Chapter 8
We had just settled into a booth at the Vintage Vibe, Anais had brought drinks for everyone when Amy spotted Phoebe Osakarsson.
“Laura, look there is the calligrapher, sitting alone at the bar, go chat her up.”
I grabbed my tonic water and headed to the bar. There was an empty seat to Phoebe’s right so I asked her first if anyone was sitting there. When she said no, I planted myself and attempted to keep the conversation going.
“Hi, I’m Laura Eriksson, I saw your tent today but a class was going on and it was full. Are you a Swedish Oskarsson or Icelandic? My great grandfather was from Sweden.”
“Sweden, always pleased to meet another Swede.”
“Likewise, I really hope I can take your introductory class tomorrow. My intern started a Marginalia Project in our bookstore, and I would just love to be able to write marginalia in a calligraphy script.”
“You own a bookstore and you encourage people to write in the books.”
“Yes it’s a free lending library, the only cost is that if you borrow a book you are required to add at least one piece of marginalia, before it is returned.”
“But you said it was a bookstore, did you turn it into a library?”
“No, we have a very small selection of nonfiction marginalia. The ‘store’ itself only sells fiction, it’s called Genre’s.” I handed her one of my cards.
“People don’t write in your new books on the shelf do they?”
“No, at least I hope not. It’s not like I can check all my books to see. I haven’t had any complaints that a book was written in, no one has asked to return a defaced book.”
“No, I guess you couldn’t thumb through every book every night right before closing.” She laughed at the image she had created.
“No, I’d still be thumbing through the books when the store opens the next morning. Say what do you do in the off season, when the Renaissance Festival isn’t running.”
“As little as possible, mostly read.”
“Well if you come to Lake Placid you could run a couple of Calligraphy Classes. I run a writers collective, so you could have free room and board. You keep whatever you charge for the course and the materials.”
“But what do you get out of it?”
“Happy customers hopefully, foot traffic. We do lots of things like that. We have book clubs almost every night of the week, the kids just built a game room. Plus we are going to start giving away ebooks and selling some too. The writers just started running writer workshops, this weekend is their first. I was sorry to miss it, but I really wanted to come see the Renaissance Festival. We all had such a great time today. My friend saw your onstage demo and told me about it. So I went looking for your tent, but like I said, you were full.”
“Yeah the demo generates a lot of foot traffic, if you get a chance come tomorrow morning before I do the demo, sometimes I’m completely alone. Do you really mean that about the free room and board. Absolutely, we have a wonderful cook, if you come in the winter we have all of the winter sports.”
“I’m more of a reader than a sports person.”
“That’s fine, me too. But I always treat myself a couple times a winter to go to Whiteface Mountain, around ten in the morning. By ten the skiers are all on the slopes and you can just sit next to this huge stone fireplace and read. Around noon till maybe one thirty the skiers come back in for lunch so it can get a little noisy, but that doesn’t bother me. Then at one thirty you have an empty lodge till at least four. Then I go home.”
“That actually sounds lovely.”
“I started doing it when I lived in New York City, our company used to have a free trip every winter to Mont Tremblant. Everyone would pack all their ski equipment, I’d show up at the train with two suitcases, one full of my clothes the other full of books. Tremblant maybe even more beautiful than Whiteface, but the best part is most of the people there are speaking French. It is impossible for me to lose concentration reading when people are speaking a foreign language, it is so easy to tune out what I don’t understand. But it’s also oddly comforting hearing that in the background.” I think I chattered on long enough to gain her trust. “But what about you, ever been to Chicago?”
“That’s kind of out of the blue isn’t it?”
“Well, I was thinking of going, doing a little sightseeing so if you’ve ever been there I could use some tips, best pizza places, things like that.”
“Yes, I actually was there so long ago that I’m sure every pizza place I know of is long since closed. Honestly I despise the city, but that’s just me don’t let it dissuade you. The city broke my heart and I’m not sure I ever got over it. I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars. Besides, NYC pizza is twice as good as Chicago's.”
Then her phone rang, and apparently water was leaking out of her trailer.
“I’m sorry, I have to go, it was wonderful to meet you Laura. I hope I see you tomorrow. I’ll give you the intro class for free and after that we can talk about me coming for a weekend in the fall, if you think the class will be a good fit for your store. I’m sorry to be rushing off like this.”
With that she was out the door. I spent all that time trying to put her at ease and bang. Well nothing can be done about it now.
I went back to the table with Amy, Anais and Willow.
Amy asked, “Well, is she the extortionist?”
“I hope not, I invited her to Lake Placid in the fall, to teach a class and I offered her free room and board.”
“Hippie, you are not supposed to be inviting the criminals back to your home. If you knew anything about investigating, that would be a given.”
“I liked her, she is very nice and obviously if she is the extortionist then her invite will be rescinded. She got a phone call and had to run out before I could question her fully. One troubling thing was that she had been in Chicago and for some reason hated the experience. Which you would expect if you had been in the police riots of sixty eight. I definitely have to talk to her again. Of course she could have been mugged when she was there so a traumatic experience doesn’t necessarily imply police riots.”
I went over to the juke box while the others finished their drinks. The Vintage Vibe Jukebox was indeed vintage, not one song released after nineteen sixty nine. Every artist included was present at the music festival. The people who owned this bar were seriously vintage. I went back to the table resisting my desire to play “White Rabbit”. Cashless summer means just that, sure I want to hear White Rabbit, but it can wait until I get back to the collective and fire up youtube. Using my Firefox browser with the uOrigin Adblocker, I’ve never seen an ad on youtube. I never even knew youtube had ads until I opened the edge browser by mistake. Never made that mistake again, just deleted the desktop shortcut and the icon on the taskbar.
The others had finished their drinks so we proceeded to the next bar. Along the way we looked in other town businesses' windows to see if we could find any more of our suspects. Jack Weber, the storyteller, was eating in Little Italy. A good Italian restaurant, according to Willow. With very good eggplant parmajian and not only does it taste good but no baby calves need to die for the experience. But that knowledge that he was eating here didn’t do us much good. It’s not like we could just go in and sit down at his table while he ate. No, the best we could do would be to hang around out here and ambush him when he comes out.
So I talked the others into continuing onto the Mystic Mule, I argued that while I might look like an obsessive fan, if the four of us waited here for him to emerge it would look like the Americans attacking Venezuela or six ICE agents gunning down an American citizen who had the impertinence, of using his phone to record the masked assassins at work. I would like to argue that if you are not in some sort of medical situation and feel the need to wear a mask to work. You are in the wrong profession, and you know it, that is why you are wearing the mask. Sure the money might be great, but living with your conscience for the rest of your life. How do you put a price tag on that?
The town or perhaps the restaurant had provided a nice bench right in front of Little Italy. I sat not because I really wanted to sit, I’m much more the pacing type person then the siting. Undeniably I do a lot of sitting, I do a lot of reading, but when I’m not reading or writing, I’m not sitting. But I reasoned that a pacing fanatic was not a good look, so I planted my butt and kept it there until Jack exited the restaurant.
“Excuse me Mister Weber, I was wondering if I might have just a moment of your time, to talk about a business venture. I’m not selling anything, I’m a bookstore owner. I handed Jack my card. My friends had the opportunity to see you in action today on stage at the Renaissance Festival. I’ll be going myself tomorrow and I look forward to seeing you onstage as well. In addition to the bookstore I also run a writer’s collective. Do you happen to write?”
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How could he not, writers tell stories and storytellers tell stories. Even storytellers that use other people’s stories have to adapt them to themselves and to their target audience. You wouldn’t tell Bambi’s story the same at a vegan restaurant as at a gunclub bar.
“Yes, I do write a little, I’ve been working on a novel actually for years. But there never seems to be enough time.”
“That’s where the collective can be really helpful. Each member of the collective has one job a day to do that can take from fifteen to twenty minutes to an hour if it’s your turn to wash the dishes. No cooking, no taking the time to run out to restaurants or ordering takeout. In addition you have the built in support from your peers, to keep you on track. Writing sprints, just the act of writing all together. You sit in the living room and the only sound you hear is typing, it inspires you not to scroll on twitter, no you want to add your own keystrokes to the typing clatter.”
“You make it sound idyllic.”
“In many ways I truly think it is. We all live together in an old mansion in Lake Placid, our grounds are right on Mirror Lake with inspiring views and plenty of room to walk if that fires up your creative juices as it does to so many writers. But what I was thinking of in particular is my store is always looking for ways to draw in readers and a couple of storytelling sessions from you would draw them in return. We would give you free room and board and you could write with the writers in residence and we could each see if you are a good fit for our collective. All you have to do is get to Lake Placid and tell a few stories. We’ll do the rest.”
“That sounds like something I’d like to consider.”
“If you have any free time perhaps we could go down to the Mystic Mule and get to know each other. I promise you, this is not a come on, it’s strictly we get to know each other. So we are not wasting each other's time, when it comes to the collective.”
“Yes, that sounds like a marvelous idea, allow me to buy you a drink.”
“Right now I’m on something of a tonic water kick and the bars here don’t seem to charge for tonic, which is awfully nice of them.”
“Yeah, well bars need all the designated drivers they can get. Designated drivers are good for business. They bring drinking customers that don’t have to worry about driving home, or the one drink an hour rule. So for every one tonic they hand out for free they sell two or three drinks to each of the designated drivers passengers.”
“That’s really smart, I never thought of it that way before.”
“If you spend enough time in bars and taverns then you tend to pick up some tricks.”
So we walked down the sidewalk in companionable silence and were soon sitting at the bar in the dimly lit Mystic Mule. Each of the tables was lit by a lava lamp, the entire vibe of the place was ‘let’s get stoned, man’. I could almost hear Tommy Chong whispering it in my ear.
“So I’ve done most of the talking. Tell me something about storytelling, have you ever told stories in say, Chicago.”
“No, I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure. I’ve never really felt the travel bug, so many people seem to get. Honestly I’d rather read a story set in Hawaii then go through the trouble of actually going there.”
“What about Vietnam, you seem to be around the right age. Did you go or did you protest?”
“Neither, I went to Canada for ten years from nineteen sixty seven till Carter issued the full pardon, in seventy seven. I considered coming back when Ford offered the two year government service. But I thought about it. The United States government had chased me out of my home in sixty seven and for seven years I was forced to live in a foreign country. Why should I give them an additional two years of my life? So I said screw them, Nixon got a full pardon, we got a conditional one the US can go to hell.”
If he wasn’t lying there was no way that he could have been at the convention in Chicago and really why would he lie about being a draft dodger.
“Do you think it is a good thing or a bad thing that they abolished the draft?”
“Oh, I think it’s a good thing, I only wish that they had done it after world war two.”
“I was never under any threat of being drafted, so my perspective may be skewed. But I think it is a very bad thing, very bad. After nine eleven people were rightly angry. But the government has basically waged war for the past twenty years, unchecked. If we still had a draft, I do not believe that could have happened. Sure lots of people would have signed up in two thousand and one because they were angry and scared. The ones who did I’m sure thought they were doing it for the right reasons. But twenty years later, it’s exactly like it was before, except the United States spent a ton of money, which they added to the debt, the kids will spend the rest of their lives paying. They also killed a whole lot of people on both sides. So if the people we fought against hated us before, well haven’t we just made it worse. But if there was a draft or even if the citizens actually had to pay for the war. I don’t think the citizens would have allowed the war to go on. They would have voted out the people that allowed it to continue, that raised their taxes to pay for the war.”
“That is a perspective I’d never really considered, but as someone who was drafted, I just think if some people are willing to volunteer, we should let them.”
“Even if they are forced to volunteer, because of economics? Because they can’t afford college, because they can’t find a decent paying job. What about deferring the taxes to actually pay for the war? Don’t you think that if people are angry enough to wage war on a country, they should expect to pay for it. That its costs shouldn’t be pushed onto their children? I’m not dumping this on you because you went to Canada, I’m genuinely interested in what people think about this and I believe we can always learn something if we take the time to listen to what other people think and why they think that way.”
He laughed, “I wasn’t taking it personally, but usually in a bar you don’t hear these types of conversations until people are quite deep in their cups, as we say at the Renaissance Festival. So I’ll say this, I disagree with the draft, but will admit that maybe because I always thought it was unfair. Now the taxes angle, I had never considered. Unless someone could come up with a better argument, then yes, I agree if a country is attacking another country then yes the attacking countries citizens should be paying for the war. But in the case of a country like Ukraine, who is being attacked, then no, their government should go into debt protecting their citizens lives. The same would be true if Mexico attacked the US, we should go into debt to defend ourselves if necessary.”
“Did you ever get to sneak home for visits with family or anything like that?”
“No, my parents came to Montreal yearly for a visit. Instead of their vacation trips to Cape Cod, they came to Montreal for vacation. The first year they didn’t come. My father was a world war two veteran, he couldn’t understand why I didn’t just go fight the communists in Vietnam. It was only the second year that he started to come and it was only after the Times published the Pentagon Papers that he told me I was right to come. So I thought he showed tremendous growth, he started as Archie Bunker and while he may not have evolved into a Meathead, I think he fell more to the center. A positive at the time was that I learned a second language. I had a few years of French in high school but had low grades in the subject and zero desire to improve them. When I arrived in Montreal, the only French I knew was to ask if they spoke English. When I left I could understand and speak French quite well, at least from my perspective that is. The Quebec natives would probably tell a different story, they were very tough on all the Americans who had moved into their city. The wait staff in particular loved to bring you the wrong orders if your pronunciation was considered off. I’m sure they were no worse than Americans had been with each wave of immigrants, The Irish, the Italian and the Polish. In the seventies in some parts of the population it was still considered funny to make jokes about how dumb the Polacks were.”
“Yeah, I remember, “All in the Family”. Archie and Mike, I think it woke a lot of people up. When they saw Archie say the things they had said in private or at work with the boys.”
“Laura, they keep rebooting TV shows, maybe they ought to reboot “All in the Family” have the liberal son in law or daughter in law would be even better, earning the income to support the family while the Maga father in law is forced to live in their house because his company dissolved his pension and he couldn’t afford to keep his house on his social security benefits. Maybe watching the two sides bicker and seeing neither is one hundred percent correct would heal some of the bitterness that the media and social media fosters. But I should get going, I’ll call you in the fall. I'd love to come to Lake Placid for a weekend. We can continue our discussion, I’d love to see the writers collective in action and do some storytelling for your readers. But do come tomorrow to the Tavern or the scheduled show on the small stage.”
With that he left and I went over to the table that my friends were sitting at.
Anais started right in, “So hippie, did you invite him to move into the collective like the last suspect.”
“No, and you better be careful saying hippie, like that you might offend someone.”
“Laura, if they are real hippies, they won’t punch me in the face. If they aren’t ‘real hippies’ I’ll get the satisfaction of pointing that out to them. So did you invite him to Lake Placid or not?”
“I invited him for a weekend, Anais, I thought it would be interesting for customers to hear stories as they used to be told. I mean all story telling comes from an oral tradition. Smart writers read their work aloud to themselves, to discover the flaws and hopefully fix them before it hits the editor’s desk.”
“Face it, you are just using that to cover the fact that you invited two potential criminals to go home with you.”
“Well, I can pretty definitely say that he is not our person. He was out of the country for ten years, he was drafted in sixty seven and never returned home until seventy seven when Carter pardoned the draft dodgers. He would have to be stupid to sneak back into the country to take part in a protest, where if he were stopped he’d be jailed as a draft dodger. No Jack is not our man.”
Willow asked “So what do we do now? Then.”
“I think we keep going from bar to bar for another hour. We search for more people to be questioned, but I suspect that it’s too late for the seventies set to be out partying. So in an hour we go back home and get some sleep. So we make sure that we are at the Renaissance Festival gate at ten am. We skip all the things we saw yesterday and look backstage, as much as we are allowed. Also check artist alley again, I only went down it fully one time. A senior employee might have been on break when I walked down between the stalls. We want to make sure that we haven’t missed even one senior because that very well might be the extortionist.”
So that’s what we did, for the next hour we bounced through each of the three bars. As I expected, no seventy year olds were out on a Saturday night partying. So when the hour was up we walked back to the collective.
Anais and Amy were tired so they got changed and went to bed. I wasn’t going to try and read underneath the covers again. I could see the advantage to reading ebooks on phones or tablets. You could lay there reading without disturbing your partner. So I grabbed my pen and notebook and went to the kitchen. I had skipped writing up notes yesterday and a simple thing like asking Pappy his real name had been neglected. So I wasn’t going to make the same mistake tonight.
I wrote a fast summary of everything that had happened today. Then I wrote out a list of our suspects, the ones I had spoken to, I wrote a brief synopsis of what they told me and whether or not I believed them. Then to finish up, I wrote a fast and loose battleplan for tomorrow.
