Teary Filisteinsdatter Mast loved chicory coffee. The woody aroma and nutty flavor always hit the spot, a perfect solution to shake her out of her deep sleep in the mornings without giving her a case of the jitters. Teary was a tall woman and she had quite a mind of her own.
At night she pre-set the coffee machine to start brewing on-the-dot so that she had time to take a shower before her daily cup of coffee alternative.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror in her shower cap and matching black and white robe, Teary pushed her lips forward. She muttered under her breath, “You fat, fat cow you. You’ll never be accepted as someone with something real to say, you’re too fat. No one will ever believe you.”
Teary wasn’t fat but most of the time she believed that she was overweight and this led to her peculiar brand of self-motivation in the mirror. Every morning, she showered herself with words of beration. Of course, she never submitted her clients to the same treatment. However, she regularly advised her beloved chicory coffee as a health benefit. “You’ll never have worms again,” she’d announce. Some of her Mormon clients thought that this underscored the medicinal qualities of the beverage, putting it above sodas. Teary ended up making an excel sheet to try to understand the “hot drink” restrictions that Longmont’s Mormon community followed. It seemed to her that each family decided their own rules on what they could and could not drink. The Noel family, for instance, banned soft drinks along with coffee and non-herbal teas. In general, when it came to the Mormon population, coffee and black tea were officially off the books, but caffeine could be treated as separate from the “hot drink” rules.
After Teary had made her usual statement about chicory coffee curing worms to her new client, Emily Noel had blinked twice. Teary had practiced enough with the sentence to deliver it with a kind of jokey good humor along with a touch of authority on the matter. Teary hadn’t had worms since nineteen-ninety-nine.
What bothered Teary most about the Mormon “hot drink” rules, was that they had never been specific and subsequently adjustments had been made to the rules. If adjustments had to be made to the rules, Teary reckoned, then the rules were not genuine rules. In Teary’s book, rules had to be real rules. Like pre-setting the coffee machine after loading the dishwasher at night.
Of course, Emily Noel had carefully explained to Teary that she did not want her kids to become addicted to soft drinks and that she would look into the option of chicory coffee. Emily also presented her belief that the federal government intended her children to become addicted to soft drinks because the government was supporting soda companies with nefarious connections and this agenda was against the teachings of Jesus Christ. Then Emily Noel left Teary’s consultation office and went back to the hair salon on Main Street where she worked as a hair technician, leaving Teary to puzzle over her excel sheet. Teary was unsure where to put the fear of developing habits leading to anti-Christian depravity and a conspiracy theory that supported the idea of soft drink companies with possible connections to foreign socialist governments trying to overtake the world on her “banned hot drinks” excel sheet.
Teary had a half an hour before she was due in her office. She was sipping on her first and only cup of chicory coffee of the morning when her husband wandered into the kitchen. El-Don was wearing a pumpkin colored fleece jacket. “El," Teary said, putting her cup down, “you need to use some hair gel and tame your Don King look.”
“Hmmmm?” El-Don said, sitting down at the bar counter in their teal blue kitchen.
“I baked you some Fall Spice Granola Bars to take to the greet and meet event at the church,” Teary said. “I used up the cranberry sauce and they are fresh.” She nodded at the tupperware container on the counter.
“That’s great,” El-Don said without enthusiasm. “Tee, you didn’t happen to hear of any more mountain lion sightings?”
“I appreciate your concern about the prairie dogs, but this is the third time this week that you’ve asked about mountain lion sightings,” Teary said. She picked up a boiled egg and began to peel it.
El-Don wasn’t particularly concerned with prairie dogs in general, but it so happened that he had ten prairie dogs in cages living in his garage. It hadn’t been his idea. His wife was planning on giving them out as Christmas presents to their family members. It was a new passion of Teary’s – saving the local prairie dogs - and she had heard they made good pets. But first she was making gosh darn sure that the animals completed a good detox routine, cleaning out those parasites in their intestines, before she wedged them into breathable boxes with red bows.
Keith Abbott woke up in his garage in Longmont. After he died, Keith continually found himself waking up in his garage in Longmont. It seemed like a garage was his version of eternity. Sometimes he woke up suspended in mid-air and sometimes he woke up on the workbench that was hidden behind a screen. One time he woke up the rug. That wrecked his back for a whole day. He had long suffered a bad back and the cold cement floor really did a number on him. He’d spent the day in the Civic Counsel on Kimbark Street, trying to get warm.
This time he woke up suspended in mid-air by the back door of 1046 Grant Street. That figured. For the last few weeks Keith had been out and about trying to find a way to get through to the Rhino Ritz Detective Agency. After trying all the disconnected telephone cells on Main Street he eventually found one that placed his call. Dialling (415) 526-1629, he was put through to the Ritz Hotel in Paris.
Keith carefully enunciated the purpose of his call into the phone, “I’d like to speak with Rhino Ritz,” he said.
“You’re not the only one,” came the reply.
“Can I leave a message?” Keith asked, thinking hard. He had to come up with a witty replique that would get him noticed.
“No,” the voice said.
Keith did not recognize the voice and this did not deter him. “What if I say that I am stuck in a redneck town in Colorado and need Ernest Hemingway to save my manuscripts from possible extinction?”
“Ernest Hemingway checked out last week.” The voice paused. “You might try Pablo’s Box Refurbishing Ltd.”
“Something happened to his suit?” Keith asked, bringing to mind the big cardboard box that Ernie wore to work. After all, Ernest Hemingway had earned his author’s spot in the limelight and he was worthy of becoming a boxed set.
“There was an incident.”
“I see,” Keith said.
“I advise Google Chrome.” And the line went dead.
Keith reviewed this conversation as he gently floated to the floor. Through the soles of his tai chi shoes he felt the cold of the winter. He looked around the garage and saw that the girl was organizing her things. He lightly stepped onto the rug.
The girl was dressed for school. She was pulling out a binder from behind the dresser. She was a thin girl with frizzy red hair pulled back into braids and a flat button nose. After counting a small wad of bills three times, the girl selected twenty-five dollars and placed it in one of the pockets of the binder. She crossed out the number twenty-five on the front page with a black marker pen.
Keith liked the look of the marker pen. It was a fat tipped pen. On the side was written Phantom Genius.
Blessing was walking along the hallway with Emery to their morning French class. “Do you know how hard it is to fill that binder?” she asked her friend. “I am getting really frustrated.”
Emery smiled. “I hear you.” She had been able to get a spot at the retirement home on Thanksgiving handing out cards and flowers donated by Longmont Florist to elderly people without family. And she had pocketed some hefty tips which she had divided into separate amounts. One that her parents knew about and one that went into her secret binder. “Let me help you,” Emery said. “Longmont Florist. They will pay on the books but you’ll earn cash. It’s not bad money and they’re nice people. I’ll set it up.”
“I thought that was your gig,” Blessing said.
“Yeah, but my parents know how much I make and make me put all the money in the bank. Most of the tips I manage to keep to myself. But your mom won’t take the money away from you so it’s better you work there than me.”
“Cool,” Blessing said, awestruck by her friend’s generosity.
“I’ve been accepted as a candy striper.” Emery flashed her blue eyes brightly.
“That doesn’t pay,” Blessing said and frowned.
“That’s what you think.”
Tags: #longmont #1046grantstreet #colorado #keithabbott #mast #mordecaiofmonterey #steinbeck #keithkumasenabbott #gertrudestein #boulder #rhinoritz #mormons #chicory #candystriper #blessing #mormon
Comments
Post a Comment