*1*

The slightest sense of sea breeze from the ocean a mile away freshened and cleaned the air. Bob stepped from the office for lunch and headed down the street. It had been the usual hectic day, souls spinning, brains to bonk, egos reeling from too much self-righteousness and dearth of vision. Time to leave all that behind and go for some self-gratiating lunch. Maybe a beer today. Cars sparkled by. The sidewalk glittered with a splash of mica and the tiniest shards of broken glass, a point of misplaced Hollywood, a fireworks sideshow from a contractor with a wry sense of humor.

The sidewalk moved beneath his feet. Sometimes he imagined the world slowly turning beneath him. The force of his and millions of other walking footsteps prodding the giant globe beneath them. Or, the mass of humanity balancing out. What if one day by agreement, everybody walked for five minutes westward? Would the rotation of the Earth speed up? What if everybody ran as fast as they could for twenty seconds westward, and then stopped? Would it cause massive earthquakes? Would it destroy the Earth?

The sun reflected rhythmically off the passing windows, changing the temperature yard by yard - warm with a window reflection, slightly cool when he passed a stucco wall. Cars whizzed by, some stationary cars were parked along the route, but mostly the curb held empty parking spaces and dull gray meters.

Bob turned into the strip mall, past the doors of the 7-Eleven, and entered into Chile's. The aroma of Mexican cooking whet his palate. A young chef stood to the side, scraping his steel spatula over a metal grill, the overhead fan whirring loudly, steam and smoke rising. Two heavy iron pots burbled at the front and back corners of the stove, their covers slightly ajar, steam rising. Several sharp knives sat poised on the counter. A handful of other odd, indescribable cooking tools were lying nearby.

Yellowish-pink whole skinned chickens hung from a line behind the stove. The young cook reached into the gigantic pot bubbling at the front of the stove and, grabbing a large fork from the counter, gave the pot a stir, and extracted a piece of cooked meat. He grabbed it with some tongs and placed it on the wood cutting block near the window. The steam rising off the meat speckled and clouded the window. Grabbing a large rectangular cleaver, the cook started whacking at the meat, hashing it into chunks.

"Howdy," Bob smiled to the owner, behind the counter. The owner, a goliath of a man with gentle hands, smiled back.
"The usual?" the owner asked.
"Vege burrito," Bob nodded. He paused. "And a Corona." The owner smiled and punched up a few keys on the register.
"$6.25."

Bob took out his wallet and handed a ten dollar bill to the owner. The owner nodded again, deftly made change, smiled again at Bob and while handing him the small paper receipt, said "Thank you!"
"Thank you," Bob replied.

Bob stepped back from the counter to let the next customer order, and he glanced again at the young chef cutting up the meat on the cutting board. It looked like pork machaca. He had already diced it into cubes and was now handily whacking it into tiny bits. He showed the skills of a practiced technician, similar to a Chinese chef on television: fwhup fwhup fwhup, now you have the finished meal. The steam continued to rise from the tiny pieces and adhere to the window. Bob drifted faraway with the blurred images pressing from the outside through the speckled glass.

He turned his attention behind him to the salsa bar, with around a dozen round containers of green and red Mexican sauces. A small clay pot with round handles held a mixture of jalapenos and carrots. Bob grabbed a plastic cup and scooped in some of the spicy green sauce. He grabbed another small cup and scooped in some of the spicy chunky red salsa. He looked at the jalapenos... oh, maybe just a couple. He took another small cup and gingerly placed two jalapenos in it.

Bob glanced at the wooden tables and chairs in the back of the restaurant. He pinged the space, sounding it for the hollows in the private spaces between those folks already present. He wanted a place by himself, not on top of somebody, where he could eat, think and read. The other customers projected their space needs, Bob scanning, choosing a seat of lower resistance, somewhat private, but striking a balance within the available free space.

He sat at a table near the back. Everybody politely avoided everyone else's gaze. Similar to the showers at the gym: nobody really cares who else is there, everybody just wants their own little space of privacy. Bob reached over and picked up a neighborhood free paper from the other empty chair at the table and began to thumb through it. He found some gruesome comics, off the wall irreverent stuff.

The owner walked up to him with his lunch on a plastic tray. "Vege burrito and a Corona," the owner smiled.
"Thanks!" Bob nodded. The owner placed the tray on the table, nodded, and returned to the register.

Bob closed the paper and placed it back on the empty chair, put his napkin in his lap, and poured the cups of green and red salsa on his burrito. Yumm. He paused for a moment, remembering days when he could only afford a loaf of bread. He had a strange thought: a memory of being very very hungry and waiting for dinner to be served. How the smell of the cooking made him famished, roused his hunger, and made the food that much more exquisite once it finally arrived. So he sat briefly quiet, to let the tension and anticipation of the food tug at his appetite. Lord, thank you for this food, and the people who have helped to prepare it, and the people I work with that made buying this possible. He took another sip of beer and cut into his burrito. It was excellent.

Bob glanced up from a mouthful of burrito to look at the pictures on the wall. He had noticed them while eating here before: they were a cross between sixties pop-art and M. C. Escher convolutions. He had just taken them to be posters. As he stared harder, however, he could see brushstrokes. How odd. These are actually paintings. He turned and glanced up over his shoulder, at the painting hanging on the wall behind him. He followed the three-D cubic design, with colors blending from deep purple in one corner, up through the colors of the rainbow to bright yellow in the other corner. Bob looked closer: in the lower right corner he could make out the signature of the owner of Chile's restaurant. "Hmmph" Bob snorted to himself.

Bob let his mind drift. He felt the pull of future souls, unidentifiable. Women in the future, himself in the future. Swirls of love, concern, guidance. He had been lonely, alone, for quite a while now. "Sigh," he sighed to himself. He scrunched a half-sideways smile. It was funny how a person picked up little habits and affectations as he aged. Bob took another swig of his beer, the bottle slightly more than half gone. He picked up the free paper again.

Man, there sure are a respectable number of babes at work, Bob thought. His mind wandered over the women that had briefly flirted with him over the past weeks. Sue, skinny as a beanpole, had the largest and most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. Every time he ran across her he fell instantly in love. Terry, another beauty, had terrific style, a beautiful face, shapely legs. Incredible Jennifer had a drop-dead body. Anywhere she went, all the male eyes followed, jaws dropping slack. Cute too, but unhinged far away, askew by god-knows-what devils. But man, what a beauty.

Bob folded up the free paper, put the empty plastic salsa cups back on his tray, wiped off the table and carried everything to the trash can. He dumped the debris into the trash and placed the tray on top of the cover. As he headed toward the door the owner raised his hand.

"Thank you," Bob and the owner each said to each other jointly, Bob nodding. As he left the beanery, a gentleman, about his stature and age, left the 7-eleven. How funny ... he was wearing white tennis shoes, blue pants and a white T-shirt, the same as Bob.

Bob slowed his gait a bit, to avoid overtaking the gentleman. The beer and beans made him relaxed and satiated. From habit, he glanced down at his watch. 12:45. Hmm, Bob thought, it seems like it was 12:45 when I left for lunch. Maybe not. Bob glanced down at his watch out of habit, 12:45. Hmmm, Bob pursed his lips, time seemed to be standing still. Must be a temporary time warp, a rip in space-time. Bob resisted the temptation to check his watch again. Space-time warps had been know to happen. Not just in Star Trek, or gonzo novels, but in his life too. He thought back to the time he had been standing at a Boston subway, linked to a marquee.

The air, crisp and clean, refreshed Bob and brought him back to the present. He again noticed the man wearing white tennis shoes, blue pants and a white T-shirt, and frowned - it was somewhat embarrassing, actually. The man turned around, noticed Bob and gave a wry smile. They both saw in each other's eyes the peculiarity of their circumstances. The gentleman slowed down and turned around.

"Howdy," the man said to Bob, extending his hand.
Bob shook his hand, "My name is Bob."
"I'm Greg," said the stranger. Greg wore his hair straight and brown, like a surfer, combed straight, parted on the left. He had a boyish face, but his eyes were an intense gray. "Do you work around here?"
"I'm doing a consulting stint down the street for an insurance company," Bob replied. "And you?"
"I make organs," Greg said.
"Organs?" Bob envisioned large pipe organs in the back of churches. Greg saw his thoughts.
"Yup. Come here, I'll show you." Bob followed Greg: they turned at a side street, went down past a small print shop, a shop that rebuilt car parts, some vapid doors, small offices, an agency of some sort. They came to a nondescript door in a metal-siding wall. Greg opened the door and motioned for Bob to enter.

It was a combination of the strangely different and the exceedingly familiar. Inside he saw a giant pipe organ arranged in large sections, mostly complete, waiting to be assembled into a single instrument. Shiny pipes, reeds, pedals. Above, a dusky plastic skylight let in the afternoon sun. The air inside smelled of a curious mix of light oil, sweet wood and newly machined metal.

"Wow" Bob said, turning to Greg. "Did you make all this from scratch?"
"Well," Greg replied, turning on a wall light switch, "parts of it. I design all the large pipes, but they're cast in England. I voice them. I do all the woodwork."

Sensing that Bob didn't understand fully, Greg reached over for a funnel-shaped piece of metal. "This is what the bottom of each pipe looks like." Greg held up the funnel and turned it so Bob could see where the air escaped: a narrow rectangular slit with another piece of metal welded to the inside. Greg tilted his head up, put the funnel to his mouth and blew air across the bottom. It made a foreign, reedy sound. "I need to file this down," Greg said, "to get the pitch exactly right."

Bob nodded his head in understanding. Bob spotted something mechanical on the wall. Once he got closer, he instantly recognized its circular grid chart and slowly oscillating line as a hygrometer. He nodded again.

"Geesh," Bob thought out loud, "how long does it take you to build one of these?"
"Oh, about two-and-a-half to three years," Greg replied. "Depending on the size."

Bob raised an eyebrow. It must be awfully nice to be self-employed on a project of such substantial duration. "How do you pace yourself?" Bob asked. "I mean, how do you know how many hours to work each day?"
"Oh, it's pretty easy," Greg replied. "I work each weekday until I'm done with a day's worth of work."

A small packet of intimation related between them. Bob had been in somewhat similar situations. The foreseeable work could stretch out for months, but somehow he knew instinctively what had to be accomplished that day and worked toward the obliged ennui.

"So then," Bob logically continued, "how do you plan for new projects, new work? Do you go scouting around, asking who might want a new organ?"

Greg smiled. "It's mostly just word of mouth. People talk, word gets around that your work is high-quality. You'd be surprised how much work there is out there, it's not just churches. Right now, for instance, I'm talking with a software executive up North who wants me to build an organ for his private residence."

"Wow," Bob thought and spoke at the same time, impressed with the idea that a single individual would want a custom pipe organ for his home.
"Here," Greg said, extending his hand and passing a business card to Bob.
"Thanks," Bob said, taking the hint that work was pulling them both away from each other. He shook Greg's hand, Lord, let me give back to Greg anything I took from him.

Bob headed back to the street. How strange, Bob thought, that here, in the middle of the city, this single individual has carved out a unique artistic life, unbeknownst except to a handful of people in the world. It is as if, in the middle of a bustling modern city, someone has hidden a medieval castle. The even stranger coincidence of his discovery left him disarrayed. It implied an even larger oddity: what a small, tiny, insignificant piece of the world we see in our daily lives, our drive to work, our day jobs, on our evening and nighttime orbits. Millions of people doing obscure and extraordinary things in hidden places.

When Bob returned to his floor of the office building, he felt the gentle brain scan from his fellow workers, their chance to live vicariously, to link with the underground life of strangers.