Lark Bunlush is speeding toward me on her “Specialized Dolce Triple” women’s bike, over the oak flowers and pollen that leave a yellowish sheen on Wicket Street’s crumbling faded blacktop. She brakes hard, and stops just ahead of me. Turns to tell me the news while brushing away an inchworm floating in front of her face on its invisible strand of silk.
“Did you know Jake Tripp is back at his house?”
She supports herself and the bike with one foot on the ground, one still on the pedal and her left hand on the handlebars.
“No I thought the bank was foreclosing on that property.”
“I saw him over at the shopping center last night.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Oh nothing much, just waved and got in his Hummer and said ‘see you around’.”
We can see the river from Wicket Street through the trees like fragments of milk chocolate broken up into odd shapes by intervening branches. Lark lifts her foot off the pedal and swings her leg over the saddle with a spring in her knees, and walks along with me. Her thick hair is bunched under an orange and silver helmet whose swirling design suggests flames blazing like her idealism from her head. Her brilliant yellow windbreaker shines in the sun with the Snaz logo prominent across the back in a streamlined italic typeface.
“Your outfit is almost blinding Lark.”
“Right! check it out. Visibility is the thing.”
Lark seems carried away by her enthusiasm, which is usually reserved for larger social causes. She looks toward the river for a moment, and goes on.
“This thing is ‘air-conditioned’ too, in a way at least, with this mesh insert in back for ventilation and reflective piping on front and back.” She turns to show off the lines of reflective piping converging down the back from the shoulders to waist.
“Bought it last week from Jake’s Snaz Super Store.”
She points out 2 side-zip pockets, the shifted seams for reduced chafing and zip with semi-lock slider. The zip-underflap and zip port and ergonomically shaped collar.
“Did you buy the bike there too?”
“No. Max gave me this thing.”
She pauses and holds the bike steady with one hand on the saddle gesturing with a sweep of her other gloved hand. It is almost new. I think he got it in a barter through business.”
“You are quite the consumer Lark!”
“I know, it is kind of disgusting isn’t it?”
“We do live in a commercial society, so you are pretty much in the main stream.”
“Well, the main stream is flowing in an unsustainable direction.”
“Biking is preferable to burning gas in the car.”
We move on again, more briskly through morning shadows cast by two gum trees clogged with wisteria vines, thick and twisting around the trunks like constricting snakes who have climbed and stretched from the roots into the heights.
“Biking is great exercise, even at my age, and I haven’t ridden since I was a kid. It is just so much fun.”
“Yes, you’re lucky to be so youthful. I haven’t ridden much since high school.”
“Well Fred, I think meditation is helpful too.”
“I have never been able to do it. Not got sufficient subtlety of mind, keep falling asleep.”
“Keep trying Fred. It’s a great way to drop your baggage.”
“My baggage?”
“Right, ‘baggage’, thoughts and preoccupations, that burden you through the day, or even your whole life. When a thought comes in meditation, don’t follow the train. Let it go!”
“How do you know my ‘train’ is burdened with ‘baggage’?”
“Sorry Fred, I don’t. But you might find out you are, through meditation and then drop the extra weight!”
“With out even dieting, just as easy as that?”
“Maybe, or you could always get a bike!”
“I could, that is true enough.”
“Mount up! Get out there!”
“You are full of advice today. I prefer walking at this point.”
We walk past the Macadamia estate and start down hill away from the river past the Stether/Vionnets towards Oval Street.
“Have you read Foulton Furay’s piece on Shrinkwrap?”
“No, haven’t checked the site for a while.”
“He’s written a story on Macadamia’s patio.”
“Why his patio?”
“You know he has always claimed that mandala he made out of stones gives him mystical insight into the stock market.”
“Well that is what Time magazine wrote years ago.”
“You know the photo with that article was not of his back patio but the path out front.”
“No, but I don’t remember the picture.”
“Mac never allowed any pictures of it.”
“Why, did he think some one else might use it?”
“Well, he did in a way. Fulton talked to one of the masons who built the thing. They said he gave them a detailed and complicated design. He insisted the dimensions be followed exactly; the kinds of stone, the shapes and positions were specified. He went out with his own tape measure to check. Made them do some over. Got pretty heated about it too.”
“So what?”
“Fulton’s source told him it isn’t just decorative. It is a coded map showing where Macadamia stashed the cash he brought out of Chile.”
“So much for mystical insights!”
“So much for the market. More likely it was laundered drug money hidden in legitimate assets.”
“That sounds pretty far fetched. How do they know?”
“It turns out that mason was once one of Pinochet’s agents and had some inside info. He was given a special visa and a new identity to come to America and through Macadamia’s connections he got training and work here in the Sates.”
“I thought the story was that Mac sold his estate down there for fifty million that he gave towards founding Prestige University.”
“That was the story but now it looks different. Looks like drug and weapons money. Macadamia never had a Chilean estate.”
“What? It must be easy enough to find out. Don’t they have records down there?”
“That’s the latest. Fulton’s contacts down there found nothing.”
“Suppose Mac or someone was tampering?”
“Maybe …”
“This ground keeps shifting.”
“Mac’s patio certainly has! That ground is gone for good!”
“Those masons better hide, now this story is out.”
“The last survivor died down in Florida a few months ago. He was dying in hospital outside Miami when Fulton got a tip and went there.”
“Oh, a deathbed confession! What about the others who worked on it?”
“The other two were killed in a construction accident soon after Mac’s job was done.”
“Both at the same time?”
“Yes, seems ‘convenient’ for certain people.”
We have walked all the way to the Pie Shop and Lark stops to park and lock her bike. She wants to go into the Elegant Ostrich gift shop, which has opened in a small space next door. The store is narrow, but deep with a counter far in back, at the end of the long narrow isle between displays on each side. Lark looks over gifts displayed on the walls and in three old glass fronted cabinets with the doors open. They are painted red, yellow, and powder blue. The red one is full of soaps and candles with exotic aromas. Lark picks up a small bar of soap in a paper box. It is printed like a page from a welltravelled pass port, with stamps, some slightly smudged, one light red just off center, which says ‘sandalwood’.
“This aroma reminds me of my mother, and a little wooden box she gave me with a necklace in it.”
She puts down the soap and tests the thickness of a yellow celadon bowl in the powder blue cabinet. Those on the top shelf all look Chinese with red dragons swirling across a blue and white sky. She passes up the red cabinet holding scarves, and other fabrics mostly paisleys, and stops in front of the cards displayed on an old opened roll top desk, with all the brass fittings removed. I can see some ink stains visible on the wood of the desktop and other signs of decrepit age. There is some blotting paper preserved in plastic, with ink stains and contained in its four cornered leather holder with two 1940s envelopes. I can read a local address under the names, Peto and the other Harnett, under canceled Belgian stamps. She soon chooses two cards and we stand, waiting together behind another customer at the cash register in tennis whites and orange shoes.
“So does it have anything to do with Jake’s return?”
“What, Fred?”
“The mason’s confession or what ever it was.”
“Oh sorry, I am still in sandalwood! Well, yes, looks like it to me. That story came out three days ago and Dordrecht’s started work the day after.”
“So it is Dordrecht’s again.”
“Always is around here.”
“You think Jake is doing the project?”
“Sure, Jake has keys to Mac’s house you know. A couple of dump trucks parked over there the other day and a crew dug the whole patio out with a backhoe in a morning’s work. It will be replaced with a swimming pool”
“… put in a pool already?”
“No, that’s what the guy told me this morning when I went by on my bike to check it out. He was from Hockney’s Aqua Marine Pools & Patios out of Bradford Virginia. Said so on his nice blue van.”
“Oh I’ve seen their ads on TV “Make a bigger splash with Hockney’s pools”!
“The same. You know the Fauxmont Militia recovered a drone from a big red oak near Mac’s house.”
“Yes it is all over the neighborhood. Rank Majors thinks it was illegal.”
Look, I never pass up signs of a good story … ” The orange shoes move over the black and white checkerboard floor towards the door under broad swinging hips and muscular female arms. Lark offers her two cards to the red-haired man at the cash register. He is thin with big hands and his silky long sleeve lavender shirt is tight around his upper arms. He looks at Lark’s two cards and her twenty dollar bill.”
“You got anything smaller hon.?”
His bass voice comes out from behind smiling crooked yellow teeth on a sunburned face. His broad flat forehead is peeling and his thin hair is sun bleached on top and combed straight back.
Lark pulls her metal wallet from behind one of the zips in her Snaz cycling outfit, opens it with a click, and hands him an unusual metallic Glitz credit card.
“That’s smaller alright!”
Lark takes back her twenty. He gives back the Glitz card and points out the card reader on the counter under a huge fresh cut hydrangea blossom.
The man scratches his neck below his silver earring, as big as a pirate’s, while waiting for the transaction to process. I walk slowly towards the door and she catches up with me in the midst of the sandalwood perfume.
“Oh I love that aroma Fred.”
She stops by the cabinet for a last look.
“Anyway aside from that sandalwood, did I tell you about the drone?”
“Yes, what about it.”
“Fred it was spying. I just know it.”
“So someone is trying to get a picture of the patio before the design is obliterated?”
She unlocks her bike and we stand there outside the Elegant Ostrich gift shop. The door is open, and there’s a hint of sandalwood in the air. I am looking towards the gas station as Lark continues.
“That’s what Boyd told me. He and Albrecht are living in the house shaded by that tree, but neither of them saw or heard the drone.”
“So who is behind it?”
“That’s the question.”
“This is so bizarre! That patio has been there for forty years. Why all this interest all of a sudden? Who’s got the drone now anyway?”
“The police I think, but they can’t find the camera.”
“Maybe there wasn’t one.”
“Maybe, or someone took it.”
“Look! Is that Jake talking to Faruk over at the gas station?”
“Looks just like him.”
“Is he living in his old house or just staying nearby?”
“No, I saw him pulling out of his garage as I went by.”
“You have seen a lot this morning.”
“I went by Diddlie’s, right next door.”
“I’ll bet she was hoping he wouldn’t ever come back.”
