Gordon looks across the table at him. Gordon knows someone who knows someone who might be able to arrange an appointment for Chris Butler and the Kotzschmar to be together some weekday afternoon. But Gordon says nothing now. Not till he knows for sure.
Plump nearly thirteen-year-old Kirk Martin is dressed in a spiffy, mint green, short-sleeved dress shirt and polka-dot bow tie, his once-fashionable little pigtail viewed with two mirrors for fifteen minutes before leaving the Settlement earlier today.
And Jane, her chin held high, hair in a pile of jittery ringlets that one of the other Settlement girls fashioned for her for tonight. Her dress is made from a slimy synthetic, a pattern of “glamour stars,” what Jane knows any self-respecting, husky, growly, hip-jerking MTV gal rapper star gripping her microphone and licking her lips would wear during her finest hour on a concert stage before those countless blazing cameras and breathless fans with burning eyes. But at the moment, Jane’s expression is long suffering, her beyond-galaxies dark eyes almost on the verge of tears. “WHERE is it?” she hisses. Wanting only Gordon to hear.
He ignores her.
While Jane is seated at Gordon’s right elbow, Brianna Vandermast, newest Settlement “student,” is on Gordon’s left, her hair an event, a volcano there, in the prophet’s periphery vision.
Whitney and Michelle. Look like sisters. Both with almond eyes, broad faces, one dark, one fair. Both girls are discussing a course at USM, philosophy, far different from Settlement yak sessions. More academic. More ordered and formidable.
Butch Martin doesn’t tease his brothers tonight, just smiles his little-bit-smirky but mostly gentlemanly smile and feels his new short beard. He is thinking about how he hates jazz piano. His idea of going to a wild rock joint went the same way as Jane’s insistence on McDonald’s.
This is a tablecloth restaurant. Old brick walls on two interior sides, brick arches around windows of leaded glass scenes lit electrically from behind because they were plugged up and boarded up before new buildings went up right against them. The two exterior windows on either side of the piano, those frame the street where the clear evening is electrically lighted a harsh pink-green-purple for “safety.” So the fake scenes are pretty, the real are not.
All the young people watch Senator Mary Wright acting nutty, giggling. She wears quiet earrings, a quiet brown outfit. Wristwatch, wedding ring, and diamond are all white gold. She has never once looked at her watch tonight. She seems to be right where she wants to be. She has ordered only one drink and is making it last.
Senator Joe is a small man, sandy-haired, dressed really sharp in a camel-color summer-weight suit jacket and a tie with a fabric of pink and creamy yellow kites and clouds on a maroon sky. His shirt is a gusty blue. Did he, too, like nearly-thirteen-year-old Kirk, use the mirror for fifteen minutes front and back before leaving tonight? He has already had two drinks. He leans forward, wrists on the table, telling the kids about the time he and his wife went to hear the Kotzschmar played by a different organist who, to his and Denise’s horror, “never touched the big pipes. It was just roller-skate music! Toodle-toddle-toodle-toddle. All those wasted big BROOOOM BROOOM BROOOOM! pedals and whatnots. It was awful. But guess what happened. Bells started ringing. Fire alarm. The doors opened onto the sidewalk and outside on that side street, fire trucks were everywhere but . . . no fire. It had been a false alarm. Denise and I never went back in but we felt kinda . . . bad . . . you know, guilty. What if nobody went back in. I’m sure some did. But Denise and I hightailed it. I mean, those hard seats are torture if you aren’t enchanted.”
Everyone likes this story.
The reporter, Ivy Morelli, has a laugh that is deep and raffish for such a small person. Her violet-tinted black hair shimmers in a fairy-talesque way, and that earring with so much “subject matter” really draws people’s eyes. Ivy likes wine but has ordered nothing to drink . . . just water.
Whitney asks, “Can we get tapes or CDs of people playing those Bach selections on the pipe organ?”
Senator Joe says, “There’s a really good series. I’ll get you the name of it and the address and mail it to you.”
Whitney looks at Gordon. She knows that tapes of any kind for the audio tape players are okay. He’s even beginning to bend concerning the VCR idea. But concerning almost anything hi-tech, the reflex is to check his face to be sure. She and other young people often had whispered discussions about what Gordon would do if he found out there was a television . . . regular old commercial television . . . hoarded somewhere in one of the Settlement houses. What would he do to it? What would he do to you if it was yours? Tantrum, Whitney always says. He’ll lay on the floor and kick.
Note that Gordon has not ordered any alcohol.
Jane narrows her eyes. “Where’s my cake thing? A hundred miles away?”
Gordon says, “They’ll bring everything soon. It’s busy here. Remember, Jane. Patience is a virtue.”
Jane swallows, turns her face slowly toward Gordon. She says in a sugary way, “Please do not say that virtue thing again. It is not funny.” She pushes his napkin and silverware to the middle of his place mat.
Gordon lifts his long arms and makes a big hug with one arm around Jane, the other around the red-haired Bree, enormously tender, a bit protective, a completion, like a circling of moons around planets, and planets around sun, leaving a summer, arriving at yet another summer. And Ivy, who sits directly across from Gordon, watches this with alertness. Whenever his pale weird eyes come around to settle on her face, her feet under the table jiggle anxiously.
At the other table, Bonnie Loo, her hair shuddering out from the squeeze of the small black handkerchief stirs her coffee, watches only her coffee.
Duotron Lindsey International arrives.
The conversation about Bach and pipe organs takes them all until the desserts come. Jane pokes hers suspiciously.
A woman-sized mermaid is suspended high above the bar. Her fishtail is truly convincing, handsomely stripy, black against silver, perfectly mackerel. But her eyes are a little crossed. Her lips shine a carnivore red. And she grins. Her teeth are real! Not human teeth, but maybe shark teeth? A red light has been directed on this creature. The bar area therefore is a lot less blah than the eating-at-tables part of the establishment. More like the proverbial “joint,” wonderfully creepy.
Gordon has slipped his arms away from Bree and Jane to deal with his Maine Moose Maxi Mousse.
A guy in a dress shirt open at the throat, dark rounded eyebrows, and a rounded nose, clean-shaven with trim dark hair suddenly appears at the table and asks in a syrupy voice, “Everyone having fun?”
Faces turn toward him.
He presses on, “So what are you doing in Portland, Joe?” Then, “Hey, Senator Wright. What on earth brings you?”
“I live here,” she says with a laugh. “It’s all right for me to be here.”
He pulls up a chair. “Am I invited to join?”
“This is Alan Sutherland.” Senator Mary pats the newcomer’s hand. “He seems to be joining us.” Her eyes glide around to all the Settlement faces. Is she insulting the newcomer? Or is she playing?
Senator Joe smiles in a peculiar way. “Our young constituents . . . uh . . .” He glances at old cross-eyed Reggie Lessard, who is looking at him intently. “Our constituents are all from Egypt. Go ahead, everyone. Rescue me. Tell him your names.”
Old Reggie Lessard has perfect hearing. Keen hearing. But he understands very little English. He just keeps looking with cross-eyed keenness at Senator Joe’s mouth and shoulders and hands. But while the others speak their names, Reggie gets the idea and when it comes his turn, he speaks his name Reginald Lessard with all sixteen lustrous rolling Rs. And now on to the next name and the next, each speaking his or her own, though just before Ivy opens her mouth, Senator Mary says brightly, “And this is . . . ta-dah! . . . Ivy Morelli from the Record Sun.”
The guy turns his somehow dagger-like but teasy dark gaze on Ivy. “Ah . . .
yes. I know. Hello, Ivy.” His voice. Warm cake.
About eight tables away and beyond, the piano zigzags through a kind of thin jazz number, thinner than the last, which was thinner than the one before that. A waiter passes with a heap of gory-looking pastries that catch Jane’s eye and cause her to slump in her seat, arms crossed, underlip puckerish, her dessert dish quite empty. When it is her turn to give her name, she sits up, smiles a sudden big smile, and announces, “Jane Miranda Meserve” with just a little bit of sensuous MTV-style tongue over the bottom lip.
“And this is . . . ta-dah! . . . Gordon St. Onge,” Senator Joe says, not to be outdone by Senator Mary. “Gordon is . . . uh . . . headmaster of a school. Sort of.”
Many Settlement chortles erupt.
“Oh, master!” chirps a young’n.
The stranger nods vaguely, eyes on Gordon’s face too briefly, then sweeping around to all the faces, a big, wide smile, then eyes back on Gordon’s face while Senator Joe explains that Alan is a lobbyist and names the lobbying firm that represents the interests of Duotron Lindsey. Many Settlement folk are squinting at the devilsome muzziness of such a universe.
“What’s that?” young bow-tied Kirk Martin asks.
Bonnie Loo’s murderous golden brown eyes settle on this jolly newcomer. Samantha Butler, her pale hair extra shivery tonight, whispers (not whispery enough) to Kirk, “He is an enemy of the people.”
Alan’s leprechaun eyebrows wag, dark eyes on Samantha. “Forget that nonsense, Sammy . . .” (He remembers her name!) Now he proceeds to spurt eloquence (uh, nonsense and a tangle of detours and smoke to Settlement ears) in a voice as smooth as strawberry milk.
Settlement girl Aleta across the table from Samantha whispers, “Duotron Lindsey makes parts for bombs and drone computers. What’s he doing in Maine?”
Another girl whispers, looking toward Gordon, then Senator Mary, who is laughing along with the lobbyist. The girl’s voice doesn’t reach the other tables. “If the people had as much money as Duotron Lindsey and Alan’s lobbying firm, we’d have access to senators, too.”
“We do! We have access,” another whispers loudly, glancing at Senator Mary and Senator Joe, who are getting more pink and animated, drunk on Alan Sutherland’s friendly heat.
“Only because of Gordon . . . you know . . . Depaolo Brothers . . . the money wing of Gordon’s family.” This whisper goes spectrally soft. “They own a lot of guys in Augusta, I heard. But probably not Washington. That’s got a heavier price tag.”
Kirk sighs as if exhausted, plays with his polka-dot bow tie.
Whitney groans. “Washington is worse, of course. But Augusta is a microcosm of the same.”
“Do Gordie’s relatives own Senator Joe and Senator Mary?” Eyes flash horrifically onto the two. Whispers painfully ceasing. All the kids are quiet as stilled wildlife watching the boyish body language of the lobbyist. So . . . so . . . so likeable.
Says Margo grimly, “So if you’re poor, you have no representation.” She looks at Whitney and Whitney is nodding fast, as to a jazzy tune, fast jazz, leaning back, using Michelle and Margo as a cover, like a fort between her and the ugly truth of Alan Sutherland.
One of the younger solar crew kids wonders, “What if you aren’t wicked poor but one of the middle ones?”
“Pigeon,” says Oceanna. “A working-class nuisance pigeon. A professional-class nuisance pigeon.”
Samantha raises her glass of water. “To the pigeon class! Too poor to pay for b’jillion-dollar campaigns. We are all poor in the truest way! Bottoms up!” Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.
Whitney continues to bob her head.
But there’s no music. Even the sleepy piano music and the pianist have vanished, withered with a poof! Practically everybody from the Settlement tables is quietly gaping at the lobbyist, except Gordon, who is making starvingly spirited noises on his Maine Moose Maxi Mousse, his eyes on the center of the table. And with eyes of fire, Jane is glaring at him. And so now Alan the lobbyist’s dark eyes are also on Gordon, and Senator Mary says, “Alan, are you with other people?” and he answers, “Yes,” but then quickly adds, “So . . . a school. Private, of course.” He does another quick take of the people squeezed in around the two tables, all the mixed ages, the billed caps beside certain dessert dishes, the hands of both male and female, both young and old having a certain tonicity, a certain ableness. “Is it a Christian school?” he asks.
Senator Mary’s light, perfectly mascaraed eyes twinkle.
There’s a soft little giggle from Bree.
Butch and C.C. faintly smirk.
Gordon picks up a napkin and presses his heavy black and brown mustache into it, his eyes moving upon each face of his rangy family and somebody whispers a few French phrases to Reggie Lessard.
“We are followers of Socrates,” pink-cheeked teenaged Margo offers. “He had to drink hemlock because he got people thinking too much.”
“He was an iconoclastic nerd,” Montana, a chunky eight-year-old, says. She enunciates schoolteacherishly “But he may actually not have existed. Plato might’ve made him up.”
“I think he was a Harvard lawyer,” skinny alley-cat-haired Oceanna laments.
The lobbyist is laughing a warm and easy laugh. Looks around at the faces. “Delightful.”
Ivy is quiet, mulling over the idea of not being the target of smarty-pants kids this time.
The piano tinkles and ripples but the pianist isn’t there. Somebody’s two-year-old in yellow overalls is giving the keys nice pats.
Senator Mary brushes crumbs from one sleeve. “Don’t laugh, Alan. This school is out of control. It . . . might catch on. The whole state could eventually object to shadowy manipulations of the government and sideshow illusions of the media.” She winks at Alan.
“Stop that now!” Alan winks back. He rakes his eyes over Gordon, the work shirt and now the ringless hands. His eyes rest there on the thickened hands, the torn cuticles and bashed nails. Oh, yes, tonicity. Like a racehorse can give you speed. Like a workhorse can pull your plow. “Well, well . . . tell me about your school.” Then, “No! Wait! Let me give you a little test.” Alan is such a fun person. He enjoys. He points at Butch Martin, whose Arctic Cat T-shirt is noticeably filled with muscle. And the hands, another two piles of tonicity, thickness, and crusty edges. “Tell us all about the Monroe Doctrine.”
Butch lowers his eyes.
Senator Joe gives a hoot. “Hell, what is the Monroe Doctrine? I mean exactly.”
Alan chuckles. “Damned if I know . . . exactly. But I just heard on a talk show that most American kids are graduating these days without knowing this essential fact . . . even in multiple choice!” Alan and the senators guffaw.
Whitney, Michelle, Butch, and Bree whisper now. How many loud yak-it-up discussions, even skits on USA imperialism’s first blush via the oh-so-flexible hemisphere-gobbling Monroe Doctrine have steamed up the west parlor on cold nights.
From a pocket in his jeans Butch tugs out his kazoo, kind of a mini Kotzschmar.
The lobbyist’s eyes rest on the aqua-colored metal tube. Butch keeps his eyes down.
Now other kazoos appear, all up and down the two tables, sheens of various colors, partial lettering on some. These are recycled soda and beer cans. They stand straight up, in various hands, mostly the teens but some of the women, too. So sly, so preplanned-seeming, like handguns in a bank robbery.
The lobbyist is laughing and giving everyone warm squinched-eyed loving looks. You can see that basically this Alan is a pretty good guy. Just a different planet. So many planets in America! And sometimes there are interplanetary visits such as this. These are Bree Vandermast’s thoughts as she sees his eyes come to rest on her, and a yellow kazoo is pressed into her fingers by the fingers of Josee Soucier. Then a kazoo for Ivy’s hands. And another, which Ivy passes on.
Now a sort of silence.
Butch lightly taps his instrument on the tabletop. Others join in, matching the tap. Now kazoos to lips but tapping continues wit
h spoons, some gooey. A drumroll. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .
To our Ivy Morelli this is déjà vu, the beat, the sun, the family. Not a school, no. Hadn’t Gordon called it the heart? “It lives!” He had proclaimed.
The melody begins. It’s, yes, “Midnight in Moscow” . . . zhip zhip zhpp zhip zhip zhp zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! Clunk clunk of forks and spoons, perfectly in sync. Ivy joins in, feeling heady. But suddenly, abruptly the dragging, soaring “Star Spangled Banner” begins.
Senator Joe sways from side to side, bumping shoulders with Senator Mary and Butch. His kites-and-clouds tie swings. As some of the Settlement folk bang the table with their palms, he bangs, too, keeping the somber beat. And now three teens whisper between kazoo zhip zhips, “Evil!” and then louder and more voices attach to these and then louder: EVIL! Zhip-zhip EVIL! Zhip-zhip EVIL! A messy throaty beat weaving through the sailing splendorous patriotic starbursts.
People at other tables glance with half smiles or composed irritation at this queer lively bunch. A waiter passes by, nods and winks, not unaccustomed to “party types.”
And yes, Ivy Morelli feels the belonging. She is locked in the lava heat of it, between all these bodies.
And the lobbyist’s eyes glitter over this while his huge brotherly smile, always at the ready, spans across his face.
Then the racket ends. “That was geography!” laughs skinny twenty-something Niagara, wiping the mouth part of her kazoo on her sleeve.
“It is one of the places where imperialism comes to a wall, “ even skinnier Oceanna declares. “The great fat eagle and the great fat bear, snout to snout! The highway to the last hour is paved in policies and doctrines. Many doctrines! One leads to another.”
A rumpus of clanging spoons, several awful ear-busting whistles is Oceanna’s prize now. Oceanna (who wears only purple, always purple) raises a finger. “We’re still working on how to do China, Brazil, and India with kazoos.”
“Soon!” one of the Settlement women pipes up amid squeals and bellers of “yesss!” and one “gonnnng!”
Gordon is tested.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 40