T |
Nicholas the Human was the only other person up. He was outside, exploring the shore of a lake in the rear of the house.
In the full scrutiny of morning sunlight, the place became a parody of upper-crust conspicuous consumption. Outside, I found that the mansion was merely a tangential outbuilding, an experimental poem of architecture on the fringe of a compound of bigger, more traditional, more serious houses made of brick, stone and cedar. The biggest of them all sat ostentatiously staring across a vast empty field at distant rolling blue ridges. It looked like it had been painted into existence by Jan Vermeer. Back in the suddenly trivial side house in which I'd spent the night, I looked at the various photographs prominently on display. One was of some anonymous middle-aged man, perhaps Claire's father, standing with former President George Bush and First Lady Barbara. I found myself thinking, "anyone with this kind of money would have to be a Republican."
My solution was to convince Nicholas the Human to drive me into town. Last night, half of us had come in his Ford Escort, you see. He was agreeable.
Just the driveway leaving the compound seemed to go on for miles. But at some point we made it onto bigger roads. We were in the Free Union area, in the heart of Charlottesville's ultra-snobby horse racing region, which lies to the northwest of the city. As Nicholas drove, I wrote down the directions on a piece of paper so he could find his way back. When he dropped me off on the Corner, I gave him $4 for gasoline. Nicholas the Human is yet another Aquarius, by the way.
H |
My folks called and told me an amusing story. The old widow who lives a quarter mile from my childhood home held an auction today to sell off her farm. My parents said they did some bidding on the nearest 18-acre parcel of land, jacking the price to 56 thousand dollars in a bidding war with their crazy Greek neighbor, whose name is Dimitra. Dimitra won the bidding war, but my folks say she wasn't acting rationally at all and they have doubts she'll be able to raise the necessary funds. In such a case she'll lose a $10,000 deposit. My folks may get yet another crack at those 18 acres.
A |
Kelly came over after she got off work, as did Angela's former boyfriend Aaron (with a 32 oz. beer for Deya), and we four watched more of this sort of teevee (including the especially forgettable Incredibly Shrinking Woman). I was becoming a hybrid of restless and tired, so Kelly and I went back to her place with a bottle of mid-priced vino. She didn't have a cork screw, so I had to use the "screwdriver plunge technique." When using this technique, the goal is to push the cork down irretrievably into the bottle.
I was loitering in front of a camera store with Jessika and Sara. The girls had a plan to steal a camera and they wanted me to help them in some way. When they came running out of the store, I ran after them, feeling foolish and wondering how I was supposed to assist them. A crowd of others were soon pursuing us, trying to catch us for the crime. We were in some little Appalachian valley town dominated by a river. After running across a bridge, we continued on up a very tall mountain. Near the top of the mountain, we found ourselves in a distinctly agricultural setting, with old farm buildings and several big mansions. There was a patch of woods at the very top, and somewhere therein, Sara and Jessika dropped the camera, which was in a small sack. I was going to carry it with me and continue eluding our pursuers, but as I was charging ahead to scout out an escape, I found myself at the very edge of an incredibly high cliff. I ran around to a lower ledge, hoping to find an escape route but there was none. By now, Sara and Jessika were being questioned by police, and were successfully convincing their interrogators that they'd stolen nothing. Meanwhile the bag and the camera lay somewhere in the patch of woods. As I began to wake up, I considered tossing the camera out over the cliff.
Get a sense of what I was like exactly eight years ago and one year ago today.