Chapter 1
Meanwhile, Marjorie Mayfield got caught up in a misadventure.
Having left the Summerfield clubhouse after that annoying tête à tête à tête with Marco and Michael, she went on to her own sale. She drove from Elysian Way to Evensong Court to Willow Way, noting at each turn the additional signs in place to guide potential customers like the faithful along a pilgrimage route. While still some distance from the sale, she saw with gratification a nicely congested knot of cars and minivans. Reminding herself never to take a parking space from a potential customer, she pulled over, intent on walking the last two blocks, if only to report to her doctor that, Yes, she had gotten some exercise.
But before she had gotten far, though, Marjorie noticed in the yard next to her old Mrs. Paula Paglia. (Always get the name, Marjorie reminded herself, it makes you sound like you care).Under the eclipsing shade of a nostalgic straw hat, Mrs. Paula Paglia was puttering about her dahlia bed; and unless Marjorie’s eye for details was failing her, Mrs. Paglia’s lordosis had increased its angle of declivity by 1/16 of an inch since last they had chatted.
Going to the waist-high hedge, Marjorie called, “Oh, Mrs. Paglia.”
Mrs. Paglia looked up from under her spacious bonnet, her back straightening a few nanometers, and holding a hand hidden in a dirty cloth glove up to her eyes, she asked, “Is that Sandra?”
“No,” corrected the visitor, as if reading from a foreign-language phrasebook, “Marjorie Mayfield. We’ve met before. I left my card if ever you wanted to clear a few things out.”
Clear-headed despite her many years, Mrs. Paglia acknowledged the fact with a squint of displeasure. "I got it.”
Marjorie squeezed out a blob of syrup. "I’m managing the sale up the street. For the Baxters? You should come by. But that was so sad about that sinkhole opening up in their breakfast nook. I’m sure that they didn’t suffer. So, how are you?”
“Still moving around,” and Mrs. Paglia demonstrated by shuffling on to another mound of dahlia shoots.
Marjorie asked, “Do you need anything?” and dug into her bag for a fresh business card.
“Just a little more time in my garden, alone.”
“Of course,” smiled Marjorie, her mouth curved like a scimitar. “Whatever you’re doing certainly is working. Your garden looks lovely, Mrs. Paglia. Well, just thought I would say hi,” and she turned away, but with the thought that this hag is not going anywhere fast with that arthritis.
She went on to her business concerns.
But Marjorie Mayfield did not step into a gratifying tableau vivant of commerce and profiteering that she thought was in progress. Apparently, at other houses along Willow Way Road Terrace other sales were taking place and some of the mob on the sidewalks was going into them, like unshriven sinners visiting heathen shrines.
But worse than that, an obstreperously long black delivery van was sitting in front of her sale, blocking her sign, blocking the house, and taking up enough curb-length for a pair of small eco-cars. They had better be shopping. With her face squinting into a vicious and determined pucker, Marjorie increased her stride—it was a good thing that Connie had offered her that pedometer—and minus the three second to sneer at her iThing, offering her another billet doux from Milosh—Marjorie Mayfield arrived at the Baxter house.
Inside the house, Marjorie found herself breathing a good deal of fresh air. Where was that brisk flow of bodies making its way from room to room? Had she opened too late? Mid-morning had always been a good bet—estate-salers want to be kept a little hungry, like a mob at a rock concert. As long as Milosh did not find out about this... Having verified that blue painter’s tape was on every step to warn of potential fall risks, that the yellow-and-black police tape was still strung across the breakfast nook, that the bid box was prominently displayed, and that only committed purchasers were scrutinizing the jewelry case at the register—none of those dreamy-eyed hipster looky-loos with their ignorance of the Real Thing. Everything was fine. After a final check in with Vickie and Dana in their honeydew-hued “Marjorie Mayfield” polo shirts at the check-out table, she moved to go.
But while whispering into her hand recorder, “Vickie’s looking a bit doughy for public display. Limit nutrition during sale hours to kale broth,” she found herself face to face with a revolting puffy-faced sow in a jump suit—and suppressing her own gasp, Marjorie saw that it was her own reflection in an equally hideous mid-seventies entryway mirror (one of those all flecked with yellow, as if cherubs had rubbed their golden curls all over the glass.)Immediately, she turned about with generalissimo decisiveness, pushed her way through the sluggish eggheads all crowded around the only bookcase in the whole house, and arrived in a sweat at a door hung with a laminated sign announcing ungrammatically Private Keep Out. Marjorie Mayfield always ensured that at every sale a half-bath was handy for her own use.
Marjorie did not take too much time in her private devotions, in her case deploying an array of cosmetic armaments to her face. She flicked on small dabs of lip gloss, took the shine off of her nose and brow with strategic dabs of powder from her Deco compact, then glanced in the mirror from various vantages to find the most complimentary reflection.
Having finished this decoupage, she had a last review of her restorations, remembered that Marco and Michael, the juvenile males in the pack, whispered, “Summerfield is mine, little boys,” snapped her compact shut, and replaced it into her shoulder bag. But before she could show herself renewed to the outside world, her iThing chirped at her and she read on the screen:
Turn self around.
Marjorie did turn about, only to find herself walled in by a foursome of goons like a collection of rock formations dressed up in discount leather jackets. To a man, each was so tall and broad that the ceiling of the little room seemed to have risen of its own volition to accommodate them. Each man was moon-faced, with microscopically small eyes and mouth, but also romantically thick waves of blondish hair, which Marjorie would have found so virile and appealing had it not been for the practical certainty that these weighty fellows had arrived to carry her off to the rendering plant.
But before she could produce her bear repellent for a trial squirt, the chief heavy jutted towards her and the little powder room became cozier still.
But Marjorie only smiled. “Dmitri.”
With an accent like a dollop sour cream on black bread, Dmitri announced, “Mrs. Marjorie, Milosh is experiencing pangs of poverty because money from you has not come to him.”
“You know,” Marjorie explained, “in English we use a ‘courtesy title’ only with the last name of the person.”(Marjorie could recite this Gilded Age palaver since as a young thing at the Bloomingvale School for Girls she had been made—after trying to perform crude genetic experiments on the class hamster—to copy out in longhand the relevant pages from an antique etiquette book).“But, since we know each other already, let’s just stick to ‘Marjorie,’ how about that?" Dmitri stood in tolerant silence and Marjorie went on. “But you just tell Milosh not to fret, he’ll have his rubles, but given the exchange rate, I am not sure he could buy much more than a sack of potatoes outside of the Metro station in Minsk.”
“Kindly leave transnational investment strategies to Milosh. But Milosh cannot dabble in questionable financial practices if loans do not pay themselves back.”
“A self-paying loan? Oh, I like that.”
“Forgive me, Mrs. Marjorie, I create reflexive construction which in English language typically finds expression with passive participle. I speak with clearness of American idiom: Loan will be paid back.”
“And how?”
“Most societies of peoples throughout long history of world have found that money is excellent medium of exchange for such transactions.”
“How am I supposed to generate any cash? I have bills to pay, staff to feed. 'Ready cash’ really is an anachronism. People are in love with their debit cards. And while we’re at it, I was toying with the notion of gift cards—I think that those will really take off.”
“Mrs. Marjorie, you forget mentioning of payment on high-end German automobile and payment on naked room with high ceiling and much kitchen machinery from Italy.”
“Do not blaspheme the sanctity of the American condominium, you oligarch." She was not sure what oligarch meant, but gar had a menacing ring to it.
“You do not also mention air drop every Thursday in middle of night on to roof of condominium building from stealth helicopter of canister of liquid nitrogen which is holding chocolate ice cream from Antwerp, the city in Belgium.”
“Van Cauwenberghe’s makes the best ice cream in the northern hemisphere and it loses something if it isn’t fresh, you know. And a girl is entitled to spoil herself now and then.”
“It appears that you are spoiling yourself very often.”Marjorie would have taken umbrage at this elementary deduction, but before she could lob one over the top, Dmitri went on.“Mrs. Marjorie, you are intelligent and like Siberia are full of many, many resources. We know that you will find money for Milosh in nearest future.”
Marjorie clicked her tongue as if explaining something to a very bright grade-schooler.“But, you know, Dmitri, I have to wait for people to die before I can sell their cast-offs.”
Dmitri came closer like a one-man glacier and his goons behind him shifted like a small continent. “Mrs. Marjorie, you are being coy with us and we mean not that you are insouciant goldfish. We know your strategy for creation of wealth up to present day. Please do not use excuse that nature is slow to cull venerable well-off senior citizens from national herd.”
Marjorie retorted, “I would blame our American medical system, which has done such an exemplary job in holding off death and disease. And that is one of the gifts of a free-market economy and democratic principles. You know, I think that I have Kate Smith in one of my music files, just let me look. She’ll tell it like it is. ”For effect, she rummaged through her shoulder bag, looking for her bear repellent, but instead produced a glossy brochure. “See, I haven’t been a lazy lady. Would you care to take a look at my latest project?”
She passed the aforementioned brochure to Dmitri, who bored his tiny eyes into it. Its cover was a shifting holographic image of John F. Kennedy at a podium, he turning back and forth in speechification, while in the background Jackie O. (before she was Jackie O.) smiled and nodded in her smart little plum-pink jacket and pillbox hat. Beneath these masters of Camelot ran the invitation “Ask Not…”
Marjorie dilated upon her scheme. "It’s an organization aimed at fiscally conservative Democrats who are worried about the mounting federal deficit—You know that Social Security checks are an immense expense to our republic, don’t you?The pitch is, do your bit for the financial health of the nation by removing yourself as a drain on the system. You get to “Leave a legacy—but you have to leave first!" For the liberals I’ve tweaked it so that you save the environment by not being a part of it.”
Dmitri puckered his mouth to one side in semi-approval. "This president was adulterer with veneer of public religiosity for unsuspecting pious persons within electorate. Very admirable to criminal soul.”
“And” Marjorie cooed, “all that thick hair, don’t forget.”
“Yes, thick hair is treasure of Slavic male,” and Dmitri and his beetling companions as one ran their sausage-link fingers through their locks, like a herd of hippos running through ripened grain.
“So, do I get any credit for being the sassy lady with all the bright ideas?”
Dmitri slipped the brochure into his jacket. “Milosh has given you much credit already." He turned from her a moment, grinding around to face the troika of muscle behind him. He muttered to these appendages in an unknown dialect for some time, until the trio nodded in grave severity and Marjorie wondered what had met with their approval.
Dmitri turned back to her and stepped in closer. She was glad that she had never suffered claustrophobia.“Mrs. Marjorie,” he stated, “we appreciate that you wish to enlarge base of customers, and that with generous profits from many sales you will in turn provide Mr. Milosh with repayment. However, this must happen with great quickness, or we will have unpleasant duty to teach you new kind of diet regimen.”
“Which,” she declared, “is something I do not need, you Cossack,” raising her tripling chin a bit.
“The loss of lower extremities is effective mode of losing of weight, although this prevents participation in Zumba class. A still more radical practice is to eliminate mouth, but it is unfortunate for this to happen because the head must go away during same operation. No head, no mouth, no poor eating.”
Marjorie informed her volunteer nutritionist, “I had a lovely arugula and açai berry salad last night. I even breathed coffee steam. I am full of antioxidants.” Marjorie did not feel that she should complicate her story by mentioning all of the ice cream that rounded out her repast.
Dmitri continued, “Or perhaps you require lead supplement in addition. This lead will go with directness into tissues and bypass system of digestion, which we see is very busy with other endeavors.”
“All supplements are additional by their nature,” Marjorie corrected him. "And I went briefly to a public school as a girl, so I think that I have plenty of lead built up in my tissues, thank you.”
“But you have so much more tissue now which needs supplementation. Mrs. Marjorie, I believe that you are intelligent woman with a high level of comprehension. You understand. Now we go. Enjoy your day. Perhaps you should live it like it may be your last.”
Marjorie said, “You know, Dmitri, your clear presentation of complex concepts is a real gift. Have you considered entering elementary education? They need men teachers at the younger grades.”
But the massive Dmitri only took from his black pocket a white handkerchief—no doubt a serviette filched from The Borscht Buffet, quite the place with its all-you-can eat pierogi special—and squeezing his way through his Pleistocene roustabouts, took the knob of the door and he and departed, not unlike a Mongol raiding party in retreat, leaving the babushkas to go back to digging their root vegetables.
Marjorie felt the little powder room shrink back to manageable dimensions and she sighed, “What a girl will do for an ice cream cone.”
But with those pining words, Marjorie forgot Dmitri, Milosh, and her money troubles.(This lack of focus might have been a cause of Marjorie’s money troubles.)Instead, for a moment’s mental escape, she sank briefly into a mirage, a vision of her sweet glacial gustatory ideal: just-melting twin heaps of starfruit ripple bloating like opening buds from the calyx of a hand-pressed, hand-thrown waffle cone of quinoa and lemon-blossom honey, all spangled with pine nuts and vanilla-sugared espresso bean dust. She could feel in the crux between thumb and hand the fatty sweet creamy streams melting heady white, flowing with so much mellowness over the grainy, gritty ochre bee-comb geometry of the cakey funnel in her sticky hands. And for Marjorie there was no despair, no hunger, no animal drive—only a tear in her closed, imagining eyes as she murmured, “Mother Cone.”
And stirring back into practicality, Marjorie muttered to herself with amoral decisiveness, “Time to generate a little more business.”
After all, that bill from Van Cauwenberghe’s would not be paying itself.
With head forced high, Marjorie left the Baxter house and marched to her convertible, which sat simmering under the warm sunshine like an obedient black tiger awaiting its mistress.
Once behind the wheel, Marjorie dug her hefty fingers (somehow) into the discreet slit of space between her seat and the cup holders clogged with plastic tumblers now empty of pistachio frappe. Finding what she sought in this cranny, she brought to light a wooden tube the length of her arm: a nice bit of exotica, and practical, too, an artefact from a youthful fling in the Peace Corps among the Kohoroxitari. (Or was it the Katukina do Juruá? Oh, well, all the evidence of that mistake in bigheartedness has gone up in a hot fog of pyrophoric smoke after an anonymous phosphorus letter bomb was sent to the Peace Corps’ main records room on Christmas Eve. Emergency response times are slower on a holiday.)
With the blowgun resting in her lap, Marjorie brought her hand to the window controls and depressed one of the buttons with consummate instinctual deftness, as if evoking a pianissimo chord. The opaque window nearest the sidewalk quietly retreated downward 11/32 of its height, its descent revealing a trapezoid of the sunny afternoon, the top of the waist-high hedge about Mrs. Paglia’s yard, and finally Mrs. Paglia herself still prodding at the soil in the shade of her garden hat.
Lowering the window another micron, Marjorie murmured, “I think that your dahlias need a little more fertilizer.”
Maintaining as motionless a stance as possible, Marjorie dug her field glasses out of the mess and raised them faceward for a more finessed and focused view. The target was still obsessing on her dahlia mounds, the brim of the hat shading her vision, and the angle of the sun such that she could not see for the glare. Now the target was turning away, exposing a bit of neck, oh, and there is a nice juniper shrub opposite her anterior plane. So, given the angle of convexity of lordosis, pelvic compensation, possible air resistance from that Minnie Pearl sombrero…Marjorie told herself, “Now,” and lowering the glasses, brought the blowgun to her sherbet-pink lips and drove out the tiny, tiny dart with the diaphragmatic power of Maria Callas circa 1951.
Mrs. Paglia put her hand to her neck as if a mosquito had bitten her and with a gasp fell forward into the variegated juniper, rolled over it, and thudded on to the lawn. Excellent, thought Marjorie. That would leave plenty of tiny, tiny puncture wounds. Maybe she even broke a hip, the old scarecrow. If Marjorie was hauled before the court, she could tell the jury that her methods were “earth-friendly” and “in harmony with the ancient traditions of peaceful peoples of the global south.”
If Mrs. Paglia had been telling the truth—and those oldsters were so pathetically forthright, under the delusion that goodness would win out—then Marjorie’s business card was on her kitchen table. Logically, her heirs would seek Marjorie out for the estate sale, so it was all for the best.
She slid the blowgun back into its hiding place. Her gaze then fell on a neat paper packet like a lethal little origami amid the mess on the seat next to her. She remembered, "Ah, the little tree nut powder to bring to the gelato feed." She recalled that Patricia had said that Eleanor could not take pecans—or was it that Florence would stop breathing if she came to close to black walnuts?Well, she had brought the medley mix. One molecule was all that the histamine centers needed for an anaphylactic extravaganza. And while they were dropping around her, Marjorie would be partaking in that dègustation of ices and sherbets.
With another elegant press of a button, Marjorie raised the car’s window, then counted to a reasonably high number, not wanting to take off immediately, lest some conscientious neighbor might connect the collapse of the Mrs. Paglia with the sudden departure of a shadowy high-end foreign automobile. Not that anyone in Summerfield Estates would realistically entertain suspicions or doubts about Marjorie Mayfield. Summerfield was hers—it was in her blood.
After rattling off numbers up into the low hundreds, Marjorie deemed it safe to begin her escape—the heat of the day was coming on and the locals were tapping the “high cool” button on the air conditioner, drawing the blinds, and taking in some film with Joseph Cotten or Norma Shearer.
She took the long way out of the community, stopping now and then for a few happy chats with any brave souls sitting in luxury lawn chairs under their Japanese maples. (This left a few gratified witnesses in her wake.)
But before she had reached the gates of Summerfield, she caught sight of a trio of dark birds in the summer sky, great unflapping triangles of hot shadow. Careening in smooth ominous circles like pterodactyls that had slipped through an interdimensional hole, they seemed on the lookout for a baby dinosaur. Marjorie pulled over alongside the median and was digging through the fast-food bags once more. After a quick search, she pulled out her dog-eared copy of Friends with Feathers: Feeding Your Cat Naturally and drawing up her field glasses again focused them upon the flyers.
Vultures, she determined, after a glance and the flipping of a few pages. Vultures in the sky over Summerfield. Or over the Happy Hunting Grounds. All the same to Marjorie Mayfield.
