Calinferno! Pt. 3 Castles Made of Sand Bar and Grill

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“What the heck?” says Patsy, with some disgust. “This is my friend’s girlfriend, I think. ’Please be good to him, I hope you can make him happy?’ Is this a joke?!?”
“She thinks you are together?”
“All we do is chat about his projects and my...well, whatever you call what I get up to! We’ve never even met face to face before tonight! I think it’s because he put me up as his Special Someone on the Avatar Alternalife thing! “ Brrmbumbumbum....
“It plainly says I’m his dern friend!!! I’m like, 17 people’s Special Someone, from Play Granny to Faerie to Play Daughter to Twin---I just make friends like ants make hills. I just listened, helped him with whatever he was going through. I offered to be her friend, too. Just ticks me off (click) ‘cause she could do the same thing but all she hits him up for is...oh!” ba-doomp.
“This is the place Val!”
“Castles Made of Sand Bar and Grill.”
“Yeah! Kicky name, huh? Let me get this tweet before we go...oh, cool! Kyle says that friend of his from Sri Lanka---the refugee housing consultation he took when he visited there?---he’s like practically around the corner, staying at the brownstone we passed coming in, and could he walk over and crash our party?”
“Sure.”
“Righteous. Okay, now we gotta find my friend Hillie...”
“Feels like everyone is looking at you like they know you.” “Ah- heh! Maybe I just...look like a lotta people’s friends? Hopefully not one that owes them money! Did I tell you about that?”
“He’s the one waving?”
“OH, totally! Hillie! C’mere, boy!”
“Hey, Patsy! You smell like the ocean! And honeysuckles!”
“Yeah, I kinda ran into a bush earlier.”



“Haha!”
“Hillie, this is my buddy Val.”
“Wow! You’re striking.”
Hellcat nudges Val, and leans over smiling to say, “Lucky for you, not literally!
Val blushes. “Ahem...perhaps I can get someone to clear us a table?”
“Sounds good!” “Yeah...I didn’t know how many our party would be.”
(Hellcat inaudibly leaned over to Hillie, while Val walks up to the hostess to say, “We’ll be four, please.”)
Hillie: Oh! I’m disappointed. I’m sorry, Patsy...I’ve really been pouring everything into the success of my projects, my web-commercials, finishing things I’ve worked on in some cases for years...the thing that bothered her in the end was that I am so married to my work at this point, then you popped up in my documentary work.
Shayde’s a talented actress, I’d be happy to shoot something new for her...first, I thought I might cross the line taking from real life and making people uncomfortable...but I kept believing I could make my ideas relevant, fed with the concentrated moment!
(Looks down into beer glass quietly) I’m not one to shed a tear in his beer, like the Hanks sang...I thought she’d lost interest, in things that take every available minute or they feel like they’ll just stop moving forward...if that happens, I feel like it’s, you know? Going to explode inside me! Normal people live lives of quiet desperation...
Patsy: Golly, a little sprinkle of normal’s like an occasional bowl of chocolate ice cream! But I understand, finding your own vision for yourself, and living it through.
Hostess: The dishwasher’s coming out now; here you go...it’ll be juuust a minute...
Val: That busser is terribly familiar...
Hostess: David just started here two weeks ago...kinda gentle, contained dude.
Val walks back over to Hilly and Patsy, as she gives him an auntie type hug at the bar.
Val: Pardon me...Patsy, do you recognize the fellow clearing our table for us?
Patsy: Waitaminute...’scuse me, Hill, this guy looks just like a dear bud of ours...
Val: you seem to have caught the attention of this fellow approaching by mistake...
The gentleman in question, about Patsy’s height, with Indian features and contemporary clothing and aura, walks up to shake the hand of Patsy walker.
“Ah, hello, you might be a friend of a friend I’m looking for...”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, hey man! “ she replies, quickly giving him a full on embrace. “Uh, you’re Bali, from around the corner, Kyle’s friend?”
“Yeah!” he replies, shaking his head vigorously with surprised, benevolently bugging eyes.
“That’s Val and Hillie, my friends,” she says, pointing. “Sorry, I’m trying to get a look at this fellow here before he ducks back into the kitchen! Be right with ya, good to meet ya, ho-ho-hold on!”
Bali turns towards Hillie and Val, unable to suppress a glee that escapes as a private giggle.
Suddenly, a voice booms drunkenly out of the booth next to the busy busser:
“A toast! A toast, then, to the children who cannot smile today. Never forget’em. I want them to LIVE through me...I wanna remember them. I want ER’y One to remember ‘em...!”
Startled, Hellcat turns in the same direction as the glances of the entire section of the dining room.

From the booth, a distraught, angry, sad young man has bellowed his toast, while across the table from him, a sturdy hand comes across to touch his arms. His companion, with steely eyes and a friendly smile, turns quickly to Patsy, in whom he sees sympathy. “Well, we two must have the reddest hair in this whole place, do we not?!?” he offers cheerfully, in an Oklahoma accent.
Patsy plays off his nonchalance, while the brooding fellow takes a deep sigh. “That we do, that we do! So how are you doing there, Oakie?”
“Oh! My accent’s telling on me!” he laughs. “Where I’m from? They would say I don’t have one!”
“You do out here, my fellow carrot TOP!”
“We have a big space here if you and your friends would care to share?” Oakie says. By now, Hillie’s watching Val move up behind Patsy, as Bali’s eyes follow Val wistfully with intimations of Love at First Sight.
The busser breathes in a cleansing fashion, as he lifts the tub full of used dinner ware to his chest, then cocks his hat back and swiftly heads back towards the kitchen entrance beside the bar back door. But he shoots a smile back towards Patsy Walker, who recognizes her friend Doctor Banner, relieved by the return to early evening din and classic rock.
“Hillie, would you put "hallejuah" on the juke box? It’s for a friend of mine,” Patsy says, as she passes a dollar to her friend. “We’ve got a pretty big party, Oakie, with more to come...but you Are hogging one of the bigger booths, you know...”
“Oh, I DO know!” says the Oakie. “Room for everyone, ain’t that right, Teddy Bear?”
“Sure,” he replies quietly, calmed now by the energy supporting him.
And so, we leave Bali sliding in across from Val so he can watch her talk, as she sits beside Teddy and Patsy pulls up a chair for herself to sit on the end and leave the booth open for Hillie to sit down next to Oakie...to fly as the crow flies, into the woods just out of reach of the revels of the Castles Made of Sand Bar...
Emma Johansson, surrounded by a glow, now sports a distinctly 20’s hat with flat feather-type triangles of fabric poised in green above her dark bob hair cut, as she gathers the edges of her faded orange trench coat to step barefoot across a patch of dried grass beside a breeze blown hickory sapling.
I reach out with my perceptions, and make my walk my meditation...I put aside my feelings---how can one love a spirit? No, how does one Fall in such love? His feelings, his heart’s stirrings---they are the empathic thread that pulls at me, weaving me deeper into the woods before the sun prepares its setting...
She touches her brow.
Such an array of impressions from nature...but in the middle is this anomaly...
Emma cups her hands to her mouth like a megaphone.
“Oh, Ann-Omm-aLeeeee! Come out, come out, wherever you...are!”
Emma looks pleased with herself.
“Hah! If only it’s that simple...”
So she continues stepping over a branch stealthily and weaving beneath a mimosa bloom along a dirt path into the darkening twilight...
...unaware that there is ONE who has answered her call, after all...
“You...want’ed meee? “
Foreshadowed, forlorn, is a sad-eyed, yellowish-green humanoid cross between a goblin and a gnome, with some form of human clothing---coveralls---standing over a yard. There is a smile, though.
“Some one...or some thing...wanted ....me.”