The MouseDoor

By David Xavier

Enchanting. Fulfilling. A Feel-Good Story.

"Like curling up by the fire."

A romantic drama about an unlikely pair, one man's love and loss, and one woman's dreams and hopes, and their lives crossing paths in unexpected ways.

For Everett Townsend life stopped in place years ago by an accident no one saw coming. It crushed his heart and any dreams he might have had. He spent his days in quiet solitude. It looked to remain that way, until someone came along and rekindled his dreams. Someone who carried her own.

She came into his life through the mouse door.

The MouseDoor is a story of lost love and longtime aspirations. It is a story of hope, of never giving up, and never giving in. It will make you laugh, it will break your heart. It will inspire you and leave you with a smile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Xavier
• Release date: Aug 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463305522

Book preview

The MouseDoor

by David Xavier

To all who have always wished to write,

a great novel burning inside them…

And to Dené, the dreamer

who keeps my own alight

I

For Everett Townsend life stopped in place years ago, as motionless as the people who propped themselves on his studio stool, grinning as they waited to be flashed into permanence.

Long ago he sold the little house he had carried his beaming wife into as a young man and moved into the studio backroom. He had a stove put in near his cot and boiled coffee morning and night, and he installed cabinets, running water, and lived out of a mini-fridge.

Fanned on the corner table in the waiting room were old magazines. Narrow shelves staggered the wall with antique cameras, their worn edges and dented bodies concealing the luster of yesteryear. In the middle sat a vintage model car, a '53 Skylark convertible, the same make and model he used to swing wide around the tight street corners with the windows down in his full-haired youth. Same color, sky blue.

Every morning he looked these shelves over and evened the cameras out. The front door had a habit of slamming shut and jostling them on their shelves. His faded boxing gloves fell off the door each time.

He lined his medals on the windowsill, a part of the décor, out of reach of small hands. Every morning he dusted them before stepping back for a stiff salute. Sometimes he sat upright on the black leather couch and watched the sunrise fill the glass door and make shadows of his studio hours on the floor, MONDAY-FRID Y 8AM – 5PM, the missing letter peeled away years ago, carried away on the bottom of someone’s shoe. Then he would unlock the door, flip the OPEN sign, and stand in the quiet street to breathe in the fresh air and let the morning breeze tickle his scalp.

His haircut had remained the same since he was eighteen. A good Army man gets a haircut every week whether he needs one or not, and usually he doesn't. There were a lot of things Everett did not need any longer.

He stretched in the sunlight, then dropped to the broken pavement and gravel for pushups. He could still do thirty full in a row before his hips began to sag and his elbows started to stiffen and shake. He gathered himself up and hitched his pants, looking around with just his eyes.

Traffic did not concern itself with Everett Townsend’s street. It was nothing more than an alleyway of barely-there businesses – a laundromat, a used bookstore he'd touched every spine in, an auto mechanic with open hoods in the drive, some abandoned buildings – a random offshoot that crept away from the main roads, out of view of commuters and pedestrians, and inconveniently far from the entrepreneurial churn of downtown, tires speeding on the asphalt in the distance. Every so often a car would come close, the lost driver sitting forward over the wheel trying to make sense of the road before coming to a complete stop, shaking his head, and in a series of forwards and reverses, making his way back the way he came.

Everett placed an ad every year in the YellowBook. Every year the price went up and the return went down. Not many people blinked away the black spots of his flashbulb anymore.

Across the street was an empty building. It used to be a coffee house, but never a busy one. People like to have a large window to look out of while they sip, not the little square one that looked chipped into the wall by rebar, small as the Mona Lisa. They would have had to crowd each other behind it, mugs in hands. But the coffee house hung on for a dozen years somehow, filling the street with the scent of crushed beans until the laundromat became busy around mid-morning and in rushed a new smell.

It was a big two-storied building, brown stucco with a small door of peeling faded blue paint and a rounded doorjamb that looked smaller than it was, as if it were a hut for gnomes or an entrance for cartoon mice. The second story was where the owner had lived in the evenings, a bit of a shut-in, and too young to have owned such an establishment on his own merit. Not one of the many shaggy brown hairs on his head or chin had yet grayed, and in the evenings he used to strum a guitar. The light in his upstairs window always stayed on through the night. But one day the coffee stopped dripping and the door didn’t open on time, and the light upstairs never went on again, abandoned in the night as if for some road show.

It remained dark now, and in the afternoons Everett stood in his window, behind his medals, and watched the sun disappear behind the building, and the letters of the old COFFEE SHOPPE fade on the stucco, and the dark portrait of a windowpane dim within. It was peaceful and quiet since the building went vacant. No diagonally parked cars of the regulars in the narrow street, and no long-haired college students propping their bicycles against the wall or chaining them to random posts and street signs. No coffee beans in the morning either, but he made his own and managed to drink most of it.

Duke Costello had let his own hair grow long. A photography studio shouldn’t have regular visitors, but Duke came by at any hour to drink the coffee, mess up the stack of magazines, and leave an impression in the couch. After the Army he drove cattle trucks and Greyhounds and forklifts before hanging up the driving gloves for good. He liked to talk service. Every year he had a new headshot taken. He had no reason to, other than to send his wallet-sized deadpans to old Army pals across the country. He always pinned a fresh one to Everett’s billboard, which Everett promptly took down.

You know Johnson had surgery a month ago?

I did not, Everett said, leaning into his camera. You're slouching. More than usual.

He did, Duke said. He thumped a fist to his chest. His heart liked to skip around on him. He said it would go five fast beats and then one big one. Like hitting reset. Said it made him jump when he wasn’t ready for it. A sort of hiccup. He tried holding his breath but his doctor told him to take the pills he'd prescribed or start looking around for a quiet cemetery. He told him he already had a plot paid for and doc told him well take the pills or get ready to get comfy. He said, doc I'd rather climb in and shut the lid myself than count pills. Must be a nuisance for a sharpshooter to jerk around with the hiccups all day. He says he cannot spoon his coffee grounds with any accuracy these days. He shakes them all the over the counter.

Duke sat up and froze. The flash went off. Everett looked up from behind the camera. You can smile if you want to.

Duke was already stepping off the stool and pulling his windbreaker on. The Army cured me of that. I do my photos Geronimo style.

What do you send these out to the fellas for? Everett said.

I am retired.

They probably spend the year trying to forget you and you go and jog their memory.

I like to be on people’s minds. What are we if people forget us?

Peaceful.

Duke put a fifty in one of the boxing gloves on his way out. He put his head back in and jostled the gloves. You want to take these down this evening? See if you can still throw a decent hook?

I am not old yet.

You’re headed in that direction.

How’s the Time Machine coming?

Nearly done. Just a bit more tinkering before I start my trail of pins in the map. I’ll be just a memory to you too.

I won’t remember you.

Duke smiled. See ya, Everett. Don’t go swinging at shadows, and eat a banana a day.

Go on.

Hey, Everett.

What?

Say hi to Maggie for me.

Everett dropped his eyes a moment and nodded, and when he looked up again it was in a squint to the farthest window. I will.

Everett closed the door with a foot and Duke went by in the window throwing a couple jabs in the air followed by an inspired uppercut. He looked back and smiled, throwing a wave over his head. Everett raised his chin, though the evening sun hid him behind the window glare. Duke's whistling faded.

Everett dug the fifty out and stuck it into his shirt pocket. The gloves were cracked and pink. He turned them slightly, then took them off the hook. He went into a fighter’s stance, squeezing his fists in the old leather. He grinned.

Thirty-three years ago the Army gave him a trophy with his name etched on it, division middleweight champion, and they kept giving him medals. He had knocked out Frank Bolanzo for the title. Hit him in the sixth round with a left hook that had him veering right and repeating questions for days. Everett had a left fist so heavy they moved him up divisions where the fighters were bigger but