David Leo Rice

(This marks a brief detour from Spine & Arp) I am writing this in the garage, hoping that one day, when I’m finished, or at least not too long after that, I will be let in to the house, across the driveway and up the back stairs and into what will then, by dint of my hard work, at last have become my home, the one place where I may finally rest.

A run-in with a nun Sitting at the table in that rundown kitchen with the sun setting outside the windows, Arp sips his coffee, munches an Oreo, and wonders what, indeed, he came here to talk to Spine about. Yalta, the railway carriage, the worked-over treaty: he glances at a bookcase lined with Naguib Mahfouz volumes and decides to believe that the record of the decisive conversation he would’ve had with Spine is contained on a comparable shelf in another room.

Back in the Theater of the Deep Spine, Arp has all the work he can handle. Well paid too, though in square footage rather than hard currency.