Queen City and Other Dimensions. E.C. WellsЧитать онлайн книгу.
stood guard at the north entrance to Little Alexandria.
Neighbors gathered daily with binoculars and cellphone cameras to catch anything they could see over the dull yellow stucco wall. Did either of the columns appear askew? Minnie Beach swears the columns switched places. Others swear that they had also noticed something, but they are not crystal clear about what. And, when they try to remember, they suffer unbearable migraine headaches.
* * *
There are Keepers of Count among the Capitol Hill bunch. As an example: The Keepers of Count keep count of the kind of flowers their neighbors plant or intend to plant, how well their choices of colors will coordinate, what kinds of insects might they attract, who was watering their yard on no-watering days and who was getting suspicious-appearing deliveries from Amazon? Things of little consequence populate the minuscule dimension of gossip within a galaxy of doomed machinations performed from a sense of insignificance and trapped them in the mire of their discontent——the Keepers of Count.
The Capitol Hill coterie appear conspicuously in coffee houses and sidewalk cafés. This provides an advantageous viewpoint to do what comes naturally——observe those whom they know, then dig for lethal information that may come in handy, in the future.
* * *
Saturday, a sunny day in mid-June. Excitement and the scent of sublimity was in the Queen City air. The FEA field trip ended when the chartered bus, which was more than an hour late, returned with neither V nor Lily on it.
Professor Hans von Mummi, of whom most on the bus had, at one time or another, wondered from where the “von” came, or if it were simply an abused preposition, was on the bus.
Before taking an early retirement, Professor von Mummi, alone in the night while playing with his chemistry set, blew-up and destroyed the entire applied sciences building where he headed the chemistry department at Queen City University. After returning home from a month in Queen City General, and another month in Utah getting plastic surgery, von Mummi looked right as rain. Better than rain, in fact. Still, he needed something to occupy his mind. So, he decided to write an opera.
His opera, Snuff in the Tropics, based on the Jonestown Massacre, had a free public reading at the Uranus Café in Queen City’s LoDo district; a pretentious throwback to the Beat 1950s’ cafés that populated New York’s Greenwich Village. However and unfortunately, the cast was so large that the small avant-garde coffee house could not accommodate an audience in excess of twelve. Besides, who wants to listen to a “reading” of an opera? Surely, something is bound to be lost in transliteration.
Prof. Hans von Mummi’s wife, Helga, an environmental artist, accompanied him on the FEA field trip. Helga’s claim to notoriety was papering the trees and grass of Cheesman Park in Queen City’s Capitol Hill territory with pink crepe paper. But moments after she had completed the installation a torrential rain came and the paper soaked into the lawn, dying the entire park pink as it disintegrated. Apparently, crepe paper wasn’t such a great idea. It took several mowings before the park returned to green. Helga then restricted herself, at the request of the City Council, to the interiors of shopping malls. Oddly enough, the sunny day following her washout the Gay Pride Parade assembled in the pink park causing some to think it a message from God.
Philip and Mercy Pence, proprietors of The Prometheus Society LLC, were on the bus. The Pences specialized in removing the bodies of loved ones, turning them into ashes before scooping them into hand-crafted boxes before return delivery. They make all the arrangements as well as the boxes. The mourner is free of worries and stress. Should you want a quiet no-questions-asked cremation, one instantly forgotten, a never-happened cremation, the Pences were thrilled to accommodate their “special” clients in their time of distress——for a significantly inflated "special" price. The Prometheus Society LLC is a cottage industry owned and operated by the Pences from their very own cottage.
Philip Pence was once a grandiose pontificator perpetually certain that he knew better than anyone within the sound of his voice. His friends and acquaintances found him a boring buffoon. Since his quarrelsome certitude intimidated any attempt to disagree with him, Philip the Pontificator quickly and drastically limited his sales ability; as well as his friends. That said, about a year before today’s FEA field trip, he suddenly became a quiet person, a submissive person, an introspective man——Philip the Ordinary. What happened? Everybody noticed, but none could figure a motive for the change. It was as though Philip wasn’t there anymore; which brought to the minds of many, The Body Snatchers. Some went so far as to check their cellars for pods. Those who hadn’t cellars scoured the bushes.
Mercy Pence is a champion when it comes to selling insurance for a low maintenance funeral. The secret to her success is her studied illusion of empathy and her uncanny ability to secure down payments from people who could never afford the monthly installments and so would eventually default. Not Mercy’s fault. Mercy convinced herself that helping the poor buy into the American Dream of dying with dignity, with a quick and quiet departure, with neither inconvenience nor stress to the survivors for whom she was doing God’s work. Clearly, it was not her responsibility that "…some who hadn’t thought about the consequences of their signed-commitments, who forfeited years of their payments because they should have known better and paid their policies on time." It certainly wasn’t the fault of Mercy that "…they’ll soon find themselves in a black hole and covered with lye.”
Carlotta Bean, occasional poet and collector of houseboys, along with her current houseguest, were on the bus sitting near Billy Butts the entertainment and society reporter for Out And Beyond.
Nelson Beach, the lawyer who had managed to squirm free from disbarment after Sarah Hooker-Sanders, a lady with a heart of gold——in spite of her choice of profession——accused him of sexual harassment, was on the bus. Sarah Hooker-Sanders, his newly hired secretary, settled on an undisclosed under-the-table payment. She dropped the charges and Nelson raised her rank from secretary to executive assistant. He thought that he could then remain close to her without needing to pay for her personal and especial services, but with Executive Assistant Hooker-Sanders everything is negotiable.
Nelson Beach sat on a narrow bus seat next to his wife Minnie; plus-sized, resembling a blond Rhine maiden, who was a woman with a kind heart and a gentle disposition. Her husband’s indifference left her to create the illusion of the bus seat being more narrow than it ought. Minnie made jovial remarks meant to amuse, but they were never thought through far enough to anticipate how some might misinterpret her meaning. Poor thing. Minnie stayed home mostly and did nothing as far as anybody knew.
Moving on, the bus finally returned to Queen City with the Friends of Erotic Artifacts sansVictoria (V) Aires and Lily Nettles, who nobody noticed missing until long after the bus was on its way home——a fact that V would find unimaginably insulting and Lily would find it a just-goes-to-show-you lesson learned.
When the chartered bus was nearly halfway home Carlotta Bean’s Greek house guest inquired, “Plume-ed lady no come back?” of the whereabouts of V who had worn her mauve fedora with the red and yellow feathers stuck to one side under the maroon velvet ribbon that gathered into a puffy bow, about which Minnie Beach had fallen flat upon her own petard with one of her lackluster attempts at wit, obviously well beyond her grasp, by pointing out earlier that day to everybody within ten blocks of the bus station, “I love your hat, Vicky. Maybe I should go to the thrift store with you next time.” Minnie Beach reminded one of a roly-poly toy that uprights every time it is knocked over.
“You do that,” V said, balefully. “…and my name isn’t Vicky! Call me that again and I’ll flog you like a piñata!”
Minnie had an overblown desire to be quick-witted, though she would settle for funny, even amusing; however, she was regrettably disadvantaged by a shortsighted sense of humor. She did give the occasional dinner party designed to reinforce her friendship with others, although they never worked out quite the way she had planned. Her last dinner party resulted in four of her guests coming down with ptomaine poisoning from her matzo ball soup. “It wasn’t my fault. Queen Soopers sold me old rancid matzo meal.”
V rarely paid Minnie Beach much