Brokenhearted in Bakersfield

 

31 - WE MEET AGAIN

Dust blew in my face as I tried to find some kind of familiar landmarks and get my proper bearings.  I looked around, but nothing seemed the same from my boyhood days as I recollect.  Everything was strangely smaller than it should have been.  It was oddly haunting not to recognize my childhood home, or even know my way around.  At least the place still smelled the same.

I walked up one street and down another until I finally stumbled upon what I was searching for.  There in a flat clearing stood Aunt Fanny’s low-slung hacienda, looking like it hadn’t changed a bit since the days when I lived there, except for maybe shrinking a little.  With some trepidation I approached the house, and with a trembling hand I knocked on the big balsa wood door.

“Hold jour huevos,” a male voice sang out, “I jam coming.”

I had the sensation of being examined through a peephole, then the massive door creaked open and there stood a very tan foreign dude, muscles slicked with salad oil, looking me up and down.

“Jess?” he said.

“My name’s not Jess,” I politely protested the stranger’s over-familiarity.  “I’m sure we’ve never been introduced.”  I eyeballed him.  “I’m here looking for Fanny Kartone.”

“Santa Maria, eez jou!  Chee always say, eef a strange man comes an he ax for his Auntie Fanny, eez da boy.  An here jou are!”

“And you are?”

“I jam jour Auntie’s personal assistant,” he bowed.  “Lars.”

Lars?  That was the name of Auntie’s manservant from my boyhood days.  This couldn’t possibly be Lars.  I gave him the ol’ stink-eye.

“Jess, chee call all her personal assistant Lars.  I tink I’m da number six, but I am da lass Lars chee ever need.”

He grabbed my elbow, “Boy oh boy, chee be so happy to see jou!”

Lars whooshed me through room after room after room until we finally arrived at our destination in the back of the house, Auntie’s boudoir.  With his hands fluttering about like panicky sparrows Lars grandly opened the door, and again bowed low.  In the steamy and darkened room, lit only by candles and the flickering light from a huge home entertainment center, propped up on a heap of silk and taffeta pillows, all wrapped in pink lace and satin ribbons, laid my Aunt Fanny.  She looked hideous old, like she wasn’t just over the hill she was stuck way down in the holler.

As I approached I could see she was wearing some kind of turban-thing-like hat on her head with a dazzling blue gem pinned smack dab in the middle.  Her turban thingy kind of tilted toward one crinkly eye heavily camouflaged in makeup.  I could only see her necrotic head sticking out from under a heavy load of sheets and blankets.  From under her hooded and painted eyes she gazed at me for a long time, and then with a skeletal arm she silently motioned for me to draw closer.

“Boy, is that really you?” she finally spoke.

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Oy,” she cried.  “What must I look like?”

I wasn’t sure if I’d just been disrespected.  Rather than feeling offended, though, I decided to chalk it up to old-age dementia.

“I always knew you’d come back,” her voice croaked. In slow-motion she turned to her bronzed assistant.  “Go draw the boy a bath, and then come back here.  It’s time for my midmorning enema.”

Lars dutifully bowed as he slinked toward the chamber door.

“And don’t try slipping me any of that decaf stuff again,” Aunt Granny warned Lars.  “I know Dark Kona when I feel it.  You can’t fool me.”

Aunt Fanny studied me for a long time through slotted eyes before she addressed me again.  “Boy, we’ll talk later.  You run along now.”

Badly needing to use the can, I ran.