just give up.”

“I’m in no hurry to die.”

“Were you serious about the Dolomites?”

“I’m not making any plans just yet, but yeah.”

“Is your patch holding up?”

“The fentanyl? Not really, but I’m not sure I want this to end.”

“This? To end?”

“Sitting and talking, with you. It’s the first time in months that I’ve felt almost human.”

“I’m not sleepy yet. We can go sit in your room for a while if you’d like. Once you put on a fresh patch you’ll want to go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“And I can’t sit here doing nothing, not if you’re in pain.”

“The Hippocrates thing, right?”

“Something like that,” she said, smiling a little. He was perspiring more now, and he had winced when he got worked up talking about Camden, so she knew it was getting close to that time.

“Let’s at least finish our drinks first?” he sighed, signaling defeat. 

“Alright.”

“So, where would you go? If you were in my place?”

She shrugged. “I read Heidi once, when I was little. I always wanted to go to Switzerland.”

“And you’ve never been?”

She shook her head. “Only time off I get…well, I go to the annual convention in Chicago.”

“So, the only time you take off is still work related?”

“I hate to say it, but I’m pretty dedicated to my work.”

“It’s admirable, Rebecca. At least in a way it is.”

“I know, I know. But it’s also kind of sad,” she said, her voice now almost a whisper.

“No time like the present. Why don’t you just go? Pack up your bags and just head on out to the airport…?”

“I’m afraid I’m not exactly the spontaneous type.”

“You know what?”

“Hm-m?”

“The last two things you said just now are ‘kind of sad’ and ‘I’m afraid.’ I see a trend here…”

“Do you indeed?” she said, suddenly brightening.

“Yup. I do. I think you need to go over there and eat fondue ’til you’re so fat you can’t move. Maybe even walk some alpine meadows. With a dog…one of those big, huge, furry Swiss dogs.”

“A Saint Bernard?”

“No-no-no. The black one.”

“Ah, the Bernese Mountain Dog. Why that one.”

“Because after I die I want to come back as one of those.”

“Oh really? Why?”

“I want to lie on my back and have a doting girl give me belly rubs all day.”

She smiled at the image in her mind’s eye. “You are such a guy,” she sighed.

“Hey, it works for me…”

They finished up their Tia Marias then she helped him stand, and he held onto her as she led them through the dining car and then back to their sleeping car. He had Room B so the compartment was almost right over the trucks, or wheels, but she noted the noise wasn’t all that bad. The attendant had, however, made up the bed so there wasn’t a lot of room to move around.

“Well damn,” Sam said when he saw the constricted space…

…but before he could object she went in and raised the bed, restoring the long sofa to its daytime position. “Let’s get you down,” she said, helping him out of his coat and getting him seated. “Where do you keep your patches?”

“Camera bag. There,” he pointed. “In the back pouch.”

She handed him the slate colored bag and he opened the pouch, removed a fresh patch. “You want to do the honors?”

She shrugged as he handed the sealed white envelope to her. “You’ve been perspiring for hours,” she said. “Would you like to shower before you get into your nightclothes?”

He shook his head. “I’m feeling too nauseated right now.”

She took his wrist and counted-off his pulse as she looked him over. “Do you have any Zofran?”

He nodded and pulled a little amber prescription bottle from the bag, took out a tiny pill and slipped it under his tongue. Rebecca then prepared the site with a swab and applied the patch.

He thanked her, then she sat beside him and waited.

And it didn’t take long; a few minutes later he leaned against her, but then she moved over and laid his head in her lap. She hesitated, but then started gently rubbing his head – and with gently swirling thumbs she massaged his temples until he started snoring gently.

But she did not get up and leave. She did not stop massaging his head. And when she was sure he was sleeping soundly she reached down and rubbed his chest for a while, and she smiled as the idea of a big black Bernese Mountain Dog pranced into her mind.

She continued rubbing away until she too felt sleep coming, then she quietly leaned against the window until she felt her eyes close, and the dream came. 

And on the other side of the glass, as their train rumbled through the night, an impossible storm gathered strength, then settled its fury on the way ahead.

(c) 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | just fiction, plain and simple, every word. 

[Seals & Croft \\ We may Never Pass This Way Again]

It has been a difficult autumn, and I will not bore you with the details. I’ve not been writing because the words would not come, and in a way I was reluctant to try again. It is inevitable that events surrounding one’s life make their way onto the page, and I simply did not care to see my work become a reflection of events beyond my control. Writing is, after all, often about control. Controlling thoughts, moods, the dynamics of life – and death – and painting those things with words is hard enough as is.

This story was born of such reflection, and I dare not say more.

[I Dreamed Last Night \\ Blue Jays]

So, grab a cup of tea and read on…and do let me know your impressions.

Why Do Stars Fall Down From The Sky?

There was a moment up there, right when the power came off, that the universe seemed to give up for a moment and time just seemed to let go of me with a sigh. Who knows, maybe the whole ball of wax relaxed, maybe everything everywhere took a deep breath before getting back down to business. Strange, because for a moment that’s what I felt. The jet’s engines powered back and little spoilers popped up on the top of the wing and I could feel the aircraft’s nose kind of drop away a little as gravity and drag got back to work. Sitting in the first row in economy – I think it was seat 7A – I sighted along the wing’s leading edge and could just make out the distant skyline of the city, out there inside misty gray hazes lost somewhere in the forbidden spaces between now and then.

Even from this distance I could make out landmarks that had defined my childhood: the Southland Life Building, the pin-striped  First National Bank building, and I could even see the blocky white form of Union Station, too. With that landmark in view I knew it was only a few blocks from there to Dealey Plaza and the infamous School Book Depository. If you knew where to look – and I most certainly did – you could follow the motorcade’s route from the Grassy Knoll along Stemmons to Parkland Memorial Hospital – where once upon a time our little universe really did come to a stop.

That moment seemed to define my generation, especially those of us growing up in Dallas at the time. Or maybe it didn’t define us so much as it haunted us. When people asked where I was from I always answered Highland Park and left it at that. It was the way people looked at you if you answered Dallas. I think it’s called guilt by association, but it’s not hard to see it in peoples’ eyes.

I’d been in the library – at High Park High School – when the principal’s scratchy voice came on over the intercom and announced that the president was dead, that he’d been murdered downtown and that school was done for the day. Two years later I graduated and as I flew west to San Francisco I swore I’d never return to Dallas, and I managed to hold true to that oath for almost ten years.

By that time I was wrapping up a five year hitch in the Air Force, not fighting in Vietnam but flying KC-135 aerial refueling tankers for the Strategic Air Command out of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. The -135 was operationally similar to the Boeing 707, and in the early 70s airlines needed pilots with such experience; I found TWAs offer irresistible and headed off to Kansas City to start training, then on to Boston – where I soon found myself flying across the Atlantic twice a week, usually to London but occasionally to Paris or Frankfurt, in the right seat of a 707-320c. Dallas receded in my mind to a distant, unpleasant memory, and I was happy to let it stay there.

And I might have been successful if not for the determined efforts of my father.

A physician, he too had gone to Highland Park High. He’d met the woman of his dreams there, too, and in due course he married her. I was the result of that union, by the way, but my mother was an actress – and actually a rather good one. When I was three years old she left for Hollywood and, like me, never looked back. A year later the divorce was finalized and dad drifted for a while before meeting another former classmate at the Dallas Country Club. She played golf and tennis and poker and could put down a half bottle of Jack Daniels without batting an eye and this wild-eyed woman became the mother I was destined to remember most. She gave my father a daughter, a timid, diaphanous creature who played the piano by day and read Agatha Christie novels all through the night as she charted a jagged course through looming mental illness in a constant search for our father’s love and attention.

Father was a thoracic surgeon and always busy, while Joan – wife number two – spent all her waking hours at the country club playing cards and drinking bourbon. Like many alcoholics, she possessed two personalities: an aloof sober variety of patrician princess and; a drunk bully. I rarely saw her when she was sober, but soon enough learned her modus operandi: When she and father made it home in the evening see launched into him until, after a few years, he found other, less stressful ways to spend his time. After she ran him out of the house she turned on me for a few years, until my voice dropped, anyway, then she turned on her daughter, my sister, Carol. Perhaps my time in that madhouse had something to do with my oath to never return, but I’ll let others be the judge of that.

Not long after I settled in Boston I met a girl that seemed to punch all the right buttons and while we dated off and on for a year nothing came of it and in the aftermath I seemed to fall into a rut. I would spend the occasional layover with a stewardess but remained otherwise serially unattached – and after a while realized that I ‘almost’ liked living that way. ‘Almost’ being the operative word to keep in mind.

I went back to Kansas City and transitioned to the L-1011 TriStar, but was soon back in Boston – flying to Paris now all the time and growing more comfortable with the time I spent in that city but increasingly feeling at odds with my life. I was still in my thirties – though just – and though I spoke to my father weekly – as in almost every Sunday – I realized I had almost no attachments left to the people who were supposed to be my family.

Father was still technically married to Joan, my mother-in-law, but now, twenty years after I’d left she was by all accounts beyond redemption. My sister, Carol, had developed an apparent affinity for razor blades and overdoses and had been in and out of Timberlawn – the gentile psychiatric hospital east of downtown – so many times she had her own room there. Father still lived in the same house at the end of Willow Wood Circle he always had, a low pink brick thing that looked vaguely French, but every time I talked with him he sounded more miserable than the last time we spoke; by this point I was starting to worry about him.

I suppose I shouldn’t have. He’d been seeing someone, of course. For years, as it happened.

And oddly enough, neither my father nor Deborah Baker felt the least bit ashamed of the arrangement.

They played golf together. They spent Sundays fishing at Koon Kreek together. And then they decided to go to Paris together, but first they stopped off in Boston.

+++++

I knew her, of course. Genie and I, Deborah’s daughter, had known each other since grade school and we had been an ‘thing’ during our senior year at Highland Park. We’d gone our separate ways after graduation, me to Berkeley and she to Tulane, but I’d neither seen nor heard from her since – and had no idea what she’d been up to. Seeing my father and – ahem, Mrs. Baker – walking up the Jetway at Logan left me feeling at little disoriented because, let’s face it, they were both married – just not to each other, and I had known Deborah most of my life – just in a very different context. And I guess I was supposed to either go along with this charade, or be gracious and not say anything untoward about their new relationship.

To put this whole mess in sharper relief, I really didn’t know my biological mother – beyond what I’d seen of her in movies and on television – and I think is by now apparent that I really disliked Joan, my mother-in-law. I’d always appreciated the sense of family Deborah Baker created in her home, and under the circumstances perhaps that was inevitable – because I felt safe there. Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas felt stilted and coldly contrived under my mother-in-law’s stewardship, yet the same holidays had felt warm and cozy when I dropped by the Baker house, and yet it was those few instances that rattled me most. I’d simply never known what the fuss about Christmas was all about, as Joan was always too drunk to give a damn and Dad was usually in surgery taking care of another broken heart. By the time I was ten, and Carol was, I think, around seven years old, Christmas had become something all of us dreaded – and after seeing Christmas in the Baker’s home I knew that was all wrong.

So as I watched Dad and Mrs. Baker walk up the Jetway I felt that lingering dichotomy; Dad with his faint grimace of a smile and Deborah Baker with the same welcoming eyes I remembered from my teens. It was, after all, just a few days before Christmas.

With their luggage checked through to Paris/Charles de Gaulle all that was left to do was shake my father’s hand and hug Deborah Baker, then we walked along inside uncomfortable cocoons of silence over to the international terminal for our flight – and with the two of them in first and me up front in the right seat, it promised to be an interesting flight. After we made our way onboard I clued-in the head stewardess and asked her to take care of my old man, and after we arrived early the next morning I helped get them into the city and to the Crillon, their hotel. We enjoyed an early dinner after long naps then I left them to enjoy the first week of their vacation, though they had convinced me to take a week off for Christmas and to stay with them in the city when I returned later that week. I dared not ask what their other halves were doing for Christmas, and from what little I could see my poor father seemed really not to care. I think taking care of Joan had simply worn him down, like stones under a pounding surf.

When I returned to Boston the next day I found a letter from my mother, not my mother-in-law, in my mailbox. She was, it seemed, now between husbands and with the holiday fast approaching it appeared she was feeling abnormally blue. She wondered, or so she wrote, if I had plans for the holidays – and if not she wanted to spend some time together. The tone of this missive was more plea than request, and this was a first in my experience.

And this was notable to me, as this outpouring of loneliness represented a vulnerability I’d never suspected in her. She’d done well in Hollywood, really very well, and was now a regular on a popular television series and still making movies; fans adored her and reporters followed her everywhere. We’d spent a little time together when I was at Berkeley, and I found the life she’d created for herself to be an intoxicating brew of glamour and ego; it was hard to imagine a life more comfortable than what she had in Beverly Hills.

Yet within her words I felt something uncomfortably dangerous. Loneliness was not something a vulnerable soul like her’s tolerated well, and her reaching out to me was a first in my experience. Thinking about her out there suddenly by herself at this time of year felt wrong, so not knowing what else to do I called Dad. I explained my concerns and as he always did he listened attentively, carefully, then he agreed with my assessment. Go out to LA, he said, and help her get through the holidays. We could do Paris again next year.

That was, of course, the last time I ever heard his voice.

+++++

It was a few weeks after that. I had just walked into the flight dispatch office inside the TWA annex at de Gaulle when one of the dispatchers handed me a note, and I could tell by the look in the man’s eyes that bad news had come calling. 

The facts were all laid out there in concise corporate speak: Father dead. Car accident. Return DFW soonest…

The dispatcher handed me travel documents and sent me on my way, and I sat in numb silence as a series of airliners carried me homeward. A stewardess I knew sat with me from time to time on the way, held my hand as we crossed the Atlantic, and after a change of planes at JFK I fell into a restless sleep. I seemed to remember dreaming about cellophane Christmases all wrapped up in terrible cartoons full of red-nosed reindeers and foul-spirited grinches stealing the true spirit of Christmas, and then the throttles retarded and the spoilers popped up on top of the wing and there was Dealey Plaza off in the distance and I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or not. Maybe all of this was, I told myself, little more than a bad dream, and I found myself wondering what John Kennedy had thought as he looked out at this skyline before he landed at Love Field.

But then, looking out over the city I could see Highland Park over by Love Field, and then we passed over Addison airport – where I’d learned to fly once upon a time – and right then I knew this wasn’t a dream. So many familiar landmarks, yet it struck me now that there was nothing familiar about anything down there. This was terra incognita, a dangerous place that existed within a series of very bad memories, and the only good thing down there was had been laid out on a marble slab being prepared for burial. This was January, after all, and bare limbs and dead grass do not make good homecomings. 

Yet I wanted to get up and run into the warmth of a home I’d never known, but there wasn’t any such place – not now and certainly not then, and it hit me: there was nowhere like that for me, and for the first time in my life I realized I had been well and truly homeless for most of my life.

The thought made me so sick I had to laugh.

I could see DFW airport ahead and soon felt the little 727 was landing, her thrust reversers announcing our arrival to the world, but still I felt detached from this noisy routine, detached and alone – as if lost inside a never-ending dream. Watching the jet turn into the gate I realized there wouldn’t be anyone waiting for me, so after the Jetway connected I watched all the other passengers deplane before I gathered my flight bag and overcoat and made my way off the jet and up the ramp into the terminal.

And so I was quite surprised when I saw Deborah Baker waiting for me up there beside the waiting area. And even more surprised when I saw Genie, her daughter and my old girlfriend, standing by her side – and I felt myself falling back into a dream that just didn’t want to end.

+++++

As it happened, my mother-in-law had learned of her husband’s death and broken out in what could most charitably be described as genuine hysteria. Laughter for a time, then a wailing lament followed by a durable catatonia. She was now resting at Parkland, heavily sedated and jaundiced. Carol, my sister, was as always living inside herself, still warmly ensconced in Haldol and wrist restraints out at Timberlawn. This I learned from Deborah in the terminal, before I realized just how fragile was her current state of mind.

Her husband was off somewhere in Mexico, Cuernavaca she thought, with his latest mistress, and it turned out that the only person she well and truly loved – besides her two children, of course – was my father. And now she was crumbling before my eyes, hanging on to me as if I was the last remnant of that love. Which, when you get right down to it, I suppose I was.

And then there was Genie.

She looked now just as she had when we had last said our goodbyes – now almost twenty years ago. Tall, short brown hair, a face that seemed born to smile, she stood back and watched as I held onto her mother and I felt the same empathic warmth in her eyes. Well, empathy and compassion, though maybe a little pain, too. 

And yet I stood there in silence, lost in that dream, not knowing what to say.

+++++

My father had died in an accident, of sorts. He’d been playing golf, had just finished the first hole at the country club and had gone into the little field stand by Mockingbird Lane to use the restroom and get something to drink, then once again in his little Cushman golf cart he had gone over to the crossing at Mockingbird and pushed the button to get a crossing signal. When he had a green signal he started across and was immediately hit by a speeding Mustang driven by a kid who’d had his driver’s license for about a month. 

Death. Senseless Death. Pointless in the extreme. One of the most gifted thoracic surgeons in Texas run down by a kid smoking pot while he was out and about and oh, by the way, skipping school, too. My father had been alive one moment and gone a split second later; he had literally never known what hit him. Pronounced dead at the scene. Closed casket service, burial at Sparkman Hillcrest, classmates from Highland Park High and the med school in Galveston lined up in shock.

And there I was, sitting in church with Deborah and Genie by my side. Both of them holding my hands, and quite possessively too, I thought.

I stayed in town long enough to settle my father’s affairs, but in truth I had no idea what to do about Joan and Carol. My mother-in-law had been an alcoholic for so long her physicians were astonished she was still alive; my half sister Carol’s affinity for razor blades and secobarbitol  notwithstanding, we’d hardly been close but now here I was: when the music stopped I was the last man standing. In short, it had been my father’s wish that should something happen to him I be appointed guardian to both Joan and Carol – so there really wasn’t anything I could do about the situation other than see it through.

They were, you see, family, and though that was a word that did not come easily to me, I had a secret weapon, or what you might call an ace up my sleeve.

+++++

He’d always been an overtly simple man. He worked hard, never drank much and managed to go to church only when the situation absolutely called for such nonsense. He’d studied engineering in Massachusetts back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, or so he liked to say, then he’d fallen in with some truly evil people. Men who called themselves things like geologists and petroleum engineers. He’d got in on the big Texas oil boom and made some real money, then he started a company that made offshore drilling equipment and got filthy rich. Along the way he picked up a wife and in due course the man and his wife had a son.

The man was my grandfather.

And in point of fact he still was. Sitting right beside Deborah, as a matter of fact.

My grandparents had built one of the first homes in Highland Park – and my grandfather still lived there. When I was a kid, when life in my father’s house became too much for me, I’d walk over to my grandparent’s house in search of calmer shores – and it was a long walk, too. Maybe two hundred yards. I still remember how he would open the door and look down at me, and how he would nod his head knowingly and let me in; this happened with increasing frequency and after a while my grandparents had a bedroom in their house set aside just for me. They didn’t pass judgement on anything or anyone, either; I was simply welcome in their home. Come hell or high water he made pancakes every Saturday morning, and we always had lunch at their home on Christmas Day.

My grandmother died when I was ten, when I was still going to Bradfield, and my grandfather and I only grew closer after that. He taught me how to fish the spillway at Koon Kreek, and how to hunt ducks with retrievers on the Old Lake, and when I expressed an interest in learning to fly he saw to my lessons and drove me out to Addison Airport every Saturday morning for a year. He and my dad watched my first solo flight early on the morning on my sixteenth birthday and because of him I ended up with my pilot’s license before I’d even learned how to drive.

He was old now but still tough as a boot, and he stood next to me at Dad’s funeral and I think we sort of held each other up. In the aftermath, his lawyers helped decipher my father’s wishes, and his financial advisors helped modify trusts for Joan and Carol. He’d never tried to hide his feelings about Joan but Carol was, whether he liked to admit it or not, his granddaughter – and his sense of duty to her was therefore absolute.

The problem, as he saw it, was my own sense of duty. I could see that doubt written all over his face.

Carol was my sister – again, whether I wanted to admit it or not – yet in his eyes my sense of duty to her was an unknown, and my grandfather didn’t cotton to such equivocation. In other words, I needed to prove myself – to him. I needed to prove – to him – that I was worthy of my father’s trust.

But why?

Why was that important to him? And to all of us?

In a way, when I first thought about it I had to look no further than my own mother – and how she had simply left us to pursue her own dreams. And now I could tell that grandfather harbored vast reservoirs of ill will towards my mother – and perhaps to my own departure for Berkeley and then the Air Force. Guilt by association had festered in his mind. Then the distance I’d kept for almost twenty years, in effect denying the very existence of my family. Just as my mother had.

I had very little experience to fall back on, too, as my fondest recollections of family came from the year or so in high school that I spent with Genie.

And yet…Genie was here, now, and like good friends everywhere we had simply said hello and started talking right where we’d left off all those years ago. Talking with her still felt natural, and by extension I still found in Deborah a kind of surrogate mother figure. But yes, Genie was different now, too. She’d finished-up at Tulane and then went to law school there. She’d married and had a boy of her own now, though she was apparently a single mother now. For more than a while, too. She’d moved home after her separation, returned to the comfortable embrace of the familiar, and now her son, Tom, was at Bradfield – and I guess you could say he was following in our familiar footsteps.

If anything, Genie was the ideal counselor for me now. She knew me as well as anyone, and she knew my family dynamic. Best of all, she and my grandfather were close; they had been since I’d started learning to fly.

But right now I had two weeks emergency family leave, so I had two weeks to put all the pieces together, and I had two people who could help me make that happen. Yet there was one piece of the puzzle I had yet to size up.

Joan and Carol. They were the last great unknown, as in Beyond Here Thar Be Dragons.

When I spoke with Carol’s psychiatrist I was underwhelmed by her use of jargon, which I  vaguely understood: borderline personality, bi-polar, depressive disorder. In truth, I had little real idea what these things meant, but I could see the results strapped in a bed at Timberlawn. The little kid I’d known in high school was long gone now, replaced by a gaunt, gray skeleton looking thing, her wrists swaddled in gauze. Carol’s eyes, almost always wide open, looked like they were focused somewhere beyond infinity.

Her shrink wanted to try ECT, or electro-convulsive therapy, which I think everyone else called ‘shock therapy,’ but this was a controversial treatment option and, as I was Carol’s guardian, she needed my permission to proceed.

What, I asked, did she hope to accomplish? Would any meaningful change in her condition result?

And she informed me that her team had run out of ideas, and that they no longer knew quite how to proceed – beyond keeping her so medicated she was not able to move. Carol was, they implied, being warehoused, and in time her skin would begin to breakdown, her physical health would deteriorate and perhaps quite precipitously. Due to the medications she was on, organ failure was a near term possibility, and a long term certainty. ECT was an unknown frontier, and they had no clear idea how it might impact Carol’s mental condition. It was, one of the other psychiatrists told me, a Hail Mary play, a last ditch effort to change an almost certain outcome.

Genie was dubious. My grandfather was curious, but doubtful. He’d been watching Carol’s slow demise for years and he was now ready for anything that sounded even remotely hopeful. I wondered about asking Joan; she was, after all, Carol’s mother, but Deborah, Genie, and my grandfather all advised against getting her involved. When he growled that Joan was a scheming psychopath I had the good sense to move on to another subject, namely what the hell were the options if ECT didn’t work?

Genie looked at me and as kindly as she could uttered one word: hospice.

I was thunderstruck. A thirty-something year old girl with no chronic illnesses going into hospice? Seriously?

Yet Carol was being fed via a gastric tube and she was urinating via catheter. She was currently unaware of her surroundings and was developing bedsores. Her brain was broken.

And it was costing, on average, about thirty thousand dollars a month to keep her in that state; medical insurance covered the first five hundred dollars – and not one cent more – per year. Of course my father had easily afforded that sum, and the trust he’d left for her care had more than enough to cover the expense for decades, but in the end that wasn’t the point.

“Pat, if you were in your sister’s place,” Genie asked, “what would you want?”

“If I wasn’t really conscious, if I couldn’t lead a productive life or even take care of myself? Man, I don’t know. It’s easy to say ‘pull the plug’ when you’re talking about things in the abstract, but it’s a completely different thing when it’s someone you know.”

“When that person is family,” my grandfather added gently.

And I nodded. “I hate to say it, but I’m hoping ECT works. If there’s even the slightest chance of an improvement I think we have to go with her team’s advice.”

Grandfather nodded, and so did Genie. Deborah seemed to want to say something but held back.

I talked with Carol’s lead psychiatrist the next morning, and of course she had the papers she wanted signed all ready to go. I had a five o’clock flight back up to Boston that evening, so Genie ran me out to Timberlawn and helped me with all the paperwork, then she went with me to Parkland to check in on Joan, my mother-in-law.

What I remember most about that visit was the color orange. Really more a yellowish-orange. Joan’s skin was orange and the whites of her eyes were yellow tinged with orange and red. What her doctors called advanced liver disease, and she was in terminal decline that day. And sober, too, for the first time that I could recall. We talked about the accident and Dad’s funeral – which she had missed – but she really wanted to talk about her daughter, Carol. 

“I know you two were never really close,” she began, “but she is all the family you have now. Please take care of her, Pat. Please. For me, if not for your father.”

Of course I assured her I would, but I didn’t linger over Carol’s prognosis, nor did I mention ECT, while under the current circumstance a word like hospice seemed hideously cruel. We talked about a few good times we had enjoyed as a family and Joan seemed content enough with that, then she came to the heart of the matter…she had, at best, another week to live…and then, the bombshell.

“Your father told me he wanted a divorce a few months ago, and I really fell apart after that,” she said as she looked at Genie. “I don’t blame him, Pat, I really don’t. I was always too high-strung, too tightly wound…”

“I assume he knew who you were before he asked you to get married,” I replied.

“No, not really, Pat. I was always pretty good at hiding my worst impulses, and I think he was in a state of denial after he figured that out. I took advantage of him, you know? You too. I counted on you to take care of Carol even then, but you know what? Your grandfather was the only one who had me pegged from the get-go.”

“I know. He was always the great and powerful Oz, working away behind his emerald curtain to make things right for…”

“For you.”

I nodded. “I know. We’ve always leaned on each other.”

“I’m glad he’s still here for you.”

Our eyes met, and she looked at me now with just one question left to ask. “What are you not telling me, Pat?”

“Nothing important,” I said, lying through my teeth. “We just came from Timberlawn and I got the low-down. They know how to get in touch with me, so don’t worry. I won’t drop the ball.”

She nodded, unconvinced. “Will you come for my funeral?” she asked, looking away.

I cleared my throat, took her hand. “Don’t worry about all that now,” I told her.

“I’d like it if you came. There are a few papers you’ll need to sign.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Your grandfather has everything.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“He wouldn’t. I asked him not to, until…the time was right.”

I nodded. 

“So, when will you be able to come back?” she asked.

“Next week. Probably Monday.”

She squeezed my hand and then let me go, but I did something uncharacteristic just then – I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead – then I turned and left the room, with a surprised Genie hastily bringing up the rear. When she caught up to me at the elevators I was trying to stifle the tears that had suddenly come calling, and I think she was more surprised than I was.

 So Genie ran me out to DFW, but as we were early she went in with me and we sat in a little restaurant – but it wasn’t too hard to tell she had a few important things she wanted to talk about, too.

“How come you never married,” Genie asked as I looked over the menu. 

And I shrugged. “I don’t know, Genie. Maybe I never really saw marriage as something I wanted to do.”

“I can’t blame you. Not with Joan terrorizing the two of you.”

“Terrorizing?” I asked. “Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”

She shook her head. “No, not in the least. My mother always called her a rattlesnake…”

I laughed at that, but I’d felt the same more than once. 

“I think that’s why you were always over at our house, Pat. Just getting away from her.”

Of course I had been, and there’d never been any real reason to hide the fact – now or then. “Survival instinct, I guess,” I just managed to say, but I was thinking of Joan again – and trying to reconcile the painful cascades of memory with who and what I had just seen at Parkland. Worse, I knew now that the only person who might have possibly prevented Carol from taking the full brunt of Joan’s tortured madness…was me.

“Tom likes you,” she said, out of the blue.

And I looked at her, and at the meaning behind those words. “He seems happy.”

“His father is working in Norway most of the time now, but he’s shown little interest in being a father.”

“Oh?” Now I was wondering when she was going to get to the point.

“Tom needs a father,” she sighed.

I nodded. “Who’d you have in mind, Genie?”

“I’ve dated a few men, Pat, but Tom has never liked any of them. He likes you.”

“So, who’s calling the shots?”

“Pat, I’ve been in love with you since kindergarten, and he’s heard me talking about you all his life. And let’s face it…you’re a pilot and what little boy isn’t going to be…”

I held up a hand. “Genie, all that happened a lifetime ago. You and me…I haven’t seen you in, what? Almost twenty years…”

“And I’m still in love with you, Pat. What’s more, I’m pretty sure you still love me.”

“Genie, look…”

“Pat, you just lost your father. Joan is dying and now you’ve got Carol to deal with. I know your grandfather is a great guy, but you really don’t need to be alone right now. At least when you come home.”

I nodded. “This isn’t home, Genie. Not anymore.”

“Look, all I’m saying is let’s give us a chance. When you come back, could we spend some time together? Not as friends, but as, well…more than friends?”

I nodded. But I looked away, not sure how I felt about all this – only that the whole day was beginning to feel a little like an ambush. “It’s a lot to take in,” I sighed.

“I know. The past two weeks have been a nightmare. Just give it some thought, would you?”

We talked about little things after that, over salads and iced tea. About how Bradfield had changed since we’d been students there, and about all the changes the country club had in the works; typical Highland Park stuff, I guess. All the things I’d turned my back on. All the things I had no interest in. We picked at our food like we picked our way through the minefield of my denials – slowly and carefully – at least until it was time to head to the gate, but by then she’d worked up enough courage to try one more shot across the bow.

“God knows you had reason enough to run, Pat, but don’t you think it’s time to stop?”

I felt helpless, defeated. Maybe I even felt alone as I shrugged. “You know, Genie, believe it or not I’m actually kind of happy. I’m doing what I want…”

“And you’re running into a dead end,” she countered. “One day you’re going to take a look around and realize you’re all alone, and it didn’t have to be that way.”

Her words felt heavy, heavy and burdensome.

“Will you at least call me when you’re coming? I’d like to meet you here?”

“Of course,” I said. “Like I said, next Monday. I’ll call you with the flight number as soon as I have it.”

She smiled then. A hopeful smile, but her eyes were full of doubt. I suppose because my words didn’t quite ring true. We hugged before I walked down the Jetway, and the more I walked the lighter I felt, and pretty soon I felt like running.

+++++

A few days passed and I found myself walking along the banks of the Seine, looking across still waters at Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle, as ever in total awe. I’d never been a particularly religious sort, yet from time to time I sought out the solitude of these old medieval sanctuaries, and while I didn’t know why, or even care how this came about, I enjoyed the timelessness I felt inside these places. And it seemed today was going to be such a day. 

I wandered over to an old favorite, to the Église Saint-Séverin, and walked inside, found an empty pew and sat in a pool of kaleidoscopic light. The stained glass in the main sanctuary was mesmerizing, and as I sat there in the light thoughts of my father came to me slowly. Then came the raging torrent of responsibilities and duties that waited for my return. Joan and Carol. Genie and Tom, and of yes, Deborah, too. And my grandfather, patiently waiting for me to come to my senses and come home…

“Well, I’ll say one thing, Pat. I never expected to see you walk into a church.”

I knew that voice, and it certainly wasn’t God’s.

I turned to see not an omnipotent old man in flowing gowns but a stewardess I’d known for years, and known rather well. Ellen. Ellen McGovern. Sweet kid. Kind of a ‘fresh off the farm’ midwest vibe and really, really good looking, too. Every now and then we had the same flight so we usually got caught up on those layovers, but it hadn’t been physical between us in a while; once she’d figured out I wasn’t the serious type she’d moved on to steadier, greener pastures.

So I smiled at her and nodded at the door, then got up to leave. Once out in the open she took my arm and leaned into me. “I heard about your dad. You doin’ okay?”

“I’m not sure,” I said with a grin. “I was about to ask God and then there you were…”

She gave my arm a squeeze as we walked back towards the Seine. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked. “It’s freezing out!”

“I think it’s more like fifty degrees. At least that’s what I remember from the forecast. So, what are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

“Following you.”

“Really?”

“No, not really, but I was showing a couple of the new girls the sights and we saw you.”

“And you just dumped them?”

“No, they’re around the corner at the crepe place.”

“That sounds good.”

“Come join us.”

So I did. 

Two old hands and the three new girls made room for Ellen and I and we shot the breeze for an hour, then I led them all on a tour of Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame, glad that, once upon a time, I’d taken several electives on medieval art and architecture and could finally put all that knowledge to good use. An afternoon later we made our way to the Marriott and we all had dinner together, and Ellen thanked me for being such a good sport before she made her way up to her room.

I heard a knock on my door an hour later, but not really wanting to be more confused than I already was I feigned sleep, then tossed and turned the rest of the night. 

In the dispatch office bright and early the next morning the sympathetic man handed me another note, this one indicating that Joan had passed away a few hours earlier – I assume while I was out chaperoning stewardesses around the city. Another first officer had been called in to work my flight to Boston and I would, therefore, be flying back to Boston in the cabin, connecting with a flight to Dallas from Logan. I called Genie and left the flight number on her answering machine, and wondered what it all meant.

So Ellen found me in seat 1A when she boarded with her brood, and I filled her in on recent events, told her I was back on family leave and en route to Dallas once again. I was in uniform so on best corporate behavior; she brought me orange juice and handed me a hot towelette. I tried to stay interested as we taxied and took off but the truth of my life was slowly dawning on me.

I was looking forward to seeing Genie. To talking with my grandfather. And I suddenly felt a surge of energy when I thought about the things I might do to help Carol along, because truly, if there was anyone capable of helping her fight her demons, it was probably me. We had, when all was said and done, suffered in silence together, through all of Joan’s abominations.

What was it they called this? Survivors guilt? I had been able to run to my grandfather’s house when things got bad, which looking back on it now meant I’d left Carol to take the brunt of it in my absence. Why had I done that? Maybe because she was ‘just’ my half sister I’d never developed the empathy I needed to protect her? Or maybe I’d just been born stronger and more resilient but had mistakenly assumed she could take care of herself? Yet what was the point in laying blame anywhere now? Assigning some half-baked idea of blame wasn’t going to help Carol reconcile her past, only compassionate support would help her now.

I thought about the little church of Saint-Séverin. The vast pools of faceted light cast by walls of stained glass, the silence within her cold stone sanctuary, and I guess I was really thinking about faith and how that spark had always eluded me. To me, faith stood in stark opposition to observable truth, and my engineers’ mind had always sought certainty – and never the vagaries of the spirit. And yet I almost instinctively sought out such places as Saint-Séverin when I needed a quiet place to think.

Looking out over the Atlantic, looking down at low scudding cumulus clouds and the shadows they cast on the blue-gray sea, I wanted to see something beyond the obvious. I wanted to see allegory and symbolism, not the stark reality of the hydrologic cycle, but my mind hadn’t been wired that way. Then I saw another airliner, below and a little to the left of our track, and I could see that it was a Swissair DC-10 and probably headed to Boston. We flew along in formation like two migrating birds above the clouds.

Ellen brought me lunch and sat with me for a while after the meal service was cleared, and apparently she still wanted to talk.

“How’re you doing?” she opened.

“I’m not really sure. Conflicted, I think.”

“You look so lonely sitting here.”

I nodded. “I think the past few weeks, well, I’ve never felt more alone. I don’t think I was ever really willing to admit how much my father meant to me, yet I’m coming to realize that his dedication to medicine was our family’s undoing, and I don’t know how to reconcile that.”

“Do you think he was aware of what was happening?”

I shrugged. “He was smart and he was perceptive so I have to think he was.”

“And yet he didn’t intervene?”

“He got Carol help, but I think by then the damage had been done. Beyond that, I think he had affairs just so he could stay away from Joan. He played golf, he went hunting or fishing…”

“Did he drink a lot?”

“At one point, yeah. After I went off to college he always seemed pretty bent when I called, but not so much the past few years. I think he was going to divorce Joan and marry again, and I think that helped pull him away from booze.”

“Do you know who he was in love with?”

I nodded. “Old friend. They’d known each other since…well, they were in grade school together.”

“So Joan wasn’t your mother, right?”

“Yup. Dorothy Mahoney is my mother.”

“The actress? Really?”

“Really.”

“Now that you mention it I can see the resemblance. You have her legs.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

“Do you talk with her much.”

“Only when she needs me. Which so far has been every five years or so.”

“I guess I can see why marriage doesn’t really ring your bell.”

I nodded. “Marriage, to me, is a battlefield – where no prisoners are taken and no one survives intact.”

“You know, there was a point when I wanted you so much, when I wanted you to ask me to marry you…”

“I’m sorry I let you down.”

“That’s just it, Pat. You didn’t let me down. You were always pretty clear about what kind of future you wanted.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t trust people, Pat. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say you don’t trust love.”

“Maybe. But I also don’t like living by myself,” I sighed. “How’s that for a contradiction.”

“That’s a whopper, but why do you have to live alone?”

“I guess all that’s frowned on, you know?”

“Well, maybe you could live with someone for a while, figure out if marriage is right for you?”

I sighed. “It always ends in marriage, doesn’t it? It’s like a moral imperative…”

“Maybe it is,” Ellen added.

“Tell me something, would you? What’s the point of marriage if you don’t want kids?”

“Commitment, I guess. Shared struggle to reach a goal? To take care of one another and maybe just have someone to laugh at your corny jokes and a shoulder to lean on when things go wrong…?”

“You need a piece of paper for that?”

“No, not really, but Pat, do you not want kids of your own?”

That was the crux of the matter, really, and she’d come to the point easily enough.

“Or are you afraid you’d create the same misery for your own kids,” she added.

I looked down – and I think I nodded in defeat. “That would kill me,” I whispered.

“So don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t let that happen; don’t create the same environment your parents did. Find the right girl and hold on tight, be there for your kids and help them on their way. Just because your parents messed up doesn’t mean you will too.”

But that argument always came full circle again, didn’t it? Faith in the unknown versus the reality of cold, hard truth. The scattered light of stained glass or shadows passing on the sea below. “Is it really that simple, Ellen?”

“I don’t know, but I’m willing to try if you are.” I knew she was teasing me just a little and that she really wasn’t serious, but then she took my hand and gave it a little squeeze before she went off to deal with a passenger.

Maybe my thinking really was caught in a rut. Or maybe I simply couldn’t imagine a life with a wife and kids because deep down I really never really wanted to live that way.

I watched the spoilers on the wing when they deployed, felt the subtle transition to our gentle descent, but this time I felt anxious little butterflies of uncertainty were circling in my gut. Only not about Ellen.

Genie was on my mind. Hell, she’d always been on my mind, all the way back to Mrs. Murphy’s first grade class. I’d always looked at her when she came into the classroom, even then. The same butterflies visited me on those mornings. We were just little kids but I was drawn to her like a moth to the flame and something was once again pulling me towards her. Momentum? Some weird kind of reverse destiny – like you can never ever really truly walk away from your past? Instead, we wear our past all our lives, like turtles wear their shells.

Genie was, like me, tall. I was a lot taller than all my classmates, but she was the tallest girl at Bradfield, too. She had a face that reminded everyone of that girl on TV, the freckle faced girl that played The Flying Nun. The same big smile, open, friendly eyes, brown hair cut real short, like Maria in The Sound of Music only Genie’s was shiny brown. By third grade we always sat together in the school cafeteria during lunch, and almost every day we walked home from school together – which explains the how and the why of Deborah becoming like what a real mother was supposed to be like. So, hadn’t Genie – in a way – become more like a sister to me?

By the time I was in sixth grade, like by the time I was eleven years old, I was taking care of Carol when she came home from school because Joan was always at the country club playing cards and getting smashed. And I don’t know how many times Genie came home to help. Some nights Carol and I walked over to Genie’s and had dinner there.

So, where was Dad during all this?

After surgery and rounds he was at the club playing golf. Cocktails with friends in the nineteenth hole then more cocktails with Joan in the main lounge that overlooked a large, four hole putting green. By the time they made it home Joan was primed and ready for combat and she’d start in on Dad, in a heartbreaking instant turning into a world class bully. After a half hour of that Carol and I could hear him thundering out the door and getting into his car and taking off for God knows where. When I finally learned he had a mistress waiting in the wings I could hardly blame him.

But as soon as he was out the door the real fun began.

Joan would come in to our rooms and tortures us for a while, the pure emotional abuse of a sadistic bully. She’d usually have a few more drinks then pass out in the living room, and that was when Carol and I could finally get some sleep. The thing is, this was our routine. It happened every night.

So when I looked at Carol I was looking at a fellow survivor, yet I was also looking at my kid sister, a defenseless little girl who’d always counted on me to take some of the heat from Joan. When I left for college Carol lost what little protection she’d had, and now she was coming apart at the seams. If that was my fault, was I supposed to be her caretaker for the rest of her life?

But now I was, and quite literally would be, her caretaker – for the rest of her life. And now…I had to make some very painful decisions on her behalf if she didn’t snap out of it, if these ECT treatments proved fruitless.

But then the Tri-Star landed and her thrust reversers pulled me back into the present. I had a tight connection so I smiled at Ellen before I dashed through customs and over to the domestic terminal to hop a ride down to DFW, yet I felt conflicted as I ran from one terminal to the next. Genie and Carol, two sides of an old coin, dominated my thoughts – which did their best to keep me company on the next three hour flight.

Genie was, of course, waiting for me at the head of the Jetway in Dallas, and she held me and kissed me just like all the other husbands and wives were doing. So natural, like falling from one life to another without so much as a passing thought. As we drove back into the city she told me about all the arrangements she’d made; the service for Joan and the actual funeral – all followed by a small get together with some of my parents closest friends at the country club. A perfect Highland Park wedding – or funeral – but really…what’s different but the passage of time?

And Tom, Genie’s son, was waiting for us at the house. My father’s house. Doing his homework, a book report on Tom Sawyer, and I thought ‘How appropriate’ – given the circumstances.

I carried my flight bag and a small duffel to my old bedroom – because I absolutely, positively wasn’t going to sleep in my parent’s bed – and Tom followed me and then waited for me to put my things away. My room looked exactly as it had at the end of my senior year at Highland Park High, which is to say that there were shelves and bookcases loaded down with all the model airplanes I’d built – probably starting somewhere in second grade – so a good ten years worth of plastic and diligently applied paint and decals.

And Tom was fascinated.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he started a bit hesitantly when I looked up at him, “but I came in and looked at your airplanes.”

“No. I don’t mind. You interested in building models?”

He nodded solemnly, as I guess he was still pretty shy, even for a nine year old.

“So, what have you built so far?”

And Tom shrugged. A shrug that represented long, lonely nights tossing and turning as daydreams came and went unfulfilled. His shrug represented all the things he wanted to do but hadn’t been able to…yet. He had all the signs of a kid caught in the tug-of-war of a disintegrating marriage; divided loyalties; not knowing who to believe, or even what to believe, as his parents used him to get at one another. The boy needed a father, desperately, and though it was easy enough to see what Genie had in mind I felt for him.

I still had a few kits in my closet, a couple of nice Tamiya 1/48^th scale Navy jets, and I pulled them down and watched his eyes light up when he saw an A-7 Corsair II. I pulled that one from the stack and put it on my desk and opened it up, and Tom picked up the rows and rows of pieces and parts and looked at them almost reverentially…

“Look over the instructions,” I said gently, “and tell me what you think.”

I turned and saw Genie leaning in the doorway, taking us in with her all-knowing, appreciative eyes, but then she looked over at me and smiled before she turned and walked off to the kitchen. She was making herself right at home now, cooking up a storm because, well, she was in her comfort zone. I assumed it had been a long time since she’d had an appreciative husband around the house and, well, we had a certain history, didn’t we?

Then Tom looked over at me and he unflinchingly asked the one question I’d not expected: “Could you teach me to fly?” he asked.

So I looked him in the eye and took a quick measure of his sincerity. “You interested in that?”

He nodded. “Every time we go somewhere. There’s something magic about flying.”

I nodded. “There is. So tell me, subtract 90 from 360. What do you get?”

He thought for a moment then replied: “270,” he said – and quite confidently, too.

“Add 65 to 95.”

“160.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yup.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said, “now what about that kit?”

“I think I’d need help with painting it, but it doesn’t look all that bad.”

“Ever used an airbrush?”

“A what?”

I smiled and shook my head. I’d put away my airbrush equipment years ago and had no idea if it would still work, but Genie called out from the kitchen just then – “Dinner’s ready!” – and I couldn’t help but hear her mother on a distant afternoon and I drifted along on my memories for a moment.

“Well,” I finally said, breaking free of the past, “come on, Tom. I guess your mom has other plans for us right now.”

We ate spaghetti and garlic bread and I fielded a barrage of questions from Tom about flying lessons, at least until my jet-lag hit – and I went down hard after that. When I woke early in the morning and found Tom asleep in Carol’s bedroom and Genie down for the count in my parent’s bed, and I looked at her while she slept and wondered why all this felt so natural. Like this was the way it should have gone down twenty years earlier, and standing there I went from feeling a kind of contented bliss to emotionally disoriented, like Time was this flexible, yielding thing that could entertain two such wildly disparate emotions in my mind.

I’d had my eight hours so went to the kitchen and was not exactly surprised to see that the ‘fridge had been completely stocked, and I stood their, exasperated and yet full of wonder, in awe of Genie’s mastery of the finest detail. She would have been perfect as Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff when he was laying out Operation Overlord, and I felt certain the war could have been shortened by at least a year if she had been organizing the invasion of Europe.

I called my grandfather at 0500 because I knew he’d have been up for at least an hour by then, and that he’d have his morning calisthenics out of the way already, so I asked him to come over and help me whip up a bunch of pancakes for Genie and Tom. Fifteen minutes later and with his excitement barely contained, he was whipping up batter while I was putting the bacon in the oven, then whisking eggs and dicing onions and green peppers for a huge scramble. When the bacon began doing it’s job – filling the house with that eternally seductive aroma – and thereby waking Tom and Genie – the old man and I began ladling out hotcakes on the griddle while Genie set the table and poured glasses of fresh squeezed OJ.

And I could see she was in seventh Heaven, that her version of the universe was coming together nicely – that the cosmic tumblers were all falling into place. Like any other nine year old, Tom dragged his ass into the kitchen still rubbing sleep from his eyes, but the prospect of a hot breakfast made by someone other than his mother snapped him to full attention. Full of unasked questions, he sat there staring in utter disbelief at my grandfather, and I even think I understood his confusion. It was beyond surreal that any old man could move with such certainty and speed and, as long as his hearing aids were set correctly, carry on multiple conversations with any and everyone in the room. Poor Grandfather was still as sharp as a tack and Tom just couldn’t relate to that.

And soon the Old Man and I laid out a nice forty-thousand calorie breakfast, just what we needed to get us through the day ahead. Tom plowed through five pancakes and asked for more, so the Old Man went to the griddle and whipped-up another batch of perfect flap-jacks.

When Genie drove Tom over to Bradfield the Old Man got down to business.

“Joan’s father and grandfather had some serious money,” he began, “and it’s parked over at Northern Trust. After consulting with her attorneys she decided to split the trust in two, seventy-five percent to you, and twenty-five to Carol, I think to take care of her medical costs, and assuming you would have no objections I went ahead and consolidated your new shares with your father’s trust…”

I shrugged. I knew the money was there, somewhere, but refused to touch it, and had continued living on my salary from TWA. I just looked at the Old Man and shrugged.

“Look, I know you don’t give a damn about these things, but Joan’s father made some good money, her grandfather even more, and she inherited it all. With what your father left you, well, you aren’t exactly poor.”

“And I told you…”

“I know what you told me, Pat. Now you’re going to need to tell me what your plans are for the foreseeable future.”

“I thought I’d been clear with you about that. I’m going to fly and I’m going to keep living in my apartment in Boston. I have no plans beyond that.”

“Pat, do you even own an automobile?”

“No. I don’t need one. I can ride the T anywhere I want to go.”

“What are you going to do with this house? And if I may, do you have any intentions concerning Genie?”

“Why would I sell this place?”

“Because it’s a shame to let it sit her and rot. And what about Genie?”

“Paw-paw, last I heard she was still married…”

“Divorce is inevitable.”

“You’ll excuse me, but you sure seem particularly well informed about things.”

“Well, you’ll excuse me, but in case it’s slipped your attention, I ain’t exactly getting any younger and I’ve got plans of my own to tend to. And, in case that too has slipped your mind, you figure into those plans as well, so you’ll pardon my curiosity but I kind of need to know what you have in mind.”

“You mind if I ask what you and Genie have cooked up for me, or is that question none of my business?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Pat.”

I knew that look, the glare he was sending my way just then. You didn’t mess around with the Old Man when he sent that one your way. My dad had taught me that much…

I sighed, but I didn’t dare look away – because the Old Man hated human weakness and frailty of any sort. “You know my position on marriage,” he snarled. “Maybe it’s time you changed your mind about living your life like some kind of monk. It ain’t natural, Pat. Your life won’t ever be complete without the responsibility that comes with bringing up a family and taking care of them. That’s what defines a man, in case no one told you.”

“That thought has been on my mind a lot recently,” I sighed.

“And?”

“I think about destiny, too. Growing up, I always thought that Genie was my destiny, and then…”

“And then California came calling – but your mother was behind all that. Then that lark in the Air Force. Yes, yes, I know that story all too well.”

“Paw-paw, in case you’ve forgotten, Genie met the man she thought was her destiny – and it wasn’t me…”

“Because she thought you’d walked out of her life – all our lives, really – and she didn’t know what else to do. She knew she wanted a family…”

“Gee, I wonder where she got that idea?” I said.

“That was a dumb-ass thing to say, Pat, and don’t you dare talk to that woman like that…not while I’m still around. I hear about that and I’ll come kick your ass from one end of the Commons to the other.”

And he could probably still do it, too. “I hear you,” I sighed.

The garage door opened and Genie walked into the kitchen, stopping short when she saw the piles of papers spread out on the kitchen table. “Did I come at a bad time?” she asked.

“No, not at all,” my grandfather said – in that perpetually chipper, matter of fact way of his. “Pat’s just got to sign a few things. What time is the service?”

“Eleven,” she replied. “Would you like us to pick you up? It’s on the way?”

“Thanks, that would be nice. Say Pat, bring your father’s car, if the damn thing’ll start. It needs to be driven some while you’re still in town.”

Of course all this felt like one blistering insinuation after another. I could see that the lawn care had slipped and that there were leaves in the gutters, things my father would have never allowed. And there were three cars in the garage; his two Jaguars and Joan’s Cadillac. Those Jags were an affectation of his, an expression of his love for all things British; he had a new XJ-12 as well as an older XK-E, an inline six model, but it was a ragtop– though I’m not sure the top had ever been raised to close off the cockpit. That car…oh how he’d doted on the thing…and how many times had we waxed it together?

But after I’d dressed I went out to the garage and noted battery chargers had been hooked up to both his cars, and only my grandfather would have thought to do that. The XJ started easily and burbled to life, and after I backed her out I went around and opened the door for Genie.

“It still smells like your father,” she sighed, her eyes closed as her senses roamed. “God, I miss him.”

“I know the feeling,” I said as I settled in and adjusted the mirrors, yet the truth is I felt like I was on autopilot, going through the motions while lingering memories beat the air over my head. It was like the last thing I wanted to do right now was rock the boat – because if only one thing was apparent right now it was my grandfather’s agenda. He wanted me home and he wanted me married to Genie. He wanted me taking care of that boy, opting to take over my father’s memberships at the country club and Koon Kreek, and it all seemed like he wanted me to slide into my father’s life because, I was beginning to see, he just couldn’t admit that his son was gone. I needed to step in to validate the future he had always considered a done deal, the future he’d imagined it ought to be. And would have been but for kid in a Mustang.

Grandfather lived at most about 200 yards away, on Bordeaux, in the same house he’d built when the developers of the newly incorporated Highland Park had first offered lots for sale. I pulled into his driveway and he walked out the same front door I’d knocked on, stopping once to check the sky on his way out to the car. No doubt he’d checked the weather reports before getting dressed, chosen what coat to wear while standing graveside, because that was the way you did things. In his world you thought things through. Everything. All the time. Certainty created precision; uncertainty bred chaos. He’d drilled that into my father’s head, and my father had done the same to me. Now it was my turn to pass on the distillate of his being, to pass on the secret of his success. Precision: Good. Uncertainty: Bad.

And hadn’t I done that my whole life. Hadn’t I studied that way? Wasn’t that why my grades were always the best in my class, whatever class it happened to be? Take precise notes. Highlight the text in precise detail. Avoid uncertainty. Avoid chaos. Come out on top?

I drove, precisely, to Lovers Lane Methodist. I acknowledged all my parent’s friends with a precise nod. I delivered a carefully constructed eulogy with concise precision, including only the highlights and omitting all of Joan’s transparently chaotic flaws. I was, as precisely as I could be, the dutiful son, and here I was with precisely the right woman hanging onto my arm, in effect validating everyone’s worldview of my place in their lives.

After the burial and during the reception at the country club I was stunned by how many of my parent’s friends came by to say how good Genie and I looked together, and more than a couple stated flatly that we had belonged together from the beginning. And every time I heard that blather I thought I could feel my head swelling up, getting ready to explode.

“You’ll be moving back to Dallas soon?” one said, and it was a proclamation, not a question.

I was still the class valedictorian, the star wide receiver that made All State my senior year. 

“And just why did you leave?”

“Good to see you’ve finally come to your senses.”

And my favorite: “Your father would be so proud.”

At one point I walked over to the small dining room that overlooked the swimming pool and I looked down into the water, saw a few forlorn leaves gathered in the deep end, and I envied their silence. the chaos of their rotting in the bottom of a swimming pool.

True to form, I’d put up my perfectly cleaned airbrush so when I took it out a few days later the damn thing worked flawlessly. Tom and I had driven in the XK-E out to Halls Hobby Shop and picked up new paint and a few tools, and we spent Saturday working together on that model of the A-7, and I found myself talking just as my father had. Careful encouragement. Positive criticism. Always in service of the ideal idea: precision over uncertainty. Take your time and do it right the first time.

Becoming my father came to me naturally, so naturally, and the thought made me sick to my stomach.

+++++

I spent one morning – alone – out at Timberlawn, talking with Carol’s psychiatrist as well as the internist charged with her rather complicated medical care. Carol had been through two ECT treatments so far, and she seemed lucid for a few hours after each but had soon slipped back into her hallucinatory existence. Her psychiatrist proposed two more treatments, to see if the latent intervals of lucidity increased, and if so to continue with four more treatments over the next two weeks.

“And if she doesn’t improve?” I asked.

“That will be up to you, but as we discussed last time you might want to consider hospice care.”

“When is her next treatment. I’d like to talk to her just after.”

“Tomorrow morning. She should be out of anesthesia by ten or so.” 

So I was there at ten or so the next morning, and Carol and I talked for the first time in twenty years, and we started where we had left off. She was with me again, clear as could be, and I explained what was happening and why I was there.

“I can’t go back there, Pat. You have no idea…”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t know,” I said, and as empathetically as I could. “What’s it like? When you go there?”

“Flames. I’m surrounded by flames and my skin is burning and then the demons come. They rip away my flesh and push me deeper into the fire…”

“And that’s…”

“That’s all I can see or hear, Pat. Don’t make me go back there…”

Those words clawed at my throat, broke my heart. “You don’t have to go back, Carol. Come, stay with me, let me help you fight them…”

And yet two hours later she slid back into the flames, began writhing in agony and screaming as her tormenters returned. Thorazine was administered and within a few minutes she was back in her stupor, but her psychiatrist explained these medicines only quelled the external dimensions. Whatever it was tormenting her continued to do so even now.

“Is this unusual?” I asked.

“Yes, fairly. Thorazine usually stops almost all hallucinations, but not in all patients, and certainly not in your sister’s case.”

“So she gets no relief?”

“That’s correct. She’s in, for all intents and purposes, Hell, and I mean that in the most literal sense possible. Inside her hallucination, she’s roasting in Hell while constantly being attacked by demons, and I’ve watched these attacks, so to speak, on an EEG – even when she’s sedated on Thorazine. It is a completely unacceptable outcome.”

“Do you know what caused this?”

The physician shrugged off the question. “Genetics? Upbringing? We just don’t know yet, and we don’t have the tools we need to find out the why or the how of such things. This woman, her mother? I can say she must have been a monster. A complete monster.”

“Cobra,” I whispered.

“What’s that?”

“I called her a cobra once, when I was about fifteen. She slapped me senseless.”

“What else do you recall?”

I shrugged. “The list is endless, but if I could come up with one common denominator I’d say that Joan was trying to destroy everything my father stood for, everything he valued, and the more she drank the more violent she became.”

“She beat you too?”

“Both of us, yes.”

“You’ll excuse my asking, but did she molest you?”

I looked away, but I nodded.

“May I ask how?”

“She’d bully my dad until he’d had enough, and after he left she came to my room. She’d crawl all over me and play with it, usually with her hands but sometimes using her mouth. She’d sit on me and piss on me and then tell my father I was still wetting the bed, telling him to spank me…”

“Did he?”

“No. I think he knew something was wrong, but I don’t think he ever really put all of the pieces of the puzzle together…”

“These pieces? They were pretty big, too big I think for a physician to ignore.”

“Maybe.”

“Have you ever considered the possibility that your father molested your sister?”

“No. And I’d say that was an impossibility.”

“Why?”

“Because he was hardly ever home. Joan ran him off – almost every night.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t really know, not with any certainty, but I always suspected he kept a mistress.”

“What about after you left for college?”

I froze. From the inside out. “Dad wasn’t the type.”

“You know this with certainty?”

I nodded.

“Then the origins of her hallucinations will remain a mystery. Joan was not your biological mother, correct?”

I nodded again. “That’s right.”

“Who raised you?”

I shrugged. “My grandparents, my girlfriend’s mother, but mostly my father. I always thought my grandparents knew something was going on…”

“Do you trust women?” the psychiatrist asked, out of the blue.

I looked at the shrink and nodded. “I never considered that Joan was normal. My grandmother was a saint, and so too was my girlfriend’s mother. Hell, for that matter my girlfriend was too.”

“But you’ve kept your distance from women, haven’t you? Maybe you find it hard to commit to a relationship?”

“I’ve always considered myself a confirmed bachelor.”

“I think if I was in your position I would too.”

“So, you think…”

“I think I am not your physician, Mr. Healey. What I know of you and your family is a distortion, or a series of distortions your sister conveyed, so I would not dare to presume anything at this point. I am curious, however. What happened to this girlfriend you mention? The saintly one?”

“Long story, but the short version is she’s still out there, waiting for me to come to my senses.”

“What an interesting way of putting things. What do you think is going to happen next?”

“I have no idea.”

The psychiatrist looked at me and smiled. “Oh, but of course you do. You’re the only one that does. You just have to know where to look.” But then the shrink turned and faced me, and just then she pointed right at my heart. “Life is a hall of mirrors, Mr. Healey, and from time to time as we walk along we think we catch a fleeting glimpse of reality, but make no mistake – what we see is an illusion, and there is no place we can hide from that one simple truth.”

And for a moment, in a brief flash of time, I felt the wind in my hair and saw dead autumn leaves skittering alongside the Seine before they fell into the black water. I looked up in time to see Sainte Chapelle covered in blood, my blood, and the sky beyond was turning crimson and gold as flame-filled clouds, writhing in my sister’s eternal agony, marched across an unsuspecting Earth.

+++++

“You look pale,” Genie said as she walked into my father’s house. Tom was trailing along at a discrete distance, his eyes cast down and looking very put upon. It was so obvious now, too. The boy missed his father and didn’t understand what had happened to his life.

‘Welcome to the club, kid,’ I said inwardly. The face of the country was rapidly inverting as no-fault divorce and legions of freshly minted lawyers scoured the land in search of a new clientele, and kids like Tom were the faceless, nameless victims of this latest inversion of family life.

“Bad day,” I grumbled.

“Carol?” Genie asked, though the question was hardly necessary.

“I picked up a bunch of steaks for dinner,” I said, changing the subject.

“A bunch? You must be hungry.”

“I asked the Old Man to drop by.”

“Are we intruding?” she asked.

“No. Not at all.”

“Tom,” she said, “why don’t you get started on your homework.”

The boy nodded and put his book bag down on the floor next to the kitchen table, then he pulled out a copy to Twain’s Tom Sawyer and got to work. I drifted back to Bradfield, to Mrs. Dunsworth’s fourth grade class, and I remembered making my way through the same book on my way to writing my very first book report. I tried to reconcile that experience with the sight of this kid following down the very same path, yet it was impossible to forget the shrink’s comments about a hall of mirrors – and the impossible vision that followed.

“Pat, what’s wrong?” Genie said, her voice shaking just a little.

“I’ve got to go back out there in the morning, but I’m a little scared…”

“Scared? You?”

“The implications of these treatments failing…well, it really became crystal clear today.”

She came over and took my hands in hers, but she as quickly gasped: “Pat…your hands are like ice!”

I remember nodding, and trying to smile just a little, but I was lost inside my very own hall of mirrors. “I told you I felt scared.”

“You feel up to cooking?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I’ll handle the grill if you can put together a salad.”

“How ‘bout a spinach soufflé?”

“Perfect,” I added, knowing the freezer was full of Dad’s favorite side dish, little orange boxes of Stouffer’s spinach soufflé – which was his side of choice when grilling steaks out back – and the thought that Genie knew that left me reeling. “Did Dad stay over at your house often?”

She hesitated, but then she relented. “More and more the past year or so.”

“How’s your mom?”

Genie shook her head. “Not good. She went down after you left last time; it was like losing him all over again.”

I nodded, felt sick to my stomach. Genie had been well on her way to becoming my stepsister, and wouldn’t that have been just ducky – best laid plans and all that nonsense. I didn’t really know what to say so went out back to get the Hasty-Bake ready for duty, filling the charcoal tray just like father      did, getting the coals just so then using the same wire brush to clean off the stainless steel grates. Back to the kitchen to make his marinade – equal parts ketchup and mustard, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and a little squeeze of anchovy paste and half a lime. Drop in the ribeyes and let them soak it all in before dropping them on a bed of 500 degree coals.

“Salads ready,” Genie called a bit later, and I pulled the steaks from the grill and closed the dampers before I carried them into the house. Both my grandfather and Deborah were sitting at the table, lost in conversation while Tom sat there still trying to figure out what the Hell was going on with his life. I said my hellos, but after I put the platter on the table I walked over and gave Deborah a huge, bone-crushing hug – if only because I was genuinely glad to see her right now – then I blushed and took my seat.

Genie fixed our plates and passed them around – just like she always had twenty years ago, only at her house. Grandfather said a prayer while Tom and I exchanged knowing smirks – just like my father and I always had – at this very table. We made small talk, anything really that would keep Carol and all her problems away for a few more hours…

“You ought to take the XK-E out for a run while you’re here,” Grandfather said.

I nodded. “Not sure I could stand the attention.”

The roadster was fire engine red with a black interior, and everywhere you went in the damn thing people stopped what they were doing and drooled.

“Better check the oil first, if you do,” he added – because like all Jags the engine leaked oil 24/7.

But I had checked her fluids already. And yes, after checking the garage floor I confirmed the oil was down almost a quart. “Maybe I’ll take it out tomorrow,” I sighed, if only because I hated crawling into the driver’s seat, contorting my frame over the wide sill and under the oak steering wheel, but a car like that needed to be driven. Hell, it screamed to be driven – and fast – but oddly enough it wasn’t a great car. It was sexy as hell, but while smooth the inline six lacked power, and Dad’s XJ handled about as well on a mountain road.

“How was Carol?” he asked, breaking the spell.

I shook my head. “We’ll know more tomorrow,” I managed to say before I asked Genie for some more grub.

Then I cleared the table and Genie got the dishes loaded in the washer – and soon enough she came over and asked if it would be okay if she and Tom slept over again.

“Why don’t you ask Tom,” I replied. “He seems a little out of it right now, like maybe he’s a little confused about where things stand.”

Her jaw tightened but she just caught herself, then she smiled and nodded as this setback became too obvious to ignore.

A half hour later I was alone again.

It was time, I realized as I looked at this dated appliances in the kitchen, to sell this mausoleum. It was time to move on. From everything.

+++++

When Carol failed to come out from under the spell of her hallucinations after her fifth treatment, I met with her treatment team in a small conference room, and I could see this latest defeat in their eyes.

“We’re back to square one,” Amy Stottlemeyer, her lead psychiatrist, said.

“And that means what, exactly?” I asked.

“We try one more time, and if that fails we have two options. Warehouse her on anti-psychotics and sedatives, or hospice care.”

“I thought we’d resolved that earlier,” I said.

“People change their minds,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Ah. The hall of mirrors,” I added.

“Precisely,” she said, satisfied that I remembered our discussion from the day before. “People change their mind all the time.”

“I’m listening.”

“We think it’s too soon to throw in the towel, so we’d like to try some orthomolecular treatments.”

“Linus Pauling, right?”

She nodded. “Right. So you know about his work with Hawkins out at Stanford?”

“The basics, yes. I also found that the NIH and others in mainstream psychiatry consider this regimen to be little more than snake oil.”

“We don’t have a whole lot left to try.”

“Well, I guess as long as you don’t blow out her liver there’s not a lot to lose.”

“So, you agree?”

I shook my head. “I’m not qualified to make this decision, or am I missing something?”

“Well, the option is palliative care.”

“Warehousing her, you mean. Until her liver fails.”

Stottlemeyer nodded. “Or we can try the orthomolecular regimen for a while, perhaps try another round of ECT. If we still find she’s made no progress…well…at least we’ll know we tried everything.”

“And you need my permission? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you have more papers for me to sign?”

Stottlemeyer grinned as she nodded my way. “Always.”

+++++

I met my grandfather at his favorite place, the S&D Oyster Company down on McKinney, after I left Timberlawn, and I filled him in on the results.

“So, you signed their papers?”

“I did.”

“I don’t trust them, Pat. All they’re after is money, more and more money.”

“Welcome to modern medicine,” I sighed.

“Bullshit! Psychiatry isn’t medicine, it’s voodoo with a few crystal balls thrown in for good measure.”

“Don’t leave out the smoke and mirrors.”

“And don’t make fun of me!” he snarled.

“I wasn’t.”

He settled down before his half dozen arrived, then he made his cocktail sauce in the little silver bowl, adding what I considered way too much Tabasco sauce, then he speared an oyster and dipped it in his sauce before he slammed it down, chasing the slimy thing down with a long pull from a Lone Star longneck.

“So, how’d the car do? Still running okay?”

“Not bad – for a Jaguar, anyway.”

“And you’re such an expert, right? The boy who still doesn’t own an automobile!”

“I’ll get one when I need one.”

“And what about Genie?”

“I’ll get one when I need one.”

“You’ll never get another chance for happiness like this one. You know that, right?”

“That was a broken dream, Paw-paw. It was never going to work out, and we always knew it.”

“Nothing works unless you try to make it work.”

“That doesn’t sound like love to me. That sounds like a job.”

He sighed. “That boy needs you.”

“He needs his father, not another disposable marriage.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“I think I found my answers to this place twenty years ago. That’s why I don’t live here.”

“I wanted it all, you know? Again. I wanted to watch you start a family, know that somehow you’d be carrying on the name, but I guess Joan killed all that, too.”

“I like to think Dad didn’t really know her, but…”

“But some mistakes we never get over. They chase us to our grave.”

I nodded. I understood what he was grieving for, because I had been too, and perhaps I had been all my life.

“So,” he continued, “I take it you’ll sell the house? And I can take your name off the list at the country club?”

“And Koon Kreek.”

“It’s to be a clean break, then,” he sighed, and while he indeed understood, he was now broken hearted.

“I think it has to be. There aren’t many good memories here, and the good ones mostly came from you.”

“I tried, Pat. I saw what was happening, so I tried. I know it wasn’t enough…”

“You made all the difference in the world.”

“Thanks.” He was still too tough to shed a tear, but I could tell he was upset. “So, you’ll stay in Boston?”

“I may be moving to Frankfurt later this year, but that will be a short term assignment. I’ll probably go back to Boston after that.”

“Frankfurt, as in Germany? What the hell…?”

“We’re expanding our route network in Europe. I’ll be making evaluation flights for a few months, but there’s a possibility I could end up based over there.”

“Dear God.”

“And just think…I’ll be flying in and out of Tempelhof, too.”

“Oh, you’re full of all kinds of good news, aren’t you?”

“I think I’m going to get my promotion to captain, but with this European thing that’d mean I’d be flying 727s.”

“That’s the little three engined one, right?”

“Yup. Great airplane, though.”

“I thought you liked the TriStar.”

“I do, but it’s not a short haul airliner.”

He nodded. “I guess you’re right, of course. Moving around like that…a family would never work out.”

“I’m not ruling it out. I am not, however, going to rush into a marriage with Genie – or anyone else, for that matter.”

“You may be right about that, but don’t underestimate that girl, or her love for you. She’s not the type to give up so easily.”

I shook my head. “As soon as she understands I’ll never move back to Highland Park she’ll lose all interest in me. Again.”

“You’re too cynical.”

“You might be right, but actually I kind of doubt it.”

“What’s going to happen to Carol?”

“If this latest effort fails, then palliative care.”

“Dear God. What did she do to deserve a life like this?”

“Good question. Why don’t you ask him when you see him.”

“God damn atheist…” he muttered.

I laughed just a little at the unintended ironies within that statement. “Have you ever considered hooking up with Deborah?”

“What? Are you serious?”

“She’s still cute, and I bet she could clean your clock.”

“And you need to get your mind out of the gutter, young man.”

I held up my hands in defeat. “Okay…if you say so.”

“Do I look like a cradle-snatcher to you?”

“No. You look lonely. And I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

“Balls!”

“Use ‘em or lose ‘em, Old Man.”

“Yup. It’s high time I kicked your ass. You ready?”

“No. But I bet you can’t eat another oyster…”

+++++

I flew back to Kansas City to finish up transition school, but I stayed with the L-1011 in order to remain flying our trans-Atlantic routes out of Boston, and after I made captain I bought a place on Louisburg Square in the heart of Beacon Hill. Four bedrooms, too. Just in case. Grandfather flew up for a visit and he liked the place. I heard Genie and her husband had reconciled after I left, and I smiled at the convenience of her ability to accommodate the bastard after he’d cheated on her, but mainly because I hoped things would work out for Tom.

I made one more trip to Dallas to visit with Carol’s treatment team at Timberlawn, and they advised she had reached the limits of what they considered possible, and while they recommended hospice as a near term option I wasn’t yet ready to go there. Just the idea that a physically healthy thirty-something year old could go into hospice to die by starvation was just too much for me. Still, when I considered Carol’s description of life in her hallucinatory world was simply overwhelming, about all I could do was ask myself what I’d want her to do if I was in her place. It was impossible, at least emotionally impossible for me to process, and I drove back to the house in a funk.

Later that afternoon I met grandfather and Deborah at the country club, and after my morning at Timberlawn I enjoyed their apparent happiness. I told him I planned to put the house on the market while still here in town, and he wasn’t surprised – again, he was just a little sad. I wasn’t surprised when the house sold just days after the listing posted, but it was a bittersweet parting of the ways, a final goodbye to the life I had once known – and turned away from.

I resumed flying the TriStar out of Logan on the Paris–De Gaulle run once again, only now from the left seat. I figured that when I got too lonely I could always count on Ellen to cheer me up, and somewhere along the way I started studying medieval art and architecture. I was soon carrying a camera everywhere I went, shooting roll after roll of Kodachrome as I walked around Paris, and I suppose life might have gone on like that indefinitely…

…until one night, when I’d just returned from Paris I listened to a voicemail on my answering machine. The call was from a Detective Ben Barnes, with the HomicideDivision of the Dallas Police Department; his voice was hard as steel, and asked that I please give him a call. 

“As soon as possible,” he added – as an after thought…

+++++

Barnes painted a pretty graphic picture over the phone: Carol’s bed at Timberlawn a ragged, blood-soaked mess, the mattress and pillow shredded by a long blade kitchen knife. But it turned out that there was one problem, and it was a biggie: there was no body. Anywhere. And now they had lab results on the blood, and it wasn’t human. In short, Barnes told me that it appeared to have been a ‘staged’ murder, and the old cop wondered why.

“Tell me about your sister,” Barnes asked.

And I told him quite literally everything I knew about her condition, up to an including the recent discussions to place Carol in hospice.

“And you say you didn’t approve that move?”

“No sir, I just couldn’t…I’m not prepared to give up hope.”

“Does she have any money?”

I felt a cold chill. “Yessir, actually quite a lot, but it’s held at Northern Trust and isn’t easy to access. In her case she would need my written permission to even get a dollar from the account.”

“And no one has been in contact with you about her holdings?”

“No sir, no one.”

“This is weird,” Barnes sighed, lost in thought. “Well, let me know if anyone tries to get in touch with you…”

I told him I would, then I called Northern Trust to check on any suspicious activity and there had been none. Next I called my grandfather. He’d been distraught for several days about all this, but he didn’t know what to do. 

“There’s no way anyone could get at her money, is there?” he asked.

“Not without my consent.”

“Could anyone fake that?”

“Doubtful. And I just talked to Cheryl at Northern Trust; they’ll be extra vigilant now, more so than usual, and she won’t authorize a thing without first talking to me in person.”

“Pat? What if she was kidnapped? What if they try to hold her for ransom?”

“Well, unless they have a shitload of Thorazine on hand they’ll have their hands full. Not sure they’d be able to manage her for more than a few days…”

“But, what are you saying – that they’d kill her?”

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions, Paw-paw. No one’s tried to contact me yet, and I assume no one has tried to touch bases with you…”

“No…no…not yet…”

“Well then, it’s a mystery, that’s for sure…”

And that word, mystery, suddenly popped to mind, flashing in bold red lights. Mystery? What about that word was suddenly so important?

Mystery?

Agatha Christie? Agatha Christie – mysteries?

Carol had been addicted to Christie’s novels in high school and had studied her life and works in college, at SMU, and I remembered her talking about the author faking her death and disappearing for a few weeks, and there’d been a later novel where the protagonist faked her own death…and as it had been set in ancient Egypt it had been Carol’s favorite.

Oh holy shit.

Could she have been faking schizophrenia? For almost ten years?

No way. No fucking way. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around that one, but…yet…something was most definitely up, only now, and quite suddenly, I thought that Carol was probably behind it all.

“Paw-paw?” I said. “Do you remember Carol’s infatuation with Agatha Christie?”

“The writer? Now that you mention it, yes, I do.”

“I can think of two incidents Carol mentioned where the writer faked a death…”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“So wait a minute…are you saying you think Carol might be behind this?”

“It’s a theory.”

“Pardon my French, but – shit!”

“Yup, that’s the first word that sprang to mind. She told me once that Christie disappeared for a couple of weeks when she found out her husband had been cheating on her…drove her car out to a quarry and parked it next to a deep water pit. Just enough hints to implicate her husband, too. I remember that much about it.”

“You gonna call that detective?”

“I think I’d better.”

“Well, I’ll be a suck-egg-mule,” the old man said, and I had to laugh at that one.

“One of these days you’re going to have to tell me what that means.”

“Hell if I know. Your great-grandfather used it when he saw someone he hadn’t seen in a while.”

“Your father?”

“No, your grandmother’s. He worked on the Texas and Pacific Railway, he was a civil engineer. Laid out tracks, designed bridges, that kind of thing.”

“He’s the one who lost an arm, right?”

“Yup. Settled on a farm outside of Sherman, found oil in one of the pastures. He taught you how to draw when you were about four…”

“I almost remember that…drawing bridges…he helped me draw a bridge.”

I could hear the old man smile, even over the phone. “That’s right. Your dad always said that was a big deal, why you went into engineering. You never can tell, I guess.”

“Geesh, I haven’t thought about that in years…”

We shot the breeze a little after that then he rang off, and I called Barnes at the police department and told him of my latest suspicions, and a while later the idea of building bridges popped to mind. Agatha Christie and building bridges.

What the hell? What could that mean?

+++++

My routine on flight days was simple. Sleep-in late and have a small breakfast, dress and head to the airport – Logan – and check-in at the dispatch office in Terminal E then head out to the gate. Assuming the equipment was there, I’d drop off my flight bag in the cockpit then check in with the ramp agent on the ground, go over fuel load-outs and check tire pressures with him before I made my first walk around the aircraft. The flight attendants would usually be working in the galleys by the time I made it back into the aircraft, and I’d start programming the necessary waypoints into the INS, or inertial navigation system, a tedious routine that demanded absolute concentration. After all three INS systems had been programmed and cross-checked, the Flight Engineer and I would go down and do a more in-depth walk around, and after we returned to the cockpit the First Officer would go down and make sure the fueling was complete and then bring a copy of the load-out back up the cockpit. When the passengers were called, one of us, usually the FO, would step into the forward entry and do the obligatory ‘Meet & Greet’ – saying hello to passengers as they stepped aboard, before they made their way aft to their assigned seats.

A few weeks after my Agatha Christie revelation I found myself posted at the entry doing the Meet & Greet, and first to board were two elderly women, both dressed in black, and both rather frail looking – and one had an old book in hand. Ellen, working as the senior flight attendant that evening, helped me get the two old women to their seats, which happened to be Row 1 on the starboard or right side of the First Class cabin, and when I helped the frailest looking woman into her window seat I just managed to look at the woman’s face.

And I saw Carol’s face. Heavily made up and wearing a wig, but it was Carol lurking behind a Cheshire Cat’s grin.

And her seat mate, and I assumed her partner in crime, was none other than her psychiatrist, Dr. Amy Stottlemeyer, also equally well disguised.

Carol then handed me a book, Agatha Christie’s ‘Death Comes As The End’, and as I looked at her she pointed to a small envelope in the book she’d used as a place marker and she smiled, said “Thank you so much,” in a stilted patrician British accent before she turned dismissively and looked out the window.

“My pleasure,” I said to a grinning Amy Stottlemeyer. I noticed then that the two were holding hands, and that they were looking most pleased with themselves.

Now at a complete loss, I walked back to the cockpit and opened the book to get the envelope, and breathlessly read Carol’s message before I put her ‘gift’ in my flight bag. I then contorted my way into the captain’s seat while doing my level best not to laugh out loud, but I think only the years of discipline I had by then accumulated allowed me to focus on my duties during that flight. I do recall the usual seven hours seemed to last about a week.

I met them at the baggage carousel, but Ellen ambled up and asked if I was going into the city. I told her I would meet her in the lobby of the Crillon at six and she sighed then walked off in a huff. The two old ladies looked like expectant owls just then, their eyes fixed on mine, waiting for the obvious next question.

“So, ladies,” I said as I turned to address my fugitives, “what can I do for you this fine morning?”

“Help us find a place to live,” Carol said.

“Someplace with a nice view,” Amy said. “And a big bathtub,” she added.

And yes, I knew just the place.

+++++

A few months passed, autumn fell and winter assumed her rightful place in the sky, and a light snow was falling on the ramp outside Logan’s International Terminal as I finished my walk-around the TriStar. This was to be another momentous flight, my first time flying Grandfather – ever. He’d always hated flying and did so only when absolutely necessary, and as this vacation was absolutely necessary he was up in the Ambassador’s Club lounge nervously waiting for his flight to be called.

I of course stood in the entry to perform the evening’s Meet & Greet, and there they were, Mr. and Mrs. Denton Healey, walking down the Jetway together. I shook his hand then leaned in to give Deborah a peck on the cheek, then I turned my attention back to my grandfather and his nervous gaze.

“There’s no way something this big can fly,” he growled as he took in the hundreds of seats. “Pat! This thing is positively huge!”

“It is, a little.”

“This is a long way from Addison Airport, you know?”

I looked at him with all the love I had in my heart. “I’d have never made it here without you.”

He looked at me and nodded, then he stood aside and made way for Genie and Tom – and now I was indeed shocked and speechless.

“We’re on our way to our wedding reception, Patrick,” my grandfather said. “Surely you’d expect my daughter-in-law to be in attendance?”

“Oh yes, I see your point,” I said, as Tom walked up to shake my hand.

“Think you could show me around the cockpit?” the boy with the glowing eyes asked.

And I nodded. With a surprised smile, I think. “Yes, I think we can manage that.”

Genie of course looked radiant and I knew when I looked into her eyes that it was pointless to resist this life any longer. My destiny – and her’s too, I assume – had been written in the stars so long ago that not one among us would dare question such a thing.

Coda

Poor Grandfather was beside himself when he saw Carol waiting for us in the lobby of the Crillon, and I feared this might be the shortest reunion possible – but no, he was made of stronger stuff. He always had been, in case you didn’t know that by now.

We sat together that evening, all of us, getting caught up over dinner. Carol was writing and Amy was painting and both had resumed their affair with the piano, and Grandfather couldn’t wait to hear them play Debussy.

He had come a long way, I guess you could say. From growing up on a farm outside of Sherman Texas to eating caviar in the Palais Royale on Christmas Eve, from driving the first automobiles to watching men walk on the Moon. He watched Carol and Amy and felt their love, all our love, really, and I doubt any grandfather had ever been happier. Carol took the newlyweds back to the Crillon, leaving me to walk with Genie and Tom through the palace gardens. I stood between them and held their hands and we talked about simple things like love and family as a gentle snow started to fall, and once I thought I heard my father calling my name; I looked up and for the life of me the snow looked just like stars falling down to hold us in his embrace.

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, plain and simple, every word of it…

[Close to You \\ The Carpenters]

So, adios for now…

Shadows of shadows passing. Shadows on the flickering white limestone of a cave’s wall.

You were there, weren’t you? Can’t you remember?

[Ray La Montagne \\ I Still Care For You]

C1.8

Two of the police department’s rescue divers stood in knee deep water just a few meters from the steep stone steps closest to the St Francis Yacht Club’s main parking lot, waiting for Callahan and Bullitt – and their instructor – to suit up. They looked tired, almost bored, and probably because they knew the afternoon was going to turn into yet another one of Homicide’s wild goose chases.

And by now there had been hundreds of sightings of the glistening black ‘sea monster’ – ever since word of the two gruesome homicides had hit the front page of the San Francisco Examiner, with dozens more fresh sightings coming in almost every day since publication. There were now overloaded excursion boats taking madras-clad tourists on Monster Hunts around Fisherman’s Wharf, and The National Enquirer had posted ‘rewards’ for anyone getting a clear photograph of the beast. After almost two weeks not a single verified sighting had been officially recorded, and the two police divers were looking forward to another unpleasant afternoon in the chilly water.

Bullitt was still fiddling with his regulator, fixing it to his 80 pound tank incorrectly before he remembered the correct way. Callahan looked on and shook his head, then lugged his gear down to the water’s edge. Harry thought the five-eighths neoprene wetsuit felt stiff as a board as he waded into waist deep water, and once his tank and vest were secured he knelt a little and pulled his fins on, only then walking into deeper water. Once Bullitt waded out to join Callahan, they walked over to their instructor and talked over the dive plan one more time.

“Okay,” Dave Mackay said, “we’re going to surface swim on snorkels out to the end of the breakwater. That’s about 700 yards but we’re at slack tide so it shouldn’t be too hard…”

“What exactly are we looking for,” Dan O’Malley, the lead police diver asked.

“You read the reports,” Callahan grumbled. “A glowing green ball – or a fucking sea monster,” he added, after spitting out some raw sea water.

The group slipped their masks over their faces and cleared their snorkels then turned and, side by side, swam out into the marina’s lone fairway and on towards the tip of the long stone breakwater. 

And no one saw a thing.

The group stopped and gathered around Mackay once they arrived at the point. “Okay, the bottom drops off rapidly from here, so let’s head down to the bottom and we’ll use 80 degrees as our primary compass heading.”

“How far we going?” O’Malley asked.

“It’s about 700 yards to the East Marina. We’ll surface there and compare tank pressures; hopefully we’ll have enough to check out the warehouse pilings.”

“Oh, crap,” Bullitt’s eyes rolled as he mumbled, “that sounds just fuckin’ great.”

“Are there sharks out here?” Callahan asked.

O’Malley just shook his head at that one, and he had to look away.

“Oh, not too many,” Mackay said, but every now and then Great Whites and Blues come in on the tide.”

Bullitt looked down and growled “What the fuckin’ hell am I doing out here,” before he put his regulator in his mouth and followed Callahan and Mackay down into the gloomy gray-black water. At eight feet they passed through the first gentle thermocline and the water temperature dropped suddenly from 62 to 58 degrees Fahrenheit; and twenty feet the temp dropped another four degrees and Frank remembered to piss in his wetsuit. The warmth from his urine passed along to the torso, warming him for a few minutes, but after a minute passed his pee had been pushed completely out of his wetsuit as he swam along, and the chilly water surrounded him again. At thirty feet it was so dark they needed flashlights, and visibility couldn’t have been more than twenty feet in any direction, but the water was colder still.

A motorboat buzzed by overhead, and Bullitt was sure he could make out the deep thrumming sound of a large diesel motor, the type that powered huge, ocean going freighters. 

At 52 feet they came to the mud and sand bottom and, after double checking compass headings the group swam off to the east – side-by-side again but now about ten feet apart.

Bullitt saw something metallic ahead and aimed his flashlight at a discarded can of Pennzoil motor oil and he almost laughed out loud…because why wouldn’t a Pennzoil Monster need quart every now and then…

…but then that feeling returned…

‘This is wrong. You shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Turn back.’

The words kept repeating and repeating. Then the words changed, became more emphatic.

“You should turn back – now. You don’t belong here.”

But these words didn’t form and come from inside his mind. He heard them.

Bullitt stopped and looked off to his left – into deeper water, and then he realized that Harry and the others were gathered next to him.

Mackay picked up his dive slate and scribbled out a note: “Did you hear that?”

Bullitt nodded and fingered the ‘Okay’ sign by bringing his thumb and index finger together; Callahan and the police divers did too. Bullitt pointed at his ears, then off into the darkness to their north. His meaning was clear: ‘The voice is over there.’

Mackay reluctantly nodded agreement; the two police divers looked unsure of themselves but nodded. Mackay picked up his pressure gauge and then had everyone hold up their gauge so he could verify readings, then the group took off, swimming along the bottom into deeper, darker, and much colder water to their north.

The same thrumming sound grew deeper and Bullitt sensed it was coming nearer, and when he looked up he saw the huge silhouette of an outbound freighter heading for the Golden Gate, its single cavitating screw leaving a raucous swishing sound as it passed – and he also noted the arcing silhouette of a large shark following along behind the freighter, perhaps hoping for some scraps of food from the ship’s galley.

He checked his depth gauge again and found they were approaching 70 feet, and his tank pressure was down to fifteen hundred pounds – and he knew at this depth the pressure would start to fall rapidly. He wished he could pee again because the layer of water in his wetsuit was getting cooler the deeper they went, but he shook it off and kicked onward…

…until just ahead Frank saw a faint cobalt blue glow…

Mackay and O’Malley stopped, then Callahan and the other diver did as well.

But Bullitt did not.

He kept swimming towards the glow so Callahan followed, then the other three fell in behind Callahan.

The source of the glow wasn’t far away now, though Bullitt was the first to see what made the water glow.

From about fifty feet away he could just make out the top half of a large blue sphere, and as he swam closer he saw that the structure was half buried in the muddy bottom.

From thirty feet away he could tell that the sphere was completely translucent.

When he swam closer he saw movement inside the sphere. Closer still and he could make out individual figures moving about, almost as if they too were floating in a liquid medium.

He felt someone by his side and turned to see Harry’s wide-eyed astonishment – then he felt Mackay’s growing trepidation…

…and then one of the creatures inside the sphere noticed the divers…

…it swam – or flew – or glided – across to the curved wall of the sphere…

…and Callahan could see it’s pale blue body was birdlike, almost completely covered in feathers, and it’s face was owl-like, with massive amber eyes staring into his own…

…then several more of the creatures came to the edge of the orb; some were blue-feathered, others green, but only one was pinkish-feathered – and this pink one, androgynously female, pushed aside the others as ‘she’ came to the wall of the sphere and looked at Bullitt for a moment – before her eyes shifted and settled on Callahan’s…

…then she turned and motioned at one of the others…

…and in the next instant the group was standing in the knee deep waters adjacent to the yacht club…

…and Callahan could see Devlin and Jimmy, the boy who had responded to Devlin’s screams, and the first to be murdered by the creature; then Callahan realized that Devlin was screaming at him as he walked out of the water with Frank and the other divers…

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he thought. ‘What is she screaming at?’

And when she realized her mistake she stood watching the divers walk out of the black water, and Jimmy walked back to the parking lot to wait for his ride home and instinctively Callahan and Bullitt knew the impossible had happened. This was the scene as it had been almost a month before, only now there had been a different outcome.

“It was wrong,” Bullitt whispered, suddenly remembering what the pink creature had said to him. “It wasn’t supposed to be that way.”

“What are you talking about?” Callahan said, now staring at the girl up on the sidewalk.

“Harry? What are we doing out here?”

“I have no idea,” Callahan sighed. He took off his gear and stopped once when he tried to remember what day it was, then he walked up to the girl under the street light because he couldn’t stop staring at her.

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | fiction, every last word

[Neil Young \\ Old Man]

Oh, so many shadows. Shadows within shadows dancing. Was Plato’s cave ever really real?

[Hypnogaja \\ Looking Glass]

C4

In a strange twist of fate, Denton Ripley read Nostromo’s orders before the message ever reached the Nostromo, and Ellen – and he’d never felt more helpless in his life.

The order, decoded as Special Order 937, had been intercepted by his COMMs team, and the message had been directed to the ore processing tug Nostromo that was currently en route from Thedus to Sparta. The Company had just activated a distress beacon on LV-426, a planet near the tugs current projected course, but after reading through the dispatch Ripley now knew that the tug’s crew – explicitly deemed expendable in the instructions sent to the tug’s Science Officer – was being sent to collect specimens of the organism. 

And with that knowledge now in hand, Denton Ripley was confronting the single most devastating decision he’d ever faced.

He knew how the organism gestated, and how it would spread inside the confines of a ship, so if the Nostromo’s crew was considered expendable the immediate reason was that the crew would used as incubators. His daughter Ellen’s fate, in other words, had been dictated in that message. She had been deemed expendable when he had refused to submit to the Co-Dominium, so he too had, in effect, sealed her fate.

But after reading the orders he knew the tug had also being redirected to take an Earth return trajectory, so the tug would not carry the organism to Sparta. That meant the Company planned on releasing the organism in the caverns currently housing Earth’s surviving population – and he was duty-bound to protect those lives, to prevent the deaths of the remaining population within the United States.

But even so the final, and the most devastating blow of all – was the psychic scar that would result from abandoning his daughter to the fates. For though he now possessed the means to use the Tall White’s FTL drive to jump directly to this planet, this LV-426, he could not alter the effects of relativistic time travel. He could jump to the planet in minutes, yet years would transpire before his arrival in real time. Whatever rescue mission he could mount would arrive years too late to prevent transmission of the organism, while at the same time his sworn duty was to protect the remaining citizens of the United States, and on the Earth. So, simply put, he knew the outcome of any utilitarian calculus meant he would have to remain in Earth orbit, but deep in his gut he wanted to ignore that most obvious conclusion and try to save his daughter.

Yet he knew he couldn’t. The physics of relativity prevented any other outcome.

And if the laws of physics prevented action, the implicit laws behind the oath he had sworn also prevented any other course of action.

So he had been fighting with himself for hours, trying to see a way clear of his dilemma, but he always arrived at the same conclusion. The “right” decision. Even if it was the wrong decision, personally.

But once the decision had been made he also had to decide whether to tell Judy, his wife, about the Special Order – and the most likely outcomes of its implementation. If he told her the whole truth then she too would be haunted by his choice for the rest of her life; as it was now, only he had to shoulder this particular burden on his own. Was such deception the humane choice, or was deception ever truly allowed in marriage…?

And in his gut he knew the answer to that question, too.

He’d have to tell her.

The blue light on his COMMs panel started blinking, and the blue light meant that the Lars Jansen avatar had something important to tell him. Ripley leaned forward and swiped the reply button on his screen and the usual ghostly swirl began to take shape onscreen – as Jansen’s form slowly consolidated and took shape in there – and Denton drummed his fingers on the duraplast desktop while he waited for this extra little bit of melodrama to play out.

“Admiral? I’m sorry, but you look distraught. Are you concerned about your daughter?”

“I am, yes.”

“I understand. This is called a Double Bind, is it not?”

“Yes. But I was thinking Catch-22 might be more appropriate.”

The avatar paused while it retrieved the necessary information, then ‘Lars’ spoke again. “The reference directs to a novel by Joseph Heller, an anti-war novel from the 1960s?”

“That’s the one. What’s on your mind, Lars?”

“Two items, Admiral. The most pressing is an indication that the Spartan fleet is mobilizing. As they are utilizing sub-light travel between multiple Jump Points we should expect their arrival within six weeks.”

“Noted.”

“Shall I pass this information on to Admiral Davis?”

“No. We’ll have all the captains over to discuss the implications and work up a plan of action. What’s the other item?”

“Do you recall the directed energy weapon deployed inside the Sun during our initial departure from Earth?”

“Yes, of course,” Ripley sighed, remembering that it was on that day that the real Lars Jansen had passed away, drowning in his own vomit.

“I have found strong indications that this weapon has been deployed on at least two other occasions in this system, and both times involving the Earth.”

“What?” Ripley snarled, sitting up abruptly in his chair. “What were the impacts?”

“The first use I have detected was in 2030, and the impact was quite simple. The weapon was deployed directly under the Cascadia subduction zone, triggering the eruptions of Mounts Baker, Rainier, St Helens, Hood, and Shasta. These eruptions…”

“…triggered the first impacts of the current Ice Age,” Ripley sighed.

“Exactly so, yes. The weapon was deployed again, and from the evidence I have uncovered it would appear to have happened almost immediately after our combined fleets left the solar system…”

“And that triggered additional eruptions, I take it?”

“Yes, Admiral, along the ring of fire in both the Southwest and Northwest Pacific.”

Ripley shook his head. “So, as soon as the Hyperion Battle Group departed for the Mintaka system, and our battle group was out of the way, too.”

“Yes, Admiral. When the Earth would be defenseless.”

“So,” Ripley said, thinking out loud, “there were three events in total. One at Earth almost a hundred years ago, then the hit on our Sun, then again on Earth, and this one right after our departure. Lars, did anyone on Earth have the capability to do this a hundred years ago?”

“Without a deeper understanding of the weapon, Admiral, such conjecture is meaningless.”

Ripley nodded. “Okay. First things first. Who benefitted most as a result of the first deployment?”

“Private space launching entities, primarily the Weyland Group, as it was then known, as well as SpaceX and Blue Origin.”

“Anyone else?”

“The BAPists cult would have to be seen as the prime beneficiaries over the long term.”

“Lars, can you find any evidence that there were BAPists within the Weyland interests a hundred years ago?”

“There is both direct and indirect evidence to support that conclusion.”

“Does it appear that interests within the original Weyland Group made efforts to conceal such associations?”

“Yes, Admiral. That is what I meant by indirect evidence.”

“So. Indirect evidence versus guilt by association. That’s not firm enough, Lars. I need something that ties the BAPists to the use of this weapon…”

“Records from the period in question, from the era before the first eruptions, is limited by accessibility issues, Admiral. It is possible that more records could be within the caverns below, but that is unknown.”

“So, it’s time to go down and initiate contact. God…I hate to imagine what those poor souls have been through.”

“Yessir. I have been able to locate multiple possible access points, Admiral. Survivors in North America have deployed ingenious elevator-like air processing ducts, so as the depth of the ice increases the air ducts increase in height.” Lars put several images on screen. “There also appear to be structures near these ducts used by, I assume, maintenance teams. It would seem logical that our ground teams approach the survivors through these access portals.” More images appeared, and Ripley studied them one by one, then he scrolled through them a few times before speaking.

“When these survivors went underground…is there…damn, how do we approach them, Lars? If they were forced underground by the BAPists, wouldn’t they consider anyone trying to contact them to be hostile, too?”

“I can only speculate, Admiral.”

Ripley steepled his fingers on his chest as he leaned back in his chair. “Any evidence these different cavern groups are communicating with one another?”

“Of course!” Lars shouted. “How did I miss that. Look at this image, Admiral…”

“That’s a radio antenna, Lars,” Ripley said as new images flooded his screen. “Actually, no, this image here shows a rather complex antenna farm. Short-wave and long-wave antennas here, and I see both UHF and ULF antennas here, early twentieth-century stuff, but…”

“Admiral, I have no information on ULF…”

“Look under submarine communication protocols…”

“The only files I can access are incomplete, Admiral, and in any event, our fleet no longer monitors these frequencies as there are no longer any working submarines.”

Ripley leaned forward and flipped a switch on his desktop panel. “COMMs? Ripley here.”

“Aye, sir?”

“Pull up what you can on early 21^st century radio protocols, including UHF and ULF frequencies, and start scanning for signals on those bands. Record whatever you pick up. Center your efforts around Kentucky, New Mexico, and South Dakota.”

“Aye, sir. Uh, Admiral, we could deploy a geo-synchronous buoy to monitor these regions while we’re over other parts of the planet.”

“Okay, COMMs, but let’s not advertise what we’re up to. Launch stealth satellites when you can.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Why stealth satellites, Admiral?” Lars asked.

“No reason to let Antarctic Traffic Control know what we’re up to.”

“Wouldn’t they be scanning for such traffic too, Admiral?”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure why they would be now, but see if you can identify any likely satellites, Lars. It’ll look like an orbiting antenna farm.”

“Admiral, there are currently more than nineteen thousand objects remaining in orbit.”

“Good. That ought to keep you busy for a few minutes.”

“I have identified two possible satellites so far, sir.”

“Lars, you are an incorrigible showoff; you know that, right?”

+++++

Neal Davis from Enterprise and Dean Farrell from Stavridis studied the images on the wall mounted monitor for several minutes, then they turned to Ripley.

“You’re sure ATC is monitoring them?” Davis said.

And Ripley nodded. “Continuously. We identified two originally, but then we backtracked, looking for similar satellites over other known cave systems on the Eurasian landmass. Once we located the satellites we were able to locate isolated pockets of survivors in France, Germany, Russia, and China. As more data came in we pinpointed more facilities in Israel and South Africa, then several in the Himalayas. In all we now have identified fourteen large cavern systems that are currently exhibiting extensive signs of life.”

Farrell shook his head and looked away. “Dear God,” he mumbled as he walked to the viewport. “I wonder how many people made it inside?”

Admiral Davis looked at Ripley, trying to gauge his mood. “How do you want to handle this, Denton?” Though technically both one star flag officers, Denton was the senior officer and therefore ranked Davis, but they’d been friends for yours.

“Technically, our primary obligation is to the survivors in caves located in US territory, but that won’t suffice in the current situation. Cast aside our moral duties for a moment and consider that the next Einstein might be residing in Chinese cave, or a German…hell, it doesn’t matter where…”

“What matters is who we choose to take with us,” Farrell sighed.

“Exactly,” Ripley added.

“But we can’t just swoop down and take all the smart people,” Davis said. “Believe it or not, if this planet ur-Pak has identified is indeed viable, we’ll need armies of builders, not…”

“Point taken,” Farrell nodded, “but how are these groups of survivors going to take it when we come in and decide to take their most able people?”

“We’ve also got to keep in mind that we have about five weeks to pull this off,” Ripley added. “We have no real intel on the Co-Dominium’s ships or the state of their weaponry, and I’d hate to get sucker-punched by them…”

“That’s simple enough,” Davis sighed. “Agamemnon and Stavridis are the smallest ships we have, but that also have the Maser. We’ve completed two on Enterprise and the Connie is about a week away from completing their first…”

“Enterprise can’t stay behind, Neal,” Ripley stated matter of factly. “She can carry more survivors than any other ship in the fleet, and if the survivors run into a hostile environment on this new world…”

“Constellation can handle anything that comes up,” Davis countered.

“You have an air wing. You have troop transports to carry colonists down to the surface. Connie has two little shuttles, so…you were saying?”

Davis looked away, nodding. “Two ships against an armada? Denton, there’s no way you’ll make it out of earth orbit…”

Farrell looked at Ripley, his shoulders sagging: “That weapon? The particle beam they fired into Earth and the Sun? Could that be used against us?”

Denton nodded. “Dean, until we know who has that weapon, or even where it’s located, none of us is safe. My guess is they’ll try to deploy it against us, because in theory it will blow right through our Langston Fields. If they take us out and we fail to destroy the weapon, I’m not sure moving any colonies not sanctioned by this Co-Dominium will ever be safe.”

“Has ur-Pak communicated this information to his people?”

Ripley nodded. “Yeah, but once again relativity will be working against us. By the time his message reaches their home worlds this will ancient history to you and me.” Ripley looked at his two best friends and shrugged. “This is going to be our fight, and ours alone. Neal? I want you to get together with your sociologists and physicists and work out a good means of contacting the survivors down there, then work out how to distribute those people amongst the fleet.”

“Right,” Davis nodded.

“Dean? I want you to fly a CAP,” referring to the concept of a Combat Air Patrol as first deployed over US Navy carriers, “ and probably out around Venus. You’ll be in a good position to see their fleet as individual ships Jump into the system.”

“What about you, Denton?” Davis asked. “You have a plan?”

“Oh hell, Neal, you know me. I always have a plan, but first things first. I want to go down and see these caves, maybe talk to their leaders…”

The rest of the fleet’s captains arrived and there were more discussions about the logistics of moving survivors up to the waiting ships, but Dean Farrell excused himself and returned to Stavridis, and a few minutes later the OOD informed Ripley that Stavridis had departed for Venus and he grinned knowingly. It was just like Farrell to think the problem through and arrive at the most sound conclusion. The fleet was vulnerable now, so he would move to protect it.

He watched the men and women of his fleet mingle and talk, and he noted the blue light on his desktop was still illuminated so at least he knew Lars was listening in, then he switched feeds and watched Stavridis powering away from the fleet before he turned to Judy. 

Now she too was worried to death about Ellen, but there was nothing he could do but be there for her. Still, her first reaction had been bitter: “We should have never left her with Stanton,” was her first reaction, but then again Judy was pregnant again and this wasn’t a mistake either would likely repeat.

“Are you going to go down to the surface?” she asked.

“I’m thinking about it.” Denton said, just as Admiral Davis walked over.

“It’s an unnecessary risk, Denton,” she said, looking from her husband to Davis. “In fact, no flag officer should go down there – because we have no idea what kind of diseases we might run into after those people have been in caves.”

“What do you recommend?” Davis asked.

“Send some medics with a company of Marines, and maybe one of the diplomats. Let them go make contact, but don’t allow any of them on our ships until we know we can handle the medical issues.”

Denton looked at Davis and nodded. “Makes sense. What do you think, Neal?”

“I concur.”

Judy nodded. “Each cave could present different pathogens, so just because one’s clear doesn’t mean they all will be.”

“What about genetic adaptation?” Davis asked. “Like…mutations?”

“They probably haven’t been down there long enough,” Judy said, looking away as she imagined the horrifying conditions the survivors were dealing with. “God, I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. The sanitation issues alone must be overwhelming.”

“Well,” Davis sighed, “we should know soon enough. Denton? You have diplomats onboard, right?”

“Singular. One gal from the State Department. Betsy Hollister. You want me to send for her?”

“Yup. She can go back to Enterprise with me. You want me to take a Middie?”

“Let me think about that for a minute.”

The lighting in the conference room went from white to red, and as alarms started going off all over the ship Ripley dove for his desk and hit the flashing red light.

“Ripley here. Sit-Rep?”

“Several objects just jumped in-system, Admiral. No IFF, and well, there’s no identification at all?”

“Did they come in through the Alderson Point?”

“No, sir. They appear to be FTL equipped ships, Admiral, and they appear to be – uh, wait one…”

And in the next instant his screen flickered and went dark, then all power throughout the ship went dark. Agamemnon’s 1G acceleration stopped and zero gravity conditions returned; Ripley felt himself floating free of the deck and not knowing what else else to do he pulled himself over to the viewport, instinctively wanting to see what was happening…

“What the hell is that?” Ripley heard someone say as he held out his hands to stop his flight across the conference room. 

“What do you see? Where?” Ripley asked.

“There, sir…”

Ripley looked down towards deep space and his eyes squinted. “What is that?” he whispered a moment later.

About all Ripley was sure of was that the blue sphere didn’t belong to the Tall Whites or the Co-Dominium. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but after fifteen years in space he’d never seen anything like it. Anywhere.

But a moment later he was pretty sure the sphere was coming closer. 

Then the red, battery powered lights flickered and came on; Ripley’s desktop rebooted and lights started flashing, demanding his immediate attention so he pushed off and floated back to his chair.

Then the usual computer generated warning came through the intercom: “Acceleration warning! All personnel prepare for 1G acceleration!”

“Everybody grab a seat,” Judy Ripley shouted, “now!”

Gravity returned as the engines flared and came online. Normal lighting returned. A million alarms were still sounding throughout the ship.

“Admiral, COMMs here. We have an incoming message. I’m not sure, but it seems to be coming from the first object.”

“Judy? Neal? Gather round, would you? Okay COMMs, put it through.”

His screen flickered and stabilized, and a moment later a middle aged man appeared. Dressed in a top coat as if he was cold, the man was wearing odd little eyeglasses and Ripley was certain he’d seen the man before.

“Hello there,” the man said genially. “What branch of the service are you in?”

“Excuse me?” Ripley said. The man grinned and once again Ripley knew he’d seen the man before returned.

“Are you Army, sir, or Navy?” the man said.

“Admiral Denton Ripley, sir. United States Naval Space Force.”

“Navy! Excellent! So, you’re an Annapolis man?”

“Yessir?”

“Excellent! Perhaps we can share a few wild tales while we’re here.”

“Excuse me, sir, but could I know your name?”

“Me?” the man said with a playful shrug. “Oh, why the hell not? My name is Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now, what the devil are you doing here?”

(c)2023 adrian leverkuhn | abw | fiction, every word of it

[The Alan Parsons Project \\ To One in Paradise]