Political scandal

The familiar chime of the eleven o clock news.  "Good evening."  Like the half dozen solo drinkers, I looked up to see the the vaguely familiar face of a woman with shoulder length brown hair fill the flat screen hanging over the bartender station.  "Grace Hailey, of CBN, filling in for Tom Donovan."  It was a slow night at Joe's Tavern.  Light conversation continued around us, from those lucky enough to have drinking companions.

"Tonight, a disturbing turn in a story we've been following since early this morning.  The two ice chests abandoned at around 6AM on the baggage claim at O'Hare airport, originally believed to contain explosives thanks to an anonymous phone call made to Chicago police, have now been confirmed to contain the remains of a woman."

Almost everyone was looking up now; conversation died.  I took a long pull of my beer.  "Authorities claim they have been able to identify the body, using genetic testing and dental records, but will not release her name until her next of kin have been notified." 

The head shot of a high-cheekboned blonde with icy blue eyes slid across the screen.  "This news comes only two days after the highly publicized disappearance of former Miss American contestant Claire Porter, a long-time resident of Chicago's upper west side and half-sister to the President, and follows on allegations last week that the two were romantically involved while the President was still married to his first wife Marie.  The White House had no comment and police refused to say if the two cases were linked."

Hover cars and Faberge eggs

Last night I did something radical - I slept without my phone.  It may be causal or merely coincidental but my dreams were exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to fill a void left by an iPhone.

Early in the night I drove a hover vehicle.  I'm inclined to call it a hover car but for full disclosure must mention that it lacked almost every single distinguishing feature of a car - there was no combustion engine, steering wheel, gears, brakes; in fact there were no discernible moving parts unless you count the big black stick in the front that ostensibly acted like a rudder.  To be honest it most resembled a plywood box, something barely upscale from Calvin and Hobbes.

I rode it proudly, dipping and swerving over the urban landscape as if it was entirely normal to move about the country in a box operated only by a stick and the power of my mind.  I maneuvered through a giant outdoor market, a place I knew well, stopping to talk to friends, acquaintances and even attempted - unsuccessfully but without drama - to pick up a cute new girl on my way.

I also tried to take the hover car (because I refuse to call it a hover box and vehicle is too pompous) to the beach but kept running into residential neighbourhoods and powerlines which is entirely too much of a recently-returned-from-Hawaiian-vacation metaphor to be quite comfortable.

Next up!  I was a 20-something ne'er-do-well, engaged to a wealthy debutante, at an extrememly uncomfortable dinner where I was being introduced to as well as subtly and thoroughly despised by her parents.

Briefly we had a Freaky Friday / Sixth Sense gender moment, and I was walking across the dining room in a ridiculous gown covered with bristly fake lilies, enduring the cold entitled stares of the snooty family who clearly thought I shouldn't have come to the wake for their son.

A moment later I resumed my initial gender and socioeconomic status and my place among the living so that I could Tango with my bride-to-be at our engagement party.

As had been our plan all along, we officially broke off our engagement mid-song, which also happened to be halfway up the staircase, next to the extensive collection of Faberge eggs, much to the relief and delight of her family. 

However the dance was so moving that some of her relatives relented in their distaste and sat around me at my Consolement party later that day to listen to my thoroughly insincere tearful explanation of our parting.

The reason for the staged engagement and breakup was never revealed and my pretend-fiance and I remained good friends. 

Extinction dream

The giant arc shuddered and swerved.  Eighteen storeys of passengers clung to their seats, the adults unnaturally quiet, only the children screaming or crying.  We hit something.  A sandbar.  The ship tilted like a skyscraper going down and then magically righted itself and was still.

We'd had 72 hours of calm sailing, and now the artificial normalcy of travel  - the routine of meals and naps, of toilet lines, and pacing the perimeter of the sealed decks - was suddenly gone.  I sat, still in my safety belt, grieving.  All the people not on the ship.  My family.  My friends.  My lovers. 

Within minutes it was clear that other ships had grounded nearby.  A lot of other ships.  A few of the able-bodied and single were sent out to recon.  Stepping from the cool gun metal interior, blinking on the sand, in the sun, we entered a war zone.  Adults running, children lost and crying, men on motorcycles or on foot pointing guns and yelling.  We had traveled on an aircraft carrier, retrofitted hastily for civilian transport, so the few entrances were well armored, but many small yachts were being looted and destroyed. 

Bullets.  Someone was firing.  More than one someone.  My small group dove for cover in all different directions and I was pushed hundreds of yards down the beach, separated from the strangers who were my newest family, separated from the safety of the battleship. 

I ran blindly for minutes then crouched in the shelter of a long sleek grey vessel.  A hatch opened and I was pulled into sudden quiet.  Fluorescent white bounced off gleaming surfaces.  A long stretching hallway branched into nooks of equipment and computers that could have been anywhere in Research America.

Only five other beings occupied this enormous space - a husband and wife who studied oceanography, a technician, the captain, the couple's eight-year-old son, and I wondered first why I had failed to leverage my research connections into this bomb shelter luxury and then why I had been chosen, from the masses outside, to be saved, if I somehow still gave off a scientist vibe detectable only to others of my kind.  Most likely it was this: a woman alone, still clean and nourished. 

I longed to stay but the hermetic safety felt like a trap.  They had food for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then what.  The world outside would still be in shambles, probably worse, and I had a panicky instinct that if I was going to survive I had to face that reality.   I accepted a snack, some water, then left, heading back to the ship, using shadows and the intermittent withered shrubs for cover.

Puppy love

I was on vacation in a department store called Woolco.  In the hardware section I found several puppies for sale.  The owners sat bent up inside the tiny cages offering their puppies through the open door to passers-by to try out.

I cuddled with a tiny tortoiseshell puppy; it had a miniature husky face and soft triangular ears.  After returning the puppy to its owner-cage I resumed shopping.  But I could not get the puppy out of my head.  I stalked the hardware aisle twice more, trying to resemble someone innocently shopping for light bulbs or screw drivers.  My heart soared every time I was able to verify that my puppy was still there.

After shopping I was due at a barbecue .  Inevitably I turned every conversation into a story about the puppy.  The puppy was so cute.  The puppy's fur was soft.  Did they want to see a creeper snapshot I'd stolen of the puppy when the owner wasn't looking?

Finally two of my friends insisted that I either shut up or show them the puppy.  We drove to the store.  I wasn't sure which floor I had been on when I first found the puppies; I scoured the first floor with no luck so we went up a flight of stairs.  We walked every puppy-less aisle, then returned to the stairs.  They were dotted with orange traffic cones so we had to swing and hop our way back down to the first floor.  No success; swing hop back to the second floor.  Search for puppies.  Still nothing.

I started to panic.  I couldn't find the puppies.  Finally I found two hardware displays that had flanked the puppy cages.  All sign of the puppies were gone.  I burst into tears.  My friends said I was foolish and that clearly this was a sign that I was not ready for a dog.

Shipping containers and med students

I park my van on a narrow gravel driveway next to Repurposes, a condo complex made of shipping containers.  My friend Craig comes out of the first house and waves me in.  "I'll make tea," he says, disappearing inside, while I wrangle my two cats out the side door of the van and in through his front door.

Craig starts the kettle and then opens the back door.  Both cats shoot through before I can say anything.

"They are indoor only," I begin, but Craig interrupts me, reassures me that his is a completely fenced yard.  He points through a small porthole to a skinny strip of grass with tall fences on both sides.  But the fence stops short of the ground and as we watch, both cats wriggle under it easily.

"Oh.  Sorry," says Craig.

I rush to open the back fence gate.  My fluffy orange cat is at the bottom of  a cliff; I have no idea where the other one is.  I call and he climbs towards my voice.  The cliff begins as a shallow slope at the bottom but the incline is negative by the top so that it is a mild overhang.  I have to close my eyes as the cat negotiates his way back; it's too nerve-wracking to watch.  I scoop him up at the top, heart pounding, eyes still shut, and shut the gate.  I stroke him and he feels sleek.  Opening my eyes I realize this is a short-haired black cat.

I leave Craig's.  It's darker now.  I've parked my van much farther away than I thought.  The neighbourhood seems much more urban.

I walk under a freeway underpass and a medical student in scrubs steps drunkenly from the passenger seat of a parked rusting car.  He's frantically emptying a hat onto the ground and somehow I know to hold my breath even before feces begin raining from it.  He takes a few steps then vomits copiously on the ground from the stench. 

I pass a sleeping bag with two bodies sleeping head to toe.  The bag is unzipped in the middle, so the heads at each end are covered but two mirror imaged white naked pelvises are exposed.  I wake exhausted, scared, and sad.

Househunting on the brain

I pull into the driveway of the farmhouse.  It is three stories tall and narrow, old, but recently painted - yellow with dark brown trim.  I use the realtor code that I shouldn't have to get in.

Inside, the air is musty though not in an unpleasant way.  I have recently watched a horror film.  It makes climbing the dark stairwells and opening the old creeky doors a mildly challenging experience.  But it is midday.  And I am 43 years old.  I brush off the ghosts with logic and keep going.

The sun is half-shielded by clouds.  In the white-walled kitchen, the winter light pours, bright and watery, through old but big single-paned windows, making everything seem simultaneously soft focus and overlit.

I expected the house to be cold and it is drafty in spots but surprisingly warm and cozy overall.   I am chilled from the bitter wind outside, don't even realize I am hunting for baseboards to turn on till I reach the living room, and walk through a jet of warm air; it's coming through a vent in the ceiling.

Imagine living again in a centrally heated house!  For a moment I daydream.  The house is in good condition - for its age.  On the lawn, I had stood on the gravel drive and reveled in the hush, the ground soft with calf-high wild grasses that stretch for acres in all directions.

But the floors tilt this way and that.  Walls would have to be knocked down.  Wiring, appliances, windows.  The farmhouse's antique charm is no match for the ancient adding machine ticking up in my head.  The dream dies before I have even started adding in the cost of refinishing the hardwoods.

On the top floor a long corridor emerges into an attic that bulges out over a barn sized garage.  I don't remember seeing this from the road, a puzzle since the road curved around the property for a quarter mile on the approach, showing it off from at least three angles.

Narrow, steep stairs.  As I descend, I hear car tires, someone talking.  My realtor, talking to someone on the phone?  No.  Two children's voices and a slightly deeper but still female voice.  In the gloom of the staircase I must have dislodged something because I hear "thump, thump" then raised voices all at once, the only discernable phrase from the jumble something like "oh my god, a severed head!"

I freeze then, five steps from the bottom.  I can see three sets of legs, not sure if they can see mine.  "Hello?" I call out, not wanting to show up unannounced.  I startle when I spot the trophy head of a deer, staring up at me from the floor where it must have rolled after thump-thumping off some wall. 

"Is someone there?"  The woman's voice.

"Hi, yes, I'm so sorry" I talk fast but take each remaining stair slowly, "I'm here looking at the house with my realtor.  We must have miscommunicated the timing somehow."

I emerge from the gloom of the stairwell into the garage.  The ceiling soars two stories above us, complete with old wooden rafters, and the requisite layers of cobwebs.  The mother seems mid-30s, short curly dark hair.  Her voice is steady as we introduce ourselves but the kids have become utterly still and silent.  They press into her, tight, making her into a human insect, six feet, one body.

"Sorry about the head," I blurt.  "I mean, I don't know how it got there but I was trying to be careful, and I really had no idea someone would be here..." I trail off, realizing I am not making myself seem any less crazy or dangerous.

She just smiles, takes a breath as if to say something and - "Mom look!"  Her son points to something shiny on the ground midway between us.  Things, plural, actually.   We all converge on the pile, bonded by curiosity.

The mom bends down.  "It's jewelry," she says.  "Uncle used to store it in all sorts of weird places.  I bet it fell out of that deer head when it rolled down the stairs."  She begins sorting the pile into bracelets, necklaces, rings.  "Look around," she instructs.  "There could be more."  I search nearby and bring back some earrings, coins, a small satin purse.

"Don't worry," she says glancing up at me, "I'll give you a cut."  I shake my head, uncomfortable, feeling more acutely than ever that I am an intruder, but she is already head down back at her task, and I find myself unable to speak.

Through the open barn door it is suddenly dark.  Light spills from the windows onto the gravel drive.  The woman and her children have disappeared, leaving only the pile of jewelry.  The "For Sale" sign sports a "SOLD" banner.  People mill inside and out, holding cups of cider, glasses of wine.  They chat and drink and the summer air is that comfortable perfect temperature that comes like an apology after a long, scorching day.

This isn't my housewarming party.  This isn't my house.  I don't have one, don't own even personal portable property, just a battered rucksack and this loot scavenged from the garage.  I straighten my ragged sweater, run my hands through my hair and stroll out to the table for the free snacks.

London blitz

I am watching some gianormous science talk in a huge hall with 300 colleagues and this girl about five crawls into my lab.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Rebecca."  Before I know it I've got this girl curled around my little grey cat who has also shown up entirely out of context, and the cat is purring and the girl is warm and sleepy and it's like I have Instant Family in my lap, just add water.

It's nice.  Nicer than I thought.  I feel the start of tears and try to focus on whatever the hell Generic Signaling Pathway, Statistially Significant Bar Graph, Clever Analogy, Neat Tie In To Medicine that had my attention before but it's impossible.  I'm already imagining christmases and birthdays, random walks to the park, firsts - first bike, first day of school, first serious conversation.

Then my cat leaves and I feel uncomfortable.  This child is a stranger and what if people wonder where I got her from?  For that matter, where DID she come from?  I shift the way I do when I want to get a snack and my cat is seated on my lap.  And this girl reacts just the same way, sliding effortlessly, thoughtlessly from my lap, and wanders off.

Except she is not a cat.  She is a five year old girl.  This doesn't hit me right away which is shameful.  Later I think of this as some kind of karma for what happens next.

I am thirsty. I get up to leave.  The hall is packed.  My seat is taken instantly, no going back.  There are people standing in every aisle, some still on their commuter bikes complete with helmet.

I snake my way through the crowd to a very public water fountain.  Dozens of people idly watch me try to control the powerful jet of water that arcs up from the fountain and lands fifteen feet away in a hole on the manicured lawn of the lecture hall.  I drink and drink, feeling no relief from my thirst.  Eventually I stop because I am so exposed and wonder what people are thinking as they watch.

The talk must be over because people have begun streaming from the many entrances.  Which coincides with the first siren, a long wailing like an air raid.  We are in London, and that is in fact exactly what it is.  People stop, puzzled, milling, and actually look up as if to catch a glimpse of German bombers.

The evident power of cultural memory makes me smile; to a person every member of this crowd is too young to have been in a single bona fide air raid.