Silk stalking

day it seems we're wastin' awayIt's all the same, only the names are changed
And every

We all know the place
Where the faces turn so cold
Drive all night, just to get back home.

--Richie Sambora

Professor.
Egghead Jack Bean and his stalk.

Stalking is a no- no.
But this was a special case.
A Nick Carter, Master Detective case.

In the first place, The Blue Angel had made a total fool out of the professor, having sex with not only tried-and-true husband, but also the mysterious stranger.
Nobody reading this blog would remember anything from 1936, but in the famous German movie with Marlene Dietrich, Professor Jalbert is cuckolded and bidden to act like Chicken Man in a walk-on scene, in the Blue Angel's cabaret routine, The professor crows like a rooster, while dressed in a clown outfit. He is having a nervous breakdown over his wife's carrying on with the stage director. But he crows all the same.
Cuckaruckakoo.
One is not sure whether to cry or laugh over this scene.

In the the classic gothic novel, the heroine usually lives in a castle and is purued by a villain, usually Italian. The professor, in his Sherlock Holmes (Holden Caulfield?) hat. He has to find the mysterious Italian. Close with him. Pop him one.

It's really a matter of ego.
Some Sicilian has done the professor a dirty. The professor, probably half-mad with Celia's mind games, has decided he is not going to lose at love again.
There is also the posssibility that the Italian is indeed a vampire, but of a different sort. He might be a high-level drug dealer and very likely a master pimp. The professor had been observing and reading, viz:
Lief the Unlucky, Celia's husband, worked for a large overground
drug company with ties all the way up to External Affairs Canada which at the same time
had strange anthropological ties to Astralopitchecus Paisan.
Overground drug company becomes underground Mafia River is jungle and jungle is river.

How badly we Canadians are served by a weasly media.
Only Montreal police and Montreal journalists seem really up to their jobs.

Enough that our professor has decided to give chase.

And so we come to Act VII, Scene I of our ongoing play, THE FIRE IN BRADFORD

THE FIRE IN BRADFORD

ACT VIII

__ Scene 1


NARRATOR (WHO IS REALLY THE PROFESSOR):

I had to find her. Either waylay her on the way to work or when she was leaving-- coming home from work.

No luck.

She apparently wasn't taking the bus any more, her Mustang dangerous and mushy in the wet weather in the first plce.
Somebody was driving her back and forth...or maybe she was just good at eluding me now that I had the smell up.

One morning, after fruitlessly waiting in front of Ronald's Printing for her to show up, I tried another tack.
She was in Toronto, sure, but her job was still north of the city. She had to go back and forth, but by what means?
Most likely, she was taking public transit,--drug dealers are busy people and the mysterious Italian was probably using his standar I-ROC or something as a Fed X delivery van.

I decided to wait at Finch Station, top of Toronto. If she was taking public transit and going south to the city after work, she had to pass by me.

I began the stalk position at six p.m., assuming she had quit work at five and had taken to commuter GO-bus.
I waited three hours.

What is your brain good for, professor? Would make a fine book-end!

And there she was, same old Celia, but dazed, stunned-looking, her face fixed as if someone about to have an attack of Parkinsonism. An automaton. And she walked right past me as if I didn't exist.

I pursued. I caught up with her on the down-elevator leading to both the subway and the Kiss'n'Ride, where spouses picked up their working partners. She sensed me behind her and turned.

SCENE.

LIGHTS: UP.

IT IS CELIA AND THE PROFESSOR AT THE SUBWAY ESCALATOR.

PROFESSOR: Where are you going?

CELIA: (HER TRANCE APPATENTLY BROKEN):

I'm going home.

CELIA BEGINS TO RACE DOWN THE ESCALATOR. THE PROFESSOR KEEP FOLLOWING HER, WATCHING HER RUBBER-TIPPED HIGH HEELS GO DOWN THE GREASY SUBWAY GRATES.
CELIA TURNS TOWARDS THE PROFESSOR AGAIN, THOUGH DESCENDING FAST,THE PROFESSOR JUST BEHIND HER NOW. SHE HAS DECIDED TO BEHAVE AS IF NOTHING WERE HAPPENING.

CELIA: Still living in Newmarket?

PROFESSOR (TO HIMSELF): Well, damn. We'd only been apart a few months. Where the hell did she think I was living? Celia's way, always the open-ended question, the hint of possibility.

PROFESSOR: Yes. Of course. Of course I'm still living in Newmarket.

STAGE BUSINESS:

CELIA AND THE PROFESSOR ARE NOW DOWN TO SUBWAY LEVEL. CELIA IS ABOUT TO TURN, TO GO TO THE KISS'N'RIDE EXIT. SHE FACES THE PROFESSOR LIKE ONE WOULD FACE AN ANGRY DOG, THE LOOK WAS ALL THERE, ALL THAT WAS MISSING IS THE "GO HOME!"

CELIA: You've got to stop following me.

CELIA TURNS ON HER HIGH HEEL, RUBBER-TIPPED SO THERE IS NO SOUND, ALL POPLIN - RAINCOAT AND- SHORT- SKIRT- AND- FEMININITY. SHE IS TURNING BACK TO THE KISS'N'RIDE EXIT. SOMEBODY IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO PICK HER UP. THE PROFESSOR IS RIGHT BEHIND HER.

NARRATOR (over the action):

Presently, up the stairs again, in front of clear glass, where I saw a new BMW waiting. Silver in colour, the effeminate ass-end appearing for all the world like a mechanical bride's buttocks. There was a man sitting there.
...Wearing a Newsboy's hat, modified golfer's model, not the 1930's kind, appearing a little like an aging Frank Zappa, but no moustache, just a tuft of hair under the lower lip. The rest of his outfit was tweedy, professorial, with leather elbow patches. She just opened the car door with what by now was certanily a practised familiarity, came aboard, locked the door from the inside. She was inside and I was outside.
She and the man looked at each other and Celia settled in a bit. I noticed that their movements were imilar and congruent. They had obviously been together a long time, probably long before I ever came on the scene.
They were one.
Goddamn!
I moved to the driver's side of the BMW, whose windows were shut tight. I read Celias lips: "I think he wants to talk to you."
I saw a slender hand, dirt under nails, operating the central console. The window rolled down. I stuck my stupid head in as the window was lowering, just to get the measure of the man. The Italian glared at me: "You got a problem?" Oh, did I ever. I had said, "yes, I've got a problem!"

I tried to smile at the two of them.
Celia gave me a look of propitious outrage, as if to ask, who was I, worm, to even try to intercede. Up goes the window, just missing my face.

Inside, they are discussing things, calmly and rationally, as is apparently their way. I was reading Celia's lips throught he parrallax. "Dan is a French teacher and a brilliant writer,"
I read The Stranger's lips, and he is saying,"Well, he may be a brilliant writer but he's out of line here. I should call a policeman. The Stranger picks up a cellphone.

I was not going to get caught.

I did not become angry. I became agenty, a secret agent, a detective.

I walked behind the car, behind the exquisitively shaped derrierre of the sports BMW to get his licence number, LMA 552, Little Italy for sure.

The Italian was busy at his cellphone. I had to, uh, take it on the lam.

I hit the nearest bar. Five beers in a row, almost at one gulp. Brain is spinning but it is trying for a solution.
Why not try the phone book under Horvath, Celia's married name.

Paydirt. She was at 229 Pannahill, wherever the hell that was.

I dialed the number.

It was celia at the other end, but what a Celia! Her hellow was a drone, almost from afar, something straight out of Close Encounters, right at the bottom of a frequency. I had blurted out, "Celia, is this your house? Is this where you live now?
And then the weird, bone-chilling reply: "Dan-ahh-aaaargh. Daniel aaa. Weave me alone. Weave me alone...ahh ahh..ahrrrggh..."
But she did not hang up, Celia still leaving me hanging through her drugs and whatever else she'd been ingesting.


...........end act VII, Scene 1.


Disgusting, no?

Never write anything ugly, the creative writing instructor says.

But my correspondent Sela Carsen (Who is today included in an anthology of short stories)--says: It it's real life, do it!