There is a bar on a corner of Oakdale Road that is part of a somewhat rundown strip mall out in the eastern part of Modesto. I never noticed the place until the day I decided to go there for a drink. I expected it to be an interesting experience since the last time I went to a bar and ordered a drink was over 30 years earlier. Thick clear and colorless plexiglass panels adorned the walls. The owners used this material for the bar, the shelves behind it, and the tables and chairs in the place. The plexiglass made the place seem spacious on the inside, although the bar was only 10 feet long and only five tables occupied the space. There were no decorations because the walls reflected the image of the traffic going back and forth on Oakdale, thanks to the strategic placement of several mirrors. The bar seemed more like the inside of an interactive conceptual art installation than a place where one might get a martini or a shot of rye.
The bartender, a slim forty-something Mexican guy with gray hair, asked, “Hey, how ya doin’? What’ll you have?”
“Hey, all right,” I said, “You got any amaretto?”
“Of course. Any particular brand in mind?”
“Nah, give me the one you would choose. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
The barman turned around and retrieved a bottle and a squat lowball glass and sat them on the bar with a paper cocktail napkin. “You want that on the rocks, with ice?”
“If that’s how you would drink it, sure.”
He deftly dropped two ice cubes into the glass and poured the sweet amber-colored liqueur from the bottle.
“Here ya go,” he said. “This is your first time in here, right? I also get the impression that you don’t really drink.”
“Yeah man, right on both counts, but every couple of decades or so, I have some amaretto or other sweet drink. Hey, this is pretty good. It’s got vanilla in it. Very nice.”
“Glad you like it. Hey, is that your car right out front?”
I turned around to see a small pickup truck backed into the parking space next to my car. The truck had an open camper shell with no back. The overflowing bed of the truck appeared to be full of a wide assortment of things. I saw a couple of stuffed animals, two or three athletic shoes, a bicycle tire, and what looked like a wagon. I assumed the driver of the truck was some sort of scavenger or junk collector.
Suddenly, a squat, gnomish woman hopped out of the pickup truck that she had backed up into the parking space next to my car. I saw her open my car and grab my backpack. I shot out of the bar and managed to grab my backpack away from her.
She smiled and giggled at me, saying, “Shuckins! Stuffins! Don’t grab me muffins! Lickity splitiky, piss up a tree; I can see you, but you can’t see me!”
I blinked and the gnomish little woman and her truck vanished.
I ran back into the bar. “Hey man, did you see that? I think I need another drink!”
“Yeah, she does that. I’m glad you got your backpack. My regular customers leave something on the roof of their cars for her. I mean, she’ll take any kind of offering. It could be anything you don’t want, even if it’s a dirty sock or a chewing gum wrapper. She’ll take it.”
“Ok, now you’re gonna have to explain what the hell is going on here.”
“Well,” the barman explained, “She’s a collector demigod, sort of like a garbage man, but she transmutes all that stuff into what you guys call manna or ambrosia. Then she bottles it and sells it. Despite her appearance, she is very wealthy. She’s made a fortune selling that stuff.”
“What do you mean, ‘you guys’? Do you mean people? Human beings?”
“Right, I should explain better. This bar is not in what you might call regular space. You’re obviously at least partially clairvoyant, and that’s why you’re able to even see this place, let alone come in and order a drink. Technically, you’re in a parallel dimension right now. My dimension, as you have noticed, is a bit different from the one you normally live in. Only a few of us can move between dimensions. Consider yourself lucky. Or not. Why don’t you look across the street? As I understand it, there is a small fenced-off privately owned lake across the street in your dimension, but here, the lake is part of a beautiful public park adjacent to a popular insectarium. Also, we know that our version of this city is much wetter because we have regulated rainfall and weather control.”
I went outside, and the bartender was right. The air smelled fresher, there was no smell of exhaust fumes, and there was a park across the street just as he described it. I went back inside.
“Amazing, just, wow!” I said to the bartender, “But my life, my regular life, is in the other dimension. How do I get back home?”
“Right,” the bartender said, “Let me check.” He pulled out a book from under the bar and quickly thumbed through it. “Ok, this is what you do. You walk out, get in your car, close your eyes, and count to 10. That should do the trick. If you want to come back for a visit, just park in the same space and come on in. The manual says that once you come here, you’re sort of imprinted on this dimension, something like that. You don’t have to close your eyes and count anymore. Also, the money is basically the same except for some of the currency. A man named Frederick Douglass is on the $20 dollar bill. I heard it’s not the same where you’re from.
When I got home, my wife said, “What’s that smell? Oh! You’ve been drinking Amaretto. It’s that time again, right?”
“Yes it is,” I replied, “and you wouldn’t believe what I just went through.”