THE BOLAN CHRONICLES: Reading #15

15. Approximate Minutes Reading (AMR): 14

Introduction to Characters:

THE BOLAN CHRONICLES

Chapter 3

A House

**Basement Secrets**

Inside of a week, the house was beginning to take on the look and feel of a home. Donna focused on stocking the kitchen, carefully choosing what foods to buy, cutting coupons from the newspapers and magazines that she'd found while doing her laundry twice a week. And Jake was pleased with her for this. She’d sit at the kitchen counter, scissors in hand, and Jake would rub her shoulders, and she would smile.

But Donna was not a natural cook. The most she could produce was simple meals like fried eggs, bacon, canned soup, and rice. One of her favorites, fried bologna sandwiches, was a new one for Jake, but he learned to love it, and she found it amusing when he would step through the door, and having smelled the meat, call out, "Ain't nothin' like my wide-eyed beauty with a fried bologna sandwich!"

But there were days when things didn't go so well, usually brought on by Jake’s impatience. 

One Saturday morning, when Donna was attempting to drive a small nail into the wall to hang a picture, Jake heard her repeatedly dropping the nail.  Each time, before she would lean over to pick it up, she would say, "Oh, my."  

She did this repeatedly until Jake finally walked over and took the hammer from her, taking care of the job in one attempt, then he handed the hammer back and said sarcastically, "There, that takes care of the ‘oh my’s."

And one weekday, after Jake had had a rather difficult day at work, he'd walked through the door and into the bedroom. Donna had been sitting on the toilet, wiping herself, but she hadn’t shut the door behind her. She looked up at Jake and smiled. He grabbed the door handle, and just before closing it, he said, "Didn't you hear me come in the front door? Jesus Christ! That’s not exactly my version of ‘welcome home, Honey.’"

At first, Donna didn't understand what he meant or why he was so upset. But after some time, she figured it out and made it a point to always close the bathroom door when she was using the toilet, whether or not he was home.

On the other hand, Donna was bothered by almost nothing of Jake's habits or ways. She was easily pleased and happy to be making a new life for herself, her husband, and the coming baby. She greeted Jake when he arrived home from work each night, even if she was asleep on the couch. She would awaken when the car rolled up the gravel driveway, and she'd rub her eyes and grab the water that she'd prepared for him, and he would open the door and she would kiss him and hand him the glass, and the two would sit down for a few minutes and discuss the day. 

Jake spent lots of time in the basement, at first simply walking about, looking at the walls and imagining what he could do with the big room when the money came rolling in. He came up with one idea after another, but his primary goal was to create a space for privacy—a place to unwind. So he purchased a small desk at a used furniture store called "Worn Woods" in Stratford. He also found a small television set at a yard sale a few blocks away for which he paid $25.  

Jake had also made a couple of trips to his parents' place to pick up his belongings. His mother had boxed-up anything that she knew he would want to take. On the first trip, when he walked into the house, she greeted him with a big hug. Jake gave her a quick squeeze and hurried to his room. She wanted to talk, and curious about how things were going, she asked about their new place and how far away it was and told Jake that they would love to visit soon. Jake brushed her questions off with quick, half-answers--things are fine, the new place is just great, it's not too far away. And he wanted nothing to do with planning for visitors, particularly not his parents, so he avoided her wishes altogether. 

She turned to leave the room when Jake asked, “What the hell is this?”

“Oh! I forgot to tell you. Your father has had that box sitting in the closet for years, and he thought you might want those.”

The box was filled with record albums, all comedian performances by the likes of Andy Kaufman, Richard Prior, Carl Reiner, and more. Jake pulled one of the albums out and began to read aloud from the cover. “The button down mind of Bob Newhart.” He looked at his mother and said, “This doesn’t sound like something that Dad would spend even two minutes listening to.”

“Oh, no, Jake,” She replied, “Your father got that from his brother, your Uncle Robert.”

Jake read from the label. “Let’s see here, ‘Abe Lincoln Vs. Madison Avenue. The Cruise of the USS Codfish. Merchandising the Wright Brothers.’ This stuff actually sounds like it might be good. I’ll have to see if I can find me a stereo somewhere one of these days.”

His mom began to tell him about where they had purchased their stereo, but Jake quickly interrupted, “Yeah, I appreciate that, Mom, but a stereo isn’t high on my list of purchase priorities.” And he’d hoped that the cold reply might have scared her off, so when it was clear that she wasn’t leaving, he looked up at her and said, “Mom, can I get some alone-time here. I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible; things to do, you understand.”

His mother walked out of the room without another word. 

The second trip to his parents’ house went much quicker than the first, and when Jake pulled out of the driveway, he held his middle finger up to the rear view mirror and mumbled, “Good riddance, worthless shit-hole.” 

He distributed the various things from their boxes to the appropriate rooms in their new place. Most of them ended up in the master bedroom. He lugged the two boxes of books down to the basement and began rummaging through them. He placed them on the shelves alphabetically by author, fiction on one side of the shelf, non-fiction on the other. When he came to the box of True Detective magazines, he pulled one from the top of the stack and flipped through it. Memories of late nights alone in his room and fantasies of law enforcement ambitions and loose, braless girls with short skirts and high heels. He closed the magazine, and under his breath he mumbled, “Yeah, definitely gotta keep these.” And he organized the magazines by date and placed them between the fiction and non-fiction books.

When he got to the bottom of the next box and saw a Mathematics textbook from his sophomore year, he blurted, "What the fuck!" He pulled it out. On the inside cover was his name. "Holy shit!" And he closed the book and hurled it at the wall. Then, under his breath he said, "Bitch probably knew where it was all along." Jake had lost the book mid-year, and he knew that his father would have made him pay for the new one himself, so he had gone as long as he could, borrowing his friends' books until it became a nuisance, so he had been forced to make the purchase. The school had charged him $10 for another book, a soiled elderly version.

Donna had wanted to ask Jake a question about the placement of a picture in the hallway, and she was standing at the top of the stairwell when she saw the book go flying across the room. With his back to her, he was unaware of her presence. She had heard him cussing the book and had watched him toss it, and she had heard him mumbling something under his breath. She quietly turned and walked out, carefully closing the door behind her.

Books were never Jake’s priority, but he had saved all of his True Crime magazines, and he had placed them in the center of the bookshelves located just above his desk so that they were easily accessible. He sat down and bellied up to his desk then reached out and grabbed one of them. The reach was a bit of a stretch, so he pushed the desk closer to the wall until he'd found the perfect distance. Then he opened up the magazine and flipped through it. He stopped at an article that he had remembered well. It was titled, "Passion-Slaying of the Barfly Brunette."  

It told of a twenty-something girl in Boston who spent most of her every evening in a pub named 'Bunker's.'  She and the young bar tender by night had become friends. And that, of course, had led to more.  He was young and good-looking, had a promising future as an attorney, and was unattached. She was beautiful, single, and had no direction or self-worth. The article detailed the kinds of sexual escapades that the young couple engaged in, including the eventual inclusion of other participants. Jealousy led to murder, and the investigation was wrapped up within a matter of months.

Reading the article had sexually aroused Jake. He closed the magazine and walked up the stairs to the house. Donna was in the kitchen, placing a box of cereal in the cupboard above the kitchen counter. She had on a yellow sundress that her mother had given her after she had told her about the pregnancy. Jake watched her closely as she reached up to put the box away. Her growing stomach made it difficult to reach, and it had cinched up so that her butt was nearly fully exposed. Jake stared and wanted her badly.  

"I've got an idea." Jake said.

Startled, she turned quickly. She pulled the dress down then sighed, "Oh, you scared me. Didn't see you there."

"Sorry 'bout that, sexy lady."

"Oh! I haven't heard that one before."

Jake reached out and slid his hand up her dress.  She grabbed it and pulled it back. "Oh, Jake, what's your idea?"

He tried to put his hand back, but she gently pushed it away.

The rejection enraged him, but he tried his best not to show it.

"What is it?" She repeated.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

"No, Jake. You can tell me."

Jake turned and walked toward the basement door. Before he opened it, he turned back and asked, "Hey, I'm going to the store for a box of nails. I've got an idea for my desk that I'll show you later. Do you need anything while I'm there?"

Confused, Donna replied, "No, I don't think so." Then she added, "We have some nails in this drawer, if you want to use them."

Fuming, somehow Jake managed to mask his extreme annoyance. "I know that we have nails.” Then he stared at her for a moment and added, “They aren't the size that I need."

By the time Jake had come back up the steps from the basement and was on his way out the door, Donna had decided that an attempt to redeem herself would be wise, so she called out to him, "Jake, I think I might know what your idea was earlier, and I'd really like to take you up on it." She had removed her bra and had deliberately fully revealed one of her breasts.

Jake stood at the open front door. He smiled at her and replied; "Don't bother yourself with it, Donna. Your cold shower done me in, and my interests have been redirected." And he walked out leaving her confused.

When he entered the Trumbull Hardware Store, a young male employee greeted him. "Welcome to Trumbull Hardware! What can I do for you?"

Jake replied, "Yeah, you can tell me what creative Shakespeare came up with such a unique name for a hardware store."

The employee smiled. 

Jake laughed then added, "Hey, I'm just kiddin' ya. But I would like to talk with the manager, if you don't mind."

"Oh, he's not here right now, but the owner of the store is in the office. I could get him."

Jake said, "Oh, perfect. Would you mind?"

"Not at all. Give me a minute."  

As soon as the employee turned toward the back of the store, Jake sauntered over to the nails section. He grabbed the first small box he saw and slid it into his coat pocket. Then he walked out the door. As he backed out of the parking lot, the employee walked out the front door and called, "Hey! He's in here, if you still..." Jake waved as he drove off.

He stopped at the small bookstore that Donna had seen a week prior. The tall, lanky girl at the counter greeted him with a smile and a ‘Hi, there.’

"I assume that you carry diaries here." Jake said.

"Yes, we do." And she came out from behind the counter and led him to the far end of the store where there were a few designs to choose from. After selecting the plain white cover, he walked back and dropped it on the counter.

"Will that be all?" She asked.

“Uh…” Jake was trying to think of a good one. He smiled and asked, “Haven’t you any copies of Mein Kampf?”

She raised her brows. “Copies of what?”

Jake snickered then said, “Yeah, that's it."

Following the transaction, she smiled at him and said, "Thanks for shopping at World of Words."

Jake looked up and said, "Geez. 'World of Words.'  Try saying three times fast, huh!"

She laughed, "Yeah, it's a tongue-twister."

Jake thanked her and walked out.

When he got home, Donna asked how it went. Jake tossed the box of nails onto the counter and said, "It went just great. Nice little town out there. Nice people."

He closed the basement door behind him and descended the stairs, pulling the journal out from the back of his pants on his way. When he reached his desk, he opened the small top drawer and pulled out a black ink pen. Then he paused for a moment. He titled the front of the journal then opened it to the first page. After the date, he wrote, 'They're all fucking alike, every last one of them.' He wrote about Donna's rejection of him in the kitchen and how that enraged him and about what he wanted but didn't do to her. And the more he wrote, the more enraged he became.

He finished writing, took a deep breath, and smiled. He looked around for a safe place to put the journal. A narrow space between a set of two-by-fours caught his eye. He followed it down behind his desk and slid the journal between them. It was nearly perfect, but he would have to pull his desk away from the wall every time he wanted to write. He ran back up the steps and into the kitchen. Donna was in the bathroom…with the door closed. He found the small ball of string that she had put in a drawer under the silverware, unwound several feet of it, and broke it off. Then he pulled open the silverware drawer and took out the old ice pick that his mother had included in one of the boxes that she'd packed for him. Back in the basement, he pulled the desk away from the wall and slid the journal out from between the boards. Using the ice pick, he gouged a hole in the cover of the journal, placed the string through it and tied it off several times. He pushed the desk back then slid the journal back down and between the boards, this time holding the string with the other hand. Then he sandwiched the end of the string between two pieces of particleboard that made up the top of the desk.  

Jake tried it several times, and it worked perfectly with each try. He sat back and admired his design. And he decided that while he was in the creative mood, he’d design a secret compartment somewhere in the basement. He studied every corner, and though he had many ideas, he didn’t have the tools nor the money for the materials each would require. He sat down and looked at the stack of books that sat on the floor next to the wall and his desk. Then he smiled. He looked through the hardcovers that had come from his old room. Most were unread, and he had no plans to read any of them in the future, so he grabbed the thickest one he could find—Ulysses by James Joyce. He used a paperclip to bind the first and last few pages of the book then he used his finger to rub Elmer’s glue around the outside edges of the remaining pages that made up the bulk of the book. He closed it up, placed two other books for weights on top of it, and waited for thirty minutes. Then he took a box cutter and hollowed out a space from the pages. When he heard Donna open the door, he slammed the cover closed and set it aside. 

She asked if he was going to be back up soon. Jake mumbled something to himself then said, “I’m just tryin’ to get through this stack of books. I’ll be a few minutes.”

As soon as she shut the door, he rubbed the glue along the inside of the compartment and placed it under the desk to dry. He sat back after he’d completed his project and he sighed. He was satisfied with his work. And now I suppose I should pacify the wife, he thought. And he made his way back up the steps and to the kitchen.