FAUXMONT with Fred BlogZ

The Polar vortex is back this winter breaking temperature records and pipes in a neighbor’s house. It was 0 F. when Lambert the weather proof West Highland white terrier ran out into the fresh snow and looked light brown. Four inches fell last night and it is too deep for his short legs, but it is powdery enough for him to jump through it with ease, as if pouncing repeatedly on some buried prey. Bel crunches along the side of the plowed road towards me in the silence only snow can bring, except for a crow rasping the atmosphere above us in the hickories.

When bel reached me I had been shoveling snow piled up across the entrance to the driveway by the plow as it pushed along the road in the night. Bel has on an orange knitted hat that covers her head and neck down to the collar of her red down jacket.

“Your car is all dressed up Fred.”

“Yes, with nowhere to go!”

The sun is still low and orange like her hat against the clear morning sky now filled with the roar of a jetliner coming into National Airport.

“How are you and Steve?”

“We are fine but Daisie had a pipe burst last night. It is in an outside wall. She called to see if Steve could turn off the water.”

“Did he find the valve?”

“Yes but he and Albrecht had to move the dryer out the back door to get at it.”

“What was Albrecht doing there?”

“He and Boyd were both there but didn’t know where to find the valve.”

“That’s strange.”

“Daisy tells me Boyd sent the Militia to check on her the other day. He has been attentive lately.”

“Daisy calls it intrusive.”

“I know. She has had enough of him and Albrecht too.”

“Seems as if Boyd chose the right time with this emergency.”

“Yes, maybe, but I think Daisy might have called him in her panic about this burst pipe.

“So what did Boyd bring Albrecht for, bel?”

“Oh I think they live together now. You don’t get one without the other. They share that rental house on Wicket Street past the Safeway parking lot.”

A rusting old dump truck loaded with salt and grit is scraping down Oval hill having just turned at the top with a blade mounted in front. Lambert barks at the strange sound gradually getting louder. The truck pushes snow ahead and spreads grit behind, and rattles and bumps into Lambert’s site at the bottom of the hill opposite us. He stands watching the truck push a pile of lumpy snow and ice across the intersection, which fills the ditch and piles up. Dordrecht’s name and logo is printed on an orange plastic rectangle stuck to the door. The company must have rented the truck for the storm. Lambert has lost interest in the plow. He has turned to bark at Maximillian and Diddlie who are walking towards us in the middle of the road where a layer of ice under the snow was gritted by the truck. Max is wearing a multicolored knitted coat around his long dachshund body with a gold button fastening at the front by his right ear. It looks as if it were knitted with hundreds of short left over bits of wool from many different projects. The two dogs twist their leashes as they go around and around each other, nose to butt.

Someone in a blue down parka is brushing off a snow- covered Volvo station wagon down the road. It has been half in the ditch all night with both left wheels burried.

“Who is that Fred”? bel is looking toward the car with her hand shading her eyes from the sun.

“Don’t recognize the car or the man.”

Diddlie has separated the dogs and looks down the road too. “There’s the Fauxmont militia to the rescue!” As she speaks the black Militia Hummer pulls up by the stranded car, and Albrecht gets out, also in black. We watch as he and Boyd in matching black fatigues with countless pockets, and the man clearing snow, chat and the man lights a cigarette and breaths blue. After helping to clear snow off the car and from around the front wheels Boyd brings a tow line from the Hummer. They both get down on the ground to look under the car and hook up the Volvo. Albrecht brushes off his uniform and climbs in behind the wheel of the Hummer and moves slowly toward us taking up slack in the line. The man flicks his partially smoked cigarette in an arc over the roof of his car before getting into in his Volvo while Boyd stands by watching. Albrecht stops, gets out of the Hummer and talks to Boyd. They go over to look under the Volvo again. Boyd drops his long black flash light, or it comes unfastened from his outfit as he gets up. I am not sure if he used it to see under the car. Albrecht picks it up and attaches it to his belt.

Miximillian is pulling Diddlie towards the incident while Lambert is sniffing a large snow bolder the plow has rolled to the roadside. We all start walking slowly. I am pulled by curiosity following Maximillian, but Albrecht runs over, holding both gloved hands above his head and waving us away.

“Stay back folks! Stay back!”

Maximillian barks at him with tail wagging and we stop while Lambert is still engrossed in his roadside investigations. Boyd walks up and puts a couple of cones in our path indicating we should go no further, though we are at least a hundred feet away. At last Albrecht is revving his shiny black Hummer. It must have been parked under cover last night. It pulls the car clear of the snowy ditch with ease. Boyd dashes over to unhook the cable while Albrecht gathers the two cones and puts them back in his Hummer. We all walk alongside the Hummer as the Volvo drives away with some dents and a broken right headlight.

There’s a voice coming out of the Hummer’s open window, where Albrecht can be seen, showing no sign of the cold, at the wheel with his mirror aviators on and a military style lined cap with the ear flaps up. The ‘don’t tread on me’ logo of the Gadston flag flies from a yellow pennant attached to the antenna in back.

“Hold on!” says the voice from the radio, “Patriotic Americans know the threats we live under. Yes we do. Are you going to let FEMA grab all the available emergency rations? I mean purchase every last one of them? Are you … ”

Albrecht turns down the radio, to speak himself. “You hear that?”

“What was it Albrecht?”

“Diddlie that was America’s favorite white man!”

“Oh really, and who is he?”

“Glen Gazburg, the man America listens to. Do you know FEMA is hoarding all the available emergency food rations, just buying them up?”

“No I had no idea Albrecht, but I don’t see the problem. I mean they will distribute them in a disaster.” Diddlie has pulled Maximillian up close by her feet. “What do you mean our, ‘favorite white man’?”

“I mean Diddlie that Glen is the only white man speaking up for the white race against our liberal socialist government and its Moslem president!”

Bel and Lambert have caught up and Lambert is now held close by his shortened leash. Bel is grinning. “Albrecht, Glen is not my favorite anything and the president is your president too, yours mine and all Americans.”

“Well good morning bel.” Albrecht takes off his aviators and lets them dangle loosely in his gloved fingers, with his arm extended straight out the window. He smiles. “Of course he is bel. Though I didn’t vote for him, I know that. I know how our system works, but let me say that he is taking our country down the wrong road.”

“Albrecht let me tell you that the president isn’t a Moslem.”

“Well of course not literally Diddlie, but he might as well be.”

“I don’t see any connection at all.”

“Bel you Liberals are just blinded by your ideology that’s all. It is as plain as day. His policy is handing the Mid East over to the Islamicists, the terrorists and their sponsors. He has pulled our forces out! Isn’t that right Fred?”

“He has pulled most of our forces out, but …”

“Oh come on Fred!” Diddlies’s impatience leads her to pull on my shoulder from behind and step between me, and the Hummer door. She is looking up at Albrecht and banging her hand on the door under his face. His glasses swing from his fingers so close to the back of her head it seems she will knock them on the ground in her agitation. I feel Maximillian’s leash against my ankle as he tries to get around me without enough leash to do so. Albrecht looks down at her frowning. “Easy there girl, you’re going to hurt yourself and mess up my new paint job.”

Boyd is leaning forward shivering in the passenger seat to see past Albrecht. His opens his mouth as if to speak but Diddlie starts again, and he silently releases a plume of condensing breath.

“Listen Albrecht, just get this, okay! The president is getting us out of a war we didn’t belong in. The president of all Americans is …”

Albrecht has pulled his arm in and put his glasses back on. Then he holds his hands up in mock surrender. As he does so his cap is brushed askew by a pocket flap on his arm and he knocks his glasses off too. Boyd ducks out of sight, picks them up and hands them to back Albrecht. Who then interrupts Diddlie, who had interrupted me in her haste to refute him.

“Okay Diddlie.” She bangs on his door again … “and don’t call me ‘girl’ young man.”

“Diddlie, I apologize. I would appreciate it if you would call me Albrecht and not ‘young man’.”

I look over at bel, who is trying to stifle her laughter and failing. She moves closer to me. “Fred, tell me I am dreaming!”

“I don’t think you are bel. It might be a nightmare though.”

“Well Fred, some times we have to laugh to stop from crying.”

I hear Albrecht saying in a voice loud enough to tell us all. “Boyd, don’t you just love winding up the crazy Liberals?” He eases the Hummer forward while Diddlie bangs on the side with the flat of her hand. “Stop Albrecht, stop, you are going to run over Max.” The vehicle stops. “Diddlie, will you please stop hammering on my new paint job!”

“Albrecht just let me get this dog out the way of your horrible gas guzzling monstrosity!”

“Baby this thing got that guy out of the ditch didn’t it?”

“Albrecht I am not your ‘baby’ and that was a job for a tow truck!”

“What ever you say Diddlie. Have a great day folks. Fred, remember to speak up for America!”

Bel waves with a flabby fingered hand. “Bye bye Albrecht.”

He is still moving very slowly and has turned up his sound system and opened all the windows. For a few moments Mimì and Rodolfo’s duet ‘Sono andati?’ from Puccini’s La Boehme fill the snowy quiet with a diva’s voice. Could that be Albrecht’s latest CD? Then the windows go up.

(how it should be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtfLB2a_q20)

What could look more comfortable than a healthy tabby cat stretched out in a sunbeam on a fur coat with two white forepaws crossed in front of her snoozing face? Her long whiskers arching into the brilliant yellow warmth tremble in a twitch of her snout.

What could be more uncomfortable than the thought of that cat tearing the silk lining of Daisie’s old fur coat where she has tossed it over the arm of the couch with the faint odor of camphor released from its folds?

I couldn’t get far into the room when I arrived, but can see signs of the cat’s earlier relaxation from where I stand near the couch. There are open boxes and their contents distributed across the floor. All recently arrived.

The coat lining is not shredded, but there are tiny holes in the silk lining exposed where the coat fell open on the cushioned seat. “Is that Moth balls?”

Daisy looks down at the coat. “Yes, strong isn’t it? I am going through old clothes.” She strokes the fur where it is spread over the arm of the couch. “Well I can’t wear the thing now.”

“Why not Daisie, it is only 12 degrees outside and there’s a wind?”

“Because, it is unacceptable to wear the fur of murdered minks!”

“But they weren’t murdered for you. That was probably, what? sixty years ago?”

“More than that Fred. I think this dates back to the 1930s”

It is hard to think of Daisy in that fur coat. In fact I don’t know any one who wears them. “Was it your mother’s?”

“No, one of the Canadian aunts. You remember Theophilus at the party after Derwent’s death?”

“Yes, he fell asleep on the table with his face in his arms by the punch bowl.”

She picks up a sleeve. “Well, he brought me this in a trunk when he visited.”

“So you don’t want to be seen wearing ancient dead Canadian mink fur.”

“No, not Canadian. It was war booty. Theophilus, or was it his older brother? Anyway one of them served in Europe during world war two, interrogating Hungarian Fascists of the Arrow Cross or Cross Barby.”

“No Daisy, I think that was too far east for Canadians. It would have been the Soviets wouldn’t it?”

“He was in on it somehow. He spoke the language. I mean I don’t know. It was all hush hush but sort of came out one day … we aren’t supposed to talk about it … I can’t explain it any further anyway.”

“You mean these are Hungarian fascist minks?”

“I mean Fred, that I don’t know the coat’s provenance and that is really creepy.”

“Yes a lot of people were deported and murdered.” Daisy is looking at the floor. She puts down the soft furry sleeve and walks slowly over to the front door and back. She stops close to me and looks into my face, speaking quietly. “Right, that’s what I mean!”

“So there’s a creepiness factor as well as a fur factor.”

“Ouch!” Daisy bends down and finds a small screw she has trodden on in her thick knee-length purple woolen socks.

“I think it fell out of the trunk’s hardware when I opened it.”

She picks it up and holds it, and then stands still looking back at the coat.

“Yeah, it gets more complicated the more I think about it. I mean should I even keep it? I don’t know … so shall I just leave it in that trunk … or … ?”

“He has put you in a difficult position.”

“He didn’t mean to. You know, he thought it would be nice for me to have.” She points to the boxes, “and all this stuff that UPS brought yesterday too.” One box has a big art book balanced on top. It is Vision in Motion by Laslo Moholy Nagy, with its dramatic red black and white modernist dust cover, still intact after nearly 70 years. It catches my eye, but now is not the time to discuss the Bauhaus in Chicago. “Didn’t you say you are going to a gala down town?”

“Well Fred, I am invited, but I wasn’t going to go. Now Artie wants me to go with her. That’s why these old clothes are spread all over the place. I was looking through that trunk. I mean I don’t go to galas. It’s not my thing.” She points out an old fashioned steamer trunk with tarnished brass corners, and the arched lid open. There’s a bent lock hanging from it.

The cat is awake and glances up at me looking vulnerable with one back paw in the air.

“When did you get this cat?”

“Last week, it’s not mine. I am cat-sitting for a friend.”

“No sign of separation anxiety I see.”

Daisy walks over and pulls gently on the coat and the cat moves up on to the back of the couch, swishing its tail in an ‘S’. She stands there for a moment and then starts sniffing the crack between cushion and the couch back, pressing her nose in and trying to pull the cushion away with her white tipped left paw. “She made herself at home as soon as I let her out of the crate.”

“What’s her name Daisie?”

“Her deep and inscrutable singular name?”

“No I am not up to feline metaphysics, I just mean the name you call her.”

“A cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES you know. Any way let’s say her name is Jennyanydots, one of her names that is, but I call her Dots. That’s what Val calls her.”

“Who’s Val?”

“My friend Val Eliot.”

“Dots has moved to the windowsill. She knocks a brass candlestick on the floor in agitation and then a small brass windmill. “That must be Artie she can see over to the driveway from there. I guess we really are going to this thing together.” Daisy moves toward the front door and Dots jumps to the floor and follows, getting between her feet trying to rub against her leg. She picks up Dots and lets Artie in.

“Hi Daisy, how is Val’s cat doing?” Artie pets Dot’s head and she struggles to get down. Daisy lets go with a wince as Dots’ claws come out and she jumps free to the floor. Daisy looks at her upper arm. “She didn’t break the skin but she’s pulled out all these stitches in this old sweater. Look at that Artie!” Artie is well protected from weather and claws by her unusual insulated orange jump suit. It looks like something from an Arctic oil-drilling site. Daisy shows no sign of surprise. She winds several inches of wool around her index finger as Artie goes on. “Yeah, you going to charge Val for that?” Artie greets me and asks if I am going to Frank’s shindig.

“No I came over drop off some magazines, and now this!”

Artie steps towards me, “Magazines, oh great! let’s see!”

I hand her my Trader Joe’s paper shopping bag. Artie takes it and pulls out a copy of Country Life.

“Looks like Constable on the cover. What’s this mag. Fred?”

Before I can answer Daisy grabs my arm. “Fred, thanks so much. Oh that’s my favorite Brit. Mag.! God I am so preoccupied with all these reeking clothes … So interesting to see a modern photograph of the house in Constable’s painting!”

Artie looks at the picture. “I didn’t know it had survived. It’s The Hay Wain isn’t it?”

Daisie confirms and takes the magazine and Trader Joe’s bag from Artie, who is looking for a place to put down her shoulder bag.

“So what’s with all these clothes all over the place?”

Daisy puts the mag. back in the Trader Joe’s bag and puts them on top of one of the boxes. She points out the trunk on the floor. “I opened the Uncle-Theophilus-trunk, Artie, you know, the one I was telling you about?”

“What’s down the bottom, a skeleton?”

“Well, in a way yes, Artie.” Daisy picks up the coat for Artie to see.” Dots is looking out from under the overhanging trunk lid. Artie doesn’t see the cat and puts her bag under there and the cat rushes out and disappears down the hall with a yell.

“For God’s sake Daisy, is that a Mink?”

“No, it was Dots.”

“I mean the coat, Daisy.”

“Its more like a ghost. I mean it’s haunted.”

Artie has a sleeve in her hand and she strokes it gently admiring the fur. “This mink coat would be a great nostalgia thing tomorrow night.”

“What “thing” is that, Artie?”

“Fred, it is Frank Vasari’s fund-raising gala for the PU Arts Center. It’s definitely the mink coat crowd. You know, jewels, bare shoulders, a little décolletage, phony smiles, kissy kissy, and all that.”

“Oh Artie, that’s us isn’t it? Hanging with the zillionaires!”

“Sure, anything to make a buck. Val’s going to be there isn’t she?”

“No Artie, Dots is staying here remember?”

“Oh right, right right … So who is going to represent the Mcavity Theater?”

Daisy shrugs, “Fred, Have you seen their production of The Cocktail Party?”

“No, didn’t know it was on. Didn’t know any one was still interested in that old T.S. Eliot thing.”

Artie walks over to the trunk and looks in. “Sure they are. It’s a student production. You should check it out.” Artie holds up a garment from the trunk. “Check this old cocktail dress.” She holds by a pair of narrow straps.

Daisy looks up from the coat. She is fiddling with the loose wool hanging from her sweater. “Wow, very slinky! and way too small for me.”

I was going to tell them I have to go when Daisy’s ring tones sound. She searches under various things for her phone before pulling it from her pocket too late to answer but listens to a message. “Oh no! It is the Fauxmont Militia saying they … ” There’s a knock on the door, which Artie opens. Two men in black flak jackets are standing outside with automatic weapons pointed up.

Daisy puts her phone back in her pocket. One says he’s sergeant Kurtz and asks if every one is all right.

Artie steps aside to let Daisy speak to him. “What’s going on?”

“Just a routine call Ma’am.”

“What do you mean? No-one ever called before.”

“Have a nice day Ms. Briscoe.” The two Militiamen turn and walk away, draped like dark Christmas trees, with equipment hanging from their belts and jackets.

I say goodbye and follow them back to their Hummer, and then on down the road back home.

Lou is giving a New Year’s Day party at his home for friends and neighbors. When I arrive his big living room is full of familiar Fauxmonters and people I don’t know mingling under the clerestory windows. They frame leafless pignut hickories spreading their tallest branches outside in the cold raking winter light.

There, by the punch bowl, I recognize Ernie Manstein in check shirt and khakis. He is tall with thickening waist under the line of his belt. His grey hair, is neatly cut and combed and catches highlight from above. Rank Majors is chatting with him, phone in hand. Rank waves to me and introduces us. Telling me Ernie was a founder of The Leiden Organization. Ernie describes the venture as a ‘personnel thing’ and then his ring tones interrupt us.

“Sorry I’ve got to take this.” Ernie turns and strolls over to the wall where he stands next to the mantelpiece with his back to the room.

Rank puts his own phone back in his pocket.“There’s less and less government money for contractors these days you know. Ernie has brought a bunch of people together who wouldn’t make it out there by themselves.”

“Sounds like a clever fellow!”

“Well happy new year Fred, I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

“Happy new year Diddlie, I was delayed.”

“Rank, have you got that gun on you?”

“As a matter of fact I have Diddlie.”

“Where, I don’t see it?”

“No, you are not supposed to, but I am ready if needed.”

“Oh Rank, what do you need a gun for at a party?”

“Diddlie, who knows?”

“In a crowded room like this … you must be crazy.”

“Diddlie, my training tells me where and when to use it.”

“I hope so Rank … I mean come on, this is a party!”

“That’s right Diddlie, so lighten up, will you?”

Diddlie pats his shoulder and whispers in his ear. Rank puts his arm around her shoulder and gives her a squeeze.

“Okay Rank, hands off buddy!”

“Oh Lou! Save me! Save me!”

“Diddlie, there’s no saving you now kid!”

“Happy new year Fred. How’s your drink?”

“Well filled thanks Lou. You ever heard of the Leiden Organization?”

“Sure, for heavens sake don’t take any notice of that stuff in Fulton Furray’s article online.”

“Lou, sometimes Fulton is on to something.”

“Oh happy new year Mr. Ramsay.”

“Diddlie, you got three men to flirt with already.”

She steps towards him and gets close. “Well, are you happy?”

“I am old and decaying and headed for another drink.”

He’s wearing a bright yellow shirt and deep brown thick-whale cords, with brown leather suspenders. His pants come up high on his waist and hang loosely from his shoulders is if from a hanger. He breaks off and shuffles nearer the table regarding the choices of wines, liquor and punch bowl.

“Here Mr. Ramsay, let me give you a hand.”

“A hand, what do I need a hand for?”

“You look a little unsteady that’s all.”

“Diddlie, where’s that nice tall friend of yours?”

“You mean Daisy?”

“Yeah, get me out from under these weeds. Show me that flower of Fauxmont … now she could give me something!”

“You want white or red Mr. Ramsay?”

“Oh red, but I got to have white, like piss, for god’s sake … it does the job though … unless it’s that cheap …”

Diddlie hands him a glass of white wine.

“What kind of a glass is this? God damn plastic, piss in plastic for Christ’s sake!”

“Drink up there!”

“Hank Dumpty, you fat old fart.”

“Ramsay, I am fat and happy with a brace of pheasant and enough bear meat and venison in the freezer for the rest of winter.”

Hank pours himself some bourbon. Then turns around.

“Any one need a refill?”

“You going to give me one of your birds for dinner tonight?”

“The question is will you behave yourself Ramsay?”

“The question is are you going to give me a refill Hank?”

“Ramsay you’re cut off!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just what I choose to mean.”

“You can’t make that choice … You god damn bully!”

“Happy new year Ramsay!”

“I don’t play by your rules Hank …”

A big wide faced blonde woman comes over and stands next to Mr. Ramsay with a light in her blue eyes. She wears black denim bib overalls matching Hank’s, and a white blouse with blue polka dots.

“Helga my love, have a drink with me.”

“Frank, you’re drunk and rude as usual.” She takes his arm and walks away slowly towards some chairs by the garden windows with him shuffling next to her. Diddlie is tugging my arm.

“Fred, come on over here honey.”

We go into the kitchen shaded by the magnolias outside and full of people, polished granite and shiny stainless steel. Daisy is leaning back against the counter top by the sink with a small rectangle of purple paper in her hatband. Her bowler hat is so far back on her head I wonder if it will fall in the sink. She wears a dark pleated blouse with a fine sari-like wrap that seems to drip from her tall spare body in silky purples and deep reds. The multiple facets of her bracelets flash all along her extended right forearm under the thin beam of a halogen light above the sink. She gestures to a small woman standing next to her in a gray tweed jacket, with wild and thin gray hair that looks like a cobweb. She holds her plastic wine glass by the stem in one of her tiny fists.

She says something about, “the ‘subfusc’ light in here”.

Diddlie has turned to talk to someone else for a moment and turns back to tell me the woman is an art historian but doesn’t know her name. I smell smoke.

“Is there a fire somewhere?”

“Here Fred …” Diddlie hands me a joint, fat with a long ash on the end. We are standing behind Daisy next to the stove with the range hood fan on full. The bonfire smell is drawn up across my face towards the stove by the fan in heavy strands of smoke.

“Where did this come from?”

Some one says “Colorado Springs.”

“Okay, so this is legal stuff right?”

“Not around here Fred.”

“Diddlie I mean …”

“Just try it Fred. Get out of your head!”

It is strong and some time after my toke I notice the cobweb woman is gone and the smell of smoke is gone, and there is Lou with Ernie. I didn’t catch Lou’s question.

“What was that Lou?”

“How many you had Fred?”

“More than enough I think.”

We are outside walking along the magnolia hedge toward a group of people standing in the gazebo with its chimney. Ernie is telling Lou that his company is registered in the Netherlands where his partners live. Boris Tarantula is there with Artie Bliemisch, Frank Vassari, and some one else. They all have drinks and warm themselves around the fire bowl in the center of the gazebo.

“Lou, I didn’t know you had connections in the art world.”

“Only through Ernie who collects Frank’s work.”

“Well, I have a couple of early paintings.”

“Now Ernie, I hope you will consider my work too.”

“Boris, when can I take a look?”

“Ernie bought one of Artie’s pieces.”

Artie, introduces me to Giuseppe Gloriani, Tarantula’s new agent. “Hi Fred, happy New Year! Are you a collector?”

No no, I am an interested friend of Artie’s and Frank’s.

“We are all friends here.”

“Of course, Boris.”
“Where is Mr. Guderian? You know Steve Strether introduced me a few months back.”

“I think he had a conflict Boris. I did invite him.”

“Too bad I want him to meet Giuseppe here. Giuseppe is handling all purchasing now.”

So, is that what Steve was doing up at the Guderian’s when we met him with bel and Lambert? When was it we were up there at those mansions off Boundary Circle that “top secret America built”? … All those caterpillars were falling off the trees … Poor Lou was upset about the discussion … His old faith came back to him when he grieved over his daughter’s death … “You know, sometimes I feel as if God is reaching out to me … and then …. Well, … then I don’t … How could God bring about all this? … History is the history of suffering … You know?”

“Fred, hey FRED! Are you stoned or what?”

“No I was just thinking about something.”

There’s a big red hole in the neighborhood at the site of Derwent Sloot’s house. All the big hollies have been cut down that once protected the view from his living room window from the excesses of the Trip mansion next door. I can see right across Derwent’s lot and across the Trip’s back yard and look at three stories of curtained windows at the base of Jake’s folly. A John Deer 800 backhoe with diesel breath, and orange exoskeleton is maneuvering across the bottom enlarging the excavation by clawing at the sides with its bucket. I can hear the strain in the engine note and see it in the darkened exhalations from the exhaust stack. Shiny steel extensions emerge from their hydraulic cylinders and gleam as if they are sweating, loading the bucket full of earth into a dump truck. I was wondering how the truck and machine would get out. Then the truck surprised me by coming up to the surface on a steep dirt ramp hidden from view on the near side of the hole. Concrete footings for a new house will soon be poured, and this big space will be enclosed to become a basement. The L shaped pit in the red clay is surrounded by a silt fence and beyond that, fenced off with orange netting stretched between thin metal posts. Two men with orange jackets and hard hats stand on the other side. One is smoking and looking down at the water pumped up from the bottom through a hose and pouring out beyond my sight. The backhoe has now come up the ramp and the operator walks over to join them leaving his machine grinding the atmosphere with its engine. The other man is on the phone, as he looks up into the trees.

Derwent’s house was scraped off the lot yesterday in a single afternoon and most of the remains were loaded with tremendous noise into a couple of dump trucks that evening. One of his armchairs is supported above the sticky wet bare clay on a sheet of warped plywood. Some one is sitting in it watching me through his Ray Bans, watching the action. He holds something up in front of his face for a moment, a tablet perhaps. Derwent’s bathroom sink sticks out from the last of the rubble near my feet. The man who was looking up into the trees puts his phone in his pocket and walks towards me, waving.

“Hi Fred, are you supervising today?” It is Max Plank.

“No, that’s your job Max.”

“Not until we pour the foundations. This hole is a lot deeper than it needs to be in my opinion, but this is another Dordrecht job.”

“I thought you were through with them!”

“So did I.”

“What do you hear from Sherman Shrowd?”

“We’re still talking. That’s his thing you know, talking.”

“Yes, is this job part of Sherman’s negotiation?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Sherman has shown me a blueprint I’d never seen before.”

“You mean from the Trip house?”

“Yeah, my legal problems grew out of the failure of our silt fence on that job.”

“So what did the blueprints tell you? How did he get them?”

“He’s not saying where he got them. He doesn’t talk that much … but look here’s the thing, there’s a room under the garage.”

“Is that unusual?”

“In this case it is, because the specs I saw show the space under the garage should have been filled in.”

“You should know. You built it.”

“Yes I should, and as far as I know it was filled in and inspected.”

“So what about this hidden room?”

“I think it was done in the week I was off site working over in DC.”

“Oh, you mean done in secret after the fact?”

“Something like that. I don’t know why but I was cut out of several aspects of that job as you know.”

“How about this job?”

“Ask the guy behind me in the arm chair.”

“Is he the boss?”

“I don’t know. His name is Skip and my contract says I answer to the Dordrecht’s site manager not him.”

“So who is he?”

“Like I said his name is Skip.”

“Right, so what’s he doing here?”

“He sits there watching, taps his tablet, and makes a few phone calls. That’s all I’ve seen.”

“Yes I saw him eyeing me and he may have taken my picture come to think of it. When did you get the news from Sherman?”

“About a month ago. Lark is convinced they are holding Juanita Gomez down there.”

“My God, what a nightmare! Who would be doing that?”

“I find it unbelievable but you can ask her in a minute. I just called her and she’s coming by to give me a bag I forgot this morning.”

“Max, I have to get going soon.”

“Alright Fred … No wait a minute. She’s in that Toyota parking over there, see?”

Lark gets out of the same old Corolla Max was driving when we saw him outside the Cavendish Pie Shop the other day. She is wearing a thick white turtleneck cable knit sweater, black jeans and boots, carrying a New Yorker magazine tote bag.

“Hi Lark, what you got there, the family jewels?”

Lark holds the bag open showing me a laptop inside with a folder full of papers next to it.

“Right, all my electronic gems are in there.” She gives Max the bag with one hand and takes his hard hat off and puts it on her head with the other.

“Are you going to be here all day?”

“Unless you are taking over.”

“Lark, good to see you, but I have to go.”

“Okay Fred, so do I, can I give you a ride?”

“Sure, I am going to the Metro.” We walk over to the car and Max’s phone sounds.

“Sorry about the seat! Max’s last passengers were a bag of cement and a couple of gallons of gas for the lawn mower.”

She reaches on to the back seat and hands me an old bath towel to cover up the dust on the seat.

“Boson peed back there on the way to the vet last month.”

“You mean I am now sitting on dog pee instead of cement dust?”

“No, no, that’s just for his drool. It’s newly washed and dried.”

“Boson, who’s Boson?’

“Max’s bloodhound, we were taking him to Dr. Higgs.

We should have used the van, but this uses less gas. Max bartered this heap in part payment for a job. He says the engine is great even though it looks crappy.” I could hear him yelling at us as I got in, but Lark ignored him and started up. It sounds smooth as Lark pulls away only to stop again and toss Max’s hardhat back to him through the open window.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

Lark is laughing at him, and honks twice before we turn the corner to go down Oval Street hill. She hadn’t said another word to Max. I can’t tell if he is really annoyed or playing games with Lark but she seems unruffled and amused.

“Did he tell you about the blue prints Fred?”

“Yes, what makes you think Juanita is being held in the Trip house. She disappeared in March of 2012!”

“Oh lots of things, from several sources. Look I know it’s been a long time, which makes it even scarier. I think she knows something. That’s one reason she’s in danger and also perhaps why she is still alive. Also Max was really frustrated the whole time he worked on that house with Dordrechts because stuff kept happening when he wasn’t there and no one explained it. He said the pay was so good he couldn’t pass the job up, even though he felt like it.”

“I see he’s working with Dordrechts on this job too.”

“Yeah, Sherman set that up and I pushed him.”

“You mean he didn’t want it?”

“No he didn’t, but I kept telling him we might find out something now

he knows there was more than lack of coordination before.”

“Has he told you about Skip?”

“Yeah, we have discussed Skip and I think he’s a security guy.”

“Oh! What about Max?”

“He still doesn’t take me seriously on this.”

“Alright, but who do you think Juanita’s jailer is?”

“Fred, I tell you, I am worried about your buddy Lou. Has he ever asked if he might plug a thumb drive into your computer?”

“How do you know about it?”

“Ah! So he has!”

“I didn’t say that Lark.”

“You don’t have to. I am sure he told you never to say anything; and Fred, you haven’t. ”

We are less than a mile past the Pie Shop on Maxwell Avenue and now stopped at the back of a long line of cars ahead.

“So what is this about?”

“Hope you are not in a hurry!”

“I was …”

“You see this is another reason not to buy a fancy car. Look at that new Mercedes S 550. Probably cost over a hundred $K new, and it is burning twice as much gas as I am sitting in the road like a pile of junk!”

“If you can afford one of those the cost of gas is immaterial.”

“Sure dollars are no a problem, but pollution affects us all.”

“Looks like you and Max got a good deal here.”

“It gets us where we are going, but it is strictly steerage!”

“So what else do your sources tell you Lark?”

“It’s what they don’t tell me. I mean there’s a big hole in the evidence. Can’t find any documentation showing that Juanita is really is in detention any where.”

“But isn’t it known she is being held in a detention center as an illegal immigrant in Texas or somewhere?”

“So they say, but I think it’s a red herring. I’ve checked it all out and there’s no paper trail.”

“Seems fishy alright. What about the raid on the Tripp house?”

“That is documented but they are withholding the details.”

“Why, by whom?”

“Neither INS, nor FBI will tell me much … well, ah … I have word that she wasn’t in fact taken by any government agency.”

“Who’s word?”

“Can’t say Fred.”

“Well, who’s got her?”

“Who else is there around here Fred?”

“Oh not Urban Safety what ever they are called!”

“I didn’t say that Fred.”

“You don’t have to and you didn’t, Lark.”

 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.  

Mishaps … happenings that is … they cause delay, disruption, and disorientation, even momentary despair but these are not disasters. Disaster is on another scale.

It is fall, cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon. Lambert has recovered from his ACL surgery and restrictions imposed by the “Cone from Hell”, which prevented him from gnawing the stitches out of his right hind thigh. Red and purple maple leaves stick to his fur after he rolls around at the roadside. He has a passion for cigarette butts and loses his equilibrium, falls into the ditch, and comes up again with a yelp shaking himself violently. Muddy water from the bottom of the ditch and wet leaves fly from his coarse white fur in all directions. Water spatters an oncoming jogger’s orange and black track suite with a Snazz logo over the right breast. Perhaps there is grit in that dispersal and that is what gets in her eyes. She doesn’t stop to get the irritant out. She keeps going, but more slowly, rubbing her eye and veering blindly from the side of Wicket Street into the intersection with Oval Street. An old chalky blue F150 comes down Oval Street hill. I notice the gun rack is full against the back window. It breaks hard and swerves to avoid an accident when I hear a loud yell from the open cab Window. It is Hank Dumpty. Coffee spilled down the front of his tea shirt.

Bel Vionnet has her hands up to her face fearing disaster. “You shouldn’t drink and drive!”

Hank Dumpty gets out of his truck, leaving it running and stopped with the door open. It is at an angle across the bottom of Oval Street blocking the way. “That stuff is god damn hot.”

He pulls his green t-shirt off over his head and rings it out over the ditch, then wipes his broad hairy protruding gut with the bunched cloth as if it were a rag. Bel Vionnet walks over to Hank.

“Sorry Hank I am sure that was painful. You dropped something you know.” She picks up the cell phone, which fell out of his t-shirt pocket as he hurriedly took it off.

“Thanks bel. It is still hot from the coffee too.” He drops it in the front pocket of his jeans.

The jogger has stopped by the truck. “Look where you’re going there!” She looks up, only a shadow inside the cave of her hood, and runs toward Hank.

“Hank, what happened to you?”

“You happened Daisy!”

“Hank, what did I do? You must be freezing! Don’t you have a jacket?”

Hank walks over to his truck and pulls out a paint-stained shearling jacket with a hole in the elbow and tufts of wool hanging from the bottom. He puts it on but doesn’t bother to fasten it. Daisy tries to do it up for him.

“Hank, where’re the buttons on this thing?”

“It has a zip and it’s busted.”

“Oh Hank, honey, get in your truck and turn the heat on.”

“The heat’s busted. I am fine Daisy. Well, I was fine until you wandered out in front of me, and I damn near ran you over.”

“I didn’t know you were a jogger Daisy.”

“I am not bel. This is my second try. I bought this outfit last year and it just stayed in my drawer until now.”

“How far do you go?”

“Last time I went through the woods on Cockroft Lane and back on Walton Street, but the light on Maxwell Avenue takes for ever to change. So now I am going once around Wicket Street. It’s only about a mile and it’s killing me.”

“What do you mean Daisy? I, damn near killed you.”

“Hank, I know. I’ve got to be more careful. I nearly fell in the ditch yesterday, like Lambert. I am ready to give it up anyway.”

“Why did you start?”

“Fred, I just thought it would be a good idea to get fit, before I get too old to even try.”

“Daisy, sweetheart, you still have plenty of time. Better look where you are going though. I’ve got to get moving up to the cabin and shoot some Thanksgiving dinner.” Hank climbs back into his truck as a UPS van comes down the hill behind. The driver gets out and delivers three cartons to the old Tripp house. Leaves them next to the side door where Juanita had let me in when I made my first visit. As Hank pulls away towards Maxwell Avenue, Lark Bunlush walks up behind us. No one noticed because we were all so interested in the happenings on the corner.

“So who is living there now?” Lark is pointing up toward the Tripp house. Some-one a few houses away starts a leaf blower. Then, as if in response, another one starts up the hill from us.

“I don’t know Lark. Let’s get away from that noise and go for coffee, on me.”

“Daisy, what happened to you?”

“Oh, I almost got run over Lark.”

“Is that why you are all spattered?”

“No she has Lambert to thank for the decorative dirt.”

Lambert has been sitting patiently at bel’s feet. He looks up on hearing his name. His tall expressive ears stand up from the top of his head like conical sections. Getting no immediate response he barks, a single sound, loud, sharp and short. Daisy bends over to pet him and his ears flatten against his head. He grunts as she rubs them, one with each hand. Daisy stands up again when Lambert breaks away.

“So, is any one up for coffee? I’ve had it with exercise.”

She starts toward Maxwell Ave. with bel and Lambert in the lead. Lark and I follow and cross the road behind them. Leaves fill the hickories with yellows as if remembering summer as they fade into fall, and gray white-oak leaves are blowing up from the road in swarms, animated by the steady flow of traffic along Maxwell Avenue. The parking lot in front of us is filling with Saturday morning shoppers maneuvering their SUVs among small cars.

“What did you say Lark?” The wind roars in my ear and her voice is carried off as a fire engine is slowed to a crawl at the intersection with its siren sweeping all other sound away.

“Fred, I said that was a pretty sickening midterm election.”

“The economy is picking up. I thought the Democrats would do better.” The sign on the door to the Cavendish says “No Pets Please”. Daisy, Bel and Lambert go in with another short bark from Lambert who is straining hard from his now shortened extendible leash. He knows Mrs. Rutherford will give him some thing. It is usually a left-over from the sandwich selection, maybe roast beef or cheese. Lark and I keep chatting outside. She steps off the shady sidewalk with a shiver and into a sunny parking space. I open the door for her.

“Fred, I don’t have time for coffee … but anyway, think about it. The stock indexes are going sky high, but who benefits?”

“I see what you mean, not the average voter.”

“That’s it Fred and they are mad at Obama who’s got only himself to blame.”

“Really Lark? I thought it was the Republicans!”

“Ha Ha, Fred, seriously though, he ditched the campaign organization that first got him elected and the oligarch’s machine just kept rolling!”

“Lark, come on in for a minute.” I open the door again but she refuses. I stand to the side as more customers go into the Pie Shop.

“The oligarchs Lark? Do you mean the conservatives.”

“You might say that, but they are not conservatives. Conservatives have been marginalized by the so called Tea Party.”

“So called? They are the Tea Party.”

“The original Tea Party was more diverse and sprang up all over the place at once. What passes for Tea Party now seldom says anything about the corporate excess, which they used to do.”

“What do you mean Lark, there is a Chantilly branch and an Alexandria branch which is emphasizing K-12 education issues.”

“I didn’t know that Fred. Are you into it?”

“Read those you agree with for reassurance and read your enemies for growth…”

“What’s that Fred? Are you quoting something?”

It is from “Lament for a National Hero” by Peter Dale Scott.

“Oh yeah the poet, the guy who wrote “Coming to Jakarta.”

“The same, Lark.”

I can see Daisy beckoning to us inside from the coffee line.”

Max Plank pulls up in a battered gold Toyota Corolla. He cranks down the window and says something that’s drowned out by wind and a horn.  Some one is honking at him trying to get by.  Max ignores them and yells at Lark to get in.

“Okay, Okay! Look Fred, the corporate state is consolidating along with militarized police and Obama’s war or journalists is keeping a lid on.” She has her hand on the car door handle but it is the driver’s side door. “Other side Kid.”

“What Max?” She is still looking at me. Werner grabs her arm and pulls to get her attention.

“Get in the other side.” The car behind Max is flashing its lights and honks again. It is a small white Lexus with the driver sitting low in the seat craning her neck to see over the steering wheel.

“Max, what are you doing here baby?”

“Get in Lark!”

The woman in the car behind leans out of the window. She has a peaked leather cap on with ear-flaps and thick gray hair spilling out from under it on the sides.

“Move your car, will you?”

“Alright lady, alright!”

Max moves on leaving Lark standing in the parking space looking at me.

“Listen Fred, our demonstrations and civil disobedience bring on the heavies, the swat teams and dirty tricksters and show their true colors.”

“Lark we can go on later. Mind that car!”

“Fred, will you join the movement to head off disaster?”

“The angry woman punches her horn as she inches up to park in the space Lark is standing in. “I am the one trying to move honey, not him. Get out of the way!”

The impatient woman moves up in the comfort of her Lexus as Lark steps off the street and back into the cold shade of the sidewalk in front of the Pie Shop.

“Get out of the way!” I can see a fat orange cat curled up in the seat next to the driver. It looks like a large round pudding until it wakes up and stretches in a distinctly feline gesture. The cat doesn’t move again but Max’s car has moved out of her way and so has Lark.

I couldn’t respond to Lark above the commotion and invited her in again gesturing towards the open door.

“I don’t have time Fred.”

She turns around. “Where’s Max?” She mops back the black strands of hair that grow in front of her thick gray mass and walks off into the crowded parking lot. I go in to find Daisy, bel, Lambert and 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. 

        Lou climbs down his ladder leaning over a butterfly bush against Diddlie’s roof and next to the chimney. He steps down slowly from the roof to the cement patio. I have driven over to pick him up for lunch, as previously agreed through a flood of text messages which had revised the time and place repeatedly over the last twenty-four hours. He has cleared Diddlie’s roof of last winter’s fallen leaves and twigs from a newly fallen branch. Swept them off the gentle grade onto a huge crumpled blue tarp spread on the lawn like stilled waters. He folds the tarp over the pile and weights it down with his rake and a spade.

“I’ll do the gutters after.”

He takes off his gloves and Australian straw hat with a brass kangaroo leaping through a dark sweat stain on the light brown leather band. Lou walks over and picks up his backpack to get a towel out. A northern mocking bird is furiously clucking at him as he wipes his head, but it doesn’t leave its perch next to the purple spread presented by the rose of Sharon trees. After he hangs the towel on a branch to dry, another mockingbird bird dives at him with its wings flashing their white markings in a dramatic display of offensive aerobatics. The bird settles on a redbud branch clucking at us only yards away. Lou leans over to talk through my open window.

“That bird has been after me all morning.”

“It’s too late for them to be nesting, Lou.”

“Naaah, they are just having some fun at my expense!”

“They are high on hibiscus.”

“You ever wash this thing?”

“No, it’s against my religion to wash the car.”

“No good for your paint.”

“Still don’t believe in it. If we get a clean rain, that will wash it off, besides this thing is made of fiberglass or something like that, which won’t rust.” Lou walks around the back running his finger across the back window leaving a wiggly line in the pollen, tree sap and soot dropped by aircraft landing and taking off up river. He holds up his hat as the bird makes a second approach. Lou knocks on the window opposite the driver’s side. I press the buttons to open the window and unlock the door. He tries the handle at the same time and the two actions cancel each other out.

“Let me in here. I need the cover Fred.”

He reaches in through the open window, unlocks the door and gets in.

“So I see Lou. I don’t have my air defense system up yet.”

“Fred, are we going to the H-bar?”

“Yes, unless you have somewhere else in mind. Is Diddlie coming, Lou?”

“She might meet us there. She’s out with … ah … I don’t know … She’s gone out though.”

“Good of you to clean off her roof, Lou.”

I backed the car out of Diddlie’s driveway and we coast down Oval Street past the Trip’s, or is it still the Trip’s?”

A fox runs in front of us with something dangling from its jaws. I break needlessly to let it cross the Wicket street intersection. It is mangy with a ragged tail, but fast, and agile enough to jump through a rail fence into a tangle of wisteria and holly on the other side.

“What’s that thing doing in the middle of the day?”

“Lou these are suburban foxes. They know most people are away during the day and home in the evening.”

“You think so?”

A lunch crowd fills the H-bar, but the receptionist assures me there are plenty of tables in the Quark Lounge.

“I don’t see her in this crowd Lou.”

“No, she is not here yet. Let’s go ahead. She’ll find us if she wants to.”

“It is darker than ever in here, Lou.”

“Might help if you take your sunglasses off.”

We settle opposite each other in a booth. Then Lou goes to wash up.

A gray haired man with wide hips and a white tea-shirt and khaki shorts walks past with a bandy gait. His pocket brushes the side of the table.

“Well, excuse me!”

“Diddlie, where did you come from?”

“Oh, out and about.”

She is wearing the same royal blue blazer as the first time I met her and there is a blaze of goldenrod on her lapel. She carries a small powder blue suede purse on a long thin red strap over her shoulder.

“That guy ought to be more careful!”

“Yes”

“So are you guys going to solve another of the world’s problems today?”

“I doubt it.”

“Fred, why do you get into these involved conversations? I mean what’s the point of sitting here talking about things you can’t do anything about?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like all that talk about Snowden.”

“All that talk about Snowden interested me because I heard other people’s views.”

“So what?”

“So actually talking about it is doing something.”

“Its not going to change anything.”

“It changes my mind. Isn’t that important?”

“You just live in your head.”

Diddlie is looking in her purse, moving her fingers deeper and deeper into it as if to try and find something tangled in the contents.

The restaurant seems to be emptying. The big gray haired man is standing by the table with his back to me facing the room, talking to a family as they get up at an adjacent table. Lou walks around them all to get back to his seat. “Where’s Diddlie, Lou?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen her yet. Have you?”

“Yes she was here a second ago.”

Lou gets up and looks around. The big guy has left and I can see the family from the adjacent table walking out through sunbeams coming in the bar through the big bay window. Lou rubs his face and scratches his thick black left eyebrow and sits down again.

“I woke up from a nightmare last night with a horrible realization.”

“Do you remember the dream itself?”

“No, nothing much. I was with my daughter before she shipped out.”

Lt. Waymarsh had been killed in Iraq on Nov. 25, 2010. The waiter is standing over us asking what we would like to drink. Lou doesn’t notice and goes on.

“There is no act of torture, carnage or sadism,  I might dream about that hasn’t happened to some one … or may be happening right now.”

The waiter moves on having said something in a low voice I didn’t hear as I was listening to Lou.

“Where did that come from?”

“A nightmare, but a nightmare that’s probably happening to some one

while I am lying in a comfortable bed, or sitting here talking to you.”

I don’t want to discuss Iraq or the war. He will get even deeper into the grief he has been living with ever since Nov 2010.

“Are you getting enough sleep these days Lou?”

“Seem to be. You know I have been living under the illusion that the world was getting to be a better place since world war two.”

“There are now more people living in material comfort than any time in history. You might be right.”

“That comfort is coming at a very high price.”

“You mean environmentally?”

“That too, but I am thinking of the way our wealth has been made and continues to be made.”

“You’re thinking of economic exploitation perhaps?”

“That’s the way they say it on the left, but I am thinking about a bigger picture. I mean there’s more than one kind of capitalism. Why are we stuck with the kind of finance we have?”

The waiter is back and gives us each a paper place mat, glasses of ice water and asks if we have decided on our order. We haven’t, and he gives us more time in which we continue to talk.

“Much has changed through leveraged buy outs and the financial crash.”

“Yup, and technology has made a lot of that possible, and a lot of other things possible too.”

Lou pulls out his glasses to read the menu and puts it down again.

“I don’t need that thing. Always get a burger and fries with a side of string beans.”

“That’s right, with balsamic vinegar on them.”

“Yeah, if Mr. Hoffman still has that good stuff.”

The waiter came back again and took our orders showing his tattooed forearms below his short sleeves and gold piercings in his ears.

“Have you been away Lou?”

“No, just not been in here lately … I still don’t feel comfortable about the deal with Guderian.”

“When was that?”

“Remember, we walked up to Slips Lane with bel and met Steve coming out of Guderian’s?”

“Yes, when Lambert came racing out.”

“I don’t know what Steve was up there for but they approached me about going back to work with them.”

“You mean Steve and Guderain are in partnership?”

“No, but Steve does some consulting with them.”

“I had no idea!”

“No, well maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Any way keep that ‘entre nous’.

“Doesn’t sound like educational work Lou.”

“No, it is hush hush.”

“You mean security stuff?”

“Say no more Fred. It is all ‘close hold’ and it has a tight hold around here that’s for sure.”

“Lou, what are you talking about?”

“I am talking about something … about our country’s safety, I mean I may need a favor if you are up for it.”

“Be glad to help you out Lou.”

“Of course Fred, but I’ll tell you straight up, you are being used, and not just by me.”

“You mean right now I am being used?”

“Put it this way, once you get into contracting and subcontracting and sub sub contracting in the tech. business it is easy to loose track of what is really going on.”

“So alternative agendas creep in.”

“Hard to discern.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a memory stick to plug in your PC for a second.

Then I’ll come back with another in about a week and plug that

in, and take it away. No one should ever know the difference.”

“But everything computers do is remembered in a sense.”

“That’s true Fred, but I’ll cover my tracks and yours.”

“Artemisia Bliemisch” say white letters on an orange banner stretched over the entrance to the new Gentileschi Gallery on 7^th Street in Washington DC. They moved from P Street in the spring. Artie is now hanging the exhibition, which opens next week. The double fronted gallery windows are framed in brushed aluminum surrounded by polished black granite. Steve and I can’t see in as the windows and door are curtained with a coarse white fabric that has small gun-metal blue spirals in the weave that look like madly distorted little springs. A small fluffy longhaired calico cat is playing between curtain and window to the left of the door. She bats with a swift white paw at something crawling up the glass and it looks as if she has pulled some metal out of the curtain too.

There’s a small gap between the end of the curtain and the doorframe. We look through the glass at the cat’s gap in the curtain and knock. Artie walks distractedly towards the door in her striped railway-man’s cap. Her black tea-shirt hangs from her broad shoulders stained with drips of white and various yellow tones, which all but obscure the P.U. logo. Her white cargo pants have paint encrusting the knees. The pockets are loaded with rags, tools, and a small paint roller hangs from a loop at her hip.

Installation of her latest and most ambitious work has not left her much time for sleep. She unlocks the door and lets us in with a big hug for Steve Strether who helped her move the big pieces in the Cavendish Pie Shop’s van last week. Her cell-phone ring chimes sound with a metallic crash of something falling, many things perhaps. She looks down at the screen as if it had bitten her and then ignores the call with the flick of her finger.

Fatigue surrounds her eyes in deepening red hollows under her brows and her voice is hoarse. She takes off her hat and her black hair is cut short rising off her head in damp black tufts and spikes as she rubs. A grin lightens her face as she notices Steve’s concentrated look at the work before us.

“Oh Cangiante! you are going in the crate now.” She picks up the cat, which has lost interest in the curtain and window and seems headed for a jar full of small paintbrushes on the floor.

“She’s going to the vet at 3.” Cangiante chirps as Artie picks her up.

She says a lot more in Italian as she carries the cat to the back of the gallery where there is a kitchen, office and storeroom. We can hear yells of protest as she is dropped in the crate. Artie returns and stands next to Steve.

“Is that a new cat?”

“Steve, she adopted me this week, here at the gallery. I think she’s a Persian.”

“That flat face of hers is striking – How do you think she will get along with your black and gray kitty, Sfumato, back at your studio?

“There’s Bounder!”

Echoing barks come from the back and fill the room.

“There was no one to take Bounder today so she has been hanging out here.”

“Artie, we could have taken care of Bounder.”

“Well, I thought Diddlie could take her Steve, but she has something on today. That might be her.”

Diddlie brings Bounder in from the back, on a short leash. Artie greats Bounder in Italian and Bounder enjoys a lot of attention but also strains to sniff the exhibits. Two paintings about ten by four feet hang on the wall in front us. They are close together lengthways, all in browns that tend towards blue, yellow and gray in a vaguely cubist composition. It is called “Random Comments”. At first glance it’s as if forms in the painting have fallen off the canvas and spread across the floor in front of it. It is as if the front fell off a building into the street as rubble, with the interior of the building standing open behind the wreckage. Warm tones of oak, and cherry and deep black mahogany greet the eye in the rubble pile stacked against the bottom of the painting.

Bounder noses several thin off-cuts and tries to grab one of the longer pieces from the assemblage.

“Diddlie, I don’t need Bounder to rearrange this thing!”

“I know, I’ll hold her back.” Diddlie pulls Bounder away, waving a treat under the dog’s nose. Artie is looking carefully where Bounder’s snout has been pulled away. She mumbles a long quiet Italian monologue into Bounder’s ear and she picks something up.

“The dog’s drooled on this piece of cherry.”

“I love those impressionist brush strokes you are using Artie.”

“Are they impressionist Did.?” Artie is still holding the piece of wood with thumb and finger, trying to avoid getting wet with dog drool.

“Yeah, you know, free and fast, like Monet, Van Gogh or Degas.”

“Diddlie you are a little mixed up honey.”

“Am I?” Artie pulls a rag from her pocket to wipe drool.”

“Monet saw differently from Degas who saw differently from Van Gogh.”

“But Artie, they are all called impressionists.”

“I know, Monet and Degas did exhibit together but they were using paint in different ways.”

“That’s it Did, Degas actually completed very little compared with say, Ingres.”

“Steve, much is suggested by Degas, sometimes with pretty wild paint.”

“That’s what I mean Artie, ‘wild paint’. Like you have here!”

“Diddlie, I don’t think Degas was an impressionist at all.”

“Right, think of Monet by comparison.”

“You can’t really see Monet’s drawing Steve. It is all in the positioning of the paint strokes.”

“That’s it Artie, he didn’t do lines. He did what he called, ‘patches of color’”. Artie has finished wiping her piece of cherry. She holds it at her side and throws the rag in an old ‘Maker’s Mark’ carton near the door.

“The thing is Diddlie, just look at the paint.”

“You might say everything else comes after that.”

“Well you might say so Steve. I look at the picture.”

Steve has not looked away from the painting since he came in. He points at the assemblage in front of us.

“Okay Artie, so now the work is uncovered I guess these are two of the big paintings we moved in the van, and we must have carried this stuff on the floor packed in the old liquor cartons.”

“Steve, I spent the last three days arranging the stuff on the floor. These and the stuff in the other room.” Artie replaces the piece of cherry she was cleaning.

“Quite a nice diptych.”

“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms Steve.”

“Artie, where did you find all this highly finished wood?”

“Old furniture.”

“Okay, and a lot of paint … some of this is the original finish and some of it is faux. You painted it yourself, right?”

“That’s right and spent a long time standing at the band saw, Steve.”

“Do I see some analytic cubism here in the painting?”

“You might.”

“Maybe de Kooning as well, with Artie’s brown chiaroscuro palette”.

“If you can find de Kooning Steve, I’ll gratefully accept the compliment.”

The surfaces exposed by cutting the old wooden furniture appear at first to have the same finish as the rest of the off-cut, but a more careful look reveals layers of paint contributing their own texture. Thin pieces of resin shaped like gestural brush strokes in yellow and white stand out where they are distributed in the wood pile; some tiny, others bigger, are positioned in the middle of the tumble. All look as if they fell off the painting. The wood on the ground looks like a random pile at first, though carefully arranged from large to small, with the largest at the back against the painting, the smallest at the outer edges. The painted gestures on the canvas, are suggested in the wood pile and the colors in the wood show in the painting.

Steve is on his hands and knees looking as closely as he can at the wood and now he gets up and steps back.

“Your impasto on some of these pieces of wood leave the same impression as forms in the painting. I mean the wood looks like paint down there on the floor, and the paint on canvas looks like wood.”

“Right Steve, but notice there are no pieces of wood fastened to the canvas.”

Steve steps further back squinting at the work.

“The painting is abstract and ah … figurative in a way too.”

“Hope you can see it both ways Steve.” Steve has backed up almost into the next room, and when he notices where he is, he looks over at the exhibits there. Diddlie has already moved on and is sitting on the windowsill with Bounder lying on the floor in front of her. “Hi Steve, come join us!” Bounder lifts his head from his paws stretched out in front of him.

“Did. you better get a tight hold now.”

“Its never easy Artie as I don’t speak Italian.”

Artie tells Bounder something and turns back to the work. Her second installation, called “Neoplastic Event” is in the room to the right of the entrance. A single painting perhaps eight feet square hangs with a pile of colorful objects on the floor in front of it. This square painting is strongly reminiscent of Mondrian’s compositions with black lines dividing up the surface in primary colors and whites and grays.

Artie and I follow Steve into the next room where Bounder rushes forward pulling Diddlie up on to her feet. Bounder picks up another object in his enthusiasm, only to drop it under Artie’s glare. Diddlie regains control, pulling Bounder back to the windowsill without her black painted prize.

“I call these ‘sticks’ Steve, and the colored pieces are boards.” The ‘sticks’ are less than one by one in section, and a foot to several feet long and correspond to black lines on the painting. What Artie calls the ‘boards’ correspond to the planes of color enclosed by the black lines in the painting.

Squares and rectangles, or ‘boards’ of various dimensions are painted in the same colors as the painting and both are spread out and piled up on the floor in front of the canvas. The effect suggests that all these three dimensional objects spilled from the flat surface of the painting as in the cubist assemblage in the other room.

“Is this based on a particular work of Mondrian?”

“No, Fred it’s a Bliemisch. I am still arranging the 3D stuff.”

Artie picks up a square box of about eighteen inches by four.

“Oh luckily the paint is dry!” When Bounder picked up her black ‘stick’ she drooled on the box beneath. She wipes more of Bounder’s curiosity off the box with another rag from her bulging pocket.

“Did. let’s take this dog outside.” Diddlie and Artie go out the front door with Bounder who seems inattentive to another monologue in Italian. While Steve and I stay on looking at the work.

“Fred, Artie, is reversing tradition.”

“What do you mean, reversing?”
“There is a long tradition of artists rendering three dimensions into two dimensional pictures.”

“She is working from two-dimensional abstract paintings into three-dimensional objects.”

“Also Fred, reversing the careful organization of a painting into the apparent chaos of fallen rubble …”

… and it’s a lot of work to arrange the look of chaos here on the floor.”

“Is it an illusion then Fred?”

“Like the painting, the wood is and it isn’t.”

“How like the painting Fred?”

“I mean does the painting render form or not?”

“You mean three-dimensional form right? The brown one in the other room does, sort of, but this flat painting isn’t rendering any illusion. It does have form though.”

“Steve, I’d say the paint is a statement of fact.”

“Okay and what would you say about the wood?”

“The painted wood is what the painting wanted to be Steve, in the next life.”

“Oh! so we are looking at this new life in the here and now!”

“Do you see the flat painting like a plan for the wood.”

“Well, chaos has no plan Fred.”

“Steve you might say this is planned chaos, an illusion of chaos, here on the floor. These bits of wood are supposed to look as if they fell here randomly but in fact Artie spent hours on the arrangement.”

“The colors follow the painting exactly, but look carefully at the arrangement. It is orderly from large to small progressing out from the bottom of the painting.”

“Yes and the wood is all arranged in ninety degree angles. It couldn’t just fall into that position.”

“No the pieces would be all higgledy-piggledy.”

“Yes, we might say painted wood and painted canvas reflect each other.”

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

Diddlie Drates is weeding her front yard. The sun is well above the tree line leaving its  electromagnetic signature in dappled shade. She kneels on a small green tarp under a wide brimmed floppy yellow straw hat with her gardening tools tossed in a bucket off to the side. Long thin purple and yellow ribbons, wound once around the top of her hat, hang across the back and flutter in the air over the edge of the brim. There’s a pile of drying weeds on her right and on her left is her wheelbarrow full of fresh cut goldenrod. I can’t see any sign of it growing nearby, but then again, Diddlie often has goldenrod, indicative of a certain mood, even when it is out of season. I walk over to her and offer her the use of my transplanting spade, which she had previously asked to borrow, if it isn’t raining, on Sunday morning.

“Thanks Fred, I want to use that to get this horse nettle out. The root can go down eight feet.”

“You need a backhoe Diddlie!”

“Yeah, this dry clay is hard as rock and you can’t pull anything up. The stems just break off. Have you got a real small one I can borrow for that patch over there?” She points out a clump of carolina horse nettle, hiding its thorns but showing off its faintly purple flowers with yellow centers. “Look at that huge bumble bee! It is weighing down the flower nearly to the ground.”

“They love solanum carolinense”.

“Are they Latin scholars, your bumble bees?”

“Fred, they don’t need Latin they have …”

“The sound of a dump truck drowns out her voice. It comes up the hill, orange, with ‘Mack’ in big polished metal letters abovethe flat rectangle of the radiator with bull dog on top. Eight wheels roll into view under its load, two more riding high, and then all stop opposite us. The driver seems lost. He has his phone up to his ear. “Dordrecht’s Group” is printed in small letters in the middle of the door bellow a yellow lion salient. The engine revs, a cloud of diesel smoke spreads from the exhaust stack behind its shiny heat shield with grab bar. The brakes exhale, and now the engine is quieter, as if it is panting rapidly from its exploding metallic lungs. Diddlie waves at the driver. She takes off her yellow leather gloves, gets up and walks over to the truck and shouts. The driver doesn’t notice. He is looking the other way with his window shut. She turns and comes over to me.

“Come on in Fred. This is too much.”

“Where are you going?”

“What?”

Diddlie, steps close, and shouts in my ear. “Come on in and have some tea.”

We go through her carport past Mr. Liddell who is sleeping through the commotion with his back to us in his hutch. As soon as we enter, the kitchen door slams shut, pulled by an old spring. The Red Queen shouts: “Get out will you? Damn you, get out!” Diddlie fills her kettle and puts it on the stove to heat. Then walks through to the living room and I can hear her tell the Queen that Fred is visiting. “He’s off his head!” replies the Parrot. I hear Diddlie close a door and she comes back to the kitchen. She stands facing me with her back to the stove. I sit at the small Formica topped table that was in here when she bought the house, along with two old chairs. The chairs have chrome metal legs and a small plastic covered seat with a matching padded back mounted on two chrome uprights. Surprisingly she holds a bunch of golden rod. There is so much it takes two hands.

“Where did that come from?”

“Oh don’t try to distract me Fred. Fred I have been reading the blog and I have a lot to say. I’m sorry Fred, but I’ve got to tell you, that the thing still doesn’t have any structure.”  There is a faint scent of lemon in the air.

“Did, your kettle is boiling.”

Her kettle is black enameled metal. The handle is in the shape of a standing cat. The head is hinged for filling while steam comes out of a vertical stump, which used to be a tail rising from the cat’s back. A plume of steam comes out like a huge bushy cloud of new tail.

“It is full of structures, Diddlie.”

“Well I don’t get it. You do seem to be getting into more of the talk though. That at least is more believable than all that transcribing you’ve been doing, without a word from you.”

“I am getting to know folks around here. There’s more to say. Have to listen at first to get to know them. Glad, at least that you find it more believable. Are you going to make tea with that boiling water?”

“No, no, no, Fred you’re trying to distract me again. Where’s the plot? I mean what is happening? It’s all loose ends.”

“Well, our knowledge of the world is scanty, though it may seem otherwise.”

“I don’t know what you mean, conspiracy theories or what?”

“No! not that, I mean we get a fragments and bits of the world from all from all sources and string them together with sentences and stories.”

The room is filled with a scent of orange and vanilla. The lemon has faded. There is a stir in the steamy air above my head and a whiff of cinnamon.

“Fragmented, like what kind of stories?”

“Diddlie, let me ask you something.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t let you off the hook from my questions to you.”

“Understood, I want to hear about your long visit to England.”

“Well, I stayed with my aunt Maria’s daughter up in Chester. Not sure how much more I am going to say.”

“Old Maria Gostrey?”

Orange scent in the atmosphere is giving way to tea, a bit smoky perhaps.

“Yes, Maria.”

“What’s the problem?” Diddlie’s small kitchen is filing with the black enamel cat’s steam tail. Nothing it seems could survive the profusion of steam, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, and it steals around window blinds and obscures a bowl of red and yellow dahlias on top of the fridge. The door to the hall is open. Nothing stirs in the living room or in the hall. The tiles behind the stove are running with condensation and the rising humidity is soaking my shirt.

“What ever I tell you will become part of your blog.”

“… and the problem is?”

“The problem is I want some privacy.”

“Diddlie are you hiding in this steam for privacy? Are we going to drink tea or just inhale?”

“I put tea in with the water you know.”

“Yes the aroma is delightful but a taste would be nice too.”

“It is Shakers’ tea, called ‘Sabbath Day Lake Herbal Tea.’

“I don’t have to write everything you say you know.”

“Well Fred, you can write the name of the tea but don’t write anything about my love life okay?”

“Okay, can I say whether or not it is still ripe?”

“You can say it was a ‘Last Tango in Chester’ and now it is over, crashed and buried, done, finished, and forgotten … I wish I could forget … anyway say that.”

“Yes, well that eliminates a promising story line.”

“What an insensitive reaction!”

“Sorry Diddlie I …” She puts the bundle of goldenrod down on the table, and adds more water to the kettle, as the clouds are thinning though still thick enough to obscure the chandelier above my head.

“… Listen Fred, you have so many other lines to tie up, you can’t complain about lack of story line.”

“Well, life is full of loose ends. That is just life.”

“Life is, but fiction isn’t full of loose ends.” I get a glimpse of Diddlie’s hair beaded with water droplets shining like tiny silver Christmas ornaments.

“I wish you’d turn the heat down under the tea kettle Diddlie.”

“Oh Fred, let kitty have his tail.”

“Any way it is getting hard to see you through this steam, besides I am not writing fiction.”

“You are too. You said you were writing me and all the rest of Fauxmont, and none of it really exists.”

“Diddlie you are so mixed up about that. But any way you want a more conventional story line I suppose.”

“I want to talk to Werner Plank and see how he is doing with that law suit hanging over him, and what about the house next door. Jake has moved out, thank God and good riddance, but what’s going on with his stinking great house, and what’s the story with the Juanita … need I go on?”

“You don’t have to.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“Um, this steam is really getting to me … I don’t know the answers yet. You know you can see all kinds of figures in this cloudy room.”

“Excuses Fred! You’re just as lost as you were before I went away and it has nothing to do with kitty’s tail. He only has a proper tail when I boil the kettle and I have been away for so long he must have forgotten what it is like.”

“Did, why isn’t the steam going into the hall? I have got to open the door and get a draft in.”

“Don’t you dare open the door, Queenie will fly out and we will never get her back.”

“I thought she was locked in the living room.”

“No she just flew in. Look up Fred.”

“I never noticed her come in. It is hard to see in this steam.” She is perched on one of the Plexiglas rods of Diddlie’s kitchen chandelier, a construction joined with fishing line she bought at a craft fair. I can smell cinnamon again and it grows stronger the longer the bird is there.

“Why is she so quiet?”

“It’s the steam.”

“What’s the steam?”

“Steam is water vapor Fred, harmless, and sterilized, just the way she likes it. It’s good for her plumage and vocal cords.”

“Do parrots have vocal cords?”

“Queenie speaks doesn’t she?”

“Well, this humidity is bad for my shirt and I am dripping, so if you’ll excuse me I’ll be going back.”

“Why Fred? … I mean I want to know. I want you to answer some questions to move the plot along.”

Steam rolls in between us in scented opacity. Its magical white substance seems both solid and immaterial both dark and filled with light from the kitchen window.

“That’s true in fiction generally, but … steam is making it hard to breath.”

“Diddlie I only find out little bits of things as … but there are themes running through it.”

“Like what?”

“What’s your address?.”

“1664 Oval street.”

“You notice all the streets in Fauxmont are named after terms in cricket and streets outside the neighborhood are named after scientists?”

“Yes but you’re inconsistent. There are some characters and details that are purely imaginary and some others that refer to something else, but there is no system.”

There’s a rush of air. Vanilla scented steam swirls around the room and I can hear the Red Queen’s wings flapping but can’t tell where she is. The Cinnamon suddenly gets stronger and fades again. Then a terrific rumbling vibration comes from outside. Is it another earthquake? Sounds as if the house might be falling over. The red Queen shrieks and flies out of the steam towards me in an intense choking cloud of cinnamon scent, only to disappear again. I get up and walk carefully towards the door, but can’t see where she landed.

“What is going on Did?”

“Oh, he’s finally figured out where he is.”

“Who has?”

“The driver of that red truck.”

“So?”

“I am getting new gravel for the driveway. Hey there, where are you going Fred? There’s lots more steam yet.”

“Goodbye Diddlie!”

Walking home, away from the cinnamon parrot and the metal kettle cat with steam tail, I am surprised to find the newspaper still in the driveway.

I had read the Sunday paper over breakfast, before walking up the hill to Diddlie’s with the transplanting spade. Could this be a second copy delivered by mistake? No, the sun is still behind the tree line. It must be Monday morning. Here’s the date printed on Monday’s paper lying in the driveway.

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.  

Early Saturday morning a strange new matte black surface takes me by surprise, like a vast perfectly clean cloth spread over more than an acre of ground. It gives off a strong smell of tar in front of the H-bar and across Huygens St. in front of Safeway. Not a vehicle in sight, not a movement, it is like a silence covering this usually bustling place. The area is marked off with orange cones. Yellow plastic ribbon stretches between them blown by gusting winds under a clear sky. Wind blows in my ear like white noise. A buck and a doe appear, standing still together with a nonchalant air in front of the H-bar. Were they there all along? As we look across the parking lot at each other it seems they want to say something, but they turn and trot away, past the big bow window of the H-bar, and disappear around the corner of the building. Several pale gray marks under the streetlights stand out like mealtime spills on clean linen, where crows gather to comment from on high. Carefully measured thin chalk lines have been drawn on the dark surface like the geometry lesson of a teacher’s chalkboard. They mark the place for thick broader white lines about to be laid down indicating parking spaces and directional arrows. The yellow DD 25 Volvo asphalt roller splashed with tar is loaded on a flatbed truck parked on Huygens St.. The lot was resurfaced only a year ago, yet it was crumbling in places and shallow gravelly depressions formed over the winter.

The old store seems empty as I walk in under the huge cement arches of the Safeway’s curving roof. Find a couple of mangos, and take a quick look at the rest of the produce, then move on along the back of the store past the pharmacy to find unfiltered apple juice. Turning the corner of the isle past the cheese and cold cuts section, I see Rank Majors holding a gallon of milk at the back of the growing express line.

“Looks like we all came at once Rank.”

“Fred, I though the place was empty. Where did this line come from?”

“There’s too many of us living around here.”

“Yeah! And, no parking access.”

“We are lucky we can walk.”

“Why isn’t this express line moving Fred?”

“I think the power just went out!”

The friendly manager walks over and tells us a fallen tree just brought down the power line. He says they will have emergency power on in a minute.

“A tree, not a terrorist huh?”

“Just a tree sir. It’s windy out there.”

The manager moves on.

“Are you going to the drill Fred?”

“The drill? What’s that?”

“Here’s what’s happening. Check out the website on this card … and bring your side arm.”

The card he hands me with red white and blue stripe across the top, is marked ‘Fauxmont Militia’ along with the website. The ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ logo from the Gadsden flag is printed on the other side.

“Okay Rank, I didn’t know you were in our local Militia.”

“Yeah! I met Frans last year at a party.”

“Frans?”

“Frans Banning Cocq, is our Militia Commander.”

“Oh yes! Albrecht mentioned him. Does he live in Fauxmont?”

“No he lives out near Culpeper. In fact I think he’s originally from Idaho.”

“So why is he commanding our Fauxmont Militia?”

“Well, he has the experience and connections to get the thing started, and he’s been helping Albrecht a lot.”

“Rank, I’d join the ‘Neighborhood Watch’ if we had one, or even “The Night Watch” but I don’t know about this.”

“Check it out Fred, just take a look.”

“Why did you join this thing Rank? Why the side-arm?”

“Fred, I am fed up with big government and big companies running my life and my country. It is time to assert our individual rights.”

“With a pistol?”

“I swore an oath to uphold the constitution when I joined the Air Force and still feel the obligation.”

“Oh, the fourth amendment …”

“Not just that …”

“What do you make of Albrecht’s ideas about corporate voting.”

“As far as that goes I think he’s nuts!”

“So do I, but he seems to think it is a viable notion.”

“Albrecht is a great energetic young guy, but he’s also goes too far.”

“Yes I have the same impression. By the way Rank, I don’t have a side arm.”

“Unlike the old days, you don’t have to own your own weapon to come to our drill.”

“Are you just anti government? I mean, do you see yourself as defending us from terrorism?”

“I’m opposed to excessive government and the present government’s excesses.”

“Okay, so how do you see the terrorism thing?”

“The terrorists are winning!”

“What do you mean? I thought we had them on the run.”

“Listen, they had no way of knowing that we would do their job for them … like shredding our own constitution … for one thing, they have pushed us into using torture.”

“True, but Obama stopped that.”

“Did he?”

“So we are told.”

“Look, we have responded to their attacks with secret laws, secret courts, and now we find out the government is tapping the Internet without a warrant.”

“Yes Snowden’s revelations have been extraordinary.”

“You know how bad thing are, when it takes a traitor to find out what our government is doing!”

“Those measures were all taken to keep us safe Rank, in an emergency!”

“Right, that emergency was twelve years ago. It has become an institution!”

“Yes, the president has renewed the Declaration of National Emergency every year since.”

“Not only that Fred, Obama’s latest revisions to the NDAA only strengthen government’s extralegal powers even further.”

“I have forgotten what NDAA is Rank.”

“Most people never knew in the first place Fred. Those who aren’t running scared are asleep! It is the National Defense Authorization Act. A very important law that is creeping dangerously towards the abyss.”

“You mean too much government power?”

“I mean too much executive power. If information is power then they now have more power and control over us than ever before! It is the Stasi’s dream come true!”

“Rank, they have more data than they can make sense of, not information.”

“That may be true now, but they will soon build better algorithms to mine the accumulated data. Not a single one of us is safe from snooping spooks.”

I see Diddlie approaching us with a mop from the hardware isle.

“Diddlie, haven’t seen you for months! What brings you here so early?”

“I might ask you the same question Fred.”

“You might, and I say, ‘Avoiding the crowd later’.”

“Likewise Fred.”

“Yeah we are the early crowd!”

“We are Rank. Are you carrying a gun? My God Rank! … you are! …What are you doing with it in the Safeway?”

“Diddlie I’m letting them know I have power too.”

“Them Rank? The Safeway? We’ve got the vote Rank. We don’t need guns.”

“Did you vote for those bozos in Congress? Tell me, what are they doing for you?”

“Well Rank, not much I guess, right now, but shooting people isn’t going to improve anything is it?”

“I am not going to shoot anybody Diddlie.”

“So what are you carrying a gun for?”

“My government is spying on me. I just lost whatever privacy I thought I had, and it is time to demonstrate a citizen’s right to protect himself.”

“But Rank, I don’t care about government spying. I don’t have anything to hide.If they can stop a bomber, God bless them!”

“Diddlie, stop for a moment! Stop and think about what you are saying.”

“Rank, I mean it!”

“You are letting fear blind you. Fear of terrorism is no reason to give up on our country’s foundations.”

“Well, the Islamic radicals are still plotting.”

“Diddlie we talked about a side arm for you before.”

“I know we did Rank. I am not interested. I think it is crazy. I also think that the government is doing its best to protect us from terrorist bombs and stuff. So they have to do all this internet stuff because that’s where they communicate along with the rest of us.”

“Diddlie, the government is too big to function properly.”

“It may be big, but this is a complex society.”

“It is Diddlie, and we are not doing a good job of managing our bureaucracies, public or private.”

“Well, that’s the truth. I see bad management and low pay all over the place.”

“That’s it Diddlie, big government and big companies have evolved together.”

“The one percent are getting most of the money …”

“ … and, Diddlie, taxes are taking too much of the rest.”

“Rank, at least we agree on something!” Diddlie pulls down a magazine from among the tabloids by the cash register where we are waiting. It is a copy of ShrinkWrap magazine.

“Diddlie I thought that thing had gone digital.”

“It has Fred, but Lark tells me corporate are trying out this monthly tabloid version. This must be the first one.”

She holds it up for Rank and me to see. It has a stiff cardboard back that folds in half for display. Unfolded one can see each page is about an eighth of an inch smaller than the next, while they are flush on the left and at the bottom. The smallest page down at the bottom left is only about 4 inches square; the exposed tops of each page have been printed to look like a single image that fragments as you turn the pages. A dramatic diagonal from top right to bottom left of the unopened magazine divides the blue sides from the red tops of the pages. Diddlie reads from the cover of the Tabloid.

“Look at this, guys. Here’s the blue part saying, ‘The Liberal Conspiracy to Socialize America’ and here’s the red part “The Corporate Right’s Conspiracy to Make us ALL Peons’. Pick a conspiracy Rank!”

Our line at the cash register has moved, and power is restored. Rank has his back to Diddlie as he pays for his gallon of milk. The cashier is waiting to get Diddlie’s attention.

“Are you buying that hon.?”

“Sure.”   Diddlie puts her copy of the new Shrink Wrap on the conveyor to be scanned, and hands over the mop.”

There isn’t a customer to be seen in the store as we all walk out into the gusting wind.

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.  

Boris Tarantula has a new exhibition at the Prestige University Arts Center.  Artie Bliemisch, Steve Strether and I are driving out to the campus together in Steve’s new car. To meet Artie’s old friend Frank Vassari, and the artist, before the official opening next week. Bel Vionnet is staying home with Lambert who has had surgery to fix a broken ligament in his left hind leg.

“I am so happy for Frank this is a quite a coup for him as the arts center director.”

“He is really going to put that place on the cultural map with this.”

“It is important work, Steve.”

“Artie, do you really think Tarantula’s work is serious?”

“He’s a contender in national competitions. Remember Fred, he may yet replace the Washington monument with his memorial to great advertisements.”

“Oh no!  How serious is that?”

“As you know Fred, that contentious issue is stuck in Congressional deadlock at the moment.”

“Oh yes Steve, Its Congressman Bean isn’t it?  He has it all locked up in the Committee on Aesthetic Crime.”

“Besides, much depends on what you mean by serious Fred.”

“Artie, I mean serious work is work that will still be valued a hundred years from now.”

“Fred, I get it, but who can tell that now?”

“Well, I can’t predict the future of course but rusty I-beams don’t seem like lasting art, and I don’t mean because of the rust!”

“Think of it this way Fred.  When Monet first exhibited his painting ‘Sunrise’ it was derided by the critic, Louis Leroy, as a ‘mere impression’”.

“Yup! I see what you mean.  Now, more than a hundred years after 1874, Monet is highly regarded.”

“Fred, French impressionist works sell for millions.  That is the measure of their acceptance.”

“What do you mean, ‘measure’?

“Fred we live in a commercial culture. The dollar value of art is the most important measure.”

“Yeah, right Artie!  That is how rusty steel can be turned into art.”

“Fred, after Dada, anything can be turned into art!”

“The market makes things into art.”

“It makes art with a capital ‘F’ Steve.”

“Come on Fred, you are getting old before your time!”

“No, that’s my point Steve.  The French impressionists were at least painting.”

The car jerks to a sudden stop along with all conversation.

“Signal would have been nice!”

A silver car cuts into the right turn lane ahead of us as we approach an intersection. Steve’s impatience grows as we stop at the light. The light is green but the silver car stays put at the cross walk.  An old man with a blue baseball cap and small white dog on a red leash crosses slowly blocking right turns. The dog stops and sits down in the middle of its trip across the road. The light turns green and traffic moves across the intersection past us, and the car now in front.  Old man and dog watch.  Our light turns amber and the silver car blasts man and dog with its horn and the dog barks back, straining on its short leash towards the middle of the intersection. The old man drags it to the curb on the other side. We resume our journey behind the silver car that cut in front of us but stop again within yards, behind a bus letting off passengers.  Steve lets out a long breath.

“So what happened to the debate?”

“I was about to say Fred, there is more to art than painting.”

“Well of course.  I mean they were working within a tradition.”

What tradition is Boris, or is it Varlan? Anyway, what tradition is he part of?”

“Fred, Varlan was his father.  You must know David Smith, Julio Gonzalez, or Mark di Suvero?”

“Gonzalez, Artie?”

“The Spanish guy who is said to have made the first welded sculptures.”

“Is their work old enough to be traditional Artie?”

“Fred, tradition is started at the second sale.”

“What do you mean Steve?”

“The first sale of a new kind of art establishes it. Especially the first sale to a big collector or museum.”

“That’s not tradition Steve.  It is more like a fashion or a fad. It is commercial.”

“Okay Steve so after that, every new sale is part of a tradition or development in that art form.”

“That’s it Artie. Call it what you like Fred. The point is that styles proliferate.”

“Nah … don’t you think it is just commercial flash in the pan stuff?  I mean the market creates and the market destroys.  What happened to William Baziotes for example, a good abstract painter?”

“What do you mean Fred?  His work is here in the National Gallery.  He’s doesn’t fetch as much as De Kooning, but he is an established American artist.”

“Okay Steve, I am trying to get at the role of hype, and marketing that is so important in the commercial world, and Art is no exception.”

“So what’s wrong with marketing Fred?  I mean I want to sell my work too.”

“What is wrong Artie, is the promotion of junk as if it is tried and tested quality work.  Look in the art magazines, or on line and see the latest sensation in New York, or Zurich or wherever.  Young artists promoted and fetching huge prices alongside old masters.”

“That’s just the market Fred.”

“Fred, you don’t like the art market.”

“Too true Steve.”

“Like I said Fred, in a commercial culture the market is all.”

“Don’t you think there is a problem with that?”

“Fred, there are lots of problems.”

“Yeah Steve!  There’s no correlation between price and aesthetic quality for one thing.”

“That’s it Artie.”

“Fred who’s to say what is good and what is not but the market?”

“Well Steve, aside from private personal judgments …”

“Don’t forget buyers Fred. They may not comment but the purchase speaks for itself.”

“Right Steve, it keeps the artist going.”

“Steve, suppose a business invests in a painting and sticks it in a vault.  What does that say about quality?”

“Fred, you must be talking about that Van Gogh right?”

“Yes Artie, I think it was a Van Gogh, bought by a Japanese bank.”

“No, it was Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance.  They bought Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, for $38 million.”

“What ever Steve, I think it was back in the eighties and I wish they would put a few million into my work!”

“I would be glad for you personally Artie, but it would be a test for you.”

“You mean of my integrity right?”

“Artie, I know you could deal with it.”

“Thanks Steve, I would like the opportunity to try!”

“Artie, suppose you knew.  May be it would be suggested to you. That if you produce three more in your completed series of “Rembrandt Commentaries”, as you called them, you could make another three million?”

“Well Fred, if I already had three million, I could laugh!”

“Great! But, you see what I am getting at Artie?”

“Fred I do, and can only hope that it would sound like a joke.”

“Arty that joke could be inspirational itself.”

“Once again Steve, you have given me something to chew on.”

We are now waiting in a line of cars to park at the Arts Center.  Steve is looking frantically at his mirrors and out of the side window.”

“This Prius has terrible visibility.”

He moves a few feet and stops with a jerk at a blast from some one’s horn.

“Sorry about that!”

It doesn’t involve Steve after all. The car moves forward again in electronic silence, no exhaust, no stench.  He finds a place to park facing the long wide swathe of grass between the administration building and the arts center. The engine starts up as we pull in.

“How odd Steve, this thing starts up just as you are going to shut it down!”

“Battery must have drained a little in all that congestion Artie.”  He presses a button in the dash and the car shuts down, engine and all.

The trucks and cranes used to bring Tarantula’s huge sculptures in have left deep tracks in the lawn where they are installed. The grounds crew is chatting in Spanish as they fill in the depressions and put in new sod.

Frank Vasari is strolling towards us along the avenue of twenty steel I-beams, arranged ten on each side of the paved walk that crosses the grass.  The sculptures look like steel trees that might have grown in a rolling mill rather than a nursery.  Boris walks next to Frank, short and wide, with white denims and a blue work shirt.  He has shaved his head, which is globular. His exaggerated gate is due to the accident that crushed his pelvis two years ago while building the pieces on show. He tends to lean heavily to the left where Frank keeps enough distance to avoid a bump, and also Boris’s gesticulations.  He regularly takes off his dark glasses with a flourish of his left had and waves them about for emphasis, before putting them on again in a simple movement.  He doesn’t have to open them or place them carefully on his ears.  Everything lands in place at once.

The I-beam sculptures are chrome plated at ground level and dazzling in the evening sun.  The chrome fades out at about ten feet up and the rest of the metal is rust red for perhaps another twenty feet. They look ragged at the top with odd shaped bits of rusty steel of various sizes and thicknesses attached at different angles, some with bolts some riveted.  They look as if they might be scraps from a demolished high-rise. Each is topped with a length of neon light looping around it in a colorful flashing entanglement.  One spirals up in green and white like a candy cane of glass tube. Another is spiky like a colorful sea urchin living on top of steel seaweed.  The spikes flash oranges and greens at random.

Artie introduces Steve and me to Frank, though we have met before, and Frank introduces us all to Boris.  He speaks fluent vernacular English with a heavy accent.

“Thanks for coming out.  So good to meet Frank’s friends!”

“So Boris, are you happy with the installation?”

“Well, I still got a week to move them around some … and Steve, we got to hide those wires on that one … see .”  Boris is pointing with his glasses in hand.

“Boris, that will be taken care of … Artie, he’s got four more pieces that don’t fit.”

“Frank, I got more than that back upstate.”

“Leave them there Boris!”

“Okay Frank, okay, but you know I don’t want the lady to get the wrong idea.”

“I am Artemisia, call me Artie.”

‘Sure, Artie, sure.  Have you seen the Coke sign and that old Burma-Shave thing?”

“No we just got here.”

“Okay Artie, come on Frank, come on Artie, Fred, come on, I’ll show you.  This is very important!”

Boris leads us over to point out the letters from an old Coca Cola sign incorporated into the top of one of his electronic I-beam trees.  We move on and I can’t see the neon letters spelling ‘Burma-Shave’ in the second piece he leads us to, though he points them out. “Fred, Fred, look, just look carefully up there … see it, see?”

“Sorry Boris, I can’t see anything like a word up there.”

“Frank, what you bringing your friend here for if he can’t see?”

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 moves her hand in front of her face under her wide brimmed floppy straw hat and finds a spider on her finger.

“That’s the Manstein place.”  She looks up from her finger to notice me looking across the circle at a yew hedge.

“The one hidden behind the yew hedge over there?”

Bel shakes the spider off and points to the right of a row of newly planted Leyland Cypresses where I can see a few slate rooftops and a chimney all covered in fallen oak flowers. The house is down towards the river and the driveway curves steeply before disappearing behind the trees.  It is marked by a sign, ‘Aladdin Lane’.  In addition, a prominent rectangular white sign warns us, “PRIVATE No Entry”.

“A three car garage is the thing to have these days bel.”

We are at the end of Slips lane at Boundary Circle, where mansions have replaced the original Fuauxmont homes on one and two acre lots with river views. Some are half-timbered. One is colonial. The detached garages are the size of small houses and feature big wooden doors with robust hinges painted black, fastened with prominent bolts and eight small square lights at the top.

“Bel, this nostalgia for the half timbered look appears to be the latest mark of success.”

“Yeah, along with this barren instant landscaping, turf, mulch, mature shrubs and cypresses.”
“I think the Rundstedts built first didn’t they Lou?”

“How did he make his fortune?”

“He’s a big wheel, bel, with Dodrecht Group.”

“Looks like they have a flat above their garages bel.”

“Cute little dormers above each door.”

“That mulch has a strong smell doesn’t it?”

The Guderians have only just added their garage. The fresh black arc of the long new driveway passes through their porte-cochère and spreads out before the three big doors. They saved a colossal willow oak in the middle of the front lawn by bringing in many truckloads of fill to level a ravine next to the house before construction began. Their Federal gray half-timbered mansion with multiple gables is connected to the garages by an arched breezeway.  Its stone arches are reminiscent of a monastic cloister but glazed, inconsistent with the half timbered mansion. The landscaper’s pickup is parked outside the Guderians’ with a dusting of pollen on its windows and the trailer loaded with mulch.

“Ah yes, mulch!  It covers up so much Lou.”

Lou coughs. “My mulch pile is mild by comparison.”

Bel resumes her dispute with Lou, which kept them busy as we strolled along in the cool May sun. Between sneezes she also told me Lambert had gone out with Steve to visit the Guderians earlier, and we might meet them for a walk back.  Pollen is so thick in the air every one is coughing and sneezing.

“There is no morality in it Lou.”

“Not all uses of technology are wrong, bel.”

“That’s not my point, Lou.  I mean technology itself is not a moral system and neither is commerce, well I am thinking particularly of the banks.”

Lou is frowning and looking at the ground covered in last year’s sticky balls, as we walk under gum trees on Slips Lane and further into the circle.

“Yes, but there’s more to our culture than technology and commerce.”

“Sure there are countless subcultures too, but less and less moral restraint on commerce or technology.”

“Bel, we are in the middle of a technological revolution.”

“We are, and that’s complicated.  I mean it’s creating a new culture.”

“Perhaps a global culture.”

“That I think remains to be seen, Fred.  Technology is also full of new solutions though, bel.”

“Do you mean, Lou, the so called ‘disruptive’ business models …”

“DELL, for example, started selling PCs over the net …”

“ … and look at Amazon! and for spies too there has been lots of disruption!”

“Fred, that’s a separate issue!”

“But Lou, isn’t it another case of disruption?  Spying can be a commercial proposition and must be as old as prostitution.”

“He’s right Lou, and they are closely related.”

“Bel, Snowden’s treachery has put us all at a disadvantage.”

“How, Lou?”

“Knowing enough to be alarmed and not enough to understand the full picture.”

“Lou, they know an awful lot about us, and what do we know about them?”

“More than we need to know right now, bel.”

“I think he did us all a favor Lou.”

“Favors like his would give malice a bad name, bel.  That guy has probably endangered our country more than any single person in history.”

“He broke the law Lou, and that is a problem, but he revealed that our government is breaking its own laws on a scale that’s hard to imagine.”

“Bel, we were attacked. Don’t you think that justifies extraordinary measures?”

“But Lou, it’s been ten years!”

“I agree bel.  There is no easy way to resolve this.”

“Lou, surely you are exaggerating. I don’t share your trust in that huge and powerful bureaucracy.”

“Fred, this is the ‘brave new world’ of the surveillance state, and I agree. It is scary.”

“I think it’s worth bearing in mind that the surveillance infrastructure for a totalitarian coup is all in place. Thanks to the so called ‘war on terror’.”
“We might also note that once a new kind of technological power is available.  It will be used.”

“Fred, we are in far more danger from outside this country than from within.  I am certain, our institutions will never let a totalitarian ruler emerge.”

“Lou, you must realize that Internet technology has enabled not only governments but industry to snoop more extensively than any time in history.  That too is a huge danger… I mean an internal danger!”

“ … and thank God for the NSA, or terrorism would be even more dangerous that it is now.”

“Of course Lou, terrorists have benefited from the internet.”

“Bel, Al Qaida has been able to spread its franchise, share its resources, and coordinate activities…”

“Much like any other franchise.”

“Fred, it’s a lot to tackle, and that guy has handed Al Qaida a gift and not just them.”

“Lou, Osama stopped using his satellite phone years ago.”

“Right bel, that’s why it took so long to find him.”

“Remember Fred, we are still under the state of emergency declared by Bush right after 9/11, and extended recently by Obama.”

“Fred, the threat is still dangerous, and we need those emergency powers.”

“What are they Lou?”

“A lot of that is classified, bel.”

“Yes Lou, that’s something else I think has gone seriously wrong.  There’s no place for secret laws in an open society.”

“Snowden didn’t say how the snooping is done only that it is taking place, and given the scale of it all, I think Americans have a right to know they have lost their right to privacy.”

“What we have lost bel, is trivial compared to what the enemy have gained!”

“But our privacy is a constitutional right.”

“Well, it is an implicit right Fred, not enumerated.”

“Lou, the technical details haven’t been revealed.  Snowden could have made a fortune selling them, and that would have been treasonous, but he didn’t.”

“Now he’s got a free ride in Russia, they presumably know everything and who knows how rich he’ll get?”

“Lou, the cold war is over.”

“Don’t be so sure Fred, Putin may be all set to start it up again.”

“Lou, we have plenty of folks right here in America who are doing that.”

“The Russians still have lots of nukes too and we are still potential targets.”

“Lou, Putin could say the same about ours.”

“Maybe so bel.”

“You might call it the ‘Shadow of the cold war’.”

“Snowden is of such great propaganda value to Putin right now though, I don’t think he had to give them anything more.”

“His propaganda value may be short lived.  Fred, it’s the other stuff that’s really valuable.”

“I don’t think he’s in it for the money Lou.”

“No bel, he may not be.  He may just hate the NSA out of naive idealism, but that doesn’t change anything.  Who knows what his motives were anyway?”

“Not so naive Lou, he said he blew the whistle to warn us all.”

“I read that too, but Fred, it’s hard to believe anything a traitor says just because his treachery renders everything he says morally uncertain.”

“If he did it out of idealism, then his integrity is untouched.”

“That’s a big,’ if ‘  Fred, besides, in that case he should have stayed here and faced the music.”

“Big if, but perfectly credible Lou.”

“Lou he didn’t have a chance here.  They’d have disappeared him.”

“Quite possibly bel, and that’s troubling too, but he betrayed some of his country’s most valuable secrets.  Gave away our advantage in the war on terrorism.”

“Lou I don’t buy it. The so called ‘War on Terror’ was a mistaken response to 9/11 in the first place, and our advantage lies in continuous technological innovation.”

“When my country is attacked, I think retaliation is necessary.  Not only that, it gave us a chance to go in after Saddam, and the Taliban.”

“Lou, have you forgotten that most, if not all the 9/11 attackers were Saudis? You are missing something here.”

“We can’t go after Saudi bel.  You know that.  We need their oil and their alliance is important.”

“What I am trying to point out is that we didn’t retaliate against Sadam.  We invaded his country, with no evidence that he was complicit.”

“I know bel, and there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, but we did get a dangerous tyrant out of the way, a threat to Israel, and secured the oil assets.”

“Right Lou, oil is and was the real point.”

“We also strengthened Iran!”

“Now Iran is a major problem alright Fred.”

“Isn’t it interesting that no government official will say that invasion was about oil?”

“They can’t Fred.  Politics of the Middle East make it impossible.”

“There’s Steve coming out of the Guderians’.”

“Look out!  Here comes Lambert off leash.”  Lambert backs out of the reddish leaves at the bottom of bottom of a photinia.  He runs towards us across the exquisitely kept lawn, into the mulch surrounding the big oak and now he’s crossed and reached the driveway.  He’s got some leaves on his face and mulch on his legs.  He is out of breath, but barking at bel any way.  His tail is going so fast, it seems he might take off like a helicopter, butt first.

“Bel, we didn’t expect to find you out here!”

“I think Lambert’s hearing has improved a little since we put him on a bit of coconut oil with dinner.”

“Don’t know about his hearing but he does seem more himself.”

“We came up to see what the new construction over here has wrought.”

“Yes, look at it.  As far as I know these are the houses that ‘Top Secret America has built.”

“They are?  What do you mean Steve?”

“Fred, didn’t you read Dana Priest and William Arkin’s big article in the

Post?”

“Oh yes, that was the title … three or four years ago, I do remember now!”

“You can still find it on the web Fred.”

“That’s right bel.”  Steve starts pointing out houses.  “Look, Rundstedt over there is retired CIA and now consults with Dodrecht, or is he part of it?  I am not sure.  Guderian here, is retired NRO now has his own contract with Fibonacci, and Manstein down by the river, left NSA for Booz Allen and then started his own firm.”

“Steve we shouldn’t be discussing this.”  Lou’s face is tense.  The lines on his forehead have deepened like little trenches.  His eyebrows seem bigger than ever growing over his eyes like unclipped hedges between forehead and eye socket.  He looks at his feet and rubs the back of his head then looks at his hand. There’s an inchworm rearing up off the end of his thumb.

“Don’t worry Lou, we are all friends.  Discussion is always alive in Fauxmont.”

Lou is still looking at his inchworm.

“Fred, I just think it is inappropriate.”  Lou doesn’t look up until now, and now he has a look of such vulnerability I expect to see tears.  He flicks the worm off his thumb.

“Have we ever discussed this stuff in the last thirty years?”

“Lou, this is a surprising first.”

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.  

“Whois living in the old Trip house now?”

“It’s vacant isn’t it, Lark?”

“No Lou, I have seen Fed Ex delivering there.”

“That’s right Fred, I saw it too that day you were planting herbs or whatever they were.”

“I think there’s a caretaker living there now.”

“Who’s paying them?  That’s what I would like to know, Lou.”

The sun comes out after an overcast day just before sunset. Gold shines through the tree trunks and gaps between structures flattening distance with dramatic brilliance and silhouettes.  It sinks behind Jake’s old house and leaves us in deepening shadow standing by the redbuds in front on the steep incline of Oval street.

“I think it may belong to one of Macadamia’s interests.”

“Lou, I heard Trip had lost his house in a foreclosure.”

“Yeah Fred, I heard that one too, and maybe that’s where they were headed at one point, but Mac. must have saved it.”

“How did you find that out Lou?”

“I think Jake told me months ago.”

“You mean you have seen him?”

“No Lark, it was a phone call.  He asked me to go over there and check on the place.  It was before the caretaker came in.”

“So you have the keys Lou?”

“Not any more.  Jake ‘over-nighted’ them to me and I only had them for a couple of weeks.”

“Have you met the caretaker? …  Who is it?”

“No no Lark, I’ve never seen them.”

“So how do you know there’s one there.  Do they live there?”

“Jake told me when they started.”

“They!  You mean there’s more than one Lou?’

“No I don’t think so, but come to think of it maybe it’s a married couple … I don’t know.”

“But didn’t you hand over the keys to them, him her whatever?”

“No I ‘overnighted’ the keys back to Jake.”

“Lou, isn’t that kind of weird?  I mean why not just hand them over?”

“Maybe they changed the locks.”

“Then you might as well throw them away!  I mean what did Jake want them back for?”

“Who knows Lark?  Its none of my business anyway.”

“Lou you are a much more trusting person than I”

“You know, Jake once called me to check in on Gale when he was away.  I was surprised as I didn’t know them very well at the time.”

“Fred, Jake is a salesman.  He sizes people up pretty fast and probably decided he could trust you.”

“I must say he sounded rather desperate.”

“When it comes to Trip, I am always suspicious.  Big money can complicate and distort people’s relationships.”

“Lark, you are such an inveterate lefty and egalitarian, I don’t think you can be objective when it comes to Jake.”

“Look Lou, first the Trips build that huge place with a lot of strange electrical work, and security lights, and rent-a-cops.  Then, Juanita disappears.  Then we hear Trip is bankrupt and will lose his home.  Now we find that there never was an eviction. His store has stayed open. The Fib. or one of Macadmia’s interests bought it.”
“Do you know who bought it Lou?”

“It is not Fibonacci.  They are listed as, “de Geer Properties”, in the tax records.  You can look it up on line.”

“Is that Macadamia?”

“I don’t know if there is any relationship there or not.”

“You seem to know a lot about it Lou.  What about his business, that big store?”

“Don’t know about the Snaz store Lark. I like to keep up with things in the neighborhood.”

“So do I Lou but … Who are they, de Geer Properties?”

“All I know for sure is that they are Gale’s people.”

“So money married money.”

“That’s history Fred.  It’s all in the family.”

“Lou tell me this, what is being delivered to a vacant house?”

“No idea Lark.”

“Don’t you find this whole thing suspicious Lou?”

“Not all that much.  There is a confluence of interests at work.”

“More like a conspiracy Lou.”

“Aw Lark, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories.”

“What do you mean by ‘a confluence of interests?”

“I mean de Geer and Jake and Macadamia all found they had an interest in keeping that house out of foreclosure.”

“There’s more to it than the foreclosure.  It’s about what was going on in that house, and Juanita’s complicated past.”

“Lark conspiracies require motive, planning, skill and luck.  I don’t think any one is smart enough, or had any reason to have plotted Juanita’s disappearance.  It would have been far too complicated. There was nothing for her to have seen.”

“Really Lou?  Whatever is going on in that house would be revealed if a bank’s agents go over it to appraise and sell.”

“It is all too easy to see conspiracies where there is a lack of information Lark.  It fills in the blanks.”

“So what did you see when you went in there?”

“Nothing special, aside from the size of the place. I checked doors and windows, and looked at faucets, and so on.  You know.  Its common sense stuff.”

“There are plenty of ‘blanks’ in this story Lou.  What about all those cctv monitors in the grand entrance?”

“Didn’t see anything like that Fred.”

“Are those two big mirrors still facing each other?”

“Oh yes Fred, I tried out that crazy infinity illusion, by standing in front of the one to look across into the other.”

“I wonder what happened to the cctvs?”

“Fred, some one cleaned the place up before Lou got in there.”

“There is nothing much to clean up Lark.  That wine cellar of his and the security system took a lot of special circuitry and machinery to move those bottles of wine.”

“So was it all in place Lou?  That is a perfect cover!”

“Cover for what Lark?  I didn’t check on his wines, or the security system.  Jake told me the security stuff is under contract.  Nothing for me to do.”

“Well Lou if he has this security system, and a contractor, what did he want you in there for?”

“Just another pair of eyes.”

“I am still thinking of what ever Juanita found out when she was so conveniently disappeared by the INS.”

“Lark there is no evidence I know of to support whatever you think is going on.  The bankruptcy was a delayed effect of the financial crash. Not even Macadamia foresaw the scale of the crash.  He predicted something smaller.  He was taken by surprise and took Jake down with him.  Now he is getting it back together again.”

“So what are Urban Safety Solutions still doing in the neighborhood now the Trips have left?”

“I imagine they are working out the time on their contract.”

“They seem to be rather close to the Fauxmont Milita.  Remember how they colluded when Juanita’s body may or may not have turned up in the gully?”

“What do you mean collusion?”

“I mean they kicked us all off the street before the police could get there and we don’t know what really happened.  Only what the local tv station told us.”

“Well, wasn’t that it?  There was no body Lark.  Remember?  It was one of Liberty Trips props from her show.”

“Maybe Lou.  I don’t know if she was abducted by the INS or murdered here in Fauxmont.  I know the lawyers are gunning for Werner, and that is just a side-show.  I think it’s being done to distract attention from something else.”

“Lark I have no way of knowing.”

It seemed to get dark more quickly than usual after the sun went down, even beyond the shadow we are standing in.

“My god it is dark out here tonight.  Look at that cloud coming in!”

“Any one got a flashlight?”

“No Fred. My phone works pretty well though.”  Lark’s phone tones sound as she opens it to demonstrate its potential as a flashlight.

She answers and walks a few steps away stands with her back to us.

The light flashes as she puts the phone close to her ear and moves it away, gesturing as she talks.

“Excuse me Fred.”  Now Lou’s phone also sounds and he walks off in the opposite direction. 

They both have a glow around their ears where the phones are pressed.  As if they might be emitting light themselves.  They talk into the dark with their backs to me.  I can’t hear what they are saying.  My phone may be ringing too, but it’s at home.  Possibly hanging in the pocket of my other jacket in the closet.

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

Daisy has been dog sitting Maximilian, her friend Hank James’s longhaired dachshund.  The dog ran off with its carefully combed tail streaming hair like a flag, and disappeared, after chasing Mr. Liddel around the yard.  Daisy was so anxious to rescue her white rabbit, it didn’t occur to her that the dachshund might run away. Herman Intaglio and Theo Tinderbrush and I walk among the ruins on the hilltop where Bails Lane intersects Wicket Street.

“Herman, are you trying to start another religious argument?”

“Not an argument Theo, a discussion.”

“Herman we won’t get any further than we did at the restaurant.”

“You never know Theo.  As I get older I have turned more to God and you have no God.  This worries me my friend.”

“There’s nothing to worry about buddy.  I am doing fine with the absurd.”

“What?  The absurd?  Is that your religion?”

“No, as an atheist, I don’t believe in God, or any supernatural controller, or any of that religious stuff.”

“See Theo, I think you are missing something.”

“Don’t tell me Herman.”

“No, Theo I must, life is meaningless without God.”

“Like I said, it is absurd.  Unless you have a project in life, and get meaning out of that.”

“Have you been reading Sartre?”

“Think I did, years ago.”

“Now think of this, God is the beginning and end of everything.”

“You mean there would be nothing at all without God?”

“Well, right, without the creator there would be no thing, no creation.”

“What creator?  We don’t know how the universe was created.”

“No, no one knows how God created the world or the universe and all that.”

“Say God didn’t create the universe or the world.  Suppose all these particles or strings or what ever they are, have just been there for ever, blowing up and condensing in an endless cycle.”

“That sounds absurd alright, Theo!”

“It doesn’t matter, we are here looking for Diddlie’s dog.  We have a purpose.  We are doing something useful, and helpful.  I am fine Herman.”

“Okay Theo I am glad you feel fine about it. You know you don’t have to live in an absurd situation.”

“Well, I do and I don’t.  Cosmically it looks absurd to me, but personally life is full of meaning.  I am a lucky bunch of particles!”

“You are more space than particle you know!”

“Herman you are supposed to be shocked!”

“Not shocked, not at all.  I’ve read a little about Penzias and Wilson, cosmic background microwave radiation, and cosmology.”

“As far as meaning is concerned, I find meaning in my experience.”

“Yes and God is immanent at every moment.”

“What does that mean?”

“He is with you in every moment … there to be heeded.”

“There? … in what sense?”

“Whenever you move from one thought to another, make a judgment or a decision for instance?”

“Well you never know what may come up from the subconscious!”

“Too true!”

“If I decide to drive over to the Safeway, isn’t that a matter of will?”

“It is, but what are your motives?”

“I want to buy something for dinner.”

“Okay, so what led you to the decision?”

“Look Herman, it wasn’t God.  It was hunger.”

“Sure, but you can always be open to God’s will, or not.  That is the perpetual question.”

“It is?”

“Yes, can you accept something beyond your own will?”

“Like what?”

“Like something that prevents you going to the store.”

“You mean God’s going to prevent me from grocery shopping?”

“No, well in a sense maybe so.  Say there’s a snow storm and you can’t drive.  Then you are hungry but can’t get anything to eat.

How do you cope with that?”

“Damn frustrating!”

“Yeah it is, and that’s where you can seek the Lord’s help.”

“In my frustration?”

“Sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Say a prayer.”

“What? … pray for the snow to stop?”

“You might.”

“I might not.  Why should God stop the snow for me?”

“That’s not for us to say.”

“Oh?  but, suppose that’s what I am asking?”

“When you pray you get away from yourself and your frustration.”

“You mean I distract myself.”

“No, you could do that with a cigarette or something.”

“Well I don’t smoke, but what’s the difference?”

“The difference between a distraction and a prayer is that a prayer is a sacred conversation and a distraction is just that, a loss of attention.”

“Oh, but I would be talking to myself … that sacred stuff, incense, choirs, etc. doesn’t work for me.”

“Look, prayer takes you, moves your attention, away from your immediate concerns to God.”

“Oh, really? … but I don’t pray.”

“What about conscience?”

“What about it Herman?”

“Do you answer to your conscience?”

“Yes I have a sense of guilt when I realize I have done wrong.”

“There you are then.”

“It is part of me Herman, my conscience isn’t any thing super natural.”

“Part of you yes, and more than that too. It is not your will.”

“Suppose I just want to go to the store and eat dinner.  While I am messing around praying, the snow is getting deeper.  Where is this getting me?”

“If you are sincere you are getting to another place, you will be open to other possibilities, and know the love of God.”

“God’s love?”

“Yes his infinite love for you!”

“Well sure, if I were a believer but really, if I just take a deep breath and relax for a few minutes I’ll think of something.”

“Well if you ignore God, you will not find him that’s for sure.”

“I am not ignoring anything.  Besides Herman, watch it, you know there are those who take exception to the idea God as “him”.  I just thought I’d warn you.”

“Him, her, it, gender isn’t important here, at least to me.  Don’t think of believing … this is not so much a credibility issue …  Think of paying attention.”

“Paying attention?  I am.  In this case the damn snow has really got my attention!”

“Okay Theo, are you reliving something here?”

“Yeah possibly … this stuff drives me crazy!”

“A prayer will get you off that.”

“Finding this dog would too.  You know Herman, I think you are talking about intuition.”

“Well sort of, that could be where you will find God.”

“I thought he was supposed to be in heaven.”

“So it is said, but that is figurative language.”

“Where do you think it is?”

“I think heaven is within us too.”

“Yeah, but what about all this talk of Jesus ascending into heaven?”

“I don’t think it is a physical movement.”

“What else could it be?”

“It could be a movement from, say …. stress to being stress free.”

“Oh relaxation, a kind of Yoga thing.”

“Could be, but reached through prayer and not physical postures.”

“Wait a minute.  A man, Jesus died and ascended into heaven.  That’s what I learned, and never have been able to believe it.”

“Don’t forget the difference between figurative language and ordinary language.”

“So it can mean anything I want?”

“It means what ever your tradition says it means.”

“Oh tradition … well yes, tradition is a fine thing but it doesn’t make the impossible possible.”

“I am trying to tell you Theo, not to take it all literally.”

“So what?  It still says what it says.”

“The question is, what does it say?”

“Yes that’s it, countless wars have been fought over that and people have been tortured and martyred.”

“The history is pretty awful, but it is the history of people’s conflicts with each other.”

“Right, that is social control through religion”.

“So what are you saying?”

“Herman, what you find in your faith is wonderful for you, but I see things differently.  I am afraid the faithful have been used and manipulated all along.”

“I think you are right Theo”.

“So how can you join such an organization?”

“It’s the tradition, not history.”

We walk up through the sloping yard toward the ruins of The Ashes.  A heavy black wooden garage door has fallen off its rusted hinges and smashed the back of an old Oldsmobile Toronado with a big back window.  Reaching the old patio above the garage we look down on a sunken driveway that leads from the road into the garage beneath our feet.  A chain link fence sags from poles leaning from each side into the shadows where oak and maple leaves have collected on the driveway.  Ivy, Virginia creeper and wisteria vines wind up the trunks towards the sun.  The ivy covers two dead gum trees with winter foliage.  More debris blows into the abyss, from the ground, surrounding red oaks and the big maple at the top of the driveway.  Tree roots have burst though the crumbling asphalt, now partly overgrown with moss.

“Look there he is!”

“Where Theo?”

“He’s at the top of the driveway Fred, on the left.”

“That was a red fox!”

“It was too low slung for a fox Fred.”

“Let’s take a look!”

Theo walks off fast, snapping twigs underfoot and heading down hill, blundering past azaleas and hollies draped with vines.

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. 

Last night’s snowfall is cleared away from the pump islands at the Light House Gas station.  Customers getting out of their cars for self service find it gritty and wet.  Snow is piled around and against the old wooden oil derrick in the corner where Huygens Street intersects Maxwell Avenue beyond.  It hides those waiting at the traffic light muffling the growl of idling engines and the strange howl of the accelerating new buses.  The station sign looks as if it is growing out of a dirty white mountain range with black peaks and white hollows.  One might be looking at a satellite image from the moon of an outer planet.  The derrick’s wooden framework is boarded over from half way up, and painted white with ‘GAS STATION’ printed in red block capitals down all four sides.  Below the bottom of the big red “N” of the word station, “Independent Since 1948” appears hand lettered in black.  A lantern mounted on top makes the structure resemble a lighthouse and at night the lantern winks brighter then fainter, and a single red neon tube glows along the center of each red letter.

Snow in the streets has started melting and refrozen many times over the past week.  The sun comes out briefly during the day and streams of water run like rivers off a mountain, which freeze into glaciers of black ice overnight at the intersection.

The soft looking snow at the base of the mountain is frozen and hard enough to dent the front of a customer’s car. A tall man with long brown ponytail climbs out of his small faded cream colored car to examine the front end for damage, and starts chatting with one of the polite and helpful attendants.  Mr. Ramsay walks over toward me from the office as I fill the old Saturn with regular gas, and wave as he approaches.

“Well hi there ahh…”

“Its Fred.”

“Yeah, ah right, ahhh Fred, how you doing there?”  A strong voice comes out of the cave of his collar.  The collar of his soiled trench coat is up around his head and his belt is tied crudely to one side.  He pushes back his fedora and looks up from the curve of his bent frame.  His coat is too big.  He has the ends of the sleeves bunched up in his hands.

“Filling up before the next blizzard.”

“Didn’t we meet at Hank’s barbeque a while back?”

“Yes we did.”

“It was gusty as I recall, and Daisy brought her Wombat.”

“In the tea cozy.”

“Haven’t seen Daisy around.  Have you?”

“Yes, saw her at the party for Derwent.”

“Oh!  That son of a bitch finally kicked it!  Now I am the last of the Mohicans.  He always said he was, but I am!”

“Last of the Mohicans?”

“Yeah, well there weren’t any Mohicans around here … figure of speech of course.  It was the “Faux”, so named by the French who couldn’t believe they were Indians.”

“Why?”

“Hell I don’t know! It’s probably a pack of lies!  That’s the story though, and I am the last of the old guard, the pioneers who built this place.”

“I see, an original settler, and you started the water system I hear.”

“This area was settled in the late 17^th century.  I may look old to you but let’s not be ridiculous.  Didn’t you learn any history?  I was just a guy looking for affordable housing after the war when the government had expanded and hired me along with thousands of others.”

“That’s world War II right?”

“What else could it be?”

“Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf …”

“Those weren’t real wars for Christ’s sake!  Korea was a United Nations boondoggle and Vietnam and the Gulf were imperial scuffles.”

“Cost a lot of lives and money, just like a war.”

“Wasted money … compared with the big one, they were unnecessary scuffles.  The mistakes of political midgets like Johnson, and Bush and the rest of them.”

“Very glad you got the water system up.”

“Yeah it’s been a pain in the ass ever since.  Anyway, you were saying you saw Daisy? “

“That’s right.”

“Maybe I did see her … Yeah across the room there.  Couldn’t talk to her though.”

“The room was crowded.”

“It was, but that was not the obstacle.”

“No?”

“No, see there’s scheming going on there.”

“Scheming?”

“You know what scheming is.  You know there’s plans and then there’s schemes.”

“Well yes, scheming has a …”

“… negative connotation?  You got it.  Sloot was a god dam schemer if ever there was one.”

“He was a little rough around the edges.”

“Slippery as an eel though … For God’s sake there’s Finderelli.”  Mr. Ramsay is looking beyond me.  Turning I see an old dented Plymouth Valliant, which must date back to the sixties.  The tall man is getting out.  He has backed it away from the snow pile.

“Haven’t seen him since I interviewed him a year or two ago.”

“What did you do that for?”

“You remember the fire ants at Prestige U.?”

“Oh that was the Tripp kid’s prank.  Is she serving any time?

“No, I believe the case is settled or going to be soon.”

“Right, right, right, her rich Daddy got Shrowd in.  Yeah that guy is a real operator!”

“So I gather, he is …”

“He is the reason I can still keep this old filling station the way it is, independent, without the god dam oil monopolies taking it over.”

“So you are a client too!”

“Stick around, and you will find yourself knocking at his door.”

“Hope to avoid litigation.  Don’t have the money for it.”

“You’ll never get to court with him.”

“No I am told he works behind the scenes.”

“He knows who to talk to and how to make a deal.  If you can’t afford to pay him he’ll make a deal and you will never get away from the guy.  Like the Mob, once you accept a deal that’s …”

Mr. Ramsay is looking beyond me again toward the street. “Hey Finn!”  Mr. Ramsay shouts above the traffic at the tall man.  Finn strolls over. The gas pump has stopped.  My tank is full.  As I pull the nozzle out of the car Ramsay pushes my hand back down, all the while shouting to Finn, who doesn’t seem to hear. So I leave the nozzle in the car.

Bending slightly towards him, Finn shakes hands “Mr. Ramsay”, and turns to me.

“I remember you … how’s the blog?”

Mr. Ramsay interrupts our exchange of pleasantries.  Finn’s thick hair is combed back from his wide lined forehead and you wouln’t guess he has it all gathered in back.

“So you totaled that car I gave you huh!”

“Just a dent that’s all.”

“How many miles you got on that thing now?”

“I am in my fifth century.”

“Not bad for a guy who doesn’t know any history.  Just like you Fred!”

“Same old smooth charmer Mr. Ramsay!”

“Listen, I gave a young hippie my old car thirty odd years ago when no one else would have given you the time of day.”

“My gratitude knows no bounds!”

“Yeah tell me about it Flower … or should I say Doctor Finderelli?”

“Say what you like.”

“I usually do!  You still professing up at that university, what ever its called?”

“No, we came to a parting of the ways.”

“You are well out of that stinking place.  So what you doing now, smoking dope?”

“Back to building houses.”

“That’s real honest to god work.  Hell! You might have come to your senses!”

“Maybe … need to make a buck, like any one else.”

“Why did they throw you out? … or did they?”

“I had a profound disagreement with the dean, Dr. Bookbender.”

“Profound huh!”

“Yeah, it went real deep.”

“Now you can forget all your degrees, and what you majored in and all the rest of that horse shit you academics get off on!”

“What you got against P.U. anyway Mr. Ramsay?”

“That goes real deep too.”

Farouk the manager walks over and stands next to Mr. Ramsay, grinning at Finn.

“Farouk, how you doing buddy?”

Mr. Ramsay interrupts again and drowns out Farouk.  He grabs Farouk’s arm.  “Okay what have I done now?”

“Mr. Ramsay, look over there, you have customers lined up waiting to use this pump.”

“Give Fred a chance to fill up will you?”

“Mr. Ramsay the pump stopped five minutes ago.”

“Fred, what you messing around for?  Get that thing out of there will you?”

I pull the nozzle out of the car and Farouk takes it from me and hangs it back on the pump.  Finn is laughing.

“He used to pull that on me too Fred.”

“What’s that Finn?”

“Hold up the whole line and blame me for it!”

“Okay okay so I’ve got a conscientious manager.  What’s your hippie problem with that?”

“Mr. Ramsay I don’t have a problem.  You do, you are holding up the line talking.”

“Farouk, get these people moving will you!”

“Yes boss.”

I get in the car but Mr. Ramsay doesn’t move out of the way.  He is still talking to Farouk and Finn who have stepped to one side.  Now he is leaning on the right front side of the car.

Finn is still laughing.  He and Farouk each take an arm and pull Mr. Ramsay out of the way and I pull away from the pump.

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.

“Quercus alba, look at those deep sinuses.”  Bel Vionnet examines some dead leaves uncurling one with her fingers as she identifies the tree.  People are gathering to see the aftermath of its dramatic fall in last night’s icy gale.

These once prophetic leaves caught the first rays of dawn sunlight, before it came up over the hill and the roofs of nearby houses. They held on through autumn into midwinter sheltering starlings and grackles, which started their chat at first light. They rustle and scratch in the windy silence after snow, vocalizing, but what they are saying falls unrevealed to the ground. The top of the tree is now spread out across Wickett Street after tipping over from the drenched ground and upending its root ball in the air.  Though the air is well below freezing this morning and light snow sparkles as it blows out of the surrounding trees, there’s a pool of dark water filling the hole left when all the earth and roots were torn out of the ground and rose into the air. The huge ragged lump spreading out at the bottom of the trunk looks like a picture of the noise it made tipping over. Several major roots dangle with clumps of earth weighing them down.  It was about seventy feet high with scales of ash grey bark along the trunk. Thick branches with lichen growing on one side have dug into the ground like bent elbows with bare limbs sticking up holding more brittle dead leaves bunched here and there.

“What was that bel?”

“Quercus alba, or white oak, that is what’s blocking the road, one of our biggest.  Probably killed by all the machinery compacting the ground around its roots.”

“That’s really too bad, they made an effort to save this tree when they dug the new well.”

A black Humvee pulls up on the other side of the tree.

“Can you see who that is bel?”  Bel parts the branches in front of her.

“It’s Albrecht Intaglio and I don’t know who, and there’s Boyd Nightingale.”

“What did you say bel?”  A chain saw starts up after a few coughs and the exhaust blows over to us.  Diddlie coughs.  “I hate those fumes!”  Albrecht is shouting orders at Boyd who starts cutting the top most branches from the trunk. Another saw starts and the third man begins to cut through larger limbs further down the trunk from us, where it has crushed the hedgerow, and revealed the remains of a rail fence.  Albrecht shouts further directions over the noise, Boyd stops his saw and drives off in the Fauxmont Militia’s Hummer.  Albrecht comes towards us around the end of the tree.

“Keep back there.  We are throwing the brush over here.”

“What?”  Lark walks towards him.  Albrecht repeats himself.  Lark walks up close to him and says something in his ear.  He smiles and they continue in a short conversation we can’t hear.  Lark is frowning as she walks back, but grins at us as she gets close enough to be heard over the noise.

“Self important little twerp!”

“What did you say to him Lark?”

“Never trust authority Didd., remember that from the old days.”

“Is that what you said to him?”

Albrecht joins us, and Lark doesn’t answer.  “Good morning, see, here’s your community at work, not yawping for the government’s help!  You all want to pitch in and move some brush?”

Lou appears from down the hill behind us, and Rank Majors and Marshall Rundstedt drive up, squeezed into the cab of Hank Dumpty’s chalky blue F150.  They too have chain saws in the back and Albrecht walks over to them.

“This will be interesting, folks.”

“Lou, I can’t see Hank taking direction from Albrecht.”

“Look Fred, Marshall is talking to him.”

“Fred, you got a saw?”

“I’ve got a pruning saw.”

“There’s enough saws at work already.”

“There’s a lot of tree Lou.”

“Right enough bel, but they’ll end up in each other’s way if there’s too many.”

“Oh look, Hank has driven off!”

“Hank’s seen enough Lou!”

“Looks like Albrecht is trying to turn this little project into a political statement, like everything else in his life.”

“Well Lark, some one’s got to take the lead.”

“Why Didd.? why couldn’t these neighbors just come here to clear the road because they choose to, because they need to get by?”

“That’s probably what’s going on Lark.”

“The spirit of Fauxmont Lou”

“Right Fred, besides, leaders can’t take anything we don’t give them.”

“Oh no Lark?  What about tyrants?  Look at Stalin or Mao.”

“Bel they had to have a lot of people supporting them to have done what they did.”

“Yeah, and if you opposed them you were as good as dead.”

“Too true Lou!  There were plenty of enforcers and killers at work.”

“So what did the dead give them?”

“Nothing Didd. … I am talking about the followers, and those who were dragged along by fear.”

“In a sense these leaders were false gods bel.”

“Like the ancient kings who ruled by divine right, or take Nero for instance who declared himself a god.”

“So Lark, you don’t think we should follow leadership.”

“No, no Didd.  Not exactly, its more a matter of what you give them.”

“What do you mean by “give them”, bel?”

“Cooperation, willing cooperation which is a mark of autonomy because it reserves one’s will for oneself.”

“That’s what I mean bel, not blind obedience, or mindless compliance where people give up their will to another.”

“Why would any one do that Lark?”

“Maybe they are prisoners.”

“Lou, they may be in the military.”

“In the military respect for rank is obligatory.”

“The outward sign of respect is obligatory Lou,”

“Right and that’s some times all there is Didd.”

“Did you see the paper the other day?  They have a crisis on their hands now.”

“Oh! you talking about that ‘toxic leadership’ story Lark.”

“Leadership is generally so poorly understood.”

“Yes Lou, but some people want to be led.  It’s a relief.  They don’t have to make so many decisions.”

“Yeah Fred, maybe it is a relief, I guess it could be, to give up one’s responsibility to one’s self but …”

“Yeah, what’s left Lou?”

“That’s it bel, without decision not much.”

“You’re spirit can’t move you without your will.  So you are not so much a person as a slave to some one else’s will.”

“Amen bel.”

“Well Lark, ‘there’s leaders’ and ‘there’s leaders’.  Hitler told the Germans what they wanted to hear in the thirties and the majority supported him at first, even though he told a lot of lies.”

“I think the thing about leadership is really respect.  When subordinates respect their leader they’ll follow.”

“What about tyrants who force people to follow them?”

“For tyrants the respect of their subordinates isn’t as important as keeping them in fear.”

“Lark, I mean we can give our respect or withhold it.”

“Exactly bel, that’s the meaning of autonomy, freedom if you like.”

“Makes the difference between tyrants and what I am calling real or true leaders.”

“Real because they are morally true and don’t rely on fear and coercion.”

“That’s it Fred.”

“So isn’t that what Albrecht is advocating?  Less government and more independent action?”

“Lou, less government means more corporate power and I have never heard him or my son say a word about that.”

“He’s very articulate for knowing nothing Lark!”

“Fred, he’s been taken in … and he has snookered Boyd too.”

“Look out over there!”  Albrecht and the other man have started throwing brush into a pile nearby.  A chunk of rotten wood falls out of a nearby red oak into the pool under the root ball of the fallen white.  It breaks the thin coat of ice that had formed in the shade.

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.

 “Here are various parts of Derwent’s life.”

“A party of them Artie!”

“And a lot of people I don’t know.”

“Fred, I’ve never even seen many of them before.”

“A difficult time for grieving during the holiday Daisie.”

“Rosie’s tweet said this is a celebration!”

“Oh … of his life … yes Daisie let’s celebrate!

“Artie, who for instance is that guy by the Christmas tree?”

“Don’t know Fred … I think that’s Sherman Shrowd next to him.”

“Hi, Lark.”

“Artie, Fred, Daisie, are we to be happy that we are sad at this party, or sad that we are happy?”

“Is that a riddle Lark?  How can you be happy that you are sad?”

“Well, brutally speaking, you might be happy to be alive yourself and sad that Derwent isn’t.”

“Lark that is horrible!”

“Sorry Daisie, we have lost Derwent, and I feel the loss.  I am sad about that.”

“Funny, I’ll miss his rudeness …”

“Lark, talking to him was like getting rubbed with coarse sandpaper.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“It’s an observation.  I liked Derwent.  Coarse sandpaper has its uses.”

“Yeah, abrasive!”

“You said it Artie, but always interesting … who the hell is that? ….  anyway, Happy Holiday.”

“It’s okay Lark, you can wish me a Merry Christmas.”

“I like to be multicultural Artie.  Besides I don’t think Derwent was Christian.”

“I believe he was an atheist.”

“He always had a tree though Fred.”

“How Christian is that, or Santa Claus for that matter?”

“It was for Rosie as a little kid.”

“We would be better off with out these myths Daisy.  That’s what Derwent might have said.”

“Lark, myths are an important part of life.”

“Well, the fact is Santa doesn’t exist!”

“You know Derwent used to be Santa down at the preschool.”

“Daisie, are you kidding?”

“His act bought Santa into existence.”

“Oh come on Artie! How many Santas are there anyway?”

“No, I mean it.”

“You aren’t going to tell me these Santas, Derwent and all the others ride, in across the night sky from the North Pole on a fleet of sleighs are you?”

“No no no, Santa has no ground control or radar.  It would be a disaster!  No seriously, I am only saying Santa exists, not that all the stories about him are literally true.”

“Okay, so we have a real person who’s story is a lie!”

“No it‘s a mythical person, not a lie.  There’s a difference between telling myths and telling lies.”

“Yeah, telling, repeating a myth can be an affirmation Lark.”

“That’s religion Artie.”

“It can also be poetry.”

“Well Artie, Father Christmas pulls it all together through his name and posing by well decorated trees for advertizing photos.”

“You mean ‘Father’ as in God the Father?”

“Yeah I am stretching the myth Lark … look there’s Edie Carnap with Olga Hahn.”

“So what’s Derwent’s connection there?”

“Fred he was on the board when we hired the Women’s Wells Cooperative to replace the mains on Wicket Street.”

“That’s before my time.”

“Oh! way before, Fred, in the eighties.”

Daisie sports a silky lemon yellow scarf around her neck falling down her back and front.  She also has a new bowler hat on, a dense immaculate black with what looks like a yellow post-it in the band.  We are standing in Derwent’s living room.  There is a table set out in front of the living room fireplace spread with platters of food, the ceiling fan is on low agitating, tinsel decorating the mantelpiece.  An ancient looking gold mantel clock has stopped at six o’clock. Theophilus Gladstone is sitting next to Daisie in an armchair. The chair is so low, the table comes up to his armpits.  He rests asleep, his head on his arm outstretched across the table.  He is one of Daisie’s ancient Canadian uncles, invited to give a lecture at P.U.  He looks up.

“Have some wine.”

“Theo, there is no wine, only punch.”

He puts his head down again close to the punch bowl.  Lark helped herself to a glass of the cranberry drink.  She holds up the ladle.

“Any one for a red refill?”

I haven’t been in this room since Derwent and I first met here and he complained about the massive Tripp house backing on to his lot.  Rosalba’s son Serge looks taller.  He is standing beyond the doorway in the hall looking solemn talking to Rank Majors.

“Rosie, sorry about your Father.”

“Thank you Fred, so glad you could come on a tweet!”

“Glad to be here Rosie.  This is my first tweeted invitation.”

“Fred, the bird is the simplest way to get the word out, and fast too.”

“I got it second hand really, thanks to Lou.”

“Rosie it looks like Derwent’s clock has stopped at 6 o’clock.”

“Yes now he can’t wind it, and I don’t dare touch it.  So it is perpetually six in here.”

“As 6 was on your invitational tweet, that clock makes every one on time!”

“Daisie, we can party for ever.”

“How can we tell Lark, the hands are still?”

“We can watch the punch bowl empty out.  Here Daisie have some more.”

“More wine!”

“Theo, this is punch.”

Theo dropped off again.  His comb-over has flopped out, hinged along the side of his drooping head like the hood of a car, revealing his pate.

“Say Rosie, was your Dad Christian or what?”

“Lark, I don’t think he was anything.”

“Not an atheist then?”

“I have never heard him say anything like that Artie, but he never announced that he was anything around me.  He sort of found his own Divinity I think, in his work.”

Lou comes up with a tray of drinks from the kitchen.  Seeing we all have punch, he puts the glasses on the table and holds the tray by his side.

“We are going to toast Derwent in as soon as Mr. Ramsay gets here.”

“Where is he?”

“Daisie, I just called him.  He was killing time down at the gas station, waiting for a delivery.  He is on the way.”

“Looks like time has caught up with him anyway!”

“I am getting out of here folks.”

“Daisie you don’t have to leave just because of him.”

“Bye bye …”

Lark grabs Daisie’s arm.  Linked arm in arm they squeeze through the crowd, one behind the other, towards the door. Lou’s stage whisper to Lark is to try and keep her here.

Artie waves goodbye.

“Derwent was always asking skeptical questions as I remember.”

“Lou, he had no time for cant that’s for sure.”

Rosie takes the tray from Lou and disappears among the guests.

“Yeah, he was outspoken alright Lou.  He told me at my first opening that he knew I could paint but couldn’t understand why there was no evidence of it in my show.”

“How did he know?”

“I guess he may have liked something I had put in a faculty show over at P.U. back in the nineties.”

Mrs. Shrowd comes up beside Artie and grips her wrist in her long thin hand with fingers like bejeweled talons tipped in glossy red.

“Let’s talk.”

She pulls Artie aside.  Diddly brings Daisie back with Lark.

“Daisie you can’t leave just as I arrive!”

Lark and Daisie each have an arm and Daisy is no longer resisting.  Lark points out that she can’t leave Theophilus asleep at the table.  Rank Majors is now talking to the man by the Christmas tree.  Lark tells Diddlie to take over Daisie’s arm.  She acquiesces with a sigh and Lark goes over to introduce herself.  She soon comes back towards the punch bowl where I am standing with Daisie, Lou, sleepy Theophilus, and Diddlie, newly arrived.

“That guy is Santa, Daisie!”

“Lark he’s going to need about fifty additional pounds and a white beard to convince me.”

“Actually he wasn’t very forthcoming.”

“So what’s his name Lark?”

“Oh, ahhh … I have forgotten …I can never remember people’s names when first introduced.”

“Could it have been Kris Kringle?”

“Diddlie, what gifts did he bring?”

“Maybe he brought us Rosie’s memorial celebration for Derwent.”

“Ask Rosie, here she is, back already.”

“Ask me what Daisie?”

“Who’s that guy … wait a minute.  Where’s he gone?”

“That’s how it is with mythical beings Lark.”

“Daisie that was a real person.”

“Who?”

“The guy we can’t find now Didd.”

NOT E: 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.

Lambert stands with a yellowish oak leaf dangling from his beard.  It swings slowly under his chin, and twists a little to the right and back to the left.  His facial fur is all cross-wise and his ears slant sideways like the horns of a steer.  A piece of moss hangs above his right eye like a loose green eyebrow.  You would think the leaf must fall at any second.  It doesn’t.  He seems to be staring at the ground, bewildered perhaps as he has just awakened from a snooze under the azaleas in front of bel’s living room window.  He shakes himself and looks up at bel and she puts his leash on.  The leaf falls.  He looks back at the ground.  He sniffs around bel’s feet and looks up again, his ears erect his attention focused. The moss is gone.  He has a second leaf hanging from his beard. It has fallen from a white oak, grey and dry and bent.  Even after shaking, his coarse long white fur holds like Velcro to any number of azalea leaves and a few twig fragments.  Leaves from white and red oaks cover the ground visually unifying, the driveway and flowerbeds and all the bald patches in the lawn with a spread of textured browns that fell, quiet as snow, in a couple of days.

“I am not raking until those hickories drop”

Bel points toward the small grove of shag bark hickories stopping at the road and continuing in the yard on the other side, with brilliant yellow leaves.  The fence zigzags among the trunks growing along her property line.  Their branches over hang the lawn.

“We got a quarter inch in our rain gauge last night.”

“No wonder all these things have come down Fred!”

Lambert is barking. He pulls hard towards the road and the second leaf falls.

“Who’s that coming down the hill Fred?  Can’t see in this mist.”

“Don’t think I know them.”

“No I haven’t seen those two Chihuahuas before.”

Two long-haired Chihuahuas zoom past twisting their leashes together and barking as they veer towards Lambert who is pulling towards them from the driveway.  The couple on the other end of the leashes walk on in conversation, and don’t look up.

Hank Dumpty’s pale blue truck pulls up with a rattle of his dented tailgate.  His thick arm partly covered with torn brown corduroy, reaches out of the open window elbow first.  His hand drops to the door handle and opens the door from the outside.  The engine idles roughly.  More mist spreads from the tale pipe.  He walks over as Lambert sniffs the air pulling now toward the truck.

“Bel, you seen our young radicals lately?”

He puts a big friendly hand on my shoulder as he speaks to bel.  He has a box under his left arm.

“Who might you be thinking of Hank?  How are you anyway?”

“You know that gun toting Nightingale kid and his boss, ah what’s his name?… “

“Entaglio?”

“That’s the one Fred”

“I have Hank.  Abrecht was talking to Fred and Lou outside the Pie shop the other day.”

“Bel here’s your bird. Shot it yesterday up in New York.”

“Another tasty Thanksgiving for us Hank; thank you.”

“You got a place to hang it?”

“Sure, Steve will hang it in the shed when he gets home.”

“Should be just right in another few days.”

“Is that a wild Turkey Hank?”  Lambert has caught scent of of the box and pulls towards Hank.

“Fred this is a pheasant.  Can I interest you in one?”

“No thanks Hank we are going to my Father in law’s for Thanksgiving.”

“You bought a side-arm yet Fred?”

Lambert is barking at Hank’s box.

“No I remain unconvinced Hank.”

“Yeah!  So do I.”

Bel pulls Lambert back and sits him down.  He settles at her feet with a gentle growl culminating with a grunt.

“You are pretty well armed already aren’t you Hank?”

“I’ve got a few hunting rifles, and an old Army forty five, but Fred, that’s nothing to do with those two.”

The truck engine spontaneously revs up and then stalls.

Hank turns toward it.  “It doesn’t like the damp … getting old like me.”  Lambert is roused and starts barking again.  Hank rubs his upper arm and then the large egg of his bald round head.

“You hear we lost Derwent?”

Bel settles Lambert at her feet again.

“No Hank, when?”

“He didn’t wake up Wednesday morning bel.”

“That’s yesterday Hank …”

“Yeah, Helga got a call from Rosalba and went over yesterday morning.  We ought to get a funeral date today.”

“I never knew you and Derwent were all that close.”

“We weren’t but Helga was teaching Rosalba German and they kind of bonded, a couple of years ago I guess … no more than that.  Hell! more like a decade ago … I think Rosalba was in college …  yeah that was it … helping her with college German.”

“Hank he was the last surviving founder of Fauxmont.”

“He was … don’t think he was religious do you?”

“Never heard him talk about it.”

“God bless him anyway.”

“You think there will be a wake Hank?”

“They’re not Irish are they?”

Lambert is restless and starts squeaking at bel.  She settles him once again.

“No, I am just talking about having friends and neighbors over.”

“Don’t know bel.  Derwent knew some interesting folks.”

“How old was he?”

“Fred he must have been in his nineties.”

“No Bel, he was eighty nine.”

“Who did Derwent know Hank?”

“Most of the people involved in starting this place.”

“I gather it has complicated beginnings.”

“What’s that Fred?”

“Oh something about laundered money and so on, and a character called Aaron Macadamia.”

“You’ve been listening to Diddlie!  She’s full of that hogwash, I’ve been hearing it for years.”

“So what so interests you about Faumont’s beginnings Hank?”

“I used to be a regular down at the H bar and chat with Banesh Hoffmann.  Got to know him a little.  He could write the book about this place, ‘The Strange Story Of Fauxmont’.  In fact I suggested it to him with that title.”

“So what’s the strange story Hank?”

“He didn’t tell me more than a bit of this and that.  There’s a lot of money involved alright.”

“Who’s Hank?”

“Ha!  That’s the question!”

Lambert breaks for a squirrel running across the driveway in a crackle of dry leaf litter.

Bel holds him back.

“The houses were pretty small to start Hank.  They don’t look like a lot of money was involved.”

“No, you’re right bel.  Most of the folks who moved here weren’t rich.  Derwent was a professor at Prestige U., Herman Intaglio taught there later I think, there were some lawyers and civil service types.”

“So where’s all the money you are talking about?”

“Where?  God knows where it is now.  If I knew that I’d probably be rich myself.”

“Hank I am getting back to your remark about a lot of money being involved when Fauxmont first started.”

“Somebody bought all this land for one thing.  Then soon after, they sold it to the Fauxmont cooperative in a deal that is sealed for ninety nine years.  Derwent may be the only living member of our community who knew what is in it.”

“Is that what Mr. Hoffmann told you?”

“Bel, Hoffmann got involved after that and took over the old Newton House which he renamed the H bar.  He started out in physics so the idea was obvious to him.”

“Okay Hank, go on …”

“Well, his lawyer found out about this sealed deal when he was negotiating his acquisition of Newton House.  In fact it is still listed as Newton House officially and he has a seventy seven year lease.  He doesn’t own it.  He has a lease which is up the same day the deal comes unsealed … and you didn’t hear this from me.”

“Are you sharing a secret with us Hank?”

“I don’t think Hoffmann would appreciate it if he found out that I had mentioned all this” Hank paused and rubbed his head again.  “I better stop running my mouth, and get going.”

He looks at bel and bel is slowly nodding at him and with sympathy in her expression.  Neither speaks.  He hands me the box with the pheasant in it and turns toward his old truck muttering, “See you around.”

He climbs back in his truck.  Lambert had fallen asleep and is roused again when the truck starts.  I put the box over in the shed for bel and walk back.  She and Lambert start his morning walk.  He has a reddish leaf over his right eye and another grey one on that side of his face.

“Bel, when did Fauxmont get started?”

“I think the land was purchased late in 1945.”

“The H bar’s plaque says, “Since 1968.”

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.

Soil comes moist and black in sunny yellow plastic sacks, 40 lbs or 60lbs at a time from the Snaz “Garden of Eden” plant and paving center. There’s a blond American Eve pictured on the front of the sack ‘sans’ serpent, but modestly covered by a few leaves on an intervening tree branch. She stands next to Adam with his fig leaf in place. This Eve has commercial savvy and knows how to stoke your expectations. Huge dahlias are perpetually blossoming around her and Adam gestures towards apples and pears and tomatoes, squash, broccoli and carrots piled in baskets with out a spec of dirt or caterpillar or even a fly to be seen. Each ideal platonic fruit and vegetable is displayed against the perfectly mowed green carpet of grass in front of them. The specially blended soil is registered and tested to comply with the standards of the Mulch and Soil Council, who’s website is provided. Detailed instructions are printed in Spanish English and French for best results with the product, which goes on fertilizing your garden long after you planted.

Dirt previously dug out of the clay under the dead yellow alyssum has dried into dusty sun-baked lumps like rocks. Having mixed the specially blended Snaz soil product with the dry clay, I fill in the hole for future planting. Put my spade with hickory handle beside the rake’s orange fiberglass handle leaning against the wheelbarrow nearby. Now using Snaz “Super Trowel” with saw tooth feature for cutting through roots, it is time to replace some dead potherbs with newly purchased Chrysanthemums. Lark waves from the road and comes through the gate to unburden herself.

“Hi Fred, Has Diddlie come down the hill yet? Are you getting your hands dirty again?

“Only my gloves Lark. See these pots?”

“There’s nothing but dried stalks. What are you trying to grow? Wow! I love the pots … oh yes! … the red one, it’s great!”

“That had cilantro in it and the dead brown stuff in the yellow pot was Italian parsley and this one …”

“Fred, you have to water them!”

“Lark, water is the thing alright, but they got too much

in those monsoon rains we had in the summer.”

“You mean they drowned?”

“Looks like it, but look at that.”

I point out the thickened roots on one of the dead plants I am exhuming.”

“Look like miniature parsnips.”

“I forget which herb this is, but those roots should sprout next spring so I’m reburying them over there by the hydrangea.”

“They might be day lilies.”

“No, not in the pots. They are all over the place though.”

“I thought they would just grow more with more rain, like all the other stuff in your yard. Its like the woods in here.”

“Yes the shrubs need pruning to clear the paths. Look at that Burford holly.”

Lark looks at the surrounding greenery, admires the holly berries and swats a mosquito on her bare arm.

“Fred, there’s a visitor on your neck right under your ear.”

I can’t swat it because my gloved hands are full of plant roots, so I shrug to drive it off.

“Why is UPS delivering to an empty house?”

“Where? What do you mean?”

“Look up the hill at Jake’s house. The driver just left a package up there by the side door.”

“I haven’t seen anyone move in.”

“Well I am going over to Diddlie’s and I’ll check it out on the way up the hill. She is finally back from that endless trip.”

“Didn’t she go to England?”

“Yeah that trip, which was extended by her new romance.”

“Haven’t seen her … didn’t know about … No come to think of it I saw her last week carrying a bundle of goldenrod up the hill.”

“Fred you couldn’t have, she only got back yesterday. Lou picked her up at Dulles.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.”

“Have you looked at Shrinkwrap’s latest posts?”

“No, Lark, not lately,”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. There’s an article on surveillance both by government and corporations, and it’s about us!”

“What? … are our names mentioned? … I mean no one talked to me or anything.”

“No, Fred it’s about government contracts for surveillance and involves the incident in Fauxmont. None of us is mentioned by name.”

“Oh, dirty tricks!”

“Fulton Furray’s blog mentions the prosthesis in the gully. He’s convinced there’s a lot more to it and that Dordrecht’s Group is involved. He has a copy of a contract, showing they are linked to Fibonacci Corp. Also Fulton has been served a subpoena to appear before Judge Grackle to reveal his source.”

“What is Quiscalus P. Grackle getting involved for? He usually does the high profile cases?”

“Quiscalus! Where did you get that from?”

“I just read an article about him in a bird magazine at the doctor’s office, and here he turns up again.”

“Okay, Fred, a judge in a bird mag.?”

“That’s right he is a bird watcher and has an impressive list.”

“List of what?”

“Of birds he has seen. Serious bird watchers make lists.”

“Fred, if the story on Shrinkwrap is just about a prosthesis and bird watching, Grackle wouldn’t even know about it.”

“Yeah, he is only in on the big stuff.”

“I don’t think Fulton is going to give anything up and Grackle will try to nail him!”

“Lark, the story has already been reported on local news …”

“I know Fred. We were at the H Bar together, remember?”
“That’s right. So what is Max saying?”

“I am not supposed to, but I’ll tell you he is afraid he is going to be the scapegoat.”

“The scapegoat for what?”

“Fred, even though the police got there after the others, they are retailing the prosthesis story. I mean what do they know? Why are they are taking Urban Safety’s word for it? There should be an inquiry into what really happened before the police arrived, and the Fauxmont Militia and Urban Safety were there by themselves.”

“That’s probably twenty minutes or more.”

“Steve thinks it took the police half an hour to get there.”

“Ah, but how soon were they called?”

“That is a question. If they delayed calling, why did they?”

“Who made the call?”

“Probably Urban Safety, that’s what they are supposed to do.”

“They all know each other, these security contractors are often ex-police or army or something like that.”

“You remember the trouble about all that dirt in the gully?

“Yeah, the stuff from the failed silt fence when Jake’s place went up.”

“If the illegal dumping is taken to court, Max will be the defendant.”

“Right, that’s it. So you think the dumping case will cover the real question of what was in the gully?”

“Isn’t that what Fibonacci do?”

“Yeah … perception management.”

“How about lies, obstruction of justice, and framing an innocent man?”

“How about it, or a fertile imagination Lark?”

“Okay Fred, Fulton has shown a connection between Fibonacci and Dordrecht’s. Max worked with Dordrechts when he built the Tripp house a couple of years ago. He thought they were doing a lot of unnecessary work. So he told Jake Tripp about it, thinking Jake was getting fleeced. Tripp didn’t say much, then Max was told to mind his own business by some clown from Dordrecht’s.”

“Really? You mean they sent him a letter, or was it done in person.”

“In fact it was done over in the parking lot outside the H bar, by a guy in a business suit. Max thinks he’s an attorney from the way he kept intimating legal action.”

“Well, I remember that crazy security system with all the video screens in their huge lobby. I tried to tell Gale the system was faulty when I first moved in here, but don’t think she heard me. There were too many screens. They looked redundant to me at the time. I couldn’t make sense of it at all. It was like a hall of mirrors.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the things Max noticed. He said there were two huge wiring closets full of connections, tons more than any residential place would need, and he only saw in there once when he was inspecting his own work. Who ever left those doors open made a mistake because they were locked whenever he went back. Also, he said the closets had heavy metal doors, not like you have in a home closet”

“Could they be for the complex wine cellar mechanism with computers and so on?”

“Right, Max knew about that, but he was never shown any of the details, not even the plans. That stuff was blank on his set of blueprints and he had to work around the space.

“Did he tell Trip all this?”

“I guess he told Jake everything.”

“Did this ‘suit’ just come up to him in the parking lot out of nowhere?”

“I don’t know, maybe he called first. Max was really mad and called up Sherman but …”

“Sherman? Who’s Sherman?”

“You know the attorney …”

“Oh I see, being Tripp’s attorney, he thought …”

“Sherman Shrowd is also Max’s attorney. That’s why Max called him to give him a heads up on the dumping case.”

“Shrowd is probably in the know already.”

“That’s another reason Max called him. He’s expensive but so well connected, you know, it’s worth it.”

“Alright so there’s a contractual relationship between Fibonacci and Dordrecht’s, and Jakes place had a lot of weird electronics. What’s the scoop?”

“Fred you know, I think Juanita’s body was found in the gully, and I think there was a cover-up that night.”

“Is that where the Shrinkwrap story is going?”

“Possibly, it tags Marshall Rundstedt as being on the board of Leiden Organization and an advisor to Fibonacci”

“ … and what is Leiden Organization?”

“Supposedly they do educational programs for various middle Eastern governments, but I’ll bet that’s not all they do.”

“But what’s the connection to Fauxmont’s gully?”

“Then there’s Rank Major, he works for the Fib. I believe.

The connection is all these people who live here also work for these related companies, and these companies have something to do with the Tripp’s weird house … and Juanita lived at that house and may have known something or seen something.”

“Known what Lark?”

“That’s the question. It’s a dirty business, and that’s what gets to me about her disappearance.”

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.

Light that brightens late in the day seems to have been pilfered from some other time and pasted into the scene by the god who laughs at our plans for tomorrow.   It has been a dark dry day. Now the picture has changed and the  cross beams on Lou’s shed are highlighted against the planks.  A crooked length of dogwood branch is illuminated as if on a whim. A chickadee settles on it only long enough to be recognized and flies deeper into the autumn greens.  The sun is low and coming in through a slit in the clouds like the sweep from a lighthouse, dramatizing grey peeling trunks of the four white oaks along the property line where Lou’s shed fills the corner.  This is where he brought out the powder blue wooden trunk a few months ago. The setting sun constructs it differently now.

Having passed Lou’s place, I have walked over to the Strether’s house expecting to meet them. A low flying plane passes close enough to cast a shadow, which feels, as it flits over, like the sun has blinked in response to the rolling reverberations of jet engines.

“That was way too low!”

Bel Vionnet is poking the gravel in her driveway with the point of her umbrella.  We are waiting under low clouds for Steve to come back out after going in to the check his back door.

“I knew you had locked it Steve.”

“I don’t remember doing so.”

“It was locked though, wasn’t it?”

“Yes it was.”

Steve threw the unlit stub of his Dutch Master cigar into a thicket of azaleas.  Lambert barked twice and retrieved it before we had taken a couple of steps.  He raced ahead and dropped it.  Then picked it up again and waited for us to catch up, panting past it in the side of his mouth.

“Steve, what’s on your mind?”

“Fred I can’t exactly say.”

“Honey do you mean you can’t put it into words or that you don’t want to?”

“Of course I want to bel.”

“So what is stopping you?”

“I can’t say.”

“Is this an emotional thing Steve?  Steve if you and Fred want to go off and have a chat I can take Lambert up the hill to the Ashes.”

“No, no, no, this isn’t anything like that bel.”

Steve took off his gold wire rim glasses and looked at the lens.  He dislodged a tiny insect from the inside of his left lens and put them back on.

“So what is it Steve? Honey you have been withdrawn for the last week, ever since you came home soaked from that incident in the gulley.”

We are walking up Wicket Street towards the river, past Armond Macadamia’s place.  They often take Lambert out at dusk in keeping with his crepuscular habits.

“It’s a legal matter.”

“So Steve, are you involved in a law suit?”

“Not yet Fred.”

“Why haven’t you said anything before honey?”

“Bel, I shouldn’t even have said that.”

“You’ve made a start honey, keep going.  Fred I think you are good for him!”

“I believe some one has broken into our house, not a thief.”

“What tipped you off.”

“It was Lambert’s sniffing around.  If any one did come in, it must have been while we were all out yesterday.  I’ve been home all week reading up on Rembrandt especially “Night Watch.”

“Oh that huge thing he did of a shooting party.”

“Fred the subject was more like a local militia.  In the 1940s they removed a layer of old varnish and found it was not a night scene at all.”

“Oh I thought it is still called “The Night Watch”.

“It is, probably always will be, but any way, where was I?”

“You were talking about Lambert, honey and the fact that he was sniffing around got your attention.  But he is always doing that.”

“Not like this.  I think he followed a trail from the back door into the utility room and back.  He was single minded, going back and forth, not just mooching around.  He got excited, and growled, and I finally let him out again”

“Steve is this connected with the incident?”

“That’s what I was wondering.  Somebody did something or left something in our utility room behind the kitchen.”

“Maybe one of us tracked something in, Steve.”

“Did you look for stuff on the floor, a bit of insulation or something?”

“Yeah, there was nothing.  No I don’t think it could have been one of us.  We haven’t been out that door lately.  If they planted something it probably just fitted into place somewhere, so you’d have to be an electrician to notice it.”

“Okay, I get it. This is about Juanita’s disappearance and that thing they found in the gulley.”

“Oh the prosthesis.”

“Right Fred, if that’s what it was.”

“Are you in doubt bel?  I know Lark is.”

“Fred, I never know what to believe about that case, but I think Steve is getting too far out.”

“What’s he done with my cigar?”

“Lambert, where is it?”

“Oh I hope he didn’t eat it!”

Lambert is looking up at us with white hair arching over his black eyes and showing his incisors behind black lips.  He moves his head to the left, then to the right as Steve questions him, as if he is sympathizing with his plight.

“Did you eat my cigar butt Lambert? I hope you dropped it.”

We walk on to look out over the river to our right through the growth of Kentucky coffee trees in jagged zigzags.

“Why would any one want to plant anything in our house?”

“Bel dear, who knows?”

“So what gives you that idea?”

“Watching those klutzes getting wet and screwing around in the gulley … I mean it made no sense when the cops arrived

and the DEA arrived and people with weapons and no uniforms or IDs.  Then one of these big bruiser types came swaggering over and told me to move on.  It was insulting and inappropriate.”

“DEA, what are they doing here?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah I over heard them mentioned on a squawk box several times.  Right after that I was kicked off my own street.”

“These security people are getting more and more arrogant.”

“It’s the terrorist threat Fred.”

“Look what happened at the Navy Yard bel!”

“Fred that was not a political terrorist from the Middle East.”

“Oh I know bel, he was hearing voices in his head.”

“Too many different kinds of violence get lumped together.  It’s the terrorist threat that is blown out of all proportion in my opinion and that has lead to militarizing law enforcement.”

“Its worth remembering bel, that a lot of people are making their fortunes out of it, and many others depend on those security appropriations for a salary.”

“Anyway, if there was a break-in, I am going to court.”

“Honey, I am not so sure there was a break-in.”

“Okay bel, an unlawful entry.  How’s that for jargon!”

“The jargon is great, but you need to identify the culprit.”

“Yes and that’s the hang up.  Some of these characters don’t need to break anything to get in.  Suppose it was an agent of my own government?”

“Then your case will gather in a media blitz.”

“Possibly Fred, more likely I will never know for sure who it was, and that’s what bothers me most.”

“Maybe no one ever came in, honey.”

“Maybe not, bel, I got your message the first time but our house overlooks the gulley.  Remember what a racket those generators made all night?”

“Oh so you’re thinking surveillance!”

“Strong possibility Fred, and more to the point who are they looking at or listening to?”

“Is that why you haven’t said anything at home?”

“It is on my mind bel.”

We have stopped at another new driveway. Bel runs the metal tip of umbrella across the surface as if she is painting.  We have been past several new driveways.  They seem to be in fashion in Fauxmont.  Some choose a light crushed stone, which drains well and shows up at night.  We have paused at a shining black asphalt driveway where a sunburst reflects in brilliant contrast to the new tar black shadow.