"Only dolts live in the city for life," I told Margaret. She shrugged. I'll never forget the day we moved out to Red Sparrow Falls. Something changed then, and I'm still uncovering the mystery of what, these so many, so many years later....
"I have to go out to the dentures repair shop," I lied to Margaret. "Molar's on the fritz again." I hopped in the station wagon and zoomed the some ninety minutes, over the majestic bridge and into the cloudy, rough and tumble hubbub of the big city, a different world. It had been a decade at least since I'd been here, but it mostly looked the same. The world seemed to hit a point of stagnation, culturally, at some point, and it became one of the great unspoken things: not questioning how or why that was. I made my way over to the Hall of Records. I had pinpointed the time and general location of what I believed to be when and where a Dr. Joe Cravendorf Sr. worked as a psychiatrist. His office was in the same building I had worked in, and though I don't believe I ever met the man, the name and title etched onto a glass door was burnt upon my memory. I was certain. I stopped to phone Margaret, to explain the length of my absence.
"Yeah, he says it's gonna be at least another hour and a half. Bungled the whole job. Showed me the mangled chompers when I got back from the deli, in fact. Apparently his cockatoo is sick and has blurting out non sequiturs, loudly and randomly. Startled him and he cracked it all in half."
I made my way over to the Hall and walked up to an elderly woman with purple hair who was on shift in front of the great book. "Looking for information on a Joe or Josef Cravendorf. Worked at the Pelican Building over on 5th. Believe he had a private psychiatry practice," I said. I told her the years he would've been active and she began to thumb through the pages. Just as she did, though, a glaze came over face, then a little spittle seeped out of the corner her mouth. Before I knew it, she was in a full-out epileptic fit or some sort. I rang the bell on the desk loudly, until a portly man with wraparound sunglasses appeared from the back. "What happened?" He shouted. "I'm... I don't know. She just..." The man dialed for help and I inched my way to the exit. This was really happening, I told myself. And I told myself never to think about Josef Cravendorf's father again.
---
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/myspace/message
Support this podcast:
https://anchor.fm/myspace/support
