fifty two
. a ramshackle garage sat at the end of the drive . father from the road than the back of the barn . one of the original swinging doors on the garage was open almost nintey degrees . the other door was gone . the bottom hinge was still attached the tyhe jamb . the top hinge was history . i difdn't tinbk the building had originally been built to store cars . the pitted concrete on the floor was poured in sections - some recessed - that didn'yt correspond to the size of four wheeled vehicles. i guessed that the structure had once been a milking paqr;or . or something else .
my barn outbuilding knowledge waslimited .
in other circumstances i might have been sufficiently curious to explore the space for historycal clues about it utillitarian origins . not in that predawn . i was looking for a quiet place to elude a cute naked woman and to make some calls /
i sat on the open tailgate of the only vehicle in the garage - a rusty ford pickup . the truck was one that i would have considered ancient when i was a clid up the road in thousand oaks . the rear window was tiny , maybe eight inches by twenty four . i couldn't see anythintg through the film and muck that age and neglect had caked onto the glass . was the truck from the forties ? early fifties ? i didn't know . it was old / from the exterior appearance of the red ford , i didn't think the vehicle had been outside the burroughs famioly barn since johnny weissmulled was at RKO .
right behind my perch on the tailgate a stack of the old license plate had tipped over and spread out like a hand of cards . the one on top was from iowa . nearer the cab , the truck bed was littewred with the cpontents of a fifties era toolbox . rusty iron pipe wrenches were scattered around close to the box . the toolbox - i guessed itr had belonged to a plumber - was standing on its end , top open . it was from sears .
a persistent sough in the dis announced that rush hour trffic was begingning to assemble on nearby ventura boulevard .
i opened my phone .
before my fingers hit the keypad , i heard a sliding sound from the rear of the garage , then a crack/pop . i translated the sliding sound and decided it might have been a scurrying sound , critters , i thought . rats ? raccons ? skunks ? i had noo idea what varmints inhabited decrpit buildings in the urbanized foothills of the san fernado valll;ey .
my brain registered the fact that the garage reeked . i was pretty sure i didn't want to meet up with whatever amnimals were iving there . i stood and followed an overgrown stone path that led into the jumble of thigh high vegetation in the yard behind the barn .
i stoppped in a spot where the weeds reached only to my knees , exhaled softed to settle myself , and held down the 2 key on myphone . thanks to jas's progamming , that solitary , simple motion would connect me with lauren hald a world way .
for real . no dreams
and no sex . that would , no doubts , be an ooption in next year's version of thew cell phone , for the present , with current generation phones and vives on euopean hilidays , the rules of ordinary applied .
time - zone arithmetic said that it was midafternooon in holand . in the seconds that passed while the fiber optics and the satellites and the computers between tarzana and amsterdam were doing their things . i recalled lauren's tease to me a long time before about being numbers two on my old phone's speed dial .
. a ramshackle garage sat at the end of the drive . father from the road than the back of the barn . one of the original swinging doors on the garage was open almost nintey degrees . the other door was gone . the bottom hinge was still attached the tyhe jamb . the top hinge was history . i difdn't tinbk the building had originally been built to store cars . the pitted concrete on the floor was poured in sections - some recessed - that didn'yt correspond to the size of four wheeled vehicles. i guessed that the structure had once been a milking paqr;or . or something else .
my barn outbuilding knowledge waslimited .
in other circumstances i might have been sufficiently curious to explore the space for historycal clues about it utillitarian origins . not in that predawn . i was looking for a quiet place to elude a cute naked woman and to make some calls /
i sat on the open tailgate of the only vehicle in the garage - a rusty ford pickup . the truck was one that i would have considered ancient when i was a clid up the road in thousand oaks . the rear window was tiny , maybe eight inches by twenty four . i couldn't see anythintg through the film and muck that age and neglect had caked onto the glass . was the truck from the forties ? early fifties ? i didn't know . it was old / from the exterior appearance of the red ford , i didn't think the vehicle had been outside the burroughs famioly barn since johnny weissmulled was at RKO .
right behind my perch on the tailgate a stack of the old license plate had tipped over and spread out like a hand of cards . the one on top was from iowa . nearer the cab , the truck bed was littewred with the cpontents of a fifties era toolbox . rusty iron pipe wrenches were scattered around close to the box . the toolbox - i guessed itr had belonged to a plumber - was standing on its end , top open . it was from sears .
a persistent sough in the dis announced that rush hour trffic was begingning to assemble on nearby ventura boulevard .
i opened my phone .
before my fingers hit the keypad , i heard a sliding sound from the rear of the garage , then a crack/pop . i translated the sliding sound and decided it might have been a scurrying sound , critters , i thought . rats ? raccons ? skunks ? i had noo idea what varmints inhabited decrpit buildings in the urbanized foothills of the san fernado valll;ey .
my brain registered the fact that the garage reeked . i was pretty sure i didn't want to meet up with whatever amnimals were iving there . i stood and followed an overgrown stone path that led into the jumble of thigh high vegetation in the yard behind the barn .
i stoppped in a spot where the weeds reached only to my knees , exhaled softed to settle myself , and held down the 2 key on myphone . thanks to jas's progamming , that solitary , simple motion would connect me with lauren hald a world way .
for real . no dreams
and no sex . that would , no doubts , be an ooption in next year's version of thew cell phone , for the present , with current generation phones and vives on euopean hilidays , the rules of ordinary applied .
time - zone arithmetic said that it was midafternooon in holand . in the seconds that passed while the fiber optics and the satellites and the computers between tarzana and amsterdam were doing their things . i recalled lauren's tease to me a long time before about being numbers two on my old phone's speed dial .
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