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.

By Thanksgiving, Christmas lights illuminate Fauxmont’s trees, shrubs, and rooflines, and many shine all night, along with streetlights, making it even more difficult to see the natural light of stars.  

Someone in red boots and a high-collar black overcoat is standing in the front yard looking up into the dead magnolia outside the living room window.  They hold bird glasses up to their face hidden behind the collar.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“No.”

I walk around to see the hidden face.

“Hi Diddlie. Looking for me?”

“Do you hang out in dead trees?”

“You might have let me know you were here!”

She goes on looking up into the dead branches.  We hear a cry, as a young eagle flies out toward the street.

“Did you see that?”

“Yup.”

“At one point it was strutting around on the ground!”

“What? out here, you mean?”

She lets her glasses hang free on their strap.

“It has the Red Queen freaked out.”

“I doubt if she can see anything down here.”

“No, that bird was in my yard, right outside the kitchen window.”

“Oh, so you flew down after it!”

“No Fred, I have been tracking it on foot for the last hour, or more.”

“In this weather!”

“I have a high-tech coat.”

She looks at her watch.

“I still have another thirty-eight minutes of power.”

“How can you tell?”

“My watch tells me, see?”

I see a red horizontal bar on the face.

“That’s interesting.  Most watches tell time.”

“Fred, you are being really obtuse today.  Is the cold weather getting to you?”

“I am not being obtuse, just inquiring.”

Some ice falls out of the tree, in a gust of wind, and shatters on the ground, narrowly missing her.

“First you accuse me of flying into your yard without telling you and now you pretend that watches only tell the time.”

She puts her glasses up to her eyes again.

“Sorry, the humor intended by my remarks seems to have frozen in the air before you could get it.”

Keeping hold of her glasses she takes them down from her eyes, and looks at me, holding them ready in front of her.

“Yeah, maybe it will melt out of that ice that nearly hit me in the head!”

“It won’t melt today.”

Diddlie lets go of her glasses and pulls her colorful fairisle knitted hat down above her eyebrows. 

“Listen, I just walked over tracking this bird, okay?”

“Okay, your watch has an app that regulates your heated coat.”

She holds her glasses up to her eyes and scans the trees across the street.

“Do you see it?”

“No.”

She strides toward the gate to the street with her glasses in one hand at her side.

“Come on, Fred.”

“Just a minute.”

“Fred! Come on.  Aren’t you going to help?”

“Help with what?”

“Tracking down this trespassing raptor.”

“It isn’t trespassing.  Eagles own the whole area between the clouds and the ground.”

“Well, okay, but the Red Queen needs reassurance.”

“Let me get my unheated puffy jacket and hat.”

“Hurry up!”

She goes on scanning the trees with her glasses.  When I get back, she is standing by the gate in our post and rail fence.

We walk up the hill towards her place when we hear the cries again.

“Can you see it?

“No,”

“I haven’t seen anything flying about.”

Diddlie lets her glasses hang by the strap.

 “I think it is a dream sign.”

“It is an eagle, Did. I hear them all the time.  There was a breeding pair in the willow oaks on Wicket Street back in the spring.”

“It could still be a dream sign.”

I follow her up the hill to her carport.

“You are not going to find the raptor in here, Did.”

“Oh, really, Fred?”

Diddlie unlocks an old art deco burr walnut armoire, standing against the house wall.  Some of the highly polished veneer has chipped off around the doors and on the corners.  The back turns out to be a heavy steel door, faced with wood, and I don’t see any handles.

“How did you open that?”

“Mr. Liddell and I, know how.”

“You mean he comes through here too?”

“Yes, all the time.”

“But he is locked in his hutch.”

She pulls me in, with her arm in mine.

“Come on honey, just move, will you!”

We stand in the armoire. The door we came in by closes. It is dark. The big steel door opens, letting in some light, and the armoire seems bigger inside than out.  There is a scent of camphor in the musty smell, and I can see where the shelves and coat rail have been removed from the sides.

“Is this your husband’s old bomb shelter?”

We descend the concrete steps to another door, which seems to open automatically.

“There; remember?  

She lets go of my arm.

“This is where I store all the different kinds of truth.”

“Yes, with your goldenrod in all those cubbies.”

“You see those jars over there?”

“Right, about twenty of them in funny shapes.”

“Each one holds dead dreams.”

“I didn’t know they died!”

“Oh yes, once it has passed through the minds of millions of people it dies.”

“Why?”

“Times change, Fred, and people’s dreams change with them.”

“How come you have them?”

“Because this house is in the collection field.”

“Good grief!”

“If you are sensitive to them the dreams will come to die there.”

“Oh, you mean this is a cemetery?”

“No Fred, my husband was a Dodgson.”

Mr. Liddell watches us patiently from under a small table.

“I remember.”

“The family has had the gift for generations, all the way back to the Druids.”

“Do you think Stuart was a Druid?”

“No, silly!”

The red Queen is perched on top of the case of truth cubbies, flapping her wings in agitation.  Mr. Liddell emerges hesitantly and hops across the room.

“You remember when all those rabbits who crowded into the carport?”

“Yeah, it was raining hard.”

“They were all dream signs.”

“I thought they came in out of the rain.”

“The rabbits did but as dream signs were attracted by the collection field.”

“Is that why Mr. Liddell was so scared?”

“Yeah, that crowd was too much for him.”

“Okay, you mean they are all in one of those jars?”

“The dreams are, not the animals.”

“Aha, so how do they detach from their mammalian hosts?”

“Well, how do your dreams detach from you?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t even remember most of them.”

“No, they soon escape, you know.”

“They re all lost to me.”

“They escape too.  Some leave you with a memory, but it is like a still from a movie.  You can never remember the whole thing.”

“So, what is the whole thing?”

“Well, it isn’t anything you could put into words. It, like, vibrates through all kinds of existences.”

“It does?”

“Every dreamer of that dream adds a vibe.”

The Red Queen glides down onto Diddlie’s shoulder.

“Okay Queenie, okay.”

“Dream scream, dream stream, cream dream dreeeeee!”

The Red Queen goes on repeating herself.

“Queenie! We get the message, okay!”

She starts grooming her wing feathers and then as if distracted, she flies back up to her perch above the cubbies.

“That bird is having a bad one!”

“She can feel the energy.”

“What energy?”

“All the energy that Mr. Liddell is tuned in to.”

“OH! He is in dream reception mode!”

“His ears can channel it.”

Mr. Liddell has stopped at the foot of the dream cabinet and watches us with ears up.

“You mean he hears our dreams?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“Oh stop asking such obtuse questions!’

“I am not obtuse.  I am curious!”

“Just chill, okay.”

We stand in silence while Mr. Liddell channels energy and the Red Queen gets even more agitated and starts pulling out her feathers, which float in the air like dust. 

“Did. Queenie is losing it.”

“No, look! She has calmed down.

The Red Queen glides to the floor through the cloud of her feathers, and Mr. Liddell hops back under the table.

“What’s going on?”

“The dream has settled.”

“What are we doing down here anyway?”

“I wanted to show you the dream sign.  You didn’t seem to understand.”

“Well, those jars look empty. I mean all I can see is the dust collecting on them.”

“Well, you can’t see a dream, can you?”

“I have seen plenty in my dreams.”

“The dream inhabited you then left without you seeing it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You experience the content, not the dream’s invisible gravity.”

“Dreams are not planets.  They don’t have mass.”

“Not physical mass, metaphysical mass, all the unresolved stuff in life.”

“Well Did. I feel plenty unresolved.  I feel as if I might dissolve!”

“Come on honey. This is a pretty strong field.”

She folds her arm into mine again and tugs. We go back upstairs to the carport. The wind is still gusting, and the white oaks have released the last of their remaining dead leaves. Some blueish Christmas lights hang with their cold light in the dark of a fir tree across the road. The leaf blowers are silent after gathering late falls and drowning out everything but the sound of trucks and crows.

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.

Nadia Brazov and Max Plank sit across from me on the banket at the H-Bar.

The late afternoon sun shines through the bay window. Through that tiny gap between the top of the tree line and the bottom of the awning outside.  

Nadia sips her wine and squints, turning to me. 

“I always had my doubts about the law, in this country.”

“Being an activist, I am not surprised!”

“Too much depends on who you are.”

“So true, Nadia, you often get the justice you can afford.”

Max leans forward.

“Sometimes we have to pay for our rights.”

“Yeah, not in patriot’s gory glorious blood but in cash!”

“It varies, from state to state.”

“Fred, Sherman once pointed out the law is written but justice must be done.”

“You mean it’s a perception thing, Max?”

Max picks up his glass to catch the last drop of grape, which is too small to reach his mouth, and spreads across the slope inside his glass, exhausted.

“Yup, much of a lawyer’s work is weaseling around the writing.”

“There is also jury selection.”

“Yeah Nadia, and PR.”

Max holds out his glass. Tipping it toward the tabletop.

The waiter notices Max’s empty glass.  He picks up the empty bottle.

“Another one sir?”

“Sure!”

The waiter takes our empty glasses and the bottle.

“Most cases are settled by plea deals; a lot of court cases go unnoticed but in the big cases use all means necessary to make the point.”

“Well, Fred my case is small, but a big deal to me.”

“See, we are back to, who you are!”

“I had a vain hope the law would protect us!”

“I would like to think it still could, though.”

Our waiter returns with a new bottle of Brunello, clean glasses, and puts down a big bowl of chips.

“On the house sir.”

Max looks up at him while Nadia pours.

“Thanks, buddy!’

We all pick up chips and chew the thirsty, salty mix.

Nadia speaks through her crunch.

“We are being attacked!”

“I thought Sherman Shroud had fixed you up.”

“So did we, but now there is more.”

“What?”

“Yes!”

Max pulls the top of his shaggy gray and white flecked sweater down over the collar of his shirt.

“It is too complicated and technical to explain, but Sherman says they want to go to court, and they won’t give up until we get there.”

“Who is after you now?”

“Day and Knight are litigating.”

“How did those barracudas get involved?”

“I don’t know who has hired them.”

“That has to be divulged.”

“Oh sure, but it is just a front, called IBI.”

Nadia is shading her eyes as the last sunbeams stream in from above the tree line.

“That stands for International Business Interests LLC., by the way.”

Nadia takes a gulp of wine and refills.

“Branch offices all over the world, no doubt.”

“You better check out your enemies, Max.”

“There are a few people out there still sore at me, Fred.”

“They must be big to pay Knight and Day’s outlandish fees.”

“They got around Sherman’s maneuvering, and he is the best around here.”

Max tugs his gray sweater again.

“Yeah, 

“You sold your company, didn’t you?”

“Yup, a very nice deal.”

“So, what are they after?”

“Crypto!”

“Oh, what have you got to do with that stuff?”

“Good question, Fred.  I have been into it from the beginning.”

“Well! Who da thought it! builder-Max has gone crypto!”

“Yeah, I got hacked about a year ago, too.”

Nadia yanks on his sweater.

“More like two years, now.”

“Right, it was early in 2020”

“You mean they got your codes?”

“No, they got some kind of evidence of my holdings that’s all.”

“Well good luck, FTX collapsed.  Is there anything left?”

“Sure, Bitcoin is still well over $16 K.”

“Is it really?”

Nadia gulps some more wine.  Stands and takes off her dark brown shearling coat.  Folding it over and puts it on the seat next to Max.

“Well, that is the last time I looked, which was the twenty-second, I think!”

She walks over to the bar in her high felt lace-up boots with fitting jeans tucked into the tops. Max rubs the back of his head.

“I don’t watch the price much, too distracting.”

“Too dodgy for me!”

“FTX was an exchange, Fred. I have no connection with it.”

“Well, Max, what got you into speculating on Crypto?”

“It was Jake Trip.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“He is into a lot of stuff.  I don’t know if he sold out or what.”

“You mean Jake advised you on it.”

Nadia is back sitting in a vacant chair, next to me.  Her coat has taken her place next to Max on the banket.  She swigs some more Brunello.

“No, he ended up paying me for my work on his house with crypto.”

“Yeah, and you thought you were getting gypped!”

“Sure did, Nadia.”

Nadia is crunching chips by the handful.

“What was it worth when he paid you?”

“Oh, Bitcoins were about a thousand bucks a piece, I think.”

“He must have paid you a bundle of them!”

“I wish!”

“So, he underpaid you.”

“At that time, he underpaid me by about ninety percent.”

“You might have gone after him for that.”

“I thought about it but, didn’t.”

“He figured it would cost more to sue than he could get back.”

“Yeah Nadia, Jake was in a bad patch at that time.  I was willing to give him a break.”

Nadia has relaxed in the shade of the darkening room.  The house lights come on.

“Those coins were worth about $65 K, a year ago and I sold a few.”

“Maybe they will go up again!”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“You see Fred, I think Day and Knight are trying to squeeze him to sell the rest.”

“No Nadia, they are going to want me to hand them over.”

“You mean they believe the coins will go up again?”

“Who knows what those people believe.”

“So why are they after you?”

“Who knows?”

“Well, there is a cap of 21 million coins that can be mined.”

“Okay, I remember now.  They were supposed to be like gold.  Holding value through scarcity.”

“That’s it. Their blockchain only goes so far.”

“What is a blockchain, anyway?”

“Fred, Sherman explained it as a mathematical organism.”

“And what did that tell you, Nadia?”

“Its life is constantly recalculating every transaction in every block in the chain.”

“Okay, so that’s why it eats up so much power.”

“Right, the more coins there are the more blocks there are to work through.”

“Well, I still don’t get it.”

“No Fred, it is all complex math. That is all I can say because that is all Sherman said.”

“How far has it got to go before they do the last one?”

Max eats the last of the chips.

“I think about 90% have been mined so far. Big computer farms are working on it. That is a huge investment of real money.”

“Those people think there is something to it, then.”

“They could be disappointed!”

“Yes, they might.”

 “You know what Lou told me?”

“What, Max?”

“I never said this, okay?”

“My God! okay.”

The waiter returns with a plate of sandwiches.  We clear a space on the small table and pick up our glasses. He places them carefully in front of us, leaving no room for the glasses in our hands.

Then he removes the empty chip bowl.

“Your order Ma’am, ham, and cheese on sourdough and roast beef on rye.”

Max looks up, with a sourdough ham and cheese in his free hand.

“Thanks, buddy.”

“Lou thinks the whole Bitcoin thing is an intelligence operation.”

He takes a bite and a swig.

“I think Lou is a freelance intelligence operative.”

“Lou has a lot of interesting sources.”

“The idea has been growing on me for years.”

“Why?”

“I have built a lot of houses around here for people with interesting connections and lots of money.”

“I get it.”

“How about that!  Satoshi Nakamoto might be a team at the CIA!”

“Or FSB or, pick your acronym!”

Nadia pushes back her thick black hair.  The thin grey streak is still prominent.

“It would be a slick way to know who has hidden money.”

“You want a sandwich, Fred?”

“No thanks, my stomach won’t take kindly to it.”

“You know that thing could be a source of all kinds of power!”

“Maybe a foreign government is after you.”

“Yeah, Fred comingled with organized crime, I’ll bet.”

Nadia is nodding slowly.

“That is Day and Knight!”

“I mean, who knows where Jake got his coins from?”

“Macadamia is mixed up in this somewhere.”

“I heard Jake snuggled up to Mac, years ago.”

“Fred, Mac bailed him out, you know.”

“That’s right, I remember hearing that too.

“He has a long history of business in Russia.”

“I often wonder how much money Mac really has.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he may just sit on top of a huge debt pyramid.”

“Like the person who keeps getting new credit cards to pay off the old ones!”

“Right, he’s got a Saudi card and a Russia card, a real-estate card, and a whole bunch of other cards.”

“Well, he sure knows how to play them!”

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 and I see people dressed in orange outfits unwinding a roll of black duct from a giant metal spool. 

It is mounted on a trailer with spokes rising above our heads.

As we walk up Oval Street hill to her place an orange drilling rig, called, ‘Vermeer’, appears on the left verge. White asters lean over the drill pipe where it goes into the ground. It bores laterally through the clay, about three feet down, parallel to the road in the municipal right of way.  

“What is going on, Did.?

“It’s called, ‘undergrounding’”.

“As in burial?”

“That’s for graves. 

This is for the electrical mains….”

A small orange John Deere backhoe comes downhill toward us.  It carries a wooden spool of cable suspended from the bucket.  The tracks are rubberized but the engine is loud.

“What?”

“Didn’t you get a postcard from Dordrecht’s Group?”

“Don’t remember getting one.”

Diddlie, stops and leans close to me.

“Fred, you are really out of it!”

“Well, there was a big stack of mail.  Probably threw it out as junk.”

“No need for excuses.”

She holds my hand.

“Did you notice anything in your yard?”

“Yes, a few things.”

“How about your lines?”

That too, electric utility lines run under our yard all the way to the meter, by the back door. Where they are still unconnected and taped over.”

“Great! You are all set.”

Small holes about three feet deep and a few yards apart reveal the passage of Vermeer’s drill pipe under the verge.  A technician watches over one of the holes, opposite Diddlie’s driveway, while talking to the driller on her phone.

Diddlie lets go of my hand and folds her arm in mine as we go on.

“I hope they don’t hit anything when they drill under my yard!”

We stop at the foot of her driveway.

“All your utilities should be marked.”

“Sure, see all those spray-painted marks. But what about my compost heap?”

“Well, what about it?”

“Don’t you remember? It caved in and all those sparks came out?”

“That’s right!”

“Yeah, I don’t want any more nonsense from that Fascist, Jake Trip.”

“Didn’t Mr. Fawkes sort it out?”

“Maybe, he never explained anything.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘it’s all fixed. Don’t worry about it.’”

“You think he is in on some secret?”

“I don’t know.”

“There is a lot of stuff under this neighborhood.”

“Yeah, Fred, remember all the electronics under the Ashes and that huge pit they dug on Derwent Sloot’s lot for the new house?”

“That was a lot deeper than any basement!”

“Right, and that guy, Stan wouldn’t say anything.”

“Oh, the guy in the hole!”

“He was sitting in a plastic chair on the side when I saw him.”

“And don’t forget, Did, Jakes wine cellar and that insane contraption to transport his Chardonnay.”

“That’s just a gag to hide the dungeon he built down there!”

“It is?”

Oh, don’t get me started!”

Diddlie stops to look around again as we walk up her driveway towards her carport.

“Look how the ditches are overgrown with jewelweed.”

“I have only noticed it in the last few years.”

“Did you see the seeds popping out?”

“Yup, productive little projectiles.”

“We’ve been getting more summer rain.”

“I know, no need for my soaker hose.”

We walk into Diddlie’s carport.

“What’s that orange cat doing on top of Mr. Liddell’s hutch, Did?”

“That’s Oliver, Sophie’s cat.”

“He’s made himself right at home!”

“If he has been messing with Mr. Liddell, Sophie and I are going to have words!”

She looks in on Mr. Liddell who has hidden under the straw.

“I guess he is alright. He’s not crying or anything.”

Mr. Liddell peers through the straw, with one black dot.  His other eye is concealed by a straw. The mound of straw in the hutch moves and his ear and then his pulsating nose appear against the black steel critter fence on the side panel.

Diddlie opens the front, picks him up, and holds him.  Straw falls off him and sticks to her green cable sweater.  Oliver jumps down to the floor and takes up a position on top of an old wine carton at the back.  He can see what we are doing, on his right as well as a clear path out of the way to his left.

She rubs Mr. Liddell’s ears, kisses him, and puts him back.

“Have you been keeping up with O Anon?”

“Is that the wacky political site?”

“No, that’s QANON!”

“Oh okay, the one with the Orange cat.”

Yes, Oliver is ‘O’, remember?”

“No, lost the web address.”

“Fred! How would you get by without me?”

“That is an interesting question, Diddlie.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Didn’t we go through this before, years ago?”

“One more time Fred!”

“Remember who is writing this?”

“NO! I don’t want to think about it.  Not at all.”

“Listen, it is kind of cosmic.”

“It is kind of impossible!”

She holds both my hands and looks at me closely.

“No, let me update you on O Anon. The real thing.”

“Okay.”

“It is about the advantages of daydreaming.”

“Great, I am all for it!”

“Maybe that is why you are so out of it.”

“Maybe, Cats seem to excel at it.”

“O discusses relaxing out of your will.”

“Like into the unconscious.”

“Yeah, like the idea that God is the same as the unconscious.”

“How could the creation happen in there?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, is O saying it is all in our heads.”

“Well, we are talking about FMS, Feline-Mind-Set.”

“What is that?”

“It is like a better way to be.”

“Oh, some kind of new religion.”

She throws down my hands.

“No, not a religion.” 

“It’s just a way to be.”

“Like yawning and stretching and chasing birds and rodents?”

“No, it’s not like we have to grow fur and tails or something.”

“Well, that is good to know.”

Diddlie looks over at Oliver whose tail is doing ‘S’ curves.

“Fred, do you ever get, just random thoughts?”

“Yes, quite often.”

“Where do you think they come from?”

“Who, knows?”

Oliver dashes off towards Dddlie’s hedge and disappears into the thicket.

“I wonder what random thought prompted that sudden move!”

“Well, O says, they come from your FMS.”

“You mean that cat over there in the hedge has come up with all this?”

“You have to ask Sophie.”

“I see. She is communicating with Oliver.”

“She sits with him on the back porch, and she has thoughts.”

“From him?”

“She presents them as being from him.”

“Have you taken up FMS, Diddlie?”

“I am learning all the time.”

“Has she explored the possibility of angels or ancestorial spirits getting back in touch?”

“O Anon is saying that you can call it whatever you want.”

“He, she, it, or even god, if you like?”

“Any of the above!”

“This is about belief rather than fact.”

“Well, it depends on what your truth is.”

“My truth?”

“Yeah, like what is true for you.”

“That would be my opinion or conviction.”

“Right, your truth.”

“I didn’t think truth was personal.”

“Well, you aren’t keeping up.  We all have our own truth, now.”

“That seems absurd.”

“Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Fred!”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“What? Just get with it.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me.  The sun is shining right now.  That observation is mine and that statement is true.  It is not my truth.”

“Well, how does the sunshine feel to you?”

“It feels fine until it gets too hot.”

“There, that is your truth!”

“Okay, so what happens if I speak my truth to you and your truth is different?”

“It happens all the time!”

“No wonder we are having problems on social media!”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Too many truths out there and many are false.”

“Think of it as subjective truth, okay?”

“What is the difference between that, and opinion?”

“Is it your opinion that the sun gets too hot?”

“No, if it is too hot for me, then it is too hot for me.”

“Like I said Fred, get with it!”

It is five to one and Lou is in the usual booth, halfway down the row on the right side of the Quark Lounge.  No one is wearing a mask but the staff. Lou has placed our orders online for one o’clock.

“I didn’t order the fake meat burgers.”

“Just as well, I can’t digest them.”

“Yeah, gave me some trouble too.”

“Did it!”

“We are getting too old for anything but basics.”

“What do you mean, basics?”

“Meat and potatoes, of course!”

“Who knows what those fake things are made of?”

“Generally, they have a lot of legumes in them for protein.”

The waiter comes by with fish and chips with coleslaw. 

“Hi, my name is Sam.  I’ll be your server today.”

“How are you doing Sam?”

“Two ‘High Seas Specials’, guys.”

He places the oval platters in front of us with slaw in its own small dish, and rectangular pieces of golden battered fish, half buried in thin fries, garnished with parsley and a lemon slice.

“You got some beers coming, Sam?”

“Sure, two Stella’s coming right up.”

As Sam turns away, a young woman with short black hair, and, hearts and butterflies tattooed on her left arm, brings us our beers on a small tray.

“Anything else gentlemen?”

Lou pokes the batter with his fork and sniffs it.

“I have never seen a box-shaped fish before.  What kind is this?”

“Ocean fish, sir.”

“Yeah, okay as opposed to river fish?”

“Right, fresh from the ocean.”

“You sure it isn’t frozen?”

“No sir, your portion is fully cooked.”

“Okay, but was it frozen before it was cooked.”

“Ah, I don’t know sir.  You want to talk to the manager?”

“Is Mr. Hoffmann around?”

“No sir, the manager is here.”

“That’s okay, but I would like to know what… No,

skip it.  This is fine.  Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The bartender walks back to the bar.

“Fred, I am worried about this place.”

“Yes, the geometry of this stuff is most un-fish-like.”

“You know what it is, don’t you?”

“Something that was swimming in the salty seas.”

“It is a mixture of Atlantic Whitefish, Mackerel, and Sardines.”

“Wait a minute.  That’s what bel feeds her cat.”

“It is?”

“Yup, I was around there feeding them over a weekend last month.”

“You mean we are eating cat food?”

“Well, hi there!”

Bel Vionnet is standing by our table with her mask on and a hefty leather case bulging with documents.

“I thought you might be in here, Wednesdays, right?

“Mostly but not always.”

What about my cat, Fred?”

“We are eating the same food.”

“He’s eating it.  Not so sure myself.”

“Lou, you two could have come by our house and had that for free.”

“Thanks, bel, but I wouldn’t have the rarified ambiance of this semi-dark lounge.”

“Well, we can always draw the curtains and turn on a few night lights.”

“Much obliged, bel.”

“May I join you?”

“Of course, bel.” 

“Scooch over a little, Fred.”

“You want me to take care of that briefcase, bel?”

She hands Lou the case and he leans it against the wall, beside him on the seat.

“That thing has the whole of 2021 in it.”

She sits down next to me and addresses Lou.

“Where have you been?”

“I went South for a while.”

“Oh, back home huh?”

“Used to be, at least.”

“Used to be?”

“Polluted with politics.”

“It’s like acid rain.”

“It sure is Fred, gets into every conversation and eats away the good feeling.”

Lou stares at his plate and cracks open the golden batter to reveal white fish. 

He pushes it aside and puts his fork down. 

Bel, is Steve going to join us?”

“Well, he doesn’t know I am here.”

“You cruising bel?”

Bel pulls out her phone and reads a text.

“Looks like my lunch date stood me up!”

“A rendezvous, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you start dating again?”

“I do this every year.”

“And Steve doesn’t know?”

Bel bursts out laughing.  Lou looks back down at his plate.

“Our tax lady buys me lunch every year but this year she is delayed by traffic on I95 and she’s still an hour away.”

“It’s a little dark to do tax work in here.”

“We just talk, Fred.”

“Are you that interested in tax law?”

“No, not at all.  That’s what we pay Jhumpa for.”

“Okay, this is friendship!”

“That’s right. We met in line to see, Soldier Saylor Tinker Spy.”

“I am a LeCarre fan too.  Did you like the movie?”

“Not so much as the old BBC production.”

“Yes, Alec Guinness!”

“George Smiley.”

Lou sips his beer ignoring his remaining ocean fish.

“What are you two talking about?” 

“A spy novel, Lou.  I don’t think it’s your thing.”

“You are right there, bel. Why don’t you call Steve and invite him over. I am buying.”

“Lou, you are a friend indeed, I’ll have a cobb salad and a cup of hot tea.”

“Fred, you see Sam, anywhere?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Is Steve alright?”

“He has a new computer.” 

“Say no more!”

“Yes, last time I got a new one I spent hours on the tech lines.”

“Fred, you’re not alone there.”

“I know, the tech lines are always loaded with an exceptionally high volume of calls.”

Bel shakes her head and looks back at Lou. Sam stops by and offers bel a menu.

“Anything for starters Ma’am?”

“No thanks, I’ll have a Cobb salad and hot tea.”

“Coming right up Ma’am.”

Sam asks us if we want anything more.  We don’t and he walks off to get bel’s order.

“Lou, what made you go south at this time of year?”

“Friends and relatives, you know.”

“Wasn’t it kind of hot and stormy?”

“It’s cooler than California!”

“It was 116 F in Sacramento the other day.”

“Augie must be cooked!”

“Oh yeah, Lou, he lives near the city, doesn’t he?”

“I never knew him well.”

“Do we ever know anyone?”

“Sure, Fred and me, go back about, ah, how many years?”

“Don’t say it!”

“Over forty years since our L.C. days.”

“What is L.C., Lou?”

“That’s Library of Congress, where Fred and I Xeroxed library books and periodicals for Congressmen and their staff.”

“And for not a few term papers, I’ll bet!”

“Well, I had no idea!”

Sam brings bel’s salad and tea.  She thanks him as she dips the teabag into her cup.

Having finished with his fish polygon, Lou is picking up skinny French fries one at a time.

“I would say we know each other pretty well.”

“I would say you recognize each other pretty well.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, how many of us really know ourselves?”

“That’s a tough question, bel!”

“It is. Think what it takes to do that.”

“Self-reflection helps a lot.” 

Lou bites on a long thin fry letting the end stick out of his lips like a toothpick.

“Some of us don’t go there.”

“Yes, you might say there is a spectrum, as we call it now.”

“A spectrum of what, Fred?”

“How about, inner light?”

“You mean some people don’t flip the switch?”

“Some of us find no need, while others are habitually introspective.”

“Okay bel, so what do you think it means to know another person?”

“Don’t you think it’s growing expectations as time goes by?”

“Right, that’s what we know.”

“That’s it.  It’s about our expectations of the other.”

“I think some of us are strangers to ourselves.”

“You mean like, they’re lost, Fred?”

“I mean people who are unreflective.”

“Oh, they don’t want to know!”

Bel looks up from her salad.

“Yes, that’s very telling.”

“It depends on how you’re wired.”

“True! for example, I don’t think Albrecht, is introspective

while Daisy is intensely inward.”

Lou is down to his last fry.  The fish remains in several pieces.

 “Daisy is an artist.  It goes with the territory.”

“Yes and Albrecht is mainly political.  Daisy hardly ever goes there.”

“So, what does that tell you, bel?”

“Albrecht is outwardly oriented, and Daisy looks in.”

“Do you think all artists are introspective?”

“They have to be to find their art.”

“Okay, but that is different from being self-reflective in other areas.”

“For example?”

“I think Picasso was a monster but also an artist.”

“Yes, he has been called an ‘Art Monster’.”

“He is only one, among many, Fred.”

“Who coined that one?”

“I remember reading it somewhere, but not who wrote it.”

Lou empties his beer.

“Bel, you seem to think we never know each other.”

“I think custom and habit tell the most.”

“How about close friends pouring their hearts out to each other?”

“So much depends on trust.”

“Yeah, I have met plenty of people I wouldn’t want to know my business!”

“Of course! And we must trust ourselves too.”

“Oh, as in, what dare I say?”

“Or, Lou, even what do I dare to think?”

“Right, I got beat up by an insight after Tilda took off.”

“There you are, Lou.”

“I am?”

“The Buddhists say, ‘we are coming into being at every moment.”

“Fluidity!”

“That’s how I see it, Fred.”

Lou tilts his empty glass, waiting for a last drop to collect.

“Coming into being, huh”?

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.

A tall man is climbing the long escalator ahead of me at Huntington Metro.  He takes two steps at a time with ease. 

I get to the top, well behind him. Taking one step at a time and then riding for the last few, as they flatten out.  There is Maynard Keyes, at the top. Facing me and looking down the elevated track for an incoming train.

He takes off his sunglasses carefully with both hands.

“What brings you to Huntington, Fred?”

“Going to meet friends for lunch.”

He puts his glasses in a case and pockets it.

“I am going back to my digs.”

“Where is your magnificent pink car?”

“In the shop.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“It is hard to find replacement parts for a 1960 Buick!”

“Not surprising, it’s historical!”

“Yes, talk about expense, if all else fails I’ll have to get some custom made.”

A train pulls in and we board.  After a few minutes, the train’s voice announces, “Yellow Line Train to Green Belt, doors closing” with a two-tone simulated gong.

The car is empty, and Maynard stretches out sideways across two seats with his feet extending to the seat across the aisle.  He puts his sunglasses back on with the same care he took removing them.  

I sit behind him, and he turns towards me.

“I’ve been lodging with the Sorrell sisters up in Northwest DC.  Did you know them when you lived over there?”

“No, none of them.”

After a short ride, the train voice announces, “Eisenhower Avenue” and the doors open onto the platform high above the Hoffmann Center.  Maynard watches two female soldiers get on wearing their four-color operational camouflage. They stand near the door in front of us. Maynard turns back to me.

“That Cami rather stands out, don’t you think?”

“Not designed for METRO.”

“I suppose it has its uses.”

“Are the Sorrells military women?”

“Good grief, no!”

“Perhaps they are too old to have followed that trend?”

“None of them would do well in a regimented society like that.”

“They sound interesting.”

“We go back a long way, There are three, with five marriages among them, all now divorced or separated.”

“Come home to roost, have they?”

“Exactly! To enjoy their unencumbered late middle age and regain their youth.”

“Oh, to regain my youth!”

“One or the other of them have been living there ever since old Sorrel died of heart failure in the late eighties, leaving them his mansion.”

“How lucky they are!”

“Yes, they grew up there, and are quite well known, or should I say notorious?”

“Perhaps you should.  I wouldn’t know.”

“They were ahead of their time.”

“All three at once?”

“Yes, Ottoline was nonbinary before the term came into use.  She was also “hooking up” long before the convenience of dating apps; and Lydia was painting illegal murals on city walls as a high school student, in the early eighties.”

“Impressive! What about the third sister?”

“Not so much ahead of her time, but she was as adventurous as her siblings.”

“Somebody must keep tradition alive!”

“True enough, teenage Lucinda’s affair with her sixty-three-year-old high school drama teacher made the papers and local TV.”

“So, is that where you took Boyd?”

“Yes, I thought he might feel more comfortable around people with unconventional lives and expectations.”

“Did he?”

“He got along well with Lucinda. I was never sure if he would sleep with her or with me. Lydia was polite and Ottoline ignored him completely.”

“Very complicated for Boyd!”

“Well, I should add that Ottoline was working to a deadline for a porn script.”

“So, she allowed that much.”

“No, Lucy told Boyd to console him.”

“This plot only thickens!”

“I think all this complexity led him to go home to Lark.”

“I seem to remember that disaster, by a huge puddle in front of the house.”

“You have that right.”

“Boyd has had a rough time these last few years.”

“He has. He tended to noctambulate.”

“You mean sleepwalking?”

“No, wide awake, he got out of bed and went for a stroll in the wee hours.”

“Much on his mind, no doubt.”

“Yes, he wanted to find his father, Harper; you know.”

“I believe that’s complicated by paternity issues.”

“So, he told Lucinda and dear Lucy told me.”

“As we drove back from the incident outside his mother’s house Boyd got a call telling him charges against him have been dropped.”

“That must have reduced his stress level!”

“He was so preoccupied, I wonder.”

“So, he got bale then?”

“Oh yes, thanks to dear Andy Sforzando’s smooth handling of the case.” 

We stop at King Street and a lot of people crowd on at the back of the car.  Some take to the hard blue seats and others stand holding the stainless-steel grab bars. Many in shorts and sleeveless tees revealing various kinds of leg and arm tattoos.  Their golden piercings shine from their faces in the sunlight as they turn and gesture in conversation. When the train pulls out of the station, Maynard looks down at a gathering crowd on the huge concrete expanse of the new bus terminal.

“Look at all those Demonstrators!” 

“They support, Lee Leavenworth Knox.”

“Isn’t he the guy trying to outlaw jeans for women?”

“Yes, he is also convinced that Hillary Clinton is a Cyborg.”

”She/it must be under the control of the Deep State.”

“Do cyborgs have gender?”

”That is a huge question, I can’t answer.”

” The term, ‘Deep State’ was once used by left-leaning conspiracy theorists.”

“Lee Leavenworth Knox was a coming young Democrat, in the nineties.”

”Lee must have smuggled the term over with him.”

”It has become a crowd pleaser.”

“He’s got nearly ten million Twitter followers and it’s only a month since the cyborg revelation.”

“I see all those gullible women for Knox are wearing sun dresses.”

“Doesn’t it look quaint!”

“My mother’s generation wore that style.”

“A lie is as good as a fact to those who believe it.”

“You remember that remark, ‘We make our own facts’?”

“Carl Rove wasn’t it?”

“He denies it.”

”Free speech is a wonderful thing and truth-free speech is truly fantastic.”

“Well, we in the ‘reality-based’ community are at a disadvantage!”

Our shiny stainless steel 7000 series car slows to a stop at Braddock Road. Outside we can see men spreading rolls of turf in front of new townhouses in the hot late morning sun.    

“That grass will be cooked by evening!”

“No, Maynard, see the tank truck?  It will be well watered.”

Sparkling droplets splash and spread among the green blades where the turf is already down.

“I think most of that water will evaporate before it does the grass any good.”

“Do we grow grass because it resembles a carpet or were carpets created to look like grass?”

“Sounds like a riddle!”

“Senator Knox has the answer.”

“He has ALL the answers!”

“Well, wool is made of grass by grazing sheep!”

“Is that supposed to be a clue, Fred?”

“Only as far as woolen carpets go.”

“We urban Westerners are growing more and more out of touch with nature.”

 “That’s right, and she is showing her annoyance!”

“I believe rising methane levels are her latest attention getter.”

“Only if you subscribe to the climate change theory.”

“It’s a bit more than theoretical at this point!”

“Well, it depends on who, you ask.”

“Much depends on the entelechy, Fred.”

“I think that is probably obscure to most of us.”

The train voice announces ‘Calvin Coolidge National Airport’ as we go into a long curve in the track. 

“Good God! I feel the train is about to fall off the tracks.”

Looking down to the right one sees no sign of the track bed only roads passing far underneath. The car tilts to the right as if it were going to tip over.

“I hope we don’t take to the air.”

“Maynard, it will be a brief descent!”

“Thankfully so.”

“Is this your first journey on Metro?”

“On this route it is.”

The two soldiers continue in conversation, leaning slightly in compensation for the tilting floor.  Those chatting together at the other end of the car, seem to be oblivious.

The train voice announces Calvin Coolidge National AirPort as we stop.

People with luggage step aboard.  After the two-tone gong, the train voice tells them, ‘Yellow Line to Green Belt’.  Maynard must pull his legs back to give everyone room.  He gets up to let a young man with a backpack sit by the window. He wears earbuds, and his black hair is shaved from the sides of his head. Maynard sits down again and extends his long leg down the aisle parallel to his row of seats.  It becomes too difficult to talk without putting the plump Asian woman sitting next to me in the middle of it, as she scrolls through her phone, smiling to herself.

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.

Daisy Briscoe parks her Taurus wagon under a maple tree outside 1861 Havisham Place. I sit in the back, chauffeur style, next to her bowler hat and Cam’s ukulele. Daisy has not yet fixed the front passenger door which is both dented and jammed shut. The driver-side door opens with a loud crack and closes more quietly.
She leads me up five steps to the brown front door of a large brick rowhouse. Her thick black hair is piled on top of her head accentuating her long neck.
“Here goes Fred, I am going to see inside this place after fifty years or more.”
She finds the key on her ring and her bracelets tumble down her arm to her wrist.
“What is this? I can’t make it fit. You try!”
I try it without success.
“Any other doors?”
“Yeah, around back.”
We walk around to the basement door, off the minimal backyard, where another maple shades both yard and the alley beyond the high vertical-board fence. Thistles and curly dock rise between the irregular paving stones, largely covered in dead leaves. We descend the concrete steps by the door to the old coal chute. Desiccated leaves and samaras clog the drain outside the door. She unlocks it easily. It is thick with many brown repaintings and draped with cobwebs sagging in accumulated dust. Daisy can’t find a switch and flips her phone light on.
A huge brick coal-burning furnace fills the far corner. Long since converted to burn oil from a tank by the door, which replaced the coal bunker.
“Mom used to talk about her visits to this place a lot. I heard about a closet down here with a built-in secret. That’s when she gave me a key.
“When was that?”
“Oh, when I was a teen. I kept it in my jewelry box. Not that I had any jewels!”
I turn on my phone light.
“Over there, by the boarded-up window.”
“Yeah, Fred there it is!”
She opens the door.
“Oh, the commode! Be my guest if you need to.”
The red wooden seat has cracked, and it is half on the floor and half up. It is dry.
“Thanks, but no need.”
“Have you seen any light switches?”
“No, is the current running in here?”
“I thought it was.”
She holds up her phone and catches an empty ceramic light fixture hanging from a floor joist on a cotton insulated cord.
We can also see the boxed-in stairs up to the ground floor, and another closet opposite. Walking over, I accidentally kick an empty Miller Highlife bottle in the shadow of a post.
“Oh, look at that!”
She picks it up.
“Miller ‘HigLeaf’.”
“What?”
“Mom said the French used to call it, ‘HigLeaf’!”
“Why would they drink our beer?”
“I don’t know. After World War two, you know the GIs brought Jazz and all kinds of good stuff.”
The door to the stairs is locked. She leaves the empty on a bench by the closet and rattles the handle, trying to turn it. It comes off in her hand. The door opens far enough to get her fingers behind it and pull, scraping the bottom along the uneven stone floor, when something falls to the ground.
“Was that part of the lock?”
“Don’t know?”
Our phone lights sweep the floor’s flat stones.
“Well look at this, Fred!”
“An Indian head penny!”
“When did you last see one of these?’
“Years ago, in the last century, in my cousin’s coin jar.”
She pockets the coin and steps through.
“Okay, this is it. The middle shelf should pull out.”
“Look at all that old food!”
The small closet is full of cans, crowding shelves on three sides. Our phone lights reveal five shelves across the back. Among the still legible labels are, Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli, Del Monte Fruit Cocktail, Fray Bentos Prepared Beef, and Clover Leaf Red Sockeye Salmon, all partially hidden behind a narrow rail across the front of each shelf. Some of the aging cans are khaki-colored, World War II military C Rations. Some are bald and silvery, others rusty and once seeping and now dry.
Daisy steps in and props her phone on a side shelf to illuminate the cans.
“Here, put these out on that bench.”
She hands the Del Monte Fruit Cocktail. As I breathe out, a dead fly blows off the top and makes a final descent. Fray Bentos Prepared Beef is next. Labels curl off and disintegrate at our feet. Finally, I move a bunch of C Rations and the shelves are empty. She starts pulling on the center shelf.
“This thing isn’t moving.”
“Why should it?”
“It is a secret door the bootleggers supposedly used. The shelf is supposed to move up and out to open the door.”
We both jiggle the shelf loose pushing and pulling repeatedly. It opens and we look through a tall entrance only wide enough to enter sideways. Even then my belt buckle catches on a loose and redundant strike plate.
“Okay, there is supposed to be what Mom called a ‘gambling den’ up here.”
Daisy pauses moving her light around.
“What do you see?”
“Some wooden stairs and dead spiders.”
“Too bad we can’t question them.”
“Come on in and look.”
I step in and brush a moth’s wing off my shoulder. It turns into powder.
“You think we could hear a spider speak?”
“There must be an app for that.”
“Too bad Cam is in New York right now.”
“Call her.”
“I did, and left a message.”
“Does she know?”
“Yes, I told her right away.”
“Maybe she can move in here?”
“No, she isn’t interested, but I wish she could see this.”
“Is she into time travel?”
“Not in this heat!”
“We are going to sell as soon as I check it out for art and relics.”
“What do you think these old townhouses fetch?”
“Huh! In DC, in this shape, half a million, maybe?”
“Out here I think it’s going to be less.”
“Sure is.”
One step in we start a steep, ladder-like climb spiraling from the back of the basement three stories up to an attic.
“Looks like a long way up.”
“I can’t see the top.”
Daisy grabs the rope serving as a banister and it breaks off as she pulls herself up to the first step.
“Glad that didn’t happen further up!”
The wooden stairway is unpainted, and the faint smell of camphor grows stronger as we climb.
We pause at the ground floor, sweating and looking by phone-light, for signs of an exit concealed in the old, stained boards and studs. The planks slanting across the studs have faded into a light silvery brown. Some look as if water had run down them years ago, now dry as a desert wadi.
“Look at those burn marks.”
“Yeah, that’s where Auntie installed upstairs plumbing, back in the fifties.”
“I guess there is no door at this level”
“Maybe it goes straight to the stop?”
“Yeah, without passing GO!”
The last step puts us in the attic with a wall on the right and the back of a dull red velvet couch serving as a rail along the top of the stairwell to the left. It smokes with dust on contact. A small bookcase loaded with National Geographic magazines from the thirties and forties serves one end.
The attic is one long room with a wide slit of a window facing next door. The view is obscured by cobwebs on the inside and accumulated grime, leaves, and moss on the outside admitting a dim nicotine light, barely bright enough for a dust particle to dance.
“Do you see any paintings?”
“Ah, no but the light is poor.”
“There should be some work by my distant cousin, Lily Briscoe.”
“Where does your namesake live?”
“She was a Brit. She died a while back, don’t know when.”
“Maybe her paintings are hanging in the other part of the house.”
“Yeah, hope so!”
“So, all this is now yours!”
“Yup, one hundred percent of the dust and every dead fly, spider, and moth.”
“Haven’t seen any roaches.”
“They have eaten everything they can and moved next door.”
“Quite a substantial place.”
“Right, and I can’t even get into it!”
“We are in it right now!”
“I mean the living room, kitchen and bedrooms and all that!”
“At least you have a year’s supply of canned goods.”
“Yeah, some of that was probably stored here in case they needed the basement as a fallout shelter.”
“A lot of those cans predate the cold war.”
“I see a sink over there.”
“So where is the roulette table?”
“Don’t see anything big enough under the dust.”
“How old is this place?”
“Not sure, but it belonged to my grandmother’s sister who never married and lived here most of her adult life.”
“I guess that makes it late nineteenth century.”
“The foundation and basement are 18th century.”
“So, what’s with the hidden staircase?”
“The story is that it was a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Seems like the stairs were built after that.”
“Family lore is so often unreliable.”
“I think Auntie was a bootlegger.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“She had the money to keep up this house and Mom said she had some interesting friends.”
“Did she marry?”
“No, well, unofficially.”
‘Meaning?”
“She lived with her companion.”
“Sounds amicable!”
“She was killed in a trolly car accident.”
“How very sad!”
“Yeah, I am so sorry I never met her.”
“Her companion?”
“Yeah, she was a younger woman. Mom knew her as, ‘Cousin Fanny’.”
“Let’s get out of here. This heat is suffocating!”
We start down the spiral, back down to the cool eighteenth-century stone.
“You know, I thought that letter from the probate company back in 2019, was a prank!”
“Sure, who wouldn’t?”
“I called them up in Chicago.”
“Have you spoken to Sherman Shroud about it?”
“He vouched for Edward and Sherwood Crow and said, go for it.”
“Crow?’
“E. S. Crow, they are the Chicago probate firm. They have been working this case for years.”
“So how did they find you?”
“The internet, I think. I don’t really know.”
“I gather there are a lot of unsettled legacies out there.”
“It has taken nearly three years to clear the case, thanks to COVID.”
“And you didn’t know it was coming to you.”
We both cough and sneeze in the dust and drip with sweat as we get to the last few steps.
“No, we visited here when I was about four and Auntie was, ah, I don’t know how old, but she fitted right in with this old house.”
“Why didn’t she tell you about her legacy?”
“It wasn’t supposed to come to us.”
“Why?”
“It is complicated, but Cam and I are the only relatives left who qualify to get it.”
“Great! Looks like this place has been empty ever since she died.”
“Right, sometime in the fifties.”
Well, somebody has kept the roof intact and the heat on in Winter. I mean it seems structurally sound even if it does have a creepy antique atmosphere.”
“I think, some local guy was hired by the trust to keep it up.”
“You can get the keys from him!”
“Sure, if I could find him.”
“Oh, so she had made a trust, then!”
“Yup, the probate company gets twenty-five percent for their fee.”
“Not unreasonable for all that work.”
“There is a lot more to find out.”
We close the hidden door and Daisy pushes the closet door shut, leaving the cans on the bench.

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.

A dusty cratered planet passes across the night sky, setting to the west just after 9:50 PM. Its crescent of metallic light is a reflection of thermonuclear events about ninety-three million miles away at this time of year. The intervening mysteries, and those beyond, reveal themselves in obscure calculations only specialists can decipher. Not even they can reveal much about, dark matter or dark energy. For one thing, it has no spectrum.  Though, calculations of the expanding visible universe indicate dark stuff must make up ninety-five percent of the total.  Having calculated that the visible universe began with a uniquely creative and rapid expansion about 13.8 billion years ago, the mystery as to where it came from remains.

“Do you see anything, Serge?”

“No.”

“The field glasses are more powerful.  Use them.”

“Mom and Diddlie took the field glasses with them.”

“Yeah, they didn’t mean to.”

“I tried to convince them to stay and that was a distraction.”

“Fred, it is getting too dark for birdwatching.”

“Yes, that was Rosey’s point and Diddlie was complaining about mosquitos.”

Tatiana is rummaging in her pockets.

“She should have asked. I’ve got some bug spray.”

“Mom is into local birds, not outer space.”

“We can look for stars.”

Serge looks over from his bird glasses.

“Yeah Fred, all those celestial bodies spread all way out towards the big bang!”

“The first orgasm!”

“What?”

Tatiana is laughing.

“Well, it led to the creation of everything else!”

Serge searches for bard owls who live in the remains of the chimney. We are standing on the stone balcony over the garage of the ‘Ashes’, that ruined mansion that once stood on the highest point in Fauxmont.  

“Thanks to the emerald ash borer, there is no foliage to spoil our view.”

“Yes, and don’t forget ‘oak wilt’ that took out those two giants over on the east side.”

Serge focuses his glasses.

“There’s Venus, but no owl or swallows.”

“The swallows have all gone for their Central American vacation by now.”

“Well, what about bats?”

“They are insect-eaters, and the mosquitos are eating us.”

“Here, spray your hat, Fred.  It will put them off.”

“Well, all I can find is the evening star.”

“Are you sure, Serge?”

Tatiana reads from her phone:

“According to NASA, the earth’s gravity holds about nine thousand tons of junk in orbit.”

She takes a swig of water from her SanzE ‘Cool Camper Special’ in a glass-lined, steel, ‘frog-green’ bottle.

“You mean stuff we have put there?”

“That’s right Fred, an unintended part of the space program.”

“And associated weapons and collection systems.”

Tatiana turns her phone off.

Serge offers her the glasses.

“How high is it, anyway?”

“The space junk, between about 100 and 1000 kilometers.”

She looks up through the glasses, with one hand, offering Serge the Cool Camper Special with the other.

“Perhaps, we shall soon have rings?”

“Married to all our waste and pollution!”

“I don’t see anything yet. You want to look, Fred?”

She hands me the glasses.  Serge is tapping his phone.

“Saturn’s rings are made of jewel-like ice.”

“That stuff is too small to see with these bird glasses.”

“I know Fred, but I thought we might get lucky and see the Planck Observatory, or something.”

“It is no longer up there!’

“There’s no cloud.  There should be something soon.”

“Once upon a time, there were only protons and neutrons.”

Tatiana takes back the Cool Camper Special

“It’s story time with, Serge.”

“No interruptions, okay Tat?”

“Okay, but when were “Pro. and Nue. the only two ‘Trons’ in the universe?”

“About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang.”

“Not exactly post-coital!”

“Most exactly, in fact, Tat.”

“What about, positrons, electrons and polititrons?”

“Polititrons? There is no such thing.”

“They are all around us, Serge.”

“You are thinking of neutrinos!”

“Didn’t they come later?”

“Seems to me, if they exist, polititrons emanate from minds not, plasma.”

“Where do you think pro and nue came from?”

“You are confusing the names with the phenomena!”

“Oh, really!”

“Well, they will only exist for ten to minus 34 seconds or something like that!”

“Okay, so who has the stopwatch?”

“It’s probably some kind of algebra.”

“Before that, there was no material at all.”

“You mean God brought ‘pro’ and ‘neu’ into the ‘Tron’ world?”

“Well, they came into existence by some process or other.”

“Sure Serge, the process called God!”

“God is not a process.”

“Okay, what is she/he/it?”

“Who can say?”

“Tat. Remember what I said about interruptions?”

“I am just adding interest!”

“Oh, I missed that!”

“For instance, Leon Lederman thinks she/he/it is the Higgs Boson!”

“Thinks what is?”

“Bosons, Fred, the ‘God particles.”

“Boson, that’s Max’s bloodhound!”

“Fred, your mean Max Plank our builder, right?”

“Who else?”

Tatiana taps my arm.

“There is another relevant Max Planck, with a ‘CK’ who started the whole quantum conundrum.”

We walk down some broken steps by the light of our phones and stroll across the weeds and grass.

“They must have cut the grass for the 4^th of July party.”

“Oh, I love the smell of cut grass!”

“This is seasoned with a few aromatic weeds!”

“More than a few Tat.”

Serge kicks a stalk into the air. 

“Get a whiff of that.”

“Diddlie told me it is fish weed. You must have broken the stem.”

We sit down at the dilapidated picnic tables.  One bench slopes to the ground from its remaining support at the other end.  Tatiana sits on the sloping bench and then carefully reclines, so she is facing up towards the Western sky with her heels on the ground.  

“It isn’t really night around here.”

 “I know, all the streetlights, headlights, yard lights, and porch lights leave a glow.”

“It is all part of our enlightened age!”

Standing next to Tatiana, Serge reads from his phone.

“Okay, here’s the scoop! The European Space Agency launched The Planck Observatory on 9 May 2009 and the mission ended on 23 October 2013.”

“So, is it still up there?”

“Doesn’t say, Fred.”

“And what did it do up there for four years?”

“It mapped the temperature of cosmic microwave background radiation.  That is CMB, left over from the beginning of the universe.”

“Must have been a big data set!”

“Fred, it gave us a picture of the universe at about three hundred thousand years old.”

“Oh! So, what do they get from that?”

“It was not uniform.”

“You mean the universe is not military?”

“I mean it is a kinky universe!”

“Wow! Be careful whom you say that to!”

“I am talking differences in temperature, instability!”

“Crazy universe!”

“Yeah, crazy enough for a supernova that births stars and all that.”

Tatiana is tracking with the bird glasses from her recumbent position.

“I can see something moving out there!”

“Something?”

“Yeah, it’s space junk.”

“I’ll bet it is a firefly!”

She takes the glasses away from her eyes.

“Ah, where?”

Serge squats down next to her to point it out, flashing on and off under a redbud.

“OH! I thought that thing was too fast and active!”

She puts the glasses down on the table, but they fall through a gap in the rotting boards.

She puts an arm out as if to grab them from under the table, but she embraces Serge instead.

Tatiana’s short hair is scrambled moments later when they stand up. Her nose ring glows in the light of our phones, as we leave the picnic table.  

“We are taking off, Fred.”

They are now silhouettes in the subtle glow of suburban night.  They merge in their hilarity into one shifting shape.

“Yeah, it’s time for juiciness.”

Tatiana is giggling.

“You know!”

They are both laughing, staggering, tangled in each other’s arms.  Serge shouts:

“Sublime slime!”

Tatiana can hardly speak between her giggles

 “Secreted secrets in shared fluid mixtures!”

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.

We are standing behind Diddlie’s carport admiring the spring growth of her holly hedge with a willow oak sapling growing through it. A flock of sparrows fly into the density of the hedge as if they had ample space to maneuver. Disappearing like magic among the holly’s spiky leaves, shiny with highlights as bright in the sun as bare metal. Their defense against the red tail hawk circling slowly, seemingly nearer the clouds to the west than the ground where we stand.  

“How do you like my green wall?”

“Hides Trip’s place pretty well.”

“That’s the idea!”

“You have some wisteria in there and greenbrier, I see.”

“So long it is leafy, it is okay with me!”

“A lot of seeding grass, and buttercups, and dandelions over there.”

 “Yes, I’ve got a couple of nice ‘worts’ too.”

“What are those?”

“Wort is derived from ‘wyrt’. It’s old English you know.”

“I had no idea!”

“It meant a healing herb, or root, as opposed to weeds.”

“See, golden ragwort and over there, purple spiderwort, with yellow centers.”

“Quite a palette of colors!”

“You can barely see Trip’s place now.”

“The top of his house is going to be hard to block.”

“If we keep getting this much rain, it will only be a few years before those two post oaks are high enough to keep the top of Trip house out of sight until fall.”

“Maybe he will sell the thing?”

 “Well, Fred, did you hear Chuck Newsom is selling his mansion?”

“What?”

“Yup, he’s broke. It is in the Wall Street Journal. ‘US Investor broken by sanctions.”

“Oh! you mean those against Russia?”

“What else?”

“We have sanctions against, Iran, and North Korea to mention only two others.

“Oh right, for years!”

“So, what do they achieve?”

“Search me!”

“They seem to be a way of doing something newsworthy without accomplishing anything but a privation.”

“News fodder!”

“Anyway, I thought Chuck had bailed out of all that oligarch stuff.”

“That was the word on the street.”

“I guess he still had ‘strings attached.”

 “He has hired Sherman Shroud’s firm to get him out of trouble.”

“I wonder what he will use to pay Shroud?”

“Shroud got Boyd Nightingale off, you know.”

“Wasn’t that pro bono?”

“That was not on Back Stairs.”

“I didn’t know you read the Wall Street Journal!”

“Well, I found the article linked on ‘Back Stairs’.

“I don’t do much social media.”

“You know, that’s where I learned about Theo’s COVID.”

“I am sure there’s some useful info.”

“You need to catch up, Fred on our neighborhood gossip and news!”

Diddlie slaps both thighs.

“OH! I forgot to let Mr. Liddell out!”

Diddlie rushes back into the carport and brings out a chicken wire run, to enclose him on the long grass. She then carries the rabbit out from his hutch in the carport and puts him in through an opening in the top.

“This is good fresh spring grass and buttercups.”

She goes back towards the carport.

“Diddlie, Mr. Liddell has escaped, look! He was gone before I could take two steps.”

Diddlie is bending over with her back turned.

“OH, not again!”

She turns around carrying a heavy stone in both hands.

“Where did you last see him?”

She drops the stone.

“Over by that stump.”

She folds her arm in mine. We walk over to the spot where he entered. She has to let go of my arm. Bending over, and stepping across the crumbling stump, in single file, we find him. 

Looking back, way ahead, in a tunnel through the thicket.

“This is going to be a creepy wild goose chase, Fred.”

“Yeah, a tame rabbit chase.”

She squeezes my arm.

“Stuff happens in here.”

“You mean you have followed him in here before?”

“Yes, after that, Lou built me the portable run.”

 “It is so light Mr. Liddell found a way to crawl out from under!”

“Well, he built it so I could put a heavy stone at each end, but I should have done that first.”

“I think the vegetation underneath held it off the ground.”

Diddlie scans the thicket.

“Which way did he go?”

We have reached a point where the path forks in two directions humans might take and at least three others that rabbits could squeeze through.

“I feel as if we must be in the “Cyber Anthropic Interface”.

“No Fred, this is more like Sofonisba’s territory.”

“And her friend Osiris?”

“Well, Osiris doesn’t have a male god’s name for nothing!”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It’s a gender thing, you know, LGBTQ.”

“So, what is her real name?”

“I heard she was Christened, ‘Mihaela’ but never took to it.”

“Don’t tell me that was on Back Stairs.”

“It wasn’t, I can’t remember where I got it.”

Diddlie lets go of my arm and leads me to the left fork, which is narrow but high enough to walk. We put up with frequent slaps from prickly holly, dead twigs, and a strange soft stalk that leaves a sticky deposit on my sleeve.

“Here! Look at that!”

“Fred! Don’t let it get on your skin!”

“What, is it poison?”

“No, you won’t breakout. I heard stories about a young girl in here who shrank to the size of a mouse from stuff like that.”

“Oh, that was years ago, in England!”

“That was the first instance, something she drank. There have been a few other cases over here since. 

Diddlie stops again. 

We face a path descending straight ahead and looking more like a tunnel into the ground. Water drips onto the path from the top. I step toward it to get a closer look and slip but don’t fall.

“Fred, don’t go down there.”

“No, we’d soon lose our footing!”

“Down there, is the way inside.”

“Yes, there is a distinct slope, and it is dark.”

“You can get stuck in the deep past that way.”

“What do you mean, the stone age?”

“No, I mean regression into your childhood.”

She points out a path curving to the left with walls of bamboo where the light is defused by the leaves above. 

We notice a third path more sharply to the left which looks like a continuation of the one we are on, with some more sticky weeds drooping from the walls. She looks each way carefully examining the thick bundles of stems, interweaving as they go up.

“I think that is the way of belief.”

“What do you mean the ‘way of belief’?

“I have never been there, but I promise you it is way too confusing for us.”

“Oh, in what way?”

“Truth, doubt, and belief, I mean that stuff grows into a maze.”

“Philosophically you mean.”

“When a human comes in here Philosophy, metaphor, and all that stuff grows on all sides.”

“And what about the path we are on?

“Yes, we have been on the way to the future.”

“Aren’t we always on that?”

“Well, in here the present and future merge and make it hard to say where you are.”

“Some of us live in the past!”

“The past was back there. You probably missed it.”

“Why?”

“Because you weren’t looking for it.”

“I don’t know what to look for!”

“Right, a lot depends on where you’re standing.”

“No, I mean was it, holly or bamboo or earth or what?”

“For me, it was all those dead metaphors.”

“But that was impenetrable.”

“The past often is!”

“Yes, it is a matter of recall, of course.”

“Oh wow! look! more dead metaphors!”

“Where?”

She points back towards a bend in the thicket.

“Looks like green briar to me.”

“Yeah, it has been literalized!”

“You mean dead like, ‘door nails’?”

“More like fingernails.”

“What?”

“Small metal spikes!”

“This is too far in the past for me.”

“Let’s not go there!”

“Well, somebody called the past, ‘a foreign country’.”

“Yeah, I saw that movie, back in the seventies, with Julie Christie, Alan Bates and I forget who else.”

“We are getting into the past again.”

“See all those shriveled metaphors, with no poetic resonance!”

“Did. I don’t see them, but I am thinking of my old friend, Hartley. I forget his first name.”

Diddlie points out two white ears protruding above the gentle slope of the downward path.

“That must be him!”

“Is Mr. Liddle waiting for us down there?”

“It must be your old friend.”

“Wait a minute. With rabbit ears?”

“No, I presume Hartley was a person.”

“Why should he be in here?”

“Because you brought him.”

“Well, he came to mind, you know.”

“Right, see that mud on your shoes. It may be pulling you.”

“You mean that’s why Hartley, whom I had forgotten, came to mind?”

“We can’t be sure, but that is how you get drawn back.”

“Well, come on, let’s stay on the path we were on. I am going to concentrate on the here and now, wherever that is in this labyrinth.”

“I don’t know. Mr. Liddell moves through all these paths and others I haven’t even found.”

“It seems to be thinning out.”

We can hear the flock of sparrows up in the holly.

“Are you a regular in all this?”

“We all are!”

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.

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.

“Ready for lunch Lou?”
Lou has finished sawing up an ironwood branch. The weight of wet snow, last month, had partially uprooted the tree and left the branch leaning against Diddlie’s carport, denting the side of the flat roof. The wood is now stacked by the driveway and the brush remains piled here and there where he trimmed it off.
“Suppose we get Woke and avoid beef?”
“That is asking a lot!”
“True! Have you read about the effect of cattle on the climate?”
“Sure, I forget about it at lunchtime.”
Lou picks up his saw and puts it in Diddlie’s carport. We look in on Mr. Liddle who has turned his back on all the noise outside and pushed a straw barrier up against the open end of his hutch.
“Is Diddlie home?”
“No, she told me she would be out most of the day.”
“Why don’t we follow Mr. Liddel’s example and have a salad for lunch. It is today’s special at the H Bar.”
I show him my phone app.
“How about those fake-meat burgers?”
“Yeah, I saw that. What do you think?”
“Better than rabbit food!”
“You try it.”
We walk down the hill towards the H Bar.
A silent blue Chevy Bolt slows down to our walking pace. The side window purrs down and there is Sophonisba’s round face.
“You want a ride, neighbor?”
“Is that thing running?”
“It’s electric, Lou.”
“A ghost, more like.”
“Hi, Sophie.”
We have stopped at the bottom of Oval Street.
“We are headed for lunch at the H Bar.”
“Oh, what an opportunity! May I join you?”
“Please do.”
Lou gets in the front next to Sophie and I ride in back. Sophie turns to me.
“Hi there Fred, I must educate you two, and lunch is a perfect setting.”
“What’s the topic?”
“A new phenomenon, thanks to my dear friend Cora, and I, Sofonisba Anguissola, will be happy to buy lunch in exchange for your ears!”
Lou turns to me.
“You up for that Fred?”
“My ears are not for sale, Sophie.”
“Oh Fred, how about a Shakespearian loan to a new friend?”
“I am listening.”
She parks in the blue ghost in the H Bar lot and Lou gallantly helps her out of the car.
“I am not getting any more agile!”
Sophie moves slowly. Turns in her seat and puts one foot on the ground outside and then the other and grabs the top of the door to pull herself up.
Lou holds the door for her.
“When did you pick up this car?”
“It isn’t mine. It is on loan for a while.”
We walk at Sophie’s slow pace to the entrance.
“I must take you back to the Late and Ptolemaic period, about three hundred BC.”
“That’s a long way from here Sophie!”
“It is Lou. We live in so many times at once. Time travel is one of my specialties.”
We stop among the few patrons in the bar, and Lou reads a menu newly chalked on a board outside the Quantum Lounge.
“Well, look at that! The salad special here today is called, ‘Quantum Entanglement’.”
“Is that where Sesame noodles entangle the salad veg?”
“Too haute cuisine for me, Fred.”
“But Lou, so appropriate to the occasion!”
“How’s that Sophie?”
She is looking at me.
“Yes, you know Einstein called entanglement, ‘Spooky action at a distance.”
“Are you talking about lunch or what, Sophie?”
“Lou, I am talking about, ‘Bast’ or ‘Bastet. The Egyptian goddess was worshiped as a lioness and later as a cat. Bastet was the daughter of Ra. She was Sekhmet’s sister and Ptah’s wife, also Mihos’s mother. Bastet was worshiped as a deity, mainly in Lower Egypt in the second dynasty.”
“Oh Ra, wasn’t that the sun god?”
“That is only part of it, Fred. Ra is the king of the deities and the father of all creation.”
“Sophie, all that genealogy is too much for me. I just told you all I know of Egyptian deities.”
“Okay Fred, doesn’t matter for our preposes now.”
Lou is scratching the back of his head as he leads the way to a booth in the Quantum Lounge.
“Oh, Lou! A table, please. I won’t be able to get out of one of those narrow stalls!”
“We call them booths, Sophie.”
He turns to an empty table.
“How about over here?”
We sit down at a table toward the back in the subdued light of the lounge where every other table is empty to keep customers well apart.
“Sophie, quantum entanglement is science, not religion!”
“You don’t think science is one of our modern religions?”
“No, I don’t. It is about data and fact, not faith and worship.”
“My friends, that is perfectly true but underneath all that, is faith and doubt.”
“What are you talking about, Sophie?”
“Haven’t you noticed how many people no longer believe what science reveals about the world?”
“Sure, that’s politics!”
“Don’t be so hasty Lou!”
“Well, okay what are you trying to tell us?”
“I want to draw your attention to the power of belief.”
“Okay, politics and entertainment have merged these days into storytelling.”
“Exactly, many people believe a story they want to believe rather than what new evidence might suggest.”
“Sure, that is how propaganda does its work.”
Sophie nods in agreement as Lou’s gentle tone is strained with frustration.
“We are talking about unexamined assumptions.”
The waiter is ready to take orders. No one gets the ‘Entangled Salad’ with sesame noodles. Lou chooses a Rueben sandwich. I get the chicken rollup and Sophie has Gumbo. Neither Lou nor I know what language Sophie speaks to the waiter, but they seem to exchange friendly banter in the midst of our choices.
“To be sure, many of us do not reflect but tend to react instead of reflecting.”
“Political ‘Reactionaries’ you mean.”
“Fred, I mean those of us who reject science, in favor of other beliefs.”
Lou puts down his glass after a swig of water.
“As far as I can see, those folks are lost! Lost in all the crime shows, game shows, and so-called “reality” entertainments on TV!”
“We enjoy countless distractions.”
“Cats are among them! They perform on YouTube, cats are advertised for sale, and stray cats run in the allies, but you know, pets are not gods.”
“We love our pet cats. Just think of all the ways cats are used in advertisements.”
“Cuteness sells a lot of products.”
“Okay, so I hope you two have looked at OAnon.”
Lou’s eyebrows meet above his gold-rimmed glasses.
“Lou, haven’t you opened that email from Diddlie yet?”
“I have Sophie and I saw the picture of an orange cat and deleted it.”
“Another cute cat, Lou! And you, Fred, may I ask if you have looked at the content?”
“Sure, seemed like this cat called Oliver is posing as some kind of oracle.”
“Yes, this ‘pose’ as you call it, is a reincarnation of the god Bast, in our time.”
“Oh! Ah, Sophie, how can you tell?”
“The cat’s spirit in human life is well preserved in the Egyptian desert.”
“Sounds like spooky action to me!”
“We have more in common with the ancients than you might think.”
“Okay, so why did I get this news from Diddlie?”
“I asked her to send it to her friends, you see, knowing that you two would get it.”
Lou’s frown is more pronounced.
“Why not send it yourself?”
“I don’t have a computer or anything to send it with.”
“Sophie, you need to get with the twenty-first century!”
“I am with this century, Fred, and many others.”
“Yeah, but I mean the cyber thing.”
“That is just another medium for the spirit I know so well from my palm reading.”
“It is electronic, not spiritual.”
“Of course, Fred, I mean the electromagnetic medium. It carries all over the world like a nervous system. Ask yourself, what is the love of cats?”
“Well, I would say it is a sentimental thing.”
“Okay, our pets are our love objects.”
The waiter brings our meals during a pause, ‘love objects’ bring to the conversation.
“So, what is the point of this OAnon thing?”
Sophie holds her soup spoon up in two fingers.
“Influence, my friend. Influence through association and humor.”
Lou chews his Rueben sandwich looking down at the table in front of him. He swallows and wipes his mouth before speaking.
“What kind of influence?”
Sophie turns her spoon in her fingers. The back and then the bowl face me in succession as if she is using it as an antenna.
“Broadening influence! This is the beginning, only the start. People see this comical orange cat on their screens and those who like that kind of thing will be charmed and amused by his remarks.”
“Broadening what?”
“For one thing, OAnon demonstrates that love of cats isn’t divided by politics.”
Lou looks up.
“We will get there!”
“We are entangled in Bast!”
Sophie stops turning her spoon. Keeps it still as an exclamation mark.
“Our modern cat worship is awakening her ancient spirit in us!”
“No, Sophie. We don’t worship cats. They are not part of a church. They are part of a market.”
“Oh! market high priests have enormous influence, I know, but events often go against their predictions.”
“You mean economists!”
“Fred, I see their statistical incantations as mystical speculations. Sometimes the spirit moves here and sometimes there.”
“It isn’t called the ‘Dismal Science’ for nothing!”
Lou picks up the second half of his sandwich and takes a bite and puts it down. The fingers of his left-hand drum silently on the table. Sophie has yet to put her spoon into her soup. She holds it up and continues turning it in her fingers.
“We have our modern pet cemeteries. The Egyptians had large cat cemeteries too, mummified cats, and thousands of bronze statuettes of the goddess were deposited as votive offerings.”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“The priests were at the center of the ancient economy, giving people a reason to work and justification for their place in life.”
“Sophie, the more you explain, the less I understand.”
Sophie looks down at the table. She starts on her gumbo. We sit silently chewing our lunches.
“I am sorry. I am not a good explainer!”
Lou takes off his glasses and cleans them on his napkin.
“Perhaps I can see what I hear better with clean glasses!”
Sophie grins at him.
“Lou, think of this: today, Bast has no need of a church! Your cat only needs your open heart!”
Lou’s eyebrows are restless again. His voice remains silent.
“The fact is Sophie, a rich minority control most of the money.”
“Has it ever been much different, Fred?”
“Well, the economy is certainly unpredictable, but it is mercenary rather than spiritual.”
“Oh, Fred! The spirit is the movement, not the money.”
No one speaks much further. The waiter comes by to pick up our dishes and Sophie enjoys further exchanges in their shared language.
“This has been such a pleasure. I have settled the bill and must get over to The Cremona Building. My customer is due at two-thirty.”
Lou helps her up from her chair.

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.

I catch up with Rank Majors and Albrecht Intaglio, after passing his Hummer, parked on the side of the road. They stand outside Daisy’s place under brilliant sun. It warms our faces, with backs to the gusting wind, blowing at thirty degrees. Many houses still have piles of brush for pickup at the roadside. Over three weeks ago, ten inches of wet snow stuck to, broke, and bent countless tree limbs to the ground, snapping and splitting them at the trunk. The heartwood wood exposed and splintered; the phloem layer broken. There is no alternative but to cut behind the break.
Power went down for a day and a half as ice, fallen lines, and trees blocked the streets.
Albrecht looks up at me from under his black Stetson.
“Daisy isn’t around.”
“No, I saw her at the traffic light on Maxwell Avenue about twenty minutes ago.”
“Well, I offered to help her clear all those broken branches.”
He points to a tangle of brush blocking the footpath to her front door.
“Thought you two were through.”
“I am still available to help, you know.”
“Anyway, last time I saw her she was working at Tenniel’s.”
“Oh, the store, right?”
Daisy’s old Ford Taurus wagon hisses through a shallow puddle towards us.
She stops, opens the door a little, and speaks through a yellow surgical mask.
“Hi guys, you come to see me?”
Albrecht steps over and puts a hand on top of the door.
“Yeah, I came to clear brush, remember?”
“OH! Was that today?”
“Thursday, as I recall. That is today.”
“Well, thanks, Albrecht. Looks like you have plenty of help.”
He turns to me and to Rank whose ring tones sound from a pocket of his cammies.
“Are you two up for helping?”
Rank shakes his head as he reads a text.
“Not today, can we do this at the weekend?”
Albrecht pulls on the door.
“Hey! Don’t open it any further, I am not getting out here. Going to park in the driveway.”
“Why don’t you just open the window?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“How long you had this thing?”
“About fifteen years. It’s only got about a hundred thousand on it.”
Daisy pulls the door shut and parks at an angle on her driveway to avoid a fallen hickory branch.
We all walk over, and Rank picks up a broken branch covered in fungus and throws it aside. It breaks with the force of his movement and only half is propelled into the azalea thicket, tangled with privet, by the driveway. The rest crumbles at his feet.
“Daisy, I thought you had gone to teach at the store.”
She gets out of the car with a warn Prestige University tote bag full of groceries. The door makes a loud cracking sound as it closes.
“Hi Fred, I am afraid that thing is going to fall off every time I use the door.”
“You will have to get in on the other side!”
“That one has been jammed ever since I got hit on the ice in the Hadron Shopping center parking lot.”
Albrecht walks around inspecting the car.
“That was last Winter, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was the only patch of ice in Northern Virginia!”
“When did you last check the odometer?”
“I don’t. It’s stuck at around a hundred and two thousand.”
“How long has that been?”
“Albrecht, I don’t know!”
“Well, I mean how do you know how many miles you have on this thing?”
“Just forget it, okay?”
“Albrecht continues his inspection.”
“Front tires are bald.”
“I said forget it!”
Daisy walks past him towards her back door weaving around a section of fence that collapsed under the weight of ice fallen from the roof, taking the gutter with it. She looks back.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
Rank is grinning at Albrecht.
“Well Albrecht, I guess she isn’t teaching at Tenniel’s today.”
“No, I guess not. What’s she do, over there?”
“Like I said, she is teaching art by Zoom.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was in there, a while back.”
“What did you go to an Art store for?”
“I wanted to check out my drone. It got stuck in a tree outside.”
“Art, you said, what kind of art?”
“Drawing and painting and computer art, I think.”
Albrecht is looking up at some crows arriving in the heights of a sycamore across the street. We listen to their calls as one comes over to perch on Daisy’s snow-capped chimney.
“That snow stuck to everything it fell on.”
“Yeah, here’s what we get for living in the woods.”
Rank ignores the crows.
“What happened to Boyd, anyway?”
“How should I know, Rank?”
“You guys were working pretty close together for a while.”
“He’s gutless!”
Daisy comes back the way she came with lopper and secateurs. Her blue and white striped overalls are tight over her thick purple turtleneck sweater, her bracelets out of the way underneath.
“So, guys, are you ready to work?”
Albrecht picks up a twig, throws it to one side, and adjusts the angle of his Stetson to shade his face.
“Albrecht, why don’t you wear a mask?”
“Why? I am not a bandit!”
“You know what I mean.”
“No masks, no jabs.”
“Don’t think Daisy is with you on that one.”
“No Fred, but our messaging is keeping the heat on.”
“Your messaging?”
“Yeah, masks and jabs, I don’t want any part of it.”
“A bit risky, isn’t it?”
Rank steps closer.
“Our liberty is at risk!”
“Our liberty?”
“Right, freedom from government coercion.”
“Aren’t we talking about public health?”
Daisy trims small branches off a sagging redbud limb at her side. Frozen snow falls off on her sleaves. Albrecht, who stands next to her, turns to Rank.
“The thing is, Rank, we have to keep the libertarian spirit alive here.”
“At the expense of people’s lives?”
“Fred, liberty is won and preserved by sacrifice and that is still true today.”
“Taking a needless risk on the virus?”
“That is the small scale. On the large scale where the world is run, we can ride this issue back into power.”
“Propaganda!”
Albrecht starts toward his Hummer but pauses.
“Keep them distracted. That’s the thing.”
“Them?”
“Our voters.”
“Don’t you want your voters to be healthy enough to vote?”
“Very few people die of the virus.”
Rank shifts his weight as if to deliver a blow.
“Yeah, most of them die of the jab!”
Daisy stops trimming to face Rank.
“That is absurd, and you know it!”
“Daisy, the total is approaching a million.”
“Yeah, one million people with a virus and no jab!”
Rank kicks some rotten wood out of his way.
“I don’t buy it.”
“Listen, the virus isn’t a problem. It’s an opportunity!”
“Tell that to the sick and the bereaved, Albrecht!”
“No, I mean politically.”
“What do you mean politically?”
“Like Albrecht just said, we are getting a lot of mileage out of this thing.”
“What thing, Rank?”
“The mandates and coverups.”
Daisy gets back to trimming the redbud’s split and frozen branches.”
“Oh, you two are blowing smoke!”
“I wish we had never politicized the health business.”
“Fred, get real, my man! We are in a fight for the soul of our Nation!”
“Right Albrecht, people don’t want to be shoved around.”
“Come on! Are you going to help, or yak, yak, yak?”
Daisy leads the way back to the street where a Juniper is leaning across the road with lower branches frozen in the shade of a shallow puddle.
Albrecht looks it over and fetches his chain saw from the Hummer. He pulls on the starting cord, and it smokes into the lowest of the sagging branches.
The sun melts ice on the sunny side of the street and the water refreezes when it reaches the shade of the sagging juniper. Albrecht finishes cutting another branch and drags it onto the driveway.
“You are blocking my access!”
“Don’t get excited Daisy. I’ll cut it up later.”
“Later? When? today, tomorrow, next week?”
“He starts the saw again for another cut. Rank waves goodbye and walks off into the wind, with his black watch cap pulled down. Daisy moves close to me, to be heard above the noise of the saw.
“These two got their minds scrambled!”
“That’s politics.”
“Yup! Two authoritarians talking about liberty.”
I help Albrecht by dragging the next cut branch over to the driveway.
He cuts the last obstruction and brings it over with one hand and puts down his silenced saw with the other.
“Yeah, that one is badly off balance.”
“What?”
“Your tree.”
“Yeah, like certain people, Albrecht!”
“Oh, sure! stability is an illusion.”
“What about stillness?”
“Meaning what, Daisy?”
“I am talking about a meditative state.”
“When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me to stop wriggling.”
“Were you hyper-active?”
“No, I was brimming with life, that’s all.”
“Well, I suggest you meditate.”
“That’s a bunch of hocus-pocus. You want to end up like India with millions of degraded poverty-stricken people doing nothing. Just sitting in the streets begging?”
“No Albrecht, I am serious. You need to reflect. Center yourself.”
“Daisy, remember Swamy, I should say, ‘Swampy’ Rajneesh?”
“Sure, he was crooked.”
“Right! He was a winner! He got rich out of it, didn’t he?”
“He fooled a lot of gullible people.”
“Don’t be fooled yourself by all that idle stuff. Throw away that mask and get active!”
Daisy keeps her mask in place. She hands me the loppers and gets the secateurs out of her back pocket.
“Yak, Yak, Yak, let’s get on!”

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.

The last of the centenarians, in that row along lower Wicket Street, hit the ground after the chain saw stopped belching sawdust, sputtered, and calmed to purring internal combustion. 

“You can feel all hundred years shaking the ground.”

“There must be enough wood there to build the new house!”

“I know, look at the size of those other logs!”

“That big one must be three or four feet in diameter.”

“Represents more than one hundred years, surely.”

“I noticed the orange Dordrecht backhoe parked here, all week.”

“It has been two weeks!”

“Did you enjoy the noise?”

“Oh yes, a symphony for steel, concrete, timber, and the resonance of an empty truck bed.”

“You have an artist’s ears!”

“My ears are ringing with disgust at this destruction!”

“Was that last one a pin oak or willow oak?”

“A willow oak.”

Bel’s braids are gathered in a colorful striped snood.  She picks up a handful of last year’s dried leaves in her suede glove. They had blown into the dead weeds along the ditch. 

“See these, long and thin like a willow.”

“There will be no more of those blowing across the street into you gutters!”

“Nothing from the southern red either, or the post oak.”

“They are all logs now.”

We stand in the road opposite her house.  Looking at the uniform imprint of the backhoe’s tracks across a flat expanse of newly exposed clay.  The men in yellow hard hats load up their trucks with equipment and drive away.  Leaving a pile of concrete chunks, which was once the foundational slab, is ready to load.  The house at 34 Wicket Street and surrounding mature trees and shrubs, is now rubble, brush, and logs, sorted into three piles.  A large puddle has formed close by, with a little ice at the edge.  

“Who lived here?”

Bel tosses the dead leaves, still in her hand.

“That house was rented. Has been ever since I can remember.”

“It always looked vacant to me, walking past.”

“It was vacant a lot of the time. The owner lives out of state.”

“This new thing is going to be the first mountain of a range that will turn our place into a canyon bottom.”

“I haven’t noticed other properties on sale around you?”

“Haven’t you heard?  There is talk of selling Fauxmont Park!”

“I suppose it would fetch half a million.”

“Easily, at the moment anyway.  When you think a half-acre lot fetches over three hundred K.”

“While the easy money flows!”

“And it is flowing around here.  It is flooding!”

“There’s going to be a lot of runoff from all that new roofing and paved driveway.”

“Runoff! Yeah, sometimes I feel like running away.”

“I know the feeling.”

“We are growing more and more out of touch with nature.”

“Is it growth or decay?”

“Well, it is a trend, I guess, to live more and more in our electronic environment.”

“Trapped in the small screen which fascinates attention.”

“LOOK!”

“That fox seems pretty casual standing there, looking at us.”

“Seen from the side, like this, they often look as if they are about to laugh.”

“It’s the jaunty curve of the mouth.”  

“Healthy too, that’s a tail to be proud of.”

“He cleared the silt fence with ease.”

The fox runs behind the brush pile.  

“If they sell the park he is going to be looking to move too.”

”Maybe not, wildlife isn’t as wild as it used to be!”

“Who is talking about selling the park?”

“Dick East and his cronies now running the Fauxmont Guild.”

“What?”

“Yes, didn’t you vote against them, last time?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Fred, why aren’t you paying attention?”

“Hard to say, there is no excuse, really.”

“Well, you said it.”

“So, what happened?”

“Dick East now has a majority on the Fauxmont Guild, and he is pressing for more development around here.”

“We moved here to get away from that!”

“So did we.”

“Right, no sidewalks, no lawns no streetlights.”

“and azaleas instead of fences.”

“and, no traffic!”

“Well, now we are getting it all!”

“This is the meaning of development!”

“Yes, they build what sells and customers want spacious houses.”

“I know, with generic shrubs and mulch.”

“Trees are seen as a danger.  Their branches fall in storms, the leaves mess up the yard and they sometimes fall themselves, blocking roads and destroying roofs.”

“They also provide shade, that reduces utility bills! How’s that for value?”

“Not a good trade-off for those who can afford houses at over a million dollars.”

“Yes, Dick reminded me that development creates value.”

“Higher valuations mean higher taxes.”

“That’s why he is a Republican.”

“Aha, tax reduction is their mantra.”

”and small government.”

“The question on my mind is, what does value mean?”

“Money, money, money!”

“There are a lot of other values, you know.”

“Are you thinking of the biosphere?”

“I am.”

“The term has been politicized.  We are in danger of being called, un-American or something.”

“That is how facts are turned into distracting controversies.”

“Distraction is the name of the game, alright.”

“Our media are entertaining us.  Full of interesting personalities, you know, celebrities.”

“What is more interesting, an embarrassing gaffe, or a policy statement?”

“Good question!”

”That’ entertainment!”

“So, anyway, I was talking about mycorrhizal activity in the ground, not entertaining at all.”

“Interesting though and pretty obscure, in fact.”

“Also, above ground, oxygen and nitrogen, insects and birds, and their connections, and so on.”

“Well, those are called externalities by industry!”

“Only by those who miss the ‘sphere’ in biosphere!”

“Micro what, was that, by the way?”

“Mycorrhizal fungi, the fungi feed on sugar provided by tree roots and roots feed on minerals processed by the fungi.”

“It’s like a contract!”

“Yeah, it was written over millions of years of evolution, called symbiosis.”

“Are you saying that trees are in an affair with fungus?”

“Not sexual, more like digestive! Check out, Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding Mother Tree.”

”Did she find it?”

“She found a lot more than that.”

“Like what?”

“Resistance! to women working in a male profession and resistance to new information about the importance of microcrystal action in tree growth.”

“I hope it isn’t another feminist tract!”

“Far from it!”

“Autobiography then.”

“It is in part, but her discoveries and insights are most important, and the  science is presented in a way I can understand.”

“Well, a gut check reveals bacteria in there are doing something similar.”

“Aren’t we all symbiotic systems?”

“As things are, that might be all we have in common!”

We turn and walk up Oval Street hill, past Diddlie’s, across Bails Lane, and into Fauxmont Park. 

“There goes the fox.”

“Yup, what’s that in its mouth?”

“Is it the same one? Can’t tell from here.”

“Doesn’t Dick East own a construction company or something?”

Bel kicks a large twig out of the way.

“I don’t know about that, but he and Westard North have a lot of influential contacts.”

“Westard North? I don’t know him.”

“He is a lobbyist in Richmond, among other things.”

“So, he doesn’t live here.”

“He does. He is on the water committee and moved into that big place on Derwent Sloot’s old lot.”

“That doesn’t sound good either.”

“No, he wants to shut our system down and go on county water.”

We go off the road down the path into the park.  A lot of sparrows are sounding off in a sunny bamboo thicket.

“Why?”

“Well, one reason is to build more houses per lot.”

“Oh?”

“Fred, you are out of the loop again.  Our well water system can only support one house per lot.”

“How about that! Not only do we have the benefit of good drinking water. We have beneficial zoning too!”

“Yeah, beneficial to some and not to others.”

“Strikes me, the planet benefits!”

“I would like to think so.”

 I stumble on a protruding sycamore root and stagger off the path.

“Easy there, Fred! You are off track!”

“Yes, looking up at that broken branch, see?”

“Looks like it could come down any time.”

A red-tailed hawk glides through the intervening limbs and lands above our heads.

“Well, I am glad that bird avoided the loose branch.”

“Yeah, I can’t tell what is keeping it up there.”

Bel takes off her sunglasses to see more clearly.

“Precarious.”

“It might have crushed us!”

“What do you think the hawk is eating?”

“An elastic squirrel, I would say.  Look at those strings stretching from the beak.”

It pauses and looks around, adjusting its grip on the meat.  It is in no hurry and appears to be finished when we see it pull another stringy portion off its catch.  Three crows can be heard sounding their alarm, in surrounding trees. Now a fourth has joined them.

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.

Daisy sits beside another woman, looking at the parking lot through the decorated window wall of the Pie Shop.  Red, blue, and gold Christmas balls hang above their heads.  The windowsills are piled with fake snow. Her bracelets are gathered at the elbows on the sleeves of her black turtleneck.  She rests her chin on the heels of both hands smiling at me through the window on my way into the shop. I pass the sign indicating that inoculated people don’t have to wear masks. 

“Hi Fred, this is my half-sister, Cam.”

Daisy puts her hand on Cam’s back.

“Comment ca va?”

“Joyeux noel, Cam.”

“You going to join us, Fred?

Cam’s grey hair is short on the left side of her head where her ear supports a heavy looking gold earring.  While hair falls thick from the right side, curling at the neck.

“Sure, let me get a cup of tea.”

The Pie shop seating area is remodeled.  The Dragon Tables are gone and a bar with stools goes around the store facing out the window walls.  There are four booths along the back of the shop and the serving bar juts out into the middle of the room dividing it in two as you come in. In house on the left and carry out on the right. 

The young barista greets me from under his Afro, wearing blue framed glasses and long braids.

“Darjeeling, no problem, sir, help yourself to a teabag.”

“Do you have any whole tea?”

“What’s that?”

“I mean loose tea, not in bags.”

“No sir, sorry, just the bags.”

He points out a selection arranged in a polished wooden box to the left of the serving counter and puts a red paper cup full of steaming water in front of me.  It is snowing on TV with a jazzy arrangement of Jingle Bells.  The promotion for SnazE winter wear is mounted high on the wall above him. Outside, the temperature is nearly sixty.  

Daisy has moved over, leaving a vacant stool between them.  She turns toward me and beckons me to sit between them.

“Cam has been living in Andorra since the 70s.”

“Well, I spent some time in Spain and Germany, all over in fact.”

Daisy grabs my arm.

“She got a gig for a YouTuber.”

“Right, a few bars of Bach and some sound effects.”

“‘The ‘Sarabande’, I’ll bet!”

“Safe on that one.”

“Is it just a one-off, or what?”

“Ah, it’s like, whenever they need a cello.”

“Did you play classical in Europe?”

“Yeah, some, with different ensembles, also some acting and stuff.”

“You must have picked up a lot of languages!”

“A few words here and there. We did mime.”

“Yeah Cam, Maybe, you can take that up here?”

“No fucking way, D.”

“Why not?”

“Shit! arthritic knees, for Christ-sake!”

“Well, you can get new ones nowadays.”

“I’ll have to go wholistic. Can’t afford to feed the medical beast.”

“Welcome back to the good old USA!”

“This old bird has come home to roost, Fred.”

“Have you found a perch yet?”

“I am couch surfing here, at my sister’s, and some friends in New York.”

“Sounds like you have some options.”

“Yeah, Daisy’s broken-legged couch here and a futon on the 21st floor on Manhattan’s upper West side.”

“Didn’t you also play jazz in Andorra?”

“No, I didn’t do gigs with Feng. I did my own thing and some management for him.”

“Lot of work!”

 “Yeah, too fucking much. I split when Feng started fooling around.”

“Is that why you have come back?”

“No, that was back in 2016 and I got with a group doing street performance.”

Cam pulls up her sleeve showing a tattoo on her right forearm.

A cello is rendered, opposite a Ram rampant with two hooves on the instrument’s scrolls.  

“Got this in Berlin.”

“Looks pretty sharp.”

“Got my first tattoo at fifty, from a kid in our building.”

“What’s with the ram?”

“Aries, I was born on April fool’s day.”

Daisy laughs.

“You remember playing cello naked in the bathtub?”

“Sure, have you still got those drawings?”

“I sold one back in the nineties, but I still have four others.”

“I played naked a few times at a gallery in Marseilles, back when I had some shape.”

“What was the occasion?”

“Our group did a ‘Happening’.”

“What’s that?”

“You ever heard of Alan Kaprow?”

“Maybe, what’s he known for?”

“He did ‘Happenings’ in New York.”

“Okay, so what are they?”

“Well, we built an environment of shredded wallpaper and an old washing machine and odd stuff, and we also had a goat and a sheep eating out of old washbasins.”

“So, what happened?”

“It lasted a few nights, with an invited audience.  I don’t remember what the event script was.  I mean, I was kind of preoccupied with being naked and painted.  A guy stripped off and played flute with me while another woman sawed wood. Two short strokes one long until a piece dropped on the floor.  Then a new pattern was established. I think it ended when the animals finished eating, or maybe when they started shitting. Anyway, there was always someone gawping at my yellow-painted boobs.”

“Did you get paid?”

“God! I don’t remember! Probably got a meal out of it or something.”

“So, why did you do it?”

“In the name of Art!”

“That is an enormous subject.”

“Right, our group moved to Berlin, and we lived in a cooperative for a few years, until our building was demolished.”

“Goes on here too and it is called, ‘development’.” 

“Development of wealth at the expense of people who need homes.”

“These new places soon fill up, you know.”

Daisy wraps on the bar.

“That is the visible part. The invisible homeless remain undeveloped.” 

She gestures with her long arms, one in the air with bracelets rattling and the other behind my back.

“People are dying on the streets over here.”

She hugs me for a moment before letting her gesture go.

“We have a competitive culture here.  It has gone too far!”

“What do you mean, Cam?”

Daisy looks past me into Cam’s face.

“I mean we have gone too fucking far with it!”

“Oh, marketing, and all that.” 

“No, sports, TV game shows, all that shit.”

“Well, it’s entertaining.”

“Yeah, you know why?”

“Sure, people like to follow their teams.”

“Think about it, okay? There can only be one winner in competition, right?”

“I guess so, in most cases.”

“Right, so where does that leave the rest of us poor suckers?”

“Come on Cam, learning to lose is part of growing up!”

“I don’t think so D. It is part of the growing fucking distortion in people’s restricted minds.”

“Distortion? restricted, what are you talking about?”

Cam is looking out the window and doesn’t turn to me or Daisy.

“It’s about learning to lose, most of your fucking life, which means dealing with insecurity.  Failing tells me I am no god damn good!”

“Yes okay.”

“So, we have a majority of people getting their rocks off winning vicariously through teams and game shows.”

“Makes up for their own losses you mean?”

“No, it doesn’t make up for any God-damn thing, it just dulls the pain with a fucking dopamine rush when your team wins.”

“Well, what is wrong with a little pleasure?”

“There is too little of it, for Christ’s sake, D.!”

“’Only connect’, said E.M. Forster!”

“Right on, Eddy Morgan!  I read that one too.”

Pensive, Cam turns the paper cup in her fingers slowly over the grain of the bar’s polished oak veneer.

 Guess what competition does?”

“Divides into teams”

“Isolates every individual.  The winners in this culture get inflated fucking egos, as the rest of us poor shits, shrink into depression.” 

“I think you exaggerate!”

“Have you noticed the suicide rate and the addiction rate over here?”

“I get it!”

“We are living in an addictive culture honey!”

“How can a culture be addictive?  It isn’t a drug. It is a social thing.”

“A divisive social fucking thing.  Social media operate by feeding your biases and making you feel good and if that isn’t addictive, what is?  I mean why do people get strung out?”

“Because they want to feel good!”

“That’s what I am saying fucking isolation!”

“You mean isolation is the problem?”

“It is about love, for Christ’s sake! Connecting not competing,”

“Cooperation!”

“There’s is a term close to socialism, which is political dynamite.  Don’t fucking go there!

“So, how do we talk about it then?”

“Damned if I know.”

Daisy puts her head back and drains her coffee.

“We are trying, aren’t we?”

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.

The scent of cigar smoke catches my attention walking along the Hadron Shopping Center arcade. Steve Strether is sitting at one of the outdoor tables set up outside the French patisserie and bistro, Chez Roger since COVID restricted indoor seating.  

His head emerges from a small cloud thinning and tumbling gently out of his pensive mood towards the parking lot.  His newspaper is folded on the table and his phone is silent beside his empty paper plate. He adjusts his new gray beret.

“Nice had gear, Steve!”

“Thanks, a gift from bel. Riot attacked my navy Parisian one. “

“Who?”

“The stray cat we adopted.”

“Oh, bel calls it Josephine, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, big mistake, in my opinion.”

“Took it for a wooly bird?”

“Another mystery of the feline mind!”

“Their brains are only pea-size, you know.”

“I don’t have much idea of their cranial capacity.”

“To be fair, they do have a lot of neurons packed in there. More than dogs, which have bigger brains.”

“That high density must be what makes them so enigmatic.”

“What grounds do you have for that assertion?”

“The tradition of whimsey associated with cats!”

Steve blows another leisurely cloud of scented smoke.  His Dutch Master is still young and long in his fingers as he takes it from his lips to speak.

“Have you got time to sit down?”

Steve pushes a chair out from the table with his foot.  It scrapes across the pavement and a rear leg jams in a crack causing it to pivot away from me.

“Roger is serving, Cannelés, Financiers, and my favorites with coffee, Madeleines.

“How about Croissant?”

“Sold out buddy.”

“Everybody knows what they are!”

“You might mistake a Financier for some kind of Capitalist.”

“And his girl, Madeleine must be, tres chic!”

Steve watches a sparrow slowly approaching a crumb by his foot, one hop at a time.

“Is Bel with you?”

“Yes, she dropped by the Safeway.”

The sparrow takes off.

“Well, hi there!”

“I didn’t see you walking over.”

Bel puts her shopping bag on the chair, now facing her.

“I couldn’t see you for smoke!”

“Did they have any olive bread?”

“Sure did.”

“That was quick, honey.”

I pull up another chair and sit down.

“You going to join us?”

Bel makes no move to sit down.

“Yes, I am going to sit down, and you are going to, “Curd and Grape” over there.”

She points out the store further down the arcade.

“Get us some wine for Thanksgiving.”

“Okay, what kind would you like?”

“Red, rich, and nothing fizzy.”

Steve stands slowly and ponders his cigar.  Its smoke rising above our heads

before dispersing in a sunbeam breaking through a gap between the tall apartment buildings opposite.  He puts it out against a trash can outside the vacant store next door.

“You can leave that thing here, honey.”

Bell points out the empty plate and some foil that held his Madeleines.

“Here, don’t let them clear it away. It’s a Dutch Master.”

Bel, nods and Steve strolls over to the wine shop. She settles into Steve’s vacant chair.

“Do you remember what used to be there?”

She is pointing towards the store, closed after a recent fire.

“Wasn’t it an Indian restaurant?”

“No, The Emperor Babur is still open. See? on the other side of the parking lot.”

“Okay.”  

“That place was Ab and Cheek Fitness Center.”

“Right and there was also a sub shop.”

“Yes, what was it called?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Daisy had a year’s membership at the “Cheek.”

“Now she will have to drive into DC.”

“Well Fred, she told me she hasn’t been since they closed.”

A West Highland Terrier trots past on a red leash and pulls toward our table. 

“Those Westies always remind me of my school days.  The headmistress had one called Gordon which used to hang out in her office.”

“Like a school mascot.”

“An unofficial one.  It had a regimental blanket to sleep on in the unused fireplace.”

“So that’s why you got Lambert!”

“Partly but he was a rescue.  We weren’t looking for a dog when Steve’s nephew

was assigned overseas and had to leave the dog here.  When I saw it was a Westie, I told Steve we have to take him.”

The Westie swivels its ears and moves on busily sniffing the ground stained by a spill.

“That one is enjoying her constitutional.”

“Why doesn’t Daisy just walk on her own, instead of paying for a gym.”

“Makes sense to me. I didn’t like games, at school and still don’t exercise enough.”

“What did you play?”

“I played hockey without much enthusiasm.”

“So, you weren’t athletic.”

“No, I was what they called a ‘Swat’.”

“No flies on you!”

“It is a term for study, you know.”

“I get it. You were a good student.”

“Yeah, I did alright. ‘Games’ is a general term for Phys Ed. at British Schools, like one I went to in New Zealand, back in the day.”

“You mean your parents left their only daughter in one of those places?”

“They were convinced it would give me what they called, ‘a good start in life’”.

“Did it?”

“Dad wasn’t comfortable after a while, with what he called my, ‘Bleached Anglicization’.”

“Well yes, kind of like a foreign culture.”

“He wanted me to go to Howard.”

Bel unzips a small compartment in her handbag. Finding her phone, she shows me the scan of an old photo of herself in school uniform.  She has a yellow sash across her blue blazer trimmed with purple.

“Fred, can you imagine that, at Howard?”

“Ah, no! but…”

“No, buts thank you.  Dad and I had a tussle before Mom brokered a deal and I went to Bard.” 

“What about the yellow sash?”

“We were organized into ‘houses’ and I was in Yellow house.  Thinking back, they

were kind of like tribes!”

“Good grief! did you have mystical rights with ceremonial flutes?”

“No, but we had mottos and competed in sports and academic contests.”

“How long were you a border?”

“Five years, every day began with assembly where all the pupils gathered in the school hall for prayers, hymns, and announcements.”

“So, it was a church school!”

“Very Church of England, loyal British subjects and all that.”

“Seems very nineteenth century.”

“Well, yes. Who was it said, ‘History isn’t even past’?”

“Ah, was it Hemingway? or Faulkner maybe?”

 “Bill! It was him.  You got it. Right now, people are living in the 13th century, and others here in the States dwell in the nineteenth and yet others in the mid-twentieth; and that is only a bit of it.”

“While some of us struggle into the digital twenty-first.”

Steve returns and puts a bag on the table with two bottles in it.  Bel looks in and

reads out;

“’La Lecciaia Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva’  A Brunello!”

“Yeah, Grape and Curd recommend it.”

“At a price, no doubt!

“No comment.”

Steve pulls up another chair and bell pushes the plate with foil-wrapped stogey in front of him.  

“The other is a Zin and there’s some stinky cheese wrapped up in there too.”

“Not Limburger again?”

“Sure, remember, Harper Nightingale used to bring it over?”

“Yeah, and I never took to the Brevibacterium linens!”

“Sounds infectious!”

“Fred, that’s what makes it armpit stinky.”

“I got to know Harper Nightingale over Limburger and Stella Artois.”

“When was that, Steve?”

“Back when we first moved here.  He and Lark were having problems.”

Bel is nodding.

“Which, he occasionally shared with me.”

 “Sounds like heavy going.”

“Yes, in a way, but I find people interesting, especially their problems with each other.”

“You have been ‘Fauxmont’s ear’ ever since I got here!”

“You know Fred, that is often all people want. 

“What do you mean?”

“Someone to take an interest.”

“Doesn’t it get tiresome?”

“Oh, yes it can!”

Steve relights his cigar.

“It seems to me he never got past his glorious college years and still thinks of life in those terms.”

“Well, Harper is an academic.”

“Sure, and that is fine.”

“So, what have you got in mind?”

“Dr. Nightingale always found some reason to mention his two master’s degrees and his doctorate from Chicago, the topic of his dissertation, etc., etc., etc.”

Bel laughs at Steve, who puffs out another scented cloud of Corona Deluxe.

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 and Serge are up on the Zoom screen.  

She appears to be sitting outside with asters

reaching for sunlight, in a blue smear behind her.  

“LIVID SLUGS!”

“Are you talking about the mollusk?”

“It’s the name of a band, Fred.”

“I am pretty much in the dark.”

“Just bear with me, okay?”

“Sorry I am late logging on.”

“Fred, we are talking about a very big deal with serious implications.”

“Oh?”

“Okay, have you heard any of their songs?”

“No, don’t even know their name.”

“You can stream free on Halloween.”

The Red Queen interrupts.

“Off-to-bed, Off-to-bed, Off-to-bed”

“Quiet, Queenie!”

Diddlie mutes her connection. Her head moves out of her virtual floral background as if she were pulling a tee shirt off over her head. It fills the space she once occupied as seamlessly as a fluid.    

Serge is on screen.

“Did you know Liberty Trip is working with them?”

“Is she? The last I heard she was out West looking for a job.”

“She is back in the business.”

“How did she do it?”

“Through Nubile State College.”

“You mean she went back to school?”

“Right, studying communications, and stuff.”

Serge’s image has gone.  Replaced by that of Liberty Trip.

“Hi, Liberty.”

She does not respond. She is in conversation with someone

who is represented by a phone number in place of their picture.

“You can find the SLUGS on You Tube.”

“Are they appearing in person? Like, live on stage somewhere?”

“Not yet.”

“So, who are they?”

“Granular Evidence has attested to their true existence in a Shrinkrap article.”

“Granular who?”

“You know, the new music critic on Shrinkrap.”

“I haven’t been following Shrinkrap.  They are messed up!”

“Anyway, just check out her post on Shrinkrap.  It went viral and boosted

the band’s name recognition enormously.”

“Testimony huh?”

“Right Gran. confronts the deniers.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“They play translucent plastic string instruments; like

a green cello, purple bass, red electronic harpsichord, and yellow violin.”

“That’s different.”

“You can see the LEDs illuminating them from inside.”

“Must show up well in the dark!”

“Yeah, it is an important part of the act.”

“Come to think of it, I have seen those people in identical masks.”

“Okay, so that might have been the SLUGS!”

“The vocals sound synthesized, to me.”

 “They have been accused of using celebrity voices.”

The screen fills with a portion of an interview. Looks as if it was downloaded from TV. The unnamed announcer asks:

“Here is Laticia Lantern.”

Laticia puts the question.

 “Are LIVID SLUGS real people or electronically generated?”

“Yes, they are real and claim non-binary status.”

“How do you know?”

The screen goes blank with a few bars of distorted string music before showing two people arguing in a hallway.  They are silhouetted against sunlight coming in through glass doors a few yards away.

“Yeah, okay.”

”I have seen them.  The Slugs, I mean on You Tube wearing shapeless smocks that 

make them all look identical.”

Ah, Did. Is this a recording?”

She does not respond, and the argument goes on.

“How does that make them real?”

“Depends on what you mean by real.”

“I mean living breathing organisms, homosapiens.”

“You sound like some kind of Zoologist!”

“No, I am interested in the difference between actual people and the products of computer code.”

“You are so twentieth century!”

“NO, I am right here in the twenty-first.”

“There is no difference now!”

“It seems important to me.”

“Wait a minute. This argument could go on forever.”

Diddlie is back on screen.  Looks like a teenager standing on a rock with mountains behind her.

“What are you doing Did?”

She still doesn’t answer.  She seems to be screening a recorded conversation with no video.  I go on listening, not knowing if I am hearing Diddlie’s voice with her youthful panoramic Alpine shot on screen.

“Did you hear LIVID SLUG’S first song?”

“It was something about running for President.”

“Right, the song asks for vice presidential hopefuls to come forward

at their next concert, to be announced in 2022.”

“That is absurd, only an individual can run.”

“Where is that in the Constitution?”

“The President and Vice President are offices held by one person in each.”

“According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old, and have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.”

“Well, you have a point there, but it is just a technicality.”

“A bit more than that. I think.”

Diddlie is holding a picture in front of her computer camera.

“This is a photo of Granular Evidence herself. She gave a news conference in Miami

at the same time the song was released.”

The voice-over says:

“Here is that spectacular new celebrity, Granular, Evidence!”

I see someone dressed up as an English schoolboy with

a deep purple blazer, shorts, white shirt, and running shoes, plus orange tie, long purple socks, and orange cap. After a few flickers on screen, there is another video where two students wearing green Nubile State hoodies argue in an empty classroom.

“Why does she have such a masculine voice?”

“Because Gran. is nonbinary.”

“Is it her real voice?”

“It is as real as you hear it!”

“Well, okay but is that her true voice?”

“We all have our own truth.”

“We do?”

“Sure! What’s true to me may not be true to you.”

“That’s opinion.”

“No, it is not my opinion.”

“Yes it is, truth itself is not a matter of opinion.”

“Listen, when I believe something, it is true to me.”

“Belief and truth are two different things.”

“In my experience my belief is true!”

“Yes, we all have our own experience.”

“Well, isn’t experience a kind of truth?”

“You can say that, sure, but that is a poetical use of the word.”

“What’s political about it?”

“I said poetical.”

“Okay, so we all have our own experience, right?”

“We do!”

“My experience listening to LIVID SLUGS is just as real

as yours.”

“Our experiences may be real but that doesn’t make the

LIVID SLUGS real or not real.”

Diddlie is back in front of a new virtual background, goldenrod with bumblebees loading their pollen sacks with gold.

“So, Fred what do you think?”

“Think of what?”

“I am now, TECH WOMAN!” 

“Oh, so that’s what is going on!”

“How did you like my little ‘guided Zoom’?”

“Well, I found it very confusing!”

“Why?”

“Who are all those people?”

“It doesn’t matter. I wanted to present the current state of discussion of the LIVID SLUGS phenomenon as it is right now in the cybersphere.”

“Did you do all that for me?”

“Well, I was thinking of you, but it was also a learning experience because Serge was showing me how to put that stuff together.”

“It was a learning experience for me too. I mean, I am just out of it!

“Not as long as you can log on!”

“Maybe so!”

“It is getting dark here.”

“Here too, I just heard some thunder”

“Wait a minute, I am going to turn on the light.”

There is a simultaneous flash of lightning and thunder.  The light goes out and the screen is as dark as it is outside.

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.

Humid air seems to cling to the trees or is it their breath? The sun is well above the tree line and does nothing to dry the atmosphere. Lou sits in his car outside the H Bar.  It is not his old Saturn wagon with dog nose prints clouding the back windows.  

“Why don’t we go in for lunch?”

“Not yet, Fred. Get in. I want to show you something.”

It is cool and dry inside.  The warn red plush seating has lost some of its pile where years of but rubbing have left their mark.  

“Just picked this up for $9K. with 95K miles.”

“Today?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“What year is it?”

“It’s a twenty eleven Hyundai.”

“You mean you sold the old Saturn?”

“The Light House Gas Station wants twenty-five hundred to fix it and clean all the tree sap off the paintwork, so I traded it in for this.”

“I didn’t know they were selling cars now.”

“Oh sure, they have a small lot full, outside one of Jake Trip’s warehouses.”

“Did they give you anything for the Saturn?”

“A handshake!”

We have stopped at yet another red light on Route One.  The big, “Pollo A La Brassa” sign is gone along with the old strip mall that once housed a favorite Peruvian Chicken place.  It is now a building site. About two stories of cinder block rise from the clay, plus future stairwells sticking up above the partially stick-built apartments to come.

“Imagine all the cars coming out of there adding to this traffic.”

Lou looks over.

“That’s growth and progress for you!”

“Enough to keep us at this light another ten eternal minutes.”

Something is pushing against my feet.

“Lou, did you know Mr. Liddell is under my seat?”

A white rabbit backs into view to the right of my feet.

Lou glances over and then accelerates as traffic moves on.

“That is not Mr. Liddell!”

“Looks like him to me.”

“I know.  Remember when Diddlie’s carport was invaded by all those rabbits during a thunderstorm?”

“Oh yes!”

We have stopped behind a bus.

“I am in the wrong lane here but can’t get over.”

The bus moves a few yards and stops at the next red light.

“We have gone just over two miles in the last eleven minutes!”

“Why don’t you pull over up at that patch of woods up here?”

“No way.”

“Why not?  We can release Mr. Liddell’s doppelganger and get out  

from behind this belching bus.”

“You’ll soon see!”

The bus pulls over into its own lane to take on a passenger, giving us room to speed on to another red light at a full eighteen miles an hour.

“Wait a minute. Where are those woods?”

“You are living in the past Fred.  That lot is a new shopping center.”

“Those were the biggest woods along here.”

“Somebody was feeding the rabbits, breading in those woods.”

“So that’s where they came from.  It is a long way from here to Diddlie’s, though.”

“It is.  I think they escaped from a van that crashed on Maxwell Avenue.”

“You mean they were trapped at the time of construction.”

“Something like that.”

“Diddlie told me there was a scheme to sell them as pets.”

“Where?”

“She didn’t tell me anymore.”

“Well, these woods were the last place for the homeless to camp out.  I wonder where they went?”

“God help them.  I don’t know.”

“So, what are you going to show me?”

“Right over here.”

We have turned into the van Ruijven Shopping Center that was the last forested island of nature on this stretch of road and parked facing the side of a new four-story building. We can see a plain cinder block wall.  A number of plywood rectangles suggest future windows. Lou checks the clock and opens the driver-side window.

“Here they come, right on time.”

There’s a buzz of electric motors as the first drone passes in front of the wall and sprays it down the middle with a cloud of brown paint.  Another comes along behind it and sprays a lighter tone next to it and then another.

“What is going on here?”

“These four-motor drones are painting a mural and I was hoping to get here early enough to talk to Alicia and watch them fill the tanks with paint.”

“Where are they coming from?”

“Look over on the right.”

Drones are coming out of a dark opening in the roof of a one-story temporary building.

They catch the sun as they fly out of the building like bees out of a hive with swollen bellies. Each carries a cylindrical tank of paint under its props. Others can be seen returning via another opening on the other side of the roof.

“I get it.  Remember the old paint by numbers!”

“This is paint by computer code.”

“Someone still has to mix and load the colors.”

“I think even that has been programmed into a machine.”

“What? I mean how?”

“Every pixel corresponds to color information that can be combined with instructions to mix paint.”

“How about that!  How do you know all this Lou?”

“The two women who designed it used to work with me at the Fib.”

“Don’t say they got funding from the Leiden Organization.”

“That’s right!  It is called the Delft Project.”

“That private equity firm is ramping up its investments around here.”

“They would have to start with an original painting though.”

“That’s what I thought but the machine has learned to copy any image its camera sees.”

“Doesn’t look like they are spraying pixels to me.  That is fluid paint!”

“Yup! This is just the underpainting.”

The underpainting builds gradually over about fifteen minutes as drones make countless passes at the wall in close succession.

“You think we will see a collision?”

“Not unless the wind comes up.”

Some drones pass close to the wall with a long proboscis quirting a thin jet of color in a well-controlled line of varying thickness.  Those covering larger areas spray from further out.  At one point we see two drones swoop in only a foot apart mixing their colors in the air before orange paint hits the surface in varying tones.

“Looks like this might be a Halloween picture.”

“Yeah, we have the makings of a huge doorway and I’ll bet those orange blobs are going to be rendered into pumpkins.”

The rabbit struggles up from the well of the floor and squeezes between the driver’s seat and mine to get in the back.

“What are you going to do about this rabbit, Lou?”

“After this, I’ll offer it to the folks in the paint shop as a mascot.”

“Looks like the gas station gave you a free bunny!”

“Look at that, Fred!”

A five-motor drone with a bigger tank hovers near the top of the wall. Spraying deep blue from three nozzles.

“It’s going to be a night scene.”

The rabbit has climbed up the back seat and settles under the rear window.

“It might have jumped in when I left the door open stopping by the house, on the way to meet you.”

The windshield is now covered in bright yellow paint.  The errant drone has come in from the left.  After spraying the front of Lou’s latest car, it crashes into the side of a silver Mercedes van only yards away.  Yellow fluid runs down the side panel, partially obscuring the sign; “Vic’s Side Arms and Ammo” printed in black. Underlined by a line of script recalling that of the Constitution, “Serving Patriots Since 1976”.  Lou is laughing.  He taps his phone and I hear only his side of the conversation.

“Alicia!  You guys just doused my car and did a bright yellow kamikaze on the van next to us!

Yeah, it is Vic’s.

Bright yellow, kind of early for sunset don’t you think?

Vincent, what do you mean?

Oh! the thing is named after Van Gogh!

Okay, I get it.

Have they all got names?

Rembrandt and Van Dyke sprayed the browns, okay.

Do you have Vermeer?

Fabritius, who is that?

Yeah, okay, I can wait.”

Lou taps his phone and puts it away.

“Alicia is going to send someone out to wipe off the window.”

“Who is Fabritius?”

“He was a student of Rambrandt’s. She says he was killed in a gun powder factory explosion.”

A teenage boy runs over to us from the temporary building with two buckets of water and rags.  The sides of his head are shaved and a huge thicket of long black hair streams from the top.  He wipes the paint off and then throws the second bucket-full across the front for a final rinse and rushes back to the drone hive.  Tattooed drones fly up his bare forearm.

He comes back with another two buckets.

“Got to clean off Vic’s. I’ll hose the rest of your car after that.”

He points to the side of the drone hive.

‘That is Alicia’s son Zeno, a real Wizkid too.  I think he did a lot of the coding for this project.”

No more drones have come in since Lou reported the accident. A row of sycamores along the lot line releases a cloud of seeds and they spin across the parking lot on a sudden breeze.

151. Forever Flowers

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.

Max Plank is leaning against a locust tree with his bloodhound, Boson who is trying to pull into a thicket of pokeweed, poison ivy, and blackberry.  The August sun will soon rise over the tree line. Max looks at the misty river from Wicket Street, after the crumbling road turns past the Dumpty house.

“Hi, Max, how are you? and how’s Nadia.?

“Nadia is fine, Fred.  Filling my head with questions an old builder is not sure he wants to think about.”

“Challenging you, huh?”

“I am getting lawyered up, you know.”

“Something about a traffic stop?”

“Something, yeah, just what, is the question?”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Well, the son of bitch pulled his weapon on me!”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s it, and I am going after them for it!”

“Best of luck.”

An orange pickup from Dordrecht pulls up and the driver opens his window.

“Is this 1672?”

Boson wanders over to the truck with wobbling dewlaps and a little drool of curiosity. Max holds back and talks through the open window.

“Sure is.”

The driver closes his window, backs up onto the driveway, and starts talking on his phone in the air-conditioned cab.  Boson has lost interest and is pulling toward the thicket again.

“Is Helga building this?”

“No Fred, she has moved to Syracuse to be close to her kid, and son-in-law.”

“So, when did this one go up?”

“Over the past few months.”

“Quite a pile, with good river views, I should think.”

“Not only that, it will have an instant, low-maintenance flower garden.”

“It will? You mean freeze-dried, Max?”

“No, synthetic.”

“A whole garden?”

“I know the contractor.  It is a new product for homeowners who want flowers year around.”

“What is your interest here?”

“Just plain old curiosity.”

“But you have built tons of houses.”

Boson is sniffing my shoes.

“Not like this one.”

“What is so unusual?”

“A fake lawn, a synthetic, kind of like Astroturf, called ‘Forever Blade’. They have another product called ‘Forever Flowers’.”

Boson is drooling on my shoes.

“The sun will soon degrade it if it is plastic.”

“Forever Blade cuts down on maintenance”, haven’t you seen the commercial?”

“Not yet.”

“It seems to be on every YouTube channel I watch.”

“Yes, interrupting the program in 5 seconds!”

“Right, I also get someone warning me about the coming financial meltdown.”

“Or political fundraising, or the Viking God of Rivers, suggesting a cruise.”

“No floods on that one!”

“It’s, your dream vacation.”

“Away from suburban boredom, Max.”

“Have you seen the cute little blond kid playing with grandpa, who is high on his meds?”

“What do you mean, high?”

“He must be high. Listen to the list of side effects. I mean he should be scared as hell!”

“Why are they always blond kids?”

“That is America’s image of itself.”

“Which America is that, Max?”

“That’s us buddy, the white ones with money to spend.”

“Do I hear Nadia’s influence?”

“Yeah, she is constantly giving me stuff to read.”

“Is she into, ‘ME TOO’?”

“That’s what got her going.  Her experiences started coming back to her and now she is on fire!”

“Where does that leave you, Max?”

“Out here with Boson.”

“I mean are you okay with it?”

“Sure, just not very active.”

“Is she pushing?”

“Yeah, but we are solid.”

“So, what is she telling you?”

“On a sunny commercial day no one sweats, and no one has sunburn or skin cancer.”

“Well, that’s good old American optimism!”

“Nadia calls it, ‘happy white commercial America.’”

“Someone called it, ‘the happy consciousness.’ I seem to remember.”

“Anything to make a buck!”

“Are you getting cynical Max?”

“No, it’s made this country rich! I just say what’s on my mind.”

“Sure, and so you should.” 

“Yeah, this diversity thing is blowing around like a hurricane!”

“Along with big new in-fill houses.”

Boson has followed a scent trail and pulled on his extended leash back to the truck tires and damps them down with drool.  We both look over to the guy in the truck.

“I think this guy will be putting in tanks for the “Forever Garden” today.

“Irrigation, you mean?”

“No, these tanks will hold the oil used to drive up all the synthetic flowers and shrubs.”

“I get it. They will have dahlias in December and fake chrysanthemums in February!”

“Whatever they want!”

“What a nightmare!”

“It is pretty ingenious really.”

“Oh, it is?”

“Oh yeah, Forever Flower packages are planted in the ground with a line to the oil tanks and pumps.  The oil moves telescoping tubes, that are green, like stems, up out of the ground hydraulically pushing leaves out as they rise until they reach bloom height.”

“Must look pretty creepy to see these things zooming up out of the ground.”

“It is all timed to grow at a natural pace.”

“It is, aha, and the oil won’t freeze of course.”

“Well, it will thicken up at about minus thirty F.”

“Okay, what about the flowers?”

“The flowers are programmed to go on after about a month’s growth.”

“You mean the owner has to wait that long?”

“Not necessarily, but Forever Flowers grow according to an algorithm which simulates natural growth.”

“What about the weather?”

“No problem.”

“I get it. These are not just instant. They are immortal!”

“As long as you are up to date on your maintenance fees.”

“Oh, maintenance fees, substantial I’ll bet!”

“These are complex systems, Fred.  For one thing, the flower units have to be attached to the stems mechanically, by the contractor at the right time.”

“So, the flowers don’t grow out of the stems hydraulically?”

“No, the bud pods are a separate system.  The pods are mechanically attached to the stems and open gradually through chemical reactions.”

“Then, they last forever!”

“Well no.  The client can choose the duration, but unattended, the flowers will only last about a month.”

“Then what?  Do they drop off like real ones?”

“No, the color fades and they go transparent.”

“Ghosts!”

“You can say that, but they look colorful in the snow!”

“Ridiculous!”

“Why are they any more ridiculous than Christmas Lights?”

“You mean these flowers have lights in them?”

“That is an optional extra.”

“Do they talk too?”

“Well, Dr. Alice Tennison is working on that.”

Max pulls out his phone.

“Here, I can show you her site.”

He taps on: ‘AT@TalkingFlowers.com’ and the video starts.  Showing a variety of products clumped in one bed, like real plants. A rose, tiger-lily, and a daisy join in answering a question from Alice, herself.

“Aren’t you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?”

“There’s the tree in the middle … what else is it good for?”

“But what could it do, if any danger came?”

“…It could bark.”

“It says bough-wough!”

“Max, isn’t that part of some story?”

“Yeah, I forget what book it is.”

“Anyway, I seem to remember one problem with fake grass is falling leaves and other stuff

that has nowhere to go.”

“What do you mean?”

“No worms or beetles.”

“Look, you have to rake, or blow leaves off your grass.  Forever Blade will vacuum your property at no extra charge.”

The sun has risen over the tree line and we can hear the grinding noise of heavy trucks coming up the hill in the growing heat.  Boson has awakened from a snooze in the shade of the thicket he couldn’t reach.

“Here comes the instant garden!”

Two bright yellow trucks are greeted by the man who has dismounted from his pickup.  An assortment of flowers and generic leaves are pictured on the doors growing out of the word “FOREVER” printed in deep green.  He directs the unloading and positioning of the Forever Products with a lot of gesticulating.

“Looks like these guys don’t speak much English.”

“No, the company has sponsored some Afghans for their crews.”

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.

The sight of a huge Buick station wagon takes me back to the

seventies but it is parked in the Safeway parking lot here

in the twenty-first century.  It must belong to Maynard Keyes.

Could there possibly be two huge pink anachronisms burning

extravagant amounts of fuel in this area?

Bel Vionnet waves to me from the shade, as I walk towards the entrance. 

“You like that car, huh?”

“Yes, until…”

“I know.”

Donna Intaglio stands next to bel, turned to one side with her phone up to her ear.

“Are you waiting for a ride home?”

“In that thing?”

“It could happen.  I know the owner!”

Maynard strolls through the exit door with a yellow canvas shoulder bag

hanging at his side.

“Fred, isn’t it?”

“It is, Maynard.  This is, bel Vionnet.”

“How do you do?  I must be in the midst of some anamnesis!”

Bel puts down her shopping bags and looks up to his face nearly two feet above hers.

“Okay, do I remind you of some past life?”

“It is your name, bel.  My dear old teacher, Vincent Vionnet.”

“Really, I wonder if he is on our family tree?”

“Are you working on one?”

“My husband is. Steve has spent the whole of COVID on both his and mine.”

“Maybe you’ll find him! He introduced me to Shakespeare’s ninety-first Sonnet.  

Do you know it?

‘…Thy love is better than high birth to me…,’”

“No Maynard but isn’t it among the ‘fair youth sequence’.”

“So, it is.”

“Well, how about that! Kind of a wild guess, I must admit.”

“You see, I was Vincent’s, ‘fair youth.’”

A low-flying jet crosses above the tree line.

“What brings you back to Fauxmont?”

“What’s that Fred?”

“I asked what brings you back to Fauxmont.”

“That plane seems very low and noisier than the others this morning.”

“Yes, we are on the flight path this morning.”

Maynard scans the tree line for the next aircraft.

“I just dropped Boyd off at his mother’s.”

“Getting along again, are they?”

“Well, I am making lunch for us, Fred.”

Maynard indicates his well-filled bag.

Thunder cracks in our ears, which makes Donna jump as she finishes her call.

“Where did that come from? The sky looks clear!”

Bel steps out into the parking lot to get a better look.

“It is raining over at National Airport.”

Maynard steps out to look, too.

“Yes, you are closer to Calvin Coolidge, here than I thought.”

“We need the rain!”

Bel pulls her two bags back as a woman steps out of a Range Rover SUV in full spandex with minimum coverage.

“There goes the power!”

Donna turns to bel, as the store goes dark, with phone still in hand.

“Did you know, Albrecht is in jail?”

“I didn’t know he had been arrested!”

“They took him in last month, Fred.”

“Welcome back, by the way, Donna.”

“Thanks, I got the first flight I could after hearing about it.”

“How did you find out?”

“Lark Bunlush called us. She found out when she was looking for Boyd.”

“So, he has been in jail for a while.”

“Yeah, weeks.  I wanted to see him yesterday right after I got off the plane.”

“You mean you didn’t?”

“No, got caught in traffic and there are complications. I never thought I would enter into such a disaster!”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just stuff. I am afraid he is going to get the virus in that place.”

Maynard runs his thumb under the bag strap that crosses his Hawaiian shirt front.

“Why was Albrecht apprehended?”

“You mean you know him, Maynard”?

“I know of him, but we have never met.”

“They accused him of breaking into the Capitol.”

Bel gestures toward Donna.

“Ah, Maynard, this is Albrecht’s Mom, Donna Intaglio.”

“How do you do?” 

He puts his long fingers over his heart. 

“Maynard.” 

Donna looks over at bel. 

“Thank you, bel.”

“Does he have benefit of counsel?”

“I am trying to get Sherman Shrowd, but his office says he is out of town.”

“Yes, Shrowd, sounds familiar somehow.”

“He has done a lot of work for this community, for free.  He’s known Albrecht ever since he was born.”

“I might be able to help.”

Maynard starts texting with broad fingertips and great dexterity.

Donna’s smile breaks through her misery.

“You are as kind as you are tall!”

“I am a friend of Boyd’s.”

“Oh, but they have split!”

“Yes, unfortunate that, but inevitable. So, I gather from Boyd.”

“I don’t care who it is, I think Albrecht will be better off with a companion.”

“Yes, many of us are. You know, Donna I think my friend, Andante Sforzando, is a partner in Shrowd’s firm.”

“God! I doubt if we can afford him if he is.”

“He might take Albrecht’s case pro bono.”

“He might?  Why? I mean we have never even heard of him.”

“I think Albrecht would have his sympathy and Andy is well able to afford it.”

“Is he a Trumper, or something?”

“I don’t know exactly what his politics are these days, conservative certainly.”

“I, I mean, I just don’t get it!”

“It can be difficult for conservatives these days.”

“Yeah, being the mother of one is, too.” 

Bel gently rubs Donna’s back.

“Ah, Maynard, is this guy a real courtroom operator?”

“Oh yes, he will argue the case, if it comes to that.”

“You think it might not?”

“Yes, few cases ever get to court, you know.”

Bel frowns looking down at her shopping bags.

“So true!”

“Yes, anyway I shall know more when Andy responds to my text.”

“How well do you know him?”

“We have been well acquainted over the last twenty years or so.”

“I get it.”

“Do you know what the charges are?”

Donna has put her phone away.

“The arrest affidavit shows some vid of him on the terrace

outside the Capital, overlooking the mob. They allege that he followed 

a group of others into the building.”

“Is that on the video?”

“Not on what Lark saw.”

“So, you haven’t seen it yourself?”

“No, Lark started researching stuff for an article, after looking for Boyd.”  

“Have they posted bail?”

“I think it is $25K. but I need to check.”

Bel puts her arm around Donna’s shoulder as she tries to suppress her sobs.

“Honey, this is going to take a while.  There is so much video evidence and over five hundred have been arrested.”

Maynard stoops down in sympathy and covers her hand with his broad palm.

“Yeah, but most of them are released!”

Maynard is shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“I am sure he can be bailed once we know more.”

Bel looks into Donna’s face.

“Is Herman going to join you, honey?”

“No! They had a big fight over the phone. He is through with Albrecht.  His only child.  It is criminal!  All because Albrecht got so wound up supporting a corporate takeover of the government.  I mean, how pathetic!”

“Maybe this arrest will bring him over?”

“No! Like I said, he doesn’t care.”

“Oh.”

“Herman says he is staying in Grenoble. They have offered him a permanent job and he is never coming back here.”

“You mean the print-making job?”

“Yeah, he loves it, there.”

“How about you?”

“I kind of miss the States.”

Donna stifles another sob and wipes her eyes.

“What do I do when the two most important people in my life talk as if they hate each other?”

Lightening still flashes through the humid heat.

Maynard steps into the lot to look at the sky again and comes back.

“Excuse me, Donna I am so sorry you are in such difficulty, but I must go.”

“Oh, nice meeting you Maynard.”

“Delighted Donna if you give me your contact info. I will get in touch as soon as I hear from Andy Sforzando.”

Maynard texts Donna and, with a wave, lopes over to his vast pink metal palace.

The store manager comes out to tell us that backup power will come on soon.

Steve Strether draws up to the curb and lowers his window.

“Hi, Fred, who’s that giant?”

Donna steps forward to greet Steve.

“That is Maynard, and he is trying to do me a giant favor!”

Bel gets into the car with her bags.

“You need a ride, Donna?”

Bel reaches over from the seat next to him and shakes his forearm.

“Honey, she is coming for dinner.”

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.

Lark is looking down into her own shadow as we stand in front of Diddlie’s house waiting for her to come home.
“She texted me that she was home. I don’t get it!”
“Let’s look in the backyard.”
We walk through the carport toward the back. Mr. Liddell presses his head against the front of his box. Lark walks over to him.
“Where is she, Mr.?”
“Look at all the straw he has thrown out!”
“Yes, he seems to be unsettled.”
He twitches an ear and his sensitive pink nose quivers.
We go on into the cicada’s seventeen-year garden song, stepping over a cluster of empty exoskeletons, curled like cashews. Lark shades her eyes with her hand, looking towards the Trip house next door.
“I don’t see her back here.”
“No, but look over there!”
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“A white rabbit just ran behind the compost heap.”
“No way, Mr. Liddell is in his hutch. We both saw him.”
“Well, he’s got company!”
We can hear the garage door open next door.
“Have you seen anything of Trip lately?”
“No, he is always jetting around. Is that him now?”
“Well, there was some doubt for a while, after Gale left him and the house had that notice on the door, but I think this is still his address.”
We both watch a hawk flapping hard over our heads with a white meal in its claws. It crosses Oval Street to perch in a broken red oak, which was struck by lightning last year.
“That hawk has carry-out.”
“Can you imagine getting rabbit carryout?”
“Bunny on a bun?”
“Only for hawks.”
“Look at that front!”
We can also see a continent of dark cloud drifting into the blue overhead.
“More rain!”
“This has got to be the rainiest year since I moved here.”
“A cicada just landed on your hair.”
“Get it off, will you?”
I pick it off and it flies out of my fingers. It’s yellow and black striped thorax suggestive of a sting.
“Look, there are two more bunnies!”
“Yes, and there’s one looking at us from under that hydrangea.”
I follow Lark slowly towards Diddlie’s excavated compost heap.
We look at the heap on one side and a new rectangle of concrete about twelve feet square.
“No rabbit here.”
“See that Fred, someone sealed up the cave-in.”
“The cave-in to what? That is the question.”
“Oh! Don’t get me started on that skullduggery!”
“Here comes the rain.”
Heavy drops splash on the broad hydrangea leaves, which dip gently under the impact.
“You know, I still have Theo’s umbrella. Should have brought it.”
“How is Theo?”
“Didn’t you hear? He died of complications from COVID.”
“Yes, I think you told me.”
“Right, back in February, February 19th. I was there.”
“Was he in the hospital all that time?”
“He was out for a while in November and December and back in by Christmas and I was taking care of him. You know, at my place.”
“You did well not to get infected!”
“I think I did, but it was a light case.”
“Have you been tested?”
“No.”
“How about vax?”
“No, I don’t trust it, besides I figure I have immunity now.”
“You don’t trust it?”
“No, it is a profit center for those big companies. There hasn’t been enough time to tell what the longer-term side effects may be.”
“That is a question alright, but it has saved a lot of lives and the economy too.”
“So, people say. So, the experts say. I think there is a lot more to come. Just think about the new Delta variant.”
“Okay, so, what about Theo?”
“He was a depressive.”
“I guess he was alone in the world.”
“Yeah, I didn’t see it when we were young and having sex all the time.”
“You think he was driven to it?”
“We both were!”
“At least you enjoyed it!”
“Oh Yeah! But it was kind of obsessive.”
“Gratifying!”
“Yeah, we didn’t talk about love.”
The rain comes to nothing. More cicadas land on both of us and we move back into the carport, throwing them off into the hydrangea by the entrance.
“Theo, kind of cut himself off.”
“Lucky you were there for him!”
“I know. I am in deep trouble. Augie went back West then
Theo got sick and Boyd took off too. I mean, what’s with the men in my life?”
“I don’t know Lark. Things seem to be piling up on you!”
“Yeah, really! Boyd found out Theo was at my house and came back for a while.”
“So, COVID brought you back together!”
“Well, kind of.”
“You and Boyd were not doing well together last time I saw you.”
“I told him that Theo was his real father and he got mad as hell.”
“Why didn’t you tell him before?”
“I wasn’t sure until we got a DNA test but then I couldn’t find him to tell him.”
“The resemblance was so strong I wonder if you really needed a test?”
“Well, I needed a test. I was fooling around a lot back then.”
“Have you heard from Keyes?”
“No, and I haven’t heard from either of them since they drove away in that car.”
“I’ll never forget that huge pink car!”
“God! How could Boyd have hooked up with that idiot!”
“What are you two doing back here?”
Diddlie walks in under the carport holding a green and orange Snaz-Naturals plastic bag over her head.
“Looking for you, Diddlie.”
“Well, I come in through the front, you know.”
“You texted that you were home, so here we are!”
“You didn’t say anything about Fred.”
“No, he happened by as I got here.”
“Well, I happened over to Lou’s after texting you.”
“Okay, and?”
“He said Mr. Liddell had come over into his yard.”
“No! He’s over there in his hutch.”
“I know but there was a white rabbit back there among the jewelweeds.”
“So, the Liddell family are visiting.”
“Lark, this is serious.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“There are plenty of brown bunnies around here, but I have never seen a wild white one.”
“Okay, so maybe it is someone else’s pet?”
“Maybe, but this is the third white one I have been called about.”
“You think there are that many?”
“They were all different. I can tell.”
“Well, I don’t know where they came from.”
“I think they are lab animals!”
“You mean they escaped?”
“Maybe, or maybe they were released.”
“You mean like retired?”
“I mean like in an experiment.”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“First the Trump virus then the COVID virus and now a plague of white bunnies!”
“AND, cicadas!”
“Look up there.”
Lark points toward the top of a mature white oak on the edge of Diddlie’s yard.
“See, that new growth on the ends of the branches. It is all dying!”
Diddlie shakes her head. A Cicada wing catches the sunlight among the waves in her hair.
“That’s just cicada damage. Nothing to it.”
Lark steps closer to Diddlie.
“Well, something is killing those trees!”
“Sure, climate change and new bugs.”
Diddlie steps back, away from Lark’s advance.
“We used to live in the woods around here. Now it is getting more like a housing estate with some trees.”
“Don’t forget this was all farmland when these houses were built, and people let the trees grow instead of planting lawns.”
Lark advances again.
“And that hasn’t happened in many places!”
“The original houses went up about eighty years ago and that’s how old most of these white oaks are.”
Diddlie steps back again next to Mr. Liddel’s cage.
“Bails Lane is like McMansion Land. There’s three in a row now, erupting out of a long strip of lawn.”
“No sweat, they won’t last a generation. They are made out of glue, sawdust, and staples!”
“Well, it makes a pretty picture and that’s what people want.”
”As seen on TV!”
“With two trees left.”
“I know, and they are sick.”
“Did you see the old bamboo is coming up through that new grass?”
Lark steps forward again.
“Revenge of the invader!”
“Lark, keep your social distance, alright?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“She steps back again.
A translucent curtain of rain is drawn across the open sides of the carport.
Mr. Liddell screams in panic thrashing straw out of his hutch with his hind legs.
Wet white bunnies are crowding into the carport.

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.

The seventeen-year cicadas are singing outside and their growing volume fades as the door closes. Daisy sits at the pay station in Tenniel’s Art Shop.

“Hello, I didn’t know you were working here.”

“Yeah, P.U. Art Department is closed.”

“COVID”

“We are doing okay here. There’s been a lot of business from the website, and….”

Rank Majors comes over with his AK over his shoulder.

“Howdy!”

“What did you bring that thing in here for?”

“I never go anywhere without it.”

“Why?”

“I think we have been here before, Daisy.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean I don’t get it. So, try me again.”

“I can sum it up in one word, Replacement!”

“Ah-ha, and what has that to do with your firearm?”

“For one thing, it is a mark of Liberty.”

“Liberty?”

“Right, in case you haven’t noticed, the new administration is bringing in thousands of emigrants to replace white Americans. Need I say more?”

“No, I don’t look at it that way.”

“You, Liberals are going to lose the country.”

“We may do so, but not to through emigration.”

“Well, right, the stolen election is a beginning.”

“Rank, the election was not stolen and there are no replacement people.”

Rank looks at the ceiling for a moment.

“Not as long as I have some ammo, there won’t. That’s how I see it.”

“Fred, what was your question?”

Rank adjusts the strap on his weapon and leans against the counter.

“What have you been up to lately?

Dinah, runs across the floor from under Daisy’s stool in a feline blur.

“Teaching my relationship course from here.”

“You helping people with their love life?”

“No, I am talking about visual relationships.

“Oh, you are back in the art business.”

“Never left it. The store got all the stuff. Come see, you guys.”

She beckons us back into the stock room behind the counter.

The room has new lights, two big screens and a video camera set up before a couple of easels.

“Here is where I teach, online.”

Rank puts his AK on top of a flat-file.

Dinah is mewing in the front of the store.

“How much is it?”

“Fifty bucks a pop.  The first ten minutes are free.”

“How many students do you have?”

Daisy clicks a couple of times on the monitor set up under the camera.

“There’s seventeen signed up right now.”

“Doesn’t look like much of an income.”

“It fluctuates.  I had over three hundred when the lockdown was serious.”

Rank stares at the monitor.

“All those people with nothing better to do than draw pictures and spend the taxpayer’s money. It is like learning to hand-weave cloth.  We have machines to do that now.”

“Well Rank, the artisanal cloth is a booming business.”

“Given the danger, we face these days, it is just irresponsible!”

“So, what are you doing in this store Rank?”

“Stencils, I need some stencils and black ink.”

“You need to go to a craft store for those.”

“Okay Daisy, see you later.”

Rank picks up his weapon and heads out.”

“Thanks anyway!”

Daisy clicks out of her spreadsheet.

“That man has been mugged by an algorithm!”

The cat returns, leaping up on to the keyboard swiftly swatting the screen with a deft right paw. Daisy lifts her off the keyboard.

“It has got him up in arms!”

“I think he is getting even deeper into that stuff.”

“Yes, he wasn’t like that, only last year.”

“Hopalong Cassidy, with an automatic weapon.”

“That old Hollywood cowboy?”

“Rank lives in a black and white world, like a 1950s Western.”

“Oh yes, black hats and white hats.”

“Yeah, before color TV.”

“It’s the politics of distraction, Daisy.”

“It all seems like compulsive clicking to me.”

“Yes, no time to think, just reaction time.”

“No grays, just provocations online.”

“Yeah, okay.  We are back to seeing.”

“Anyway, tell me about the art courses you are doing online.”

“Okay, I’ll start with charcoal and paper.”

“Sounds kind of 19th century.”

“Nineteenth-century by twenty-first century means.”

“Do go on!”

Daisy points to one of the large screens.

“So, look at that screen.  That is what you would see if you were at home online.”

“I am looking!”

“Drawing is basically a matter of seeing.”

“What about the charcoal part.”

“You have to see relationships.”

“What’s that got to do with my charcoal?”

“Before you can make a mark you have to have seen something.”

Daisy brings up a still picture of a tree seen through the store window

“Sure, I see a tree through the window, but so what.”

“You have to forget about trees and windows and see tones and directions.”

“What?”

“Watch this.”

The vid moves on and the image changes to black and white, with no grays.”

“Good grief, back to Hopalong!”

“Hard to tell all those branches are growing in 3 D space, right?”

“Where are the leaves?”

“That thing is dying. It started last year.”

“Don’t see any cicadas.”

“There are some around the remaining leaves.”

“No, wait.  Look at that!”

“You, are seeing!”

“Doesn’t it look like a cicada on that twig on the right.”

“You are reading, not seeing.”

“What do you mean, reading?”

“You found and identified a noun.”

“Oh, you mean I should be drawing the shape.”

“Right, nonverbal.”

“The video is doing the work!”

“Sure, simplifying that complicated image into two tones makes it a lot easier to draw.”

“Yes, I could draw that tree trunk pretty well, I think.  Like copying a map.”

“Okay, watch this.”

Daisy clicks again and a fragmented green image appears.

“What is that supposed to show?”

“It shows all the green parts of the image.  As if it were a color separation for printing.”

“Okay, but I am not printing.  I want to draw.”

“This image shows you a green selection from all the color information in the original picture.”

“A lot of different greens!”

“Aha, keep looking.”

“Right, tree foliage; olive green, frog green, slime green, chartreuse, mold green, even traffic light green! That looks like part of a sign. What’s that weird shape there?”

“You got it!  Shapes are the things we see before we can identify an object.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what that shape is.”

“Makes it a lot easier to draw.”

“It does?”

“Sure, you have to look very carefully because you have never seen it before.”

“Oh right, even though it was in the picture. I mean, in the first image you put up.”

“You didn’t see it, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Okay Try to draw a shape between different branches.”

She looks at my drawing.

“Fill it in.”

“Inside the lines, right?”

“Yes, lines only mark the edges of things we see.”

“Yeah, draw a line around the tree trunk and there you have it.”

“You have drawn a diagram.  Fill it in and you have a shape.”

I fill the shape with charcoal black.

“You have seen the relationships among the branches.”

“Looks like a weird one to me.”

“Right, nobody looks at those things in our verbal world.”

“I guess not.  There is no word for them.”

“The general term for them is, ‘negative shapes.”

“So, it is all kind of abstract.”

“That is where relationships come in.”

“What relationships?”

“Those between, the green shapes and tones in the picture and all the other shapes and tones.”

“There must be millions!”

“There are, and you have to select which ones you want to draw.”

“That depends on how many I can see.”

“There you are. Drawing is about seeing.”

“So is painting, I get that!”

“Your choices create your picture.”

“Wait a minute.  What’s that in the upper left?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is the traffic light green. Seems to be moving slowly to the right.”

Daisy clicks into full-color live video.

“It’s gone behind the leaves!”

“No Fred, look further over.”

“Is it a drone?”

“Yeah, I wonder, surveillance or recreational?”

“Both perhaps!”

“Look, there it goes through that gap in the branches!”

“It has gone through my shape!”

“Too big to be a cicada!”

“Why would Tenniel’s be under Surveillance?”

Dinah has fallen asleep in an empty carton, by the trash can.

“Who knows what it might be looking for?”

“This is creepy!”

“WOW!”

“It just flew right through the frame again.”

“So true.  That will be fifty bucks please!”