Vestavia Hills. Christian Perego

the last of his dreams, the metal sky above him. He was so small compared to so much immensity: how could he think he was worth something, that he was part of a larger design, the gear that made the mechanism work at its best, a mechanism so complex that escaped even his highest understanding?

      Robert reread the last words he had written down the previous evening, before going to bed. They did not satisfy him: they had a severity that did not suit the drier style he had used pages before.

      He had to fix it.

      The syntax ...

      Or maybe it was the choice of words that could be improved?

      Maybe it was more appropriate to rewrite everything.

      He reread again

      so complex that escaped even his highest understanding?

      The words sounded strange to him.

      The rhythm of the phrase, which Robert spelled several times, moved him inside.

      And what he felt was very similar to the feeling he had in literary coffee.

      Now he could have called it by the name all too abused of déja-vu: he did not like to follow the words of everyone, but he could not find any other name for it than that.

      He reread those words yet another time and, they changed in front of him: they twisted, pulsed, detached themselves from the page as if wanting to jump on him, and then they fell again. The syllables and letters spanned again, swirling like a spiral. Robert, initially confused by that hallucination, tried to rub his eyes; then, he kept them closed for a few moments. When he opened them again, the words seemed more stable, but now they were cloudy, fuzzy, they got bigger and bigger, looking scary as if they were black bubbles about to explode.

      Then it all ended, and the letters went back to being impalpable and monotonous signs on the computer screen.

      THERE AND BACK FOR JOHNATHAN ABBLEPOT

      2.

      Vestavia Hills, 1858

      Mrs. Evelyn Archer had just opened the door of her antique shop. She never arrived early in the morning: the hustle and bustle of people in Vestavia Hills only started around 9.30.

      An elegant maple door carved no less than by her Bob, the husband who had left her a few years earlier, had been double locked. Ms. Archer put the key in and played with the lock a bit, as she only knew how to do it. The humidity probably swelled the wood so much that the lock no longer slid as easy as it did before.

      And then she is in.

      Just under the entrance porch, she put Rose on the ground, the cat that had kept her company for several years. Rose patiently waited for her owner to tinker with the door and then preceded her inside. It only meowed a little bit, but once inside the shop, it always made a noise, as if greeting the various knick-knacks present, its companions in the endless sleepy afternoons shut in there.

      The interior of that shop seemed to be made especially for cats, and Rose might have thought: countless corners to explore, many shelves or objects to sleep on, such a mass of stuff that you could lose yourself in it without the fear of being disturbed.

      Evelyn Archer had accumulated all those things in almost forty years of activity. In the beginning, it was Bob who had traveled to nearby or larger towns in Alabama to retrieve old or recent items, to be repaired or still working, which they then resold in their shop.

      After some time, she, too, had acquired the skill that was needed to find what was possible to sell by separating it from what no one would ever buy.

      Over the years, as the objects in the shop had grown, so had and the arguments between them.

      Sometimes Evelyn just couldn't stand Bob, and she was happy when some errands kept him away for a while. She couldn't stand the person Bob had become over the years. And that's certainly a big deal in a wedding. Then one day, just like that, he was dead.

      A heart attack had taken him away.

      As for Evelyn, she cried, of course. But her newfound freedom didn't take long to calm her sadness.

      "Mrs. Archer! Good morning!"

      An older man just entered the shop. He stood in the doorway for a moment, as if waiting for the owner's greeting as permission to enter.

      Evelyn Archer had already figured out who he was and thought, "Stingy Bastard! Yet again today, you will come in and buy nothing. You have been walking by here for months without spending a penny. You could just stay outside then!"

      Then, with a smile that seemed sincere, he said, "Mr. Gardner. Cheerful as always! "

      The man replied: "Eh, at our age, it is better to be happy, right? You never know when the time to cry will come!" To end his sentence, Mr. Gardner let out a laugh that turned into in a phlegmy cough fit. "Yeah, you are right," Evelyn said, expecting to see the man do what he always did.

      As she predicted, Mr. Gardner looked around, as if he did not know, after all his weekly visits, where all the objects in the shop were.

      Lifted the first vase he found next to him and contemplated it as if he was interested; then, he put it down, did a small turn on himself, a few random steps and, then turned to Evelyn for the farewell.

      Everything as expected.

      Instead, this time Mr. Gardner added: "How is your nephew?" with a very innocent look: "I have seen him lately. near Church Yard, I believe."

      Mrs. Archer senses some malice, which probably wasn't there, in the old man's statement, and immediately changed her facial expression. However, in order not to show it too much, she pretended to have something to do on the counter and turned sideways: "I haven't seen him for a while; I mean that he is usually in a rush when he comes in the shop and has no time to chat. You know, sometimes young people spend a lot more time with strangers than with relatives. "

      "He is a dear boy, so nice," added the man, "always greets everyone in town."

      But Evelyn wanted to cut the conversation short: "He's a hard worker," she said. Then she began to overly organize the excessive mess of the shop as if to make the customer understand that she had a lot to do.

      "Yeah, and it's a very much appreciated quality."

      "You must excuse me, Mr. Gardner, but as you can see, I have not been tidying up for a long time, and now I am swamped with chaos!"

      The man said kindly: "Of course, of course. I apologize. I don't want to waste your time. Have a nice day. Goodbye, Mrs. Archer. Maybe I'll drop by here next week, huh? "

      "You are always welcome."

      The man greeted politely and slowly closed the door. Evelyn let go of the stuff she had in her hands and stared at the entrance as if she could send through it some of her anger to that nuisance, who was also nosy.

      What did he want to know about his nephew? People should mind their own business more often.

      Shortly after the old Mr. Gardner was gone, the door of the shop creaked again. This time Evelyn didn't even need to look towards the door to figure out who had entered. The way the door opened was enough for her to figure it out.

      He was his nephew. As always in a hurry.

      The old woman began: "You know that Mr. Gardner came in a little while ago and said he saw you ..."

      But she could not complete the sentence, because the young man interrupted her: "We need to talk. I just had a thought. And she agrees too. I thought of Dothan, and then from there, we could go to Georgia ... "

      "Dothan?" this time, it was Ms. Archer's turn to butt in "you don't think it's possible just to pick up and move there! Without starting any rumors, without people starting to search! We have already talked about it."

      "I have contacts, and maybe you have some too. When the uncle was still alive, he used to go there. "

      The young