The Waldorf Astoria Of Punxustawney

Punxutawney Phil, the clairvoyant critter, saw his shadow this morning on Gobbler's Knob, and now there will be six more weeks of winter. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. 

I wrote a poem about Phil and winter when I was in fourth grade. When I was innocent and full of life. Before I was cursed with erections and desire for lusty women of all sorts. When my greatest and only love was my mother, and I feared the day she would die like the unholy fear Armageddon.

It was the best poem that was ever written, but I lost it. I even drew Phil and the men in tuxedos who usher him from his hole. My beloved mother kept it in a scrapbook, but the scrapbook was lost after she died — a day that hit me in the mouth like Pearl Harbor. All my life I've been trying to remember that poem and to resuscitate my dead mother in words. 

I am in love with a woman named Annabelle Lee. I have never met her, and it is very likely she has never been born. Her name has been stuck in my mind for as long as I can remember. It likely stems from my adoration of Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem of the same name, but I am whole-heartedly convinced that I love her. I've never met anyone named Annabelle in my life, much less Annabelle Lee. There is a movie called "Annabelle," but imagine my disappointment to discover it was about a demonic doll. There are several adult film stars named Annabelle something-or-other. But they won't do, getting stuffed like ducks for foie gras.

Upon the shore I wait for thee,

Please come, my Annabelle Lee.

Murdered by Poe, and drowned at sea. 

My love, my life, return to me. 

I wrote that on a cocktail napkin at a Greenwich Village bar where I was supposed to meet some sleazy woman who didn't show. I stuffed it in my suitcoat pocket and left. 

Often the dry cleaner will give me gobs of cocktail napkins with drunk things written on them. I don't know if he reads them or not. His name is Lao. I always wonder why he doesn't throw them away. Confuscious say — Don't throw away cocktail napkin from pocket.

I have a problem. I over analyze everything, and nothing can ever be simple. It is all very metaphoric and complex in my head. My head is a Gobbler's Knob and there is a furry little Phil in there who comes out now and then to decide if I will, or I will not have a good day. Six more weeks of depression or an early myrth. Very seldom do I experience an early myrth. 

I think too much about everything. For years I couldn't decide what to eat or wear, so I eat and wear the same things. I have a closet full of back Brooks Brothers suits and black ties, and a cabinet full of peanut butter, which I eat exclusively on Wonder bread. Sometimes I get crazy and eat tuna salad on Wonder bread. I do not eat any other bread.

There is surely a name for my afflicting condition in some medical journal somewhere. A study from the University of Leipzig. It can be described as some sort of mania, or manic dillema, that many people must suffer and have suffered before. There is probably a medication to treat it and commercials to boot with absurdly happy people with perfect teeth roasting marshmallows and smiling as a narrator nonchalantly reads the side-effects. Some catchy jingle to go along with it. 

Look out cause here I come. 

The once daily medication for those with overactive thoughts and imagination. May cause brain bleeding, loss of appetite, hair loss, paralysis, burning during urination, or thoughts of suicide in rare cases.

Someone suggested I get a pet to give me purpose, but that is too much of a commitment. I'm a busy lawyer who has an absurd amount of sex because I have no other active hobbies. Sex is my hobby. It is my golf. Every female I meet is evaluated in less than two seconds for fuckability. Pussy is my groundhog hole. It is my Gobbler's Knob. When I have sex and am in the hole, I go through various states of nirvana. Otherwise, I am a neurotic mess. 

What is the point? What is the point of watching Punxutawney Phil wobble his fat little ass out of his hole to see if he sees his shadow or not. But here I am, glued to the television screen remembering when they called it a television set. What does it matter if we have six more weeks of winter or an early spring? Depression or myrth?

I was laid up with a kidney stone that wasn't just a kidney stone. What a terrible thing to suffer. A three millimeter stone wreaking havoc in my kidney. He progressed through me and went by many names on his jungle cruise through my back bean. Namely, Lewis or Clark, when he was a novel explorer. Then he became Dick. And because cursing "Dick" sounded too gay while I was pissing and moaning in pain, I renamed him Bob.

I called in sick. A flash of pain from Bob blitzkrieged through my back bean. The old Blitzkrieg Bop. I was watching Bob Ross on TV painting landscapes and when I wasn't watching Bob Ross painting landscapes, I was watching animals eating other animals on Facebook reels because I couldn't stop. A komodo dragon ate a baby goat. Hyenas slowly ate an orphaned zebra. Once you watch one, they assume interest and fill your feed with them. It is a sick world. 

I was writing between bouts of spasmic pain. Squinting my eyes because I lost my glasses somewhere in the mess of my bed. Under books, quilts, sheets, pillows, and junk mail. Thumbs dancing across the phone screen keyboard like tentacles from my nose to catch the fish of a good idea. To cancel plans. To reschedule. Offering rain checks never to be cashed. No one really believes you are in as much pain as you say, I've come to learn. They just say things like, "Wow. That's awful." Or "Gee, I hope you feel better." Or the blanket condolence of, "I am sorry." Or they offer their "prayers," but surely God has better things to do than to mess with my kidney stone. 

I thought of Bob as many different things. It was my albatross. But at first, it was the heroism of a runaway slave who I liked because it wasn't all too uncomfortable for me. The Civil War had yet to be waged within me. There was just arguments. Charles Sumter had yet to be beaten. My kidney was the Deep South. The briars and the thicket. Alligators in the bayou that don't give a fuck of the doings of people. The unforgiving swamp and the merciless unending wilderness. 

I was rooting for the girl to find her way through. It was more sympathetic to think of it as a female. Run, Ruby, run. Ruby was a beautiful woman because everyone loves beautiful things more. Ruby had babies to make. An entire ten generations depended upon her. 

But then Ruby was gone and it progressed to an alien invasion. A hostile game of Asteroids. An angry takeover of some sort. It was punishment from God for masturbating too much as a teenager, for some unnatural act committed, as I am guilty of a litany of them. It was a drought. A wildfire. A flood. It was the doomsday meteor I least expected, that I always knew would come. It was Hitler advancing through Poland. The aforementioned Blitzkreig Bop. Columbus traveling to the pristine New World much to the chagrin of some boot scootin' engines, or butt-fucking natives, whichever you prefer to call them. It was anything and everything but what it actually was. Just a tiny rock that placed anywhere else would have been inconsequential. 

Bob.

My girlfriend thought I was lying and accused me of sleeping with other women because I wasn't texting her enough. She was angry because I canceled plans for dinner at some bougie restaurant that took me two months to get reservations for. I was going to propose to her there, though I loathed the idea in its cruddy Hallmark Channel banality, and I didn't want to get married. The old ring in the wine glass trick. That ought to do her. My dad once gave me a piece of advice. It is the only advice I ever remember him giving me and I don't even know if it was advice. 

Rings don't plug holes. 

She coreographed the whole thing for me. She said exactly how she wanted it to go like we were conspirators planning the Lincoln assassination. She went over it so that I would remember. If it didn't go flawlessly, she would be angry. I sent her pictures of myself miserable in bed. Writhing in pain like Stephen Hawking when it rained. But she afforded me no sympathy and said our perfect proposal, which she knew was coming, and our relationship, was ruined, chiding me for ruining it. Goodbye, Olivia. This is where we do part. 

Then Bob settled down and I went over to see Kate, good-old steady Kate, who I had been banging on the side since before I met Olivia and failed to discard, though I thought of it many times because Olivia was enough for me and I was spreading myself thin. I started off strong and fisted her like a Thanksgiving turkey and ate her like a fat man eats wings at a buffet, her gravy spurting out of her in periodic convulsions. Then we lied in bed and I showed her a komodo dragon eating a helpless water buffalo calf, discussing the usual things until I mistakenly used her as a confessional. In her black stockings and nun outfit, I mistook her for someone more than she ever was. 

As I told her about Olivia dumping me, her demeanor quickly soured and she got up and got dressed like it was Monday morning and she had overslept. Then, after she was fully clothed, she dumped me, too. She said me having a girlfriend was part of the attraction and she didn't want to get into anything serious anyway with someone who might want something serious. She had been considering it for months, she told me. She was seven month's pregnant. She said it was God's baby. It was not mine. She had many other lovers and she dumped them in lieu of committing suicide. 

"Who asked for anything serious?" I argued. But I realized even by asking I sounded desperate and I was like that helpless water buffalo calf about to be devoured by that hideous forked-tongue creature. I should have said nothing at all. It was an elaborate game of cat and mouse of which I was unburdended. 

She went into a long diatribe about things expiring because she thought she was a poet like Sylvia Plath, and though she wanted to die, she didn't have the courage to stick her head in a gas oven. I realized she was annoying and a complete idiot, and I should have discarded her before she discarded me because I was never really into it, either. She was the one who squirted all over me like a broken water pistol.

I realized in that moment that I have trouble throwing things away. That is my main problem. I am a hoarder of souls and just-in-case-back-pocket-pussy that I keep until it is no longer available for one reason or another. I never really loved anyone, nor knew anyone I couldn't stand to lose, which was the most tragic realization I've ever had. 

I got drunk at a tourist bar on 54th and banged a teacher with beautiful brown eyes in the bar bathroom who was in the city for some conference. We made small talk about kidney stones and she related that she too once had a kidney stone and had named hers as well. She thought my "back bean" moniker was the cleverest thing she ever heard. She named hers Stan. And I played "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" on the jukebox and she said she hadn't ever heard it before and had no idea who Paul Simon was so the bar got flooded with Simon and Garfunkel songs courtesy of me, and Paul Simon solo, all but for that dreadful "You Can Call Me Al" song which was only made worse by the goddamn video. 

Her name was Nicole, though it was irrelevant. I thought of writing Paul Simon a letter telling him I fucked an attractive fourth grade teacher with whisky-colored eyes in a bar bathroom on 54th to the rhythm of "Baby Driver." I even sang it as I railed her from behind in the privacy of a bathroom stall that was fifty shades of red.

She asked if I wanted to go back to her hotel, but I said I had to work in the morning, which wasn't true because I had lost my job. The law firm fired me because I called off for several days due to the kidney stone and couldn't make it to trial. I burned all my sick time and the boss knew I had been sleeping with his wife when sleeping with wives appealed to my degenerate mind. It was a chapter in life. His name happened to be Al, short for Albert, who was my favorite character on Little House on the Prairie, who got killed off with Leukemia, a tragedy from which I've never fully recovered. To the writers of that show, a sincere, fuck you.

"You can call me, Al," he said during the interview. His hot wife's picture was on his desk. She said he loved golf more than her. I called our affair, "A Hole in One."

Nicole the teacher said she thought of ordering room service and getting a movie in a Midwesterny sort of effort to persuade me, but I couldn't think of anything more miserable than being quiet while she called her husband in Cincinnati and told him about the city, and the sites, and dinner, and the chocolate martini she drank, conveniently skipping past Paul Simon, and the red bar bathroom, to ask about the kids. Then hearing her babytalk some toddler who thought her mom was the most wonderful person in the world and a husband who thought she was a saint while I lied naked in the white fluffy hotel bed beating my meat hard again so we could have a third round, maybe fingering her while I did. 

The third nut is always the best nut if you can get there, gentlemen. That is what I would say to aliens if they ever came to Earth and asked my opinion about anything. 

So fuck all that, it was farewell shortly after our bathroom tryst. I paid the tab and left, regretting her three chocolate martinis which were fifteen a piece. Small price for a hooker. I decided not to write to Paul Simon because I don't know if he would find my letter humorous or of interest, and I will never write a letter that is not one or the other. I'm sure she would take a whore's bath back at the hotel and maybe a shit and schlepp down to the hotel bar where the vultures always roost. Upscale hotel bars are the easiest places in the universe to get laid — other than morgues. You only need a suit and a story. 

Bob came back. He came back with a fucking vengeance. I thought he was God punishing me for my many sins. Defiling another married school teacher. So I took a cab and went to the hopsital and walked into the ER at 7:34am. It was quiet and sterile. It looked like a bus terminal somewhere perfectly between arrivals and departures and without the riff-raff you can always expect to find dependably bumming at a bus station. 

Televisions were playing commercials for various drugs. Those people with perfect teeth roasting marshmallows and playing guitar by the campfire. 

Look out cause here I come. 

May cause diarrhea, dizziness, nausea, loss of appetite. Do not take if you are pregnant or nursing or trying to become pregnant. 

A young nurse was at the admittance station reading a book, eating an apple. The book had a picture of a barefoot black girl with bloody feet running through cotton fields on it. "If I Can Survive This" was the title. I hear you, Ruby. If I Can Survive This. I said it over and over again, softly, and in my head. 

The nurse was pretty, but in a dull sort of mannequin way. I couldn't fall in love with her if I tried. I told her I was going to get sick so she handed me a blue thing that looked like an elephant condom. The pain was so intense that I puked in it which caused the penis bag part to extend. I realized I must have looked ridiculous standing there throwing up with that thing flush to my face. Alcohol and sushi. But I couldn't help it. I wanted to purge my entire life into that azure phallus bag. I wanted to get it all out because it was poison. 

"Is that really your name?" she asked as I handed her my ID. "William Nobody?"

I shook my head yes. That ridiculous blue trunk attached to my face. 

"I've never met anyone with that last name before," she smiled. "Strange." She went on for a moment but the pain drowned her out. She was asking me registration questions, so they knew who was going to pay for all of this. 

Someone with a wheelchair came and rescued me from her inquisition and took me to a room. I puked again on the way, weaving around nurses and housekeeping staff who gave me various looks of curiosity, empathy and disgust. Then I threw the bag away and the nurse who pushed me in the wheelchair gave me another. A fresh clean one. She was plump but cute. I wondered if she thought about Punxutawney Phil as much as I did. I wondered if she knew we faced six more weeks of winter. I tried to remember that poem.

They were wonderfully efficient. After an hour or so, they took some blood and took me for a CAT scan for the insurance money. In short order, the doctor came in smiling and proclaimed that I had a 3mm kidney stone. 

"His name is Bob," I said.

How miserable I was. I began to cry like a little bitch. The doctor didn't know what to say. She asked if I had been drinking. I said, yes, of course. She asked if I wanted to talk to a counselor and I said no. Then I wiped my face and apologized and regretted apologizing and crying. I felt like I was going to give birth. Which I was. Just not to a baby. Not to a pride and joy. I was giving birth to a life of shame. 

She smiled and wrote something down on her chart. Probably some despicable observation of me. I was drunk and in horrible pain. They hooked me up to an IV to give me some pain medication and told me to relax. The pain slowly faded away and I must have looked like a dead man in that small ER room on the tilted bed with the blissfully soft cotton sheets on which someone surely had shit themselves or died. These are the last sheets that someone had ever felt. They were worn, baby blue. Soft and generous. 

I used my suitcoat for a blanket and the IV in my arm pinched me and made me feel like a junkie who died in the thralls of his last fix. The room was cold and the only sound was a random methodic beeping I couldn't explain, an occasional page, and the bustle of busy nurse's feet of varying attractiveness scurrying in the hallway.  

I wondered how many pour souls died in this room. It was an old hospital, after all. How much hope was extinguished by fate here in this room. How many of those people were alone. The bland nothingness of the ceiling being the last thing in the world they would have seen. The sign saying "Please No Cellphone Use in the ER" in simple black and white letters. A cold metal trash bin. Cabinets and a counter top with the obligatory glass jar full of wooden tongue depressers and cotton balls. How many kids died here. I should be grateful that bar some extremely unlikely turn of events, I would live. 

But fuck, I was cold. I drifted in and out of sleep taking an autopsy of the life I had spewed in the barf bag. Every terrible thing I've done and person was now vomitus, purged from me. This was the time and place to do it. 

Bob was being good for now. He wasn't moving, but he would move again because he needed to move. He had to pass. He couldn't stay in there forever. It would be horrible if he did. I'd have another problem. A worse problem. One that would require surgery. He was just passing through and I needed to let him pass through so I could progess.

I thought of all the women I had been with. Young women. Old women. Skinny women. Good women. Bad women. Women from church. Women from rehabs. Women from Central Park. In Central Park. Joggers. Nannies. Women in Burger King bathrooms. I've had revenge sex. Makeup sex. Breakup sex. Quick sex. Long sex. Hard sex. Soft sex. Good sex. Bad sex. Every occupation of woman on me, over me, under me. Bankers. Lawyers. Doctors. Cooks. Prison guards. Nurses. Mothers. Wives. Bartenders. A midget once or twice. An amputee. A carnival worker. Steet sex. Car sex. Barn sex. Box sex. Yard sex. Boat sex. Zoo sex. What a depraved run I've had of it. Nothing was special anymore. I was simply chasing the next fix like any other junkie. 

I went through a stretch of banging hookers, single moms, married moms, married wives without kids, a couple of widows, a virgin. Sisters. Mom and daughter in tandem. But it was never enough. Bob. It was Bob. He was the tape worm inside of me. That insatiable tape worm. Bob had to pass. Bob was killing me. 

The nurse came in and told me they'd call my prescription into the pharmacy for pain pills and something that would help me pass "the stone." I said great and thank you. But like the girl up front reading the slave girl book, I couldn't have fallen in love with her even if I wanted to. I couldn't have fallen in love with anyone at the moment because it was the furthest thing from my mind for the first time since I can remember. In order to have sex with someone, I had to fall in love with them for at least 5 minutes. I wondered if Punxutawney Phil has sex. 

I wanted to kill myself standing in line at Duane Reade. I wanted to throw myself off the Empire State Building. Feed myself to a lion at the Brooklyn Zoo. What a good way to go. In the jaws of a lion. I wanted to find and ingest some poison and die like a rat in the gutter. To get myself robbed and shot for my wallet with nothing in it. Only a note that says, "Thank you! Don't feel bad for killing me. This is what I wanted all along. Though I couldn't leave you any money, I leave you with this one incidental good deed done — You killed me. You took me out of this place. You delivered me from evil. You alleviated me of my mortal burden. In your darkest days, know this — You once did a very good deed."

And the bastard might smile and then sulk. Fuck. For a minute he will regret I had no cash. Nothing of value. But that note, though. He'll keep that shit. Some weird shit. When they arrest him it will be that note that gets him convicted. But he will want to be convicted. 

He threw out my empty wallet, but he had to keep that note. And fibers on the strange note matched fibers from my wallet. And so in prison, he will think of it. And twenty years later, he will be released with a new lease on life. A 40 year-old baby born to the free world no longer to rob or cheat people, but to appreciate the sun upon his skin, walks in the park, a cool breeze, a hot pizza, and a Mets game where he works on his work-release program. 

Killing me wasn't the worst thing he had ever done. It was the best thing for us both. It saved him from an angry life of terrible burden. Of divorces and kids he don't know, and child support he couldn't pay, and routine vacations to Rikers. He got it all over with in one fell swoop and found Jesus and forgiveness in his cell block.  

And wherever he goes for a hundred years, he will tell the story of the crazy asshole he killed as a favor. Two for one. We were both cleansed of our sins. That is the power of Jesus Christ.

Amen. 

Lawyer Shot Dead in Alley Mugging Gone Awry — the papers will read. They won't mention my name but once and no one will remember it. They'll say something disparaging about the mayor and the crime rate. But, oh, I had it coming. Lord, I had it coming. It is amazing that someone's jealous husband or boyfriend hadn't shot me already. It is amazing that after all I've done, God himself didn't part the clouds and push his hand through to shoot me dead. Or give me a stroke or cancer, or lead me out into the path of a speeding bus. Woe is my soul. 

And our friend, who mugged and shot me, will be blessed with the same joke he can tell for the rest of his life courtesy of my name. 

"George, who did you kill?" 

"Nobody!"

He ain't lying. He killed a nobody. 

I lost my apartment. I was evicted because I didn't have a job and owed back rent I wouldn't pay. I wrecked my Mercedes and didn't have insurance. I didn't have the money to repair it, so the bank repossessed it. I talked to the repo man, Carlos, who was a nice guy. He said he liked the way I dressed and I gave him a few of my suits and ties. We were the same size it turns out. He said he would be the best dressed repo man in New York City. I told him he would be in a Brooks Brothers commercial before he knew it. He paid me with his smile and left. 

I boxed my food and donated it to a pantry. Mostly peanut butter. I took the rest of my suits to a Salvation Army in Brooklyn. Maybe it was the pain-killers that made me so altruistic, but the feeling of leaving my apartment, losing my car, giving away my suits, left me with an unusual sort of satisfaction that I had never before known. Or that I had not felt in a long time. I cashed out my retirement and my savings, which gave me about $42,000 to start over in anywhere but New York City.

Then Bob passed. Very unceremoniously and without any fanfare or pain. He tumbled out into a urinal. I plunged my hand in and pulled him out. I put him in a small glass vial I bought at Duane Reade. And I was free. Free of shame and sin. Unburdened by worries of a credit score. Of expensive things. A car I didn't need and couldn't afford. Free from chasing women. I bought some jeans and a couple shirts and sweatshirts. Boots from a thrift store. I bought a piece of luggage, a jacket, and a Yankees cap. I said goodbye to a few friends and left New York. I told them all I was going to be a poet, to which the overwhelming response was that they didn't even know that I wrote. They said they'd look for me in Harper's Weekly. 

I was born again.

New York said goodbye to me, William Nobody, in its own sort of way. That is what it does. It kicks people out or sobs as they leave. The day I bought my train ticket out of Penn Station, there was a bilboard that said, "No one is a nobody. Everyone is a somebody." 

It was an advertisement for the health department encouraging people to sign up for the healthcare exchange. There were ten people of every race you could imagine standing there with their hand raised. This was New York saying goodbye to me. Fare-thee-well, asshole. But should I ever come back, I knew I would be welcomed. 

The train chugged down the track out of the mouth of Penn Station, spilling in and out of the city. It didn't chug, really. It only did so in my mind because trains chug. It swooshed, really. There was nothing cumbersome or laboring about it. It moved with the illusion of effort. I looked out the window and there was only remnants of that great city speckled behind me. 

I left and I was no longer a lawyer. I was, as the name suggests, a nobody. Following Penn Station, I arrived at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. And from Philadelphia, I was on a train to Pittsburgh's Union Station. And from a train in Pittsburgh, I was on a greyhound bus to Puxuntawney. And other than Phil's annual resurrection, it was the quietest town you could imagine. On the off-season it was like golfers and librarians. It was mice and cotton balls.

I got a job at a criminal defense law firm in Punxutawney. I was, once more, William Nobody, Esquire. It was written on the door. There weren't many law breakers in Punxutawney, but there was the occasional yahoo. Domestic violence, and the sort. The occasional theft and drunk driver to defend. I didn't do personal injury until there was no criminals in Punxutawney left to defend. No serious traffic offenders. I took what cases I could find. 

So I evolved for a year. I become Punxutawney. I became Phil. I embraced the community and talked to people like the postman and the guys at the hardware store. And although there are many beautiful women in Punxutawney, I wrote for a hobby instead of having sex. I created a writer's group, which I called "Nobody's Poet." 

But still I couldn't remember that poem. 

By the following February, I had written nearly two dozen short stories and dozens of poems. My writer's group swelled from three members to twelve. We shared stories and drank coffee often way too late into the night. All of my stories were romantic love stories. Things I dreamed of but could not live — of the girl I loved all my life, but had never met. 

Our writer's group met on Tuesdays and the Tuesday this week was February 1. The eve of Phil's big day. The town explodes in population in the three day swing from roughly 5,600 people to upwards of 20,000. Bed and breakfasts, hotels, motels are all booked out. I bought a nice three-bedroom home shortly after getting my job and thought of renting the other two rooms for extra income, but I didn't. At least, not this year. 

The writer's group meets at my house in the parlor. We canceled it this week for for the holiday because Groundhog's Eve is a huge evening. Tourists bring the town alive and businesses are eager to cash in as much as they can. I was home and had just showered when the doorbell rang. One of the members probably hadn't remembered we canceled. More likely it was Steve the postman. 

"Sorry. Just a minute," I called down from upstairs. My cat meowed. It was an old Victorian house, but surely he could hear me. I rushed around to find something to throw on so I could tell him we canceled. Then we probably would head down to The Burrow for a beer where everyone else was probably already at. 

But the doorbell rang again. "The postman does ring twice," I joked. 

He hadn't heard me. So I raced down and threw open the door. But there was no Steve the Postman with his emphatic handlebar mustache and lonely watery eyes there to greet me. There was a woman standing there. Quite possibly the most attractive women I had ever seen in my whole life. 

"Hi. Is this where the writer's group meets? Nobody's Poet?" She looked down at our flier to confirm.

I didn't give thought to my disheveled appearance or the fact that my appearance left a lot to be desired. I was in a t-shirt and torn jeans. I hadn't put on shoes or socks. My hair was not combed. My mouth suddenly was incapable of articulating words and my tongue felt like it was a bloated whale carcass washed ashore being picked at by birds. 

"Normally, yes. We do. But, uh, with the groundhog, we, um... the thing."

"The thing?" she repeated. 

"It's, uh, yeah, Groundhog's Eve. It is a big, um, thing around here. Are you from here? Or?"

"No, I'm not," she said. "I'm from Philly. Here to see Phil like the rest of them."

"Oh. Yeah. Well, people go out and there's a parade downtown so we, uh, we canceled this week. We will meet next Tuesday, though. For sure. Here."

"Oh, I won't be in town then. This is sort of a bucket list thing for me. And when I was looking for things to do, I saw the flier and thought I'd come and check it out. I am a writer, as well. So figured I might land in some good company."

I was nervous and I believe my tongue sweat. It betrayed me. Likely in revenge of me being celibate for a year. It enjoyed its part in the lovemaking. Now here it was, wallowing in my mouth at the site of a beautiful woman. 

I had a response in my head but forgot to deliver it. I just looked at her. I stood in the doorway and looked at her as she stood there on the porch like I was Buffalo Bill and she was the FBI. Agent Starling. Starlings are terrible birds. But she wasn't a bird. Or the FBI. Who was she? 

"Well, thank you," she smiled. "Have a good evening."

As she walked away a universe of thought washed over me. Bob. The Blitzkrieg Bop. Joey Ramone thrashing in the garage of my skull. If it wasn't for Bob, I wouldn't have lost my job. My girlfriend wouldn't have broken up with me. I would have been engaged. On the hook. Kate wouldn't have left me. I'd still have my car and East Village apartment and I would have been consuming large amounts of pussy recreationally until it all blew up and killed me. Until Olivia shot me, or some jealous husband shot me. Bob saved my life. Bob gave me an exodus I so desperately desired to Punxutawney. Bob gave me the writer's group, which was cathartic and cleansing. Bob gave me a new life. A second chance. He gave me hope. And he gave me this opportunity with this beautiful woman, who was walking away. 

"Hey!" I called. She stopped before getting back into her car. 

"I was going to go down to The Burrow to get a drink, if you'd like to join me I could introduce you to some of the others from the group. Maybe we can get a table and make it a makeshift meeting or something. That would be fun."

She smiled. "Okay!"

"Just give me a minute to get dressed and, you want to come inside and wait for a second? It's pretty cold, and it's just me and the cat. His name is Poe." 

"Poe?" I like that. She walked back up to the porch. The way she said Poe reverberated in my ears. It was her enunciation of the P. The pretty puh sound that come from her lips. I hadn't been with a woman for so long I felt nervous and awkward. 

She came inside and looked around the living room as I ran upstairs to get dressed, regretting running for how immature it made me seem. So halfway up I walked as though my mother had scolded me. 

I got dressed and Poe had warmed up to her. The corpulent kitty, as he was affectionately referred. It was quite unusual for him to allow someone to hold him, but there he was, in her arms like a baby. She was scratching his belly. I smiled. I also prayed he wouldn't attack her. That he wasn't only luring her in for the kill because I always suspected him of contemplating murder. I had no faith in the cat, though he had done nothing specific to make me feel that way. 

"You have a lovely home," she said letting Poe down onto the sofa. 

"Thank you. I just moved here last year. So, where are you staying? What lovely inn, B&B, or motel did you find? They are at a premium."

She smiled. "Well, I'm in my car. Unfortunatley, everything was booked. I sort of — came on a whim. It's only for the night. I'll be fine."

I must have looked at her oddly for too long because she smiled back and laughed, "What?" 

"I came on a whim. Last year from New York. I wasn't quite sure why, but I bought a ticket to Philly. Then to Pittsburgh. Then took a bus here. The rest, I suppose, is history."

"Or maybe fate," she offered

"Fate." I repeated the word with all it's due air so that it floated through the room that was suddenly curiously silent as it is when I am desperately between words of a story. I had to remind myself that I wasn't at my desk and I wasn't writing. 

She looked around the room, gliding about, smiling at objects on the mantle, pictures on the wall, and books on my shelves. I was following her with my eyes as she spoke. Her back turned to me and her fingers caressing the spines of those books. 

"Do you ever have the desire to be lost in a good book? Confined between two covers, but not confined at all. Put upon a shelf to collect dust until one day something about you catches someone's eye and they choose you. You can feel their fingers grabbing you. And you are opened back up, and though you appear to be but ink on pages, you are so much more. You come alive in the beautiful world of someone's mind, to live, to love, your exposition, your plot, the conflict, and climax, and to say all the prettiest things at all the right moments, to realize true love, to endure tragedy, and to resonate in someone's mind and soul long after your cover is closed and you are once more placed back upon the shelf. To live forever. To never get old. And to fall in love again and again in a thousand different worlds every time you're chosen."

"I have never heard it so —"

"Forgive me. I'm a weirdo," she said, a little embarrassed, which she assuaged with the confidence of a smile. Her eyes lit with the amber glow of the Edison bulbs in the chandelier. 

"Weirdos are welcome here. I believe it is on the doormat. Or it should be. And I have a room. Um, two actually. I have — two rooms. Well, three, but one is mine, the other two are guest rooms. I have no guests. You can have your pick if you don't mind wallpapered walls and a drafty-old Victorian house with a murder cat who confesses his crimes sometimes late into the night. The wind howls through the bones of the walls, and there are indeed some creaks and bumps in the night, but it beats the backseat of a Toyota, I'd say."

"It beats the Waldorf Astoria," she smiled. 

"The room service is lacking, I must confess. But I hope to remedy that."

"Well, it is only for the night. How much would you charge?"

"I've never given price a thought, honestly. You would be my first ever guest. Let's see. Maybe you can buy me a drink at The Burrow and we'll call it even."

She smiled and nodded. "In that case, I'll leave you a good tip and a great review. Is there a registry for me to sign?"

I went along with our fun and pulled a blank journal from the drawer and gave it to her with a very fine Emerald Emigma fountain pen that had never been used for there had never been the proper occasion. It was a funeral or wedding pen.

"What time is checkout?" she asked signing her name. The beautiful sound of the pen dancing across the paper filled my ears. I realized then that I didn't even know her name and I hadn't introduced myself. 

"That is negotiable. I am William Nobody, by the way. Proprietor or the Waldorf Astoria of Punxustawney. And, yes. That is my real name. She smiled and we shook hands just as I noticed her signature, which I read as she spoke it, her small hand enveloped in mine. I stared at her signature in disbelief. 

"Annabelle Lee. And, yes. That is my real name. Perhaps that is why Poe let me scratch his belly." 

"Perhaps."

We went to The Burrow and drank to the night and the occasion. It was loud and there wasn't much room. We met the others from the writer's group, and some more friends, and while everyone was talking and laughing in a riotous way, I looked at her and marveled at her beauty that was not altered or diminished by any favorable or unfavorable light. There was something inside of her that could not be extinguished or looked over, and I hoped with all of my soul that she would never checkout and that she would decide to live forever on room service. 

Before we left The Burrow for home, I remembered that poem I wrote so long ago. I wrote it down on some cocktail napkins which I shoved in the pockets of my suitcoat. She asked me what I wrote as we drove home and I tried my best to recite it. 

The groundhog makes his way to-day

To cast his shadow upon the ground.

Are we to be blessed by an early spring,

Or in winter to be longer bound. 

But I ask of him, the clairvoyant critter,

In love am I to be fulfilled or broken. 

And in life, have I been lulled asleep, 

Or from death, am I yet to be awoken. 

She smiled and inhaled deeply in the passenger seat. It was what I do when I read or hear something I like. As though there is a redolence to the words for me to savor. She was a little drunk, so I carried her in over the threshold and up the stairs to bed. 

We would wake to see Phil in the morning.