Simone sat on her front porch swing, savoring the summer evening air, sipping a glass of fine Cabernet
Sauvignon and reading a new book on ancient Greek culture, her interest re-sparked by the photographic images
shown to her by Joe Gambaro. She spent some time reviewing the figures on a photo of a classical Greek
frieze, and then tested her ability to understand Greek script by looking at close-ups of ancient scrolls.
She suddenly startled, knocking over her mostly empty glass of wine. One image of a scroll
contained a graphic image that she had just seen recently. Then it came to her, it was an image
that she had seen on one of Joe Gambaro’s photographs. The image was of a grape leaf surrounded
by a circle of branches of some kind of fine leafed herb. In the middle of the grape leaf was an
image of an eye. There were Greek letters on the leaf and inside the circle outside of the leaf.
This was not really an image associated with alchemy. Why would Joe’s wife’s cousins
in Milan have such an image on the manuscripts that they had uncovered? She picked up the phone
handset and dialed.
Eric sat in his Berkeley apartment sipping on a shot glass of bourbon, staring at the brief case handed
to him a few nights ago. The television news provided a background of random patter that he was oblivious
too. He had not heard anything more from Juan or Robert. The image of the Japanese man Shindo
abruptly and angrily leaving the dinner table the other night kept playing over and over in his head.
The thought of $10,000 sitting in the briefcase kept drawing his eyes to the briefcase, now in his living
room. He was too afraid to open it. Somehow, the trickling of money into his Swiss Bank account
had seemed remote and sanitary. He had never taken a bribe so directly. To Eric, opening the
briefcase would be like crossing a line, a line that in realty, he had crossed long ago. What would
be the real price of his becoming a member of Juan’s group of associates? An advertisement
came on the television for an electronics warehouse. Eric had wanted the latest wide screen plasma
TV for a while now. He reached over to the briefcase, popped the latches and prepared to go shopping.
Elise was cooking dinner when Joe took some time to go into his den to look closely at the several bottles
of wine he had taken from his great grandfather’s wine tunnel. He now had a couple of bottles of
the Zinfandel Rosarium Clarivoyance, the wine that he was now sure had given him dreams about things happening
far away. Then there was the bottle of Paracelsus Turbo Medius 1871, he no idea what kind of wine this
was. He now had several bottles of a wine called Zinfandel Rosarium Divinatio, which was a name close
to that of the first bottle that he had taken out of the secret wine cellar. He had just set down one
of these last bottles when he heard Elise call out, “Dinner is just about ready. We are
having pork roast, polenta, and a cauliflower dish, I did not have a lot of time this evening to
prepare a real dinner.”
Joe replied, “Your cooking is always the best. Did you know that because of the meals you
serve the grape pickers, we are getting some of the best pickers again this year?”
Elise beamed, “Then I will really have to make them something special this year.”
Joe realized as he sat down that, as hungry as he was, something was making him queasy this evening,
maybe the lunch he had at the sandwich shop downtown. He managed to eat the dinner that Elise served,
but had to pass on seconds. Joe Junior and Cathy cleaned up their plates quickly and dove in for
seconds; their growing bodies needing the extra calories.
Elise looked at Joe with concern, “Don’t you like my cooking? Are you OK?”
“I think I ate something bad for lunch at the sandwich shop today. Your cooking was exquisite,
as usual. I am lucky to be married to such a good cook as you .”
Continued ...
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