Apples from the Garden of Eden

ISBN 978-1-959182-53-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-959182-54-2 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Rocco Scibetta

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the email address below, or reach out through the official Facebook page: 𝗦𝗖𝗜𝗕𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗔 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞𝗦

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The mention of any similarities between names and references to anyone living or dead being is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

PART I

Morning Becomes Alexis

Morning Has Broken

The Lecture

A New Chapter

Good Night, Rabo Karabekian

Leases

PART II

A Conversation at Bruce’s Roost

The Second Delirium of One Felix X. Cole; or: The Collective Consciousness of Carl Jung

The Blue Diamond

PART I

Morning Becomes Alexis

It is autumn in the city, not deep autumn like the kind you see pictured on sympathy cards with curled dried leaves and swirling wind, but pleasant autumn—sunny and brisk with folks projecting happy faces in anticipation of the holiday season.

From the view of a moving bus window, one might think the local pageantry appears as an unfolding ribbon loop of coats and sweaters forming grids throughout the city. A visual artist the likes of a Mondrian or a Marlow Moss might perceive the procession as a rotary typewriter ribbon—twisting narrow bands of cloth with specially finished edges, recycling from one end of the spool to the other around and around back and forth, disappearing and appearing again, creating spaces and lines. A writer might be inspired to perceive the blue-black footprint residual shadow marks underfoot, marking the pavement. Each surviving mark generates a unique brand of alternative grapheme. Collectively, they become one: human letters and hashtags littering the avenue with excessive information.

The busy sidewalks are filling up with folks adorned in colors of the season. Commuters blend against the brick and mortar of brownstone buildings, reminding everyone that festivity and asphalt fashion make the season fun. Freshly painted enamel railings of black and gray become a wash of watercolor splashing down the street. All this orchestration becomes a blur from the window of the Main Street bus, without one tree to clutter the view.

Storeowners are staging their window displays. The last distractions of summer are falling off in pieces. A sundried billboard blocking the autumn sky features two young people running along a beach; their summer tans now sun faded and weather beaten, exposing the cracking poster marine board underneath. This landmark-avenue marquee soon to be replaced, however, by a digital photo image of a huge moving cornucopia of autumnal fruits and goodies cascading from a horn of plenty. It is an advertisement promoting a local farm. This is a city after all, not near a beach and not near a farm; nevertheless, the business of billboards is to transform us. Advertising subtlety suggests to the viewer that where they are is not where they need to be. That might be one reason why they project an image that is always of a place somewhere other than where you are—that unattainable, fantastic moment that always leaves you yearning.

It was Eighth Street and Broadway. A gentle gathering of clouds united themselves in front of the already-too-bright sun for this time of year, causing a flicker of silver lining to catch the eye of one Alexis Barrette who was contemplating downy formations from the window of the eight fifteen main.

Lexis, as her friends would call her, was an ordinary, nondescript, aging teenager with a pretty name. Hazing schoolmates at Belmont High School signed in her yearbook (the girl most likely to write an encyclopedia on animal origins of property and nation or something similar.) Moreover, she once aspired to become a curator for the comparative Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. For the time being, however—lying lofty dreams aside—she is completing her studies in library science where her lust for research is serving her well. Her interest for data fills up her days with exciting day trips and visits to places outside her normal realm of trendy boutique coffeehouses and wall-to-wall carpeted study halls with Deco couches.

Gone are the hard, no-nonsense old oak library chairs of yesteryear. Clumsy constructs of modest and plain design, complete with spindle backs and carved buttock pine seats, were matched with scholarly oak tables and a reading lamp. The conspicuous high-tech era brought with it plush, comfortable lounge chairs and laptops of all kinds, transforming the dimmest trendy coffee bar or fast-food establishment into an internet cafe.

Gone also is the shush! and etiquette rule. Students are comfortable chatting, snacking, or lounging, so long as it is not too interruptive with fellow students. Flashing blinks and twinkles follow suit, producing bizarre split-second twinkling LED screens and cell phone beeps. Even Darwin in his solitary study would have been slow to suspect that the modern scholar would one day evolve into a social creature fraternizing through a social network that could deliver the exchange of ideas from all over the world in a few seconds. Study halls have become moveable feasts where friends could hook up in just a few clicks.

Lexis was a loyal friend. Her studies kept her from actively joining clubs or mingling with social groups, but she stayed close with the acquaintances she met along the way. Even as time brings changes to a young girl’s life, Lexis was able to stay in touch with the old gang through the magic of social media.

Ah, thank goodness for social media, she thought to herself, finishing off the final clicks to a message on her smart phone before closing out to resume a last-ditch daydream before she reaches her destination.

The many times Lexis has traveled this venue enabled her to see the same stores and even the same faces; some have become so familiar to her that even though they have never met formally, people say hello in passing, just out of plain propinquity. Lexis became aware of herself saying hello to strangers all morning, keyed up and inwardly excited. Today is a special day.

Today, Lexis is en route to attend a lecture that she has been waiting for three weeks to attend. This afternoon at one o’clock, Sampson Hall is having Dr. Felix X. Cole discusses his new book. Lexis has been a follower of Dr. Cole’s theories since high school and collected every book he has ever written since she discovered he was writing them. I suppose you could say that Lexis thought of Professor Cole as her subliminal soul mate. Cole, on the other hand, did not know Lexis existed, and neither would he care. Unbeknownst to Lexis, Prof. Felix. X. Cole was probably one of the most unimpassioned, empty-suited hacks that this planet is capable of turning out. Besides his ornery indifference to everything human, he is losing his marbles faster than the new kid in the schoolyard and is about to go clinically insane.

Hartman University—considered by many to be a leading institution in psychology promoting a better understanding of person and beast. Hartman U, as is abbreviated on campus, has become a cornerstone in Lexis’s life over the last two years. Lately, she has built her life around the campus. Being an only child and somewhat sheltered, Lexis has a somewhat myopic view of the outside world. Her interest in zoology and folklore studies enabled her to examine lifestyles and exotic cultures without having to travel much or to touch anything, which works out fine, as she has a genuine dislike for leaving her comfort zone and a wicked phobia about touching things without prior knowledge about them.

Today, young Lexis will have the opportunity to have her soul mate/mentor sign a copy of his book for her. Besides, she can confess to him at last, face to face, how moved she is by his thoughts and how his dedicated research had changed her life.

Comfortably relaxing now, Lexis turns her head to the window of the Main Street bus 10 looking out, watching the street signs fall in nickelodeon sequence. She is clutching a fresh new edition of Felix X. Cole’s new magnum opus—Lectures on the Traditional Mores and the Extinction of Marriage.

Morning Has Broken

The sun had already been up for hours, but one would never know from the Havisham gloom that envelopes Felix X. Cole in his cryptic bedroom. An empty ashtray, a half-eaten donut, and some milk in glass are stationary on a small table. Carefully folded pants, a dress shirt, and tie, along with a pair of socks, are carefully hanging on a bedroom clothes butler. A small alarm clock that reads 6:28 a.m. is on a nightstand jammed next to his bed. Some wrinkled sheets reveal an arm exposed to the shoulder leading to the peaceful face of a sleeping Felix Xavier Cole.

The alarm clock rings. F. X. Cole’s eyes gently open, and a gentle smile comes over his lips. He sits perched on the edge of his bed. He rises and walks toward the window, pulling the shade cord, allowing an eruption of light to flood the room. He spreads his arms and greets the day to crescendo like an emperor—phoenix rising.

Felix Cole can awaken from deep slumber with absolutely no past residue of sleep appearing on his face at all. This odd manifestation has been going on for the last six months. So vitalized is he upon awakening that he immediately wakes up roused and rushes into a course of action, carrying out the day’s agenda. He thought, in the beginning, when he first became aware of this abrupt awakening that this might be a bit peculiar, a play of nerves or some slight anxiety. But he soon wrote it off as a will to self-discipline, a byproduct some simple flotsam dispelled, due to a moral code he has been strenuously developing for himself—a proper exercise for the endurance needed to survive the end of the world.

Felix X. Cole walks briskly over to the bathroom and disrobes. Adjusting the shower water, he looks over at a novelty gadget he has suction-cupped to his shower wall. It is a temperature thermometer that registers the steam heat to assure the water is an accurate degree of 99 to 101. That is slightly warmer than the body temperature of 98.6. The water spews through a special nozzle that simulates a pulse flow in cadence to a pregnant woman’s biorhythms. According to the manufacturer’s package information, the procedure restores the feeling of being in the womb through pulsating massage. It not only helps you relax; it opens you to experience prewomb embryonic memory that has been dormant during your adult life.

I have no doubt, Cole mentioned in more than one of his lectures, that pre-embryonic trauma and pleasure have played more than a passive role in our psychological development, especially in the area of phobias and religious beliefs.

Felix X. Cole steps into the shower station and adjusts the flow valve to a normal pulse. This simulates the pulsing heartbeat to the speed an embryo would experience if a normal mother just exists on an average day with no anxieties.

On page 15 of the information booklet, Cole ponders aloud to himself, this setting is best for morning preparation or after a light meal because the digestive tract is most relaxed and not churning away—reducing internal process activity, creating a less likelihood of whipping into a frantic soup over produced acidic bile.

Throwing back his head, he accesses the warm waters of the womb