The Interventionists

Jim and Jack were interventionists, private eyes specializing in surveillance, tracking down missing persons, stakeouts. They accessed systems, great and small. They could hack into a kid’s video game, a city’s traffic grid, banks, email, purchases, sales, the International Space Station. They’d been following me using outside smart home and building security cameras as I walked north through Venice, hired by Sylvie, my faithful half goddess counselor and once part time partner, my Cassandra, whose love for me I could not believe, who called out my bad decisions, my financial planner who set me up on my hobo trek through time and place after I’d borrowed the $300 million from the Walter Group for a day to syphon off just enough to pay my own separate future way before returning the file to its rightful owners, with interest. Fate is the decisions you make, Sylvie repeated, but I’d not been greedy, and that too was a fateful decision. And somewhere along the way Sylvie had purchased a minor league baseball team, fell in love with the green fields under lights at night, with the game, with the travel, with the players. Jim and Jack informed me I was invited down as Sylvie’s guest to Tucson for a three game series with the Desert Wavers versus the Northwest Roadtrippers. I spent the afternoon supervised by Jim and Jack in a professional makeup artist’s studio in Culver City, where I got a real washing followed by haircut and shave and some new duds. They fixed me up with a new cell phone and ID. We would catch a flight out of LA for Tucson come morning. Meantime I was their guest in their suite at Hotel Olumposh overlooking the Marina del Rey, where we dined, in the hotel’s Lighthouse Lounge, on butter seared scallops with prosecco, filet mignon petite medallions with truffles in a tangy orange sauce, squid soup, crab and oyster shooters, rosemary garlic and olive bread, Palos Verdes Pinot Noir – a jazz trio playing, a vocalist appearing during dessert (custard raspberry tarts, tiramisu) singing a set of songs all with the word moon in the titles.

“The Interventionists” is episode 57 of Inventories, a Novel in Progress in Serial Format at The Coming of the Toads.