Things happen on Highway 95. It’s a lonely road where losing things isn’t hard. Charlie’s been down Highway 95 a time or two. Charlie hates conflict. When he feels it coming on his face squirms like a toddler with a dirty diaper. So he can be cajoled into helping beyond reasonable boundaries. It’s a subtle game of inches. “Well, just help me this once. It’s a small thing. Do it for me, Charlie,” so he does.
Then the regrets come. Coulda, woulda, shoulda but didn’t. Instead, haul a body out of Paradise Valley north along State Highway 95 and dump it along with a bucket of carrion beatles. Good work, Charlie.
Tala was just kidding when she giggled that Piranhas in Ophie’s fish pond would be funny. Charlie wasn’t when he heard her say it. Some gitback on Ophie that might improve his standing with Tala sounded awesome. He’s lucky it never got beyond an embarrassing morning before work. Tala hasn’t let him forget it.
No Body, No Crime
If there is no body there is no proof of murder. So there is more than reasonable doubt and conviction is unlikely. Maybe so. Unless you have a retired Sherriff’s Deputy and part-time private investigator who is friends with Inger. These two like cold cases. Carrion Beatles don’t eat everything. They leave behind bones and traces of flesh. Time will eat even that. Yeah, but not enough time. Ruh roh.
A Virginia murder case and remains in Humboldt County, Nevada. Neesha speaks, “He killed Michael.” No, sweetie, he did not. Now there is a body and so there is a murder. Let’s get into it.
It’s early Sunday morning. Charlie is off on Sunday’s. His phone rings. It’s Neesha, “Hey. What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“So why did you call?”
“My therapist said I should.”
“Ok. Now you have called.” and he hangs up. Charlie goes back to his buffet plate. He’s sitting with Tala, one of the bottle service girls. Ojiisan pays for her to mind Charlie. Make sure he goes to mass, to meetings, and so on. She also cooks for him. Side note, and maybe mentioned earlier, Charlie doesn’t cook. If someone isn’t cooking for him he finds a buffet. The Griddle in Winnemucca is pretty good. It is an n-th commandment that he will reside within walking distance of somewhere to eat. No one to cook for him and he’ll just not eat.
A Woman’s Power
Sex is powerful, no doubt. If you ask Charlie to choose between good food and good sex he’d squirm. Pushed hard, though, and he’d say, “good food”. His phone rings again, Neesha, “You are not supposed to contact me.”
“Then why did you answer?”
“I don’t want to be rude.”
“You know you are my daughter’s baby Daddy.”
“I don’t know that. I haven’t seen a DNA test,” Charlie hangs up. He’s seen pictures and videos of Neesha’s daughter on social media. In the future everyone will be a video star. Well, except Charlie. He turns back to his plate again.
Tala asks for his phone. In hand she turns it off. The hostess answers the buffet phone. Yeah, her. Charlie can’t hear what’s being said. But the body language says it isn’t good. The hostess gives it 15 seconds and hangs up. Buffet phone again, same caller, same result, rinse repeat for 15 minutes. Then a text to support to ask them to block the number. Why not do it herself? The Casino’s phones are Avaya’s VOIP. Blocking numbers has to be done from an account that has the correct admin rights. Be quiet, zoomer. Ojiisan and I are old men. We earned our privilege to be stuck in our ways.
Once Neesha’s fire is lit there is no putting it out. Paradise Casino became the latest thing to be declared racist. Letting her burn through the tantrum takes between two and four hours. Then she’s spent and will be down for a day or so. Medication? She doesn’t like taking it.
Neesha Wants Charlie
Tala’s phone rings, “What!?”
“Put Charlie on”
“Listen, you have a no-contact order. You can’t talk to Charlie.”
“This is more important than the evil MEGA MAGA racist, asshole judge who wrote that.”
“Girl, listen. You are already drama. Violating the no-contact order is stupid.”
“No, the judge is stupid. Also trans-phobic. Let me talk to him.”
Tala hangs up, “Annoying.”
That was around 8am Sunday morning. Charlie wasn’t at mass. Nobody saw him all of Sunday. His days off are Sunday and Monday. Tala checked on him late Sunday night. He was in an easy chair in the dorm, sleeping his apnea sleep. The dorms in the casino are separated by gender. What? A trans-identified woman? Meaning a dude claiming to be a woman? In a casino owned by an old Yakuza man. And he hasn’t been to the train station yet? Not possible.
I’ve said enough about the cray-cray that passes for Progressivism. True to its founders, it is a fraud perpetrated on the people. It promises much and delivers little. Meanwhile, it’s leadership gets fat on the sweat of the workers. Trans ideology is the latest zeitgeist marketed as the sin of the age needing revolution.
Radio Silence
Monday morning Tala went to the dorm to wake him up. There is an employee dining room served by the American Cafe. Most mornings Tala and Charlie eat breakfast together, “Charlie, wake up. Charlie!” His body was room temperature. Charlie is gone. Tala screamed, “CHARLIE! NO! YOU CAN’T BE GONE!” and collapsed beside the recliner, beating the side of the chair and crying. Other bar girls heard her scream and ran to find out what was wrong, “SOMEBODY CALL 911! HELP ME GET HIM OUT OF THE CHAIR AND START CPR! CHARLIE IS NOT ALLOWED TO DIE!”
Casino Security is trained in advanced first aid. The casino has an AED. The Humboldt General Hospital rescue squad is an hour away in Winnemucca. The magic doors in this story are limited to established destinations. One of them is Inger’s Stuart Street house and the other is Ojiisan’s Hot Springs in 新世界、大阪. If it’s bad your best hope is Casino Security.
Which . . . isn’t horrid. Ojiisan bought an advanced life support ambulance because the casino is an hour away from everything. He also has a Ford Crown Victoria that used to belong to the Humboldt County Sherriff. So when trouble happens it can be handled.
N715TJ, turn left heading 280
For Charlie, it’s very bad, terminal actually. Casino Security made a show of it. But it was clear he’d passed in the early hours of Monday morning. The other bar girls walked Tala in tears and shouts to their dorm. The bar manager offered her family leave time. Ojiisan offered a magic door key to Shinseki that she declined. Some grieve quietly. Tala sought the comfort of the other bar girls. She didn’t know anyone this well in Shinskeki.
Through the Fourth Wall
Two weeks ago my friend of 30 years went radio silent. His gym buddy, Holli, tried to contact him on Wednesday, 2/19/25. That time, the cops couldn’t get into his apartment and their was no response when they knocked. His last contact with Holli was two days before on Monday. Somewhere between Monday and Wednesday he went home to heaven.
TJ was agnostic for most of the years I knew him. His conversion to Catholic happened a few years ago. My fellow Reformed tradition brothers and sisters worry about someone who hasn’t accepted Christ as their personal savior. They worry about the Catholics, whether being so qualifies as saved by Jesus. I’m not worried. The Catholic church is the church of Christ, of St. Paul, and the many that still worship a martyred Nazarene stone mason accused of blasphemy.
So TJ is in heaven. My shouty and stiff Christian brothers and sisters who judge his Catholicism to be insufficient should be worried about themselves. I choose to say he found my Dad at his favorite dairy bar in heaven enjoying a chocolate shake with my Mom. My Dad was a hero to TJ so it’s good that they get to meet. Now . . . to make the link between life and fiction—TJ is Charlie.
Opening the Door to Paradise
My grief this time is new for me. I keep remembering things TJ and I did together. The conversations we had on the road talking about what would happen to Charlie. The food we ate. He and I managed to travel to and eat at some of the best BBQ places in the country. The flashlight he gave me that was on my dresser and moved by itself across it and fell to the floor.
I’ve spent a decade building a story about Charlie and the three women in his circle. In that same decade I find new ways to complain about the misdeeds of my former red diaper friends. Trump won. TJ died. Those two events emptied me of the words I want to have about the tired and foolish demagogy of the Democrats and their Socialist fellow travelers.
I promised TJ I’d finish the novel. So I shall. Balzac Press, TJ’s startup publishing company, won’t continue. I didn’t have a publisher for the novel before he launched his company. I still don’t. But writer’s write on speculation that their work can be sold. We have to write it to find out if that is true.
The Hole Left in the Fabric
I’m TJ’s college friend that lives in Virginia. His father has inherited the task of executor of his son’s estate. Protip: inheriting an estate might sound like a win. It might be. But it comes at a price. Death leaves a hole in the fabric than an executor must patch. I still feel TJ. Words of/from him still punch through.
I’ll take the storyteller’s privilege with TJ’s last night alive. He got comfortable in his LazyBoy recliner on Monday, February 17th, 2025. His apnea was severe enough that the recliner was the only place he could get any rest. Sometime that night or early Tuesday morning he stopped breathing. And found himself in 新世界、at Ojiisan’s tea house. An angel was at the table with him, “Am I dead?”
“Yes”
“So . . . which way? Up or down?”
“Neither. Welcome, good and faithful servant.”