spacious skies - 40. a room for the night

by american joe

part 40 of 40

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good evening. good evening. how can i help you? i would like to rent a room. for how long? i am not sure. i want to pay for one night. all right. how much will it be? can i see some i d first? i don’t have any i d. what do you mean, you don’t have any i d? i can pay a little extra. you mean you are from the bureau or the service. i really don’t have time for this. what might you have time for? if you do not want cash, i might be able to give you something more solid. i am as aware as you are that i am required to report your attempt at bribery. please excuse me while i make the call. hello. i am calling from the hideaway motel on highway 75-j, area 8915. an individual with no i d just came in here and tried to bribe me into renting him a room. i know you want to know about these things. what is your number and name? my number is 785-3297-854-j. my name is daniel boone. and your password? i sing a happy tune. thank you. i am looking you up. i see you are indeed licensed to run the hideaway motel in the location you describe. but your license is up in three months and five days. would you like to take the opportunity to renew it now?’ no thank you. is the individual whom you assert approached you there now? no, he is not. he left as soon as i started calling you. did you follow him to see what direction he was headed? i did not follow him but i could see he turned to the right where the parking lot is. where he went from there i could not see. i felt i had to call you right away. very commendable. wait there, an agent will be out to see you. i am not going anywhere. the end

spacious skies - 39. iggy

by american joe

part 39 of 40

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iggy axman held his phone to his ear. vince gray did not think iggy was actually listening to anything or anybody, but he kept his own counsel. as he had been doing for millions of years. iggy took the phone away from his ear and pointed it at vince. mister blue wants to see you. i work for al hodgkins now. that is neither here nor there. i think it would be a good idea if you saw mister blue. what do you guys think? two hulking figures emerged from the shadows and stood between vince and the sidewalk. mose jones and tank miller. they had worked for all the bosses in the world in their time and had been around the block and knew all the scores and then forgotten them. neither of them talked much. whatever you say, iggy, mose murmured, soft as a butterfly on a deserted beach with the tide gone out. let’s get it over with, vince told iggy. i knew you would be reasonable. the black car was parked on the corner. tank got in the left front seat with iggy beside him. mose motioned to vince to get in behind tank, then got in beside him. the left front seat was pushed so far back to accommodate tank that vince was almost pinned back to his own seat. they moved out. the streets were deserted. they passed the beach, also deserted, and got out on to the mostly abandoned highway that circled the town. nobody spoke. vince thought they might talk about nothing, about the fights or the horses or the ball games, but they did not. he thought they might comment on the fact that he, vince, did not talk or ask questions but they did not do that ether. the black car floated down the highway. next

spacious skies - 38. seersucker

by american joe

part 38 of 40

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you and will evans should get together, buddy barker said with a sad smile. it’s time for a change, vince gray agreed unenthusiastically. al hodgkins does not like that sort of thing, zena parfrey interjected. i guess we better start over from scratch. draw up a plan then, and leave it on my desk in the morning, buddy said to vince. what have i gotten myself into, vince gray wondered. he looked around. will evans. buddy barker, and zena parfrey were acting like nothing had happened. al hodgkins looked down at his knees. george tolliver kept munching on his supersized candy bar, and charlie robinson stared into space in the way that he had. i will catch you guys tomorrow, al hodgkins said, and got up and left. vince gray had put his whole future and all his grand plans to conquer the universe at risk, and nobody even cared. he decided he needed a drink. nodding to the others, he put his coat and hat on and started down the back stairs. he took the back stairs, because he knew iggy axman was still looking for him. when he got outside he remembered that all the bars were closed except from eight to midnight under the new crackdown by the new district attorney, fred o’rourke. shaking his head sadly, he absently walked around to the front of the building instead of continuing down the alleyway to where he could come out on main street. and ran straight into iggy axman. well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise, iggy axman greeted him with a big grin. can i help you, vince gray extemporized. i think we both know the answers to that one, don’t we, iggy axman chuckled unamiably. listen, i got a good thing going. it just came up. just came up in your head. no, al hodgkins has a special job for me. you can call him and ask him. i will do just that, iggy axman sneered, taking his phone out of the breast pocket of his white seersucker suit. next

spacious skies - 37. the crew

by american joe

part 37 of 40

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vince gray was just a guy. he had big dreams, but really he was just a guy. he was a soldier on a crew with four other guys - will evans, buddy barker, george tolliver, and charlie robinson, and one girl, zena parfrey. they were all just guys, and zena was just a girl - at least to all outward appearances. al hodgkins was the boss of the crew. what he said went. * the crew worked out of a back room on a back street on the outskirts of town. the word “work” might give a wrong impression. mostly they just waited around, because they did not know what they had been hired to do. when the time came, al hodgkins wpuld let them know. meanwhile, they were on call, under the eagle eye of al. they had all been down the road before - maybe charlie robinson not as much as the others - and knew the score. the score was zero to zero. none of them had phones on their persons, and there was no phone in the room - or so they had been told - and supposedly no phones at all in the building. theoretically, none of them even owned phones. if they wanted to call their aunts or mothers in russia or hawaii, they were supposed to use public phones if they could find one - and never talk on those phones about the job, even to say they had so far nothing to do on the job. there was a monitor in the room that played the same four movies over and over again. after the first few days nobody watched them except buddy barker, and he watched them with the sound off. george tolliver and charlie robinson carried on an endless conversation about their all time teams. it had begun the day they were first hired. will evans started it with george and george and charlie had kept it going. who’s on your all time team? my what? your all time team. all time team for what? football, basketball, what? no, no, like the dirty dozen or the magnificent seven, like that. you got to explain it to him, he hasn’t been around. right, see here’s the deal. we got to talking the other night about a team to fight the aliens. aliens? what aliens? when are we going to fight the aliens? i didn’t hear anything about aliens. no, we are just supposing. here, you explain it to him, you can explain it better than me. * al hodgkins tried to engage zena parfrey in conversation, but she did not seem vey interested in anything he had to say. will evans kept his own counsel, occasionally laughing out loud at something in his head. none of the others ever asked him what he was laughing at. vince gray also kept his own counsel, but without ever laughing or even smiling. next

spacious skies - 36. joan

by american joe

part 36 of 40

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a black dog ran down the street under a blue sky. the blue sky was filled with white clouds. a woman in a yellow dress came out of her house. the house was painted white. it had a red roof. the woman was annoyed when she walked around her green lawn and saw the holes in it made by rabbits. her name was joan sanders and she went back inside the house and made herself an ice cold drink. sipping the drink, she remembered the days when she had more to worry about than lawns and rabbits. the black dog ran back up the street. it saw a small rabbit on joan sanders’s lawn and chased it. the rabbit ran away and got under a fence and into a hole in the lawn of the house behind joan sanders’s. joan heard the dog bark when the rabbit disappeared under the fence, but she paid no attention to it and continued sipping her drink. when she finished the drink she debated whether to look up a pest control company online in order to deal with the rabbits, turn on the television and watch the news, or make another drink. the dog, whose name was avenger, sniffed at the fence a few times and then gave it up and went back across joan sanders’s lawn and back on to the street. avenger was, of course, not supposed to be running around loose and up and down streets on his own, but he belonged to a man named ralph richards, who considered himself to be a rebel and an outlaw. nobody told ralph or his dog what to do. they were wild and free. ralph lived on the street parallel to the one joan sanders lived on. ralph and joan had never met and were not aware of each others’ existences. next

spacious skies - 35. harry

by american joe

part 35 of 40

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joey’s house was at the end of a street that was not a through street. the street sign indicated this by calling it a “private way” though it was not really that, just what had used to be called a “dead end street” many of the houses on the street were empty, and two of them were unattended to and had overgrown lawns. these two houses were sometimes invaded by teenagers for parties, but somebody - not joey - always called the police and the parties were quickly broken up. the house across the street from joey’s - the other one at the end of the street - was occupied by harry harsh, who was a little older than joey and also lived alone. harry’s lawn, unlike joey’s, was filled by a couple of huge trees that almost obscured the house from the view of passersby. harry was not a nice person. he was a very nasty person, one of the worst in the world. one day joey had to leave his car at a garage overnight for repairs. he took the bus home. the bus stop was two blocks from his house and he had to walk from there. twilight was falling as joey approached his house. harry was standing on the sidewalk in front of his own house. he crossed the street and spoke to joey. joey was not particularly thrilled to see harry but responded politely to his greeting. those kids were back in that house tonight, harry said. i called the cops. joey did not know or care which of the two abandoned houses harry was talking about. that was neighborly of you, he said. when they had raccoons in those houses the city came and exterminated them, harry said. yes, i think i remember hearing something about that, joey replied. he hoped his lack of enthusiasm for harry’s conversation and company would communicate itself to harry. they should do the same with those kids, if you ask me, harry said, looking joey straight in the face as he said it that sounds a little extreme, joey said. yeah, it does, doesn’t it, ha ha! i was just kidding, but those kids really are a pain in the posterior. they don’t bother me much, joey said, i can hardly hear them, even when they are partying. yeah well, listen, to change the subject. harry stared intently at joey, though joey could not really see his eyes that clearly in the dark. can i ask you a question? you can ask. i notice your light on late at night, sometimes. you stay up late? where was this going, joey wondered. sometimes, if i get home late. i work different hours. yeah, a lot of people do these days. you watch television when you get home? sometimes. ever see those ads on channel 9 for real live girls? joey was startled by the question. yeah, i think so. i didn’t pay much attention. yeah, right, harry thought. i think you pay a lot of attention, my brother. aloud he said, i thought they were kind of humorous, myself. well, i’ll let you go. you must be tired after a long day at work. yes, i am, joey agreed. when joey closed his front door behind himself, he leaned back against it and literally breathed a sigh of relief. what a creep, he thought. next

spacious skies - 34 . real live

by american joe

part 34 of 40

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joey johnson was the most harmless person in the world. he had a job as a custodian in an office building in a mall on the outskirts of town. he worked odd hours. he lived alone in a house that had been owned by his parents. was, in fact, still owned by his father, who was serving a life sentence for murdering joey’s mother. joey’s father was also suspected of murdering a couple of young women, but had never been tried for those crimes. joey’s father had been an angry man. until the murder of joey’s mother, however, his anger at home had taken the form of constant ranting, not physical violence. he had never struck joey, and joey had never seen his father strike his mother before the murder. joey inherited his docile nature from his mother, and from his father’s mother whom he, joey, had never met or seen a picture of. when joey came home from work at night, if it was not too late, he usually watched television. he did not have cable tv, so he just watched the network stations, and, more often, the local station. the local station had some curious programs, and curious ads, especially late at night. one ad that ran often and that caught joey’s attention was for “real live girls - not inflatable dolls”. joey found the ads confusing - he could not quite make out what they were for. they promised the purchaser a “real live girl” but even joey, innocent as he was, realized that this could not be literally true. the “real live girls” pictured in the ads looked like ordinary women in their early twenties, wearing bikinis and clearly intended for sex - would they also cook and clean house? have day jobs to bring in money? the ads did not say they would not, but it did not seem likely. the ads said they “talked” - but about what? could they talk about politics and the weather and the yankees and the giants or just about sex? did they have to be fed? unlikely. but the ads assured the viewer they were not “not just dolls”. joey decided they must be some kind of robot. in any case, they were way too expensive - more than a car! - even with a “low down payment” and installments. intrigued as he sometimes was when he watched the ads, joey never thought about them during the day. when he was performing his duties as a custodian, he often daydreamed, but about playing for the yankees or the giants or the knicks, or about winning the lottery, or about having a girl friend who would be a gentle soul like his mother and also a sports fan. joey was happy just to be alive and to have a job. next