Wimbledon, Kentucky

by H. Claire Taylor

  The rest of the party wasn’t quite following, so Gavin took in a couple lungfuls of air, sat up straight in his chair, and began to elaborate.

  “Well, see, here’s just what I mean. There was this one time I cut myself while I was shaving my legs. I played football, you see and the socks just gave me ingrown hairs. ” Everyone aahed in relief. “Anyway, I cut myself bad with the razor, took a chunk of skin right off. My father said, ‘Gavin, yous gowna havta get that thar town medcine man to look atcho leg,” but I said, ‘No, Daddy, I don’t need that. God’ll heal it for me.’

  “Anyway, God did heal it for me. Only, where he filled up the hole was extra hard skin. No hair ever grew out of it again.

  “So, that’s what I’m saying. Maybe God healed the hole in the ozone layer with extra hard ozone, and that’s why it’s gotten cold.”

  Gavin’s point was lost on the other guests, who were all slightly offended that Gavin had felt the need to explain scar tissue to them.

  Feeling embarrassed about her selection of a plus-one, Georgina did the only thing she could think of to do.

  “That’s an amazing story, Gavin. You’re truly in touch with God in a way we could only hope to be.”

  She tried to use guilt.

  Malcolm, of course, was impenetrable to Christian guilt, and so he was the only one who could help draw everyone else out of the crossfire.

  But of course he didn’t.

  Laurel’s re-entrance into the dining room was what finally broke the tension, although her dessert selection stirred up the deep-seated guilt once again.

  “You have two choices,” she said. “I know some people are chocolate people and some are vanilla, so I made both angel food cake and a devil’s food cake for you to chose from.” Then she added, quite unnecessarily and unfortunately, “Choose wisely.”

  She began passing the cakes around the table as everyone took a slice of the one they wanted. As the cakes made their way back around to Laurel, she couldn’t help but comment, “Seems like we don’t have any chocolate people here. Oh,” she said, rotating the platter so that she saw two slices missing, then looking around the table to see whose plate those slices had ended up on, “I guess I was wrong. Malcolm seems to be a chocolate person. Oh! And Frank, you seem to be both a chocolate and vanilla person.”

  Frank nodded. “Happiness is never in the extremes. It’s always found in a middle ground.”

  Laurel smiled and nodded politely, though she didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about and was slightly disgusted when he started mashing together his two slices of cake.

  “This is all bullshit,” Bill said, suddenly breaking the contemptuous silence he’d been holding for the past half hour. “Can we please stop throwing out ideas that we either know nothing about or know for a fact can’t be true?”

  “It’s just a little brainstorming, honey,” Laurel said sweetly through gritted teeth. “No harm in a little brainstorming.”

  “All I’m saying,” Bill continued, “is that you’re all full of crap. That’s all I’m saying…” Bill lifted his hands defensively into the air before digging back into his fluffy cake.

  Dr. Leinenkugel laughed and a few crumbs of cake were shaken loose from his beard. “Bill, you old curmudgeon, you might be onto something.”

  He set his fork down on his plate, grabbed his napkin out of his lap and shoved it, too, onto his plate, and from that small gesture, everyone knew he meant business.

  “We’re talking out of our ass, so to speak,” he said. “We’re all trying to sound more intelligent than we really are—with the exception of myself, of course—and that’s not going to help us. We need to stop worrying about impressing people with our knowledge, and stop trying to broadcast what sort of people we are, or rather, what sort of people we fancy ourselves to be, and just start thinking at our real levels.

  “Georgina, you didn’t have the slightest idea of how a star can swallow another object that gets stuck in its orbit, but you wanted to sound like you had some sort of knowledge about that. You’re just a hairdresser with a GED. For all our sakes, start thinking like one.

  “Jack, you feel like you should care about global warming, the ozone layer, the whales, the polar bears, providing healthcare to all Americans, pressing criminal charges on Cheney, and what France thinks of us, but I have a feeling you don’t actually give a damn about that.”

  “I—but—see, the thing is—my dad—” stammered Jack.

  “Bingo. You only care about what your dad thinks of you. I knew Charles Knowles very well. He was a close friend of mine. Bret’s, too. If I remember correctly, your father was an avid supporter of the—”

  “Quiet, you!” Jack yelled. Georgina’s hand shot up to cover her heart at his outburst. His eyes darted around the room, as he hoped that maybe, just maybe all these other people were too young to remember what his father was so well known for around town.

  Bret took over for Frank. “No shame in it, boy. He was president of the Wimbledon Republicans. So what?”

  Jack threw his hands up to his face to cover his eyes so that he didn’t have to see the looks of shock on everyone’s face as his family’s secret was revealed.

  But no one gasped.

  Slowly Jack peeked through his fingers to find that, yes, everyone was looking at him, but most likely just because he was clutching his face.

  Gavin patted Jack comfortingly on the shoulder, saying, “It’s okay. We all have daddy issues. If it makes you feel any better, my daddy was a practicing queer.”

  Jack slowly turned to look at the man next to him who was stroking his back ever so gently.

  “My dad married a Jew…and took her name,” Malcolm added.

  “See?” Gavin said. “We shouldn’t have to pay for our fathers’ awful, awful lapses in judgment.”

  Bill hadn’t moved a muscle since the word “queer.” His wide eyes darted around the table to try to get his social footing. “I’m not really sure when this turned into a counseling group…”

  Frank shrugged. “Yeah, back to my point. My point is that everyone here needs to get real and dumb down to where they should be and stop acting like they care about things they don’t. Maybe then we can get some real thinking done.”

  “I’m not a smart person…” Malcolm said.

  “Attaboy,” Frank replied.

  “…and so when I heard people around the news station talking about how stupid this one theory was, I just kept silent, because I couldn’t figure out why it was stupid. I’d just say things like, ‘Man, that sure is one crackpipe idea,’ or ‘Yeah, that’s a really stupid notion,’ but that was just to fit in.”

  “What was the idea?” Georgina asked.

  “Apparently it was made up by some crazy old man around town. Old Carpenter or something, I think his name was.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “Old Carter,” Laurel corrected, her disbelief showing through her slackened expression. “You’re about to quote Old Carter.”

  “And God help us,” Bill added, “but we’re about to listen.”

  Malcolm collected his thoughts then realized that thinking too hard about anything that old man said was probably only going to muddle things further. “He said that people need to grow more body hair. That that’s somehow the reason why we’re all so cold this year.”

  Melanie shook her head. “No, I just can’t do this. I can’t give any weight to the words of that old buffoon. Maybe you didn’t hear what else he said in that interview, but I did. He also said the reason people have body hair is to shame kids out of having premarital sex.”

  “But that part’s true,” Gavin said. “That’s why we have hair…down there.” He finished by whispering the words behind his hand, though no one was sure who he was trying to keep from overhearing him.

  Dr. Leinenkugel sighed like a tired father having to explain something for the fiftieth time. “Gavin, I thought we weren’t going to pretend to be who we thought we should be anymore.
You’re telling me you seriously believe that God gave us pubic hair to shame kids away from premarital sex?”

  Gavin nodded. “Yes.”

  “But what about razors?” Jack asked. “Why did God give us the brains to invent razors if body hair is godly?”

  “Oh, no,” Gavin said, laughing slightly at Jack’s ignorance. “God didn’t give us razors, the Devil did. I pray to God every day to forgive me for the trespasses I committed in the name of football pants.”

  Everyone at the table groaned, except Jack, who was hell-bent on proving Gavin wrong.

  “Then how come you don’t have any facial hair? And I’ve seen you in a bathing suit; your chest is completely smooth!”

  “God granted me the gift of being almost entirely

  hairless, with the exception of my legs. Everyone has gifts, Jack, one of mine just happens to be particularly sexy.”

  Georgina was embarrassed once again for her poor choice of a plus-one, so she decided to try to mediate. “Some of what Gavin is saying might not be…well, in accordance to your own beliefs, but there is some truth to the body hair thing. Sure, I doubt any of us here waited until marriage before we had sex, but I bet there wasn’t one of us who didn’t need a few years once we started having urges to get over the embarrassment of having…you know…that situation downstairs.”

  Everyone agreed and was simply content with agreeing on something, even if it got them no closer to anything.

  “Georgina has a point,” Frank said. “Even if she is trying to sound more intelligent than she actually is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THERE COMES A POINT IN every dinner party when each guest begins to start thinking in vivid detail about what his or her own bed looks like. First the brain focuses on the comforter—always the comforter—imagining the texture, the amount of stuffing, the pattern, how long it hangs off each side—maybe it drags slightly on the carpet—then the pillows come into focus—the thread count of the pillow cases, the firmness of each one, then one by one each decorative pillow—and maybe then the television comes into view, perhaps propped up on the dresser, just at eye level for someone who’s tucked comfortably into said bed, remote control in hand. Or maybe there’s no television, and some soothing music begins to play instead, some slow, soft melody that goes perfectly with candles or aromatherapy.

  It’s at this point in the night where the majority of agreements are made, and often haphazardly. In fact, though unbeknownst to all the Dinner Summit attendees, all of the major agreements of the past five hundred years of Western history have been made during this twilight time. The French even created a word just for that sort of state: prissemetterammention.

  On the night that term was coined, the original idea was to create a compound word that stemmed from smaller words relevant to the situation, but at the point in the evening when the discussion took place, after too many glasses of wine and far too many baguettes, someone stumbled in their speech and said something that sounded like prissemetterammention. The rest of the group decided that prissemetterammention would work just fine, as everyone was too focused on their comforters to draw out the discussion any longer.

  The honored guests of Laurel Sapphire’s Dinner Summit had each reached his or her own prissemetterammention. While Malcolm had achieved it much earlier in the evening, one by one each guest’s eyes began to glaze over, and their shoulders began to slouch.

  One can never choose where the conversation will be when this state is reached, so one can only hope it’s at a somewhat coherent point in the discussion. That was not the case for Laurel Sapphire’s Dinner Summit. Laurel Sapphire’s Dinner Summit conversation was still on the topic of Old Carter’s theories.

  “I can’t tell,” said Bret Hammersmith in an uncharacteristically dreamy voice, “if I can’t argue with that idea because there are no flaws in it or because it’s so flawed that I have a hard time knowing where to begin disproving it.”

  Melanie Johnston, whose teacher posture was completely shot to shit, had one arm flung over the back of her chair as she nodded. “Yeah, I’m sort of right there with you on that, Bret.”

  Georgina Angus perked up, or rather she remained slouched, propping up her chin with her hands, her elbows on the table, but one of her eyebrows managed to perk up. “But what if—no. Wait, I guess… Yeah, I can’t tell, either.”

  “It gives me goose bumps, actually,” said Jack Knowles, extending out his bare forearm demonstratively.

  “It feels like…” Gavin McQueen searched for the words to describe it. “It’s like…you know it can be disproved, but at the same time, it just feels better to believe it exists. It gives you hope to know there’s a solution. It feels like…”

  “God?” Jack suggested.

  Gavin snapped out of his thoughts. “What? No. I was thinking of math.”

  Laurel shoved her empty dessert plate as far away from her as she could. “I think we should really delve into this body hair thing a little more,” she said, “because it seems to be about the best we have to go on.”

  Dr. Frank Leinenkugel thought differently. “I think that’s exactly what we need to not do. This idea of growing body hair as a response to the global cooling is just confusing enough that people might buy it. By that, I mean that it’s so dumb that people will hear it and say, ‘Surely if I can poke holes in this notion so easily, then there must be a lot more to it that I just don’t understand.’ Take the government, for instance.” He held up a preemptive hand toward Bret before giving a warning glance to Jack. “What I’m saying is that people will sometimes let a government get away with all kinds of horrible things because they assume it has more knowledge and intel than the people themselves. And guess what. The governments—all of them—have told the people to listen to what we have to say. That alone seems unbelievably crazy, and yet people are buying it. So for now, I think we need to just come to a consensus on our plan of action and stick to it, because the bottom line is this: the world outside of Wimbledon wants a solution, but if we plan on giving them a solution, it will have to be one that requires them expending less effort in their daily lives, or else they will never go for it. We can also be pretty sure that our solution won’t actually solve anything, so we’ll just give them the next best thing to a solution; we’ll give them an answer. Less promise of correcting this situation, and the less we can promise, the less likely we’ll all be lynched or meet the same fate as the Hopshirites—whatever fate that actually is—when our answer doesn’t change a damn thing.” Frank looked around at the other guests. “So what do you all say? Do we want to go with the body hair solution and just stick to our guns, or do we want to brainstorm some more solutions?”

  Before anyone else could reply, Melanie chimed in. “You know, there’s always the chance that this is just another naturally occurring temperature shift. They’ve been happening all throughout the history of the earth, as far as science can tell. There’s no reason they shouldn’t keep happening naturally just because civilization is around.”

  “So true, Melanie,” said Frank.

  She smiled proudly. “So, why don’t we just announce that as our conclusion? It would be more honest.”

  “Because not one goddamn person wants to hear it,” he said. Then, “All in favor of the body hair explanation say ‘aye.’”

  Prissemetterammention compelled each guest to say “aye.”

  Even Melanie.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “BUT HOW ARE WE GOING to convince people that this is the answer?” asked Malcolm.

  Bret patted his spokesman on the back. “That’s for you to figure out, son. You’re the one with the media at your fingertips.” Bret held his hands out and wiggled his fingers demonstratively.

  Malcolm leaned back, putting room between himself and Bret’s flailing digits. “Nuh-uh. I only have half of the media at my fingertips. If you want everyone convinced, you’re going to need someone like Eugene to push this story, too.”

  Bret ga
sped in an et tu Brute? sort of way. “I hope this is some humorous side of you that’s just now coming out, Malcolm. I hope this is a joke.”

  Dr. Leinenkugel began packing the pipe he’d pulled out of his pocket not long after he’d finished his mashed cake. “Bret, the boy’s right. I hate that Eugene Thornton fellow just as much as the rest of you—”

  “It’s true,” Malcolm piped up. “He chased him off with a gun, just like you, Mr. Hammersmith.”

  Bret nodded approvingly, though his face remained stern.

  “—but the fact of the matter is that people like Malcolm are only going to convince half of the population. Without people like Eugene backing the story as well, the other half of the people are simply going to believe the opposite of whatever Malcolm reports. Unfortunately, we are going to need a team effort here.”

  “Eugene Thornton is not a team player.” It was Jack Knowles who said it, and the rest of the guests jerked their heads around to assess him.

  “I thought you of all the people would love the guy,” Bret said disdainfully.

  Jack turned up his nose in disgust. “No, not at all. After he came and covered the faux-fur protest I was heading up, I got online and Googled some of his stuff to see how he would go about presenting our mission to the world. Turns out, he’s just another exploiter. He doesn’t care about liberal ideals any more than he cares about conservative ideals. He only cares about monetary ideals. He’ll scare anyone into believing anything if it’ll get him higher ratings, and I can only assume that he works for the station he works for, and covers the stories he covers, because they pay the most.”

  Bret stood up in his chair and walked around the table to where Jack sat. Bret stuck out his hand. Jack flinched, but after staring at it for a few seconds noticed it was an open palm, not a fist, and shook it.

  “Maybe we can come to some sort of an understanding after all, Mr. Knowles. You may be a cracked-out, lazy liberal, but at least you have values, the most important of which is that you think Eugene Thornton is scum.”