Chapter 6 – Crazy Old Lady / Sane Young Men

It was half past "Beyond" when Yuri, suddenly conscious of his own silence, decided to break the trance the music had been putting him in. "Maybe I should get the car going now."

Yuri's eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open slightly. His silver hair had somehow fallen into disarray and was hanging over his eyes. It looked as though he had just rolled out of bed, only much worse, because usually his hair was much better kempt after he just got out of bed than this.

"It seems you enjoyed the music," Yomotsu said.

"Oh." Yuri opened his eyes and glanced ahead, through the glass. "Yeah… This music… we need to listen to it more. On the drive back and when we get home, preferably."

Yomotsu nodded.

"It's like a meadow."

Yomotsu smiled back at him. "I know it is, Yuri."

"I don't think you get it," Yuri said a little louder, with bite. "This is what the future sounds like. This is revolution. This is Art. This is the childhood we never had, and never will… because we're old, Yomotsu. We're old, but this music is new."

Yuri noticed his housemate turn his head toward him, from the passenger seat. It gave off the illusion that he was being stared down by the blind man.

"But we will get even older sitting in this car if we don't get the vehicle going toward the grocery store," Yomotsu insisted, turning to "look" forward.

Yuri sighed and turned the music off. "You're right… Let's get on our way to the grocery store."

There was a knock on the window to Yomotsu's right. Then some more rapid knocks. Both of them turned their heads toward the sound. A slightly miniature woman with tan horn-rimmed glasses was peering inside at them. She had white, curly hair, and a mole in the dead center of her forehead that resembled a believer's bindi.

She knocked again, and Yuri pressed the button to roll down the window. As the barrier between them lowered, so did her knocks, so much so that she was furiously knocking on the window even as it disappeared inside the door. When it gone, her eyes paused on where it had went, before drifting toward the occupants of the car.

"Yomo, sweetie, you never told me you had a chauffeur! I saw your new vehicle and just wanted to pop by and catch up! I haven't seen you since I got back two Fridays ago! What a treat!"

Yomotsu smiled and courteously replied, "You're looking as lovely as ever, Miss Olivia. This gentleman here is renting out a space in my property, actually. He only serves as my chauffeur in his part time." He brought his voice to a whisper. "He has no other hobbies, you see."

Yuri raged silently, watching Yomotsu through narrowed eyes. "Oh, is that so?" Miss Olivia, as she was called, replied. "How interesting. How profound." It was obvious her attention shifted from dominantly on Yomotsu to being dominantly on the driver. "You really must come inside, for a spot of drink. We can talk about the weather and the metaphysics for at least a little while."

"Well, actually," Yuri started up, politely but urgently, "We're on our way to—"

"Such a shame that most men wouldn't spare time to chat with a crazy old lady like me, but not my Yomo… He's always made time for me, such a sweetie…"

"And this time is no exception!" Yomotsu hastily started up, clamping his hand over Yuri's mouth, to stifle any objections. "If you want to head inside, we'll join you in but a second. We have to remove this CD from the CD player. I always get paranoid leaving them inside."

Miss Olivia's wrinkled face lit up with a smile as she summoned up a hum from her lips. The tune was, to Yuri's surprise, quite familiar. It was, if he was not mistaken, from Chopin's Trestesse. She walked away with a certain hop to her step, produced both from a jovial mood and from her reliance on what looked like a shaman's spirit stick for walking.

Yomotsu's friendly waving ceased when he quickly turned to Yuri. "I need you to be on your best behavior with this woman," Yomotsu advised, putting the CD into its case. "I know we need to get to the grocery store, but we make no attempt at leaving. She's never kept me longer than is necessary. You may not understand now, buy you'll understand soon. Let me do the talking, but answer any questions she directs toward you. Abandon all expectations."

Yuri was about to say something, when Yomotsu opened his door to leave, allowing for no further commentary. Yuri would be content with being rushed along for now, because he was very interested in finding out what was making Yomotsu behave so strangely. He stored his keys safe in his pants' pocket, and followed Yomotsu to the door, which Miss Olivia had closed on her way inside.

The house was salmon-colored. This light pink, combined with the white trimming and door, gave the house the appearance of a springtime flower. In front of the door, a welcome mat read: "Be Not Afraid. This is Your Home."

Yomotsu knocked on the door. A few seconds passed before it opened. Miss Olivia, who at first appeared a little disoriented, glared at the pair from the doorway a while before recognition set in. "Oh, Yomo! What a surprise!" She exclaimed, throwing her hands up toward him. "And I see you've brought a friend, too! Is this your brother?"

Yomotsu shook his head and answered, "This is my housemate, Yuri Petrov. Yuri, this is—"

"No, no, no!" The woman snapped playfully. "I'll introduce myself, thank you very much." She took a deep breath and set her eyes on Yuri. She extended her shaky, thin hand, which Yuri clasped and lightly shook. "I am Miss Olivia Jubajuba–Anastasis don Thingamajig Walkins." When their hands unclasped, she wasted no second in snatching his hand giving it a firm kiss.

Yuri nodded uncertainly and half-whispered, "Hi."

She looked at him, as one looks at a new car one has just purchased. "Well don't just stand there! Wind doesn't carry rocks; it carries leaves! Follow me!" She slipped back inside the salmon-colored house, and before Yuri could evaluate what was happening, he was inside with Yomotsu, taking off his shoes, and entering the living room.

Miss Olivia appeared to be one who cared about empty space, for much of the white carpet and the light blue walls inside could be seen, while every little decoration seemed to carry greater importance. There were two pink armchairs set up in the room, each opposing each other, with an wooden ugly stool sitting off a short distance. When Miss Olivia told them to take a seat, she and Yomotsu assumed the two chairs, leaving Yuri on the barrier between being in what could almost be considered a "time out" zone and being in the personal bubble of the conversation.

From this stool, he observed in one corner an old grandfather clock, which ran backwards instead of forwards. In the other corner, there was a bookshelf full of old texts, with such names as Descartes, Schopenhauer, Lao Tzu, and Sartre printed on the binding. A record player sat on a stand next to the bookshelf.

When Yuri looked away from the shelf, he noticed that a seat was vacant. "Glass of pinot noir?" He tried to hide how startled he was by how suddenly Miss Olivia's voice had sounded behind him by simply muttering an "mmhmm" and taking the empty glass that was offered to him.

She poured it over the white carpet with an artist's skill. The burgundy-black seemed to glide into the tall glass he held so lightly. He felt the weight increase in his grasp, like a newborn growing between his fingertips. She disappeared behind him once more, after he had motioned for her to stop. He took a sip and swallowed slowly. How pleasant, so genuine! His first love was tea, but wine had another special place in his heart.

He took another quiet sip and closed his eyes. He was brought back to the memory of his first glass of wine. Most of his colleagues and associates, among the rare sort he did frequently communicate with, drank frequently. Yuri, however, was afraid of what he knew alcohol could do to a man. He pretended it was just disinterest and sometimes feigned being a moral teetotaler, but a more personal reason lurked behind his avoidance of all alcoholic beverages.

However, a dark time washed over Yuri's life as he struggled in university to keep up his high marks. His first drink was a crude beer, something cheap he figured he could get away with. His rationalization was that it was not a real drink if it was cheap, and thus he was not really drinking, nor was he wasting his money on alcoholic beverages. He almost quit drinking then and there, after spitting out the filth, but during a certain date one night, he found out the woman he was attempting to court came from a family of vintners.

What, in this glass of pinot noir, brought back such fond memories of the beautiful young woman and the quiet side of the room they occupied under the gray-glow of a cloudy day, he could only speculate. What about being here, in this quiet room, hearing only the ticking of the reverse grandfather clock, brought to him images of warm timbres from the different instruments of the music on record as he and the young woman, he was faint to be certain of. This was the first proper drink of wine he had enjoyed since leaving Sternbild, but in a way, it felt like more like that first glass from his youth than it did the few times he drank when he was working for the Administration of Justice.

"Yomotsu has told me a lot about you," Miss Olivia mentioned, waking Yuri up. "It must be embarrassing, but we talked a while about you just the other day over the phone. He gives me such good company. I might turn into a total lunatic if it weren't for him."

Yuri's smile answered "that's nice" and then disappeared as he sipped more of the wine. He swallowed and then, his etiquette perhaps refined by the drink, asked rhetorically, "Is that so?" He chuckled softly. "I admit, he's brought a certain sense of normalcy to my life already."

Miss Olivia placed her hand on Yomotsu's, gently stroking it. "He's one of the most sane young men I've ever had the privilege of meeting. He's like a modern Buddha, a commonplace Jesus." She closed her eyes and kept stroking the hand in front of her. "I've lived in this neighborhood all my life, but up until recently, I spent nearly the entire time traveling. I've been to so many countries and have soaked up so many cultures… It's wonderful, this beautiful world we have. It's so big and so small at the same time. Like people. So complicated, so emotional and thoughtful, and yet so essentially of the same spirit."

Yuri's glass was halfway to his lips, when he peered over to focus solely on listening. Miss Olivia had leaned back and placed her hands on her lap, on top of her yellow and pink floral blouse. "And how interesting it is, then, when two souls from different realms are brought near. How interesting it is when, outside the individual cell, something calls forth two to become one unit while still holding onto their individuality—in an alliance, what goes for the sake of unity, and what remains the same for the sake of it remaining an alliance and not an assimilation?" She chuckled. "But…" She waved in front of her face. "Something sure does smell. Oh. The cat."

Yuri's eyes went towards the fat, gray form wobbling toward Miss Olivia. Clearly not able to hop onto her lap, it just stretched itself up and reached for her knees, eliciting a kindly pet on its head. "This is Dostoevsky. He's a nice kitty. Ain't you? Ain't you a nice kitty?" She stroked the back of its ears like she stroked Yomotsu's hand, with the same emotion.

"Last time we spoke, you said you were going to look into something for me," Yomotsu alluded, vaguely. "Vous avez dit 'Un œuf sous la lumière artificielle avait une mère toujours' et tel..."

Yuri nearly coughed up the wine as it went down his throat. The expressions on the faces in front of him betrayed nothing at all unusual about this whole scene.

"Oh, that," Miss Olivia responded. "Just let me get there, let me get there! I was getting there, you know." Dostoevsky got what he wanted from Olivia and wobbled over to receive Yomotsu's attention. "But first, I was hoping you could help me with a few chores out in the back. The grass loves the rain we've been getting, but so do the weeds…"

Miss Olivia rose, and it looked as though Yomotsu was about to protest but held it back successfully. He stood up behind her. "We'll be just one second, dearie," cooed the older woman, setting a hand on his shoulder. "In the meantime, you get your thoughts together. I'd pour you more wine, but you know the damage alcohol can do."

They slipped away into the backyard, and this left Yuri awfully bored. For some unmeasured distance of time, he just sat, swirling his pinot noir within the glass, looking gloomily into the darkness which had just a few moments ago had produced vivid and gentle reminiscence. That light which had surrounded him turned to fires that burned him, however, and he felt some unwelcomed warmth inside of his body. He leaned forward on the stool, only to find that his balance on it was shaky. He felt the back legs rise behind him before he fell forward. The wine splattered across the white carpet in front of him, in one big blotch arching forward, from near where his head was landed. Yuri was lying on the carpet in disbelief; the fiery warmth had not left him. To the onlooker, the way in which the wine spilled might have indicated that his brains had burst straight out from his skull and onto the carpet.

He was soon on his knees, nervously reaching for the wine glass. A small portion was still inside. He immediately propped the glass back up, sitting it on the stool behind him, somehow satisfied that, against the vast amount that had spilled, at least a portion had not. That gave him some excuse that it was not a total act of clumsiness, that at least there was still marginal room for human understanding.

Still, when he looked on the spill, he could not help but see something horrible. The splatter shot clean between where the two chairs were, dividing them, going even a little past them. He placed his hands on his knees, and then his knees felt damp. He lifted his hands up to his eyes, and he saw they were stained by the dark grapes.

"What are you going to do now?"

Yuri's hands shook, and he stared through them. His fingers were blurry.

"This could be a problem."

He placed his wet hands on an already wet portion of the carpet, and seized the carpet firmly. He threatened to rip it out as he pulled on it, his body leaning forward.

"Or are you just hoping someone will swoop in and save you? I would if I could, but…"

"Father…" Yuri rose to his feet and turned suddenly, in one swift motion, and looked toward the source of the voice suddenly, hands outstretched, joints in his fingers bent like claws ready to strike. "I don't need you to save me!"

He glared forward, and Miss Olivia Walkins looked back at him. His rapid breath slowed, and then he turned away from her, ashamed and lost, desirous of somehow regaining composure without her recognizing that he had to try to regain it. He saw the carpet was white once more, and there was no stain to be found. He turned once more, and there the glass was on the stool, as full of wine as when the woman had left the room with Yomotsu.

"But you do," Miss Olivia Walkins said, softly. She placed her hands on his shoulders, as he now faced her. Her small stature was made even more apparent by standing so close to him. "Whether you realize it or not, Mr. Yuri Petrov, I know you deserve it, what I have prepared for you. Make no mistake about it, I will save both of you." Like that, she left him once more. Olivia called out for Yomotsu, saying she was unable to find the other weed clippers, and they should just use the ones in the outside tool box.

Yomotsu was on his knees, but that did not mean he was submitting. Rather, he had to lower himself to his opponent's level in order to destroy them—he had to descend toward their infested grounds in order to claim victory.

Terrible, terrible weeds! They threatened the life of the growing vegetables, so fresh and ready to thrive in Olivia's backyard! Such parasitic plants fed off the same soil as the crop, but the more they grew, the more they encroached and threatened to take even the light of the sun away from the true harvest.

The seed planted by the gardener was weak to start, but it grew stronger. As though to challenge it, now weeds were advancing, but the plants had an ally in Yomotsu. Tomatoes, zucchini, potatoes—whatever Olivia's garden all contained, he intended to protect the fruits of her labor. The fruits happened to be vegetables, but that made no difference to him—it was just an added bonus that this means of helping out his neighbor served as a perfect analogy.

Yomotsu heard Olivia quietly singing Doris Day's "Que Sera, Sera" from her lawn chair, and all he could think about was how the vegetables were like perfect creeds and strong ideals. A seed of justice, if placed in the right soil, given the right amount of water, and left to bask in the sun—if all these conditions could be met—could produce a beautiful and succulent plant. However, false codes of justice could just as easily grow and suffocate true justice. Without the support of the people, how could a hero of righteousness stand? He would be no more successful than a plant without the right soil, water, and sunlight.

Perhaps that was the root of the issue—if he could excuse himself of such a pun. Such forms of false justice were everywhere, perpetuated by popular media and loud mouth advocates. Most memorably, there was that vigilante known as Lunatic. Yomotsu sliced through the thick weeds with his clippers, fueling his proper gardening with the natural anger that Lunatic arose in his mind.

That man, claiming to "hear the voice of Thanatos," defied the true heroes of the city. He dishonorably would murder criminals instead of help bring them to the proper authorities. Yomotsu could understand such a mentality, but only in extreme circumstances would he ever be willing to risk human life. There was always the opportunity for criminals to repent, but with every criminal act, the blood on one's hands seeps deeper into the skin.

"Yomo, dearie, I think you're cutting up my good plants along with the weeds!"

Yomotsu immediately stopped and dropped his weed clippers. She had not questioned the idea of sending blind man out with sharp clippers into her precious garden, but now she was suffering for his overenthusiasm!

"Perhaps I should contract someone else for my garden," he heard Olivia say. "You and Yuri aren't the only sane young men I know…"

Yomotsu sighed. He was being replaced, and it was his own fault.

"Yomo, I have other tasks for you to take care of—just as man cannot live on bread alone, not every man can live as a baker! Don't be sad!"

He was just realizing that Olivia's voice had been drawing nearer and nearer when he suddenly felt her hand on his shoulder.

"Besides, I think you should go to the grocery store now," Olivia insisted. "That is the most important thing you can do right now. You go on your way, then, and I will see to it that one of the next times you visit, I will have the answer to one of your questions."

Yomotsu sighed. "The message on my Diary… Could you explain that one?"

Olivia's hand raised from his shoulder. "Ah, yes," she recalled. "All your Diary keeps repeating is that you are going to defeat a great obstruction of true justice in Graceville… I am afraid that is something I can't answer."

"I presumed as much," he mumbled, lowly.

"But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer," Olivia reminded. "All it means is this isn't the right time yet for you to know. Continue, not passively, but with trust in your Future Diary. It was given to you for a reason, right?"

Yomotsu rose from the grass. He crossed his arms and turned his face toward her. His expression as thoughtful. "I am not a hero of justice worthy of such a Diary," he murmured.

Olivia softly stroked his cheek with her hand. "Oh, Yomo… You are a shining star among billions, yet you shine so much brighter than others in the sky… Come. Let's get you back inside and get you a nice glass of Juicy Juice—and a sticker!"

"A STICKER?" Yomotsu repeated.

"You've been a good boy," Olivia affirmed. "And good boys get stickers!"