Alchemy
This is the fifth and final installment of The Writer posts, initially titled “Favor” – a post split into three episodes. For better or worse, its purpose is about the only thing about that has remained intact since I started writing it. I’ve renamed it “Alchemy” for reasons that I’m arrogant enough to assume will be made abundantly clear in the end.
All of this writing really amounts to an attempt at some form of recovery from sour times via internet vignettes.
Stories relating to and including The Writer himself are likely to follow given how often we tend to pal around.
And, as always, thanks for reading.
D
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Episode I: Accord
“The value of the grand unification energy is not very well known, but it would probably have to be at least a thousand million GeV [giga-electron volts]. The present generation of particle accelerators can collide particles at energies of about one hundred thousand GeV, and machines are planned that would raise this to a few thousand GeV. But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System – and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.”
--Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time
I could tell he was uncomfortable. We’d been sitting in silence for a full minute or better. I looked over, trying to read him and got nothing. The tacit tension continued. I started getting uncomfortable myself by the time the bill arrived. We rose and left the restaurant, leaving a five on the table for the waitress we’d kept at bay all night with our antics.
The car chewed up the miles between the scene of the crime and the pub. We spoke a little then, carefully at first, sweeping the conversational landscape for mines. Farmland streaked by as the blacktop paid out beneath us. One word exchanges lengthened to two, then five, growing more and more as we neared the pub. By the time we pulled into the driveway, we were laughing and debating this and that again. He was taking me too seriously and I wasn’t taking him seriously enough which meant things were more or less back to normal.
We staked out two seats at the bar and got good and silly. Old war stories, college misadventures, and the like came to the fore. We laughed long and easy. The writer, normally a Blue Moon fan, matched my order. I took it as an additional sign that everything was alright. Good times.
All around us patrons unconsciously acted out the lyrics to bad country music. Occasionally, one or two of them would cast a wary glance toward the great peals of laughter echoing from our end of the bar before returning to their southern fried charade.
Before long, my sides and cheeks were hurting like hell. It was late and getting later all the time but I was happy and couldn’t care less what time it was. Eventually, however, wisdom prevailed despite the beers and we fled before any real damage could be done.
* * * * *
The sliding glass door that leads to his porch has a tendency to stick. To open or close it, one has to pull it from the bottom, else it won’t move at all. I flicked my half-smoked cigarette into the wind and came in from the porch. I knelt to close the door, goofy and geisha-like, dimly aware that I had work the next morning. Something was on television that neither of us was interested in watching. The night had just begun.
The Writer emerged from the kitchen and poured something cold and clear into a tiny glass he’d set in front of me. The bottle was large and covered in unfamiliar writing. I knocked the drink back in one gulp. It tasted like… pear? Yes – it was almost certainly pear flavored. I smiled again, thinking, “I could get used to this stuff.”
“You’re not supposed to shoot that,” he said patiently, pouring me another. He gestured with his free hand. “Sip it”.
I nodded, carefully picking up the drink and knocking it back in one gulp. It was delicious. “That was delicious!” I bleated, flashing the smile of a delinquent toddler. The Writer was not amused.
By the fifth tiny glass, I’d learned my lesson. I sipped, gripping the tiny glass fiercely, easing a new cool and tantalizingly dark liquid over my tongue. This stuff was different yet familiar. It took a while before the name of the flavor came to me. “Raspberry!” I cried victoriously. The word fell out, heavy and wet. I grinned like a proud puppy. The Writer smiled and nodded in agreement.
Episode II: Genesis
“About one hundred seconds after the big bang, the temperature would have fallen to one thousand million degrees, the temperature inside the hottest stars… Within only a few hours of the big bang, the production of helium and other elements would have stopped. An, after that, for the next million years or so, the universe would have just continued expanding, without anything much happening.”
--Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time
He’d been painting. The combination of the hard work and the fumes had ground him down a bit. A lingering cold he’d been battling did the rest. By the time he joined me on the back porch, he was an awful hacking mess. I wouldn’t have said anything if he hadn’t sounded so awful.
“You sound awful”, I said.
“Eh [hack] [wheeze], I’m fine.” He cleared his throat, making a sound like a growling pit bull. Placing his hands on the wooden railing, he spat out an impossibly large wad of phlegm before blowing his nose into a fistful of wet napkins. I immediately thought of Captain Tripps and shivered. He shouldn’t have been painting. I thought of telling him so and stopped myself. “Really, I’m fine” he said, reading my mind. His nose was a furious red button in the middle of a flushed and splotchy face. I tried not to frown. He certainly didn’t look or sound ok but I decided to leave the issue alone for the moment despite my better judgment.
After a few moments, he headed back in and continued painting. I sat on the couch, took out my notes, and flipped open the laptop. More coughing and snorting echoed from the other room. “You sure you’re ok?” I called. No answer. Then, a head poked out of his bedroom. “Fine!”, he said, grinning and dropping out of sight as quickly as he’d appeared. Moments later, he began punctuating the afternoon with the sounds of bad business. “Bronchitis”, I thought and wouldn’t say. I bit my tongue and kept typing.
Somewhere between the misery and the empathy, I realized that he was my friend – officially... whatever the hell that means. I let the idea make me as uncomfortable as it dared before settling back to my notes and such. I wanted to say something and felt like maybe I should. But what to say?
I walked over and leaned against the door frame to his bedroom. “Hello”, he said, not taking his eyes off the wall.
“Dinner?”
He paused. “Eh, sure. Sure. Let me get some… things in order here and… er yes – just a minute. I want to finish this. What’d you have in mind?”
I shrugged. “The Pub? We can always figure it out from there.”
“That sounds fine – just let me do this in here and…”
“I’ll be in the living room.”
“That fine.” He went back to painting.
I went back to the couch feeling better having said what needed to be said.
Episode III: Notice
“If the universe is indeed spatially infinite, or if there are infinitely many universes, there would probably be some large regions somewhere that started out in a smooth and uniform manner... At first sight this might seem very improbable, because such smooth regions would be heavily outnumbered by chaotic and irregular regions. However, suppose that only in the smooth regions were galaxies and stars formed and were conditions right for the development of complicated self-replicating organisms like ourselves who were capable of asking the question: Why is the universe so smooth? This is an example of the application of what is known as the anthropic principle, which can be paraphrased as ‘We see the universe the way it is because we exist.”
--Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time
I walked in and was greeted by a surprising smell of food. Setting my things in their usual place, I took a seat and waited for him to come over. The Writer was in the kitchen managing a series of boiling, simmering, pots and pans.
Without question, I was curious as all hell. There’d never been cooking of any kind before. For that matter, there’d never really been anything in the apartment that could even constitute a meal if either of us had a desire to cook. I’d raided the fridge with and without permission more than a few times, never finding much more than black olives and fruit flavored liqueur. Eating had always meant eating out.
Now, he stirred and seasoned mysterious whatnots just outside of my field of vision. Something like nervousness started in to gnawing on me.
“I was inspired by your comments last night”
“My comments?”
He nodded vigorously. “This morning, I went shopping and such. Feel free to inspect the fridge.” Intrigued, I walked over to the fridge and looked inside.
It was full. I’ll say that much. No longer would the olives be lonely. Not a single empty space had been spared the burden of his newly acquired comestibles. Looking near the top shelf, I noticed a rather large tub of radishes. I turned to look at him.
“Radishes”?
“Oh yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. They’re tasty!” He was excited. About radishes. He was also making lunch and, given that I was a guest in his house, I let a perfectly good “Peter Rabbit” insult die behind my teeth.
Radishes are awful.
He harbored the same disgust for the lima beans I’d loaded up on a few nights prior at The Restaurant. In the end, however, we agreed on olives and alcohol, which is no small feat. I stifled my radish-hate for the sake of peace.
* * * * *
It was delicious… whatever it was. I’m not sure if the dish had a proper name and never really bothered to ask. I didn’t care. My mouth was full of tastiness.
There was eggplant and some kind of mushroom and a bit of garlic in this red sauce of his. There was also something crunchy and familiar that I couldn’t quite identify. I kept eating anyway.
“BlahBlahBlah onions.” I looked up, curious. Had he been talking?
“I forgot about the onions.” I noticed he sounded a little worried. And he was looking directly at me. I smiled, forking more tasty into my face. It was a good thing he’d forgotten them. I’m allergic to onions.
“Groob fing”, I said through a mouthful of food. I swallowed. “I’m allergic to onions.” I lifted another huge forkful of delicious into my mouth. This stuff was marvelous!
“I know. I forgot that you were allergic.” He jabbed a finger at my meal. “There are onions in there.”
I was already halfway done. Onions, especially raw onions, give me the worst gas imaginable. Suffice it to say, I’ve made myself and others vomit from the smell. Along with the noxious fumes comes terrible stomach cramps and, at times, mild confusion. I eyed my plate lustily, suspiciously. The facts were irrefutable. My choice was clear. Sighing with regret, I wolfed the rest of the meal down. It was delicious.
Later, on the way to my mom’s place, I was forced to drive about 75 mph with both windows down. I could still taste the onions.
Special thanks to Karen, who will likely never read this until I get around to fixing her internet connection. Likewise thanks to Richard, who, love it or hate it, will certainly read this more than once .They’ve both independently encouraged me to reach back over twenty years to deliver a simple “Thank You” that was long overdue.
