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  The London Eye was made out of steel from the UK, cables from Italy, bearings from Germany, the hub was made in the Czech Republic, and yes, the passenger capsules were manufactured in France, but that didn’t matter to Jack or even Anton.

  Anton had spotted Jack, and had almost caught him, but the young man was quicker than the giant. He had been lucky, and Jack was someone who relied on his wits. Cutting through the waiting line he made it into the waiting capsules by pretending to be the teenage son of large family of tourists from Mumbai.

  Anton hadn’t been so lucky. He was stopped by an attendant, “Get to the back o’da line, Mate.”

  “Here you go,” said Anton, handing the bill with a picture of the Queen of England on it to the attendant. France doesn’t have a monarch, and none has appeared on its coinage since 1793.

  “There goes a tenner,” said the attendant taking the bill from Anton, “but what’s so important?”

  “Beans,” said the giant.

  The London Eye is 435 feet tall. It’s the largest of its kind in Europe, but the largest Ferris wheel in the world is the Singapore Flyer. Completed in 2008 it’s 541 feet tall, and on December 23, 2008, 173 passengers became trapped for six hours when an electrical fire occurred in the ride’s control room, but that has nothing to do with our story.

  There were thirty-two capsules attached to the London Eye, and Jack was sealed into one of them with the giant and a large family from Mumbai. There was no place for the young lecturer to escape. It looked like the giant would get the beans back from him.

  There were five beans that were discovered in the caves in France. If they had been originally placed in a leather pouch, that container had long ago turned into dust. The beans had survived and the few scientists who had been allowed to study them thought they might have been brought to the cave for a prehistoric ceremony.

  As Anton got closer to Jack, the capsule of the Eye reached the peak of its arc, he had to think of something quick to get away from the giant. He didn’t have much time and when he saw one of the tourists from Mumbai holding a can of soda. Jack made a quick grab for the soda, and when he got it firmly in his hand he placed the beans into the dark liquid.

  The magic inside the beans could no longer be contained when they were soaked in the soda pop. It was such a violent reaction that Jack couldn’t hold onto the can. As soon as he dropped it, everyone in the large capsule could see the bean shoots sprout out of it. The new plants were looking for soil and as soon as they found the right direction they magically bore through the bottom of the carriage. Jack took advantage of his new escape route by climbing down one of the tendrils of the new bean stalk. Anton followed, but the boy was quicker than the giant.

  The Thames has been used by man since Neolithic times, and a bowl has been discovered along its shores dating back to 3300 BC. The River Thames is also under the influence of the North Sea tides, and low tide information is readily available at any of the docks along its banks where the new plant’s roots held firmly into the most soil.

  Jack was the first to reach the bottom of the stalk, and on the ground, he found the tool he needed to finish the giant off. He broke the glass that held a fire axe, and it easily cut through the new beanstalks. With five swings of the axe the plant began to falter.

  Anton felt the stalk shake and quiver. Anton stopped, and it was then that Jack gave the beanstalk one more blow with his axe, and that was enough to dislodge the giant.

  Video of the giant, the beanstalk, and Jack soon went viral, and Jack became an overnight Internet celebrity. After he served his jail-time for manslaughter, and destruction of public property, Jack capitalized on his fame and lived happily ever after.

  Chapter 32

  Excellent to Bad and Everything In-Between: A Quick Glance at Fredrick Culvert-Owen’s Credit Score

  It always starts with a girl. It isn’t an ordinary girl because someday she’ll be my future wife, and even later on she’ll be my future ex-wife.

  “Who’s at fault?” I ask, “I want to know who’s at fault when the relationship is over? Of course it’s my fault. Isn’t it always the man’s fault?”

  How will I describe her? Beautiful. There are no more words needed.

   

  Credit Score Range: 720 to 850

   

  “Hello Freddy, my name is Henry. Is there anything catching your eye?” asks the salesman standing behind the counter. He has read the name badge on my work shirt.

  I point to the ring.

  “You have a good eye if I do say so myself.”

  “My name, it’s actually, Fredrick Irwin,” I say trying to sound older and less nervous.

  “Could you show me a different ring?”

  “Of course, I can,” says Henry opening the back of the glass case. “Is this the one, Mr. Irwin?” When the man makes certain it is the one I want to see, he says, “It’s a fine ring. One-quarter carat.”

  I say quietly, but loud enough so I don’t embarrass him, “It’s all my first name, Fredrick Irwin. My last name isn’t Irwin. It’s…”

  The salesman looks up from the ring, and gives me a free shark’s smile. “My fault I’m sure, your future bride will love you even more for your good taste.”

  It’s not the first time I notice how uncaring people can be. It’s like finally getting off the interstate, but it’s the wrong exit.

  The salesman says, “Would you like to apply for a Belgium Brother’s diamond customer charge card? Most young men like yourself find it’s the easiest way to pay.”

  I’m a passenger now.

  Credit Score Range: 630 to 719

  Helen is crying. She doesn’t cry very often. She tries to hide her tears from me when she does, but today there’s no stopping them. My wife’s eyes are red, and I’m glad she’s not hurt.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say going to her. My wife is sitting in the waiting room. A TV has a daytime soap for its current morning-face, but nobody here is watching the two lover’s embrace, and I only catch their affectionate hug from the corner of my eye. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  The auto body repair man walks through the door in the back of his shop to the two of us in his waiting room. He has a practice look for times like these, and he’s ready to use it on Helen and me. “Mr. and Mrs. Culvert it’s not worth to cost to fix the mini-van. It’s too old. You’d be better off buying another one.”

  Helen looks to me and starts to cry again. “It’s Culvert-Owen. We both changed our names when we were married.”

  The auto body man doesn’t care or understand my wife, and he starts to speak to me again. “I was saying. It’s not worth the repairs. But I have a used one out in the back lot, and it’s only a few years old. I can show it to you if you like?”

  “No thank you,” I say to him. I look at Helen, and I know what I want to do for her.  I say to my wife, “We’ll go out and look for a new SUV this afternoon. It’s not your fault, and you should be driving something better.”

  Helen stands and looks for the woman’s toilet, and maybe she can go in there and dry the rest of the sadness from her face. Before she leaves me, she asks, “Do you think we can afford one?”

  The auto body man looks at Helen as she walks away. It’s another one of those looks. He looks as if he could fill her up with windshield wiper fluid topping off all the liquid she has lost inside.

  Credit Score Range: Below 630

  “Fredrick Irwin Culvert-Owen?”

  I can’t believe I’m here. Helen isn’t here, she’s sent her lawyer instead. I’m sitting with my own attorney and facing the other across the table. I try to lighten the mood in the office. I say, “It’s Fred. Please call me, Fred. Only my wife, Mrs. Culvert-Owen, calls me, Fredrick.”

  My wife’s lawyer corrects me without looking up and says, “It’s Ms. Culvert. Your ex-wife now uses her maiden name. To business, please. Your ex-wife would like to keep the following items…”

  I reach for my briefcase and
bring it to the table in front of me. It’s black leather, and Helen bought it for me two years ago. She had it custom made, and gave it to me on my birthday. I put my thumbs on its silver sliders, and I can see my initials in the middle: FICO.

  “Are you ready to sign the papers?”

  “Not really,” I say finding a proper pen, closing the case, and placing it back on the floor. “But will I ever get a second chance?”

  My lawyer says to me, “We all get a chance to get back in the driver’s seat, but sometimes we need to give the GPS time to recalculate …you know, so it has a chance to find the new route.”

  “Who’s at fault? Me? Her?”

  “No one’s at fault,” he says looking through the top half of his no-line, no-scratch bifocals. “We live in a no fault state. It’s curious, but we all try to purchase insurance afterwards. Don’t we?”

   

  Chapter 33

  Eating Acrylic Pancakes with the Dictators at IHOP on my Birthday

  “Nicholas, you do remember what happened last year when you invited the dictators to your birthday?” asked Murielle who was next to me on our bed. I had been reading the Sunday funnies, and I had thought Murielle had been reading along with me.

  “This year will be different, I promise,” I said to her not knowing if it were true, and on the surface I wanted it to be true. We always celebrated Murielle’s birthday at our dining room table with a few of her close girlfriends, their husbands, and her saints. We drank some Napa Valley sparkling wines that we found on our summer trips. I always felt we had eaten too much bread and cheese to my liking. Because her birthday was on November 1st, All Saints Day, we would bring out extra china, silver, and the fine linen. We would make small partitions in her cake just in case the saints wanted tiny pieces of the white frosted cake with its raspberry filling.

  “Wouldn’t you rather invite the saints this year instead?” asked Murielle who was much more comfortable with her own idea than mine.

  “No,” I stated, “we have the saints come on your birthday party every year. I was thinking of something different.” While the saints always had an excellent taste in wine, there’s only so many times I could drink with the same venerable people, who had great miracles attributed to them and who had ultimately been canonized. Once a year was enough for me and it was something that I did gladly on Murielle’s birthday, but not on my own.

  There was Mattias, who replaced Judas in Christ’s flock. There were also Melania the Elder, and her daughter, Melania the Younger, both who became famous for their conversion to Christianity in Rome. When they stood next to my wife, both could’ve been mistaken for Murielle’s mother and sister. Both ladies had the same kinky red hair as Murielle. The others included Ermengol, Catherine of Alexander, and Martin of Tours. I never could remember what any of them did to become saints. Finally, there was Tsarevna Maria, a Russian Grand-Duchess, who, as a nurse, helped wounded soldiers during World War I. She was someone we definitely needed to keep away from the dictators that I liked to invite to my own party.

  Murielle said, “No dictators, I don’t think I could take them again even if I tried, and I’m sure that IHOP doesn’t want them back either. Your birthday is on April 23rd…that’s Saint George’s Day. The British do love him. Its short notice, but I’m sure he’ll come.” Her face always reminds me of a girl’s face. Her red hair, which she always wanted to be straighter, made her look younger.

  I ignored her. “You’d be surprised…I had overheard the waitress and the busboy, and while they didn’t like singing happy birthday all of the time, they didn’t seem to mind the dictators as a group. The only one they had a problem with was Pol Pot. Do you remember how he never came back from the toilet?” I asked.

  “Yes, I thought it was strange.”

  “It turns out he went outside and started digging up the shrubs next to the restaurant.”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Murielle who decided to put both her cold feet against the warmth of my leg. “You don’t suspect he was starting another ‘Killing Field’?…do you?

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s why they got mad. They got mad because they knew they couldn’t get any illegals to come back and do the landscaping. Last year…do you remember?”

  “No, not really,” she said as her feet finally found the right spot to get their maximum amount of heat off my closer leg.

  “Well, I told Pol to leave, and I had to tip them extra money. I don’t think they ever did replace those shrubs he dug up.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  I thought Murielle might go back to sleep, but I kept talking to her, “I had to apologize for Pol. They said it didn’t matter because Saturday night customers were always that way…always difficult.”

  “No dictators, please,” she said again but not with too much emphasis in her voice as she had the time before.

  “We’ll see,” I said as I put down the paper next to the bed, and I pulled the thick warm fluffy white down comforter up over our heads. “They aren’t such a bad group once you get to know them.”

  This is what Pol Pot had at last year’s birthday; he ate the Grilled Cod Hollandaise ($7.99). His cod filet was lightly dusted in seasoned flour. It was topped with a fresh lemon and hollandaise. He wanted the beef barley soup and the vegetable medley for his choices. He also had an ice tea with two Sweet ’n Lows ($1.49).

  My friends from work won’t go eat at IHOP with me. My wife will go there because she loves me. Dictators will go because they’ll eat with anyone. The saints will never set their bare feet inside an IHOP. Lastly there was Pol Pot, who would’ve gone, but he hadn’t been invited.

  The fascists always like to sit together. I noticed that during my birthday dinner last year and the same held true again this year. Juan and Eva, Benito and Adolf sat together at one of the two tables the servers brought together for my party. While the fascist like to sit together, the communists don’t like to sit next to other. They hate the fascist dictators more, so they’re resigned to sit next each other. Murielle sat next to me; so that left the communists who were forced to sit together and their egos were strained in the remaining chairs. Marx liked Lenin even though communism took hold in Russia instead of Germany. Stalin’s ego was always damaged because he never thought he measured up to Lenin. After all that, there was Tito who didn’t like Stalin because of the ‘Iron Curtain’ he had once received from him for his own birthday.

  I didn’t care because it was my birthday which meant that it was my special day. There would be no saints involved, and I sat next to my pretty wife. Would I call this group of dictators my friends? Can any man call them friends? I don’t know if they’re beyond having acquaintances let alone friends. I know for certain that no one can be friends with a saint, but just maybe, dictators are better to know than saints.

  All of the dictators already had a chance to order something to drink by the time Murielle and I arrived. At IHOP, the dictators were forced to drink soda pop, and some had resigned themselves to coffee or water instead.

  Meeting each dictator’s taste in food was a difficult task with so many complex personalities that had been invited. We could’ve had the dinner at our house, but it was much easier to have the meal there instead. I was glad that it was the IHOP staff that had been given that task of taking each of the dictator’s orders.

  “Nicholas, are you going to have anything to drink?” asked Murielle, who had just ordered a Sprite ($1.49). Murielle liked that brand of soda because it didn’t have caffeine and wouldn’t keep her awake at night.

  “The guests must order first,” said Tito trying to be polite, and he was always a welcoming man. He even stood when my wife was being seated. This forced the others to stand and wait for Murielle to take her place at the table. The only ones who didn’t stand were Juan and Eva. I thought Juan might’ve stood if his wife hadn’t been there with him.

  “Sit down Tito. You have stood long enough,” said Stalin who was grumpier than I
remembered him being the year before. Things must not be going well for him. “I have digestion problems also. Do you mind?” he asked in his way and took Murielle’s Sprite ($1.49). He drank it all for himself. “I find the bubbles help.”

  “I’ll get you another, sweetie,” said the waitress anticipating her needs, and she quickly left for the soda dispenser in the back.

  “That was rude,” said Tito to Stalin, trying to defend my wife’s soda from the aggressive dictator.

  “When have you become French, Comrade?” commented Stalin, and his remark made the rest of them laugh, and made Tito retreat back into his chair away from his hostile neighbor. Tito’s meal: he had one Coke without ice ($1.49), and a Colorado Omelette ($8.99). The menu described the Colorado Omelette as a meat lover’s delight. It contained bacon, pork sausage, shredded beef, ham, onions, green peppers, and Cheddar cheese. It was served with steak sauce or salsa. Tito chose the steak sauce.

  I was getting hungry. All IHOPs have pictures of their food from the menus on the restaurant’s walls. The food in those silver framed photos was perfect, and because I was starving I would’ve eaten those delicious eye-catching morsels off the wall instead of waiting longer than I had to.

  “They aren’t real,” said Lenin to me when he noticed I had been staring at them. “I could’ve fed my whole country if we had pictures like this. We wouldn’t have needed any more food. If the Tsars had these pictures, there would never have been a revolution. The serfs could’ve eaten those pictures instead. But alas they’re only acrylic in those photos, they’re fakes, and they’ll break your teeth if you tried.” His comment only made Marx laugh, and when he had finished talking to me, Lenin and Marx talked to each other for the rest of the night and had little interaction with the rest of us. They argued about the revolution in Russia and why it hadn’t happened in Germany first and neither could agree. At that point, Stalin tried to talk to his old mentor, but he couldn’t make Lenin listen. No matter how hard he tried to be included. The two were only interested in the other.

  This was Marx’s meal: he had the Cheese Sticks Appetizers ($3.99). Lightly breaded Mozzarella sticks served with marinara sauce. He also had the Grilled Turkey Super Stacker ($7.99). Tender slices of grilled turkey with Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions and mayonnaise on a grilled Romano-Parmesan cheese roll. It was served with a dill pickle spear. Marx had to drink it all down with the local root beer ($1.49).