Warm Gouda and Weed

There was a tap on Mark’s shoulder. He turned in his chair to see Kathleen standing in the opening of his cubicle.

“Hey. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Nothing. Drinking. Maybe writing. Playstation. Laundry. The usual excitement. I may cut loose and make a pizza. Why?”

“I’m going to a party in New York and I’d like you to come. Peter is on a trip for the weekend and I don’t want to go alone. You can have pizza another day. Shit, I’ll make you a pizza on another day. Say yes.”

“Then yes. Probably. What kind of party?”

“The kind where people eat, drink, walk around, and go home. Not a Tupperware party, not a Pampered Chef party, and not one of those parties where women sell chocolate to each other. An actual party. And you can dress normal. It’s just some friends of mine, and you might meet some interesting people. Plus, you can be with me. I’ll even drive.”

“Of course you’ll drive. You’re inviting me and they’re your friends. Plus it’s like 6 hours from DC to New York. I’m not covering gas for that.”

“Did I say you were covering anything? I already said I’d drive and I’ll feed you. But I pick the music.”

“You always pick the music. Even when I drive. When do we go?”

“I’ll pick you up at 2, unless you want to get lunch or hang out.”

“Two is fine. Then I can rest up and get ready.”

“Resting is a good idea. Take it easy on your liver tonight writer boy. You’ll need it tomorrow. My friend likes Belgian beer so you’ll want to have a few.”

“I’ve told you, I’m from Wisconsin, the drinking capitol of America. My liver is the size of a doormat. I can drink a beer while eating soup made with cheese and beer while eating a brat cooked in beer, then have a dessert soaked in whiskey and still have 3 or 4 more beers. On a weekday. On Saturdays I bring my extra liver and get serious.”

“Then don’t forget your extra liver. I’ll see you at 2.”

* * *

“So what is this?” Mark mumbled around a bite of bagel. Cream cheese was in one corner of his mouth and on the tip of his nose.

“Josie’s Placenta. They’re a band from Denmark. Peter met them in Peru and they gave him a CD they haven’t made it here yet but they’re big in Japan and Europe.”

“They’re pretty good.” Mark wiped his nose and took another bite of the enormous bagel. A fresh dot of cream cheese appeared on his nose, this time with a piece of chive. “I like the bass lines. He’s not just keeping time. Too many bassists are boring.”

“They wear costumes sometimes. When Peter saw them the guitarist had a guitar shaped like a fish.”

“Huh. John Fogerty has a guitar shaped like a bat. Ace Frehley’s shoots fireballs. Haven’t seen one shaped like a fish.”

Kathleen’s husband frequently met people in Peru, or Spain, or Ecuador. As a Spanish language expert for IBM he travelled almost constantly, aiding development of projects in Central and South America. The money was nice, nice enough that Kathleen didn’t have to work, but he was rarely home and work gave Kathleen something to do. Plus it enabled them to use most of her salary as a graphic designer toward running a zine, and collecting primitive art and odd collectibles. Sometimes Mark felt like an odd collectible. Or a primitive artist, he wasn’t sure which. He usually didn’t mind. Kathleen was a good friend, and without her he wouldn’t be doing things like going to New York, or going to a Misfits concert.

Mark packed in his last bite of bagel, wiped his hands on a napkin and wrapped the napkin up in the waxed paper that had wrapped the bagel. On his first trip to New York he’d learned the difference between a New York bagel and a bagel anywhere else. True, they were much more expensive, but considering that ordering a bagel with cream cheese in New York resulted in getting a bagel the size of your hand covered in at least a half cup of cream cheese, they were practically a bargain. And the closer you got to New York, the better the bagels were. The one he had just eaten, which they had bought at a rest stop on the Jersey turnpike, was better than the best bagel he could get in D.C. He slumped down in the seat and sipped at his coffee, which in contrast was fine. Kathleen cracked her window and lit a cigarette.

“Since when do you smoke?” Mark said, glancing at her.

“Give me a break. I’ve been under a lot of stress,” Kathleen said, exhaling out the window.

“Hmm.”

She pulled her CD out of the player and put in another. After a brief lead in on mandolin, keyboard, and acoustic and electric guitars (no drums), a woman Mark didn’t recognize started singing. She sounded forlorn. Mark expected her to mention something about tea, toast, or rain. It didn’t take long. Mark started missing Josie’s Placenta.

“So tell me that story again about when you and your girlfriend had the same dream. I was trying to tell that to Peter and I couldn’t get it right.”

“Oh yeah, that was weird. Well, toward the end of college, my girlfriend and I had fallen asleep. I was having some dream, I don’t remember what, and I felt an electric buzz in the side of my head. Suddenly I’m dreaming of water. The ocean, or Lake Michigan. Some kind of big body of water and blue sky, totally unrelated to what I had been dreaming, but it wasn’t the usual transition from dream to dream, and there was that buzzing. I woke up, and our heads were touching. The right side of my head, the left side of hers, and where they were touching I felt this current. I woke her up and asked her what she had been dreaming. She said she was dreaming of water, and described exactly what I had seen. It was very weird.

“What made it even weirder is, it happened again, but with my cat. I was asleep on my back and again, this weird image cuts in and disrupts my dream. This time it was something gold or light orange, I couldn’t tell what. And the buzzing was coming from my hip. I woke up, and the cat is curled up against my hip, and the buzz is where he is. I had no idea what the image was until a few days later when I realized it was beer. You know how he drinks the drops out of the bottom of a beer bottle, or will try to get into a glass. What he had been dreaming about was a glass of beer, from his perspective, with much smaller eyes, looking at it from up close. It was pretty hilarious.”

Kathleen puffed and exhaled. “Did that ever happen again? Can you do that whenever you want?”

“I don’t think so. It never happened again, but I found out we could do other things. You know how they use visual imaging to control pain?”

“Yeah, you think of the pain as a circle and you make the circle smaller and smaller…”

“And less intense and then you turn it into a little dot and shoot it away. Right. A friend of mine had to do that to deal with TMJ, and another one did it with migraines. It works as long as you can concentrate. Well, I found out that you can do that and send the pain away, into someone else. I had a headache, and I shrunk it down and sent it out of me and into her. She immediately flinched and grabbed her head. It got to be a thing then. But it doesn’t work all the time. The dream thing and the headache thing only seem to work if you have a close rapport with someone, kind of like finishing each other’s sentences and knowing if someone is in trouble.”

“I don’t know. Peter and I have never done that. It’s weird.”

“Lots of things are weird. But it’s true. I knew another guy in college who really got into tai chi and chi kung, the whole energy manipulation thing. Like reiki. Or acupuncture. They’re all the same thing, basically. He used to go around and ‘tap’ people. Suck up their personal energy just a bit to see if they’d notice. Some people would just feel tired for a minute. Some would rub their heads. Others would look at him and know he had done something, but not what. He thought it was funny as hell. When he did it to me it always felt like something at the back of my neck and butterflies in my stomach. After a while you had to learn to kind of brace yourself so he couldn’t do it. Then he would leave you alone.”

“Who else have you told about this?”

He gave her a look and snorted. “Are you kidding? Almost no one. You live for weirdness, so I told you. Anyone else would think I was crazy. I like working and getting laid once in a while. I keep all weirdness to myself.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Kathleen flicked her cigarette butt out the window, exhaled one last time, and fiddled with one of her Hello Kitty earrings, her favorites. Kathleen wore something from Hello Kitty almost every day. Mark was reminded of what she told him about it when he first noticed her fixation.

“There are two kinds of Hello Kitty fans aside from children. There are the women who are still little girls, and the women who refuse to grow up. There’s a difference.”

Kathleen clearly was the latter. She refused to live by the conventional rules of the world and insisted on enjoying life as much as possible. Hello Kitty was part of that. Among her collection of esoterica was a Hello Kitty waffle maker that left imprints of Hello Kitty on every waffle it made. When Kathleen made waffles for Mark he had to slather the image with butter to obscure it or else he found it too distracting to eat.

Mark looked out the window at the approaching New York skyline. It was dusk and he winced as he saw the gap in the skyline just as he had winced everytime he saw it after 9/11. It was like looking at a smile with a missing tooth. You knew something should be there but wasn’t, and then you remembered why. He wondered how long he would wince at the image and thought he would probably continue as long as there was a hole.

He focused in on the music, thinking they should be playing something fitting to mark their arrival. A New York song, or a song by a New Yorker. Sinatra, or Paul Simon, or Lou Reed. Maybe the Ramones. Not whatever this was. This was stuff that made him think of NPR. Beatless, driveless, moody stuff meant for coffee houses, campus housing and childless hipsters. This was as interesting as plain yogurt with granola and chamomile tea. Mark tried to ignore it and started listening to “Born to Run” in his mind. He smiled.

They pulled into Greenwich Village at dusk. Mark had never seen Greenwich in full daylight and tended to doubt it existed then. As one of the countercultural centers of the world it probably faded away in the morning like Katmandu, only to reappear at dusk each evening with coffee bars restocked and jazz clubs fumigated and ready to go. He didn’t think he’d want to see it during the daytime. The romance would be gone.

Kathleen pulled the care smoothly into an open spot at the curb and turned off the car.

“We’re here!”

“An open spot. That’s lucky.”

“Parking is easier here than in midtown. I can always find a spot over here. More people in Greenwich ride a bike or take the bus. They’re hippies. Let’s go, I want a beer!”

Mark got out and brushed bagel off his pants. “Do I look okay?”

Kathleen eyed him over half-heartedly while checking her purse for her ever-present camera and other necessities. She was wearing a medium length floral dress, red flats, a light cream-colored sweater, and matching Hello Kitty earrings and purse. Mark wore a black polo, black workboots and faded jeans.

“You look fine. You look like you. You’re fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’re fine.” She peeked in her compact mirror and wiped at something near her eye.

“You look good. No smeared lipstick or anything, no toilet paper on your shoe.”

She frowned slightly and glanced at him. “I’m not wearing any lipstick. Just eyeliner. But thanks.”

“Uh, no problem.”

The building was a brownstone on a block of brownstones, small shops, and restaurants. They climbed the steps and went inside. Kathleen paused at the bank of mailboxes and page buttons and pushed the button for 309. After a second or two there was a buzz as the inner door unlocked.

“I don’t know why they even bother having a buzzer on the front door anymore,” Kathleen said as they climbed the stairs. “I’ve never had to tell anyone who I am, they always just buzz me in. I think they’d buzz in anybody.”

“I thought New Yorkers were supposed to be paranoid.”

“Not in the Village.”

Mark shrugged and opened the door for the third floor. They walked down the worn carpeted hallway and knocked on the door of 309, the last door at the end of the hall. The door opened and they were greeted by a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair. He wore a sweater vest and corduroy pants and carried a glass of white wine and an unlit cigarette in the same hand. He grinned at them broadly.

“Hi! Glad you could make it! I’m Raff. Don is in the kitchen, I think, so I’m acting as gatekeeper at the moment. Make yourselves at home, do you have coats?”

Mark looked at Kathleen and himself. “Uh, no.”

Kathleen stepped in and smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Kathleen, Don’s friend from Candidly Odd. We did that piece on his Coney Island Show with the roach sculpture.”

“Of course! Hello, Kathleen!”

“This is my friend Mark McKellan, we work together at Spruce Publishing in D.C.”

Raff put out his hand and Mark shook it. “Nice to meet you, Ralph.”

Raff grimaced slightly and their hands stopped mid-pump. “It’s pronounced ‘Raff’ like the actor Raff Fiennes.”

“Isn’t that pronounced ‘Rafe’?”

Raff smiled politely. “No, it’s ‘Raff.’ Common mistake.”

“Ah.”

They unclasped hands and Kathleen pulled Mark into the room. “Don’t mind him, he’s from Wisconsin. He thinks Leinenkugel’s is a domestic beer.”

“That’s because it is.”

“Sure it is, Cheese Boy. Let’s go.”

Raff closed the door behind them. “Would you like a tour?”

“That’s okay, I’ve been here before. Mark, do you want a tour?”

Mark panned his gaze around the flat, taking in the large living room and dining room with hallways going to the left and right. “That’s okay. I see the drinks, the appetizers, the books, and the guests. I can figure it out from here.”

Raff looked at him and smiled. “Excellent. Don is finishing off a few more things including a cake. Make yourself at home.”

After he had walked away Kathleen looked up at Mark and said quietly, “Okay, there’s your beer, there’s the food. Go mingle, I have to pee and go find Don.”

“Fine. Go pee. Don’t fall in.”

“Ha.”

Mark grabbed a bottle of Delirium Tremens from the cooler near the door, popped the cap with the opener next to the cooler and looked across the room. A cluster of 3 women were talking near the window overlooking the street while 4 men, 1 of them Raff, talked near the bookcases and stereo, which quietly played John Coltrane. The tv was on but ignored. Mark decided to hang back and comb the coffee table for appetizers before making his approach. He ladled barbecued cocktail wienies onto a blue Chinet plate with matching cocktail napkin and then added little triangles of salami and cream cheese, imported crackers, bitter greek olives, and slices of cheese that were starting to dry and curl a bit. He skewered a cocktail wienie, popped it in his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of beer.

Starting with the sitting area closest to him, Mark surveyed the room. An overstuffed couch and chairs with flatscreen TV sitting on top of a large sidebar that doubled as entertainment center. Bookshelves lined one entire wall and comingled books, pictures, knick-knacks and other media. As the shelves approached the far wall and the stereo, Mark spotted two full shelves of old LPs and one of tabloid sized Treasury Edition comics from the 70s. In the corner on a gig stand stood a Fender 6 string electric jazz bass and practice amp. Suddenly Mark wanted nothing more than to thumb through the records, and pluck at the bass while reading the comics, but it wasn’t worth the risk. They were too near Raff and the other men whom mark had already quickly assessed as snooty, foppish, irritating, and tedious. The plan for them was going to be avoid and ignore until something better came along.

He glanced at the women by the window and immediately honed in on a woman with red hair in a blue sweater when he felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned his head and saw Kathleen.

“Hey, there’s some people I want you to meet.”

“Okay…”

“Leave your beer, you’ve already emptied it anyway.”

He looked at his bottle and swirled it. “Shit. I hadn’t noticed.” The little sausages were gone, too. He put the bottle and plate down on the coffee table as Kathleen tugged on his elbow. “Come on…”

She led him down the right hand hallway, past the swinging kitchen door on the left, behind which he heard mixing and smelled baking. To the right was the open bathroom with 40s and 50s style décor. At the end of the hall was another door, which Mark expected would be a bedroom or den. Kathleen stopped, put her hand on the know and turned around. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. They had never so much as hugged before.

“Good luck,” she said.

“What…”

She opened the door and pushed him in.

Mark turned to stop her, to reach for the door, then pulled his hand back. The door was gone. The wall was gone. Everything was gone. Or seemed to be. Where there should have been a door was white space. No length, no breadth, no depth, no details, just white space. He looked down at his feet. He was the same, but he couldn’t tell what he was standing on. Where his feet ended there was nothing but white. When he tried to focus on the floor, or the wall, it all just seemed to blur. He looked up. The ceiling was the same, and he couldn’t find the source of light. It seemed to be everywhere. Warm white light. Too warm, too white.

There was a voice behind him. “Hello, Mark.”

He turned to find several men seated at a long, dark, walnut table. Aside from Mark, they were the only things in the room with any color. They were also the only things that provided any sense of perspective. Mark guessed they were about 15 feet away, though it was hard to focus. They may have been 20, or 10, or 40. It seemed to be changing.

“Welcome,” the man in the center said. He was thin, 40ish, with a shaven head. He wore a stylish black leather jacket over a black t-shirt and spoke with a Scottish accent. Mark recognized him as Stuart Grant, known mostly for writing comics and a handful of sci-fi novels. On Grant’s left was an older man, also familiar, though Mark couldn’t yet remember him. 60ish and paunchy, he had reddish hair fading into blond and white while simultaneously thinning and receding. He wore a khaki polo shirt at least one size too small that avoided choking him by being completely unbuttoned. One deep crease ran across his ruddy brow while wrinkles at the corner of his eyes hinted at a smile. Mark concentrated on his face but couldn’t come up with a name. Something odd like Bill Williams. No, he had three names. William Antoine Williams. Mark thought he was a sci-fi author as well, though he couldn’t think of anything he had read by him.

On Grant’s other side but further away was a tall, thin, slightly sunburned man of about 60 with curly brown hair and a goatee. His chin rested in one hand and his index finger poked at the corner of his mustache and mouth. He stared intently at Mark and look bemused. Mark didn’t know him but he had the air of a playboy or CEO or both. Someone the media would call an adventurer and philanthropist.

Mark thought there was a fourth man to the right of the playboy but a wave of vertigo struck him and his attention was drawn back to Grant, who smiled at him politely.

“Welcome Mark, you are among friends.”

Mark blinked and tried to focus. “Really?”

“Of course. And we’re impressed. We’ve heard some interesting things about you, and so far they appear to be true. Most people fall into a panic just seeing the white room.”

“Shit themselves more like,” the playboy said. Another accent. Irish?

“Let’s not overstate it or be crass,” Williams said. American, and it was him. Mark could recall seeing him on something he watched on TV. Something on PBS or Discovery. Cults or hauntings. Something.

“Oh come on, you know it happened. A man filled his pants right there in front of us. And that one woman cried and wet herself.”

“It’s still crass.”

“Bollocks.”

Grant looked at each of them and raised his eyebrows. “Regardless of who did or did not panic to what degree, the fact remains that most do panic or get disoriented while our friend has not.” He looked at Mark. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks, but I’m not sure what you’re thanking me for. I’ve seen white rooms before.”

Grant cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Like this one?” As he said it, the table warped and stretched like taffy, pulling farther back into the room, then thrusting forward seemingly right up into Mark’s face, then up as if lifted by a crane, then back down.

Mark gritted his molars and left his face slack. “Right. Four guys at a table in a white room. Big deal. Did you paint it yourself?”

Williams cocked his head. “You see four?”

Mark pointed at him and counted, “One...” then Grant, “two…” then the playboy “three...” then to the right of the playboy, where the air moved like a heat shimmer, “four.”

As he pointed he felt a sudden sharp pain in the middle of his forehead. A wave of nausea rushed over him and he felt feverish. Fire ran along his arms and his gut twisted.

“So there are,” Grant said. “Very good.”

The pain was blinding and got worse whenever Mark tried to look at the fourth man. He moved his head until the man was in the center of his field of vision and squinted as if he were looking at the sun. He certainly felt as if he was. The at noon in July. His face and cheeks were hot. Even his scalp burned. The pain in his gut increased and his eyes watered. His pulse beat in his temples. That pulse was then replaced by pressure, as if a giant’s hand were wrapped around his head, squeezing it like a grape. He thought of that hand and pushed back hard against it. Suddenly it released.

Mark staggered forward, unaware he had been leaning to fight the pain. He blinked and saw the fourth man seated at the left end of the table. Instantly Mark hated him. A pulse began in his gut and temples, low and sickening.

“Quit it,” Mark said.

“Quit what?” the man said, grinning sheepishly and shrugging his shoulders. He could have been 50 or 70. He was thin, with a pencil moustache and dark short hair with a widow’s peak. Mark couldn’t place the man’s accent and his gray flannel suit didn’t lend a clue. His accent was either effeminate upper class British or old money Southern, with the slightly out of breath hush of a lifelong smoker. One thing was clear, he was an asshole. He pronounced the h before the w when saying, “what.” That was the sure mark of an asshole in every society.

The asshole smiled at Mark, clasped his hands in front of him and pursed is lips. Pain flared in Mark’s stomach and chest.

“That!” Mark said.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about." This time he felt the air shift in front of his face and his head rocked back from a hot slap he could feel but not hear.

"Son of a..." Mark lashed out instinctively, focusing his anger on the area in front of him where he felt the slap and driving straight back at the man. The asshole's eyes snapped open in surprise. Surprised himself, Mark did it again.

To his right, Mark heard a chuckle. He glanced over to see the playboy leaning forward, eyes gleaming, still resting his chin in his hand. To his left, Grant had his eyebrows raised in obvious surprise. Williams was intent but silent.

Mark felt the air hum and crackle around him and his head was turned back toward the asshole again.

"We weren't done talking," he said. Mark still had no clue on his accent. Obviously cultured, but from where?

Grant cleared his throat. "I think we could dial the intensity level back a bit, don't you think? This young man isn't Al Qaeda and this isn't Guantanamo. We're talent scouts, not CIA."

The playboy looked at Grant over his shoulder and laughed. "Talent scouts? Really? Is that what we are?"

"I was thinking the same thing. That kind of oversimplifies things doesn't it?" Williams said.

"I don't know, it's kind of how I think of it," Grant shrugged.

The playboy snorted and looked back toward Mark. "I'd avoid telling Simon Cowell, he may sue."

Listening to them, something clicked in Mark's memory. Something about them together. Grant, Williams, the playboy (what was his name?). Something Mark was half-watching on TV while doing something mundane like sorthing laundry. What was it? The playboy was featured as a backer of an art exhibit done by that guy, the asshole. Mark didn't pay attention to that part because the name was unfamiliar and the art was ugly. What was the artists's name? Malevich? Magret? Something. He was Belgian maybe. Belgian, because it reminded him of the Austin Powers joke, "That's how they drink it in Belgium." The guy did big paintings of machines he claimed were alive. The others were on the same show and seemed very impressed. And they were also in a book Mark saw that...

Looking past the artist Mark saw a shimmer in the air, like a heat shimmer over hot asphalt. Very faint, about the size of a man. And it was moving.

There was a fifth man.

He closed his eyes to think about what he had seen, reopened them.

The artist was staring at him, and the playboy had sat back and was looking attentive. Some expression must have crossed Mark's face that told them he had seen something. The nausea the artist was inducing in Mark had eased slightly, but his focus had not.

"Mr. McKellan, your attention should be here. While my colleagues may make light of the this situation and their roles, let me assure you that you are being tested, and you're being quite rude."

"I don't recall submitting to a test."

"You're being tested all the same."

"And if I don't want to be?"

"What you want does not matter."

From the corner of his eye Mark saw Grant lean forward. "Mark, this is obviously a special situation, and we are special people. You should be honored that you're even here, that you're even talking to us."

Mark looked at Grant and the others, but watched the shimmer as it made a circuit around the room, now just behind Williams.

"Well thank you. I'm honored to have this opportunity to be tortured and driven out of my mind."

"Pff," Magret chuffed. "Tortured."

"Mark, what you fail to realize is..."

Mark saw a flicker over his right shoulder and caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and Polo. He wheeled and punched blindly as hard as he could, felt his hand connect with what felt like the side of someone's head. The man appeared as he fell, as did the rest of the room, the details of a small study filling in where there had been white void.

Mark spun to his left, reached for the door, opened, and ran through, almost tripping on Kathleen, who was sitting on the floor outside the door smoking.

"Mark?" She jumped up to follow him.

"Fuck you," he said without turning back.

"Where are you going? How did you...you're not supposed to come out on your own...they...how did you even open the door?"

He made his way across the living room, going for the door, still not looking. "The door is where it was supposed to be. There is no white room, just like there is no spoon. I'm not stupid. Why does everyone think I'm stupid?" He opened the door and went out to the hall.

Kathleen ran behind and stopped. "Wait! Why are you...I wanted you to meet those people, they..."

Mark finally turned. "No You don't do that to people, Kath. Friends don't do that to people. They did shit to me in there. Even if you didn't know, you didn't ask. You may think shit like this is cool or a game or fun or whatever, I don't. I don't want to know them or do what they do or have anything to do with whatever it is they do or anyone else does. Do you understand? You know what, I don't care if you understand. I'm just done." He turned and went down the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

"Anywhere else," he stopped mid-stair turned, then reached up and grabbed her purse. He opened it and reached in.

"I'll drive," he said, pulling out her keys. He handed the purse back to her. "Here. I'm pretty sure you have a ride."

He ran down the rest of the stairs and out the door without a word. Kathleen burst out the door just as her Beetle pulled away.

"Wait!" she screamed, arms flailing. She ran to the curb, then into the street. "You can't steal my car! Don't..."

The car stopped, then backed up so quickly Kathleen jumped back to the curb. The door opened. Mark got out and threw the keys at her feet.

"Fuck it. I don't want to spend the next several hours in a seat where your ass has been. Have a nice life, see you around the office."

"How are you going to get home?"

"We're in New York. I'll take a cab."

He walked across the street, turned the corner, and was gone.