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.
Phone in hand, Dimbleby Moreaboutcha is looking out over the river from the bench along Wicket Street. Where it follows the top of the escarpment. He sits on an empty plastic bag in the damp morning sun. Looks like rain is still falling in Maryland across the Potomac.
I walk over to him with folded umbrella.
“Good morning Dimble!”
I ask him about the festive meal we all enjoyed at The Emperor Babur restaurant the previous weekend.
“It brought back memories.”
“Did the meal compare favorably?”
“No, he came to me while I was shaving this morning.”
“What?”
“The meal was fine. I am overloaded with associations.”
He belches.
“Someone to accompany your mirror image?”
“Yeah, I was focused on the right side of my chin, in fact.”
“You are clean-shaven, I see.”
“My razor irritated a small wart which marks the spot where Alonzo Ganes slugged me back in the nineties.”
“Ouch! What provoked him?”
Dimbleby holds up his phone.
“This thing is going to go off any minute. Excuse me in advance. I am going to answer it and walk away.”
“Yeah, okay, I will stick with the view here.”
“I wrote a story about him.”
“I guess you’re not the first reporter to suffer retribution!”
“Far from it. We had just enjoyed good North Indian Tandoor.”
“So, he didn’t attack you over the table.”
“No, Alonzo got mad as we were climbing the stairs and it happened in the Hadron Parking lot.”
“From The Emperor Babur’s stairs?”
“No, it was called, The Star of India at that time.”
“Well, the steep stairs aren’t your fault!”
“No, you want to sit down? This thing is drying off.”
“Sure.”
We share the bench and the view across the river and watch a tour boat cruise past with empty outdoor seats.
“It wasn’t the stairs.”
“No, were you badly hurt?”
“His fist only grazed me, but it chipped a couple of teeth.”
“Did you throw a punch?”
“No, no, I resorted to verbal retaliation and drove away.”
“Good man!”
“Alonzo was drunk and didn’t have a car.”
“We all got well lubricated last week as far as I can remember.”
“Rosey Pelicans were flocking to our table.”
“Even though the bird is extinct!”
“It wings through my thoughts alright. Who was that artist woman I was sitting next to.”
“That was Daisey Briscoe.”
“Yeah, I had designs.”
“Did you? Daisey teaches drawing at PU.”
“Yeah, she mentioned her students a couple of times, but I was distracted by Hermione.”
“I don’t remember her.”
“She is my wife. Well, she was, ah strictly speaking, ah ah.”
“Okay.”
“Guilt, soaked in Indian beer didn’t do much for my sleep.”
“But aren’t you separated?”
“By the Appalachians, the great plains, and the Rockies and then some.”
“She still dwells in you, though.”
“She weighs on me.”
“Perhaps a fling would unburden you?”
“She and Alonzo were pretty tight.”
“Sounds like a tense situation.”
“No, far from it. We were all comfortable together.”
“How did she react to the attack?”
“This was before we met.”
Dimble’s ring tones sound. He taps his screen and is a little unsteady getting up.
He taps the screen again and sits down. The SnazE plastic bag falls from his butt where it stuck for the moments he was using his phone.
“Yeah, Alonzo is an art historian at PU.”
“Art historian and pugilist!”
“I never knew him to sock anyone else.”
“Was it the Rosey Pelicans?”
“Alcohol has never brought it out in him before.”
“Did you mention Alonzo to Daisy?”
“She didn’t know him.”
“No, she is a studio teacher.”
“So, what are you doing up here so early, Fred?”
“My morning routine walk, meet, and talk to the neighbors.”
“What for?”
“I am interested in what people think.”
“There’s a lot of mindlessness out there.”
“Even people who speak in clichés, are moved by something.”
“What’s your job?”
“Full-time retirement.”
“Retired from what?”
“The government bureaucracy.”
“Oh, that quagmire!”
“Good benefits though.”
“Yeah, at my expense!”
“I pay taxes too, you know.”
“Yeah, it’s Congress, I mean it is decaying like an old molar.”
His phone rings again and he tries to get up but staggers back onto the bench.
“Hello, hello, who is this?”
“Okay Jim, why are you calling me?”
He taps the phone and mutters his annoyance inaudibly. We sit in silence. A brown squirrel runs in front of us chased by another up a small tree.
“Well, look at that, a sourwood tree!”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
“Fred, it’s the first one I’ve seen around here.”
“It may be the only one I have ever seen.”
“There’s a lot of them down in Tennessee. It is hardwood, good and useful.”
“So, Dimble, tell me, what did you write about that art historian?”
“Yeah, what indeed? Do you know Diddlie Drates? I think she lives around here.”
“Yes, I know her well. She is only a few blocks away.”
“Okay.”
“I can introduce you if you like.”
“Ah, not right now.”
Dimble’s phone beeps. He reads a text and responds briefly.
“Yeah, ah, okay, I am not ready for a meeting.”
“She lives at the top of Oval Street at 1667.”
“Right, ah, there is history here, you know.”
“Oh! am I hearing an Alonzo connection?”
“I finished off the Saki before leaving this morning.”
“Liquid breakfast!”
“Yeah.”
“Do you do news shows on BBC, or what?”
“I haven’t worked for them for a while.”
“Why did you leave?
“They, claim to have fired me. I say I quit to finish a novel.”
“So, both things happened.”
“I was getting intimate regularly with the Saki.”
“I get it.”
Dimble looks at his phone, but it is silent.
“My novel is what got me in trouble with Alonzo.”
“You mean the same one you are working on now.”
“Different, with a little help from Saki.”
“Japanese help!”
“No, British.”
“But they, rather the Scots, make whiskey.”
“I am talking about Munroe.”
“As in Hector Hugh?”
“Well, the Japanese have been helping me lately. You see, they got between me and Hermoine.”
“Sorry to hear that, Dimble.”
“Well, there’s other stuff too, of course.”
“Sure.”
“And you know, Alonzo thought my novel was about him.”
“Did he read it?”
“He read a draft. Not even half of it.”
Dimble is feeling in his pockets.
“And was unhappy.”
“Well, the protagonist is an Art Historian.”
“What period?”
He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, looks at it, and scrunches back in.
“Seventeenth Century Dutch. Fabritius, Ter Borch, van Ruisdael, and Cornelia de Rijck, especially, de Rijk.”
“I don’t know de Rijk.”
“No, she painted birds.”
“Overshadowed in art history, by Rembrandt and Vermeer and so on.”
“Yeah, those guys are in the highest price range, so in our commercial culture, they are most valuable.”
“Don’t you think there are other grounds for the valuation?”
Dimble belches again coughs and spits.
“Excuse me; No, in a word.”
“You mean price, is it?”
“Well, there’s the museum racket and the prestige stakes, influential critics, and so on.”
“Yes, that is part of pricing, but what about the works themselves?”
“That is a sore subject.”
“Does that mean, no comment?”
“It means that is why Alonzo socked me and chipped my tooth.”
He shows his upper front teeth, exhibiting a chipped corner.
“That?”
“Yeah, I told him, I wrote that all these valuations are bullshit, and he took it personally.”
“Oh! You accused him of being a Racketeer!”
“I did not!”
“No.”
