No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
“Just the one drink for you all tonight, huh?” Daisy says, and flashes them her most waitressly smile. She practices it every morning in the mirror, the quick flick of the chin down, the dimples shining toward them, the curling of one side of her lips, the dancing, twitching, of her left pupil. Boss said she should practice, because when she was first hired, she would scowl, unknowingly, at every customer. You gotta sell it, the boss said.
California in the year 2075 offers the intrepid traveler a cornucopia of sad marvels, unnerving grotesqueries, and outright horrors. From the sea-scoured coastline, which, due to hurricane, typhoon and tsunami, has been eroded inland an average of 22 miles; to the mad and anarchic self-governing homeless encampment of Greater Los Angeles; to the scorched and moribund Redwood Forest; to the eerily abandoned ghost town of San Francisco; to the desiccated vestiges of America’s once-rich farmland; to the scalding wastes of The Inland Empire – California is truly an adventure tourist’s Eden.
I could get lost in my small hometown when it rains. A whirling dervish of directional confusion. How I made it out of the state, I’ll never know.
These were people’s memories that I saw. Some were pleasant. Others not so much. People carried a lot in them, stories you’d never even imagine were real or possible. My father used to sometimes tell stories back in the village. He’d always say a good storyteller renews the story with each telling, weaving in memories and personal experiences to subtly change it and make it a new story.
In her old life, her eyes would have been anxiously scanning the room, searching for flaws. Was there enough food? Were the flowers fresh enough? Were the guests having a good time?
Marissa leans a little closer, uses her confidential voice, though she’s pretty sure even his good ear doesn’t work so well these days. And he probably isn’t paying attention. Around them people are eating dinner. Chairs are being slid in and out at tables. Low voices like pillows buffer an occasional impatient “what?” and the frustrated response, “I. SAID. THIS. IS….”