Ted slipped silently into the first floor's back hallway, tiptoeing on the richly polished black toes of his Sketchers safety-grip-soled work shoes. His right palm sweated, his fingers wrapped painfully tight around the handle of his paint roller. The roller itself was righteous...a 1/4 inch nap affair that would bring a pretty penny on the black market of Madison' tough working class west side. The west side. THE WEST SIDE! He'd just driven 40 miles through the intricate labyrnth of twist and turns, naked concrete and asphalt. 40 miles of West Side just to be standing here, existing in the moment, gripping this paint roller, heart pounding in his throat, eyes mere slits, his mouth drooling for a cool drink. Maybe a drop of water, maybe a Coke, maybe a dark Guiness stout. The kind he drank at the old Club DeWash before it burned down. The Club where he'd listen to Peter and Lou Berryman (no relation). He wondered if they themselves had actually torched the place. And were they actually married, or maybe married and then divorced, maybe married, divorced, remarried?
Ted shook his head sharply, coming back into the moment. The moment. Time to seize a painting task and subdue it, slathering on rich coats of brown latex satin, slap it on before that steel door could squeal in protest, before it could wimper a whine, before it could get a bit more stale grape jelly on it to mess up the paint job. Yes, even that. And was that actually jelly he was finding on those doors, or was it mascara, or maybe gear grease, splotched on the door by Perry or his brother, Sander, a dark haired man of 40?
Ted McCedric, master painter, breathed a long sigh of relief. His was not to paint tonight. His was to go over classroom 201, try to make it nicer for the upcomng week. A big week. Big week big dogs. 21 big dogs, he'd heard. Maybe more. Funny, none were dobermans. None were dalmations. None were even collies. In fact, none even had four legs. But some had four eyes, he'd heard.
201 itself was a pretty room. Overlooked the Danube. Overlooked a beautiful green space off to the left and a quaint small village market place to the right. And then that beautiful blue Danube to the center of the spectacular view. Ted thought about writing about it in his spare time. Not a novel but maybe a song. Maybe a waltz. Yes, that was it, a waltz. He could call it the Blue Danube Waltz. He might even become famous over it.
Ted McCedric, master painter, heard someone coming. It was Loberto Sang Winthrop. Or, simply Lob Sang, as his friends called him. He was a Celtic immigrant from Lithowainia, a province in Botswania. Botswania itself was nested inside the walls of the French Bastille. Strange. A fully independent state inside a terrible prison. But we digress.
Anyway, Ted McCedric, master painter pulled off the first window screen to get to work. Suddenly a horrible swarm of killer bees swooshed out from behind the framework of the window screen, peppering Ted with horrific stings. Ted was screaming. Lob Sang ran for help. There it was, that missing pail of gasoline, sitting just outside 201's door on the carpet. Lob grabbed it and flushed those killer bees off Ted's face with one swift emptying of the bucket. Laughing with a sinister revengeful grin, Lob then tossed a match and blew the heck out of those bees. KaBlam! Ted and Lob were in shock. Slowly they regained their composure and started to smile. Started to laugh. Busted a gut! Boy, we sure showed those bees, Ted chuckled!
Possibly to be continued
Ted McCedric, Master Painter, was picking up dead bees. Lots of them. They were all over the carpet in classroom 201 of the Center. Seemed unusual, all those dead bees. Something seemed familiar about them. The way they looked or something, but he couldn't really say why. Ted had been off work for a couple weeks, been off to a hospital of sorts. PTSD, they called it. Post Stress Disorder or something. He wondered what had been so stressful. Picking up these bees was stressful. Why was it his job? He didn't put them there. 'Course, maybe they'd just dropped there that afternoon, after Sander and Perry were gone. Ron too. And Steve and Lob certainly would have been tied up with that room set in Skyview. And Tenzin would most likely have been polishing the balcony rails. Well, yes, it was no wonder the bees were there for Ted to clean up. Everyone else had other stuff that needed being done.
Ted, Master Painter, went to work, then, vacuuming up the bees. Killer bees, he suspected. Hah! They sure weren't killers anymore. Take that, Osama Bin! Dirty birty bin! Poop bin! Killer Bees bin.
There was a rustling behind Ted. Ted turned around. There were sets of eyes on him. All staring. 21 sets of eyes. 21 sets of Vice Presidential eyes. The EconoMarkian Two Dozen! Oh My Gosh! Ted was mortified. He felt discovered, revealed, found out. Naked. No not naked as in Naked. Just discovered. Discovered lost in his confusion. Like the time he woke up naked, as in really actually buff Naked, in front of the Barneveld Church. Right there in the front of the congregation, not knowing how he got there or what he was doing. That time he'd dashed out the side door, immensely embarrassed. Didn't go back for three years. If he'd only known the truth, he'd have gone back the next Sunday...those weren't real Lutheran parishioners. Those were vile members of the Satanic Dogs of Hades sect. The real Lutherans were bound and gagged in a seldom-used branch of the Blue Mounds Cave, up the road a few miles. Thankfully, young Scotty Walker and the FBI freed them just a few hours later.
Ted, Master Painter, looked down at himself. Good, he was in full maintenance uniform. Name badge, check. Collars buttoned, check. Ted mumbled a polite Good Evening, Gents! and padded silently out the west door near the windows.
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Ted McCedric, Master Painter, was busy thinking. That was always his best work. Thinking about things.
It had been a busy weekend. Washing windows, tracks and screens. Skylights, too.
Ted had been too busy to write any musical comedies over the weekend, something he felt bad about. He knew that Meridith Vierra was losing her job and might be needing work. He didn’t make any money on the musicals he wrote but he felt a need/obligation to churn them out to put a few more out-of-work actors back into tax-payer status.
St. Louis Lonnie mixed Ted a cheap gin drink with some rail stuff and then put her cigarette out on the back of Ted’s left hand. “Ouch!” Ted yelled. “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry!” SL Lonnie gasped. She was mortified by having done that, but the smoke had been burning her eyes and all she had been able to think about was getting that noxious firebrand out. Then Ted felt bad. He knew his favorite bartender had advanced dementia and didn’t mean to harm him.
Ted headed down West Johnson Street and went up the employee entrance ramp to punch in at The Center. Lots of people there that night. Busy place. Ted grabbed his card and poised his right hand to swipe it. The cat was looking at him. Looking away. Looking at him. Looking away. It seemed to be a pattern. The Cat was a black and white plastic cat clock sitting above the frame of the KeyWatcher box. Eyes to the left tail to the right. Eyes to the right tail to the left. On and on it went. Gosh, Ted hated that clock. No one else ever mentioned it.
Ted McCedric, Master Painter, was now on shift at work. Drunk too, he wondered? He hoped no one would notice. Boy, that Lonnie didn’t know what the heck she was doing, mixing drinks. Three drinks should be fine before work. But he didn’t feel fine. Ted should have known to stay out of any place named Lonnie’s Liquor Lagoon.
Ted wandered up the back hall and pushed the elevator button. Ronnie, the new cook, was singing and talking loud. “What up, Ted?” Ronnie inquired. He looked pretty cool in his clean white chef’s coat. He didn’t miss his old utility job in the blue jumpsuit. Looked pretty neat and proper for 8:30pm, Ted thought. Must not have done any work again tonight.
The service elevator arrived at second floor and Ted jumped out. The elevator attendant never waited long for Ted to get off. She never announced “Floor Two” for Ted anymore either.
Ted went in to the Tool Shop and read the shift notes. Perry had gone into detail about some project that Ted had no clue existed or what was going on with it. Perry was a pretty cool guy. He’d been a gladiator in a previous life but was now a regular person. As a gladiator in World War II’s South Pacific he’d been a mechanic on those attack/fighter planes with the single propeller and the shark’s teeth on the plane’s snout. Must have been a cool unit to be in. Ted tried to picture Perry in that gladiator kilt thing, sword in waistband, ratcheting down the engine mounting bolts, putting a torque wrench to the tail wheel, or running copper wire through the fuselage. Boy, he just couldn’t picture it; that collision of two cultures.
Ted, Master Painter, picked up the Shop trash and headed for the Dock. He didn’t like the smell of the tobacco spit in the trash bin. Maybe it was anchovies. The Boys sometimes snacked in the Shop. Ted marched toward the Dock doors, carrying the rattling bag. That Cat Clock was gone again from the KeyWatcher. He hated how they did that. Taking it down; putting it back up. Sometimes it would be there when he went into the dock dumpster area and be gone when he came back out the dock doors. No pattern. Sometimes there; sometimes not.
To be continued
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Part 5:
Dave grabbed the machine gun by the hot barrel – burned his hand pretty good, he said -- and ran for the rear. The rest of his team and the grunts around them scrambled for their lives as well. Dropped back as fast as they could. The Marine F-4 Phantom had just done a run less than a couple hundred meters in front of their defensive position, snagged a wing tip on the earth, and careened into a fireball of Hell. Dave had seen the pilot and copilot underneath their canopy. Dead now. Incinerated.
Dave learned later that the pilot was a Viet Nam vet; survived that Hades only to burn up in a training mission at 29 Palms, California, in the peacetime of the late 1970’s. Supporting reservists. 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines. Were the reserve F-4’s in bad shape, was the pilot aging, was the method of execution poorly developed? Dave said the fireball singed the hair on his forearms and face, but that was nothing, he knew.
By the time Ted got to 29 Palms it was 1983 and the aviators’ lives had paid for big change. Close Air Support came in one click out (1000 meters) and didn’t fool around with pretending it was the real deal. 1000 pounders rocked our socks but left us and the pilots intact.
Ted McCedric, Master Painter, walked through the double doors into the Lobby of The Center. He felt like a lucky man often times. Sort of a king in his own domain. More like a farmer in his rented field, he guessed. Jane Danielle Boone was at the Front Desk. She was the regular weekday night auditor from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. 74 miles each way in a big champaign-colored Chrysler. Jane ignored him tonight, absorbed in her work, reconciling receipts. Ted wandered off, glad to have a peaceful night.
The ride up the service elevator was uneventful. The attendant was quiet. Motionless like a statue. Again, she didn’t say a word or announce the floor at the 8th landing. Ted looked around, made sure the Research Pub (funny name for a drinking establishment) was locked and turned around to head downstairs. He heard a treadmill running in the Fitness Center. Odd time of night. Ted looked in and saw no one there. Nervously he checked the windows in case some treader had slipped on the web and launched themselves out the 8th floor window like a missile. Nope, the windows were intact. No treader was unconscious on the floor. All was well. Ted pulled the plug.
Down in the Lobby, Jane Danielle Boone was polishing her Bowie knife. She fancied herself a mountain woman or something and spent most of her free time sharpening and polishing that large knife, lost in reverie. J. Danielle Boone only had one good eye, the other being glass. Yet, whenever she was working on that knife she’d lapse into squinting shut her good eye and stare at the blade with that glass eye. Ted found it unnerving. Creeped him out. Maybe she just did it when he was passing by…there’d she be, eyeballing that knife with her good eye squinted shut and assessing the knife’s edge with her bad eye. Very funny, Dannie Boone!
Later that night Ted found Dannie polishing that Bowie feverishly. Nervously. Like an obsession. She did that extra obsessing when she was uneasy. Ted felt nervous too. Something not quite right. Suddenly the whole building shook and shuddered…KaBoom! Then all was silent. J. Danielle and Ted looked at each other. Neither spoke.
Ted decided to head up the guest elevator and walk down through the floors. Should he take the elevator? No. Who knew if it was safe? Ted took the elevator. He exited the elevator (no attendant on the guest elevators - strange policy) on 8th and looked around. A dim fiery glow came from the Research Pub. Ted didn’t have to unlock the door. It was off its hinges. A huge hole was in the ceiling and in the east wall. Ted saw satellite dust all over the place. A huge satellite had torn through the building and taken that piece-of-crap never-worked-right flat screen TV with it. Took it right out towards Ians Pizza across Frances Street.
Ted looked out the one intact window. Yes, Ians was OK and had not been hit. He felt better. He surveyed the damage, the shattered windows, the craterous holes in ceiling and wall. Ted scratched his head. It would have to wait for morning. He’d see what Sander had to say. Ted hoped it didn’t rain that night.
To be continued possibly
Ted, Master Painter, slipped through the Kitchen into the Dining Room, edging over to the glass doors. The Land Shark was out there again tonight, circling silently. In the courtyard that separated The Center from that blue Danube. The shark sensed Ted’s gaze and glared with a cold emotionless eye as he glided along the far wall of the compound. Ted wondered where he came from, where he went, what determined when he would show up next. Seemed like he was only out there on darker moonless nights.
In a moment of machismo, Ted flipped off the shark, threw back his head and laughed. The shark flipped a fin at Ted briskly and jerked his head around to glare full coldly at Ted with both eyes, not just the one. Ted jumped. He didn’t really mean to diminish the shark’s self-image. He didn’t really mean to rile him up.
Ted McCedric turned and headed into the Kitchen, only slightly nervous. For a moment he fantasized the land shark crashing through the glass and biting him on the back of the neck or devouring him in a gory bloodbath.
The gypsies were back again tonight in the Lobby’s north vestibule. Dancing and singing. Carrying on in a colorful fashion. Sometimes the Master Painter would sit in the Lobby’s shadows and watch, rather wishing he was part of that band of gypsies. He was glad they always departed before Sander arrived. Sander didn’t appreciate having gypsies in the vestibule. Ted wondered if those gypsy kids went to school?
“Can I have the gun, man? Can I have that gun? I saved your life last night.” What? Ted came to with a dull glaze in mind and eye. “What?”, Ted muttered. A sorta personable young man, not a hippie, not even quite a freak, was standing in front of Ted, inquiring. Ted was lying on his back on the grass, backpack near the right side of his head. A peaceful stream arched around from left to right past his feet. A large tree was behind his head. It was a cool, clear morning in August, 1973. Reno, Nevada.
“Can I have that .38 revolver in the brown suitcase there?” Ted turned his head to his left and saw a cheap pressed-cardboard sort of suitcase to his side. “I saved your life last night while you were sleeping. A man was standing here saying he was going to shoot you and I talked him out of it,” the young man told Ted. “Then the man left and left this suitcase here. I kept watch over you all night from over there by those rocks”. Ted looked at the rocks. Which rocks, he wasn’t sure.
Ted tried to take this all in. Later on he couldn’t for sure remember if he even saw the handgun that morning. “Ya, take it. I sure don’t want it!” Ted declared. The last thing he wanted hitchhiking cross-country was carrying a handgun. Or dope. Or liquor. He liked to travel simple, light, as nearly invisible as he could be. The not-quite-a-freak young man left with the suitcase. One thing Ted was sure of was that he was fully glad the bad man, the good man, and the suitcase were gone, whatever the reality of it all might be.
Ted McPainter walked through The Center’s Lobby. It was 5am and guests were starting to leave. Catch taxi cabs to far-away wonderful parts of the world. Ted sort of pretended to be important, like a security guard at Hotel Swank or something. He’d say “Good Morning!” to the guests as they rattled importantly past with the little “roller blade wheels – patent pending” of their carry-on bags humming by. Ted breathed in a deep sigh and headed off to write shift notes and punch out. He looked forward to the morning drive home, catching news casts from various stations on the radio. 98.1 at 5:44am, 105.5 at 5:51am, 101.5 at 6:08am whenever Christie Lee got her act together, 105.5 again at 6:21am. It was a good time of the day to be alive.
To be continued: