Leonardo’s Revenge
and Other Stories
Aysha Griffin
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Aysha Griffin
Inhabit Your Dreams Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1468143553
ISBN-10: 1468143557
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Disclaimer: Any resemblance to real people is coincidental.
Cover design and photo by Aysha Griffin
DEDICATION
Every human story has, at its core, a uniquely individual character or manifestation of the Divine in vulnerable, complex, impermanent and imperfect temporal form.
These stories are dedicated to the remarkable characters who have graced my life and accompanied me on my journey, adding love, joy, wisdom and encouragement to creating the stories that make life worth living.
CONTENTS
To DLH who shared these
and many other stories with me.
With enormous appreciation and love for my support team of extraordinary and creative friends whose own truth, compassion and chutzpah helped me survive the Dark Night of the Soul that preceded publication of this book:
Richard Hughes Seager, Judith Fein, Anne Clark, Kitty Miller, Patricia Barakat, Karen Wight, Mark Beaver, Karen Strickholm, Stefany Burrowes, Carolyn Erickson, Alexanna Johnson, Mark Rich, David Wagner, Tree Elven, Nancy Hon, Rachel Seed, Jan Helling Croteau, Mina Anguiano, Susan J. Cobb, Jan Baross, Lonnie Rankin, Fran and Carl Hyman, Laila and Ion Ionescu and CA Boyer. And to Linda Post who encouraged me with her love of short stories.
Special thanks to Susan Page and the San Miguel International Writers' Conference for the opportunity to be part of that illustrious faculty and spectacular event.
Join The Guilt-Free Society!
See details at the end of this book.
CHAPTER 1
LEONARDO’S REVENGE
The True Story of the Beloved Founder of the
Guilt-Free Society
The knock came early one spring morning at the door of my cabin. Before my first cup of coffee I came face-to-face with a gray-suited, terse and pallid middle-aged man who flatly asked, “Do you know where Mr. Leonardo Loma can be found?”
“No. Isn’t he home next door?”
“No sign of him.”
As the official-looking man was not the regular sort who visited the property, I thought to ask “Is there something I can do for you?” whereupon he presented his card, formally engraved with the words “Internal Revenue Service”.
“You tell Mr. Loma it is imperative he contact me immediately.”
I knew Leo wasn’t going to like this, but agreed I’d relay the message when next I saw him.
“Okey-dokey,” I replied, trying to keep from snorting in his somber flatfish face. I took the card and firmly closed the door. As is often said in hindsight, ‘If I knew then what I know now,’ I don’t think I would have agreed to involve myself at all.
***
Leo was a rebel, an anarchist by his own admission. We met only six months before when I returned to the States after many years of traveling overseas (or, as some might say, wandering aimlessly). I was looking for a quiet place to rent, with the idea of cloistering myself to write of my adventures, and chanced upon a referral to Leo Loma. His outlandishness, I was told, was legend, so I was not surprised to see a large, crudely hand-painted sign at the foot of his driveway which read: Enter at your own risk!
I eased my old Fiat slowly through the broken wooden gate that lay askew on either side of the dirt road. Numerous large American-made cars and trucks in varying states of disrepair, piles of wood and mounds of rusting unidentifiable metal objects lined the way to the rather majestic, though somewhat decrepit, three-story pink stucco house on the hillside. Several ramshackle outbuildings dotted the immediate dirt-covered acre or two. But, in the background of this strange scene, I beheld a breathtaking view of neatly arranged hill upon rolling hill of tall pine, golden aspen and snow-capped peaks caressing the sky.
Pulling in next to a 1967 Marquis with a peeling black vinyl roof, I chuckled to myself that my rusty beater of a car would fit right in, unnoticed, among the other junkers.
“Anyone home?” I shouted, stepping out. As no one readily appeared, I began to amble about. Rounding a corner, I heard a man yell, “O.K... we’re ready...get back!”
Two rather large men – an older fellow in a straw hat and sunglasses and a younger wild-haired one, both in dirt-smeared work clothes – came bounding toward me.
“This way!” The elder shouted, motioning frantically for me to follow them to the opposite side of the house. They stood breathlessly looking skyward in great anticipation, and I did likewise, wondering for a moment just what in the world we were doing, until the earth’s vibration tickled the bottom of my feet. Suddenly I felt a deep rumbling and trembling and heard the booming sound of rock being blown asunder and falling back on itself.
I stood transfixed, gaping in amazement, arms over head to protect it from chunks of granite as they soared and fell upon the roof, like someone had just taken the lid off a giant popcorn popper on full tilt.
The two men smiled with obvious satisfaction at one another and me. I forced a smile in return and the older man stepped over and patted me on the back.
“Now, young lady, is there something I can do for you?” he asked kindly, without any self-consciousness about the ordeal I’d just witnessed.
“I heard you might have a place for rent,” I stammered, my mouth dry from the excitement and settling dust.
“Well, we may be able to help you out. If you’ll make yourself at home in the kitchen,” he said, pointing toward the stairs, “I’ll be up in a minute. Help yourself to some coffee.”
He turned to inspect the area from which we’d just run and I, with heart beating unevenly, followed his directive and walked carefully up the concrete stairs to the door that led to the kitchen. It was propped open by a shiny stainless steel engine cylinder – a part, I later learned, of Leo’s memorabilia from Korea – and I entered the large room trying to take in everything at once.
Along the right wall were mismatched appliances – a 1950’s vintage aqua-colored refrigerator with silver duct tape securing the handle, a 1970’s era avocado-colored oven and a badly-stained pink china sink, of the same vintage as the refrigerator. An ochre-colored 40-cup aluminum coffee-maker sat imposingly on the warping orange-Formica counter top. A huge blackened brick fireplace, to my left, was crammed with junk mail and trash. Next to it a rusty white-enamel corner bar sported a gallon jug in a wrought-iron dispenser. Pasted on the jug was a hand-written label: Loma’s Whiskey Du Jour. While the center of the room was cluttered with a school cafeteria-style Formica table and a half dozen shoddy green vinyl chairs, an enormous picture window in the west wall framed the spectacular view and seemed to separate nature’s beauty on one side from man’s tastelessness on the other.
Badly-worn black-and-blue linoleum, like the nightmare face of a losing boxer, and at least as old as the fifty-year-old house itself, covered the floor and crept halfway up the dingy baby-blue walls. Despite the lack of order and modern aesthetics, it was, in its peculiarity, a warm, informal, amiable room.
From among the disheveled contents of the cabinets, I located a mug, dispensed a cup of tea-colored coffee, and had barely sat down at the table when Leo burst in, wiping beads of sweat from his tanned face with a grungy red bandana, which he then stuffed into the back pocket of his baggy mechanic’s pants. He had muscular arms and a solid build, although slightly paunchy with age, and his long, broad face – with an oversized and bulbous nose reminiscent of W.C. Fields – was weathered and well-marked with what are pleasantly called character lines.
“So, you’ve got some coffee?” he asked, looking sideways at my cup while pouring himself one. “Yes, thank you.” The green vinyl chair opposite mine, and his collapsing body weight, seemed to sigh in unison. Gazing for a moment through the window he whispered to him self, “It’s a beautiful world,” then turned abruptly toward me, removed his glasses as the corners of his dark, brown eyes turned upward, smiling.
“Now, tell me about yourself. Where do you come from and what do you like to do?”
“That’s a rather long story.”
“A good one I hope. I always enjoy a good story!”
We both laughed and I began to tell of my travels. I appreciated each opportunity to do so, trying as I was to sort out the details for writing. Leo listened intently, joining in that he had been to the Far East with the military.
“I got little good to say of it ‘cept for the beauty of a few ladies whose acquaintance I recall fondly.” He smoked his Camel cigarettes continually and refilled our cups more than once, explaining he liked his coffee weak so he could drink it all day long without getting the jitters. It was dreadful stuff, mistakable for battery acid, but I learned long ago that graciously accepting hospitality was directly related to being accepted by one’s host, so I kept sipping.
“Your turn. Please tell me about yourself and how you came to live in such a wonderful place,” I said, nodding toward the mountains.
At first I thought he’d hadn’t heard me. He looked at the clock above the sink, decorously raised his arms as if a conductor commanding the orchestra’s attention and proclaimed, “It’s bourbon-thirty!”
He scraped his chair back from the table, jumped up with boyish glee and began scurrying about the kitchen with distinct purpose. Removing two tall glasses from the cupboard, he meticulously filled them with ice from the freezer, “whiskey du jour” from the dispenser and water from the tap. I alternately watched his solid, well-rehearsed movements and the ever-shifting clouds out the window, trying not to appear as amazed and curious as I was about him and this ritual. Proudly placing a glass before me he returned to his seat and declared dramatically, “Now we can continue!”
Thus I came to hear in part a remarkable account of the life of Leonardo Loma. He was a storyteller par excellence who had honed that age-old and rare art over barrels of bourbon and years of kitchen colloquy. He spoke with an grandiloquence and color to which I cannot do justice. I can only recount the barest outline of his story that during the next several months increased in detail and intrigue.
***
There was no theory, concept, hypothesis or idea in the whole world for which Leo Loma was at a loss for opinion. Although one might rarely agree with him – as his opinions were often based on a single vague notion that was antiquated or even irrelevant to the topic at hand – you could not deny the pleasure of his oratory, his love of discourse and adamant drama, or the graciousness of his hospitality.
Leo, nee Leonardo, was a man of many talents. Supreme among them was his ability either to totally engage or repulse the affections of others. People either loved and accepted his eccentricity or intensely disliked him for it. As with his opinions, there was little room for middle ground or ambivalence.
Like his namesake, he was an inventor, I later learned, of gadgets, schemes and – when it suited him – words. Undaunted by convention or failure he dressed himself in an endless procession of ideas which he tried on and readily discarded as a fussy socialite might exhaust an entire dress shop in search of just the right gown and, being impossible to satisfy, would deign to design her own.
His father, “The Scoundrel,” fancied himself to be an artist and was so convinced that his firstborn would be a genius, insisted on his name being that of one of the greatest artists of all time.
The Scoundrel, though not him self greatly gifted, was not without taste. He married a strong, handsome and articulate woman who was the public librarian for a small mid-western town in which he happened to pass a summer working on a nearby ranch. He had traveled the states by rail, after flunking out of an eastern college in his preoccupation to be a cowboy, and was reputed to have had many a fireside story of his own. Having been reared on the east coast, of an established upper-middle-class family, he also had the charm, manners and education to woo and win the librarian’s heart.
Although she knew him to be a drifter, she hoped, as many a good woman has, that the comfort and peace of a well ordered home might quiet his soul and be conducive to the creation of the masterpieces he spoke of harboring in his mind’s eye. They married and she was soon pregnant. Fulfilling her worst fears, he had, within a year, left for Paris to pursue his new passion of art and hobnob with famed ex-patriots. That was the last that was heard of him. Leo’s mother, on her meager salary, maintained a modest house for herself and her son and boldly set about to provide him with as many educational and cultural possibilities as were within her means.
At 18, Leo joined the Navy and received training in electronics and explosives. In the course of his service he met and married his first wife, whom he acidly referred to as “The Barb.” For her sin of becoming a religious devotee she was disposed of, after a brief marriage and unreasonable settlement that left her in a much better position and him in a much worse.
“She was into all that hocus pocus – saints and ghosts and stars. I can understand reading about it, but to believe it…! When I was about 20, I got interested in Egyptology. There were all sorts of people into it, espousing their lame-brain philosophies: If you took the diameter of a rock and measured in a rat’s ass, it’d equal the circumference of the earth measured in cubits…or some such nonsense,” he chuckled, gulping his bourbon.
His second wife, “The Cat Lady,” bore him three sons. She gradually, with little love lost between them, fell for a politician and filed for divorce from Leo, taking the children and large support payments to Washington, D.C. His opinion of politicians was not enhanced by this experience:
“There are shysters and there are real snake agents, but the worst of the worst mindless palaver is spewed out en masse by those heartless sons of mutant boars in Washington!”
At this point I had to wonder how such an intelligent and enchanting man as Leo had either managed to choose so poorly or to had been such a prig as to have these unpleasant connections. Leo answered my thoughts: “I must’ve been a real bastard,” he mused, confessing, “I used to believe ‘a man’s purpose is to make money and a woman’s to have babies.’ I don’t think too differently now, but I wouldn’t treat a woman like that these days. And you didn’t hear me say it,” he added with a wink.
Leo left military service in 1960 and found gainful employment in private industry, working his way up to a comfortable position in research and development. He was frugal and managed to save enough to purchase the five acres of splendid view property on which he had since lived. It was not long after that he met and immediately fell in love with a young woman who lived nearby. She was bright, hardworking, pretty and imaginative and saw in him all the potential for greatness that Leo’s mother had seen in her husband. Her ambition was for Leo to be a rich and famous inventor and prodded him to quit his job and put his talent to use pursuing his own ideas.
“I was never one to slink from a challenge,” announced Leo, puffing up his chest with pride. “So I put the electronic and metal shop together and created the anachronism of the century – ‘the electric turkey!’“ As the electric car project, originally dubbed ‘electric workhorse,’ developed no signs of lucrative return or renown, his relationship with his wife deteriorated. She took to drinking heavily and was not overjoyed at the birth, within four years, of three children – two sons and a daughter. While the youngest was still in diapers she was killed in a car accident.
Leo continued to stay home to raise the children. For a few months he was despondent and naturally grief-stricken. Then, he began to think a lot about Life and what was really valuable. He spent hours each day, between household duties, staring through the window, just thinking about things.
If nothing else, he concluded, love was possible, and his children, in so far as he was able, would have a secure home with a father who was reliable. His sons, (the second set), were a source of enjoyment, while his daughter was a source of secret vexation.
He came to value that precious resource – time – and to share as much of it as possible with those he liked and loved. He decided his main purpose was not to make money, but to make things – good things – happen around him. He was sure the business of making friends was much more important than the business of making money but still, money had to made somehow and hard work seemed the surest guarantee of steady income. Abandoning the ‘electric turkey’, he bought a dump truck and backhoe, named respectively “Groucho” and “Kovac,” and started a low-key excavation business. “Moving earth is very basic stuff,” he explained.
At the time this was told me, in anecdotes and lighthearted narration, Leo’s children were grown but still made their home with him because, as he confessed, for all his care he had failed to instill in them the skills necessary to make a living. His daughter, of whom he spoke despairingly, but in a nonchalant tone, continued to worry him with her lackadaisical and selfish attitude. “Maybe she’ll grow out of it,” he said hopefully, with a shrug and strained smile.
“Let me fill your drink,” said Leo as I covered my glass and nodded emphatically in the negative. “I’ve really got to be going,” I explained. “But wait! what about your mission? Let me show you what I’ve got for rent. You’ll like it!”
“O.K.,” I said following him out the kitchen door, down the stairs and past the site where we’d met, what seemed weeks before, around mounds of metal scrap and piping which he referred to as his “resource pile,” to a small wooden cabin. It was rough and unfurnished save for a large wood-burning stove, old appliances and god-awful orange lace curtains which however, when drawn, revealed the same dazzling view as from the kitchen window.
“We’ve got some paint and a decent bed and odds and ends lying about if you need them, and I’ll have the boys make it nice. The rent will be...” he looked me in the eye and smiled, “How about $100 bucks a month, utilities and wood included?”
Knowing I couldn’t find such a deal elsewhere, especially with the great view and neighborhood, I asked, “Is that really enough for you?”
“You can pay more if it’d make you feel better,” he replied with a grin.
“I don’t know. I might feel guilty...”
“Guilty? Guilt! Do I have a solution for that!” he exclaimed exuberantly, waving his muscular arms in the air. “How about a guilt-free certificate? I’ve got one I’ll be glad to sell you for only $19.95. It’s a bargain. Or, if you prefer, you can pay me one-tenth of your income and get the promise of heaven thrown in for free!”
“O.K., O.K., I’ll take it! One hundred dollars a month will be just fine!” I laughed as we shook hands with exaggeration.