Extraordinary events can happen in very ordinary places. . . .
Let me hand you the whole picture. I’m in trouble, real trouble, and can’t do a blessed thing about it. And I’m hurting and tired and cold, and God knows I’m scared. So the game’s name for me right now is SURVIVAL, which means I’ve got to invent distractions and more distractions to fight this urge I’m getting to—to just give up.
Yesterday, I think it was yesterday, I reviewed the high spots of my life—more hills than mountains, sad to say—then told myself every joke I could remember. None of that pleased me much, but at least it killed a few hours. Then I decided to indulge in acting out the fantasy that’s molded my daydreams for the last two years. Don’t laugh. The idea is that I’m at the bookstore where I work, during a weekly session of our writer’s club, the Literary Lions. But instead of being a salesperson cum barista cum waitress merely serving the wordsmiths, I’m one of them, reading her latest baby out loud. Don’t you think that would be so satisfying, sharing something you’ve created with a group that can appreciate and intelligently critique your art?
That may not be your fantasy, but it’s mine, and I tried to really get into it, imagining I was ensconced in one of the big circles of dusty armchairs, sitting with a writer’s typical bad posture: shoulders rounded, head jutting forward, back slumped. But when I started my tale, just making stuff up impromptu, the love was missing. Took me a while to figure out why.
What I crave is the feeling of doing an official reading—or what I imagine that’s like. And that’s something I can’t get here without having a story, actually created by me, memorized well enough to get a sense that I’m reading it as I recite it. Crazy? I know, but I’ve never had more time or reason to pamper myself. Ever notice how you can’t do a blessed thing until you do something else first?
So I started gluing a plot together in my head and ran headlong into another snag. I guess my . . . situation has squashed my creativity along with other things. Pure fiction was out. What I finally came up with is basically a glorified report on some stuff that’s actually happened. And though I said the writing itself wasn’t my goal, it’s been more involving than I expected. Be interesting to try this for real if I ever get out of here.
Anyway, I’ve completed my masterpiece and gone over it a dozen times and had a long if not good nap. Now I’m ready to give my fantasy a second try. A word of warning: real life doesn’t always have much of a plot or character development or even conflict—all the stuff the Lions blab about every week. So I guess what you’ll hear isn’t a good story, but I’ve tried to make it interesting despite that. You can tell me how well I’ve succeeded.
Which brings me to why I’ve invented you. I can visualize a circle of people just fine, but only as . . . placeholders. I don’t think my brain is firing well enough right now to summon up more than one imaginary person to interact with. But you’ll do fine as someone to listen and keep me company. Just don’t interrupt. That’s a joke.
And here’s an idea! Let’s add a game into the mix. I’ll mostly be telling it like it was except I’ll add a wee exaggeration or an outright fib now and then. I’ll stop the “reading” a few times and you can guess which parts that you just heard weren’t true. It won’t be easy because weird things were happening even before I wound up in this mess, so you’d best listen with both ears.
Ready? >>
Five years ago, in 2013, during my junior year at UC Santa Cruz, I wrote an essay titled “An Endangered Business List” for the only economics class I’ve ever taken.
That title seemed clever to me back then but sly because the paper was really about types of small American businesses vanishing beneath the waves of insolvency. Right after the section concerning ma-and-pa grocery stores, I’d described the fate of ma-and-pa bookstores. Had no idea at the time that last problem would soon get right in my face; but it sure has, because with three great white sharks gobbling up all lesser fish, small fry such as The Page Turner, where I’ve worked for four years now, have practically become extinct. And the Sharks keep circling.
<< Yeah, now that I’m actually reciting this, I can see that the beginning sucks, so don’t bother pointing it out. No doubt real authors would say there’s too much info coming too fast, and the intro is too cutesy. But I don’t have the oomph to start this from scratch. Besides, that essay got an A. >>
Our store is situated very near the Pacific somewhere between San Diego and Seattle, but it isn’t really named The Page Turner. Sorry to come on evasive, but some of the secrets I plan to share aren’t mine, so I’m squirting a little obscuring ink in the waters to protect the innocent.
<< Evasive. Ha! If this story were truly meant for publication, I’d have to ink out the bulk of it. In other news, you think maybe I’m going a bit heavy-handed on the oceanic theme? >>
One innocent is my boss, and I’m going to claim her name is also Page Turner because I believe in overdoing a good thing. If you’d like an honest description, you’re out of luck and not only because I’m hiding her identity but because she changes so much from moment to moment. I’ll happen to glance her way and be stunned at how beautiful she is, then she’ll turn slightly or catch the light a different way and poof—she’s almost a hag. I can tell you her hair is dark and long, and let’s just call her eyes gray and leave them be. She always wears blue or green. Always.
As for me, I’m easy and I don’t mean sexually. I’ve got a nose that’s tragically short, too many freckles, and hair that’s either obnoxiously red or just red enough depending on your tastes. I suppose my basic proportions will do, but I’m about five pounds pleasantly plump plus another ten that’s trickier to justify. And I appear heavier than I am because, frankly, I’m in sad shape for a woman still in her twenties. George W. Bush—remember him?—had a better attitude toward his critics than I do toward exercise. Well, now you can guess where I stand politically, but I don’t mind spilling my own secrets, some of them. I’ve got a Celtic knot tattoo on my butt, an IQ comfortably north of 150, and I’m a monster at chess—almost good enough to be known outside of chess circles where I’m ranked pretty darn high. I’ll even confess that I’m somewhat bisexual, although I prefer men. And I’m fully bilingual: English and Gaelic, which I get to use at Christmas and on the phone with my mum. But I won’t spill my real name.
We’ll just call me Amy because Amy was my best friend at UCSC. And she died in an idiotic car accident that wasn’t her fault.
<< Two facts that I’ll give you for free: my name is actually Caitlin, Caitlin Mackenzie Shroeder if you must know, Mackenzie being my mum’s maiden surname; but my friend who died in the accident was truly named Amy and for obvious reasons I’m feeling . . . close to her right now. >>
I’ll explain our setup. With a New Borders within a quarter mile and a Barnes & Noble just down the street, not to mention a next gen Amazon megastore already on the drawing board, coming to a neighborhood near YOU, Page has had to be damn shrewd to keep us afloat. She’s taken a multitasking sort of approach to keep business flowing in. Here’s an example:
Few consumables earn money in this city as well as gourmet coffee, but New Borders is pushing “Alexandria Café,” which Page thinks is a redux of a discontinued blend from Starbucks and not half bad, while B&N offers Starbucks under its own name. So Page got hold of a friend who got hold of a friend who ships her the really good stuff. Illy is our café ordinaire, a terrific espresso-style brewed in an ordinary coffeemaker, and although it’s pricey, we undercut Starbucks on price per cup. But for a few dimes more, we offer authentic Jamaican Blue Mountain.
<< Now there’s a bit I’d definitely redact if I ever wrote this down and submitted it to a magazine. Anyone who read it and is familiar with the store or who merely stumbled in and took one look at the chalkboard would go “Ah ha!” and start looking around for me. I’d hate that kind of attention. Likewise, I’d think twice before bragging about our homemade pecan cheesecake and the best Napoleons ever. But I might be willing to include other things we offer since pretty much every baby bookstore still limping along has to do similar stuff. Care to guess what I mean? You’re too late. >>
Page also uses what she calls her “social hooks” to bump business. We do an art show every month, have live music every Friday night, and sometimes offer stand-up comedy. In addition, we have three semiformal bookish clubs infesting our couches and chairs on designated evenings: the Fantasy Guild, a short chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars, and finally a writer’s group, the Literary Lions, which has two honest-to-God published authors.
<< I guess the “Lions”—actually named the “Bookworms,” I’m bummed to admit—infected me with the writing bug, bless their squinty bloodshot eyes, and I didn’t even know it until now. We used to host my chess club, the Rooks, but it wound up doing too little business to make it worth staying open late; we board heads know how to concentrate. That’s why Rooks meet mostly at my house. Or did. Looks like we’ll need a new venue. >>
Then there’s something of an informal club. Every morning from around nine to noon, we’ve got the Regulars. Sure, swarms of irregulars—not the Baker Street kind—show up during those hours, and a few such even appear consistently for a week or two, then vanish as if responding to some invisible slow tide. Our five solid citizens, on the other hand, practically homestead their couches during the early shift. They all walk to the store rather than drive, arrive usually within fifteen minutes of each other, and they never begin the day’s discussion until all five are seated and equipped with java and goodies. I understand they got to know each other through the Page Turner, but they’ve coalesced into a sort of clique, an unusually accepting one that grants temporary visas to anyone wishing to join the morning blab session. Still, full membership is subtly reserved for the core group, Page and I being honorary members in those moments when we’re not too busy.
One thing that keeps Paul, Page’s part-timer, and me hopping is that our Regulars are bean fiends; most gulp down a cup or two of our best brew per hour. You heard right. Professor J, for example, inhales five cups before lunch every blessed day we’re open—that’s six days a week—which I always figured accounts for his over-the-top energy and twisted sense of humor. Around eleven you’ll hear my boss muttering, “Amy, we’ve got to cut them off.”
Even when I can’t participate in discussions, they’re worth eavesdropping on. Maybe it’s all that caffeine whipping their brains cells to a frenzy, but our five “clients,” as Paul puts it, are some of the brightest people I’ve ever met—with some of the nuttiest notions.
Maybe it’s time to introduce you around, and sorry about the bogus names.
Tara always settles in the green couch, probably to match her eyes. She’s very blond, somewhere in her forties I suppose, big enough to make me look skinny, and has lovely and delicate features. If she dropped fifty pounds, she could be—no, don’t want to go there. I refuse to be one of those chubby girls who look at other overweight people with narrowed eyes. Anyway, she’s got a sexy voice with a Scottish accent that reminds me of my mum’s, only mum sounds more like Shrek. Tara totes crutches around, but uses them sparingly. She’s a professor of marine biology on a sabbatical.
Serge—Sir-gay—has to be on the far side of fifty. He’s got a lean but not hungry look and seems taller
than he is. Very polite and always calm, decades of gentle smiles have engraved his face with gentle wrinkles. Gray hair, but plenty of it. Retired librarian, which is more impressive than you might think since his particular library has the words “of Congress” tacked on.
Professor J is Serge ten years younger, facially speaking, but shorter and infinitely less serene. Don’t think I’ve met anyone else with such electric blue eyes. Semi-retired, but only from the teaching aspect of his life. J also shows up for Lion get-togethers. He’s the other white meat: the less published of our literary giants and his work is strictly nonfiction. Archeology tomes.
Dusty is the club’s toddler, and I’ve never learned why she doesn’t have to be somewhere else every morning. I’d say she’s not quite thirty and would describe her as hemi-goth, although I suppose most people have forgotten what “goth” used to mean in a fashion sense. Anyway, hair dyed carbon-black, black eyeliner and fingernails. Eyes so dark you can’t see any pupils and lashes so long and with so much mascara, you barely see her eyes. But she dresses mostly in blazing colors and tends to show a lot of high-quality tanned leg. She’s the kind of person Page describes as “entitled.”
Finally, there’s good old Doc Abraham. Sixty, plus or minus five years, tall enough to play pro basketball, gray kinky hair, skin almost light enough to pass for Caucasian. Extra large eyes, usually all lit up with enthusiasm. Of the Regulars, he emits the most words per minute by a wide margin. Doctorate in physics and a spare one in computer science, a genuine nerd’s nerd gainfully employed in research. Just not before noon most days. British, veddy.
If I sound especially fond of Abe and talk about him more than the others, it’s because he’s the only Regular I have a connection with outside the store. He’s a Rook, a fellow chess nut, and we frequently have private matches, just the two of us. He’s good, so good that I actually have to sweat a little to checkmate him, and I must admit that he’s even taken a few when I was daydreaming. That’s three losses for me out of one hundred ninety matches so far, so you can see who pwns who.
<< Neat, huh. “Pwn” does suggest “pawn.” Or is that one of those too-clever word games? >>
Five months ago, Abe raved ecstatic about a piece of equipment his lab had just slapped together. Sometimes he called it a GHD, other times a “field portable gravitational harmonic detector.” For weeks, he blathered about it incessantly during the morning sessions and our late-night matches, but he might as well have been spouting Urdu for all I got out of it. I mean he made nice clear statements such as, “the GHD uses the polarization of microwave beams to modulate a laser inferometer.” See what I mean? I finally asked what the thing was for and he goggled at me, startled that anyone could miss the obvious, and sputtered, “Why, detecting the highly elusive; everything from spacetime distortions to De Broglie waves generated by objects many magnitudes larger than the subatomic.” At this point his eyes took on a gleam any fanatic might envy. “In one lightweight unit, Amy, we now have a device for measuring gravitational waves with capabilities far beyond LIGO 3, and which can also pinpoint oscillations, or rather the consequences of oscillations hitherto too minute to be more than theoretical!”
Seems ridiculous to end a sentence as geeky as that last one with an exclamation point, but it was right there in his voice.
Anyhow, I couldn’t summon the courage to ask him to translate all that into English but was nervy enough to ask about practical applications. I got a lovely lecture about pure scientific exploration before he went on to admit, reluctantly, that he supposed the machine could waste its time accomplishing various tasks beyond its intended purpose such as sniffing out deeply buried radioactive materials, or warning of incipient earthquakes by measuring subterranean pressures. He went on to add, in a fit of British whimsy, that the GHD could even locate a kitty that had fallen down the backyard well, so long as it kept treading water. Apparently some feline motion would be necessary to isolate the kitty’s vibration from the general vibration of the well.
Okay, that’s all five Regulars. And the cuckoo-clock widget on my screen just roared so I’m putting this and myself to bed for the night. Got an extra long day coming up. The Literary Lions and their hope-to-be-maned followers will be extending our hours. And while the writer’s group isn’t nearly as sneaky or crazed as the Fantasy Guild, I’ll want to be sharp for smuggled-in booze, which we could get busted for. So I need my less-than-beauty sleep. Goodnight, sweet whatever.
<< See what I did there with the widget? I just gave the “reader” a clue that the story is really some kind of e-diary I’m writing on a computer. I wish. And if only I could go to bed. I’ll probably conk out soon anyway. That’s been happening more lately. A bad sign, I’m sure. >>
Bummer. The Lions kept me up past midnight and today I’m burned out.
<< Got a hunch I really was up past midnight, but since it’s pitch black and I can’t see my watch or move the arm it’s on, or even touch its light button with my free arm, who knows?
FYI, I’m not loving the transition at this point in the story. And I’m beginning to see why a lot of writers are so down on first person narratives; it’s easy to overdose on commentary. Maybe I should’ve gone third person or spiced up the remarks by using blog format. Mood: moody. Nah. Ten to one, editors are flooded with bloggy tales and I wouldn’t want—hey! Why am I talking like an editor would ever be involved? I think my mind is starting to strip gears. We won’t talk about that. Okay, the next part really happened but hardly last night. Nothing good happened last night, if it was night. >>
Near the meeting’s final yawn, one of the wannabe authors asked Gerald, the most opinionated and famous Lion, to detail the worst kinds of writing blunders. At first I only listened with an earlobe because Gerald rehashed the boo-boos we hear about every few weeks, the ones so standard they’ve been named. Such as “I’ve suffered for my art and now it’s your turn,” which means dumping irrelevant junk into the storyline simply because you’ve gone through the bother of doing some research and want to show off.
But then Gerald jumped the tracks and started in with his own pet peeves. The one that caught my whole ear he called “HGTV syndrome,” although he claimed he could’ve picked on any number of informational-type cable channels just as easily. Definition: trying too hard or too cutely to match narrative with subject through imagery or puns. Seemed abstract to me until he rattled off examples:
“Watch any HGTV program where, say, a doctor is attempting to buy a house, and you’ll hear lines such as ‘Will the doctor give this home a clean bill of health?’ and ‘Now all he has to do is cough up the down payment.’”
<< Come to think of it, those oceanic references in the beginning would have to go if I were seriously working on this. I wanted them for the—now I’m showing off—adumbration, but being clever isn’t always smart. Still, the sea is a big part of the picture I plan to paint, so I’ll try not to throw the baby out with the you know what.
Gerald says you should open every story with a “hook,” usually some kind of action or quick-setting mystery to get the reader involved. So maybe I should’ve started this yarn more like: When Page arrived to open her bookstore Tuesday morning, she found a large fish flopping around on the front step.
Oh dear, we have another loser. Doesn’t exactly make you smell the weirdness, and besides, it’s wrong. Dusty was the one who found it and it wasn’t on the step until we’d been open for some time and it wasn’t that large. Maybe it’s not even so dramatic, although I suppose it’s a bit freaky to run into a fish out for a morning swim on concrete. We’re near the ocean, not on top of it. Oh heck, I hadn’t planned to change the story during the reading, but why not throw that intro in right now with a few changes? >>
Two hours after the Page Turner opened last Tuesday morning, Dusty, the last of the Regulars to arrive, found a large fish flopping around on the front step.
Naturally, she was more concerned about the inconvenience of having to step over the thing than how it had wound up in her way. And naturally, she complained about it in her usual pre-coffee whine the instant she stepped through the door. Tara, our guru on matters aquatic who’d been sitting in a pile of herself on the couch, has sharp ears. She hove up and went to investigate, leaving her crutches to hold her place on the furniture. Page and I followed.
Tara’s limberness surprised me as she squatted down to take a close look at our finny visitor, which was
about a foot and a half long, wide and flat. “Limanda aspera,” she murmured. “Yellowfin sole. Strange . . .”
“You bet,” I offered helpfully. “Usually we only get hammerheads coming in for the morning croissant.”
“What’s strange?” Page asked, blinking rapidly as we both turned to stare at her. “I mean about the species, damn it.” I wasn’t used to my boss losing her cool and wondered what was bugging her.
Tara aimed a thumb in the general direction of the ocean. “There’s a stretch of Pacific dead-zone running along our shores for kilometers. Not enough oxygen in those waters to support any kind of rockfish. And that’s why”—she turned those emerald eyes on me—“I’m taking your report of pastry-seeking sharks with, let’s say, a wee drop of salinity.” We both smiled.
<< Well, that’s what Tara should have said. What she really said was “Sharks prefer meat, dear.” Do tell. Rats, I just remembered a pearl of wisdom Gerald dropped way back when. He said fish or birds appearing in unexpected places have become almost inevitable in humorous SF or fantasy. But I don’t mean for my story to be funny, and besides, I’m stuck with Joe “Fins” Piscine because that part’s true although Joe showed up DOA.
Which reminds me: catch me in any big lies yet? You’re right, so far I’ve only lightly varnished the facts, although in real life, Tara suggested that the sole fell out of a delivery truck restocking the nearby Whole Foods and some doggy grabbed it and redirected the delivery. But where’s the magic in that? Back to the fictional fiction! >>
The door opened and Abraham stepped out, took one look at the now barely flopping creature, and paled so much he could pass for a white man who should really get out in the sun more.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked in a choked voice.
“I’d go with fish,” I suggested.
“I meant a—a non-local flounder. Tara?”
“You’ve been hanging around Yanks too long, Abe. ’Tis a sole, but definitely non-local.”
“Could someone have dropped it here? By accident?”
We all glanced up and down the street, perhaps looking for a fisherman searching his creel because it felt too light. “Not too likely,” I said.
Abe wrung his hands, which I’d read about but never seen anyone do in real life. What was the big deal? First Page freaked and now Abe. Never seen him rattled before either, but he’d been acting funny lately, excited all last week over something he wouldn’t talk about, and since Monday he’d been looking bummed. But not this bummed.
“Damn,” he whispered after chewing his lower lip pretty good. “This might mean—never mind.”
As he moseyed back into the store, Tara placed her delicate hand under the flatfish, which had ceased even twitching, and scooped it up, very casually. “I’ll see if Whole Foods will bestow some wrapping paper. I’ve a friend in the seafood department. Page, would you have sufficient room in your fridge for this if I promise to make the wrapping airtight?”
“For you, sure.”
“I’ll fetch your crutches,” I offered, unsure if she could manage them and still tote the fish.
“Don’t bother dear, I can hobble the three blocks. But thank you. Thank you both. And I’ll be wanting fresh coffee on my return.”
Mr. Fins tucked under one arm, she walked off with that weird limp of hers, as though different things were wrong with each leg. I almost ran after her to help out, but Page gave me the look and we both returned to work. I tooled over to see if any Regulars were falling behind in their daily caffeine overdose.
Got four orders of the respective usuals and got some of the usual treatment. Dusty raised a dyed eyebrow at me; Serge smiled warmly and returned to fiddling with the GPS menu on his iPhone G6. But then Professor J failed to make his usual odd joke and asked about the “commotion” instead, complaining that he couldn’t get word one out of Abraham, who was still looking worried and upset.
“Live fish on the stoop,” I said. “Dead now, I guess. Don’t think it was trying to bother anyone.”
“It bothered me,” Dusty muttered. “Gross.”
Now it was J’s turn to look worried. “Live, you say?”
“Until a few minutes ago. Apparently from pretty far away.”
“Oh, Christ.” His expression changed. The worry stayed, but he also looked angry. Was there some national I Hate Gills Day I didn’t know about?
I tried to raise one eyebrow the way Dusty can, but of course they both lifted. “What makes that your problem, Professor?” Which sounds rude, but I didn’t ask it rudely.
“There’s a, um, possibility a practical joke was involved. At my expense.” Was the man actually blushing?
“Why play jokes aimed at you on our front step?”
His blush deepened. “You wouldn’t believe me. Hell, sometimes I don’t believe me.”
I opened my mouth to answer but got distracted. Abraham had done something unheard of for a Regular. He’d up and left the store, abandoning his steaming large-java-extra-cream on the table. I stared at the slowly closing door, the full mug, then looked down again at the professor. “Try me,” I suggested.
He glanced over at Dusty, who seemed uninterested in anything outside herself, which I’d learned could be an optical illusion. “All right,” he sighed. “It’d be a relief to tell someone. Amy, do you believe in leprechauns?”
He didn’t notice, but that got Dusty’s gothy attention. Serge, far as I could tell, remained wrapped up in his new toy. I squinted into J’s blue, blue eyes looking for a sign the man was “winding me up,” as Abraham might put it, but all I saw was blue sincerity.
“Can’t say as I do.”
“Nor do I. Not as most people think of them. Did you know I was once a field archeologist?”
I gave my forehead two I-have-brains taps. “I figured as much since that’s what you used to teach and what you write all those books about. You saying you dug up some leprechaun fossils?”
He dug up a mini-smile. “Hardly fossils; I’m no paleontologist. But I am an amateur entomologist.”
“That’s news to me,” I admitted, looking around to make sure no one desired my services; Page was manning the register, and no customers were shooting up flares. “But I don’t get the connection.”
“How could you? Perhaps I’ve said too much already.”
“Care for triple sugar in your coffee from now on if you clam up?”
<< HGTV syndrome strikes again, right? Clam up! >>
He sighed. “An effective threat. Very well. Twenty years ago, a former student living in Ireland wrote me about finding some old oak piles and sticks half buried in a dried-up lakebed. He’d thought he’d found the ruins of a crannog, a sort of artificial island used as a dwelling.”
“Built by Picts; I know about crannogs. My mom’s so Scottish I’m surprised she doesn’t wear kilts.”
My wit went right under his head. “Splendid,” he said. “A fellow gravedigger and I rounded up a herd of undergraduates and went on a teaching dig in Eire.” He licked his lips and then continued.
“At the site, which certainly did suggest Pictish ruins, I noticed holes tunneled into the loam, too small for rodents but a bit oversize for your average Irish earthworm. I was curious. So as my team did some preliminary excavating, I concentrated my shovel-work on exploring one of the tunnels.”
“And you found?”
He winced. “Nothing I could’ve expected. Five feet down, my tunnel leveled off and veered into a spot where dozens of other tunnels converged. And that’s where I found it.”
“I’ll bite. You found what?”
“Something akin to a European beehive, but larger and coated with wax. I’d never seen or heard of such a thing and should have brought it, intact, to a laboratory for careful study. Instead, I made the mistake of cutting it open.”
“And little guys dressed in green popped out?” I grinned.
“Hardly. Huge green fuzzy insects, rather beelike, flew out. At least five hundred of them.”
“Whoa.”
“They buzzed me and my students and I was sure they intended to attack. Instead they all landed on their hive, dug their feet into the waxy coating, and flew away with it. But I did get a glimpse of what was inside, thanks to my, um, premature dissection.”
“What?”
“Well, honey, for one thing. The stuff kept dripping out. But the main feature that caught my interest,” he paused to wet his lips again, “was tiny little . . . furniture.”
I didn’t know whether to gasp or laugh. “Professor, are you trying to tell me leprechauns are bugs?”
“I didn’t put it together until later. Consider the folktales about the little people. Dressed in green? Check. Pot of gold? Check, if you take gold as a metaphor for honey. Small? Check. Clever? Double check. Their furniture was peculiar but marvelously crafted. Elaborate. And then there’s the matter of pranks. They flew off, but it turned out they didn’t forget me. Or forgive.”
“How do you know?”
“I didn’t at first. But little things kept going wrong. My car keys would vanish and show up days later embedded in an ice cube in my freezer. Thought some students were playing games. Then one day I opened a banana and it was filled with Solenopsis. I mean the fruit was gone, and the peel stuffed solid with live red ants. After I dealt with the escapees and a few bites, I examined the peel through a low-power microscope. Can you guess what I found?”
“A Chiquita label?”
“Very, very small stitches.”
“Huh.” I looked at him hard, but he seemed perfectly serious. “So what’d you do about all this?”
He glanced around the room, maybe to certify that no one but me was listening. He finally noticed Dusty was on board, but he only shrugged and spoke in a lowered voice. “My former student got me some names of Irish old-timers who reputedly were experts in, er, folk remedies. I hoped they’d know a cure for my situation. If there was a cure, I assumed Ireland would be the logical place to look for it.”
“I suppose.”
“Three of the herbalists just laughed me out the door, but the fourth was something else. All tattooed like a Pict himself. He gave me a—an amulet to wear.” Professor J yanked on a silver chain around his neck and out popped a copper cage barely big enough to contain a dime. But rather than spare change, it held two green shells, or perhaps one broken shell. He hurriedly stuffed the cage back into his shirt.
Dusty leaned closer to him. “What kind of shells were those?” she demanded.
“I suspect they’re carapaces, if you must know. From a Queen leprechaun. It’s been two decades now and the practical jokes haven’t stopped and have even followed me to two other continents and back. But ever since I’ve worn this, the pranks have, um, kept their distance.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “So that’s why you thought the fish had something to do with you.”
“Yes, indeed. Look, I know how mental all this sounds, but have you any idea how many species coexist with us on Earth that remain undiscovered?”
“How could I?”
“Exactly.” He took a long final sip of coffee, set the mug down, and walked out of the store without another word.
I watched him through the big front window until he’d passed beyond my view, trying to convince myself he’d been pulling my leg big-time. And then it was probably just the power of suggestion, but I could’ve sworn I saw a green blur flying past the glass, headed in his direction.
This was turning out to be an unusual day.
<< Now that I’ve heard myself say it out loud, I realize that last line was a clunker. So sue me. But tell me, have I lied about what the Professor said?
Wrong! I reported exactly what he told me, almost word for word. But remember that Professor J is the one with the freaky sense of humor and I suspect he was leg-pulling especially hard that day. But yeah, I did see a green blur after he took off. Shows you how gullible I am. Got to rest for a minute. >>
Copyright © 2010 by Rajnar Vajra
