Just Like Paris

By Jon-Michael Hamilton

Just Like Paris is a compilation of short stories, poems, and a short novella that explores life in Southern California in the 1990's. Anaheim California is where the majority of the short dramas take place with characters who are exploring different aspects and levels of human relationship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Global Summit House
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781636499550

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Just Like Paris

Short Stories

Life Lines

Novella

Memoirs In

A Shade of Blue

Jon-Michael Hamilton

Copyright © 2020 by Jon-Michael Hamilton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Library Of Congress Control Number   2019904479

ISBN: 978-1-63649-956-7 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-63649-957-4 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-63649-955-0 (E-book Edition)

Some characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Book Ordering Information

Phone Number: 315 288-7939 ext. 1000 or 347-901-4920

Email: [e-mail]

Global Summit House

www.globalsummithouse.com

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Short Stories

Crayon Lines Revisited

The Great Drama Function

Recovery From A Fragile Time

A Period Of Distance

A Point Of Interest

Adam in Evening

The Other Side of Broadway

The Language Of Survival

Constructing John

Life Lines

With You

Humanity

Obsession

Imitation

In Rain Again

A Long Time New

California Coast Drive

Just like Paris

XIV

XXI

XXII

XXVII

Urban Rain

Ants in Sand

Rock Climbing

One Blade of Grass

Reflections of Little Boy on Bus

Circles

The Chair

Finding New

Fresh Breath

Any Saturday

A Slip

Take Care

A Reprieve

The Better Part of Joy

I Have Been Consumed

There is a Gray

Run Swiftly Our Youth Away

All the Years and All the Days

A Four Corner Room

Strings

She is

Loving the Million-Dollar Mannequin

1616 American Drive

Songs of Life

Memoirs In A Shade Of Blue

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

Short Stories

Crayon Lines Revisited

D o you think there will be more oranges on the trees this year?

Evelyn Hardy asked her husband that question in the same soft sing song that she had used for the past ten years. She used the dreamlike gestures, like sleepwalking, like moving through a fog sometimes, like walking on cotton. This had become her routine now. And now this brings him so much pleasure to see, to hear, to see her animated, to touch her lips, still, in their many years together. She looked out of the kitchen window to the backyard but seemed to look further off and into the distance of their shared past.

He offered her no answer this time, the evening growing late, even with using their own signals, since this had become the refrain of his manner just like her manner of sing song questions. Blake Davis Hardy only sat in a corner in the old but large wooden rocking chair. He couldn’t mention the cool mornings with the moist dew drops that would greet them with a chilling touch when their floor heater would not adjust. He couldn’t mention his neglect of their last few orange trees in the cold winter nights that preceded these cool fresh winter-like mornings because he felt he was losing his strength of character to care for them. He couldn’t mention the famine and sickness in the third world countries that were being televised so much lately, that he had constantly viewed on the television and could not turn away from day after day. He couldn’t mention how he had used the news tragedies as an excuse for his neglect. How world famine had become a crutch, an excuse, an explanation of apathy from him, after he had become this numb, frail old man of silence. How he had lost his place in society when he had lost his ability to speak. He still did not like to show pain. Now, he only gazed through the big front window of the soft-white wood frame house to a busy horizon of new buildings, stores and changes from the many business improvements where people and cars mingled and traversed on Orangewood and Harbor Blvd, on these quiet collections of afternoons. He continued and looked and saw only so much waste.

The city had gradually changed after the war years. After his Okinawa stint in the Pacific with the Corps, he and his wife had been in almost this same spot for the past 45 years or so watching the change first with enthusiasm and then with reluctance and then with dread and now with the numbness of futility. He would have used hand signs to answer her question but didn’t choose to. From that time, ten years ago, when he had lost his ability to speak from what she only referred to as the work accident, that had damaged his vocal cords he had become more reluctant to try to explain things to her. When it had happened, she had taken it harder than he had. It was then that she began to lose her focus and her mind had started to wonder, to lose thoughts, to lose time.

She was still beautiful. The gray in her plain brown hair gave her a nobleness that some woman never achieved. Her face still showed happiness easily, from the little things and her eyes could never hide the mirth of her humor. She was still tall but a little frail now and that was the only indication of a turn of sadness for her. She turned to face him and in her limpid moments, which were more often than not, and saw her son’s face in his, perhaps a proud man now and always in his thirties, never changing, especially when her husband was helping her as she knew her son would. But often times his face revealed to her the hurt and shame of a change not expected as she thought had burdened the other neighbors who still lived in this once proud section of the city. Change had now made a shamble of the values of their pre-atomic generation with its over-run commercialism and easily disposable values. It was the 90’s.

He showed that grim future on his face with a stern visage of seriousness. It made her feel silly. Her inquiry to him. A sign of frustration was a tiny crinkle in her brow and an evasive look to her prayer clinched palms at her waist. But it wasn’t a serious question. It was only her yearning to enter into his world, their world; to share the pain that would torture a man such as this and gnaw at the absolute emptiness that crept at the depths of his soul. She felt the need to embrace the pain that had stomped his pride like a dusty footprint against a small ant hill; to take away some of the guilt that would hinge on this man’s soul after witnessing the failure of his dreams and plans from the hands of someone stronger and more important than he. No, this guilt would not take away from the rebuilding that was accomplished by the efforts of their love. But it would sit firmly in the pit of this man’s gut and embrace him in the ebbing moments of daybreak. This was the pain she sought to soften like a fallen child’s pain over and over for the past twenty years. But she was being shut out again.

With the city like this, it reminds me of the days when I first came to this country as a child, she persisted.

She was an active woman of German descent who had lost her only son some thirty years before, in a car accident, but she was still part of the city’s history and a person of the land just like her family from so many generations before. She had been in the city long before him and had introduced him to the simplicity of their way of life. Indeed, it had changed him, and it had changed her, but after the city had wrenched her twelve-year-old son, little Frederick, from his bicycle and her arms, it was one of the things that had changed the city and so, in turn, had helped to changed their way of life to what it is now. It was beyond simple and now almost static. Time sometimes never moved.

Moving into the dimly lit corner of the house by the same window that he stared through she sat on their old leather sofa where a portrait of their younger days perched bravely on the wall behind her. She had felt especially apprehensive today and for no apparent reason that she could remember. Then it had come to her like a flash, like an itch that spread across her arms and neck. It was two days before their 50th wedding anniversary. She had picked up the photo album from the coffee table. It was the only photo album that they had left. She preferred it that way. It was one of the few things that they owned that always gave her clarity. She could depend on it. She had wiped the dust from it. She wondered how she could have let the dust settle there in the first place. From a reflex from somewhere she had opened it and began to look through it while still silently contemplating her neglect. She was usually very good at things like this, she had thought. Keeping dust away from their accumulated belongings. But with the days as they were and he seemingly always lost in his silence, she rarely had the strength to tidy. It wasn’t so long ago, she had reasoned aloud, without looking away she rarely had the strength to tidy. It wasn’t so long ago, she had reasoned … to the next page, three happy figures, she in the rocking chair with Little Fredrick, and he standing beside her on a day just like the one today. She didn’t look for an answer. She was only stating that it wasn’t so long ago when they were happier, when things were clearer. Fredrick was such a beautiful boy. He was born three years into their marriage and was taken from her fifteen years later. She had closed and sat the album back on the small table and walked closer to the window. She had lost the feeling just as quickly as it had come. She had begun to run down like a slow ticking clock the rest of the day.

Looking out now she could see the crimson sky just beginning in the West and feel the sudden emptiness and quiet that would settle over everything after the sun had finally set. She could feel herself shudder at the thought of the long sleepless night ahead and silently wished as she did every night for daybreak.

We should get ready for darkness, she said to him, and briskly walked to the back of the bedroom and closed the windows and drew the curtains closed across them.

He had been silent through all of her comments never looking away from windows at the busy street outside. Abruptly, he rose from the chair and walked over to the windows and helped her with it. Afterward, while she closed the blinds of the other windows on the insides, he stepped outside to replace the big heavy trashcans against the gate entrance that he had moved away at daybreak. The sun was dying quickly as had before and all the evening lights were coming alive as had before and he knew it would be another cool night like winter in a few hours. Again, obtaining heat would be a problem.

She lay awake in the night unable to sleep from the sounds that she heard. He was fast asleep though, exhausted from working in their dead backyard and clearing out the trash and bottles that had been tossed into it over the weekend. She had discovered long ago that nothing could hinder the exhaustion that riveted his tired frame. It was his way of not accepting defeat, she thought. Yet, she would lie awake in the night with her eyes searching through the small bedroom and watching for reflections from the past. The portrait that had brought her joy now only added to her pain. Her pain. The pain she suffered and endured with him, but alone. It was the dark silence of the night that sometimes concealed the past like a heavy and mysterious, troubadour’s blanket.

The large rocking chair that had somehow survived the winter’s search for firewood beaconed in a corner like a living occupant. It had its own history. A house warming present to him from her mother on their wedding day. But maybe when the winter months came, the search for wood would discover it. It survived because he knew how much it meant to her as a reminder of how things were supposed to be. But maybe next winter. If things didn’t improve it would also go, like the orange trees from lost winters ago that were the only trees that seemed to grow. But then things would be better. She would never give up hope. They would survive this spring and the coming winter and begin again what was started before. Then she heard the howling of loud voices and the laughter in the night that she had heard so often and she shuddered at the sounds. She moved closer to him through the bedcovers and placed her arm firmly across his chest.

I can’t sleep, she heard herself say. She felt him stir beside her and felt him place his arm across her and pull her face against his chest. She felt herself heave and cry and cry into sleep.

That morning she slept late, and he was already out and moving around with the sunrise replacing the trashcans at the gate’s entrance and then collecting dry wood and trash that had blown into the backyard overnight. He hoped something would sprout in their garden from the ribbon off section of soil that he had marked last spring. He had kept it moist and irrigated with water from the hose and water from the kitchen faucet. Maybe something would show before the summer. He walked out further in the backyard to the edge of the fence and could still feel a small gust of wind that had removed the weaker topsoil in swirling breaths from the section where their last few seeds had been planted. From the soft mulch pushing upward with green leaves grew two large plants. He rushed back to the house to the small trunk where he his tools and got his shovel and a large cardboard box. He placed the box down beside the small stalks and began cutting a square around them with the huge shovel. He worked carefully placing the huge scoop of the shovel away from the leaves and where he thought the roots were taking, then using his foot he thrust the shovel deep down into the soft dirt. He remembered the old days when the pods could have remained where they had grown. When nothing or no one would come by and dig the roots up from the soil. There were blackbirds in those days, yet they were nothing compared to the people who hunted now in packs at night taunting and destroying anything and everything that lived and grew. He lifted the plants up into the large box which was large enough to hold three extra shovel-full of dirt. He felt happy as he pulled the large box back to the house. Straining against the weight of the box he used his belt as straps and walked with determination and happiness. He would have these plants inside soon and from them the confidence that more would grow. Hopefully. Then they would become independent again within their straining budget.

Chili peppers, oh darling, the peppers are trying to bud, she said happily. She danced with glee and took his hands in her own and placed them on her cheeks. We’ll have original spices for our sauerkraut, and red cabbages and grow our own spices again, she said smiling.

He smiled also, then scooted the box in the corner underneath the window in the living room. He sat down in the wooden chair still smiling and gazed out of the window to the street and the few passing cars. He heard her come up from behind and she sat and kneeled and placed a hand on the upper top side of his leg.

Please, let’s go over and across the Boulevard to visit the doctor again. It’s been so long since we went to visit anyone.

He didn’t want to go. He had been reluctant to go out since the time of the accident and after the time when they had the confrontation with the young teenagers who should have been in school and studying instead of teasing and preying on the old and weak. After the work accident when a torn conveyor band had snapped across his throat and damaged his vocal cords and left him speechless after tossing him ten feet away. Yet aside from the scar the injury had left no physical signs except his absence of speech. Brumley, who was a doctor and a friend said it was severe but could heal, but shock from the fall could be lasting. But this man didn’t remember much about the accident. He only remembered coming back from the hospital covered in bandages and some blood and ripped clothing from when his co-workers had pulled him out of the way of more danger. After that, he didn’t want to travel and visit too many people at any cost, but at the same time, he always wanted to make her happy. Unfortunately, one of the more substantial tradeoffs from his injury was the lack of communication with the outside world that they both shared now. The telephone became non-existent in their lives. He could not use one, and she was already reluctant with usage after the loss of their son as well. It quickly became a faint memory for them, talking on the phone with friends and fielding calls on holidays and anniversaries. And although she never said so, he knew she missed the communicating with her friends and family. But talking to them was often a reminder of her loss because it was their loss as well. Her parents missed the grandson, and her sisters missed their nephew. So, she fell into her pattern of silence as loyalty to him as well as her memory of what was lost, and he knew it.

Please, she said. Please. Everything will be okay. I’ll be with you, you’ll see. Everything will be all right. It’s just been so long since we’ve visited anyone and the doctor needs to see you and check on your progress.

She wore down his resistance with her argument. She would like to hear him speak again and he knew that. She would like to listen to him call her name. But she would also love to hear anyone talk if even in a greeting. They walked out of the house using the front door and stared into the light with the sun burning aft and casting three o’clock shadows on the sidewalks. She had found her large sun hat hidden away on a shelf in the bedroom closet and flopped it on with a smile. He carried a large walking stick in his hands upright like a farmer using it on his left to mark his long strides. She asked him questions, and he answered with the hand signs that they had created after the accident, and they walked like they had before when the city was green and fresh, and the birds would sing; before the big hotel and entertainment business had poisoned the people with the clouds of greed and commercialism changing the values of every living thing that had visited for miles and miles. Those were the rough times she reluctantly remembered. When it first started the other people in the community saw it as something temporary. They had cared for each other in open gestures while still living in their home in the midst of a once thriving town. However, after the first rush of tourism had left and the season was over, people started to move away from the horror of rudeness and being treated like novelties instead of like people. Some joined in the pursuit of capitalizing on the tourist trade by creating their own merchandise to sell. In the beginning he talked to her and then after the accident used their sign language and wrote letters to her, and she saw for herself how opportunistic people had changed their values with the times. Being bleached with greed and a hunger for entertainment tourists traveled at night and in packs. Old and young men all banded together with an appetite for flesh. Many of the neighbors changed, and young girls hastily grew up after encountering the ruinous attentions of foreigners and tourist in the city. Many were harassed at night walking back to their homes after going to their favorite mom and pop restaurant in the waning daylight hours. She heard that those who were steadfast against change had lost their desire for combating the new communication devices like the pager, the cell phone, or computer and even the cable television in their homes. They had finally moved away in old cars and buses to a slower time, and the few who stayed in the city were eventually eaten away by time and the changing values.

They walked over and out into the light and to the intersection of the streets. Harbor Blvd was a full three-lane street on both sides with all types of cars passing by and covered with large beautiful Hotels and businesses that aligned the streets like mountains of impassive bullies with their fancy facades and expensive decorations as restrictions to the meager budgets of the elderly. The sidewalks which were once covered with indigenous trees now held carefully planned palm trees that acted as guards and guides for the curious who could afford the answers. They stood there waiting for the light to change and became a sight for the passengers of a car passing by and the walking curious who now began to take pictures and point with smiles. Tall and dressed in an old dark gray suit and white shirt he was well-groomed and tapered with an old bald head and trimmed mustache and goatee that traced his face with white grey hairs. She was shorter with still long black beautiful hair that also had a wisp of gray peeking from under her hat and past her collar. Her dress, blue as deep seawater, was outdated as well with long sleeves that were buttoned tightly at the wrist and the collar, but the dress fell down snugly over her still firm breasts and then wrapped tightly around her thin waistline and finally had a pleated luster that ran past her knees and stopped short at the calf revealing the soft black loafers that still held the shine from a previous outing a long time ago. Her eyes were still beautiful, dark brown and happy and she walked so erect and proud and was so intoxicated with the sounds and voices of the afternoon that she was away up high and he became nothing more than her escort with her visit among the commoners.

These voices were so different from the night voices. There was laughter from some of the children of tourist who were walking to Disneyland, and there were the Japanese conversations going on from a small group and musical Spanish heard and so much more. All that could be seen on her was the big floppy hat covering her eyes and a big broad smile underneath. They were a sight. They were their own California gothic. But he remained impassive and took the reaction of the onlookers for what it was worth from a society with so many transitory values.

After the light changed, they walked across with the flow of the other pedestrians and after walking for three blocks could now see Doc Brumley’s old house coming closer in the distance on the left. They walked side by side and reached the step to the house and smiled at each other before he knocked on the door with the end of the walking stick. The home was quiet, and no one answered. He knocked again with his hand and tried to open the door and felt it give-way. He walked in first with her following closely behind. The interior was white and the living room part had been converted into a waiting room. There was a long leather sofa against the furthest wall and two leather chairs bookend on both sides of it. The walls were white and there were landscape pictures of a waterfall and a steep red cliff overlooking a green valley perched on the walls above the sofa. The doctor’s framed credentials were on the other side and above one of the chairs.

Blake advanced and placed an out-stretched arm between them. He held her back but in the doorway. Something moved in the corner of the room. He walked toward it. The first Doberman, reddish brown with white dickie, darted out from a pile of clothing and snapped at his leg. He moved his leg away, and the animal caught his loose-fit pant leg. He swung down with the stick using the pointed edge, striking the beast sharply on its hind leg, drawing blood and a yelp of pain. The second Doberman, black with snarling teeth, jumped from underneath the bed frame upward towards his chest growling and snarling viciously. He caught the animal’s neck in one hand and threw it hard against the wall. Turning quickly, he hit the stunned animal on the top of its head with the flat part of the stick and heard it cry in pain and jump through the access to the pet door. He turned to his wife who was straining frantically with the reddish brown one. The animal’s teeth pulled at her dress, and she resisted, holding herself up against the doorway. He moved fast, using the sharp edge again, sticking the animal hard in the meaty flank area. He drew blood again. The creature released its hold and limped toward him. The anger in his brain and body ran hot red. The message in his mind flashed, This is what it feels like to kill again. He struck down against the animal again and again with the flat part of the walking stick on its head. The animal whimpered, then died in its own blood.

Leaving drops of blood from a wound, she limped into the room favoring her leg. She watched as he rushed to her. Lifting her up from her feet into his arms, he walked quickly to the bed where there was a lump underneath a pile of sheets and blankets. He held her, and they both looked at the bed where Doc Brumley’s body lay on his back, still and quiet, with his body at an angle across the rustled bedcoverings. It was evident from the smell that he had passed away on the bed in an attempt to slide into his shoes. The body held a great resemblance to a man sleeping comfortably, but upon closer inspection and with the eyes staring straight up and to the ceiling it was clear that his passing was a surprise but then an acceptance for him. His expression was peaceful. He was clean shaven with a perfectly trimmed mustache and his lips were tight and calm. His eyes were welcome blanks of brown and white. And his hands were at his side with his fingers unclenched. He was dressed in his working pants, shirt, and socks, which was uncomfortable to see but was better than seeing the doctor in his pajamas, or less.

Evelyn winced at the sight of the body and closed her own eyes. He turned her body away from the sadness and shook her and tighten his grip on her to make her understand not to look again. As he released her and lifted his arm, she opened her eyes and watched as he moved to the doorway and looked out. He turned to face her. She understood his expressions and motions. The walk over had taken more than thirty minutes. Now, with her injury, time would become even more critical. They had to get back to their home. She felt a determination in her heart and displayed it to him in her eyes. She felt the burn of his stare somehow match the burning in her heart and knew he understood that she felt the urgency that he felt. She felt no pain now.

Blake moved quickly now, placing her down under a window, then walking briskly to the bed and removing a cover sheet to use for bandages. He looked around and saw lying under the bed many glass bottles covered in blood. He grabbed three, reading the labels, discarded two, then moved back to her. Working fast on his knees he looked at the wound and was relieved to see that it was a cut and not a bite. It was a deep cut though with blood still flowing. She must have gotten the cut from one of the broken pieces of glass or bottles that were littered all over the floor of Dr. Brumley’s bedroom and makeshift examination room. He poured the contents of a bottle of peroxide on the wound and listened for her cries. Surprisingly there weren’t many. He wrapped the leg in a bandage made from a ripped pillowcase and lifted her up on her two feet. I can make it, he heard her say. He held her close around her waist with one arm and with the other grabbed the waking stick, and she put an arm around his neck. They walked out into the dying sunlight.

The going was slow and laborious, and many times they had to stop and rest. They could see the sun deep in the western horizon growing softer and sinking. She cried now because of the pain and the bleeding started and stopped twice. He carried her sometimes and suppressed her distress, and together they made it back to the intersection again. The sun had just dipped into the night and the lights of the hotels, cars, and night were alive with the sounds of a life of its own. People walked by, and some looked and most ignored, and a few of the young ones started to taunt. To the onlookers, they looked like an elderly couple who had been out enjoying a vacation and perhaps had a bit too much to drink. Cars passed by and tourist were making their way back and forth to Disneyland and horns were blaring, and people were shouting from the vehicles, and then there were a few with deafening music. They rested on the corner of the Sheraton Hotel, a massive monolith of concrete, marble, glass, and recreation and took in labored and uneasy breaths. The moment was good at first because now he felt the exhaustion from the trek. They had never had a chance to sit down, and this whole journey was spontaneous and ill-planned. But the more they lingered at the moment, the more he saw the limitations in his life within the slightest deviation from what was planned for their day. It wasn’t that Dr. Brumley was dead. People die. It was that no one neither knew nor had notified them about it. It was that the doctor’s body was still in his house and his dogs were left unattended. It was, and he knew it for what it was as the limitations of his own communication manifesting itself and affecting her in a way that he had not envisioned. He had become so complacent with his last fifteen years of silence that it had shut them off from the world that surrounded them. There began the guilt that he felt the full effect of for the first time and he felt the weight of it in his shoulders and neck. He heaved and exhaled slowly and gave her a somber