Jake Wants

Jake Strange sat at the Pacchio Bar and Grill open bar with a shot of scotch in his hand. He looked up at the TV. It was three in the afternoon and his favorite show ‘The Twilight Zone was running another marathon. Jake liked to listen to the various teleplays from that man whom he considered to be his idol, Rod Serling. Jack Weston was just telling Allenbee one of Jake’s favorite diatribes. A drunken Jake mouthed along with the dialogue.

“I don’t want no presents…I don’t want no tidbits…makes me feel like some kind of animal in a cage…you know with some old lady throwin’ peanuts at me…”

Jake took another drink and continued with Allenbee’s response “I know you think its easy seein’ you in agony…comin’ here four times a year to this asteroid…I can’t give you freedom, just something to help fight the loneliness…anything to help keep your sanity.”

Jake broke out into a loud repose as the scene shifted to Jack Weston and the female android left by Allenbee. He shouted along with the episode “I’m sick of bein’ mocked by the memory of women…with their make believe eyes and make believe voices…it’s just a reminder to me…that I’m so lonely…that I’m about to lose my mind…”

The bartender shouted “Hey Jake, keep it down. All you’re doin’ is scaring folks with those scenes you’ve been stealin’ from Sterling for years.” He sat another shot in front of Jake.

Jake proclaimed “Hey man, this is submitted for your approval. Jake Strange, maker of book, slightly the worst for wear. My life is like a bundle of dirty laundry…the kind I’d like to send out and have all the filth washed away…so it could come back shiny and clean.”

“Right Jake and your kid’s name is Pip, huh? Serling’s turning over in his grave.”

“Hey, Pip” Jake blurted out holding up his shot glass which sparkled amber in the rays of a setting sun shining through, “Who’s your best buddy…You are pop; you’re my best buddy in the whole world.”

For Jake, believing in a magical reality was easy. The road to hell was paved with good intention, he’d remember Grandma saying. And for Jake, his intentions were always well-meaning, fraught with the best of his dreams, his wishes. They were filled with benevolent beginnings.

Being a creature driven by habit, Jake suffered from a rather myopic inability to sense the error of his ways. He was a slave to poor judgment. He could never foresee the inevitable conclusions that his often inadequate and misplaced methods would lead him; catastrophe. He would never attain what he originally intended.

Jake was a man completely out of touch with the reality of how he operated. He was expecting different results from doing the same things. He kept on doing what he always did and getting what he always got; stark misery.

In complete denial of his apparent deficiencies, Jake found different ways to end up on the same old road. Always he did that under the guise of becoming wiser and smarter that time. With his feeble attempts, he expected to become victorious and get things right. Jake’s ultimate failure was he missed the fact that the more he did to change what was wrong, the more he’d stay the same. Jake resorted back to the tried and true methods which ensured his every failure.

Because Jake never believed his greatest enemy was himself, he’d place maximum trust in himself and his ability to keep the promises he made. But, Jake never found nor made a promise to himself he’d ever keep. It kept Jake the fool that he was and the loser he’d always be.

Like most of the Strange’s, he’d refuse to know his limitations and like all fools he kept on believing that somehow, he’d prevail. Jake’s folly within what he wanted stood as a dark and sardonic monument to his singular ambition in life. Jake wanted what all men wanted who’ve wasted and squandered their lives away; one more chance to get it right.

Now, Jake spent his years trying to prove to himself that he deserved another chance. Paradoxically, he continued trying to change a past he was doomed to repeat. He didn’t believe his one shot at getting life right was his only shot. Jake thought he deserved as many shots as he needed.

So, like most of Briansburg’s populace, Jake held on to his old ways; refuting any need to alter or adapt. Doomed to see life through the cracked and clouded lens that was his family’s perspective, Jake waited for new chances to conquer old dilemmas.

Everyone knew Jake was stuck in the past; sinking within his own stupidity. Their greatest fear and most potent weapon with Jake were whenever he’d experience those all too few moments of crystalline clarity. That was when Jake would sense their truths regarding him. Truth’s that shattered Jake’s hope, crushed his will and left him devoid of meaning and direction.

Drowning Jake in absolute bleakness, he became a man who did nothing right nor wanted to. For those times, Jake did what he did best; he’d run. He escaped into the self-piteous pit which came with self-destruction.

The grotesque beauty of Jake’s self-administered beatings through booze and insanity were the stuff of community legend. Briansburg was made ripe for the twisted existence of those like Jake and to some degree everyone. It was a veritable sideshow of fools; emotional cripples and a haven for the self-important slicksters all too busy deluding themselves that in the end everything would be alright. They waited for that silver lining to come through on the sunny side of life.

The harder Jake tried to find that lining, the more Briansburg laughed. And Jake learned, if he was to survive, he had to laugh along. It was because the truth hurt and his abject failures left him afraid to go on; too sad to exist. But, if Jake would only forget, maybe then perhaps….

Well, that’s how Jake began writing fiction. He wasn’t bad but then again, he wasn’t very good either. Still he tried. His works acted as a catharsis; releasing his personal demons and letting him look at his speculative worlds and characters as perhaps analogous to his own world.

His two most prodigious and ambitious projects were called ‘The Return’ and ‘Darkly through a Glass.’ He worked hard and long on each, especially whenever he needed a refuge from bitter reality.

Those closest to him worried that Jake’s projects would tip him over into a world were he lost touch with reality. Soon, the borders vanished separating the truth from fiction for Jake. He became obsessed with merging the fictional pieces into a singular work. He began to entertain dreams of publication for his work much to his future lament. The importance of his projects overshadowed prudence and he shut himself off at times from the world. Jake operated then as if living within the dramatic situations he created on paper. In a place like Briansburg with people like Lilith Strange, his sister, that dismissal would be dangerous indeed. It might even get Jake killed.

In a sense, Jake knew that, yet he believed blindly that completion of his project would become his saving grace. Maybe, Jake’s work could get him what he really wanted the most; a different reality and a voice in which his desires could be heard. Most times, it was what we all wanted.

.

The blaring tirade howled like bloodhounds baling at the harvest moon. The shrill sirens sad song penetrated the coolness of Chicago’s moonlit lakefront sky. Sparkling stars twinkled as though existence itself seemed to sigh off and on. Desperately, the ravaged occupants of Fire Ambulance 6229 fervently sighed their silent prayers for mercy.

For Jake Strange, time seemed to unravel. His mauled and twisted fingers tightened their futile grip around the limp and quivering handhold of the middle-aged lady fighting for her life as she lay strapped upon the gurney. Only the fury of her spontaneous convulsions, which caused the snaking IV tubing to twirl like jump ropes, made him believe life within still dwelled. Jake’s belief dwindled, drifting away like silken strands of grey smoke into the fire lit orange sky over a green mountain forest.

“Hang in there Jake,” hollered the young Asian driver as his head twisted away from the windshield, “we’re almost there.”

“Look, don’t start with that obligatory supportive crap with me right now,” Jake spat back; grimacing from yet another lump on his head caused by the buffeting roller coaster ride through the pot-marked obstacle course known as Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive. “Just make sure we get there in one piece or else you’ll be checkin’ out what the undertow is like down at the North Avenue beach!” He looked down at his twisted wife’s body, covered with smatterings of crimson stains and slimy mucous she had coughed up along the way.

“Jake…Jake” cried Jake’s stricken wife Rochelle, “where are you…I can’t see you.”

“I am here…I am Here…” he screamed, choking back his sorrow-drenched anger; “why the hell did I let this happen…it’s all her fault…I shoulda’ kept her butt the hell away from you…for the baby’s sake too.”

“Don’t blame your sis for this, baby” she whispered, “God sho’ don’t like ugly and we shouldn’t judge…” Suddenly, without warning, Rochelle’s chest stopped it’s frantic heaving as she tried to gulp in oxygen. Her eyes closed and hand fell limp.

“Mr. Strange, was she talking about your sister, Miss Lilith,” offered the other ambulance attendant as she pumped and pressed the AMBU-Bag driven air into his wife’s mouth. “I thought I saw her on Oprah’s show a couple of weeks ago, getting that Business Woman of the Year award. She’s my idol…she got it goin’ on…”

No reply came from Jake. His water-filled eyes gazed emptily at the young medic’s innocence; her sea-blue contacts, which didn’t go with her ebony-black skin, negated the skeptical smirk that lurked at the corner of her overly glossed red lips. Yet, it was just like all the other times, he mused silently.

They always sided with Lilith…always it’s me who plays the patsy to my saintly sister’s mischief. And now this…

The park across the street from the office reminded Jake of his early times when diving and leaping after 16-inch Clinchers were the greatest expressions of athletic art his 6’0” frame could perform. He relished returning to the simplicity of that era, before the tribulations of surviving the mean streets had taken total priority. He found himself staring incessantly over there behind the baseball diamonds; eyes gliding along the green rolling hills just beyond the tree-lined fishing lagoon where the Park District routinely placed Farmed-Catfish for the catching. Jake was like that; always wanting something just beyond his grasp.

Finding himself at the door to the office building, he hesitated. Sighing briefly, his head lowered and stare peered into the normalized posture of subservience that seemed to get him through the day whenever he ventured into the presence of the boss lady herself. That was how it was working for his sister, he knew, albeit, he didn’t like it.

The job came with the territory, not the other way around.

Entering the office, Jake was never astonished to find various levels of disarray left over the last day of work prior. The office girls never had it together for very long with keeping things organized. Often, fast food generated garbage strewn about, files and notes were everywhere. Searches of epic proportion were normal whenever boss lady had lost yet another memo placed into her possession. All too often, Jake took the brunt of blame for unfound documents lost while in her or the other office girl’s possession.

Not being in much of a mood for the usual petty banter of office gossip about who screwed who or who wanted to shyster whom out of what, Jake determinedly crawled up under the nearest rock he could find and waited for the day to hurry up and end. He knew, however, soon the often incompetent clerical workers would begin their search for someone to bail them out with information or directions on what to do and how to do it. They didn’t like going to the boss lady; she always had a plethora of acid-tongued wisecracks at the ready. Jake knew he was never immune and all too often was the primary target of these public scoldings. She liked it like that and he knew that may have been the only reason for his being there.

Today was different. Jake was fed up and suffering from a miserable hang over after having spent most of the night at Northwestern Hospital’s emergency room. He showed up on this day looking for something more specific than a days pay for a good days work. Lost in the shadows of mourning Rochelle’s death, he needed answers and perhaps the condolence of family support. Neither would be found and he sensed the futility of his desire. Boss lady wasn’t cut from that kind of mold. There would be no sympathy found. What he would find, however, was a new assignment.

Lilith Strange, Jake’s sister, called him into her excuse for an executive suite. It was a place that reminded him of her front living room where she lived, a kind of sanctuary far removed from the accessibility of the open office. She would hide there whenever bill collectors, conned ex-employees and disgruntled clients came looking for whatever payments or services she’d promised to deliver them.

Babylon Strange, Jake’s niece and boss lady’s heir apparent, had just finished a brief discussion of how to get rid of Jake. Both agreed Jake would not be needed around very shortly. He had served his purpose and provided them a scapegoat for when the business needed to go belly up. That’s what fools were for, they cackled; laughing at the ease with which they suckered Jake into returning home under the guise of helping to stabilize both their business and family lives. Often, they talked rather openly about their wishes that Jake would just simply disappear or go to jail and be out of their hair.

The latest contract to cross her desk involved tracking down Ken, an old childhood friend they both knew. Jake’s fingers trembled. He remembered Ken was B.B.’s younger brother. B.B. and his kid’s mother, Alicia, were lovers at one time. Jake and B.B. had fought over her once.

Apparently, he’d gotten into trouble years earlier and torched one of Lilith’s girlfriends garment factory. The insurance company and the law had their way with him but now there remained the issue of what was done with the insurance money; a question only Ken could answer. It seemed Lilith’s girlfriend died mysteriously of food poisoning soon after the incident. Rumor had it she and Lilith had conspired to split the loot. Jake wasn’t surprised.

What did rattle him was the way boss lady had treated Rochelle’s death. She seemed almost aversive to the news and yet, unsurprised. Jake knew that Rochelle had begun to share his disdain for boss lady’s office antics and tiresome verbal lashings. Arguments had erupted between she and her boss while rumors grew about an under-the- table agreement the two worked up giving Rochelle a share of the company’s executive power and benefits.

Jake listened from the basement near the heating duct as the conversation in Sis’ office drolled on. His interest peaked as his name was mentioned by Babylon. She spoke to Sis’ about why she’d even brought him back; with him being such a cat-housing, drunken nut case. He was always unable to keep a job and usually not very reliable. Sis replied that he was useful in a lot of ways. His usefulness, she said, wasn’t very endearing to him, however.

She’d use him up like a hungry wolf used a cheap steak. He’d be a good source of cheap labor. Where else could she find someone to cut the lawn, take out the garbage, chauffer, her and the kids or baby-sit? Where could she find services at that cut-rate for writing business proposals, managing the front office, conducting investigations and being a guard dog at a cost of next to nothing? Beside, she said, with the skimming off of corporate profits and the cooking of the books, who else would be a better patsy to take the blame for the rampant incompetence causing it all.

As well, she said, it was what he deserved for abandoning the family and running off the way he did years ago. He needed to pay for that, according to her, and she was going to make sure that he did exactly that.

Babylon Strange replied, “Yeah, give him that assignment and watch him fry.”

Silently, Jake closed the heating vent and his eyes as well. He’d thought his return would make up for the missing years; that perhaps he was forgiven and needed. Now, even though he knew better, his feelings remained the same.

Rochelle’s death, maybe it wasn’t an accident, Jake wondered aloud. He remembered her being introduced to him at the office several months ago. Even then, Jake had wondered to what degree Sis was involved. His suspicions grew as Rochelle got real cozy with him. He wondered if Sis hadn’t orchestrated the whole affair. He had felt used and disrespected by the idea but desperate and lonely enough to accept whatever it meant to him. Maybe, he thought, he could turn these sinister manipulations by Sis into his private life into something pure, meaningful and of merit in its own right. And he almost did just that but evil has a way of marking what it creates. In the end, he thought, he still owed Rochelle the authenticity of what he felt in his heart beyond the deceit that spawned their meeting. He was real with her and, to the end; he’d told her what he suspected. At the end, he thought, maybe she could appreciate that.

No matter, he mused, she didn’t deserve to get used that way just because she was so desperate to succeed in his sister’s eyes. Neither, he thought, did he.

Before Jake left the basement he turned and reopened the vent. Babylon was asking Sis if she’d placed all the financial and investigative files in her office prior to Ken’s meeting with the boss lady.

Jake wondered, why him? He was known for doing mob torch jobs and running insurance scams. Members of Jake’s family had long suspected Ken was Sis’ right hand man when her car had come up missing and found torched years ago. Jake left the basement perplexed.

Jake took the case but not before she and boss lady broke off into a heated exchange over Jake’s hang over. Seems she didn’t have any sympathy that his woman had died the night before.

Jake stormed off into a tirade about how and why boss lady had engineered their relationship, paid Rochelle to keep him content and quiet about Sis’ secret dealings, and then tried to destroy the relationship by concocting sordid stories on Jake’s twisted past and his luridly lustful transgressions. Jake didn’t like being reminded about the breakdown he’d suffered after the last assignment from Sis; the one that almost ended his life. Why did he have to think about Alicia right now, he thought? Jake stormed out of the office.

Jake winced as he remembered meeting Rochelle at the hospital.