by Evan Dara
Rick nods.
Doesn’t exist, Carol says. I made her up.
Rick looks at her. Hm, he says.
Where does this shit come from?, Carol says. Why this unanimity of—
A presence draws up to their booth – a perturbation of air, a limited darkening, a halt. Carol, Rick, and Ian look towards it.
John Krim Fallows appears above the suit they first see. As usual, he’s in sheer dark blue, over his white shirt with skinny-glisteny vertical stripes, his cufflinks, his shiny-skin sheen – ever the energetic local-government goodboy. But now he isn’t smiling.
Hey, he says.
Hi there, Carol says.
Listen, JKF says. I’ve heard about what you’re doing. I want to help.
—Oh, my. I mean, I look around and …and what is my context? What can I do – can I mean – what can I possibly do that would—
—Am I just a receptacle? Am I not supposed to have some bearing on things? I look and see and look and see. But one thing I do not see. Where am I in—?
—No. My vision is clear – unifocal, unwavering, clear.
And I see one thing.
I only see the I that doesn’t see the I—
—My kinship? It lies in one thought: Who is thinking about me? Who is looking out for my interests?
And that is how I look out for theirs.
I give them purpose—
—No.
—Get this away from—
—Leave me be with your—
—I’m too busy now—
—I don’t want to say anything about—
—Nothing, I have nothing to say about—
—I’m overdue at my—
—And on Thursday …? Heard it then. The Ellners, 30 Adsit Court …? One eighty-nine.
One eighty-nine.
They started at three fifty—
—And I mean—
—Who can I count on? When I do not count.
—And I have to—
—I have to—!
—I—
—Lord, master, please let me reach the end of this note – this quick-scribbled streak, this dreamed scratch, all no more than a hope that I will find a sense, a taste, a possibility to elevate, to justify … O my remaker, will I last long enough to—
—And what I’m hearing …? Naples, Scottsdale, New Orleans, Isaura, Inland Empire – all through down there, so many people going to the sunbelt. We’re sprinkling A-burg all over the South! And I hear them saying Hey, great, I’ll see you there, we’ll meet up when we get there, let’s look each other up! And meanwhile, here, in front of me on line: Hey: sorry but I’ve, o no no!, I’m …, I’ve got to—
It’s forty minutes later, and they’re still talking. Fallows, now sitting in the booth, elbows on the table, has sprung for coffee, tea, and muffins, and for impassioned encouragement.
What are the kinds of things he said? He spoke of how he had been born in Anderburg, had grown up here, and had played shortstop with the Pirates in little league here. Broken his lateral malleolus here and sold shoes at Hannigan’s all through high school – at first, two afternoons a week, then four afternoons, after his father’s highway accident. He’d started at Amherst then transferred back to Pitkinson, and had wanted to become a cartographer, to travel and map. But he learned that most everyplace – most everyplace interesting – had already been put down on paper, so he decided to refine the map of his home town, to give its paper richer features, to draw in more effective and engaging details. And that project was, for him, ongoing – his map was not finished, he said. His mom and his sister – they still lived together in the family house on Bayview – were holding on in town, and so would he. A-burg was his past, and so would it be his future. His place is his continuity. And this merge made for good egotism, he said: by restoring his city, he was restoring himself. I don’t give up, he said. I give back.
So here’s the deal, he then says. The situation here has created a little wiggle room, so if we stay relatively quiet and keep our noses clean, I think I can get you space in Town Hall. I know someone who can open up an office, and then you, or we, can use the desks, the phone, copying machines, secretarial, utilities are included of course, whatever’s there. The whole package, minus the price tag. I like what you’re doing, I think it’s important, and I’d like to do whatever I can to move it forward.
But one thing this is not, he continues, is a government co-opt. What I’m envisioning here is not a government takeover of your business, but a true public-private partnership – the public sector helping individuals like yourselves do what they do best, what only individuals can do when left on their own. And if I can somehow find a place, a line, for you in the city budget, well I can’t see that as overly interfering.
OK?, JKF says. Go build your number 2 pencil.
—Yessir, just last night, I was out downtown about nine o’clock looking for cardboard boxes, you know how they get thrown out. Sometimes they been flattened and you have to fold them out again or tape them so they’ll hold something, so they’ll be a box, but usually they can still be strong and we have duct tape at home if we need it.
So, yeah, I’m in back of the commercial district, snooping around one of those alleys around South Chamoon Street, I’m not sure precisely where cause I’d been out for a while, and I look over and see this guy behind a store, probably like a little deli over there with a little normal screen door leading out to that back area. And there’s still a little daylight and there’s also a bulb coming from a streetlamp, but as sure as I can see it he’s like pouring liquid on like this pile of lettuce – full heads, they’re full size, not brown or rottenlike, and there’s also some cauliflowers in the pile and some shrimp. I think also potatoes. And I kneel down behind some wreck of a car that’s there, and then the guy takes the pile of food – big like this – and, using two hands like this, chucks it into a dumpster. Takes two or three trips to get it all. Then he gets the bottle he was pouring from, it looks like something like lighter fluid with the long nozzle and the tiny cap on the top, he takes that and just goes back in the business’s back door. And the door shuts just like nothing. He’s gone, and so, for anybody, is the food.
So, what. What do I do? Tell someone? But that could have the wrong effect maybe. So do I just scream to high heaven that this is going on? To high heaven and to who? What do I – why the hell are they protecting prices? Who for? What in God’s name am I – am I supposed to—?
Finally, silence at the dining booth. At which, the café’s quiet fuzzes in, absence puffing full. Carol notices, one surprise to the lips, her tea is cold. But John Krim Fallows hasn’t even touched his mug of coffee, she sees. He orders coffee in order not to touch it.
Carol hikes her eyebrows, looks up.
Well, she says to Fallows.
Support, she says.
She looks across the all-but bodiless room. I think we can handle that, she says.
—What were they here – three weeks? Four? Three weeks and already the new people at one thirty-six are upst – are moving out—?
—I mean, to what end? What good will it do? What anything will it, when I – when my words – who am I saying this to—?
—And I can not imagine their incentive. It is beyond me why they’re doing it. SureAid, the pharmacy, big signs in their windows: Now Open Daily Til 11 p.m. Til almost midnight. Who’s going to need or use that here? How can they possibly justify the expense – the electricity. And they announced free delivery to anywhere in A-Burg last week. I mean, their prices are already really low, they have blow-out sales every week, every single day, and Dr. Massling, my ENT man, he told me they’ve started a service so he can just send in prescriptions by internet. And it’s just so big and it has everything but is this just a reflex? Are they doing this just so they can crush the competition, which I believe is all of Seattle Drugs? Really – is all this about putting Mr. Seattle out of business? I mean in A-burg, right now, how much more money can they exp
ect to make, how can it be worth it to them? Or is it just the same old, same old, commerce on automatic, spinning its saw-wheels, the historical necessity of vanquishing all the Seattle Drugses around the country they can. Mr. Seattle’s been here for years and years, and no one working in SureAid, not a one of the cashiers or people on the floor or pharmacists I saw when I picked up my prescription, not a one of them is from A-burg. And not a one of them, I trust, buys anything in A-burg beyond what they can get via their SureAid ten-percent employee discount. I know that competition’s good, that in general everyone benefits, but this isn’t competition, its—
—Now when I bring in food for Mrs. Foster, I turn the serving table to jut out over her, lying in bed. And open the plastic pack with the fork and the spoon and the knife. And flick wide her napkin, and put it on her chest. And take off the tray’s lid, and turn the straw to curve towards her, and put the tray lid on her nightstand, balance it among the skin-cream bottles and the prescription vials and the meds.
She doesn’t react except by nodding, barely dipping her still-wavy, white-white hair, and that’s what I hope. I hope that, forgive me, Lord, she doesn’t know. That she isn’t aware. Or that her mind passes to something existing somewhere else and, in confusion or defense, that lets her not notice.
I have noticed. Her daughter and her son-in-law, Judy and Jay, bright, pleasant people – he’s an accountant, she has some smile to her – I haven’t seen them in I don’t know how long. I asked Chris, she’s on during the day, and she hasn’t seen them either, for who knows how long. There’s no tracking here, people don’t have to sign in, so I suppose I can’t be sure. But there are no indications, no new magazines or sucking candies or socks, unremoved from their cardboard. And no one else comes.
Mrs. Foster, I read in her folder, taught in Edmunds High School – now Anderburg High – for thirty-one years. History, first US history, then the history of the State of Vermont.
—And I’m walking, you know, on Kilburn Street—
—I’m walking down Elmwood Avenue—
—Minding my business, you know, just doing my—
—Doing my—
—When hoom, you know—
—Hoom—
—This guy just knocks into me—
—Ploughs into—
—Barreling—
—From behind me, didn’t see a thing, this big lady pushes me out of her—
—Shoves me like I wasn’t even—
—Knocked over, I was—
—On the sidewalk—!
—Uph – hey! Watch it! Look where you’re—!
—There, I’m lying right there in the middle of Cherry Street—!
—He puts his hand on my forearm and—
—He rams his fist into my back and—
—So I ran after her, you know—
—I chased him down Harbor Road, weaving and banging through the people who—
—And this car, this Honda Civic, jamming down Falls Road—
—The Range Rover just sideswipes this other car, a gray Olds, and—
—And it just continues on its—!
—It’s careening down Shelburne Road and it runs a red and slams into the rear lights of another car and—
—The Corolla doesn’t stop, it doesn’t even go back to pick up its side mirror, it just—
—Straight on, just right straight on without—
—And all, all the people foaming towards the border—
—And this is, this has to, how can anyone put up with …? I mean damn them, damn them all, monsters – so please, you know, please, I just want to tell them please …try to, be civilized, just think about, for one second – just think about, you must have room, just think about taking me with you—
9,441
Had to go all the way across town. Had to get on my bicycle and dodge the craziness on a self-directed bet – because I assumed, I had to assume, that Mills & Greer has watercoolers. Olympia is gone, also North Star, and when I called over to Mills & Greer no one knew a thing. Asked for the camping department, then for trekking supplies, and after the second bout of seven minutes on hold it became clear I was dealing with ciphers. I’d have to verify myself.
It’s twenty minutes for me on the bike, but Mills & Greer has that fun rack out front, the big metal rings, so I could lock her up OK. Went in and looked around. Camping’s in the back by the left, past the insulated gloves and the skis and the sleeping bags and the high-tech insect repellent, among others. As usual, it was tough to find someone who works there. The only indication is these orange curled wires drooping from their pants pocket in front, must be a key or something. Can’t they spring for a shirt? So, on my own, I scanned around. And what I saw was, yes, there were still customers in the store, by no means a sure thing. In fact, they had quite a few, looking at maps, trying on sunhats, browsing, a good number of them. But.
But this young lady flicking through a rack of jerseys was making those hanger-tops click over and over again, all up and down the rack, way across size lines. But this guy checking pool cues for straightness placed their thick ends by his nose and looked down those things for a hell of a long time. He picked up and put down the same two, three cues over and over again. And this other guy was just like standing in the corner looking at sunscreen, without actually taking any of the bottles or tubes from the shelves. And other such, just like that. Movement without movement, or progression. And all of them new faces to me.
Were they buying? Or were they what, just passing the time? Weird. I got my watercooler and got out of there.
—Even in the midst of everything, even after everything I’ve already seen, never, never could I believe I would witness such a thing: On Pearl Street, right through downtown, with people looking on, troops, in uniform, green fatigues and carrying rifles barrels-up in two hands, proceeding in a line of threes down the center of the Street, one of our main streets. Not running, not even jogging, but kind of bobbing up and down as they moved along the Street, in bright sunshine, our sunshine, at slightly more than walking pace.
No one watching said a word. They just watched, grim. And one by one, turned, went, walked, scattered—
—And I had thought – I had hoped – these scenes were over, that with so few people left it wouldn’t – it couldn’t – it just couldn’t happen again. But on Battery Street, I turned the corner on Thursday afternoon and there, again, damn and horrible, three bodies on the tarmac, sprawled, twisted, all middle-aged men. Hit. I mean, the traffic jams are lightening up, they’re starting later in the day, I saw Main Street clear at 8 a.m., but still this happens, this continues to happen, another mark against us … On Thursday there weren’t even people around to re-route the cars, there was just one woman standing by the first body, the body with its head tucked under, waving her arms to steer the unrelenting tires away. I mean, the cars just keep coming, no one stops, there aren’t even onlookers any more, no one even waits for the ambulan—
—But maybe, you know, maybe this just feeds on itself. Maybe with fewer cars on the road the other cars just go faster – they see they can, and they want to go faster. Go, get out, the way is beginning to open, use it, use it before it closes up again, before even this non-opportunity dims. So hit the gas, gush it down, slake your engine’s throat, and look, horrid, horrible, behold the consequences. It’s panic squared, panic creating more panic, panic gone exponential—
—And then, and then, Ira driving down Overlake Park, and I turn and whoa – my God, in front of the O’Hara estate, or the former O’Hara estate, there’s one by the front door and two on the sidewalk, three of them all together: Policemen, standing guard. Stiff and upright and wearing caps with visors and equipment, guns, standing protecting the empty house—
—And—
—
—I am not here—
—I am not here any more—
—I am not—
—Nothing is mine. At last—
John Krim Fallows
cracks open the door and – miracle of miracles – the office is already furnished. Carol, Rick, and Ian follow him in, eyes panning. Two squat metal desks with short thick legs, a black couch yawning before a clip-shin glass table of nearly the same width, chairs, two tall, empty, brownwood cabinets of shelves. In back, a step-in enclave with a sink, cabinets, a countertop fridge, and, best of all, a coffee machine. And throughout, ceiling lamps and standing lights, despite abundant sun, grace falling from two broad windows.
In short order, all three register, in small, multiple ways – widened eyes, short pullbacks, up-bobbings, grins – individual, unspoken approval. Then the rest wait as Carol goes and puts a slight stack of letterhead, maybe sixty sheets, in the middle of the far desk’s blottered top.
She turns. Looks pretty good, she says.
Rick carries other documents, including printouts of their first placements. Results, so far, have been modest, but were gaining and growing encouraging. One friend of Rick’s with an office-cleaning service. One friend-of-a-friend of Carol’s as the tracking manager for a local van line. A cold caller who was nicely set up with a private security firm – itself referred by a person whom Carol, on the phone, said she knew, but didn’t.
OK, John Krim Fallows says. Welcome home.
The office is in the Wells Richardson Building, an unadorned three-story cinderblock two minutes walking from City Hall that serves as an undeclared government annex – it also houses the Community Justice Center. John had tried to find a perch in the main site – nearer his office, after all – then decided against. The air there was agony, he said, security was absurd, and, besides, maybe a little distance would come in handy. Promote risk-taking. Further autonomy.
And now the good news, John says. The additional good news.
He props himself in the doorway to the kitchenette. I believe – I think – I can line-item the rent and service costs on this office as one of my general expenses, he says. Took a little doing, and I may get a phone call, and maybe I’ll have to ask you to reimburse these things – or some of them – some day. But the day is a long ways off, and we all know what a government maybe means.