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.
Heavy showers come down with monsoon-like density, after a hot sunny morning and then clear to cerulean sky in ten minutes. We advance into steam rising from the hot black surface of newly paved Wicket Street. Daisy looks up. Geese fly over, calling, encouraging each other.
“Have you ever been attacked by a goose?”
“No, I hope that echelon up there doesn’t come down after us!”
We walk slowly. The five geese above pass, as we complete the full circle of Wicket St. Scent of honeysuckle, odor auto of exhaust, the breeze brings down a shower from the overhanging ironwood tree. The last remaining tree outside number 28, opposite Daisy, at 27.
“What is that smell, Daisy?
“Tar.”
“No, something aromatic.”
“Yeah, I know, ah, yes! That is, Snaz brand fabric softener, called ‘Lavandou’.”
“Fake lavender, it recalls the real thing, but it ain’t right.”
“Canned peas, same thing, taste like a distant relative of fresh.”
Daisy stumbles but recovers easily.
“How is your foot, these days?”
“Comfortable, as long as I am careful.”
“That was a thoroughly nasty goose attack!”
“Right! The ‘wild goose chase’, ended when my foot caught in a hole.”
“Seem to remember you shattered your ankle?”
“And spent more time in hospital than I want to recall.”
“Yes, I liked your star-studded cane, though.”
“Nice wasn’t it! Frank Vasari gave it to me.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah, well, you know, he’s calmed down a lot since the old days.”
“Did he ever marry?”
“I think he’s divorced.”
“You know Fred, I had a thing going with a guy out there.”
“At PU, you mean?”
“Right, he’s a friend of Frank’s. He brought me Frank’s gift on my last day in hospital and drove me home.”
“Good grief, Diasy.”
“I guess security was better than I thought.”
“All sub-rosa, was it?”
“Right. It wasn’t all roses though.”
“These things never are.”
“Rose bushes have thorns!”
“Sweet scent though!”
“Oh sweet, yes so sweet it was. God knows I wasn’t looking for it
and I don’t think he was.”
“You say, ‘was’?”
“We stopped. Last week, as a matter of fact. Left me kind of blue.”
“I see you are wearing your bowler again.”
“Yeah, it was a bad omen when the old one blew away.”
“More yourself now!”
“Thirty bucks, second hand, and also, check these.”
She shows me the thin gold and silver bracelets gathered around her wrist.
“Your job is secure, I trust?”
“Oh, sure. I don’t wear them at work, by the way.”
Daisy wipes her eyes and turns away, looking past the new bamboo thicket outside number 28.
“Would you ever guess Derwent lived there, Fred?”
“Hardly, the old Sloot house was nicely surrounded by white oaks and azaleas, among other things.”
“Yes, and that tree with kind of droopy blossoms.”
“A Fringe tree I think, local native too.”
“Look the sprinklers came on!”
“Got to keep that grass like a fresh green carpet.”
“It was raining less than half an hour ago!”
“Who lives in that McMansion, anyway?”
“Ah, oh, I can’t think. Diddlie knows. She has a long story about the pit they dug for the foundation, and some mysterious guy she kept approaching but he wouldn’t talk to her.”
“When did all that come out?”
“Months ago. When did it go up? Around that time.”
Daisy kicks some bamboo shoots at her feet. Growing at the edge of the road.
“Bamboo is hard to control once it gets going.”
“Yeah, kind of like the guy and me. Right up to the edge and no further.”
“The edge of what?”
“Something more than I could deal with.”
“Too much, too soon?”
“Too young, for one thing.”
“A student, you mean?”
“A married student of Frank’s.”
“Complications abound!”
“I mean, Boyd was too young. Thought I had learned my lesson!”
“Daisy, you must have something the ‘young’ uns’ want.”
“I tried to convince him that the emperor had no clothes!”
“In what context?”
“Not just our affair, also Charline von Heyl.”
“Charline?”
“Yup, she is a German abstractionist, now in New York.
“We took Acela and looked around the galleries over a weekend.”
“Did you find a good hotel?”
“Frank got us invited to Gloriani’s place.”
“Free accommodation!”
“Yes, and he wasn’t around, thank God. I don’t know who let us in.
“She disappeared after giving us a key.”
“So, what’s Charline’s work like?”
“Seemed like a random arrangement of shapes and effects to me.”
“And to him?”
“Well, I couldn’t see what he was seeing.”
“As far as abstraction goes, you like, DeKooning well enough, I believe.”
“Sure, there is nothing random about his work. He builds.”
“I hear you saying Charline had no structure.”
“I heard him saying stuff he couldn’t point to in the painting.”
“Ouch!”
“Yeah, painful! we were a random event too, by the great painter of the universe.”
“Fell off the palette, did you?”
“Our colors were a rich mix, but the juxtaposition was all wrong.”
“So, you were in dispute.”
“We were. He said, for example; ‘there’s always a structural reason at the heart of her juxtapositions.’”
“And what of this heart?”
“I found no beat at all, zilch!”
“So, now you are in a ‘blue period’”.
“Yeah, kind of a muddy grey-blue.”
“Speaking of which, look at that front coming in from the South.”
Wind gusts through the ironwood tree, odor of fire lighter, smoke blows from the back of number 28. It is barbeque season.
“Is that a signal from Diddlie’s mystery person?”
“A smoke signal no less!”
