Natura: Uhuru Genesis

DELUCA

DELUCA

6. SMOKES AND MIRRORS

There's a bluebird in my heart that

Wants to get out

But I pour whiskey on him and inhale

Cigarette smoke

- Charles Bukowski "Bluebird"

The night is chilly, just as Rector Deluca likes it.

He rubs his sore eyes, and picks his glasses, lying askew on the bed alongside his equally discarded reading gadget: The Tetra pro, a page of "In God's name" idling on a mellow screen.

He puts the glasses on, and glares at his nightstand, where other reading retro gadgets lie piled up; including a battered, red Kindle Fire, passed on to him on his birthday – by his only true love, his grandmother – at London Bridge, because lousy karma, saw it fit that an albino boy be born on new year's eve.

On the same table, stands a turquoise lamp, tuned to a warm glow, providing the single illumination in the studio apartment of his crisp manse. It's light touches the indoor cycle, and treadmill, items he never bothers to use.

On a mantel the color of old lace, sits a modern record player, an opera singer crooning through it. But none of that is what's yanked him out of his shallow sleep. Besides the crisp player, lies a corded phone, of course also retro.

It's on its sixth, frantic ring now, Deluca realizes with a jolt.

He curses, pulls a frostbite colored tunic on, a sleeping robe, and steps into loafers, and crosses the white-tiled floor, a chill cutting into his bones.

"Deluca speaking," he murmurs darkly into the receiver.

He goes mute, listening to the speaker on the other side. Felly, his cat, looks up from the shag with its green-gold eyes, shakes of its nap, and pads to him, nuzzling his foot.

Deluca sets the receiver down, calls on the lights – which immediately burst on – and strides with great reluctance, taking a seat on a sofa. He allows his pallid finger trail the gilded wire of one of the board games he's found fascinating lately; the Three Dee crystal omweso. Sometimes, the board's twisting gold wire reminds him of Thames river: a silvery sparkle forever threading itself through the foggy city, speedboats speckling its shiny banks like bits of stardust.

Sometimes, staring at it really carries him back to the good old days: running through Waterloo, to a funfair at the gardens, or sitting in one of the capsules of London eye, or inside Shard, away from the sun. It was always better at twilight, when people didn't openly glare at him as though he was a weird creature. He'd also always loved twilight, because the sun didn't get to tan his skin a funny, atomic tangerine color. So he'd watch cherry bombs explode over the Ferris wheel as though he was a lone, forsaken vampire. Yet he hated fantasy tales.

He considers lighting a cigarette but doing that in the night, when trying to get by the courtyards unnoticed is a stupid idea. And nothing irks him like stupid ideas – except for, of course urban fantasy tales. But he reaches the door, and takes his protective bowler hat from the hook.

That's when he hears it again ...the mournful hoot of an owl, far off in the woods.

He quirks his pale mouth, listens, and decides he will get one of the sharp-shooter archers to kill it. It's been going on and on for weeks now; like a lone crying child, seated and locked away in a graveyard by the window.

He shuts the door behind him, and hurries into the night.

He keeps a wary glance over his shoulder as he passes the colonnades in front of Shaka's manse. The lightbulbs are still on, he can tell, and he hears curious murmurs seep out from the crack under the mahogany door, and other noises: the sound of glasses and bottles being set on table like faraway wind chimes, the hiss of an opening can, a woman's lazy laugh.