Coal Train Chase

Bill Coletrain stood beside me in a damp and chilly morning air just outside the Greyhound bus stop, which was also a hardware store, in the village of Chase.  The sun had not entirely risen and the first frost painted the still weeds like mold.  He was looking down between his boots at the crushed tobacco bits and flattened filter from his still smouldering cigarette now cooling on the asphalt, the last ghost of smoke spilling from his nostrils.  The bus would arrive soon, and he would get on it.  We’d probably just shake hands and say goodbye.  There wasn’t much left to say and after buying his ticket for him last night and putting him up in the kids room, in the bunk bed they used when they came in the summer, there really wasn’t anything more I could do.   He stood still.

“I guess that’s about it,” he finally said.

“Well.”  I couldn’t decide if I should say anything, but it was too late.  “It isn’t all bad today.  The worst is yet to come.”

He smiled but didn’t look up.  “Wow,” was all he said.  Maybe I had experience in such matters that weighed on him but I regretted speaking.  I just needed to be here was all.

Across from us and the main street the CP train sat cold and heavy on the track that ran through town.  The even coat of filth said these were clearly the coal cars. I sometimes wondered why these stopped here. There was no train station here, no docks.  They just stopped here for hours and hours.  Then they left.  Maybe other trains stopped here too, but from my house a little up the hill at the other end of town I could tell from the shivering walls and the rumbling base sound that these were the heavy trains.  The others I couldn’t feel.  But when it’s your walls they shake, you know.  So the coal sat, still in Chase, miles from the station in Kamloops, further yet from the coast, and half a world from a coal burning furnace in some far off foreign town.   Why it sat here I didn’t know.

“Does it end?” he asked.  He was looking up now but not at me.

“They say it does.”

“Any idea when abouts?”

“I don’t recall them saying that part.”

The bus was arriving.  In the cold air we could hear it turning off the highway and coming closer.  The engine made the only sound in town at this hour of a Sunday and it was a warm sound, warmer even than the church bells that would ring in a few hours.  I heard him sigh and clear his throat, but I was afraid to look at him.  I didn’t know him well enough to see him cry.  The train disappeared behind the bus and the air brakes hissed a bit of cold dust at us just as the door opened and the driver stepped off, all seemingly in the same motion.  The man unlocked the squeaky door behind us, presumably to gather some manila-wrapped boxes, going to the same foreign town as far as I knew.

“Thanks,” Bill said, holding out his right hand.  He was looking at me now, toward my hand at least.  I sighed for him.

“Sure,” and we shook hands.  And then he was gone.

Sartorial Squalor

The paisely tie stood up, dumbfounded.  The pocket kerchief, full of itself in a stuffed-style fold, contemptuously posited that the center of the outfit was itself.

The Prince of Wales Super 120 wool sport coat, tan kissed for the season, chuckled a bass crease where the arm met the shoulder, a sign that low-mannered humour was unbecoming of attire of sartorial perfection.  Yet not as unbecoming as Sea Island Cotton is sensitive, and the white twill button-down dress shirt, french cuffs immaculately embossed in mother of pearl antique links, puckered up its ivory buttons as the brogue-crimped brown belt tightened a little, as if to hold a breath, as if anticipating a clash with off-the-cuff little kerchief.

As the belt goes, so goes the shoe.  The hand-stitched corodovan cap-toed blucher sucked in its waxed laces a notch and crimped the elegant checked hose, so eloquently decorating the void beneath the medium gray cuffs.  Such a raising of the arch heaved up the cuffs, a neatly cut one-and-a-quarter inches of the best of Savile Row worsted wool that weighted a perfect crease descending in shimmering, tapered splendour to the pristine double-folded inward pleats, so pleading for everyone to sit just down and relax so the crimp in the beltline would let go.  Such a heave on such a cuff on such a pant overbroke the crease above the shoe.  The image was shattered, the visage broken.

From tie to taper, from collar to cuff, everything seemed out of sorts.  All except the little linen pocket kerchief that rested with a confident aplomb amongst the angst.

Queenside

Black pawn, alone on the file, stood straight ahead.  He was bold, but he looked meagre.  There had better be some protection for him soon because a white night was closing in for position.  And that was our awful predicament.  We, the proud pieces, were being led into protecting an isolated pawn because enemy cavalry was about to pounce. Things are not looking good. But then, they started out that way.

White initiated this game with a yawn and we replied in kind.  Oh, we should have taken risks then!  But Ruy Lopez, that old defence, was so playable.  The game opened up and bishops began sniping from our corners and our king took cover in the other castle.  Some are saying we castled too early, that we lost some tempo when it was unnecessary.  I say that’s just negative gossip.  I say it’s never too early to castle, but then I’m a rook, Queenside.

I can see now across the board and I’m nervous about the way the enemy’s kingside bishop and this restless knight appears to be lining up for some sort of combination.  I’ve seen it before.  If only it was our move we could better our pawn structure and crowd this side a little more.  I feel like I’m the only one with an eye on this little guy and once he goes, bam!  We’re in for a queenside onslaught.  It’s like the whole board is being tipped my way, and everything’s going to slide into me.  I need support before it’s too late.  Worst thing is to be traded off for some lesser piece, to have to trade me off for some measly animal, say, because we need position.  Position.  That’s all we’re fighting for now.  When the team gets position in its head look out; anybody is the next body to be sacrificed.  If I’m right, though, they’re going to need me too much.  But not yet.  Our guys are still focused on the kingside.  Our move. It appears to be our Queen.

First time she’s made her appearance.  Headed the wrong way, though.  Still blinded by all that pawn and kingside knight action by white.  That fianchetto by white’s bishop, which is a little move one space toward the board’s edge for those of you who don’t speak our language, is mesmerizing her.  That earlier peck at our king, just a silly check really, has everyone skittish.  Not me. I’m staying put.  I can see across all this space what’s really shaping up.  She’s stopped.  I don’t like this.  She’s come out too early and has taken a defensive posture, and on the wrong side.  Now I’m skittish. White to move.

Things just got a whole lot bloodier.  That little pawn is no more.  It only took a second after our Queen took her royal position off in la la land.  Wham! And it was all over for the little guy.  He didn’t stand a chance, like I said.  Suddenly I feel like, like I’m in my underwear up on the school stage and the whole gymnasium has never seen a rook in his underwear before.  Well don’t look now because it appears everything I said is coming true.  Here comes our queenside knight from his nap or whatever.  It’s about time I got help, but too late for our little pawn island.  I want that white nag.  What he did wasn’t right.  It was natural, it was even smooth.  But it wasn’t right.

So we moved our knight after losing a pawn.  That’s a pawn down in the material world of things.  Not our most threatening move, but now at least we’re behaving a little like we have a plan, and on the right side of the board for once. If someone would kindly wipe the look of sheer panic and surprise off our Queens face maybe we could even rattle up a little morale.  Okay, what’s he doing?

He slides his bishop up.  That’s our move!  He wastes an entire turn slipping a nice fianchettoed bishop a little further into the centre. Who cares?  This isn’t about the centre anymore, my friend.  In case you hadn’t noticed, even our well-plopped queen is looking my way.  Here I am, solid, proud, and valuable and all you can do is guard your slippery centre with a wayward bishop?  The tempo is ours, my white nemesis, and if our Queen would kindly slam home a little cross-board rush you will see that more than just the board is tipping our way.  And look at that, here she comes.  Ain’t she a sight?

Hello, darlin’.  Nice to see you’ve lost your poker face and bear a little gritty determination on ya.  I’m here, right beneath you, my Queen, and I see what you’ve done.  Now the whole board knows that we have us a battery.

Battery is my favourite thing.  Pile me and my other rook, or Queenie here, onto a single file and we mean business.  And oh my look at that, whitey has a bare 8^th rank!  He’s pulled everyone out to a big fat centre that doesn’t matter and here we are with cannons aimed.  What will he do, what will he do?

I knew it.  That gangly excuse for a horse tuck tailed and ran backward.  And who wouldn’t?  Bloody ground about shook like thunder majestic Mother lined up behind me.  Oh if little pawney could see us now.  My move.  I’m in my underwear and I don’t care.  We have the pieces, we have the power, and I’m going for it.  8^th rank, here I come.

No rook ever took his place on the enemy’s 8^th rank and didn’t sweat buckets.  7^th rank is heavy, man, but 8^th is heaven.  I can still see her from here and her gaze down this file is reassuring, but it’s still awful lonely.  And our knightly crusader has a long way to go.  And that bishop of theirs still worries me. Maybe he’s just looking the wrong way.  I doubt it. I’m the play now.  I’ve pinned this knight to the king so many squares on the other side and the heat is on.  I can see it’s about to get a lot hotter.

The whole board is on edge now as we’ve played out our surprise.  The question for us is, can we hold on?  We have no backup plan. None that I know of.  And I see something they haven’t.  Because their eyes are on me, they miss my old friend, that lazy bishop of ours off in the corner.  He’s sat there for so long, it’s like he’s a fixture, part of the backdrop.  He’s awake now, and Queen Mother is winking his way.  We’re going.  And we have one last bastion to plough through.

Whitey races for reinforcement.  One right move on his part and it could all be over for our victory rush.  He’s decentralizing.  Moves his bishop again, backwards this time, guarding this knight with the crosshairs on his forehead.  Oh I hope it doesn’t come to a sacrifice, me for him!  It can happen so quickly, trading me for tempo, giving up my value for more coordination on the white king.  I’m worried, afraid even.  It occurs to me that we all are.

Suddenly that sullen, quiet little bishop in our corner gets his orders. He marches across the board.  It seems to take forever; he’s got so far to go.  Nobody knows where he’ll stop.  But wait! I see it now.  He’s the one.  He’s the sacrifice.  He smacks a white pawn down, down right in front of blacks king and puts him in check.  What bravery, what sacrifice.  We hold our breath, sorry to have to see him go, but hoping for a greater game in the next 3 moves. I see it now.  The delay is deafening in its nothingness.  Nobody moves.  Everyone wonders if the white king, the only piece who can slay the Bishop now at his throat, will take the bait. He could just move away, slide one piece toward me.  I put on my most menacing face.

He does it.  It’s terrible to see such a noble piece fall, but to an enemy king it means we are incredibly dangerous, or incredibly stupid.  He was bait. He was valuable, open, and had no backup.  And every white piece is nervously glancing here and there.  We have them on edge.  We must turn this edge into a full retreat.

Queenie slides back laterally toward her old position, one square short.  Yes, I see what she’s doing. It bothers me to give up the support, but not really because she is supporting me another way.  He’s in check again and there’s only one piece to protect him; central bishop.  The check ends when the bishop releases his guard on this white night that now grows fearful.  His fear becomes panic as I heave my bulk toward him.  My turn, and the white knight is all mine now as I make my move, right to the bull’s eye.

If the victory over the white knight was not victory enough, I own the enemy’s 8^th rank.  The cheer from the pieces on the far side reaches my ears and I beam with pride.  But not too much.  This enemy is still dangerous and not entirely trapped. His next move silences the crowds.

A forward knight, the second in whites army, retreats toward protecting his king, and attacks our Queen.  I trust she knew that could happen, and knows what to do, but it catches me a little by surprise.  In fact, I think I gasped. She’ll have to move.  I look for new positions, as if to help.  But she knows what she’s doing.  The move is subtle and looks like simple reaction, but its not. It’s the kill move; white just doesn’t know it yet.  It’s a little slip to line up with a 7^th rank white pawn a little ahead of me, and yet she threatens the knight, who calls for backup.  A pawn moves up to support him.  Now she will make her move and all the planning will come out in the open.  White will see all the way up our sleeve.   But it will be too late.

In the annals of the games I have fought and won this game will go down as one of the greatest.  We were bold and brave, terrified, overjoyed, saddened and finally, elated.  At the victory gathering we marched to the missing man, our brave bishop who captured the attention of a fierce enemy, and the hearts of all his compatriots.

Crowd On The Calle

It was a hot and humid afternoon.  I suppose all stories in Havana could start like that.  I had come to Havana just a storyteller wanna-be, or liar.  Those terms switched somewhere between now and Grade One show-and-tell.  Back then, with no pine cone in hand picked up on the way to school, I simply stood in front of all the class (and beautiful Tracy Erickson) and told of how my father had come home from work with a loaded gun to shoot my mom who was now working part time as a hairdresser to support my little sister and I while Dad was in prison.  It worked.  Tracy paid attention to me all day.  By next Sunday afternoon the entire trailer court gossip circle was enjoying my fib.  No harm done, I suppose.  Now I am a writer.  At least, I write on the side.  You know, a hobby.  Not a real writer.  And in these years of marriage and children I lack the time and inspiration to come up with really good lies, good stories.  In Cuba, I decided, I could find new inspiration, new material.   Not to mention cheap cigars.  And I would be alone to drift in the ambience of tropical fumes.

I love cigars.  Cigars can be a hobby too, without becoming a habit, but since one can smoke more per hour than one can make in Calgary oil and gas stocks, the best place to smoke them is where they belong in the first place.  I belong in Calgary, but stepped off the plane and into Jose Marti Airport outside Havana where the cigars are cheap by Canadian standards.  The last time I was here, a year ago in Varadero with my wife Tracy, I liked impressing the guy at the Casa de Habanos with how much they cost back home.  “No lie,” I would say, “Thousand pesos, one box.”  So, if I needed to get away from the interruptions and experience some inspiration, and smoke puros, I should go back to Cuba.  Beautiful Tracy agreed, if she could go to Hawaii with a girlfriend later that summer.  Deal, I said. In a week I was off to Havana with my laptop, passport, and travelers cheques.

Nobody can say when a writer really becomes a writer.  Or exactly what separates a writer from a novelist.  So I wasn’t sure which I was, if either.  Especially since, for me, working on my lame-duck novel was less a hobby than cigars were and I found writing inspiration more fleeting than cigar smoke on a Canadian winter day.  Bloody things pucker up tighter than a drum outside in winter and taste black as tar.  I figured the  opposite would be true of inspiration in Havana at 31 degrees Celsius and 88% humidity.  Plot would flow to me and I would capture it and enrapture my readers.  But when the little taxi stopped and the suitcase and I were delivered to my room, all I could do was lie there under the air conditioning and watch movies with Spanish subtitles.  Too bad they have TV here. Two days passed. I felt the week melting away as quickly as the trumpeting that threaded its way past my Hostal Conde De Villanueva, a little 9-room hotel in Habana Vieja, Old Havana.  I only had five days left to write and these first two had been a total waste.  The jackhammers started at 9, the trumpets walked past at 3, and the crowds walked under my balcony at 5.  So I decided that tomorrow I would take a little walk.

After the jackhammers but before the trumpeters, I saw how the Habana Vieja has Castro written all over it.  Not in the tacky totalitarian slogans so professionally spray-painted on the beaten walls in the suburbs, Socialismo o Muerta, Viva la Revolucion, etcetera.  But in the puke that spills from an old womans mouth outside a blanched three story whatever-building that should have been condemned in the last century before it’s blackened edifices now threatened to crumble on your distracted head looking down at the fresh dog shit you’ve just stepped in.  No, the buildings weren’t just old looking.  But they looked more than rustic, less than completely burnt out.  There was some other description I needed but couldn’t think of as I walked by mildly along the narrow, crumbling brick Calle from my Hostal toward Ernest Hemingways old haunt, the Torro de Mundo Hotel, to order a mojito in the lovely lobby bar.  There I lit a cigar, rested one calf over a knee and sat under Hemingways smiling, bushy face and read a novel by Grisham.  Certainly inspiration will come to me now.

I always thought Grisham wrote like Hemingway.  Simple and homey, reaching people.  Although that was my first Grisham novel and although I’ve never actually read  Hemingway, I’d heard of how he wrote.  I decided I was writer enough to draw such conclusions.  Anyway, I was constantly distracted by the touristas.  With my slightly sweaty Hawaiian shirt and a week-old beard and sitting alone in a hotel lobby bar, I didn’t think I fit in as your standard tourist.  I finished my cigar and mojito and decided take a table and order a chicken sandwich, versus the tuna, and certainly not the beef.  I’ve read a little about Havana before coming here, and saw the cattle on the way in from the airport.  I wasn’t going to drink the milk either.

The grease in those twelve French fries, if that’s what they were, tasted great.  Somehow everything I had ordered in the last two days lacked that deep fried essence, and my system had suddenly noticed.  I yearned for a burger.  But the thick Cuban bread and poor pollo drowning in mayo would have to do.   If I’d have known it would be one of the last tastes of freedom on my vacation I would have eaten it more slowly.  I think I stopped altogether when a few tables up some hurried Spanish suddenly broke out.

A short, thin old lady, bug-eyed as a fly and just as dark, was being shooed away by our waiter over the shoulders of some meek looking norteamericano couple, or maybe they were Europeans.  She had stepped off the skinny street onto the broad, shining tiles of the restaurant, which were pinned down by towering mahogany pyres and a heavy bar where once Papa Hemingway himself once sipped mojitos.  Suddenly it was two against one for the restaurant, as security is never far away in Havana.  A large, dark woman in that common blue-green uniform followed the little fly out the door and back onto the street, where it seemed to disappear in the swarm that always moves along.  The stuff of novellas, I thought, and rats! I’d left my notebook in my Hostal.  I needed plot and  atmosphere and this was the most exciting thing since the trip in from the airport.  I noted the yellow mustard walls of some old Spanish building across the street.  Why always mustard yellow?  Why, because it goes with so much.  Just look; mustard and blue, mustard and white, mustard and off-white.  Even that stained old, paintless- what was the word I was looking for?-building looked good beside mustard. I returned to my dead chicken sandwich and the gringo couple, a little nonplussed, seem to do the same.

After a meal, not before, is the best time for a puros.  That’s what the Cubans call a cigar, a reference to it’s months of aging and fermentation in those little huts in the Pinar del Rio region where little or nothing artificial is required to grow the finest tobacco in the solar system.  But since my cigar with Hemingway was still smouldering in the ashtray a few yards away, I tipped and paid for my meal, and walked out the open doors past the already vacant table of the gringos.  The tour buses leave on time, I didn’t know about anything else.

Now Conde De Villanueva was only a few blocks away.  With a couple mojitos under my belt, I decided I would walk down the middle of the little road with my sunglasses on and three day old beard.  Maybe then no one would approach me.  And no one did.  Except a cop.

Some gathering or another was going on up ahead and that familiar Cuban rattle of Spanish pummeled its way toward me, more congested than usual.  I thought of ducking right, taking a detour around it, but just as quickly decided I could walk around it.  It seemed like others were.  I approached the crowd of onlookers gathered in a circle, most hanging their hands on their hips, listening to some more heated discussion going on at the center.  As I passed, I glanced at whatever the other passers by were trying to see, and tried to keep on walking.  But by now, the crowd had grown as thick as the air, always pungent and hanging still.

Any true writer would appreciate the site of a real stabbing or shooting or whatever.  I read in a book that we take notes.  Lots of mental notes.  We absorb the drama.  We look at faces.  We note the vast amounts of blood that come from a body, and such a flaccid, thin little body and we pay particular attention to the way the blood pools, then seeps into hot cracks between the bricks in the road.   We recreate in our minds what everyone else sees in their eyes.  In fact, some of us try so hard, we might even forget to look at the obvious.  Like we might miss the fact that we are the only norteamericano in a crowd, or the only one wearing shorts, or the only one in a Hawaiian shirt.   We might forget, that is, until someone is pointing at us and saying “Ah, si” with two well-pressed green, uniformed polizia looking in our direction.  Just such an oversight instantly became the most unforgettable moment of my life.

Back home, everyone tries to please a bureaucrat now and then. Usually it’s during a speeding ticket, or maybe some tussle after a playoff hockey game when they show up in paddy wagons.  Here the bureaucratic hinge swings more broadly.  Tomorrow, Castro could wake up in a bad mood and suddenly nobody, nobody, will be allowed to wear blue.  A few years ago he banned Cigar Aficionado magazine from the country because they printed a not-so-favourable article about him.  That was several years after he announced cigar smoking was bad for Cubans and jacked the price out of their reach.  And just as suddenly people were allowed to sell handmade goods to touristas and keep the money for themselves, just as a law was being passed banning the ownership of new vehicles; everything had to be old.  And everyone in our little crowd on the calle knew it could all change again tomorrow.  Just that fast.  In such places, where laws swing as fast as a mood, it’s good to have a little polizia favour in your pocket.  Good to help the polizia if they were looking for someone else.  Especially some norteamericano.

“Senor.  Your papers,” said the polizia-man.  He looked up at me with that strong lower jaw so many here seemed to have.  It was the most prominent feature he carried on his otherwise small stature.  But he seemed 10 feet tall to me, asking for paperwork as if the bleeding body of-who was that lying there?-was less interesting than this gringo looking for his passport.  My passport.  And my visitors Visa.

“Si,” I replied without breathing.  A Hawaiian shirt- you know, the shirt that’s supposed to help you fit in to the Caribbean crowd?- has one pocket.  My chino shorts have four.  That was all I had left and they had yielded nothing more than a card-pass for my hotel room and a five peso bill.

“Uh, mi passporte?  It’s in my room.  Uh, mi casa.  There. Conde De Villanueva.”  I pointed, for the famous red brick building everyone knew about was within pointing distance, just that close for such a narrow street as Calle de Mercadares. Almost there.

“Yo no ha yor pazport?”  he asked.  Better English than most police, I would find out later.

“Si, yes.  There at my hotel, Conde De-“

“Yo no ha yor pazport?”  he asked again.  I felt my blood drain from my head, pool at my feet, and trickle into the hot little cracks between the bricks in the street.  So this is what it feels like to be let of all your blood.  The other officer, a woman but larger and with just as blank a stare, stood at his shoulder.   They wanted the papers now.  Here.  Right now, as if- as if I was supposed to be carrying it on my person.  Oh no.  Of course.  Okay.  They will come with me.  Then I will get it.  Minor oversight, so sorry, but maybe after I sit down, just for a second, before I pass out. I feared I might faint, not knowing if that would be good sign of guilt or innocence.  I felt my eyebrow drip what I hoped was sweat to my cheek and then stream to my chin.  The drop dropped to the street.  Man, it seemed hot today.

“I will get it, Senor, it is just there at the Conde De Villanueva, okay?”

“No,-“ and the rest was in a Spanish row I could not understand.  I presumed by the fact that they were turning me around and pressing my wrists together and jingling handcuffs on me that I should have thought of that sooner.  Suddenly I pictured myself as that guy in the Tom Hanks movie, stranded on an island-what was his name?-wounded and long bearded.  Only my island held some torture chamber of a prison where we all ate stale bread and chicken guts for breakfast.  Oh no.  Oh, this cannot be happening!  Please God, no. But neither the chicken guts in my belly, nor the heat and humidity, nor that fact that a lady lay dead on the street dulled the unforgiving steel edge of the cuffs on my tender Canuck wrists.  I noted the details, still writing.  We writers.  How audacious are we?

The fly.   That’s where I’d seen her.  The black little beggar lady from the restaurant must have come into some more trouble down the street.  So like a fly, she was. They sat me down on the curb just in time, for I suddenly spewed chicken sandwich into the gutter at my feet.  Not that the gutter was surprised.  And nobody else seemed to care.  People just stared at the poor norteamericano squatting there, hands behind his back.  The circle had widened and now I could see the fly and she looked even smaller than before.  Now we both have trouble; you and your blood, me and my passport. Then I was unable to hold my head up anymore not caring anymore if I fainted.  I wanted to go home.

I felt weak and hot, but I shivered.  What was taking so long?  I was taking second place to the body that was still lying there in the street, a few metres away.  Finally more police arrived running, and blocked the area off where the fly and I could be a little more alone.   I needed a lawyer or an embassy person or even the guy at the cigar shop would have been a sight.  But all I could see were the flies attracted by my puke cooking at my feet on the hot-baked bricks that must have seen a million touristas thinking nothing of this spot as they flashed their cameras and awed at the architecture rotting around them.  If only they knew how rotten it could be.  Damn flies.

The noise excuse for a paddy wagon rumbled and rolled, the gears ground and the heat was unbearable.  Not like the ones I saw after hockey games. I rested my head against the tinny wall, but the potholes made that kind of ease impossible.  The only air came from a barred-up square like a porthole in one of the barren, swing doors.  Ugly as they were, those doors had finally shut away the ugly little scene on the street, and I was just as glad to see them close.  The whole thing sickened me.  I noted how the doors dry hinges creaked and jangled as loose as my handcuffs, shaking them so loud they almost drowned out the other noises of 40 years of police-state dereliction jostling around me.  Being a writer was becoming a curse.  I was absorbing way too much information.  Really, I just wanted out of there.  Then, as if God in his mercy had finally discovered one righteous soul in Cuba, I finally passed out.

“Senor?” The kindest male voice I had ever heard awoke me.  I thought he was stabbing me in the neck, that’s how much it hurt.  Senor was all I understood from his words, but his white smock coat and stethoscope hung off an older gentleman in a grey moustache, a little browned at the centre from a not-very-doctor-like habit.  What little antiseptic quality he portrayed did not match our environs which was certainly not, I hoped, a hospital.  We were in a jail cell, that I could see.  The cuffs were gone and my neck and shoulder ached.  What’swrong with me that I needed a doctor?  What is happening here? He simply shrugged his shoulders at the guard and said something more in Spanish. I heard ‘agua’.  The guard gave me a bottle of water, which I sat up to drink in large gulps.  It was warm, but the coolest thing I could feel other than my own sweat.  I could have sworn that I felt every drop sitting on my skin like acid.  That’s the word I had been looking for.  Those buildings in the Vieja.  They looked like they’d been sprayed with acid decades ago. Acidized.  Not unlike these walls, the inside of somewhere just as skanky.  The guard was leaving.

“Senor.” I didn’t want him to leave.  Maybe he could help some other way.  He turned to me looking down, as it was apparent to me now that I was sitting on a cot with bars all around and other people near us.

“Senor, I-“  I wanted to talk to him.  “Hablo Inglis?”  He just turned and walked out.  He traded places with another one of those uniformed officers who presented me with a piece of paper and pen.  She pointed to a line at the bottom of a page of Spanish.  I took another long drink from the bottle, now half empty.  “I’m not signing anything,” I said, and hung my head, too tired to hold it up.  Man how draining some simple things can be!  Maybe I’ll just lay down again. Where am I?  What do I do now? What’s going to happen? The polizia woman broke out into a blur of Cuban Spanish directed into the top of my head.  I looked up.  “Look,” I said, beginning to feel like I had a lot less to lose now, “I don’t speak Spanish, okay?  No hablo, okay?  Please get me someone who speaks ENGLISH.   Inglis.”  She pulled the paper back smartly and left my cell.  Rather, our cell, because there were others there with me and I took a moment to inspect them.  Actually I tried not to look directly, but you know writers.

I sat in that jail cell sweating for three days with Eduardo, Cuerto, and Adnan the youngest who reminded me of Antonio Banderas.  The air didn’t move and neither did we much, nor did we talk.  They chatted a bit amongst themselves, and we had a bit of a breeze whenever someone left or returned from the banyo and their movement disturbed the air.  There was a useless fan about ten yards away blowing jail-house air toward a desk where there sat an old, thin man who every day looked like he just wanted the day to end.  I suppose I felt like that, too.  Now I understood that look I had seen around Havana.  It was very much the same as I’d seen on the face of my waiter, that security guard at the restaurant, even the polizia who stood shoulder to shoulder demanding papers of innocent bystanders. Even the fly lady seemed to have it before she died.  Or maybe it was after.  Why didn’t they just shoo me away instead?  Isn’t that how we’re supposed to be treated?

I was surprised at the decency of the jailhouse food which was mostly rice and black beans with pork or chicken.  Even the behaviour of my cellmates was civilized, who by day three had reduced from three to only one, Antonio, whose real name I had forgotten.  After Antonio had made the introductions, none of them had said anything to me the whole time, occasionally chatting amongst themselves until this fellow and I waited quietly alone together.  I’m sure there were questions, but I really didn’t care to talk about my deal, much less to folks who probably  knew less English than I knew Spanish.  One of them did offer me a cigarette that second day, which I accepted.  I mean, that’s what you do in prison, isn’t it?  Stuck down here in some forgotten, tin-pot dictatorship in God-knows-where of a hellhole? Well, I’m pretending just a little with the ‘hellhole’ thing.  In all, the cell was kept clean, we had access to a banyo, bottled water and half decent food.  I even chuckled a little when they served chicken sandwiches for lunch on day one.  They forgot to take the skin off, though.  Unfortunately for my cell mates the skin gives me bad gas, so I tried to spend more time in the banyo but the guard kicked me out.  They chuckled again when I came back in.  That was as much fun as a lost Canuck could possibly have in a Cuban jail, I thought.

If I had been a real writer, I might have taken note of all my own thoughts during that time.   But I quickly forgot most things that occurred to me, like how I really hated communism now, like how backward these third world places are with their legal systems, like imagining life in a Cuban prison.  I do remember that I thought of the things I missed.  I missed my wife, and my kids.  I hadn’t actually spent much time thinking of them until then.  Since they weren’t supposed to hear from me for several more days, I knew they weren’t worried about me at least.  I couldn’t decide if they should be.  Other than that, I remember distinctly missing something else, something that often crossed my mind like a soft carribean breeze; my air conditioner, like the one in my room at the Conde.  That thing could make a place downright chilly.  About then I met Lisa.

Lisa worked for the Canadian Embassy in Havana.  Man, was she a sight for sore eyes, and not just because every vein in my body cried out for justice, or even just to talk to someone who spoke English.  She was really pretty and her darling green eyes would have fit right in to Stampede week in Calgary, or her shoulder length red hair waving from under a cowboy hat on that white horse during a Stampeders game.  But she sure as hell didn’t fit in here.  And I could have sworn I felt the temperature drop when she walked into the cell.

“Hi, you must be Barry.”  I hadn’t heard my name in a long time.  Not since I left home.

“Howdy, yes.”  I could stand now, and so I did and shook her slight hand, “I am.  Oh man, am I glad to see you,” and forgot any macho machismo whatsoever.  When it comes to Cuban jails I’m a wimp and don’t care who knows it.

“I’ll bet.  Well I asked them to turn on the air conditioning as their supposed to, so hopefully things cool down a bit here for you.”  That’s what that chill was.  I decided it felt really good and suddenly felt refreshed enough to ask,

“You mean, we’re not leaving?”

“Well, let’s talk about that, okay?  First,” she pulled up a chair and sat down, and I apologized and she said no problem, “my name is Lisa Alexander and I work here in Havana at the Canadian Embassy. “  So we were still in Havana.  “I’m not a lawyer, but am the first contact for folks who, well, who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances.  I’ll be gathering some information that can help you and can arrange for a lawyer if one is needed.”

“If? So we might just move straight to execution without need for lawyers?”  I said a little sarcastically.

“Actually, Mr. Taylor, that’s not funny, as you are here on a murder charge, and that entails the maximum penalty which is death.”  I could have put that better than she did, I thought.  I swallowed.  “But please understand,” she continued in her formal manner, “there is due process and we’re going to make sure you get it, okay?”  Okay.  I think she thought if we death row inmates heard that word enough times we might feel better.  I didn’t.  I was afraid to ask what process, how long, what are my chances, how will my family find out…I could think of a lot of questions I didn’t want to ask right now.

“So, where are you from?”  I asked.

“Where am I from?” she asked back, smiling.  I think she really did want to make me feel better.  And I thought some conversation off-topic would feel better right now, after the whole ‘death’ comment and all.  “I’m from Montreal.”

“Montreal?  Lisa Anderson from Montreal.  English speaker, then.  I like the way you guys put up a fuss about language against the French government out there.”

“Really.  Here we are in a Cuban jail and you bring up western sovereignty?”

“Hey, ‘viva la Alberta libre’,” to which my esteemed cell mate reminded us he was still there and broke out into hysterics.  I leaned over and gave him another one, “Alberta o Muerte.”  That was too much for him and he was off for the banyo holding his gut trying to breathe and laugh.  But Lisa wasn’t laughing.  What can I say?  He and I had spent a lot of wordless moments together already and my mood had picked up for the first time since I didn’t produce a visa.

“Sorry, I don’t know his name.  They don’t talk much to strangers here.”

“Oh they do, just not to westerners.  It’s not legal for them to-“

“Yeah, I know. I gathered a little information before I came here.  Not enough apparently, but…”

“So,” she interjected.  “Information.  Let me ask you a few things, okay?”  She was brash at conversational transition, I thought.  But this character is definitely getting into my novel.  She’ll be the interrogator, the one with the scalpel who works on the eyes first.  If I get out, or if they ever let me have paper and pen, that is.  She asked what I was doing here, about the incident with the fly, about what I thought had happened.  And since she already knew who I was and where I was from, I guess my questions were going to wait.  She wanted to hear my account of the stabbing.  That’s what it was, a stabbing.

“Let me say this very clearly,” I said next. “That lady, the one who was killed?  She had just gotten into a bit of a spat with security at the restaurant for bugging some patrons a couple tables over from me.  Tourists.  Westerners too.  There weren’t many people there, but they were closest to the door and she just walked in and started asking them something, I don’t know.  But then they left.  They left before I did.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“No, I went back to finishing my lunch.  And here I thought I was being so observant, noting stuff down.”

“For the novel you’re writing.”

“Yeah.  Listen.  Can you get me out of this?  When is this going to end?”  She lowered her head to one side in a sympathetic look like she had consoled other innocents many times.  It was just the kind of look that I’d missed when I needed it most.  Back there, in the puke and the blood and broken bricks beneath my feet.  Now I needed answers.  And to visit the banyo, ‘cause man I had a sore gut from the gas I’d been storing, waiting for Mr. Laughing Gas to return.

“Hopefully tomorrow you will see your lawyer and then I think you’ll feel better.  Meantime, I will give your statement to the police here right away and to your lawyer, okay?”  There it was again.

“Okay.”  Nope.  Even saying it for myself didn’t help.  But it might help if the police caught some blood stained schmuck in a resort or on a bus or otherwise walking around Havana.  That might help.

We said our goodbyes.  She had made me feel better, in spite of all the ‘okays’.  I guessed that they could put together something of a case for me, especially after they retrieved my passport and visitors visa from my room.  Not as if that was the issue any more.  Oh, what an idiot I had been!  First to leave my visa in the room and then to think that was why they were arresting me.  Mr. Gas finally returned and I went to feel even more relieved than I already was that afternoon.  Death.  That hadn’t occurred to me until she said it.  But maybe, just maybe things would work out.  They had to.

I couldn’t have known it, but that tourist guy and his wife were being arrested for suspicion of murder the very moment I was gassing myself of old chicken skin in that Havana jail banyo.  Seems a ketchup spill on his shirt didn’t ring with their tour guide after the group was re-boarding their bus enroute to their resort in Veradero.  Report of a knifing incident in the Vieja came across the radio every tour bus has and since it was in Spanish, the couple couldn’t understand it.  The guide reported the ketchup case back to dispatch, and later with the polizia spotted him in the crowd by the pool.  A police search of their room gave up a Hawaiian-patterned shirt (why do we insist on wearing those things?) drying on the veranda after a poor wash job to remove the stain.  The old fly lady had presented a small knife to her thankless prey after they left the restaurant, and when she swung it at them for not giving her money, he spun her hand around and stuck it into her chest.  Apparently the little knife wasn’t little enough and it struck an artery near her heart, or maybe it was her heart I’m not sure, and a stream of blood splattered onto him.  That would also explain the huge black puddle she lay in by the time I reached her.  But like I said, at that moment I couldn’t have known that.  Anyway, though nobody saw the stabbing directly, they did see a gringo in a Hawaiian shirt.  Kinda like what I was wearing.  I did learn that when I returned to my cell Mr. Gas was gone and I would spend the next 24 hours alone in a jail in Havana on a murder charge.  Man, the novel I was going to write!

Now I did monitor my thoughts, for now they came unmercifully.  I thought of never seeing my children again.  That was enough to break me, and I cried for the first time.  I was shy and I guess that’s what held me back when the other guys were here.  But the old man at the useless fan didn’t seem to notice or care.  And I could tell he had shut off the air conditioner.  But I didn’t care.  I thought of my wife, how she would learn that I was going to die in Cuba as a convicted murderer.  I missed them dearly now, and felt like my own heart was going to explode, right here on this drab, concrete floor with no cracks.  The heartbreak my mother and sister would suffer.  The bewilderment that would plague my friends who would surely doubt their whole life long that I could never have done this thing.   The folks at work.  Even the friendly guy at the cigar store in my hotel.  They would all be stunned.

I couldn’t bring myself to fully trust the justice system here, so there were moments when I just resigned myself to my fate.  How would they do it?  Firing squad most likely.  There’d be some good material.  What it’s like to have ten steely missiles atomize your body. Well, it would probably, hopefully, happen quickly with as little pain as possible.  I exhaled hot air into hot air.  In my lungs or out, it all seemed thick and stale.  It didn’t matter.  The next time that  door of bars opened, I would be on my way to the holding cell.  Or worse, directly to the firing line.

I shook when it opened.  I had drifted off to sleep, strangely enough.  Nothing grates on the nerves like steel on steel moving without lubrication.  But it wasn’t Castro, or Guido, or anybody like that.  It was another gringo woman.  And she looked Canadian. Not sure how I could tell, but I could.  Maybe it was the slenderness of face, or the polite manner of her introduction.  But I felt rescued from my own mind and just focused on her.

“Mr. Taylor.  Hello, I’m Anne-Marie, your lawyer and I bring good news.  You’re being released, Barry.”  The sweetest words I have ever heard.

Well, one might think I would be on the next plane out of Cuba.  Or that the embassy would arrange some special charter.  In fact, I asked to go back to my room at the Conde De Villanueva.  For that last day, assured I was fully cleared of all charges and suspicion, and due to receive some formal apology from the Cuban Embassy out of Vancouver, I decided I would return to my vacation. Oh, I missed my wife and kids.  But I cared so much that they would worry so little, that I decided the best thing for them was for me to simply see me at the airport, none the wiser.  I had asked Lisa to not mention anything to anyone back home yet, and she agreed.  They weren’t due to hear from me until the next day anyway.  So Anne-Marie and a bodyguard from the embassy escorted me to lunch at the restaurant in my hotel, at my request.  I didn’t feel like being alone just yet.  We talked about home and family, about vacations, and about the novel I was going to write.  And it wasn’t going to be about no measly four day stint in a Havana Hilton like I was in. No sir, there would be stale bread, torture and, worst of all, chicken guts.  With skin on it.

They left and I bought the biggest cigar they sold there in the little cigar shop.  They were glad to see me and patted me plenty on the back, refusing to charge me for the big, dark gigantes.  They even handed me a handful to take home.  I walked up to my room made ready, clean and cooled by the air conditioner that breathed light, chilled whisps of air across my face.  I pulled the laptop to my belly as I stretched my legs across the big, king bed, lit the bold cigar, and began to write a story that would impress beautiful Tracy Erickson waiting for me back home.

“It was a hot and humid afternoon…..”

THE END

Tulipman

John was never good at change, but waking up as a tulip bulb was simply hilarious.   No miracles, no magic spells, no lightning bolts as far as he knew.  It simply defied explanation.  But it was as true as funny.

He laughed out loud.   Despite his belly-crunching outburst, there was no sound.  Of course not, he thought.  I don’t have ears.  No belly, either.  He chuckled again.  Having no ears is why he couldn’t be heard.  No, it was because he had no mouth, no voice box.  He stopped laughing.  Not laughing was the same as laughing.  He wasn’t sure how, but it was the same all right.  He couldn’t  think a single thought before another would crowd its way to the front of his panic.

Thinking about thinking made it worse.  How could he think?  How should he think?  Tulip bulbs don’t think; they have no mind.  A rip of pain ran through him, cutting like a side-splitting sliver.  Deprived of thinking, they can’t.  Again the jagged sliver cut.   He screamed out loud in perfect silence.  It must be the thought that stung.  “Don’t think that tulips don’t -” he almost thought it again.  It still hurt.  He settled that he was a tulip bulb not deprived of mind, but depraved.

It’s a dream, he thought to himself, his thoughts unceasing.  Talking consoled more than just thinking did, so he spoke inwardly as loud as he could.  Or outwardly, he wasn’t sure.  Taking stock, he wondered when it first occurred to him that he was a tulip.  He laughed again until he shed a tear.  He was uncertain.  It seemed so long ago.  He wished he could dry the tear on his cheek.  Past the stinging think, past the laughter that didn’t laugh.  He didn’t have a cheek so it must be on a bud or something.  It started somewhere there, there where he first began to laugh.  He still felt like laughing.  Such a silly dream to have.  He wished he could stretch.  Best to wait it out.

So he waited.  Sitting there in his little black plastic pot of soil on the bay windowsill in the kitchen, he waited.  He waited for fourteen and a half days.  And then he sprouted.

The waterings were the worst.  Daily they came. They were miserable.  It felt to John like he had made a mess in his bed.  Or that he had forgotten his shoes and walked into the rain.  Perfectly good ground became slop to simply stoop in.  It set things out of order, and he had come to hate disorder.  Oh there was disorder all right.  Like the time someone bumped his pot and spun him around to face the coffee pot brewing and he missed a sunrise.  It took him an exhausting day to stretch around so he could see the garden again, just in time for nightfall.  Or the time when soil was added to his pot and some was dropped onto the counter and left.  It was like being paralyzed and pooping beside the toilet and not being able to lean over and clean it up.  It was disorderly and as embarrassing as it was frustrating.

The sunshine was best.  He smiled when he saw the sun.   Besides his green stem, though, something else grew; the truth that he was indeed a tulip.  It loomed like the window; big and invisible.  I’m a tulip, he thought.  Out loud he would say it; “A tulip.”  But none of the other plants in the little bay window heard.  They didn’t seem to be anyone, not one of them.  Occasionally he would express his thoughts to the prettiest flower in the bay; a carnation or whatever it was.  It did what carnations do.  Nothing.  He named it the tarnation carnation.  While John didn’t think a single normal thought anymore (he was certain of that), he always felt better in the sunshine.  The warmth was like a hug.  He would squint and faintly smile.  No, he thought, it was no smile.  But it felt like a smile.  So he kept doing it whenever the sun shone in his bay.  If only he could go where it was, or if only it would stay.

Weeks turned into months and it was during that time that the most glorious thing happened.  He was brought outside into the wonderful fresh air of spring and was planted by his wife in the garden among other tulips.  He was surprised how excited he was to see them, excited like the first day he sprouted.  It was the first time he had noticed another tulip, while being a tulip that is, and they were tall and green and beautiful to look at.  And so were the other flowers that dotted the rich black soil so carefully laid.  The garden was lovely and more colourful than he ever noticed from the bay window.  Yet he didn’t bother speaking to his wife who pressed his feet into the cold, deep soil since he knew, from vain yelling, he couldn’t yell.  But he didn’t hesitate to holler when he saw the other tulips.

“Hey!”  he yelled to them.  “Hey are any of you guys-” he stopped.  How do you ask somebody if they’re a tulip?  Or was he asking a tulip if it was a somebody?  Which discourse to take?  How often had he stopped mid-thought these last months?  He wasn’t sure anymore.  He didn’t keep count.  What was he going to ask?  It didn’t matter.  By now, anyone hearing him would have answered like a long lost traveller yelling back to a search party.  A search party.  That reminded him that he must be missed, mustn’t he?  Did they look for him?  Did they stop?  What did they conclude?  “How did this happen?” he groaned, unbecoming of a tulip.  After several peaceable months panic set in again.  He yearned for daylight; he hated nights like tonight.  They went on and on.  He hated all the nights.  Then it happened.

One morning, as if something unzipped, untied, unburdened within him, he opened.  He stretched long arms he didn’t have far into the sky it seemed.  Mornings in the garden always made him feel the most human.  He reached toward the little bay window into the shady humidity, certain all that watering was unnecessary.  At about mid-morning the bright rays of the still morning sun would peak over the fence.  John would always play a little beckoning game of ”come-to-me” just before the sunlight reached him.  He pretended the rays were little children, hesitant to come to his warming arms.  Then, when the leap was finally made, when the shine spilled over, it was like a long, lost reunion.  Or maybe the sun was playing with him as the child, thus the hug.  Either way it was fun.  That was the highlight of his day.  The worst was yet to come.  Today was Saturday and Saturday was lawn-mowing day.

The whole garden seemed to tense up.  Even the puckered lips of lilies seemed to tuck a little.  It wasn’t the lawnmower that upset everything.  It was obnoxious and disturbed the peace to be sure.  It was the hated whipper snipper.  Anarchy on a string.  One small mistake and wham!  He’d seen it happen and it looked painful.  If only he had been planted further back.  The only consolation was that lawn-mowing day was always a sunny day and afterward everyone would lie quietly, warming in the rays as if recovering, meditating.  Today he was spared; only the grass blades at his toes were hit.

The summer flew by and John grew to enjoy the pleasant routine of witnessing weekend backyard activities, from the bumblebees that tickled his stigma to the spiders that spun their web to his frame.  A most pleasing experience, however, was the first time a hummingbird pecked at his ovaries.   That was the day he started thinking again.  Ovaries.  Why does he have ovaries? How did he know he had ovaries?  He didn’t know tulips had ovaries until…from the hummingbird he just knew.  In moments like these John was glad to be alone.  He blushed as the vibrating little tip prodded past his style and stigma.  Almost as good as sunshine, he opined.  He blushed again as the little bird flipped to another tulip.  Amazing as his first pollination experience was, his real fascination was that (perhaps because he had no eyes?) he could see every single flap of the hyper birds wing.  Stunning.  Until it all stopped one Sunday.

At dawn he was annoyed that the grating grass had grown taller than usual; nobody had cut it the day before.  His wife didn’t come out to the deck to drink her morning coffee and read her book anymore.  Weed picking had become one of his favourite things to watch, too, but it didn’t happen.  The children didn’t come to the back yard to play.  And the barbeque was gone.  It was like the whole family up and moved away, taking the whipper snipper with them and leaving John behind.

Things got worse.   First there was a quiet but annoying noise he hadn’t heard before.  Next he noticed, for the first time ever, that he was thirsty. He began to panic once again.   He was always watered, and well at that.  Fresh morning dew was just extra.  But now he yearned for morning dew.  He didn’t know tulips had to be watered so much.  Not until now.  He was thirsty and there was nobody to give him water and the afternoon sun was getting hotter.  The garden humidity was too humble and timid; it was suffocating.  Everything was coming undone.  For the first time in a long time, he stretched out his voice as if to be heard.  But there was no voice.  Only a dry gasp came out.  He did the only thing that had ever worked in such situations; he waited.

The sound of a raindrop bouncing off his forehead awakened him.  He felt a cramp throughout his body and closed his eyes again.  Another raindrop. Another.  One absorbed into his flaking skin and, strangely, he drank it.  His parched lips closed around the next drop and as the rain continued to fall, he gathered his strength.  It occurred to him that he had slumped over and passed out.  He didn’t know for how long, but it ached and that usually meant at least a nights worth of sleeping wrong.  He stretched upward to see tall grass that had grown up around the garden.  What a horrible, achy feeling, he thought as he straightened.  He bumped something before he reached full height and heard that annoying, grating sound again.   It was loud now and came from some sort of foul smelling weed, the most ugly, unkempt thing he ever saw.  One of its droopy branches arched across his back in a rude fashion, keeping him bent over. It stunk, it was ugly, and it was noisy.  He didn’t like it one bit.  What little strength he had he spent for naught in trying to unwrap himself from it.  He’d trade the stinking thing for the stinging think if he could, but couldn’t remember what it was.  This, he concluded, was not good.

Things were all messed up.  He began to despair.  He saw the lilies lilting low and thought he would cry.  A while ago he had fallen asleep or slipped into a coma or something.  He wanted to go there again.  No tear rested on his cheek as it once had when he laughed so hard, tucked safely in his pot in the little bay window beside the tarnation carnation.  Even the rain had stopped.  But the pain lingered on.   And the noise.   Stupid weed.   ”Oh where has everyone gone?”  he sobbed to himself.  It had always been to himself.  Would the sun ever shine through the tall, tall grass?  Would the tickle-bees come or would the hummingbird hum past the weed?  A leaf fell close from the tree above onto a carnation that folded over and died.  How hadn’t he noticed tarnation so near him?  Time slipped away.

John’s last memory was a dim view of a face he knew.  Her warm, dainty hand stretched between the snowflakes and down, down among the weeds to lift his fallen countenance.  It was his wife.   He could see her.  She had come back for him.  There were a dozen dying flowers lying frozen but she came to him, him of all in the barren garden.  She held up his chin and smiled directly at him, ever his and he forever hers.  He bathed in her grace like rain, like the baby rays of gold he used to hold and smiled faintly, irresistibly.

“Oh John,” she said, speaking to him for the first time.  He felt like he was coming back to life, as if becoming a man again.

“John.” she said again into his face.  “JOHN!”

“What!” he yelled back, hearing his own voice for the first time.  The lights were out and everything was sweaty.

“You’re snoring.”

Sitting up in bed, stuck wet to the sheet like a mummy, John shivered and moaned at the flu-ish pain in his joints.  He saw his chilly feet sticking out from the sheet.  It was a dream.  It had all been a dream.

“A tulip?” his voice cracked.  He bent over the sheets in a hoarse laughter.  “Ovaries!” he coughed, gasping for more air to laugh twice as hard.

“Shush!” said his wife in her loudest whisper. “You’ll wake up the kids.”  She pulled for more covers that were stuck tight around John still laughing across the bed.  He caught his breath.

“Hun?” he whispered.

“What,” she sighed.

“Do we have any-” He couldn’t say it without chuckling.  He tried again. “Do we have any tulips?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, exasperated, rolling into her pillow.

He paused.  “Do you water them enough?”

“Go to sleep.”

“Well, show them to me in the morning, ok?”

“Fine. Go to sleep now.”

Despite wanting to do just that, John unwrapped himself and slumbered to the ensuite for a drink from the tap.  He splashed cool water on his face and wiped it dry in the mirror.  Everything was like before.  Everything was in order.  In tomorrows sun he would water the tulips and tell them everything was all right, now and always.

THE END