The Taste of Penny (9 page)

“You want to do this in front of our friends?” Vadim said. “Inna is still adjusting to living with Bipkus,” he said to us. “This space is helping.”

Mehmet came out of the bathroom and looked strangely at us.

“Sorry, neighbor. My brother. He's demanding about his bathroom.”

Bipkus threw open the door and blew by Mehmet into his bathroom.

“It's I should be sorry,” Mehmet said. He's smirking, I thought.

“No way,” Vadim said. “One more game. We're getting this thing right.”

I built the tower up that time. I described in plain language the spaces that open up in the crevices between the blocks. “The weight shifts,” I said to Mehmet, “and certain ones come out at certain times and certain other ones at certain other times.”

 

“You actually look more retarded than your retarded brother,” Inna said to Vadim. This is something that Inna had said before about her husband to me when she was drunk.

“Inna,” Liza said.

I guided Mehmet's hand—the skin was brown and smooth and hotter than I'd expected—and slid out a side. Mehmet stationed it at the top of the tower. Liza and I erupted
in applause.

“If we stood you next to Bipkus in a line-up for retards, you'd get picked over him hands down,” Inna said. “Your face is oblong. One side of your head is like an old balloon.”

Vadim took a middle in silence. Bipkus pounded on the wall.

Mehmet's hand flashed toward the remaining bottom block, but my hand was faster. I snagged his wrist.

“Don't do it, motherfucker. There are no hot tubs here to protect you from the Earthquake of Herb.”

“What are you doing?” Liza said. “How much did he drink?”

“Herb, let him go,” Vadim said.

“I'm not letting him go, Vadim.” I tightened my grip. “Correction, you want me to let him go, you ask him this question for me. Go ahead and ask him. Ask him if he's knocking this tower down on purpose. Ask him if he's trying to say something. Ask him.”

“Say what, Herb, what is everyone trying to say?” Liza said.

“I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

“Sir, please, release my arm,” Mehmet said.

“You're being too touchy, Herb,” Vadim said. “It's an interpretation.”

“It's a little—it's not so fun for me,” I said.

“Come on, Herb, he's just playing around,” Liza said.

“Liza, if you tell me that we're just playing or that this is just a game one more time or just this or just that, I'm going to leave you here. I'm going to leave and just leave you here.”

“I am sorry, Herbs, I am only not good at games,” Mehmet said.

Mehmet stood and I stood too, not letting him go, our arms locked over the tower in what surely seemed to Bipkus, as he emerged, an awkward handshake.

“Your politics lack a certain subtlety,” I said.

Bipkus approached and covered our hands with his huge palm. “Go teams,” he said, bopping our hands hard enough to bust them apart then raising his in the air for high-fives. He does look normal, I thought. Mehmet and I high-fived him. He carried a box of pizza into his room and slammed the door shut again.

We sat down on the floor cushions.

I turned to Vadim. “It's not just meanness,” I said. “She believes what she's said.” We looked at Inna who had her finger in the sangria blotch again.

“Dessert,” Liza said. “Dessert is requisite before the end of the night.”

“I know,” Vadim said. “That's what kills.”

FOR AN EXTERNAL OUTDOOR FLAGPOLE, ONE NEED not necessarily go with the Illuminator Hurricane Series, to wit a flagged wind speed of 220 miles per hour-plus, if one is not in, say, Florida. And I am nowhere near Florida. I am in what Floridians think of as the anti-Florida if they think of a place like this, if they even know about what might exist not a few hours north of the Vermont border of the United States of America. I
wish
for Florida.

I am in Roberval, Quebec, Canada, the long-distance swimming capital of the world, a place to wit there are creatures heretofore unbeknown to me which is called a French Redneck. The French Redneck is very much like the American Redneck we know and love but for the obvious fact it speaks French. I will not even tell you how I landed here other than to inuit (which is a kind of indian here) to the fact that it is on account of the boy, that lacking-in-character son
of mine, who loves America not even enough to put his butt on the line for it, who because I love him enough to put my butt on the line for him have put it so. I am now here and am technically considered an accomplice by the laws of the good country which I love should I ever return which I can't see because how would it look to the people who share my views and whose sons are not lacking in character? To wit there are days I have no idea what I am doing here. It is an uninteresting and unfortunate little tale. I'll spare you.

One does not necessarily need go with the Illuminator Hurricane Series, flagged wind speed of 220 miles per hour-plus, but I am going with it. I am installing a 50-foot exposed height, 10-inch diameter butt, 4-inch diameter top, and while this pole easily supports the 15 x 10 foot flag I am settling for the 12 x 8 so as not to make the neighbors feel
too
bad, which still will be tough because it's spun polyester, the most durable flag material on the market, with sewn stripes and embroidered stars. The beauty of the Illuminator, where usually a regular flagpole top caps out, the Illuminator orbs a fixture to wit powers a 120-volt halogen or 12-volt Zenon to alight the whole shebang through the night, when it will flap over this suburban Roberval neighborhood in a Zenon—I am going with the Zenon—glow.

I am going with all this, because the flags decorating—and that's just it, flags are symbols and idols and not decoration—the French Redneck porches of every house around us have begun to irritate me. They are of two sorts, mostly the crimson zit of a maple leaf,
printed
mind you on a nylon scrap, popping in the wind. The Quebec flag I can stomach, four little reproductions of that thing, reminds me of a Webelos badge, and at minimum cloth with
stitching. Got some symmetry. With that I can pert deal. I'm all right in general with Canada. Sure, the Maple Leafs. And then when they speak English it's all turned around. There's the
sawrys
and the way that the first
a
in two-
a
words gets backward. The
dra
ma of driving a
Maz
da. But I intend to make a statement this morning when the semi, an actual semi, comes down the street with the pole chained to the trailer and the flag folded down and boxed the size of a nice dining room table.

I have already dug and wired the hole and the boy is stirring six bags of Quickcrete in a wheelbarrel. Though he is not, as we say, altogether with the program, he understands that he owes me something here. The semi guys help us stand it in and run some support lines to the house and before long we are ceremoniously raising the flag of the US of A, flicking a switch and illuminating it just before dusk when the French Rednecks on all sides step off the porches, summoned like moths, except French-speaking and Canadian moths instead of the kind you would expect, so in about a round way they're like exactly what you would expect except different in some small and altogether disconcertive way.

After a few moments all of them are in my yard, standing next to me and the boy at the base of the Illuminator Hurricane, and they are all speaking in French. The boy talks to an Asian Redneck, who lives right next door. Imagine it, an Asian with maple leafs and Webelos all over his house, speaking perfect French. That is something.

“Ne
boo
play,” I say. “What? What is it, boy?”

“They seem impressed,” the boy says. “They say it's a fire hazard.”

“That's Zenon,” I say, “Less heat than Halogen. Emits.”

The boy says something to them and the Asian French Redneck mouths the word “Zenon.”

I mouth the words “Illuminator Hurricane, motherfucker.”

 

The non-Asian French Redneck from the other side what knocks on my door at three am, saying something in frog.

“
Sawry
, eh?” I say. “
Sawry
.”

He continues. The boy appears. Him and the non-Asian French Redneck talk. I can't tell you what they're saying, but I can say for fact that you can hear the country in the way a French Redneck talks. It's like yak butter or meat jelly. You don't know exactly what it is but you know it's there.

“He says the light from the flagpole is shining into his bedroom, Dad,” the boy says.

I study the French Redneck. You can see in his eye the belief that everyone who ever did anything important in the world—invent electricity or the name for a dish of fries in gravy and cheese or the solid-body guitar or went to space, wiped out polio, sacrificed their line for braided-hair virgins—I imagine his belief that everyone who ever did any of those important things was French like him, just like blacks with blacks and Jews with Jews, Peruvians with Peruvians. The French Redneck looks like REO Speedwagon. He wears jeans that are too long on him and a Ducks Unlimited t-shirt. Has hairy toes. Drives a pickup.

He says another thing, and the boy doesn't translate.

“
Sawry
, eh,” I say. I flick the porch switch, which the Illuminator is wired into.

The boy goes back to bed. I stand at the door until I hear the non-Asian French Redneck's front door close. Then I count off sixty seconds, just how long I reckon it takes him
to get those jeans off and back cozy into bed. I flick the porch switch again and go to shower where we have this shower head that opens up to a monsoon and the water hits the tub with such force you can only barely make out the pounding on the door. But I have only my upper body soaped down when I notice something I can't believe I missed before. In the pocket corner of the showerhead we picked up from the dollar store just a few days un, there's a stamp in the metal: “Made in Tehran.”

And suddenly I'm up in the sky, aught from space, seeing my own house with X-ray vision, the Illuminator casting a shadow of that gorgeous flapping flag down on my roof, and I see through all the Canadian-made shingles, to the bathroom where a turkey named me is standing in the shower, the water kept in by a curtain hung from a rod made in the place where my country is getting its war on next. I snatch it down and reach for my towel.

 

The boy and I are building a rock garden around the base of the Illuminator Hurricane the morning when the water meter reader comes down the drive. He speaks in French. The boy tries to step in, translate. I put my hand over his mouth.

“It's around back,” I say. “But they just read the thing to wit a week ago.”

“You don't speak French, sir?” he says.

“Dramamine,” I say.

“Excuse me.”

“I'm fluent beginner Canadia.”

“I am here from city works. We received some complaints. And I'm sorry to say, but this, it's against see city code. It must come down.” He looks up at the flag.

“That's the Illuminator Hurricane.”

“Yes. I am afraid Robervale law is nothing in the residential region over eight meters.”

“It's under eight.”

“This is at least 15 meters, sir.”

“You didn't measure it.”

“I can measure it, if you like.”

“I think you'll find it's under eight meters if you do.”

The French city works guy stands there a moment before fishing a tape measure from his back pocket, stepping into my new rock garden and running it up the pole. I rake the red and brown and yellow maple leafs into a pile by the rock garden then sit on the rocks and one by one tear them along the veins, listening to the plinking of his metal tape measure on the Illuminator Hurricane.

“You see, sir, it is almost fifteen and a half.”

“Oh, shit,” I say. “I thought you meant feet. It said on the box it was under eight football fields, American football of course. I'm not Argonaut or Blue Bombering here. It's all confusing, but I don't think anyone minds.”

“We are receiving many solicitations on this matter.” A gust of wind whips the flag. “I am afraid it is the law and the rules. If you do not take it down, we will start to fine 150 dollars per day. It is an expensive rent for a flagpole.”

“A hundred and fifty per? Let me think about that. Is that cash?”

I knew what this guy was thinking. But it wasn't that even. I'm just into the spectacular, and if anything in the world is not spectacular, it is a Canadian flag. Run one of them up this pole and it'll look all wrong flapping in the Zenon of the Illuminator. It just doesn't carry the weight. And that comes across I guess, which is why they're all after me about it.

“Let me ask you this: If I hang one of those maple leaf pus bubbles from this pole, can I keep it?”

“We are having laws here, sir. It is not a negotiable. But I may ask you, this is about genitalia? You have big American penis and this is how you show it to us all?” He smiles.

“I'm not going to accept that,” I say. “I will take the Illuminator Hurricane down to avoid you fining me, but until my dick is 50 feet long with a queen-size flag draped off it, a Zenon bulb for a tip, you better take that back.”

 

Me and the boy stand in the yard staring up at the Illuminator flagpole after the city guy leaves. The boy won't admit, but I can see that it stirs something in him too.

“Going down to a 25-footer isn't going to hurt us, Dad,” the boy says.