Hazel Moon

By Lisa Minneti and Lori Minneti

I REMEMBER WATERCOLOR nights with my father and can still conjure up his voice, creaky like an anise candy wrapper. Sometimes he’d shade my world with his knowledge of birds, bats, and insects, or recite the lyrics to ballads like, “To Know Know Know Him, is to Love Love Love Him.” When the wind howled dad would say, “See little November, there is music everywhere.”

Come along on a magical and mystical literary ride, a coming-of-age story as November Rainer Savitchian, a troubled twentysomething, encounters adventure after musical and fantastical mythological adventure during the alternative Celtic Hazel Moon Rock Festival, as secrets, love and truth are conquered in the glamorous & rebellious American cultural landscape of 1984.

Hazel Moon unfolds over 24 hours on Earth, yet also Spans Centuries and Travels the Universe. Hidden in the author's colorful prose are poignant layers of profound Wisdom & Parable inspired by classic texts like Hermann Hesse's book, Siddhartha.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329637696

Book preview

Hazel Moon

written by

Lisa & Lori Minneti

published by

Heritage Press

http://heritagepresspublications.blogspot.com/

First Edition

Copyright © 2016

by

Lisa & Lori Minneti

Original Front & Back Cover Art

by

Lawrence C. Zamba

http://www.zambaphotography.com

Front Cover Model

Lori Minneti

Back Cover Models

Lori & Lisa Minneti

eBook ISBN: 978-1-329-63769-6

http://hazelmoonlisaloriminneti.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer: This book is a work of fiction. If any names used or characters developed

resemble real people, it is unintentional and they are presented only in the

context of the creative license needed to tell a compelling story.

Disclaimer: The background image on the cover is believed to be in the public domain. If you believe that background belongs to you then please contact us and we will take action immediately by either removing the background or provide credit to you or make some compensation arrangements as it was not the

publisher’s intention to avoid any copyright obligations.

Cover Me with Honor

Shine Just Like You Are

Down on my Knees

Please Follow my Lead

He’ll Teach You to Wish on the Stars

Answer Me with Hope Always

Note: From the song, It’s Over Now

Music & Lyrics by Kent Parco

Honoring Mark Minneti

PROLOGUE

Seattle 1991

I REMEMBER WATERCOLOR nights with my father and can still conjure up his voice, creaky like an anise candy wrapper. Sometimes he’d shade my world with his knowledge of birds, bats, and insects, or recite the lyrics to ballads like, To Know Know Know Him, is to Love Love Love Him.

Pushing seven, I would often pass the time sloshing around swamps in my yellow plastic boots searching for tadpoles and leopard frogs. When the wind howled dad would say, See little November, there is music everywhere.

That outdoor smell of yesteryear permeates my soul, a foul yet intoxicating aroma, kind of like the musty scent of an old wet dog.

I was his dutiful sidekick, think Tatum O’Neill in Paper Moon. Rainy days became adventures exploring the fallow lands of the Midwest in a mustard-colored station wagon, the Ford Country Squire kind, roomy yet chock full of dad’s things.

Glass vials, Marvel comic books and orange spiral note pads lay loosely organized along with hardcover books, paperbacks, and vinyl records way in the back in the odd seats other people used for kids and dogs.

Time breezed by with dad driving. A thick, flat pencil always seemed to be on his ear; and me, being useful, kept busy organizing bills and change for highway tolls by date and denomination into plastic baggies neatly sealed with twist ties.

Sometimes we would stop at shady trailer parks, on display their long, neatly orchestrated rows of almond-colored mobile homes. I remember how cozy they made me feel—magical, really.

It was in such a place that I remember hearing the sounds of voice and guitar that would change my life while listening to dad’s records being played on a stranger’s turntable, pumping out the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Ben E. King, and Nina Simone.

Life changed again after dad got married, when everything in our world became blonde. I felt like an egret whose long, thin legs were now too awkward to plod along in the plastic boots of my past innocence.

He met her, Dawn Amber, on a day of destiny at a park in Wichita, Kansas. Sporting irresistibly styled sunrise-yellow Breck Girl hair, the rest of her ensemble was accessorized with colored balloons and white Go-Go boots.

She worked for a singing telegram service. I couldn’t really get what dad saw in her. Baring her stained teeth when she sang, all I could think of was dirty fingernails—yuck. Nevertheless, just past eight I had a new family; twin half brothers, Stone and Sheppard, and of course, step-mom Dawn. They were all second or third generation Americans. They did not look like me.

Tonight, perched on this godforsaken pier, I feel like me—November Rainer Savitchian, proudly Armenian. Piercing through the mist, thick in texture like a heavy fungus growing on cheese, I hear the black-billed magpies’ raucous calls, hauntingly forecasting a foreboding season of change.

It smells like fall even though there are still seven days left in August. Tonight is creeping up on me like a tragic memory. You try to block it out, but instead it morphs into something gross and ominous like Boris Karloff’s tree-trunk thighs, his face and body full of scary scars and stitches, in the classic Frankenstein film.

Tonight, Puget Sound’s rumblings remind me of the drama of opera—the peninsula’s high tides performing magnificently, the sky framing the waters as if in the deep hues of lapis-lazuli blue velvet curtains. The relentless, pounding waves were providing the same impact to the observer as Carl Orff’s impressive work, Carmina Burana, presented on a mourning dove colored stage.

Unthreading the laces of my Doc Martin combat boots, I hear his breathing…a simple enough sound, but heavenly music to my ears, like the crying of a desperately-loved newborn signaling the promise of life entering the world.

Life here has been simple, calm, and normal. Is that a good thing? Living in rainy Seattle can saturate your world with a cornucopia of various shades of grey, which sadly happens to be close to my dad’s favorite color, muddy brown.

Ah, I have a new companion on the pier, a small rust-colored fire ant dragging a fragment of cheese popcorn back to his nest for dinner. Approaching his home, a sandy mound between cracks in the pavement, I envy his sense of purpose—so focused, so elegantly clear.

Looking down at this tiny spec of vibrant life, I feel ginormous, yet at the same moment I’d love to be small enough to follow him, to dig and scratch under the pavement, see his family, and observe the reception he gets for bringing home the bacon.

Somewhere in the foggy distance I hear a harmonica playing. I remember that my dad was horsing around with his at the RV park before I left, his face contorted as he struggled to find the right notes from one end to the other and back again.

I have a friend here who plays the harmonica. His name is Marcus. He projects the cache of the expensive Starbucks caramel lattes everyone seems to slurp around here—well-mixed and stylish. His clothes take me back to the Jackson 5. Marcus amazingly always smells like freshly-mown hay when he stops by my stand every day to buy incense. Tomorrow’s Rainbow is his favorite.

Today I decided to splurge two whole dollars and change at the coffee shop, an orange-and-brown bookstorish place, ‘70s themed, the interior slashed with slanted modern stainless steel absurdities. I walked in with my muddy-brown glazed Hull mug, feeling earthy.

Welcomed by all the fixtures; the weathered chess table, the schoolhouse Cuckoo clock, and my friend Marcus, I immediately felt even more at home hearing the familiar voice of Tommy Bolin singing Post Toastee cranking from the shop’s record player. New stepmom, Dawn Amber, had a huge crush on Tommy, but then dad would always say, Who doesn’t?

Hey Armenian princess, Marcus affectionately called out.

You can sure pick the day to stop in. Jacomo, your barista is at your beck and call, he added while reaching down to pick up a cup holder he’d dropped.

Turning to the counter, Marcus continued, Start up her regular brew…you know the one you always complain is a real pain to prepare.

I started the Turkish coffee when I saw her across the street…I know what she wants, said Jacomo, his words colored with his husky voice.

Marcus, with a slant glance at the stout shopkeeper, went on, Today, November my dear, we are privy to something great. I heard this cat rock out at Enron’s last week, he rides motorcycles with Jacomo’s brother Dominic and well, he’s here, we’re here, and girl life is good!

MARCUS WAS PIMPED UP IN a vintage newsboy cap. Sometimes I imagined him as a cartoon character, like Top Cat, always wearing the same clothes, but somehow you could easily alter his hat with your own pain; skulls, waterfalls, whatever.

We made it to the venue just as the live music started. The musician was clad in jeans and flannel. He was perched atop a wooden schoolhouse table sporting long, wavy hair and holding a straw-colored guitar. He effortlessly sang in a raspy Bob-Dylan voice about seasons and weather and change.

B-flat chord changes, while cooing at times into a few a cappella lines, pleading but never breaking as the steady guitar melody brought us back to calm waters. He sang without apology or apathy. His voice impressed like a natural wonder in this world full of magic and miracles and I felt blessed to be part of it.

I remember searching the faces of the crowd—Saturday’s child, the lonely poet, the fisherman’s wife, and the young widow. At that instant a blurry feeling of family embraced all of us, a wolf pack where we were finally safe and secure with no need to talk. Life’s demons took a rest at that memorable moment.

At fourteen, I remembered a similar feeling of familial bliss when my brothers and I burned through a whole matchbook to light our aging gas stove and cook everyone their own TV dinner—the good kind that included a desert.

How fast seven years can pass by. Did I really learn anything? Did anything worthwhile even happen? The only thing I care to remember is the musician at the coffee shop this afternoon.

The gifts of music and magic are best when such blessings are bestowed or inherited. The shadowy scars on my soul remain cocoa-buttered by a sense that some of my gifts have been stolen.

I’ve always brought my darker elements forward while keeping the rest locked in the closet with my rain boots. Every day I struggle to be my authentic self. Oh yellow moon, I’m still suffering the effects of the crimes from that night, that misbegotten Eve of the Hazel Moon.

Luna where are you?

You were right about him, but then of course, you’re always right about everything.

Part I

LADY Luna

1

WHITE CHOCOLATE

Genoa Valley City…August 1984

THE BATTERED BLEAKNESS of history rings true when it comes to a reputation. Such is the case for November.

Mary Shelley knew it when her character, Frankenstein, came to life on a dreary night in November, as did the tormented voyagers on the Edmund Fitzgerald when the ill-fated vessel sank in a storm on the Great Lakes in early November.

Ah…November, that gray time of the year, where promises are forgotten and preparation begins. Death will soon be everywhere and before the white of winter recedes life will resemble a graveyard.

Our November, November Rainer Savitchian always answered this common question just as she did when a mere child.

What day is your birthday?

July 25th, November replied, her eyes peering down sheepishly at the white laces on her kid’s yellow Keds, her legs crossed, before adding, but I was beautifully created near the stroke of midnight on November 10th!

Sometimes she would get a follow-up question, but as she got older people would just stare and not say a word, or often just shake their heads.

LEAVING HER UPPER FLAT, as she grasped the heavy, rusty latch of the Rococo iron gate, which was part of a metal bar wall that entombed the area around the funeral parlor grounds, and still looking down, November’s thoughts slipped from her childhood Keds to her snakeskin boots and the present—1984 somewhere in the Midwest.

She ran through pewter-colored puddles, a high-fashion vision in black and white, before crashing into the bucket seats of November’s classic, fully restored, 1969 Camaro Z28 with four on the floor and sporting 505 horses of menacing mechanical power under the hood.

Set up for racing right from the factory, the deep purple Camaro was known for its stiff, steady ride, but put November behind the wheel you’d better buckle up as she loved to live out her indy car fantasies on the open road. Late for work at the mall, the ultimate muscle car began to rip and shake.

WHEN WHITE CHOCOLATE burns, the masquerade is up, the imposter is revealed—white chocolate is not chocolate. Because of morning smoke billowing overhead, the indoor super mall was tardy opening its consumer culture talons on this fateful Saturday to the dismay of many an addicted local shopaholic.

The Cherry Apple Mall had always been the community’s preferred destination on a dreary day. The capricious sun was nursing a bad hangover and decided to take the entire day off. After weeks of cloudless skies, the sun knew it was good business to shake things up, let people down, ruin their picnics, realizing that the human psyche thrives on contrast.

These cookies are to die for, said Jiffy, the cashier, her diamond-studded earrings sparkling in the fake fluorescent ceiling light.

They gross me out, declared November, attacking the dough with her long fingernails while focusing on the macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips.

They are bastardized and loaded with fat. I like the real thing…now Tollhouse, they’re the real deal, she added.

Our white chocolate cookies are packed with macadamia nuts from Hawaii, they’re top sellers, not to mention pure and wholesome, countered Jiffy, quietly wondering why the odd shopkeeper from the weird neighboring store had been hanging around lately.

Jiffy opened the large commercial oven door, then, slammed it in a brazen fashion after sliding in another tray of cookies.

Truth be told, said November, squishing a white chocolate chip with her thumb and index finger as if it were a nasty bug, I really don’t care for cookies. Now, the right bonbon is a different story. I mean they are magical…with a chocolate cover surrounding a surprise center…hmmmm worth each and every calorie. Besides they have a cool name. Hey Jiffypop, did you ever in all your thirty-something years…have a bonbon?

November looked at her companion’s puzzled expression, her doughy face punctuated with confusion.

Jiffy wasn’t listening anymore, her mouth open and her breathing irregularly heavy as she watched this strange girl pulling hair after hair from the left side of her head. Then taking the wiry strands and tying perfect little bows around the cookies.

WHEN THE MALL FINALLY opened, it was a relief to everyone in town for whom going there had become a ritual, the kind that throws you for a loop when you can’t carry on with your routine, like someone with obsessive tendencies who forgets to face all the cans in her cupboard forward, then frets about it all day at work.

The local firefighters who’d responded to the mall fire were dripping with perspiration after finally knocking down the blaze in the oven at the cookie shop in the North Food Court, not Jiffy’s. They decided to take a well-deserved break and drench their thirst with super-sized sodas. The group parked themselves at the most popular kiosk in the mall; some standing, some seated.

Merry-Go-Round, the mall’s hip retail clothing store, was pumping loud techno up and down the hall to the delight of all the mall rats. One of them, a retired police officer who was there every day, spotted the firemen and offered to buy them all lunch as a token of appreciation for their efforts.

You couldn’t walk past Merry-Go-Round and not stop in to have a bona-fide first-person experience with the fantasy retail fashion world inside the store.

The interior was a study in the classic yet cutting edge interior design concept of playing black off white. Add in sparkling chrome panels, headless mannequins and sexy sales sirens and you soon realize it’s not just the trendy clothes that attracted a faithful clientele.

Behind the counter, but not merely a cashier, stood November Rainer Savitchian, assistant manager—actually assistant to the assistant, or to use the MGR term, the Third Person—a position without much chance to move up in the organizational ladder. Sporting an outfit of her own design, November reflected the slick style of the Merry-Go-Round image.

She’d turned some of her dad’s old overalls into pattern panels and reassembled them into a kind of tunic. She stood a modest but proud 5’2" while projecting striking, almost anime features—her huge eyes protruding from a dominant forehead and all sitting on top of a tiny body.

What caused the smoke this morning at the mall, honey? asked a still-pretty-around-the-edges dowager while laying a pair of crimson parachute pants on the counter.

"Do you think my grandson will like these? He’s thirteen going on grown-up, if you know what I mean," she quickly added.

Those parachutes really kick it, November casually quipped while perfectly folding them in preparation for the sale. A moment later she decided to answer the smoke query in a way that might shake up the old lady.

Magic…you know, unseen powers decided to celebrate tonight’s performance of Echo and the Bunnymen…that hot new wave group from London, and sent smoke signals rising over the mall to get some attention for the band!

Waiting to see if her wry remarks would get the desired reaction, November narrowed her eyes, pushed out her lower lip, and swept her long bangs to the left in a premature victory stare.

That sounds like fun…maybe I’ll go see the band, was her sassy and totally unexpected comeback. And, about the smoke, one of the firemen told me it was cookies burning that started the fire, she added, answering her own question with a pout, knowing she was being played.

November nodded in agreement; a little disappointed she couldn’t rattle her. Letting all that go, she took a tiny sip of her Orange Julius through a chewed-up neon-colored straw, popped a few vitamins, and jutted her chin out a little farther before swallowing them.

November’s coworker, Merry-Go-Round weekend warrior, Angela Gonzales, jogged over to the counter, her round face disoriented, and seemed in a tizzy.

Hey…you and Jiffy messed up our sales goals for the week, the white stirrup pants are for Saturday’s sale.

Angela was modeling a pair, showing off all her Pamela-Anderson curves, her nineteen-year-old bright brown eyes buzzing with youthful energy. A teacher or two had diagnosed Angela with attention-deficit disorder, but to her family she was just high-spirited.

Wear them tonight, for the festival, for Ian McCullough!

November’s mind was racing with anticipation as, in deference to her Armenian heritage, she rebelliously applied the colors of the Armenian flag; chameleon red, Mediterranean blue, and apricot orange, in three stripes, in that order, to her nails, the color blue chosen to exactly match her Z28.

As a member of the Armenian Diaspora descended from their Holocaust, November’s father, Sarkis, belonged to the faction who by 1984 had continued to embrace the Armenian flag and its colors, as opposed to the other group who’d rejected it. Although Sarkis would probably not have approved of her glibly painting her nails with the flag’s colors, he was gone, her mother was gone, and this was a playful but meaningful attempt to remain connected to her heritage. 

Tonight is really all that matters—Echo and the Bunnymen, just think, right here in the Valley! November added shaking her head at the wonder of it all.

November, in an attempt to stay in the moment, turned on a hair dryer to give her nails that salon finish. With her head focused down, she caught a whiff of a familiar aroma and looked over to see an unfamiliar customer standing in the What’s-New area near the counter.

He had the look of old family wealth, deep pockets, one of those guys who always walked around with a wad of bills, ready for anything. After all…Money Talks.

Go coax him over here, Angela, November crassly ordered, a little too much like a boss for Angela’s liking.

Layered over her words was the sound of the hairdryer and the store’s signature song, always in heavy rotation, Round and Round, by RATT. As the rock ballad burst into its catchy chorus, Angela walked the stranger to the counter and raised up on her tiptoes, like an intimidatingly tall stripper wearing elevated stilettos, before turning to address him.

My name is Angela. I’m here to help you spend your money.

At first glance his face seemed craggy, weather-beaten, but there was a captivating American culture essence about him…part Clark Gable, part Clint Eastwood—all man. He was not at all phased by Angela using her potent sex appeal to build up the sales pressure.

"Actually, I have a friend about your age, cupcake, but more the size of