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.
There are no sidewalks in Fauxmont and no street lights. The sun has gone down behind the tree line. A huge white cloud high in the West is still brilliant while I stand in deep shade. Willow oak leaves are swirling around in freshening evening gusts. Diddlie’s porch light is on and she sweeps, muttering in frustration as I go by.
“Why don’t you wait until the wind dies down?”
“Why don’t you come over here and help!”
I walk over through thick ivy, spreading on long vines across the driveway absorbing dead oak leaves under its own.
“Okay, here I am.”
I stop and stand behind her, as she works under the porch roof. Her sweeping action is erratic. She accidently bangs the broom into her new wicker table, with glass top. She gives up, and leaves the broom handle stretched across the width of the porch leaning against the table and turns to me.
“Fred these things get everywhere and blow into my house when ever I open the door, and track into the kitchen. The Red Queen is eating them during her fly around, and I don’t know what they’ll do to her. I’ve never had such problems before. We had that drought though August and September. That didn’t help either. Damn it! There they go, blowing right back in here over the wall.”
“Why don’t we sit down on your nice new comfortable chairs by the table, and enjoy the whole windy spectacle?”
“Aha, and just let these things go all over the place?”
“Might as well, sweeping isn’t getting you anywhere is it?”
“Ah, no it isn’t Fred.”
She turns away and goes in with her broom, followed by a few more leaves, letting the screen door slam shut. A car passes with its lights on. Something runs across the road in front of it, but I can’t tell what. It crunches among the dried leaves in the ivy, too large to be a squirrel, a cat, or a fox perhaps. Two doves are roused and fly out into the trees like shadows out of a slingshot. Diddlie is back with a bottle of wine and two glasses. The screen door slams shut again.
“Lou said he would fix that months ago. I have to get after that man.”
She puts the glasses and bottle on the table between us.
“Sorry, we drank half of this last night.”
“I’ll take what’s going Did.”
“Okay, you pour, I am going to get a sweater.”
I pull the cork, only about a third in, and pour two glasses of refrigerated Pinot Grigio. I can still hear something moving in the ivy between me, and the road. Diddlie returns with one hand in the pocket of her white cable stitch cardigan. She comes around the table and sits next to me.
“Well?”
“Well, its getting dark.”
“Well, don’t you want to know who I drank that wine with last night?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“Oh my god! Don’t you ever get excited about anything?”
“Sure.”
“Like what for instance?”
“Like my new copy of the catalogue from the Delacroix show in Minneapolis.”
“Minneapolis? Is that where you’ve been?”
“No, that’s why I bought the catalogue.”
“Oh good grief, why don’t you get going and see it Fred? I mean don’t you feel you are missing out? Don’t you get excited about anything?”
“You keep saying that.”
“Saying what?”
“Asking if I get excited about anything.”
“Well, do you? It’s hard to tell you know.”
“Well I am very excited about the idea of Macadamia losing the election. His winning would be a real disaster I think!”
“Okay, it is an election year. So I’ll tell you Fred. Lark and an old friend of ours came over last night. A guy we used to know at college.
It was hysterical!”
“I’ll bet you drank more than half that bottle.”
“Oh you better believe it. We drank our way back to our twenties,
and smoked our way back into the sixties.”
“Sounds perfectly delightful.”
“Delightful! It was absolutely wild. We had some help from the Stones, and that guy Augie likes, the jazz guy…ah, Ornette Coleman, and Lark danced topless in the kitchen. Do you believe that?”
“Sure, I’ll bet I know who you were with too.”
“and how would you know that?”
“Because a couple of weeks ago I found Lark in the H Bar with Niels Plank and her old lover, August Carmichael.”
“Oooooo, so you met our sex object!”
“Your sex object?”
“Okay, well I am telling you, even with his beautiful blond hair all short and grey, and his kaki pants and polo shirt and a lot of mileage on him, he’s still hot.”
“Okay, what was he doing at Glamour College in 68?”
“He was reading his work to our poetry class. I think professor Lang wanted him for herself. I mean he was young, cute and innocent, well seemed like it. Don’t even know how she found him. Lark wasn’t in that class and she got him.”
“That could be problematic!”
“No not at all. He was kind of shy at first. I still love his deep sexy voice though.”
“Oh yes, his effect on Lark was easy to see.”
“And you know what Fred? He’s intellectual, I mean he is more intellectual than you, but he is alive and exciting!”
“Well, this corpse here was not unmoved by the quality of his mind or his physical grace.”
Diddlie giggles and falls silent, sipping wine and then shaking my arm and pointing over to the table beyond her reach, to indicate her glass needs refilling. I pour. We say nothing. The wind is up and it is darker. Another car goes by with its lights on and we can see leaves blowing through the light beams. I get up and walk out from under the roof of the porch.
“Hey where are you going?”
“To see if that big cloud is still there.”
“What big cloud?”
Diddlie runs out to join me.
“Where?”
I point to the Eastern sky but the light has dimmed and the cloud has moved. It is one dark shape among many. We start walking through the dark to the road.
We walk up to Wicket Street and keep to the middle of the road, so as not to fall in the ditch, and keep on into the evening light. Diddlie has her arm in mine.
“You know, Theo is procrastinating over helping Boyd find his true Father.”
“I am told he is still interested in Lark.”
“Oh wicked! Who said that? Well he’s going to have a long wait.”
“Why?”
“Because Augie has done his gig in New York and he has come back to live with Lark.”
“Live in? I thought he was more of a troubadour.”
“No she has proposed to him.”
“What about his wife?”
“They lost her in an accident quite a while ago.”
“They?”
“Yeah Augie has two grown kids, one, the girl, is teaching college the other, I think, has a startup in silicon valley.”
The wind is in the hickories and we are pelted with the last nuts of the season.
“You heard Max is with Nadia now, right?”
“Yes, so she ditched Chuck?”
“Oh Chuck, he’s a hunk, but he’s a hunk of boredom.”
“What kind of boring?”
“Like business boring. All he talks about are his deals and his money and all this financial stuff, like ‘short selling’ what ever that is.”
“Well Nadia was taken with him.”
“Yeah, she’s taken his money, or a bunch of it at least.”
“Have you spoken to Chuck since?”
“Yeah, he called me trying to find his wife.”
Another gust knocks twigs and branches out of the trees. We walk more slowly, snapping twigs and crunching acorns under foot as we go under the red oaks.
“So you know him quite well.”
“No not really.”
I can see a flashlight in the distance. It seems to wink with the owner’s movements. Diddlie says something.
“What? The wind carried your voice away. You have to face me when you speak.”
“I said, look, fireflies!”
Diddlie is tugging on my arm.
“No, I think its some one coming.”
“Oh look, there’s two of them.”
We walk on in silence. Diddlie trips on a fallen branch trying to catch her balance by holding on to my arm, but I trip too and we collapse together slowly on to the ground, she on top of me.
“Oh Sweety, are you alright?”
“Mind your sweater Did, it’s caught in the twigs.”
We disentangle ourselves from the broken branches and twigs and sit in the road.
“Why did we walk into this storm?”
“I thought you wanted to go for a walk.”
“No, I thought you did. You led the way.”
“It’s not a storm, just autumnal gusts to clear the leaves out of the forest canopy.”
“Well, there’s no stars and no moon, just wind dust and god dam skinny little leaves in my house.”
“There’s people coming up soon.”
“And I thought we were going to have a romantic evening under the moon and stars with wine…Ha!”
We are engulfed in swirling leaves for a moment, then the air is still and quiet enough to hear an acorn hit the ground nearby.
“Wow, that was kind of fun!”
“See, enjoyment was my object to begin with!”
“So what were we talking about?”
“Chuck Newsom I think. Did you tell him where his wife had gone?”
“I told him to call Lark and gave him her number because she found out the day after they took a night flight out of Dulles. She found out when she saw his stuff was gone, and Niels, yeah, Niels told her about Nadia months ago.”
“He did?”
“Well you know Niels was on the building site a lot, working with Max. He’s such a dumb-ass, and he drinks way too much and he didn’t even realize the sensitivity of it. He just says stuff.”
“Ouch!”
“Yeah. Ouch! Lark left me a real scared message on my answering machine. I lost my cel phone and I was out looking for it over in Lou’s yard.”
“Look its bel and Steve!”
Steve shines his flashlight up from under his chin so we can see who he is, with a strange effect of illuminating his nostrils.
“Why are you two sitting in the middle of the road?”
“We fell here.”
Diddlie sings into the night.
“Why don’t we do it in the road?”
(https://www.google.com/#q=why+don%27t+we+do+it+in+the+road+beatles)
Steve stoops to help Diddlie up, but she doesn’t move at once.
“So sweety, here’s your chance!”
“Okay guys, are you sure you want an audience?”
“Yeah, cold, gritty and exposed.”
“Oh where’s your sense of adventure Fred?”
Diddlie takes Steve’s hand and gets up.
Bel embraces Diddlie.
“Bel why are you wandering around in this storm?”
“Why are you?”
“I don’t know, ask him. He brought me out here. I was just trying to sweep leaves off my porch.”
I get up and drag the fallen branch to the side of the road as Steve shines his flashlight and kicks some remaining bits of wood out of the way. Another gust blows dust in our faces.
“Fred, this was a dumb idea. Lets go back to my porch. Steve, bel, you want to come sit on the porch?”
“Fine, we’re right with you.”
