The Keeper of Memories

    One afternoon, I was smoking in the courtyard when I saw my neighbor Kieren coming from the parking lot. She was carrying a large, heavy canvas bag. She was wincing and trying desperately not to drop it. I stamped out my cigarette and ran to her, ‘Can I help?’

    ‘Oh, thank you!’ she said, handing the bag to me. 

    We went to her apartment. It was messy, with her roommate’s unmade bed in the living room surrounded by stacks of her belongings. I set the bag down near the television console. ‘Would you like anything to drink?’ Kieren asked. 

    ‘What do you have?’ I asked. 

    She shrugged, ‘Wine, that’s my strongest thing.’

    ‘Sure.’

    ‘Cool. Have a seat on Diana’s bed. She doesn’t mind.”

    She disappeared into the kitchen while I sat on the bed, returning with a bottle of wine and two full glasses, handing me one. She sat down on a worn-out recliner across from me.

    We chatted about everything that came to our minds as we refilled our glasses, one after another. With the bottle finished, Kieren asked if I could open another while she used the bathroom. 

    I entered the kitchen and found an unopened bottle of Two Buck Chuck on the counter. As I was uncorking it, I saw photographs on the wall near me. There were ancient monochrome photos of morose couples and distant-looking families; a color portrait of a smiling young woman, her hair done in Victory rolls, wearing a high school graduation robe; a half dozen Kodak snapshots of laughing children with smiling adults in the background. I admired each one.

    I returned to the living room with the open bottle, apologizing to Kieren, ‘I was enjoying your pictures on the wall back there,’ I said. 

    'You like them?’ she asked.

    ‘Yeah. Are they family?’

    ‘Nope, they’re not.’

    ‘Who are they?’

    ‘Just random people.’

    ‘Yeah? Why do you have them?’

    ‘I collect old photographs. I get them at garage sales or whatever. That’s what I was carrying home just now. I got a bunch of old photo albums.’

    Kieren started pulling out old, frail-looking albums from her canvas bag, ‘Here, have a look.’

    The two of us spent the afternoon looking at the photographs. We saw ladies and gentlemen in proper attire, families on vacation, teenagers in wood-sided station wagons, and scenes from countries that no longer exist.

    ‘They’re beautiful,’ I said.

    She picked an album up from the floor, ‘I found this one in the trash.’

    ‘I can't believe that!’

    ‘You’d be surprised. When someone dies, what’s the one thing that gets thrown out? Their photographs. No one treasures them.’ She was sad. ‘These pictures are what’s left of people. If they’re gone, they might as well have never existed.’

    ‘So you preserve them,’ I said.

    She nodded. ‘I don’t believe there’s a god, don’t believe in an eternity. Once we die, that’s it. And what do we have to show that we existed at one time? Probably nothing more than these pictures. They deserve some remembrance. If only for a little while.’

    We will die and, before long, be forgotten. Someone may preserve whatever legacy we leave behind if we’re lucky—someone like Kieren, the keeper of memories.

A Reflection of the By-Gone

    The speakers above the bar are old, shotty, and grimy with age. Something is playing through them. Lo-fi hip-hop, that’s what it is. Slow and gentle, very hypnotic. 

    The television in front of me is on but muted. A football game is playing, but no one is watching. It’s just me here. 

    A warm breeze comes in from the Pacific through the open side door leading to the smoking patio—the palm trees beyond the patio’s tall wood fence sway. 

    I finish my beer and order another. I put a coaster on top of my fresh glass and went outside. The sky is sweetly lucent from the descending sun, lively pink and dying orange; sherbert purples drape above as lavender clouds float by. I light a cigarette and watch the embers and smoke slowly die in my lungs. 

    Today is my last day here in Paradise, I tell myself as I put the cancer stick out and walk back inside. 

Review #1 - The Extortioners

 The Extortioners by Ovid Demaris

Ovid Demaris (1919-1998) was well known for his non-fiction work. Seventeen of the thirty-four books he published were investigative journalism focused on organized crime. But like every reporter out there, he dabbled in fiction. And he sure followed the axiom “write what you know” to the letter. 

In 1960, Demaris published The Extortioners, #960, of Fawcett Gold Medal Books. It’s a story about the ultimate American fiction, a self-made millionaire, and his run-in with the mafia. 

Hugh Dewitt is a pug-faced, red-headed former wildcatter with a seventh-grade education (if that) who struck it rich drilling for oil in the hills of Los Angeles, earning him an astronomical $10 million. He has a blond beauty model wife, Nancy, and a blond supermodel daughter, Alison, because, of course, he does. But everything takes a turn when an old friend, Angelo Rizzola, and his girlfriend, Lola, come a-calling, asking for a stake in Dewitt’s oil claim. Though no promises were made, nothing written down, except for a non-committal grunt from Dewitt, Angelo believes in his heart that he’s getting that stake and the gob-smacking $10,000 a year that it earns. There’s just a slight problem: he doesn’t have the capital to buy in. So, just like any other hood trying to get rich quickly, he goes to his capomandamento Jimmy Gracio, promising ol’ Jimmy a part of the stake if he fronts the cash. And… he accepts? With nothing to prove that any part of this scheme exists, Jimmy just gives Angelo the investment money. Okay.

When Angelo tries to collect the stake, lo and behold, Dewitt doesn’t remember promising him. A he-said-he-said ensues. You know where this is going; the Gracio crime syndicate gets involved. And by that, I mean Jimmy, his seven-foot, meat-headed enforcer goon, Bastiano, and Jimmy’s A-lister movie star girlfriend, Marsha Moore (a not-too-subtle Marilyn Monroe). What follows is tit-for-tat, move-countermove, intimidation and ultimatums, violent reprisals, and the involvement of a strangely competent, To-Serve-and-Protect LAPD. 

Reading The Extortioners, I couldn’t help but feel an undercurrent of anti-Italian sentiment throughout the book. All Italian-American characters - Rizzola, Gracio, and the murderous machine Bastiano - are either sleazy to the point of incompetence, villainous to the point of parody, or violent beyond the point of sadism. Meanwhile, our other characters - Dewitt, his knockout wife and daughter, and police Sargeant Tucker - are self-reliantly, selflessly heroic, wilting victims of unconscionable violence or stoically determined to uphold the law and decency. It wasn’t my cup of tea. It was a fast read, I will say. But I don’t think I’ll seek out any other of Demaris’ novels.