954: Another of the . . .
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 27 begins
Chapter 27
October 6
Enough Is Enough
There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poems there lives a real transcendental buffoonery.
Friedrich von Schlegel, Aphorisms from the Lyceum
ANOTHER OF THE REALTORS, Lana, brought a group of potential buyers to the island. They came in their own boat, one of those long, powerful speedboats modeled on offshore racers, the kind that my friend Mark Dorset, the unaffiliated psychosociologist, calls a penis boat. They were well tanned, fit, brisk, and efficient, and they seemed annoyed. I was so depressed and pessimistic that I could hardly say anything to them, certainly couldn’t manage to seem enthusiastic about their plans, didn’t even inquire about their plans, in fact, just shook their hands and mumbled at my shoes. Albertine, however, managed to smile and be vivacious and, it seemed to me, even flirted with the tanned and square-jawed spokesguy.
“So what do you guys have in mind for the place?” she asked. It seemed to me that she canted her hip provocatively when she asked and that while she was waiting for his answer she swayed to some song that only she could hear.
“Let me just say that we — and you understand that there are more of us than those of us you see here — we’re just the tip of the iceberg, the tip of the consortium, you could say — we were very disturbed by this whole dredging fiasco.”
“We were pretty fucking pissed off about it out here, too,” I said.
“It was annoying,” said Albertine, smiling at the spokesguy. Did she wink, too?
“We were assured that the project was in full compliance with all local regulations and that Mayor Asshole could deliver the approval of the town council and the general population.”
“Oh?” said Albertine. She knit her brows.
“Completely. Absolutely. There was no wrongdoing on our part. No monies were proffered.” He winked at Albertine and added, “None that could be traced to us.” The group of tanned guys behind him chuckled conspiratorially.
“Pretty clever,” said Albertine.
“But now we’re screwed. There’s no way that new island is going to get built, so we’re interested in yours.”
“You mean you’re — ”
“We’re going to build a world-class water sports facility — ”
“For personal motorized recreational watercraft?” asked Albertine.
“Right!” said the spokesguy, thrilled that Albertine should know the lingo. “And maybe we’ll build it here.” He looked around him, assessing the island by world-class standards, and he looked skeptical. “Frankly, we considered Small’s Island some time ago, but we rejected it because of its distance from the mainland, its small size, and its inappropriate shape. We figured we could enlarge it and we could reconfigure it, but we couldn’t very well move it, could we?” The guys behind him chuckled at the absurdity of life. “Easier to build a new one from scratch — we thought.” He clenched his jaw and pounded his fist in his hand. “And it would have been perfect if the whole thing hadn’t blown up in our faces.” He made the motions of wringing someone’s neck. “If we hadn’t been victimized by the perfidy of politicians.” He finished throttling the invisible effigy and let it fall to the dock, then suddenly he relaxed and said, “But hey, it’s water down the slide, as we say.” The guys chuckled in acknowledgment of the fact that they had to admit that this was indeed what they said.
“Let me ask you something,” said Albertine.
“What’s that?”
“How many jet skis would you have?”
“Oh, a couple of hundred, easily.”
“Oh, swell,” said Albertine, apparently giddy at the prospect. “Cool. What fun.” Somehow she managed to give the impression that she was chewing gum.
[to be continued]
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