Excerpt From My Short Story

From: "Message From Beyond Death Involving Las Vegas and the Afterlife" published on Zoetrope Virtual Studio.

"I discovered in 11th grade that I liked routine and new things in tandem. Many people are like this. It is a wondrous thing. I awakened early, went out on a cold winter’s morning in my Troy Colts sweatpants and t-shirt to the yellow “Free Press” box bolted to the mailbox post and got the morning paper. The air was frigid and you could feel it in your lungs. The winter birds were ranked on the power lines. A clump of bare birch trees with trunks white as a wedding dress stood against the tweed woods where the frozen swamp was. Sometimes I skated to the bus stop through the frozen woods. One night I skated through the trees on clean ice with a full moon over head, my dog Mac on my right, running along, barking. Walking back with the frosty rolled up paper I could smell the diesel exhaust from the big trucks on the other side of the narrow, frozen river. It smelled good, almost like pretzels baking. They growled and prowled like big cats in the DPW yard. In those days, I read the Detroit Free Press every morning. For breakfast I had dark toast and a cup of instant coffee and read the paper. Headlines. Back page of pictures and Bob Talbert‘s column. Entertainment. Sports. This morning, I flipped to the back page and what I saw froze me. The Beatles playing on a London rooftop. I loved the Beatles. They could not play live anywhere else except the roof of an office building. It was a sublime solution to a host of problems. Paul had a heavy black beard and a black suit, playing that violin shaped bass as familiar as my mother’s face. Ringo wore a wet-look coat of a type that was then fashionable. John, like a carving on a bowsprit, long hair blown back by the wind as he sang into the mike, playing that white Chuck Berry-style guitar. George, dark and long mustachioed like a tartar. Brooding watchfully with his dark guitar. I felt as light and high as a cloud. Why? It was rare, surprising news and a picture of people I loved. 40 years later, I discovered that Ringo’s striking wet -look Carnaby coat belonged to Maureen, his wife. Ringo came to the rooftop and found he was cold. Maureen put her raincoat on him. It fit. Also, at the end of one song, Paul says “Thanks, Mo.” That was Maureen. She was clapping, going “yea!” I wrote this into a character in a screenplay about winter street racing to show a character snapping out of his winter depression. The movie person didn’t get it. 'It’s not visual.'"

Beatles rooftop clips on the video bar below.