by Chip Jacobs
“Officers. Thank God,” Percy said from the bench. “This anarchist and his rabid dog double-teamed me. I had to fight back. Shoot ’em.”
“You talk too much,” Crum said. “Hands up, everybody.”
Percy, trying to demonstrate how compliant he was, whipped his arms upward with ill-considered zest. The tip of his right hand caught the razor-sharp edge of a severed fence post and, as well as any QVC-sold Ginsu knife, the movement sliced off his two middle fingers at their knuckles. They became the next objects to bounce off that condo’s roof, which was taking a drubbing today.
Blood spurted from Percy’s new stumps, and he rolled off the bench and onto the bridge sidewalk. He writhed there before he clutched the Fake Teddy mask and wrapped his hand in it like a plastic tourniquet. He then curled into a ball, sniveling like the coward he was.
Crum shook his head, jawing to Lieutenant Figgle, “Back to FUBAR territory, I guess.” Then louder, he said, “If anybody has any weapons, throw them down. I mean it, you guys.”
Nick slowly raised his arms to show he didn’t have a gun and slowly lowered them back onto the antique solar projector. It took every fibrous strand of want-to for him to deposit the first postcard into the slot. On the periphery, SWAT sharpshooters were kneeling.
“You any closer?” Royo asked. “I’m seeing myself as a teething puppy. Hurry.”
“Nick. Please,” Crum said. “Show history some respect.”
Nick, be it the Alternative Nick or Current Nick, just then understood that he once hung from a strap stories above here. He thrust the postcard down into his fully charged machine. Instantly radiating out over the south side of the bridge, with a slight 3-D effect, was a billboard-size image of Vroman’s Colorado Street store from 1913.
As it brightened the twilight, a woman in an old-lady mask, long, frilly dress, and gray wig scampered over, waving her arms. She’d sweet-talked her way into the event, too, never expecting it was the table-setter for this. The police wouldn’t allow her to get any closer.
“Nick. It’s me!” said Julie, yanking off her Lilly-Bush-esque mask. “Whatever you’re doing, give up. We still can have a future.”
Nick, weakening by the second, gaped at her. “Really? But why are you here?”
“Well, I can’t write about something if I miss its party, can I? Now stop. This bridge has seen enough tears. I love you.”
“After today, I may transfer to San Bernardino,” Crum side-mouthed to Figgle.
“San Berdoo?” Figgle said. “I wouldn’t. More felons out there than San Quentin.”
Nick’s bloody hands pressed a second postcard into the slot. This one broadcast an image of Thaddeus Lowe and his sons on a breathtaking, snow-capped Echo Mountain.
Any pretense the ceremony could resume uninterrupted was over. The invited guests and others now were busy ooh-ing and aah-ing at the aerial-projected memories of yesteryear.
“Well, lordy!” exclaimed David Lee Roth, stupefied by Nick’s device. “This is a gen-u-ine George Lucas.” Close by, Kip Thorne scribbled an equation on his palm.
“As Robert Plant once sang,” Royo told Nick, “the path you seek burns inside the light ahead.”
“I’m still confounded, boy. Why did God recruit a fuck-up like me—a fuck-up selling plastic crap, underachieving every which way?” Nick fed the third postcard into the projector: a panoramic shot of upper Busch Gardens that accentuated its grassy steppes and Gingerbread Hut, the Budweiser-eagle flowerbed and exotic cacti.
Julie and the police were mystified. To whom was Nick talking: an invisible friend? Voices in his head?
“Didn’t you know that Jesus predicted fuck-ups will inherit the Earth?” Royo said. “Let the answer come.”
Nick eyeballed the image and turned to Royo. “He never said that. I’m an ex-Presbyterian.” He gulped. “I’m supposed to be a truth shiner, aren’t I?”
“Warmer,” Royo answered by brainwave.
“A truth shiner that’d, um, rather die for the best of something’s aims—than live dishonestly in its fables, no matter how beautiful the lie.”
“Getting there, human. And whatever happens from here, I apologize for shredding your couch. Tasty as that foam was, it was no excuse to go Royo Asswipe.”
“Forget it.” Nick said, stepping over bawling Percy and grunting, scooping up his fading dog. “We have all some Royo Asswipe inside. Looks like, though, we’re not making it to San Francisco, after all.” He cradled Royo in his arms, barely able to return to where he’d stood while sharpshooters clicked their automatic rifles at them.
“I’ll take Pasadena anyway,” Royo thought. “Prettier. And better grass to roll on.”
Holding his dog in his right arm, Nick used his left hand to load the final image into his whirring projector. But this one wasn’t a postcard. It was far better: a photograph of a smiling, dark-haired man atop a plumy ostrich with a dog hoisted up on its front legs beside them, as the trio watched the bridge under construction from patchy ground. Inexplicably, A. C. Vroman’s photo spread wider than the others. One of its borders spilled over to the side of the alcove, right to where the exposed hole in the fence was.
“Holy mackerel: that’s us!” Nick said. “And I think she’s extending us an invitation, catch me?”
Both were dripping blood all over the bench.
“I do. What you never understood was that she always needed you as much as the city needed her,” Royo thought. “If you’re really awoken, what’s E-I-T-D-I?”
Nick, in this time of dying, smiled truer than he had since he was a kid in Mac’s garage. “Sure sunny, this awareness, this high of knowing who you really are. Knowing who you’re supposed to be is the ultimate high. Ready?” He then shouted the answer to Royo’s acronym riddle, though only one person heard it—the person designated to—over the police walkie-talkie chatter and rising confusion. “Shall we, muttenheimer?”
“Call me the butterscotch wolf,” Royo thought. “Last one to Buford’s buys.”
“Like you ever bought a sandwich in your life,” Nick said. “Or lives.”
Nick, clutching Royo in his arms, ducked through the gap in the fence perfectly sized for them. A stunning white flash, like the flash of a hundred old-fashioned cameras, exploded in the night air as they stepped into nothing. When the flash petered out, they were gone.
“Niccccck! No,” Julie wailed, so loudly she sprained her esophagus.
“Oh, my god,” Sally Field said from the table area. “What’s happening?”
“I’m definitely taking some personal time,” Crum said.
Nearly simultaneously, the mourning women on the bank, and only them, saw something as jaw-dropping as Nick and Royo’s disappearing routine. Brilliant streaks of purple light illuminated the spots below the bridge where each one of the people they lost landed after jumping from the deck. Each woman only saw the purple light related to her tragedy, rather than the entire spider web of intersecting beams reminiscent of a Griffith Park laser show. Each in their own way implicitly knew that it was a recreation of a loved one being lifted up and jetted home a trillion-trillion miles above the stars.
Some of the ladies fainted. Some howled thanks. Connie Prunell wept euphoric tears of relief. There’d be a good deal of inebriation, laughter, and joyous reminiscing over photo albums later that night.
Even so, the following weeks were a muddle. Initially, none of the eyewitnesses could agree on what they’d witnessed, debating whether it was a miracle, prank, or something defying categorization. One bunch, including most of the police closest to the white flash, suspected it was an elaborate, David Copperfield-like hoax involving mirrors and fossil-fuel-protesting actors. Two months later, someone claimed to have seen Nick and Royo in the snowy parking lot of a Chili’s restaurant in Indiana. False rumor.
Across the world, religions with long-held beliefs in r
eincarnation enjoyed a record surge of new members and donations. In Nick’s honor, a Caltech physicist sketched the plans for a spectrometer to capture light escaping the departed.
—
Three years later, in the afterglow of her blockbuster book about the true history of the Colorado Street Bridge and its connection to deathless endings, Julie was the keynote speaker at the dedication of a plaque for the men who died during the bridge’s anything-but-immaculate conception. Her knees trembled when she noticed a vaguely familiar gent in the back of the admiring crowd. Seeing his twinkling eyes, she veered off her prepared comments, describing a recurring dream she was having: that sometime in 2050, with the Earth unraveling, Pasadena’s concrete queen would brook more than the Arroyo Seco.
“People,” Julie said in closing, “frequently ask me if I expect Nick and Royo to return to this gem of a city. To them I say we have to earn it to deserve it.”
Acknowledgments
As a native Pasadenan, I’ve spent most of my life living within a few miles of my famous subject. Yet, memories of teenage mischief there and an evolved appreciation for the light-dark paradox that is the Colorado Street Bridge only served as raw inspiration. How fortunate, then, I was to have my wife, Kate, and two daughters, Samantha and Lauren, pushing me forward, never doubting I could weave the loose threads of imagination and reality into narrative whole cloth. I love you all to my depths. My big brother, Paul, sparked my premise years ago when he encouraged me to write about a special dog using the organic smart-ass in me. My editor, Seth Fischer, performed his usual magic by helping me situate my boundless ideas within a manageable universe. Steve Eames, another terrific editor, added his insights on all things grammar and logic. Gary Cowles, Ann Scheid, Ann Erdman, Sue Mossman of Pasadena Heritage, the Pasadena Museum of History, and the Pasadena Central Library were generous with their support. Fellow writers Kimberly Kindy, David Kukoff, David Rocklin, and Kevin Uhrich were always there with a positive word (or kick in the butt), as well. Your kindness shall not be forgotten. Finally, an arch-sized thank you to the wondrous people at Rare Bird Books, who continually produce literary miracles and support us neurotic authors on incredibly little caffeine. No one loves books or recognizes how they transport us as much as you do.
Research
Books
Lummis, Charles F. A Tramp Across America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982; Waddell, John Alexander Low. Bridge Engineering Volume 2. RareBooksClub, 2012; Phillips, Cedar Imboden, and the Pasadena Museum of History. Early Pasadena (Images of America). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2008; Perlin, John, and Amory Lovins. Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy. Novato: New World Library, 2013; Ebershoff, David. Pasadena (a novel). New York: Random House, 2002. Conyers, Patrick, Cedar Phillips, and the Pasadena Museum of History. Pasadena 1940–2008 (Images of America). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009; Conyers, Patrick, Cedar Phillips, and the Pasadena Museum of History. Pasadena: A Business History (Images of America). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2007; Wood, J. W. Pasadena, California, Historical and Personal: A Complete History of the Indiana Colony. Pasadena: J. W. Wood, 1917; Scheid, Ann. Pasadena: Crown of the Valley. Northridge: Windsor Publications, 1986; Heckman, Marlin. Pasadena in Vintage Postcards (Postcard History Series). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2001; Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006; Thomas, Rick. South Pasadena’s Ostrich Farm (Images of America). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2007; McWilliams, Carey. Southern California: An Island on the Land. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1946; Walsh, Tim. Wham-O Super-Book: Celebrating Sixty Years Inside the Fun Factory. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008; Crocker, Donald W. Within the Vale of Annandale: A Picture History of South Western Pasadena and Vicinity. Pasadena: Pasadena-Foothill YMCA, 1990. Thomas, Rick. The Arroyo Seco (Images of America). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2008; Hernon, Peter, and Terry Ganey. Under the Influence: The Unauthorized Story of the Anheuser-Busch Dynasty. New York: Avon Books, 1991.
NEWSPAPERS, INSTITUTIONS, PERIODICALS, AND WEBSITES
Altadena Historical Society, Anheuser-busch.com, Arroyoseco.org, Biography.com Brainhistory.com, city of Pasadena, Bissellhouse.com, Bizarrela.com, Eagle Rock Sentinel, Engineering Record, Hardesty & Hanover, Historic American Engineering Record, Facebook, Flickr.com, Fortune, Google Books, Hometown Pasadena, KCET, Laacollective.com, L.A. Curbed, Ladailymirror.com, Lompoc Journal, Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Mentalfloss.com, Mountlowe.org, Oldradio.com, Onthisday.com, Pacificelectric.org, Pasadena Daily News, Pasadena Digital History, Pasadenagardens.com, Pasadena Magazine, Pasadena Now, Pasadena Post, Pasadena Star, Pasadena Star News, Pasadena Weekly, Rolling Stone, Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, Slate, Structure magazine, Thaddeuslowe.com, The New York Times, The People History, Tournamentofroses.com, University of Southern California, Waterandpower.org, Westways, Wikipedia, and Youtube.