just inhaled helium or came from a child’s bath toy.
“That’s my uncle’s car,” Jack said excitedly, “no mistaking it.” They turned together. At the curb a tall, thin, man exited a cobalt blue Mercedes coup.
“Jacket!” he called out.
The Mercedes had its top down and the driver waived a hello with one hand and held an open, pink, umbrella in the other. He had silver hair with bushy, protruding, eyebrows that looked like white caterpillars resting horizontally above his eyes. He wore a pale blue blazer and navy polo shirt and had a red bandana tied around his neck in a makeshift ascot. When he spoke his eyes moved all around with great animated interest—up and down, then wide open, and then almost closed. And the eyebrows, with all of this expressiveness, resembled white moths jumping around a wild-eyed flame. Uncle Browne walked over to Jack.
“Damn switch to the convertible top is broken and I never know when the top will go up or down. I was lucky your aunt left this umbrella in there,” he said, waving the umbrella like a sword at the sky and letting go a burst of laughter in his frenzied jubilation.
“Uncle Browne,” Jack said affectionately, shaking his uncle’s hand.
“Jacket, boy-you’re the spitting image of your young dad, and even more handsome if that’s possible. Sorry I didn’t make it to your graduation but we had one of our own, you know. I’m so happy you came up,” he said, embracing Jack. Jack stepped back to stand beside Veronica.
“Uncle Browne, this is Veronica,” Jack offered proudly.
Uncle Browne took a step backward. He was a tall man at six foot four, slender and genteel looking. His silver hair was long and brushed back and he had an aquiline nose. When he stood tall and held his chin up to contemplate something, he looked distinguished and formidable, like some early American aristocrat poised around a table as some important document is signed.
“Veronica,” Uncle Browne said dramatically, “how nice to see you. My nephew talks about you with hyperbole, you know. But I must say it turns out to be understatement.”
“My uncle’s an English professor at the community college here,” Jack explained. “He’s the only person I know who talks about usual things in unusual terms. He once told me I was the personification of youthful splendor. Isn’t that what you said, Uncle Browne?”
“I did and still do,” Uncle Browne proffered.
“I think he’s some kind of word wizard,” Jack said to Veronica.
“I tend the un-penned garden of words that grow all around us, Jacket. That’s my stock and trade. But what I say about you and Veronica, like all good verbal blooms, grows out of the truth.” Uncle Browne punctuated his statement with a wink, and then continued. “Now are you two hungry at all?” He asked the question, did not wait for their answer, and nodded yes for them.
“Good,” he said, “we’ll go over to The Doc’s Diner. I love it there. It’s the best greasy spoon on Earth.”
Jack and Veronica had not had breakfast so the diner idea appealed to them. They followed Uncle Browne up from the ferry terminal parking lot and crossed the road to enter a path in the field that bordered the still sleeping town of Chimera. A pleasant sea breeze came off the water and they inhaled the briny sea air. They walked with the sun rising higher over the sound behind them, feeling generally uplifted by the fresh quality of a new day on the island. The quiet streets of Chimera were empty but for a few early risers out for breakfast or to walk their dogs. Uncle Browne, Veronica, and Jack were the only ones walking on their side of the street. They passed a series of closed shops on Chimera Way.
Chimera was the whimsical equivalent of the quaint fishing village of Cythere where Uncle Browne and his wife lived. It had become a kind of artist’s colony in the last decade. And it was unusual with its gingerbread houses in as many bright colors as there are crayons in a crayon box; an antique ·but still functioning carousel; a main street loaded with esoteric boutiques. Jack hadn’t been there in three years but particularly remembered one shop, a glass blowers shop that had enthralled him. He looked for it as they walked along Chimera Way.
They passed a series of other unique shops with everything and anything artistic and eclectic: a bead store, a rare book store, a medieval dress shop. Then Jack spotted the glass blower’s shop. Uncle Browne and Veronica walked ahead chatting, so Jack paused by himself to look at the shop.
Through the front window he could see some pieces displayed that returned the exuberant feeling he’d had the last time he’d come to the shop. He’d gone into it then. Today, he had to settle for what he could see in the display window.
A piece containing swirls of orange suggestive of desert sand caught his eye. It was as if sunlight over the sand at dusk had been glazed for posterity and now remained forever captured in the surface of a table top. Next was a glass lampshade of silver delicacy, spun in a spiral, surrounding muted light. This shade resembled a pine tree enameled by crystals of ice shining on a winter night. Another piece, a honey-colored vase, touched by dots of glistening mica, stood out without flowers as if itself in bloom-the white-silver specks of mica rising in relief from the honey plane like pearl droplets on a suntanned hand. All of these nuances of light, these specks of gold the artist must have known and drawn upon, Jack thought, as he gazed at them. He wanted to see more. He tried entering but the door was locked. Then he heard Veronica calling, and moved quickly to catch up. At the end of Chimera Way they turned onto a short, narrow, street and walked toward a different dock. They came to a cobble-stoned alley fronting the water and there The Doc’s Diner sign hung, creaking in the slight wind. The sign was dark blue and rusty around the edges. The diner faced the water, which was calm and sunlit. Above the water a swirl of small birds swept the sky in what looked like a pointillist’s black hand as they flew in perfect synchronization this way and that before disappearing somewhere. Jack admired the pattern the birds made while Uncle Browne lifted his nose; nostrils flared, and took in the aroma of coffee.
“My God,” he said, “I love that smell.” He walked into the diner without hesitation, smiled at those he knew, and sat down on a stool at the long counter. He spun a little on the stool so that he could see Jack and Veronica entering. Then he patted the stool next to him for them to sit down.
They sat on stools at the counter of this railroad-car like diner. Bacon sizzled on a huge, grease-smeared grill. It smelled wonderful. A tall man, thin, with a pony tail tucked under his baseball cap worked the grill like a magician. His tattooed forearms moved in repeated patterns and his large hands fetched and broke and spilled what seemed like half a dozen eggs at a time onto the sizzling skillet when they weren’t stirring and turning and flipping the flapjacks or eggs or grabbing slabs of bacon to separate and fry.
“What’ll it be, Browne?” the cook asked.
“Whatever’s most decadent, but don’t tell my cardiologist,” Uncle Browne retorted.
“I’ll give you the artery clogger special,” the cook said.
“Delightful,” said Uncle Browne with a devilish smile.
“Doc,” he said, addressing the cook, “I’d like you to meet my nephew, Jack, and his girlfriend, Veronica.”
“Nice to know you; vacationing?” the cook asked.
“We’re taking a few days, yeah,” said Jack.
“You came at a good time,” the cook said. “It was just announced, Illumination Night is this week.”
“Is that right?” said Uncle Browne. “I thought it’d be. You two will enjoy that,” Uncle Browne said earnestly. “Jack just graduated from Duke,” Uncle Browne said next.
“Impressive,” the cook said, “know what you’re going to do?”
“I’m thinking things over,” Jack said.
“Good idea,” said the cook.
“He’s thinking about Wall Street,” Uncle Browne said, giving the cook