I had just gotten back from an amazing trip. I'd driven to Castroville, flown to San Francisco, hiked up some amazing mountain there, spent a few days in Seattle, gone out to a nearby mountain and spent some time there, then flown back to Castroville. I had brand new hiking boots that had colored bands on them listing these destinations to commemorate my trip. The Castroville bands were a deep reddish brown, the bands for both mountains were a bright orangey red, and the middle band, for Seattle, was a rich Kelley green. I was finally home, in my own bed. This was in the bedroom of the house in the Hill Country, that I grew up in, but somehow, out the window, I could still see the mountain just outside of Seattle.
This mountain was a giant wedge of gray stone, shaped kind of like a piece from a round cake, laid over on it's side. It was volcanic, but covered with glaciers, and at the foot of the tall, almost sheer side was a wide lake with waters of an almost electric aquamarine. The foothills on either side and the gentle back slope, below the snow line, were swathed in deep evergreens. The volcanic activity at the moment was concentrated on the southern tip of the broad precipice, and was basically a slow seep of magma that, because of the glacial ice, caused enormous billows of steam to rise from the peak, but the magma was cooling in domes, so the southern side was getting taller and taller, but the peak was shaped like a pile of large bubbles.
I lay in bed staring at this, unable to sleep, but unable to get up. I kept trying to call into work to let them know I couldn't make it in, but I was unable to do that, either, and the hours passed, 9am, 10am, and I knew they'd have missed me by now, and would be wondering where I was. I was finally able to reach the phone and call my boss and leave a message that I'd be out that day. Around noon, my mother came in and said it was time to get up and help her move to her new house. Which was, of course, why I couldn't come into work. Naturally. I finally got out of bed, we packed all the boxes, movers came, and everything was carted off to her new house and unloaded.
The center of the house was a large, light and airy kitchen, almost square, with an island in the middle, and a bar of cabinets and counters and a sink looking over into the living room. The front door was reached by going into a building that looked like apartment complexes on the outside, but inside this conglomeration of buildings, the corridors looked like a mid-range hotel, like maybe a Best Western, with beige walls and taupe carpet, elevators and painted bronze, dome-topped trash cans by each door, with chips of pain pocked out here and there, and a bronze mail slot in each door.
When you went through the front door, you entered a corridor between a cavernous living room on the left and maybe a home office sort of room on the left. The corridor opened out into the kitchen, and these two other rooms, and the master bedroom suite, opened from the kitchen, too. Everything was cream and beige and taupe, with warm yellow lights in the ceilings. The kitchen had a back wall of floor to ceiling windows, looking into the branches of a row of small trees. There was a black iron spiral staircase going up to a bedroom/bathroom suite. If you went through the home office, there was a wood-railed back porch that had an identical spiral stair, leading up to an identical suite, which would be mine. Lorne, the empath demon from the television show Angel, was going to live in the other. Brooke's room was off the living room.
There were boxes piled everywhere. Both the breakfast table and the big dining room table were arranged in the living room, with the sofas up against a wall. Chairs and small tables were scattered around, and workmen were still coming in and out to inspect and test and make sure everything was set. We all took a break and went our separate ways to get an early dinner.
Just across a parking lot and a hedge, I found a bar that was showing a football game and serving deep dish pizzas about the size and shape of shoe boxes. I found a corner to sit in and ordered a pizza and watched the game. After a while, I got up and wandered around the bar, then back outside to see the rest of the building. The bar was tucked among a bunch of really ratty and run-down apartments that housed what was pretty much a clothing-optional hippie commune. People of all ages, who didn't bathe or shave, mostly, sat on stoops or called to each other out of open doorways. Some of them were cooking huge vats of soup for a communal dinner. Most were fully clothed, but some walked around partially or completely nude, but no one blinked an eye. Not even me.
One of the apartments was in ruins, and an outer wall had been broken in. Through the boards I could see a litter of kittens, and I went to make their acquaintance. They were all about twelve weeks old and had long, silky fur. Three were a rich blue-gray with golden eyes, and two looked like silver-point Himalayans, with wide blue eyes. One of the resident hippie dudes (scruffy and scraggly, but clothed) came over to talk with me about them. He hotly denied that they had fleas, but I pointed to the flea specks all lodged in their coats. Finally I shrugged and turned to go back home.
When I got there, two workmen had just finished testing the hot water in the two upstairs bathrooms. The test involved turning on the hot water taps in the large, sunken tubs, and timing how long it took for the water coming from the faucet to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit. As they were packing up to leave, a frightened old Chinese woman rushed up the kitchen stair and into Lorne's bedroom. Her feet were bare and caked with mud. She understood no English, but was crying and wailing and we were all at a loss, until her daughter and son-in-law knocked on the door below and asked after her.
It turns out, the old woman had lived in this house, but had gotten too forgetful and senile to be on her own. She had moved in with her daughter, but had wandered out of their home and gotten lost. In a panic, she found her way to us, thinking this was where she lived, and it took a lot of explaining before she recognized what had happened. A winter storm was coming, so the workmen hurried away, but we couldn't let the old woman go out with her feet muddy and bloody, so Mom invited the family to stay as long as they needed. I went downstairs to make sure enough bedding was unpacked, and we'd have places to put everyone overnight, and found a Rubbermaid tub to take upstairs so we could wash the old woman's feet, since apparently the sunken tubs were new, and she didn't trust them at all. I took the tub upstairs and filled it with warm, soapy water, and then I woke up.
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