Spirits

By Michael Jesse

On Saturday, Jack rented a van and drove up to Harrington to collect the items he'd put in short-term storage – mostly books and an assortment of varnished boards that he had taken from apartment to apartment to reassemble on the walls to make bookcases of different shapes and sizes to fit each new place. By afternoon, he had everything stacked up in the new apartment and was using a measuring tape and his reporter's notebook to sketch out the new bookshelf configuration.

By evening, he had things pretty well set up, but he needed to use his drill to attach the bookshelves to the walls, and he didn't want to bother his neighbors (if he had any) with noise at that hour. But he'd gotten enough done and decided to go out for a walk downtown and see what kind of nightlife downtown Brayton had on a Saturday night.

He woke Sunday morning to the pealing of church bells from St. Mary's less than two blocks away. Though he had a hangover and it was more noise than his brain wanted at the moment, he smiled at the sound because it reminded him of childhood and his mother -- when they lived across the street from St. Peter's. At his bedside table was the remains of a drink, and he sipped at it as the bells counted to eight and the vibrations of the final stroke hung in the air around him before dissipating like a wisp of smoke.

In his spacious tile bathroom, which still had the original ceramic knob fixtures (as well as a urinal), he brushed his teeth and combed his hair to be reasonably presentable. He put on yesterday's t-shirt, his grey sweatpants, and a pair of sneakers. In the kitchen, which seemed incongruously small and modern compared to the bathroom, he got the coffee going and grabbed his keys. In the still silent hallway, he double-checked the lock to make sure the key on his chain would open the door again.

As if it had been waiting all night just for him, the elevator opened its doors as soon as he hit the button. On the ground floor, the restaurant showed the first signs of human activity, though only a handful of tables were occupied. He was looking forward to trying it out, but not right now. Outside, it was overcast, and he felt a few raindrops as he started to run. He wasn't a distance runner -- it was too boring -- but liked to do two or three miles.

He had already walked along the construction site, so he went south a few blocks and then east on the alley behind City Market, where long-unused trolley tracks curved among the uneven street bricks. He remembered being fascinated by the pattern of the tracks and the bricks as he walked home with Grandma from the rummage stores down in the Flats. One time, Grandma found a sack of potatoes next to a loading dock where a big truck was idling. She picked it up quickly and held it in front of her as they walked away.

The rain was picking up, and Jack turned at LaSalle Street and stopped at the next newspaper box he passed to pick up the Sunday paper. He got a quick takeout from McDonald's and, in a few minutes, was back in his apartment eating his breakfast and paging through the newspaper at his desk.

Jack spent most of the day finishing his bookshelves and arranging his books. As he put each book in its proper place, he recited in his mind a summary of the book and the names of the principal characters. When he could not remember a name, he flipped through the book until he found it. This took a while. Jack's library contained all the usual texts of classic literature -- War and Peace, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Tale of Two Cities and so on. He had read about half of them so far and knew enough about the rest to discuss them should the need arise.

Because there were no hardware stores downtown anymore, he drove out to the suburbs for a few things he needed, and on the way back, he discovered an antique store where he found an Art Deco floor lamp and a leather ottoman that fit the new place.

By evening, he was cooking up a pot of tuna pasta that would last him a few days. He had a jazz album on the turntable and was savoring his first drink of the day. He felt relieved about having gone to his first AA meeting. The location down in Edwina was sufficiently remote, so he was unlikely to run into anyone he knew from work. And all he had to do was go to five more meetings and listen to other people talk.

Hearing Curtis' story had been a relief as well because it confirmed Jack's belief that he himself was not an alcoholic, at least not yet. He knew he drank more than most people, and sometimes he consumed more than he intended and didn't remember the last part of the evening. But based on what he'd heard at that meeting, he was nowhere near being an alcoholic. He never got in bar fights or ended up in jail or the hospital. His life was not at all "unmanageable" -- in fact, things were going really well.

After eating some of the tuna pasta and putting the rest in the fridge, Jack made a fresh drink and settled at his desk in front of the big window overlooking downtown. The sun was low in the sky, creating long ghostly shadows from the building facades behind the fence.

Logging into Molly's site, Jack was pleased to see several fresh comments in response to Molly's latest post. But then he noticed that Molly had already replied to some of them. Uh-oh. He didn't remember doing that and quickly read through the responses to make sure Molly had not inadvertently said something that would undermine the delicate architecture of her own existence. Most of the responses were fine, but one of the readers said he had just read the Mona and Libby stories and wondered if Molly and Mona were related since they are both redheads. Molly's reply was:

Yes, Mona is my older sister! That's why I moved here to do my master's degree. There were several schools I could choose from to do that, and I picked this one because it's near where Mona and Libby settled down shortly before I got out of college. They are way out in the country, and I'm in the middle of the city, so it's nearly an hour's drive with traffic. But I can see them on weekends easily.

Uh-oh. That was potentially a problem. Fortunately, the Mona and Libby stories were written in a pretty realistic manner, but the problem was that the "Libby" character in those stories was basically the same as the "Molly" character in this story. Both had the urge to be nude and had similar background stories. He was afraid it would seem like too much of a coincidence and some readers might get suspicious.

After some while, Jack had an idea and crafted an additional post from Molly.

When I was growing up, Mona was the most influential person in my life. She was the only one who knew my secret desire to be naked -- and she got a kick out of it. She did not have the same urge herself, but was delighted by her kid sister's little kink, and so she was often my lookout and enabler.

Psychologists say that we tend to pick spouses who are similar to one of our parents, but with me and Mona, it seems to have been each other. I am attracted to people who have her unflappable confidence -- always knowing the right thing to do in any circumstance -- while she was apparently so tickled by her kid sister's penchant for nudity that she sought out girlfriends who had a similar desire. Although she managed to get some of her girlfriends to hang out naked, most of them only did it to please her. When she met Libby, she knew she had the real thing. Libby and I had some of the same experiences growing up. We both sneaked out of the house at night to run naked in the backyard, and in college we both became known as "the naked girl" of our dorms. But it's not just that. I've gotten to know Libby pretty well these past few years, and it is remarkable how much we have in common.

Jack read through the entry again before making the post live. It was a little lame, he thought, but sufficient damage control under the circumstances.