Waiting Room Rewards

by Lad Moore

* * **When you return from a 3480-mile drive without being able to vent your creative energy, you will fall for anything.** * *

The first thing on my calendar after our trip was to get a checkup. I thought I would fool the receptionist by arriving at my doctor’s appointment an hour early. Unfortunately, she had been programmed by Bill Gates’ covert medical software not to notice me. I signed the patient’s arrival list on the clipboard and noted my name followed that of Lloyd Handler’s. I knew Lloyd from my old days at Rotary. He died from sofa-myocardial arrhythmia last summer. In fact, I figured his flowers were probably removed last week from Greenwood Cemetery, which has a strict six- month rule for grave ornaments. It looked like I had a bit of a wait.

In my old age, I have developed a penchant to tinker with wet spirits. As I waited for my physician to accept her gifts from the Abbot Labs rep, I read a 1988 issue of Free-Spirit Weekly. In the labyrinth of its dog-eared pages, I found an advertisement for the exact make and model of my AeroCruise motorhome. The article divulged some technical data that spurred me to try a recipe I had for elderberry wine. In the data, I learned that the Freon coolant for the rooftop air condenser circulates through the kitchen refrigerator, then drops its condensate into a tray that drains into the on-board latrine. Well, I thought, what if I put grapes and sugar in the Freon tank, flush the commode, and wait?

Sure enough, in a day and a half I had an acceptable dinner wine to go with the 99-cent “Fish Du Monde” special I got at Long John Silver's. The wine was the wrong color and a little dry, but I figure that was because I failed to remove the little "2000-Flush" blue deodorant cake that hangs on a wire in the commode.

Huntsberger is my motor-home neighbor. This is our home park, meaning we no longer have homes without wheels. I invited him over for a swill or two while my wife Rose was reading two months of mail. Huntsberger looks like a cross between Orville Redenbacher and that guy from TV with applique question-marks on his suit that sells government-grant secrets. I toasted Huntz with my wine. He didn't notice the blue tint because he had on the same aviator's glasses that he wore when he flew choppers in Cambodia.

*“We weren’t supposed to be in there,”* he says, whispering like I might still tell. Hell, I wasn’t supposed to be in Vegas the time I told Rose I was fishing off the Baja, either—but I didn’t come home with any damn table chips in my suitcase, that’s for sure.

Either way, the two of us drank my wine and watched the TV show “Millionaire” with Regis Philbin. I got the $125,000 answer right, but missed all the ones that came before it. The only lifeline I had was the little thing Rose makes me wear around my neck in case I collapse when she isn’t there.

Huntsberger just left and Rose complained that it’s way too hot in the coach. She has stripped down to her baggy satin panties and Minute-Maid-can hair curlers. I hope I’m not forced to choose between air conditioning and blue elderberry wine.

Lad Moore a former boardroom executive who "walked away to reclaim his roots." He found what he sought on a small farm in East Texas. He enjoys more than a hundred publishing credits and is currently completing his memoir, "Firefly Rides." A second work in progress, "Offspring of the Tiger," chronicles a conflicted relationship with his father, one of the storied CNAC "Hump" pilots of WWII. Lad Moore's work has appeared in Carolina Country, The Virginia Adversaria, Adirondack Review, Paumanok Review, Danforth Review, and Carve Magazine Anthologies, among others. In the early hours of morning, the heron patiently waits by the rushes. Just a ripple on the surface of the water will alert it to the presence of fresh fish. For reasons not visibly apparent, it suddenly takes .