by MJ Rodgers
Mab flipped the switch on the main control board to cut in the prerecorded Christmas music.
Octavia sat forward in concern at Mab’s final message to her listeners. This was the first she had heard that the community center was in jeopardy. Was that the reason for Mab’s call and urgent request for Octavia to come by this morning?
Mab seemed to read the concern in Octavia’s eyes. She shook her head at her granddaughter. Octavia understood that was Mab’s way of saying that any questions Octavia had would have to wait.
Octavia rose and reached for Constance’s hand as she started the rounds of giving each of the seniors a warm handshake and smile. “It was a stimulating show. Thanks for letting me sit in.”
As Constance rose to her feet to take Octavia’s hand, she gave her comfortably round, five-foot frame a small shake, like the miniature dog she so resembled.
“It had its moments,” she agreed.
Douglas scratched irritably at his stiff salt-and-pepper beard after he released Octavia’s hand.
“Personally, I could do without Mab always having to sensationalize everything. No penises on men! What a ridiculous thing to say. Isn’t that right, Constance?”
Constance’s head bent back as she squinted up at the much taller man.
“Now, Douglas, Mab had a commendable point, once she got to it. Although, I do believe the use of that word really wasn’t—”
Douglas swung away from Constance to face John. “Don’t you agree Mab should be muzzled?”
John’s palms came up, a humorous gleam in his eyes. “Doctors, even ophthalmologists, always stay neutral in fights, Douglas. We have to be available later to patch up the combatants.”
Mab turned to position herself squarely in front of the horsey, six-foot Douglas Twitch.
“Stop looking for support to gang up on me, Douglas. You never got it when we were in grade school together and you’re not getting it now. Muzzle me, indeed! I’m not surprised my point eluded you. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the subtleties of ‘Sesame Street’ elude you.”
Douglas’s sallow face colored. He grabbed the pipe hanging out of his checkered shirt pocket and took it like a bit between his prominent teeth, spluttering incoherently.
Mab turned away from his reddened face and calmly slipped her arm through Octavia’s.
“I’m glad you arrived in time to hear some of the show. Your being here takes me back, Octavia. Let’s go home and I’ll fix us both something nice and hot to drink and we can talk.”
Octavia nodded. But as they turned to leave the control room, she saw Mab suddenly halt and stiffen.
Octavia followed the direction of her grandmother’s fixed gaze. On the other side of the glass barrier that separated the radio control room from the visitors’ lounge, two men stood staring.
Octavia noted and dismissed the slouching, sour-pussed shorter man with the squinty dark eyes, thin ashen hair, baggy olive pants and green-and-black-checkered suspenders. But the taller man caught and completely held her attention.
He was at least six-four with bark-brown hair and broad, imposing shoulders in an expensive custom suit of charcoal gray, discreetly trimmed with a dove-gray tie and pocket handkerchief. He looked remarkably formal and forbidding, from the tight laces of his highly polished black shoes to the obdurate shine in his black-rimmed, silver-sprinkled eyes.
Octavia knew instantly that this was a man who had made his mark in the world and would continue to do so.
Those arresting eyes held hers in an intense scrutiny. Their silver shine was stronger than confidence, deeper than desire. For no reason that made any sense, she suddenly felt the rush of blood through her heart and a tingling in her fingertips.
“Who is he, Mab?” she asked.
She could feel her grandmother’s eyes dart to her face and then back to the men.
“I don’t know who the tall one is you’re fixating on, but the short, slimy one is Dole Scroogen. We call him the Scrooge around here.”
“And as long as the other one is with the Scrooge, he’s not worth your wondering about,” Constance announced in what sounded to Octavia like a definite warning.
“What does that damn Scrooge want besides our blood?” Douglas grumbled with more vehemence than Octavia had yet heard from the man.
“He only shows up in person when he can gloat over something,” the normally cool, suave John said with surprising heat. “We’d better go see what it is this time.”
Their collective comments told Octavia that despite the seniors’ previous differences over the content and conduct of the radio show, the appearance of Dole Scroogen had united them instantly in animosity against the man.
They left the tiny control room single file, Mab in the lead, Octavia right behind her, the rest following. Octavia could still feel the stranger’s eyes. They had not left her once since the moment she first felt them.
As Octavia and the seniors approached the two men in the waiting room, Dole Scroogen raised his arm to point at Mab.
“That’s her. That’s Mab Osborne.”
The impoliteness of the man’s pointing finger and his whiny, condescending tone immediately irritated Octavia. She knew at that precise moment that she was going to thoroughly dislike Dole Scroogen.
Scroogen’s tall companion shifted his eyes from Octavia to her grandmother. He took a step toward Mab. His deep, rich voice vibrated through the small waiting room like an ominous drumroll.
“Mrs. Osborne, I’m Brett Merlin.”
Brett Merlin? Octavia felt a small jolt of surprise as she instantly recognized his name. Could this really be the Magician of corporate law standing before her? The one whose name every attorney whispered in polite reverence? Well, well. No wonder the guy exuded the aura of the anointed.
Octavia watched, her initial interest heightened even more, as Brett Merlin slipped a sheet of folded paper from his pocket. He held it out to Mab.
“What’s this?” Mab asked as she took the paper from his hand.
“It’s a copy of a cover letter I faxed to the FCC this morning, Mrs. Osborne. I’ve also sent by Federal Express a two-hour tape of recorded highlights from your ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ programs. I’m demanding the FCC revoke your radio license on the grounds of lewd and immoral content.”
Octavia couldn’t have been more surprised at Brett Merlin’s words than if the man had suddenly announced he was from Mars. He was bringing her grandmother up on a morals charge before the FCC? She didn’t know whether to laugh or have this obviously overrated fool of an attorney committed.
Before she could respond to either impulse, a photographer suddenly jumped out from where he had been hidden on the other side of a partition and snapped several photos of Mab. The unexpected flashes from his camera also blinded Octavia, who was standing just behind her grandmother.
By the time Octavia could see and think straight again, it was too late to do anything. The Magician, the Scrooge and the photographer had all vanished—right out the door of her grandmother’s radio station.
* * *
“OCTAVIA, I‘M NOT standing still for this FCC threat.”
Octavia smiled. That sounded just like the fearless, independently competent Mab that she had been admiring all her life.
She poured her grandmother’s homemade hot apple cider into both their cups and slipped in a cinnamon stick. The spicy fragrance filled the room and Octavia’s senses with the sweet, nostalgic past of other cold, overcast December days spent in this bright, cozy kitchen, baking Christmas goodies and stringing popcorn for the tree.
Octavia gathered up all the marvelous memories spilling out of her mind and set them firmly aside as she focused her attention on her grandmother’s perky head of silver-and-red curls.
“Before we talk about this FCC thing, Mab, tell me why you called last night and asked me to take the ferry over from Seattle this morning.”
Mab shook her straight shoulders, as though trying to disengage some annoying burden c
linging to them.
“Because of the Scrooge, Octavia. All the trouble began with him.”
“What trouble?”
“When a group of us formed the Silver Power League five years ago, we did so in order to organize senior citizens and show them the kind of power we could wield if united against unfavorable legislation. One of our members gave us a ninety-nine-year lease to some land and an old barn that sat on it to use as our community center.”
“Yes, I remember visiting you there a couple of times when you first opened. You had cleaned and painted that old barn and made it very presentable. Now, what has this to do with Dole Scroogen?”
“He’s our new landlord.”
“And?”
“Remember those documents I asked you to look over nearly a year ago? The ones about the Silver Power League’s ninety-nine-year land lease?”
“Yes. You were worried about any loopholes. But the previous owner’s lawyer did a very good job drafting that protection clause against your eviction by a subsequent owner.”
“Except she didn’t anticipate that the Scrooge would levy a ridiculous rent on us.”
“Mab, he can’t do that. Remember my telling you? There are protection provisions in your lease that prohibit any rent being charged that is not commensurate with property value. The three acres of land your community center sits on has some value, but that old barn isn’t worth much.”
“You’ve been away too long, Octavia. We have a new Silver Power League community center.”
Yes, she had been away too long—too busy rushing through the arteries of her life to find the time to spend with this special person who had first put Octavia’s hand on life’s true pulse.
Octavia paused in the middle of her self-recrimination to let her grandmother’s last words register. “Wait a minute. Did you just say the new center?”
Her grandmother nodded.
“I kept looking at all this talent our members had just going to waste—retired architects, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, decorators. Our members may be over sixty, but most are still vital and strong and possess a lifetime of experience and expertise. So a couple of years ago I decided to get them off their duffs and put them to work on some renovations.”
“But, Mab—”
Mab raised her hand to halt Octavia’s interruption.
“Yes, I know. Any improvements on leased land become the property of the landowner. But you have to understand, Octavia, at that time the landowner was one of our members and a good friend. She was charging us only fifty dollars a month in rent. We knew that on her death everything in her estate was to go to her only surviving blood relative—her great-nephew, Dole Scroogen. She told us that she had spoken to him and he understood her wishes. Plus which, we had the ninety-nine-year lease and we never thought...well, we never thought he would do what he did.”
“Go on, Mab.”
“When she died, we’d already torn down that old barn and broken ground on the new Silver Power League Community Center and the extensive greenhouse that goes with it. Everyone was so involved by then, so excited at what we were creating.”
“And Scroogen?”
“Months went by and he never even contacted us. We thought that like his great aunt, he supported us. We went blissfully on with our plans. The buildings are magnificent. We’ve all been so proud. We held an open house two months ago. Invited everyone in the community.”
Octavia was certain she knew what was coming. “Let me guess. Scroogen showed up then with an appraiser?”
Mab nodded. “Because of our improvements, the property is now worth far more than it was before. He and the appraiser spent hours evaluating every inch before he presented us with an astronomical monthly rent and a six-month deposit demand, all payable by December 1. We barely managed to scrape together December’s rent and half of the deposit demand. It cleaned out our savings. He served us immediately with a thirty-day eviction notice. If we don’t come up with with the rest of the deposit and January’s rent by January 1, we’re out.”
Octavia sipped her cider. It would be so easy to get upset. But getting upset was not going to help her grandmother’s predicament. Only clear thinking could do that. Besides, Octavia had never been one to waste time wringing her hands over what was already done.
“Scroogen must have plans for that land to be so bent on forcing you seniors out.”
“About two and a half weeks ago, the bulldozers arrived and started leveling the houses on the rest of the block adjacent to our center. I checked the county assessor’s office and found that the Scrooge owns all the property. What’s more, he began buying it right after he acquired his great aunt’s land and we started building the new Silver Power League Community Center. A public notice went in the newspaper yesterday. He’s building a condominium complex.”
“Right next to your community center?”
“Right over our community center. We invited the workers driving the bulldozers in for tea and cookies and pumped them. Their foreman is Keneth George, a native American of the Suquamish Tribe, and a real nice young man. He told us the Scrooge has approval to build a very exclusive, high-priced condominium complex on all the land he owns.”
“So he’s been planning on evicting you all along.”
“Absolutely. The far-end parcel connects to the water. He’s going to build a private ferry system to Seattle for the owners of the condos. Keneth said he’s going to use our new community center as a clubhouse and our greenhouse as an indoor garden for the people who purchase the units.”
Octavia shook her head. “And he let you build them for him. This guy is a real piece of work. Your Scrooge label fits him only too well. Is the site zoned for multiple-family dwelling?”
“Yes. There was a small four-unit complex in the middle that was inhabited by seniors before he bought them out and tore it down. Octavia, he’s setting up the whole block to be a new bedroom community for Seattle.”
“And concentrated residences such as this condominium complex mean lots more people. Demands for water, electricity, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, shopping centers, everything rises. That will change the whole atmosphere of your quiet little community.”
“That’s precisely what I’ve been telling my radio listeners this last week. The Scrooge’s plan to push out the Silver Power League is only the start of the breakup of our community. It isn’t just our community center’s one block that will be affected. Our whole neighborhood for miles will be changed. With the influx of the affluent commuters, property values and taxes will skyrocket until the seniors on social security will be forced out from homes they’ve lived in all their lives. Unless he’s stopped.”
“Are you getting much response to your radio broadcasts?”
“The station has been deluged with callers—of all ages, I’m happy to say—all asking what they can do. I tell them to write letters and make phone calls to the mayor, the chamber of commerce and Bremerton’s Community Development Department. Still, every morning the bulldozers arrive at eight sharp.”
“Since the condominium complex is already allowed outright by the zoning code, even if these officials were sympathetic, they have no legal recourse to stop it.”
“I know. When I called the mayor’s office, I was told his hands are tied.”
“This complex would be thoroughly welcomed in other Bremerton neighborhoods, inasmuch as it would bring the promise of jobs and new industry. But your neighborhood is such a poor place to put it. Have you mentioned that fact to the Scrooge?”
“I called him as soon as I heard about the condo complex. But he wouldn’t listen. He hung up on me.”
“Feeling secure in his legal rights, no doubt.”
“I don’t care about legal rights, Octavia, only what is right. I’m going to raise the money to meet the Scrooge’s rent demand. Our little corner of Bremerton is made up mostly of seniors. We know one another. We help one another. We’re holding on to our life-style
and our neighborhood. We’re not letting ourselves be shoved aside.”
Octavia rested her hand on her grandmother’s arm and gave it a supportive squeeze.
“You say you’ve been running your broadcasts against Scroogen this last week?”
“Once, sometimes twice, a day, I plead for a call to arms—phone-calling and letter-writing ones, of course. The radio station is our communicator, the only immediate information and entertainment line I have to many nonambulatory seniors. They count on me, Octavia. That’s why this business about an FCC complaint is so disturbing. I originally called you hoping you could suggest a legal way to fight the Scrooge’s astronomical rent demand. But this FCC complaint is more serious. I can’t lose my radio license. The seniors’ communication lifeline can’t be cut off. What can I do?”
Octavia sent her grandmother a reassuring smile.
“Mab, don’t worry about losing your license. This FCC complaint is a joke. Merlin never really thought there was anything lewd or improper about your ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ programs. Nor does he expect the FCC to take the complaint seriously, much less revoke your license.”
“Then why did he do and say what he did?”
“My educated guess is that he staged that scene this morning for the sole purpose of getting the photographer to shoot some pictures to go along with a local newspaper story.”
“How do you know that photographer was from the newspaper?”
“Because this ridiculous, trumped-up charge is just the kind of sensational story a newspaper will eat up. Think about it, Mab. A seventy-six-year-old gal is being reported to the FCC because her ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ show is alleged to violate a morality clause. Could you ask for better?”
Mab laughed suddenly, relief rampant in the happy sound. “You’re right, Octavia! I don’t know why I didn’t see it. Even I would run a news brief on that storyline. It’s bound to give people a good laugh.”
“Yes, Mab. People are going to laugh,” Octavia said, not a vestige of humor in her voice. “And that’s the part I’m worried about.”