Dinner with The Fixer - II
I had done 905km in ten hours. The Fixer diagnosed me, correctly, as needing refreshment. He showed me where to put my bags and mixed some vodka and water.
We sat overlooking his back yard. It was peaceful. I took a picture of it.
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The Fixer likes his new surroundings. He sees them as redolent with opportunity. We spoke of business, of mutual friends, of Kindles, and of the battles of the first Persian invasion of Greece.
The Fixer got up to replenish our drinks. "How much water in your vodka?", he asked.
"How much have you put in?"
"None."
"That will do", I said.
We debated whether integrity of acoustics was a design goal in gothic architecture. We decided that it wasn't. We wondered at how the fuck Filippo Brunelleschi had managed to build the largest unsupported masonry dome in the world at the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in 1436 without using formwork. I hadn't eaten lunch. I gently steered the conversation towards dinner.
"Tonight, we shall dine at", declared The Fixer, "the pub. I have some people I want you to meet."
The Fixer went to put on his drinking pants, and then drove me to the pub and introduced me to the movers and shakers of the area, and others who neither moved nor shook. We bought Boags Premium beer and I met the Bow Hunter, Peaches, the Counsellor, the Reasonable Facsimile, and a half-dozen or so others whose names passed from my head somewhere between the third and fourth Boags.
We repaired to the restaurant, ordered cabernet merlot and steak, and The Fixer borrowed a pen from a waitress and quickly sketched on his napkin how Brunelleschi might have done that dome.
I don't remember how I got back to the lair.
I awoke early. Cattle lowed in the fields beside The Fixer's yard. Magpies carolled. A truck driver hit the jake brake on the hill out the front. I went out on to the verandah. It was raining. A butcher bird landed on the barbecue and sang me a song.
I showered and packed. It took me fifteen minutes to work out how to get the TV to work. The stereo had to be on too, or there was no picture. I found the weather channel. If you entered your postcode with the remote control, it would tell you the weather in your area. I went into the kitchen and found a bill still in its envelope. It had the postcode on it. I put it into the remote control, and looked at the radar. It looked like the local rain would stop soon, but there was a big line of it coming down from the north west. If I headed south I might be able to stay in front of it.
The Fixer appeared. "M'boy", he greeted me. "What are your plans for today?"
"My first priority", I said, "is bacon. I was going to hang around for lunch, but looking at the weather, it might be an idea to leave earlier."
The Fixer drove me into town again. We had bacon and eggs. The Fixer held forth on the differences between the gospel accounts of the birth of Christ, and opined that if the Bible is the word of God, then God should at least be able to get the story straight as part of the all-knowing thing, rather than having angels talking to Mary in one book and to Joseph in another. He started reading from his iPhone, which appeared to have a copy of the King James Version on it. "And the angel came in unto her", he read, wiggling his eyebrows up and down lasciviously.
"And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be", he continued. He did the eyebrow thing again.
