Serendipity Green

by Rob Levandoski

  Donald pours himself another glass of warm 7UP. He doesn’t offer a refill to his protégé. “To be fair, Bill, you’re the one who forced Howie to paint it.”

  D. William Aitchbone notices that his mentor hasn’t offered him a refill. “He was suppose to paint it white.”

  “Was he now?”

  “Every goddamn house in town is painted white.”

  “Every house but one.”

  “And why that color? Where do you even buy paint like that?”

  “It’s some god-awful color, all right.”

  Now the crises in D. William Aitchbone’s life twist together like one of the stale pretzels the Tuttwyler Optimists’ Club sold in their food tent: “I should’ve won that privatization vote. Damn that Bonobo!”

  “It’s hardly Vicki’s fault that Woody vetoed your bill,” Donald Grinspoon says.

  “I’m not talking about the goddamn veto. I knew that pimply assed socialist would veto it. But the override vote, Donald, the goddamn override. She knew I needed her vote for that.”

  Donald Grinspoon starts working his protégé toward the front door. “You can’t blame Vicki for getting the flu.”

  D. William Aitchbone’s hands are out his pockets. He slaps at the air as if it’s lousy with black flies. “In July? Nobody gets the flu in July! She intentionally skipped that council meeting. She wanted me to lose that override.”

  “And why would that be?” Donald asks, opening the door for his protégé.

  “Because I wouldn’t sleep with her,” Aitchbone confesses. “Do you know, when we were in Washington, she came out of the bathroom naked? She’s punishing me, Donald. Punishing me for being faithful to my goddamn wife.” They’re on the porch now. The late afternoon sun is shooting through the decorative spandrels that arch between the posts like fancy spider webs. “I’ll never be able to prove it, but I think she called the VP off.”

  Donald herds him down the sidewalk. “Because you wouldn’t sleep with her? Come on, Bill, Vicki Bonobo is too classy for that.”

  “Oh, really? Do you know that the VP once tried to feel her up?”

  The revelation shocks Donald Grinspoon. He opens the car door for his protégé. “If she’s as ruthless as you say, maybe you should diddle her.”

  “One thing I am not going to do is diddle Victoria Bonobo. Not literally, anyway.”

  “Sometimes literally is necessary, Bill. Remember that exclusive contract I had with Weideman Boots? I had to diddle Bud Weideman’s wife six or seven times to land that baby. She looked more like a mule than a donkey does. But it got me that exclusive contract. Anybody in a fifteen-county radius who wanted a pair of Weideman boots had to drive to Grinspoon’s. Best boots in the world back in the fifties and sixties when best counted for something. Those boots bought me that condo in Key Largo. Penny and I had lots of wonderful vacations there. Romantic vacations.” He closes the car door as soon as his protégé’s legs are out of harm’s way. “There are bumps in every road, Bill. Squaw Days went just fine.”

  “Did you know that Katherine Hardihood and Howie Dornick are—”

  “Everybody in Tuttwyler knows that. I can’t imagine what ever brought those two got together. Can you?”

  “That woman’s got more brass than a marching band,” D. William Aitchbone says to his mentor. “Howie never would have painted his house that goddamn color if she wasn’t whispering in his goddamn ear.”

  Donald Grinspoon reaches into the car and pats his protégé on the shoulder. “You’re worrying too much. Nobody’s going to blame you for Howie house. In fact, you can blame it on Woody in the next election.”

  “Oh, you bet I will.”

  “Woody’s a flash in the pan,” Donald says. “You’ll win the next election.”

  “Oh, I’ll win it. Howie Dornick’s days as maintenance engineer are numbered, Donald. Goddamn numbered.”

  “Howie’s a decent guy.”

  Aitchbone wrings the blood out of his steering wheel. “He’s a bastard. And Katherine Hardihood’s a dried up old bastard bitch. And Victoria Bonobo’s a bitch, too. Half the people in this town are bastards and bitches. I may not be the mayor yet, Donald, but I’m goddamn everything else in this goddamn town, and goddamn it, Donald, the whole lot of them are going to rue the day they ruined D. William Aitchbone’s first Squaw Days!”

  “Revenge is fine in politics,” the mentor reminds his protégé, “as long as you show your enemies a little respect. And respect yourself a little, too.”

  Aitchbone puts his car in reverse. He smiles warmly. “How is Penny?”

  Donald Grinspoon smiles back. “Her emphysema is about the same. But her mind, well, it’s as brittle as her bones.”

  D. William Aitchbone eases up on the brake. The car rolls toward the street. “You’ll give her my love?”

  “I will. And you give Karen my love. Amy and Cannon, too.”

  After D. William Aitchbone leaves, Donald Grinspoon gets into his dusty rose Oldsmobile and drives forty miles north to the Sparrow Hill Nursing Home. He sits at his beloved Penelope’s bedside and tries to kiss the ache out of her knuckles. “I’m starting to worry about Bill Aitchbone,” he says. “Since taking over Squaw Days he’s really gone over the edge. Very sad.”

  Penelope Grinspoon’s Alzheimer’s is settling in for the evening. “Who’s Bill Aitchbone?”

  “That’s a good question,” answers Donald Grinspoon.

  After supper with Karen and the kids, D. William Aitchbone hurries to the Daydream Beanery for a strategy session with himself. It’s a long session. He drinks two double cappuccinos and picks at a banana muffin. He watches the counter girl with the blackcherry lips. He’s never noticed how wonderful her shoulders are. They’re almost as wonderful as Victoria Bonobo’s shoulders. He goes home and crawls into bed and kisses Karen Aitchbone’s cold ear. “I’m getting worried about Donald,” he says. “Since giving up the Squaw Days chairmanship he’s really lost his edge. Very sad.”

  14

  Early Tuesday morning Hugh Harbinger sneaks out of Bob and Eleanor’s house. Under one arm he carries a shopping bag containing two empty cereal bowls and a one-liter bottle of mineral water. Under the other arm he carries Matisse. He drives the Crown Vic into Cleveland, to the funky Tremont neighborhood on Starkweather Avenue, where gays and Hispanics and artsy bohemians live happily among the poor Irish. He parks and hurries into Quintessential Art. He waves to the owner of the shop. “Casey! Yo!”

  Casey Quinn “Yos!” back. They know each other from their days at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

  Hurrying straight to the Winsor & Newton rack, Hugh Harbinger gathers up several dozen tubes of gouache, an opaque water-based paint that’s just the ticket for the work ahead. He not only chooses various hues of green, blue and yellow, but many other colors, too. He grabs an inexpensive pallet for mixing. He grabs an expensive pad of thick paper. He selects three very expensive sable brushes. Matisse runs free, sniffing his way up and down the aisles.

  “Back in Cleveland to stay, are you?” Casey Quinn asks, stuffing what Hugh has just paid $157 for into a bag made of recycled paper.

  “I’m Amtrakking back tonight.”

  “You’ve at least got time for us to get drunk, don’t you?”

  “Love to, Casey, but I’ve got a lot of shit to do.”

  “Ah man, don’t we all.”

  Hugh Harbinger now drives south on Interstate 71. He takes it all the way to Tuttwyler, to the two-story frame on South Mill. He knocks on the door for a long time, but Howie Dornick is not home. Permission or no permission, he nestles himself in the tall grass in the back yard, morning sun at his back, Matisse nestled between his legs like an enormously swollen prostrate. He fills the two cereal bowls with Evian. One bowl is for cleaning his brushes. The other is for Matisse. He loads his pallet with squirts of gouache. He opens his pad. He clenches one sable brush between his teeth. He clenches one in his left hand. He begins making green circles.

  He knows
replicating the green on Howie Dornick’s house won’t be easy. He knows this may take hours. He implores Matisse to be patient. And Matisse will be patient, because he knows from long experience that his master is as crazy as the squirrels in Washington Square.

  Hugh knows this may take hours because he knows color. He knows that color isn’t a real and tangible thing. He knows that color is more than paint on the side of a house or the paint on a thick piece of paper, that color is only light and that light is nothing but ghostly waves of ancient energy, radiating and reflecting and bouncing and bending and advancing and retreating, zigzagging and spinning, appearing and disappearing, no more easy for a mortal man to capture than a cat chasing a flashlight beam.

  Hugh Harbinger also knows that this green is more than the serendipitous result of what Howie Dornick mixed in his 55-gallon drum, the car-wash yellow and the video-store blue and the beauty-shop blue and the fraternity-house gold and the darkroom black he bought at Bittinger’s in Wooster. He knows it is more than the other stuff he mixed in, the kitchen peach, the shellac, the bleach, the floor wax and furniture polish, the rubbing alcohol, the Listerine and hydrogen peroxide, the 10 W-30 motor oil and the windshield wiper fluid, the charcoal lighter and all those gallons of antifreeze. He knows it is more than the rotting gray clapboards Howie Dornick slathered his concoction over; more than the moss and the mold and the bugs and the splatters of bird shit, more than the sweat dripped from Howie Dornick’s forehead, more than the rays of sun stabbing Tuttwyler that particular day. He knows it is more than the radiation riding the northwinds from the nuclear power plants along Lake Erie and more than the gritty steam oozing from Cleveland’s steel mills, more than the exhaust of cars and trucks and buses whooshing bumper to bumper on I-491.

  He knows better than anyone alive that this green comprises the collective hues of Howie Dornick’s life. Yet Hugh Harbinger is confident he can capture this serendipity green. He is confident because he understands Howie Dornick’s fears and frustrations, his feelings of worthlessness. He understands because he has a hunch that Howie’s goblins are personal friends of his own.

  As the sun changes its position, Hugh is forced to change his position, too. By noon there are several buttock-sized circles smashed into the unmowed grass, each a little farther west than the other. Matisse is restless now. And angry. He wants to run and sniff and salute some bush with his back leg.

  His master also is growing restless. Also growing angry. Despite his mastery of color and his kinship with Howie Dornick’s goblins, he is unable to replicate the green on Howie’s house.

  All afternoon Hugh Harbinger works. The westward sliding sun moves him from the back of the house to the side of the house and to the front of the house. He is running out of paint. Running out of paper. Running out of sun. Then at ten after five a narrow shadow falls over Hugh’s pad of green circles. He lifts his chin until his upside down eyes see an unappetizing face. “Hey, Howie! Hope you don’t mind I came by.”

  Howie Dornick does not appear the least bit upset. “You paint really good circles,” he says.

  Hugh explains that he’s trying to capture the green, as perfectly as he can, so he can take it to New York and make it the biggest color in years. “With your permission, of course,” he says. “I figured I’d give you half of everything I make. If that’s OK.”

  Howie Dornick studies the pages of green circles. “Just what is it you’re planning to make? Beach balls? Dinner plates?”

  Hugh Harbinger laughs and explains what he intends to make is money. “We’ll do it legal, of course. A contract spelling it all out.”

  “I guess that would be OK,” Howie Dornick says.

  So while Hugh Harbinger goes back to painting green circles—each a slightly different hue than the last, each a far cry from the serendipity green soaked into the clapboards of the two-story frame—Howie Dornick goes inside and empties two cans of Franco-American Spaghetti into a sauce pan. He’ll also boil some wieners. “Can Matisse eat hotdogs?” he yells out the window.

  Yes, Matisse is permitted to eat hotdogs, and the three of them eat their supper on the front lawn. The evening flies by. Hugh Harbinger’s hope of capturing the color is flying by, too. He’ll have to take tomorrow night’s train to New York.

  Howie Dornick is not an artist. He is a practical maintenance engineer. He walks to the side of his house and breaks one of the clapboards off the wall. He hands Hugh Harbinger four feet of serendipity green. Together they laugh like the worthless bastards they know they are.

  “You wouldn’t want to watch Matisse for a while, would you?” Hugh asks.

  D. William Aitchbone and Victoria Bonobo slide into a booth at the Wagon Wheel. “This is a pleasant surprise,” she says. “I figured after my stunt in Washington I’d be exiled to an iceberg.”

  “We’ve been through all that.”

  They order. She orders feminine, a garden salad—hold the onion—poppyseed dressing on the side. He can play the gender game, too. He orders a steakburger and steak fries. She orders a diet Coke. He orders a regular Coke.

  “Squaw Days really kept me hopping,” he says.

  “You were magnificent.”

  He counters with a sexual innuendo of his own. “Even with the small Ferris wheel?”

  She gets it and they both laugh. The Cokes come. They unsheathe their straws and sip.

  D. William Aitchbone has rehearsed this rendezvous at two separate strategy sessions. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this all summer,” he begins. “I really appreciate your looking out for me on that privatization thing.”

  Victoria Bonobo hasn’t had time to rehearse—he invited her to Wooster for lunch just that morning—and he can see that she’s flummoxed. “Well,” she says. “Well.”

  “I must say I’m impressed with your political instincts.”

  “Well,” she says. “Well.”

  “Pretending to have the flu. Very Nixonian, Vicki. Nixonian as hell.”

  “Well, thanks, but I really wasn’t feeling good.”

  “Well, you sure were thinking good.” He takes a long smooth suck on his straw, emptying half his glass. He hopes it has the sexual connotation he intends. “You knew putting Howie Dornick on the street without a job would be bad for me politically. Knew Woody and the Democrats would turn him into a cause célèbre. Sledgehammer me with it in the next election. ‘There’s Bill Aitchbone, the cold-hearted SOB who put Artie Brown’s son on the street,’ etcetera, etcetera. You knew I was just thinking about saving the village some money, overlooking the emotional side of it. That’s my one political flaw, Vicki. I’m not emotional enough.”

  Victoria Bonobo protests. “You’re a very sensitive man.”

  He knew she would say something like that. He puts a blush on his face. “Well, I just wanted to thank you.”

  “Well, you’re welcome.” Her hand comes down on his, like the heavy lid of a waffle iron. “You know how much I admire you.”

  He waffle-irons her hand right back. “And I admire you.”

  Their feminine and masculine lunches arrive.

  “The upside, of course,” says D. William Aitchbone, his molars grinding away at a huge bite of ground beef, “is that with Howie Dornick still on the village payroll, we can still exert some pressure on him. Help him reconsider that god-awful paintjob on his house.”

  Victoria Bonobo now does exactly what he knew she would: She accepts his version of reality. “I should have been more direct with you,” she says, “instead of trying to protect you. I’m not your wife, after all.”

  D. William Aitchbone laughs, with her, and at her, and he springs for the kill like the shrewd meat-eater he is. “I wish my wife was more protective like that.”

  Victoria Bonobo is flummoxed anew. “Well,” she says. “Well.”

  Three entire steakfries go into D. William Aitchbone’s mouth before he speaks again. He does not know for sure whether the Vice President’s sudden change of plans was Victoria Bonobo’s do
ing or not—Vice Presidents do, after all, get occasionally busy—but he will raise the VP issue nonetheless. “Squaw Days went well enough, little Ferris wheel or no. I just wish the VP could have been there.”

  “Me, too,” Victoria says. “I feel so responsible.”

  They make another hand waffle.

  “Do you think we can get him to come to next year’s festival? It would do everyone a lot of good. Help me win the mayor’s race. Help him carry Ohio when he runs for the big enchilada. Help you win the council president’s seat. You know I want you in that chair when I’m mayor.”

  “You do?”

  “God yes, Vicki, I want you in that chair more than anything.”

  D. William Aitchbone cannot remember ever seeing a woman so flummoxed. He enjoys the rest of his steakburger and steakfries as he has never enjoyed a steakburger and steakfries before. Donald Grinspoon would be proud of him, he thinks. God knows he is proud of himself. Next Squaw Days the VP will be in his car, not the goddamn secretary of the Interior. Next Squaw Days Howie Dornick’s house will be as soapy white as every other house in Tuttwyler. Next Squaw Days the Happy Landing Ride Company will bring the big Ferris wheel. And the next election! Next election D. William Aitchbone will be goddamn mayor! And one thing Victoria Bonobo won’t be is president of the goddamn village council. “You know, Vicki, maybe you and I could go down to Washington again, to twist the VP’s arm a little harder.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Still hungry? Want to split a piece of pie?”

  “Love to.”

  And so D. William Aitchbone shares a piece of peach pie with Victoria Bonobo, knowing as he chews and swallows that her mind is filled with images of them in bed together, in a big Washington, DC hotel, the Washington Monument right out the window, copulating and copulating and copulating; knowing as he chews and swallows that a year from now he will be a very rich man, that the old Aitchbone family farm will have been annexed into the village, and that hundreds and hundreds of big two-income, marriage-wrecking, lawyer-needing houses will be springing up; knowing that the second Squaw Days under his leadership will be even better than the first. “I love peach pie,” he says.