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. 

Walking with Lark through one of the last bits of undeveloped land in the Fauxmont area. Cockcroft lane takes us on gravel and dust, up through the woods on Maxwell hill and down the other side to Maxwell Avenue and the Pie Shop.  I ask after Boyd, who moved in with her recently.

“My son has taken off again.”

“Where to this time?”

“He’s gone to the beach with Maria del Sarto.”

“You mean they have something going?”

“Seems like. He’s been spending a lot of time over at the Elegant Ostrich.”

The humidity is so thick in the air we can see hanging damp illuminated by the odd sun beam shining through the white oak leaves. It is cooler in the woods than on the street, but the fresh air we seek is soaked and dark.  When we come out of the woods and turn right on Maxwell a small cloud briefly shades us, while the pavement in front of the Pie shop radiates heat.  Albrecht Intaglio is sitting just inside the door wiping his revolver.

“You going to join me?”

Lark has stepped past without looking at him, greeting Mrs. Rutherford behind the counter,but turns when Albrecht and I exchange pleasantries.

“Oh, hi there.”

Albrecht gets up and arranges two more chairs at the table.

Mrs. Rutherford serves ice teas and Lark and I walk back from the counter to sit down.

“It is one hundred degrees Fahrenheit out there, folks.”

He drains his ice tea and puts down his glass of ice cubes rounding like pebbles as they melt.

“Not the best time for a walk through the woods, I guess!”

“Augie is away, Fred, and Boyd has taken off. “

Lark sips her tea.

“I love those woods, even in this.”

Albrecht holsters is weapon and wipes his hands on a napkin.

“You need to talk to that boy Lark.  He is very mixed up.”

“Maybe he is.”

“Maybe he will figure it out at the beach.”

“Fred, Boyd and I had some good years together.  He isn’t going to figure anything out with that vaping chick from the gift shop.”

Lark opens her bag, looks in and closes it and then she looks away from us.

“Maybe he is bi?”

“I doubt it very much Fred.”

Albrecht leans back to stuff his gun rag into the front pocket of his jeans.

Lark gets up, goes to the counter and comes back with a napkin.

“Lark, I have plenty right here.”

He pushes a stack of white paper napkins across the deep brown grain of the varnished table top.

“Oh, okay … ah, thanks … what’s that noise?”

The site on Albrecht’s extralong gun barrel is catching on the stretcher under his chair, and he moves slightly to one side.

“Poor Boyd isn’t the only one mixed up, either.”

“No, our politics are in utter chaos.”

“When have they been any other way Fred?”

“I think the last administration was a lot more stable, Albrecht.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea! Our President was elected to shake things up and he has the power skills to do it.”

“He seems too full of himself, and too ignorant to be in office.”

“All these Liberals, they’re the ignorant ones!”

“What do you mean?”

“All these college graduates from fancy schools who think the rest of us are just trash. What was it?  ‘A basket of deplorables’!”

“Well, yes there’s a certain amount of snobbery out there.”

“A certain amount! Fred, they do nothing but criticize our president for being vulgar, illiterate, boorish, lying, and … what do they know?”

“They know what they hear and read.”

“They are not his audience!”

“That is for sure!”

“Look at what he has accomplished already.”

“I am looking, it is appalling!”

“You think full employment and jobs for the rest of us ‘deplorable’ people is so bad? You think the invasion by MS 13 from south of the border was fine? You think freeloading allies should just get away with it, like his sappy ivy league predecessor?”

“I think we need allies in this world, and we are turning on them all!”

“We need jobs and prosperity.”

“I don’t think this is the way to get either?”

“Those jabbering Liberals all have cushy jobs.  Would they be so sweet, guilty and condescending if they had to scramble to make a minimum wage in Appalachia?”

“They have to scramble in their world.”

“Yeah, to get junior into the right preschool!”

“No, professional jobs can be ‘uber competitive’ and ruinously stressful.”

“Okay, but they get the bucks and we don’t.”

“It takes a lot of work and dedication you know.”

“Don’t say any more until you have grown up in a poor white community! Until you have seen minorities getting a leg up and over you from the so-called progressives!”

“You didn’t, Albrecht.  You grew up here in Fauxmont.”

“No, I grew up when I went West and found the real America!”

“Why is it any more real than here?”

“Because they are fighting for their lives and liberty against government power. Not sucking on the Federal taxpayer’s tit.”

“Are you talking about lost jobs?”

“Yup, over the last forty years, thanks to trade deals, NAFTA and so on … our lives were stolen, but now we are fighting back with a champion.”

“You think this guy’s Whitehouse tweets are solving anything?”

“They ARE!  Sure, beats a generation of … of national decline.”

“Relative decline was inevitable.  That issue is arguable.”

“Oh give me a break. Arguable! While you professors are arguing the rest of are going down the tubes!”

“Albrecht, I think you are being duped by orange hair’s tone and swagger.  So, he talks your talk.  So, what! He is an oligarch, and a bankrupt too!”

“Wait a minute, he came out of bankruptcy a bigger celebrity than he was before!”

“Look at his cabinet appointments.”

“No, I don’t care who is in the cabinet … I mean he is an instinctive communicator.  He knows in his gut what my people want to hear and says it like it is.”

“That is my point. You are being taken!”

Lark is looking at her fingers. Still quietly examining her nails.

“So much of his talk is self-contradictory … it is incoherent.”

“No Fred, what he says reflects people’s feelings, and you can’t accept it!”

Lark looks up from her hands. Still saying nothing.

“Oh! come on, feelings change all the time.”

“Now you are getting it!”

Lark sips her ice tea, then puts it down and slaps the table with the flat of her palm.

“You can’t run our country on hatred, it will no longer be our country.”

“Listen, there has been plenty of hatred running this country since the beginning.”

“It is the hatred we must fight against!”

“What about your own hatred?”

“That too.”

“There you go, all your ‘liberal bleeding’ again!”

Lark grasps the edge of the table in one hand and her glass in the other.

“I see a vain pathetic man-boy sweet-talking Vladimir Putin and that Korean creep and pandering to the worst our country has in its heartland.”

“No, no, no, Lark, you have no sense of the real pulse of our country.”

“Pulse? We are talking about the politics of greed and grievance.”

“Okay, my guy, Macadamia would have done it better.  He would have been more Presidential.  We fought a tough primary, but the president is the president and I support him.”

“Can’t you see the evil of reaching out to racism, nationalism, paranoia, especially about emigration!  To name only three of the ugliest…”

“Aha, all you have is a put down!”

“Right, I find his behavior offensive and disgusting.”

“Lark, has it occurred to you, up there on that dried out, hyper-educated, dead branch you are perched on, that he is speaking for an excluded majority of real live white American voters?”

“Whites have never been excluded, they’ve always been privileged.”

“Tell that to the West Virginia coal miners crooked Hillary went after!”

“Besides Albrecht, his majority was only a function of the electoral college and gerrymandering … AND voter suppression!”

“He is president all the same …. If crooked Hillary had won, you wouldn’t be finding any of that a problem.”

“No, but you would. You would be saying the system is rigged.  Trump set that up early in his campaign.”

“Yes, he did, and he had a point too.”

“So, Albrecht who rigged what?”

“Fred, it wasn’t the Russians, okay?”

“That remains to be seen!  Looks like they had a good try.”

“Look Fred, he beat the odds by being honest and saying how it is in America, how the real America feels.”

“Yes, the lies, racism, and all that are real enough.”

“Yup, low hanging political fruit my friend … That is reality. This is a representative Republic, alright?  What people feel matters.”

“Low, it is! But, once again, it takes more than that to govern.”

Lark stands up, ignoring Albrecht, turns her back and looks past counter where today’s pastry specials are handwritten on a chalk board, out the window towards the shimmering hot air in the parking lot.

“What my people feel has been ignored and excluded by the elites for generations.”

“I think Dubya said a few words in your direction.”

“Right, he paid lip service to get votes then he turned and became just another politician.”

Albrecht picks up his glass and holds it up.  Looks at a remaining ice in the bottom.  Rattles it around and put it down again.

“He invaded Iraq. What a dumb move that was!”

“Agreed!”

“Well, Fred, there is hope for you yet, my friend.”

Lark turns and leans towards Albrecht, bending down with both hands on the table.

“You think Trump isn’t a politician?  Don’t say you buy that line!”

“He isn’t just another politician!  That’s why you hate him so much!”

“Okay, so he is an outlier!”

“Yes, and he speaks for all of us other, ‘didn’t-go-to-college-outliers’ who won the far-out election.”

“Do you really believe that cutting taxes for his buddies is going to help you and America?”

“I don’t know, and neither do you!  I do know unemployment is way down. I also know that no one can predict the future, and there’s a lot of drones writing fake news in the elite media who think they can.”

“Albrecht, think this through! Don’t let yourself be fooled!”

“Back at you Fred!  Like I said, Macadamia would have done it better, subtler, but this president tweets to the raw living pain in our country.”

“He’s just a political opioid!”

“Whatever he says goes for the feelings of the moment, and my feelings are truths … facts about me. He is always fresh, and always on liberty’s pulse!”

Albrecht stops, and turns to look out the window.

A moving picture of apples, bananas, tomatoes, cabbages, carrots and celery fills the windows, to our right. I can see the word “Safe”.

“Wake up Fred! My president has defeated the terrorist Caliphate in Iraq.”

He pats his holster and the gun barrel taps sharply on his chair.

“This is the twenty-first century my friend, the cyber century, the dawn of social media and a Great …”

A tractor trailer loaded with food, is maneuvering in the parking lot, headed for the Safeway loading dock down the alley opposite.

Customers open the door next to our table and walk out letting in heat and noise. The truck’s diesel drowns out our voices while the driver revs to move clear of shopper’s cars.

Post 113. Concrete

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 walking around the new exhibition, by Boris Tarantula at Prestige University Arts Center.

“ ‘In the Aggregate’,

New works in concrete by Boris Tarantula” 

says the red banner in white letters, stretched across the façade of the building on golden cords with tassels hanging from the knotted ends.

Steve Strether has parked and joins Artie Bliemischand me at the entrance where he dropped us off to spare Artie’s injured foot.  She leans on her walking stick, with lines of yellow and white stars spiraling up the deep green shaft from the bottom like a stellar barber pole.

“Look, there he is!”

“Who?”

“Seymour Van Rijn, Fred!”

“Who? That guy in the aviators?”

“No, he must be security, check his right ear.  No, I mean the old man … he is over ninety and still pretty active.  See him there, with Frank Vasari and the crowd around them?”

They are strolling along a sky-blue carpet that leads visitors into the gallery and around the exhibition then into the courtyard.

“Yes, isn’t that Gloriani, there too?”

“Always, Giuseppe is Boris’s shadow, agent, and fixer.  He set up the sponsorship.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gloriani got Seymour to foot the bill for this whole show.”

“You mean he owns this stuff.”

“He is donating it to P.U. after this.”

Steve takes Artie’s elbow as she looks down at her foot, wrapped with a protective black ‘Orthopedic Wedge Healing Shoe’ with white socked toes protruding through the open front.  She has painted it with orange and yellow paisleys.

“He is loaded, developed the Van Rijn estates out of cow pasture, back in the sixties, you know.”

“A far-sighted man, Steve!”

We enter the gallery which is dominated by a massive lump of unfinished concrete, roughly dome shaped, called “Mammon’s Pantheon.”

A helpful docent tells us,

“It weighs over fifteen-tons, made with coins from every country in the world, mixed into the cement, gravel and sand. Isn’t it a great idea?”

“Very clever.”

Steve speaks from behind a hand up at his beard.  The young docent smiles at Artie.

“Hi Professor, Bliemisch.”

“Jackie, you look great in that black outfit.”

“Thanks Professor Bliemisch.  Did you see the show go up?”

“No, I was long gone. So, Jackie, how much dough did he mix into this thing?”

“The total value is said to be worth over two hundred thousand dollars.”

Jackie looks over her shoulder.

“Sorry, I got to go!”

“Jackie was in my drawing class, Fred.”

“I didn’t know you were teaching here.”

“I am not.  It barely lasted one semester.”

“When was that?”

“About a year or so ago, well maybe two.  I don’t want to remember any of it. I think they gave the position to Daisy Briscoe.”

“They keep the students busy around here.”

We look more closely and find facets of various coins emerging from the aggregate like gifts. Steve walks around the piece and comes back.

“I think I saw tiny bit of a Krugerrand protruding back there.”

“They are solid gold, aren’t they?”

“Yup, one ounce worth, fetch around $1300 Fred, if it really is one.”

“A tempting little item Steve!”

Jacky waves to us from her podium.

“Is that kid one of your students?”

“She was a student, sort of, you might say, I was just telling Fred.”

“Any good?”

“Yeah, she’s too easily distracted, though.  She is supposed to stay behind that podium and dish out programs or what-ever these things are.”

Artie waves the brochure she picked up while we waited for Steve to park.

We can see Jackie back at her station inside the entrance smiling at Sherman Shrowd, and his wife, and giving them both brochures. Artie reads from hers.

“We regret the artist’s intentions cannot be fully realized for this piece at this time.

Please take time to watch the video presentation opposite.”

A flat screen set into the wall opposite comes on as soon as Steve steps within a few feet in front of it.  We can see several people wearing, protective goggles and gloves, chiseling coins out of the surface at various points. A young blond girl and a brown boy are both running around looking for more on the ground. While the crawl underneath tells us:

“The public were to be given hammers and chisels and goggles to chip out the coins, following the way the dome of the Roman Pantheon was dug out from its foundation mound by people hunting for coins. We regret the risk of injuries is too great for this activity.”

“Well, isn’t that cute!”

Turning back to the piece, Artie lifts her spiraling star stick to point at the great lump of art cementing currency into our aesthetic appreciation.

“We consumers should be destroying the thing and getting our mitts on some dough.”

“Yes Artie, consumers of art, no less!”

“Isn’t that putting us in our place!”

“Touchet! Steve.”

“Maybe Boris is an artist after all.”

“Well, look who’s president, Fred.”

“I keep looking the other way.”

Steve has walked ahead while Artie and I look for more gold on the surface of “Mammon’s Pantheon.”  We catch up with him on the blue pile of our progress at, “Regimental Order”. 113 sacks of Portland cement are suspended, as if lying flat on the ground, about four feet above it.  Four abreast in columns of twenty-five, led by two rows of six and one in the lead by itself. Each appears to balance on a thin black wire fixed to the center of the underside of each sack and to the floor below by a round brass fitting.

Artie is leaning hard on her star stick looking closely.

“These things are balloons!”

“There is a little cement dust on this one.”

Steve blows at the one in front of him, no dust rises but the balloon moves a little.

“Must be glued on.”

Artie eases up on her star stick.

“How about that!”

“Wait a minute Artie, those in front are all moving.”

“There must be a fan somewhere, Steve.”

Steve wets his finger with spit and holds it up to find the breeze.

“Nothing here.”

He moves toward the front of the regiment.  Artie moves toward the back.

“No, here Steve, back here.”

“Fred, it is coming out of these vents, look.”

“Yeah, I think they turn the fans on and off to keep it interesting.”

We can see a small vent low on the wall behind them and another in the floorTowards the front.  Artie moves over to the plaque on the wall opposite.

“Why no video on this one?”

We read the plaque:

Each of these sack-shape Mylar inflatables is printed with unique photographs of a sack of Portland cement just before it was opened and emptied into the mixer at the Dordrechts, Rout One bridge construction site, between 11:25 AM and 11:47AM on September 23, 2014, in Alexandria, Virginia.

“The artist expresses the orderly intentionality of our impact on the environment with an irony characteristic of his new work.” E. Montana Berg, Mark It Art, Blog, Dec. 2014.

Artie looks up from the plaque.

“Well Fred, does Berg’s remark mean anything to you?”

“Seems to me that our impact on the environment is disorderly and unintended.”

“What about bridge building?”

“Artie, these things seem more like Dadaist gestures really.”

Steve is stroking his beard.

“Echoes from around 1916, I think.”

“Still making money too!”

“No one will ever do it better than Meret Oppenhiem’s fur teacup!”

“That was well after 1916, Artie.”

“I would like to have seen some video of the action at the Dordrechts building site”

“Fred, someone must have had a phone handy at the time.”

“Funny idea, a phone for taking videos.”

“Cement that one Fred!”

We move on along the river of our blue carpeted intentions to a smaller space, where, “Rising Piece”, is arranged in sequence against the wall.  Seven white pedestals support rounded gray chunks of concrete, only about a couple of pounds each. They are exhibited in a row of uniform, 2 ft. open top, plexiglass cubes, partially filled with water. Each box is filled a little higher than the next in succession.  The seventh with water apparently oozing out of hidden holes in the concrete, overflows into a shallow mettle pan on the floor under the pedestal. The paisleys on Artie’s Orthopedic Wedge Healing Shoe shine with drops of water splashing out.  The pan overflows, draining into a shallow rounded channel across the gallery floor and disappearing through a jagged hole where the wall meets the terrazzo floor. One can follow a faint sound around the corner of the gallery into a dark room filled with the roar of a heavy waterfall.

“Can’t see a damn thing in here!”

“I think that’s the idea Steve.”

“There’s the wall on your left and a railing on your right.”

“Yeah, got it, Fred.”

“Check the LEDs on the floor.”

“Just like being at the movies.”

“Not quite Fred.”

“Well, it is a ‘sound screen’, you see.”

“Not at all Fred.”

“Okay, Artie….”

“Why do I feel I might fall off into the void?”

“Are you afraid of heights Fred?”

“Don’t do well at all, on high.”

“There you are, we don’t have enough visual clues in here.  I’ll bet the opposite wall is closer than you might think.”

“I can’t touch anything beyond the line of lights with this stick.”

A voice comes out of the void.

“For your safety. Please stay within the path indicated.”

The room lights up red, like a dark room safety light. A uniformed security guard comes to Artie, who is leaning over the rail, still pocking with her stick.

“Are you alright Ma’am?”

“Yes, sorry, lost my balance a little.”

The guard escorts her out of the room and the red light goes off.  We could see the room is painted black and isn’t more than a few yards wide with lots of wire and huge black cabinets.

Around another corner we come up outside on an escalator, beneath a massive lump of cement, called “Complementary Eye Piece.  It is the biggest yet, by far, with yellow and purple pebbles said to made by the artist out of tumbled glass.  It balances on a narrow base and towers out ward with a smooth side and a jagged side, like a rock that was torn out of a stream bed.

“Artie!”

“Well, if it isn’t Frank Vasari!”

“What happened to your foot?”

“Slipped and busted it up in the studio last week.”

The group around Seymour Van Rijn has gathered in the shade of “Complementry Eye Piece”, with wine coloring plastic glasses in various shades of grape.

“Artie, let me get you a drink?”

Frank Vasari walks off, before she can answer.

“Hi, Artie, Giuseppe Gloriani…”

He holds out a hand with the fingers of the other crowded around a paper plate, wine glass and napkin.

“Frank told me you are a sculptor.”

“Yeah, I do some 3D work.”

Frank Vasari breezes back with a glass of wine for Artie.  She introduces Steve and me to Frank, who then introduces Gloriani, or tries to.

“Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me folks.”

Guseppe, strides off to tend to Seymore who has turned from the serving table talking to Mrs. Shrowd.

Artie swigs from her wine and gestures to Steve who has a plate full of Teriyaki chicken on skewers and a glass of cider. Boris is yelling across the crowd to Frank, who excuses himself to walk over.

“Listen to that!”

“Boris yells, that’s one of his things.”

“Let’s make a move, guys.”

“Gloriani is a pretty good agent you know.”

“No, no, no, Gentileschi takes care of that for me, Steve.”

“Don’t you want to mix and mingle?”

“No, I don’t know what to say to people at these things.  It all gets too pretentious for me … Finish your chicken Steve, let’s go.”

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. 

Three leafless stems with a few thin branches rise from a large red clay pot on the patio behind Diddlie’s carport, surrounded by a cage improvised out of chicken wire.  It is draped with oak catkins dangling like tinsel and yellow with white-oak pollen.  Diddlie watches Mr. Liddell feeding on the fresh spring chickweed growing between the patio pavers. Preoccupied by the recent death of her English cousin Ian, she has gone quiet. A blue jay shrieks.
“Were you close?”
“No, we weren’t that close lately, but we have a history.”
“Ahh, I see.”
“Fred, you don’t see anything!”
“I only see what you mean.”
She is looking past me into the trees.
“Well, just don’t use that know-it-all tone of yours, okay.”
Her phone chimes but she ignores it.
“Might I ask about your history?”
“You can ask, sure!”
“Is that what makes his death so painful?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I didn’t want to be presumptuous!”
“It is just a private thing okay?”
“Oh certainly … would you rather I came back some other time?”
“No, Fred … I mean … I mean I want to talk, but not about that….
Her phone chimes and she looks down at it, and puts it back in her jeans pocket.
“…well anyway.  I had to put that wire around my apple trees to keep birds and squirrels out, or something.  I lost a whole year’s crop when I came out one afternoon and found the dirt all spread out everywhere and the seedlings gone.”
Diddlie steps over to pick up Mr. Liddell who has wandered over to the cilantro and parsley sprouting above deep blue and emerald green glazed earthen ware. He ignores the thyme growing on the border of the flower bed which he reaches first.  He scrambles away from her.  Last night’s storm knocked so many blooms off the pink azaleas in the bed beyond the thyme, Mr. Liddell runs into a pink paradise under the arch of overhanging branches weighted with rain-soaked petals.
Diddlie, pauses in front of the azaleas and looks back at the big pot.
“Those apple trees were two years old but didn’t make it through winter.”
“Give them time, perhaps they will sprout yet.”
Diddlie, walks over and reaches down to a thin twig sticking through the wire mesh and snaps it off.
“Not much green in there.”
“Did you grow them from seed?’
“Yes, I put two others in the ground over by the property line, and they survived.”
“Any fruit yet?”
“No, they won’t fruit for at least five years and probably won’t be edible anyway.
“So, it’s a gamble.”
“Yes, nature is holding all the cards.”
Her phone chimes again  and she seems to be
reading a short text.  She puts it back in her pocket.
“What kind of seed did you plant?”
“These were probably Goldrush and York. I don’t remember really. I just kept putting seeds in an old salt cellar on the sideboard every time I ate an apple.”
“I find they tend to fly around when you cut an apple in half.”
“Not if you do it carefully and put your hand over it. You know every seed grows into a new thing.”
“A new type?”

“Yes, another kind of apple.”
“So, you can’t expect more Yorks or Gold Rush.”
“My old aunt, Maria Gostrey used to grow Cox’s and James Grieve in her garden in Chester.  Ian and I used to pick up windfalls.”
“Wind falls?’
“Yes, wind falls, that’s what they called fruit that dropped before it was ripe.”
“Oh! the ones with bugs in them!”
“Supposedly the sweetest! Pecked open by birds, or whatever … “
“They also harbor wasps attracted by all that apple scent.”
“Ian was often gloomy and would say he felt he would fall into the, ‘Great vacuum of doom’.
“Sounds rather frightening!”
“Well, he was matter of fact about it actually.”
“It seems to have left an impression on you though.”
“Anyway Fred, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mr. Liddell has emerged from his bower. He raises an ear, the other is caught in the azalea thicket.  Diddlie moves quickly enough to catch him this time. His pink nose pulsates as he tries to wriggle in her arms.
“I better take him in.”
Rain has started again, and she pulls her floral Indian wrap up over her head as I follow through the carport to Mr. Liddell’s hutch near the front. Her phone chimes again as she puts Mr. Liddell in his hutch head first, smoothing his ears down, and closing the hatch. She looks at the phone, puts it away and runs out to the front driveway.  Daisy Briscoe is standing by the front door with a bunch of daffodils set off by fern and sprays of spirea and forsythia.  We walk over.
“Hi Did., Fred, no one answered when I rang the bell.”
“No, we were out back yacking.”
“Sorry about your cousin Diddlie.”
Diddlie doesn’t take the flowers at once. She taps her phone.  Daisey keeps hold of them resting the stems on her shoulder. The blooms spread their colors behind her, out of Diddlie’s sight.
“How did you know?”
“Oh, from Lou.”
“I never told him.”
“Well, he said he sent you some electrons.”
“Yeah, right, he hasn’t stopped texting all day, him and all kinds of people.  I mean how did they all find out?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, it matters Fred.  I know who I tell what.  You know what I mean?”
“Sure, but you can get mixed up too.”
“No, to me, each person is a story of their own.”
“They are? What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know each story.  Each one is its own thing. I know who I told what, and where they are in my life. I didn’t tell any of these people.  I know what I told Lark and I know what I told you, Fred, and there’s stuff I haven’t ever told anyone … and there’s lies I got burned by too.”
“Well, it is a bad habit.”
“Who doesn’t fall into lies from time to time, Daisy?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Diddlie looks away from Daisy down at the concrete step.
“This is my private business.”
Her phone chimes sound.
“It’s these damn things.  Spreading twaddle through twitter … and constantly interrupting.”
“Turn it off Did.!”
“You know I should, Fred but I am expecting something important, so I am stuck with it.  We are all stuck with it, here, at least.”
Daisy’s chimes sound.  She wanders out into the rain with the phone up to her ear and circles back and hands Diddlie her phone.
“It’s wet Daisy, I’ll get electrocuted!”
“Oh Diddlie!  She wipes it on the underside of her long sleeve and smears the screen.
“Give it to me!”
Diddlie takes an oil stained towel out of her cupboard and dries the phone off on a selected patch of faded yellow and puts it to her ear.
“There’s no one there.”
“Must have hung it up when we dried it off.”
“Who was it?”
“Bel Vionnet, she’s got kittens to give away.  I thought you might like one.”
“Does she know too?  I mean did Lark put this in Face book or something? Besides, I have a bird and a rabbit. No way a cat is coming here!”
Diasy walks toward the carport with me and Diddlie while she is busy with her phone again.
“I don’t do Facebook.  Do you Fred?”
“Yes sometimes.  I haven’t seen anything about Ian, though.”
We all shelter in the carport as light rain falls through sunshine.  Diddlie has her hand up around the back of her neck.
“Well, I don’t do it either.  I bailed out after all that about the way our data is used or sold, I should say.”
Mr. Liddell is scratching about in his hutch.  Daisy has backed up so close to the hutch that Mr. Liddell is trying to get a nibble of fern.
“Daisy, mind the rabbit!”
Daisy steps forward holding the flowers upright and away from the hutch.
“I mean it is kind of amazing when I think of it.  How all the people I know stay in their place, until this happens and they kind of all spill out.”
Daisy changes hands, holding her flowers down with the stems up.
“From your yard, Daisy … for me?”
She hands Diddlie the flowers, who holds
the bunch in both hands rotating it to see the full selection and arrangement.
“Well, I hope he didn’t fall into the vacuum of doom.”
She puts the flowers down on top of a tall box.
“God!  I hope nobody does!”
“Well, no one knows what happens after our death.”
“There’s plenty of people will tell you they do you know, Fred.”
Diddley is rummaging in her cupboard, and finds a painter’s bucket to put the flowers in. She then puts flowers and bucket out in the rain where the dried lavender and orange paint drips look wet again, running down the sides.
“There, that will keep them going.”
“Yeah! Look at the rain drops on the spirea.  The sun is doing interesting things.  See that!”
“Ah, maybe, I am not a painter, Daisy.”
“Just look Fred.  Forget paint, check those translucent drops.”
Diddlie has pulled her wrap tight around her chest, as she watches the rain.
“But it’s not just death.  The scary thing is that the vacuum is right here. I mean I can feel it.”
“You mean we are the vacuum, or is it in you?”
“No, no, it’s like Ian said, he is afraid of falling out of life into nothing, nothing but a big pile of purchases, unread books and cloths he never wore, just stuff.”
He had more stuff when we were kids than any one I knew.  He went on buying all his life. Deliveries came every day. Then he threw it all out. Didn’t even give it away.  Just threw it out. That was an email I got from him … a couple of weeks ago … after years … after years of just Christmas cards.

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 gray cat bel Vionnet and Steve Strether adopted after a storm last year, Marie-Josèph-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, or Josephine, had five kittens.  Two were given to a French family who named them after a couple of Napoleon’s Marshals.

“Marie-Josèph-Rose…what did you say?”

“It is, Marie-Josèph-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie.”

“All that, bel ?”

“Well she was known as ‘Cat’ until the family suggested the longer name.”

“How can you remember it?”

“With practice.  It was a challenge!”

“That’s a bit of a mouthful to call your cat!”

“Not for the French, Fred, Americans can call her Josephine.”

“The French family who returned them said those two tabies raised too much hell. So, they brought the Marshals back to us.”

“Now they are raising it here!”

“Well, they’ve got competition here, and we didn’t want them to go to the pound.”

“When was that?”

“Back in January. Of course, we never knew who Napoleon was.”

“What do you mean, you must know who the emperor was.”

“No, not that self-crowned revolutionary, the Corsican.”

“Well, who then?”

“I mean the father of the kittens!”

“But Napoleon and Josephine had no children together!”

“Oh no? You’re looking at two of them, at least, right in this house!”

“I mean historically!”

“Fred, don’t be so literal!”

“Okay, so what did you call the others?”

“Well, I never took to the Corsican dictator or his Marshals. We chose the names of revolutionary women who were left out of the history books written by men.”

Bel Vionnet goes into the kitchen and brings out a large packet of cat treats.  She calls the cats as she walks through the living room to the hall that leads to the bedrooms.  Only one cat responds to bel’s call, en Française, “Venez! Venez au couloires! “

“You see, Millicent Fawcett, snoozing over there on the dining table.

“Yeah, looking very comfortable, with her back against the fruit bowl.”

She jumps down on to a chair at once, and then to the floor and trots over with one black ear and one white ear, and two white front socks.

“Yes, and who was Millicent Fawcett?”

“A moderate suffragist, she did a lot to improve higher education for women.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Hardly surprising! By the way, she was not part of Emmeline Pankhurst’s WSPU not a suffragette.”

‘I see.”

“And she also co-founded, Newnham College, Cambridge.”

“Is that so!”

“Yes, the Brits just put up a statue of her in Parliament Square.”

Bel throws a handful of treats down the hall where they land like hail scattering on pavement, a sound which gets everybody’s attention.

“Look at the gray and white Fred.  That is Alexandra Kollontai, asleep in the windowsill.”

“She has a sunbeam all to herself!”

She awakens and jumps down in front of a Black cat, racing towards the hall.

“Now there! That black one is, Olympe de Gouges. Now, she is named after an 18^th century French playwright and political activist. Widely read, she revved up feminist and abolitionist movements.”

“Well I do know that it was angry women who mobbed Versailles.”

“Right, by October 1789 they were fired up.  They got the Revo. going and then it was stolen by that diminutive dictator and his “Code” which, set us back a hundred years!”

“I thought the Code Napoleon, was a great social advance.”

“Not for women.”

“So, the Revo. was betrayed!”

Bel spreads her arms as she speaks.

“Men must be liberated from their dominance.”

Some more cat treats spill out of the packet.

“Interesting way of putting it.  Dominance is so often the successor of liberations!”

Millicent is on them, with paws spread to possess two treats at once.

“So true Fred! Every Revolution in history has been betrayed.”

Josephine looks out from under the couch, twitching her torn ears which were crushed by the motion of her head against the front of the couch. She bounds across the room and races towards the hall speedway with the others.  Two tabbies, Mashall Joachim Murat and Marshal Ney, Prince of the Moskovie, collide in the hall doorway closing in behind Josephine, but skidding on the parquet as they make the turn.  Bel closes the door, as hissing and some yowls ensue from the advance of the Marshals.  The feline mob is blocked from the living room, kitchen and dining rooms. Bel walks back to the kitchen and puts the dog food down for their visiting cocker spaniel, sniffing the bottom of the trash can. It gives her a solemnly sagging look.  The dog munches noisily, its tags tinkling and tapping on the shiny steel rim of the bowl. It goes on licking the empty bowl long after any sign of the meal is evident to human curiosity.

There is a lot of mewing to be heard from behind the hall door.

“When did you get the dog?”

“Oh Flush?  He’s staying with us while Liz and Bob Browning are away.”

Flush moves over to drink at the water bowl wetting down the surrounding floor.

Steve comes in the back door.

“Hey flush! Going to mop the kitchen with those ears?”

Flush looks up and pants.

“You made a great start! Go for it!”

Flush barks.

Steve bends down to give Flush an ear rub.

“Steve, keep ahold of him okay?”

“Yeah okay, ah…what’s up?

“I just put the cat treats down, and their dinner is coming right up.”

“Well I’ll close him on the back porch for a minute.”

“He will try and eat the cat food Fred, and that leads to mayhem.”

Bel has arranged six small steel dishes of cat food in a row along the counter.

“Fred, can you lend a hand?”

There are some loud thumps on the hall door and rasping scratches too. Bel offers me two dishes.

“Just put these dishes in that crate in the dining room.”

I carry the dishes in.

“Okay, Fred, stand by.”

Bel puts another dish on the windowsill where the gray and white cat, Alexandra Kollontai, was sleeping. According to bel, historically, she was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a Menshevik, then as a Bolshevik.

“She was an advocate for free love you know.”

“Or do you mean free sex?”

“Fred, there you have a question!”

Bel puts three dinners in the corner of the kitchen on a mat in front of the dryer.

Steve is back from securing Flush on the porch and we can hear the dog barking.

“Are you ready for the Feline Five Hundred, Fred?”

“Is it formula one?”

“No formula, sheer chaos though.”

“Bel told me to stand by this crate.”

“Did you put those two bowls of food in there?”

“Yup”

“Great, as soon as the two tabby Marshals go in there close it.”

“Okay.”

“They will try to eat everyone’s food if they aren’t separated by Flush’s crate.”

“What about when Flush isn’t here with his crate?”

“They eat on the screened porch, or in the broom closet if it’s too cold out on the porch.”

“What about the brooms?”

“They don’t mind at all!”

Bel opens the closet where I can see a number of things from across the room, including two brooms hanging from the wall leaving a small floor space.

She gets out the sponge mop and mops up around the dog bowl.

“So they eat in there?  In the dark?”

“No, it’s not dark.  See, these are louvered doors.”

Bel’s shouts out.

“Are you ready Fred?’

“Okay!”

“Bel opens the door to the hall and five revolutionaries and one mother race out as if to Versailles in a tumbling mob.  They might be five hundred. Tails cross, heads butt, and whiskers are cruelly crushed as the crowd with no starting line climbs over itself to get to the food.  Olympe de Gouges, the black cat, is in front like, ‘Liberty Leading the People”, with tail high instead of the tricolor.  She jumps against the side of the couch bouncing off to make a skillful ninety degree turn without skidding. This opens the field to the tabby Marshals who are right behind, only they skid and head into the crate at my feet. The windowsill cat, Alexandra, has peeled off from the crowd and does a ‘thunder paw’ to her dish in place.

“Alexandra Kolentai can gallop as loud as a horse!”

“Bel, she is a revolutionary cat!”

“She is like the others, hungry!”

Mother cat, Josephine, and Millicent are neck and neck as they race down the straight away into their Indianapolis, the kitchen. Olympe first leapt up on to the counter and then into the sink.  She mews and laps some water out of a mug. Josephine has started feasting with Millicent beside her when the Olympe jumps down from the sink and drives between them. They all try to eat from the same two bowls until Millicent finds a bowl to herself only inches to the right. The race is over.

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. 

Mrs. Rutherford stands patiently behind the curving glass counter covering a selection of pastries, cakes and cookies available to her customers at the Cavendish Pie shop.

A couple in matching red and blue SnazE running outfits have selected two chocolate croissants.

As Mrs. Rutherford moves to serve them.  The male runner changes his mind and asks for a brownie instead.

“For here or to go sir?”

The woman speaks up.

“To go.”

The man has already said they will eat here.

Mrs. Rutherford is smiling.

“Ah, which is it folks?”

The woman leans over the glass.

“To go, that’s to go Ma’am.”

Mrs. Rutherford places one croissant in a small paper bag and then puts down the tongs she uses to serve them and picks up a spatula to lift a brownie from the display.

Mrs. Rutherford has a brownie in midair on its way to a waiting bag but pauses when he moves close to his companion to mumble something in her ear and she responds.

“Oh well, okay…no, not the brownie, I’ll have, ahhh…a couple of those almond cookies.”

Mrs. Rutherford puts the brownie back.

“Are you sure about that hon.?”

“Sure, I’m sure!”

Mrs. Rutherford pulls a plastic bag over her hand to pick up cookies.

“Okay, how about something to drink?”

He has stepped over to the left side of the display in his green and black running shoes with red wing-shaped SnazE logos rising from the toes.

“Ah, I don’t want a croissant either, can I have one of those strawberry jobs there?”

“Just a minute sir.”

Mrs. Rutherford pulls the plastic bag off her hand so the two cookies are inside. Now she moves to the other end of the counter to serve him.

He points out a thick creamy looking triangular slice with strawberries on top.

“The strawberry cheese cake special! Good choice sir!”

Mrs. Rutherford takes the other croissant out of its paper bag and puts it back then moves over to the strawberry special.

“Oh, ah…ma’am, ah, over here!”

Mrs. Rutherford looks up, and over to her right where the woman who wanted a brownie, then almond cookies has changed her mind again.

‘Yeah, instead of the cookies I’ll have a piece of cherry pie please.”

Mrs. Rutherford doesn’t move.  She is looking hard at the woman in blue track suit with red piping and SnazE logos running across the back of her jacket, who was sure she was sure she wants two almond cookies.

The man has stepped over next to his friend to look at the cherry pie.

“You mustn’t eat cherries remember?”

“Oh, I can eat these!”

“No, No, you can’t, remember what happened at Derick’s?”

“Listen, I am having the pie, alright?”

“No, it’s not alright, I don’t want to have to call the medics.”

A man walks forward from behind me and goes up to the arguing couple.

“Why don’t you settle this outside?  You are not the only customers in here you know!”

They ignore him, and now they are shouting.

“You didn’t call any one.”

“Yes, I did!”

“It was Derick who called, and beside it wasn’t even necessary!”

“Oh no? You wouldn’t be standing here now if he hadn’t called!”

“You are so wrong!”

It was Westie North who stepped up to them and as he is tapping the man’s shoulder, Mrs. Rutherford looks up at me.

“Next customer please.”

She serves me a small Darjeeling tea, and keeps looking over at the arguing couple as she presses down the lid on the sky blue paper cup.

“Enjoy it now, sir.”

“What’s that?”

“Its been a bad season over there in Darjeeling.”

“Oh really, poor harvest, you mean.”

“So, I hear.  One of my customers has folks over there.”

Mrs. Rutherford is staring past me towards the door.

“Well I’ll be…”

The couple walk outside, still in dispute, without buying anything.

“Sorry you had to put up with them!”

“Please excuse me…ah, Fred, You are Fred right?

“That’s me.”

“I find that kind of behavior just hard to understand.”

Steve Strether is sitting with his back to the sunlit window at the far end of one of the dragon tables.  He is tapping his I-pad looking for a web site as I sit down to join him.

“Look at this on Shrinkrap today!”

Axel Ensor’s nineteen-year old Asian wife is shown reclining nude on a huge crimson velvet cushion with palm trees in the background.

“Is it real?”

“Who knows?”

“Looks like she’s on a yacht.”

“Yeah, this isn’t just a tabloid thing.  It is all over. Look at this.”

A headline comes up from the Guardian with few more taps.

“Well maybe it was taken years ago.”

“Fred, he only married her last year in a huge ceremony over on Mindanao.”

“She is under age!”

“Mr. Ensor’s influence assured that she was 21.”

“Well, maybe she was.”

“Someone claiming to be her sister was quoted as saying she is 18.  Then a reporter for Shrinkrap produced a copy of the birth certificate showing she was 19 last month.”

He brings up a Daily Beast article, with picture, and a long article

by Laticia Lantern, of the popular talk show.

“Was she on Laticia’s show?”

“No, he was, and Axel was highly critical of our president.”

“Oh really!”

He taps another news site where Glen Gasberg is doing his daily commentary, accusing the FBI of publishing the picture, “through their liberal allies in the media.”

Steve picks up his coffee for a swig, and then taps up yet another news site.  It is FOX. Robert Byron is standing on a tropical beach.  It is a windy overcast day.  His tie is blowing hard to the right and his hair has come unstuck from its perfect wave and streams chaotically in the same direction.  Steve turns the sound up. We can hear Byron’s voice above the muffled buffeting wind on the furry microphone.

“As the Ensor story has seized the nation’s attention, here in Key Biscayne, you can see the Macadamia yacht pulling out of its slip into this gusting wind. Is Ensor on board?  That is the question everyone is asking. Over to you Bob, for a weather update.”

“Have you seen anything on Macadamia’s alternative budget proposal?”

“Nothing.”

“What about the government shut down?”

Steve shakes his head.

“… or the joint DHS, FBI alert on the Russian government’s targeting our energy, nuclear and commercial facilities.”

“Fed, that’s back page stuff, these days!”

A shadow falls on Steve’s I-pad as Westie North walks in front of the window behind him to sit down opposite me.

“So, Westie, what’s new on the Guild Water Committee’s deliberations?”

“We have plenty of water, but we are one pump down, with two running fine.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Steve, that will happen in good time.”

“How long is that?”

“Well, you know what committee time is.  It is the combined time of everyone on the committee, so it is longer and slower than individual time.”

“Okay, so that explains something about Congressional time as well I guess.”

“The red and the blue, gives me the blues!”

“Westie, are you talking politics or that little fracas at the counter just now?”

“Ah, both…but I’ll say this about that, the media need to stop their assault on the president and get behind him!”

Steve laughs.

“What about the president’s assault on truth?”

“Who’s, truth is that Steve?”

“There’s only one kind of truth isn’t there?”

“Depends what you believe, doesn’t it.”

“Not really Westie, beliefs can be mistaken.”

“Not while your believing them they’re not!”

“Of course, they are. If you believe that Armond Macadamia won the last election, you are wrong.”

“Ha! Truth in politics is what you believe.  You’re talking philosophy!”

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. 

Lou bites into his burger.  A piece of lettuce falls on his plate, white stem, and green leaf-shred land on a red blob of dripped ketchup.  He listens with his bun in both hands, chewing vigorously.

“Have you noticed Chuck Newsome seems to be a bigamist?”

He puts down his food and wipes his thick fingers on one of the white paper napkins scrunched up around his plate and swigs some Stella Artois straight from the bottle.

“You remind me of a hell of a question!”

“Aha, do go on!”

“Well, a long story in fact. It was at a data management conference in Vienna, back before selling the business to Fibonacci Corp.”

He chokes down another mouthful of burger.

“That’s where I met Nikita Sergeyevich.”

“Ahh, Nadia’s ex-husband isn’t it?”

Lou pushes his gold rimmed glasses up to the bridge of his nose.

“Right, one of them at least, and therein lies the story. I have heard a thing or two, you know, here and there, as he rose in prominence.”

“When was this? I mean was he part of Gorbachev’s movement?

“No, no, he is no Red, this was well after Perestroika you know, as Putin consolidated his power.”

“I guess Putin is more of a ‘black’, leaning in the Fascist direction.”

“Niki gave…hell, he probably still does… give generously to Putin’s youth movement ‘Nashi’. Even though their financing is never revealed, it is pretty clear that the big money, like Gazprom, contributes.”

Lou stuffs a few fries in his mouth and squirts more ketchup over the pile on his plate.  Putting the plastic squeeze bottle down, he waves to the passing waitress.  Still chewing his fries, he gesticulates.  She laughs, nodding.

“That’s two more Stellas, right guys?”

He gives her the thumbs up and swallows his food with a Stella chaser, which drains the bottle.

“I didn’t get breakfast and two o’clock is way too late for lunch!”

“Way too late! …What was Diddlie’s problem by the way?”

“Oh, did she call you too?”

“I think she covered all her bases this morning.”

“Well, I didn’t get over there until after ten.  You know how she gets.

Talking a mile-a-minute!”

“I’ve been there.”

“Lou bungs more burger in.  The waitress brings two more Stellas and he orders another burger, but slaw instead of fries.  We are sitting in front of the bow window in the H bar.  The lunch crowd has moved on.  Joy Flack and Congressman Bean are still at the bar talking to Mr. Hoffman.  Theo Tinderbrush waves to us as he goes out through the heavy oak doors.

“I think the kid was his.”

“You mean Boyd?”

“Yeah, they did a DNA test.”

Lou is busy for a moment with his two-fisted burger and slaw.

“Right, I never heard the outcome.”

“Boyd is Theo’s…excuse me…”

A curly piece of cabbage falls from the corner of his mouth, with a drip of white.

“So, the cat is out of the bag!”

He picks up yet another napkin to wipe his mouth. He waves to the waitress with napkin in hand and she nods to us across several intervening tables.

“Not sure where the cat is, but it escaped Diddlie’s lips.”

The waitress brings him a stack of fresh napkins.

“Well, I shan’t bring it up.  Did you see Harper?”

“No, Harper was only here for about a day and a half. He’s gone back to his job in Budapest.”

“Budapest? I thought it was Prague.  What’s he doing there?”

“He’s teaching at Central European University, you know, George Soros’s project.”

Lou finishes off his fries and lifts the last piece of burger off his plate.

The waitress takes away our empties and brings Lou’s second burger, medium rare, no onions.  He doesn’t go at it right away but leans back and loosens his belt.

“Any way the last time I saw Nikita Sergeyevich, he was a security type, based in Sophia Bulgaria.  He was in charge of some ‘heavies’ and also sat in on data security briefings with his tech. buddy, Henri Beyle.”

“Beyle?”

“Also served time in France as Julien Sorel”

“Never heard of him.”

“No, I haven’t heard anything for years.”

“Was Niki married to Nadia at the time?”

“No, Nikita Sergeyevich Brasov moved to London after he had made his fortune and the right contacts to make more.”

“Whatever made Nadia tell you all this?”

“Nadia told me her story when I did some consulting work for Chuck Newsome. It was just a few days. Chuck was in London on business, Nadia was still nervous and needed to talk and I was listening.  I worked partly out of my house and partly out of an office Chuck had in his old place before he built that palace by the river.  Niki Brazov, it turns out, is a gangster/oligarch, with numerous shell companies, posing as an ordinary businessman.”

“Oh yes, money laundering, and property you mean?”

“I believe he had a roll in arming the ‘little green men’ who took over the Crimea.  He also helps the Ukrainian separatists with volunteers from his militia organization.”

“Sounds like a shady KGB type alright.”

“Don’t know about KGB, he spent some time with another club though, jail time in 1981, on robbery, fraud and child prostitution charges.  Then he got into Putin’s orbit somehow, as a paid informant, I suspect.”

“I get it, a talkative crook of many parts!”

“He picked up young Nadia at a London club, where she was out with friends. He charmed her with his Russian and his money.”

“But Nadia is a Brit.  Sounds like one at least.”

“Well, kind of, Nadia’s father, Dr. Kutuzov was a Russian expat, of White Russian family and a mathematician at Kings College.  She grew up bilingual, Russian/English in a bilingual expat. world.  She was smart, and a little rebellious, a little adventurous, you know what I mean?”

“Oh yes, spirited girl!”

“That’s it.  She also went to one of those elite British schools.”

Lou finishes his second burger and drains his second Stella.  The waitress has kept up with him and picks up the bottle.

“Another Stella hon?”

Lou shakes his head.

“Just a coffee please…you want a coffee Fred?

“Sure.”

“No, excuse me, make that two coffees.”

Joy Flack and Congressman Bean leave through the back, led by Mr. Hoffman.

“Must be reporters somewhere near.”

“Maybe Lou, or maybe they have business back there.”

“Well, could be, the parking lot has emptied out.  I don’t see a TV van or anything.”

“Anyway Lou, you were telling me about Niki and Nadia, but what about Paula.  I thought Chuck was going to marry her?  That will be bigamy.”

“He is marrying Paula, I think that’s why Nadia got together with Max Plank.”

“Yeah, right, they both went off to Bulgaria!”

It may get Chuck out of a jam with Brasov, for stealing his woman. “

“It may not too!  I am sure that Nadia and Chuck were said to be married though.”

“Could be a convenience, just to get her into the States.

“There might be a contract of another sort, you know.”

“You mean out on Chuck’s life, Fred?”

“Yup!”

“Huh!  Could be I suppose.  Any way back before this, Chuck was sent over to London by his firm on business and met both Nadia and Brazov at this club in Mayfair, about the time they started getting involved. She liked both men. At the same time Chuck quits his firm and makes a deal with Nikita Brazov, which netted them a stream of income worth millions.”

“So, Chuck is flush with Russian oligarch money!”

“I believe so. After the deal was done, Nadia and Niki zoomed off to Bulgaria for a couple of weeks, to get married and meet his family.

A few days after they got back to London, Nadia called Chuck and later told him over lunch that she was leaving Niki.”

“Why?”

“He was punching her out and going with other women.  The guy is a real brute!”

“No wonder she took off!”

“Nadia took up with Chuck partly for protection from Nikita’s retribution.  It is a pretty dramatic story.”

The coffee arrives.

“Nadia left their hotel suite midmorning as Nikita was on the phone in another room, and room service brought breakfast.  She stepped out while Niki’s ‘heavy’ turned his back and sat down to eat.

She walks out with no coat, only her purse and phone.

Goes down to the sub-basement and talks a young guy into guiding her out an obscure service door. You know Nadia.  She is well put together and she knows when to flaunt it and when not to.

“Well I know Chuck likes to see it too.”

“Yeah, some of her outfits are pretty eye catching! Anyway…Luckily, Nadia finds a taxi dropping off passengers at the end of the block and gets in after them.

She goes to Victoria station and takes the train to Walthamstow Central.”

“Where’s that?”

I looked it up on the map and its way out in East London far from Mayfair, the Arab Sheiks and Russian Oligarchs.

Nadia is afraid to use her phone in case his people can track it.

She leaves it in the taxi.  Hoping he will be miss led if he is tracking it.  She buys a new one the high street.

She walks for blocks to find the store where an old school friend works. Nikita doesn’t know her. Natalia Bagrationi is part of the same White Russian expat. world and claims to be related to the great Russian General, Bigration.”

“Yes, wasn’t he was killed at Borodino?”

“Ah, maybe…She dropped out of the school where she and Nadia were friends and trained as a plumber. Years ago, Nadia watched her repair a toilet cistern at school with a piece of Styrofoam and a length of bamboo.”

“I would expect the school to do that, in a well-to-do place.”

“No, no, no, they had their weed stashed in the ballcock and it sank.”

“So maybe Natalia got the boot?”

“Could be, Nadia didn’t tell me.  Any way Natalia’s contact info. was not on the old phone she left in the taxi, so Nadia felt safe.”

“Oh! two of my favorite men!”

Diddlie surprises us both.

“What are you guys scheming over now?”

“Oh, nothing much Did. Is your garbage disposal working okay?”

“Well, funny you should ask Lou.”

“Okay, what’s the laugh?”

Lou picks up his second Stella, finds it empty. Sips his coffee instead.

“It’s jammed again.”

“Aha, well that raccoon won’t be getting into the attic again.”

“I hope not Lou…you used a whole piece of plywood.”

“So, you came down here.”

“Boy! You got enough napkins Lou?  Looks like you are collecting.”

“Well, ketchup gets around you know.”

“How many have you had?”

“Napkins? About a dozen.”

“Sweetie you know what I mean.  How many Fred?”

“If you must know, I’ve had a couple of Stellas.”

“I had one before Fred got here, so that’s three.”

Diddlie unwinds her red scarf and takes off her matching wool hat.

“You are not the quiet guy I used to know, or the guy I saw this morning. Seems to me you are well sauced!”

“Yeah! I am happy enough.  So, any way Did. How did you find me…us… down here?”

“You two are always in here Wednesdays lunch time.  Is there any one in Fauxmont who doesn’t know that?”

“The majority of residents. I don’t think that we are all that well known.”

“Well, what do you think Fred?”

“Only a few people know me.”

Diddlie pulls up a chair.

“Are you going to invite me to sit down?”

“Did, you have taken care of that already.”

Diddlie is looking down at the table.

“Lou, any chance you can take another look under my sink?”

“Pretty fair chance I would say.  What do you think Fred?”

“I’ll leave it to you.  Would you like a coffee Did?”

Diddlie looks up and smiles at me.

“Thought you would never ask.”

“Did, you need to go by the hardware store next door and buy a new disposal.  I can install it for you this evening.”

“How many more are you guys going to have?”

“As many as we want Did.  You want a Stella to chase that coffee?”

Diddlie shakes her head.

“Why can’t you fix the old one?”

“Do you know how old it is?”

“Ah, no, don’t remember.”

“That’s it.  Your disposal has worn out and it is going to jam up a couple more times and then just freeze up or short-out altogether.”

The waitress takes an order for coffee.

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. 

Flowers of golden rod spray the sun’s yellows up near Diddlie’s ceiling.  On top of the Hoosier Cabinet the Red Queen browses among stems and blooms with her curved beak.  Only this morning, Diddlie stuffed them, stalks first, into the tin flower drawer with built in sifter. The white enamel metal table is sprinkled with flower fragments in front of cupboards rising against the wall behind.  She listens to young Serge read from his tablet while making tea for the guests in her kitchen.

“Milk and sugar Serge?”

“Ah, what kind of tea are you making?”

Her Majesty, flies down to a perch near the action, on the handle of Diddlie’s tall blackened ancestral kettle. Her claws grip the handle bound in heavy cord for insulation.

“Darjeeling honey, what else is there?”

Diddlie lights the gas under her kettle.

“You really want to know? … I mean there are teas made of Yerba, Chicory, Chamomile, Dandelion…”

“Yeah, okay Serge, you’re a little too clever. I didn’t mean literally.  I mean Darjeeling is the best tea.”

“Oh okay, sorry, I like it with a little milk, no sugar.”

“Five times as clever!”

“What’s with that bird?”

“You want yours straight, right Fred?”

“Thanks, Did.”

The Red Queen flies off the handle circling the room, shrieking as she felt the heat. She settles back on top of the cabinet.

 “Speak when you’re spoken to!”

She pecks at the flowers and at the top of the flower drawer and pulls on it, as if to break piece off for a snack, and then,

“Let me introduce you to that leg of mutton.”
“Leg of Mutton?”

“Serge, she is just flustered by the kettle heating up under her.”

“Can you answer useful questions?”

The red Queen breaks off and starts smoothing her wing feathers.

“Maybe that bird knows something!”

Serge was telling Diddlie about his latest online adventure, when I came in through the back door, as specified by Diddlie. in a text, earlier.  He waves to me and goes on, reading from his tablet, as Diddlie prepares tea.

“The Mattress of Imaginary Murders, was a file found on line in 1998.  It was the plain text part of a larger encrypted file posted by someone called B4.  Nothing more is known.  Efforts to decrypt the rest of the file have failed.”

Serge looks up at the Red Queen, who blinks but says nothing.

“Serge, did you drive here in your Mom’s car?”

“Yeah Diddlie, passed the test last month in the beat up old Volvo.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thanks Fred.”

“How did you find this weird file?”

“Oh, by accident, like so many things. It was through someone else. I mean she’s in like, Hong Kong!  Well I think so. She tells me when she found the B4 file, it looked like a joke.  Going on about the word mattress, and saying mattress is a female mat!  That you will find a key under the mat.”

“You mean the key to the encryption?”

“I don’t know, maybe?  I mean under the mat, what mat? under the word, ‘mat’ or an actual mat someplace? Or is it another kind of mat like a matted hair, or a cardboard mat, like in a picture frame, or what?  So, anyway, after reading a while, Jasmine’s machine crashed. I mean we went back and forth on ‘Haddock’s Eyes’ on all this.  Her Search history was wiped, and she didn’t remember how to get back. She said it took her hours to get her system back up, and that’s when she found the file icon on her desk top. Nothing added up”

“What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?”

Diddlie turns from the counter waving a tea spoon in the air.

“Serge… Ah honey…Just a moment, what is, ‘Haddock’s Eyes’?”

“It’s an online message board, Diddlie.”

The Red Queen moves from behind the goldenrod, along the top of the cupboard, her head moving to track the spoon. She flutters her feathers without taking off.

Diddlie lifts the kettle, checks the weight and puts it back on the stove.

“They didn’t have whistling kettles when this was made.  Queenie!  You stay up there!”

The Red Queen whistles…

Diddlie serves tea and joins us at the table with her own cup.

“A message board?”

“Yeah, you can leave messages for people there.”

“Aha…”

Queenie takes off again, bumps into the pewter chandelier hanging over the kitchen table on its silvery chain and settles back on top of the Hoosier cabinet.  A small grey feather, rocks in the air on its way down toward Diddlie’s cup.  She waits to see where it goes.

“It won’t be the first feather tea I have drunk.”

The downy feather veers off from her steaming cup.

Serge catches a larger one out of the air and misses a second damaged one as it floats down behind his head.

“Serge, who is this girl friend in Hong Kong?”

“She is not exactly a girlfriend. I don’t know for sure, I can’t read Chinese characters, but someone told me her character means Jasmine and that seems feminine. That’s how she signs off, even though everything else is in English.  I don’t even know if she is a girl…She could be anything, a hacker, a kid in Latvia, I mean like a bot or something, even an!”

“Why should an intelligence agency talk to you?”

“Diddlie, they don’t know who I am…You know, like, they might be unintelligent!

”Wrong as usual.”

“Yeah, okay bird!  Any way Jasmine thinks the link was designed to erase itself once it was opened.”

“So, nobody knows anything.”

“Well it’s not quite that bad.”

He goes on reading from his tablet.

“Mattress out on the street, discarded, sodden with dreams, spilled out in breath, blood, snorts, snot, sweats, snores, coughs, tears, belches and farts, seeking all means of escape from the body over fifteen or twenty years of sleep.”

“Serge, wait a minute, wait…Okay, she goes by Jasmine, so who are you?”

“Oh! for this, I am Earl Grey!”

“For this? Really! Who else are you?”

“Oh, I use a bunch of screen names, like, ah, Rowland Macassar, and ‘Telford Menai’.”

“So nobody knows who anybody else is.”

“There is a lot of uncertainty, but you can figure stuff out.”

“Is Earl Grey from the tea?”

“Well, Charles, the second Earl, was Prime Minister of England when they abolished slavery.  That’s the big deal. I did a paper on him. Any way that’s neither here nor there.” He reads on.

“It is stained and sags in the middle with two long shallow depressions next to each other on its surface, like a slumbering couple.”

“Serge, Serge, hold up a moment…is that the dream mattress in the picture?  Did you see it?”

“No, I am only reading what Jasmine sent me.”

“You mean what she wrote to you?”

“Well, whatever…she sent it along with about five other messages, but that doesn’t mean she wrote it.”

“Five times as clever!”

“Oh hush, Queenie!”

The parot flutters and scratches the top of the cabinet under its claws.

Serge sips his tea and reads on.

“These are no ordinary murders.  Remembered dreams escape into conscious mind and have no need to go anywhere else.  These murdered dreams are forgotten, with nowhere to go. Forgetting is self-defense against the criminal element sneaking up!  Carl, fracked the unconscious with his alchemy!  Use that krater and you’ll be pushed out of your own skin, as it were, into some unaccustomed shape.  You have to do your best to explain it away, but ‘sources’ will have their say.”

“Carl? Who’s Carl?”

“I think he’s a psychoanalyst or was.  He’s dead now.”

“Sounds like he is in the oil business.”

“Well you know, they are talking about an alchemist’s krater, like a mixing bowl for bringing stuff up to the surface…you know, like subconscious stuff.”

“Oh, this is way too obscure Serge…”

Serge nods and reads on.

“Fitful sleep, troubled sleep, deep or shallow, sleep like a tide that comes in high and deep, flooding the streets and floating secrets out of people’s private lives into the public flow of the flood.  A low tide sleep drains the beach.  Isolated dreams dry out as their pools of coagulating images evaporate into anagoges, waking dreamers with longings pulsing in their blood. Elastic moments they have been trying to forget for years, stretching out of the Bakken Shale.”

“Well whoever it is, they fancy themselves as literate!”

“Is that what you call it Fred?”

“Why, don’t you see, child—”

“Queenie, why don’t you come down from there, huh?”

Queenie flutters down to Diddlie’s arm, then up to her head. Diddlie puts her hands up to the top of her head.

“No, not on my head honey, not my head, okay?”

She settles on an orange in the fruit bowl. Digs her left claw in and samples the ooze.

“Well, I am thinking of the metaphorical beach, the water, dreams, and so on. It all goes together.”

The back door opens, and Hank and Helga Dumpty come in quietly with two neatly bound bunches of goldenrod, put them on the table, and sit down.  Diddlie gets up to put the flowers into the sifter drawer of the cabinet and serve them, while Serge goes on reading and takes no notice.

“It takes a certain sense to know these mysterious fields trapped in the psychic pockets in the matress foam.  Not all sleepers leave them behind.  A certain configuration of time, space and mind can persist outside the body and dwell in her.”

Diddlie is standing by her stove regarding the cabinet. She doesn’t look over at Serge.

“…dwell in her?”

“Yeah, in her…This is mattress not mat, remember?”

“Oh right…mattress space time, or something.”

The White Rabbit opens one of the cupboard doors and walks along the white Hoosier table with its back to us, nosing the flower fragments.  Diddlie picks him up, with straw in his fur. When he raises his ears for a moment, a long stem with a sharp bend in it catches on her sweater.

“I had to bring him in from the car port when it got so cold.”

He has trailed straw along the table.  Queenie hops down to pick up some stems.

“Serge, this is dream physics!”

“Well, maybe Fred…like, what’s dream and what isn’t?”

As he goes on reading, the back door opens again, and Lark comes in with Augie, followed by bel Vionnet and Steve Strether. The table is full, and they have to stand around behind us, holding their bunches of goldenrod like candles at a service.

Serge reads on.

“Floating in the atmosphere, which may be jammed and scrunched into words, by those retelling their ambiguous dreamy ‘rememberings’. “

Serge stops reading and looks around.

“Who are all these people?”

Frank Vasari carries in a load on his shoulder, and stumbles into Boris Tarantula as he bends down to introduce himself to Serge.  Frank hangs a chrome car bumper on the wall by the table. It has stickers on it.  ‘Elect Macadamia’ which is real, some, such as “I like Ike” are Trompe L’Oeil.

Diddlie greets Daisy as she hangs her bowler from the top of the Hoosier cabinet.  Queenie pulls out the blue sticky from the hat band.

“Queenie! Give that here!”

The bird turns away out of reach.  The room is so crowded Daisy can’t move around the cabinet to try and get it back.  Diddlie gives her half a cup of tea with two lumps of sugar, and spoon in the saucer.

“Sorry honey this is all I have left.”

Her cup rattles in its saucer and the spoon falls on the floor as Paula backs into her trying to make room for Chuck to get through the back door.

Queenie eyes the sugar.

“Did., help me get my sticker from Queenie, will you?”

Chuck Newsome squeezes through the back door. He has a goldenrod stem behind his ear like a pencil sharpened down to flowers.

“Oh, is he retelling his dreams, what a bore!”

“No Chuck, that’s not it.”

“So, what’s going on Fred?”

Diddlie stands on a short stool to make an announcement, as Queenie lands on her hand protected by a golden oven mitt.

“Did., I don’t see my sticky.  Has she eaten it?”

“Okay people, just let him read, okay?  He’s got to keep reading people, okay!

Serge goes on.

“The name recalled by the dreamer, when awakened, is not the name of its secret self, enciphered in brain’s ‘mindy’, ‘thoughty’, meanderings. Name is…  Name is called…. Dream is…Dream”

Someone else is trying to get in the back door.  The wind is up, and we can see snow through the kitchen window.

Albrecht is in the doorway. Starts brushing snow off his jacket, but the crush of people makes it impossible.  It just rubs off on the others as he pushes in toward Diddlie.

“It’s getting too crowded in here!”  The window opens.

“Congressman Bean is here.”

Joy Flack shouts through the window, pushing a bunch f goldenrod through the gap.

“Shut the window!”

Chuck Newsome reaches up to push it shut, but one of the lights fall out.

Boyd Nightingale is standing next to Serge, looking over his shoulder at the tablet.  Tatiana is on the other side with her face pressed affectionately next to his.  They read together.

“The kitchen, the bird, the crush of the crowd, the floor, and noise, even the condensation on the kitchen door has all been around before. All repeated in the dreamer’s unconscious feathers parroting down and down and down past the white rabbit’s pink nose…”

People are crowding in from the corridor opposite us at the table.

The Planks have nailed a sign above the entrance to the corridor, saying, “Maximum Capacity 31!”

There is no room for Werner and Tron to get off the step ladder.

There’s Rank Majors and Sherman Shroud gesturing to Mrs. Shroud who is up on the cabinet with the Red Queen, painting her claws with purple nail varnish. Diddlie is trying to make herself heard by photographs of Derwent Sloot and Mr. Ramsay, but she is drowned out by the crowd.  People push down the hall and into the crowded Pie Shop where Mrs. Rutherford is playing chess with Pam Dirac. Theophilus Gladstone wakes up from his sleep.

“Where is Mr. Wordsworth?” He goes back to sleep with his head on the table.

Queenie has settled back on the kettle, now cool on the stove, showing off her purple claws. Serge and Tatiana are lost in a kiss.

“Can you do subtraction?”

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 Light House Gas Station looks deserted when I pull up. A tall lean figure over by the service center has his hands up around his eyes to look through the tiny windows in the closed doors of the lube bays.  He turns away and waves to me.

Augie Carmichael kicks some ice off the tire of a dented lime-green Kia sedan parked in front of the doors. A sign saying “SnazE Gas!” glows red about twenty feet up at the top of the new light house sign post.  Its LED beacon highlights the random flutter of snowflakes falling past it into the thin mist.

I finish inflating the tires on my old gold Saturn wagon and we walk towards each other, meeting outside the station office. Augie points at the new sign.

“When did that happen Fred?”

“This place changed hands when Mr. Ramsay died.”

“That thing looks like a stack of blue and white life savers.”

“Yes, it went up last month.”

“Is it a new franchise?”

“Well, SnazE now belongs to the Ensor conglomerate, so we’ll probably see these all over the place soon.”

“Last time I was here there was an old wooden oil derrick there.  Kind of funky, but distinctive.”

Lark comes around from the back in her black down jacket dotted with flakes of snow.

“The restrooms are locked, Augie.”

“Yeah, so is the office door.”

She walks by a tow truck parked near the lube bays.  The doors are marked “LUCY” in Gothic script.  The door is alive with graffiti style color.  A female figure with huge breasts bulging from a minimal black bustier, bursts from the center of a splash, in the shape of a scallop shell. Her face is flushed, her exaggerated deep red lips part revealing a dazzle of white teeth. The semicircles of her brilliant blue eyes are painted like rising suns with black mascara sunrays radiating above the horizon of her pale cheeks. Her wavy blond hair spreads to the right in a parody of The Birth of Venus with a spray of diamonds glistening in the sky around her head.

“No one back there! This place has gone to hell!”

“Here’s Fred, Lark!”

“Hey there! What are you two staring at?”

“You just walked past it.”

Lark turns around to see the truck she just ignored from looking down to keep the snow out of her face.

“Yeah, right, pretty skillful paint job! Or wait a minute.”

She walks back over to look more closely at the truck door.

“This may be a transfer.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, a printed image on thin film, just pasted on.”

“You think so?”

Lark stands close, takes a glove off and runs her forefinger over the surface.

“Well, no.”

“Any way, you know who bought this place don’t you?”

“Jake Trip, is what I heard Fred, and this is about his speed.  Plastic signs, no service and higher prices.”

“Yes, that’s what I heard too and he is going to build a convenience store over there where they used to park cars and store tires.”

“What about the Seven Eleven further down the block?”

A door bangs, somewhere at the back of the building.

“Maybe they are opening up!…lights are on in the office.”

“Why aren’t they open Fred, its gone 3 o’clock?”

“Who knows Augie.”

The office door opens a few inches and then closes on the narrow column of light it revealed.  A row of Christmas lights blink, green, yellow, orange, and blue, on and off along the windowsill, blurred behind the condensation on the office window. We keep looking.  It opens again bringing us children’s voices singing Jingle Bells.  Somebody with a big gut stretching his black tea shirt over his belt, steps out and shouts, keeping one hand on the door handle.

“Can I help you?”

His shirt is printed with the phrase,

‘I Club Baby Seals’. The club symbol from a deck of cards is printed bright red in place of the word ‘club’, while the lettering is white.

Lark gets to him first.

“Hi, is Farouk around?”

“Who?”

“Farouk, you know, the manager.”

“No Farouk here lady.  The manager is on the phone.  What do you need?”

“Do you know where he went?”

He shakes his greying black goatee and gold earring.

“I drive the truck.  Don’t know nobody.”

“That’s too bad.  Farouk really made this place what it is…or what it was.”

Augie regards the pumps, which are also in the shape of lighthouses with the hoses hanging inside a niche in front of each.

“How much you want for that Kia?”

“It’s going for about six grand.  You want to check it out?”

We walk over to the green car.

The new man doesn’t seem cold in his tee shirt even though his boots crack ice in a puddle outside the lube bays.  He has a complicated indistinct design tattooed down his right arm. The ink has smudged under his skin.

“The price is on the dash.”

Lark has bent down to look inside.

“It’s not locked take a look.”

“I don’t see anything on the dash.”

She tries the door, but it resists.

“It’s locked.”

The club man steps over and pulls on the door handle, and it opens part way with a metallic crack.  He takes a white plastic rectangle off the driver’s seat and puts it face up on the dash, revealing:

“BARGAIN, $6999.95, only 90 K miles”

Lark steps back, pulling her hood forward with both hands.

“I don’t think so.”

“What’s the matter Lark?  Don’t you want to road test it first?”

“No, I don’t like it.”

She looks closely at the outside mirror.

“Look at that! It’s cracked too. Forget it!”

“She locks her arm in his and turns away.”

Augie follows turning to the driver.

“Thanks buddy!”

He doesn’t answer and walks stiffly back in the office.  His massive shoulders rocking from side to side with each step.

Lark turns to me with a shiver.

“He totaled my old Toyota Fred! Now he wants to fob me off on that crate.”

“That’s no crate kiddo.  It even has a dent in the same place on the driver’s side door.”

“It’s a piece of junk. Besides mine was not on the driver’s side and it wasn’t as bad.  The paint was intact.”

“Strange fits of passion have I known:

And I will dare to tell,

But in the Lover’s ear alone,

What once to me befell.”

“I don’t see any poetic qualities in it, okay?”

“No, it’s not the car.”

“You going to whisper later?”

“The poet has said it all for me.”

“Well, at least you didn’t hurt your precious bod in ‘what once befell’!”

The snow is turning into sleet.  A pair oncoming headlights push their cones through the deepening gloom, sweep into our eyes as they turn the left from Maxwell Avenue on to Huygens Street.  They fill the pumping station with a cold blueish tint and then shut off.  Herman Intaglio opens the driver’s side door and stands looking at the new pump.

“What the hell?”

He stands before the new light house pump, one hand in the pocket of his black raincoat and the other pulling down the peak of his red baseball cap.

“That’s Herman, Augie.  Have you met him?”

“Oh right, he’s a printmaker isn’t he?”

“He’s an artist alright…got to say hi to Donatella.”

Lark pats Herman on the shoulder and looks for her through the open driver’s side door.

“Lark, what are you guys doing here?”

“Oh, getting cold and wet and disappointed.”

Herman still hasn’t moved to start pumping gas, so I step over to him.

“Do you get it Herman?”

He doesn’t look up.

“Do you have the SnazE phone app Fred?”

“No, I wouldn’t know how to use it.”

“Well, join the club.”

“Why?  Isn’t it supposed to make life easier?”

“Yeah, easier to get hacked Fred!”

“Always a risk.”

“Don’t we face enough risk on the road already?”

“Herman, I am told these pumps know all about you. They know the make, model and year of your car, when its due for service and how long you’ve owned it.  It will even remind you to go for inspection.  Also, you can buy anything in the SanzE inventory. Do on line banking, all while you wait for the tank to fill.”

“How can it know all that?”

“If you give the necessary permissions through the app.”

“Oh! I am not giving any permissions! Give this thing the keys to my life?”

An electronic voice speaks from the pump.

“Hi, I am your pump attendant. How can I help you?”

Herman looks at the small screen in the pump.

“Is that a woman’s voice?”

“Sorry sir, I don’t understand your question.  Do you want to pump gas?”

“Yes, where do I put my money?”

“Just follow me on your phone sir.”

“My phone?”

“Sorry sir we have no record for this transaction.”

Herman walks over to the office only to find out that they do not take cash.

The blue and white lighthouse pump addresses him again as he walks in front of it.

“Hi, I am your pump attendant.  Welcome to ‘My Gas’ help.”

“You just said we can’t do business.”

“Sir, you can find me on your phone.”

“What?”

“Just tell me your address and plate number and we can get started.”

“I don’t speak to machines.”

“Sir, don’t you want to fill your tank?”

Herman turns to get back into his car and finds Lark sitting behind the wheel talking to Donna.

“Are you driving or what?”

Lark gets out of the car with a hand from Herman.

“Did you fill up?”

“No Lark, I got into an argument with the big guy in the office and then had a senseless confrontation with that machine.”

Donna shouts goodbye to Lark, but Herman keeps talking.

“We can coast down the hill on fumes and gas in VanRijn.”

“Enjoy the holiday Herman!”

“Merry Christmas!”

“You can no longer say that you know, Herman.”

He was closing the door, but that remark stops him, and he gets back out.

“What do you mean Lark?”

“I mean the president has politicized it.”

“He has?”

“Yes, he has just ended the “war on Christmas!”

“There never was a war. I’ve been greeting people with that happy phrase since I was a kid.”

Donna leans over across the driver’s seat with one hand on the wheel.

“Herman get back in the car honey, before the seat is soaked.”

“Okay, okay…you know Lark, I have stopped reading twitter or listening to the so-called news.”

“Herman, Augie’s settled in with Lark.  You’re supposed to be congratulating them.”

“I wish you both every happiness!”

He closes the door, opens the window and sings.

“Fa la la la LA, La La LA!”

The clubman walks out from the back, over to his tow truck and backs it up to the green sedan. Two ace of clubs decals decorate the left and right sides of the back window. He Fixes the hitch to the front.

“Well, look at that!  I told him that crate was no bargain.”

“In fact, I recommended a test drive.”

“Looks like it would have been in the truck with that seal murderer.”

“Could be.”

“Come on sweetie! He’s about to tow it away!”

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 Bunlush’s umbrella is dripping rain water on the floor at the Elegant Ostrich Gift Shop. She has folded her huge colorful golf umbrella into its spiral with one yellow segment flapping.  A small pool is spreading on the black and white tiles.

Lark is looking at Thanksgiving paraphernalia. She examines a life size orange cardboard turkey carved out of many laminated pieces. I walk over to her.

“How are you going to cook it?”

“Hi Fred…I think we’ll serve it as ‘Papier tartare’!”

There is a scuffle, and I hear an angry whisper.

“Muon get back here, you naughty boy!”

A small white dog, with terrier tendencies to take the initiative, is sampling the water under her still dripping umbrella.  Muon has slipped his leash.  He finishes with the puddle, bumps the bottom of the umbrella with his nose, and zooms around the displays to the back.  The rhythmic click of his claws on the checkerboard floor is interrupted as he makes a sharp turn at the cash desk in the back and skids. The sales clerk seems happy to see him.

“Oh Muon! Hi Sweetie!”

One of the del Sarto twins picks him up and stands behind the counter with him. Muon struggles out of her arms and lands on the counter.  She pets him and picks him up again. He settles, licking the side of her face.

I browse around the center display to the other side, leaving Lark contemplating the paper bird. There is Nadia Brazov, in her fitted red leather jacket with shiny silver zip running diagonally across the swell of her chest. She is looking at one of Rosalba’s portrait miniatures.

“Werner, darling, here is a portrait artist offering to do commissions.  Shall we get one done?”

Werner is in the back. Nadia looks up and sees me, instead of Werner.

“Oh, excuse me!”

Werner is chatting with the young woman behind the counter.

“How are you doing Maria?”

“Oh, pretty good, I guess.”

“You, have quite an armful there.”

“Oh! he is so cute!  Can I keep him Werner?”

“Ask Nadia.”

“Where is Meson?”

“He is at the groomer.”

“NADIA! Can I keep your dog?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Nadia is shopping.  You can’t get through.”

“I know.”

She is not going to give him up you know.”

“Oh, I guess not.”

“Well, last time we talked, you had an office job…an intern or something.”

“I know, Andrea is still there but it was too boring…I like this better…you know, cute dogs and lots of people to meet.”

“So, you are having fun, huh?”

“And, I am getting paid.  That intern thing sucks, you know, no money.”

“Yeah, that’s how it works.  You are supposed to learn from the experience…

and something for your resume!”

“Yeah, right.  I thought Lou was going to get us paid, but it didn’t work out.”

“I don’t think interns do get paid, not usually anyway.”

“Yeah, too bad… There was a creepy guy there too.”

“What do you mean?”

“He kept standing too close, you know Werner, and asking stuff.”

“Ah ha, I get the picture.”

“Like when he gave me some stuff to copy and the back of his hand kind of bumped my chest…I mean it wasn’t an accident. That was my last day!”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Yeah, my sister… He kind of had a reputation at the office… and some friends…you know… …we were talking about creeps.”

“Well, you sound like you can deal with it.”

“Oh god!  I shouldn’t be talking about it in front of everyone…but it really pissed me off!”

“Sure, Maria. I have known you two since you were little kids.  I mean I am really sorry to hear it.  You ought to talk to Lou, you know.”

“Well, maybe…I don’t know.”

“Okay, here, give me that dog, and I’ll get the leash back on him.”

Werner picks him up and carries him back to Nadia. They put his collar back on and affix the leash. I look around the center display to find a suitable gift.

A loud male voice calls from behind me.

“Lark! Lark! Hey! Come here…”

Lark has left the store. I can see her through the window wall, huge umbrella, with brilliant colored panels twirling, purple, white, yellow, green, and blue, with two thin legs beneath, crossing the parking lot under the thickening deluge. Werner Plank opens the door and shouts into the downpour for Lark.  He steps out.

Nadia walks over to the door with Muon resisting, tugging hard on his leash, trying to go in the opposite direction, back to Maria. Nadia reaches out and calls Werner back in.  Muon starts barking.

“You are going to get soaked darling!”

Werner steps back in.

“Shut up whitey!”

“Don’t be so rude!”

“The dog doesn’t know!”

Muon’s tail is wagging fast and he is standing back from, facing Werner, keeping up his constant bark.

Nadia bends down to pick him up and the straps of her hand bag slide down her arm.

Muon seizes one of the red straps in his mouth.  She picks him up.

“Hush Muon, hush!”

“That peace of leather ought to keep him quiet. Nice and chewy! Huh big guy!”

Werner stands next to them petting Muon’s head with a wet hand and soggy sleeve.

“Darling don’t you have any doggy treats?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Dearest, check your pockets before he ruins my bag!”

Werner stuffs his hands into the pockets of his brown fleece jacket and pulls out a scrunched up five-dollar bill.  He offers it to Muon, who ignores it.

“Oh, come on dear, you know he doesn’t eat paper.”

“No but it might distract him.”

“Oh! darling you are so helpless!  Would you be a dear, and look in my bag for a treat.

I don’t have a free hand.”

“Are you kidding me?  Look in there?”

Werner opens Nadia’s bag as it hangs from her forearm, under the dog. He pulls the free strap away while Muon pulls back on his strap growling quietly. Werner rummages through the contents.
“Excuse me please.”

Maria steps past between me and the display case.

“Nadia!  Nadia! Here’s a treat for Muon.”

She offers it, but Muon doesn’t let go.  He just looks at it.

Werner closes the purse and watches Muon.

“Well, make a decision buddy!”

Maria picks up Muon’s forepaw paw which makes him bark, and then she grabs the strap from him and gives him a bone shaped treat.

“Oh, clever girl!”

Nadia pulls her handbag straps up to her elbow, out of reach.

“He hates any one to touch his paws.”

“I know, it works every time.”

“You have a customer waiting.”

A short stocky man in tweed cap standing at the cash desk looks around as Maria hurries over.

Werner turns to me.

“Hi Fred, have you met Nadia?”

Nadia looks at me again.

“Oh! how do you do?  Please excuse me just now!”

“Of course.”

Werner steps closer to me with his back to Nadia, as if looking out the window behind me.

He speaks softly close to my ear.

“Fred, did you see that guy who just went out?”

“I noticed his cap, that’s about all.”

”Okay, something about him…”

“He sure left in a hurry.  I wonder if he paid.”

“Darling, come over here, and look at this little portrait.”
Nadia comes over and tugs on his arm.

“Excuse me Fred darling.”

He resists, and she lets go. She is drawn back to the small painting.

“Did you come in with Lark?”

“No, I bumped into her manhandling a paper turkey over there, by the window.”

“I mean, how is she doing?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Well, we had to get over to Bulgaria in a hurry.  Something about the divorce from Brazov.  You know…I know it wasn’t right for Lark…”

“No, she was very shaken.”

“Well, any way Nadia’s marriage broke up the day after they got married in London, and it has taken a while for her to get out of it…I mean it just wasn’t safe for her after she walked out.”

Werner steps away, unzips his SnazE jacket to get out his phone, and walks back over by the door.

Nadia comes over to me with a bright yellow card in her hand.

“How do you like this Fred, darling?”

She shows me the card with a photo of an enormously fat bulldog sitting in a luxurious wine-red wingback chair next to a small white kitten lying on one arm.

“Quite a contrast! What does it say inside?”

“Oh, it’s blank my dear, I shall write something later.”

She walks back to the rack of greeting cards and picks out another.

Tries to turn the display rack, which has jammed.

“Werner, where are you?”

“Here, right here.  He has put his phone away and steps to her side.

“Can you fix this thing darling?”

“Oh maybe, but let me get the boss.”

He walks back to Maria leaving Nadia bending over to look for the obstruction at the bottom of the mechanism.

Maria comes over, and starts petting Muon.

“Muon, honey, can you fix it sweetie?”

“Dearest girl, that dog can’t possibly do the repair.”

Nadia has straightened up with Muon in her arms and her bag out of his reach. She keeps a firm hold on Muon, as he struggles to get down on the floor, where Maria is examining the base of the greeting card rack.

“Thank you dear. Can you fix it?”

Maria gets up and pulls the whole thing away from the wall revealing an extension cord caught in it half way up.

“What’s that doing there?”

“Nadia, we are getting setup for Christmas, you know, it will be for the lights.”

“Christmas already? Darling, it isn’t Thanksgiving yet.”

“I know.”

Werner is on the phone again by the door.  Maria is distracted, petting Muon.

“Do put this rack back my dear, so I can finish looking.”

Maria, still cooing at Muon, gets the rack back in place.

Werner and Nadia come behind me as I wait to pay Maria for a greeting card.

Muon sniffs my shoes and bumps my ankles with his nose.

“Are you trying to call that woman dear?”

“You mean Lark?”

“You know perfectly well darling.”

Werner puts his phone away.

“No, Meson is ready for pickup.”

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. 

“Mom and I were between maids, and I was cleaning out the cat’s litterbox.  It was in the morning, late morning I think. I heard someone knocking on a window.  This was in our old house over on the Van Rijn Estate. Mom was out West visiting a friend, so I was alone.  Anyway, I tried not to think about that, and went into the living room and saw a strange figure knocking from outside, on the bottom left window, over by the dining table. Whoever it is, knocks five or six times in rapid succession then pauses and knocks again.  It has a bunch of ragged scarfs around its head, tied under the chin. The person is short but thick set, with a dirty rain coat on.

I beckoned … I mean, even with the scarves, I am not sure if it is a woman or not…I point towards the front door.

No one is there when I open the door.  I walk outside and look around towards the dining room window and no one is there either. Just a lot of leaves blowing around. I mean it was at least a couple of weeks before Halloween. So, I don’t think it was a prank.

The next day I saw a man who looked like him, in the SanzE Super store, dressed in slacks and a t-shirt. I guess I was staring at him.

He said, “Hi, can I help you?”

He had a foreign accent.

I said something like, “Hi, I am Paula, remember?”

And then people were trying to get by and he moved on into the crowd. I lost track of him.

He was short, with a tweed cap and had the same big uneven bulbous nose with a wide thin mouth, prominent chin and pig eyes.

I kept trying to remember if I had seen this person before, but haven’t recalled any one so far.

Was it, ah…maybe it was an apparition?

Well, anyway, when I finished with the litter box, our cat Mamie, had disappeared. I looked everywhere. I don’t know how she got out.  The back door was closed and she didn’t get out the front door while I had it open.  The bedroom window was open but the screen is in intact, and no other windows are open …

I couldn’t sleep that night.  I kept thinking about Mamie outside alone, and who that person outside was and how did Mamie get out?

It was kind of scary…

Anyway, I was single back when this person came to the window. It was only a couple of years ago I guess. I was sort of seeing Chuck around that time, and that was great, but he was still married to Nadia, and they were away that week. So, I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up.

Later on … was it that day? Maybe the next day, like Sunday, I went out to get something from the shed.  It is built into the backyard fence, right against the overgrown alley that runs between Stoffels, Street and our place on Lievens Avenue. It had been a while since I looked in there, and it wasn’t locked. It didn’t look right, when I opened the door.  Stuff was rearranged.  The lawn mower was half blocking the door. When I moved it out of the way I saw a sleeping bag rolled up in there, and a couple of shopping bags with clothes in them.  Seemed like someone was sleeping in there.  I was going to call the police as soon as I got back in the house to get my phone, but the ring tones were on when I picked it up, and I didn’t call right then.

A friend was waiting for me in the driveway, and we went shopping.  We talked it over and she said she would help me find Maime, and you know what? Andrea del Sarto found her, and that’s how I got her back, like that Wednesday. They lived a few blocks away and she called me.  Maime was in a crab apple tree in their back yard.  I forget now, who it was, someone got a ladder out and brought her down for me. By then I decided it probably wasn’t anything, and so I forgot all about the window thing…

Okay, so a few months ago, when Chuck and I were looking around the shed and throwing some stuff out.  He found an old blue tarp hanging from some nails in the back.  When he pulled it down there was a back door.  I never noticed it before.  It was kind of hidden.  Just a piece of the plywood cut out of the back wall and a couple of hinges put in at the top, so it opened from the bottom up, lifting out into the alley.

I just about screamed when I saw it.  I remembered the whole incident again. There was nothing in there though.  The sleeping bag and cloths had gone. We went out into the ally and you couldn’t see it from out there, because old pieces of tarpaper were tacked carefully over the whole back of the shed. It overlapped the edges of the door, and hid the cuts, but didn’t prevent it opening.  There was even a piece hanging over the hinges at the top.  Chuck looked carefully up there. He did a Sherlock, and saw some slight scrape marks where the tarpaper on top rubbed against the stuff below the hinges. Then he noticed there were lichens growing on some parts of the paper and then stopped in a long straight line, and there was a row of nail holes that didn’t make sense. He figured the tarpaper was taken from somewhere else.

So we called the police because there might have been illegals using it, you know, gang members, or something. When they came they couldn’t find any useful evidence, and said if it had happened two years ago, there wasn’t anything to do about it now.

So then we decided to buy a couple of pistols in case any one came around again. We got into a discussion with this guy in the SnazE gun department, about security, and self-defense, and stuff like that. He told us about his buddy, Frans Bankock, or something like that.  Anyway, he said they were militia buddies, and gave us this Frans’s phone number.  Chuck called him and he came over to the house a while later. I was outside.  It was a sunny day and I saw them drive up, and as he got out of the car I saw another guy, behind the wheel, who started to get out too, but didn’t.  He closed the door, and stayed in the car. What I did see looked like the guy I saw at SnazE with the bulbous nose, after the incident at our window. I felt really creeped out.  If Chuck hadn’t come out at that moment, I would have got my pistol, and locked myself in the house.  I mean he looked like the person who knocked on the window, but I wasn’t sure. He put on his sunglasses, and a tweed cap when he realized I was looking at him. He never got out of the car and never said anything. Frans did all the talking.  He was real friendly and checked out Mom’s home security and then looked at the shed. That guy seemed to be Frans’s driver.  Franz mentioned him by name at one point. Can’t remember what it was.  It might have been French, like Jean Pierre or something.  Anyway, Frans thought he might be able to help us, but wouldn’t say any more, at that time. He just said he would get back to us …

Oh, yeah, now I remember, he said he was a Militia organizer.  That was it. He told us about the Fauxmont Milita and asked if we were interested in meeting some of our neighbors who were going to start a Van Rijn Militia to protect our neighborhood.  You know, from creepy people in our sheds and stuff like that.  Well we were getting ready to move down by the river, so we opted out.

Then the other day we were down there, by the river, talking to one of the builders.  I think it was Tron Plank.  He told us about this bankruptcy in Fauxmont.  This guy who owned the SnazE franchise had lost everything.  They were foreclosing on his property, a while back, and he disappeared. Well, he was a friend of Tron’s Dad, Werner. I mean the Planks had built this guy’s house, and you know, got to know him. I think it was a real big one too.

Well, Tron thinks that his dad helped this guy disappear for a while.  He heard a story that this guy had spent some time on a friend’s boat, down at the marina in DC, and also spent one night in a shed. So that gave me the creeps. I asked him if he knew Frans, and he did.  He was really surprised that we knew him too. Then he was even more surprised when I told him about our shed.  He wouldn’t say any more after that, and said he had to go.”

Paula shrugged.

“That’s about it I guess.”

By the time Paula finished, the waiter had come by numerous times to get our order, which Lou had not placed in advance as he usually did.

Paula kept talking, pausing only for breath, telling Lou and me all this in the H Bar, over a glass of ice water, a paper placemat, and some menus.  Lou had introduced me as his old friend, and Paula seemed so comfortable with Lou she didn’t hesitate after that.

“You know, I seem to remember talking to Liberty about someone visiting out in California.”

“Oh … Well, it could have been Mom.”

“Paula didn’t you know that your mother was visiting Gale Trip, when she went out West?”

“Oh yes, that sounds right!

“Okay, do you know Liberty then?”

“Ah, we might have met, I forget. Who are the Trips anyway? It was just a name, you know.  Mom knows a lot of people.”

“Paula, Gale’s husband, Jake Trip, is the guy who went bankrupt in Fauxmont.”

“Oh, Wow! Was it him?”

“It was. Do you remember the name, Frans Banning Cocq, is that who came out to look at your shed?”

“Right, that’s it, really strange name.”

The waiter is looking at Paula, who has picked up a menu.

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 broken couch is alive with stains.  Long dried, but visible under a light coating of dust, and visually energetic in Artie’s studio above the Cavendish Pie Shop.  The back of the couch has separated from the arms. It is sprinkled with thick white plaster dust and supported by the wall behind. Steve removes a paint clotted towel from the nearest cushion to find a protected spot.  He looks at faint remains of the monogram in a flourishing script.  “Hotel Ducasse.”

“When did you swipe this thing, Artie?”

Artie shrugs, wiping plaster dust off the seat of an old chair for bel to sit on.  A narrow box across the back holds scrapers and a hammer with handles sticking up over the end.

Steve sits on the edge of the cushion, leaning forward to avoid getting powdered.

“Where is Bounder?’

“He and Cangiante are down stairs.”

“This looks like an old church chair.”

“It is bel.  Got it at a yard sale.”

“You are supposed to have your hymnal and Bible in back there.”

“Those are tools for worship, mine are tools for dreaming.”

“Do you think dreams mean anything Artie, or are they just random eventsin the brain?”

“I don’t think they are meaningless, Fred.”

“You know, people denied their dreams in experiments, start hallucinating.”

“Yes, it is thought to be an integrative process.”

“That’s right Fred, but no one knows much about it.”

“Well, they are so amorphous and stuff appears and disappears…who knows what’s going on.”

“Steve, I must be hallucinating now! A cat’s head just appeared up in that hole in the wall.”

Artie’s railwayman’s cap and navy-blue tea shirt are also powdered white and her hair around the base of the cap looks dowsed with confectioner’s sugar. She tips her cap and powder smokes down her back as she looks up.

“Don’t you remember Fred, that’s Sfumato?  Oooops! Now she’s gone back to the Pie Shop.”

“How could I forget?”

“She won’t come down until I am through Fred…The other two will lick the dust if I keep them here.”

“So, what are you up to?”

“I was standing on the back of the couch Steve, so as to sand up there on that wall.”

“How about a step ladder?”

“They borrowed it downstairs…seemed quicker to step up there on the back.”

“Well yes, but now you have a busted couch.”

“You’re sitting on it, aren’t you Steve?”

“Yes, very carefully, and you notice Fred is sitting on that thing over there.”

“That thing was molded, a nice smooth accurate model of the space inside an empty bucket!”

“A solid piece of space!”

“A volume Steve, rendered in plaster…coated with resin.”

“You might have used a transparent medium.”

“That’s interesting, Steve.”

“I am thinking of being able to see dust particles floating in it.”

“It might work too, but that wouldn’t look so solid, and also, I was using the plaster to fix the wall back there.”

She gestures further back into the studio, where we have never been. As if pushing air down the passage with the flat of her hand.

“You mean you made too much?”

“I was interrupted Steve, when I saw Cangiante licking the dust off her fur.  So, I asked Mrs. Rutherford if she could hang out with Bounder in back of the Cavendish.”

“With all that food? Is that sanitary?

“No bel, you know, out in the shed where they park the van.”

“We didn’t see him when we came in.”

Artie fingers the ribbed paper dust mask hanging around her neck from its thin elastic thread.

“Someone probably had him out on a walk.”

“What are you working on now?”

“Ah…” She kicks some used sandpaper from under foot.

“Well…that wall.”

She regards the wall quietly for a moment and then,

“…until you all dropped in.”

Bel gets up from her chair, groping for the handles of her bag on the floor without looking away from Artie.

“Yes, well, do you want to get back to work?”

“No, that’s okay bel.”

Bel sits down again, now looking for the handles she didn’t find.  Her ring tones sound like a Barred owl in the room. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRPYpklhiA)

“Are you preparing for a mural?”

“No Fred.”

“Well, I mean, what are you doing that wall for?

Sfumato’s tortoiseshell head has appeared again, Cheshire-like, rubbing her whiskers against the outer edge of the dark rectangular opening left by the old vent.

“The walls need patching and painting and I need something to do.”

Steve gets up and stands by Artie and they look at the high wall behind the couch together.

“What is it, about fifteen feet?”

“Yeah it is half an inch lower above the door than it is at the corner.”

“Looks like stuff has been torn out up there.”

“Don’t know what that was, but I took off a layer of yellow paint and another of gray before hitting the plaster…this is all old-fashioned plaster and lath.  See that bulge over there?”

We can see a bulge where her work bench meets the other wall, and doesn’t fit snug against it.

“Looks like the wall is giving out.”

Bel looks up from her phone.

“Artie, we haven’t seen you since the Caillebotte exhibition.”

“That long? When was that?”

“Back in 2015 Fred.”

Steve looks at Artie with his head to one side.  She pushes the ‘Shopvac’ with her foot, and it rolls over by the door.

“I’ve been up here a few times since then, during the mouse war.”

“Yeah, those two cats were raising hell in here all night.”

“I remember when we were looking at the catalogue downstairs in front of the shop.”

“Right Fred, I have been doing some dream work since then.  Since I got so pissed off.”

“Pissed off about what Artie?”

“Let’s not go there.  Any way I was teaching a course at PU last year.”

“So, Frank Vasari found you too!”

“Like I said, I am not going there…You know dream work?  I mean you ever do any Steve?”

“Bel has, I haven’t.”

“I was reading Carl Jung at the time, and started writing them down.”

“Did you find out anything?”

“Well Artie, I wrote down about sixty of them over three months, never did get to an interpretation.”

“Writing them down is an interpretation!”

“I guess it is Artie.”

“Sure, think about it.”

“Yeah, think of all the nonverbal stuff…I mean dreaming is a kind of experience, like art.”

Steve is pulling on his beard.

“When you can remember it.”

“Well, right! … I have written some, and drawn some and even did some work in plaster.”

“Plaster?”

“I used plaster dust Fred.”

“What?”

“Think of this; Goya spreads pigment and oil on a piece of woven flax and makes you think you are looking at the duke of Wellington.  It is not the duke.  Yet the image of his face is there…that illusion, that transformation is kind of dreamlike, don’t you think?”

“Well, I guess.  Maybe that’s why it was stolen. I am not sure I get it though.”

“Not just that painting…”

“Yeah, art messes with identity”

“…and appearance, Steve.”

“Sure, it does bel. If you look at it one moment, and think paint and see only paint and then the next instant you see, and think of Wellington and Waterloo…”

“Right Artie, or look at Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington, any portrait, or any rendering.”

Steve keeps walking around, looking at the floor Artie had cleaned up. Now he is standing by bel.

“Aren’t we really talking about perception?”

Artie and bel both speak at once, then we all fall silent.  Bounder is barking down stairs, and a plane goes over with its engine note rising.  Artie opens the door and looks down into the shed for Bounder.

“Can we see some of your plaster work?”

She steps back across the threshold.

“This whole room got a dustcover. It was kind of dreamlike, kind of dry granular fog too.”

“Do you have any of your granular fog work up here Artie?”

“Sure, it will turn your thoughts into cobwebs!”

Artie walks back down the hall to the right of her bench and the window. Bel stands up and starts to comment on some small white objects on the bench, but stops as Artie comes back.

Artie has something covered in gray and white on a board. Plaster particles rise into a sun beam like a cloud of gnats, as she puts it down in front of the window.

“What’s under there Artie?”

“Fred, that’s the question of interpreting this coincidence.”

We are crowding around the bench, pressing closer and closer together.

“Well, I think there is a framed photograph and some kind of box.  See there, they aren’t quite covered by the cloth or dust.”

Bel goes on, identifying an old transistor radio and points out traces of yellow in gray.

“There’s a book I think.”

Steve bends down, looks closer, and gently lifts a corner of the cloth just an inch.

“I can read the title from here Fred, it’s John Ashbery’s, Hotel Lautréamont.”

A lump of dust falls from the cloth and disintegrates into a tiny cloud. More falls through the cheese cloth’s open weave as he lets go.

“Well, no one can read it now!”

He straightens up awkwardly and staggers as he turns to Artie, but regains his balance.

“Okay Artie, I think these things were on your bench when you started on the walls, right?”

“You’ve got it Steve!”

“That’s yellow and gray you mentioned before!”

“Right bel, and I draped the cheese cloth over stuff for protection.”

Artie is standing back with her arms folded watching us look at her granulated dream work, settled on the bench.

“So, this was all an accident, right?”

“Right bel, I looked back at the bench after standing up on it, to reach above the window, and found all that.”

“Yeah, look!  You left a foot print!”

“Only one though, Fred.”

“Have you looked up what dreams mean…like water means this or flying means that?”

“Yeah, tried it, but none of the theories hold up.”

“Only the dreamer can tell what her dream means.”

“and only sometimes bel.”

“I was sanding the walls.  I was pissed off and distracted…I mean that’s what got me into to dream work in the first place. You know, I didn’t have anything else to do.”

“That’s what we were talking about before Artie.”

“Right, I was up against it at that point.”

I step aside to look at another part of the bench. Find a soup bowl discernable with a wrench and screwdriver, and Zippo lighter, under their blanket of plaster, and awakening to recognition.  A small empty can next to it, maybe the soup can, has been reduced to a white cylinder. What might be a watch, with broken strap, and other small objects lie incognito, next to the bowl, under yellow and gray powder.

Artie picks up a small hand-held electric fan and a piece of cardboard, and blows dust gently into small clouds.  Enough comes up to make us all cough, without dust masks.  Steve walks away from the bench.

“White nightmare!”

“Sorry about that everyone.”

Artie switches off the fan. The objects have dissolved into a solid mass under the settling particles, as if it had snowed all night. Then with a few skillful swipes of the cardboard, the side of a watch, and the ends of the wrench and screwdriver come clean and easy to identify.

“Are you dreaming yet Fred?”

“Yeah, the timepiece and tool handles must mean something!”

“It is all physics Fred, air, motion, direction, turbulence, etc.”

Bel is shaking her head at Steve.”

“I think that’s too reductive.”

“Isn’t that what is going on here?”

“That’s only the mechanism…”

“I see Artie, like the lump in the bucket.”

“Dr. Hollis says the content of a dream is like a call to central casting from the unconscious.”

“What is that supposed to mean bel?”

“Fred, if you say you dreamed of a rabbit, you have identified the actor, not the part he is playing.”

“Who is Hollis anyway?”

“He is a Jungian analyst.  I went to a series of his talks on dream interpretation.”

Steve is standing behind bel, looking over her shoulder at the objects Artie brought in, arranged on a board like a still life in hiding.  First, he lifts his glasses above his eyes, then looks again with them on.

“Trying to identify those objects, is like trying to recall something.”

“Trying to recall a dream Steve.”

“Okay Artie, that’s the experience!”

103 Eclipse

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.

It is a stretch, but Daisy finds me on my way out of the Safeway.  She is talking to someone behind the office window. I did not notice her as I passed close by, to avoid a shopping cart loaded with two children and a huge watermelon. Without looking up, she puts out an arm strewn with bracelets, and pulls on my shirt-sleeve. I wait for her between the video rental machine and a kiosk for renting carpet-cleaning equipment.  Looking over at the newspapers displayed on their wire racks, headlines say that Armond Macadamia has called the president a Nazi and the President has called Armond Macadamia a Terrorist and Xi Jinping has called them both dangers to world peace and stability. The kids in the shopping cart are now calling for their mother’s attention near the sandwich counter.

Daisy steps away from the office.

“I have lost my password for the ATM.”

“Ouch! Were they any help?”

“Not really, I was hoping someone might have found my yellow sticky.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it was in my hat band with the password written on it.”

She puts her bowler back on, having taken it off to talk to the office person.

“You didn’t write what it was for as well did you?”

“Well, sort of…”

“Sort of what?”

“It had ‘Amy’ on it.”

“The woman’s name, you mean?”

“Right, I call the ATM Amy…It’s a long story…”

“It’s not a dead give-away, at least.”

“It is probably swept up by now.”

“Yes, if you lost it here.”

“I may have lost it at the Guild’s Board meeting last night.”

“You would have noticed. You always have something in your hat band.”

“Things got pretty heated, and I dropped it on the way out.”

“How horrible!”

“I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

“I noticed you had nothing in the band last month when we were in the Pie Shop with Lou.”

We are walking out of the building.   Daisy is draped in a loose pink silky garment with countless folds cascading down her torso.  A breeze fills it out for a moment as we go through the exit.

“I know … a shopping list … Threw it away when I had bought everything.”

Steve Strether and Diddlie are in animated conversation outside in the heat of the parking lot.  I can hear Diddlie from a distance.

“It’s a palace Coup!”

We get close enough to join them.  Steve is patiently stroking his beard and letting Diddlie talk on and on, so fast she is breathlessly dropping syllables on top of each other.

“How c’d-they-d’this?  How c’d-they-take-our-Guil-dover?”

“They were the ones elected back in the spring, you know, at our neighborhood meeting.”

“By whom Steve?  I didn’t vote for any of them.”

“I voted by proxy.”

“Who did you give it to Fred?”

“You, Diddlie.”

“You did not.  I didn’t have it.”

“Well, I put it in your mail box a few days before the election because

I couldn’t make it to the neighborhood meeting.”

“My mailbox?”

“Right, in the evening after the mail was delivered, otherwise the mailman will throw it out.”

“Oh great, the evening we had five inches of rain in about five minutes and my box and carport got washed out!”

“Yes, it did rain that night.”

“So Fred, we have you to thank for this mess!”

“Diddlie, my one lost vote did not determine the elections.”

“Every vote counts Fred.”

“How is Mr. Liddel?  I mean his hutch is in the carport.”

“I had him in the living room.  He’s scared of lightning so we had the curtains drawn.”

Steve pushes his goldrimmed glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and starts easing toward the shade of the Safeway entrance.

“I still don’t think the election was sufficiently publicized.”

Diddlie hugs her soft pink leather purse, fingering the gold clasp.

“Oh, they kept it in the dark, for sure Steve!”

“Did they have a quorum?”

“A quorum was announced, Fred.”

“Well, right!  We should have demanded to see the figures Daisy!”

“We didn’t get very far with our questions about turnout.”

Steve is now a step away from us, be beckoning towards the shade.

“This is what we get for lack of interest.”

We all move under the entrance and stand away from the swinging doors.

“Right again, there was only one person running for each office.”

“A lot of new people have moved in too.”

“I know Steve, the ones in those obscene new McMansions don’t have time for us, and we are their neighbors!”

“Diddlie, who is on the board now anyway?”

Diddlie opens the clasp on top of her purse and works her fingers among its contents, pulling up bits of paper and pushing them back down again. Her voice softens and she seems to be talking into its light brown jaws.

“Ah … I know Rank Majors left because he can’t stand Dick East or Joel McAllister.”

She pulls out a sheet of paper folded in half, and shakes it open to read in a single gesture.

“Here you are, got this as an email attachment; Albrecht Intaglio, President, Boyd Nightingale, Vice Pres. Dick East, Treasurer, and Westwood, ‘Westie’ North is Secretary”

“What about Joel McAllistair?”

“Ah Steve … Oh, he is representative for West Wicket Street.”

“And the other streets?”

“Daisy, there’s no one listed.”

“Where are the women?”

Diddlie waves the sheet of paper in the air.

“No one came forward! Can you believe it Daisy?”

She waves the paper so hard it tears.  Steve puts his hand on Diddlie’s arm to calm her.

“No wait a minute … Marshall Rundstedt … he’s a representative too.”

Diddlie scans the paper again.

“He’s not on here!’

“Well, I remember he was there as a Rep.”

“I know Daisy, see!  That jerk, Dick East can’t keep track.”

“This needs to be fixed!”

“It sure does Steve.”

“Those are not official minutes though, Diddlie.”

“That’s right, they’ll have to be approved at the next meeting.”

“Wait a minute Steve, Marshall doesn’t live in Fauxmont.  He lives outside our system. They are on city water, not ours.”

“I know Fred, but he owns a couple of rental properties.”

“Oh, does he?”

“He bought one about 2014 on Wicket and another on Bails Lane, just last year.”

“How do you know all this Diddlie?”

“Because Fred, I keep track of that stuff for News Letter distribution.”

“Oh I forgot about that.”

“Don’t you read it?”

“I don’t get it.  Haven’t seen one for a year or more.”

“Fred, maybe you are down for online distribution.”

“I can check when I get home Daisy, and I’ll get back to you Fred.”

“You know who else is missing from that list?”

“Ah … no, who?

“That militia guy, kind of a shadowy figure, ah … what’s his name?”

“Oh right, Kemp Rombout.”

“That’s it Daisy, I think he was sergeant of the Night Watch over on the Van Rijn Estate, now he’s in the Fauxmont Militia.”

“Well, he doesn’t live here Steve!”

“He’s around though, I remember that SOB for kicking me out of the area when there was talk of a severed limb down in the gully.”

“Sorry Fred, he’s renting one of Marshall’s places.”

“Yeah, he came with his AR15 automatic rifle.”

“Daisy, you are well up on your weaponry!”

“I know Fred, I asked him what it was.”

“Why did he bring that to the Guild meeting?”

“Same reason Joel McAllistair brought his old 38 revolver and Albrecht had his automatic.”

“What do you mean Steve?  There is no reason!”

Daisy puts an arm around Diddlie’s shoulders.

“They are afraid, Diddlie!”

“Afraid?  Afraid, here in Fauxmont?  Afraid of what?”

Daisy drops her arm, and grabs Diddlie’s hands in hers.

“Afraid of themselves of course. Bel, explained it to me years ago, they are scared shitless!”

“Well, they better shoot each other then!”

“No-no-no. It’s their sacred delusions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Darkness.”

“What?”

“Their own inner darkness.”

“Daisy, I know you are an artist and all that, but sometimes you get so deep, I think you have drowned!”

Diddlie breaks loose of Daisy’s hands.

“Well anyway, I think we need to be nice to them.”

“Okay Daisy, I know you and Boyd had a thing…”

“We did.”

“So don’t you see? You can’t baby them out of it!”

“That is not what I am saying.  I mean we must treat fearful people carefully.”

“Well I treat them for what they are.  Stupid immature men, like little boys playing with danger.”

“Diddlie, we need to talk some other time.”

“So, what do you want to tell me?”

“I’ll tell you this. Joel showed me the empty chambers in his revolver!”

Diddlie looks at the ground with a sigh.

“Daisy, I never realized you had such an interest.”

“Fred, she is just trying to keep the peace with… with … those JERKS!”

Steve steps forward to get my attention.

“Fred, they are protecting the meeting.”

“Steve, we don’t need their protection thank you!”

Diddlie shoulders her purse, steps towards Steve, and grabs his wrist and shakes it, while looking up into his face.

“Steve, will you stop making excuses?”

“I wasn’t entirely serious Did.”

She releases his wrist.

“Well okay, but this is serious business.”

Daisy is twirling a length from the curtain of her black hair.

“I can’t imagine Hank Dumpty, who has been on for 20 years, living with that.”

“No Daisy, I remember when he left, after bel Vionet lost the last election to Albrecht.”

“Yup, and Lou wanted to take a break too, as he has been serving on and off in various capacities for about as long.”

“How long have you served Fred?”

“The only thing I have done is serve on a nominating committee.”

Diddlie has folded her paper up and put it back in her purse.

“Fred, that was years ago!”

Daisy is pointing over to the Lighthouse Gas Station.

“Look! Is that Jake’s Hummer?”

They are lifting the old wooden oil derrick onto a flatbed truck with a telescoping yellow crane.

“See the plate number, 2 SnaZ. It is parked by that stack of old tires.”

“Yes but, I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Steve, I’ve got things to do!”

Diddlie walks away and goes quickly into the Safeway.

“I have to go too.”

Daisy walks over towards the gas station.  The sun has gone behind a small cloud.  There are a few drops of rain in the air as Steve and I head across the parking lot for home.

“Seems darker than it should be from a cloud that size.”

“Must be the eclipse, Fred.”

Steve is tapping his phone.
“Right on time, it is 2:42PM!”

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.

Mrs. Rutherford has rearranged the Cavendish Pie Shop with legendary fire. Daisy sits alone at one of two antique black wooden tables, with three high back chairs on each side. They fill the middle of the room with marble and ebony. Six winged dragons crouch down by her legs. These are the Wyvern variety, less lizard, more bird, balanced on their tails curled underneath in back and two legs with avian claws gripping the leaf and scrollwork in front. The weight they support bows their heads. Their breath is painted gold, but flaking off, and flows like a beard down toward the floor in a broken scorch. Daisy looks unmoved by the drama. Her long folded arm extends across the brown marble tabletop, with a fist digging into her cheek to hold up her head. Her thick hair is pushed back behind her shoulders like a short spreading cape. I sit down opposite, careful not to knock my shin on a folded dragon wing. A feather tip is chipped off showing not ebony, but a pale yellowish brown. The dome of Daisy’s bowler rises on the table between us, a dense soft black without the usual orange post-it note alight in the band.

She yawns.

“Excuse me Fred…”

“Late night?”

“I find the heat soporific,” yawns again.

“Ah, ‘soporifique’!”

“Oui, c’est ça…”

“Try some coffee.”

“Fred, did you hear, we lost another neighbor?”

“No, you mean departed?”

“Yes, moved on, not away.”

“On up?”

“… or down, who knows, Fred?”

“Depends what you believe.”

“I guess it is there if you do.”

“If you can!”

“I can’t think there’s a here-after, only a here.”

“ ‘So brief,’ as they say.”

“Oh really? Not so brief if you are in pain!”

“No, but you know what happens when you’re having fun?”

“Yeah, Fred, when life stops sucking, it can blow by like a sign on the freeway.”

“Not easy to read, those signs,”

“… or stay on the road.”

“Well, depends whose road.”

“It’s all a matter of choices.”

“If you can find them; I mean some people don’t seem to have much choice.”

“Yup, in the end none of us have a choice.”

“Well, then we’re talking about attitude.”

“If you are alive to it, Daisy.”

“I choose my own road; even if it leads to PU.”

“An artist must!”

“No, you can follow some one else. There’s plenty of derivative art around.”

“Right Daisy, there is always tradition under any road.”

“Frank Vasari calls it; “That Toad tradition, cold dead weight, or lively liquid eye.’ ”

“Is that original?”

“Don’t know for sure; I mean its been said in many ways, but I haven’t heard it said like that before.”
“So what artists do you like?”

“Depends when you ask.”

“I am asking today.”

“Today, Giotto, Velasquez, and Monet, and don’t forget Chartres and sometimes Rouault.”

“How about this time?”

“Ahh, he’s kind of on the threshold today.”

“Well, you might say they’re alive right now.”

“Seen with a lively liquid eye!”

“So, who were we talking about?”

“Diddlie told me it was old Ramsay.”

“We won’t see Mr. Ramsay at the Light House Gas Station again.”

“Fred, he will never be more than ninety nine.”

“A corpse is a corpse.”

My ‘small’ earl-gray tea steams, scenting the air with bergamot.

“Diddlie is always in the know!”

“Fred! Diddlie has been in on everything ever since I first met her.”

“Lou once called her, ‘mother of the neighborhood’.”

“It is like she knows stuff just before it happens.”

“Well, she does know every one.”

Daisy, sits up, puts he hand down from her face and looks at the back of her hand for a moment in silence.

“Some times I think she is on to something.”

“You mean something mystical in Diddlie?”

“Well, what to call it?”

She fingers her hat, pulling it an inch this way and that.

“Her intuitions?”

“It is hard to say…just a feeling really, some times when I am with her.”

“A woman of many parts, is Diddlie.”

“This thing, I mean Ramsay…is getting to me.”

“I didn’t know he was sick.”

Daisy holds up an arm to shake her multiple bracelets down her forearm from where they gathered at her wrist.

“Oh God! I got this letter from him about two weeks ago. I mean I was flabbergasted!”

“I wonder why he didn’t just call you.”

“I don’t know…it is pathetic, sickening and mainly confusing … now the old man is dead, I feel terrible about my attitude.”

“Well, he was pretty obnoxious in his day.”

“Yes he was, but that letter was so maudlin…I think he must have known he was about to go…”

“A last communication of his love and passion!”

“Oh please! “

“Sorry, I wasn’t…”

“Okay, okay…he opens with ‘Don’t get between a dragon and his fire.’ or something like that.”

“A quotation?”

“I looked it up…No, it was: ‘Come not between the dragon and his wrath.’”

Google says it is from Shakespeare’s King Lear.”

“Another troubled old man.”

“He dragged on and on, and then there’s this check for five thousand dollars enclosed.”

“I am getting a glimmer of your position.”

“Yes, and don’t confound me with Ophelia!”

“No, none of that!”

Daisy drains her ice tea, with a glacial rattle of melting cubes. She puts down the tall pale blue paper cup.

“You know, he is the reason I wasn’t evicted!”

“How bizarre!”

“To say the least.”

“Had he been sending you checks all along?”

Daisy’s bracelets move between the fingers of her free hand, as if she is counting them on the abacus of her forearm.

“No, he paid the trustees in my bankruptcy through an intermediary, a company or something. I couldn’t imagine who it was.”

“Must have been quite a surprise.”

“Embarrassing, would be more like it.”

“At least you didn’t have to hit the road.”

“No, I was kind of psyched for it though…well in a way.”

Daisy shakes her head and lets her hair fall in two long dense curtains down each side of her face.

“Well! Well! Well!

High thigh-cut shorts, two navels, and four breasts, pillowing in SnazE sports bras, move through the opening glass doors.

“Quite a distraction!”

“Fred, I thought you were a grown up.”

“I regress.”

Cargo shorts, snaking blue veins, thick tanned legs and heavy shoulders follow in and wait at the counter while the women place orders. Daisy waves to him, with her jingling bracelets moving around he arm.

“Lou Waymarsh!”

He is talking to the two women, but looks over at Daisy and waves back.

“Those are the del Sarto twins.”

“Oh, don’t know them Daisy.”

“They grew up in Fauxmont. One is Andrea, I forget the other one.”

“Are they high school or college?”

“Oh, I don’t know, college age…I guess.”

I look up to catch Lou’s short-sighted eye, as he turns around from the counter.

He holds up his coffee as if toasting his guests.

“Looks like Lou kept up with the family.”

“He bought the family property when they left…around two thousand perhaps.”

“But Lou has lived here thirty years or more.”

“Right, his first place was on Maxwell Avenue.”

“That’s right! I had forgotten, I remember visiting them there.”

The del Sarto twins stand with their backs to the counter. Holding their iced drinks in one hand and phones in the other, waiting for Lou. He pays and goes out with the twins and sees them into a car. He unexpectedly comes back and sits down next to Daisy. Mrs. Rutherford walks over.

“You need this hon.?”

“I could do with it in fact!”

“Well so could I hon.”

She puts his platinum SnazE Visa card down in front of him.

“Let me sign you up…they have an online special this week. I’ll get points and you’ll get discounts!”

Mrs. Rutherford has gone before he finished.

“Interesting company you keep Lou.”

“Maria and Andrea start as interns at my old shop tomorrow.”

“Is that what they wear to job interviews?”

“No Fred, they were at a weekend activity. I was chauffeur.”

“They could be my students at PU.”

“Daisy, it is great experience for them. Nice and close too, near St. George’s Church, you know that office building?”

“Sure Lou, what are they doing, delivering mail?”

“No Daisy, Maria is working in the PR department and Andrea is helping in attire.”

“Attire? When did the Fib. get into Tux. rentals?”

“Its advisory, part of protocol, you know, State Department contract.”

“Some times I think we are ruled by contractors!”

“They can only do what they are told, Daisy.”

Daisy shakes the ice in her empty cup looking at Lou in silence.

“What are you teaching out at PU Arts Center Daisy?”

“Frank has me doing a stained glass course, Lou and two drawing classes, so far at least.”

“Did you know Frank Vasari?”

“Not really, I met him at one of Artie’s openings I think…any way I recognized him at the interview. Doubt if he recognized me.”

“Enjoying it?”

“Well, I am trying to Lou, trying to like it.”

“Any experience?”

“I did a class at a frame shop about 25 years ago.” She yawns.”Oh sorry…”

Lou leans back, takes off his glasses and starts cleaning them in his lap with the bottom of his T-shirt.

“‘Soporifique’, I see the subject is having its effect!”

“I think Frank hired me because Boris’s agent, ahh, what’s his name?”

“Oh, Gloriani?”

“Yes, Gloriani, apparently Gloriani saw my designs for the Trip house.”

Lou leans forward still without his glasses on.

“What, Frank hired you sight unseen?”

“Lou, Gloriani has all the influence money can buy out there.”

“You mean at PU?”

“Yes, he and Frank are building a little empire around Boris Tarantula.”

Lou sips his coffee. A diesel is ticking over outside, close by, then you can’t hear anything above grinding gears and air breaks and a metallic squeal as a truck starts backing up to the Safeway loading dock. When it switches off, a spoon’s rhythmic click, in a hot mug at the opposite table stirs the new quiet.

“Have you heard Mr. Ramsay died?”

“We were just taking about that Lou.”

“He made a bequest to the PU Arts Center.”

“NO!”

“What’s the matter Daisy?”

“How do you know Lou?”

“It came out when they read his will. I was there, in the Heisenberg Rooms. He had a big stake in one of Macadamia’s funds and it all went to PU Arts.”

“Oh…”

“I wonder what will happen to the Light House Gas station?”

“I don’t know Fred … I mean, who is handling the estate?”

“Did he live alone?”

“I don’t think so Fred, but I don’t know who he lived with. His wife died years ago and the kids are grown and gone.”

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 Vionnet is standing in the street outside her house, as I walk up. She leans against the car to talk to her husband through the driver’s side window, then looks up to greet me. Steve waves me over to the car.

“You hear about Gordon Byron’s speech at PU?”

“No, what about it?”

“You know, the riot.”

“Oh yes, I did see it on TV, something about political protest out there.”

“Well, he is now Macadamia’s full time flack, and the speech was canceled because of violence.”

“Canceled!”

“Yup, announced last night.”

“So they shut the facility?”

“Fred, you might suppose that university students would welcome a challenging speaker.”

“Was it really the students do you think, bel?”

“Looks like it.”

Steve is shaking his head.

“I still suspect agents provocateurs!”

“Byron should be refuted not silenced, let alone by a mob.”

Bel steps closer to me, touching my elbow.

“He is going over there to support Gordon’s right to speak … not that we have much time for what he has to say!”

“You mean there’s a counter demonstration?”

“No, no, it will be an old fashioned teach-in and there will be a petition to sign.”

“Who’s organizing it Steve?”

“Its an ad hoc group called “Speech Therapy”.

Bel, is looking at Steve, and shaking her head.

“Yes, Steve found it on Face Book, or something.”

I didn’t see Albrecht in the back seat until now. He opens the door.

“Yo! Fred, get in. The great man should be heard!”

“Yeah Fred, why don’t you go along?”

“Okay bel, aren’t you coming too?”

“Well, I wasn’t … ”

“Come on bel, get in!”

“Okay Steve, okay then, let me go lock up the house.”

Steve gives me a thumbs-up, as bel walks over to the door.

“Thanks Fred, you made the difference!”

I get in back with Albrecht and bel soon returns to get in front next to Steve. We drive off in silence toward the PU campus past the physics department only a few blocks from their oasis, the H-bar, and then get stuck in traffic.

“Have you still got those kittens?”

“We have Fred. The cat family has taken over our bedroom and we sleep in the guest room.”

“But the cats are your guests.”

“She doesn’t see it that way. Besides she is a single Mom!”

“It has been her room ever since the storm.”

“Steve, it was the first room she ran into.”

“I can’t approach her.”

“No, Steve is the big threat around our feline house!”

“You can expect strife if you take in refugees.”

Steve drums on the steering wheel impatiently, waiting for the open trailer in front of us to move, loaded with lawn mowers, rakes, blowers, weed whackers and other equipment.

Albrecht is reading some papers and looks up.

“Say folks, I really appreciate this you know.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Steve, I know we are kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum on a lot of things.”

“All the more reason to talk, don’t you think?”

“Well sure … ”

“I support civil society, where we discuss our differences.”

“On the other hand Steve, we have to get people involved you know… get them off the couch and out of their apathy … and you know when emotions ran high those liberal students turned violent.”

“If they did, it is disgraceful!”

“Remember what Jefferson told us?”

“What’s that Albrecht?”

“Fred, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Bel turns around and looks at Albrecht.

“Do you take that to justify what went on?”

“Think about Shays’ rebellion.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion)

“Oh I have, and in Jefferson’s letter to his buddy, he attributed the rebellion to ignorance not wickedness.”

“Well, that’s one interpretation.”

“That’s not interpretation. In fact, those were his words.”

“Okay, but facts don’t matter. As I keep telling you Liberals, what matters, is what people believe.”

“Albrecht, people believe all kinds of nonsense!”

“There you go! That’s just Liberal condescension!”

“Albrecht, please don’t take it personally.”

“Steve, it sure sounded condescending to me.”

“Albrecht, I apologize.”

“Thank you … People vote on what they believe, and that is what it is all about. The rest is just idle philosophizing.”

“But Albrecht, we are giving you a ride out of principle. That is no idle thing.”

“No it isn’t and I appreciate your kindness, but principles aren’t getting you liberals majorities in Congress or the presidency.”

“Albrecht, do you really think principle doesn’t matter?”

“Not much bel.”

“Have you forgotten about gay rights already?”

“No I haven’t.”

“Where do you think you and Boyd would be without that big push?”

“We would be screwed, but we did that for ourselves, as much as anything.”

“You better not forget the Democrats!”

“Bel, I wish I could! Those peace loving elite liberal students are supposedly knowledgeable, and they got violent.”

“They should know better.”

“They perceive a threat from Macadamia.”

“Albrecht, it was mindless!”

“Your words, not mine!”

“The real students are studying, Albrecht.”

“That may be bel, but elites never hesitate to preserve their privileges, and by God, our movement is going to wipe them off the scene!”

“You mean your side is just as violent?”

“Bel, violence is part of politics you know. That’s why I carry a weapon.”

“Albrecht, the idea is to change administrations peacefully.”

We move up about two car lengths, and see flashing lights ahead.

“Oh great! a traffic stop for us all.”

Bel rubs the back of Steve’s neck.

“There’s the siren honey.”

The siren gets louder and the trailer ahead pulls to the right. Steve tries to follow but there isn’t room to get all the way out of his lane. We can see an Ambulance coming up behind, lights flashing in the rear view mirrors.

“Okay, can any one see if there is room for them to get by?”

The ambulance is close, its siren screams. The car is uncomfortably hot and humid, with the windows open.

An SUV moves over parallel to us. We look up into its windows reflecting the sun back at us. Deep treads in the big rear tire are packed with clay less a few inches from the window. A twig fragment sticks from the side casting a minute shadow on the unmoving tire. Albrecht opens the door and stands outside looking over the roof.
“There they go!”

He gets back in.

“Should be rolling now Steve.”

We start forward slowly behind the SUV that is now in front.

“AC any one?”

“Yeah, its hotter out there than our dispute in here!”

Albrecht rolls up his window.

We are still moving slowly, and the noise of the air conditioning blowers reaches us in back before the cool air comes like a rescue.

“Look folks, what I was trying to explain to you is that the elites are through, but don’t know it yet.”

“Albrecht, you are part of the so-called elite. You went to Puberty High School, and grew up right here in Fauxmont.”

“Puberty High, was a waste of my time.”

“Did you study Albrecht?”

“No, I was pissed off with the world in general and that school in particular.”

Bel sighs.

“Well, you are grown up now!”

“I grew up when I left Fauxmont and found my kind out West!”

“Didn’t you get anything out of growing up in an artistic family here in Fauxmont?”

“Bel, the sad truth is that Dad is all wound up in his art and Mom is tangled up in him, you know?”

“Did you feel left out Albrecht?”

“I took responsibility for myself and moved on, as soon as I could.”

“So what made you come back?”

“The movement, Fred. I came back to where the action is here in the DC area.”

“Yes, you are addressing that by your activism.”

“Well thanks friend! My name isn’t Intaglio for nothing! You have to understand that Liberal condescension is behind a lot of our hard feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I just pointed out one example. I mean elite cultural condescension. Just watch PBS, all those shows feeding off nostalgia for the British upper class.”

“So what about it Albrecht?”

“So Steve, it is government subsidized Public TV, and that’s my taxes going to waste.”

Steve lifts a hand off the wheel to scratch his nose.
“Okay, you have a point, and I will pursue it when Congress stops dishing out corporate welfare.”

“Well Steve, we could get all the votes we need to stop that if the Liberals would just show some respect.”

Steve’s attention shifts to changing lanes and getting on to the highway. We all fall silent for a bit zooming along in the passing lane towards the exit for Prestige University.

“Is Boyd joining you out there?”

“He needs to wake up and wise up, Fred.”

“Oh, he disagrees?”

“I don’t know Fred, he needs to stand up like a man! I am not going to partner with a blubbering kid.”

“You mean he can’t make up his mind?”

“He made up his mind, if you can call it a mind. Now I am left high and dry!”

“Good grief Albrecht! You mean he walked out?”

“Yeah, with my foot in his ass!”

“Oh! You threw him out then.”

“He is like those week minded, so called students who have to be protected from ideas that might upset them.”

“So where is Boyd now?”

“He’s gone back to his mother’s tit.”

Bel turns around again.

“Albrecht, I am so sorry to hear this.”

Albrecht puts his hands up to the sides of his head.

“God! How disappointing!”

“Well Augie is there too, a father figure perhaps?’

“Bel, Augie is finishing up his contract with Nubile Sate, out West.”

“Don’t you think Boyd will come back?”

“He doesn’t know himself.”

“Did he find out who his father is?”

“He didn’t tell me. He needs to move on and stop sniveling in his Mama’s arms.”

We slow down with the PU campus in sight. The long approach past the playing fields is jammed with traffic. There are more police cars with lights flashing ahead. Officer Chastellux approaches us on foot having spoken to those in the car ahead. He looks into the car through Steve’s window, one hand on his side arm.

“Sir, the campus is closed.”

“Officer we have come for the teach-in at 11 AM today.”

The sun glints on his metal name-tag.

“Sir the Campus is closed.”

“What shall we do? There is no room to move.”

“Wait!”

Officer Chastellux moves 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. 

A stream flows from the north at the bottom of the hill on Bails Lane. It is hidden in shadow of the early morning sun, as I walk down hill towards Oval Street. Some one is working in a yard on the opposite slope. I see a big G, on the back of a yellow hoodie as it appears through a gap in the shrubs. The last three weeks of Fauxmont’s rain crosses under the road at the bottom. I walk over and watch translucent twists splashing among rocks eroded from the clay on the south side.

“Oh, I am trying to get this done before any one comes along.”

“Well, I haven’t seen any one but a fox and a lone cicada on a fence post, so far.”

Diddlie is working in the front yard of a vacant house. The ‘G’ Stands for Glamour College, her alma mater. She is filling a number-ten size can, all shiny with 18 ribs and eight glue spots where its label was attached. She doesn’t look up as I get nearer, but notices me even so.

“What are you doing out so early, Fred?

“Getting my morning exercise.”

“It’s not even six yet.”

“No, it is best to get out before the crowd if possible, but after dawn.”

“Well you didn’t see me doing this.”

“No, as a matter of fact I can’t see you from here when you move behind that bush.”

“You better get out of the middle of the road. People are going to work now and they speed up this hill.”

Walking over to the side of the lot, I find the house is hidden by a huge patch of goldenrod. It grows tall, behind thick hollies and some cedars smothered in Virginia creeper and wisteria.

“It is way too early for this goldenrod to be in bloom.”

“That’s why you can’t see it.”

“No, except I notice you picked some.”

Diddlie is gathering a bunch of long stems, all cut to the same length.

“Fred, you can write about this in your blog, but no one will believe it.”

“She disappears into goldenrod taller than she.”

“Why not?”

“Like you said, this stuff doesn’t bloom in May.”

The flowers on top of the plants wave as she speaks, moving through and cutting selected stems.

“Climate change might have brought it out earlier than usual.”

“Well, okay, put that in if you want.”

“Are you reading it?”

She comes out of the thicket as if coming out of a maze.

“Sometimes.”

“I see.”

Her hoodie is a little too big. She keeps pulling up the sleeves, which gradually fall down over her hands as she works.

“I have been gathering this at every opportunity ever since Stuart died.”

“In memory of him you mean?”

“Mr. Dodgson left me childless, with a house, a parrot and a white rabbit.”

“Mr. Liddell must be very old for a rabbit!”

“He is not the original Liddell. That was George.

“Oh, how old was he when you lost him?”

“About twelve I think. He lived on lettuce, kale and hay with mint for treats.”

She winds string around her collected stems, from a small plastic bag marked SnazE on the ground at her feet. She cuts it off with small scissors from a side pocket of her jeans and ties it. The bundle fits precisely into the empty can standing on a flagstone.

“That will be my hundredth can!”

“What do you buy in such bulk?”

“I don’t buy it.”

“Did someone give it to you?”

“Yes, my friend gives me these empties when she cooks her church’s charity lunches. It probably had tomatoes in it.”

Mr. Liddell is sitting inside his extensive sack-like net, which pushes his ears down but gives him some freedom of movement. He nibbles weeds under some spring shoots of Japanese honeysuckle. He walks deeper in among the stalks, but the net snags on a twig as he drags it behind. The twig is lodged among the young shoots. He starts nibbling the net. A bluejay shrieks from a branch in the Viburnums growing at the corner of the house.

“I think Mr. Liddell is gnawing through his net.”

“He can’t. It is a rabbit proof metallic thing.”

Mr. Liddell stops nibbling and turns towards me, blinks and remains still, as if waiting to disappear. Diddlie waves some of the blossoms, admiring the rich yellow.

“How about this yellow glow.”

I sneeze.

“Very bright.”

“The glow of sentience.”

“It is?”

“Can’t you feel it? That’s’ why it makes you sneeze you know.”

“I thought the pollen irritated my nose.”

Physiologically it is called ‘sternutation’, a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs.”

“You sound like a text book!”

“Stuart told me all about it.”

“About what?”

“About that, and ‘pneuma’, ancient Greek word for both, breath, and soul.”

“You mean you collect golden rod to make yourself sneeze?”

“No, it is the yellow. It has the sun in it, the same energy we embody.”

“Couldn’t you say that of any yellow flower?”

“Well, you could, but that’s because you don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“You are just thinking of color. I mean your soul, your flower, your breath, your voice vibrating in the air, your words in print, in sight.”

“Did. you are a mystic!”

“You didn’t know that did you!”

“Not until now.”

“Stuart knew many things.”

Diddlie starts deeper into the overgrown lot, leaving Mr. Liddell behind, and her can full of flowers. I follow her around the corner of the house past the Viburnums and through a tunnel of wisteria growing up over two smothered cedars, which have turned light brown for lack of light.

She stoops when we come out and picks a long stalk from a plant in the gravely ground, with two leaves at the bottom. We seem to be crossing an overgrown driveway.

“Here Fred, Lyre Leaf Sage”

She hands me a long stem with lyre shaped leaves at the bottom and some small blue flowers at the top.

“Thanks.”

“You are not supposed to be here. This is where I go to get away from you!”

“You do? Well, I better take off.”

“You can’t yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am making you up.”

“In a way … but I am making you up too.”

“So, I am leading you up the garden path?”

“You call this a path?”

“Well I keep telling you your blog has no structure!”

“Yes, you have mentioned it.”

“I mean I am turning the tables on you in your narrative.”

“You are?”

“You have to ask me for explanations here.”

“Well, I find you hard to understand.”

“So now you know what it is like.”

“What it is like?”

“You don’t know what to write until you think of me!”

“I sometimes don’t know what to write even when I do think of you.”

“Well, you better get thinking or all this will stop.”

“It won’t stop because the story extends beyond what is said in the blog.”

“You don’t know what that is. I mean that is a mystery even you can’t claim to solve.”

“I make no claims.”

“Fred, every story is like a loop of string.”

“How’s that?’

“It only goes so far then ends when the plot is tied up, so to speak.”

“Well, every story ends somewhere or there’d be no point to it.”

“That’s it. Is your blog endless? Maybe that’s the problem!”

“Its bound to end some time. I won’t live for ever.”

“Look, there are countless pieces of string and no one has ever put them all together.”

“No, that is impossible.”

“All stories start in the yellow and when you hear them told, they go back in.”

“Oh, you mean the unconscious!”

“I don’t use that kind of jargon.”

“Okay, I don’t follow you there, Did …

“That’s because I am beyond you in the yellow!”

“Well, that’s one way of putting it. Sometimes I have to wait”

“You have to wait for me!”

She waves her lyre leaf sage flower.

“This is my herbal song.”

“I can’t hear anything.”

The sun is high enough to sparkle in the stream along the property line at the bottom of the hill. We stand on the cracked cement of a moss-covered patio. There’s a steep drop off at one end, so we can see over the lichens growing on the north side of the roof below, and down towards the stream.

“Of course not! You can’t hear unutterable thoughts.”

“No, but they occur.”

“Oh don’t they just!”

“You said it was your song.”

“I am not singing though.”

“You mean that stalk your holding is singing?”

“Have you followed me into a dead end on this overgrown lot with its vacant house?”

“You tell me Did.”

“So what now?”

“Yes … I’ll stand here for a while …”

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. 

Lou swigs the last of his house-red with the stem of his glass in a loose fist, and pushes his empty plate of Lasagna aside.

This stuff is okay for the ‘Lunch Special’, but I still prefer beer.

“Yes, back to a burger, beer and fries next week.”

“Yeah, you have to opt out of this on the H-bar app. … Careless mistake.”

“They bank on our digital dizziness!”

“ ‘Bank’, is right!”

He points to the last of the three TVs that were once distributed along the length of the bar for the election.

“I thought Mr. Hoffman was going to take all those distractions down.”

“Many of us did, but some of the regulars wanted one. The night shift from PU wanted it, I think. So he has that small one up there with sound off.”

Lou is looking at the TV, which is at an odd angle for him to see clearly.

“Looks like Ensor is going to build a new place over here.”

“Are you talking about the New York building?”

“Yes, Axel Ensor’s hundred story town house.”

“What does he need all that space for?”

“Fred that’s obvious. It is a prestige thing.  To get one up on Trump Tower, only fifty eight stories, a few blocks away.”

“Yes, he can look down on it.”

“His town house is all his, no tenants no nothing!”

“He is reported to have a nine hundred person staff though.”

“If you believe Glen Gasberg’s Festival of Facts!”

“Well maybe not, but yes, I did read all about it in his new Shrinkrap feature.”

“Fred, his Festival of Facts is mainly his fantasies and opinions.”

“Mind you Lou … Opinions that many share!”

“Yes … mind seems sadly lacking!”

Mr. Hoffman is talking to Theo Tinderbrush at the bar just behind me.

“Well, I took the damn test didn’t I Banesh?”

Lou looks up at the raised voice.

“Good grief, I didn’t know it was happening today!”

“What’s that Lou?”

“Here we go … “

“What is it Lou?”

“Here comes Lark!”

He takes off his glasses and concentrates on cleaning them with his napkin. I don’t turn around, and the voices behind me remain inaudible above the chatter and clatter of the H bar at lunchtime. We didn’t go into the quieter Quark Lounge because we expected Diddlie to join us, and she doesn’t like the lounge. She finds it dark and pretentious. Lou finishes his meticulous cleaning, but doesn’t put his glasses back on. He holds the gold rims in his fingers and stares at his empty wine glass.

“Did you know Albrecht is running for president of our association again?”

“No, but I know he is still itching to get bel Vionnet out.”

Diddlie sneaks up behind Lou in her royal blue blazer with her finger up to her lips, signaling me not to betray her. She puts her hands over his eyes and blows in his ear.

Lou relaxes out of the tension of her surprise.

“Okay Diddlie, I give up. Who is it?”

“Your, Fairy Godmother, Lou!”

She tosses some oak blossom on the table and the golden pollen spills out on the deep brown, varnished wood.

“Here! Have some stardust guys! Tiny little grains of the sun’s energy.”

Lou sneezes.
“Thanks Diddlie you’re just …”

He sneezes again.

“You’re just the allergy I have been waiting for.”

“Hi Fred” She squeezes my arm as she sits in the vacant place on my right. I can feel the deliberate pressure of her knee against my leg as she looks at Lou.

“How you doing?”

Before he responds, she gets up and moves around the table to sit on my left with her back to the window.

“I don’t want to be facing the entrance.”

“You expecting trouble?”

“No, not necessarily, but I don’t want the sun in my eyes.”

She puts her foot on top of mine, the way Lambert used to do with his paw.

“No one does.”

“Well Lou, it was never a problem until they cut down those twin white oaks out in the parking lot and took away the deck with out- door tables underneath the awning. All to make more room for those damn cars.”

“Diddlie that was years ago!”

Lou it was when it was. Seems like yesterday to me, and that’s his fault!”

She points at me with her thumb while looking hard at Lou and removes her foot from on top of mine.”

“Let’s not go there … So what’s the big hold up Did.?

“Oh, wouldn’t you two like to know!”

“So tell us.”

“Ah… well sorry I am so late guys, but it was…”

“Okay Did, so you were in a tight spot huh?”

Well Hank James brought Maximillian over, and I have to keep him away from Mr. Liddell … I mean that dog is a predator!”

“Mr. Liddell has his hutch doesn’t he?”

“Yes but he likes the living room in his dotage.”

“How long will you be walking Max?”

“Hank is going to Florence, and he won’t finish up until mid June.”

She pulls an old clamshell cel phone out of her blazer pocket and looks at the side. She passes three fingers over it with slow deliberation, and puts it away, then brushes some pollen off the front of her pink silk blouse.

She straightens the sprig of golden ragwort in her lapel and checks her hair with a quick tap of her palms.

I wave to the waitress to take Diddlie’s order and notice Lark and Mr. Hoffman disappear through a door that leads upstairs to the Heisenberg Rooms.

“Have you two been talking to them?”

“Who do you mean Did.?”

“Well, you must have seen them up at the bar Lou. They were there when I came in and then they got up stood around and went upstairs.”

“You mean Theo and Lark?”

“Well, who else, Fred?”

Lou leans back and scratches the back of his head.

“We were talking, and they were too busy.”

“Oh.”

“I did hear Theo raise his voice just now.”

Diddlie orders a shrimp salad from the waitress.

“Sorry we are sold out. How about our Quasar Salad?”

“What’s that?”

“Well, its kind of a quasi salad sandwich, ah you know… ah,

like two squares of Foccacia arranged, off set, one on top of the other, kind of star shaped, with ah, arugula, papaya, cranberries, fully cooked, freeze dried chicken chips, and ah…

“Stop! Wait wait…

“Would you like a menue Ma’am?

“No, that’s okay, I’ll have coffee and a Danish.”

“Nice quick lunch Did!”

“You guys didn’t wait for me Fred, so what am I to do? Besides, it is my cheat day. God knows I’ve earned it!”

Lou stifles a laugh.

“Ah, who are you cheating on Diddlie?”

“On my weight loss program. I am nearly nine pounds over weight according to Lark’s scales and the body mass index.”

“Diddlie, you look fine, I am sure you can get away with it!”

Her coffee arrives in a mug served by a man in a turban.

“Thank you sweetie.”

“I think that’s the guy from Emperor Babur.”

“I wouldn’t know, Lou. Oh here’s my Danish!”

Diddlie picks up her Danish with rich buttery pastry and ‘Confiture d’abricots’ filling the center, as advertized. Brittle white icing cracks around the sides under her fingers. Some almond flakes fall off the crust on to her lap as she bites into the crispy edge. She puts it down on her plate and backs up her chair to get the fallen almond bits.

“I knew it was a good idea to wear my jeans!”

Lou puts his glasses back on and leans over, looking at Diddlie

with his bushy eyebrows hiding the tops of his gold rims. Bringing the five o’clock shadow on his light brown face to bear on the atmosphere between them.

“What is going on upstairs any way?”

Diddlie has her coffee mug in one hand and her partially eaten Danish in the other.

“Here Lou, you want to try this?”

He holds up a hand, palm out,

“Did. I am sweet enough already.”

“Well honey …” the apricot filling falls out of the center of her Danish

and lands on the side of her plate.

“Honey will you lean back a little? Look what you made me do!”

Lou pulls back but doesn’t change his expression.

“You can’t sweet-talk me with that pastry kid. Come on, tell us, what is going on here.”

Diddlie puts down her Coffee and the crust of her Danish, and turns to me.

“Will you listen to this guy Fred?”

‘Oh, I do. I listen all the time! He’s a man of many interesting questions.”

“Okay, okay, so what happened was. I got a call you see.”

She picks up the Danish crust and finishes it off, and goes on after swallowing hard.

“You know, I got a call this morning as I was cleaning out the Red Queen’s cage.”

“She cautiously sips some coffee.

“This stuff is cold!”

Lou stands up to get the waiter from Babur’s attention, as he passes towards us from the swinging kitchen doors.

“Thanks Lou, any way it was late this morning and it was …”

The waiter from Babur arrives with coffee.

“More coffee Ma’am?”

“Is it hot waiter? This stuff is stone cold.”

She points down into her mug.

“This is plenty hot Ma’am.”

“Great, can I have a fresh cup then, you know, if you pour that in there it’s going to get cooled off.”

The waiter walks back to the bar and brings a clean mug and fills it with steaming coffee.

“Thanks waiter … yeah, so anyway, I got this call and … Say waiter!

She stands up and shouts to the waiter of Babur again. He doesn’t turn around. Lou gets up and takes some sugar packets from a nearby vacant table and puts them down next to Diddlie’s mug.

“Here neighbor.”

“You got any cream honey?”

He gets up again and brings back creamer.

“Thanks Lou, your service is really outstanding! They ought to hire you!”

“Right, I am a waiter alright. Waiting for you to answer my question!”

“What was that honey?”

He leans forward again and gently picks up her hand.

“Diddlie, you know!”

“Well, sweetie, I don’t know if I should tell.”

“Try me, then I’ll tell you if you made a mistake.”

“She grabs his hand in both of hers.”

“You are trying me, that’s for sure!”

“Okay Did. You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you might be involved in something bigger than you think, with Lark and Theo about Boyd’s true father. I mean, don’t you think someone is missing?”

Diddlie has taken her hands back from his, and has her finger up at her mouth.

“Ah, did you get a call too?”

“Right, I sure did.”

“From Boyd?”

“No, from our favorite hotelier.”

“Oh from Mr. Hoffman, yes he is trying to help Theo out of the jam he is in with Lark and Boyd.”

“And Harper, don’t forget.”

“Harper Nightingale? What’s that creep got to do with anything? He’s gone!”

“I know, but we talked and I had some resources for him.”

“Like what Lou?”

“Oh, an old acquaintance who can facilitate this kind of thing.”

“Like who?”

“Did Harper and Lark ever divorce?”

“Lou, I am not going there. That’s between her, Augie and Harper, and Lark and no one else.”

“Okay, that’s not what I mean. Don’t you think Boyd should be told who his father is by the responsible parties?”

“Are you telling me that Harper Nightingale is here?”

Diddlie puts both hands up over her mouth.

“Lou, Theo and Harper are not going to be in that room together!”

“Aha, yes this is a complicated problem, and there is a piece missing.”

“What’s that?”

“Did. do you know if Theo took the DNA test?”

“Yes he did.”

Lou is folding one of the empty sugar packets into a tiny square. His frown line deepens and his eyebrows grow closer, with each fold. He doesn’t look up.

“So, do they have the results up there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I am guessing they do, or what is all this about?”

“Okay honey. I brought Boyd over here this morning after the call, and it took me a couple of hours, and that’s why I need this Danish … you dig?”

Lou tosses his folded sugar packet into his empty wineglass.

“Oh yes! Did any one else call you Did?”

“Well no, I mean not in this connection Lou.”

“Okay, so then what?”

“Well I’ll tell you this, Albrecht wasn’t any help … and … and, well I don’t even remember it all, but we finally walked over, and when we got here Boyd went upstairs … that’s it, I don’t know if any one else was up there. I came in here. I mean, Boyd is so mixed up … He’s mad at every body and he loves every body and he hates the whole world and wants to see Juanita, I don’t know what … I mean, who did he find up there?

“Well, Juanita Gomez was a real mother to him. I really want to stay out of this mess, but now I am sort of implicated.”

“Well looks like you weren’t invited Lou!”

“Didn’t expect to be.”

“Have you talked to Juanita, Lou?”

“No, she isn’t at Jake’s right now.”

“What about the ‘resource’, you gave Harper, are they up there?”

“Maybe…”

“Who else could it be?”

“Harper Nightingale.”

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 has started across the vast field of gray asphalt at the Hadron Shopping Center parking lot, where shiny metal heats up in the late winter sun. Oil-drips leave multi tone brown stains between the faded parallel white lines where a flattened bottle cap keeps company with a shred of squashed white Styrofoam. There seem to be fewer cars and SUVs than usual. The trees were all cut down a few years ago to make room for more parking. A new row of Cherries is in bloom, for the first time since they were planted along the street.I find Lark coming from the Ab. and Cheek Fitness Center.

Huge rectangular purple frames enclose two opaque brown lenses, which hide her eyes like blank TV screens. They are not plugged in to the currents running through the Leticia Lantern Show or Shrinkrap’s verbal pugilists, Glen Gasburg and Fulton Furay. The sky is reflected doubly. A tiny bright spot on each lens, highlights noon’s passing, while a penetrating breeze leaves her shivering under her yellow fleece.

“Are you going over to work out?”

“No Lark…”

A helicopter goes over low and loud.” … the restaurant!”

She turns around.

“Oh, anywhere to get out of this cold, Fred!”

“Let’s go down to the Emperor Babur.”

Looking down the long stairs to the Emperor’s restaurant, I notice something odd in the mirror next to the Bose Gallery. It is Daisy’s bowler with a yellow sticky in the hatband, above her long straight black coat with high collar. She is in conversation with her friend, and stands in contrast to her high cadmium-red coat, brass buttons and floral pink wrap.

“Mr. Fred!”

Indranil, the friendly manager, remembers me from my introduction by Theo Tinderbrush. Indranil has his palms together, bows slightly. A crooked upper tooth shines in the smile under his dense black moustache.

“Ms Daisy, Mr. Fred”

Indranil leads us to a table together, and one of his waiters offers us menus, but we opt for the buffet.

“Lark I hear you have a new partner.”

“Yeah, Augie.”

“So! Where is he?”

“Robin, he is a few miles outside Sacramento.”

Lark takes off her big glasses and puts them in a knitted woolen pouch hanging conveniently, by tasseled strings, outside her bag.

“What’s he doing back in California?”

“He has to finish up his contract, Daisy. He teaches English at Nubile State College.”

Robin picks up the first plate and starts down the line of chafing dishes at the buffet, skipping basmati rice in favor of Punjabi, Palak Paneer.

My Rosy Pelican beer is on the table when we sit down. Indranil stops by to ask if the others want drinks, two teas, and another beer for Daisy.

“Is there any truth to the rumor that you have a new client Daisy?”

She puts her forefinger to her lips, barely looking at me.

“Don’t go there yet. We might jinx it.”

“Are you still in your house?”

“Yeah, kind of. The roof leaks and I had to turn off the water

to the kitchen sink.”

Robin puts her fork down on her plate with a sharp sound, as if to get attention.

“My god, is that why you didn’t want me to stay? What do you do?”

“I still have the laundry tub and a bathroom.”

“We need to talk honey.”

The Fez brings the rest of the drinks. He no longer has the help of the turban. I thought he was Hispanic masquerading as Sikh, but Indranel told me he grew up Sikh in a Spanish neighborhood.

“Lark raises her cup of tea, as if in a toast.”

“Say goodbye to the ACA!”

Robin raises her teacup too.

“Yeah! Give all that money back to the taxpayer!”

Daisy sips her Rosy Pelican. Lark puts her cup down. Our table is quiet. I remember that broad shouldered round man with a walrus moustache sitting at the table opposite me. His thin white hair is combed over his bald spot in back. His sleeves ride high on his forearms. He is talking about his delay in a three-hour backup on Route One. The waiter comes to him smiling slightly under his fez. Though he has a black Hitler moustache, he is friendly, small, and rotund himself. “More water sir?”

Voices are still silent at our table.

Someone behind me is talking about a son at Berkeley.

“Herb is a straight ‘A’ student. He should have gone to Stanford.”

“Oh what a shame! My niece just graduated. She is into Bio Ethics, brilliant girl.”

“Berkeley is no longer the home of free speech you know.”

Daisy asks Robin if she is staying with Diddlie.

“No, that is no longer possible.”

“But Robin, that’s your mother in law!”

“Daisy, I don’t even want to get into it.”

Lark is looking down at her plate. She gets her sunglasses out of their pouch and puts them back on.

“You okay Lark?”

“No, Fred.”

“What is the matter?”

Lark has a fork full of butter chicken and rice in the air, half way to her mouth. A clump of rice falls back on the plate. A few grains go on the tablecloth. She says nothing at first.

The man opposite smoothes his white hair, describing an alternative route he took, to get away from Route One. His companion, sitting opposite, is nodding slowly in sympathy and her dangling earring swings like a jeweled pendulum.

“Plenty.”

Lark eats her butter chicken, without the fallen grains of rice. She faces Robin across the table with her two TV screens reflecting part of the room in miniature. The voice behind me is on about Milo Yiannopoulos.

“Well they should never have invited him to Berkeley, that creep.”

“They should have let him speak though, even if he is a nut case!”

Robin looks up at me.

“Are you people all Liberals?”

“Progressives.”

“Oh yes, Progressive government control of everything!”

Daisy is looking at Lark, who betrays nothing from behind her shades.

“Not everything Robin.”

“Daisy, Glen says, ‘the government isn’t a charity’, and I am sure you know that.”

“No, it is many things but not that.”

“So tell me this Fred, why should it be subsidizing healthcare?”

Daisy has put down her cutlery, leaving the stewed strings of her goat meat in ‘flavorful’ sauce, to congeal. She gestures broadly with her long arms. Gold and silver bracelets spread their ‘brights’ from elbows to hands.

The waiter brushes past. One of her fingers catches on the towel hanging from his arm. The towel slips and upsets his tray. The drink he is carrying spills. Daisy turns to see what has happened behind her.

“Oh NO! Sorry waiter!”

The waiter turns, and rights the glass as a few ice cubes fall on her shoulder and one tumbles on to the table. Fluid drips from the tray. The man with walrus moustache is looking over, chewing slowly. A light brown stain marks his yellow necktie, close in tone to his khaki jacket.

Indranil is at Daisy’s side.

“Are you alright ma’am?”

“Oh sure, I am so sorry. It’s my fault.”

“No problem ma’am. It is all cleaned up, right away, fast! Do you need a towel ma’am?”

“No no, I am fine, really.”

Indranil puts his palms together and bows.

“Yes ma’am.”

He looks around the table.

“Some desert ma’am?”

His smile is at full stretch.

“Sir, another Rosy Pelikan?”

“No thank you’s,” all around.

Lark looks up at him, and lifts her glasses far enough to see under the frames.

“Just fine.”

She moves her glasses back up.

“I have some eye problems.”

Indranil moves on. The Fez picks up the ice cube on our table, next to the chutney dish, and those on the carpeted floor.

“Okay, Robin, we are a rich country. So many of our people can’t afford a doctor. Well, ah, isn’t it just morally right for, for the ah, government to help out, ah, don’t you think?”

“Daisy, Glen has explained that over and over again. Don’t you listen?

“Glen?”

“Glen Gasberg! America’s favorite commentator.”

“I don’t follow him Robin, but anyway, what’s wrong with that, if it’s for people’s health?”

“Oh my God Daisy! You can get his daily commentary on Shrinkrap’s site. Honey, I mean that is all I need to know!”

“How could you say that?”

“Listen Daisy. If kind hearted people like you want to help the poor, the disabled, the sexual wierdos etc. let them do so, through Churches or independent charities.”

“Well lots of us do!”

“Well I think it is immoral to take my money away from me, against my will, and giving it to a cause I don’t believe in?”

“I don’t do all that political stuff on the internet. You think people should just die because they can’t afford insurance?”

“Listen, Glen says, ‘socialism is like the wrong cure for cancer. Yes, you are cancer free, but then cure kills you’.”

“Insurance doesn’t kill anyone Robin.”

“Glen calls socialized medicine, ‘a fungus growing on the work of others.’ “

Daisy tries to interject, but Robin goes on.

“Glen also says, ‘You lose your integrity. You lose your self-respect. You just become a dependent creature of the state’, I mean like a nothing!”

Daisy’s glance sweeps by me, and fixes on Robin, but she says nothing.

Lark lifts her glasses up a bit and looks over at Robin, who looks back.

“Yes, Lark?”

With her hand still up at her face, she drops her screens back in place.

“Nothing, forget it.”

“So where are you staying Robin?”

“I am with Boyd and his buddy Albrecht. They have a really nice guest room, Fred.”

“Robin, I didn’t know you knew those guys.”

“Oh sure Daisy, I met them at a rally for Senator Knox, raising the heat on Obama.”

“Aren’t you scared of Albrecht’s guns?”

“No Daisy, he is not scared of mine either.”

“You mean you have one too.”

“Sure, women have to stand up for themselves.”

“Oh! Ah! What kind?”

“It is a 38. Cute little thing, I’ll show you later. You can try it you if you want, Daisy.”

Lark has finished her meal. She waves down the Fez.

“Can we have separate checks please? I need mine right away.”

Indranil hurries over.

Is anything wrong ma’am?

“Yeah plenty!”

He steps forward looking closely at the table.

“Not your problem.”

She lifts her glasses for a moment.

“Service is great, food is delicious.”

The Fez comes by and hands her the check. Lark throws down a twenty-dollar bill, and gets up to leave.

“That should cover it.”

Robin looks at her as she moves off.

“What’s the hurry Lark?”

Lark says nothing and tries to get away. She is blocked by a round table of seven, all being served nearby. She comes back toward us and takes another route to the pointed arch at the bottom of the stairs.

Robin finishes the last of her samosa and swigs her remaining tea. She then holds up her bag.

“See that thin cloth on the side of my bag Daisy?”

She leans forward to touch the cloth.

The fez swings by again.

“Are you finished ma’am?”

He takes Robin’s plate.

Daisy is still looking at the bag with Robin’s hand inside.

“Yes I see.”

“Well if we have a problem in here, I can have my hand like this,

and shoot right through that cloth. Problem solved.”

“What kind of problem do you mean?”

“Who knows, Fred? There’s ISIS, Al Qaeda, undocumented crazies and rapists, druggies, I mean, the list is endless.”

Daisy chews the last of her goat in ‘flavorful’ sauce with basmati rice.

She slowly wipes her mouth on her napkin in both hands.

“That chutney is too hot for me!”

She leaves some Dahl, pushed to the side of the plate.

The walrus moustache has finished his meal and holds his companion’s hand for a moment across the table. The Fez pours the last of their wine for them. They both look up in appreciation.

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. 

Walking along Walton Lane, through the bare-twig winter-woods, we can see debris everywhere from the recent Derecho. Numerous trees and branches have fallen at odd angles supporting each other in the cold gray light and dripping through warm humid air. A big red cedar blocks the lane and its massive root ball cracked open the sidewalk when it erupted. We can hear something nearby on the other side of the thick evergreen mass.

“Sounds odd.”

Lou has stopped to listen, supporting his right arm with his thumb in his back pocket, as he regards the obstacle across our path.

“Could it be a Terrier, Lou?”

There is a series of high pitched barks.

“Now that was a terrier.”

We don’t hear the strange sound again and the dog stops barking. A blue jay rasps the quiet around us with a loud call and flies across the lane.

“Yes, one was definitely a terrier but what about the other?”

We walk off the sidewalk on soggy black ground showing between dead oak leaves, twigs and shreds of bark and a flattened Mountain Dew can. Stepping around the shaggy root ball and the shallow watery hole it left in the ground, we can see a teenage girl with her phone in one hand and two small dogs pulling hard on their leashes into the green chaos blocking the lane.

She looks up and says hi, to Lou.

“Pam this is Fred, Fred, Pam Dirac.”

“Hi Pam, didn’t you used to study chess with Derwent Soot?”

“Yeah right, he was a great teacher!”

“I’ll bet he was. Are those your dogs?”

Pam has a single leash in hand with a fork at the end holding two short leashes for the two dogs.

“No they are Nadia’s. I took care of them while she was away, but I still walk them all the time.”

“Nadia?”

“Yeah, you know. She just got back from a trip. She is staying over at the Plank’s, next door to us.”

“Okay, so what is wrong with the black one? She doesn’t sound like a dog.”

“Yeah, I know Lou. That’s Meson. She got a throat injury when she was a pup. Now she sounds more like she’s quacking, querking or quarking or something”

“What is the Westie’s name?”

“Well, the Scottie is Meson and the Westie is Muon.”

“I thought the Plank’s dog was Boson, a big hound, or something.”

“Oh yeah Boson!”

Muon is trying to pull Meson towards me. Pam has to use both hands on the leash while still holding the phone in her left. Lou steps forward and holds the leash below her hand.

“Thanks, I nearly dropped my phone!”

The dogs are calmed as Lou bends over to pet Muon, but Meson stays close to Pam’s legs.

“Boson went with Liberty. I think he is in California now.”

A white SUV pulls up slowly, with smooth rounded contours, wet, and shiny like a metallic white wale. Twigs snap under the wheels with a slight ring-sound in the tires.

The dogs are pulling hard on her outstretched arm back towards the fibrous peeling bark. Pam looks at them and back at her phone.

The driver’s side window opens silently. The Westie, Muon, looks up.

Chuck Newsom is looking at us from under a NY Yankees baseball cap. He removes his dark glasses and waves with them in hand in a single sweep of his extended arm.

“How you doing?”

Both dogs seem to recognize him and bark and quark furiously at him. He puts his glasses back on, turns off the engine and steps out. As the sun comes out, the door on the other side slams shut immediately after his.

Pam pulls Muon back while Meson is pulling the opposite way towards Chuck.

A young red headed woman walks around the front of the ‘whale’ in tight white jeans and a blue sweatshirt with “Palin” in big red letters across her chest. She keeps tossing bouncy red curls out of her face and she squints with the sun in her eyes. She and Chuck hold hands and stroll over to Pam and the dogs, who greet Chuck with tails wagging. They both start up again when a third door slams shut, on the other side of the SUV from us.

A short bald man comes around the back, zipping up a red windbreaker over his protruding belly as he walks.

“Hey guys, how are you doing?”

Lou nudges me.

“You remember this guy, Fred?”

“I think it is Gloriani, Boris Tarantula’s agent.” He walks up to us with short quick steps in his pointed black shoes.

“Hi, Giuseppe Gloriani, glad to meet you. I think we’ve met before, at Lou’s party.” He talks fast in a high-pitched voice.

Giuseppe is shaking hands with Lou.

Chuck introduces his friend, Paula Pocock.

“Spring in February guys! How do you like it?” Paula tosses her hair again and raises the long red nailed index finger of her free hand to pull a loose curl from her eye.

“Yeah, great, great, great, Paula.” Gloriani stands next to Paula with his fists pushing out the pockets of his windbreaker. A breeze blows some moisture out of the beech tree above us, still full of last year’s gray brown leaves hanging like shriveled fruit.

Chuck scratches the back of his head and wipes a few drops of water from his forehead.

“Giuseppe, you know these folks?”

“Yeah sure, I met Fred before, and ah, Lou, I remember you too, from someplace.”

“Yeah it was at my party, Giuseppe.”

“You guys friends with Daisy Briscoe? You know? The stained glass artist that lives around here?”

“Oh yes, I know her well Giuseppe.”

“Yeah, right Fred, well I just got her a contract with Chuck and maybe a job out at PU Arts Center. We’ll see.”

“Yeah, that’s so great Giuseppe, I can’t wait to meet her. Giuseppe is such a great businessman. I am meeting so many interesting artists since I got with Chuck.” Paula giggles with a blazing expanse of moist dental enamel. Pam is busy looking at her phone and then at Muon and Meson, who gradually pull her away from us.

“Yeah, Paula, I know tons of people for you to meet. You know Boris or Frank? You know, Frank Vasari, out at the Arts Center right?”

“No Giuseppe, but I know Chuck has a beautiful new sculpture in front of his house. Isn’t that one by Boris, Chuck honey?”

“Sure is baby!” Chuck’s long arm pulls Paula close and she stands on tiptoe in her SanzE pink and yellow track shoes to nuzzle his neck. Chuck takes off his cap and smoothes his blond hair, and smiles down on us, nearly a foot taller than any one else.

“Either of you guys seen Tarantula’s latest works out at PU?”

“No Chuck, I haven’t seen much for years.”

Chuck gestures to Lou with his cap in hand.

“Tarantula is now making human figures out of computer circuit boards, wire and other associated hardware.”

Giuseppe looks up at him.

“Damn good investment Chuck, if I do say so myself.”

“Yeah no doubt, but I want to see some more first.”

“Oh you can! You can! You can! Next week for sure, Chuck.  How would you like that Paula?”

“Oh sure Giuseppe, you know how much I love art! Oh this is just such a great day. All this warm sun came out like it is specially for our spectacular new president!”

“Yeah, right, right, right, Paula, he is quite a spectacle, great business man…yeah, sure, but you know Paula, some of Boris’s new figures incorporate video screens of various sizes showing details of the human body; a finger joint, a foreskin, the upper eyelid. You know, real anatomical detail!”

Chuck is laughing.

“Where could I exhibit a thing like that?”

“Hey my friend, it would be great publicity! His figures showing details of male and female genitalia draw attention. You would have those people out of CUPA swarming all over it.”

“Giuseppe, I think it is a little, ahhh, kind of obscene. I mean like pornography.”

“No, no, no, Paula, listen, this is art. This is the real thing. Look at all the old masters, Rembrandt, Titian, Velasquez, and new ones like Larry Rivers, they all painted the female anatomy and some male too. Check out those fat baby putti with their ‘junk’ hanging out. Boris is doing real avant-garde Art, Art, Art, with a capital A!”

Paula pulls on Giuseppe’s arm as gets more and more excited.

“Take it easy, okay?”

Giuseppe goes quiet, and looks up into her face.

“Did you say putti or pussy, Giuseppe?”

Putti, Putti, Putti, Paula, that’s Italian, Putti from Putto. They are fat little cherubs. You got to let me take you down to the National Gallery some time. Look at some old oil paintings. You and Chuck and me, okay?”

“Well, the old masters are art. I know that, but videos, that sounds like something else to me.”

“Okay, Oaky, Okay, Listen Paula, hey Chuck you should hear this too.”

Chuck has stepped over to look at a branch that just fell on his SUV.

He pets Muon and Meson who chase after his legs along the way. Pam is focused on her phone. Chuck ignores Giuseppi’s shout. He turns back to Paula.

“Listen, Boris Tarantula, is one of the greatest artists of the twenty first century.”

He looks over to Lou and me.

“You guys could make out big if you want to invest, say 20K!”

“No thanks Giuseppe. It isn’t my kind of thing.”

“So what do you like Lou?”
“Old stuff, Norman Rockwell, or even Grandma Moses, you know, I like American art. I do have one of Frank Vasari’s early paintings.”

“Hey! Tarantula is applying for citizenship. I have him working with my lawyer, but he won’t study! He is too busy with his art!”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Lou, he is doing art in America alright?”

“I don’t know what he is doing.”

Paula is distracted by Chuck’s walking away. Giuseppe steps over to get her attention.

Paula, Paula, Paula, listen… his figure, Tarantula’s sculpture, you know, that shows close up video details of male and female genitalia. In fact that already drew the attention of CUPA. They want it removed from the gallery at PU, that, or close the place, and gallery attendance tripled the next week. You see what I mean about publicity?”

“Well it is sensational.”

Paula has drawn back. She is watching Chuck remove some twigs from the hood of his big white SUV.

“Giuseppe maybe CUPA are right…”

She shouts out to Chuck.

“Say honey! Is it alright?”

Chuck turns and smiles at her, and comes back to her.

“No problem baby.”

“Yeah, great, great, great, Paula.”

Giuseppe steps close to her.

“You know that publicity is going to raise the value. You see what I mean?”

“Well sure, Giuseppe, but that doesn’t make it art.”

“Who’s to say what art is, Paula? If I can sell it, then it is art. I promiss you that. I mean, you know, it’s a market, that is for sure, sure, sure!

Lou is backing away slightly, his face pinched his eyebrows low over his eyes. He is looking at the ground. Kicks the remains of a 9 volt battery towards the side of the road where a torn ‘big gulp’ cup lies with shreds of black plastic all tangled with twigs and other detritus.

“What’s the matter Lou? Something bothering you my friend?”

“Yeah.”

Giuseppe’s hands come out of his pockets, spread in an open gesture in front of him.

“Well, what is it my man?”

“Spring in February, this is the Northern hemisphere.”

Pam Dirac has moved further off, dexterously thumbing  her phone’s keyboard in one hand, and holding on to the leash and Muon and Meson, black and white, surging ahead of her past the parked SUV.

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 Macadamia campaign is having a post election rally led by Albrecht Intaglio at the Tentacle Coffee Bar where I met Liberty trip back in 2010. Their sign is familiar. The huge ‘T’ in the word ‘TENTACLE’ is tilted as if to support the words Coffee Bar in smaller cursive next to the long vertical.

The bar must be under new management. The walls are painted with murals of an outdoor cafe in the right hand corner and a panorama from under the ocean called, “The Octopus’s Garden”, (http://www.jango.com/music/The+Beatles) behind the bar on the left. A huge tentacle emerges from the near end of the image and arches over the bar with tiny colored lights flashing from the suction cups. The artist, Enid Starkie, signed her name on the front of a treasure chest embraced by an octopus near a cave on the seabed.

The front of a tour bus is skillfully rendered behind the small bandstand at the back, magically filling the wall facing us as we enter. It feels as if it will run right through us. The huge windscreen partially reflects the front of the café and in addition one can see mysterious passengers silhouetted in the front seats. The driver’s hand is raised, saluting patrons in the coffee bar. The saluting hand’s little finger touches the base of the tilted ‘T’ in the sign in front of the building, as if he has knocked it off balance.

“Who’s that kid waving to us over there, Fred?”

“It’s Serge, Steve.”

“Oh is it, and who is Serge?”

“You remember Steve, Derwent Sloot’s grandson?”

“Right, and that’s his mother Rosalba with him Steve.”

“I wouldn’t have recognized them, bel.”

Bel points out through the tall windows behind Serge and Rosalbaas we walk across the room towards them.

“Look at that!”

“The biggest murmuration I’ve seen around here!”

Serge has turned around to look.

“Check the coordination! They are way ahead of us!”

The oval cloud of starlings seems to turn inside out and changes from an oval to a stream heading out of sight beyond the window.

We met only briefly several years ago when he was a young boy, yet Serge recognizes me, and I remember his precocity. Now he beckons, as we walk over to them in the window seats. Rosalba sits next to him on the red banquette at a trapezoidal smoked glass table.

“Fred!”

Serge’s voice has broken.

“How are you doing Serge?”

“I am doing my junior project on technology and the Macadamia Campaign.”

He shows me his video camera with sound system hooked up to his laptop, which displays the picture and sound levels and more I can’t identify.

“See, I want to capture some of this event.”

He greets Steve and bel with bright smiles and the easy familiarity of an adult.

There can’t be more than twenty people here, including Steve Strether and bel. They drove me over, and have been following Albrecht and Boyd’s rise in the movement without being a part of it themselves.

We push two blueish gray tables together. Bel stands behind the chair opposite Rosalba.

“Hi there you two, are you Macadamia supporters?”

“My son is”

“Rosie, are you still doing pastels?”

“I’ve been doing some portrait miniatures.”

Bel puts her hand on Rosie’s shoulder.

“Congratulations!”

Rosie takes bel’s full length down coat from her and piles it on top of her own on the windowsill behind her.

“Too bad about Trump, Macadamia would have been a brilliant president.”

“Really Serge? Why?”

“For one thing he ran his campaign on line which is where the future is. He knows the score!”

“Well, Serge, I don’t think all voters have caught up.”

“They are going to have to! I mean I was teaching Tatiana’s Mom how to code over Christmas.”

Rosalba pushes back her brown hair and its highlights tumble around her ears. “That’s his girl, bel.”

“Yeah, she’s in Europe this week, and I can’t go…Bummerrr!”

Steve takes off his watch cap and black bomber jacket and lets it fall over the back of his chair. I sit next to Serge on the banquette.

“Serge, I think you’re a little premature!”

“Can’t argue that.”

Boyd Nightingale is standing at the microphone on the small bandstand at the far end of the room.

“Testing, Macadamia, one two three, testing Mac…”

The sound is clear. Serge taps his laptop, looking at the video image.

Boyd puts the mike on its stand. Albrecht comes forward and takes the mike. His hair has grown enough to be combed straight back from his forehead. His side arm is different too. Now the long barreled revolver he carried to the Guild Nominating Committee, years ago, is replaced with a small automatic, plain to see in his shoulder holster. He looks around the room. As Boyd turns to step down, his own automatic is evident under his belt in the small of his back.

“Welcome everybody! So glad to have you here bringing life and atmosphere to this occasion.”

Loud whistles and cheers rise from the audience.

“We are live at www.Macadamia.cybercarry.org

There is a murmur in the room.

Albrecht pulls at the collar of his open neck white shirt.

“Folks we have a new President elect…”

He is interrupted with booing and some one yells out,

“TWEET TWEET, TWITTER, TWEET”

Another voice shouts, “The bird brain speaks!”

A man with his gut hanging over his belt tosses a red Trump Campaign cap up on the bandstand and shouts out. “Wear that, Mother Fucker!”

Albrecht is smiling.

“Okay! Okay! Welcome, Welcome, Supporters and detractors, alike.

Welcome to a new presidency!”

“Yeah!” Shouts a voice.

“It isn’t liberal!”

“Who knows what it is Albrecht?” says a man with a shaven head leaning against the wall under a framed portrait of Ringo.

“Obama is gone!”

Big cheer from the audience.

“Right on” says Albrecht raising both arms. Then he picks up the red Trump campaign cap, and holds it in front of him.

“This guy is our president. Respect the Office!”

People start arguing with each other. Albrecht gives them a few moments while he hangs the cap from a knob on the mike stand and, and then says loudly;

“OUR MAN LOST. Okay?”

“Booooo” from the audience.

Albrecht pauses again; “So let’s deal with it!”

The heckler has left his seat and is now standing by the stage with his back to the audience silently giving him the finger.

“Sit down asshole!” shouts a big woman with multiple piercings.

“Stick it up your ass John!”

Albrecht goes on, “OUR Rights,” he pulls out his automatic and holds it up for emphasis. The heckler sits down at a chair by the stage Boyd was using earlier.

“Our initiatives, and our technical ingenuity are all ALIVE and well right here in this room. Let’s hear it for Net Neutrality!”

“Fuck the ISPs!…Stop filtering!…”

Albrecht gives the time out sign with his hands.

“Okay, Okay, I hear you, but you know, Comcast and Verizon, Google, you know, they run dedicated computer servers deep inside these ISPs, folks.”

“Booooooo. Fuck ‘em all!”

A young woman stands up in white turtleneck with a thick blond braid. She holds her rifle aloft and shouts;

“Listen! The big ISPs are getting bigger and that’s a problem. We can’t get into this now…Gun Rights! Play the video Albrecht!”

Albrecht smiles.

“It will be OUR twenty first century!”

More cheers and whistles. “Get the NSA out of my internet!”

Several others hold up their various guns in solidarity.

“We will…” Albrecht is drowned out…

“Pardon Ed Snowden!”

“Shoot the bastard!”

Albrecht goes on. “We WILL be playing the video. Boyd is getting that together, right Boyd?”

Albrecht looks down from the bandstand to his left at the heckler where Boyd was sitting and now Boyd appears from behind a curtain.

“Come on up here Boyd.”

Boyd hops up and stands next to Albrecht, both in white shirts and black pants.

“Lets give it up for Boyd Nightingale, ladies and gentlemen.”

The headlights of the bus rendered on the wall behind them are real and they flash brilliantly.

“WHOA! WOW! The man who threw the Trump cap on stage interrupts applause.

“FAGGOTS” he shouts, and he walks toward the door kicking a chair over shouting, MACA.FUCKING.DAMIA! FUCKING NUT CASE! He goes out the door.

Albrecht says, “So long fella,” in a low voice, and takes Boyd’s hand and raises it up with his own.

“Okay, let’s move on and get to our future with Macadamia in Liberty Through Technology!”

Serge looks up from his lap top and stands to cheer, as do a few others.

I notice a lot of other people are busy with their laptops, and turn to Serge.

“Serge, are you a big gun rights supporter?”

Serge is distracted, looking at his laptop.

“Excuse me, there is a lot more going on over the net than in this room!”

“What do you make of all this?’

“Kind of mindless…WHAT? Ohhhhh…

He taps his keyboard.

“My god, the site crashed!”

He looks up.

“Well Fred, I think we should all have that right, but I don’t plan on buying anything myself.”

“I am so glad to hear that!”

“Bel, I am convinced that we can’t move into our digital future too soon. The old world is holding us back, blinded by industrial pollution, and threatened by the consequences of global warming and worst of all, is ignorance. My project is about finding the way to reach escape velocity! Macadamia is the guy who has started the really big move. I am sending my material to the media lab at MIT. See if I can get him some help from there.”

Rosalba watches her son closely and then puts her arm around his shoulders.

“Serge went up there last summer. You know, on a special program for high schoolers.”

“Congratulations Serge!”

Some one in a wet suit is standing by our tables. They are wearing tanks and speak in a synthetic electronic voice through a modified facemask.

They produce plastic cups from a spring loading cylindrical holder worn on the hip. Another plastic cup comes out with each click of a small lever.

Serge takes a cup. “Cool!”

The person behind the facemask offers us coffee, which they pour from a hose extending from the tanks on their back. There turns out to be more than one hose. Of course! There is more than one tank. One has hot milk for café au lait, and a third tank produces cappuccino, which froths forth into Steve and Rosalba’s cups.

I get my wallet out. The diver moves on with a cloud of steam condensing from a valve on the cappuccino tank.

“You have to pay by phone Fred.”

I don’t have a smart phone.”

Steve has his in hand.

“I’ve got you covered Fred.”

“Was that male or female bel?”

“Female of course!”

“How can you tell Serge, with all that gear on?”

“The shape of the hips Fred. The hips are largely unencumbered.”

Steve leans forward and pats Serge on the shoulder.

“What a discerning fellow!”

Now the stage is empty. Music is growing in volume.

“You know what that is Fred?”

“Ah…no.”

That is, Formic Acid Blues, by you know who!”

Rosalba nudges Serge, “Oh come on, tell us!”

“Its our very own Toxic Blob, that’s what they played while Liberty released the ants at PU! I’ve got the vid.”

Steve and Serge do a high five across the table.

The barista behind the bar moves to the beat wearing a facemask and snorkel. Her breasts jiggle under a tight fitting gold turtle-neck, like iridescent fish scales.

Boyd and Albrecht are standing in front of the curtain talking to Frans Banning Cocq, the Militia leader. His rifle hangs by its strap from his right shoulder. His thin straw blond hair is flying out from his bald patch in a frizzy star shape. Beyond our window seats, I can see an outdoor café rendered by ‘Chaz Baudelaire’ in the corner of the wall. He signed his name on the awning as the name of the café. A display window by the entrance is drawn on one side of the corner. Outdoor tables and chairs are pictured on the other side. I can see the diver serving four Seahorses seated in the picture like customers.

“So these are the gun and Militia people huh?”

“It’s the cyber freaks too, Steve.”

“Well some of them are sort of futurists aren’t they Serge?”

“Mom, most of it is online.”

“How many meetings have you been to Serge?”

“Went to one with Tatiana last semester up in New York. That’s the only one I know of. We don’t meet in person.”

“How many were there?”

Serge is focused on his laptop and seems to have lost interest in the Rally. He doesn’t look up.

“Five or six in somebody’s loft.”

Rosalba is watching a couple, who have just come in, take off their helmets and motorcycle leather.

“Macadamia, brings some odd birds together!”

Illusions color the occasion, fixed on the wall and now flickering there. The café’s picture window in the mural, is now a video screen showing the Macadamia gun rights video that Albrecht had promised to the woman with a blond braid and rifle.

“There is no sound on that vid.”

A young woman is crouching on her bed pointing a pistol at a big intruder. He suddenly falls back revealing a dark face under his hoodie, and I can see the recoil lifting her arms.

Steve looks at bel, who is shaking her head.

“Mom, you need your phone for that.”

Serge offers his mother his phone.

“Why don’t they supply any sound?”

“Look around Fred, there’s four different vids playing. You couldn’t hear anything if they all had sound on.”

“Look at the treasure chest in the Octopus’s Garden.”

Bel points out another video appearing as if it were the treasure.

The rendered window of the tour bus has also become a flickering video screen.

Serge is looking up at the ceiling.

“Check the ceiling bel.”

At the moment there’s a high altitude view of Washington sweeping across like a city falling into the sky.

Bel looks up.

“How come I am looking up to look down?”

Steve is laughing.

“That’s politics honey.”

Feathery Touch

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. 

Hank Dumpty looks as if he is asleep at the wheel of his old chalky blue F150, stopped outside Diddlie’s house at the top of Oval Street. The engine is running with a rhythmic squeak, as if it were young and calling for food from its nest under the hood. Grey exhaust blends into the mist around the hollies on the edge of Diddlie’s front yard. I walk through patches of morning mist over to his window. It is cracked open and he is asleep all right, leaning back in the seat, mouth open, snoring quietly with his big fingers woven together across his gut between the unbuttoned sides of his brown leather jerkin.

“Morning Hank!”

Hank opens his eyes and runs a hand over the great egg of his bald head.

“Huh? Where the hell’s my hat?”

“Down by your shoulder.”

“How did that happen for heaven’s sake?”

He reaches back and pulls his Aberford Tweed Driving Cap out from behind his neck and puts it back on his head.

“Don’t know Hank.”

“How are you doing Fred?”

“Having a stroll in the mist.”

“Don’t know where the hell Diddlie’s gone. She said 9 AM sharp.”

“Well, it’s gone 9:20 now.”

He doesn’t turn towards me, but goes on looking out through the moisture running down the windscreen past a wet hickory leaf stuck under the driver side wiper. Two crows seem to be commenting as they watch us from the dripping oak branches across the street.

“You seen her this morning?”

“No, but I know she’s got an old friend in town.”

“She said something about moving a piece of art.”

“I didn’t know she was a buyer.”

“I don’t think it is hers.”

A Toyota Prius approaches slowly up Oval Street hill indicating a left turn, but stops short of the driveway facing Hank’s truck. The engine kicks on ending the car’s electronic quiet. Hank looks past me towards the car. The headlights go out.

“You know that silver car?”

“I think I’ve seen it here before. Don’t know whose it is though.”

The left side passenger door opens. Two long denim covered legs emerge placing black boots cautiously on the ground. The jeans have black leather fringes sewn around the bottoms.

“Fred…Hankie!”

“Daisy! What’s the hold-up?”

After Daisy gets out, the car turns onto Diddlie’s gravel driveway and parks. The passenger side window opens, and some one yells “Thanks Hank!” as it goes by. He looks over as Daisy walks towards us.

“Is it icy here?”

“No, the leaves are slippery though. Its still in the high thirties.”

“Sorry we are so late Hank. There’s ice all around my place. Had to spread grit which I couldn’t find right away.”

“Thanks for what by the way? What is this art piece Diddlie wants to move?”

“Need to move some of Lark’s stuff, Hank.”

“Lark’s stuff? What are we doing here then?”

“Well some of it is here at Diddlie’s.”

“Aha, how big?”

“Nothing you can’t handle.”

“Diddlie called me about moving a piece of art.”

“I know, Lou is away, and…”

“Yup, I am the fall back.” Hank scratches his cheek. “Done it before.”

Diddlie had gone into her house as soon as the car parked. Now she is running from her porch waiving to the Toyota departing in its own cloud, and over to Hank’s truck.

“Hi Fred.” She is out of breath and grabs my arm. “Are you going to help?”

“I guess I can help.”

“You guess? You’ve got to do more than that!”

She pulls the hood of her bright yellow sweatshirt up over her hair sparkling with moisture as passing headlights break through the mist for an instant. The words Glamour College, in purple gothic script, bend across the curve of her breast.

“I’ve got about a dozen boxes of Lark’s stuff in the spare room.”

“Is it all that political campaign material you two were distributing?”

“No it is not. It’s personal stuff, books and clothes and so on.”

Daisy isn’t wearing her bowler but she keeps her hood up.

“She’s also got a glass piece I designed for Jake, but he never picked it up.”

Diddlie starts flirting with Hank through his window. Daisy rests an arm on the truck’s side and bends slightly to look through the window.

“Hi Hank, are you going to come out honey?”

“I was telling him about the art glass.”

“That’s right Daisy’s big stained glass…yeah, mustn’t forget that.”

“So where is Lark?”

“Hank, Lark’s got her hands full at the moment.”

“It is over there behind Mr. Liddell’s hutch, all wrapped up.”

“Aha, full of what?”

Diddlie is giggling, but not Daisy.

“Lark’s got a new man in her life and he is going to move in.

Diddlie stored this stuff while they repainted.”

“Well that’s part of it.”

“They could have rented one of those containers for that, and put it in the driveway.”

“No, No, Hank.”

“What do you mean Diddlie?”

“You know Daisy.”

“What?”

Diddlie tries to communicate with a look.

“No Did., what are you talking about?”

“A few things Augie doesn’t need to see, okay?”

“Oh! enough said, Diddlie.”

“I mean we didn’t move all this stuff at once, okay?”

“Okay, but I still don’t get it Diddlie.”

Diddlie pulls on my arm and points toward something draped in a blue tarp behind Mr. Liddell’s hutch mounted on two paint-stained sawhorses.

Hank is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while idly whistling but there’s more breath than notes coming out.

“Yeah, enough said. Time to get moving.”

Hank opens his door a crack.

“Excuse me ladies, I want to get a closer look at what we are dealing with here.”

He leaves the engine running and climbs out. We all follow him over to the carport. Hank looks in at Mr. Liddell and then reaches for the tarp.

I can see Mr. Liddell moving about in a lot of straw. Then his pulsating pink nose presses through the chicken wire door of the hutch. Diddlie rushes inside again.

Hank turns and watches her go with his hand still on the tarp.

“What’s that sound?”

“I think it is the Red Queen, Hank.”

“That doesn’t sound like a dove to me.”

Daisy coaxes Mr. Liddel, who has moved back into the privacy of a straw curtain he kicks up against the opening.

“It isn’t a dove. It’s a parrot.”

“You sure she isn’t a myna bird Fred?”

“Yes, the Red Queen is a grey parrot with a few red tail feathers.”

Diddlie appears with a tray full of empty pint glass beer mugs, which she leaves on top of a tea chest. Then she goes back in and returns with a big steaming pot, which resembles Daisy’s hammered copper coalscuttle, but it is marked on one side with ‘Enjoy’ and ‘Drink Me’ in bold silver letters on the other. She puts it down on the cement floor, and starts dipping mugs in.

“Here, have some mulled cider. Here Hank.”

He takes a hot dripping pint mug full, as a strong scent of cinnamon mixes with the damp in the air and the tea-like aroma of fallen wet leaves. Hank holds up his mug.

“Skol!”

Some mist rolls in and Diddlie strides out of the carport and disappears into the cloud. Mr. Liddell is rummaging around covered in straw. Hank pulls aside the tarp behind Mr. Liddell’s hutch with his free hand.

“This looks about the size of a door.”

“Yeah, that’s what it is. A door with three glass panels.”

“So why didn’t Jake take it?”

Daisy throws back her hood and swigs her mulled cider.

“Daisy, where’s your hat?”

“It won’t fit under this hood…I know Hankie…I feel kind of naked without it too.”

“Look fine to me kid.”

“I don’t know about Jake. He made a down payment for the materials and I never heard from him again.”

Diddlie returns with cider in one hand and a small plastic tool box in the other.

“How long ago was that?”

Hank shakes his head as Diddlie offers him the tools. So she puts the box down next to the cider pot.

“Years ago. About the time of the financial crash.”

“Aha, now where do you want to put it?”

“I am lending it to Lark until he pays it off. Then we’ll unhinge it and hand it over.”

“It’s as good as a gift, Daisy.”

Daisy shrugs. Diddlie reaches up to put her glass of cider down on top of Mr. Liddell’s hutch and starts gesticulating.

“Yeah, and good riddance! I only took it as a favor to Daisy as she was having complications.” She gives Daisy a hug. “…and because I am next door to that SOB Trip, so it would be easy to give it to him. Not that he will ever pay up!”

“Okay then. I’ll back up the truck.”

Hank moves Mr. Liddell’s hutch and saw horses away from the tarp draped door to make room to work, then walks back to his truck blowing mist into the hollies. The tailgate rattles with vibration as he goes into reverse and the squeaking turns into a shriek and then stops. He gets out of the truck and opens the hood, and sprays something into the engine and gets back in. Hank’s F150 crunches slowly over the gravel, back towards us until we can smell the exhaust with our mulled cider.

“Drink up Fred.”

“This stuff is hot Did!”

Daisy steps behind the hutch and starts clearing the tarp off the door revealing a layer of bubble wrap over the glass.

“Well, leave it here with mine to cool off.”

Diddlie leads me back into her house to the spare room stacked with cardboard boxes of various sizes.

“Okay, lets get started!”

“You are in a hurry!”

“Yes, Maximillian is coming to stay tomorrow and I want this stuff out of here before he can gnaw his way into it.”

“You have some pretty weird and unruly guests.”

“It isn’t a person Fred, Maximillian is Hank James’ dachshund. Wake up, will you!”

“Yeah okay, here’s a lovely red dawn!”

I look around the room and see a bright red lacquered wooden chest set aside from the boxes. The rounded top is cracked along its length and there’s a key in the lock with curled paper label attached by old brown string. It is written in an old fashioned script in a foreign language I don’t recognize. Diddlie’s face is close to mine looking at it with me as I open the lid.

One of the hinges is loose.

“Careful Fred.”

“It is loose but not broken.”

“Honey that is private. You shouldn’t be so nosey.”

“No, but it looks interesting.”

The inside is shiny black. Looks like inside of the lid might have been decorated with gold leaf but there are only a few traces left around the rim. Several long necklaces with large beads in black and pearl and Lapis blue are jumbled together with a gold chain on top of green, yellow and pink silk scarves.

“This must be some of the stuff from Hungary that Daisy gave Lark after she got that trunk from her Uncle Theophilus.”

“Uncle who?”

“You remember, Gladstone Theophilus! The intelligence officer in WW II.”

“Or it might have been his older brother, the one with the Hungarian Fascist minks!”

“Among other things, yes.”

“Wait a minute, look, this is just the top tray.”

“Fred, no!”

“Why not? We’ve gone this far.”

“She puts her hand on mine and pulls away.

“Much too far.”

The Red Queen flies in circling the pile of boxes fluttering wildly. There’s more cinnamon in the air with every flap.

“Don’t look up! Try not to sneeze Fred!”

Diddlie stands up.

“Why not?”

“Queenie, here Queenie! Come on sweetie, lets go back in the living room.”

The bird drops a grey feather brushing against the curtains and jingling the old brass rings against the rod.

“Off to bed! Off to bed” says Queenie landing on the highest box in the stack.

“Queenie, be careful sweetie.”

Diddlie doesn’t answer me from the doorway, where she holds out her finger for the Red Queen to find a perch. Queenie flutters close over my head to the proffered finger and I feel the feathery touch.