kabul airport

BUT WHY DO I love her so? But why do I love her so? But why did I love Dulcinea? The question wrapped around the experience, like paper on a bottle. The more you turned it, the more you saw. Then everything went all zig-zag again and I wasn’t quite sure where I was, only that one piece connected to another — and there was a little boy there — one minor plot twist turned things. The next thing I knew we were landing at Kabul Airport in sandy Afghanistan.

Why were we here? Don’t tell me our band was on tour. But didn’t you know, our new keyboard player had let down all her previous bands? There was a large metallic overhang, like the roof of the stage over the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. Everything else was underwater. Warm, chlorinated, waterpark kind of blue water. We lugged our suitcases through it, or rather they floated. Floating by went spinning islands of American candies, leftovers from the retreat? Mars, Snickers, Twix, Pringles, take your pick. And what were we even doing here? I grabbed a chocolate from one of the airport waterpark islands and looked up, saw orange. Great glowing comet-like streaks were running the length of the sky. Was it a fireworks display or had the Iran War spread to Afghanistan? But weren’t the Pakistanis also fighting the Afghanis now?

When I got to the hotel, I decided that I had my fill of adventure. I went to the café bar, told them to make me the blackest, darkest, evilest espresso there was. If she was the light, then I would be the dark. If she was wholesome and good, I would bristle with sinister malevolence. This life without her had been a graveyard dead end. Light unto light, dark unto dark, her pure into my pure. I stared down into the cup and it whispered back up to me like a haunted well.

staircases

AGAIN THAT TABLE, worn and soft to the touch, coming into view in the dim light of wherever this was. A bar, restaurant, a speakeasy tavern? The table was long, wide, thick. Two familiar friends sat down next to me, maybe one of them was Matti, a semi-famous, experimental writer, and he said to an approaching waitress in a white blouse, “Get this man a glass of the …” I didn’t hear the rest, but when it arrived, there was a near bowl of something that looked like pinot noir or valpolicella. I pushed the glass back on the table and announced, “For the very last time, Matti, I told you that I don’t drink anymore!” Then, gesturing to the kind waitress in the blouse, I affected a more diplomatic tone and said, “But I will have an espresso, thanks.” “Very good,” she said, and there was some turning and clicking of the heels. Matti, who was dressed all in black, guzzled my wine. His bald head was impressive, emerging from his neck like a boulder on Everest, or the corpse of a mountaineer who had fallen there.

I became aware that there were others around the table, including Violette who was waiting patiently for me. I began to reach for the fabric of her dress and brushed against her chest, ever so slightly, hoping that if I made her blush enough, she would unsheathe one for me. Just a few more pats around the breast and soon I would have one in my mouth, if I could only just lay back, like this? The espresso arrived on a silver tray and I took it and drank. It was hot and frothy, splashing around like waves in the Great Western Ocean. Then I announced to all, that I needed to use the bathroom. I headed for one downstairs, but Violette called after me, “No!”

It wasn’t there anymore, in fact everything had changed. The walls had been retiled, there were boxes of construction materials. I came up to the main floor again and Violette was standing there in her dress. She said, “My company acquired the building and there is no toilet anymore, except one for the management on the top floor, but you can’t go up there.” I made another play for her breasts. What did they look like under there? She had some kind of checker print material on, she reminded me of a tablecloth. Picnic baskets, summer, delicious. She just sort of swatted me away, but there was a happy little grin in there, beneath the hair.

“Nonsense,” I told her. “I’m going to find it. But first, I need my journal.” I took my journal from my bag and began climbing the steps to the off-limits upper floors. These had been demolished too and replaced with a swaying, unstable temporary metal staircase. All around me there were cranes and men in white shirts and hardhats conducting the lifting of materials and scaffolding. They were talking into headset microphones and giving orders and wore sunglasses. The staircase only swayed more and I remembered that I was terrified of heights.

I looked down and Violette was shaking her head, each one of those breasts still locked away, like fresh rolls behind bakery glass. “I told you,” she said. I looked down and saw there was a pool below me, a new pool for the company management who were developing the building. I decided to leap into the pool — I had lost all my desire to find a toilet — and kept the journal aloft as I came down feet first into the warm water. Unfortunately, the corner of this most precious book became wet in the fall. I held it up as I swam back to the restaurant. Violette helped me out. “It will dry,” I told her. “Even the wettest journals can be dried and read again.” Then, noticing Violette’s chest through the dress’s material, I said, “Let’s go sit down together.”

fragments

I SAW THEM ALL on stage, a smaller auditorium, standing only, playing just a few feet off the ground. This was the classic line up, and after the show, one of the singers came over. I couldn’t tell if her face was really melting off or if I had been dosed again. She had a doll-like yellow wig, which could have been her real hair, and her features looked sculpted, contorted into a menacing grin, and not quite human, like one of those shamanic masks from the Pacific Northwest. She wore loose, Tibetan-looking robes. She handed a large witches hat, about three feet high, to the woman next to me, and said. “Thank you for coming to the concert.” When the hat was opened, a pomegranate-like fruit protruded, with red flesh between its stiff membranes. The woman beside me said it was delicious. “Like persimmons mixed with honey.”

Next another singer in the band presented me with my own reward, a green hat of about the same size. It was made of unfamiliar textile, smooth and yet fuzzy, a bit course to the touch. The singer’s brown hair was long and he was dressed in Renaissance clothing. “Thanks for coming to the show, man,” he said. I pulled open the hat and devoured its sticky contents.

Later, I found myself on the second floor of a warehouse in New York. My great grandmother was there sitting at a table, dressed in a white youthful dress of the time, something circa 1914. She was sitting there staring off into space and someone was taking her photograph. Everything was black and white, and each time the camera flashed, I could see a dark negative of a child inside her. Not a baby, but a girl of maybe three or four years old, sitting peacefully there, in her own white dress. What even was this? Why was I being shown the past and the future? My great grandmother still didn’t notice me in the warehouse. She sat there quite still.

Downstairs, at a café, I waited in line to place my order. The seller told me that the cake I wanted was too strong for my needs. “If I give you this cake, and you digest it, it will change you, it will make you into a real monster,” he said. “I recommend this cinnamon bun, over here.” I took the cinnamon bun and noticed that Violette was sitting below the window in the sunshine. She was sitting there, watching me, with the sun in her red curls and Lata was by the counter, standing tall and erect, watching me. Lata also looked like she had no idea what she was doing in the café. I looked over at Violette. She smiled at me and winked. Lata’s brown hair was pulled back in a braid, she wore a white jacket and trousers, and her light eyes looked alert and alarmed. “So,” she said while waiting for her matcha latte. “Fancy meeting you here.”

landlord

I MUST HAVE RENTED an apartment from a middle-aged Estonian man. He was maybe a decade older, dark tufts of hair, graying at the temples, tawny complexion. He might have been Spanish or Jewish in a previous life. He worked in some dusty corner of the financial services universe and was always dressed smart casual, with a jacket, shirt open at the collar, khakis.

His wife had recently left him, or they had separated or taken a time out. So they said. She took the rest of the children off to the Canary Islands, where she had become a poolside yoga teacher and worshipper of the Hindu love gods. The eldest daughter stayed behind to finish her studies. She was disarmingly beautiful. He was certain the girl had caught my eye. She had.

At night, her father would kick off his loafers after a long day spent shilling for the bank and watch the news on an enormous screen he had got a great deal on during the pandemic. When he saw me entering my apartment through the big glass windows on the first floor, and most of the house was made of metal and glass, he would shake his head a little and purse his lips and then nurse another sip from a bottle of beer. The apartment itself was a tranquil single room, wide and spacious, all painted white, with high, echoey ceilings, and a small kitchenette.

It had three windows and through them I would watch the eldest daughter arrive and depart on her way to or from her semiotics classes. The bob of a golden brain in the late winter sun. The lyrical cadence of a youthful, ever optimistic voice heard through the glass, concerned for her joyless, dead-hearted father. There was something to her, a kind of music so faint you could only hear it if you strained your very ears. But it was also so removed from my waking conscience that I could barely grasp at it, even if I tried. This sparkle might have found its way into a magazine article I wrote, one with sultry allusions to such inappropriate relationships.

And then one day, my landlord was there before me, clutching a rolled up copy of the magazine’s latest edition in his hand, ready to strike. I could see my face above the column, which was printed neatly in black and white “You,” he said, “are a sick pervert! I have already initiated legal proceedings, a kohtuprotsess!” I stepped back and he whacked me with my own words. I tried to defend myself. “But it was all fictionalized!” I cried. “All of it was fiction!” “Lies,” he shouted and struck. “Of course, some of it was based on reality.” “Jail!” he growled. “Jail!”

In my apartment, I let down the white blinds. Outside I could hear him howling, banging. I grabbed my things, crawled out the back window like a character in a Willie Nelson song. Then I was down the forest path, on my way, almost free at last when his wife appeared like mirage. I tumbled and there were orange leaves everywhere, so many leaves I began to swim. The enlightened landlord’s wife looked down out me, her head wrapped in a bandana. Stars flooded the sky and began circling her like little birds. They arranged themselves into a crown. She reached down and pulled me free from my leafy oceans. At long last, I had been rescued.

The landlord’s wife was a fine looking woman, very smooth features, a kind of gray-brown hair just visible beneath her turban, and she had very clear blue eyes that were skies unto themselves. She did not fear my love of her daughter, for as she saw it, all daughters needed to be loved. “Would you like honey too?” She poured me some tea on the terrace later. I mixed in the honey, watched it dissolve in the peppermint, and drank deep from the warm ceramic cup. I was still kind of shaken up and could see her husband through the windows. He was filming the whole thing. Evidence to be used at trial. He gave me the middle finger. Then he motioned to his throat and made a slashing gesture. He mouthed the words: “Pervert, pervert. Jail, jail.”

frittata

SIGBRITT was making a frittata. She was in the little yellow kitchen with its dim yellow lighting and she was very excited. Her flame of yellowblonde hair was open and loose and messy. Sigbritt was making frittata in the old school way, sprinkling breadcrumbs on top of the mix, cooking it over a low heat in a cast iron pan. Who had taught her the recipe? Her hair and skin reflected back the light from the kitchen. Soon she would put it in the oven to finish up.

Each time she added an ingredient, she leapt up, and each time she jumped, I caught her breast in my mouth. Sigbritt was not very tall and she was still very clothed, in a silky green-gray blouse. With each leap of happiness, I gave her another lick. “But I have a boyfriend, but I have a boyfriend, but I have a boyfriend,” she said and teased me. As she chanted, her blue eyes sparkled. “His name is Giovanni, his name is Giovanni, his name is Giovanni!” “I don’t care, I don’t care,” I said, suckling Sigbritt. First one, then the other. First the left and then the right. “So what, so what, so what?”

the epstein hotel

THE EPSTEIN HOTEL was on Vermont Avenue in Washington, DC. It was built in the Second Empire style for some diplomat but later after passing hands through successive generations of elite bureaucrats had been repurposed as a hotel and hostel. By the time I arrived one night, with just one suitcase, fresh off an Amtrak train from Newport News, Virginia, all of the single rooms had been booked and I was given a bunk in one of the hostel’s eight-bed dormitories.

This turned out to be a lovely space on the top floor with its own kitchenette, a nice view of some green memorial park, and plenty of guests. All of the other seven beds in the room were taken, and one of my bunkmates happened to be Heath Harrigan, an old high school chum, now a karate teacher and lifestyle influencer who had strong opinions on vaccines, chem trails and the like, and had accrued a following of thousands. Joe Rogan had even interviewed him.

He looked great — the supplements he sold on his channel were working, his hair was still dark and wavy — and he invited me in to what soon became a rather wild bunkbed party, with plenty of pretty university students and Japanese tourists who were also domiciled at the Epstein Hotel. It was good to see Heath again, but I was tired, and I crawled up to my top bunk. It was impossible to sleep. They were all arguing about the measles mumps rubella vaccine.

“Shut up,” I heard Heath tell one of the Japanese. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The plan was to go to Boston to meet up with Bergerac, a former university friend who had taken on a teaching position and had an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just over the Charles. In my mind, Boston didn’t seem so far away from Washington, it was just a quick jaunt, like going to the supermarket for some butter or bread. Just a quick journey to Boston and I would be back. Bergerac had become quite knowledgeable since graduation and knew the details on the makings of all albums by The Who. Bergerac was tall, bearded, French, Jewish. I liked him immensely. Just a train to Boston to visit Bergerac and all would be jake.

Besides, there was no sleep going on at the Epstein Hotel. My roommates were too loud with their arguments over vaccinations and pillow fights. In the middle of the night, I got up to get a bottle of water from a vending machine in the common area, and maybe some salted peanuts. I began to wander the halls of the hotel. Everything had been refurbished in that light, beige, putrid colonial tone that many hotels in Washington and Alexandria and other such places are painted in. The air smelled of aged carpet, but it wasn’t a musty smell, just a hotel smell. There in the back hall, I encountered the man himself, Lord Epstein. This was him in his element, the Epstein Hotel. He was seated in a corner with two young blonde women beside him. These were Estonian women, maybe 25 years old. He was talking. They were laughing at his jokes.

“Sorry to intrude,” I told Epstein. He nodded a bit with that big ominous head of his and pretended that he didn’t hear me. He just watched them, swigging from a bottle of Perrier.

Returning to my room was complicated. All of those beige carpeted hallways, turns, dead ends. When I got back, the police had arrived. They were marking off the crime scene and taking photos. The two same young Estonian women I had seen before were sprawled out on the floor. They were both very dead, but otherwise looked quite peaceful, as if they were sleeping. Heath came over to me. He was holding a half-empty bottle of champagne and his shirt was off. His eyes were all bloodshot. Heath Harrigan said to me, in a tired, subdued voice, “Epstein stopped by, man. But the party got out of hand. Things got way out of hand. You should leave now.” That I did. I was on the next train to Boston, to meet with Bergerac, to talk about Tommy.

“Tommy can you hear me? Can you feel me near you?”

I whistled as Washington dissolved into Maryland. Before I knew it, we were in Philadelphia. Home free.

underwater book

THE HOUSE was at the top of a hill on the edge of town, some wooded area, exclusive wherever it was and in any case. Whoever owned it had not been there for some time. Maybe it was a summer place? My car pulled into its gravel driveway and parked beside a wooden gate. I had driven it there, but I don’t remember why I decided to stop in that shady place.

Maybe I just needed a rest.

Outside, I could see two figures talking in the dust, a very elegant woman dressed all in black with sunglasses and her hair done up and a groundskeeper who was being given instructions as to what needed to be trimmed, moved, painted, refurbished, et cetera. He had on khaki and white and looked like he was about to go fishing. There he stood, holding a white bucket while she went on and on. When she was at last finished, the man disappeared behind a red barn.

That left the two of us. She didn’t see me, or I didn’t notice her seeing me. She had on those big sunglasses, the scarf around her neck. What a fashionable lady, and clearly very posh, to live in such a palace, even if it was in disrepair. She went inside the house to dust the old vases.

I began to wander the estate, past the hedges, under the arches. Where was this? England? Estonia? The Hamptons? There was an old swimming pool tucked into a courtyard, its green clear waters moving against a light breeze. In the shallower part of the pool, I could see there was a book. The book was open, about halfway through. If I focused my eyes, stared at the book long enough, I could read the words on the page through the water ripples on the pool’s surface. Blurry words. Then something unusual happened. I dove headfirst into the water.

The water was cool, fresh, almost sweet to the taste. And so clear, like it was fed from an underground stream or a Greek grotto. I came up again with the book in my hands, looked around. The interior of the courtyard was covered in green ivy, climbing up all walls. And from this darkness emerged the lady of the house, clutching imperiously at her shawl. I realized that I knew who she was as she removed her sunglasses. But wasn’t she 10 years older than me?

“I see that you like my underwater book,” she said. I did. I held it on the edge of the pool. I liked the text, it was set in Renner’s classic 1927 Futura. The pages were strange, they just slipped through my fingers, except they didn’t fall apart. They were soft to the touch, it was a kind of softness I had never felt. “Come up here,” she said. “Sit by me.” I sat on the edge of the pool with the book in my lap and the woman came over to me. Then she gently removed the book, set it down beside me, and sat in my lap facing me. Next, I was inducted into her. It went quick.

“There, there,” she said, with a hint of satisfaction and a very happy sigh. “That’s much better.”

kiss

SOME THINGS ARE ALMOST SPECTRAL. You don’t see the full embodiment of reality, it’s sort of hazy, silhouettes, even auras, I’d dare say. What I can report back is that we were en route to the north coast via Tartu, the second largest city of Estonia, situated in the southeast center of the country, and a hub of rail and bus links. Within the bus station, which had taken on an almost Turkish bazaar kind of atmosphere with spice markets, et cetera, one of my companions, which might have been my older brother, climbed to the second floor of the building, which opened up on an inner atrium and leapt backwards with his arms outstretched into the blue air. This terrified me, but he landed softly on a couch, laughing to himself, as if nothing was amiss and it would all turn out like that. The people around us might as well have been made out of neon or electricity. There was a brisk trade in turmeric, ginger, and garlic.

Then, whoosh, I woke up.

It was clearly morning now and along the inside of my bedframe, I realized there was a young woman lying opposite me, face to face with me. She had very thick dark hair and white loose pajamas, she had distinct features, that were not too feminine but somehow even more attractive because they didn’t align with the norm. Her gray eyes opened, milky blue green gray in the light. Mornings are already light at eight now, maybe even at seven. I felt a kind of euphoria and agony entwined and realized, she was stroking me down there. “Shh,” she said. “Shh. Shh. Shh.” That was all she said. “I see you,” she said. “I see you, I see you, I see.” After that we kissed. It was loving, long, lingering. But who was she and how did she wind up in my bed?

Later I walked the frozen town trying to determine the identity of the mystery visitor from the morning. The sidewalks and streets were deathhard with ice and snow powdered on top, and more helpings of snow drifted down slowly, February lazily, the same as it always did. The snow toppled its way down from the rooftops, through tree branches, tumbling. Who was she? Then I remembered. It was her! It must have been her. That was her hair, those were her features. Maybe it was just a illusion, an astral projection, maybe a hologram? Projecting, projecting. The mind beams her against the wall and she comes to life, alive, fully in the flesh.

“Shh,” she says. “Shh. Shh. Shh.”

a lift to the city

MIHKEL RAUD gave me a lift to the city. It was in one of those old-fashioned Volkswagen Beetles, beige exterior, red interior, remarkably clean. I couldn’t tell if he was just being friendly or had gone into the taxi or Bolt driver business, and I wasn’t really sure why I had got in the car to begin with, as I had no plans to go to the city. He wore his flat cap and looked the part of a driver, parked the Beetle on one of the lower levels of the Viru Keskus parking garage. Mihkel Raud hopped out and wished me a good day.

There I was, back in the city. A lot had changed since I was away. Tallinn looked sort of like Manhattan, but in the 1950s or 1960s. Brick buildings, iron railings, snow-covered cars, trash cans. Why did I feel like I was in Little Shop of Horrors or Rear Window? Tarja came walking by in a nice pink dress and waved to me. “But what are you doing here?” she said. “What brings you to town?” Her black hair was done up, she eyed me with her usual sparkling curiosity. “Well,” she said. “I need to get some shopping done. My children are hungry.” And she left.

At the end of the street, I noticed Esmeralda. Young Esmeralda Kask. I hadn’t seen her in ages. She looked quite beautiful in her dress, her chestnut hair was pulled back. There was something about those blue pearls of eyes, the slope of her cheeks. There was no one as beautiful as Esmeralda Kask. Not in this world. Something strange was happening though. She was leading a flock of sheep. When had Esmeralda become a shepherd? Or was she a shepherdess? I was too old for her, but I loved her anyway. Such loves are non-negotiable.

Just then my mother emerged from a store, clutching her grandmother’s pearls. “You, young lady,” she called out to Esmeralda. “What do you plan to do with all of those sheep?” Esmeralda blinked a few times. “I am going to sheer them,” said Esmeralda. “It’s been such a cold winter. I am going to make myself a warm coat.” “That sounds like a lovely idea,” my mother said and waved. Their interaction brought a tear to my eye. For Esmeralda Kask was what the Estonians would call a silmarõõm, my one true love. The tear swelled and rolled down my ice cold cheek.

hollow road

HOLLOW ROAD was a shady road. If you followed it from one end to the other, it would carry you from the Village Green to Cedar Street. It was called Hollow Road because it ran the length of a hollow. Atlantic coastal deciduous trees rose up on both sides, tall, towering oaks, cedars, and maples. In all seasons, the hillsides were covered with their colorful rotting leaves. About halfway down on the left, as you traveled the road toward Cedar Street, there was an old cemetery where the original British settler families like the Conklins and Bayles were entombed behind iron gates and beneath Victorian angels. But I never went up in there.

On this day, I walked on ahead, gingerly, freely. It was late spring, early summer, or the onset of fall. The sun shone through the leaves into the darkness of the hollow and as I exited this kind of natural tunnel, I found myself at the foot of Suffolk Avenue. On the right hand side though, I could see that several newer houses had been constructed since I went away, in a style someone might call Scandinavian contemporary. Such buildings would not be out of place on the other side of the ocean. In fact, the more I observed them, the more I began to realize that this part of Hollow Road matched Hariduse Street, which means Education Street. At least the houses looked like the kinds that one found at the start of Hariduse Street, just before the old Airplane Factory. But this was not Estonia. This was Long Island. I was sure of it. The trees were proof. Estonia didn’t have these trees.

The houses were deserted. I didn’t see one trampoline in a yard or car in a driveway. They were made of wood with yellow corrugated metal roofs. All of the trees around them had been cut down, the underbrush removed. The land had been ploughed through and reshaped and covered with fresh green sod from the sod farms out east. It was just too vacant and peculiar. I walked up one of the gravel driveways and found myself at the door of one of these Scandinavian contemporary houses on Hollow Road. The door was ajar and so I went in.

There was almost no furniture in the house. A table, a couch. But someone was living here. On the table, I saw piles of chocolate wrappers from Ghirardelli and other big name manufacturers. On the walls hung the glinting paintings of the Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. I stood there in that unlit room admiring the Klimt paintings when a woman walked in and startled me. “Who are you? What are you doing here in my house?” she said.

She was younger than me and she had raven black hair. This was pulled up in a messy braid. She wore a white jacket. Her eyes were light and remarkable but not threatening. I told her quickly that I had used to live in the neighborhood, how I can discovered the strange houses, how I had decided to look inside, how my curiosity had got the best of me. She told me that she was a translator, a chocolate translator, and how she was responsible for translating all of Ghirardelli’s packaging and marketing materials into other languages. But how did she come to acquire the Klimt paintings? Weren’t they worth millions? They were beautiful pieces.

“Yes, I also like them very much,” she said. At that moment, I began to feel a familiar, wavy sea-like sensation. It was like the floor was being pulled out from beneath me. She just stood there, staring at me. She had very light, soft skin. It was like milk. She looked too familiar. Who was she? The maritime sensation continued. “Well,” the woman said. Her voice tinkled like faint, far off music. “What now?”