Six to 18 Hours from Now

By Alex Kroll, Jr

"Six to 18 Hours from Now" is a collection 30-or-so memorably twisted and darkly amusing detours on the road ahead. Carefully calibrated to tickle comfort levels and to stir laughter with all the subtlety of the prod of a fresh-sharpened assegai, these tales from Alex Kroll Jr offer a fresh look at Modern Lust in many of its Robust and Surprising Guises, the Possible Plus-Side of Fukushima, Surprises up the Family Tree, the Most Beautiful Girl in the Universe, Human Resources, Innovative Retirement Solutions for the Baby Boomer, the Holocaust, Unexpected Side-Effects of our Panoptic Surveillance Culture, What is to be Done about Communists and Nazis, Ending Religious Strife, Fathers and Sons, Six-Mile-High Plants, 9/11, Earth as Ovum, the Next American Civil War, Murder and many other subjects. In several chilling tales, Kroll even takes on Advertising! Kroll, a Princeton graduate, advertising copywriter and commercial voiceover artist in the New York City area, has never properly recovered from reading "Fail-Safe" in the fifth grade. His previous book, inspired by the work of Stanley Kubrick, is "Fourth & Gogol: The True Story of Russia’s Top-Secret American Football Program." It may still be remaindered somewhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Kroll, Jr
• Release date: Jan 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310150975

Alex Kroll, Jr

Alex Kroll is a copywriter and voiceover artist from the NYC Area. Cover Photo (c) Alice Kroll 2013

Book preview

Six to 18 Hours from Now

Copyright 2014 Alex Kroll Jr

A Smashwords Edition from Alex Kroll Jr

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Six to 18 Hours from Now

Contents

JIM GALOR

THE LADY SOLDIER

OTHERS DAY

THE WRECTOR

SELF-INFLICTED WORLD

THE LONG HELLO

UNDERACHIEVER

INBOX: FROM YOUR NEW FRIENDS AT BMAIL

THE MERKEZ

CIDARIS

BACK TO THE SIMPLE LIFE

SUBJECT: RE: YOUR NEW FRIENDS AT BMAIL

ANOMALY FARMS

THE SILICON CEILING

SUBJECT: RE: RE: YOUR NEW FRIENDS AT BMAIL

THE LANGLEY CONFERENCE

RATLINE.COM

THE ILLITERACY PROJECT

HARSHMARK: A SHORT PLAY

ART DIRECTION

PLAN KUTUZOV

THE U-NOTE

THE DRY CLEANER

TWINS

HR

PRE-ENACTORS

MANAGING ELDER ADVANCEMENT TODAY

SUBJECT: A THANK-YOU FROM YOUR NEW FRIENDS AT BMAIL

MILLIONTH ANNIVERSARY

CLOSURE

Contact Alex Kroll

JIM GALOR

Alarm clock. 5:30.

Dad’s in town. That means dinner at the latest, hottest new place. Tonight.

Shower: Uneventful. I couldn’t think of anybody, either.

Bathroom Scale: 275! Way too much. It’s the damned bizdev job. No standardized time to work out during my work day. Between wakeup and shutdown and maybe two or three cigars, a couple drink stops here and there with clients and friends, just not much time for wheezing at the gym. I like carbs, too. Salt’s all right by me. My favorite electrolyte.

Consequently, my collar button pinches. I estimate it’s good for at least one more outing. One more sortie into the unknown of my modern economic day, attempting to sell air to airheads. I am in the marketing business. I purvey air, lightly scented with ideas.

To extend as much as possible its lifetime on my shirt, I decide to spare the button the immediate challenge and leave it unbuttoned until dinner. I can’t sew. I probably could learn. I just don’t want to.

I roll up a disappointing tie and toss it in my shoulder bag and bear myself in my slightly too-tight, already warm suit out the door to the train. The overcast day is warmer and muggier than I expected as well. Unaccustomed to the too-small suit, I am certain my humid bulk will put its fibers to the test in transit around the city, today.

The first of many yeasts, some indigenous, to be joined now by others I will encounter during this day, let out their happy morning cry, and set to work in the various and balmy pasturelands of the regions below my arms

For I tend to perspire. For any reason. And before this day is over, the industrious life forms covering my body will outstrip and o’erwhelm the bulwarks of any and all known fragrances, tinctures, aluminoid counter-perspirants, lymphectomies, talcum, natural remedies like cornsilk, myrrh or recently marketed concoctions like Polar Sport or Tropic Ice. Nothing manmade nor natural will withstand these regenerative geniuses. Nothing, perhaps not even this well fashioned but aged suit, can withstand the force of the marauders pouring off of Jimmy Galor.

The day goes about as well as you can expect in these times, a friendly couple of pops with Chester from Pi Industries, a nice Nicaraguan stogie with Tim and Marty at the Balmoral Regis smokeshop across from Edge Central, and, between hither-and-yonning and waiting on sweating subway platforms, by end of day, I am the Incarnation of Moisture.

By dinnertime, my suit is palpably damp, almost wet, warm like a peacoat and emitting a fragrance recalling its origin–yes, wool in the summer! God alone knows the condition of my saturate button-down shirt and...

... I am totally running late. I flag down a cab. Stretching my leg to enter, my beleaguered inseam at last gives way, from knee to knee, with a sodden ripping sound.

It is an inconceivable system failure, this instantaneous 30inch aperture in the seat of my ancient suit. It is victim to the day’s cumulus, from within and without, of heat and humidity. The sudden vent does admit some refreshing cool air from the rear-seat air conditioning, however. Glad am I for the dark-gray pair of boxers Fortune allowed to remain, the last undershorts in the drawer!

Oh, what quiet, consistent, evening-long fun Pop will have with this–if he detects it. He will, of course. The razzing will be subtle and somehow worse if he brings the latest version of his Associate with him! Just a slight eyebrow-raise or a micrometer twist in his default smile. I would read it, he would know I read it, and thus the hierarchy would be re-established, the son’s yoke: NICE TRY, SONNY.

But with more neck! I tell myself, finally attempting to gasket-seal the collar around my throat with clumsy fingers. Finally, through the buttonhole, it secures a brief, pinching hold at my Adam’s apple. I relax, swallow, and the pearlescent button snaps free from its weakened threads. With a PLINK it shoots like a BB, one-hopping deep beneath the furry murk beneath the driver’s seat. I see the driver’s eyes in the rearview as he looks at me.

His are Central Asian eyes. I see pity in them.

How many more are there like me? Sons and daughters of an incontestably great man, I wonder, riding north past the park towards our Upper East Side rendezvous at the Beograd.

The son of an indisputably great man!

It’s hard to describe him, really. But I’ll try.

He seems never to age, for one thing. I compare the pain and swelling in my 50-year-old ankle, aggravated by the wingtips I’ve shoehorned around my feet.

He’s fantastically handsome. Like a movie star. The perfect blend of, say, art-scene Londoner and a decorated Rhodesian commando. Women fall to him like meteors to earth, all but begging to be ravished by the Cossack brute they sense beneath his stylish, cultured exterior.

But let’s leave my Mom out of this.

Women tend not to see me, despite my size.

I have a slight Chicago accent. Because that’s where my mom raised me.

How he used to drag me around the tennis court on those intermittent childhood occasions when we’d spend time together! That killer second serve and the phenomenal wingspan he’d carry to the net. Me in tennis whites is something to behold, let me tell you. One of my schoolmates, Carl, up for a summer visit, nicknamed me Bip after he watched Pop move me around the court for three straight sets.

I didn’t understand why he called me that until twenty years later, when, as part of the pitch for the Michelin Tires account, I learned that Bip was the name of the brand’s mascot. Well, how do you like that? I’d even been in Carl’s wedding. Me. His pal, Bip. That cast the last fifteen years of that friendship... in a considerably different light. Sheesh.

Pop would disappear for a time, sometimes as much as a year. But I’d always get a birthday card and sometimes just a note, saying Hi. Such fine handwriting, too! And from overseas, so often. So I collected stamps and often bright and funny memories of him. And now, I haven’t seen him in... could it be... two years?

The taxi swerves to a halt at restaurant Beograd. I tip rather handsomely and unlodge my bulk from the car, making it shake.

Београд...

... assures the neon sign in the plate glass window. I glance at my watch. Five minutes late. Crap.

A Balkan-standard gypsy trio, two violins and an accordion, quietly plays something stringy and Pop rises as I enter. A beautiful brunette is with him, just over a third his actual age. The place is close and dark and pleasant.

It’s a hot one, isn’t it, Bip? he offers his hand and a genuine smile. Right away with the weight comment? My ears redden like coils on an electric stove. He smoothly transitions:

This is Tanya Ivanovna Bendova, an associate. He’s ageless, all right. She extends an arm out of Swan Lake. We seat and the waiter pours me an apertif. I try not to sweat, and fail. The woman is simply ravishing.

Plum brandy, explains my dad, pointing to the tumbler with its meniscus of clear liquor. A martini glass is delivered to him by the waiter, who wears a horn-buttoned evening jacket.

Well, to your health, Dad. You look great. And, very nice to meet you, Tanya. Who looks even better than great. She smiles and raises her glass. I tip mine and instantly my vision fogs.

It’s home-made slivocice! It’s the toast of the Yugoslav sniper! Dad enthuses.

As though I’ve been gas-blinded, I gasp, Odd choice for a sniper.

Vision returns slowly. I watch Dad take a sip of his martini through the clouds and I detect a brief flicker of dissatisfaction with his drink... a nanometer twinkle and darkening of his irises only I, so well schooled in the warning signs of his disfavor, could detect.

Warm, he burrs. The r in the word purrs out of him. It sounds a bit like Warn. It purrs, but not like a housecat purrs. Something bigger, feral and more Scottish. Something insufficiently contained.

<> he commands. Same with the r here, too, but with additional Slavonic force.

The waiter re-materializes. <>

Dad proceeds to explain the failure of this martini in fluent Serbian, which I find surprising, as I did not know he spoke it. I say fluent because I speak a little Russian and am not unacquainted with certain verb-stems shared by the Eastern Slavs, one of them being the root Eb- or, phonetically, Yob- which Dad is using repeatedly and in various conjugations and clearly idiomatic declensions.

The content of his criticism registers slowly on the surprised waiter’s face. Surprised and, I hazard to guess, increasingly insulted face.

Tanya understands the gist of Father’s remarks, its picturesque yet physical impossibility in regards the waiter’s mother or any woman. Tanya blushes handsomely beneath a peach-pit-sized diamond pendant she wears, and little else. Her outfit seems made of glossy radiant silk, what there is of it.

Here we go! thinks I. I’ve seen this scene played out a number of times around the world. Do not mess with Dad’s drink.

The waiter’s face, inclining towards my father, is frozen agape.

Oh, realizes Dad, continuing in English. Bad grammar. I meant his mother. Your boss’s. Not yours. Dad turns away, saying, Tell him I said so.

<> hisses Konobar, silencing Dad’s back with a furious hand gesture and retiring around the bar. I push back a little in my chair and note the route to the exit.

A ‘Moment’, eh? He’s off for the manager, by my trow, smiles Dad, who leans back, beaming magisterially upon his malign drink. His eyes refocus, darkly. Tanya isn’t accustomed to the look, yet, but I know it. The eyelids narrow and the eyes behind harden. I saw it once when I got thrown out of boarding school and once more when I accidentally proposed marriage.

Tell me more about your time in Istanbul, James, chimes Tanya Ivanovna in a Slav accent rich as beet soup with extra sour cream. She sounds as Herodotus reported of the Scythian women who’d come down to Tanais on the Black Sea 2,500 years ago to trade furs and amber. The Scythian women, he reported, [S]peak in the language of birds.

Father turned his attention back to her. That was many years ago, before this lad graced my life. Ancient history. How is your drink, Dear Tatyana Ivanovna?

The door from the kitchen slaps open and an intense foursome of tall men in antlered coats approaches from back around the bar, in single file.

Ah, here comes the manager. And some assistant managers, it seems. What could need so much managing?

Dad arises and so do I.

Played a bit of football, I did.

Sense things, I do.

The manager looks like a cross between Slobodan Milošević and former Chicago Bull Tony Kukoc. In other words, like a really tall war criminal. Or, heroic defender of the Serbs, depending on whom you talk to. Opinions vary.

Goddamn I miss Michael Jordan.

<>

"Hello, Slavko. Skipped The Hague, did we? It’s a crime I haven’t run into you