Frederik Sandwich and the Mayor Who Lost Her Marbles

by Kevin John Scott

  From the other side came hundreds of people, wading up to their thighs and scaring the ducks and holding their babies over their heads. And right behind, bearing down on them, ugly, grimacing gargoyles made of stone: The mayor’s marbles. Rasmus’s zombies. The cause of it all. The cause of everything. Thirty years of lies. The forgotten, sneering faces of Kamilla Kristensen’s greed.

  “Pernille,” Frederik gasped, getting somehow to his feet. The guards were all preoccupied now, with the elephants and statues and general public racing headlong toward collision in the lake. “Pernille, where are you?”

  Everything was chaos. There were floodlights swinging wildly about and fireworks flashing in the sky and the bonfire roaring out of control at the heart of the lake, its light refracted in the fountains of pop. Faces appeared and disappeared in shadow again. Bodies flailing everywhere. He couldn’t make out who was who. “Pernille!” he shouted. “Pernille!”

  And then he saw her.

  Or did he?

  What was he seeing? Was he seeing double?

  The beam of the lighthouse searchlight still bore down on what was left of the stage. Standing at its center, a dark silhouette against the bright-white glare, Pernille. Clearly Pernille. Hands on hips. A halo of pure-white hair about her head. Tall. Willowy. Defiant.

  Staring. Angrily. Furiously.

  At herself. Pernille. Another identical silhouette. Hands on hips. A halo of pure-white hair. Tall and willowy and haughty, staring, angry.

  “What?” he murmured. “Wait.” Which was which? Pernille and Pernille? Was he out of his mind? Had he banged his head?

  The two Pernilles were shouting, both of them, leaning forward, hurling abuse at each other from close quarters in almost identical ways. Same stance, same gestures, same frame, same build, same height, everything. And then they both threw their hands in the air in rage and backed away, glaring, snarling, and one of them, sure enough—as the angle changed and the light broke and Frederik could finally see—was Pernille.

  And the other was not.

  It was the mayor.

  It was Kamilla Kristensen.

  Pernille’s captor. Pernille’s nemesis. Pernille’s…

  “Mama,” Frederik breathed. “She is Pernille’s mama!”

  A cacophony of rockets exploded hundreds of feet above the stage, and the evening was suddenly day for the briefest instant, color raining about them all. Illuminating a soup of people, floundering and panicking in the boating lake, waist deep, crying out in dismay. A brigade of sneering statues, bowling into the water, their momentum abruptly checked. Some tipping and splashing sideways, others standing staring out of the lake like zombies; just like zombies. And a broadside of broad backsides, as elephant after elephant thrashed through the water to meet them.

  The noise was terrific. It was a riot of flashes and glimpses and horror. The elephants met the marbles maybe ten feet from the edge. They didn’t pause for a moment. They crashed through the water and they crashed through the statues, wave upon wave of them, sinking them deep underwater, driving them backward into the bank, trampling, crushing, pulverizing every single one. Grinding the mayor’s marbles into a powder that drifted like smoke on the evening air.

  “Stop!” the mayor howled into the microphone. “Stop them!”

  A long, black limousine slid to the side of the stage in a heck of a hurry. Her Majesty the Queen was bundled to the open door, and the car sped away across the lawns.

  “No!” yelled the mayor. “Come back!”

  Henrik Hotdog’s hot dog cart was trundling uncontrolled down the hillside, veering side to side, threatening to run over anyone who got in the way. Henrik Hotdog waddled twenty yards behind it, out of control himself, running and tumbling down the steep slope.

  A giant figure wandered to the very front of the stage, staring out across the chaos, rubbing his head in confusion. It was Rasmus. Frederik ran to his side. They watched the herd of elephants climb the hill, scattering the remaining onlookers and trampling statues into the lawn.

  “You!” the mayor roared. She stormed across the stage, microphone in hand, and started hitting Rasmus with it. Muffled thuds echoed across the park. “You cretin!” she roared. “You moron! You miserable excuse for a man. You scum. You vandal. Look what you’ve done to my glory! My glory!”

  “Me?” Rasmus said, grabbing her arm and holding her microphone hand in the air so she couldn’t batter him anymore. “Me?”

  “You! Always you! Only you! Every time I’m on the brink, there you are. In the way. Ruining everything!” The National Medal for Civic Service slipped from her shoulders and pinned her arms to her sides like a lasso. She couldn’t move them. She staggered around like a penguin, threw her head back, and roared with rage. The chain slipped farther and jammed at her elbows.

  Frantic people were running in every direction, yelling, pleading for help. Clambering up the slick banks of the lake on hands and knees, their clothing saturated, caught between helping their loved ones and saving themselves.

  The mayor took a step too far and toppled off the edge of the stage. There was a gasp. Frederik held his breath. And then there was a squelch and a screech of revulsion. He slithered to the lip and looked down.

  Her Ladyship the Mayor had landed in the middle of a mound of elephant dung. It broke her fall and no doubt prevented her breaking anything else. But she didn’t seem to appreciate her luck. She was howling, wailing. Arms still pinned motionless by her medal chain.

  Rasmus jumped down and helped her to sit. Steaming green doo-doo all over her elegant, sleeveless gown. All over her arms. On her face. In her mouth. She spat and retched.

  Rasmus squatted at her side and tried to remove the chain, the microphone still cradled under his arm.

  “What have you done?” she screamed at him. “Do you know the lengths I had to go to? Burying the past, silencing dissent, making all the mindless morons who live in this borough do exactly as I say. Do you think that was easy? Do you think that was cheap? Do you think I’ll let you blunder back into my life with your disgusting creatures and smash it all up again? Again? I should have dealt with you properly the first time, but no! I was weak. I was sentimental. Well, never again!”

  She drew the deepest of breaths, gasped as the chain tightened around her midriff.

  “This time,” she hissed, “I will make you disappear for good. You and those horrid foreign kids with their skin and their idiotic accents. Don’t think I can’t. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again! I’ll wipe every memory of you away, and no one will know you existed! I will erase you like I erased the railway, like I erased the earthquake. Like all who dare disrupt me. Like unwanted offspring. I will not be stopped! I will not have my reputation sullied by you! I never knew you! We were never an item. You’re nothing to me! You’re a disgusting lowlife and I’m going to make you disappear!”

  She stared, incensed, at Rasmus.

  His shadow was a broad, black line stretching out to the lake. A long, black shadow in the searing light.

  And then she realized.

  The searchlight was shining directly on them both. On Rasmus and her. The searchlight and the TV cameras. And Rasmus had the microphone under his arm. And the finest firework display ever seen on Frederik’s Hill had finally ended. And everyone, in every direction, had stopped screaming and running around and had turned to stare. At the mayor. And it was very, very quiet across the Royal Garden Park. Save for the last echoes of her voice across the hillside, broadcast loud and clear to everyone by the highly expensive high-fidelity public-address system.

  “You and I are finished!” she spat at Rasmus, unable to stop her bitterness spilling to the surface one last time, like bile.

  Rasmus Rasmussen stared at Her Ladyship the Mayor from the depths of an infinite sadness.

  “No,” he said. “Only you.”

  Chapter
27

  One Week After Her Ladyship the Mayor’s Unforeseeable Midsummer Debacle

  An oak tree reached its canopy of leaves over the pond and the grass. Frederik stretched his legs from a bench in sun-dappled shade. They failed to reach anywhere near as far as Pernille’s. A block away, a digger was shoveling remains of the Ramasubramanian Superstore onto the back of a truck.

  “This must be difficult to watch,” Frederik said to Venkatamahesh.

  The little man sat beside Pernille. He laughed. “Not at all.”

  “But aren’t you ruined?” Pernille asked.

  The former shopkeeper smiled. “Actually, no. After the earthquake, some months back, I used what little cash remained to buy some insurance. I thought it wise. Today, I received a check. Also, a windfall payment from the Borough of Frederik’s Hill. It seems they are keen for me to keep quiet about last Friday’s incident.”

  “But what will you do, now that your business is gone?”

  “Something new,” he said. “Maybe something with wildlife. I have experience, after all.”

  Frederik spotted a familiar figure mounting a bicycle outside Municipal Hall.

  “Father!” he called as the cyclist drew close. “Over here!”

  Father braked, grinned, waved, collided with a lamppost. Wheeled his wobbly bicycle onto the green and shook Venkatamahesh’s hand.

  “You and your wife had a narrow escape,” said Venkatamahesh.

  “We did,” said Father. “They had us in the back of a van, ready to go to the airport.”

  “And now?”

  “Now they are very apologetic.”

  “I bet.”

  The four of them ambled down the street together, past the blue house and the yellow, toward home.

  “Any more news from Municipal Hall?” Frederik asked.

  “They’re doing a lot of what’s called damage limitation,” Father explained. “It means making up iffy excuses.”

  Frederik had some of those prepared too. Even now, one week after the dust had cleared, quite literally, from Her Ladyship the Mayor’s unforeseeable midsummer debacle, he found it stunning that he hadn’t been named, blamed, shamed, or even very much questioned about his appearances on national TV in the middle of mayhem.

  “And the mayor is gone?” asked Venkatamahesh.

  “Long gone,” said Father. “On what they’re calling a sabbatical. An indefinite sabbatical.” He smiled. “She won’t be back. She’s finished. The brewery is suing her. International investors are abandoning Frederik’s Hill. The government is having to offer discounts to keep their business. And the queen is furious about the statues from her palace. She took the medal back.”

  “What about the zombies?” asked Venkatamahesh. “I still hear people talking about zombies.”

  “The official position,” Father said, “is there are no zombies. Never were. But as you know, thousands of eyewitnesses were sent fleeing in fear, and they are proving hard to persuade. Many believe the mayor set zombies on them, and it was only the elephants that saved them from an appalling death.”

  “And they’re not looking for anyone else to blame?” Pernille asked, checking. “Only the mayor?”

  “Oh, I didn’t say that,” said Father. “In fact, the investigation now centers on two individuals thought to have let the elephants out on the street.”

  Pernille grabbed Frederik’s wrist entirely too hard.

  “Believe it or not,” Father went on, “they’re detectives. Names of Martensen and Mortensen. Apparently, they scared the animals onto the road. The rest”—he gestured at the rubble being cleared from Frederik’s Avenue—“is history.”

  The upholsterer stepped from his workshop to greet them in the sunshine. “Mr. Sandwich! And Mr. Ramasubramanian. Frederik, Pernille. How splendid. Can I interest you in coffee?”

  Frederik glanced across to the Café Grondal. Its tables stood empty, as they had since the sugar incident. There was no sign of the owner.

  “Not over there,” the upholsterer said. “Dreadful woman. I make my own these days.” He draped an arm around Pernille’s shoulders. “We don’t talk to her, do we?”

  Pernille smiled. “She’s no friend of ours. Or relative.”

  “No!” Frederik agreed. And then he shut up. Had he sounded too certain? Had he given himself away? He hadn’t found a way to tell Pernille what he’d seen in the dark and the flashing lights. Pernille and the mayor, silhouetted, indistinguishable from one another. It was coincidence, he kept telling himself. A trick of the light. The stress.

  “I’ve given up my search,” Pernille said to her papa. “It’s time. You’re the only parent I need.”

  The upholsterer’s eyes glistened for a moment. “I’m glad.”

  “Me too. The whole time I was locked up, all I could think about was getting home to you.”

  Frederik’s father turned to Venkatamahesh. “Things still look bad for Rasmus Rasmussen. He brought those elephants out of the zoo. Heads will roll, and I think it will be his.”

  “Rasmus Rasmussen is a hero!” insisted Pernille’s papa. “My customers say his elephants saved their lives.”

  “Hero or not,” said Father, “he’s suspended, pending dismissal. Unless someone comes forward with something convincing, he’ll need a new career.”

  “No!” Frederik yelped.

  “We must find him,” said Pernille. “Right away.”

  “I’m coming too,” said Venkatamahesh. “I owe that man a debt of infinite gratitude.”

  The doors of the old, abandoned elephant house were wide open to the fresh air for the first time in many moons. They found Rasmus rifling through papers in a grubby, little office. He was hot and harassed and murmuring words that cannot be repeated. There were people everywhere.

  “Go away,” he snapped. “I’m busy.”

  “The whole zoo is busy,” Pernille said.

  “Thousands of people every day,” Rasmus complained. “Busloads of them. They all want to see the elephants.”

  “But surely that’s good?” Frederik said.

  “Maddening. People traipsing through my house all day.”

  “Why are they in your house?” Frederik watched a gaggle of tourists, wandering through the old elephant house, snapping selfies. They headed for the archway that led down to the railway, far beneath.

  “Secret’s out,” said Rasmus. “Everyone wants a walk in the dark to a railway that doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “What precisely are you doing?” Pernille asked, examining the riot of paperwork on the desk and the chair and the shelf and the floor.

  “Hunting for my resumé. Haven’t needed it for forty years.”

  Frederik felt awful. He had tricked Rasmus into helping him, and now Rasmus had lost his job. He hid his shame in a folder of papers: Zoo Rules and Regulations. Instructions from more than a century of superintendents and mayors. Safety guidelines and employment conditions. Maintenance agreements and feeding schedules. He found an order from Kamilla Kristensen, and a second and a third. Wads of them. Demanding this and that in the most officious tone.

  “They’ll reinstate you, Rasmus,” said Pernille.

  “They won’t. I shouldn’t have let the elephants out of the zoo.”

  Frederik stared at the folder. Rules for animal quarantine in the event of outbreak. And something struck him.

  “What is it, muffin?” asked Pernille. “You’ve had a brainwave. I know that look.”

  “Help Rasmus,” Frederik told her. “There’s something I need to do.” And he galloped from the elephant house and up through the crowds to the street.

  He was back, breathless, in forty-seven minutes. The papers were deeper than ever on the floor. Rasmus was despondent. Pernille was trying to keep his spirits up. Venkatamahesh was peering at small print through large spectacles.
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  Frederik picked up the folder. He waited till no one was looking, unclipped the rings, hooked an extra sheet of paper inside, and never said a word. Then he shoved the folder at Rasmus and said, “Look! Does this help?”

  The other three examined the page, stamped at the top with the crest of Frederik’s Hill.

  Evacuation of Animals, it said. I, Kamilla Kristensen, Mayor of Frederik’s Hill, hereby order that in an emergency or natural disaster, the animals of the zoo are to be evacuated immediately. By their designated keepers. To Municipal Hall. For safekeeping. By train.

  “Amazingly,” Frederik said, “it seems you did exactly what the rules require.”

  Pernille gave him a long, searching look. “Yes. Amazingly. And fancy it turning up just at the moment we need it most.” She smiled to herself.

  “What a relief,” said Venkatamahesh. “You are in the clear, Mr. Rasmussen. You are vindicated. Exonerated.”

  “What about the festival?” Rasmus said. “I’m responsible for seven elephants marauding through a public event. Can’t argue otherwise.”

  “I can argue otherwise,” insisted Venkatamahesh. “And I will! I was there. I saw those detectives chase them onto the street. I saw your efforts to steer them away from the crowds. Was it your fault a jet of soda pop erupted from the door in the floor and startled them? No. Was it your fault that fountains exploded and statues cascaded down the hill, leading to a general breakdown in public orderliness? No! Was any of this in the mayor’s advertised program of events? No! So whose fault was it?”

  Frederik coughed.

  “The mayor’s!” said Venkatamahesh. “You followed protocols to the letter, sir. Your conduct was exemplary. You saved buildings and lives. You saved the queen! And I shall say so. I shall tell them. Believe me, they’re keen to keep me sweet.”