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Kristi's Crypt

•  Irrational Functions

    ©2006  Word Count: 2,800

  
  
  It was the pre-arranged combinations of effects that made it difficult to distinguish the real. The darkness of the lounge, spotted with the bouncing, multi-colored lights that rotated from the ceiling; the close, unseen space, jammed with people, tables, smoke, and the rambling remnants of talk and glasses; and the music, the seeming master-thread that tied this discordant mess into a whole, floated from the speakers in the far-off stage, a weirdly exotic mix of flute and drum…
  
  
  Cramped, unmoving, Alan Mesh sat, staring straight ahead, as if in trance. No, he couldn’t make sense of it… Of course, the weariness of the day compounded with the alcohol of the night robbed him of the strength and the will…to try to make sense of it. But, no, he couldn’t…
  
  
  “The result is irrational,” aggressively asserted the bald man, forcefully running his podgy hand up his moist, fat features to the dome of his glistening pate. The passing lights momentarily illuminated the naked head with its large, unsteady eyes; for an instant, he was revealed, like a large bullfrog with his face protruding from the murky waters of a night swamp, caught in the beam of a flashlight. The lights rolled on, and once again, mercifully, he was again plunged into darkness.
  
  
  The tall, pale man sitting opposite Froggy arched his eyebrows in woozy astonishment, stray bits of light glinting off the rims of his spectacles. “Is there a proof for that?” he disbelievingly slurred.
  
  
  “It’s a Fibonacci series!” Froggy drunkenly sidestepped. “Now, listen, Birch. You take the third vector…”
  
  
  And thus onward, in this aimless direction, the inebriated mathematicians rambled. The third man at the table, however, continued on in silence, deaf, for the nonce, to his colleagues’ theories on the algebraic properties of plastic containers. Despite the liquor, despite the exhaustion, Alan suddenly felt oddly focused. Drink in hand, propped against the table, he stared away at the distant stage.
  
  
  There in the dim, shifting lights, she danced. A child. As stylized as the mythic phoenix; as supple, as brown as the ever-flowing Ganges. The dance of creation. The dance of the gods. The dance of purity and madness.
  
  
  Alan blinked and leaned forward, but his stinging eyes, his clouded brain, were unable to pierce the veil of smoke, noise, distance, and distraction…
  
  
  Froggy roughly grabbed Alan by the shoulder, attempting to pull him back into the argument.
  
  
  “Throw some light on this, Mesh!” he jocularly demanded via the standard jib. But Dr. Mesh did not hear Froggy and continued to stare away at the distant, dancing figure.
  
  
  “Aw hell!” burped Froggy. “He’s blinded.” He turned once again to the stolid, still unconvinced Birch. “How can anyone be so drunk…” he began again.
  
  
  Through it all, however, somewhere in the background, on the drum and flute played, and on she danced…
  
  
  And on he watched…
  
  
  ~
  From above, from somewhere far above, irritating shards of jangling noise sprinkled themselves painfully into Alan’s groping consciousness. He rolled, this way and then that, attempting to evade the painful stabs – but to no avail. On they rained.
  
  
  He had the fleeting delusion that he was buried neck-deep in sand, and that his eyes were plastered over with glue. Through the iron-heavy mud, crabs and sea worms gnawed at his immobile, pulsing flesh.
  
  
  Alan shook himself violently, trying to loosen the adamantine bonds of the nightmare ~ for now he saw her, moving carefree across the very crescents of the waves. Moving out to sea, away from him.
  
  
  It was with a jarring, rattling stab of pain that Alan recognized the phone was ringing. And someone was banging on the door.
  
  
  Convulsively, the receiver was grabbed, sending the dialer clattering to the floor. “Hello? Yes?” he said. His throat was dry and his head pounded.
  
  
  “Dr. Mesh,” the annoyed and annoying voice buzzed, “check-out time is noon and it’s 11:30 now. We’re sorry, sir, you’ll have to vacate the room as it’s been reserved.”
  
  
  Alan looked about him, the fog only slowly receding from his brain.
  
  
  “Yes,” he said, clearing his throat and propping himself on one elbow. “Thank you.”
  
  
  ~
  
  
  It was with good reason that the hotel’s coffee shop was nearly deserted: the prices were inflated, the food rubbery, and the service slow. Yet it, too, with its advantageous position and the weakness of its victims, claimed its share of victims. Alan sat, more or less disheveled, morosely forking over “Set Breakfast No. 1”.
  
  
  He couldn’t recall how he’d gotten to his room last night, but something was nagging at his blurred consciousness… And where had Froggy and Birch disappeared to? Had they already checked out? The plan for returning to Ansford, too, had been mentally misfiled, but Alan didn’t seem to care… There was something else…
  
  
  A living manikin (blue pants suit; blond, acrylic hair, face neatly, if cheaply and plainly, painted on) efficiently glided over to Alan’s table. As customary, she paused a half-second, prefacing her spiel with an ersatz smile lifted from the beaming face of the now long-dead Wonder Bread girl.
  
  
  “The industrial canning conference is concluded, sir. I need to reclaim your I.D. badge.” And again a cellophane facsimile of sunshine was produced.
  
  
  Blankly, Alan stared up at her, not quite following. It oddly occurred to him, however, that she was a wonderful puppet. Very life-like. He had the vague desire to turn her around and unzip her, getting a full gander at that maze of wheels and cogs clicking away inside her. What a contrast!
  
  
  Quizzically, the woman arched one of a pair of penciled eyebrows, and leaned forward slightly, moving her head side to side. With a dull-gleaming nail, she politely tapped the square, plastic badge covering her heart.
  
  
  “I need this,” she said as if speaking to a slow-witted child.
  
  
  In a spasmodic, protective gesture, like pledging allegiance to an unseen flag, his right hand leapt up, covering his uncovered heart. Ah… But, no… she didn’t want that. Alan’s fingers groped over his shirt, then again; he gave his pockets a pat search.
  
  
  No. The thing had been lost.
  
  
  ~
  
  
  The automaton at the checkout desk had been equally concerned about the loss of the I.D. badge (“It’s simply a matter of security,” she had rote-informed him.) As he handed in the key (which had not slipped away in the lounge), a key of another sort was obliquely offered.
  
  
  To the far left end of the desk, propped against the wall in a cheap cardboard frame, leaned a small, gaudily glossy poster. The effect of the lobby’s fluorescent lights on the Photo-Shop generated image was lurid, but it did catch the eye. Or at least Alan’s.
  
  
  A background of a Technicolor sunset was provided with the de rigueur dreamily rocking ocean. And there she danced.
  
  
  Balinese Dance Exhibition
  The Hunter’s Hall: 11PM – Midnight
  
  
  As he stood before the representation, he could feel his heart pounding. Frantically, yet cautiously, his still-plodding memory attended to the scattered shards and shreds in his unconscious…
  
  
  Sight still focused on the poster, not daring to let the mirage slip from his sight a second time, he called out to the receptionist at the desk.
  
  
  “This girl,” Alan said, pointing to the advertisement, “this girl, where is she?”
  
  
  With a violent blink, the woman looked up from the Windows solitaire she was losing. Her plastic features were a cross between puzzlement and annoyance. Why was it people always wanted what they didn’t have? Did anyone bother to read the schedule? Couldn’t she get a minute’s peace?
  
  
  “That show’s been cancelled, sir,” she said (tone automatically reverting to hotel-ese).
  
  
  “Can –“ Alan stuttered. He shot a cutting look at the woman ~ perhaps she was joking. But no.
  
  
  “Cancelled?” Alan re-tried.
  
  
  Perhaps it was the glint in his eyes that caught her attention. Now, more carefully, she gave him the once over. Drunk? Hung-over? A little crazy?
  
  
  “Yes, sir,” she said slowly, “due to lack of interest, the Balinese dance show has been cancelled. The last show was last night. That poster has to be taken down.”
  
  
  “I need to speak,” Alan said, trying to choose his words carefully, “to the… performers.”
  
  
  Immediately, the receptionist had begun to shake her head, but Alan approached the desk and discreetly laid a twenty-dollar bill before him.
  
  
  The woman looked down, then about the lobby; it was almost empty, and she was going home in 15 minutes. She crossed her arms at her chest, concealing her name badge.
  
  
  “Across the street,” she said quietly, “at the Rainbow Hotel.”
  
  
  Alan turned away from the woman as she slid the bill off the desk and into her waiting pocket.
  
  
  Heading toward the exit, he stopped a moment and quickly detached the poster from its frame.
  
  
  Image in hand, he stepped onto the sidewalk.
  
  
  ~
  
  
  The Rainbow Hotel, despite the bright promise of its name, turned out to be as colorless as the side alley in which it sat. In fact, even the term “hotel” was something of a misnomer: the place would have been more truly described as a storage area for itinerant persons. Modern mores, however, do not permit the candid expression of such truths (preferring to let them exist, as if unseen, plastered over with standard labels). But enough, the threadbare rugs, the peeling walls, the dead lamps, the darting cockroaches, all spoke eloquently.
  
  
  En route, dodging first the sidewalk full of rapid pedestrians then wending his way through the sluggish traffic to yet another packed sidewalk, Alan grappled with the problems he would soon confront. How would he explain himself? What would he say, by way of entrée, to the girl’s parents? (Whom surely they must be.) And what about the child herself? What if she spoke no English? Where could you get an English-Balinese dictionary?
  
  
  The lobby of the Rainbow, dim, dusty, as worn down as a used-up pair of boots, was apparently empty. The reception desk, unmanned, had nothing to say; its traditional sentinels of registry book, hand-bell, and phone, hung back, useless and mute.
  
  
  Alan stood just three steps into the chamber, sunlight at his back, door slowly closing behind him, peering into the obscurity. He was about to call out, when, from an unseen corner of the large room, an echo of rhythmic tapping was heard.
  
  
  The sound and its attendant, light reverberation, unlike the monotonous dead clicking of a machine, had a decidedly live, even vibrant, quality to it. And, like all things that pulse of their own accord, it too had a certain attractive power. Thus, without deliberation, and of his own true will, Alan slowly stepped across the room toward the dark corner.
  
  
  As he drew closer, his eyes gradually adjusted to the low light; slowly, out of the darkness, a child’s form came into view. A pale, thin girl of about nine, clad in a cheap frock, sat on the floor, playing jacks. Her abundant blond hair, like her frock, the straps of which hung mid-arms revealing her upper chest, was in need of a wash.
  
  
  But how do you play jacks in the dark?
  
  
  Feeling his presence, yet not wanting to be taken from the magic of the game (it was at a crucial point), she only turned her head half toward him. The tangle of wisps that veiled her face more accented than hid her dark eyed beauty.
  
  
  “The dancer,” he whispered.
  
  
  Beneath the stray strands, a reaction did play across the fey child’s features… Such phenomenon, however, not only eludes but indeed mocks attempts at description. They even make one wonder if some things are beyond the powers of god…
  
  
  She did not turn, but merely pointed with a shadowy hand toward a nearby wall where a large, door-sized variation in color indicated the opening of a hallway.
  
  
  “Thank you,” he said as he reached into his coat pocket, retrieving the coins that were there. Alan placed the silver and bronze pentacles within the magic circle and said, “Get some candy with it.” He stood and turned, treading away toward the hallway.
  
  
  Miranda (for such was her name), put her free hand over the unseen coins and then slipped them into her frock pocket, and at once returned to the game.
  
  
  Like an angel or a demon scattering stars, she cast the jacks before her, bouncing the tiny red sun in time.
  
  
  “Nine, nine, time ahead and time behind.”
  
  
  The sun and the stars were scooped up.
  
  
  The hall was as dark as the lobby had been, and so the half-open door, with its pale, irregular triangle of light cast upon the dirty floor, was an obvious beacon. Quickly but cautiously, Alan approached it, his expectations, however, having shifted into a kind of dream-logic.
  
  
  The wedge of the rectangular vantage gave upon an unmade, recently abandoned bed, scraps of paper on the ragged carpet, and silence. He didn’t bother to knock, though didn’t quite dare to enter either, so gently pushed the unresisting door open.
  
  
  Not surprisingly, Alice was not there ~ nor the rabbit in his top hat, nor dancing, armed cards, nor even horribly laughing harlequins. No, there was nothing there that pulsed, not even a cockroach. It was only empty, hideous reality, draped in the rags of a ramshackle hotel, that blankly stared back at Alan.
  
  
  The scatter of trash about the sordid, little room spoke plainly of the temporary family stay and their recent, rapid departure. Alan stood motionless, gazing over the mess, trying to divine a cue, or waiting for a sigh to be given.
  
  
  But there was nothing amongst these remains; there seemed neither purpose nor direction. All that he was sure of, via a decaying psychic trace, was that she had been here.
  
  
  Moving in a counter-clockwise direction, from west to east, Alan began to search through the bits and pieces. An empty, paper shoe box, size unmarked, with the picture of a Chinese basketball star on the top; plastic bottles and wrappers; a much-battered tourist map of New York, with key sights circled and fold-lines threatening to separate the city; a transistor radio made in Indonesia that no longer transisted.
  
  
  In a thin, badly worn wastebasket of plastic, the exterior of which was decorated with a blurred scene of rolling verdant, flowing streams, and dancing does, was found a crumpled, half-torn sheet confirming air tickets.
  
  
  The names of the four passengers were unpronounceable; the destination (Dristamme, Bali), unheard of; the date was today; the departure time in 35 minutes.
  
  
  Now, it was not possible to go from where he was (mid-town NY) to where he wanted to be (La Guardia) in the allotted time. To wit, the redoubtable Mr. Phileas Fogg would have instantly located the helicopter on the building three roofs away, bought it, and boldly flown on ~ only to fall short by minutes. Or again, Captain Kirk would have beamed directly to the departure gate ~ only to be detained by security personnel, and again lose the girl. No, it was not possible, no matter how mathematically one jumped.
  
  
  But, you see, the heart knows nothing of mathematics.
  
  
  Alan rushed from the dreary room to the dark hall and through the dim, echoing lobby, out into the bright void of the sunshine in the busy city street. Masterfully, mid-traffic, a cab was commandeered.
  
  
  “La Guardia! La Guardia!” Alan shouted at the Hindu driver as he slammed the door behind him. The Sikh, a big man, merely readjusted his turban, and looked back at his passenger, wondering if the man were insane.
  
  
  Alan plucked a fortuitous greenback, graced with the wise and reasonable countenance of Dr. Franklin, from the folds of his wallet.
  
  
  “La Guardia Airport!” he loudly enunciated.
  
  
  The face of the driver, heretofore so stolid, suddenly lit up, sparked into action by the fires of lucre.
  
  
  “Yes, sir! Right away, sir!” the driver panted in rapid, clipped, English, at once snatching the bill and violently jerking the car out of the molasses lane toward the expressway entrance.
  
  
  On they flew.
  
  
  ~
  
  
  The massive departures board was a rolling chaos of cities, times, letters and numbers. Alan craned his neck, blinking up at the black surface illuminated with dotted yellow lights, trying to find Bali Air, NY to Dristamme, flight 801.
  
  
  But there was no time for anything to be done. The swift clicking of the board, the listless pushing and jostling of the crowds, the faint background roar of planes taking off: it all said the same thing: there was no time…
  
  
  The information office was both empty and locked. “Please Go To The Next Office” read a placard hanging on the inside of the glass door. But the next office, too, was locked tight.
  
  
  Amidst the shuffling crowds, Alan located a strolling policeman and inquired about Bali Air. He was directed one flight up, around the corner.
  
  
  Just as Alan turned that corner the receptionist was putting the “Closed” sign on her desk; she was about to go on break.
  
  
  “Miss! Miss!” Alan called, moving quickly toward her. “Flight 801?” he urgently asked.
  
  
  “It’s gone, sir,” she replied with a wondering expression. “But you couldn’t have had a ticket for 801. All the passengers for that flight checked-in!”
  
  
  Alan’s sigh graded into a wistful smile.
  
  
  “I’d like a ticket on the next flight,” he said calmly.
  
  
  8-1/8-15
  
  
  
  
  
  ~
  


~The End~
• Author Bio:  Robert T. Tuohey was born in 1961, Danbury, Connecticut. He has studied psychology at the State University of New York in Albany (1988), and California Coast University in Santa Ana (1993). In the U.S., Bob worked in the field of mental health; for the past ten years, he has lived abroad (in Japan and China) teaching English at the tertiary level. His current position is Foreign Expert in the Languages Department of Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, Shanxi, PRC.
  
  Bob’s published works include an introductory textbook on English literature (From Beowulf to Joyce, Taiyuan University press, 2001), several short stories (some to be found on the WWW), his home page at

  http://jadedragon.250x.com/welcome.htm
  
  and his bimonthly chess column, Past Pawns, at

  chessville.com.
  
  
  
  Besides writing, blues guitar and martial arts take up a good deal of his time. Bob’s e-mail is

  jadedragon61@hotmail.com.