The Pigeon Man's Dream

            The telephone rang in the middle of June. It was the week summer had arrived. I remember it well, because the days started to get hot around ten in the morning instead of noon, and if I recall, the last call I’d gotten was at the end of May, three weeks before.

            That was a call from Helga, my ex-girl friend, a vicious tirade that burned my ears so bad I ripped the phone’s plug from the wall. After that call I looked at that little plastic machine as some kind of instrument of torture to be used only to call your mother on Sunday, or to dial 911. Since nobody called me anyway it didn’t matter much whether the phone was working or not. Figuring it was time to rejoin the real world; however, that very morning I had turned the machine back on. A half hour after plugging it in I got a call.

            Summer’s arrival on that warm June morning, and the change of seasons that went with it really didn’t much matter to me. There could have been a Force Ten hurricane outside and it still wouldn’t have altered the state of mind I’d been in since the day Helga left. In the agricultural world they would call it vegetating, or going to seed. The medical term is probably; “Deep Compost, Depression Syndrome,” best cured by placing the barrel of a .44-magnum re-volver between your eyebrows and squeezing off a round. In the end it didn’t matter what it was called. I just knew that my mind had turned into an emo-tional septic tank, and I had wasted weeks lying on a leaky inner tube floating around in the middle of it.

            Helga packed her bags and left for the “Fatherland” the day before my 51st birthday. After she was gone, I realized she not only took all her things, but she also walked off with the wrapped presents that were hidden behind the dirty laundry on the closet floor.

            An apt definition of Helga’s mind would be the attitude, “Take no prisoners.” Walking off with the gifts was just an extension of her battlefield mentality. I can see this short, fat, Nazi colonel running around inside her head, arm held straight out, shouting, “Give no quarter; leave nothing behind the enemy can use!”

            She was about as close to mean as I’d ever seen. There was no waiting around for the sun to go down before she would draw blood. For all she cared, it could have been high noon on the hottest day in July because she knew there wasn’t a silver bullet or crucifix made that could keep her away from your emotional throat.

            A friend once said that she reminded him of Frankenstein’s bride in the midst of your worst PMS nightmare, wired on some bad “crank.”

            I would spend hours asking myself the unanswerable Zen question of how is it that there exists something that doesn’t hold six bullets, or isn’t shiny with a sharp point that could cause so much pain?

            I was slowly drowning in a deep pool of existential sewage, listening to the sound of my heart shrinking, when the phone’s ring bounced off the hardwood floor. It ricocheted over the carpet into the living room, landing on the couch next to me where I had been sitting since noon the day before.

            The ring had some importance to it, a seriousness hard to ignore. It wasn’t one where you pick up the receiver and some lady asks if you take the Sunday paper, and if not would you like a lifetime subscription at half off, or the guy who says we’re taking a poll and would like to know if you have a vacuum cleaner in the house.

            This ring was different. It had a Tibetan gong quality to it, maybe even a karmic clang. It was definitely doing something to me. I found myself springing off the couch, spilling my third beer of the morning. Anything that could do that had to have some magic in it.

            Fully expecting to have the Dalai Lama on the other end, I picked it up. With the deepest and most spiritual voice I could conjure, I said, “Hello?”

            At the other end of the line the soft voice of a young woman said, “Hi.”

            It sure as hell isn’t the “Enlightened One.” And I don’t know any young women, (not lately anyway), except for my daughter, and she never calls. And I know it isn’t the high school girl who called last month asking for donations to help send the cheerleading team to Wisconsin for the national finals; not after I philosophically, (and very drunkenly), told her it’s really not very cool to be a cheerleader anymore, that it’s about as close to being a campus whore as there is.

            The silence was becoming deadly. If I didn’t say something soon the person on the other end would t