For Entertainment Purposes Only

By Kim Traverse

David Barnes leaves a disastrous two year marriage and the state of Nebraska to try and start a new life in Seattle but seventeen months later he's crashing on his younger brother's couch. Brother Rick is a computer game tester and heads to a conference in Houston leaving David to figure out how to make enough money to eat. Well, he does that- coming up with an on-line service Zodiac service that promises to bring in a lot of money but no happiness. Soon he has fallen for the office manager he hired who is fourteen years older than him and has a six year old kid to boot.. Brother Rick has to fire David to head off a sexual-harassment suit and David blunders into an affair with artsy Jackie Bass, editor of Poetry on Napkins, and as rich as she is smart and cultured. Jackie's dad is trying to have David investigated but she won't believe it. David goes off for a solo camping trip in the North Cascades and almost winds up dead but returns to finally realize that there is no shortcut to growing up and sometimes what you have been avoiding is the key to moving forward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kim Traverse
• Release date: Dec 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311499165

Kim Traverse

I have lived in the Midwest, on the East Coast and now I live on the West Coast. My novels are set in places similar to where I have lived but never exactly. These are works of fiction not biography, although occasionally real people make cameo appearances: friendly nods to my family and friends! I love to write but find everything to do with publishing and marketing very difficult. I mostly write about ordinary people having interesting experiences.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Not every story has a nice beginning you can find

And not every wonderful beginning leads to a story worth telling

But if you can match a great story to its actual beginning

even once in your life--

Count yourself lucky and

know you got something important right –Elliot Larson

At the time this story started, I sure didn’t recognize it as any kind of a beginning; it felt more like the end of another story. One that I didn’t want to look back on. A story that left me feeling crummy and exposed my life as a series of poorly planned messcapades with me jumping from one disaster to the next. Trying out a new city, Seattle, far from where I started out, had been my attempt at a new beginning but that had quickly turned into a mire with me stirring the muck. Nothing disastrous had happened to me; no one had died or gone missing, and I didn’t feel self-destructive or anything; but in a lot of ways, I really didn’t feel anything; didn’t care over-much about anything or anybody. That’s a bad way to live your life. Even I knew that much.

My name is David Barnes and I grew up in the small town of Robert, Nebraska. Almost everyone back home refers to the town familiarly as Bobby or Bob. With a town named so normal and formal, we all seemed to feel more comfortable with the nickname. I, on the other hand, with one of the original generic names of all time, have always refused to use or let others use any nickname. With the uncomfortable exception of summer camp when I was eleven, I have always been David; never Dave. Family tradition says I made that call when I was only three; apparently refusing to even notice anyone who called me Dave. I can’t imagine why I was so picky about something so unimportant. I guess I just needed something to be picky about.

Seattle’s a great place to live if you’re rich and none too bad if you’re poor. Or so I thought. Not that I was of either class. I was down, and that wasn’t good, but what was disturbing was the direction I seemed to keep heading. I had fooled myself into thinking I had ambition and ability. Now I was beginning to see that I was just a major screw-up skating on undeserved luck. I’d hit town seventeen months ago, scored three jobs that I’d quickly lost and had mooched off the only two friends I had in town, a couple of acquaintances I made, and finally, as a last resort, my younger brother, himself no paragon of responsibility. And this whole fiasco was supposed to be relief from a disastrous two-year marriage, the high point of which had been that we were able to split still childless. I just wasn’t doing much right and somehow I was mixing that up in my head with being broke. In fact, if I was broke, it was because I wasn’t doing much right; not a case of missing out on opportunities because I had no money.

And I really had no excuse for any of it. I’m the middle child of a staunch middle class family and Robert, Nebraska, with a population of 1457, is about as close to the middle of America as anybody needs to get. A good and ordinary life but I wasn’t in rebellion from it. I’d done that bit in my freshman year in high school. My father died of a heart attack that year and I guess that made me feel I had the right to some screwing up. The school social worker really helped me get out of that and develop a strong interest in sports. I was fine after that but these last few years, something had been going wrong.

Currently I didn’t have a job, a car, money in the bank, or a romantic interest. And believe me, there was no clarifying simplicity that made this all seem worthwhile. I’d try to tell myself that at least I didn’t have a huge debt that I was paying off but even a tiny debt was hard. I went into one of those quick-care places when I couldn’t shake a cold last winter and the bill was over three hundred dollars. Having my blood pressure checked, spending four minutes with a Physician’s Assistant and having a prescription for an antibiotic written was worth that much? Hell no! But I managed to pay the damn thing off over a few months time. And I was young and basically healthy. How could anyone poor afford to live when they got old or sick?

When I first got to town, I tried right off to get rehired by FedEx. I had worked two years for them back in Nebraska, but I guess they were still mad at me for something I had done back there. After that I registered with a temp agency and worked for a couple of months while I stayed with a friend from college. It turned out that was a good way to learn the city. I traveled by bus or occasionally I’d be picked up by contractors and did work downtown and in about every direction out. I’m not much of a carpenter but my labor was wanted mostly for demolition or cleanup; usually totally different work from one day to the next. Once I tore out ten feet of kitchen cabinet bulkhead and it took all day and was surprisingly hard; another morning I took up and salvaged oak flooring from three rooms and found it surprisingly easy once you got a few boards up. I did some precision demolition of a concrete floor; in other words we couldn’t leave any marks on the walls or ceiling from flying chips. Because we had to take it slow it wasn’t all that tiring but another job I did was three back-breaking days digging a thirty foot long trench two feet wide and eighteen inches deep. I was hired because the company skid-steer backhoe was down for repairs, and then, on the afternoon of day three, I watched the newly repaired hoe take the trench down another three inches in about ten minutes. Some of the bigger houses I worked at had amazing views but I learned from riding the bus around that there were pretty good views throughout the city. Even from bus windows I’d catch stunning looks at Mt. Rainier to the south, the Cascades to the east, Mt. Baker to the north and the Olympics across the Sound to the west. In Nebraska, where I came from, about the only things sticking up from the horizon were grain elevators and water towers.

Sometimes too, I’d do work for the friend I was staying with. Steve was two years older and had gone on to get a degree in engineering; so naturally he was running a landscaping company. Living in his apartment, I saw less of him than I did when we were on the same lacrosse team together in college, but a few times he’d have someone from his crew pick me up for a day or two’s work. I hadn’t gotten a degree in anything. I had just barely finished the second year at the college where I had gotten a partial scholarship to play lacrosse. I liked to read ok, but I really didn’t have it in me to study. When I got hurt my sophomore year and couldn’t play any longer I was pretty happy to quit school.

Mostly though, Steve would be off to work really early and a little later, I’d take the bus downtown. If I was lucky I’d hang around for maybe an hour, pick up half a day of work somewhere and take home thirty dollars. Some days I’d sit for two hours with nothing shaking before taking the bus back to Dunlap. I’d walk past the Baptist Church where Jimi Hendrix’s funeral was held and hole up the rest of the day in Steve’s apartment watching ESPN. I kept hearing from other guys that by taking the express bus across the lake to Bellevue, I could get work almost any morning but it just seemed too much trouble. And there were other, in my opinion, worse ways to get work. Over at the 1st Ave Home Depot, there would be an informal labor pool in the morning milling about at the outskirts of the parking lot. People standing around hoping someone needed labor for the day. Mostly Hispanic guys and the two times I ran into some of them on jobs they made me ashamed of how slow and unskilled I was. One job, when I was working for Steve, over in the Leschi neighborhood on a hillside too steep to bring in power equipment, I spent three days working alongside two guys from Columbia who taught me what all the plants were that we were tearing out. They gave me a nickname that I didn’t like one bit when they explained it to me. Asomada. They wouldn’t call me anything else. They said it meant: just barely there. But what really bothered me even more was Steve making me their supervisor when they knew more about what we were doing and worked, maybe not harder, but a whole lot more effectively than I did. I’d seen things like that happen before. One summer I worked at a place that bumped this total idiot into a semi-supervisory position and the guy acted like he’d gone to college to learn how to make sure others did the work he barely knew how to do. And others bought into it too. Not just new hires who didn’t know any better but some of the guys who had worked right along side of him and knew what a bad worker he was just followed his orders like he was some great leader.

Some days, I’d feel too bummed to even take the bus downtown. Those days I’d try at least to take a walk. There was a park and boat launch not far away on Lake Washington and I’d sit there, especially on hot days, enjoying the cool breeze coming off the water. At the south end of the lake Boeing was still assembling their ever-popular 737’s. The green planes would take off, bound for Boeing Field somebody told me, where they would be painted and finished.

A couple of times I helped guys launch their boats from trailers backed down into the water. One guy handed me a buck after we were done and I realized I looked like I was hanging around just for that purpose. Hell, maybe I was. I certainly was beginning to feel like a bum. I didn’t realize what that could mean to your attitude. After that experience I’d spend my days at the library reading or take a book and walk an extra half-mile to Kubota Gardens and just sit reading and watching the birds and strollers. That was a bit better.

I made a few acquaintances but no real friends. Not being really involved in anything made it harder to connect with people. It’s not like there weren’t plenty of organizations I could join, it was just that I didn’t have many interests. And it didn’t bother me in the least that I didn’t. I felt perfectly content without any. Staying pretty much to myself was fine. There’d still be times when I’d get roped into things. One of the ways I tried to defray my crashing with Steve was to walk his dog. That led to an amusing happenstance once when we were walking near Pritchard Beach.

Max!

The leash tugged me around and there was a young woman, also walking a dog, squatting down, petting and talking to my dog with enthusiasm. Her dog seemed indifferent.

Say ‘Hello’, Max. I said, hoping that Max would introduce me.

Oh, he is. He’s saying hello…aren’t you, you sweet thing.

It was hard for me to imagine Max sweet but that may have been because he had the habit of walking up next to the couch when I was sleeping and fart. Seemingly on purpose.

I’m just walking him…

Oh, I know. I’m Lisa and this is Jojo. She doesn’t seem that friendly but one time Max’s owner and I took them up to Genesee and they had the most amazing time together. They really bonded. She was good looking but she really gushed over the dogs and that seemed weird.

Uh huh. I sounded a little dubious. Jojo looked like she was embarrassed being seen in public with Lisa.

Oh, you can’t tell about dogs when they’re chained up like this. It’s the same as with people…nobody acts right when they’re in prison.

I’m David. I offered. She might be a bit odd but I was pretty lonely.

I’m Lisa. she held out her hand.

I know, I said as I shook it. You told me.

"That’s right, I did. I’m just so excited seeing Max again. Have you been a good doggy? Have you been behaving yourself?" She kept frisking Max’s chin. Jojo pretended she didn’t know us.

I couldn’t think of much else to say so we parted shortly with a friendly wave and see you around.

But when I told Steve about all this he looked confused. He said he had never taken Max to Genesee, (which I learned was a park where your dog could run free), and then decided Lisa must have meant his friend Rob who gave him Max before he went into the army.

"But that was, like, two years ago." Steve said, genuinely puzzled.

So, that was a little weird. But then, a couple of days later, it got stranger. This time it was me that recognized Jojo, even though a different woman was walking her.

Hi, Jojo! I thought Jojo seemed almost happy to see me.

You must be Lisa’s friend...

You must be Lisa’s friend… we both started and stopped about the same time.

No, I’m her cousin, Lou. Lou was very good looking, I thought.

Well, I’m really not her friend and in fact, it looks like I’m not even friends with her friend. I said.

So, that’s not Max, then? Lou quizzed.

It is Max. I admitted. Then I explained what I had garnered from Steve.

Wow, this is so karmic! You haven’t even the slightest connection to the owner that Lisa remembers from when she first met Max and I’m out with Jojo when I meet you…it’s like fate or something.

Let’s get married then. I suggested.

Not yet, silly, she laughed. We have to date before we can even get engaged.

Can’t we just skip right to picking out living room furniture?

Nope. Gotta take things in order.

We had some more pleasant conversation and she invited me to a party the next afternoon.

"It’s some friends of my cousin’s but they said to invite me so I guess I can bring a friend."

She wrote down the address and her name on the back of my hand because, although she had a pen, neither of us had even a scrap of paper.

I was beginning to think of Max as one lucky dog!

The party was in West Seattle near Alki Point and it took me a real long time to get there because there were no direct bus routes. I could have tried to cop a ride with Lisa and Lou, but on the other hand, I thought it looked better if I arrived independently. And maybe I’d be able to snag a ride back with them. That would be a bit of all right!

When you stand anywhere along Alki Ave. where the beach is, watching people on roller blades, bicyclists, strollers, and runners tearing back and forth; watch families swimming and near-naked women sunning themselves with the downtown skyline behind them, giant container ships from all over the world crossing Elliot bay, and on the other side of the street, the houses, condos, and restaurants that spell sea-side community at a glance; it’s hard to imagine that this is near the dreary rain-soaked first landing place of the families that started Seattle. So miserable a landing place that it was recorded that the women spent the night crying. I saw a large dark shape a few hundred yards off shore and realized that it was a sea lion. The first I had actually seen although one foggy morning I had heard them barking from somewhere invisible. That sucker could move pretty fast.

It took me a little while finding the party as it was on a fragment of a named street that didn’t connect with the rest of its namesake and wasn’t really even in line with it. I finally asked someone and they said it was where the noise was coming from behind their house. They let me cut through the yard and that saved me a long walk around. I arrived about four and didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious even though it was a friend of a friend of a friend kind of a party. I was too full of the chance to connect with a good-looking woman. I milled about talking with people some and although it seemed that it was fine that I had come, neither Lou nor Lisa ever showed up and nobody I talked to the whole time I was there even seemed to know either of them. The only person I met there who I had known before arriving at the party was the neighbor who let me cut through. I greeted him like an old friend. The party was filled with nice people though– real friendly even if they were mostly all quite a bit older than me. I got fed well, and plenty to drink. The house had a lot going for it too, although I was never exactly sure who lived there. It wasn’t really close to the water but there was a distinct ocean smell in the air. Inside were some of the most intensely colored rooms I’d ever seen. It was hard to believe that it was just paint on the walls. And more books than I’d ever seen outside of a bookstore or library. Every room seemed to have shelves of them. It might have been why the colors seemed so strong; or maybe why it looked so nice. I’ve always kinda liked books.

I briefly felt heroic when I managed to get the charcoal grill going again after a very late arrival brought some fresh caught salmon. It was an absolutely perfect day, temperature-wise, with not a cloud in the sky all day. The kind of day that I had seen a lot more of than I had thought I would when I first came to Seattle. All I knew about the city before I got here could be described by three words, or one word and two names: rain, Hendrix, Nirvana. Jimi and Kurt were dead and the rain seemed to have taken an extended vacation.

Things were winding down and I was sitting in the kitchen with a bunch of people who worked at Boeing. It was starting to get weird because they were all talking in this secret language: Boeningese. I absolutely couldn’t follow much of what they were saying. Service disaggregation and benchmarking and lean events. They all seemed to have to continually justify their jobs somehow. The host, or whom I thought might be the host came in and started in about how they all needed to get real jobs and stop working for the Beezy Lay, I think he called it. It made no more sense than that.

So I didn’t hook up with Lou or any other woman but at least I was able to catch a ride almost all the way home with an older couple with a blind daughter maybe in her teens. The parents seemed too tired to talk but the daughter told me more than I ever thought possible about the musical, Les Miz. She had versions in about a million different languages it seemed. She said there were six cast albums in Japanese alone, differentiated by color!

A couple of days later I ran into Lisa walking Jojo, although I was sans Max.

Why didn’t you come to the party? Lou said she invited you…you should have come! They were taking people out water-skiing; it was so much fun!

I explained and we tried to figure out how I had gone to the wrong place but it never made any sense and, of course, it really didn’t matter anymore. Still, it left an impression on me. It actually made me feel a lot more at home in Seattle. But I never ran into either Lisa or Lou again, even though I took to walking Max several times a day.

Steve finally strongly hinted that it was time for me to find another place to stay so I moved in for a while with someone I had met when a mutual friend had been in town a few months before. A real crappy apartment in a less friendly area and the guy always managed to talk friendly but act the opposite. The first weekend he brought a girl home with him and I had the sense to say that, as hot as it was, I was going to sleep out on the balcony. That got me through the first time that happened but it had some drawbacks. The balconies were just metal slats and I woke the next morning looking up the dress of a woman on the balcony above me. As soon as I stirred she scurried back into her apartment and I heard muffled but angry words. Somebody once told me that you could tell you were racist if you felt more intimidated by a black guy than a white guy. So ok, I’m a white guy, and I’m suddenly staring up at an angry black guy looking down over the railing of the balcony at me. I mean, I get intimidated by anyone who acts intimidating. But it also makes me pissed. Does that make me racist, too?

Whatchu looking at? His nasty expression bore into me.

I just woke up. I stretched to demonstrate.

"I find you sleepin there tomorrow I’m gonna piss on you, you hear me?"

I’ll sleep where I want to.

I bet it won’t be there. he smirked.

I didn’t reply but I knew I’d sleep there if I felt like it. I don’t know what I would have done if he had pissed on me but I figured he’d feel intimidated by me sleeping out there again. But I spent several days just tense with anticipating further conflict.

I did sleep out there again, too. The next time I needed to vacate the living room couch I slept out on the balcony again. It rained that night.

The next morning I called my brother but he wasn’t home so I left a message that got cut off. I figured I’d try again later. I had only seen Rick maybe four times since I had come out here. It wasn’t that we were estranged or anything; we just weren’t very close. I don’t really know why.

I called my only other friend in Seattle and he said it would be ok for me to stay with him a few days but I had already crashed there when I first came to town so I know it looked really bad that I still needed temporary housing after so long. I wasn’t sure what I should do but I had some library books to return so I headed over in that direction. There was someone up the street trying to use the slight slope to get a car started. I set my books down on the trunk and started to push the same time another guy stepped up to help. We got it moving pretty fast, the engine caught, I scooped up my books and the car sped off. I looked at the other guy and we both slowly recognized each other. It was the guy from the balcony above. He smiled and gave me a friendly nod and headed off and I went to the library. Wouldn’t it be nice if all things worked out that easy?

I turned in my load of detective fiction including the book version of something I’d originally listened to on-line and was about to check out another armful. But I thought for a moment and decided I’d better wait until I knew I didn’t have to lug them with me to a new place to live. Then I went back to the apartment and tried calling my brother again.

Hi, Rick, it’s me…I tried to leave a message but… Rick’s message space was short so I’d have to talk fast to get everything in.

Someone answered the phone.

Hey. Rick’ll be with you in a sec. said a quiet voice.

I waited. And waited. Finally there was a distracted Hello?

Hi, it’s me.

Uh, hi. You need a place to stay a couple of nights, right? He yawned while he was saying this. Why did he always sound so bored?

Yeah, in a couple of days. I said cautiously.

I heard him ask someone in the room something about Houston and a muffled reply.

He seemed reluctant but ended up saying yes. It wasn’t good that my brother Rick had become my only hope for even a roof over my head.

CHAPTER TWO

I managed to get through a couple more nights out on the balcony without getting pissed on, rained on or in a fight but I was effectively kicked out of my acquaintance’s by his visiting sister. I packed my duffle and walked a few blocks to the bus stop on South Rainier and one transfer later was off on 40th in Wallingford. A short walk down a quiet side street brought me to the two-story firetrap that Rick calls home.

He took practically forever answering the door. I would have thought he wasn’t home but I knew that he almost always was home. Besides, I could see his motorcycle parked along side of the house.

Oh, yeah, I thought you were coming by tomorrow. he stood in the door way significantly.

Uh, I need a place to stay a little sooner than I thought. I said shifting my duffle.

Still for just a couple of nights, right? I told you I have to be in Houston next week…Jesse and Mark and I are going and I have a friend who’s gonna house sit for while I’m gone. I can’t just spring my big brother on her, so you can only stay until Friday morning. Three nights, got it?

Sure. I wondered who the girl was. I’d met his old girlfriend, Jan, so maybe this was a new one? Or maybe just some girl he knew. I guess there didn’t have to be any romance involved.

My brother Rick is into video games and does something I’ve never understood about hosting beta conventions. At least that was what he told me the last time we had actually had much of a conversation. If I remember correctly that was right after he’d not shown up for my wedding. He’d given me a sorry apology and then launched into all this stuff about all the games he had successfully played. Not, won, mind you; I’d asked about that and he had contemptuously dismissed the standard goal of every game I’d ever played. Successfully playing a game was something much richer and satisfying it seemed. He actually hadn’t told me he was going to Houston and I had no idea who Jesse or Mark were.

I moved my duffle into the vestibule and followed him into the living room. Clutter everywhere. Much worse than I had remembered it.

There’s a couch in here someplace. That should be ok, won’t it? Just for a few nights.

Fine. Thanks. It really was hard to see where the couch was.

Well, I’ve got to get something to eat so I’ll be back in a hour or so but you can stay if you want. I’ve got cable if you still watch TV as much as you used to.

I had hoped he’d invite me out to eat but I found some examples of what we used to call ‘questionable comestibles’ in the kitchen and watched TV until he finally came back a couple hours after midnight.

I had a minor wave of nostalgia when I realized that I could tell something was up with Rick just from the way he was making noise as he came in the door. The same noises I had grown up with. It made me nervous though when I realized that, while back then he was just my little brother, now he was like my landlord or something. I braced myself.

Ah, I need to talk to you about staying here.