Sheena beat Henry with a tease only, but now it came time to terminate…the tease. She had fun. Not like the first time. The first time she teased a man like this she nearly tossed. The power of her sexuality never tested until the tease test. It marked a demarcation between girl and woman, between victim and villain. Now she teased, sometimes beatings sometimes worse, just to watch them clench. She smiled as Henry unclenched. Sheena was not alone in her wonder and fascination with the male of the species. Men puzzled women. Give men what they want and they leave in triumph. Withhold it and they stay in hope. She never knew why this worked but it did.
“Can I offer you a drink? Wine?” asked Sheena.
The relative non sequitur returned Henry from his temporary confusion.
“Yes, do you have Green Eyes Pinot Noir?” asked Henry. I knew she was kidding about the beating all the time. He checked his trousers, first back then front.
“Did you mean to ask, ‘Do you have Pinot Noir, green eyes?’” answered Sheena, still teasing. “No.” she continued seriously, “I don’t drink red wine. It turns my lips blue”.
Is that how you do it?
“In fact, I don’t drink any grape wine. It weakens my inhibitions…”
That is good to know…that she knows of such things.
“But I do have other types of wine. Fruit?”
Each word she spoke, a drop of sweet potion for Henry’s senses. Each gesture made, a motion of entrancement. Sheena excited his thoughts, accelerated them. He recollected walking into the room fully alert. He remembered that distant moment but now his senses raced as she teased, then pleased him with her kind regard. Now, he slowly but consciously gave in to the abandon her potion offered up.
Abruptly, Henry snapped back from his thoughts. Sheena screeched a short sturdy stool across the bare floor. Henry looked preoccupied, so she recruited this three-legged helper to assist in scaling her tall, lean fruitful rack of wine. Taller now, she perused the slender necks. She twisted them with purpose. He listened to the lilt of her indecipherable comments. He wasn’t sure of her whispers’ intentions. Were they for his ears or for his imagination? Sheena continued her murmuring, her mouth sometimes moving close in, her lips changing color as the ambient light diffused upon them.
Is the Princess from Pandora revealing herself unknowingly?
Suddenly, Sheena spoke, “I have a nice raspberry. You surely won’t be feeling any pain…after a couple of pours”.
So are you back to teasing already?
“I have a nice hibiscus. It helps to regulate body temperature”.
Should that be voluntary or mandatory?
“I have a nice prickly pear”.
Indeed!
Sheena interpreted Henry’s choked response to mean ‘Yes, I would like to try them…or rather it’. Sheena grabbed the “Cactus”. Surprised by its color, the rich fluorescent purple spirits evoked romance and nostalgia. She poured…the flow more like nectar than wine. The long stemmed exquisite promised gratification in the purest sense. The Crystal clarity and veiled motives contrasted, as enchantment always presents.
Sheena placed a glass in Henry’s hand. She placed the cork behind her…this bottle’s destiny already determined. Perhaps Henry wished his near future were as obvious.
As Sheena advanced, Henry noticed the current cork in an extra-large, a giant’s wine glass. 750 milliliters, filled with 751 milliliters of normal sized wine-corks. It sat atop this monument to merriment. Knowing that Henry watched her, she straightened and turned like a ballerina, ready to begin her next part. She approached Henry with her stemware held delicately between the thumb and forefinger.
“Enjoy” said Sheena, sitting her glass on the table beside his, then reaching across to pinch him.
“Ouch, what was that?” said Henry, sipping and squirming.
“I wanted to see if you were still breathing”.
Indeed.
The moment of truth came. Sheena took his hand and led him to the shiny middle door, the door closed and between the whips and the sausage. Henry, in stride, said he didn’t think he was up for this. They both stopped. Sheena pulled something out from her somewhere with her left hand. She bent at the waist, reached around, and tucked it into his right pocket.
Looking down at the skin of Sheena’s briefly and slightly exposed lower back, Henry recalled some vulgarity about bad girls ‘bending at the waist’.
“I know you’ll do fine,” whispered Sheena as she straightened.
In the bedroom:
Everything proceeded in a normal, consensual fashion until Henry blacked out. When he came to, nothing was normal or consensual.
Henry awoke from unconsciousness. His eyelids seemed glued together and he heard terrible sounds and he felt wonderful things and he couldn’t move or stop moving. His eyelid muscles pried at their restraints. They stretched a bit and would have admitted light – but there was none. He screamed so that someone somewhere would hear him but sounds of that night in that room drowned out his pleadings. The wonderful and cruel sensations continued. Almost imperceptibly, a warm liquid began to drip down on to his face and began to free his eyelids.
Henry’s eyelids stretched again and cracked the blindfold. He sensed something or someone above him. His distended senses could only guess at what was happening to him. A spinning, alternating light source allowed his vision to focus and his mind to interpolate the scene:
It’s a cat with a rat squirming in it’s mouth and animal blood is dripping on to my face.
Henry blinked and refocused. The terror rose up in his throat even as the rest of his body vibrated with unknown sensation.
Now, it’s a bear with a salmon flailing in its jaws and an ocean of blood is gushing down upon him.
Henry realized that neither of these things was possible and he let the eyes take another look. He saw clearly now and was relieved. It was neither a cat nor a bear. It was Sheena. Sheena held something between her blue lips and gripped it in her ivory teeth and the thing was moving and blood pulsed from it.
It was a beating heart.
The Morning After
A solitary cobweb floated in stealth, moving with the subtle breezes generated by movements of things below. The attachments it formed kept it from escaping. It submitted to contentment in its corner…and existed long because it could go unnoticed. A fragile existence may continue for a long time but it can’t continue forever.
The bright sun reflected off a shiny surface into Henry’s face. Where was he? Eyes sealed shut but he sensed the light. He could not open his eyelids…again. He remembered something about this…was it a dream? At this current moment, Henry felt his arms pinned at his sides and tasted grit in his teeth and the inhaled dust. He was buried alive.
But wait…he could move his head and there was light shining on his eyelids…he was breathing. Yikes, he had heard about this – commercial organ harvesting! The horror of this thought caused him to force his pinned arms from his sides. The hopelessness of this mutilation caused him to cry in futility.
His tears moistened his eyelids. His eyes peeked through the gauze of crusted sand. He was not in a grave. It was a bathtub. Dirt didn’t cover him. Grout and broken tile covered him. He had not lost any organs…except maybe his mind.
Looking to his right he saw a large hole in the tiled wall; a head size hole; a Henry head size hole. How did this happen? He wasn’t bleeding. His didn’t even have a headache. He simultaneously smelled and saw the reason his skull didn’t crack. Thank god for mildew! He must have crashed his hard head into the soft wall and it gave way. Questions remained, but for now, by the nature of the sounds coming from the adjacent room – the bedroom – he had better, exit with extreme haste.
Something slept, something. It should simply be Sheena or Princess Na’vi or whoever she really was, but no human snored like that. No human could make that vibration continuously both in and out. That deep and satiated resonance next door could tell him something about what happened last night but he wasn’t sticking around and ask questions. It was time to go full coward.
Henry climbed out through the bathroom window. Tumbling on to the porch, he regained his feet in one hysterical gymnastic motion and, it seemed, neither foot touched down again until he was pressing one the accelerator. Now that he felt safe, his instincts forced him to look back and up to 8D. He squinted through crusted eyelids to look at the middle window. It was dark and blue and there was no movement. No silhouette projected itself against the sheers. Henry turned away and drove back towards his lonely life.
Watching from the window, a woman stood motionless and immodest and smiling confidently.
After dalliance, sitting in the park – bold
Henry sat on a park bench near nowhere. His intact head still spinning from the night, a night that just ended this morning, a head that must never have been quite intact. Henry reflected. Was this all a dream, a nightmare? Take stock. You don’t have a mark on you. No blood…no stains…of any kind…no signs of struggle. But there is this powder on your clothes. Your presence in that bathtub. Still, he thought, these images swimming in his head must be delusional.
Henry chewed his nails. Yuck! Now disgusted. What’s under my finger nails? More powder? No. It’s yellow, flaky chips. Oh, no! I swallowed that lead paint…and I’ve also got a piece stuck in my teeth.
Henry used a piece of cardboard he found in his back pocket as a sort of floss to remove the paint chip. But this chip wasn’t quite the same as his erstwhile finger food. It was more like…shell? Yuck again, what kind of slimy thing crawled into my sleeping mouth…a SNAIL? Oops. The only other way a person would swallow slime – willingly and joyfully and expensively – is in the form of a French appetizer. Something must have happened…
It’s still a dream…has to be. Paint clips and snail chips could have come from who knows what or where. My unconscious mind worked them into the dream. Henry convinced himself. It was the most obvious or, at least, easiest explanation. He saw himself returning to his safe, unremarkable life, post nightmare. Satisfied, for now, with his shaky assessment, he streched back on the bench, picked up and crossed his left leg on to his right knee and closed his eyes, exhausted.
What now? Discomfort between his legs. Something in my pocket making me uncomfortable. Henry uncrossed and reached his hand into his right pants pocket. His shaky assessment vibrated…then vaporized. Sheena put this in my pocket last night. It was part of the dream. But if I’m holding it, looking at it fully awake, it’s not a dream. He reached into his back pocket to retrieve his floss-er. 8D Pete Street.
Henry stood resolutely. I’m goin’ back in!

Return to Pete Street
Henry caught every light on his rampage back to Pete. He violated every law that got in his way: moving, non-, even warnings. At the swamp, the short cut, the road was closed and he was rerouted back to the main road.
The heat of the day suited him and he left the windows open and the radio off so that he could ruminate. No more nice guy. No more manipulation. He was intent on changing his life. He would not be a fool. He would act boldly, bold no matter what threat emerged. Enough is enough. Bring it on!
The tenements curiously welcomed Henry back. Their cookie cutter arrangement, sweetly allowed him to relax and slow his heart down so that he could boldly go forward where he had fearfully just lef. Henry regained his alertness just in time to realize his vehicle had arrived at – 8D. He swallowed with difficulty and remembered his reflux pill before stepping to the muddy parking lot with resolve.
The impressions under his step were the same but he wasn’t. Same distance, same destination, same dilapidation greeted him but not with the same intimidation. The first apartment would appear familiar and therefore was unseen, as were the next two. Henry stepped on to the forth and final porch, egged on by an inner voice encouraging boldness…but he wasn’t deaf. He was not hearing voices now, he heard voices.
He heard screams… They were doing something to Sheena! Quickly followed by louder screams.
“Leave her alone” Henry sputtered.
The screams grew even louder. They weren’t screams of terror. But someone was doing something to her. That’s all his mind would allow him to conclude…for the moment.
“Open the door. Sheena, are you alright?” Henry pleaded.
That last scream was much louder…and different? But familiar.
Henry boldly stepped forward to…bang on the door? Knock it down if necessary. Before he made contact, the door disappeared and Henry saw a hulking neanderthal head, an undersized white cotton sleeveless chest hair revealing shirt, and a pair of arms the size of legs. Brawny Man? Looks like Brawny Man, the lumberjack, two ply paper towel mascot?
“What are you looking at” said Brawny Man.
“Nice shirt” said Henry. He was petrified and yet he craned his neck looking inside for evidence of Brawny Man’s signature red plaid flannel shirt neatly hanging from a log fixture or axe handle .
The big paper towel mascot lifted a huge-leg-fist menacingly.
Henry boldly closed his eyes and hollered, “Wait, stop!”. In that instant, his mind raced with thoughts but they were not thoughts of death or dismemberment. They were inappropriate thoughts for, at least in this the instance. No, they were weird thoughts, in any instance, about Brawny Man and how he had PC’d over the decades – for the worse. Brawny Man’s clean shaven face with the styled coif was not as manly as the mustachioed, needs a hair cut John Holmes look alike. Henry, however, did concede his approval of Brawny Man’s return to the ‘Virgil’s got his wifebeater on, looks like Helen’s gonna get taught a lesson tonight!’ A-shirt…just before reality hit him.
Instead of being punched out, a jolt to Henry’s right shoulder twisted him sideways. He peeked out of one eye to see that he was still standing, and alone on the 8D porch. Not for long.
Bam! Something rammed Henry from the the back and opposite side, twisting completely around and causing him to fall on his face inside Sheena’s apartment. Fortunately, she had added carpeting since his last visit, yesterday. From a prone position he half raised his head. Just beyond his nose were ten toes, ten painted toenails and two legs, two too white legs. Henry’s gaze crawled up Sheena’s legs halfway, then stopped. There it is…the shirt, Brawny Man’s signature red flannel shirt.
“Sheena, why are you wearing that man’s shirt” asked Henry.
The looked down past her folded arms with a look he had never gotten from her before.
“You’re not Sheena” said Henry.
“Who’s Sheena, A-hole” chorused three different voices in a single volley, including the personage formerly known as Sheena.
“What are you doing here?” asked Henry.
“What are you doing here, A-hole?” came another volley, this time more staggered, nerves tensing, vocals chords taut.
An identical vulgarity, in practiced harmony…they gotta be family. “I…” began Henry.
“Shut-up” came an angry man’s voice.
I know, you A-hole.
“What are you doing here?” said angry man.
In dawned on Henry that someone or something was mistaken and angry man was not going to give Henry’s little dog brain enough time to figure it completely out.
“Look, you’re mistaken. I’m here by accident” explained Henry. Didn’t convince anybody with that one.
Angry man was getting angrier staring at the back of A-hole’s head and A-hole’s head was staring at the thighs of his estranged wife, who was glaring at the couple’s teenage daughter. A Mexican, er, white trash stand off seemed to be congeal as Henry calculated his poor odds of fleeing this scene.
“Oh, sure, it’s an accident,” began angry man sarcastically. “You were just collecting bottle caps in the parking lot and tripped over a dead animal and stumbled into a fourth floor apartment and fell on top of my wife”.
“That’s not what happened” whined Henry.
Simultaneously, the family members rolled their eyes, each with a different take, smirk and vulgarity forming on their individual lips.
“Doesn’t matter” barked Angry man, “Nobody’s leaving today, by mistake, accident or grace”.
That’s an interesting way of putting it.
It dawned on Henry he literally fallen into a hostage situation. Although, he was figuratively in a world of shit, he remembered his almost forgotten vow to be bold. He watched TV. He would negotiate his way out of this situation and, as an after thought, he might save the lives of these fine…a…ladies.
Henry turned on to his back, to face his captor. Woooah daddy. We’ve gone from a paper towel lumberjack to Deliverance. Stop it compose yourself. Think. Get him talking, keep him talking, until we can be rescued.
“That’s an impressive gun” said Henry.
“It’s a revolver” countered Angry Man, never taking his focus off of his wife.
“Of, course. It’s well maintained I can tell by the shine of the plating”.
“It’s never been out of the case” sneered Angry Man, still focused, “I bought for one reason, and this is the occasion”.
This isn’t working. Try some other approach. Henry watched TV and remembered the History Channel’s programs on the JFK assassination. Jack Ruby used a similar revolver to take out Oswald.
“You know Ruby…” started Henry.
“What about my wife” snapped Angry Man, breaking his focus, now leaning in toward Henry.
Angry Man’s wife intervened, “Stop it. I never saw this A-Hole in my life until just this minute”.
Satisfied that his cheating wife’s veracity would suffice, Henry stupidly continued, “Ruby…”.
“Ruby is her whore name” screamed Angry Man.
Ruby, addressing Henry, clarified, “I’m not a whore. I’m a call girl. There’s a difference you know”.
Henry, addressing Angry Man, meekly, “So what is your wife’s given name”.
“Ruby May” Angry Man almost choked as he said her name.
The quiet in the room, permitted by the three now vanquished voices of the adults was punctuated by the resonant sobs of the teenager who had led her father to her mother’s affair. The daughter’s piercing anguish ignited her father once again.
“Alright, ” said Angry Man, “There are four bullets in this revolver. One for Ruby May. One for Jesse Pearl…”
You two should be shot.
Angry Man finished, “…and One for me”.
Henry was confused, “Who’s the other one for?”

Epiphany at Pete Street swamp
Return to Avatar Bar
Return Home to an empty pool

Henry Departs:
A belief one clings to as truth is continually tested and eventually exhausted. Beliefs often take one nowhere – motion without movement. This is where we find Henry, finally free of everything but his beliefs. One of them, “it’s better to be safe than sorry”, kept him safe. Henry could be no more sorry. Yet, his bold plans scared him. He decided to leave a note. Just in case. He searched for a pen. A pencil, stubby forgotten remnant miniature golf pencil, would do. What to say? How to begin? Address to whom? OK, let’s get this over with.
To whom it may concern.
If you are reading this, I have disappeared. Check 8D Pete St.
Aug. 3, 6 p.m.
He thought, as he drove, Henry Peck thought: a secret meeting, at an unknown to him location, with a mysterious stranger – a Princess from Pandora – now that’s excitement…but something is missing – good sense.
Getting laid was better than being screwed, even if this might include a pinch of humiliation. Manipulated sexually, if that is what is actually happening, has to be the best kind of manipulation. This guy has really thought this through. Wouldn’t a torrid one-night-stand avenge the decades of subservience and accommodation? A jumbo storage unit can always make room for one more foolhardy acquisition.
Henry Peck held the manila beer tab adventure map out the car’s window, tightly between his thumb and forefinger, under the dyeing yellow light and tried to make out the smeared numbers on the distorted paper that flopped in the wind.
Henry Descends:
8D Pete Street, got it. Never been there but I know about where it was, over in New Badsoden in the decaying end of nowhere. It was near the reservoir named after the swamp that fed the mills that once gave life to this town. The meandering drive seemed to take longer than anticipated. That’s the way with unfamiliar place – and he was taking the shortcut. We’re heeeeere…I guess.
The four-story walk-up loomed, among a legion of identical run down tenements and back lighted by a horizon, matching a broken down school bus and embroidered with the shapes of the small town’s still sunken warehouses and silent sulking machinery. Each of the devolving apartments in this urban evil forest faced front with no access, no expression and all entrances in the shadows behind. Each apartment displayed its number tacked under an identical porch light to the left of an identical door. One by one, each glowed respectable amber. Level four, 8D Pete, appeared indistinguishable. Not seeing a red light up above, Henry Peck descended. He began his ascent.
Henry noticed details as he moved. The muddy ground was heavily trafficked, both vehicle and other. A good thing? Animals, maybe cats and dogs, also good…and then some other beasts, bigger cats and dogs? He stopped and looked about.
I’m no authority on animal tracks, or feces, but…
Climbing the winding wooden steps, crossing the landings would be a workout for anyone other than a world-class stair climber, age adjusted. If a single word for anxiety and anticipation existed, it applied now. Ouch, what’s this stuff? The railing’s flaking yellow lead paint forbade Henry to hold on safe. The curled paint chips gnashed at his hand like neglected teeth. Each cluttered landing slouched identical. Each muddled porch distinguished only by a frost bitten plant or a moth eaten coach or a feeding Tomcat. 8D appeared as if from outer space, with none of the slum accessories.
Sheena stood in the darkened entryway, invisible in of its depth. She looked a 10 tonight. She left no feature unattended. Henry did not see her, just as she hoped. He double checked the address and stepped to the threshold. Stopping startled as she emerged. She stunned him with the flash of her smile.
“I wasn’t sure you would come” began Sheena.
“Neither, was I” replied Henry weakly.
“Oh, why is that?”
“You, first” countered Henry.
“I thought you would, pock, pock, pock, chicken-out” Sheena teased.
“I shouldn’t be here” came Henry’s obligatory explanation.
Sheena caught herself, furtively, and then replied, “We’ll see about that”.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“No”.
“OK”.
“Let’s go get a bite”.
“I don’t know the area. I was hoping I could take you to a place you’ve never been”.
She smiled that different smile.
“There is no ‘area’ here, but I have just the place for you…for us, I mean”.
Henry Dines:
Henry Peck knew he never dined here before. He knew he would never return, but that’s not all he knew. The menu had no prices listed. He can’t afford it. Maybe if he dined by himself, didn’t order dessert, left a meager tip, he could indulge himself once a week. Another thing he knew, Sheena strode this palace with a confident sway, the entire staff knew her… intimately. From the eager young hostess to the practiced mature waiter to the, what do you call them in a fine restaurant? The impassive old Maître d’ sensed my attention and turned his pointed beak.
Each employee with the same genuine fake smile directed toward me, not a Sheena smile. The hostess attended to my date with deference and to me with kindness, allowing me to pick my chair and pulling it away from the only round table. After deliberating with me on an appetizer, Sheena summoned the waiter without signal and pointed and the order taker complimented her on the choice but wrote nothing, seeming to have foreknowledge.
Escargot cooked with garlic butter and parsley in a shell, no doubt a popular request here, but rare to Henry’s palate, rarer than pate, and his rarest aperitif since jellied moose nose, but presumably the only thing Sheena found of interest. Once the appetizer was selected, she didn’t comment on the possible entrees, even when queried. The dish arrived and she put on a rapid display of her expertise, attacking the mollusks without the special tongs and fork. She, holding the shell in one napkin-ed hand, extracting the tiny carcass with minimal drip, splash or difficulty, plunging the morsel swiftly and fully into the simmering drawn butter, made it disappear.
Henry’s technique, clearly unfamiliar, unpracticed but patience, resembled that of a boy embarrassed at his first restaurant outing. He, semi-mastering the tongs and fork approach, on a third try, forgoing the napkin, self-consciously unsure of etiquette with the alien utensils, ate three snails. He liked the exotic taste but he made a note to avoid them in the future, all possible futures.
Arriving back at Sheena’s place, they stepped cautiously through the muddy parking lot, she adroit, a measured dance, Henry looking for fresh tracks, fresh animal tracks. He decided the unfamiliar large beast tracks from earlier were that of a wild predator, a big one too, and hungry! They mounted the steps, Henry avoiding the handrail pointedly, Sheena moving up the flights unconsciously, moving with anticipation or urgency.
Once inside her apartment, the two faced each other in the smart sparsely furnished living area. The short silence prompted Henry to say something stupid.
“What do you want to do?” asked Henry.
“What I want to do, what I’m going to do, is beat you,” replied Sheena.
Sheena cocked her head to the left. Henry looked into the shadows and saw a half opened closet with lengths of something. Looks like leather. These lengths hooked to the closet door by something metallic, like a buckle, he guessed. After his torture by tong, it would be beating by belt? Hold on now, she’s not that drunk…yet.
Sheena saw the error in Henry’s gaze and nodded again, this time with more emphasis. He followed her invisible nodded line past the belted closet, further past the innocuous glossy red door, to the entrance of the kitchen. That’s what she was referring to – he identified a jumbo climate controlled storage unit – a refrigerator.
Henry mauled her words. He looked at her and saw the “good” smile, with maybe a smirk of mischievousness. She told him she was going to beat him. She clarified to him with second nod the beating would occur in the kitchen or perhaps she would beat him with something from the kitchen. Who keeps a torture device in the kitchen? In the refrigerator? What could Sheena beat him with from the fridge?
“Sausage” Henry guessed excitedly.

Where can you go when there is nowhere else for you to go physically? The crazy have a place. The lonely have no place…except crazy. Therefore, in order for the displaced to delay insanity, they must freshen what they have. They must take something new to a fresh place and try to invent fire. Anyone of you can do it. Anyone, as long as you are neurotic. However, don’t wait too long. Don’t sleep through this opportunity. All you’ll have waiting one morning is the over-long sleeves of a sexy strait-jacket or an hiatus of blood circulation and breathing with a one way ticket to hypothermia’s constant climate control.
Let me fill you in on this odd fellow before I turn this story over to him. Henry Peck was once just a beak in the pen. On the surface, he had no particular virtue, no particular vice. However, inside, a set of hand me down beliefs that guaranteed a life of being screwed. Not just screwed but also humiliated while being screwed. Further, his beliefs would not allow either blame or revenge to rise above his reactive temper. Action and pursuit of rectification his beliefs did not allow. Well, it might be better said that blame and revenge were being stored for later use. His jumbo climate controlled emotional storage unit went over capacity that day – the day when he was promoted out of the baby pool of impasse.
I couldn’t believe myself. I seemed to be enjoying everyone and everything. I seemed to have no stress. I felt no real responsibilities. I rid myself of my oafish oppressors. This new freedom all started when I calculated that I could financially make it without working for someone else. I could also do without the burden of family – be that close, immediate or distant. And friends? Friends are just self-confected zombies who transmute when the small “r” in that vile word dissolves. Those fiends have no Reason for a Relationship with a Reciprocity expectant sycophant.
I’m playing videos games and killing. Not only am I strutting my stuff in this game as Scooby-Doo, flailing a six-foot link sausage like a chain weapon, destroying mercilessly everything in my radius, including my playing partner, but also vanquishing the unwashed, teens who are obviously in awe of my strutting stuff. Later, oddly, I stand by the game machine un-partnered after my last over-celebrated victory in-your-face jump and strut. Those sneering punks and punkettes didn’t know who hit ’em.
The vanquished brood leaving suddenly didn’t really bother him. It wasn’t really on this old man’s mind. In its near recesses, there played an earlier game. The barmaid, she was stuck in his mind. It was Neytiri the Na’vi amazon princess from Pandora in Avatar. He saw her, tending bar, an empty bar, an empty bar where she seemed to be waiting for his arrival. He knew it was she by the leading contraindications: her skin quite smooth, iridescent in tone but definitely not cyan – and no stripes, she was tall – but under ten feet. Slender, however, just like the princess. The nose, definitely the nose, it was her. The decisive factor occurred when he paid his two-beer tab and rolled off his bar stool. He turned to say goodbye and she gave him that genuine smile that vowed to him, “I will stalk you, and put an arrow through your heart, and feed your entrails to the viper wolves if I learn that you are less than pure”. Henry go all of that from gratuitous a smirk?
That was no gratuitous smirk, she thought. Sheena Waderwicz launched a smart bomb with her intent gaze, choreographed pose and full display of near perfect ivory American teeth. He walked into the door, she remembered, his head turning almost Exorcist-like to look back at her. That was fun. The near reality that he would be seeing more of her teeth was something else. It would be nothing nasty for real. However, this might not be all for real.
Guys are stupid and this one was perfect in that way. She would use her scarce assets, which seemed for some reason to captivate him, to manipulate a ritual rendezvous. It will be so easy to lure this gentle, naive, trusting man-child into a situation he would never enter consciously. However, the spell, the spell almost any Delilah might cast will put his not so shabby tookus where she wanted it. She really did smirk this time. Maybe that’s what he’s seeking: Finality.
Old Henry Peck stumbled out of the dank video game room into a too bright late morning sidewalk. He fell flat on his face, missing the fact that a single step, just one, existed between his verticality and his being grounded. No one saw this, that’s the important thing. Doing careless and foolish things were normal for him. Caught in the act made it unforgettable and, therefore, it would have become another thing to ruminate about. With humiliation now unnecessary and the new freedom of angst now back in charge, he wondered, Is it too early for a beer?
He’s baaaaaack, Sheena suppressed, as Henry maneuvered past the pesky door.
“Hey, stranger” Sheena said.
“Hi, ah, I didn’t catch your name last day, I mean time” said Henry.
“I didn’t toss it”.
This is fun, arousing she thought.
“Sorry, I’m Henry, I was in here…”
“Sure, I remember you vividly, punkin’. I’m Sheena and we talked about books and brothers and boyfriends…my boyfriend I mean”.
Embarrassed, relieved and confused…boyfriend?
“Sheena”, Henry started, in hopes of retaining her name, “you were telling me how you read lots of science fiction. I think you said you read, not because you liked the science fiction but because you liked the challenge of figuring out the plot twists before the author revealed them”.
“Exactly, you remembered.”
Alright-y then. How did he remember that? Henry hoped she would pick up the conversation. The unpunctuated silence made him anxious but he knew that the next person to speak would say something stupid…if that person were he. A mouth full of beer might buy him some time.
Sheena returned to his darkened end of the bar, rag in hand. She leaned forward, leading with her rolled up sleeve forearms, the naked limbs extended un-ringed and unpainted. Henry acted nonchalant but sensed something of importance, not stupid, was about to be spoken.
“I expected, the time before when I showed you the sci-fi I was reading, that you would take the paperback from me and feign interest. At first, I was disappointed, that you, you know didn’t feign. I quickly concluded that, perhaps, this old hound is off his game. Trying to be kind, you know”.
Feign? Old Hound? Kind? Henry suddenly felt vulnerable. He knew, he thought, she was waiting for a response, hence the silence. He knew there would be no one or nothing to twist this plot so that he would not be compelled to say something stupid. And ruin everything. Everything? What everything? In any case, he was in over his head and sinking fast.
Sheena invoked that smile, that parting smile she gave him last week, which resulted in a bruise and a lump. She leaned in.
“It’s OK” she started. He exhaled.
“I have some others I want you to see, you’ll be more interested, I know that, for sure,” she concluded.
“Show me ’em” said Henry. He felt that maybe he blurted it out; he had become so immediately anxious.
Sheena straightened and stepped back from the bar. She gave a different smile this time as she positioned her hands. Suddenly, her expression changed…deadpan. The blueish window tint, the half-opened wooden blinds, cast a transforming hue and pattern on this statuesque enigma, now in cyan, with stripes and seeming ten feet tall.
“You want me to ‘Show ’em to ya,'” the Princess said.
“I meant…I mean…the books…the ones you said you wanted me to see” Henry sputtered. He wasn’t sure now to whom he was speaking, let alone being sure what they might be talking about now.
“I don’t have them”.
“But you just said…”
“I mean I don’t have what you’re inquiring about here”.
“But, how can I see…”
“You’ll have to come visit me”.
“In Pandora?” said Henry.
He completely captivated. She completely confused.
“No”.
She began writing an earthly address on the back of Henry’s beer tab.