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.
Lou’s deck looks out towards tall green bamboo, dense and blending into a screen. With regularly spaced nodal rings, which might be rising magically like bubbles in a grassy carbonated drink. He was busy early yesterday morning when I walked past, digging up white rhizomes whose shoots are emerging through the clay from Daisy Briscoe’s back yard into his. We socially distance under his torn and sagging awning, damaged in a recent thunderstorm but still affords some cover on the extreme left, overlooking Sophonisba’s yard.
“Can you fix this thing?”
“Expecting delivery of new canvas and struts any day.”
“Great! No knowing when we can go back to the H Bar.”
“The virus is spreading in the South and West.”
“I hope the lockdown won’t have been for nothing!”
“Yes, we might have the worst of all worlds; a lockdown here and there, a resulting financial crash everywhere and then a second wave leaving us with the same problem all over again.”
“That’s getting to, ‘herd immunity’ the hard way!”
“Joy has succumbed, you know.”
“Joy Von Luck? I didn’t know. When was that?”
“Last week, bel tells me it was organ failure.”
“What will Steve and bel do now, about their puzzle?”
“I don’t think there is much to it.”
“No? Really?
”No, that thing was a game Macadamia enjoys. He is a puzzle freak you know.”
”Had no idea.”
“You better tell bel and Steve.”
“I did, but they were not convinced.”
Lou cleans his gold-rimmed glasses on his tea shirt and replaces them under his black overhanging eyebrows. A single hair is trapped behind the left lens, but it doesn’t bother him.
“Daisy has isolated herself, now.”
“I haven’t seen her for weeks.”
“You won’t. She gets her necessities delivered to the porch. Then sprays them with bleach and wipes off before taking anything in.”
“She doesn’t answer the phone, not my calls, at least.”
“She gets too many junk calls. You’ll do better with email.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Mid-June, I went over and snaked out the drain in her kitchen sink.”
“You mean she let you in?”
“Had to wear a paper hazmat suite she left on the porch for me, plus mask and plastic face shield.”
“How about a couple of tanks of air and regulator?”
“Well, she did insist I spray bleach on all surfaces, she had not covered in plastic and leave her kitchen windows open with a fan blowing outwards in case I left anything in the air!”
“I wonder what she gets up to, all cooped up by herself?”
“She told me, to mind my own business!”
“Friendly soul!”
A humid breeze rattles the broken awning. Thunder rumbles, though the sky overhead is clear. Six crows circle. The air is thick with their cawing.
“Yeah, she was in a foul mood that day; clogged drain and fighting with Jake, earlier.”
“Didn’t know Jake was around.”
“No, I was surprised to see him arrive.”
“I am wondering, how they communicated?”
“She was in the carport cleaning out Mr. Liddell’s straw and went on the attack as soon as he got out of his Hummer.”
“You mean you witnessed this ambush?”
“Yes, Jake responded in kind.”
“What a neighborly community we have around here!”
“I was going to stop by to check on her.”
“And?”
“And I chickened out. Came home and got out of the heat.”
Pam slides the porch door open, as a motorcycle revs out front before shutting down.
“Lunch from The Emperor Babur has arrived, gentlemen!”
Lou gets up quickly, pulling a mask from his back pocket. Pam hands him his phone and rushes out to meet the delivery. Pam’s royal blue silk kimono with yellow trim falls open at the front, as she reaches up to move the curtain out of the way of the door.
“Oh! excuse me, Fred!”
She giggles and covers herself at once. The garment momentarily rises, flashing her left hip as she steps away gathering silk across her breast.
Lou returns with two bottles of Rosy Pelican beer, and Murg Makhani, Daal Masala, Basmati rice with Naan, Raita, and mix chutneys. All is distributed across the porch table in a wilderness of plastic containers.
“Nice spread, Lou!”
He drops his phone on the table.
“Left this thing plugged into the wall!”
“We have too many things to remember these days.”
“Yeah, mustn’t forget to recycle these things.”
He holds up a one-ounce disposable sauce container of Mango Chutney and then looks closely at the lid as he removes it.
“The Emperor is doing things right! This is made of ‘bioplastic’ derived from
renewable biomass, such as recycled food waste.”
“Gives me a new reason not to eat leftovers!”
Lou shakes his head. Picks up a Samosa and dips it in the chutney.
“You remember Serge?”
“Yes, Rosie’s son, isn’t he?”
“Right, he started a food delivery business, ‘Geek’s Good-Deal Deliveries’, from his computer and hired friends to deliver by motorbike.”
“So that’s what the noise was.”
“Yeah, got a look at it, a Triumph Street Triple R.”
“I don’t know much about bikes.”
“Nor do I but I have lusted after another Triumph after having a bike in the sixties.”
“Thought Serge had gone off to MIT, was it?”
“The virus got in his way.”
Lou opens more containers and a whiff of turmeric and coriander
rises from the Daal Masala.
“Makes a change from our burger routine.”
“Is Pam going to join us?’
“Ah, Fred, no-one is supposed to know she’s here.”
“Seems to me the ladies next door will soon catch on.”
“I Know!”
“So, what’s the harm?”
“By the way Fred, Osiris lives in New York. She is visiting.”
“I wonder what that connection is? Thought she was an art dealer.
“She is a mystery to me.”
“She is friends with Nadia Brasov, I remember.”
“Yeah, anyway, Pam is trying to make herself scarce at the moment.”
“Let’s hope it is a brief moment.”
“Gives her a chance to finish her Chemistry degree as we speak.”
“Oh, Zooming past lunch into the romantic valances of chemistry!”
“No less, and more too!”
“How long has it been?”
“A few months now, I guess.”
We toast the occasion with condensation dripping from our Rosy Pelican bottles.
“She’s on her last course.”
Another toast.
“Hi, Lou, who’s your friend?”
Sophonisba is standing on the other side of the hollies dividing the two properties. She smiles up at us through a gap in the foliage, from under her yellow turban, arms folded.
“Sophie, this is, Fred. He lives down on Wicket Street.”
“Hi Fred, have you met my friend, Osiris?”
She turns toward her patio. The crows landed and are calling back and forth quietly in small dead branches poking out from the pin oak, by the road. Now they fly off with a lot of commotion. Five land in an ironwood tree next door.
“Osiris, men! Over here, honey.”
Osiris Tarantula limps over to join Sophy by the hollies, leaning on a long pole, which might once have been a boat hook. Her black robe trails through last year’s dead and brittle leaves.
“Hi there, you men.”
“Osiris, this is Fred.”
“Fred, we have heard about you!”
“Nothing too scandalous, I hope.”
A sixth crow joins the others in the ironwood tree.
Sophie beckons to me.
“You need to stop by my store for a reading.”
Osiris turns and limps back towards her chair on the patio, adjusting her orange beret trimmed with black feathers.
“Osiris has to sit down. It’s her knees.”
“Okay, Sophie, what did you hear?”
“Oh, chatter from the other world.”
“You must have it from Diddlie.”
“No honey, my sources are not of this world.”
“You mean an intuition?”
“Call it that if you want, honey.”
“I mean, I find the supernatural problematic.”
“Oh, it is, Fred. It is! I am sure there is a spirit anxious to contact you. I could feel it as soon as I came outside.”
“But you didn’t know I was here!”
“That’s right, as soon as I saw you, then I knew what that movement was!”
Osiris waves a bunch of goldenrod from her chair at the edge of the patio.
“Sophie, it’s time!”
“Well, you men, I have things to do. Be seeing you. Don’t forget Fred. I am in the Cremona Building on Route One!”
Sophie strolls back toward her patio with her arms upraised at the elbow.
“What do you make of that Lou?”
“She must be summoning spirits.”
“Goldenrod?”
“Diddlie.”
