Keeping busy…

Oh, I keep busy you know.

Distracting myself with all sorts of things so that I don’t have to stop and look at myself or my life too closely. I can fill up my time easily enough; I could fill my life just as easily. A bit of this, a bit of that – some cooking, some writing, blogging and drawing, the painted glass, a smidgeon of gardening, taking care of the cat, going to bed early and sleeping. A much better life than most; most don’t even have a home.

I used to travel a fair bit. It got tiring sometimes but I usually enjoyed it. I once went to Twin Peaks, well not quite Twin Peaks, Cedar Rapids in Iowa. But on one occasion, the first visit of many, it seemed as if it actually was Twin Peaks.

Captain James T. Kirk will be born not too far from Cedar Rapids in 2233. Riverside, Iowa, to be exact, but on the night I arrived it was raining, the wind blowing the wire strung stop lights noisily backwards and forwards above my head as I rode in the dimly lit cab to my hotel.

Cedar Rapids smelt strange. Sweet and sickly like chocolate and vanilla mixed with vinegar - and was that a whiff of bones and offal? We stopped at the railway tracks, a freight train passing to the ringing of bells. The train seemed to go on forever, mile on mile of freight carriage each with a different smell; the bells never stopping until the sickly sweet caterpillar had passed.

A huge factory dominated the city, if 250,000 souls do a city make. I was in the cereal capitol of the world. Quaker Oats, General Mills, Ralston Foods and Post all had factories in Cedar Rapids and I soon learnt that, because of the cereal and dog food, it had different scent each day of the week. Some days I could smell Captain Crunch, other days the rankness of wet doggie treats. 

The hotel was a 1970’s time capsule, heavily patterned carpets, curtains and wallpapers in just about every shade of brown and burnt orange I couldn’t be bothered to imagine. It was late. I ordered a couple of beers and a club sandwich. It didn’t take long to chug the beers and eat the plastic bread, and so I decided it was time for bed.

I called the lift and when it arrived I found it already occupied. A young man in the biggest checked flat cap I’d ever seen stood in one corner of the brown leatherette clad box. He touched the brim of his cap which was almost as big as a dustbin lid and smiled. “Going up sir?” He asked. “Twelve,” I responded. He stepped forward and pressed the button. We began to rise. With each floor the light in the lift seemed to get dimmer. By the time we reached the 10^th the lift was almost in darkness. It stopped. “This is me sir,” he said as the door opened.

I hate the way Americans call complete strangers sir. I find it disrespectful. I waited. The door seemed to stay open for far too long. Just when was it going to close? Please let it close I thought and it was then that I had my Twin Peaks moment.

Across the way from the lift on the landing was an open door. Beyond the door was a concrete room, brightly lit, grey. A middle aged woman in a blue checked smock was aimlessly mopping the concrete floor.

She looked up as the man in the cap approached her. “Keeping busy?” I heard him ask as he reached the door to the concrete room. He turned, touched his cap and smiled: “Be seeing you sir, enjoy your evening,” he said looking directly into my eyes. That cap was far too big. I thought about what might be under it and decided that I didn’t want to know. Then he stepped across the threshold and into the concrete room. I heard a gasp. The lights in the room went out as the door slammed and closed behind him.

It was as if time had started up again. The lift doors closed and it started to rise. I was shaking all over, confused about what I’d just witnessed. Had I really seen anything at all?

I went to my room and locked the door. In the distance the railway track bells rang and the wind howled. I could smell vanilla in the air.

“Be seeing you sir.” He’d said.

I hoped not.