Datesville: Out of the Land of Bondage!

Chapter 4 — The Hideous Depression

 

After my return from Central City and a brief, two-day visit with Mom, I fly back to New York.  And as agreed, I call Todd Willingham a couple of days later to meet for beers at Blarney’s and commiserate my misfortune and perhaps pry a tidbit or two out of him, explaining better why ZMC canned me.  But Willingham is evasive.  He has another commitment that evening, he says, so won’t be able to meet me.  And he would ask for a raincheck, he adds, except his work schedule is “absolutely horrendous!”  “Henry, this departmental reorganization thing has me tied up all the way through April!  Can you believe it!  I just have no idea when I’ll get any time for myself.”  So Willingham and I make no further plans to meet for beers.

I know what’s up, though; he doesn’t have to tell me.  Obviously, the higher-ups have gotten to Todd and threatened him, not to talk to, or help me in any way.  This feels like a punch in the gut!  Willingham and I go way back, over ten years.  We’ve been good friends and colleagues for that long, and that says something in a town like New York.

Meanwhile, my life gets hectic.  For one, I can’t earn a living.  Three-quarters of my income dried up the minute ZMC fired me which, by the way, was two years ago last November.  So, consequently, I’m no longer able to afford my life in the city.

To stay afloat, I cash out my investment portfolio, only to see my savings evaporate quicker than expected.  And, I call Mark Tank, my literary agent.  I say, hey Mark, look, I need more work, a lot more, soon! and explain to him how critical my situation is.  Sure, no problem, he says.  But after that, it feels like he’s avoiding me; and it gets harder to reach him by phone; and he won’t answer my texts.  And the work Mark sends my way is social media fillers that don’t pay diddly-squat; I know for sure I can’t survive in New York on this.

Then, when I do finally reach Mark by phone, he says: Things have slowed down, Henry.  I suspect, however, that what he really means is that word has gotten out about ZMC blackballing me and, therefore, managing editors among the independent media companies aren’t lining up to hire me for fear that Zircon-McCade might blackball them, too.  Zircon-McCade is, as mentioned, a behemoth with a long reach in the publishing industry.

So more months pass and work continues drying up and I become uncertain about where things are headed and more desperate as a result.

Finally, I decide to quit writing under my real name and take a pen name in an attempt to end run the death grip ZMC has on my career.  Sure, I’ve used pen names before but only under certain circumstances, not as something more permanent.  I settle on Harvey Orange as my new pseudonym.  It’s got a nice ring, don’t you think?

I figure, as Harvey Orange, I can avoid associations with ZMC and, perhaps, generate more work.  Of course, I brief Mark on this development.  Cool, he says, it might work.  But changing my name also means editors who know me and know my reputation as a journalist and who are familiar with my work, now have no idea who the hell Harvey Orange is.  Mind you, these people hate working with writers they’ve never heard of.  Thus the evolving complications of my career continue while my prospects for turning things around dwindle.  Basically, despite the name change, I’m still screwed.

You know, it’s amusing how unemployment affects one’s social life.  I was never one of these fawning individuals who invests an excessive amount of time and energy, cultivating a circle of friends with the idea of “more is better”.   But, in New York, I still have probably two dozen friends I see occasionally, at one party or another, maybe a couple of times a year.  And they call me, now and then, to attend hockey games or concerts, or meet them for drinks at an Irish pub after work—that sort of thing.  And, though I may not see them often, I can always count on a friend to hang with, when I want one, or to invite over for pizza.  That was true, until I became unemployed.

With unemployment, I suddenly have the same trouble reaching friends as I do Mark Tank, and none of them returns my call.  I truly did not know just how much I depended on my so called social network until it went extinct.

But there’s something else.  My mother has, inexplicably, stopped conversing with me.  Oh, she will talk to me on the phone when I call, but we don’t converse anymore.  I know you understand the difference.

I’ve wondered, is it because I didn’t move back to Churchill as she asked?  I don’t know.  More likely, I figure, it was the shock she experienced when the medical examiner called that day and confronted us with the possibility that the body in the Central City morgue could have been Patsy.  Or perhaps Mom has realized Patsy may already be dead, somewhere, and this thought affects her profoundly.  Again, I can’t say.  But something, whatever it may be, has caused Mom to slip into a reticence—at least toward me, if not her friends in Churchill.

After my return to New York, Mom became distant.  I would call her and she would answer the phone, of course.  But, then, she seems to never have time to talk; always, something else presses for her attention when I call.  And when we do speak, she avoids sharing anything important about her life.  So I try to coax her to open up, but she only replies, in that artificially chipper tone she sometimes uses, “You shouldn’t worry about me, Henry.  I get along just fine.”  And this is the signal that she will not tolerate any further prying.  Thus, our conversations are limited to weather reports and recaps of TV programs she has watched recently.

If I persist in asking questions after the you-shouldn’t-worry-about-me warning, she scolds me by saying: “Henry, you make me feel like I’m standing in front of the Spanish Inquisition.  I don’t quiz you about your life, now do I?”  At this point, I apologize and the conversation either returns to weather forecasts or TV trivia or we let it die altogether.

For several months, she does not share with me anything about her health or daily activities or her ideas, plans, or desires, and not even the latest note about her flowers which she loves and which bloom in her backyard.  She simply cuts me off emotionally.

So eight months pass, and right before I move from New York to Tulsa, I lose phone service for not paying my bill, and I haven’t, yet, been able to replace it.  I’m sure Mom must wonder why I haven’t called.  Now, fifteen months have passed since then; I’ve tried calling twice using the pay-booth, but both times she did not answer.  Probably she did not recognize the number when the call came in and that was why she didn’t pick up.  Or perhaps she is afraid some other medical examiner from some other part of the country is calling with news about Patsy that she’d rather not hear.  So I’ve lost touch with my mother, and now I have no idea what the weather is doing in Churchill or what TV programs Mom finds entertaining.  Sorry, that was cruel.  And to be fair, when she and I still had contact, I wasn’t sharing all of the nitty gritty details of my life with her, either.  So she didn’t know anything about my deteriorating situation at the time nor how bad it has gotten since.

 *  *  *  *

There is something else, perhaps, I should mention about myself—or about my career, I should say—because, if I neglect it, you might assume that my current predicament has somehow caught me by surprise.  It hasn’t really, or at least not completely.  I’ve known theoretically that something like this can happen to anyone, myself included.

See, my bread and butter story has never been the billionaire profile, like the one I planned to write featuring Marcus Purcell.  The billionaire profile has always and only been a bonus gig.  It pays well but audience interest in such an article is extremely narrow, limited mostly to those who like the SOB featured in the story.  No, my real bread and butter is, and has always been, the plight of the common American during this so called Grand Depression which began, by the way, in October of 2029, a year before my birth.  The Grand Depression has dragged on now for four decades and appears to have no end.  “Grand!”  What a poor choice of adjective, if you ask me!  It implies that what people in this country incessantly endure is somehow magnificent—in a good way—or at least important.  But I say, why not call it what it is?  How about the Hideous or Perpetual Depression?  Or why not the Really Shitty Depression?  Wouldn’t these descriptors seem a bit more accurate?  Grand my ass!  Anyway—

But I’m one of the lucky ones (at least I was until recently) because I’ve managed to escape the dregs of this epoch and have avoided the great cesspool of terrible misery and despair into which so many of my fellow countrymen, and -women, have fallen.  But as stated, I’ve written upwards of forty to fifty articles which have appeared widely, over the years, in well-read periodicals and on popular news sites, describing the sufferings of ordinary people from every walk of life.  And for these bread and butter stories, there never seemed to be a lack of material because it was available everywhere throughout the good ol’ U S of A.

My stories featured former factory workers, school teachers, IT engineers, among so many others, who spent years outdoors in tent-camps, on desolate windblown mountains, in swamplands or deserts, in wooded ravines and on riverbanks, not to mention in the crumbling buildings of inter-cities, or on the margins of dangerous freeways.  Most of these lived in such conditions without shelter, for thirty years or more.  The old-timers were those who remembered life before the crash.  These were the best stories because they depicted the loss of a way of life which the victims, to some extent, had enjoyed.  Not many old-timers yet survive because so many perished prematurely.

I’ve written, too, about people who lived without homes, apartments, bathrooms, and running water for their entire lives—second-generation homeless, as they are known—who were still youths when their stories appeared in magazines they would never read.  Their mothers told how they gave birth in tents, and counted themselves lucky because so many former nurses also populated the camps in those days and were exceptionally generous and goodhearted women who volunteered as midwives and delivered their babies.

For ten years, I traveled and lived out of motels and wrote these stories, describing, basically, only one story—over and over again:  The story’s protagonist was always a middle- or working-class American who lost her job for one reason or another, who couldn’t regain financial stability thereafter, no matter how hard she tried, who prior to her present dilemma could never fathom losing everything she owned, including her family but, of course, did, and who, up until the very day I interviewed her, refused to relinquish hope that one day—without even the prospect of gainful employment anywhere in sight and suffering failing health because of lack of decent nutrition—that one day she would reclaim the modest dream of a “normal life” and that somehow she would find again what had slipped through her fingers a decade or two earlier.  This same protagonist would never concede that homelessness might be the last chapter of her life.  “No, no, this isn’t going to beat me,” she’d say, but in every case it was homelessness that won in the end.

And for ten years, periodicals, catering to the apparatchik-class of the American audience, whose hearts were “crushed” over the tragedy of the Grand Depression, couldn’t get enough of my stories, especially when uploaded with photos of the poverty and squalor in which these individuals lived.  But that was then.

Now Mark Tank informs me that the market for my bread and butter story has dried up, that people these days want “uplifting, inspirational narratives about those who’ve escaped the abyss of poverty and homelessness and pulled their lives out of the toilet.”  Basically, what the American audience wants to read now is that the Grand Depression has, at last, faded into history, so that they no longer have to pay attention to it.  Yes, that would be nice, I tell Mark, except there are no such narratives!  Nothing out there has changed! I tell him.  Or maybe inspirational narratives do exist, he suggests, and you’ve just overlooked them.  Whatever, I say.

 *  *  *  *

Last March, I had to give up my nice apartment in Manhattan.  What I replace it with is a ratty studio in Bushwick, situated in a neighborhood where you don’t go out after dark.  But it isn’t long before I can’t stand the limitations and aggravations that encompassed me on every side and remember how things felt here, in Tulsa, the last time I was out.  I knew things here weren’t great, but they did seem better.

So in preparation to relocate, I pare down my belongings to what I can carry in a duffle bag then purchase a bus ticket for Oklahoma.  The good thing is, I know exactly where I want to live when I get here—the exotic and affordable Bermuda Hotel!  And, with the savings I still have, and the semi-dependable flow of piecemeal work from Mark, I figure I can survive in Tulsa indefinitely.  Plus—and this is the bonus—in Tulsa I’m swimming in a sea of personal misfortune that will allow me to study, up close, the heroes of my future bread and butter stories.  And I won’t have to look far to find them because they’ll literally be my neighbors.  Heck, I might even write a bestseller!

So I arrive in Tulsa mid-August, and boy is it hot!  Waiting in the lobby of the Bermuda Hotel for the manager to materialize from wherever it is he is hiding, an old fellow, who’s also waiting, strikes up a conversation with me.  We talk about the dreadful heat, of course.  The old fellow puts it this way:  “Lord, it’s hotter’n a blister bug in a pepper patch out there.”  But as he says this, it’s probably over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, right there in the lobby where we’re talking.

If you’re here for very long, Tulsa begins to feel like “the homeless person capital of the world”.  But the homeless people you see are actually only the tip of the iceberg of those who are present.  Most stay out of sight and for good reason.  On the other hand, people like Purcell who have everything they want and need don’t really believe in the Grand Depression.  They see it as a cultural myth, something writers like me have invented to make them look and feel bad for being successful and powerful.  Lord have mercy!

Finally the manager shows up and I learn that the Bermuda can’t accommodate me because it’s full.  So I have to put my name on a waiting list and seek living arrangements elsewhere.  But elsewhere is much more expensive.  Still, the manager assures me that there’s a constant turnover at the Bermuda, so I shouldn’t have to wait more than a month for a room, even though there are seventy names on the list ahead of me.

But the only other accommodation I can find in Tulsa, anywhere, is a small basement room and half bath in a neighborhood of brick houses for the modest rent of seven-hundred a month.  At least the room is cool, I tell myself, and take it.  But the initial costs of renting the room take a large bite out of my savings.  I contact Mark again and tell him I need a couple of good paying jobs, NOW!  Sure, he says, his standard answer.  This time, I try to impress on him the urgency of my situation: “Mark, I can’t sustain myself for more than three months here without work.”  “Don’t worry, Henry; I’ll take care of it,” he says and hangs up.

Over the next month or so, I e-mail Mark two articles.  A week later, he responds regarding one of them.  That article is titled The Great Divide.  “Good news!” Mark writes, “Mary Fossy at NWN loved the Great Divide piece and wants it.  Done deal!  Negotiating but should bring at least a grand, minus commission, of course.  Just waiting to hear back.  MT.”

What Mark’s message means is I should receive a check for seven-hundred dollars soon.  I grumble because the article Mark refers to required a fair investment of research for which I bought several hours of internet time at the local internet cafe while writing it.  Plus it’s a two-thousand word article that should have brought no less than eighteen hundred dollars from an outfit like NWN.  Mark’s deal smells fishy to me.

I try to call him but can’t seem to reach him by phone, and he hasn’t answered any of my texts or emails.  I leave several frantic voice messages, hoping Mark will contact me.  Five days pass before I finally get this, via e-mail:  “Still negotiating with Fossy at NWN.  In the meantime sold Starlings to The Candle—a cool little rag.  Wired the check to your account.  Stay in touch.  MT.”

Yeah, I’d like to stay in touch, Mark, if you’d answer your goddamn phone, I say to myself.  I’ve never heard of The Candle.  Must be some internet magazine or something.  Anyway, Tank neglects to mention what amount he has wired to my account, so I have to look it up.  Five—hundred—dollars!  Not even three weeks’ rent!  So now I’m beginning to panic and  start hounding the manager at the Bermuda to see if anything has come available.  I also submit the required month-in-advance notice to my landlord that I’ll be leaving his dungeon at the end of November, though without any guarantee that something at the Bermuda will turn up.

The money has gotten really tight.  Finally I have to close my checking account because I can’t afford the fees to keep it open.  I’m living, in terms of money, cash-out-of-pocket and I still can’t reach that SOB, Mark Tank.

At this point, I say to heck with Mark and begin calling friends to see who might be in the market for a good, depressing story about the Grand Depression.  Maybe I can do better than a thousand dollars for my big story.  It might not work, however, since I am still under contract with Mark.  But if I do find a better bid, then perhaps, I can turn the deal over to Mark and we both come out a little more flush.  But I really need something after taking such a bath on the Starlings piece.

All of this rigmarole with Mark takes time away from my writing—actually producing any new work which is precisely why I hired a stupid agent in the first place.  So I call around but quickly learn that I don’t have as many contacts in the business as I used to.  Some have retired; some have died; some have simply dropped off the face of the planet.  But in the process, I catch this rumor, floating around, about Mark, my agent.  The rumor has it that Mark has skipped the country.  Literally!  Moved to Panama, they say.  Well, this is the story I hear from Tony Spino.

“I guess old Tank moved to Panama,” he says and chuckles.  Tony finds this amusing, but, frankly, I’m not laughing.  “It was either Panama or Columbia or someplace hot like that,” says Tony and laughs in my ear with his cigar cough.  If it wasn’t Hell, I think, then it can’t be hot enough!.  Tony continues his story.  “Yeah, someone said he’s living in a cabana on the beach, eating bananas, and drinking Margaritas.  They say he doesn’t even own a cell phone.”

Shit! I think.  What about the NWN deal?  What’s happened to that?  Did he take the money and run?  This means I will have to call Mary Fossy.

The article Mark supposedly sold to NWN is a human interest piece about the sharp contrast in lifestyles between the haves and have-nots which Tulsa so poignantly illustrates.  It’s a good piece, I think, highlighting the destitute and rich, living literally one block apart but, figuratively, on separate planets.  I had hoped Mark would turn it quickly, and, until my chat with Spino, was under the impression he had.

So here’s the thing: I have a really great, missing story—and photos to go with it—and an uncertain buyer while I’m in panic mode here in Tulsa, in October, without enough money to pay next month’s rent, and an agent who’s lounging on a beach somewhere in Panama, sipping Margaritas.  I can’t help but feel there’s something wrong with this picture.

What does one do in these cases?  Well, I do the only thing I can: I call Mary Fossy.  Mary manages NWN (it’s a magazine) where Mark said he had the “done deal.”  So I ask Mary if she knows anything about the piece I wrote which, supposedly, Mark Tank had submitted to her for publication, and I ask whether or not she knows if NWN purchased the piece.  Mary says she knows Mark but has not worked with him much and has not spoken to him in over a year.  “Perhaps,” she suggests, “Mark pitched the story to one of our other editors but, certainly, any serious query would have crossed my desk.  I’m sorry, Henry, but I haven’t seen it.”

“Hey,” she adds, “I hear Mark is in Panama now, is that true?”

“Probably,” I say, then thank her for her time and hang up.

By this time, I’m more than worried.  I begin calling every publisher I know to sell the Divide article myself.  But everyone—though they like the premise—has either just published a piece like it or has recently tightened their budgets “due to the recession.”  Recession!?  How on earth can there be a recession in the middle of this so called Grand Depression?  I’m not an economist, but this seems wacky to me.

Anyway—

One editor, I talk to, claims he’s published several stories like mine but says his audience requires “upbeat and life affirming material, now, especially since things have dragged on for so long.”  He adds that our national economic morass doesn’t make good copy anymore and people are sick of reality.  “Henry,” he complains, “people crave escape.  They want to be voyeurs.”  Then he asks if I have any big articles, featuring the lifestyles of wealthy celebrities.  I invite him to go to hell.

Finally, my oldest buddy in the business says he would love to have my story but explains he can only give me three-hundred dollars for it, though he knows it’s worth much more than that.  He says, even at this, he’ll have to push back the publication date nine months but will advance me the three-hundred now if I can afford to part with it for that.  I take his offer without dickering.  At this point, the decision isn’t rocket science.

And as soon as I get the check, I’m back at the Bermuda Hotel, asking the manager if he’s got any openings.  And, lo and behold, he says a room opened that very morning, and I can have it—if I’ve got the cash.  I pay him on the spot, take the key, and move in that afternoon.

This all happened back in late October.  Now it’s January and cold as hell and by the end of this week, short of a miracle, I’ll find myself searching for a place to sleep on the streets of Tulsa.

Maybe getting out of this town and heading someplace warm isn’t a bad idea.

Copyright © 2023 by Dale Tucker  All rights reserved.

Datesville: Out of the Land of Bondage!

Chapter 3 — A Body in Central City

 

I’m Scotched up and stewing in the back seat.  Mister Chuba guns the engine, and the cab barrels south on the turnpike, away from downtown, toward what they call the New Rise District where my hotel is located.

This is bullshit! I think.  If Purcell wanted to make a point, why didn’t he just come out and say it to my face instead of playing this junior high school game of: Guess What’s Eating Me?  I feel more outraged by the minute.  I’m beginning to surmise, however, that Purcell pulled the plug on our interview because it had something to do with Henri Roaché, another billionaire I interviewed recently.  Why else would Meilin mention him? I ask myself.

It’s a conspiracy.  Roaché’s fingerprints are all over this; I know it.  It was a setup from the beginning and the call by Purcell to Trumbeau should have tipped me off.  I’m a fool!

“Trumbeau,” by the way, is Donald Trumbeau.  He’s the CEO of the publishing house for whom I do most of my work.  Yes, I’m technically a freelance writer but I earn the lion’s share of my income through the Zircon-McCade Corporation, writing stories for one or another of their several holdings; as you might have guessed, ZMC is a publishing conglomerate.  The other much smaller but also necessary portion of my income, I earn with independent work gotten through my grifting literary agent, Mark Tank.  But, back to the story—

See, when the interview was first set up, no one, as far as I knew, had ever interviewed the elusive Marcus Purcell for an in-depth profile.  So it came as a thunderbolt when, out of the blue, Purcell himself called up Donald Trumbeau to ask if I was available for an interview before Christmas.  Trumbeau, without blinking an eye, said yes, that I was available anytime, anywhere, and that all Purcell had to do was name the time and place.  So that’s how today’s luncheon and interview came about.  But it did seem odd that Purcell would, himself, pick up the phone and call Trumbeau.  Billionaires usually don’t do that; they employ a hundred flunkies for that sort of thing.  But now, the pieces are starting to fit together, the more I think about it.

But where does Roaché fit in?  Well, I’ll tell you where I think he fits in:

See, I interviewed the Napoleon complex afflicted Henri Roaché several months ago—April maybe.  In fact, Roaché was the last billionaire I interviewed before Purcell, and I’d caught flack from my managing editor over one of the questions I’d asked him during the interview.  From my perspective, however, it was a nothingburger question.  I actually included it for Roaché’s benefit because I thought he’d enjoy climbing his soapbox to answer it.  And, at the end of the interview, he acted as if everything was fine:  He was all handshakes and smiles and slapped me on the back and told me how much he looked forward to reading the article when it came out.  But that had all been for show apparently, as I soon found out.

When I returned to the office later that day, Willingham, my managing editor, sidled up to me laughing and said: “Leave it to Thakur to stir up a hornets’ nest.”

I said, “What?  What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, Trumbeau called me.  Said Roaché was disappointed that you brought up the Anarchists during his interview and that he hoped you weren’t going to glorify those—what was his term? oh yeah—terrorists by including them in the article.”

“What?” I said.  “That’s bullshit!  I asked him about the Anarchist social critics, thinking he would enjoy lambasting them which everyone knows he loves to do every opportunity he gets, though this time, for some reason, he passed on the question.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Willingham.  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it.  These rich prima donnas get their panties in a knot over fly shit.  Then the next day, after he’s read your article, and you’ve made the prick look like Mother Theresa, he wants to have you up to the mansion for one of his galas and hire you as his own personal biographer.  It happens all the time.  But maybe next time, you might—just to be safe—give our boys in legal a first look to, you know, make sure everything is kosher.  Once in a while, Henry, the blind crows in legal find an acorn; that’s all I’m saying.”

Willingham’s suggestion that I clear interview questions with the publisher’s legal department before using them incensed me and I told him so:  The day I have to ask permission from a lawyer to do my job, I said, is the day I’m out of journalism.  “It’s your call, Hen,” said Willingham, “just a suggestion.”

But the Roaché article went to press on schedule and without further repercussions and ran as submitted.  So I naturally assumed that everything had been ironed out and that Roaché had been placated and was as happy as any billionaire could be.  The article made no mention of Anarchists whatsoever and, in the words of my eloquent editor, it painted billionaire Roaché in the very likeness of Mother Theresa.  So as far as I knew, everything ended well—until now.  Now, Purcell eighty-sixes my interview for no apparent reason.

I know these guys.  They stick together, even when they hate each other’s guts which, by the way, they often do.  And there isn’t a single billionaire among the whole cabal who will tolerate an impertinent journalist.  Impertinent.  Yes, now I remember hearing a rumor about that:  The rumor was that Roaché said he couldn’t stand an “impertinent journalist,” implying, by it, that I was the journalist in question because the rumor circulated through the back-channels for about a week after my interview with him.  But then it disappeared.  I didn’t give much thought to it then, but now I’m beginning to wonder.

The reason I was supposedly impertinent was because of one question I asked near the end of the interview.  The question was this:  “We’re hearing more and more, these days, this argument, put forward by Anarchist social critics who claim that the concept of private property is passé and ought to be abolished.  Mr. Roaché, how do you respond to these critics?”

It was a grapefruit and I figured Roaché would knock it out of the ballpark since he was well documented in the press, expressing his fervent support for the unbridled accumulation of property by private individuals such as himself.  It was a topic he really seemed to relish talking about.  In fact, Roaché, in one interview I read, had gone so far as to suggest that the idea of monopoly no longer existed, that society had freed itself from such “counterproductive and non-progressive restraints”.  Of course, his position on monopoly was quite logical given the fact that he owns millions of square miles of land around the globe and accumulates more every day.

But for some reason, on this particular afternoon, he found my question offensive—impertinent.  Apparently, even the mere acknowledgment of his detractors—the Anarchists, who are also detractors of Roaché’s social class—was enough to make him see red and view me as an interloper, overreaching my rank.  Neither the question, nor the fact that Roaché refused to answer it, even appeared in the Polylama article.  But apparently, I had broken some obscure rule in the billionaire class’s code book by asking it, or perhaps I framed it improperly, I don’t know.  But whatever the case, word of my crime has apparently gotten out to other billionaires like Purcell.  If this theory is true, then I’m screwed—blackballed, and that is why Purcell canned the interview.

Too wily to address the matter directly, he probably feigned giving me an interview, only to reel me in—to Tulsa—so he could deliver the vindictive message, on behalf of his billionaire class, which states:  Your license to interview us—the ruling elite—and enjoy our favorable treatment has been revoked!

It’s starting to feel like I’m in deep shit professionally as well as financially.  But I can’t be completely sure at this point.  Maybe Purcell really did have urgent business in New York.  Probably not, though.  The whole thing smells fishy.

 *  *  *  *

The next morning, I board an early bird flight to Columbus.  My mother lives forty minutes south of the capital in Churchill, Ohio, in the same house where Patsy and I grew up.  But the flight out of Tulsa takes me first to Houston where I have an hour layover.  After the layover, I board another plane and fly north to Columbus, passing almost directly over Tulsa on the way.  From there, the plan is to rent a car and drive the rest of the way to Churchill.  There are more direct flights from Tulsa to Columbus, but my habit has always been to buy the cheapest ticket available and go economy class, even when I can afford better.

On my layover in Houston, while sitting in Terminal B waiting for the boarding call, Todd Willingham, my managing editor, calls me from New York.  I see on the caller ID that it’s Willingham.

“Hey, Todd, what’s up?” I say, answering the phone.

“Yeah, Henry, hello.  Where are you?” asks Willingham.

“I’m laid-over in Houston at the moment.  What’s up?”

“Right,” he says; there’s anxiety in his voice.  “Yeah, Henry, I wish this could wait till you get back, but it can’t.  Orders from upstairs.  Actually, I volunteered to call because, well—because I consider us friends and because I didn’t want you hearing it from Trumbeau.”

“Todd, you’re scaring me.  Is something wrong?”

“Yeah Hen, we’ve got a crisis here this morning.  Roaché’s suing us—well, suing ZMC.”

“Suing us?  What the hell for?”

“Ah, you know, the article you wrote—defamation, he claims.  Legal says he doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but we’re going to have to deal with it anyway.  That’s why I’m calling.”

“Wait.  What the hell are you saying, Todd?  You’re calling to fire me?  Is that it?  Over the goddamn phone?”

“I’m not firing you, Henry.  Hell, you’re one of my best writers.  But it wasn’t my decision.  This came down from the top: damage control.  That’s all it is.”

“Is it Trumbeau?  Is that who it is?”

“Hell no, Hen.  This goes way above Trumbeau.  Trumbeau can be a pain in the ass, everyone knows that, but he’s not stupid.  He wouldn’t fire you because you make ZMC too much money.  But anyway, yes, that’s the shitty news: you’ve been let go, effective immediately.  Hey, tell you what, when you get back to New York, why don’t you and I meet at Blarney’s and knock back a couple and discuss this whole mess.  How does that sound?  But right now, Hen, I’ve gotta go.  Wish I had more time, I really do.  But my nine-thirty is breathing down my neck.  But, ah, don’t forget to call when you get back, okay?  Will you do that, Hen?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Okay, that’s good.  I feel bad about this; I really do.  So, you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I say.  “I don’t know how I feel.  I think I’m in shock.”

“Yeah, so let’s talk when you get back.  Oh god, I’m late for my nine-thirty.  Sorry, got to rush.  But hang in there, Henry.  Hey, maybe now you can write that novel you’ve always talked about.  There’s a bright side to everything, you know?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“See you when you get back.”

Then there’s a beep and the line goes silent.

So this is the other shoe! I think.  First Purcell ditches the interview, then they get me fired.  There goes my career, down the toilet!  Hell, there goes my life; I’ve been blackballed!

Now I know for sure Roaché and Purcell are in this together and Purcell had no intention of sitting for the interview.  It was all a ruse.  But why?  Why would Purcell get involved?  Why would he volunteer the role of Brutus in this treachery?  Why would Roaché’s insult become Purcell’s cause?  There’s no connection between them.  None of this makes sense! I tell myself.

But at the moment, I’ve got other problems to think about.  For example, what will I do with my apartment in New York?  I’ll need to find somewhere cheaper to live; I’ll have to wiggle out of my lease, though that shouldn’t be too difficult, given the number of people, I know alone, who’ll be drooling all over themselves at the prospect of getting their greedy paws on my great apartment.  But to avoid financial ruin, I’m going to have to put my ducks in a row, and fast.

Yes, Purcell and Roaché, have hurt me, caught me off guard, but I can, and will, survive, if for no other reason than to find some way to bite them both in the rump for this conspiracy against me.  They’ve kicked the wrong dog, this time! is what I think while sitting in Terminal B at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.  But none of my mental bluster prevents my hand from trembling as I dial Mom who’s waiting for me in Churchill.

“Hey Mom.  Everything going okay?…

“Not yet.  Houston.  I’m in Houston.

“Yes Mom, Houston, Texas; I’m on layover.

“It was the cheapest.  It was the cheapest.

“I’ll arrive in Columbus at eleven-ten, your time.

“No, this morning.  Right.

“No, that won’t be necessary; I’ve already taken care of it.

“I rented a car.  Yeah.  I’m driving down.

“So you wouldn’t have to deal with Columbus traffic, Mom.

“It wasn’t that expensive.  Besides, aren’t you up to your elbows in flour, baking pies or whatever for the prodigal son?”

I smile as I say this.

“Mom, don’t fib.  I know you’re baking pies or something; you always do.

“That’s what I thought.

“Sounds good, Mom.

“I’d tell you not to go to any trouble but we both know I’d be wasting my breath.

“Ah, I don’t know.  I doubt it.

“Because I have to get back to New York.

“Because I live there, remember?  And I’ve got a deadline,” I fib because, at this point, I don’t even have a story.

“Mm—not so well.  I’ll tell you about it when I get there.

“Depending on traffic, I’d say close to two; two-thirty, at the latest.

“Well, I might have to stop—you know—eat something.

“But I didn’t eat before—

“Okay Mom.  But if I pass out and wreck, it’s your fault.

“See you around a quarter till two then.

“Mom, I can’t get there any faster.

“All right.  I won’t.  Love you too.

“See you soon.  Bye Mom.

“Right.  Okay.  I’m hanging up now.

“Byeeee.”

I smile and shake my head as I press the “end call” circle with my thumb.  I glance at my watch again.  Only thirty minutes to boarding; not enough time for breakfast.  I decide that when I get to Columbus I’ll hit a drive-thru and pick up a burger on my way out of town.

 *  *  *  *

I arrive at Mom’s at two-twenty; she’s been waiting impatiently, probably, since one.  But as I pull up to the house in the rental car, I realize how little Mom’s world has changed.  Hers is a majestic Victorian house; white with forest green shutters; way too much upkeep for a widow of sixty-five who lives alone; but she hires help when needed.  The lawn, though a bit patchy in color because of frost, is dandelion free, evenly trimmed and edged, and the hazelnut hedge that borders the yard on the east-side has recently been trimmed—shaped into a continuous caterpillar.  The place looks exactly as it did when I came home for Thanksgiving, my first year at college, except the large buckeye tree that used to stand in the front yard has been removed.  Several other houses in the neighborhood don’t look so good, but everything in Mom’s world is apparently right as rain, or so one would surmise, judging by the appearance of her home.

She fusses at me for not getting home sooner because she has prepared an early supper of roast beef and potatoes that have been drying out in the oven waiting on me.  I don’t mention, of course, that I ate a hamburger and fries in Columbus before hitting the road.  And yes, she has baked an apple pie and a batch of oatmeal-raisin cookies—both my favorites—as I suspected she would.

I must admit, it feels good to be home.

The first debate happens over supper.  It’s about how long I plan to stay.  If she were to have her way, I would stay in Churchill, under her roof, for the rest of her life, and mine too I suppose.  But I cannot stay here.  It seems like the opportune time, however, to sketch out for her the “little crisis” I have in New York with my employer and my apartment and how I need to get back very soon to fix things.

“Well, there you go!” she says.  “Get rid of your overpriced apartment in New York and come stay here—at least until you get back on your feet.  I’ll bet the Churchill Gazette could use a seasoned journalist.  You should talk to them while you’re here.”

“Thank you, Mom, for your very generous offer but—”

“But what?” she demands.  “Henry, son, I’m asking for this because I need you.  I know you’re a grown man and have your own life—though it seems to me like a very empty life—but be that as it may, I wouldn’t ask you to give up your stimulating life in New York if I didn’t really need you.  Please son, give it some serious thought, won’t you?”

“Yes, Mom, I will,” I say, though the possibility of relocating to Churchill is extremely remote.

“And I insist that this time, at least, you stay a couple of days before going back because I don’t see enough of you.  Then go back and get rid of that dreadful apartment.”

Mom has never seen my apartment; she just assumes that if it’s in New York it must be dreadful.

Then the phone rings.  It’s the landline so Mom goes to the kitchen to answer it.  I can overhear her side of the conversation from the dining room:

“Hello?

“Yes, I’m Abigail Thakur.

“Who did you say you were?”

There’s a minute-long pause or so as she listens.

“Oh, I’m sorry but could you please talk to my son?  He happens to be here from New York and I think he would be better able to answer your questions.  I’m sorry; I need to sit down a minute.  Let me pass you over to my son, Henry, if you will, please.  Yes, Henry Thakur; he’s my son.  Thank you.”

I get up and head for the kitchen even before Mom calls me.  Her voice trembles when she does.  She’s white and short of breath, her knees seem ready to give out as I reach for the phone.

“Just one minute please,” I say into the receiver then lay it on the counter.

“Mom!  Mom!  What’s wrong?”

“I need to sit down.  I’m afraid I’m going to pass out.”

I help her to her recliner in the living room.  She leans back and closes her eyes.  Her lips are gray.

“Mom, are you having chest pain?” I ask.

“No, just dizziness.  Please, talk to the man on the phone; it’s about Patsy,” she whispers, “I’m okay now.  I’ll be okay.”

“Take some deep breaths, Mom,” I say as I turn toward the kitchen.  “I’ll tell whoever it is I’ll them call back.”

“Honey!” she squeaks in an attempt to raise her voice.  “Please talk to him.  I’m all right.  It’s about Patsy: they think they’ve found her.”

“Okay Mom, I will.”

“I’m okay now,” she says again, trying to reassure me.

It turns out that the man on the phone is a fellow by the name of Jim Fulbright MD.  He’s the Medical Examiner for Somerset County, Pennsylvania. His office is located in Central City.  He says they have the body of a female, age somewhere between late twenties and mid-thirties; height, five feet, seven inches; dark-blond hair in color.  He asks if Patsy had any distinguishing birth marks or tattoos.  I say, none that I know of.

“Though the body was found several days after TOD—” he continues.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but may I ask what ‘TOD’ means?”

“Of course.  It means: time of death.  Anyway, it appears that the deceased died approximately two weeks ago, so the body is not in the best of conditions.  However, in spite of that,” continues Dr. Fulbright, “I could find no wounds or other injuries suggesting foul play.  I’ve listed the cause of death as: acute pneumonia, complicated by untreated COPD—that is, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

“I see,” I say.  “Are you certain the body is my sister’s—Patsy Thakur?” I ask.

“Well, no, that’s the problem.  I can’t confirm anything without more information.  You see, Mr. Thakur, these cases are always referred to me—”

“What cases do you mean?”

“Transient cases,” says Dr. Fulbright.  “Homeless individuals; they are routinely sent to the Medical Examiner’s office here for determination of cause of death, just as a matter of policy.  This Jane Doe was found at a campsite on Indian Lake, a few miles south of here.  Usually, there’s never any ID or anything to help us identify the victim—or, I should say, the deceased, in this case.  But among Jane Doe’s belongings, police did find a pocketbook which contained Ms. Thakur’s driver’s license, a couple of photos, and a slip of paper bearing Ms. Abigail Thakur’s contact information which was how we contacted you.  But the problem now is: the photo on the ID does not match the body very well and—we also found two other female IDs among our Jane Doe’s personal effects which poses a somewhat obvious question.  Look, let me just say this straight: we don’t know if our Jane Doe lifted the IDs or if one of them belongs to her.  The other two, however, seem to be the wrong age, according to our determination of the approximate age of the individual.  Mr. Thakur, is there any way you might be able come out here and identify our Jane Doe from Indian Lake?  Whether she is or isn’t your sister, we’d like to be sure.”

The ambiguity that Dr. Fulbright expressed concerning the Jane Doe in Central City helps me to discuss the situation with Mom.  Still, it isn’t easy.  And to be truthful, I have this sinking feeling in my gut that the body in Pennsylvania probably is Patsy.

Needless to say, Dr. Fulbright’s call ruins the rest of our evening.  Mom retreats to bed, feeling ill.  I’m left alone, wrestling with ghosts of the past.  And for me there are many.

I don’t see Mom again until breakfast the next morning.  She’s twitchy and silent and doesn’t want to discuss Patsy any further.  I’ve agreed to drive to Central City myself to identify the body; it’s a five hour trip, one way.  I plan to go straight there and come straight back, which may take twelve hours altogether.  As soon as I know something, Mom wants me to call her with the news—good or bad.  God, I hope it’s not Patsy.  I can’t bear the thought of giving Mom bad news over the phone and being three-hundred miles away.  But somehow, I see the hand of providence in everything that has happened, at least for Mom’s sake.  But for me, it’s just more of the shitshow that began in Tulsa.

 *  *  *  *

I know as soon as I see the body it isn’t Patsy.  This poor gal looks rough.  She wears a patchwork of tattoos over various areas of her anatomy.  In an odd way she reminds me of Scrappy, the fellow who was shot in front of the Mann Hotel and died on the sidewalk, the day before yesterday.  I guess it’s impossible to understand anything about the real person just by viewing their corpse.  Maybe this gal had a great sense of humor and a noble spirit, like Scrappy.  But whether or not that is true, Dr. Fulbright and I will never know.

But certainly this woman is not Patsy—her face, hands, and ears reveal that much to me.  Dr. Fulbright gives me the pocketbook and it’s contents which were Patsy’s at one time.  In the wallet there are two photos: an old photo of Dad whose image is partially obscured by the smoke of a campfire in front of him, but he’s grinning broadly at the camera, and a 5th or 6th grade school photo of Patsy herself who wears a pleasant expression, though she’s not really smiling.  There’s also her driver’s license in the wallet—the one she got at age fifteen—but, of course, it expired long ago.  And lastly, I find the slip of paper on which, in her neat and flowing hand, is written Mom’s name, address, and telephone number.

I call Mom with the good news and she starts sobbing.  The relief is overwhelming.

“I just knew it was her,” she sobs, “I was so certain.  But not knowing what’s happened to her is almost worse.”

I let her cry.  Mom’s stoicism over the years has misled me to believe that her pain in losing Patsy was not deep.  I see now, I was wrong.  I attempt to make her feel better by asking what’s for supper and approximating for her when I think I’ll get home.  My strategy works and Mom, through involuntary sobs, begins giving me instructions so that the coordination of supper with my arrival comes off smoothy.

Without stopping to eat and with only one pitstop at a roadside rest area, I manage to arrive back in Churchill thirty minutes before Mom expects me.  This makes her happy.  We eat a quiet supper together and catch-up a bit, afterward, with conversation and coffee before retiring to bed.

“I love you, Henry,” she says and kisses me goodnight.  I give her a squeeze and tell her I love her, too.

In my room as I undress and prepare for bed, my thoughts return to Patsy.  I wonder if she’s still alive out there somewhere?  I feel a pang of nostalgia, thinking about my kid sister, and miss her.  Though she could be a royal pain in the rear at times, she also carried with her an irrepressible beam of curiosity and intelligence.  If you twisted my arm, I would have to admit she was smarter than me.  She might have become a renown professor who turned her academic field upside down or some such thing, if only she had entered college.  But even more than Dad, she was born with wings and could not help but fly away.

Copyright © 2023 by Dale Tucker  All rights reserved.

Datesville: Out of the Land of Bondage!

Chapter 2 — The Tinpot Emperor

 

Purcell and I have lunch in what he calls the “Emperor’s Dining Hall”.  It’s only one of three dining rooms in the apartment, but it’s the most lavished and expensively furnished and the least used of all three, according to Purcell.  Before lunch, he gives me a partial tour of the residence which occupies the whole eleventh floor of the historic Mann Hotel.  But he claims that the Emperor’s Dining Hall is modeled after Emperor Wu’s own dining hall who ruled China during the Great Han Dynasty and that all of its furnishings—vases, figurines, tapestries, and what have you—that decorate the Hall, originated from either the Western or Eastern Han Periods.  Frankly, the whole provenance of stuff—which Purcell obviously enjoys talking about—and which Han period this or that object comes from is completely lost on me.  That said, the dining room and our lunch are both exquisite and, by themselves, worth the flight out from New York.

The luncheon’s chef is a young woman named Meilin, a native of Guangdong Province and one of five international chefs in Purcell’s employ.  I learn, too, that she presently lives in New York but Purcell had her fly out to Tulsa, just for our meeting.  Meilin, Purcell tells me, is a modern master of Chinese cuisine who studied in Hubei.  Her English is impeccable.

She serves each course herself and, with each, gives us a description of how it was prepared and how its creation links to traditional dishes of China’s past.  All of the courses are memorable.

Mrs. Purcell—“Mackenzie”—is not in Tulsa this afternoon.  She’s in Cannes, I’m told, where the Purcells own a large estate and a couple dozen Picassos.  She’s overseeing preparations for their annual Christmas party which the Purcells host each year for two hundred of their closest friends.

“I hope I don’t offend you, Henry,” says Purcell as we finish dessert, “but I’ve got a keen nose for smokers because I used to be one.  What I’m trying to say is:  Would you have a cigarette I could bum?”

Everything Marcus Purcell owns and the people he surrounds himself with might all be sophisticated and chic but the man himself is not.  He’s practical and street smart and, I would imagine, knows how to fight dirty.

“Of course,” I answer about borrowing a cig and retrieve a box of Camels and a lighter from my attaché.  Besides, I’m aching for a smoke, myself.

“Let’s go to the atrium,” he suggests and leads the way.

We sit in one corner of the atrium, overlooking the city and the river.  It’s a dismal view.  Purcell opens windows, letting in a rather sour smell from the river below and retrieves crystal ashtrays from the drawer of an antique desk.  He hands me one and we sit in big, cube-like chairs opposite each other, a magnificent Persian carpet underfoot.

The cube-like chairs, scattered throughout the atrium, are arranged in such a way that they resemble a tower of pastel colored blocks that has been knocked over by a child and left where they’ve spilled.  It seems odd to me that a billionaire would tolerate such a pre-school-like arrangement of furniture.  But maybe that’s the price one pays for marrying a young, attractive, socialite who employs European interior designers, as is the case with Mackenzie Purcell.

“See, I’ve never actually quit smoking,” says Purcell as he lights up, “but I hardly ever do, anymore.  In my younger days, I smoked like a chimney.  Loved to smoke.  Still do, in fact.  But the problem now is, when I want a cigarette there’s nowhere to smoke it.  Mackenzie won’t let me smoke in the atrium, when she’s here, or even in my study.  She says I’ll ruin the paintings or the carpet or some damned thing.  I don’t think she gives a shit about my lungs; it’s her artifacts she cares about.  She’s an antiquities dealer by trade; studied at the Beaux Arts, you see.  But to a barbarian like me, you know, it’s all just furniture.  So, what am I supposed to do?  Go down and smoke on the street?”

I only smile at his question without offering an answer, but “smoke on the street” is what I’ve always done—even in the worst of weather.

 *  *  *

Damn, I’m pissed!  One thing I know for certain is that the excuse he gave for leaving the interview was bullshit!  Billionaires do not schedule things then change their minds on a whim.  That I know!  Because every one of them could live on a deserted island in the middle of Pacific and run his whole damned empire—and the world if he chose to!—with nothing more than a cell phone.  Anyway, the impact of what has just happened to me is beginning to sink in while I sit in a cab on my way across town to some moronic-sounding place called the Speedway.  (The cabby assures me they serve alcohol there.)

This can’t possibly be punishment of some kind, can it?  But if it is, then why?  For what?  What have I done?  Was the whole interview and having me fly all the way out to Oklahoma from New York a premeditated ruse, perpetrated simply to humiliate me?  It doesn’t make any sense!  There’s absolutely no reason Purcell should target me.  Yet, I’m beginning to feel this—this, cold numbness gripping my brainstem, like there’s something really wrong here.  Have they fired me?  Or even worse, blackballed me for some inexplicable reason?

As you may have guessed, the interview did not go as expected.

This is bullshit!  Nothing but cowardly bullshit!  And unless it has something to do with the “Scrappy incident” I witnessed in front of the building—which I doubt, by the way—then I have no idea what it’s about, why Purcell would pull the plug on the interview before it began.

So I begin to review it all in my head:

After our smoke in the atrium and a few minutes of casual conversation, I ask Purcell if we can start the interview.  He says, sure.  So I gather my notes and audio recorder and set everything up.  But no sooner have I read my first question—“Mr. Purcell, where did you grow up?  And characterize for us, if you will, your childhood”—than Marcus Purcell asks to be excused because he has suddenly remembered a phone call he was supposed to have made earlier to New York.  I say sure, of course, so he leaves, presumably, to make his call.  He says it won’t take long and he’ll be right back.

But the call, apparently, takes longer than expected.  In the meantime, I’m sitting in the atrium twiddling my thumbs.  After a few minutes, I get up and stroll to the windows and gaze down at the muddy Arkansas River and the gray, blighted landscape that is Tulsa.  I’m thinking, if I was a gazillionaire like Purcell, I certainly wouldn’t spend my time in a hellhole like Tulsa when I could be fishing on a yacht, off an island in the Mediterranean somewhere, but that’s just me!  And I’m still waiting, but no Purcell.

After about twenty minutes, I begin to suspect he has fled the building and won’t be seen again when, just then, he shows up.  But his demeanor has changed.  He’s not the easy-going, loquacious host he was during lunch.  Instead, he’s reverted to billionaire-mode: a bottom-liner, a capitalist shark and I’m just another business appointment who wants something from him he has no interest in relinquishing—especially not his most valued possession: time.

“I’m terribly sorry, Henry,” he says without a hint of apology in his voice as he brusquely enters the atrium, “but we’re going to have to reschedule.  Give Caroline a call and she’ll work something out—probably next month.  I’ve asked Noah to see you out since I have to scoot to the airport, but it was great to meet you, Henry.  Thanks for coming.”

And that’s it!  He shakes my hand and leaves.  Noah, one of Purcell’s toadies, has by now appeared in the atrium and is ready to walk me out of the building.

“Mr. Thakur, I’ll be happy to see you to the lobby,” says Noah.  “The elevators are this way, sir, if you will, please.”

I feel like I’m getting the bum’s rush.  Noah continues his apology:  “By the way,” he says, “we’re terribly sorry for whatever inconvenience you may have experienced today but I’m sure you understand Mr. Purcell is a very busy man and has had to fly back to New York unexpectedly on urgent business this afternoon—”

Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, I think to myself.  I just flew in from New York for this damned interview; why couldn’t we have met there, instead?

Noah continues talking even though I’m too angry to care what he says:  “So the car and driver that brought you here, Mr. Thakur, unfortunately, won’t be available to take you back to the hotel as planned, since Mr. Purcell is taking the car to the airport.  Here we go.”

He ushers me into the elevator and presses the button for the lobby; quickly the door closes.  My guts leap into my chest as the elevator car free falls and the numbers on the black screen above the door rapidly count backward.

Still, Noah cannot stop blathering:  “I’ve taken the liberty of calling you a cab, Mr. Thakur.  I hope that’s okay.  It should be waiting by the time we reach the lobby.  Oh, and don’t worry about the fare; I’ve taken care of that already.  Will you be flying back to New York this afternoon?”

I want to ask: Do you really give a shit, Noah?  But I don’t.  Instead, I try to answer him politely.

“No, actually, I haven’t seen my mom in a while so I plan to visit her in Ohio before returning home.”

“Oh how delightful!  So it won’t be an entirely unproductive trip, after all.  Is your mother expecting you or are you planning to surprise her?”

“She’s expecting me.”

“Very good,” says Noah.

I know Noah is just making small talk and trying to keep the mood light until he can get rid of me.  I know that an assistant to a billionaire has bigger, more pressing, fish to fry than escorting writers off the premises.  But still, I can’t help but resent him asking me personal questions—about my plans, my mother—when I know full well he doesn’t give a shit about either.  It’s as if people like Noah think they’re doing you a favor, feigning interest in your life—your small, pathetic life.  And in return, I’m supposed to feel what?  Grateful?  Grateful that he would pretend to take an interest in my little world?  Well, he can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned, and the quicker the better!

It takes us no time at all to fall eleven stories to the lobby in the elevator.  Noah, I guess, is perceptive enough to sense that I’m not exactly in a talkative mood so lets the final seconds of our elevator ride pass without further chitchat.

My cab is waiting out front.  I tell Noah thanks and goodbye and stride quickly through the lobby and out of the building.  On my way to the cab, I pass over the spot where Scrappy fell and bled on the sidewalk, earlier that afternoon.  I climb into the cab and slam the door without looking back.  The truth is I’m pissed and I don’t care who knows it.

The cabby already has his signal blinking as I get in.  He pulls away from the Mann Building and without saying anything immediately turns right onto North Atlas Avenue which butts into New Market Boulevard and runs parallel to the Interstate, north and south.  We’re circling back towards the business district and the heart of town.

Finally, the cabby glances up at me in the rearview mirror.  He has dull eyes, dark hair and features, and a three day shadow.  Perched obtusely on top his oily head, sits a filthy St. Louis Cardinals ball cap.  The Cardinals moved to Charleston eighteen years ago.

“Where you wanna go?” he says through the mirror.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

“They said to take you anywhere you want.  You got a hotel somewhere?  The airport?  I could give you a tour of the city,” he suggests and grins at me in the mirror.  His teeth need brushing.

“I need a drink,” I say.  “You know anyplace nice?”

“I’ve got just the place for you, pal.  Trust me.”

“As long as it’s nice and not too far away.”

“Oh this place is very nice.  You’ll like it.  Tell you what, I’ll take you there then I’ll come back when you’re ready and take you someplace different if you want.  I’ll be your personal chauffeur for as long as you like.”

“What’s the place called?”

“What place?  Oh you mean the club.  It’s called the Speedway: very hip; lots of beautiful women—young ones too.  Hey, you like to dance?”

“I’m not in a dancing mood; I just need a drink.”

“Well, the Speedway’s got everything.  You’ll like it.”

“Will it be open this early?”

“Oh yeah, they’re open all the time—twenty-four seven.”

“All right.  Sounds fine,” I say.

“I’ll fix you up, don’t worry,” he says.

That all happened a few minutes ago and, like I said, now I’m headed to a bar called the Speedway.

It seems like thirty minutes before we reach the Speedway, but when we pull up, there are doormen in tuxes and valets in organ grinder, monkey uniforms out front and Las Vegas style lights exploding in fantastic displays of color and images over the entire wall of its entrance.  It’s garish and probably pricey.

“Here’s my card,” shouts the cabby as I’m getting out of the car.  He stretches to hand me his card without undoing his seatbelt.  “Just give it to the doorman when you’re done.  I’ll be here to pick you up in no time.”

“Thanks,” I say, “I owe you anything?”

“No, you’re all taken care of.  See you later.”

I throw the door closed; the cab speeds away.  I read his card: “Damian Chuba.”

“Don’t go too far, Mr. Chuba,” I say and stuff the card into a pocket on my way to the glitzy club entrance.

I ask one of the musclebound doormen/bouncers if there’s a cover charge to get in.  He says, no, not till five.  So I enter the club uneasily, looking for somewhere out of the way to be alone with my thoughts.

It being early afternoon, I expect the club to be empty: not so at the Speedway.  There’s a mob of people bouncing up and down on the dance floor and others clogging tables around the perimeter of the expansive main room.  The place is dark.  Lights strobe as if a gang of fugitives are being chased by SWAT teams in helicopters at one a.m.

The dance music pulsates like a giant heart—it vibrates my spine—and the central chamber, where the dancers are, goes black between blinding shocks of light.  It’s like being caught in an Oklahoma lightening storm.  The noise and flashing lights would surely trigger migraines for someone prone to them.

Despite the confusion, I find my way to the bar.  A chirpy girl behind the bar greets me and shouts, “What can I bring you?”  She looks like she can’t be a day over fifteen, though I know that’s impossible.

“Is there someplace quieter I can go to have a drink?” I ask, suddenly aware that I’ve phrased my question poorly so that it begs an invitation to go someplace darker and hotter than the Speedway.  But she’s sweet and directs me to a hallway that has a glowing sign above it that reads “Restrooms & Lounge” and tells me there’s a quiet-bar down the hallway.  I thank her and leave behind the Oklahoma storm.

The quiet-bar is empty except for a couple sitting together in a booth at the other end of the room.  I take a stool at the far end of the bar.  The bartender takes my order.  This room is better lit and not loud.  I order a double Scotch and water.  He pours it for me; it tastes good and dissolves the hubbub in my head, though the throbbing heart of the Speedway can still be felt beneath the soft music of the lounge.

I drink the first one quickly and ask for a second.  Now the alcohol sinks in and washes over my brain, engulfing it, warming it, soothing it into a relaxed state so I can focus.  For the lack of other subjects, my attention falls on the couple sitting across the room in the booth.

They appear engaged in a disagreement of some sort.  I’m amused by them, by their attempts to suppress emotions which obviously verge on eruption.  Why should they be self-conscious here? I think.  Who would give a damn if they screamed at each other?  But instead, they whisper fiercely back and forth, though now and then their voices break into audible levels.

“That’s what I said!” I hear the woman say.

The woman catches my attention because she bears a striking resemblance to Patsy, my kid sister, or at least to the image I’ve carried of Patsy since the last time I saw her.  But that was years ago; Patsy would be older now.  The resemblance is especially close in the way the young woman gestures, and in her profile, and the righteous indignation I hear in her voice, the belligerence in her posture.  And the young woman might be close to Patsy’s age—now that I think about it—and, as best as I can tell, she has the same build.  But, with the lock of hair that falls against her left cheek blocking my view, it’s hard to get a clear look at her face.  But would I even recognize Patsy now? I wonder.  It’s been sixteen years since she ran away, seventeen since I saw her last.  She was fifteen then and still a girl.  She would be a young woman, age thirty-one now—no, thirty-two, I believe.

Patsy graduated high school a year early but I missed it—her graduation, I mean.  It was my first year of graduate school, and I was knee-deep in my own studies—researching a Master’s thesis in Journalism.  I spent that whole summer holed up in the university library and didn’t come home until Mom called with the news that Patsy was missing.

But it was clear she had run away because she left a note in her room listing her grievances and the reasons why she had gone.  In the note she stated she wanted to live among the “oppressed” so she could better fight for their freedom because it would mean her own freedom as well.  And she wrote: “There’s no point looking for me.  You will not find me and even if you do, I will not come home.”  That statement turned out to be prophetic.  For several months, Mom and I tried to find Patsy, but never did.

But before Patsy ran away, the battles between her and my mother were bitter.  Patsy was a precocious girl who, in my opinion, read too much crap.  Beginning in her early teens, after our dad’s death in a car accident, Patsy read volumes of radical political literature and understood it.  When she declared herself an Anarchist at age fourteen, I told Mom it was only a phase; Patsy was too young to know what she was and, sooner or later, she’d grow out of it.  At fifteen, Patsy believed she understood the political underpinnings of the human catastrophe unfolding all around her—around all of us, actually.  And she was mortified by it and blamed “zombie capitalism,” as she called it, for the desperate plight of so many.  She insisted something had to be done, that we—she, our mother, and I—had to take responsibility for the mistakes of history and commitment ourselves to dislodging the wreckage of the old system and, while doing so, relieve the suffering of others, as much as possible.

I never took Patsy seriously.  How could a fifteen year old presume to tell two adults what they were obligated to do? I thought.  And how could three individuals, even if we tried, make any difference at all in solving such an enormous social crisis?  No, Patsy was much too idealistic and detached from reality to be taken seriously, and I told her so.  Mom, on the other hand, was terrified by Patsy’s ideas which became the root of their battles which continued right up until the night Patsy left.

I continue staring at the young woman in the booth until finally she catches me doing so.

“Take a picture, weirdo,” she yells at me across the room and flashes me the middle finger.

No, not Patsy, I realize.  I got a good look at her this time.  So I quit watching the couple and order another Scotch.  It’s doubtful Patsy would ever enter a place like the Speedway, anyway.  She would consider it too bourgeois and despise me for being there.

Suddenly I want to dismiss all of these thoughts about Patsy.  They’re too heavy.

“Mr. Thakur?”

A light hand touches my shoulder.  I look up from my drink.

“Do you remember me?  I’m Meilin.  Mr. Purcell’s chef?  I cooked your lunch today.”

“Oh, of course, of course.  Meilin!” I say, surprised to see her.  “What a pleasure to see you again!  I didn’t recognize you without the chef’s uniform.  What a nice surprise!  Please join me if you can.”

“I’m meeting a friend so I can’t stay long, but sure, I’d love to join you for a minute.”

Meilin sits down beside me.  She’s young and beautiful.  I offer to buy her a drink but she orders a mini-Perrier instead, explaining she’s not ready to drink yet because she hasn’t eaten anything.

“My friend and I are having dinner later—here, this evening.  You wouldn’t believe it but they actually have a great menu.  I know the chef.  Have you eaten here before?”

“No, I’ve never been here before,” I reply.  “Is there a restaurant too?”

“Oh sure, it’s on the other side but my friend said he’d meet me here first.  But when I came in, I thought I recognized you sitting here and was surprised you were alone.  I’m only here because Mr. Purcell flew back to New York after lunch so I’ve got the night off.  Yippee!  Dinner with a friend, a little dancing, kick back; you know, while the cat’s away—  So, what are you doing tonight?”

“I don’t know really; getting drunk maybe.  With this one I’m halfway there,” I say.  I lift my glass.  Damn!  The Scotch is working; I already sound pathetic, I say to myself.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine.”  I try to sound courageous.

“Are you missing someone—a wife, girlfriend maybe?”

“Oh no, neither.  I mean, I don’t have either a wife or a girlfriend,” I confess, as my cheeks confirm the statement by lighting up.

“Really?  Seems like an intelligent, successful guy like you would have a girl in every port.  So what are you?  Thirty-one, thirty-two maybe?”

“I wish!  No, I turned thirty-nine this year.”

“That’s still young,” she says unconvincingly.

“Well, you’re in the right place,” she adds, “lots of cute girls here, especially a little later.  Maybe you’ll find someone to hook up with, have some fun tonight.  Oh, by the way, I read your last article.”

“Really?  Which article was that?”

“The Henri Roaché piece; I thought it was quite good.  Oops, I see my ride’s here.  I’d better go.  But it was great chatting with you, Mr. Thakur.  Good luck, tonight!”

She’s already walking away, toward a handsome young man standing near the entrance.

“Call me Henry,” I say.

“Pardon?”

She turns, walking sideways in her stilettos.

“Thanks for lunch!” I say.

She smiles, wiggles an index finger goodbye, and blows me a kiss, then turns and walks to her friend.  They greet by holding hands and brushing cheeks like Europeans.  He gestures toward the door.  She threads her arm in his and together they disappear.

Somehow, my already crappy day feels even worse.  I order another Scotch.

Henri Roaché!  The name sticks in my brain like a cocklebur in a sock.  It’s odd she would mention him.  It feels like a clue, dropped in my hat.

The bartender—a young man, sporting Sir Walter Raleigh facial hair and a billy club ponytail—lingers after serving my drink and polishes an Old Fashioned glass with a towel.  He acts nonchalant—like nothing’s on his mind except the glass he’s holding.   But common barkeep etiquette says that, usually, the server disappears after serving a customer.  So it’s a little odd that he stays, polishing his glass in the hot spotlight until it sparkles.

After a minute, however, he casually says to me:  “I see you know Meilin.”

I think: Maybe he’s bored and just wants conversation.  Or maybe he and Meilin used to be an item and he’s curious about what she’s up to these days,  or something of that nature.

“Yeah, I just met her today,” I say.  “She’s certainly a beautiful and talented woman—a wonderful chef, too.”

“So I’ve heard,” replies Sir Walter.

He continues polishing without making eye contact.

“It’s none of my business, but you might be careful what you tell her—Meilin.”  He says this and nods in the direction of the door where she and her friend just left.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“What I mean is: be careful what personal information you share with Meilin.  Some people say cooking is only a hobby with that girl, that her real expertise is less savory, shall we say.”

I blink my eyes in disbelief.  The bartender stares directly into my eyes but does not offer further explanation.

“What expertise are we talking about?” I ask.

“Just be careful.  If Meilin takes an interested in you, then someone’s watching,” he says, then nods at me and moves away.

I’m dumbfounded.  What an insane day! I think.

I fish several bills and Mr. Chuba’s business card out of my pocket and leave the bills on the bar.

“What a waste,” I mumble as I start to get up.  I have to stop though and steady myself before walking.  What a waste, indeed!  My entire day has turned into one tangled riddle without the hint of an explanation as to what’s going on.

Copyright © 2023 by Dale Tucker  All rights reserved.

Datesville: Out of the Land of Bondage!

Chapter 1 — The Bermuda Hotel

 

My legal name is Henry Thakur but I’m currently going by “Harvey Orange” as a pen name for a couple of different reasons.  It’s complicated so I’ll try to explain as I go.  Anyway, I’m not happy with my current situation.  In fact, I’m scared out of my wits.

So here’s the deal:

I’m stuck in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of all places.  But I’m afraid that’s going to change soon.  I’m out of cash—getting close anyway—and tonight I’ll have to fork over half the cash I have left to that little SOB manager for the rent or get my rump kicked out on the street, making me officially homeless.

The problem is, unlike the ninety-two million unfortunate Americans residing under trees and bridges these days, I’ve never been homeless before.  I’ve observed it, written forty or fifty articles about it—homelessness, I mean—but I’ve never actually been homeless myself.  And I can tell you, it’s not a safari I’d volunteer for, either.  Anyway, for the time being I’m crashing at the Bermuda Hotel.  And in case you were wondering, despite the moniker, the Bermuda is not resort accommodations—not by a long shot.

Actually, “Bermuda” is not even the real name of this place, never was.  Instead, it was once the name of a restaurant called The Bermuda Grill which used to exist on the ground level of the building, off the hotel lobby.  The restaurant is long gone and boarded up but no one ever bothered taking down the sign which still hangs on the corner of the building and which, by some miracle, hasn’t fallen off by itself.  It’s a large sign and everyone seems to ignore the fact that it reads: The Bermuda Grill, not Hotel.  So the residents here continue to call this place by its misnomer: “The Bermuda Hotel”.  See?  I still do my research.  It’s a lost art among writers these days.  Anyhow, that’s where I live: the Bermuda Hotel on West 4th.  Home Sweet Home—for now.

The hotel was probably built in the Nineteen-sixties so it’s a dump.  But ten bucks buys you a week’s rent and utilities.  Except the hot water’s a joke.  Take this morning for example.  I get up at five-thirty—I’m not a morning person, mind you—to beat the crowd to the showers and have a nice, soothing ten minutes of hot water.  But when I turn on the shower the water is tepid.  And I only get five minutes of that before it goes subzero on me.  That little tinpot manager turned off the hot water heater overnight to save fifty cents worth of electricity at our expense.  Someone ought to kick his ass.

But let me back up a little, if you will, and start at the beginning, how I got into this fiasco in the first place.  It all began about two years ago:

So it’s November and I’m sitting in the posh lobby of the Hotel Grant Imperial across town—right here in Tulsa—waiting for a limo to pick me up.  (Quite a fall from grace, right?)  But back then I was used to staying in places like the Grant Imperial and used to rubbing elbows with people like Marcus Purcell—billionaire—who had invited me to lunch that afternoon and who had agreed to sit for an interview for a profile piece I was supposed to write for the Pollylama.  Don’t ask me what Pollylama means; I don’t know.  It’s one of these slick, online tabloids that I’ve never read.  Anyway—  You could say that by this point in my career, I had built a successful pop-journalism brand by writing for these “respectable” gossip tabloids, like the Pollylama.

So here I am, sitting comfortably in the lobby between a giant Christmas tree and the hearth with its fake logs and roaring, gas-flame fire.  And I’m looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, waiting for Purcell’s limo to arrive.

Being mid-November, it’s cold—one of those dreary, overcast days Tulsa is famous for.  And though it’s not yet Thanksgiving, the hotel lobby is festooned for Christmas already, and fantastically so, with a real spruce tree towering at its center, lit with a million lights, draped with garland, and hung with huge gold and silver balls of real glass.  The fresh tree perfumes the entire lobby.  And under the tree, are large boxes in a variety of shapes, all gift-wrapped in bright paper and tied with colorful ribbon, like real gifts.  The only thing missing is Christmas music, but the Hotel Grant Imperial has the good taste to wait on that in deference to Thanksgiving.  Instead, they’ve piped in symphonic, easy-listening stuff.  So there I am, happy and sitting in the deep leather cushions of one of the hotel lobby chairs, waiting for my ride.

Pretty soon, a long, jet-blue Bentley pulls up under the portico, headlights gleaming like it’s just come from a funeral.  The fact that it’s a limousine tips me off that it’s probably my ride.  So I gather my coat and briefcase and stroll toward the lobby exit.  The doors puff open and slide closed as I pass through.  A cold wind blasts through the portico as the driver’s door on the limo pops open.  The driver gets out and stands beside the car waiting for me; he has impeccable posture.

Despite the cold, the driver’s manner is relaxed and he wears a smart, navy blue uniform with dove-gray piping and matching gray gloves.  He’s a handsome fellow.  He tips his hat and bows slightly as I approach.  And with perfect fluidity he opens the back door.  I nod my thanks and get in.  It’s all like something out of a movie.

“Good morning, sir, how are you today?” he asks.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I answer.

“May I stow your bag or coat for you?”

“I’d like to keep them with me if that’s all right.”

Now I get a better look at him, the driver, I mean.  He has beautiful skin, black eyes and eyebrows, a serene smile; and as mentioned, he’s handsome.  His accent is subtle—eastern, I think, Indian perhaps.

“It is indeed, sir,” he replies to my request to keep my coat and attaché with me.  “We hope you will find everything you need to make your journey a pleasant one.”  He makes me feel like I’m boarding a private jet instead of getting into a car for a trip across town.  “If you please, sir, do avail yourself of the passenger comfort features,” he says, as I scoot in and arrange my stuff.

He takes the time to point out the comfort features for me.

“Just a quick overview,” he says as he begins.  “This is the beverage machine.  It makes a surprisingly good cappuccino or anything else you desire in the way of coffee, tea, soft drink, or cocktail—”

He’s an efficient fellow—economic with his words.  I like that.

“The media center, here, offers high-speed, secure internet and a variety of music channels for one’s listening pleasure.  And, of course, here are the comfort controls for your seat: firmness, temperature, even massage if you happen to be in the mood for it.  But please, do make yourself comfortable, Mr. Thakur.  Sir, are you familiar with AIA technology?” he asks.

AIA stands for: Automated Inboard Attendant; it’s the artificial intelligence interface for using the car’s amenities and features.  I have interviewed several billionaires like Purcell who have shuttled me to and from hotels and airports in cars like this one, so I’m not entirely bowled over by the futuristic features the Bentley limo offers.

“Yes, I am actually,” I say.

“Then you will do fine, sir.  Ours is Megan.  We shall arrive at our destination in approximately twenty-three minutes once we are underway.  Is there anything else you need, sir, before we embark?”

“No, I’m quite fine, thank you.”  Then I do remember something.

“Very good!,” he continues, “then we shall we depart.”

“Oh, you could answer one question before we go,” I say.

“Anything, sir.”

“What is your name?”

“My name, sir?”

“Yes.  I’m a journalist so I like knowing people’s names—if you don’t mind telling me yours.”

“Not at all, sir:  I am Paranjay.  In Hindi it means Lord of the Sea.  My father’s dream, bless his soul, was that I should one day return to Sri Lanka and take up the family business—as fisherman, the same as he and my grandfather were.  But I was not a very good son, I’m afraid.  Instead, I attended Harvard and studied business and did not return to my homeland.  But yes, my name is Paranjay.  Was there anything else, sir?”

“No, that’ll do.  Thank you, Paranjay.  It is good to meet you.  And I’m sure your father is very proud of you.”

“Thank you, sir, but my father has, as you say, gone to meet his maker.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I hope—”

“It’s nothing, sir.  He passed many years ago.”

“I’m Henry, by the way.”

“Yes, I know, sir.”

“So I guess that’s all.  I’m ready when you are, Paranjay.”

“Very good then!  We shall go.”

Paranjay closes the door, encapsulating me within the comfort of the spacious passenger compartment.  As the door shuts, soft lights appear here and there, illuminating the beverage machine and other controls within my reach.  My seat releases and takes in air silently and automatically to cradle and support my body.  It feels as if I’ve just sat down in a cloud and am not using any of my own muscles to remain upright.

I’m glassed in from Paranjay.  A computer touch-screen, like a window, now glows in front of me, offering an array of menu options: Call Megan, NYSE, NASDAQ, Entertainment Live, WiFi, VSAT, SATPhone, and others, several of which I have no idea what they are.

A soft tone sounds and a female voice begins speaking.

“Good morning, Henry!  May I call you Henry?”

“Of course,” I answer.

“Thank you.  On behalf of Mr. Purcell, I would like to welcome you aboard.  I am Megan, your inboard attendant.  If at any time you should need me, just say my name or touch Call Megan at the top of the screen in front of you and I shall be ready to assist you.  I’ve noticed that you speak American English, Henry.  Would you prefer I continue in American English?”

At that same instant, a new menu array on the touch-screen appears, displaying a list of some fifty or so languages and dialects.

“English is fine,” I answer.

“Thank you, Henry.  Are you comfortable?”

“Yes, very comfortable,” I say.

“Great!  Now, shall I adjust your cabin lighting for reading?”

“No, thank you.  I won’t be reading right now.”

“Okay, that’s fine.  While I’m here, may I serve you a beverage?  Or if you’d prefer, I can read our beverage menu for you.”

“Ah, black coffee would be great.”

“Absolutely!  Henry, please select your roast on the screen by touching it.”

Again, the screen changes to display six different coffee roasts.  The list is surprisingly pedestrian—no Kopi Luwak or Black Ivory.  Maybe Purcell isn’t into coffee, I think, or maybe he just grew up on Folgers like normal people.  Megan waits for me to touch the screen.  I scan the list and make my selection.

“Mmm,” says Megan, “Ethiopian Light; one of my favorites.  I’ll start that now.  Your coffee will be ready in about thirty-seconds.”

“Thank you, Megan.”

“You’re welcome, Henry.  One last thing.  Since you won’t be reading this morning, would you like me to set your environment for relaxation with aroma therapy and a little soft music or shall I leave things as they are?  And remember, you can always adjust your environment at any time, just by letting me know.”

“Ah, sure!  An environment sounds good.”

“Very well.  Henry, will you trust me to choose your environment today or would you prefer choosing your own settings?”

“Surprise me, Megan,” I answer.

“Very well, then.  I’ve selected Ocean for you.  Is that okay?”

“Yes, perfect.”

“Great, thank you.  So now, just relax and enjoy.  Oh, and by the way, your coffee is ready.  Be sure to secure the lid before enjoying it.  And, please, do call should you need anything else.  I’ll check on you later, too.  It was lovely meeting you, Henry.”

“You too, Megan.”

“Thank you and enjoy the rest of your trip.”

Already, the lights are dimming.  A sonorous cello begins playing, behind the sounds of distant seagulls and waves that paint a mental image of great expanses of sky over water.  The cabin fills with what smells like sea air, packed with oxygen, moisture, and salt—and it’s fresh.  One can imagine bits of sea shell rolling over sand and bare toes in lines of advancing foam.

These AIAs are quite amazing technology.  They can be programed with different names such as Megan, Amanda, Kristine; Brandon, Antonio, or Reuben, among a hundred others, all having unique personalities, who can be given different styles of language accents such as: British, American-South, Japanese, Swedish, French, Spanish, Indian, or Hungarian, to name only a few.

With experience, I’ve become comfortable with these technological personalities.  Their vocabularies and recognition of dialect, idiom, and even jargon are absolutely astounding.  With each upgrade they become more casual and conversational to the point, now, that they are like talking to real people at a cocktail party.

But American billionaires, such as Purcell, are enamored with this sort of high tech, high-end gadgetry which—with the special comfort features—can triple the cost of your standard Bentley limousine.

“How is your coffee, sir?”

It’s Paranjay.  His face appears on the touch-screen in front of me.

“It’s very good, Paranjay.  Just like I make at home,” I joke.

“Glad you like it.  And how is Megan?”

“She’s sweet.  Makes a hell of a cup of coffee, too.”

“Yes, I had to disable her momentarily so I could call back.  She tends to interrupt sometimes so I gave her a couple of minutes off.”

“Say Paranjay, I’m glad you called.  I had something I needed to check with you.”

“How may I help, sir?”

“Yes, well, what I need to know is: what’s Mr. Purcell’s address?  I want to make sure I have it right for the profile.”

“Do you mean his business address or the street address of his residence where we are going now?”

“Ah, yes, the street address, if you please.”

“Of course.  That address is: 1-3-0 New Market Boulevard, Suite 9.  Mr. Purcell’s apartment occupies the eleventh floor.  The building is the historic Mann Hotel, its lobby and decor fully restored, of course.  Do you know it, sir?”

“I’ve heard of it but, no, I’ve never been inside.”

“I think you will enjoy your visit; it’s a fine building.  I believe Mr. Purcell is expecting you for lunch, today.  Is that agreeable with you, sir?”

“Yes, I’m hungry.”

“Excellent!  Well, then, unless there is anything else I can do, I suppose I’ll give you back to Megan for the rest of the ride.  Is that all right, sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine, Paranjay.  The address was all I needed.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.  We should arrive at our destination in approximately seventeen minutes.  For now, Mr. Thakur, I’ll say good bye.”

“Yes, thank you, Paranjay.  Good bye.”

I slouch in my seat and extend my legs.  The seat automatically reclines some and readjusts the cushioning to fit my position.  Normally, I might have taken the opportunity to review my notes before the interview, but at this moment I’m too comfortable to worry about it.

A few minutes later, Megan returns, as promised, to check on me but there’s nothing else I need.  So I ride on, enjoying the ocean environment until about a minute before our arrival at the Mann Building.

At this point, the environment fades, the lights come up, and Megan returns once more to announce that our destination approaches.  She, of course, leaves me with a final salutation to say what a pleasure it has been to serve me and to express how nice it would be to do so again sometime in the future.

By this time, we are gliding silently west on New Market Boulevard toward North Atlas Avenue where New Market ends and beyond which lies the Federal Interstate Freeway and beyond that the fouled and fetid Arkansas River which supplies the city with much of its wealth and a good deal of its unsavoriness.

I notice that the car never meets a red traffic signal, that magically every signal turns green before we get to it, so that the limo skates along wherever it goes without ever having to stop.  What miracles are possible when business, government, and technology merge in doctrine and function.  It has become a very efficient world for men like Marcus Purcell, a world void of nuisance and aberration.

Soon, we pull up in front of the Mann Building on New Market Boulevard.  It’s constructed of gray stone and stands only thirteen stories high and is, in my opinion, architecturally unremarkable.  It doesn’t look like the residence of one of the richest men in the world.

As Paranjay brings the car to a gentle stop, my attention is drawn to what appears to be a cast of performers acting out a street drama on the broad walk in front of the main entrance.  My first impression is that it’s a satire—a kind of Punch and Judy show but played by real actors.  That’s what I think at first glance.

At center stage, is a Don Quixote-looking character.  He brandishes a broom, gripping the broomstick just above the brush so that the handle becomes a long sword.  This character wears a metal cooking pot on his head for a helmet over a stocking cap.  From under the stocking cap sprout uneven strands of gray, thin hair.  The cooking pot’s handle sticks out behind the base of his skull like a ponytail.  The fellow playing Quixote is sinewy and gaunt and, like his literary counterpart, dons a scraggly gray goatee and mustache, neither of which are well shaped.

But for an older player, our Quixote is extremely agile.  He hops, left and right, back and forth, alternating his lead foot each time and lands in a position of attack like a samurai, poised to engage his opponent.  Then he runs in place as if conjuring more force for his next attack.  After that, he whirls and swoops—his sword cutting the air, high and low.  And in between the hopping and whirling, he taunts his adversaries with the sword in grand figure-eights before jumping into a thrust which he punctuates by smacking the broom handle on the pavement.

The objects of his aggression are two uniformed city police—or actors dressed like them.  But they stand well beyond the reach of Mr. Quixote’s sword though, now and then, they try to advance a little on either side.  The officers each have one hand extended and the other resting on the holster of his sidearm.  They move tentatively, trying to corral our protagonist by positioning themselves on either side of him, but Quixote will not allow it.  The dervish Quixote holds them at bay with his exaggerated fencing motions, all the while grinning broadly and shouting:  “Oh no you don’t you clumsy jackasses!  Haw!  Haw!  I am the Defender of Justice, the Champion of Chivalry and Honor!  Take that, you knaves!”  And again he slaps the pavement with the broomstick.

I find myself chuckling at this droll performance as I sit watching from the back seat of the limo.  Paranjay has apparently made his assessment and appears again on the screen in front of me.

“It looks like we have a minor situation, sir, in front of the building,” he says flatly.  “For the sake of safety, I suggest we let our fine gentlemen in uniform do their job before we exit the vehicle.  What do you think, sir?”

“That’s fine with me, Paranjay.  This guy’s funny,” I comment.

“Indeed, sir.  It looks like we’ll be okay to wait here until the situation resolves.”

Besides his stocking hat and helmet, Quixote wears a bulky sweater which is ragged and has large holes in it, in predictable places.  The sleeves of the sweater are much too long for his arms, so he has cut openings near the ends of the sleeves through which he pokes his thumbs.  This fashion ingenuity has improvised the sleeves below his thumbs into fingerless gloves.  Adding to the absurdity of his costume, Quixote wears green sweatpants—badly soiled at the knees and bottom—which might once have belonged to a woman because they reach only as far as his calves and fit tightly on his pole-shaped legs.

Then below the sweatpants, he dons fuzzy, blue knee socks and scuffed oxfords which look a size or two too large for his feet.  Around his neck is wrapped a long, striped scarf of many colors.  It hangs nearly to his knees.  And finally, on his back, he carries a sort of backpack, made out of a plastic garbage bag which is, I’m guessing, full of aluminum cans and plastic bottles.  He looks like some sort of strange insect—a colorful beetle, perhaps.  The contents of his backpack clatter as he whirls and jabs at his foes with the broomstick sword.

There are two young women—supporting cast, you might call them—present with Quixote and the two police officers on stage.  One of the women is obviously pregnant; both are huddled against the wall, behind Quixote and beside the glassed-in entrance of the building.  They, too, wear stocking caps on their heads.  Their costumes are those typical of homeless peasants in winter which one sees everywhere.  The two women are significantly younger than Quixote which makes me wonder if the fair damsels are the reason Quixote sprang into action in the first place and took to arms.  Perhaps, one of the officers had besmirched their honor and virtue by making a rude comment or reproaching their presence on the street.  But this I’ll never know since I’ve missed the opening act of our melodrama.

The damsels twitter into their mittens at the bravado of their swashbuckling knight.  Inside the building and from behind the entryway’s thick plate glass, two private security guards watch the performance and are doubled over in laughter.  They find it highly entertaining that their frustrated colleagues in uniform can’t catch this jester-like figure, and the skinny, bearded senior with a pot on his head, at every turn, evades and outmaneuvers them.  The longer the act continues, the harder they laugh.

But suddenly, the tone of the drama changes.  One of the police officers—the one with the drum-like torso and not too agile of foot—bolts forward in a daring attempt to flank Quixote.  But our geriatric Jedi anticipates the officer’s bold attempt and, with a whirl and a Haw!, swats him squarely on the knee with his sword.  The officer cries Ow! and goes down on one knee with a grimace.  In an instant, Quixote whirls again and springs back to his defensive position between the officers and the damsels, resuming his martial arts maneuvers with the broom.  But by busting the officer with his broomstick, Quixote has excited the other officer to draw his weapon who, with a doubled-handed grip, trains it on the nimble coot.

The next twenty or thirty seconds transpire very quickly, so quickly, in fact, that neither I nor Paranjay have time to do anything but watch as the drama plays out.  The officer with the drawn weapon shouts repeatedly: “Drop the weapon!  Lie down!, or I will shoot!”  The smitten officer struggles to his feet then draws his sidearm, too, and points it at Quixote and, between commands to drop his weapon, curses his stringy assailant with vile language.  The damsels begin screaming:  “Don’t hurt him!  Don’t hurt him!  Scrappy, drop the broom!  Please Scrappy do what they say!  Forgodssake, drop the broom!”  They huddle closer together and shelter against the wall.

“Oh my god!” I say in shock.  “Surely they won’t shoot the old guy?”

But Quixote defies them and waves his broomstick more deliberately now, as if ready to repel bullets should they come.  The damsels become hysterical, pleading with their knight to lay down his broom and submit.

“Hold your tongues, daughters!” he shouts back.  “I know my duty!  I will give these monkeys a lesson in honor, and they will heed it or else taste my blade.  We were created equal before God—all of us!”

Then he addresses the officers directly.

“You have no power except what’s consented to by the governed and we shall not consent to tyranny!  Haw!”

He leaps forward again as before.

Pang!  Pang-pang-pang!  Pang!

Daggers of white light flash from the guns.  The shots sound like hammers striking metal pipe.  The two damsels and I flinch with each report.  Then a moment, a split second, passes when all the players freeze in place—and silence prevails.  And only the clouds of smoke from the weapons move as they expand and drift upward.  Quixote’s hands release the broom and it falls to the pavement with a hollow smack.  He falls after it.  One knee bends unnaturally under his weight causing him to topple like a building.  All the while, his hands are raised as if still holding the broom.  He hits the pavement and lands in an unnatural position.

The girls shriek several times then wail.  One bends at the waist and reaches for the pavement with both hands like a toddler having second thoughts about walking.  The other—the pregnant one—clings to her companion, arms locked around her abdomen, and goes down to the pavement with her.  The first girl, stabilizes herself on hands and knees and makes as if to crawl to the fallen Quixote but then loses strength and collapses into a fetal position, rocking, and wailing one sentence:  “They killed Scrappy.  They killed Scrappy.”  The two damsels lie in a heap on the cold cement like the Marys might have done at the tomb of Christ.  The last act has ended.  The audience is stunned.

The police, after a moment, relax, stand upright, then move cautiously forward but still train their weapons with both hands on the lifeless figure before them.  One squats over him, touches fingers to neck checking for a pulse, then stands and holsters his weapon.  The other officer puts his away as well.  Scrappy seems small now, diminished, wasted.

In a short period of time, he looks not like a human anymore but like a four-legged animal, a coyote perhaps, lying deflated and flat upon the pavement, like almost a feature of the pavement itself.  He has aged in seconds, become a Methuselah, a skeleton, prisoner of war or refugee of famine now that the spirit has escaped his body.  The bones and teeth in his scull protrude under a thin stretch of skin.

At this point, the doors of the building burst open and the two private security men who had stood behind the glass watching the drama and another man in a suit charge out of the building to take control of the scene.  The man in the suit appears to take charge.  He corners the two police officers and speaks to them aggressively, pointing a finger at Scrappy, then at some distant point on the horizon, then at himself, then at the nose of the officer in front.  Between pointing, he waves his arms as he addresses the two uniformed officers.  They take the dressing down like schoolboys, being lectured by an angry coach—sometimes shrugging or removing their hats and scratching their heads, but obviously they deem themselves inferior in rank to the man in the suit.

Meanwhile, one of the private security men with the physique of Atlas stands over Scrappy and talks into his cellphone, gazing idly into the traffic on New Market Boulevard.  The other one—the smaller man—attempts to move the damsels but is having a rough go of it.  He grabs one woman by the arm and tries to pull her up physically but her body is limp with grief and unresponsive.  Another security man hustles out of the building to assist the smaller man with the women.  Together, they lift one of the women to her feet and make her stand, then escort both women through the building’s main entrance, into the lobby, before ushering them through a door near the front desk.  The one woman continues to wail as they escort her through the door which has a little red sign on it with white letters that reads: PRIVATE.  The door floats closed.  Now they are gone.

Scrappy lies where he fell but his sweater has turned black with blood.  A small stream of red issues forth from his open mouth and puddles against his cheek.  Atlas picks up the broom and pot that had separated from their owner when he fell.   Atlas and the man in the suit turn toward the building and converse quietly, keeping their backs to the street.  But I can see their faces in the reflection of the plate glass: the man in the suit is angry.  The police officers, now, have also disappeared into the building through the same door where the security men took the women.  Then the man in the suit pulls out his cellphone from the inside pocket of his jacket and makes a call.  At the same time, Paranjay appears on the screen in front of me.

“Hello, sir.  This is Paranjay.”

The car begins pulling away from the curb and back onto New Market Boulevard.

“I’m extremely sorry for the delay, sir.  But I’ve been in contact with building security and they’ve requested I move the vehicle until they can properly clear the entrance.  They’ve assured me it won’t take long.  We are going to circle the block to give them better access.”

The car turns right onto North Atlas Avenue.

“Yes, thank you, Paranjay, but shouldn’t we stay at the scene until the police have taken our statements?  Certainly they will want to interview us, don’t you think?”

There’s an uncomfortable pause.

“Paranjay, are you still there?” I ask.

“Yes, sir, I am here.  Uh, well, regarding the unfortunate incident—uh, may I have a minute, sir?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The car takes another right and bears east.  Though broad, this street is shabby; it’s as if we’ve crossed some invisible line into another world.  Here, there are pedestrians—groups of two or three—trudging along both sides of the street, dressed in the same kind of clothes as Scrappy and the two girls and carrying garbage bags and other objects.

On the north side of the street, so many empty lots open between buildings that more sunlight is let in and the area seems brighter, somehow more festive or nostalgic, perhaps.  It’s not beautiful or happy by any means, but freer and less gloomy than the cloister of buildings from which we’ve just come.

“Hello, sir.  I’m back.  As I was saying about the unfortunate incident today—uh, well, how do I say this?  See, technically, we were not there.  Technically, we’ve been detained in traffic so, actually, we have not yet arrived at Mr. Purcell’s residence and therefore could not have witnessed the, um, arrests of the transients by the city police.”

“So this is the official story?” I say.

“I’m afraid so, sir, yes, for now anyway.  It’s just much less complicated this way, for everyone, you see, including the law enforcement people and us too.  Besides, should the police need to contact either you or me, our security office will be able to point them in the right direction.  But I’m quite certain that that will not be necessary, sir.  Our security people are very professional; they will handle everything.  So, no need to worry.”

“I’m very relieved,” I say, but “relieved” is not what I’m feeling.

“And, by the way, sir, lunch will be served as soon as you arrive.”

“Thanks, Paranjay.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

No Megan this trip.  Instead, Paranjay pipes in rumba music to give the mood a lift and a Caribbean flavor as we circle the block.  It takes Paranjay two trips around a four-block detour before security and building maintenance give us the “all clear” and the work of cleaning up the mess Scrappy left in front of the Mann Building is complete.

But, on our first pass by the Mann Building where the Scrappy incident took place, I see four maintenance men in white overalls working in front of the building.  The security men are all gone.  Two of the workers in overalls sit on vehicles on the sidewalk.  One vehicle is a small orange front-loader, the type used by grounds crews to clear snow or move dirt or sod.  The second vehicle is of the “all terrain” sort with oversized knobby tires.  To it, there is hitched a small green cart for hauling debris.  The cart is draped with a green tarp which conceals whatever “debris” the cart carries at that moment.

The men on the vehicles are, apparently, preparing to drive away so find it necessary to shout instructions and confirmations back and forth about their next destination.  I catch some of their conversation as we pass by.  It seems they are going to the parking garage whose entrance is situated on the North Atlas Avenue side of the building, at the rear.  The garage itself is below street level.

The other two members of the crew are cleaning the sidewalk—well, at least one is; the other is watching.  There’s an irregular shaped patch of white foam on the spot where Scrappy fell.  It’s not large.  And as we pass in the car, one of the men turns on a pressure wash machine and begins blasting the foam toward the gutter.  Islands of foam break away and float in the direction of the curb and, before being annihilated by the pressure stream, turn pink.  The second man leans on his broom handle and watches as the first sprays away the foam and whatever remains of Scrappy.

By the time Paranjay completes the second cycle, the cleanup is all but finished.  Only one maintenance man is left.  He’s drying the last patch of pavement with a leaf blower.   No evidence remains of the inconvenient incident between Scrappy and the police except the slightly damp concrete in front of the building entrance.  So this time, Paranjay delivers me for my luncheon and interview with Mr. Marcus Purcell.

I’m glad to get out of the car.

Copyright © 2023 by Dale Tucker  All rights reserved.