Gulch

Losing Ella

(It's been so long since I've posted a short story or a piece of my fiction here that I thought it was time. This piece was inspired by the story mentioned in this post as well as a China Mieville piece I read a while back. Pleased be warned that the language in it is a bit more explicit than my normal writing. And, as always, my intentional fiction will be designated by the category “fiction” at the bottom of the post. Fiction found in my non-fiction and travel posts are probably just lies.)
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Dear Ella,

Do you still think about that night on the mountain, Ella? Do you ever find yourself awake at four in the morning, covered in sweat and twisted sheets, startled to find yourself in a darkened room and not, as you had been dreaming, back on the mountain? Are you ever walking along the street, Ella, and suddenly feel your stomach quiver nauseously? As you begin to plot the course to the nearest bathroom, do you realize that you’re not sick? That it’s just nerves? Do you take a deep breath, do an inventory, and realize it’s not work, it’s not the boss, it’s not home, and that the stove isn’t on? And, Ella, just as you feel your stomach slowly relax and calm its convulsions, do you figure out that it’s the goddamn mountain again, and that you smell acrid gun smoke and taste the warm copper of blood and do you think that maybe you should, after all, head straight for a toilet stall and lock the door?

Do you still think about that night on the mountain, Ella? I don’t. I’ve found somewhere much worse.

I miss you Ella. I miss how before the trip you used to come around all the time to my little apartment in Chinatown. It’s a cheap shit-hole, but you said it had character, authenticity. Plus, you lived out in Langford, and frankly, I couldn’t be bothered to make the trip out there, I mean, what’s the point?

You’d show up unexpectedly now and then, carrying a couple of beers from the liquor store around the corner. We’d sit out on the fire escape and bask in the evening sun, the warmth radiating from the bricks at our backs. We’d watch the seagulls circling and landing on the roofs of the buildings around us and we’d listen to the sounds from the restaurant in the courtyard below us. You’d tell me about your shitty job and how you wanted to travel, to just get away from our boring town and do something adventurous. And when I said, “Let’s do it,” you’d either laugh or just stare off towards the harbour.

Of course, I don’t sit out on the fire escape anymore. There are no seagulls and I doubt the restaurants are open anymore. The silence, I must admit, creeps me out.

After we returned from Guatemala, you came over two or three times but you didn’t stay long. We’d talk about “how we were doing” and then you’d make some excuse about meeting friends or having to catch a bus. I called you a couple of times, but you must have had your cell phone turned off.

It’s okay, Ella, I understood. I reminded you of that night on the mountain. It would be impossible for you to move on as long as you had to keep seeing me, my features overlapped with the features of that other me, the one with the blood and moonlight splashed across his face. I wouldn’t want to keep seeing that either.

Where were you, though, when this new horror happened, when our shining city on the sea died or was stolen and changed, replaced, with this, this decaying place, this new wrongness? What were you thinking when it happened? When I discovered the change, my first thought was of you. I tried to call you. Of course, you didn’t pick it up, but I left a message.

Later that night, when I tried to call you again, there was no dial tone; instead, the phone just emitted a hiss. I threw the phone against the wall. It hit the bricks with a dull thud and fell to the wood floor. I haven’t checked to see if it still works.

I didn’t know if I loved you back then, Ella, and if anyone had asked me, which was unlikely, I would have said that love didn’t exist, that it was just a social construct for lonely people too scared of silence. But when, instead of just laughing on my fire escape that night, you said, “Let’s fucking do it,” and your eyes sparked with the reflection of the setting sun, well, that night I would have skipped the bullshit and just answered honestly, “I don’t know.” So we did it, we cobbled the air miles together and I raided my savings, and we planned to live as much as we could for 11 days.

Maybe it was my fault we didn’t talk much after the trip. You could only get 11 days in a row off from your shitty job, and that’s not much time to go all the way to Guatemala. I do remember that when we were in there, we talked a lot and that you told me that you hadn't felt really alive in a long time and that you wanted to feel alive. You thought that the midnight hike seemed to be exactly what we needed to do. We had seen the signs everywhere in Antigua – plastered on concrete walls, pinned to the bulletin board in our hostel. “Full Moon Volcano Climb! Very Safe! Private Guides! Student Discounts!” the signs practically shouted with florescent colors, exclamation points, and capital letters.

You'll laugh, Ella, but I think I was asleep the day the city died and the world became so wrong. I had been taking a lazy Saturday nap, as I had been out drinking by myself the night before. The thing about being alone, Ella, is that the bartenders will always talk to you. Not that I mind drinking in silence. Anyway, I woke up and looked out of my window. The skies that morning were clear and blue, but I saw that the afternoon sky was filled with flat gray clouds.

I stood there looking at the same cityscape that I had seen out my window for the last three years and I could tell something was off. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure it out. It was like looking at one of those cartoons they print in the newspaper where you have to figure out the ten differences between two identical pictures. Only, instead of two images, I only had the world outside of my window and my memory.

I suppose my subconscious mind figured it out first, maybe it instinctively knew that the view was just, well, wrong. Why else would I have stayed there staring as long as I had? When I figured it out, my first thought was to call you.

They say the eye is drawn to movement, Ella. Only outside, my eye was drawn to the fact that there was no movement. Normally, on a warm summer afternoon, our city is filled tourists. The sidewalks are overcrowded, especially here in Chinatown. Only, they were empty. So were the streets.

It was empty outside. Well, okay, not completely empty. There were a few people ever so slowly wandering the sidewalks here and there. I recognized a few of the familiar homeless people reclining in their normal niches in door wells and under bushes. Only, there was no vitality. They could have been catatonic.

That was when I tried to call you then, Ella, but you didn’t pick up the phone. Did you get my message?

Of course, I went outside and walked for hours. I asked a few people what happened - was it an earthquake? Of course, there was no rubble, no trash either. A few people ran off as I approached them, but the others who would talk with me had nothing to tell me. Some asked the same questions I had, others just sobbed and asked if I had seen their wife, or their father, or their brother. “Don’t you see, they were just with me?” But I had less answers for them than they had for me.

Still, the thing that bothers me the most is that the clouds no longer move. There is still wind, but the sky is covered in that thin layer of clouds that just sit there. My days are filled with weak gray light. It’s been that way for a week now. Do you remember how bright the moon could shine, Ella? I'm sure you do.

So, Ella, this is it. This is the end, I think. Every day, there are less and less people in the streets. I don’t know if they’re held up in their homes, like me, or if they’re just gone, like the homeless people I no longer see. It’s as if the world just forgot about them, stopped thinking about them. What’s that old saying - that the universe will end not with a bang but with a whimper? There's some truth behind every cliche, I guess.

Still, I wonder if it really did happen all at once while I was sleeping that day? Or has it been happening so slowly that we just didn’t notice it? If someone asked me, which is unlikely these days, I suppose I’d have to say it began that night on the mountain.

Climbing a volcano in Guatemala under the full moon sounded like just what we came to that country to do. And, hey, since we only had 11 days, and we wanted to fit as much in as possible, doing crap at night seemed like a good option.

“We can always sleep when we’re home,” you said.

“Or dead,” I replied.

“What’s the difference?” you joked weakly.

So, we hired a guide for a full moon climb up one of the local volcanoes. Not the active one, I was disappointed to learn - that one was still off limits - but one of the other volcanoes that just look just like mountains. The tour operator, a slick young college guy, promised us it would be “just as cool.”

He introduced us to Francisco, our guide. Francisco was a short older Guatemala guy with a straw hat and a weathered face. He looked like one of the old campesinos, peasant farmers who loitered in Antigua’s main square. He also carried a shotgun and didn’t speak English.

The young tour operator noticed you eyeing the shotgun, Ella. “Look,” he said in his smooth Latin accent, “I am your friend right, and friends are always honest, so I will tell you the truth: There have been lots of robberies but just stay with Francisco here, and you’ll be perfectly safe. The government is paying bounties for bandits, so there is much less crime now.”

The tour operator didn’t understand your expression, did he Ella? You weren’t worried about the gun. No, you loved the idea of the shotgun, didn’t you? It wasn’t like the hostel filled with Europeans. No, the campesino and the shotgun were authentic, weren’t they? They were what you came to see.

And so, we began to climb. The trail was in the trees, but because of the full moon, it was surprisingly light. We took off at a brisk pace as we had only four hours before the tour operator would pick us back up at the trail head.

We hiked up the trail, Francisco walking a few meters behind us and not saying a word. His stride was strong and it was apparent that, despite being at least twice our age, he could out-hike us anytime. Soon, we forgot about him and chatted as we hiked the steep and rocky path up the mountain. I don’t think I had seen you that happy in a long time.

After about two hours Francisco stopped to tie his shoe. We slowed down but the old Campesino waved us on. We continued, and after about 15 minutes, we realized that Francisco was no longer with us.

We stopped and were standing there, looking down the way we had come, wondering what we should do, when we heard the voice behind us.

“Your backpack, por favor,” the voice said slowly and quietly. But still we jumped. Behind us, was a Guatemalan teenager dressed all in black. His t-shirt, I still remember, had a silver AC/DC logo on it. He held a large machete in his hand and waived it at me.

I held my hands up.

“Tranquilo! Do not say a word,” the kid hissed. “Give me your backpack and I no hurt no one.”

I slowly removed the straps from my shoulder. I don’t know what you were doing Ella, because my eyes were on the kid, his face, his machete. I wish I had been watching you instead.

I held my backpack out, and the kid stepped towards me to take it. Then his face was gone. It didn’t melt, it didn’t explode. It was just there one second and then there was a black, gaping hole.

And this is how I remember it, Ella. Each element separate, like looking at individual frames in a strip of film. You know that the frames create a movie, but when you only see two or three of them, they just look like small pictures. First, the face is gone, then there is a flash of light, then there is that acrid, pungent smell like firecrackers on the Chinese New Year, then there is a roaring crash of noise that drowns every other noise, then a warm spattering of liquid hits my face, and finally the kid falls into me and we both fall backwards.

My eyes are closed but I can feel the body’s weight. It’s warm and heavy, and it’s twitching gently. Besides the pungent scent of firecrackers, I smell shit. A second later, the weight on my chest is gone and Francisco, still holding the shotgun, is pulling me to my feet.

He is smiling. He thumps me on the back and rubs his thumbs against his forefingers in the universal gesture for money. He turns and pokes the body – it’s not a kid any longer, is it - and I can see that it’s still holding the machete. Francisco bends down and unclamps the body’s grasp on the knife. He picks up the machete and grabs the body’s head by its black hair, just above where a face should be. He gets down on one knee and lines the machete up with the neck and then Francisco raises the long, wicked blade above his head.

I see no more because I am running, running down the dark trail, and it’s not until I reach the trail head and find you sobbing there, Ella, that I remember that I am not alone. I do not know if you got there before me or after me. All I know is that I am at the trail head and I am sobbing and there is vomit and dark bile and gore on the front of my shirt, and I hear you sobbing. I may have been there for an hour; I may have just got there. I do not, know, Ella, I do not know.

That rest of that night was a daze. After a long hot shower in the hostel, we went to the police and they told us it is part of the bounty program and that crime is way down and that Guatemala was much safer because of that. The tour operator offered us our money back. I’m not really sure how, but then we were flying home, flying back to our shiny, boring city by the sea. Did the hostel arrange that? The police? Did you Ella?

And I know you know all of this. And I know that night on the mountain followed us home. But what I wanted to tell you, Ella, is that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for forgetting about you on the mountain. I'm sorry for running. I'm sorry for everything.

Two days after it happened, Ella, not the mountain but the wrongness, I thought about trying to go out to Langford to find you. I loaded some water into an old backpack (my new one is still in Guatemala) and walked up the street. I walked past where you used to catch the bus and then I remembered that I hadn't seen a bus or any cars for days. Someone had ripped the bus schedule so it no longer listed any stops for the suburbs. The little list of times and stops ended with a ragged tear about where the edge of the city would have been. I sat there for a while, and then I cried a bit, and then I went home.

Last night, Ella, I woke up to screaming and shouting coming from outside. It was male but surprising high-pitched. I instinctively looked at my clock, but it had stopped working two days ago. The screaming continued and I looked out the window. Some kid, wearing a baseball cap and a University t-shirt was walking in a circle in the middle of the no longer noisy intersection in front of my building. “Call 911,” he shouted occasionally.

I watched him for a bit and then went back to bed. I put the earplugs in – remember those, Ella, we bought them for the hostel – and I tried to go back to sleep. I failed, of course. Instead, though, I made a decision. I’m leaving this city, our shining city by the sea.

So, I’ve written this all down, Ella, and tomorrow I’ll put this in an envelope and write your address on the front and put a stamp on it and drop it in a mail box. I’m sorry for the mountain, Ella. I’m sorry for the bullshit, for yelling at you.

I figured the wind would have stopped by now but it hasn’t. So, I’m going to take one of the sailboats that are still tied up in the harbour and I’ll sail whichever way the compass now points to as South.

I’m sorry I’m not coming to Langford tomorrow, Ella, I’m so sorry.

I miss you.

Love,

Me

The Almost Fine Death of Jack Castillo

It was said that the best way to cross the great desert was to find the longest rope in the world, tie a loop around your waist on one end and then give the other end to a friend to hold. That way, when you realized that it was impossible to cross the desert you could give the rope a tug and your friend could pull you out.

At the time when he had first heard this saying – inside the market in the old medina – Jack had thought it was a pretty absurd, superstitious idea, typical of something that the old men who scuttled around the cook fires might tell an outsider. Something they might tell someone like him right before offering to sell him a hard nugget of black hashish or guide him to the rug shop of their brother.

Still as Jack lay face down in the sand, the inside of his mouth coated with gritty blood, he thought that maybe a rope wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. Of course, it didn’t matter now and, he supposed, it didn’t matter then - he had no friends. No one to pull him back.

“Now, why do you think that is?” came a soft voice from his right.

Jack raised his head and squinted in the direction of the voice. A thick crust of mucus and sand coated the corners of his eyes and he was only able to open them as wide as a tiny crack. The world was a burning blur, half blinding light and half undulating dunes, and he quickly clenched his eyes shut. He dropped his head back into the sand, but shrugged over to lie on his side.

“Marla, is that you?” he thought he might have said. His could feel the salty, gritty mixture of his blood and the sand slide down his raw throat but he didn’t hear his own voice. The desert shimmered behind his eyelids and for a brief second, the sand felt soft and even, like a bed.

The first time he saw Marla was in a café in Venice shortly after he got the idea to cross the desert solo. It was the fact she had asked for an ice cube in her glass of water that caused him to first noticed her. It was unquestionably hot that summer and the café’s lazily turning ceiling fans did nothing but shuffle the searing air around. Still, ice cubes in her water seemed like, well, such an American thing to ask for and he wasn’t surprised when the waiter brought a plain glass of water and walked off without saying anything.

Jack watched this short drama unfold in the moment, taking in her short blonde hair that was fashionable cut and her lean, tan arms, and then turned back to his newspaper.

It was on the third day that they were both seated in the café that she approached him. “Excuse me,” she said. “You are American, aren’t you?”

“Guilty,” Jack said, with a smile. “You know, you should really ask for bottled water. With the lack of rain this year, I’m not sure I’d trust the water from the wells. The canal water is probably backfilling and seeping into them this year.”

“Oh, well, uh, thank you,” she said. “I was surprised to hear your accent. I didn’t think I’d meet anyone from back home here.”

“Well, you know the problem with being an American is? It’s the fact that no matter where you go, you’ll always run into another American. Why, I doubt you could even cross the Sahara without encountering a group of Ohioans who got lost on their way to see the Pyramids.”

She laughed. “Well, I was going to ask you for directions, but maybe I should get my phrase book out and ask Signore No Ice over there how to find the Cattedrale di Isabelle. I’m studying art history and I’ve been told that there is a fresco there that I must absolutely check out.”

Now Jack laughed. “No need, no need, I’m not sure he’d tell you anyway. Look, I’m staying right around the corner from that Cattedrale. I’d be happy to show you there after I finish my cappuccino.”

It was exactly two nights later that he took her to bed. Before, she had taken him to see the fresco at the Cattedrale di Isabelle. The curved plaster wall showed a monk standing in a barren desert. He held a tall cross and at his feet two plump pigs stared at the ground, looking rather depressed that there was nothing to graze.

“It’s Saint Anthony of Egypt,” Marla said. “When he was 18, he inherited a vast amount of wealth. He then heard God instruct him that if he wanted to be perfect, to go and sell all he had and give his money to the poor – only then would he find his riches in heaven. So he gave away his house, his fields, and, then, eventually everything. He then moved to the desert and lived as a hermit for the next 20 years of his life.”

Jack had been studying Marla rather than the painting. Despite the rather cool, murky interior of the cathedral, her cheeks were flushed as she explained the painting. He stared at its dull colors and tried to think of something interesting to say about it. It looked just like just another religious painting in a city filled with a lot of religious paintings.

“Huh, Lonely Saint Tony of the Desert” Jack said finally. He liked the way the artist painted sparseness of desert scene but could do without all the religious imagery around the saint who, despite a faint glow, looked rather ragged. Jack was hoping the desert would bring him wealth in this life, or at least an article, perhaps even a cover, featuring him in the Society's magazine.

Afterwards - after their languid sighs ended, after they untangled their limbs, after they kicked the flimsy sheets off the bed and let their glistening bodies cool in the muggy evening air - Jack told her his plans to cross the great desert.

“Maybe Lonely Saint Tony had something,” he said after he finished talking about his expedition. “Maybe to be perfect you have to go to the desert.”

Rather than say anything, she rested her head on his chest. He stroked her hair.

“Listen,” he said suddenly, “I want you to come with me. To the desert”

She laughed.

“No, no, listen…It will be a great adventure."

"Jack," Marla said, "Sometimes when you look at me, I don't think you see me. I think you see the desert. No," she corrected herself, "I think you see a picture of yourself in the desert on the cover of a magazine."

"Then come with me," Jack said. " We can cross the desert together, be in the picture together, it will be perfect.”

“Shhh,” she said. Marla held up a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

He kissed her finger.

The last time he saw Marla, almost six months after she had first showed him the fresco, it still had not rained. The canals stunk like putrid garbage and there was dust everywhere. The air was thick and tangible, something you felt resisting you when you walked the narrow streets of Venice.

Jack had not seen Marla for at least two weeks. She had not visited the café nor had she stopped by the pension where he stayed. It was his fault, he knew. They had quarreled the last time they had been together, and he called her a boring academic and even worse, a coward.

When he finally found Marla, she was standing in front of the fresco of Lonely Saint Tony. She didn’t notice him at first and he studied her like he had done the first time she showed him the painting. Her hair was pulled back and she was looking seriously at a notebook she held. Her arms were still tan and slender.

“Marla,” he called.

Her head turned and she took one step back.

“I told you we’re through, Jack. I told you to leave me alone,” she hissed.

“Listen,” he said. “I don't want to do this alone. I need you." He hesitated. "I love you.”

She laughed. It was a small joyless sound that hung in the murky interior of the Cathedral. Some small spark that he didn’t even know was lit inside of him caught a powder keg and there was an explosion.

Her eyes were so wide and her hand snuck up to her red cheek. Her eyes filled with moisture.

“You’re sick” she shouted and someone from the back of the cathedral walked towards them. “Leave me alone.” she yelled and ran out the door.

Jack watched her go, too surprised by the explosion to follow her. He shifted his gaze up to the fresco and then left abruptly.

That afternoon, sooty, gray rain clouds gathered overhead. When he stopped by the villa that her university had rented for its students, he was turned away by the doorman, saying that she did not want to see him. Shortly afterwards, and for the first time in years, thick greasy drops of water fell from the sky.

He huddled under an umbrella in the courtyard in front of the villa for two nights but he didn’t see Marla either coming or going. After two nights he realized that he was soaked and that Marla was gone. It was time, he decided; time to begin the expedition, time to cross the desert.

“I am alone.” He thought to himself.

“Now why do you think that is?” Marla’s voice asked again. “Why do you think that you’re alone?”

Jack felt a stabbing pain in his guts, calling him back to the desert. He must have swallowed a bucket’s worth of sand, he thought. His mouth felt so gritty, so dry.

I’m so tired, Jack thought. “Marla,” he moaned. “Marla, why didn't you come with me?”

Marla laughed her deep throaty laugh. Jack cracked his eyes open but he could not focus them.

"Leave me alone," Jack whispered. "I don't need you."

Jack struggled to sit up and saw a dark silhouette that appeared to be Marla. The dark form appeared to be holding a coarse rope. “Take it,” Marla said and the dark form held out the rope to him. He grabbed for it, but the rope slid between his hands and fell into the sand. Jack slumped back into the sand.

The dunes like wrinkles in a crumpled sheet as the burning sun set behind the horizon.

Why My Computer is Still Broken or the Danger of Outsourcing

On my eleventh call to the customer care center I was assigned a personal representative and given his direct extension number. Of course, when I called that number, it just rang and rang. No voicemail or transfers, nothing. Four calls later, I finally reached the representative, Carlos, who asked for my non existent customer service id number, listened to my story again, and promised to look into it. He put me on hold and I was disconnected shortly afterwards.

“You are a very stubborn boy,” my Grandma used to tell me. “If you don’t change, you will be a very hard person to live with.” I thought about this prediction as I stared at the dead gray screen of my computer monitor. My girlfriend, Jen, should have been asleep in the next room. We had taken to sleeping in different rooms – she in our warm bedroom and me on a futon mattress I had propped up next to my desk. I had taken to calling Customer Care at three in the morning as that was the only time I seemed to be able to get a hold of Carlos. I didn’t sleep so much as doze while I was on hold. I would wake up with a sore, kinked neck - the result of sleeping with the phone cradled to my ear. I just wanted my computer fixed and I somehow had become engaged in a battle of wits with Carlos, who clearly did not want to have my computer fixed. I wasn’t sure how I had gotten to this point. I had tried other options but all the parts in my computer were proprietary to the Computer Company and could not be fixed locally.

At first, I would wake up mid morning and find a note from Jen saying that she had missed me the night before. A week ago, she stopped leaving notes and I suspect that she hasn’t been sleeping at the apartment for the last few days.

Still, I thought I was making progress with Carlos. On the 31st call to him, I had a breakthrough. In a fit of caffeine fueled anger, I threatened to post his direct extension number to every computer forum and blog that I could find. He asked me not to, then begged me not to, and then put me on hold. After four hours, I hung up and posted the extension to one blog. I called back the next night.

“Okay, okay, okay,” said Carlos, in his accented English. “You win. I am beaten. Please take my extension off that website, yes? You don’t know the whole story. I can not deal with the calls that will result from having that number available on the Internet.”

He paused and then let out a big sigh.

“Listen, my friend, I will tell you the truth. The entire Customer Care Department of the Computer Company is run out my cousin’s apartment in Bielsa. This is a small town in the Spanish province of Valencia. My cousins Icar and Miguel and my brother Jorge make up the entire Department. We share two phone lines and three computers.” He paused and then added sadly, “the computers run on Windows ME.”

I was quiet – I didn’t believe him, of course, but the raw emotion in his voice transcended the normal way he talked, which usually had all of the warmth of a concrete parking garage.

“But Carlos,” I said, “What about the woman I sometimes get? The one who transfers me from Sales to Customer Care back to Sales back to Customer Care. The one who said I sounded like a nice boy and gave me your extension."

There was a pause.

“Ah, yes. That is my Aunt Nuria. She works here too, when she has good days. She hasn’t been the same since my uncle disappeared in the 70’s.” He lowered his voice. “Franco, you know.”

“Carlos, are you telling me that the entire Computer Company’s customer service is run by three guys and a semi crazy aunt in Spain? The Company is one of the biggest sellers of computers in the world – I don't believe this. How could you handle all of the calls?” I asked.

“I know, I know,” He said miserably. “Listen, my friend, 95% of the people who call here hang up after the first two hours of being on hold. You, my friend, are the first to call back and back and back. You are very stubborn.”

“But how could the Computer Company do this?” I asked, “Why don’t they hire more people?”

“More people? It sounds like a dream, yes? I have not been outside since 1991 and you just say hire more people. That would be very nice. My brother Jorge could spend time with his son if we had more people. It is my fault, though. Que pena, no? You see we have the exclusive contract with the Company and it does not pay enough to hire more people. "

“You see, my friend,” Carlos said, “as a young boy, my father took my brother Jorge and I on a holiday to the South of Spain. Have you been to the South of Spain? No? Well at the very most southern tip, is a small mountain – it is more of a large rock. In fact, they call it a rock, the Rock of Gibraltar. This rock, despite being in Spain, does not belong to the Spanish. It belongs to the British who keep a small army and a tourist village there. They drive their cars on the wrong side of the streets and drink tea with their pinkies out and laugh at us Spaniards. It doesn’t sound very fair, does it? The southern tip of Spain owned by the English? But such is life.”

“Well, as a young boy,” Carlos continued, “my father, brother and I went to climb this small mountain. They say from the top you can see all the way to Africa. There is a - how do you say it – a funicular, a tram, that runs to the top but that is for the lazy English tourists. We decided to climb it. My father had a surprise for Jorge and I. You know what is the most amazing thing about Gibraltar? On the rock are monkeys. No, no, my friend, it is true.” Carlos paused and let out a chuckle, “I did not believe my father when he told me, either.”

“They call them apes but really they are just monkeys,” Carlos said. “The British try to make everything they own sound better than what it really is. But the apes of Gibraltar are really just small brown monkeys who live in caves on the rock. They have always been there and it is said that the British will not leave the Rock before the monkeys do. Trust the British to try to out stubborn monkeys. You are sort of like that, only you are American, no?”

“Well,” Carlos continued, “the day was very hot as it often is in Spain. We were about half way up the mountain when we decided to take a break in the shade. That is when we saw the first monkey. It ignored us until Jorge took out some tortilla to eat. Have you tried Spanish tortilla, my friend? It is very good, no?”

“Well the monkey came over and it was very obvious that he wanted some tortilla. He would put his paw to his mouth every time Jorge put a piece of tortilla to his own mouth. When Jorge touched the top of his head, the monkey would touch the top of its own head. It mimicked everything Jorge did until Jorge gave it a piece of tortilla."

“I had never seen anything like that," Carlos said. “Of course I was only a small boy and had not seen much in the world. Still, the Gibraltar monkeys are supposed to be the smartest monkeys in the world, and that is not just British bragging. De verdad, they are very smart."

“Well, ten years ago, I started my own computer repair shop in Bielsa. The only problem is that not many people had computers in my small town. Then, I read an article on how the Computer Company was looking to outsource its customer service department and it was looking for low bids. I said to myself, ‘Carlos, my friend, if you can get that contract, you will be very rich.' But how could I get the contract?”

“I thought and thought and thought about how I could make the lowest bid. I would need an army of people to take calls and Bielsa is very small. Well, I was thinking about this problem one night, eating some of my Auntie’s tortilla, when it hit me – monkeys. Not just any monkeys, no, but the apes of Gibraltar. I had ready seen that they could be easily trained, yes? And the best part was that since the British owned Gibraltar, the monkeys already knew English. It was perfect, no?” Carlos asked.

At this point, I interrupted him. “You wanted the Computer Company’s Customer Care Department to be run by trained monkeys?” I blurted.

He paused and I could hear the sound of a cigarette lighter striking. “You don’t mind if I smoke do you – you Americans are so funny about these things.” He inhaled deeply.

“Oh yes, my friend,” he continued. “In fact, I was able to make the bid so low, I won the contract. But it was my mistake, que lastima, to sign an agreement to provide services for 50 years. After winning the contract, my father, brother, and I went to go get the monkeys.”

He paused again to inhale from his cigarette.

“Well, we got the monkeys, my friend. We put a whole bunch of them in bags but when we tried to leave Gibraltar, the pendajo British shot my father and killed him. My brother and I dropped our bags of monkeys and ran back to Spain like cowards.”

He paused and took another drag.

“Do not be sad, my friend. He was very old at that point. My auntie tried to get the body back but the British had – what is the word - shellacked him and put him in one of those jodido wax museums that they so love."

There was a long silence. I wasn’t sure what to say.

Carlos sighed.

“I have not gone outside in ten years, I have not taken siesta, drank wine, swam in the ocean for a very long time. I cannot even remember what it is like to make love to a woman. All I do is answer these puto madre telephones.”

He sighed again.

“I tell you what my friend,” he said wearily, “Even though it means I have to work six months longer, I send you the part to fix your computer for free. You get an email soon with a tracking number.”

There was a pause, then Carlos shouted somewhat angrily, “Do not call back.”

The line went dead.

Ten days later, I still hadn’t received the part. Last night at a public library terminal and with the help of a friend who is very good at illicit computer stuff, I hacked into the Computer Company’s shipping and tracking website.

Carlos did not lie – my free part is on its way. Only, it is coming by camel caravan over the High Atlas Mountains. The Company’s spare part division was relocated to the Western Sahara last year for, apparently, tax reasons.

That’s my story and the reason I haven’t updated this site recently. My computer is dead – it’s a large plastic paperweight sitting on my desk and it looks like it might be a while before I can get it fixed.

Visible Cities

The Great City contained many treasures: the last dream of the last sultan of the last great empire hastily written down on perfumed parchment on the morning before his beheading; a chest of perfectly spherical green glass globes that washed up on the western most shore, no more than one every 70 to 80 years, each globe stamped with a single word written in a different Asiatic language that signified the visual signs of entropy: decay, crumble, tear, crack, rot. One of the cities most prized treasures was a large ocean mammal who sat on a flat rock protruding from a deep pond and stared out so wisely and regally that any visitors could not help but feel as if it was they, and not the giant walrus, who were placed behind the glass wall.

These treasures and many more were given, either as gifts or in fair trade, over the years to the people of the Great City. The first and perhaps wisest inhabitants of this city, fearing that these rare gifts would be squandered or lost, devised a plan. The treasures were placed in specially made rooms with high marble walls. The rooms in turn, were placed in the city’s many parks. In the front wall of each room was set a plain gate with a circular brass lock with a round keyhole. The first engineers of the city created many circular keys that fit each different lock but designed them in such a way that a key could only be used once.

The keys were given out for doing a task or service for the city. In that manner, a resident or visitor could come to the city and spend an hour cleaning the golden autumn leaves from the wide streets and receive a key to open the gate to the room of the glass globes of ruin (of which it was said that when the last green orb washed up on the shore and was placed along side its brothers, the universe itself would come to an end). Or a visitor could come for a few seasons and teach the city’s children to speak a language that had not been spoken before in the Great City and receive a key in order to read the last dream of the sultan, or as some called it, the last dream of a dying empire and thus be able understand and accept their own death. Or a man might come to the city and spend a lifetime carrying on his back the rock from a granite quarry to the building site of a new temple, and gain a key that opened the gate of the grand hall of the walrus and thus be able to ask it his one question that the beast will answer most kindly and truthfully.

The men and women whose task it was to dispense the keys did so fairly. The key givers were chosen from among the people who sought to ask the walrus a question and the first inhabitants of the city had trained the beast to only answer questions from people who had worked at their task both honestly and thoroughly. In this manner the city grew and prospered. No other city’s building soared quite as high or contained citizens who were so knowledgeable about both the stars and the seas.

It wasn’t until many years after the great walrus announced that it was dying and was carried in a caravan consisting of thousands of the City’s citizens, to the sea where it was released as it had been asked, that one of the key givers, fearing the apocalypse was at hand, smashed the glass globes of ruin. That same year it was noticed the ink in which the last dream of the sultan was written had faded and it was decided that the parchment must be sealed in a dark chamber before the dream was completely lost. In this manner, the City’s treasures were stolen, ruined, or forgotten. The Great City still stands today but it is only one of many such cities, a confluence of roads and buildings, and its people find very little to treasure about it.

---
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities

Interstitial

(Please note that from time to time I’ll put a short story on this website. My intentional fiction will be designated by the category “fiction” at the bottom of the post. Fiction found in my non-fiction posts are probably just lies. –ed)

The noises pulled at my mind like a bug bite in the unreachable territory of my middle back. As the darkened bedroom swam into focus, I could hear my upstairs neighbor's heels striking the hardwood floor above me. It was not the soft click clack that is associated with dress shoes and evening gowns but rather the bim-bam of three inch hardened rubber heals on black leather boots that go up to or even beyond the knee. I had been sleeping badly although I couldn’t really blame the upstairs tenants for that.

I turned over and looked at the clock, 3:43 am, and wondered if Laura would be angry if I called her at this hour. The cordless phone was laying on the nightstand, a dim rectangle bathed in the red digital glow of the alarm clock. I wondered what Laura’s schedule was for tomorrow. My alarm would go off in another two hours and 17 minutes and, if I didn’t want to be late for work, I would walk out the door no later than 41 minutes after that.

Something above me crashed and I thought that perhaps my upstairs neighbors were rearranging their furniture. I missed the old tenants that used to live in this building. They were older, quieter folks, who reminded me of cheap factory knock-offs of my parents' friends. They had slowly faded from the halls and the laundry room of the building being replaced one by one with the new updated version; twenty-something kids that were more hip, more transient, and more able to pay the rising rents of living downtown. In an odd sort of circle, they wore clothes that the old people might have worn in their younger days: black plastic framed glasses, beat-up denim jackets, and used plaid shirts.

The disappearing old set, I liked to imagine, had been employed as barbers, insurance agents, secretaries, that sort of thing. The new ones were 25-year-old junior advertising executives, web designers, and the occasional bartender roommates splitting the rent. The old ones had lived in the building, the news ones were simply stopping over for year or two. Of course that was who I was, what I wore, what I was doing, but I was here first, I had found the building first.

Not that I had ever talked to them, the new neighbors or the old ones. It wasn't that sort of building. With the old set, I'd occasionally get a nod, a hello, maybe even a friendly smile. The new set would also smile, but that smile was vaguely embarrassed, somewhat competitive, and didn't promote any further pleasantries. I once had a conversation with the couple that lived across the hall, but they moved out about a month before Laura did.

I don’t think that I could even visually recognize the people who had moved in. I did know they got the paper delivered daily. I occasionally pictured my unknown neighbors, if they ever smelled something strange coming from my door and it turned out that I had died or, perhaps had killed someone, telling the police that I was quiet and nice and seemed normal but that they didn't really know a thing about me. The same thing I would say about them if asked.

I reached out and picked up the phone, its solid weight somehow comforting and real in the liquid night world of my bedroom. Laura would at first be sleepy and confused and then sad. Eventually, there would be anger. Anger that I had called her at this hour, anger at me. Still, maybe she would want to talk. God, maybe she wouldn’t be alone. I started to dial, hesitated, and laid the phone down on the pillow next to me.

The only person in the building that I ever did talk to was Richard, the manager. I liked to think of him as the building super, because that term seemed somehow antique and rare, like the building. He was thin and quiet and it was hard to tell if he was a member of the older generation or the younger. He drove a beat up blue car but I often saw him zipping to and from the building on a bike. I know he had a storage room or two in the basement filled with furniture that he rescued from behind other old buildings, fixed up and sold. He had gray hair and a kind voice. I often wanted to ask him how long he had lived in the building, had been its manager, its super, but I felt that might have been rude in a way, like questioning someone's professional abilities. Laura had bought a table from him for her new apartment.

The clock, in its odd 1980’s robotic font, read 3:44 am and I was one minute closer to hearing its shrill alarm announce that I had to face the day. I was warm but hardly comfortable in my cocoon of flannel sheets and blankets. The beige brick of cordless phone rested on pillow next to me. I had programmed Laura’s number into its auto-dial memory after she had left and we were still talking regularly, her number was a two-button combination of flash and 9. Surely, she would be alone. She owed me that much. I tried to think of her actual phone number but could only think of how flash-3 was her parent’s number and flash-5 was mine.

I picked up the phone and its smooth plastic felt cool to my hand. I balanced it in my upright palm and then placed it back on the nightstand and turned onto my back. My eyes traced the dim geography of shadows and cracks in the ceiling and instead of trying to fall back asleep, I pictured my neighbors, in their thigh high boots, struggling to find that ideally perfect arrangement of furniture - perhaps the chair should go in the corner, the bookshelf against the outer wall - that would make their fourth floor world complete and wonderful and allow them to finally rest.