Prologue
“ It all starts somewhere.”


Wilson Abernathy was on his back and settled into a pile of snow. He might have been making snow angels but he was not. Instead, he was simply staring skyward. It was one of those Colorado mountain spring days when you can see and sense the glitter in the air, flashes from the corner of the eye and gone, as if tiny particles of the oxygen itself were expanding into thousands of small explosions. He sensed these but it was the clouds which had his eye, drifting slow above him...the puffed white shapes transformed into rolling hils and houses. He could have easily imagined these structures anywhere and without the need of clouds, but his mind and eye patterned them to that purpose.

His cross-country skis splayed from his feet and long stretched legs making angles of hickory, legs and snow. Wilson Abernathy was a builder, and an architect; this was the reason for this cloud shaping. At various times in his life he had worked most every construction trade from the filthy to the clean. This day he employed himself in none of these. Instead he was a backcountry skier, by himself, alone in the mountains near Aspen Colorado. He lay where he fell not because he was tired or hurt but because of the clouds above him, and these were his musings excuse for tracing houses in the sky.

He had needed the winter off. He had thought he needed years, and perhaps he would have taken them if he could. Left Michigan forever, never to return, if his sculptured flowing residence of glass and stone and massive beams and high soaring space had sold. It and his boat, the mooring, and the water...Sell it all. That had been the plan. Sell out... quit...escape for a time...reexamine...live modestly. But he wondered staring at these clouds that even if it all went tomorrow, and he secure with dollars for a time, was that what he wanted?

It had already been five months and he was again thinking of unique houses. Waking up in the middle of the night from dreams of spaces he had never seen or walked or lived in. Dreams of stairs just so and beams just right, windows the proper height, and ridge beams not too high or low but perfect in proportion. Dreaming of houses where the spaces soared enough to be grand but not so much to diminish. That fine balance which was almost never right for others, but was easy for him. Easy, if he had the dreams. And he was dreaming again those dreams of houses.

Departing Michigan to Aspen he had planned to slowly start over. He had formed a Colorado company, bought insurance taken tests and paid for licenses. There was now a project waiting if he wanted; a remodel he had designed for a musician friend. He had thought this would be enough. It would give him time to ride his bike again and hike and think of other things, but lying here in the snow he was not so sure. The recent dreams and these houses in the sky made him wonder.

Was it enough and would it provide enough money if the summer passed and he was left living in Colorado while still paying a whopping mortgage on a piece of empty ‘architectural brilliance’, in Michigan? You might ask; doesn’t brilliance sell The answer is not always, and not this bit of Wilson’s “brilliance”... not when you have built unique beauty and space while the market has switched to old and moldy. That was the problem; he was trapped by the past, his recent and the more distant of a hundred years before.

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It seemed that every Nouveau Riche who wanted a second home in Northern Michigan wished to pretend that grandpa had been a Rockefeller or a Carnegie and not a tradesman, small-time salesman, or a factory man. They could not of course dust the common from their clothes. They should not have wished too. They should have listened to more Aaron Copeland. But they did wish this imagined social cleansing and thus did not want what he was selling. He was not selling old and moldy and English prints, he had not been so callous, or unprincipled to himself to embrace this fraud as Ralph Lauren had done with clothes (and perhaps Ralph did like old, but he doubted it). Anyway, he did not know Ralph Lauren, but he knew that Ralph Lauren was rich and he knew he was not.

Wilson had not imagined. His first project had sold. It was different, unique. But as the saying goes, “the masses are asses” and these new wealthy masses were no different in his mind. But to their lack of discredit they were no different from new money at any time or anywhere, no different from the Dickens dustman who became the “Golden Dustman” and now was the richest man in town...feeling outside and looking in, and wanting old to be accepted, or the Veneers from the same Novel. No different from the horribly rich Robber Barons of the past who had thieved and stolen and then attacked old money with their New Port Rhode Island. He had built for people with the confidence of old money and the only ones buying were those with new, and these folks wanted old.

Oh, there had been a few with interest, more than enough to keep him busy, but they had wanted his designs, new ones, unique ones for themselves and not his house. Other wise he was discovering that people confident in their own taste are rare in the world and he had not realized this until recently.

It was this same day, later, in the evening after he had returned to his small apartment when the phone rang. It was almost serendipity, because when he reluctantly rose and answered it was a call from Michigan. A call from a man he did not know or had not heard of, knew nothing about at all. But the man knew of him.

“Wilson Abernathy”, the phone cracked and snapped with a poor connection, “Wilson Abernathy, I’m looking for Wilson Abernathy.”

“You have him”, he said.

“Where are you”, said the phone. “Is this Colorado?”

“Right again”, said Wilson, “Who is it?”

“Is this the builder?” said the phone.

“Architect Builder”, he said.

“Well, sure, I knew that, this is Tim Stevens. I’ve heard of you...seen that house you did on Lake Arnaud. I may be interested in you”.

“O...K”, said Wilson. “Tell me. I don’t think I know you, have we met?”

“No”, said the phone, “no we haven’t, but I’ve seen the house you built.”

“I’ve done a few”, said Wilson grabbing a beer from the refrigerator and sitting down. “Which one was it?”

“Charlie Larsen’s”, said the phone, “Charlie’s a friend of a friend of mine and we were over there last Christmas. I liked the house. Are you interested in building a house for me?”

“Perhaps”, said Wilson.

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Could this be the answer was this the reason for his recent dreams, the day, the houses in the sky of the afternoon, he wondered?

“Tell me what you are looking for”, said Wilson, half listening as this unknown Tim rattled on about the location, his lot, how beautiful, “the view”, and that he wanted a builder to start building soon.

“How soon?” said Wilson?

“Well we’d like to start next month, I need a builder. I’ve talked to a few already, but I liked that house of Charlie’s, looks like you know what you’re doing”.

Typical, he thought, typical. They looked at the house in December, figures, could have called months ago, but now it’s spring so now it’s go, go, go. These guys are all the same. They are the center of the world. Tim continued to ramble on. Wilson was half paying attention; he had experienced the same conversation, just the same, so many times before. Finally, he interrupted.

“You know I designed it too. I only do them if I do the designs, and build, and supervise the whole project”.

“Sure, sure”, said this unknown Tim, “Sure, I understand, so how much do you charge? These other guys said they could build for 175 a foot.”

“Well, It depends on what you build”, said Wilson, thinking why do they always ask that stupid question, as if houses were cans of soup or a pair of pants...all the same.

“I may be interested, he replied, “but I don’t bid, I’ll give you an estimate once we have the plans. Usually I am with in ten percent or so if nothing changes."

“Well, that fellow McCray said 175 do you know him?”

“No” said Wilson ignoring the 175. “It would mean switching gears; I had planned to stay here, in Colorado. There’s a project I was about to start, I suppose I could set it up and keep track of it from there. I’ve a friend...” No need to tell the guy he thought that it was a remodel and that he was not that excited about it. Houses in the sky?

“Look I need more information, but I am only interested if I can design your project if it is something special, something I can be proud of. Then yeah, I think I could come back for a special project. Can you fax and E-mail me anything you can and mail me a survey? Do you have a survey?"

“The one that came with the lot.”

“That’s probably not good enough; send me the information, as soon as I get it I’ll get back to you. Look, send me everything you have. Is it a subdivision?”

“I think so”, said this Tim of the phone. "Yeah, it must be, there are flags all over the place.”

“Well send me the rules the envelopes, everything you’ve got. I’ll look at and we can talk. Send it Fed-Ex, and we can talk in a couple days”.

“Ok”, said the phone, looking forward to it”.

Wilson was about to say more, about to say that he would send him one of his questionnaires, but the phone went dead. The fellow had hung up.

Well, there you go, he thought. Here’s the opportunity. Do you want it, oh but you don’t know do you, and no, now he was again not so sure. There had been a reason for his exit to Colorado. Remember how you felt when you left. A reason for it, you were sick of it. As if a few hours thinking of designs are enough to switch again, God, are you indecisive. He was not sure. He always became so involved. If he went back, if he started again, he knew the project would consume him, probably for at least two years. True fulfillment was selfish with time. Do you want this, again? He would be left with only a few weeks skiing and a little summer sailing for the next two years or three.
Is this what you want, it’s decision time baby?

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And after a while his demon shouting- advising, his searching for a decision, he decided that if he could have it as he wished he would remain in Colorado. There had been a reason for retreating here, he thought, he had been sick of it, and he was tired of that gossipy little town too. This little, smaller, project would be ‘Just alright’. He could look for more. But there was the matter of his empty house. He looked about the little apartment thinking that living in that Beauville home was like living in light and sculpture, his sculpture, and Michigan would be warm in summer, not cold for a while.

He could go sailing again...couldn’t do that in the mountains, and his boat was just sitting there in dry dock, waiting. He imagined his little sloops surging rise and fall. Its movement up and down the waves, wings of sail full, mass and momentum, and he smelled the water, that morning crisp Lake Michigan water, and a North wind sending the haze from the sky...the wind on his face as he reached North, and then this circle of thought would hit him again. Rotating around his questions, fueled by four beers, two whiskeys, and the three cd’s of Gounod’s Faust. He could not make up his mind. Aware that it was a decision for tomorrow, or when he learned more, and as Margareta rose up to heaven and Gounod’s Faust went down to hell, he fell asleep where the houses came again, and then dreams of sailing, and music he had never heard.

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Events moved rapidly over the next week. Tim’s material arrived. He spoke with the surveyor, and arranged for a more detailed survey and its transmission by E-mail to his computer. His realtor called saying “Your house is not selling”, wishing to lower the price, and Wilson had fired him for this. Summer was the selling season he would market it himself. Tim examined Wilson’s portfolio and agreed to Wilson’s terms.

Not sure yet, in his decision to leave Colorado, Wilson spoke with his former client Charlie Larson who asked his friend, who asked his friend, about the nature and the character of Tim. Tim Stevens was rich from restaurant franchises, and of solid reputation. He was an honest man, they said.

He inquired into Wet lands on the property, bogs and tiny rivulets which neighbors could maneuver with wet land law to keep new neighbors out. These were absent, or approved by the Department of Natural Resources of Michigan, and the Army Corp of Engineers. He read the subdivision covenants, the height limits, the parameters of design, the stone, the wood, the required appearance, which seemed be anything one wanted as long as there were no asphalt shingles, fake stone, or “bad” colors to the house. A contract was signed.

So, it was early April when you might have seen if you were traveling too, somewhere out along the Interstate, Wilson Abernathy, a man of almost middle age who had pulled up his real and metaphorical stakes yet once again, rolling, trailer in tow, across the Great Plains of America...Listening to talk radio and imagining the prairie grasses gone, the Buffalo extinct except as designer beef, and Indians departed, leaving only their names.

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He sensed the possibility that he had made a Faustian bargain at this beginning, a bargain with himself. His life--the devil; his compromise--his soul; his Margarita--his achievement and gain. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He could only hope that he made it past part one, the Faust of Gounod, and into part two, where Faust and the Devil built magnificent worlds.


Chapter One
If everything remained the same

There would be nothing new


He remembered the island from long ago when his family had vacationed here. This Island between the lakes -- Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and farther north, Superior. It was fitting, he thought, that so much history came together at this freshwater junction which defined Michigan, just as Michigan defined his own small history.

The past was heavy and full at this intersection of lake and land where Indian canoes had traversed, where French, English, and Americans had all spent lives, or portions of lives... For adventure, for beauty, for profit, for trade, for control of a waterway that might lead to or be the Northwest
Passage. That mythic watery path to the Pacific, which calls throughout our nations early history, a ‘manifest destiny’, years before Mr. Greeley…it and the beaver trade were the reasons for the island fort, which rising from the bluffs above him sat like Gibraltar in command of the surrounding freshwater sea.
He remembered -- adrift in his mind.

He heard the horses' hoofs from a four-year-olds summer past, percussive sound, muted rubber shoes on asphalt, and he remembered an avenue that was large and long and grayish black. Tall trees lined its edges, defining wide veranda walkways, meandering down the hill. He heard the horses from the carriage its wheels red and seats black leather, the driver’s whip before him lightly snapping at the horses hindquarters.

It was one of his earliest vacation memories, the horse’s rump swaying as it climbed the hill, he and his parents in the fancy coach, slowly moving upwards… steep loamed island granite and a white Shangri-la of an estate above them, approaching with their carriage’s progress, their driver wearing red and a top hat. 1954 and Mackinac Island, men with sticks hitting the ground to his right-deep meadows to his left

“Look!”, he had said, “look!”, pointing at the men with sticks, seeing a white ball.

“Look!”

“It’s a game, Wilson, golf”.

The game, silly game, another man hit the ground, and then threw his stick. It held no great wonder for him, on this morning when everything he saw was bright, new, and exciting…Men, woman, strolling, riding, speeding down the hill.

Every so often the horse would stop unbidden and drop road apples, farm smells, oats, runny and round, then move on up the hillside. Black men sweated upwards and sped down on rickshaw bicycle contraptions, ferrying, carting, skinny and fat, tan and pasty, white folks to and from the hotel. Mackinac Island.

“You’re going to love it Willy. There are no cars here only horses and bicycles, and carriages.”

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A rickshaw with a dark frame and yellow wicker bench sped by, the bench-black leather clad, beneath the fat buttocks of an old lady, her head covered with a floppy thing of a hat -white with a wilted flower at its side.

It was summer and he was four.

“You will have your own bike. You can pick it”, his father had said.

He could not yet ride a bike but what his father meant was a tricycle. He had seen them near the ferry, another little boy with one, green, with wooden blocks attached so he could reach the pedals. The horse stopped and oozed again, “giddup” said the driver, flicking the whip-“giddup”.

The Hotel was huge before them, full of gardens and flowers, red carpet steps and dark smiling men in uniforms.

“Welcome sir, young master, Mrs. Welcome to the Grand Hotel”.

And up the wide steps they had followed, as their ferried baggage. Up the wide steps to a veranda, a deck, a porch, column after column and flag after flag, east and west, high ceilinged…forever. Then through great doors.

“The Grand” had said his father. “See the pool”, had said his mother, pointing down, and out, and away towards more gardens, and a light blue Paul Bunyan foot shaped hole of water, and beyond that deep blue waters-the Straits of Mackinac…Water, and ferries, and boats everywhere.

“Hurry up Wilson, we are going to the room”, his father had said, “Hurry up now, you may look later”.

He followed looking at everything, all new and glowing- wonderfully full of life. All new.

Towering above him was the check in with rows and rows of keys. He could barely see them and another uniformed man.

“Your name sir”… “Applegate, Applegate-two rooms”.

Bang, clang, an old brass elevator open to the lobby, he looked down before the floor was lost. Two floors and then a wide hallway with lights on blue papered walls, and carpet-tan beige and dappled green with bordered dark wood, shiny door after shiny door; the brass number said 207. They walked inside behind the man, who set their bags on the table, beds, and opened a door to another room.

“This ones yours Willy”, his mother said. While his father fished in his pockets and handed something to the man.

“Thank you sir”, “thank you, if you need anything”.

The man leaving- and out the window he had seen again the blue water with the dotting white boats, confettied white-capped foam, a horn sounding and then another…red, right, returning.

He was jumping from his clothes, almost -- in excitement, his father sitting down, his mother placing clothes in drawers.

“Just a minute Wilson, we’ll explore”.

Horse sounds below, and flower smells, people back and forth, then another carriage. This one with a surrey and fringe, open, with many people ridding, gawking, pointing at the hotel- up at the wide windows, at him.
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He heard a ferry and a foghorns sound. The blasts from the ferry and the lower louder harbor light were sounds shaking him from the past. Yes that had been how it was that first time. That first visit to the Island. Sweat dripped on his nose, fell to his chin, and rolled down the shallow slope of his belly, burned ripe red and itching above blue nylon. All of him lounging in the stern of his current client's yacht, a bloody Mary in his hand. Well, what used to be a bloody Mary… some of it consumed and some seeping into the cushions beneath him- the glass tipped over by the past.

Jesus, it was noisy. His head throbbed from the bar, and the night before, Horses' hoofs clattered with snare drum rhythms, pulling a carriage going by. Well, some things had not changed. There were still no cars on the Island. And the servants were poor white men now, the society having dumped at least some of its prejudice. There were few blacks working as they had before, possibly because it would be just too
ridiculous and unjust, to costume up some black man as if it were still the days of liveried slavery. This had changed and for the better he thought. But the statues in the park had remained the same.

The marina, Mackinac Island Marina, was before the street, before the park, before the old Victorians-The Park, shores where French trappers had first landed. Was it a park then, or mosquito swamp, or just a bunch of wickyups with Indians? God his mind was full. Too full he thought, staring into the water. Too many years, too full. The water was slick with green, and filth, and oil…mung. Had it been mungy in 1954? He had not noticed.

He looked to shore again, a white pushcart, a scrawny man with a shovel, unshaven and smoking. Every so often the man bent, shovel down, and scooped up some horse dung. He was no longer black either. Wilson wondered if the blacks would even want the job. If you listened to the news in Detroit, the answer would have been no. They were all supposedly doing crack and killing. But he did not believe this. It was just another one of those twisted thoughts that arrived with those from the south, on their frantic weekend journeys north...Prejudice the result of too hectic lives. Jazz, to crack, to killing- all from carriages, no- he didn’t buy it. Too much, his head was too full, too much.

And how had he become talked into this anyway. Sitting on this elaborate plastic barge, which might have been a living room with engines... A bar inside and bar out. The temptation on yachts like this always to overindulge. He got up to pour a little more, gin and tonic now, sun over the yardarm, then decided against it. Where were his clients who had dragged him here? Where were Tim and Daphne. He felt like he was on stage or waiting in the wings and god he hated it, this part of it. Hated performing, hated selling, and he was becoming worse at it. You would think he would be becoming better, old hat, falling of a log better. But no he was just thinking of drinking too early. Better not... might need to sound wise and witty...smart with houses. Jesus, he had begun to hate it. Begun? Or had it been a while now? Quite a while, like a toothache growing.

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He had sensed this inconsistency in himself before he had departed Aspen, in fact it was in larger measure why he had left Michigan and retreated there in the first place. Knowing that at times he hated the whole process of it, the politics of work and life - the meetings, the bullshit, the money. Always the money! But it was this need of money which had sucked him back. That need and his desire to once again build another special sculpted home, to seek self worth through concrete, wood and stone. But the business of it all. This bill, that bill, this car, that car, this boat. Too much stuff. That is what had captured him. How had he let it happen, thinking of the days when everything he owned fit in his little Austin Healy? He had started out so pure. He farted long like the ferry, then off the stern behind him he heard a cry.

A man was approaching, potbellied and brown, astride a black plastic, low, sleek thing that was mainly engine. There was a bikinied woman on the bow and the man was shouting at him. Well, not at me, thought Wilson, but at this boat, this massive self indulgence that I'm aboard.

“Master Mind Two, Master Mind Two”.

Master Mind two—where did they get these names? The boat looked more like an Ethel to him. Wilson rose.
“Yeah”

“Can you give us a hand?” said the fellow. “Alicia’s not much good at docking. She makes a better port.”

Amazing, he thought, You fool you’ve gone and trapped yourself again, trapped in the land of clods. The woman on the bow smiled and jiggled--shaking her hair.

“Sure”, he said gesturing. “Have you talked to the Harbormaster”?

“Kenney”, said the man, “Kenny, I’m a friend of Tim and Daphne”.

Tim and Daphne were his clients. Wilson left and grabbed the line wrapping it back and forth.

“Better check with the Harbormaster”.

“Hi”, said Alicia, giving him one of those you want me stares, traveling downward and lingering at his sunburned baggage of a gut. He sucked it in, then let it back out. What the hell, he had been down that route before, he was on no stage for that.. There lay terror and horrible expense.

“Well, see you latter, Holler”. He climbed back aboard the yacht, he had not noticed, The Master Mind Two or Too was it? Anyway, yacht, boat, plastic floating monstrosity, whatever- wishing gin he grabbed a Coke instead. Then looking back at Alicia who was smiling at him; he remembered past despair.

Actually, the Island had been his idea.
“We want a Victorian” they had said at the third meeting in May after all his work on the first plan. “Something that looks substantial”…and the wife, Daphne, had brought pictures of houses she liked.
“Margie gave me these when she saw your plan, all my friends like this look better.”

He had looked then, hideous houses, too much, to full of porches and turrets, gee gaws and junk. “I haven’t done a Victorian in years” he had replied. “It’s too bad you did not like my first design”… at the same time wondering why had they come to him? Why had they bothered him in Aspen, they had seen his past projects. His houses were special, sculpted, contemporary with perfect open spaces, yet none were the same accept for the white and oak and light. Why him? And it was too bad. That first plan had been almost perfect. Two, no three weeks on it, proud of its space and the use of the property, the days tromping in the spring siteing it; all now for naught, too bad!

“I liked it”, said Tim.

“Me too”, Daphne now, “ I liked it but it’s not what I wanted. I want this”, she said again thrusting the pictures at him. “This”.

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“We aim to please”, he replied, “A Victorian could be interesting, might be fun to do something like I did in the Seventies again, something totally different from my last two”.

But the pictures were terrible. Tiny rooms in a mansion full of too much altogether. Why him?

“I love this one” Daphne had said. “I just love it”...shoving the picture in front of him.

The photo was of room, a space, so full of doilies, tables, vases and knickknacks, that one could barely see the floor-hardly his style. And a room with windows divided into little panes, divided to look old, like when they could only make them small. The result a lack of light. And the outside had stone. He liked that; and some roundy doos, well, they were ok. However the building, the building, was just all too much. Still, he needed work, he had agreed to design and build them a house. One of his Aspen friends bits of joking verse came to mind.

“Every Rich man today, it seems wants a camp. Something musty and old but no home for a tramp”.....Fuck!

But they had paid him for the first plan- maybe he could design a minimalist Victorian, one with open spaces and not so many things-sell them on that idea. At least it would be money, he made a lot on the plans, the drawing. It would be at least another 7,000 before they ever got to working drawings.

However; this building, this picture, was Mr. Potato head, in contrast to anything he had ever done-horrible. Potato head architecture--here a turret, there a turret, here a dormer, there a dormer, jammed willy-nilly into the side of a building with way too many gables. No sense of design at all just stuff on top of stuff, gingerbread do-das onward, misplaced, heading toward some house graveyard of poor design. “Ugh”

How I can I do this? Then it dawned on him Mackinac Island- there were fine 1880’s houses there, large and impressive but not too much, the accents- well done but limited, a special round porch, one onion turret, a few dormers, and wisely placed. They could steal design from them. Who cares, Victorians, there were thousands of them, nothing unique or special about them unless it was just that one had more crap and fizz than the next one. But the ones on Mackinac- not too bad. Still....thousands of times before. That is when he had suggested.

“Let’s go to Mackinac Island”.

He had been there so many times with his family, and on sailboat races. Or alone and private dropping in for one night, for supplies, and a sail around the Island on his own boat before moving on- farther North.

“Let’s go to Mackinac Island, check out those houses”.

But he meant for a day, and then departure, and then privacy away from this Daphne and Tim.

It was best to take a while to know ones clients. To let them fill out the questionnaire; how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, did they read, what did they want in a home? Then he required time alone, to think. He had done this all once. Well, he better do it again. Just to check, in case this Margie, Daphne’s friend, had opinions concerning baths and beds and bookshelves too.

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And they had suggested the boat trip… what could he say, he was a sucker for the water? So here he was, trapped, on their Clorox bottle of a boat- on Mackinac Island, they absent, and he mentally telling himself to watch the booze. Don’t lose it. He would have to eat dinner with them, chat with them, sleep near them. Oh well, maybe it would not be so bad, tomorrow they would tour the Island and look at the houses above the Grand. The ones facing the Straits like old dowagers weathered by time, commanding a vista which today includes the Mackinac Bridge, more magnificent then the golden gate. And a high bluff view that had seen sailing merchant ships, and before their time, trappers, frigates, Indian canoes, and bold clear fresh blue water… east and west since the last ice age.

“Wilson”, a shrill syrupy voice spoke his name.

“Hey buddy”, deeper now a man’s.

They were returning. His clients. Tim and Daphne of Grand Rapids Michigan, home of furniture, home of Amway, home of Gerald Ford, and one of Michigan’s enclaves of conservatism. Wilson did not know them well enough to know their politics, but he was beginning to suspect that they probably fit the place. What had the Detroit Free Press said of their city's greatest son when he stumbled into the presidency, “A simple local yokel whose ass has been struck by lightening”, well something like that. Grand Rapids!

He rose as she stepped aboard. Daphne was tan and red and in the process of becoming round, with a perk, pixied, cheerleader face starting to sag above tight pink bodice held mammaries. White shorts sheltered Cellulite, and her blond hair rolled out beneath a white baseball cap. Its logo, Mighty Burger, a ketchup oozing burger on spindling legs in the middle of her head. Tim followed his bubbling Daphne, wearing some sort of skipper costume, white hat, black brim-gold anchor ridden, shorts too white, and knee socks above Pat Boone shoes. How old were they? He guessed early fifties.

“Fudge”, she said dumping four white and blue boxes on the cockpit table.

“Howdy”, he said, “See anything?”

“Horses and shit”, Tim replied. “What a toilet”.

Well, perhaps thought Wilson, but no, the idea fought too powerfully with his memories and imagination. Sure there were many tourists and traps, fudge stores, bars, rubber tomahawk shops…and they’re all made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same- Pete Seggar, but that was houses.

“I like it”, said Daphne.

“You would”, replied her husband, now scratching at his legs and adjusting his socks perfection. “You would”.

“Did you look at any houses”, said Wilson?

“Know, we didn’t get that far. Daphne did not want to climb the hill.”

“My knees hurt”, she said.

“Drink?” , said Tim.

Tim moved to the bar, the outside bar. He poured some whiskey; lots of it, with ice, in a styrofoam container stamped Big Mighty, and gestured with the bottle.

“Coke”, said Wilson.

“Daphne”?

“Gin dear, large, dry”.

They sipped in the cockpit.

“Your friends arrived”.

He pointed to the Kenny yacht a few slips away, sleek, fast looking, black with gold letters. Midnight Vixen scripted on the side.

“That’s a fast boat”, said Tim, looking in envy and then back at the comfort of his barge. “All the paint that GM consumes. It comes from Kenny. It buys the toys”.

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Who were these people--this Tim, this Daphne, he wondered, now on their second cocktail, while he still tried to avoid the booze. “You have always been weak”, said the demon,“weak with expectation, weak because there was a future. No leaping into life’s pool and swimming, but instead, waiting, waiting for everything to become perfect”.

Tim and Daphne staring at him, she chattering something to him through a fog. Tim speaking too, something about even if it was a toilet it might be a good place for a ‘Mighty Burger’. He nodded and they both turned away to Kenny who had just arrived. The Baron of paint, stained dark as his heaviest brown

Was it possible that they and he were of the same species? White skinned, blond to brown haired, eyes blue, blue green and hazel. They looked the same, he and they, but they were not, he knew or thought. With too much false and misplaced pride? Did they think or were they simply in the process of consuming? Economic engines of flesh, of blood, making, spending, producing, buying. Engines of Mercantilism. Could they be real? He could touch them. He could hear them. He could smell them, and he knew he needed them, and they thought the same of he. But did any of them need one another at all?

The joy of building, the joy of designing, the smell of the wood, the fabrication, the filthy madding chaotic mess of it, of construction…land, to design, to muddy hole in the ground- he needed them. To concrete pouring, wood framed, shingled, high windowed, and fabricated sculptures- he needed them. Interiors wonderful with light, and marble… oak epoxied stairs- he needed them.

Too bad he was not the driver. The real driver of the bus being specie, currency, coin or paper, unknown, numbered, never seen, except in statements, bank statements, stock statements, money, bills and invoices. It made one boring but without it one might be a dullard. It should have opened passions doors; instead it so often slammed them shut. He knew it. Did they, this Tim, this Daphne? “You think too much”. The demon said. And he knew he did…and so often to no purpose, to no productivity. “Why are you thinking…Work, produce, grovel, you idiot-grovel. Listen to Marx, listen to his re-reasoned surplus value”, but Marx was wrong--too generous of opinion, you sell your life not your labor… and that was even fouler, especially if it was sold to people like these-who looked the same.

He slammed the demons door. Tim was speaking to him, at the same time nodding and gesturing to Kenny who now also held a drink in his hand. Tim of the ‘Pat Boone’ shoes and perfect socks. His nose straight and aquiline with a face too soft, too lightly sculpted for a man. Thin and graceful, almost androgynous, Nureyev without the satyr, next to the smaller, rounder, balder, tanner, Kenny-Baron of paint, whose head resembled one of those healthy brown eggs.

Survival of the fittest? Perhaps for Tim, sure did not look like it for Kenny. Well, shit, not either one of them. What an odd bit of history, someday…The Age of Rejects… a return to the tyranny of the Bourgeoisie ... Stop it, Stop it… he should have locked the door…Well, never would, never could. Never the less he tried again. Super glue?

“What’s up with ‘Mighty’ these days?” Said Kenny.

“Not good”, replied Tim.
Wilson listened.

Page 13

“I’ve got twenty five of those things now and everyone is losing equity, everyone is down- if I tried to sell. They keep cutting prices to compete with the big burgers, and my labor costs are up. That fucking Clinton! These kids, they want more than the minimum wage. I’m squeezed.”

Wilson looked, first left then right, about the Master Mind Two—the opulence, the white, the teak all new and shinning... Stroking the faux white leather beneath him. “Clods”, said the Demon, “Do you really want to get involved with these people, oh but you need to don’t you, idiot, those payments, you’re trapped and you’ve committed. The demon laughed. And he had, the contract was signed. They were talking to him. He saw their mouths moving, and he tugged himself back again to be polite.

“A Victorian is it?” Came from Kenny. “I hear you’re good”. “And Daphne”, he looked towards her smiling down, “She likes her Victorians”.

“Get out now, before it’s too late, get out now, walk away, idiot, idiot-demon laughter again.
“We’ll I’ve tended to the contemporary more the last ten years. But we can do it, we can do it”. “Ha, ha, ha”.

“I’m not sure if we can”, said Tim.
Daphne quickly turned towards her husband, “What?” As if she had never heard it before. Wilson wondered, great, what am I in for. Ha, ha, ha, ha-ha-ha.

“What?” She said again.

“Now, we have talked about this, Daphne.”

He thought. What am I? They’re oblivious to me. I am just here, another thing. Ha, ha, ha… Fuck! Daphne’s face was growing redder, her checks puffing out, her little nose retreating in her face.

“Fuck you Tim, It’s my dream.”

Wilson raised his eyes toward Kenny who shrugged as if to say, oh well, ‘shit happens’.

“Tim, you’re having a midlife crisis”, bellowed Daphne.

Tim sloshed his drink around its ice and took a long, slow, sip while frowning at his wife.

“Wilson have you had yours?”… “Well”?

“I’m not sure I haven’t always had one, always been in the midst of one”.

Tim’s affect was strange, body slouched yet Prussian rigid- eyes pooled blue, but like a Malamute’s, somehow more hollow than they might be. Dogs’ eyes, confused? His face smiling.

“Huh, what do you mean by that”?

If you need to describe it? It was like explaining physics to a fish, perhaps, but different, because Tim’s eyebrow was raised in curious skepticism, perhaps more in a lack of understanding of Wilson, than the idea.

“ Nothing”.

“I wasn’t talking about Wilson”, said Daphne, “I was talking about you. You always try to change the subject.” A scowl in her larynx.

Tim frowned with amusement towards his wife, as one might look to a toy or a pet that one loved and sometimes tolerated.

“ Occasionally, Daphne, you’re a really dim bulb. Sometimes I wonder how you even find the switch”.

Daphne now pouted—insulted. She moved to the edge of the Master Mind’s gunneled rail, then quickly turned and hurled her drink towards her husband- but it missed and gin, ice, showered down on Wilson, a squeezed used up lime landing on his foot.

“Oh no, I’m sorry”.

Page 14

She sped to towel him off, touching too long, pulling on his sleeves, wiping too close to his groin…Smirking at her husband.

“Stop it Daphne, Wilson will dry on his own, just fine”.

"Watch out”, said the demon, an angel now.

“I’m going for a stroll, said Wilson, grabbing his top-seders and pulling them on, one foot then another, as he walked and hopped away and down the dock.

Alicia was lounging on the Midnight Vixen, spilling from a suit that could have been a Kleenex. She waved, and slouched then gestured with a drink. The Vixen was only a few slips away from the Master Mind II- no more than seventy, eighty feet. He turned towards her “Sure”.

It seemed that it might become another night of booze. On the boat with them, he glanced back, why not they wouldn’t notice if they kept drinking, and it seemed in their cards, why not his? He didn’t need to be whipped in that direction. Hell, maybe, he would need it just to sleep…Imagining crashed glasses, and cushions stained, then looking again at Alicia, he wandered out the slips walkway. “Watch Out”.

“Not so happy in burger land?”

“Doesn’t seem to be”

“Well, it won’t be the last time.”

“Watch out”, again said the demon but for different reasons.

Wilson climbed slightly and boarded. Alicia, her pupils at the top of her eyes, gazed at him, a (Je ne sais crois) there that did not match the Kleenex. Did he see it? Really? A knowledge of too much life already, acceptance, smiling cynicism, sure didn’t belong with the physical package, that deep tan, flat stomach, legs long stretched, breasts, used but attractive. He could not help noticing; the fabric daub of her suit too small a turquoise band-aid on a too pretty wound.

“Why? That happens a lot?

“Enough”, she said. “Enough, it’s just part of their routine-they’ll be fine in a while”.

Just then there was Kenny, looking down, brown pot belly, large but firm like an over inflated football, thing looks like it needs a signature, powerful legs, gray fringe around his head, some Roman accolade wreath.

“Thought I’d get out of there too. They’ll be at it for a while now. Don’t worry, Wilson, you seem OK, it’s not their best side”.
He faced Alicia,
“Hey babe- I’ve got to talk to Roger”... He pointed to another large powerboat, a Viking, which was just pulling in, belching its horn to no purpose but noise.
“I’ll pass,” she said.
Wilson, looking watching, the comedy-the play, movie, sitcom?
“You know I can’t stand him, always leers at me, ugly little man”.
“Knows paint though”, said Kenny, “buys it, I sell it in case you’ve forgotten”.
“He’s just another car guy”, she said.
“Well, stay here and entertain Wilson”. Turning to Wilson. “Make yourself comfortable I’d stay away for awhile”.
Kenny twisting, nodding back over his shoulder towards more shouting
“I was thinking of going up to the fort, she replied. “Wilson, want to come?”
“Sure”.

Page 15

“Never been up there”, said Kenny, facing the stern now and turning his head upward. On the bluff above were white walls, serpentine stairs, flags, guard turrets...Some clown dressed up as a soldier, boy scouts. Wilson gazed too, would the British have liked all this? Their fort turned into Disney land?

Kenny headed off, Alicia went below, he smelled the water--slightly putrid and faint of oil, and the fudge--the overwhelming sweetness of it, sugared nutty and buttery in the air, the horseshit—barnyard rich. An odd combination of smells to mingle as one... Eau de Mackinac. Bicycles raced by along the shore, bells ringing, some built for two.

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do”, he and his parents had sung that, “I’m half crazy over the love of you…It won’t be a stylish marriage…I can’t afford a carriage…But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two”.

Alicia re-emerged with a long sleeved, oversized translucent white shirt, boat feet, and a straw hat with a turquoise band, which matched the Kleenex turquoise subtly penetrating the white.

“Come on”, she said.

They meandered down the long main dock until it teed inward towards the shore and the Victorians, the Yacht club to their right, Michigan flag, US flag, Yacht Club Burgee, barely signaling a breeze. Then the park with its bronze Father Marquette... Speckled white with seagull filth, left then right, by the wickyup rebuilt Indian something, and up steep stairs walked on by Indians, British, French, Americans, Trappers, Hustlers?, Frauds?…Centuries before.

She walked before him. He could get in trouble here, buttocks moving beneath the white as she climbed the stairs, narrow waist, and long blond hair. No, not a chance, look higher now, look upward, look at the sky. Trumpets sounded, a cannon boomed, the pretend guard was changing.

From the fort they could see it all, a beauty overwhelming, this confluence of waters, the green and cream bridge, five miles long, Upper Peninsula to lower, then westward and barely north, then east dipping south to Canada, the route through lake Huron to the farther North of Georgian Bay. Superior was out there too somewhere; you just could not see her. And from there departed a water path to the whole world. The Saint Lawrence Seaway.

More immediate below them was the street bordering the park and marina, tiny bikes, tiny carriages, tiny people, tiny yachts, and one in particular to the east end of the main wide T. It was the Master Mind II. They could just make out the figures in the stern one looking west and one east. There was no blood on the decks he could almost feel the anger...way up here.

He and Alicia spent a sun shaded few hours at the fort and along the hills, which lead to the further bluff and the Grand Hotel...Inland and hilly until that view was clear too, but more west and less commanding. Alicia chattered with wit and smiles, and over this period he gathered that her association with Kenny had been ten years--She probably thirty-five and twenty years or more his junior. He acquired the awareness that Kenny was growing old in more ways than one, for her. That she was becoming weary of being a trinket on someone else’s bracelet, perhaps ready to detach herself.

Had he pursued it something sexual might have come of their afternoon, right there and then, on a towel, in the shrubbery, behind the trees. It was possible. But neither of them were that foolish to confuse an already strange scene with an additional layer of chaos.

Page 16

And for Wilson this was just as well, because relationships frightened him. So by early evening they were walking back down the steep stairs, white painted bouldered walls… Tired-descending... And the others…Kenny talked paint…Tim snored …Daphne pouted… all against a backdrop of cloud wisped purples and pinks, high orange and a setting sun, three quartered above darkening blue waters.

Hours before he and Alicia had seen a sloop arriving and as he had thought then, it was familiar. It was the Persephone with his old friends Steve and Kathy Robbins aboard.

“Alicia, can you tell them, I’m with friends over here”.

He pointed towards the Robbins’s yacht- ‘Persephone’.

“Sure, ok, tomorrow maybe”, she had replied, then given him a head dipping,

“Latter”.

“Say thanks to Kenny” he added.

There seemed certain a sadness in their parting, the threatening, non-threatening afternoon of her company. We’ll see, no, never happen, ten years…And Kenny seemed descent enough, successful, a boob perhaps, but pleasant and apparently, extremely rich-- never happen.

The Robbins welcomed him and he sat in the sunsets second quarter with these friends of years—understanding even more so with their company how much the charade of his builder designer life was wearing thin and why he had fled to Aspen in the first place. Damn, this is better, he thought, and no games… Why he could just sit with Steve and Kathy…They could just sit and stare at one another, saying nothing, and none of them would even think about it… impressions-anything. Or they could do as they set about doing, which was catching up. How had it been in Aspen? Why was he returned when he had said he might never come back? The who, the where, the how-- old projects and thoughts… new ones… sipping more cocktails, past agendas, new agendas, old friends and where they were. Telling stories…fitting on him like his oldest softest most repeatedly laundered shirt. The invite for the night, no one said anything about it, the invitation was just there, hanging, should he choose to grab it. He had every intention. Yes this was a lot better.

So sunset built and finished, the boat rocked, the ferried horns went silent, and with the departing daily visitors- he, they, the Marina, went into repose, a quiet evening of the occasional horse and carriage going by, footsteps on the docks, lilting laughter, the drifting combination cacophony of different tunes, the meandering inebriated around midnight and then sleep, secure, yet trepidations of tomorrow…a gently rocking windless night...no sounds of screaming outrage from the Master Mind Two.