we bid you goodnight

THERE I WAS having another coffee with Rory and Ella in a cafe when someone ‘pantsed’ me, as we used to say, pulled down my trousers while I wasn’t looking. I had on my military-style jacket, so I wasn’t exposed up front, but all of the cafe society people got a good look at my ass. To make matters worse, I was so shocked by what had happened, I couldn’t manage to pull my pants back up. I fumbled with the button and the zipper, but they just wouldn’t close. Rory, stalwart poet that he was, had a good laugh. Ella was dressed up like a flapper, but with a pair of butterfly wings, the kinds little girls wear at Halloween. She reclined in her seat, crossed her white stockinged legs and licked her lips. She was very entertained. She sipped from her latte.

Just then Saint-Malo marched in and arrested me for exposing myself. I was hauled off to an open Scandinavian-style prison, but thoroughly tested and prodded before being admitted to my room. Saint-Malo was younger than me, but he was already gray at the temples and had a gruff, indifferent manner. He wore military fatigues, even though he was a jazz musician and not a prison guard. Still, the denizens of the town had elected him to be a sheriff of sorts, preventing robberies of the burger truck, for instance. “You and your ass are a disgrace to the good clean folk of Viljandi Town,” Saint-Malo peppered me with scorn. “But I didn’t drop my trousers on purpose,” I said. “Someone pantsed me in Kodukohvik.” “Silence,” Saint-Malo said.

My prison days passed like that until Jorma showed up and broke me out. He invited me to a “pancake and drug thing” in the Haight. All of the bands were there. The Dead. The Charlatans. Janis was still alive. “Psychedelic pancakes,” said Jorma. “Eat up, man.” This was young Jorma, with the black hair and Beatle boots. The syrup, as I took it, was spiked with LSD. That might have been why Mr. Garcia got an extra helping. The Dead were called up on stage and performed an acapella version of “We Bid You Goodnight.” Jerry, Phil, Pigpen, Bill, Bobby, even Micky. They were all up there singing. They were moving in unison just like the Temptations.

After the Haight-Ashbury pancake drug breakfast, I went for a stroll, eventually winding my way through North Beach and climbing to the top of Coit Tower. From here, I could look out on all of sunny San Francisco. There was the Presidio over there. And I could see Alcatraz gleaming like a mirage off in the distance. Whenever the wind blew off the bay, the top of Coit Tower would move along with it. The engineers had even built a strange system where the top was set on wheels, so that it would rotate along. It felt good to be out of prison, though I was still trying to digest the acapella Grateful Dead performance. Plus those LSD-spiked pancakes.

Rory and Ella came up the steps at that moment. They reached the top of Coit Tower and were also taken aback by its breathtaking views. Lotta was with them. Another cafe person, in fact a regular in the local co-working space. She was wearing a colorful dress and sunglasses and clutching a cappuccino. Lotta blew me a kiss. “Come over here,” she said. “Let’s all take a selfie.”

get thee to a nunnery

AFTER DULCINEA went to the convent I didn’t see her for some time. I did keep her in my thoughts though. Any happenings with her, though few in recent years, allowed me to survive the long Estonian winters. A memory that I kept especially close to heart was of her seated beside the seaside in the summer, in her white sweater, with the cool July winds toying with her straw hair, and that wondrous look in her midnight eyes. She was like summer that night. Dulcinea could become summer just as she could become any season. But she left after that and went to the convent and I didn’t see her again until our paths crossed in a strange way.

She was working with a French priest whose job it was to retrieve lost children and it so happened that I too was assigned to cover the case of the lost little boy for an Estonian magazine. As I understood it, Sister Dulcinea had taken on a secretarial role within this Catholic detective agency. There she was, clad in white. I wondered how long it would last. Would not the pleasures of the flesh, or at least the heart, be the undoing of her virtuous vows? How was I to look upon this woman of god, if not with desire? Something about the gold cross that dangled across her neck was only more seductive and erogenous. She was, in person, quite professional and mostly ignored me, side-eyed me, or didn’t appear at all.

Over time though, I began to realize that our connection, while not expressed in words, was pulsing in the air. After the French priest finally found the lost little boy, who had been kept by kidnappers in an old house somewhere in the south of France equidistant between Grenoble and Lyon, there was a celebration. The sun was setting magnificently that evening and the boy’s grateful parents gathered around and thanked the French detective, who I imagined was something like Poirot and Maigret mixed together and clothed in the black clothes of the Christian faith. It was then that lovely Sister Dulcinea walked toward me, her hands toying with her beads, and kissed me passionately. “That’s that,” she said. So much for the nunnery.

the adventure of the swedish pastries

ON THE SHIP TO MUHU, with my daughter and parents, I was surprised to discover my friend Anton was also on board, and that he had a special need to be delivered to the nature preserve at the head of the Sõrve peninsula, an expansive strip of island land that dangled suggestively down toward the Gulf of Riga. It was already night when the ship docked in Kuivastu Harbor and the bus began to roll across Muhu and then the causeway to Saaremaa.

By the time we got to the hotel in Kuressaare, it was bedtime, for sure, but the hotel was jumping, with a restaurant up front, as well as blackjack tables and slot machines. My parents retired to their room, and I left my daughter in ours, and then went searching for Anton so I could take him to Sõrve. Anton himself had disappeared upon disembarking. Where was he? I sent him some messages, but he only sent back photos of himself and friends tearing up various nightclubs in Kuressaare. There was even a shot of a mounted police officer trying to rein in the island pub crawl chaos. This guy wanted a free ride? But a promise was a promise.

I went down a series of long hallways that seemed to stretch on forever. Well-lit, wood-paneled corridors, no doubt created by some Nordic design firm. I kept walking and soon I was near Mändjala Beach. Such long passageways, I thought. How was it even possible? At the end of the final hallway, I saw there was a sauna and swimming complex outside, and old ladies were relaxing in the warm bubbles of a hot tub. Inside there was a breakfast buffet set out with the most delicious looking choux pastries, topped with lingonberry-flavored cream. Inside the breakfast area, some old Scandinavian couples had fallen asleep at the dining tables. I helped myself to four or five of these special pastries and turned back while a DJ was setting up.

As I returned to the entrance of the hotel, with no word from Anton, who was probably sleeping in the drunk tank at the Saaremaa police station, I encountered the maître d’hôtel, an older gentleman with gray hair and a fine mustache, who informed me that I now owed the hotel a pretty sum for the pastries. “You had five umeå-brests,” he said. “That will cost you €25 at the very least.” “But I have stayed here many times before,” I told the maître d’hôtel. “As far as I recall, the umeå-brest pastries were always free.” “Times have changed in Estonia,” said the maître d’hôtel. “We now charge for almond milk, honey. Umeå-brests are certainly no longer free.” No, nothing was complimentary anymore in this odd nation. With a heavy heart, but a belly full of brests, I retired to my hotel room at last. Sõrve was not in the cards. Who knew what had become of Anton. And besides, it just then occurred to me, I didn’t even have a car.

it will all start to make sense

IN THE CITY CENTER, a woman was managing a small aquarium. She filled this small water pool with different elements, which began to coalesce and take shape, creating new fish-like creatures, which emerged into sight as they swam in circles. Some of them looked like the kinds of strange fish one might find in a Swedish market, burbot, cod, and terrifying anglerfish, with their ugly toothy jaws. The woman was quite discrete about the fish. She wore a white raincoat and made sure they were fed. When I asked her what they were for, she said it was hard to describe, or that she couldn’t say. “You’ll see,” she said. “It will all start to make sense.”

Later, when there was another drone and missile attack in the center of the city, and pedestrians crouched and took shelter in between fast food kiosks and t-shirt vendors, I noticed that soldiers in white uniforms with backpacks emerged into the streets. With small hoses, they sprayed down parachuting Russian soldiers, who were rendered powerless by a thick pink goo. This, as I understood it, was the toxic by product of the new fish. The woman in the white raincoat had been creating a new form of biological weapon, fish that could kill.

I tried to tell my pal El Scorcho all about it as we walked through the city later when the latest missile attack had ended, but he was too busy talking about his music career. “She’s raised a whole mini-aquarium of biological terror,” I told him. “You wouldn’t believe it. It’s so far-fetched even I have trouble believing it.” El Scorcho was lost in his world. “Can you believe they want me to headline next year’s festival?” he said. “I’m think of covering some Paul McCartney solo stuff.” We arrived at a supermercato in the middle of town, one where you had to ride an escalator up to a second floor. The building itself was made of yellow adobe, so it looked as if El Scorcho was entering a pueblo. What a pueblo was doing in a Northern European city under constant in-coming Russian attack escaped me. El Scorcho tossed some bags of potato chips and plantains down the escalator at me after he bought them. He smiled down while sipping at a bowl of mate. “Will you shut up about those weird fish, man,” El Scorcho said. “Nobody cares.”

shapeshifter

IT HAPPENED AT NIGHT, or rather the early morning. The clock said it was 4:30 am. Either way, it was still dark. The black cat was biting my fingers, which was uncomfortable enough, except that this black cat was also my child. Somehow my child had shapeshifted into a black cat. I wasn’t sure which child this cat was. One I didn’t know or didn’t remember. My black cat child bit down hard. I tried to shake it from my hand. There was something vindictive about it.

I was being paid back for something by the universe. The cat’s fangs pierced into my thumb.

Silvia was in the apartment while this was going on. She was doing renovation work. Specifically, she had removed the front door, which looked like a water-logged piece of driftwood that had once been painted Mediterranean blue. “All of the doors have to be replaced,” Silvia told me. Her boyfriend Enrico was in the kitchen while she sanded down one of the doors. He was standing by the stovetop boiling a hot espresso. “Cats!” was all he said as he watched me tangling with the cat. He didn’t know what to make of the thing. Neither did I.

nineteen sixty-eight

WHERE WERE WE? I wondered. Then one of a pack of school boys turned my way and said, “Don’t you know, you’re in 1968!” Is that why everything was so weirdly sepia-toned, as if we had all stepped out of one of those ancient, musty smelling album covers, like Waiting for the Sun by The Doors, or Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. by The Monkees? A strange place was 1968, one foot in the past, one in the future. People’s hair was merely growing then, but had not yet achieved its 1970s freak-flag length. Wide collars, floppy hats. What was I even doing in this murky picture of the past? I was standing outside a school on a street. The boys from 1968 turned and went one way, and I went the other. A girl in a plaid dress passed me by.

It was autumn in 1968, a rainy autumn, or was it a rainy spring? It was cool, moist, there were wet leaves on the mottled asphalt of the street. I walked and walked and soon I was in my old neighborhood on Long Island, which wouldn’t be built for another 17 years or so, but here it was, and the houses were all finished. Jocko and his family were outside their home, which was across the street from my old house, and the sun had just come out. We used to play right over there, in the sand dunes between his house and the neighbors’, and wrestle in the mud. One time he even sprayed us with his sister’s tropical perfume, which made the hornets and the bees of the neighborhood go wild with lust. This time, he was kneeling before a stack of roofing tiles while his brothers did the hard work. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you doing okay, man?” I said. Jocko looked up at me, good-natured Sicilian that he was, and said, “Yeah, of course. Just this renovation job is taking forever.” It was. The façade was missing. I could see his room up on the second floor, the wind gusting through. “Where do you sleep at night?” I asked Jocko. “We have to sleep here,” he sighed. “But it sure does get cold at night.”

In the back of the house, I found stacks of utility uniforms, the kinds that construction workers wear. These piles formed elaborate patterns, so that it almost looked like they were a deck of playing cards. I was baffled by the uniforms and knew not what to make of the find.

From there, I walked on.

Eventually, I wound up back at the school where I started. It was a brick building, like all of the school buildings in the district, which had been, per chance, constructed in 1968. I stood there waiting outside of the school while other parents waited for their children. Just then, my friend El Scorcho, a Latin folk singer with a faint moustache I knew from Estonia, arrived. He came down the hill on his bicycle to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel. He too was here in 1968, and his clothing was of the modern fashion. He wore a brown leather jacket, his black hair was becoming unruly, and he smelled of incense and marijuana. As soon as he saw me, he slowed his peddling and came to a stop. “Oh, you’re here too. You’re in 1968 too,” he said. “What are we doing in 1968?” I asked him. “Beats me,” he said. “I’ve been stuck in 1968 all week. But do you want to get some tacos? I found a place that’s good. Jim Morrison even goes there.”

frida and saskia

FRIDA AND SASKIA came to visit Estonia. They booked for themselves an exclusive suite in an Old Town hotel, one with its own traditional sauna. We sat by the fireplace in the suite together, waiting for the sauna to warm up and drinking tea. Saskia was at the table, thumbing through a fresh copy of Eesti Ekspress. Frida’s older sister looked the same, with her red-hair parted down the center, and she was wearing a t-shirt with a vest over it. I’m not sure why Saskia was so engrossed by Ekspress, because she couldn’t understand a word of the Estonian language, but maybe she liked the cartoons? She seemed in high spirits, whatever the case.

Frida stretched out on the couch. She was wearing a dark dress, maybe black, maybe navy colored, and seemed quite tired from all the travel and very unimpressed. Her brown hair fell across the couch pillows like waves of grain tossed about by an autumn wind, and she reminded me of one of those slightly jaded Romanov princesses from before the Revolution. I surveyed this woman from end to end and from head to toe. Frida looked me over with a glum mix of pity and boredom. She yawned. I took a blanket and draped it over her legs. “Why did you do that?” Frida said. “I was afraid you might get cold,” I told her. “But I wasn’t cold,” she said. She took out her phone and showed it to me. There was a photo of her and her husband there. They were embracing each other and both topless. Frida put the phone quickly away. “I’m a married woman. Married.” She repeated the word as if it had great eternal meaning.

“But married women also need to stay warm,” I said.

Saskia looked up from the newspaper at that moment. “Cute!” was all she said. She smiled at me. “Frida, do you remember him being so cute? Because I had no memory of him being so cute. He sure is cute!” “That’s always nice to hear,” I said. Frida lounged on in tranquil lethargy, eyeing me with a mix of frustration and half-amused interest. The nerve of this man to barge into her life again like this. Why couldn’t he just let her go? Why did it keep on happening?

I presented her next with a gift, a box wrapped in old-fashioned wrapping paper with small evergreen trees painted on it. Frida carefully undid its ribbon, and opened the parcel in a way that the paper could be reused. Inside there was a small toy piano, like the type that Fisher Price might make, except made of metal. Frida gave me a funny look and pressed down on the keys. The piano made a playful, tinny, musical sound. “This is for your children,” I told Frida.

To be honest, I had no idea how many children she had. We hadn’t spoken in years and I knew nothing about her anymore, other than it was her fixed policy and heartfelt desire that I would continue to know nothing. Frida gave me a clear-blue-eyed glance and a sad half smile. I stroked her legs again. Then Saskia set the copy of Ekspress down abruptly and looked over. “Well, you two love birds” she said. “I think the sauna is ready now.” It was ready. It was hot.

b‐boys makin’ with the apteek

AD-ROCK AND MIKE D were in the Raeapteek. Ad-Rock was wearing his red t-shirt and Mike D toted a stolen VW hood ornament around his neck. It was a summer’s day and there was light through the windows. It fell upon the jars of burnt bees, bleached dog feces, dried deer penises, and other potent medieval remedies. They were impressed, to say the least, especially by the thick, ancient volumes of the Burchard family, the original owners of the apothecary which, to their surprise, were full of dope rhymes about wack aldermen and fly maidens.

I be smokin’ roaches in the vestibule, in the next millennium I’ll still be old school.

“But where’s Yauch,” I asked? This was taking place in the past, you see, long before the sad, unnecessary, and tragic death of the vital MCA. “Yauch went to Helsinki,” Ad-Rock said. “He went to go to a Kaurismäki film screening with Lars von Trier.” I could see him then, with his nose to the sea, sniffing the Gulf of Finland. I could see him traveling on Tallink. I was worried about Yauch disappearing into a cinema in Helsinki though with this notoriously difficult Danish director. They would no doubt go out drinking. There would no doubt be pool hall fights. But then I remembered that Yauch had toured the world. Yauch had leapt into hotel pools from third-floor windows. Yauch had rapped alongside strippers in cages beneath giant inflatable phalluses. Yauch once made out with Madonna during the Like a Virgin Tour in ’85.

Yauch also had a beard like a billy goat.

“You don’t need to worry about Yauch,” Ad-Rock told me. “He always comes out unscathed.”

Yes, Yauch would turn up unscathed off the ship in Tallinn Harbor, munching on some fresh Karelian pies. Mike and Ad-Rock would have rhymes galore to share from the archives of the Raeapteek. And no matter what happened after that, the B-Boys would rhyme the rhyme well.

registration

ESMERALDA came in wearing a green dress. She arrived with the others, pointing out her name at the registration with her pretty ringed fingers. Her name was there, as was mine just a few lines away. I was surprised that she even remembered me. I was certain I had been entirely forgotten, maybe on purpose. She had skipped town months before, but here she was again in the full flesh. I asked Esmeralda where she had been all this time. If she only knew how many black nights I had walked home thinking of her, or half expecting her to appear from some shadow or behind some corner, only to whistle on alone in solemn disappointment. She said that she had been busy. ‘I’ve been so busy,’ she said. She was a busy kind of woman.

In the summer, during the festival, I would watch her walking up and down the street. She was always talking to someone, and she was mostly in a good mood when she wasn’t having one of her sad-looking sulky days, when she sat in the corner staring out the café windows. I asked Esmeralda why she hadn’t responded to any of my love letters, but she told me that there was no need to. She did this fluidly, as if she was dancing between the registration desk and the coffee. There were many bureaucrats in white shirts buzzing around. Her potato brown hair was pulled back. There was something about those eyes. Esmeralda has clever, fox-like eyes.

I could see her soft comforting milky white chest poking out of the top of that dress she had on, the same way you might see a gold coin reflecting the sunlight at the bottom of a clearwater lake or pool. Or the same way you might see a distant light in the night sky and wonder if it was a planet. What struck me was how at ease we were with this whole thing by now. It had become the default for us. It ebbed, it flowed, it undulated, rolled along and vibrated but it was reliably there, as sure and as trustworthy as the sunshine. ‘But you do know that I love you,’ I told her at registration. Esmeralda only smiled, her smart eyes drawing up into half moons. She placed a finger on my lips and said, “Hush, hush, hush.” Then I felt her all over me and in every part of me like a March wind. In my bones, in my blood, in my hair.

Everywhere.

sand street beach

I SWAM OUT to the end of the bay, to where it connects with the sound, just off the point. The water was darker and deeper here and the current was just too strong. Turning back was hopeless, so I let the water carry me all the way around the point to Sand Street Beach. Remember Sand Street Beach? Wasn’t there even a little shelter there, at least in the old days? Maybe it’s still there, with the names of aspiring lovers carved into its sturdy wooden walls.

Joanie loves Chachi.

It was there there that I emerged, dripping salt water and sand. It wasn’t such a long walk home, but a storm was setting in, and the air was thick with thunder and that ominous grayblue feeling. The wind picked up and danced with the cedar branches and I began the hike. Sand Street connected to Christian Avenue. Christian Avenue intersected with Quaker Path. I had this feeling all along that a hundred eyeballs were watching me through the windows of white clapboard houses that had once belonged to dead whaling ship captains.