I haven’t worked on my novel, “Swamis,” in a while. Long enough to run changes through my mind, the main one being that I need to stop over explaining stuff. I went through an outtake that would be part of a much longer version. And it’s a bit long itself. These scenes take place just after Joey and Julie have a bit of a romantic moment in the otherwise empty dark room at Palomar Junior College. Reminder, this is 1969, Joseph DeFreines’ father, a detective, had recently died in a car accident; Chulo, a surfer/drug dealer/evangelist, had been murdered at Swamis, and Joey is obsessed with solving the case, and has long been obsessed with surfer Julia Cole. Julie’s family is connected to the burgeoning marijuana trade. The connections in the North County were, obviously, closer then than at any time since.

What got me interested enough to do some more editing and posting this excerpt/outtake is the relevance it may or may not have with events we are still dealing with today. No more explanation.

But first:

Owen Wright at Cloudbreak, Fiji, from a few years back. EPIC. This year’s final five event. I believe the WSL may have cut off commentary. I got home in time to miss the first women’s heat. Caroline won, low scoring, against Molly (Pickles to some). Okay. I did watch Griff losing to Yago (is Yag the hipster version?). After, evidently, beating the other down-raters, it was one and done, Format wise, if Griff had won the first heat, two more heats were necessary to win the crown. Steph did it a few years ago; if the San Clemente surf-trained/programmed surfer had made the barrel at the last moment… Maybe. So, pretty exciting. Not to take anything away from Yags (Aussie version, perhaps, though Yago kind of fits), but Griffo was showing fatigue. And, not to take anything away from Picks, clearly in the Zone and ripping, but Caro seemed to not care enough. Or something.

The thrill of watching any sporting activity live, even golf, even Canadian Ice Bowling, comes down to the intensity of competitors, the make-or-break moments. I checked the results for the earlier heats, haven’t watched any of them, yet. And I gave up watching the post event awards stuff years ago. Not taking anything away from Joey and the crew thanking their sponsors and such. STILL, if I can stream a close heat live, like Kelly and John-John, or whichever of them went on to go against Gabriel… Yes; and I’ll be so happy I did.

Scam, Scheme, Schema, Schemata, Schematic, and the Crowded Lineup

You can learn a lot on PBS. Too much information, evidently, for the current administration. Not that I’m political, but truth seems very liberal to idiots and bigots and, basically, all the ‘ists. This isn’t me, devout hypocrite, saying some folks are idiots; that wouldn’t be kind. And it might be dangerous.  However, if you have a chance to know the truth, to gain real knowledge, but you refuse the opportunity and try to block the opportunity for others, you are, by definition, ignorant. Being ignorant might, arguably, be more common among those who, through no fault of their own (not involving myself in the ‘nature or nurture’ discussion/controversy), be pretty fucking stupid. No offense meant.

Here’s the hypocritical part: What I learned by watching “Professor T” on PBS, is the word ‘SCHEMATA,’ in that instance applied to psychology. That I also watched the series in the original German is more because my hearing is so bad I read subtitles; the language less important; and this practice (also love “Astrid” in the original French) doesn’t necessarily make me that much cooler. Don’t fuckin’ call me an ‘elitist.’  Thanks.

Okay, so Professor Tempest, brilliant and quirky/damaged (obligatory for all detectives and such folks) criminologist, uses the word (singular form is ‘SCHEMA’) to describe how we, humans, from birth, learn, over time, patterns of behavior in others. This knowledge allows us to instantly discern whether someone is being honest, hostile, even dangerous. Further, we (as humans) can instantly know something about crowd behavior.

Okay, so here’s the actual hypocritical part: Want more waves in a crowded lineup? Yes. I’m guessing. Do you check out the surfers (competition) on the beach, guessing (with some clues) who is going to be a challenge in the water? Do you scan the lineup, checking out who is catching the most waves or the best waves? Do you use the information to your advantage once you’re in the lineup?

Also, it is important to evaluate yourself, your skill level in the conditions available, as honestly as possible, bearing in mind that very few surfers are as awesome as we like to think we are. Yeah, being able to get out at a spot doesn’t mean you’ll rip. There are the waves and there is the pecking order in the lineup. Not being the pecker doesn’t mean you have to be the peck-ie. VERY IMPORTANT- When you get your chance, don’t fuck up. No pressure.

Bear in mind, it’s okay to deny that you have some self-centered motives. You have a SCHEME, a plan; once you use tactics to take other surfer’s waves; yeah, then you’re SCAMMING. Some tactics are tolerated; blatant burning is, however, not generally a crowd-pleasing activity.

While I was thinking about what to write on this subject, not planning to write anything negative about any political regime, it suddenly occurred to me that a SCHEMATIC is what a wiring diagram is called. Wow! Knowledge. But, whoa! Project 2025, a plan, a scheme, drawn out in great detail, denied, denied, and denied, then… implemented.

I am not claiming ignorance of etiquette or innocence. With my motto (still) being “I’m here to surf,” I will take advantage of some advantages (wave knowledge, lineup management, bigger board) gathered over many years. AND, here’s where old school rules come into play: If a surfer blows a couple of takeoffs, doesn’t catch waves he or she paddles for, doesn’t make makeable sections due to lack of skill, I have been known to venture into the territory some might call SCAMMING.

More often I will use the time-honored traditions of SHARKING THE LINEUP and SNAGGING a wave someone else didn’t make the section on or fell on. This, in case you don’t know, might also be referred to as ‘SCRAPPING.’ I’m totally not immune to using the technique. I am here to surf.

Julie Cole reached to the right of the lightlock door and hit the light switch. The light over the door went out. She set the stack of contact prints just under the blow up from Beacons, dropped her bag just under the table. In the light of overhead fluorescent tubes and indirect sunlight, Julie did seem self-conscious. She set her glasses on top of my two PeeChee folders, put her left arm across her chest, set the sunglasses next to the prescription pair, pulled her sweater from the back of the chair, held it in front of her with both hands.

“Oh. Yeah. Admissions forms. Draft. It’s school or Vietnam. So, temporarily…”

Julie pulled the sweater over her head, watched my eyes as she pulled It down. I looked toward the table. “I noticed you… have….” I laughed. “More. Prints. Contact prints.”

“Thanks for noticing. But Joey…” She put a finger on the folders. “One’s thicker.” She looked in my eyes for an answer. I pulled the thicker folder out from under the glasses as Julie reached her hand toward it. “Julia Cole” was written, in ink, on the thinner folder.  

“Not a… explanation. Apology.”

“You were going to… leave it?” I didn’t have to answer. “Can I read it?”

I picked it up. “Not now. No!”

Julie pulled her hair out of the sweater and pushed it back, put on her glasses, and walked to the table. She started spreading out the sheets, thirty-five-millimeter contact prints, several misaligned segments of film on each page.

“Mrs. Tony has… bosoms. I have… yeah, contact prints.”

I leaned over the table. “They look… nice. Prints.”

“Joey. Stop it! I am not trying to… just… Please… Your imagination.”

“Then quit… pleasing… my… imagination.”

“Please.”

“Okay. Sorry. Word play. So, uh, Julie; I believe… I don’t so much… imagine as remember. You… you’re the… imaginer.”

Julie took another step toward me. She squinted, half-smiled. “Just… I don’t want you to think I’m coming on you.”

“No; couldn’t even imagine it.” I tapped my head with three fingers of my right hand and showed Julie my blankest expression. “I do have to ask, though; where is Allen Broderick?”

“He insists on being called… Broderick. He’s… he has a class at ten; he’s probably…”

“Chasing another student, hoping his former student, current wife doesn’t… find out.”

“Possible.” Julie set the stack on the table, started pushing them off, spreading them to our right. I set the stack of seven notepads just past the contact prints. “Luckily,” Julie said, “I’m not his type.” She stopped the shuffling, looked down at her outfit. Loose sweater, gray cords, chukka boots. “I mean, in case you might have thought that we, we being he and I…” She was looking at me as she slid several more contact prints off the pile.

“Wait!” I put my hand down, hard, on the fourth sheet of photo paper. I leaned in.

“What?” 

“Black car.” I grabbed the sheet. “Do you remember it? Do you have more? The guys. Do you have any… When, exactly, was this taken?”

Julie pointed to the lightlock door. “I have dates… on the cans. The film canisters. And I have, on the camera… dates.” Both of us were leaning over the sheet of tiny photographs.

“We should… Was this before or after Chulo’s…?”

“Julie.” A different voice. I turned. It was Allen Broderick, standing behind me and to my right. To his left was a young woman, giggling. I looked just long enough to get the impression she was an American Indian. Or she wanted to look like she was. Her right arm was under Broderick’s left. Her straight black hair was held in place with a headband of braided ribbons of different colors. She was wearing some sort of post Hippie garb, almost a dress, quite colorful, low cut. Braless. I did notice that. She was barefoot.

Broderick almost pushed off the woman to get next to the counter. He stood next to me. “You found something?”

Julie and I looked at each other. “No,” we said, simultaneously.   

“Not really,” Julie said, looking around me and at the photography instructor.

The young woman had moved up next to Broderick and was leaning across him, looking at me. I glanced, smiled, politely, and turned back toward Julie.

Julie restacked the contract print sheets. I slipped in the one from my hand and shuffled in three from the bottom of the pile. “No, Broderick,” Julie said, “Joey. You know Joey. You spied on him.” Both Broderick and I nodded. “Joey just got a little… excited when he saw the sheet… incident at Beacons.” Swinging her left arm toward the enlargement by the light lock door, Julie turned toward the woman. Both of them smiled as if someone should introduce them.

The woman was still staring at me. Broderick broke away when he saw the edges of the two notepads hanging out of my pocket. He pointed with both hands. “Are those… those your father’s?”

“Do you remember me, Jody?” I turned my head toward the young woman. “Cynthia. Seventh grade. We were in the same home room.” I turned toward her. Allen Broderick stepped back. Cynthia stepped closer. I put my left hand on the table. Cynthia put her right hand to her nose and pushed it downward. “Cynthia.”

Dropping my left hand to the table and putting weight on it, I said, “Cynthia,” and froze.

…

            Cynthia was in front of me, talking. I could see her, and the seventh grade Cynthia, at the desk next to mine, crying. There was laughter in the background. “The way the other kids treated you, I did. I… understood.”

In my memory version, the homeroom teacher, Mrs. Macintyre, in her last year of teaching, went behind seventh grade Cynthia’s chair, put her arms around Cynthia, and glared at me. She stepped to one side, half-lifted Cynthia from the chair, and walked her through a hushed classroom. Cynthia and Mrs. Macintyre looked back at me from the door. Mrs. Macintyre began to cry. Cynthia no longer was. I scanned the classroom, quickly passing over the faces of my classmates. All of them were looking at me. A boy one row of desks behind me said, “Way to go, Jap!”

The images faded. Both of Julie’s hands were over her face, middle fingers touching the inside corner of her eyes. She pulled at what might have been tears, slid her hands down and apart, and turned her eyes toward Cynthia.

I looked from Julie and Cynthia. Unaware that I had been, I continued crying. Cynthia’s expression was somewhere between curious and confused, possibly even concerned. “Cyn-thi-a, I… I am… so… so… ashamed.”

Cynthia placed her right hand on my left shoulder. “You are aware that, Jody, that your nose is… running?”

I wiped at my nose with the thumb side of my right hand. “You transferred… out. I’ve hoped… ever since… Did things get… better?”

Julie came up next to Cynthia. Shoulder to shoulder. “What did you do, Joey?”

“Navajo,” Cynthia said. “Jody wasn’t the first person to do… this.” Cynthia pulled down on her nose with her right hand. She turned toward me. “It was just… I didn’t expect it from… you.”

I had no response.

“I knew how badly you wanted to be… cool, Jody; to be… in… with the cool crowd.”

“That… never happened, Cynthia.” She gave me a half smile. “I am so, so… ashamed.”

“Good. Then, you should do the honorable… Japanese-ey thing.” Cynthia took a step back, pantomimed sticking a knife into her abdomen.

Julie said, “Hari-kari,” almost as a question.

Broderick laughed. Then Cynthia. Then Julie. Then me.

“Cynthia and I,” Broderick said, “We’re doing some…”

“Publicity shots.” Cynthia said, stepping away from Julie and me and putting her hands up to frame her face. “For my…” She threw her hands out. “…Professional… Agent!”

“So… fucking… groovy!” Julie froze. “Sorry. I never say… that, but…” Both of Julie’s hands were shaking as she reached out, not quite touching Cynthia. “I saw you, heard you. The VFW Hall. Vista. Teen dance. Last year. You were…”

Cynthia stepped forward into a hug. It took a moment before Julie allowed her hands to wrap around Cynthia. When she did, she looked at me.

Broderick put his right arm around Cynthia’s shoulder. His left hand was on Julie’s. “Cynthia’s fucking fantastic, Jody!”

The hug over, Cynthia turned toward me. “Funny thing, Jody; suddenly the cool people think I’m… I don’t know. Pretty. Different kind of pretty.” Cynthia gave Julie a sideways but intense look. “Teen dance? I would have noticed… you.”

“Probably not. Not really a… dancer.” Julie turned toward me. “Duncan.” She turned back toward Cynthia. “Big fan. He was… dancing.”

Cynthia looked from Julie to me. “Duncan?”

“Duncan,” I said, “Boyfriend.”

“Not… like that. Duncan…” Julie stopped but continued to blush. “Different.”

“You’re… her.” Cynthia pointed at Julie and turned toward me with a huge smile. “Is she her? She’s her, isn’t she?” I wiped my nose and eyes with the sleeve of my t shirt and shook my head. “The surfer girl. You drew her!” Cynthia was looking between Julie and me. I couldn’t see Julie’s face. “Crappy drawings. Grant; he started drawing because you… drew.”

“Grant. Still drawing.”

“But… now, here you both are; surfer girl and… you. Whoa!”

Whatever expression I gave Cynthia was taken as affirmation.

“Well,” Broderick said, “This is all kinds of fun.” I turned around. He was holding the contact prints up, close to his face, with both hands, raising and lowering them in a sort of peekaboo way. I grabbed the stack in the middle. I pulled them away quickly enough that I half spun toward Cynthia and Julie. They were looking toward the front of the classroom. I followed their eyes.

“Allen?” It was the woman I had seen at the San Elijo Grocery store. Allen Broderick’s picnic date. Or, possibly, Mrs. Broderick. High school class of ’67 was my guess. Dark hair. Pixie cut. Knee length skirt, matching top. Obviously pregnant. She raised a camera with both hands, and, without looking though the viewfinder, snapped several photos. “And this girl? Student or… another… client?”

Broderick said, “Andrea. No.” Andrea kept taking photos.

Cynthia posed rather provocatively. “Client. But I am… I’m flattered, Mrs. Broderick.”

“Not quite Mrs. Broderick… yet.” Andrea moved closer, aimed the camera at me. “You,” she said. “The detective’s son. Allen made me go with him… to see you.”

“At Mrs. Tony’s. Sure. Picnic.”

Allen Broderick moved closer to Andrea. He placed his hand on her left shoulder. She lowered the camera and pulled his hand off. “Picnic. Yes.”

 “I am here with… Julia Cole. Julie. She is… taking… I would say, she’s taking advantage of the… college.” Keeping the contact prints against my chest, I swung my left arm around in the direction of the light lock door. “Julie and I are going to find out who killed Chulo Lopez. But, like you, Andrea, I don’t totally trust your husband to… We have to keep this all… secret.”  

“All what?” Allen Broderick asked, extending both hands toward me.

Cynthia found another chair with an attached desktop area, sat down, put both elbows on the flat surface, both hands to her face, looked at me and said, “I can keep a secret.” She laughed. “Allen is… consumed with… this case,” Andrea said. “His life is so boring without the war and the killing. But he is pretty good at keeping secrets. A little too good, maybe.”

Allen stepped closer to Andrea. He put one hand on her shoulder, the other on her camera. She lowered it. “What would you rather have me consumed with, Andrea?”

“Me, Allen.”

Cynthia clapped her hands, very quietly. She pointed at Julie with her left hand, and me with her right. She crossed each finger over the other several times, then put the right finger under her nose, pushed it up, laughed, and said, as she stood up, “This is all kinds of fun, but… You guys look over my… head shots. I’ll trust you… Andrea. Whichever one you think is best. Broderick can call my… hooray for me… my agent.”

Andrea stood up, walked to the lightlock door, turned, took three quick photos of Broderick, Cynthia, Julie and me.

Cynthia said, “Sorry about your father, Jody.” She ran three fingers down Julie’s left arm, mouthed, “Surfer girl.” She half-sang, “Consumed,” as she walked into the brightness, in an exaggerated walk, her left hand moving in a beauty queen’s wave. “Oh, and Jody; a million ‘fuck you’s’ for being a. bullying fuck, and one ‘good luck’ for being ashamed.”

Broderick, next to the lightlock door, next to Andrea, looked at his watch. “I have a class. You can come back at noon. Or, if you trust me, I can do the contacts. Up to you.”

Julie nodded. I shrugged. Allen hit the switch for the red light and squeezed into the lightlock door, pushing his belly against Andrea’s.       

            …

Julie was sitting to my right at a large table in the history section of the Palomar Library. Admission application forms, partially filled out, were sitting on a PeeChee folder with. “For Julie” written on it. There were two sheets of contact prints in front of us. My stack, her stack. A large magnifying glass was in front of me, something that looked like an upside-down shot glass was in front of Julie.

            “You comfortable now, Joey?”

I looked around. “Libraries. The wisdom of the world; categorized, filed, accessible. The Student Union. Noise. People. Disjointed conversations with a lack of… context.”

“Disjointed? Yeah, and you might run into someone else you… know.”

“You mean… offended. Or beat up. Never run into those folks in a library.”

“Palomar. They take… anyone. It is like failure to you. It’s not… Stanford?” Julie didn’t wait. “Yeah. I know shit. Stanford; got that from Judith, she from Portia, she from… your mom. Third hand. But… true or not true, Atsushi?”

 “True… heart.” I slid the top sheet from my pile. “Going would have been a bigger failure.” Julie shook her head. “Irregardless, we’re looking for the black car, one of those muscle cars, and/or the two guys…”

Julie laughed, too loud, pulled it back, and said, “Irregardless.” I couldn’t help laughing. Julie leaned against me as if she couldn’t help herself.

Silence. Julie moved away, slowly, her left arm on my right. She picked up several photos from my stack. “These are from the Saturday. After. Early. If you notice, I wrote the dates on the photo paper before I exposed them.” She looked at me. “Didn’t notice? Okay.” Julie slid her right pointer finger down a row of prints. “You talking to that East Indian guy, the gardener; you getting your tape deck smashed; you getting hit by Dickson; him flipping us off before they let us go.”

            “Dickson. You, um, made a… gesture, with your camera.”

            “I did. Wish I had a longer lens. Prick like him…” Julie looked up. I looked up. “What was Detective… Dickson, Dick the Dick; what was he trying to… prove?”

            “Dicky Bird, my dad called him.” I looked around the library, then back at Julie. My reflection was bouncing in the lenses of her glasses. “I think Dickson was trying to keep me… away. Maybe he thought he was doing a favor. For Wendall. He… I’m trying to be brief; he’s had… romantic notions about my mother… for a while.”

            “Romantic notions? How…?”

            “Quaint? Old fashioned? Un… um, hip? Wrong? Sorry.”

            “No. Proof that you’re a… romantic.”

Silence. “Regardless, Julie; what about photos from… Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?”

            “Sure.” Julie put her first two fingers up to her lips, kissed them, turned her hand around and moved it toward me.  “Over… here.” Julie pulled up the top right-hand corner on five sheets, set them to one side. “So, Broderick. You didn’t trust him, and now…”

            “Broderick’s knowing that I don’t trust him is good. For us. My mother… the photographers she works with… she says war’s ruined them for everything else except… more war. The game. And… he’s on our side.”

            Julie looked into my eyes for a moment, then slid her chair to her right, noisily. “Our side?” She pulled the left sleeve of her sweater up with her right hand and checked her watch. “I didn’t ask to be in this game.” She let her tortoise-framed, oval glasses fall from her face.

            I caught Julie’s glasses and put them on. “Whoa!” I handed them to Julie. “You. You’re as frightened, and confused, and… excited as I am; and you are… in the game.”

Julie chair scraped across the floor when she stood up. “I am… in it, Joey.” She kept her eyes on me as she crab-walked to the far side of the table. “You don’t have to be. You have to get that.”

“I… do get that. Or that you believe that. We’re not…” I wanted to say ‘friends.’ I wanted to say, ‘I love you.’ I said neither.

“This isn’t hypothetical or theoretical, Joey; you shouldn’t have any…. romantic notions about my life, who I am.”

“No.” I stood up, picked up the magnifying glass, and looked at the sheet on top of my stack, “Either should you. About me.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Your mother knows… I was driving my mother’s car… when my father pulled off the road…”

Julie’s expression said she didn’t know. She mouthed, “Sorry. So sorry,” leaned onto the table, and slid both forearms toward me.

I dropped the magnifying glass and took the ends of her fingers in mine. “I was… responsible.” I let her fingers go. ”And because of the accident, Langdon…” I sat back down.

…

            If I was somewhere else, I don’t know where or for how long. Julie was, suddenly, it seemed, back in the chair to my right, leaning toward me. She took in a deep breath. “The guy… at Beacons, is Jonathan Barnhouse.  It’s his brother in your dad’s notes. Sabastian Barnhouse, Junior. Dad’s a banker. North County Savings and Loan.” I forced my chair to pivot to get a closer view. “Went by Seb, or… Barney. He told me how lucky it was that a Jew like my dad could get accepted into…”

            “The… country club?”

            “Yeah. And he told me how beautiful I looked in a dress. Don’t… help me here. I have to… He said, no doubt, he was going to be rich; said he’d had a lot of success with girls. High school, and even more at San Diego State. Said he’d popped a lot of cherries. Yeah. And he told me I should feel honored that he was paying attention to a tomboy surfer chick like me.”

            Julie was studying my reactions as she spoke.

            “Women’s bathroom. There weren’t women around on a Wednesday. Golfers. I didn’t… lure… him in. I told him I was, I was fifteen. When I… turned him down, he…” Julie’s face was flushed. Her breathing quick and shallow. She was tapping on the table with the fingers of both hands. Little finger to index finger. “He said Cristine wouldn’t have.”

            I let out more air than I thought I had in my lungs. I put my hands over Julie’s. “It’s… terrible. I… What happened? I mean…”

            Julie pulled her left hand out and put it on top of my hands. “It’s… anti-climactic.” She pulled her head back, slightly, smiled, slightly. She looked around the library. I did the same. Our faces were close again. “So, Barney, Junior. He…” Julie’s smile was real. It was bigger, almost frightening. “At least, metaphorically, he got his cherry…”

At the very moment Julie scattered both piles of photos into each other, she sucked in her bottom lip, popped it out loudly enough that we both had to straighten up and look around.

            “Popped!” I wanted to reach out to Julie, grab both sides of her face, kiss her. I didn’t. I did imagine it. I did, instantly imagine five different ways she could have done in real life what she did metaphorically. “My girl,” I said, way too loudly.

            “Woman,” Julie said. “There were… repercussions, Joey. Both directions.”

            “May I… guess?” Julie nodded. Her normal color was returning to her cheeks. Not instantly. “I know that… I have to whisper…” Julie and I moved toward each other. She pulled   her hair back from her left ear. “Your father… maybe you thought the Twins… Swamis… were federal. I know… believe you looked.” She shrugged. “Orange County. You told me he said Certified Public Accountants don’t handle… money. Cash. Bankers do. Grocery stores… do. My guess is, molest the daughter of a CPA at your risk. I’m… shit, I don’t know.”

            Julie turned her head toward me and came closer. She made a slight popping sound before our lips met. I made a similar sound, louder, after we had kissed.

…

            Julie Cole and I were sitting together, scanning our separate stacks of contact print sheets. “Reverse shot-glass and full-on Sherlock,” I said, turning my traditional magnifying glass toward her.

            “It was just a kiss, Joey.”

            No, it was the kiss I have, since compared every kiss to. “What about… Duncan?”

            “Duncan?” Julie’s head did a kind of sideways bobble. “Duncan needs me… more than…” She gave me a ‘you don’t get it’ expression. “Friend. Forever.”

            “But he… loves… you.”

            “He does.” Julie set the shot-glass down, put her left hand close to her mouth, and let out a breath. “I’m right about you.” She picked up the magnifier, held it against the right eye’s lens of her glasses, looked at me through it. “Besides being a genuine romantic, you believe you’re… funny.”

            “To be more precise… precise-er…” I put the Sherlock up against the Shot-glass. “I’d rather be clever than… funny.”

            “Keep trying, then.”

Julie checked my reaction. “Did I hurt your feelings?” She put a finger close to my lips.

I kissed her finger. “You did something to them, Trueheart.”

            “Quit it.” She put her finger to her lips. “Later. Maybe…”

            “Maybe?”

            Julie blindly reached for her stack of contact prints, pulled one off the top, moved it in front of her, and set the shot-glass back on top of it. “Black car, Joey; remember?”

            “Oh. Yeah.” I pulled a sheet from my pile, ran the Sherlock up and down the three strips. “Crowd. Wednesday morning. Lee Anne Ransom.”

            “It was light by the time she got there.”

There’s… Do you recognize any of these people, Julie?”

            Julie leaned toward me. She shook her head and pulled the sheet closer to her. “Okay, there’s… Jumper and… Sid. Must have walked past the… Petey Blodgett told me they wouldn’t let anyone into the lot.” She slid the shot-glass away and pulled the Sherlock out of my hand, fingers of her right hand on the frame. She grabbed the handle with her right hand, floated it over the images.

            “We’re looking for two guys; one’s Mexican, the other white. From the loud black car. So, big… tailpipe… or pipes. And the other guys; also a Mexican and… critical, probably; the guys who brought Chulo to Swamis in a white pickup with duel back wheels. The white guy, he’s…”

            Julie said, “Dulies” as she dropped the magnifying glasses. She took off her glasses as she stood up. She put the sheets we had looked at on top of my stack, that stack on hers. She grabbed the PeeChee folder with ‘For Julie’ on it, stuffed the photo sheets into the folder, that into her big gray bag. “These are mine, Joey. I have to go.”

            “What did I do?”

Julie shook her head. She threw the reverse shot-glass and the magnifying glass into her bag, picking it up with her left hand, and spun away from me. “You should have listened to everyone, Joey.” She took two steps and stopped. “You should have stayed out of this.”  

I leapt up, took the two steps, put my left hand on her shoulder. She stiffened. I circled around and in front of her. She pulled the hair from the right side of her head over her face.

“I don’t… understand.”

“No,” she said. “Not yet.” She looked at me for just a moment. There were tears. “Please, Joey; let me go.”

Julie did look at me outside the library’s main entrance. It was late afternoon. The sun’s rays, oranged-out like an old photograph by the northwest wind driven smog, was hitting her at a severe angle. “Atsushi.” She kissed me. “We were never…”  With an expression somewhere beyond Julia Cold, Julie, pushing off me, was somewhere between panic and resolve.  

Everything had changed. Again.

LATEST ATTEMPT AT SERIOUS POETRY-

                                    An Accidental Smile

It was an accidental smile from a random, chance encounter, A passing glance at a passing stranger, Not inexplicable, just unexplained, It wouldn’t have been right to look back.

Of course I did.

It wasn’t you, It was someone too like you, Not you.

I thought that I forgot, I have not, Not yet, Not with the lightning quickness of synapses, firing, Triggered by unexplained chance, A random passing, An accidental smile.

What could I know from a moment, a first glance? Perhaps nothing, But, perhaps I’d passed someone I thought I forgot, Or, perhaps, I looked too like someone she once knew And believed she had forgotten.

Memories, then, images jumping around the neural passages, Lightning quick, faster than a heart beating, Too many, too fast, colliding.

I looked back, The woman who wasn’t you had stopped, Both of us smiled, shook our heads, and turned away.

I thought I couldn’t cry, I knew I wouldn’t try.

Why try?

Yet, safely away from the street, Most of those in the crowd dancing To too many rhythms, Their focus elsewhere, I had to lower my head, Knowing no one would notice.

Not on purpose.

Accidentally, maybe.

ALTERNATE ERWIN-

The photos of Owen Wright and the crowd in, I believe, France, are ‘borrowed.’ “Swamis,” the original pieces, the illustrations are copyrighted material, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

Ready to welcome Autumn. Hoping for some swell. See you out there.