An Exit133 Holiday Special

This isn’t a noir-style detective story, but if it was, its first sentence would be this: “In my line of work, a man’s got to be sure he isn’t a sucker”. No, my friends, this is not a detective story. This is a Christmas story; and like any good Christmas story, it begins with someone walking alone in the snow, contemplating weighty personal matters while warm light glows in the nearby windows.

It was Christmas Eve night, 2035. Evan stood in the center of Tollefson Plaza, kicking instant mashed potato flakes off his boots. Only hours before, a major studio film crew had been assembled in the plaza, filming a gulag scene for a De Mille-esque picture about Stalin’s purges. The cold, weathered concrete and hard horizontal lines of the space made the perfect setting for a dreary Russian winter melodrama.

Really, a clean-up crew should have removed the fake snow from the site before sundown. But the City didn’t want to seem unfriendly to business, and refused to press the matter with the studio. All the better for a hunched-over homeless woman, who was quietly gathering the downy flakes into a paper grocery bag, dreaming of a Christmas mashed potato dinner. Evan was saddened by her plight, perhaps unnaturally so. He had knocked back a few pints at one of the waterfront dives before safely and enjoyably riding his bike up the hill to downtown. India Pale Ale made him emotional. He approached the old woman and offered to help her gather the flakes.

“Oh, you are too kind,” she said, “But I’m sure you’ve a family to return to on this blessed eve. No need to trouble yourself with little old me.”

Evan was a little put-off by her false reluctance, but nonetheless quietly set to assisting her.

The old woman studied his unremarkable face. “You’re a kind man. Where is your family on this sacred day?”

Evan was a little put-off by her artificially antiquated speech, but nonetheless quietly set to answering her question. “Well, I’m alone. And I’m alone because I lost everything. Twenty five years ago, I was a hot-shot writer for one of Tacoma’s top 50 blogs. I had a girl, a house and a lot of big dreams. Yeah… a lot of big dreams.”

“How fascinating,” the old woman lied, her hooded woolen shawl obscuring her face.

“For years, I was caught up in a world of big real estate deals, political intrigue, comment moderation – the works,” Evan continued ad nauseum. “I was there when the R.R. Anderson Institute of Invention was christened in the Old City Hall building. I had the honor of filling the gas tank for the lawnmower when Derek Young did the ceremonial first trimming of the grass in the greenspace just north of here on Pacific.”

“I know the grass you speak of. Deer and toddlers now frolic in it,” said the old woman.

“Yes. That very grass.”

They were silent for a moment. “But the success came with a cost, did it not?” the woman asked, knowingly.

“Yes. My girl left,” Evan said, sullen.

“My son, it seems she left because she could not abide the fast, glamorous blogging life.”

Evan had never considered this possibility. All his life, he had persevered with a single-minded drive for the cultural betterment of Tacoma. But now, he was a relic of Tacoma’s bygone era – an era of specialized bands, history worship, specialized beer, genteel urbanism and unobtrusive individualism. Tacoma’s youth now viewed most insistent idiosyncracies as cranky cynicism. They valued some new movement called “hypermodernism”, and compared the McMenamins Elks Building to Cracker Barrel. Their sense of nostalgia only emerged during special weekly showings of “High School Musical 2” at The Grand Cinema. Worst of all, they deemed beer uncool and gathered in sterile-looking “malt-liquor” bars, drinking wild variations on a Smirnoff Ice theme.

Evan let his bitterness consume him in his apartment atop the crowded Esplanade, remembering when the rehabilitation of the Murray Morgan Bridge brought new life to the eastern lowlands. He reminisced about the days before Tacoma’s millions of bike lanes and bike trails became pocked with pot holes. He wrote Bing Crosby fan-fiction.

The old woman understood all of this simply by observing his unexpressive face, as if staring into his soul.

Evan added one last handful of potato flakes to the now brimming grocery sack, and rose to his feet. “Old woman,” he said, “I believe I have some life alterations to consider. The mental journey I have taken with you from the past into the present, by way of a tale set in the future, has brought me to the cusp of epiphany. Now, I must go home to cook a lovely dinner for those whom I once derided. I must let our differences sharpen my own mind so that I may be of better service to my fellow citizens of Tacoma.”

With that, he mounted his bicycle and disappeared into the mist.

At that very moment, a long, low automobile turned the corner from 13th Street and roared up Pacific Avenue toward the Plaza. The old woman stood and approached the curb. As the car came to a stop, she removed her dark woolen shawl and left it by a streetlight with the sack of instant potato flakes. No longer hunched over, she was strangely tall and brawny. She entered the vehicle and said, “Thanks for coming to get me, Robin.” Her voice had deepened considerably.

“Oh, Batman, I’d never forget you!” the masked driver replied.

“Robin, I think we’re going to like Tacoma,” the Caped Crusader said with a wry smile.