by Chip Jacobs
“Dilly,” Fleet said. “Let there be bacchanalia.”
When the group tired of guzzling Budweiser from tin cups, they slurped it directly from the beer pipe, which gunned amber lager into their mouths at high velocity; Royo lapped up his foamy share from a pie pan. Soon their shirts were damp from overflow, and the second half of their “game” deteriorated with every predictable stumble and klutzy tackle.
The final play was controversial and cross-species. Gilly snapped a four-fingered hike to RG, who dodged a blitzing Waldo for an intended bootleg. Just as Nick closed in to deck him, RG at the last second pitched the ball to Royo. He caught it in his teeth, looped around, and outraced Waldo for the winning score.
“Doesn’t count,” Waldo protested. “Your halfback’s paw stepped out of bounds.”
“Like you’re sober enough to tell,” RG cracked. “Concede defeat, sport.”
Grass-stained and flush, they put their jackets back on in the November night and chugged some more. Afterward, they sat down to admire Pasadena’s nighttime sky. They were in drunken slumbers within minutes.
Right before he joined them, a disturbing thought occurred to Nick. If word leaked about what happened at Cawston, to say nothing of his role unleashing those voluble parrots, he might well have to bail town to join the people of the corn in the flatlands his forefathers fled: Indiana. Wouldn’t that be circularly ironic?
—
His blackout dream was a spinning carousel of unexpected encounters, commencing with the goddess that spellbound him at J. D. Mercereau’s wake and continuing with meeting eccentric Hattie in the blackened hills of Linda Vista. How that round tip from an unknown object was involved wasn’t evident. Whatever its role, the pointy thing was rocking his chin back and forth. “Go away,” Nick slurred from his Budweiser sleep cave.
His dream resumed with animals, and he saw himself kneeling next to the nail-perforated Mrs. Julius Caesar and next, playing guitar while Royo swaggered on his hind legs.
But that pesky tip returned, this time speaking with a European inflection. “Excuse me, you need to wake up.”
Nick rolled onto his side.
“Schnell. I cannot leave you here.” To emphasize that, the interloper stopped harassing his chin. The tip now rubbed directly over his mouth, and it reeked of shoe polish.
“Yooo-hooo. Wakey, wakey, Rip Van Winkle.”
Ah, crimminy. Nick shook awake in the netherworld between post-inebriation and pre-hangover. The sleep killer—a woman’s gray, colt-skin boot—lingered over his face like a dark zeppelin.
“Please, sir, my foot is tiring,” the stranger said. “It cannot taste very good.”
Nick hoisted himself onto his elbows. Needles jabbed his eyelids. “No, it didn’t,” he said with reasonable lucidity.
“I was afraid the police would discover you,” the old lady obviously from Germany said. “After the recent burglaries, including at my own house, an officer patrols the gardens every night. He’s quite strict. Youthful mischief would infuriate him.”
Nick, who knew all about the area’s cat burglar, stood up damp and shaky. The evening’s debauchery traced to him, and he slyly tried locating his accomplices that the woman had yet to discern. Using the moonlight and the garden’s spaced-out ground lights, he saw that Waldo was asleep, hugging a shrub twenty yards away. RG was farther away, snoring face down by a family of clay foxes in wedding garb. Knowing Fleet, he had probably crept away, gulped black coffee, and returned to his med-school studies.
“I appreciate your gesture, ma’am,” Nick said. “I hope I’m not, um—” He fumbled for verbiage that wouldn’t boomerang in court. “Not trespassing.”
“You are. I will not tell, though. I’m married to the property owner. And if my nose is correct, you enjoy his products.”
How fitting. Pasadena’s wealthiest doyenne, Lillian Busch, busting Nick in her husband’s storybook park. She extended her hand in introduction, revealing a weighty diamond ring probably worth more than Argentina’s gross domestic product. Mrs. Busch was continually in the news for her charitable giving and extravagant lifestyle. Nick mumbled his name, just a second before a crunchy rustling from the bushes diagonal from them.
“Oh, my heavens.” The petite woman in her late sixties covered her elongated mouth. “I hope that’s not a mountain lion pursuing somebody’s pussycat. Or us.”
Nick knew the stirring was no cougar. It was Gilly crawling up the hill in a job-preserving retreat. Should she uncover his beer pipe, Gilly would likely be standing by Nick at the next soup line. “Why take the chance with our welfare?” he said. “Let’s stroll toward the lamp. Nocturnal creatures detest light.”
She bought it, and they walked the opposite direction on a path of decomposed granite. What a pair: one was an unemployed, would-be inventor in a fog of liquor and uncertainty; the other was the archetype of a catalog grandmother whose family basically owned St. Louis, parts of Germany, and some of Pasadena’s most prized real estate.
“Try one of these candies,” she said, digging a wax-papered confection from her sweater pocket. “They’re scrumptious.”
As repulsive as candy sounded, Nick realized he coulndn’t demur. He unwrapped what appeared to be a caramel, depositing it into his cottony mouth. “Umm. What is this?” he inquired with a manufactured smile. “It’s not chocolate.”
“Marzipan. Wonderful, aren’t they? We order them special from Berlin.”
“They’re special all right, Mrs. Busch.” Nick thought he might puke on her colt-skin boots.
“Here,” she said. “Have another.”
Nick chewed it under the yellow lamplight’s chemical halo, yearning to spit it out. After they sat down on the bench beside the light, Lillian stared at the pink-lavender bruises on his face.
“Did you injure yourself tonight, doing whatever it is you were doing?”
Nick touched the cheekbone that’d made acquaintance with Otis’s right hook. “These? No. A disagreement with a former colleague turned heated, you might say.”
“Ja, Ja, I mean, yes, yes.” She examined him closer. “Say, I’ve seen you before. I’m certain of it. You ride an ostrich through the gardens, no? On some Saturdays, you perform tricks on it for the affirmed children. You make it fun balls.”
Nick was tempted to correct the doughy-featured woman that she meant “balls of fun.” Conversely, she could have him arrested for trespassing, and the negligent homicide of an innocent gnome.
“That’s me; those kids can’t get enough of it when I ride her backward, sideways, anyway I can. They’re especially fond of when I get thrown. I call my act an ostrich rodeo. Anything I can do to make them smile, I will.”
“You excel at it,” she said. “Though I’m more partial to our family peacocks. Their tail feathers remind me of cheerful times.”
Nick, whirling in disbelief that this woman recognized him, smiled. When he was starting out at Cawston, the Busches celebrated their fifty-year wedding anniversary here with a ring-kissing spectacle never seen before. During the festivity, she sat on a throne studded with diamonds and pearls. Well-wishers came bearing gold—as in gold flower baskets, a gold-ruby calendar and, in the case of then-President William Taft, who once toured the gardens in a motorcar, an uncirculated twenty-dollar gold coin.
The Busches’ next major event was an American Medical Association convention that set records for attendance. Thousands swarmed into the gardens for an elaborate, south-of-the-border-themed jubilee where troubadours and Mexican nationals served tamales in sombreros. As added flourishes, trained ducks waddled at guests’ feet and a meadow was specially planted with white carnations.
Her husband, Adolphus, a goateed, five-foot-five livewire, had in these fanciful grounds a sanctuary from corporate pressures and the hard-knuckle politics of keeping American alcohol legal. Pasadena, he spouted, was “the grandest place
in the world.” He was forever raising his chalice praising its aura.
“Not to offer unsolicited advice, but you might consider wine next time,” Lillian said, directing her long-lashed eyes at him. “Between us, Adolphus refers to his product as ‘dot schlop.’ He prefers the grape or Dom Perignon.”
“I don’t foresee much bubbly in my future,” Nick said, gazing up at the Milky Way. “Every time I blink, a black cloud’s hovering. Which is humorous for someone who covets a vocation in solar energy.”
Lillian buttoned the top of her sweater. “I’ve heard of such things. Some houses in town heat their water with the sun, no, on their roofs?”
“They do indeed. I want to spread my ideas wider.”
“Ostriches, ailing children, lights, wanton drinking: you’re a distinctive person, Nick Chance.”
Distinctive and desperate. Before he knew it, he was telling the baroness in pearls about his woebegone last few months. Despite the travails, he said he’d never give up on the sun-charged inventions that he invested hundreds of hours and countless all-nighters perfecting.
Lillian listened earnestly. When Nick was through, a smile upturned above her dimpled chin. “Since you’re mechanically inclined, I have a proposition, a job proposition. Adolphus usually does our negotiations. He’d call this mutually beneficial.”
Nick leaned forward, forgetting about his drunk, comatose friends. Here was her offer: Lillian said she’d ply connections to secure him a job on a “prestigious” public works project, provided he agreed to her “extra terms.”
Nick filled with appreciation, if not low expectations. The only city employment he knew had vacancies was in Pasadena’s waste disposal system, which outsiders described as “ingenious” because they weren’t stuck there. In this system, some of the citizenry’s collective shit was piped underground to collection fields miles away. There, the excrement was converted into fertilizer essential to grow foodstuffs—foodstuffs that Pasadenans consumed in a grotesque digestive cycle. This wasn’t a shiny future. It was a career tromping in acres of human feces. “The sewer?” he asked tremulously.
Lillian stifled laughter. “No, no, Nick. I hope you’re not afraid of heights.”
“I’ll change streetlights for a paycheck. I thank you and will—.”
“Dear, Nick. Stop guessing. On Monday, I’ll speak to someone at the Mercereau Construction Company. They have to listen because of my last name.”
Nick was almost shaking. Tumblers were clicking. “You mean on the bridge, the Colorado Street Bridge?”
“Correct. You must promise me that once I recommend you, you’ll be, what’s the word, conscientious. And that you’ll continue riding that silly ostrich for the children, and at the Easter egg hunt I organize for those without.”
“I accept,” he answered, probably too quickly. “I might just have an idea to share with the company, too.”
“You’re enthused. Good, good, good,” she said. “This has been a productive evening.” Lillian gave Nick the name of her contact, directing him to be at the man’s tent at seven on Tuesday. “Before I say goodnight, we do have one additional piece of business to conduct. Please follow me.”
Nick couldn’t fathom what it was. He hoped it wasn’t that elf he shattered.
They walked the trail to near where Mrs. Cleveland bested the Model T. After a bit, they stopped at the base of a knoll overlooking some of Busch Gardens’ more arbitrary embellishments: a Glider swing, a Grecian pergola, prickly cacti imported from Arizona (where Aubrey Eneas now spent his time on a new solar endeavor). To the west were the terraced steppes at the park’s western perimeter.
“Lilly,” as she insisted Nick call her, lifted the hem of her “hausfrau” dress and walked up the mound toward a flowerbed of special import. It was planted there to remind visitors what bankrolled this renowned parkland. The Anheuser-Busch emblem, a large capital “A” capped with a gold star on its high point and an eagle through its center, was inlaid in the grass in browns, reds, and yellows. The insignia measured a gaudy seven feet.
Lilly directed Nick’s attention to one of the flowerbed-eagle’s talons. The light here was weak, emanating only from Japanese lanterns strung from adjacent trees. Nick sidled closer to understand what she wanted him to view.
Damn! I knew I forgot something. Nick’s zzzz-ing, inebriated mutt lay there asleep. “Oh, Mrs. Busch, Lilly, apologies. He’s mine. An independent animal, to be sure.”
“I discovered him tonight before I found you. Do you get your pets intoxicated often?”
“First time,” he said. “We won’t repeat it. Again, it was a particularly dismal week.”
“As I gather. Now rest up. And thank you for brightening this old woman.”
Under clouds scudding around the moon, after he shook hands with Lilly-the-lifesaver, after he awoke Royo, Waldo, and RG, he lumbered up the switchback out of the gardens with a bum hip and his still-wasted dog in his arms.
Physically, he was a punching bag. Psychically, he was a man anew. His misadventure at Cawston opened a door to a job on a wondrous bridge the entire world would soon be lionizing. This was his destiny-bender.
Outside the upholstery shop a block from his Green Street bungalow, Nick set a sobering Royo onto his paws. Nick had no choice, for his stomach was yanking the ripcord on its contents. After he hunched over to vomit and dug out a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint, he turned his head. His intuitive dog was grinning at him, again.
—
Schematics in hand, future at stake, Nick swayed outside a crisp, white tent roomier than his cottage. Hung above the flap of the entry was a bold-print sign: “J. D. Mercereau Bridge and Construction Company: Management ONLY.”
Foremen in splattered overalls, some cradling mugs of steaming coffee, rotated in and out to receive the day’s marching orders in five-minute intervals.
“Next,” a voice bellowed. “Snappy now. Concrete mixing in thirty minutes.”
Nick puffed his cheeks and ducked under the flap, striding in assertively, only to bobble his designs when they brushed a tent pole; cat-quick, he grabbed them off the dirt floor. The man sitting behind a paper-jumbled desk offered no greeting.
“Excuse me, sir, I’m Nick Chance.”
Marcus Stonebreaker lifted his swarthy head and lowered it, continuing to annotate the edges of a structural blueprint. “Give me a second,” he said with a gravelly voice. “From what I heard, you’ve got no other pressing engagements.”
The company’s forty-five-year-old construction czar had kinky black hair, deep-creviced features, and hairy ears. Nick’s first impression: the man had the finesse of a grizzly, which, parenthetically, Pasadena boosters stressed no longer roamed the mountains, making meals out of hikers. After he finished writing, Marcus flashed Nick a scowl. “Mrs. Busch tells me you’re a gem, and a local,” he said. “All that gets you here is a sniff. List your qualifications.”
He stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and crossed his arms, waiting to be impressed. Nick could tell he was husky, well over six feet tall.
“I have management experience and a USC business degree,” he said. “I’ve been an ardent fan of your bridge since—”
“Sycophants need not apply,” Marcus interrupted. “And this isn’t our bridge: it’s Pasadena’s.”
“Right,” Nick said, gulping. “I’ll be quick. The city’s light standards, from what I’ve read, should throw off decent candlepower on the bridge deck.”
“And?”
“But there’s nothing to illuminate the adjoining hillsides. At nightfall, it’s pitch dark on the peripheries, which won’t be beneficial for drivers. Or safety.”
“And an ex-ostrich plucker has a solution to a backburner oversight?”
Yeah, he’s a grizzly. “As a matter of fact, I do. And it’s not pricey.” Nick unrolled his schematic on the table and twirled it around
for Marcus to analyze. “At Cawston, when I wasn’t overseeing the solar-powered water pumps and assisting running the place, I devoted myself to engineering and trial testing this.”
“Yeah, yeah. What am I looking at, exactly?”
“A new type of lamp that utilizes mirrors to channel heat from sunbeams into dark glass and obsidian. At night, the heat is released into a globe bulb coated with phosphorous. That, in turn, activates a filament generating a silvery glow that lasts all evening. My lamps don’t require much maintenance either. It’s mainly swiveling them every equinox to compensate for the sun’s seasonal path. Nothing to it.”
Marcus scrunched his face into the diagram. Nick’s rendering presented a tapered, two-foot-tall device with small, angled mirrors surrounding a floodlight-size bulb. The rounded base was where the crumbly heat-storing material sat.
“Damn thing reminds me of a metal petunia,” Marcus said. “Mirrors for petals. Am I wrong?”
Petunias? “No, good comparison. Admittedly, the wattage produced isn’t nearly as robust as the new lamps on Orange Grove Boulevard, but they cast surprising illumination. And they require no wires or hookups.”
“Tell me why I should gamble on an amateur, particularly when our budget is stretched to a breaking point. Wireless electricity seems pie in the sky.”
“Actually, it’s pie available now.”
“That’s big talk, Chance. If you were so gangbusters about your invention, you should’ve brought a prototype.”
“I would’ve, but we don’t have a deal, do we? This is a million-dollar concept, and I’m protective about it. If you think I’m blowing smoke, contact my former colleagues at Cawston who’ve seen it work. I bled for this.” Nick upturned his palms, exhibiting hands crisscrossed with scars and nicks.
