The Ishmael Gradsdovic Papers, part twenty-six


In part twenty-six of the Ishmael Gradsdovic papers, another dream is related...


19 August 1994

I'm having a dream. Tom Waits is playing piano down at Linnaea's Cafe. He's playing some song I've never heard before, closing his eyes, and looking up at the ceiling with his chin to stretch his throat out when he sings.

"You'll take a three-hour tour to no man's heart
A dot on the charts with your name in the corner
And you're busy knitting reeds when the ship crosses the line
Like a slug on the razor sharp horizon
And the signal fire's too late to keep you warm."
B----- and C----- come in and say hi. "Tell me a story," C----- says. I tell them about being awakened to a word spelled much like "Rochfereaux" said over and over on the loudspeaker on the train car we were trying to sleep on at three in the morning as we went through the Alps, only to eventually wake up to find that the front of the train, which we weren't on, went to our intended destination while the back of the train, which we were on, went somewhere else. I didn't think much of that story, though, so I launched into the one about the poor speed freak I terrorized at the Dead show with visions of a Jim Jones-like mass suicide of Deadheads. Total fiction, but well practiced from when I recorded it for the KCPR spoken word show. B----- and C----- both loved it, and said independently, "I could totally see you doing that." Since I was trying to get them to believe the story, this was good, but I like to think I have a less cruel image among my peers.

Although the Linnaea's crowd is very casual, I suddenly feel guilty for telling these stories and interrupting the Waits-provided ambience.

"Your photo album pages aren't even sticky anymore
You've written sabotage into every plan
And there's no clown like a recovering romantic
Suffering a relapse so build a wall around the castle
And laugh curses at the waves."
B----- and C----- get up to go stand in line for cheesecake and Mexican Hot Chocolate at the bar up front. I settle back to people-watch. Outside, in the area in back between the buildings, people are making clay sculptures. Inside, two people are playing chess, a small table is flipping Magic Cards back and forth, and most people are just chatting it up quietly and laughing occasionally. I'm admiring the paintings on the wall, and a bas relief made of crocodile teeth and papier mache made from love letters sent to me by old lovers.

The lights are going dim, almost completely dark, on occasion as the fire raging on the hillsides surrounding the city reaches the incoming wires. I wonder idly if the cafe is safe. The part in back where the people are casting clay doesn't have any exit except for the door back into the cafe. And that in turn has only the swinging wooden barroom-door entrance to the front bar as an exit, which leads to a small corridor occasionally blocked by stools and opening bathroom doors and then finally to the street.

But nobody seems to be concerned. Tom keeps singing:

"So you're invited, Friday, to get sand in your boots
And disguise..."
The bar doors swing open, and people dash for the walls. Tom stops singing, pulls out a cigarette, and walks cooly out the back door. I feel as if there is a spotlight on me. D----- has come in, arm and arm with some fellow about her height, looks like someone who would play the sycophantic assistant to a small-time mobster. I heard about this guy. Part of her new rollerskating rink clique. They go shopping in the Boys' Department for him together. Seems just yesterday she was saying that the idea of dating again made her physically ill. She never liked short guys. Always fell for the tall lanky sort, like me, like whats-his-name.

I pick up a thick wooden chessboard from the table, scattering pieces on the floor. With a smooth motion I hurl it by the corner through the room, where it meets (the same corner) with his baffled forehead. He puts one hand to his head, the other searches for the wall, then he sits down hard and falls over to one side, out cold. "C'mon, baby," I say, lifting my hat and wiping my brow with my sleeve, "we're getting out of here."

I rip the bandana from my neck. "Breathe through this," I say, as I grab her around the waist and search for a strong vine in the smoke. I don't have time to save the others. Clay models are cracking in the heat. I stand on tip-toes and wrap one hand securely around a vine. "Hold on," I say, and swing us over the Crocodile pit, landing with a spine wrenching stretch just on the other side.

Later, after a thrilling motorcycle ride to the airport, we're finally skyward and thoroughly black-and-white. I flick a cigarette out of the cockpit window, over the smouldering remains of the Santa Lucia Wilderness Area. Won't do any harm, I figure. "We'll reach the island in three hours," I say. D----- is still coughing from smoke inhalation, and looks a bit discarded in the torn and burnt remnants of her dress. "I never did give you my sales pitch."

But then, just before the violins and closeups, a propellor fails, then another. The dials are going nuts, and rapping them with calloused knuckles does no good. We're out of sight of land and falling fast. No time to run for parachutes. Fading back you see the plane fall, smoke coming from one engine, the co-pilot's seat strangely empty. I'm reminded of wristwatch tan lines on Roman emperors and asterisk shadows in the O.K. Corral. I grip the controls but back away the plane falls from view off the bottom of the screen.




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