Chapter 3

22 September 2050

He never felt like Jorge H. Bernardo when he returned.

He felt like Sinbad.

Arrived back at last, at the end of his travels, returned before the King, trembling in wait as his fate hung in the balance, having journeyed, wandered, gone wayward, and gone lost far and wide before finding his place in the world again.

His beloved corner of Sekovia Drive: a lone Red Maple painting a chill gray on the sunlit pavement that he could claim as his own.

He would stoop, panting, one hand extended to reach the broken bricks of the curb before his knee gave away, and support himself as he sat down, home again.

Throwing his pillowcase aside, sliding backwards until his back nearly touched the southern boundary wall of the Duvall Shelter for the Homeless, he paused to hurriedly take out his neatly folded throw from the case and push it with his shaky hand between his back and the wall. Or a large burn stamped on his back would be the next big thing.

He was fifty-two.

Kneeing up his left leg, folding the right one underneath the calf of the first, he would rest one arm over the knee in a position of a graceful calm and stare ahead braving the eye of the abyss. And await the king's order.

It hadn't come yet, the beheading, the bowl of sweet poison, the fall off the brink. He was ready for all and any, often imagining what the last moments were gonna feel like.

Was it going to feel like a final release? Like a forever held breath, imprisoned inside this house of aches and heartbreak, of resist and desist, let go once and for all.

Or would it be like a bland peace, like in the muscles of the immovable dead brought back in airplanes wrapped in a large bolt of patterned fabric?

Maybe hell was just going to continue in another guise ...

At this point, he would smile. Hey, it isn't that bad in the land of the well-dressed satan, is it? Well, not for him. As long as they kept their hands off her Sheila, and someone made sure his baby was fed, he did not care what hells awaited for him and why ...

He reminded himself to reaffirm vows by the Pattersons, the Lorenzos, and the Feuns, that they would keep his ladies herded. Lone sheep get branded first.

At last, he'd settle on this idea that death in any form would be a beauty. An aesthetic marvel. Whether one found it scary, serene, fiery, blissful, avenging, or as providing closure ... must remain a personal interpretation. To each their own ...

The only sad part was that he won't be able to relate that beauty and the unraveling of the final mystery to anyone he would care to. To Geurro his closest friend from the shelter, to Shiela his beautiful life inspiration, or to Harry that eager boy with a mind on the grind.

He chuckled when the day's adventure came back to his mind. And what a stretch that had been, three whole days indeed, switching the regular pains with an eerie surprise. Less self-flagellating enjoyment, more a forced-down-the-throat burn.

That strange place he'd been to could have turned into a house of horrors in a few more days. It had all the makings of one. But for the wits he had kept collected to the end. The fun part was he couldn't even remember his commute. The route he had taken both to and from the place was missing from his memory.

He blinked two or three times to jumpstart the screen of his mind into a moving picture but nothing appeared. He tried jerking his head to clear whatever blankness masked the details of the trip: the distance, the highway, the exits, the signposts, but again none surfaced.

He gave it up.

He had found Janet there though. Isn't that what had prompted the trip, this news that his long lost daughter had been seen at that place? It had created such a wave in him ... His heart had surged, almost as high as little Janet used to swing in the park around the corner from where they lived, in their old neighborhood in Quincy. Leaving a note for Geurro, he had stuffed some necessities in a pillowcase stolen from Sheila's suitcase inside the Shelter and taken off.

His mind tripped further into the past. Into his own childhood.

His parents had a two room apartment looking over Rivet Street. Jorge and his brother would stray over into the balcony despite the hand leash Mimosa had tied around their wrists and to a leg of her sewing table just inside the door.

The leashes would be taken off at lunch time. Romell would come in loaded with bites for them. A bite of cheescake from Aunt Soho's bakery they could see from the balcony if allowed to lean over the railing. A bite of meat loaf from Costigan's Fried Treasures visible from the big windows above Mimosa's bedposts. A bite of pierogi from young Ivy's house shop beyond the third lot from them.

For a long time the kid brothers had assumed the particular cocktail of brine and poutine coming in from that shop that they could smell from up here was an authentic ocean stamp. The innocent mistakes the lil ones are allowed to make ...

They pale in comparison to the mistakes of innocence we make far into adulthood. Some call 'em blissful ignorance, some call 'em foolhardiness, some call 'em acts of heartlessness.

Jorge ... he called them providence.

Like the mistake, his father made by leaving with a raw steak from Lazzaro's meatshop on the understanding that the good owner usually kept one for his family every fortnight.

Braulio, Jorge's father, didn't know that over the last weekend, Lazzaro had met an accidental death and that Lazzaro's brother, a mafia guy aspiring to ultimately replace the Capo in this region, was now in charge. The sharp hawk of a thug manning the store that day followed Braulio, butchered him, and threw his corpse in the gutter before securing what rightfully belonged to the shop.

Another mistake, several years later, would be made by Jorge's younger brother Borges. That of mistaking the 3rd Afghanistan War as a once and for all attempt by his shining, armored country to end the terrorist threat. Jorge's reasoning was completely lost on Borges: it was only pressure tactics to scare neighbor countries of Afghanistan to bow down to US interests in their newly constructed pipeline for transportation of crude oil.

Borges had returned after a year of active duty completely deprived of his mental sanity. He hadn't gone exactly mad, but the complete hollow behind his once sparkling eyes as he would stare into the flame of a candle sitting in his otherwise unlit room ... The image still gave Jorge shivers, while his pillowcase carried the incoherent ramblings of Borges jotted down in a barely legible script until the very day of his suicide.

Some mistakes had turned endlessly beautiful. The birth of a daughter when he was twenty. The impulsive decision to try his luck in marital vows with a beautiful Latino much younger than him. The birth of another daughter when he was fifty.

Life is a pendulum, he murmured to the wind. Gotta keep swinging for the fences. Hit or miss.

As if to prove a point, the ground beneath him began to shake, followed by a rumbling cacophony of a monstrous mechanical structure rolling in huffing and puffing and at least easing into a stop.

With surprise, Jorge looked about. He was at the junction several street turns south from the shelter!

How in the world had he got here? The force of his surprise took him on a twirling survey of the premises. Strange. This had never happened to him before. So lost must he have become in his thoughts, that his legs seemed to have taken him on a fugue, tracing the familiar route from Patronus Drive to the Finger Junction behind their Hardee county version of chinatown.

He couldn't imagine what had prompted him to get up from under his maple and set out.

The bustle at the junction had peaked with the arrival of a tram. He didn't think he would find Harry among the arriving passengers at this time of the evening. But he was still too tired for a long stroll back to the maple. So he limped -- his left foot was hurting now; he must have stepped on a rock -- to the east wall of the station, mindlessly letting his eyes trail over the comings and goings of the crowd.

There was no comfort now. He was confused. For all his failures in life, Jorge was a practical, no-nonsense man. He had never let his mind wander to this extent, never plunged too deep into the pool of his own thoughts ... What had caused his body to close the door on his mind and take control of the steering wheel?

Was he becoming more like his brother now? Was this how depression worked? Was life finally gonna catch up to him today?

He felt eager then, restless. Strange sensations were tinkling like a thousand tiny bells going off at once, silent, not laughing, giving muscles all over his body a low but perceptible buzz. He became acutely aware of things going on inside. He could hear his heart loud and clear, he could feel it's boom in the cave of his chest, and as he focused, even see it like a gong standing in the middle of a dark room being struck in a loud metronome.

He deliberately winced. He didn't want to slip into another fugue; no telling where his body might take him next. The sun was about to set and it got very dark on these streets.

He pushed one arm behind him and felt the cool bricks behind his back, snuggling more firmly into the wall. He pulled the panels of that old vomit-colored jacket close to ward of the early chill. The jacket was a perfect fit and lined with flannel on the inside. He tried to glean warmth from it to reach his usual comfort.

Why was he feeling so strange? If these indeed were to be his last hours, he wanted them to be reflective, ruminative, and reminiscing, not strange. He wanted to feel the slow measured immersion into the last lake, even if it was scary or nerve wracking. He didn't want it to feel ... alien.

The bustle had died down now. There was a long break in the tram schedule at this time of day. The place always went quiet as the crew inside the ticketing station lolled on their chairs or chatted about in low voices. The vendors would either pack in their carts for the break and stroll off into the streets beyond or spread throws on the curbside to lay down a bit. The few passengers that had already arrived in wait for the next hour's tram, would kill time clamping on the earbuttons or plugging in the old fashioned earphones. Jorge hardly heard a voice from that side other than an occasional rap beat or a child's excited yell followed by her mother's comeback.

Two men strolled in his direction. At first he thought, they would walk past him, but they stopped in front of him. He raised his head.

They were wearing black leather jackets like the ones the Blue Jobs people wore, but the front pockets had no monogram embossed. They were both young men in their late twenties or early thirties at most. The one in front, as white as salt, smiled at him, his hazel eyes twinkling.

The other stepped back and lit up a cigarette looking about, looking bored.

"Harry?"

Jorge didn't know why he said that. The boy smiling at him may have looked like Harry, a Grecian nose and intelligent eyes, but something was different.

"Yes, I am Harry," the boy said with a low chuckle as he sat down on his haunches on the pavement, "your old friend."

Jorge was confused. His mind couldn't settle. Harry was fond of leather jackets, the one Jorge was wearing had been Harry's gift. But this boy, his eyes lacked that dull blue gravity or were not even grey as Harry's looked in shade. The voice ... it wasn't quite as gentle. And that smile, it lacked the usual touch of sadness, as if a constant weight on the boy's shoulders won't free his lips for a full smile.

He wasn't Harry.

"What do you want from me?" Jorge blinked his eyes a few times. His vision seemed to be clouding for seconds, like a photographer's camera struggling to find its focus.

"What do I want from you? Why? Nothing." The boy's lips curved into another smile. Smug. "Just checking up on you after your long trip. How you doing and everything."

The boy standing behind flicked away the cigarette snub and got out a clipboard from somewhere. He occasionally looked at Jorge and scribbled with a pen.

"How did you get here?" the Harry-but-not-Harry continued. "Isn't the maple tree behind the shelter your favorite hangout?"

"I sit here too sometimes, you know that. Did you just come fr--" This wasn't Harry, Jorge had to remind himself again. He looked down at his shaking hand in his lap, unsure of what to do. When did his hands begin to shake?

"My legs brought me." The not-Harry had asked him again and Jorge's mouth had replied first and clued in his mind later. Strange. He was observing himself be himself from across the TV screen.

"What are you feeling right now?" The boy, man, stranger ... or Harry ... was serious now, asking with a slight concern... Concern for what... for who ...

While his mind was creating unnecessary mazes to wander through, his mouth replied:

"I feel like my body is trying to go to sleep or to dance, shake, but I can't decide which."

The boy turned his head back slightly and the one behind wrote faster. Finally, Jorge's mind caught up to his mouth and he looked up into the guy's eyes: "Can you help me decide which?"

The man's lips unfurled into a wide, highly bemused smile. His third smile.

"Sure, whatever you need buddy," The guy said holding his gaze with an alien familiarity while the twinkle in his eyes continued to laugh at him. The guy whacked Jorge's arm jokingly, and gave it a strong shake. "This is my goodbye." He got up and stepped back.

"Mine too," the other boy said letting the clipboard hang from a string around his neck, putting the pen away.

They turned around and left with leisurely steps. Jorge was no longer interested in them. His senses were filled the sudden new experience his body was going through. It was like and unlike the rush in of a drug. He had had plenty of those in his time. It was drugs and his unrelenting cycle of relapse and rehab that had finally alienated Janet. So much so that on coming face to face with her after twenty years, all he'd gotten out of her was "I have no use for you anymore except if you volunteer for us."

He melted at her request, caught up with a nostalgic love for this stranger who was once his world, a world he had failed. But after two days as a volunteer, he came back to his senses as an he heard in his mind the happy cackle of his other, baby daughter. He won't like to fail her too, he decided. So he'd gotten himself out using his sharp, no-nonsense wits.

And now... now he just felt afloat, carried on a large flood, watching the banks of his life pass by... He was a salmon journeying up the river to his origin point, while his body felt like raw, tender, pink flesh, about to be skinned. He relinquished control and let the journey begin in earnest.

He was a father again, celebrating the birth of a miracle, his only legacy to be.

He was a newlywed, hugging his beautiful wife close to his side, proudly enjoying the feast spread by all his friends in life.

He was a recovering addict with a fresh lease on life after chugging too many relaxants on top of a few cans of beer.

He was former volunteer for Don't Snuff the Candle, discouraged after being brutally beaten by the Monop Minions on taking shelter in the shadow of a newly constructed building.

He was a new member of the streetside nation trying to calm down a kid who was so traumatized by his family's recent and absolute disintegration, that he wanted to forget everything about his past including his name.

He was an empty-handed loser who had lost his mother, father, daughter and sister in quick succession. To cancer, disillusionment, and the sadistic love of a psychotic man, respectively.

He was a street lawyer, hoping to make an earnest living while also assisting his homeless brethren in their unheard claims against the authorities.

He was a broken-hearted brother taking the news of his kid brother's suicide to his parents.

He was a broken-hearted brother taking the news of his kid brother's loss of a leg in war to his parents.

He was an optimistic student of law in his local university, working three jobs in a week, and studying daily to afford the education.

He was a kid ruffian of Rogues Circle, running around the streets, dodging gun-toting thugs and small town drug dealers.

He was a carefree boy with an even smaller toddling boy in tow, both sneaking on to the forbidden balcony smelling the greasy ocean breeze.

He couldn't have recalled the seminal next stop on this journey in reverse, his grand entrance on to the stage of life, the same way he couldn't observe the curiosity of his own crossing of the nile, when at last he neared the point of his origin and ceased to be.