(no subject)
Factoring in the principals of the battle, Ed Groat, and Henge; Carmine Calamari focused on the immediate implications. The paddling about in a canoe. The pious little pull of a sail from a small skiff. The environment. A small to medium sized Midwestern lake on the outskirts of an insular and extraordinarily self important college town, nearly an hour outside Cincinnati - one of the most provincial of all modern major cities of the world.
On a yellow legal pad Carmine scrawled the words “mid August” and “Midwest.”
Also he drew a picture of a Detroit area Coney Island restaurant façade, and a large van.
Naked, except for the towel around his waist, Carmine farted on the vinyl upholstered seat of the old battle ship grey desk chair. Out in the cavernous garage portion of the Romulus body shop, Pinky Mortrudo was showing a young Mexican kid how to operate an air ratchet. Each painstaking phrase of instruction was punctuated with a pneumatic whine of the ratchet, intersperse with a pallet of curse words and grammatical crutches. The whole scene echoed in the high ceiling, five bay wide garage.
Carmine pouted his lower lip into a hyperbolic frown - a display of concern and thought as he squinted at the legal pad.
On the pad Carmine wrote: “locals?” - indicating to himself that he should make a few phone calls. Get the lay of the land. Maybe a Lake Me dockside worker? A Milton University employee? A professor?
One the pad he also wrote: “Van.” Carmine felt, for some nebulous reason, that he should have a dilapidated van. A van that he could use as a semi mobile headquarters. He could effectively blend in - be relatively inconspicuous. Be construed as a local - or some mid American transient. Immerse himself in the culture - if only ostensibly. Become Lake Me.
William Comparetto
© 2007