To Whom It May Concern: And Other Stories

By Vincent Di Blasi

The nine stories in this volume are each unique unto themselves but they all straddle the line between what we know and what we do not know, the material world and the spiritual one, what we hope for and what we fear most. The emphasis is on hope and our search for what is most beautiful within our world and within ourselves.

Sarafina is about a man who must choose between heaven and hell. You might think the choice is an easy one until you appreciate the consequences. In A String of Bad Hands, a writer plays poker with the devil to save the soul of a woman he met in the Yucatan in their distant youth. Before the game is over, he will risk everything he has in the hope of winning everything he wants. From the Mirror is the narrative of a man who crosses the country looking for the other person we see in the mirror, the one we could have become or perhaps will be in the future.

In the title entry, To Whom It May Concern, the inhabitants of a small island community discover that their world is sinking beneath the sea just as communication with the outside world comes to a halt. They never lose hope. These stories are about human resilience and limitless curiosity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532032332

Vincent Di Blasi

Vincent Di Blasi is a Brooklyn native who has lived and worked – mostly in educational publishing and program management – across North America including Boston, Mexico City and San Antonio, Texas, where he currently resides. A seasoned traveler and observer, his inclusive perspective of humanity is evident in his short stories as well as the novel Creating Cassandra.

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Copyright © 2017 Vincent Di Blasi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-3232-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3234-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3233-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916360

iUniverse rev. date: 11/15/2017

INTRODUCTION

T HE NINE STORIES in this volume are each unique unto themselves but they all, in their own way, straddle the line between what we know and what we do not know, the material world and the spiritual one, what we hope for and what we fear most. The emphasis is on hope and our search for what is most beautiful within our world and within ourselves.

The first story, Sarafina, is about a man who must choose between heaven and hell. You might think the choice is any easy one until you read the story and appreciate the consequences.

This is followed by A String of Bad Hands, in which a once successful author who has not written anything in years finds himself risking his own soul playing poker with the devil to save the soul of a woman he met in the Yucatan in their distant youth; all in the hope of coming up with a new great story. The poker game is played in a San Antonio River Walk hotel where the author slowly comes to risk everything he has in the hope of winning everything he wants.

In the title entry, To Whom It May Concern, the inhabitants of a small island community discover that their island is sinking beneath the sea while communication with the outside world has simultaneously come to a complete halt. Living as we do on a planet with a limited life span; the parallels are only too easily grasped.

The fourth story, The Red Woman from Campania, is about a woman who seemingly had very little impact on the world around her; except that when you take a closer look, you realize that she had a profound impact.

From the Mirror, the fifth in the series, is the narrative of a man who goes on a pilgrimage from Austin, Texas to Washington, D. C. to Los Angeles, back to Austin and then to East Texas looking for the other person we see in the mirror, the other person inside us, the other person we could be, might be and perhaps will be someday in the future.

How Long You Been in Texas? is the sixth story. Despite the innocent title, it deals with hovering above the earth, an angel who resides in Madisonville, Texas and fastest way to get from here to there.

The seventh story, Next, is by far the shortest and is presented as an abstraction of the universal experience. It deals with nothing but the basics.

Something from Billy, the eighth story in this volume, is about two Long Island high school friends who agree that whoever dies first will return to tell the other as much as he can about what happens after death. As it turns out, one does die of leukemia during his freshman year at college.

The last entry, entitled The Writers, is the story of one man’s attempt to call on all the intellectual resources he can muster to keep the woman he so desperately loves from leaving him.

These are stories of human hope, curiosity and resilience. Writing them left me aware, not only of our mortality but of the limits of our understanding of so many of the things that matter most to us. Just as there is an island sinking into the sea in one of these stories, so are other islands sinking into other seas in the world outside these pages. Increased awareness may be a small price to pay if we move forward with the confidence exhibited by the narrator as depicted in this same story. His final words before he closes the letter he places in the bottle that he will throw into the sea are…

What would we have become, what would we ever be, without hope and the resolve to continue?

DEDICATION

T O MY GRANDMOTHERS, Lucia Mastellone née Russo and Sarafina Di Blasi née Cangemi; may their memories be extended in this new world and on into the next.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Dedication

Sarafina

A String Of Bad Hands

To Whom It May Concern

The Red Woman From Campania

From The Mirror

How Long You Been In Texas?

Next

Something From Billy

The Writers

About The Author

SARAFINA

W HEN I WOKE from the dream the darkness was not textured and the silence was moving. In short, I was not enveloped by as heavy a darkness but I still could not shake the dream from my mind so I tried as hard as I could to recall as many of the details as I could. I had been the one-man crew of a small submarine that had traveled thousands of miles to a point slightly west of the very center of the Indian Ocean. There I surfaced the submarine, spread a blanket over the hot, metal deck, opened a bottle of wine I had saved for the occasion and sunbathed for hours until the sun lost all intensity and the seas began to grow rough.

At that point, I gathered up the few things on deck, swallowed the wine remaining in my glass and proceeded to the heavy metal hatchway that would allow me to re-enter the submarine. It was closed. Perhaps the movement of one of the more recent and higher waves had slammed it shut. In any case, it was locked closed. On the other side of that hatchway were water and food and the means to control the craft. Outside there was nothing but dark clouds and a gathering storm. The sun’s heat, which had been so strong as to make my feet burn against that metal deck whenever they ventured off the blanket, was gone now and the late afternoon was quickly turning colder. What was far worse was that the darkness was textured – a charcoal black patterned mosaic against a slightly lighter background – that frightened me and despite the way the rough seas were beginning to hurl themselves across the deck, I knew the silence would be a still one. In other words, surrounded by crashing waves, I could hear no sound at all within a detailed blackness that I knew was not of my invention.

So I was happy to awaken in a less heavy silence and darkness without texture. I tried to think back beyond the dream and I realized that I had never in my life been on any submarine. I had been driving my car late at night during a rainstorm when I saw the lights of another vehicle that was coming directly towards me.

And here I am now. I open my eyes and find I am sitting here with you.

What happened?

What do you think happened? Sarafina’s smile always left you feeling that she knew something she would not divulge. The ends of her mouth curled up and her pouting lips – the lower one being far fuller than the upper – resembled those of a hundred teachers in a hundred classrooms, each one silently purporting to know something you had yet to learn.

I heard a voice that led my mind in a new direction.

Is that Isabel’s voice coming from downstairs?

Yes, she was waiting for you to wake up but…

Here I am! A soft daughterly kiss on the cheek, the fragrance of briskly scrubbed adolescence and the hug we always shared after kisses. Oh, Daddy, I was hoping you would wake up but I didn’t want to disturb you. Mama said I shouldn’t. I was waiting.

Dinner will be ready, interrupted Sarafina. We’ll eat together and discuss the day. And then that mischievous smile returned. Or maybe the month or even the year if you want to.

My daughter ran off while I gingerly pushed myself up so that I was sitting with my back against the headboard of our bed.

I feel fine.

Of course you do!

How long have I been recovering?

Not that long.

I shook my arms and stretched my legs. I even threw off the covers and wiggled my toes.

It doesn’t seem like anything is wrong.

What could be?

I don’t know.

With one hand I was scratching my head. With the other, I was caressing the sheet. It felt so fresh and looked so wonderfully clean that I had to sniff it. The fragrance that rose from it was a wonderful blend of perfume and Sarafina. But then my mind returned to my daughter.

I thought Isabel was in Europe.

She was. And now she is here.

How long has it been?

"Questions, questions and more questions! Why are you so concerned about all the little parts when you will never know about how they are all connected? Didn’t you once tell me that? What a nice now we have!"

We ate and talked and when Isabel announced that she was tired and going to bed, Sarafina and I did too. I felt great peace then but it was short lived. I was not tired. My mind still filled with questions. I was not questioning what was all around me as much as wanting to enjoy it more fully and for me, that meant understanding it better. I had no memory of how I had gotten where I was.

As Sarafina slid her feet into her slippers the following morning, I again asked my question.

How long has it been?

Not long, she shrugged as she closed the bathroom door behind her.

I looked outside to discover that freshly fallen snow, high and now drifting in the blowing wind, had arrived during the night. No one would be able to go anywhere in snow so deep. We were effectively sealed in. It was just me and my Sarafina and my Isabel in the little world that was my home. If there was a heaven anywhere, I was sure that I had found it.

The accident had occurred in October; I knew that much. There had been wet leaves all over the road. Red ones and yellow ones; it had been a beautiful fall that I had missed. Now it felt like winter. And it did not feel like Christmas was coming. Christmas had to have passed since there were no signs of it anywhere. No lights outside on any of the neighbors’ houses and there was nothing proclaiming Christmas inside. I concluded that it must be late January or February. That would have given them time to take the lights down. Of course, with me away, it was possible that Sarafina had not celebrated at all.

It is February, I said. I said it loud enough for Sarafina to hear me from the bathroom.

Uh, huh, was her reply.

Lots of snow out there!

Uh, huh, she repeated from the bathroom.

You don’t mind?

I have no place to go.

As Sarafina emerged from the bathroom I could not help but see that she looked vibrant, young, much as she did when I had met her so many years earlier when we had attended the same college. The way she walked, the way the towel was wrapped like a turban around her head, even the robe she wore; her entire presence reflected how she had looked and moved and even what she used to wear so many, many years earlier.

As she approached me, Sarafina yanked the towel from her head and flung it back across the room so that it landed on the bathroom floor. Then she sat down in the middle of the bed cross-legged, brush in hand, and began to brush her still wet curly hair. Thanks to the additional light reflecting off the snow outside, the golden highlights were accentuated and I noticed far more of the yellow and red strands – and less of the colorless and gray – than I had noticed in a long, long time.

I think you are growing younger, I said.

Not likely, she replied.

Then maybe I am seeing you with more love than I ever did before.

While she did not stop brushing her hair, I thought I caught the