Category Archives: Stories

These are random stories from my life.

Stories

How I Met Your Mother (or Mid-80’s Life and Love in the BU Theatre)

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Becca has known for years how her mother and I met on stage while involved in theatre at college. Now that she is attending the same university and gracing the same boards in the same theatre that we did three decades ago, she is curious about specifics, to compare and contrast, perhaps.

So…

How I Met Your Mother
(or Mid-80’s Life and Love in the Bradley University Theatre)

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Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts

 

We met on stage. We fell in love. We lived happily ever after.

That’s the abridged version. Obviously, there was much more.

When we were freshmen at Bradley, I noticed your Mother fairly soon on campus. As you know, the campus isn’t that big. And she’s cute. I was a dorky dorm boy who hung out with other dorky dorm boys. I remember noticing her right away, I’m certain it took her longer to notice me. Much longer.

One of the first vivid memories I have of your Mother was of her playing Frisbee in the quad in front of Williams Hall. It was like watching a montage scene from a romantic comedy, complete with jamming rock tunes blaring from a nearby boom box (that’s what we called iPods back in the day). There was your Mother, cute freshman, rockin’ big, permed 80’s hair, short-shorts and perfectly tanned legs. She was flinging the classic plastic disc with these shirtless, long-haired guys apparently at school on a modeling scholarship. I never played Frisbee. I always kept my shirt on. These guys looked like: what else would they be doing? The scene played out in slow motion. Wind in their hair, sun on their bare chests, pretty girls laughing. I wasn’t just intimidated, I was way out of my league.

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Cute freshman girl and dorky dorm boy

Later in the year, ACBU hosted a talent contest for the young ladies on campus. Sort of a “Miss Bradley U.” Your Mother was a contestant. She wore pretty dresses and during the talent competition did a musical number in a sailor’s suit, ”Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair,” I think. She was good. And cute. I attended the event with my dorky dorm boy gang. It was free food and entertainment on a Friday night.

Your Mother was a theatre major, so she was involved in several shows our freshman year, including a great character role, Ms. Prism, in “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Uncle Dave had one of the leads and was dating your Mother’s roommate.

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Ms. Prism from The Importance of Being Earnest and Sheriff Thomas from The Rainmaker

I was a computer science major, but took acting classes. I got to know the directors and they encouraged me to audition for main stage shows. We did six shows per year back then. I was cast in the fall play, “The Rainmaker.” It was a small cast, mostly speech team guys, so I didn’t get to know the theatre people.

Your Mother was cast in the ensemble of the children’s show that year, “Androcles and the Lion.” Your Mother’s roommate was Androcles and Uncle Dave was the Lion. I had to see the show and write a review as part of my theatre class assignment. I wrote that I loved Uncle Dave’s portrayal, but found the musical interlude involving a ballet of peacocks a waste of time. Your Mother was one of the dancing birds.

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Dancing Peacock in Androcles and the Lion

Our sophomore year, your Mother was in “The Music Man,” Greg Lhamon as the lead. Uncle Dave was the mayor and your Mother was his daughter. I didn’t audition because of the need to be early back to school in August. Grandpa wanted me home working, making money. That would have been a fun show to be in, the ensemble was huge.

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Zaneeta with Dave Houghtaling and Greg Lhamon in The Music Man

For the fall play, “Tobacco Road,” the set designer dumped three tons of dirt on stage to create a depression era farm. Your Mother played a girl who rolled in that dirt and ate a raw turnip like she loved it. Acting!

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Tobacco Road and Aesop’s Falables

 We were both cast in the children’s show in December. It was a modern take on Aesop’s fables. Your Mother was the City Mouse. Uncle Dave was the hare bested by the tortoise. I was a mute clown, an ensemble utility player. It was a big cast, and I just hung out with the other clowns…mostly speech team guys again. Your Mother hung out with the theatre people…they were busy founding Alpha Psi Omega.

Alpha Psi Omega
Alpha Psi Omega

In the spring, we auditioned for “Romeo and Juliet.” At the time, your Mother was dating a talented actor named Steve. They auditioned together and were amazing. Memorized. Full of feeling. Brought Shakespeare to life in the audition! But the director went in a different…direction. Steve was cast as Benvolio, your Mother’s roommate got Juliet, and your Mother got “ensemble.” Alas, casting life in the theatre: sometimes comedy, sometimes tragedy.

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Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet

I was cast as Mercutio, so Steve and I became friends, on stage and off. I officially met your Mother backstage during that show, but we didn’t interact much. Mostly because I was still intimidated by her. I had gotten to know Sheryl, one of your Mother’s good friends. She was stage manager for R & J and had been part of the clown cadre in the recent children’s show. Since my character was dead for the second half of the show, I hung out out backstage with Sheryl while she called the show.

The fall musical of our junior year was “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” I auditioned and got the lead! I had to explain to Grandpa that it was worth going back early for, even if it meant leaving three weeks of summer job pay on the table. He didn’t agree, thought it was a waste of time, but let me go.

I was still living in the dorms, and they didn’t open early, so I needed a place to stay for the three summer weeks. Sheryl, Dave, your Mother and some other theatre folks had rented a house on Main Street. Sheryl had told me after the cast list went up in May that I could stay on their couch. In August, when Grandma and Grandpa asked if I had a place to stay, I said yes, without providing much other detail. I barely knew Sheryl and didn’t know any of the others well and didn’t know if they were okay with me sleeping on their couch for three weeks.

This was the mid-1980’s; pre-cellphones, pre-email. I just jumped in my car in August and hoped I’d have a place to stay. I walked into the theatre and stood in the house, looking at the empty stage. People were filing in and hugging and hello-ing like theatre folk do. Catching up on one another’s summer activities and adventures. I thought how much I wanted to be part of their world, part of their inner circle. I felt alone and distant…how ironic, I thought, that I was the lead in the show, yet barely an ensemble player in real life.

Then suddenly, your Mother, who had just been hugging and swung around by Greg Lhamon on stage, saw me and came running out to greet me. She gave me a big hug and said “I understand you’re staying with us!”

She was so excited and welcoming. My fear of living out of my car and status as an outsider both melted in her embrace. By the end of that week, I had bonded with people who would be my friends for the next thirty years.

The others in the house didn’t mind me crashing on the couch either. Most of them were involved in the show too, and since it was close to campus, the house became the venue for many post-rehearsal, um, gatherings and was dubbed “the theatre house.”

The set for Forum consisted of three houses, each two levels. The musical was very energetic with actors running in and out of the houses, on and off stage, even leaping from balcony to balcony. But there was no way to get backstage from inside the center house. If you went in there, you had to wait, quietly for your next entrance.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Your Mother, who was the romantic lead, and I were stranded in the center house for a scene and a song. No big deal in rehearsal, but during the run, there we were. For five minutes every show. We had to be quiet. There was no place to sit. So we danced. While the song was sung, I looked into her big blue eyes and we danced.

It was lovely.

We sorta dated on and off that year, more off than on. I was in all six main stage productions, and she was involved with most of them. The children’s show that December was about three Polish kids with a szopka (puppet theater)! Your Mother was a shoe-in as one of the kids. I played a blustery watchman with shoes that were too small and a fake moustache that was too big.

The Christmas Nightengale
The Christmas Nightengale

I changed my major to communications and we found ourselves in a lot of the same classes. We spent a lot of time together just as friends, hanging out, studying, dating other people, but nothing too serious.

Dave had graduated, but had a job on campus. Even after I moved off his couch, we spent many nights over that following year watching HBO and sharing a bottle. So I was still at the theatre house a lot, and often “fell asleep” on my couch. It was there, with your Mother and a few other Alpha Psi members that we came up with the Mock Anthony Awards, to celebrate the memories of the past year on stage, salute the graduating seniors, and provide a reason for everyone to gather one more time on the stage. We got all dressed up, ate Happy Meals, and presented one another penguin shaped, Styrofoam mock-awards. The presentation podium was in the center of the audience, so you had to step off stage, into the audience to accept your recognition.

The Mock Anthony Awards
The Mock Anthony Awards

The next year, Sheryl and some of the other people graduated and they and Dave moved out of the theatre house. Your Mother and the others who remained asked if I would move in. They liked having a boy around to do boy things, like kill spiders and trap mice. We were all just friends. And the idea of living with a bunch of girls was a college boy’s fantasy. So I moved in.

I did not take into account that I would be sharing one bathroom with all these women. The fantasy soured quickly.

The Theatre House
The Theatre House

Your Mother and Sheryl had gone in on food together, as it’s cheaper and more fun to buy and cook for two. So your Mother asked if I wanted to do that too. I did. What I found was that neither your Mother nor Sheryl could cook and both had horrible diet plans! I changed all that. I got your Mother eating good food and balanced meals.

We were both in the fall musical our senior year, but seeing other people. Living together and watching each other date other, lesser people became a challenge for us both. We were like living out a real life, sexual tension ridden rom-com like “Friends” or “New Girl.” We would both get jealous, but not want to admit it.

The October play was “The Passion of Dracula.” Your Mother was, again, the romantic lead. I was Prof. Van Helsing, Dracula’s nemesis. I played an old man, the uncle to your Mother’s character. At some point during the run of that show, we realized that we were stupid for dating other people. We were best friends, why not admit that we liked each other! But we didn’t want any of our friends to know that we finally figured out what everyone already knew. Again, living out a real life rom-com.

At one of the performances, a former girlfriend of mine from high school showed up. She met me after the show. I was surprised to see her. She said, “So, you’re dating that girl in the show” (meaning your Mother).  I asked how she knew. She said, “I could tell by the way you looked into her eyes on stage, and how she looked back. I know that look.”

The Passion of Dracula (and me and your Mother)
The Passion of Dracula (and me and your Mother)

Apparently, we weren’t fooling anyone.

That was the last show we were in together at Bradley. We each did one more main stage show. Your Mother’s final bow was as Alice in Wonderland. Mine was in “Two by Two” as Ham. Seemed fitting. I directed your Mother as the “Felix” character in a black box production of a female version of “The Odd Couple,” the same part you played in high school forensics.

The Adventures of Alice and Two By Two
The Adventures of Alice and Two By Two

What I’m not going into are the fights. What couple doesn’t fight? We had some masterful moments, also rom-com worthy. Often in the theatre. Often in front of others. One of our directors said even at their worst moments, he’d never fought with his ex-wife with the ferocity that we fought. We are both dramatic, after all.

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But in the end, happiness. Togetherness. The true friendship was born, tested, and blossomed on stage, there in the Hartmann Center.

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And we have lived happily ever after.

Stories

A Bad Egg

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A bad egg.

Kev never thought of those three words as anything more than an idiom. Like “the black sheep.” A miscreant. Trouble.

Kev had no idea.

Kev and Jess like to spend long weekends in western and central Michigan. But they hate the traffic between there and Chicago. Six interstate highways merge together as the wind around the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Six lanes of trucks and cars towing boats and campers all vying for space and position inevitably end up in a parking lot like standstill at best, multiple lane-blocking accident at worst.

The route was riddled with various forms of pollution, noise, air quality and profanity from Kev to other drivers. “Honey,” Jess would say, turning up the volume on the Barney or Disney video entertaining the girls in the backseat, “not in front of the girls!”

Though, to be fair, pedestrian profanity rarely broke past Kev’s lips these days. He had to be taken by surprise to elicit the classic vocabulary. He had gone out of his way to produce an all new translation of the typical verbal outbursts of frustration and anger. “You flaming grunt monkey!” he might yell instead. Or “Watch it, donkey butt!” Or the girls’ current favorite, “Winkles!!” Or some combination, like, “You winkle-faced grunt monkey!!”

Jess and Kev have found taking the highways winding through small towns in northern Indiana perhaps not a faster route, but definitely a less stressful alternative. Several Amish communities thrive there, and in them they have found wonderful little restaurants and shops. Nappanee, Indiana, with fewer than seven thousand residents, has wonderful Amish shops with homemade sweets and butter and farm fresh eggs. Those Amish, they’re always up to something fresh. Jess and Kev had gotten hooked on all three.

“This butter is so creamy and sweet,” Kev told the Amish as he presented his credit card for purchase, amazed that they were allowed to accept the plastic form of currency. But honestly, he didn’t really know too much about their simplified traditions beyond their yummy food, furniture products, and friendly demeanor. “And these eggs! What a difference between these and grocery store eggs!”

“Watch out, though,” the Amish warned, “every so often you get a fertilized egg mixed in.”

“How can you tell?” Kev asked the Amish, “Do baby chicks burst forth when you crack ‘em?”

“Well, not exactly,” the Amish replied, not unlike the ominous character in the first act of a horror film. “But you’ll know.”

Kev had no idea.

A week or so later, at the peak of the July heat wave, the temperature outside topped one hundred degrees and, to Kev, some farm-fresh egg salad sounded delicious. So he placed a few of the Amish eggs in a pan of water and set it to boil.

A few minutes later, he noticed that one of the eggs looked wrong. It had broken through its brown shell in a way not unlike the Hulk tears through his purple pants. The egg white was not white, but dark gray and something even darker—and wronger—seemed to lurk within.

“A bad egg,” he thought, shrugging it off as no biggie. It happens. Kev didn’t want to spoil the rest of the batch, so he carefully removed the abhorrent thing with a large spoon.

Warning: If you ever find yourself in this situation, carefully wrap the nastiness in a paper towel, take it to the farthest reaches of your property and bury it in the ground. Do NOT put it in the garbage disposal.

Kev had no idea.

He placed it in the sink but it was too engorged to fit down the hole. Kev gave it a slight tap with said spoon to push it through. It was like setting off a bomb. The reaction was swift. The smell…oh, the smell…scampered like an evil sprite up his nose, slithered down his throat, grabbed hold of the contents of his stomach and gave a painful tug north.

Before he fell into a full on retch, Kev managed to push it the rest of the way down the disposal, blast the water and flick the switch. The sound was thick and crunchy. Was there a faint scream escaping the drain, or was it rising from within him? He made a mad dash for the powder room off the kitchen holding his breath and desperately on to his breakfast.

Jess entered the kitchen. “What is happening!?”

Kev could barely respond, afraid that a full explanation might be punctuated with vomit. “Lemons!” he gurgled. “Shove lemons down the disposal!” He had noticed a couple of lemon wedges as he’d retracted the eggs from their farm-fresh carton in the fridge.

Jess did, gagging and opening the window. They opened all the windows, the smell was horrid. Thick. Suffocating.

Remember, it was hundred degrees outside. And no breeze.

They did not have egg salad for lunch.

Kev had no idea.

He did, however, now have a greater appreciation for the term, a bad egg.

Stories

The Cat is on the Roof

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“Is everything okay?” Kev asked.

The fear he had of riding the green, double-looping coaster looming above his head was insignificant to the dread of seeing that number flash as the incoming call on his cellphone. Sweat pooled near the crown of Kev’s head, spilling into his eyes and down his spine…but it was not caused by the late-July Florida humidity. The void created by the hesitation in the response was filled with this haunting thought:  The cat is on the roof and it won’t come down.

Maybe Kev was wrong. Maybe it was nothing. He certainly did not own a cat.

Kev and Jess’s home is under construction. They are adding a couple of new rooms, new garage, literally raising the roof and putting a new one in place. They chose to remain in the house during the construction, which started two months ago and has at least as long to go. Their lives are in turmoil. They never know day to day what door might or might not be in service. They park their cars on what used to be their front lawn. They’ve gotten to know the crew of builders and tradesmen very well. Their two girls, Becca and Katie, were holding up pretty well, but the chaos that had started as an adventure was getting old after eight weeks. They were all ready for a break. A vacation in Orlando for a week would allow them to sleep in past 7:00AM without the drone of workers’ saws and hammers grinding and pounding all around.

In the heart of Universal Studios, standing under the Incredible Hulk roller coaster overlooking the central bay, Kev’s phone rang. It was Glenn, his builder. They had been in Florida only three days and it seemed odd that he’d be calling. With some trepidation, Kev answered and asked how things were going. After a brief, yet seemingly eternal pause, Glenn said, “Well, there was a storm here last night.”

When they had left their home for the airport, there was no roof on the front half of the house. The struts were in place, but nothing else. Kev asked Glenn if that was okay, especially if it should rain. Glenn assured him that it would be fine. They’d put a plastic tarp over it. Not to worry. Kev’s first thought when Glenn said storm was to worry.

“Is everything okay?” Kev asked.

“Well,” Glenn said. Then he hesitated, time stood still, and the real sweat started.

The cat was on the roof and it won’t come down.

Kev had gotten to know Glenn and his verbal mannerisms over the past few weeks of daily interaction. On one of the first days, when the concrete guy was digging in the backyard to put in the foundation for the new room, Glenn called Kev at work. Kev had asked if everything was okay and Glenn responded, “Well,” with the same intonation and subsequent hesitation he used now. It turned out that the estimate as to the depth needed to pour the foundation was off. They had to dig a foot deeper than they thought.

“What does that mean—budget-wise?” Kev asked.

“Well,” (awkward pause) “it’s going to cost an extra eight thousand dollars,” Glenn said. That was week one.

This same hitch in his voice was what Kev heard as he stared across the pond, Jurassic Park to the left, Dr. Seuss Landing to the right. “There was a little water damage,” Glenn finally admitted.

“Is it bad?” Kev asked. In my mind, the image of a waterfall was cascading into his home.

“No, no,” Glenn’s voice reassured.

Becca tapped Kev’s arm and quietly asked if they could go back to Hogwarts castle. Kev gave her the just a minute finger, which, to a child, is more offensive than the other one. “The tarp ripped loose,” Glenn continued, “but we got it tied down and everything cleaned up. Nothing to worry about.”

Okay, Kev thought, the cat was fine.

Later that evening at the hotel, Jess got a text from Deb, their neighbor back home.  We saw your builder out in the midst of the storm at 4:30AM on a ladder, the text read, The tarp was flapping madly in the wind. Is everything okay?

“You’d better call Glenn. Just to be sure,” Jess said.

So I called Glenn, just to be sure. “Yeah, like I said, I tied the tarp back down,” he said.

“Were you really there at 4:30 in the morning?” Kev asked.

“Well,” Glenn said, “it was a pretty nasty storm. It woke me up. I wanted to make sure the tarp was holding up in the wind, so I drove over to check it out. Good thing I did.”

“What do you mean?” Kev asked. Is the cat on the roof?! “I thought you said…”

“Everything is fine,” Glenn reassured. “I got it tied down. A little rain got in.” Again, the image of the waterfall. And that cat… “The insulation soaked most of it up,” he continued. “It’s under control. No worries. Enjoy your vacation.”

The cat was fine. Hell, there was no cat.

Jess was not convinced. The next day, she got more intel from the neighbor. It seemed that the giant, red, industrial-sized garbage dumpster in our front yard was filling up with wet refuse resembling our living room walls. Jess read the text to Kev, then looked at him. “Remember the waterfall?” she asked.

Of course he did.

It had only been four weeks earlier. Once the new foundation was finally poured, the four foot high crawlspace and concrete floor under the addition looked like an in-ground swimming pool just off the kitchen. Except they cut a five foot wide hole in the existing foundation of the house to tie in the new crawlspace. At the time, Kev said to Glenn, “What if rain gets in there?” thinking how an in-ground swimming pool would easily flood the crawlspace and lower-level finished family room.

“Oh, your sump pump should handle that,” Glenn assured him.

Jess and Kev have lived in the house for fifteen years. In that time, they endured many storms where their neighbors were flooded, yet they remained dry. Probably because their home is a split level and only goes four feet below grade as opposed to the neighbors’ full basements. In that fifteen years, their sump pump never went on. Not once. It was like the appendix of the house, dangling in the back corner of the laundry room gathering dust and cobwebs. Luckily, they remained rain free for enough days to have the sub-floor and walls added over the new crawlspace.

But the roof over that section of the house was still a work in progress on the night they went out with friends to a local pub in town. They had dinner and a drink and were about to leave when suddenly it started pouring outside. They hadn’t thought to bring umbrellas as it was one of those summer storms that came out of nowhere. They were seated by a window and decided to order another drink while they waited out the worst of it. Two drinks later, the rain continued full downpour. So they opted to brave the weather and run to the car.

Their friends, Dave and Amy, pulled into the expanding mud hole that was once their driveway to drop them off. As if mocking them, the rain came down even harder. So, again, they waited for a break. But after a few minutes, the extra drinks started weighing heavily on everyone’s bladders. “I have really got to pee!” Jess said. “And this downpour is not helping the situation!”

“Well, if we are going to get soaked one way or another,” Kev said, “I vote for refreshing rain over the more embarrassing alternative!”

“There’s an image!” Dave said.

“Wow, I really gotta go now, too!” Amy added.

Everyone laughed. Kev counted down from three, opened the door and bolted through the muddy puddles toward their front door, with Jess slipping and laughing right behind. They got soaked, but then got inside, and each of them made a bee-line to the bathrooms, Kev heading downstairs and Jess running up. After relieving their ripe bladders, they met in the middle of the house and looked out their former back door, into the skeleton of the new addition.

What used to be the back wall of the house was now one wall of the hallway leading to the new bedroom, bath and garage. There was a gap almost a foot wide between the new roof and the old one and the old gutter was still attached to the house just above the door frame and running down the length of the new hallway. The downspout had been removed because who needs a downspout in your hallway? Though the new roof and gutter had not been installed, that did not deter the rain hitting the old roof from doing what it does…flow. The hole where the downspout had been now gushed forth gallons of water onto the sub-floor of the new hallway. Coincidentally, this was directly above the five foot wide cut-through in the old foundation.

Jess and Kev did the math, gave each other a panicked look, then, without discussion, made a mad, somewhat intoxicated crawl to the back corner of the crawlspace. There they were greeted by a curtain of water separating the old crawlspace from the new like a roaring waterfall at a state park, the full five feet wide. They stared in awe, as you would at any wonder of Mother Nature. No matter how terrifying or devastating, you had to be impressed at some level, be it earthquake, hurricane or indoor waterfall.

While the new crawlspace had concrete floors (like the bottom of a swimming pool), the old crawlspace floor was pea gravel over dirt. Unlike the barren new crawlspace, the old was jammed to the gills with stuff. Christmas decorations and wrapping paper, old clothes, old files, old toys, old books…stuff. Full.

But Glenn was right, the ground drank the rain and flowed it back to the appendix/sump pump. Kev and Jess quickly crawled there next and removed the metal cover to watch it working.

It wasn’t.

Oh, water was flowing in, they could see that. But the sump pump had seemingly died without ever knowing the joy of fulfilling its primary function. Kev extracted the device. He unplugged it and plugged it back in, but it only whined a little and not much more. He completed the appendectomy by disconnecting it from the power and the “L” shaped pipe coming out of the four foot deep hole (slowly filling with water) and emptied (in theory) through the wall into the back yard. The waterline in the sump pump hole was still a good eighteen inches from spilling over into their finished downstairs family room, but the surface crept toward the upper edge, not way from it, indicating that the incoming torrent outpaced the ground’s ability to soak it in.

Oh, and it was just after 1:00AM. And they had been drinking. While the events were certainly sobering, they didn’t completely alleviate the effect of the extra couple of drinks at the pub. Alcohol coursed through their blood like the rain water through the downspout hole. Jess deployed her smartphone to find the hours of the area hardware stores. Home Depot opened first at 6:00 AM. Five hours to sober up. Five hours without a sump pump.

Kev decided not to wait. He attacked the source of the problem.

Because Kev hates to throw anything away (remember the crawlspace packed to the gills?), he had salvaged the discarded gutters and downspouts dispatched by the workers and stored them in the playhouse section of the swing set in the back yard. Who knows? He might be able to use these for something someday. Like today. Kev grabbed a flashlight and staggered out the back door to the play/storehouse. Their home is on a small hill, draining the rain naturally away from the house, so the back part of our property, where the swing set was located, was becoming less yard, more pond. Fortunately, Kev was pre-soaked from all the evening’s earlier adventures so the rain didn’t bother him. He reached the playhouse and pulled a few key pieces of metal and sloshed back to the addition.

Outside the former back door, in the new hallway, the water spilled not only from the downspout-less hole, but also over the edge of the gutter. There must have been a clog. Kev spotted a step ladder in the new bedroom. It was easy, since there were only studs, no actual walls. He poked his head through the opening to the sky and directed the flashlight into the gutter. Sure enough, a huge wad of leaves, seeds, and branches was damming the gutter, creating the overspill. Kev scooped the slop out and tossed it onto the sub-floor of the new hallway. Now the flow of the water pouring from the downspout-less hole increased dramatically.

Kev jumped down from the ladder and looked at the leftover gutter/downspout pieces. He needed to move the water from the open, operational gutter hole, through the hallway, and out the new back door to the yard. His years of playing with LEGOs were suddenly paying off in this dark, intoxicated, soggy moment. Kev had multiple drain pipe elbow pieces, bending various directions. He connected a long drain-pipe to the gushing hole at one end and a bendy elbow piece at the other. He inserted that piece into another drainpipe that emptied into a former length of gutter, running about twelve feet down the hallway and out the new back door into the ever expanding pond. Kev had effectively cut the indoor waterfall supply off. He was so focused on the task at hand that standing on a ladder holding big pieces of aluminum in the middle of a thunderstorm didn’t strike him as dangerous. Luckily, that wasn’t the only thing that didn’t strike him.

Back at the sump-pumpless hole, the water level was still rising (bad) but wasn’t rising as quickly (good). Kev grabbed a bucket and started bailing water out of the hole and into the nearby laundry sink. He bailed eight to ten gallons, got it down so that he could see the sub-system pouring water in. He did a quick calculation and thought (a) he would need to bail water again, possibly a few times before 6:00AM, but (b) probably had some time for some needed rest right then. So he changed into dry clothes, set the alarm and tried to sleep.

He didn’t sleep.

Kev laid awake. The rational part of his mind, calmly calculating that he had plenty of time before the need to bail again, wrestled with the panicked part of his mind, listening to the endless downpour on the roof conjuring the image of the sump-pump hole over-flowing and ruining the family room. After forty-five minutes of the internal debate, he went downstairs and bailed again, repeating the vigilant process every forty-five minutes until 5:45AM. The rain abated a bit, but still came down steadily as Kev navigated up rivers and down streams en route to the Home Depot. At ten minutes before six, people were already trickling into the store. Kev was greeted at the entrance by an employee who asked simply, “Sump pump?” Kev must have had that five-hour-bailing look, he thought. He nodded in the affirmative. “Aisle 18.”

Kev followed the stream of other pumpless patrons flowing to aisle 18. There, two more helpful employees stood ready with a choice of four to five options, based on price and capacity. Kev was suffering from a bit of sensory overload. After spending that last five hours slowly sobering via the monotonous action of draining the hole in the dimness of his house, the bright lights and cheery dispositions at the Home Depot were almost too much. Especially before his first cup of coffee. Decisions had come quickly in the night. Do this now before things get worse. Choosing between five pumps was too much to bear. Then he remembered, he didn’t have time to waste. The hole was filling again back home. Kev couldn’t be certain that Jess was manning the bailing bucket. He chose the mid-range price/capacity pump and was back in the car wading home before six.

Back at the ranch, Kev found Jess dutifully bailing, the water near to cresting the edge again. He ripped open the box of his new mid-range priced/capacity toy. Jess put the bucket down and asked, “Do you know what you’re doing?” Exactly the kind of confidence-deflating moment Kev needed right then. He had no idea what he was doing. But how tough could this be? Foregoing a verbal response, Kev attached the pump to the “L” shaped pipe and lowered it into the drink.

Interesting construction side note: they needed to add a new electric panel as part of the addition. The most logical place to install it was on the back wall, right next to the sump pump pipe exit. This was in violation of the village code, but the inspector saw that there was no easy way around it, and grandfathered us in as an exception.

Immediately after plugging in the new pump, the force from the water bucked the end of the pipe back into the inside of the house. Water was spraying everywhere, but in particular, right at the newly installed electric panel, like a fire hose on full blast. Kev jumped at the cord and sparks flew through the saturated air as it disconnected from the outlet. A little inside lightning. Fun. The stream went limp. Kev carefully inserted the pipe back into the hole in the back wall of the house from whence it came and told Jess to hold it in place. She didn’t like the plan, not at all, but Kev didn’t have a better one. He wiped the water dripping from the cord and plugged it in. It roared back to life. The pipe bucked, but Jess held it in place. Kev quickly assembled a makeshift Jess out of a chair and some wood so she wouldn’t have to stand there all day.

The water drained quickly. All was saved.

Except the water pumping outside was going right down into the exposed foundation. It needed to be farther away from the house, to the back pond. A flex hose (like his neighbors had) would be perfect, but Kev didn’t have one because he never needed one before! But he did have another ten feet of discarded gutter in the playhouse.

The dark sky was now morning and the pond now a lake. Kev sank mid-calf as he waded out to the playhouse/gutter supply. It was here, after a wickedly sobering, sleepless night of bailing and pump bucking, standing in the middle of a small lake lined by tall cottonwood trees holding a ten foot aluminum gutter that Kev realized his vulnerability as lightning continued to strike in the vicinity. In a panic, he prayed to God to protect a fool, launched the gutter at the back door, and sloshed quickly out of the kill zone.

You know those little plastic coated wires that toys like Barbies and Fisher Price Little People and any other toy frozen in some marketing director’s idea of the perfectly posed packaged scene come entwined in? Kev saves those, too. He keeps them in a shoebox. They are handy for all sorts of things, like attaching lights to evergreen swags at Christmas, keeping the thorny rose bush tendrils secured to the fencing instead of growing dangerously wild in all directions, and, it turns out, tying the gutter to the extruding sump pump exhaust pipe. It continued to gush forth a gallon or two every thirty seconds. The water ran away from the house, into their new lake. Victory: Round one of Rain vs. Construction.

Back in Florida, round two remained undecided. With the image of the recently vanquished waterfall in mind, the thought of a new one flowing through the living room was starting to stress Jess and Kev out. The cat may be on the roof. Or worse. They called Glenn again. Kev put him on speaker for Jess to listen in.  “A little water damage,” he repeated. “Insulation soaked most of it up. We replaced that. A little drywall damage, but we were going to replace most of that front wall anyway when we put in the new window.”

“So, under control?” Kev asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “No worries. Enjoy your vacation. Just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be surprised when you got home.”

They were satisfied. He was calm, reassuring. There was nothing they could do. There was some damage. Glenn’s taking care of it. No reason to stress about something beyond their control.

So they forgot about waterfalls and cats and enjoyed the last few days of vacation. No more calls to or from home.

But when they got home and walked in the front door…well, it did not look okay. The neighbors confirmed in person and greater detail that the storm had been brutal and that the tarp had ripped completely away from one corner at the height of the storm. Glenn had arrived on the scene early, still mid-storm, fighting to batten down the hatches. Clean up had gone all that day and the following with giant fans blowing and wet insulation and drywall going. Kev and Jess had expected some damage, but not this. Three of the four walls had severe water damage, paint bulging and peeling halfway down each wall. The ceiling drywall had already been replaced along with the insulation above it. It had been bad.

The cat was dead.

Glenn had lied to them. Kev’s instincts had been correct. The cat was on the roof and wouldn’t come down.

This old joke had haunted him, taunting him with the image of a stubborn cat on the roof, since that first phone call in Orlando. It goes something like this: there were two brothers. One brother was going on an extended business trip, so he left his beloved cat in the care of the other brother while he was away. The traveling brother called to see how things were going and his brother said, “Your cat is dead.”

“No! Oh, no,” the traveling brother cried. Then he said, “That’s no way to deliver bad news.”

“I figured I’d use the Band-Aid method,” replied his brother. “Just tear it off, get it over quickly.”

“But I loved that cat! You knew I’d be away for a few weeks,” explained the traveling brother. “You should have started slowly to soften the blow. The first time I call, you should have told me that the cat is on the roof and won’t come down. The next time I call, you could say you finally got it down, but he must have caught a cold, but you’re going to take him to the vet. Then you could tell me, the vet gave him some medicine, and so on. You stretch it out like that for days. Build it up so it won’t be such a shock. And in the end, you break the bad news that he passed away.”

“Oh,” said his brother. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said the traveling brother. “How’s everyone else?”

“Well,” said his brother, “Mom is on the roof and she won’t come down.”

There was a knock at the door. It was Glenn. “The damage was much worse than you let on,” Kev said, pointing to the obvious destruction surrounding them.

“I lied,” he said, smiling. “Since there was nothing you could do about it, I didn’t want to ruin your vacation.”

Any anger or distrust Kev had had for the man drained like the water in the pea gravel. He was right. The Band-Aid rip of the blunt truth would have stressed them out. Glenn told them things were under control. And they were.

His instincts had been right. Glenn told them the cat was on the roof and it wouldn’t come down. Only, of course, there was no cat.

And no roof.

Stories

Pay Attention

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Attention. It seems a simple thing to provide. Yet focus so easily falls victim to ear-buds, smartphones, status updates. Distraction, usually self-imposed, is justified in the name of efficiency, though sometimes it’s a response to the cacophony of excess sensory input. Like last night at the dinner table.

“Are you listening to me?” Jess asked, her tone burdened with the weight of those five words having become too regular a part of her vocabulary.

“Mm hmm,” Kev replied. He was not listening at all. He had tuned her out the moment she mentioned her mother. He didn’t care. Same regurgitation of the same frustration Jess had shared with him for almost two decades now. Her mother didn’t understand that Jess couldn’t just drop everything and drive forty-five minutes west to go dress shopping or couch shopping or wallpaper picking or coffee klatching or whatever whim her mother was currently experiencing. Jess had two young daughters to look after, both actively involved in dancing and theater and Girl Scouts and choir and birthday parties not to mention school and homework!

Kev knew the basics. Jess was busy. Her mother didn’t appreciate that. Or understand. Or was guilt-tripping her. Or some other tangential iteration of a theme that he had stopped caring about five minutes ago. He knew it was important for Jess to vent. She is a venter. She gots to get it all out. All.

He had suggested to her, early in their relationship and then again in the first years of their marriage, that she summarize her thoughts. Cut to the chase. Hit the highlights. He didn’t need all the details. Frankly, it was difficult for him to keep up. To pay attention. He didn’t suffer from attention deficit disorder, he just prioritized his time differently. He didn’t see the sense in wasting it listening to the minutiae of something he didn’t care about.

But Jess needed to vent in minutiae. And he loved Jess. So he let Jess vent. He simply avoided going along for the ride. But to Jess, venting meant nothing if the ventee wasn’t participating.

“What did I say?” Jess asked.

Oh, how Kev hated that question. It would be so easy to respond so inappropriately. It almost begged to be.

“Nothing of consequence, dear.”

“Way too much, hon.”

“The same thing for the fourth time, at my last count.”

“I thought you knew; I do not care in the least.”

But he loved Jess. He really did. He even found her need for excessive verbosity adorable. So long as he didn’t actually have to listen. Which he didn’t. Exactly.

Kev scanned. He read other things, a magazine, the mail, or listened to a song or the TV, or simply thought about things that needed to be done. Making a little mental list in his head. That was what he was doing right now. He had heard everything that came out of Jess’s mouth, just hadn’t actively retained most of it. He listened for key words or phrases. Like dates and expectations of him to go do something with his mother-in-law. He hadn’t heard any of those key words this time. Anyway, he didn’t think so.

“Uhhh…” he stammered, trying to buy time. Jess was having none of it.

“Being present is a gift,” she said. Jess loved that one. The pun and all. Kev had to actively strain to keep his eyes from rolling.

“Of course,” he said. “Sorry.”

But really, he wasn’t.

Pay attention. The expression is so commonplace it loses its none-too-subtle implication. Attention comes at a cost. A price is to be paid, be it your time, effort, or concentration to the situation at hand or consequences may be suffered as a result.

The very next day, Kev was at his desk at work, multi-tasking. Jess was on the speaker phone, Kev was putting a report together while also scanning emails. Someone who promised him some information won’t be able to get it until tomorrow. Is that okay? Well, not really. Kev may have to get creative or use some alternative data source.

Jess was going on about a dance show for one of the girls. The costume. The make-up. The shoes. The dates and times. The venue and parking. A red light on Kev’s phone lit up, indicating that someone else is calling. Kev recognized the number and let it go to voicemail. His report mocked him with its lack of data while his wife ironically spilled forth with more and more.

She has moved on to tell Kev about the lunch she had with her mother. How glad her mother was that she had finally found the time to fit her into Jess’s busy schedule. Then there was the menu. Every single option. The waitress. Her attitude. Her hairstyle. Her shoes. The soup du jour. The fabulous dessert, but oh, the conditions in the ladies room … not so pleasant. Another email popped up from a co-worker asking about lunch tomorrow.  As Kev answered the email, Jess asked him a question. He didn’t really hear the question itself, just the question mark in the tone in her voice. He had no idea what she’d been talking about. He started to consider how to respond.

Kev wasn’t paying attention. Busted once again.

A story is but a snapshot of the actual event. Kev is willing to settle for a stick drawing. Jess insists upon providing a full-color, artist rendering in 3D. “So you can better appreciate the moment,” she would explain. And since Kev had a track record of distraction, Jess feels the need to repeat certain key elements to ensure that they get through.

Kev doesn’t think Jess is wrong for her excessive verbosity. That’s the way she’s wired. As a consumer of information, she is ravenous. Lots of research prior to any decision. Any. He, on the other hand, tends to just follow his gut. Likewise, Jess provides TMI whereas Kev is succinct. Too much so, if you ask her. Frustratingly concise, apparently. Kev does not believe one is right, the other wrong, just that they’re different. Very different.

One time in the car, Jess was going on and on about something and Kev casually reached for the volume on the radio and turned it down.

Except the radio wasn’t on.

He was so busted.

And now this. Jess had asked a specific question and Kev had to fess up that he wasn’t paying attention. He could already hear the lecture. “Being present is a gift.” Only, like five more minutes of that kind of thing. With some repetition.

But he was in luck. Jess kept going! In fact, she didn’t miss a beat! At first, Kev thought, whew! Bullet dodged, when it hit him: he had become so distracted in his multi-tasking that he had forgotten if he had called home or was checking voicemail messages. It could be either scenario. Jess was going on about the lawn service bill now.

So, Kev tried this crazy tactic: he started listening to what she was saying. Who knows, maybe that would help.

She’d moved on to a litany of dinner options, noting in each case potential issues due to lack of either groceries or preference by the girls. Meatloaf, but we’d need to get meat. Pasta, but Katie just had mac-n-cheese for lunch. Pizza, but Becca wants thin crust, not deep dish. After what seemed an eternity, she asked another question. Here was his in, his dilemma resolved.

Kev answered the question.

Jess didn’t seem to hear him. She maintained full blather. Kev tried to break into the conversation but she talked right over him. How rude! Kev thought, taking a little offense. Then he noticed that the mute button was lit up on the phone. He picked up the receiver and said, “Hello, can you hear me?”

Jess replied cheerfully, “Okay, well, think about it and call me back when you can.” And hung up.

It was voicemail.

Now it was time to pay his debt. Kev hit replay and listened for important data he would be expected to know before returning the call. As he endured the four minute message again, Kev realized that he could have saved himself the extra effort.

If only he had paid attention.

Stories

Slaying the Decaf Dragon

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Outside your comfort zone…that is where adventure lies. Where your mettle is tested. Where that which is alien to you provides the challenge to grow, be it through victory or defeat.

Whenever Kev exits the comfort zone of the expressway and winds through the sprawling, residential neighborhoods of Chicago, he gets uneasy. The clusters of ethnicity make him feel like an outsider, a throwback to the tribal code imprinted on his DNA. Doesn’t matter if the neighborhood is predominantly Greek, black, Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Irish, Puerto Rican, or German, if it isn’t populated with folks of protestant Norwegian descent, he feels out of place. Not scared, exactly, but more cautious. Wary not to offend the local populace.

Maybe a little scared.

The small, mid-western Illinois farming community where Kev grew up had very little diversity. The most ethnic people in town were the Moranos. They were Italian. And Catholic.

Kev married into a family of Polish immigrants from the south side of Chicago. He was terrified on his first trip to the “old neighborhood.” They drove through a sea of ever-changing cultures, thousands of tiny houses crammed next to each other, the streets lined with cars, bars and words in languages he couldn’t decipher. After decades of visiting, Kev grew comfortable with the old neighborhood. He didn’t feel like he belonged, but he felt welcome.

Anchored by a Catholic church and a locals-only tavern, just a short walk from Comiskey Park where da White Sox play, the old neighborhood is made up of row upon row of single story brick bungalows with just enough room between them to run a sidewalk. Narrow streets lined with trees and cars. Old folding chairs sit in parking spaces “reserved” for residents. Front porches and stoops alive with people watching their kids run and play while they gossip and share cold beers or hot coffee. Dogs bark and barbeques smoke in tiny, well-manicured back yards, filling the air with the aroma of grilled sausages, fish, steaks and whole turkeys. Garages are at the back of each lot opening onto the alley. This is where the men live, the buildings converted into man-caves, where they drink, smoke, watch sports on TV and play cards or darts while keeping an eye on the grill and just a shout away from home.

Kev had never eaten better than at holiday gatherings and celebrations in the old neighborhood. Nor danced more, often to the point of exhaustion, usually in the company of a great aunt or grandmother more than twice his age, barely breaking a sweat and drinking him under the table. But sometime the music has to end.

They were on our way home from a wake of one such beloved great aunt. While Kev had become used to the destination and even the route there, the exotic locales surrounding the old neighborhood still put his nerves on heightened alert. It was about quarter of nine in the evening, when his wife, Jess, wanted some decaf coffee for the forty minute return trip to the Western suburbs.  Kev caught sight of a Starbucks, a recognizable icon in this sea of cultural cacophony. It seemed a safe haven. He pulled their minivan into the parking lot.

“Oh, drive-thru,” he said. That would be the safest option. No reason to get out of the car, even to take it out of gear.

There was no line at the drive-thru at eight forty-five at night. Kev surveyed the surroundings, checked the mirrors, then lowered his window and waited. Nothing. He pressed the call button. Still nothing. No sound but the Barney DVD playing in the back of the van, entertaining their seven- and two-year old daughters.

“Are they closed?” Jess asked.

“I dunno,” Kev said. He checked the mirrors again, then searched for a sign stating the hours of operation. He tried the button again.

Nothing.

“I really wanted some coffee,” Jess said. She used the voice. Kev recognized it immediately. It was the same inflection she had used when she’d been pregnant to send him out for ice cream in the middle of the night. Not guilt, exactly, more a plea from a helpless damsel to her suitor, to her shining knight. A quest! Was Kev worthy of the task? Could he overcome his unwarranted, borderline racist fears to sate his lover’s desire? Kev thought how our modern age has reduced dragon slaying to decaf coffee runs in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

He summoned a modicum of courage and said, “I’ll try the front door,” though he really didn’t want to get out of the car. Kev examined the situation. They were on a major street, lots of traffic. Lighting in the lot was good. No one dangerous-looking was in sight. He pulled to the space closest to the front door.

As he stepped out, Jess said, “Would you get me a cookie or something, too?” Kev nodded.  They had eaten pretty light, no time for dinner, only snacking on fresh, homemade Polish bakery at the wake – kolaczky, chrusciki and nut cups. Delicious! But the coffee had looked older than her deceased great aunt. So they had passed on it.

Kev left the car and the singing dinosaur running.  “Just a small decaf with cream and sugar!” Jess called out as he shut the door.  He nodded to her again.  He’d been making her coffee for seventeen years, he knew how she liked it.  Kev knew how to make it for her better than she did.

He reached the front door of the Starbucks and nearly fell over as the quick jerk he used to open it failed its task.  It was locked.  Kev glanced through the glass and saw three bright-green-apron-clad employees all casually look up at him, then back to their respective coffeehouse duties.  He tried the other door.  It was locked too.  No one looked up this time.  Kev scanned the door and found the posted business hours:  6:00am – 9:00pm.  He checked his watch to confirm that it was in fact fifteen minutes ‘til closing for these guys.  Kev rapped lightly on the door until he got the attention of the guy seated at the table, going over the company’s books.  Kev gestured at his watch, but the employee just returned his attention to his books.  The guy counting out the cashier drawer shook his head and laughed.  The other one kept mopping the floor.

Kev got back in the van and put it in reverse.  “What, are they closed?” Jess asked.

“Not supposed to be for another fifteen minutes,” Kev said, disgusted.  He drove back to the drive-thru and pressed the call button.  Nothing.

“You think this will work?” Jess asked, the subtext clearly This isn’t going to work.

“I dunno,” Kev muttered and pressed the button again. There was a dragon to be slain. He was determined to find a way.

The speaker crackled, then a muffled electronic voice said, “We’re closed.”

Kev flinched at the sound. He hadn’t actually expected an answer. He regained his composure and said, “Your sign says you’re open ‘til nine.”

After a pause, as if inside they had to discuss what response to give, came, “We’re outta coffee.”

Starbucks—out of coffee.  This dragon was wily indeed.

Kev turned to Jess and repeated what she’d already heard, “They’re out of coffee.  And fresh out of apologies, too, apparently.  Along with any concept of customer service.  Did you want me to ask about the cookies?”

“I really wanted some coffee,” Jess sighed. The voice again. A stabbing wound.  A failed quest.

Over the insipid giddiness of the friendly purple dinosaur and his friends, Becca, their oldest daughter piped up from the back seat, “I’m still hungry.”

Kev pulled back onto the street and was stopped at a traffic light.  He took in the local billboards. Most were in Spanish.  At some point, their journey had taken them from old Warsaw to south of the border. The hotels and apartment buildings that lined the busy street were on the lower socio-economic end. Kev’s stomach muscles tightened a bit and he mentally reminded himself not to start any trouble. He was a guest in another tribe’s territory. Perhaps the custom here was to close shop early. Suck it up and move on.

The Fates granted him another chance to fulfill his noble task. The light turned green, and on the opposite corner of the Starbucks was a Dunkin Donuts.

“Oh!” Jess said, also noticing the neon orange and pink logo. She perked up at the renewed possibility of satisfying her coffee fix.  Kev was already pulling into the lot. He looked for a drive-thru. No such luck.

Another car screeched around the corner and into the lot. A late model domestic sedan with a recent custom paint job. It parked next to Jess and Kev’s minivan on the passenger side. The bass from the hip-hop music blared through the closed windows of both vehicles. Barney was bopping to a whole new beat. The windows and Kev’s back teeth began to vibrate in sync.

“Can I go in, too?” asked Becca.

“No,” he snapped, a micro-second after the question left her mouth. Becca looked startled, then sad.

“Oh, take her in, let her get something,” Jess said. Kev glared at her, trying to convey with his eyes the danger that lurked loudly just outside her door. She was oblovious – oblivious to the obvious.

“Look, I’ll go real fast,” Kev said as he jumped out. He double-clicked the door lock on the key fob he’d removed the from the key ring, leaving the keys in the ignition and Barney shucking and jiving while also allowing Kev access to and from a secure vehicle. Jess called out, muffled through the windshield and the music, “Just a small decaf with cream and sugar.”  Kev looked at her with the I know look, and she waved to get his attention and added, “And maybe a donut?”

Kev hit the lock button on the key fob, answering her with a short toot from the horn and walked around the building to the entrance.

The front of the store was literally two feet from the street, which was a six-lane thoroughfare.  The door was filthy.  Kev’s attire was more formal for the wake. The girls all wore dresses and he had a black suit and tie. He was seriously overdressed for Dunkin Donuts. Two guys in factory-worker clothes pushed past him on their way out with large cups of coffee in their hands.

The single clerk was standing behind counter-to-ceiling bullet-proof Plexiglas. It looked like a currency exchange in a bad neighborhood. The Dunkin Donuts in our area must not be victims of armed robbery as often as this one, Kev thought.  The fish out of water sensation in his gut became more pronounced. The scene played into the quest theme with the decaf dragon locked deep within its keep. Kev wanted to slay the beast quickly and get back to the safety of the minivan.

A man in his thirties of Middle-Eastern decent stood behind the glass, wearing an eager smile, ready to take Kev’s order.  There was an older woman behind the clerk, talking on the phone.

“Two small decaf coffees, please,” Kev said. After all this, he wanted some coffee too.  He looked over the donut selection. Pretty sparse at nine PM.

The man picked up two empty coffee cups.  “Cream and sugar?” he asked.

“Two creams, one sugar,” Kev answered, meaning sugar in one of them and cream in both, though that wasn’t clearly communicated.

The bell at the front door chimed and with it came a familiar voice and patter of feet. “Daddy!” Becca said and ran to hug Kev’s leg. His eyes grew wide, or more accurately, wild. Had Jess really let Becca come in here, along that busy street, all by herself in this neighborhood at this time of night?! The door chimed again and two more factory-worker looking men with leathery skin and five o’clock shadows walked in the door and stood behind them in line.

“I want a pink lemonade,” Becca said, pointing to the refrigerated beverages sitting out in front of the counter.  Kev kept one hand on her shoulder and turned back to the clerk who was finishing up adding sugar to one of the coffees, and then he moved on to add sugar to the other too.

“No!!” Kev said, a little more forceful than intended. He startled the clerk and Becca, too. The walls of Kev’s paranoia were closing in on him. His chest tightened to match his clenched abdomen. “No,” Kev repeated, softer this time, “two creams and one sugar.”

The clerk looked at him with a puzzled expression. The woman on the phone brought the receiver to her breast and barked something at the clerk. It was no language Kev knew, but the meaning unnerved the clerk who flinched, then dumped both cups of coffee into the sink to start from scratch.

“Daaadddyy…” Becca said, tugging on Kev’s suit coat.

“Oh, and a pink lemonade,” Kev said. He bent down to kiss Becca and ruffled her hair. No need for her to sense his fear. When he straightened up, Kev was greeted by a key attached to a large, heavy object, dangling from a hand protruding from a small opening in the glass.  He looked back at the drink cooler and saw that it was locked.  It kinda defeats the purpose of locking the drinks up if the procedure to get them was to hand the key to the customer, Kev thought as he took the key.

He stooped down to the display case, turning the object attached to the key over in his hand. It was metal, painted but worn. Some sort of work of art, he supposed, though the detail and symbols seemed utterly foreign. He unlocked the large, steel padlock on the door of the case as he realized the object’s purpose. It was too big, heavy and awkward to easily place into a pocket. Clever, thought Kev, then fumbled and dropped lock along with the key and its decorative anchor on the floor. The clankity-bang caused everyone sitting at the tables a few feet away to look up quickly, apprehensively, perhaps defensively, from their conversations. Kev met their steely glares and started to appreciate the bullet-proof Plexiglas a little more.

“That was loud, Daddy,” Becca said.

Kev smiled at her and continued on the lemonade mini-quest. He was juggling more damsels than he could handle. It wasn’t hot, but sweat actively pooled in his armpits and at his temples. He opened the door, removed a pink bottle, shut the door, re-affixed and closed the lock and returned the odd-shaped anchor-laden key to the still protruding, disembodied hand.

Kev stepped closer to the round metal vent mouth-high on the glass and said, “And the two small decaf coffees, please.”

“We are out of decaf,” came the accented response through the vent.

Kev was stunned.

“Can I get a long-john with vanilla frosting?” Becca asked. Her eyes were wide and pleading.  Kev put a hand on her shoulder, acknowledging her request, but non-verbally tabling it for the moment.

“You have no decaf,” Kev said, not a question, but a statement of utter disbelief.

The donut guy smiled and shrugged his shoulders, “I have the regular,” he offered.  The woman behind him had returned to her animated phone conversation in a very foreign language.

“You have no decaf?”  This time it was a question, but kind of a threat, too, like, you’d better be joking about the no decaf buddy, ‘cause my wife really wants some decaf, I’m on this noble errand, see, and it really shouldn’t be that difficult to satisfy such a simple request yet you’re the second coffee house in a hundred yards to deny me this basic dragon to slay and it’s beginning to really piss me off!

The clerk seemed to understand. “I’m just brewing a fresh pot.” He’d thrown out the last two cups after Kev had yelled at him.

“How long will that take?” Kev asked, in a less threatening tone.

The clerk shrugged, guessing, “Two minutes?”

Two minutes?!  Kev thought. Jess and the baby were out in that dark parking lot next to that car full of possible gang-bangers.  Did he really want to wait another two minutes?

“Daddy…” Becca said under her breath, pulling again at his coat, reminding Kev of her wish for the long-john. He could see the decaf pot brewing behind the clerk. Maybe it wouldn’t take two minutes. Besides, he had to get donuts, too.

“Okay, fine,” Kev said. “Can I get a vanilla frosted long-john and a blueberry cake donut, too,” he added. Jess would have eaten any donut but she loved the blueberry cake.

The clerk nodded in acknowledgment of the order, “And two small decaf coffees,” he said.

“Right,” Kev said.  He couldn’t believe how long this quest for a decaf coffee was taking. He was anxious to conclude his business and be on his way. He turned and smiled at the two guys behind him in line. They did not return the gesture.

The clerk bagged the baked goods and shoved them through the hole in the protective glass, next to the lemonade, then picked up two empty coffee cups.  “Cream and sugar?” he asked again.

“Two creams, one sugar,” Kev said, raising two fingers on one hand and one on the other.

“Two creams and one sugar?” the clerk echoed, as if that was not right at all.

“Two creams and one sugar,” Kev confirmed with confidence.

“Two creams and one sugar?” the clerk repeated, still unable to believe that’s what Kev had said.  Kev knew the clerk was speaking English, but what he said seemed as foreign as the conversation the woman was having on the phone behind him.

In his weary, sweaty, stressed out state, Kev couldn’t think of any other way of phrasing the order, so he just kept repeating the same five words, “Two creams and one sugar,” as pleasant as if saying, Yep, and have a great day!

“Two creams and one sugar?”

“Two creams and one sugar.”  It had become their mantra.  On and on they went, neither pausing to rearticulate for clarity, both looking at the other as though he were an idiot.  And both being correct.

“Two creams and one sugar?”

One of the factory guys behind them said something under his breath to the other. “Daddy, I think that man said a bad word,” Becca said. Kev ignored them. He was mired in his own hell of communication breakdown.

“Two creams and one sugar,” Ken assured the frazzled clerk, thinking, Zippedy-doo-dah, this ain’t that tough, donut man! 

“Two creams and one sugar,” this time the clerk was saying it to himself, shaking his head slightly in disbelief or confusion.  The two minutes were not quite up and the entire 120 seconds had revolved around the two of them repeating the same phrase to each other.  The clerk noticed the other customers and said to them, “May I help you?”

The first man looked at Kev, acknowledging that he was behind him in line and not sure what to make of the situation.  “We’re waiting for the decaf to brew,” Kev told him.

The man nodded, understanding, then ordered a large coffee – black. The other guy ordered a large coffee with cream and sugar.  The clerk filled the orders. Kev thought he would try to ease the tension with the factory guys, make a little joke. So he turned to the second one and asked, “Only one cream one sugar?”

The man just stared at Kev without expression. If Becca had not been there, Kev thought he might have been physically injured. There was something going on between Kev and the donut guy involving two creams and one sugar, but the factory dude didn’t want to find out.  Kev looked away awkwardly, at the ceiling and then the floor.

The men paid for their drinks and left.  The clerk grabbed the two small coffee cups and dumped a bunch of sugar into each one.  Kev couldn’t believe it.  “Uhh, I don’t want sugar in one of those,” he said. This dragon would not die!

The clerk looked at Kev like he was pulling his leg.  “One sugar only,” Kev said, referring him back to the insane verbal exchange they’d had just moments ago, “But cream in both.”

The clerk was frustrated, that much was clear.  Kev didn’t think the clerk thought he was screwing around with him, but he couldn’t be sure.  The woman set the phone down long enough to ask the clerk something like, what the hell is going on?  He told her he was waiting on the decaf to brew, pointing at the nearly full pot.

He took a cup in each hand, tossed the sugar out of them both, held only one up to the glass and said, “Sugar?”

“Yes,” Kev replied.  Now we were getting somewhere.

The clerk held up the other cup, “Sugar?”

“No,” Kev said.  There, that was easy.

The clerk shook his head, finally understanding, “No sugar. Regular.”  And he went for the coffee pot.

“Yes,” Kev said. “Well, decaf.” He was pretty sure the clerk knew that, but wasn’t taking any chances. “I do want cream in both of them,” Kev reminded him quickly, before he filled the cups.

The clerk stopped, placed the carafe back on the burner and picked up the first cup again, “Cream?” he asked, gesturing with the cup.  Kev nodded.  He added cream to the sugar, then filled it with decaf coffee.  Then he held up the second cup and repeated, “Cream?”  Kev nodded again.  In the midst of filling that cup with coffee, the realization dawned on him like a spotlight in his mind.  The clerk’s eyes lit up and he started to smile, “Ahhh…two creams, one sugar!”

Good lord, what a moron, Kev thought, but smiled politely. Then it hit him. The clerk thought he wanted sugar and extra cream in both coffees. It seemed so obvious. Kev shook his head at himself, Good lord, what a moron.

The clerk passed one cup through the Plexiglas, tapped its cover and said, “Cream and sugar.”  He passed the second, identical cup through and tapped it, saying, “Cream,” then tapped the first one again and said, “Cream and sugar,” in case Kev had forgotten from when he’d told him eight seconds earlier.

Kev paid him, Becca grabbed her drink and the bag of donuts and they headed for the parking lot.  Jess was staring through the windshield, her eyes saying What took you so long? And Kev just shook his head. He was carrying both very hot cups of coffee. He asked Jess to open her window and take a cup so he could help Becca get in the van. She complied, but gave him a nervous turn around and look! non-verbal shifting of her eyes. The decaf dragon had been slain, but Kev was not yet out of danger.

As he assisted Becca, Kev looked over at the car parked next to them. Three young men under twenty-five sat smoking inside, staring in his direction through dark sunglasses. It was pushing nine-thirty. Any nervousness or heightened sensitivity to the surroundings seemed totally justified in the presence of these gangsta-types, their rap music still thumping loudly as they stared in their sinister demeanor at his Barney watching, minivan driving, suburban family. Were they carjackers? Kidnappers? Donut thieves? Kev didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out.

Kev’s cultural paranoia, which had been brewing longer than the pot of decaf, peaked. Becca climbed into her car seat. He glanced over his shoulder at the car, the occupants were still staring at him. Well, not at Kev, at the minivan. Kev did a quick estimation based on their line of site and realized that they were not staring at him, they were watching the Barney video playing on the TV hanging from the ceiling of the van. They were transfixed by the antics of the purple dino and his friends set to their inner-city soundtrack. Kev wondered if it was as synchronistic as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon supposedly was to the Wizard of Oz.

But he didn’t really want to find out, nor get into a discussion with them about it. He snapped Becca’s seatbelt into place and, in his haste, fumbled with the other cup of coffee. It dropped to the ground, splashing on his shoe and pant leg.

Becca looked back from her seat, “Oops,” she said, hoping the blunder wasn’t somehow her fault. Kev raised his eyebrows at her to quell her concern, then shut her door.

He shook the drips of creamy coffee from his left foot, too tired to even swear.  The smoke-filled sedan rocked on its shocks as its occupants rolled with hysterics at the situation. Kev walked around to the driver’s side and got in.

“You dropped your coffee?” Jess said.

Kev didn’t answer. He realized in that moment how trapped he had been in the paranoia of other cultures when he actually shared a good deal in common with those he had considered alien. Jess’s grieving family, all missing her beloved great aunt. The Starbucks gang, who just wanted to go home early. The donut clerk, frustrated with what seemed a simple phrase uttered from a stranger. The young men in the car, amazed that anyone could derive entertainment value from Barney.

Jess took a sip of the long-sought after beverage. Her face scrunched up.  “There’s just cream; no sugar,” she said.

Kev had slain her dragon. He had been blessed with an epiphany of personal growth on this trek outside of his comfort zone, a bonus Holy Grail! His quest was over. He was tired and any flame of further nobility was as doused as his coffee-soaked and lightly sweetened pant leg.

The lids of his eyes narrowed as the pupils slowly re-directed from the traffic ahead to focus on Jess. A look that said we will ride in silence now for a while and you will enjoy your donut and decaf coffee without sugar.

Except for the dinosaur’s insipid giggling through nursery rhyme songs, that’s what they did.
 

 

 

Stories

Wiggy

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Becca piloted the yellow rubber duck along the surface of the bath water, launching it through a berg of soap bubbles with a “Whoosh!” and sending it soaring for a victory flight.

As the duck dove back into the water, Kev submerged a bar of soap and launched it up his daughter’s spine. Becca laughed and wriggled at the touch.

“Did that tickle?” Kev asked, setting the bar in the corner of the tub and reaching for the bottle of no-tears Muppet shampoo.

Becca resumed her duck’s circuit back through the bubble berg. “It makes me feel wiggy.”

“Wiggy?” Becca’s vocabulary was pretty good for a four-year-old. This sounded not like a mistake, but a word she had coined.

“You know, that oogy-feeling,” she explained, matter-of-fact, as the duck again launched and plunged. “Like worms in your hair.”

Sometimes Kev would pretend he held an egg full of worms and crack it over Becca’s head, his fingertips wriggling over her scalp and down her back. Becca would squirm and squeal, “Again! Again!”

She set the sudsy duck on the edge of the tub, sat up, peered over the side, and scanned the floor near the toilet. “Can I read my book?”

Kev’s hands were busy massaging the shampoo into a lather and working it through her shoulder length blonde hair. “In the tub?”

“Yeah,” Becca said, pretending she didn’t know better. The board book pages would not survive a reading in the tub. She had not quite finished the book during her pre-bath big-girl potty time. Even though she could recite the tale word for word from memory, she did not like to leave it undone. After all, the story was a mystery that needed to be solved.

“Why don’t you finish it after your bath?” Kev suggested. He filled a large plastic cup to rinse her hair.

“It’s not a bedtime book, it’s a bathroom book, Daddy.” Duh implied.

Kev spied the book as he placed a finger under Becca’s chin and lifted slowly so she would face the ceiling while he rinsed the shampoo from her hair. Grover, the affable, goofy blue Muppet of Sesame Street fame, warned clearly from The Little Golden Book cover that there would be a monster at the end. This was Becca’s current favorite bathroom text. The suspense that built with each turning page stirred in her that wiggy feeling of nervous excitement, even though she knew full well that the book’s “monster” was only Grover himself, not scary at all.

“I’m afraid it’s too late,” Kev said. He flipped the metal toggle to drain the tub. “Your bath is all done. Time to dry off.”

Kev enjoyed these times when it was his turn to get Becca ready for bed. Jess would handle his usual post-dinner dish washing and dog walking duties. It would not be long before their little princess was too big for her daddy to help with the bath routine. Unfortunately, the dirty dishes and dog poo would never outgrow him.

Tonight, Jess had the bedtime story honors. Once that was complete and she clicked off the big light, Kev rejoined Becca in her bedroom.

“Good night,” he said with a kiss.

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Becca chimed in with the sing-song benediction of her bedtime ritual.

Kev kissed her again, told her he loved her and wished her sweet dreams.

Becca usually had no problems sleeping through the night. When she did stir, her trusty night light and soft, ragged blankie usually provided enough security to lull her back to dreamland.

But not that night.

The hard oak floorboards that stretch along the hallway connecting her bedroom to the master bedroom are riddled with fifty-odd years of creaks and moans, alerting Kev to her midnight visit before she made it to his bedside. She stood cuddling her blankie in the crook of her neck, not making a sound. Jess remained still, breathing deeply, not quite a snore. The dog looked up sleepily from his spot at the foot of the bed long enough to make a quick assessment of the situation before dropping his head heavily back to the covers.

Even in the faint light of the room, Kev could see Becca’s lower lip protruding in a serious pout.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he whispered, not wanting to wake Jess.

Something unsettling she’d experienced during the day had crept to the forefront of her mind in the dark of the night.

“Will you lie down in bed with me,” she asked, “for just a few minutes?”

They’d had the discussion about how big girls can go to sleep all on their own. And Becca had embraced that concept, though not enthusiastically. But that night’s appeal seemed out of the ordinary. She was being haunted by some new bogeyman.

Kev smiled and wiped a tear away from her cheek with his thumb. What kind of father would he be to turn down the chance to provide his baby the feeling of safety and security as she drifted off to sleep?

The mid-July night was pleasant—low humidity. The warm breeze that blew in through the open bedroom window was a refreshing change from the past week of stagnant air conditioning. Kev tucked Becca into her twin bed and again kissed her forehead. She smiled, now certain that Daddy would keep her safe. She scooted closer to the wall, providing room for Kev to slide in next to her. He remained on top of the covers to allow himself an easier escape once she was conked out.

Kev lay on his back with his right arm cocked behind his neck and stared ahead, avoiding the allure of sleep as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim room, illuminated only by the small, partially obscured night light. Kev felt as relaxed and content as any father could be.

Until an odd, shadowy movement caught his eye.

Given the room’s lighting and his state of semi-consciousness, Kev couldn’t be sure, but it looked like something was crawling across his shirt, from his belly toward his face. Perhaps the hungry bed bug of legend had come to feast at last.

His pulse quickened.

Maybe the shadows were playing tricks on him. His eyes strained to focus on his T-shirt. The folds of the shirt and the angle of the low light created ample shadows across his torso. Kev remained still, not wanting to alarm Becca, though every muscle in his body was taut. Kev didn’t blink, he didn’t want to miss any possible movement, and was rewarded for the effort. One of the shadows suddenly moved with remarkable speed. It was huge. Becca stirred beside him, not quite asleep. Kev didn’t want her to panic. He was there to protect. Yet panic seemed eager for a victim and Kev proved to be fertile ground as the enormous thing scurried closer. Closer.

Closer.

It crested the collar of his shirt. Instinct overpowered his rational mind. His left hand slapped wildly at the front of his shirt. Kev was sweating and his heart was pounding. But Becca remained unaware of the danger.

An open hand still firmly against his chest, Kev groped about it to detect the creature. A tickling at the base of his palm confirmed that something was there. An invader. If it were a spider, he’d probably crushed it dead. But he had to know for sure. Kev didn’t want some fatally wounded creature of the night exacting its final revenge on his daughter.

Then a thought hit him, the kind of thought that only comes in bed, at night, when the lights are low and the shadows long: that the thing might be burrowing into his hand. Or worse, his chest—like some horrid, tiny monster from a B-movie on late night cable.

A gasp escaped his lips and Kev leapt from the bed, arms flailing as he snapped on the lights.

Becca sat up and rubbed her eyes. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Uh…nothing, honey,” Kev tried to assure her, failing to assure himself, realizing his startled leap had allowed the fiend to fall from his grasp. Kev searched the bed, pulling back the covers and the sheets, then checking and re-checking his shirt, his shorts, and the floor. No writhing horror. No scurrying terror. No twitching corpse.

Nothing.

Becca’s innocence and drowsiness kept her from suspecting the true nature of his sudden urge to ransack her bed.

“Did you lose something?” she asked, now fully awake.

Kev slid the mattress away from the wall and surveyed the dark crevice. If it had made it that far, its escape would be certain.

“Daddy?”

He pushed the mattress back into place, cupped the back of her head in his hand, smiled and calmly replied that he thought he had lost something, but must have been mistaken. She smiled in return, satisfied. Kev turned off the lights, returned to the bed, kissed and covered his daughter, and, now very, very awake, reviewed the recent events in his mind.

It had all happened so fast, it was possible he had imagined it in a near-dream state. Had his subconscious latched onto that old saying about the bed bugs and fabricated the entire event? No. Kev was certain he’d seen it—some thing—had felt it against his skin. Yes, it was real. But where was it now? It had moved so fast. Could bugs move that quickly? His mind accelerated with his lurching heart. He re-propped his head with his cocked right arm and kept his left hand free, ready to strike at the first sign of movement. It had probably fallen to the floor when he had jumped up, and scampered under the bed or maybe the nightstand. Kev tried to focus on the thought that he was safe, they were safe—whatever it was, was gone now—gone for good.

Bugs really bothered Kev, especially at night. He knew it was silly. He understood the math. He was thousands of times more massive and powerful than any lurking critter. But the thought of even a harmless millipede scampering across his body left Kev feeling all, well, wiggy—goose bumps, cold sweats, and chills down his spine. Picturing spiders or other ungodly nocturnal nasties crawling upon his little princess in search of her blood sent Kev into paternal protector mode.

Becca cuddled close. After five minutes without further incident, Kev began to realize that the intruder was unlikely to return, especially if he’d frightened or harmed it. His breathing and heart rate returned to normal. Lulled by the warmth and reassurance of his daughter’s body against his, Kev felt his eyelids grow heavy. He could actually feel himself drifting off to sleep when he felt an itch in his right armpit, the one next to Becca. Kev tried to ignore it, but the more he did, the more the itch intensified. He was wide awake again. Becca’s breathing revealed her escape to dreamland, so Kev carefully reached over with his left hand and slowly scratched the irritating spot. Mission accomplished, he re-set his left hand in a defensive position, and resumed his vigil.

The itch returned. The more inconvenient it is to scratch an itch, the more it seems to recur. Again, Kev waited, taking in deep breaths of the fresh night air, hoping in vain the itch would abate. First the bug, now this itch. His mood had swung from wiggy to vigilant to irritated.

It seemed his promise to calm Becca into sleep was satisfied, so he began plotting his escape without waking her.

The itch moved.

Eyes wide, Kev realized that the source of the itch was something inside his shirt, clawing its way through the hair in his armpit. The creature wound its way through the curly brush, soon to pounce from beneath the fabric of his shirt to Becca’s nearby head. Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream spiking his heart rate to light speed.

His left hand swooped in, the thumb and forefinger finding their prey and, with a pinch, halted any possibility of escape. A squeeze produced a discernable crunch, the sound of an exoskeleton under duress. Kev sat up, holding the insect captive. Becca stirred. “I’m just going to the bathroom. I’ll be right back,” he told her and made a quick exit.

In one fluid motion, Kev flicked the bathroom light on with his right elbow and shut the door behind him with a kick of his foot. His thumb and forefinger squeezed together again, and he was rewarded with another audible scrunch. Kev hovered over the gaping toilet bowl, positioning himself so that, upon the release of his vice-like hold, gravity would drag the bug to its watery tomb.

He released his grip, but nothing fell.

Kev shook his shirt and frantically checked the floor. Still nothing. Was he going mad? Had it flown away? He scanned the ceiling while grasping clumsily at his armpit. He decided to take his shirt off and shake it out. It wasn’t until his head was below the neck hole, inside the shirt, that Kev realized that that was where the bug must be. He imagined a multi-legged, fanged and venomous creature lunging at his nostrils. He stripped the shirt from his back with a quick jerk. He shook the garment, checked the floor…nothing. Kev looked in the mirror—just in case.

It was on his head. Scurrying through his coarse, rapidly graying hair.

The wigginess returned, intensified. As if electrocuted, his whole body convulsed, his feet dancing as he slapped frantically at his head. Dislodged, the bug was smacked against the wall, then fell with a thud to the floor. Even after all the slapping and squeezing, it was able to move with uncanny speed. Near the base of the sink, it made a frenzied dash for a crack in woodwork. Barefoot and still freaked out, Kev whacked at it with the shirt, but the bug stayed its course. He grabbed Becca’s rubber duck and brought it crashing down on the six-legged fiend. It was an incapacitating blow.

With a satisfied smile, Kev said, “Duck you.”

Using a tissue plucked from the box on the tank of the toilet, he brought the still-writhing insect in for closer inspection.

It was enormous. Black, with brownish markings, some kind of beetle, perhaps. Not a cockroach, but…what was this? Kev brought it within an inch of his nose—it had two huge pincers, like the claws of a lobster.

That’s when it leapt back to full life and onto his face.

Kev reacted as though set on fire. Sputtering and blowing viciously out of his nose in a panicked attempt to keep it from clawing its way into his nasal cavity and—who knows—raising a small family there. He bludgeoned his face with his hands and the creature fell again to the floor. This time, shoeless be damned, Kev stomped and felt a crunch beneath the meaty part of his foot. Remembering the big pincers, he retracted his foot and watched in horror and amazement as the thing continued to limp toward the door.

Becca’s Little Golden Book on the floor and caught his eye. Kev grabbed it and threw it onto his nemesis.

Just then, the bathroom door swung open and a bleary-eyed Becca stumbled in, still clutching her blankie. She stepped squarely onto her book, oblivious to the source of the crunchy, popping sound emanating from beneath it.

“Are you done going potty?” she asked. Why else would Kev be in the bathroom at this hour?

His eyes never left the book. Grover continued to smile that Muppet smile, but now a new monster resided at the end of this book. On the back cover, to be precise. Kev stood breathless, waiting for a small claw to appear from beneath an edge of The Little Golden tomb, like a slasher flick villain refusing to die—this tiny monster determined to extract its hideous body for one final assault against his precious daughter.

“Daddy?” she asked, puzzled by his disheveled, shirtless, distracted state.

With a nervous, unconvincing smile, Kev suggested she go back to bed.

“I’m thirsty,” she protested, shifting her minimal weight to the foot not resting on the book. That might be all the hellish creature needed to escape. Kev rushed her back around the corner to her room, promising a cup of water in a moment. Back in the bathroom, he cautiously flipped the book over, revealing the very squished corpse of his waking nightmare. Kev wiped the remains off the cover with a tissue, then dropped it into the drink, flushing it into oblivion.

He put his shirt back on, filled a Dixie cup with water, turned out the light and returned to Becca’s bedroom. Her thirst quenched, Kev again reclined beside her and she in turn drew close to his side.

“Good night, don’t let the bed bugs bite,” she chanted, wrapping her tiny arms around him, snuggling close, sighing. Relaxed. Content. Asleep.

The inside of Kev’s eyelids revealed hordes of the deceased pest’s relatives swarming from the woodwork to take up where their fallen comrade had left off. They dispersed as his eyes shot open, yet every shadow moved. Squirmed. The gentle breeze crawled across the hair on his arms.

Kev lay awake for hours.

Stories

The Incontinental

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Jake, Mary and Jim all studiously pondered the possibilities on their respective menus. Kev didn’t need one. He knew what he would be ordering before he set foot inside the front door. The Pit served a mean tuna melt on wheat, and Kev never thought to order anything else.

They all worked in the Loop in Chicago, for different employers, but within a four block area of each other. Kev was the common factor among them, having worked with both Jake and Mary though at different asset management firms over the past ten years. Kev had worked closely with each of them and so thoroughly enjoyed their comradery that when they had moved on to new firms and new jobs, they maintained a regular lunch date to stay in touch. Jim was an old college friend who worked for a magazine downtown and met Kev for lunch regularly, too. At some point, Kev started meeting two of them at the same time for lunch, sometimes Jake and Mary, sometimes Jim and Jake, sometimes Mary and Jim. While they would go to different places around town, the one venue that they all seemed to enjoy was the Pit.

They weren’t sure of its actual name, they always just called it the Pit. It was a basement level bar and restaurant on Madison in the financial district. Dark, low ceilings. Residual smoke from the years prior to the ban on cigarettes indoors still hung heavy on the yellowed, stained wallpaper. The wait staff were all seasoned, mature no-nonsense women not there to flirt or chat, just take your order and quickly, thank you.

They were all about the same age, Mary and Jim in their late thirties, Jake and Kev in their early forties. Jake was a couple of years senior to Kev, and, like him, was married with a young family in the suburbs. Mary and Jim were both single. At some point, Kev had thought introducing them might lead to some sort of romance. But there was a mutual disinterest between them. Their relationship over lunch in the Pit evolving more akin to brother and sister. Siblings who annoy and barely tolerate one another, yet relish in pushing the others’ buttons.

Kev yawned. Then Mary, sitting next to him in the booth, yawned. “Don’t yawn,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “My life is dull enough without you yawning to remind me.” She dropped her menu to the table. Jake peered around his to see what was going on. Jim remained hidden, as if he didn’t already have the menu memorized. They’d been coming to the Pit every Wednesday for more than five years. There were stains on the menu he’d recognize.

Mary turned to Kev, “So, what’s new with you?”

“I got dog troubles,” he said.

“What kinda dog troubles?” Mary asked.

“In a word: incontinence,” Kev said.

“That’s not a good word,” Jake said.

“What, did he pee on the floor?” Jim’s menu asked.

“Well, yeah,” Kev said, “but that’s not what’s bothering me.”

“The couch?” Jake asked.

“Been there, done that,” Kev said. “But not the raison du jour.”

Mary curled her left nostril a bit, “Not your bed?”

“Not just my bed,” Kev said, “but while in my bed, he peed on my head.”

“He peed on your head?” Jake asked, laughing.

“While I was sleeping,” Kev explained.

“Ooooo!!” Jim lowered his menu. Now he was interested. “Was it all warm?”

“Initially,” Kev said, “but cooled quickly. Got to take a real shower, do the laundry and bathe the dog all at two-thirty in the morning. It’s like having an infant again.”

“Did you beat him before bedtime?” Mary asked.

“I fed him pork chops,” Kev said, “and gravy.”

“Ungrateful cur,” Jake said.

Jim was openly laughing, “What did you do when he peed on you?”

“It was a difficult moment, to be sure,” Kev said. “He can’t help his condition. He’s diabetic. He’s old. I mean, we’ve had the little guy for over fifteen years. Longer than we’ve had the daughters. He’s a member of the family. He’s been sleeping in our bed for fifteen years, right there between our heads. So imagine the polarity of emotions surging through me last night as I held his little limp body, him looking pathetically and helplessly into my eyes, his tiny little neck in the firm grip of my hand. On the one hand I wanted to comfort him. On the other, I couldn’t help but think…just a tiny little twist and SNAP it’s all over. This thought came so easily as the urine dripped from my hair. I’m pretty sure he knew it, too.”

“Dog’s have a good sense for that sort of thing,” Jake said.

“A quick snap would be cheaper than a trip to the vet,” Jim said.

Mary snapped a glare at Jim, “That’s so cruel!”

“Every trip to the vet for him is a guaranteed three hundred dollars,” Kev said. “Minimum. Sometimes we’ll go a couple of months without taking him in, so they call us and say he’s overdue for some blood test or something.”

“Hey, they’ve got a boat payment to make,” Jake said.

“You’ve spent a small fortune on that dog,” Mary said. “Didn’t you drop like five grand on him a few years ago?”

“What?!?” Jim asked

“Six grand, actually,” Kev said. “We started calling him the Six Thousand Dollar Dog.”

“Six thousand dollars!!?!” Jim cried out. “Is he part bionic? Can he hump your leg at super speed?”

“Rips your pant leg clean off,” Jake said.

“No,” Kev said. “But he developed the super-canine ability to sleep. And urinate.”

“Seriously,” Jim said. “How do you spend six thousand dollars on your dog and not me?”

“It was six years ago,” Kev said, “right after Katie, my youngest daughter, was born. He was still a relatively young dog. And he’s small, only eight pounds soaking wet.”

“Soaked in urine?” Jim asked.

Mary glared.

“Anyway,” Kev said. “It was late Spring – April or May. Bucket just collapsed one day.”

“Bucket?” Jim said. “Your dog’s name is Bucket?”

“My wife insisted on a small lap dog. So we got a Maltese,” Kev explained. “But I got to name him.”

“And you went with Bucket?” Jim asked, still unable to believe.

“I dunno,” Kev said. “Seemed right at the time. Better than Fifi or Fluffy.”

“It’s unique,” Jim said.

“I think it’s cute,” Mary said.

“He collapsed,” Jake said, getting them back on track.

“Suddenly,” Kev said. “No accident, just stopped moving. Suddenly quadriplegic.”

“What the hell?” Jim asked.

“Apparently he had a seriously slipped disc,” Kev said. “Pinched off all the nerves from the neck down. The vet said he thought it was genetic. He was confident they could repair him, but they’d have to operate immediately. They gave my wife and me an hour to decide what to do.”

“And it cost six thousand dollars??” Jim asked.

“Oh, no,” Kev said. “Only about three thousand. Still, three thousand dollars. I asked the doc for odds of recovery. He said ninety-five percent chance of full recovery.”

“Wow,” Jake said. “It couldn’t be like fifty-fifty?”

“No. Ninety-five percent,” Kev said. “Pretty good odds. So we agreed to the surgery.”

“And did the vet lie?” Jim asked. “Not a full recovery?”

“Well, what we didn’t take into account was that full recovery was not the same thing as immediate recovery,” Kev explained. “Post-op we pick him up and he’s wearing one of those giant plastic cone collars so he can’t lick his wounds, but the rest of him looks like he’d been hit by a lawn mower!”

Kev unlocked his cellphone and called up his photos. He found one of his two daughters and Bucket. “See,” he said, “he’s a little ball of white, fluffy fur. Well, instead of shaving him all over, they just shaved him where they needed to, front right leg, part of the belly, most of the neck area. He looked awful. And he was sore.”

“‘Cuz he’d just had spinal surgery,” Jake said.

“Yes,” Kev said. “So every time he moved, even a little, he barked bloody murder.”

“Oh, well, that’s fun to have around the house,” Jim said.

“Katie, was still a baby and just starting to sleep through the night,” Kev said. “So for two weeks, I slept on the couch downstairs with the dog. Whenever he’d move and howl, I would immediately start petting him until he’d fall back to sleep. I’d carry him outside and hold him while he did his business. Fed him by hand.”

“He’s your little baby,” Mary said.

“He’s my little baby,” Kev said. “I took care of him. Before long, just like the vet said, full recovery.”

“And then?” Jim asked.

“October,” Kev said. “He stopped peeing.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“He’d stand by the door, give us the ol’ I gotta go look,” Kev explained, “but when he went out, just stood there.”

“Kinda the opposite of the present situation,” Jim said.

“Yes,” Kev said. “He’d strain, so it was obvious he had to go, but nothing was happening.”

“So, off for another boat payment to the vet…” Jake said.

“I swear this only happened on Sundays and holidays,” Kev said. “He had a blocked urethra.” Jake and Jim both winced at the word. “Kidney stones that didn’t quite pass. Little dog. Little urethra.”

Jim hunched his shoulders and wriggled his fingers like someone was scratching nails on a blackboard, “Please stop saying that word.”

“How do they, uhh, fix that?” Jake asked.

“They’d use a little poker,” Kev said, using his butter knife to accentuate the point, “to dislodge the blockage.”

“Yee-ouch!!!” Jim said, doubling over as he sat.

“This went on every so often over the course of a few weeks,” Kev said. “Each clearing incident was three hundred dollars.”

Jim repeated, “Yee-ouch!!!”

“Finally I ask if there was any other option open to us,” Kev said. “The vet says he has an idea. We could create an opening a little earlier in the plumbing cycle, allowing any stones to pass before ever entering the urethra.”

“Wait,” Jake said. “Are you saying, he had the ‘operation?’”

“Well, he’d been neutered as a puppy,” Kev said, “so this little operation essentially made him more of a little girl dog than a little boy dog.”

“Quite an expensive route to end up with a bitch,” Jim said. Mary glared at him.

“What happened to the uhh, original plumbing?” Jake asked.

“Still there,” Kev said, “just not active.

“Sure glad we’re eating,” Mary said.

“So after that operation, you’re up to six thousand dollars?” Jim asked.

“Just about,” Kev said. “Between the two operations and the multiple pipe cleanings, we were at five thousand dollars plus. Then he started urinating all the time. At first we thought it was a result of the sex change. Nope. He’d become diabetic.”

“What’s that mean,” Jake asked, “no more sugar in his diet?”

“Oh, no,” Kev said. “That means he has to get a shot of insulin two times every day for the rest of his life.”

“Shot?!?” Jim said. “You mean, like a syringe?!”

“Twice a day,” Kev said. “For the rest of his life.”

“I don’t mean to sound cruel,” Jake said, “but isn’t it at that point you just put the little guy down?”

“At that point?!” Kev shot back. “At that point we’d spent six thousand dollars on him! Oh, no, he was going to live!”

“This was how long ago?” Mary asked.

“Six years,” Kev said. “So the vet was right. He recovered from everything and has lived a relatively normal, healthy life.”

“And now he’s incontinent,” Jake said.

“He’s diabetic, right?” Jim asked. “Just slip him a little extra insulin and no one’s the wiser…”

“If he has too much,” Kev said, “he gets hypoglycemic and starts shaking and falling down and, gets incontinent.”

“So, you’ve already tried that,” Jim said.

“What happens when he gets like that?” Mary asked.

“We give him a spoonful or two of honey,” Kev said. “Followed by a scoop of Trix. Hand-fed.

“Trix cereal?” Mary asked. “With the silly rabbit?”

“I thought they were just for kids?” Jake said.

“Mind you,” Kev said, “these hand-fed honey and  Trix cereal moments generally come between three and four in the morning.”

“You’re like a dog saint,” Mary said.

“That’d be cool if you were,” Jake said, “‘cause then you’d be required to carry a barrel of whiskey with you wherever you go!”

“Of course,” Jim said, “you’d also have to be neutered.”

When Kev got home from work that night, Bucket was the only one to greet him. Jess was busy with dinner, the girls with homework. But there was Bucket, feeble, limping, moving in slow motion, but coming to say hello none-the-less, his little tail wagging with as much energy as he could muster. Not nearly at the speed it moved in his youth, back before the daily shots, the back surgery, when he lifted his leg to do his business rather than squat.

Kev picked him up and scratched behind his ears. Bucket lovingly licked him with his pink little tongue, huffing out his stinky dog breath. But Kev didn’t care. It was tough to stay mad at this fluffy little bundle of unconditional love.

Kev tried to remember that later when he stepped in a puddle at the top of the stairs.

Stories

Blowout

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“He’s a fainter!”

Three little words so quickly emasculate a grown man.

“His hands are cold,” one nurse said.

“He’s gone pale,” said another, the one who seemed to be in charge.  “Okay, we’re calling this off!” And with that, she stripped the rubber tourniquet from Kev’s arm.

“Don’t faint on me, okay?” she said, more of a threat than request.

A third nurse provided a cool washcloth for Kev’s neck and orange juice for some quick energy. “Breathe deeply,” she said, then moved on to other duties, leaving him in the chair in the hallway of the medical center. Another out-patient three chairs down stared at him as if he might spontaneously combust or turn into a chicken. She rolled her eyes and looked away as Kev attempted a weak smile.

He had just stopped in for some routine blood tests – a couple of vials and then on his merry way. Now he’d been escalated to a problem case requiring the attention of the entire nursing staff. Kev was embarrassed. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to look at his arm to inspect the blowout. They were right.

Kev is a fainter.

He sat there, not looking at the other patient, not looking at the blowout, rolling his own eyes at the ceiling, wishing for a window, even to look out on the dreary parking lot, anything to distract him. He pondered this classification, fainter. Ridiculous. A man in his thirties, modestly successful in business and life, to be maligned with such a label. It wasn’t that he had a weak constitution or poor health. I just hate veins, he thought, and shivered a bit at even thinking the word.

He hates anything even related to veins. When his wife, Jess, lightly touches the veins on the back of his hand, it completely wigs him out. And needles!  He can’t watch while giving blood; he isn’t bothered by the pain, it’s the vein. And the blood. His blood.  Outside his body. And IVs are the worst, because the needle has to remain in the vein for an extended period of time.

He would get a little woozy just thinking about this.

That said, today’s simple blood draw seemed inconsequential. Kev had found a way to distract himself while the deed is done. It wasn’t rocket science. More like Zen-inspired misdirection. Meditation-light. Just look away! Go to a happy place. Embrace the minor pinch – there is no blood, no needle, just a pinch! Just a minor pain, like a stubbed toe or a pulled muscle. Some minor inconvenience to endure for a moment and before you know it, you’re all done!

When he got to the lab, Kev confidently exposed his right arm – his good, blood-givin’ arm – then dutifully looked away as the nurse jabbed him with the needle.  Kev was mellow. Kev was Zen. Be one with the pain. Ride the wave like an astral surfer. He took in a deep breath and stared at the fluorescent light, flickering ever so slightly, waiting patiently for her to say “Okay, that’s it!”

Instead, she said, “Uh-oh.” Which is not exactly what you want to hear from a medical professional.  Kev thought that it was the worst thing for a patient in his position to hear.

He was wrong.

In a mild panic, she called another nurse over.  “Why is it swelling like that?” she asked.

See, that’s worse.

The other nurse didn’t seem too concerned, “Oh, that’s just a blowout,” she said.

The rational part of Kev’s brain was sure the term “blowout” is common nursing lingo for something minor, but that part of his brain was being pummeled by his emotional part, currently in a state of near-panic. It did not sound good.  His so-recently-Zen-mind was now flooded with images of exploding forearms. His forearms, to be precise. Exploding.

“How much more blood do we need?” the second nurse asked as she wrapped a tourniquet around Kev’s left arm and started probing for a new vein to tap.

“Three vials,” the first replied. “I only got a little over one from this arm.”

They weren’t talking to Kev, just each other. He was some piece of meat they were carving up. He was in no mood for discussion anyway. The two things that most freak him out in the universe are needles and veins and here he is with two nurses, two needles, two veins and a blowout. His anxiety intensified as he frantically scanned the ceiling, desperately forcing himself not to look down, down where all the action was, between the left-arm probing and the right-arm damage.  The second nurse, the one probing his arm for a vein, abruptly ceased her search and looked Kev in the eye.  “Are you okay?” she asked, suddenly very concerned.

“Uhh, well, yeah…” Kev said. The sudden inclusion of him in the conversation pulled him back from the abyss of self-absorbed terror and shame, to the real world of a few adults having a conversation in a medical center, throwing a virtual damp rag on his raging anxiety attack.

“He’s a fainter!” she yelled out, signaling all nurses in the area to immediately converge on him for maximum humiliation. Kev was stripped of his tourniquet and pride and left with a moist towel and OJ to compose himself.

He recovered for a few minutes. His original nurse, the one surprised by the blowout she’d provided, returned. “Are you ready to proceed?” she asked.

“Sure,” Kev said, trying to maintain the Zen-like calm. But the butcher couldn’t find a vein on his left arm, either. She called over the nurse who seemed to be the senior nurse on call.  As she was probing and probing his arm for a vein (and, yes, freaking him out), two other nurses rushed over in a panic warning, “He’s the fainter!!”

They might as well have declared, “He’s the bed-wetter!!” The blood that everyone was so desperate to access, rushed to his face and burned bright in his cheeks, supplanting the sweat streaked pale green hue.

The probing stopped.  They moved Kev, carefully, to another room with a bed.  There he reclined and extended his left arm again. After a quick review, the senior nurse declared, “That’s it, I’m going in through the hand.”

Good thing he was lying down.

Kev started seeing spots as she secured the tourniquet to his wrist.  That hurt. As he closed his eyes to the world swimming before him, he heard footsteps running.  Kev opened one eye to see the nurse running out of the door then quickly returning with a big needle in one hand and something dangling in the other, like a giant vein.

Kev fainted.

The vial of ammonia-smelling horridness used to revive him was a virtual slap extending from his nasal cavity to the crown of his skull. He shook his head back and forth like a dog dislodging a snout full of water and tried to exhale the nastiness.

“You better now?” asked one of the nurses, very serious as she checked the dilation of his pupils.

“Well, I am a fainter,” Kev shrugged, trying to lightened the mood.

“Lie there for as long as you need,” she said. After about fifteen minutes, Kev slowly swung his feet to the floor and tested his sea legs. Everything seemed in order, so he shuffled down the hall to the main lobby and wisely collapsed in a big comfy chair for another few minutes before heading out to his car.

That night at home, Kev stared at the bandage on his right arm afraid of what horror lay beneath. Jess’s college roommate is now a surgical technician, they call her whenever they have a medical question. “A blowout?” she repeated back to Kev over the phone. “Oh, sure. That’s when someone’s taking blood or inserting an IV and the needle goes in too far. It passes through the backside of the vein. Kinda scary looking, but not a big deal. Basically the sign of bad needlework.”

Wincing at the mental image, Kev thanked her and hung up the phone. His arm ached.

Relieved that ultimately it was no big deal, no matter how bad it looked, he sat comfortably on the couch – just in case – and prepared to remove the bandage. Carefully peeling back the Band-Aid and cotton revealed a nasty, yellowish-green bruise about four inches long and two inches wide on the inside of his forearm.

Kev sneered a little in disgust, then shrugged. Nothing really to faint about.

But he did anyway.