Know Nothing

Ed was sitting down at a table that was covered in spilled salt. His shoes were laid side by side next to his aching feet, swollen so much from walking all day that he could feel his blood pulse through them. A thrumming, strumming beat that made him remember his boasting about being hale for his 40’s the other day and made it ring like a cruel taunt in his mind. The diner was a zoo on most nights, so busy that no one would find out about Ed’s daring attempt to let his feet breathe. No one except his dinner companion, Mike, who let the matter drop as soon as Ed stopped giving him guff about eating jam on toast for the fourth time that day. In between bites Mike shuffled through a stack of crudely made cards and gave the stack a pat every time he set them all down again.

“Are you going to mess with those resh cards all night?” Ed asked as he stretched out in his seat. His partner sometimes grew so focused on the six cards that he’d get unnerved by the gaps of time without a sound or word.

Mike tensed up and threw a worried look at Ed, “What did you call them?”

“Resh. The resh cards. The ones in your hand.”

“What the heck’s a resh?” Mike stared down at the deck and narrowed his eyes. He had been staring at the things for so long that the identical symbol on all them sometimes looked like it was starting to move.

“It’s a word, no wait just a letter. A hebrew one, means head. Like the one on your neck.” Ed waved his hand in a circle before tapping his cheek with his palm.

“What the hell are you doing spouting out hebrew? You’re as much a goy as I am.” Mike was too tired to start a fight then but still leaned forward over the table, face stretched into a grimace.

Ed chuckled, “My sister taught me about it before she ran off to become a sister, yeah? Er, it’s not something everyone knows?” And Ed’s smirk turned into a zag of a slash in his face. He was tired too but he’d be damned if he let a chance to make someone feel like a boob pass by.

“Your sister? Wasn’t she the one that joined the Order of Anon over on Chapel and Main? What did she know about hebrew?”

“She was a smart cookie. Could cite out facts from books all day and all night; she said they liked that in Anon.” Ed peeked at his partner and wondered if Mike always pulled expressions taut like he was doing now. His skin seemed so stretched that all Ed could think was ow and he closed his eyes again. They had been working together a month on trailing down this calling card thief. In a month they found little but late nights ending in too many drinks masked with tonic and threats of being demoted back down to sorting out traffic violations when they would come up to the station with nothing but a new card. Finding those cards was a task in itself most times; the last time the thief stuck his card in the roof of the building he stole a fully restored medieval tapestry from. Part of a secret collection that was collected by some rich so and so, a former UN ambassador. The thief struck at three o’clock in the morning and ended up leaving his card in the third ova from the left in a line of decorative ovum carvings that graced the entrance of the private collection’s home. There were twelve of those in that entryway, even Ed found it a bit clever.

“‘What doth thou know about Anon? Thy head knows nothing.’, that’s a cute thing for a smart girl to end up sticking her nose into.” Mike brought the calling cards into his hands again while mouthing out the last portion of the strange order’s creed.

“Gina’s a legitimate, abso-factly nun. She just doesn’t need one of those alpha and omegas to give herself over to is all. After she told me about Anon she told me about that word, the resh thing. Then she told me that The Order would be a good place to find a cure for what ailed her and left to her fate.” and again Ed’s hand turned in front of his mouth, winding up his words into a bundle that Mike had learned over the last month he would have to bring himself to swallow.

“What was ailing her?”

“Mostly me. Some bits Ma, but mostly me.” and Ed’s mind remembered his younger sister, a perky little thing with a book always in her arm and a computer left open next to her pillow every night. Between his fighting with his mother all the time in front of his sister, his dragging friends from the bar that he wouldn’t keep from harrassing her, and his way of yelling at anyone who crossed his path after a long day he wasn’t surprised when she left. He was just surprised she could take all those hurts for so long before finally going. He knew he would miss the frenzied moments of listening to her spell out how derogatory some of the terms he casually let loose were and how they got that way. Haji was offensive, who knew? Gina did and she knew about how pi could open up any circle’s secrets and how malts were popular drinks in Nicarauga during the spring when it was warm but not too warm and the taste of malt matched well with the view of the sea. Ooh la la, ain’t that a thing? he told her but he was quietly impressed by her each time and knew better than to ever bother her again once she finally freed herself.

“Thy head knows nothing… is this guy trying to just mock us? Maybe these cards have been a giant goose chase this whole time, there has to be something more. There can’t just be these damned head cards, these can’t be our only finds!” Mike took up his last piece of toast and chomped into it violently. A speck of jam stuck to the corner of his mouth, he could feel it but he just couldn’t be dared to care if he had a massacre of jam all over his face then. He kept mouthing the phrase to himself again as Ed opened his eyes to look at him. Ed frowned and ordered a lime margarita from the waitress who had come to know the men by name over the last month. The diner was a good place to think and relax but Mike could never get a handle on that second part.

“You know the worst part?” Ed paused until he grabbed Mike’s attention, “This guy is probably a show off. You’re still kind of green, Mike, but I can tell you I’ve seen this before. Someone starts getting notions of being a master thief and starts to pull crazy stunts just to prove they can. You can’t sell any of the stuff he’s taken, and you can’t really display it neither. So what does that leave? Couple months from now all the stuff comes back with a smartass note or this here calling card. The station and youse got your head mashed up for nothing.” Ed grabbed Mike’s toast away from him, “‘En another thing, you gotta eat something better than this. What do you expect to come out of your head when you feed it nothing but crap?” Mike sunk down over the table with an audible groan.

“I think my brain’s about al dente at this point, Ed. Is the boss really going to knock us down to traffic?” the quick turn of Mike’s qi from battle ready to bee without its stinger reminded Ed, for a brief moment, of Gina. Ed leaned forward and grabbed his partner’s shoulder.

“A month tops, and I’ll do my best to get you out of it a little sooner. Gary’s got more of an axe to grind with me than he does you so he’ll stick me with any slack your re-promotion makes, kid.” Ed gripped into Mike’s shoulder for a minute before letting the pressure go, “He’s going to hit the modern art gallery over on Lavaca tomorrow. We know that from his letter in the paper, if we can’t figure this one out we’ll call it from here. It’ll be alright.” Mike’s shoulders slumped in a relieving way and he set the cards down on the table.

“The tapestry of that face, the gold replica of the Samothrace, the plaque from Mensa, that piece of the Eureka. What was that piece called again?” Mike didn’t make a grab for his toast once Ed set it down.

“The headsail, he took the headsail.” Ed said a muttered thanks to the waitress as she brought over his margarita. The drink was so cold that it looked like wisps of smoke were coming off of it.

“The headsail. The-” Mike cut himself off as his body jerked forward to crunch the cards in his fists. “Resh! Resh! Head! Damn it! The Monroe! I think he’s going after the Monroe! The Warhols are up in Lavaca, I bet it’s the same damn place!” Mike started to frantically dig through his bag for the newspapers with the thief’s letter and the listings of shows going on in the gallery district that month.

Ed smiled, shook his head and took a long and almost brain numbing swig of his frosted drink. He clapped his hands together, knowing that that night was going to last until dawn now that the kid had something, and blurted out, “Olé!” with a chortle.

7-year-old me would be extremely proud.

I’ve had these big chunky red glasses for a little over two months now and the remarks have been interesting. It seems like most people think I’m trying to be hip or fashionable, and a few think I’m trying my hand at this whole hipster fashion thing.

 

Little do they know that when I saw and tried on these glasses in the store I didn’t think of any of those things. I just thought of this:

My heart jumped a beat. Memories of playing sailor scouts with old friends and eating cereal at the break of day on saturday mornings flooded into my head.

 

-Loki(ale)

Mount Bonnell

Went to the top, not sure what it is I found but I think I should put it back or throw it away.
Mount Bonnell: Quick Guide

Running

Behind a cut just because it’s some mental stuff I want to sort out that’s not as happy and silly as the former post. I don’t want to bring down anyone who just decided to browse hoping for more space stories.