The Mittelmann Journals

It had finally stopped raining. Kent Porter stepped out of the arid, fluorescent-lit bus station, switched the heavy suitcase to his right hand, and started walking along the glistening sidewalk toward what he hoped was the business district of Primula, a small central California town he'd never heard of before Constance Trask had contacted him. She and several other "interested parties" had agreed to meet with him at her law office to discuss the possibility and terms of purchasing the contents of the suitcase.

It was only an inconvenient accident that it was him shlepping the suitcase past the mysterious little storefronts and bars that inevitably inhabited the side streets of little towns like this, instead of one of the five other people who had applied for the San Francisco apartment he'd moved into three months ago. The bedroom had a big walk-in closet with built-in shelves, drawers, and a storage space under a cushioned seat. He had found the suitcase in the storage space during the move.

He had asked the manager if the previous tenant had left any forwarding address, and had been told that the previous tenants had been two college students who had only lived there a few months before leaving ("for Europe, I presume.") without any notice. The tenant before them had been an elderly man who had been living there for a couple of years, and one day he'd been found dead on a park bench. When no relatives could be found, his belongings had been sold at auction.

The suitcase had been locked, and after an initial failed attempt at picking the lock (he'd rationalized that the contents might tell him who it should be passed on to), he'd put it back in the closet intending to have another try at it later. But it wasn't until a week ago that he had finally, on the fourth attempt, gotten the lock to open, or had just broken it, he wasn't sure which.

He'd noticed during his forays at the lock that the suitcase was bulging, packed tight with whatever was inside. When he opened the locked side, that corner of the lid lifted, straining at the other side. He'd pressed it back down and gingerly popped the other latch, then slowly opened it. The odor of mildew wafted up to him. The suitcase was filled with notebooks, a couple of which were stuck to the inside of the lid. There were all kinds: mostly spiral, but also cardboard bound, fancy hardcovered ones, and a lot of sheaves of paper stapled or paper-clipped together. On the lower right hand corner of each of the notebook covers was carefully written the name John Mittelmann.

He'd leafed through several of them, hoping to find some address or identification. The pages were rumpled and warped and mildew speckled. There was nothing, as far as he could tell from skimming a few pages, but a rather dry reportage of some sort of a salesman's daily doings. He'd squashed it closed and stashed it away in the closet with the thought that he'd go through it more thoroughly some rainy day. The next day he'd received the call from Constance Trask.

He arrived at a corner that had a traffic light, and after consulting a map hastily drawn to Ms. Trask's instructions, turned right and trudged another two blocks before coming to a '50s-ish flagstone-walled building with a large front window gold-leafed with the words Parker, Gonzalez, Trask - Legal Consultants. He shoved the glass door open with his shoulder and went in. He immediately found himself before a curved formica counter, and a pretty young woman seated behind it asked if she could help him. When he told her his name, she said he was expected and got up, opened a door to the right of the counter and motioned him in.

The room he came into had a single large conference table in the middle of it, surrounded with upholstered chairs. Most of them were empty, but the one at the end and the two nearest it on either side were occupied. On the side away from him a sturdily built 30s-ish woman with strawberry blonde hair was earnestly conversing with the man next to her, a middle-aged man with pale skin, a grizzled beard and glasses. On the nearer side a well-tanned middle-aged man with thinning dark hair was talking to a dark-haired young woman in the end chair. The woman in the chair nearest him, a stocky woman wearing a maroon sweatsuit and sporting a Gertrude Stein haircut turned and looked at him as he came in. Everyone stopped talking and the woman at the end got up and walked purposefully over to him. She extended her hand and said "Mr. Porter? I'm Constance Trask."

[So...why do all these people want to get their hands on these journals? What would a closer reading of them disclose? Might some or all of these people be mentioned in them? Why are the pages "rumpled, warped, and mildew speckled"? What "sort of a salesman" might J.M. have been?]

Well, Hello, Connie! It had been four years since the witch had turned me into a suitcase, stuffed me with old sales records and chucked me into a Union Station dumpster just prior to hopping the Coast Starlight with a half million simoleons of my dough and a Triptyk two yards long. So we meet again, sweet Connie! But this time things will be different, Connie. This time it won't be me who falls into the palsied hands of a hooch-crazed hobo, then gets left in the gutter to be dredged up by two glue-sniffing ten-year-olds an hour later and tossed over a fence into the monkey cage at the City Park. This time it won't be me who spends a year and a half in a dark wet corner of a zoo enclosure jealously guarded by a sedative-muddled orangutan. And it won't be me who finally gets found by an absinthe-addicted apprentice zookeeper sleeping one off in the primate compound, then dropped in a trashcan behind a hock shop after being rejected by a macrobiotic-diet-addled assistant pawnbroker with two missing fingers and a crying need for dental floss. No, Connie, nor will it be me who then serves 18 months as a makeshift footstool in the perenially leaky lavatory of the nearby Home for Short Persons, then is stolen as a prank by hooch-crazed absinthe-addicted college students and forgotten in their closet when, in a mushroom-ingesting episode, they flew standby to Serbia to accept hallucinated offers of work there as superspies.

I might be only a suitcase now, but I had a plan.

Kent was beginning to have his suspicions that there was more to this whole situation than met the eye. He laid the suitcase on the conference table and settled warily into a chair, as Constance began introducing the other members of the group.

"These are my associates, Skip Gonzales and Pete Trask," she said, indicating the dark-haired woman and the tanned man. Pete smiled, and Skip nodded, business-like.

"And this is Mr. Garth Mittelmann and his daughter-in-law, Shanna Mittelman." Kent found his hand being shaken energetically by Mr. Mittelmann, who said with an unmistakeable Brooklyn accent, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Porter." Shanna Mittelmann just beamed at him and stole an excited glance at the suitcase.

"Excuse the sweats," Constance Trask was saying as she resumed her seat. "Pete's got me on a daily exercise regime."

"We're running in a couples' 10K in October," Pete explained happily. "Something we've been meaning to do ever since we got married last spring, and I promised Connie I'd help her get in shape."

"Can we please get down to business?" said Skip, with a frown and a glance at her watch. "We have many things to discuss." It was the first time she had spoken, and Kent noted that she also had an accent, this one a bit harder to place than Garth Mittelmann's. Brazilian, perhaps?

Kent stood, cleared his throat and began his story. As he spoke, relating who had lived in the apartment and where he had found the suitcase, he realized that he was very nervous. This whole affair was none of his business. He wasn't even interested in a monetary reward. Actually he just wanted to go home to his now suitcase-free apartment or maybe take in a much needed Sci-Fi flick at the Cinerama 46.

He abruptly stopped speaking.

"Well, that's all," he added and sat back down. Then he reached forward and popped the suitcase latches open. He lifted the squeaky lid and turned it around for all to see. There was a general intake of breath and everybody leaned forward.

Constance leaned over and lifted out about six journals. As she began to carefully turn the pages of the first one, Skip peeled another off the suitcase lid. Then to everyone's surprise, Shanna reached over, flipped up a few more spiral bound notebooks before exposing two exquisite leather bound volumes that Kent had not noticed before.

"There they are!!" She gasped, and with a triumphant sweep of the hand, grabbed them up. Without a backward glance, she barreled out of the room. The rest of them watched the door close, then looked at each other.

"I'll go after her." said Pete. He jumped up and headed toward the door. Then he paused and braced his hands against the wall to stretch his legs. "Back soon", he said as he darted out.

Everyone else rushed to the window. They saw Shanna turning left several blocks away just as Pete came into view. He ran up the same street, then turned right at the first block.

"After them!" Cried Constance and she too braced her hands against the wall to stretch.

Everyone followed suit and stretched out quickly, then darted out at once. Skip went after Pete while Garth and Kent chased Shanna in a mad rush. After all, the woman was wearing heels, how far could she get?

Connie paced slowly around the wooden office table, keeping her eyes on the old, worn suitcase.

"So, you’re back. Well, John, it doesn’t surprise me. You’ve always pushed the limits, getting what you want. Now that we’re once again here in my office, you have anything to say?" Connie laughed cruelly, placing both her hands on the table and leaning in toward her old partner.

"You had the chance to live your life as it was meant. You really shouldn’t meddle in other people’s business. Oh yes, let me re-phrase that. You should keep your eye on other people’s lives, not mine."

Connie walked to the window and peered out on the street. No one was returning, she had plenty of time.

"Truth is, John, I need you. I really wanted to avoid this whole messy business, but you’re the only one I know who can do this. I have a very important job for you to do. You will, of course, need your journals, so those idiot muggles better get them back."

[So... John Mittelmann does exist. In some form anyway...]

Constance Trask reached down between her ample bosoms and retrieved a tiny sparkling wand (though to be sure, a much larger wand could have been hidden there.) She waved the mystical stick over the satchel and in a monotone delivered the magical words "Ay vantchur bah dee" three times. Instantly, right there on the conference room table and much to his embarrassment, John Mittelmann's naked body materialized.

"I'm sorry my dear," Constance said "but my magical methods evidently aren't up to materializing non-living items such as clothing. That particular installment of my mail order conjuring lessons must have been lost when the mailman was chased down the street by my ravenous miniature Chihuahua, Boris."

John, momentarily longing for his previous and sexually neutral state, lurched off the table and seated himself in the relative concealment of a conference room chair. He leapt back up off the chair and seated himself in the next chair. "What are those icecubes doing on that chair?"

Constance, at first not sure what had caused John's impromptu but graceful change of chairs, came to her senses "Oh, sorry, that must have been that klutzy Shanna. She grabbed for the leather bound volumes so quickly that she must have knocked over her ice tea."

Constance opened a closet door and pulled out a Colombo-esq raincoat and slid it across the table to the now shivering journalizer.

John, donning the drab coat said "Don't' worry Connie, it wasn't your lack of conjuring skills that is the problem. If you recall, you turned me into a satchel as I was stepping out of the shower. You might have waited until I got dressed. By the way, I'm starved. I've gone without food for four years. Being full of old journals is not the same as eating you know. Is that little sidewalk stand downstairs still in business, the one with the delicious chili?"

[Connie's Monolog Begins]

"Funny you should mention it." Constance said, looking furtively into the hall through the partially opened door. "I bought the place a few years ago. It cost me most of your simoleons. If I'd known what a simoleon was worth then, I wouldn't have bothered turning you into a suitcase." Fortunately the old "Simoliano" that owned the place didn't know the worth of his home country's currency. He was known on the street as the Chili Nazi (or CN for short). His chili was so good that he turned away anyone that looked cross-eyed at him, knowing that there was such a demand for his chili that he didn't have to be nice to his customers."

"Before that day that I turned you into a satchel, I had accidentally come across CN's special chili recipe in an old dresser that he had unknowingly sold me at his garage sale. I decided to take over his business (I too was an avid chile fan.) One day I waved the old recipe in the old Simoliano's face just as he was about to evict me from his premises. He knew that I had him in a corner. I threatened to start a competing chili stand across the street. He broke down and cried right there in front of me. I was bluffing. The recipe was written in Simolean, which I could not understand."

"For days we were at a stalemate. I had no start up money to open my own stand and I could find no one that knew Simolean. Then I remembered that one night after a drunken party, you had divulged to me that you had fought in the Serbo-Simolean war and had come away with a tremendous hoard of Simolean currency as war booty."

"I quickly went to my PC and pointed my browser at www.sneakystuff.com. There I signed up for a correspondence course in conjuring. After learning the appropriate techniques, I sneaked up to your apartment and listened at your door. When I heard you singing, "Who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder" in the shower, I knew this was my chance. I slipped in and changed you into a suitcase. Then, to cover up all evidence of your existence I stuffed all your journals into you. I had not realized that the secret chili recipe had slipped out of my secret bosom hiding place (SBHP) and got mixed in with some loose journal pages."

"I immediately went over to the chili stand and offered CN most of your simoleans in exchange for the stand. The old Simoliano did not hesitate one moment. He grabbed your booty and ran, leaving me as owner of the world's most profitable chili establishment (WMPCE).

But what a hollow victory it was. When I found out that the recipe was missing from my SBHP, my heart fell to a very low and unspeakable place (VL&UP). It wasn't long before I figured out what must have happened. And, it wasn't long before I was running the world's least profitable chili establishment (WLPCE)."

"It was a low time indeed. The worst day was when instead of having a line of eager customers outside my door, I had a chanting mob yelling "Bring back the Nazi! Bring back CN! Bring back the Nazi! Bring back CN!" repeatedly, and repeatedly until I almost went out of my mind.

The mob was led by a little old white haired lady in a saggy old blue and white polka dot jogging outfit whom I had never seen before. Later I discovered that she was our mysterious and inactive law partner Susy Parker. It turned out that she had had a successful career as a super model and movie star until she discovered CN's chili."

"It was in desperation that I married Pete Trask and thereby became a junior working partner of Parker, Gonzalez and Trask esqs, et al."

"Pete was a regular customer of the WMPCE before it became the WLPCE. He was one of the few that stayed on despite having to eat the world's most horrible chili. He must have seen something in me that no one else saw. But as for me, I'm afraid it was a marriage of convenience. Despite turning you into a satchel, I've always loved you. I hope you can understand that. My need for the chili was just too great."

"The worst part of this whole thing is that I have spread the problem to the law firm. In order to keep the WLPCE open Pete and I have siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the law firm without the consent of the partners. We have partially covered this up by showing a large accounts receivable balance on the books for fictitious services rendered to the WLPCE. All this time we have desperately tried to find out what happened to the satchel (you) after I dumped it in a Union Station dumpster."

"It was Pete's idea to enlist the services of the noted clairvoyant Maya Petite to try and find out the whereabouts of the enchanted you and your contents, aka the satchel. Had we not gone to Maya, Ken Porter would still be fumbling about your journals trying to figure out who to contact. It was only at our current meeting that I realized that you must know Simolean, since you had been to Simolia for an extended period and now, for the first time, as I stared at the open satchel, realized that all your journals are coded in the Simolean tongue." You are the only one that can tell the real chili recipe from your other boring journal pages.

"What irony! Now you, who I inconvenienced for four years, are my only salvation. May those muggles never return. You and I will run the WLPCE and turn it back into the WMPCE."

[Connie's Monolog Ends]

"Curses!" thought Mittelmann. "All those years of planning for naught. It's just going to be too easy to get even with her." He ambled over to the corner of the conference room and picked up an empty wastebasket. With one long swoop of his right arm he pushed all his scattered journals from the table into the container and carried it out into the hall. Constance stood staring at him, unbelieving.

"Where are you going?" She opined.

As he walked to the elevator barefoot, clad only in the motley gray raincoat, he looked over his shoulder and replied "I think I'll start my own chili stand across the street from yours. So long sweet Connie."

She cried after him to no avail. "Give me back my raincoat, you ungrateful brute!"