FAR WEST Chapter Six

GENTLEMAN JOHNNY

Across from the discolored green beyond the police cordon at a diagonal sat Gideon Hall.  The Hall was built during the Depression to replace the old Castle Philip as the seat of local government, which was terribly unfit for habitation due to its lack of indoor plumbing, proper heating, and poorly installed direct current electrical system that occasionally exploded.  The invention of alternating current with its complicated light switches was still too controversial for the past and former Anti-Tesla Party members of the city government to accept.  The eternal and ubiquitous thrift of Cranbury was hard to escape even in the present day.

            The Mayor ran up the three flights of stairs in his black and purple tracksuit.  His brow was dripping with sweat and his stiff body odor wafted up into the offices of the top floor of the Hall as made his way into his office.  He immediately sighed upon entering his office; he ignored the lights leaving the room in his preferred partial darkness.  These evening jogs were taking a toll on his aging body; he was nearing sixty faster than he thought he could bear.

            The blood cheeked Mayor and biological father of Rachel Cox, John Ramsay, meandered over to a burgundy leather couch that ran beside the fourth floor window of his executive office.  In the yellow light of the streetlamps that streamed through the panes of tempered glass, Ramsay sat beneath an Incan rug which was gift from Cranbury’s sister city in Bolivia and an encased 1654 parish map of the New Haven Colony. 

            The map was crowded and confusing, due much in part to the conflicting claims between New Haven and Taunton County over the Vale that had tenuously been resolved over the span of four centuries by the courts and many lawsuits filed on both sides of the Atlantic.  Such ancient adverse documents were to be found everywhere in Gideon Hall and the old Castle, which was now part of the Crown Trust and maintained by the royal estate.  Many of the documents did not use the name Cranbury Vale, until one of Stuart Kings took it upon himself to name the area for an ill-fated British General-at-Sea who had died fighting the Spanish in the West Indies.  The Vale had its far share of forgotten and expunged histories, traumas.  The official general audiences record taught to the fifth and eleventh graders bore little resemblance to the NC-17 truth.

            Out of the darkness, the Mayor’s Chamberlain (Chief of Staff) approached him sitting on the couch. “Sir, they want you to make a statement about the shooting.”  She scanned her notebook for additional phone messages, changes to his travel itinerary, and fundraiser notices for Mayor Ramsay.

            “Who is it now?” 

            The Mayor lay down on his couch.  Supinely on his back, he held his arms over his eyes trying to sleep and avoid his responsibilities for as long as possible.  The Chamberlain knew this was part of his routine of feigning exhaustion for staff meetings, in council sessions, and at home.  It was best to ignore his antics and just move it along. 

            She responded kindly, “The media, WQNP, your daughter, and a few of the local papers.”

            “Fucking parasites.”

            “Should I tell them that sir?”

            “I wish you would, but I doubt that you will.  The FCC would ban me from television forever, which may not be such a bad thing after all.”

            “Sir, you can’t alienate and anger them to go that far just yet.  Soon enough.”

            “I hate your alliterations!  They’ve isolated this city long before I became the next corrupt Mayor of Cranbury or is it County Director?  I don’t even know which offices I hold.”

            She sighed dismissively, “That was not alliterative, sir.  Not even close.  And you hold both titles, sir.”

            “I don’t care, Helena.  I was not elected Mayor because I aced senior year English, scored 5s on my APs or four digits on my SATs.  The ETS are a bunch of elitist conspiratorial fucks who have destroyed the local control of education and made the Universities lazy bordering on incompetent for a few more dollars and total control of our budgets wasted on preparation for their goddamn exams.  No one learns anything of any value anymore; curriculum is dictated to us by a bunch of Princeton assholes, what a wonderful future for our descendants.”

“You weren’t elected.  None of the mayors before you have been elected, at least not in this century.”

            “What does the history have to do with that?”

            “Democracy has yet to grace the city.  It’s not like it will anytime soon.”

            “Then remind me why I haven’t asked for your resignation?”

            “Two words, boss:  Rough sex.”

            Helena Kemken sat down on the Mayor’s outstretched legs and put her soft framed glasses on the lamp stand beside the couch.  She found a decrepit edition of The Mayor of Casterbridge resting in the darkness.  She picked it up and held it lightly in her left hand.  The cover began to deteriorate as she scanned through the withered illustrations of the Signet paperback.  A fleeting smirk covered her mouth and Helena promptly returned the book back to its place on top of the three-legged stand. Helena thought inwardly to herself without betraying the slightest hint of her mind’s wanderings.  One of her many talents.

            “Discretion is one of your strong suits.  Keeps me from losing my job to one of those party lackeys from Hartford because of some obscure articles of the state constitution or the colonial charter.” Ramsay interrupted her ruminations. 

            “Well according to the Cranbury Charter, I would take the post as soon as that happens.  There has not been a Deputy Mayor or City Chancellor since Ella Grasso was Governor.  There are worse consequences to befall you than that, Johnny.”

            “Bet you would love that.  But Why?  It’s a shit job without any respect or dignity.”

            “The legacy of our predecessors is alive and well.”

            “I’m expected to sell my children for all the cartons of cigarettes that fall out the back of a fast moving truck.  We are all bent on the take and puppets of your father.  Well, better him than the state or the Frost Corporation.”

            “Had to mention my father didn’t you.”  Helena stood up promptly and pouted as she did whenever provoked. 

            “He sent you to me to keep tabs on his city.  I am not profoundly stupid and sex crazed to miss that little detail.  I have lived here long enough to know the truth that no official or reporter can ever say without litigation or disappearing forever.”

            “I came here on my own.”

            “Bullshit!  You’re a terrible liar for all your allure.  There’s a vocabulary word for you—allure.  Didn’t think I knew words, did you, Helena?”

            The Mayor took off the top of his track suit, letting it fall on the Turkish carpet, and went to the bay window overlooking the multitude of police cars surrounding the Tower and the rest of the old center of the city.  Helena followed behind him, standing in the shade of the drawn curtains, and tried her best to re-assure him of her intentions. 

            “My father likes you.  He needs allies to keep Frost out of his business, at least until Cody gets indicted for treason and his arms deals with Iran or Belarus.  That might keep you in office just long enough for me to run for the Senate.”

            “Then onto the White House, right Mrs. Clinton?”

            “Eventually, but I’m not quite that evil.  I have yet to kill anyone, still a virgin, and I would need a husband first.  Americans don’t like overly aggressive women, I know I’m one.  A family salves their fears, even if it’s a total fraud.  We only want the appearance of perfection never the real thing.”

            “Like finding a Virgin?” he laughed sarcastically.  “Don’t look at me, marriage is sacred.  It shouldn’t be used for political advancement.  Only for legitimizing perverse sexual behavior between couples, everyone knows that.”

            “What I meant was that I need a husband just like you.  A career politician with a questionable past of bisexual adultery, selling off their illegitimate children and draft dodging to Vancouver.”

            “I only ran away to Canada, got a Section 8—nutcase rejection.  Insanity runs in the family.  We were all pardoned so it never officially happened.  I never married the mother of Rachel; she was too fucking crazy.  Really how cursed am I?”

            “Rachel hates me, doesn’t she?”

            “Because she knows you’re sleeping with me and her personality rarely appears less than abrasive.  More than probably, yes.”

            “You’ve told her?” 

            Helena said more casually than the visceral response of anger which she had expected herself to feel in this situation.  She had given a lot of thought to exactly how she could close this widening breach between them and simply surviving his daughter’s less than cordial manners.  Rachel had always been a difficult person, but she hated Helena with a burning passion that had intensified over time rather than waned.

            “She can just tell from the behavioral things.  She’s jealous of how I love you.”

            “Bit of a soap opera moment idn’t?”

            “I can feel the vomit rising, Miss Kemken.”

            Helena came into the pale light of the packed downtown streets and leaned her head against his shoulder.  Their hands gripped as attentions shifted to the Tower.  They were watching the rescue helicopter swept down over the skyscrapers as it approached the belfry of the tower amid the constant hum of the sirens and blinking lights of the police cars and ERT vans parked in front of the courthouse adjacent to his office and the Green.

            “You are quite the melodramatic one, aren’t you, Johnny.”  Helena whispered into his ears, she continued speaking in Russian, knowing full well that the Mayor could barely understand English.

            Helena stood at least a foot shorter than the Mayor.  Her jet black hair shined in the static reflection that came in from the street beneath their vantage.  Her large sepia eyes stared up to the dim shroud where the tower stood somewhere behind the shadows.  There was nothing but darkness above the Green. 

            A sudden brilliance illuminated the night revealing the disposition of the gawkers and police in the prolonged moment bathed in the burning white flash of lightning.  The jarring sound of metal ripping apart was truncated by the hard ugly sudden crash of the helicopter onto the tarmac of Taconic Street and the explosion of its fuel tanks outward towards the crowd, who ducked and ran off blindly for cover.  The aerial assault had failed more than completely.

            “Have you reached a decision, sir?”  Helena was on the verge of laughter.

            “I hate it when you call me sir!  Yeah, I’ll sign the order for Sergeant Bezzeg for you, make it official to save Major Templeman’s ass from the Feds again.  Fuck.”

            “I had the papers drawn up already.  All that is needed is your signature.”

            “I take it that Major Templeman has called him up already, and this is just for posterity.  Or is something more sinister, my dear, like setting me up for the fall?”

            “I can’t force things to happen.”  She smiled and slowly began to undress and redirect the Mayor’s thoughts elsewhere to a place where she was in complete control.

            “Why do you like him so much Helena?  Whenever there is a problem it’s ‘call Beg and he’ll fix it.’  We can’t let the due process happen.”

            She kneeled on the floor in front of the Mayor reclining on the couch.  “I used to know him better before he went after my father.”

            “You mean you two used to fuck.”

            Helena withdrew from his gaze, protecting her emotions from his view, as she pulled his drawstring pants down to his ankles.  “No, we never did.  That’s probably why I liked him so much.”