Warren Warmer carries in a newspaper, balancing it flat on his forearm, and in the the opposite hand holding a mug filled with what he says is “Turbo Coffee.” His face is a flat mask. His eyes are alert. Within them everyone can see his father but especially his mother, who back in the day founded the club that they all sit in now, who convinced the previous owners of the land that change was not only preferable but inevitable. “Get the ghosts out,” she used to say, by way of explaining that time waited for no one but that if you played your cards right time could wait on you. Warren Warmer welcomes everyone. Warren Warmer wants everyone in the room to know that even when the clubhouse is demolished, even when he erects in its place a multi-function community center that will include office space, a self-sufficient graphic design business, a gymnasium, and a podcasting studio, that the spirit of the place will persist. Everyone feels something round when he speaks. His tone gives off a spherical quality in the process of shaping the air around it. There is, if not a straightforward honesty, an absence of stable facets that can serve as sites of attack. Howard Warmer was a trustworthy man but not a man who inspired trust. What Warren Warmer is doing now is all his mother, all the time.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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