In The Middle of Middle America

by David B Lyons

  “Crazy, us saying we don’t really have anything in common, yet you don’t wanna leave,” I say, before snickering.

  “Ahhh...” she replies, shaking her head, “you really are arrogant.”

  “Me?” I say, pointing my thumb at myself, “you’re the damned liberal.”

  She purses her lips at me, trying to look disappointed but finding it difficult given that she’s grinning at the same time.

  The bartender places a glass of red in front of Lucy, then a Bud on the beer mat in front of me.

  “This one’s on me,” he says, waving his hand at us, “for your service, sir.” I glance down at the stars and stripes on my collar. “And you ma’am,” the bartender says to Lucy, “if I’m not mistaken, you’re a teacher at Median High School, right?”

  “Yeah,” she says, “did I teach you?”

  “Not me, ma’am. My younger sister, Jennifer Hirsch.”

  “Ahh... how is Jennifer?” Lucy asks, leaning into the bar genuinely intrigued to find out how her former student has been living her life. More proof she really cares for her students, even if they have long since left the school. I wonder what Brody makes of Miss Decker? He’s probably as infatuated with her as his old man is.

  “She’s great. She’s in the city — in Wichita — working in design for a tech company.”

  “Awesome,” Lucy says. “It was always obvious Jennifer would make something of herself.”

  “Well... I don’t wanna disturb you guys. Just wanted to buy you both a drink... you are both two fine members of society.”

  Then he walks away backward, his hands clasped together and his head slightly bowing at us.

  “Wow, that was nice,” Lucy says, turning to me.

  “Oh,” I say, batting my hand at her. “I get that all the time.” And then I laugh.

  “Well I sure as hell don’t,” Lucy says.

  She picks up her glass of red, swirls it and then takes a sip while smiling.

  “So… what were we talking about?” she says.

  “Clinton,” I remind her.

  “Ah yes,” she says. “And what was it you were trying to say to me again, with your tinfoil hat on?”

  I laugh another husky man-laugh.

  “I am not a conspiracy theorist,” I say. “I just don’t know how you can look at that man and tell me he’s squeaky clean. It’s as clear as day, it’s in his eyes. That man is as slippery as they come.”

  “Jesus, Johnny,” she says, using the Lord’s name in vain, which is probably my biggest pet peeve. But given that we’re both smirking and smiling and grinning at each other, I don’t say a word. “The man is probably the most scrutinized man on the planet. He’s just won the White House. Twice. If there was a scandal to be had, it’d be out there already.”

  “We’ll see,” I say shrugging my shoulders at her. “The two of them — him and Hilary — they just… they just…”

  “They just, what?”

  “They just creep me out, is all. Wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw ’em.”

  “But you wudda trusted George Bush for another term instead?” she says, creasing her brow smugly at me before taking a sip from her wine as if she’s just won the discussion.

  “See... this is the trouble with you Democrats,” I say. “You always assume you’re smarter than the rest of us.”

  “Well, statistically we are,” she says.

  “See!” I point at her. “This is a prime example of that arrogance I was talking about last Saturday. Democrats are so arrogant.”

  “Ha,” she replies, “says the Republican with his finger pointed in a woman’s face.”

  “Well… I mean…” I snatch my hand away. “I’m sorry about that — I was―”

  “Relax,” she says, laughing and then leaning in to touch my wrist. “I’m only pulling your leg, Johnny.”

  We both allow our shoulders to sink back down, and I take a large sip of beer while the silence settles between us.

  “Are Americans the only folk in the world who talk politics on dates?” I ask, placing my beer back down.

  I see the smile drop from her face. Darn it! I bet that’s ’cause I said the word “date.” She doesn’t think this is a date, does she?

  “Probably,” she says. “It’s the two-party system in America that divides us, isn’t it? You’re either on the red team or the blue team in America. Bipartisanship goes out the window, doesn’t it? Bipartisanship doesn’t exist in our country. Whereas in Europe, there are a multitude of political parties their people can vote for, so the population isn’t divided on such a sharp knife edge. Not like we are. We are divided literally down the middle. Wanna know what the average percentile difference is in our Presidential races?”

  ‘Go on,’ I say, intrigued. She may be arrogant. But she’s right. She’s definitely smarter than me on this subject.

  “Fifty-three percent to forty-seven percent. No matter what way it goes… sometimes the Republican wins by a few points, sometimes it’s the Dems. But no matter what, the nation is split pretty much down the middle. Always.”

  “Wow,” I say, leaning on the bar. “I never realized it was always that close. So you think we should have more political parties than just two? But, wait a sec, would that not just divide the nation into more groups?”

  “Well... kinda, yeah. I guess,” she says, shrugging. “But at least the division wouldn’t be so razor sharp. The difference between four groups wouldn’t always be on a knife edge like we are with two, right? But that’s not the main reason for the division in America anyway.”

  “What is?” I say before taking another sip of beer.

  “The media,” she says. “They thrive on this division. Their main objective in this country is to divide the population of the United States right down the middle. Every single news anchor’s job in this country is to scare us, and then divide us. S’what they’re paid to do.”

  Six

  “Do you think we’re doing what’s best for America?” Sarah-Jane asked as she continued to pace around the small, oval coffee table in the middle of her tight dressing room, with one hand held against her forehead.

  Phil took his eyes from his roaming boss, then, using two of his chubby fingers, hooked aside the cuff of his left sleeve.

  “You’re asking this ninety minutes before going live?”

  “It’s just…. ugggh!” Sarah-Jane stopped pacing, then held both hands to her face so she could mumble into them. “I hate those opening two lines. It’s not what this should be about. I’m just worried all we’re doing is dividing the American people. We should be reporting this as a human story, not…” She shook her head, then looked up at Phil’s bullish features. “There are thirty million projected to tune in tonight.”

  Phil scratched at his patchy beard.

  “Somebody told you?”

  “Walter.”

  “Hmmm,” Phil said. “Listen...” he took a step closer to his boss, and reached a hand to cup her elbow. ‘The producers didn’t wanna tell you how big the audience is projected to be, ’cause they thought you’d start getting panicky and… and well, pacing around your dressing room worrying about what America is gonna think. I promised them you wouldn’t panic; that you never panic.”

  Sarah-Jane curled her lips at Phil, though he didn’t mirror her half-smile like most people would, simply because Philip Meredith never smiled.

  “Thanks Phil,” she said, cupping the hand that was cupping her elbow.

  As they stood staring into each other’s eyes, a knock rattled against the door of the dressing room, and while Sarah-Jane moved to answer it, Phil glanced down at the coffee table, noticing all of the newspapers fanned out on the top of it were still leading with photographs of Princess Diana—even though her death had occurred many weeks prior. In that moment, as he stared at the Princess’s heavy blue eyes, he realized that these newspapers would most likely carry the image of his boss on their front pages the next day.

  “Ni
nety minutes till live,” the pock-faced boy who had greeted her in the lobby three hours earlier said. “Time to get you to hair and makeup.’”

  Sarah-Jane glanced over her shoulder at Phil, to catch him picking up her purse. Then they both left the dressing room she had inherited that was clearly too small to pace furiously in.

  They were lead down one floor via the back stairwell and then through a narrow maze of dimly-lit hallways that mirrored upstairs before the pock-faced young man whose name Sarah-Jane couldn’t recall, abruptly stopped outside one of the doors and knocked on it. When that door opened, a flood of light hit them.

  “Oh hellu,” a thick Scottish accent called out. Sarah-Jane adjusted her eyes to the light, to see a beautiful, older, brunette woman smiling kind eyes at her.

  “Hey,” Sarah-Jane said.

  The brunette nodded once.

  “Ya nervous?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Nervous fo’ tonight?”

  “Excited,” Sarah-Jane said.

  Then the brunette led Sarah-Jane to a large chair in front of a mirror framed by two dozen naked light bulbs—all of them sizzling and humming with white light.

  “I’m Mollie,” the brunette said. “And I’ll be doon ya hair ’n’ makeup.”

  “You look beautiful,” Sarah-Jane said to Mollie’s reflection as she sat back.

  “Ach aye,” Mollie said, “I think me ’n’ you gonnae get on just fine.”

  They did get on just fine—talking as if they had been best friends since high school with such haste that Phil realized early on his presence wasn’t required. So, he slid himself into the waiting lounge chair next to the hair and makeup front door where he picked up a newspaper with Princess Diana’s pale face on the front page, crossed his legs, and began thumbing through the pages.

  Sarah-Jane and Mollie discussed the level of the anchor’s nerves versus her excitement, then they talked about how naturally pretty she was before the conversation turned to the people Sarah-Jane would be interviewing in just eighty minutes time.

  “Will you be doing their hair and makeup, too?” Sarah-Jane asked.

  “Light makeup. Just enough to make sure their skin is no’ shinin’ through the screen. A wee bit o’ powder. And if they have any spots or blemishes I normally cover ’em up. Sometimes guests turn up and their hair is a right mess, so I might give it a little goon over. Though tonight who knows who’s gonnae show up, eh? These guys are hardly used to bin on television, are they?”

  Sarah-Jane agreed by producing a little grunt in the back of her throat, simply because she couldn’t nod her head, nor audibly communicate with Mollie while the makeup artist was busy applying, with the subtlest of strokes, lipstick to her latest muse.

  “Just make sure, is all I’ll tell ya,” Mollie said with her nose an inch from Sarah-Jane’s, “that you don’t become one of the overcoat girls.”

  Sarah-Jane sat immediately upright, causing Mollie to tut and then swivel around to grab a wet wipe.

  As she mopped up the streak of scarlet lipstick stretched across Sarah-Jane’s cheek, the anchor, deadpan, asked, “what’s an overcoat girl?”

  “I shuddnae say,” Mollie said, “but once or twice a day some o’ the girls are asked to wear somethin’ sexy up to Walter Fellowes’s office—and Isla in wardrobe, she gis ’em a gray overcoat to wear over it as they’re goon up the lift.”

  “Something sexy? For what?” Sarah-Jane asked, squinting into the mirror.

  “Well, that’s what we’d all love tae know,” Mollie said as she re-screwed the square lid onto her lipstick.

  Sarah-Jane pretended her neck was itchy so that she could turn around sharply to take Phil in while she scratched at it. He was peering up over the pages of the newspaper at her, then he let his eyes drop back down.

  “So, what’s Walter Fellowes really like?” she elected to ask next, as she turned back around to the mirror.

  Mollie sucked on her own teeth, then pulled open a drawer below the glowing mirror.

  “He’s a’right, I guess. But ya ne’er see him down here, no’ really. He’s a’ways up there in his big office and sure he just comes straight doon the lift to the parking lot underneath and gets driven home. I rarely see ’im. Have you met with ’im?” she asks into the mirror.

  “Twice,” Sarah-Jane said. “First time when he offered me the job and second, when, well… I just met with him for dinner just now.”

  Mollie nodded and then creased her kind eyes at Sarah-Jane’s reflection while a silence swept its way through the overly-lit room. It was most unusual for hair and makeup to fall silent, given that Mollie McRae rarely took a breath from talking. She, stereotypical to her profession, loved to gossip, and often opened up to the new female employees as soon as she met them about the gray overcoat scandal, just so she could at least try to save them from falling into the trap. She rarely did save them, in truth, with stories of female employees looking sheepish in the gray overcoats she had warned them never to wear pushing their fingers on a button next to double golden doors of the elevator still being told on a regular basis.

  “Have you ever worn a gray overcoat?” Sarah-Jane asked as Mollie took a hair brush and a spray bottle from the drawer.

  “Was asked to once,” Mollie replied. “By Walter’s secretary, Barbara. Have ya met her?”

  “Yes,” Sarah-Jane said. “She seemed really nice.”

  “She’s a fookin’ enabler, she is.”

  “A what?”

  “She does all his scoutin’ for him. Helps get all the prettiest girls up tae his office.”

  Sarah-Jane widened her eyes, and in that moment would have loved to have glanced back at Phil once again, only she felt a magnetic pull to hold Mollie’s stare through the mirror.

  “And so, what did you do when you were asked to go to his office?” she asked.

  “I told Barbara to go and shi’e.”

  “Go and shy?”

  “Shi’e.”

  “Shy?”

  “Shite,” Mollie said, annunciating the T has forcefully as she could, kicking it off her top palate.

  “Oh,” Sarah-Jane said as Mollie began squirting water to the back of her hair. “And what happened after you told Barbara to go and shite?”

  “Dunno,” Mollie said. “She musta moved on to find another wee girl for Walter that day.”

  Sarah-Jane furrowed her brow. She wasn’t sure what to make of Mollie’s revelation; having assumed that if you didn’t succumb to Walter Fellowes’s advances, then surely you were bound to lose your job.

  “And you’re working at CSN how long?” Sarah-Jane asked.

  “Eight years.”

  “And he’s never asked you up to his office again?”

  Mollie shook her head, then placed her spray bottle down on the counter beside the mirror and began brushing through Sarah-Jane’s wet locks.

  “That’s what I’m sayin’… start as ya mean to go on with ’im. If he asks you to wear something to up tae his office, just tell him to go and shi’e.”

  Sarah-Jane coughed and laughed at the same time.

  “I sure will,” she said. Then she pretended her neck was itchy again and turned to face Phil while she scratched at it. Phil kept his eyes on the newspaper. “Wait!” she said, turning back to the mirror. “What are you doing with my hair? I’m just gonna go with a simple tied-back ponytail tonight.”

  “We’re doing the Farrah Fawcett-style retro blowout, similar to what you had in the teaser advertisements,” Mollie said.

  “No. I’ve thought about this. I want a simple ponytail. I don’t want to look all flashy. Just tie it back tight from the front and give me a simple ponytail.”

  Mollie swiveled Sarah-Jane’s chair around, then took one step back and folded her arms.

  “Exec Producer’s already had a word with me.”

  “Howie? Howie wants me to wear my hair blown back and fancy?”

  “Makes sense, I guess. Audience is tunin’ in to see the wom
an in the teaser advertisements, so may as well make you look as familiar as possible, aye?”

  “Tonight isn’t about glamour,” Sarah-Jane said, and as she said it, Phil folded the newspaper over before slapping it down on the lounge chair next to him.

  “I mean, we can call Howie and ask―”

  “I want a simple ponytail!” Sarah-Jane said, interrupting Mollie.

  “It’s just that Howie is ma boss, and―”

  “She wants a ponytail,” Phil said. Then he stood and folded his arms, just as a knock rattled against the door.

  “Don’t worry,” Sarah-Jane said to Mollie as Phil moved to answer it. “I’ll let Howie know I was adamant you did my hair in a ponytail. He can’t tell me how to do my hair.. he can ah… what’s the phrase, he can go and shy.”

  Mollie puffed out a laugh while Phil inched the door open to find a man whose face took a moment to register in his memory.

  “Sorry,” Phil said, “Sarah-Jane isn’t meeting with any of the guests before going live.”

  “Oh please, sir,” the man said. “She knows me a little. I’ve spoken to her before. Can I just have a quick word. I won’t keep her.”

  Sarah-Jane squinted at Mollie through the mirror, then spun around in her chair.

  “What’s going on, Phil?” she said.

  “One of the guests is here. Says he wants a quick word.”

  “Which guest is it?” she asked.

  Phil turned back to the crack in the door.

  “What’s your name again?”

  “It’s ah, Patrick,” the guest said, before shifting his feet awkwardly. “Patrick Klay.”

  BRODY EDWARDS