by MK Alexander
I sat on the bottom bunk for several hours in the midst of absurdity. I had too much time on my hands and it wasn’t long until I completely doubted my sanity. Obviously, too many drugs had impaired this particular brain. I had serious trouble discerning what was in my imagination and what was real. Another wave of withdrawal hit me as well, I spent a solid hour curled up in a ball, just shivering. Real or not, Fynn had offered a means of escape and it seemed worth trying.
Night came at last. At the very least there was a routine to this place. A bell rang announcing lights out in five minutes. Soon after, they clicked off. It was never truly dark though, a dull glow from somewhere still shone, and it was enough for me to see the tiny compass dial. Jumping from the lower bunk would be impossible, there just wasn’t enough height. Crawling up to the top bunk was problematic; my cellmate was not going to be enthusiastic about the idea. I checked the compass again. Bad news.
The direction Fynn told me to jump towards was not accessible, not from any bunk, high or low, since it was closed off by two walls. The counter top… that might do the trick, at least it faced in the right direction. I climbed to the top of it, glancing over at my cellmate who barely looked surprised, though he did start to spew a long trail of curses. I briefly wondered what he might think if he saw me sprawled on the concrete floor.
Okay, soft jump… I was happy enough that the over-sized coveralls would not be traveling with me. I was also filled with trepidation and many questions. I wondered where I might end up: which previous me? And how far back would I go? Fynn had not given me a clue, in fact he was downright evasive. Still, anywhere was probably better than here. I jumped. Oblivion, no pain this time, but something like milky chocolate came to my tongue.
* * *
chapter fifteen
hot town
I slurped the last drops of sweet chocolate milk from the bottom of a can. I could taste metal as well, vaguely. Yet it was so satisfying and comforting. It was also far too loud. Still, I wanted another… another whatever it was. I checked the label: Carnation Chocolate Milk. The next thing I remembered was California, a blue jumpsuit and Inspector Fynn… Okay, I am someplace else. This is good… only, where? I read the label again: no bar code, no nutritional information. The only warning was “shake well.” I knew I had traveled to a distant past. I looked around to find myself in an old kitchen or a pantry maybe. The walls were covered in cabinets, all painted white. There was an old fashioned sink and a table with chairs. The floor looked to be marble and very clean.
One chocolate drink was not enough. Like an addiction, I felt an insatiable craving for more. By rote, I opened a low cabinet, reached in and grabbed another can. It felt so familiar in my hand, something I had held long ago. My hand… it was smaller than it should be. I tried to concentrate as I picked up an opener from the table. I punched two small triangles in the metal top. That’s my hand? I asked myself. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t. It was a child’s… but— My mind started reeling. This was not good.
I knew to be quiet, that much rang clear, like a standing order. I might do anything I want, but only if I did it very quietly. Beyond the pantry, I found an even larger kitchen, also old fashioned. There was a stove, a deep sink, and a refrigerator with rounded corners. I peeked out the back door that led onto a courtyard. There was an odd smell overlain on the dry hot air, like something overripe, sickly sweet, though not completely unpleasant. I looked up to the open sky. It was blue and cloudless. I was living in some sort of apartment, four or five stories high; with one floor above me and several below.
“I’m not even sure this is me… I don’t remember any of this,” I finally said aloud though in a whisper. My voice sounded so strange, unrecognizable. Maybe this wasn’t me at all. Maybe I had jumped into some random person. It is difficult to explain exactly how I felt, almost as if I occupied someone else entirely, but that person did not seem to be aware of me. I was an observer only, certainly not a puppet master. Somehow, this was a kid-me. For the moment I was satisfied to see what we would do, or better put, what he’d do.
We tiptoed out of the pantry through a swinging door into a dining room, or a museum, I’m not quite sure which. The furniture was ancient by any measure, chairs and cabinets right out of Versailles, including a giant oval table centered under a massive chandelier. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high with a pattern stamped on it— an old tin roof probably. On the walls hung huge paintings in ornate gilt frames, mostly dark portraits of no one I recognized. One painting was a landscape. It depicted half-naked women lounging about, though their picnic seemed to have been interrupted by an army of rapacious centaurs.
I also noticed a floor to ceiling window, but more like a double glass door. While open, just beyond it, thin wooden slats blocked my view. Daylight leaked through the horizontal gaps. A balcony lay beyond, I remembered. Everything here was steeped in memory. I could recall the exact sound of pulling up that heavy grate. On the other side was a big city, busy and loud, with streets full of people, honking cars, smelly buses and tiny two-stroke motorcycles. For now though, the whole apartment was overwhelmingly silent and dark despite the bright day outside.
A pastiche of disjointed memories came flooding to my mind, indeed, a gallimaufry. I was unable to stop them. They were out of time, that much I understood, but rooted in this location… I could remember lowering plastic army men from the balcony to the streets below, dangling them just over the heads of pedestrians… There was a park across the street where I taught some crazy guy to play whiffle ball… Just yesterday, it seemed, I was visiting a very old woman, Elpitha… I had never seen anyone so ancient. Her tea cup rattled when she tried to lift it. And she stared at me with rheumy eyes, behind giant magnifying glasses. With an astonished smile, she looked at me and I could tell she was thinking: how could anyone be so young and yet sentient. Outside, in her walled garden I was in a fig fight with some other boys… clinging to branches and tossing ripe fruit at my foes.
More memories came flooding in… playing foosball for endless hours… a discotheque, kissing a girl on the dance floor… Posters everywhere of fierce looking colonels, and a hairy Shah of Iran tip-toeing along a sandy beach. All these came from the past, and from the future. How could that be? How could I remember things that had not yet happened?
By the pantry door, I saw a large television set; it said Telefunken on it and rested on a movable cart. It also had channel knobs. This surprised me. It was not supposed to be here. I recalled an old shortwave radio instead… Wait, maybe the TV was new. It was here for a reason, something was going to happen, something big… How could I know that?
Behind closed doors was another set of rooms and a kind of office— there was something forbidden about them though. I snuck in for a quick peek. They had the same museum-like quality but there were bookshelves here, glass cabinets and what looked to be a doctor’s exam table. Wait, diabolical experiments? I wondered. No, it was my grandfather’s office. He was a doctor and this is where he saw his patients. A big anatomy poster hung in one corner. It seemed to be a cutaway picture of the human digestive tract. “Are you satisfied with your life?” a voice in my mind asked in a foreign accent. That was my grandfather, I think.
I let myself walk back through the dining room to a small alcove. There was a sleep sofa there, a Castro Convertible, I was sure of the name. I folded the bed back into itself and replaced the cushions. From a nearby table I picked up some money, colorful bills and heavy coins. Apparently, I was rich, because I found several hundred somethings, some currency I was unable to decipher. And I felt something like anticipation. This self was going somewhere. I put on a pair of sandals.
On my way out of the room, I couldn’t help but peer inside a small glass cabinet. On the shelves I noticed a set of odd figurines, delicately carved porcelain people about five inches tall. A man in a rooster costume, was all I could guess. I could see his head, a human face peering through a mask. The other figures seemed to be the same, a f
rog, a swan, and maybe a cat of some kind… I had certainly seen these before but never had any idea what they were. This morning, at least part of me understood it was a fancy dress ball, some sort of masquerade from the days of Louis the fourteenth.
Still under the order of silence, I slipped out of the apartment altogether. I closed the heavy door behind me and came upon a tomb-like staircase. It would be full of echoes if I made the slightest noise. Everything was in marble, and there was coolness here. A white spiral staircase led down. On the landing I noticed an ancient elevator, glass doors, and a metal grate. I knew not to enter though, too noisy. Instead, I glided down the steps silently and out through the lobby. I pushed hard against a wrought iron door that was at least twice as tall as me. It gave way slowly and I was out on the street, assaulted by hot dry air.
Now I noticed my clothes: baggy shorts and a powder blue pullover with a collar and a mix of thin and wide white stripes. Who dresses like this? I walked through what seemed to be a deserted city, or maybe more like a city on a Sunday afternoon in the summer. Everything that resembled a shop or a restaurant was closed up with the same kind of heavy shutters back at the apartment. I started to notice the signs, they were not in a language I could recognize, not even the alphabet was familiar…
Uh-oh. I remembered what Fynn had joked: When I see signs I cannot read, I know that I am very far from my usual timeline. This could be real trouble. I followed myself to a very wide boulevard. There was little traffic but every car that did pass seemed foreign. Across the street I could see a huge modern building, tall, completely white and built in a sweeping arc. I knew it to be a hotel, more, I knew it to be the Hilton. I had been there. I remember swimming in a pool and eating something that passed for a hot dog. This was not my destination though, not today. Instead I found myself standing on a corner, waiting. Several blue buses went by, some even stopped, but I didn’t get on. They filled the hot dry air with diesel fumes.
Finally, a yellow bus appeared and slowed to a stop. I hopped on through the back door. It wasn’t a tram— maybe a trolley; it wasn’t on tracks but it was electric, and made a funny sound as it accelerated down the main thoroughfare. There were wires overhead and somehow we were attached to them by two long poles. An old man in a tattered uniform came up to me. “Syntagma, parakalo,” I said, but half of me didn’t know what that meant. I handed him a large coin. He returned a tiny paper receipt from a machine at his belt and gave me several smaller coins, some ridiculously light, and one with a whole in its center.
After a mile or so, I jumped off and crossed the wide avenue. I made a beeline to a shady area on the other side. It was shielded by small trees and awnings. There were many more people here, though they seemed like tourists. I walked beside a high marble wall until I came to a sidewalk kiosk, a standing cube about four feet wide on each side. Its exterior was lined with books and magazines, and in many languages it seemed. I browsed through the titles and settled on some well-worn paperbacks. I took my haul up to the cashier.
“Do you have any books on astronomy?” I asked.
“Eh?”
“Astronomi ... astéria ston ouranó...”
The kiosk owner sat buried in his wares, surrounded by odd snacks, candies, and cigarettes. I could just look up to see his head and shoulders. He clicked his tongue and gave a single nod of his head. That meant no. “Oxi, cimera.”
I knew I had asked that question before. I bought a newspaper, the Athens News— okay, I know where I am, sort of… I also grabbed a tube of Mentos. The guy in the kiosk counted everything up: twenty-two drachmas. I could tell this was a ritual. And disturbingly, I felt like I was slowly reverting back to this younger me. He was re-asserting himself. My other memories were fading... I was fighting a losing battle, and admit to being frightened.
A short walk later I stopped at the corner of a large intersection. Across, was a main square, an acre of steps and marble filled with sidewalk cafes. To my left was the Palace. I looked up and saw two motionless guards, Evzones standing in the heat of the sun guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier. But I was here to feed the pigeons. I put a drachma down and a kindly man handed me a white paper bag filled with seeds. As soon as I tore it open, the pigeons came fluttering in, landing on my arm, my shoulder, anywhere they could. Their beaks tickled as they pecked the seeds from my palm.
Next, I walked towards a lush park set behind a high wall: the Palace Gardens. After a hundred yards or so I turned into the gate and meandered down a white pebble path. It crunched softly under my sandals. Peacocks sauntered across, letting go an occasional plaintive cry. To either side were gardens, hedges and trees, flowering plants and leaky hoses everywhere. Small iron guardrails kept me out of this not so wild place. I lingered by a modest zoo containing animals that didn’t seem particularly exotic, then searched for a seat near an artificial lagoon complete with a fountain. I sat down at my usual bench lucky to find shade this afternoon, and started through my new books: an Agatha Christie mystery, another volume of Get Smart— Max and Ninety-Nine peered back at me from one side of the cover. A tattered sci-fi novel by somebody called Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle… One by Jules Verne, a Doc Savage book, and something by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
I had just started reading The 4:50 from Paddington when someone came up to me. “Excuse me…” he said in a rather loud voice, “Constitution Square?” he pronounced it slowly. He was certainly posing a question and I guess he was talking to me. I looked up at him. A tourist. “Um… Follow that path to the exit and hang a right… you can’t miss it.”
“Hey, you speak English,” the man said, surprised.
“Yeah…”
“Wow, you’re American.”
“Yup…”
“Where are you from?”
“Close to New York,” I answered vaguely and my voice seemed an octave higher than it should be.
“Me too.”
“Really?”
“A place called Sand City.”
That certainly rang a bell but I couldn’t quite remember its geography. “Where’s that, like Long Island somewhere?”
“No, not really.”
I looked the man over. He wasn’t quite a tourist, not by the way he was dressed. But he was a really old guy, like forty or something. He didn’t seem especially creepy, just sort of lost.
“Is there some place nearby I can get a drink?”
“Like a fizzy lemonade? A gazzola, a portokalada?”
“Whatever that is, I guess… Maybe like a coke.”
“Oh, there is no coca-cola yet, just something called Tam-Tam.”
“Close enough.”
I nodded over to a man sleeping nearby on a shady bench. He wore a gray uniform and was using his cap and the afternoon newspaper as a pillow. In front of him was a white pushcart on spindly wheels.
“Do I have to wake him up?”
“Probably.”
“You want anything?”
“No thanks.”
The stranger apparently decided he was not so thirsty. He sat down at the far end of the bench instead. “Hey, what’s with all the sailors around?” he asked.
“American Sixth fleet,” I said.
“How do you know that?”
“The fleet docks in Piraeus every summer.” I looked the man over. “You’re not a sailor though.”
“I could be…” he said and smiled slightly.
“Well, you’re not wearing white… and you’re alone… and you’re too old.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The sailors I see are always in uniform and they’re never alone.”
“Oh, well, shore leave today… just a tourist.”
His explanation didn’t seem very plausible.
“Say, what’cha got there, kid?” the stranger asked and looked at my stack of paperbacks.
“Books.”
“You like to read?
“I guess.”
“That’s quite a haul
…” the man said and started sifting through the titles.
I felt a little protective. These were books I hadn’t read yet. They were mine, not his. “American books… or at least they’re in English,” I said.
“Can I see?” He leafed through them. “You’ll like this one. I’ve read it before.”
“What’s it about?”
“Hard to explain… sort of like an alternate history.” He picked up another. “Oh, Jules Verne... can’t go wrong with the classics.”
“I think I saw the movie.”
“Hmm. Get Smart? That’s a TV show back in the states.”
“I’ve never seen it. Is it funny?”
“Very funny. You’ve never seen it?”
“No TV here.”
“Really? I was just walking down the street before, and there was a whole crowd of people staring at a television set in a shop window… almost like they never saw one.”
“Well, I should’ve said, TV just arrived… maybe this year. It’s brand new, pretty much.” A memory came flooding in. My granddad had a TV… only two channels though. I seemed to remember a show called “Bonanza,” a western, maybe it was dubbed in Greek… a big guy name “Hoss” talking in a high squeaky voice that always made me laugh.
“I’ll bet you watch tomorrow.”
“Why?” I looked at him.
“If all goes well, we’ll be landing on the moon. Don’t miss it.”
“Apollo thirteen?” I asked.
“I don’t think so… maybe eleven.”
I went back to my book slightly embarrassed.
“Say, I don’t suppose you know a good place to buy souvenirs?”
“What kind of souvenirs?”
“Something different, not your usual miniature statue, or worry beads, or those stupid wool bags.”
“Tagari.”
“What?”
“The shoulder bags.”
“How about one of those cool black captain hats?” he asked.