When Quotable Quotes Quoted are Questionable.

When confronting someone, honesty is STILL the best policy – only if you STILL have too many teeth.

Shibumi!

That’s the onomatopoeic word to describe what Henry felt as his sternum impressed his backbone.   With Sheena suctioned to his chest, Henry opened his eyes wide and quickly shut them.   What hath God wrought?  Henry’s pedestrian mind’s eye may have seen this sight in the abstract but it was being driven home in the concrete.  In addition, she was babbling.

“Sheena, what are you saying?  Fish?  What are you doing?”.  Wet?  And then the words a man had never said to a woman, “Get off of me!”

For the first time in their short courtship, Sheena responded catatonic.

Henry needed to do something, think of something to break the spell.  Maybe he should shock her back.  Maybe he could make her laugh.  Shibumi?  His thick psyche presented a questionable quote for this conundrum.

Henry somehow remembered, that in the obscure spy novel Shibumi, author Trevanian has his protagonist Nicholas Hel remark to a young lady on what he considered to be an indecent pose.  He would try it.  He would have to code switch his diction into that of an educated sophisticated speaker.  No small feat here.  He would have to paraphrase the passage into what might be rated a hard R.  Blame Sheena’s silence for, once again, Henry saying something stupid.

Henry impersonated the faux spy Hel, “By the way, can you stand a bit of avuncular advice?” Blink once for yes, twice for no.

“It is a sartorial indiscretion for a young lady so lavishly endowed with…” he wasn’t sure how to continue, “nether-hair as you, to wear no shorts, and sit in so revealing a position.”  Henry gulped.  His failing courage now as disjointed as his conjugation.

He was getting through!  She did not speak and she did not blink but somehow his lost-in-translation presentation of another’s well formed passage made…her skin crawl.  This was good.

Henry, encouraged, continued, “Unless of course, it is your intention to prove that your endowment is natural.”

Sheena’s right arm proved every bit as powerful as her left.  His orthopedic discrepancy now perfectly aligned as his numb skull leaned and attempted to kiss his right shoulder.  His next intended sentence slipped through his lips along with an ample, light viscose liquid and a slight, dark sticky venous discharge.

She’s baaaack.  Sheena’s momentary cerebral depression subsided.  Henry’s extended deflation excited.  They went at it, how might one say?

Shibumi.

You take my breath away

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou – but not necessarily in that order.

Birds sung this sunny morning outside the middle window at 8D Pete Street.  Yesterday, Henry had his safety on.  Last night, Sheena had her groove on.  This morning, knee-ther had nigh-ther.  Darkness may hide our flaws for the moment but the light frees the eyes to see all.  Today, the sight twice blinded by the night, would be one of those days.

Henry Peck was dead – to the world.  Sheena Waderwicz was from another world – one might say.  She never allowed her sense to be overruled by sensibility but that didn’t mean she wasn’t occasionally sentimental or sensitive.  What was it that Henry was going to say before I slapped it out of him?

Sheena had seen him put a in his pocket yesterday, a note with a pocket full of meaning.  She must see it.  She must know these last words he had for he.  Still sans a stitch, Sheena slipped from the sheets, straddled her pal, and slithered up the bed, foot to head.

The sudden movement and soft contact stirred Henry, but not to complete consciousness.  His eyes never opened but he thought he knew what was up.

“Let’s wait a while, I’m sore,” he lied.  The likely reason for his disinterest was his flagging energy rather than his floppy excuse.

“You’re sore?” shot back Sheena, at once disbelieving and indignant and actually sore.  She continued, “Rest easy cowboy, you deserve it.  Don’t mind me.  I can do it all.  I’m here to please.”

With her last words, Henry quickly deflated back into his dream world.  Sheena had advanced stealthily and commando on her belly from the perimeter, to his weapons cache, and now she hovered above the single snoring sentry.

Still straddling, she quickly placed each of her knees on each of his shoulders to gain advantage.  Sheena rendered her objective helpless and, this time,  handcuffs need not apply.

A sudden chill came over the intrepid hero.  What will happen next?  If I don’t complete my mission before Henry opens his eyes, he’ll see me in a whole new light!  Sheena’s concerns were valid.  Henry had never even seen beneath Sheena’s clothing, let alone further.  They were in complete darkness both times they were intimate.  Yes, there was a giant lech in this pint size gigolo that expected him to search and debauch.  But there was also the adorable dolt of decency that implored him, unsuccessfully, to hide his eyes at the site of a cleavage dip and avert his gaze when the wind turned a skirt up.

Henry’s dueling gland Joes courted their arguments while decency rested.  Questions such as: What is descent?,  What is fashionable?, and What would Larry Flynt do?, swirlled around Judge Henry’s crowded cortex.  A split decision usually yielded.  A compromise between lechery and decency.  Henry kept one eye wide shut.

Fortunately, for Henry’s other cheek, Sheena didn’t waste a penny on his thoughts.  This person persisted in her persevering pursuit to pick her partner’s pants pockets, the pleats plainly posited on the bedpost post-night.  Doesn’t this guy ever change clothes?  Although, she did notice that these wear-and-wear abominations were crisply clean – like new.  The plastic tagging barbs wiggling, still alive and well, their feelers made Henry’s frightening fashion even creepier.

Start with the back pocket.  Wrong…just a receipt with her address in her handwriting…oh yeah.  Next, the right front pocket.  Oh yeah, didn’t need this for last night.  Important progress!  Finally, she found it in the other back pocket.  The yellow sticky epiphany written in the supernatural script of a cartoon canine.

Sheena exhaled open mouthed and collapsed onto Henry.  His chest  collapsing undo her sudden distress.  The sticky note falling from her hand, the words whispered from her lips…

“Fish don’t know that they’re wet.”

A Crazy Little Thing Called Deja Vu

Love is lovelier the second time you mistake it.

Henry entered the Star Wars Bar with his hands full.  In his dominant right, he held the sticky note epiphany he would quote to Sheena.  The weaker left hand shook with the menacing Ruby.  His stomach would not cooperate for long so he planned to quickly lead with his epiphany and end with his lead, in the way redneck Virgil had earlier intended for his beloved.

Sheena, cleaning glassware at  the bar, looked up expectantly.  When she saw the revolver, he froze.  Stepping around the bar, his lover charged him like a drill sergeant.  At arms length, Sheena drew back her left arm and slapped Henry with inhuman strength.  He had the snot literally slapped out of him – his left ear careening and almost touching his shoulder.

Flustered.  Henry’s neck tried to assume its former and natural alignment.  That pulsinng left hand pushed and pointed its pistol parcel at the princess.  His memorized sentences, like his senses, shaken and stirred, poured silently forth from his lips along with his spittle.  The sticky note, still clinging to a single thumb,  before letting go; forsaking him; his left leaving him without words.  This bird would have to ad-lib his swan song.

“This revolver has three bullets in it,” said Henry.

“I know what you’re going to say,” replied Sheena.

Sheena reached out with her right hand and grabbed Henry’s gunned hand.  She pulled it towards her and rested it, pointed upward, under her left breast.

Henry was reminded of Sheena’s penchant of dressing for comfort.

Her frightening left arm raised.  Henry flinched.  She moved it slowly but deliberately this time.  The hand fell gently, lovingly on Henry’s ear.  But it seemed to grow angry as the unvarnished nails dug into his scalp and began to pull his head down hard but towards comfort.  Simultaneously, her right hand covered his left.  Her thumb spooned against his trigger finger, with each conflicting digit seeming to await the resistant head’s descent.

Looking down into the hand gun’s cylinder,  Sheena confirmed its brass content and calculated its bullet count.  She raspfully whispered a query.

“So, who’s the other one for?”

Defeat at the Foot of Pete

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs – perhaps you don’t understand the situation.

The rusting tin integer wasn’t worth a penny but it cost a total zero his eroding thin sanity.  Hovering ghostly above, the penumbra of a missing “1” gloated.  Cruel consequence had its fun with the fragile and pointed a single finger to the imagined ideal of fairness.  But life lessons were not completely without purpose, that’s why they’re called lessons.  Duh.

What is a life lesson?  Cribbing from Winston Churchill: It is like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.  Henry Peck believes and preaches that there is an epiphany inside each life lesson. Au contraire says a doubting Thomas (Cruise).   Quoting from the movie A Few Good Men: Should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid?

Henry found himself laying in the sparse grass on the sharp gravel shore of Pete reservoir.  At last consciousness, he heard a gunshot.  Blackout is the first refuge of a coward – unless there’s a place to hide.

As the gnats about him needled his scalp, he poked even deeper into his memory.  The hostage crisis started coming back.  He remembered awakening to a horrid stench.  It wasn’t the dreadful smell of death – it was the much greater stench of the dead guy’s still breathable shirt.  Implausibly but not impossibly, Angry Man had shot himself first.  The simplest logistics escape some of our most well intentioned plans.

If a paramedic had examined the two bodies lying in the Pete street apartment, he would have found no viable heart beat.  This is a true statement except for the fact that an ambulance was never called and Henry wasn’t dead. Henry’s clothes were soaked with blood from the erupted head that rested on his sunken chest.   At first, he wondered why no one called the police at the sound of gunfire.  He concluded that in this part of town the sound of a gunslinger was more frequent than the sound of a robin singing.

Henry did not wonder why the two targeted women were gone.  He did wonder why the “Ruby” revolver seemed to be cradled in his palm.  This reality prompted him to action.  He pushed the still steaming stink stack off.  Knowing he could not go out in broad daylight looking like he just left a slaughter house, he walked to the closet to look for a change of clothes.  What he saw took his breathe.

On the left side of the closet, hung dozens of identical shirts.  These shirts still had all of their tags on them – unopened Christmas gifts often revealed family ties.   Henry loved and wore these same shirts – except they weren’t exactly shirts. They were 2-in-1s.

A 2-in-1 is: a sort of dickey that has taken hostages: the original false shirt-front with a reluctant collar sewn on,  an innocent sweater vest wishing it would have completed the weave and finished cardigan, and two pathetically short sleeves that only a bastard design would claim.  Henry mused, That sweatshop Bangladeshi seamstress should be working in America.  Probably is.

Improbably, on the right side of this fashion faux pas, hung a long row of identical trousers.  Yes, they were Dickies – fourteen pair of pleated, cuffed, four pocketed khakis.  Also with tags.  It looks like Virgil laying over there had some pretty good fashion sense even if it was an aberration.  Henry loved and wore the same style trousers, too.

So, except for the sanguine hue, Henry wore the exact costume that a man whose brains could fit in a Lite beer can would literally not be caught dead in.

So, laying on the shore, Henry imagined he remembered all this.  Continuing his recollection, he did remember changing into the clean clothes and emptying his crusted pockets into the clean ones.  He didn’t remember removing the tags and he couldn’t remember anything after that until he woke up here on the beach.

But now, upon further thought, since he found himself in the same clothes he’d been wearing and near the site of the traffic jam, he was afraid to trust this last surrealistic memory.  He had no evidence he could point to and corroborate the haunting events that occurred after returning to the main road.  Henry again had to consider whether he was going mad.

Henry would not leave this place until he got a sign that verified his madness or his sanity.  He stood up and looked around.  The deserted shores of the reservoir sustained no life worth living.  Yet, he spotted what looked like a fishing pole propped on a rock a few yards away.  Walking to it, Henry had to wonder who would leave a working rod and reel cast into a fish-less tank – or who put it here for him to find.

On a whim, Henry picked it up and hopelessly started to reel in the taut line.  Wow, I caught something.  Like a little boy, Henry reeled and tugged and reeled and tugged as if he had a whopper.  He performed these theatrics even though there was no struggle on the tackle – only weight, dead weight.

Henry’s mouth fell agape at the sight of he catch. It was a dead animal – part of a dead animal.  Henry’s mind raced back to the scene of the traffic jam that occurred here not that long ago.  The realization that the catastrophe had turned to tragedy lay at his feet.  The public servants at the seen did not do their civil best.  Expedient, not expert; they were insensitive, not compassionate; they were irreverent, not fervent – the firefighters dumped Bullwinkle, with a wink, and without a second thought, into the drink.  The nearly severed nose pulled off with a single Henry tug on the fishing line.

This was the sign Henry needed to begin to resurrect belief in his sanity.  Though salivation had commenced, he would have to leave this near jellied delicacy for the appreciative carp.  Those nutrition-less bottom feeders had the ravenous appetite of ten Henrys for this carrion carryout.  It would be the death of them.

Henry watched the oily mouths pursue the goo,  wiggling out of the water, continuing over the rocks, and on to the chum.  In pursuit of their desire they would die a terrible death, even for a carp.  This sight struck Henry with insight.  He had an epiphany.  This gem had to be written down before he forgot it.   As he raced across the rip-rap, he turned his eyes back one at a time towards the morsel he left wharfed.

Henry wrote the sage adage on a sticky note and jammed it in he pocket.  He excitedly jumped into his car and cursed immediately.  There was something in the driver’s seat that bruised his butt.  Reaching under himself he retrieved a gun – a revolver,  the erstwhile suicide maker.  It was “Ruby’s” revolver – blood, brains and three remaining bullets.  Now he was sure he wasn’t crazy.  But if all of what happened was real, mostly what he remembered of the night with Sheena, he would rather be crazy than sane, dead than alive.

A solitary cob web floated in stealth, moving with the subtle breezes generated by movements of those below.  Unable to escape because of its attachments.  Content in its corner…as long it as existed unnoticed by them.  A fragile existence may continue for quite a long time but always ends quickly.

Henry always acted reliably but wished he didn’t always.

Sheena always got what she wanted but wished she were sometimes deprived.

Henry believed that Sheena was the Princess from Pandora but that didn’t make it so.

Sheena believed here femininity was stronger than any masculinity but this belief had already been tested by time.

Henry survived because he knew he was timid and weak and out of touch.

Sheena knew she was alluring and unaffected and young but had never considered that she had any vulnerabilities.

The bright sun reflected off a mirror into Henry’s face.  Where was he?  His eyes were shut but he sensed the light.  He could not open his eyes, he remembered something about this…was it a dream?  With arms pinned at his sides and the feel of grit and the smell of dust…he was buried alive.  At least he was alive.

But wait…he could move his head and there was light shining on his eyelids…he was breathing.   Yikes, he had heard about this – commercial organ harvesting!  The horror of this thought caused him to force his pinned arms from his sides involuntarily.  The hopelessness of this mutilation caused him to cry in futility.

His tears moistened his eyelids.  His eyes peeked through the gauze of crusted sand.  He was not in a grave but a bathtub.  He was not covered with dirt but grout.  He had not lost any organs…except maybe his mind.

Looking to his right he saw a large hole in the tiled wall.  A head size hole.  A Henry head size hole.  How did this happen?  He wasn’t bleeding.  His didn’t even have a headache.  He simultaneously smelled it and saw it.  Thank god for mildew!  He crashed his hard head into the soft wall and it gave way.  Questions remained, but for now, by the nature of the sounds coming from the adjacent room, he knew it to be the bedroom, he had better, exit with extreme haste.

Something slept.  Something.  It should simply be his date, Sheena.  But no one snored like that.  No human could make that vibration and continuous both in and out.  That deep and satiated resonance telling him something about what happened but he wasn’t going to stick around and ask questions.  It was time to go full coward.

Henry climbed out through the bathroom window.  Tumbling on to the porch, he regained his feet in one gymnastic motion and, it seemed, they never touched again until he was pressing his accelerator.  Now that he felt safe, his instincts forced him to look back and up to 8D.  He squinted to see what might be framed in the middle window.  It was dark and blue and there was movement.  A large silhouette could be detected behind the sheers.  As the shape turned in profile, Henry could verify it was the shape of a woman that watched his now reluctant departure.

Theme: Henry’s belief that it’s no better to safe than sorry, must be dispatched.  He will go have an affair with a mystery woman in order to accomplish this.  First dinner, then drinks, then destiny.

Opening: Freshened – Epiphany – He arrives

Dinner will be unusual but unremarkable: Freshened – Epiphany – Vignettes

Drinks will be unique but not unusual: Freshened – Vignettes 2

Destiny will be unreal but not unexpected: Freshened – Hemingway

Sheena was teasing the tense Henry.   It was time to terminate.  The first time she tried this tactic she nearly tossed.  Now she teased a beating just to watch the guys’ expression change.  She smiled as Henry unclenched.  Sheena wasn’t alone.  Women were puzzled by men.  Give men what they want and they leave in triumph.  Withhold it and they stay in hope.  She didn’t know why this worked but it did.

“Can I offer you a drink?  Wine?” asked Sheena.  Cut and scene.

“Yes, do you have Pinot Noir?” asked Henry.  I knew she was kidding.  He checked his trousers, first back then front.

“No, I don’t drink red wine, it turns my lips blue”.

Is that how you do it?

“In fact, I don’t drink any grape wine.  It weakens my inhibitions…”.

Good to know…that she knows of such things.

“But I do have other types of wine.  Fruit?”.

She spoke a drop of potion.  She gestured a motion of entrance.  She excited his thoughts, accelerating them. He recollected walking into the room.  He remembered his senses racing as she teased him.  Now, he conscious give in to abandon.

Abruptly, Henry snapped back as Sheena pulled a short sturdy stool toward her tall, lean fruitful rack of wine.  She perused the necks. She twisted them with purpose. He listened to the lilt of her indecipherable comments.   He wasn’t sure if her whispers were intended for his ears or for his imagination.  Sheena continued her murmuring, her mouth sometimes moving close in, her lips changing color as the ambient light diffused upon them.  Is the Princess from Pandora is revealing herself unknowingly?

Abruptly, Sheena spoke, “I have a nice raspberry.  You surely won’t be feeling any pain…after a couple of pours”.

So are you offering to beat me again?

“I have a nice hibiscus. It helps to regulate body temperature”.

At this point in time, I seriously doubt that.

“I have a nice prickly pear”.

Indeed!

Henry’s stunned silence bade acceptance. Sheena grabbed the “Cactus”.  Surprised by its color.  The rich fluorescent purple spirits evoked romance and nostalgia.  She poured, the flow more like nectar than wine, the long stem exquisite like this woman, the Crystal clarity and veiled motives contrasted as enchantment always presents.

Sheena handed Henry his.  She picked up the prickly pear cork and put it somewhere deftly behind her, this bottle’s destiny predetermined.  Perhaps he wished his were as obvious.

As Sheena advanced, Henry noticed the cork had been placed in an extra large, “giant”, wine glass replica, 750 milliliters, filled with 751 milliliters of normal sized wine-corks.  She had it placed it atop this monument to merriment.  Knowing she was being watched, she had straightened, and turned, like a ballerina, ready to begin her next part, and approached Henry with her stemware held delicately between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

“Enjoy” said Sheena, sitting her glass on the table beside his, then reaching across to pinch him.

“What was that?” said Henry, sipping and squirming.

“I wanted to see if you were still breathing”.

Indeed.

Dinner

Henry Peck had never been to this restaurant 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…perhaps 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 turned his pointed beak.

Each employee had the same genuine smile for me.  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 elegant round table.  After deliberating with me on an appetizer, Sheena summoned the waiter without signal and pointed, where upon the order taker complimented 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 entrees, even when queried.  Once the dish arrived, she put on a rapid display of her expertise for handling the mollusks without the special tongs and fork.  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 placed between them, with voracious anticipation, making it ascend and disappear with one almost frightening motion.

Henry’s technique, clearly unfamiliar, unpracticed and patience, resembled that of a boy embarrassed at his first restaurant outing.  Actually, he did OK.   He semi-mastered the tongs and fork approach, forgoing the napkin, self-conscious of his unsure etiquette with the alien utensils. He liked the exotic taste but he made a note to avoid them in the future so that he might maintain a modicum of adult table manners.

After Dinner

Arriving back at Sheena’s place, they stepped cautiously through the muddy parking lot, she adroit in her measured prance, Henry looking for new tracks, fresh animal tracks, he having decided the unfamiliar large beast tracks from earlier were that of a bear, a big one too!  And hungry.  They mounted the steps, Henry avoiding the hand rail consciously, Sheena moving up the flights unconsciously, with seeming 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 could see into the half opened shadowed closet, lengths of something, probably leather, like a belt, he surmised.  These lengths were hooked to the closet door by something metallic, like a buckle, he guessed.  After him torturing by tong the tender escargot, was she going to torture him?  Hold on now, 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 foreboding closet, further past the innocuous glossy closed 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 in his mind.  He looked at her and saw the “good” smile, with maybe a smirk mischievousness.  She told him she was going to beat him.  She clarified to him that she would beat him with something, but not something from the closet.  She would beat him with something from the kitchen.  Something normally found in the kitchen.  In the refrigerator…

“Sausage” Henry guessed nervously.

Morning After

Day After

One’s most cherished beliefs are continually tested and eventually become exhausted.  These beliefs often take one nowhere – motion without movement.  This is where we find Henry, finally free of everything but his beliefs.  One of them resembles the lyric, “it’s no better to be safe than sorry”.  Henry would no longer play it safe and he was already sorry and yet he could not make himself unafraid and he decided to leave a note.  Just in case.  To whom it may concern.  His obituary might start with, “A guy goes into a bar…”.

When you have gone where you were never told you could go, will you ever find your way back?  The lost have no yellow crumbs to follow…but move, faking it, as they feel they must.  One’s old belief map,  annotated with supplied destinations but without compass, etched with strict instructions but smeared by ignorance’s trappings and fear’s perspiration, but having essential clues which have escaped into the yawning holes created by anxious re-referencing, is useless.  You’ll get there, but via the path of least resistance.  Things will get better, but not before they get a lot worse.  The experience will make you stronger, if it doesn’t kill you.  Change always appeals in the abstract.  She fails to inform you of the initial pain.  The harsh reality of nurturing the new, in an environment favoring the old, where old can scorch, drown or simply ignore you and leave you stranded.  Sounds like fun.

He thought, Henry Peck thought: a secret meeting, at an unknown location, with a mysterious stranger – a Princess from Pandora – now that’s excitement…but something is missing – good sense.

Suffice it to say that getting screwed was better than being screwed, even if this might include a pinch of humiliation.  Being 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 ill-advised acquisition.

Henry Peck held the manila beer tab adventure map out the car’s window, between his thumb and forefinger,  under the dieing yellow light and tried to make out the smeared numbers on the distorted surface as in flopped in the growing night wind.

8D Pete Street. Got it.  Never been there but I know about where it was, 0ver in 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 but that’s the way with unfamiliar places. 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 broken down school bus horizon and embroidered with the shapes of the small town’s still sunken warehouses and silent sulking machinery.  Each of the devolving apartments in this man-made evil forest, faced front with no access and no expression and all entrances in the shadows behind.  Each apartment displayed it’s number tacked under an identical porch light by an identical door.  One by one each glowed respectable amber.  Level four, 8D Pete, was indistinguishable.  Not seeing a red light up above, Henry Peck descended his Hyundai Accent and 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 and landings would be a workout for anyone other than a world class stair climber and add age, conditioning and eager anticipation and you might have a cardiac case.  And what’s this stuff?  The railing’s flaking yellow lead paint forbade Henry from holding on for safety and the bite of curled paint chips gnashing at his hand like neglected teeth.  Each cluttered landing identical, each muddled porch distinguished by a potted  plant or a rotted coach or a mottled Tom…except 8D, distinguished by nothing.

Sheena stood in the darkened doorway, invisible in of its depth.  She was a 10 tonight, no detail left unattended.  Henry did not see but sensed her, as she had hoped.  He  double checked the address and stepped forward toward her threshold.  He stopped abruptly when she emerged, possibly stunned by the flash of her alluring smile and the pierce of her intent eyes.

“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, 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”.