Taut

Shelly became worried about her parole. I said that if she kept out of Amerika then it should not make a difference. These Californian pops made here nervous, to her any of these characters was most likely a Federal Marshal, I think she is half likely right. These guys really get their rocks off by shackling. She slipped out to Oslo, planning to take a bus to a southern ferry, drive and take on offers through the flat lands of Denmark, make advantage of the summer ease, wait on in Copenhagen. She speaks decent Danish.

Rudi gets a lot of tic when their are women around and he is anyway a nervous German. This time of year, summer in the north lands, there come women to this beach wearing only swim wear. In the nervous he slid out one night, his ease the dark parts of Dar es Salaam, Kampala, these days he is known in Bujunbura. That town has calmed a bit since the April days of bodies on the streets and the Tutsi girls lured and offered.

Muhsin went to keep watch in Darijani, he is never spotted. The Duck to Hong Kong on his own purchasing mission.

Shelly had left her Ben-Wa balls. I kept them in my pocket, took and clicked them incessant perched alone in the beach bar. Click, click, click, juice. A man up in reception, short and fit, a Manchester accent. Have you rooms. Plenty. He insisted on paying advance dead president. We drunk beer, until eleven o clock.

"I was four years in the army, then four years in the RAF. I work in Afghanistan, civilian, aircraft handling logistics for NATO"

I stayed on. We drank together. He had a recording device in which there was an amplified loop of a rattles snake. We played it using the speakers left by Alex Howard. I sat upon the Ben-Wa balls.

Shelly had said " Keep them up your bottom. For me that is where the Marshall's like to look. When they find something there they leave the rest alone"

"You are quite a character. Always good to meet them. You don't like this Amerikan then.

I would quite like to go on a Safari"

I fixed the trip, three days in Ruaha, no single supplement. We drank red wine. He did not smoke. There is silence, the noisy tide would mostly drown a sniper shot. That is the Authors trade, Rudi is more a switch blade.

The blue pills and hospital grade sister were bought from the chemist off the market. Needle and thread from a pharmacy down Mobassa way.

Michael met Isobella Giles for lunch in the Spanish, Northcote Road, then two weeks later for, at her suggestion, "an early dinner" some place in Wimbledon Village, "where the food is always good", not so always in the Village. At the Spanish she wore blue jeans, the dinner a green frock, looked smart and trim in both. She arrived exactly on time, me three minutes early. She was assertive with both of the severveuse, the last an Australian manager. To taste the wine she leaned back in her chair, confident. At our train station parting, the first place the black cabs waited, she said

"It is so nice to re-connect"

Michael was not sure of the last stop on that bus route. I got off, wrong stop, got back on the going out door. Two uniformed policeman were on the bus. One said

"Sir, did you buy a ticket"

I showed my Oyster card, credited. The bus driver coughed, spat, guffawed.

"Get on a bus, get off a bus, get on get arrested"

"Sir that is something of an exaggeration"

"I think it best we end this conversation"

Got off at the next stop. By the gates of Wimbledon Lawn tennis club, painted, flags a flutter, parking restrictions newly yellowed, June mellow warmth in readiness for an annual tennis competition. A close moment on a bus, unexpected, that is how will probably end, a bit of bad luck a lapse of concentration. By the sword.

The Washerman.

On Wimbledon Common, wooded, a place of murders, women with dogs. His colliers run loose finding badger holes, we call his dogs. By the by one returns and locates the other two coming out a hole muddied with badger mulched earth.

It is a warm Sunday morning , early June, prior to lunch. His beard is flecked with frost, dry ice upper lip, white breath, Moscow in winter, nineteen seventy eight.

"Palo Alto was once a pretty pace, perhaps still is. Your room is in Redwood City"