Otto

Chapter 2: Otto pilot

He sat by himself looking, forgive me, slightly retarded with his huge
glasses, his sparse unkempt hair and wide plastic grin. His eyes bobbed
lazily behind thick lenses. A white shirt and black tie stretched over
a bulking frame on the verge of bursting. He had some odd contraption
strapped around his forehead and errant coasters lay strewn about his
table and wedged into the folds of his seat. He looked to me a shoe-in
for going postal.

"Hunh?", Frank asked. "Reeta Melownee. Meess Januory.", replied the
man, which prompted Frank to repeat his question. Of course he was
talking about Rita Melone. Apparently she was a hot topic around this
neighborhood. And that, in a nutshell, is how we, Frank and I, were
introduced to Otto, which to emulate our new friend is pronounced
"aught to". It was clear to me from that very first meeting, despite
his appearance and being, without question, phonetically challenged,
that this Otto was a genius.

As the night progressed, Frank and I did most of the talking while,
occasionally, Otto would interject with inspired scribbling on paper
napkins. He had adopted this new medium, drafting notes and sketches,
early in the evening when he realized conversation was taking an
awkward turn towards charades. Attempts at acting out his queer
phonetics proved tasking. Sweat oozed out of him like grease through a
stocking and he could see that, for all his efforts, he wasn't getting
through. Falling back on the knowledge that all thoughts are iconic, he
dispensed with gesticulation altogether. He gutted the napkin
dispenser, dabbed his brow and armpits with the first, and, tongue
curled over his upper lip, set himself to drawing.

By the close of that first night scribbled napkins lay sorted in
mismatched piles across our table. Otto, though he had only swallowed
three beers by my count, seemed to slip in and out of awareness. And,
Frank...well...