Waterfront Whorehouse Pianist

By Steven Sobel

Indie bookstore outreach

Southern California events

Features in online lit mags like The Nervous Breakdown

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781644280249

Book preview

My Thin Brother

I am thin like my brother

always in action, very active.

It's really fun.

running,

in the park, with

the towering trees, running

with my skinny brother.

Once he was so sick,

you could see

all of his bones, his ribs that is.

Once he was that gaunt

We'd eat and eat,

piling up foods,

eating it all,

without a care.

We'd eat it never

gaining a single pound.

We could eat and

still be as thin as twigs.

The playground

right by my house,

it had a small gate,

that only we,

the weeds,

could pass through

and play all day long.

My brother and I,

may act and seem different,

but we both are thin.

Danny Sobel, age fourteen

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

I woke up sore and disoriented and it took me a few moments to realize that I had fallen asleep, my head tucked into the sleeping bag. I opened my eyes and lifted my head from under the warm covering. The sharp and sudden cold reminded me where I was and I sat up, holding the sleeping bag tight. There was no sound at all and complete darkness. With my shirtsleeve, I wiped an area on the window and shined the light outside, and in the meager glow that reached only a couple of feet I could see large, heavy snowflakes falling. My watch said ten minutes till five o’clock. I fell back onto the sleeping bag as it all came back to me, along with anger at May, and especially at myself. I wanted to scream, and I could have, at the top of my lungs, because I was in the middle of a snowstorm with the closest person at least twenty miles away. But I didn’t scream because I never did; maybe if I were more that person, I wouldn’t keep finding myself in these stupid, compromised positions.

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, wishing that everything around me would change to almost anything else, but wondering how May was doing, imagining her bundled up in that cave deep in the mountains, now truly trapped by the storm. I lay back down and curled up inside the bag, not wanting to move, but knowing that I had a bit of a problem that needed to be figured out, quickly.

May and I had hiked into the mountains the day before yesterday. The plan, May’s plan, was for me to hike back to the car in front of the storm that was predicted to hit, wait for the snow to fall for a few hours, then, after I was certain the storm had come in strong enough that no search party could be initiated, head into town and report that May was injured and trapped in the mountains. She would be rescued after the storm and become famous. I had agreed to her plan, but in one of those overly generous moments while we were in bed and, honestly, I never thought it would happen. Her plan was too trite and too farfetched at the same time.

Unfortunately, I had reached the jeep before the storm arrived. I waited impatiently inside the jeep, but the storm was taking forever, so I lay down just to close my eyes for a few minutes. It must have been my lack of sleep the night before and the long day of stressful hiking because I fell asleep for nearly twelve hours. While I was asleep, the storm moved in, so I had no idea when the snowfall began, and that was my problem. One of my problems. The other was that I was totally screwed. I thought back to the moment the day before, when May and I stood deep in the mountains, storm clouds gathering from the northwest, and she had convinced me to hike back alone. How could I possibly have agreed to that? I sighed as deeply as is humanly possible, because here I was. At the very least I had helped commit a giant fraud; at worst I had abandoned a woman in the mountains to die. I had had things turn out bad, but this could be as bad as the worst of them.

Still, here I was, so I had to put away my anger, assume that May would be okay, and figure out how to handle this correctly, make it absolutely believable. I was certain to be under scrutiny, and maybe intense scrutiny, and if this was going to work I could not have any holes in my story. It would seem way too callous, and at least a little suspicious, for me to leave my girlfriend trapped in the mountains with a storm coming in while I took a nap in my car instead of driving immediately into town, so I clearly had to work around that. If it had been snowing for hours, as it appeared, I likely would not have made it out of the mountains walking through the night in a storm. I lay on my back and stretched out in the sleeping bag, my hands behind my head, staring into the darkness, trying to stay calm, thinking about how I might make all the pieces fit, but becoming more and more angry that I had let myself get in this situation.

I wondered if maybe I had already ruined everything and would have to leave May to hike out alone after the storm passed, only to find that I hadn’t even reported her being lost. I couldn’t help laughing at that thought, but just for a moment. All the time and preparation, May’s unwavering confidence and enthusiasm, her dreams of her new life. I could imagine waiting in the jeep for her to return after a full day of trudging through the snow, watching her walk wearily the last few yards to the jeep, and then I would have to break the news to her. Her glory and celebrity would evaporate. She would slump to the ground, her dream destroyed in a moment. Or she would cry and scream at me for being a coward and a liar. Either way, she probably deserved it, but so did I.

But when would she come out? She was deep in the mountains and a major storm had just arrived. Would it be a few days before she gave up and was able to hike out, or a few weeks? And what would I do in the meantime? Wait in the car with a day or so of food? And what if she did not make it out? What if things didn’t go the way May expected and she froze to death in the cave or became injured on her hike back? How would I explain that? My girlfriend trapped in a storm, a day’s hike into the Cascade Mountains, while I…did what? Maybe they would think that I murdered her.

I opened the back of the jeep and shined the flashlight into snow that was falling densely and, surely, straight down. I slowly moved the flashlight side to side and the snow was everywhere, the entire world. Even in the dark it was beautiful.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the only answer. It just took me a while to accept the idea and to work out the details. The jeep was in a small, hidden parking lot a short distance down the road from a thickly forested hiking area. A three-mile hike through the forest led to a trail that climbed steeply into the mountains, which May and I had hiked two days before and I had hiked back yesterday. I would wait until sunrise, walk a short distance back into the forest, sit down for a couple of hours, or however long it took, with my backpack on the ground and the sleeping bag wrapped around me. I would sit there until I became cold enough and wet enough, incurred the physical discomforts, and manifested whatever other details that I knew nothing about, to demonstrate to anyone knowledgeable that I had actually hiked out of the mountains this morning in the storm, after having spent the night someplace in the forest. There might even be footprints, or at least some remnants of footprints, leading to the car in case someone decided to come up to check. I wouldn’t have to worry about my footprints walking back into the forest because the heavy snow would certainly obscure those by the time I sat in the forest, walked back to the car, drove to town, and someone managed to get back up here. I considered the possibility that I had hiked through the night with a flashlight, but it might be completely unrealistic. And even if it were possible, no one would question my decision to stop when it got dark for fear of becoming lost. How could I have known when I settled in for the night that I was within a mile of my car? Unfortunately, I didn’t know exactly when the snow had started, but it was certainly after dark because the clouds had not managed to push past the mountains when I reached the jeep, so I could stay a little ambiguous about that. It was still dark out and I considered walking back into the forest with a flashlight, but figured that in the dark I would more likely get it wrong, so I lay waiting for first light, reviewing in my mind the details of the happenings since I left May yesterday, the way I would relate it to everyone, probably over and over again. I hoped that I would be believable.

I buried myself deep in the sleeping bag and lay with my eyes open, waiting for light. I must have dozed for a short while because suddenly there was the hint of light outside. I wiped a clearing in the fogged-over window and the snow was still falling, but at an angle now, the wind having come in from somewhere while I dozed off for a few minutes. I glanced at my watch and it was nearly eight o’clock, long past time to get moving.

I really did not want to get out into that storm, but I had no choice because time was already becoming a serious issue for me. I repacked my backpack, put on my gloves, shoes, and jacket, tightened the strings at my wrists and on my jacket hood to keep the cold and snow out, and rolled up my sleeping bag. Life is all about moving forward, so I opened the back of the jeep and climbed out.

I walked slowly up the road and the snow fell softly and densely all around for miles in every direction. The road was a blanket of plush white, becoming thicker and softer each moment, defined by the trees on either side that were almost lost in the blurring distance created by the falling snow. I was reminded of an evening with Janie all those years ago and my breath caught at the collision of the two moments. I paused and looked all around, and knew that it was the lonely beauty that made me remember.

Janie and I had taken a bus from campus to see a movie in a distant suburb, and when we came out of the theater, heavy snow had begun to fall, already a couple of inches on the ground. Janie stood transfixed and delighted by the large, heavy snowflakes. She held me tightly and shivered while we waited fifteen minutes for the bus. She stood on her toes, inches from my face, and told me that this was what our life together would be: forever standing at bus stops, having just stepped out of our last adventure and waiting for our next unexpected and wonderful adventure. It might have been a little bit of hyperbole under the circumstances, but I leaned in to kiss her and I still understand what she meant. Back then I often felt that Janie rejoiced in life and that I rejoiced in her.

But that was long ago, and today I had more pressing things to think about. Ahead, the snow was already nearly knee-deep. I breathed in deeply and continued up the road, squeezing my hands and holding myself tightly against the cold until the work of walking uphill gradually warmed me. At the trailhead I was breathing hard, catching my breath, exhaling small clouds that dissipated quickly. The snow continued to fall, indifferent to me and all that was my life, and I wondered how far I was from another person, thought about how far I was from May, a full day’s hike away.

It was a short walk before I was enveloped by the forest, the wind fully abated, everything a soft mosaic of fern leaves, rocks, and fallen trees largely hidden by the snow, and pine needles and tree bark still resisting but slowly disappearing. The snow fell irregularly between small gaps in the overhead canopy and in occasional clumps from the treetops, dispersing like buckets of finely shredded paper and settling on the undergrowth and forest floor. I walked slowly for perhaps an hour and a half, mindlessly, following the path that was barely discernible as a narrow, more consistent layer of snow between what I knew were bushes and fallen trees piled higher with snow. I looked up and the air was falling white, the tops of the trees somewhere beyond my view. The path sloped upward for about thirty yards and I lowered my head and plowed forward. When the ground leveled, I was out of the dense forest and the wind was suddenly strong and erratic and the falling snow stung my face. I stopped, a little panicked, reminded that I was hiking into the mountains in a storm, with no idea whatsoever of what to expect, lulled a little by the forest that had given me some protection. I turned around and walked about halfway back, following my footprints in the snow, until I found a fallen tree just off the path with a thin layer of snow accumulated along the top edge of the trunk. I dropped my backpack on the ground and stretched broadly, my head back. I stood absolutely still. Snowflakes dropped gently on my face and I was alone in this strange, deserted, suffocating wonderland of green and brown and white. And suddenly I had a thought: whatever else might happen, being here at this moment made everything worth it. This was a moment that Janie would have loved—I was sure that she would.

I pulled the sleeping bag from my backpack, wrapped it tightly around me and sat on the fallen tree trunk, staring out into the forest. The snow continued to fall. It fell deep in the forest and way up into the mountains, farther than I could see, in places I would never know and could not even imagine. The wind picked up, coming in strong, irregular gusts through the forest, working around the trees, creating gentle whirls of falling snow and whisking soft powder off of everything above and below me. Snow melted on my face and dripped down my neck, so I tightened my hood to cover more of my forehead and chin. I shifted to different positions, becoming more and more uncomfortable, until I realized that there was no way I could have spent the night sitting on a tree trunk. It was critical that everything I did would stand up to the scrutiny of people who knew far more about being in a situation like this than I did. I lifted my pack and walked slowly, carefully evaluating formations in the snow and every partially exposed rock along the path, pausing and scanning the forest, but could not find any place that looked comfortable enough to settle in for any length of time. I knew that if I sat on the ground, the cold would quickly work up through me, and the falling snow would find places to settle on me and melt and work under my clothes. I imagined having sat in the forest through the cold night as the storm came in, even bundled in my sleeping bag, and wondered how I would have gotten through it, whether it was realistic to think that I could have walked out the next morning, whether anyone would believe my story.

Finally, I found a flat area just off the path, dense with ferns that now showed only white-dusted tips growing through the snow. Packed-down ferns would keep me off the ground and, with my heavy clothing and sleeping bag wrapped around me, I would save body heat and slow the process of freezing to death. I stood for a few minutes, just looking around. The beauty was still all around me, but now that I was no longer moving, the cold was closer and the beauty was slowly receding from my awareness. I was suddenly weary and reluctant to reach through the snow to pull up ferns to make the pile I would sit on, but I really had no choice. I gave myself another minute before I began kicking at the snow, exposing the dense fern leaves, then pulling them up and tossing them into a large pile. Nearby I used my feet to crush an area of ferns about six feet across, stepping high and feeling the plants break under my weight. I spread the ferns I had pulled up in the flattened space, unzipped and spread out my sleeping bag, then sat on the end and wrapped the rest of the bag around me. I would just sit until the cold and discomfort were as much as I could handle, wait a little longer, and then I would stagger back to the car and make my way to the motel where I would tell May’s story.

The waterproof exterior of the bag kept my bottom dry, but the cold came through quickly, even with the ferns underneath. After a short while, I stood and walked in place, lifting my legs high until I was breathing hard and warming up, but being careful not to let myself sweat. May had warned me about that. I did not want to get hypothermia because of my own frozen sweat. Once I warmed a bit, I sat on the ground again until I was too cold to sit, then I stood and walked in another small circle. Each time I stood it became more difficult to get warm, but I pressed on. I was uncomfortable, but there was a lot more discomfort I could handle.

Finally I was just too cold, even walking around, so I got fully inside the sleeping bag, shoes, parka and all, and lay curled on the ground, my head inside the bag. There was snow all around and more falling on me, but I got surprisingly comfortable after a while, until finally the snow managed to find its way into the bag’s opening and melted. I changed my position a number of times to try to keep the snow out, but the snow was persistent and pervasive. There had to be a secret to doing this that I just could not figure out. Eventually I was freezing cold and shivering, just shivering, and could not get myself warm. I had decided to stay in the forest long enough that it would be convincing that I had spent the night, but it occurred to me that I would have started walking out of the forest at first light and since I wasn’t all that far from the car, it wouldn’t make sense if I arrived at the town too late. And after spending just this short amount of time in the forest, it had become less clear to me that I would have survived the night. How would I have survived farther up the mountain where I would not have been protected by the trees? I was now so cold that the shivering was deep, all the way to my bones, and I was becoming confused. I tried to focus, but I just couldn’t, and I was afraid I was outsmarting myself by trying to figure it all out. My story would have to be that at last light I had found a small area covered by a clump of fallen trees and crawled inside where I had huddled in my sleeping bag all night. They could believe it or not, and if I could not find the place again, well, it was dark and I was tired and cold and a lot of snow had fallen since. There were just too many details, so they would somehow have to take care of themselves. I picked up my backpack and sleeping bag and headed to the car.

It was a cold, miserable hike back through the forest. The wind was stronger, blowing mostly from the side as I walked, but gusts whipped in all directions. My teeth were chattering and my face was numb, but the snow still stung when it blew onto my cheeks. Somehow I had become largely soaked through my clothing, and my feet and hands were also numb. The snow was thigh-deep as I trudged down the road and I was breathing so heavily that I almost couldn’t catch my breath, despite walking downhill. The wind and snow were relentless. I realized that I hadn’t left much room for error. I knew that if I weren’t this close to the car, I would be in real trouble. Even now I could still be in trouble. I could fall and twist an ankle or something. It would be ironic if I froze to death at this point, walking back to the car. That would ruin everything for May, because no one would know she was ever lost or where to look for her if she was in trouble.

I reached the jeep and leaned heavily against it. I wasn’t quite as angry at May as I had been earlier. I sometimes felt as though I were living for two people, and that Janie would have found the beauty and the adventure worth all the rest. I was gradually catching my breath, but shivering to the point that I almost could not stand. Finally I managed to shove everything into the front seat and climb in behind the wheel. The key was zipped in a jacket pocket and with my numb hands I managed to pull it out and get it into the ignition. The engine stuttered and paused, but started. I sat with the engine running for a minute, the snow still accumulating all around, then turned on the heater and windshield wipers. I was startled at their reliability out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of this storm.

The heater blew cold air until the engine got warm. The snow covered the windshield as quickly as the blades brushed it away. I held out my hands to the heater, then took off my shoes and warmed my feet. I was in a tiny space where I could stay alive out here and I hoped May had planned well enough and was at least reasonably comfortable where she was stranded far into the mountains. I didn’t want to be where she was. Finally I put the jeep in gear and pressed gently on the gas, not sure whether I would be able to move at all in the snow. The wheels spun a little, caught, and I lurched forward.

Half an hour later, I had worked my way down to the main road. The snow continued to fall, the wind picking up even more as the sun, hidden somewhere behind the storm, rose higher. I stopped at the bottom of the hill where the narrow local road met the two-lane mountain highway that would take me back to the motel. The road was a soft, unbroken blanket of snow. On our trip up, May had pointed out narrow metal posts every twenty yards that were two feet from the edge of the road and painted orange above two feet. She told me that if there was heavy snowfall, I might have to use these to find my way along the road. The first of the posts was just a couple of feet to the right and I was once again amazed at how thoroughly May had thought out everything. The orange part of the post protruded at least eight feet above the snow and I wondered how deep the snow could get if the poles were that tall. The snowplows had not yet gone to work and not a single car track showed.

I had nearly seven miles and probably an hour to travel on this road back to my motel. Along the way I passed a gas station with a small market and a coffee shop, but both were closed, I guessed because of the storm. Last week, May and I had determined that our cell phones had no service up here, so I didn’t have to worry about explaining why I didn’t use mine to call for help. We expected the market would be open and that was where I was to stop, but the plan would now have to be different. I considered stopping at a payphone at the gas station, but just wasn’t prepared to make a 911 call that would be recorded and might later be analyzed in detail, so I decided to continue to the motel. I checked my pockets and the ashtray for change, found three quarters and two dimes, which I tossed out the window so that I could explain that I didn’t have any change to make the call, if stopping at the payphone would have been the more appropriate response to the situation. It was a bit disorienting and surprisingly difficult to calculate the proper way to act in a situation where I should be driven by real emotion.

I pulled up to the covered area in front of the motel office and staggered through the front door. My jacket was hanging open and I tried to look as frantic and disheveled as possible, which wasn’t difficult because that was exactly how I felt. There was no one behind the counter, but two old men sat in old, cloth-covered stuffed chairs watching the lobby television. Both men turned to look at me but did not say anything. I stood looking back at the men, bracing myself, not quite sure what to say, but certain that not saying anything would be a mistake. How do I reach the sheriff, or the rescue people? I asked, figuring that a certain amount of panic and confusion on my part would be appropriate.

Chapter 2

A year before, back when I was a lawyer and before the problem at my firm, I caught a morning flight to New York. I thought it was just one more business trip and had no sense of the storm clouds gathering in my life. I was a corporate lawyer at a national law firm and sat in first class at the expense of our client, a large, multinational oil processing company currently attempting to purchase a smaller, regional oil distribution network in the southwestern United States. I reviewed everything that I would need for the meeting that evening, then settled back in my seat.

We touched down at JFK and I caught a cab to my hotel, a small, luxurious old landmark across the street from Central Park. The lobby was extravagantly decorated in rich, dark wood with large, beautiful plants and expensive, comfortable furniture. The rooms felt like opulent sitting rooms with beds. I had left Los Angeles early in the morning so it was only four o’clock in the afternoon when I got to my room. My meeting was downtown at six so I had a little time. I stepped out of the hotel lobby into a chilly early October late afternoon and the feel of an impending east coast autumn evening was in the air. I wandered down the street to get a slice of pizza, then caught a cab to the offices of the law firm where we were to meet. It was just a few minutes before six when I walked into the waiting area and told the receptionist who I was and why I was here.

"Yes, Mr. Stone. There’s a note here that I’m to let Mr. Loeb know as soon as you