Martha always stayed in. No, she couldn’t go to the amusement park with her friends because she was afraid of heights. No she couldn’t possibly go out in weather like this, she might slip and break her leg, it had happened before. No she didn’t want to go over to your house because you had a dog and she was scared of dogs because once upon a time her mom’s friend’s cousin’s daughter was bit by a dog and had to go to the hospital for stitches. The beach was a definite no-no because A, there was the possibility of sharks, (she didn’t care if there hadn’t ever been a shark sighting at the Jersey shore, have you seen Jaws?) and B, she was extremely pale and would burn in an instant, a condition which was exacerbated by the hermetic lifestyle that, for the most part, kept her out of the sun. Martha never agreed to offers to socialize with friends, she was too afraid of the everyday dangers of normal life to venture out of the East Village apartment she had shared with her parents since birth unless it was absolutely necessary. Her friends stopped inviting her because they got tired of constantly being denied and eventually, they even stopped calling and coming by as well, for Martha never really had any interesting news and the average person has an attention span similar to that of a goldfish. Martha had all the makings of a crazy cat lady, except; unfortunately she was allergic to cats.
Martha would wake up at 6am on the dot everyday without setting her alarm, and she went to bed no later than 10pm in order to ensure that she got the precise eight hours of sleep necessary to replenish her energy reserves, depleted from a strenuous day of reading, taking online classes (she was working on her PhD in Latin), and knitting sweaters. It had been Martha’s New Year’s Resolution, even though she hadn’t stayed up to watch the ball drop because it was past her bedtime, to knit a sweater every week. She never sewed because the needles were too sharp and she might prick herself accidentally. By the third week in February she had already knitted seven and a half sweaters, one for her dad, one for her mom, and five for the friends she hadn’t heard from in months.
It was 11:49 on Tuesday morning when Martha ran out of wool. She was shocked because she generally had a good idea for how much wool was left in her stock. She kept tabs and when her supplies ran low she made sure that she gave her mother enough notice so that she could pick some up for Martha on her way home from work and save Martha an anxiety-filled trip to the Yarn Galore. She glanced outside, the sky was clear except for a few clouds, scattered like cotton balls throughout the blue sky. Sam Champion, Good Morning America’s weatherman, had informed her that it was likely to rain in the afternoon, but if she went quickly she could avoid the rain and still be back in time for Oprah. In the cold February weather, the roads would probably be slippery if it rained and she didn’t want to chance a fall, or even being hit by an out-of-control taxi that skidded on the ice. There was so much hidden peril in the world that no one else seemed to be mindful of except for Martha. She decided to be adventurous and leave after the last eleven minutes of Maury was over, she really wanted to find out if Marcus was the father of L-a (it’s pronounced le-DASH-ah)’s baby or not.
Martha stepped outside in green and blue striped rain boots, an oversized bubblegum pink parka, and a matching hat, scarf and mittens that she had knit herself. As soon as she stepped outside the cold air fogged up her glasses and she had to pause to wipe them off. With a clearer vision of her surroundings, she set out for the yarn store at a jaunty stroll, her mousy brown braid swinging in her wake. The jaded New Yorkers she passed, plugged into their iPods, paid her mismatched outfit no attention as she whizzed by them, intent on her destination. Martha waited patiently at the cross walk for the little white man on the pedestrian crossing light to beckon her to the other side, even though there were no cars coming and she could easily have crossed in a much more timely fashion. However, the prospect of being hit by a car or an inattentive bicyclist proved to be too deterring. When she glimpsed a dog walker approaching with a slew of ill-sorted hounds, Martha quickly ducked into the nearest Starbucks and waited until they had all safely passed before resuming her journey.
She finally reached the yarn shop and bought three different balls of yarn, all different shades of green. St. Patrick’s Day was coming up and she wanted to make a festive sweater for each member of her family. She was walking particularly briskly on her way back to her apartment, the line had been long in the shop and she wanted to make it back in time for the re-run of The OC that would soon be airing, she couldn’t help but have a monster-sized crush on the geeky-but-cute Seth Cohen. As she trotted down the street, her gaudy rain boots squeaking with every stride, an onslaught of subway passengers emerged from underground, engulfing Martha in a mass of bodies and briefcases. In the gaggle of businessmen, Martha’s precious cargo became dislodged and the balls of green yarn scattered and rolled onto the street. In a momentary lapse of caution, Martha jumped into oncoming traffic to retrieve them and was greeted by a vulgar remark issued from an angry Pedi cab driver, displeased at having to suddenly swerve out of the way to avoid hitting her. Startled by his yell, Martha lost her balance and tumbled onto the asphalt, scraping her knee in the process.
“Aw blast and tarnation!” she exclaimed as she slumped on the curb and hiked up her pant-leg to inspect her wound. She was so intent in her examination that she didn’t notice the gangly shadow that loomed over her.
“Do you need a band-aid?” Martha turned around and was faced with a pair of orthopedic loafers and thermal socks that were only visible because the khaki pants that should have covered them were a few inches shy of being socially acceptable. Martha’s eyes drifted upwards to see a lanky boy about her age pulling a travel-size first aid kit out of his pocket. His adult braces gleamed as he smiled, “I’m always prepared for situations like these.” He knelt down and swabbed her knee with an alcohol wipe before applying a generous amount of Neosporin and covering it with a Star Wars band-aid. Princess Leia briefly grinned up at her before Martha pulled her pant-leg back down. Then out of his other pocket, he pulled out a bottle of Purell and squeezed some out on his own palm before offering it to her. Martha was in love.
The boy helped her up and introduced himself as Brian and said he liked her boots. They immediately hit it off and stood talking by the side of the road for twenty minutes, the fact that Martha was missing her cheesy TV drama completely slipped her mind, as did the arrival of menacing rain clouds. It turned out that Brian was part Irish and his favorite color was green, so Martha agreed to knit him a sweater the following week, she couldn’t have him celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in improper attire. Their moment was interrupted when all of a sudden the clouds carried through on their threats and it started to rain. Martha inwardly cursed Sam Champion for always being right, at least in a meteorological sense, and tried frantically to stuff her yarn into her jacket-front to avoid it getting spoiled by the rain.
“I got you covered…literally.” Brian said cheesily as he calmly pulled a compact poncho out of another one of his many useful pockets. They huddled together under the cheap plastic garment and held freshly sanitized hands as Brian chivalrously escorted Martha home. She in turn invited him in for hot cocoa and ignored the fact that she was missing Oprah, even though it was the episode where Oprah was going to give away all her favorite things to the lucky members of the audience. It was one of Martha’s life ambitions to one day be on that episode, but that rainy afternoon it was more important for her to engage in companionable chit-chat with her new “friend”. Brian invited her to ice skate that weekend and uncharacteristically, Martha agreed, disregarding the dangers sharp blades and slippery ice posed to her health. With Brian, armed with his first-aid kit and portable hand sanitizer, she felt secure.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Luckiest Man Alive (completed)
It was a really cold winter. Not only was the temperature consistently below zero but there was also a biting wind that penetrated even the woolliest of sweaters and the four pairs of socks that I had developed the habit of wearing. It was around Christmas when I was working late one night at the bar and Geoffrey Mann walked in. I know it was around Christmas because I remember thinking about how Donna kept nagging me to put the lights up on the roof of the house. Doesn’t she know that it involves a good level of physical labor? I work all night just to put food on the table and she won’t even give me a few hours of peace at home to relax and reflect upon my day like a normal guy! No, she wants me up and about constantly doing chores for her, as if I don’t need any down time. I’m not in my thirties (or even my forties) anymore and I don’t really appreciate her treating me like her very own personal Mephistopheles, I should have realized she’d sold her soul to the Devil long before I married her.
Anyway, I was working late at the bar one night when the wind blew this odd fellow in. It must have been a weeknight because business was slow and the tips were under par. Geoff was real tall and mysterious, like one of those characters from those old movies my mom used to watch when I was a kid. He took off his black fedora hat and brushed off a fine sprinkling of snow before sitting down on one of the dilapidated bar stools, the one all the way on the end to the left where the Doctor usually self-medicates after a long day looking down throats and bandaging broken bones. At any rate, he sat down on the stool and I says to him, “Hey buddy what can I get for you?”
He was all weird and silent, pensive-like, before ordering a glass of milk. Now I found this mighty curious, who orders a glass of milk at a bar on a weeknight? Now normally I would’ve just gone into the kitchen and served the guy his milk, but I was really bewildered by this guy. Don’t get me wrong, business is business, so I still got the damned milk but I couldn’t resist the tantalizing temptation of mystery, so I asked him, straight-up, what he was all about.
“Now what kind of a guy orders milk at a bar on a weeknight?”
“I’m experiencing my second childhood,” he replied.
“Oh really, would you like me to warm that glass up and sing you a lullaby too?”
“No, it’s fine cold. I have an ulcer, that’s what the milk’s for, it helps settle it down.”
“An ulcer? What stresses you out so much that you’ve got ulcers? Does your wife keep after you to put a sparkly rendition of Rudolf and his eight reindeer buddies up on the roof?”
“No, I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“Ha, you’re funny! The luckiest man alive is probably sitting fat and happy in a retirement home somewhere in Florida soaking in the sun and pretty girls in bikinis.”
Geoff just looks me straight in the eyes and takes a deep swig of his milk before replying, “I can prove it. What are you doing Saturday?”
I shook my head, I was free all weekend, my daughter Maryellen was taking over the bar shifts. She always got better tips than me on the weekends anyway; the younger crowd that filled the bar on Friday and Saturday nights was a sucker for big tits and a pretty smile. He continued, “Why don’t you come over to my house for dinner? I live over in Chester a few miles west of here.” I agreed, intrigued by this man. I spent the rest of the week musing over what could possibly make this man the luckiest man alive. Bets were placed at the bar, the front-running idea was that he was an ex-lottery winner and would show me his framed winning ticket and the runner-up was that he was married to Pamela Anderson.
Chester was a small sleepy town nestled in the mountains. It received only the occasional visitor or lost tourist because it was so difficult to get to and the people that lived there never really had a reason to leave. It took me a little extra time to get to Chester on Saturday evening because the roads were icy and Donna had kept me hostage in the driveway for a good twenty minutes lecturing me to be careful driving and to call if I was going to be later than midnight. I promised her that I would even though I never had any intention of doing so. I knew that Donna would be asleep in front of the TV by ten thirty, knocked out by the combination of a long day working as an elementary school secretary and an extra-dry nightcap, where she would remain until my return when I would rouse her to go to bed. In our younger days I would have carried her but after our three kids, that was no longer an option.
Geoffrey Mann almost lived in the middle of nowhere. There was a good ten-mile radius between his house and any of his neighbors. At almost drove straight past the weed-covered “Mann Estate” sign that pointed to the long paved driveway leading up to his home. The first thing I noticed as I reached the front of the portentous stone mansion was a skinny old horse standing in the front yard. It perked its gray ears forward and whinnied as I approached in my rusty blue Toyota Corolla but turned away when I got closer and it recognized me as a stranger. The horse resumed standing dejectedly under the substandard shelter of a massive snow-covered oak tree, the only indicators of life were the occasional flick of its stringy tail and the rise and fall of its visible ribcage. After I parked my car, I walked up the freshly shoveled front steps and rang the doorbell, I could hear the echo of its enthusiastic chime reverberate within the tremendous house. I was still musing over the downtrodden hag when the door opened and a rather plump butler greeted me.
“Good evening sir, I take it you are Mr. Shepherd?”
“Yeah, that would be me.” As the butler ushered me indoors I inquired about the melancholy steed, “Say, what’s the deal with that horse?”
“Sunny? Oh don’t mind him, he’s just waiting for Mrs. Mann to return, he’s been like that ever since she left.”
“Oh, when was that?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
Boy that’s loyalty. I secretly vowed to give my dog Sammy more table scraps just in case I keel over before he does, I want there to be at least someone left who mourns my absence. Donna would just gloat that she could use the money from my life insurance to finally get the new extension on the house. I followed the butler through the foyer and down a dimly lit hallway. There were portraits of men long dead as well as family photographs from more recent years. In one picture a young boy with an astonishing likeness to Geoffrey Mann stood alongside a beautiful blond woman with smiling eyes and a much more juvenile looking Sunny. There were also photos of the same woman holding a tiny baby and in a wedding dress standing next to Mann.
The butler led me to the kitchen at the end of the hall where I was surprised to see Geoffrey Mann standing by the granite countertop grating cheese. It caught me off guard to find that a mansion dwelling man with a live in butler would not have a personal chef. Now, I’m extremely loyal to my wife Donna but if given the chance to replace her excessively salty food with the fare of a personal chef, I would agree hands down any day, unless it was lasagna night. Mann cut off a hunk of cheddar and dropped it into the anticipating mouth of a small tabby cat. The scraggly cat turned around and scampered out of the room, giving me a glimpse of its missing half an ear and absence of a left eye.
“Shep! I’m happy you made it in this weather! I was just finishing up preparing the feast for us tonight, I hope you like pasta carbonara?” I do. “Come, while it’s in the oven let us go to the den for some pre-dinner drinks.” He beckoned for me to follow him into another room where a mini bar was already set up. He went behind the counter and pulled out some Scotch, “I hope you’re okay with this, it’s pretty much all I keep around. It feels weird serving drinks to a bartender.” I nodded that Scotch was fine, I’m not much of a drinker anyway. After a few rounds and some small talk, I’d come to the conclusion that Geoffrey Mann is quite an amusing fellow. I glanced around the room and noticed a hound dog fast asleep in front of the fireplace.
“Is that your hunting dog?” I inquired, pointing to the snoring beast.
Geoff laughed, “Tripod? Heaven’s no, the poor old chap isn’t good for much; he’s only got three legs.”
“What’s the deal with all these gimpy animals, you got a fetish for them? I noticed that your cat only had one eye as well.”
“To tell you the truth Shep, I like having them around because they remind me of myself. They’re survivors like I am.” Geoff motioned to a collection of framed newspaper articles on the wall above the fireplace, “See, I wasn’t lying when I told you I was the luckiest man alive.”
The headlines had titles like “FISHERMAN LANDS LUCKIEST CATCH OF THE DAY” and “YACHT ACCIDENT SURVIVOR DISCOVERED AFTER 8 DAYS” Geoffrey Mann had been a prominent figure in the newspapers twenty years ago for being the lone survivor of a freak yacht sinking. He had managed to stay afloat on a lifeboat for more than a week until a fisherman discovered him and brought him back to shore where he was received as a local hero. There had been only two other people on the yacht, a famous hotel tycoon and the ship captain, the bodies of which had never been found. I nodded in acquiescence and lifted my near empty glass in a silent toast, “That my friend, is pretty darn lucky.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” At my perplexed look, he rose from his chair, “I’ll tell you the rest over dinner, let’s eat!”
The pasta was surprisingly delicious; it was better than anything Donna had ever cooked for me, which I found both interesting and disturbing at the same time. Tripod even managed to rouse himself and hobble through to the dining room for some free samples of his master’s cooking. The table was very long, made to entertain large groups of people, a remnant of the days when the Mann Estate had a greater influx of guests. It seemed weird to me to use only two of the twelve place settings, but the conversation and food were both satisfactory so I really had no qualms. After the hefty butler cleared the dishes away, I’m sure had been sampling his fare share of leftovers behind the kitchen doors, Mann told me to stay put as he went into another room. He returned and placed a small black box on the table, about the size of a toaster. I asked him what it was.
“I don’t normally tell people this Shep but there’s something I like about you Shep, so I’m going to tell it to you straight. It’s the satellite radio from the Florentina, the yacht that sunk.”
I mused over that information for a while. How could he have the radio from a yacht that was anchored on the ocean floor? I looked back at Geoffrey Mann and wondered just how lucky he really was. Mann didn’t seem worried by my hesitation and continued speaking, absentmindedly turning the radio over and over in his hands.
“Honestly Shep, this radio was never on the ship the night it sunk. I’d had it removed the day before and a dummy one put in its place. You see, I couldn’t have Harry George or his captain wiring in for help when the boat started to go down. What’s lucky isn’t that I survived and the fisherman rescued me; the lucky part was that I got away with it.” Mann deliberately folded his napkin and placed it on the table before rising from his chair and pouring himself a glass of red wine from a bottle on the table. He angled it towards me in offering that I politely refused. When he placed the bottle back on the table I could see the label that read “Chester Vineyard” and displayed a picture of the same woman I had seen gracing many of the photos in Mann’s home.
Mann saw my glance and beckoned to her picture, “I did it all for her too. The truth is, I’d dug myself into a pretty deep gambling bet and owed George a helluva lot of money and I was going to lose my house and all my worldly belongings if I ever paid up. It wouldn’t have been so bad except I didn’t think my wife would stand by me if she weren’t kept in the manner in which she had become accustomed. So I made sure George would never be able to collect on his debt. It didn’t work though, I felt so bad about the whole thing Shep! I was treated like a hero in this worthless town! I couldn’t have people look at me with awe knowing what I’d really done! After three years, I absolutely had to tell somebody, so I told the person closest to me, my wife. When she found out, however, the ungrateful bitch took my son and left to St. Kits. I haven’t seen either of them since.”
I swallowed hard and looked at my watch, it was ten thirty. I was all jumpy and nervous, knowing I was alone in a house with a murderer and I got startled when the cat with one eye jumped up on the table. It commenced to purr and rub against my host, arching its back approvingly at Mann’s touch. I thought of Donna asleep at home in front of a never-ending stream of infomercials and had a sudden intense desire to be back there with her, away from this twisted and lonely fellow, “Wow man, that really sucks.” It was all I could say, what else could I possibly utter to a man who’d just confessed murder to me over pasta carbonara? All I knew was that I needed to get out of there as soon as possible.
“Eh,” Mann shrugged, “She was a slut anyway and I got used to being alone after a while. Besides, I have the animals and Rusty, my butler to keep me company. And now I have you, my new friend.”
Uncomfortable under his gaze I stood up, “Yeah well, dinner was swell but I better be going… My wife’s waiting up for me.”
“Nonsense, Shep!” Mann exclaimed as he motioned out the window, where a fresh coating of snow blanketed the ground and a flurry was continuing to come down heavily, “There’s no way you could drive home in weather like this! I’d be happy to put you up for the night, no worries, I have plenty of room.” I really didn’t have a choice, I was at the mercy of my murderous host who excitedly motioned for me to get up, “Let’s go back into the den and play some cards.”
I followed him reluctantly, wishing I could close my eyes and be back at the bar grumbling about Donna and chatting with the Doc, never having met Geoffrey Mann, “Won’t the luckiest man alive automatically win?”
“Shep, my dear friend, men make there own luck.”
Anyway, I was working late at the bar one night when the wind blew this odd fellow in. It must have been a weeknight because business was slow and the tips were under par. Geoff was real tall and mysterious, like one of those characters from those old movies my mom used to watch when I was a kid. He took off his black fedora hat and brushed off a fine sprinkling of snow before sitting down on one of the dilapidated bar stools, the one all the way on the end to the left where the Doctor usually self-medicates after a long day looking down throats and bandaging broken bones. At any rate, he sat down on the stool and I says to him, “Hey buddy what can I get for you?”
He was all weird and silent, pensive-like, before ordering a glass of milk. Now I found this mighty curious, who orders a glass of milk at a bar on a weeknight? Now normally I would’ve just gone into the kitchen and served the guy his milk, but I was really bewildered by this guy. Don’t get me wrong, business is business, so I still got the damned milk but I couldn’t resist the tantalizing temptation of mystery, so I asked him, straight-up, what he was all about.
“Now what kind of a guy orders milk at a bar on a weeknight?”
“I’m experiencing my second childhood,” he replied.
“Oh really, would you like me to warm that glass up and sing you a lullaby too?”
“No, it’s fine cold. I have an ulcer, that’s what the milk’s for, it helps settle it down.”
“An ulcer? What stresses you out so much that you’ve got ulcers? Does your wife keep after you to put a sparkly rendition of Rudolf and his eight reindeer buddies up on the roof?”
“No, I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“Ha, you’re funny! The luckiest man alive is probably sitting fat and happy in a retirement home somewhere in Florida soaking in the sun and pretty girls in bikinis.”
Geoff just looks me straight in the eyes and takes a deep swig of his milk before replying, “I can prove it. What are you doing Saturday?”
I shook my head, I was free all weekend, my daughter Maryellen was taking over the bar shifts. She always got better tips than me on the weekends anyway; the younger crowd that filled the bar on Friday and Saturday nights was a sucker for big tits and a pretty smile. He continued, “Why don’t you come over to my house for dinner? I live over in Chester a few miles west of here.” I agreed, intrigued by this man. I spent the rest of the week musing over what could possibly make this man the luckiest man alive. Bets were placed at the bar, the front-running idea was that he was an ex-lottery winner and would show me his framed winning ticket and the runner-up was that he was married to Pamela Anderson.
Chester was a small sleepy town nestled in the mountains. It received only the occasional visitor or lost tourist because it was so difficult to get to and the people that lived there never really had a reason to leave. It took me a little extra time to get to Chester on Saturday evening because the roads were icy and Donna had kept me hostage in the driveway for a good twenty minutes lecturing me to be careful driving and to call if I was going to be later than midnight. I promised her that I would even though I never had any intention of doing so. I knew that Donna would be asleep in front of the TV by ten thirty, knocked out by the combination of a long day working as an elementary school secretary and an extra-dry nightcap, where she would remain until my return when I would rouse her to go to bed. In our younger days I would have carried her but after our three kids, that was no longer an option.
Geoffrey Mann almost lived in the middle of nowhere. There was a good ten-mile radius between his house and any of his neighbors. At almost drove straight past the weed-covered “Mann Estate” sign that pointed to the long paved driveway leading up to his home. The first thing I noticed as I reached the front of the portentous stone mansion was a skinny old horse standing in the front yard. It perked its gray ears forward and whinnied as I approached in my rusty blue Toyota Corolla but turned away when I got closer and it recognized me as a stranger. The horse resumed standing dejectedly under the substandard shelter of a massive snow-covered oak tree, the only indicators of life were the occasional flick of its stringy tail and the rise and fall of its visible ribcage. After I parked my car, I walked up the freshly shoveled front steps and rang the doorbell, I could hear the echo of its enthusiastic chime reverberate within the tremendous house. I was still musing over the downtrodden hag when the door opened and a rather plump butler greeted me.
“Good evening sir, I take it you are Mr. Shepherd?”
“Yeah, that would be me.” As the butler ushered me indoors I inquired about the melancholy steed, “Say, what’s the deal with that horse?”
“Sunny? Oh don’t mind him, he’s just waiting for Mrs. Mann to return, he’s been like that ever since she left.”
“Oh, when was that?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
Boy that’s loyalty. I secretly vowed to give my dog Sammy more table scraps just in case I keel over before he does, I want there to be at least someone left who mourns my absence. Donna would just gloat that she could use the money from my life insurance to finally get the new extension on the house. I followed the butler through the foyer and down a dimly lit hallway. There were portraits of men long dead as well as family photographs from more recent years. In one picture a young boy with an astonishing likeness to Geoffrey Mann stood alongside a beautiful blond woman with smiling eyes and a much more juvenile looking Sunny. There were also photos of the same woman holding a tiny baby and in a wedding dress standing next to Mann.
The butler led me to the kitchen at the end of the hall where I was surprised to see Geoffrey Mann standing by the granite countertop grating cheese. It caught me off guard to find that a mansion dwelling man with a live in butler would not have a personal chef. Now, I’m extremely loyal to my wife Donna but if given the chance to replace her excessively salty food with the fare of a personal chef, I would agree hands down any day, unless it was lasagna night. Mann cut off a hunk of cheddar and dropped it into the anticipating mouth of a small tabby cat. The scraggly cat turned around and scampered out of the room, giving me a glimpse of its missing half an ear and absence of a left eye.
“Shep! I’m happy you made it in this weather! I was just finishing up preparing the feast for us tonight, I hope you like pasta carbonara?” I do. “Come, while it’s in the oven let us go to the den for some pre-dinner drinks.” He beckoned for me to follow him into another room where a mini bar was already set up. He went behind the counter and pulled out some Scotch, “I hope you’re okay with this, it’s pretty much all I keep around. It feels weird serving drinks to a bartender.” I nodded that Scotch was fine, I’m not much of a drinker anyway. After a few rounds and some small talk, I’d come to the conclusion that Geoffrey Mann is quite an amusing fellow. I glanced around the room and noticed a hound dog fast asleep in front of the fireplace.
“Is that your hunting dog?” I inquired, pointing to the snoring beast.
Geoff laughed, “Tripod? Heaven’s no, the poor old chap isn’t good for much; he’s only got three legs.”
“What’s the deal with all these gimpy animals, you got a fetish for them? I noticed that your cat only had one eye as well.”
“To tell you the truth Shep, I like having them around because they remind me of myself. They’re survivors like I am.” Geoff motioned to a collection of framed newspaper articles on the wall above the fireplace, “See, I wasn’t lying when I told you I was the luckiest man alive.”
The headlines had titles like “FISHERMAN LANDS LUCKIEST CATCH OF THE DAY” and “YACHT ACCIDENT SURVIVOR DISCOVERED AFTER 8 DAYS” Geoffrey Mann had been a prominent figure in the newspapers twenty years ago for being the lone survivor of a freak yacht sinking. He had managed to stay afloat on a lifeboat for more than a week until a fisherman discovered him and brought him back to shore where he was received as a local hero. There had been only two other people on the yacht, a famous hotel tycoon and the ship captain, the bodies of which had never been found. I nodded in acquiescence and lifted my near empty glass in a silent toast, “That my friend, is pretty darn lucky.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” At my perplexed look, he rose from his chair, “I’ll tell you the rest over dinner, let’s eat!”
The pasta was surprisingly delicious; it was better than anything Donna had ever cooked for me, which I found both interesting and disturbing at the same time. Tripod even managed to rouse himself and hobble through to the dining room for some free samples of his master’s cooking. The table was very long, made to entertain large groups of people, a remnant of the days when the Mann Estate had a greater influx of guests. It seemed weird to me to use only two of the twelve place settings, but the conversation and food were both satisfactory so I really had no qualms. After the hefty butler cleared the dishes away, I’m sure had been sampling his fare share of leftovers behind the kitchen doors, Mann told me to stay put as he went into another room. He returned and placed a small black box on the table, about the size of a toaster. I asked him what it was.
“I don’t normally tell people this Shep but there’s something I like about you Shep, so I’m going to tell it to you straight. It’s the satellite radio from the Florentina, the yacht that sunk.”
I mused over that information for a while. How could he have the radio from a yacht that was anchored on the ocean floor? I looked back at Geoffrey Mann and wondered just how lucky he really was. Mann didn’t seem worried by my hesitation and continued speaking, absentmindedly turning the radio over and over in his hands.
“Honestly Shep, this radio was never on the ship the night it sunk. I’d had it removed the day before and a dummy one put in its place. You see, I couldn’t have Harry George or his captain wiring in for help when the boat started to go down. What’s lucky isn’t that I survived and the fisherman rescued me; the lucky part was that I got away with it.” Mann deliberately folded his napkin and placed it on the table before rising from his chair and pouring himself a glass of red wine from a bottle on the table. He angled it towards me in offering that I politely refused. When he placed the bottle back on the table I could see the label that read “Chester Vineyard” and displayed a picture of the same woman I had seen gracing many of the photos in Mann’s home.
Mann saw my glance and beckoned to her picture, “I did it all for her too. The truth is, I’d dug myself into a pretty deep gambling bet and owed George a helluva lot of money and I was going to lose my house and all my worldly belongings if I ever paid up. It wouldn’t have been so bad except I didn’t think my wife would stand by me if she weren’t kept in the manner in which she had become accustomed. So I made sure George would never be able to collect on his debt. It didn’t work though, I felt so bad about the whole thing Shep! I was treated like a hero in this worthless town! I couldn’t have people look at me with awe knowing what I’d really done! After three years, I absolutely had to tell somebody, so I told the person closest to me, my wife. When she found out, however, the ungrateful bitch took my son and left to St. Kits. I haven’t seen either of them since.”
I swallowed hard and looked at my watch, it was ten thirty. I was all jumpy and nervous, knowing I was alone in a house with a murderer and I got startled when the cat with one eye jumped up on the table. It commenced to purr and rub against my host, arching its back approvingly at Mann’s touch. I thought of Donna asleep at home in front of a never-ending stream of infomercials and had a sudden intense desire to be back there with her, away from this twisted and lonely fellow, “Wow man, that really sucks.” It was all I could say, what else could I possibly utter to a man who’d just confessed murder to me over pasta carbonara? All I knew was that I needed to get out of there as soon as possible.
“Eh,” Mann shrugged, “She was a slut anyway and I got used to being alone after a while. Besides, I have the animals and Rusty, my butler to keep me company. And now I have you, my new friend.”
Uncomfortable under his gaze I stood up, “Yeah well, dinner was swell but I better be going… My wife’s waiting up for me.”
“Nonsense, Shep!” Mann exclaimed as he motioned out the window, where a fresh coating of snow blanketed the ground and a flurry was continuing to come down heavily, “There’s no way you could drive home in weather like this! I’d be happy to put you up for the night, no worries, I have plenty of room.” I really didn’t have a choice, I was at the mercy of my murderous host who excitedly motioned for me to get up, “Let’s go back into the den and play some cards.”
I followed him reluctantly, wishing I could close my eyes and be back at the bar grumbling about Donna and chatting with the Doc, never having met Geoffrey Mann, “Won’t the luckiest man alive automatically win?”
“Shep, my dear friend, men make there own luck.”
Monday, January 5, 2009
n. heart [hahrt]: spirit, courage, or enthusiasm; the vital or essential part
For the fifth year in a row, the Canadian Junior squad wins the IIHF World Junior Championship. Why? Because they're amazing, because they have courage, determination, passion, and most of all, heart.
Also, I have such a crush on Alex Pietrangelo. And Thomas Hickey. And Dustin Tokarski. Not to mention Carey Price. Dear suitemates: I'm considering transferring back home where the beer is Molson, hockey is rampant and all boys love and play it.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
the spider that got caught in her own web
Oh no I see
a spider web and its me in the middle
so i twist and turn
but here i am in my little bubble”
-Coldplay
Spiders are by nature killers. Not in a malicious or inappropriate manner but they are required to kill insects in order to maintain the interminable circle of life. Bulbuline the spider may have big and have a telltale red mark on her belly indicating her status as a black widow, but she was nicer than any spider was meant to be. Now it may seem impossible for one to be excessively kind but there comes a point where being too kind will destroy someone. For excessive kindness will surely result in selflessness and one needs to be at least a little bit selfish in order to survive. Bulbuline was not at all self-interested and let all the other spiders decide everything about her life like where her web was built and how big it was. Baby spiderlings are born from egg sacs by the thousands, so Bulbuline had an awful lot of spider peers controlling her. The most unsettling thing about Bulbuline was that she didn’t seem to mind that her brothers and sisters mooched off of her web or shafted her into the dimmest corner that never attracted any flies. Despite the mistreatment, she worked harder than any other spider, building webs for her artificial friends and voluntarily offering for them to feast upon the insects she trapped in her web. Bulbuline was happiest when others were happy and if it took other spiders taking advantage of her to achieve this skewed form of utilitarianism, Bulbuline was content with that.
At first, Bulbuline was adored by her fellow spiders. They enjoyed her absurd kindness and her perpetual willingness to do whatever was asked of her. Alas, by nature, spiders are solitary creatures and the other spiders soon got bored of each other, Bulbuline included, and found their own spots in which to inhabit alone. Bulbuline, of course, ended up with the the least suitable place in which to build her web, seeing as she let all the other spiders go ahead of her in line in the virtual lottery of spider housing. Bulbuline soon grew lonely, however, without the companionship of the other arachnids. Although they didn’t appreciate Bulbuline’s complete lack of egotism, she did not know what to do with herself if she wasn’t doing something for someone else.
Bulbuline’s happiness level plummeted in the little niche in the woods in wich she settled. In between a rock and a tree stump, she fashioned an extremely intricate web. It was not very large but it was very detailed and would have been the object of many outdoor photographers camera lens had it not been in such a secluded position. Even though Bulbuline was proud of her web, she would have been happy to give it away to any one of her brothers or sisters if only they ever came to visit her. She was very very lonely and she was forced to eat only the dandelion fluff that by chance blew into her web because no insects ever travelled near enough for her to catch.
So Bulbuline spent her days singing melancholy songs, she was a fan of the blues, and knitting silken sweaters and booties for the friends she didn’t have. These lovingly sewed gifts would fall onto the ground and pile up until a gust of wind or rainfall would scatter them. It’s a mystery how long the she lived like this as every day melded together until not even Bulbuline herself could determine how many days or weeks or months she had spent alone in her web. Until one day a disoriented bumble bee got trapped in Bulbuline’s web. The bumble bee had drifted off course whilst searching for fresh pollen to bring back to her hive. Bulbuline’s web was in such an isolated section of the forest there was a plethora of virgin flowers, untouched by the other bee colonies. The succulent aroma of these tender buds is what attracted the young worker bee to the unfortunate circumstance which involved her being stuck in Bulbuline’s web.
The panicked struggling of the bee awoke Bulbuline from a nap, she had fallen asleep after completing her 10431st silken bootie, and she was very surprised to find the adolescent bumble bee in her web for it had been so very long since she had seen an insect in that very position. Accustomed to her diet of oxygen and dandelion fluff, Bulbuline was not seized with a desire for devouring the poor beastie, but rather with a desire for company and idle chit-chat.
“Hello there little one, I didn’t know I would be receiving visitors today.”
There was no answer from the petrified bee, who lay shivering trapped beneath Bulbuline’s feet. The spider absentmindedly rubbed her spinnerets together as she gazed perturbedly at the small bee out of her hundreds of eyes.
“Come now, why are you so scared? What do you think I’ll do to you?”
A tiny voice replied, “Eat me. Isn’t that what spiders do?”
“Eat you?”, Bulbuline scoffed, “I could never, I’m a vegetarian. I only want to talk.”
“Are you messing with me?” inquired the bee, “Because that would be really cruel to mess around with a poor defenseless bee on her deathbed. I’d much rather you got it over with quickly and stuck those giant fangs into my neck right now.”
Bulbuline averted her gaze, embarrassed, “I swear upon my life that I will do no such thing.” This seemed to appease the bumble bee who marginally relaxed at this statement, “Well can you let me go then?”
The spider thought for a moment, “Okay, only if you promise to stay and talk with me for a while. I get pretty lonely, I’ll even knit you a sweater!”
“Promise.”
With that, the spider freed the bee, unravelling the silken web from around her delicate wings and striped body. The bee, however, was skeptical of Bulbuline’s good intentions and did not keep her promise. As the bee attempted to fly away, Bulbuline frantically reached out one of her eight legs and grabbed hold of the bee’s antennae. In blind fear, the bee stung Bulbuline in the back, injecting deadly poison into her bloodstream, before releasing herself from the spider’s grasp and buzzing away. Paralyzed by the sting, the spider dazedly collapsed onto her own web. In her drunken struggles to right herself, she got wrapped up in sticky silk rendering her stuck fast even after the bumblebee sting wore off. Unfortunately for Bulbuline, that bee was the only visitor she would ever have in her concealed alcove between the rock and the tree stump, and she remained motionlessly trapped in her own web until it was washed away by a heavy thunderstorm seventeen weeks later.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
LADY MACBETH
This is the story of Lady Macbeth:
She has a knife collection in her bedside drawer and will eat you for breakfast if you mess with her or her Yeti Ugg boots. She owns a long, black cape-like Lady Macbeth winter coat that flaps behind her when she strides through the snow. She wears runners with her jeans and deems Armani Exchange the only European-esque enough brand in North America to don. According to her, every European nationality runs in her blood and at photoshoots (while everyone else is smiling joyfully), she will step forward, whip her hair back, and stare you down. Also, she makes fun of her younger cousins for only being born in Slovakia, and not Czechoslovakia, which was Communist. She loves horses. With a vengeance. As in her walls are covered with images of majestic, epic horses rearing in front of waterfalls and galloping in the ocean's spray, and she genuinely does not understand why you find them hilarious. However, if she had to pick between plunging her hand into a live horse's chest and eating out its heart, and killing her friend, she swears she would eat the heart. (Of course she would.) She would also pick her friend's life over killing off the entire horse race with her bare hands. At prom, she wore a long, glistening, mermaid-cut golden dress with colourful sequins that outshone everything. She is the fiercest white person in the world. The end.
She has a knife collection in her bedside drawer and will eat you for breakfast if you mess with her or her Yeti Ugg boots. She owns a long, black cape-like Lady Macbeth winter coat that flaps behind her when she strides through the snow. She wears runners with her jeans and deems Armani Exchange the only European-esque enough brand in North America to don. According to her, every European nationality runs in her blood and at photoshoots (while everyone else is smiling joyfully), she will step forward, whip her hair back, and stare you down. Also, she makes fun of her younger cousins for only being born in Slovakia, and not Czechoslovakia, which was Communist. She loves horses. With a vengeance. As in her walls are covered with images of majestic, epic horses rearing in front of waterfalls and galloping in the ocean's spray, and she genuinely does not understand why you find them hilarious. However, if she had to pick between plunging her hand into a live horse's chest and eating out its heart, and killing her friend, she swears she would eat the heart. (Of course she would.) She would also pick her friend's life over killing off the entire horse race with her bare hands. At prom, she wore a long, glistening, mermaid-cut golden dress with colourful sequins that outshone everything. She is the fiercest white person in the world. The end.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The Luckiest Man Alive
It was a really cold winter. Not only was the temperature consistently below zero but there was a biting wind that penetrated even the woolliest of sweaters and the four pairs of socks I had come into the habit of wearing. It was around Christmas and I was working late one night at the bar. I know it was around Christmas because I remember thinking how Donna kept nagging me to put the lights up on the roof of the house. Doesn’t she know that it involves a good level of physical labor? I work all night just to put food on the table and she won’t even give me a few hours of peace at home to relax and reflect upon my day like a normal guy! No, she wants me up and about constantly doing chores for her, as if I don’t need any down time. I’m not in my thirties (or even my forties) anymore and I don’t really appreciate her treating me like her very own personal Mephistopheles, I should have realized she’d sold her soul to the Devil long before I married her.
Anyway, I was working late at the bar one night when the wind blew this odd fellow in. It must have been a weeknight because business was slow and the tips were bad. He was real tall and mysterious, like one of those characters from those old movies my mom used to watch when I was a kid. He took off his hat and brushed some snow off of his boots before sitting down on one of the stools, the one all the way on the end to the left where the Doctor usually sits after a long day looking down throats and bandaging broken bones. At any rate, he sat down on the stool and I says to him, “Hey buddy what can I getcha?”
He was all weird and silent, pensive-like, before ordering a glass of milk. Now I found this mighty curious, who orders a glass of milk at a bar on a weeknight? Now normally I would’ve just gone into the kitchen and served the guy his milk, but I was really bewildered by this guy. Don’t get me wrong, business is business, so I still got the damned milk but I couldn’t resist the tantalizing temptation of mystery, so I asked him, straight-up, what he was all about.
“Now what kind of a guy orders milk at a bar on a weeknight?”
“I’m experiencing my second childhood,” he replied.
“Really, would you like me to warm that glass up and sing you a lullaby too?”
“No, cold’s fine. And I have an ulcer, that’s what the milk’s for, it helps settle it down.”
“What stresses you out so much that you’ve got ulcers? Does your wife keep pestering you to put a sparkly rendition of Rudolf and his eight reindeer buddies up on the roof?”
“No, I’m the luckiest man alive.”
Anyway, I was working late at the bar one night when the wind blew this odd fellow in. It must have been a weeknight because business was slow and the tips were bad. He was real tall and mysterious, like one of those characters from those old movies my mom used to watch when I was a kid. He took off his hat and brushed some snow off of his boots before sitting down on one of the stools, the one all the way on the end to the left where the Doctor usually sits after a long day looking down throats and bandaging broken bones. At any rate, he sat down on the stool and I says to him, “Hey buddy what can I getcha?”
He was all weird and silent, pensive-like, before ordering a glass of milk. Now I found this mighty curious, who orders a glass of milk at a bar on a weeknight? Now normally I would’ve just gone into the kitchen and served the guy his milk, but I was really bewildered by this guy. Don’t get me wrong, business is business, so I still got the damned milk but I couldn’t resist the tantalizing temptation of mystery, so I asked him, straight-up, what he was all about.
“Now what kind of a guy orders milk at a bar on a weeknight?”
“I’m experiencing my second childhood,” he replied.
“Really, would you like me to warm that glass up and sing you a lullaby too?”
“No, cold’s fine. And I have an ulcer, that’s what the milk’s for, it helps settle it down.”
“What stresses you out so much that you’ve got ulcers? Does your wife keep pestering you to put a sparkly rendition of Rudolf and his eight reindeer buddies up on the roof?”
“No, I’m the luckiest man alive.”
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