Henry Departs:
A belief one clings to as truth is continually tested and eventually exhausted. Beliefs often take one nowhere – motion without movement. This is where we find Henry, finally free of everything but his beliefs. One of them, “it’s better to be safe than sorry”, kept him safe. Henry could be no more sorry. Yet, his bold plans scared him. He decided to leave a note. Just in case. He searched for a pen. A pencil, stubby forgotten remnant miniature golf pencil, would do. What to say? How to begin? Address to whom? OK, let’s get this over with.
To whom it may concern.
If you are reading this, I have disappeared. Check 8D Pete St.
Aug. 3, 6 p.m.
He thought, as he drove, Henry Peck thought: a secret meeting, at an unknown to him location, with a mysterious stranger – a Princess from Pandora – now that’s excitement…but something is missing – good sense.
Getting laid was better than being screwed, even if this might include a pinch of humiliation. Manipulated sexually, if that is what is actually happening, has to be the best kind of manipulation. This guy has really thought this through. Wouldn’t a torrid one-night-stand avenge the decades of subservience and accommodation? A jumbo storage unit can always make room for one more foolhardy acquisition.
Henry Peck held the manila beer tab adventure map out the car’s window, tightly between his thumb and forefinger, under the dyeing yellow light and tried to make out the smeared numbers on the distorted paper that flopped in the wind.
Henry Descends:
8D Pete Street, got it. Never been there but I know about where it was, over in New Badsoden in the decaying end of nowhere. It was near the reservoir named after the swamp that fed the mills that once gave life to this town. The meandering drive seemed to take longer than anticipated. That’s the way with unfamiliar place – and he was taking the shortcut. We’re heeeeere…I guess.
The four-story walk-up loomed, among a legion of identical run down tenements and back lighted by a horizon, matching a broken down school bus and embroidered with the shapes of the small town’s still sunken warehouses and silent sulking machinery. Each of the devolving apartments in this urban evil forest faced front with no access, no expression and all entrances in the shadows behind. Each apartment displayed its number tacked under an identical porch light to the left of an identical door. One by one, each glowed respectable amber. Level four, 8D Pete, appeared indistinguishable. Not seeing a red light up above, Henry Peck descended. He began his ascent.
Henry noticed details as he moved. The muddy ground was heavily trafficked, both vehicle and other. A good thing? Animals, maybe cats and dogs, also good…and then some other beasts, bigger cats and dogs? He stopped and looked about.
I’m no authority on animal tracks, or feces, but…
Climbing the winding wooden steps, crossing the landings would be a workout for anyone other than a world-class stair climber, age adjusted. If a single word for anxiety and anticipation existed, it applied now. Ouch, what’s this stuff? The railing’s flaking yellow lead paint forbade Henry to hold on safe. The curled paint chips gnashed at his hand like neglected teeth. Each cluttered landing slouched identical. Each muddled porch distinguished only by a frost bitten plant or a moth eaten coach or a feeding Tomcat. 8D appeared as if from outer space, with none of the slum accessories.
Sheena stood in the darkened entryway, invisible in of its depth. She looked a 10 tonight. She left no feature unattended. Henry did not see her, just as she hoped. He double checked the address and stepped to the threshold. Stopping startled as she emerged. She stunned him with the flash of her smile.
“I wasn’t sure you would come” began Sheena.
“Neither, was I” replied Henry weakly.
“Oh, why is that?”
“You, first” countered Henry.
“I thought you would, pock, pock, pock, chicken-out” Sheena teased.
“I shouldn’t be here” came Henry’s obligatory explanation.
Sheena caught herself, furtively, and then replied, “We’ll see about that”.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“No”.
“OK”.
“Let’s go get a bite”.
“I don’t know the area. I was hoping I could take you to a place you’ve never been”.
She smiled that different smile.
“There is no ‘area’ here, but I have just the place for you…for us, I mean”.
Henry Dines:
Henry Peck knew he never dined here before. He knew he would never return, but that’s not all he knew. The menu had no prices listed. He can’t afford it. Maybe if he dined by himself, didn’t order dessert, left a meager tip, he could indulge himself once a week. Another thing he knew, Sheena strode this palace with a confident sway, the entire staff knew her… intimately. From the eager young hostess to the practiced mature waiter to the, what do you call them in a fine restaurant? The impassive old Maître d’ sensed my attention and turned his pointed beak.
Each employee with the same genuine fake smile directed toward me, not a Sheena smile. The hostess attended to my date with deference and to me with kindness, allowing me to pick my chair and pulling it away from the only round table. After deliberating with me on an appetizer, Sheena summoned the waiter without signal and pointed and the order taker complimented her on the choice but wrote nothing, seeming to have foreknowledge.
Escargot cooked with garlic butter and parsley in a shell, no doubt a popular request here, but rare to Henry’s palate, rarer than pate, and his rarest aperitif since jellied moose nose, but presumably the only thing Sheena found of interest. Once the appetizer was selected, she didn’t comment on the possible entrees, even when queried. The dish arrived and she put on a rapid display of her expertise, attacking the mollusks without the special tongs and fork. She, holding the shell in one napkin-ed hand, extracting the tiny carcass with minimal drip, splash or difficulty, plunging the morsel swiftly and fully into the simmering drawn butter, made it disappear.
Henry’s technique, clearly unfamiliar, unpracticed but patience, resembled that of a boy embarrassed at his first restaurant outing. He, semi-mastering the tongs and fork approach, on a third try, forgoing the napkin, self-consciously unsure of etiquette with the alien utensils, ate three snails. He liked the exotic taste but he made a note to avoid them in the future, all possible futures.
Arriving back at Sheena’s place, they stepped cautiously through the muddy parking lot, she adroit, a measured dance, Henry looking for fresh tracks, fresh animal tracks. He decided the unfamiliar large beast tracks from earlier were that of a wild predator, a big one too, and hungry! They mounted the steps, Henry avoiding the handrail pointedly, Sheena moving up the flights unconsciously, moving with anticipation or urgency.
Once inside her apartment, the two faced each other in the smart sparsely furnished living area. The short silence prompted Henry to say something stupid.
“What do you want to do?” asked Henry.
“What I want to do, what I’m going to do, is beat you,” replied Sheena.
Sheena cocked her head to the left. Henry looked into the shadows and saw a half opened closet with lengths of something. Looks like leather. These lengths hooked to the closet door by something metallic, like a buckle, he guessed. After his torture by tong, it would be beating by belt? Hold on now, she’s not that drunk…yet.
Sheena saw the error in Henry’s gaze and nodded again, this time with more emphasis. He followed her invisible nodded line past the belted closet, further past the innocuous glossy red door, to the entrance of the kitchen. That’s what she was referring to – he identified a jumbo climate controlled storage unit – a refrigerator.
Henry mauled her words. He looked at her and saw the “good” smile, with maybe a smirk of mischievousness. She told him she was going to beat him. She clarified to him with second nod the beating would occur in the kitchen or perhaps she would beat him with something from the kitchen. Who keeps a torture device in the kitchen? In the refrigerator? What could Sheena beat him with from the fridge?
“Sausage” Henry guessed excitedly.

Where can you go when there is nowhere else for you to go physically? The crazy have a place. The lonely have no place…except crazy. Therefore, in order for the displaced to delay insanity, they must freshen what they have. They must take something new to a fresh place and try to invent fire. Anyone of you can do it. Anyone, as long as you are neurotic. However, don’t wait too long. Don’t sleep through this opportunity. All you’ll have waiting one morning is the over-long sleeves of a sexy strait-jacket or an hiatus of blood circulation and breathing with a one way ticket to hypothermia’s constant climate control.
Let me fill you in on this odd fellow before I turn this story over to him. Henry Peck was once just a beak in the pen. On the surface, he had no particular virtue, no particular vice. However, inside, a set of hand me down beliefs that guaranteed a life of being screwed. Not just screwed but also humiliated while being screwed. Further, his beliefs would not allow either blame or revenge to rise above his reactive temper. Action and pursuit of rectification his beliefs did not allow. Well, it might be better said that blame and revenge were being stored for later use. His jumbo climate controlled emotional storage unit went over capacity that day – the day when he was promoted out of the baby pool of impasse.
I couldn’t believe myself. I seemed to be enjoying everyone and everything. I seemed to have no stress. I felt no real responsibilities. I rid myself of my oafish oppressors. This new freedom all started when I calculated that I could financially make it without working for someone else. I could also do without the burden of family – be that close, immediate or distant. And friends? Friends are just self-confected zombies who transmute when the small “r” in that vile word dissolves. Those fiends have no Reason for a Relationship with a Reciprocity expectant sycophant.
I’m playing videos games and killing. Not only am I strutting my stuff in this game as Scooby-Doo, flailing a six-foot link sausage like a chain weapon, destroying mercilessly everything in my radius, including my playing partner, but also vanquishing the unwashed, teens who are obviously in awe of my strutting stuff. Later, oddly, I stand by the game machine un-partnered after my last over-celebrated victory in-your-face jump and strut. Those sneering punks and punkettes didn’t know who hit ’em.
The vanquished brood leaving suddenly didn’t really bother him. It wasn’t really on this old man’s mind. In its near recesses, there played an earlier game. The barmaid, she was stuck in his mind. It was Neytiri the Na’vi amazon princess from Pandora in Avatar. He saw her, tending bar, an empty bar, an empty bar where she seemed to be waiting for his arrival. He knew it was she by the leading contraindications: her skin quite smooth, iridescent in tone but definitely not cyan – and no stripes, she was tall – but under ten feet. Slender, however, just like the princess. The nose, definitely the nose, it was her. The decisive factor occurred when he paid his two-beer tab and rolled off his bar stool. He turned to say goodbye and she gave him that genuine smile that vowed to him, “I will stalk you, and put an arrow through your heart, and feed your entrails to the viper wolves if I learn that you are less than pure”. Henry go all of that from gratuitous a smirk?
That was no gratuitous smirk, she thought. Sheena Waderwicz launched a smart bomb with her intent gaze, choreographed pose and full display of near perfect ivory American teeth. He walked into the door, she remembered, his head turning almost Exorcist-like to look back at her. That was fun. The near reality that he would be seeing more of her teeth was something else. It would be nothing nasty for real. However, this might not be all for real.
Guys are stupid and this one was perfect in that way. She would use her scarce assets, which seemed for some reason to captivate him, to manipulate a ritual rendezvous. It will be so easy to lure this gentle, naive, trusting man-child into a situation he would never enter consciously. However, the spell, the spell almost any Delilah might cast will put his not so shabby tookus where she wanted it. She really did smirk this time. Maybe that’s what he’s seeking: Finality.
Old Henry Peck stumbled out of the dank video game room into a too bright late morning sidewalk. He fell flat on his face, missing the fact that a single step, just one, existed between his verticality and his being grounded. No one saw this, that’s the important thing. Doing careless and foolish things were normal for him. Caught in the act made it unforgettable and, therefore, it would have become another thing to ruminate about. With humiliation now unnecessary and the new freedom of angst now back in charge, he wondered, Is it too early for a beer?
He’s baaaaaack, Sheena suppressed, as Henry maneuvered past the pesky door.
“Hey, stranger” Sheena said.
“Hi, ah, I didn’t catch your name last day, I mean time” said Henry.
“I didn’t toss it”.
This is fun, arousing she thought.
“Sorry, I’m Henry, I was in here…”
“Sure, I remember you vividly, punkin’. I’m Sheena and we talked about books and brothers and boyfriends…my boyfriend I mean”.
Embarrassed, relieved and confused…boyfriend?
“Sheena”, Henry started, in hopes of retaining her name, “you were telling me how you read lots of science fiction. I think you said you read, not because you liked the science fiction but because you liked the challenge of figuring out the plot twists before the author revealed them”.
“Exactly, you remembered.”
Alright-y then. How did he remember that? Henry hoped she would pick up the conversation. The unpunctuated silence made him anxious but he knew that the next person to speak would say something stupid…if that person were he. A mouth full of beer might buy him some time.
Sheena returned to his darkened end of the bar, rag in hand. She leaned forward, leading with her rolled up sleeve forearms, the naked limbs extended un-ringed and unpainted. Henry acted nonchalant but sensed something of importance, not stupid, was about to be spoken.
“I expected, the time before when I showed you the sci-fi I was reading, that you would take the paperback from me and feign interest. At first, I was disappointed, that you, you know didn’t feign. I quickly concluded that, perhaps, this old hound is off his game. Trying to be kind, you know”.
Feign? Old Hound? Kind? Henry suddenly felt vulnerable. He knew, he thought, she was waiting for a response, hence the silence. He knew there would be no one or nothing to twist this plot so that he would not be compelled to say something stupid. And ruin everything. Everything? What everything? In any case, he was in over his head and sinking fast.
Sheena invoked that smile, that parting smile she gave him last week, which resulted in a bruise and a lump. She leaned in.
“It’s OK” she started. He exhaled.
“I have some others I want you to see, you’ll be more interested, I know that, for sure,” she concluded.
“Show me ’em” said Henry. He felt that maybe he blurted it out; he had become so immediately anxious.
Sheena straightened and stepped back from the bar. She gave a different smile this time as she positioned her hands. Suddenly, her expression changed…deadpan. The blueish window tint, the half-opened wooden blinds, cast a transforming hue and pattern on this statuesque enigma, now in cyan, with stripes and seeming ten feet tall.
“You want me to ‘Show ’em to ya,'” the Princess said.
“I meant…I mean…the books…the ones you said you wanted me to see” Henry sputtered. He wasn’t sure now to whom he was speaking, let alone being sure what they might be talking about now.
“I don’t have them”.
“But you just said…”
“I mean I don’t have what you’re inquiring about here”.
“But, how can I see…”
“You’ll have to come visit me”.
“In Pandora?” said Henry.
He completely captivated. She completely confused.
“No”.
She began writing an earthly address on the back of Henry’s beer tab.