The Air Between Us

Dear Charlie,

Read this letter by the shore.

Stand and feel. Feel the continent of nothing that separates us. See me from across the world gazing to you. Your eyes are green swirls in tidal pools. Waves wreathe sea foam along damp tracts of sand. My toes curled in the silken loam; up to my knees, breakers beckoning, undulating, “come deeper” the creamy tops swallowing my legs, hips.

Charlie feel the air between us.  Let it caress, let it hold you, let it grip you. Lick blowy against you, through you.  The sky is warm, pliable, let it enfold you. Taste the salt-spray  bite of the breeze.

 I kiss the air between us.

Feel my kiss on the air between us.

Love,
L.A.F

Eyes on the Street

THAA-WHACK! That was the sound of Mort's body hitting the mat.

Mort remembers seeing the ceiling of the dojo dimly give way to a fluttering blackness at the corners of his vision, like someone was tightening a garrote around his neck, then it was total black.

That was the first time Mort met Professor Sign.

Looking across the mat; Mort didn't think much of the man at the time. Yes, he noticed the tattered

black belt, the thick wrists revealed by the sleeves of the man's gi, but the guy was blind.

Mort was cocky in the way a lot of young, strong, beginners are. Mort pulled his blue belt tight, went to shake the hand left dangling for him. When Mort came to he was shaken; he stayed away from the black belt for months.

Eventual Sign came up to him "Why you dodging me Mort? You have to tap next time buddy." So Mort grabbed hold of Sign's gi when Mort pushed Sign pulled when Mort pulled Sign pushed. Mort felt like chew toy in the mouth of a Rottweiler. It was like grappling a whirlwind inside an empty jacket.

 "Don't use Strength Mort. Feel where I'm giving you energy than use that energy to throw me."

Sign took Mort under his wing teaching him all the techniques, and counters he knew. Pretty soon Mort was tossing guys on their heads as well. Professor Sign felt akin to this somewhat socially awkward kid that had certain brashness, an outsider’s attitude.

 

After years of training with Professor Sign; Mort knew almost nothing about him, he wore a ring but never mentioned a wife, he lost his vision somehow while working for the NYPD, that he taught Criminal Psychology and Profiling at John Jay College, and of course the ability to toss you on your head in the blink of an eye. Sign on the other had known almost everything about Mort. For instance that Mort was a nickname. That his family ran a funeral parlor which Mort worked at and that he was expelled from the Forensic Pathology Program at John Hopkins University because of extra circular experiments involving cadavers from the pathology lab. Sign knew Mort was something of a prodigy when it came to study lividity, desiccation, putrification, taphonomy, proximate and immediate causes of mortality. Mort though rough around the edges was a good kid and he knew his stuff.

It was on the Desi Freedman case, that Professor Sign enlisted Mort’s help. She was missing for two days when Steve Freedman, a Wall Street big-shot with enough dough in the bank to by a deserted island in the Caribbean and enough girlfriends to repopulate it with hired Sign to find her. Steve met Detective Sign at the couple’s posh west side townhouse. Through an open window Sign felt a breeze; the blowing breeze brought a smell of new churned dirt, and the faint bitter ammonia scent of decay. Sign knew Desi was buried not too deeply under the ivy in courtyard. He finished his talk with Steve Freedman in the courtyard “Ever since I lost my sight,” Sign said “that is one of my favorite sensations, the wind blowing through ivy.” He couldn’t risk letting him know he had found Desi already Sign had a feeling Mr. Steve had some blood on his hands and dirt under his fingernails.

 Mort was trapped. Professor Sign was holding him down using his signature side control pressure crushing Mort’s head down against the mat. Mort futilely maneuvered his legs to get a knee against Sign’s body to create some much needed space, just to breathe. Sign said to him. "Mort I hear your pretty good with dead bodies."

"Yeah they don't complain much."

"I bet. I have a job for you if you’re interested."

Sign needed Mort’s expertise to place a time of death, cause of death, everything a forensic Pathologist does and more. Sign always like working just outside the rules so he chose Mort.

 The Desi Freedman case was wrapped up. Two of Steve Freedman’s girlfriends murdered her in her sleep while Steve watched lying next to her in bed the whole time. Steve and the two girlfriends were both convicted and awaiting sentencing. Mort was able to tell the time and immediate cause of death through asphyxiation. Mort couldn’t testify in the trial because he wasn’t licensed but Sign brought Mort’s report to the coroner who gave it her seal of approval.

 The duo continued to train jiu-jitsu together and Mort would help out whenever Sign needed him. They would banter about cases as they tried to choke or lock up a submission on each other. While Sign had Mort squirming locked in an arm bar, he said.

"How about working for me full-time more-or-less."

"Owww...Owww!  Tap! Tap, tap."

"Oh, sorry. Mort I've learned a lot, how to use my senses to compensate, but I'm not superhuman I could use a pair of eyes on the street."

 

Mort became Sign's eyes on the street doing surveillance operations, trailing people, providing forensic backup at crime sciences, and supplemental pathology reports. With Mort’s help Sign was being hired for more and more high profile cases working with the FBI, NYPD, even the Joint Task Force on Terrorism, but he liked staying on small cases private cases that paid a whole lot more.

  It was Mort’s idea to place a camera and listening device in Sign’s sunglasses. Mort really could be Sign’s eyes at a crime scene or when meeting with clients or suspects, communicating information via a hidden earpiece. Sign quickly garnered a reputation of semi-superhuman powers of deduction, a blind Sherlock Holmes.

Fortunes Told/ Hairs Cut

Before I left for Mexico I figured I would get a hair-cut.

Someone had recommended I see this lady about it. Turns out she wasn't much of a barber but a hell of a fortune teller. I got the address from a contact in the city who mainly deals with polish immigrates and intelligence from their network of resistant fighters. This particular contact thought I needed a little insight in to my future and subsequently a trim.

After a little wandering around the village I found the Barber pole hanging from a second story apartment above a sign that said Fortunes Read/ Hairs Cut. I walked up the stairs and was passed by some ladies leaving almost bald but for some rough tufts of hair sticking out of their heads. Is that what I'm in for I thought?

The room was like your typical Barber shop, mirrors, two barber chairs, a waiting area with magazines, chairs, a coat rack, and pictures of men's and women's hairstyles but here you couldn't pick your hairstyle. There was also a back room separated by a beaded curtain over which hung a sign in the shape of a hand with an eye in it reading Aggi the Psychic.

I sat in the chair supremely skeptical and afraid for my head. Aggi came out, she was a dressed in a peasant tunic and looked like she hadn't had a haircut for years herself. Steel gray and black pulled back into a wild ponytail that reached the back of her thick legs. She looked at me with indifference and said "You want haircut?"

"Yes- please."

She motioned with her strong arm that looked accustomed to hard manual labor whipping out a white smock she tightly fastened it around my throat. Trying to loosen it with my finger I said "Just a little off the sides." and she smacked my hand away and said "Sit still."

Hair collected on the floor and she clipped away taking random bites off my head. I blew the hair off my face and blinked to keep it out of my eyes. Out from behind a beaded curtain a little woman with a broom twice as big as herself and dressed similar to Aggi started to sweep the hair into piles at Aggi's feet .Then a high-pitched voice came from below me.

"You will be traveling." The voice was coming from the little lady sweeping the hair into piles around the chair.

"Yes, I plan too." I glanced down and saw here staring down into the small piles of hair.

"Don't move." the lady with the ham hock arms said and forced my head straight ahead.

"The trip you are taking will end abruptly. Be careful of a green woman and be on the lookout for an enemy who is really your ally. Your trip will be ultimately unsatisfying. Don't go into bad places alone."

By this point it was all pretty general stuff and my head was getting cut to shreds.

"Stay off of motorcycles. You have knowledge, you feel you can't divulge. Disappear, someone is looking for you... you should disappear."

Although I was almost completely bald by this point I wanted to hear what she said and let the rest of my hair get chopped off.

"You will have children. But soon you will have to..."

At that point she stopped.

"Have to what?" I said looking down at the lady as she swept up the remaining piles of hair and waddled back behind the beaded curtain.

"Hey, where's she going?"

"No more hair no more fortune." the thickset lady with the scissors grunted.

It was true my head was completely shore.

Mexico Night

  

     It turned gory that night in Mexico. Blood mixed with rain water pouring from the palm fronds and running along the concrete patio of the cantina. I wouldn’t have ordinarily minded a scene like this but it was my blood pouring so freely into the night. Just a minute ago I was drinking a cerveza with lime and smoking in my new guayabera shirt; now my head felt the rain but the blackness faded.  I was watching my life pour out, and I didn’t really mind, I actually felt quite comfortable head busted open face digging into the concrete patio.

            I rolled onto my side and looked into the placid saucer sized brown eyes of the little Mexican kid. He was frowning and looked scared. I pushed myself on to my knees. Someone had done a good job putting me down. There was a gash on the side of my head, unsteady as I stood I placed a hand to stauch the bleeding.

 “Hola Kid.”

     He just looked at me with what I guessed was concern, shock or just plain curiosity then ran inside crying.  I let myself drop back into the chair I had been sitting in when someone clocked me good with what must have been something hard and heavy. I looked at my shirt and it was rusty pink with blood, water and dirt. My beer didn’t spill so I took a long draught, lit a smoke and took a long drag.

 “Fuck…”

“Senor Gringo you OK”? The ladies in the kitchen were apparently too busy to see what happen while they were preparing an octopus in a large cast iron pot. I had watched them squeeze the ink from the things head. The giant pot of pulpo was simmering now, it smelt both garlicy and like the ocean. Now I had ink coming out of my head- red ink I was back in school the old mistake machine back in action.

     Why wouldn’t someone just finish me off?  The Kestrel wasn’t so crude as to caveman bash me on the side of the cranium, no I would be dead if it was him who wanted me dead.

      I had figured out why the Kestrel wanted me in Mexico though; I stuck out like a sore thumb down here, yeah I could get lost in Mexico,but  it was easy for anybody to find me. The local news spread quickly and information was cheap and easy to get. I quickly found it hard to assimilate; they looked at my blond hair and blue eyes and soon I was gringo, or Americano or whatever they called me. I didn’t have a grip on the language so relied on who ever I stayed with. I also knew who hit me lying beneath a palm tree like another jungle plant was a green hat shimmering like the surrounding jungle.

Signs

     Charlie in blue suit and striped tie swinging his briefcase slightly,walked through the fog on an unusually warm December to a five story apartment building of light brown brick and bay windows on W. 96th Street and pressed the intercom button marked D. Sign.
     Derrick rolled over searching for her warm soft skin, but woke to the faded smell of suntan lotion on the pillow next to him.  "Aw, Shit." he groaned. "She's gone." Has been gone for two months now.
     The bell rang an angry shriek again. Trembling and head circling, he heading the thirteen steps to the door, and pressed the intercom button.
    "Come up." he growled and flipped the lock open.
    The elevator being out of service Charlie headed up the stairs sweating from the climb and the strange December humidity.  Charlie knocked and the door floated open; inside was a moderately sized apartment with an open floor plan living area with a small kitchen and a hallway leading to other rooms. Shelves of books, leather bound volumes, ancient looking tombs and large art and photography books covered one entire wall.  The furniture was spare; a black leather sofa, a dinette set in the kitchen, and a aspidistra plant in the corner.
     Charlie, busy taking in the apartment didn't notice Derrick come out of the bathroom down the hall vigorously drying his face on a towel.
     "What? Are you with the IRS?"
     "Professor Sign, we talked on the phone, we had an appointment? Charlie Farmer with Forrest Insurance."
     "Right". Derrick moved to the sofa and sat hand holding his temples, moving head his head side to side cracking the bones in his neck and jaw. Running his hand over two days stubble and his shaved crew-cut.
     Charlie wondered why he got stuck with these assignments. Difficult clients who had to be visited at home. Charlie sat at the other end of the sofa and put his briefcase next to him; there was no coffee table.
     "OK Professor Sign, ah do you prefer Professor, Dr. or Detective?"
     "Whatever Chuck lets just get this thing over with." Derrick grumbled feeling his stomach churn with last nights gin and tonics.
      "Because we dealt with all the preliminary questions over the phone Prof. Sign I just have a few more things to clear up. We will be done quickly; I will get your signature and be on my way before you know it."
      "Right, shoot."
      "Do you use alcohol or tobacco?"
      "I have the occasional drink, and once in a while I will have a cigar."
      "OK, any family history of disease."
      "My mother was a terrible driver."
      "Excuse me?"
      "No none, are we done?"
      "How long have you've been blind?"
      "Twenty years but who's counting. Its only partial, I get around just fine."
      "Really, then what kind of hat am I wearing?"
      "Your not wearing a hat."
      "Good guess. But it says in your file that you lost your vision while still an officer for the NYPD. Correct?"
      "Your wearing a sensible blue suit and I think your girlfriend who wears a clean, flora perfume picks out your tie, so that is most likely striped and red for the holiday season. Your a insurance salesman so your clean cut but today you didn't shave because you were meeting a blind man. Your shoes are scuffed because you walk a lot to meet clients and you stepped in something on the way here. Your wearing a watch but its not working. And your sweating like a pig."
      "Wow, how the fuck did you do that."
      "Listen, I can tell you more. But right now I want to ask you a question."
      "OK Professor Sign."
      "What did you do with that green hat you stole- Mr. Farmer?"

The Grey-Eyed Girl 3

     The alley way was dark but for ambient light of the city and a naked bulb that flickered over the door she just pushed out of- he following.  A lone cat scampered over some crates and streaked down the alley; the air was permeated with the order of stale beer, urine and garbage.  Through the funnel of buildings, traffic, trucks gasping and sighing could be heard; the incessant honking, blaring of taxis, the squeal of brakes.
     She faced him and pushed him up against the building, made to kiss him but passed her face next to his feeling his stubbled plump face. He turned to kiss her; she felt his mouth and teeth slobbering on her neck his excitement palpable and groping.  
     "Oh, your some kinda freak huh? Good. What do I call you? I mean what's your name anyway?"
     "You can call me Delilah."
    His paw like hands moving over her back and ass, she leaned back and looked him in the eye, ran a hand over the back of his bald head pushing his head down to her crotch. The grey-eyed girl stepped back a little from him and her eyes matched the grey snub nosed Beretta she pulled from her handbag. 
      "Wha...what the fuck? Wha..what d-do...do you want?" staring down the bore hole; black, flat and empty of any solace.
       The girl with the gun-metal grey eyes shoved the short barreled Beretta into his mouth grinding and chipping teeth. 
       "Do you want to live?" the girl with the gun-metal grey eyes said. "Voir ma misère, hélas! Voir ma détresse." she quoted; a tear cold and slow rolling down her check. Her black fingernails tight on grip, but easily and light on the trigger.
    Gun in mouth; Samson jerked his head in shaky yeses.
    "Good....THEN STOP WRITING BAD POETRY!!!"
  There was motion from a fire-escape overhead a figure leaned back into an apartment.
She left Samson weeping and trembling in a heap and out of the alley and into the New York night.

The Dream of the Grey-Eyed Girl

    Sitting, reading a cloth bound book under a ginkgo tree a grey-eyed girl is falling asleep. A burgundy silk book mark ripples obedient and languorous in the breeze. Fan shaped leaves shake and fall a bright yellow cascade around her.  She wears a mans sweater; the top two buttons missing she holds it closed with robin eggshell blue painted fingernails, when the breeze turns into a gust sweeping up the hill making the blond heads of the dry, overgrown  grass wave and dance like ecstatic dervishes. Her grey eyes squint and watch a kestrel hovering over her tree and dart back out over the field and back again.
    Back firmly against her tree, her favorite tree atop the hill, she feels the comfort of soil, root, the entire earth. Experiencing the earth pulling her in and letting her go at once as she closes her eyes and nods off.  The grey-eyed girl dreams of her mother; still young, vibrant dark hair, glamorous and mysteriously inviting like an alleyway at night. A promise of something behind those star-like eyes. She senses all the protection and leonine power in the way she embraces her father. Her father handsome; when all the markings of his face were but an outline and map for the deeply entrenched emotions that she would know.  They hold each other tightly, and she hears the kestrel screaming.
    "Charlie, I dreamed about her again." Louise said sitting up in bed.
     "The grey-eyed girl?" Charlie said without turning over.

The Letter

Dear L.A.F.,

      It's getting near to Christmas time and the leaves are falling- they get pushed and scattered by the wind   swirling as I walk the city surrounding me. Everyone races around, the men have taken to wearing hats again and the women their long coats and stockings, I have to hurry from one avenue to the next or get swallowed up. I'm not quite used to it.  I can't help looking and investigating the vertical landscape.   It is in a quiet gaping awe that I gaze at the decorative windows, facades, and the wrought iron gates; here a walk-up apartment house, there a church and again another apartment, townhouses and Tudor revival buildings. Lobbies, all in marble, bigger than the house I grew up in. 

      The city is a Goliath of ponderous concrete, sublime artistic craftsmanship, and continuous motion. But what is this monolith of constant motion compared to you?   I know I promised to write you a poem.  Compared to your eyes on me what is the city, the city awes me but you with just a turn of  your head, a word, or reaching over in your sleep to clasp my hand and hold it close to your breast, there is utter fascination and wonderment. What is a city compared to your beguiling, I'm bewildered by you at times; the city in comparison is predictable and dull. I think of your hair like a dark waterfall flowing. Rushes over me and crushes me and I drown in perfumed delight in bountiful sensuousness. I am suffocated in locks like blackbirds wings fluttering and beating against my face but it feels incredible to be under and I take big gulps of you.  

     I read a scientific article that said some women can see an extra color on the visible color spectrum (that might explain some fashions we see today) they are called the tetrachromatic women. That's what happens when I look at you a whole different spectrum is revealed- things look brighter and better.  Maybe that is what love does; it brings the whole world to life in different colors.

    I am running short on time I hope everything is well with you my love.  I wrestle everyday about rejoining you. Not having you by my-side at times is too much.  I want to leave but I know what is best for us both. With that, here is to the hope we will be reunited soon, until then I will continue to see the world in this new light and know you are still in my heart.

With love always,

C. Farmer

 P.S. You have to see the wonderful parks, in the next letter I will tell you all about them. I even saw a kestrel eating a pigeon last week.

She Takes the Stage

     Amid scattered applause the singer took the stage. Her red lipstick shone in the pool of stage light set off against her clear ivory complexion and hair the color of October fallen leaves; somewhere between red and brown. A shimmering green sequined dress clung to her and held the collective gaze of the small subterranean nightclub's patrons. She clutched a Pomeranian under one arm, the microphone stand in the other. Her voice started out a husky whisper but grew resonate and had the depth of an underground river. She sang:

We met in the cool breeze of spring.
walked along the quay and the riverside
went to cafes and talked the day and evening away
we watched the stars all night.
in the morning
you said you could love me all year through.

In the summer we spent all day at the ocean-side
drank in saloons and danced and swayed
passing our way; we watched the stars shoot through the sky.
And you said
you would love me all the year through
 

In the autumn the wind chilled and blew
but we were warm together, I held tight to you.
and there were stars in our eyes.
and you were loving me all year through.
 

Then the days grew quick and the nights never-ending
because you had left me,
oh why, oh why?
You had said the stars had fallen from my eyes.
 

and you said you would love me all year through
and you said you would love me.....

      She finished, her last breath was like a sighing wind beneath a bridge. She let the microphone topple over, held her dog tightly and left the stage. Before she left through the service exit behind the stage she donned her chameleon skin green hat with the ostrich feather. Ava de'Fleur the famed French singer promised herself never to sing the song again as she walked off into the New York night.

The Green Hat

           The hat was green and glowing like a dessert under glass in a roadside diner. The color of neon jell-o made of felt with an ostrich feather sticking out of the slightly darker band.  The brim was wide and round and stiff; twice as large as a manhole cover.  “I have to have that hat". Louise laughed as they walked by the brightly lit window.

       Taxis whooshed by on the damp street and the air was cooler now.  Louise had Charlie's arm and was hugged up against his shoulder.  "That's just your style Lou, Come on lets see how much it is."

  "You know I was kidding right?" Giving Charlie a wry smile.
  "I know I just want to see you in it. It will be funny". 
    A little bell rang as the entered the small shop. They specialized in designer hats that all looked to be too asymmetrical to wear or too heavy or just too plain ugly.  Charlie approached a tall thin woman with a bright orange bob haircut behind the counter.  The lady looked up from her accounting pushing her bifocals back up her beak like nose.  "Yes, can we help you?" The lady drawled in a think French accent.

     Charlie trying not to crack up said “Why yes Madame, can we perhaps see that beautiful green hat on display there."
     The sales lady slinked her sinewy body  from the behind the counter bringing a key on a long sparkling chain with her.  Her long red dress clashed violently with the green of the hat as she removed it from the case, she looked like a Christmas decoration gone horribly wrong.  She held it out in her thin long arms at full length to read the price tag. Clutching the tag with one talon like hand she read. "Oui, this one is a Calvaconte, from Italy very nice" Charlie couldn't help to peek at the price tag.

     The green saucer of the brim actually shimmered like chameleon skin; the color wasn't as bad removed from the glare of the display case neon light.   The clerk placed the hat on Louise's head at an rakish angle that divided her face diagonally. "Oo-lala, tre bein, this hat it suits you very well." the clerk squawked.

       Louise turned and looked into the gold framed mirror and thought right away how wrong she was about the hat. It made her look sophisticated and as she modeled the hat for herself and Charlie she thought, I look almost mysterious as she pulled a dark lock of hair from behind her ear. Like a movie starlet from the 30's or 40's. 

      Just as Louise was reluctantly taking the hat off.  A bell attached to the door rang and a man in a white dress shirt and dark suit pants pushed his way in.  His hair was wild and shirt stained and stretched over a large belly, his face was red and unshaven; his bulbous nose even redder. Running his hands over his wild grey, head the man shouted at the clerk "Mimi you bitch, you cheating bitch!" the man continued to yell like this but in an incomprehensible drunken french. Mimi the clerk wasn't backing down and didn't seem to mind that Charlie and Louise were there.

       "Who are you talking too? You louse! You drunk?" Mimi shrieked.

     Mimi went right up to him and jabbed her bony finger into his chest and backed him into a back room. Where there was a loud clatter like a table being overturned or a book case falling. Charlie and Louise looked at each other.

     "Should we do something?" Louise said

      "No, let’s just get out of here".

      Louise started to take off the hat but Charlie grabbed her arm hard and said "Come on lets go!  Take it." 

They hit the door with a bang and the little bell rang wildly as they were out of the shop and heading down 42nd street.