Pineapple Grove & Other Short Stories is a book of ecclectic stories from the philosophical and nostalgic to the satiric and whimsical. For the science-fiction fan there are several of those included in this collection, as well as a take off or two on the pulp type horror tales of the fifties with some surprising twists. The collection of stories in Pineapple Grove contains short stories in both the classical tradition of cozy yarn spinning and the kind of tales rarely stumbled on today. Reading this book is like sitting down with an old friend by the fire.

Pineapple Grove and Other Short Stories

By Gary Alexander Azerier

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Gary Alexander Azerier
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-7637-2

Contents

Chapter 1 Pineapple Grove..................................5Pineapple Grove............................................7Chapter 2 Early Days.......................................15P.S. 173...................................................17Richard Feare..............................................23Enrique....................................................27Chapter 3 Yesterdays.......................................31Sportsman's................................................33Sugar Daddy................................................41Chapter 4 Friends..........................................49Barry......................................................51Mort of Magic..............................................59Embraceable You............................................65Santiago...................................................71Chapter 5 Reflections......................................77Kirby Felton's Final Note..................................79The Gift...................................................83The Man....................................................87Promise....................................................89Iwo........................................................91Chapter 6 Light Reflections................................93The Party..................................................95Visit to Valhalla..........................................105Equal Opportunity Employer.................................110Closet Hero................................................113A Silly Tale...............................................115This Stinks................................................117Neighborhood Stroll........................................121Chapter 7 Science Fiction Off the Wall.....................127Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall................................129A Little Unfinished Monkey Business........................137Dj Vu, Dj Vu...........................................145Shipwreck..................................................149Constellation Station......................................162Chapter 8 Sweet Fantasy....................................180Stentor....................................................182About the Author

Chapter One

Pineapple Grove

"UPON THOSE SILENT WALLS WE LEFT THE SHADE" William Wordsworth - The Excursion

Pineapple Grove

There is a place in Delray Beach, Florida, called Pineapple Grove. It is situated off Atlantic Avenue, the little city's main drag, so to speak. Of course, there is nothing "draggy" about Atlantic Avenue. In fact, if anything can be construed as draggy, it would be Atlantic Avenue's counterpart in Palm Beach, the posh, somewhat ostentatious Worth Avenue. Come to think of it, however, sterile might better describe Worth.

Before I go on to Pineapple Grove, I should like you to indulge me a few more observations about "downtown" Palm Beach and its rather antiseptic streets. On the days I recall strolling along the avenue, there were few others on the streets, little traffic, and most of the shops were, oddly, closed. My chief recollection is an overabundance of Rolls Royce and Bentley automobiles in a variety of colors, to the extent that they faded into the horizon and became, not only unnoticeable, but bordering on the vulgar. The ones I do remember were mocha, tan, deep chocolate, green, and convertible. The local police patrol cars were inordinate in number. Toward the bottom of the avenue, was the only shop I ever seemed compulsively to visit. It was a citrus shop specializing in lemons, oranges, and limes. Occasionally a shelf sported a red pepper jelly that was, instead of the promised "hot," sickeningly sweet. South of all this on AIA was Atlantic. And you made a right.

The beautiful ride down on AIA was made interesting by the ocean on the left, the lovely, although well hidden, mansions and estates on both the left and the right, and scent of old money and history embracing all of it. There are Palm Beach postcards you can buy at flea markets, antique shops, and postcard shows that picture this community, its hotels, and tree-lined roads as it was back in the forties, thirties, twenties, and before. Much of it is still very recognizable. In a way, little has changed. One woman wrote on a Saturday morning in February 1914, "We are surely having summer weather, although a little cool here. Trusting you are well." The card, signed N. W. D., is addressed to Mrs. R. Davis in what looks to be Assonet, Massachusetts.

Another, my favorite, read: "My Dear Blanche, We are having a glorious time, but I wish I were back in Havana. It is so unique there. Do not sail til the 17th in N.Y. Love to you, Mabelle." It was sent to 1752 Beacon Street, Brookline, Massachusetts, February 14, 1920. The two cards show "Lake Front Avenue, Palm Beach, Florida," and "The Australian Walk, Palm Beach, Florida," respectively. The women pictured on one of the cards are wearing large floppy hats and ankle-length dresses. One of the women carries a parasol. The other woman wears a jacket. A man in the picture wears a suit and a derby. I wonder what became of N. W. D. and Mabelle and if she got to Havana.

So, today, as you drive slowly and carefully down AIA, you seem to sense the same trees in the deep green canopy, similar mild warmth, the possibility of the man in the derby, and a certain quiet that punctuated the simple conversation of the two strolling women on the Australian Walk. It is all very recognizable. And then there is Atlantic Avenue. At the corner, a noisy, Italian eatery, Boston's overcrowded restaurant and bar, and a clothing store selling unlimited numbers of T-shirts, the last two or three years' issue of current, oversized postcards and beach accessories.

Atlantic Avenue is divided into sections. It is quiet at the top, before the bridge and alongside the new, somewhat reserved Marriot. (It's orange and looks like old Florida.) Also before the Intracoastal Waterway is an ice cream store where you can get a small cone of chocolate or peanut-butter vanilla for just a little over four dollars ... not including what you put in the tip cup. If you have anything left, you can buy a seashell or a souvenir next door.

The Blue Anchor Pub rests on the corner, just over the bridge. It would be a welcoming establishment for the thirsty or the hungry but for the enigmatic fact that the chef, supposedly Irish or English, still insists on infusing his shepherd's pie potatoes with garlic. In the evenings, an acid-rock band puts forth the loudest, most intolerable noise, making conversation, ordering, hearing, and swallowing daunting and near-impossible feats of will and effort.

What follows is another somewhat quiet stretch of street with a gallery here and a sidewalk caf there, like a piedmont, stretching gradually before the vast range of mountain to come. It was livelier before development changes in the landscape, and activity seemed to gravitate farther west.

The old Colony Hotel pretty much marks the center of the avenue and sits, beige and off-red, in the center of the city's history. The hotel recalls another day and boasts a porch, facing the avenue, furnished in Florida rattan and revelers who appear to be from somewhere else. Many grasp drinks and some sing.

Past the Colony, on either side of Atlantic, are sidewalk cafs. Nearly every one of the avenue's many restaurants have placed tables and chairs on the sidewalks to accommodate diners who prefer dining with a close-up view of the street and its pedestrians, as their luncheon and dinner selections remain on display, longer than usual it seems, for the passersby to inspect with their casual, unobtrusive (and sometimes not so unobtrusive) glances.

And across the street, there are more galleries, gift shops, strange African and New World Order/Astrology shops and another ice cream/sweets shop with patrons lined up outside, waiting to pay prices similar to the four-dollar price farther east, closer to the beach.

Then, approaching the northeast corner, there is Louie Louie Two ... or Too, depending how you read it. Around the corner from it is Pineapple Grove.

I live in a high-rise about a mile down on AIA. When I first moved into the building, I very nearly always bumped into a jolly fellow whenever, it appeared, I ventured into the elevator. His name was Scott, an Englishman of some means, very effusive, social, and good-natured. He seemed to be enjoying life, taking full advantage of the building, the area, the weather, the beach, and the pool. I, somewhat more modestly, was just enjoying the elevator ride up to the eighth floor, which I didn't mind doing alone.

I grew up in an elevator building in Manhattan. The building had six floors. We lived on what I imagined to be a respectably high, fourth floor. On occasion, I rode to the fifth floor, which I understood was even higher and which seemed brighter, sunnier, and more airy, and even on rare days up to the sixth floor, which was considerably higher, in fact, an apex ... the highest! It was on one afternoon, as a child, that I could have sworn I saw a red marking, through the see-through gate on the concrete wall before a designated floor, indicating a seventh floor. This took place when the building still used a manually run service elevator complete with gates, a governor, and heavy sliding doors operated by handles. For years, I secreted the thought that somewhere, beyond the zenith of the sixth floor, there was a seventh. I could still imagine seeing that red number 7 painted on the outside wall, but I never found the floor.

In the Florida place, there was a seventh floor beyond the sunny sixth ... and I lived above that one ... on the eighth. Strange how some of the really insignificant measures in life sometimes take on inordinate proportions. But I enjoyed living not on a lower floor, above my old fourth, beyond the sixth, and certainly beyond the seventh floor. And my jolly neighbor Scott seemed to enjoy the eighth floor as well (although I am sure, for different reasons). Certainly, he seemed to traverse the hallways enough. I got to enjoy meeting him pretty nearly each of my trips up or down.

On the first Christmas Eve my wife and I spent in the building, Scott must have sensed my wife's feelings of misplacement. It just wasn't a northeast Christmas. He rang our bell and invited us for Christmas dinner. We ate, we drank. The night was warm, happy, interesting, and Christmassy!

A short time later, four of us ate at Louie, Louie Two ... or Too (depending on how you take it!). It was before the city started building Pineapple Grove, and we didn't even walk in that direction but we passed it. We ambled west of Louie and where the Grove would later be, but there was less development in that direction (than there would later come to be). Somehow, the evening fizzled, and we wound up browsing in a drugstore before the night was over. Scott said he hadn't been feeling well. He was quiet.

Scott died shortly thereafter. I hadn't known him for that long a time but felt I had lost an old, old friend. The elevator trips were hardly the same. I actually found myself waiting for him to show up and had a shade of surprise when his shout to "Hold it" didn't obtrusively come from around the bend. I really thought it would. It didn't.

Some few years later, the city of Delray started construction on Pineapple Grove. They erected a vaulted archway with an illuminated pineapple and the words "Pineapple Grove" in lights. The first few establishments began conducting business, although the rest of the strip was dark, quiet, bare. The House of Siam?

I drove a ways down and didn't find much. There was nothing to find. Always dark. Always untraveled. Always a little bleak.

It was sometime later that a friend in the building directed me to a mystery bookshop I had not known of. Turns out it was on Pineapple Grove, all the way in. I found it. It was the only shop open on that strip.

Each year, the Grove grows. The shops increase in number; the restaurants increase, bringing more and more amblers and pedestrians meandering and exploring. Still, though, it is a quiet place, not quite, I suspect, coming up to expectations.

But whenever my wife and I finish a carafe of Chianti and a pasta dinner at Louie, Louie Two (or Too), I only want to pass under the arch and stroll down Pineapple Grove.

"Why?" she asks. "There's really nothing down there!"

But when I look north, down the long, long, dark street, past the House of Siam, Kyoto and Palm Beach Photo, Bond Street, NE First Street, and the Paradise Salon Spa Caf, I see something she doesn't see. No one seems to see it. I have driven down this street onto what presents itself to me as a road into the night, into the dark north where the Florida visitors came from, into yesterday, and even beyond that. The road flows past the Jamaican Restaurant, the Mystery Book Store, what is slated to be the Caf Verdi Amici, past the Beached Boat and the City Walk Apartments ... and long, long past Louie Louie Two. It reaches back into the twenties and thirties, when this place didn't exist for me but it was still warm, still different, waiting ... to be here now. I look north, into the black, and I see ladies on the Australian Walk and a man with a derby following. I see old, old friends. I see Cannery Row, "New Apartments Going Up." I see "End NE 4th."

Chapter Two

Early Days

"NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T!" Anonymous Magician

P.S. 173

When I think of P.S. 173, Lawrence Landis comes to mind. The pristine, red-brick building comes to mind as well, with the white faux marble stairs in front of the school (the stairs rarely used by anyone, save those who were kept well after three o'clock, when the side exit doors had long been locked) and the shiny brass handrails that we polished by sliding upon them when we did use the center doors. I can still smell the brass.

That pretty picture of the school was taken from 173's early years in the 1940s. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the school, at least its appearance, had gone to seed and was covered by graffiti, as was much of Washington Heights. And it had aged, melting into the years, into deterioration, into, not so much encroaching time, but the encroaching times. But the memories of the early days and the early people remained. And they are unchanging, immutable.

Miss Callanan's first-grade class was not all that pleasant. We folded our yellow, pulpy papers and filled in the top two folds with our name, the date, our class, and the subject. Arithmetic papers were folded into four boxes, spelling papers only once in half, to form two columns. Denizens of the class knew what kind of lesson or test was to come based on how we were instructed to fold our papers. And the ink, spraying from those horrid pens when the nib got momentarily hung up in the paper's pulp, added mess to misery. If you were left-handed, all the worse. Of course, I was left-handed.

Tensions heightened when papers were handed back. The grade you received was one of two: a cross-not good, a check-good. It was Lawrence Landis, seated one aisle to my left, who showed me how to successfully defuse this tension as well as mollify the devastating effects of a possible poor grade. Landis-a comfort, a smile, and a fellow traveler-seemed to know how to make light of an otherwise difficult half hour. What he did was fold his returned paper lengthwise in four and then fold the bottom inch upward and away from him, the next inch segment toward himself, making a zigzag pattern, until the entire paper was transformed into an inch-square packet. He would then hold the little square, pressing it on his desktop with an index finger, letting go all at once, as it sprung up, revealing itself as a nifty jack-in-the-box, an improvised toy, an entertainment, an amusement, fashioned out of the very cruel weaponry the adult world was using to torture us. With judicious use of this toy, the feeling was that we had prevailed.

We did not always prevail. In fact, it was rare. And when we did prevail, we did not always triumph.

Sometime in 1946, Tom Mix and the Ralston Purina Company offered an interesting premium. For a thin dime and box top from Shredded Ralston you got a neat, little, adjustable ring that enabled the wearer to look around corners. I got it. After weeks of waiting, which of course seemed like months, it came in a little brown envelope, addressed to me. I was slow to finish the cereal, however.

Rings that followed included Sky King's Gold Ore Ring, the Magna-Glo-Writing Ring, the Navajo Treasure Ring (for which one had to consume Peter Pan Peanut Butter), and a host of Lone Ranger rings, including the Flashlight Ring, the Six-Shooter Ring, and the Weather Ring (which required proof of purchase of either Kix or Cheerios cereal). Always, however, I was slow to finish the required cereal. And it was because of this sluggishness (and limited cupboard space) that I failed to acquire what for me became the ring of rings: the Lone Ranger Atom Bomb Ring. My mother simply refused to harvest anymore fractionally consumed boxes of cereal. One bright day, however, in Mrs. Storm's sixth-grade class, my dreams were answered ... almost.

I don't remember who, but one of the boys (who I thought was the luckiest kid in the room that day) flashed the ring: the Lone Ranger Atom Bomb Ring. It had been "around" for a couple of years, but I had never seen it, never held it, much less removed the rear fins to peer into the innards of the bomb itself and thereby witness the mini-phosphorescent atom bomb devastation. But the kid wouldn't let me see it. He would not let me hold it. I negotiated for the ring all day and finally assumed ownership of the coveted piece by day's end-after forgoing a day's schooling and trading away a goodly proportion of my pocket's contents: trading cards, penknives, pin backs, and do-dads.

Although only moments remained until the final dismissal bell of the day, my curiosity was not to be contained. I removed the red plastic fins and looked into the ring. Nothing. I adjusted the angle and cupped my hand over it to block out the light. And it was then I heard those ominous words:

"What do you have there? Bring that up here, please!"

She took the ring ... and threw it in the wicker wastebasket just as the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. And my Atom Bomb Ring dream.

(Continues...)

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