Episode 1:

Family Riddles

Episode 1 – Season 1 – March 15, 2016

Show Notes:

Greater Boston is written and produced by Alexander Danner and Jeff Van Dreason. Recording and technical assistance from Marck Harmon.

You can support Greater Boston on Patreon.

Cast:
  • James Johnston as Dimitri Stamatis (he/him)
  • Kelly McCabe as Nica Stamatis (she/her)
  • Braden Lamb as Leon Stamatis (he/him)
  • Alexander Danner as The Narrator (he/him) and the Singer Pitch Man
  • Jeff Van Dreason as BB Bosco (The Riddle King) (he/him) and Someday Cafe MC

Interview clips gathered from Greater Boston residents.

Content Warning:
  • Strong language
  • Death (Non-violent) (Ambiguous Suicide)

Transcript:

COLD OPEN—INTERVIEW CLIP

 

Female Interview 1

 

What I love about Boston is that we’re such a close-knit little city. Boston is kinda like one of those cities that’s like…”oh yeah—they have history there.” But we’re sooo cute. I think we’re a cute city. And I don’t know how else to say this, but I love being from Boston, ’cause it’s like…you’ve heard about me.

 

[Charlie on the MTA instrumental fades in.]

 

One: You’ve heard about us. Everybody hears about Boston.

 

Interviewer – Jeff Van Dreason

 

Everybody knows about Boston.

 

Female Interview 1

 

There’s like a clean…like an ocean taste to us, I guess. It’s like when you eat a clam. It’s like…we’re that clean.

 

 

 

TITLE SEQUENCE

 

Multiple Voices

 

Braintree

 

Arlington

 

Peabody

 

Haverhill

 

Lowell

 

Alright.

 

Fall River

 

Cambridge

 

Quincy

 

I can’t say that one without a ridiculous accent, it’s just impossible

 

Arlington

 

Framingham

 

Newton

 

Lynn

 

Worcester

 

This is

 

Framingham

 

Waltham

 

Quincy

 

Arlington

 

Revere

 

Waltham

 

Somerville

 

Arlington

 

Leominster

 

This is

 

Haverhill

 

Medford

 

Brookline

 

Somerville

 

Cambridge

 

This is

 

This is

 

This is

 

Greater Boston

 

EPISODE CONTENTS

 

Narrator – Alexander Danner

 

This week in Greater Boston, we meet three siblings: baby brother Dimitri hunts the Sasquatch in “Part-Time Cryptozoologists;” middle child Nica rubs shoulders with celebrities in “The Famous Bobbin Winder;” and eldest brother Leon dies on a roller coaster in “Disaster Planning.”

 

[Intro music fades out]

 

In episode 1: Family Riddles

 

THE BIG BOOK OF RIDDLES

 

BB BOSCO – Jeff Van Dreason

 

[Quiz Show splash music cuts in]

 

And now, a reading from the Big Book of Riddles by B.B. Bosco.

 

[Quiz show splash music ends]

 

[Quiz show anxiety music fades in]

 

A child was born in Boston, Massachusetts to parents who were born in Boston, Massachusetts. The child was not a US citizen. How can this be?

 

What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years?

 

Which word in the dictionary is always spelled incorrectly?

 

What can travel around the world while staying in a corner?

 

What gets broken without being held?

 

What always murmurs but never talks? Always runs but never walks? Has a bed but never sleeps? Has a mouth but never speaks?

 

What is greater than god, more evil than the devil? The poor have it, the rich need it and if you’ll eat it, you’ll die.

 

What’s always coming but never arrives?

 

He who makes it has no use for it. She who buys it has no use for it. He who uses it can neither see nor feel it. What is it?

 

[Quiz show anxiety music ends]

 

[Quiz show splash music cuts in]

 

Remember, page 113 has the answers. No peeking!

 

[Quiz show splash music ends]

 

CHAPTER 1 PART-TIME CRYPTOZOOLOGISTS

 

Dimitri Stamatis—James Johnston

 

Dear Leon,

 

Let me say it up front: you were right. The Sasquatch is a myth.

 

[Tosa Waltz fades in.]

 

I know, that’s hardly a surprise to you, and honestly it’s less of a surprise to me than you might suspect.

 

My guides in my hunt were a pair of second-generation Sasquatch-spotters, a rosy-cheeked husband and wife team, Timothy and Tiffany Ludlow. The Ludlows have spent their entire lives migrating through a circuit of cabins and camps in the wooded northwest, ushered into their lifestyle by their own parents. They were a welcoming pair, self-appointed ambassadors to the Sasquatch-curious, always on the search for potential new initiates. I met them in a camping supply store, where I was selecting the items for my camping kit. They were happy to offer their guidance on essential equipment and reliable brands, with further advice about good spots to camp and places to avoid.

 

“Is this your first time chasing Sasquatch?” Tiffany asked. I had not volunteered that I was seeking the Bigfoot. I’d said nothing about it at all, only speaking of my intention to go camping, to get away from the world for a while, to seek myself in the woods. The Ludlows weren’t fooled. They were attuned to their own; they saw Sasquatch in my body language, my tone of voice, the little things I didn’t say. I laughed, and made no effort to deny my true intentions. I needed their help, after all, so why be anything less than forthright?

 

They invited me to join them at their camp, which turned out to be a grand enclave of beards and flannel, a dozen part-time cryptozoologists sharing resources, sharing meals, trading stories of their sightings and near misses, weaving in improbable details, unaccountably poor luck. They reminded me of Nica, these spontaneous storytellers, the way they all were so delighted to have an audience in their midst who hadn’t heard their stories before. Do you remember after the hurricane when we were kids, how the power stayed out for days, and Nica wove tales for us by candlelight every night before bed? And then the power came back on, and we went back to watching television and playing our cassette tapes, and after three days of that, the power went out again. It only lasted a few minutes that time, before dad discovered that all the fuses were gone, stolen, hidden away in Nica’s sock drawer, and Nica extravagantly wondering aloud how they could possibly have gotten there.

 

These men were the same, in a way. A bald-headed insurance adjuster told of the time he spotted just the Sasquatch’s hand resting on a fallen tree, before withdrawing back into the brush. A portly line cook told of the fresh tracks he found in the mud behind his restaurant, leading from the tree line to the dumpsters and back again. A diminutive shop class instructor told of the time he and his girlfriend were parked at camp, when they were interrupted by an inhuman cry from the darkness. They all talked of how they would leave their day job someday, just as soon as they had the evidence they needed, the perfect film footage, the complete fossil, the living specimen. One day soon, their faith would prove out, and the world would acknowledge them.

 

I lived with a rotating cast of these characters for the following six months, each of them taking turns as my guides and companions. They each had their pet strategies, their favorite spotting grounds, some favoring treetop blinds, some spelunking uncharted caves, some preferring to simply walk the trails and count on serendipity to deliver the beast to their path.

 

Serendipity never delivered. In the six months I spent searching, I never saw the least bit of convincing evidence, much though my companions tried to convince me otherwise. They showed me animal hair and footprints and broken branches, and none of it justified the claims they made, none of it resembled the miracles they imagined finding.

 

[Tosa Waltz fades out.]

 

[Nighttime forest noises fade in.]

 

Once, while perched in a treetop blind, I observed the Ludlows, hunting separately, approach each other from the woods, close enough to see, but not recognize the other, each mistaking their spouse for something remarkable. That night at camp, they corroborated each others’ stories. They had seen it in the same place, hadn’t they? By the creek, something manlike, lingering in the trees, peering out at them from behind insufficient cover. They each spoke of being watched by something intelligent, they reported the same, furtive, careful posture, timid and curious. They described the same eyes, knowing and generous, and deserving of love. What else could it be but the Sasquatch?

 

[Owl hoots.]

 

The other cryptozoologists devoured this story, added their own embellishments, how one of them had once found half a footprint in the mud by that same creek, another had picked up the scent of the Sasquatch’s distinctive musk. They congratulated themselves on this great discovery, this great step forward. They opened beers and boxed wines and they celebrated. I said nothing of my observations from my own vantage, of how I had seen them discover nothing but their own selves. I knew I was done then, but I said no goodbyes, reluctant to explain my loss of faith, my exit from the congregation. Disillusionment has never been a gift worth sharing.

 

[Forest noises fade out.]

 

That idea probably makes no sense to you, does it, Leon? The truth had been laid bare, the mystery dispelled. That would have satisfied you. More, that would have relieved you. But I was never there for the Sasquatch, Leon. I was there for the mystery itself. That was what drew me. Had I failed to draw a conclusion, I could have happily stayed in those woods for the remainder of my life.

 

Do you remember that book of riddles we shared as boys? They weren’t difficult to solve, especially for you—you saw the logic of them, plucked solutions from the nuances of phrasing like an angler pulling fish from the sea. But they got harder as we got deeper into the book, took you longer to puzzle out, until eventually they began stumping you entirely. You sat and thought, five minutes, ten minutes, fixated, but quickly giving in to frustration—you snatched the book from me, flipping to the answers at the back, only to find that I’d carefully razored those pages out, tossed them away days earlier. You lost interest instantly, but I continued reading riddles out to you, tormenting you with unresolvable conundrums. I wasn’t interested in the answers, only the questions. The riddles I liked best were the ones we couldn’t solve.

 

[Tosa Waltz fades in]

 

After leaving camp, I hitchhiked to Portland, feeling ready for a few weeks of comfortable living, a hotel bed, a long shower. The hotel was a hotel. The bed was a bed. The water was wet. After four days, I was roaming the streets, looking for signs, omens, miracles. I walked down to the pier to see the ocean, those vast alien fathoms. The depths have always comforted me.

 

That’s where I met the man who owns a submarine.

 

Dear Leon, by the time you receive this letter, I will already be gone, down beneath the waves, in the company of submariners. I will write you again, as soon as I can. Until then, I offer you a mystery: How much of our world has been lost to the ocean?

 

What might still be there?

 

With love,

 

Dimitri

 

[Tosa Waltz Ends]

 

SINGER SEW & VAC RADIO SPOT

 

[Sewing machine noises fade in]

 

Singer Jingle Singers—Alexander Danner

 

Singer!

 

Soft Voice—Alexander Danner

 

Sew & Vac

 

Singer Pitch Man—Alexander Danner

 

In Somerville.

 

Your one-stop shop for all your sewing machine and vacuum repair needs.

 

Isaac Singer invented his sewing machine in 1851. 100 years later, Singer Sew & Vac opened its doors. That’s 100 years of old sewing machines in desperate need of expert repair. Got an antique beauty? Bring ‘er to Singer Sew & Vac today.

 

Need some sewing help? Check out our popular “Singing with Singer” sewing classes; work on your pipes while you pedal and stitch! This week, practice your Irish folk ballads while learning the fine art of the log cabin quilt block.

 

Making your own clothes? If not, then you are missing out on the hot new trend that Improper Bostonian called “this year’s thriftiest fad in haute couture.” Don’t cramp your fingers with needle and thread on that new pair of home-crafted designer dungarees. Stop in at Singer Sew & Vac for your own vintage Singer today. Free extended warranty on all refurbished machines.

 

Sew what? Sew whatever you want, that’s what, at Singer Sew & Vac. 280 Elm Street in Somerville.

 

Sew you soon!

 

[Sewing machine noises fade out]

 

CHAPTER 2: THE FAMOUS BOBBIN WINDER

 

[Cafe noises fade in—chatter, silverware, etc.]

 

Open Mic MC—Jeff Van Dreason

 

I’d just like to thank everybody again for coming out to The Someday Cafe open mic night. Up next we have…Nica Stamatis. A regular at The Someday Cafe, performing one of her…distinctive…monologues.

 

[Applause]

 

Nica Stamatis—Kelly McCabe

 

Hello! It’s good to be back here again. Some of you know me already. I certainly know some of you. Hi Leon. My brother, Leon, folks. Stop rolling your eyes, Leon. No really, he’s my biggest supporter folks. He never misses a show. My name is Nica Stamatis, I’m a Somerville native, and I’ve decided to be famous. So that’s what I’m going to tell you about today.

 

I know, it’s not exactly a big revelation. I mean, I’m standing up here right? You don’t get many people who get up on stage to tell their stories without some kind of desire for public recognition. I think I’ve really got a shot, though. And I’ll tell you why—fame is drawn to me. It finds me. Brushes up against me. Jumps directly into my path so that I can’t help but trip over it.

 

It started early, in a video rental store on in Martha’s Vineyard, where we were spending a week in a summer house. Not our own summer house, obviously. It belonged to a rich friend of my mom’s, an old money molasses magnate she’d gone to high school with. And the summer house had a DVD player, which was very exciting. They weren’t exactly new, but they were still too expensive for us to have one at home yet. So we took a trip to a rental store to rent some videos.

 

While we were there, there was this other guy, a super tall guy, maybe the tallest guy I’d ever seen, right ahead of us at the register. I stood right next to him. And after he left, my Mom was all, “Nica! Did you see Chevy Chase?” And I was like: “Who?” because I had no idea who that was, since he hadn’t even done Community yet. “Well, someday you’ll remember that you met him,” she said, “and you’ll tell your friends about it.” So I guess she was right about that. You know, assuming I can call you guys my friends. Anyway, I rented Feivel Goes West on DVD. Chevy Chase wasn’t in that one.

 

So then came a long dry spell. My high school didn’t turn out many celebrities, though some of us tried. I played in a band. The Weimeraners. I figured no one gets more famous than bands, right? Well, maybe if we hadn’t sucked, but we totally sucked. I played drums, and now the other five guys all work at Olive Garden. And not even the same Olive Garden—they work at five different Olive Gardens in five different towns, but all in New Jersey. Not to knock them or anything, I mean, all I do is fix busted sewing machines. Yes, if I seem familiar to some of you, that’s probably where you know me from, the sewing and vacuum shop on Elm St. I specialize in bobbin winder repairs.

 

Anyway, my Junior year, I got a job at Sew Buttons, that upscale thread shop on Newbury street. The same shop where Matt Damon bought all the thread he used to make his tux for the Oscars the year I worked there—the one with the blue fiber-optic weave that flashed messages about water charities. But anyway, fuck if *I* ever met him. I started out on the sales floor, trying to up-sell trust fund students from premium cotton thread to artisanal distressed silk. But I’m total crap at sales, so I got shuffled into the back, to maintain the machines. That’s how I first started learning about sewing repair.

 

A few years after that, my brother Leon went off to college. Only one of us to do that. I never saw college as a step along the path to where I was going. Our baby brother, Dimitri practically lived at the library, like he even had one of those special library cards that let you stay in the library overnight to keep reading, but he never had much patience for formal education. “They’re too focussed on getting the right answers,” he always said. Like getting the wrong answer is something to aspire to. But anyway, I visited Leon a couple of times, which brought me to the office of Professor Frakes.

 

Professor Frakes was an English teacher, and sometimes he drank coffee out of his son’s head, which was weird, but not that weird, because lots of people drank coffee out of his son’s head. His son was Commander William Thomas Riker, first officer on the Enterprise, and they used to make coffee mugs shaped like his head to sell at Newbury Comics. I never really watched Star Trek, that was Dimitri’s favorite show, but to someone like me who just wants to be famous, you can’t really beat the prestige of having a mass-produced coffee mug shaped like your head. So Professor Frakes was a pretty big deal in my book.

 

So anyway, this one time, I walked into the office of Prof. Frakes, and I tell him, “Prof. Frakes, there’s a student open mic, you should come.” And he just says “no.” And then he scowls at me, the same way he must have scowled at his son when little Jonathan announced he wanted to grow up to be a TV astronaut.

 

And the longer he scowled, the more famous I knew I would someday be.

 

After high school, I was friends with a guy who was making movies, and he cast me in one of them. And that’s how I met Rob Zylowski. Rob played an evil clown, and I played his captive videographer, and at the end of the movie, the clown beat me with my own camera, kind of a whole extreme shakeycam thing, until I coughed up a frozen meatball soaked in warm Jell-O. That was supposed to be the special effect, like if enough red sugar water dripped off that meatball, it would look like I had coughed up my guts after the beating. But mostly it still just looked like a meatball. That movie did not make anyone famous.

 

But then Rob Zylowski was in another movie, called The Princess Diaries, and that movie did make somebody famous. Rob played a pizza guy and a teenaged Anne Hathaway played a princess, and Rob delivered a pizza to teenaged Anne Hathaway’s love interest. Rob didn’t make the pizzas, he just delivered them—that was his dialogue, because he had a crazy long skinny beard, like this six-inch tentacle of beard that practically wanted to shake hands when it met you, so you wouldn’t want him making your pizza because he might get some beard in it. And then he left, ‘cause he was just the pizza guy. But he gave Anne Hathaway’s onscreen boyfriend a pizza, and I coughed up that meatball, so now that’s me and Anne Hathaway, linked at the metaphorical esophagus.

 

And that brings me to today. Here. Now. Working at the sewing and vacuum repair here in Davis Square, which isn’t all hoity-toity trust-fund glitzy like the place I worked on Newbury St. But it’s been around forever, and everyone knows that if you’ve got a serious machine in need of serious repair, you bring it to us. Like…like last week, Amanda Palmer brought in the very machine she used to make the Bride’s gown she wore back in her busking days, when she was the living statue in Harvard Sq. She handed that sacred machine to me, and she trusted me to fix it.

 

And let me tell you, I repaired the fuck out of Amanda Palmer’s bobbin winder.

 

So that’s how far I’ve gotten. I think I must be close.

 

Thank you.

 

[Insincere applause]

 

[Cafe noise fades out]

 

INTERVIEW MONTAGE

 

Interviewer—Jeff Van Dreason

 

Um…do you know any good riddles?

 

Male Interview 1

 

I don’t even know…what do you mean by…like a little fancy rhyme here? Like… what are you talking about?

 

Interviewer

 

A riddle. You know!

 

[Laughter]

 

Female Interview 2

 

Yeah, there’s one that I can’t say. Um…that she-sell one.

 

Interviewer

 

Go ahead

 

Female Interview 2

 

By the seashore.

 

Male Interview 2

 

[Clicks tongue, followed by sharp intake of breath.]

 

Oh man, I always mess it up.

 

Female Interview 3

 

What do you call a clairvoyant dwarf who’s missing?

 

Male Interview 2

 

Okay, what has four legs, and then two, and then three. And then four again, I think.

 

Female Interview 2

 

She…she sells she sells by the seashore.

 

Female Interview 3

 

A small medium at large. [Laughing] That’s the only one I can remember. It’s not good!

 

Interviewer

 

I like it, I like it.

 

Male Interview 2

 

When you’re a baby, you crawl on all fours. And then when you’re a man you have two legs. And when you’re an old man, you have a cane, so three legs. And then back to four, cause you’re dead? I don’t know.

 

Female Interview 2

 

She sells, she sells by the seash—I feel like I’m repeating it, like…!

 

Female Interview 1

 

You know what? Maybe I told it wrong.

 

Interviewer

 

I don’t know. It’s…I’m a little confused.

 

Male Interview 3

 

Ummm…yeah. You’re in a house with no windows and no doors. All you have is a table and a saw. How do you get out of the house? You cut the table in half. You put the two halves together. Two halves make a whole, and you walk through the hole.

 

CHAPTER THREE: DISASTER PLANNING

 

Narrator—Alexander Danner

 

Leon Stamatis died on a roller coaster at the age of 32. It was not a dramatic death; his car did not detach from the rails, his body did not loose itself from its seat. His death was quiet, unobtrusive. In that way, you could even say that Leon found the kind of death he’d always planned for.

 

He’d had profound misgivings about boarding the ride in the first place. He’d never been an adventurer, not like his little brother Dimitri, who had disappeared into the mysterious labyrinth of the world, nor a thrill-seeker like Nica, who grinned wider for every inch the line advanced. It had been Nica who had goaded Leon into coming here in the first place, escorting him via the Red Line from Porter Square to Park St., briefly boarding the Green Line to reach the Government Center connection, where they boarded the Stygian Blue Line, which ferried them mercilessly to its terminus:

 

[Amusement park noises fade in. People cheering on rides.]

 

Wonderland.

 

Once there, Nica insisted that the absurdly-named roller coaster be their first stop, pulling him by the cuff of his sleeve. She had brought him out here specifically to cheer him up after the end of his most recent relationship. She saw not so much a responsibility as an opportunity to be useful, and Leon felt obliged to indulge her, to allow her that pride of having comforted a loved one in need. So he put on his smile, took deep breaths, and shuffled along the crowd control maze that guided him toward his destiny.

 

He knew he could change his mind. It’s not as though he had inscribed this into his schedule. The trip itself, sure. It was right there in his Google calendar: “Post-relationship outing with Nica. (Destination Wonderland.)” But nothing committing to the roller coaster itself, and certainly nothing about some rickety monster called, good lord, “Whirlodon.” And if it wasn’t on his schedule, then he didn’t have to do it. He reminded himself with every step. As he approached the polo-shirted teen with the child-measuring rod, he reminded himself. As he stepped off the platform into the third car from the front, he reminded himself. But when the shoulder cage descended over his head, he realized he was too late.

 

[Ominous hydraulic sound]

 

The appointment was confirmed.

 

He didn’t even mind so much that his relationship had fallen apart. He was more concerned about the precarious state of his job. He’d found the relationship stressful, Louisa expecting outings on a moment’s notice, to movies, to dance clubs, all the way to the North End for florentine cannoli at Mike’s Pastry. It wouldn’t have been so bad, if only she had planned ahead, given him a month’s warning, or maybe two. Heck, he liked the North End, where the streets were permanently tacky from The Great Molasses Flood, so you had to slow down your step, just a little, or the sidewalk would pull your shoes right off. But Louisa sprang things on him, cooking classes, and dinner reservations, and IMAX showings of documentaries about Antarctica. It was too much.

 

The operator released the cars, and Leon was jerked forward.

 

[Ratcheting noise of roller coaster ascending fades in]

 

He laughed once, the way a condemned man laughs when he doesn’t quite believe what’s coming. Nica misunderstood, gave him a nod and a grin. As the car rose, Leon began planning. He would keep his hands and arms inside the car, of course. He would not give up his one means of anchoring himself, should the safety harness fail. There weren’t any good handholds. Holding the harness itself wouldn’t help. If the harness detached, he’d just have a good grip on it as they flew off into the atmosphere together. But there wasn’t even a lap bar, since the five-point harness was expected to suffice. Leon was not so trusting. He understood the need to be proactive, to ensure his own security. That was why he’d begun job hunting, despite having a job in which he’d been content for ten years. The publishing industry was shrinking. He had survived the first round of layoffs, but needed to be ready for the second.

 

The cars clacked, dragged forward by the chain, through the ratcheting mechanism of the side rails. He understood that this was a safety system, an assurance that the cars could never fall backwards, simultaneously snapping the necks of every passenger on the train; understanding made the sound no less ominous. Up they clacked, up, and up, and up, he couldn’t believe how far up, how long they ascended, whole lifetimes passing while Nica bounced in the seat beside him.

 

[Amusement park noises fade out]

 

[Ratcheting noise increases in intensity—then abruptly stops]

 

Leon had never been good at anticipation. There was no joy in it for him, only the dread of uncertainty, the panic of surprise. As a child, he had refused to open his own Christmas presents, insisting that Nica and Dimitri do it for him, while he waited in the next room with his eyes closed. His siblings reported back to him dutifully, carefully detailing what they had found, most significant presents first so as to ease the greatest anxieties, then continuing in order of diminishing value, to end in the familiar safety of socks and number-2 pencils. Only once he knew every item, had assuaged all lingering mystery, would he dare to set eyes on the totems of affection his family had chosen for him.

 

[Ratcheting fades back in]

 

He discovered that if he stretched his arms far enough, he could hook his fingers under the bottom of the seat itself. The metal was filthy and unpolished in this unseen space. It cut into his fingers. He calculated dates to reassure himself that his tetanus inoculations were current. They were. So that was one less thing, at least. Tetanus was not among the uncertainties.

 

Leon could bear no uncertainty. He was the sort who would gladly accept knowledge of the exact time and cause of his death, given the opportunity. He wouldn’t even try to change that fate—the knowing would be enough, more than enough, better than avoiding it only to land back in the limbo of uncertainty. He had even applied for a position at an astrology magazine, not because he believed in astrology, which he did not, but simply because he respected the art’s goal: the complete elimination of the unknown.

 

[Ratcheting noise fades out]

 

A life without surprises, without the unexpected, without unanticipated terrors. However much about the world changed, superstition would always be a constant, perhaps all the more so in times of upheaval.

 

[Ratcheting fades in]

 

Just look at Dimitri, run off into the woods in search of implausible creatures, or Nica, hanging her hopes on chance encounters with famous strangers. Yes, Astrology was a counterintuitively solid post to which Leon could tie his ship.

 

He thought about all of that during the interminable rise along the track, but soon enough, all that time was reduced to a mere blip, the end come much too soon, as Leon saw the passengers in the head car raise their hands in the air just before disappearing over the zenith of the track

 

[Ratcheting ends. People scream in delight]

 

[Ominous clank of something releasing]

 

[Heavy winds blow]

 

followed by the second car, and then there he was, at the peak, looking out over the edge at a 200 foot vertical drop, followed by an array of twists and loops; he tried to make the calculations, to consider how best to turn his body, or shift his weight, or anchor his hands, but he knew it was hopeless. Whatever was going to happen would happen far too fast for any of his careful preparations to mean anything at all; either his little pod would drive itself into the ground with crushing force or it wouldn’t; it would fly free of its rails or it wouldn’t; it would kill him or it wouldn’t.

 

[Wind blowing ends]

 

There was no solution to this puzzle, save to wait, and hope. And now here was Nica, tossing her hands in the air, with no concerns at all.

 

Leon just couldn’t do it. He took one look from atop that rickety wave of track, that dizzying array of speed and surprise, and embraced the greatest certainty he could muster; he muttered a single word…

 

Leon Stamatis—Braden Lamb

 

Nope.

 

Narrator

 

…then preemptively expired, willfully exited the world, without feeling even the first breeze of descent.

 

[Sound of roller coaster descending a steep drop, then continuing for several moments]

 

[Sad Charlie on the MTA instrumental fades in]

 

CREDITS

 

Jeff Van Dreason

 

Greater Boston is written and produced by Alexander Danner and Jeff Van Dreason, with recording and technical assistance from Marck Harmon.

 

In order of appearance, this episode featured:

 

  • James Johnston as Dimitri Stamatis (he/him)
  • Kelly McCabe as Nica Stamatis (she/her)
  • Braden Lamb as the voice of Leon Stamatis (he/him)
  • Alexander Danner as The Narrator (he/him) and the Singer pitch man
  • Jeff Van Dreason as BB Bosco (he/him)

Interview clips gathered from greater Boston residents.

 

Charlie on the MTA is recorded by Emily Peterson and Dirk Tiede.

 

The Tosa Waltz is written by Michael Cassidy, and performed by Emily Peterson and Dirk Tiede.

 

Additional music by David Fernandez.

 

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[Sad Charlie ends.]

 

COOKIE

 

Male Interview 2

 

I have one sibling. We don’t get along too well, and he likes football. And the strangest thing is, umm… [clicks tongue, sharp intake of breath] He always comes in my room and steals my deodorant. I don’t know why. He has his own.

 

Interviewer

 

Is yours…better?

 

Male Interview 2

 

I guess, yeah. It’s kind of the same brand, but different…flavors?

 

[End Transcript]