The beginning of my June story starts here...

Who
knows where it will end? Don't look for modern stuff,
like TGA-4 or whatever. I am going to write about a man
will be 61 very soon and something strange that
happened to him in his late 50s, where, as Rod Serling
would have said he crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
Okay, I'm derivative sometimes, but all writers are.

CHRISTIAN BARZOY, TOBACCO BROKER by Devon

Pitlor

I. The "heart attack"

B eginnings are a tricky business in fiction. You have

the details all tangled up in your head, but you really
don't know where to start or where your one and only
fan (because you always must believe you have at least
one) would like you to start or where you really should
start. Suppose that I should say that today in the United
States being a tobacco commodities broker (as was
Christian Barzoy) is a very tenuous business. To make
it short, let's just say that U.S. tobacco has to be sold
somewhere else but in this country, like in the Third
World where we can maintain huge percentages of
smokers who are, sadly for the tobacco industry,
diminishing in North America.

Typical boring start coming from an economics

major...sorry. I can't help it.

Okay, let's go to the pretty little town of Raleigh, North

Carolina, right in the dying heart of the American
tobacco industry. There we find 58 year old Christian
Barzoy waiting for a connecting flight to Charlotte. The
story will therefore begin in the airport at Raleigh and
continue on to the airport in Charlotte.

Damn, this is sounding dull. I hope I can do better.

Like every other middle aged executive in commodities

exchange, Christian Barzoy was well past his prime, but
his life had been surprisingly fulfilling. He had married a
very pretty woman named Alaina at an early age and had
produced three rather appealing children who, as we
open this story, were now moderately successful adults.
He had chanced to visit his oldest daughter, Alexis,
while in Raleigh and now was returning home to
Baltimore when he suffered his "heart attack."
Christian's "heart attack" was no usual heart attack [or
else I would not have bored you with the quotation
marks]. It was, in fact, a very welcome "heart attack"
and one that was very natural to have in a busy place
like an airport. It was the sort of "heart attack" that
Christian had enjoyed since he had first crossed the
threshhold into adolescence many eons before.

Okay, I drop the quotation marks now. You get the point.
Christian's heart attack was somewhat like a real one.
His pulse raced, his heart pounded, he got slightly dizzy,
needed to sit down and breath deeply. He knew what
was coming, and, above all, he knew what caused it.
Once in his twenties, he had even gone to an emergency
room because of a stronger version of the same heart
attack. And what is coming is that when an hour or so
later, when Christian will arrive at Charlotte's bustling
airport, he will suffer a much stronger version of the
same attack---and this time if Christian didn't have a
lifetime history of such attacks, he would have indeed
been afraid and summoned emergency personnel which
he did not do either in Raleigh that day or later in
Charlotte.

Instead he sat back and enjoyed them.

He could not after all these years explain them, but he

knew what caused them. And for Christian Barzoy,
ageing tobacco broker, that was, after all, "kinda nice."

II. One in ten thousand....an estimate

Christian Barzoy had long ago explained himself to

himself.

His favorite phrase was "one in ten thousand...that's my

estimate." What he was estimating was the ratio of
women or girls on earth whose mere appearance
exercised such a dramatic effect on him---upon first
sight---that he would suffer the thunderstruck symptoms
of these so-called heart attacks and be transfixed like a
moth to the setting sun for as long as the vision
endured.

Now this is not a story about some horny guy who was
having a libidinal surfeit of testosterone and going into
seizures over women because he wanted sex. It is the
story of a man who was really lucky to have ever found
a wife and married in the first place. Not because he
was twisted, weird or unattractive--because he was none
of these--but because only about one in ten thousand
women appealed to him in any way whatsoever. Not
charming women. Not smart women. Not
accommodating women but beautiful women, women
who had a certain type of look that he had spent his
lifetime trying to define cogently to himself. It was not
about sex or body shapes either. It was mostly about
faces. Certain types of faces, and Christian did not
discriminate between children or senior citizens or
anything in between. More about the children aspect in
the next installment---which will be called "Pedophilia"
and will not be about pedophilia at all, just in case some
prurient reader might think I am heading in that
direction.

The "look" could be pretty commonly defined too.

Perfect facial symmetry, thick to long hair, full pouty
lips, widely spaced , deep and dramatic eyes, a good
chin, nice cheekbones. It sounded like a catalogue of
adjectives from any man's wish list, but for Christian
there was a certain---indescribable---combination of
these characteristics which---if the recipe was right---
took his breath away and caused him all the visible
symptoms of a stroke or heart attack. The "recipe" was
not from Playboy or Penthouse either. Nor was it from
Hollywood. Women considered great beauties by the
general masses usually bored Christian and had always
done so, even to the point that his college friends had
once considered him stricken with homosexual qualities
based simply on the number of aspiring females he had
turned down or ignored completely. Christian himself
was far above average in his looks, and he could
galvanize the attention of nearly any female he wanted,
but the fact was that he wanted so few...so very few. For
many in his circle of friends, he just HAD to be gay.
Even though he wasn't.

Christian had no idea where his one in ten thousand

came from either.
He just knew her when he saw her.

The one before the girl in the Raleigh airport had been
overweight too. She worked in a diner behind the
counter and had greasy hair. Christian's son and his
son's friends laughed when he pointed her out to them.
But Christian was having one of his heart attacks
because of her and didn't care.

Now in Raleigh the woman, a mere girl of between 20

and 25 and not an hour older, was sitting opposite to
him in the airport concourse and reading a book, or
trying to read a book because a mannish older woman
with a man's hair cut brushed to one side of a very male
hair part was assailing her with some sort of hushy-
hush conversation the subject of which Christian could
not divine.

Christian knew not to make any approaches and was

well aware of his age. He simply say back and stared.
He wore sunglasses indoors exactly on the chance that
this rare event would occur and he could look without
being obvious.

The mannish woman talked and talked, and the sublime

object of Christian's heart attack politely listened,
forgetting her book. For a moment or two, Christian
even thought of rescuing her, but he thought better of it.
Events like this, though rarer and rarer, had occurred all
his life.

The symptoms of being overcome by such beauty did

not diminish with time, and Christian was relieved when
at length the girl and he boarded separate flights and
the episode was over.
He thought of Alaina, his divorced wife. It was one of
those thoughts where the entirety of their rather
satisfying life together was featured on a timeline which
came all at once....meeting...courting...college...having
and raising kids...watching the kids leave home...and
finally an amicable divorce because....because, well, it
was just over between them. Whatever bonfire had once
been lit had slowly but pleasantly burned itself out, and
it was just time to separate.

And that was the end of the episode in Raleigh. No

more about that. I can't make up more because there
was no more.

But what is to follow a little more than an hour later is

more interesting.

I hope.

III. Pedophilia

Christian Barzoy had over two hours to kill in the

Charlotte airport, so he did the natural thing and went
into a bar. The bar was attached to an overpriced pizza
joint. The music was overpowering. First, "Because" by
the Dave Clark Five, followed by Peter Gordon's old
chestnut "World Without Love," as rendered by Paul
McCartney and then, as if to put a 20th Century revival
clamp on the crowded atmosphere, the Eagle's "You
Can't Hide Your Cheating Eyes," all of it like stepping
into a time capsule, but this time a capsule filled with
savage modern adults and their children talking into
mobile phones and thumbing their way through a series
of endless messages to unseen parties inhabiting god
knows where in the cybersphere.

She could not have been older than 15 and was sitting at
a table halfway between the bar and the pizza parlor with
a group of adults who if not her parents could have and
should have been. A barely pubescent body filling out a
rather skimpy sun dress. Long, artificially kinked hair,
slightly protruding teeth concealed by irregular but full
lips, wide almond-shaped eyes and an abstract far away
look aimed vaguely in the direction of the parked jets
beyond the window.

It had happened before. Someone desperately

underaged. But it did not matter, and there was no hint
of pedophilic desire in the reaction which welled up in
Christian's heart and chest. Long ago, he had put
immutable restraints on himself with every person who
had ever produced this reaction in him....and with a
mere child he would be especially cautious. His life had
followed the maxim of "Do no harm, but think whatever
you want." So being totally entranced by a teenage girl
did not make him feel guilty or worried in the slightest
because he knew he would remain inert in his actions as
he always had.

The thing which bothered Christian was, first, the

absolute intensity of the reaction to this girl and,
secondly, how soon it had come on the heels of the
day's first episode in Raleigh. He could not remember
when in one day he had experienced two such
reactions. In truth, as he caught furtive looks at the
young girl, he did start to worry about his actual heart.
At age 58, anything could happen, and for a moment, he
felt like fleeing the bar but realized that he may become
too obvious and even stagger. The child exercised that
strong an effect on him. Hers was a supernal beauty
which escaped the confines of mere words and vapid
descriptions.

He drank his rum and coke and said "No big deal" to
himself. Nothing was going to harm him, so he might as
well enjoy the reaction. After all, he had relished visual
episodes like this for over 35 years. Nothing was new
here, just a way of passing the time.

But then suddenly, and without warning it happened---

the preternatural, the unexplained, the intrusion of a
totally bizarre reality upon the banality of the crowded
airport bar scene. It began when the girl looked up
briefly and into his eyes. But that was no big deal. He
simply averted his gaze, and he was indeed wearing sun
glasses. "Just like an old pervert," he thought quietly to
himself. But he knew he was not an old pervert and how
to make sure he did not look or act like one. He had
years of experience in these matters. They were not
about encounters or sex or anything of the type.

But what happened next requires some explaining...

And it is family safe, in case you are wondering. Work
safe and family safe and Christian safe---because, as I
have said, this is not the story of a child molester or sex
freak. It is the story of an ageing tobacco broker and his
encounter with the surreal.

The next section will be called "What happened" and will

be hard to write.

As a footnote, I remind my readers [if I even have any,

which is doubtful] that English is not my first language,
and sometimes I have trouble...oh well.

To be continued if I can.

IV. What happened

There is an old and rather stupid saying in my language

that goes something like this: When you die, your
whole life flashes for one instant before your eyes. I
have always found it stupid because who knows what
anyone thinks right before they die?

But having lived 42 years myself, I do know that you can

usually conjure your entire life up rather rapidly in one
piece as a compressed timeline if you try. Christian
Barzoy, like me and most others, was able to do this.
His time with Alaina and his kids could easily flash
across the screen of his consciousness if he wanted. Of
course, there were visual highlights in the mental
images. Sometimes the highlights were the most
inconsequential things. Something like his son Brian
asking him to take the wrapper off a chocolate bar or his
beautiful wife Alaina dropping a screwdriver in the
swimming pool. Boring stuff...but visual moments in the
timeline nonetheless. That is how memories of a
lifetime occur. They follow the timeline but the
flashpoints visuals are random and oftimes
meaningless.

Sitting in a Charlotte airport bar, Christian Barzoy

suddenly had his mental field filled with quite another
version of his life, and when it came it was all real , all
valid. It was completely visual and compressed...years
compressed together. As in one solid movie running at
lightning speed in his brain, he "saw" himself meeting
Gina at a church he had never attended. He saw himself
holding hands with her outside of brown brick school
building that he had never set foot in. He felt her
grasping him around the waist from the rear of a
motorcycle seat that he never owned. He heard himself
arguing with her parents (whom he never knew) about
their marriage and where it would take place (which it
never did). He languished in the panorama of long years
with Gina and buying a series of houses in towns where
--in reality-- he had never visited. He saw her making
oatmeal for the kids before they left for school. He saw
her waving goodbye to him as she drove off with a man
who would replace him as a husband. In short, he
experienced his whole life with Gina in a time, in an era,
in icons of random experience that never existed. The
good, the banal, the exciting, the less than exciting and
the very bad. A lifetime...and with Gina, and who in the
hell was Gina?

That was her before him he knew, not a day older than
15 as she sat there munching cheap airport pizza, her
exquisite beauty ignored as is the custom by parents
who no doubt never even noticed her much anymore.

In some other version....some other timeline...Christian

and she were the same age, had played together as
children, dated, married and made a life...and it was all
as real a memory as anything that he had ever had with
his real wife Alaina. It was not a fantasy. It was a solid
and unquestionable memory. Fear gripped Christian's
chest. Nothing of the sort had ever happened to him
before. He had never had anything close to this vivid
memory of the unreal....let alone with a child over 40
years younger than himself. But nonetheless it was all
there. He pulled it forth again and again as he sat there.
Other moments appeared at will. Gina losing a toe. Him
slapping her and regretting for months afterward. The
names of their children and where they had birthmarks
and little scars from play accidents. The kind of
toothpaste Gina bought for the family. Little stuff. Some
big stuff. But lots and lots of stuff.

Terrorized, Christian attempted to pay for his drink and

rush out of the airport bar, but something held him back.
It was a fear for his own sanity. A weird idea came into
his head. The girl had taken notice of him only once,
and the bar-pizza joint was packed, as are all such
establishments in busy airports. Nobody, least of all
this 15 year old girl, was concerned about him in the
slightest. So a plan...

Deliberately he stood up and pretended to hail someone

far off in the terminal outside the door of the bar. He
looked up over everyone's shoulders, put his hand to
his mouth, and shouted "Gina" at the top of his lungs.
But in a place like this everyone was shouting for
everyone else, so his was not strange behavior in any
way. But he saw what he saw. The girl, who ordinarily
should have paid him no attention, was startled and for
an instant thought he was calling to her. So her name
really was Gina. How could he have known that?

She made some little joke with one of the adults at her
table that "Other people have my name." That was
enough to turn Christian into a totem of fear and cause
him to walk unsteadily out of the bar and as far down
the concourse as his wobbly legs would carry him. For
a few minutes, he felt he was going to pass out and die.
But the memory was still there like a long panorama:
his "life" with Gina.

Fortunately for Christian, the memory became less

distinct with distance. But he could still conjure it. In
fact, he could conjure it for weeks afterward until
something new happened. But when he brought the
memory forth, he felt guilt and was for the first time in
his life scared. It was a version of some other timeline
that had never happened, but it was still there and could
not be removed by the sheer force of logic or will.

The next section will be the epilogue of Christian's story.

It will involve how he finally dealt with these new an
implanted memories of life he never actually lived....and
then, unfortunately, another shocking revelation.

To my one reader, if I ever have one, the end will be

short now.

I promise.

V. Epilogue

Endings should come fast and be conclusive and

summarize well---and mine will.

Christian Barzoy, shaken to the very root of his being,

returned to his lonely apartment in Baltimore and tried
unsuccessfully to resume his daily routine, visited a
psychotherapist in vain, tried to date some workmate--
again in vain, tried to regain his composure---again in
vain, and eventually thought of killing himself, which he
never did because they exact same thing happened to
him again during a business trip to Richmond, Virginia.
The stunning face...the "heart attack"....the cold
sweat...but this time it was Rhonda, and Rhonda was
somewhere in her mid thirties. Rhonda had the recipe
of facial looks which had magnetized and thunderstruck
Christian all his life, and his life with Rhonda---whom he
never "married" but only "lived" with---totally
supplanted the story of Gina. The real version of
Christian's life, which involved Alaina and his actual
children, never faded in the least, but Gina vanished as
soon as the mental version of his life with Rhonda came
into focus.

Calmly he ascertained whether the beautiful woman on

the Richmond Grain Exchange trading floor was in fact
called Rhonda. She said she was and wondered
abstractly how he knew. He made up some lie about
how all commodities brokers know of one another, and
the subject was dismissed. Still he remembered
everything about his "life" with Rhonda: The annoying
way she had of calling an orgasm "blowing your
cookies" over and over again to the point of triteness.
The time she convinced him to use footpowder in his
shoes because his feet sweated and became foul
smelling. How she left him short handed with the rent
month after month. His faux life with Gina, part and
parcel in memory, became his faux life with Rhona, and
that life was far more annoying if nothing else. Life with
Rhonda had been, in effect, less than satsifying.

And then there is more, but I shall allow the reader to

draw in the lines between the numbers and color the
squares.

The next one came at age 60 for Christian. The girl must
have been around 26. He saw her in a park in Baltimore
when he was walking his dog. Her name was Davila and
she was from Arizona and, of course, they had lived
there and he worked on Porsche engines for a living.

By the time Davila arrived into Christian's memory as a

lifelong conjugal panorama, Christian had come to
accept these false memories as just another peculiarity
in his life. The real Davila had been in the park for only
minutes before she disappeared walking out the main
gate and not taking even a sideways glance at Christian.

But two weeks later Christian was sent my his company

to Chicago and was eating alone in a crowded beef
restaurant in the Loop. He had never been in Chicago in
his life. Out of the corner of his eye he became vaguely
aware of a rather plain woman examining him with a
certain degree of furtivity which he recognized as one of
his own tactics when overcome by the beauty of his
"one in ten thousand."

The restaurant was full of business people taking very

little interest in strangers, but suddenly the woman
stood up and shouted "Christian" at an unseen person
near the front door. There was no Christian. HE was
Christian, and he knew it. And though he did not
acknowledge it, he realized for the first time in his life
that he was not alone. He wondered in silence what
memories her "life" must have had of him in a version
that he would never share.

by

Devon Pitlor, 26 May 2008