Part 3, Chapter 4

Here's Part 3, Chapter 4. It's a short one. I'll post the next chapter on Sunday.

A few people bought copies of the ebook this week, which was awesome, and I'd like to extend my thanks to them -- this week has been the best week for sales so far. So thanks for supporting small publishing! If you haven't picked up a copy yet, they're only $1.25, and have recently been updated with a stack of grammatical fixes, some of the junk cut, and some nice new bits put in. Just check out the links on the right.

I hope you enjoy Part 3, Chapter 4. Sorry it's a bit late in the day -- I've been busy at a family reunion. Enjoy the rest of your week,

Dave

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4

At Saul’s, I dream that I’m standing outside the Students’ Union. But, in this dream, the Union building isn’t burnt and gutted. It’s the same as it’s been for years. Busy, with teenagers pouring in and out of its eateries. Behind me, a plaque states that Gene Kelly is a university alumnus. Students stroll by, enjoying the sunshine. Here, one is eating an ice cream. Here, a couple walks hand in hand. Many of them wear pastel clothes, as if I am in a teen movie on an old and faded video cassette.

Someone walks by and I recognize his face. Weeks prior, he had sat on a table across from me in a coffee shop. He called a girl on his cell phone and told her ridiculous stories about his life. He claimed that NASA had offered him a job, and that they would send him a helicopter every morning to bring him into the field to study the latest geological discoveries. The girl hung up on him.

In the dream he only glances at me, grimaces, and walks on.

I look at the Gene Kelly plaque again, glinting in the warm sun, and then turn to use the ATM machine by the Union’s exterior. I put my card in the machine, enter my security number, and listen to the whirr of the mechanism while it thinks and processes. I press more buttons and wait for money and the ATM whirrs some more. The machine dispenses money, but once I pluck it from the slot, I see that I hold pound sterling, rather than dollars. I look around at the students walking by and a queue is forming behind me. I grunt disapproval and put my card into the ATM again. This time the machine whirrs and dispenses fifty Euros in notes illustrated with the Arc de Triumph on one side and Marmeduke comics on the other. I get angry.

This isn’t a nightmare, this is just frustrating. Why doesn’t anything fucking work?...

*

I wake up in a bed, though I fell asleep in an armchair. Saul must have moved me in the night or perhaps I had woken up drunk, climbed into bed.

The copy on Don Quixote sits on the bedside table. Closed.

Light filters down through the window illuminating dust motes in the air.

As I lift my arms out from under the sheets, I realize how cold it is.

I lie under the thick blanket for a while, unwilling to expose myself to the elements, even for the length of time it will take to get dressed. I’m only wearing my boxer shorts and I try to remember if I undressed myself last night. My filthy clothes are folded on a chair in the far corner of the room. I can see blood stains on my jeans even at this distance, though Saul never mentioned it, nor even seemed to notice. Being so blotted with grease and grime, being so dirty, and not showering in so long a time, does in a way, feel more liberating than disgusting. I stink, but nobodies offended. I’d jump in the next lake I see, but the cold would probably kill me.

From the bed, I can see through the window, up into the sky. The clouds are a white and wispy, which makes a change from the oppressive snow clouds that have been overhead for months now. A bird twitters outside.

Eventually, I hear Saul moving in the kitchen, making coffee on an old steel espresso maker, which he places above the coals of the living room’s fireplace, on a small iron frame. “Did you sleep well?” he asks as I walk into the living room, and pull on a sweater.

“Like a rock,” I say. He’s made boiled eggs in a pot over the fire. The smell as he shells them wafts across the room and I feel ravenous.

“I heard you waking, so I put the breakfast on. You’re hungry, right?”

“Absolutely. You read my mind.”

As we eat, Saul asks me what I thought to the opening of Don Quixote. I can’t remember much of the short part I flicked through. Rather than say this, I give vague generalities, and he reads the difficult praises. “It’s a classic,” he laughs. “Give it time. You’ll love it.”

We pass the time, shooting the shit; talking about the weather. Eventually, he asks about my plans. I’m silent for a little while, unwilling to offend his generosity, but I want to leave within the next hour or two.

“Well, I have to go home eventually – I mean go to my parent’s home. I have to see what’s going on and how thing’s stand.”

“There’s no time like the present,” he shrugs.

“That’s true,” I say with relief.

“After breakfast, I’ll get some water. That way, you can get yourself cleaned up. I guess after that there’ll be no reason for you to stick around, right?” It seems that Saul’s hermit instincts have begun to surface again. “I’m interested in what you plan to do, though, after you’ve been back to your old home. Have you figured out your plans? I mean, where are you going in life now?”

I don’t have a clue, but I can’t say that.

“Well, maybe go back to the city. There’s food there, after all.”

“You should go to Florida.” Saul beams with a smile. “I might do it too. All those condos up for grabs now, so you may as well soak up the sun!”

And that sounds like a fantastic idea.

“Maybe I will – why bother staying in this cold?”

Saul’s face crinkles as he looks through the window in quiet thought. Saul’s home is one of those places where what you see beyond it can often take precedent over its interior. “But then, this little place does hold a certain charm,” he says as sparse snowflakes fall against the backdrop of brown and green.

*

Soon afterwards, I pull the tarpaulin from the snowmobile and fire it into life. Saul stands aside, in his doorway, watching with a vague smiling interest. Before I leave, I wave to him and yell “Thanks!” over the sound of the engine. He puts some enthusiasm into his smile and raises his thumb in farewell. I drive away without looking back.