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 don’t recognize Lark Bunlush when I get to the H Bar early to meet Lou for our weekly lunch. The place is nearly empty and smells a little stale, seems darker than usual too. Lark’s head looks different. Her hair is bunched up at the back. It always used to hang from her head in a thick grey spread like a lampshade. She has a small black lock combed back from her forehead in single vivid stripe above the left eye. She is sitting next to Niels Plank. I don’t know the other guy, and move to the right to say hello to Niels.
Before I can order a drink from the bartender arranging his stock at the other end, Lark turns towards Niels and me. She introduces me to Augie Carmichael, on her left and to Niels. She is wearing sunglasses and her face looks puffy.
“Yeah, how you doing Fred? I remember you from somewhere.”
“Probably around the neighborhood. The Trip’s driveway perhaps.”
“Why don’t we move to that table Lark?”
“Sure Augie. Lets get away from TVs and election scandals.”
Augie helps her off her stool and brings her drink over to a nearby round table with lots of chairs where we all sit down with room to spare. The sun hasn’t come around to the bay window yet and we don’t have to arrange ourselves to avoid the usual glare in our aging eyes.
“Fred, Augie and I … We go back a long way.”
Augie offers a powerful well shaped hand in greeting.
His hair is cropped short all over and his high forehead is tanned. He looks at me with watery blue eyes under thick lids.
“What you drinking Fred?”
“Bass Ale please.”
Augie goes to the bar and brings back a straight pint glass with a thin head spilling over the brim as he puts it on the table in front of me. He fits his arm around Lark’s shoulders in one easy movement as he sits down. He speaks in a low gentle voice with his face close to hers and puts a finger on the bridge of her nose where the pink and yellow frames rest.
“When are you going to come out from behind those shades baby?”
“Not yet.”
“So how far back do you two go?”
“We lost our virginity together Fred and have been inseparable ever since.”
Niels swigs his beer, takes the glass from his mouth and coughs.
“That’s heavy shit! You never told me that!”
“Well, I had no reason to discuss it.”
Augie devotes himself to Lark.
“We started a publication, I think it was called Shrinkwrap, you remember?”
“It still is honey.” She put her forefinger on his lips.
“Are you still writing for our word-child?”
“Yes, sometimes, I sold it and now it’s a website.”
Augie sips his beer. We are all silent for a few moments. I can hear thebartender working with glasses.
Augie puts down his beer and moves his face close to Lark’s ear.
“Hey, you still know that other girl, ah, Diddlie, what was her last name?”
“Drates, Augie … after me, you had her and all the other hens in her coop!”
“Well okay, those were the pretty birds of the Glamour College cage, and you had some on the side too. I know that, but we were solid.”
“Right I know, I know, we are solid.”
“Yeah we are! It was right before you and Diddlie were sharing that dude from Princeton, who had such a high opinion of himself.”
“Oh right, we had some fun with him!”
Niels belches and leans forward to look at Lark.
“But you just said your are inseparable.”
Augie has moved back from his intimacy at Lark’s ear and on the bridge of her nose, where soft reminiscence flows, as if Niels and I aren’t here.
He looks up into the distance, through the gloom of the bar room to the walls and beyond:
“But for those first affections
Those shadowy recollections
Which, be they what they may
Are yet the fountain light of all our day
Are yet a master light of all our seeing.”
(http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html)
Lark grabs his forearm, “He is still quoting Wordsworth!”
“My first love, British romantic poetry!”
Augie returns his gaze to our party and to Lark. He holds up Lark’s hand clasped in his, to salute the poet. His sleeve falls down his arm revealing his watch mounted on a silver bracelet jeweled with blue green turquoise.
Niels stands up, swaying a little and raises his nearly empty glass and addresses the beginning of the lunch crowd as they gather at the bar.
“This is Doctor Augustus Carmichael, my brother, with a Phd in English from Berkeley and he is a poet and Viking spirit warrior, and …” He mutters something I can’t hear.
“Hey Niels, I don’t have Phd, I am ABD.”
“I don’t care if you are ABC brother. You told me to read and contemplate the poets, back in the day, when you were a Prof.”
“Yeah, visiting writer gigs, for a few extra bucks. There’s too many academic egos in that game, kind of crowding out the art.”
“Well, shit, artists have bigger egos than anybody.”
“Right Niels, but that’s art not the academy, its endowment, its new buildings and its bureaucracy and politics, AND underpaid adjuncts doing too much of the teaching.”
Niels, growing unsteady, spills the last drops of his drink down his shirt as he sits down again.
“Niels, what have you been reading?”
“Shit, I don’t know, the Bible I guess.”
Augie is looking at Lark and now at me.
“Our souls have never parted. You know what I mean Fred?”
“Sort of, I mean, have you been in touch over the years?”
“We are never out of touch, out there in the ‘soul space’.”
Lark waves at me, from across the table.
“Fred, that’s where the action is.”
“Okay Lark, I don’t get it though.”
Augie puts his hand on my shoulder, and looks into my face.
“I’ll tell you Fred. I was driving East from Tucson last week and came thru DC on the way to a reading in New York. So I am walking down the Mall on a little nostalgia trip and who comes up out of Smithsonian Metro as I walk by? This one here!”
He moves back and gives Lark a big smooch and knocks her glasses askew. Niels gets up for another beer, but stops, steadying himself on the back of Lark’s chair and facing me.
“See Fred, my bad ass Dad took off with Nadia Brazoff. When was it?
Last week or something, right Lark?”
“I don’t know, that creep didn’t tell me!”
“Hey the dude was too busy!”
“Shut up Niels! I didn’t know where he was and went down to the Mall to check out the Buddha show at the Sackler.”
“The Buddha show?”
“It’s called the ‘Body of Devotion’ Fred.”
Augie lets go of Lark’s wrist.
“The Cosmic Buddha’, interactive exhibit, real heavy technology too.”
Niels has half turned away, but is still listening.
“That’s pretty awesome cosmic shit Augie!”
“You see Fred, the cosmos sends me here at the precise moment when I am needed and sets up a rendezvous.
‘Whether Buddhas arise oh priests, or whether Buddhas do not arise, it remains a fact and fixed and necessary constitution of being, that all its elements are lacking ego…”
(http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bits/bit-4.htm)
Niels goes to get another drink at the bar. Lark grins, “The Three Characteristics, Hinayana! I’ll bet Fred is thinking coincidence!”
“Well that’s what it is! We are not in control. We perceive coincidence all over the place. That’s how it is!”
“So you and Max have split.”
“He’s split to Bulgaria with Nadia Fred, I am still here.”
“That’s different Lark. What’s in Bulgaria?”
Augie’s voice deepens with his more confidential tone.
“Roses! Doesn’t that make sense Fred? Not quite so red roses. You see what I mean?”
“Right Augie the Soviets are history.”
Lark puts her hand up in her hair and twirls a few strands in her fingers.
“Max thinks it’s a business opportunity.”
“To Max, everything he does is a business opportunity.”
Niels spills some beer sitting down again next to Lark.
“He’s getting his romantic rocks off in Thrace!”
“What do you know about Thrace, Niels?”
“Remember, you turned me on to the Oddessey.”
“Did I? I haven’t lived in vain!”
Augie looks down at his lap.
“Oh! The corny rose red petals of romance.”
Lark grabs Augie head in both her hands and brings herself up so their noses touch.
“Fucking, you mean!”
“Well that’s all part of business, my long lost love.”
My ring tones sound. It is a text from Lou. “Sorry can’t make it. See you at the party.” I can’t think what party he means but forget it for now.
“Shit, I’ve known Augie since about eighth fucking grade. You were working for Daddy Max.”
“That’s right, I was doing some carpentry and some readings around DC about that time. It was Nixon time, and the hippies were still hanging in Georgetown, the war was driving us insane, and grass was green all over.”
“Yeah I remember you guys smoking the profits up at Great Falls, thinking me and Werner didn’t know!”
“I told you it was a bonfire Niels, and we all saw the smoke over across the rocks.”
“What ever you say Augie, my brother!
“Niels have you finished building that property down by the river?”
“No way Fred, we have fucking six months to go on the Newsom place.It’s a goddam city!”
Lark is in the midst of a long drink and puts her glass down suddenly. Takes off her glasses and rubs her red eyes.
“That’s where your father went to hell!”
“Well, he split with Mom when I was like, fucking snot nose three years old.”
Lark is trying to get up from her chair.
“Lark, Lark, Lark, stop.” Augie embraces her and she leans into him from her chair, as he leans towards her.
“Augie listen man, Nadia had her cantilever spread for Max at every fucking opportunity. It’s like the finest piece of engineering since fucking Howard Hughes got hot Jane Russell rigged. I am telling you. Now the old man is selling our company to Dodrechts. Me and Werner are staying on as co- directors.”
“I always thought he would leave the company to you two, not sell it.”
“Fred, I got no complaints brother. The selling price takes care of all three of us Planks plus we brothers get stock Dordrecht options, good pay, golden parachutes, the whole package. We are happy as pigs in shit.”
“Niels, there’s another part of the package, you left out my man.”
“What’s that Augie?”
Lark is roused again, breaks out of Augie’s embrace and takes up the front of Niels’ shirt in her fingers, getting behind a couple of buttons, and closes them in her fist.
“Supulveda! you greedy little shit!”
Niels has his hand around Lark’s wrist, to pull back and save his shirt front from tearing.”
“Okay Lark! Okay! God, what’s the big deal?”
“What do you think happened to the Williams and the Scroggins and the other families who used to live where the Newsome place is going up?”
“We bought them out Lark, we bought…”
“Like hell…”
Augie gets up and stands behind her chair. He puts an arm under each of her armpits and lifts her up out of her chair. She raises her knees to her chest and Augie moves her into the vacant chair next to him, on the other side, away from Niels.
“Okay, put it here. Put your ass in that chair.”
Lark doesn’t struggle, and allows her self to be lowered into the chair.
“You are going to get us kicked out of here, manhandling me like that.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time!”
“Okay people, let’s settle down now, okay?”
“We’re cool Niels, we’re cool.”
“Yeah, okay so who is Supelveda?’
“Fred, he’s got a ‘rent-a-cop’ business, I forget the name. They have a contract with with Dodrechts. He put together a bunch of Israeli Russians, or Mafia or Russian mafia, I don’t know which, maybe both and a few ex narcos.
Lark interrupts Augie. She bangs a fist into her palm repeatedly as she speaks.
“Yeah, and dogs, and mace, and all these guys are over two hundred pounds, ugly, violent, lowlife, rapist, thugs!”
“Supelveda is a bad ass hombre. You know, ‘Guerra Sucia’, and all that.”
“I get it Augie, ‘Dirty War’, right?”
“Fred, I’m talking about what went down when Macadamia sold his estate to the Chilean General, and Juanita …”
Lark bangs the table again, now with the flat of her hand and spills the drinks.
“I published some of that story and I got more I can’t substantiate, Juanita is too scared to talk and those dope dealing rapists got away with it thanks to my government, thanks to Nixon!”
Augie has his arm around Lark’s shoulders again. He gently pulls some gray hair off her face.
“Ease up, will you, you’re spilling our fun all over the table.”
“What about the blood those creeps spilled? Look what we have done since 9/11. The anniversary was last month right? Three thousand people from all over the world were killed in New York, and more of us in Pennsylvania and here in DC.”
“Lark! Lark! Stop!”
“No no no, I am going to finish; since 9/11 we have killed how many mothers, fathers, and children, brothers and uncles and grannies, over there? How many? Where’s their memorial? What about that? What about the bloody Saudis who made it all happen? What about that?”
“I hear you, okay?”
Augie voice pours into Lark’s ear, his lips touching her hair. Lark is still agitated. She pushes Augie away, and gets up, her face is wet. She walks slowly towards the restrooms. Augie is soaking up the flood on the table as it drips on the carpet and the aroma of hops keeps memories flowing. Niels sits back in his chair staring into the air, one hand up on the back of his neck.
“So Niels, is Max past the trouble he was in with Judge Grackle and the subpoena to Fulton Furay for his sources?”
“Oh Sherman got that shit settled Fred. Shit, I don’t know about Fulton. Maybe he is still fighting”
Augie looks over at me with wavy lines deepening along his brow.
“You know about that?”
“Not the details, I just know it sounded serious with that incident in the parking lot, and all.”
“Yeah, it was serious Fred. It was dead serious. You know big money speaks in many voices. So the money starts talking and moving under Shrowd’s direction. He draws the map. You know who am I talking about?”
“Oh yes, Sherman Shrowd, attorney at law.”
“Right he’s the man, and all that stuff got smoothed out in a deal,you know.”
“Well, sort of. I never could figure out whether Jake’s house went into foreclosure or not. Beside, what did the Planks have that got Newsome, Jake Trip and Macadamia involved?”
“You’ve got it Fred!”
“I mean what else happened?”
“Don’t ask me Fred, don’t ask.”
“It was Newsome and Sherman Fred.” Niels leans forward bumping his glass but it doesn’t spill. “Sherman makes shit go away and other shit happen. That’s his thing. Shit, Max and Werner built Trip’s place. That’s where it all started.”
I look at Augie.
“Don’t ask me!”
Lark walks up behind Niels and puts her hands on his shoulders. She whispers in his ear, and kisses his cheek. Augie has finished wiping the table with a pile of paper napkins he got from the bar. He looks over at Lark and Niels.
“Urpsky dirpsk!”
Lark sits down again between Niels and Augie where she was before, and holds Augie’s hand in both of hers.
“Urpsky dirpsk!” Lark’s last syllable merges with her laughter and theyboth continue laughing uncontrollably at their in joke.
