Sam Drinks Mud

The sun in California is significantly different. There is no scientific reason for this to be sure, but ask any visitor from elsewhere in the US, and they will agree. It is clearer, warmer to be sure, particularly if you are from the midwest or northeastern United States. The air feels different; there is a vibe of possibility, of the new. Anyone from California would perhaps disagree. There is a maxim that those that live near Disneyland rarely go; the novelty wears off quickly and it becomes something in the background, always there as a reminder, but at the same time it is a noise in the background, a dull roar that is tuned out.

Sam had ceased to be annoyed by those, who on their first day in San Francisco, commented on how temperate the weather is. Weather, weather, weather. Weather was what strangers talked about when there was nothing else to talk about. Weather was something that no one had control over, and the inability to change the weather becomes a common point of contact. It is banal because it's commonality makes it so.

Sam had to hear a lot of this because of his job. He was a taxi driver, but when he did speed dating he would elaborate, saying that taxi driving was both a way to pay the bills, but gave him fuel for his real work, which as writing 1 minute songs about people. He wrote these songs constantly, particularly when things happened in his job, such as the bastard in the rusted white van cutting him off at the last minute. "Van Driving Man" was an old standard.

I'm a Van Driving Man
With a Master Plan
To rule the world
and to get the girl

There was more to this, it devolved into a acrimonious rant about stupidity and compromise (I wanted a Camaro, but my wife wanted the minivan.). He didn't feel sorry for these people. They got what they deserved. He was excluded from this of course. He didn't get what he deserved, not nearly enough. Life was shoveling shit down his gullet, and he had no opportunity to swallow. It just kept packing in there.

Time to pull over, and pick up another passenger, a pasty faced woman in her late 30's. He thought that she could use a new hairstyle, that the closely cropped and spiked look wasn't working for her anymore. It seemed strange when coupled with her new found poundage. He couldn't let things go, so why should anyone else?

He grunted and took a swig of his cold Dunkin Donuts coffee. It tasted literally like Mud. But it was good mud.

The Tape in Franks Head

The road whipped past, slick and shining with a drizzle of rain that had been intermittent throughout the day. The reflective paint of the stripes looks like pulses, fleeting flashes of light that blipped on and off, a hidden message that couldn't be decoded in time. Frank imagined the message to be ominous, a harbinger of some sort of bad outcome. He started to count them, but it was hard to see through the metal grating that separated him from the driver and his partner. Frank shifted in his seat, the handcuffs a little too tight, and his feet were starting to go a little numb. Soon the tingling would filter in, and there would be little or nothing he could do about it, another reminder of his failure to escape the law.

All traces of his medication were slowly filtering out of his system, and the whispers in his head were rising from the dull roar of the road. In a way they were reassuring, he had been with them for so long that it was something familiar, even though the messages they conveyed weren't entirely good. Frank knew that, but the loop would continue to play until it wore him down and then he would cave to it's will. He didn't want to do bad things, but at times the mechanism would kick in, and he would see himself, detached, moving through the motions, digging the gun out of the back of the sock drawer, sticking the pistol against his head one more time. He knew this little loop would someday come to a conclusion, the tape flapping as the reel moved around and around, around and around, around and around. He began to bang is head, softly, against the side of the window, trying to loosen the voices, imaging they would escape through his ears, a wisp of smoke that would have a slight yellow trace, with the smell of burning sulphur. The smell would be unpleasant, but at least he would be free. He imagined himself soaring about the trees, floating on the ether, bodiless and ephemeral. He would be free at last, his head clear, not clouded by the numerous pills he had to take. It was a moment of respite, a break. He banged his head louder. Soon they would start to shout at him, and tell him to stop. This was a loop too. Every thing repeated. Every thing repeated. Every thing repeated.

Spring in Utica

The problem with spring was that it was an in-between time, Sandra thought. She was a fan of the summer, and for her Spring was merely a practice round, a tease with a peek at the sun, followed by days of the typical Utica gray dreariness. She found herself in this moment, again, the perpetual moment of vertigo where she wonders how the hell she ended up in this place. It wasn't fair, but what is? Her sister Pamela, free and single, living in Key West. She had her priorities in the right place. Indeed. No mud rooms in Key West, just a place to let your swimsuit dry.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, she heard a sigh, and then realized that it was her own voice, a small echo rattling through the house, soon enough to be filled again with the chatter of Ethan and Suze, home from school. Whenever she felt that life was passing her by, it was this moment of elasticity that pulled her back, back to now, a 32 year old stay at home mom who still painted on the side. Her painting remained her reminder to herself that there was always more. It gave her a strange bit of comfort, a feeling of quiet strength.

Mike's Cabin

In the grand scheme of things, it couldn't have made much difference in how Stephanie and Mike fell out of love with one another, for there could have been many reasons, many brief, transitional moments where one felt slighted by the other, where the thin threads of a web were pulled apart, to drift in the breeze.

Mike had moved on years before. Now, his life was consumed with his grand passion, building a cabin in upstate New York with their son, Andrew. It was the momental achievement, for Mike had absolutely no skill with the simplest tools. It was something that he had to prove to himself, more than anything else in his life. In an indirect way, it was perhaps his mid-life crisis, but instead of the buxom blond affair, or even the vintage sports car that collected dust in the garage, it was a log cabin that had arrived in a kit, with presawn logs and a set of instructions that were the size of a slender phone book for a town of 10,000 people. To be completely fair, it's bulk was in part from it's being in English and French.

This project was well underway, and gave Mike an excuse to vanish on weekends, to "work on the cabin". In reality, he would often camp there on the site, watch a movie on his laptop, and finally sleep to the sounds of crickets in the night, without actually doing any work at all. He just wanted to get away.

Albert Gets Booted

Albert was confused. He was sure that he had put on two black socks, but now that he stood in the clear 7 o'clock California sunlight, it was obvious that he was wrong. It would not have been an issue if it was not for the gap from shoe to cuff that was approximately 2 inches. The pants were an embarrassment, but it was all that he could find that would match his jacket, that was in itself snug, with little stress folds around the armpit. It would have to do for court.

The drive there was mostly uneventful. He stopped at McDonald's for breakfast, consisting of two apple pies and a medium black coffee. He ate as he drove, a bit of the apple filling dripping out on to his tie. At a stop light, he dabbed it out with a napkin soaked with a little coffee. Meanwhile, the light changed and the honda accord behind him honked. He hunched down and mashed the accelerator as the car roared past. The coffee slipped out his hand and exploded in the passenger floorboard, drenching the pile of wrappers, empty bags and diet mountain dew bottles.

In a moment of peculiar luck, he managed to find a parking place on the street. He weighed the potential for yet another ticket vs. the possibility that his case might be solved quickly. He could under no circumstances imagine his car booted, which it would be, with remarkable quickness.››