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.
Diddlie’s black hoody is pulled down across her forehead keeping out the damp wind.
“It was 29 degrees yesterday when I went out in the morning, to bundle up this goldenrod.”
“Yup, now we have wet wind.”
“I know. It’s at least forty.”
She picks up a bundle of dried goldenrod and carries it into the carport.
“Bring that other bundle, okay?”
I pick up the bundle lying under a tarp at the top of the driveway and push through the dead leaves blown up against the porch.
“You need to clear your leaves.”
“I called Mr. Fawkes about it yesterday.”
“Has he got a blower?”
“No, he rakes, and it takes forever!”
We leave the bundles standing upright in an empty trash can.
“Not quite, besides the gas-powered blowers release pollutants into the air.”
“Yeah, I can smell it.”
All conversation stops as the yard service at Max’s starts a leaf blower next door. Now another starts at a higher pitch.
The drought in August and September left the grass brown and cracks spread across patches of bare clay soil.
The blowers move around the corner of the house and the angry-insect buzz fades.
“Even the electric ones still blow dust, soil, and mold into the air.”
“Yeah, Fungus!”
“What do you mean, fungus?”
“It’s all over the truth!”
“You are not making any sense!”
“Fred, now you know what it is like!”
“Like what?”
“Like talking to you!”
She pulls on my arm and leads me further into the carport.
We pass Mr. Liddell’s hutch.
He doesn’t stir. She opens the old wardrobe with the back cut out and finds a narrow steel door in the wall behind.
“What happened to that beautiful polished wooden door?”
“I gave it to Lou in exchange for some work he did for me.”
I step through the wardrobe to the hidden door.
“Come on Fred! What are you afraid of?”
“The unknown!”
“Well, so you should be, but come on in.”
Diddlie gallops down the dark steep, cement stairs and flips a switch at the bottom. The stairwell is filled with dim orange light.
“Okay, honey, can you see now?”
We shout in the stairwell.
“Yes, Did. Why the lurid orange light?”
“It doesn’t attract bugs.”
“Good idea!”
“It is also LED. Serge says they are more efficient.”
I go down slowly to find her under brighter orange LEDs in the old bomb shelter .
“It is so quiet down here!”
“Yeah, you can hear your own brain buzz.”
She turns towards a small shelf.
“Here put on this mask.”
Latex gloves cover her fingers holding a mask.
“Why? Have you got COVID down here?”
“No, can’t you smell it?”
“Well, it smells kind of like those rotting leaves up in the yard.”
“That is the fungus odor.”
“You remember, these cubbies?”
“Ahh, it is all Greek, right?”
“Well, that was the Queenie, speaking out of turn.”
“Where is Queenie?”
“I left her upstairs this time.”
“Okay.”
Diddlie gestures toward the wall of cubbies.
“Here is absolute truth, there’s hard truth, difficult truth, here, and embarrassing truth behind that yellow Chinese curtain.”
She reaches into one of the cubies and pulls out something like powdery paper.
“What is it?”
“It is one of my hard truths.”
“Why has it turned purple? Looks like it has disintegrated!”
“See, all the relative truths in those hanging baskets?”
“Yeah, they are filling the place.”
“Oh, look at all those alternative facts!”
The floor underneath the baskets is covered in crumbly lumps.
“Where did that come from?”
“They fall out of the relative truths.”
“Oh.”
“Now I’ll have to sweep all that up.”
“What about the embarrassing truths?’
“Oh, they are fine.”
“Now look at this!”
She pulls out a small object shaped like a toadstool, with a purple cap and yellow gills.
“This is the fungus I was talking about.”
“So that is eating up your files!”
“You got it, sweety.”
She snuggles up next to me and whispers through her mask.
“Aren’t you going to console me with a kiss?”
She has pulled her mask down.
I bend down to her and she pulls my mask aside. She embraces me forcefully. She is passionate. We separate our lips.
“See how good it feels to get out of your head?”
“Yes, you nearly pulled my tongue from its roots.”
My mask has fallen around my neck. Diddlie pulls her’s back up.
“Are you okay Fred?”
“Oh yeah, fine.”
“Pretty good first kiss, huh Fred!”
“A first, it was!”
“It has taken more than a decade!”
“What’s the hurry?”
“Is that what you were afraid of?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh, you mean my kiss was, like, too intense for you?”
“No, kissing was not on my mind.”
She pulls on my hand.
“Well, why aren’t I surprised?”
“You tell me!”
“Does your temperature ever get over 98.6?”
“The flue tends to do that.”
“No silly! I am talking metaphorically.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Oh?”
“Because if could only see, you would kiss me again.”
“Okay, you are talking erotic temperature!”
“See that nice soft couch over there?”
“I do. You want to sit down?”
“Now you are getting it.”
We step over to the couch and sit down raising a cloud of fungus spores from the cushions.
We are both choking, despite our masks.
“HELLOW! Anybody home?”
Diddlie whispers to me.
“Who the hell could that be?”
“Sounds like Lark to me.”
“Shhh, keep quiet.”
We both choke.
“Maybe she will go away.”
The soles of her shoes scrap on the gritty steps.
“Did. are you down here?”
She has reached the bottom step and crunches some alternative facts on the floor.
Lark looks in.
“Oh! Am I interrupting something?”
Diddlie chokes,
YES!”
Lark starts coughing too as she walks through the dusty orange air toward us.
“Well, let’s make it a threesome!”
Lark sits down next to me and raises another fungus-cloud.
We all cough together in a random pattern of straining lungs.
Diddlie chokes out to Lark that masks are by the door.
Choking, Lark gets up to find one.
“Okay, we better let the dust settle.”
We sit together breathing gently through our masks.
“Did., where have you been?”
“Home.”
“You don’t answer the phone or your door.”
Lark stops to adjust her mask.
“Oh, you weren’t kidding, was she Fred?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fred, I mean you two have been busy with each other, right? Romantically, I mean.”
“No, I only stopped by about twenty minutes ago.”
Well, Did. What’s going on?”
“I have an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“Fungus!”
“Lark, she means her files are rotting away due to fungus.”
“What files?”
“No one is supposed to know.”
“Come on Did. Let it out!”
“It’s my truth files.”
“Well, I have an emergency too, it is called Armond Macadamia, and its fake.”
“That guy must be a hundred by now!”
“It doesn’t matter, Did. They are running an electronic replica.”
“Yeah, sounds like the fungus has infected the electronics.”
“What fungus?”
“It is what we are all choking on!”
“I don’t know about that, but we have a reality crisis going on.”
“That isn’t going to fool anybody for long.”
“Oh yes, it is.”
“The thing is going to have to appear and do rallies and all that.”
“It already has.”
“No way.”
“That’s it. No one believes it isn’t really him, but it isn’t.”
“I still don’t think it will work.”
“Oh! it could. They have made a breakthrough at PU.”
“Never heard about it.”
“No, because Macadamia’s money has funded it with billions of dollars over the past two or three years.”
“How is this thing going to shake hands and hold babies?”
“Somebody wears an electronic suit just like Mac’s.”
“You mean he is forcing them to keep all this under wraps?”
“Something like that.”
“It even smells of Mac’s Snaz “Testostronica” aftershave, his favorite.
“That stuff supposedly costs a thousand dollars a bottle.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be an aphrodisiac?”
“Don’t say they can do an electronic fuck!”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“So how do you know about it?”
“Remember Did., when the Elegant Ostrich closed?”
“Sure, there was all that about an electronic art project there.”
“That’s right, the Cyber Anthropic Interface. That was a cover story for the Macadamia thing.”
“You said it was at PU.”
“They used the old store as an offsite for secrecy.”
“Okay Lark, you still haven’t explained how you know any of this is true.”
“I have been talking to someone who worked on it.”
“Oh sure, how do you know this person is legit?”
“I used to see her when she worked at the Ostrich site.”
“Ah ha, and she is going to tell you, a journalist, all about it!”.
“That’s right. Her name will not be revealed, and she will get a lot of money when the story breaks.”
