Chapter 1
Chapter III: Life in the Wasps’ Nest, or Baba, Martie, and the Bag Ladies
The frustration that had tainted Bella’s morning ride now bled over to her trip into the throbbing red-brick heart of our lovely town of Merryweather.
Just as our cheery countryside should have endeared Bella to our little corner of heaven, so our town’s charming welcome sign should have softened her snarling features. Hanging between charmingly carved posts growing from charming low-maintenance bedding plants, its lettering, gilded and glinting under the midday sun, charmed the reader with:
Welcome To Merryweather
The Town that’s glad to meet you
Bella drove the twenty or so blocks towards our ye olde historic center, through an enchanting quarter of gingerbread architecture and Arts-and-Crafts cottages, of dogwoods, lilacs, and fresh crème-spectrum paint jobs, by power-walkers with piston elbows marching into their for a few centering exercises, then an hour or so of vlogging in defense of the Merryweather Lifestyle[1].
These magazine-worthy neighborhoods gave way to half of a dozen blocks of brick-and-mortar cafes, sweet shops, handmade toy shops, and a cruelty-free leather goods emporium. As Bella navigated ever-skinnier side streets, her most pressing battle became how to find a parking place. A phalanx of eco-cars had already nosed into every possible space and a few were snouting over the line into the crosswalks. For crying out loud, she thought, were they importing people into this backwater?
But with the minute hand of the old cast iron clock on the corner of Quaint and Darling inching toward 12:00 p.m. and spying the neon window sign for her destination, Come All Kombucha (Baba and Martie had both suggested the same place) Bella was left with no choice but to land her craft.
Then, spying a spot right in front of the venerable old stucco grange hall, now serving now as a venue for both punk bands and the Merryweather Folk Ensemble, with whitening knuckles, Bella parallel-parked between a couple of electric cars, then stepped on to the narrow street with its historic trolley tracks tenderly preserved in place, to stride to Come All Kombucha.
Its door was postered-over with placards reassuring the customer that any gender was welcome, that love trumps hate, and that the management stood with Compassionate Merryweather, which honors and accepts their homeless neighbors.(Bella saw none of the homeless right then, but she guessed that plenty were sure to arrive, once the word got out about all the compassion in town.)Within the kombucheria, broad beams of enduring wood bridged the ceiling, but this sturdiness petered out at lower altitudes, where the walls of aged brick were hung with mixed-medium pieces, while about the floor squatted hefty chairs in environmentally-suggestive mid-70s monochromes, around glass-and-chrome tables where tech-savvy twenty-somethings sat with generous beverages while indulging their Interweb addictions.
Leisurely scanning the room for familiar faces, Bella sighted at the farther end, under a collage of pirated road signs, a mop of brilliantly copper red hair. This was Baba—Charlotte “Baba” Savarin to the uninitiated—and Bella hove in closer.
As the queen of her own glass-and-chrome domain, Baba sat languorously enthroned like an urbane prophetess, her hair a cloud above a shrine, while about her floated fumes like the breath of a great censer, the vapor of her malachite electronic cigarette balanced between spidery fingers that terminated in iodine-orange fingernails. (Bella reminded herself to ask where she got her mannies—That color had to illegal in this state.)
Around Baba chattered a bevy of women of ambiguous age but youthful attire, no doubt a few local cronies. (But with emphasis on the crone, thought Bella, since those string tops did not go with those crows’ feet.) But such was the way. Send up a clarion call about romantic distress and the ladies stampede to offer consolation and advice.
As she closed in on the gabbing little group, Bella whipped out her mental score card. She had to rank each woman according to her handbag. A Birkin, a Brahmin, a Kelly Bag, and a Swarovski. The hierarchy was clear. Now, she thought, time to eavesdrop on a few strands of conversation to bring herself up to speed.
One was saying, “That reminds me, Marjorie’s having a sale this weekend.” This was the Kelly Bag, a slightly geriatric number, dressed about thirty years too young.
“Marjorie?” asked another.
“Marjorie?” thought a third.
And a fourth had to explain, “Oh, you know, Marjorie.” (Marjorie Mayfield was a local heavy in the estate sale business—and quite literally, due to her addiction to high-end ice cream. But the Bag Ladies were ready to forgive that.)
Like a mourner guessing at the will, another of them knowingly opined, “You know, dead people always have the best stuff." This was the Birkin, a bit young to have succeeded in the Handbag Wars by merit alone, and Bella guessed that there was blood under them thar press-ons.
Then the Swarovski contributed to the symposium.“Oh, and have you heard about that one store, Aire...?” The bevy quieted. "They doesn’t sell anything at all. They just let you go inside.”
“And?” Baba inquired, her lone word rolling out from the end of the table like thunder at twilight. Dispensing e-smoke from her e-cigarette, she awaited the response.
“And nothing,” said the Swarovski.
“Bizarre,” Baba smirked, not quite Delphically, but still communicating her judgement.
The Swarovski must have felt the chill and speedily piped up, “But, it’s so cool ’cause you don’t have to spend any money. You just get to go to this really cool store.”
“Wow, that’s so cool,” murmured the Brahmin Bag. As far as Bella could make out, this lady was a kind of bridge figure, a link in the sisterly chain, necessary filler.
The Swarovski opened her mouth to spring back into the fray, but the Birkin Bag made her parry. "And what about the mountain?" This obviously disrupted the mercantile theme. "I think that we need a mountain or two here. I wanted to post some pictures on Instagram, like, now, and a mountain would look just right in the background. But I called the US Geological Survey and they said it would take, like, a couple of thousand years. I’m sorry, but...”
Recognizing that this could go on for hours, Bella seized her moment and slithered into their midst.Sitting herself down with a smile, she planted on the table her own handbag—the Leda Marks, and yes, a knock-off, which Bella would freely admit under torture, but, please: only a student of the craft could tell and as a free agent she was not out to impress anyone.
From beneath her crown of sunset-colored hair, Baba announced, “Ah, Bella,” and the other women sweetly pounced on the newcomer with variations on, “Oh, are you Bella?” or “Hi, Bella,” or “How do you know Baba?”
“Hey, everybody,” Bella returned generically and gave a theatrical scan about the table.“Hey, where’s Martie?”
The Birkin Bag said, “Martie’s running late,” as if explaining away the incarceration of a wayward child.
But just then, a very harried soul hurried up to the table and Bella smiled: Martie coming in for a landing.
[1] The fire of the ancient mothers had not died out. The spiritual granddaughters of the boozy chatterbox and her friends were now elbow-deep in smalltown political activism, besieging town council meetings to demand that Merryweather be preserved in as pristine a state as possible. The word had come down from the refurbished city hall (too, too cute after Suzanne donated those 1925 brass doorknobs) that downtown a whole block of the charming old brick-and-mortars, the geese that were laying the golden eggs, was to be hauled down, the fixtures and finials sent off to architectural salvage, to make clear the way for something called Happy Sky Village, a complex embracing one hundred “income-based housing units,” a methadone clinic, a needle exchange, a mental health drop-in site, a bottle-redemption center, and office space for various non-profit and community-based organizations. The ladies, panting hot breaths rank with Gewürztraminer and gluten-free brownie bites, decided that this was not what Merryweather was all about, and so the war had begun…
