Cadillac Ranch

To be honest, the only reason I noticed her following me was the noise her damn shoes made. For someone so waif thin, she sounded like a Lipizzaner stallion on its hind legs when she walked. I stopped looking for my car, faced her, and said, "You really don't need to come with me. He was joking... seriously." I turned back around and found my car about three rows over. My car was a big, white, square, powerful, American deal. Not new, but not old enough to look old. White to keep it cool in the sun and tan leather inside, just to be different. I kept it clean and in top shape. In fact, up until that morning it had never had a scratch. I was as proud of it as I was of anything I owned, and I did own it. I had bought it outright the previous year at the end of college basketball season. I thought that because it wasn't brand new, that I wasn't really acting like a degenerate gambler by paying cash for a Caddy at 3am in Vegas. I have to say, it still looked good on the driver's side, you couldn't see the dent where the guy's bike had hit it, and white cars are pretty good at hiding the scratches Matt's goons had keyed into the trunk. I hit the clicker and popped the trunk. Took off my jacket and pulled my wallet, phone, and keys out of the pockets. Small miracle, I still had my room key so I could get out of the garage. I slammed the trunk and turned to get into the car and jumped fifteen feet into the air. The Russian had somehow managed to close the gap to about two feet and was moving at blazing speed toward the passenger side of my car. She had cleared about two hundred feet of parking lot in the time it had taken me to pop my trunk, and I hadn't heard a thing. I was thinking I had better start working on my situational awareness. She grabbed the passenger door handle, looked at me like it was covered in dog poop, cracked the door and disappeared inside the car like butter melting on a cast iron skillet. I said, "Hey..." and her door slammed shut. I pulled my own door open and dumped my wallet and crap on the seat. I bent over so I could see inside and said, "look, this is ridiculous, he was making a sick joke. Go on back upstairs." She matched the upholstery perfectly. She turned a bit, gave me the dog poop look again, then turned back toward the door. I thought she was getting out, but instead she grabbed the seatbelt and hooked up. Then she turned to face the windshield and sighed the way a Kindergarten teacher does on fingerpainting day. I moved my crap and got in the car. As I backed out of the parking spot, drove through the garage, and used my key to exit, I kept up a one-way, incredibly profane conversation about how I would drop her off anywhere that she asked and she needed to ask, because this bullshit needed to stop, and people aren't pets and what the hell? I probably hadn't stopped talking for a good ten minutes when I remembered that I had had nothing to eat since yesterday's lunch.

Only a fool fights in a burning house

What if you're a fireman and you just exposed a massive conspiracy by your Captain and the Chief to smear the name of the Mayor by setting fire to halfway houses and homeless shelters in minority districts so that the erstwhile President of the City Council can win the mayoral election on a rent control and urban renewal ticket. Of course, you've just exposed them after returning to the Fire Department from your lucrative safety consulting practice, which you left for your best friend and comedic foil (Steve Zahn) to run in your absence, he has contacts in some government agency and can work computers really well. He'll be killed in a gas explosion on his sailboat after emailing you the the purchase records for the malfunctioning CFL bulbs that started the fires. You've returned to the city because your older brother died in one of these fires, setting up your quest to 1) find out what happened and 2) come to an understanding with your father (Albert Finney) who is an ex-firefighter and Union rep who was invalided out of the department due to lung problems who never understood your decision to leave the department to "chase the almighty buck". Your ex-wife, (that semi-hot chick who always plays the ex-wife)who you still have feelings for now works as special assistant to the President of City Council and wants you to stop making waves and admit you're wrong, something you were never able to do when you were married and caused the split to begin with and that hurt your child (cameo by current cute commercial kid) who you never see. Eventually, she falls for you again and helps you by digging up the property records that show that a holding company owned, in part, by the President of City Council, your Captain, your father (who confesses in a note to you and commits suicide by sleeping without his oxygen), and your brother, who was killed because he threatened to spill the beans after he was told to burn down an orphanage full of "undocumented immigrant children" who the President of City Council says "no one would miss." You spill the beans to you're wife's current love interest, a hard-nosed investigative reporter (Jimmy Smits), who hates your guts, but has a grudging respect for you (plus your ex-wife just admitted to him that she's still in love with you,) and on the next fire call your Chief comes at you with an axe. You're going to have to fight then. Admit it. But let's face it, Worf was a pussy.

Why?

I'm posting this here because this blog was supposed to be where I posted experimental stuff that I didn't want to post on my other blog, which was, more or less, a type of journal. A "web log" so to speak. However, I just noticed that the only link that was still active in my pathetic blogroll is this one. My own ignored bullshit blog. What the hell happened to the internet?

Just checking

Is this thing even on?

Mel's Diner

Irina had collapsed in the only comfortable chair I owned within seconds of entering my condo. I was beginning to wonder if the woman had bones.

She and I had sat for a bit in the ballroom after Matt and his two monkeys had left. She sat quietly, looking at her face in one of those compact mirrors. I, on the other hand, was not quiet at all. I cursed Matt, his goons, his parents, his pets and his siblings. After about five minutes of this, I sat down, rubbed my face, and muttered one last expletive. Then I stood up, patted my pockets for my keys and walked out. I was in the parking garage before I noticed she was behind me.

He grunted a bit and kept walking.

"Hey", the denim man said, "I ain't got any more gas than what's in it."

"So?"

You're what?

"Two hundred and six." "That's bullshit." He closed the folder and tilted my kitchen chair back on its hindmost legs. I winced for the chair. He must have been three fifteen, three twenty and that chair wasn't the newest thing in my house. I opened my mouth but decided not to say anything. "Look," he said, "I'm a professional. I see shit like this," he pointed at my check stubs, "and I have to report it. It's against the law. And honestly? It pisses me the hell off. Does Your mother know this is how you support yourself? That you're a scam artist? When your sister asked me to help you and told me you were an entrepreneur, I expected something fishy. I didn't expect this. " I blinked. That made me angry. "Scam artist? It's a four hundred dollar check! I paid into social security for almost seventy years! If I was going to rip somebody off I could do a hell of a lot better than a four hundred dollar check! Look at the damn paperwork, everything you need is in there. I just need it sorted out so I can do my taxes... again... for the hundredth time. And for the record, Mary is not my sister, she's my great, great, great, great, granddaughter. Look at the damn paperwork already! "You're delusional. This is not funny and you need help." "I'm serious. I'm not crazy and yes, I do need help. Help with my taxes, help with my investments. Pretend I'm a normal retired guy who gets a Social Security check and has some extra income. Mary's father used to do this for me. I can't make heads or tails of this anymore. You're part of the family now. You were going to find out sooner or later anyway, so please... help out." He leaned forward and put the chair back on all four legs. I was happy for the chair, it went well with the table. He opened the folder and shuffled the first couple of pages, loose leaf sheets Katherine's husband had put in there in the seventies. He took a breath, "OK then. I'll play.", he cleared his throat and looked me in the eye, " What are you supposed to be, a vampire? Some kind of immortal being? Is some guy with a sword going to come and chop off your head?" I ground me teeth and held my temper. "No. I'm not immortal. I'm not supernatural. I'm not even special. It's a genetic abnormality. There's hundreds of people just like me around the world, there's at least ten of us left in the US. My great-grandmother is still alive, down in Phoenix. She's married to a guy, I swear, looks your age. It's disgusting, really..." "Wait. Stop right there. I don't want to hear about your grandmother, OK? You tell me your story, I'll pretend to believe you. You think you have a disease?" "Not a disease. More like an hereditary trait." "Genetic immortality..." "It's not immortality, but yeah, it's genetic. A guy in France did a study a couple of years ago... Passes down through the female. If I had had a sister, she might have passed it down. I can't. People like me don't have lots of kids. "According to that guy in France, people like me can all trace their maternal family tree back to a couple of families in southern Turkey. There's stories of people living to be seven, hell, eight hundred years old out there, but these days most of us don't live much past three. Accidents. Anger. People like me live a long time, but we can die, and do all the time. Many of us commit suicide. I had no idea I was like this until I was close to thirty years old. My childhood was normal. I just never got sick. But most people I knew as a kid didn't get sick. If they got sick, they died. If I knew you at twenty, you hadn't been sick yet. I really didn't realize I was different than other people until I was close to thirty. My friends were looking older, but I wasn't. At twenty-six I looked twenty. At thirty, I still looked twenty. At forty, I still looked twenty. I still looked twenty at my wife's funeral. It was at my son's funeral I finally started looking like an adult and I was over a hundred years old by that time. "And people thought you were a freak, right? You had to fake your death and steal a new identity to leave your fortune to? I've seen this movie, Tom." "Read the file, jackass. Movies are full of it. There's no reason to fake your death. Just go on living, day in, day out. You become a fixture, no one notices that you don't change, and no one would say anything if they did. Who the hell is going to believe that the guy in the house next door is two hundred years old? "Not me." "I don't really care if you do or don't, just do my damn taxes. The part about getting rich is bullshit too. I spent most of my first hundred and fifty years poor as dirt. Living hand to mouth. If I had known what people today would pay for a table or chair or gun from back then I would have saved something, anything, but the truth is, I had to use the things I had and they wore out. "I was born in 1805 on a farm just south of Philadelphia. My mother was only twenty and died having me. By the time I was old enough to start remembering things, my father had moved us out west, and we spent a couple years moving from town to town down the Ohio River. I was married in 1845 and had one son, Paul, that same year. Paul spent most of his life in the Navy, he signed up during the war, and died in 1911. His son, Michael, I didn't know real well. He died in 1925, but I got close with his son, Thomas. Thomas went west and married a peach of a girl in California. They had twins, Jonathan and Mary. Jonathan was killed in the Pacific in 1944, Thomas never really recovered from that and died early in 1945. His daughter Mary moved back here for work and I followed. She died in 1991. That was Mary Kay's grandmother. Kay was born here in 1951, married he husband Steve in '69 and Mary Kay was born in '71.

Betcha

I sat in the chair and looked at him, he seemed to like when I looked at him. He talked faster when I looked at him. He said, "Look Tom. I'm never going to ask you where you got it, I don't care. This isn't a personal thing." And I thought, "Wow. I'm in a gangster movie. Tough guys, henchmen, locked room and all." He said, "Are you going to make a fuss?" A fuss.

I looked around the room. It was gold. Gold carpet, furniture, fixtures. He was wearing a blue suit. A nice one too. It flattered him. It would have looked nicer if he was wearing a tie. I wasn't wearing a tie, but then I wasn't wearing a suit either. I had on a navy blazer, charcoal pants, a blue button-down shirt and cordovan loafers. I was comfortable. Which was nice, since I had just lost three-quarters of a million dollars on the outcome of a football game played by a bunch of kids who forgot they were supposed to be in the tank. Or maybe they never were in the tank, I don't know. Point is, this asshole, my friend Matt, told me they were in the tank, lied, and now had all my money. And when I say all my money, I mean all the money I took from my business. And when I say my business, I mean the clothing business my ex-wife's family owns. So it was nice that my socks weren't too tight and my shirt collar wasn't cutting into my neck and my blazer was cut well enough so that I could move my arms. The chair I was sitting in was also comfortable in, I assume, a hotel ballroom furniture way. I didn't really notice.

What I did notice was that three out of the four other people in the room were not sitting comfortably in hotel provided arm chairs. Two were flanking the door, arms crossed, like bouncers at a nightclub, one was pacing in front of me, talking incessantly about why I was going to give him my money and why he was OK with taking it. The fourth person in the room was draped over one of the chairs like a raincoat, in fact, that's what she looked like. A nice beige Burberry coat, expensive, classy, but functional. Beauty but built with purpose intended. She looked bored out of her skull.

"Tom listen." Matt said. I listened. "I want you to know that I really do like you. I'm not bullshitting. I think of you as a friend." I snorted a bit, "Matt," I said, "Four hours ago I would have said you were the best friend a guy ever had. Right now, I'm just not feeling it." I took a deep breath, "You know what kind of position you've put me in? Wait. Yes, you do. You do because I told you what would happen if I lost this money. You said I'd double it...triple it...hell, I'd never have to worry about money again. You lied to me Matt, and now I'm pretty much screwed." Matt blanched. "You're not screwed. You're far from screwed. Look. I know you. You'll come out alright."

"How exactly am I going to come out alright?"

"I know you will. I can tell. In fact, I'll bet you a thousand bucks that you'll be back here in six months, loaded with cash. I'll buy you a drink and we'll have some laughs. Trust me Tom, In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty good with the odds."

"So I was a sure thing."

"You were a mark Tom, yeah. It's my job to find 'em and take their money. Usually that's it. But you're different Tom, we got along. We're a lot alike..."

"Alike? You're a con man, a gangster... You've got henchmen for Christ's sake!" I waved my arm at the doors, "I sell suits."

"You take risks, you're a gambler, just like me."

"I bet on football, I play cards for nickels in a buddy's garage."

"I have an envelope in my pocket says that's bullshit. You lost money, don't lose your self respect. I know where you got this money, remember. You made a bet once that paid off, remember how that felt? Tom. Look at Irina. Did you ever wonder where I met a girl like that? Doesn't speak a word of English? I won her in a poker game Tom. I bet. I won. You lost this time, you'll maybe win next time."

"I'm not the kind of guy who wins Russian models in poker games Matt."

"You are now. She's your consolation prize. Way to go." He turned and snapped his fingers, "Irina! You're with him." he pointed at me. Her eyes barely registered me, but her eyebrows raised a bit, then fell back. "She'll help you over the hump...or not." He said, "Point is, I tried. Now you take care Tom. I'm sure I'll see you around." He turned and started walking to the doors. Irina rustled a bit when he passed her, but he stopped, shook his head and jerked his thumb at me, then kept walking. At the doors he stopped again, turned and said, "Now stop being such a baby." His buddies pulled open the doors and followed him out as he walked through. They closed without a sound. The Russian woman's head turned almost imperceptibly towards me, her right eyebrow raised expectantly.

"Well," I said, "I hope you don't eat much."

The Boss

The Boss wasn't old when he got to town. He was a grown-up though, no mistaking. Long but chiseled features, and rail thin with skin like beef jerky, he had prematurely gray hair, thinning a bit at the sides and back cut close enough to stay in place under a hat, but long enough it didn't stick up. Gray eyes too, when you saw them through his thick-framed tortoise shell reading glasses, otherwise all you saw under his bushy eyebrows were the dark lines of his famed gunfighter's squint. There was a story that once, about a year after he came to town, he was called for jury duty. He showed up on time and spent a good two hours that morning on a folding chair, glasses on, working on a book of crossword puzzles placed on the seat of the chair beside him. He may have been a little too wrapped up in the puzzle because he didn't hear his number called the first time, or the second, but he did hear the lawyer practically shout his full Christian name from the front of the room. Concentration broken, with one hand The Boss removed his glasses, folded them up and placed them in his shirt pocket, and with the other hand he dog eared his page and shut the book, all while turning to look straight at that "loudmouth sumbitch" exactly the same way he would look at anything else, from two dogs fucking to the President of the United States. A full three seconds later The Boss hears the two words he waited all morning for, "you're dismissed" without a single question asked by the visibly shaken young lawyer. Yes, the power of that look was legendary, but what no one knew was that that terrifying tough-guy glare would disappear as soon as The Boss walked through the front door to his house and put on the bifocals he left on the tall wooden stool by the door on his way out every morning. Reading glasses were OK, bifocals were for old women and dentists.

The Boss had a uniform he stuck to. Twill pants in dark green, blue or brown, black steel-toed shoes and a black belt, topped by a short-sleeved white shirt, no matter what the weather. He also had a short, fat, brown necktie looped over the inside doorknob of his office for special occasions. At home, the white shirt, work shoes and twill pants came off and the flannel, boots and jeans went on after a quick shower and before anyone was allowed to say a word to him. This was the only rule he had that was never broken, bent or stretched. Once, a salesman was ringing the doorbell just as The Boss pulled his company Buick into the driveway. As the man rushed out to meet him, ranting on and on about some new vacuum cleaner, cleaning product or political issue, it didn't matter. The Boss blew past him, keyed open the the front door and slammed it shut on the man's fingers with devastating force without saying a word while trooping up the stairs and into the shower. Work was work and home wasn't home until the stink of work was washed off.