Picking Stones Chapter 21
"Just Talking"
Table of Contents
Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)
Just Talking
Sun was setting, quicker and quicker as the day welcomed the dark night. Coat was sealed. It was just a few minutes walk from the hotel. Walking and walking. Pushed by the cold wind that whispered on my back. Each streetlight I crossed briefly blinked off as I dodged beneath. By the time I was there the sun had vanished. I was outside, alone. Standing in front of Nimrod. The only thing I knew for sure was not that I was real, but that I must have looked like a complete idiot.
Nimrod’s exterior was painted black. Its name was in streaking red letters above the storefront window. I peaked inside and saw that it was small. Bar to the right side that stretched down to the kitchen with black peeling stools set in front of it. To the left were maybe eight tables just big enough for two, a bench running against the wall and chairs on the opposite side of the probably wobbly tables. The place was smaller than my apartment back home and had a red glow over its darkness from Christmas lights strung around the ceiling.
Frozen. Unable to move. Why was I standing out there? I needed to go in. If not for anything else but for the food, which the concierge at the hotel had said was her favorite in the city. She seemed like the type.
Inside, Weezer boomed out of the stereos. Crooked black and white photos of people making ‘funny’ faces were decked on the walls. A girl who looked to be in her thirties was lugging a blue tub filled with ice to the ice bucket mechanism likely hidden beneath the bar. “Hey!” she called in a friendly voice while she shook the crunching bucket. I smiled and stood there. At least I didn’t need to worry about attracting attention.
Odors of cleaning products wafted up from the shiny floors. The night was still young after all. Entering had done little to quell my anxiety. I was again still, unable to decide where to park my lower half. “Any seat you’d like,” she shouted toward me again, motioning with her chin to the empty stools at the bar.
My heart sunk. I felt for the book hiding in my jacket. I needed a table. Within seconds my head exploded, second guessing the book and the decision altogether. Had I really come here because I was dumb enough to think a sticker was left for me by the lighthouse? A bit of a loaded question in a time so dire.
At the end of the bar closest to me was a man in his sixties, or was it his eighties or thirties? He had a scraggly gray beard. His nose was bobbing in and out of the brown liquid sloshing in his cup like one of those drinking bird things my grandmother used to have in the house.
I shot to the furthest table at the end of the place, face red and ready to beg forgiveness for sins once the bartender realized I hadn’t taken shop next to bird guy, who, speaking of, snickered at me when he saw my figure bypass the bar and head for a table of solitude. What did it matter to him where I sat? Unless he was laughing at something else. Maybe that was it.
The table wobbled aggressively when I set my elbows on it. Called that one. “Mind if I sit here?” I asked the girl when she stomped passed me to bring drinks to a table near the front. “Huh? You’re good,” she said, confused at the question. I breathed a sigh of vindicated relief.
While I waited for my drink I pulled out the book and began reading. Since it was Sunday, the coffee shop closed early without giving me the chance to write. I decided to get some more inspiration from the book before pulling out the notebook I also brought. My thumb ran over the smudged fingerprints on the white cover. How many hands had touched this before mine? At the bottom of the cover was the author’s name, Graham Gordon. The back cover said he was sixty and lived in California. The printing date on the third page dated it to 2004. Was he in his eighties, or had they updated his information in a reprinting? Was he even alive? I wondered if he was dead if he’d be looking over my shoulder, happy I was reading.
Spine cracked open. Before I had the chance to get through a page the chair opposite mine was pulled out. It was Nim, clad in a black cloak, face hidden under hood. My heart sunk. Matches were set on the table in front of us, nine in all. If my last turn was taking the sticker by the lighthouse, that meant he was up. What was his next move? A boney hand reached out from his sleeve, and lunged toward him, trying to stop him from his next turn, desperate to see his face. Suddenly it went cold. I could see him and I was freezing, my heart on its last beat before death.
“Oh no!” the bartender cried out. I knocked over the drink she had just set on the table, which was quickly dispersing itself all over my lap and the floor. That explained the cold. Across from me the shape dematerialized, exploding into a cloud of particles as someone burst through him, thrusting paper towels onto the table to mitigate the spillage.
“Sorry about that, I was not expecting you to, um, bump into the glass,” the bartender said. “Let me get you a new one.”
“No, no it’s my fault. Please charge me for the drink, that was completely on me,” I said. My face was burning red, had that been Nim’s pick? Another match gone, eight to go.
“I’ll be right back. Thanks for cleaning that up, Ramona. You’re the best!” she said before dashing behind the bar. I hadn’t realized the paper towel wielder was still cleaning the table. Turning toward her, I nearly fainted.
In front of me, spreading sheet after sheet of paper towel onto the table, chair, and floor, was the girl from the coffee shop. Panic struck. I couldn’t decide whether to run or die. Chances of escape were slim. I’d need to squeeze past two tables while potentially crushing her hand that was wiping a large mass of paper towels on the floor. Death was the alternative, and even that seemed slim for once.
“No problem, Cindy!” she replied to the bartender who had just finished mixing my tequila. “Just add me to the payroll for tonight.” She still hadn’t seen me, but the inevitable was approaching.
“Good one,” the bartender, who I guessed was named Cindy, said. “Here you go. Try not to spill this one. Move over, Ramona, I got it.”
“No no, let me clean the rest. I feel horrible. I’ll just grab a few more of—”I said and reached for the paper towel roll on the table, almost knocking my second drink over.
“Easy tiger, let’s not let that happen again. Plus, it’s my job. Why I get paid the big bucks.” Cindy grabbed the paper towels from coffee shop girl and I shot up off the bench and out of the way just as coffee shop girl did.
“Oh my gosh! You’re the guy I gave the list to yesterday.” Her surprised face showed a smile, it looked real. “Glad to see you’re following my instructions.” She laughed; did I notice a twinkle in her eyes?
Panic appeared and quickly disappeared in my eyes. I had been so transfixed on her first suggestion of the lighthouse that I hadn’t read any of the other suggestions on the list, which I guessed included a stop at Nimrod’s.
“Oh, hey!” I said feigning coolness. “That’s right, you’re the girl from the coffee shop. Great list, by the way. I ended up going to the Portland Head Light this morning. Figured I’d hit this place for dinner.”
“Cool, cool,” she said. “This place is great. My best friend, the one lapping up your spill, is the bartender, so I’m here all the time.”
“Well thanks for cleaning up my mess,” I said.
“I try to help her out when I can. She still doesn’t share tips though, so we’ll see how long that lasts.” Her eyes darted around the room. She pushed her black hair behind her right ear. “That’s a great book, by the way.”
Her finger was pointing to the little book I clutched in my hand. Somehow it had lived through the spill unharmed.
“Yeah, this guy seems pretty cool.”
“Graham Gordon is a genius! Like, seriously. That thing is life changing. All his work is.”
“Totally,” I said. “I was reading the book you have by him in the coffee shop.”
“Passing Fire?”
“That’s the one. After I left yesterday I went to a bookstore and the guy in there recommended this one to me. Crazy coincidence. I had to get it.”
She laughed. “That’s no coincidence. That was totally a sign. Something or someone was telling you to read it. That’s so cool.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Seriously, dude. That book can change your life. Oh, and I’m Ramona by the way.” She stuck out her hand. Before they touched they zapped, then we shook. “I’m Will.”
“Nice to meet you, Will. Anyway. Read the book, okay? I gotta get back over by Cindy before she gets jealous that I’m not giving her enough attention. Order the chicken fingers!”
“So, tell me about yourself.”
No one had said it, but I feared the ramifications if I would be asked. The sheer thought of being told to talk about myself ran me with dread. It had been a half hour, maybe forty minutes since she had made her way back to a stool at the mostly empty bar where she chatted with her friend. We had made awkward eye contact four and a half times—and counting. I tried concentrating on the book, but made poor progress since I couldn’t help but play out the simulation of a very boring and uninspired conversation between Ramona and I if she ever dared to venture back into my vicinity. I prayed for her sake that she wouldn’t.
What would I say? That I hated my job and my apartment and my life? Would I tell her that she was so lucky to live here? Lucky to be away from the hell I had to live with? I knew I was painting her life through rose colored glasses. I stared at her pleasantly shaped backside as she sat unknowingly on a stool, giggling with her friend.
Once I made eye contact with Cindy I knew I needed to stop. I was on my second drink, well, first if you didn’t count the spilled one, which you shouldn’t. Pacing myself was a new development, but a marked improvement. My stomach rumbled. She hadn’t come back for a food order.
Lying to the girl would be fruitless. What would I gain from it? Well, I was in Maine. I could be whoever I wanted to be while I was there. A more hopeful, happier Will.
I took a sip, and sipped and sipped until the ice cued me to stop. The book was open again. He, Graham Gordon, was intent on getting across to the reader that there was—is—a higher power. Before fulfilling his purpose of writing, he’d sit down and pray. Then he’d sit down and get out of the way, letting his God take the reigns of his mind. In essence, he became a channel for whatever it was he was meant to do.
If I didn’t live in such a hell hole, maybe I could let go of myself and try to channel whatever it was he was talking about. This man believed in God, and it was that belief that made him a success. Maybe there was something to that.
Constantly living in a nihilistic world, as I spent the better part of my life, would attract negative energy. Just like Peter had told me at Imperial Szechuan. It was funny. In a way, both men were telling me the same thing.
I sat there, thinking hard about what I wanted. At that moment, it was for Ramona to get off her stool, away from her friend, and to sit down and talk to me. I needed the company.
I waited, and waited. She didn’t come. When that failed I took out the notebook I had brought. Spiral, green matte cover, yellow tinted pages with black lines.
It was an exercise the book suggested to unblock the junk spinning around on the inside of my head. To write whatever I wanted, even if it was worthless. After a few minutes of feeling like the most stupid creature to ever walk into that bar, I felt something strange happen. Like a warm sensation that started tingling near my chest, vibrating down to my fingers. My head felt lighter, clearer. The more I wrote, the more I drifted somewhere ethereal. Breath slowed down, all the music tuned out. I felt like I was floating.
When my eyes opened I looked down at the words I had wrote and realized I had been writing to God, the one Gordon kept talking about. What did I talk to him about?
For more. For the end not to be the end, and for happiness, and for change. Then I laughed and kept going. There was an idea, a spark. Suddenly the on the page was a crazy idea for a book. Too crazy to even mention it here. Just two or three lines, but it stuck. Then I told God to say hi to my grandfather, to tell him I missed him and I was sorry I didn’t spend more time with him in the end. Then I said goodbye and closed the book.
When the book shut I realized my entire body was buzzing in euphoria. Had I done anything of value? Did that even matter? No. Was I talking to God? Did it matter who, myself or him or someone else? What mattered most to me, at that moment, was that for the first time in months, maybe even years or even a decade, I felt a strange sense of…happiness?
Then the first prayer was answered.
The door to Nimrod’s flung open. In walked my savior, a man in his sixties with a bald head and a bushy white beard. He wore a Hawaiian shirt under a puffy black jacket and open toed sandals poking out from jeans. The man had a smile spread from ear to ear. “Hello, Nimrod!” he shouted. “The Clutter family returns for their annual Halloween rager.” I watched Mr. Clutter walk to the bar followed by a chattering and happy hoard of fifteen family members ranging from twenty to eighty. “Hey, Cindy,” a few of the adults said to the bartender. Ladies and gentlemen, we had regulars.
Ramona swiftly evacuated the bar to give the family enough room to spread out. Before I knew it she was in front of me. “Is this seat taken?” I shook my head, ready for her to swipe it away. Instead she plopped down into it and set her drink on the table between us. “I’ll let Cindy do her job. You don’t mind if I sit here do you?”
“Not at all!”
“Hungry?”
“Yeah, I haven’t gotten the chance to order anything yet.”
“Cindy is the worst,” she joked. Her eyes gazed down at my notebook. “Oh, no. Am I interrupting something?”
“No, no. I was just wrapping up. I could use someone to talk to actually. I feel like I’ve been alone for such a long time.”
“Well the artist’s life can definitely be a life of solitude,” she said. I wasn’t able to hide the raising of my eyebrow. “Aren’t you a writer?” she asked. I said I was. “I figured. You seem the type, plus you have to be a special type of weird, or a writer, to write in a place like this.”
Drinks dropped in front of us. “That’s from ol’ man Clutter, he wanted to thank you for giving up your spot at the bar,” Cindy said while running back to the bar.
The two glasses clinked. “Thanks for letting me sit here,” she said. “Of course.” Awkward silence proceeded. She grinned and stretched her neck out toward me scrunching her pointed nose.
“So, what brought you to Portland?” she asked.
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“Well I got nothing better to do tonight.”
“It’s also kind of crazy. Well, not kind of, it is crazy.”
“Then I NEED to hear this. Come on, tell me. We need something to break the awkwardness anyway.”
Sitting there for a moment, I thought about what I should say. What to hold back and what to embellish. The story needed no embellishing and it really didn’t matter what this girl thought of my story. It was the truth, and if she thought I was crazy and got up to leave, I’d have to find someone else to pine over. It was like ripping off a band-aid.
“This is the story,” I started. My hand clutched the little white card with the word NIM printed on it in blood red that was tucked in my pocket. “Basically, I was walking home from a restaurant one night. I can’t tell you why yet, but I thought I was being followed. That’s when I found this card. That’s important because the card may have potentially been given to me by either a demon, or ghost, or some other entity. And that entity may be playing a game with me. A game that’s been making me experience coincidences that have led me to this state, this city, and this very bar.”
“Wait wait, you need to start from the very beginning, please!”
She was right, so I told her everything. The fear of being followed to the hike to the restaurant to finally getting followed home. I told her about the card and how I went back to the restaurant where Peter told me about the I Ching and the bad energy in my life. I told her everything—well, almost everything. I opted to not mention Beth and our breakup; it seemed so irrelevant to the rest of the story, and by now Beth seemed like nothing but a distant blurred memory of a past I wanted soon to forget.
I explained how the game of Nim was played and that I kept seeing visions of an entity I bequeathed the unoriginal name of Nim to. Then I mentioned the deaths and the coincidences that had finally led me to Portland, up to and including almost defecating myself after finding the Nimrod sticker at the lighthouse.
“That has to be the coolest story I’ve ever heard,” she said through bites of steak sandwich. “We gotta figure out what the picks in the game were! This is gonna be a blast!”
“You actually believe it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“It sounds impossible!”
“But you’re saying it’s 100% true. No?”
“Yeah, no, I’m telling the truth.”
“So, I believe you.”
“Cool.”
“You know, Will. You, uh, strike me as a real person. I like you.”
“Listen though. You really need to stop with the coincidence nonsense. If you really believe the stuff that’s been happening to you is real, you need to start believing the world is more than just black and white,” Ramona said. Her gray eyes twinkled hints of the red lights strung up behind me. She smiled, just a half one, barely showing any teeth.
“I’m getting there,” I admitted. “Slowly but surely.” Surprising myself, I actually was beginning to believe I mean it, too.
“There’s a whole world out there waiting to be discovered. Especially with the situation you’re in right now. You haven’t been happy. You want change but are too scared to act? What if the universe—or God, or whatever you want to call it—is pushing you into the direction you’re supposed to go? Since you have a negative approach, you’re interpreting most of this stuff in a bad way, but it might be good, too.” She took the final chomp of the last chicken finger and washed it down with two sips of her drink. “The world is actually a really beautiful place. It’s a tragic place too, don’t get me wrong. But it’s easy to get caught up in all the bad and block everything else out. What I’m saying is that you can always find the good in whatever situation you’re in. Do you get that, or am I not making sense anymore?”
“That’s been debatable this whole time,” I joked.
“What is this, my fourth drink?”
“Third.”
“Whatever.”
She scratched her left arm in a spot next to a tiny pear-shaped beauty mark. “Listen, man. I’m telling the truth. It’s true. I don’t care how crazy I sound. Hold on. Where was I going with this?” She stopped to think. “Oh yeah. There’s a world out there that we can’t see. It’s the forces in nature that drew that Retreat sign in your I Ching book. It’s the force that makes you start seeing the same matchbook everywhere. The world where you go to a bookstore and the guy tells you to buy a book by the same author as the one you were just reading. The world where you find a freaking ghostly card out of thin air!”
“A world where I hoped all day long that I’d see you again, and then see you here tonight?”
“Exactly!” Ramona nearly jumped out of the chair and grabbed my arm. “Life is absolutely crazy. But it’s not meaningless. There’s too much love in the world for it to be meaningless, you know?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, get sure. Read the damn book.” She slammed her hands on the table. “Look. I’ve always wanted to be a painter. I got a little money, took a chance, opened a coffee shop, and try to do it as much painting in my free time as I can. It’s not the easiest life, but I get by by staying positive. By doing what I want to do to make me happy. You gotta find fulfillment somewhere.”
“You own the coffee shop?”
“Yeah, well me and my dad are partners in it. I’m kind of paying him back on a never ending loan. But, anyway. That may be what I do most of the day, but I still love painting and like to identify as a painter. Then I go home and do it and it makes me feel good. You should know, you’re a writer.”
“Yeah…” I hadn’t mentioned to her that tonight was the first time I had put pen to paper in years.
“Well, start identifying as one, see if it makes you feel different. You can have a job you aren’t stoked on and still find stuff to make you happy. Like, for instance, I put up my paintings at the coffee shop. Sometimes, rarely, someone will buy one of them. It makes me happy.”
“The paintings on the wall are all yours?”
“Yup.”
“They were incredible. You know you’re seriously like my hero right now,” I said.
“Sure,” she said and laughed. “Being a writer is cool, too. Don’t sell yourself short. BUT, if you want to use me as an inspiration, you have my permission to.”
“I want to see you again,” I said.
“Me too.”
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You can also buy me a coffee. Or a drink at a welcoming dive bar in Portland, Maine.
I love Ramona and her outlook on life! I think I needed to hear that, too.
Great chapter John!
Very Real.