Déjà vu

Last Friday I moved my sailboat into a small marina in Annapolis, Maryland. It’s one of a dozen or more marinas that crowd the shores of Back Creek. When you step off the docks, you are in the Eastport neighborhood—known locally as the Maritime Republic of Eastport. A less-touristy area than Annapolis proper, Eastport has none of the bustle that accompanies the capitol of a state. If you didn’t know the State House was just a short walk across the Spa Creek bridge, you’d never guess it. The streets are lined with small charming houses. Trees arch out to form a canopy of green overhead. From around every corner you catch a glimpse of water and, of course, boats.

Walking out of the marina parking lot to look around, you find the Leeward coffee shop two blocks to the east. About a half-block west is Davis’s Tavern, a former mercantile store in the 1930’s, converted to a local watering hole. Really, this is about as perfect as it gets for a writer: libations for either end of the day all within walking distance.

The evening after we tied up, we decided to go see what was happening at the tavern, see what the locals do for fun after the long work-week. To our surprise, Davis’s was crowded. Outside, people stood in clusters under the green awnings or sat at the tables. Inside, the barstools were full. We took a table nearby and overheard several lies . . . I mean sea stories being told. Most of the patrons had houses nearby, or boats at the marinas across the street, or both. It was a happy, convivial atmosphere that made you want to stay and mingle.

That’s when my first attack of déjà vu hit: I had been there before. No, I don’t mean that I had ever been in Davis’s Tavern. Before that evening, I didn’t even know it existed. But there was a feel to the place that was very familiar, except I couldn’t figure out the connection. The next morning, writing away on my latest book, I realize that Davis’s shared some striking resemblances to the bar I had created for my characters. My bar—The Laughing Gull—is in an old, historic building on the waterfront. You can see boats from its windows. The vibe I get from the bar I created is a lot like the real one: warm, welcoming and boisterous.

A few days later we stopped into the tavern again. It wasn’t so busy on a weeknight, so we pulled up a stool. As I was sipping my wine, a man walked up to the bar next to me, smiled and ordered a drink. He had a thick accent that sounded Italian. After the bartender served him, he took his beer outside to a table. Through the windows, I could see him sit down with several other older men who all seemed to be talking at once and having a great time. Forgetting my manners, I started to stare. He looked very like my image of Antonio Berzani, patriarch of the Berzani clan and father to my hero, Ian. Did he have an Italian accent? Yes. Did he talk with his hands? Yes. Was he tall, have silver hair and dark eyes with a twinkle lurking in their depths? Yes, yes, yes.

Whoa.

Did one of my characters just come to life? And was he in a bar that came out of my imagination? The universe isn’t supposed to work that way, but what if this is one of those mysterious anomalies? What I love most of all about this “déjà vu” experience (I’m sure there’s a better psychological term for experiencing something you imagined beforehand) is that it shows I’ve successfully translated my experiences on the Chesapeake Bay extracted from a myriad of small communities—Chestertown, Deltaville, Oxford, Easton—into a “real” fictional place, somewhere my characters really would live, laugh and love.

So far, none of my other characters has made an appearance at Davis’s or around the neighborhood, but I’m not giving up. Any day, I expect to see Kate and Patrick with their baby, strolling along Chester Avenue, or Ian lugging his tool box into a boatyard, or Mimi strumming her guitar and singing at a local hangout. I believe that there’s a thin spot in the fabric of the universe somewhere around here and through it, my stories are entering this reality.

How cool would that be?