Dead Stones [manxman] [boyxboy]

faulty analogies

Luke drove to Hao’s place with lazy anticipation. Twilight cast a glare over the windscreen, and in the resulting patina of white, the traffic lights were hard to see. After switchbacks, zigzags and numerous diversions up private driveways later, lively streets became the black roads of bare tar, greenery overtook the sidewalks, pedestrians became rarities, and lazy anticipation roused into irritation.

By the time he was cruising Hao’s neighborhood, patience flaked away over the prissy clean streets and their snobbish signs that disallowed street parking. Eventually he found parking on a steep inclined dirt road that bordered a sheer drop of devastating views, which featured the Frank Canyon’s open space in its verdant glory.

Luke turned the steering wheel right then left, confused over which way the wheels were supposed to face when a car is parked on an incline. Deciding it was towards the curb, he pulled the hand brake then got of the car.

The sky was still alive in the glow of waning daylight; the horizon melted into a plasma stream of red. He was early, one hour early. A middle-aged woman jogged past, her mutt scampering a few paces ahead. She slowed down and primed an aggressive stare before demanding, “hello.”

“Hi.” Luke leaned back against the passenger door. Stroking and combing through his beard, he did not care to seem less the prowling stranger.

The woman halted in front of him, biting her lip, seemingly awed in the shadow of a rising fear.

“Stand aside, you’re taking up my view of the sunset,” Luke said.

The woman obediently stepped to the trunk of the car. Twilight wrapped them in a cold breeze from the north. The moon seemed apologetic with its dim light. Luke felt stillness, not of peace, but one of disquieting ineffability. His mind frayed with the teeming echoes of groans, pleas calling on pleas for undecipherable requests. And heedless of the woman’s vacuous stare, he so remained muted until darkness pervaded the sky

His phone rang.

“Where are you?” Hao’s inflected Chinese accent was diffuse with irritation.

“Waiting for the sun to set.”

“You’re wasting because of the sunset?”

“Old sir, I don’t think one wastes time, observing the sunset. The regularity of sunsets notwithstanding, every sunset is unique. In the earth’s five billion year history, no sunset has been alike in color and hue. Much too do—”

“Get down here now,” Hao’s barking, as usual, was tipped with a comical edge that only assured Luke’s prompt compliance.

Luke nodded to the stranger and grabbed his bag pack before descending the hill.

The trees and shrubs buried the driveways and fizzled upwards into inky heights. A black hand waved at Luke in the mauve air. He kept to a languid pace and held back with a feeling of reticence. Perhaps it was more caution that held sway as he made out the silver outlines of Hao’s glasses floating in the air. Luke was rudely aware of his own little and oafish strides as he intruded on the house of a genius.

“Still with the terrible hair?” Hao said by way of greeting.

“Yes, old sir.”

Hao offered laughter, a laughter that rippled through Luke’s brittle senses. Hao placed a hand lightly on Luke’s shoulder and herded him into the Moorish gateway that opened to an inner garden. They climbed the four, five steps up to the front door as totems staggered in the benighted front lawn. A dry garden with boulders Hao had called it, raked sand instead of cool grass.

The craftman’s door was imprinted with a maze design. A stranger would be at loss to know which of the metal grooves was the door handle. Luke watched Hao insert his hand into the shadowed recesses and depress on a bar. In the moment the door cranked opened, and the inside light rushed upon Hao’s face, profiling a snapshot of a wan mouth and metallic glass frames glittering about black eyes. Something momentous rose in Luke and bespoke of broken dreams and exhausted nights. Startled, he scrambled ahead of Hao.