Colson Whitehead - Apex Hides the Hurt

“This is the big weekend.”

“They get bigger every year,” she said, cocking her head dismissively. “I hadn’t thought of the timing when we talked about bringing you here, but I’m sure Lucky had it all planned out.”

“He puts on a good show.”

The waitress parked a thigh against the Footsie, and she and Regina caught up briefly before she took their drink order. He couldn’t tell if Regina was a regular, or if this was standard mayoral interaction. The waitress gave him a snaggletoothed smile before scampering to the kitchen counter.

“Back where I’m from,” he said, “if you’re a local celebrity, they tape your 8 X 10 picture over the cash register.”

Regina gave him a wry look, then gave in. “I don’t know about celebrity, but I am a strange creature around here, I’ll give you that. First black mayor since we started having mayors in this town. Descended from the first families. Oh, I left for a time,” she said, shifting gears, as if afraid he’d think her a hick. “For a good many years. Went away to college. Got married. Got divorced. But I came back. Which puts me in with Lucky. We tried other places, but we chose to come back home. Which means something to people in a town like this.”

She asked him about his meeting with Albie, which turned into a long discussion over whether or not Albie was mentally disturbed. Regina was more forgiving of eccentricity than he was. A mom and dad steered their two young children toward a booth in the back, the father offering a throaty, “Hel-lo, Regina,” as he passed. The man took quick measure of him, then winked at her. The two kids bounded into the booth with gusto and started flapping their menus in the air.

All this winking and weird glances. She must be kinda hard up, he thought. He wondered if this was the type of place where everybody was related. Where everyone was some degree of cousin. Did that family come from hearty founder stock, were they Goodes or Fields or another, less famous First Family? Or did they move here recently, to work for Lucky or other new computer businesses?

Regina stirred her wine spritzer distractedly. “They think we’re on a date,” she said. “It doesn’t happen that often.” She chuckled. “My ex-husband came to town once. Nobody knew who he was. They thought we were having a romantic outing. Mayor Goode and her new beau. We laughed. Enough time had passed that we could laugh together again.” Her shoulders relaxed. “He was a bit of an asshole, to tell you the truth,” she added in a rush, and he could see she was momentarily embarrassed by the vulgarity.

He smiled. Maybe not hard up. Just dosed with Isolatrum in the same amount as everyone else. The government was putting it in the drinking water these days along with fluoride.

She said, “People look at me and they see what they want to see. Black people see me as family, because my name goes way back. The white people know what the Goode name means in this community — tradition, like Winthrop means tradition. And the new people know that I agree with a lot of what Lucky is trying to do and that he and I have been a team, in terms of trying to bring this place into the twenty-first century. Way I figure, I’m a bit of a triple threat that way.” She halted, considering the full implications of what she was saying. “Of course,” she continued, “after my vote in the meeting, people don’t know what to do with me.”

Sure, sure. He said, “At some point you were going to vote with Lucky, right? Then you just blindsided him. What changed your mind?”

She started to speak, then stopped. By the fish tank, a table filled with Help Tourists hit a raucous patch and distracted him. This Nordic guy stabbed the air with his fork for emphasis. She said simply, “I’ll be right back,” and disappeared to the restrooms. B for Buccaneer, L for Lass.

The cook slapped a bell, and placed two dishes on the ledge that opened onto the dining room. He had a happy idea that it was their food. He looked hopefully at the waitress but she refused to notice that their order was up. She stood by the hostess station, squaring the corners of a stack of menus. Minutes passed.

What do you call that terrible length of time between when you see that your food is ready and when your waitress drags her ass over to your table with it? He saw Regina emerge from the back of the restaurant. His eyes zipped to the plates sitting on the kitchen ledge. Tantalasia. Rather broad applications, Tantalasia, apart from the food thing. An emotional state, that muted area between desire and consummation. A literal territory, some patch of unnamed broken gravel between places on a map. A keeper, he told himself. Did that mean he was keeping keepers again? Names for rainy days?

She dropped her napkin in her lap and spoke rapidly. “Can you argue with Lucky, really? Can you argue with prosperity? Can you protest change? It’s jobs, money for the town, money for the ‘infrastructure.’ We didn’t have an infrastructure until Lucky came back. We had ‘stuff that needed fixing.’ How can you fight a word like infrastructure ?”

Regina scanned the room to check for eavesdroppers. “You fight it by saying: No. Look at the dock across the street. Winthrop comes to town, he has the resources to build that thing. Most important, he’s white. What are Goode and Field going to say? They didn’t have a choice, did they? Back then. What could they do? They lose this land, this land is what they are at that point. They lose that, they lose themselves. He’s not threatening them, Winthrop. But he wouldn’t have to say it. They did what they had to do. Give up their name for their lives — was that a little thing or a big thing after all they’d been through?” Her chest heaved but her eyes stared defiantly. “Well, I have a choice. And I choose the truth.”

The waitress dropped their plates on the table. Regina took a bite, winced at the temperature. She put her fork down. She said, “Sometimes when I have a hard day and I’m too tired to leave the office and I just want to put my head on my desk, I think about how they got here. In their wagons, all that way from the plantations that had been their homes. Think about that: those places were their homes. Places of degradation and death. So I get my ass out of my office because I have a house that is my own and that’s what they fought for, why they came all this way. They didn’t know where they were headed when they started or that they’d end up here, all they knew was what they had: Freedom. Which was a kind of home that they carried inside them, if you think about it. When they finally arrived here and looked around, what was the word that came to their lips? What was the only thing they can think of when they see this place they have chosen? The word on their lips?”

For the life of him he didn’t know if this was a rhetorical question or if she really needed him to say it. Say the word for her to hear. Also Tantalasia: the in-between place where you’re not sure if you should say something, if it is truly as important as it appears to be that you say something, the right words.

Living in Tantalasia. Neither Winthrop nor New Prospera. Nor Freedom. It occurred to him that in its current suspended state, the town was effectively nameless.

. . . . . . . .

Assuming you had a facility for choosing the right name, the just name, for healing the disquiet of anonymity through the application of a balming name, you were a nomenclature consultant. He was a natural, they said. During his time in Winthrop, his mind kept returning to one of his early assignments with the firm. It came back to him whenever he tried to sleep.

Statistically speaking, a good part of the Western world has played with Ehko. It was one of the most popular toys in the world. The plastic pieces came in different interlocking shapes, the same four or five hues. Once you learned how to hook the pieces together with that little snap sound, you yourself were hooked for a good stretch of childhood. The tiny bricks were easily misplaced, but the kits came with extras and the prodigal pieces returned eventually, coaxed by brooms, even if it took years.