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.
Bel squints as the sun comes out at an angle low enough to shine under the awning over the tables outside the Pie Shop.
“Shall we move back a bit?”
Gertie Stone is pulled up to the table, in her new battery-powered wheelchair, with her back to the parking lot. Her hand appears from under her cape and lifts her cup to her mouth for a sip of espresso.
“Wait until Fil gets back.”
Big white Alf has already moved into the shade under the table, where he lies, panting quietly with his left paw extended.
“How long have you been living here in Fauxmont, Fred?”
“Since 96, and still feel I am new here.”
Bel looks over at me.
“There are so many new houses going up, I don’t know a lot of the neighbors these days.”
“Yup, there’s a big one going up next door to us.”
“The city is moving in.”
“All our famous, ‘herbaceous borders’ look like vacant lots!”
“There’s no privacy now. It’s just lawns, small shrubs, and big windows.”
“A typical development!”
“It is hard to keep up.”
“As soon as someone introduces themselves, I tend to forget their name.”
The shadow of a low flying helicopter moves across the parking lot like a magic carpet, which takes on the contour of everything it encounters.
“What was that bel?”
“It’s the cops.”
“How do you know Gertie?”
“Surveillance, all the others do it cybernetically, but the cops still have shooters to catch and other traditional problems.”
“Anyway, bel, what did you say into that noise?”
“One way to remember a new name is to repeat it back.”
“I never forget a name. What some people say isn’t worth remembering, but that sticks too.”
“Gertie, I hope you don’t remember everything I have said in your presence.”
“Oh, I do, bel. You once said your boarding school in New Zealand was housed in an old army barracks, which struck me as appropriate!”
“The buildings were converted very nicely. The old parade ground was dug out and planted with grass where we had games.”
“Glad to hear it, but the regimentation remained, I’ve no doubt.”
“Yes, it didn’t bother me, though.”
“I had tutors at home until college, so I have no experience, but schools, prisons, and bureaucracies have a lot in common, it seems to me.”
“Yes, social organization.”
“True, but it is a fine line between organization and coercion.”
“No, I never felt that. I always knew what I was supposed to do. Life was so simple then.”
Gertie raises the brim of her black fedora.
“Kind of boring, don’t you think?”
“No, I didn’t have to think. Life was easy!”
“So, you survived by being mindless!”
“Not at all, I had a heavy course load and exams to pass.”
“That’s intellect, by, ‘mind’ I mean something bigger.”
“You have a point there.”
“How did you survive it?”
“I had another part which kept quiet until vacations.”
“You were a complicated kid!”
“Maybe so, Fred. It all fell into place when I discovered, men, love, sex, and disappointment, all in the space of a few weeks.”
“At a school like that?”
“Vacation, on the ship to San Francisco, to visit my parents.”
“Must have been love at first sight!”
“Looking back, it was adventure, love, lust all at once. Kind of undifferentiated at the time. This was before containers. I was a passenger on a cargo ship which took its time at every port.”
“Oh, you sailed by yourself.”
“Sure, my parents sent me a ticket with a letter full of instructions and warnings.”
“Which you ignored!”
“Oh no, I read it very carefully.”
“Sounds like a hot summer in cold San Francisco.”
“Yeah, well it was all over by the time we got there.”
“Dried up when you came ashore!”
“Pretty much, I was glad to get back to school when vacation was over and enter sixth form, and the structured life.”
“Well, you had to bail out at some point!”
“Yeah, getting to know Steve bailed me out.”
“How was that possible?”
“It was the following year, Fred, at college in San Francisco.”
“Was he your teacher?”
“When I met him, Steve was working at City Lights bookstore.”
We can hear little, but the helicopter going over again. This time we can’t see the machine or its shadow.
Felicity walks across the parking lot to us, with a tote full of groceries. Alf pulls on his leash attached to the arm of Gertie’s chair. She is focused on bel.
“What was that about love and sex again?”
“I didn’t spread it around you know; being together was a miracle!”
“Well, it was for you, but I have my doubts.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it sounds as if you had to integrate two parts of yourself that you kept separate.”
“Right, we made a lot of each other, that was the miracle!”
“It sounds a lot more interesting than that!”
“Oh, does it?”
“Calling it a miracle doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Isn’t this getting a little deep and personal?”
“Fred, I can judge that for myself.”
Gertie tries to lean forward but can only try. She seems physically immobile, but her face is animated.
“No, no, no, let’s keep this conversation alive because if bel is right about herself, and so many of us are not, she might have something to say!”
Gertie tries to turn to the right and look back.
“Where’s Fil?”
“Here, next to you, dear!”
Gertie turns quickly to her left.
“When did you get back?”
“Just now.”
“Well, how did you sneak up like that?”
“You had your back to me.”
“Why didn’t you say anything, for God’s sake?”
“There was a lot of noise from the plane.”
“It was a helicopter!”
Fil pulls her chair back against the wall as Gertie moves forward, with a touch on the joystick on the arm of her chair. Alf noses the groceries in the tote, while bel and I move the table back and get our chairs in place.
“It was a mob scene in there.”
“Oh! and why, Fil?”
“There’s a big storm forecast for tonight. Haven’t you checked your phone?”
“No! I am not about to be tied to a piece of damned circuitry, digital trickery, and the nonsense it produces!”
“Well, I heard something about tornadoes.”
“Okay, okay, I know, they all go for the toilet paper.”
“Shall we allow bel some privacy, dear?”
“I am all for privacy, but bel has been so candid about her peripatetic childhood, why not encourage her?”
“I think you are pushing too hard!”
“Let bel speak for herself!”
Fil gestures with her open hand toward bel.
“So, bel, I know you moved around a lot, where do you feel at home?”
“I don’t belong anywhere, or perhaps wherever I happen to be.”
“You mean you have no sense of nationality?”
“I have a sense of various experiences in different countries, but they are all part of me.”
“Well, that’s your mobile childhood!”
“I am a global nomad!”
“Do you feel at home, here in Fauxmont?”
“Sure, as long as I am here. When we went back to Paris, to visit friends, in the early eighties, it felt like home too. We had a nostalgic walk down Rue Jacques Dulud, in Neuilly, our old neighborhood, and noticed a few changes too.”
Gertie reaches down to pet Alf, who has his nose on her lap.
“The Parisians, yes, I never took to them.”
“And why not?”
“Because, bel, they think they are better than anyone else.”
“Well, that is all too common in many countries.”
“Sure, we do have our boosters and braggers, echoing in their own emptiness!”
Alf settles again against Gertie’s chair wheel with his head under the table.
She picks up her small blue cup with white polka dots and presses the top of the cup against her upper lip to get the last of her espresso. When she puts it down the cup tips over and Fil rights it.
“Fiddley damn thing!”
Bel moves her chair back a bit to give Alf some room, under the table disturbing a starling who’s been watching us, from the railing, nearby.
“Anyway, citizenship is a legal matter and nationality is mythology.”
“Yes Gertie, but nationality is a subject of strong emotion.”
“It’s an old game, Fred, manipulation by propagandists, pundits, and all those distractors that now plague us through various anti-social media,”
The starling takes off. We can see it flying towards the murmuration, wheeling above the Safeway.
