Melvin and Regina

He throttled the Mustang across the I-10 toward California past the West Valley past the post-apocalyptic race track.  It might as well be on Neptune.  Alone in the desert, its naked hills, serrated grooves and salty wadis.

The sun has gone down and the moon has gone up.  

Twilight turns to night and he furthers loneliness into his his mind passing some and being passed by others.  A 53 foot dry van thunders past him at break neck speed.  Moving.  Dodging.  Charging to something.  What?

THE OCEAN

“The last time I was here,” Melvin smirked, “I was with you in a room you paid for.”  Scotch on his lips, smoky on the his tongue, his eyes wandered back to the supine ghost nude underneath a silk bed sheet. Kidnapped by this egoist in oversized blue jeans, Regina eyes pleaded skyward in bored exhaustion.

To be or not be, to love inconsequentially , in choosing between two lovers, self love wins every time 

“What do you want me to say?” asked the ghost.

“Oh I know what you want.”  She rolls her eyes sliding the sheet off the bed.  “You are so predictable.”  Regina smiled.

The something happened that’s never happened before.  In Southern California, it rained.

* * * 

The Germans came over the wire.  It was now or never.  The gunners let them have it.  Then the Berthas moving artillery kept our heads down.  I couldn’t get a shot off.  To be honest, I didn’t care.  The gunners had no choice but to fire into the wide swath of pock marked no man’s land.  A shrief from Billy signaled he too had been hit by the indiscriminating shrapnel.  We clutched the earth as if it were our mother.  I held back only for vanity.  I wanted to stay clean and dry.  Does comfort trump life?

The bastards were in the trench.  I got one shot off.  A miss.  Then it was hand to hand.  I grappled with the Hun, blue eyed, blonde, beautiful, small and bearing the truths of starvation.  I was stronger.  I was going to kill this bastard.  We went to ground.  I had my hand on his neck, squeezing out the life of this beautiful boy, who mother nurtured and father loved,  His face turned purple.  Hold it.  Hold it.  Wouldn’t be long.  Then it would be all over.

Ow!

Stabbed in the shoulder.

* * * 

You know I have seen both sides of the Pacific.      I have seen the California coast.  I have seen the Philippine Bay.  In California, the ocean truly has no memory - wide, vast, strong and unknowable.  In the Philippines  . . . 

Little House on the Prairie

“The gates are open to those who see it”

Max Wormwood: “Oh no!  Not this stupid show!  The pretty teenager in blue gingham dress that highlights her eyes, and compliments her faint tan  and auburn hair.  Not quite a child, not quite a woman flops down the open prairie.  I hate this show.  It’s a stupid show.  Uninteresting.  All the characters are girls.  Nothing ever happens.

Gina, strapped to the table, naked as a jaybird as usual, “Michael Landon is in it.  He’s nice.”

Max Wormwood: “Shut up!  Shut up you stupid, stood, stupid woman!”

Gina: “Ok” 

“Why can’t there be more shows about the glories of war?  Manhood?  Strength and Honor.”

Gina tries as hard as she can not to roll her eyes.

The disguise fools Wormwood.  Wormwood edges closer to Gina.  Wormwood talks and talks.  Gina looks hard at Wormwood’s forehead.  

“What in God’s green earth did I see in you.”

Wormwood talks himself into an incantation against insecurity against weakness

Gina says to herself, “ That kind of thinking will get me skinned alive. Must think.  The gate is open only to those who see it,”  she thinks and accidentally says, “Yes, but what does that mean?”

Wormwood morphs out of his Black SS uniform into the clothes he wore on their first date and suddenly she finds herself in the East Tucson Bar near Speedway and Houghton.  He still sounds like a jack ass but in a cute pudgy way like if Brad Pitt gained 400 lbs.

“Yes the Bible says if a door closes God opens a window.”  Wormwood now Melvin said.

“That’s not in the Bible.  Ben Franklin didn’t say it.  Its some hybrid Neo-pagan prosperity heresy.  Look the world is unfair, not nice, unlikeable place.  You may never be happy, rich or free but you can be . . . .”