by Inmon, Shawn
“Keep an eye on your butter. It just needs to be melted, definitely not burned.” He tipped the pan to and fro so the butter spread evenly over the surface.
Moondog winked at Charles. “And now, the magic happens.” He picked the bowl up and poured its contents into the pan.
“Don’t mess around with it at this stage. Don’t stir it. When it starts to cook in the middle, you can move the edges with a spatula, but you don’t want to muck around with it too much. That’ll ruin the texture.”
Moondog picked up a spatula and did exactly that, smoothing the cooking eggs into a perfect circle in the pan. The smell rose up and filled the kitchen.
Moondog reached over and pushed the lever down on a toaster beside the stove.
“Now, you see how the eggs have firmed up? That’s the right time to put your fillings in. Tonight, I’m just making a cheese omelet because I didn’t know what you might like, but you can add anything you want—bacon, or peppers, taco meat or onions—whatever you prefer.”
Moondog picked up half the shredded cheese and dropped it on the right side of the eggs.
“Give it a little minute to melt that cheese. If you want to check on how things are doing, you can take a little peek like this.” Moondog maneuvered the spatula to lift up the side of the eggs without the cheese. It was just starting to brown.
“Perfect. When you see that, fold it over like this.” Moondog neatly flipped half the omelet over the other. “Don’t be afraid of that part, or you’ll mess it up. It takes a little courage at first. And, if you mess it up, don’t worry, you’ve got cheesy scrambled eggs.”
Moondog reached into the cupboard on his right and took out a plate just as the toaster popped up. He slid the omelet neatly onto the plate, buttered the toast and said, “There,” he said, handing the plate to Charles. “In about the time it takes to microwave something, you’ve got a delicious home-cooked meal. Go ahead and sit at the table and dig in. I’ll make mine and be right over.”
Moondog started the whole process again while Charles took his plate into the small dining room that was really part of the living room. There was a table set with placemats, napkins, and silverware.
Charles sat and poked the omelet, picking it up at the edge and looking at it. He had never eaten anything like it in his life and wasn’t sure he liked the look of it. He delayed tasting it by spreading some jam on his toast.
In the kitchen, Moondog whistled Peace Train while he cooked.
A few minutes later, he came around the corner and was surprised to see that Charles’ omelet was gone and he was working on his toast.
“Sorry you didn’t like it, Charles.”
“Oh, did I mislead you? I thought I wouldn’t like it, but when I took the first bite, I was surprised to find how wonderful it was.”
“Yeah, I was kidding you—a habit I’ve got to learn to break. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I made you up a little shopping list of everything you’ll need to make an omelet.” Moondog stood up and retrieved a sheet of paper from the counter and handed it to Charles. “I’m assuming you don’t have any pots and pans, if all you eat is microwaved. Is that right?”
“I’ve never needed very many. I do have one small pot I heat soup up in, and one small pan to make toasted cheese sandwiches.”
Moondog picked up a pen and jotted a few more items down. “I think you can get everything you need at Safeway. Or, you can come over here and I’ll make you one whenever you want.”
“Thank you, Moondog, for doing this for me.”
“Hey! You always called me Mark. When did you start calling me by my real name?”
“Eighty-five years ago.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
CHARLES PERCHED ON the edge of a log, looking out over Netarts Bay. In the distance, a lone figure walked toward him. He couldn’t make out the specifics of the approaching form, but he was sure he knew who it was.
He hadn’t seen Sarah for many years, but for some reason, she had lodged in his mind like an unsolved equation. If you had asked Sarah, of course, she would have said she had never seen Charles before.
When Sarah got close enough to Charles to speak without shouting, she said, “What ho, fellow traveler.”
Charles did his best to put a smile on his face, though it wasn’t an expression that came naturally to him. He didn’t have a sour disposition; he just thought that many people smiled when they didn’t mean it and he didn’t want to be one of those people.
Sarah lifted her hand in a slight wave, then walked on by toward the Whiskey River.
Charles hopped down from the log and fell alongside Sarah, matching her stride for stride.
Most people would know that doing that to someone they didn’t know would be odd and perhaps obtrusive. Charles lacked the ability to register that thought.
Sarah glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, taking him in from head to toe. Finally, she said, “Rockhounding?”
“Yes. On the hunt for agates and jaspers. I used to come here with my mother before she passed. How did you know?”
“You walk with a purposeful stride, so I didn’t take you for a tourist out for a stroll. You have a backpack, which of course could just hold your lunch, but I thought more likely was a repository for your rockhounding equipment.”
“You are logical.”
“Sometimes to my detriment, yes.”
They had hiked over a small rise and looked at the banks of the Whiskey River.
“Which way are you heading?”
Charles pointed off to his right.
“This is where we part ways, then. I’m heading downstream.”
Sarah gave him a last friendly smile and set off, stooping to examine or dig loose a rock at regular intervals.
Charles stood in one place, watching Sarah’s retreating back until she disappeared.
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, CHARLES knocked on Moondog’s door at precisely 6:00.
Moondog let Charles in with a sweep of his arm. This time he wasn’t wearing a chef’s hat for their lesson.
“I tried to make an omelet for breakfast this morning.”
“Good. Practice will make perfect. How did it turn out?”
“I had cheesy scrambled eggs.”
“Ah. Even so, I’ll bet they were good, weren’t they?”
“Yes. I think I need more confidence when I fold the omelet over.”
“Try this. Next time, just before you fold it, stop for a second and picture that you’ve already done it successfully. Take a moment to savor your victory. Then flip the omelet.”
“Does doing so wire my brain for success somehow?”
“I have no idea. It’s a technique I learned a long time ago. Give it a try. Come on in the kitchen. Tonight I’ll show you how to broil a steak.”
“That would be good. I have a steak on my birthday every year.”
Moondog showed Charles the broiler, then took the top off and put water in the bottom. “This will make it easier to clean later.” While he seasoned the steaks, Moondog said, “So, have you come up with a place you want to visit yet? Somewhere to break up the monotony of twelve hundred lives?”
“Twelve-hundred and thirty-seven,” Charles corrected.
“Right, right. How can I forget? Prime number, right?”
Charles ignored that and said, “I think I’ve come up with the place I want to go. The Goudreau Museum.”
“I find myself completely unsurprised to say I’ve never heard of that. I would expect no less from you.”
“It’s a museum focused on mathematics. It’s in New York.”
“Sounds like a perfect choice for you.”
“It is a perfect choice for us.”
“Us? Oh, no. I don’t like leaving my condo, let alone flying across the entire country. I’ll stay here and you can tell me all about it when you get home.”
Moondog opened the oven and slipped the broiler onto the very top rack. “How do you like your steaks?”
“Well done
.”
Moondog’s shoulders slumped. “Well done? Come on, man, that’s like eating shoe leather. I can’t do that to a beautiful piece of meat like this. I’ll tell you what, I’ll make it medium-well.”
“I’ll take it medium-well done and you’ll come to New York with me. I can’t do it by myself. I need you to go with me.”
Moondog set the timer on the stove for four minutes, then stared at Charles. “You’re a pain in my patoot. You know that, don’t you? When do you want to go?”
“I haven’t told work that anything is going on in this life, so I’ll do that on Monday. I’ll stop at the travel agent and buy our tickets on the way home. We could leave on Wednesday. That would give me all day Tuesday to decide what I want to pack.”
“It makes me nervous just to think about it.”
Charles waited, but didn’t say anything.
Finally, Moondog said, “You’re really guilting me into this, aren’t you? I ought to make your steak medium-rare.”
“You wouldn’t do that. But, you will fly to New York with me.”
“You’re right on both counts. You are a good judge of character.”
The timer went off; Moondog slid the steaks out, flipped them over and put them back under the broiler for another three minutes. He carried a wooden bowl with a tossed salad out to the dining room table, along with several bottles of dressing.
As soon as the timer went off again, he opened the oven to a huge cloud of steam. He plated his steak and put Charles’ back in. While he waited for it to finish, he asked Charles “Do you want steak sauce?”
“I didn’t learn many things from my father—he died when I was young. I do remember him saying ‘I won’t insult you by putting anything on my steak,’ so I guess that’s the right answer.
“That’s the right answer all right, especially since you didn’t make me cook the flavor out of yours. I can’t believe I asked you over to cook you a steak and ended up committing myself to go on a trip I don’t want to go on. You’re a damned fine salesman, Charles.”
“That’s what my father was. Mother always said he was the best salesman in the world and that was how I came to be.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
NEITHER CHARLES NOR Moondog had a friend they knew well enough to ask for a ride all the way to Portland to catch their plane. Even Charles realized that making the four hour drive twice was too much to ask a casual acquaintance like Alice Harkins.
Moondog did have a young man named Freddy who ran errands for him every week, though—a necessity for someone who did everything he could to never leave his condominium. Freddy said he was willing to ferry them there and come back and pick them up—for a price.
Charles wasn’t willing to trust Freddy with his Civic, and Moondog didn’t own a car, so they left Middle Falls on Wednesday morning in Freddy’s 1979 Pinto. It had once been tan, but had more primer-gray spots than anything now.
Charles did his best not to mention the study he’d seen on rear-end collisions with Pintos, but after a few miles he couldn’t help himself.
“Have you seen the studies done on the likelihood of a deadly fire in the case of a collision near the gas tank?”
“Yeah, I know,” Freddy said. “That’s why I got such a great deal on it.”
Moondog rode up front with Freddy and Charles had the backseat to himself, aside from the many crumpled bags of leftover food from Artie’s drive in.
“It smells like grease and stale bread back here,” Charles said.
“Thank you, man,” Freddy said, smiling and nodding. “Seriously, thanks for noticing. I know that most people like to hang air fresheners in their car, but I much prefer the au natural smell.”
“I’ve always just kept my car clean,” Charles said, but noticed that Moondog was looking at him and giving small shakes of his head.
For the rest of the car trip, Freddy and Moondog talked about chores that needed to be done at the condo while he was gone, music, and what kind of weed Moondog wanted Freddy to stock up on. Charles looked at the scenery as it rolled by and wondered what kind of information would be at the Goudreau Museum of Mathematics in New York. He was hopeful that there would be puzzles and equations to be solved.
At Portland International Airport, Freddy dropped them off at the curb and promised to be there waiting when their flight landed in four days.
As they walked away, Charles said, “Do you think he’ll be here?”
“Yep. I told him I wasn’t paying him for the ride until we got back. He’ll be here.”
Both of them had brought one piece of luggage to be checked, but the line at the United desk wasn’t long. They each got their boarding pass and a luggage claim ticket.
“Don’t lose that,” Charles said, nodding at the sticker, “or they won’t let you have your luggage when we get there.”
“I never traveled with my father as a child, but if I had, I think it would have been much like traveling with you, Charles.”
Charles nodded, accepting what he thought was a compliment.
Moondog took his boarding pass out of the envelope and stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans, while he put the claim ticket in the pocket of his coat.
Airport security was lax in 1988. People had stopped hijacking planes to Cuba by then, and terrorists hadn’t yet started flying planes into buildings. They made it through security in less than half an hour.
Moondog glanced at the clock over their heads. “We’ve got two hours until our flight leaves. Why did you want Freddy to pick us up so early?”
“I looked at all the possible things that could delay us—the car breaking down, traffic, a long line to check in—and decided this was the minimum time to be absolutely sure we could make our flight.”
Moondog pointed ahead to Gate B-22 and said, “Well, good job. We made it. Now I am going to prepare for the flight with a strong Bloody Mary. Do you want to join me?”
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds awful.”
“It’s a drink that people are comfortable drinking before it’s five o’clock. They’ll put celery in it so it feels like a health food.”
“But it has alcohol in it?”
“Yes, that’s kind of the point.”
“I don’t drink, thank you.”
“...and you don’t go out with girls who do, right?”
Charles ignored him.
“Listen, you go ahead and stake out our seats at the gate. I’m going to lubricate myself appropriately for the flight, then I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
Charles staked out a spot in the nearly-empty gate and pulled a copy of The Osterman Weekend by Robert Ludlum out of his carry-on bag. He had read it dozens of times, so there were no surprises within the pages, but it was the literary equivalent of comfort food.
Charles looked up from his book and checked the time every five minutes or so. When their flight was scheduled to depart in an hour, Moondog hadn’t shown up at the gate yet. Charles began to get nervous and twitchy, constantly glancing over his shoulder.
When another five minutes had passed, Charles put his book back in his bag and retraced his steps to the bar where he had left Moondog an hour before. He found him sitting at a small table with a man Charles didn’t know, apparently lost in deep conversation.
Moondog saw Charles approaching and waved him over. “Charles, this is William. I was just telling him all about you.”
That stopped Charles. “All about me?”
“Well, not all about you. I’ve only been chatting with him for half an hour or so. William is a psychologist.”
“Very pleased to meet you, Charles,” William said, extending a hand.
Charles considered not shaking it, as he didn’t like to touch strangers, but his desire to not be rude overrode that instinct.
“We need to go. You’re making us late.”
Moondog glanced up at the clock overhead. “Our flight doesn’t leave for an hour.”
“It leaves in fift
y-five minutes. They will start boarding twenty minutes before that. The gate is getting crowded.”
Moondog grinned a little and glanced at William. It was a glance that said, ‘See? Just like I told you.’
Charles glanced at the table and saw that there were two empty glasses in front of Moondog and a third that was nearly empty. Charles had never had a drink in his life and so had no idea whether having three drinks in an hour was a lot or not.
Moondog stood up, shook William’s hand, said, “It was a pleasure,” and drained the Bloody Mary. “After you.”
In the time since Charles had left the gate, it had nearly filled. There were no two seats together.
“See? Now we’re going to have to wait separately.”
That didn’t seem to be as terrible to Moondog as it was to Charles.
“It doesn’t matter. Our seats on the plane are next to each other.”
Charles took a seat next to the boarding area but couldn’t help but feel anxious. He had never flown and everything about the experience set him on edge.
Finally, the gate agent announced boarding for families, then first class passengers.
Charles had not bought them first class tickets, although he could have certainly afforded to do so. With his savings alone, Charles had more than enough money to travel first class anywhere he wanted to go. When he died in a few weeks, he would wake up and the money would be there in his bank account again.
However, when he had sat in the travel agent’s office, the extra six hundred dollars between coach and first class has seemed a waste and he just hadn’t been able to make himself spend the money. Now, as he boarded the plane and saw the wide, comfortable seats in first class and the narrower, cramped seats in coach, he made a mental note to upgrade next time.
As soon as they got settled into their seats—Charles by the window, Moondog in the middle—Moondog flagged a stewardess down.
“Excuse me, but when will alcohol service begin?”