AZOTUSLAND chapter one

Jim bleared at the clock hoping it would say 6:30 or thereabouts, but it said 5:11 .

He knew well enough that he was now up. He rolled off the bed, clipped the bookshelf with his shoulder as he moved around the bed in the small bunkhouse and slogged slowly into the small kitchen. He grabbed a Hornsby Cider and twisted the cap and slipped into the bathroom for the usual.

Turning the knob across the way sent steam in a few minutes and he stripped off his T and lumbered into the shower.

God it felt good. As it reached around his back he thanked the unknown god for hot water and allowed it to soak himself well and full. Soap and rough tugging and shaking with shampoo on his tall head was even better.

Flooding suds down and drying then a look in the mirror. Would she come back today or would it be just another one?

Fifteen minutes or so later, the doors of the Azotus Café would open and Frank, Ted and Melinda would be there, waiting, if he didn’t hurry.

He slipped on some shorts and slung a dark flannel shirt and took a slug from the Hornsby and headed still wet out the door.

The main door was only fifteen feet down a walkway. He stopped in at Ops to revive the computers and check his emails. The usual spammage had gotten through. Seven emails about fake Rolex watches, 6 from anonymous women in their 20s who supposedly wanted to meet him, 4 advertising Viagra in soft-gel form. He erased them all immediately. But one email looked different. There was no contents but the tagline simply said “I will see you.” The return address was Rnonymous@msn.com.

“Whatever,” he said to the cold room then left for the upper Café next door.

Roo had been there since 5 a.m. and was on beam as usual. Out in the main area, the room was awakening with Frank, Ted and Melinda already in their usual places. In the far corner was a couple that I had never seen before.

The Azotus Café is an amazing and utterly unique place. Redundancy and hyperbole are its two other triplet sisters. They form an unusual trinity.

I woke up early that day, which is a fine mess in my condition . I hunked down from the top floor to the bottom patio and asked Roo on the way down for an espresso and a slack of cheese.

“There’s some leftovers in the IC” Roo said. “And hit Andy for your course and grift” she said not unkindly.

I tried to clear my eyes. The light fog was lifting over Red Hill and the crows were braying and the sun hit the rooftop of the Azotus Café and spilled down below. It’s an intensely yellow sun that floods the whole eastern wall of this complex. I ducked into the IC, which is what others know as an “Internet Café”.

“Andy!” I called out as I hit one of the keyboards to awaken it for use. Then I walked around behind the small expresso bar and started to pack a load into the machine when Andy came around the corner.

“Maug!”

“Troll!”

He shook his head, not fond of my various nicknames for folk. “Roo says there’s food.”

“Yeah, down at the end in the last fridge. I picked through and found some Muenster slices in a tray, grabbed some old bread and finished making my Americano.

Once logged in I checked my emails and had one from my editor:

Maug,

Good response on the Rage piece. Very timely too. Simon says he wants your next one to be on a related topic…how about Lying or Cover-ups? Let me know. Wedndesday’s come quickly. Don’t be late.

Bill

Okay..fine.

I started the usual web searches and jotted down some easy notes.

Upstairs Ted had managed to draw in a new victim, actually two of them. After eaves-dropping for awhile he managed to interject an irrelevant notion about Intelligent Design into the young couple’s conversation on the window shopping they wanted to do in Sausalito. Within minutes it was a three-way debate and temperatures were rising.

Roo came over at one point and smirked at Ted. “Are you harassing this lovely couple Ted?”

“No, we are just discussing…”

“Yes,” she said then turned to the couple, “if you ignore him eventually he moves off for other prey” she said smiling. “Would you like some more coffee?”

“No, were fine,” offered the woman, “we have to be going in about five minutes anyway.

With that Ted turn his chair back around and muttered “nice talking”.

Some of the other usual suspects came in at 6:30 before the larger rush at 7. Whispah, Cara and Maurice would all find their usual spots upstairs in the main Café where Jim, Manfred and Renata ran the morning rush. Roo, Martine and Hans took care of the Big Room one floor down. Andy watched over the IC, but only used the small expresso bar for folks in the afternoons so they did not have to go up two flights. Later, around 11, Hans, Roo and Martine would close up the Big Room, but leave the doors open to the library section on the South side. Hans would then go and open the Gallery and Studio on the North side of the old mansion. Roo had classes mid-day and Martine used the time to do bookkeeping and also to prepare for whatever performances were scheduled for either the library of the Big Room.

The other folks only worked in spots. Jeremy ran the kid’s area, “The Batcave” from 10 to 1, and again from 6 to 8. Jim was in charge of all movie events in the small theater, and Jonathan did a remarkable job of doing all the custodial work as well as entertaining people with his seemingly unending variety of impersonations and ad lib comedy bits.

Most of them biked in from local neighborhoods except Jim who lived in the Bunkhouse, Andy who lived in a small room off the IC and was rumored to have not seen direct sunlight for over a decade, and myself since Jim befriended me a decade ago. I have a small section of the room we call Ops, which essentially runs the place. I am essentially the security officer for the whole complex. Jim likes to call me “Maugham P.I.” with derision.

Oh and of course there is Manfred. No one is quite sure where Manfred came from, but he also resides in the Bunkhouse with his own small room. Manfred deserves his own story.

**********

Manfred just showed up one day about 5 years ago, at least three years before Jim moved down here to Marin and bought the old mansion on the hill and renovated it into the gothic complex which is Azotusland.

I had met Jim in 1988 at a thing called “Word Jam” at Café Paris in downtown Sacramento. Despite completely different world views we became fast friends and started hanging together. We’re kinda like brothers.

So, I came over for a movie night with Jim in 2000 and Manfred answered the door.

“Hellooo” he exclaimed loudly.

“Hi, ummm…who are you?”

I am Manfred!” he said even louder with a big toothy grin.

I shook his hand. He didn’t look harmful (only later would the real truth be known), in fact he looked a little bit like Ben Kingsley. Between that and his quasi-East Indian accent he had, upon first glance, a sort of Ghandi-esque quality to him. So I gave it no mind. We had an enjoyable pizza dinner and watched The Wind and the Lion on DVD. Manfred was mostly silent throughout the evening, but I noticed he ate more than his share of the pizza. He actually kind of wolfed it down. Later, in the kitchen he was helping himself to a huge bowl of ice cream and I could hear him saying over and over again “perhaps the previous owner had nothing pleasant to say” and then giggling in Hindi.

I week later Jim and I were to go to an art opening. When I arrived Manfred was there again. Jim turned to him and said “Manfred, will you bring the car around please?”

“Oh yes Sahib! I willl!”

And with that he scampered away, and out the back to get the Mustang.

I looked at Jim. He looked at me. I gave him my best Larry David stare, which only I can do (he is very tall, but so am I. About two inches shorter, so I am 6’4”).

Finally he relented. He’s my “manservant” Maug.

“Really?” I said slyly. “and…”

Just then the black Mustang GT came roaring around the corner and screeched to a halt near the front walkway. Manfred leapt out leaving the car on and the door open. Then he got my door.

“Thanks Manfred,’ he said “enjoy your evening.” And we headed out down Montgomery Street.

It was a warm Sacramento evening so he had the top down.

“So?”

“I’m not sure how it happened,” he said shaking his head. “He was working in a bank that was closing in a week and we started up a conversation in the bank. He told me about his family back in Spain..”

“What a minute” I interrupted. “HE’s from Spain?!”

“Well yes, but he is also half East Indian. To make matters worse he is Bi-Polar.”

“So in other words, he is “Quad-Polar?” I asked with a smirk.

“He’s not a bad guy,” Jim said. “He just needed a place to stay for awhile. So he offered to be my manservant…for free.”

“For free? You have an indentured slave living at your place?”

“It’s not like that. In fact as things have shook out he basically eats most of my food, watches soap operas all day long and is alternately gleefully hyper or elusively glum.”

“What services does he provide? Does he cook and clean?”

“Nope. He has a rare skin disease that makes him allergic to dish soap. No, he simply brings the car around.”

Of course later Jim found out that Manfred was a lot more shrewd than anyone could have ever dreamed. His first clue should have come a week earlier when he had a woman named Susan over for a dinner date. She was a tall lanky woman with dark brown hair and a delicious smile and Jim was quite smitten. But as he was making dinner in the kitchen Susan was left with Manfred to talk.

When he walked out of the kitchen with dinner Susan was gone.

“Where’s Susan?” he asked Manfred innocently.

“Oh indeed Sahib, Miss Susan has left us.” He said with a grin.

“Why?”

“She hadst to go Sahib” he gestured and said “Pooftah!”

Jim left messages but she never returned them. And he had no idea why and finally gave up.

______________________

end of chapter one.