by James Short
“Philip wouldn’t have had the nerve,” April said quietly as she scooped up a handful of pills again.
“No, he probably wouldn’t,” agreed a new voice from behind the curtain.
Philip’s Close Encounter
When he had slammed the door on the supposed bridal suite and had run the gauntlet of a giggling maid, the front desk clerk with a lascivious wink, the concierge’s ingratiating smile, and the nod of the aged bellboy who loved to reminisce with honeymooners about his blissful married forty years with his late wife, Philip had only one intention in mind—to prove he was still an attractive and virile male.
As he numbly walked towards the lights and music of the beach district, Philip faced the truth that he had been avoiding the last six days. April had discovered his great flaw. This irremediable defect became apparent when he was given the assignment to list all of his attributes and talents in a resume composition class. “Personal capital” the professor had called it. His list topped out at a whopping 98. Yet, when Philip actually critically examined the list, something was glaringly absent. Not one of his special talents, positive characteristics, or achievements could be classed as outstanding: they were—all 98—merely above average. In other words, high mediocrity was the best he had achieved, and the best, most likely, he could ever attain.
Quite the opposite was April. She combined a bewildering accumulation of special characteristics, a veritable buffet of loveliness; from her smile of tender radiance to her delicately molded ears—he had never conceived of ears as objects of erotic beauty until he had beheld hers—to her eyes, brown vortexes down through which he slid into her soul, to her skittishly sexy body, and her naturally high spirits, which, until he married her, only occasionally had veered toward the darker moods. Philip didn’t have trouble understanding why she had remained a virgin. She wasn’t one of those prim, inhibited, old-maidish maidens; rather she was an untamed creature whom he had the great good fortune of courting.
Their romance was a breathless affair of eight months. He had come home for a visit feeling rather smug with his newly minted MBA and pocketful of job offers. The second evening, his little sister Pamela called him. She had planned a double date with a friend named April, but April’s date had stood her up. Would he be so kind to fill in, she inquired. Philip acquiesced, admiring himself for engaging in the charitable act of escorting a rejected woman. Pamela signed off saying they’d be over in a flash. Philip prepared himself to be gallant and consoling; however, at the same time, he intended to keep a proper distance because, after all, there was probably a good reason why the date of his sister’s friend had failed to show.
When Pamela walked through the door and introduced the shy nervous young lady who followed her, Philip’s presumption melted away and was replaced by the disbelief that anyone could stand up such a stunning creature. And when April’s somewhat dampened spirits began to revive, and after he had had the opportunity to examine her from a dozen different angles in a hopeless attempt to find the defect which caused the rejection, Philip arrived at the conclusion that her prospective date had perished in a fatal car accident. From street carnival to coffee shop, to the converging of confidences, to the wonderment of observing oneself fall in love, the evening revealed to Philip the true meaning of his life. He was put on earth to be a CFO of a Fortune 500 company and to become the husband of April Dawson.
Over the course of the following dates, April warmed to him and returned his affection playfully, sincerely, wholeheartedly, shyly, brazenly with flurries of kisses and contented coos as she nestled into his arms. They petted, however beyond a breast brimming over his fingers in the luminous moonlight and a thigh that seemed to go on forever as his hand inched up until being gently stopped short of its goal, he had little experience of her body. He proposed to her on their fifth date, the rashest act of his twenty-five years, and when she accepted, he thought there just might be such a thing as perfect happiness.
Philip wasn’t clear how he had arrived at the crowded bar, nor how many mugs of lite beer he had imbibed before he noticed that a woman seemingly unaccompanied occupied the stool next to him. He struck up a conversation with her, and they moved to a quiet booth, making it easier for him to study this seemingly compliant member of the opposite sex. Although dressed in the collegiate fashion and wearing her hair in a style favored by the young, the maturing lines of her face hinted she was straddling forty. There were signs of unwanted facial hair; her laugh was an irritating hee-haw, which obviously embarrassed her because she tried to stifle it.
Philip could have cataloged her defects for the rest of the evening, however, he had recently become a humbler man. This woman was another human being searching for love and could have only arrived at this moment of occupying the seat across from him through a series of disappointments and misfortunes. Suddenly, it dawned on Philip that her name had either slipped his mind or, perhaps, he had forgotten to ask her.
“Margaret Mae,” she said, suppressing the “haw” part of her laugh. After the fourth gin and tonic, Margaret relaxed more than necessary and launched into confessions. Philip then discovered the limits to his empathy.
“You know I’m not as young as I seem…” Margaret looked down and fluttered her eyelashes.
“Oh?”
“No, I’m not as young as I seem. I’m forty and…”
Philip believed that although the truth might make you free, it only by chance made you happy, and rarely others so. He added ten years to his age.
“I would have never thought that!” she exclaimed.
“I would have never believed you were forty. You look maybe thirty, tops.”
“That’s because I like to be around younger people. It rubs off, you see,” Margaret fluttered her lashes again telegraphing another intimacy. “I was bedridden for fifteen years, from exactly my fifteenth birthday until I was thirty. Cancer, you know. Everyone expected me to die. Then, suddenly, miraculously, the doctor said I was cured. It was such a shock. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I knew I had missed out on so much…”
Philip tuned her out, reluctantly admitting to himself that he didn’t want to listen to another person’s tragic backstory. In fact, he felt cheated—the whole point of picking her up was to forget for a few hours the pathos of being human.
“Then at the age of thirty-seven, I got pregnant. The father was only sixt…”
Philip turned down the volume again and studied her appearance. ‘Cute as a bulldog puppy,’ was the phrase he settled on to describe her.
“I feel so fortunate to find someone who is so understanding, someone who listens so well…”
The glasses were empty. Philip saw no reason to delay any longer. “Shall we go to your place?”
Margaret squeezed her eyes shut as if she had been slapped. However, when she reopened them, she seemed relieved. “Sure, honey, just as long as you keep in mind you wouldn’t be here unless you needed me as much as I need you.”
Forty-five minutes later, Philip had rediscovered that libido of the male kind is a human condition that doesn’t mix very well with other human conditions. It can combine tolerably with love, sort of like oil and vinegar that when shaken in a frenzied manner seem to blend, but quickly separate if left alone for a minute. It doesn’t mix at all well with anger or the desire to get even and only with great difficulty can it be paired with pity.
Of course, the hallucination he experienced just before ascending the narrow stairway to Margaret Mae’s single room apartment didn’t help. A shop window had distracted the woman on his arm. He nudged Margaret, so she could confirm or deny what he saw, but at the same moment, she pulled him into the doorway and up the unlighted stairwell. In fact, under the influence of this hallucination, his desire intensified until halfway up the stairs, when a nagging sense of loss started a slow leak of testosterone. By the time they had gone to the trouble of baring their bodies, his libido was dead.
Margaret Mae tried. Panting, gyrating, brea
king into several sweats, she went through various methods of stimulation alphabetically. But Philip’s trusted soldier, veteran of near a hundred engagements, refused to rise. In fact, the message his supine member seemed to want to convey was that it probably would never care to indulge in such an annoying exercise as copulation ever again. Philip apologized. Margaret apologized. They both apologized at the same time. She asked in a motherly tone, “How long have you had this problem?”
He couldn’t tell the truth, which would have been: just with you, so he said, “Off and on.”
“I’m an ‘off’ then?” she asked.
“No, I’m about fifty percent ‘off,’” Philip replied, wondering how far he would go to protect her feelings.
“You mean always ‘Off.’”
“No, sometimes ‘On.’”
“How often?”
“I better go now.”
“Tell me the truth, is it me?” She demanded, tears seeping into her voice.
“You’re a lovely lady.”
“Coward!”
“I’m sorry; I'm married.”
“Lucky wife you have,” Margaret said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
Philip stared at the pudgy woman on the hopefully large bed surrounded by stuffed animals because she was allergic to real ones. He had no words to console her. As he descended the dingy narrow staircase, he heard Margaret cry, the sobs like whelps of a wounded seal, and wished for her the human comfort he was unable to give, not even briefly.
The Treasure Hunters
During the next several hours of wandering, Philip began to slide into easy metaphysics as the desperate often do. He had always been skeptical of the idea of karma because it seemed a glib solution to human suffering. At the moment, however, the concept appeared to have merit. His great disappointment might be counterbalanced by a stroke of extraordinary luck.
He decided to test the karmic hypothesis. According to the pamphlet which April obsessively read and reread, there happened to be a treasure conveniently hidden nearby. He had noticed a few treasure hunters the first day, unkempt and rather odd men puzzling over the rock formations in the cliffs or walking through the redwood forest, heads down concentrating on the clicking disk of their metal detectors. But he had possessed a beautiful bride then, and they only had their dreams. Now he had nothing, and they still had their dreams.
On the fourth night, Philip had taken April to a Denny’s restaurant in the hope of talking things over away from the confines of the bridal suite. While April was spending an extended stay in the ladies’ room, he had observed three treasure hunters sitting at a corner table. Philip eavesdropped on their conversation and found himself momentarily caught up in their enthusiasm. He had noticed that the waitress treated them as regulars. Although the hoped-for heart-to-heart conversation fizzled unsatisfactorily into platitudes, Philip left the coffee shop reluctantly because he wanted to hear more of what the treasure hunters were discussing.
Philip’s sore feet now led him to that same Denny’s. The same treasure hunters occupied their customary booth, hunching over their cups of coffee and plates with red-smeared nubs of french fries and the crumbs and shavings of coconut cream pies. Philip boldly pulled up a chair. They stopped talking.
“No luck yet?” Philip ventured.
The treasure hunters huddled close and glared at him, much like musk ox will form a tight circle and balefully stare at outside threats.
“I heard the treasure was a publicity gimmick planned by masons,” Philip prodded.
“Yeah, and we’re hired to add local color,” one of the treasure hunters replied through tight lips from which dangled a toothpick. He had a thin face that cleaved the air like a dull ax and a hard voice that promised you were going to hear the honest truth, and you weren’t going to like it.
“I see. I was just curious,” Philip said.
“If you think you can just waltz up to our table and steal our plans…” The ax-faced treasured hunter bared his teeth.
Philip was past caring how much he annoyed people. “I’m not interested in your plans. I just want to know why you believe the treasure exists.”
The ax-faced treasure hunter leaned forward, bringing his unblinking gray eyes close to Philip, and whispered with a hiss, “Because it is a historical fact like World War II is a historical fact, and Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy is a historical fact, and this restaurant is a historical fact.”
“You would have thought by now somebody would have found something…” Philip tried to think of how to tactfully put this inconvenient observation.
“Yeah, you’d have thought, and you’d have been right,” The old-timer of the group, a small pinched wrinkled reduction of a man, replied. Despite his age, his bright blue eyes shone with ardor. “That’s the thing. Tom and Penelope spilled coins during the chase. Old Goose, who was around when the chase happened, knew what ground to cover. He would come up with a find every once in a while. I myself found three half eagles and a double eagle just lying there in the dirt which someone had kicked up. Forty-seven years ago. Even then, I got five hundred dollars for them.”
“Who’s Old Goose?” Philip asked.
“Who’s Old Goose?” The old-timer replied in a shocked voice. “Well, if you don’t know who he is, then you don’t belong at this table. Old Goose is the original.”
“Original what?”
“Original Deering treasure hunter!” The old-timer could not hide his pity and disdain at Philip’s ignorance. “I met him when I was a student at San Jose State. Five of us came down from the college on a lark. Old Goose was already well into his nineties. In those days, any treasure hunter new to the area first had to interview with the Goose. I think his real name was Jacinto, but I’m not sure. Chatty fellow, asked all sorts of questions. If you flattered him, he might give you a few tips. He was a big fellow too. It was something to see a man that old and that fat gamboling over the hills like a kid. He never told you where to look, but he’d show you all the places where others had looked so you didn’t waste your time.”
“Why was he called Old Goose?”
“Because he was Portuguese. Guese, goose, get it?” The third treasure hunter, a middle-aged hippie, who wore his hair in a long ponytail, spoke up. “And he was the last living witness. Claimed that he actually saw the three heavy bags of gold in the back of the wagon. Claimed he saw Tom and Penelope drive over the cliff.”
“All absolutely verifiable,” the old-timer added. “Goose told me how for months afterward everybody in the town spent all their time looking for the gold. It was like a fever. Not much was found—only a few coins that had spilled out of a torn bag. Eventually, people lost faith. They began to say that the Boller’s servant, Franklin, disappeared with the gold. Only Old Goose didn’t give up. Here and there, a few hunters found other coins dropped during the chase, although that hasn’t happened for quite a while.”
“You know what, Adam,” the hatchet-faced man addressed the middle-aged hippie, keeping an eye on Philip, “the more I hear about Old Goose, the more I distrust him. We all know how he really made his living.”
“There is no proof of that, Conway!” Adam replied.
“So what do we have to show for our time?” Conway asked. “Especially you with your theory and your map. Every time we go any place you check it against your map. You’ve spent more time trying to make sense of that map than you’ve spent with your wife of… how long have you been married? Twenty-something years or is it centuries?”
“How did Old Goose really make his living?” Philip asked, not wishing to hear the argument which he suspected was a very old bone of contention between the two.
Conway explained: “Goose had a great angle. Since he was the local undertaker, whenever he was short of funds, he’d make up the difference with contributions from the dear departed. He attended every funeral, so he could see which corpses were loaded and which weren’t. Personally, I don’t see the harm in it. The corpse don’t care. The gro
undskeeper got a free bottle of booze and a night off, and Old Goose was ever so careful to put the sod back nicely. Who’s the loser?”
Adam spoke up. “That doesn’t mean Goose wasn’t telling the truth. Goose was there.”
“Goose was an old man who liked to get attention by spinning tales,” Conway said.
“It was the second hour of the second day of my first time hunting for the Deering gold,” the old-timer interrupted, reminiscing. “Old Goose suggested that I shouldn’t dig up around the pier because every new treasure hunter tried that. I got mad and decided to call it quits, but on the way back, I kicked up some dust with my shoe, and there they were. Paid the down payment on my first car, which convinced my wife I might be marriage material.”
Conway smirked. “You’d be much richer if you had found nothing and never had a wife to spend your money. This is it for me. This is my last time. I’m sick of Solvidado; I'm sick of Goose, and I’m sick of looking for something that isn’t there.” Conway then stared defiantly at the silent faces. “I know I’ve said this before. I mean it now. God damn it! I mean it!”
“So you’re leaving tomorrow morning?” The old-timer asked.
“The hotel is paid through until Tuesday. I think I’ll go to the beach, lie out in the sun, sip a glass of Zin and watch the pretty girls.”
“Good! More for us when we find the treasure.” The aged hippie declared triumphantly.
Conway’s face contorted and his eyes narrowed into icy slits as he assessed the risk of being the fool who quit one day too early.
Philip Meets a Genie
Nothing resolved, the treasure hunters slowly stood—tired, stiff men who needed a few seconds to straighten themselves out. They said their goodnights, their bleary eyes showing that weariness had finally gotten the upper hand over their imaginations. Philip stayed behind, not quite wanting to abandon the remaining sips in his coffee cup. The thin liquid seemed the last barrier against the final despair. He gazed at the dark windows, his mind filling with obscure forebodings. How hopeless was the endeavor to make sense of the ultimate nothingness?