Excerpt: Takin' It Sneezy

It was the golden age of newspapers, by which I mean, the setting sun cast a golden-reddish hue across the newspaper business land. Edgar saw the newspaper less as a dinosaur and more as a crocodile – he imagined it still in existence for a long time into the future. But he also wasn’t interested in writing. He would often say, “I avoid writing, and clichés, like the plague.”

Despite his best efforts, he continued to receive offers of work, usually attached to some sort of writing. Finally, he realized that he was falling into too easy of a rhythm; he hadn’t taken an interesting photo in over six months; he didn’t feel like he could find an underbelly, or overbelly, or even just a belly, of his current home town; and he knew what he needed to do. He needed to move. Somewhere different. Coastal. Or mountainous. Somewhere where he could be pictorially inspired, at least for a year or two.

He had a college friend who had moved to Portland, Oregon, and his friend said that he was welcome to crash at his place until he found his own. He gave notice to his landlord, started ridding himself of the things he didn’t need (which, he realized, was most of his stuff, i.e., necessities (for Edgar): camera, a few shirts and pants, a few good books, a few good CDs, and some snacks. That was it. By the time he had finished packing his car, he found, to his surprise, that he actually still had plenty of room in it. He could probably still fit a passenger in there, possibly two if the person in the back didn’t mind being squished between Dostoyesvski, Dylan, and Doritos.

Before he Kerouac-ed off into the great unknown, he needed to stop one place and say his goodbyes. No, not his parents, they had since moved away from his home town years ago, settling down in Las Vegas, and they were thrilled that Edgar would now be living on the same coast as them. No, it was Pepper. He needed to see her one last time before he left, and he needed to tell her what he thought about her. Now or never or sometime in between, but preferably now.

Since they only saw each other infrequently, and it always seemed rushed when they did, and just a tad awkward, Edgar figured the best thing to do would be to not let her know he was leaving until, well, he was actually leaving. He hadn’t finished packing his car until around 4 p.m. He did a final walk-through of the apartment with his landlords, who commended him on his cleanliness (he lived in a collegey part of town, so it wasn’t hard to earn a commendation), and then started the drive over to Pepper’s apartment.

When he got to Pepper’s apartment, it was nearing 6 p.m., and, as luck wouldn’t have it, she wasn’t home. He decided then, on a whim, to drive to the liquor store nearby and buy a nice bottle of green bottle of Tangueray gin, a few small bottles of tonic, and a couple of limes. It could be a parting gift for Pepper, he figured, since he’d probably be on the road in a soon, anyway. (He was wrong about that.)