Saragun

Calling the Garden of Contempt

Just yesterday I realized there was not a post scheduled for this day in final semi-private month of Saragun Springs.

That will not do.

But I cannot move myself to bash around the rerun cabinet, just yet. That feels lazy, and the gods have a way of punishing lazy people by extending the “to do” list. It is a common and annoying punishment that I am tired of experiencing. So, I will add something new.

When seeking something new, the time honored and much revered concept of “Complaining” usually runs to the front of my mind. Oh, my head is a rich field of complaints. Vexations everywhere. Recently there was yet another ugsome development in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Complaint Field in my mind.

You see, Chubby Checker was just voted in. I personally have nothing against Chubby, I admire someone who can make a good living off one song that he did not write nor even recorded first. That takes perseverance and a lot more than luck. And I must congratulate him on appearing at least once in my memory, in every year I have been alive, which, sigh, is getting to be an ungainly sum. For me, you cannot have The Peppermint Twist without Chubby Checker.

Still, I have always been under the impression that a Hall of Fame is for the very best. That such exists to extol the greatest in a field. A place in which the difference between Great and good is clearly marked. The Beatles and Ray Charles are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and damn well deserve it. But the addition of Chubby tells me there are people out there, people in charge of safeguarding the excellence of music history, who believe that Chubby Checker is of the same grade as, say, Nobel laureate Bob Dylan.

You have got to be kidding.

Chubby had been pissing and moaning about his exclusion for a number of years. I will not blame him for that, no doubt he is reasonably involved with the fame level of Chubby Checker. But I cannot help but think that he got in because the Hall got tired of his whining about it. Like Cher (who for me is better qualified than Chubby but hardly compares in quality to someone like Etta James), who bitched loudly saying she’d never accept, but who did not let the ink dry on her invitation when asked.

The Moral: You Can Complain Yourself Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Maybe the tactic will swell the hall to include the 1910 Fruitgum Company. Or, how about, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, ? and the Mysterians?

Anyway, I do not believe that any Hall of Fame should adopt the Participation Trophy standard.

Ah, here we are at the point where this is long enough to be a post.

Thank you again Garden of Contempt!

Leila

Saragun Verse: Ode to the Bought and Sold

Such a pettifog, he

Scheming and placating,

Somehow forgetting the gods

Who foreclose on borrowed truth

Such an obsequity, she

Parroting upstairs melodies

Forgetting there are no loopholes

For heads tucked in the noose

It begins as sweet stuff

Everyone on the line

Everyone plenty good enough

Graham crackers and story time

Dreams on wind dried sheets

Stories with morals to be learned

Yet the cash machine must collect

Between the crib and the urn

Such a cynic, me

Listing and berating

Laughter without smiles

And when my phone rings

It kills without style

BehindThePearlyGates.com by Irene Allison

(Note: Please note I was still using my first name when I wrote this eleven years ago. Call it vanity, call it tripe, call it home, but this story, now published, means that every thing I have ever “submitted” somewhere has been “accepted.” Boowahahaha. ‘t is of the season and has the distinction of getting rejected twice by Literally Stories though submitted only once. What Einstein said about madness can also be attributed to persistence–Merry Christmas! Leila)

I’ve recently stacked my Internet access up to Heaven. Literally. Though pricey, I find BehindThePearlyGates.com (BTPG) worth the expense. The site gives me an up close and personal glimpse into the fey doings of God’s government (which, interestingly, is about as organized as that of a pirate ship). Just the other day I signed in and found myself connected to a scandal that had been lurking on the books since 1843.

Upon signing in to the site, a precocious and sometimes indigestible little boy Angel named Somerset ( whose voice comes off like that of Truman Capote being channeled through a rubber ducky), greets you by name and proceeds to give you the dish on what’s on the dock that day. Sometimes it’s Soul Judging (my personal favorite), other times it’s Smiting (“Yee-ouch,” according to Somerset), and once in awhile God will just sit there and go on a rant about the lack of clarity in prayers. There’s never a dull moment at BTPG.

All the action takes place in the Great Hall, which is nothing but a blinding white expanse in which only God, a throne , and whomever God has a beef with are present.

I see God as a short, somewhat rumpled woman who has a talent for losing her left earring during the scrum of the day. This is because God has arranged it that when you look at and listen to her you see and hear yourself–even though nothing God does or says is likely to remind you of yourself. It doesn’t matter how many people look at and listen to God at the same time, everybody “gets” him- or herself. Even the visually and hearing impaired “see” and “hear” their shapes and tones in their mind’s eye. However, this isn’t done to bring us closer to God. Since we are beings that have free will, God reflects your form as a reminder of whose fault it is when things go wrong between the two of you.

Somerset announced that the scandal involved the Three Ghosts of Christmas. And as the “Triumvirate” stood nervously before God on her throne (a seat that adjusts to its beholder), I had no doubt that each member of the “Treacherous Trio” (as snarky little Somerset kept calling them) that each one saw himself seated there, examining a scroll, and making unhappy noises to himself. The Ghosts appeared to be rightfully mortified, and judging from the sideways glances they cast between each other, it seemed to me that each Ghost was considering throwing the other two under the bus, so to speak.

God suddenly tossed the scroll into the air and it vanished with a “foom” and puff of green smoke. She (as me) leaned forward and smiled at the Ghosts. (Oh, I had been working an apricot ascot and an old time pince nez at work that day, which has nothing to do with anything other than I like bragging my thrift store finds up.)

“Tell me, Ghost of Christmas Past,” God said sweetly to an individual who looked like a clean shaven garden gnome, “I’ve got three trillion prayers on hold–Which do I answer, which do I cast into the pit?”

Even though he was very small, the Ghost spoke with a cultured baritone voice. “Why I’d be lost, Your Highness, for I lack Your infinite wisdom.”

“Present!” God called out to the middle Ghost who looked an awful lot like a Hell’s Angel in drag.

“What would you do in the given situation. And if I really were you, I’d be careful not to feed me the same bullshit that your brother has tried to serve up.”

Both the Past and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sidestepped away from their middle brother as though he had cholera. The consensus in various BTPG chatrooms has no love lost between the Present and his siblings, and that when it comes to bus throwing under, he is without peer. Of course the Triumvirate already knew what they were on the carpet of all carpets for, but only the Present was rash enough to make an early mention of it, which is exactly what he proceeded to do. “Your Majesty,” the Ghost of Christmas Present said with a gruff yet gregarious voice, “I know of no prayers addressed to me for I am a humble servant, but I do know that these two here,” he added with an all inclusive left-to-right shift of his eyes, “and old Marley had been as thick as thieves, if Your Grace will pardon the expression.”

A sour expression fell over God’s face. I didn’t know that my face was so good at conveying contempt.

“To Come!” God called energetically to a gangly, seven-foot Goth body-hoodie who held a staff in one bony hand. Even though the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed no visage, the spirit had affected a “too cool for school” posture that God had obviously picked up on and did not like. The Ghost started at hearing his name, but he quickly regained his insolent composure.

“How nice that you’re awake,” God said. “I know you don’t speak, but if you’ll favor me with one thump of your stick for yay, two for neigh, I ask, do you hold with tattlers?”

A pair of enthusiastic wallops echoed through the Great Hall.

“Neither do I,” God said. “But now that the subject of this interview has been awkwardly and prematurely brought to light, I feel that I best remind all of you that further lying, backstabbing, and disrespect might prevent a still possible happy ending. Am I clear?”

The Ghosts, even the mute To Come, assured God that she had been clear. Crystal, if you’ll pardon the expression.

The scroll that had foomed and puffed out of existence earlier, reappeared in God’s hands. She read from it aloud:

“On 24 December 1843, a punished soul by the name of Jacob Marley visited his odious former business partner, one Ebeneezer Scrooge, of London. Marley proceeded to give Scrooge insider information on what would happen to him after death if Scrooge didn’t mend his stingy, evil ways.” God looked up from the scroll and trained her gaze on the Present. “Sirrah, please be so good as to refresh me on what happens to usuers and misers upon crossover.”

The Ghost of Christmas Present cleared his throat and said, “They must carry a chain that they had girded on willingly in life, then walk among their fellow beings after death for not having done so in life.”

“And?”

“Um-well,” the ghost stammered, “they are to lament the situation because they have lost their power to interfere on behalf of the good, My Liege.”

“Would you also be as kind to tell everyone who decides on both the punishment and how long it shall last?”

“You, on both accounts,” the Present mumbled.

“Come again?”

“You, Your Grace.”

God then trained her gaze on the Ghost of Christmas Past. “You’ve been around long enough to know that every single groaning spirit claims that his or her punishment exceeds the crime, and that they have been made to suffer forever–even though it is known to all that I will eventually unclap their chains, after a suitable interval, and then place them in a position from which they may rise or fall on the strength of his or her imagination. Old Marley had been in evil business for three-and-twenty years; I was going to keep him fettered for six-and-forty. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone had improved his situation after just seven years had passed.”

The Ghosts found the floor extremely interesting.

God continued: “Your actions restored Marley’s power to do good. You allowed him to go to Scrooge with a warning. When that didn’t work, the three of you, on Marley’s behest, got it across to the old bastard that Marley hadn’t been kidding.”

God rose to her feet and began to pace tro in fro with obviously mock concentration. She rubbed her chin and said, “Funny, I don’t recall greenlighting this project. Nor do I recall anyone proposing this sort of scheme. Maybe I’m getting old. It’s either that or someone has made a very bold move.”

Suddenly, a historic event occurred in Heaven. a real stunner. It even caused Sommerset to drop an F-Bomb in the background. The ever-silent ghost of Christmas Yet to Come spoke: “But you said we could have free will,” a positively angst-ridden, teenage boy-like voice screeched.

I had never seen God taken by surprise before. “When did that thing learn how to speak?” She asked the room in general.

“Hey,” To Come screeched some more, “I’m right here! People shake in their shoes when they see me coming, so how about a little respect?”

“My apologies,” God said. “And you’re right, you do have free will, but it wouldn’t be worth much if there weren’t consequences for using it. However, I am willing to admit that this little stunt you’ve pulled off has turned out well. It was done for the sake of kindness and hope. And to prove to my naysayers who claim I’m a vicious bully, I will not take actions against anyone involved, even though each one of you have it coming.”

A great, palpable relief swept over the Ghosts. This was going much better than any of them had dared to dream. Still, I’ve been on the site enough to know that God is most dangerous in the “however.”

“However,” God said, “this doesn’t mean that there won’t be some necessary changes made. The Triumvirate will continue to serve in its time honored manner, but there are three things we need to address before we can set this business aside forever.”

The Ghost of Christmas Past sensed that God needed to hear something from the group, if only to set up her rehearsed lines. “How may we please Your Highness?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” she said. “The first matter is a condition not subject to alteration: pull another end-around like this one in the future, and there’ll be a sudden need for the Three Ghosts of Feces–Are we met?”

Oh, yes, yes indeedy.

“Two is the big one,” God said. “You see, when you altered Scrooge, you altered the life path of one Timothy Cratchit who died nine-and-eighty years later than he should have. Master Cratchit expressed his gratitude by siring eleven children, who in turn added an average of nine persons apiece to the population, and so forth. Lots and lots of and so forth. Enough and so forth to fill a medium-sized city, nowadays. Since the Triumvirate is responsible for these persons, it gets to be God to them. You’ll get the opportunity to watch free will exercised by this randy clan all over the globe. You will listen to their prayers and keep track of their sins. You will endure the blame they cast at me when the things they do go wrong. You will decide how each one will be classified upon his and her reckonings. Is that clear?”

It was everything but clear, but the Ghosts kept that to themselves.

“It’s a big job,” God said, “I recommend that you divide the world in thirds. And I don’t want to hear any whining about this, either. I do seven billion plus, each and every minute of each and every day. You’d better get busy.”

“But you said there were three things,” To Come whined. For a second I thought that the Present was going to take the Future’s staff away from him and cudgel the punk with it.

“Ah, that’s right,” God said. No one had been fooled into believing that she had actually forgotten something, yet that doesn’t stop her from pretending to do so from time to time. ”Just for the sake of my own curiosity, what moved the three of you to do such a thing?”

The Past spoke for the Triumvirate: “A man named Dickens tells a wonderful tale, Sire. We got the idea from him.”

An incredulous expression bloomed in God’s face (since she was me, I recognized the expression as the one I must have had on my face the first time I watched Red Dwarf). Then she began to laugh, long and hard. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and they took the remainder of my morning mascara with them, which caused God to look like a raccoon. She finally gained her composure, saw that the Ghosts were staring at her, and said: “You’re still here?”

The Ghosts took the hint and wasted no time getting gone.

One of the coolest perks that subscribers get for signing up (and of course, paying for) with BTPG.com, is a personal word from God at the conclusion of that day’s business.

“Irene Allison!” God bellowed. “I know you are watching due to the slovenly shape I’ve taken.” Her/my face filled my screen.

“Yes, O Spell Checker of the Soul, how may I be of service,” I replied.

“Your family hails from Ireland, does it not?”

“Yes,” I said. “That thing you did to the potatoes in the nineteenth-century made immigrating to America necessary.”

“”How I love the Irish, and not for just their long memories. You, Irene, have a spot of English in you as well.”

“A Cratchit?” I asked. “But weren’t they a fictional family?”

“We observe no difference between the made up and the natural born here in Heaven,” God said. “If something invented sticks and prospers, it’s the same as real in my mind.”

“So you’ve got a Wizard of Oz, a Dracula, and Old mother Hubbard, up there?”

“Precisely.”

“May I ask what it was that you found so funny earlier?” When I asked that, something inside my mind groaned. I’ve often been exposed to God’s surprisingly puerile sense of humor. the thing that groaned articulated itself, and told me that I had just done what God had wanted me to do.

“You write, don’t you, Irene?” God asked, and I spied a juvenile glee in her/my eyes. “I mean, you’re hardly Jane Austen, but you do scribbles, do you not?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you know what writers are, Irene?” Here, God had difficulty not laughing halfway through her own straight line. Now, I knew what was coming, but when you are conversing with the Supreme Being of the Universe, it’s best to play along.

“They’re humbug! Humbug! I tell you!” God said. And she began laughing and snorting laughter out her nose (this is one embarrassing to look at item that I have never done). I thought I had heard her little toady Somerset join in with her laughter. This is when I quietly signed out of the site and went into the kitchen to fix myself a martini. A double.

I thought I saw the shape of the Ghost of Yet to Come reflected in the door of my microwave. He was writing something on a scroll and shaking his head in a tut tut sort of way. I laid a dish towel over the microwave and made my drink a triple.

Whatever happened to solidarity by Michael Bloor

(Note–Not everything this month before we go public is a rerun; and today we bring you a fresh one by our friend, Michael Bloor–LA)

Andy and Davie were on their usual walk, along the banks of the Allanwater as far as the wooden footbridge, and then back again. They were discussing Scotland’s nail-biting victory last week over the Danes, sending the Scots to the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1998. Andy was English and had little interest in football, but he’d been deeply impressed by the tremendous, spontaneous upwelling of joy across the entire Scottish nation that the game had caused. Davie was trying to explain that it wasn’t just about the result, but the circumstances – the manner of the win. Three of the four goals were truly things of beauty. The match took place at Glasgow’s Hampden Park in front of a delirious home crowd, screened live and free-to-view in every home and every pub. It followed years and years of failure to qualify – some of the present team being unborn at the time Scotland had last qualified.

Andy nodded good-humouredly, but Davie could tell that he hadn’t yet got his point across. He tried again:

‘I was ten when I first started going to the football. In ‘The Boys Enclosure’ (admission: 9 pence – 5p. in new money). It was always packed solid, but you were always among friends, you roared, you booed, you sang, and when they scored you all swept forward like a mighty wave. Like I said, I was ten, and for the first time I felt a part of a whole. That was what Scotland felt when that lovely fourth goal hit the net in the last minute of extra time: it felt that we were part of a whole. It was a feeling of solidarity.’

‘OK, yeah, I’ve got it now, Davie. Solidarity: maybe I didn’t recognise it ’til you said it. Solidarity eh? I thought that had disappeared back in 1985.’

‘1985?? Ah, you mean Polmaise?’

[Polmaise Colliery, or the remains of it, lay just nine miles away. All through the year-long miners’ strike in 1984-85, the Polmaise miners never posted pickets at the mine gates to try to deter fellow miners from returning to work: they didn’t need to. They knew that Polmaise miners were all, to a man, solidly behind the strike. Polmaise was famous: they’d previously struck for 10 whole months back in 1938; they’d already been out on strike for a fortnight in 1984, before the national miners’ strike was declared. When the national strike was broken, a whole year later, and the union voted for a return to work, Polmaise, alone, stayed out for a further week.]

‘Yeah, I mean Polmaise. That was solidarity, Davie. I was there, you know, with the whole village at the gates to applaud the lads coming off the last shift, when the Thatcher government closed the pit two years later.’

‘Good for you, Andy. I understand: that was solidarity. So, instead, what would you call our nation of leaping hearts when the ref blew the final whistle at Hampden Park the other night?’

‘Maybe Communion? A transcendent thing, shared and remembered. ‘

‘Ah, like Archie Gemmill’s solo goal against the Dutch in the World Cup Finals in Argentina in 1978?’

‘Ha, if you like.’

‘OK, I’ll settle for communion over solidarity. By the way, do you know what William McIlvanney, your favourite Scots author, did when he got the publisher’s advance for his first novel?’

‘Beats me, Davie.’

‘He jacked in his teaching job in Kilmarnock and headed off to watch Scotland and Archie Gemmill in the 1978 World Cup Finals in Argentina.’

Andy smiled, but he was absorbed in watching a Dipper fossicking in the Allanwater shallows over at the opposite bank. Part of the attraction of Dippers is that, like Puffins, they are both comical in appearance and surprisingly successful in their daily tasks. Dippers are about the same size as a thrush, but black and definitely portly in appearance, with a big white bib under their chin. They are called ‘Dippers’ because they constantly bow and nod their heads up and down, like manic Victorian butlers. Yet these clown-like birds are surprisingly swift underwater swimmers and efficient finders of caddisfly larvae on the bottoms of rivers, lochs and burns.

Davie followed Andy’s gaze. ‘That Dipper looks perfectly happy on his own over there. Maybe we don’t really need communion with others?’

‘Ah, but he’s in communion with Nature.’

A Saragun Springs Rerun: The Great Book of Angharad by Michael Bloor

(Introduced by Puck the Squirrel, in the image, a resident of Evergreen Park, Bremerton, WA, USA)

This week it is our pleasure to rerun stories by contributors to our site this past year.

We are going public in January, and, yes, this rerun thing is a naked attempt to fill the days until the new business begins, without first creating new work.

We are all about the TRUTH in the Springs.

But that does not mean a lack of quality. This is a fine work by Mick, and since many more eyes are trained toward the site than before, it, and the items that follow deserve a second go.

This also allows me to break in the link feature, which we hope you will hit now…

The Great Book of Angharad

Tell Only the Good Parts and Leave the Rest by Leila Allison

(First published in 2015)

It’s three feet farther to hell for people who jump off Torqwamni Bridge. The City of Charleston has recently installed an eighteen-inch extension to the span’s rail. In my opinion, the city has wasted its money. The Torqwamni goes up to a fatal height almost immediately, and at its middle it stands better than ten stories above the churning and hungry Port Washington Narrows. Only Serious People go over that bridge; less than serious types, those who need just a little attention to feel better inside, never go to Torqwamni Bridge to perform on the off-chance that they might fall off. No, I don’t see a foot-and-a-half—in both directions—getting in the way of a well prepared and dedicated serious person.

Such ran through my mind as I drove Gram to yet another doctor’s appointment. At the age of twenty, I was getting awfully familiar with doctors’ clinics and the technologies designed to prevent, for as long as possible, what I had once heard described as an “end of life event.” Nobody speaks frankly about anything at doctors’ clinics after the insurance is settled. In a decrepit and mournful sort of way, visiting any of Gram’s phalanx of medicos was like going to Neverland; but instead of recapturing the spirit of youth, we found Tinkerbell in bifocals and Peter Pan attached to a colostomy bag.

It was a typical Pacific Northwest March morning. The bipolar weather changed its mood every ten minutes or so. Wind driven slaps of rain, hail, and perhaps, locusts, would suddenly stop and give over to sunshine so cheery that I was certain that it had to be up to something. Sure enough, the lovely light soon faltered and the whole evil process began again from the top.

“Reena?” Gram said, not at all sounding like the mindless old woman who had earlier killed a half hour whining like a two-year-old because she couldn’t find the hideous “rose” blouse she that she already had on.

“Hmmm?” At that time I was struggling with the wind as to hold my lane on the bridge.

“Tell me we’re goin to VIP’s for bloody Marys; tell me we’re goin for butts—Tell me anything but Group Death.”

“I thought you were dead,” danced on the tip of my tongue. But as I looked over at Gram, I saw the woman I had known and loved for life. It broke my heart knowing that her soul was still in there; trapped like a miner given up for dead; unrescuable; a flickering flame eating the last of the oxygen.

Gram and my late Grandpa Henry had raised me after my mother, their daughter, had abandoned me in my infancy. They were in their late middle-years at the time, and both were hard working sorts who never let the drudgery of their menial jobs get in the way of having fun. This fun included booze. So what? They had loved me and had gone out of their way to see to my happiness.

Not long after Grandpa Henry had died from a mercifully swift heart attack, Gram had suffered the first in a series of small strokes. For five snarly and prideful years, Gram had fought back while keeping her dignity. Even though death had meant to take her one piece at a time, Gram had kept her sense of humor. I remember the morning when Gram had to weigh herself to see if she had accrued fluid due to her failing kidneys. “Christ, I’m getting fat,” she had mumbled through a Winston. Upon seeing that she had lost three pounds, Gram winked and said: “Probably cancer.”

But even the best of us have only so much good dying in our souls. And on the afternoon Gram had to endure another stroke that wouldn’t kill her, by itself, she knew that the game was up. “Reena, honey,” Gram had whispered as the ambulance took its customary route to our house across the street from the Ivy Green Cemetery, “I’m so sorry about this…There’s still time…Time to get the Demerol…”

Dear God, how it used to be: The laughter; the living and dying for the Seattle Mariners; the childlike looking forward to payday; ashtrays which resembled beaver dams; last night loganberry flip glasses left on the “occasional” table; watching Thin Man marathons on TCM over popcorn. Those, and more, yes, were the backdrop of my happy childhood. But, at twenty, the roles of adult and child had been swapped around. This was a poor trade because I couldn’t provide Gram with happy memories; that part of her life was over. Gram wasn’t going to get better because the ravages of time and choice had ensured that there was no level of better for Gram to get back to. Still, within it all, I had learned something of value: The worst universe possible is a godless void in which a sentient chemical accident know as humankind is the sole inhabitant. Yet here, even here, especially here, if an otherwise meaningless being does right by a fellow meaningless being minus the promise of heaven or the threat of hell, as my grandparents had done for me, life has a meaning, and it should be wailed for upon its diminishing, more so than upon its passing.

I had time to think all this because whatever appropriately snarky remark I had shot back at Gram after her “Group Death” comment had landed on a mind that changed even more rapidly than the weather.

“Hmmm?” Gram replied vacantly, very much sounding like the mindless old woman who had whined about the rose blouse.

“Nothing…Nothing at all.”

How I hate doctors’ clinics: decor that is offensive because it is designed to be the opposite; pushcart muzak around only to stave off silence; fellow wranglers tending their charges; Everest College-types behind counters secretly texting their boy friends. But, mostly, its the walkers I hate most. There’s something about a cane that allows its user to retain his or her independence; walkers are cribs on wheels. You can smack someone with your cane if that someone offends you. All you can do in a walker is shuffle forward, head down, as though you now weigh more on Earth than you would on Jupiter.

Sometime during my brief life, civility, actual and feigned, has been, as Gram would’ve said, before the loss of her mind, “shitcanned.” Once upon a time strangers used to speak to other strangers by formal address until they were given permission to do otherwise. Perhaps I’m proof that even a twenty-year-old girl can have a lot of humbugging fogy in her; still, there’s nothing more irritating than have someone unknown to you call you by your first name as though you are a dog or a toddler.

“Has Elizabeth fasted?” The Everest College-type asked me upon check-in.

“How should I know what Elizabeth is up to?” I said cheerfully. “She could be off waxing her tramp-stamp, for all I know. Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Elsbeth Allison has fasted.”

Surprise! My little remark pissed the Everest College-type off something awful. Unless I was horribly mistaken, the evil light that shone through her previously bored expression communicated her desire to watch me starve slowly in a sealed room.

“Have a seat,” the E.C.-type said through clenched teeth. “The nurse will be with you.”

“Why thank you, um, Misty,” I said after I made a big show of reading her name badge. “I’m sure it won’t take too long for that to happen—even though it will give you and I less time together.”

Dante would lose his mind if he could see that humankind hasn’t taken The Inferno as a cautionary tale, but has used it as a blueprint from which to devise smaller hells on Earth.

Call this an overreaction, if you must, but I have spied concentric circles of increasing misery inside every doctors’ clinic I’ve ever been to. The first circle has to be the waiting room; which is guarded (as you already know) disinterested E.C.-types who wear pastel scrubs and too much makeup. The second circle involves a mute tech who points at an old timey scale better suited for weighing livestock than humorous human beings. The Nurse (who is likely the brains of the outfit) inhabits the third circle. Every The Nurse is an intimidating and omniscient person who has learned her (never his) skills from repeated watchings of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and/or Godzilla.

The fourth circle is excruciating. This si where you cool your heels in a cruddy cubicle waiting for the doctor to come talk at you as if you have the IQ of a pineapple. Old Gram (the person whom I knew and loved, not her insufficient doppleganger) used to go to special pains to make herself unendurable for the doctor whenever she felt she had waited too long: “There’s dustbunnies ‘neath that table—Hope y’all wipe better than that.” That sort of unendurable.

I heard muffled chatter, hard by. I imagined the doctor reading (probably for the first time) the results of Gram’s last blood draw (she’d have another on the way out; think circle five). I imagined him being able to give names to each of her few remaining red cells as though they were a box of kittens. I imagined nothing good. Instead, I loaded my mind with unendurable remarks enough for two.

Dr. Zale made his entrance. Though I had been taking Gram to see this particular physician for over a year, I always got the impression that every time Dr. Zale saw Gram was like the first time. To be fair, Gram 2.0 has never been all that memorable. If she and Dr. Zale had known each other a bit longer, as little as three or four months, he would have brought a whip and a chair.

Dr. Zale, however, remembered me. Not by name, but by sight. It did my heart good to have his confident I Am The Scientist, You Are The Zombie demeanor slink off and get replaced with an “Oh, no, not her again,” expression—which, to be frank, I get a lot of.

He smiled weakly. “How are we, this morning?”

“I suppose that depends on what the test results have to say,” I said.

Dr. Zale shrugged and held his weak smile and went over to where Gram was seated, but he never took his eyes off Yours Truly. “How are you today, Mrs. Allison?” he asked, still looking me in the eye.

For our miserable year or so together, I had been struggling to develop an actual opinion about Dr. Zale. His use of Gram as a prop to deliver sarcasm my way ended the struggle.

Something along the line of “Listen, fuckstick, eyes on to whom you’re speaking,” had entered my mouth like a shell slammed into the chamber of a shotgun. And I would have said it too, if a voice hadn’t called out from below the insurmountable slag that over-topped it.

“It’s three feet further to hell for folks who’d jump off the bridge, Dr. Zale,” Gram said. “On the drive over this mornin’, I noticed that the dumbass city put an extension on the Torqwamni’s rail.”

I could actually feel my eyes dilate, and a weird tingling erupted in both my hands and thighs. I sat down heavily on a nearby stool, and I wondered if I was not too young to suffer a stroke of my own.

Dr. Zale became nonplussed; he had never heard Gram speak before, save for yes and no and general gibberish.

Gram looked at me. Though her pallor remained that of old paper, the lightning blue I had always remembered being in her eyes was fully charged. A wicked, lovely, vicious, warm grin had broken out in her face. “We think a lot alike, don’t we Reena baby?”

“Ye-yes, Gram, we sure do,” I replied. I wanted that moment to last forever. But, already, the befuddled fog again gathered between reality and the survivor.