Next Installment: 

Once upon a time there was a man who lived off  Chelsea; his favorite meal was crawfish; he stacked potatoes for a living; he worked for a sculptor; the sculptor's name was Lynnda Lythe-Morton; she made potato casts; her work sold well; she paid her helpers in pirated videos of a British television show from the Sixties; one episode was the source of her art; it was a mystery; in the middle of the third act, if, that is, a television show can be said to have acts, this mystery featured a surprise duel in a bookshop-a friend of the detective-hero’s, his best friend (despite his only having been introduced to the audience at the beginning of this particular episode) finds himself confronting the villain-they both have umbrellas, and so they duel; harmless, the detective-hero's best friend doesn't take this duel seriously, fails to notice the villain's hidden blade, is stabbed and slashed until dead: watching this show for the first time, the sculptor, a mere child at that point of her life, suddenly began to crave champagne, which she had yet to taste; therefore, her mixed musings three decades later at the suggestion of the cigar-smoking Gloucestershire widow ·who wanted to trade a trailer-truck of videos for a set of Lynnda Lythe-Morton's lead potatoes; each potato had mysterious carving in one side, often compared to the inner folds of an orchid or perhaps labia; yes, the sculptor knows her champagne well these days, and pays her helpers (she has only one) in videos and he in turn pays the fish monger, the vegetable boy and the bakery girl, all in videos, which they send to their American cousins who have never seen the show yet eagerly await each installment. 

Henry James' Restless Great Granddaughter: 

I like the private eyes of London, the way they each carry a business card made of fibrous paper so cheap that a simple splash of coffee will make it dissolve like wet newsprint. One simply wonders. These louts in their ridiculously beige raincoats, do they really think we care where they lurk — suppose they are following us, suppose we confront them; well, what are they going to do, hand us their soggy cards? 

The Plot: 

Like everyone else, I had a prolonged affair with one of my professors while I attended the University of London. Unlike many but perhaps still like several, she (my professor) wrote (years later) a novel about an affair she once had with one of her students, an affair that devastated her completely and continued to resonate deeply within her being until it thrashed itself into a major literary work. Many of my friends read this book and with some embarrassment identified me as the affairing student — their embarrassment came from discovering what a horrendous lout he was: strong yet childish, given to mispronouncing literary terms in between sexual encounters, dewy-eyed but violently self-obsessed, a brilliant intellect helplessly experimenting with mind-altering substances, carnal but puissant enough to yawn in public. These friends never asked me about it; had they, I would have admitted my presence in the novel — not the student but the jovial guest lecturer from Sweden who shares her office and reasonably urges her to move on: “Have your fun,” I say, "but forget him!" 

A Swedish Philosophy Professor's Tour of London: 

London is constructed in such a way that parts of it remind one of other cities, and this, really, is the secret of its identity — each neighborhood is elsewhere:  

Chelsea = San Francisco. 

West End = Berlin. 

Threadneedle Street = New Stockholm.  

One begins to long, particularly as one walks into a new neighborhood, to simply leave. What else can one say about a city that is elsewhere? 

A Walk Along Upper Thames Street Will Lead You To The Lower Ganges: 

At the first party thrown by our upstairs neighbors: 

''How did you two meet?" we are asked. Everyone expects us to say how one of us or perhaps both of us got jobs in London and so we came over from the States but the truth is we met standing in line at Garfields. 

"Here?" People want to know. “ln Chelsea?" 

We nod. 

Then I say, "Deborah was standing in front of me — and she suddenly turned and said, 'I'm Henry James' Restless Great Granddaughter.'” 

People want to know what I replied. 

So Deborah tells them, "He immediately invited me to dinner.''  

Someone starts dancing. 

People discuss rock 'n' roll. 

We mingle. 

Mingling is important, particularly for displaced North American artists. It is at this party, you see, that Deborah meets Lynnda Lythe-Morton, who was invited by Alexander Markhan, her helper, who lives down the hall. 

I meet Dahlia the Bakery Girl and Giles the Vegetable Boy. 

Sweeping Images In The Slow Rainy Night: 

Deborah and Lynnda begin collaborating on a series of cut-out people. 

The people stand about a foot and a half tall and are made of very thin plywood. Deborah paints one side, Lynnda paints the other. The paintings are unrelated to each other — in fact, as soon, as it's finished, each image is covered by brown paper before the cut-out is handed over to the other artist to paint. And both paintings are also unrelated to the image of the cut-out itself — usually recognizable silhouettes of stock characters, such as a lurking private eye or a swooning ballerina. 

Everyone Knows The London Bridge: 

Deborah cuts her hair, but she doesn't do this over the sink. She sits cross-legged on a small beach towel in front of the mirror mounted on the inside panel of a closet door and the door is open, which means that Deborah is sitting in the hallway. 

Bangers & Mash: 

A bobby's hat suddenly appears in our fridge. We survive this. We sleep. We cook. 

The London Bridge Everyone Knows: 

Deborah washes the dishes, but she doesn't do this over the sink. She sits cross-legged on a small beach towel in front of the walk-in closet. I sit cross-legged beside her. Sometimes I dry dishes. Sometimes I spontaneously read aloud a sentence or two from a short story about a woman named Deborah who sits on a small beach towel while cutting her hair in front of a mirror, which shows her the room upside down so that her hair falls on the ceiling. The short story is one I'm still working on and Deborah complains that many of the dishes are not thoroughly dry. 

A Nocturnal So And So: 

My cousin Rachel, how can we describe Rachel, so lovely, so cynical, so much larger than life? Rachel, the intrepid New Yorker, only leaves downtown to visit London. Now that we live here, she visits us. When we lived on 57th Street, we never saw her. Rachel the bond trader. So wiry; so lithe; so very brassy in the aggressive investment banker sense of the word which, face it, only carries the exact weight of her portfolio — currently a fair bit of currency, $600,000,000. Brass is Rachel's metal, just as lead is Lynnda Lithe-Morton's. Rachel hates painters but seduces theatre people without restraint. Now she's after royalty. 

Rachel fills a room like no one else, although we're always shocked to see that she is actually quite small, perhaps only four and a half feet tall. No one is more beautiful than Rachel, so effortlessly elegant. Brass again, shiny and bright. 

Brass has weight. More Buddhas are made of brass than any other substance except flesh. 

So when our Rachel telephones us one day from the lower West Village to tell us that she wants a duchess, and later that night we hear an unusually loud knock, we expect to open the door and to see Rachel standing there, grinning, a member of the Royal Family clenched between her teeth. 

The Plan: 

We are trying to save money, so, although it is Rachel's first night in town with us, we decide to cook dinner at home then take a stroll around the neighborhood. 

Rachel wants to walk first, then eat. 

ln the small park around the corner, we spot Alexander Markham, Lynnda Lythe-Morton's assistant, standing by the fountain. He holds a stick in each hand: he's moving these sticks, hitting a third stick, keeping it aloft, sometimes flipping it back and forth, sometimes spinning it like a propeller. We had no idea. We watch Alexander for several minutes before we continue our tour. We wave to Dahlia when we pass the bakery and stop to chat with Giles when we buy our carrots and peas. 

At dinner, Rachel asks us about our favorite place in all of London. 

"Orrick's Well," we both say at once. Rachel smiles, "Which is?" 

"A night club!" says Deborah as I say, ''A book store!" 

Rachel nods. 

"Both," we confirm.  

Rachel takes a sip of brandy. "Well then," she says, "that's where I'll go to meet my duchess.'' 

"I have to get up early tomorrow," I say. 

"You don't understand," Rachel smiles again. Each smile is an individual event for her, which must be fully completed before she speaks. ''I don't want company." 

Deborah sighs. 

Orrick's Well: 

This is a place where we recognize every self-centered myopic person who ever despaired of not having the last dance with the object of their true desire — the only reason we know about this is that someone tells us, isn't this so? 

But, of course, although there is music and booze, there is no dancing. It's a bookstore, after all. 

So how does it work, this magic? We hear about it later, several days later. First we get a telegram the next morning, from Rachel, a single word: Libby. 

Later, two or three days later, we receive a phone call during which we hear about the importance of simultaneously reaching for the only copy of Gertrude Stein's only mystery novel. This causes a brief domestic dispute: Deborah, perhaps correctly, maintains that all of Gertrude Stein's novels are mysteries; while I, contrarily, assert that there is a difference between being mysterious and being a mystery novel, a novel of genre. This prompts Deborah to immediately ask whether or not Gertrude Stein's novel fulfills the demands of the mystery genre, which of course, it does not, although, it does invent a new genre. This discussion expands our activities: we pull books from shelves and stand on opposite sides of our tiny living room, reading aloud to one another. This is the sort of disagreement at which we excel: we serve wine and microwave popcorn and draw in more and more texts. 

Still later, we receive other phone calls from Rachel. Although we understood the single word, Libby, to be a name, a diminutive, we didn’t realize that this Libby was the Libby sometimes bantered about on Fleet Street, the family nickname that somehow became the public nom du choice for the Duchess Anne Marie Dumbarton. 

When we beg Rachel for an explanation, she merely says that it seems neither she nor Libby had read Gertrude Stein's mystery novel. She says this so simply that, even over the phone, we can hear her shrug. 

West End, Loose End: 

Giles the Vegetable Boy and Dahlia the Bakery Girl become silhouettes. So does the cigar-smoking widow from Gloucestershire. 

The Well Of Orrick's Well: We Explicate: 

Lynnda Lythe-Morton has a friend, Samantha Orrick, who always dreamed of owning her own bookshop. When she inherited her debonair but sickly half-brother's night dub, she was overjoyed. The bar had never really made money, she knew, although the house band had a following that was enthusiastic beyond the boundaries of normal tavern devotion. Samantha began to make plans for the installation of the shelving, but she did not have the heart to let the band go, nor the bartender, nor the waitpersons who, she delightedly discovered, were unusually literary types who became extremely interested in what particular volumes of fiction she planned to stock. Then there were the bon-bons. Her brother, you see, had over-jovial but stalwart customers (whom he called his bon-bon vivants) and these fellows were insistent that brother Jeremy's wake be held in the club. When Samantha acquiesced, they ruined the ceremony by demanding that the club never close. When faced by the watery or perhaps merely rummy eyes of the band, the literary enthusiasm of the waitpersons and the potential loyalty and undying attendance of the bon-bons, well, then, Samantha had her business. 

And she sells lots of books. Samantha Orrick was born to sell books and sell books she does. She has a special authors menu that changes at a greater rate than her special drinks menu (7:3). 

The well of Orrick's Well which is embossed on the matchboxes, printed on the paper napkins and carved into the old wood sign which swings above the front door like a tavern sign — this overgrown stone image of quagmire and climbing vines is a made-up thing, a fiction, a private joke between Jeremy and the bon-bons; and the bon-bons aren't telling, not even to Samantha, who has become their own true Ariadne. 

Slightly Obvious Our Obvious Slights: 

Back home, our government creates yet another international blunder, but we do not cancel our modest cocktail party.  

Instead, when cornered, we simply say: “Was it Oscar Wilde who said that if Paris is the party, then London must be the hangover?" 

Or we say: ''During the American Civil War, England sold rifles and cannonballs to the South. The South badly needed these things since, unlike the North, it had no munitions factories. The Government of the United States, the North, appealed to England to stop sending weapons and ammunition to the South. To no avail. The North tried to set up a naval blockade of the South but ships slipped through by ducking below the Caribbean. Finally, the North sent a gunship up the Thames and threatened to include England in our war." 

Courting The Duchess Dumbarton: 

Our Rachel knows her movies well. This morning she announces to us that she is going to go to Savile Row in order to be fitted for a shirt for her tuxedo. 

Introduction: 

The Duchess takes us into her flat which is painted black but the furniture which is also painted black and has matching black upholstery and black cushions, has outlines on it painted in white, so, for example, it is easy for us to determine ,where to sit, when sitting becomes appropriate, which, surely, it must. We slowly realize that we don't know how to act, how to speak, how to move. We are clumsy. We are Americans. We watch Rachel closely as if she has changed into something non-American: we can save ourselves from great embarrassment by emulating Rachel, we believe, but only for an instant before we understand that she's far too intimate with the Duchess for us to imitate her, even in the way she crosses the room. Rachel leaps into our arms. This will be so simple, we suddenly realize. We are simply Rachel's family, her friends — perhaps all of this is obvious to you, the indigenous reader, but to us, it was something of a discovery, no less momentous than the realization that not all members of the Royal Family live in the Palace. 

A Modest Address On Pandemonium Square: 

Just when all is quiet again, Lynnda Lythe-Morton's regular gallery refuses to show her collaborations with Deborah, which makes Deborah feel dreadful, so much so that she offers to withdraw from the project — but it is too late, there is a gleam in the eyes of Lynnda Lythe-Morton. She gets a new gallery. But Lynnda and Deborah don't get their own show. They are simply part of a group show. But they sell a work before the show opens, and another later on, and they are featured in one of three photos accompanying the prominent review on the front page of the Arts & Diversions section of Imbroglio. Behind the silhouettes of their two dueling private eyes, just above the umbrellas crossed in mid-air, are their own smiling faces. 

Errants Abroad: 

“Would you mind if I reinstated, for a very brief moment, the presence of light in this subtle corner?" 

The Duchess flicks the match in between her left thumbnail and the edge of the wicker witch's mask — the flame flares very high and continues to burn bright and true before the widow from Gloucestershire's cigar. 

"Well." says Alexander Markham, "I understand how Rachel met Libby." 

They bow. 

"But what I don't understand ..." — Alex pauses long enough for Deborah to look at me, for me to look at Deborah, for both of us to look at Rachel then the Duchess then Lynnda Lythe-Morton and the widow from Gloucestershire, then suddenly realize that everyone is looking at us, Deborah and me — "is how you said Rachel never visited you when you lived on 57th Street in New York, but, before that, when we first met, you told me that you met each other standing in line, here in London, in Garfields." 

This causes Deborah and I to begin a good laugh. 

Rachel waves the arm that's not holding the Duchess, "That's so simple to explain,” she says, but she doesn't dare, not with Deborah's hand clamped over her mouth. 

Why Novels Can Be Written While Simple Gestures Are Left Unfinished: 

There comes a time when even Rachel must return to work. 

Which she does. 

Despite her paramour, the Duchess. 

Yes, even our Rachel must return to the States. The Duchess comes over to our flat for chapati and stories of New York. 

The Duchess does not understand why Rachel wouldn't let her come along. Deborah smiles but clasps my hand a bit too hard. Rachel, our Rachel. 

The stories we tell are the stories we know. New York, New York. You know them too. 

Rachel returns in three days with a visa and a new job at an old bank in the City. 

The Duchess introduces her to the Lord Mayor. 

Our Place In The Centre Of Time: 

Which means that now Rachel's portfolio has the exact weight of £397,500,000. 

The Plot Reinstated: 

One late afternoon just before dusk, when we are walking around the corner to the small neighborhood park in order to watch Alexander Markham perform with fire for the first time (publicly), we bump into my former professor and lover, Maria Stewart. 

"Goodness," I say, when she introduces me to her companion, Sven Olofsson, an epi-phenomenologist from Stockholm. He too hesitates before reaching for my hand. We overcome this awkward pettiness and actually clasp hands — although, it must be written., without ever quite shaking hands — the gesture, somehow, is left incomplete. 

"Funny,'' says Sven, “I thought you were just a fictional character." 

"It's worse than that," I confirm, "I thought I was you." 

My former lover may be blushing but my former professor relishes this new and added irony. Too bad, I think, that these two personas of Maria Stewart are so effortlessly sexy and singular. 

Deborah clears her throat and we all look at her. 

Which is when Alex lights his torches and begins juggling. 

A Swedish Philosophy Professor's Second Tour Of London: 

There is Shepherd's Pie.  

And here — here is Chutney! 

No Lollipops For The Unspoken Word: 

The sun is shiny bright. 

Although we are in our dreary flat. 

I am deeply inside our flat — sitting at the small writing table in the corner beneath the stairs leading to our upstairs neighbors and the hallway leading to our front door — this writing desk always makes me feel as if I am in a small cabin or a fisherman's shack. 

Deborah is reading in the bay window when she calls me over. 

"Didn't I tell you?" She points at two men wearing raincoats. One of the men hands something to the other man who suddenly waves his hand in disgust. 

Return To Pandemonium Square: 

Deborah sits cross-legged on a small beach towel in front of the closet mirror. She is painting. She is painting a Swedish philosophy professor raising his eyebrows in shock and dismay as he reads a torrid bestseller. The entire painting is done in black and white except for the bookcover which is garish as well as torrid. 

Oddly enough, the professor has my face. 

Deborah sits in front of the mirror because she is painting the surface of the mirror. 

The perceptive audience member will note that the professor uses a worn business card as a bookmark. 

The Mask Of The Wicker Witch, Clap Hands: 

Deborah invites Dahlia the Bakery Girl, who can't miss class unfortunately, and Giles the Vegetable Boy, who does come, and speaks quite well about art; so well, in fact, that we look at him twice and realize that he is quite a bit older than we've always taken him for — he has a relaxed quality, a bit of hippie boyishness, that makes him seems so much younger. His articulate remarks and sense of aesthetics are not what surprise us the most — it is his mother, who, it turns out, is a retired television actor. She once starred in a Sixties detective show, and, in fact, was the quintessential bohemienne of that generation. She continues to enjoy her slender beauty and charm — her eyes are as striking as ever — that odd mixture of soft playfulness and narrow determination that reminds one of a cat. We are all enamored. There's not a soul in the gallery who doesn't want Giles' Mum to curl up in their lap. 

We discover that Giles played the violin as a lad but gave it up during puberty. 

Lynnda Lythe-Morton tells Giles and his mother about the widow from Gloucestershire and her truckload of tapes, but they merely nod as if similar things like that are always happening. 

A Village Tale: 

Yet, it is Giles that tells us the following, at the end of the evening, as we crowd around a long solid table in The Iron Whales Pub: 

My father's aunt married a prosperous farmer in Bohemia. About two months after she moved onto the farm, her husband had to go to Prague to buy some cattle. Alone on the farm, she was awakened one night by a knock on the door. It was a clear night — no rain, no clouds, no full moon — nothing at all to make her fear for her safety. A knock in the middle of the night, she thought, must mean that a traveler's in trouble. What else could bring someone to a farm so far away from town in the middle of the night? Must be a cracked wheel rim or a broken wagon axle. So, she opened the door and saw an extremely thin man with wild red hair and a long unkempt beard which fell halfway down his chest. The hair on top of his head was even longer, gathered in a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck, with loose strands falling over his shoulders. He wore no hat. No overcoat. His clothes — simple, like a suit, but not a suit — were oddly cut and black — or so washed out and covered with grease that they would have been grey were it not for the grease which made them black again. His boots were covered in so much dried mud that she couldn't discern the original color of the leather. The sickly sweet smell of rotting elderberries was so strong that she felt like slamming the door, just to get away from the odor. And she would have done, had she not been so awestruck by the sight of his pale skin which looked so flawlessly vulnerable in the light cast by her lamp. Like a child, she thought. 

"Don't be afraid," he said, his voice harsh as a whisper, only he wasn't whispering. ''I mean you no harm. I just want to sleep this night in your barn." 

Now she was trapped. She wasn't a woman to treat charity lightly. Nor was she a woman who could forget familial obligations. There was something fascinating yet menacing about this stranger at her door. His eyes were an intense black that glistened whenever he moved his head. Not being one to refuse a request for help, she had to think fast. On the one hand, in the barn were three horses her husband treasured above all other things. But the night was too cold for sleeping outside. And what was it that should make this thin man with unkempt hair not yield to the temptation of riding off with the finest trio of two year old Bohemian mares in the valley? On the other hand, if this man were a thief, would he present himself to the mistress of the estate before robbing her blind? Not unless, she answered herself, he was a man of outrageous zeal who could flaunt his illegal intentions so blatantly. Now, my father’s aunt had a capricious streak in her personality that was the talk of our family for over two generations. If he's a thief like that, she thought, then let him stay with my blessing. 

So, she said, "Of course, make your bed in my hay, but be gone before I do my morning chores." 

The man bowed, never lessening the intensity of his gaze. She told him the location of the well, so he could wash, and the henhouse, so he could break an egg or two before he renewed his journey. The man thanked her, then said, "Why trust me? Could I not be a thief? A Murderer? Or a scoundrel of even worse intentions?" 

My father's aunt laughed and said, "A horse thief carries spare bridles or, at least, several lengths of rope. A murderer, a gun or a hatchet. As for a person inclined to do even worse than that, refusing the hospitality of an honest soul is the worst thing I could possibly imagine." 

The stranger laughed and turned away, walking in fast sure strides toward the barn — almost as if he already knew its location. 

My father's aunt never saw him again. 

And, in the next morning, the horses were still in their stalls. 

When her husband returned from Prague, she told him that she had let a wanderer sleep in the barn, but he didn't show much concern. Yet, when she went on to describe the man's face and clothing and wild hair, her husband grabbed his chest and fell across the kitchen table. She carried him to bed, but he never regained consciousness. He died three days later. She asked the priest, the village tradesmen, all the neighboring farmers in the valley, and all the members of her husband's family, who joined her in mourning, who the man might have been — but no one knew. The only thing they agreed on was that he was not from their village. 

The World ls Our Pomegranate: 

It is the Duchess who says, ''Odd, isn't it, how no one is ever from our own village?" 

And then we know that this will always be London for us — we will always be sitting here at the long table in our favorite pub, surrounded by our friends, listening to Giles tell us ghost stories. 

“London Stories” was originally published in First Intensity (#11 — Fall 1998.)