I needed that health center, too, except I needed it for the hot water and for the times when the inside of the turret got too tight.
I pulled into the lot and crept around the potholes to the husk of the doorless Buick. The locker room was empty except for the guy asleep on a towel bag. He had a room upstairs but slept down by the lockers in the summer because it was cooler. I put on my workout duds, went up, and walked more laps than I ran, so my gasping wouldn’t drown out my voice of reason, should it decide to speak up. It didn’t. After forty-five minutes, I went down to the showers, no closer to understanding why the Bohemian thought he could buy off the bomber for good.
I spent the rest of July like a man waiting for bad news from a doctor, trying not to jump at the first ring of the phone or tap at thedoor, for word that another note-or worse, another bomb-had come to Gateville.
I sent out letters to former clients, newsy little bundles of lies about how busy my firm was, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I called the roofers, had them come out again, peppered them with too many questions about how each would fix my roof. And then waited by the door for Elvis to come huffing over, so we could yell at each other while he inspected my roof and I inspected his complexion.
I hung dark oak trim on the first floor of the turret, CD player blasting Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Son House, Lightnin’ Hopkins. Blues men from blue times.
I went to the health center every day and laughed at Nick’s jokes and did circles around the track like I was doing in life.
And I went nuts a little, because all I’d really been doing was waiting for another bomb to go off. So, on the tenth long day after I’d messengered my report to the Bohemian, I launched a minor war against city hall.
I’d spent the morning and all afternoon on a long ladder, caulking the gaps around the slit windows on the second and third floors, and being subjected to the whining voice of some adolescent outside city hall, counting to three, over and over, sound-checking a P.A. system. Across the lawn, workers were setting up green-and-white-striped umbrella tables along the terrace, and they’d hung a huge RIVERTOWN RENAISSANCE IS READY banner across the front of city hall. The lizards were holding their first evening soiree for contractors and developers.
The reception started at five o’clock, and from my ladder, it looked to be high style for city halclass="underline" candles on the tables on the broad limestone terrace overlooking the Willahock, strings of brightly colored Christmas lights woven into the bushes, an out-of tune, two-sax-with-drums trio, and, judging by the volume of shrill laughter as the soiree got under way, plenty of booze. Nodoubt there were also cocktail wienies on toothpicks, but I can’t verify that because none of the lizards thought to acknowledge me, up on my ladder, by sending over a sampling on a paper plate.
I quit working about eight o’clock. The sun was going down, and I had a pounding headache from the off-key music and the liquor laughter from next door. I had just slid the ladder into the shed when the combo stopped abruptly, as if somebody had mercifully pulled the plug of the P.A. The sudden absence of missed chords calmed the night like painkillers on a toothache, and I stopped outside the shed to breathe in the quiet.
The silence didn’t last. A minute later, the two saxophones attacked the first notes of the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The drummer fought to keep in time. And some fool flipped a switch.
Four spotlights hit the turret with enough mega-wattage to light a microsurgery. The combo screeched louder; people clapped. I froze, caught in the glare, staring into the white light coming from the city hall they’d built with my grandfather’s limestone, on the land they’d stolen from my grandmother. It was supposed to be high drama, the stark illuminating of the symbol of Rivertown’s renaissance. But to me it was assault.
The bastards didn’t bother to turn off the spotlights after the last of the developers had tipsied away. The slit windows of the turret are narrow, too skinny to admit much sunlight, but that night the interior of the turret was as bright as a bus station waiting room. I couldn’t sleep at all, from the glare and the anger, and spent the night on the roof, in a small patch of shadow cast by the top of the stone wall, staring at the floodlit water of the Willahock. If not now, then soon, the turret would be floodlit all night, every night.
And sometime, just before dawn, a switch of my own got flipped.
The next morning I pulled into the parking lot of Mabel’s Mature Fashions. I’d found it in the yellow pages.
“What are the largest-sized ladies’ undergarments you carry?” I asked the pink-wigged woman in the orange tunic behind the counter. She looked to be sporting the very sizes I was interested in.
She raised one caked eyebrow.
“Not for me,” I added quickly. My skin felt hot, and I wanted to giggle. It was probably from the lack of sleep.
“Fifty-quadruple-D in bras, 6X in panties.” She looked me up and down. “Might be a little large.”
I ignored it. “Do they come in colors?”
The other caked eyebrow went up. “White only in those sizes, sir, but they’re all cotton. You could dye them to suit yourself.”
I turned away to clear my eyes as I fumbled in my wallet for my credit card. This was not funny; this was war. I bought six sets.
After Mabel’s, I went to a hardware store for clothesline, clothespins, and Rit Dye. Back at the turret, I boiled water on my hotplate, mixed the dye, and became Michelangelo. As a kid, I’d tie-dyed all my T-shirts once, in a quest to become a ten-year-old hippie. That had been decades before, but I hadn’t lost my touch. I transformed the panties and bras, big enough for prizewinning pumpkins, into bright, psychedelic works of what could be called art. I spread them out on my table saw and over the plastic chairs, and when they were dry, I set them on top of my new coil of clothesline.
They would be the battle flags of my war against city hall.
The second reception was the same as the first: umbrella tables, colored lights, eighty-proof chatter, and the same two saxophones, sounding like they’d wasted not one minute on practice. As the last of the sun disappeared from the sky, the combo went silent, just as it had during the first reception. Only this time, I was behind the turret, tensed for the first shrieking notes of 2001.
A minute passed, then another, and then both saxophones bleated into the night air, fighting to approximate the same note.
The four spotlights hit the turret with white light.
I started feeding my flags onto the clothesline I’d strung on the property line facing city hall.
I played them out slowly, letting the bright colors unfurl with their own drama. By the time the second pair of tie-dyed 6X panties-these scarlet, gold, and Kelly green-hit the white light and started flapping in the night breeze, the cocktail chatter next door had dissolved into shrieks of raucous laughter. The band stopped, confused, as the people roared, louder and louder. I fed two bras, the first one magenta and yellow, the second neon green, onto the line. The people clapped and cheered.
And that brought Elvis.
He stormed across the lawn, chasing his own shadow made long by the spotlights behind him. He wore a greasy powder blue dinner jacket that had the look of something discarded after a prom.
“You got a woman living here, Elstrom,” he screamed, his face contorted, his hair wall glistening in the glow of the floodlights. A hundred yards behind him, the well-lubricated contractors and developers shrieked, drunk enough to think this was a skit, done for their amusement.