by Anna Tambour
~
Ten pm. Norm, the head night guard, rang to say that my guests had arrived. I shooed them up the stairs to the brand new Desert gallery. After its successfully busy first day, and I was looking forward to how the exhibit would display its eerie charm in this high-fashion ad. The client—Mr. Grelm: chubby baby-picture of a man, complete with halo-of-hair. Clammy hand, lingering grip, black silk T shirt, good deep voice. A bigger crowd than usual tagged behind him for a still photo session, but with the normal amount of paraphernalia. One person looked competent, and the rest ...? The photographer, I'd never heard of. The model, in a cheap salon wrap.
The ad planned was a touch exotic with a bit of the creeps, for Grelm's high-markup range of peroxides named "Desert Gold." We entered the Desert Hall, and in the sickle moon of night lighting, the still-lives looked positively howlable. "Dump your stuff here," I pointed by the wall at the entrance; and umbrellas, reflection shields, lamps, smuggler's bags, clothes rack, and people all crammed through.
While they fiddled with lights, power, model, I removed the rope barrier placed to keep the public away from the room's centrepiece—the unglassed waist-high sand hill topped by that sinuous basking lizard as long as a woman.
Mr. Grelm made a face and a guard's chair was pulled up and under his bottom. The lights were set, measurements taken, voices raised and lowered in quick skirmishes, model moved and painted, and a headache developed behind my eyes as my brain registered "too many cooks." Darcy, the competent one—there was something wrong there. Couldn't tell, but ... And the others ... "Hey, not on the display, please, what's your name? Chris? Don't put your equipment on the display." Gawd. Like minding a troop of chimpanzees.
And then Darcy slipped the model's wrap off her back, and underneath the girl was—fat. For a model. Her skin glowed with the hue, texture and muscle tone of a used condom. Her face was cute, as a kewpie doll is cute, the kind of kewpie doll who looks like Doris Day at twenty. Her hair a glorious gold, very silky, super shiny in the lights.
She hunched with her wrap off and her pallid belly pouted, like a puppy during a session at a teat. Darcy steadied her to step into a black strapless slink, when Grelm spoke from his chair. "I've changed the look. She doesn't need anything."
Darcy swung, twisting the model's feet in the slithery tube. "Shoes?"
"Natch. Make her up to lie beside the lizard."
"'Kay." Darcy flicked the girl's feet up. I'd seen a horse trainer flick a filly's feet in the same way, to teach it high stepping, and this girl jumped with the same startled alacrity. Her eyes were opened to the width of fear of not pleasing. High black heels were put on her feet, and then Darcy told the assistant to do the girl's body.
I walked over to intervene. Darcy intervened on me first. "Won't come off. Waterproof. No worries." And she went back to work, now conferring with the photographer.
I looked over at Grelm, splayed there in the semi-dark, lids half closed. I knew in that glance that my rule of pay the Museum's fees up front was right. Normally, the client kvetches like a grandmother if the crew is crazy enough to allow him into the session. Clients don't sit still. They scuttle here, touch equipment there, ask godzillian numbers of questions, and twitch incessantly if they're forced finally, to just butt out. But Grelm's body? It smirked. His slacked-back shoulders spoke of—what? I recognized that smirk. It was the satisfaction of screwing others. But the Museum had his money, my head pounded watching these stooges, and their fate was not my burden to bear.
With his cane toad eyes, Grelm looked at the girl's naked body, at her eagerness and fright. His thoughts were transparent to me because I had met my Grelms before. I could see his brain moving, like looking into a carnivore's eyes. He'd paid her already in two ways, he would justify. Given her a chance, AND slept with her.
"Mr. Grelm. We agreed that your model would be backed by the scene, and that is what you paid for. But no one is allowed to touch the display itself. Sorry." I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty and not even polaroids yet. Shit!
Darcy, keeping busy and out of it, was painting blush on the girl's nipples when the door opened and Norm popped his head in, and then stepped into the room. "Did you need me, Leah? I thought you might."
I walked him gently back out the door. "Ta, Norm. No. We'll be a while here yet. And can you make sure no one else comes up here to help, either? Changes the lighting, you know." Should have expected word to spread about the last photo session with five changes of lingerie and no change room.
Norm disappeared with a smile, satisfied ... and now Grelm sidled up. He took my hand and pressed into it a piece of paper, smiling confidentially.
"What's this?"
"A bit of something for you."
A hundred dollar bill. I took his hand and smeared the note back into it, wishing it were used toilet paper, used side down. "Mr. Grelm. I don't take tips."
"Well, how we gonna get a shot of her stretched out by that lizard?"
"You can't, Mr. Grelm. That's the rules. Not on the exhibits."
"She's such a little thing."
It hurt to laugh, but snot shot from my nose, luckily into an eye. Just couldn't help it. He wiped my nose with scented silk, unoffended, and then mopped his face. Looking each other irises to irises, he cracked a smile, the smile of a meat-catcher.
"A healthy girl," he vaudevilled with his hands out. "How can it hurt?"
"Five hundred dollars cash now, as a Friend of the Museum. And bare feet."
"You're on." The bills unwadded themselves and were handed over, a game. "Tax deductable?" he snickered.
"Natch. I'll send you a receipt." I had to turn away. The bugger was so sick, he was infectious.
The crowd was waiting for us now, respectfully. I couldn't tell these folks that this guy was the scum that forms on scum. It would be a learning experience for them, and for the model, maybe the end of an illusion chased.
We were finally ready. I was invited to run my finger over her skin to approve the stickability of the body makeup. It was truly runproof and scratchproof.
"Careful," I cautioned. "The sand is sharp. Don't skin a knee."
Darcy gave her a leg up, and she crawled up onto the sand hill and stretched out by the long lizard.
The photographer glanced back uncertainly, and Grelm strode forward as Art Director.
"Shoulders back." He yelled. "Toss your head, doll."
The girl put everything she had into it. She tossed her mane, thrust her breasts forward, and leaned back on one elbow. And grabbed the closest thing to her, the body-length lizard as they both fell head first, tail in the air, through the sandpaper bubble.
The Refloat of D'Urbe Isle
Cluny McCrory drowned the digestive biscuit in his fifth cup of tea before noon, and dumped both in the sink. He was going crazy-bored with retirement after just six months home from the mainland, and had just decided to fall off the back of a ferry when he glanced at the page staring at him from The Times, held open by Daphne at the kitchen table, like some sort of a shield. World mourns hero to the planet. "I'm goin out," he said, and didn't hear the sigh of Daphne who, since he'd retired (When's lunch? What're you doin now?), had been troubled with fantasies of kitchen knives.
By the end of the day McCrory couldn't wait to take the ferry back to the mainland to check up on a few things. But his plans were made. He was going to salvage the sunken economy of the island and die someday a long time off with an obituary he'd be proud of. He knew a thing or two about energy so that was the direction his mind and energies took. He drafted a grant proposal to set up a plant to harness, store, and export energy from the wind, the one marketable resource that his island possessed.
He wasn't entirely original in his thoughts. The windmill farm had been in place for some years but was scheduled for dismantling, as the sound of the tall propeller-topped poles was now too many times quoted as "like a toilet on permanent flush", and they were now deemed to be unpopular, especially as they didn't help the loc
al economy.
Once his plan was thoroughly costed, he went to the regional authority, and since he was who he was— not anyone important as such, but someone who knew how others had done things and gotten their way in the public works department—he knew how to get his proposal approved, and he did. Applauded by the regional authority like a magically appearing hand for an emptily flapping glove, McCrory's business/government partnership proposal was perfectly on message with Government's current policy. Everyone was happy. And this is said with no nudge, nudge. Everybody was happy, as the islanders were assured that this scraggy little island would finally be considered a model of something worthy, and that they would soon be middle class.
The corporation was duly formed—a co-operative with 80% of the inhabitants eager to be part of it, the other 20% being over 75 years of age. The co-operative members were mostly crofters on slim pickings, both for their sheep, and the prices being paid for sheep. The remainder of the co-operative was composed of bent-backed but hardy ex-lichen gatherers for the handloomed tweed trade, who'd been done out of their jobs by the boom in world demand for these lichen-dyed wools, which meant that their natural lichen dyes couldn't possibly supply the market, but had to be substituted by dyes made by substances that are originally natural in some form, but are no longer lichen-derived.
But back to the D'Urbe Isle Energy Export Co-operative. The seed money for the setup was awarded, some millions, matched monetarily to full by projections in the plan.
With a will, the inhabitants/co-operative owners got to work, Cluny McCrory directing. First—the office, with appropriate software installed for Just-In-Time and certified Best Practice operating mode.
Then they built a warehouse. The fierce winds made the building of it tricky, and draftiness the prime concern. So for efficiency, two hundred thousand tons of cement mix, three tons of epoxy, forty-thousand steel reinforcing bars and two shipments more worth of supplies were ferried over to a new dock that had been built, even before the office, to service the island's trade.
Then the receiving and sorting centre was built beside the dock.
The business was almost ready, but it needed its supplies. They came by container to the new container-holding facility that now occupied the western half of the island, the flatter side, though it had still needed blasting before it could be paved. Storms made these containers imperative, allowing the business to run smoothly all year, even if a ship could not dock due to the frequent storms. When a ship could arrive and leave, it would be loaded to the gills.
The containers came, and they were piled high—so high that the poles left from the windmills needed to be extended up half their height again.
The facility was ready. The seed money—those millions—had now been spent. The projections for expenditure had been calculated elegantly, with now everything finished and nothing necessary to buy for the business to launch itself into the future.
The Minister spoke. The islanders had one almighty wet and raucous night, including Cora Golightly and her cousins Alberta and Phyllida, the "office". The next day—Monday at 9am—everyone, sick in the head but thrilled in the brain, showed up at work. And the wind harvest and export business began.
The imported cargo was primarily composed of recycled plastic bags. They were piled high in the processing house. Since there was now no electricity on the island once the blades had been removed from the mills, an assembly line of workers wearing earmuffs picked up bags one at a time and put them to a spigot, which puffed air into the bag, powered by a diesel compressor.
Bags with holes went to the DISCARD side; bags without holes continued forward to USE.
The procedure for a USE bag was then as follows: a harvester, a co-op worker job descripted more exactly as a "collector" takes the bag to a pole, fits it over an open-weave metal basket pointing sideways, and then runs the open bag up the pole, positioning it so that it puffs completely open and fills, at which time the collector lowers the bag, takes it off the basket, and machine-assisted, packs it in a waterproofed box labelled "D'Urbe Isle Energy Export Co-operative: Export Quality Wind Energy" (in five European languages).
Previous test runs showed that each cake-box-size box could hold fifty bags, especially after the Finnish box makers suggested upping the grade of board to extra heavy corrugate so that the packing machine can compress the contents to provide the greatest space savings, thereby saving money, shipping space, and the environment—for it should go without saying, but few companies are this careful with their shareholder's money: the more efficiently a product is packed, the less boxes need to be made for the product—a win-win situation.
Once the wind harvest is packed and sealed, it is ready for export whenever weather permits.
Since the wind howls without letup on D'Urbe Isle, the co-operative has ideal work practices. They vote their own work hours, and are scathing about other sources that are so much less reliable, like sun.
The discarded bags might have been a problem as they are, unfortunately, a significant percentage of recycled plastic bags. But a quick run up the pole for each, and a release at the top, lets nature take care of the problem with its normal efficiency, if we only give it a chance. The ubiquitous whitecaps sink the half-puffed bubbles almost as soon as they alight on the water, or if they don't alight as the wind is in one of its truly efficient moods, the bags just disappear as so many little clouds scudding over the horizon.
Today D'Urbe Isle is a model economy. The mainland has solved an ugly issue of waste. And wind has been harvested in a lesson for us all: with lateral thinking and good business sense, we can bag for useful purposes, at least some of nature's antisocial habits.
And that obituary in The Times? On file, only needing particulars of date, cause of death, and detail of which spouse outlived the other.
The Apple
With a rolling crash so loud she looked behind her back to see if anyone was there, the apple tumbled down the hidden chute and hit the chromed stop, where it gleamed red. As red as the shiny machine, and much shinier than the mud-grimed linoleum floor outside the lunchroom.
She reached in and took the apple and it overfilled her hand. It looked real good. And at the price of a candy bar, this particular apple looked to be what her mom called "a bargain."
But it hadn't cost a nickel. It hadn't cost anything, except an experiment. An impulsive experiment. But one that worked, and was so exciting, that ...
That she couldn't tell anyone.
She was real ashamed.
And real excited. After all, this meant something.
But the apple had come to her free.
And that wasn't good.
"Did I steal it?" She stood there, looking at the machine and at the apple, till Mrs. Crawford, her second grade teacher from last year, noticed her as she was walking past. Mrs. Crawford clicked over on those high heels and bent down low.
"What's wrong, Celia? Did you wet your pants again?" she whispered.
Celia felt bad, because Mrs. Crawford had been her favorite teacher once she knew how hard it was for Celia to raise her hand, and then she'd just let her go whenever she needed to, without asking.
"No, Mrs. Crawford," Celia answered, as the first drop fell from an eye, and then her nose began to run, and then she "sounded like an old donkey," as her mom laughingly called it. Mrs. Crawford pulled what looked like a spotless handkerchief from some magic pocket, and said, "There there. Now it can't be that bad." And she took Celia's hand and led her to the empty assembly hall, with a "Why don't we talk."
By the time they sat down in adjoining hard wooden seats, Celia knew she had done a terrible thing. She didn't think of a preamble. She just said, "I put a piece of candy wrapper in the machine, and an apple came."
Mrs. Crawford turned her face away for a moment and Celia watched, knowing it was even worse than she had known. Maybe she was cursed for life, as Beverly Lamburn always screamed when some boy was bad. "Yur gonna be cursed for life!"
Maybe that was it. Maybe she was pre-cursed, her life just waiting to be tempted into doing that thing. As it was, she hadn't planned. It just happened because she finished the chocolate, and just screwed up the shiny tinfoil, and it looked so pretty, like a nickel, so she made it rounder and flatter, and then there was the machine, and she just dropped it right in. "Just like that!" as her mom always said about things that she'd buy on a notion, that she just had to have. Or times when visitors came unexpected. Or rain suddenly pounded on the roof in the middle of a bluesky day. "Just like that." No explanation. A fact as hard as the sidewalk.
But that was making excuses. She knew. She did it.
But now there was Mrs. Crawford turned Celia's way again, with those beautiful, gray, great big eyes, somber as always.
"Is this the apple, Celia?"
Celia handed it to her.
"It's a nice apple." said Mrs. Crawford. "Did you not have a nickel?"
"No, ma'am. I have my lunch money and my allowance in my pocket."
"Then ..." Mrs.Crawford scrundled up her forehead, "Why, little honeysuckle?" She fished out the soggy hanky and handed it to Celia.
"Because it just happened," Celia sobbed. "Just like that."
Mrs. Crawford smiled. To Celia at that moment, she looked holy, especially when she asked, soft like private prayer, "Do you think it will happen again?"
Celia wanted with all her heart to absolve her horribleness, to never be a thief again. To be as good a person as Mrs. Crawford, so when she answered, she answered in complete trust, love, and horror. "Maybe."
Mrs. Crawford's painted eyebrows twitched. "Maybe you better talk to Mr. Abernathy."
So she took Celia to the principal's office, and there Celia met Mr. Lester Abernathy, and he agreed with her self-assessment of horribleness, especially the cursed-for-life part.
The Rest Cure
"Misanthrope's Rest", as he called it, did pique my curiosity. Adrian could tell a story and he hadn't finished this one yet: "Once out of the shrill of the street, everything ceases to have an edge—all is softness. The carpets—thick as Irish paddocks. The walls—muffled as a well-dressed castle. The lighting—suffused with that natural tint that imparts an aura of beneficence to the most boiled-eyed old misanthrope. It's for you, Jack."