The story thus far: Lee Harris, after three nights moldering in a motel room, an arcane night on the town, half of it in jail, and a night of woe on a green Naugahyde couch, has to decide how he can survive until his court date comes and goes, his parking ticket is paid for and his car is fixed. He has also been unfairly branded, like Chuck Connors, as a public drunk and a jailbird. For details, read the erstwhile archives.

Installment Four
"Ride My Seesaw"
(No, Steve. Why not? One, it's been used. Two, it has nothing to do with this story. And two, we already gave it a name at the end of the last installment. How about "Agnes of God"?)

"Opening Night and I Ain't Got Nobody"
(First billing is going to your head, Goober.)

The street that the Willow Lane Theater was on, Willow Lane, was a single lane road with well spaced single story buildings and tall trees, willows, shading the sidewalk and street. When there was a breeze, the willows whispered gently. It was a quaint street, though not quite quaint enough for gas lamps, located slightly away from the center of town. The building itself was painted a glossy red that showed off the rough texture of the well weathered wood underneath. It looked like it might at one time have been a barn or a storehouse. Or a brothel. Or not. The evening air was chilly in a comfortable way, and smelled like drying leaves and chimney smoke. Lee rode along the sidewalk hunkered down on the zebra-striped banana seat of the tiny old Stingray bike, rested it on its rusty kick-stand and walked up to the window beside the double doors that doubled as the box office.

It was the second night that their production of "The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" was playing and Twain had given him the night off to see it. The lobby had green marbleized floor tiles and knotty pine paneling. There were framed photographs of previous productions, and Lee studied each one, looking at the captions underneath listing the names of the actors pictured in the pictures. The lobby smelled slightly musty. There were people mingling. Lee had always been fascinated watching people mingle. Mingling was a skill he had never developed. Suddenly the lights in the lobby flickered, which reminded Lee of the last time he was in a theater, the night Beverly had dragged him to see the revival of Chorus Line. What a miserable evening that had been. Damn her. People ceased to mingle and carried their conversations through the two doors, one on either side of the lobby, that led into the theater itself.

Lee walked down the steps of the auditorium, if they could be called steps. They were more like platforms which were uneven and long, too short to take two strides, too long for one; the width of the row of seats that ended on them. He found his row fairly quickly. His ticket was for row "Q", seat 37. The last row was "R". He also found his seat quickly because it was only two in from the aisle. On the small section by the wall. Off to the side. At a really weird angle to the stage. (I think they get it, Geoff. Sorry.) Right near the exit. (Sorry.) At least he didn't have the absolute worse seat in the house. That was one row behind him and two seats to the right. And it was empty.

The stage didn't have a curtain, but was open to a set bathed in artfully dusty light. The set was very realistic; a cluttered, messy living room. Except for the dim amber and blue lighting it looked just like a living room/dining room of post adolescent boys without supervision. Who subscribed to lots of newspapers. There were clothes and boxes on the couch and table. It looked strangely familiar to Lee. Suddenly he was aware of a smell, like grease and eggs. He started sniffing the air like a dog sniffing another dog (Now cut that out! Sorry.), and wondered why they were cooking sausage and eggs in the theater. This set was really realistic, he thought, then noticed that the smell was coming from closer than the stage. It was coming from his jacket. And also, he realized much to his chagrin, from the skin on his arm. He put his arm back in his lap. He had showered. His clothes were clean. He had only been living and working at Twain's for two weeks, and already the atmosphere had permeated his molecules like fetid cheese. He would have to buy lots of pomace. He sniffed his arm again. He hadn't noticed it before because, aside from the court date, he'd spent very little time outside of the diner. He thought about the last two weeks. (I smell a flashback coming.) He thought about the last two weeks. (No, Steve, further back than one sentence.)

Lee awoke at four in the morning and tried to get his bearings. (That's better.) The greasy dust smell in the air reminded him vaguely that he had finally fallen into a deep drug-like sleep on the nasty Naugahyde couch in Twain's attic. He sat up. This time his face didn't peel away from the pasty plastic, it slid forward on the pool of his own greasy perspiration, like boiled okra. He stood and looked around the cluttered room. He pulled at the sleeve of his tee shirt and wiped his face off with it, realized what he was doing and pulled it away in disgust, trying to roll it so it wouldn't touch his arm. The sight of the metal shower stall, open sink and toilet on the other side of it, solidified his recollection. He sighed. His life had certainly turned some odd corners in the time since he had left Chicago. Actually, it had started before he left. Damn Beverly and her weakness for jerks. He was awake, now, he might as well continue with the cleaning. No. First deal with his ravenousness. (Ravenousness? Spell check likes it. Sigh.) A handful of first edition Wheaties in twenty-four hours wasn't enough to keep his body going. After a good breakfast, he could face the carnage in the attic.

Downstairs, the diner was comfortably quiet, the glow from the three-quarter moon casting a silver shadow over the red booths and across the floor like a shot from a Spielberg© movie. Lee breathed in the atmosphere of the night, possibly the first pleasant breath he'd had in days. Actually, only a day. God, could it only have been one day since he'd set out for a night on the town? He felt like a twisted Simon and Garfunkel song. Sunday morning, four am. (That's movies and music. Can we make a reference to a book?) His hunger was biblical. He went behind the counter and started a pot of coffee, then went back into the kitchen and turned on the light. The flourescent ballasts buzzed erratically and the lights flickered to a pinkish glow. He turned on the faucet, vigorously scrubbed his face and hands. There was a thick, clean white towel folded neatly by the sink. He picked it up to dry off and reveled in the surprising clean bleach scent, then found a piece of paper and wrote his name and "Tab" at the top.

Taped to the front of the refrigerator door was the season schedule for the Willow Lane Theater and right next to that, under a plastic magnet shaped like Our Lady of Guadalupe, were two tickets to opening night of The Effect of Marigolds on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Row "E", seats 18 and 19. They said "Paid, Season Ticket Holder." Son of a bitch, Lee thought, as he opened the dented metal door of the industrial refrigerator. This guy is impossible to figure out.

He took three eggs from the large blue pulp paper carton, picked up the bowl of butter, set them on the counter, then went back for the slab of bacon. He opened the freezer side looking for Walt Disney (Steve!) I mean a loaf of white bread. He had seen Twain pull one from there when he was washing dishes the morning before. Behind the pile of bread loaves and freezer paper wrapped meat was a strangely familiar looking white cardboard box with a plastic cover. Lee tried to pick it up, but it was glued in with frost. It hadn't been moved in many years. He yanked it, and, begrudgingly, it came free, denting slightly. It was a florist's box. The flower inside was almost obscured by the build up of frost, but was barely discernable as an ancient orchid and baby's breath wrist corsage. Lee shook his head wondering at the story of that long past prom, then put the box back, trying to re-fit it into the cave of frost he had pulled it from to make it look like it had never been moved, then he closed the door on his hand.

He took two frozen slices of bread and put them in the toaster, put a pan on the stove and turned on the flame. He wrote the items he was using on the tab as the butter began to brown. He looked around for a place to keep the tab where it would be convenient and safe. There was a shelf over the counter to the right of the old black stove with an old radio on it. He put the pad next to the radio, then looked more closely. The radio was black plastic with plastic chrome trim, and covered with splattered batter, grease and dust. It only had an AM dial. He turned it on and was about to play with the tuner but the song that was playing was interesting; sitars and a wavering voice. It was just intriguing enough that he let it play.

Lee finished frying his eggs and bacon, buttered his toast, and sat at the counter in the darkened diner with his breakfast. The coffee, as he remembered from the day before, was wonderful, and this time, not only was he able to stomach the bacon and eggs, it was the best meal he had ever eaten in his entire life. Ever. The smokey quiet voice of the radio deejay mixed perfectly with the air in the room. It was a college station and they were playing some very odd and interesting music. ". . . roley-poley fish heads . . .," he sang out loud to the radio as he was getting off the stool and gathering his dishes to bring them back to the sink. He saw movement outside the window of the diner. A patrol car was parked just outside. As soon as he noticed that, there was a tapping at the front door. It was a police officer.

"Oh, fuck," he said to himself, and thought about hiding. He would have to remember to put twenty-five cents on his tab for the cuss jar. He realized the officer had already seen him and he timidly went to the door. How was he going to get framed this time? The officer looked vaguely familiar. He opened the door and put his hands out to be cuffed.

"What are you doing here?" the officer said, looking oddly at his outstretched hands.

It was Officer Bacon, the policeman who had checked him in at the desk when he had been arrested for public intoxication the night before. Could it possibly only have been the night before, he thought.

"Twain gave me a job," he said, still wondering if he was about to unjustly spend another night in jail.

Officer Bacon looked around. He nodded.

"Welcome to River Bend," he said, and shook one of Lee's outstretched hands.

Lee tried not to show his relief and offered him some coffee. Bacon said he took cream and five sugars then asked if that was Lee's car parked out in front of the diner. Lee nodded.

"Oh," Officer Bacon said, almost sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I had to write you a ticket. You're parked illegally, you know."

Lee sighed. "I already got a ticket for that. It's broken. I can't move it." Were two tickets enough to get you arrested in this town, he wondered.

"It's only three feet into the red," Bacon said. "We could push it into legality."

While they were going out to the sidewalk, Lee asked if he could just tear up the ticket. Officer Bacon shook his head sadly, they had to account for every one, and apologized again. Lee wondered if he could get arrested for tearing up the ticket himself. He got in the car, took it out of gear and unhooked the emergency brake. He was about to get back out to push when the car started to move. Officer Bacon was leaning on the dew covered vehicle and had already rolled it past the red. Bacon stood up and brushed his hands together. Lee was so surprised he almost forgot to put the brake back on. Bacon wasn't even breathing hard. It was an SUV, for God's sake. Lee tripped on the curb when he got out of the car.

They went back in for the coffee. Lee hadn't noticed the goose bumps from the morning chill until the hot brew warmed them from his skin. During their sparse conversation, nothing personal was revealed by either man. Which is as it should be with straight men. When the policeman went on his way, Lee sat for another moment taking in the final moments of the still, replenishing night, then went upstairs to continue cleaning the attic. When he got there, the sky outside of the dusty little window was beginning to turn a grayish pink.

When Twain came into the diner in the morning, Lee already had more coffee brewing and the kitchen set up for the breakfast crowd. Twain sat at the counter and opened his paper as Lee poured him his coffee. Twain nodded and started to read as if being served his first cup of coffee had been his routine for years. Lee set the pot back on the burner as if that had been his.

After the breakfast crowd left, Lee emptied his car and brought all the stuff up into the ever increasing corner he was clearing in the attic. He packed the clothes into a box that was set on its side, and stacked the CDs on top of it mournfully, knowing that it would be a long time before he would be able to listen to "Kind of Blue". He hung the photo of Danny Bonaduce, and reverently placed the tools behind the couch where he would always know where to find them. He spent the next couple of days doing dishes, short order cooking and finishing the cleaning and organization of the attic. He wasn't used to the smell of grease, and occasionally had to go out back by the garbage bins just to breathe real air. As he cleaned, he found an old small "bachelor apartment" sized refrigerator that was being used as a storage bin. As he emptied it he found an even older hot plate inside with a frayed, cloth wrapped cord and an old stack of flyers for www.JosephCoaler.com, announcing a fat free, sugar free serial, which he threw away. Another stupid play, he thought. He scrubbed the refrigerator clean, and set it by the couch with the hot plate on top of it. It was beginning to feel like a real apartment. An apartment for a poverty-stricken community college student, granted, but an apartment none the less.

He also found an old simulated wood-grained AM radio. He turned an old popcorn machine over for a table, set the radio on it and tuned it to the college radio station. To the strains of an a capella Christian reggae rap song, he opened a box which was filled with old games; Operation, Chutes and Ladders, Twister, Mousetrap, Mystery Date, Candyland and chess™. He put the multicolored plastic mat from the Twister set on the upturned popcorn machine as a table cloth. Behind that box was an old Stingray bike with a zebra-striped banana seat. Lee tried to piece together Twain's childhood from all of this, but it only made his head hurt.

The attic smelled almost more like old grease than the diner. The air from the kitchen must thicken and solidify as it seeped up through the floor. That, with the addition of the strong cleaning products he was employing to make the place livable, made the air even more noxious. After an hour or two of working, he took a bag of trash out back as an excuse to go breathe. He leaned against the brick back wall of the diner. He thought he heard a scurrying from somewhere above and looked up to see something running across the electric wires that led from the next building toward Twain's. It was a rat. He was about to be repulsed when it burst into flames that showered out and down like a night at Disneyland™, The Happiest Place on Earth™. When a charred, smoldering foot landed upright on the ground in front of him like a little bootie, he decided it was time to go back to work. (Aren't you going to make a comment? Geoff?)

At eventide, the autumnal air misted in a swirl of opalescent opulence as Lee posited his . . . (Fine. You win.)

On Wednesday, Twain pulled up in front of the diner in an old, dented metallic-green dusty boat of a car and told Lee to use it to go to the motel to pick up his bags. It was an Impala. A 1972 Impala. Lee dreaded starting it, but when he did, the engine sounded smooth and powerful. A 400. It looked like hell, but the engine was cherry. The next time he saw the car was Friday when Twain brought it back so he could go to court.

Lee expected the courtroom to be old dark wood with an imposing throne-like structure where the judge sat above his minions, very "Perry Mason". The court house was located right next to the police station and jail, which was quite logical, but looked like a small hospital; cinder block and window grating. The courtroom was cold and barren, decorated, if you could call it that, in linoleum and folding chairs. The one item in the room that bespoke "Courtroom" was the chair that the judge sat on which looked like it had come off the set of an Agatha Christie movie; leather, brass buttons and polished wood. The judge was an old curmudgeonly cellophane-skinned man with wild white hair, also seemingly off the set of an Agatha Christie movie. One of the bad ones. When the bailiff announced "Judge Darling", Lee almost laughed out loud, but caught himself in time. The bailiff called Lee Harris up and handed Judge Darling a file.

The judge muttered to himself as he read, occasionally saying something out loud like "parking tickets are due in twenty days. Twenty-five dollars apiece," and "public intoxication is pay-on-demand, hundred seventy-five . . ." Lee started to hyperventilate. Judge Darling looked up over his eyeglasses, a studied move designed to intimidate.

"I don't have any money," Lee said in a hoarse, desperate voice, then added "your honor."

"You shouldn't have spent it all on booze," Judge Darling said in a voice that sounded like a cross between Mel Torme and Cass Elliot.

Lee was about to argue that his wife had cleaned him out, damn her, but saw the look on the judge's face, thought better of it, and just said that he was only making a hundred dollars a week. He was going to have to find a way to get back at Beverly somehow. The judge nodded and said he'd garnish seventy-five of that.

"What can I do for twenty-five bucks?" Lee said, surprised that he had said it out loud.

The judge regarded him for a moment. "We've got a fine theater," he said.

"I've seen the flyers," Lee sputtered. "The tickets are fifteen dollars."

"That leaves ten," the judge said, casually, "you can still get a good meal or two," then asked for the next case.

"Not at Twain's," Lee said under his breath.

When he got back to the diner, it was mercifully empty of patronage. (Mercifully empty of patronage? The place was empty. I know. Say that.) The place was empty. Lee tried to rant and rave about the turns his life had made in the last week or so, but he had never ranted or raved in his life. He was used to witnessing other people ranting and raving from a safe distance, so it only made him feel silly, and he quickly wound down and slumped into a booth. Twain said at least he had a place to stay.

"I'm a thirty-seven year old man who is sleeping on a couch," Lee shouted. "All I'd need to complete the picture of loserness is a roommate who talks about girls he never dates."

Twain said he could eat at the diner.

"I can't afford it," Lee said bitterly. "I can't even afford to pay you back for my tab."

Twain shrugged, and Lee heaved himself up and went to the attic, where he sunk into the couch and indulged himself in an old fashioned funk. He was still in the funk the next morning as he trudged his dirty laundry the three blocks to the Laundromat. He was separating his clothes into two machines when he realized the second one would cost him a meal, and he tearfully mixed his whites with his colors. Gray underwear would be the final indignity. While his clothes were washing, he went to the little market next door and bought a box of macaroni and cheese and a couple of cans of tomato soup. When he was about to go to the register, he impulsively picked up an avocado. Until the buxom highschool girl rung him up, he didn't realize that it cost a dollar nineteen. He was too numb to fight it, and forlornly carried his pitiful grocery bag back to the Laundromat.

The diner was so incredibly busy that afternoon he didn't have any time to feel sorry for himself, which pissed him off. He asked Twain what all the people were doing there, and Twain informed him, in a tone that suggested he should already know, that it was hell week. It took him thirty minutes of getting under both Matt and Twain's feet as they bustled around trying to serve everyone, for Lee to be able to ask what the hell hell week was.

"The play opens next week," Twain said, as if to a child. A very small child. One who was slow to learn English. "They did the tech blocking this morning. Now they've broken for dinner, then tonight they do the first full run-through."

"And they spend the rest of the week fixing what didn't work in that," Matt added as he ran back with Agnes's salad to add the croutons Lee had neglected to put on it.

As the rest of the week progressed, Lee tried to make the best of it. The mac and cheese lasted one day, and the tomato soup another three. He felt guilty for the expense of the avocado, so he pretended it wasn't there, but by Wednesday it was all he had left. He took a small slice of it in the morning, and another at night. The next morning he took another slice, started shaking, and dropped the knife. He picked it up and dropped it again.

"God Damnit!" he screamed.

His face got hot, and the hunger in his stomach was replaced by steaming vitriol. He threw the remaining fruit against the wall, leaving an avocado green colored splat that looked frighteningly like a Jackson Pollock painting, screaming at the top of his lungs at the balls of Beverly who was probably right at that very moment sleeping off a night of California Central Coast Chardonnay and Lobster Thermador in a big fluffy bed with silk sheets, down pillows and the Jerk.

"Everything okay up there?" Twain asked from the bottom of the stairs.

"Yeah," he said after an embarrassed pause, then sheepishly scraped the unsightly avocado mess off the wall with the edge of the Twister (by MB) board.

The next day, while tossing the remains of a lunch platter, he stopped and stared at the two cold, soggy french fries he was about to trash. He didn't even know whose plate it was. He stared in horror as his free hand reached out toward one and actually picked it up off the plate. It had, like in a Warner Bros® cartoon, turned into a thick t-bone steak with a frilly paper floret on the end of the bone. It was all he could do to force his fingers open and let the fry fall into the trash. He quickly wiped the ketchup off his fingers and washed his hands before he would be tempted to lick them clean. He wondered what he could ever do to repay Beverly for this. Maybe call her at four every morning for a week. That would certainly teach her. Man, am I pathetic, he thought.

He spent the time when he wasn't working attempting to fix the Stingray. It had a sissy bar, butterfly handlebars, and a rusty chain. It was painted lime green and Dreamsicle orange. He cleaned it up, oiled it up. The tires, miraculously, held the air he put in them. It had three speeds. He would look like a shambling dweeby dork-like doofus riding it, but he could endure anything after the indignity of gray underwear, and, hell, it was transportation, and working on it kept his mind off his stomach.

The first time he took the bike out, he rode toward town. He saw a bunch of kids riding real bikes and heard the familiar fwapping of baseball cards slapping against spokes. He grinned. Suddenly he could smell freshly cut grass. Things hadn't changed all that much. Someone was bar-b-queing burgers, and he thought he saw an ice cream cart in the distance. He rode up to the kids and asked one whose card he was using.

"What?" the kid said to him, a little confused.

"The baseball card," Lee said to him. "On your spokes."

The kid looked at him befuddled. "You know how much baseball cards cost?"

Lee asked what it was. The kid stopped and took the clothespin off and handed the card to him. It was a thick piece of glossy paper, folded in half. Lee unfolded it with a smile, then his face fell as if he had just seen his wife. It was an advertisement for The Willow Lane Theater's production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. The smell of grass faded. The burgers were really Jack-in-the-Box®, and as the ice cream cart approached, he realized it was a meter maid. An old one. And he remembered how hungry he was.

"All right! I get it!" he shouted, waving the card. "I got it! I'll go!"

The kids got back on their bikes and rode away very fast.

"Okay, I'm here, already," he said to himself as he looked back up at the living room set. "Start."

He opened his program, which, until that moment, he had been unconsciously rolling into a tube in his hands. He scanned the page and noticed a name, Kim Anderson, the stage manager. He couldn't quite figure out why the name felt familiar. When he turned a page, a printed index card fell out. He picked it up. It was a volunteer card, listing all the wonderful ways you could give away your labor in the theater.

Who the hell would want to volunteer in a theater, Lee thought. You couldn't PAY me to work in a theater. He looked around the auditorium. Why am I even here, he thought. I just got paid today, and I spent a week's worth of food money on this. Am I insane? What a crazy thought, he thought.

He sighed deeply wondering if he should just go home and take the loss, but the light in the room slowly began to fade. The chatter faded with it, and his attention was drawn to the stage, which was still lit with the amber and blue light. It seemed, in the darkening room, to glow. Then the amber light slowly faded, and people settled into their seats. As the blue light dimmed, Lee began to catch the atmosphere of the room. A thrill went up his spine when it went totally dark. His forearms felt electric and his stomach tingled when a single spot of light grew in the darkness, revealing a middle aged housewife sitting at the table, and his heart beat loudly in his extremities when it widened to include a young, plain girl focused intently on some strange project. My God, he thought as his breath quickened with anticipation. This is cool.

Will this moment last?
Will Lee survive smelling like a diner?
Will he be able to survive on a Stingray and twenty-five dollars a week?
Will he survive at all?
Willie Mays?
Willy Nilly?
Will he get back at Beverly?
Why didn't we mention the microphone in the corner of the diner? (See installment two)
What do you do when you're branded, and you know you're a man?
How do you handle a hungry man?
Will we raise the $2,060,000 we need to finish the next installment?

To find the answers to these and other agonizing inquiries, tune in to our next installment:
"A Haunting Darkness"
Why not call it "The Dick"
It's not about you, Steve.
You hurt my feeling.

To use Weeping Willow to prop up a wobbly table, buy the book.
Now available in both hard cover and paperback.