The Crash of Hennington (2 page)

—I’m not sure. Just got off the train and I’m here. A week. A month. I’m not sure. What’s your name?

—Eugene.

—Tybalt Noth.

Tybalt Noth offered a hand. Eugene, surprised again, accepted the shake.

—Unusual first name.

—A ridiculous name given by ridiculous, if loving, parents. I go by Jon.

—So an open-ended stay is what you’re looking for?

—You have summed up the matter admirably.

Jon né Tybalt smiled.

—I’m visiting an old friend, you see. I don’t know when I’ll be leaving.

—An open-ended reservation ought to be fine. We’re not that crowded.

—Because it’s so damned hot.

The man betrayed not one drop of sweat, despite having recently arrived from the oven outside. Eugene took his identification and credit card and entered them into the computer.

—You might want to change clothes, sir. The heat doesn’t look to let up anytime soon.

—Call me Jon, please, and I know about the weather. I’m from here. I can remember many a pressure-cooker summer.

—Really?

Why was it so surprising that this man was a Hennington native? Yet it was, most definitely.

—I just haven’t been back in a long time. These are my traveling clothes. Trust me, Mr Eugene, I brought appropriate attire.

He took the card key Eugene offered him.

—Room 402.

—Thank you, Eugene.

—And my name’s Eugene if you need anything else.

Jon blinked.

—Thank you again. I’ll remember that. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, Eugene.

He grabbed his bag, hitherto out of Eugene’s sight below the rolling back of the sperm whale. Eugene started making sounds about getting a bellhop, but Jon waved them off.

—I like to carry my own bag.

He smiled again, warmly and, it struck Eugene, incongruously for being dressed like a fallen angel. He turned and walked to the elevators. He seemed shorter than at first sight, but he moved with a sense of balance so sure and smooth that he seemed to glide. At the elevators, he turned.

—Is The Crash still hovering about town?

—Of course. They never change.

—Ah, that’ll be something to see again.

The elevator arrived. Jon disappeared into it. Eugene looked back at his computer screen. Jon Tybalt Noth’s return address was in the Fifty Shores, which meant that he had traveled three and a half thousand miles across the widest expanse of the Brown, by
train,
dressed in black. Eugene entered a note reminding the evening staff to check if Jon needed any other cooling amenities. He thought for a minute, erased the note, and decided to ask Jon himself at the end of his own shift.

Poor Eugene. He never knew what hit him.

2. A Confluence of Nudity.

Many years before she became
the
Cora Larsson, legendary Mayor of Hennington and remembered in a generation of matronymics, Cora Trygvesdottir went sunbathing in the nude and met the man who would become her husband. The scene: infamous Conchulatta Beach, that prime piece of land hooking its way over the southern entrance to Hennington Harbor, its crescent stretching from calm harbor to violent strait to calm ocean. Cora went alone, a not uncommon occurrence during a final year at college spent fleeing the daily catastrophes of two flatmates. Her natural inclination for serenity left her unable to really enjoy the boom crash of college life. That she excelled at it and later at law and still later at politics seemed to Cora to be the same sort of infuriating fate joke as penguins being such great swimmers: you did what you were good at and tried to ignore the fact that your flippers were really handicapped wings.

And so here was Cora, hatless and tanned, humming to herself, marching down to the beach, having parked her hasty in the last available slot. She carried a law coursebook, but even she knew that it was more or less a pretext. Henningtonians were not an especially beach-worshipping bunch, but neither were they beach-foolish. There were rules. The beach was a place where she could expect quiet and calm, especially if she read from an unattractive book of laws and even more so if she removed her bathing suit,
de rigueur
as the beach edged west. A naked sunbather was a serious sunbather, and Cora could wear her nudity as a shield against bothersome, over-friendly beachwalkers.

Along with her law book, Cora carried her hasty keys, a tube of sunblock with a much too low defense level, a small
bottle of water, and a Mansfield U beach towel. She wore only sunglasses, sandals and a bikini, more appropriate attire having been left in the hasty’s trunk. For a Wednesday, the beach was crowded, but Cora made good time heading past the unseemly hordes of casual visitors. As she got further west, the families thinned and solitary sunbathers became more common. No one was in the water. It was hammerhead season and even with the iffy safety nets, you only swam if you were suicidal or drunk.

She grew faintly aware that the female-to-male ratio on the beach was beginning to tilt in favor of the men. She was a confident young woman, but still she relaxed a bit as the number of muscled, oiled bodies covered in the tiniest of suits began to grow. She removed her bikini top, bunched it in her hand, and received nary a glance from the men baking in the sun. Still further and the tiny suits shrunk all the way into not being there at all. She began to glance an impressive variety of penises in an ever-more impressive variety of states of excitement. Slowly, the lone sunbathers became pairs of sunbathers who now paused in their activities and watched Cora curiously as she passed. Seeking only solitude, Cora followed etiquette and kept her eyes to the middle distance, pausing just long enough to remove her bikini bottom once the danger of any male who might leer had thoroughly passed. Now on the ocean side, she selected a spot at the edge of some brush that led back to the base of the cliffs. She spread her towel, piled her belongings, and lay down to read.

She was awakened some time later by a voice.

—Good God, you’re about to burst into flames.

Cora opened her eyes, and the pain began there.

—Ow.

—No shit, ow, are you going to be able to walk?

Cora forced her eyelids the rest of the way up and saw her
future husband, Albert Larsson, for the very first time. He was clothed only in sandals and a concerned expression. Cora turned a little and reached for something to cover herself up, but the excruciating pain from the burn quickly overtook any notions of modesty. She croaked out a question.

—Is it as bad as it feels?

She felt her lips crack as she finished the sentence. She tasted blood.

—I think you’re going to live, but we’ve got to get you inside somewhere.

And so Albert referred to himself and Cora as ‘we’ in the third sentence he ever spoke to her. Whenever she told this story in the years to come, both less and more often than you might think, Cora left out how suddenly comforted Albert’s simple ‘we’ had made her feel. If, as she believed, every story needed a secret, Cora’s was that she had loved Albert from sentence number three.

—Let me help you up. Slowly, now.

With much care and the lightest of touches, Albert got her to her feet. He gathered her few wayward things and delicately placed a hand on an unburnt spot to help her walk.

—You’re going to have this two-tone problem for a while. Your backside is as white as virgin pearl.

—A moan will have to suffice for a witty rejoinder.

—I’ll pretend to be dazzled.

She still could only barely see him, but her painful squints revealed first his nudity, second that he seemed Cora’s age or a bit younger (she was right but only just; when they met, they were twenty-two and twenty-one), and third that the reddish-blond hair on his head matched exactly the reddish-blond hair that led down from his belly button. What made a bigger impression was the kindness she felt in his hands. They were so gentle on her skin that they seemed to be the
only thing keeping her from spontaneous immolation as they trudged back up the beach.

—How did you get here?

—I drove my hasty.

—Well, you’re not driving it home.

—Clearly.

—Do you have anyone who could come get you?

—My flatmates, I guess.

—I recognize that tone. Don’t worry. I’ll drive you, and let’s talk no more of it.

—Ow.

—We’re getting there.

Step by painstaking step, Albert supported Cora, and they walked, naked as a bridal bad dream the night before the wedding, past staring groups of volleyball players and disc throwers. Cora’s burn was so awesome there weren’t even any catcalls. The onlookers knew they were in the presence of something tremendous.

—Pavement.

Cora’s step jarred on the stone, sending a canvas of pain up her front.

—Ow.

—My car’s just right here.

—So close? You got here early.

—I’m not very proud to say.

Something occurred to Cora.

—Did you come to the beach naked?

—No. I was having sex with a man in the bushes behind you. We dozed, and when I woke up, he was gone and so were my clothes, towel and all various and sundry, save for the sandals I had somehow managed to not take off.

Cora let out a surprised laugh in the form of a grunt.

—I’m laughing less at the story than at your candor.

Through another squint, she could see him grin.

—I’m Albert.

—Cora.

—How about I take you to my lonely apartment, cover you with aloe, and put you in a cold bath, Cora?

—I’m in no position to decline.

Albert slipped off his left sandal, lifted up a flap, and pulled out his car key. Cora watched him with burnt eyebrows raised.

—You know, that’s a really good idea.

Some time later, after Albert more than made good on his promises, he wrapped her in a sheet, laid her on the couch, and fed her with bits of melon and cool water.

—I want to take you out to dinner to repay your kindness.

—Are you asking me on a date?

—You had sex with a man on the beach today. Are you askable on a date?

—It’s a big world. I like lots of things. I’m askable.

—All right then, I’m asking.

They married four months later. Though they occasionally indulged in sharing a boy, theirs was a rock-solid, faithful, and devoted union. Such was their bond, in fact, that by the time Cora was elected Mayor a surprisingly short seventeen years later, local Hennington argot referred to an especially strong contract as an ‘Albert and Cora’ to demonstrate its solidity.

3. The Crash on the Hill.

She was concerned about the dust.

The air smelled heavily of it, but it should have been too early in the year for there to be dust, although the last rains
were well gone. There was ash in the dust as well and a distant smell of burning. She paused before she led the herd up to the top of the hill that marked the northern entrance to the descending fields, a place completely lacking in the malodorous homes of the thin creatures. This was just a grassy area, and she shouldn’t have been able to smell dust at all.

(An Arboretum groundskeeper leaned against his rake, watching The Crash from behind a stand of trees. He could see them grazing in the field, Maggerty mooning along after as usual, and he also had a pretty good guess where they were going to head next.

He frowned.)

She looked at the rest of the herd behind her. A lightness of mood permeated the group but left her unaffected. She was the only one who bothered at the dust in the air. The rest of the herdmembers shuffled aimlessly about, pulling at the grass with agile lips, some of the younger calves even playing, gamboling on the lea, if anything so bulky could ever truly be said to gambol. Lush green surrounded them. Families of birds sang to each other in the trees and to those symbiotic brethren who made a meal of the ticks and other annoyances in the herdmembers’ hides. A breeze teased its way through the glade where the herd was gathered, and to every herdmember there, save one, all was well.

She sniffed again, reaching with her nose, even squinting her eyes, their weakness more than compensated for by sensitive nostrils and nimble ears that now also turned and grabbed at any evidence that might linger in the air. Nothing. There was the usual amount of thin creatures scattered in the fields, easy to sense with their eerie strangled cries and halved footfalls, oddities not excepted by the thin creature who constantly followed the herd, also present in her catalogue of senses. Nothing out of the ordinary but the dust.

She snorted and waved her great horn to get the others’ attention. The message communicated itself through the group, and the herd began to file behind her. Yet even as they crossed into the ever more verdant gardens that leapt their way down the hillside, she could still smell the dust, its persistence meaning only one thing.

Hard times were coming.

4. Luther in Limbo.

Luther Pickett, beloved foster son of Archie Banyon and heir apparent to both the Chairmanship of Banyon Enterprises and the Banyon family fortune – though there
was
the matter of the last name – kept an immaculate desk in the middle of an overwhelming office. Taking up fully three quarters of the forty-fifth floor (the leftover fourth given to elevators and Luther’s four secretaries), it contained a conference room, a lengthy reception hall, a full bathroom with shower, an exercise room with spa and relaxation tub, a dining room, and a whole separate apartment where Luther could quite comfortably spend the night if he chose, which he never had, not once. Luther’s desk sat in the office’s main chamber, a room whose vaulted ceiling reached so high it took up a sizable portion of the forty
-sixth
floor, giving Luther a two-story wall made entirely of glass. In late afternoon, the sun poured in, filling the office to the brim with a spectacular view of Hennington out into the Harbor and beyond. Aside from Archie Banyon’s own office (the three-story penthouse with the pool, driving range, and ice rink; Archie was an athletic man), Luther’s office was the most impressive, most talked about, most envied, and to the extent that smaller budgets would allow, most copied in the city.