Geoff Ashbrook 9/9/1999
They cast their eyes aside for a few moments as the hills tossed and bumbled down the side of Wisteria's olfactory Monolyths, the car bouncing and the coffee chirping and the dead eyes caught snaking bow legs for a 'Diane' style fortuitous moment of tabooed reflection. The grey stains on the west wall back on campus and the traces of the stains on her sleeve he thought made a wonderful testament to accidental art, the maroon cases of marooned sailors carrying morose vinyets and macaroons. Desmond thought his scalp was fine for propping up a hand to rest his head, and he looked at all the daffodils by the roadside getting head. In the morning sometimes breakfast lasts three thousand miles, with a metric ton of sand. But morning also resurrects desires such as placing a paper napkin beneath the neck. He looked down beside his backpack and his sword caused only a slight bulge underneath his December layering, and looking Wisteria up and down, he couldn't tell what she had on her. And then when they got to the end of the street and had to turn left they saw it. It tractor-trailer had turned over, couldn't have been more than a minute ago. They stopped and put on their hazard lights.
No one appeared to be hurt, but a dozen people were wandering about, dazed, looking about him or her, as if they didn't know where they were. Then Wisteria tapped him on the shoulder. "Charles," she said, "Are those pancakes."
"My god," he said. "I believe they are." The back container part of the truck was burst open as though it were a microwave bag of popcorn. And everything within a hundred feet or more of the truck was covered with nice fluffy buttermilk pancakes. And at that moment a pancake landed on their windshield. It was a blueberry pancake, and it sent out a radially-symmetrical lite spray of blueberry juice onto the windshield.
The two of them got out of the car. It was five thirty in the morning because the clock said a quarter to three, and they shut the car doors and a great wind picked up from Blake in the south, and ruffled their hair. It was at that kind of morning time where the dawn line hadn't quite passed over their point like a satellite or a disco ball, but where the sky is bright enough to see as if it were an overcast day. Another three pancakes landed in quick succession, forming a straight line on the hood of her car. And they both noticed without the need of a second glance that they were walnut banana pancakes. And it was at that moment that he noticed that she did look a little bit like an ice cream cone.
She smiled and he burst out laughing and she stopped grinning and smirked at him with one brow cocked and aimed. "It's your hair," he said.
"What about it?" she asked.
"What about it? You dyed it so red it looks like a maraschino cherry that's what about it. And your skins as white as vanilla. You get the idea."
"What is going on," she said, smiling again, and looking around. And then it began to lightly rain silver dollar pancakes everywhere.
By now more and more cars had stopped. Some people got out and ran over to the truck to see if everything was ok. Others looked around them with great anxiety and strife at being held up in their daily peregrinations. And yet other occupants got out of their cars and climb up onto their roofs with pitchers of lemonade, and great billowing sacks of pretzels or popcorn. "Is this April fools day or something?"
"Not in December, no I'm afraid not. But I was wandering something similar myself. There aren't any other days like that, are there? Are they filming a movie here?" And he looked around but he didn't see any bustling crews or camera cranes or trailers for actors or coming attractions.
Than an old lady wrapped in, it must have been twenty bath-towels, walked right by Wisteria, walking at least a dozen cats on leashes. "Good morning to you," she said.
"Morning," Wisteria said, taken aback a bit.
"Do you think we should just have breakfast here?" He said.
"Are you serious? Now? Isn't it inappropriate or something? What about the accident?"
"Well look," he said pointing, "there's a man over there handing out plates, and it looks like the truck driver is giving out silverware." Then he looked over at her and she gave him a scowl of contemplative scrutiny.
"Hold your arm out again." She said.
"Oh, I thought it was just, me." He said, and held his arm out again in a pointing gesture. But it was true, when he held his arm out to point it sort of got longer than an arm is supposed to be. Like a foot and a half longer. He just shrugged.
Then she pointed toward the toppled truck, "Why does the truck driver have a sailors cap and shirt on."
"Oh you noticed that too?"
"Yes, I noticed that- what is going on? Oh god, are we dreaming? Can two people dream the same dream? I thought that was impossible."
"I'd say it's unlikely, but, you know these pancakes are pretty good." And he pealed off a huge banana walnut disk off the front of the car, the size of a dinner plate, and took a bit, and then tossed it to her like a Frisbee.
She took a bite too. "It tastes a bit mushroomy, doesn't it?" She asked, and he nodded. "Still, it's quite good though. Oh, look at that." She said pointing again, this time to the median strip which housed a plot of grass and a few trees, where Blue and Golden pancakes had begun to sprout out from the grass on long stems that looked like writing implements or tall buildings, some on small telescoping telescopes.
"I guess we'd have to be dreaming at this point." He said. "You know I just thought of something else. I have two names. Sometimes you call me Desmond, sometimes Charles, and I don't think either is my real name."
She began to laugh, almost choking on her strawberry chocolate chunk dollar pancake, "What. And you think 'Wisteria's my real name? "Wisteria." I mean how many people have a name like that."
"I see your point." He said nodding with sophistication. "Only I seem to have forgotten whatever's really going on. All I can remember is a bunch of stories. Do you suppose that's it? Is that all there is?"
"As long as it tastes like this." She said, trying another dollar pancake which had landed like a limp coaster, or a doily, on her shoulder. "I don't think I'd mind a bit. How about you."
"There's just that waking up thing. You see that man dolling out syrup from a pitcher, and handing out little pitchers, down at the corner of Folsom. I bet it's really good syrup, but I'm afraid I'll wake up before he gets here."
"How could you wake up, I mean, what would you be waking up to? You don't even have real name. I guess you could wake up though. More like fall asleep again. Well if you want syrup, go down and get some."
"Ah, but you see, at least in my dreams, even if I could get to him, if I left you here I'd spend the rest of the dream trying to get back to you. You know, one of those asymptotic nightmares."
"Well, I could go with you."
"Could we hold hands to make sure?"
"That would be ok. Sure." She said, putting the pancake she was eating back on the hood of the car, and wiping the corners of her mouth. Never taking her eyes off him.
"Nice. Ok. Let's go for it. A modest first extension, be that as it may." He shook his arms in the sleeves of his coat with anticipation.
So they began walking and as soon as their hands touched they started noticing how far the strangeness had spread from the truck, with hot air balloons landing by the dozens, helicopters, and things that looked like UFO's from old comic books hovering for miles around. The people around them looked odd too. Sometimes you could see the pixels. Or with other people, you could see the pen lines by the shoulders of their coats. Or you could hear music when a person walked by, you could hear what they heard yesterday. And it sounded like it was it was clearly in that direction, crisply that a distance away. But most of all they noticed that no matter how hard or long they looked, that it would be impossible to notice everything going on around them.
When they got to the Syrup man, which they did with an ease which surprised them both, they found him a tall man with a modest greying beard, curly hair, and a thought lined forehead. And they saw he had a picture of Yggdrasil on his sailor's shirt, which now looked more like an imperial Chinese robe, the tree's Bhodii like branches moving just about everywhere, or at least so for the conduit microcosmic mandala the print was. But then they realized they didn't have anything to put the syrup on.
"What should we do?" Wisteria asked the man, so nervous she almost became afraid. But he just smiled and walked right by them. In a few seconds a pancake fell into her hands, and they walked up to him again and tapped him on the shoulder.