When Trevor saw Gordon come careening out of the ladies’-wear shop like a foundering old tanker, blowing steam and wearing a pink nightie as regalia, he went immediately to a payphone in the restrooms corridor of the mall and called the police to leave an anonymous complaint together with the name of the shop where they could get confirmation of this bizarre behavior. He did not know why he did this. He did not even know why he was out here. He had been having a late lunch in the Sixth Street Cafe, his usual, a cup of soup (beef noodle today) and a chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat, with a slice of lemon meringue pie for dessert, no coffee, and he was still thinking about his wife Marge’s latest insurrectionary venture and what problems it might cause him with John, when John’s mother came in with her little grandson to buy him a chocolate icecream cone, followed almost immediately by Gordon and his camera, and they posed for pictures which Gordon said were for the newspaper, the chef, who was also the owner, coming out from the kitchen to get in them. Gordon had seemed to be in a hurry when he popped in, his mind elsewhere, but the moment he began the photo-taking session, frivolous though the occasion was, he became completely absorbed in his work and Trevor found himself becoming equally absorbed watching him. Gordon shifted his big hips about fluidly, searching out the best light, the right angle, moved a table and chairs, pulled down a sign taped to the counter near the cash register, took lightmeter readings with and without flash, switched lenses and filters, all in a matter of seconds, and before the icecream was even being scooped, he was already snapping away, bobbing, leaning, rearing, crouching, and it slowly dawned on Trevor that Gordon was not photographing the people at all, he probably didn’t even see them: his focus was on the cone, passing from hand to hand and hand to mouth. Where it went, his lens went, and as it did, Gordon asked the little boy where his sister was. Opal said she thought she was out at the mall, “Mikey, how did you get chocolate on your nose?” and before she could scrub it away with a licked paper napkin, Gordon, without apology, was gone. The pie came, a house specialty, the meringue almost four inches high and light as air, but Trevor only poked at it. He was still thinking about the photographer, his amazing intensity, and the thought that came to him then, which he did not understand at all, or even quite believe to be true (there was the pie in front of him, for example), but which remained with him for all the rest of that day, was: I have never known delight. He knew of course where Gordon had gone, he’d made the same calculations Gordon had. Trevor paid his check, received an inquiry about his appetite, and went to pick up his car in the lot behind the bank building. He took his time, driving cautiously as he always did. At the mall, he spied John’s daughter at a table with a couple of friends, but did not find Gordon until he came flying out of the ladies’-apparel store in his pink gown, though Trevor had peeked in there earlier as he made his rounds. Alarmed, almost as though in self-defense, then, he put in that panicky call to the police, regretting it as soon as he had done it, he hadn’t even disguised his voice properly. This was not the first time, he had reported Gordon twice before, but those times only for fun. One day when, from his office window in the bank building, he had seen Gordon sidle swiftly into the card shop and travel agency across the street and, from behind the scenic posters of beaches and hill towns, aim his telephoto lens at the bank door (Trevor knew why of course: John’s wife’s car was parked at the curb below), he called, also anonymously (“a worried bank customer”), to report the “suspicious behavior” of a person “lurking secretively” near the bank entrance, last seen peeking out from inside the travel agents’ across the way. He was still giggling about it that night, it was the first time he’d ever done anything like that, and when Marge asked him what was so funny he fumbled for a moment in confusion and then said that John had taken out another half million of insurance and he was still feeling giddy. Then there was the even funnier time he’d called the police and in a high-pitched voice accused the photographer of sneaking around outside the women’s changing room at the civic center swimming pool, a complete fabrication, since Trevor himself had never even seen the pool in operation, his only visit to it being before the dedication ceremony when the retractable roof was being demonstrated. Though he had thought of that call as only a kind of practical joke, he nevertheless felt more or less justified because of things he’d seen the photographer up to elsewhere, and he told himself it was even possible he’d guessed at a truth. Not likely, though. Gordon was not an ordinary voyeur, any more than Trevor was. It could even be said that he and Gordon were both searching for the same thing, Gordon more directly, fully aware of what he was doing and why, Trevor more speculatively, but more prudently. Though he had begun this little game as a mere lark, Trevor had come to believe that if he took it seriously enough, something, he didn’t know what, would be revealed. It was as though Gordon and his camera were leading him, unwittingly, to buried treasure, and if he reported him mischievously to the police now and then it was only to remind himself that it was just a game, a harmless amusement. It was different today, though. He was frightened, he didn’t know why. Was it because of Gordon’s mad lumbering flight through the crowded mall, the disturbing impropriety of it, or had he suddenly become appalled at his own improper fascination with such madness? He ducked into the men’s room after the call, afraid of being seen near a telephone (had anyone recognized him?), and was shocked when he peered in a mirror and saw the panic in his face, his rumpled clothing. And was that a floccule of meringue on his lapel? Trevor was known for his cool aplomb, his tidy dispassionate composure — something was terribly wrong! “The trouble is,” he said to himself, dabbing at the sweat on his brow (he had sweat on his brow?), “you don’t know who you are.” “Who does?” asked some voice in one of the stalls, and Trevor, now thoroughly flustered, fled again.
The insurrectionary venture that troubled Trevor feared was his wife Marge’s decision to challenge Snuffy, the popular ex-high school football coach, airport manager, and can-do councilman, for mayor, not because she didn’t like Snuffy (she certainly didn’t), but because she could not let John’s handpicked candidate run unopposed. Was this a democracy or one bully’s fiefdom? She was afraid she already knew the answer to that, but even knowing it, she could not accept it, and she planned to run, not against Snuffy so much, he was just a proxy anyway, but against her old classmate and nemesis, the number one honcho himself. It would necessarily be a grassroots affair, she had no money for it, she’d have to confront all that wealth and power with a few volunteers (she had been trying to enlist Lollie’s help, but the woman seemed strangely aloof these days; she hoped her cretinous husband hadn’t finally turned her head), handmade posters and flyers, an exhaustive door-to-door campaign, tough talk, and an attention-grabbing platform, including a call for radical electoral reform. So far she’d kept everything under wraps, only Trevor knew, and he wasn’t all that excited about it. As she expected: Trev was an accountant and this enterprise looked to fall pretty much in the loss column, she understood that; in the end John would find some way to clobber her, and Trevor, who needed John, knew it. Probably she told her husband just so he could brace himself, though she could have used a little moral support. Trev was an older grad student up at State when they met, a teaching assistant for Marge’s Econ 101 class. She’d invited him to a civil rights rally and they had developed a kind of activist paldom, though Trev wasn’t even political. Probably just lonely. That was all right. So was she. Just why marriage should have followed the way a street march follows a resolution was not that clear to either of them, but they had got used to and respected one another, discovering that they were about the only persons they didn’t argue with, and the alternatives were few. Or rather: nil. No regrets. They were helpmeets in the true sense of the word, and now that she was finally launching her campaign, she knew he’d be at her side, no matter what his misgivings. She wanted maximum impact when she did announce formally, and she was doing that now with a concise but forceful and passionate position paper, the exact wording of which she had just finished drafting, to be published in this week’s edition of The Town Crier. She was determined that this was not going to be a negative campaign, but she was pointing out that her opponent had a lifelong reputation for dealing ruthlessly and arbitrarily with those who were younger and less powerful than he and had frequently shown alarming evidence of undemocratic gender-biased attitudes. There were other rumors about the old coach’s behavior that today would open him up to charges of sexual harassment, and she would not be disappointed if those rumors should come out as the campaign proceeded, and perhaps even be substantiated, though she herself of course would never bring them up. She had wanted something that would give the announcement of her candidacy a bit of a kick-start, so she had gone out earlier to see Barnaby at the retirement center to try to obtain his endorsement, but no help there. He seemed to think she was his bath lady, and he started yelling at her incoherently, something about his dead wife doing it, and probably telling her to get the hell out, which anyway she did. So she had called Trevor to tell him what she was doing and then delivered the document that would change her life and that perhaps of the entire town as well (she could beat that meathead!) to the newspaper office — which, oddly, was closed, no signs of life inside: she had to push it through the slot in the bottom panel of the door, her sense of drama offended, and angry that already, as she took her first dramatic step into bigtime electoral politics, she was being made to stoop instead of stride. Her fateful turn taken, she stood up, took a deep breath, looked around at the disappointingly empty sidewalks, and headed for the club where she could work off her tensions with a round or two of golf, have a quiet drink and supper with Trevor, lighten him up a bit (when she finally did see him, he seemed to be taking it much worse than she’d thought), and get ready for all hell to break loose tomorrow.