Viewmaster

by Ferdinand Stowell

“Mr. Flores,” the nurse said as she gently touched his arm. “Mr. Flores, there’s someone here to see you. Porky didn’t move or open his eyes before he mumbled,

  “Mm’m nawe hung-ree. Sv’it fo’mee inth fridge an’ll’eat it latrr.”

  “Mr. Flores, there’s someone here to see you. A policeman. It’s time to wake up, now.” The nurse reached for a pillow and started squeezing it behind Porky’s head and shoulders.

  “Oh, Cripes,” Porky said, as he cocked one eye open. “I feel terrible; can you come back later?”

  “Well, Mr. Flores….”

  “Please?”

  “Mr. Flores, we have some developments, some new information that I think you’ll want to hear.”

  “Ok,” Porky said, as he opened both eyes. “I don’t remember a thing, I swear.”

  “Well, first off, our forensic specialist deduced from an examination of your vomit that you had eaten Greek. The only Greek restaurant within at least a hundred miles is the Helios, so I went over there and talked to Yani, the son. He told me they came back from a wedding to find that someone had eaten their way through the display of food they left at the diner. You know, Yani has been trying to expand their business into new areas and he’s really pushing the catering. I had him do my tenth wedding anniversary; his mother’s spanakopita is phenomenal.”

  “I used to love that stuff,” said Porky

  “Tell me about it. Oh, and he does this lemonato thing; it’s pork cutlets smothered in mushrooms – wow! – and the dessert! – I could eat a tray of their baklava at one sitting, no sweat.” Porky moaned at the mention of baklava,

  “Oh, can we not talk about Greek food right now, it’s making me queasy.”

  “Oh, yeah, right, of course, sorry about that, buddy. Anyway, the thing is, that food wasn’t made to be eaten. You see they were having a photographer take pictures for promotional material for the catering business. The photographer sprayed the food with a fixative that makes it last longer and photograph better, so you ate food with a highly toxic layer of this stuff on it. You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.

  “Anyway they’ve agreed not to press charges if you’ll sign a document stating you relinquish any right to pursue compensation through the legal system.

  “I’m lying in a hospital bed and they’ve agreed not to press charges?” Porky said about as angrily as he would allow himself to get with a police officer looming over his hospital bed.

  “Well, we could pull you in for breaking and entering.”

  “I didn’t break anything, the door was unlocked. And I said hello three times; I think they call that due diligence.”

  “You’re welcome to lawyer up if you want but I wouldn’t if I were you. I think the Papadopoulos’ have mob connections back in the old country.”

  “I don’t want any trouble, I just want to get out of here. I’ll sign whatever they want me to. But you tell them that this experience may just turn me off of Greek food for good. They’ll have to live with that and as Greek caterers, that should keep them up at night.”

  “We’ve got your truck in our lot behind the police station, by the way,” the policeman said.

  “Do I get charged for that?”

  “Nope. It’s all good to go when you check out. Here are your keys,” the officer said as he placed the keys on a table next to the bed. Oh, and I have a message from Dawn – she said you two were friends?”

  “Were friends?”

  “Well, she had to leave after the seminar. She said she finally got clear about what she needed to do. She wanted me to tell you something about ‘you know from nothing, because that’s everything and you be living powerfully in the moment, every moment of your life’. Does that make any sense to you? ”

  “Sort of. Did she go back to her boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know really, she was with a guy she met at the seminar, so I doubt it.”

  Flat bed hiccup

  Porky had never had his stomach pumped, excepting of course the daily pumping action of his gastro-intestinal tract. His insides ached and felt raw; his stomach – the inner sanctum, the holy of holies – had been violated. His body had taken a beating and for a time the hospital staff had worried about his heart. He had aged several months in the space of two days and he was both chastened and more determined to do what had to be done.

  That afternoon, seated in his truck, once again moving southward on the freeway, Porky felt he had been set back on his rightful throne. He vowed never again to veer from his chosen way, but, as he’d already shown, keeping vows was not Porky’s strong suit.

  Turning a blind eye

  It was much farther south, in King County, that the truck began to sputter, finally stopping after making some mechanical clanking noises in a lost language that new automobiles don’t know. King County, unlike most of the rest of California, doesn’t beckon one. Dreams are not launched here; it is in fact a refutation of California and all it stands for. There is a grayness, a blight upon the land that depresses the tourist, as though they’d stumbled into the bleak back room employee lounge at a really fun amusement park. ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter’.

  The garage at first appeared deserted. A light was on in the office and another in the garage itself, but they appeared to be the weak night-lights businesses leave on to discourage break-ins. The sign over the garage doors said ‘Polyphemus Automotive’ and a tow-truck had written on its doors, ‘Polyphemus Towing’. Porky had learned from his abandoned deli experience not to try opening any doors and also that saying ‘hello’ three times doesn’t count as due diligence in the eyes of the law. So as he walked around the building he called out repeatedly, as a parrot might, ‘hello, hello, hello, hello’. He noticed that in back of the garage was a proper house, a little bungalow that was in sad shape and, considering it’s location in one of California’s least attractive landscapes, probably had never seen better days.

  Porky hesitated; he stopped saying hello. The house didn’t exactly radiate love, or even a common decency, which would have necessitated repair of the dangerously collapsed front stairs and although he heard a television, indicating some presence, it didn’t seem to be a human one. Porky was expecting a dog to start barking and snarling, possibly even lunging for him out of the dark. After creeping around in the shadows with no other sound but the television, he began wanting this to happen because the existence of a pet would have at least suggested a homeowner who, if not possessed of the higher emotions like affection, at least felt some need to protect and be protected. Porky continued cautiously getting closer to the house and nothing much happened.

  “Who are you?” a loud gravel-agitating voice demanded. Porky jumped out of his skin. The man had two nose rings and only one eye.

  “Nobody! My truck broke down.”

  “Nobody, huh? What kind of truck you got?”

  “A 1964 Ford. It just needs a distributor cap.”

  “Hhhmm,” he grumbled, “I like those. Yeah, I’ve got parts for that. Where is it?”

  Porky told him approximately where he had left it on the freeway; if it had been daylight he could have pointed it out to him on the far ridge before the freeway dipped down towards the service station.

  “You wait here. I’ll go get it.”

  The brutish man was back with his truck within twenty minutes. He nearly ran over some animal that Porky couldn’t identify.

  “Oh, my god, did you see that thing you almost ran over? It was like a cross between a wolf and a possum.

  “Are you makin’ fun of me ‘cause I’m legally blind?”

  “You’re blind? And you just drove my car?”

  “I’m legally blind,” the ogre said in a low, threatening tone.

  “So why does only one eye have a patch if you can’t see out of either one of them? I don’t get it.”

  “I’m legally blind,” he roared, “legally blind. Doesn’t mean I can’t see!”

  “All
it is is the distributor cap,” Porky whined, “Just give me the part and I can fix it.”

  “Don’t tell me what it is. I’m the mechanic; I’ll tell you what it is. Now you just sit down. I’m going to finish my dinner and my program. Then I’ll tell you what’s wrong with your truck. And then maybe I’ll fix it.”

  Porky didn’t know what to say. What do you say to somebody that makes Hitler look like a human being? He stood outside fretting; no good could come of this. He decided that this guy wanted his truck and would probably do anything to keep it. He had to get into that garage and find that part – fast.

  Porky crept over to the office door on the side of the garage – locked. Then he walked over to the front and began feeling his way around the roll-up door. It was rusty and battered and, Porky imagined, a real noise-maker. He laid down on the ground, up against the door and pried it open with his fingers very slowly, so determinedly that even his beads of sweat were rolling slowly,

  Porky’s operating speed defied time; defied the ability of sound to get up and go somewhere else. There were squeaky, rusty, squealing noises that seemed to die as soon as they hit the air. The door was unlocked and Porky managed to get his body inserted between it and the concrete floor. He floundered briefly as the full weight of the door came to rest on his body – it was heavy. He panicked and began flapping and flailing his arms about. The one inside the garage found a milk crate and he managed to push it under the door just above his head. He then slid all the way into the garage, froze for another minute of panic and then got up to look around. There were shelves in back full of car parts and it took surprisingly little time to find just the part he needed.

  As he rolled out of the garage, he remembered a trick he had seen in that movie with the singing nuns and the baron and all those kids who couldn’t keep their Von Trapps shut. So first off he went over to the mechanic’s truck and pulled the plugs. He then began working as quietly as he could, dipping his hand into his tool box as delicately as one of those nuns extracting sacramental wafers from a biscuit tin.

  Unfortunately, by this time the monster’s dinner and show was over and Porky was apparently making enough noise to arouse suspicion.

  “What’s going on?” Porky could hear him grumble to himself. “Who’s there?” Could he have forgotten about Porky? “Who’s there,” he asked again more loudly.

  By this time Porky was nearly done with the repair and he began quietly pushing his truck off the lot.

  “Who’s there, goddammit,” the mechanic yelled.

  “Nobody,” Porky said, “Nobody.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so the first time, for Christ’s sake,” he said to Porky and then half to himself, “Nobody. Nobody? – Wait a minute.” Then he began yelling again, “Nobody! I know you; you’re no good. I’m gonna get you!” He then began climbing into his tow truck but the engine wouldn’t start. By this time Porky had started up his truck and was driving it away with his foot all the way to the floor, improvising a prayer that someone or something must have heard because he got clean away.

  Trouble comes in twos

  They say that small children are remarkably resilient. And so it was proved when Porky’s stomach, which he refers to as ‘Junior’, came roaring back to life with a prodigal hunger. By the time he drove into the parking lot of the restaurant just outside of San Luis Obispo – “Siren’s Last Call” – Porky would have eaten anything, Greek food, even, though it be cursed by the gods of Olympus.

  The place was sparsely attended, it appeared to be some kind of a supper club with a small stage and theatre lights. Enough of an audience had been scraped together so as not to be embarrassing to the performers, of which there were only two, the proprietors of the establishment. They were fading, identical blonds, Hanna and Svea, with thick Scandinavian accents and they wove in and out of each others’ paths in perpetual motion as if they were flying insects guided by some internal homing device. As Porky walked in they were singing Weimar era cabaret songs in the original German, the kind of songs that seemed to presage, with their smutty sadness, the disasters to come. Porky had never heard anybody singing in German before and thought it was weird that anybody would even want to sing in German as he was not overly fond of languages he couldn’t understand, which means anything other than English and Spanish. He considers German to be a language best shouted by nasty people in uniforms and not normal people who were just out to have a good time.

  There was nothing normal about the performers who were now drawing a chair away from a table and motioning for him to sit down. Before he could do that one of the sisters brought her leg up athletically to rest her high-heeled foot on the chair; she then smoothly worked the garter from her thigh down her leg and off onto Porky’s wrist, singing all the while and suggestively tonguing her lips and winking her eyes. Porky hadn’t seen the likes of this since he’d been to that old top-less bar in North Beach – The Booby Trap – for his bachelor’s party.

  With the song over, it quickly became apparent that they also took food orders. In fact they were the only staff in the entire establishment. Porky was not encouraged by the German singing to expect anything other than sloppy prisoner-of-war food and so was pleasantly surprised to find the menu in English and featuring mostly Italian food, which was a further relief, Italy being geographically far enough from Greece that he felt safe, gastronomically speaking.

  After they dropped his menu off, Porky noticed that they seemed to be easing the other diners up from their tables and out the door.

  “Oh, are you closing? Does that mean I can’t eat?”

  One of the ladies came over to reassure him with a wide smile and bedroom eyes:

  “No, you charming man. The show is over and these people have finished their meals. We want to concentrate on you. You are alone; your need is greater.”

  “What can I get you, handsome? one said.

  “Doll face,” the other immediately followed up with, a mere comma pause in a distinct monologue seamlessly delivered by two smoky voices.

  Porky ordered a little bit of everything.

  “Oh, we have a man with an appetite. I love men with appetites.” Svea pronounced the word ‘appetite’ as if it were a foreign word for something very dirty.

  Porky was deeply perplexed. Was he now irresistible to women? He loved himself, but he couldn’t help asking, ‘why me?’ What had brought this about? He’d had no change of deodorant or aftershave, no improvements to his physique, no great leaps in his net worth. He had to acknowledge the Diego Rivera factor, namely the ability of obese, physically repellant South American artists to charm the panties off of beautiful women. Yet he was a plumber born in America without creative flights of fancy. Besides, he was pudgy, not really fat and until recently he’d been quite chaste. And though nobody would ever mistake him for Brad Pitt, he was a total babe hunk compared to Quasimodo and you couldn’t say the same for Diego Rivera.

  They, Hanna und Svea, fluttered around him in such a whirl that he became quite dizzy attempting to distinguish the movements and utterances of each; it was an impossible task and he was left with the impression of a supra-being incarnated in two separate halves.

  As they served him what turned out to be an excellent meal, they joined him at the table and took such delight in his enjoyment of each of the many dishes they brought him that Porky hoped he might be getting a free meal out of this – he was entertaining them.

  “Nothing warms a woman’s heart more than a man having his fill of the food she has so lovingly prepared for him. You do like it, yes?”

  “Oh, my god, this is one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life. I feel like I need another set of taste buds just to be able to appreciate all the flavor. This is amazing!”

  “Oh, good, we’re so glad it pleases you. You must eat as much as you can.”

  “I’m a little concerned about the cost, though…..”

  “You silly, wonderful man.
This is our gift to you,” said Hanna, “money would only pervert what for us is a very pure ritual. You have swept joy into our lives by your presence; this meal is your reward. Food is such a great comfort when one is alone, wandering the highway of life with no place to rest, no peace to be had.”

  “Now you are ready for the dessert,” Svea said as she cleared the dishes Porky had wiped clean.

  “Oh, cripes, I’m stuffed,” Porky said. “I’m not sure I can do dessert right now.”

  “No, you must. It is a tiramisu so light and delicious that it will be like eating the clouds of heaven. I’ll get some for you now,” she said as she backed away from the table, following Hanna to the kitchen.

  After about five minutes, during which Porky began to wonder about this odd set-up, Svea and Hanna both returned to the table with the tiramisu and one look at it and smell of it was enough to send Porky’s sweet tooth quivering in ecstasy. All those wonderful textures, the bitter, the sweet, the light, the heavy, the chocolate, the coffee, the alcohol, the almond – who needed a tooth fairy with desserts like this?

  “There’s no way I’m not trying some of that. Ladies, you’ve outdone yourselves.”

  As Porky was about to dip into his little cloud of heaven a loud crashing of glass and splintering of wood could be heard and a small crowd of people were approaching them from the front door and the kitchen. Two of them Porky recognized as diners that had been there when he’d first arrived; they shouted:

  “Put down that tiramisu!”

  Porky was wide-eyed and frozen in a pose that left a spoon with his first bite of the tiramisu hovering in the air. “Now what?” he whined.

  “That pastry is filled with poison. For your own protection, put it down now.”

  “Oh, my god, wha…..cripes! He threw it down to the other side of the table where Hanna and Svea were also frozen in a pose with their hands up in the air because three uniformed police officers had their guns trained on them. “What’s going on?”

  “All I can say is you were two notes away from hearing the fat lady sing. We’ve been watching these two for months now. This supper club is at the center of what the Los Angeles Times calls the ‘Toupee Triangle’, or the ‘Viagra Vale of Tears’ according to Time magazine, take your pick. There have been fifteen older guys, maybe scores more, who’ve gone missing in the last eleven years within a 40-mile radius of this club. It took a long time before we finally started connecting the dots. Smooth as velvet, these two. The Saab Sisters, we call ‘em.”

  “You mean those two killed all those men?”

  “Not just killed, but fattened up for the slaughter. They force fed them, then poisoned them.”

  “We did it for the men, to prepare them for their journey,” pleaded Svea. They were so hungry, so in need.”

  “We loved each and every one of those men, like nobody else did,” said Hanna. “We all have to die.”

  “Ouch!” was all Porky could say.

  Gods with anger issues

  t was after a lengthy interview with the police, while on the road again that Porky suddenly saw the hand of a higher power in the strange happenings of his road trip. He’d come that close to death three times, obvious punishment for his transgression. Whether it was Zeus or Jehovah that was doing the punishing didn’t seem to matter – darkness had been cast over all that had been light before. And yet, he’d been spared. What was he in search of now?

  Chapter XIX: The Chase Scene