From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled
Let’s consider the possibility that the events of the past two years were no more than a series of misunderstandings, that even though all of them acted in ways that were not commensurate with the duties of their office, that they meant well, that things got away from them, that it’s not always a good idea to judge. So the mayor embezzled. So what? So the sheriff stole cars. So what? So the superintendent of schools trafficked drugs in the halls of the junior high, shades on, tucked into a corner by the lockers outside the band room, running his sales patter, “smoke smoke smoke, get yer smoke.” So what? So the rest of them served as the willing tentacles of a vast and wide-reaching criminal enterprise overseen by Susan Fairbanks, a middle-aged freeholder who lived in an “elegant Cape Cod” with a “bright and beautiful master suite” and a “spacious living room” featuring “Anderson windows and skylight,” not to mention “central A/C, two-zone” and “sliding glass doors” that “lead out” to a “backyard ideal for parties.” In that backyard, Susan Fairbanks assembled her lieutenants and planned mischief and mayhem, larceny and depravity, not only commanding the selectmen and -women, the aldermen and -women, the assemblymen and-women, but also instructing them to invite the others and tell them to stand by for their orders: the mayor (the order: embezzle), the sheriff (the order: steal cars), the superintendent of schools (the order: sell dope), and the head of the local chamber of commerce (the order: murder the rest of them, put the bodies in a storage space, build a Stonehenge of filled-to-the-brim gasoline cans, toast their immortal souls with a glass of whiskey and a cigar, walk out whistling, drip a trail of gasoline from the storage space, at a safe distance drop the lit cigar into the tail of the trail, drive away, don’t look back, never look back, drive straight to Susan, sit in lounge chairs, have some burgers). So what?
No comments:
Post a Comment