Cleanthe Tells Us a Tale

We were at our usual place, transforming into our most unusual selves through the aid of idle talk and plenty water treated with fine hops, barley, malt, and the occasional grains of rice, when Cleanthe cleared his throat and leaned forward in the way that he does when announcing that it is time for us all to pay attention to him.

"Allright, boys," he began, taking a bottle into his right hand and swirling it softly about in the air, as though it were a glass of fine vino to be discerned, "I'm gonna tell you a little story..."

He let these words hang over our table as a gust of smoke waiting to be disbursed by a frantic waving of arms; he was, in fact, hoping for one of us to frantically chomp at the bit and plead for him to continue. No doubt, in our younger days one of us would have done just that, but as it was, we were all mellowed with age, we knew his dramatic tricks well, thus the four of us simply brought our distracted gazes to rest on him, his bottle still swishing about in the air, and sipped our own elixirs in silence.

Cleanthe, noticing his moment in the spotlight, and knowing full well that soon something would distract his weak-minded friends, continued, "I've never told this to anyone before. It's not an easy story to tell, but....well, I'll just let you boys make what you will of it."

Iason and I smirked at each other, knowingly. Cleanthe rarely partook of the fermented funstuff, but when he did we were always prepared for the unexpected.

"I'm sure you all remember Charlie Fogg, " Cleanthe said in a most melancholy tone. We all nodded, bowed our heads, and I was driven to propose a silent toast, holding my little glass aloft, to which my friends all clinked their own, and without a word we waited for Cleanthe to resume.

"Well, I was at that party. You were all....ahhh, I forget where you were, but none of you showed up for his party. It was a halloween party...a masquerade...and he was very sad that none of you showed up.

"Buuut, that doesn't matter. Doesn't matter," Cleanthe paused to loudly slurp the remnants of his brown bottle, and expertly motioned to the waitress that he was thirsty before he returned to us. "I dressed as Jackson Pollock. Nah, don't ask; you weren't there, you didn't see my costume, so to hell with you! Trust me, I was good...I had paint all over me, I had..."

Antisthenes leaned forward with a loud hiss, his very typical style, and interjected, "Stick to the story, kiiiiiid....what about Charlie?"

Cleanthe frowned a moment, his dark features somehow obscuring further, but only for an instant, before he softened, and said, "You're right, you're right. So I went as Jackson Pollock....I looked great...there were supposed to be prizes for best costume. I was sure I'd win.

"But anyways...it was kind of a boring party." Cleanthe chuckled loudly as our very fetching waitress brought his fourth and took quick orders from the rest of us, "I mean...I hate to say it, but it was a boring party. You know, all his friends were artists, too, and just like him...none of them was any good! I mean no disrespect, really. But, ahhh, they stood around talking about noir movies and smoking Sherman cigarettes...and not one of them recognized my costume!!

"A couple people had good costumes, though. There was one chick dressed as Frida Kahlo...the eyebrow was a giveaway, but trust me boys...that was the only similarity!

"So I stuck around...I was on my herbs in those days, so I couldn't really drink. I had a couple. Around midnight this girl from Brooklyn showed us a short little horror movie she'd made with puppets that was actually pretty good. After that, the crowd thinned out. Seriously, like one minute the place was full, then it was like half!"

"Show's over!" Iason shouted out, "I'm outtahere...right?"

"Basically," Cleanthe nodded, "So the crowd thins out, and you know how when there aren't so many people around you actually have starting talking?"

We all chuckled and nodded. Midas grunted, "Yeah, dude. Know how that goes."

"Right," Cleanthe began to lower his voice, "So I start talking to this guy. At first I thought he was dressed as a businessman...he had on a suit, and dress pants, and shiny shoes, and a tie. Pretty boring costume, I thought, but I didn't tell him that. He didn't have much to say, and he had the wierdest accent. I mean, I've never heard an accent like it before. At first I thought he was just drunk, but he kept saying the same words the same way...like a...I don't know, like a mix of red-neck, Hispanic and Asian."

At this I chuckled. I'm a lover of interesting accents.

Cleanthe focused on me, "I'm serious! Imagine you took a 12 year old kid from Oklahoma, sent him to high school in Hong Kong, and college in Buenos Aires. That's what he sounded like."

"A traveler, then?" I asked.

"Well...." Cleanthe lowered his head closer to the table, "That's what I asked him. I asked him where he was from. And he blurts out, 'I'm from the year 2487'."

We all erupted into a loud cacophony of scoffs and laughs, and "yeah, right"s, and Iason threw in a "have another".

Cleanthe, however, was not joining in the fun. He said, "Can I finish my story or what? Thank you. Thank you. So of course, at first I was teasing him and playing along a little, you know, just for fun. So I ask him 'If you're from the future, what are you doing at this lame party?' And he looks at me like I'm the crazy one. He starts to talk, but then like this totally sobering look crosses his face, like he realized something at the last possible second, and he says, 'I can't say.'

"So I played along a little bit, you know, the whole no-telling-the-future rule. But this guy, he just keeps getting drunker and drunker, and keeps talking to Charlie, won't leave Charlie alone until finally Charlie asks me to start talking to him again to get him off his back. So I do. I asked him if he'd tell me his secret now, and he looks at me with these....these sad, sad eyes...and he says, 'I'll tell you because you'd never believe me. Charlie Fogg is considered to be the greatest of all painters who ever lived, and this is the most infamous night of his life.'"

At this, all of us sobered up, just a little.

Cleanthe concluded, "And then the guy got up and walked straight out the door."

It was a strangely somber moment. For Charlie Fogg, our good friend and atrocious painter, had perished later that night. One of his guests had come too close the edge of the building when the party had carried onto the rooftop, and in an attempt to be a hero with a flourish, poor Charlie himself had fallen seven stories to the pavement below.

Midas was the first to speak, brushing his long hair aside, and looking to the ceiling said, "Whoa, dude. That's trippy."

After a full minute, it was Iason who next spoke, "Hey, hey guys! Coupla 10s just walked in!" And he was motioning with no degree of discretion to two very tall and buxomy ladies who had just approached the bar.