Different Strokes

A crowded community coffee shop of the university type. Gail is newly with us. She's Will's new potential. I go for coffee.

I pick up two orddinary cups. They are a different color; one dark and the other buff. The coffee is already in them, and I realize the cup color must mean they're different, but I din't care. I'm here for coffee, not detail.

I am set to go. I set the cups on a table and fish for dollars and change. I realize it should be simple but I'm having much trouble picking up the amount I need. I know which bills and which coins but I cannot seem to convey that to my hands.

The mesera encourages me, as if I'm attempting a difficult juggling act for the team. Take yer time; you can do it.

The longer it goes on, the less sure I am that I can do it.

The Incident

He smiled that mirthless sneer of his, like a sociopath. 

"It would not do to have it go out raw," he told me. Leering. 

"I suppose not," I said, for something to say. 

We were discussing the Incident, one of many Hess handled. It was only history, he said sometimes, compiled by an historian. 

Why was he talking to me, a reporter, and not even the dreamer, just the assumed first-person part of the story? It was because he and Kaufman thought I was from Medical Records when I had only been cleared by them to come here. Perhaps they had not been wise to trust Hess after all. This was turning into another incident. 

Undertow

Driving carefully through obstruction not clearly marked, with folks wandering over the roadway and gazing in different directions, as if there was an accident or construction at some undisclosed location. 

An old brevet cop walks right into my path, and a soft contact is made with my left front fender. He continues on down the road, oblivious. 

Here's a spot off the main traffic lane. I park, exit my vehicle, run after the rent-a-cop. 

"Hey, excuse me, but - are you hurt?"

He stops, considers as if it hadn't occurred to him. 

"Maybe a scratch ..." He pulls up a trouser to show an abrasion.  

I look back up to my car to see - it's being towed! I rush back up there. 

"Hey, you can't - I was talking to a cop!"

There is a slender raffish sort with a deprecating perpetual grin. He is apparently in charge. My vehicle is towed away. 

I see well the gambit now. Extortion like in one of those failed states ... Nigeria, Mexico, the US. 

I ride with the smirking cop to a large building, barren and unkempt inside, with lots of milling and no clear mission. I wait. The tow cop is quite content to do nothing. He sits and then ambles. Then he leans against a counter. 

The kids are coming today. This no time to be arrested. (I understand there will be a ransom for my auto and a fine for illegal parking and I am under restraint until both are paid.) I'd better call home. 

My iPhone is transforming as I hold it, marveling. It unfolds a keyboard, then continues into a classic SLR camera, then retracts these extensions and presents others. I cannot make a simple phone call. 

I've had enough of this. I slip away from the shoddy cop and head down stairs. I am accosted by another agent. He is bland and young and telling me I must wait. 

I push him into a closet. Close the door. He opens it, tells me I am not free to go. I slam the closet door and am gone by the time he opens it again. 

Home now. Ah, my favorite cereal. It's home, but an inchoate setting, with plenty of dark space towards the corners and voices from other rooms. Someone comes in and goes out. 

I recognize the one from the closet standing near the edge of my breakfast room. And then, stepping into the dim light from a little further off, the shoddy tow cop. 

It looks like I won't finish my cereal. 

Tim Bowden is twiddling his thumbs on his  iPhone 4S!

Here and There

A portion of my income was left off inadvertently last year, and resupplied in a later transfer. It's all the same. 

But I must document for taxes. I look for the pay stub, or the voucher. 

There are lots of old papers here in this public desk. Here are references, but I need the specific items which authorized or effected the transfer, and the shortage. 

I walk among many who are less and less interested in my problem. Perhaps it is somewhere else, suggest the keepers of the present domain here and now. 

It is considered my best policy to seek assistance somewhere beyond wherever I might be, no matter where that is. They should be able to help, over there. Not doing their jobs if they don 't. 

I find direct references here and solid leads there, but for the actual records themselves, that's the responsibility of someone not here now. If you would kindly consult another time and place?

You Should Help Her More

I catch a glimpse of Lady outside the window. She is walking very fast to the utility shed from the basement door. (None of these settings corresponds to any waking experience.) She is dragging flattened cardboard. 

What's she doing? Why does the cardboard belong in the shed instead of the basement?

I make preparations to go and assist, grudgingly. Is this necessary? I am lacing boots by the back door. 

A grandson, not Peej but one who plays a grandson in our play, approaches. 

"You really should help her more," he says. I know he's repeating what my son has said, but I pay it no mind. These aren't really my own family. 

I walk beside Lady now. I'm telling her my adventure. 

I tried to find you, I said, but opened the door of the shed and there was a miniature football stadium where the storage building should be. There were young boys playing football. The ball flew out the window. 

Nobody knew what to do about it. They mostly stood around and waited. With great shrugs and nods, an adult, a coach or parent of one of the boys, is trying to indicate to me it would be nice we're I to retrieve the football. It was almost expected of me. 

I went around the corner. I guess like magical fairies, none of them in the shed could leave it. I'll bet someone has the ball by now. 

Around two corners, the side of the shed opposite the only door, the ball lays in a lot like a horse pasture. Approaching is a group of boys. One of them just ahead of two others bends to scoop up the ball and they stride up away from the pasture. I watch them go. 

This is what I want to tell Lady, but she shushes me. On her other side is a blonde lady, smiling through crinkly make-up and gazing straight ahead through eyes that do not see. I am to understand she'a an old friend of Lady's and she's been talking and I interrupted. 

Okay, I think, and I bolt away. I won't be going to the car to drive home with Lady then. She can look for me. 

Where am I? It seems to be the bare underside of a huge stadium. Over there is a ward. I enter it and lay down on one of the beds. 

I remain there. That should fix her! Don't want to hear about the lost and found football, well, I son't care about the glazed blonde neither. Bet she wasn't even there in the flesh. 

I jump up as spontaneously as I entered the ward. It was the time to enter now it's time to go. 

On one of the other beds is my list brother Reloj. He isn't leaving. 

Tim Bowden is twiddling his thumbs on his  iPhone 4S!