L'AUTOMNE déjà. Royal as spring is clown, in der Klage um Linos. A story in vain, chased by winter. Fall again.
THE town threw a festival to commemorate summer's end. Pastel balloons blossomed from the clenched fists of capering children, their fingers and mouths dyed with sticky snow cone syrup. Flower vendors hawked rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, violets. Looky-loos queued up to pay a nickel for a glimpse through a telescope pointed, per the selectman, at a sign outside his grocery store advertising sweet potatoes by the lb. Popcorn carts rattled a prestissimo snare over the irregular hi-hat steps of the dance instructor's tap students shuffling on a pair of small parquet stages that flanked a waterfall of barbershop singers cascading down the gazebo steps.
From under the shade of a linden tree, Ashen and J. surveyed the scene.
"I want a pretzel," Ashen said.
"I want to be stuffed into a wicker man and set on fire."
"Gross."
"Can't think of a better way to ensure a bountiful harvest and put me out of my misery."
"You're miserable?"
"I'm somewhere between the Beatles song and James Caan tied to a bed while Kathy Bates tests his reflexes with a sledgehammer."
"You're random."
"You're whatever the opposite of random is."
Rather than follow the conversation to its inevitable desultory conclusion, they decided to bide their time with a little ta-ra-ra boom-de-aye. When they unlocked their clinch to catch their breaths, J. spotted Blue on the far side of the square. It was the first time he saw her since the last time he saw her. She was with Tallboy, the two of them stitched together from ankle to shoulder, strolling through the fair like a Technicolor Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney planning some PG scheme to send some city orphans to the countryside or raise money for the milk fund or sell war bonds. Seeing those babes in arms, J. knew he had been a fool to fall and get that way (hi-ho, alas, and also lackaday). Although he couldn't dismiss the memory of her kiss, he knew Blue wasn't for him. Tallboy was the chappie to make her happy, to tie her shoesies and chase her bluesies. Who could ask for anything more?
"I still want a pretzel," Ashen said.
"Let's get you a pretzel," J. said.
"What about you?"
"I don't want nothing."
As Ashen grabbed J.'s hand and steered him through the crowd, the townsfolk closed in on Blue and Tallboy from all sides, forming a series of alternating clockwise and counterclockwise concentric circles rotating with martial precision around the happy couple. The vendors lined up their carts perpendicular to the rings, spokes to the wheel. This gargantuan mechanism gently rolled Blue and Tallboy into the gazebo, flanked by a kaleidoscopic kickline of barbershoppers and bandmembers. A pyromaniacal tapper struck up a shower of sparks with his shoes that ignited the stockpile of fireworks stowed underneath the gazebo. In a blast of rainbow sparkles and smoke, the entire structure soared into the cottonball clouds, where a lemon-cheeked sun beamed benignantly while Tallboy serenaded Blue with "I Only Have Eyes for You." The couple kissed, the crowd cheered, the orchestra swelled. Iris out.
