Is Joe immortal?
Don’t tell him that I told you this – he’ll never look here and read this – but It has long been suspected by other members of the band – OK, by me - that the person we all know so affably as “Joe Wallner”, is in fact an immortal being of unknown origin. First, well, he looks pretty young. He should look old. But wait, there’s more. Iwill make this as brief as I can.
Long story short, my great Aunt Mabel was a free-spirited artist and in the early 1920’s she moved to Paris where she parted and hung out with the literati and artists. Fast forward a hundred years. I am going through some of my aunt’s paintings, handed down through grandmother, then mother, then me. One painting, on the crumbly brown paper backing, says in faint pencil “Café Monmartre Sept 1922,” and “mon cherie Josef.” I lean it forward and this is what I see:
It’s him, I swear that’s Joe! In the painting, playing piano. Café Monmartre. Paris. 1922. He hardly looks any older than in the painting even now!
I admit that I may be jumping to conclusions in stating that Joe is immortal. He could simply be very unnaturally long-lived. He could be part of experimentation into longevity and immortality. He might – the most likely alternative explanation – be a time traveler accessing our past, present and future at will pursuing some nefarious and nebulous plan the nature of which or consequence of, we may find out only too late. Perhaps he is a vampire and therefore for all intents and purposes immortal, but not, in a literal sense, immortal. This possibility is not good, either.
I think I will keep playing in the band and not say anything to him about it for now. I need to find out if there is some kind of concoction that he takes to remain ageless, and if so, I need to figure out how to steal it. Also, need to know if he has any future rays or aliens to kill me with if I do. If you vaguely remember seeing grown-up-me somewhere when we were kids, lurking in the background, then you know he got me with his time ray.
People always think it’s going to be the Death Ray, but no, it’s the freakin time ray, every time.
To be honest, the most disturbing part of all of this is to think that Joe prolly boinked my dear old Aunt Mabel.
