Three Fictional Locations (writing for fun)
Davies Park is a place vibrating which ancient laughter. Rowdy boys from the 1950s are still throwing water balloons at the Target Practice Hollow up in the tall oak tree; the knotty picnic benches still smell of pink watermelon and if you find a dirt patch clear of anthills and dig, you will discover Necco wrappers and toy boats and unperturbed innocence. Out on the water, when the mild waves strike the shore in just the right sequence, you hear the reverberations of a Hawaiian guitar and a crackling barbeque.
After sunset here, on even the cloudiest of midnights, you can see by the memory of firelight.
***
Under the city, still maintained by archaic and perpetual laws, a dirt path stretches one-third mile from West Bleeker Street to a field behind the Wonderbread bakery that is little more than a threadbare quilt of grass. In times predating zoning ordinance, a row of apartments stood with their backs to this thoroughfare, and their well-to-do inhabitants required of the burgeoning city certain protections, so that their children might always be able to traverse from what was then just plain Bleeker Street to what was then a promenade around Wylie's Pond. --The Pond was drained, filled, and relocated to Crofton Place in the Forties; the construction of the Wilker Building on one side of the path created the notion of air rights, and some two decades after the dereliction of the old brick apartments, they were torn down and the new, concrete Soler Complex sprang up, arched its back and connected itself to the Wilker. Thus did the nameless, inviolate dirt path become a tunnel.
Primarily responsible for its maintenance - both in terms of groundskeeping and the protection of its lawful provision - are a trio of city employees, legacy inheritants of a position created under the New Deal. Joined to an implacable union, they come out here two of them each day, five days a week each, thus ensuring coverage for every day of the year except Labor Day, Easter and Christmas. In a brick closet that is all that remains of the chiefest of the demolished apartments, these janitors have at their disposal a rake, a weed-wacker, a salt dispenser for icy days, some rat traps, large Maglites as much for self-defense as for nighttime work, several massive bags of brown sand used to fill in the rare pothole, and a company cellphone should any vagabond sleepers be discovered camping in the shelter of the path, whom the janitors have no authority to remove. Seven flourescent lights dangle from flexible wires above, attached to circuits in the Soler's floor (which is the path's ceiling), and which provide a weak, gray light. Every once in a while, one burns out, and it is a major operation to install a new bulb, involving the approval and participation of city officials, the janitors, and representatives of the Soler Company.
One time, one of the lights fell. The wind-tunnel effect during a particularly bad storm was officially blamed. The scar from the descent is still visible in the large stone block which lays like a discarded corpse against the wall, some twenty feet above which one stone is clearly whiter, smoother and newer than the rest. Local teenagers know that behind this block, in the well-maintained soft, old dirt, is the best place in the city to have surreptitious, outdoor sex. The janitors' schedules are regular and, in fact, posted on the closet door. No sound escapes from the compacted tunnel to either the suites above or the avenues outside. And lastly and especially, there are two distant escape routes, and if the police should enter by chance from one side, there will surely not be placed at the other side, which requires a full ten minutes' traffic to reach by any route besides the dirt path itself, navigating convoluted one-way streets.
By some miracle of city history, unknown to any human mind and uncaptured by any video camera, the path has seen a steady usage of exactly three teenage couples a day, seven days a week, never two at the same time, for the past fourteen years, including Christmas.
***
Jana's bedroom is small, sunlit and rapturous. The household itself is often mistaken for the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with its multitudinous windows and natural parallel lines, but really it was created by some anonymous, maybe imitative, architect; but that's no matter because the house is very pretty either way, and besides Jana's family got it at a price unthinkable for an authentic. There are leafy trees along the ridge, and the view from Jana's bedroom frames them like a picture.
The walls, the ceiling, and even the door are all the same whimsically sandy color of soft wood. The grooves between the lumbers are deep and inviting; on the truly sunniest days a faint amber glow works its way through them and makes the bedroom into something young Jana can easily imagine to be a time-travel device, or a submersible, or an airship. The closeness of the room only makes it all work better, somehow; from her hospital-corner, firm white bed, Jana can touch every wall.
There are shelves built in on the windowless sides (adjacent to the door) and Jana's collection of stuffed lions and teddy bears and plush cartoon characters fill them. They guard a scattered collection of pastel books -- two between a pair of porcelain bookends here, a set of five in a velveteen carrying-box there, a single bound volume full of two-page tales occupying a place of honor on the highest shelf, which is still within tiny Jana's reach. At one point her parents offered her Venetian blinds; she completely and utterly refused.
At night, when the moon is trisected by the two tallest elm trees on the ridge, Jana is transported.
After sunset here, on even the cloudiest of midnights, you can see by the memory of firelight.
***
Under the city, still maintained by archaic and perpetual laws, a dirt path stretches one-third mile from West Bleeker Street to a field behind the Wonderbread bakery that is little more than a threadbare quilt of grass. In times predating zoning ordinance, a row of apartments stood with their backs to this thoroughfare, and their well-to-do inhabitants required of the burgeoning city certain protections, so that their children might always be able to traverse from what was then just plain Bleeker Street to what was then a promenade around Wylie's Pond. --The Pond was drained, filled, and relocated to Crofton Place in the Forties; the construction of the Wilker Building on one side of the path created the notion of air rights, and some two decades after the dereliction of the old brick apartments, they were torn down and the new, concrete Soler Complex sprang up, arched its back and connected itself to the Wilker. Thus did the nameless, inviolate dirt path become a tunnel.
Primarily responsible for its maintenance - both in terms of groundskeeping and the protection of its lawful provision - are a trio of city employees, legacy inheritants of a position created under the New Deal. Joined to an implacable union, they come out here two of them each day, five days a week each, thus ensuring coverage for every day of the year except Labor Day, Easter and Christmas. In a brick closet that is all that remains of the chiefest of the demolished apartments, these janitors have at their disposal a rake, a weed-wacker, a salt dispenser for icy days, some rat traps, large Maglites as much for self-defense as for nighttime work, several massive bags of brown sand used to fill in the rare pothole, and a company cellphone should any vagabond sleepers be discovered camping in the shelter of the path, whom the janitors have no authority to remove. Seven flourescent lights dangle from flexible wires above, attached to circuits in the Soler's floor (which is the path's ceiling), and which provide a weak, gray light. Every once in a while, one burns out, and it is a major operation to install a new bulb, involving the approval and participation of city officials, the janitors, and representatives of the Soler Company.
One time, one of the lights fell. The wind-tunnel effect during a particularly bad storm was officially blamed. The scar from the descent is still visible in the large stone block which lays like a discarded corpse against the wall, some twenty feet above which one stone is clearly whiter, smoother and newer than the rest. Local teenagers know that behind this block, in the well-maintained soft, old dirt, is the best place in the city to have surreptitious, outdoor sex. The janitors' schedules are regular and, in fact, posted on the closet door. No sound escapes from the compacted tunnel to either the suites above or the avenues outside. And lastly and especially, there are two distant escape routes, and if the police should enter by chance from one side, there will surely not be placed at the other side, which requires a full ten minutes' traffic to reach by any route besides the dirt path itself, navigating convoluted one-way streets.
By some miracle of city history, unknown to any human mind and uncaptured by any video camera, the path has seen a steady usage of exactly three teenage couples a day, seven days a week, never two at the same time, for the past fourteen years, including Christmas.
***
Jana's bedroom is small, sunlit and rapturous. The household itself is often mistaken for the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with its multitudinous windows and natural parallel lines, but really it was created by some anonymous, maybe imitative, architect; but that's no matter because the house is very pretty either way, and besides Jana's family got it at a price unthinkable for an authentic. There are leafy trees along the ridge, and the view from Jana's bedroom frames them like a picture.
The walls, the ceiling, and even the door are all the same whimsically sandy color of soft wood. The grooves between the lumbers are deep and inviting; on the truly sunniest days a faint amber glow works its way through them and makes the bedroom into something young Jana can easily imagine to be a time-travel device, or a submersible, or an airship. The closeness of the room only makes it all work better, somehow; from her hospital-corner, firm white bed, Jana can touch every wall.
There are shelves built in on the windowless sides (adjacent to the door) and Jana's collection of stuffed lions and teddy bears and plush cartoon characters fill them. They guard a scattered collection of pastel books -- two between a pair of porcelain bookends here, a set of five in a velveteen carrying-box there, a single bound volume full of two-page tales occupying a place of honor on the highest shelf, which is still within tiny Jana's reach. At one point her parents offered her Venetian blinds; she completely and utterly refused.
At night, when the moon is trisected by the two tallest elm trees on the ridge, Jana is transported.