The 747ers

by Sam Ursu

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COPYRIGHT

The 747ers

By Sam Ursu

© 2013 Sam Ursu

All rights reserved.

Author: Sam Ursu

Contact details: samursuauthor.grunt941@passinbox.com

Book cover, illustration: Sam Ursu

Editing, proofreading: Sam Ursu

This e-book, including its portions, is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, resold, or redistributed without the permission of the author.

If you liked the e-book, recommend that your friends buy a personal copy. A big thank you for respecting the author's work!

DEDICATION

To all of the great authors who have gone on before, a tremendous debt of gratitude is owed.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The following story is not real.  That is to say, it is a work of fiction.  But it is based on many real historical facts and is largely a summation of many of the journeys and experiences I have had over my lifetime.

There are a total of 86,000 words in this book, written over the span of about a week, written in a kind of fugue dream state wherein the words flowed out almost unconsciously in a great torrent.  

Later, in a more sober frame of mind, I carefully edited this book for clarity and to streamline the ideas and views that I wanted to portray.

Although I am the author of many successful books, this is my first attempt at writing fiction.

I hope you find this book as rewarding to read as it was for me to write it.

May 24, 2013

Cluj-Napoca, Romania

LIFTOFF

It was a bitterly cold night, the windows of my tiny apartment completely obscured with frost.  Only the dim, orange halo of the streetlight could be seen, but I could tell we were in for another one of those frozen Iowa winter storms.  Already, I could hear the wind howling outside, causing my windows to rattle in their weathered frames.

I was living in a shitbox apartment, the walls a dingy yellow, both from age and from the scummy residue of nicotine, the legacy of many former tenants, with a hefty contribution from my own miserable self.  The light from my torchiere lamp cast the only light inside my apartment apart from the muted glow of the TV.

I didn’t care about the storm outside.  It was my night off from work.

At the moment, my apartment stank of onions because I had just cooked my lunch, or breakfast, depending on how you calculated such things for someone who was working the graveyard shift.  I had been unable to open the tiny window in the kitchen for more than a week because it had frozen shut.  Oh well.  C’est la vie.

A week earlier, a crusty old census worker informed me that my apartment building had been erected sometime in the early 1920s, which meant it had been just after what my gramps always called the Great War.  I guess folks in his day might have looked at such a construction as my building as the very model of progress and modernity, but now it was just a crumbling, ugly, squat monster that charged very low rents and was inhabited by all sorts of characters I preferred not to think about.  

Two days after I had moved in, a sallow, sunken-cheeked kid who couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17 years old had knocked on my door, wanting to know if he could trade three small, frozen pizzas for a few grams of weed.  Even if I had what he was looking for, I would’ve refused.  

I had also seen a couple of decrepit older residents shuffling down the threadbare carpeting in the stairwell, reeking of both piss and the sour stench of old beer.  The apartment building, whatever it had been in its heyday, was now the last refuge of the poor and the desperate, and sometimes both.  

I was just grateful that I was “only” poor.  I was still fairly young, and hoped to climb my way out of this sad, old wreck of a building and improve my living standards as quickly as humanly possible.

In my one big room there was a large, clanking radiator, painted badly in multiple coats of thick, white paint, small globules of which would turn gummy when the heat was cranking out full force, as it most definitely was on the winter night when all of this began.  I distinctly remember playing with a rubbery globule of it right before I made the decision that would forever change my life.

Inside that old apartment, the one benefit was heat, and plenty of it, in the winter.  Outdoors it was a frozen tundra, the air bitterly cold, and all winter I had to wrap up in multiple layers; two pairs of pants, a hat, gloves and a scarf, every time I went anywhere.  But inside my apartment at three o’clock in the morning, I was dressed only in boxers and an old T-shirt, and yet I was still sweating buckets.

I don’t know if the heat was turned up so freaking high because of all of the elderly residents, or if because the drunken property manager liked it that way, or because the boiler only had one setting – BOILING HOT.  

It was like a damn sauna in my apartment, and there was no way to modify it or adjust it or turn it down.  If I could’ve opened one of my windows, I probably would’ve, the blowing snow be damned.  But they were all frozen shut.  

And so, on that fateful night, I was trapped between fire and ice, having to choose between slowly being cooked alive in the sweltering heat of my apartment or having to bundle up to face the deathly cold outside.

Somehow, I came to the decision that a quick dash outdoors to smoke a cigarette would be just what the doctor ordered.  

But instead of bundling up in multiple layers, I planned on slipping on a pair of jeans and going outside in the blowing cold with bare arms, letting the frozen wind wick away the sweat from my body.  In the time that it would take to smoke a cigarette, I would get a good chill, and then I could go back upstairs and the heat inside my apartment would feel quite welcoming.  

And so I grabbed my lighter and put on some pants and shoes and made my way down to the front entrance.  The vestibule was unheated, and I could clearly see through the glass that it wasn’t snowing too hard.  But the wind was doing a brisk business of whirling the snow from the ground, making it look like we were all trapped inside a giant snow globe.  

I lit up my smoke before pushing open the heavy front door. I stepped outside, the bitter cold feeling amazingly refreshing and invigorating.  I let the door swing shut, and I stood outside, shivering with pleasure and because my body was undergoing rapid temperature changes.  

And all of that would’ve been just fine had I not forgotten the special key that opened up the front door of the apartment building

✈

They say that ignorance is bliss, and my bliss lasted about two or three minutes, about as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette in the lee of a doorway when a wintry Iowa wind is blowing down the neck of your T-shirt.  

I had gone from feeling cool and refreshed to beginning to feel quite cold when I tossed my cigarette butt to the ground.  I then felt around in my pocket for the large, grooved metal key that opened the front door.  

My numbed fingers felt the thin metal of my apartment key, the one that opened the flimsy lock that separated strangers from my sparse “valuables”, but the blocky key that opened the front door of the building was missing.  

The two keys had been given to me together on a plain wire ring when I had paid my first and last month’s rent plus the security deposit, but I had removed the building key a few days earlier in a futile attempt to get someone to make a copy of it.  

The damn key was engraved with the words “DO NOT COPY” but I had hoped that I could find a locksmith somewhere who would be willing to overlook it.  Apparently however, there is some kind of secret brotherhood of locksmiths, and I was sternly informed that the mandate written on the key was not to be ignored.

Panicking, I checked all of my other pockets, pulling out a small clump of lint, a bright red string of unknown provenance, one fuzzy penny, my cigarette lighter, and nothing else.  I wasn’t wearing a jacket, and it didn’t take me very long to realize that there was nothing more to find in my pockets.  

I was now locked outside in the bitter cold, wearing a T-shirt, a thin pair of jeans and some ratty old flip-flops.

Just inside the front door of my building, I could see the small vestibule, containing a series of wooden mail slots for the residents.  At this time at night, I knew that no one would be coming downstairs in the bitter cold to find out if their Social Security check had come in.  I tried banging on the front door a few times with my fist, knowing it was pretty much in vain, as only someone in or near the vestibule would be able to hear it.

And that’s when I really began to panic, completely unsure of what to do.  I checked three or four, and even five more times in all of my pockets, as well as searching the ground near me, to see if I had somehow overlooked the goddamned front door key.  

If this had happened during the daytime, then I might have gotten lucky and caught someone on their way in or out of the building.  But at three o’clock in the morning, I knew that the chances of someone entering or leaving were infinitesimal.

I had no money on me, and no telephone.  I began ransacking my brain, wondering where the nearest payphone was.  I realized that it was a good way down the road, assuming it would even be in working order, what with all the cold and snow.  

And as cold as it was in the lee of the doorway, shuffling a mile or more down the road in the blowing snow, wearing only flip-flops and a T-shirt, would be a friggin’ nightmare.  

And who could I call?  Only the police.  And what would I tell them?  That I was locked out of my apartment?  And what is it exactly that they would do?  It didn’t seem to me like that was the kind of thing that they were equipped to handle.

There was no intercom system in my apartment building, but there was a buzzer, a kind of doorbell that was wired to ring to one apartment, that of the property manager.  

In exchange for free rent and the hassle of dealing with the residents, as well as making minor repairs to the ancient and crumbling building, the property manager’s apartment was connected to the buzzer. As much as I hated to disturb him at this hour, I realized I had no other option, and so I pressed the button.

There was no way to know if it was working or not because the buzzer made no sound on my end, and I had never used it before.  I stood there, hopping up and down, both of my fists jammed deep into my pockets, making up a little speech in my mind, apologizing and then thanking the property manager, explaining how foolish I had been to step outside for a quick cigarette in the middle of the night.  I was prepared to take whatever verbal abuse and grumpiness he might dish out.

I waited as long as I dared, but I didn’t hear any buzzing sound of the front door being opened.  I didn’t even think that it could be buzzed open because it was more like a doorbell than some kind of true “buzzer” intercom system.  

I pressed my ear to the glass of the front door to see if I could detect the heavy tramp of the property manager’s feet on the stairwell, hoping to look up and see him blearily wiping the sleep from his eyes but nonetheless coming to my rescue.  But there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

I pressed the button again, this time letting it ring or buzz for a much longer time.  Perhaps the property manager had already risen from his bed and now he was more grumpy and more surly because of the second buzz, but fuck it, I didn’t care.  I was starting to be seriously cold.  

What the fuck, as angry as he might be, his job as property manager was to handle things.  And I was a tenant, paid up on my rent, and I needed him.  But no crackling buzz of the door opening and no damn manager in sight.

I had met the property manager once before.  He was a young-ish sort of man, maybe in his late 20’s or early 30’s, overall more or less fit but possessing an enormous, nearly perfectly round gut, something I recognized from my Uncle Tom as the classic mark of a very heavy beer drinker.

But now, as I stood outside, hopping up and down like a pogo stick in the cold, I realized with a sinking feeling that that the buzzer or doorbell was probably working just fine but the drunken idiot was probably asleep in bed, passed out after polishing off a case of the cheap stuff.  

There was just no way for him to have normal sized limbs and that protruding belly, hard and round, like he had swallowed a basketball, without years of heavily abusing alcohol.  Somewhere in there, his internal organs were swollen and distended, poisoned from all of the substances he had consumed.  And so I rang the doorbell yet again, and waited, and did it three or four more times, silently willing with every fiber of my soul that, deep in the recesses of the building, the sharp buzzing sound would jolt him out of his slumber and sober him up enough to rise to the challenge of actually doing his fucking job and impel him to come up to the front of the building to let me in.  

Initially, I had feared his wrath for disturbing him, but the cold was becoming vicious at that point, my body shaking uncontrollably, my eyes running with tears from the pain of the biting wind, and I was ready to face any level of anger or verbal abuse if only he would just wake up and come let me the hell in the building.

But he didn’t wake up, assuming he heard the buzzer at all, or that it even worked, because he never ever came to the door.  

My toes and feet were beginning to burn, that awful fiery feeling that comes from deep cold, my bones blocks of ice.  My fists, jammed in my pockets, were frozen lumps of numb meat.  I was now hopping up and down like a lunatic, trying to think as clearly as I could before my brain began to freeze too.  My first option was to hold out and wait a little bit longer, to keep ringing the doorbell and see if the property manager would ever come and let me in.  Or else perhaps I’d get lucky and a resident of the building afflicted with insomnia or a sudden urge to take a nighttime drive would come out the front door and rescue me.  

My second option was to make my way down the road and find a working payphone, dial 911, and let the authorities do their bit, whatever that might be, because even sitting in the back of a patrol car was beginning to sound pretty damn appealing at this point.  The third option, of course, was to lay down and die, which would probably only take a few minutes at this rate, but completely not what I wanted to do at all.

So, stay a while longer and hope someone would come and let me in?  Or head out into the full force of the wind, find a payphone, and call 911 and deal with all that mess and whatever?  Time was very rapidly running out for me to make my decision.

I looked intently at the window of the front door, gauging its thickness, and wondered if perhaps I could scout around for a brick or a rock to break it.  After that, I could reach my hand inside and twist the door open.  But it was an old, heavy door with two panes of glass, and the act of burglarizing my own apartment building seemed fraught with too much risk and embarrassment.  I wasn’t really the criminal type, which partly explained my hesitancy to run down the street and call up the cops.

What I wanted, damnit, was for someone to open up the fucking door!  Once inside I could nod, say thank you, and scurry up to my apartment as fast as I could and let myself in.  I was already imagining the wonderful feeling of basking in the waves of heat coming off my radiator, wondering to myself why it had ever seemed so intolerable or unpleasant that I had decided to go outdoors like a complete moron, wearing only a T-shirt and flip-flops in the middle of an Iowa winter.  One person was all it would take, damned, just one.  One person to push open a single door and all of this would be nothing more than a bad memory.

My eyes were watering terribly at this point, the right one nearly sealing shut as I blinked, the liquid and the flakes of snow in my eyelashes began to freeze together.  My T-shirt was covered in a pale dusting of snow, and I could feel miniature icicles starting to form at the end of my beard.  

I was just at the point of saying fuck it and running down the road to call 911 when I saw a shape on the first floor landing.  I stood still for a moment, blinking rapidly, not sure if I was fantasizing my salvation or if it was genuine.  But it was real, and my heart soared as I saw an elderly man enter the vestibule and then make his way towards the front door of the building.  

The man was dressed in a heavy, ankle-length black coat, which, as he got closer, I saw it heavily resembled the kind of get-up that Catholic priests wear.  But there was no white band around his throat, and he was wearing a lumberjack hat, the kind with two flaps that pull down to cover the ears.  Around his neck was a pendant on a chain, which I first mistook to be a cross.  But right as he pushed open the front door, I saw that it was in the shape of a white airplane, the kind of universal symbol you see on highway exits that lead toward the airport.

The man in the black coat pushed open the heavy front door of my building, and I gratefully felt the rush of warm air on my face.  Seeing me standing outside, he briefly touched his finger to the brim of his hat and said, “Evening.”

“Evening,” I replied, doing my best to sound like a normal person instead of a crazed fool in a snow-covered T-shirt standing outside in the middle of the night.

The man made his way down the sidewalk as I scampered inside the building.  Once inside, I ran up the stairs to my apartment as fast as my trembling legs could carry me.

Later, I discovered I was quite lucky because I had suffered no permanent damage, although my right foot throbbed painfully the rest of that night.  But by the time I went back to work the next night, I was more or less feeling normal, the crazy experience a sharp reminder of what could’ve been a fatal disaster, but the reality of it fading into something akin to a bad dream.

✈✈

One morning, a few weeks after the incident, I was riding the bus home in the morning after work when I noticed that the bus was taking a detour.  I saw that there was some kind of roadwork or construction on the street that we normally took, and so I rose up in my seat, fighting off my post-work sleepiness to see something new.  

The bus rumbled through a few leafy, quiet residential streets that I had never seen before.  I was slumped back in my seat, enjoying the crisp spring sunlight as the bus made a left-hand turn, when out of the corner of my eye I saw that same airplane symbol in a storefront window.  

I shot up in my seat as I recognized it as being identical to the pendant that the old man had been wearing, a plain, white outline of an airplane on a sky blue background.  Just as the bus turned the corner, I was able to make out the name of the business – Airport Bookstore.

I wondered if the bookstore and the man were somehow connected, but it seemed highly unlikely.  After all, that airplane symbol is used all over the world to indicate that an airport is ahead or nearby or whatever.    It’s just a simple white outline of a plane, as if seen from above, with two wings canted back, and completely ordinary and commonplace in every way.  

The only odd thing about Airport Books was that it was in a residential section of town, and I knew that our local airport was several miles away to the south, outside the actual city limits.  I realized that it was a bit strange for a bookstore that was nowhere near an airport to be called Airport Books, so when I got home I decided to poke around on the internet and see if I could find some more information about it.  I saw that there was indeed a bookstore inside our local airport, but all of the other listings that I found on the internet seemed to be for bookstores in other airports around the country.  And I didn’t find any listing for an Airport Books in my city or in any other city that wasn’t inside or adjacent to an actual airport.  I definitely didn’t see any listing for an Airport Books located on that little leafy residential street in my neighborhood.

After some more fruitless searches, I shrugged my shoulders and then made myself comfortable on the couch and did my best to try and get some sleep before I had to go to work again later that evening.

✈✈✈

The next morning on the bus ride home, the detour was still in effect, and this time I was ready and I was looking out the window as we made that left-hand turn for the detour.  

This time I got a better look at Airport Books, seeing that it was set in a small but elegant series of businesses, being flanked on one side by an Excelsior Pizza and on the other side by a stationary store.  

With its large display window and brick and ivy climbing gracefully up the front, Airport Books was just a boutique bookstore in this upscale little shopping district.  

Just before the bookstore passed out of view, I saw the front door open and a man exit, wearing the same ankle-length black robe that I had seen the man wearing the night I had gotten locked out of my apartment building.  

This guy however seemed to be a bit younger, his hair brown and full, but his outfit was nearly identical and the word cassock swam up in my mind.   The man then turned and headed down the street, his destination lost to me as the bus pulled out of view.

Without even really thinking about it, I reached up and pulled the cord.  I saw the driver snap his head up, looking to see who had requested a stop, his brow furrowing slightly when he saw it was me.  The bus coasted to a stop and I sprang up and then out the rear door.  

The sunlight felt amazing and invigorating and already the chill of the night was beginning to dissipate. With the smell of spring in my nose, I turned the corner and headed towards Airport Books to satisfy my curiosity.

✈✈✈✈

As I got closer to the front of the bookstore, I noticed two things.  

Mounted neatly in the lee of the entrance were the street numbers in a bright chrome finish, marking the address at number 747.  

The second thing that I noticed was that in my early morning daze I had slightly misread the name of the place.  It was actually Airplane Books not Airport.  It was still an odd name but with the street address coinciding with the model number of a common Boeing aircraft, I guessed that the name of the store made a little more sense in a whimsical kind of way.

In the single, large display facing the street were several books positioned on a kind of drape of deep purple.  Some of the titles I recognized, like Charles Dickens and Shakespeare, but others were completely unknown to me.  

I saw one book with a lurid cover, bright colors depicting a screaming man being stabbed by another person, scarlet blood graphically spurting out of his chest, entitled We’ll Crucify The Insincere Tonight!  

Another book on display had a dark cover painted richly in black and dark blue hues with a woman’s head looking out of a window and up at the sky, where a pale yellow moon was partly obscured behind a screen of bare tree branches, entitled The Impossible Is Possible Tonight.

I stood there briefly, looking at the books on display and then I peered beyond and into the interior of the store but the sunlight was too bright and I couldn’t see anything inside.  

I pushed against the gilt brass doorknob and a little overhead bell tinkled as I entered the bookstore.

The shop wasn’t very wide but it had a profound depth to it, the three rows of shelving extending deep towards the rear of the store.  On every wall, starting from just inches above the ground to just beneath the ceiling were shelves positively groaning with books of every size, shape and description.  

I immediately smelled that strange mixture of glue and paper with a hint of mold or mustiness that seems to pervade any bookstore selling older books.  There was a mixture of something fresh and earthy mixed in as well, which reminded me for some reason of basil or one of those green herbs people use to make spaghetti sauce.

To my left, and behind the front display, was a small counter area with an antique dark brass register, the kind with little flags that pop up, including one that said “No Sale” as I noticed this one was showing.  

At the rear of the counter area was a narrow spiral staircase that led up to the upper floor of the store.  Curled up on the counter at the rear of the front display was an enormous gray and black striped cat, head tucked under his tail, sleeping uninterrupted despite the bell announcing my entrance.

The sole pieces of furniture that I could see were just beyond the counter and to my left, two large leather chairs with high backs and overstuffed arms, facing each other with a tiny glass table between them, on top of which was a stack of books balanced precariously in a sloppy tower that looked like a strong sneeze could blow it over.  

The top book on the stack was all black with no pictures or graphics and the title written in simple white letters, entitled The More You Change, The Less You Feel.  I was no literary or book expert but something about the font seemed to strike a chord in me, making me think that I had read it before or at least heard of it, some kind of late 1960s hippy peace love Zen kind of book.

I had my hand on the book and was about to pick it up and start browsing through it when I heard a voice coming from one of the leather chairs, startling me.  “Interesting book, wouldn’t you say?”  

I stopped, frozen briefly, and turned to see none other than the same man who had unknowingly saved my life a few weeks earlier when he had let me in my apartment building.  

I saw that he was dressed the same, as far as I could tell, although I realized now in the daylight that his clothes looked more like a monk’s robe than the more elaborate outfit of a priest, a sort of a long, formless garment that was entirely black.  

He was an older man, with short and perfectly gray hair and silver stubble on his face.  The juxtaposition of his silver hair and weathered face with the vitality sparkling in his pale brown eyes made it hard to guess his age.  He could’ve been anywhere from perhaps as young as 55 to possibly in his early 70s.  

The man held an enormous black book open on his lap, one of the largest books I had ever seen, encased in leather and looking quite old.  

There was a title stamped on the front in silver letters but it was too faded and worn for me to make it out.  Even with a quick glance I could see that the pages inside were a dull brown tea color, a long way from the white or cream I was used to.  

Around the man’s neck was a silver chain with the pendant just visible disappearing into the crook of the enormous black tome, the same plain white airplane symbol that adorned the front of the shop.

“Please have a seat and make yourself comfortable,” the man said, gesturing at the chair opposite him.  

I paused for another half second, unsure exactly what I was going to do but then gave in to the course of least resistance and sat down.  

The old chair smelled richly of fine leather and was incredibly comfortable, the seat cushion emitting a small crinkly whooshing sound under my weight.

The old man glanced down at his book for a moment as though reading a few more lines and then he drew an ornate, gold tassel between the pages and closed the book with a quick snap.  He then folded the book down on his knees and leaned forward slightly towards me.

“I was going to offer you some tea but I’m getting the feeling you’re more of a coffee man, am I right?”  

He cocked his head slightly sideways, staring off in the corner as though sensing or smelling something.  

“Just black, no sugar, no cream?” he asked with a measure of hesitation in his voice.

I nodded mutely.  It was true that I rarely drank tea but at this time of the morning I usually eschewed coffee as it was actually my bedtime and I needed to be winding down, not revving up.  But it seemed like the polite thing to do to accept.

“Excellent!” said the man, with a wide grin.  

He stood up and tucked the enormous black book under his arm and proceeded over towards the counter.  

As he walked away, I noticed that his long black garment was belted, seemingly with a thick kind of rope material, the two ends dangling down in front at about his knees.  

I knew nothing about monks except what I had seen on TV but except for the fact that the material was black and not brown, the older man did actually seem to be wearing a monk’s outfit, complete with an enormous hood or cowl visible from the back.

I couldn’t see him over the back of the leather chair in front of me but I heard tinkling and rustling sounds as he evidently was preparing the coffee.  The closest thing I could see to him was the enormous cat, still sleeping peacefully, completely undisturbed.  

I glanced over at the books on the shelf next to me on my right, at first thinking my fatigue was messing with my eyesight.  I could read the titles on the spines but none of the words made any sense.  

It looked like someone had picked letters at random and put them in nonsensical order, also using a few other invented symbols.  One large red book at eye level was entitled AEPOПOPT for example.  

It was only after I had stared at them for a minute that I realized that they weren’t written in English and that probably in some foreign language they made complete sense.

As I scanned further, I saw that indeed many of the books were written in foreign languages.  I recognized the odd symbols that comprise the Greek alphabet as well as that strange series of dashes and apostrophes that I guessed were Arabic.  In fact, as I craned my neck in both directions, I realized that I couldn’t see a single book title that was in English.  

The only title that I could pick out was a small, blue book on a shelf behind me, facing outward, with little, crude drawings of smiling people and a sun with a face, obviously a children’s book.  I really don’t speak Spanish but even I could parse out what the title Buenos Dias, Señores! meant.

I began to smell the very strong and delicious scent of coffee wafting my way and I could hear the burbling sounds of it brewing.  I looked over in the direction of the counter and my eyes followed the narrow staircase upwards but apparently it led nowhere as the top of the staircase abutted the ceiling itself.

Soon enough, the old man hove into view, bent over low, carrying a large silver tray.  Shuffling slowly, he made his way over to the little table and slowly, oh so delicately, inched the tray down, somehow finding space next to the leaning tower of books.  

On the tray was a full silver, ornate coffee set, complete with whatever the name of the main pouring vessel is, steam gaily piping out of its curved neck.

“Ah, that’s better,” said the man, heaving a sigh of relief and falling into the leather chair.  

He leaned forward and began dickering around with the service, rattling china and then pouring a fragrant stream of rich, brown coffee into a small porcelain cup with a tiny matching saucer.  He then reached across and handed it to me.  

After he had fixed his own coffee, he too sat back in his chair, lifting the delicate cup to his mouth and taking a long, loud slurp.  He then smacked his lips audibly and set the cup and saucer back on the tray.  

He rubbed his hands together and leaned forward, looking directly in my eyes and spoke.

“So, have you woken up yet?”

✈✈✈✈✈

“Well,” I said, “actually I’ve been awake all night.”

“All night you say?” he asked, a grin appearing on his face.

“Yes, I work the third shift at F---- Hospital and so actually I’m just getting off work now.”

“I see,” he said, chuckling.  “So you’ve been awake a long time then, eh?”

“Yes, you could say that.”  

He didn’t reply but he was clearly deeply amused by my answer, only barely stifling an outright laugh.  Still, his eyes were twinkling as he was chuckling.

“Well how does that feel?” he asked, suddenly straight faced and sober.

I wasn’t sure how to respond.  What had started off as a fairly ordinary conversation was taking a deeply personal and weird turn.  When he turned that piercing gaze my way, I felt like I was being analyzed, appraised, examined like some kind of patient.

“It feels like it feels.  You get used to it after a while,” I said.

“Still though,” he replied, “I don’t imagine it’s all that pleasant.  Which is why I imagine you are here, eh?” he asked, a glimmer of that twinkle once again returning to his eyes.

“I’m sorry?”

“As you can see, I am a collector and preserver of books, occasionally also a seller of books.  But it also so happens that I am a sleep specialist.”

“If you’re a sleep specialist then why are you giving me coffee at 7:00 in the morning?

He laughed and slapped his knee as though I had told the greatest joke in the world.  

“Yes, I wonder WHY I would do that?” he asked in a falsetto voice, still laughing.  His chuckles then tapered down and he again looked me dead in the eye.  

Continuing to hold my gaze, he once again lifted his cup and saucer off the table.  With a flick of his wrist, he then dashed the coffee up and over his left shoulder, staring right at me the whole time.  He then paused, grinned and laughed, and stood up from the chair.

“I bet you weren’t expecting that!” he said and then turned around and headed back to the counter area.

✈✈✈✈✈✈

“Damnit! I forgot the biscuits!” I heard him yell from over towards the counter area.

I couldn’t exactly tell you why I stayed there, calmly sipping my coffee.  The man was clearly eccentric and his actions had disturbed me.  

But I could see the door from where I sat, the bright sunshine pouring in and the occasional car driving by.  I’d like to say that it was more about inertia, the feeling of not really knowing why I had even come into the bookshop or what I expected to find out.  The coffee was good and the old leather chair was comfortable.  The old man was a little weird but I didn’t really feel threatened.

A moment later he came back, holding a small plate with some round little cookies that seemed to be of the chocolate chip variety.  

“You’ll have to forgive me.  Sometimes the nuances of this Narrative escape me, in this case to my own regret, as they can be quite delightful.  But even though these cookies aren’t homemade I have to admit my fondness for them borders on being greedy,” he said, smiling and then sat back down in the chair opposite me.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he continued, “as I know it’s always a little weird when people meet me for the first time.  I realize from your perspective that you walked into an ordinary book store and just met someone new for the first time and then that person begins to act bizarrely and throws coffee over his shoulder and it’s all a little hard to make sense of.”

“Actually, believe it or not…”

“Yes, yes, December 18, 3:13 am.  You were standing outside the G---- Apartments dressed in a T-shirt and looked quite cold from what I saw,” he said, chuckling.

“Well…”

“Again, I ask you to forgive me.  We in our Brotherhood, we are keen on certain rituals, I guess you could say.  And when someone knocks and then enters, that’s quite important to us so we definitely remember.”

“Uh, I’m not quite sure if I follow,” I said.  “I had stepped outside to grab a quick smoke and then realized I had forgotten the key to the front door so I thought my goose was cooked right there.  You came along right at the right time, so thank you for that.”

He cocked one eyebrow up and grinned at me with that same full mouth grin.  

“Well, that’s what we do in the Brotherhood, so I accept your thanks but I’m here to tell you that it’s completely unnecessary.  In fact, it is I who should be thanking you.”

That one really stumped me.  “No, no, it was freezing cold out there that night and I was just about to try and find a payphone somewhere to call the police.  Thank goodness you came along but it was darn close to being a serious situation.”

“Sorry,” he said, flashing that grin at me again, “I can’t help but smile because almost everything you’re telling me is so sincere.  It’s quite touching.”

“Uh, I assure you it is sincere, mister,” I said, beginning to feel a bit indignant.

“Indeed.  Indeed.  But from my perspective it’s almost like you’re speaking a foreign language that I’m having to translate,” he replied, still smiling.  

“And I am easily amused,” he continued, “so that’s why I’m smiling.  I know you are sincere.  But to prevent any further misunderstandings, let’s follow the dictates of this Narrative and do things correctly, shall we?  My name is Brother E and it is very nice to meet you… again,” he said, smiling and stood up, extending his hand.

I stood and shook his hand, a firm and warm handshake.  His hand seemed rough and callused, surprisingly so for a guy who ran a bookstore.

“Robert Callahan,” I said, “nice to meet you.”

“Excellent, excellent!” he said, again, smiling broadly.  

The guy seemed overly delighted at just about everything, which made him seem almost childlike in his enthusiasm, a bit strange but kind of an appealing contrast considering his age.  

Other than a few family members and one old aunt I used to visit in her nursing home when I was kid, I hadn’t really spent too much time around older people.  But it always seemed as though they were kind of sour or bitter or complained a lot, about prices or the weather or something, and yet here was this older guy Brother E and he was positively beaming with good spirits.

“If I may, I have a question,” I said.

“Of course!  Anything.  Anything at all, Robert Callahan.”

“Well I’m not quite sure what you were doing at my building that night but you definitely arrived in the nick of time.  I’ve never been that cold as I was in my entire life so again, I thank you for letting me in when you did,” I began.  

“But I noticed then, as well as now, that you have an airplane pendant around your neck and the name of this shop is the Airplane Books.  Are you some kind of plane nut?  I mean fan, not nut like nuts,” I continued.  “Like I mean is this your hobby or something?  Did you used to be a pilot or what exactly is the deal?  I noticed that the address outside was 747.  Is it like a specialty bookstore with books about airplanes or what’s going on?”

He sat back in his chair and thought for a minute.  

“Theme is an interesting word, Robert of Callahan, and I like the etymology of it quite a lot,” he said after a moment.  “It adds a very nice nuance of meaning to what we’re all about here.”

He paused for a moment.  “Excuse me, for I have a bad tendency to think out loud sometimes,” he said with a rueful smile.  “You’ll forgive an old man for getting sidetracked, won’t you?  I think the easiest way to begin is to say that this is a shop with religious books.  And the symbols that we wear in the Brotherhood are religious in nature.  Yes, yes, I think that is the simplest way to describe it.”

“Religion?  Forgive me as I don’t mean to offend but I’ve never heard of a religion that worships airplanes,” I said.  “When you say Brotherhood and religion and I look at that kind of robe you’re wearing, I’m thinking more like Catholic or something.”

“Ahh, well we don’t worship aeroplanes, that’s for sure,” he said with a chuckle.  “But yes, you’re quite right, for this is an aeroplane around my neck.  I don’t wish to intrude into personal matters but are you familiar with Christianity?”

I was a bit nonplussed by the question but nonetheless I was intrigued by the conversation.  “I was raised Methodist,” I said.  “But I wouldn’t say I’m very religious or anything.  I mean I do believe in God and I know the basics but I don’t know, like, all the nuances and the specifics.”

“Ah, that’s quite alright.  But you are at least familiar with Christians wearing crosses around their necks or mounting them on the walls of churches, the cross being a major symbol for them, yes?”

“Of course.”

“But they don’t worship crosses, do they?  Of course not.  The cross is important because it’s a symbol, in this case a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus, which according to their dogma was the proof, if you will, that he was a god and not a man.  Any man can preach and talk and be wise, so to speak, but only a god can be killed and then come back to life.  So since Jesus died on a cross and then came back to life from there, the cross is a form of shorthand, like a condensed version of the most important aspect of their supernatural leader.”

“Yes,” I said, sort of understanding but not quite.

“So no, we in the Brotherhood do not worship or kneel down and pray to or offer up burnt sacrifices or wave incense in front of aeroplanes or anything else like that.  To us it is merely a symbol of something bigger.”

“But a symbol of what?” I asked.  “I have to tell you that I’ve never even heard of any religion having to do with airplanes before.  Every time I’ve ever seen that symbol it was just the regular kind of thing meaning an airport or whatever.”

The old man smiled at me as if I had just answered a test question correctly.  “Yes, and if you look around you, there are crosses absolutely everywhere that have nothing to do with Christianity.  For instance, a lot of telephone poles and electrical transmission lines are in the shape of a cross.  Same with the masts and yardarms on ships, and so on and so forth.  Or even the interior bracing on a kite, yes?  Even in English the lowercase letter T looks like a cross.”

“Well, that’s true,” I conceded.

“What makes a cross a religious symbol is when we attach the meaning of the sacred to it.  It’s what makes a cross in a church meaningful and a telephone pole profane.  The shape is the same.  It is the semiotics that give the symbol meaning,” he said.

I nodded, finally feeling like I understood what he was trying to tell me.  “Ok, I think I follow.  But what’s the meaning for you guys, in terms of the airplane symbol?”

He leaned back in his chair, smiling.  “Now that is a good question.  As you probably have already seen, we’re a very humorous organization.  For us, it’s sort of like an inside joke.”

“Wait a minute.  Now I’m lost.  You say it’s a religious thing for you guys but it’s also a joke?”

“Why can’t it be both?” he asked, giving me a wink and then reached over and took a handful of cookies, popping one into his mouth, chewing noisily.  

“Now I’m really lost,” I said.

“Good!” he exclaimed, brushing crumbs off his lap.  “We don’t believe that there is anything wrong with being lost.  But let’s start with something even simpler.  How many cats are there in my humble little bookshop here?”

I paused for a minute, thrown by the sudden shift in direction.  “Cats?”

“Yes, cats.  The domestic house cat, felix catus, the furry little mammal that is humanity’s oldest companion.  Four paws and whiskers, purrs, you know, cats.  How many cats are there in this shop?”  He leaned forward, eyes twinkling once again with that light of inner merriment.

I answered cautiously, suspecting some kind of verbal trickery.  “Well, are there more in the back or something?  I just saw that big one sleeping on the counter when I came in.”

He beamed that grin at me.  “Don’t worry about what’s hidden from view.  Look around again from where you are sitting right now and tell me how many cats there are.”

I looked around, first to the left and then to the right.  My eyes settled again on the children’s book in Spanish, the bright blue one entitled Buenos Dias, Señores!  

I was surprised to see that there was a small, silvery gray Siamese cat curled up on the shelf right next to it.  It was like he was camouflaged somehow, as I saw he was sleeping on top of some of the books, filling the gap perfectly on the shelf between other books.

“Keep looking!” the man said, smiling and reaching for another handful of cookies.

This time I scanned around more slowly and then I spotted an orange and white tabby also curled up asleep on a shelf to my left.  “Well I see three so far, but I swear I didn’t see the other two until just now, only the one up in the front on the counter,” I said.

“Outstanding!” he said with a grin.  “So now you’re starting to understand a little bit about what our Brotherhood is all about.  Now I’m going to ask you a very important question.  Do you believe that those cats were here all along?”

“All along?” I asked, confused.

“Yes.  Do you think those cats warped in here from another dimension or somehow snuck past you and stealthily curled up in a ball and went to sleep when your attention was somewhere else?  Or do you think that they’ve been here all along and you just didn’t see them until now?”

“Sure,” I said, my confidence returning.  “I’m sure they were here all along.”

“And so the question, Robert of Callahan, is what else has been here all along?  What else exists in this big old mysterious world of ours that we don’t see until we look for it?”

“Ahhh…”

“That is the foundation of our religious order, a quest that we have all solemnly dedicated our lives to.  You could summarize it exactly like that if you like, for we are on a perpetual journey to see what has not been seen before but has been there all along.”

“Ah,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“It’s okay.  I know it’s a little vague sounding and odd to begin with,” he continued.  “And I don’t wish to take up too much of your time.  And I am afraid that I too have certain matters to attend to.  So before you go, I would ask you kindly if you would accept a book from me as a gift, that might help explain a little bit more what we’re all about.”

He stood up and brushed a small avalanche of crumbs off of his shirt and onto the floor.  “Don’t worry, we’re not an evangelical order, so this isn’t my pitch to convert you or anything like that,” he said, laughing.  “But this is a book store and I would feel absolutely remiss if I didn’t at least give you a book before you left, no?” he said, arching one eyebrow.

Without waiting for my reply he exclaimed, “Wonderful!”  

He then went over to the Siamese cat on the shelf near me and petted it briefly, scratching it behind its ears.  The cat lifted its head slightly and angled its chin out, clearly relishing the petting.  The old man then picked up Buenos Dias, Señores! and handed it to me.

“Uh, thanks for the book and everything but I don’t really speak Spanish,” I protested.  “I took Spanish for a couple of years in high school but foreign languages were never really my specialty.”

“Oh that’s quite alright!” he said, flashing that megawatt grin at me.  “It’s mostly pictures and the vocabulary isn’t all that important anyway.  We humans are mostly visual creatures, are we not?”

“Uh, yes okay.”  I was a little confused but I accepted the book and then stood up.

“It was a true pleasure to meet you, Robert of Callahan.”

“It was nice meeting you too, Brother…”

“Brother E, as in the letter E.”  He then grinned and laughed, “Yes, yes, another one of our quirky little rituals.  Don’t fret over it.”  He then extended his hand and I once again felt the calloused warmth of his handshake.

“Come again soon!” he called out as I pushed open the front door of the store.  

I turned and gave him a little wave and then stepped out into the sunshine.

✈✈✈✈✈✈✈

I got down to the corner and then saw the bus coming, the same one that I always took home.  So just a couple of minutes after leaving the bookshop I was on my way home.

As the bus rumbled its way through the streets, I flipped open the book the strange old man had given me.  

The drawings were crude and simple, laid out in bold, primary colors, like it was not just a book written for children but illustrated by one as well.  

There wasn’t a whole lot of dialogue but as I scanned through it, it seemed to be about a little kid taking a flight somewhere and his adventures on the plane.  

The last page showed the kid exiting the plane door, standing at the top of those stairs that they sometimes still use, shouting out to a large crowd below, “Buenos Dias, Señores!” which even I knew meant “Good day, sirs” or “Hello everyone” or something like that.

I shut the book when we got to my stop and I got off the bus and trudged up to my apartment.  I set the book down on my table and ate breakfast, or dinner, whatever you prefer to call it, and then I  laid down to try and get some sleep.  

Despite the coffee and the interesting events of that morning, I was quite surprised that I fell asleep rapidly.  I don’t remember having any dreams but when I woke up in the late afternoon I felt remarkably refreshed and energized.

✈✈✈✈✈✈

Around 2:00 am, when we were having our “lunch” at work, I was pulling out my sandwiches and the apple I had packed along with the children’s book that Brother E had given me.  

I set it on the table when my coworker Dave spied it and snatched it, peering at the cover.

“Learning Spanish, eh?  Muy bueno!” he chortled.

“Something like that.”

“It just so happens that I’m a certified Spanish translator.  Let’s see what we got here.”

I grinned a bit, as did my other two coworkers, Deborah and Anja, because we were used to Dave’s antics.  

He was forever boasting that he was a karate expert or expert in some other kind of martial arts and yet he was extremely fat.  It was almost a ritual that during lunch he’d wax on and on about nutrition and how many calories we were eating while he would nonchalantly sit there and eat a fried pie from the 24-hour convenience store across the street.  

If you asked him about this glaring contradiction, a seriously overweight, flabby guy giving lectures on health and nutrition, he’d start in on his “bad back” and how it prevented him from doing pretty much anything at all, including work, apparently.

I don’t really know how much Spanish he actually spoke or understood but he was reading through the book quite intently.  

I let him do his thing and I asked Anja if she had found a newspaper.  Somewhere on her rounds Anja usually managed to find a copy of that day’s newspaper and it had gotten to be kind of a thing for us to read it during lunch.  

I was halfway into an article about how the Federal Reserve was predicting the economy would soon rebound when Dave snapped the book shut.  “This is a weird fucking book, Robert,” he said, pompously pronouncing his verdict on the subject.

“Oh yeah, Dave?  How is that?”

“Well for one, it’s written in a strange dialect of Spanish and some parts are difficult to understand.”

“I thought you were a certified translator, man,” I said, teasing him.

“I am.  But I learned classical Spanish from Madrid.  This is all like peasant Spanish with slang and stuff,” he said, huffily.

“Well maybe it’s Mexican or something.  Aren’t there lots of dialects and stuff in Spanish?” I asked.

“Where exactly did you get this book, Robert?”

Ahh.  I paused.  “It’s from a bookstore near my house.  I stopped in there this morning and the owner gave it to me.”

“Boning up on your Spanish, eh?  You should go to Mexico on your next vacation, bro.  I’m telling you the chicas there are muy beautiful.  But be sure not to drink the water or you will feel muy loco in the stomach-o,” he chortled, sliding the book across the table back to me.

“Thanks for the travel advice but it’s going to be a long time before I’ve got enough vacation days for a trip to a foreign country, man.”  I turned to my coworkers.  “Deborah, Anja?  Anyone else want to look at the book and give me their uninvited expert opinion?”

Deborah grinned and Anja looked at me stonily, saying nothing.  She had been born in Germany like 60 or 70 years ago or some impossibly long time ago but then moved to America when she was a kid but she still retained a kind of stoic reserve that didn’t leave her much room for hijinks and joking around.

“You must be a pretty good customer there,” said Dave, “if the owner is giving you free books and shit.”

“Actually, it was my first time even going in there,” I replied with a smirk.

“So this guy you’ve never met just hands you a free book, just like that?” asked Dave incredulously.

“Damn, Robert, I want me some free books!” said Deborah, eager to get in on the fun.

“Well he also gave me some coffee and we had an interesting chat.  Maybe the book was in appreciation of my scintillating conversational skills.  Did you ever think about that?” I asked.

“Yeah and maybe it’s in appreciation of your ugly face,” said Dave, chuckling.

“Shh!” said Anja, “Please, vill all of you be quiet?  I’m trying to read the paper here.”

I winked at Dave and used my hand to form the shape of a gun, pretending to “shoot” it at him and then blew off the “smoke” from the tip of the barrel.

✈✈✈✈✈

The next morning when I got off of work, all the roadwork on the route home was apparently over with and the bus went on its normal route and so we didn’t take the detour past the bookshop.

When I got home, I hauled out the book the old man had given me and I looked at it a bit more thoroughly this time.  

I didn’t know if Dave had been full of shit or if my Spanish was well and truly rusty but I really couldn’t understand most of the words on the few pages that had dialogue.  

The book was almost entirely pictures though, the first page showing a little Mexican boy in an airport near what looked like a boarding gate.

The next page showed him seated on the plane, reading a book on his lap and wearing headphones, little musical notes wafting out from his ears.  

The third page showed him asleep under a blanket, little thought bubbles rising up from his head, each one containing an animal that looked like sheep.

On the next page, he’s waking up, arms above his head like he’s stretching, his mouth wide open.  The passenger sitting next to him, a rather round, fat woman is shown asleep, little x’s for eyes and more little sheep in cloud bubbles above her head.  

The next few pages showed the kid racing around, having all kinds of fun on the plane.  The kid was shown climbing on the seats, stealing and then wearing a pair of sunglasses from someone’s purse, messily eating an enormous feast off of the food trolley in the galley, climbing into the overhead storage compartments, etcetera.  

What was odd though was that all of the other passengers were asleep and there wasn’t even a stewardess around or flight attendant or whatever they’re called now, to stop him.

The kid was clearly having a lot of fun until he got up to the cockpit, colored in deep grays and blacks, looking quite ominous.  For two pages straight, the kid knocks on the cockpit door and has a scared look on his face.  

He apparently receives no answer because on the next page he goes back to his seat and reads his book for a while.  On the next to last page he’s shown asleep again and then the last page is the one where he’s at the top of the stairs and shouting out to the people below, an enormous smile on his face.

It really was a bizarre book.  I didn’t know what the kid was saying to himself in the speech bubbles during his midair adventure but even so, the story made no sense.  

I imagined some Mexican grandmother reading this book to her grandson, perhaps back in the days when little kids could still fly unaccompanied, telling him a story about a boy who wasn’t afraid at all and had himself a grand adventure on the plane.  

I closed the book and fired up my old computer.  The internet in those days was a cruder and simpler thing but when I went to Google to type in Buenos Dias, Señores! I got about a million hits since it was just a basic phrase in Spanish.  

I then looked at the spine and the cover of the book to see who the author was but I was surprised to see that it wasn’t written anywhere.  

I then opened the book to the very front page where usually the publisher and author and all that jazz was listed.  But again there was nothing.  The first page just had the title and then the story began right away on the next page.  

I flipped the book over to the back and still nothing, no publisher, no author, no date, no nothing, not even a barcode, just the title and the story itself.  Very weird.

Out of curiosity I typed in “Buenos Dias, Señores! +strange +book” into the search bar but got nothing, the same with a few other combinations.  

Without wading through ten thousand language websites there was just no way it seemed like I was going to find out anything more about the book that Brother E had given me.

✈✈✈✈

It ended up being a couple of weeks before I made it back to Airport Books.  

I had originally started working at the hospital as a temp to do clerical work but then got hired on directly, slotted immediately into the team that was attempting to digitize millions of patient records.  

The theory was that in the future a patient could come into the hospital and the doctor could call up a digital copy of all of their past treatment records at any of our facilities.    But the scanning software was buggy and we were constantly having to sort out problems.  And so I was working some very long nights.  

On the bus each morning I’d debate getting off and walking uphill to the bookstore but I always felt too tired and so put it off for another day.  

But then one night the scanning machine broke down completely and we’d called the boss and she told us that a repair technician couldn’t make it out until the next day and so we had a rather easy night.  And so the next morning I got off the bus at the other stop and hiked on up to the bookstore.

Before entering, I looked in the display window and saw that the books had been changed.  There was still a mix of some old classics that I knew like Moby Dick and Gulliver’s Travels but also some weird titles that I didn’t recognize.  

I saw one book showing a guy dressed in old-timey knee-length pants and wearing a kind of golf or driver’s cap with his hands up in the classic boxer stance, the title You’ve Crossed the Line! written in large type yellow font.  

The book next to it looked like one of those classic romance books, the title In Love There Are No Rules written in a flowery script.  But the illustration below it was a beautiful young woman with blonde hair dressed in a firefighter’s uniform carrying in her arms a rather beefy, square-jawed looking fellow, his light purple shirt ripped open at the chest, revealing his well-defined muscles.  

Over in the corner of the display was an old paperback with a man on the cover wearing a Roman style white toga and a crown of leaves on his head, angrily pointing at a group of men.  The title of that one was, You Too! but as I bent closer I saw that none of the books but the classical literature ones had any author listed on their front covers.  

I pushed open the front door of the bookstore, the little bell above tinkling my arrival.  Inside, I saw Brother E standing near the central row of shelves, talking to two men and one woman.  

Both men were dressed entirely in black formalwear, black dress trousers and black suit jackets with black round hats on their heads.  The woman with them was dressed in a floor-length old-fashioned dress and was wearing a bonnet on her head.  

Whoever they were, they were huddled around Brother E and in the midst of an intense discussion when I entered.

They all stopped talking and turned to look at me.  They then turned back to Brother E, who said something that I couldn’t hear and then the two men in black chuckled in response to whatever he had said.  

Brother E clapped the tallest man on the shoulder and then shook both men’s hands.  The woman in the bonnet bent her knees and curtsied slightly and then all three brushed past me and quickly left the store.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Robert!,” said Brother E, smiling warmly.  “Please, please, do come in and have a seat.  I’m glad to see I didn’t frighten you off last time.”

“No problem.”

He motioned to the same leather chairs in which we had sat last time.  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Yes.  Thank you.”

“Ah, it’s so wonderful to have someone to share a good cup of coffee with, Robert.  We all have our little vices and it makes it that more delicious to be able to share them with someone, does it not?” he called out to me merrily as he made his way over to the counter.  

I sank into the leather chair, noticing that this time the little glass table was no longer covered with a teetering stack of books.  

Instead, I saw a small menu like the kind restaurants stick in your mailbox or give you when they deliver food.  On the front it said, “The Midnight Special” with a big cartoon yellow smiley face underneath it, a large red tongue extended and the words, “So yammy!” written at the bottom.  

I scanned down the list of items, seeing a lot of classic American diner foods like grilled cheese sandwiches and hamburgers and “dog n’ fixin’s” and one entry called “corn cob good” but also a couple of weird ones like “mamaliga” and another one called “sarmale”, whatever those were.

“This time I remembered the biscuits!” Brother E said as he came around the other leather chair, carrying the same silver tray as before.  He set the tray down on the table and repeated the same procedure, filling up the delicate white cup with rich, steaming coffee before gently handing the cup and saucer to me.  

“Just out of curiosity, I saw a menu there,” I said, pointing at the table.

“Ah yes!  Well if books nourish the soul then it’s also good to have some food to nourish the body, eh?” he said, his eyes twinkling.

“Interesting.  Is this your restaurant then?  I didn’t think you had the space here to run a kitchen.”

“Well actually we don’t!” he exclaimed, grinning.  “But upstairs we do,” he said, pointing up at the ceiling.  “But the menu you just saw was provisional, a mock-up.  It’ll be a few months before the restaurant is open but I wanted to see if we could get a healthy balance with some foods from home.”

“Are you going to serve these delicious chocolate chip cookies as well?” I asked, biting into one.

He laughed merrily.  “Oh don’t I wish!  But those are just the indulgences of an old man.  For the general public, I don’t think they’d quite serve, eh?”

“Oh I don’t know.  People like cookies pretty well here I think.”

He stroked his chin, seeming to ponder that for a moment.  “You might be right, Robert.  In fact I am sure of it!  But as you might’ve noticed,” he said, pointing his thumb back at the shop entrance, “we get some different kinds of folks here and their tastes, let’s just say, may not run towards chocolate chip cookies.”  

He then chortled and happily munched on a few cookies, crumbs cascading into his lap.  

“I don’t mean to be rude and pry,” I said, “but those folks who were here before, were they Amish or something?”

He looked up at me, again with that amused twinkle in his eye.  “Not a bad guess, Robert, not a bad guess at all.  They’re actually members of the Brotherhood.”

“The same Brotherhood as you?  With the airplane thing and all that?”

“Not exactly,” he said, “Not exactly.  But I don’t suppose you know who Jan Hus was, do you?”

“Yon who?”

“Ah yes, well I’ll give you the extremely short version.  About 600 years ago in what is now the Czech Republic but was then the Holy Roman Empire, a man named Jan Hus had, hm, let’s say he had some disagreements with the Catholic church on a few rather technical points.  And in those days, the Church was, ah, how shall we say it?  A little less tolerant on points of disagreement.  Anyway, they ended up burning him at the stake, this Jan Hus fellow.  

But he had a number of followers and there were some wars and all that kind of thing and the followers ended up splitting into different camps based on even more technical disagreements and distinctions and so on and so forth.  And one of those groups became known as the Brotherhood and still survives to this day and those people you saw in the shop are members of that congregation.”

“Ahhh.”

“But you’re right, it’s not too different from the Amish.  In these quote unquote modern times, they are a little old-fashioned but I assure you that they’re good people.  Occasionally they have, hm, well sometimes certain questions come up of a delicate nature and I’m always glad to help them out with a bit of advice if I can.”

“But your Brotherhood is not their Brotherhood, is it?”

“Well I guess you could say that all humans are brothers, eh?” he said, laughing.  “But yes, you’re right.  We are members of different Brotherhoods.”

“But they are some kind of Christian group or something and aren’t related to the airplane thing, right?” I asked.

“No, no,” he said laughing amidst another shower of cookie crumbs, “not unless it’s some kind of wooden plane that has a hand crank on the front!”

“If you don’t mind me changing subjects,” I said.  “I appreciate the book that you gave me the last time I was here but number one, I really and truly don’t speak Spanish and number two, I didn’t understand the story at all.”

“No?” he said, arching one eyebrow and taking a long, loud slurp from his coffee cup.  

“When you gave it to me you said something about how it would explain more about your religion or beliefs.  And yet all I could make out was that it was about a little Mexican kid who went on a flight somewhere and that’s it.  The only words I even understood were the ones on the last page, the Buenos Dias, Señores! part, which means ‘Good day, people’ or something, right?”

“Oh come on now,” he said, wiping cookie crumbs off his chin.  “It’s almost all pictures, no?  And those were drawn by a child.  Very crude sort of almost stick figures if I remember correctly.  How much simpler could it be, Robert?”

“Well yes, it was a simple children’s book,” I said, a little peeved at the insinuation.  “But I don’t get the point of it.  It’s just a kid flying on a plane.  What’s that got to do with your Brotherhood or religion or anything else?”

“Hmm,” he said, sitting back in his chair.  “Perhaps I’m remembering the wrong book.  At my age, my memory is sometimes a little wonky.  Refresh my memory, if you would, and tell me the story as best as you remember.”

“Okay, let’s see.  It starts out with a boy in an airport.  He is then on the plane, reading a book and listening to music.  And then he sleeps for a bit and then he gets up and starts running around the plane doing wild little kid stuff, climbing on the seats and things like that.  And then he goes to sleep again for a bit and then the plane gets there, wherever he’s going and that’s it.  That’s the end.”

He shot up forward in the chair.  “Aha!  Yes, that’s the book I thought I had given you.  Well, you’ve described it perfectly I think,” he said.