NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
I found Lou Waymarsh up on his ladder. Lou is from tobacco country, Chesterfield County, but moved north to find work and a house in Fauxmont. He has always enjoyed working with his hands and is beginning his retirement by doing odd repairs for his two neighbors, Didlie and Derwent. He comes down promptly when he sees my aging Saturn wagon, flecked with brown from sticky sap that drips on it in the driveway all through Spring. I have overshot. The rear windows are obscured by the dog’s nose prints and looking back it is hard to see what he was doing up in the eaves of the Sloot house. He tramps over gravel, which has spilled out of the roadside ditch during the storm. The forecast snow turned out to be rain. After he gets in we move off in a sluggish four cylinder crawl along Fauxmont’s narrow winding wooded streets, where I promptly lose my bearings. After driving an extra mile that Lou tactfully called a ‘grand tour”, we park outside Hoffman’s Bar and Grille for lunch. The ‘H-Bar’, scene of my first taste of Fauxmont, is frequented by many in the community as well as local business owners, politicians, academics, technicians from the Prestige U. physics lab and mechanics from the Light House gas station across Maxwell avenue.
As we sit down at the only two vacant bar stools, I notice that they’re selling a new brand of mineral water in glass bottles. He agrees to let me buy him a bottle of what he calls, “snob water”, rather than his usual beer as he plans to go back up the ladder afterwards. This brand is bottled in England, and drawn from the lake where King Arthur found his sword Excalibur, just the way the picture on the label shows. Of course it is by “appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth”, which adds to the price we pay for such prestigious stuff. The guys just off the bar to our right in the “Quantum Que” pool room have also found it impossible to resist. While to our left, in the Quark Lounge it is ‘de rigueur’ with the professorate from Prestige U. I can also see a growing line at the “String Bag” carry out counter waiting for one of the “ten delicious dimensions in food and flavor”. There are eleven dimensions on Friday nights and twenty-six weekend specials.
Dr. Tinderbrush pours a little of this most pure water in his Ballvenie, his favorite among the single malts, that arguably should not be watered down, not even with Merlin’s ancient magic. Tinderbrush is chatting at the bar with its owner Mr. Hoffman, earnestly telling Hoffman about a scandal. It is all news to Lou and me. Lou, phlegmatic as ever seems happy to sip quietly and silently share our amusement, eavesdropping attentively, while waiting for lunch to be served. Tinderbrush is waiting for Congressman Bean, well-known ranking member on the new House Select Committee on Esthetic Crime. Upon Bean’s arrival they will go up to one of the Heisenberg Rooms, private dining and meeting rooms upstairs. Thanks in part to the popularity of the Quark Lounge and the Quantum Que, Hoffman is acknowledged in certain media circles as being among the most reliable sources in Washington.
Tinderbrush gets animated. “It turns out that on the aluminum cap, atop the Washington Monument are displayed two words: ‘Laus De’. You know the meaning of course?” Tinderbrush asks Hoffman.
“Praise God” replied Hoffman.
Dr. Tinderbrush had made this revelation in yesterday’s news conference with Secular Humanists International, at their god bashing conference in Winnipeg, and their outrage is now amplified by a group of Atheists convening in DC.
Tinderbrush has flown down from Winnipeg to meet Congressman Bean before the Congressman is interviewed on talk radio tonight. He wants Bean’s support for his proposal to tear down the Washington Monument and replace it with something more suitable than that “Great White Egyptian Phallus,” as he now calls it.
He mentions Joy Flack repeatedly and with great disdain. She has proposed a piece by the sculptor Boris Tarantula as a replacement for the white column now in place. It is said she represents a group in New York who are lobbying to get the new monument contract, should there be one. Others will tell you that there isn’t any chance of the monument being replaced, but no one is sure where the committee will end up on the subject. Perhaps the mention of God in aluminum at the top of the monument could be replaced with other words? In aluminum? Not in aluminum? What about the aluminum lobby? Speculation is endless.
I remember Tarantula from the 1980s. He was headline news as a political dissident when he defected from Romania. He was reportedly born in Transylvania, and soon made it known that he is a descendent of Count Dracula’s. He claimed that the Dracula and the Tarantula families had been closely related since the Mongol Invasion. His ancestor Varlan Tarantula was a commoner, who saved an early Dracula from the Mongols by marrying the princess himself, and buying off the marauding Mongol chief with a few slave girls.
It was also said between guffaws at the Quantum Que, that this now memorable story is ‘bull-shit, and unadulterated crap’ etc. and Mr. Hoffman was heard asking “Since when did attention-getting public relations have anything to do with truth?”. The word is now that Boris’s ancestors are from Italy, and never had anything to do with the Count or historic princesses in Transylvania. No one seems to know if he really did defect from Romania, or if that too is part of a public relations gimmick to keep Boris’s name in the news. Speculation grows as tabloid column space allows. The CIA is usually brought into discussion too, and Boris does nothing to discourage the spread of conflicting stories; as when he got himself in a picture standing next to an accused rogue agent, published in the New York Post. The story was mysteriously dropped soon after and the alleged rogue copped a plea on another charge. Boris then got another day’s coverage insisting that he had nothing to do with the man.
Dr. Theobald Tinderbrush is getting more heated. “Banesh!” He exclaims with his red hair flying above his face a little too close to his interlocutor’s protective beard.
“You know what they are saying about that Tarantula’s ‘design for disaster’? Well, it is this Ms Flack actually. I am told to expect a formal announcement among the talking heads on tomorrow morning’s television calling it ‘Scaffolding for the Future’”. Theo’s tones of growing frustration hold Mr. Hoffman’s attention, and he nods, quietly drawing more and more heat out of Tinderbrush’s reddening face.
A faint scent in the air grows stronger in the presence of a svelte young woman in a black fleece pullover, bobbed brown hair, and pearl earrings. She is excusing herself and pushing into the narrow space that opened up between me and the Prof’s back as I lean over to talk to Lou. On righting myself, I face the Snaz logo on the back of her upturned collar, as she is facing Tinderbrush and Mr. Hoffman. I can hear her whisper something about the Congressman. Mr. Hoffman leans across the bar, and gets a peck on the cheek, as Tinderbrush gets up from his stool and rushes towards the door, but Hoffman walks around the end of the bar and brings him back. Congressman Bean will arrive shortly, and try to avoid attention. The young woman quickly turns her head towards me. Her hair flies up with the momentum of her twist and there’s a flash of reflected light from a dangling pearl earring as it whips past my face, extending from her earlobe at the end of its tiny chain as if it were riding a merry-go-round. She further excuses herself with a flash of her tongue behind a small tooth smile, and she makes room in her cloud of scent for the Prof. to get back to his drink.
Once the Prof. is back at the bar, his voice grows louder and seems intrusive. We cannot avoid hearing as he tells Hoffman: “This rusty proposal from Tarantula is brought to you by five different interests, (as yet unnamed, I might add)”. He goes on: ”I don’t believe for a minute that there is money from the Mid East in this. No, this money is home grown green, passed on at the golf course, AND”, he adds sharply, “they reserve the right to advertising space built into the structure. Imagine it: ads for banks, credit cards, mutual funds and low interest loans flashing across the mall in politically correct, low voltage lighted diodes! Forget Washington the man or the city, it will be nothing more than a monument to the other ‘almighty’, the dollar ….. well the dollar is not so mighty as it was. It is now worth a little less every day.” Tinderbrush is suddenly quiet, as if this thought of the declining value of the dollar has transported him. He goes on muttering confidentially to Mr. Hoffman.
Pam the barmaid brings our orders. Mr. Hoffman graciously offers the good professor some more cooling snob-water and goes on listening.
Tinderbrush jammed the door open just now by putting a cloths peg under it. “What are you doing with a cloths peg?” asked the young woman. “I don’t know Jan” says Tinderbrush, “I’ve had it for years.” As we are sitting with our backs to the door, I turn from my plate of fish and chips to look outside on hearing an unmistakable sound. It is a Volkswagen, a rusty old Microbus with small oval windows along the faded yellow roofline. This is hardly inconspicuous, but adds a moment of nostalgia to the scene; the memory of that glistening scented smile, and the back of an earlobe with a pearl hanging from it. I watch the agile Congressman alight in jeans and navy blue tea shirt. There is no sign of the limo. one might expect as the bus drives off, and the svelte Ms Vermeer guides the Congressman out of sight towards the side entrance, while a motion of her hips draws some attention away from the man himself.
Louis has finished his lunch while I am still only half done and so lost in thought I have not noticed him pick up the tab and leave the tip for Pam who is handing Tinderbrush his cloths peg. As we walk out, Lou asks: “Do you know that guy talking to Hoffman?”
“No.”
“Theo Tinderbrush, he’s known around the neighborhood. Lived here for a while. We reach my car, and climb in. I start the engine and ease the car out of the crowded parking lot even more slowly than usual as the back window is obscured with glare from the sun on nose and paw prints. Then get behind a massive white SUV at the light on Maxwell Ave. and Oval Street. Two English sheep dogs with wild hair are watching us through the back window. One seems to be laughing, or is it yawning?
