This, Being Part 2, The Second
Now, with the Half Guinea
Remembering that this is all taking place in March, 2019
Except that we know, in the Universe, all moments happen at the same time
“Hey, Stevie, long time no see. Let’s hang out a while!”
The Half Guinea pours out for Kowalski some opaque, murky green, viscous beverage into a ruby-shaded cut-crystal champagne flute. He sets the glass down on some surface before Kowalski, which Kowalski cannot see, although he is not certain whether he looks down at that moment to even try to see.
But now Kowalski finds himself seated before a short, square, red plastic table in a chair that, to match the table’s height, is proportionately low, thereby forcing Steve’s knees up closer to his chin. It is more a table for children than a grown man. He does not remember having sat down.
The space around him is echoey, dank, and dark, although the muck-green liquid he’s been offered by the Half Guinea to consume appears to glow dully out of its glass. Some part of the ceiling, farther off, is drip-drip-dripping into a small puddle, forming somewhere over there, on the cold cement floor.
“Where are we?”
“Drink up, Stevie! It’ll warm your blood and brace you up after that disagreeable rain and cold out there, and, aaahh… that no-doubt distressing experience you just had, I’ll freely add. It’s an old herbal concoction out of the Carpathians. Sure, it’s got some alcohol in it, though not that much, but that’s the least important of its potent properties…”
But Steve Kowalski persists: “What is this place.” He does not remember having taken the crystal flute into his hand – but there it is.
“Steve! Come on! Drink! Nothin’ll happen to ya!”
The Guinea drains his own glass and civilly puts it down on the little table.
“See! Now, I did that as a sign of my good will, so it’s the least you can do to show yours” – the last two words spoken a little more forcefully than the rest preceding them, tempered, Kowalski feels, by a barely controlled anger.
“But…”
“Drink up, Steve! Stop worrying, and I’ll light the joint up – but I’ll keep them low, to set a relaxing mood… like at the Piano Bar; remember, Steve, that night some years ago, when you just came into town, and we first met? I mean, Zeus knows, after this whole vexatious –”
But Kowalski does not quite catch the Guinea’s endsay, having turned his head to the left, and sort of drifting off.
And he doesn’t remember willing the Guinea’s proffered elixir toward his parting lips; but he is aware of himself drinking it – and it is sweet, and good, and immediately warms up his insides.
And though his head is turned, through the slowly lifting darkness in which he has been immersed – an inexplicable phenomenon occurring without the Guinea’s even turning on the lights yet – peripherally Kowalski sees the outline of the Guinea’s arms, outstretched to either side of him. And now, the long, thick fingers of his large and deeply tanned, leathery hands flick sparks quickly out their tips but once; and now the stone-block walls that surround him appear to Kowalski’s sight, glowing with the flames of a cool fire that dance upon them.
“We’re in some kind of basement; some kind of cellar?!”
“Ah, what’s-a-matter, Steve?! You, of all people, can’t even recognize a house of worship when you’re in one?!”
Kowalski hears a kind of dull scraping and shifting along a wall off to his right, but, having grown relaxed, decides to dismiss the sounds as the Guinea concocting more of the setting to meet the esoteric needs, as the Guinea sees them, for this particular scene.
And yet the Guinea’s statement dumbfounds Kowalski.
“You mean a church? We’re in a church?! But –”
“But nuts, Kowalski! It’s the synagogue! Except downstairs! Way downstairs. Yeah – they let me use it on an as-needed basis. Of course, I pay them for the use of the space, and all, although I don’t always have the dough up front – but, you know, good relations grow in trust over time, and we always manage to find, you know, some sort of –”
But for Kowalski, the Guinea’s words again trail off, as, with his head still turned, he is now able to make out another table; this, quite a large one, rustic and built of rough-hewn heavy interlocking pieces of wood, up against the wall, together with a chair, as well as a bench, both of the same design, construction, and quality as the table.
Somewhere off to Kowalski’s other side, the Guinea keeps moving and shifting about, doing things, and droning on and on: “… though it’s funny I should be doing this on the Jews’ sabbath, but, as long as they get the money, what do I care?! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Not that I ever have. But come to think of it – what do THEY care, either?! Ha-haaaaa!!! And you know who and what I mean by “they”, don’t you, Steve? …”
On the table, a large computer monitor, and next to it, oddly, Kowalski thinks, an olive-green Soviet-era landline rotary phone. He notes a couple of thin bundles of cables and wires coursing up the wall against which the table has been positioned, apparently leaving the chamber through holes in the ceiling, but that part of the enclosure is too far up in the low fire-lights the Guinea has provided for Kowalski to see.
Off to the other side of him, Kowalski continues to barely hear a combination of muffled shuffling, scraping and, curiously, a sort of broken, heavy breathing – but it is only the Guinea; only the Guinea.
For some reason, from where he is, Kowalski suddenly comprehends that, despite the surrounding general dimness, he is able to read the document opened on the well-lit desktop screen: it is his letter to the Ferret, mocking him, telling the Ferret he isn’t Byronic…
Saint Stephan, April 6, 2025