Interlude: The Journals of E.H. Kranklehunt

From the Journals of E.H Kranklehunt.

“You tricksters!” I knocked over the lamps- oil spilling, I knew the vagabonds had come and replaced my maps with fakes. I stood up hitting my head and spilling my sweet drink.  I would not have all my work on this journey and search undone. They come here selling corn mashed with fish and sneak in while I am asleep from my cava. I rushed out shouting, “You tricksters, you vagabonds, you rascals, and rapscallions! My maps! My maps! I must have my maps back!”

      They were still in the camp. Posted up with their shanty tents and foodstuffs; the men in their armor eating and consorting with their pleasure girls. “What would great Jaguar have done with you?”

And they remembered what had been said about the East. From the east would come a man full of nonsense talk and fury.  They turned toward Monsignor Fabricio and began throwing corn husks at him.

Authors Note: Thanks to C.M. Mayo's Daily Five Minute writing exercises for inspiration. http://www.cmmayo.com

Mort and Nito

     The Grey-Eyed girl grabbed hold of his jacket sleeve and jerked him back from the curb as spray of greasy brown pot-hole water geysered up from under the oblivious beeping taxi’s tire.

“Sometimes I think the city is held together by dirty rain water,” Mort said.

“Ha, yeah and rust,” Nito said.

It was raining an all enveloping mist with a few fat cold drops, which would land on the back of Mort’s neck and run down his back. Nito had her hood up but the mist clung to her sweatshirt making it a wet sponge around her.They walked heads bent against the rain, the concrete sidewalk haloed in gasoline rainbows.

“I should of brought an umbrella,” Mort said.

“I don’t believe in umbrellas,” said Nito as she jumped a murky puddle. “We're almost there anyway.”

It was a small Italian restaurant with tinkling glasses, white table clothes, and waiters in black vests and bow ties. They were seated at a small table they were dripping wet and used their cloth napkins to dry their faces and hair.

“To me it’s just like a corpse of crumbling concrete, belching and bursting with noxious gases. We’re just the microbial life that’s left and worse; blow flies and maggots scurrying around trying to make a living off the host, running to catch the bus or thronging in crowds on 5^th ave. stampeding through Penn Station at rush hour. I imagine it’s all liquefying until all that’s left is the polished glass bones of the city,” Mort said rubbing his hands together on the napkin.

“Wow, that’s pretty grim, but I get your analogy.”

The waiter approached; his arms folded behind his back. “Have you decided on a wine sir?”

“No, not yet,” Mort said picking up the menu.

Walking away the waiter turned his nose up in the imperceptible way waiters in expensive restaurants have of doing without overtly offending you or actually turning their noses up.

“That guy was staring at you since we walked in,” Nito said.

“I guess he has something against wet people. I’m used to it- I never carry an umbrella,”

“So you don’t believe in them either, we have something in common,” Nito smiled. “You know, I’ve been staring at you since we sat down too.”

 “You- I like staring at me,” Mort said cracking a thin grin, a wave of heat spread over his pale skin. “You do have a way with those eyes.”

“It’s one of my skills,” Nito said. “Glad you noticed. Do you want to get out of here?” The grey-eyed girl stared down the waiter.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“I know an awesome taco place in the Village.”

Mort and the grey-eyed girl walked and chatted at an easy pace (the rain having let up) through billowing clouds of steam emanating from the belly of the city through the groans and grinding teeth of garbage trucks, grating and slamming dumpsters full of trash and cast off scraps. The bleating and careening metro buses hydraulics hissing , kneeling  like subservient beasts of burden, wailing sirens and shouting, horns beeping and blaring everywhere, jackhammers, and alarms, but none of this interrupts them only makes them raise their voices or turn their head so they can hear each other better.  The lights of the digital signs, the glass of store fronts, stationary stores, smoke shops, porno palaces, 24hr. bodegas selling fruit out on the street lit up with bright flowers dyed every hue, bars and more bars, thrift stores, cleaners, hair and nail salons, trendy shops selling women’s clothes, abandoned empty store fronts, construction sites that turn the street into a maze of corridors and mirrors, the muck of the street an unspeakable combination of human excreta, vomit, dog shit, and leaking garbage bags, exhaust from the constant stream of cabs, cars, trucks, and buses.

“What’s the deal with your friend?” Nito asks.

“Prof. Sign is my friend but he is also my employer.”

“Oh, so are you the Watson to his Sherlock?”

“I guess you could say that, it’s really his story but I keep getting dragged in.”

“What are you working on now?”

Union square lit by the lampposts the trees glistened still dark and wet scrawling there naked branches out into the hazy sky. Mort fumbled his phone out of his pants pocket.

“Fuck!” Mort said looking at his phone.

“What is it?”

“Prof. Sign needs me. Shit, I forgot to turn up the ringer.”

“How long ago did he call?”

“Three hours ago.”