EPISODE 3

Jack watches the clowns. Without the big floppy shoes and wigs, dressed in jeans and t-shirts instead of costumes, and without all that makeup, they were probably pretty decent people. So why, he wondered, did they fill him with such unease. He looks to his friends. Pat is still frozen in fear; Liz is waiting up ahead, impatient to get to The Bar None; Josh is at Pat’s side, attempting to pull her along with him into the street. They are so still, they could be the subjects of a tableaux painting, frozen in time.

Then a clown, a girl clown, running to catch up with the others, trips over her big clown feet. She careens off Jack and goes sprawling on the sidewalk, tearing her baggy polka dot pants. Her red and green wig falls off her head and lands in a puddle in the gutter. Her shoes flip off her feet and cartwheel down the street, one going east, the other west. She wipes a splash of mud off her face and takes a smear of white greasepaint and red lipstick with it, showing fair, freckled skin and a rueful grin behind the painted red smirk.

“Jeepers. Just what I need!” she says. The clown scrambles after her wig and jams it over her own brown hair – caught up loosely in a pony tail. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she asks Jack.

Jack shakes his head. Who could be afraid of a clown? Even Pat is unfrozen now, coming over to ask the clown if she is all right, if she skinned her knee.

“I’m fine,” the clown says, now running after her left shoe. The other clowns are disappearing into a building with a marque reading “Clown Try-Outs Tonight Only”

“I’m going to be late!” She says, jamming the shoe on to her foot, going after the right one. “If I miss the audition, I won’t get a second chance.” She catches the shoe and tucks it under her arm, racing awkwardly to the building before the two large security clowns shut her out. “Wish me luck!”

“Good luck,” Pat says.

“See,” Jack says, too loudly to Pat, “nothing to be afraid of. Just a girl dressed as a clown.”

“Sure,” says Pat. “That one is a girl dressed up as a clown, but what if she were a clown dressed up as a girl?”

“And I thought I was nuts,” Jack says, drinking again from his Koolaid and alcohol.

“I will protect you against clowns,” Josh tells Pat, gallantly.

“No, you won’t,” Pat tells him. “You’ll try, but you won’t manage.”

“I will, I will,”Josh says. “When your hope is gone, when the clowns are breathing

down your neck with their fresh peppermint breath and you feel that there is no way out of the clown car of fate, I will save you.”

“No, you won’t, ” Pat says again. She sidles up to Jack, takes his drink from him and drains the cup. “Jack might.”

Before Jack can react, Pat twirls away from him in a pirouette, grabs Liz by the arm and skips off with her down the street – singing “Everybody Loves Saturday Night.”

Jack and Josh catch up.

“It’s Friday night,” Josh points out. Pat ignores him; urges Liz to sing.

“I don’t know the words,” Liz says.

“What’s to know?” Pat asks, breaking into song again. “Everybody loves Saturday night…”

Liz, laughing chimes in, then asks, “Is there no end to the old songs you know?” then: “there must be more than the one line. You can’t just keep singing “Everybody loves Saturday night.”

“I can so,” Pat says. “I’ve just survived a near-Clown experience.”

****

And then they’re at the door of The Bar None, and it’s all good, Jack thinks. He’s with his friends. They’re laughing. They’re singing. They’re nuts – or at least Pat is – just as nuts as he is. There are no shimmers of color, no unreal corridors, just this:

A dark street of car body shops, deserted alleyways, low rent offices, and grimy cafes. It’s the kind of area you wouldn’t want to be in in the daytime. You wouldn’t belong. You wouldn’t be caught dead in the cafes, with their industrial coffee pots and thick china mugs, formica tables and vinyl chairs like something out of a Norman Rockwell illustration; not an espresso machine or a bistro table in sight.

The one bright spot on the street is the big neon Bar None sign, over a small door of what used to be a warehouse. There is a line up of hopefuls snaking their way up to the entrance, well dressed college kids mostly, but some who look like they’re still in high school. The doorman opens the door to let in two people who look like they’re of age, and a burst of music comes out, thankfully drowning out Pat’s one line rendition of “Everybody Loves Saturday Night.”

The doorman turns to the girls at the head of the line.

“What year were you born?” he asks one, checking the ID in his hand. “Yeah? What month?”

He makes a buzzer noise. “Brrzzzt. Wrong answer.”

“Did I say November? I meant June,” the girl says.

“Nice try,” he goes. “Come back when you know what’s on your ID.”

The doorman opens the door, and the girls think he’s changed his mind. They rush the door. He puts an arm in front of it, blocking them. “Hey, Jack, where have you been?” he asks. “Didn’t think you guys would get here.”

He holds the door open for Pat, Liz, Josh and Jack, then closes it again. Jack can hear a volley of complaint from the people who’ve been waiting their turn to get in, and haven’t just been waved through. Yup, he thinks. It’s all good.

Inside, it takes a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness and the light show lasers, for them to get their bearings. The place is packed. The lineup outside isn’t just for show tonight, to make the club look more popular than it is. There are lineups inside too – a lineup for the bar, a mass of people standing at the entrance to the dance floor, lines of people standing around and between the tables, hoping for a vacant chair.

It’s a new DJ, Jack sees. He’s missed a few Fridays at Bar None with the gang. Some tall guy, down there in his little booth. Josh and Pat join the pack at the bar, all hollering for attention from the bartender. “Find us a table,” Pat mouths at Jack – yelling wouldn’t help, there’s no way he’d hear her. Good luck with that, he thinks, and he and Liz join the hopefuls slouching against the wall.

An unfamiliar song starts playing – unfamiliar to Jack, that is. Everyone else in the place seems to know it by heart, and they leave off waiting for their tables, leave the lineup at the bar and surge onto the dance floor.

“And Smokie…” the DJ says as a cheer goes up. “For twenty four years I’ve been living next door to Alice.”

Jack and Liz fall into two chairs that might be vacant – there are no jackets on them, no drinks in front of them and they aren’t warm with someone else’s body heat. They each grab another chair, for Josh and Pat, and watch the action on the dance floor.

The dancers swoop around in a big circle, all singing to the recording now:

“For twenty-four years I’ve been living next door to Alice.”

then, on their own own:

“Who the heck is Alice?” Except they don’t say “heck.”

“What the heck is that?” Jack asks. Only he doesn’t say “heck” either. Pat and Josh are down there, he sees, Pat right into it, Josh hanging back a bit, not singing.

“Bar None mating ritual,” Liz tells him. “Want to have a go?”

Jack doesn’t hear. Liz yells, louder, and louder again.

“No thanks,” Jack yells, just as the music suddenly dies. “I do my mating dance in private.”

There are hoots and hollers from all within hearing distance, and then his words are repeated in waves of “What did he says,” laughter always following. Jack wishes he could crawl under his seat.

“I’ve seen your mating dance,” Liz reminds him. “And that’s the last time I’ll drink tequila.” She smiles at Jack, taking some of the sting away. It wasn’t that bad was it? He can’t quite remember…

Josh and Pat make their way to the table, miraculously bearing beer. Jack drinks, hiding behind the glass.

“Lets see,” Liz says, Pat is afraid of clowns, Josh is afraid of being poisoned,”

“And dancing,” Pat says, digging Josh in the ribs,

“What are you afraid of,” Liz asks Jack.

Corridors, Jack thinks. “The way you make me feel,” he says, raising his beer glass to her in a toast, but it’s too late. His words echo in his own ears, and he’s back in the corridor with the fun house doors and the bright colors, the irrational fear.

One of the fun house doors slowly creaks open.. The blue door, he sees, and there is something in there. Something with a whiny little girl voice. “Jack,” it calls. “Jack!”

Jack can’t help himself. He feels as if he is being pulled towards the door by an invisible force. He peers in, and there is a doll sitting on the bed in there, a large doll with deadly white arms and staring blue eyes and blond synthetic hair, a wicked smile on her bright red lips. Jack blinks and the back of the doll’s head is to him. He can see the holes in the doll’s plastic scalp, the tufts of hair poking out to form perfect curls. He blinks again, and the doll’s head is turning towards him again, completing a 360 degree turn: those ice blue eyes, those red lips parting now to show dainty sharp teeth.

The doll beckons and Jack jumps.

“You okay, there, bud?” he hears. Josh’s voice. It’s Josh’s voice! Jack opens his eyes. He’s still hiding behind his beer. He drinks, swallows.

“Sure I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“The way you jumped just now?” Josh says. “I figured you were having a seizure.” He’s smiling, but there is a lack of surety about his words. “You’re not epileptic, are you? The lights aren’t getting to you?”

Jack laughs it off. Josh is training to be a paramedic. “Goose walked over my grave,” he says. And shivers.

Back in the corridor. The doll is beckoning. “Jack,” it says…

And then it floats off the bed and starts walking towards him with jerky little stiff-legged steps.

TO BE CONTINUED!

EPISODE 2

Jack shuts his eyes tight against the specter of the multi colored doors. He thinks he can hear strange sounds coming from behind them – rinky dink carnival midway music behind one, the whooshing sound of a windy day, or maybe of air being sucked into a vacuum, from behind another. The sounds don’t seem like they should be scary, except for the evil clown laughter behind the purple door.

Then there is another sound, the sound of someone making his voice reverberate like a television announcer from the days of black and white: “Lost in Space,” the voice says. “Jack is Lost in Space.”

It’s Josh. Jack knows it’s his friend Josh. No one else is cheesy enough to imitate the announcer’s voice from a long ago TV show that no one else even remembers existed. Next he’ll say…

Jack waits, relaxing now, but still not ready to open his eyes.

“Earth calling Jack, come in, Jack.”

A flood of relief courses through Jack’s veins. He opens his eyes to see Pat’s familiar grimy corridor, and realizes he has walked past Pat’s apartment. The door number next to him is 4C. Pat’s apartment is 3C. Jack hears two more voices from behind him, one making “dee dee dee,” sounds, the other making “doo doo doo” sounds in what is supposed to be the theme to The Twilight Zone. Jack smiles. Good old Pat and Liz. He wonders what color Liz’s hair will be today.

Before Jack turns around to face his friends, he reaches out to touch the tarnished metal plaque of 4C, needing some tactile proof that he is in Pat’s corridor, not in the fun house of his nightmare or hallucination, or whatever that is… was.

He lets his fingers run lightly over the rough dirty wooden door – and wishes he hasn’t as his fingers meet something unpleasantly slimy. Grease from a pizza box, he hopes, rubbing his fingers on the liquor store bag in his hand. He turns, prepares to make some smart comment to his friends about their knowledge of old TV shows.

Cranberry. Liz’ hair is the color of cranberries.

Josh holds a can of beer under his chin as if it were a microphone, adopts a Rod Serling voice.

“Jack Spratt, 22 years old, thought he knew where his friend Pat lived. Little did he know that her corridor lead to a wormhole of …The Twilight Zone!”

Jack’s relief dissolves. “How did you know?” he asks, panic welling up. It is bad enough that he is experiencing fun house corridors that aren’t there, but how would his friends know what’s in his mind? Are they in on it?

Jack’s voice is loud and shrill. “How did you know?” he asks again.

“Know what?” Josh asks, uneasily. “How did I know what?”

“Nothing.” Jack pauses. So this is what being paranoid feels like.

Josh waits for an answer.

“The twilight zone wormhole thing.” Jack says, attempting to laugh it off. To his own ears at least, his laugh has a hollow, whistling past the graveyard tone, and Josh is starting to look alarmed. “I’m just messing with you,” Jack says.

The door to 4C opens and a crabby old face peers out.

Pat notices, beckons at Jack to come into her apartment. “We have to be quiet,” she says. Then: “is there something wrong?”

Jack gives himself a shake, replies, “wrong?”

“You walked right past us.” Josh says, “Did you forget where Pat lives?”

Another shiver goes down Jack’s spine. For a second he thinks that maybe there is something seriously wrong with him – then he looks as his friends’ faces; Pat, being concerned, Liz, being beautiful, and Josh clowning, as usual, and shrugs it off – determined, this time to get past whatever this is.

“I’d never forget where Pat lives,” Jack says, and gallantly presents his gifts of tequila and chips to her, with a theatrical bow. “You might.”

A shimmer of cartoon colors blinks in front of Jack’s eyes. He shivers again.

“Me? Why would I forget Pat?” Josh asks. “You’re the one who doesn’t even remember where she lives!”

Pat looks into Jack’s bag. “What did you bring?” she asks, but Jack doesn’t answer. He’s staring, Josh’s words echoing in his head, Lost in Space again.

Liz touches his shoulder.

“Jack?” Liz asks. “You okay?”

“Not enough sleep, too much coffee,” Jack answers. Then, answering Pat’s question: “Tequila. Want some?”

“Forget it,” Liz answers, “Not after last time.”

They walk into Pat’s apartment. It’s as much a “poor student” apartment as Jack’s – except that Pat still is a poor student. She’s a poor medical student, which has some perks. A bottle of the alcohol the hospital uses in the lab is on the kitchen cabinet, together with a blender, ice, and packets of Kool-Aid. Liz loads the ingredients into the blender, starts it up.

“Last time was fun,” Jack says, almost shouting to be heard over the noise.

“In your dreams,” Liz says, laughing.

“If only you knew,” Jack says.

The door to 4C opens and Jack is relieved to see an ordinary man come out. A crabby, old ordinary man, dressed in baggy sweat pants and an over-sized sweater. He looks like he might live on delivery pizza. Jack stops worrying about what might be on his finger.

The man gives the group a sour look as he passes Pat’s open door, takes a pointed look at his watch.

“It’s only 8:00,” Pat tells him. “We’ll be gone soon.” She shuts her door.

“You’re going to get me kicked out,” she says to Liz. “Why are you so late, anyways, Jack?”

“Work,” Jack answers. “Some of us work.”

“Oh, stop bragging,” Liz says. She pours the drink from the blender into a plastic cup and hands it to Jack. It’s a bright color of a shade never seen in nature.

Jack sniffs it suspiciously. “What is this?”

“Punch,” Liz says. “Drink up.”

“It looks horrible. I don’t even know what color it is,” Jack says.

Liz gives it a stir. “Chartreuse, I think.”

“Can’t I have some tequila?” Jack asks. “I brought tequila.”

“No,” you have to drink that,” Liz says.

“Or a beer,” Jack says. “Josh has a beer.”

“Josh never drinks Liz and Pat’s punch.” Josh says, ” Josh is afraid of being poisoned.”

Jack sips the concoction. It’s sickly sweet and nasty bitter all at once. Jack goes to look at the alcohol bottle and the Kool-Aid packet beside the blender. “Alcohol and Kool-Aid? Where did you get the recipe, Jonestown?”

“That’s right,” Josh says. “Liz is Reverend Jim Jones in disguise, and we’re all suicidal cult members. She’s planning to take us out, one by one.”

A shiver goes down Jack’s spine. He takes another sip, covering up. “Do I have to drink it all?”

“Don’t drink it at all,” Josh says. “That’s my advice.”

“Just because you’re afraid of being poisoned,” Liz says.

“Can we stop?” Jack asks, his voice strident.

Liz, Josh and Pat look at each other. “Stop what?” Pat asks.

“All this talk of twilight zones and being poisoned and forgetting where Pat lives,” Jack says, his voice unnecessarily loud. “Can’t we just have some laughs?”

Liz, Josh and Pat look at each other again. They all think they are enjoying themselves.

“Yeah, we can do that,” Pat says. She takes Jack’s drink from him and swallows it down.

“See,” she says. “No poison. And you know where I live, so there’s no problem there. Josh is going to shut up about The Twilight Zone, but I can’t promise he won’t bring up Gilligan’s Island or Flintstones or some other mouldy oldie TV show.”

“And Pat will probably sing some mouldy oldie songs,” Josh warns.

“That’s OK,” Jack says. “I like the Flintstones and Pat’s old songs.”

From outside there is a shuffle of feet on the carpet, coming towards Pat’s place.

“Great, another noise complaint,” Pat says. “Let’s go.” She refills the cup with what’s left in the blender, hands it to Jack.

“Where?” Josh asks. “The Bar None?”

“Good enough,” Liz says.

Pat leads the way out of the apartment, the door almost hitting the neighbor and another man, the manager, who are poised to knock. The manager gives Jack and Josh a hard look, memorizing them for future reference. Jack and Josh shield their drinks, try to look harmless.

“This is a quiet building,” the neighbor calls after them. “A quiet building!” His voice is loud, louder than necessary. Doors pop open on both sides of the corridor as Josh, Jack, Liz and Pat make their way to the elevator. Each of the other tenants is old. Old and crabby, Jack thinks, until one of the women yells out:

“Enjoy yourselves! You young people should go enjoy yourselves!” then, to the original neighbor: “Quiet, you old coot! This is a quiet building!”

Another voice, in support of the coot, makes a reply from across the hall, and by the time the elevator doors close, , it sounds like the entire third floor is shouting about being quiet.

By the time they reach the lobby vestibule, Josh, Jack, Liz and Pat are laughing so hard they can hardly stand up. There are no shimmers of color for Jack, no fun house corridors, just the plain brown ordinariness of Pat’s apartment building and the nice feeling of being with friends, just like Jack had been looking forward to all week.

“Come on, young people,” Jack says, “The Bar None awaits!”

Jack takes Pat’s drink and swallows some of the obnoxious mixture. The taste hasn’t improved any, but the color isn’t upsetting him any more.

Pat sings: “Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine, when you gonna let me get sober,”

Jack joins in: “Leave me alone, let me go home, let me go home and start over…”

Josh takes the cup, sips, and gives it right back.

“Definitely not fruit of the vine,” he says. Fruit of the lab, maybe.”

Jack takes the cup back. “Kind of grows on you though.”

“Bar None, here we come!” he shouts into the street, and charges forward, leaving Pat and the others in his wake.

Liz and Josh run to catch up. It takes a second for them to realize Pat isn’t following. When they look back, Pat is standing straight, staring ahead.

Josh makes his voice do the TV announcer thing again. “Lost in Space…” he says.

Pat blinks at him, her face pale.

“I don’t like clowns,” she says. “Save me from the clowns.”

The shiver comes back to Jack’s spine. He doesn’t know what Pat’s talking about until Liz says: “It’s only a street carnival,” and he sees them. Dozens and dozens of clowns, all galloping towards them.

TO BE CONTINUED!

EPISODE 1

Jack is in that space somewhere between dreaming and awake. Oh, he knows he’s in bed. He can feel the heaviness of the quilt against his legs, and the unyielding lump of the pillow jammed into his neck. The pillow is in exactly the wrong place. It’s squashed between the headboard and his neck, pushing his head into an awkward angle. Still in that never land of almost sleep, or almost awake, Jack realizes that he’s getting a crick in his neck and his earlobe is throbbing. How can such a small thing as an earlobe make its discomfort so evident? Jack thinks that he should be able to just move his head slightly to get more comfortable, or even to lift his hand above his head to tweak the pillow just a bit, to give it a thump that will release his head from from being squashed against the headboard, and unfold his earlobe. But he can’t move. His legs are trapped by something – something heavy and soft, and his head is held in some kind of a vise.

It occurs to him that his legs might be in quicksand, but why would there be quicksand in a corridor? Jack cannot figure that out. He’s in a corridor.. He’s also in bed, in that never land of almost asleep, but he’s in a corridor in that never land of almost awake. The corridor isn’t the straightforward kind, wide and straight with doors on either side, neatly marked with apartment numbers, like the grubby corridor that smells ever so slightly of bug killer and other people’s dinners, in the apartment building where his friend Pat lives. It’s a fun house corridor, a Bugs Bunny cartoon corridor, where the doors leading off of it are strong colors that might have tipped out of a crayon box- lime green and strawberry pink, lemon yellow and sky blue. If he could hold his head at the proper angle, the doors might be proper rectangles. But they aren’t proper rectangles. The doors are askew with odd angles and uneven edges.

He wishes he could move his head.

Jack doesn’t like the corridor. He doesn’t know why. The colors are pretty and it doesn’t smell of cooked cabbage and curry, but it’s not a corridor that seems like it would lead to the home of a good friend, someone he’s known since grade eight, and lets, face it, if we’re going to be honest, and where else can you be honest but in a dream? - has had a bit of a crush on since grade nine. Not as big as the crush he’s had on Liz for the same amount of time, but if Pat wanted to switch roles from pal to buddy, he wouldn’t say “no.” No, this corridor reminds him of the ones in the haunted mansion exhibit at the amusement park. Soon, very soon, there will be a creaking and grinding of gears and the floor will buckle and spin. The doors will open and horrible things will leap out at him, cackling with laughter – evil clowns and walking dolls, drunks with grasping hands and bad breath - other, unmentionable frights.

Jack doesn’t want to be in the corridor, he doesn’t want to walk further down the corridor and further into danger, but his legs, traitors that they are, have somehow regained their ability to move, and they’re moving him forward.

“I’m on the wrong ride!” Jack screams out. “This isn’t the ride that I have a ticket for!

But his legs keep going,

“No, No!” Jack screams. And now things are getting worse. Somewhere, behind one of the doors, maybe the orange door, maybe the chartreuse one, there is banging. Banging and banging – construction work for more corridors and more scary things, and Jack doesn’t know what to do, and his ear hurts and his legs are going to sleep, and he sits straight up in bed and screams:

“Knock it off!”

He looks at the clock on his bedside table, yells louder:

“It’s three o’clock in the morning, I’m trying to sleep down here!”

And the noise stops. The people upstairs, the owners of the house from whom Jack rents a basement suite, keep strange hours, Jack has noticed. He doesn’t remember them doing it before, but now they’re constantly waking him up in the middle of the night, hammering on their floor, his ceiling with something that might be a broom handle. He’ll have to talk to them about. it.

Jack thumps his pillow into a soft and malleable shape and settles it behind his head. The quilt has managed to twist itself around his legs. He sits up again and untangles himself, then swallows – his throat dry and painful. He feels like he’s been shouting for hours, but how can he shout when he’s been asleep? It was a sound sleep, too, he thinks, a dreamless sleep, and his stupid landlord had to wake him up. Four hours before he has to get up and go to work, and then there’s the party at Pat’s. He can’t afford a sleepless night.

The room is dark. There is no light other than the faint glow given off by his bedside clock. Still, it’s enough to irritate. Jack buries his head into the covers. He’s not comfortable. He’s not relaxed and for some reason his earlobe now feels swollen and hot and full of pins and needles. And, oh great. He has to pee. He has to get up, out of his cocoon, take himself across the floor of his bedroom, into his own corridor, if you can call it that, the three feet of space that leads to his bathroom door and his kitchen door.

Into the corridor.

Why, for just a second, was there a prickle of dread along his spine? He gets very tense. Listening for something that isn’t there, looking for something that seems to be just outside of his range of vision. His heart thuds, his hands sweat. And it’s dark, so dark. Even the numbers on his clock radio seem dim. He feels panic rise in his chest as he scrambles to sit up and turn on the light before…

Before “they” whoever, whatever “they” are, get him.

Light floods the room, illuminating his poor student basement suite that is all he can afford even though he isn’t a poor student anymore. Now he’s a poor working stiff. A poor working stiff who has to get up in… he looks at the clock… three hours and forty seven minutes. But there is Pat’s party to look forward to. Lovely Pat. He hasn’t seen his friends all week – Josh and Liz and Pat. They’ve all been too busy. So now he’ll go, he’ll have a few drinks, some laughs. It’ll be the Four Musketeers again, just like in high school, when they spent most of their waking hours together.

Jack smiles, leans against his pillows, drowsy and content. Now what was he doing? Why is he awake at – he looks at the clock – 3:12? Oh yeah. He has to pee.

******

The alarm goes off. 7:00 AM, and he feels like he’s just dozed off after a hard night of waiting behind dry eyelids for sleep to come. At 7:25 he yawns, pulls himself out of bed, pulls on the clothes that are folded neatly on the chair beside the bed. White button up shirt, dark blue pants. It’s started to feel like a uniform. A prison uniform. Stumble to the sink, brush teeth, swipe of deodorant in the pits – no time for a shower, and what does it matter anyways?

Now shaving, bleary eyed. He’s going to be late for work, and he feels like he hasn’t slept at all. If he didn’t have to shave, that’d buy him three minutes, he figures. He wonders what he’d look like with a beard. Well, he’s finished half of his face, so maybe half a beard. If he stopped right now, right this second, he could got back to bed for a minute. His thoughts tumble around, but his razor just keeps stroking his face, his hand automatically performing the actions of shaving and dunking the razor under the tap to clear out the shaving foam and shaving again without his mind having anything to say about the matter.

Tying his tie. Another waste of time. And why, in his position, does he have to wear a tie? Jack knows the answer: Company policy. Whenever there isn’t a good answer for something, it’s “company policy.” How long does this little morning ritual take? Another half a minute, maybe. Can he bill the company for four minutes of his precious morning time, following their stupid directives? Add it to his time slip once a week maybe. 4 minutes a day, five days a week – that’s 20 minutes. It would add up. Jack sighs. He doesn’t want to be paid for it. He just wants to not do it anymore. He wants the sleep. Two hundred and ten seconds of sleep.

And now he’s out the door and on his way to the bus.

Out the door and on the way to the bus, as long as Rover is in his fenced in dog run. Rover is the only dog he’s ever met with the actual name “Rover.” Rover is the only dog he’s never liked. Jack looks nervously towards the dog run – and a hundred pounds of slathering, barking Doberman/Rottweiller cross springs out at him, running full tilt into the chain link fence.

Jack jumps. No matter that this happens every morning, Jack jumps.

“Down! Rover!” he yells.

Rover gives him what can only be described as a contemptuous look and saunters away from the fence, checks out his water dish, and squats to pee.

“Some macho dog. You’re supposed to lift your leg.” Jack mutters.

Rover snarls and Jack backs away. He can see the bus coming, and breaks into a trot. Behind him, if a Doberman/Rottweiller cross can laugh, Rover is.

****

Finally, the work day is done. Jack is on his way to Pat’s apartment with a bottle of tequila in a liquor store bag in one hand and a grocery bag filled with chips and pretzels in the other.

He reaches the vestibule door of Pat’s apartment, and dials her number. Sounds of a party come out at him, and he smiles. The first time he’s felt like smiling all day.

“About time you got here,” Pat says. “Come on up!”

She buzzes him in, and he’s still smiling as he rides the elevator up and gets off at her floor, making himself walk, not run to her door. Even the drab, dingy corridor makes him feel welcome, and the smells of other people’s dinners that waft up through the closed doors of the other apartments make him realize how hungry he is.

Then there is a feeling of light-headedness and a shimmer, and the corridor is suddenly a fun house corridor with doors that are the colors of crayons tipped right from the box, and they aren’t rectangular doors, regular doors, straightforward doors, but doors that are too tall or too short, and rise to an impossibly high ceiling in weird angles and uneven edges. Jack wants to stop, to go back, but his traitor legs propel him forward.

TO BE CONTINUED!