4. How I Lost Thirty-five Dollars - 
                             the Sequel

I surrendered my red Kia to one of the fifteen eager parking valets. Carefully, on wine-purple stiletto sandals, I set out to find the Dohner party. The Willows, a harbor-side restaurant and bar was just leaning in to the Happy Hour.

I found the group on the water-side patio fairly close to the bar. After greetings all around, I was seated at the table with a coveted view of the bay and its moored sailboats.

The summons to this gathering was predicated on attending a performance by the son of my long-time friend, Rachelle. Her son, Kent, and his friend were positioned in front of mikes, ready to serenade the crowd.

I glanced around the outdoor room. The Willows was known to be a pricey ‘meet market.’ Women with long, frothy hair wore summery crepe tops showing toned arms. Near the bar, men in business suits, or dressed in a calculatedly casual way, were all directed toward the feminine patrons who were at small tables, very purposefully not looking back. There were more blue-shirted wait staff than customers.

Menus were scattered around our table.

“What are you going to have?” asked Rachelle.

“Whatever they’re offering for Happy Hour,” I replied.

She informed me that happy hour at The Willows was a less expensive, truncated version of the in-house menu. I ordered a $15.00 mojito and a $12.00 house salad. Rachelle’s sister, Carli, ordered the lobster roll despite the $29.00 cost.

“Kent, we can’t hear you,” Rachelle hollered toward her son. “Turn up the audio; it’s coming out all muffled.”

 Kent, doing his best cool jazz persona, shook his head at her and avoided her gaze.

“Come on, do you think we came here to listen to fuzzy background music?”

 Carli suggested that she was embarrassing him.

“Somebody’s got to tell him,” she retorted.

Our drinks arrived, all in plastic cups or in wine glasses, which were on the short and narrow side. The group grumbled. I discovered that my wonderful seat was not the prize I had thought. The sun moved out from behind a cloud and bore down on the gathering, directly into my eyes.  When I told Rachelle she should have told me to bring a hat (like hers) she replied, “I would think that as an adult you would be self-regulating enough to have thought of it yourself.” I mumbled something about expected umbrellas, and focused on the fuzzy music.

Our happy meals arrived.

“I smell skunk,” announced Carli.

“I smell skunk,” agreed Rachelle.

The waiter had served the dishes. Carli stared down at a hotdog roll topped with lobster salad. She sniffed. She tasted the lobster, then waved her fork.

“Taste this!” she demanded of the group. “Very fishy.”

She had the lobster roll sent back.

Rachelle addressed her $19.00 hamburger. The flat, wrinkled bun did not bode well.

“This bun is from the supermarket down the street. When they run out of the good stuff, they send someone over there to get this.”

She managed to eat half of the burger and pushed it aside.

“This is boiled horsemeat. Can’t eat it.”

She proceeded to inform every Willows worker of her dissatisfaction.

“They’ll sure be glad when we’re gone,” said her brother-in-law, Ryan.

I ate my salad with its two halved cherry tomatoes, medallion of goat cheese, and bits of hardened bacon. I poured the ice and mint bits from my mojito cup into ice water to keep the illusion going.

Rachelle and I went to powder our sweaty noses and encountered the musical duo on a break. She let her son have it about the low caliber of the music as I tried not to listen. When she left I whispered, “But it’s nice!” and hurried after her.

We returned to our seats under the heat lamp and endured for another twenty minutes. The best entertainment was the off-color joke Carli’s husband told. Then I parted with a five, a ten and a twenty as my portion of the bill.

Waiting for our cars Rachelle attempted to explain her position.

“I know they don’t like what I say,” she said airily referring to her family members, “but I have…”

“Standards,” I supplied.

(705 words)

3. How I Lost Twenty Dollars

          I had no intention of consulting a psychic.  There were the eight business cards in a row on the dark green tablecloth.  I collected them all, instantly attracted to the white square with colorful stars. Later I realized that this act was the only psychic phenomenon I would encounter that night.

          Peer pressure conned me into adding my name to the list.  A Shaman dressed in the striking blue costume of her indigenous Nordic forebears had conducted the drumming circle, which preceded this psychic fair of sorts.   My spiritual cup was full; I could continue contentedly in my corporeal life, encouraged, invigorated, and becalmed.  But, “Hmmm,” got the better of me.

          I was directed to Karen’s table, she of the square, starred card.  After exclaiming over that coincidence (my one in eight surprise chance of hitting it on the head) it went down hill from there. 

          “Your feelings are accurate,” she declared. 

          The dutiful subject, I wrote this revelation down on a yellow pad. 

          “Something about a coworker.  You are going to step forward.”

          “You mean defensively?” I queried.

          I told her I worked independently at my two jobs.  Karen did not pick up on the fact that I conducted poetry classes in the very room in which we were seated, at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.

          “Your daughter is in NYC, in the medical field.”

          “No,” I said carefully, cocking my head slightly to the left.  “My son is attending Hofstra Law.”

          “Then I see him involved in the medical field.  Maybe he will live near a hospital,” she said with confidence.

          My pen recorded this new insight.

          “Florida!” she exclaimed breathlessly.  A male relative will have an issue.  It’s an emergency.”

          “No,” I said almost guiltily.  No connection.

          I could sense frustration.  Karen was drawing a blank.

          “Distant memories will bring thoughts,” she intoned.

          “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,” I parried back, psychically of course.  Maybe that’s why Karen began to scowl. 

          I found myself trying to help her along, putting strong thoughts in my head for her to reach for.  I had designed and sewn the Shaman’s glorious blue Saami dress.

          “I see you as a small child.  An elderly male relative is giving you a coin.”

          “No,” I said evenly.  “I never met either of my grandfathers.  No other elderly male relatives either.”

          Karen was losing patience with me.

          “There’s a coin,” she insisted.  “Think back.”

          “No,” I said regretfully.  I was not trying to be difficult.

          “Who’s Roger?” she asked intensely.

          “I don’t know a Roger,” I admitted, but quickly, “I have a Roberta, and a Ray.”

          Karen deftly missed the recent fight I had had with my sister, and went for my next-door neighbor, a pleasant sort.  However, she assumed Ray was a woman.

          “I’m getting, ‘see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil,’” she said. 

          My pad got it too.  A few blinks from me in response.  I saw, heard, and said nothing.  Now I was summoning Karen’s ire.

          She leaned forward.  “Who is contacting you in your dreams?”

          My eyebrows danced the mazurka across my forehead.

          “Male relatives are trying to give you a message.  Why aren’t you receiving it?” she demanded.

          I assured her that other than Dragon and Teddy Bear, my two cats who slept in and on my bed, no male relatives were anywhere near my dreams.  Karen didn’t buy it.

          “You are not receiving messages from the other realm.  You must request that they come through tonight when you go to sleep.”

          I assured her that I would do just that.

          “I see balloons,” she said, with a concerted attempt at calm.

          “Yes,” I agreed, feeling expansive.  “We have a celebration.  Nick is graduating this month from law school.”  How many celebrations occur in May and June?  My wicked thoughts would not let me rest.

          “He will choose between two women.”

          “His relationship is on the rocks.  He has no other girl at this time,” I offered almost timidly.  Karen was tiring.

          Ironically sympathetic to her poor batting stats, I pushed my looming thirty year wedding anniversary, even sooner birth date, fairly recent graduation with another master’s degree, and fortuitous friendship with the event’s Shaman generously toward Karen with every psychic corpuscle that I could muster.

          “You will be moving to a sideline,” said my desperate psychic.

          “I started a business a year ago after going back to school.  That was the sideline,” I said with the finality of a vet about to put a creature out of its misery.  “So glad to have met you.  Good luck.” 

          I rose to leave Karen the psychic and my twenty.  I shook her half-opened hand. 

          I was wrong when I said that nailing the one in eight psychics was the only intuitive moment of the night.  Karen had opened our consult with the words, “Your feelings are accurate.”

          By all that is holy, she was right!  I knew that I would get a dose of snake oil.

(836 words)

2. The Butterfly Defect 

            SEND

            Kirt Marse stretched and rose from his desk. His second novel, Effect, delivered to his publisher. He hadn’t meant to write a sequel to his first book, Cause, but one thing led to another. Cause was a murder mystery based on Chaos Theory: “when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future”, as defined by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz.

            In Cause Kirt twisted the fates of five characters who all attempted to kill the same man for different reasons, by assorted methods, at separate times. Each character’s actions started a trajectory of events that eventually ensnared each of them. Their carefully planned approximations with room for error was the logical despoiler of the expected result, an intended untraceable death. The approximate actions of the present did not approximate the result in the future because wildly different tangents became initiated. The success of the book demanded that another follow, and Kirt had obliged within a year’s time.

            Effect began with in-depth narratives surrounding the widely diverging outcomes seemingly spreading from the ‘five stones’ dropped in still water, the ripple effect, of the five murder attempts. The satisfying conclusion was the surprising eventual death of the original intended victim based on all he had done to deserve it, but by unpredictable means.

            Kirt made his money as a pharmacist, though he boasted a scorned minor in English at River University in New Hampshire as well.

            “There’s a reason for everything,” intoned Kirt to himself as he thought of the nay-sayers in his life.”  He resigned his position at SNH Pharmacy.

            He arrived at home to find Lindsay, his wife, sitting on the floor surrounded by pricey housing development brochures in several states. She hurried over and threw her arms around him.

            “Take a look at these beautiful homes! I thought we’d also need a bigger place to entertain family than the pied-a-terre in New York we were talking about.”

            Kirt poured himself a glass of Gaja Langhe Conteisa and picked up a brochure for New Hampshire farms in mountain country. You reap what you sow after all.

            Six months later, Kirt never could have envisioned the course of events that occurred. Lindsay left him for a former lover. His first book, Cause, was contested in court as a past colleague’s idea. The scandal caused its removal from Oprah’s book club list. The hefty down payment on the Chelsea brownstone almost purged his royalties, and legal fees would decimate the rest.

            On his way to an interview at a rival pharmacy, Kirt focused on his next book with a working title of Crap Shoot. His life had indeed suffered from the wiles of chaos but he knew that all theories were defective. Life is random. 

(464 words published on Aug 5, 2016 on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/flash-fiction-fridays/)

1 Please Do the Math

            “Make me feel something,” intoned Max.

            “Mr. Farseed, we will impress you with our best efforts here at Matchless Mates! But, ah, your list of possibles has compiled. Please look at your transcreen for candidate One.”

            The impeccably polished Social Engineer fluttered her fingers at the hovering transparency and it enlarged and brightened before them. Max brightened himself as he gazed at the attractive woman on the screen.

            He had been contracted with eight other dating services with only disappointment to show for it. There had been no spark, chemistry, magic. The various matches selected for his profile were all lovely, but none excited him.

            He was here at Matchless Mates with the last feathers of hope he had left.

            Libby Halsy appeared before him in a silky red dress that displayed her soft proportions to best advantage. Thick shining hair fell below her shoulders. Her face, not media pretty, was alluring in its simplicity with the near-perfect symmetry of classic beauty.

            “Ms. Halsy is eager to meet you,” sighed the Social Engineer. “Please select from these days and times.”

            Max chose the soonest, that afternoon at three. He found Ms. Halsy in the lobby of the Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC, her back toward him as she gazed up at a spectacular chandelier designed to suggest a frozen waterfall covered with ice. Instinctively she turned and watched him approach, his long, black dress-coat open to show a white shirt and jeans.

            He reached her and took her hands. Her eyes had a sparkle of light in them he had never seen before.

            After introductions, they seated themselves on a curving jacquard sofa almost face to face. A hovering coffee cart waited near an oval table at their knees.

            “You’re a writer,” said Max as an opening query.

            “Yes. I write code,” replied Ms. Halsy.

            “For what application?” asked Max.

            “Social observation. My data collection about societal changes is fed into satellite storage. It’s used to adjust social structures, like law enforcement or housing standards based on the changing human climate.”

            Despite the cool almost clinical tone of her speech, Max felt a warmth that made him hang on her every word. It was no surprise that he drew her to him after they had walked out of the hotel café together into a lingering embrace that ended in a welcomed kiss.

In the Matchless Mates office, Social Engineer V+@, known on her name badge to clients as Ms. Volz, was doing some data storage of her own. She recorded another successful pairing, Mr. Max Farseed and Ms. Libidina Halsy who had reported four successful dates. Mr. Farseed had surrendered his list of other possible matches. No continued searches on his behalf needed.

V+@ smiled to itself. As a tentacle of the main computer that was Matchless Mates, V+@ used computer acumen and analytical algorithms to assess the client and his or her needs. It knew an android when it met one, even when the machine/man in question did not know that it was not in fact human itself. V+@ knew what was required to make an artificial life form “feel.” The same thing that makes any ‘one’ feel, and any ‘thing.’ Pheromones. In this case, not a chemical formula that found a match in the breath and touch of another human, but for Mr. Max Farseed, a complex potion of integers that entangled with naturals, mixed with whole, rational fractionals to make the complex ratio of their desire. Ms. Libby Halsy was an android as well, uploaded with the numbers that Mr. Max Farseed was looking for, communicated to him from her expelled breath when they shared air.

Another satisfied customer.

(614 words)