By the way, not too much of this is important, either. But it's true, and J.D. is here at the broad smeared C.I. Airport window, not helping DeHaven greet the next-to-last, so he can scan for the final alumni children: Eberhardt '70, Sternberg '70. They're supposed to be among these folks now de-coptering, bent low under blades, hands to headwear against a swirl of chaff and dawn-fog. But no kids. Everyone coming off the tarmac and into the lei-strewn gate's entrance looks far too adult, purposeful, neither shifty nor shitty. Shitty? Adult? J.D. Steelritter's own DeHaven Steelritter is a professional trademark. A clown. The clown. Been the campaign's Ronald a year now, ever since that last Ronald's indiscretion with that Malay girl (Oh Lord though skin like cream-shot coffee, and eyes?) in the Enchanted French-Fry Forest forced J.D. to see to it that that particular clown would never work in the industry again. Ever. The smears of lurid lipstick on that child's au-lait belly! The red nose clapped, with the obscenity of adult force, over her own! The goose-bruises — though thank God no poke-bruises, so no concessions needed, whole thing explainable to Malay stage mother as Stage Fright as she led the little thing away, the girl's legs shaky like a new foal's. Sweet Jesus never again one of those grizzled circus clowns, any man you can get twelve of in a Honda Civic you don't trust them, no? No.
But so DeHaven Steelritter? adult? putative son? possible heir? usurper? Who could love this DeHaven K. Steelritter — age: needs a shave; height; slouches, with intent; weight: who could know under either leather or this big-hipped dot-pocked outfit and swim-fin shoes; education: as school is not a hundred percent easy and pleasurable it's "bogus"; aspiration: atonal composer (alleged), to accept prime wages for doing the bare minimal and spending the rest of his time fucking off (apparent)? He represents the Product. Is Ronald McDonald. Professionally. This son, this sty on the cosmic eyelid, this SHRDLU in the cosmic ad copy, represents the world's community restaurant.
And but gratitude? This job is a plum, clown-wise — veteran clowns would have given left nuts for even a giggled audition. But the fix was in, after the Stage Fright snafu. J.D. Steelritter controls, and since the one-Collision-Illinois-Ray-Kroc-burger-stand beginning has controlled, the image and perception of McDonald's franchise empire.
No alumni on this LordAloft. They missed it. Children. The fly in every fucking machine's perfect lubricant. DeHaven is looking over at J.D. and shrugging, checking his fat clipboard, shrugging with that what-are-you-gonna-do apathy he directs at every impediment. J.D. ponders. What is his son? Those Jews have a word for it, no? Schlemiel is the clumsy waiter who spills the scalding soup? Schlamazl is the totally innocent hapless guy who gets spilled on? Then J.D. Steelritter's son is the customer who ordered that soup (on credit), and now wants his goddamn soup, and wants quiet from that screaming scalded guy over there so he can eat his soup with all the peaceful quiet enjoyment he hasn't earned. A child who exited a womb inconvenienced.
To avoid misunderstanding or prejudice, J.D. is sad, but not usually this bitter. Most of all this is sleep-deprivation, anxiety, an almost Christmas-Eve-like anticipation, plus extended proximity to a son, which let's face it taxes even the most richly patient parent. DeHaven's not a bad kid, J.D. knows. He's good with the commercial children. Brings out a gentleness that would have surprised a lesser adman. The kid'll sure never give anybody Stage Fright.
But he's an apprentice clown who gets to be the third Ronald McDonald in American franchise history, and yet it's clear he doesn't appreciate it, he doesn't like the job — and, worse, doesn't like the job like a sleeping person dislikes things, with a torpid whimper and an infant's total frown — the latter he's doing now, and the frown disturbs J.D., rattles him, his son's skin's frown under a manic painted grin… it looks grotesque, a kind of crude circle of lip and lipstick, so your impression, that you should never get from a mouth that represents a restaurant, is just of a hole, a blank dime, an empty entrance you'd only want to exit.
Sternberg '70 and Eberhardt 70 are late. They missed the LordAloft 5:10. There's another at 7:10. J.D.'s idea to have them run regular as trains. So wait and hope for the next LordAloft? Fuck around with O'Hare's Kafkan bureaucracy and have them looked for and/ or maybe paged? But everyone else is here, on the way into Collision and Funhouse 1 and McDonald's 1 to await the high-noon appearance of LordAloft 1, and the revels until then have been carefully structured. And J.D.'s got this obsession that everything like this he structures has got to be tidy, complete, fulfilled, enclosed. Not a single no-show except for two late kids who promised 5:10, in the contract. What's to do?
J.D. jumps a bit as DeHaven's voice appears next to his sensitive ear.
"Done," the big clown says, popping off the costume's red plastic battery-lit nose with a kind of fuck-you-in-Italian gesture he likes. "Couple no-shows, though, Pop."
J.D. snaps at him to put his nose on, in public, for Christ's sake, still looking squinted at what the East's expelled. That little worrisome sleep-deprived For Whom rattles, still, at that high-static idiot pitch.
WHY THE KIDS ARE LATE
After the flight from M.I. Airport, after luggage roulette — try packing a seventy-piece bow plus quiver — Tom Sternberg edged furtively into an O'Hare men's room and stayed in there for a really long time. Mark Nechtr got distracted watching a guy with long soft hair and beard, and a clipboard, who was giving away money in the commuter terminal. The man was well-dressed, respectable. The treasury notes were crisp. Mark couldn't determine what the scam was. He ruled out Cult because the guy had an utterly ordinary expression: no Krishna glaze or Bagwanite's pirate squint; no Moonie's mannequin cheer. Yet people kept avoiding him. He kept asking them what they were afraid of. Beefy types with holsters and field radios eventually led him off. What was the scam? The guy was maybe thirty, tops. Mark, a born watcher, watched, from a distance.
MORE QUICKLY WHY THEY'RE LATE
The LordAloft pilot, a Polynesian in a just bitching three-piece and mirrored glasses, wouldn't allow Mark's disassembled bow or quiver on the helicopter. The twelve shuttle passengers all sit together in a big plastic bubble: all luggage on LordAloft is accessible in-flight. Target arrows are deadly weapons, after all. There are FAA regulations that even the deregulated might not make, but must obey, koniki? A serious archer doesn't just leave his equipment, so what's to do. The helicopter ascends without them, sprays them with dark tarmac crud. Cases and carry-ons and almost-full quiver are spread out on the landing pad. Drew-Lynn is half-asleep, tranquilized, treating Mark's arm like a banister. Sternberg has his thumb tentatively against his forehead, where there's a bit of a poison-sumac cyst that's developed. Their reserved seats ascend; they recede. Sternberg's a bit honked off at Mark for being the sort you don't leave without. It's clear what's to do. They go back inside O'Hare's commuter terminal and transfer to the LordAloft 7:10. They kill time. D.L. sleeps in a weird chair whose attached TV wants quarters. Sternberg rehaunts the men's room after loud requests for a comb. Mark stows his bow's case and strings, quiver and wooden arrows, fingerless archer's gloves, tincture of benzoin (for calluses) and fletcher in a tall rental locker. The key he keeps for his four quarters is unloseably huge. He was supposed to try to maybe write a bit, but mostly shoot, at whatever YWCA's to be found downstate, while D.L. and her pen pal Sternberg, who's pegged as a furtive but so far generally OK sort, are reuniting, reveling, and appearing in a panoramic commercial, and awaiting Jack Lord.