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SAUL POINTS THE FLASHLIGHT DIRECTLY AHEAD as he makes his way through the crumbling tunnel that extends from the basement of St. Peter's and continues underneath Sixth Street.
Clarice should have been here with me for this.
He pauses for a moment to survey his surroundings. The walls are a mixture of old stone, bricks and dirt along with rotting wooden beams that support crossbeams overhead. A dark coldness permeates the tunnel -- the kind of chill you find only in a place that's never seen the light of day.
Every few minutes there's a clunking noise from above, followed by a slight shudder and the sound of dust and dirt falling to the tunnel floor. In the distance he can make out another sound.
Running water. Must be an underground creek or a sewer.
"Anybody down here?" He calls out, half expecting to hear only an echo, and half expecting to hear nothing.
A sudden gust of wind blows past him. From somewhere up ahead comes another sound, like a door closing.
"Hello?"
The clunking noise followed by the falling dust and debris continues intermittently as he advances through the darkened tunnel. A few feet ahead he comes to a divergence in his journey. To the left the tunnel continues with the same structural style that he found at the opening. To the right is a breach in the wall, perhaps resulting from an ancient cave-in, which opens into another tunnel, although this one is constructed in a distinctly different manner.
He shines the flashlight through the dark hole and peers around the perimeter.
There are support beams, but no walls of brick and stone. Dirt walls that have been dug out to varying degrees line either side of the passageway, which actually appears to resemble a cave, or perhaps a mine.
Looks like part of one of those old Charlotte mines I've heard people talk about. I didn't know they actually existed.
A sudden loud, booming noise from behind catches Saul off guard. He rushes forward and trips on chunks of rock lying on the pathway ahead. In the process he loses his grip on the flashlight, and it skids across the ground and into a shallow crevice. The loud boom is followed by the sound of massive falling rock and dirt.
Saul grapples in the dark for the flashlight, retrieves it and points it back along the path behind him. The tunnel back to St. Peters is now blocked with an impenetrable heap of rubble.
Fuck.
CLARICE IS WALKING THROUGH GATEWAY VILLAGE headed towards the Presto Grill for lunch when she hears a familiar voice call her name. She turns in the direction of the voice and sees Marshall approaching.
"Marshall!" She calls out. "What brings you to my neck of the woods?"
"I had an appointment with a client."
"Oh yeah? You haven't talked about work in a long time."
"I haven't really taken on any in a while. After that freak shot me I just wasn't in the mood, I suppose," he laughs.
"You laugh at everything, don't you?"
"Not everything. But I have found that humor can often diffuse tense situations or lighten unpleasant memories."
"Yeah Marsh. But what happened to you was more than just an unpleasant situation."
"It's also been awhile. I'm comfortable making a little joke about it now and then."
"Fine by me. I'm certainly not trying to begrudge you a chuckle now and then. Just concerned."
"Noted. Noted and appreciated. But not necessary. I'm fine, really."
"Wanna join me for lunch? I was headed over to the Presto."
"Sounds good."
Clarice and Marshall head up Trade Street, passing the gravel parking lot that was once the site of the Traveler's Inn and also the home of the original Presto Grill.
"Did I ever tell you about the time Christina and I spent the night at the Traveler's Inn?" Marshall asks.
"You mean that old flophouse hotel that got torn down a few years back? Why were you there?"
"Christina was working on a story for Creative Loafing. It was the oldest operating hotel in the city at the time and many of the residents had lived there for years. It looked bad outside, but the inside was even worse. Once upon a time it was a beautiful old place with deco styling. A hundred years of disrepair took its toll. In the room where we stayed you could touch the wall and it would fall off. As I recall we had to get a little drunk to pull that night off."
"I bet. I never saw the story though. What happened?"
"It started off well. We made friends with this one guy on the same floor who had lived there for about 15 years. His name was James Watkins and he was full of so many stories. He even let Christina take his picture. But then some of the other people on the floor started dropping by because James was known to keep a sort of open bar policy. The later it got, the thirstier the residents got. In less than an hour, word got to the owner who we were and why we were there. He made us leave and snatched the film out of Christina's camera so fast we didn't know what hit us."
"Before the advent of digital, I'm assuming."
"No. Not really. It wasn't as popular yet, but Christina was a bit of a purist, you know."
"I didn't know her that well," Clarice replies, with an icy edge to her voice.
Marshall pauses for a moment, glancing at Clarice furtively. He'd forgotten about the tension that had existed between Christina and his friend.
"Anyway, without photos there wasn't much of a story, so it never got written. I think the children of the owner used the proceeds from the sale of the old hotel to open the new restaurant."
Marshall leans on the door of the restaurant, pushing it open and motioning for Clarice to enter.
"Thanks, Marsh. Nice to have a guy hold the door for me again."
A young man with Mediterranean features dressed in crisply pressed black pants and a white shirt meets them near the entrance.
"Good afternoon," he says. "Welcome to The Presto. Any seating preference?"
"What about over there, by the window?" says Clarice, pointing in the direction of the seat with a view that overlooks the street.
"Of course. Right this way."
The waiter seats the two, drops off a couple of menus and scurries away to get water glasses.
"I haven't been here since the day before we got kicked outta that hotel," says Marshall. "I hope Poppa Presto doesn't show up. Don't think he'd be too happy to see me."
"You think he'd still remember you after all that time?"
"Who knows? Probably not. He was pretty old then. He may not even be alive anymore."
Marshall thumbs through the menu, trying to decide. "So you come here a lot?"
"Saul and I did pretty often."
"You hear anything from him lately?"
"Not for the past 24 hours. Which doesn't seem like such a long time, except that he was calling me every hour or so. He came by the apartment and begged me to take him back, talking about all these things we were supposed to do together. I told him I didn't wanna do anything with him anymore."
"You know, Clarice ... I saw what happened. He had been drinking. I was really pissed off at first. But I think he really does love you."
Clarice stares at her fingernails intently, as if examining them for some flaw. Once convinced of their perfection, she looks up at Marshall. He recognizes the ploy as an attempt to buy time while searching for the right words and finds it difficult to stifle a laugh.
"What are you laughing at?" she asks.
"You and your fingernail game. I've seen it before. Now tell me what you were going to say about Saul?"
"You think you know me so well, don't you?"
"I do."
"You're right."
"So. Saul?"
"You're right. He does love me. And I think I love him. So I'm trying to get past this. I think the time away has actually done some good. The next time he calls I'm ready to be more receptive."
"Maybe you should call him. Before it's too late -- and you break his heart so much he changes his mind. What is life all about, anyway? If you think you've found the right one for you it's okay to make allowances for mistakes, right?"
"Maybe you're right," she says cautiously. "My cell phone's dead. Can I use yours?"
~David Moore
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