The Thrilling Conclusion
by Jeremy-Joseph Rosen
There were four white walls to the room, each roughly ten feet by ten feet. Absentmindedly, Scooter attempted to figure out the room’s volume. Then, he remembered that Javier, like all mysterious characters returned from one’s childhood, had given him an assignment.
On the table were four items: a box of matches, a candle, some thumbtacks and a pencil. Before he left the room, Javier had given him instructions.
“Affix the candle to the wall with what I have given you,” Javier had stated “and then I will tell you why the lemons are purple. I know you want to know.”
Sitting on the rumpled bed, Scooter tried to focus his thoughts on the problem at hand. He had to affix a candle to the wall using only a box of matches, some thumbtacks and a pencil. That problem seemed inconsequential. What did seem important was the Register Girl at the K.K.K.
Something about her intrigued Scooter in a way that purple lemons, buttons and even the secret of life itself could not. With a flip of the switch, he turned on the Dictaphone and began to speak:
“I’ll never understand that which I need to understand. I’ll only ever understand that which I am meant to understand.”
For a moment he scratched a private area and began again.
“There is a great mystery to this world and I have been given many clues, but I can never deduce a glimmer of the answer.”
Again he scratched; it was a persistent itch.
“There are many clues, scattered throughout life, and I have found only a few. But then there is her.” (Of course he was referring to the Register Girl at the Kalisotta Koffee Klatch, whose hips were not actually too thin.)
“There was a cornstalk I saw in the sidewalk, and in it I see only her. There was a tree and in it I see only her, and there were purple lemons and in them I see only her.”
For a second he returned to the bed and thought about how Javier led him here, with promises of knowledge. Scooter wasn’t a particularly wild person. No, the wilderness happened about his person as he passed through life.
They left the K.K.K. early in the afternoon and beyond all reason, Scooter had secured Register Girl’s phone number in an ingenious way. With little adieu, they had boarded Javiar’s moped and made their way out to the Warehouse Quarter, where all the warehouses lived and where for no apparent reason 19 pine trees grew in a straight line in the middle of a vacant lot.
“That used to be the Chicken Shack,” said Javier referring to the vacant lot.
“I went there before,” said Scooter holding on tightly. “They had good milkshakes.”
“Those weren’t milkshakes,” Javier said cryptically before turning down Mildred Street and parking near an old Dutch Colonial style warehouse.
When they entered, a butler had come to take their coats, a maid had dusted off a pair of chairs in which they never sat and a kitchen scullion had brought out a pot and teacups from which they never drank.
Pacing about the room, Scooter stared at the items on the table. His interest was not in them, only in Register Girl. It turned out that her name was Mildred Strange. Strange since he was on Mildred Street.
Scooter had long ago learned to ignore these coincidences and not dwell on them. When they are a matter of course in your life, you learn to ignore them. This may have been part of Scooter’s problem. (But we’ve gotten only slightly ahead of ourselves.) Quickly he emptied the match box and used the tacks to attach it to the wall. Then he placed the candle in the box and lit it with the matches. The key to the puzzle was to remember that the box was an item; it wasn’t just the matches in it.
As for the pencil, he didn’t use that. It wasn’t necessary. Quite a few of his brain cells were dedicated to imagining an exciting future for him and Register Girl from the K.K.K. They would have a whirlwind romance, marry in Paris and honeymoon in Kazakhstan. Despite convention, their wedding cake would be chocolate.
With a respectable flourish, for not wearing a cape, Javier entered the room.
“So, you’ve passed the test,” he said, draining the rest of his grape soda. The can fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Tell me what I need to know.”
Scooter stepped forward slightly, his eyes narrowing to slits. He picked up the discarded can and placed it with the leftover items from the puzzle.
“Why, you already know everything you need to know.”
Scooter remembered that, by gum, he did remember everything he needed to know. As he made to leave, Javier halted him.
“There’s no great secret to this world, Scooter,” Javier began. “The truth is that everything you’ve searched for, all the information you’ve tried to hunt down, already exists in your head. You just need to learn how to remember it. You need to learn how to sort out the discrepancies in your personal story and unlock that borscht for brains you have.”
Scooter looked at him not quite dumbly by way of answer.
“The great secret is knowing how to do that.” Javier stepped over and knocked the grape soda can back on the ground. “But, you were never meant to know. The one who knows is the one you seek.”
“The Register Girl from the K.K.K.?”
“Exactly. God speed, Scooter.”
And Javier, with little to no flourish, left forever. Scooter never saw him again. Picking up the calculator, Scooter punched a few buttons. It turned out that the room had roughly 1000 cubic feet, or even more roughly 305 cubic meters. That was enough for Scooter and, lighting his pipe, he left to go meet Mildred, the Register Girl from the K.K.K.
Later that night, they went bowling.