Thief

Though the car dealership across our alley is sixteen years gone, replaced by condos and a parking lot, it remains in photos and in film. For example, you can see it in the photos we took from our porch window—pictures now stored in a big plastic tub—or in Thief as James Caan’s fictional/nonfictional business. But unlike what is visible in the film’s background, our garage is now covered by a trumpet vine. Here, by our building’s backdoor are three Amsonia plants. These are a kind of dogbane that flowers blue in the spring, just as the apple blossoms are falling. In the autumn, the leaves and stems are caramel colored. This variety is called “Butterscotch.” Now, in January, the Amsonia have been entirely cut down. Here then is a two-foot plot of gooseneck loosestrife, now just brown skeletons. I transplanted these from Olivia’s mother’s garden. They spread everywhere. Each “neck” fills with white flowers in midsummer. They are beloved by the wasps: floating prisms, orphic, magical things. Poor katydid. Poor nursery: pulled down below, like a Jim Belushi dissolved in acid, or the rhododendron flowering on spring evenings, or James Caan lighting his Cadillacs on fire, every minute can be caught and cataloged.