Why is this? I mean, don’t I get to socialize with those with whom I communicate on paper? It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? Questions, questions, questions...you sit there, I imagine, trying to decide what this story, this tale of tales, is all about. Will the heroine die in the end? Will the butler get time off for good behavior? Come here a minute and sit beside me, hold my hand even, and get ready for an adventure. If only I could see you I’d know how to tell this story. Oh well, I hope you’re the kind of person who likes my stories.
In a galaxy far, far away...no, that’s not it. You’re heard that one, I’m sure. The beginning goes something like this -- a small man wearing a granite-gray overcoat over a dark blue suit, smartly accented by a red power tie, walks into an antique shop. The shop is full of broken jukeboxes, old, veneered Victrolas and faded plastic eight-track players, boxes of yellowed jewelry and moth-eaten clothes, and rocking chairs with tattered wicker seats. Sitting behind a glass counter packed with rusted knives, arrowheads broken in little pieces, and chipped marbles, a woman in her late thirties -- whose washed-out face and long, stringy, straw-colored hair speak of decades, not years -- pulls a thread from the sleeve of her thin ankle-length dress patterned with pink and primrose paisley. The woman smiles at the man as he enters the shop. He nods his head, picks up a copy of People magazine with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover, and wanders through the shop as he flips through the article on Ms. Tiegs.
The man, in his fifties, is a local pillar of the community. He helped bring tourists to his town by starting a campaign to renovate the old houses and stores in the downtown district. He raised money for the volunteer fire department. He donated land for a retirement home. He had received several community and state awards but the woman in the shop didn’t know him from any of the other businessmen who frequented her place during their lunch hour.
The woman looked away from the man and continued daydreaming. Before the man came into the shop, the woman, whose name is Edwina, had imagined herself in a castle with herself as queen and ruler of all the land, her kingdom where everyone loved and worshipped her.
The man, whose name is Carlton, did not begin daydreaming until he picked up the magazine and lost himself amidst the pictures of glamorous models and other people whose ordinary lives had caught the attention of some tabloid writer or editor. Carlton imagined himself sitting on a boat in the shade of a tree on a crystal-clear lake on top of a mountain. An eagle flew over the middle of the lake and on the opposite shore, some otters slid down a streambed into the lake.
Edwina looked down at her hands and saw diamond rings surrounded by rubies in place of her costume jewelry. Around her neck she felt pearls in place of her bead necklace. And her dress! Oh, her dress was beautiful, folds upon folds of pink silk with lace trim and a low neckline, revealing full breasts and a snow-white neck. Her platinum blond hair was crowned by an ornate ring of gold. Seated several steps below her throne were her courtiers, ready to carry out her desires. The walls were draped with flags from different parts of her kingdom but dominated by the dove-and-lily shield of her proud family.
Carlton closed his eyes for a moment to smell the clean air and listen to the cicadas and songbirds in the woods next to the lake. He felt the warmth of the sun and the soft touch of a breeze across his face. Instead of an old rocking chair he sat in, he felt the smooth surface of the sides of the boat. The rocking motion put him in the waves of the gently rolling lake.
As Edwina and Carlton wafted into dreamland, a young man in his early twenties stepped quietly into the store. He looked around him, jerking his head back and forth, trying to see everywhere at once while fumbling with something in the right front pocket of his windbreaker. He walked, or rather sneaked, along the left wall, keeping his eyes on the woman across the shop and the man in the back.
Meanwhile, Carlton had drifted off to sleep. Edwina was in the arms of a suitor who was pledging his everlasting loyalty.
The young man, whose name is Wayne, had one purpose in life, to follow in the footsteps of his father, a notorious murderer who had died in the electric chair five years ago. Wayne rubbed his sweaty palms on his torn jeans. He imagined he saw the headlines on tomorrow’s newspaper: SON FULFILLS LEGACY, MURDERS TWO IN TAGGETVILLE. He contemplated how he would do it. In the first scenario, he would stand them against a wall and shoot them both through the forehead. Or he could catch them both by surprise and fill each one full of bullets. He finally decided to shoot Carlton in the back of the head while he slept in the rocker and shoot Edwina as she tried to flee out the door.
Carlton stirred from his sleep right as he was pulling in a two-foot long trout. He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Wayne slip his gun back into his pocket and begin to rummage through some books on a table. Wayne dropped a book and Edwina woke from her lover’s arms to see Carlton walk past the counter and nod his head. She smiled back. She watched Wayne scurry past Carlton and burst through the door. She imagined Carlton and Wayne had just made a drug deal. Carlton imagined he had just foiled a lovers’ meeting between Edwina and Wayne. Wayne figured Carlton and Edwina knew who he was and were going to report him to the police for loitering.
Wayne hurried down the street and into another store. Edwina went back to her castle and her lover’s arms. Carlton returned to his office and called a travel agency.
And you, the reader, where do you go? Will you return to hear another of my tales? Or will you find someone else to fill your ears with the webs of a spidery typewriter? I wish I knew. You know why? Because if I knew you’d come back I’d weave some more tales for your next arrival. Sure, I know you say you’d like to hear more but we both know you have clothes to wash or dinner to fix or some other pressing matter that you’d rather put off and I’m just as good an excuse as any to sit down and relax and listen to the problems of some imaginary, imagining people. Believe me, so do I. Go ahead, it’s your turn. I’m ready to stop and listen.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Don’t let Lee fool you. He’s being nice to you so you won’t notice he’s sliding into self-pity. I crept into his room last night and stole the pages from his latest creation. Not exactly Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein but I was certain I had found the edge of a vein of the mother lode.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No comments:
Post a Comment