The Plenty

Josh showered, shaved, drove to town to kill some time at the bank, hardly able to hide his anticipation, but adhering to the rules he waited until noon before he walked from the bank to the U.S. Postal Service box – the dropbox, as he and Shannon coined it. When he reached behind the mailbox, a slip of paper met his fingers. It read: OHNOW. The Opera House, the abandoned Opera House. And the time suited him just fine. Like an addict, an invisible grip seized his shoulders, a tingle darted up and down his forearms and spine. What he needed neared. The antidote for desire awaited, a torturous ecstasy, worth every moment.

  Down the sidewalk he nearly skipped, jumping into his car and speeding off toward the run-down Opera House, parking and rushing inside without pause to inspect the road for cars. The musty smell of the old building added to the intrigue as Shannon so often found a new hiding place. Between two old pillars, one cracked and leaning precariously, he passed through the foyer into the main auditorium, with neither career nor family holding him back. On the stage he saw a hand, a slender arm, motioning to him. Her fingers extended from behind the torn red curtain on the stage of an Opera House that had never flourished in a town that eschewed the arts. Drawn to this teasing forearm, Josh removed his watch and placed it inside his pocket. Over creaking floorboards, past fallen t-shaped posts that once lined the main entrance, he walked with swagger. The moment before contact like a dream, mooting his concerns. It was bliss. He might have stayed forever in the Keatsian approach. To be frozen forever in anticipation of the forbidden beckoning arm, freed of all earthly expectations, vows, and responsibilities, to be in a strange place, and most of all, to be rampant with the teenage feeling he once had with Renee Masterson – this was Josh's heaven.

  And in his haste to reach heaven, Josh entered the abandoned Opera House unaware of another car that had followed his Cadillac since he entered town. On the other side of the Opera House, a car engine idled. A woman exited the vehicle, holding a 35 millimeter camera in hand. Judd Blanks' girlfriend, Jana, slinked toward the back door of the building, to the stage entrance, to photograph the stars of the defunct stage.