The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (69 page)

U.S. Marines march out and surround the velvet ropes that mark the Sultan’s place and in a silent coup subdue the Sultan’s bodyguards …

And the Sultan himself is under military arrest, oh,
yes
he is raging and—
mirabile!
—the monstroplex and properties surrounding are returned to the City of New York in a bloodless
coup
, a gift to Manhattanites from the combined forces of our saviors the financial giants: Disney, Bertelsmann and Microsoft.

That fast.

The band segues into “The Star Spangled Banner.”

While on the abandoned baseball diamond, Salman Rushdie dithers, forgotten.

Well, almost forgotten.

“Allah
bismallah
,” Ahmed cries. It’s time! With upraised kris he breaks through the crowd and with all the strength left in his ninety-year-old body, he lunges at Rushdie.

His mark’s eyes grow wide with excitement as Ahmed bears down on him. He beams, delighted. “You!”

Caught in midlunge, Ahmed is transfixed, thunderstruck and rattled to the foundations. “You.” He has waited all his life for this moment.

“Yes!” Rushdie wags his head in delight at being recognized.

“You look just like all your pictures.” Ahmed falls on him and they grapple. Never mind that the
fatwah
was called off dozens of years ago. Never mind that Ahmed is the last man standing who failed to get the word. This is fated, fated. “Yes.”

Locked in a mortal embrace, Rushdie sighs as if to a lover, “I thought you’d never come.”

—
The Barcelona Review
, 2005

Special

Ashley Famous is coming to town and we’re all excited and a little apprehensive. Ours is the last unspoiled village on the Hudson, one of those quiet places where nobody important ever comes, and the last thing we want is gawking disciples trampling our flower beds, to say nothing of gift shops and roadside shrines popping up all along Route 9. Still we get the shivers, thinking,
Ashley Famous. Here.

Bill Anthony says although she’s world renowned it’s in a good way, no YouTube antics to embarrass us, no scandal, no paparazzi implied, she can only bring honor to Schuylerton. “Think people like us, but with the sheen of greatness”—Bill actually said that!—“when all she wants is to blend in and disappear.” Well, she’s picked the right place. We all mind our own business here.

She writes those sexy little books about God, so crowds collect like flies on a road kill because, who wouldn’t want to touch the hand that’s been in touch with God? People do it, but not people you know. She can walk down our streets undisturbed, although when Gloria saw her out in front of Tazewell’s Realty that first day, she could swear the woman had
look at me
written all over her.

Of course Gloria is not our most reliable witness. Even though she’s a published writer, she is not all that popular, while Ashley Famous has all those fans driving her into seclusion. They follow her everywhere with misty eyes and wide, wet smiles. Bill says everybody has a cross and this is hers.

Our Reverend Anthony wrote a book about her, which is how they got friends. Bill fought his way to the platform when she got that medal, waving the book with her picture on the front. “Oh,” she shouted, “how lovely,” but by that time fans were stampeding like a herd of leeches and Bill had to rescue her. She thanked him with the saddest smile and said, “Sometimes you just get tired.”

The thing is, if you’ve touched the hand and God just happens to drop in on you, the last thing He wants is to fight off gangs of rapt admirers, Bill says, so she’s going into seclusion—here!

Bill is dean over at the college so he stepped up and invited her, to do what, we aren’t certain, but there you are.

She’s bought the Eversons’ boathouse which is odd, since we will do anything to keep our houses in the family; we owe it to our children to say nothing of the generations that came before, but you’d have to be one of us to understand. We’re not pointing any fingers, but this is the first piece of riverfront property to pass out of family hands in two centuries and Grant didn’t consult Bunk Schuyler at Historical Preservation before he sold.

Never mind. Schuylerton could use a little pizzazz, and it is well known that celebrities like Ashley Famous have creative, fascinating friends who would probably love a weekend in the country, especially with summer coming on. She’ll want to invite gangs of poets and artists, who are bound to be more exciting than certain people around here, which will definitely perk up our social lives. We can’t wait to be invited—that is, if she takes to us.

The question is, where to start with her? We won’t intrude and we never, ever overstep—no screen captures in the
IGA
parking lot, we promise, no cell phone shots at Luther’s Drug Store even though we’re dying for our friends to know. Uninvited drop-ins and cold calls are out; when a person’s keeping the line open for God, who are we to interrupt? We don’t go where we’re not invited and our kind doesn’t gawk, it’s just not done.

When we do meet her we’ll be discreet, we will!
Guess what. We have a secret
.
Guess what. It’s you.

Oh, but she said something odd to Jack Tazewell when he was showing the boathouse. “I think the most interesting things in the world are sex and religion, don’t you?”

So, should we lock up our husbands or what?

We don’t mean to fret, but if we happen to run into her, is it all right to say hello?

It’s hard to know. But we
are
looking forward to meeting her, however it comes about, Ms. Famous and whichever husband she has this time around. We hear that there have been several, but never mind. We’re very forgiving here. We’d let you into our hearts quicker than we’d let you into our homes.

We just haven’t figured out how to let her know she has friends here in Schuylerton.

Beth and Gloria and Jeannie Chandler and I have been going home by the river road after lunch at the club, checking for signs of life. So far all we’ve seen is Grant Everson glowering over his rose bushes as we come through his gate; when he pops up with the hedge clippers we wave our fingers and laugh: la-la, Grant, you’re the one who sold the boathouse, now look. Evanoaks is not your private property now.

Rich as she is, you’d think Ashley Famous would have the boathouse crawling
with painters and decorators, God knows those books make millions, but the new mailbox and fresh geraniums in the cut-out truck tire planter are pretty much it. Well, that will all change once we’re friends; we can tell her where to shop for all the best things. If only we’d come upon her planting something in the front yard; if only she’d hear our car in the turnaround and stick her head out the front door to see who’s coming, then we could all smile and wave, hel-
looo
. Of course she’d wave back and if we caught her smiling we’d pile out of the car and make friends, but we’ve cruised the boathouse four times this week and we haven’t seen a trace.

With anybody else, we’d start with the chess pie or the hot cross buns, but you don’t take food to a star, not even the apple basket from Creech’s Orchards with Elva Creech’s jams and homemade maple sugar leaves; usually casseroles and deep dish pies are great conversation pieces, but even the mocha cheese-cake from Tempest’s Teapot is just wrong.

With a best-selling author who can’t stop winning prizes, where do you start? It’s not like Gloria would know.

We hear she’s very reclusive. Maybe she’s like us, standoffish, but only with people she doesn’t want to know.

We hear she’s a lot of fun at parties, if you can only get her to come.

We hear that sometimes she can get a little wild.

Then why is she so damn difficult, when all we’re trying to do is welcome her to Schuylerton?

Bill warned us that she doesn’t warm up to just anybody, but Bill is infuriatingly smug just because he happened to write a book. We’re not
just anybody
, which he knows, and if he won’t tell Ashley Famous who we are in this town, then how do we let her know?

Should we sidle up to her in the supermarket and start the discussion about cheeses or tell her which produce to avoid? A few words and she’ll understand who we are. So, can we get friends by showing her the farmers’ market or should we offer her our cleaning lady or should we just come right out in the open and give a party for her?

What if she hates parties and doesn’t want to come?

What if she loves parties and doesn’t want to come?

What if she wants to come, just not to our house?

Would she come if we gave it at the club? Does she really hate parties, and does she know what an honor that would be? Outsiders can live here for generations without seeing the inside of the Schuylerton River Club. Bill says the last thing she wants is to feel crowded and we don’t want to make her self-conscious so it should sound casual, “If you happen to be around,” even though
we’re putting on the dog. When she gets to the club and sees how much fun we’re all having she’ll know how lucky she is:
we know you’re big and important but in our own way we’re important too
. Of course she’ll invite us back, if we can only get her to come.

We could probably start by reading her books, but who has the time? Should we fake it and send her admiring notes? Naturally we’ll have them laid out on our end tables when she comes over and after she notices, of course we’ll ask her to sign—unless that’s gauche. We bought them all, what more does she expect?

Unlike my friends, who dropped theirs in the tub or left them out on the clubhouse porch in the rain, at least I tried. My Richard thought it was foolish, sitting up in bed improving my mind when he thought we should be doing something else, and was it my fault I got bored and fell asleep between the pages, or hers? To tell the truth, her stuff is all too airy-fairy for me—beautiful, but neither here nor there. So it just won’t do to barge up to her on Broad Street with that gooshy Ashley-fan smile, babbling, “I just loved your book.” I hate being false even when it’s working, and if there was a quiz, I’d die.

Mirabile
, Stephanie Parrish makes the big breakthrough. Yesterday our Ms. Famous tripped on the old boot scraper outside Fanueil Flowers and all her shopping bags went whoosh, so Stephanie got down and helped her pick up her stuff.

Of course she was grateful, and all the while Stephanie was taking note of the items: which face creams, what shade of lipstick, whose bread; hand-knit sweater from Erdrich’s with those lambs on the front plus, from Ezekiel’s of all things, canned smelts. She thanked Stephanie three times, but that was it. It wasn’t like Ashley Famous invited her back to the boathouse for coffee, or to have lunch at Tempest’s before she headed home.

In fact Beth was the first to speak to her, and it wasn’t exactly a conversation. She saw her in Ezekiel’s, lined up for bagels on Sunday morning just like everybody else but with dark glasses and a kerchief pulled down, so we wouldn’t know. Beth just went right up to her. She smiled as nicely as she could without being smarmy and spoke. “Excuse me, but aren’t you …”

And in the name of Edith Wharton, who used to live around here and I’m sure was a lot more gracious, Ashley Famous said, “No.”

That set us back.

But we have discovered that she is a very sweet person and tremendously vulnerable, which Mariel Edmunds learned when she braved the Hudson in Jake’s little boat after Beth told us about it at brunch. She cut the motor and glided in tactfully, so to look at her, you’d think she was quietly fishing in the
marsh and accidentally drifted in without noticing how close she was, which is how she caught our world-class new neighbor weeping out on the end of Grant Everson’s dock.

Well, one thing led to another—empathic grimaces, little waves—and Mariel scooted up the ladder and, respecting her privacy, sat on the end of the dock next to Ms. Famous, but not too close. She stayed quiet as the tomb while they both stared out at the channel until finally the sight of this
star
sitting there with tears streaming was more than Mariel could bear and she had to ask, “Are you all right?”

Imagine all that and then guess what this person with a brilliant career and gobs of honors and every man she ever wanted revealed in that thrilling, smoky voice she uses on
TV
. Not a damn thing. She said, “It’s just so beautiful.”