Follow the Dotted Line (27 page)

“Have you seen this guy before?” Andy asked her son-in-law, as the two of them waited for Sam to finish getting dressed.

“Only once. When I was a kid,” Graham said. “Scared the kilt hose off me. But he’s pretty native. It could be tough.”

“What does that mean?”

Graham considered the obstacles to enjoying Russell Bain. “He’s from Inverness and speaks with a Highlands accent. And his best stories are about the Picts.”

“The Picts?”

“Some of our original ancestors. He’s sure to give us a mouthful of local color. But don’t worry, I’ll sit next to you,” Graham assured her, “and translate, when necessary.”

As soon as Sam was ready, the trio stepped out the door and onto the crescent, an elegantly curved street lined by graceful four-story buildings with red, black, and yellow painted doors. The row of upper-class flats featured high, light-gathering bay windows along a street of small hedges and billowing trees, planted to assure anyone passing through that this was a neighborhood with big aspirations and all the right intentions.

The entertainment seekers walked three blocks to Bruntsfield, a village-like shopping area, stopping just long enough to pick up mochas at Project Coffee, a hangout for moms with posh baby buggies.

“Let’s cut through The Meadows,” said Graham, as they resumed their early evening trek toward the The Caves. “It’s faster.”

The Meadows, a grassy, ambling public park, spread out like an elongated piece of pie dough across the middle of the city, with Bruntsfield near one end and the University of Edinburgh near the other. Sam liked to say she traversed it everyday on her walk to work, rain or shine—mostly rain. The park’s best feature was The Links, a small golf course with holes about 60 yards long, plopped down in the midst of playgrounds and picnic areas and open to anyone who wanted to swing a club. It was possible for a Scotsman living in the neighborhood to grab a short iron and play three holes on the stroll to lunch at the pub and another three on the stroll back. Had she lived here, Andy thought, she would permanently carry a wedge in her shoulder bag.

It took less than 30 minutes to reach the Old Town, which surrounds Edinburgh Castle, a medieval monument perched high over the city, atop a spent volcano. The centuries-old stone fortress looks down on the original settlement below, still veined with narrow streets and pedestrian alleyways known as closes. In the 18th century, two bridges were built to connect the Old Town with the increasing sprawl outward. Within the arches of the bridges, the engineers built 120 vaults to store whiskey, among other things. Over time, the vaults were abandoned and lost to the consciousness of the growing, modern city. Discovered again in the 1980s by an entrepreneurial rugby player named Norrie, they had since been renovated into a subterranean hot spot called The Caves, now home to restaurants and bars and pricey, kilted Scottish weddings. Tonight, the labyrinth of stonewalled, windowless enclosures was well lit and wired for sound and the venue for at least five festival events.

Leggy and languid, Russell Bains was already on stage, anchored to a bar stool in the midst of a warm, yellowy spotlight, when Andy, Graham, and Sam took their seats. The vault accommodated about 75 ticket holders and was nearly full. The exotic entertainer was well over six feet tall and dressed in a black cotton turtleneck, black kilt, and black high-lace army boots. Riddled with graying curls, his sandy, shoulder length hair dangled over a two-day growth of white stubble. As the house lights dimmed, the storyteller smiled, revealing a glistening expanse of pearl white teeth.

“Brìgh gach cluiche gu dheireadh,” he began.

“Oh, my god,” Andy whispered. “I don’t understand a word he’s saying.”

“Shh,” said Graham. “It’s Gaelic.”

“The essence of a game ‘tis at the end,” Bain translated, in an unusually tender brogue that Andy could almost grasp. “And life is the most bafflin’ game of all.”

Bain’s soothing style hooked the audience like a knitting needle. In rich, lilting sentences, he methodically wove his story, pulling the audience deeper and deeper into the tale of a third-century Pict king who found himself facing an aramach by his kinsman.

“A what?!” Andy said into Graham’s ear.

“An uprising. They wanted to kill the old man,” Graham said into hers.

As the narrative moved on, Andy found herself leaning forward, as if getting herself six inches closer to Bain would help her untangle the rasp and roll of his accent. The crux of the story seemed to be that the entire rebellion was based on a misapprehension created by the King’s young son, an irredeemable womanizer. If Andy understood things correctly, the boy would slip out at night and roam from village to village, seducing women at an alarming rate. When the females in the kingdom began to piece together the Prince’s duplicity, they bridled with indignation and retaliated by starting a rumor that the kingdom was being preyed upon by an enemy infiltrator who was attacking the local lassies—and that the King had done nothing to catch him. The uglier the rumor grew, the angrier the village men became and the more the Prince wanted to go fishing off the Orkney Islands, which he soon did.

“The old king daunered aboot babhdaireachd,” Bain said.

Andy leaned toward Graham, but he preempted her. “No idea,” he whispered.

“He wandered about in a puzzlement of mind,” Bain explained, all on his own. “He feared bloody insurrection, and he didnae kin what to do. So his advisors, aye, even the Pict kings had advisors, had a blether. They all ken someone must gang to see Iona, the auld woman of wicca, on Mull and learn from her what was to be.”

Graham leaned into Andy’s ear. “Someone must go to see a witch. On the island of Mull. To find out what was going to happen.”

“Wise, she was, Iona,” continued the storyteller. “A teller of the future, with tools of staff and dirk and scrying stone.”

“Did he say scrying stone?” Andy whispered.

“I think so,” Graham whispered back

Holy shit, Andy hissed. Tilda the Terrible had stalked her to Scotland. Was there no place to get away from this woman?

She felt the chill of a post-menopausal hot flash, her aging body’s response to things that weirded her out. Shivering with sweat, she tried to concentrate on Bain’s story. He was telling his audience that the King readily agreed to the proposal with one proviso: that only his son could be trusted to hear and convey the fortuneteller’s news. So the advisors sent men out to find the Prince and haul him home. When he arrived, father instructed son to set sail for Mull and see what the witch had to say about how the unrest would end.

“Noo witchcraft is witchcraft ye say,” Bain observed, “but Iona was a true Pict Wiccan, bawfaced and sleekit. Alone she lived in a wee hoose, where many came to see her beloved keek-stane.”

Before Andy could ask Graham for a translation, Bain glared in her direction and explained with perturbed eyes, “A Scottish crystal ball, fur ye who dinnae ken. A peeking stone. Polished and black and powerful in the peely wally hands of Iona.”

Andy wanted to die. Instead, she kept her head down, her lids shuttered, and vowed not to open her mouth for the rest of the frigging story. As a consequence, the last ten minutes seemed to go on forever, and because she couldn’t watch his lips, Bain’s narrative went from challenging to incomprehensible.

“He scowled at me,” she said, as the trio made their way back to Merchiston Crescent in the 10 o’clock twilight. “A big, brutish scowl. Did you see it?”

“No, Mother, I did not,” said Sam. “It wasn’t personal, believe me. He knows there are people in the audience who have trouble understanding him. That’s why he stops so often to define the words he uses.”

“Well, not often enough, if you ask me. How the hell am I supposed to know what a keek-stane is?”

Graham guided the three of them toward one of the makeshift bars set up for late-night revelers in George Square. “To be fair, Andy, he told you what it was. And also to be fair, it was a brilliant ending, didn’t you think? Here, take a swig of this before you give us your review.”

Andy took the proffered plastic cup and swallowed impatiently. The ale hit her cascading blood stream, fueled by both embarrassment and thoughts of Tilda, like a warm rain. Within minutes, she felt her system slow to a comfortable calm. For the first time, she noticed the residual sunlight on the horizon to the west. “In the gloaming,” she murmured to herself and, all at once, she thought she understood what the Scots meant by dusk.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Nothing. It’s just so amazing to still see the sun at this time of night,” Andy said. The wonder of the gloaming mixed sublimely with the beer, and almost instantly, Andy experienced a mind-altering buzz. Suddenly, the Ugly American in her felt as if she could forgive anything excessively Scottish, including Russell Bain. She turned to her son-in-law and, as if she had just stepped out of a monastery, said contemplatively, “How did it end? The story. I couldn’t understand it.”

Graham laughed and took Samantha’s hand, as they headed for home. “Well, the Prince went to see Iona, the old woman on the Isle of Mull. And he asked her to tell him how the revolt would end. She hesitated, saying some things are best left unknown. But he pressed her. So she opened a small box and took out her—” He stopped long enough for Andy to know it was a tease.

“Her keek-stane,” she said.

“Aye. And she told him the future.”

“Which was?”

“Did you really not get this part, Mom?” Sam asked.

“Sorry, Sam. I really didn’t get it.”

“Well, the old woman said the rebellion would end when the King was murdered,” Graham resumed.

“Murdered?” said Andy.

“Murrdad,” he repeated in his best brogue. “And not by an enemy, the old woman told him. The King would be murdered by the one he trusted most.”

“Ah,” breathed Andy. “And the boy demanded to know who that was . . .”

“He did,” replied Graham. “‘Ye,’ said Iona. ‘Because ye are the one he sent.’”

“Got it,” Andy piped in. “It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy!”

“Ever the writer. Exactly right,” smiled Graham. “Would you like to finish?”

“My pleasure.” Graham had a penchant for filling her ego, and Andy went with it. “Let’s see, I’m going to guess that the prediction made the boy panic. If he told his father the truth, the old man would have his son killed to protect himself. If the Prince failed to tell the truth, the witch would put a curse on him for lying. So the poor lad did the only thing he could do; he went home and killed his old man.”

Sam began a round of applause. “Bravo, Mom. Now was that so hard?”

Andy did not mind capitulating, but acknowledging her weaknesses was becoming an increasingly familiar theme in the conversations with her adult kids, and
that
she minded.

“Damn right, it was,” she protested. “It takes an above-average American to follow Russell Bain’s blather. And I have just proved what most of my Scottish friends already know; I am definitely an above-average American. I need another beer.”

“No, you don’t,” said Sam.

“Yes, I do,” announced Andy. “And I’m buying this round.”

“Brilliant,” said Graham. “And as a true Scotsman, I find you way above average, Andy.”

“Enough said.”

“Okay. Okay,” Sam relented. “But I don’t want to hear one word from the two of you about the Ryder Cup or I’m heading home by myself.”

The Ingenious Part

LA welcomed Andy home with a carmageddon-sized traffic jam on the 405. The blockage began near Sunset and continued northward for miles. It took her just over four hours of enforced patience to make the 50-minute trip home from LAX, and she marveled that some second amendment nut hadn’t stepped out of his stalled automobile and started exercising his right to bear arms on a public thoroughfare. Pundits complained about the lack of civility in the 21st
century, but they were looking in all the wrong places. Thousands of people trapped on a narrow strip of concrete in a confined space for hours on end, and no one steps out of line or lane. Was there a purer definition of good behavior?

Weary and driving by rote as she pulled into the garage, Andy decided to leave her suitcase in the trunk and head directly to bed. She turned off the car, picked up her purse, and headed for the door into the family room. As she reached to put her key in the lock, the door opened without her. The man holding it was big, bulky, and dressed in bituminous black.

“You must be Andrea,” he said, in a voice that mimicked the timber of his body.

Her adrenaline spiked, as her stomach dropped. She opened her mouth, but her voice was empty.

“I’m Rabbi Mencachem Moser,” said the man.

“Oh. Right,” Andy responded, not really that excited but very much relieved. She wasn’t sure why this particular clergyman was standing in her doorway, but it had to be Harley’s doing, and at this point in her travel itinerary, she didn’t care. Her next stop was upstairs in the middle of a familiar mattress. She took a step forward, but he didn’t move. And if he didn’t, she couldn’t. She stood for a moment, wondering how to make nice so she could get into her own house. Finally, she put out her hand. She waited unthinkingly for him to take it, and when he didn’t, she watched it dangle pathetically in the space between them. Then the gender-specific explanation for his behavior dawned, filling her with all the righteous indignation of a 1960s protest march.

Aching with exhaustion and no longer able to sustain the perfect record of good behavior she had just set on the California freeway, she let her rebellion rip. “Oh, Christ,” she sneered, “I forgot you guys don’t touch women. Well, step out of the way, whoever you are, because I don’t want to touch you, either. And whatever the hell you’re doing here, do it and get it over with, so I can get some rest.”

Mortified, the tubby rabbi nearly tripped in his efforts to move aside. Andy charged forward, right past her nephew, who was seated at the dining table clutching the Oxford Jewish Bible and looking as offended as the man at the door.

“He’s tutoring me,” Harley called after her by way of explanation. “For my bar mitzvah.”