by Barry Rachin
“As a Wellesley girl, who may on occasion rub shoulders with America’s elite,” he noted tongue in cheek, “I thought you ought to know.”
They meandered halfway around the perimeter of the circle and pulled up in front of the music tent, where a half-dozen brown-skinned men were pounding away on a communal drum. Behind them women decked out in feathers and native costumes were singing wordless accompaniment, a rambunctious call and response. More people were arriving every minute with giddy tribal members rushing off to greet long-lost friends and relatives. “Considering some of the men I've dated recently,” she muttered with a self-deprecating half-smile, “downwardly mobile is a refreshing change.”
Alexis found a pair of turquoise earrings plus a matching bracelet at one stalls, while Tom bought a flute fashioned from fire-killed, old-growth cedar originally harvested in British Columbia. Alexis was three tents down looking at a collection of handmade moccasins while Tom spoke with the Mashpee instrument maker, who had driven up in a rust-bucket camper from the tribal reservation on Cape Cod.
“Find the seam.” Tom handed her the amber colored flute he just purchased.
Alexis flipped the flute over in her hand. The satiny smooth wood shimmered in the early afternoon light. “There’s no break in the grain. It looks all of one piece.”
“The wood was split down the middle, each half carefully hollowed out and planed smooth before being glued back together.” “That craggy-faced Indian,” he pointed to the elder with a single eagle feather wedged in his gray ponytail, “claims the assembly is so exact that most people can’t find the joint line even if he shows them where to look.” Tom’s enthusiasm over the ingenious workmanship was infectious, and Alexis grinned foolishly even though she wasn’t quite sure why the design was such a big deal. A young toddler dressed in moccasins and beaded leather shirt wandered by nibbling on an ear of corn. Near a display of handmade Indian artifacts, a huge pile of unshucked corn was roasting on a blackened grill.
“Hungry?” Tom queried. They ignored the hot dogs and hamburgers in favor of a watery succotash and traditional corn tortillas with vegetables, a roasted meat of unknown origin, generous dollop of sour cream and pungent, herbal sauce.
A new group of drummers and singers replaced the original musicians as a stream of children and teenagers, some brandishing war clubs and elaborate, handmade jewelry, entered the dance circle. Out of breath, the elderly man with the breechcloth and geriatric walker shuffled unsteadily off to the side and collapsed onto a folding chair. His companion ran off momentarily and returned with a large bowl of succotash. Many of the participants didn’t especially look like Indians. A tall black man sporting dreadlocks and a broad, fleshy nose was talking to a blond woman with pigtails. Both wore feathers, leggings and traditional Indian regalia. With an impromptu change of clothing, the WASP’y blonde could have passed for a cheerleader or collegiate homecoming queen.
Alexis was feeling slightly woozy from the food and excitement. Somewhere between the changing of the guard with the drummers and young people joining the older dancers, Tom had slipped an arm around her waist. She felt his hips lean up against her. “So, what are you doing next weekend?”
The following Saturday night, Tom took Alexis to a Russian foreign film, Dersu Usala. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, the joint-venture movie won the Grand Prix at the Moscow Film Festival in 1975. Loosely based on the memoirs of a Russian explorer, Vladimir Arsenyey, the movie described his exploration of the Sikhote-Alin region of Siberia in the early twentieth century. By the end of the film, when the aged, half-blind hunter discovered his ancestral ways slipping into oblivion, Alexis found herself dabbing away the tears. "I'm not usually like this," she sputtered averting her soggy face.
*****
“Is there a literary precedent for what we’re doing?” Alexis asked. Lying in bed, Tom was kissing the satiny skin between her shoulder blades.
A minute passed before he spoke. “E.M. Forster... A Room with a View."
"I read it in high school but can't remember a thing."
Tom lay supine, fingers laced behind his neck. "In the final chapter, the love birds elope to Italy... rush off impetuously in the middle of the night without telling a soul."
Alexis flipped over on her stomach, rising up on her elbows. A Room with a View - the plot was coming back to her in bits and pieces. Rediscovering the novella, which she read in late adolescence, was like fitting the frayed pieces of a favorite puzzle together. Every time Alexis located a matching piece, another scene or subplot suggested itself.
Around five o’clock in the morning, Tom slid off the side of the bed. A moment later she heard pee splattering against the toilet bowl. “My mother thinks you suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome,” she said when he returned to bed.
“That’s not true… it’s something else altogether.
Without bothering to inquire what that ‘something else’ might be, Alexis said, “It doesn’t really feel like we’re dating anymore,”
They had been together three months now and settled into a comfortable domesticity. A car door slammed. An engine fired up and the vehicle crawled out of the parking lot in the direction of the highway. When it was gone, the bedroom was engulfed in soothing silence. Alexis rolled over and straddled Tom. Resting lightly on his stomach, the girl sat up straight, draping her forearms provocatively over her head. "Like what you see?"
Lips parted, he lay transfixed, breathing through his mouth in shallow puffs of air. An unintelligible, guttural sound welled up in his throat. Inching back down, Alexis placed her lips up against his ear. "Consider yourself a risk taker?"
“For the most part, no," he spoke haltingly, "but on rare occasion, I'll go for broke."
"Listen closely." Alexis whispered gruffly, "Conventional wisdom be damned, this is what I think we ought to do…"
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Old Man, Old Woman
Phyllis Moon was sifting through a stack of messages when both telephone lines lit up simultaneously. “Caring Hearts Home Care, please hold.” The office coordinator put the first caller on hold and attended to the second.
Alex, who had just arrived at work, picked up the flashing line. Eighty-seven-year-old Sarah Cohen from Scenic View Apartments was complaining that her homemaker late. Alex glanced at the clock on the far wall. “It’s not quite nine o’clock, Mrs. Cohen. Your girl should be there momentarily.”
“The podiatrist… I got an eleven o’clock appointment,” the client reported in a gravelly monotone. “Senior van is picking me up at ten-thirty, and she gotta help me get dressed.”
“Your homemaker will be there shortly,” Alex promised.
“My ingrown toenail… it’s all infected. The girl’s got to help me get ready.”
“Has Mildred ever been late?”
“No, never,” the Jewish woman sputtered with genuine warmth. “She’s a goddamn saint!”
“So you’re all set then?”
“Yeah, for sure.” There was a slight pause. “It’s the third time.”
“Third time what?”
“This lousy infection.” The woman was diabetic. Untreated, foot infections might lead to necrosis, septicemia, gangrene or worse. Alex could hear a commotion in the background. “Wait, somebody’s at the door. I gotta hang up.”
“That would be Mildred,” Alex noted but the line had already gone dead.
Hanging up the phone he turned back to Phyllis. The receptionist’s dark skin and short-cropped raven hair framed a pleasant if somewhat unremarkable face. She favored unfashionable, dark-framed glasses and an assortment of infuriatingly drab skirts and blouses. Despite her physical limitations, Phyllis Moon was efficient and dependable. She knew how to comfort a crotchety client addicted to stool softeners or finesse a homemaker into taking on a difficult case, while keeping office politics to a bare minimum.
“My fiancée, Clarice, wants to live together… cohabitate.”
“That�
�s nice,” Phyllis replied in a low-keyed monotone. “Your accountant is stopping by this morning. The general ledger is locked in the middle cabinet.”
“Clarice and I decided to live together,” Alex repeated.
“Yes, you just told me a moment ago.” Phyllis tilted her slender neck to the side and smiled opaquely. “Congratulations.”
Alex glanced about the office distractedly. “Do you like Clarice?”
Phyllis Moon gawked at him with a quizzical expression. “You put me in an awkward spot with a question like that.”
A homemaker wearing a green smock came to pick up directions plus pay slips for a new client. “It’s not a trick question,” Alex groused when the homemaker was gone. “Either you like my future wife or not.”
Phyllis removed her dark-frame glasses, sprayed the lenses with a pocket-size cleaner then wiped the surface dry with a tissue. “You just went from casual dating to cohabitating to wedding bells.”
Before he could respond, a dark blue Toyota sedan with a moon roof pulled up in front of the building, and, what was turning out to be a reasonably pleasant day got a whole lot worse. “Oh, God!” Alex muttered. “That’s Jessica Stern from the Department of Health.”
Every year without notice the Brandenburg Department of Health bushwhacked the home care agencies with unscheduled visits. They came ostensibly to insure that paperwork was in order and employee medical records up to date.
That was the stated purpose for the inspections. But Jessica Stern always brought a secondary agenda. The dour woman would dig, until she unearthed some petty indiscretion or infinitesimal sin of omission. Then, like a Roman gladiator, Jessica Stern would launch a full frontal attack.
Alex set the inspector up in a small vestibule off the entryway. Five minutes into her visit Jessica flagged him down. “The elder abuse hotline number on the Patient Bill of Rights form is incorrect,” she announced in a pinched tone. The woman was tall, over six feet, with a wide jaw and meticulously combed auburn hair. “What you have here,” she repeated “is outdated.”
“We were never notified of the changed,” he replied weakly.
“We contacted every provider.” Jessica gave him a withering look that precluded any further discussion of the matter. “When did you print these forms?”
“Just last week. We ordered fifteen hundred.”
“They’ll all need to be destroyed, and every client issued a new one with the correct telephone number,” she added for good measure. “Where’s your Emergency Disaster Control Plan?”
“Disaster Control Plan,” Alex repeated dully.
Three years earlier, following the 911 terrorist attack, the state ordered all health care providers to draw up a written plan detailing how they would continue operations following a national catastrophe such as germ warfare, terrorist attack, nuclear explosion, earthquake, flood, holocaust, God-knows-what. Alex had dutifully churned out ten pages of surrealistic drivel. The original document was buried in his computer hard drive, the printed version filed away somewhere in the office.
The dystopian directive read like third-rate, pulp fiction. When militant Pakistanis dropped a nuclear bomb on downtown Brandenburg, Alex would of course ignore his own, immediate family and rush back to the site of the demolished home care agency.
To do what? To insure that Sarah Cohen from Scenic View Apartments got her pussy toe lanced by the podiatrist and then make a side trip to the drug store - if it hadn’t already been burnt to the ground or looted - to purchase an organic laxative for the ninety year-old client with fecal impactions. Brandenburg had just been demolished, annihilated on a scale similar to Hiroshima, but Jessica Stern’s bureaucratic master plan trumped all mundane considerations.
Alex rummaged through every three-ring folder and manual lining the credenza. No luck. He slouched into a chair. A fat bumblebee just outside the window was circling the mouth of an orangey tiger lily. Across the street the driver of a Pepsi Cola van was stacking crates of soda on a hand truck to be wheeled into the grocery market.
“Did you check the blue binder?” Phyllis was leaning against the door jamb.
Alex looked up. “That’s where we store outdated telephone logs.”
“Yes, but you cram all sorts of junk in there.” She opened the folder and thumbed through the blue binder, section by section. “Yes, here it is… right where you put it three years ago.” She pried the metal rings apart, extricating the report. “I’ll bring it out to Mrs. Stern.” She hurried off.
After Jessica Stern left the building, Alex called the Brandenburg Department of Health. “I’m calling from Caring Hearts Home Care. We need the new Elder Abuse Hotline number.”
“Yes, I have that right here,” the woman on the other end of the line replied. “Eight, four, nine… nine, six, five, three.”
Alex felt like he had been sucker punched in the solar plexus. “No, that’s the number we presently have. It’s been replaced… updated.”
“One minute please.” After a lengthy pause the receptionist returned. “I’m so sorry. The correct number is six, one, five …”
“Well that went well.” Alex told Phyllis about the comedy of errors with the outdated telephone number. “Jessica Stern is writing us up with multiple deficiencies.”
Phyllis smirked. “It’s sort of like high school, when you get caught smoking in the bathroom.”
“A lot more costly,” Alex observed. “Those non-carbonated forms we have to scrap cost over a hundred bucks.” He stepped closer. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Camping in the White Mountains,” she replied. “Gonna hike the trails and maybe do some fly-fishing.”
“You don’t strike me as the outdoors type.”
There was no immediate reply. “What’s my full name?”
Alex stared at her queerly. “Phyllis… Phyllis Moon.”
“I was born Phyllis Half Moon. After moving east from the reservation in Butte, Montana, I dropped the ‘Half’. I’d like to think that a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian should know a thing or two about communing with Mother Nature.”
*****
“Regarding accounts receivable,” Howie Tittlebaum observed, “company income is way up, but profits are in the toilet.”
Alex was seated behind his desk in the back office. A coffee-colored UPS truck swerved onto the street. That would be the non-surgical glove shipment he ordered the middle of last week - ten cases of latex-free, powdered gloves for the health aides who bathed clients and provided personal care. “I’m projecting a million five this year.”
A small man with pale, flaccid skin and a receding hairline, the accountant laid a spreadsheet on top of the desk. “Look here.” He stabbed at a double line midway down the page. “Caring Hearts brought in close to four hundred thousand in gross sales through March, but blew three-quarters of the revenue on payroll and operating expenses.”
Alex’s expression darkened. “Our business is labor-intensive. To stay competitive with the nursing homes, we need to offer regular pay raises.” Alex cracked his knuckles and shook his head in disgust. “But then the state nickel-and-dimes us to death. A ton of money flows in every month but flies back out the window.”
“You think you’re in health care?” Howie waved his slender hands in the air, assuming the gently mocking tone of a practical jokester. “Surprise! Surprise! You’re in the garment trade!”
He burst out laughing hysterically at his own joke. “The garment industry in New York,” the humor was tempered now with an equal measure of gravitas, “functions on razor-thin profit margins. Smaller shops can’t raise prices, because the jerk down the street might undercut them; so clothiers got no control over their bottom line.”
“Millions of dollars in, millions out,” Alex observed sardonically. Receivables went chasing expenses like the proverbial carrot on the end of an absurdly long stick. No matter how much money he brought in, no profit remained from one month to the next. In April, Alex borrowed ten
thousand dollars to cover payroll and a federal tax payment. He couldn’t screw around with the Feds.
“You can cart the goddamn money to the bank in a freakin’ wheelbarrow,” Howie observed, “but if it’s all eaten up in salaries and benefits, there isn’t a plug nickel’s worth of profit at the end of the day.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“You don’t need more money, you need stronger profit,” he replied. “Hit the state up for a rate increase when you renegotiate contracts.” Howie rose and, reaching across the desk, pumped Alex’s hand up and down. “When you own your own company,” he quipped, “everybody thinks you’re rolling in dough.”
Alex gazed distractedly about the room. His eyes came to rest on the new computer and dot matrix printer they used for processing the continuous-feed payroll slips. That purchase alone set him back a good penny. Now he had to fork over another three hundred dollars to the software company that designed the automated accounting program. Every couple of years they introduced an updated program that rendered what Alex was currently using obsolete.
*****
Later that night, Alex called Phyllis at home. “You work for me five goddamn years and only just now get around to telling me about your heritage?”
“How many Native Americans do you rub shoulders with on any given day?” She had never spoken to him in that way and the caustic tone brought him up short.
What did Alex know about the American Indians?
His junior year in high school the history teacher touched briefly on the ugly legacy of Manifest Destiny. In the far west, the Spanish wanted to convert all the natives to their way of life and, on the whole, were surprisingly successful. The English, on the other hand, never tried to make Englishman out of the Indians; instead they saw the red man as part of the wilderness that they aimed to clear away.
“How many tribes make up the Blackfoot Nation?” This time she didn’t wait for a reply. “Four – the North and South Peigans, the Kinai Nation, also known as the Bloods, and the Siksika.”