Chapter Twenty-One

REEFER GRANDMA

"Prana is energy," Shiszu explained.

Several candles flickered as she spoke. The candles cast elf-like shadows against the wall. The yoga class listened.

"Boom. Boom. Boom."

The other wall thumped to the beat of the jukebox in the tavern next door.

Wilbur, lying on the floor, stretched in the same way that Shiszu demonstrated. He lowered his forehead as close to his knees as he could. As the candles sparkled in the dimmed room Wilbur felt that Shiszu herself was made only of flame and shadows.

Wilbur was still fascinated with Shiszu. He decided to ask her after class to the pizza parlor next door. He envisioned sitting with her in a quiet corner at a table with a red-checkered tablecloth. Then afterwards they would take a drive in her dark blue Mercedes or in his white, 1961 Volkswagen.

There were two married women who noticed Wilbur from the very first class he attended. He wore no jewelry so they naturally assumed they could enjoy, once again, the give and take of flirting.

xxx

After class Wilbur waited outside for Shiszu so he could ask her to the pizza parlor. The two married friends came barreling out and bumped into him. Wilbur immediately recognized the two women as the ones who arrived in the rusty, 1965 Oldsmobile ‘98. It had more rust on it than Wilbur's Volkswagen. Both women had headaches. Before yoga, during yoga and after yoga, they had headaches.

They included Wilbur, much to his dismay, in their dialogue.

"Do you hear the way she paces around, up and down the aisles, while we do our exercises. It makes me nervous the way Shiszu does that. I came here to relax and get away from my children and my husband. You know what? I'm just as nervous as when I came in, maybe even more nervous. I'd like to get a refund, but I don't want to embarrass her," Tammy said.

She was a short, thin woman with black eyelashes and blonde pony tail. Her friend, Helen, who was taller, agreed.

"Yeah, she makes me nervous too. It's like she doesn't know what she's doing."

"Oh, yeah, maybe," Wilbur hesitated, still watching for Shiszu.

"I teach school," Helen said. "Every day I have a headache. Those kids drive me crazy."

"That's too bad," Wilbur sympathized.

"I live next door to her," Tammy interrupted.

"You know, Wilbur, that's your name, right?"

"Yeah."

"I thought that's what you said. It sounded a little like William."

"Yeah," Tammy agreed. "It sounds like William."

"You know," Helen continued, "I don't like kids, they drive me crazy, and I'm a school teacher. I don't know what to do."

All three continued standing outside in the parking lot.

"I'm going to have some dinner at the pizza parlor," Wilbur said.

"Yeah, that's a good idea!" Tammy interjected before Wilbur could elaborate.

"You want to smoke a joint before dinner?" Helen asked. "I've got to get rid of this headache."

"Not me, I've had enough today," Wilbur said as he recalled the day’s events.

xxx

He had gotten miserably stoned and moderately drunk with a grandmother and her felonious-looking grandson at a waterbed setup.

They lived in a second floor apartment. Edna, the grandmother, had a sunken chin, glasses with light blue butterfly frames and a beehive hairdo. She was excited and nervous about the used Saint Cloud waterbed she had bought. It was the same style that Celeste and Arthur Stuart had bought a few months before. The cocoa-colored bed had a foam-padded exterior frame.

Her grandson, Glenn, was the manager of the apartment complex. He had a dark beard and brown, frizzy hair. When Wilbur came into their living room, Glenn, not looking where he was going, knocked over one of the novelty shop lamps in the living room. The lamp shade had a beer advertisement on it. The majority of his Grandma's furnishings were knickknacks and trinkets from head shops and novelty shops. There were freaked-out posters of Felix the Cat and "Keep on Trucking" on the walls.

On a large patio below, people from the apartment complex were preparing for a party. Edna and Glenn were also preparing for the party when Wilbur arrived.

Glenn was rolling a reefer on one of her plastic, novelty shop, marijuana rolling machines. The machine was bright, fire engine red. When he finished rolling one, Edna waited anxiously for a draw off the reefer. Her hands fluttered expectantly in the air.

"You shore you know how to set that bed up?" she quizzed Wilbur.

"Yes mam, I've been doing it for a while now," he assured her.

"You want some doober?" Glenn offered Wilbur.

"No, but you got any beer?"

"Beer? Yeah sure," he replied.

Before long, Wilbur guzzled three beers and was smoking dope with Reefer Grandma and her grandson, Glenn. They were having a good time watching a plastic clock on the kitchen counter. It operated like a mousetrap game. The clock hands triggered different-sized, silver balls which zigzagged across the frame of the clock. Wilbur stared and stared at the silver balls racing across the clock. It was amazing, almost like a wonder of the world, to him. The tenor of the visit changed abruptly though.

"Well, isn't he going to set up my waterbed?" Grandma demanded of Glenn.

"Ask him not me," Glenn blubbered.

Wilbur was entirely startled by the change of mood. He had felt a great camaraderie with the two, but now he felt betrayed. It made him paranoid.

"Can you set that bed up or not? I don't want it leaking on the apartment below, hear? Have you set up waterbeds befo'?"

"Yeah, all the time," Wilbur managed to say.

xxx

Normal time had evaporated. It seemed like he had been there for hours. He went from one side of the bed to the other, trying to figure out how to attach the side pieces and how to get the bed against the wall.

"He's drunk and stoned," Reefer Grandma complained in the other room to Glenn.

That confused Wilbur even more. He couldn't decide where the front of the bed was. He stood in the room and stared at the hinges on the corner of the bed. He began to free associate out loud.

"I like Fig Newtons..., I like Fig Newtons..., Isaac Newton..., gravity...,the apple...,the Garden of Eden..., Adam and Eve."

Reefer Grandma and Glenn visited the party downstairs. Every so often someone came up to look at Wilbur struggling with the used waterbed. They laughed, then a few minutes later someone else wandered in.

xxx

"No more reefer for me today," Wilbur repeated to Tammy and Helen as he recalled the day's events.

Shiszu soon came out of the Sunlight Yoga Society. She was headed to the pizza parlor so all four of them sat at the same table.

Wilbur, unable to sit with Shiszu alone, sat there, listened, and looked over the menu. Shiszu remained aloof and distant also. Wilbur ordered first because the others couldn't decide.

"I'll take the Hard Hat Special you got there. That sandwich, you know?"

"Yes. One Hard Hat Special. It's a meal in itself," the waitress stated.

"We'll take a medium pizza with double cheese, hamburger, sausage and green pepper," Helen and Tammy finally decided.

"Do you serve hot tea?" Shiszu asked.

"Yes mam. Do you want that with your dinner, mam? You want hot tea and...?"

"Hot tea. I'll just have a cup of hot tea. That's fine."

"One hot tea. Is that it?" she asked, looking at all of them.

Tammy and Helen rolled their eyes. Wilbur sensed the uneasiness as all four sat there at the table.