by Evan Dara
—Ah – him, too? Now Mr. Crocker? He’s upstaking, too? Well, that makes me sad. We shared a hedge fence for what, twenty-two years. Two stakes in the ground, can barely see their wooden heads and sure we have bushes but mostly between us it was OK, air and free vistas. Yes, we shared those hedges between us (though I paid the gardeners). Nice man. Scar around and under his ear. Still lisping a bit despite, evidently, speech therapy. Almost never came out of that house. Haven’t seen him since – maybe since the lightning hit the white pine across the Street in, when, ’97. Hm. I’ll miss him. Nice man. Nice man—
—Of course. Of course. Take it away. Take it all. Largest library in the State. There for over a hundred years, through decay and rebuilding and the bond drive. Point of pride for the entire city, for every one of us, felt warm around your shoulders when you went by.
Big as a shopping-center anchor, solid red brick, tinted by time, lots of airy, reflecting windows and two big triangle pediments one above the other – that was an entrance. Housed, who knows, forty thousand books? Eighty thousand? Books and maps and DVDs and such? Every one of which was there on purpose, professionally selected and installed and always just waiting there, expressly and only to help. To help people. To help them find, to help them flow, to help them enter – to help them grow. Each one of them possibly, just possibly, a node of identity. To help them be.
Fletcher Library, RIP. Maybe now you are finally free.
—Yeah, so I was walking yesterday up North Union Street, right around Loomis, right around 2 p.m.? – and yesterday afternoon was OK, if you remember, good eye-closing sun and not so cold you just want to sublet every one of your cells – and this guy crosses North Union and starts talking to me. A mid-size guy, solid, he likes his rib-roast, clean shaven, straight black hair combed entirely fine, he was wearing a suit under one of those green trenchcoat-kind of coats with the panels and the lapels that businessguys feel they have to wear, and he just walks over and starts jawing. That is to say: jawing to me.
Well, it’s not like I knew the guy, I may have seen him once or twice around A-burg but I sure as hell don’t know him personally, and he just goes into yakking about how he’s doing OK and how he’s feeling pretty strong, then about how his Volvo’s coming out of the shop and how a friend of his has gone back on magic mushrooms and how he wants to start tai chi again … And yeah of course the guy was dingers but what he was saying kind of wasn’t, it had some non-uselessness to it, the guy was harmless.
But of course after maybe two minutes of this – cresting on a rap about the guy’s sisters phlebitis – I just wanted to grab him, you know, take him by his birdwing lapels and just get him to a.) clam up or b.) maybe actually explain himself. But I don’t think I could have gotten either clamming or explaining, he was in the passenger seat of a jalopy called urgency, it didn’t really matter what he was saying because it was mostly about that urgency – that’s what he was trying to get across, the words were placeholders or publicities, or even feints. So I listened, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, this bizarro on the Street, and let me see if I can recall what else he was saying, o yeah he started kibitzing about planned memory obsolescence and about his hunt for obese aphids, and about the difference between mimlick and mimlo, and about how he was going to—
30,507
And here’s what I heard: that Anderburg, our Anderburg, is going to be re-zoned for projects – for low-income housing. For more of them. I heard big new developments all around Route 2, out by Shunpike, by the airport? More of those huge big orange apartment buildings with all the same horrible horizontal windows. Parking lots with nothing but light poles and oil blots and thrown-away paper and those tarry underloved trees. Projects. I – that would be … That would be just—
—Petra …?
I mean, Petra, who told you that? Where did you hear this? Do you really think the whole city can be seized under eminent domain? That can’t be true, there’s no way that could happen, where would – I mean, what does that even mean? Seized by whom – to achieve what? To ram a road right through our …our everything? Where would we be in all this? There’d be like total revolt and even before it could happen don’t you think the State would step in? Wouldn’t the State have to step in?
—Oh, Jonah. Oh, dear, beautiful, crescent-eyed boy with the Brancusi blades of milk-blonde hair and the body that narrates happiness by bobbling in place. It hollows me to see you like that, crying, crying and fist-grabbing my skirt, then, when I pick you up, cawing and pressing, turning tears into warm glitter on my cheek, which chills. I know you don’t want to leave Billy, your adorable little radio-car friend Billy. Billy who has freckles and black hair, who lives to roll you up in bedcovers and who taught you five-card rummy. Dearest Jonah, I don’t want to leave him either! But Jonah, how can I tell you that Billy, that your friend and all six of his family, one son, three daughters, two delightful parents, that they left yesterday?
—And I went to Wanamaker’s, and it wasn’t – I didn’t—
—Where did my—?
—So that afternoon I called Leah, and—
—It’s like this animals been let loose that has no predators—
—Ah, look at … Sixty-one ninety. I never paid that much, not even two summers ago, with all the air-conditioning. Damn, A-burg Electric, I mean, I don’t know their per-whatever costs, or their demand factors, or what on God’s earth can be figuring into these numbers but – but don’t they have to notify us first? Dont they have to tell us something when they’re going to—
—And now Martin Zuckerbraun – big fat fuck with the Brillo hair, puddle gut souping over his suit pants, how could – after what, twenty years?, we know each other I’m working for him replaced his fan belt, patched his motor mount and that fuel line everything for twenty years and he sticks me for eighteen dollars—?
—So, what? – should I not, should I take new customers?, only go cash or right on the spot with a credit card—?
—So what am I supposed to—?
—What am I—?
—And you know its like A-burg has an auto-immune disorder, like the place, all of it, the whole corpus, is attacking its own defenses—
And here’s Carol again, solo, away from Rick, sitting upright in New Moon Café on a Friday afternoon with longtime friend Dave D., talking, just talking. They’re talking about all kinds of things, while having coffee, two people, two white mugs. They talk about the new Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited, about Carol’s caring for a pair of finches until her friend Ally gets resettled, about neighbor Janet’s cystic fibrosis, about Dave’s father’s lumber yard, if it might be looking for a secretary, or a receptionist—
And here’s Carol, pushing into a barred compartment of the revolving door into Staples—
—But now, you know, Rhonda’s telling me things that just – that just … She told me her husband’s back on Zoloft. Told me the city’s offering to give away Fletcher Library. That’s right, give it away – for a dollar, to make it legal. They think that’s the only way they can get it up and running again – to sell the whole thing to a private company for one dollar. And she told me a company from Cincinnati’s made a bid. This big venture company actually heard about the situation, and studied it, and thought about it, and presumably voted on it, and then said OK, we’ll give you one dollar. One dollar for your enormous brick library and everything that happened in there and everything to do with it.
That was last week. This week the Cincinnati company says they’ll only take the library if the city pays for redesign, and for removing all the books and fixtures and old tech equipment they don’t think they can use – if their one-dollar purchase is subsidized. And Rhonda should know this, she works with Anne Madaris in the city comptrollers office, they’re the ones who really know what’s going on and, well, and I just—
—What do I care? It’s – this is not my deal, OK? What do I—
—Well then shit, you know, I went down like a coal ch
ute, hit my knee hard on the sidewalk on Bank Street. And it hurt like shit and yes there’s blood and I’m looking around and you know what did it, you know what did it to me? I skidded on a flyer, a wet one, one of those millions of fucking flyers that ’re all over everywhere – I mean, I am minding my business, thinking about and on my way to lunch, and I get bushwhacked by a flyer from that stupid rug store on Williston Road—?
—So we keep in touch, OK?, let’s be sure to keep in – I’ve got your e-mail and your cell and I’ll send you my data, OK?, and wherever we are, wherever, we’ll be in – OK—?
—Wow me with a miracle – Farina is back! Our good and great Mr. Mayor has graciously decided to cut his vacation short and maybe contribute around here. Maybe the neighbors in his condo in Tampa Bay got disturbed by his telephone ringing all day long, and so gently suggested that he get the hell out, and so the poor guy was only able to keep his whole family in eighty degrees for a pitiful, pitiful three weeks. Whatever – the trick, it is did. Our honorable mayor is, this very day, going into shops and stopping on streetcorners saying he’s in a fighting mood, that he’s rearing for a fight, and if a smooth and silky tan is required to do the job—
—Oh, yes. I have heard about this. Madeleine told me. And I’m hopeful, you know. It seems to me this can help. They’re called Great American Equity Owners, and they’re out of Atlanta. That’s a nice city down south, my sister lived there for a few years when her husband worked for Coca-Cola. I was there two times. Now here, they’re buying houses out behind the golf course at the Vermont State country club – that’s the company that’s buying houses, the Great American. I understand they’ve already bought six. And everyone says this’ll keep the prices up, that they’re working to support the prices. And I support them in that, you know. I wish them very well.
—And of course they’re big and of course they’re huge and they’re all white and clean and bright and stuff, and of course they have everything – even film processing, even bottled water, even perfectly OK socks and even flip-flops three months before summer. And I’m sure – I assume – I hope – everything also’ll be cheaper. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great that SureAid came in, that they’ve opened up here and believed in A-burg and – hopefully – started the movement back. But now, you see, it’s only them and Seattle Drugs, it’s only those two, and what’s that going to lead to? I mean, Seattle is, like, owned by a guy, Dan Gordon, who lives in a house on Mills Avenue, a guy who went off to pharmacy school and came back and built his own business here, where he met his future wife, Shel, while waiting on line at Northfield Savings and who pays for his sons Adidas at Mills & Greer. A guy who—
—And Rennie …? Or even Cari? They know I’m a little behind, they must know, Cari must have understood when I didn’t come out bowling last Fri … Now, what, I have to get to Dr. Mazlor, I can’t, they’ll just, they have their own headaches, they don’t want to hear about anybody else’s migraines, they don’t need it, that I—
—And everywhere, everything, before you know it, before you can get to where you want to be with it, it’s—
—Wednesday the 25th, that’s when the meeting is called for, 8 p.m. in Contois Auditorium. Well thank God they’re finally getting into gear, I – both my neighbors, they won’t be attending, if you know what I mean. The whole town council is going to be there, it said that on a poster hanging in City Market and another one in the post office, it said they’ll be both presenting and welcoming proposals about the situation and everyone is welcome, even just to listen. They’re going to set up or introduce some kind of new commission, it also said, it was labeled a Great Town Meeting—
—Hallelujah – let them do something for a change, finally get off their fat asses and—
—And yesterday I sold my dinette set, they’re coming in a truck to pick it up, and tomorrow evening someone from the internet is coming to look at the bed, the four-poster I inherited from my—
An early afternoon shower, and Carol ducks into a pigeon-gray, two-story office building, walks up one flight of dust-smell stairs. She opens door 215-S into a large office, sees tens, dozens of umbrellas – full-size, retractable – spike from a yellow plastic cylinder, or stand propped in the closest corner, or sprawl like a congress of drunken bats on a smeary piece of floor protection.
First Carol waits on line, then receives a sheet, then sits in the fourth of sixteen rows of leg-locked steel chairs and looks at nothing. In fifty-eight minutes she hears her number, goes and sits between partitions with a woman wearing a name on a pin. Nadine is round-bodied and black, with half-moon reading glasses and a pencil permanently clutched in a squidlike fist that swims and float-descends over her desk, discharging ink. Behind the desk, dense with documents, she shifts her weight to scooch an edge of skirt under an unpasted thigh. They speak. Carol receives lined forms, Carol fills in the lines. Carol gives the forms back, smiles at Nadine.
Carol walks behind glass on North Winooski, into a shop offering artisanal toys. Small caterpillarian wooden push-trains, motley puppets jump-appearing from cones, thick-page books in irregular rounded shapes, safe crayons. She asks the proprietor, a youngish woman with one dimple and a flouncy paisley dress, if she might propose something, something good. Much of the store’s space is unused, Carol says. Could she sublet one corner and set up a small, non-competing business? One that’s harmless, noiseless, and good? She’ll start kicking in rent when the revenue gets rolling. No pay no way, the young woman says. But you aren’t earning anyth—, Carol says.
—I am through. I am out. I am getting out of here. I do not want this any more! This is something I do not need to know about. Now the only thing I want is get the fuck out of my—
—And – and – check this out: my buddy, my buddy Tim, they cut him down ten percent. The offer on his house, what they told him they’d pay, they shook hands on X, they came back maybe like a few days later at X minus ten. They said they got to, they had to do it or they’d walk, because they have to keep the prices up for everybody, minus ten is now the best they can do. This way everybody can get that amount, they’ll all make out OK, this Great American Equity Owners has to look out for all their properties they said. And Tim, you know, they gave him whatever time he wants, take whatever time you need to consider it they said—
—And I found myself on the curb on Shelburne Road, in front of Pauline’s, in that always pleasant reflecting-and- digesting moment waiting for the nice, bouncy Hispanic valet to return my car. I’d just wrapped lunch with Walter Neston, a fine hour and a half of talks and laughs and pan-seared steaks at the end of which, yes, we shook hands, indeed we shook hands on several things. Truth be told, I’d had reason to hope for a few further handshakes – I nearly had him on the insulator package – but there are more lunchtimes between here and complacency, and I need to sit down to every one of them.
So there I was, warmly postprandial, drinking in the beginnings of spring weather, the ambering sun, the shorter shadows, and using the interval to look at all the many people going about their business – driving, walking and popping into shops, or emerging with tote bags, and talking on cells and holding their children’s hands, and all I can say is: It’s all nonsense. All of it. Everything they’re saying and doing, meaningless nonsense. I cannot imagine what they’re working themselves into a lather about. There’s no proof, there’s no hard evidence, everything here is functioning just fine – just take a look – within usual parameters, small and even not so small fluctuations are to be expected in any dynamic human arrangement. That’s natural. And some of these alarmists are proposing steps or remedies that are so drastic, so Draconian, that they would disrupt everything, really wreck this craft. The cure would be far worse than any alleged problem. And who’s supposed to pay for these guesses, because that’s all they are, guesses, and wouldn’t that money be better used for—
—Oh yeah, lay that down, tell me all about it. But let me tell you something, K? The upstaking? The blowing and th
e going? That hasn’t just begun. Oh no no, my friend. That shit been going on a long time—
Carol knows someone, Trudy Dyson, who Works in Anderburg’s Office of Business Development, Town Hall. She hesitates, doesn’t, pushes the door. Would they be interested in a program to facilitate hiring? Permanent and/or, you know, temp?
—And – and it’s like pieces in a rebus being removed … falling through the surface …gaps in the visual field …a portrait of a coastline, romantic, sun-played, but never watered by the edge-cut waves …a world pocked in no pattern with cell-shaped holes …features being eaten away …to reveal the white, the fall, the blank beneath—
—And it was last night, you know, last night at – call it 11 p.m., and I’m still blasting away at Antiword trying to get it to convert an old MS file to PostScript, and I’m really wanting to get to bed before 1 a.m. for a change, and then I’m thinking: Thursday, you know, wait: this is Thursday. What …? And then I’m thinking: shit, did I miss it? Did I forget it entirely? Oh man … ’Cause I had really wanted – shit I had seriously wanted to get over to the meeting they set up in Contois Auditorium for Wednesday, for the night before – and oh man, can’t I once just take a minute for myself, just one minute, even one second to break away from what all I got to—
—Yo, wail on this: In Sarabelles? The bakery up on Main? They got a new thing in there, a row of them laying out in a display case, in the first glass case right as you go in, like this kind of long like dicklike pastry-thing that swells at one end and’s like made of chocolate cake with white cream inside, kind of like a Devil Dog …?