Dead Stones [manxman] [boyxboy]

lazy bum part I

The following Saturday morning unfolded outside the Cheese and Mints Café with the lady with a straw hat of flowers sifting through the city trash can, Monica humming and strangely buzzing at the counter, the NA anonymous droning from the closed-off curtain, but no Hao grumpy and irritated.  Luke rubbed his tired eyes, forgot to feel slighted by Hao’s tardiness, attempted to order extra sweet lemonade from Monica.  She refused, citing Hao’s inviolable injunctions.

He called Hao.

“It’s 9:30. Was there a lesson for today?”

“9:30?”  Hao’s voice sounded thick and groggy. “ Oh great 9:30—right 9:30… Where are my clothes? Can’t find my trousers—Ai-ya!”

“Are you all right, sir?”

“No—yes. Well enough …. Look, come over to my house. I’ll be there shortly.”

However, when Luke rang the doorbell by the grand iron-wrought gate, nobody answered. The neighborhood unwound a misanthropic black with its lack of sidewalks.  He sat on the solid tar by the gate. Dogs in baby strollers passed him by, as well as the irate half-naked jogger in short shorts. The sun whipped its rays over the tall hedges, the black gates, and then stooped over him a lithe lady in a sleek velvet tracksuit.

“May I help you?” she said.

“Thank you, but I don’t believe you can, ma’am.”

Her eyes lined with blue swished left right. “You can’t sit there.”

“May I ask why, ma’am?”

“Because you can’t.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree, ma’am.”

She stood back, knitted her brows, looked around for someone to help her. One or two cars passed by; would-be helpers were safely imprisoned behind their grand gates.

“If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police,” she said, “you obviously don’t belong here.”

“I don’t believe that is a crime, ma’am.”

She shook her head. “It is something.”

‘Something’ breathed eerily the echoes of the knotty otherworldly things his parents would damn him to do, and distressingly now before the baleful scowl of the lady, these things tightened up a disorder within him.  The twinkle of the front emblem of a German import car coasted to a halt behind her. Then Luke’s bum was vibrating with the rattling slide of the gate.

“Ma’am I think you need to move aside. Hao needs to get into his driveway.”

Lips crimped tightly, she waggled her sun-spotted arms at Hao’s car window, evidently gesticulating a lament. Hao rolled down the window, smiling, saying, “Mrs. Matheson, a good morning to you.”

“Are you—” Her cheeks were soiled a sickly purple.

“I was just at the beach for an early swim.” Hao soothed the rose patches scattered along his shoulder. “How’s your husband doing?”

“Good enough—The bum’s been sitting there for over an hour.”

“The bum’s sadly my student.” 

She glanced at Luke staring at the windshield, then down the recesses of the driver’s seat.  She tramped across the street, the wind raising a storm in her ash-blond curls.

Feeling dull over his lack of insight on this ‘something,’ Luke strolled along with  Hao’s car guiding itself into the yawning garage. Unlike Luke’s cluttered garage, the Neat shelves ruled the front wall, and a muscular black convertible beamed.  The gate shrugged to a close, unfurling uneasy shadows over the walls. Then barking came at the heels of Hao stepping out of the car, “How come you lost two games at the tournament?”