"Looks like we're talking a half-hour wait."

Which means, of course, an hour. An hour of waiting in the over-packed, over-amped bar, nursing a Campari, hoping that Sarah will actually show, knowing she most likely won't.

"Unless you're OK with family style.  I've still got a seat open in the main room."

What the hey.  I'm here.  I'm hungry.  And stuffing my face with a comped meal sounds better than a bowl of ramen back home.

I nod.  She grabs a menu.  Then it's follow the leader, swerving to avoid the bar-droid with the tray of tall green iced whatevers, the bus boy who trolls in her wake, stacking empties, wiping tops, the waitress who is pulling doubles to pay off a DUI her boyfriend still doesn't know about, and a clot of incredibly thin, incredibly blonde women who are managing to stand dead center in everyone's way, either laughing hysterically or sobbing uncontrollably, take your pick.  Still, no one seems to care or notice, because the salsa is blasting in here as well, and the sound of fork finding plate, plate meeting table is matched only by the roar of each and every diner talking a little bit louder, no, not talking, shouting, screaming to be heard, to the person at their table, to the person on their cell, to the person hovering just two feet away, asking if they'd like to take the rest of that on home.

Just north of the blondes are two large tables, each a full twelve-top, both of them packed, except for a single open spot at the very head of the nearest one.  The server stops.  Nods towards the open chair.  I can feel a half-dozen conversations suddenly cease, then watch as heads pivot, eyes narrow.  No one really wants to look, but they have to.  Because each of them is terrified by what they see, knowing that perhaps one day it could be them, not me.  The Thing That Eats Alone.

I keep my own eyes locked on the server.  Find my chair by braile alone.  Then, once seated, I pretend to study the menu, which is one of those obscene, oversized tomes big enough for a duck blind.  After a few seconds the chatter level starts to creep back up.  The Thing risks a quick reconnoiter.

To my left sits a woman.  One look at her face, her smile, and I know I would give anything to have her looking, smiling, back at me.  Her attentions, however, are meant for someone else, a someone who sits across from her, next to me.  I turn my gaze, already hating whoever that person might be.

Even if it is Simon.

Or more like a version of Simon.  The man sitting there is younger than the one I know, his hair longer, his chin sporting one of those hip little soul patches everyone was affecting a while back.  But it's not the flourishes, the details, that really stand out.  It's the essence.  Whenever he'd visit, Simon always had this tentative quality about him.  Like snowfall caught on a slender branch, or a dandelion riding the breeze.  He was ephemeral, fleeting, an accident waiting to happen, or un-happen.  But whoever, whatever this person is, he feels solid, substantial, real.

"Don't bother.  It's just a waste of time."

It's the woman talking.  I move my eyes from Simon, turn instead towards her.

"The menu,"  she explains, nodding at mine.  "We're riding steerage.  They bring us whatever they want to bring us, and we'd damn well better like it."

Her accent is faint but unmistakable.  Yorkshire hills.  A spoonful of sugar.  If I was in love before, I am now officially besotted.

"It's their way of punishing us," Simon adds.  "For showing up without reservations."  His voice is deeper, more forceful than the one I've grown used to.  Then again, he is shouting over all that din.

As I watch, he extends his hand.  "I'm Chuck."

Chuck?

The woman smiles.  "Claire."

Claire?

Now they're both staring at me.  Without even thinking, I open my mouth.  "Simon."

"Simon.  What a lovely name."  She reaches out and pats my hand.  "I had a puppy once called Simon.  A terrier.  Fiercest thing in the world when it came to a pair of socks."

I want to be that pair of socks.  I want her to be Simon.  I can almost feel those tiny teeth, nuzzling, gnawing, ripping away at me, when the real Simon, or Chuck, or whoever he is pipes up again.

"So how'd you hear about this place?"

It takes me a second to clear my head.  "I've been selling them produce ever since they opened.  June, July?  Matt, their chef, kept saying I had to drop in.  Taste their vision, or view their taste, or something."

"You sell produce?'' She makes the 'prod' rhyme with God.  "What, you mean you're a farmer?"

I nod once, knowing what's coming.

"Oh my gosh.  That's wonderful."

At which point I would normally launch into my woe-is-me, anything-but-wonderful, plight-of-the-farmer tirade.  This will include a brief summation of agricultural developments in twentieth-century America, a cogent analysis of current market trends, a point-by-point comparison of Big Ag, Industrial Organic and truly sustainable, small-scale farming, and a few good digs for the greedy, self-serving hypocrites who grow pot, sorry, "herbal medicine".  

Only I can't.  Seeing her face, her enthusiasm, I want her to believe that what I do is wonderful.  That I myself am wonderful.

"Well, yeah," I admit, "it does have it's advantages.  Like getting a free meal from time to time."

I risk a quick peek at Simon.  Or is it Chuck?  Either way, I detect a change in his face, a glimmer of discontent.  They were having what looked like a nice one-on-one.  And now it's been crashed, hijacked.  By me.

I offer him a conciliatory smile.  "And what about you?" I ask.  "What puts bread on your table?"

"I play games."

There's something there, almost an arrogance, that surprises me.  No, not my Simon.  Not by a long shot.

For her part, Claire doesn't even seem to notice.  "You've heard of DoQuest?  Chuck's one of their brains.  He's designed all sorts of virtual worlds for their online gaming.  You know.  Imaginary creatures, imaginary worlds."

"Imaginary people too?"

"Haven't you noticed?  All people are imaginary."

I wait for him to continue.

"Alright, so say our bodies are real.  And maybe you could argue the things they feel are real, too - hunger, anger, lust.  But everything else is a construct.  Our personalities, our memories, they're acts of the imagination, our own mainly, but we're also constantly being imagined by other people.  The people we know."  He glances across the table.  "The people we love."

The comment, the moment, are theirs, not mine, and I immediately look away, wishing I were invisible, intangible.  Imaginary.  And then, almost against my will, I can feel my eyes lowering, turning, following his, to the woman whom he clearly loves, and whom, if he's lucky, loves him, imagines him, in return.

Only it's not her.  Not the one with the auburn hair, and the grey-green eyes, and amethyst earrings.  Not the one who was sitting there.  No, this woman is older, taller, with blondish hair, and darker eyes, and I know I've seen her somewhere before, somewhere long ago, and the salsa music seems to fade, and I'm hearing another song, still lots of splashy brass, but there's a woman singing, and a chorus behind her, and a refrain going over and over.  Downtown.  Downtown.

And then the song stops.  The salsa returns.  I realize there is yet another woman standing there, midway between Simon and me.  Our waitress.

She smiles.  It is the smile of an infinite, unknowable, and not entirely benign universe, enjoying a joke.  A joke that seems to be on me.

"So can I get you guys anything to drink?"      

It's a clear, bright SoCal day, sometime in July.  School is out for the summer.  The three of us - my mom, my dad and me - are all piled in the Chevy, on our way north to visit Aunt Claire.

For the longest time, I thought it was just one word.  Antclear.  I never asked what that word meant, or how it had become our own secret code for the tall woman with the long braids who seemed to live in a different house every time we saw her.  And then someone, probably a kid at school, sat me down and explained the whole thing about aunts and uncles, and how your parents got to have brothers and sisters too, which didn't really mean much to me at the time, since I didn't have either one.  Only later, the more I thought about,  the more it did start to mean something, and I knew I felt a little bit jealous, maybe even angry, that my Mom and Dad got to have a sister even though I never did.

I guess I must have talked to my Mom about it, because sometimes she'd bring up the story about how she had to explain to me how Claire wasn't both their sisters, only hers, which then left me feeling sorry for two people, my Dad and me, instead of just one.  Not that Aunt Claire was some magic prize.  Whenever we went to see her, Dad seemed mostly bored.  And my Mom got different somehow.  Looking back, I know now she was anxious, but that wasn't a word I would've known, or used, back then.  Still I could tell something was up, the way her voice got sharper, and how her cigarettes didn't last nearly as long, and the way she'd keep fussing over me, straightening my hair, or picking the lint off my shirt.  With all that, who needs to know the word?

So we're all in the car, the big black Chevy, which means I must be at least eight, because that's how old I was when my Dad bought it, and not quite eleven, because that's when my Mom quit smoking, and I can see her now, up front in the passenger seat, puffing away on a Kent.  Scenery flashes by - the flat, green fields lined with crops, eventually giving way to hills, trees, a sparkle of water out near the horizon.  Every few minutes I'll steal a glimpse, then it's back to the stack of comics I've brought along.  On the other side of the big bench seat it's mostly silence, my Dad clutching the wheel, my Mom staring through the glass, and it's just like with the Justice League, one half stuck on Earth One, the other half on Earth Two, and the only thing that will eventually bring them together is a battle with Kanjar Ro. 

Or, more likely, each other.

And then it must be a day or two later, and we've finally stopped driving, we're parked instead, and we're climbing out of the Chevy, my legs all stiff and my Mom's hair kind of flattened from where she was resting it against the window.  It's almost dark, and the air is cool, and it smells different somehow, different from home, and the streets are narrow, and the sidewalk all buckled, and there are trees everywhere, on the streets, in the yards, like a picture in a jigsaw puzzle.  We have to go through a narrow gate, my Dad has trouble with the latch, and then we're in the front yard and the tall woman with the braids is coming down the steps, only the braids are gone, she's got shorter hair, and I'm thinking of a picture I saw of Petula Clarke, who I like almost as much as the Beatles.

The house is tiny, from the outside at least, but as soon as we're inside it seems to explode, or expand, and there's stuff everywhere, scarves dangling from a rack on the door, and real paintings on every wall, and a big old couch with a really fat cat sleeping in one corner, and a fake elephant with wings hanging from the ceiling, and a fish tank with no fish in it, but a hand instead, like from a mannequin in a store window.  There's a funny smell in the air, which my Mom later explains is called incense, and some kind of music coming from somewhere, not the kind I like with singing, but the kind where the instruments sound all upset and crazy, and then a dog starts barking, and the cat wakes up, and my Dad is trying to find a place to set down our luggage, and my Mom is hugging the woman, and I'm starting to think that it's not just Earth One and Earth Two anymore, but a whole new place, Earth Three.

And yes, that's it, that's it exactly.  Earth Three.  And now instead of a memory of one time, one visit, it's like I'm watching a movie go by real fast, or looking at one of those flip books, and I'm seeing all the times I visited that third place over the years.  Some were up at that same tiny bungalow in Olympia.  A few more at an apartment in San Pedro, where you could hear the seagulls, and it always smelled like anchovies and diesel.  Sometimes Earth Three even visited us, and I had to sleep in my Mom's project room next to the sewing machine and all those rolls of unused canvas.  And it was like with each time, each visit, I got one more clue, one more piece of the puzzle that was this place, this woman, antclear.

At first what I noticed was all the things she didn't have.  A man for one thing.  I wasn't quite sure why grown-up girls always had to be around grown-up guys, but I knew that they did, and knew that for some reason antclear had decided to break the rules.  And kids.  She should've had kids too, like Mom and Dad had me.  Plus there was never one place, one place she called home.  Not even a car like our Chevy.  She talked once about having to borrow a car from a friend of hers, and I remember how shocked I was, but excited too, because I never knew you could borrow a car and maybe, someday, I could borrow the Chevy from my dad.

Then, as I got older, the pieces fell into place even faster, but in this weird, mixed-up way, and I realized that what I'd thought was one thing was really another, that I'd somehow mistaken sky for ground, gift for burden.  Sure, there were a lot of things Aunt Claire didn't have.  And then there were all the things she did.  Like that time she disappeared for almost a year, and it turned out she'd been living in Morocco.  Or the way all those pictures on the wall had been painted by her, or were presents from other artists, some of them almost famous.  For the longest time I didn't know what a name-dropper was, or how people could pretend that they didn't want you to notice something, when in fact they really did.  All I knew was how other people reacted, how my Dad always found an excuse to leave the room, or how my Mom got that look on her face, staring into space, her eyes seeing nothing at all.

Sometimes, when we'd visit, my aunt would pull out a deck of Tarot cards, and for me it was like they were all superheoes, each figure with its own special power, special fate.  But what she was really showing me was them.  Aunt Claire was the rider on horseback, her banner unfurled, heading out to the meet the world, while a second woman, who could only be my mother, stayed behind to tend hearth, home, child.  And there was a third card lying on the table, a man, my father, witness to the drama that played out between but powerless to act.  Or maybe that was me, that silent figure, stuck there in the middle.  I loved my mother, understood in some child's way all that she'd sacrificed to bring me into this world, to make me whole.  But it was antclear I was drawn to, her wild spirit, her power to be whatever, whoever, she wanted.  I knew someday I'd face that choice.  To draw my card.  To be one or the other.

It's the very next day on that very same visit, our visit to Aunt Claire.  I am alone.  I've traded, it seems, all the intrigue and innuendo of the adult world for the relative calm of the back yard.  It's a space that mirrors the house itself, and the woman who calls it home.  Vines run rampant over arbor and fence.  Flowers fight it out for attention.  It's chaos, it's magic, it's everything our neatly managed yard back home is not, and for a while I wander around in a daze, trying to take it all in.  And then I see it.  A small, rather plain tree tucked in the very back, unremarkable in every way except for the one remarkable thing hanging from one of its branches.  A thing that is round, and green, and shiny.  A thing that I thought existed only in lunchboxes, or supermarkets.  A thing that is somehow, miraculously, growing out of the tree itself.

And with that, I wake up.

It takes me a moment to realize that this is, in fact, what I'm doing.  Waking up.  Which means that I must have been asleep.  Asleep, it seems, on my couch.  The couch, I start to remember, where I lay down that afternoon.  The same Sunday afternoon that saw me pick up an apple, and cut it into pieces, and then pop one of those pieces into my mouth.

Unwilling, or unable, to get up, I stare out towards the glass slider, see that there's still a bit of late afternoon light hitting the crepe myrtle, and realize that if I was asleep, it couldn't have been for long.  Just long enough to relive half my life.  Or half of someone's life.

A while back Simon asked me a question, one those impossible, imponderable questions that seem to be his stock in trade.  How can you tell if you're remembering or imagining?  How do you know the difference?  And because I was feeling impatient at the time, and maybe a little put out, I gave him the stock answer, the one grown-ups have been doling out to kids since god knows when.  "You just know."  Still, it wasn't a lie.  Somehow you do just know.

The same way I do just know two things right now, as I lie here on my couch, watching the day fade to darkness.  One is that whatever just happened, it wasn't imagined, wasn't a dream.  There really was a little white bungalow.  There really was an Aunt Claire.  They were as real, as uncontestable, as Petula Clarke, or the Justice League, or any of the other minor bits of window dressing that had served as part of the tale.  And the second thing I know is that if it was, in fact, a memory, then it clearly wasn't mine.  Because I never had an Aunt Claire, who never lived in that bungalow, who wasn't visited by someone who couldn't have been me.

Which leads, in turn, to a question.

Whose memory was it?

It's been a full week - seven nights, seven days - and all the people I've seen have been real.

Not that I'm complaining.  Not exactly.  The truth is, Simon could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.  Imagine a person who could just drop in anytime, anywhere, with no warning, no invitation, no reason for being there, except to distract you, or make some inane comment, or ask one of those crazy, circle-jerk questions that only a five-year-old can ask, and not even a zen master can answer.  And the way he would just sit there, existing, or not-existing, and knowing he never had to worry about paying bills or cooking dinner of any of the day-to-day hassles that plague actual, flesh and blood creatures like you and me.  Needless to say, it got old.  Sometimes listening to him prattling on - so blithe, so carefree - you just wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up.  To please, please, go away.

And then, just like that, he does.

Have you ever had that thing happen, when there's a sound way off in the distance, a car alarm or a leaf-blower, a sound that you're not really hearing until the moment it stops, and then you notice it, not because of its presence, but because of its absence.  The breath you skip.  The stair that isn't there.  The thing that you've taken for granted, that's become a part of your day, until suddenly it's not, and every time you take a step, you're stepping over that hole, that void, and telling yourself not to look down.

Or the way after a good friend has visited for a long weekend, you'll be cleaning up, putting things back in order, and you'll find some personal item, some remnant, he or she has left behind.  A pair of socks.  A toothbrush.  And of course it's only an accident, but of course it's something more.  It's your friend, lingering on like a memory.  Appointing some small yet tangible proxy to maintain a presence in your life.

A week gone by - seven nights, seven days - and each one of those days I've stopped, and paused, and taken a good long look at Simon's parting gift.  The small green orb in the off-white bowl.  The apple of his - or is it my - eye.  Apple trees are notoriously promiscuous, they cross-pollinate like mad, and so this apple, like every apple you or I have ever eaten, is the product of a grafted tree.  Which is, perhaps, what Simon and I are, or were.  Me, with my feet on the ground, my roots anchored deep in this place we call the real world.  And Simon, with his head in the clouds, his limbs stretching out to the sun, part of me and yet not part.  If so, then this apple is our offspring.  Our child.  A little bit of both of us, made real.

Or as real as anything gets in this life of mine.

Now if I were to concede that this life isn't real, that it was instead a dream, or a fairy tale, I would immediately know what to do.  Take a bite of the apple.  And in doing so, become somehow transformed.  Perhaps I'd gain knowledge of good and evil, loose what little innocence I have left.  Or fall into a deathly slumber, only to be awakened one day by the kiss of a handsome prince.  Either one sounds bearable, if not exactly desirable.  And if nothing at all happens, then we're back to square one - all this is real, whatever that means, and I can get back to the business of living.

Which is why I am standing here, in my small, cluttered excuse for a kitchen at 4:47 on a Sunday afternoon, staring at that same, and by now quite familiar, Granny Smith.  Or I don't know, maybe it's a Pippin.

Even after seven days, it seems no worse for the wear, and I'm glad that Simon or The Powers That Be decided to settle on an apple, and not some fruit that gets all tetchy and perishable, like a banana.  Still, something's wrong.  Even though it looks fine, and I figure I'm finally ready to do the obvious thing, the only thing, to just go for it and take a big, honking bite, I find myself hesitating instead.  Because suddenly it's not an apple anymore, it's a Hershey bar, and I'm seven or eight years old, and I'm counting each square, and doing the math, and realizing if I only eat one square, instead of the whole thing, it's like I'm getting ten separate little candy bars, ten and not just one.

So now I'm sitting back watching my seven or eight year old self go to the drawer, and open it up, and take out a small paring knife - careful, sharp! - and then reach over and snatch the apple out of the bowl.  And being the clever little lad I am, I know all about fractions, and proportions, and all that grown-up stuff, and so first I cut the apple clean down the middle, that's two, and then cut each of the halves into quarters, that's four, and then, now here's the tricky part, carefully slice each quarter into a perfect little half, which makes for eight, which isn't quite as good as ten, but a whole lot better than one.

And then, just like that, it's me again, a strung-out, middle-aged man, staring at eight slices of apple on a wooden cutting board.

The slices are surprisingly uniform.  Not bad for a wee tyke.  Still, he didn't quite get around to cutting out the core and seeds, so now it's time for one decidedly larger hand to pick up the knife, while another grabs the first slice of apple.  Only somehow, after that, neither hand wants to do much of anything.  Which is strange.  I mean everyone knows you don't eat the seeds.  They're bad.  They've got poison in them, arsenic or something, or maybe it's that they sprout down there, and start to grow, and all of a sudden you've got an apple tree growing out of your stomach.

But in spite of all this, which I've known since before I was seven or eight, since before I could even count that high, I take the slice, stick it in my mouth, and begin to chomp away.

Wow.  It's just the way Simon described it, that incredible mix of tart and sweet, ying and yang, and even the seeds are a revelation, the way they fight back, determined to hold their ground, until the inevitable moment when they are crushed to pieces by the power of all those molars brought to bear.  Wow.  Forget about Hershey bars.  Forget about waigu beef, and shaved truffles, and Doritos Extreme Ranch.  This tiny slice of apple is the most amazing thing I've ever eaten.  And the best part is, I've got seven more just like it, just waiting to devoured whenever, wherever I see fit.

Or at least that's what I thinking at the time.

But I'm wrong.

Because the best - or maybe just the strangest - is what happens next.

"So how was your Thanksgiving?"

This after three days.  Three whole days of no Simon.  Which is not, of course, like three whole days without the sun rising, or the birds chirping, or any of that stuff that doesn't happen in a song by the Ronettes.  But still.

"It was, you know, Thanksgiving," I told him.  "White meat.  Brown gravy.  Orange yams."

"Sounds like a breakfast cereal."

"Doesn't it though?"

He was giving me this goofy little grin, one which I simultaneously felt like knocking off his face, and answering with an equally goofy grin of my own.  And the worst of it was, I could tell he knew how conflicted I felt, that this was in fact the reason he was smiling in the first place.

"And what about you? How was your 'place'?"  He started to answer, but I cut him off.  "No.  Wait.  Let me guess.  Black.  Black.  And ... I don't know ... Black?"

"Actually, it was green."

I'd wanted to stay angry.  Now I was curious instead.

"Green?"

"Green."  As I watched, the grin finally vanished, replaced by a pensive look.  "So how do you tell when something's a memory?"

I sniffed at that, still wary.  "What do you mean?"

"There's something floating inside your head.  A beach at sunset.  Somebody's face.  Or maybe it's not a picture at all, an image, but a little snatch of music, or the way breakfast smells."  He stared at me, his dark eyes suddenly haunted.  "How do you know if you're remembering something that once was, or imagining something that could be?  How do you know the difference?"

I wanted my mouth to open, to have some sort of pithy, intelligent and entirely lucid answer come spilling out.  Instead I just sat there, as silent as the couch tucked beneath me.  How do you know the difference?

"I'm not sure," I heard myself say.  "Somehow your brain, or your mind, or whatever just knows which is which.  It's automatic, instinctive.  Like breathing."  I paused, feeling the air move in and out of my lungs.  "Only I guess it's not really that simple.  They say people are always inventing memories, remembering things that never really happened, or remembering them wrong."

I watched as he mulled that over, black hair, dark eyes, furrowed brow.

"The reason I ask, I think I might finally have one.  A memory, that is."

It was such an odd thing to hear someone say.  Then again, he wasn't someone.  Not really.  "A memory?  Of what?"

"An apple."

"An apple," I echoed back.

"It's there, just kind of floating right in front of me.  This intense, vivid green.  I can see the light reflecting off its skin, it's so glossy, so alive, and I can feel what it would be like to bite into it, the sound it would make, the feeling of my jaws clamping down, and then that first taste hitting my mouth, that incredible mix of tart and sweet."

By now I could see it.  Taste it.  Real or imagined, his or mine.

I stared down at the carpet, willing the image away.  "And that's it?  Just this apple floating there?  Nothing changes, nothing happens?"

He shook his head once.

We both sat there a while - spat forgotten, allies now - determined to confront this small, green mystery.

"So what do you think it means?" he asked.

"It's your memory." 

"And your imagination." 

I felt something then.  A power.  A recklessness.  Before I had a chance to think, the words were spilling out.

"Alright.  Sure.  Whatever.  A green apple.  It's Newton getting hit on the head.  Divine inspiration, or seeing whatever's right in front of you.  It's Eve tempting Adam, though I guess that's always a red apple, isn't it, because red is sex and sex is sin.  It's one of those paintings by Magritte, the man with the black bowler, only you can't see his face because there's a giant green apple parked smack in the way.  It's sitting around listening to the White Album freshman year, smoking hash in Tom and Brad's room, and hearing Lennon sing about being So Tired, and staring at the green apple logo in the middle of the black vinyl disc.  And then suddenly twenty or thirty years have gone by and there are no more black discs, or people getting stoned, because now we're all staring at the screens on our iPads, with the little logo on the back that - surprise surprise - is supposed to a green apple too.  And maybe that's what this is telling you, or me, or us, is that you're nothing more a painting in a museum, or a song on a record album, or a file on somebody's Mac.  A figment.  A fiction.  Not real."

I stopped.  

Caught my breath.

I was staring at an empty chair.  My words had shattered the spell.  Whoever, whatever, had been sitting there was gone.  Banished.  For three hours, three days, the rest of my life.

After a time, I left the couch, seeking a glass of water, not because I was thirsty, but because I needed to do something, anything, besides just sitting there, looking at nothing at all.  I walked into the kitchen.  Filled a glass under the tap.  And as I drank, I let my eyes wander idly along the countertop.  Perched on the microwave was the porcelain bowl where I usually kept stray fruit, destined for the cereal bowl, or inclusion in a smoothie.  When I'd woken a few hours earlier, the bowl had been empty.  Or at least that's what my memory kept insisting.  And now, somehow, a single piece of fruit lay there, taunting me, tempting me.

It was not an orange.