by C. T. Wente
“Well, let’s see what was important enough to be airmailed from India,” Chip replied. He unfolded the letter and slowly sipped at his beer as he read.
As she waited for Chip’s inevitable opinion, Jeri gazed out the saloon’s arched window at the cars that flashed by on Historic Route 66 outside. It was her favorite time of year, when the late autumn sun bathed everything in warm, honey-golden light. She watched quietly as the leaves of the maple trees planted along the sidewalk trembled at the passing cars, their red-orange colors shimmering with an ethereal glow.
Chip dropped the letter on the bar and picked up the Polaroid with a slow, deliberate motion. He examined it carefully for a few moments before placing it and the letter back in the envelope. Jeri watched as he then drained the last of his beer, a thoughtful expression painted on his face.
“So, what do you think?” she asked, tucking an errant strand of copper-brown hair behind her ear.
Chip stared absently at his empty glass for a moment before leveling his stare on her. “I think I need another beer.”
“Fine,” Jeri replied as she walked over to the beer taps. This was what she loved most about the old man. Everything about him was deliberate and calculated. Even the gaze of his piercing blue eyes had a calming effect as they peered out from his handsome, weathered face. A professor of archeology in his earlier days, Chip was an amalgam of some of her favorite things– part gray-haired professor, part rugged cowboy, and part grumpy old man.
She poured him a fresh beer from the tap and handed it over with a prying smile.
“So?”
“So I think the same thing I thought before I read the letter,” Chip answered, a paternal tone creeping into his deep voice. “That I still don’t understand why a beautiful, brilliant young woman like you is wasting her life pouring drinks for gruff old men like me and witless little Neanderthals like them.” He pointed his thumb at a group of college-age men sitting at a table behind him. The men were too engrossed in a conversation to catch the insult, but Jeri knew Chip wouldn’t have cared either way.
Jeri rolled her large, amber-colored eyes. “Do we have to have this conversation every week?” she asked, feigning annoyance. In truth, she didn’t mind the older man’s fatherly advice. The death of her real father just a year earlier had left Jeri devastated. Until that moment, he had been the stable center of her impetuous, wildly adventurous life. Brilliant and endlessly patient, her father had been her rational tether to reality as she bounced from one adventure, destination, and interest to the next. But all of that had changed with his death, and Jeri was still trying to accept the absence. If nothing else, Chip’s occasional words of wisdom provided a comforting if only fleeting dose of the man she missed so much.
“Yes, we do have to have this conversation every week,” Chip answered. “And I intend to keep having it until I’m no longer looking at the prettiest girl in Flagstaff when I order a beer.”
“I’m not the prettiest girl in Flagstaff,” Jeri retorted. “Not by a mile. And even if I was, I don’t see how that would have anything to do with my choice of profession.” She grabbed a towel and began absently wiping down the counter of the bar.
“I’ll give you that,” Chip replied, nodding his head. “But, then again, this particular bartender also happens to hold a handful of bachelor’s degrees and a Masters in Economics. Isn’t that right?”
Jeri ignored the question.
“Now, I may not be the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed anymore,” Chip continued, “but I think I’m still smart enough to recognize talent being wasted when I see it.” Finished with his sermon, he grabbed the fresh pint in front of him and took a long deliberate drink.
Jeri turned and paced quickly down the bar towards Chip. Her slender figure moved with graceful ease as her eyes burned into the older man’s down-turned face. Chip kept his eyes fixed on his beer as she stopped in front of him. She then slowly leaned across the counter; her fair, oval-shaped face hovering just inches from his. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said flatly, tossing the towel at his chest.
Chip looked up at her with a wry grin. “Oh, you mean the letter?” he asked.
“Yes Chip, the letter.”
“Well I think he sounds like one helluva guy,” he replied cheerfully, raising his glass. “I just hope he writes you again.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Jeri replied, grabbing the letter from the counter. She turned and walked back to the far end of the bar, concealing the thin smile on her face as she stared at the envelope. She slid back onto her barstool in the corner behind the counter and looked out again at the autumn afternoon. The glow of the maple leaves was beginning to fade, their shadows tracing intricate shadows against the wooden blinds in the window. In a few more hours the sun would fall behind Mars Hill, the chill of autumn would return to the clear mountain air, and the neon sign hanging on the old brick façade outside would paint flickering crimson on the sidewalk outside. It was then that the magic of evening would return, bringing the nightly wave of thirty-something couples and college-age hipsters with it.
“It is rather interesting though, isn’t it?” Chip asked as he stared contemplatively at his beer glass.
“What’s that?” Jeri responded.
“How well he seems to know you,” the older man replied. He took a sip of his beer and looked over at her, his blue eyes still swimming with thought. “I was watching you while you read that letter. You were sitting there, in your favorite spot behind the bar, holding the letter in one hand, your other hand on your cheek–”
He paused for a moment as Jeri’s eyes widened with the realization of what he was saying. “Just like he described.”
3.
Tareeq 135 Madinat, Al Jubail
October 5, 8:04am
Planet Saudia Arabia
Jeri –
I’m looking nervously over my shoulder as I write you, fully expecting the twitchy coolness of morning to be chased from the room by the approaching simoon before it wrings me completely fucking lifeless. Did I complain about endless precipitation in my last letter? I’d trade a billion grains of sand for one sparkling drop of ma. Make that two billion, and throw in a double-shot of Fortaleza and a Camel Light.
Camels, camels everywhere, and none of them to smoke.
The flight getting here was a disaster of colossal proportions. The mescaline and Prozac wore off somewhere high above the surreally sparkly Indian Ocean. And what I thought was a rogue band of harmless, cuddly chia-pets turned out to be a staff of churlish Air Iran flight attendants. I swear I did nothing wrong, Jeri. There I was, innocently floating in post-hallucinogenic meditation when suddenly they were shouting at me from all sides. I vaguely gathered from the pointing fingers and distorted curls of their lips that it might have something to do with my shirt being inexplicably removed and my fly incomprehensibly unzipped, because the Farsi flowed from their mouths like jackals learning hooked-on-phonics. The fact that the cabin held the warm pungent stench of a curried, oven-baked jockstrap certainly didn’t help matters. I considered asking the passenger next to me how to say ‘What, fucknuts?’ in Farsi, but EVERYONE was looking at me like I was the one who was delusional. While my memory after this is sketchy, I have compelling evidence that suggests I was bodily probed by the authorities during my layover in Dammam. Hard to say, as either the mescaline kicked back in, or they did something so terrible to my nether regions that I immediately retreated into my mental “happy place” and shut the whole thing out.
So here I am in Al Jubail, twitching and writing, waiting for a new assignment and that goddamn wind the locals call simoon to suck out what little water I have left in me faster than a parched kid can straw-suck a cherry coke. This has to be hell on earth, my love, just without the hookers and Justin Timberlake.
I would bitch-slap Jesus for a cigarette right now.
Let’s talk about us Jeri. There’s no doubt you’ve chiseled your way into my enlarged, slightly atherosc
lerotic heart. I only hope you’re as comfortable about our situation as I am. Allah knows I haven’t always followed the “straight and narrow”, but that’s probably because I have no fucking clue what that saying really means.
Just know this, sweet pea. 1) I have solemnly relinquished my heart to the whims and circumstances of your physically oh-so-distant equivalent and 2) I haven’t felt this giddy in the groin since that time I found a stack of Playboys in my pop’s closet. By this measure alone, I know I’m in deep.
The morning sirens are sounding, so I’d better sign off. Time to grab the prayer mat and square off with Mecca. We’ll see who flinches first. I’m not a Muslim, Jeri. I only play one on TV.
You don’t need to say it, I already know.
Ta!
- Mysterious Joe’s Last Stand Guy
p.s. The enclosed picture requires no caption.
p.p.s. The food here tastes like sand and shit-fed meatloaf.
Don’t order dog.
4.
“Seriously Jeri – who the hell is this guy?” Allie yelled toward the kitchen from the balcony of the third-floor apartment.
“I told you, I have no idea,” Jeri yelled back, uncorking another bottle of Pinot Gris. It was Sunday afternoon, and Jeri and her best friend Allie were enjoying their weekend ritual of drinking, lounging and marathon sessions of girl talk. She strolled back onto the balcony with the sweating bottle of wine in hand and dropped lazily into her chair.
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Allie said, her glass of wine perched in one hand, the two letters in the other. “Some guy is hop-scotching around the world taking pictures of himself in a Joe’s Last Stand t-shirt. You’ve never met him – or at least you don’t think you have – but he writes like he knows everything about you. Oh, and he’s also apparently in love with you. Does that sound about right?”
Jeri leaned over and poured more wine into her glass as Allie waited for an answer. The two of them had been best friends since the day Jeri had answered a “roommate wanted” ad in the college paper. She’d shown up at the tiny rental house on Leroux Street, exhausted and emotionally numb after a sleepless night of breaking the final cord of a pitifully frayed relationship with her live-in boyfriend. Jeri still vividly remembered the moment Allie had answered the door – her tall, thin body dressed only in a t-shirt and tiger-skin panties as she stood casually drinking a beer. Allie had looked Jeri over through the screen door with a sympathetic smile. “I’m not going to ask,” she’d said flatly, “just make sure you don’t give the asshole your new address.” Now, years later, she didn’t need to look at Allie to know what she was thinking.
“Yeah,” Jeri replied with a sly grin, “that sounds about right.”
“I’m glad you’re finding this so funny Jer, because personally I think it’s more than a little creepy.” Allie kicked her feet onto the balcony’s railing and sank deeper into the cushions of the chair. Her short blonde hair framed her alabaster face as she frowned. “I mean, what if he’s some kind of serial stalker or molester? What if he shows up at the bar one day and says ‘Hi Jeri, remember me? I’m that creepy stalker guy. Want to grab some dinner?’ What are you going to do then?”
Jeri suppressed a laugh as she stared out at the picturesque afternoon. The distant slopes of the San Francisco Mountains shimmered like copper as the quaking aspens relinquished their summer colors to fall. A checkered sky of giant billowing cumulous clouds floated overhead, the sun casting their undulating backs in silver-gray light. And around her, shaggy, army-green spears of ponderosa pines stretched upward to frame the serene valley landscape. “God, it is so gorgeous here today,” she said with a sigh.
“Don’t change the subject,” Allie replied irritably.
Jeri reluctantly broke her stare from the view and turned to her friend. “What do you want me to do, Allie? It’s not like I asked for this. It’s not like I can write this guy and tell him to stop. And honestly, what’s the danger in it? What has he said that would indicate harmful intentions to anything other than his own liver?” Jeri paused as Allie rolled her eyes. “Besides,” she continued, “his letters make me laugh.”
“I knew it!” Allie said with an accusing tone as she bolted upright in her chair. “I knew it! You actually like this guy!”
Jeri laughed reflexively. “Come on, Allie – can we be reasonable here? We’re a long way past high school. I just said that his letters are funny. What the hell does that have to do with anything romantic?”
“It has everything to do with being romantic,” Allie said as she jabbed at Jeri with her wine glass, swirling the Pinot Gris dangerously close to the rim. “Don’t you see that? Every guy out there knows the best way to get a girl’s attention is to make her laugh, because then we become intrigued.” Allie drew out the last word slowly, like a teacher speaking to a first grade class. “And god knows, once we become intrigued, we want to learn more, which means now we’re interested in the guy, whether we want to admit it or not.” She paused and leaned in closer. “And once were interested… well, then we’re fucked.”
Jeri stared at her friend, trying desperately to maintain a straight face. As ridiculous as it seemed, she knew that this was Allie’s best effort at heartfelt advice. “Fucked, huh? Do you mean that literally, or figuratively?”
Allie sat back and threw her hands in the air.
“Does it matter?”
Jeri shrugged and took a long sip of her wine. She was beginning to question why she’d even shown the letters to Allie in the first place.
“He’s doing everything right, Jeri,” Allie continued with a tone. “He’s setting the intrigue trap that every woman falls into.” She reached over and picked up the Polaroid from the second letter, studying it for a moment. “Even these damn photos; do you honestly think they aren’t meant to make you want to know more?” She tossed it onto Jeri’s lap.
Unlike the lush tropical location of the first photo, the scene in the Polaroid from the second letter was eerily empty. A midday shot of white desert sand and flawless blue sky filled the background. As in the first photo, her mysterious writer stood in the foreground, but this time his back was to the camera. In his right hand he held a small sign over his shoulder. A one-word message was written with heavy marker in the same precise handwriting as the letters – “Hell.” Next to the sign, the man’s dark, short-cropped hair looked disheveled and chaotic, exposing just a hint of his unshaven face. Jeri was sure she could see the edge of a wide smile in that thin, seductively hidden profile, but she was not about to mention this to Allie.
“Maybe,” Jeri replied.
“Maybe what?”
She handed the Polaroid back to Allie. “Maybe he wants me to be intrigued. Or maybe he just can’t find anyone to take a good photo.”
Allie shook her head and quickly shoved the letters and Polaroids back into their battered envelopes. “Fine, whatever. Just do me a favor and hold on to these. I’m sure the authorities will want to examine them when you go missing.”
“Can we drop this subject?” Jeri asked as she refilled Allie’s wine glasses.
“Consider it dropped,” Allie retorted curtly.
“Thank you. And for the record, if I ever go missing, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.”
“That’s not funny… at all.”
Jeri hooked her feet onto the railing and leaned back into her chair, her long legs stretched in front of her. She took a sip of wine and closed her eyes, letting the cool sweet flavors of fruit slowly slide across her tongue. The autumn sun found a window in the clouds and drenched them both in radiant golden warmth. “Maybe so,” she said as a smile stretched across her face. “But I can think of far worse things than disappearing for a while.”
5.
The large black Mercedes rolled to a stop.
“So… what now?” he asked from the back seat.
A pair of small petulant eyes glanced back at him through the rearview mirror. His driver was a dark, co
rpulent man with thinning hair and a severe expression. Despite the air conditioning that blasted through the front console, his wide head and thick, hairy neck were covered in beads of sweat that trickled down to the white cotton thobe that covered his rotund body. And he farted; a condition that he seemed completely unashamed of since the beginning of their short drive together. “Wait,” he replied tersely. “They’ll signal.”
“Sounds good,” he replied to the driver, nodding his head. He gazed out through the Mercedes’ heavily tinted windows at the stark landscape outside. The long, two-story buildings that lined both sides of the street were nearly mirror copies of each other. Bleach-white and stripped of anything ornate or memorable, they appeared intentionally designed to be forgettable. Four white doors punctured the first floor façade in regular intervals on each side, a tiny window next to each. It was clear the windows were not designed for aesthetics, but as a functional means of surveillance. The windows along the second floor were slightly larger versions of those on the first, as if teasing the idea of normalcy. Viewed under the raw, harsh light of the late-morning sun, he realized the buildings – if not the entire area in general – gave off a serious ‘fuck-you’ vibe. It was the kind of flagrant aura of bad energy normally reserved for morgues, strip joints and most of downtown Philadelphia.
A sudden movement caught his attention.
The second door of the building to his left slowly cracked open, forming a vertical crease of black in the stark white façade. As he watched, a hand appeared from the dark interior and quickly waved before vanishing.
“There,” his driver muttered, nodding his head towards the door. The small gesture caused his body to quiver like a massive ball of gelatin. A low growl bellowed from beneath his thobe. The driver gripped the leather steering wheel and leaned forward, groaning with effort.