Interface. Part 18

In the course of installing the cable system he had to go in and out of the house half a dozen times. Each time, he was careful to stare her down while standing in the corner of her peripheral vision so that she would know that he was there. Each time, she felt herself getting hot under the collar and turned squarely toward him, and each time he glanced away just a moment before her eye met his, blinked, shook his head, and continued about his work.

He walked around the house brandishing a power drill with a preposterously elongated bit, which he used to drill holes all the way through the exterior walls wherever she told him she wanted a cable TV wire. Even the way that he handled this tool raised Eleanor's hackles; it seemed clear, somehow, that a large portion of Erwin Dudley Strang's ego was bound up in this tool, and that penetrating the walls of total strangers' homes was the really swell part of the job as far as he was concerned.

And consequently he always pushed on the drill a little bit too hard, tried to make it happen a little bit too fast, and ended up shoving the drill bit through the wall with brute force rather than waiting for it to cut cleanly; everywhere he poked a hole through the wall he managed to burst a sizable hole through the drywall, and every time he did it, he came back in and shook his head in astonishment as if this were the first time it had ever happened. As if defective drywall had been used to build the Richmonds' new house, the Richmonds had been foolish enough not to notice, and there was not a thing he could do about it.

He ran the cables along the outside of the house, not by stapling them but by tucking them between the pieces of vinyl siding. As a result they all fell out within the first couple of days, leaving gaps in the siding where it no longer interlocked properly. Harmon ended up spending an entire weekend fixing the holes in the drywall and reattaching the cable to the house and getting the siding popped back together. Harmon also noticed that Strang had neglected to ground the cable system properly, which put the whole family at risk of electrocution, and so he rigged up a way to ground it to a cold-water pipe down in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

All of this was in defiance of Erwin Dudley Strang's statement, which he repeated to Eleanor several times, that the stuff was cable company property and they were not allowed to mess with it in any way.

"It's all hooked up," he said, at some point when he had arbitrarily decided that he was finished. "Now, if you'll show me your TV, I'll hook it up for you."

The Richmonds had not moved into the house yet. There was not a stick of furniture in the house, or for that matter in the whole development. Erwin Dudley Strang had pa.s.sed through every room in the place and must have noticed this. Now he was asking to see their television set, staring at her blankly, with the forced innocentexpression of a sixth-grade bad boy who has just nailed the teacher with a spitball.

She was just completely baffled by the man. Clearly, what he was saying had no relationship to what he was thinking. He was playing some kind of game. She had no idea what it was.

"It's not here. We haven't moved in yet," she finally said. Mother had taught her, when in doubt, to be polite.

"Well, then I can't show you how to hook it up."

"It's cable-ready," she said. "All we have to do is screw the cable in the back and turn it on."

"And plug it into the power outlet," he corrected her, just a hint of a smirk on his face.

"Yes, and plug it in. Good point," she said.

"Now, is it ready for all bands of cable? Because the bands here might be different from the bands there."

She had been expecting something like this. Telling Erwin Dudley Strang that their set was cable-ready was tantamount to making fun of his drill bit. He could not let it go unpunished. He would have to one-up her and display his technical mastery.

"From the bands where?" she asked.

His eyes darted back and forth. Clearly this was something of a curve ball. "Wherever y'all came from," he said, putting a long, drawling emphasis on the "y'all."

"If you don't know where we came from, how do you know that the bands are different?"

"Well, you came from back East, didn't you? From one of them big cities?"

"No. We were at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center for a couple of years. Before that we lived in Germany."

"Oooh, Germany," he said. Then, moving so suddenly that he made Eleanor startle, he stood up straight, clicked the heels of his work boots together, and jutted his right arm out in a n.a.z.i salute. "Sieg Heil!" he hollered.

He dropped his arm and a smile spread across his face as he watched Eleanor's reaction. "Lots of those kinds of people there? You know, National Socialists?"

"You mean n.a.z.is?"

"Well, that's kind of a slang term, but yeah, that's what I mean."

"Never saw one there," Eleanor said. "If you're finished, you can leave now."

Strang raised his eyebrows fastidiously. "Well, technically speaking, I'm not finished with the installation until I have hooked up the TV set and gotten it running to the satisfaction of the owner."

"My husband is an engineer. He'll get it running. If we're not satisfied, we'll call the cable company."

"But before I leave, I have to get your signature on this doc.u.ment," Strang said, holding up an aluminium clipboard, "which states that the installation is complete and you are satisfied with the quality of service."

"I'll sign anything, at this point."

"You sure?" Strang said, wiggling the clipboard just out of Eleanor's reach.

"Positive."

"We could test it right now if you could get a TV set."

"For the eight hundredth time, I do not have a TV."

"I'll bet you could get one, though."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Strang looked out the windows of the living room, down the block. "Must be some other houses around here that have TVs. I'll bet you could figure out a way to get your hands on someone else's TV set, if you really wanted it."

She just stared at him, narrowed her eyes, shook her head in amazement.

He continued, "Course now that y'all are out here in the nice part of town, I'll bet you don't do that kind of thing no more. But I'll bet you still got the skills. Y'all are just a little rusty."

"I'm gong to call the cable TV company and they are going to fire your a.s.s," she said.

"They can't," he said. "I don't work for them. I'm an independent contractor. Just a small-time entrepreneurial businessman struggling to make my way."

"Then I'll make sure they never hire you again."

"Your word against mine," he said, "and even if they believe you, there's plenty of other cable systemsout here in Colorful Colorado that keep my services in high demand."

She knew it was crazy for her to be arguing this with him. She should just throw him out of the house. But her parents had raised her to talk things out. They had worked their fingers to the bone paying for an expensive Catholic education so that the nuns could teach her to be a rational, intelligent citizen. She could not get over the impulse to make Erwin Dudley Strang see reason. "Why shouldn't they believe me?" she said. "Why would I bother to call in such a complaint? It's not something I would do for fun."

"h.e.l.l hath no fury like a woman scorned," he said.

"What!?"

"I seen the way you been looking at me," he said. "If you want a taste, why don't you just ask for it?"

"Oh, Jesus," she said, "get out of my house. Get out now. Just get out."

"Upstairs bedroom has some nice carpet in it. Almost as good as a bed."

Then she astonished herself by kicking him in the nuts. Hard. A direct hit. His mouth formed into an O shape, his eyes got big, he stuck his arms down between his thighs, sank to the living room floor, and lay down on his side, sucking in quick, short breaths through his puckered lips.

She went right out to her car, rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and started the engine.

After a few minutes, Strang came out, walking in little tiny baby step, climbed gingerly into his van, and after sitting there in the front seat for a few ominous minutes, backed out of the driveway and went away.

Later they found out that he had forged Eleanor's signature on the work order form. She didn't care.

The next time Eleanor saw Erwin Dudley Strang, he was on television, his name was Earl Strong, and his complexion was frighteningly, unnaturally smooth, as if he had been lovingly s.p.a.ckled, buffed, and polished. The white skin of his cheeks was luminous under the lights of the television studio, and almost fuzzy, like an off-focus beauty shot of an aging movie star. As if the camera could not find any feature or blemish to focus on.

She saw his face on the local public-access cable TV channel one night when she was flipping through the channels after Harmon and the children had gone to bed. It went without saying that the cable had never worked perfectly ever since Strang installed it. It was always a little snowy, with a bit of fuzz in the audio, and whenever the wind blew, the picture started to jump. But putting up with bad television was preferable to phoning the cable TV company and having them send him back to fix it.

It was creepy and ironic to be flipping through the channels, cursing the bad reception, cursing the man who had installed it, and suddenly to have him show up on screen, in a full talking head shot, wearing a business suit.

She looked at him for a moment and flipped on to the next channel. She didn't want to see the man. So he was wearing a business suit. He had found some other profession to give a bad name to. She didn't care.

But a few nights later she saw him again, and this time the letters EARL STRONG were superimposed on the bottom of the screen, and finally she had to stop right there and watch.

It was some kind of talk show. Not a slick network production by any means. Just a sheet-metal desk in front of a big piece of blue paper with a Goodwill sofa next to it where the guests sat.

But Earl Strong/Erwin Dudley Strang wasn't sitting on the sofa. He was sitting behind the desk, in a cheap folding sheet-metal chair that creaked whenever he shifted his weight. He was the host.

Eleanor had to go and dig up the little channel guide, the little slip of cardboard that Strang had given her years ago, to find out what channel she was watching. It said CH. 29 - PUBLIC ACCESS CABLEVISION.

Earl Strong was talking politics with an a.s.sortment of off-brand philosophers who drifted across his little stage, seemingly following their own cues. The camera angle never varied. Clearly there was only one camera taping this thing, and it was sitting on a tripod, running on autopilot. It was comically inept, just the kind of thing that he would throw together.

The t.i.tle of tonight's broadcast was "The Three-Fifths Compromise: Error or Inspiration?" Eleanor could only listen to about thirty seconds of it before she was overcome by an odd combination of boredomand fury.

The name of the show was Coming on Strong. Earl Strong kept coming on, week after week, year after year. It seemed that every time she happened to flip past his little program, he looked a little different: he did something about those crooked teeth. Got his chin lengthened. Fixed the nose. Bought a narrower and more conservative set of neckties. Played endlessly with his hairstyle until he found one - close-cropped but carefully sculpted - that worked. Bought himself a chair that did not creak. Moved to a better studio, got a two-camera setup, then a three-camera setup. Got commercial sponsorship from Ty (Buckaroo) Steele, a prominent local purveyor of cut-rate used cars, and made the jump from public-access cable to one of the local commercial stations.

And at each step of the process, Eleanor laughed and shook her head, remembering him curled up on the floor in her living room, sucking in short little breaths, and she wondered how long it would take for this man to be found out for the shabby little fraud he really was. Each time he attained a little more success, Eleanor was shocked for a moment, even a little frightened. Then she calmed herself down by reminding herself that the higher he got, the harder he would fall in the end.

Surely someone would take it upon themselves to expose this man.

But no one ever did.

And then, all of a sudden, Earl Strong was running for the United States Senate, he was ahead in the polls, and everyone loved him.

19.

A white limousine pulled into the parking lot of the mall, swung past the line of waiting buses, and came to a stop in front of the main entrance. This limousine was far from elegant; it was a rolling billboard for Ty (Buckaroo) Steele's Pre-Owned and Remanufactured Vehicles Inc. The only time it ever came out of the garage was during parades, when Buckaroo himself would drive it down the street with some local beauty queen popping out of the sunroof to wave at the crowd and pelt the young 'uns with hard candy.

But Buckaroo had now found another way to use it. The doors opened up and several men in dark suits climbed out and walked, in a cl.u.s.ter, toward the entrance of the mall. In the middle of the group she could clearly make out the pre-owned and remanufactured face of Earl Strong, who in these parts was invariably described as "the next Senator from Colorado."

A few moments after he went into the mall, a big cheer rose up from inside. They were holding some kind of campaign event inside there.

She shook her head, staring at a huge COMES ON STRONG poster stuck to the side of a bus directly in front of her.

Her bus wasn't due to leave for half an hour. There was really no reason for her to sit outside on this bench when she could go into the mall and kill time. It was just that she felt so trashy, walking through the nice mall in her clothes, rumpled from having been slept in, and her rumpled hair, carrying big hunks of generic bulk food that she had gotten for free.

Right next to her was a big pseudoadobe litter basket, nearly overflowing, and resting on the top layer, neatly folded and put away, was a thick glossy shopping bag from Nordstrom.

Eleanor pulled the bag out and unfolded it. It was clean and new.

She put her cheese and oatmeal inside the Nordstrom bag, got up, and walked toward the entrance of the shopping mall. She wanted to see what Erwin Dudley Strang was up to.As she was approaching the entrance, she saw her reflection in the gla.s.s doors. She had thought it was a clever trick, hiding her welfare cheese in the Nordstrom bag, but when she saw herself, she recognized something about her silhouette, a shape she'd seen in many cities, on many park benches, and a realization came to her.

She had become a bag lady.

It was a spear through her heart. She lost her stride and stumbled to a complete halt. Tears flooded her eyes uncontrollably and her nose began to run. She sniffed, blinked, swallowed, and fought it back.

The Earl Strong supporters were veering around her, turning back to look at her face. She couldn't just stand there. She picked up her pace and punched through the gla.s.s doors and in so doing, transformed herself from a bag lady into a shopper.

In the central part of the mall, Earl Strong was standing up on a raised podium, coming on strong.

"Thank you all for coming today. I wanted to do this in January, but the mall wouldn't let me have the s.p.a.ce because they said it was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And I said that I certainly wouldn't want to have my name a.s.sociated with a man who plagiarized his dissertation and shacked up with women he wasn't married to."

Nervous but exultant laughter ran through the crowd: a lot of heavy middle-aged white men raising their eyebrows at each other to see if they dared laugh at Martin Luther King. They did.

"Then I wanted to do it in February, but they said it was President's Day. And I said that I liked the sound of that, but that I was only running for the Senate, and the presidency would have to wait for a few more years."

That line brought a round of applause and a slowly gathering chant of "Run! Run! Run" from the crowd.

Earl Strong, obviously pleased, let the chant build for a few seconds, long enough to be picked up by the TV cameras, then made a big show of quieting it down by waving his hands over the crowd.

"That left March or April. But in April, we've got Easter, when Christ rose from the dead, and that one is a little out of my scope. So I settled on March. March is a plain and simple month, raw and honest, not tricked up with any fancy holidays, and I decided that suited my style best. And another thing about the month of March: it comes on strong!"

That cued an outburst of cheering and chanting that went on for several minutes.

Below, Eleanor wandered through the crowd with her shopping bag, watching the Strong supporters cheering and jumping up and down and pumping their fists in the air. She was totally invisible. They had eyes only for Strong. The few who did notice her got the same shocked look that Erwin Dudley Strang had gotten years ago when he had first seen a black woman standing in the doorway of a suburban house. Then they looked away.

Guiltily.

People were so easy to understand, when you were a mom. Eleanor could see their guilt a mile away, see them trying to delude themselves, like kids who believed that they could make unpleasant things go away just by wishing.

The only thing they needed, she realized, was a good talking-to. Which was one thing that Earl Strong could never give them.

Eventually the cheering died away and Earl Strong stopped shaking his clasped hands over his head and returned to the podium, shot his cuffs, adjusted his collar just a bit. Eleanor had wandered rather close to him, was now looking up at him from just a few feet away. His face was thickly plastered with television makeup. In his perfect, stiff suit and his injection-molded haircut and his heavy pancake, he looked like a cardboard cutout.

"Now you might ask why I went to so much trouble, and waited so long, for the opportunity to speak here at the Boulevard Mall. After all, there are better places to hold a campaign event. But this mall has something that none of those places can provide. As I stand here in the crossroads of this beautiful mall I can look in all directions and see economic prosperity at work."

Applause.

"I don't see people standing in line for a handout. I don't see people going to court and suing other people for what they think the world owes them. I don't see people breaking into other people's homes and stealing things. I see people working hard in honest businesses, small businesses, and to me that is what makes America thegreatest nation on earth."

Applause.

"And I have particular respect for the small businessmen, and women - let's not forget the women's libbers!-"