Poets and Dreamers by Anne Tammel - Fiction

III

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 19:59:06 GMT

excerpt from
A More Deadly Union

Gayle Carline

Peri checked her watch as she crawled along the freeway with the commuters. Like most inland towns, Walnut Ridge was lived in, not worked in. The residents left in the early morning, and drove south to Orange County, or west to Los Angeles. Their journey home began around three in the afternoon and lasted past six.

Four o’clock meant she was in the middle of traffic sludge.

Finally off the freeway, she wound through the wide, curving streets. As she rolled down the main boulevard, she noted a banner hanging overhead. A town meeting was scheduled for the next evening to discuss some issue plaguing the residents.

I’ll bet Rick attends, and I’ll bet he’s got something to say.

By six, she had reached her destination, a tony little mini-mansion behind huge iron gates. Rick Mayfield had done well for himself. Of course, she’d already read up on his family. His wife came from wealth. She wedged her Honda along the curb between two Mercedes, hoping no one noticed her humble ride. It was already dark, which worked to her advantage.

For a long time, there was no activity around the house, at least that she could see through the gates. Around seven, the porch light came on, as well as accent lights around the yard, low enough to be attractive yet bright enough to reveal intruders.

She noticed an easement with a walking path along the west side fence. Stepping from her car, she adjusted her ball cap and checked the laces on her running shoes. She jogged down the street, away from the house, to get an idea of the neighborhood. The houses were all large and well-spaced. Most were two stories, with balconies over the front door.

At last, she turned and ran toward Rick’s house. As she got to his gate, it opened. She stepped forward, only to pull back when a dark Jaguar blasted down the drive. The car stopped at the street, blocking her way. She couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but she had the distinct feeling of being stared at by the driver.

Perhaps he’s waiting for me to jog around him.

She gestured for him to drive on, but the car sat, idling. Peri shrugged and stepped in front. The engine growled, and the car rolled forward, threatening, so she stepped back.
She waited for a moment. The car stayed put, still idling. Stepping forward again, she stared at the tinted window. Again, the car jumped forward, engine roaring.

Screw this.

Swinging out to the left, she sprinted across. She could feel the warm air from the engine as the car pulled out, barely letting her get around it. The Jaguar turned down the street toward her, ruining her plan to run along the easement. It crept alongside, keeping pace.
Stopping, she turned and faced her stalker. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and glared at the car while she pointed her phone at it, and pressed a button. A flash from the camera lit the night, and the Jaguar sped off, with a slight screech of tires.

After watching until she lost sight of the car, Peri doubled back. The encounter left her with a vague sourness in her stomach and prickles along her spine. There was no way Rick could recognize her, could know her business, could know that Jared hired her, unless he’d passed the stalking stage and was into surveillance, complete with listening devices.

She trotted down the path along the easement, glancing sideways at the house. Most of the home was obscured by trees and shrubbery. The path sloped down as the property rose, allowing the owners to have a magnificent view of the canyon below, while ensuring people on the path were too low to see the house.

Well played, topography.

The path continued to wind downward in the dark, lit from above by a fragment of moon and from below by the city lights. She realized she was moving too far away from the house, and would have to trek up a steep incline to return to the street. The night smelled of wet dirt, and chimney smoke. Turning, she saw something she hadn’t seen as she jogged past.

Steps.

They were wooden and appeared ancient, swept over by loose dirt, reminding her of the steps down to the coves in Laguna Beach. The handrail was also wood, and quite weathered. She laid her hand gently on the rail as she climbed, noting the roughness and taking care not to pick up any splinters. Five tall, narrow steps and she was at a small wrought-iron gate that led into the yard. The gate was decorated with swirls and a large circle with an “M” inside.

The “M” could stand for “Mayfield,” but the wealthy Mrs. Mayfield’s maiden name had been Morrison. Wonder who really holds the deed to this place?

She listened for dogs, but none had appeared as she climbed, so she pressed against the iron bars and peered inside. The grounds were a gentle slope of lush grass. An extensive patio with an outdoor living area spilled from the back of the house, ending in a natural-rock pool and spa.

Lights were on in a room downstairs, and she could see straight-backed chairs through the window. The dining area. Figures moved back and forth, entering with objects in their hands and leaving without. Dinner was being served.

A woman’s shape became recognizable. She moved as if made of steel rods. Every step she took looked angry.

A man joined her in the shadows. The woman raised her arms, a little fistball at the end of each. The man brought one arm up and leaned forward. She backed, turned, and strode away. He followed.

Nice family moment.

Soon the man’s shadow re-appeared. It was probably Rick. She watched him come to the window and stare out at the blackness. Something was in his hand; he brought it to his lips. He seemed to focus on the gate, standing still, staring. Peri feared he had detected her. She ducked, but something stopped her.

Her sweatshirt was caught in one of the curls of wrought iron. She pulled at the shirt, trying to get it unwound. It came undone as she yanked harder, stepping backward. Now something was under her foot, causing her to lose her balance. Not wanting to throw herself at the gate and attract attention, she kept backpedaling, beyond the edge of the step. Shuffling and scrambling, she tried to get her feet under her and stop her momentum.

It was no use.

She stifled a scream as she fell to the bottom, giving a series of huffs and groans. Her back and hips hit the corners of the steps with each bounce. Grasping at the handrail on her way did nothing but drive splinters into her palm. With one final thud, she landed in the dirt.

Wheezing, she attempted to rise. Her lungs did not agree and forced her to wait until they worked again. Finally, she pushed herself into a sitting position, and looked up. An object rolled about on the middle step.

She stood on rubbery legs and brushed dirt from her clothes. Reaching to the step, she grabbed the object, an empty pill bottle. She resisted the urge to stop and read the label. Getting back to the car was a better idea. Pocketing the bottle, she staggered forward, attempting to look normal.

As she reached the top of the rise, she heard a familiar hiss and sputter. Little black heads popped up from the grass and sprayed water. Sprinklers. Perfect. She would have jogged out of the way, but her body was complaining about the walk. There was no way she’d coax it to run.

She got into her car, soggy, muddy, grass-stained and already feeling her muscles stiffen. Before driving away, she pulled a bottle of ibuprofen from her tote. Two was the recommended dose. She swallowed down six. Next, she reached into her pocket for the empty bottle and looked at the label. It was a prescription for hydrocodone for Leona Mayfield.

Vicodin. She rubbed her sore shoulder. Too bad it’s empty.

Tomorrow morning she had to be outside Brandon’s apartment in Fullerton. Hopefully, she could catch him leaving and follow him.

This case was not going to be fun.

* * * * *

At five a.m. Peri lowered her battered frame into her Honda, wincing with every muscle spasm. I should have just slept in the car last night. Too bad I was busy digging splinters from my palm. And icing my right hip, left ankle, and—oh, hell, it all hurts.

There was a job to be done, however. Soon, she was sitting in front of Brandon Mayfield’s apartment, waiting for him to appear, and popping her non-prescription, under-performing pain relievers. She had found a picture of Brandon on the internet, a Mayfield family photo used for Rick’s political aims. Shawna was right. He was a good-looking kid.

An hour later, she had nearly given up on catching him at home. He was probably on social media—surely, she could dig a little deeper to find his place of employment. As she turned the key in the ignition, the front door of the apartments opened and the familiar face emerged. He stared at his phone, shuffling down the stairs, then stepped over to a bright red Audi coupe and into the driver’s seat. Peri let him get almost to the corner before she pulled out.

Less than fifteen minutes later, the Audi rolled into a parking lot, and Brandon bounced to the front of the local Bank of America branch and knocked. Another employee met him and opened the door.

Peri checked the time. The bank wouldn’t open for another hour. Seeing a takeout place across the street, she got a quick to-go order and coffee. As she returned, a short, curvy brunette was knocking at the bank’s door.

Hmm, is that Jessica? Peri settled into her driver’s seat and pulled a breakfast sandwich from the bag.

She had taken a bite, when a flash in her rearview mirror made her look up. It was a Placentia Police Car, parked behind her. A shadow passed to her driver’s side. She looked over to see a gun barrel staring back at her, and stopped moving, stopped breathing, even tried to stop her heart from beating.

“Ma’am, roll the window down and put both hands out of the car.” There was a dark blue torso behind the gun barrel, with a female voice.
Peri looked at her sandwich, her mind stuck on what to do with it. When she turned toward the bag on the passenger seat, she saw another gun barrel, at the other window.

“Ma’am.”

“Yes. Um, I have to turn the key over to lower the window.” Peri sat, afraid to reach for anything in the car and be misunderstood.

The torso to her left leaned forward and yanked the door open. “Step out, Ma’am.”
Peri did her best to unwind her aching body from under the steering wheel, keeping her breakfast in her right hand.

“Drop the sandwich,” the female officer said.

Peri couldn’t stop herself. “But I just bought this.”

“Turn around, please, hands on the hood. And put the sandwich down.”

Sighing, she placed her breakfast on the top of the car, and felt a small, strong hand patting her down.

Several times, the officer hit her bruises. She winced but tried not to budge, focusing on the tall, slender African-American officer on the passenger side, who was going through her tote and glove compartment.

The patting stopped.

“Ma’am, could you step away from the car?” the patrolwoman asked, indicating with her gun.

Peri kept moving until the gun stopped waving. The male officer completed the search by checking out the driver’s side, the back seat, and the trunk. Peri blushed as she watched him dig through unopened junk mail and unfiled papers. After a few moments in conference, the officers holstered their weapons.

The male uniform held up her wallet. “Miss Minneepah, can I ask why you’re in this parking lot?”

“I’m waiting for the bank to open. I misjudged the time.” Easy question. Maybe too easy.

“Are you a customer?”

“No, but I was hoping to get some information about opening an account here.”

“I see you’re a private investigator. Work anything interesting lately?”
Peri looked at him. The officer’s face showed no emotion, but there was something there, in his eyes. The police didn’t often ask questions they didn’t know the answers to.

“What am I suspected of doing, officers?”

They exchanged glances again.

“We got a call,” the woman said. “Someone claimed you followed them here. They said they thought they saw a gun.”

A laugh burst from Peri. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that. I don’t own a gun.”

“Really? An unarmed PI?”

She shrugged. “What can I say? Not anti-gun, just don’t personally want one.”

“But, you are working something, aren’t you?” the patrolman asked.

“Yes.” A flash of red caught her attention. Brandon’s car zipped out of the parking lot. As he drove away, she saw a brunette in the passenger seat. “But I’m done for the moment.”
The patrolwoman looked at the disappearing car. “Sorry about that.”

They handed Peri her things and returned to their vehicle. She picked up her breakfast from the hood and examined it, brushing at the bottom of the English muffin and considering how badly the five-second rule had been violated.

Sliding back into her front seat, she waited for the police to unblock her car. It was hard to attach her seatbelt, her hands were trembling so badly. Looking down the barrel of one gun was bad enough. Two barrels reduced her limbs to noodles.

She’d lost Brandon and Jessica, probably for the day. How did Brandon know she was tailing him? She tossed her partially-eaten sandwich in its bag and pulled out of the parking lot.

* * * * *

Driving down Yorba Linda Boulevard, she paid cursory attention to the road, while her mind reviewed the morning. Brandon could not have spotted her, so who tipped him off?
Before she realized where she was headed, she had driven to the hospital. Chief Fletcher had said she’d get visitation privileges soon. She parked and went in, hoping it had happened.

“Peri Minn…” the receptionist’s voice trailed off as she looked for Peri’s name. “Yes, here it is. You can go on in. Room 241.”

She stifled her urge to dash down the hall, keeping herself to a quick stride. As she turned the corner, it occurred to her Amanda and Daria would be there. Maybe Amanda would at least respect her relationship with Skip, even if she didn’t like it.

Maybe unicorns were real and Skip’s coma was a dream.

The officer at the door stood as she approached, looking at her with eyes as black as his hair. She announced herself.

He grinned. “Yes, I know. I’ve seen you with Skip around the station. I’m Ara Markel.”

Happy to know the friendly face at the door, she entered Skip’s room. The nurse was the only one with him, taking vitals.

The nurse tapped her chart on her way out. “He’s all yours.”

Peri pulled a chair over and sat, taking his hand. She stared at him. Was there more color in his face today? Leaning forward, she kissed his forehead and let her cheek rest against his temple.

“Hey, Skipper. How’s your day been? Getting a lot of rest? Jason’s working hard to process all the evidence. Sure would help if you were there. You’re so good at putting clues together, solving puzzles. I’m busy helping Jared, the contractor working on Benny’s house. Someone’s stalking him.” She rubbed his hand.

“Geez, Honey, I wish you could talk to me. I was trying to tail this guy and he made me somehow and got away. I’ve been over and over my actions all morning, and I can’t figure out how he knew I was following him.”

She leaned back. Pain shot through her hip. “Ow. I fell down a bunch of steps, into a flower bed last night. Stupid. Really hurts.”

The memory of visiting the Mayfield home flitted across her mind, especially the Jaguar looking so menacing. She told him what had happened, from the Jaguar to the fall, to this morning’s fiasco tailing Brandon.

“I couldn’t see who was in the car, but what if it was Brandon? Or maybe…what if whoever was following Jared followed him to the meeting at my office?”

A sudden idea froze her blood.

“What if Rick knows I’m working for Jared? What if he’s already ahead of me?” She kissed him again. “I’ll be back—I need to check on something.”

She scurried to her car and sped the mile to her building. Everything took too much time. As she put the car in park, her hands fumbled with the car keys.

Damn it. She sprinted to her office, and her heart fell. The door was ajar. She could hear noises inside. Not good noises, either, but the sounds of objects being thrown.

Double damn it.

Peri pulled out her phone to call 9-1-1. She had raised it to her ear when two figures came out of her office, dressed in black and wearing ski masks. One was short, one was tall, and both were lumpy. The trio looked at each other, three pairs of wide eyes.

“Son of a—what are you doing in my office?” Peri tossed her phone in her tote and reached forward to grab the short one’s mask.

Before she could pull, the tall one had pushed her against the wall. She pushed back, then felt something sharp at her throat, and retreated.

“What do we do now?” the short one whispered. It was a woman’s voice.

“Shut up.” The tall one, a man, kept the blade tight at Peri’s throat while he dragged her along the wall, into the office.

The short one followed, and shut the door.

“Now—” Short Gal began.

“Shh!” Tall Man cut her off, and stuck his leg out, tripping Peri, and tossing her to the floor. Landing on her bruised hip, she yelped. Tall Man’s eyes wrinkled in a smile. He put his thick hiking boot on her leg and stood, putting all his weight on her. She gritted her teeth and glared at him, suppressing any more sounds of pain. Still, it hurt like hell.

Bastard.

He stepped off and stood by Short Gal, whispering. Peri studied the pair. Tall Man was running his fingers over his knife, a slim switchblade. Short Gal was unarmed, and stood flatfooted, as if she relied on everyone else to give her the next move.

Peri looked around for something to strike back with. Her desk was upended, and there were papers and books strewn around the floor. Apart from a letter opener and a stapler, she didn’t keep a lot of sharp objects in the office. There was a pair of scissors in one of the drawers, but nothing within her reach, at least nothing that trumped the knife Tall Man had.

She looked for the safe in the corner. It had been dragged away and had obvious scratch marks and dents. But they hadn’t been able to open it, thank God. She looked over to see Tall Man watching her. Without the rest of his face visible, his eyes were more expressive. They stared at her, then shifted to the safe.

Damn it.

It took two steps for him to reach her. She felt him grab a fistful of her hair and pull. Her hands went up to try to take the pressure off her head—they were met by his blade. A sharp prick on her left pinkie made her yank her hands down, using them to crawl in the direction he was jerking her.

He gave her head one more vicious tug toward the safe, then pointed the tip of the knife at the keypad. No words were needed.

Peri glanced at her left hand. Blood was dribbling down the side. She wanted to wipe it off, but Tall Man seemed insistent that she open the safe first. Her pulse rose as she reached out and tapped the code. The back of Tall Man’s hand caught her cheek and slapped her aside. She flew backward and landed flat.

That’s when she noticed his hands. He had taken off one of his gloves.

Rolling over, she struggled to a sitting position, then felt another boot, this one on her shoulder, pushing her back. Short Gal had moved behind her and kept her on the floor. Peri stopped resisting and watched Tall Man open the safe door, her heart beating against her ribcage.

He tore out the few items from the shelves. Peri waited for him to find the picture she’d taped to the underside, but instead, he rifled through the papers and books. It took all her cunning to keep her expression neutral as she watched him slam the safe door shut, then stomp around the space.

“Where else would it be?” Short Gal asked.

“Shut. Up.” Tall Man sounded angry.

“Relax. She’ll never ID us.”

Peri looked up at the shorter intruder, who was now going through her pink snakeskin tote. “Hey, get out of my stuff.”

A sharp pain in her ribs made her curl in the fetal position, wheezing. She felt her hands being yanked behind her back, and her wrists being wound with something sticky. Great, they found my duct tape. Soon, both wrists were bound together, followed by both ankles. The coup de grace was the strip of shiny gray across her mouth.

At least they didn’t tape her ankles to her wrists. She laid very still, so they wouldn’t get ideas. Both of her assailants moved to the door, then gave her a final look before leaving.

Not even noon and this day has gone to hell in a hand basket.

Gayle Carline spent 30 years as a software engineer until she chewed her way out of the cubicle to become a writer. She knew nothing of writing mysteries, but figured that reading her husband’s mind was good experience. Most of her books are set in Orange County, where there are always well-manicured places to hide a body.

Treasure Island, The Bronx

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 01:40:26 GMT

Jean Ende

If a Jewish pirate decided to retire to the Bronx, he and his wife, who was also a pirate, would probably be a lot like my Great Aunt and Uncle, Gussie and Harry.

Aunt Gussie had a black plastic patch over one lens of her glasses, Uncle Harry walked with a limp, they had a large green parrot that shouted curses in Yiddish.

Their house was the perfect place to store treasure, a tall castle in a nearly deserted area at the end of the city. It was protected by thick, thorny bushes and by a screechy copper-colored dragon. To get there you took a train that few people knew about, a train you could board only if you knew the secret entrance.

Anyway, that’s what I thought in the late ‘50s when I was ten and eleven and twelve and spent much too much time daydreaming for someone my age (according to my mother) and Grandma Ruth took me with her when she went visiting.

Today I know that Aunt Gussie wore a patch because she didn’t receive proper treatment for an eye infection when she was young and she got dizzy if she used the weak eye and Uncle Harry walked with a limp because he had arthritis in his left knee.

Today I know that the house they lived in is called a Tudor, it was located at the border of the North Bronx and Westchester County and few people went there because there wasn’t much there. I know that the thorny bushes in their yard were where the currents that Aunt Gussie used to make jelly grew, and that the dragon’s head doorknocker screeched because Uncle Harry forgot to oil it.

Today you can get to that neighborhood by taking the #5 train to the last stop. But in the 1950s you had to take the dinky, the shuttle that ran back and forth from Dyre Ave to the 180th Street stop where you changed for the train that took you downtown, which is what you called Manhattan if you grew up in the Bronx. If you wanted to get on or off the dinky at our stop, Pelham Parkway, you had to be in the first three cars because the platform wasn’t big enough to hold the whole train.

There really was a foul-mouthed, Yiddish speaking parrot trained by Aunt Gussie and Uncle Harry’s sons. They had kept the bird in a large brass cage in their room so no one knew what it was learning to say until it had mastered a very extensive repetoire of Yiddish curses. When the boys grew up and moved away Aunt Gussie and Uncle Harry tried to get rid of the parrot, but no one wanted it. As the years went by the bird began to slur its words and pretty soon it wasn’t that easy to understand what it was saying so they didn't mind so much.

Great Uncle Harry was my Grandma Ruth’s older brother and he was as skinny as she was fat. He wore bowties and pants that were too big for him, held up with a brown leather belt. Harry and Ruth had come to America from Poland when Grandma was sixteen and he was 20, just the two of them. Harry was supposed to work hard and start a business while Grandma helped out, cooked and cleaned for him.

The rest of their family remained in Warsaw while their father settled his affairs. But he waited too long. Grandma and Uncle Harry’s parents, their other brothers and sisters, they were all lost in the war.

Many of my relatives were lost in the war. When I was young I imagined a crowd of confused old people wandering around Europe, knocking on doors and peering around corners while guns fired and planes dropped bombs; going from village to village in Poland and Hungary and Russia and Romania, trying to find their way home.

Grandma told me that when she and Harry made the trip to America she was often scared of the big ocean and the way the boat sometimes rocked, so he held her hand and sang to her to keep her calm. I stared at Uncle Harry’s hands that were stiff and bent into claw-like shapes. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hold those hands. I never heard Uncle Harry sing.

Aunt Gussie’s family had come to New York from Germany, which, I’d been told, meant that they thought they were high class, at least higher than my father’s family which had come from a small village in Poland. (I’d heard Jews who originally came from Eastern Europe say that the German Jews weren’t as smart as they thought they were, that they had needed Hitler to teach them that they were Jews.) Aunt Gussie had gone to university in Germany and there were people in her family who were professors, ballerinas and opera singers. We didn’t see those people very often.

When Aunt Gussie’s family decided it wasn’t safe to be a Jew in Germany they had many relatives who were already in the US and happy to help them get settled. But they were never again as rich as they had been in Germany. Harry and Gussie’s home was furnished with thick oriental rugs, their cabinets held fine china and crystal glasses. But as I got older I noticed that the rugs were worn, the rooms needed to be painted and the sets of china and silverware were incomplete.

Grandma Ruth told me that Aunt Gussie’s family wasn’t happy when she started going out with Harry, a boy from Poland whom she had met at a party for people interested in the Yiddish theater. They agreed to the marriage because Harry had a successful business and, even though she was educated and came from a good family, Gussie was a girl with a bad eye who might not be able to attract one of the wealthy Deutsche Yidden, German Jewish men.

Grandma and I made the trip to their house every other month. Just the two of us. Grandpa Jake was dead and my parents were too busy to go. As far as I was concerned this was the perfect arrangement. Gussie and Harry's house really was filled with treasures and I had no desire to share this loot with anyone.

When Grandma and I were ready for our visit, my mother gave me four subway tokens to keep in my pocket until it was time to drop them carefully in the turnstile. She told me to keep an eye on grandma. Maybe she said the same thing to grandma. Sometimes we’d be the only ones who took the dinky all the way to the last stop, Dyre Avenue.

When we got off the train I’d point the way up the curvy street that led to the hill on top of which was Aunt Gussie and Uncle Harry’s house. When we got there I'd reach up to the doorknocker, lift the dragon’s big head and listen to him screech.

Aunt Gussie smelled better than other old ladies. Instead of chicken fat and parsley she smelled of the fine, white, lilac-scented powder that came from a silver box with a large powder puff. The box was in her bedroom on her dresser, on a blue mirrored tray. I’d never seen a blue mirror before, it made me look like someone in a fairy tale. I was allowed to use the powder since Aunt Gussie knew I’d be careful and wouldn’t spill any. If I did spill, I blew the powder away before anyone noticed.

When Grandma and Uncle Harry and Aunt Gussie talked to each other they spoke in English. My mother had explained to me that Jewish people from Germany didn’t speak Yiddish, they considered it a lower class language. Unless there was someone in the room who wasn’t Jewish, all of the other old people I knew spoke to each other only in Yiddish.

While the grownups had tea and talked about whatever it was that grownups talk about, I could go into the garden, pretend I was a soldier and battle my way through the thorny bushes that guarded tiny black and red berries. I learned to pry apart the tangled branches carefully so my hands didn’t get scratched. No one noticed if I picked these berries, no one noticed if I ate them without washing them first.

When I was tired of being outside I went to the living room where there was an old upright piano painted light green with tiny pink roses. If you didn’t know any better you might think that the color was the only thing special about this piano and you’d press the keys and make ordinary piano sounds. But Aunt Gussie had shown me that the piano had a magic switch. When you pressed the switch and pumped the pedals the keys went up and down and the piano played songs all by itself. I tried to memorize the keys’ motions so the next time we visited I could get my fingers on to the right keys and look like I was really playing.

The best part of the house was the top floor. Up two flights of worn wooden steps was a big room with a whole wall of bookcases that reached almost to the ceiling, just like the ones in the public library.

In my house we had an encyclopedia, schoolbooks and some paperback books my mother bought at the drug store and read while everyone else watched TV. On the shelves in Harry and Gussie's house were stacks of yellowing magazines, books with old leather bindings, shiny, new, hard covered books, and lots of thick paperback books.

There was a large collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. I never thought about what “condensed” meant, that there might be something missing from these stories, I was too impressed by the idea of so many stories, three or four in each plastic covered volume. There were all kinds of books and no one to tell me to do my homework, or clean my room, or do anything but open a book and ignore everything else.

In Aunt Gussie’s library there were books about Eskimos and Indians, stories that took place in Europe and Asia and Africa, sci-fi books about outer space. But these were of minor interest. I became a connoisseur of novels that took place in even more exotic locales—like the Midwest—and featured strange people with strange folkways. I later learned they were called Wasps. I searched for stories that took place in Iowa or Kansas or Utah, all the square states I’d mix up in find-the-states jig saw puzzles.

I read about moms who could play tennis, adventures in college dorms, and a world where athletics were as important as academics. The people in the books on Aunt Gussie’s shelves had native English speaking grandparents—a species I’d never encountered.

The people in my neighborhood were Jewish or Italian. We all had stout, corseted mothers who believed in the benefits of large portions of high carb foods and extra sweaters to protect us from unmentionable diseases. We had distant fathers who worked hard and therefore deserved respect, and grandparents who spoke English with heavy accents and frequently switched to another language mid-sentence.

My family had come to this country dreaming of an America where the streets were paved with gold. Their heavily accented voices echoed in my head while I read and imagined an America where people with perfect enunciation had short, easy to pronounce names, where slim, blonde girls (you don’t eat people will think you have consumption) threw sticks retrieved by dogs named Prince (a dog, what do you want with a dog? It’ll poop on the carpet, shed on the couch and set off your allergies.)

I longed for camping trips (sleep outside where animals can eat you? I warn you about rashes you can get from strange toilet seats and you want to pee in the woods?) I wanted to be a cheerleader for the high school football team (a bunch of goyim chasing a lopsided ball and jumping all over each other. With what they’re doing to their hands you think they’ll become surgeons?)

Just once, instead of being urged to have a third helping of overcooked meat and vegetables, I wanted to sit down to a meal of a cheeseburger and fries and a tall glass of milk. (***###!! Where do you get such an idea?)

I sat in the creaky old rocking chair and read those books till it was time to go home. When I asked Aunt Gussie if I could borrow a book and she always said yes.

And that night I dreamed of being a pirate who sailed on the amber waves of grain where the loafs of white bread grew.

Jean Ende is a former newspaper reporter, political publicist, marketing executive and college professor. Her fiction has appeared in the University of California Press, Jewish Literary Journal and Jewish Fiction.net, was a winner in the Bosque Magazine Fiction Competition and received Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Competition. A native New Yorker who lives in Brooklyn, Jean is currently working on a collection of linked short stories about three generations of a Jewish family that fled Eastern Europe during WWII and settled in the Bronx. A graduate of CCNY and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, she has attended Broadloaf Writers Conference and MFA classes in fiction at StonyBrook University.

The Last Man on Earth: A Mini-Novel

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:36:33 GMT

John Guzlowski

Chapter One:
The Last Man on Earth Watches Blazing Saddles

It’s his favorite scene.

The cowboys rise and fart, rise and fart, and he thinks of his wife farting in the night.
He never laughed when she did. Most of the time he was asleep when she started and half asleep when she finished. He realizes now, perhaps for the first time, that it’s hard to laugh in your sleep. He can’t remember ever laughing in his sleep, but when he would tell his wife in the morning about her farting, she would smile and say excuse me and fart again.

They would both laugh over that in the morning, and smiling now he turns again to the cowboys.

The scene he loves is still playing. The cowboys are still rising and farting, rising and farting, and he begins to weep.

Chapter Two:
The Last Man on Earth Hums an Old Rock Song

He thinks of that old Doors song, Jim Morrison in a blues growl singing he wants somebody to light his fire, some baby to light his fire, make the night light up, make their love a funeral pyre.

That would be nice.

Chapter Three:
The Last Man on Earth Remembers a Conversation

It didn’t mean much at the time. It was just him and his friend Bill talking. They were both hung over and drinking coffee, and Bill said,

“You know sometimes I think that I just want to leave, you know, just leave all this shit
and start over like in those sci fi novels you’re always reading, I mean this is fucked up. It’s me and you and you’re lonely and horny and I am too, and we dream about chicks all the time and never talk about them or do anything about them, like we don’t know they’re probably all just standing around waiting for us to call or say something even if it’s just hello and do you have a biscuit or a broom and shovel.”

And the last man didn’t say anything back then.

He just looked at Bill and shrugged, and then the waitress came and filled their cups and asked them if they wanted anything else. And there was a lot that he wanted back then, and even more that he wants now, but the last man couldn’t tell her then and he can’t tell anyone now.

Chapter Four:
The Last Man on Earth Wonders about the Daffodils

Will they come up this spring? Will there be a spring? So far God hasn't answer any of the last man’s prayers.

So why should He answer this one?

Chapter Five:
The Last Man on Earth Reads an Old Newspaper

There had been a car crash and six members of a family traveling home after Thanksgiving died. Some tried to get out of the car, and some didn’t. Either way they died. The parents and the kids. What a waste.

Down the page, it says somewhere else a typhoon ripped away an island. More people died.

The last man drops the paper and lets the wind take it away.

Chapter Six:
The Last Man on Earth Looks out His Window

Yesterday he thought he saw a shadow moving past a black Buick Century across the street, but when he looked again he didn’t see anything, just the car’s shadow.

A funny thought came into his head then, “When shadows are safe, no one’s safe.” And he wondered again where the people all went.

There had been no zombies, no vampires, no plague walkers either, no floods or tsunamis, no lightning from the sky or God’s terrible wrath. There had been nothing that would kill you quicker than usual.

Then, one day everybody was just gone, all gone, and outside the window there was nothing to see.

Nothing but safe shadows.

Chapter Seven:
The Last Man on Earth Recognizes the Futility of All Things

If he were faster or stronger or wiser, he would still be the last man on earth

Chapter Eight:
The Last Man on Earth Writes a Poem about the Dead

The Dead

No Words
will bring them back.

Only words
will bring them back.

Chapter Nine:
The Last Man on Earth Goes to the Zoo

At first he studied the lion hard, knowing he was the last man who would ever look at a lion and he wanted to make that moment important somehow, memorable, but then he realized there was no point to memory.

When the lion went it went. When he went he went.

All his scrambling to remember would end in death. Even if there was a heaven, he couldn’t believe remembering the way a lion rose — its muscled bones lifting curiously from the concrete in a way that had always been beautiful even in the old times when men scratched the image of the lion on the walls of cold caves — would be important.

Would God want to hear about the lion? Would the saints? Probably not. The last man smiled. Some of those old saints probably had bad memories of lions, the saints who died in Roman time, and they’d probably rather forget the king creature’s muscled loins.

So the last man let the lion go, and then he let the tiger go, and the elephant, and the chimps and gazelles. Singly and in pairs.

He even let the alligator and the crocodile go like the last man was some kind of bizzaro Noah doing God’s good work in reverse.

Chapter 10:
The Last Man on Earth Has a Nightmare

He groans again, and the groan is something between the sound of pain and a laugh, but it doesn’t feel like laughter. It’s a monotonic quick exhaled “ha” followed after a pause by another and another and another.

It’s the glottal sound of fear from deep in his throat and maybe deeper.

He’s dreaming of something coming for him that won’t stop until it drags him down and kills him.

Chapter Eleven:
Last Man on Earth Goes to Church

This church is empty too. What the hell is God waiting for? A wake up call?

Chapter Twelve:
The Last Man at the Last Beach

The water is cold and moon dark, and the last man rests for a moment on a bench and knows he won’t swim.

Once on this beach he saw a white car pull onto the sand and make slow circles for hours and then leave. Another time, a woman walked backwards holding her scarf hard against her head. She seemed to be dreaming, her eyes tracing the prints her shoes left in the sand.
No other sounds now, not cars, not singing, not voices of children playing tag in the grass beyond the red slat-and-wire storm fence leaning wave-like toward him and away.

All he can hear is the black water, the almost quiet waves swooshing across the wet cold sand.

A white plastic grocery bag balloons along the grass. Like the last man, it’s going nowhere, just moving, sometimes slowly sometimes fast as the wind picks up.

The last man stands and walks to the water and starts to swim away.

John Guzlowski’s writing appears in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ontario Review, North American Review, Salon.Com, Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, and many other print and online journals here and abroad. His poems and personal essays about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany and refugees making a life for themselves in Chicago appear in his memoir in prose and poetry, Echoes of Tattered Tongues (Aquila Polonica Press). Of Guzlowski’s writing, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz said, “He has an astonishing ability for grasping reality.”

https://www.amazon.com/John-Z.-Guzlowski/e/B00287TCBG/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1472578549&sr=1-1
http://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com

II

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 23:32:51 GMT

An Audition

Carole Bulewski

Another late morning, another guilt trip. Midday already and I’ve wasted yet another morning. A good four hours I could have spent practicing, even writing a new song maybe, who knows. That’s what moving from the Windy City to the Sunshine State does to you. It changes you from a creature of habit with a regular schedule into a lizard sunning itself on the beach day in and day out, only truly waking up at sundown and spending the night consuming illicit substances that expand your mind and open your eyes to new worlds of possibilities. Jim assures me that there’s nothing wrong with any of that. He tells me that I’m going through the gestation process, and that when the time is right, the music will come pouring out of me. He says the guilt thing is the result of my Catholic upbringing.

Talking of Jim, he’s obviously still asleep. He will not emerge for another couple of hours. Another hour or two and we’ll head for the beach until six o’clock, then we’ll make our way to the little house on the beach we’re using as a rehearsal studio.

Someone is coming to audition today, a guitarist. We’ve seen so many already, but it just didn’t click, it didn’t gel. Not that these guys were not talented. There are plenty of extremely talented people in this city, and we’ve already auditioned quite a few of them. But it’s something else we’re after, something we cannot put into words. Something mystical, the same thing that drew us close, Jim and I. When the right person comes along, we’ll just know. We won’t even have to talk; it’ll just be obvious.

I’ve got a spectacular headache this morning. Spectacular hangover would be a more appropriate term for it. The hangover has a name: hallucinogenic drugs. It’s been one bad trip after another lately and if it hadn’t been for Jim persuading me to try just once more because I’m so close to discovering something amazing about myself, I would have given up that stuff altogether. Arguing with Jim that I’m more into meditation these days is no use when he smiles at me while handing me the little tab. “Come on, you know you want to find out what happens this time…” That voice, those eyes… I’m not into guys but how could you not love this one? Smooth-talking bastard.

Well anyway, someone is coming to audition to become our guitarist, late afternoon, at our beach rehearsal place. At first it was just the two of us, Jim and I, getting excited about creating this unique-sounding music, his poetry and my bluesy organ. But who would pay to see that, an organ player and a guy reciting his poetry? Some intellectual types at an avant- garde arty event, that’s who. But that’s not what we want. We want a real audience, with people from all walks of life, young and old – well, mostly young, let’s be honest. We want the love of a public, not the interest of a few spotty, bespectacled librarians. Oh come on, let’s just say it like it is: we want to be rock stars, like the Beatles and the Stones. What is it those guys have that we don’t? Jim is so much better looking than any of them, and I think I can say I’m a much better musician than any of them put together. Right time, right place, that’s what it is. That’s all it is. “Is that the meditation or the acid talking,” Jim asked last night. We laughed, but then again I know we view things in the exact same way.

Enough procrastinating. I finally leave my empty bed. My girlfriend left early this morning to go to work. She’s our patron in a way, supporting the both of us so that we can put our music, and our band, together. The former is pretty much there. As for the latter… We’ve got a drummer now but there’s still something missing, and that something has to be a guitarist to support the vocal melody and the weirdness of the organ sound; something that will sound familiar to most people, and what’s more familiar in popular music than an electric guitar sound?

Freakin’ drummer said he knew this guy who also meditates and could be interested, but the guy in question never turned up for the audition. We just sat there waiting for him, and then Jim told us about a new song he’d started writing and we played something to complement his vocal melody. And before you know it we had a new song to add to our set-list. But still no guitarist. And something is definitely still missing.

Who knows, maybe we’ll finally be complete tonight, after we’ve auditioned this guitarist guy Jim met at a bar the other night.

Here’s what happened, three days ago. Jim comes home at the crack of dawn, all excited, and he wakes us up, my girlfriend and I, and she decides to go and make breakfast while Jim tells me all about it. He was writing the lyrics for a new song in his favourite bar when this guy comes to sit next to him, reading over his shoulder. Jim, being the character that he is, gets annoyed and asks the man what he wants with him, adding that he’s not that way inclined. The other guy laughs and tells him that he’s not either. That he has just never seen anyone writing poetry in a bar before; that he would expect something like that in Paris or New York, but not here in the Sunshine State. Jim explains that he writes poetry, and also lyrics for songs he’s working on with this keyboard player friend of his and a drummer who seems to like what they’re doing. The other chap asks what’s up with the no-guitarist business, and Jim answers that it’s starting to get to us, to get us all down, not having the final piece to the puzzle, that we might lose our mojo if we don’t find this guy sometime soon. The guy grabs the piece of paper on which Jim was writing and he starts reading, and he asks Jim to hum the music he hears in his head, the music that will accompany the words. And Jim, by now quite drunk, starts singing, and the guy tells him it’s so beautiful that he would like to be part of our project, of our exploration. As Jim tells the story I can picture him in the bar with that guy, getting all excited and letting rip, letting the real Jim out for once, the liquor having helped him to get over his natural shyness. “So there,” Jim says to conclude the story, “he might just be what we’ve been looking for.” And on this he leaves me stranded and collapses on his bed two minutes later.

It was three days ago. The guitarist Jim met at the bar is coming to audition tonight and I’m thinking that this guy has to work out otherwise our beautiful adventure is going to end very soon. I’m a little nervous and there’s no one in the flat I can talk to; my girlfriend Dorothy is at work and Jim is still asleep. So I decide to take a stroll on the beach, breathe in the sea air and try to steady my nerves.

And who do I meet on the beach but our drummer John. “So you’re looking forward to tonight?” he asks me. John wasn’t supposed to be here tonight, the audition was meant to be only Jim and me checking this guy out before involving John. Freakin’ Jim and his big mouth. He’s told John when we’d agreed it’d be just the two of us first. Oh well… But John continues: “I always thought he was our man, do you remember, from that very first evening at the meditation class?” Now I’m lost. What the hell is he talking about? And so that’s what I ask him. “What are you talking about, man? When the hell did you meet that guy Jim hanged out with at that bar?” “What bar? What are you talking about?” We’re obviously not talking the same language here, and I suspect this has something to do with Jim. “Who’s coming tonight John?” “My friend Robby, you know, you met him at the meditation class? He was supposed to come for an audition but he never turned up?” I can’t believe that after months of waiting around for that freakin’ Robby guy, he’s coming to audition on the very same night as the bar guy. I can’t explain the issue to John, who’s not supposed to know about the bar guy in the first place. The only option is to get Jim to sort out this mess.

But when I get home Jim’s already gone. And so I spend the afternoon checking out every single place where he likes to hang out. Obviously, he’s nowhere to be found. He always spends his afternoons at the apartment or at one bar or another where he writes his poetry. But not today, of all days. No, today he’s decided to be a complete liability and disappear after having booked two guys for an audition. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Time to go to the beach rehearsal place and see what happens.

It’s two o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep. Dorothy can’t sleep. Jim can’t sleep. And so we’re hanging out in the living room of the apartment, smoking one cigarette after another, talking like there’s no tomorrow. That’s it, the missing element has been found and we’re ready for whatever it is destiny has in store for us. We’ve got our guitarist. Robby. The only one of the two guys who actually turned up for the audition. And it clicked. It just clicked.

Robby is our fourth musketeer. He completes us and he gives us meaning. We’re not going to sleep at all tonight, Jim, Dorothy and I.

It was fifty years ago. Fifty years. Fuck me. Jim died six years after this audition, in a bathtub in Paris. And now it’s my turn to die, surrounded by my family in a hospital somewhere in Germany. What destiny had in store for us, everybody knows about it by now. Fifty years later and people still listen to our music, buy posters – of Jim, mostly – read books about us, watch documentaries about us. I don’t think we ever were more famous than the Beatles or the Stones, but we weren’t far from it. We were different, most certainly. And now, at death’s door, I’m pondering. What would have happened if the guy from the bar had turned up for the audition? What if he had been a great guitarist, and Jim and I had been swayed and decided to go for him? And suddenly, out of nowhere, I hear Jim’s voice in my head, this slight Florida tinge in his accent: “Ray, man, why do you think we would have gone for this guy, even if he’d turned up for the audition? We had to become the Doors, man, that’s all."

"That, really, is all.”

French-born Carole Bulewski is a writer, scientist and musician who made London her home over 15 years ago. Music, in one form or another, plays an important part in all her writings. Connect with Carole on Twitter.

I

Tue, 13 Oct 2015 18:47:07 GMT

Before Led Zeppelin and After, 1973

Anne tammel

“I see a man in your future. And somewhere, death.” Two houses down the beach, Sabine’s friend Cecilia pores over a veneer coffee table wearing a long skirt made from faded bell-bottom jeans with a tie-dyed peasant top and red bandana around her forehead, focusing. “Not in the immediate sense, you know. It could be someone around you. Or even a tree on your property.” She looks up.

While Jules works long hours with his surgery clients, Sabine has taken to walking the kids down the sunny beach to neighbors’ houses where the girls spend afternoons sharing macaroni and potato salads and Jello molds, selling Tupperware ensembles in an endless stream of daily get-togethers. On the days they don’t trade Tupperware, they take turns painting on oily pink lipsticks from mini tube dispensers, matching the Avon lipsticks with butterfly shades of eye shadow in sky-blue, marigold, raw sienna, and burnt umber. With Jules paying off his boat, more upset about money than ever and threatening to put the house on the market, Sabine tells herself at least she is raising something.

She needs to make some money and thinks back to Alan, the high school sweetheart-turned entertainment lawyer she ran into on Sunset weeks ago. “Meet me at the Forum.” Alan said before he sped toward Wilshire.

Day after day this month, the girls have been meeting in the long hours away from their husbands to read tarot cards and talk about stopping the Vietnam war, to sit Indian-style in their living rooms smoking hashish and listening to The Doors much too loud; the kids run out to the beach or ride bikes along the sun drenched path of the PCH. Last week, the kids put together a lemonade stand and sold seventy-eight cents worth to neighbors without Sabine coming to check on them once.

“Yes, but the man.” Cecilia starts to talk again. “He’s a dark man. I see a knight. I’m not so sure you can trust him, though. The part about the death, I don’t know. You smoke?” Cecilia takes another drag off her joint, squinting.

In the night, Jules turns up the television and adjusts the antenna. Sabine looks out at the moon and thinks of the day she met Alan.

“What happened? Mom says you married a doctor.” Alan had said to her in the sun, skin fresh after a shower, fingers strumming his shining red Stingray. “You still model?” Alan lowered his voice to a whisper then watched as if trying to solve some complex puzzle. “Or has married life taken you off the circuit?”

“When I can.” Sabine cleared her throat. “I need to break into the design business.”
“Hey, Zeppelin’s down at the Forum this month.” Alan said. “I’ll be there with clients.” Alan’s car blended into the mass of colors that made up Sunset, leaving behind it a mixture of memories and longing.

People want to see my work, Sabine reminds herself.

She thinks of Jules. Even on the nights that they eat together, which they seldom do anymore, he is yawning. “You’re in bed every night at ten except New Years. By 10:01, you’ve shut out the light,” Sabine says to Jules, trying to get his attention after the kids are off to bed. Jules shrugs and turns up the 9 o’clock news. “Nixon’s on.” He holds up his hand as if to call a time out, makes no eye contact.

Even staying up to watch the moon over the water together never happens. On the hottest nights she watches it alone, falls asleep on the deck lounge wrapped in only a towel and dreams of her designs, of bringing her brother Ritchie home from Vietnam, of somehow escaping all this.

But as she lies on that deck and looks up to that moon, those words keep ringing through her, that vision of Alan in the sun. “Sure, we can we hook up. Bring the dresses.” The feeling whispers on her skin, that fresh wind of arousal and mystery, the thoughts of how far she can go with her art, how much she can do with it.

When she wakes alone on the deck in the morning, the Santa Ana winds blowing on her face and through her hair, Sabine thinks again of selling her dresses, of getting to that concert with Alan.

“Don’t care for loud rock bands,” Jules says at the beach house at six, the early evening sun turning broad. He picks over a dish of mixed nuts and settles his martini on a crystal coaster. “Or for concerts. You go with the girls.” He waves Sabine away before his eyes float back to the six o’clock news, blue silk shirt noticeably tighter around his midriff. “I’ll stay here at the beach, watch the kids.”

When Sabine shows at Cecilia’s door wearing her turquoise ruana, Cecilia swings the door open in a gold flared bodysuit and shimmery bangles, laughing with a tray in hand and whispering as she blinks to reveal sky-blue eye shadow. “Some swanky guys stopped by. One played bass for Three Dog Night.” Cecilia’s Gypsy Moon perfume trails onto the porch. “Come out to Moroccan with us. A new joint on Sunset — ”

Sabine waves a rash goodbye then rushes into the taxi, smoke billowing out from the back of the car.

At the crowded LA Forum, Sabine steps inside past the bell-bottomed, long-haired masses. In her turquoise blouse, faded denim skirt and platform boots, hair pulled back high to reveal large cat eyes, Sabine squints and wanders past the smoke-filled crowd, barely able to make out the stage or hear the Misty Mountain Hop.

Far away, Robert Plant crosses the stage in a wild rhythm, a tiny figure writhing in faded hiphuggers and tall red boots several feet away from Jimmy Page. In the smoke-filled air, Sabine squints to make out the long-haired beach types in dirty bell-bottom blue jeans without shirts. They flail past her in the flashing lights to keep time with the organic momentum.Where is Alan?

In the distance, Plant writhes rhythmically across the stage, a mystical figure in faded out bell-bottoms patched dark at the crotch. The charismatic singer spins as he elongates his torso, shaking his exaggerated mane and donning his naked chest. His voice from heaven or the gods, Plant keeps unreal time with Page, who plucks the strings of his guitar, wearing a full white suit and sending celestial power from his hands, an hypnotic magic that brings Sabine to forget her world, the night, the reasons she is there.

Teenage girls in hiphuggers dance freely through the crowd, shaking pale heads of hair wildly as they imitate Plant. Sabine closes her own eyes to forget the smoke and falls into the rhythm, the trance, the electricity of the night, and loses balance when her ruana falls to the ground. A group of stoned-out fans starts to dance past her. They flail their arms above their heads. Sabine leans to pick up the ruana and her world grows dark. She feels a large hand glide against the back of her hair.

“Alan?” she spins around, breathless in the dark, hoping to see the entertainment lawyer.
The man stands above her, half-smiling with hazel eyes and a strong unshaven chin. He wears a dark leather jacket. “You drop this, Girlie-Girl?” In his low-cut dress shirt, the man is alluring and dangerous at the same time. He towers above her and reaches out to give Sabine her ruana, his large dark hand brushing hers then lingering a moment. But he isn’t Alan. “You alone?” He reaches out toward her shoulder to straighten her hair.

“I’m just — uh, waiting for a friend,” Sabine shouts above the Misty Mountain Hop. When the song fades to a close, Sabine tries to make out the stage, to forget the alluring stranger. She looks first at the musicians and then to the crowd to search for Alan. But the stadium is still filled with the smoke of stoned-out fans who wave bottles above their heads and shout toward the stage.

“Some friend that is to take off on a drop dead gorgeous gal like you,” he calls, distracting Sabine and leaning closer so that she can hear him before the next song. “So, you a model?” He reaches toward her again. “I mean, because if you are, I mean I’m a photographer. I’ll do your pictures.”

Sabine looks toward the man’s hand. He holds out a business card. In the dark, she squints to make out the words, “Nick Stankovich — Photographer: 876–8885. Van Nuys.”

“I — I’m a fashion designer,” she calls back over the crowd. She likes the sound of it. Even if Jules condemns the title and she can’t find Alan, she still needs to make connections.
“Bring the dresses. We’ll photograph them.”

At the stage, Plant and Page dance like musical gods from the heights of Mount Olympus. The half-dressed teenage groupies scream back at the stage. When Page picks up a theremin, smoke rolls past the stage. The teenagers exchange hits of LSD and joints, and one claps repeatedly as she shouts, “Feel the night! Feel the love!”

Plant falls to his knees before he rolls across the stage. When he lifts himself, he struts slowly past Page to pull open a large box then release twelve white doves. One by one, the doves rise out of the box to then soar above the audience several minutes. One returns to land on Plant’s hand, and a teenage girl points high above her head then screams before she falls into the crowd. A random teenager wearing no shirt and faded out bellbottoms starts to kiss her and she kisses him back.

“Do ya feel it?” Plant calls out to the crowd, resembling Dionysus himself. “Do ya feel the buzz?” The music starts again.

The music is so loud and the air so thick that Sabine finds herself swept up in the power of the swaying crowd, the music, the moment. She moves in time with the new photographer named Nick and forgets to look for Alan, those words and the tune to Whole Lotta Love synonymous with the night, with the getting away that seems so imminent.

“Way way down inside, Honey, you need it
I’m gonna give you my love…”

At the Biltmore lobby after the show and several sips of his brandy, Sabine steps with Nick into the large glass elevator and he presses the button. Nick is taller and thinner than he looked in the dark at the concert. With an unexpected charismatic appeal, he moves in closer to her, his laugh very deep — the sort of laugh that reminds a woman she’s far from home. Sabine laughs herself and backs up into him. He reaches under her mini skirt and slowly runs his finger along the lace of her panties. She feels the outline of his slim hips next to her, thinks of how they fit so well next to hers. With Jules, there is still an awkwardness when they try to fit together. But not here this way, not with Nick.

When the elevator chime sounds and a well-dressed older couple steps in, the lady in a black-and-white houndstooth suit lined with sky-blue, Sabine tries to hide the erupting laughter then realizes they’re already halfway to Nick’s room. She feels the buzz from his brandy and wants more. She wants to forget. She wants to forget the horrors of Nam, the fights with Jules. She wants to forget that she has no way to bring Ritchie home. In this moment of her wanting to forget, Nick guides her out of the glass elevator and down the hall. When the door closes much too slowly, Sabine feels the couples’ watchful eye and hopes that the woman is not one of her husband’s clients.

Inside the room, Nick pours each of them a brandy from his snifter. Then gets on the phone and dials a number. Tipsy and off balance, Sabine sits on the bed and closes her eyelids.
When she wakes, his large hands are on her feet, wanting and expressive. He sits at the foot of the bed and wears no shirt. She can hardly make out his figure in the dark except to see the outline of his hair, much longer than Jules’, and that his torso is younger and much more slim. She can see Nick continuing to look toward her with wanting intensity. Jules hasn’t looked at her this way for too long. And even though Nick is the wrong man, his attention makes her blush. She doesn’t remember blushing this way. He wraps his hands around her feet. His eyes focus on her intently.

Sabine extends her legs, not knowing how to react to his stare. In her moment of half waking and half sleep and in this desire she hasn’t felt for too long, it seems hard anymore to draw a clear line between right and wrong. Vietnam is no enemy, she thinks. And Ritchie is no fighter. He never has been a fighter, and now is too late to start. None of it makes sense. And now she and Jules are fighting all of the time. Either fighting or not talking.
When Nick hands her his joint, she simply pulls closer, rests when he gathers the small of her body into his. Feels the tingle of his large hands that cross her back, running themselves along the expanse of it. And when she realizes that all he wears is a pale towel, his full wet lips are seeking hers.

Very early into the morning, Nick is spread across the large hotel bed, sleeping lengthwise in the nude. Not able to find her aquamarine ruana in the dark, Sabine brushes aside her long dark hair, damp with sweat and smelling of hashish, and snaps the clasp of her Dior purse closed. She searches again at the foot of the bed, lifting his bellbottoms to discover a wallet that falls open to the Nevada driver’s license displaying the name Stan Moore and a picture of Nick. Next to the wallet, a faded gold band has fallen out, along with several red and yellow pills.

Sabine tiptoes out of the room, giving up on the ruana. She rushes downstairs to catch a taxi back home, then shivers in the cold outside and avoids eye contact with the stiff bellman.

Inside the taxi, Sabine looks out at the early morning lights that cross Wilshire, sighs and starts to sober. The talkative driver is wide awake for the long drive in the middle of the night and assuming she isn’t from LA, probably because he just picked her up at a hotel.
When they finally reach the outskirts of Malibu, the sky is starting to grow bright and the driver inches slowly through the dense fog of the PCH toward the beach house, where she hopes Jules is fast asleep. “A lotta wealthy folks in this neighborhood. There’s a fine Hollywood surgeon lives up here. Treats a lot of celebrities.” The driver studies Sabine through the rear view mirror. “I’ve taken ‘im home a couple times. He likes to get out now and then.”

“You can drop me here,” Sabine says abruptly and points as the taxi nears Cecilia’s ranch-style beach house.

“I’ll wait ‘til you get in.” The driver takes his time counting the change in the shivering cold, the taxi lights much too bright and the motor running loud enough that he’ll attract too much attention at four in the morning.

“It’s ok.” Sabine explains and focuses hard in both directions for lights coming on in the houses. “I — I don’t want to wake the kids.”

“They’ve got kids or you got kids? If you’ve got kids, you coulda fooled me. I mistook you for much younger.”

“Uh…my friends’ kids.” Sabine shields her eyes. “I’m in from out of town.” “Well, thanks for the twenty-spot.” The driver tips his head and takes a moment to study her again.
And as the taxi pulls slowly back into the fog of the PCH, Sabine walks barefoot in the cold so as not to attract attention, and searches the cramped Dior handbag for her key.

When she locks the heavy door that accidentally slammed closed with the wind, Sabine creeps into the downstairs bathroom where she tears away her turquoise blouse and mini skirt, smelling of stale smoke and brandy and stained from Nick. She hides them in the bottom of the vanity drawer then switches on the hot shower.

Upstairs in the room without a change of clothes, Sabine creeps into bed, still in the damp white towel when Jules starts to stir and leans on his elbow, thick gold chain catching the dim moonlight as it crosses his bare chest. “That you?” His voice is deep with sleep. “I was starting to worry. Started calling people.”

“The show with the girls ran late,” Sabine whispers, confused as she counts through the hours to keep track of the lies.

“You drinking?” Jules’ voice rings in the dark. He rests back on his side.
“We had a few after.”

Jules is snoring before Sabine can say more. And as she lies in the darkness all that night, listening to the bluffs beneath their window and watching the moon that crosses the water, Sabine wonders where her life is heading.

Copyright © Anne Tammel 2014

First published by 3Elements Literary Review, Before Led Zeppelin and After: 1973 is a work of fiction that introduces Sabine, the first missing woman in a series of literary suspense novels about Isa, a Los Angeles-based writer haunted by recurring dreams. After signing up for a series of life-or-death adventures in exotic, faraway locales, Isa must now face her own worst fears, and risk everything to expose the missing women’s unsolved mysteries and stop the dreams.

Led Zeppelin 1970s Missing Women