Novel: The Wisteria Hotel and Bar on 23rd Avenue

Story: Told in three parts, each one a first-person account from a different character. This is a novelization of a short story I wrote way back when called Thirty Silver Pieces.

Part One: Jefferson Canute

A mysterious, disturbed young man narrates in a strange voice.

"Tobacco. The smell of it. The smoke rising from the open shop window, down on the block. A thick, rich fragrance. Had it all before: cigars, cigarettes, pipes, dip, snuff. Even those miniature cigars. Those literal cigar-ettes. The smell of tobacco smoke always promised something more than it gave. That’s all I know about it, and all I need to know."

"How can I explain how the Wisteria felt to those who walked past it's womb-like glow on those cold, November evenings? It was like only it was truly inside. Everything else was outside."

Jefferson has been having nightmares about his mother for weeks, we learn. In his dreams she is angry at him. His friends tell him to find a man named Rickshaw who keeps a room at the old Wisteria Hotel. Rickshaw can help with things like that, they say. But you have to be prepared to leave something valuable with him, and not money. Something personal. Jefferson learns his room number and discovers that Rickshaw has committed suicide. The only clue he has is a photograph of a boy with a unique old hunter's hat standing with his mother.

When the time comes he jumps into a wish fountain in the middle of the park and steals handfuls and handfuls of change. A security guard chases him down an alleyway. He eludes the guard and makes his way to the Wisteria. Part One ends as he enters the bar.

Part Two: Pat Hennigar

This part tells the story of an old writer who has just sold his first novel to a science fiction publisher. He is out alone celebrating at the Wisteria, remembering the trials and tribulations he went through. He has sold out. He wrote something from the heart, something "cosmic and true to life" but the publisher kept requesting changes, so he modified it and modified it until it no longer resembled anything he loved. The story concerned a spring on a distant planet whose waters restored youth to those who bathed in it. So what at first seemed a celebration becomes a mourning. "I am the cliche, sell-out, Judas of the world," he scribbles on a napkin. The writer is in love, or something, with a waitress who works at the Wisteria. He wants to take away the sadness he sees in her eyes, take away the memory of her drowned son. But he can never make a connection, it seems. This part ends with him missing a chance to talk to her, as the young man from part one enters the bar and shouts, "Drinks all around!"

Part Three: Rosemary Wehn

This part is from the perspective of the waitress. She tells the story of the night after the strange young man comes into the Wisteria with pockets stuffed with old change and buys drinks for everyone. She makes a lot of money and has a couple drinks herself. She has a crush on the old writer who is always there, but he never talks to her. Finally he leaves. She ends up dancing with the young man who came in. He reminds her of her drowned son Gabe. At the end of the night she takes him back to her apartment. He reminds her so much of her son that she doesn't want him to leave. They go to bed. She has a memory of one bright day in the park, at the fountain, when her son was still alive. "I never wanted that day to end," she remembers.