She stopped in front of a door. A neon sign in the window said "OPEN" and another "Budweiser." There was twanging, wailing music coming from inside. It wasn't a style she heard much these days, or ever really. Linda had never been a fan.

They were waiting in there. She pulled on the door and stepped into a hot, claustrophobic space full of smoke and cheap beer. Heads turned. Most made no attempt to hide their frowns once they had finished their evaluations. She didn't match the wallpaper, or wood paneling in this case. She looked and felt as out of place as their faces said she was, but the reactions only made her more determined not to leave. She deliberately did not try to find them. Let them make the first move. Theatrics.

She slid on to a stool. The man behind the bar wore regulation, pearl snap buttons on his shirt and a huge oval buckle on the belt holding up his jeans, but his head was a dark shaved stubble. Something about him made Linda think he was here for the work and nothing to do with all this play acting and nostalgia. Maybe it was his youth, or maybe it was a sense she had acquired from standing behind bars herself from time to time. He confirmed her suspicions with a conspiratorial grin. "What can I do you for?"

"Do you have anything besides beer?"

His smile widened. "You like something with more punch to it?"

"Not really. I just don't like beer." She cast around for something that would have as little taste as possible, in case she might have to drink it. "Vodka?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Straight? Not exactly soft." She shrugged.

He started to pour. "I like your accent. English?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

He put the glass in front of her. "You know how bad Americans are at geography."

"Not enough wars anymore."

He looked puzzled, and interested. "What's that?"

"Wars teach geography. That's what they say."

"Plenty of wars. Just not countries doing it. Can't learn geography from wars anymore." He made a wry face, but that switched off when another man sat in the stool next to Linda. He seemed suddenly nervous.

"They don't pay you to chat up the ladies, do they?" the new man said, gruff, but not angry, not in any serious way.

"No sir, but it is good for business."

Linda admired his courage. The smell of the Gift off the new man was overpowering, and the bartender was obviously afraid of him.

The new man looked at her drink. "Shouldn't you have ordered a Bloody Mary?" He laughed at his own joke, too loudly.

Linda watched as the bartender's expression changed. He smiled a faint polite twitch, nothing like his first honest grin, and moved to serve someone else. It made pain in her chest, sharp, cutting down deep.

The man shifted on his stool and drawled. "An' you best tell your man with the gun to come down outta there, 'fore Carley tears his head off."

Trinity Pub, Upper East Side Manhattan

Nobody goes to the Trinity on a Monday. Except for a few stewardesses who live in the area, an F-1 mechanic between gigs, the occasional Canadian tourist brandishing a "best pubs in New York for draught Guinness" list...and me. Once in a while. It's a reliable dead-drop spot, what with its purse-hooks under the bar, but I've done a couple of live meets there, too, since it's so damned easy to take the room in at a glance. That's why I'm there tonight. To let someone pass a signal. Not every day I see the URGENT chalk-mark on the fire hydrant in front of my NoLIta stairs, either. At least this time, it means a glass of Jameson and maybe a decent pint to chase it down....if I have to wait. I amble in just after 2300, order a whisky and a glass of water, and start playing signal tag with my iPhone so nobody feels they have to talk to me. I figure I might be an hour. No rush.

Six eBay searches and half a glass later, my cocked ear catches a sniff of a sound bite. I tilt my chin up at the small shelf television behind the bar, and see a familiar face, a very familiar face, speaking dazedly into about a hundred microphones in what is obviously day-old tape of a media scrum. Then the screen cuts to the present, and a curly-haired, gap-toothed yokel is making an introduction to a live New York studio audience. Like, thirty blocks away.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the producer-director of the Palme d'Or- winning movie at Cannes this year-- big hand for MUTT! COOPER!!"

And out walks Trogdor. Hat, bandana, and all.

I sit there, and for the first time in my professional career, I'm gape-mawed.

"Well, uh, thank yuh, Dave. I'm, uh, I'm not quite over it." Nawt kwaat over utt.

Fuck me. He's doing the drawl and everything. Fuck me.

"Mutt- Now, America wants to know--- Where in HELL did you come up with the idea of doing a film about HAM radio? And get funding for it?"

General laughter.

"Elvis came to me in a dream, Dave, and the idea sprang fully formed from his Brylcreem-dewed forehead. As for the funding, well..."

Way-alll

"If he told you, he'd have to kill you!" This, from the bandleader. Second banana. General laughter. Morons.

"Well, wouldn't say that (th-a-a-a-at), but a man might get his hair mussed, asking after the people who financed this crazy stunt. Suffice it to say (Suh-FASS it) that I obviously had some European backing." General laughter. "And I'm glad of it." A note of sincerity. Their tongues loll across his palm.

I'm staring at this pixel-screen in a tiny New York near-dive and I'm thinking, you magnificent bastard, you've finally pulled it off. Your cover's always been on the fringe of show-business, but...damn. Vanity Fair, cover of People, a spread in GQ, and in a few months, or a year, the middle pages of the Enquirer, the Globe, and the Star... Not even the Sovs, at their height, had the horsepower to put someone of your station so plausibly and improperly in the public eye...with a pass-key to anywhere. Or close to anywhere. But as close as anyone in our trade needs to get. Masterstroke.

"How long you been at this, Mutt? IMBD barely mentions you... well, until yesterday." General laughter, seen before heard, like lightning.

"Oh, twenty years." Twenny yeeers. "But only had the hoop in sight for about five."

A directorship will do that.

And with that, I start wondering: about the beautiful, pure acting I've seen Trogdor do on the job; about the backlot gig in the former Yugoslavia, with the orphans; about his run-in with Sinatra; about the Maserati. All that shit. Which is the act? Does he tread the boards to better play the role needed of him, or does he take the shilling simply because it affords him the greasepaint? And, no. I somehow can't get my simple peasant head around it being so clear-cut. It's just a mix, I guess; a near-perfect one. I shake my head, and politely waggle my empty pony glass at the barman for a refill. I'm not ready to leave until this is over, anyway. The television show, I mean.

Trogdor's setting up a clip when my contact smooves in; tall, thin blonde girl, American jaw, American legs, wearing the requisite green dot on her lapel. I recognise her as one of the stewardesses. She straddles the stool next to mine and greets the bartender with easy familiarity, all while hanging a small, no-name, black digital camera case from the purse hook between us under the bar-top. She'll leave without it. She takes no notice of me for a while, content to chat about Amsterdam with the fellow world-traveller pulling her pint. Then the film clip on the television ends, and Trogdor's back, in all his corny glory.

"Dave, I sincerely think the lack of sex, violence, and misogyny in the storyline scared the pee out o'them. They voted for it so I wouldn't re-submit it next year." General laughter.

The blonde turns to me without moving, still staring at the screen. As we're taught. "Geez. Who's the cowboy?"

"No idea."

And for once, I'm almost telling the truth.

*clap* *clap* *clap*

Oy vey!

(I saw a rabbi who used that as a vanity plate.)

quote:

Their tongues loll across his palm.

When God prays, he prays to M0M.

YES!

You could spread that on toast.

that was a nice surprise.

Mom's got the thang.

"need"

A little body pressed against yours, little hands and arms twining around your neck as this miniature person seeks comfort from an unnamable fear - the dark, maybe, or missing his mother. Whatever the reason, he needs someone right now - and being that someone for him is the most important job in the world at that moment.

A fictional conversation:

“Data is stored in the cerebrum as electronic charges.” And the other man in a white coat continued explaining. “Reading them is no more difficult than reading a memory bank from a computer.”

Wearing a dominant black robe, a man at the other side of the desk was observing the presentation. He is clearly not at home in any scientific environment, and did not make the effort to hide his disbelieve; “So if things are so ‘easy’, what’s the problem?”

“Reading the data on its own is not much use if you don’t know how to interpret it.” One of the scientist hastily replied and the other continued; “Every mind has its own unique neural pathways. They form over time, through experiences and environmentally influences.” The symphony of explanation continued unrequested. “It is not only a question of interpretation. The data on itself is incomplete. The brain only stores what it considers to be relevant and then interpolates the missing pieces on request. In terms of computers, each CPU is unique, and the memories are uniquely encoded for this particular CPU.”

Obviously bored the observer interrupted. “They are ‘clones’, just make sure that they all have the same, what you call it, pathways? Growing up in a tube, how hard can it be for them to experience the same thing?”

“Oh, quite. You see, quantum physics dictates that there is only a certain possibility for a connection to form. And once there is even the tiniest difference it will cause a chain reaction of changes over time till the end result is completely different.” The ballet of words continued. “What my college wants to say is that even two identical individuals, experiencing exactly the same environmental factors, would still create unique neural networks.”

The observer leans forward as his interest awakes. “So what you tell me is that each clone will still have a unique soul?”

The scientists look puzzled at the observer, than shrug at each other and respond, “Soul?”



_

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Newro,

I like the puzzled shrugging.

The strip-mall was what one would expect in these times. Paint chipping off, windows boarded up, giving the impression that it's just another depressing testament to today's economy. Truth is, it's been like this for ten years. All but one of the businesses has closed, the one remaining being on the west end. The sign above the door reads, simply, "Magda's".

Magda's is a bar, low-lit and still smelling of smoke even after the ban on cigarettes in such places. There isn't much afternoon business, most people around here are either commuters or so far into unemployment that public drowning of sorrows is beyond their capabilities anymore.

In case someone does come in, there is a large brass bell on a hanger at the end of the bar. Attached is a sign "ring for service, wait". The reward for patience is the visage of the bar's owner, Layla. Tall and curvy, with white-blond hair in waves down her back, she saunters out from the shadows of the back of the bar like Venus from the half-shell. Her platform stilletos click on the tile floor in slow, Southern time.

"So what'll it be?" she asks, her soft drawl promising.



*

I roll out of the bed, careful not to wake Su. I stand for a moment, watching her sleep, those slow restful breaths. I stretch, matching my breaths to hers, and smile. what a night! we'd met online, and arranged for a date. sushi at that little Japanese place in the west end. we spent a long slow night there, working our way through the courses, the fish, the tempura, the rice and meat bowls, and a free flowing supply of green tea. which is why I’m standing here now instead of sleeping off that bout of incredible sex – a free flowing supply of green tea that has finally caught up on me. I’m bursting for a pee. i stalk across the room quietly, ease the door open. the corridor has three doors along its length, i don't know which is the bathroom, we really didn't take the time to take the tour of the place when we came tumbling through that front door so many hours earlier. I guess I’ll just need to use the old trial and error method, no doubt she would understand.

I open the first door. I blink in the darkness, light streaming from behind this door unexpectedly. one hand on the door handle, the other comes up to cover my eyes, to shade them from the light. as I get a moment to acclimatize I peer into the room, which is full of sand. dunes sweeping across from wall to wall. a light bulb hangs above, brighter than any I’ve ever seen – almost like a blazing sun. how curious. I close the door.

I move along the corridor to the next door, stifling a yawn, reminded again of just how tired again. once again i open the door, absently lifting my right foot and brushing it off my left leg, trying to loosen some stray granules of sand from my sole. this room is darker, though, there is another light, pale and white. the surface of the bulb mottled, with a grey tinge. the floor is flat this time, no expanses of curious landscape. however, as I look at the floor there is something equally curious about it, as it ripples, and I notice the bulb reflect like moon light against water. hmm, an indoor swimming pool?

I close the door and move along. that leaves one door, before the corridor leads to the open square of the living room. feeling a growing urgency, I try this last door. with a relief i find that it is indeed, finally, the bathroom. I pad across the floor, carefully lifting the wooden seat and propping it up. if take aim and fire, expelling green tea waste product, give it shake, wash my hands and pad back along the hall to the bedroom. carefully I climb back in beside her, and in no time I am back asleep again.

Oh, I was expecting a hungry tiger...

She sent me a postcard to tell me she had seen tigers. Just like big kittens, she said, playing pranks on each other then running away. She promised me more news about tigers in her next card. But there were no more cards. Later that week the phone rang in the middle of the night. I had been sleeping, so it woke me up, I felt fuzzy and disorientated. Hello, I said. But got no response. For the duration of the call I never heard a single human sound. But I listened, and I thought to myself - my, that sure does sound like tigers! When the line went dead, I wandered back to bed, sleepily, wondering how the tigers had gotten my number. When I woke in the morning the whole thing seemed hazy and strange, almost unreal. All through the day it played on my mind. And by lunch time I could come to only one conclusion - they had taken her phone. When she got back from the trip, she embarrassedly admitted this was the case, they had distracted her with their amusing antics while the cub went through her bag. She insisted, as she treated me to lunch as compensation, that she would never get caught out by tigers again!

quote:

Originally posted by fuldog:
Oh, I was expecting a hungry tiger...

Got lucky with the doors, I guess.

quote:

Originally posted by fuldog:
Oh, I was expecting a hungry tiger...

Who knows, maybe its in the bed.

The crowd is holding their breath. They can tell what they're watching is something special.

Well, it is, Eugene. I don't think we've seen anything this remarkable since Spordovsky in '96.

And he's ready to make his move. Yes...that's it...will you look at that? That six of hearts let's him move that five of clubs run and get a whole new card off the deck.

Simply remarkable.

His level of concentration is spectacular. He's a true competitor, in the finest sense.

Look at his brow. You can see he wants desperately to get under that jack in the sixth column.

Oh, I don't know how he'll manage that. He looks concerned. This may be the key moment for him in this set....

"Put the eight on the nine."

"Excuse me?" Charles looked around to find a grinning face uncomfortably close to his.

"See, there, the eight goes on the nine here." She leaned across his shoulder -- as she did, he could feel the edge of her hair graze his neck, could smell it, girl-hair!, and he could feel, though he desperately tried not to think of it, could feel her breast press into his arm. She tapped at the seventeen inch screen of his HP HDX 18t laptop, causing pangs of horror to reverberate through his body.

"Uh," he said, and words failed him, as words often do, until he made himself breathe a seething "Thanks." and reluctantly pulled the eight over. Hate.

Inexplicably, she did not leave. His eyes narrowed at the screen, but his concentration was broken. He could not even see the cards on the screen anymore. All he knew is that she was still there, still too close to him, and he wanted her to go. But the more he tried to keep himself from turning his head and acknowledging her presence, the more he felt it pulling at him. Finally, he turned his head and looked at her.

She had a large freckled forehead and long brown curling hair (that he had felt on his neck!) that seemed to invade the space around her head with abandon. Her frame (that he had felt against his arm!) was slim, but she appeared to be quite tall. Her eyes -- brown, he tried not to notice -- looked at him intently, and her mouth was one long, crooked smile that he steadfastly refused to return.

"Hi, I'm Sara," she said, "no 'h'."

"Hi," he said. There was an awkward pause.

"Aaaand this is the part where you tell me your name," she prodded.

"Charles," he said, not used to revealing so much about himself.

"Hi, Charlie!" Hate. "Mind if I join you?" she said, but before he could answer, even if he could have told her know, she'd climbed into the seat opposite him in the booth. "So you like solitaire?"

"'S ok," Charles mumbled. Solitaire was, in fact, Charles's favorite game, and in his mind the perfect game, a game designed to be played alone.

"It's kind of a lonely game," she said. "And, as long as you don't miss anything, it's kind of easy, you know. It doesn't take any real skill, it's just luck at that point." Hate.

This conversation wasn't going at all like any of the ones in his head ever did. "What," he began and stopped and began again, "What are you doing here?"

"I don't have class for another half hour," she said. "Western civ. Tuesdays and Thursdays," she confided. "And they're not much fun to watch," pointing at the only other people in the union, a couple mashing faces in a corner booth. Charles found their public displays disgusting and did his best to will them out of existence, which had been working until she pointed them out to him. "At least, you know, not after the first five minutes," she winked. Hate. "So I thought I'd come bother you. I'm not talking too much, am I?" she asked.

Charles winced again. "It's fine," he said. Hate.

"Yeah, some people think I talk too much, I guess they think I'm kind of weird," she said slightly self-consciously. "But I figure, if you have something to say, you should say it, right?"

"Right," he said, not understanding in the slightest why they were talking at all.

"So, what about you? What are you doing here, Charlie? Besides playing solitaire?"

"Same," he said, "Class at two." He hated the way she said his name, said it wrong, the way she kept saying it, the pure chiming voice of her voice as she said it. He hated the way it was said each time with increasing familiarity, how it drew them together, and most of all, he hated that somewhere inside of him he'd never been aware of, he liked hearing it and knowing she was talking directly to him. He tried to return his game, knowing it would never work.

"Great! I used to go by the pond and look at the ducks, but the ducks are all gone. Now I can come see you. I guess that makes you my new duck."

Purely by her inflection, he could tell that was meant as a joke of some kind, so he choked out a "heh" that sounded strange even to him.

"So what's your major?" she asked him. "Comp sci, I bet."

"Mechanical engineering," he said.

"I knew it was something like that. I'm no good at math." Hate. "I have to take Stats next semester and I'm already dreading it. It's going to be horrible. But it's required. I'm an anthropology major."

"Huh," he said, never having given much thought to any major but his own.

"Yeah, I love watching people. You could probably make a life's work out of this place alone. Like the face suckers over there. How long you think they've known each other, Charlie?"

Charles had no idea. He'd never thought of them as distinct individuals who had a before and after beyond their sole existence to annoy him.

"I'd put it at a week," she said, squinting at the couple, discerning critically. "Maybe two. I give them about another month before they're both bored and on to something else. Look at his hand on her hip." Charles did not want to look. He was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. "Not moving at all, not exploring, just pulling her rhythmically. How much passion can there be if he can't be bothered to rub her back or her butt?"

Charles watched the hand and thought of where he would move his if he were kissing someone, and where he might caress and touch and where his arms might be and how his head would tilt and then he thought of curly brown hair against his neck and--

"And then there's you," she said, turning back to him as he flushed violently. "All by himself, the loner, playing solitaire of all things, I mean, can you get any more obvious?" Hate. "Not making eye-contact with anyone. A world unto himself. No man is an island, except Charlie, right?" she smiled, softening the blow. "At least until now!"

"I guess you've got it figured out then," he said.

"Oh, no, not nearly. But I'd better get to class. We'll have to figure out the rest later," she grinned some more. And with a bounce she was out of the booth.

"Goodbye, Charlie. It was nice to meet you."

"Goodbye," he started.

"Sara," she offered helpfully. "No 'h'."

"Goodbye, Sara," and with that, she was walking away. He breathed a sigh of relief and spent the next hour thinking about the encounter while trying not to think about it, and more importantly, trying not to think about how much he couldn't wait for it to be Thursday.

Well, Eugene, we've really seen an amazing display today--

Oh, screw it, he finally thought, and closed the laptop.

[Apologies, as this was written then, not now, but I assure you it was now when I wrote it then. For Babylon.]

Was it only a mere eighteen months ago that the tweet heard round the culinary world announced that Grant Achatz was launching a new northside restaurant? It may has well have been a millennium. Not since Pavlov has their been such concerted salivating.

Before the name of the restaurant had even been released, reservations had nabbed every spot through the end of the decade. For months, every premier Chicago restaurant, including such enduring stalwarts as Poco a Poco and Staph!, has suffered half-empty dining rooms of listless patrons dejectedly nibbling their mutton pâté in a furious state of distraction. For nothing seems remotely palatable while an Achatz masterpiece is waiting to be unveiled. Such is the hold this Wunderkind chef, whose previous triumphs include Trio and Alinea, holds over our collective dining imagination.

The wait is now over. Achatz's latest conception, Swallow, 1564 N Wells Ave, is not merely a triumph. It is without doubt the most inspired gastronomic revolution of our age.

Marked only by a discrete sign the size of a business card, a winding wrought iron staircase leads up to a tree-level terrace enmeshed in foliage and sheltered by surrounding boughs. Glass doors open to a dimly lit dining room tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Old Town. Without a single word spoken, the host signals quick-footed underlings to lead diners to their seats.

The decor is decidedly rustic. Ceiling fans branch from high wooden beams, underneath which small oaken tables sit low to the floor. The quaint interwoven willow chairs are surprisingly comfortable due to the insulation of soft cotton tufted into the seat and back. As we nestled in, a server appeared our elbows to relieve our thirst. For purity of palate, we decided to forgo wine for the evening, instead opting for the recommended Tibetan rainwater at $190 a bottle.

As usual, Achatz only employs the swiftest and most cultured waiters -- ours had been a former diplomat to the Republic of Senegal -- but the service at Swallow is simply incomparable to any other restaurant on the planet due to the intensive nature of the presentation. For Swallow provides the world's very first post-mastication dining experience.

Very simply, at every table stands a dedicated masticateur to prepare each bite for the patrons. It goes without saying that I was initially apprehensive about the concept. Would having this person hovering all evening disrupt the dinner conversation? But our masticateur was the epitome of discretion, almost blending into the surroundings as he expertly chewed our food for us, then leaned over us to drop the pulpy masses into our mouths. Freed from responsibilities of hands and arms, teeth and gums, the entirety of focus was on the sensation of swallowing.

Imagine my delight as the first wad of escargots landed on the front of my palate, not overpowered by butter and garlic as is de rigueur, but here presented modestly, mashed into a gelatinous mass enveloped in the saliva of another human being. The natural flavor was highlighted by the faintest hint of lime from the cocktail our masticateur had drank before the evening's sitting.

Equally pleasing were the seaweed-wrapped roasted sunflower seeds. In lesser hands -- and mouths -- this hors d'oeuvre might meander into bourgeois drippiness, but here, accompanied by the receding influence of the escargots, a salubrious masterpiece emerges. A surprisingly meaty salade des sauterelles doused in a nectarous vinaigrette rounds out the preliminaries.

Pasta has long been a dining frustration, bunching up, evading, sliding from the silverware, turning a perfectly delectable dish into a chore, forcing even the most elegant connoisseur to rope it around his fork like a ranch hand lassoing a sheep. Here one is spared all the unpleasantness, the pre-chewed pasta slides directly down the esophagus. Divorced of its tedious practicalities, Swallow's pasta vermicelli leaps to transcendence.

But nothing that came before could presage the preeminence of the pan-seared starfish. Perched atop a bed of parsley and plumed in artichoke leaves, the starfish exudes a heavenly aroma that fires the imagination of distant beaches in far-away lands populated by exotic women who had never known the supportive effects of a brassiere. Drenched in the masticateur's spittle, each swallow was one long, wet, exuberant explosion.

So thoroughly fulfilled was I by the rapture that had preceded that I could only allow the masticateur to peck at my delectable poppy seed tart at the evening's close.

Swallow is an experience not to missed. Sadly, unless you already have reservations, miss it you shall. For I was informed that so far advance have reservations been booked, structural engineers have predicted the edifice won't last long enough for them all to be seated.

**** (4/4 stars)

Royko, you live in an excruciating world!

quote:

Originally posted by King Real:
they had distracted her with their amusing antics while the cub went through her bag. She insisted, as she treated me to lunch as compensation, that she would never get caught out by tigers again!