FAUXMONT with Fred BlogZ

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.

Trip’s daughter has just found some notoriety by joining the all girl band “Toxic Blob”. I meet her at The Tentacle Coffee Bar near her rehearsal studio.  We are the only customers.  They serve sushi, tea, and coffee in the afternoon and full meals in the evenings.  The place is sparse, with a few tables and chairs in a large space.  The bar looks as if it once served as a drug store soda fountain.  There are holes in the walls where various attachments have neen removed.

“Toxic Blob”released ten million flying ants at a recent summer concert on the campus at Prestige University.

“Yea, that’s P.U., get it?” Asks Liberty.

“Perhaps” I hesitated.

“The place stinks!”  said Liberty fiercely but confidentially.

She went on in a quiet but serious voice, “I mean there is one group up there that thinks it is still 1968 or something, and another group who are promoting the ‘design argument’  against evolution. They need to wake up.”  She broke off, and now it was she who hesitated.

In vulnerable and trusting tones she asked me to forget all that.  I suggested that the substance of her remarks seemed plausible enough.  After some further reflection Liberty agreed to let me post her remarks and moved on from arts to ants.

That number was used by the publicist. Though ten million is obviously an estimate, the figure is also allegedly mentioned in a suit the college filed against Toxi Blob.  The campus of Prestige University was infested with fire ants and had to close its summer session for a full week after the incident.

Liberty showed me a clipping from the local paper, which revealed that Dr. Bookbender the dean at P.U. refused to be interviewed.  The reporter was also put off by Carol Crowding of the college administration office.  Dr. Flower Finderelli has offered off the record remarks only.   He is co-chair of the Gender Studies Dept, at Prestige and reportedly knows Liberty well. A spokesman for Terminal Arthropod, the exterminator, refused to comment on the issue as it is now in litigation. Some one did say they still find ants on their desk.

Liberty plays under the name ‘Etta Smog’.  She has a smile like her Mother’s, worthy of the screens at any multiplex, and speaks in the same soft friendly tones as her Dad.

“I am an entertainer” she said, “and our band is the only one doing the buzz thing”.

Some men walk in and sit down at the bar.

Liberty is wearing her work cloths.  These are customized outfits made of pink black and orange plastic plates.  In combination they look a bit like the armor jousting knights used to wear, except that Liberty does not care to cover too much of her shapely contour when on stage, or on warm days in rehearsal.

“It is like my exoskeleton” says Liberty.  “It gives us the insect look and feel. I am not wearing the antennas and mouthparts, but we have them for the stage.  Very important for building the band’s identity. It is our brand. It also feeds into the cross species thing.” Liberty does not explain further. She offers me a look at their concert on a portable DVD player.

Toxic Blob plays on stage from inside a translucent and multicolored plastic bubble that vibrates like jelly to sound.

“There’s is the Blob”.  Liberty pointed out.  I keep thinking of the seat on Jake’s deck and of jellyfish it brought to mind. The video shows the band breaking out of the blob and freeing the insects all at once. She leans across the small cafe table pointing out the effects.

“See them – see those beautiful clouds – there  – and there  – look at those flying up through the spot lights.  We keep the bugs hidden in canisters, out of sight until the end.”

She explains that they’re latest music was inspired by the recent sounds of cicadas.  “Why not?”  asked Liberty.  “I mean who’s the dude that wrote the orchestral piece ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’?

She paused. Her upper plates have ridden up crushing her breasts as she leans over to point out more clouds of insects.  Liberty wriggles to adjust her plates. One by one the men at the coffee bar turned to stare.

“Rimsky-Korsakov!”

She exclaimes it in the tone of an expletive, as she turns suddenly, looking back at the men, and answering her own question.  The men at the bar turn back to their lattes, as her plates slip back into more comfortable positions.

“That’s the dude who started the insect thing” she went on.  “ Well, we use electronics and guitars, no orchestra, at least not yet.”

Since Liberty joined the band last year, they have done seven gigs at university campuses around the country and national fame beckons.  Liberty shares her Dad’s business acumen, but she allows as how her taste in entertainment has led to some strain on the relationship.

“Dad’s OK “ she said philosophically, “He can see the bottom line.  He’ll get over it.  I found his wine storage thing was a perfect place to keep my insect larva.  It kept them sleepy until the right time.  So Dad didn’t know what was going on.  Now the lawyers are all over him, and he is helping us too.  That’s why we had to move on when his cel went off in the wine cellar.  It was the lawyers. I know for sure. He’s got the best. Believe me.”  She broke off to adjust the plates riding up on her collarbone.

“You mean your Dad’s lawyer’s are going to defend the band?”

“I didn’t say that.”  The plates are flexibly joined by elastic threads.  She pulles out and down slightly from each side, her elbows out to right and left  like wings.  As the orange and black segments stretched apart her breasts fell back into place under them.

“Okay, so your Dad’s got smart lawyers.”

“Let’s not go there” she said, still adjusting her exoskeleton. These things can get really bad, especially if they pinch my nipples!” she complained, making smaller adjustments with her fingers, and then went on, “This was our first release.” Liberty said of the ants. “We planned a hornet release next and a cockroach release at the next concert, but this first one may be our last.”

“Hornets! That sounds very dangerous.  Once people got stung there could be a panic in the audience.”

“Oh so long as we are outside it would be okay.”

“With a very high wind perhaps.” I suggest they might want to release CDs next time.  “We release insects,” said Liberty “We sellCDs.”

The concert video is over. She closes the CD player. “That’s it Fred.”  She pulls away from the table.  “Hey! don’t forget to look for our label, ‘Aphid Fuzz’.  We are going to use white polyester fibers on the CD ‘jule box’ to make it a warm and fuzzy purchasing experience.”  She got up.  Her body bulged, her skin creased and peeped from under the plates.  She and her plates moved towards the door. She glared at the men sitting at the coffee bar and went back to her rehearsal.

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 Place

I saw Diddlie outside her front door as I walked up the hill past Jake’s place, not knowing her address.  She was emptying a pail of water onto a hydrangea when I waved and she came towards me.  She now lives seventeen feet from Jake’s new house at 1661 Oval Road.  The fourth garage door is the nearest and the biggest door behind which he keeps his stretch Hummer.  This Hummer is the sample he used to convince the Snaz franchise to market them nationwide.  Diddlie Drates hates Hummers.  She colored with outrage when I asked her feelings on Jake’s huge house next door.  Diddlie had measured the exact distance from the property line over to the corner of the garage to substantiate complaints she voiced in a recent Fauxmont newsletter.  She alluded to problems over the newsletter, community activists, and other tensions.  She would get to those later she said, then as if to bring up another subject “We need to talk.”

Diddlie seems perplexed.  The subject had put her in a bad mood.  Her response to my question left her disoriented.  I had forgotten how volatile the issue had become in her mind, though I might have been reminded when reading the news letter that she is concerned about Jake’s huge house.

“Yes, okay, what else is going on?  I mean I’ve been thinking, and there’s plenty to tell you.  Like you said I have a lot of memories, and we can get into that, but I am not through with you about that other stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“You are going to tell me who you are: alright?”

“Okay, we can talk.  Go ahead I am listening.”

Diddlie explained that her house was built in the early 1940s.  It is unimproved, and she takes pride in its being well maintained and in original condition.  She has some original appliances that her late husband was restoring, set aside under tarps in the carport.

“This is a historic neighborhood” she states emphatically, pausing for effect before going on.  “We bought this house from my Aunt, Maria Gostrey, when she moved to Paris back in the fifties and she used to visit us regularly.  It is hot in summer but we live in dappled light under here she said gesturing up towards the tree tops with a sweep of her arms over her head and raising her face towards the sky “and it’s cooler here than the ‘burbs’ down the street.”  She gestures again to the east where Orchard Close, far larger than its name suggests, stretched all the way to Route One.  Diddlie danced on into the house, beckoning me in, and skipping over a small fallen branch.  “These homes here in Fauxmont should not be knocked down to make room for mansions” she insisted.  Her one story house is built on a concrete slab, surrounded by tall white oaks, hickories, azaleas, ivy and the wilting hydrangea now recovering outside her front door.

“First they cut down the trees next door, then there was all the construction noise, that nearly drove me crazy” says Diddlie as she goes into the history of Jakes’s construction next door.  She picks up the crouching white rabbit that is still in the hallway leading to her living room.  “This is Mr. Liddell” she says through the strain of bending and picking him up, stretching out the sound of his name.  Now it is Jake’s new lights that Diddlie complains about.  He has more than a dozen high intensity lights installed on his outside walls by the security firm, Urban Safety Security Solutions.  They come on in response to motion detectors, as deer, possum, fox, bunnies, cats and dogs, but so far no terrorists, wander through the narrow margins of Jake’s property, and into Diddlie’s ivy.

“When those lights come on, I feel like I am living on a movie set and the cameras are about to roll” jokes Diddlie, smoothing the rabbit’s ears.  Then more seriously  “That man’s dream house is my nightmare.  No not a nightmare.  If it was a nightmare I might wake up and it would be gone.”  She squeezes Mr. Liddell in her fury, and he wriggles and protests.  No that’s the trouble.  I am stuck with it.”  She breaks off and excuses herself, apologizing to Mr. Liddell and says she is going to put him back in his hutch.  I can’t hear what she says as she goes on talking while walking away towards the back door which slams behind her, cutting off the sound of her voice.

She soon comes back in, her voice sounds as if she has been talking all the time she was out with Mr. Liddell, but it is clear she claims to have broken through Jake’s usually unflappable good humor.  She reports that he called her “a slab dwelling low life busybody.”  That is when she accused him of being a Hun, a Goth and a Vandalizing Mansioniser.  I ask her if Jake has offered her a gift card from Snaz, but Diddlie says “He knows better.”

The sound of a loud crack broke into our conversation.  It was a Toyota Prius rolling quietly up the driveway snapping the branch Diddlie had skipped over on the way in.  Diddlie leads me out the front door and says “We still need to talk!” and runs out to meet someone in the car.  “I can call back tomorrow,” she yells as her voice was cut off again by another slamming door.

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.

Yesterday Derwent Sloot celebrated his eighty seventh birthday behind the row of prickly holly trees that partially screen his living room window from the Trips’.  It faces the Trips’ three story kitchen-dining room with large windows flooding the banana trees, and orchids with light and colorful fish swimming in a huge plexiglas cylinder that rises from its sand stone foundation to the second story gallery, all visible through a thin patch in the holly trees. This view is also an advertisement for high-end Snaz Super Stores, where so many of the Trips’ accoutrements were purchased.  I knock on the Sloots’ door which opens directly into the living room. He opens up and I stand facing his modest picture window, momentarily absorbed by the vision of Trip’s mansion, when Sloot brings me back;

“If you are so fascinated by that sickening extravagance next door, why didn’t you knock on their door?”

“If you remember, you had invited me over.  I am Fred, your new neighbor.”

“Hi Fred.” said Derwent quietly with no sign of impatience.

“What is new in Fauxmont?” I asked Mr. Sloot.

“It is pronounced Foxmont, like the fox”, he corrects me sternly.

“Sit down why don’t you?” He said politely.  Derwent waved at a couch and two armchairs in the living room. The back of his thin hand was bruised purple. His fingers stiff and bent could suggest nothing but a general direction by their limited extension.

I sit on the couch and Derwent takes to a stained wingback chair that cuddles him with extended arms in the hollow of its sunken upholstery. He brushes back some thin white spiky hair that falls across his brow as he leans forward to sit down.  It looks slightly wet. He is still exercised about his neighbor’s new house, and tells me he has expressed his objections to Trip about the new construction on a number of occasions, and then more heatedly he says;  “It’s a megalith, not a house.  I can’t look up without seeing it!”.  He goes on: “Yes, Jake’s dream, his fantasy, his fancy, as told by his builder, not in words: what words could describe that thing?  That idiot Planck built it dumb, and mindless.  Kept adding on without thinking. I stood there and watched one morning while Trip sketched his changing notions on a plywood off-cut, and Planck explained what he could build. He should have refused to build it!  All that architectural chaos wasn’t designed.  His conniving architect, who seldom showed up, contrived it into a towering suburban status symbol for a fee. That’s it. Jake’s ambition expressed in all the things he can buy and in his expansive gestures to his neighbors. Let’s talk about something else!”

Derwent is out of breath. His lip is wet, and he wipes some drool off his chin hurriedly turning away into his cavernous chair.

He is also annoyed by a row of French doors opening onto a spacious deck, with a gazebo built like a three level pagoda thankfully near the thickest healthiest hollies at the property line. The granite base of the eight-story tower, which gives the building an inappropriately medieval presence, further outrages him.  Diddlie told me that Trip, after an altercation, had given Derwent a hundred dollar gift card redeemable at any Snaz outlet.  Some call it vulgar bribery; Steve Strether, another neighbor, called it a neighborly show of good will.  When asked about it, Sloot snarled that he didn’t know where the place was, and didn’t intend to find it. The doorbell rang. He excused himself graciously, and soon returned not with his new visitor but to introduce his daughter Rosalba, explaining he had a chess game in the other room with the caller, a child he didn’t introduce.

“Call me Rosie” she said as Derwent and the child visitor went out.

“I am visiting my folks here.” she explained and went on that Derwent is giving his weekly chess lesson to Heidy Guderian, a five-year-old neighbor.

Sloot has lived in his one story slab built home for fifty odd years. He is a world authority on some microbe living in sub arctic soils, and still enjoys making occasional appearances with environmental groups.  During the pre-election period he pulled up one of Jake’s Bush/Cheyne posters, which he claimed was on his property. Derwent was not happy when Jake replaced it with a larger one several feet back.

Derwent used to know everyone in the neighborhood, but the recent housing boom changed things radically. He had already told me heatedly that he didn’t ’know” Trip, “I only know of him”.  Rosie told me how the community had grown up in the late 1940s.  The owners put up most of the simple single story homes in the space of a few years, and a strong sense of community grew out of that experience.

Rosalba did allow, out of Derwent’s earshot, that her son had a very good time riding in Jake’s Hummer last weekend.  Apparently Jake had taken them all to Cyber Kids out at Snaz.  Rosie giggled: “No one over fourteen really understands how much of Cyber Kids is virtual and how much is actual, and no one under fourteen really cares.”

Rosie’s son, Serge, who was eavesdropping in an adjoining room, came in and told us that his Mother is living in the past.  “Such questions are really meaningless” he pronounced with the precocious authority of a preteen expert.  Derwent is blissfully unaware of the threat to his progeny.

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.

Jake Trip moved into his dream house last year at 1674 Oval street.  Wicket Street is flat, narrow and one way going around the hill from East to West about half way up from Boundary Road at the bottom of the hill.  The steep incline of Oval Street between Boundary Road at the bottom and Wicket street above, passes Jake Trip’s granite faced basement walls as they disappear into the slope.  The basement was cut into the hillside and all eight oneiric stories are visible only from Wicket Street.  I did not mount the twelve steps up from Wicket St. to enter through the formal front doors.  Mrs. Gomez let me in through a side door under a half- timbered overhang.  Looking at all this granite off Oval Street could lead one to expect battlements above, but there are several stories of half timbered stucco.  It’s exterior is designed in many styles.  The brick facing on Wickett street features arches and ledges and iron railings in front of tall windows.  Looking up at the top stories I can see the last few leaves against the long parallel lines of siding like notes on an extended staff.  The sun sets behind mature oaks growing on the perimeter  and none of them obstruct his sixth floor view of distant hills beyond the river.  Jake owns a local Snaz Super Store franchise.  Lou had introduced us over a platter of bear meat as the three of us helped ourselves at his last barbecue.  Jake was interested in telling me about the neighborhood but we didn’t talk much at the time.  Before he left he told me to walk over for a visit after I move in.  Now he is speaking to me from the privacy of his Jacuzzi on this unseasonably warm November evening.  I declined to join him, but settled into a Snaz semi-inflatable seating pod close by on the extensive sixth floor deck.  The pod surrounds you like an amoeba as you sink into it, but surprisingly, it firms up when its innards find their equilibrium around you.

Jake stands up to observe me.  Two crows call to each other on the dead branch of a Willow Oak growing up from Diddlie’s yard next door.

“How about that?” exclaimed Jake, dripping in his tub.  Narrow curled leaves from the oak blow into the water, and float next to his knees when he sits down again.

I tell him it was like sitting in a jellyfish in front of jeering crows.  “Yea, that’s about it” Jake goes on.  “How do you know they’re jeering?”

“Only a guess.”

“I don’t think we interest them.  They’re busy trying to make a living like the rest of us.  My daughter developed that thing as a college project.  She’s got them on the market already; pretty good in two years.  So far I am the only Snaz store that carries them.”

“How’s business?”  I asked; “Hey, business is good” Jake said.  He also indicated that lower taxes will be great for him and his employees.  “I held the line on wages and benefits this year” he remarked sternly.  The proud Snaz owner has cleared most of trees from his lot and his dream now rises eight stories above the expanse of his smooth lawn .

I ask if he is going to plant any trees to replace the losses.

“Yes I have a shipment due in next Tuesday. The trees will grow back.  They have a history of doing that.  Ask the coal industry.”

He splashes at a late wasp that found his plate of sliced Mountaineer apples.  He offers me some and goes on.  “By adding that eighth floor, we have an unobstructed view of the river and the Parkway.  We will see trouble before it finds us”.

Jake has a full security package which cost him ‘half a mil’, he remarked with a wink, including a contract with Suburban Safety and Security Solutions.  Jake tells me that they are able to respond discreetly, in minutes, 24/7, with a team of consultants who will  “assure the protection of your home”.  He finishes the last slice of Mountaineer apple after I refused it.

Trip dismisses local residents’ complaints about the excessive height of his structure as narrow-minded.

“These folks need to get a life,” remarks Trip, as he rises again and starts drying himself off on his sunny Eastern exposure.  “I have added to the security of all my neighbors and raised the value of their homes.”  He pauses to dry his head and face.

“You can’t take it with you.  So, I thought I would just realize a dream of mine to live in a multistory home.”

Standing up again, I can see the sky’s unlimited blue reflected in his jacuzzi water as the surface stills after he steps out.  I can also see warm yellow brown patches in the river filled with mud washed in by recent rains.  After this short chat he goes inside to dress.  As he opens the door from the deck into the house the twins come out in elegant deep purple Snaz track suits with their names Liberty and Gale, embroidered on the front and logos on the shoulders with gold piping on the sleeves and pants.

No they are not twins.  Sorry, it is Jake’s youthful wife Gale.  She blows her husband a kiss and introduces me to their daughter Liberty.

Gale takes the lead, guiding me down to the second floor wine ‘cellar’, where my tour with Jake will begin.  I notice their matching NY Yankee baseball caps and white shoes with purple stripes, and more Snaz logos in the back below their ankles.  We take our time descending the grand double staircase, modeled on one that sank in “Titanic”.  Liberty tells me that her mother was a semi-pro tennis player in her time, and now runs the “Sports Arena” at Snaz.  I ask Liberty about Snaz, and they both laugh nervously, as Liberty explains that “Snaz isn’t ready for me yet.”

As we enter the wine ‘cellar’, Jake appears, in khakis, teeshirt and aviators.  His friendly tones suddenly take on the familiar qualities of a sales pitch.  It emerges that his five thousand bottles of Chardonnay, (he only drinks Chardonnay), are the beginning of a new line at Snaz.  He plans to do a joint venture with Glitz Holdings.

“Glitz do high end Condos, and we shall do the wines and accessories,”

Jake explains.  He has a fully motorized, climate controlled, inventory sorting and tracking system installed on three stories of structural steel, between the basement and the polished surfaces of his second floor ‘cellar’.  I stand next to him while he activates the pop-out keyboard installed behind one of the mahogany wall panels that alternate with glass doors around the walls of the room.  With a few key strokes he summons the screen listing his holdings and then selects the bottle he wants.  The gentle murmuring of electronic switches and motors behind the walls is drowned out by a sudden shrill chirp from Jake’s cell phone.  Gale goes over to his side.

Liberty beckons me over to the door and suggests we move on.  Gale comes across before we leave the doorway, with earnest apologies.  She explains that this is not the right time for my tour.  She offers lunch next Sunday, and a tour, if I don’t mind eating early. I accept.  She escorts me to a Parisian art deco style elevator door, which doesn’t squeak or rattle and I go down to the lobby at Wicket Street level.

Walking out of the elevator into the entrance hall below I see a wall of television screens.  There are four rows of four screens, some blank but flickering, others showing whatever comes into the mirror across the room.  I turn to the left and notice a tall beveled glass mirror on the wall, perhaps twelve feet high and about four feet wide.  As I walk toward it, my image in the mirror walks towards me.  I keep going towards the mirror until my image meets me a few inches from the glass.  The glass steams up as my breath hits it.  So it happens a number of times on the screens opposite.  I can see the screens across the room in the mirror.  There appear to be slight delays between the video capture and the displays.  When I turn around completely I can watch various pictures of my reflection, at different moments in the past few seconds.  Some screens act like another mirror facing the one I was looking in, creating an image of ifinite regression, one image inside the other.  I can’t tell where the cameras are.

“There seems to be something wrong with your security video Gale.”

There is no reply.  The elevator door is closed.  Gale is gone.  I am too bewildered to fully understand the strange infinities in that video kaleidoscope.  I walk out the front door and turn off the path through ivy in the deep shade cast by the Trip’s fantastic home.

NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction.  Click on Archives on the right.

Soon after Diddlie and I sat down the waitress interrupts us, with menus. At the same time Lou Waymarsh appears hemmed in behind the waitress and an adjacent table, with his strong square face showing a gray beard. The waitress looks over her shoulder at Lou and drops some of the menus as she tries to separate two from a stack she is carrying.  Then noticing Lou behind her, she turns and asks if he wants to sit down.  The bus boy is standing off to the right with a cart full of dishes, waiting for the waitress to make way.  He can’t move back because of the lady with the walker waiting behind him. A large party to the left is getting up and the aisle between our booth and the adjacent tables is jammed. As I bend down to pick up a menu that has fallen by my feet I notice Diddlie’s jeans are gone. By the time I give the menu back to the waitress Lou is sitting in Diddlie’s place. His thick black eyebrows look like caterpillars basking in his thoughts while resting above his eyes.  He is frowning slightly, as he so often has since his daughter, Lt. Waymarsh was killed in Iraq. I had forgotten, but realized what he meant at once with his first words.

“It was 3 years ago today.”

“Has it been that long already?”

“I am going to sell my firm to Fibonacci.” Said Lou without any change of tone, as if the two events were one.

“’I had no idea Lou!  ‘The Fib.’  Congratulations, I am sure you got a good price.”

“Yeah the three of us made out okay. We didn’t close the deal until this morning.  That’s when I called. It was an all-nighter.” Lou stifles a yawn, and looks into the menu.  Seems as if he is absorbed by it.  Perhaps he is still negotiating silently behind the caterpillars on his brow which have arched slightly as he concentrates squinting for a while until getting out his reading glasses with a sigh of resignation. He puts the menu down. A few caterpillar hairs are scratching the tops of his glasses as he speaks.

“That outfit is more like a network than a company. Sure they are incorporated, and have that non-descript building out in Fairfax, among others, but they have people from all over government, banking, media. Congress…I mean you name it.”

“Now they have taken an interest in your education consultancy.”

“Yes they want my data.”

“Your data?”

“You know.” he waved his hand over the menu as if to draw forth a genie or perhaps cast a spell. He speaks slowly, as always, with a low resonant voice.

“I was the education guy, but there’s data we had collected over the years.”

“I don’t understand Lou.”

Lou looked more serious than ever. I wonder, has this man been so constricted by the python of his job that he can no longer relax?  I had not noticed this before, though it is striking now, after his daughter’s death he spent more and more time at work.

“Yea, education is where I started out but we drifted into waters Fibonacci is now interested in navigating.”

We had become friends over a Xerox machine; two graduate students working at the Library of Congress, thirty years ago, amusing each other with riffs on the genius of the Flying Circus. Lou has paused, fallen back into the depths he had conjured with his hands out of the menu’s plastic holder. He stifles another yawn.

“Sorry about this.” He puts down the menu and looks at me. ” I mean I can’t say any more about it. You know ‘the Fib’..  They like to stay out of sight, don’t think people realize how big they are.  Like a kind of light house projecting all these pictures its clients want us to see, or someone wants us to see, on the op-ed page, or featured in a news magazine or even on TV.  I mean TV is the thing now.  You don’t see the light source only the pretty pictures it illuminates.”

Lou picks up the menu again but his eyes are closed. “I need a coffee” said Lou, and the waitress is there. I hadn’t noticed her arrival.

“Will that be all sir?”

Dropping the menu, Lou has a full yawn into both hands. The menu slides over the table towards me. “Excuse me” he says to the waitress, “That is all for now.”

I order the same and ask:

“Lou, do you have a neighbor called Diddlie Drates?”

“Diddlie, yes. She was there when we moved in. She is like a founding mother of the neighborhood.”

“ Did you see her ?”

“No, how do you know her?

“She introduced herself to me just now in the bar, after hearing me mention your name to the bartender.”

“Wonder what made her do that?”

“Don’t know, she was sitting here just now.”

“No I didn’t notice her going out, but I don’t notice much at the moment.  By the way, did you contact Jake Trip?”

I told him I had.  Jake remembered me from  your barbeque, and invited me to visit him tomorrow.”

“That should be your first stop alright. Now you will see what the neighborhood is all about.”

My first thought on reaching the H Bar Restaurant on Maxwell Avenue is to ask if my old and close friend Lou Waymarsh has made a reservation.  We haven’t seen each other for months and the first arrangement to meet this morning at his house had changed.  I asked the receptionist and finding that reservations are unnecessary, I look around and see he hasn’t arrived yet and take a seat at the bar.  There is now time to reread the text he sent me earlier, when the ring tone announced its arrival as I drove North on Rout One from the realtor’s office, unaware of the caller’s identity until a stop light afforded time to take a glance. Now there is time to fully appreciate his apologetic digital explanation for the delay and look again at his reminder to find him in the Quark Lounge of the H Bar where we can chat in comfort. His unexpected absence also leaves me time for reflection.  We are sure to see a lot more of each other in future as I have just moved into his neighborhood, largely under the influence of his advice, and his telling me recently that a house is for sale, and in addition, my own experience in Fauxmont, visiting him, had been decisive. There is also time to survey the scene and so my first sense of Fauxmont as a new home comes through the lively ambiance of the local bar and restaurant.  The attentive bartender notices the empty glass of Bass Ale in front of me , and asks if I would like another.  “I am meeting Lou Waymarsh in the lounge,” I explain, shaking my head, thinking Lou might be known at his neighborhood bar.  The bartender gives no sign of knowing him, and I pay my tab and tip, and put my wallet back in its pocket, preparing to look for him again among the quiet booths in the carpeted Quark Lounge.  Before taking so much as a step I am confronted by a friendly smiling woman wearing an expensive, finely cut royal blue blazer.  She asks:
“Did you say you’re a friend of Lou Waymarsh?”

The bar seats are all taken and I had been dimly conscious of someone standing close behind me trying to get the bartender’s attention,  as I settled my tab.

“Yes” I tell her, surprised at her sudden interruption of my reveries, anticipating Waymarsh’s arrival and studying the other customers crowding in opposite me,  and others more distant, I could see walking into the Quantum Que to play pool across the hall.

“I have known him for years.  He’s a neighbor and good friend too.”

“Funny I haven’t met you before.” I said, sliding off my stool to stand next to her, in the narrow space between the barstools and the rail separating them from the chairs and tables of the noisy cocktail area extending beside us to a big bay window.

“I often visit him, when he adds me to a few of his neighbors for a barbeque.”

“I don’t go to those much. I don’t eat meat. I mainly know him through our community organization the ‘Fauxmont Guild’.”

She held out her hand and introduced herself: “Diddlie Drates” she said in a business-like manner.  She has a blaze of golden rod in her lapel, and there’s some garden soil dried on to the stained knees of her jeans.  I walk towards the low light of the carpeted Quark lounge which appears like a dim cave from here in the brilliance of the sunny bay window. She follows and sits down across from me in a booth, without saying anything about it; perhaps assuming that a friend of Lou’s must be her friend too.  She goes on and gives me no opportunity to tell her that I was thinking of my chat with Lou as personal and confidential.

“What did you say you do?”

“Oh I didn’t say, but I do as I please.”

“What do you mean? is it a secret of something?”

“No, I write a blog.”

“Are you going to write about me?”

“Yes.”

“Will you send me the URL?”

“Not yet.”

“I want to see this thing before it goes out, okay?”

“Not yet, it is not up yet.”

”It’s not a blog then.”

“True, it is in the form of a blog.”

“Are you sure you know what you are doing?” asked Diddlie looking alarmed.

“No.”

“You better get with it,” she said fiercely.

Her questions and reactions seem impertinent and presumptuous coming from a total stranger who had introduced herself with such polite formality.

“It’s not as bad as you think.”

“Sounds to me like you are lost.”

“I am finding my way now, though.”

“You’re just a gossip like me.” She giggles.

“I am very interested in what you say.”

“Are you coming on to me?”

“Not exactly.”

“I know you’re lost, but come on, just tell me!”

“No I am not coming on to you, but I am interested in what you say.”

“I mean you… well I just don’t get you.”

“Sorry Diddlie.  I don’t know at the moment if I am writing a blog of a novel or just a blog.”

“A blog of a novel,” repeated Diddlie, “and that is why you are pumping me huh?” Diddlie giggles and goes on.

“Look, I can’t tell you what you’re doing.  You have to figure that out for yourself.”

“True, it’s not your problem.  Forget it.”

“Listen, I just want to know where you are coming from.  I mean you just moved here, or are about to.  You must be the guy Lou mentioned while he was fixing my bike, but I don’t know who you are.”

“I am a writer.”

“Okay, you told me that already.”

“I am writing you.”

“What?”

“Yes, I invented you and now we are getting acquainted.”

“You set me up!”

“Yes.”

“You just dragged me in here for…Well!  For what?

“You came to mind. There was no dragging.”

”So why do you have to keep asking all these questions?”

“You’re the one asking the questions Diddlie.”

“Well you said you are interested, so I keep talking, but I also want to know who I am dealing with.”

“I am a writer trying to give readers an idea.”

“You don’t have any readers.”

“Well, hypothetical readers.”

“So you aren’t really talking about anything.”

“I am.  I am talking to you about who I am.”

“Yea right, and you are all in your head and you’re lost!”

“You keep saying that.”

“It is true. What do you mean you are writing me?  You think you are God or something?”

“No, there’s no need to be so exasperated, I am not playing God, I am just a writer.”

“Is this a put-down?  Are you trying to tell me I don’t exist?”

“No no, you certainly do exist.”

“Ah ha, so when is my birthday?”

“I haven’t thought of it yet.”

“Does that mean I don’t have one?’

“You must have a birthday, every one does.”

“You don’t know when my birthday is.  You can admit it.  It’s okay.  See, God knows everything, and you don’t, and that is okay too.

“I would say it is January 2, 1945.”

“You might say it, but how do you know if it is true?”

“I will write about your birth certificate and you can get it out of your top desk drawer and read it later on.”

“Suppose I don’t want to be that old?  Just think again okay.  You are putting too much behind me.  It isn’t fair.”

“Not so much, enough for you to have interesting memories.”

“What about living? To hell with memories.”

“You have a good life here in Fauxmont.”

“You ought to take notice of your character, as you seem to think of me.  They can really mess things up if you get them wrong.”

“True.”

“So why can’t I be twenty three and having really good sex with my boyfriend in the privacy of my house before that thing next door went up?”

“You did and also married him.”

“No, I mean now, instead of arguing with you in this booth without any food.”

“You can’t because I am not writing the story that way.”

“Sweetie, you could always change it.”

“No, your role is to be a source of background information.”

“I don’t want a role.  I want a life.”

“Yes and you have one.”

“All I have is memories and dumb questions designed to make you look smarter than I am.”

“Diddlie, that is not the idea.  You are plenty smart, but you are also worked up about the new big house next door, and other things in your life. You are burning on a short fuse right now.”

“So you write, but I want a life.”

“Yes it is my story, but you have a good life.  Not an easy life but a fulfilling one.”

“Enough about me…what about you?”

“What about me?”

“I still don’t know who you are. You just keep saying you are a writer.”

“That’s it.”

“Well tell me more about yourself.  Like what do you do?”

“I told you I am a writer.”

“No for a living, come on, you know what I mean… stop being cagey.”

“Anything I say becomes part of the story, and this isn’t a story about me.”

“It could be.”

“I am not writing autobiography.”

“No, but to be fair you might as well put yourself in here with me and get out of your God complex.  I’m talking mental health you know.  Why should you be the only one with a life?”

“All the characters have lives.”

“Are you a character yourself?”

“Not exactly myself.”

”Oh not exactly myself,” mocked Diddlie.  “Are you so lost even about yourself?”

“Whatever I write is what happens.”

“You really do have a God complex sweetie. You’re acting like a deity above it all. No wonder you are so lost.  You say you are Lou’s old friend.  Then you say you invented me.  Now you won’t come and live in Fauxmont.”

“I am living in Fauxmont.”

“But not exactly! Oh don’t start that writer stuff again.  You have no exact idea!  That’s where you get lost.”

“Yes I do get lost in it.”

“Well how dumb is that?”

“Diddlie we live in different worlds.”

“That’s for sure.  You are lost in a world of your own.  I am saying, ‘Come back!’ I have a feeling I might like you a lot better if I knew you.”

“Try thinking of it this way: If I mail you a letter to Diddlie Drates, 1664 Oval Road, etc. it will never reach you.  The post office will either return it or it will end up in the dead letter bin.  On the other hand if you send me a letter in your world, to Fred Blogz at my address on Maxwell Avenue, you can be reasonably sure I will get it.”

“Well what do you know?”

“I don’t know anything until it is written.”

“Talking to you makes me wonder if I know anything at all.”