Everything seemed to change. Nothing stays the same.
Henna drove Alvar into town in her rental car. He needed some things. A paring knife, a new whisk broom, paraffin. She marveled at the simplicity with which her grandfather lived all these years. When they couldn’t find a wooden handled knife he grumbled some more. “Plastic. Everywhere now. Plastic. Solar phone charger? Plastic. I don’t want plastic in my house. It doesn’t feel right.” Thankfully, an outfitters store supplied carbon steel boning knives with cork handles. Alvar smiled. “This is more like it.” Alvar insisted on paying for the purchases. She marveled at him. His back remained straight. He was still tall. Alvar, the survivor. Alvar, the hero. She couldn’t fathom the patience and the energy it took to let her burst into his quiet existence. He’d earned the right to be a hermit. She felt certain that dealing with her hormones and her menses hadn’t been easy for the man, but he’d done it all so kindly.
He was a gentleman.
She watched him fiddle with the phone. He ran his fingers over the keys as a drill. He hovered over the keys to call the phone Henna carried and turned to her self-consciously.
“How do you carry your phone?”
“I just toss it in my satchel, with the ringer up so I can hear it.”
“How do men carry them?”
“Some men put smaller ones like that in their pockets.” Henna watched as Alvar tried the phone in his right pants pocket, then his left. He furrowed his brow. He already kept things in his pockets. It wouldn’t work.
“How about a holster for it?” Henna found a store that sold phones. Alvar bought himself a case that slid onto his belt. He adjusted the phone in the case and did some dialing and answering drills as they left the store.
“Grandpa—puppies!” On the sidewalk sat an apple box full of puppies. Paws and faces poked out the top. A woman in a folding camp chair stood to begin her sales pitch.
“We have a deep-chested Chesapeake.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the big-headed waterdog in the back of an old truck. “He took a liking to my friend’s Labrador.” The dog yawned. He unfurled his tongue like a cartoon red carpet. Row, row, raow. The lady pursed her lips and scowled. “He denies it, but I saw him. He’s a big talker, but a poor historian.” Henna dipped her hand into the box and let the puppies maul her. Alvar walked to the old truck to pet the Chesapeake. “If we place the puppies in good homes, my friend promised not to sue us for child support. No takers yet. When people see how big Olle here is, they balk. You have pick of the litter.”
Henna counted five happy faces looking up at her, tongues lolling. Yowp. Olle wagged and kicked a leg happily as Alvar scratched his ear. Alvar joined Henna at the box and felt around inside. The puppies followed his hand like moths to a light. He had a distant look on his face. Most of the puppies nipped, tumbled and roughhoused, but one sat calmly—waiting his turn. When Alvar’s hand came close, the curly faced puppy gave him a joyful lick and threw his head back in a gleeful howl. Raow! A smile spread over the old man’s face.
“There’s another talker in there.”
The puppy sat on Alvar’s lap on the way up the mountain. Alvar pulled out his phone, but not to practice drills—he let the puppy sniff the device. When the puppy fell asleep he felt his ears, his legs, his paws, then smiled and reached for Henna’s hand. They held hands the rest of the way home.
~Barn Find
Bonn visited Manny on all his school breaks. Business boomed for Troy in the Caymans. Bonn didn’t talk much about his father. He never went to visit him. By the time Bonn was fifteen, Manny swapped the old couch for a hide-a-bed so Bonn would be more comfortable. They stayed up late when Bonn came home. They fixed up old Chargers, Mustangs, a Barracuda. Manny taught Bonn to use a machine press to make hard-to-find parts. One summer evening as they repacked the bearings on an old rat-rod, Troy called to wish Bonn a happy birthday. Since his hands were greasy, Bonn put the shop phone on speaker. Manny shook his head sadly when Bonn hung up.
“Son, I know when your birthday is. It’s not today. We’ve still got another three weeks.”
Bonn rolled a bearing between his fingers. “I know.” Manny shook his head, but kept his feelings to himself.
The man doesn’t even know when his own son’s birthday is.
Well, Manny thought, he intended to make the day special.
For Bonn’s sixteenth birthday, Manny and Linda took him to Seneca Lake. A reclusive old farmer willed his immense car collection to his daughter, who intended to sell them off quickly. Manny showed Bonn the advertisement in the paper. “Dozens of classics for sale.” Ever since Manny read the ad he’d dreamed of Fastbacks, Stingrays, other possible treasures lying fallow in the fields, eagerly awaiting his help. He intended to let Bonn pick one out—they’d fix it up together. It’d be Bonn’s car. Manny became animated as they neared the farm. He had the door of the car open before Linda turned off the ignition. He sprung from the vehicle with purpose and disappeared among the neat rows of cars.
Bonn and Linda walked the rows slowly. They paused to admire an old Cadillac. Linda told Bonn a story. Bonn ran his finger along an ostentatious tail fin. Manny returned to excitedly report his discoveries. He rambled on about curb weight, horsepower, torque. Linda watched her husband proudly. Then she felt sad. Bonn was grown-up. Once he enrolled in college he might stop coming home altogether. Manny needed one last summer with the boy. A carefree summer. To tinker with old cars, to stay up late and tell stories. Although Bonn would certainly fill out a bit more, he was already like a forklift. Linda saw Bonn move even the heaviest parts in the shop with relative ease. Manny bragged about him like he was their boy.
An irascible-looking woman trudged from the farmhouse in a bathrobe and mud boots. Her greeting was clipped.
“Anything you like? Going to auction day after tomorrow.” Manny pulled Linda toward a barn. The doors were open. More neat rows of cars covered with canvas tarps were inside—cars special enough to store under the big roof of the building. Manny read the shapes that lay beneath each fabric. His breath quickened. He felt heady. He pulled covers back with reverence. Linda laughed as he fondled grills and assessed aged undercarriages. Bonn excused himself to make a phone call. Manny peeled a corner of a tarp back. If he was right, this was a—
He was right. A ’69 GTO convertible. The Goat of all Goats.
Manny teared up. He whispered to Linda, “The Judge.” Manny yanked the rest of the tarp off and allowed himself to be pulled into the orbit of the legendary car. The trim was intact, but the body needed work. Manny sucked air through his teeth nervously. He squatted to inspect the “ram air.” He fingered the husk of a dead wasp and admired the intact chrome emblem on the old Pontiac. “How much for this old GTO? She’s in kind of sad shape.” Manny looked around for Bonn to make sure he approved, but the boy had his back turned. The woman adjusted her glasses and fiddled with her hair. She squinted down at Manny, cracked her gum—took a moment to re-tie the belt on her thick blue robe. She cinched the belt deep into her doughy middle in a serious way, a dramatic gesture. An obvious necessity to prepare for a successful negotiation.
Bonn hung up the phone. “We’ll take them all.”
The woman’s gum fell from her open mouth. She stared down at it, as if the gum had spoken, but didn’t stoop to retrieve it. “How much you offering?”
Bonn dialed the phone and handed it to the woman. “Why don’t you think of a price? Tell the man that answers this phone that I’ve agreed to it. When you hang up, we will shake on it. We will send some car haulers up in a few days to disburden you—unless the farm is for sale too.” Bonn made eye contact with Manny. His mouth hung open as well. “That would certainly make storage easier.”
“Son, what are you doing? We came up here to buy you an old car we could fix up together. You can’t buy all these cars—” Manny gave Linda a terrified look, imploring her for help. She looked confused but entertained and remained quiet.
“Do
n’t you have to ask you dad for the money?”
“My dad was killed last week.” Manny and Linda froze. Bonn shrugged. “Tropical storm.” Linda held her hand to her mouth. Manny felt his head reeling. He sat, abruptly, in the dirt. Bonn sat next to Manny and spoke in a hushed tone. “You can fix these cars up and sell them—stop bidding on renovation jobs. You grumble about deadlines, Manny, but if the cars are yours there aren’t deadlines.” Linda helped Manny to his feet. They looked together at the rows of cars. There must be nearly a hundred. Although neither of them would admit it to Bonn, times had been tight. Manny was in shock. He dusted himself off. He walked the rows. He pulled covers off. The last two were Shelbys. The woman approached them like a shoddy automaton. She shook Bonn’s hand.
The deal was done? It actually happened?
Bonn smiled. He followed the rules for a proper handshake. “Is there a burger place nearby? It’s my birthday.”
“Lunch is on us,” Manny said quietly.
Lunch is definitely on us.
~Just Right
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
~Antoine de Saint Exupery
Henna bought her own place in Edinburgh. Before the building was converted to lofts it was a warehouse. Before that, it was a candle factory, a butcher’s quarters, grain storage. In the deeper past it housed a successful felter. Recently rezoned, resold, internally renovated, Henna was the first person in over a century to live in the building. Massive renovations weren’t new in the city. Over the centuries political shifts changed the skyline drastically. Some projects evolved so swiftly that people’s homes and businesses were literally buried by progress, though still occupied.
The loft retained one feature: the floor of thick old heart-pine. The age-worn patina spoke to nearly two centuries of hard and varied use. Henna didn’t intend to disrupt the space more than necessary, so she hired a cabinetmaker to build a small functional island in the middle of the loft. It contained everything she really needed. Henna never intended to own more than the cabinets could contain. On the north side of the built-in, a solid-looking refrigerator winked a blue LED toward the harbor window. A deep German nickel farmhouse sink grounded the counter. Henna had a fold-down cutting board and a small drawer to hold utensils. The small blue teapot Alvar gave her in the woods years ago rested on a single gas burner. The east side of the built-in held a small room containing her water closet and a small sink. A sliding shoji door, decorated with flowers she’d collected and pressed while on holiday in France, hid the room. The south side held a Murphy bed with soft white sheets and a quilt she’d sewn as a girl. The west side held a vast bank of cedar-lined drawers. They rose from the floor to just below the deep crown molding that capped the structure. An oak library ladder was installed to access the upper drawers, which contained Henna’s clothing and other belongings. A marble mantle interrupted the drawers at eye level. Henna had found it at an architectural salvage store. It had a wide copper sconce along the back, which reflected the light of mismatched beeswax candles. When lit, the effect reminded her of her grandfather’s fireplace in Ruka, but without the hassle of a chimney.
Henna left the tall windows unfettered. She enjoyed the natural light. The building itself was tall. Her loft sat on the top floor. She didn’t suffer a lack of privacy—in fact, a massive copper bathtub sat near the windows facing the harbor. While Henna bathed, a grim gargoyle hunched under the eave to keep watch. He was original to the building. To Henna he appeared part bird, part goat, and part cat. He had large human feet and hands. The stone creature still functioned as a waterspout during a downpour. She enjoyed sitting in the tub when it rained and soaked frequently. Head relaxed, eyes half closed—it felt meditative. She liked to watch smoky drips of dew fall from the tip of the gargoyle’s beak-like nose. The creature lost a horn to the scaly grip and acidic excrement of aeons of pigeons at rest, but he looked good with his remaining horn. She considered naming the gruesome figure, but couldn’t think of a name that suited him. One crisp fall evening she opened the window. Tub-fresh, bare-chested—she leaned out to touch the little monster’s face.
Then she painted his toenails. He looked happier. He remained nameless, but now he was truly hers.
The only other fixtures in the loft were the small bronze coat hooks just inside the door. Henna labored over whether to place one or two hooks. She chose two, after some deliberation. One sat slightly higher than the other. And crooked. Initially it bothered her, but the imperfection grew on her. It added the warmth of character similar to hand stitching or a well-adapted three-legged dog. The remainder of the loft was uncluttered space. Her tabula rasa. If filled with things, it would become imperfect. She neither neglected nor took the space for granted. She frequently danced alone in the loft, thoughtless and free. On warm days she picked sun-warmed spots on the hard pine floor to stretch—to breathe—to contemplate the history of the wood beneath her. The oil spilled, love made … the tears of loss, the glow of fortune.
Although just eighteen, Henna projected wisdom. She had striking green eyes. She left her strong dark eyebrows alone. She had her grandmother’s high cheekbones and a strong jaw that swept to the graceful point of her chin. She kept her soft dark hair short, only bothering to run her fingers through the natural loose curls after she conditioned in the tub. She didn’t require makeup, which was fortunate. She wouldn’t wear it even if it were necessary. A small tin of lip moisturizer that she’d made from the forest in Ruka sat near her toothbrush and floss. She rubbed a little on her full, soft lips before folding the Murphy bed down at night. The toenail polish was a gift from a friend at the university. She only used it on her gargoyle.
Henna’s loft reflected how she wanted to live her life: light and happy. Her education allowed her to choose her destiny. She telephoned Alvar daily. He frequently told her, “Only befriend those who offer encouragements instead of advice.” Henna traveled voraciously. She moved light and fast, not just in the city, but also throughout the world. Henna sought organic goods. She brought home amazing things—exotic fibers, mushrooms, resin—many interesting things found their way into her wardrobe. Since she made her clothing, it fit perfectly. Henna’s youth and mobility were of great benefit to her research. She didn’t suffer from practical considerations. If she wanted to go somewhere, she simply went. Sometimes Henna traveled for months on end. She trusted her instinct. She made the world her playground.
A worn leather satchel was all she carried on any trip. Henna packed simple yet elegant garments. By adding a scarf, a wrap, or some wool leggings, she could morph from an elegant Scotswoman out at the theater to a Moroccan market-goer in moments. A coat hung from the lower hook near the door. A fashion conscious observer may assume it was a smartly cut Barbour—in fact, Henna knit the coat. The hood could be worn up in the rain, but became a cowl that wrapped upon itself when not needed. Tagua nut buttons formed squat hourglass shapes. The coat appeared double-breasted at times, or with a few adjustments flowed open. A gossamer liner held baffled chevrons of fine goose down. A baleen pin threaded through two carved horn loops at the neck when weather got really bad. Although the coat could appear plain and casual, or sophisticated and serious, the hidden pockets were Henna’s favorite features. Henna frequently carried small bottles of tincture or vials of powder. Henna felt powerful with the coat on. Almost—impenetrable.
She felt like the shrikethrush.
Henna pulled on her boots and draped the coat over her shoulders. She slid aside the heavy elm door and rode the elevator to the ground floor. Today she carried enough toxins to dispatch the occupants of two popular London pubs at peak hour and a South American soccer stadium during finals and all the people of Brest, France combined. She had no plans to do this—
But she could.
~Plenty
Rupert Trembling worked for Troy Maddox for decades before Troy went to the Caymans. He knew the man well. Troy’s
partner expected Troy to need a new start after the craziness with Raquel, but he didn’t expect him to thrive so quickly in the islands. Troy called him a week after he left. “Rupert, this place is what I needed. Money is falling in my lap.”
Troy proved to be a master of reinvention. Rupert reflected on the man’s resilience, but was a bit shocked by the details Troy shared with him. “I started taking growth hormones. Poke fun if you like, but I’m firming up and feeling young. I even grew out a three-day beard. I don’t know why I packed suits when I came down. I’ve thrown them all out. No one wears them here.” Grand Cayman was brimming with poolside beauties and mobsters. He’d discovered “boat parties” and even hosted one of his own on the ship. Troy’s first big client brought along many potential clients as guests. Word of mouth was everything. “It’s more efficient than time spent on the links, Rupert. Less plaid too.”
“Don’t you miss golf even a little?”
They used to play eighteen holes each weekend.
“Nope. I’ve traded golf for tanned breasts and drug lords. Drug lords, Rupert, are much better company than golfers.” Troy told him he’d purchased a small fleet of jet skis for the girlfriends and families of clients to ride while he set up “tax havens.” Troy didn’t share any details about actual business, but Rupert guessed he was laundering money. Troy asked about Rupert’s family, as he usually did, then got around to why he’d called.
INHUMANUM: A THRILLER (Law of Retaliation Book 1) Page 11
