The Postcard

It was tucked between the electric bill and an oversized postcard from the local car dealership. It was in almost perfect condition, its corners slightly dog-eared.

She set the rest of the mail on the dining room table and sat on the third step of the stairs leading to the second floor.

Gloria held the postcard in her hand, trembling slightly, the deckled edge pressing gently into her skin. She read her name and address written in a script she didn’t recognize. The large “G’s” in Gloria Gundry were over accentuated and the entire address was tilted right.

On the left hand side of the postcard, someone had written, in the same blue pen:

Gloria,

France is beautiful. Just as we had always talked about. It’s all a dream – the architecture, the people, the language, the food.

Paris was rainy but amazing. I saw the Eiffel Tower and then at Notre Dame, I fell down some stairs (I’m okay). I am now in Nice for the next five days. I wish you were here.

Helen


Above the greeting, there was printed, “La Cote D’azur, Nice” and then below that it said that the image was of “La Promenade, la nuit” She had taken French in high school so she remembered that “nuit” meant that it was “at night." She turned the postcard over to reveal a retro image of Nice. It appeared to be a photograph, shot from above, that had been hand-colored. The sky was black, the water pushed against the road was black as well, with a hint of deep aqua green. Silhouetted palm trees ran down the middle of “La Promenade” separating the two lanes, with a bright yellow glow coming from the streetlamps reflecting off the street like fire. The road wound from the bottom of the postcard up, twisting left at the top of the card, vanishing in the darkness.

She flipped the card back over and gazed at the message. “I wish you were here.” Gloria did not know a person named Helen. She could not think of any Helen who might write her a postcard from France. It was obviously intended for her – her name was correct, the address was hers, it had been her home since she moved out of her parents house over fifty years ago. Jack had bought it right before they got married in September of 1954, just after they both graduated from North Hamilton High School. The postcard was meant for her, it had made its way to her mailbox, all way from France. But who was Helen?

Gloria rested her hands in her lap and looked at the wall. The same painting hung near the door. The same lamp and table near the couch, the same light coming in through the living room windows. The house was quiet. Janie and Tom were both grown, living downstate, both with families of their own, with teenagers of their own, as a matter of fact. She thought of Jack and how she felt lonely without him. She always felt that loneliness, it was always there, like a dull, throbbing pain, but in times like this, it was more acute. How she longed to simply ask him a silly question like, Do we know a woman named Helen? Her heart ached.

She thought about women in the neighborhood, up and down the block, but there wasn’t anyone with that name. She thought of the four or five women in church, those who sat beside her on the Liturgy Commission on which she served, but there wasn’t a Helen. She though of her fellow poll workers who work at the local elementary school gymnasium on election days. No Helen that she could remember. She did not know who this person was, how she knew her.

It was odd. She shared with this woman a love a France but yet could not remember who she was. As a matter of fact, the card implied that they had talked and dreamt about France together. “Just as we had always talked about.” But she hadn’t even given France a thought, not in any real way, in years. Countless years. Too many years.

She noticed the canceled stamp in the upper right corner -- a woman in a robe holding a vase, an ornate pale orange frame around the woman with the words “Republique Francasise” at the top and “25c Postes” along the bottom. Gloria looked at the cancellation over the postage stamp where the black ink formed an intermittent circle. She could vaguely make out “JU” for either June or July, perhaps, and “1955.” Gloria pushed her glasses back up on her nose and read it again. Nineteen and fifty-five. That was over fifty years ago, Gloria thought. Fifty-four years ago.

And then she remembered that there was a Helen Shamanski that she was friends with in high school. She was short and blond and a very sweet girl. She sat behind Gloria in their senior French class and she moved away soon after high school, a few years after graduation, class of ’54.

Gloria remembered Helen's face, and tried to remember her voice or something they did together, but she could not. She could not recall why or how they had bonded. Did they see each other after class? After school? Gloria didn’t think so but it all happened so long ago. She had lost sight of Helen, had lost contact with her. It had been so many years now. But as Gloria sat there, in her empty and quiet house, she realized that there had been something there, all this time. Something she never realized or even felt. The connection of a postcard that was carried across the miles, across the ocean, across two lives, so separate and yet so parallel. A connection that had taken fifty-four years to complete.

91724

A short story the begins with a running theme of something being handed to the main character, a device to propel the plot. This particular story seems to desire a little more time, a few more words than the previous stories in this series. However, this is all I have so far.


The man handed me a small ticket with the number “91724,” printed in elongated red numbers across the top. I took the ticket with my left hand and handed the man my car keys with the right. The man did not look at me. “We’ll be out around . . . I don’t know, 11, 11:30,” I said as I dropped the keys into his open palm. “Okay,” the man said – that is, I think that is what he said – and slid behind the wheel of the car, moving the seat back so quickly it did not seem possible it could have been moved at all. He closed the door and drove off in a blur, around the corner.

I stood with ticket 91724 in my hand and watched my car disappear from view. Where did he take it, I wondered. Where could he possibly be parking my car in this city? I couldn’t find a spot anywhere, how the heck is he going to? I slid the ticket inside my pants pocket and looked down at my shoes, at the cement in front of me. The ground was littered with cigarette butts. It was if someone had stood all afternoon in the very spot I now stood, smoking cigarette after cigarette. I buttoned the middle button of my jacket, pressed my fingers against my collar, making sure my tie was straight and walked towards the glass doors of the Art Museum.

The banner above the doors announced the opening of a new exhibit of Renoir paintings, never before seen in North America. The show would open in two days and tonight was a special preview party for members and benefactors. Just as her mother and grandmother had been before her, my wife was a Life Member, and as her husband, I was fortunate enough to share the privileges. I swung the door open and moved into the museum, the world inside was soft and oddly quiet. The murmur of voices in the crowd had evolved into one soft low hum. I stood at the entrance and watched a swirl of people cascade in front of me, like extras on a movie set. Men and women, beautiful couples and groups of people in newly shorn hair, makeup, and varying degrees of black and white. Their teeth were so white, their skin so rich and healthy. So much black and yet so much white. I felt dizzy and looked out into the room, over the crowd and back again. I could not see my wife.

I made my way down the stairs and began to move through the crowd – groups of tightly packed people with wine glasses propped at the end of their arms, forming defiant and impassable L’s. A small dark-haired woman in a dinner jacket appeared before me and offered me a plate of hors d’oeuvres, small toast with spinach and a tiny circle of salmon. I quickly declined and almost instantly, wished I had not. It looked good. All before me, I saw a multitude of heads from varying angles, back and side, ¾ and ¼, but none of them looked straight at me and none of them were my wife. I tried to take in the whole room all at once and yet concentrated on what caught my eye. I looked left and right and then left again but I could not see a familiar face. I began to feel the slightest beginnings of desperation creep in. In a crowded room this large, I surmised, I could lose her forever.

“She is not here,” a deep voice said. I turned to a man standing before me and smiled. His hair was deep black, his skin a baked bronze. He held his hands up toward the sky, in a futile gesture. “She is gone. She is not here.” His voice was thick with an accent, an origin I could not place. It did not matter for I was more concerned with who he was referring to.

“Who,” I asked the stranger. I was sure he did not mean to talk to me.

He looked at me directly and spoke with the gentleness of a friend, his eyes softening the words he struggled to speak. “Your wife. I am afraid she is gone. She left, my friend. She looked very beautiful tonight, a glittery light green dress, her hair with more curls than I have seen before.”

“How?” I shook my head. “How do you know this? How do you know my wife?”

The man looked to the floor and then across the room, a whisp of his dark hair falling across his forehead. “I am a member, like your wife. She and I have mutual friends. I do not know your wife well, but we have friends in common. The man she was talking to tonight, I did not know. He was a man I had never seen before.”

“When was this?” I tried to wrap my head around what this man was saying. “Are you saying that this man . . . took my wife?”

“I don’t know what happened. He was a tall man, dark hair, very good looking. He wore a bowtie that I can tell you for certain. But I did not think too much of anything when I saw them together, standing very close, I did not think too much of it at the time. I remember his bowtie though.” He shook his head. “I do not have much information for you, I am afraid. I am only telling you that I saw this man talking to your wife, say, twenty minutes ago and then, poof, I do not see your wife here anymore.”

I wasn’t convinced of this man, not his story or his assumptions. Hell, I doubted everything, even his sincerity. “Well, she could be here, she is probably here. This is a huge room, a very large room. She could be in the bathroom. She could be near the corner. She could be here. There are lots of people here. I mean, I’ve been looking for her since I arrived.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure you are right,” the man said. “So, when you looked for her, all that time you were looking, did you find her?”

I stared at the man, his dark brown eyes echoing the seriousness of my own. I realized that with his question, I had no choice but to trust this stranger standing before me. To what degree was still uncertain, but right now, I was forced to listen to him and trust the words he spoke. “No,” I said, “No, I did not.”

The night air had turned cool and I walked into a small circle of singular smokers, five men and women alone, standing at intervals of a few feet between them, but joined together as a group by their addiction. My wife did not smoke but I wanted to check the one area that was outside the main room as a possible outlet. She was not there. I turned and headed back inside to find the dark-haired man standing, his hands in his pockets, surveying the room. He glanced at me and then looked again out to the room. “Any luck with the outdoors?”

“No, she must be here. Inside,” I said.

“I think we must not lose sight that time is a most vital issue. If she is not here, which you are still not convinced of – contrary to what I have told you – then every moment we spend in this room, the further distance is between ourselves and her actual whereabouts. Time is escaping from us right at this every minute. Seconds make up minutes, and minutes multiply and lead into hours. We cannot afford to lose any more time. We must not lose her.”

I could not speak. It was dawning on me that my wife was missing. Missing from my sight, or perhaps even from the building. This man was implying that my wife had been abducted, taken perhaps against her will.

“My name is Andrei. I am a friend of Barbara Gainer, the publicist. Your wife is her very good friend.”

“Yes, I know,” I interjected.

“Yes, of course you know. That is how I am acquainted with your wife. I thought you should know that. It is vital for assurance to be based in knowledge, however slim or fleeting that knowledge is. Without it, we are left with empty hope and, ultimately, disillusionment. I am trying to give you that knowledge, whatever knowledge I have.”

Book of Chance

He stood in the hallway, slumped against the wall, his face flush and drawn. I could not speak, I knew not what to say.

"It will happen because I want it to happen. It will happen because I need it to happen. It has to happen, it must. I just need a break, a sliver, a glimmer of hope. Just a hand to reach out, a hand to hold."

I shook my head. Yes, yes, that is what we all need.

Ah, yes, if only . . .

Today

Today is Election Day, a day to officially welcome a new day in America.

I was at my local polling place at 5:45am and was the tenth one in line, waiting for the polls to open at 6am. It was an exciting feeling there at that little church a half of a block from my house, the sky still dark, a sense of pending change almost palpable. And to be in Chicago, home of Barack Obama, the site of his huge rally tonight . . . well, suffice to say, that there is a great feeling of hope in the air.

I share that hope, I am bathing in it. But I remain a might fearful. I hope America gets it right this time. We need it.

Please vote, if you can, whatever your choices. If you cannot, please keep this election in your good thoughts.

The Next Story

This story you are now reading – the one that begins just like this – is my next story. Just as you read now, I have labored over each word, the combination of words, and each sentence. With furrowed brow and fingers poised over the keyboard, I searched for the right words, always the perpetual quest for the right words. For I want to make it a good story, perhaps a great story, if that is possible, a story that the reader will enjoy, will connect with, and feel real emotions as he or she reads my words. I want this story to withstand the test of time, to live for the ages. I want this story to make a difference, even if for just the moments that a person reads it.

I will try to throw in a lot of verbs -- talk, sprint, reverberate, germinate, convulse, oscillate, transpire, solidify -- to make things interesting, and more vibrant. Also some key adjectives like milky, vivacious, rotund, acute and brittle. Work in other words, nouns or not, that I am particularly fond of -- trousers, facilitate, therefore, earnest, fuzzy, nonetheless, waif, subsequent, conjecture, fiddle.

In drawing characters, I will fondly recall my father, my mother’s smile, my first grade teacher, my best friend from childhood and his reddish blond curls. I will remember the way my uncle sat on a folding chair at Christmas, always a little off-kilter. I will color the story with the little things – the movement of my grandfather’s hands when he talked, like a conductor harnessing in an orchestra, the faint buzzing sound of a fly circling a light on a summer’s evening, the small heart-shaped tattoo partially hidden under a ponytail, on the neck of the woman standing in front of me in line at the grocery store, the way the newspaper man’s face crinkles in sour displeasure when I hand him a $10 bill.

I will try to relax my whole body and, acting as a mere conduit, I will try not to get in the way as the story makes its way through me. I know that it is the only way to write this story. I cannot control it or fake it or even make it up. It is like dancing with a lion. I must let it lead, yet I must be so close in my corresponding movements that I am not noticed. The story is in me, around me, and it only takes the right moment for it to burst forth. I just have to be open to receive the stimuli. Like a junkie taking the needle into his bulging vein, I must release my body, surrendering it to the currents surrounding and imbibing it. I will let it flow and go in places I never thought possible -- all a sudden, the man extended his arms and flew away -- but will be forever grateful for each word that drips and falls into my keyboard.

That is my story. It is different each time and yet it is the only story I know.

A Birthday Wish, Part II

His 43 year old reflection showed a hollow man, a frail man; it reflected confused, dazed eyes, skin seeped in shock. He stared at the stranger looking back. Am I really . . . about to die? Is today my final day on earth? Of being alive? He looked to himself for an answer. It was a sobering but real thought. My final hours? Perhaps even my final minutes? His mind was awash in an empty numbness. Thoughts rushed in and then quickly dissipated. He could not think, could not process how to feel. His head swam, ached and yet he felt nothing at the very same time, he could not hold a single thought. He felt nauseous and anxious. It was if a large bag of fear, like encased powder, had imploded inside him and was numbing his insides as it reached every inch of his body. The skin in his cheeks, under his eyes, was ashen with thin streams of sweat creasing its grey hue. Almost corpse-like. A hapless and lifeless suit. What was happening to him? What had already happened? He looked like he was dead, or was dying. His reflection gave no answers but merely echoed his own fears: this living man will soon be dead. As he stared at himself, it was if he was already counting down his final moments on earth.

Neil tried to breathe, regain some sense of composure. After all, it was a story in a newspaper, Neil thought, nothing more. Why am I reading so much into it? As he turned right onto Wacker Drive, Neil felt a sudden urge push forward and he threw up against the side of a building. He leaned his elbow into the brick for support, his knees and lower back shaking. As he gasped for breath, Neil could feel tears fill his eyes. He heaved again, and then tied to catch his breath. “Dear God,” he said, almost breathlessly. “Please. Please make this all be okay. I don’t care what happens to me, but I hope that you take care of me, take care of things.” His stomach contracted quickly and he heaved again, this time only his breath pushing forth.

He took off his tie and wiped his mouth and then the sweat from his brow. He threw the soiled tie in a small trashcan near an old light post. Neil stood straight, bending his back backwards to stretch his muscles, and looked down Wacker Avenue. He looked to his his right, up Wacker, but there were no clues, no answers. People passed, barely looking in his direction. Nothing seemed odd or extraordinary. There were no black clouds that he could see, no roaring engine, no indication that an end was imminent. He breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself, gain control, even if only for a few moments. He wiped his eyes and began walking north. He felt his knees wobble a bit but he pressed on. The sun was beating down now, warming his skin, the sky a clean palette of purple blue. A beautiful Fall morning. It was a day like so many others, Neil reminded himself, just an everyday day.

A woman ran past him, trying to keep herself balanced with a huge brown bag over her shoulder and a small black phone pressed to her ear. She jumped off the curb just before Neil, right in front of a cab, a disruptive fog of yellow growing large before them. It appeared like a flash. The brakes of the car squealed and gritted its teeth, veering a little right towards the curb, in trying to avoid the woman. The car stopped less than a foot from Neil Paul’s legs. The woman staggered the rest of the way across the street, unharmed, never breaking stride or the flow of her conversation. As Neil stood with his left hand on the front hood of the yellow taxi cab, perspiration covered his body from his head, down to his toes. The cabdriver put a foot outside the cab and screamed “What you do? You are crazy,” he said, “You almost killed my cab.”

Neil watched the women continue down the street. “Oh my God,” he said, “That was meant for me and she saved me, her carelessness saved me.”

Eight minutes later, Neil was in his office, silently sitting at his desk, his bag at his feet, his body covered in sweat, his hands resting in his lap. Actually, he was slumped in his seat, relieved to be safe at work, physically exhausted to have made it thus far. It was 8:28 am. His computer screen faced him, his ghost-like reflection barely visible within the black. He felt a vast openness throughout his body. His mind felt numb, his body limp. He did not know what to do. He could not, for the life of him, imagine what it was that he was supposed to do that day. He could not think of the tasks that had not been completed the day before. He tried to think. He tried to concentrate. Did he have a meeting to prepare for? A project he was working on? A client to call? He could not even remember the names of any of his clients. He looked at his phone, the red light flashing at him, alerting him to a message, but he could not recall what to do, how to retrieve his messages.

He walked back outside his building. He retraced his steps and walked slowly back to the train station. Once inside, he could see that the station was a great deal less chaotic then when he had left it that morning, the morning rush was over. The man at the newsstand straightened the stack of papers, picked up some scrap wrappers that littered the ground. There were families milling about, in the city for the day, looking up, pointing, checking their maps. Neil stood at the top of the escalator and watched the train board as the lights flickered and blinked. An update occurred and the times, the destinations and track numbers twinkled and displayed new sets of numbers. The next train headed due west was boarding on track eight. He boarded the train and leaned his head against the window. As the train began it’s lethargic march, he felt an odd calm – sitting in the cushioned seat, he was back to where he was when this whole mess started. Maybe he was safe now, maybe time could move backwards for him. He watched the city float by, stop by stop, mile by mile, disappearing behind him. Through the glass, he watched his own stop slide into view, the station standing silently off to the side of the tracks, as the train came to a stop and then rumbled off again. Neil did not even think about getting off the train. He sat and watched each station, people hopping off, people climbing the steps getting on. Neil took the train to the end of the line, got off, and began to walk. He did not know the direction in which he was headed, nor did he know his destination. The sun was shining, there was a slight breeze filling the trees, ruffling the brittle leaves. Right now, he thought, I just don’t want to worry.

He walked down a sidewalk in a town whose name he did not know. As he walked along rows of houses and storefronts, crossed small streets without street signs, he felt the shadow of giant oaks hovering above him, and the day slowed down. He could breathe again. In front of him, further down the sidewalk, Neil noticed a small black object blocking his path. As he neared, he could make out that it was a small boy, sitting next to a small bicycle. As he passed, he noticed the boy was crying, quietly, swallowed by a grimace and great determination. Neil stopped and turned back to the boy. “Are you alright?” he asked but the boy did not answer. He stepped towards the boy, crouched on one knee. He could see that the foot on his other leg was wedged between the spokes of his wheel and the metal frame. He hadn’t noticed it as he had passed, but the boy’s foot was bent at a rather uncomfortable angle. The further the boy moved, the deeper the foot would get caught within the spokes. Neil centered himself in the middle of the bike, stretched his fingers around the metal bars, and lifted the frame. With his right foot, he nudged the black tire, turning the wheel. In an instant, the boy’s foot sprang loose. As soon as Neil put the frame of the bike back down, the boy hopped on the bike and rode away.

Neil stood and watched the boy disappear down the street, his black figure getting smaller and smaller, until at last he was gone. He smiled and felt himself lose all its weight and in this small unnamed town, Neil Paul floated away.

A Birthday Wish, Part I

Neil Paul was 43 years and 364 days old. He was on the brink of yet another birthday. In his mind, however, he was on the cusp of just another day. His birthdays had long lost any significance or shine. He was no longer a child, nor a young man even. He no longer waited in anticipation of his “special day,” as the Hallmark cards kept reminding him a birthday was, nor was he pained by the milestones of passing years, either. If he chose to think on it, he would barely recall his fortieth birthday. The day had passed with neither a well-orchestrated surprise party nor him wallowing in self-pity in the corner booth at Old Green Tavern. He kissed his wife in the morning and went to work. He came home and they had dinner. That was the extent of things. His thirtieth had passed the same way, he was sure, but he could not remember. It seemed so long ago. He didn’t know if his failing memory reflected more the uneventfulness of the day or his fleeting faculties. The day had always, for him, merely passed.

He did not need a birthday — or New Years’ Eve for that matter — to mark the marks in his life and what it meant. The calendar told him less about the passing of time than his actual life did. He knew what was happening. His youth was fading rapidly behind him, and he felt himself get older with the emergence of each new day. He felt his body and his mind becoming more dull, the lines in his face getting deeper, softer at the end of each day, more so than not each year. He felt his fatigue grow, he felt his body take a little longer to react, to respond, in certain situations. These things did not happen once a year, they happened every day. He had requested that his name be removed from the Birthday List that was posted in the breakroom at work. He joked with the Office Manager that he no longer had birthdays, that he given them up for Lent one year and never resumed having them. The truth of the matter, of course, was that he just no longer cared.

It was on this day — October 4th, the day before his 44th birthday — that things changed for Neil Paul.

The day began innocently enough, like any of so many workdays before. Neil woke one minute before his alarm was to go off at six am. He reached over and turned it off and then ran his fingers through his thinning hair as he sat up in bed. He did not look at his wife lying next to him, but felt her presence, the curled body beneath the large, heavy blanket. He rose to his feet and ambled downstairs. He turned the thin knob to begin brewing a pot of coffee and then went back upstairs to shower. After dressing in black trousers, a pale yellow shirt with a red and black striped tie, he pulled the glass carafe from the white plastic coffeemaker. Adding milk and sugar, he poured his portion into a travel mug and the remaining coffee into a brown ceramic cup with “Hawaii” in white script and illustrated with a white silhouetted palm tree. He brought it up to his wife as she lay in bed, her mouth slightly open in a deep sleep. He placed it down on her bedside table, kissed her on her cheek and went back downstairs, grabbed his things and headed outside. He scooped up the folded newspaper from the sidewalk and stuffed it in his briefcase. As his neighbor wrestled with his two small dogs, the leashes intertwining, Neil waved and felt thankful that he did not have a pet. He walked the three blocks to the commuter train and boarded the 7:16 express, just as he did every morning.

As the train rumbled along the track towards the city, he glanced over the shoulder of a woman a row in front of him, as she held up the front page of the local newspaper. Neil immediately noticed the date nestled under the paper’s masthead and was reminded of his pending birthday. And further down, just above the woman’s hand clutching the side of the paper, he noticed that one of the top stories, on this day, the day before his birthday, was of a local man who had been struck and killed by a drunk driver after exiting a restaurant in the early evening hours the night before. It had been the night before the mans’ forty-forth birthday. Neil leaned in. The victim’s name was Paul O’Neill. That fact, in and of itself, shook him by the throat. So similar to his. And exactly the same age. As he read, Neil Paul gasped at each turn, each fact that tumbled out before him, in black and white. The victim lived in the very next town. He held a good job with a good firm, was well-liked, well-thought of, just as Neil imagined he would be, if he were the victim and written about in the newspaper. He had no children but the man left behind a wife of 21 years, the same number of years for Neil and his wife. Both men were married to a woman named Kathy. Just then, the woman flipped her wrist and turned the page of the newspaper.

He stopped. He could not breathe. He felt a hollow thud echo through his body, as if he were a kettle drum at the back of an orchestra, being tapped rhythmically with increasing intensity. As he gazed out the train window, he had to fight back the sudden urge to cry, to weep for a man he did not know. This was no coincidence, Neil thought, this was all too similar, way too similar. Or maybe it was a coincidence, his mind racing with backhanded logic. So, maybe that is all it was, something of little consequence. Just a few facts that seemed to resemble his own few facts. It held no meaning, just a few random facts. It did not matter, nor could he determine anything, nothing he could do, not now.

Twenty-two minutes later, the train hissed to a stop. As Neil began his walk from the train, passed some glass partitions, through the station, vast throngs of people who converged in from both sides, from the platforms of other incoming trains, down the stairs, into the street. His body moved with the crowd, his brow furrowed deep in thought. Facts bounced inside his head like rubber balls. The similarities were striking but where and how, he wondered, would they end? On either side – did the man’s parents resemble Neil’s? And then . . . what about the other side of things? The similarities would end, he thought, wouldn’t they? As he stood at a red light, just outside the train station, waiting to cross, it occurred to Neil: like his counterpart in the newspaper, perhaps he too was to die. Perhaps he would be run over by a car on the way to work, just as the man had been killed, or perhaps tonight on the way home. That made sense. Either way, what if today was his day to die.

The sunlight greeted Neil as he continued to walk the five blocks from the station to work. It was a beautiful morning, perfect actually. And yet there was an eerie nature to it all – people moved around him, none of them standing too close, or walking too closely past him, as if they wanted no part of an accident that was sure to occur. They walked around him. Cars moved in slow motion towards him and then sped up as they passed, almost in double-time. And – eerily – there was no sound. Was there literally a black cloud following above him that everyone but him could see? The world was strangely quiet, deathly calm. He could hear himself breathing, in a magnified way, as if his external hearing had been muted by earphones or ear plugs. In front of the windows of By The Sea, a small holistic health and beauty shop, Neil gazed through the glass, looking at a display of pale soaps, the window reflecting a fragment of a man, disjointed face and shoulders and torso. Yes. He remembered bringing Kathy her coffee that morning, but did he kiss her cheek? Did he tell her he loved her? He could not remember. How the hell could he have forgotten? No, no, he must have kissed her before leaving.

(part two of this story will be posted tomorrow)

Meme Moo Moo

Very belated but a wonderful meme passed to me from the ever gracious Taffiny. I think I was supposed to do this in June -- yikes (see the the list of bad habits below).


1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
My first thought to this was concerning "work." Ten years ago, I was working a job I enjoyed, something I felt really good about and had a lot of passion for, a job I enjoyed going to each day. I miss that feeling. Ten years ago, I had only one child and he was only two at the time. My wife and I were in the process of looking to buy our first house. Obviously, I was a lot younger then. About ten years younger.

2. 5 things on your to-do list for today?
I have a list of about ten things to do at work today. I also plan on leaving work on time today so I can go back home at a decent hour. I plan on playing bocce tonight so I am looking forward to that.

3. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
I am not sure what a billion dollars means but I would like to be able to spend more time with my family, doing things (writing) that I love to do, not worrying about the small stuff, not worrying about the mortgage, bills, etc. Just like every one else.

4. What are three of your bad habits?
Besides doing memes very late? Um, uh, habits? Bad habits? I bite my fingernails. I know, I know. Um, uh, I sacrifice myself too easily (my wants and needs) for other's wants and needs. I get very anxious at times, very impulsive and then I procrastinate at times as well (we are all guilty of that, aren't we?).

5. What are some snacks you enjoy?
Popcorn, chips and guacamole, pizzelles. Did I mention popcorn?

6. What were the last five books you read?
Oh boy. I am reading THE DIAGNOSIS right now. Let's see if I can remember the previous four -- COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER by Michael Ondaatje, THE DOUBLE, by Jose Saramago (what an amazing writer; goodness, he thrills me), USED AND RARE: TRAVELS IN THE BOOK WORLD by Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone (this was awful), WHAT A TIME IT WAS by W.C. Heinz (a disappointment) and THE MIRACLES OF SANTO FICO by Dennis Smith.

7. What are five jobs you have had?
My first job was at a 7-11 convenience store right out of high school. I have some great stories from that one. Also, I worked at a Chess King clothing store during college. I have had many jobs as an actor (do those count?) over my life -- all different kinds of acting gigs. I have also worked in several corporate settings (which is where I am today). I was an Office Manager, I have worked for a few photo studios, a huge stock photography company, a few marketing agencies, as a photographers agent. Too many jobs, really. I need to settle down now.

8. What are five places where you have lived?
I have only lived in three cities: my first 22 years in Flint Michigan, six apartments in Chicago and now a house in Park Ridge, Illinois.

That's it. That's all I got.

Amazing

Just an amazing photograph I ran across on the web and wanted to share. This is of Erice, in Sicila, a "medieval mountaintop fortresses" overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

I saw this shot via Google Earth, on panoramio. It was taken by Giampaolo Macorig, whom I hope does not mind me posting here. I do so in admiration.

by Giampaolo Macorig