Shorts

By Craig Dixon

Here are road rides, a diva, and a deviant cook. Some lovers, some losers and besotted admirers. There's even a shoe story without a fetishist.

"Stories, stories, short and tall. Pick and choose some, that's your call. Stories, stories, great and small. Wade right in and read them all." Anon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 23, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462838783

Craig Dixon

I am a father of one adult daughter, Studying computer programming, Born in Melbourne Victoria, I am a live-in carer to my elderly mother. Love reading, Web development, volunteer for local elderly society. I have a Love of making up fiction stories, and being creative, I do Origami 3D in my spare time. Very much a family man. Camping and the great outdoors are my happy place. Not done much of that lately but. While stuck at home, my imagination wanders, thinking up adventures to write about that i hope will entertain and educate my young readers.

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Copyright © 2007 by Craig Dixon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents in the stories are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Box Count was previously published in Barcelona Review. Several stories were included in the Amazon Shorts program during 2006.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

IN LOVE WITH SAMANTHA

LADYLOVE

SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY

HOUSE PROUD

MILITARY BRIDGE

GREAT-AUNT GHILDE’S ARRIVAL

THE NISSEN HUTS OF SHERWOOD

THE SHOE SCHMUCK

GETTING TO SPRINGFIELD

TRUST

JUST FOR THE WEEKEND

BOX COUNT

THE EYES OF ALEX

TEN HOURS WITH THE TAMADA

STARSTRUCK

BALKAN BARGAIN

To everyone who improved these stories.

You know who you are.

Thank you.

IN LOVE WITH SAMANTHA

It was my third sighting. Third time lucky. Because now she was sitting directly across from me, close up. The other times she’d been farther away in the railroad car. Dark red hair and pale clear skin, she was like one of the auto show models from the fifties in a book I have on classic cars. The book is called Automotive Beauties.

We were in the front railroad car, on the daily 7:14 AM that I took into the city. The Long Island Railroad. I’ve been commuting for three years. I’ve fallen in love more than twenty times. In lust, that’s what Ritchie would say. He’s my supervisor at work. But I didn’t have to deal with him here on the train.

I’d first seen this one two weeks ago.

Third sighting. That’s how bird watchers talk. And she was like a bird, light and lovely with her knees together, on the edge of her seat, poised for flight. But she wasn’t taking her eyes off her Vanity Fair.

It was just my lousy luck. A streaming nose when I had the first chance to make significant contact. But I couldn’t let her catch my cold. I’d have to wait for the next time.

Aah-tish-oo! I struggled for a Kleenex in my pocket. Mama always makes sure I have some. The girl lowered her magazine.

Bless you, she said, and she smiled just for a nanosecond.

Thanks, I mumbled and blushed. Her eyes were back again on her magazine.

Before I could tell her about my sinuses or that I wanted to marry her, I heard the train brakes squeal, and we came into Penn Station. She hurried out to the platform, dropping the Vanity Fair on her seat. I shouldered my backpack and picked the magazine up. The edge of my hand touched the seat fabric. It was still warm from her. I knew that I was blushing.

My first thought was to catch up with her and gallantly hand her the discarded magazine. But the commuting crowd was like a wall, and besides, I didn’t want the rejection. People routinely left papers and magazines on the train. Then I noticed that the Vanity Fair had a mailing label. SAMANTHA RILEY, Apt 15C, 407 West End Avenue. In the city.

I got to work as usual at 8:30 AM. It was a building-maintenance company, and my supervisor Ritchie was making his daily assault on my fantasies.

So … Did ya nail her, Barry? What … ?

The two of us had an hour together each morning, laying out the work schedules. Ritchie always brought in an elaborate breakfast from the deli. Every day he tore off pieces of his muffin and thrust them at me, but at home Mama and I ate very early, watching the news together. That first hour in the office with Ritchie was more than enough for me, but I think he would have enjoyed interrogating me all day.

Every time I fell in love on the train, I found myself like an idiot confessing to Ritchie, and inevitably he goaded me until that particular fantasy faded out and the next one replaced her. I never learned. Now I came out of my daydream. This one’s different, Ritchie. It isn’t like that. I don’t want to talk about her.

"Yeah, right. You don’t want to talk about her, but I do. I’ve been waiting for the blow-by-blow. Looks like, with you, I’ll wait forever." Ritchie waddled over to my side of the cubicle, dropping crumbs. He picked up the Vanity Fair.

Hey, Barry, can I borrow this for my wife?

I grabbed the magazine out of his hand. No, I said harshly.

What’s the big deal? Ritchie sat himself on my desk, scattering piles of work orders.

Well, it’s like this. I sighed and smiled a little. I’ve got her name and address. Gripping the magazine and holding it away from Ritchie, I pointed to the mailing label.

Oh, you sly fox! Ritchie’s eyebrows went up. Hey, you’re not going to get all weird on me, are you?

I am not weird.

You’re close, my friend, very close. Ritchie hitched up his pants. Anyway, so what’re you going to do?

I don’t know. But something. She’s the one. I know it.

Sure, Barry. Ritchie nodded and walked back to his workstation. In your dreams.

I checked my messages, and Ritchie waved the men’s room key at me, indicating where he was heading. He noticed me looking at the phone slips.

By the way, your mother called, again.

At night, when I arrived home, Mama always had a question the minute I walked in the door. It was a toss-up whether I heard her voice first or whether I caught the whiff of stale perfume as I let outside fresh air into the house. It’s small, our house, kind of a ranch. It used to be part of a vacation bungalow colony years ago.

Was she on the train again, Barry? This was a variation of Who did you meet today?

When I’m in the throes of love-anxiety, Mama always knows, and I would tell her anyway. She asks for lots of detail, often more than I realize that I’ve noticed. Sometimes I tease and pretend I didn’t see anyone interesting. As she draws the physical descriptions out of me, the girls from the train would become even more real to me.

How was your day, son?

Same old, same old, Mama. I opened one of the kitchen cabinets. We’re having linguini with clam sauce. OK?

That’s fine. Do you see what I’m wearing?

That pretty green blouse. Sure.

D’you know how I got it?

I know. Two birthdays ago. I went to Saks.

You’re a good son, too good for those train whores.

I stirred the noodles as they simmered. I hadn’t told her about Samantha Riley’s magazine with its mailing label.

Barry, pour me some of that fruit juice. The pineapple-banana one. She maneuvered her wheelchair over to the table. You didn’t ride in any automobiles today, did you?

I made a mental note that one of the wheels on her chair needed oil.

Barry? You didn’t, did you?

I answered her now as I did every time, No, Mama, no.

She smiled and blew me a kiss. She’d done her fingernails to match the Saks blouse.

My parents had emigrated from Europe. Mama came from Hungary, and she’d met up with my father in Frankfurt. They’d brought me up in

Mineola using a mixture of German and Hungarian to communicate. I was christened Attila Ellenbogen, but when I started school, a teacher called me Attila the Hun. Ha-ha, Hungarian. The kids all laughed, and my father, for my tenth birthday, arranged that my first name would be legally changed.

I was twenty-one before I was able to stop Mama from using my old name. I had to start ignoring her completely every time, until she apologized and called me Barry like everyone else.

A car crash when I was twelve left us without my father, and my mother without legs. The doctors told me that my father would not have experienced pain. Mama had been trapped in the debris for hours. The operations afterward left her spine intact.

When the crash happened, I’d been away at summer camp. I learned a lot of things very fast after the accident. Like how to clean the special bathroom we had built. This elaborate reconstruction gave Mama access to it from the main bedroom, but the expansion eliminated my small bedroom. Mama laughed and just said she needed someone in bed with her anyway.

The insurance money from the crash lasted until I got my union card. I was twenty-six then. I’d had some college, but the job offers that came my way involved overnight travel, and I couldn’t leave Mama. After I’d drifted for a while, a Hungarian friend of the family got me into the union. I repaired elevators.

Correction, I’m now assistant supervisor of repairmen. Not bad for a twenty-nine-year-old. Ritchie uses me as backup when one of the operating crews is short a man, but these days that’s not often; so it’s a soft job riding around the city inspecting the jobs.

But I never tell Mama about the riding part. If she saw my cubicle at work she’d die. It’s covered with pictures of cars. Half the auto mechanics out in Nassau County are my friends. I finish the tough tune-up jobs for them. I’ve trained Mama to not hassle me on weekends after I’ve set her up for the day. I’m not sure which smell I like best, hot oil or gasoline. Some people do their volunteer work in hospitals. I do it in garages.

At work we were busy with annual inspections, and then it took me more than a week to pluck up courage for the next step. It might have taken longer, but my love, my Samantha, seemed to have disappeared. After a couple of days I took an earlier train, then another day a later one; and I wondered a lot about her schedule.

I get on the LIRR at Mineola, and every time I saw her, she’d already found a seat. Mineola is about halfway in toward New York from the end of the line. I had no idea at which station she’d caught the morning train.

Of course, Samantha Riley had that Manhattan address, but she was always coming into the city from Long Island. Without talking to her, I couldn’t figure it out. I’d dialed 411 in the city, but at the customer’s request she was unlisted. Anywho.com had nothing. I asked Mama what I should do and I even quizzed Ritchie. They both assumed that this one would pass out of the picture like the others before her. Ritchie told me it was time for a reality check, and Mama winked at me and said that it was fate.

One morning I had an inspiration. I came in early, logged on, and found Samantha’s building listed in our company database. Bingo! We had a contract with them. The full works, on retainer, they were entitled to year-round service with the twenty-four-hour on-call feature. They’d signed up for everything.

I scheduled myself for a visit to her building and hopped in the truck. It was a doorman building, a grand old place in the West Seventies. It looked like a bigger version of the ones in family photos from Europe that my father had kept. This had a hundred units on sixteen floors, with a basement garage. Wouldn’t mind living there myself. The elevator had a clean bill of health on our books, but the mechanism was ancient. I was sure I’d be able to find something to fix or inspect. Hell, I could even create some innocuous problem if necessary, with maybe a couple of follow-up visits.

On this job you have to be able to get on well with the building staff. Supers are the best. They’re overworked, grateful, no attitude. Worst are the uniformed flunkeys. They call themselves concierges. As I went into this building I remembered Ritchie’s description. They think their shit don’t stink.

You’re the building manager, right? It always helps to flatter them, and this one had five stars on each shoulder and stood ramrod tall behind a reception counter. He made me think of a military brass-band leader, maybe Sergeant Pepper.

I am the day manager, the duty concierge. His shoulders did a little dance of pride, and the shiny metal stars caught the light from a chandelier. The lobby was half the size of a ballroom, with a set of ornate living room furniture on each side. I told him my business and that I needed him to open the utility room.

He said he couldn’t leave the desk without relief. But just then another uniformed guy came through a rear door buttoning his jacket. So my guy explained things to him. Then he took some keys out of a drawer and stepped out from behind the counter, saying, Follow me.

I had to hold in a laugh because he was about five foot zero. He must have been on a milk crate back there behind the counter. We rode the elevator down to the basement garage level, and he unlocked the service door for me. As he wrenched it open, he smeared thick grease all over his gold-braid sleeve.

Kurva! he hissed, trying to wipe himself. That’s a very bad word in Hungarian. Mama used it only in extreme circumstances, and she slapped me when I’d copied her.

I politely excused him in Hungarian, and his eyes popped with pleasant surprise. He introduced himself as Jozsef Molnar, who came to the United States eight years ago. We became instant soul mates standing down there by the elevator shaft, and I promised to bring him the best solvent to get the grease out of his jacket. We always had a case of the stuff in the office.

Jozsef hadn’t grown up in the same city as Mama, but I could relate to his stories from some of the things she’d told me about life in Hungary. I explained that I had something important I needed to return to someone living in the building.

It belongs to a woman.

Oh. What’s her name?

Samantha Riley.

Sure, I know her. Nice lady. By the way, that’s her car over there.

Which one?

The low one, with the beige cover.

Even in the dim light I realized that the car had triangular rubber overriders built into the front bumper. It had to be a Citroen. Jozsef grudgingly let me peek under the dust cover, and I found that it was a midnight blue 1955 DS styled by Chapron. It has a unique hydraulic suspension, and it’s one of the most elegant convertibles in creation. And this rarity was owned by my Samantha.

After I’d oohed and aahed, I noticed a faded For Sale sign lying on the passenger seat. Jozsef said that she’d inherited the car. She left it stored in the building because a free garage slot came with her apartment.

I’d already had fantasies about choosing a ring with Samantha, how she would look in a white wedding dress, becoming Mrs. Samantha

Ellenbogen, and us setting up house together with a big garage. It could be near Mama but separate. Now I added a vision of us driving around in this smooth-riding gem with the top down. The wind lifting her long lustrous red hair as she gazed adoringly at me behind the wheel. That unique Citroen steering wheel, with the single spoke. Definitely before airbags. It’s like some weird French forearm coming out of the dash.

So I have to give something to her.

I can do that. I see her most days. He straightened the edge of the car cover.

Thanks, Jozsef. But it wouldn’t be the same.

What do you mean?

Well, I want to get to know her.

Know her in what way? Jozsef the doorman frowned. He was a fellow countryman, but that was going to help me only so far.

I don’t know, maybe just be introduced.

Somehow, I’d never connected with girls. In school, and later at parties, we would start to chat. They would be speaking about this and that, and I always seemed to fade out on the small talk. After they’d sort of given up on me, I could imagine them joking about me with their girl friends. They probably did.

I don’t know. Jozsef looked worried. As if the two of us would be going up and knocking on her door.

I said, Nothing formal. We’ll figure out when she’s coming down, and I’ll be there in the lobby. You don’t have to get involved.

If I do this, and I’m not saying I will, it’ll only be the introduction words. Yes. That’s it. The lady is fussy. Jozsef straightened his clip-on bow tie. Always twenty questions about anyone doing work here. OK.

We headed back up to the lobby

And she’s good at Christmas—so don’t mess me up.

No problem, Jozsef. I won’t mess anyone up.

I will say this, though, about Ms. Riley: she does like meeting new people. She’s very chatty with everyone working in the building.

That’s good. If I hadn’t sneezed that day on the train, Samantha and I could have already been chatty together.

A nice apartment. Good view. Jozsef had finished adjusting his bow tie and was tugging on his shirt cuffs.

Oh, you’ve been in it?

Sure, everyone here has. I told you, a friendly lady. She bakes cookies, and you have to go up there and pick them up.

Ha! That’s nice. I can do a main course, but I’m not so hot on desserts. I buy pies and stuff for Mama and me.

So, what shall I say to her then?

How about something like ‘Ms. Riley, this is Barry. He keeps us going up and down!’ That should do it. People use that up and down line all the time around us elevator guys.

That might be OK.

Or you could say, ‘Ms. Riley, this is Barry. He wants to buy your car.’

Yeah, she’d like that. Jozsef told me what he knew of Samantha’s routine. He said he could set his watch by her in the morning. She was always out by eight and back by six thirty, at the latest seven. Sometimes later, if she’d been to dinner or a movie. He thought that she did this with a rotation of friends.

She tells me everything. Jozsef looked taller for a moment.

Really?

Sure! The menu from dinner, the story of the movie. You know, she likes me; what can I tell you. He shrugged, grinning. I couldn’t honestly see this guy as my competition.

So she’s usually here then?

Yeah, but she leaves most weekends though.

I looked questioningly at him.

I know, ‘cause I’m here then and I don’t see her.

But weekday mornings you’re sure about?

I couldn’t remember exactly which days of which weeks I’d seen Samantha on the train, but they’d definitely been weekdays.

Well, when I’m on duty, I’m sure of it.

She had some Long Island connection. Stayed out there often enough. Relatives, probably. This all made sense. Jozsef wasn’t in the lobby every weekday morning.

What does she do?

Something in an office. Believe me, it’s boring. You don’t want to get her started.

But no man, huh?

She sometimes talks about clients, but …

No. I mean a friend, a boyfriend. Is there a man in her life?

A man? Ms. Riley? No way!

Why do you say that?

Jozsef looked at me intently and paused before he answered me.

I would have heard about it. Remember what I told you, she likes to talk.

At school, talking was always awkward for me. The nearest I’d come to having a girlfriend was Liz. When I was with her, things were different. I could talk without going red. Somehow, when we were together it was as if we were in another country. Unpredictable and exciting. We were both crazy about the Beatles. Of course, between us we owned everything they’d recorded, but each of us kept finding out things about the Fab Four that the other didn’t know about. We figured that we were the only kids in the whole school who were paid-up members of a fan club for a defunct group.

One evening Liz came home for dinner with me. I spent most of the first hour of the visit cooking in the kitchen, so Liz sat in the living room with Mama. I hadn’t heard any conversation, but when I went in there, Liz was sitting rigid, with tears streaming down her face. She asked me to take her home right away, and she wouldn’t tell me why. I asked Mama, and she shrugged. She twirled her finger at the side of her head, indicating that the girl must be crazy.

I walked down the street with Liz. We’d had to park her dad’s car some blocks away from our place because I couldn’t arrive home in a motor vehicle.

She finally told me that Mama had sat the whole time with her mouth open, waggling her tongue from side to side. Liz said that Mama also moved her forefinger in and out through a hole she made with the thumb and index finger of her other hand. Liz and I were both sixteen. We knew what that gesture meant. Slobbery old Eddie, the custodian at school, did it around the girls all the time.

That evening as we walked away from our house, I actually didn’t believe what Liz had told me. I couldn’t tell her, but then when I got back home, Mama had a big smile as I walked in. She turned away from me and denied upsetting Liz. I couldn’t ask her questions about the gestures. Didn’t need to anyway.

But it was too late. Liz avoided me, and I assumed everyone else at school knew. From then on, my acne seemed worse; and nothing I wore seemed to fit me anymore. Liz’s father was transferred, and they moved to Houston. Mama played the CD track of Yesterday" incessantly. Using earplugs, I slept on the living room couch for the first time in my life. After a couple of weeks, Mama handed me the CD with a ribbon on it, and I stopped using the couch.

Now it was Wednesday. I was ready, ready to declare myself to Samantha the next morning.

That evening I must have been tense because I snapped no at Mama when she asked her first standard daily question about who I saw on the train. At work the pile of phone messages from her that day inspired Ritchie to call my mother the Motormouth of Mineola.

Mama picked up on my tone of voice, so I wasn’t surprised that she sounded angry as she asked her second question about whether I’d been in a car. But I answered her in my