The Program Management Office

1

 

“I need to see your passport.”

 

I handed my passport to the Delta ticket agent, feeling naked and exposed, as if somehow the story of my life was recorded in the passport for all to see.  I gave the woman a nervous smile.  She smiled back and nodded as she swiped the passport through a slot on the keyboard, placed the passport on the counter and typed on the computer terminal.

 

“And your final destination is Shannon?”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Okay, I have you booked to Shannon, Ireland, through Atlanta, Georgia.  You’re flying out of Gate 6.  Here are your tickets and have a good flight.”

 

“Thanks!”

 

My first trip to Ireland.  I turned around and walked out of the ticketing area of the Huntsville airport and walked toward the escalator, towing my luggage behind me.  So far, so good.  No international thought police reading my mind and seeing that I had been bad when I was a boy, teenager and young adult.  And why did I even think that?  People traveled internationally every day, with backgrounds that were legally complicated.  I had no legal issues.  I was just this guy, traveling by himself to uncharted mental territory.  And maybe that was it.  It was my charted mental territory that I didn’t want to take with me on this new adventure.  I wanted to reinvent myself, land on the shores of the Emerald Isle as a new man.

As a message to myself that traveling to Ireland meant I could shed my outer trappings and attempt to be someone I’d never been before, I had dyed my hair red the previous night.

 

When I walked up to the HSV airport security counter, the HSV agent looked at my passport photo and then at me, a slightly puzzled look on his face, with just the slight turn of the corner of one side of his mouth to indicate a smirk, a smile or disappointment.

 

“I don’t know.  Your hair color might get you in trouble overseas.”

 

I looked and felt like I was as scared as the rabbit in the jaws of the Siamese cat that hunted the woods and field near my house.  I just hoped the HSV agent wasn’t going to bite down.

 

“Oh, sorry, sir.  I was just kidding.  You’ll be fine.”  The HSV agent handed my passport to me and waved me on through.

 

In the meantime, I knew I had hours to think upon and worry about the validity of the man’s comment.  Sure, the HSV agent probably saw people of all sorts of shapes and sizes who didn’t fit their five- to ten-year old passport photos.  He was probably in his 60s and had seen enough one-minute stories to make a one-hour, one-man show on Broadway about the lives of travelers.  But I only had myself and my one-life story to analyze for comic or tragic effects.

 

I contemplated taking my Tylenol PM tablets as soon as I found an empty seat in the waiting area around Gate 6.  Perhaps I could just sleep walk until I got off the flight in Shannon.  But no, the Atlanta airport, as simply as it was laid out, was not something to sleep walk through.

 

“Hey, Bruce!”

 

I peeled the film of self-fear fog away from my eyes to see an Irish Cumulo-Seven employee standing next to me.

 

“Oh, hey Edmund.  Whatcha doing here?”

 

“Well, I was over here with Mary.  We’re both flying back to Shannon today.  Where are you headed?”

 

Edmund Tandy.  He was probably in his mid-30s, of slim build with dirty blond hair mixed with a bit of gray.  I never could remember if Edmund worked in IT or in accounting.  He could pass for either one.  He was a level-headed fellow and not one to drink pints after work or crack off-color jokes like some of the other Irishmen I’d met.  Mary Nagle was just like Edmund, only female and red-headed.  If Edmund was in Accounting, then Mary was in IT, or vice versa.  They seemed to travel to Huntsville a lot.  They were peas in a pod.  I nodded at Mary as she joined us.

 

“Hey, Mary.”

 

“Hello, Bruce.  Are you travelin’ with us today?”

 

“I was just about to tell Edmund that I am.”

 

“Fabulous.  So you’re flyin’ through Atlanta, then?”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

“Of course.”  Mary looked at Edmund and then at me.  “Well, I guess we’ll be seein’ you along the way.”  Mary walked off.

 

Edmund looked at me and raised his eyebrows.  “Yes, Bruce, we’ll keep in touch.  Right now, I’ve got to work through emails before we hop on the plane to Atlanta.”

 

I nodded.  I decided not to pop the Tylenol PM.  I didn’t want straight-laced Edmund and Mary to think I was a pill popper or sound sluggish if we ended up sitting next to each other on the flights over.

 

We didn’t sit next to each other on the flight to Atlanta so I just closed my eyes and thought about nothing memorable, just replaying conversations I’d eavesdropped upon while sitting in the waiting area, and eavesdropped on the conversation behind me about the explosion of residential growth in and around Madison and west Huntsville.

 

I joined Edmund and Mary for a bite to eat at a TGI Friday’s restaurant in the Atlanta airport.  I had hoped I could figure out which one was in Accounting and which one in IT but no luck.  They talked about the rollout of some FITZ accounting software module that was not going well, a task which required skills and assistance from both groups.

 

We made our way to the airport terminal trains.  As we stepped off the stop for the international terminal, I saw another familiar face.

 

“David?”

 

“Ahh, Bruce.  Glad to see you.”

 

“David, this is Edmund Tandy and Mary Nagle. They work in the Shannon office.  Guys, this is David Katzenberg.  He heads up the group in Sunrise.”

 

David shook hands with each of them.

 

“Nice to meet you.”

 

“You, too.”

 

“I know you guys are busy.  I’ll leave you to it.”

 

Mary and Edmund nodded and walked on.

 

David turned to me.  “Bruce, I was just heading to the Delta Crown Room.  Wanna join me?”

 

“Sure.”

 

David and I walked through the Crown Room Club door and past a pretty Delta agent.

 

“Excuse me.”

 

David stopped and turned toward the agent.  “Huh?”

 

“I need to see your Crown Club membership card.”

 

“Oh, sure.”  David set down his briefcase and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.  He found the card and handed it to the agent.  “And your name is?”

 

“Debbie.”

 

“Debbie, thanks for keeping us safe.  We sure don’t want the riff-raff coming in here unnoticed, do we?”

 

“No, sir.  Oh, sir, I’m sorry but your card expired last month.”

 

“Huh?  What?”  David turned to me and smiled.  “I leave this sort of thing up to my assistant.  I guess she missed the renewal notice.  Do you have your card?”

 

“I don’t have a membership.  But I think I do have a one-day pass somewhere in my bag.”

 

“Oh, right.  Gotta be a VP to get Cumulo-Seven to pay the $150 annual fee.  Sorry about that.”

 

“No problem.  I’m just a Gold medallion member anyway.”

 

“Right.”  David turned back to the agent.  “So what can we do here?”

 

“Do you think you’ve maybe turned in your renewal but it hasn’t been processed yet?”

 

“Very likely.  Or it may be that the new card is sitting in my inbox at work and I haven’t dug through the pile to open that piece of mail.”

 

“In that case, I don’t see a problem with letting you go on in.  Next time, I hope you’ll have your new card with you, Mr. Katzenberg.”

 

“Thank you, Debbie.  You’re a kind host.”

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

We walked in and found the place packed.  We had to walk around to a back room and wait for a couple of seats to open up.  David sat his briefcase next to me and walked off.  As soon as a couple of folks left, I put David’s briefcase in one seat and sat down in the other, propping my suitcase against my leg.

 

David came back with a couple of drinks and handed me one.  “I hope you like bourbon.”

 

“Sure do.  Thanks!”

 

David pushed his briefcase against the back of the chair and sat down on the edge of the seat.  “No problem.  Say, what are you plans for your trip to Shannon?”

 

“Well, I’m supposed to meet with Donnagan and Nathaniel.”

 

“You are?  Hmm…”  David pulled his Treo out of a hip holster and thumbed through some emails.  “Yes, I see.”  He looked back up at me.  “Well, I’m sure you’ll have a good time.  If you excuse me, I have a phone call to make before we go.”  David sat his drink down on an adjacent table and walked out of the room.

 

I sipped my drink and watched the people in the room.  The room was clearly divided into two classes of business travelers, the young, 20-something class who rapid-fired emails on their Blackberrys or Treos while drinking raspberry chocoholic martinis or other rainbow-colored drinks and the older, 50-plus class who smoothly chatted on cellphones about multi-million dollar deals while gulping down brown-colored drinks.  A couple of college-aged kids sat in the corner playing games on their PSPs.  I felt out of place.  I picked up the only available reading material, a Life section of USAToday, and pretended to be interested in the latest arrest of a young movie star for DUI after she wrecked her car while avoiding paparazzi.  News?  There was nothing newsworthy about that article.  Something like four out of every 10 traffic fatalities is alcohol or drug related.  Just because the arrested party had starred in some forgettable film didn’t make the incident any more palatable.

 

Just as I was wondering if I should grab David’s bag and head out the door in order to make it to the gate on time, David returned.

 

“Sorry about that, Bruce.  The call took longer than I thought.”

 

“No problem.  Guess I’m heading to the gate.”

 

“Already?”

 

“Well, it is 30 minutes before the flight takes off.”

 

“You don’t have a boarding pass?”

 

“Yes, I do, but they’ll be calling my section pretty soon.”

 

“What’s the rush?  You can still board at the last minute.”

 

I didn’t want to tell David I was nervous about my first flight to Ireland.  “Well, I want to be sure I can store my suitcase somewhere near me.”

 

David looked at my bag.  “Good point.  Well, if I don’t see you again, have a safe flight.”

 

“Sure thing.  Maybe we’ll see each other on board.”

 

“You’re flying first class, too?”

 

“Oh, uh, no.  But I think I’m only a few rows back.”

 

“Very well.  See you.”  David looked down at his Treo.

 

I took the hint and walked out of the room.  It was after 6 p.m. Eastern Time but for David it was still working hours and as a VP, David was truly a busy man.

 

The flight from Atlanta to Shannon was fairly uneventful.  I popped a couple of Tylenol PM tablets after I sat in my seat, put my Bose QC2 headset on, ate my chicken dinner 30 minutes later and slept most of the way over, waking up occasionally to see a glimpse of a movie.

 

I was awakened by a general increase in noise and movement in the cabin and saw that breakfast was being served.  I could see light outside the cabin window.  With the increase in light came my increase in nervousness, knowing that I was going to land on foreign soil soon and be pointed out as an American, strung up, accused and convicted of international crimes committed by the current American presidential administration.

 

Instead, I was hardly noticed.

 

After stepping off the plane, I followed the crowd around a corner and down a set of stairs to an area cordoned off from baggage claim.  I tried to act nonchalant with the rest of the bleary-eyed, disheveled-hair folks standing there, all of us figuring out if we should form a line.  Two booths were open, one clearly marked for EU citizens only, through which a few Irish citizens and flight attendants walked.  The rest of us stood in a loose line in front of the other booth, waiting our turn to be motioned forward.

 

“Your passport please.”

 

I stepped across the red line on the floor and handed my passport through a plastic window to a young bald man in a blue uniform.

 

“Business or pleasure.”

 

“Business.  Maybe a little bit of both.”

 

The attendant looked up at me and smiled.

 

“How many days will you be stayin’ with us?”

 

“About a week.”

 

The attendant stamped my passport and wrote a departure date for 10 days later.

 

“Next.”

 

Mary and Edmund showed me how to walk through the declaration doorway, making sure I walked to the right where I had nothing to declare.

 

 

I parted company with my Irish coworkers, picked up the keys to my rental car with a portable GPS unit and walked out to the row of cars.  I was still shaking like a leaf internally.  I was in Ireland and knew no safe place to run to.  I found my rental car, a little Citroen Xsara Picasso wagon that looked like the automotive version of the Pushme-Pullyu from the film, Dr. Dolittle, a two-headed car that looked like it was going in two directions at once.  I laughed to myself to ease my nervousness and threw my suitcase in the back.  I started to get in on the left side of the car and remembered the driver’s seat was on the other side.  After I corrected my mistake, I sat in the car and adjusted the seat and mirrors.  I tried to dial my wife using my personal cell phone but couldn’t get through.  I was ready to panic but I told myself to calm down.  I could always call her or email her from the office.  I set the destination for Cumulo-Seven House and drove the five minutes it took to get to Cumulo-Seven from the airport.

 

At the office, I found my way to the front lobby, which was at the back of the building in relations to the road I drove in on but faced the main highway.  I wondered if the arrangement was part of Irish humor or Irish tradition.  You know, never let the front of the house or business face the lesser of two roads, or something like that.

 

“May I help you?”

 

“Yes, I’m Bruce Colline, I’m here to see Nathaniel O’Sullivan.”

 

“Are you to be expected?”

 

“I don’t know.  I hope so.”

 

As the receptionist dialed a number and quietly talked with someone on the phone, I looked around the two-story glass enclosure.  The lobby was rather cool but it was December, after all.  Despite being December, the grass on the lawn out front was bright green and some semi-tropical plants were growing in containers on both sides of the main entrance.

 

“He’ll be here shortly.”

 

I turned back around to face the receptionist.  “Thanks!”

 

“Oh, and you’ll be needing a badge while you’re here.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Do you think you’ll be visiting here often?”

 

I shrugged my shoulders.  “I have no idea.”

 

“Well, then, let’s give you a temporary badge.”  The receptionist opened a drawer and dug through a collection of plastic cards.  “This looks like a good one, nice and clean.”

 

I accepted the card and put it in my coat pocket.

 

“Oh, no, you can’t go on with it like that.”

 

I furrowed my brow.  “I can’t?”

 

“No, you must have a badge holder to go with your badge.  Here.”

 

I accepted a clear, hard plastic sleeve attached to a retractable wire attached to a clip.  I took the badge out of my pocket, inserted it in the sleeve and clipped the holder to my belt.

 

“Oh, no, you can’t walk around like that.”

 

I sighed, wondering what I’d done.

 

“Look, your badge must be displayed at all times.”

 

“Okay.”  I hooked the badge to the lapel of my coat.  “Is that better.”

 

“Yes, it is.  And by the way, my name’s Nualla.  If you need anything, just dial 1200.”

 

“Thanks, Nualla.”  I turned my head to walk away from the receptionist’s desk.

 

“Wait, you can’t go.”

 

“I can’t?”

 

“No, you haven’t signed the guest log book yet.”

 

“But I’m an Cumulo-Seven employee.”

 

“Yes, but you’re a guest here in Shannon.”

 

“Okay.”  I signed my name and wrote the date in the logbook.  I turned to walk over to a set of chairs against the far wall.

 

“Wait, you can’t go yet.”

 

“I can’t?”

 

“No, your badge is upside down.  No one’ll be able to read it.”

 

I looked at the badge in the holder.  The only distinguishing mark was a quarter-inch tall barcode at the top of the badge.  I pulled the badge out and flipped it around so the barcode was on the other side.  As I did so, I backed away from the desk.

 

“No, no, that won’t do.”

 

I rolled my eyes and looked at Nualla.  “I’m sorry, Nualla.  I have a bit of jet lag.  What is it that I can do to rectify this situation?”

 

“Well, for one thing, you can turn the badge back around and turn it rightside up.  The barcode’s supposed to be clearly displayed on the bottom of the badge.  It’s part of our new EU consistency compliance policy.  I just got the email today.  It says, ‘All characters, codes, numbers and numbers must be positioned in such a way that an average person should be able to clearly read the sign, signal, label or identification card within two meters distance without using special equipment or having to make undue stress or adjustment.’  Who’s going to be able to read your badge from two meters if it’s upside down?”

 

I looked from Nualla to the badge.  “Well, I don’t know about you but I can’t read barcode whether it’s rightside up or upside down.  Can you?”

 

Nualla giggled.  “I can’t, either, but we’ve got to be consistent, anyway, don’t you think?”

 

“But of course.”  And I had finally reached the nearest chair.  I stood for a couple of seconds to make sure Nualla didn’t find anything else out of place about my badge.  Maybe it was too high for the average person to read.  How tall was an average person in the EU, anyhow?  Was it shorter than the average person in the U.S.?  Was it taller than the average person in the world?  Was the average person measured on the day she wore high heels or flats?  Was she suffering from back pain and bent over a couple of inches.  What if she’d had back surgery as a child and had a couple of vertebras fused together, making her shorter than she would have been on an average basis?  What if…

 

My tired brain continued to fire off logical and illogical questions until a side door opened.

 

I stood up.  “Hey, Nathaniel.”

 

Nathaniel turned to face me.  “Oh, hello.  Welcome to Shannon.  How’re you feeling?”

 

“A little tired.”

 

“Well, me, too.  I don’t usually get in this early but had some work to do this morning.  How about we both go to the canteen for a cup of coffee?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Nathaniel looked at Nualla.  “Is he all checked in?”

 

“Well, yes, I think so.  He’s got his badge.”

 

“Good.  Did you issue him a phone number?”

 

“Phone number?”  Nualla gave Nathaniel a disapproving look.

 

“Oh, right.  That’s IT’s responsibility now, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes, Nathaniel.  As of a couple of weeks ago, too.  I know you got the email announcin’ it.”

 

“Right.”  Nathaniel turned to me, slapped me on the back and led me out of the lobby.

 

As we walked down a corridor at the front of the building, I saw that except for three or four offices along the walls, everyone worked in cubicles.  A prairie dog farm in Ireland!

 

“So, Bruce, how was your trip.”

 

“Not very exciting.”

 

“I like those.  Say, why don’t we grab Donnagan?”

 

“Okay.”

 

Nathaniel led me through the cubicle maze to another major corridor.  Lined on both sides of the cubicle walls along the corridor were Christmas decorations.  They were all familiar in form and style except for the expression, “Happy Christmas,” which was plastered across the wall of a double cubicle.

 

Nathaniel leaned his head over the double cubicle wall.  “Ah, here we are.  Donnagan, you ready for some coffee?”

 

“Is he here already?” I heard a muffled voice say.

 

“Afraid so.”

 

Donnagan stepped outside of the cubicle.  “Very well.  Hello, Bruce.  How was your flight?”

 

“Fine.”

 

“’Fine,’” Donnagan mimicked in a John Wayne accent.  “’I reckon you cowboys have it pretty easy coming over here.  Eh, pardner?’”  Donnagan stuck out his hand and shook my hand vigorously.

 

“Sure.”

 

Donnagan returned to his regular voice.  “Well, welcome to Cumulo-Seven House.  Nathaniel, have you shown him around?”

 

“Not yet.  I figured with it being only 8 o’clock, we could grab a coffee and sit down to talk in the canteen before it got too crowded.”

 

Donnagan responded in a mock Oxford English accent.  “’Marvelous idea.  Simply brilliant.’”

 

I followed Donnagan and Nathaniel to the other side of the cube farm.  On the way, I noticed letters of the alphabet posted on columns, much the way row numbers are posted in shopping mall parking lots to help you find your way back.  I figured that was the only way the employees here could find their way around.  “Jack, come over to my place.  Just walk over to C, follow the wall until you get to L, take a right turn and walk down to W.  I’m three cubicle doors over.”

 

Inside the canteen, which was really nice, a much airier, friendlier version of the typical lunch rooms and cafeterias of businesses back home, a young man in a chef’s outfit bellowed at us.  “GOOD MORNING!  GOOD MORNING, GENTLEMEN!”  He walked from around the breakfast counter to shake my hand.  “Liam, glad to meet you.  Are you from the States?”

 

“Yes, I am.  Bruce Colline.”

 

“Well, Bruce Colline, I can sarve you a mighty breakfast to quench your tastebuds and have you askin’ for more.  What can I get fer you?”

 

“I…uh…I just ate on the plane.”

 

“Ah, that was nothing.  Fluff.  How about some fresh rashers, pork sausage, black puddin’ and soda bread to start your day?  You’ll be regrettin’ it in an hour or two if you don’t have a proper Irish breakfast.”

 

Donnagan nudged my shoulder.  “Go on, Bruce.  You only live once.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“FANTASTIC!”  Liam’s voice echoed inside the two-story canteen.  I took the tray of food that would feed a family of four and joined Donnagan and Nathaniel at the coffee station.

 

“’Well, pilgrim, what’ll it be?  Black or cappuccino?’”

 

“Black is fine.”

 

Donnagan pressed a button on a grinding machine and a freshly ground cup of black Brazilian coffee was poured for me.

 

There were a few other early birds sitting in the canteen near the coffee machine so Nathaniel led us to a deserted corner.

 

I swallowed hard and dug into my breakfast.  I wasn’t really hungry but I didn’t want to upset the over-ebullient chef.

 

“Well, Bruce, what do you think so far?”

 

Of course, Nathaniel asked the question just as I stuffed a fork of sausage in my mouth.  “Mmm-hmm,” was all I could manage.

 

Nathaniel laughed.  “Sorry about that.  Guess you’re hungrier than you thought, eh?”

 

I nodded.

 

“Very good.  Donnagan, anything to say to Bruce while he’s putting away breakfast?”

 

“Indeed, indeed.  Bruce, as you can see, we have lovely weather here.”  Donnagan pointed out the window to the cloudy sky and hard blowing wind which was bending all the bushes at a 45-degree angle.  “I suppose if I were you, I’d be wonderin’ why I came all the way over here just to increase my cholesterol count or have a heart attack in front of the likes of us.”

 

I nodded and smiled, trying not to open my mouth.

“See, I told you.  But seriously, Bruce.  We’ve got some news to share with you.  You’ve probably heard the good news about the Qwerty-Queue folks in Huntsville.”

 

I shook my head and took another bite.

 

“Well, Patrick Keating’s decided to absorb them into his group over there.  That’s good news for them but bad news for us.  It means that we’ve essentially lost six or eight engineers to work on Qwerty-Queue, and just when we’ve closed a bunch of deals with companies that have seats on the New York and London stock exchanges.”

 

I kept eating.

 

“In addition to the Qwerty-Queue product line, there’s another product line that the Shannon engineering team owns called TINZ.  Have you heard of it?”

 

“Through L3, yes,” I managed to say around a piece of bread in my left cheek.

 

“Right.  And it’s about time we renewed the TINZ software, too.”

 

“That’s right, Donnagan.”  Nathaniel sipped his coffee.  “Bruce, I’m guessing from the look on your face that you don’t understand the impact this has on our company.”

 

I cut a section of blood pudding in half and wondered why they called it blood pudding.  It looked like a piece of beef sausage that had been cooked too long.  I speared a piece and held it up to my nose.

 

Donnagan laughed.  “Don’t worry, Bruce, it won’t bite you!”

 

I ate the crumbly sausage.  It didn’t taste bad.  Just a little dry and crunchy.  I washed down the meal with a couple of gulps of coffee.

 

“No, I guess I don’t.”

 

“Just as I thought.”  Nathaniel looked at his watch.  “I have a conference call in a few minutes.  Why don’t you and Donnagan take a tour of the facilities and get back with me in half an hour.”

 

I looked at Donnagan and he nodded.   “Sure.”

 

As Nathaniel walked away, Donnagan leaned over the table to me.  “Bruce, as you’ll see, we like to have fun around here but don’t let exteriors fool you.  We’re very serious.”  He laughed and stood up.  “Have you been to the manufacturing area?”

 

“Uh, no.”

 

“Good, then let’s go for a tour.”

 

Donnagan led me out of the canteen.  I waved at Liam who was busy “sarving” other Cumulo-Seven employees.  He yelled over the tops of their heads. “DIDN’T I TELL YOU YOU’D ENJOY IT?!”

 

“YES!”

 

We walked down a side corridor and came upon a door with no handle or doorknob.  Donnagan held his badge up to a spot about three feet up the wall and the door popped open.  We stepped into an anteroom with another similar door on the other side.  Donnagan grabbed a couple of yellow-and-green straps from a bucket on the floor and handed me two of them.

 

“Here, you’ll have to put these on your feet.  We are very serious about static shock.”  Donnagan hooked the straps across the toes of his shoes and hooked them onto his trouser cuffs.  He then stepped on a metal pad and pressed a button on the wall.  He let go of the button after a green LED light came on.  I followed suit and then the far door opened automatically.

 

Donnagan looked at me and smiled.  “Amazing technology, isn’t it?”

 

We stepped out into a three-story tall manufacturing room.  There were rows of small work tables where employees were attaching circuit boards, faceplates and screws onto metal chassis.  With the concrete floor, metal walls and ceilings, the whole room buzzed with the sound of machinery.

 

Donnagan raised his voice.  “This is where we install our secret ingredients.”

 

I nodded and looked around the room.  Donnagan tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a caged-in area.  “Not here.  Over there.”

 

I followed Donnagan along the rightside wall but walked a few steps to his left to get a closer look at the workstations.  The strap on my left shoe let out a loud chirp.  Donnagan stopped and turned around.  He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back toward the wall as he pointed to the floor.  I had stepped across a red line on the floor.

 

“You’re not supposed to step out on the manufacturing floor unless you’ve had electrostatic discharge training.  Our straps are not certified for ESD-trained personnel.”

 

I nodded and followed Donnagan as he walked over to the caged-in area.

 

“Bruce, I know you’re not familiar with the innards of a TINZ 5000 but I’m certain that as a former test engineer, you’ll appreciate this part of our manufacturing process.”  Donnagan held his badge up to a box on the cage door and the door unlatched.  As Donnagan opened the door, I saw what appeared to be an optical illusion.  Before he had opened the door, I thought the cage was just that – an open mesh fence that allowed people outside the cage to see what was going on inside the cage but not able to step in.  The same fluorescent lighting that lit up the factory floor also lit up the caged-in area.  However, through the doorway, I saw that an entirely different room was inside the cage.  It was shrouded in darkness and the only light came from rows of large LCD monitors.

 

Donnagan pulled me inside and closed the door.

 

“Welcome to the Secret Ingredients Room.”  Donnagan spoke in a normal tone of voice but his voice seemed so loud in the enclosed space.

 

Ten or 12 technicians sat stooped over computer keyboards, typing furiously while simultaneously viewing several computer monitors at once.

 

I looked at Donnagan and gave him a questioning look.

 

“This, Bruce, is where the TINZ units are programmed.  And soon, we’ll be able to do the same thing for the Qwerty-Queue product line.  Well, at least I think that’s what we’re going to do.  Nathaniel’ll have to give you the technical details on that.  So what do you think?”

 

I watched the changing images of the screens.  Several of the displays seemed to be posting active stock market quotes.  Others were scrolling business and financial news.  Only a couple of the technicians seemed to be actively working on software or firmware code.

 

“Impressive.”

 

“We think so.  Well, we best be movin’ along.  I want to introduce you to a couple of folks in Marketing before we get with Nathaniel.”

 

 

When I met Donnagan’s two marketing assistants, two cute brunettes who were fresh out of college and working on a portable wooden platform that could hold a 42-inch plasma TV and three KVM switches, Donnagan also pointed out the empty cubicle nearby, emphasizing that there was room for one more person on his team.  I nodded, not saying anything, figuring that Donnagan was probing to see if I knew anyone that had applied for a Marketing job position in Shannon.

 

Nathaniel closed the door as we entered his office.

 

“Bruce, I hope we’re not wearing you out too much.  To be honest, I thought you’d be in the office after 10.  Most of you Americans check into the hotel and catch a nap.”

 

“Oh, really.  I didn’t know that.”

 

“Just as well.  We can get a lot done before everyone wanders in around 9.  So, did you get the tour?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Donnagan slapped me on the back.  “This guy really knows his stuff.  I could tell by the way he was taking it all in that he knows more about our manufacturing area than he’s willing to say.  Aren’t you, Bruce?”

 

I shrugged my shoulders and suppressed a yawn.

 

“Why do you think I invited him over here, Donnagan?”

 

Donnagan switched to his John Wayne voice.  “’I don’t suppose you’d think he was the next generation version of The Quiet Man, do ya?’”

 

I laughed.  Donnagan and Nathaniel looked at me.  “Well, if I find a fiery redhead to marry while I’m over here, my wife’ll kill me, if the redhead’s brother doesn’t kill me first.”

 

Donnagan and Nathaniel laughed.

 

Nathaniel motioned us to sit at the small conference table in his office.

 

“Bruce, now that you’ve seen the TINZ programming room, you’ll understand more about what we’re doing here.  And I hope you’ll understand the urgency we face in finding a replacement for the engineers we lost on the Qwerty-Queue line.  We’d hoped to get some of the Qwerty-Queue engineers over here on a temporary basis to help integrate its technology with that of TINZ.  Since Patrick is calling the shots, he decided that the Qwerty-Queue sales didn’t justify the expense of temporary employee relocation.  What Patrick doesn’t know but for some reason, you do, is that our sales of Qwerty-Queue to the financial markets is just a one-time investment that we’d be willing to pay to get our equipment in place.  Do you know what I’m saying?”

 

“Sort of.”

 

“What don’t you understand?”

 

“I know what you’re saying about Patrick.  He’s looking at this as purely an engineering decision whereas you’ve got a different picture in mind.”

 

“Precisely.  Patrick is an excellent engineering VP and I’m glad to be working for him.  At the same time, I’m still working for Geoffrey McCabe.  Geoffrey has more in mind for Qwerty-Queue than just a technological solution.  And that’s why he asked us to invite you here.  He’s heard that you’re familiar with every product that Cumulo-Seven makes and he’s assured me that you are very aware of the importance of the synergy our products bring to our major stockholders.”

 

I nodded.  Geoffrey had made a similar remark before.  He thought that as a real global L3 coordinator, I had access to all the engineering design teams around the world and was intimately familiar with current and future product capabilities.

 

Nathaniel stood up and started drawing a diagram on the white board behind him.  “You see, when we first created the TINZ product line, we thought we were just providing another elegant analog KVM switching solution.  But then, while Donnagan was demonstrating the TINZ to an IT department of a TV station in New York, it dawned on him that good analog reception wasn’t just good for IT departments, it would also be useful for TV broadcasters, filmmakers and financial analysts.  Donnagan came back to me to see if his idea made sense.”

 

Nathaniel drew several rows of cascading boxes, starting with a single controller box at the top, with each row below doubling the number of boxes.  “Now, as you move down the chain, the TINZ unit above can control the units in the network below it.  But, it can’t control the unit above it and can’t control units on the other side of the chain because of the unique ID structure embedded in the attached dongles.  We created this hierarchical structure for simplicity’s sake, giving IT department an easy way to configure TINZ installations.

 

“However, the limitation is artificial.  We found that if we inserted special code in the TINZ units, we could pass and store data in the TINZ units with ease, hardly even bumping up Ethernet traffic.  Our only hangup was how this traffic would look to network sniffers.”

 

“’The hunted becomes the hunter.’”

 

“That’s right, Donnagan.  We put our TINZ units on an artificial network with five of the best network sniffers logging the traffic on the TINZ network.  We found that by encoding the new TINZ data as junk on the end of the regular TINZ data, we could make it look like our TINZ network sent perfectly good analog signals despite the poor way we handled the sending and receiving of data traffic.  I don’t know how many times we flew a technician to the Star Lights Ranch film studio in California to demonstrate that our poorly written code could not be improved but was still causing no adverse effects on the server farm that was creating the latest CG movie.  However, it paid off.  With Star Lights Ranch in our pocket, we were able to sign on several big customers, including the four major TV broadcasters.  With the money from these customers, we hired several famous hackers to give us backdoor entry through any firewall.  Although we have no direct interest in the goings-on of the major media outlets, we still are able to watch raw unedited news feeds and quickly buy or sell company stock before their news hits the financial markets.”

 

It made sense and explained why I saw TV shows and stock market data being displayed in a hidden room.  Not something you wanted to let every employee know about.  Too much movement of a stock by one group of people before the stock tanked would draw undue attention.

 

“It was then that we stumbled upon the Qwerty-Queue product line.  You see, we’ve tried to get traction in the financial markets but although there is some need for large analog displays of stock market data, there is a lot of heavily-guarded secrecy about how the individual stock traders’ computers are managed.  None of the brokerages would let us into their trading rooms or even let us see their IT networks.  As luck would have it, the Qwerty-Queue sales team included an ex-trader named Katerina Karamazov.  She had emigrated to the U.S. after the collapse of the Soviet Union and had quickly ingrained herself into the denizens of Wall Street.  My guess is that she already had connections before she came here.  In any event, she contacted Paul O’Reilly a couple of years ago about being able to remotely monitor a digital computer display for security purposes.  Paul demonstrated the Qwerty-Queue technology and she fell in love with it.  She quit her job as a trader and became the top salesperson for that product.”

 

“Have you ever been to Paul O’Reilly’s estate?”

 

I shook my head.  “No, I haven’t.”

 

“Well, it’s obvious from the size of the place that he makes money other ways than just through Cumulo-Seven salary and stock options.”

 

“Interesting.”  I yawned.

 

“Donnagan, why don’t you get Bruce a cup of coffee?”

 

“Glad to!”  Donnagan got up and left the room.

 

“Bruce, how’s your financial situation?”

 

“Not bad.”

 

“Not bad as in…?”

 

“Well, our house is almost paid off and we have no credit card debt.  We really only have one outstanding loan, called a home equity line of credit.  I could pay it off now, if I wanted to.”

 

“What would you do if you had an endless spring of pure water?”

 

“Uh…”

 

“I mean, if you knew that you’d never run out of something as essential as water, what would you do with it?”

 

“I don’t know.  I suppose I’d always have a healthy stand of green trees in my yard.”

 

“You’d be rolling in green leaves, wouldn’t you?”

 

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

 

“Well, you see, that’s what the Qwerty-Queue product line does for you and me.  It could provide you with an endless supply of your American greenbacks and I mean endless.”

 

I thought Nathaniel was a down-to-earth engineering manager but he was starting to sound like a cheap salesman, making promises that the rusted-out Yugo I was about to buy would save me money and make me rich beyond compare.

 

I yawned and shook my head.  “Sorry.”

 

“Oh, that’s all right.  A good Irish breakfast will do that to you.  When Donnagan gets back, the coffee will do you good.”  Nathaniel walked over to his desk and checked email.  I closed my eyes for a quick power nap.

 

Donnagan burst through the door a few minutes later.  “Coffee for everyone!”  He handed the cups out and sat down at the conference table.  “So what did I miss?”

 

“Not much.  Bruce was just snoring me a little tune, weren’t you, Bruce?”  Nathaniel chuckled.

 

“Yeah, sure.”  I grinned.

 

“As I was telling Bruce, we’ve got a good handle on Qwerty-Queue sales.  I suppose you could go ahead and tell him about DUNZ while I finish this email.”

 

“Right, you are!  So, Bruce, you familiar with DUNZ?”

 

“Not a bit.”  I sipped the hot coffee and sat back in my chair, wondering if I was going to get another John Wayne impression.  I could see why Donnagan was sent out for a lot of sales cold calls.  His personality was very likeable and he knew his audience.

 

“Nathaniel, mind if I erase your drawing?”

 

Nathaniel looked up at the white board.  “Why do you need to erase it?  I think you’re going to need to use it.”

 

“Indeed.”  Donnagan stood up and walked to the white board.  “You’re familiar with TINZ now?”

 

I nodded.

 

“Well, Qwerty-Queue is different.  I’ll draw a little diagram over here to show you what I mean.  The Qwerty-Queue products work on a one-to-one relationship.  There’s a little board inside a PC that has a unique network address that is tied to a black box with the same unique network address.  The only way to change the one-to-one relationship is to reassign the unique network addresses.  Or at least, that’s how the remote digital display technology works.  It turns out that we can make the black boxes communicate with each other.  Instead of the normal way in which network devices communicate, where one device sends a piece of data and the receiving device sends a message back that the data was received, we found out that the Qwerty-Queue black boxes would just send data to each other but not acknowledge the receipt.  That way, the black boxes became a separate network backbone.”

 

The coffee was giving me the pickup I needed.  “But wouldn’t someone sniffing the network see it was pretty obvious that you were sending data back and forth between the black boxes?”

 

“It would, except the Qwerty-Queue team fell into a bit of luck.  They hired an engineer from UWB Designs.  The Qwerty-Queue team quizzed the new engineer about UWB Designs’ main product, a handheld device that can send high-speed signals, called ultra-wideband, over short distances.”

 

“Yeah, I know about UWB Designs.  I studied them in a business class.  From what I understand, ultra-wideband is a low-power pulse radio signal.”

 

“Simply put, yes.  But what was learned from the ex-UWB Designs employee was the secret way in which data is encoded.  Because there are a lot of frequencies that are available at low power and with ultra-wideband you can send a bit of data to a synchronized receiver on any frequency you want, a person trying to listen to an ultra-wideband transmission is going to have a difficult time catching all the bits in the right sequence.  The same technology was incorporated into the Qwerty-Queue product line.  To a network sniffer, it looks like a lot of random bits are being sent across a network.”

 

I liked what I heard.  “Very interesting.”

 

“Yes, it is.  Now you see why we were hoping to get a couple of the Qwerty-Queue engineers over here.”

 

I nodded and finished off my coffee.

 

“Since it won’t be happening, we’ve decided to take another tack.  Nathaniel has had all the Qwerty-Queue engineering files sent over here for analysis.  During the analysis, our lead design engineer, Oliver Sheridan, figured out a way to combine the best of TINZ and Qwerty-Queue technology into one product, unofficially, of course, because he’s supposed to be reworking the TINZ code for a couple of my customers.”  Donnagan stared at Nathaniel.

 

Nathaniel looked up from his computer.  “And we’re doing that, too!”

 

“Anyway, Geoffrey has authorized a few of Nathaniel’s engineers and one of my marketing guys to put together a plan for this next-generation product.  Right now, we’re calling it DUNZ.”

 

“Sounds very hip.”

 

“Thanks.  But in the meantime, we don’t want word of DUNZ development to leak out.  Since you’re the Qwerty-Queue program manager, we figured this is where you could step in and help us.  You see, Geoffrey has worked out a tentative deal to sublicense the Qwerty-Queue technology to a company in the UK called Round Tower.  Round Tower is headed up by a colleague of Geoffrey.  Do you know Morgana Cornwallis?”

 

I shook my head.

 

“Well, Morgana’s company is very active in the financial markets.  She sells a special keyboard design for stockbrokers.  She thinks the Qwerty-Queue technology will be a fine fit with her keyboards.  Also, because Morgana and Geoffrey go way back, they owe each other enough favors that we’re sure there will be no ‘accidental’ disclosure of the Qwerty-Queue technology, should Morgana’s engineering team figure out what it does.  But in case there is, Geoffrey has set up the preliminary contract with Round Tower so that Round Tower can take the fall in case the word gets out.”

 

I raised my eyebrows.  What exactly did they want me to do?

 

“You have a question?”

 

“Well…”  I swirled a drop a coffee around in my cup.  “You said that Cumulo-Seven is giving away Qwerty-Queue technology?”

 

Nathaniel stood up and walked over to the table.  “Not at all.  We’re licensing the technology to Round Tower.  And to be more specific, we’re only licensing the one-to-one relationship technology to them.  The ‘black box’ technology stays with us.”

 

“And how am I supposed to fit into all this?”

 

“Well, I guess you don’t know, do you?”  Nathaniel looked at Donnagan and smiled.

 

“Know what?”

 

“I thought not.  Well, it appears that Geoffrey has sold Morgana on the idea that you’re the key to the whole deal.  If you don’t get the contract to a state where Cumulo-Seven will sign it, then the whole deal’s off.”

 

I laughed through my nose.  I knew that Geoffrey was a persuasive person and at least on this side of the Atlantic he could call the shots he wanted so why did he set me up to be the linchpin for this contract?  Did he expect it to fail?  It would be easy to say that an American botched up an inter-EU agreement, especially with the way the U.S. was being perceived as a world-class bully.  Maybe I needed to talk with Geoffrey.

 

“So you say Geoffrey came up with this idea?”

 

“I believe so.”

 

“You guys don’t mind if I talk with him about this, do you?”

 

“Not at all.  Go right ahead.  In fact, I think he’d rather talk to you first before your conference call with Morgana tomorrow morning.”

 

“Conference call?  Are you going to be there?”

 

“No.  I believe this is a private call between you, Geoffrey and Morgana.  We’re not invited.”

 

“I see.”

 

“We’re just supposed to make sure you understand the technology in order to keep the contract, and us, out of trouble.”

 

I looked down into the coffee cup, hoping to find some kind of answer.  The cup was dry.  I wasn’t sure what that meant, other than I was thirsty and tired and could use another jolt of caffeine.

 

“Oh, I know all about the technology.  I’m all over it.”

 

“Very good.”  Nathaniel walked back to his desk and looked at an email message that was flashing.  “In that case, I’ve got work to do.  If you have any more questions, just ring Donnagan or me.”

 

“I do have one question.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Where am I going to sit?”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I thought Donnagan had taken care of that.  Donnagan?”

 

“Bruce, I thought you knew you were going to sit in my area.”

 

Was I so tired earlier that I missed Donnagan’s invitation?

 

“I thought you were just being polite.”

 

“’Us cowboys have to stick together.  You don’t want them Indians to catch us out on the plains alone.’”

 

I nodded at Donnagan and turned to Nathaniel.  “Well, thanks for the update, Nathaniel.  Maybe we can get together later this week.”

 

Nathaniel looked up and nodded.  “Yes, we do.  I want you to meet with the DUNZ team before you leave.”

 

Donnagan led me back through the maze to my temporary office.  It was part of a four-person cubicle office.  Each person sat facing a corner.  I had met the two young women earlier.  There was another cubicle but it was unoccupied at the time.

 

By the time I had unpacked my laptop bag, it was time for lunch.  I wasn’t particularly hungry so I spent the time catching up on emails.  I found out I had to dial 001 to get the U.S. and called my wife to let her know I had made it safely.

 

After lunch, I called Geoffrey’s secretary and asked for an appointment with Geoffrey.  She told me he would be busy all afternoon and that his meeting with Morgana and me had been postponed indefinitely.  She suggested that if I wasn’t busy, I should go ahead and leave and go out to enjoy the Irish countryside.  Try to catch the Cliffs of Moher, if I was up for the drive.

 

Before I left the building, I stopped by Donnagan’s office.  I told him about the postponed meeting with Morgana and the suggestion by Geoffrey’s secretary to drive out to see the Cliffs of Moher.   I had looked it up on a map and decided that it was a bit of a stretch to see on my first day.  I really needed a nap.

 

“Bruce, you know the secret to a good stay in Ireland?”

 

“No.”

 

“Stay up the whole day to reset your clock.”

 

I blinked my eyes.  “I don’t know about that.”

 

“Oh sure, you can make it.  Besides, you’ll want to go to the Cliffs of Moher as soon as possible.”

 

“Oh yeah.  Why’s that?”

 

Donnagan motioned me to follow him.

 

We walked down a side hallway and appeared in front of Geoffrey’s office.  Donnagan waved off Geoffrey’s secretary, knocked on the door and walked in.

 

“Geoffrey, Bruce’s here.”

 

Geoffrey looked up from his computer.  “Yes, I’m aware of that.  And I think I’ve arranged a meeting with him tomorrow.”

 

“Well, he’s got nothing to do today and your secretary advised him to visit the Cliffs of Moher.”

 

Geoffrey looked surprised.  “She did, did she?  Why would she do that?”

 

“Don’t know.  But I tink it’s a marvelous idea.”

 

“Indeed.”  Geoffrey adjusted his eyeglasses.  “Close the door.”

 

Donnagan closed the office door and turned the bolt.  He pulled the shade down over the window in the door.

 

Geoffrey stood up and shook my hand.  “Bruce, good to see you.  You have a good flight over, did ya?”

 

“Yes, thanks, I did.”

 

“That’s good.  So I hear you’re knowledgeable about all that’s going on?”

 

“As far as I know, yes.  I believe you’ve got me lined up to meet an old friend of yours?”

 

Geoffrey looked at Donnagan.

 

Donnagan cleared his throat.  “Morgana.”

 

Geoffrey turned back to me.  “Oh yes, Morgana.  Well, we can discuss that in our meeting tomorrow.  I suppose I’d better show you what you can and can’t see at the Cliffs of Moher.”

 

Geoffrey turned to the bookshelf behind his desk.  He pulled a book off the top shelf and set it on top of a book on the middle shelf.  The bookshelf made an audible clicking sound.  Geoffrey grabbed the side of the bookshelf and swung it open like a door.  On the wall behind the bookshelf was a flexible electronic display like a map.  Geoffrey pulled the display off the wall and set it down on his desk.  He nodded at Donnagan.  Donnagan stepped forward and maneuvered images on the display with his fingers.  Eventually he brought up a map of southwestern Ireland, with several large dots on it.  He tapped a dot on the coastline and a detailed coastline map appeared.  The words, “Cliffs of Moher”, highlighted a small portion of the map.

 

“Okay, Bruce, I’ll leave it up to you to get to the Cliffs.  The weather’s a bit rough right now but it’s supposed to clear up in a few hours.  Should be just about right by the time you get there, if you’re leaving anytime soon.  When you arrive, you’ll have to pull into this carpark and pay a fee, or you could keep driving up the road and park off to the side for free.  It doesn’t matter.  What you’ll need to do is go into the visitor’s center.  Now, if it’s after 5, I believe the visitor’s center will be closed and then you’ll just have to enjoy the cliffs the way everyone else does.  If you get there before then, go into the men’s toilet and step into the last stall.  There’s an automatic sensor on the wall.  Very quickly wave your hand over the sensor twice, pause for a second and then wave your hand over the sensor three times.  Repeat this sequence for a total of 23 times.  A door will open up on the wall.  You’ll find yourself in the entryway to an old set of caverns that have been hidden from public view.”

 

Donnagan tapped on the electronic map and it zoomed in to the Cliffs of Moher, popping up a 3D display.

 

“Now I can’t go with you today so I’ll have to send you with a personal message from me.”  Geoffrey leaned over and whispered a few words in my ear.  “You’ll want to tell this to everyone you meet but do it privately, not out loud.  There are those who are always waiting to hear things they shouldn’t.  Best to keep them from hearing it.  Right, Donnagan?”

 

Donnagan nodded.  He tapped the map and returned the electronic display to a picture of an Old World map.  He handed the display back to Geoffrey.  Geoffrey placed it back on the wall and closed the bookshelf against it.

 

“You don’t have to visit these caverns without me.  However, if you do, you’ll gain a level of respect that I with you couldn’t give.”  Geoffrey turned to Donnagan.  “Is that all?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“I’ve really got to get back to work then.”

 

Donnagan unlocked the door and ushered me out before I had a chance to say thanks.

 

The Cliffs of Moher, or Aillte an Mhothair, as the Irish call it.  Before I visited Ireland, I had never heard of the cliffs.  The first time I heard them mentioned in Ireland, I imagined something like the white cliffs of Dover, mainly because the names are so close in pronunciation.  Oh, but what a difference!  I have never visited the eastern shore of England and have only read about the white cliffs, which form a white, chalky outline visible to folks on French soil, and crumble away in chunks throughout the year.  They seem so soft and defenseless compared to the rocky fortress of the Cliffs of Moher.

Perhaps that’s why the Cliffs of Moher were chosen as one of the headquarters.  I don’t know for sure because no one will tell me.  But I do know that hidden behind, below and above the visitor’s center is a network of tunnels and caves not everyone is aware of, even those who say they’ve mapped the whole area.

I guess that’s why I began to believe in magic, even if there was nothing magical about the existence of 8^th, 9^th and other N^th dimensions.  I knew that scientific tools such as ground-penetrating radar and GPS should be able to assist 3D cartographers with their geographical information systems to map out underground cavities.  Yet, with all the modern methods available, the caves I crawled and walked through, the portholes I stuck my face up against and the meeting rooms that I’ve sat and slept through meetings in didn’t show up on any maps, paper or electronic.  The Google mapping system could give us bird’s-eye views and street-level views and even views of the universe around us yet it couldn’t point out the nook where a certain Atlantic puffin, which hated the cold-sounding name of Fratercula arctica, and preferred the name of O’Flaherty, sat on a nest which rested on a hatchway on Goat Island.

I met O’Flaherty that first evening on the Cliffs of Moher while watching the sun set.  I was sitting on a spot of grass at the top of the Cliffs, enjoying the fading colors of day and dreading the dark, twisty drive back to Ennis.  I shot a few pictures of the sunset and placed the camera in my lap.  The ocean waves looked like tiny, slow moving ripples in a bowl of water.  Lines of white spray coated the surface and reminded me of the writing of a garden spider.  Curious, how nature repeats itself in unusual ways.

As I lifted my leg to stand up, I heard a grunting sound.  I knew I hadn’t farted but wondered if someone behind me had burped or farted, instead.  I slowly turned around, hoping that no one had snuck up on me, since I was sitting in an area that was off-limits, the sheer edge of the cliff where loose soil and grass was known to slip off and plunge 600 feet to the sea.  There were a couple of photographers a few dozen yards away, bracing their long telephoto lenses on walking canes or camera monopods.  My hearing was poor so I doubted their bodily functions were audible from where I stood.  I put the camera strap around my neck and stood up.  The grunting continued.

Maybe the ground grunted as it shifted and slipped off the cliff?  I took a couple of steps back, just as a precaution.  I snapped a shot of the sun sinking below the horizon.  I wanted to get a silhouette shot of a lighthouse-like building, a watchtower called O’Brien’s Castle.  Before I could turn around, I felt something tugging on the left cuff of my trousers.  I didn’t remember any brambles or branches that could catch on clothing but I was never sure anymore what could happen after I was saved from falling by vines a while back.  After that, I had given in to the idea that I was permanently insane and stopped trying to separate fantasy from reality.  My sanity had gotten a lot better.

I looked down to see a 12-inch bird looking back up at me.  I looked back up the cliff and the photographers were gone so there was no one who could independently verify that a wild bird had personally gotten a hold of my attention without my coaxing it to me with food.

I hand-fed birds in my backyard back home but it took many weeks to show the birds I meant no harm – first, I filled up birdfeeders early in the morning, when the birds were less numerous and I wouldn’t upset so many of them at once.  After a few weeks of daily birdfeeder fillings, I would sit motionless near the birdfeeders for a while so birds would get used to my presence.  Then, on weekends I would sit in a chair on the back deck just a few feet from the birdfeeders and rest my arm on my lap with birdseed in an open palm.  The tickle of a bird’s feet clinging to your finger is one of the most rewarding sensations I know of.

The puffin spoke again.  It was the eeriest sound, like a performer in a haunted house slowly saying, “Ah-ha!”  I thought the bird was telling me that it was satisfied that it had finally captured my attention.  The bird shook its head, flexed it wings, waddled over to the edge of the cliff and flew to a spearhead shaped rock called Goat Island.

The bird flew back and handed me a note.  It was getting dark so I snapped a picture of the note and looked at the note in the camera’s LCD screen.  The note read, “Hi, my name is O’Flaherty.  Hold your hands by your sides.”  I looked at the bird and it nodded its head.  I stuffed the note in my pocket and put my hands by my sides.  A few minutes later, I was surrounded by all sorts of birds.  They seemed to pick and peck until I was all eaten up.  I went into an altered state of consciousness, a sort of out-of-body experience where I felt like I was still standing on the cliff’s edge but I was also stretched between the cliff and a spot in the middle of Goat Island.  This feeling lasted for a few minutes until I found myself standing in a small room surrounded by rock.  I could see out a small hatchway and barely make out the dark outline of the Cliffs of Moher.  Had I somehow been transported to Goat Island?

“Hello again, Bruce.”

I turned around to see Geoffrey hold a small lantern.

“Hello, Geoffrey.”

“Welcome to Branaunmore.”

I bowed to Geoffrey.  In the glow of the lantern, he looked like some ancient Irish god.

“Follow me.”

I walked behind Geoffrey as we descended a set of stairs.  At the bottom of the stairs was a small room, with elderly men and women sitting ceremoniously in throne-like seats covered with Celtic symbols carved into the rock walls.

“Bruce, today you were entrusted with information.  At no time during the relaying of this information did you act like you were afraid to learn secrets nor did your eyes say that you would betray us.  Your actions before you came to Ireland told us that you are trustworthy because of your ability to both look like you’re an open, honest person who wouldn’t keep a secret against anyone while at the same time you keep secrets to yourself that would tumble world leaders and crush the global market.  I have spoken with the Council and they agree that I should tentatively offer you the full program management role for the new DUNZ product line.  Do you accept this offer?”

 

I blinked heavily a few times.  It had been a long day.  I wasn’t even sure what time it was.  I nodded at Geoffrey, hoping he would keep talking so I could soak in all that I had just experienced.  And was there a bunch of bird droppings on my shoulder?

 

“Very well.  I know that you take this offer with solemnity and a sure sense of sincerity.  Your acceptance means that you are giving yourself to your Irish kindred spirits forever and always.  Your acceptance means that you have promised to protect your brothers and sisters in times of great troubles.  Your acceptance means that you and your family will always have a home.  Your acceptance is a commitment you must keep even when you have no money or time to give.  I ask you again – do you accept this offer?”

 

It seemed like an awful lot to ask of one person for a job that I hadn’t even figured out if a pay raise and relocation costs were going to be included.  But then again, I knew that Geoffrey had ties to old Limerick families.  There were rumors of connections to crime syndicates but no one knew for sure.  I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to stick with Geoffrey.

 

“Yes, I do.”

 

“In that case, I release you.  You are free to go as you please.  But don’t forget this offer.  Even at the bleakest moment when it looks like there’s no hope that you’ll actually get this job, the offer still stands.  Do you understand?”

 

“Yes, I do.”

 

Geoffrey looked at the Council members individually.  They nodded to him in turn.  Geoffrey looked back at me and then blew out the lantern.

 

I found myself standing back on the edge of the cliff.  It was completely dark.  I looked up at the stars and could tell a fog was moving in from the ocean.  Using the flash of my camera, I snapped photos to help me find my way over the stone barrier and back down the walkway to the carpark.  I drove back to the hotel in Ennis, my head nodding back and forth in a half-sleepy state.

 

 

The next day, Donnagan invited me to visit his home in the country.  After I accepted the invitation, he gave me a hand-drawn map that led to “Chez Garrykennedy,” which, like the countryside lanes over which I dodged large lorries and farmers hopping across the roads in their tractors, left a lot to be desired, especially in the form of clearly visible or legible signs indicating which crooked road led to the next major intersection I was to look for.  I made a few wrong turns but didn’t complain to Donnagan about them.  Instead, I enjoyed the newness, seeing this part of southwestern Ireland for the first time.  As the famous postcard saying goes, “The weather is here.  Wish you were beautiful.”  Or is it the other way around?  In any case, the narrow lanes bordered by thick hedges became my guides, leading past old farmsteads, abandoned castles, new holiday homes, and just about all the same types of sights you’d see in the area of southeastern United States where I grew up.  Anywhere in the mountains, ravines, valleys, foothills and hollers of southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, southeastern Kentucky, northern Georgia or northeastern Alabama.  No wonder my ancestors settled down to help form an independent nation across the Atlantic Ocean.  Similar terrain and the right to practice any form of religion they took a fancy to.  In other words, I felt at home before I even got to Donnagan’s house.

 

When I finally arrived at the Garrykennedy hillside homestead, I knew I would enjoy the friendliness attributed to the Irish.  Much to my delight, Donnagan and his wife, Fiona, opened their home to me.  The modern, sharply-angled, purple stuccoed house, like some sort of Cubist grape dropped from the Picasso-painted hand of a god eating a snack on Mt. Olympus, with oil-filled pipes heating the concrete underneath our feet on the front floor, circular stairs providing a virtual flue piping heat to the second floor bedrooms from the turf-fed stove in the middle of the living room, and wireless networking providing multiple channels of music, television and Internet services to every room in the house, contrasted sharply against the piles of hay and old tires that delineated the fenceline dividing the pastureland for the curious cows of the neighboring farm from the Japanese garden surrounding Casa de la Garrykennedy.  No one seemed to mind the culture clash because they all enjoyed the panoramic view of Lough Derg, a lake that spread across the valley.

 

Even on the dreariest cloudy day, Lough Derg, the second-largest lake in the Republic of Ireland, brightens the landscape.  From the air, it resembles a child’s crayon drawing of a seahorse.

 

The day I pulled into their driveway, only a few clouds paraded across the sky, leaving the sun to have fun and use the surface of the lake to flash the two-legged, antlike creatures who tended gardens, repaired fences, sailed boats and took leisurely drives around the lake.

 

Donnagan and his family wanted to treat me to a view of their house from across the lake so we packed into their Range Rover and drove down to the village of Killaloe, the birthplace of one of Ireland’s heroes, Brian Boru, and a convenient crossing point at the southern end of Lough Derg.

 

Donnagan pointed out some of the traditional landmarks associated with the former emperor and Ard Ri Na hEireann, high king of Ireland.  We crossed the lake into the town of Ballina and pulled into a tourist carpark to look back at Killaloe.  Standing in front of a sign that said, “Cill Dalua ó Bhéal an Átha / Killaloe from Ballina,” Donnagan pulled Fiona and his eight-year old son, Cormac, up to him.  His ten-year old daughter, Brigid, had stayed in the car to finish reading a book.  Cormac kept playing a video game.

 

Huddled together with his family against a cool breeze, Donnagan looked at me.  “Funny, isn’t it, how easy it appears to us to be able to cross this lake and yet how difficult it must have been for our ancestors to cross.”

 

I looked down at the waterway and wondered what kind of boats they used to cross the lake.  A scene from the movie, Apocalyse Now, popped into my mind, where a boat crew passed through an area of the Nung River under attack.  Martin Sheen asked some soldiers on shore who was in charge and they weren’t sure but maybe thought he was.  The confusion of war.  How many times did the Irish attack each other in these waters because of the confusion of who was in charge?  But then, groups go to war over the question of supremacy all the time – water rights, land rights, oil rights, religious rights, government/leadership rights, or even just the right to brag about who won.

 

“Yeah, I guess so.  You know, the stone of that church is a dull gray.  Seems like a lot of churches look like that.”

 

Fiona looked at me.  “You mean Saint Flannan’s Cathedral?”

 

“I guess.”

 

Donnagan laughed.  “Well, if you move to Ireland, you better get used to it.  I think someone patented the look and this being Ireland, the Catholic Church isn’t moving too quickly to change it.  You may find a few newer churches in big towns like Limerick or Galway but the old churches always look like that…and always will.”

 

“Interesting.”

 

Fiona sighed.  “That is, if there’s still a Catholic Church around.  You know how much your Protestant churches are attended in the U.S.?  Well, over here, despite our being something like 85% Catholic, you get very few people actually attending Mass.  It’s a dying faith.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

Donnagan nodded.  He dropped his arms from around his family and pointed east.  “Yes, and it’s happening all over Europe.  That’s why we live out here, so our children can attend a parochial school out in the country where Catholicism still has a strong influence.  I bet you’d see two or three times as many people actively involved in the local parish around here than you’d see even in a town like Ennis.”

 

I cocked my head to one side, making a mental connection.  “Oh, that makes sense.  I’m staying in a hotel across the street from the big cathedral in Ennis and saw maybe a dozen or so people walking to church service.  I thought it just wasn’t the most popular time for mass.  Like back home, where you’ll have a church full of people attending a contemporary service but then only a few people showing up for the traditional service.”

 

“Okay, let’s get going.  I want to take you by the old family grounds before it gets dark.”

 

We drove up the east side of the lake, with Donnagan whipping the Rover around blind curves and not one word of shock or concern out of the occupants.  I never criticize a driver, assuming that she or he knows how to drive, but even I felt uneasiness at the way Donnagan seemed to put us in harm’s way potentially.  However, as we cruised along, it seemed Irish drivers coming at us also drove in the middle of the road, with cars jerking one wheel off the road at the last minute as they passed each other.  After two or three of these near misses, I relaxed, knowing that Donnagan had been driving in Ireland his whole life.  It was I, not him, who needed an attitude adjustment.

 

Donnagan pulled into an overlook.  He and I climbed out and left his wife and kids to keep singing along with a pop tune on the radio.

 

Misty, low clouds had blown in from nowhere, cutting off the tops of the mountains across the lake.  Donnagan and I walked to the edge of the lookout, admiring the green, hilly fields around that part of Tipperary North. 

 

“Bruce, here’s where I want you to pay attention.”  Donnagan pointed across the lake.  “If you squint, you can just see our house on the hill.”

 

I saw the place where it looked like someone had taken a purple pencil and gently dotted a spot on the mountain.

 

“That’s my castle.  I bet you can see why I chose that location for a house.”

 

“No.”

 

“Ah, well, see, that’s the point, isn’t it?  Not obvious, at all.”  Donnagan dropped into his John Wayne voice.  “Them Injuns’d have a mighty hard time paddling their canoes across the lake without being seen by my scouts.”

 

I frowned.  What was he talking about?  Indians?

 

“Scouts?” 

 

Donnagan returned to his normal voice.  “Yeah.  You see, and you’ll understand more of what I’m talking about when we get to Garrykennedy, there might not be real physical attacks like in the early days of Irish history but we now have to worry about virtual attacks on Ireland.  Foreigners coming over and changing the look of the Irish landscape, for instance.  See down there, where that old church ruin and graveyard is?”

 

Below us, a roofless church, with its complement of gray, lifeless stone, held sway over just as lifeless gravestones.  A parish church for a parish that no longer existed or no longer cared to hold lifeless Catholic services in that church.  Maybe the church had burned down and taken the parishioners with it?

 

I nodded.

 

“That’s the old Castletown Graveyard.  You’d be interested in knowin’ that was both a Catholic and a Protestant church.  Not at the same time, of course!”

 

I laughed with Donnagan at the thought of two strongly-opposed Christian organizations sharing the same sanctuary for the practice of their faith, knowing the groups would more likely have fought to the death than discuss any common beliefs in victory over death in the afterlife.

 

“Well, look just to the right and you can see where someone is building a house with a bright-blue roof.  Do you see any other house in this area with a roof like that?  No!  Well, then, we’ve got to call attention to this travesty before it gets completed.  We won’t let folks just come in and build houses like that and take away our Irishness!”

 

I laughed.  “You tell ‘em, Donnagan.”

 

Donnagan grinned like a drunken fool.  “Damn right!  If I won’t stand up for the Irish, who will?!”

 

“But you’ve got a pretty strange-looking house yourself.”

 

Donnagan mockingly shook his fist in the air, like an oldtime stump speaker on a roll.  “And I damn well am going to keep it!  Do you know how hard I fought the old biddies around us who still think Ireland should live in the 19^th Century!  Did they not once notice that I stuck to the tradition of a stuccoed house with a tile roof?  They fooking didn’t!  All they could go on about in the council meeting was the purple paint, the purple paint, the purple paint, as if paint color was going to spoil crops and make cow milk go sour.  Of course, now they all like to give directions to their places by way of the purple house.  I know the old ladies have painted their descriptions of us just as purple as our house.  You’d be surprised how many people will stop at my house on the pretense they’re lost, just to see how strange and weird we really are.  Now, for those hikers on the East Clare Way, that’s different but these old country folk just want to put a bug up my rear and…”

 

“East Clare Way?”

 

“Yeah, it’s an overland hiking route.  Sorry, I thought you knew about it.  I drew one of the East Clare Way signs on the map I gave you.  Where the trail crosses the road to my house.”

 

“I thought it was some sort of flag you drew.”

 

Donnagan snorted and turned.  I walked with Donnagan over to a sign labeled, TIOBRAID ÁRANN THUAIDH / TIPPERARY NORTH, which contained a map of the area surrounding Lough Derg.  “Here’s where we are now.  And over across the lake…there…is where I live.  Now, you can hike around the lake, follow the Lough Derg Way, and on around the East Clare Way, if you like and get to my place.  I much prefer the old underground trails myself, with entry points here and here.  And of course, the original one in Garrykennedy.  And speaking of which, we’d best be moving on.”

 

Donnagan and I jumped in the car.  Donnagan headed down the road at breakneck speed again.  The kids were asleep beside me in the back seat, Brigid with a comic book in her lap and Cormac with his Playstation Portable, or PSP as he called it.  Fiona thumbed through a ladies’ magazine.  I closed my eyes and caught a cat nap.

 

I fell into a dream.  I faintly remember being trapped inside a giant pocket watch and having no way to get out.  I had only a pocket knife with me and was in the process of shaving off the edges of a gear to change the time of the watch so someone would have to open the watch and fix it, hopefully freeing me at the same time.  I suppose the jostling and bumping along poorly-paved roads provided the sensation of being inside a giant ticking watch.  Just when I thought someone was going to open the watch…

 

Donnagan swung open his door and shouted. “Okay, let’s pile out!  We’re home!”

 

The rest of us followed Donnagan’s example, except instead of leaping enthusiastically out of the car, we sort of rolled and slid out, half-asleep or still sleeping.

 

A broken piece of rainbow, like the last cutoff section of a Christmas ribbon, hung in the sky across the lake.  Donnagan followed my gaze.

 

He used a fake lilty Irish accent.  “And don’t go tellin’ me that you’ve got me lucky charms or that you’re going to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!”

 

Fiona and I laughed so hard we had to hold each other up.  The kids rolled their eyes at our adult antics and strange humor.

 

Donnagan pointed across the carpark at a rundown cottage, made with stacked stones and heavily whitewashed.  The slate roofing sagged.  He motioned his family to gather with him in front of the cottage.  I walked beside them.  Upon closer inspection, I laughed to myself.  The cottage windows were no windows at all but a piece of wood painted with red stripes to simulate a window frame and black squares to simulate glass with a fake black painted sill to match.  Someone had added a box-frame wooden chimney and stuck it on top of the cottage.

 

My inner laugh twisted the corners of my mouth and eyes into a wicked smile.  Donnagan looked at me and laughed.

 

“I suppose, Bruce, you’re thinking this is one of my ancestor’s houses and laughing at our heritage, wondering why we take pride in coming from such squalid conditions.”

 

Donnagan didn’t often fall into the trap of Irish self-deprecation so I assumed my smile had given him a moment to make fun of Irish self-deprecated humor and not a revealed true streak of pride in him.

 

“No.  I’m just laughing at someone’s idea that a cottage is supposed to have perfectly square windows when the rest of it is as crooked as the house the ‘crooked little man’ had.”

 

Brigid and Cormac spoke up at the same time.

 

“There was a crooked man,

and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence

upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat,

which caught a crooked mouse,

and they all lived together in a crooked little house.”

I patted the kids on the back.  “Very good!  I was just trying to remember that old ditty.”

Fiona looked astonished.  “So you have those same children’s nursery rhymes in the States?”

“Yes.”

She retorted.  “And all this time, I thought it was just another example of England’s eight-hundred years of oppressing the Irish, including forcing their silly little rhymes upon our children.  If your people had successfully kicked the English out of America and yet you still sing these same songs…”

Donnagan put his arms around Fiona and Fiona hugged him back.  Donnagan gazed into his wife’s eyes.  “Ah, Fiona, my dear.  We both speak the simpleton Queen’s English so it’s inevitable that some of their simpleton tales would come along with it.”

Fiona looked lovingly in Donnagan’s eyes.  “You’re right, I’m sure.”

They peck kissed and let go of each other.

“Well, Bruce, you know we didn’t come here just to show you that.  I want to show you the Garrykennedy castle and then we get grab a quick pint at Larkins Music pub.”  He pointed to a pub next to the carpark.  At one time, it probably stood out on its own but the affluent Irish economy had caught up with the lakeside tavern.  A row of similar-sized, two-story buildings, in various stages of construction, sat silently waiting for the next working day to continue growing.  Larkins Pub would soon have competition.

We walked a trail leading to the entrance of a forest walk, and out to a harbor big enough to pull in half a dozen bass buggies – pontoon boats that fishermen in the southeastern United States used to load up crates of beer and fishing gear on the pretense of catching fish.  At the lake side of the harbor, a raised walkway with gray stone walls about eight feet high jutted out and formed a protective barrier for boats.  A 25-foot tall chimney, that appeared to be left over from a large house, stood sentinel in the middle of the walkway.

Donnagan nodded his head for me to go with him over to the chimney.  Fiona and the kids stopped to watch a juvenile swan playing in the still water of the harbor.

We halted in front of a metal sign mounted on the chimney.

Donnagan held his hands up in the air.

“Welcome to the ruins of the Garrykennedy Castle!  Let me read you the grossly inaccurate history of this sacred ground…

“GARRYKENNEDY CASTLE WAS ONE OF MANY ERECTED ON THE SHORES OF LOUGH DERG DURING THE PERIOD 1450 – 1600 A.D.  THESE CASTLES,

(OR TOWER HOUSES) WERE BUILT FOR DEFENCE BY IMPORTANT LOCAL

LAND OWNERS SUCH AS BUTLER, O KENNEDYS, O’BRIEN OF ARRA.

GARRYKENNEDY CASTLE IS REFERRED TO IN THE CIVIL SURVEY OF 1654 A.D.  AS THE DEMOLISHED CASTLE OF CASTLEGARE AND TWO CENTURIES LATER AS SLANGER CASTLE, JOHN O’DONOVAN ESTIMATED THE DIMENSIONS OF THE RUIN IN 1840 AT 17’ BY 11’ AND 40’ IN HEIGHT.  MUCH OF THE STONE FROM THE CASTLE WAS USED TO CONSTRUCT THE EXISTING HARBOUR SO THE SKILLS OF THE MEDIEVAL CRAFTSMEN ARE STILL UTILISED BY THE PEOPLE TODAY”

“Excellent speech, Donnagan.  You brought tears to my eyes.”

“As well it should.  You should be bowing to honor my fallen ancestors!  Ha!”

I held my right hand out in front of me, pressed my left hand against my back and bowed to the heir to the Garrykennedy name.

“Thank you, thank you!”

“So, Donnagan, any of this yours?”

“No, and yes.  The castle belongs to the people now but the underground passages belong to me and my people and always will.”

Every time Donnagan mentioned underground passages, he looked around as if he was making sure no one was listening.  I stepped up close to him so I could find out more.

“What underground passages?”

“Well, you see, Bruce, I can’t show you right now but I can tell you about them.  A few hundred years before the reign of Brian Boru, a group of Irish folk were banished from the island.  No kingdom would take them because they were short, hairy and dark-skinned.  Think of a troll, for instance.  Well, these short people wouldn’t leave the land that they’d inhabited for longer than most folks, at least longer than the four kingdoms and probably longer than there’s been a language to record their history.  Anyway, they took to hiding among the reeds and bushes of Lough Derg.  As time went on, they carved themselves little hiding places, like big foxholes.  Each successive generation expanded the hiding places to the point where they had their own castles underground.  To keep their bloodline fresh, they’d steal babies from surrounding villages and raise them to think they were part of the same clan so the children would breed with the cave dwellers.  In order to keep their stealing from raising too many questions, young men would dress in wild clothing, with long strands of straw and reed for hair and wander the hills wailing, perpetuating the myth of the banshees.  That way, whenever a baby disappeared, the villagers would blame it on a banshee.  Very clever for such a backward people, eh?”

I nodded.

“Anyway, these people built an extensive set of tunnels underneath Lough Derg and created special, fortified entranceways that can’t be seen by regular folks.  You have to have ‘the eye’ in order to figure out where these entrances are placed.  As it turns out, an alliance was forged between the cave people and my bloodline.  My family were the official gatekeepers for many castles around the lake.  We had long since declared a neutral stance as it related to the whims and follies of kings and their claims on the land.  We were…that is, our reputation for complete silence, even under torture, for not giving away the secrets of one family to another…it served us well.  The fortunes of kings may come and go but there’s always a king that needs serving.  At some point in time, it became necessary for the cave people to make peace with some of the Irish.  The Gares as we called them.”

“Guerre as in the French word for war?”

No.  G-A-R-E.  Since you seem to know your languages, then you probably know that the word garrison comes from the old French word, garisun, meaning healing or maybe the German word, garir, to heal and protect.  I believe we probably called them the Garrison people to start with, because of our belief that they protected the people above ground from the beasts that lived in the underworld.  With time, we just shortened the word to Gare.  Anyway, the story goes that the Gares first approached the gatekeepers protecting the O’Kennedy family.  My ancestors often adopted the names of the families they guarded so I’m sure that the Gares called us the O’Kennedys.  We quickly understood the significance of the cavern system.  Not only could we continue to provide gatekeeping duties for families around the lake but we could also use the underground system to send messages between gatekeepers.  What better way to protect the general peace than to make sure that as one family decided to attack another, we could happenchance have fortified the castle under attack ahead of time?  With time, it became increasingly difficult for the Irish to keep attacking themselves and not a moment too soon.  We had done a pretty good job until the English and Scottish started pouring in.  Then, the whole system fell apart.  By then, the Gares and O’Kennedys had interbred so much that we took on the name Garrykennedy.  Not everyone in the Garrykennedy family line is aware of this history because as our family grew, some of them bred with lowlifes, half Vikings or even the fookin’ English, and lost their capacity to hold their tongues.”

I crossed my arms and puffed up my chest, emulating a condemning priest or minister.  “Rotten, good for nothing, and doomed for HELL!”

Donnagan laughed.  “Exactly!”

“So why can’t you show me the caverns?”

“Not in broad daylight.”

“Are these connected to the Cliffs of Moher?”

“Not at all.  These caves are not magical.  They’re just part of the Celtic myths.  I know for a fact that the Irish government is fully aware of these caves and put them to use during times of war.  The Garrykennedy clan may not be protecting the homes of prime ministers but we still protect the sanctity of the Gare caves.”

I nodded, not sure if Donnagan was pulling a joke on me.

“The reason I’ve let you in on the secret of the caves is that we need an international presence here.  Much like the times when we used to steal babies, we are at the point where too much insularity, too much inbreeding of Irish blood, if you will, has turned us into pale versions of our old selves.  We’re no longer interested in just protecting the caves for the caves’ sakes.  We need new blood to help us invent a reason for keeping these caves from the public conscience.  With folks like you involved, there’s a good possibility that we’ll invigorate the gatekeeper clan once again.  What do you say?  Are you interested?”

I looked around.  Fiona and the kids had wandered off.  The sun had set and shadows were stretching out into the lake.  I looked at Donnagan and he nodded.

“Bruce, it’s time.”

We walked around to the side of the chimney facing Lough Derg.  Donnagan pressed on a couple of stones with his hands and kicked another stone with his foot.  Nothing happened.  He tried again.  Nothing.  Donnagan tried pressing on different stones at the same time while kicking on the same stone at foot level.  Nothing.  Donnagan laughed nervously.  He looked out at the lake and then at me.

“Bruce, you see, this is part of what I was telling you.  Virtual attacks.  Someone has messed with this entrance.  I have opened this door more times than you’ve taken a leak.  I even opened it a few days ago.  Can you see the wire jutting out of the top of the tower?”

I stepped back and looked up at the top of the chimney.  Sure enough, there was a wire.  I had thought it was a lightning rod.

“That wire is part of a communication system around the lake.  I have a WiMAX connection at my house that relays a microwave signal across the lake to a spot not too far from where we stopped to look at the cathedral ruins.  From there, one of my Garrykennedy cousins monitors all the cave entrances.”

“WiMAX?  Here in Ireland.”

“Yeah.  We’re not as backwards as you thought, eh?  I not only run our TV and Internet through the WiMAX signal but my extended family uses WiMAX for cave protection.  If we hadn’t had a rerun of Eurovision on TV at the house for the kids, I would have shown you the monitoring system.  Very sophisticated.  Oh, hey, did you hear that the Chinese figured out how Eurovision and American Idol are really just covers for a test of a secret political voting system using the Internet?”

“No way!”

“Really, it’s true.  Right now, it’s only a two-fold system.  First, to test the usefulness of instantaneous voting of large masses of population and second, to see if the winners can be used to broadcast subliminal messages to influence future voting.  If it all works, politicians can hide their test marketing of hot political issues in television shows by having game show contestants who essentially look and act alike have a few seconds to describe themselves.  Then, one contestant could say he worked for an organization to promote universal health insurance while another contestant could say he worked for a private insurance company that wanted no interference from government.  The winner would tell the politicians which way to set their public posturing without sticking their necks out.  The Chinese are afraid the game shows could be manipulated by rich capitalists to sway public opinion and overthrow the Communist government.”

I laughed.

Donnagan looked up at the sky.  “Yeah, pretty funny.  A government of the people worried that the people don’t need governing.  Excuse me a moment.”

Donnagan stepped away to make a cell phone call.  I walked off to find Fiona.  Hunger and the desire for a drop of whiskey overtook my interest in Donnagan’s story, fictional or not.

Fiona saw the look on my face and knew what was going on.  She promised me to keep my mouth shut about what I’d heard from Donnagan.  We went to the pub and waited for Donnagan to join us.  He said nothing about our earlier conversation.  Instead, the talk turned to family matters, what the kids were doing in school and where they’d visited during their two-year stay in the States a while back.  While we talked, we enjoyed a good meal and drank good alcohol.  A band of young performers played a few songs in an adjacent room.  Overall, an excellent Irish evening.

 

 

 

 

2

 

When I returned to Huntsville, I rejoiced.  Home.  Familiar territory.  And yet…something acrid in the air, like a simmering mound of fresh manure and sawdust that a local chicken farmer used to dump at the end of our road.  Someone had tilted the world 12.5 degrees.  Northern Alabama was cockeyed.  Either that or it was the picture frame view out my airplane window as we landed.  I didn’t care.  I knew what I had to do.  I drove straight to the office and interrupted one of my boss’ ubiquitous conference calls. 

 

“Excuse me, Patrick.”

 

“Bruce.  I’m on a conference call right now.”

 

I looked down to see the Mute button was lit up.

 

“When was the last time you actually spoke or were spoken to on this call?”

 

“Today?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Nothing, yet.”

 

“I see.  Mind if I cut you off then?”  I held my finger over the Cancel button.

 

“No, just turn the volume down, willya?”

 

“Okay.”  I pressed the Down button a few times until the talker’s voice was like the 60 Hz hum of an old water pump my parents used to keep our basement dry.  Annoying but necessary.

 

“Whatcha need, Bruce?”

 

“Well, Patrick, I just got back from Ireland and…”

 

“You like the weather there?”

 

“What?  Oh yeah, it’s not bad.”

 

“I’m never sure.  They say it rains there almost every day.”

 

I nodded.

 

“You like rain, Bruce?”

 

“Uh, yeah, sure.  It’s good running weather.”

 

“You do much fishing or hunting?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“Well, I like to hit the lake myself.  I’ll take a sunny morning on the water with beer in the cooler and fish takin’ the line over a day spent shivering and wet.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“They do much fishing in Ireland?”

 

“I know that some people do.”

 

“Well, I guess they like fishing in the rain, then.”

 

“Probably.  Anyway, speaking of the Irish, I’m interested in ‘going native’ there.”

 

“’Going native?’”

 

“Yeah, I’d like to move to Ireland and focus on program management there.”

 

“Is that so?  What about your lab here?”

 

I snapped out of a state of sleep deprivation to see Patrick’s fingers tapping on the computer keyboard.  While Patrick and I had been talking, my eyes had drifted over to his office window and turned circles with the buzzards catching a thermal above the parking lot.

 

I looked over his shoulders at what he was typing.  He was sending an instant message to someone named sue165: “CU@lunch. In mgt rite now.”  His wife’s name was Sherry, not Sue, but maybe Sue was her online name?  Or was it a colleague?  Or someone named Sam Ulysses Edminsten?  My overwrought mind was wandering again.  I looked back out the window.

 

Patrick pushed his chair away from the computer stand and stopped behind his desk.

 

“I’m not sure yet.”

 

“Do you think you could run the lab from Shannon?”

 

I spoke my thoughts.  “I could…but do I want to?”

 

“You don’t have to.”

 

“I could use some coffee.”

 

Patrick nodded.  “Yeah, those circles under your eyes could be used as spare tires in a NASCAR race.  Why don’t you get a cup and come back here?”

 

“Not yet.  So you wouldn’t object to my moving to Ireland?”

 

“Bruce, you have my full support.  I know what needs to be done.  If you want to stay there for a few weeks and try it out first, I’m fine with that.  If you want to move to the Shannon area permanently, I’ll support you.  Just keep in mind that Cumulo-Seven has a stake in this.  I’m sure HR on both sides of the Atlantic will want to make this as cost-effective as possible.  In other words, you’re going to find that neither HR group will want to pay for the move.  If you need my help to ‘encourage’ them, let me know.”

 

“Thanks, Patrick.”

 

“Anything else?”

 

“Well, I was just thinking.”

 

“That’s always a healthy habit.  Anything useful?”

 

“Hugh Rowan has been performing a great job.”

 

“Yes, and I appreciate you bringing him with you.  He’s been a great asset.  His lab demos have been exactly what I expected when I first thought of the lab.”

 

“I was just thinking that since I plan to move to Ireland, I could go ahead and offer my resignation as Huntsville test lab manager to give Hugh a chance to be promoted to test lab manager.”

 

“Excellent idea.  But are you sure you want to resign before you move to Ireland?”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Well, it’s certainly your choice.”

 

I sucked air into my lungs until the oxygen was filling the space between my shoulder blades.  I puffed up like Mr. Universe, veins bulging out of my neck, biceps growing so huge I couldn’t comb my hair, calf muscles ripped to the point I couldn’t squat on the toilet.  I held my breath until my heart quit pumping.  When I exhaled, Patrick rode the shock wave back to his computer desk like the Big Kahuna catching a wave at Pipeline Beach.

 

Patrick laughed.  “At least take the weekend to think it over.”

 

Assuming we were going to move to Ireland, Karen and I drove up to Nashville, Tennessee, for one last “fling” in the United States, spending a long weekend in “Music City USA.”

 

We got a room at the Hydrangea Retreat B&B in east Nashville, the Edgefield historic district.  When we arrived early Friday afternoon, the B&B hostess, Eva Levi, greeted us at the door.  Karen and I have stayed at many B&Bs because the owners surprise us with their eccentric personalities and personal touches they add to a vacation getaway.  Eva was no exception.

 

“Greetings.  Who are you?”  Eva held the door open but stood in the doorway.  She stood about 5’4” and wore an apron decorated with herbs and flowers.

 

“The Collines.”

 

“Colline?”  Eva frowned.  “I’m sorry.  Do I know you?”

 

“Yeah, we called in reservations.”

 

Eva scratched her head and looked at me.  “I’m terrible with last names.  What’s your first name?”

 

“Bruce.”

 

“Ohh!  Bruce and Karen, right?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“Come on in.  You’re a little early.”

 

We walked into the bungalow-style house.  The walls were painted a pale olive and showcased a few dozen paintings.  The paintings varied in style from Southern primitive to abstract.  A picture next to me, although just a few squiggly lines, shimmered, as if a naked man and woman were grinding against each other to a tune playing in the privacy of their home.

 

Eva caught me staring.  “Oh, those are all for sale.  I love art in my house but can’t afford to buy it all so I’ve just offered up my walls to support local artists, instead.”

 

Karen admired a pair of paintings, a sun and a moon behind a silhouette of a tree.  “And they’re reasonably priced.”

 

“Yes, they are.  I don’t charge commissions like the galleries do.  And this is not a museum.  I’m not a curator.  If you see something you like, buy it!”

 

We laughed.

 

Eva looked at her watch.  “Well, the other guests don’t arrive for a couple of hours.  Are either one of you interested in a massage?”

 

Karen looked from me to Eva.  “I’d love one.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

“So which one of you wants to go first?”

 

I put my hand on Karen’s shoulder.  “Karen should go first.  She’s had a rough day at work.”

 

“In that case, Karen, just follow me.”  Eva reached into her apron and handed me a set of keys.  “These unlock the front door, back door and your room upstairs.  You can get the bags while your wife is getting a rubdown.  Right, Bruce?”

 

I walked outside to unload the car.  A middle-aged man and a little boy were flying down the sidewalk on roller blades.  At every car they encountered parked on the street, the two guys took turns pulling chewing gum out of their mouths and throwing it on the hood.  They saw me walking toward my car and skipped it, waving as they passed.  I walked around the car just to be sure they hadn’t hit it already.  Instead, I found a bumper sticker someone had placed on a side window.  It was a picture of a bicycle handle, with the slogan, “GET A GRIP! VOTE FOR ZIP!” – apparently, an advertisement for Zip “The Lip” Jackson, a candidate in the upcoming city mayoral election.  I pulled out my pocket knife to scrape the sticker off.  I found that the sticker had been stuck on top of another one.  Underneath Zip’s ad was a sticker that read, “Please be neat and wipe the seat / Portable Pottie, 317 King Street / 615-555-JOHN”.  I threw the stickers in the car trash bag and took one load of luggage to the room.

 

When I returned to the car, a neon-orange wad of gum was oozing and spreading out, bonding with the paint of the hood.  I looked up the road and sure enough the bubble gum bandits were racing up the other side of the street.  They waved at me and turned a corner.  I scraped the gum off the car and threw it in the car trash bag.  I opened the trunk to get out a cooler full of champagne and heard a screeching sound.  A group of teenage boys on bikes peddled down hill.  They grabbed something out of their backpacks as they approached me.  SPLAT!  SPLOOSH!  BAM!  They pounded me with water balloons as they passed by, shouting and waving on their journey toward downtown.

 

I would have chased after the boys but the cool liquid on my back and neck eased some of the heat-related tension.  I took off my shirt and wrung out the water, grabbed the cooler and headed back into the B&B.

 

I changed clothes and wandered the house.  Inside the front door, a framed copy of a newspaper review of the B&B mentioned Eva was a folk singer in the ‘70s and rock singer in the ‘80s but had settled down in Nashville to become a songwriter.  She opened the B&B as a way to make ends meet.  Next thing I knew, Karen woke me up from my nap on the living room sofa.

 

“Your turn!”  Karen shook me a little and ran up the stairs.  “I’m going to take a bath.  Have fun!”

 

I walked back to the kitchen where I could hear space music playing.  In my youth, I had attended several presentations at the Bays Mountain Planetarium.  Curious about the music that played in the background while we sat back in our chairs watching a red arrow point out visible stars, constellations and planets, I spoke to the park ranger who ran the place.  He told me that he had created the soundtrack using music by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Synergy.  He showed me his record collection, which introduced me to the world of electronic music, including Kraftwerk, Jean-Michel Jarre, Walter Carlos, Tomita, Kitaro and Vangelis.  As an adult, I narrowed my enjoyment of that style of music to Philip Glass.  Sure, he’s a popular composer but his repetitive music brings back fond memories of listening to space music in the dark.  As I walked past the kitchen door, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

 

“This way, Bruce.”  Eva guided me past a curtained door and into a darkened room, dominated by a massage table, musk-scented candles and the aforementioned space music.

 

“You can take off your clothes and place them over there.  Go ahead and get under this towel.  I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

 

I stripped down and slid onto the table, placing my legs over a rolled-up towel.  I pulled the full-length towel over me as much as I could.

 

“I’m coming in.”  Eva opened the door, lit another candle and turned the music up a couple of notches.

 

“What kind of massage do you like?”

 

“Deep muscle,” I mumbled through the headrest.

 

“I thought so.  Just relax.”

 

Eva placed metal tips on my head and flipped a switch.  I felt a tingly sensation.  Then, the muscles in my face slackened followed by my neck muscles.

 

“How does that feel?”

 

“Mnnh.”  My lips were numb and I couldn’t move my tongue or close my mouth.

 

“Too strong?  Sorry, your wife needed the heavier dose.”

 

The tingling subsided and I could lift my head.

 

“That feels weird.”

 

“I hope so.  I came up with this design back when I lived in New York.  One of my friends broke his guitar on stage.  I leaned over to pick up the guitar and the bare metal edge scraped my scalp.  Oohee, what a jolt that was!  We played with it after the show and had a great time.  Later on, I figured out how to adjust his guitar amp to turn those guys into space cadets.  There, how does that feel?”

 

“Good.”

 

Eva took the contraption off my head and began to rub my shoulders.  “So, Bruce, your wife tells me you’re here on your anniversary.”

 

“That’s right.  Twenty-one years.”

 

“Time flies, doesn’t it?  You know, I bet when you two were dating, I was at the peak of my performing career.  I was a rocker in New York.  Did I tell you that?”

 

“No.”

 

“Yeah, we used to perform all over the city.  My favorite was CBGB’s.  You ever been there?”

 

“No.”

 

“That’s too bad.  It’s closed now, you know.  Hilly had to close it down.”

 

“He died.”

 

Eva stopped rubbing my shoulders.  “What?”

 

“Yeah, I saw it on the Internet a day or so ago.  I think it was real sudden.”

 

“No!”  Eva rested her weight on the middle of my back.  “I can’t believe it.”

 

“I can look it up for you, if you want.”

 

“Would you?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“That’d be great.  Well, anyway, he was a lot of fun.  I worked there from 1979 to 1981…three years.  Hilly really hated to see me go.  He liked me.  I played in bands and worked the place.  A lot of bands came and went through there…”  Eva sighed, pressing her elbow into my spine.

 

I coughed.  “Errgh.  Did you play punk?”

 

“Oh, no-o-o.  I was strictly rock.  But I did start out in folk.  But no punk.  And certainly no hip-hop or rap.  Just not my style.”

 

“Then I’ve got to look you up, too.  I’ve never heard of you.”

 

“Well, if you’re going to go to that trouble, make sure you search for Eve Levy.”

 

“Lee-vee?”

 

“Yeah, l-e-v-y.”

 

“I thought you spelled your last name, l-e-v-i?”

 

“I do.”

 

Eva worked on a knot in my middle back.  “Woo-ee.  You’ve got back problems.  You ever see a chiropractor?”

 

“No.”

 

“You oughta.  You’ve got some serious misalignment problems.  You’re almost out of my league here.”

 

“So why did you change your name?”

 

“Why did I change my name?  Well, my manager, Ben Guttenberg, convinced me that Levy was too Jewish for a stage name so he convinced me to change my name from Eve Levy to Eva Levi.”

 

I was about to laugh at the silliness of such a little name change when Eva dug into another knot in my back.  I groaned.

 

“Found another one, didn’t I?  I tell you, you need some therapy, you know that?  You ever go swimming?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, you should think about it.”

 

“So why this place?”

 

“I woke up one day and realized I wasn’t going to be a famous rock star.  I’d already been doing massage therapy for over 10 years.  So, about three years ago, I told my mother I was going to open a B&B.  And I knew nothing about it.  Not one thing.”

 

“Wow.  That takes guts.”

 

“No, it takes ignorance.  I was hoping to open this place so I could generate enough money to be able to put some away.  All this place does is eat up my money.  Well, I do make a little bit extra but all that goes toward my music business.  I tell you about my music business?”

 

“No.”

 

“I work with a lot of famous songwriters in the area.  Notice I said famous, not rich.  Songwriting is not a way to get rich.  Anyway, I’m working with a couple of guys to write individualized music for weddings.  We have packages for like $5000 and $7500.  You know anyone getting married?”

 

“No.”

 

“How about something for your 21^st wedding anniversary?”

 

“No.”

 

“You sure say ‘No’ a lot.  What are you, some kind of money lender?”

 

“No.”

 

“So what do you do?”

 

“I’m a program manager.”

 

“Yeah?  What’s that?”

 

“I make sure engineers make the products customers want and make sure the factories get the products to the customers on time.”

 

“I see.”

 

“I’m also working on a novel.”

 

“A novel?  What kind of novel?”

 

“It’s a satire about the corporate world.”

 

“Oh, you mean something like that show on TV?”

 

“’The Office’?”

 

“I think so.”

 

“I don’t know.  I haven’t seen it.  I don’t watch much television.”

 

Eva gave me a soft rub down my spine.  I closed my eyes and let her finish the massage in silence.

 

 

After I showered, we walked over to the local wine bar, City Scene, for a few glasses of wine.  Eva had told us that the bar opened at 4:30 p.m.  We got there around 10 till 5.  I jiggled the door handle and the door was locked.  We debated walking back to the B&B but decided it was just too hot to move.  We stood outside on the sidewalk in the humidity and heat, pondering what to do.  Finally, to get our minds off the trickles of sweat creeping down the napes of our necks, we picked up a couple of copies of the local entertainment newspapers, one weekly and one daily.

 

I leaned back against the doorway to shield myself from the direct sunlight.  Karen hid herself beside me, thumbing through pages absent-mindedly.  Eventually, the door opened and the chef stepped out, holding a cigarette in his hand.

 

“You all been trying to come inside?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Well, we’re closed.”

 

“Yeah, I figured that.”

 

“We don’t open until 5:30.”  The chef put the cigarette in his mouth.

 

I rubbed my sleeve against my brow, wiping sweat off my eyelids.  “I figured something like that.”

 

Karen stepped out from around me.  “But Eva told us you opened at 4:30.”

 

“Uh-huh.  I guess she saw that on our website.  We don’t open until 5:30.  You all wanna come inside?”  The chef held the door open with one hand while with the other hand he put a lighter up to the cigarette in his mouth.

 

I nodded.  “Oh yeah.”

 

We took the offer and settled into a couple of diner chairs at a table inside the dark restaurant.  Karen and I continued to flip through our newspapers, even though we could barely read them.

 

The chef walked back in a couple of minutes later.  “You all want something to drink?”

 

“Why not.”

 

“Whatcha want?”

 

I looked at Karen.  She turned to the chef.  “Maybe some wine.”

 

“I like you,” he said half-mockingly.  “Whatcha want?”

 

“You have a menu?”

 

“At the bar.”

 

“I don’t do bars.  The chairs are too tall for my short legs.”

 

The chef looked at me and I took the look in his eyes to mean he wanted me to follow him to the back of the restaurant where the bar was located.  I walked behind him, picked up a menu on the counter and took the menu back to Karen.

 

“Here you go, honey.”

 

“Thanks, dear.”

 

I stood next to Karen while she looked over the menu.

 

“You’re hovering over me is making me nervous.”

 

I sat back down at the table and thumbed through the newspaper, skimming over articles detailing the latest spat between two Nashville mayoral candidates.  The candidates were scolding local officials in the police and planning departments for the poor jobs they had performed under the current Nashville administration.  Neither candidate seemed to offer any solutions, only suggesting they’d improve the performance of city government.  I flipped on.

 

The chef yelled to us from the back of the restaurant.  “Well, I’ve gotta get back to prepping the food.  If you guys want, you can wait until the bartender gets here to order your wine.”

 

I nodded at the chef and he disappeared into the kitchen.  Karen kept looking at the wine menu.

 

“Have you found anything you like, darling?”

 

“Well…I don’t know.  I kinda like the Toasted Wheat Zinfandel.  How about you?”

 

“Can’t say.  I’ll wait until the bartender gets here, I guess.”

 

Karen set the menu aside and returned to reading the newspaper.

 

A few minutes later, a pretty young woman sashayed up to the table, almost popping her hips out of their sockets.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived.  Is there anything I can get for you?”

 

I looked at Karen.  “Darling?”

 

Karen picked up the wine menu.  “I’ll take a glass of the Toasted Wheat.  Unless you have a better suggestion.”

 

The woman flittered her eyes between Karen and me.  “Well, the Toasted Wheat is good but the Earth, Zin & Fire is good, too.”

 

“Well, whichever one you suggest will be fine with me.”

 

The woman turned to me.  “And you?”

 

“Oh, I guess I’ll try the Hope Estates Shiraz.”

 

“Hope Estates?  Okay, good.”

 

The woman walked away from us.  I watched her take a few steps.  She was wearing a slightly tight pair of spadiceous brown pants and a peacock-blue peasant shirt.  She was about 5’5” or 5’6” and weighed 125 pounds.  There was enough flesh on her bones not to make her look too skinny or too fat.  From the back, she’d almost pass for a blonde but the brunette roots showed at the top of her head.  I had already seen her from the front and her dark cherry bangs told me she was a true brunette, with chocolate brown eyes to boot.

 

While the bartender poured our wine, two women came into the restaurant and sat at the bar.  They chatted with the bartender, with only some of their conversation drifting my way.

 

“…thirty-eight years of marriage.”

 

“That’s sweet.  You know, I just turned twenty-nine myself.  I’m glad to hear there’s hope for the rest of us for such a long-lasting relationship.”

 

The bartender brought us our drinks.

 

I touched my fingers to the stem of the wine glass and held the wine up to the light.  “So that couple over there celebrated their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary?”

 

“No, it’s their thirty-eighth.”

 

“And you said you’re twenty-eight, then?”

 

“No, I just turned twenty-nine.”

 

“Wow, that’s great.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

My wife sat up proudly.  “And we’re celebrating our twenty-first anniversary.”

 

“Congratulations.”  The bartender turned from us when she heard the front door open.  “Welcome, you guys!”

 

“Hey, you, too.”  A couple of women sat at the table behind me.  I could barely see them out of my peripheral vision but they appeared to be in their late 30s.  “What’s on the menu tonight?”

 

“Some good food, of course.”  The bartender turned back to us.  “Is there anything else I can get you?”

 

“You have a food menu?”

 

“Oh yes.  I’ll be right back.”

 

Karen nodded at the women behind me.  “Hello.”

 

“Hey,” said a voice to the right of me.  “You all been here long?”

 

“No, we just got here a little while ago.”

 

“Yeah?  Well, we’re usually the first ones here.  We like to sit at the bar but it looks like it’s already occupied.”

 

Karen smiled.  “Uh-huh.  They just got here before you.”

 

The woman behind me continued talking.  “So, where are you from?  You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

 

“Where are we from originally or where do we live now?”

 

“Where do you live now?”

 

“Huntsville, Alabama.  We’re originally from east Tennessee.”

 

“Huntsville!  You’re kidding!  I’m from Huntsville.”

 

Karen looked at me and laughed.  We had a running tally of the number of people from Huntsville.  In our 20+ years in Huntsville, we’d counted about three dozen true Huntsville natives.

 

“Is that so?”

 

“Yeah.  Of course, I live in Nashville now.  What brings you to Nashville?”

 

“We’re on vacation.”

 

The other woman spoke up.  “Vacation?  Why did you decide to vacation in east Nashville?”  Her question had a bite to it, with a clear challenge in her tone.

 

Without turning around, I guessed the two women were together.  I flashed my eyes at Karen and she nodded.  She held her hands under the table, made fists and bumped the fists together so that only I could see her message.  Obvious lesbians.  I nodded in recognition.  I already guessed the second woman wanted to know why a married couple was hanging out in same-sex couple territory.

 

I shrugged my shoulders.  “I don’t know.  We like to stay in places where you don’t get all the same hotel and restaurant chains.”

 

“I see.”

 

The first woman changed the subject.  “What part of Huntsville are you all from?”

 

“East, near Hampton Cove.”

 

“Yeah?  Gosh, my mother’s from Cove Creek.”

 

Karen shook her head.  “Amazing.  Practically just down the street from us.”

 

“Well, I’m glad to meet you all.  My name’s Sally.  And this is Suzanne.”

 

I twisted my upper body around and stuck out my hand.  “I’m Bruce.  And this is Karen.”

 

“I can’t believe it.  Two people from my hometown.  How long have you all been there?”

 

Karen took over the conversation.  “Since…well, my brother first came to Huntsville in ’74 so I guess it’s been at least 30 years that I’ve been in Huntsville.”

 

“Just about makes you a native, doesn’t it?”

 

“Almost.”

 

“I grew up off of Covemont, myself.  I’m 47 so it’s been a while back but I attended Randolph and Huntsville High.  I played tennis in high school.”

 

I looked between the two women.  They both had a tan so it was an easy guess they were physically active.  “And you still play?”

 

“Tennis?  Oh no.  I coach high school soccer now.”

 

The bartender walked up to us.  “Soccer?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“So do I!  Do you teach?”

 

“Not this year.”

 

“I teach science at a high school in the Hillwood area near Belle Meade.”

 

Sally and the bartender smiled at each other.

 

I looked at Suzanne.  “And you?”

 

“Me?  Nope.  I’m not from around here.  I grew up in Chicago.  North of Chicago, really.  In the suburbs.  No tennis or soccer for me.”

 

“I’m surprised.  You look pretty fit.”

 

Sally laughed.  “Oh, she’s active, all right.  How much do you run?”

 

Suzanne scooted back and forth in the barstool.  “Not a lot.  One or two miles a day.”

 

Karen spoke to Sally in a svelte tone.  “Oh, my husband runs.  He just ran a road race this past weekend.”

 

Sally beamed.  “Well, so did my…I mean, so did Suzanne.  So how far did you run?”

 

“Only five kilometers.”

 

Karen spoke louder.  “But he’s run in marathons and half marathons!”

 

Suzanne looked at me and nodded her approval.  “A long-distance runner.  I can respect that.  I know the discipline it takes.  I used to be a cross country runner in college.  I bet we could compare a lot of half-healed injuries.”

 

“You know it.”

 

“What training method do you use?  Is it the…”

 

The bartender cleared her throat and held up a small chalkboard.  “So I hope you’re hungry.  We’ve got a great selection tonight.”

 

We all turned our attention to the bartender.

 

“And by the way, my name’s Amy.  I’ll be serving both of your tables.  I’ve also got to serve drinks for the whole place.  If you don’t mind, I’ll just set the menu down on this chair here and come back to you in a few minutes.”

 

We agreed.

 

Sally pointed at Amy as she walked away.  “Amy doesn’t remember us from last week.  We were here last Friday and this place was packed.  How long are you guys staying?”

 

Karen looked over my shoulder at Sally.  “We’re here until Monday.”

 

“Oh, then that gives you plenty of time to try all the different places here.  Have you been to Margot’s?”

 

“No.”

 

“You’ve got to try it.  It’s at Woodland and 10th.  They have great dinners.  How about Marché?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, they have the most delicious breakfast.”

 

Karen looked back down at the newspaper.

 

I could hear Sally scoot her seat closer to the table behind me.  “Sorry, you guys.  I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

 

Karen looked back up.  “Hnnh?  Oh, you know, I was just finishing a sentence.  Go on.”

 

“Have you all eaten here?”

 

“No.  This is our first time here.”

 

“Then you’ve got to meet the owner, Francesca.  HEY, FRANCESCA!”

 

An older worker wearing a crushed chef’s hat who I had assumed was an assistant of some kind stood up from her position of rearranging bottles of white wine in the cooler behind the bar.  “Yes?”

 

“Come over here, willya?”

 

The woman stood up and wiped her hands on her white apron.  She closed the cooler door and walked slowly over to our table, shaking hands with some of the other patrons that had come into the restaurant in the past few minutes.

 

“Yes, Sally?”

 

“Francesca, this is Bruce and…”

 

My wife volunteered her name.  “Karen.”

 

“…Karen.  They’re from my hometown, Huntsville.”

 

Francesca shook our hands.  “Thanks for coming to City Scene.  I haven’t seen you all before, have I?”

 

Sally laughed.  “I was thinking the same thing.  Bruce, you sure you weren’t here last week.  I swear you look just like a guy that was in here last week, except maybe the other guy’s hair wasn’t as blond as yours.”

 

“Not me,” I confessed.

 

Francesca pushed her glasses back up on her nose.  Her wrinkled face said she was probably in her late 40s or early 50s.

 

She stared at me intently, like she already knew me.  I wasn’t sure why.  “So, Francesca, why did you open this place?”

 

“Me?  Oh, I worked for the YMCA for 20 years, and heard this place was for sale…for lease, I mean…and already had a kitchen facility so I jumped at the chance, thinking I could just step right in and take it over.  There were a few renovations that cost more than I thought but…”

 

I snickered.  “I know what you mean.  Karen and I invested in a Japanese restaurant that had a few ‘extra’ costs…”

 

Karen grinned.  “Like a $50,000 air conditioner.”

 

Francesca put her hands on her hips.  “We’ve been open since April and I haven’t looked back.”

 

“Great attitude.”

 

“Only one to have.  Is everything all right tonight?”

 

“So far.”

 

“As good as last week?”

 

“I don’t know.  This is our first time here.”

 

“Is that right?  Are you sure you weren’t here with MORTIE last week?”  Francesca winked at me and then looked from me to Karen and back. “Well, before you get your mind set on one of our wines, let me tell you that our stock is a little short tonight.  I forgot to place an order earlier this week so we may be out of some of your favorite wines.  I apologize in advance and will make sure we make it up to you before the night is over.”

 

“Thanks, Francesca.”

 

“And be sure to tell all your friends about us.”

 

Sally blew a puff of air out of her nose.  “I already have!  And we’ll certainly be coming back.”

 

“That’s what I wanted to hear.  Well, I better get back to filling up the white wine cooler.  I’d hate to have you order a wine that’s at the wrong temperature.”

 

We all smiled at Francesca as she bowed and walked away.

 

Sally slid off her chair and leaned over to whisper in my ear.  Her first words were, “Pretend like I’m telling you a private joke about Francesca.”  I smirked and gave a guttural laugh.  She then gave me a secret message not to repeat.  I smiled at Karen.  She gave me a questioning look.  I held my smile which told Karen that we’d have to wait until later to discuss what I’d just heard.

 

Sally slapped me on the shoulder and spoke out loud.  “…And that’s why we enjoy hanging out here.  One unusual character after another.”  She got back on the stool.

 

I laughed loudly and nodded.

 

Amy returned, took our orders and left.  While we waited for our food, Karen and I read the newspapers.  I looked through the classified section and couldn’t believe the number of homes over a million dollars.  Did people really make that much money to pay for those houses or were those houses on the market because the homeowners were about to go bankrupt because they couldn’t pay the mortgages on their overpriced homes?

 

We ate our dinners in silence.  I enjoyed my baba ganoush, Karen enjoyed her parmesan-crusted chicken and the women behind me enjoyed their meals.

 

Amy came back to take our after-dinner orders.

 

Sally answered before I could speak up.  “Not for me, thanks!”

 

Suzanne joined her.  “Me, either.”

 

Amy looked at Karen.  “What about you?”

 

“I’ll take the pineapple tart.”

 

Amy looked at me.  “I’ll have the chocolate mousse and a cup of coffee.”

 

After Amy left, Suzanne got out of her chair and announced she had to go to the bathroom.  She leaned her head against mine and whispered.  “If you think you’re getting anything from Sally, you’re crazy.”

 

She walked away from me and didn’t see the big grin on my face.  I flashed my eyes at Karen to let her know I’d fill her in on all the whispering later on.

 

Suzanne returned just as Amy brought the desserts.  Sally paid for their meals and they said their good-byes to us, reminding us to eat at the other dining establishments in the area and to please come back to this side of town the next time we visited.

 

When Amy brought us our check, she told us about a local hip-hop band starring two kids, Ian and King Ty, whose girlfriend and girlfriend’s mother were sitting across the room from us, their bright red dresses heating up the already hot and sweaty room.  They were supposed to start performing in a few minutes.  We excused ourselves and left.  Amy told us she was sorry to see us leave so soon.

 

Back at the B&B, I prepared a whirlpool bubble bath for Karen and wrote down the poem I had written on the check receipt for Amy before we left the restaurant.

 

Pomme de Terre

 

True,

Parting is such sweet sorrow

But when a new friend arrives –

An Amy from upper New Amsterdam

Or a Suzanne from the Windy City –

Joy gets in the way.

And futbol makes it so much fun.  After all,

Have you dissected a worm?

Technology’ll get you every time.

The next time you stop for Vino

Let the hip-hop fiery fever flow.

Francesca’s flavors, Ian and King Ty and his groupies,

Thumping until the rhythm gets you.

It’s poetry, after all.

 

I read the poem to Karen after she got out of the bathroom.

 

“Wonderful, dear.”

 

Karen kissed me and pulled back the covers on the bed.  She patted the bed beside her and asked a question as nonchalantly as possible.  “While you’re snuggling up here beside me to rub my feet, why don’t you tell me what those women had to say to you that they couldn’t share with me?”

 

I took off my clothes and slipped into bed beside her.  I whispered the words to her.  She hugged me and kissed my cheek.  “It’s what they didn’t say that I’m happy to hear.”

 

 

3

 

You can look at life in one of two ways – your life is one coincidence after another, like a pinball machine or pachinko game, looking like you’re getting somewhere because your score in the game of life keeps going up (age, income, savings, debt, number of friends, number of enemies, number of enemas, etc.), or your life is predetermined and we’re all just robots dancing to the same silent song.  I watch the breeze blowing through the trees in my yard and think, yeah, we can create a computer simulation of the loquacious birds snapping up moths that dance between branches and the flittering trees dropping leaves that take hidden staircases to the ground but why would a Grand Being go to the trouble of creating a preplanned universe just to watch it play itself out?  Why have my brain maintain half a dozen trains of thought just so I can have the occasional “aha” moment and believe I’ve reached a universal revelation when in fact my thoughts were written down some billions and billions of years ago?  Why have me believe that the chickadee and golden finch looking for protein meals among the trees because they don’t have the usual supply of birdseed I place in the backyard, empty feeders giving away that I’ve been too lazy to stop at the birdseed supply, supply me with the pure pleasure of my own colorful aviary?

 

I believe in the randomness of life.  On a local scale, though, I don’t have the luxury of belief.  The dogged determination of weather patterns and castle builders can roll me up and smoke me, blowing my cantankerous smoke up somebody’s nose in a heartbeat.  Randomly, I could attract national attention, with someone willing to nominate me for president of the national political system.  In reality, I have less chance of being the president of a country than I have being hit by a presidential motorcade.

 

In the midst of finalizing the agreement to move me to Shannon, the country of Ireland completed its merger with the EU, effectively banning the hiring of non-EU nationals for EU-based jobs.  Actually, the law stated something to the effect that a job position had to be advertised to EU nationals and if the job didn’t attract a qualified person then the job position could be offered to, say, someone from Nigeria or the United States.  Unfortunately for me, the position of Program Manager would have attracted a lot of highly qualified job candidates, from inside Ireland as well as from other EU countries.  Geoffrey wanted me to continue the program management duties but if he wanted the duties performed in Ireland, he would have had to open the job to EU nationals.  He was confident I’d be a highly qualified candidate and would get the job but the possibility existed another candidate would apply, find out that I’d gotten the job and sue Cumulo-Seven, a risk Geoffrey didn’t want to take.  So, from a random place in the universe, from a random telescope on a random planet, I was observed randomly managing the lives of humans randomly living in Ireland from my random location in the randomly outlined area that had randomly taken the name the United States of America.  In other words, Geoffrey couldn’t move me to Shannon so I continued to run the program management duties from Huntsville.

4

 

When you have your heart set on moving to Ireland, don’t let “no” get in the way.  I fell in love with Ireland and refused to let EU membership keep me from eloping with my new girlfriend.  But Ireland is not an easy girl to go courting with.  She wants to see you make personal sacrifices before she’ll believe your heart aches the way your mouth says it does.

 

I flew to Shannon every few weeks.  My frequent visits earned me the right to find temporary housing instead of hotel or B&B.

 

Geoffrey authorized my use of a “holiday cottage,” a small house typically used as a short-length rental home for a summer holiday or vacation.  I drove around western Ireland on my days off to search for the right holiday cottage.  One day, while evading a speeding ticket – that is, while driving at a high rate of speed to avoid getting pulled over by one of the members of the Garda Síochána na hÉireann  or “guardians of the peace in Ireland” – I drove my rental car off the four-lane highway, or dual carriageway, as they call it, through a gap in the guardrail, down a steep embankment, through a trickle of a creek, up a small rise, onto the end of the road in a small housing estate and jerked to a halt behind other cars parked on the suburban street.  I could hear the sounds of the garda speeding on down the dual carriageway so I knew I was safe.

 

I threw my feet out of the car, a little Audi A4 now streaked with fresh mud, and put one foot in front of the other.  Had to burn off some adrenaline.  I looked at the mix of houses around me, the usual mishmash of semiDs.  A semiD, semi-d, or semi-detached is a house split in two, with the halves mirroring each other in look and layout.  Often, the overall effect of the building is a large, single family home.  They save on space and materials, giving the growing middle class an affordable housing option to anonymous-looking apartment complexes.

 

Hidden between two rows of semiDs, an old garden called my name.  Three-foot tall stone walls surrounded a narrow, one-hectare patch, forming a fancy entrance to the alleyway connecting the backsides of semiDs.  I lifted the rusty hasp on a decrepit metal gate and set foot in another time.  A thatch-covered hut squatted at the back of the garden like a heavy snail that long ago took a break from resisting gravity to spread its slimy goo along a country lane.

 

The yard in front of the cottage had once made a gentleman or lady gardener proud.  But no gardener had tended the intricate twists and turns of the flower beds in a long time.  Dark, molded, crippled, and twisted limbs of last year’s crop of weeds leaned against each other like lepers, holding up a handful of shriveled seeds, begging “alms for the poor” in their creaky voices as they swayed in a wind whipped up from the Atlantic Ocean.  My pants picked up a few passengers whose hooks and barbs waited for a furry passerby on which to hitch a ride.

 

Tacked over the small, round window in the front door, a piece of paper flapped and slapped the wooden sill.  I rubbed my eyes to better read the faded lettering of the advert.  “TO LET / Thomas O’Casey, Auctioneer / Knock to Enter,” the handwriting said.

 

I knocked on the door and waited a few seconds.  My knuckles, two inches from contacting wood, anticipated another reddening as they fell toward the graying wood, wondering if they’d scrape against old chips of red paint or just bang into the solid, two-inch boards again when the door creaked open.  I held my fist in check and pushed the door open with the other hand.

 

“Hello!”

 

My voice bounced around, looking for someone or something to ricochet it back to my ears.  Instead, dead silence.  On a white-washed wall inside the doorway to my right I felt two buttons of a lightswitch.  I pushed on the button not depressed and heard a doorbell ring.  Or rather, a cacophonous contraption pretending to be a doorbell buzzed, clicked, clanged like a bicycle bell, honked like a clown’s nose, and ended the symphonic performance with the booming resonance of a large cathedral church bell.  A lightbulb covered in dust woke up from all the noise, popped once, flickered twice as if warming up with a few morning stretches and then heated up to full strength, casting a tan glow over the hallway.

 

I pushed the door against the wall and looked at the floor.  Either solid stone or pounded-down Irish dirt, the floor hinted at no weakness.  I walked inside.

 

I had automatically thrown my laptop backpack on my shoulder when I got out of the car.  I set the bag down and closed the door.  For some strange reason, I felt like I was home.

 

The artificial light painted the walls a pastel yellow.  The ceiling was rounded, matching the shape of the front door.  An umbrella stand and coat rack propped up one side of the small room while three doors, one on each side and one at the rear, made me feel like a contestant on “The Price is Right,” a cheesy game show from my youth.

 

“Hello?”  A muffled Cork accent called back to me like an echo that had a sudden urge to run to the bathroom, take a leak, zip up and then in a state of forgetfulness, not sure which sex, nationality and locality had first spoken, selected the wrong reverb setting on the PZ81 Electronic Wow/Echo Synthesizer and send my voice back to me like a bad karaoke night at Buddy’s Bar and Grill near my house back home.

 

The rear door swung open.  A frumpy woman with purple cabbage hair stood before me.  She eyed me suspiciously, keeping her hand on the door as if she could, at a moment’s notice, rip the door from its hinges and use it as a weapon.

 

I nodded at her.

 

“Oh, sorry sir, I didn’t know anyone lived here.”

 

A teenage boy stepped up beside the woman.  His peanut butter colored hair flew in 20 different directions.  Either his hair was trying to escape the boy’s head like all the other hair of today’s youth, afraid to become infused with the latest synthetic party drugs, or the boy hadn’t slept or taken a bath in days.

 

“Ma, I thought you said we had the place to ourselves.”

 

The woman reached up and put her free arm on her son’s neck.  “We did, son.  We did.”  She let go of the door and pushed hair out of her son’s face.  After she patted his cheek, she fixed her stare on me again.

 

“Look, we’ll be out of your way.  We just needed a place to stay until we got on our feet.  My husband up and died without any notice ahead of time.  I…”

 

“That’s okay.”  I picked up my laptop bag.  “I can come back.”

 

“Oh, no sir.  We don’t want to intrude.”  The woman and her son retreated from the doorway, inviting me forward.

 

I walked ten paces to their defensive location, feeling like a Stratego game piece being pushed forward by unseen hands.  The deadened sound of my footsteps told me the floor was earthen.

 

The boy and his mother stood beside taped-up cardboard boxes.  A pile of clothes was thrown on top of a kitchen table.

 

“Like we said, sir, we have no home.  We were just shacking up here for a few days until we could find a place to stay.  My husband had no insurance.  What with me having no job and my son in school…”  The woman hugged her son.

 

And I really felt like this was my home, too.  Should I keep on feeling this way and act like it, too?

 

Later, I arranged with Cumulo-Seven to let the place on my behalf.  I gave the room behind the kitchen to the mother and boy to set up living quarters.  She offered to take care of the place for me.  I wasn’t one to refuse a person’s right to take a job nobody else was asking for.

 

Back at the office, a spectacled man with hair parted in the middle, stopped by my desk.

 

“Bruce?”

 

I looked up from my usual hunched-over position at the laptop computer.

 

“That’s me.”

 

“I’m Ivan Abrams.”

 

“Oh, yeah, Ivan.  Great to meet you in person.  I always look forward to putting faces to names and voices on the phone.”

 

“Really?  God, I hate it.  Especially when it’s a sexy voice on the phone and then I meet a dumpy, frumpy middle-aged woman.  Kinda deflates the fantasy life, if you know what I mean.”

 

I nodded.

 

“So how long are you here for?”

 

“Oh, I’m just here for one of my visits.”

 

“Yeah.  I heard you were moving here.”

 

“Well, I was but it’s getting more complicated than I thought.”

 

“Welcome to my world.  You know, I’m an American expatriate who’s been living in Shannon for about two years.”

 

“Lucky you.”

 

Ivan laughed.  “Well-l-l.  I could go into more detail but I can tell you’ve got work to do.  You got plans for tonight?”

 

“Not sure.  Probably find a good pub somewhere.”

 

“Well, how about joining me and my pals?  We’re making a pub crawl tonight.”

 

“What time?”

 

“What time do you usually get away?”

 

“Around eight or nine.”

 

“Bruce, don’t let them work you over like that.”

 

“Well, I figure it’s the least I can do to cover the cost of the trip.”

 

“Haha.  Like our CEO is putting in 60-hour weeks while he’s traveling.  You gotta learn to enjoy the local lifestyle.  That’s part of the reason you’re here, you know.  The cultural exchange.”

 

I could see the smart-ass crinkles in Ivan’s smile.  Another jokester.

 

“So what time do you suggest?”

 

“We like to get out of here around 5:30 or 6 o’clock.”

 

“See you then.”

 

“Yep.  I gotta get back to a meeting.  Just meet us in the parking lot.”

 

 

We drove into Limerick.  Ivan had suggested I park on the street but I didn’t trust my rental car to survive unscathed, what with drunks careening down sidewalks with keys in their hands and teens unknowingly recreating the San Francisco chase scene from Bullitt on the hilly streets of downtown Limerick.  I found a cheap carpark and left my car in the safe hands of a zitty-faced kid watching TV behind a Plexiglas window.

 

I met Ivan at the entrance of the White House Pub on O’Connell Street.  We walked through the haze of smoke coming from people who’d stepped outside to feed their body’s craving to fill the coffers of cigarette company stockholders.

 

We slipped in through the side door.  I joined Ivan’s band of merry revelers, who’d already availed themselves of the local brew.

 

“Everyone, this is Bruce.  Bruce, this is our night off, which means no talking about work.”

 

I nodded.

 

A short, bald-headed man stood up.  “I’m Seamus Boru.  And before you say anythin’, I am related to the famous Brian Boru so you better keep that in mind before you go sayin’ anythin’ against Ireland.”

 

Seamus grabbed my outstretched hand and squeezed tightly.  I squeezed back.  Seamus squeezed harder.  I squeezed back.  I lost the feeling in the ends of my fingers.  Seamus squeezed harder.  My whole hand went numb, like there was a lump of Alabama red clay stuck on the end of my wrist, not good for growing vegetables but packed into a ball it was still good for shaking hands.  I could see Seamus’ knuckles go from red to white.  We kept squeezing tighter.

 

“Nice to meet ya.”

 

“And this is Angela Browne.”

 

I let go of Seamus’ hand and shook the hand of a stocky woman with ponceau-colored hair, which made me think of a field of Hemerocallis ‘Carolina Cranberry’, rich, cranberry-red daylilies I’d seen on the banks of the French Broad River in east Tennessee the previous summer.

 

“And unlike Seamus, I’m related to no one famous, not even Angela’s ashes.”

 

The group laughed.

 

Ivan slapped my shoulder.  “Let’s not waste anymore time.  Which would you prefer? Heineken, Smith’ick’s or Guinness?”

 

“Guinness, I guess.”

 

“That’s right, you’re an American.  What else!”

 

Ivan shuttled through the crowd to the bar, his voice carrying loudly over the hubbub in the pub. “Excuse me.  Pardon me. I’m just going to take that spot right there.  Thanks.  Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to grab ass.  Oh, well, you’re welcome.  Anytime.  Nope, busy tonight.  Maybe another time.  Excuse me.  Mind if I slip into the bar here next to you?  Thanks.  No, I didn’t know who that woman was.  Your girlfriend?  Oh, well, yes, she has a lovely ass.  Yes, I enjoyed a squeeze.  No, I’m not interested in taking this outside for further discussion.  You’re a little drunk.  I’m sorry to hear your girlfriend just dumped you.  Barman, get this man another drink!  I’ll take two Guinness and I’ll be right back.  Yep, sorry to hear it, fellow.  Girls on this side of the Atlantic are a pain, too, I see.  Excuse me a minute, will you?  I promise I’ll be right back.  Hello, my name’s Ivan and yours?  Maureen, a lovely name.  Looks like I may be free later tonight.  Now?  Well, how about you come join me?  Great, I’m just over there with the gang by the door.  I’ll be right over.  You want a drink?  Heineken it is.  Excuse me.  Pardon me.  Barman, add a Heineken to my order.”

 

A replica of Cheryl Ladd walked up beside me.

 

“Hello there.  What’s your name?”

 

The crowd noise had grown long teeth and bitten down hard.  I leaned down to better hear what she said.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“I’m Maureen.  What’s your name?”

 

“Bruce.”

 

“Glad to meet ya.  You here with Ivan?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

Something about Maureen made me want to hug her.  Packed together like we were, I patted her on the back, instead.

 

“So what are you up to, then?”

 

I looked over the heads of the folks between me and the bar.

 

“I’m waiting for Ivan to return with some beers.”

 

“Me, too.  You know, I came here with my boyfriend, Dana, but he’s just gotten drunk again.  I don’t mind a few drinks on a T’ursday night out but he’s like this every night.  I need something a little more.  Don’t you?”

 

I nodded, not sure if she was trying to be Ivan’s or my date for the evening.

 

“Thursday night out?”

 

Seamus looked at me.  “What did you say?”

 

“I was just asking Maureen about her going out on Thursday night.”

 

“Well, we all do.  You know that, don’t you?”

 

I shook my head.

 

“Just ask Ivan.”

 

Ivan returned with our beers a few minutes later.  As he approached us, the crowd got quiet.  I could hear a voice in the next room.

 

“Welcome.  Tonight, we have a special poet with us.  He’s all the way from Dublin.  Would you welcome George Shaw!”

 

The crowd gave George Shaw a raucous welcome.

 

Ivan yelled in my ear.  “Looks like they’re having a special White House Poets night tonight.  They usually run this show on Wednesday night.  Mind if we finish these beers and take off?”

 

I shook my head.

 

Ivan gulped down his beer in four or five swallows.  I finished a few gulps behind him and slammed my glass on the table.  The whole group shoved out the door in less time than it took Britney Spears to embarrass herself in a skimpy, post-baby, pre-anorexic diet bikini on national television.

 

As we walked down the street, Ivan had one hand around Maureen’s waist and one hand on my shoulder.

 

“So, Bruce, you were asking about ‘Thursday Night Out’?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well, it’s the one night of the week when one or another of a married couple…”

 

Maureen laughed.  “Or anyone!”

 

“Yes, or anyone.  But for married couples, it’s the one night of the week when you can go out and drink with your buddies, come home at any hour and not get reprimands from the spouse.  Goes for either spouse.  That way, the other spouse can stay home with the kids while you’re boozing it.”

 

Seamus put his arm around my neck.  “You gotta wife, Bruce?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Then, remember this.  We don’t talk about what we do on Thursday nights.”

 

Ivan nodded.  “That’s right.  You don’t mention it at work and you don’t mention it at home.  In other words, for you, what goes on in Ireland stays in Ireland.”

 

Seamus squeezed the back of my neck.  “You got it.”

 

I nodded.

 

“Good.  Ivan, I think he’s in.”

 

“Glad to hear it, Seamus.  Bruce, that means you’re now an official member of the Cumulo-Seven Thursday Night Out Club.”

 

Seamus unscrewed the vise grip on my neck and pounded my back.  “Way to go, Bruce.  It’s a privilege and honor.”

 

Angela had taken the lead out of the White House. She turned to face us.  “Bruce, I knew you’d get in.  Are you ready to pay your dues?”

 

“Dues?”

 

“Yes, you didn’t think we’d let you in for free, did you?”

 

I laughed, seeing how they’d conned me into a night of paying for drinks.  It wasn’t the first time someone had twisted a conversation into a bet or some other way of snookering a newcomer into footing the bill.

 

“I don’t suppose this has anything to do with my having a corporate credit card?”

 

“Actually, Bruce, no.  Most of these pubs don’t take American Express.  I hope you have plenty of cash.”

 

 

We walked into South’s pub, taking the side entrance, of course.  No use in announcing there were a couple of Americans in the group by taking the main front entrance.  For some strange reason, the pub was only half-full.  Or it was half-empty.  Or perhaps the pub had just been designed two times the size it needed to be.  In any case, we easily found seats at the bar.

 

Ivan held up a thumb and a forefinger.  Thinking he was only ordering a beer for himself, I flashed a peace sign at the barman.  The barman nodded and brought over five freshly poured glasses of Guinness.

 

Ivan looked at me over his glasses.  “Bruce, if you want to order two beers, you hold up your thumb and forefinger.”

 

“Oh, okay.”  I handed a couple of 20-Euro bills to the barman.  “Did I ever tell you about the first time I drank at a bar in Ireland?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“Well, I got a room at the Bunratty Castle Hotel and wanted a beer to get my bearings so I walked into the hotel bar.  Seated next to me were what I thought were your typical Irish barflies, two old guys with bulbous noses and red, bloated faces.  They were watching the television behind the bar and commenting about the loss of the greatest football player in Irish history?”

 

“Football.  You mean soccer or rugby?”

 

“I don’t know.  Soccer, I guess.  Anyway, I watched the television with them.  They were having a funeral procession for George Best.  The commentator went on and on about this being the only ‘state funeral’ for a non-politician.  One of the guys turned to me and asked why I didn’t have a tear in my eye for him.  I told him I wasn’t familiar with George Best and he about bit my head off.”

 

Maureen shook her head in disbelief.  “You don’t know one of Ireland’s national heroes?!  Well, he should have taken your head off.”

 

“Yeah, well, it was close.  He then accused me of being a terrorist because it was George Bush who had introduced real terror in the world, not the ones who had attacked the World Trade Center, and anyone from America was sure to support their own president.  I told them I hadn’t voted for George Bush and then he laid into me for not being a supporter of my own country.  I couldn’t win for losing.”

 

Ivan nodded.  “I’ve been there.  So did you have to pound your fists into them to show you were a real red-blooded American or what?”

 

“No.  I told them I was just there to have a beer and I’d be on my way.  One of the fellows said, ‘What if all of us were like you and backed down from a fight?’  I started to get up.  Then, a fellow at the end of the bar spoke up.  ‘Are you an American, I hear?’  I told him yes.

 

“He said, ’Do you know the Mamas and the Papas?  Wait, I bet you’re too young to remember them.’

 

“I told him I remembered the band from the ‘60s.

 

“He then said, ’Well, do you remember Mama Cass, then?’

 

“I told him I remembered her, but from a movie called Pufnstuf, based on a Saturday morning TV show called H.R. Pufnstuf that I used to watch.

 

“He went on.  ‘Well, what if Mama Cass hadn’t eaten that sandwich and had given it to Karen Carpenter, instead, they’d both be alive today.’  Everyone at the bar laughed, including the two guys next to me.  The man arguing with me apologized and said he was just so moved by the funeral for Best that he’d let his emotions run away with him.  I thanked him and walked out of the bar.”

 

“That’s too bad, Bruce.  At that point, those were willing to buy you beers for the rest of the day.”

 

Angela nodded.  “Guys like that are the backbone of Ireland.  My father’s just like ‘em.  They remember Ireland the way it used to be, before we started letting all the immigrants in.  There’s no telling what our children are going to face but it won’t be the same as our fathers and mothers, I can tell you that.”

 

Ivan held up his glass.  “Cheers!”

 

I toasted with the rest of them and finished my beer, ordering another round by waving at the barman and pointing at the group.  He nodded and smiled, knowing I didn’t want to make a mistake with the wrong hand signal again.

 

I didn’t tell them that before I left the pub at the Bunratty Castle Hotel, I had run into a former school mate from the States, Lefty Lifkowitz.  Lefty and I had committed some juvenile crimes together, vandalizing homes under construction and stealing from local convenient stores, nothing serious mind you.  I hadn’t seen Lefty since high school.  He filled me in on his life as we walked out of the pub and over to a secluded corner of the hotel lobby.

 

Lefty had started college on a baseball scholarship but flunked out after the first year.  His father got him a job at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, where Lefty found his calling.  He could rivet in no time flat.  He also learned how to make tools at a local die shop.  Lefty’s father set up a tool-and-die shop in our hometown and invited Lefty to join him.  Lefty gladly left Virginia.

 

At his father’s shop in Tennessee, Lefty worked with his brother, Scout, to keep the work crews in shape.  In doing so, they figured out the power of intimidation, forcing many of the undocumented workers to pay them a kickback.  Lefty’s first wife enjoyed the money that Lefty brought home, buying herself a couple of fur coats and convincing Lefty to buy a Corvette.  Because of the cyclical nature of the car business, Lefty’s father worked hard to keep the company afloat half the year when few orders came in while they enjoyed a comfortable business the other two quarters of the year.  During the lean times, Lefty’s wife couldn’t stand not being able to buy what she wanted when she wanted and rode Lefty’s back relentlessly.  Lefty couldn’t squeeze the workers for much more money and instead turned to beating his wife to get her to stop bugging him.  After the inevitable divorce, Lefty struggled to keep up alimony payments and maintain the lifestyle he’d built up.

 

His brother never married, enjoyed the single life, and with his extra dough he bought several new computers and a couple of high-end color laser printers just for the hell of it.  Lefty and Scout played with the computers to make a die-cutting machine etch intricate patterns for Japanese text on the side of tools destined for an overseas manufacturing plant.  During their design work, Lefty created a template to print out 50 and 100-dollar bills.  When he and Scout compared their printed bills to the real thing, they realized they might have a fun side business, paying some of their workers in fake money and keeping the real money for themselves.  They made the mistake of discussing this business at a hole-in-the-wall dive where a server overheard their conversation.  She approached Lefty a few days later and told him that MORTIE was very interested in Lefty’s home-based business.  Lefty balked at first until the server brought him some of the fake money that she had bought from a Guatemalan she’d seen leaving the tool-and-die shop where Lefty worked.

 

Lefty asked to meet Mortie and the server laughed in his face.  She told him that Mortie was not a person but an organization – Mother Organization for Reconnaissance, Terrorism, Investigation and Extortion.  No one headed up MORTIE.  The story went that there probably was an original Mortie.   More than likely, though, Mortie was a name that someone in the service industry had made up because the name was generic enough to pass translation into any language.  In any case, most bartenders and servers belonged to the loose knit group, active observers of customers who met and drank in dark bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants.  That way, members of MORTIE could take advantage of the secrets of athletes, politicians and business leaders.  MORTIE gave the powerless workers hidden power and protection.  If one member of MORTIE was threatened, other members would provide backup.  With no membership list, no organized leadership, no recruiting practices, no dues or other means of tracking MORTIE, the police and government had no way to shut down the organization.  MORTIE didn’t just take from the powerful.  MORTIE also looked out for single men and women, married or divorce, who sought or needed simple, nonabusive conversations.  MORTIE acted as an informal dating service.  Members of MORTIE would lend a hand to lonely people looking for love or companions by matching likely pairs of loners, buying them flowers or paying for whole evenings out.

 

The server told Lefty that she wasn’t interested in turning Lefty over to the police.  She wanted him to keep his business going and she only required a small token of his appreciation for her silence.  The server didn’t believe in making agreements too uncomfortable for nice people like Lefty.  He could set the payment amount and the delivery schedule.  As an added bonus, his payment for keeping the counterfeit money scheme secret would never go up but if he ever stopped making payments, his scheme could, for instance, end up in the lap of some unsuspecting Secret Service agent caught rendezvousing with a female senator at a lesbian bar.  Then, MORTIE would not only own the Secret Service agent but also would own Lefty’s lucrative side business in the end.

 

Lefty asked me if I believed the Gay Mafia or Jewish Zionist Movement controlled the media.  I told him I didn’t believe in shadow organizations pulling hidden strings.  He laughed at me but his face showed no humor.  Sudden betrayal of his deepest fears turned his face ugly, his temple covered with pulsating veins, his nose growing varicose veins and his cheeks puffing up with years of sun damage, pores expanding into caverns.  A Halloween Grotesque.  He told me to keep playing innocent, that if I still believed our petty adolescent thievery resulted in no consequences for me, I would be lucky my whole life.  He was not so lucky.  After our childhood adventures in five-finger discounts, Lefty had to turn over all his stolen goods to his mother, who claimed she had to sell the cigarette packs, uneaten candy bars and Playboy magazines to pay a union steward in Detroit who had saved his father’s job at the auto factory when they lived in Michigan before they moved to east Tennessee.  She let her son keep the half-eaten candy bars, pocket flashlights, handi-wipes, Superfreak comic books and other useless items we pilfered at the checkout counter, items we put to good use in our secret clubhouse in the woods.

 

Lefty told me he knew someone somewhere was getting paid to protect me.  That’s just how the world worked.  Before we parted ways, Lefty warned me to never get involved with MORTIE because once you made a mistake, they had you for life.  Every crime syndicate, every local government, every well-oiled corporation and every money-lending institute had ties to MORTIE and could find you on this planet and probably other planets he didn’t even know about.  We shook hands.  He looked around the lobby and left by a side door.

 

After my sixth beer with Ivan and the others, I was feeling buoyant, like my head was a helium-filled balloon floating above my body, ready to break free and sail up to the heavens where all the balloons went that didn’t get stuck up against the ceiling and rafters of buildings.  I tugged on the ribbon holding my head in place and the room bounced a little too heavy.

 

Ivan ordered another round and insisted on paying for it, saying that I had done enough to earn my place in the group.

 

Seamus stood up and shuffled up behind Ivan.  “Well, shall we sing a song?”

 

“I don’t think it’s fair.  Bruce doesn’t know any of our songs.”

 

“Very well, then.  Maureen, you know any good pub songs you could join me in?”

 

Maureen stood up and put her arm around Seamus’ waist.  “Surely here’s one that Bruce knows…

 

“As I went out through Dublin City…”

I smiled and shook my head.  “I know the melody but not the words.”
Seamus, Angela and Ivan joined her.

“At the hour of twelve o’clock at night
Who should I see but the Spanish lady
Washing her feet by candlelight
First she washed them
Then she dried them
Over a fire of amber coals

“In all my life I ne’er did see
A maid so sweet about the soul

“Whack for the tooraloora laddy
Whack for the tooraloora lay
Whack for the tooraloora laddy
Whack for the tooraloora lay

“As I went our thru Dublin City
At the hour of half past eight
Who do I see but the Spanish lady
Combing her hair so trim and neat
First she brushed it
Then she combed it
On her lap was a silver comb

“In all my life I ne’er did see
A maid so sweet since I did roam

“Whack for the tooraloora laddy
Whack for the tooraloora lay
Whack for the tooraloora laddy
Whack for the tooraloora lay

“As I walked out through Dublin City
As the sun began to set
Who should I see but the Spanish lady
Catch a moth in her golden net
First she spied me then she fled me
Hitchin’ her petticoat over her knee

“In all my life ne’er did I see
A maid so fair as the Spanish Lady

“Whack for the tooraloora laddy
Whack for the tooraloora lay
Whack for the tooraloora laddy
Whack for the tooraloora lay”

 

As they sang, they put their arms around each other.  I pulled my Canon S1 camera out of my pocket and snapped a couple of pictures.  Ivan laughed and nodded.

 

Ivan held up his newly-filled pint glass.  “To bad singing that sounds glorious after a few pints!”

 

“To bad singing!”

 

“And bad breath!”

 

“Cheers!”

 

Ivan set his head on my left shoulder.  “What do you plan to do with those pictures?”

 

“I don’t know.  I just like taking pictures to remember where I’ve been and who I was with.”

 

“Well, I know you won’t be sharing those at work, right?”

 

“Uh, right.”

 

“Good.”  Ivan elbowed me to right himself on his barstool.

 

“Ivan…” Since we were in a talking mood, I thought I’d bounce something off Ivan and not worry about him sharing it with anyone else.

 

“Yes, Bruce.”

 

“When I first joined the Qwerty-Queue team, I…”

 

“You know, that is the most ridiculous name I’ve ever heard.  Sounds like Curly Cue, Dippity Do, or some other silly hair product, doesn’t it?”

 

“Ummm…yeah, I suppose it does.  Anyway, when I joined the team, I got invited to this secret hideaway that looked like a fancy treehouse.  I got lost and ended up in some enchanted forest where the vines had arms and little plants talked to me.  Do you think I was dreaming it all up?  After all, the weird stuff only occurred after I was left alone for a while.  Maybe I fell asleep and dreamt it all up.”

 

Ivan nodded and smiled.  He whispered to me, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.  What goes on in Ireland stays in Ireland.”  Ivan patted me on the back, put a finger to his mouth and made a zipper-closing motion.

 

“But this didn’t occur in Ireland.  It happened in Huntsville.”

 

“What goes on in Huntsville stays in Huntsville, my man.  No need to tell me anything more.”

 

Ivan’s cell phone rang.

 

“Hello?  Yes, I know but it’s Thursday night.  I’m out with my friends.  What time did you say?  Oh, all right.  I’ll be there close to the time.”

 

Ivan turned to me.

 

“So, Bruce, how you planning to get home?”

 

“I’ll drive, I guess.  I left my car in a carpark down the street.”

 

“Carpark?  Hell, you aren’t getting your car out tonight, then.  They close at 7 o’clock.”

 

“Seven?”

 

“Yeah, man, hate to break it to you.  You’ll need a ride.  If you want a ride home now, I can take you but otherwise you better plan on getting a hotel room.”

 

“But the others…”

 

“No way.  They all live near Limerick.  None of these cats are going to waste their time driving you back.”

 

“Shit.”

 

“Sorry, man.  So, you up for leaving?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Then let’s go.”

 

Ivan and I stood up, both of us wobbling a bit.  Ivan turned to his fellow Thursday Night Out Club members and held up his hand.

 

“We’re calling this meeting adjourned.  I gotta get Bruce back to his hotel because the fucker locked his car in a carpark.”

 

Angela and Seamus waved goodbye.  Maureen gave Ivan and me each an extra-strong hug.  I can still smell her perfume, a strong slap of artificial flavoring laced with sexual invitations and lustful drooling, and followed up by a hint of “I’ll respect you in the morning but don’t expect me to be waiting for you to call back.”

 

Ivan and I stumbled out of the pub.

 

“So, Bruce, what do you think?”

 

“You guys sure seem to have a lot of fun.”

 

“Actually, tonight was rather quiet.”

 

Pasted to a window of a building on the corner, a squash-yellow poster for an upcoming concert proclaimed, “NO CELTIC WOMEN HERE!  Catch the sounds you’ve always loved.  Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett.  All your favorite rocking women from the ‘60s and ‘70s from one rock-and-roller, Eva Levi, the singer who’s famous for not being famous! Live, in concert, Eva Levi and the Levitones, Saturday @ 9 p.m.”

 

I called after Ivan who was crossing the street.  “Did you see that?”

 

Ivan spun around like a weeble-wobble toy.  I burst out laughing.  The advertising jingle, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!”, started playing in my head.

 

Ivan frowned.  “What?”

 

“This poster.  Have you ever heard of Eva Levi and the Levitones?”

 

“No, why?”

 

“Well, I swear that Eva Levi was the owner of a B&B I recently stayed in.”

 

“Good for you.  I’m standing in the middle of the street.  Let’s get to the car.”

 

I concentrated on the broken concrete sidewalk, stepping on the cracks to avoid tripping – breaking the backs of all the mothers in the world – and ran to catch up with Ivan as he opened the door to his car, a VW of some sort.

 

I opened the passenger door and leaned in.  “Are you okay to drive?”

 

“Me?  Hell, yeah.  I’ve driven out of Limerick so many times I could do it with me strapped to the top of a double-decker bus in London with only mind control to get my car home to Ennis from here.”

 

“If you say so…”

 

“Don’t worry.  Just get in the car and strap in.”

 

As Ivan maneuvered out of town, I closed my eyes.  A hidden pair of hands grabbed my skull just above my eye sockets and tightened.  My brain no longer fit in the scrunched-down skull and throbbed in protest.  My ears felt like they were being ignored so they ran out to the Body Parts store and bought a used gerbil cage, making sure they got a nice rusty old wheel.  Taking turns kicking the wheel with their anvil and stirrup, my left and right ear got the wheel spinning.  Creak, creak, creak, creak.  One of the hidden hands let go of my forehead and grabbed a sledgehammer, adding a bass beat to the creaking.  Creak, boom, creak, boom, creak, boom.  My neck muscles seized up, distorting my backbone, making my vertebrae pop out of joint.  Creak, boom, creak, boom, pop, creak boom.  A symphonic headache took over my consciousness.

 

“Bruce, you all right.  You look awful.”

 

I opened my eyes, which slowed down the spinning but the pounding and seizing continued.

 

“Unnh.  I don’t know.  Maybe.  Can you talk about something to help me get my mind off this headache?”

 

“Sure thing.  By the way, on the way to your hotel, I’ve got to make a stop.  I’ve got a friend of mine who needs a little help.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“If you see her, act surprised, like you’ve never met her before.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

“Well, you might recognize her.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Anyway, despite what you’ve heard, she’s not my girlfriend.  I have a girlfriend back home in the U.S.  But since I’m not over but there very often…well, you know how lonely it can get when you travel.  A man’s got to have a little relaxation on the side.”

 

I nodded.

 

“You see, I used to be married but my ex was a real square.  She didn’t understand that guys have needs that can’t go unmet for very long.  She completely misinterpreted simple acts of sex as some kind of goddam relationship.  Not once have I cheated on a woman for love.  If I love a woman, it’s for good.  I don’t fall in love very easily.  But don’t let that woman know you’re having sex with someone else because the dinner at home isn’t exactly filling.  No-o-o-o.  Sure as hell don’t make any calls from your cell phone that you’ll have to explain.  You gotta a wife?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well, if you love her, keep the sex on the side quiet.  When the wrong kind of wife gets wind of what you’re doing, she’ll go nuts.  Berserk.  A prime candidate for the loony bin.  And she’ll keep getting crazier, even after the divorce.  And…I swear you better go into a marriage with the rules of sex clearly spelled out.  That’s the only way to have a fun marriage.  Or even a long-term relationship.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“You got kids?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, that just complicates matters even worse.  The bitch will make sure you’re painted as some kind of philandering lush so that no judge will want to let you have visitation without paying through your ass for alimony and child support. Fuck!”  Ivan slammed the steering wheel and sped up as we hit the dual carriageway.

 

“How many kids you got?”

 

“Two.  I wanted them to visit me while I was over here but the bitch has turned them against me.”

 

“Sorry to hear it.”

 

“Yeah, so am I.”

 

Ivan pulled off at the exit for the Radisson Hotel.  He parked the car and opened the door.

 

“I’ll be right back.”

 

I closed my eyes to take a nap.  The next thing I knew, Ivan was tapping me on the shoulder.

 

“Okay, Bruce, we’re here.”

 

We were parked at my hotel.

 

“Oh, wow, thanks.”

 

Ivan laughed.  “Well, I hope you learned your lesson.  Next time, take my word and park on the street.  Hey, when you get up in the morning, give me a call.  I’ll pick you up on my way to work.  I like to leave around 8 o’clock.”

 

“Thanks.  Will do.”

 

“Oh, and you can get a taxi from the office to take you to Limerick to get your car.”

 

“Okay.”

 

 

The next day, Ivan and I strolled into the Shannon office.  We stopped by Seamus’ desk to make sure he had made it in.

 

“Bruce!  Ivan!  You’re here early.”

 

Ivan laughed.  “You, too.”

 

My headache still held me in its grips, even though I’d downed a pot of coffee.  My thoughts were poorly organized.  I remembered the many times I had driven home drunk, pulling off the road to take a whizz or throw up.  I thought that our drive home the previous night should be something to be proud of.  “We even made it home on just one stop!”

 

“You did, did you?  That’s a surprise.  Ivan, I thought you were the world’s best drunk driver.  Or are you slippin’ in your old age?”

 

Ivan clenched his jaw and stared at me, his glistening, bloodshot eyes reminding me that I was to keep my mouth shut.  My headache took one look at Ivan and ran away.  I suddenly felt naked and alone, like a little kid called to the principal’s office not knowing what he’d done wrong.  I wanted to run away but adults don’t do that.  They stand in place and figuratively pee down their pants, instead.

 

Ivan turned to Seamus.  “I believe Bruce’s mistaken.  I dropped him off at his hotel and then drove back to my place.”

 

Duh.  My mistake.  What goes on in Ireland stays in Ireland.

 

“Of course, Ivan’s right.  To him, it’s only one stop in that he had to drop me off.”

 

Seamus smiled.  “That’s more like it.  I was beginning to be afraid that we could no longer trust you Americans to hold your drink.”

 

Ivan and Seamus exchanged a silent glance, telling each other that it was me they weren’t sure they could trust anymore.  Only later did I realize that I’d completely lost Seamus’ trust when he no longer spoke to me and only responded to questions from me when in the company of others.  Blackballed!

5

 

When I returned to Huntsville, I stopped by Patrick’s office to check in.

 

“Patrick.”

 

Patrick looked up from his  computer.  “Oh, hey, Bruce.  Come on in and close the door.”

 

Something serious again.  “Anything new going on?”

 

“Just an email to discuss with you.”

 

“Oh, okay.”  I closed the door and sat in the guest chair nearest his desk.  The stacks of paper on his desk had grown.  Obviously, Patrick was no longer interested in maintaining an uncluttered desk.  I didn’t know him well enough to gauge whether the paper meant he was too busy to review documents, had reviewed them and didn’t want to sign them, or wanted to build a bigger wall to separate him from his visitors.

 

“So, Bruce, anything new you want to share with me?”

 

Patrick was fishing again.  “Not really.  You might get a kick out of this, though.  They have a special night of the week in Ireland designated for folks to go out and drink.”

 

“You mean they don’t go out drinking every night?”

 

I laughed.  “No, contrary to popular myth, not every Irishman is an alcoholic.”

 

“So why the special night?  I mean, here we’ve got bowling leagues and pool leagues and dart leagues and all sorts of excuses for social drinking seven days a week.”

 

“Yeah, I know.  That’s why I thought it was funny that the Irish would be the ones that designated only one special night.  Anyway, Thursday nights you can go out drinking with your friends and not get in trouble with your wife.”

 

“Thanks for telling me.  That explains why some of the Shannon engineers laughed when I told them I had better catch a plane out of Ireland on Thursday instead of Friday.  I’ll have to remember to make a joke about it next time.”

 

“You can’t.”

 

“I can’t?”

 

“No, officially there is no special night out.”

 

“I see.  But we can laugh about it without talking about it.  Anyway, thanks Bruce.  It’s useful information.”

 

“No problem.”

 

“So, have you caught up on email this morning?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, I thought that’s why you’re here.  Look at this email, then, and we can talk.”

 

I walked over to Patrick’s computer and read over his shoulder.

 

FROM: Cumulo-Seven Corporate

TO: Cumulo-Seven Employees

SUBJECT: Company reorganization

 

In an effort to optimize the efficiency of our operations, in line with our most recent organization announcement, we have consolidated the functions of the Qwerty-Queue division.  All members of the Qwerty-Queue engineering team have been assigned to other projects.  The functions of the Marketing, Sales and Program Management teams are under review for further optimization.

 

We thank the engineers for their efforts in the development of the Qwerty-Queue product line.  Without their contribution, the Qwerty-Queue products would never have achieved a level of success in the marketplace.

 

Please direct all questions to Human Resources.

 

“So what does this mean?”

 

“Well, I know you had planned to move to Ireland.  Had you made any changes in that direction?”

 

He was still fishing.  Trying a different lure.  “Uh, no.  I was told I was going to run the program management duties from Huntsville.”

 

“That’s right.  So have you talked to Donnagan recently?”

 

Last cast didn’t work.  Patrick had reeled in the line and tried another cast. “No.”

 

“I know he’ll want to talk with you but I’ll go ahead and let you know what the company is thinking.  The whole marketing, sales and program management department in Shannon is being eliminated.”

 

I took a step back, caught my foot on a roller and fell against a chair.

 

“You all right, Bruce?”

 

I blushed as I stood up.  “Oh, yeah, sorry.  Guess I still have jetlag.”

 

“Have a seat.”

 

I grabbed the chair and placed myself in it gingerly, my butt a little sore from the sudden fall.

 

“So what about my job?”

 

“I don’t know.  You’ll have to ask Donnagan.  If you’re up for it, I can call him from here.  I need to ask him a couple of questions anyway.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Patrick punched the speakerphone button and dialed Donnagan.

 

“Good afternoon, Cumulo-Seven.  Donnagan speaking.”

 

“Donnagan, it’s Patrick.”

 

“Patrick.  What a surprise.  What are you up to?”

 

“Not much.”

 

“Well, I’m up to 5’4” but that’s another story.  What can I do for you?”

 

“I’ve got Bruce here with me and…”

 

“Hello, Bruce!”

 

“Hey, Donnagan.”

 

“…And we thought we’d discuss the news with you.”

 

“Oh, news it is, isn’t it?  I don’t suppose you’re calling to offer me a job, are you?”  Donnagan laughed.

 

“Afraid not.  Unless you’re looking for a lab technician position.  I can’t seem to find a good candidate for the design lab.”

 

“As much as I’d love to get my hands on a soldering iron, I’m not in the market.  So what can I do for you, then?”

 

“Well, we’re wondering what this news has to do with Bruce.”

 

“You’re right.  Bruce, I’m sorry I haven’t called you about this myself.”

 

“No problem.”

 

“You see, Bruce, I’ve been trying to find a way to keep you in your current position but it looks like it won’t work out.  But I haven’t finished talking with everyone here so don’t give up hope!”

 

Hope.  Hope is a word for losers who don’t have a handle on the rudder of their ship of destiny.

 

“No problem.  I just got word of the announcement a few minutes ago.”

 

“Yeah?  Well, I’m sorry about that.  So, Patrick, think Bruce would be willing to solder a few engineering prototype boards?”

 

Patrick and Donnagan laughed.

 

Patrick looked me.  “Somehow, I don’t think so.  Bruce?”

 

I shook my head.

 

“And I wouldn’t ask him to.  He’s been through enough already.  So when do you think you’ll have the final word on this?”

 

“I’m not sure.  I’m still trying to find out if I have a job.  Once I get that sorted out, I’ll work more diligently on Bruce’s behalf.”

 

“Thanks, Donnagan.”

 

“Bruce, you’re quite welcome.  In the meantime, can you contact the U.S. sales team and see if they’re doing okay?”

 

“Will do.”

 

“Great.  Well, guys, if you don’t mind, I have a meeting to run off to.  Keep in touch.”  Donnagan hung up the phone.

 

Patrick leaned back in his chair.  “Bruce, I bet you wonder if we know what we’re doing.”

 

I laughed to push the tiredness out of my mind.  “Don’t worry.  I know you don’t.  I’m just here to do my job and support the team in this great big experiment we call business.”

 

“I like to hear that, Bruce.  Well, if you have nothing else to discuss, I, too, have a meeting to get to.”

 

“Nope.”

 

I walked out of Patrick’s office.

 

When I got to my office, the phone was ringing.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Bruce, it’s Greg Walters.  How’re you doing?”

 

Greg Walters?  He was a tall, long-haired guy I’d seen in the halls a few times.  His large frame reminded me of a person who had played high school or college football and not lifted weights since then.

 

“Hey, Greg.  Fine.”

 

“Good.  Hey, I hear you’re looking for a job.”

 

Word travels fast.  “Not really.”

 

“Are you sure?  Never mind.  You don’t have to answer that.  Hey, I spoke with Patrick and he thinks that you’re the perfect fit for a job in my department.”

 

“Oh, okay.”

 

“Yeah.  Good news, isn’t it?”  Greg spoke mockingly.  “In case you’re interested, let me tell you about my group and then we can talk in more details if you like.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“You see, I run the branded program management team for Cumulo-Seven.  That means that any product we make that has the Cumulo-Seven label has to be managed by us.  Since you’ve been wrapped up in the Qwerty-Queue world, I’m sure you’re familiar with our products.”

 

“Of course.  I’ve also seen a lot of Cumulo-Seven products in the test lab.”

 

“I forgot.  You were the Huntsville test lab manager, weren’t you?  Yes, you were.  Well, anyway, I’ve been tasked by the OEM team to pull some of the OEM programs into my group.”

 

“OEM?”

 

“Yeah.  The OEM team operates mainly out of Austin and Redmond but they want more exposure at the corporate level so they thought that if some of the products were managed here in Huntsville then…”

 

“What do you mean by OEM?”

 

“Bad habit, Bruce.  The OEM programs are the products we make for other companies, putting their labels on our products and modifying the embedded firmware so that the other company’s name appears in place of ours, especially for any GUI stuff that pops up.”

 

“Uh, okay.”

 

“We’ve already got the Mimosa program manager here in Huntsville, even though Mimosa headquarters is based out of Houston.  It made more sense to me to base our Mimosa program management in Austin with the others but what can I say?  I’m just here to keep the programs on target.  Where you park your butt to run the programs shouldn’t affect profit, right?”

 

“If you say so.”

 

“That’s what I’m saying.  Anyway, give it some thought.  I know you’ll probably get offers from other groups, but before you do I want you to stop by my office and spend a few minutes with me and my crew.”

 

“Will do.”

 

“That’s all I can ask.  Anyway, I’ve got a meeting to get to.  Give me a call soon.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“And one last thing, feel free to call anybody on my team, or even Carl Guyotte, the OEM VP based in Austin.”

 

“Who’s on your team?”

 

“My team consists of Carol Stone, Juan Johnson, Gigi Vioget and Leonard Gallagher.  They’ll be glad to fill you in on what they do.  Gotta go.  Bye!”

 

6

 

Next thing I knew, I was working for Greg Walters.  Greg sent me to Redmond, Washington, along with Juan Johnson, for an OEM program management meeting.   Greg told me Fawn Fresnel was moving to Europe to take over the EMEA sales position for the UDARA account so I was taking over most of Fawn’s programs, sharing the Geauxgetem program with Gerard. 

 

At the meeting, I met Constance once again, along with Tammy Pierce, Gerard Colquitt, and Fawn Fresnel.  During the meeting, Constance acted like she was in synch with me, giving me the impression she was flirting with me in her own Christian brother/sister sort of way.  I was confused and decided I’d take the conversation further at dinner.  Fawn was unable to join us that night.

 

On trips, I carry an old Gateway2000 Handbook, a subnotebook computer I had purchased at Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama, many years ago.  No, subnotebook does not mean a book of notes about submarines or sub sandwiches.  Or a notebook that is under the surface, subversive or somehow lower than a regular notebook. The subnotebook had been owned by someone at Saudi Aramco.  The computer specialist at Unclaimed Baggage had deleted all the old Saudi Aramco data and programs off the hard drive, leaving only an empty spreadsheet with the header, Saudi Aramco.  Unfortunately, the computer had been infected with the Cascade virus which caused letters typed on the command line to fall to the bottom in an apparent pile.  Those computer users who have never used the command line probably do not understand the concept but back in the days of DOS and Windows 3.1, people actually typed white text on a black screen.  Instead of seeing a screen full of text that you could edit in a word processor, the command line screen allowed you to type and edit text on one line only.  Some junior high or high school prankster probably lost a few nights sleep dreaming up and creating the Cascade virus.  You see, back in the day, not all computer viruses were meant to take down computer networks or steal credit card information.  Some viruses simply functioned as pranks.  For a couple of days, I enjoyed typing words on the command line and watching them fall like chunks of ice in a snowstorm, crushing unsuspecting cars on the freeway of letters at the bottom of the screen.  Since I had paid $700 for a $2500 portable PC, I got bored with the novelty of the Cascade virus and decided to put my $1800 savings to better use.

 

It was pretty easy to find the Cascade virus and repair the system.  However, I wanted no chance that the leftover bits and bytes from the days of Saudi Aramco would affect me in any way so I had converted the subnotebook computer from Windows 3.1 to Linux, after changing the long-term memory from a hard disk to compact flash-based memory.  I had also replaced the coin battery and power supply batteries.  All in all, the Handbook has served as a great portable computer that can’t be beat for text typing.  I wouldn’t want to spend all day surfing the Web with it but I could use my OLPC laptop or Asus EEE PC for that, instead – beats the tiny iPhone screen any day.

 

I like taking notes when I’m sitting with colleagues.  Daydreams and conversations turn into fun.  Truth becomes lies and lies become friends, friends become lovers and lovers become partners, long-time partners learn the truth about long-term relationships and truth becomes lies again…

 

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

 

Violet View Café and wine bar.  Kirkland, Washington.  Table for 6.  7:17 p.m.  Sitting with four of my coworkers – Constance O’Connell, Tammy Pierce, Juan Johnson, and Gerard Colquitt.  The empty chair and place setting across from me keep calling my name, like a harpy beckoning me to reach over and shake hands with the invisible person who has been staring at me, her eyes begging me to open the menu so my imaginary friend can look at the selection of “fine” foods and dream of tasty morsels melting in her mouth.

My mind wanders.  I hate it when I’m tired.  Hard enough to concentrate when I’m fully awake and sober.  But now?  My God, I’m not even sure what I’m hearing.

Already living in some sort of fantasy world by day, where people talk of web aggregators, function sets, password requests and certification procedures (What the hell do those words mean, anyway?), I’m listening to a discussion of past trips to other fantasy realms called Disney World and Disneyland.  An “apple, walnut and stilton” salad is drying in front of me, the pieces long since plucked from wild ancestral roots and planted in civilization, cut down at their prime in order to feed my proper middle class mouth.  The conversation segues to motorcycle riding (went from finger scanning at Disney World entrance to the news story of an 18-year old boy genius who recently died in a motorbike accident in south Florida (he was also part of a family that had chips implanted under their skin)).

Chips planted in their skins?  What am I hearing?  I look at the white Christmas lights strung over a nearby doorway and flick my eyes back and forth.  The streaks of lights remain in my vision.  Do I hear anything but the conversation around me?  Do I see anything but the words bubbling up from people’s mouths into cartoon-like clouds above their heads?  Isn’t there music somewhere in the background?  Some sort of jazz tune.  No, it’s the Beatles.  Lucy.  Yeah, I hear the words all right, but I know it’s in my head, not coming from some Muzak channel.

I look over at my dinner companions.  They cannot see my invisible friend in the empty chair.  But the waitress does.  She doesn’t take away the glass of water, silverware or menu in front of my friend.  I give her a nod and a knowing look.  She gives me the knowing look in return.  No need for words.  Those who know, know.

Unbeknownst to my colleagues, I had stopped to shop in downtown Redmond earlier in the day, a Thai-Oaxaca herb store.  The week’s activities had turned my head into a mess.  Pounding headache and blurred vision.  The shopkeeper talked with me a few minutes about my current lifestyle and told me I had a mental block of some sort keeping me from seeing the other side of my world.  She gave me a few gelatin tablets that she told me contained pure cocoa, a ground-up variety of Capiscum frutescens known as Thai Dragon hot pepper, a mood enhancer herb called Sceletium Tortuosum, and a visionary herb known as Salvia divinorum. I told the old woman I was familiar with the salvia but didn’t know about the other plants.  She assured me that the mixture, known as Happy Dreamer, would calm my nerves and clear my head. I slipped the shamanistic herb mixture onto my tongue at the office at 6:05 p.m., before driving to the hotel to pick up Constance and meet them at the restaurant.

I don’t usually see tracers until 30 minutes have passed.  Luckily, it took a little longer, just enough time for me to find a parking space near the restaurant.  Thank goodness, Constance was clueless, especially since I kept talking about how tired I was and how it messed with my speech center, causing me to say the wrong things, like looking up the definition of a word in the dictionary, selecting a key word from the definition, looking up an antonym of that word in an thesaurus and then adding that word to the conversation.  You know, something like, while walking from the parking lot, through a shopping center to the restaurant, while taking the stairs from one level to the next, seeing a Christmas tree and bronze statues of kids pointing up at a tree…

“Hey, Constance.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s cool,” I said, pointing to the statues, realizing the artist meant to show that children are branches, twigs, limbs, leaves, bark, sapwood and everything else but the trunk.  Trunks belong to elephants, adult humans, carriages and cars.  Cars transport trunks within trunks, pieces of elephant trunks preserved in paleontologists’ trunks on the way to a geologist’s lecture about a petrified tree trunk that showed where an elephant calf crawled up inside a giant tree and died.  The baby passed up adulthood and branched into a trunk within a trunk, instead.

“What?  Oh yeah, my son would love taking pictures of that.  He’s so good at taking pictures.”

I thought about what Constance had said earlier.  Her son enjoyed photography, I knew, so he liked to play with gadgets, and Constance liked kitchen gadgets so something was cooking and there was a Japanese restaurant to my left and a crab restaurant to my right so Constance was crabby about cooking and liked to photograph dead trees with ornaments but no, she didn’t shoot pictures, she didn’t like to kill anything, and there’s a book store, and Constance likes to read, but she doesn’t read because she gets tired of finding the right reading glasses, so what type of glasses does she drink from when she’s cooking Christmas trees in hollow bronze statues in the middle of a cold night in Washington?

I looked from the statues to Constance. “So you use stainless steel?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, you like to cook?” I asked, not sure what I had said out loud.

“Right.  Yeah, J.C. is really good at taking pictures.  I think he’d enjoy shooting those kids.”

I wondered what kind of woman I was walking with who would encourage her son to murder other people.  Got to stay focused.  Got to remember what we’re here for.  “So where’s the restaurant?”

“I think it’s just across the street there.”

Giraffes?  Safaris?  What was Constance doing in Africa?  I thought her passport had expired earlier this year, or was it that her passport expired at the end of this year?  What year is it?  Wait, Constance had stayed at a hotel in the Disney Animal World, able to see giraffes from her hotel window.

Close my eyes.  Breathe.  Look back across the table.  My imaginary friend has gotten up and left.  Nothing but the empty chair facing me.  Look down.  I’m scrawling on a scrap of paper.  Tiny letters.  Too dark in the restaurant to read.  The others are laughing at me.  “Must be at least 3 point type there, Bruce!” Juan says, looking around Gerard to make eye contact with me.  Does he know I’m tripping?  Doesn’t give me the knowing look.  No, he doesn’t know.

Constance is smiling at me, but the smile is not comforting, more like a mother who’s bearing the situation for her children’s sake.  Does she still have her headache from earlier in the day?  Probably only needs a neck massage but who’s going to give it to her?  Someone should, but not me.  I’m not the “touchy feely” kind.

Beside me, Gerard’s voice grabs my left ear.  He’s saying something which reminds me he’s got two kids, age 7 and 5, I think.  He took his kids to Disneyland in 2005 during a particularly heavy rainy period, when lots of flooding was taking place in southern California.  His kids were able to ride the attractions over and over; in August 2006, during the Hurricane Ernesto scare, his kids got to ride over and over again at Disney World.  His kids don’t know what lines are like.  Or queues, as the British call them.  The British know how to queue, or so said Arthur Dent in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”  But aren’t we all good at forming formations, making foundations, floundering, frowning, frustrating, forgetting, spaghetti, spouting, spewing, mewing, mooing, booing, brewing, brooding, breeding, feeding, freeing, paying fees after standing for hours, shuffling our feet at the DMV?

Tammy’s conducting an interview.  “And what do you do?”  The words echo around the room, ‘and what do you do, do the Dew, the do, the dooo….”

Juan has always worked in the high tech industry, mainly manufacturing companies (SCI and the like); Gerard in medical business a long time.  Constance’s been a house parent, house mom, midwife, and cleaning lady.  She used computers for the first time, in 1991 or 1992, using floppy drive system.  Floppy?  Why not “flexible”?  Or “bendable”?

I like to write.  I’ve always liked to write.  I’m writing now or at least this pen in my hand likes to spread ink on the paper beneath my hand.

Gerard wrote a book in 8^th grade, chapters were episodes based on friends’ names and their quizzical questions, “When’s the next chapter?”  What is it with parents and their dreams of their kids?  Gerard’s father has locked Gerard’s book away in a safety deposit box.  What did they ever do wrong?  What do his words have to be forever imprisoned behind iron bars?  Guess they’ve been sentenced!

Aha!  Finally!  A hallucination worth writing about.  There, in the middle of the table is the concrete-encrusted fake tree from my childhood, based on the adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson, all covered with silk webbing.  But why?  Of course, reread the words floating about Tammy’s head.  Tammy remembers a book by Spider Robinson, recounting the adventures in a bar called Callahan’s Place.  Some of the writing was just recounting bad puns.

She turns the interview on herself, at last.  Answering the questions no one has specifically asked, Tammy turns the spigot, letting her life’s juicy details flow out.  She had trained as a vet tech but topped out at $11/hour, not enough to live on by herself.  Then she did something else.  I’m having difficulty hearing her.  A gigantic, blinding parabola is blocking my view, a shiny metal bowl is vibrating, echoing with the bong from the beat of oversized tongs.  Maybe she was in a wok band?  It’s hard to tell.  The aluminum disk shrinks and disappears.  Self-educated in computers, hired at Compaq with no degree and very little experience – Tammy got the job at Compaq because during interview, when asked why she felt she was more qualified than other guys with technical degrees and experience, she responded, “I don’t know.  I thought I was interviewing to take your job.”  Refreshing response.

I sigh.  Ahh…the pause that refreshes…

From parabolas to triangles, must be the math-magician, the majestic Constance talking.  She worked for a medical billing company on Dug Hill Road in Huntsville, went to school in Athens and lived in Decatur, plus had three little ones to raise at home.  Six, fifty an hour and no insurance, a caring mother’ll do anything to survive.

Tammy worked at 3 different veterinarian offices while going to school – Vancouver, extreme west Washington (isn’t that like in the ocean, or something?) and east Washington, 8-12 hours/week at each place, equivalent to fulltime job.

I like to draw pictures with words.  Tammy likes to draw pictures worth a thousand words.  She had a pet flat spider and has a drawing of it to prove it.  Or at least she thinks she has the picture.  I wonder if she’ll ever get the satisfaction of proving it.  “Just come to my office and you’ll see I like to draw,” she challenges.  Like she can’t see I remember our previous conversations together.  Like she can’t remember I edited a photograph of her, putting a praying mantis on her shoulder.  Like I didn’t even exist in her mind when I visited Redmond eight or nine months ago.  Like it’s obvious she’s a manager of the concept of ordering things in her head, matching reality almost all the time but not necessarily remembering everything she sees or hears, except when she wants to gather the stimulus, add it to the list, resort and categorize the items on the list, nod her head and smile in satisfaction.  She lived in Nigeria when she was 10 while her father taught school, doing research for 3 years.  She had to collect insects for him so she got to see interesting insects.  She saw how the local inhabitants of Nigeria lived and we know what that means.  What does that mean?

Constance learned DOS; software at her first high tech job was developed by a psychiatrist’s wife for her husband’s business.  If her husband all about reading people and prescribing therapy and drugs, then Constance’s responsible for a lot more of the mental lives of folks in Huntsville than she may realize.  Somewhere, there’s a guy saying, “If only I had paid that quack for one more session, I’d not be living under the I-565 bridge today.”  😉   She got hired at Cumulo-Seven by Marv Putter, who was head of engineering and technical support; hired after Victor Post and at lower pay, pay being an especially sensitive topic for a woman raising three kids on her own.  And what’s with the “on her own” bit, anyway?  Gotta find out that story some day?  At Cumulo-Seven, she soon saw that she and the other two technical support reps were keeping separate ways to track customers – she developed plan to buy software to track customers.  Cumulo-Seven had 90 employees at the time.  Maybe the third different location for the company, by that time.

The waitress stops by and leans over to grab a wine glass from in front of me.  “Have you had enough to soldier?” she whispers in my ear.  I feel my shoulders relax, realizing I’m not the only tripped out person in the world.  She smiles and walks away, her duty done, acknowledgement of another lost soul in the swirling, chaotic, commercial, Western world.  The soft side of MORTIE.

The ebb and flow of vocational talltales continues.  Tammy was hired as inside sales rep, even though she wanted to be program manager.  Tammy told Robert Solough she was going to work for him – he was livid, finding out after she was hired and assigned to him.  She didn’t call him back for several days.  Amazing, how the concept of “job” and “work” affect our human interactions.

My main course consists of drinking a “flight” of wine (four glasses half-filled with dark red wine) called the “teethstainer”, and eating a “flight” of cheese called “Ode to a musty French cave” (pierre robert. cows milk triple cream. France; mahone. cows milk. France; saint nectaire abbaye. cows milk. France; brique agour. sheeps milk. France).

Constance likes to listen to a CD of the musical, “Les Miserables” when she cleans her house every Saturday.  Tammy likes Eileen Ivers, a violin performer of Irish descent.  One Christmas, Tammy received a bright red electric Zeta violin (similar to the one Eileen has) on which she enjoys playing jazz, blues and Irish music (“peasant music”, as her mother calls it, pointing out that the caste system is not just limited to world of Constance’s college roommate).

Tammy remembers drinking morning and afternoon tea in Nigeria, but no lunch.

Juan was in the Army – served in various places, Central America, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain.  There, he drank 5 servings of tea a day (very small cups), following local customs.

Tammy , a born program manager and sketch artist.

Constance, an engineering project manager and math tutor.

Juan, a program manager who never likes to sit still at home or he falls asleep, unless the movie’s good enough to keep him awake.

Gerard, a program manager who has played on the same softball team for 10 years, in the Bellevue league.

Constance’s son is a photographer.  His school, Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, TN, sponsored a dinner where Cal Ripken, Junior, was the speaker on Friday night.  Her son stayed late to photograph and talk with Cal.  He drove to Memphis to run in the St. Jude’s marathon on Saturday (I sponsored him for $50) and then drove to Nashville for his fiancé’s event on Sunday.

The war of words is almost over.  My amigos have paid the price and spilled their guts, the words of their lives staining the wine lists in my hands.  I close my eyes once more.  The spinning is still slow.  I’ll follow the others out of the restaurant and act “behaved”.  I’ll drive them to the hotel down the straight and narrow road.  The long and winding road of my mind will lead me back to the page after I have parked.

I step into the hotel room and drop the vestiges of my cultured self, giving in to the demands of the Wondering Wanderer inside, who wants randomness and disorganization to dominate the space around him for a while.  I let my mind drift.  Spacing out.  Chemically-induced, toxic tripping.  After all, aren’t there peace, quiet and tranquility to be found in the empty, white noise spaces on the radio dial?

 

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

 

The next day we found out Constance was called back to Sunrise for an emergency.

7

 

We broke up the next day’s meeting at noon so we could concentrate on separate issues.  I got with Fawn to go over her programs, including Geauxgetem, RRR and Pairuclaws.

 

A hiking route map of Mt. Kilimanjaro hung on the wall above Fawn’s desk.

 

“Wow, so you really climbed Mount Kilimanjaro?”

 

Fawn’s eyes lit up like a new fall harvest moon pushing a stubborn old summer cloud out of the way.  The office brightened from Fawn’s glow.  She got up and closed the door.

 

“Yes, all the way to the top of Kibo on Kili.  19,340 feet, eight friends and family and 41 porters.  How much do you know about Africa?”

 

I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me so I shrugged my shoulders, impersonating Darrell Hammond’s impression of Al Gore’s personification of his old boss, Bill Clinton.

 

Fawn then pulled a tiny gray tablet PC out of her purse.  She sat on the edge of the desk and unfolded the double palm-sized computer in front of me.

 

“Have you ever seen pictures of exotic animals like this before?”

 

“No.”  I watched as she thumbed through a slideshow of animals and insects that made the Island of Doctor Moreau look like a boring city zoo.  I shuddered while a dim memory from my youth flashed in front of my eyes.  Fawn’s photographs revealed turtles disguised as rocks with bits of dead lizards and shriveled human fingers sticking out as a warning not to pick up the rock, snakes that looked like gnarled tree limbs, flies that seemed to dance in and out of campfires as if they were eating the flames, ghost spiders that lay hidden in the flowers of Helichrysum newii and an unknown insect that resembled the long, curled-up green-and-purple leaf of Lobelia deckenii.    I shook my head when I saw a tree that had killed and hung a gazelle in its branches.

 

“You mean killer trees don’t just live in the dark forests of Europe?”

 

Fawn laughed.  “You silly.  That’s a leopard kill.”  Fawn nudged me.  “Of course, killer trees exist but we didn’t actually see the evidence of one.”

 

“Of course.  I was just playing with you.”

 

Fawn gave me a soft kick in my shin.  “I like the look in your eyes.  Like I can trust you.  I can trust you, can’t I?”

 

“Of course.”

 

Fawn put the tablet PC in my lap and dug through her purse.  She plugged an MP3 player into the USB port of the tablet PC.

 

“Take a look at this.”

 

Fawn brought up another slideshow.

 

“These are our porters.”

 

I nodded and smiled.

 

“After we climbed out of the rain forest, our guide and our porters led us on an alternate path they had promised would give better views of the mountain.  Better views!  I think he should have told us what kind of views.”

 

Fawn flipped to the next photo and made eye contact with me, her look asking me if I wanted to go on.  Holding the tablet PC below my chin, we faced each other a few inches apart, bending and breaking the invisible three-foot barrier around my body.

 

The photo was hard to see.  The photographer was sitting inside a tent and shooting a shot of naked or semi-naked people standing outside.  I assumed the people in the shot were the porters, with their dark skin blending into the darkness of the night.

 

“Some of us had gotten sick on the second day of the hike.  The guide blamed it on some food we’d probably eaten, which had contained beef broth by accident.  He produced some pills he brought with him for just such a situation.  As you know, I don’t do drugs or eat meat.  However, until you’re in the situation we were in, facing a climb that would produce altitude sickness, you don’t know how you’ll react.  In order for all of us to be physically capable of the climb, everyone in our group except for me took the pills.  These photos you see are what happened to us after they took the pills.”

 

Fawn flipped to the next photo.

 

I could clearly see members of Fawn’s hiking group mixed in with the porters.  They were standing in a circle, all of them stripped down to their underwear.

 

“Look closely at the people.  What do you see?  Do you believe they believe what they see?  Do you believe anything is possible?  Look beyond their physical appearances and put away your misconceptions, prejudices and biases about race, religion and education.  Imagine you are right there with them.  Imagine you have shed the trappings of your culture, removed the clothing of your economic stature.  Yet, you are still a scientist at the core.  Curiosity takes over and you become part of them.  You hold a camera to record the events around you, and see wonders beyond your imagination.”

 

Fawn flipped to the next photo.

 

The photographer stood with the others in the circle.  On the rocky ground in the middle of the circle the guide lay on his back, his arms and legs spread out.  His face cast a pale-green glow.  His eyes, normally a deep marble-brown, flickered like candlelight.

 

Fawn flipped to the next photo.

 

“These photos are not doctored.  I took them myself.  Keep in mind that I did not take the pill our guide had handed out.  But something they chanted…the rhythm of their singing…the Swahili language…I don’t know what it was but the group seemed to bring forth an energy in that place I’d never seen before.”  Fawn leaned in even closer, her nose barely touching mine.  “I know from a college psychology course that hypnosis and the power of suggestion will produce in people’s minds images, feelings and smells they never experienced.  I know that some people are more prone to hypnosis than others.  I have tried to be one of those people but always failed.  Yet, that night on the side of the mountain, with camera in hand, I watched…”  Fawn pressed her forehead to mine.  I felt heat from her skin, not as if Fawn had a fever, more like the inside of her skull blazed in an inferno.  I wanted to pull away but her skin seemed to melt into mine.

 

I broke eye contact and looked down between our cheeks at the photograph.  The guide floated above the group and the stars formed a miasmatic, kaleidoscopic, phlebophonic, gyrogistic galaxy that danced to the cacophony coming from the mouths of the faces swirling around the periphery of the photo.

 

I further slipped into Fawn’s mind.  Her thoughts became mine.  I stood in the group of Kili hikers, torn between taking more pictures or slipping off my clothes and joining in the stargazing head trip.  I held the camera up and snapped another picture, wanting to capture what my eyes didn’t believe.  The guide floated over me, blocking the sky.  His hands glommed onto my shoulders and lifted me up.  My eyes fell out of my head.  The camera grew wings and flew away.  Ensorcelled, I lost everything, even the sense of my bare necessities.  Naked and cold in a lunar landscape.

 

Like my feelings during a mystical experience with Helen in college many years before, I suddenly wanted to make love to Fawn.  In our mental union, we understood that we had already made love of the soul that no physical familiarity could touch.

 

Fawn wound down the telling of the story.  Together in mind, I lay on the rocky ground with her and watched the group dancing and chanting around me, like a bunch of kids I’d seen around a fire totally absorbed in the moment at a Lollapalooza concert, some holding hands, some slam-dancing, all of them pouring sweat to the music of Rage Against the Machine.  In the cold night air on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro, I burned with fever and fused with the stones beneath me…then I passed out from exhaustion.

 

I woke up some time later.  Seconds, perhaps.  Time didn’t matter.  In the moment my eyes were closed, the North American continent and Asian continent were one once again.  The Hawaiian islands disappeared under the earth’s mantle.  Two hundred million years had passed in an instant.  Human beings no longer existed.  Life had been wiped out on Earth several times.  I closed my eyelids to moisten my eyes, rolling my eyes inside my head, dust making small scratches on the inside of my eyelids, carving undecipherable patterns.  Slowly, I opened my lids, light from an overhead florescent fixture bursting through and exciting my retinas.  Fawn’s eyes filled my view.  Instead of her face, a reflection of me looked back, wrinkles, freckles and all.  I freaked out.  I wanted to pull away from her but Fawn’s eyes told me it was all right so I calmed down.

 

Fawn stood over me and held a finger to my lips.  She walked over and opened the door.

 

“I don’t think there is a lot more to tell you.  Have I shown you the story I wrote about my experience?”

 

I could hardly lift my head off the back of the chair.  I attempted to shake my head.

 

“No?  I guess I haven’t, have I.  It’s not what you think.  Pretty straightforward writing.  Here, let me show you.”

 

Fawn grabbed the PC out of my lap and opened a Word document.

 

The Unsung Heroes of Kilimanjaro by Fawn Fresnel (a/k/a A.P.)

“Porters!”  I heard the cry behind me as I ambled slowly up the trail, placing one dusty boot in front of the other.  I stepped to one side and watch the Motley Crew hired by our guide service, Tusker Trail, march by with our gear:  bright yellow North Face bags, folded aluminum armchairs, 5 gallon water pails, empty for now, and various and sundry other items including 150 eggs.  We would be on the mountain for 10 days, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me how much these men, the people of Kilimanjaro, would improve my journey.

When planning my trip to Tanzania to climb the tallest mountain in Africa, I gave the least thought to the idea of porters of any of the things I considered prior to my arrival.  I was careful in selecting a guide service with medical training and equipment.  I had double-checked the food options, trying to ensure there would enough calories to sustain me, and had hauled along a gallon-size Ziploc bag worth of Clif bars and Gu gels just in case I needed to stave off starvation.  I had checked and re-checked my gear, trying on my 800-fill Feathered Friends down jacket several times, before packing it lovingly in my carry-on bag.  When people asked me about the small detail of porters, though, I nodded carelessly.  “Yeah, there’ll be one per person – carrying up 20 pounds of our stuff.”

I had no idea.  I had no inkling that I’d be surrounded by 49 capable African men, 41 of them porters, who had been hired to escort me and my fellow climbers to the Roof of Africa.  49 men, each carrying a heavy load, who would sing, share games, tell stories and provide companionship for the long trek.

My climbing group consisted of my friend Veronica and I from Seattle, Washington, my friends Bertha, Linda and Jody from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and three siblings, Heather from Boca Raton, Florida, Terin from Chicago, Illinois and Luke, the lone male, from San Diego, California.  We’d come for a variety of reasons:  I had organized the trip to celebrate my thirtieth birthday and my friends eagerly joined the trek; Luke had just turned fifty; Terin was a new grandmother; Heather was celebrating two years free from breast cancer.  Together we looked forward to an adventure that would bring us to top of one of the world’s highest peaks.

We began our trip at the Lemosho Trailhead at 7,400 feet.  The Toyota Land Cruisers stopped in a small clearing to let us out and we watched as the porters piled out of the tall sturdy truck that carried them from Moshi, pushing off of the wooden side rails as they leapt down, some with gear in hand, others reaching up to their friends still standing in the truck bed, to unload bag after bag of tents, stakes, cooking fuel, food and other supplies.  Standing in the clearing at that first moment were 12 climbers, 5 guides, 3 cooks, 3 waiters, 2 medical support people and 63 porters!

One by one, the porters moved into a line in front of the scale where their loads were being weighed:  “Some guide services overload their porters, maybe 40 kilos” explained Honest, one of the assistant guides.  He shook his head.  “Not Tusker – 20 kilos – that’s the limit.”  20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, may seem lightweight to these guys, but for us, facing a 10 day climb up the tallest mountain in Africa to 19,340 feet if we are successful, it seemed like a formidable burden…and that’s even before we saw how they carried it.

On their heads!  In addition to their personal backpack, at whatever weight that happens to be.  No-hands style, with a cheerful stroll.  It’s a jaw-dropping moment.  “Doesn’t that hurt their necks?” we asked, naïve.  “Are they really going to carry all that stuff all the way to the top?”  “Why in the world are there so many people to carry our swill up the face of this mountain – isn’t that a bit excessive?”  We soon found out just what that excess would mean to our comfort and safety when we arrived at the first camp.

Big Tree Camp is the first stop on the mountain, and as its name suggests, is nestled under a sprawling canopy of giant trees.  We reached camp a good hour after the support crew, and could hear the voices, exchanging Swahili phrases and sharing laughter, ten minutes or so before we actually saw the camp.  The yellow North Face four-season tents, with thick red sleeping pads inside, and the tall green canvas dining tents covered most of the available cleared ground.  Four or more green canvas bathrooms with full zips and red or blue buckets to contain the human waste had been set up around the perimeter.  Our dining tent sat dead center and appeared to be the size of my living room, complete with an aluminum dining room table and nine aluminum armchairs with cushions.  Warm water and soap had been set out for us to rid ourselves of some of the dust from the first day’s travel, and a porter was pumping gallons of drinking water through a Katadyn filter into a large water cooler for our convenience.

Shortly after our arrival, Stanislas, our head waiter, announced “Tea time!  Maji moto!” (hot water!).  He repeated this greeting several times before we understood it as a directive to come to the dining tent right now.  I smelled popcorn, and sure enough – a huge tray of freshly popped popcorn and several cookies filled a large circular pan.  “Ahhhh,” I thought, “This is going to be the life!”

As we sat with our cups of tea, our three guides, Elias, Honest and Kombe approached with a small black object, several sheets of paper, and a pen.  It was our first encounter with the oxymeter that would measure our heart rate and our oxygen levels twice daily, letting the guides know if we needed special attention of some sort.  We found out later that the guides take care of the porters as carefully as they tend to the clients.  Each porter benefits from the same monitoring, ensuring a higher level of safety and success for the entire expedition party.  Tusker is one of the few outfits on the mountain to offer this service, and is known to other guide services as the experts to whom they should go should non-Tusker clients run into trouble.

As we hiked the next day, Day 2, we pressed our guides, Elias, Kombe and Honest, for Swahili translations of elementary English phrases, and eagerly practiced them with every porter that passed us on the trail.  For several hours, until the last porter has marched quickly by, we showed off our new-found knowledge:  “Jambo!” (hello!) “Mambo kaka?” (What’s up, brother?)  “Habari gani?” (How are you?).  Much to the amusement of ourselves and the porters—most chuckled cheerfully and responded back with “Poa!” (cool!) or “Asante sana” (very good) and the occasional “Zakwako” (and you?)—which we hadn’t learned yet so it completely threw us for a loop, and we laughed, with no reply.

Day 3 was our first acclimation day and designed to give us a better chance of summiting the mountain.  It turned out that it also gave us an opportunity for a small glimpse into the East African culture and the lives of the 41 men who had literally lightened our loads.  After a short hike in the morning, we sat out in the scrub grass on the moorland that comprised the Shira plateau.  We had just washed our hair and were feeling pretty good about ground we’d covered, the Protea Kilimanjarika that we photographed and euphoric after a first, pre-sunrise sighting of the summit we’d come to conquer.

As we sat in our armchairs, drying our hair in the sun, we saw the group of porters and guides marching excitedly toward us with big grins on their faces.  They’d come, Elias, the head guide, informed us, to give us a concert!  The entire support staff gathered around in a big semi-circle: Stanislas with a crisp white apron wrapped around his middle, Basco, our medical support staff, with his silver sunglasses firmly in place, Immanuel with his blue and magenta plaid shirt tucked behind the suspender straps of his yellow ski bibs, Gramma with his gray knit hat perched high on his head, next to him head cook Luka with this baseball cap pulled low, and behind them Benieli with his long tan trench coat and bright striped hat, ready to entertain us.  It was sung a cappella, beautifully done with the rich, male voices rising together, sometimes blending, sometimes separating to allow one voice to call above the rest:  “Hakuna matata!” (No problems!), and they’d repeat as one:  “Hakuna matata!”   One song would end and they would start again, after a brief discussion, into the next:  “Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaroooooooo!”  It was surprise and a gift – one they would give us upon our arrival to every camp from then forward.

At Moyr Camp, where we spent two days, we entertained ourselves and a willing group of porters with the “Newspaper Game.”  It was a game we’d learned as kids and consists of all the players but one sitting in a large circle, in this case on overturned five-gallon buckets and random rocks rolled into the edge of the ring.  One player is “up” and stands with a rolled up newspaper (gunnysack, whatever is available) in hand, waiting for the player sitting in front of him to say a name:  “George!”  The “up” person then tries to slap George on the knee before he can say:  “Basco!”  If George is successful, Basco has to attempt to spit out another player’s name before he gets swatted.  If not, George is “up.”  We played this game for hours, with much shared humor – they loved it!  It was a way for us to establish camaraderie:  where language was a barrier, names and laughter established a link.

Even at the Crater Camp, 18,400 feet above sea level with 50 percent of the oxygen to which were accustomed, the porters pulled through with support and song.  As we climbed over the edge of the crater rim, we saw two men, Stanislas and Immanuel, standing in front of the Funkwangler Glacier with thermoses of hot tea, mugs, and a few songs, softly sung, as the mist swirled around our tired, happy faces, up toward Kibo and the final summit climb.

Later, Luke, Jody and I made the long, slow trudge through the fine sand toward the ash pit, guided by Honest and three porters.  When I removed my jacket, Henry carried it for me.  When I left my orange Nalgene bottle behind at the edge of the ash pit in my excitement to forever capture the digital moment on my Nikon, Immanuel jogged back to pick it up so I could save my energy for the last day’s climb.

As we strolled back down to our tents, still in awe of the massive, sprawling cathedral beauty of the glaciers, Kibo peak in front of us, beckoning,  and Mount Meru floating on a broad expanse of marshmallow clouds in the distance, Jody and I sang to the porters:  “He’s got the whole world, in his hands…he’s got the mamas and the babas in his hands…he’s got the kakas and the dadas in his hands…” with Immanuel conducting up front and bouncing to the tune, until Honest told us to “save our breath for tomorrow!”

Our arrival to the summit of Kilimanjaro was a glorious moment.  Lead by Elias, we crested just as the sun rose above the peak, a burning orange that backlit the rocks near the summit sign and slowly brightened into a brilliant pale gold behind Kibo, casting the large shadow of Kilimanjaro across the horizon.  We’d made it!  We sang again here, inspired by the porters:  “I’m on the top of the world looking down on Creation…”  It was a song that fit the moment as we gazed out across the Serengeti Plain from the Roof of Africa – inspired, awestruck, and thankful for the 49 men who had aided us all the way and contributed so much to our experience.

 

She closed the PC and walked around the desk.

 

“Here, let me show you the names of the contacts at Geauxgetem and Pairuclaws that you’ll need to know.”  Fawn wrote down a list of names and made me promise to visit Geauxgetem with her soon.

 

The head of engineering in Redmond, William Exeter, stopped by to tell us that it was the last day of work for one of the longtime Redmond engineers and a valid excuse for drinking with buddies after work.  He invited all the OEM program managers to join the fun.  Juan, Gerard and Tammy backed out, saying they had too much work to do.  Fawn and I decided to join the engineers for dinner.

8

 

Fawn and I drove separate cars to the Red Hook Brewery, a brewpub in nearby Woodinville – she thought she might leave early and I gladly drove my rental car with the GPS satellite navigation system to see if the directions it gave would match the verbal directions that Fawn gave me.  Needless to say, they didn’t match because Fawn knew a shortcut that took her 10 minutes longer than the GPS directions.  Once again, I realized that technology can outwit even the most informed local expert, especially when the expert’s advice includes “turn off the paved road.”

 

“About time you got here.”  I stood on the top of the steps of the entrance to the restaurant with my hands on my hips, watching Fawn approach.

 

“Yeah?  You wouldn’t think you had me worried that you weren’t behind me.”

 

“I know you’re not.”

 

Fawn beamed.  “You’re right.  You’re a grownup with a GPS system.  What’s my excuse?”

 

“There’s no excuse for you.”  I patted Fawn on the back.

 

She put her arm around my waist and hugged me.  “But I’m glad you made it, anyway.  Too bad you missed the shortcut.  You would have seen one of the oldest men in the world struggle to pull a Rubus discolor bush out of the ground.”

 

“A what?”

 

“Himalayan blackberry.  They’re the scourge of this area.  Did you know they cover 12% of the public land in the Seattle area?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“They grow something like 30 feet a year.”

 

“Oh, like kudzu in the South, about 12 inches a day.”

 

“I guess.  Anyway, that old man was funny.”  Fawn snorted.  “He was so bent over he looked like a giant fern trying to grow out of the ground, unfurling as he stood up.  You really should have been there.  I would swear that he was attached to the plant, like one of those wooden windmill thingamadoodles you seem at craft fairs sometime.  Ha ha!”  Fawn laughed again, her teeth flashing as she let out a hearty laugh.

I smiled and opened the door for her.

 

Inside, about a dozen Cumulo-Seven employees sat casually on sofas next to a fireplace at the back.  Fawn and I joined them, staying in touch physically without making it obvious.  A knee lightly touching a knee.  An elbow loosely set on a shoulder.  A hip to a hip.  A back to a back.  Neither one of us consciously made these moves.  The merry-go-round conversation kept putting us back together after one of us got up off a jasmine circus horse of a chair or an aubergine snail of a love seat to move around and meet others.

 

As the evening progressed, we communicated with each another without touching, making eye contact across the room and having whole conversations.  In the slow uptake of her eyelid, Fawn told me about her recent trip to Munich.  I told her about my loving physical relationship with my wife in the deepening dimple of my left cheek at the start of a smile.  Fawn swallowed and her throat told me about her love for her father and how she wished her mother and siblings could come close to filling the void.

 

A couple of hours passed while I learned about a recent divorce that started because the wife wouldn’t get rid of the 200 three-legged, one-eyed, 20-pound, mangy cats in her house, a pending marriage between an Indian man and a Hawaiian woman with a combined Hindu-Polynesian ceremony planned, new kids and the art of shopping for cheap diapers, teenagers and parents’ attempt to censor the art of sneaking sexy pictures via camera phones, and the happiness of grandparenting.

 

Several folks stood up to leave.  I wondered if a hidden alarm clock had gone off and concluded that the scent of empty appetizer plates had triggered the innate migratory habits of engineers.  It was seven o’clock and engineers should drive home before their analytical minds pulled them back to the office to solve a new problem.

 

Thirty minutes later, the group had thinned out, leaving a few engineers with Fawn and me.  The time had come for us to decide if we wanted to part together.

 

Fawn did not hesitate to move the time forward.  “Are you okay?”

 

“Hnnh?”

 

“You’re leaning on me a little hard.  Have you had too much to drink?”

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“Well, then, do you need to follow me home?”

 

I put my hand on Fawn’s shoulder.  “No.”

 

“No?”

 

I whispered in Fawn’s ear.  “I need to get more details out of William Exeter about what he knows about the Shannon operations.”

 

Fawn read my mind.  She understood I needed to feed the engineering side of me that night more than I needed to find out what waited for Fawn and me at her house.

 

Fawn stood up to leave.  “Call me if you change your mind.”

 

 

9

 

The next morning, we found out that Juan had to leave suddenly for Huntsville.  Gerard called in sick. 

 

Fawn put her arms around Tammy and me.  “Hey, since it’s just us, why don’t we go out to breakfast?”

 

“How about Uncle Eddy’s?”

 

Fawn slapped Tammy on the back.  “Great idea, Tammy.  Let’s go.  Besides, it’s not too far from my house.”

 

I sat in the backseat and tuned out Fawn and Tammy while we rode to the restaurant.  Jet lag and the previous night’s beers put me in a comfortable daze.

 

At the country-kitchen style restaurant located under a store, our server heard us talking about work and let us know her husband worked at the Cumulo-Seven office.  She quizzed us about the latest office gossip.  Tammy and Fawn filled her in as much as they could.  The server seemed to know everything she heard and left us alone after she delivered the food.  Even so, she kept looking at me from across the basement restaurant.  If it weren’t for the sleepiness, I might have felt paranoid.  Did MORTIE really exist?

 

After breakfast, Fawn drove us to her house.  I sat in the back of the car behind Fawn and stared at her eyes in the rearview mirror.  Sometimes she met my eyes and smiled.  She continued to drive and look around normally.  In my mind, I could see the layout of Fawn’s house as if she was leading me through it, having a telepathic conversation about her domestic life.

 

When we got to her house, Fawn took the time to describe the plants in the yard and her gardening style to Tammy and acted like I already knew.  I stood back a little bit, trying not to give away the secret connection between Fawn and me.  I glanced at Tammy’s face as she looked at the little box garden in Fawn’s front yard.  I could see that she understood something else was going on.

 

Without thinking about it, I lifted an old clay flower pot shoved in the dirt next to her front door step and pulled out a key hung on a wire glued to the inside of the pot.  I opened the screen door and inserted the key in the front door.

 

Tammy looked at me.  “How did you…”

 

I raised my eyebrows.  “I don’t know.  It just made sense.”

 

Fawn put her hand on Tammy’s shoulder.  “Bruce’s never been here.  He’s a good guesser, isn’t he?”

 

“Well-l-l.  If you say so.”  Tammy’s eyes said otherwise.

 

I opened the door and let the women in.

 

Fawn spoke in an intimate tone as she brushed past me.  “Don’t forget to put the key back.”

 

The house occupied 900 square feet, a no-nonsense place for a no-nonsense owner.  The front entryway consisted of a small pad of wood planking at the corner of the living room.

 

After I closed the front door, Fawn pointed to the door on the wall to the left of us, which could not be reached when the front door was open.  “This is where my roommate lived.  She’s in the process of getting her stuff out so I won’t bother showing the room to you.”

 

We took a few steps along the wall and Fawn opened another door on the left.  We peered into a small room, just big enough to hold a drafting table at the far wall and a couple of bookshelves on the righthand wall.  A row of four glass bricks in the wall above the drafting table fed the room a modicum of lemon-yellow light.

 

“This was where the closets of the two bedrooms existed.  I think the previous owner was smart to convert the closets to a small study.  In theory, I could call this a three-bedroom house and of course, my real estate agent wanted to but I think it stretches the limit a bit, don’t you?”

 

Tammy and I stepped into the room.  A folded-up running machine stood attention on the wall next to the door.

 

Tammy unfolded her arms and touched both sides of the room.  “What do you think, Bruce?”

 

“Well, it doesn’t stretch the word ‘cozy,’ that’s for sure.”

 

Fawn and Tammy laughed.

 

“All this coziness makes me want to pee.  Excuse me.”  Tammy pushed me against the wall and walked around Fawn.

 

After Tammy walked out, Fawn stepped into the room.

 

“I see you were studying my bookshelf.”

 

I nodded.

 

“I read a lot of books before and after the trip to Kili.”  Fawn turned her body to me and put one arm on the wall behind me.  She studied my eyes for a second or two.  Some people say eyes are “hazel” or “chestnut” or some other single color but when you stand in front of another person or face yourself in the mirror, you see within the stroma of the iris pigmented yellows and reds and blacks and whites no matter what the primary color may dominate.  Like dials on a safe trying to line up the tumblers to let a person inside, our eyes twisted back and forth looking for the right combination of veins and color lines to open our souls to each other in the confines of a converted closet.  Instead, the interplay of light and motion became a Rosetta stone, unlocking the language between two people unafraid to live outside conventional social expectations.  Our eyes told us that life is short, go with the moment, don’t forget the past and remember the future is always waiting and never truly exists.  Returning to the moment, Fawn searched my eyes for an answer.  Her voice confirmed her thoughts.  “So what do you think happened?”

 

“The brain can do all sorts of strange things.”

 

“But the photographs…”  Fawn furrowed her brows, letting me know she didn’t believe her sights, despite the supertropical visions.

 

“Did anyone borrow your camera while you were on the trip?”

 

“No.  We all had our own cameras.”

 

“Maybe while you slept?”

 

“I doubt it.  I didn’t sleep particularly well.  I would have felt someone going through my bag.”  Fawn placed one hand on her hip, twisted around and leaned her head against me, our heads focused on the books and papers stacked on the shelves.

 

“I don’t know, then.  Maybe it was real.  When was the last time you talked to a burning bush or communicated with a previous reincarnation?”

 

“Good point.”

 

“There are a lot of things that I’ve seen in my life that didn’t make sense.”

 

“Did you research them?”

 

“No.”

 

Fawn turned her face to study the side of my head, her breakfast breath pouring into my ear.  “But why not?  I know you want to know the truth.”

 

“Sure I do.  Sometimes the truth is just there.  Like us.”  I turned my face to Fawn.

 

Fawn stared at the corner of my eye.  “You know you have a mole.”  She put a finger on my left cheekbone.  “Right there.”

 

“Yep.  It appeared a few years ago.”

 

“You ought to have it examined.  Could be cancerous.”

 

“So could all the freckles on your face and neck.”  I poked Fawn in her right cheek.

 

“Stop it.”  Fawn brushed my hand away.  “So what do you think?”

 

I picked up a book titled, African Traditions and Customs Revisited for the 21^st Century.  “Of what?  You did a lot of research.”

 

Fawn grabbed the book from my hand and put it back on the shelf.  “Of all this!”  She spread her arms out.

 

I looked at Fawn’s body. “Well, you could probably lose a few pounds.”

 

“What!  No, not me.  My house.”

 

Tammy stepped up behind Fawn.  “What are you two talking about?  I could hear you with the bathroom door closed.”

 

“I’m trying to get Bruce’s opinion about my house but he keeps changing the subject.”

 

Tammy winked at me over Fawn’s shoulder.  “Yeah, Bruce, what gives?  You don’t like it or what?”

 

“I…uh…it’s wonderful so far.”

 

Fawn gave my shoulder a shove.  “Let’s go on, then.  Obviously, you haven’t made up your mind.”

 

Fawn turned around and pushed Tammy down the short hallway that extended past the living room.

 

“Bathroom’s on the right.”  Fawn flipped a light switch.  “Bruce, you need to go, too?”

 

“No, I’m fine.”  I glanced in the bathroom and scenes of Fawn getting ready for work flipped through my mind like a badly edited movie at an all-night showing of horror flicks in a rundown drive-in theater.  In the full-length mirror mounted next to the toilet, Fawn’s outfits ranged from perfectly-ironed slacks to wrinkled linen skirts.  In the mirror above the sink, Fawn would one day look at her nose and one day at her chin.  Some days, she applied a touch of eye shadow.  Some days, she dabbed light powder on her cheeks to cover a large zit.  She never covered her face with a mask of chemicals, always leaving the playful tease of freckles on her face and neck.  Her reversed image smiled back reassuringly at her every day, never once faltering or questioning what she was going to do that day.  Fawn knew herself.  One day led to another and added to the stack of days upon which she climbed to her next goal.

 

“And this is my bedroom on the left.”

 

I walked into the bedroom behind Fawn and Tammy.  A honey maple chest with two drawers and mirror held up the lefthand wall.  A double bed stood guard in the back corner.  Several moving boxes waited patiently on the wall to our right, knowing that Fawn would fill them soon.  They would receive an assignment of like items with an accompanying checklist, clearly-written label and strips of packing tape appropriate for the total weight.  The boxes even had an idea when they would be filled, privy to the conversations in Fawn’s bedroom.

 

“I apologize for the appearance of a mess.  I have packed most of my clothes and personal items and put them in storage at the local moving company.  I plan to pack up the remaining clothes before I move in two weeks.”

 

Tammy looked shocked.  “Two weeks?”

 

“Yes.  Didn’t I tell you?”

 

“Well, I suppose you did but…gosh, time has flown by, hasn’t it?”

 

“Okay, enough of my room.  Let’s see the rest of the house.”

 

I looked at the celeste walls.  As Fawn and Tammy walked past me, I caught a vision of myself as if I was Fawn lying down on the bed looking up at the metal frame of the ceiling light fixture where a sooty-yellow light flickered.  The source of the light came from the window above the bed.  My peripheral vision faded away and I saw only the staccato pattern reflecting on the mirror-like finish of the ceiling fixture, as if someone was sending a Morse code message.  The pattern swelled, intensity growing in brightness but not in frequency.  The reflection gained a voice, humming through the wires in the wall.  The humming filled the bottom of the room like a fog creeping into a mountain valley, undulating and flowing into the room from the light switch like sludge.  I lifted off the bed and floated on the subsonic waves.  High notes tickled my sides, causing me to giggle uncontrollably.  I floated closer to the ceiling, my body waving back and forth like a big tanker in a small harbor, gently, slowly, whole minutes passing between my tossing back-and-forth.  The reflection in the ceiling light grew bigger.  My anthropomorphic tendencies tried to make out a face.  The closer I got, the more my primal mind forced the flickering light to take on a life form.  My uncertain self asked if I should flee or fight.  My analytical self asked if I saw the reflection of a single candle, multiple candles or a large fire.  I sniffed the air and smelled citronella, the lemony scent of the grass plant, Cymbopogon nardus, whose oils are used ineffectively to thwart mosquito bites.  Was I experiencing another one of Fawn’s mystical, magical moments from Africa?

 

I floated up past the ceiling light, past the ceiling, into the musty attic and out above the roof.  My body twisted around and I faced downward, observing the layout of Fawn’s yard.  A path led from the back deck to a tree in the corner of the yard.  I tried paddling my arms to swim over to the tree.

 

“Bruce, come here!”

 

The vision disappeared and gravity once again held me firmly in place, standing in the entrance to Fawn’s bedroom.  I turned around, walked out and joined the tour in the living room.

 

“About time you showed up!  I was just telling Tammy that if you know anyone interested in this sofa or the drafting table or other furniture, let me know.  I’ve got to get rid of all of it.”

 

I looked around the room and realized there was no phone or TV.  “Have you already sold the TV?”

 

“Funny.  You know I don’t watch TV.”

 

“What about a phone?”

 

“There’s one in the kitchen.  And if you know a way to get Kool-Aid out of carpet, let me know.  I babysat my niece and nephew a few days ago and there was an accident.  I should get this red stain out of my white carpet before the agent comes back.”

 

“Agent?”

 

Fawn read my meaning.  “Not a federal agent.  My REAL ESTATE agent.”

 

Tammy laughed at the weak joke.  “Oh, yeah, it does sort of look like a blood stain.”

 

We walked past the sofa and looked into the kitchen/eating area.  An old Formica table served as an apparent staging area for packing, with its four chairs taking turns holding on to plates and packing material.

 

“Again, I apologize for the mess.  I just started packing up the kitchen last night.  It was so late to start with that I didn’t get very far.”

 

I looked at Fawn’s face and sure enough, she had dark half-circles under her eyes.  How had I missed them before?

 

Tammy pointed to a box on the floor next to the refrigerator.  “What’s that?”

 

A six-inch wide wooden mask stuck up out of the box.  Fawn pulled the mask and a roll of brown paper out of the box.

 

“I was given this mask by a lady at the end of our trip to Africa.  We stopped at a small town and bought some trinkets to give to family back home.  I saw the mask and liked the unusual shape of the carved-out eyes.”

 

Fawn held the mask up to her face and showed us how the eyeholes made her appear to have an African warrior woman head on upside down.  Tammy and I laughed.

 

“It is funny, isn’t it?  Like a devil clown or something.  When I set the mask down, the lady selling it told me to keep it.  She said the mask spoke to me so I must have it.  My Swahili was not good and I thought she was trying to get me to bargain for it.  I told her no and she repeated that the mask fit no other face but mine.  If she kept it, it would bring her and me bad luck so I had no choice but to take it with me.  I offered her money but she refused.  At least she did sell me this scroll so I wouldn’t feel so guilty.  They’re so poor, you know, that every day is a struggle to make enough money to buy food.  They don’t have the luxury of retirement accounts.”

 

I smirked, wondering if Fawn was serious or facetious.  “So has the mask brought you luck?”

 

“Well, I did get my dream job to work in Europe.  Who’s to say the mask did or didn’t help?”

 

“I’m not saying.”

 

“As well you shouldn’t!”

 

Fawn slipped the mask under her arm and partially unfurled the roll of brown paper.  The paint colors on the paper were vivid, bright-white, canary-yellow, azure-blue and emerald-green splashed on the paper between varying widths of black lines.  Although the paint stood out, the image didn’t reveal itself.

 

Tammy looked at me and then at Fawn.  “I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

 

I nodded.  “But the colors are so thick, they look fresh, almost alive.”

 

Fawn laughed and rolled up the scroll.  “You’re right.  The woman said she had just painted the picture the day I bought it.  She told me it was the tale of a giraffe that become a tree…or maybe it was the other way around?  I don’t remember.  Her English was better than my Swahili and that’s not saying much.”

 

Fawn set the mask and scroll on top of the box.  “One more thing to see.”  Fawn opened the back door between the kitchen and eating area and led us out to the back deck.

 

“This is where I like to go when my house gets too overbearing.”

 

I stepped onto the ash-gray wooden deck.  A row of Cornus kousa grew over the deck.

 

“When did you get the dogwoods?”

 

“Huh?  Oh, those.  I bought them at an end-of-year sale at the nursery a few years ago.  They promised me they wouldn’t grow very big and as you can see, big is a matter of interpretation.  I can’t use half my deck because of the branches.”

 

“Why don’t you trim them?”

 

Fawn smiled.  “Because I’m about to move.  Besides, why not let the next owner make that decision?  I hate to see trees get butchered just because we didn’t make wise decisions when we first planted trees.”

 

I nodded in agreement, remembering the city arborist in my hometown getting mad whenever he saw people plant trees under power lines at the front of their house.  He told them that his successor would come out in 30 years and have to shorten the life of the trees in order to top them off and save the power lines.  The trees would form scars around the cuts, leaving the middle of the tree open to the elements, to rot and get infested in their early adult years rather than when they were tall old trees and nature would take care of its own, striking down the trees by lightning or wind.

 

By the time we finished the tour of her house, I knew Fawn as intimately as I’d ever know her.  Did she know me, too?

 

While we stood on the back deck, left to our own thoughts, admiring the uncut grass, breathing in the moist, mossy air of the Pacific Northwest, Tammy’s cell phone rang.  She excused herself and stepped around the corner to take the call.

 

Fawn motioned me to quickly follow her inside her house to the kitchen.  She completely unrolled the African painting she had shown us only the top few inches before.  At the bottom of the painting, the likeness of Fawn and me stood in front of a doorway at the base of a large tree.

 

Fawn cupped her hand against my ear and whispered.  “Tonight.”

 

 

10

 

Tammy informed us that she had an important meeting she was missing.  We quickly returned to the Cumulo-Seven office, riding in silence.

 

Fawn and I sat down in her office.  We participated in a conference call with Geauxgetem the rest of the morning.

 

At lunchtime, we stayed in the office building and grabbed coffee in the breakroom.  Tammy ran into us and told us she had forgotten she had promised to eat dinner with her husband and in-laws, meaning that Fawn and I were on our own that evening.

 

Fawn had to finish up moving plans that afternoon, leaving me to conduct the conference calls with Pairuclaws and Brooch.

 

After work, I drove to the hotel, packed my suitcase, walked out of the hotel and headed to Fawn’s house.

 

She didn’t answer the front door so I walked around back.

 

A dim light shone from the corner of the backyard.

 

I walked through the thick, uncut grass and discovered the light was coming from a doorway at the base of a large spruce.  From a distance, the doorway looked like a botched job from someone cutting a huge twin tree in two.

 

I lifted the rusty metal clasp and pulled the heavy, moss-covered wooden door open.

 

Fawn leaned against the inside of the tree.

 

She held a book in her hand.