It's All Fiction

       There has to be a maximum age  for someone to be able to wear a fitted backwards hat and not look like an idiot. Thrity-five years old was definitely a couple floors above that ceiling, but nevertheless the guy was just that: 35 years old wearing a backwards hat. Really, though, the backwards hat wasn’t what made him an idiot; it was the fact that he was hammered drunk and by now on his twelfth and a half pint; the other half having been spilled on an eight year old boy in the row ahead of him. Self-respect? Gone years ago, lost through the promotion he didn’t get, the girl who said, “I don’t,” or the bedroom in his mother’s house that he had yet to move out of. The baseball game would end, and he’d return home to the sheltered comfort of his Green Day, Pearl Jam and Nirvana posters-all good bands, just not the normal decor of an established 35-year-old man.

         This was all speculation, of course; a worst-case scenario that Kyle was forming in his head as he watched the usher help the drunken fool out of his seat. Aging drunks gave Kyle a sense of comfort and reassurance. No matter how bad life was, or how bad he fucked up, there was always someone worse off-someone Kyle could look at, shake his head and sigh, “At least I’m not that guy.” But it also scared Kyle; even though he wasn’t “that guy” now, there was always the chance he could be in the future.

***

          Kyle was twenty-three, a year out of college, the owner of a leisure studies degree and curently getting by on his youthful potential, so distant that Kyle’s fulfilment of it wasn’t expected until he at least turned twenty-five. Right now everyone was all, “Take your time,” “You’ve got time,” and “Give it time, it’ll come.” The problem with time is that it’s not stationary; it ticks away till there’s none left. In the back of Kyle’s mind, behind every lazy weekday afternoon, sat the image of an old hourglass. Every time Kyle found himself in his sweats incorrectly guessing whether Jamal was the father of N’quisha’s baby or undershooting the price of the showcase showdown on “The Price is Right,” the hourglass would come to the forefront of his mind, each time with more and more sand in the bottom container.

          Kyle lived at home, but that arrangment was only temporary. Kyle got a job, working weeknights as a loader for a commercial moving company owned by one of his parrents’ patients; this job too, was temporary. Every morning at around 4:00 AM, after the trucks were loaded for the daytime delivery, Kyle would leave the moving company’s warehouse telling himself that later on that afternoon he’d get on the computer and start the application for a new job, law school, a master’s program or whatever else intrigued his sleep-deprived mind. The first few times he left work with this conclusion, it felt like an epiphany; but now, seven months into the job, the life-changing revelations had become as routine as his pre-shift coffee.

          Every time his parents had a dinner party and Kyle was asked what he was up to he always answered with, “I’m just taking a bit of time, keeping my options open.” Kyle was always afraid his father and mother’s dentist-friends would see through his procrastinating bullshit and cut him down with the funny truth from  Animal House, “Fat, Drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” Kyle always used to laugh at the confusion on Flounder’s face, but now every time he heard Dean Wormer utter those words, Kyle couldn’t help but feel sorry for himself and relate to the pudgy Delta pledge. This feeling usually turned to jealously when Kyle realized that Flounder wasn’t plagued by an hourglass; Flounder got to stay in college 

forever. Oh, the luxury of being a fictional character.

          Early on in his undergraduate career, Kyle thought that becoming a dentist was the way to go.

Seemed easy enough: go into the same office everyday, see patients everyday, clean teeth everyday, pull 

teeth everyday. The plan was set and put into motion until Kyle had only one dental school pre-requisite to go. It was then, so close to the finish line, that Kyle realized that the idea of pulling teeth everyday had to be

like, well, pulling teeth. Like the fall-out of any life-altering realization, Kyle found himself asking, “What’s 

next?”

Kyle had written fiction in college and did occassionally as a hobby now. In a perfect world, Kyle would be a writer, a provider of thought- provoking literature, but a poor writing style coupled with inconsequential subject matter prevented Kyle’s dream. As it stood, Kyle was not a very good writer. He’d use ambiguous, open-ended phrases and turns in his stories because “ambiguity’s hot right-now, all the big shots are doing it”; a notion derived from hear say, seeing as how he never read anything. Phrases like “Little did I know then, how right she was,” or “But I never would have expected what happened to me next” would sit like forgotten islands; never telling the reader what had occurred so unexpectedly, or what “she” was right about. Kyle never let anyone read his stories either, but now because he was afraid; Kyle just considered the content and subject matter too “high-brow” for an audience.

“There’re too many references-old ones to movies, novels, poetry, and television. I don’t think you’d get it,” Kyle would say with the arrogance of a genuine pseudo-intellectual. The truth was, if Wikipedia, IMDb, and Spark Note summaries didn’t exist, Kyle wouldn’t understand the references either. The references were shallow, shortsighted, blatantly inapt and, worst of all, anachronistic. Kyle liked writing colonial period historical fiction, a problem when your metaphors and similes all refer to post-1970 pop-culture. “And he switched sides, Benedict Arnold did, like Professor Snape’s turn to the Death Eaters.” Never mind the fact that the Harry Potter saga was created a good two hundred years after the Revolutionary War, Professor Snape wasn’t a true Benedict Arnold; he only pretended to switch sides be to keep Harry safe. The IMDb film summary wasn’t intricately detailed.

***

            “Look at that guy. No self-respect. That’s the problem with society. Pathetic.” Kyle’s friend Mike said, running his hand through his dark brown hair. The drunk had just passed their row as the usher tried to hold him upright while his stomach rejected his last beer. Mike, also twenty-three, had graduated from the business school where his diploma had already gotten him a nice accounting job and a newly formed sense of power. Since getting the job, Mike had spun and adopted the wisdom of Spider-Man from, “With great power, comes great responsibility” into “With great power, comes great superiority.” As a lowly laborer, Kyle found Mike’s opening foray into elitism annoying. Going to the baseball game had been Mike’s idea; a chance for them to go out like old times and a chance for Kyle to take a ride in Mike’s new Audi A4.

            “Yeah, but I mean, c’mon, think about what we were doing just ttwelve  months ago. We were the problem with society. That’s the third out. Wanna drink?” Kyle said sarcastically, hoping Mike would remember senior year, when Mike had been rushed to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. “I bet I can have a drink every time they retire a batter.”  Had Mike not gotten sick in the bottom of the fifth, had history not been made in the form of a perfect game, Mike would be dead.

            “Ok, smart ass, ok. Look, one more inning and we’re out. Want to go meet a couple of guys from the office over at Fusion, ok?” Mike asked, changing the subject.

            “Yeah, Sure. Sounds good.”

            Fusion was the worst kind of bar; it was club/bar. Between the deafening music and seizure-inducing light displays, conversation was impossible. It was the kind of place where the obnoxious hand signals of a third base coach were your only hope of asking a girl if she wanted a drink. Kyle looked at Mike, who was in the middle of steal sign-two fingers on his eyes, then a point at the girl, followed by a quick point toward the bar. Mike patted Kyle on the shoulder, the universal “Don’t wait up” sign, as the girl nodded in agreement.

            Nothing’s worse than being a loner at a club. You can’t stand there and announce “I know I’m by myself now, but really, honestly I came with friends. They’re just…not here right now.” Instead, you have to do something, to look as if you have a purpose, a direction. Otherwise, you have to be prepared to put up with passing eyes. Looking at you as if you were the weird old guy at a house party on homecoming weekend.

            Still standing by the bar, Kyle scanned the club for his options. The dance floor looked like a scene from The Planet of the Apes. Large hanging cages were suspended above the floor, each one containing at least thirty half-naked, sweaty dancing humans. Below the cages was a clear glass dance floor positioned atop of a giant tropical fish tank. In the center of the dance floor was a seven-foot tall dark, shirtless man wearing a baby-backpack with a midget inside. Both men were wearing Indian headdresses and constantly blowing whistles and waving glow sticks. This was not Kyle’s kind of place. Besides, he could never get past the Arthur H. Fonzarelli corniness he felt when approaching a girl with the cocky swagger required at a place like Fusion. Kyle wasn’t Fonzie or Vinnie Barberino; he was Kyle-a nice guy, a funny guy, and in his mind, a creative guy, but standing alone at Fusion, he was an out-of-place guy.

A short, stocky “bro” whose shoulders had morphed into his neck was dancing on the neon-lit bar with an open bottle of champagne; his shirt, with a design resembling the laser lights on the dancefloor, was completely unbuttoned and on top of his head he was wearing black, blinged-up sunglasses. “YO, BRO. PARTY MUCH? Bottle service bitches!” he yelled as he pointed at Kyle before spraying a fresh bottle of champagneat him. With a light mist of Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame coating his face, Kyle took out his phone and sent a text to Mike: I’m Leaving. Call me when you leave, I still need a ride home.

            Outside, the street was a complete contrast to Fusion. Kyle’s ears were still ringing but were beginning to readjust, thanks in part to the smooth, soulful tones of the saxophone street musician on the corner. The sax-man was playing “Harden My Heart” by Quarterflash, a song that transported Kyle in the backseat of the old family station wagon. When he was a kid, Kyle’s mom never allowed children’s music; instead, they’d listen to “93.7 Flashback Radio: The hits of the 80’s, TODAY!” On the way to school it was Hall & Oates, with Huey Lewis & News taking over on the way home; trips to the grocery store, with “Hungry Eyes,” it was Eric Carmen; and on the way to soccer practice, they asked “Who Can It Be Now?” The answer: Men at Work. All that 80’s music at such a young age gave Kyle a shortsighted expertise about a decade he only existed in for two months. To Kyle, the 80’s were defined by the marriage of the electric guitar and the saxophone.

Wearing a black hemp fedora, a cream colored button down popping against his dark skin, the sax-man taped the leather soles of his light brown gators against the sidewalk as he continued playing. Noticing Kyle approaching with a smile and more importantly, a hand in his back pocket, the sax-man lowered his wayfarer sunglasses, winked and started playing “Maneater.” The sax-man played with so much rock & soul that a blind man would believe it was Hall & Oates in the flesh. Kyle dropped five dollars in the man’s empty saxophone case and stood singing the words under his breath: “Oh, oh here she comes, watch out boy she’ll chew you up…” He let his nostalgia linger until the end of the song, when he noticed the awning that was sheltering the sax-man: “Bookie’s Tavern.”

            “You ever been to this joint?” Kyle asked, trying to adjust his vocabulary to match the cool lingo he thought all saxophone players used.

            “Yes sir, real good. Always letting me set up right here. No problems, man.”

            “Yeah? Ok sounds good. Keep on playing that good stuff.”

            “No doubt, no doubt. It’s just a thing, man,” the sax-man said, while shaking his inclined head at the night sky, cradling the saxophone like a baby.

            If Fusion was Bizzaro World, then Bookie’s was Planet Krypton. People conversing with spoken word, dancing on a dance floor that was actually a floor, the absence of bare-chested men, eye-glasses instead of sunglasses, and a live band in the back room-what more could you ask for? Kyle saw an open bar stool in front of the beer taps and decided he’d wait to hear from Mike here. The band was composed of two men in their early 50’s. The lead, and only guitarist had shoulder-length salt and pepper hair, similarly colored scruff and was wearing a Black Watch Pendleton that, based on the beaded knots of wool, was at least twenty years old. His guitar strap was black leather with silver and indigo beads traveling from end to end. The drummer, who so far had only displayed the ability to maintain the song’s tempo, was wearing leather, fingertip-less driving gloves and had a head of thinning jet-black hair, courtesy of  “Just for Men.” As Kyle made his way to the open stool, the duo was just finishing up “You Shook Me All Night Long” to the applause of the exhausted dancers in front of the three-foot high stage.

            “How many people we got were doing a little gambling tonight?” the salt-n-pepper front man asked before waiting for the casino goers in the crowd to answer. “All right, got a few of ‘em, I see. Well, this next one’s a bit of instruction. If you ever get on a lucky streak, no questions, LET IT RIDE” The announcement of the BTO-that’s Bachman Turner Overdrive-classic was acknowledged by shouts of excitement as the guitarist struck the first chords.

            Kyle sat down at the stool he’d spotted from the entrance and rested his feet on the copper rail running along the bar’s base. A list of beers was written on a chalkboard behind the bar directly beneath the large round analog clock; it was fifteen after midnight. The beers on the chalkboard were divided up into four categories: On-Tap, Well-drinks, Spring Specialties, and New Arrivals. Kyle didn’t understand beer;  he wasn’t one of those guys who memorized the quantity of hops in a beer, or the distinctions between a pilsner, a lager, a stout, and a porter. He just liked beer, “pale to dark pale beer” was as specific as it got, and, in terms of hard liquor, it was Jack Daniels, simple enough. In college whenever Mike, honing his big-shot skills, would hold a glass of beer up to the light, smell it and send it back without allowing it to touch his lips Kyle would cringe.

            “What’ll it be, buddy?” boomed the mustached, baby-face bartender, trying to get his question across over the yelling on the dance floor. The band was in the middle of playing as good a version of “Shout” as any two-man band could.

            “Can I get a Two-Hearted Ale.? TWO-HEARTED?” Kyle screamed back as the band asked the crowd to shout “A little bit louder now.”

            To Kyle’s left were two middle-aged men debating whether the Lions’ need for a defensive back or an offensive tackle should be addressed in free agency. Kyle thought a running back was a need, but when the debate switched gears to an argument about whether the mayor’s proposed Light-Rail-Train System would work, Kyle decided to keep his opinion to himself. There was an empty stool to his immediate right, but beyond that was a pack of five heavy-set thirty –something-old women. Each one was hammered, and her perspiration had caused her delicately applied mascara to run into raccoon eyes. Bookie’s was the women’s last stop on a very long bachelorette party bar crawl. The two girls sitting on the stools were both wearing silver jeweled plastic tiaras and white sashes that read “BRIDE TO BE.” The three women standing behind the stools were screeching demands for free drinks while trying to keep their ill-fitting strapless dresses from revealing what no one wanted to see. “C’mon, it’s her last night as a single woman. WOO!”

Laughing to himself, Kyle shook his head and finished his beer. The bartender saw the empty glass and shot Kyle an inquisitive glance. Kyle nodded and was given another Two-Hearted. Thinking he felt his phone vibrate, Kyle reached into his pocket and checked for Mike’s text. Nothing yet; Mike was still dancing in a cage. When Kyle lifted his head from his phone’s screen, he noticed there was a girl standing behind the unoccupied stool next to him. She was looking at the large analog clock above the chalkboard with the confused determination of a child’s first attempt at the rubix cube.

“Can I help you?” Kyle asked.

“Um, yes. What time does that say?” she asked before quickly turning to face Kyle, letting her light brown hair sweep across her similarly brown eyes.

“twelve-fifty-six, fift-seven  maybe. It’s about one o’clock in the morning. Are you waiting for someone?” Kyle thought it was better not to ask whether she could tell time or not.

“Yes. I think so. This is Bookie’s, yeah?”

“That’s what I’m told, but honestly this is my first time here. So, which one is it? You think or you’re meeting someone?” Kyle asked as he noticed the beautiful symmetry of her face. She looked like a young Ingmar Bergman, or was it Ingrid Bergman? Kyle couldn’t remember, but he liked her.

“Well, I go to the city college, but I’m out of state. Some girls in my class said they were coming here tonight and wanted me to meet them. So I came. Maybe I’m too late.”

“Well, are those the girls?” Kyle pointed to the bachelorette party. At the moment, the two brides-to-be were slumped over on their stools with their heads in their hands.

“Absolutley not,” Ingrid Bergman responded, laughing.

“That’s a relief. You check by the band?’
            “Yeah, just came from there. No luck. You mind if I take a seat while I’m waiting?” she asked while pulling out the empty stool and climbing onto it.

“Go for it. Want a drink?”

“Sure,” she replied with a smile and a slight nod of approval.

***

They talked over a couple rounds with the usual small talk that strangers use to become familiars. Her name was Lilah; she was a twenty-year-old junior majoring in English at City College who wrote fiction in her spare time. Lilah’s hobby gave Kyle a jump-off point to talk about his own writing, the one thing in his life he thought would impress her. He talked about his love for writing colonial American period pieces and even gave summarized for her a story he’d just started working on. It was an all-American love story, one of America’s first, actually, about the courtship and marriage of John and Abigail Adams. It was a fictional piece that revolved around historical events. Kyle even provided Lilah with some paraphrased excerpts, he couldn’t remember word-for-word, but he remembered the references and the main idea.

            John’s mind was a ball of frustration. With the proceedings of the Continental Congress keeping him away from his beloved, he was lovesick. But Abigail was there in spirit, supporting John’s efforts with the written words only a lover- nay, only a wife, could provide. Their love was so strong. They were like Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, together forever in the bond of marriage.

            “Well, I mean, it’s a good idea. But, well…” Lila hesitated after hearing Kyle recite one of his favorite parts.

            “What’s wrong with it?  It’s not horrible,” Kyle said, but really he was asking.

            “The reference, the Star Wars reference. It just doesn’t work for what you’re writing and it’s Han Solo and Princess Leia. Not Luke and Leia.”

            “Whatever. Han Solo, fine. Minor detail. Quick fix,” Kyle said quickly, smiling the whole way through.

            “Not quite as quick a fix as you think. From one writer to another, if I may, the reference just doesn’t work with the story. You’re writing a period piece, a piece of realistic fiction with historical events. But the Star Wars stuff just throws the whole thing off. It’s a reference that’s inconsistent with the colonial period. It makes for an unreliable narrator. I can’t trust what the voice is telling me.” Lilah offered, but Kyle wasn’t getting it. “Look, there’s only one rule in writing fiction: there are no rules, as long as it works. And I don’t think the pop-culture references in a colonial love story work. Have you ever thought of writing about a different setting, different time?” Lilah’s point was clear now. Kyle’s smile disappeared as he mulled over her question.

            “I don’t know. Like what? You’re supposed to write about what you’re interested in and, well, the people of that time period interest me. Great sources of character,” Kyle said while pounding his fist on the bar with the word “character.”

            “Anyone can be a great source of character. You’re a character. I’m a character. You could write about your night, this night. I’m sure some interesting things happened before you came here. And if you did write about tonight, the pop culture stuff would at least be fitting. There you go, that’s a story.” Lilah emphatically stated.

            Kyle could hear bells ringing. It was an epiphany, a breakthrough revelation that would cast Kyle into the realm of literary success. Not quite. The bells were his phone letting him know he’d received a new text message. The phone’s ringer had been turned on when it was pressed against his thigh while crammed into his front pocket. Kyle took out the phone and brought the text message up. It was Mike: Hye DUUUUDE. Cne u drcvee my car homne/? Reel drnuk. Meet in frnt of Fuison. Oook.

            “Um, I gotta go. My buddy needs me to get him from the club. Nice to meet you and I hope you find those friends,” Kyle said hurriedly. He laid twenty dollars on the bar before leaving, insisting on paying for Lilah’s beers as compensation for his hasty departure. Lilah said no, but seeming to acknowledge Kyle’s attempt at flattery, she smiled and accepted his offer.

            Kyle didn’t hear the soulful tones of the sax-man as he stepped out of Bookie’s; his walk back to Fusion would be without musical accompaniment. Kyle’s thoughts turned to his night: the guy throwing up at the baseball game, the weird whistle blower and midget, the champagne shooter, the sax-man’s time-traveling set list, the live band at Bookie’s, the sloppy bachelorettes and lastly Lilah. “It wouldn’t make the worst story, but how would it end?” Kyle thought as he approached the front of Fusion. The doors flew open and Mike, carried by four large bouncers, was thrown out on his ass. He was covered with blue vomit.

            “You can’t do this to me! I’m gonna own this place! I’m gonna own you all!” Mike yelled, sitting up on his knees, trying to button his shirt back up. Kyle slowly approached him from behind.

            “What the hell happened to you?” Asked Kyle, laying his hand on Mike’s shoulder.

            “Those fuckers. Fuck.” Mike paused, trying to recollect himself. “I don’t know. I think I drank too man-ee blue orga-orgasms.” Kyle helped Mike to his feet with a smile. This is how the story would end.

Monkey Business

         “No Monkey Business: First-ever face transplant surgery performed after woman’s face is torn apart by pet chimp!” Two of the four magazines that book ended the checkout counter had some variation of this headline. Rob wasn’t supposed to read the tabloids while on the clock but this headline would not leave his wandering eye alone. “A Riley’s employee is alert and ready to answer every question a customer may have. The more you turn the pages the more grease gets on them. Then you got a greasy magazine. Who the hell’s gonna want to buy it then, you know? Gotta’ tell you it doesn’t work for me.” It was always amazing to Rob how whenever Paul exerted his managerial power, he’d start the statement sounding like a normal human being, then quickly regress into a dialect similar to Robert Deniro’s “Jimmy Conway” character. The phrase “pet chimp” was tempting Rob to break his oath to be alert and ready. “Pet chimp.” Absurdity- what did the woman think was going to happen to her face? A chimp’s a wild animal. You never hear about a dog ripping someone’s face off or a housecat, or a goldfish or a cockatoo, but these are not wild animals.

Rob was content with the woman’s situation, “If you’re going to take on a wild animal as a pet, then accept the repercussions.” All Rob could think about was the information kiosk outside the chimpanzee cage at the Zoo—four miniature King-Kongs, fists beating their chests, hands slapping rocks, screeching “attack” in their primate language, with their lips curled just above the gum line revealing the brutal force of their upper canines. The image used to scare Rob as a child, and this woman who he was now supposed to feel sorry for had decided it was a good idea to make one her pet. The whole thing was so ridiculous to Rob that he began thinking it might not be the worst idea to commit the woman once she was out of the ICU. After all, only a lunatic would allow a chimpanzee to live with them as a pet, or as the article now revealed as their equal: The chimp, or Albert as the Delaware woman had named him, was treated like the patron of the household. Albert had a seat at the dining room table, liked his pipe between the hours of 7pm and 8pm following the nightly news, and liked his steak cooked medium-rare with just a smudge of A-1 already on the plate.

“I’m going to warn you, I don’t have my Riley’s card but I know we’re in your system. Could you check?”

Rob’s head shot up from the magazine’s cover shot showing the victim’s mummified face juxtaposed alongside the family photo: smiling woman, baby chimp on her bent knee, both wearing identical light blue jumpsuits. How will she smile without lips?

“Oh…um, your phone number?” Rob asked, scrambling to hide the magazine.

“310-565-7345,” the woman answered.

She waited with childlike anticipation as Rob, still halfway in his “Hail to the Chimp” daze, typed the numbers in one, by one by one. If you punched the numbers too fast and the screen didn’t immediately display “APPROVED: Welcome Back Valued Customer!!” you were accused of having rogue fingertips, and asked to repeat the process. Or worse, Paul was called to the front to stand vigilantly over your shoulder to assure the customer that everything was under control, and you were, in fact, a competent individual who didn’t require one of those padded helmets given to recovering closed head injury patients. “APPROVED.” Thank God. Dodging moments from these minute annoyances kept Rob’s restlessness from boiling over.

Riley’s used to have three cashiers working at all times, but since the newly installed and highly flawed “U-SCAN” machines came, only one warm body was needed. When people go shopping, they like consistency, and the machines provided this. With the U-SCAN, the customer was never at any risk of getting slowed down by Rhonda’s stories, how she was desperately hoping to hear back from “Wheel of Fortune” because it could mean a free trip to any one of Pat Sajak’s favorite vacation spots. “You got no idea. Me and Bobby, that’s my son, need a vacation honey. He’s such a good boy, but they don’t pay me nothing here,” Rhonda would said as she attempted to type in each item with her one finger that was capped with a long, curled, tribal-colored, fingernail.  Or trapped by Sid’s self-documented history of the “Riley’s Photo Studio” and how he was pushed out because “I know film, real physical film. Not these digital disk-card slots and discs.” Customers would just smile, and nod in recognition at these problems that weren’t theirs, and never could be theirs.

            There was a time when the people of the local community ran the local drug stores. A true community drugstore, customers and the employees went to the same churches, schools, restaurants, bars and movie theaters. Now, the employees would get off the public buses that transported them from city slouch to suburban statuesque and walk through a parking lot of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Cadillac before clocking in to sell the suburbanites their toilet paper. Maybe that was the only common thing they all still had in common: shitting. Whether rich or poor, everybody had to wipe their ass. Except, of course, the people who used bidet toilets; they might as well be royalty.

            Rob was an exception. He’d lived in the suburbs and had since he was a child, which made his employment at Riley’s all the more embarrassing for him. Rob had grown up wealthy, gone to college and had now been cutoff by his parents; now sick of Rob’s dicking around, not making any use of his communications degree. “Make up your mind, Robert. Pick a career and get on with it!” He had it all planned out; he‘d quit once he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. His college degree meant he was overqualified, which in his mind meant that showing up was more than Riley’s deserved from him. “Riley’s is a TEAM. Be a TEAM player.” Rob was a team player, just too good for this team. He wasn’t arrogant just realistic, Rob’s peers at Riley’s weren’t really his peers. People like Rhonda and Sid lived their lives and ended up as cashiers. They’d found their niche or, to be more poetic, their “calling.” But looking down at the cash register, Rob knew it wasn’t his “calling”. Riley’s was a way to bide time until Rob’s “calling” revealed itself, like it’s supposed to, and as it had for so many anonymous others.

            “I remember as a child playing in the backyard. I heard the sound of a weird chirping. There it was, an injured baby bird...From that point on, I knew my calling was to be a veterinarian.” or “We were swimming at the public pool, playing Marco Polo in the deep end. Suddenly I was saying “Marco” to one less “Polo”-The man was a doctor, he rushed over and gave my friend mouth-to-mouth. Saved his life. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a doctor.” But, Cashier? It couldn’t be. Rob could never be “called” to be a cashier. Then again, everyone is called to do something, even criminals. “I was always sneaking cookies, then my dad’s car keys, then other people’s car keys…That’s when I knew theft was my calling.”

            “Attention, Riley’s employees. Attention Riley’s employees. Rob please report to aisle six for spill clean-up.”  Aisle six was the salty snack and cereal aisle. The cheaper, no-name brand cereals were positioned at the north end of the aisle with the Kellogg’s brand monopolizing the south end. There was a heightened glare on the tile floor down at the south end. Most things didn’t give off a strong glare under the flat fluorescent lights of the store; liquids were one of the exceptions. As Rob approached, Michael was talking kindly and reassuring to a distraught mother, holding the hand of her red-eyed daughter whose pink cardigan sweater was tied across the front of her waist to cover up the pee that was nowhere near as dry as her tears. “Little girl had an accident. Clean up the piss before you head to break. I’ll block off the aisle till your done. Okay?” Michael said as he and Rob were looking into the puddle of cold urine.

            Rob looked into the reflection of the bucket’s clear, still water; the water would only allow one glance before its stillness was blurred by the in and out motion of the mop. Twenty pounds heavier than he’d been at graduation a year and a half ago. Does water add pounds like a camera? Brown hair-not long, not short just sitting in limbo waiting for the verdict to cut it off or let it grow. A five-day beard, or an attempt at one; the mustache was always the most prominent. The same baggy, beaten-down eyes that he’d been sporting for the last 4 months. Rob slammed the mop in the bucket and cleaned up after what appeared to have been an extremely dehydrated young girl.

            There was a giant calendar in the break room, “September 5^th: Rhonda no A.M. shift-Bobby’s first day of 1^st grade!!” “September 10^th: Rhonda no afternoon shift-Bobby’s team pictures”, “September 15^th: Rhonda no shift after 2:00 PM-Bobby’s first scrimmage”, “September 29^th: Rhonda Day-Off-Bobby’s class field trip.”  Rob couldn’t understand why Rhonda never seemed to be taking days off for herself. Rhonda, like most parents, wanted to share every experience she could with her child. She wanted to help Bobby because she, herself, was once a child and now, as an adult, had finally worked out all the kinks. Maybe that’s why the little girl’s mother in aisle six had looked just as distraught as her daughter. Perhaps, the mother had peed herself twenty-five years ago during a show-and-tell and now felt like a failure because she hadn’t been able to protect her daughter from a similar trauma. 

             As Rob sat in the break room, he remembered his father always telling him not to have kids until he was married and not to get married until he was, at least, twenty-eight. Rob was neither.  Besides not meeting the age requirement, Rob also didn’t have the most important component for marriage or a kid: a girl. Rob hadn’t been a part of a couple since college, and those rarely developed into anything serious. In fact, most of his relationships ended like a middle-school soccer game—both teams meeting in the middle of the field, shaking hands as a sign of sportsmanship: “We’re just different people. It’s nothing personal. Good game.” A lot of Rob’s friends were always in serious relationships, and that was fine; it always made his friends accountable for someone beside themselves, gave them direction. Rob would hear them talking, saying things like, “I don’t know if I really want to be a pharmacist, but it’ll be a good living for Cath and me after graduation.” Rob was only accountable for himself, no one to tie him down; he could do whatever he wanted. He was living the dream. He moved from the break-room table and stepped in front of the mirror hanging above the sink. He read his name tag to himself, “Hello, My name is: ROB-Cashier. Can I help you today?” He checked the clock-12:55 pm. He was due back on the floor.

            Rob always walked down aisle eight when heading to break or returning from it. Six times a day he’d walk down the aisle. Aisle eight contained anything and everything that fell under the label of “Feminine Needs.” Rob never liked answering customers’ questions, and he found that women rarely asked him anything while they were selecting their Tampons and Venus razors. They’d simply divert their eyes from him and pretend he wasn’t there. But he was there, and since no one bothered him with questions or glares, Rob had time to observe the women. During the day shift most of the women were middle-aged housewives. They’d flock in at around 2:45, just before picking up their kids from school. The trip had to be made before picking up the kids. If made after, they’d run the risk of missing the beginning of “Oprah” therefore isolating themselves from the captivating conversation that consumed their weekly wine parties, cleverly disguised as meetings of “Oprah’s Book Club.” Between 2:00 and 3:00 pm, it seemed as if the register printed nothing but identical three-item receipts: white wine, “O” magazine, and tampons.

            “Excuse me, can I ask you something?” a female voice at the end of the aisle behind Rob asked. Rob almost kept walking, there’s no way it was directed at him, not here, not in aisle eight. “Excuse me, I was just wondering if you could help me with something?” She asked with a heighten volume in her voice. The question was for him. Rob turned around.

“Um, y-yes,” he noticed she was a twenty-something, like him, “what’s going on?”

“Are these on sale?” holding a pair of black panty-hose. “The flyer in the paper said they were, but there’s nothing on them here.”

“I’m honestly not sure, I could get someone for y-“

“Don’t you know? I mean, isn’t this your department? I’ve seen you walking up and down this aisle a couple times before, and I’ve only even been here a couple times.”

It was true; she wasn’t one of aisle eight’s regulars, like the housewives. Rob considered coming up with a work related excuse for being in the aisle—quality control or inventory, but he settled on the truth. The truth was funny, and Rob wanted to flirt a bit.

“No, this isn’t my department. I just walk through it a lot because no one ever bothers me with questions when I’m here. Think about it. How many normal women want to discuss their shaving habits, or panty hose preference with a twenty-four-year-old, male stranger?”

“True. So I guess that makes me a weirdo, right? Asking you about these panty hose?”

“Well, you’re really just asking about the price, so I wouldn’t call you a weirdo—not yet at least. But I should call you something, that is unless you’d prefer to be called ma’am?”

“Save that for the mothers.” She inspected his right breast pocket, squinting as she seemingly tried to read his nametag, “Rob, huh? I’m Kim.”

“Oh, my mother’s name was Kim.” Rob’s mother was named Julie. One of his college buddies claimed that girls think it’s cute when they have the same name as a guy’s mother-“It’s an immediate connection, man. They love it. They think you’ll be subconsciously attracted to them.” Apparently girls like guys with Oedipus complexes.

“Really? Well, that’s something. So, what’s the deal with the panty hose, Robert? Does your mother call you ‘Robert’?”

            “Rob’s fine. But, yeah if it said they’re on sale in the flyer then, they’re on sale. C’mon, I’ll ring you up.”

            At the register, Rob tried to play it cool; he was embarrassed about the mom line. Why did he take that advice now, a year and half after college? He’d never listened to the guy in college; in fact he thought the guy was a creep. Why now? At twenty-four, you’d think you could come up with something better than a corny one-liner that would’ve been lame in even the cheapest hotel bar.

“My mom’s name is Katherine. I just said that because some friend told me girls like it when they have the same name as a guy’s mother. I don’t know, sorry.” Rob was flustered. Kim just smiled; apparently amused by Rob’s confession. She’d probably had a feeling the line was a hoax.

 “It’s fine- no worries. Really, I think it’s funny. I was saying I’ve only been in here a couple times; I’m new, just moved here a couple weeks ago.” Rob’s anxiety faded. Another opening; she wanted to talk more.

             “Really? Well, how do you like it?’ Rob glanced behind Kim to see if anyone else was waiting in line—no one yet.

            “Eh, it’s ok, I guess. But there’s nothing to do really, no people our age, yah know?” Rob loved how she automatically grouped the two of them together, “our age”; it was them against the rest.

“I know what you mean. I guess it’s the suburban setting. By the way, what are you doing living out here?” He was going for a kind, curious prying, but his voice took on a sort of judgmental tone. It didn’t seem to faze her.

“Work. One of those consulting firms—it’s a job.” Rob could tell she wasn’t thrilled to talk about her work. Perhaps, like Rob, she was stuck in a job she had chosen because she really had no other choice. “What do you do for fun, Rob?”

“Fun? Downtown definitely. Good bars down there. I go with my buddies a lot.” The truth was Rob hadn’t been downtown on a frequent basis with his friends in almost a year. Most of his buddies had left their hometown, found jobs in other states with bigger cities and didn’t plan to come back until they’d made enough money to support a family.

“Bars, huh? That’s neat I guess, but honestly, I’m really not a drinker.” People who use the word “neat” rarely are big drinkers.

“Well, there’s other stuff too.” Rob was scrambling his brain for his interests, trying to come up with an activity that didn’t suggest he was a drunk; non-drinkers tend to think of all drinkers as alcoholics. “I go to coffee shops, movies, there’s a theater that gets a few good productions and a decent rotation of music, an art museum. A lot of culture here.” Rob was feeling like a travel agent trying to turn a place like Blaine, Missouri into New York City.

“I like coffee. I usually only drink one cup a day, though. It’ll stain your teeth too quick if you drink too much of it. Come to think of it I haven’t had a cup yet. What time do you get off?”

           

Rob finished at six. He was used to counting down the hours until he was free from Riley’s, but now that he had plans with Kim, the hours ticked by even more slowly. Each customer was like a single grain of sand dropping from the top chamber to the bottom of an hourglass. It was the first time Rob wasn’t leaving work simply to go home, eat, watch TV and wait for the morning to arrive so he could go back to Riley’s and earn money to pay for the apartment where he ate, watched TV and waited for the next morning to come. At six o’clock, Jerry, the night shift cashier, came to relieve Rob. School’s out.

            Rob was hoping to find Kim already waiting when he arrived; he never liked being the first person to a meeting. The first person had to wait and sit as the doubt about whether the other party was coming grew from its birthplace in the stomach and rose higher and higher until it was oozing through the pores of the face, paralyzing the person until the meeting began. Rob pulled into a spot directly in front of the coffee shop’s glass-wall façade. He scanned the store-front for Kim before getting out of the car, moving his eyes steadily from left to right, then right to left. He caught her on the second scan, sitting at a small round table up against the glass. The slam of Rob’s car door got her attention. Kim looked up from her magazine and waved to Rob, who nodded and smiled as he entered. When Kim had come into Riley’s, she’d been wearing a white blouse and a gray skirt—her business outfit. But now she was wearing a purple flannel, most likely second-hand, blue jeans, naturally faded, and red-framed Wayfarer eye glasses. The whole outfit looked cool and simple, complementing the effortless beauty of her fair white skin and golden blonde hair. Rob was flattered that she’d taken the time after work to go home and change and viewed the flannel and eyeglasses as a gesture to him, a way of telling him she wanted him to see the real her.

“Kim.” Rob said with a wave.

“Hey Rob. I almost didn’t recognize you without the nametag.” She smiled at him,

seemingly to assure Rob she was only joking.

“What’re you reading?” Rob said as he reached for the newspaper print magazine she held in her hand.

“I don’t know. It’s really stupid. They had them at the front for free. I was just looking through it while I was waiting. It’s called “FEAR FINDER.” It lists all the upcoming Haunted attractions for October.”

“Those people are ridiculous. I mean, that’s their job. What do their business cards say?”

“Well, what’s your business card say?” She asked, again in a joking tone.

“Well, I’m just temporary until I figure out what my calling is.” Rob’s tone got higher, mocking on “calling.”

“A calling, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m just waiting for the moment when it’ll just hit me. Bam! Then I’ll know what to do and I can quit my job.”

“I don’t think your job’s that bad.” Rob just looked at her, with a stare that said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, really I don’t think it’s that bad. You get to talk and see people all day, move around and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of time to think.”

“Too much time to think, and the thinking that goes on while I’m at work isn’t the healthiest kind.”

“Why’s that?” She asked, looking down to stir her coffee.

“Well, I’ve been working there for about a year now, which is a year longer than I thought I’d be working there. The whole job just wears on you. There’s nowhere to go. I need a career, not a job. It’s just not how I want to be seen.”

“I don’t think it really matters what anyone actually does. I don’t think of myself as a consultant after I leave work. It’s like a costume I put on from eight to five everyday. I just do it so I can have money to do things I like. Those are the things that define me.”

            Rob considered it for a moment, and then smiled at Kim. A sense of ease had come over Rob, an epiphany—not one of great importance, but one that allowed Rob to feel better about his life. If Kim was a consultant, but at the same time wasn’t, then Rob didn’t have to be a cashier.

“So what do you like then, Kim?”

“Well, this weekend I went hiking. Not around here, but I found a trail a few miles away, and I liked that.”

“So, this weekend you defined yourself as a outdoorsy type then?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I felt outdoorsy at least. And next weekend, or tomorrow maybe I’ll decide to go see a movie, or go skydiving. I don’t know.”

“Kim, the daredevil movie-buff.” Rob said, raising his hands as if he were imaging the

title on a marquee.

“Sure. Whatever you like. That’s who you are.”

“Well, I think I’d like to go to dinner with you. How’s Thursday?”

“I’d love to, except Thursday’s no good. The rodeo’s coming in, a couple towns over. I think I’d like to be a rodeo clown Thursday.”

Rob didn’t know how long he would temporarily be working at Riley’s, and for the first time the indefinite timeline didn’t bother him. He just relaxed, sitting there with Kim in the coffee shop. A fresh perspective on things may not cause drastic changes but it does provide something different. Rob wasn’t just a tired, worn-out cashier; Rob had become a guy who was simply getting coffee with a cute girl and that was enough to make him happy for now.

           

           

35 mm Memory

I miss the good old days, the days when you’d see a Bugs Bunny cartoon instead of a ten-minute-long set of commercials before a film, or when buckets of popcorn, bottles of pop and boxes of candies would sing, “Let’s all go to the Lobby” as they danced across an animated screen, happily asking us to eat and drink them during the intermission. I miss the days when the original version was the only version, when only in theaters actually meant “only in theaters,” and when a screenwriter’s idea of the distant, weird, hovercraft-filled future was 2001. When you spend your days owning a Cineplex because you love film, but can’t show any good ones, it’s easy to think back and idolize the good old days—the days that only exist through the fond memories of your elders.

*

            Getting off 696, the Detroit Zoo Water tower marking the exit, I drove past my street in Pleasant Ridge heading south on Woodward. I’d left Dayton early but told my mother I’d be home around six, hoping to enjoy the city I’d grown up in before assuming my week-long, home-body role as my grandfather’s caretaker.  Hungry and wanting to re-capture my own ‘good-old-days’, I headed west on Nine Mile and parked outside the China Ruby storefront—a hole in the wall that Gramps, my grandfather, sometimes had taken me to when my mom would be out at the bars, scanning metro-Detroit for a husband who wouldn’t run out on us.

              Beside the three stools along China Ruby’s four-foot counter top, there’d only ever been enough room in the restaurant for two, four-person tables. So closely packed that sitting down and getting up had to be done in one-at-a-time intervals. Despite the size, the owner’s daughter Chen, who looked young even when I was ten, would make each customer stand at the door and wait as she played hostess. Gramps and I would wait patiently as Chen carefully laid out Chinese Zodiac placemats, napkin-rolls of utensils and cups of water before leaving us to our table, softly telling us, “xie¢-xie¢”or “thank you.”

A true American expert in Chinese cuisine, Gramps would always order an egg roll and a plate of orange chicken. Not to be out done, I’d usually get breaded almond chicken because its picture looked like chicken fingers on the menu. At the end of every meal, no matter the time of night, Gramps would start calling for a card-game with the owner, Bo.

             “Hey Bo, how about some dessert for the boy here?” Gramps would say.

             Bo would come from behind the counter with a smile, shuffling a worn-down deck of cards between his hands. Chen would follow behind with a bucket of Stroh’s vanilla bean and as Bo and Gramps would play cards, Chen and I would have a few scoops. I hadn’t been to the restaurant in a few years, before gramps was diagnosed with dementia, and as I walked to the door I wondered how the place would look and feel without the sounds of Gramps’s and Bo’s poker games while Chen and I giggled at the fact that both Bo’s and Gramps’s Zodiac animal was the pig.

              Unsurprisingly, the restaurant was empty. There was a woman behind the counter with the same, kind eyes as Chen, but as she extended her hand, inviting me to sit anywhere in the empty restaurant, her graying hair and wrinkled features told me that she wasn’t my child-hostess all grown up. I took the stool at the end of the counter, closest to the open-air kitchen at the back. I leaned over the counter to see if Bo was still working the fryer.

           His hair was now completely white but, standing against the chopping counter, his smile and the way he was shuffling his card-deck reassured me that it was Bo.

          “Bo?” I said, as the woman poured me a cup of something that looked more like dishwater than it did tea.

           Bo’s smile turned into full-out laughter as he slammed the deck on the counter and shook my hand.

           “Dr. Joz’s boy!” Bo said. “I haven’t seen you in years, I ought to put you up on the wall. My hall of fame!”

           Bo pointed to the thin sliver of wall space high up behind the counter where he’d hung five pictures of himself and his regulars, none of which were famous. In all but one, Bo was crouched next to a customer with one arm around their shoulder and the other raising a ‘thumbs up.’ In Gramps’s celebrity shot, both he and Bo were grinning with big, open-mouth smiles as Bo gave a double thumbs-up and Gramps held open a hand of straight aces.  The picture looked recent, as if it had been taken in the last year, and I liked that Bo had it on display.  To any passer-by, in that picture’s frozen moment, there was no way of telling that Gramps’s hands were most likely shaking as he held up the cards, or that hours after the picture had been taken, he was back at home confused about where he’d eaten dinner or even what year he was in. In that picture, he was only a happy old man who’d come across a lucky hand while playing cards in his favorite restaurant.

              “So, what’ve you been up to? I really haven’t visited with Eddie since that picture was taken, almost a year ago I think, but I remember him mentioning something about you still being in school?” Bo said, motioning the older woman, seemingly his wife, back towards the kitchen.

              “Well, actually I’ve been out of school for a couple years now. I just bought a small cinema in Ohio about two years ago. Maybe Gramps got confused. I’ve been doing a lot lately. Almost too much for me to even keep track of.”

             “That must’ve been it. He’s come in here at night sometimes, now that I think about it. But that was what he’d said the last time I asked about you,” Bo said, before he let out a long, contemplative sigh.

I had a feeling that Bo knew about Gramps’s dementia, but I didn’t want to push the issue. It wasn’t my disease to talk about. Besides, the dementia wasn’t full-blown, twenty-four hours a day; it was only the sundowner’s syndrome that was serious. For all I knew, Gramps still came to China Ruby for lunch, before the sun went down, played a couple hands over a plate of orange chicken and had Bo fooled. 

            “So, movie theater owner, huh? Ever show any Seagal movies?” Bo asked.

            Bo put himself into a karate-like stance before pretending to crack his neck in an exaggerated, comic fashion. We both burst out laughing.

            “Not quite. Although I think if he ever managed to make another movie that doesn’t go straight to DVD, there’d be a strong demand from my audience,” I said, clearing the laughing tears from my eyes. “My problem is that I own a theater in a city with no taste, but what do I know. By the way, how’s Chen?”

            “She’s great,” Bo said. “She’s training to be a chef right now, wants to specialize in Italian cuisine.”

            “That so.”

            “Her Father runs a world-class Chinese restaurant and she wants to cook pizzas. Go figure.”

            The woman who’d seated me, made her way behind Bo.

            “World-class? Bo, if this place were world-class then I think those pictures on the wall might actually contain some famous faces,” the woman said, setting down a hot plate of almond chicken in front of me. “I’m Jia, Bo’s wife. I don’t think I was ever around when you used to come in here.”

            “Nice to meet you,” I said, before looking down at the steaming plate.

            “Not too old for Chinese chicken strips, are you?” Bo said, slapping me on the back. “And your money’s no good here. It’s on the house!”

*

            The soft sound of gravel rumbled underneath the tires of my used ’88 3-series Bimmer as I pulled into the driveway of Gramps’s house. On a street full of colonials, the house’s awkward, outdated contemporary sixties design made it the sore thumb—something I’d noticed even as a kid. It looked like a two-tone shoebox. The lower level of the house was marked with cheap, light brown brick on all four corners leading up to its dark brown vertical wood siding on the second story. The lawn was cut, but the flowerbeds were empty, a regular site that had started when Gramps became a widower. As I walked to the front door the vertical blinds of the living-room bay window were drawn open, allowing for the fading glow of Gramps’s television to display the five o’clock news out to the neighborhood street.

            “The big-theater owner still won’t get a real pair of shoes, I see,” my mother said as she made her way up the hallway’s oriental runner.

            I waved back and quickly kicked off my vans, jarring a few pebbles loose from the crevices of the soles. As she brought me in for a hug, I noticed that besides the smell of pierogies on her apron, she no longer smelled like the Chanel No. 5 I’d grown up with.

            “Hello, Mrs. Beckman. I mean mom,” I said as she began to break the hug.

            “Colin, stop it,” she said, slapping me on the arm with a sister-like affection. “It wouldn’t be fair to Derek if his own wife didn’t take his last name.”

            “Fair is fair. Let me guess, Gramps is watching the tube?”

            “Bingo. How was the drive in?”

            “Fine, I got in a little early, so I got a quick bite to eat up the street at China Ruby.”

            “Oh God,” She said, putting her hand to her cheek. “I bet they were glad you were the only one walking in from this family.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “His sundowner’s has been getting worse, starting a little bit earlier in the night than it used to,” she said, pulling me into the dining room, turning the front doorway into a buffer between the living room and us. “Last month he got out of the house during one of his spells. Went to Bo’s restaurant, thought he was at a bar, kept asking for Mickey.”

            “Uncle Mickey? Gramps’s cousin?”

            “Right, Uncle Mickey. He walked the four blocks to Nine Mile, went in right before Bo was closing for the night. Nobody was there except Bo. Thank God.” She paused and furrowed her brow, as if she were collecting her thoughts. “First he didn’t really know Bo, thought Bo was the bartender. ‘Any minute now, Mickey’ll be here,’ Bo said, he kept saying.”

            “Uncle Mickey’s dead,” I said.

            “It’s the sundowner’s. Anyways, Bo ended up calling me and I went and got him.”

            “Is he ok?” I asked.

            “During the daytime, the early evenings, he’s his old self. Hands keep shaking and he’s a little forgetful but mostly his old self. You know I didn’t mind selling the house in Huntington Woods to move back in here and take care of him, but Derek and I are thinking that it might be time to put him in a home. At least get him a full-time, professional caretaker maybe.”

            “I bet Derek thinks that’s a good idea,” I said, giving my mom a look of disgust for the suggestion. “He doesn’t need to be in a home, we’ll be fine this week. Just watch.”

            “I know you two will,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “And you know I really appreciate you coming in. Derek and I have been putting off this honeymoon far too long. But go on in and see him, he’s been waiting for you.”

            As I walked into living room, letting my mom return to the kitchen, I could hear the loud, static-filled voice of the news commentator through the speakers of my grandfather’s box Sony television. The newsman was reporting live from outside city council chambers in regards to “yet another unproductive day of meetings, regarding the city’s budget concerns as the governor’s plan for a state takeover still looms.”

            “Jesus, you believe this?” Gramps said to himself, waving off the screen in disgust.

            “I don’t believe it,” I announced, causing Gramps to twist around in his seat.

            “Colin!” he said, jumping to his feet and walking around the front of the couch. “We’ve been waiting for ya, bubs! How was the drive?”

            “It was fine,” I said, thinking better than to mention my stop at Bo’s as Gramps brought me in for quick a hug. “Watching the news?”

            “Yeah, you remember how it is down there. Even when they get new people, smart people or at least honest people, they’ve still got the same problems. This city used to be great.”

            “Yeah, I guess some things are just unfixable.”

            Gramps nodded and moved across the room towards the cabinet bar he’d kept off to the side of the bay window. He shakily lifted up the hinged bar-top revealing a set of shot glasses, each one with a different year painted over the breast of the white Polish eagle design the glasses carried. They were old mementos from the Polish-Medical-Dental Association conventions he’d attended over the years. He lowered the bar-top back down and grabbed a bottle of potato vodka from the lower cabinet.

            “A drink!” he announced, as he fidgeted with the bottle’s wire hood. “To the movie man’s homecoming.”

            “No drinks!” my mom yelled from the kitchen.

            Gramps waved me in close, shadowing his mouth with the backside of his hand.

            “Look, she doesn’t want me to be drinking because, well, you know,” he whispered. “One nip, between you and me, won’t do either of us any harm. In fact, it might even make this meal tolerable.”

            I slyly smiled back and nodded in agreement. I stole the bottle from his shaking grip and quickly poured the shots.

            “This is the best Polish vodka you’re gonna have,” he said, lightly clanking his glass against mine. “Zuafa Mi.”

*

            Maybe it was my homesickness being cured, or maybe it was just the effect that good potato vodka can have on the mind, but sitting at the kitchen table, having heard Gramps’s old Polish, “zuafa mi,” or “trust me,” my mind wandered back two years, to my twenty-four year-old self and the day I made the movie theater, and the city of Dayton, my new home.
           When I'd met with the old Polish-American couple that originally owned my theater, the husband, Gwidon, had plopped a stack of yellowing loose-leaf papers on top of the concession counter. It was handwritten list spanning the mid-nineties all the way back to fifties. In different shades of blue and black ink were scribbled titles. Numbered all the way up to two-hundred, Gwidon claimed that it was a list of the films that had become his 'all-time' favorites. He told me that if he was going to put his "X" on the last dotted-line I'd have to promise to have my booker get the rights to at least ten of his movies each year. Trying to replicate Gramps's charm, I gave Gwidon a quick wink and said, "Zaufa Mi" before signing my name to the contract.

            Although I’d kept my word and made it my theater’s direction to play only ‘old classics’ and nothing that the multiplexes were carrying, I learned the hard way that promises don’t pay the bills. Now, two-years later, I owned a theater that averaged five patrons per screening and had begun receiving advice from my booker not on what movies to carry, but rather on who I could possibly sell my theater to. I had inherited the money that I’d bought the theater with, and seeing as how my mom was against its purchase from the beginning, I had decided not to tell her that coming home and shutting it down a week was the first and only money-saving business decision I’d made in the two-years since I’d bought it.

*

            “Go ahead and get started. Derek called, he’s going to be a little late,” my mom said, pouring herself a glass of wine as I came out of my thoughts. “He had to take care of a few last things at the office before we leave tomorrow. The plate on the left is potato-cheese and the one closest to you Dad are the meat pierogies.”

            I reached for the serving spoon and began shoveling the pierogies on to Gramps’s plate—three meat ones and two potato-cheese. When I’d finished, he grabbed away the spoon and dropped the two potato-cheese back into the serving dish.

            “I think I had enough potatoes in the living room,” he said and winked at me.

            As the dim lighting of the rustic table-chandelier took over the room, I began to notice that Gramps had taken a turn to silence. My mom’s glass never seemed to be more than half-empty, and as the meal concluded, her and I started on the dishes as my grandfather continued to sit quietly at the table.

            “Dad?” my mom said over the steady stream of water pouring into the kitchen sink. I was on drying duty. “Dad, you want some desert or maybe want to watch some television?”

            “I’m not your dad,” Gramps said, shaking his head ‘no’ with his hands laid palm down on the table.

            I looked at my mother, and she nodded up to the clock above the sink.

            “I think the sundowner’s is starting up a little,” she whispered to me, before reaching for the last sip of her wine.

            “Honey, why are you drinking all that wine?” Gramps said, shakily pushing himself up from the table. “The kids asked you to cut it out.”

            “Dad! It’s me, Ann. Your daughter, Ann.”

            Gramps stopped in his tracks, and brought his shaking hand to the back of his head. He stood silently, murmuring something to himself and pointing, as if he were counting the air. As he closed his eyes and pursed his lips, I could tell he was trying to re-orient himself back to the present moment.

            “Gramps?” I gently said, hoping my acknowledged presence would bring him back.

            “I think I oughta’ hit the bathroom before we watch the game, all right bubs?” he said, and walked out of the kitchen towards the bathroom, using the hallway walls as a guide.

            “Can he go to the bathroom okay?” I asked, after I’d heard the bathroom door close.

            “He’ll be fine, just takes him a little bit of time,” she said, and returned to the sink.

            “So, did I catch all that right? He thought you were grandma?”

            “It happens sometimes. Thankfully when Derek’s around it’s enough for not to act out on it,” She said, with a smile and a laugh. “Hey, you better be careful. Everybody always thought you looked like Uncle Mickey. Maybe, he’ll try to get you to take him to one of those jazz joints they loved.”

             She nudged me with her hip, as if she was going to “bump” the smile out of me. I was surprised that she was so lighthearted about the situation, but I figured that since she’d been around for the dementia’s entire process, she had moved beyond the point of being capable of shock, past the time when its strangeness stirred up a strong enough desire to try to cure Gramps and was now simply numb to it all: surrendering to the reality of his degeneration, still caring and concerned, but knowing that the healthiest thing might be to allow herself to laugh once in a while.

            “Goddamn it!” Gramps yelled. The sound of slamming cabinets echoed from the bathroom.

            As I stood in the open doorway, my mother hiding behind me, Gramps rifled through the bathroom counter’s drawers.

            “Jane, where’s that Drain-O stuff?” he said flailing his hands as he crouched down to the drawer’s waist-high height, squinting into its shadowy opening. “Did you buy any of it?”

            “Gramps, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Damn clog. These damn hands of mine won’t let me really work that plunger.” He said.

His hands were shaking more erratically now, and the way his balding head was glistening under the clean, bathroom lighting, I guessed he’d worked himself into a sweat trying to unclog it.

            “Here let me try it,” I said reaching over the toilet bowl. He pushed my hand away.

            “No, no, you’re the guest,” he said. “I’m not going to let my only older cousin, clean up my shit. Tell ya’ what though, Mick, while I’m working in here, how’s about you fix us up a couple of rusty nails? We’ll have ourselves a real Sto-Lat.”

            He went back to his rummaging. I turned back to my mom, whose wide eyes revealed that the humorous forewarning of me assuming the role of Uncle Mickey was just as big of a shock to her as it was to me. She moved in front of me and put her arms on Gramps’s shoulders. Walking him out of the bathroom, she quickly nudged her head toward the toilet, silently asking me to take care of the clog.

            As I plunged away at the mountain of submerged toilet paper, I could hear her gently re-orienting Gramps just outside the door. “Dad, it’s Ann, your daughter. Not Jane. Do you know where Jane is?”  The clog was heavy, and the water was at the rim of the bowl. “Right Dad, Jane’s gone. That’s not Mickey, dad, that’s Colin in the bathroom.” The hallway was silent, and for a moment the only noise was the swish-swash of plunger-made waves. “Right, Dad, Mickey’s gone too. You okay?” I stopped the plunger, and waited to hear Gramps’s answer. He must’ve whispered ‘yes’ because my mom and Gramps reappeared in the doorway again.

            I widened my stance and bent slightly over the bowl in an attempt to give my body some of the load. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gramps’s figure standing over me.

           In one swift move my grandfather grabbed the plunger from my hands, threw it into the small corner behind the toilet and began digging the toilet paper out with his bare hands. With the dripping mound of paper in his hand, Gramps backed away from the bowl, a look of shock on his pale white face. Stopping at the bathroom wall, Gramps let his body slide down until he was sitting on the damp tile floor.

          As I wrung out my towel over the bathtub next to Gramps’s seated figure, the falling drops seemed to hang in the air an extra few seconds before hitting the tub floor. The visuals of memory can be so vivid, like moving pictures playing on a theater screen inside the mind. The films we don’t like don’t have to be played. Plenty of films have been banned. Scenes are cut or edited as if they never existed—the memories that the film itself wishes to repress and never revisit. Gramps’s illness was like a rogue-projector, disobeying its human-operator and running the 35 mm memories through its reels, sprockets and drums, spewing confusion from its lens. Focusing images that the audience wants blurred and randomly sharpening the scenes we’ve intentionally made hazy.

           By the time Derek had arrived home, Gramps had forgotten the scene and was in his bed, eyes closed, and peacefully drifting back into a dream world of another old memory. I was in my mother’s childhood room, the one I always used to use for sleepovers, listening through the wall as Derek and her discussed flight plans and the morning’s travel arrangements. I’d applied a little bleach to the tile after Gramps had collected himself from the floor and as I pulled my comforter up to my chin I could still smell the sting of Clorox from underneath my fingernails. My mind was no longer scrambling, I’d calmed down and began to fall-in line with Gramps. Hoping that we might end up dreaming of the same memory. 

Kept in a Box

As I removed my faded Grateful Dead t-shirt from the duct-taped moving box labeled, Colin’s Shit, an intense feeling of nostalgia came over me. The shirt’s dancing bears came from a time when my biggest worry was whether or not the “Stop ‘N Go” would finally get wise to my fake I.D. and my weekends were spent beer-drunk and twisted, arguing over movies and bands in my buddy’s garage with my girlfriend Lex—things like which version of “The Fly” was better, Vincent Price or Jeff Goldblum. I’d always argue that Lex’s opinion didn’t really count because she’d have never seen any movies if I hadn’t made her watch them, while her rebuttal always used the logic that I could never be right about anything that sprung from decades I’d never existed in.

I placed the t-shirt on top of my chest, but the image of a stuffed human-sausage in a tie-dye t-shirt casing prompted me to throw it back in the box with all my other “shit.” I’d have gotten mad about the box’s label but I was the one who’d scribbled it on the side—packaged up an entire four years of high school in the midst of that stage when a guy gets it in his head that a regular dose of “shit,” “fuck,” and “crap” makes him sound older or tougher or just closer to that stock bad-boy character that girls seem to like. My mom used to say it was like a toddler’s terrible two’s only seventeen-years later.

            “Colin!” Gramps yelled from the top of the stairs. “Did you find that sausage grinder down there?”

            “Yeah, got it right here!” I yelled back up, unscrewing the meat grinder’s rusted clamp from the tabletop of Gramps’s old workbench.

The kitchen used to always be grandma’s territory, unless there was sausage. That’s when Gramps would invade. It’d be Christmas Eve, Wigilia, and despite the old custom against it, Gramps would be grinding out the meat for the ones who couldn’t stomach the fish. The first time I saw the grinder, its coarse steel still un-scathed by lack of use, Gramps was showing it off to me. Attempting to quiet my cries for a chicken-nugget Christmas Eve dinner. “Chicken nuggets haven’t got a fighting chance against this, bubs,” he’d said, before grinding out and frying up some links. Retrieving it from the cellar, I knew that he wanted to show me that he had remembered me as that special exception to the Wigilia tradition. That even though his mind was going, the memories we shared were also a special exception.

            “Jesus,” gramps said, peeking his eye through the grinder’s steel nozzle, fighting with its rusted crank-handle. “I don’t know if we’re gonna get this thing going. Damn shame, my dad used to make the best sausage with this thing.”

            “You weren’t too bad with it either,” I said. “But if we can’t have polish sausage we might as well go get the next best thing.”

            Gramps looked at the clock, and gave me a smile.

            “Let’s go see Bo,” he said.

            As we drove south on Woodward, the rain being the only reason we didn’t walk the four blocks, I imagined that the storefronts along the road were moving past us on a giant conveyor belt. I thought of the sidewalk as being from one of those perfect Utopian-style tomorrow-lands, like “Logan’s Run” before your palm-sized life-clock expires and you’re put to death. My lapse back into twelve-year-old imaginations was broken by the sound of my phone vibrating inside a cup holder full of loose change. It was Brian, the film booker for my near-dead movie theater back in Dayton, Ohio.

“Brian, what’s up?” I said, and switched the phone to speaker.

“Nothing, you free for a beer in a little bit?”

“Really, what’s up?” I said, taken back by Brian’s unprecedented request to hangout.

Rustling papers came through the receiver, followed by a couple of muttered curse words.

 “Ah, yeah, right, right…Okay here it is, ‘Dear Mr. Jozwiak, we’d like to inform you in regards to your request for the following films…” Brian said, and his voice trailed off into a scrambled murmur before taking shape again. “We feel as though it’s not in this studio’s best interest to…”

I took the phone off speaker and quickly pressed it back up to my ear.

“Well, if you ask me, I’d have to say that they don’t want to sell you the distribution rights,” Brian, said.

“Which ones?” I said, hoping Gramps hadn’t caught the blurb about my theater being rejected.

“All four,” Brain said, as the sound of shuffling papers was replaced with a drinking, slurping sound and a refreshing sigh. “This is good coffee, but, ah, they don’t think the extra distribution is worth the risk of pissing off the big boys. Unlike you, those Cineplex joints have been doing business with these studios for a while and they’re not holding ten empty screenings a day. The big boys get first dibs on the block-busters, that’s the way it is.”

“Alright, alright I hear ya,” I said.

“Like I’ve been telling you. Think about selling it,” he said. “I might know a couple guys who’d buy it from you.”

I took the phone away from my ear as Brian continued to ramble on about some guy he knew, who knows some guy who’d be willing to pay just a few thousand less than what I paid for it. Trying to get a few new mainstream films was a last ditch effort for my theater. I knew that selling the theater would be the best option money-wise but listening to Brian force the idea on me with the sincerity of a door-to-door salesman, I got the feeling that the guy Brian had lined-up, also had a nice kick-back lined up for Brian.

“…So, you know, you’re losing money on the deal, but you’re losing money now anyways.”  Brian said, as I returned the phone to my ear. “I’m trying to help you out here, Colin.”

“Yeah okay,” I said, ready to throw the phone against the dashboard. “Hey, you know what, I changed my mind, that beer sounds good! I’ll meet ya’ at Bendy’s around five.”

Brian hadn’t picked up on my lie, despite the heavy sarcasm in my voice.

“Perfect, and how’s about you get the first round? Call it a finders fee for the buyers I’ve already got lined up.”

“Even better, see you down there!” I said.

“Heading out tonight?” Gramps said, revealing his inside-man-status on with a quick laugh.

“Yeah right, all the way back to Dayton,” I said. “Guy’s a fucking jerk, let him sit there and wait at the bar all night.”

 “Colin, do what you love.” Gramps said, calmly. “It’ll work out.”

I just nodded and turned down Nine Mile.

“Well, right now I’d love some Chinese.” I said.

“Me too.”

*

We parked outside a costume shop with a banner-sized rainbow “PRIDE” flag hanging in the window where Macalum’s Food and Drug used to hang the stars and stripes.

            “At least there’s one familiar site,” Gramps said, pointing across the street to the China Ruby storefront. “Let’s go, I’m starving. Could use a drink too.”

            I was surprised to see that the place wasn’t empty. Two pudgy men in matching business suits—glen-plaid and double-breasted—with greased-back thinning hair and black ties were sitting at the counter. Each one had a tiger-eye ring on that would, no doubt, have to be cut off if they ever wanted to see the skin underneath their gold bands again. The one closest to the register had a head of gray and was eating his egg roll like a cannoli while the guy next to him, with the Just for Men jet-black slick-back, was wearing his napkin like a bib. They were talking between bites but weren’t looking at each other. Just kept staring ahead at the mirror-tiles that paneled the wall behind the counter.

            “Bo,” Gramps called out; the two wise guys at the counter stayed deadpan, probably muttering “Salud” or “Manga” to one another for the twentieth time.

            “Who’s there?” Bo asked, from behind the fryer.

            “It’s me, the good doctor,” Gramps said, pulling a chair out from the table closest to the front window.

            “What’re you gonna sit all the way up there for?” Bo asked, wiping his hands on his apron, before shaking Gramps’s. “Don’t you want to keep me company back there?”

            “I’ll eat your cats, but I don’t want to see them before you throw ‘em in the fryer. You don’t want me taking the stand when the Health Department takes you down, do you?”

            Just then the two Mafioso-types cracked their knuckles and made their way toward our table. The shorter, graying one led the way, and behind him, I could see that Mr. Just for Men was reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. Gramps and Bo were still shooting the shit, but all I could think about were the thoughts running through Just for Men’s mind, “leave the gun, and take the egg roll?”

He was right behind Bo, and as he brought his hand out I saw that he was armed with a black leather-bound book and a couple of glossy pamphlets. 

            “Ah, ‘scuse me, I don’t wanna interrupt you’s guys here, but ah, are you all good and well with your current religious experience?” Just for Men said.

            From there, the gray-haired wise guy laid-out the Jehovah’s Witness sales pitch while Gramps and Bo finished wiping away their laughing tears. At the end of the pitch, Gramps and Bo were silent, and as Just for Men chimed back in, trying to talk about what he thought was the best part about being a witness, Gramps interrupted.

            “Really?” Gramps said, before turning to Bo. “Bo, a couple egg rolls and the usual please.”

Bo nodded and headed for the fryer.

 “What’re you guys below your quota for the month?” Gramps asked. “Approaching a nice old Polish-Catholic in a Chinese restaurant with—what do those say? The Watchtower?” Gramps said, leaning on the chair’s back legs and resting his hands on his stomach. “Well if it’s a matter of meeting a quota, fine, I’ll take your pamphlets and your book. But I’m not interested in the religion. I’m only interested in enjoying my orange chicken.”

            “If we leave the book, then we gotta’ hear you say you’ll at least think about it. Those are the rules and that’s the deal.”

            “That’s a bad deal. What happened to the days of making me an offer I can’t refuse?” Gramps said, jutting out his lower jaw. I knew he was trying to do Brando, but he’d have been better off with just sticking an orange-slice in his mouth. “How ‘bout I get Bo back there to bring out a bottle of whiskey and you two take a shot with me?  Then I’ll tell you that I’ll think about converting. Hell—wait, do you guys believe in hell?”

The two goodfella-prophets just answered with a blank stare.

 “Anyways, hell, I’ll even read that pamphlet right in front of you if you take a shot.” Gramps said, waving to Bo and tipping his hand in a drinking motion.

            “Not supposed to drink when on public ministry. Leviticus 10:9,” Just for Men said, already collecting the reading material from the table.

            “Good, more for me,” Gramps answered as the two walked out.

            Bo placed a couple of egg rolls on the table, along with a bottle of whiskey. Gramps looked to the bottles edge where the label wasn’t covering up the glass and checked the bottle’s contents against a hand-drawn black-sharpie-line. The date 03/15/12 was scribbled above it.

            “What gives, Bo?” Gramps said. “I bought this bottle and told you to keep it only for me. I can’t trust the only place that I’m able to have a drink in peace? It’s bad enough I gotta’ sneak around the liquor cabinet at home like some high-school freshman.”

            “Easy, doc,” Bo said, bringing over two half-full glasses of coke. “An old friend of Colin’s was in here a few nights back and looked like she needed a drink. Lex, I think her name was?”

            “I don’t know any Lex,” Gramps said, filling the other half of his glass with the Jack Daniels. “Probably scammed you Bo, or scammed me I should say. Scammed me right out of a shot.”

            “Said she was an old-friend of yours,” Bo said, now looking only to me. “Came in here from down the street, said she owns a dance studio on the other side of Woodward on nine-mile? Had her daughter with her too—“

            “A kid?” I said, interrupting Bo.

            “Yeah, cute kid. Loved those fried won-tons.” Bo said, pushing the nut-bowl of won tons toward me. “Ringing any bells, amigo?”

*

            Figuring he’d be occupied for at least an hour, I left Gramps at the table with Bo, a plate of orange chicken and a fresh ‘Jack & Coke.’ Bo gave me the name of Lex’s dance studio and I headed down the street to check it out. As I saw the studio’s hanging sign reading, “Alexandra Coulter’s Dance Academy for the Young and Young at Heart,” I wondered if Alexandra Coulter was my Lex David.

The studio was on the second floor of the building and as I opened the door to the stairwell, I was bombarded by at least eight ten-year-old girls in leg warmers. The words Ice Breakers were printed in silver sparkles on the backs of all their swishy-black nylon windbreakers. A woman who looked to be around thirty-five shot me a disconcerting look, before pushing her bug-eyed-black-shades up the ridge of her nose.

            When I reached the top, I saw a girl, younger than the Ice Breakers by at least five years, counting off steps in front of the studio’s twenty-foot wall mirror.

            “Hurry mommy!” The girl shouted, before straightening her shoulders, lowering her head and touching her heels together.

            Just then, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blasted through the speakers, and the little girl, who was before at a stand-still, was now twirling, splitting and rolling over the floor using a variation of gymnastic and snow-angel dance-moves.

            “Get it lady,” a female voice said through a microphone. “Shake it! Woo!”

            I nearly lost myself in the poetry of Cyndi Lauper, before realizing that standing there—watching this five-year-old girl shake it—I probably looked like the perfect candidate for Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”. The lady on the microphone must’ve thought the same thing because the music stopped abruptly.

            “Can I help you sir?” The woman asked, emerging from the back.

            It was Lex.

            “I’m looking for Lex David,” I said. “I’m an old friend.”

            “Joz? Colin Jozwiak, is that you?” she said, squinting at me from across the room.

By the time I’d made my way over to Lex, the little girl was standing at Lex’s knees, seemingly protecting Lex from me. As I went in for the hug, the girl shot her hand up in my direction.

“Hi-yee,” the girl said. “I’m Jackie.”

“Hi, Jackie. I’m Colin,” I said before looking back up at Lex. “Your mom and I are old friends.”

“How old are you? Mommy won’t tell me how old she is,” Jackie said, tugging my pant leg and getting my attention back down below her four-foot eye-line.

“I’m twenty-six ma’am,” I said, watching Jackie count her little piggies through her silk dance-slippers. “How old are you?”

“This many,” Jackie answered, holding up four fingers while hiding, showing and re-hiding her thumb. “Four-and-a-half.”

“Wow! That’s great, and I saw you dancing. You might be better than your mom was!” I said.

Lex punched me in the shoulder and I just laughed as Jackie sprinted back into the darkness of the backroom. A giggling voice, “Check-one. Check-one-two,” told me that Jackie had stationed herself at the microphone. As the electric tones of a 1980’s keyboard played over a studio drum machine, I realized that Jackie was about to give us another dance number. As the lyrics “…she’s got Bette Davis Eyes…” came through the speakers, I felt the seat of a chair gently press against the back of my legs.

“Have a seat,” Lex said. “I’ll put some coffee on, Kim Carnes is way better with coffee.”

*

“So, he looked at the bottle and asked who drank his whiskey?” Lex asked. “That’s how you found me?”

“That’s it,” I said. “Although I never thought that Chinese food would be the thing sparking our reunion.”

“Well, I faced my fear. I’ve been listening to these motivational CD’s that Mark gave me and, well, I figured if I was going to beat my Chinese-food-phobia I might as well do it on familiar territory. Then, I remembered how you always used to talk about going there with your grandpa.”

“So, you went and beat it.” I said.

“I did.” Lex said. “I’ve eaten it three times since too. I owe it all to you and Mark.”

“Mark’s your husband?” I said.

“He is. He’s also the one that helped me get this studio going,” she said. “But enough of that, what’re you doing? Did you end-up fulfilling the yearbook prophecy, most likely to invent something totally useless?”

 “Almost, but after a near fatal run-in with a bagel-guillotine I decided that it wasn’t for me,” I said, laughing at my own sarcasm. “I own a movie theater in Dayton, Ohio.” 

“That’s awesome,” Lex said, as Jackie had begun clapping to the chorus of Hall &Oates’ “Private Eyes.” “I totally called it by the way, knew you’d own a movie theater.”

            “No way, you called that.” I said, laughing at her statement. “What’d you put money on a game of M.A.S.H. or something? Five-hundred on Colin in the job category, movie-theater-owner.”

            “Okay, okay,” Lex said, nearly spitting out her coffee through her giggles. “I guess I meant, I knew you’d do something cool like that.”

            “Well, I think the idea is cooler than the actual job,” I said. “It’s more of a burden right now…God, I hate money.”

            Lex smiled softly, and as I turned back towards Jackie I could still feel Lex’s eyes on me.

            “I’m just in town watching my grandpa,” I said, looking into my coffee’s blackness. “My mom’s out-of-town on her honeymoon and Gramps needed someone around.”

            “Well, he was always pretty capable when I knew him,” Lex said. “I’m sure he’d be alright if you told him you needed to head back or something.”

            “Nah, can’t do it. He’s got dementia, sundowner’s syndrome actually,” I said.

            “Sundowner’s?” Lex asked. “That’s the one where you forget at night, right?”

            “Yep, he’s been okay, but he flipped pretty bad a couple nights ago. My first night in town.”

            “Well, where is he now?” Lex said.

            “I left him at China Ruby, he’s having an early lunch,” I said. “I should probably get back over there though. He was already starting a second drink when I left.”

            “Alright well, why don’t you come by the house this week? I mean, if you can,” Lex said. “Come over for lunch or coffee if dinner is too late. Bring your grandpa, I’d love to see him. Wait here a second though.”

            With that, Lex hopped up from her seat and sped back into her office. Jackie was now skipping along the length of the floor, but stopped once the music was cut-off. Lex re-emerged and grabbed Jackie by the hand, whispering something into her ear before assisting her in a pirouette towards me.

            “Are you going to come visit us?” Jackie asked, bobbing up and down on her tiptoes. “Please?”

            “I put my cell and my home address on the back,” Lex said, handing me her business card. “If you’re not too busy, I close the studio on Thursdays so I’ll be home.”

            “I’ll give you a call,” I said. “Catching up more would be nice, maybe meet Mark too.”

            “Absolutely,” Lex said. “See you Thursday, babe.”

            “Bye babe!” Jackie shouted as I headed back down the stairs.

*

            As I walked back to Bo’s, I began thinking about the foolish thoughts and aspirations I once held for Lex and myself, and how my reasoning behind those desires partly stemmed from the odd-source of early-morning television. While the working-world would scan the front pages and flip through channels 2,4 and 7 for their morning news-flashes, I’d tune into sitcom re-runs where Zack Morris would take me through the halls of Bayside, making me envious that my classes had no AC Slater, no Mr. Belding and especially no Screech. Back then, when my Grateful Dead t-shirt still fit, I’d watch as “Saved by the Bell” laid-out for me the recipe for one of the greatest love stories ever told—Zack and Kelly Kapowski.

Crossing Woodward, I thought about how Zack and Kelly had dated in high school, like Lex and I had, about how the two of them had attended the same college, like Lex and I had, and how they had ended up engaged and married, like I once thought Lex and I eventually would. I didn’t want Lex now, and didn’t think of our run-in as some kind of divine symbol for me to steal her away or ‘win’ her back. Those types of thoughts belonged back at Bayside. Tucked away with the rest of Colin’s Shit.