INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Three.

 Chapter three

Adulthood would find Fritz von Franz working for a computer company. Having found a homeless shelter in Downtown San Diego wherein to stay, he saw his convictions -- that living in the meth desert that was Downtown San Diego would be livable by his standards – disproved. His laptop was stolen one night by an addict. He had made every effort to preserve it.

One day, as he was spanging on the streets, he met a man named Frank Wolfe. This was during the daytime, when the city was still a swirling parade of disaffected adults running about from bar to bar as though possessed of some kind of hypnosis.

Nights in Downtown San Diego began at the moment that the Sun went down. At the outset, upon arriving downtown, Fritz did not know how to distinguish the tender line between the late afternoon and dusk. He was surprised to see a barrage of bar patrons begin to flee towards the safety of their automobiles practically simultaneously. The hypnotic celebration yielded to a dusk that seemed to set into the hearts of all the patrons themselves.

Within minutes, meth addicts would accumulate on the street corners. He saw in their eyes, then, the look of individuals who had no pity for anyone. He began to miss his family, but only formally.

Frank was a professional artist. He had been in prison several times. He had tattoos running along his arms and a lion's mane of hair. He spoke with a voice as broken as his teeth, as though each intonation was made by the scraping of the inside of his throat against a stone. He smoked a good deal. Beyond his manic eyes, however, rested something else: A childlike wonder. Even his rigid views – a fortress of opinions -- seemed to be constructed as though it were a fortress to protect childhood naivete. He would, each day, make some reference to one thing or another from his upbringing: How his hard-nosed father commanded respect without ever having to demand it, how his mother-in-law had been the scourge of his early life, how his younger brother, also an artist, got into juvenile hall for counterfeiting bills that he had drawn, himself.

Frank fought for Fritz's legal rights. When that crusade failed, he took Fritz into his own care, as an apprentice. He taught Fritz how to be a freelancer. Fritz learned quickly.

He had a prized talent for designing three-dimensional models and figures by computer. He would advertise his work tirelessly on the website that Frank used to network. One day, he got a gig and made several hundred dollars. Several gigs like this later, he was ready to move out of Frank's custody.

Dm.A.A.