It starts its fall from two hundred feet. Possibly higher--I'm terrible with distances, even fictional ones. This might astonish you, but it's true. Authors don't always have control over their own work, any more than humans truly have control over their own minds. At the worst moment, we'll say inappropriate things. Approaching an intersection, our memory will kick in for just an instant--maybe influenced by the aroma of Sicilian peperoni pizza baking in the restaurant on the corner--and we'll become convinced the light is green when it's actually red, sail through and be spun three times by a garbage truck.
So, if you think I should know the exact distance it started falling from, you have another think coming.
"Abercrombie and Fitch," stated Reginald.
Melinda wanted to argue, wanted to deride, wanted dearly to retort. But . . . and this unnerved her . . . she could only breath shallowly three times, then say, "I agree."
Reginald had fished out change so that he could leave exactly a seventeen percent tip. This was his trademark. It wasn't the only eccentric thing about him, but it was the only one worth bringing up at parties or after closing when all the waiters and bussers were hammering beers and filling the sugar caddies. It was less flashy than the fellow who left his tips using two dollar bills. It was also more practical. You didn't want to spend one of those relatively rare Jeffersons. But you could scoop 3.78 into your purse and buy cat litter or a dumb toy for your four-year-old. Reginald's habit was so well known that, when he once left twenty-one percent, the server glowed for days and even called his mother in Anchorage to brag about it. On another occasion, he left nine percent. That server was suspended.
It has bounced off a tenth story window. A cleaning woman, inside, saw it, put down her rag and spray bottle, pulled out a small pad of paper, the kind that are seventy-nine cents and are spiral bound at the top--reporters pads, they're sometimes called--and a pen, and quickly wrote a haiku. She had three hundred of these pads, neatly labeled with the dates she started and finished writing in them. They would be found after she inexplicably moved to Hawaii to work as a hairdresser. Her apartment superintendent would be the one who opened the boxes, trying to figure out where she had gone, and lamenting that he'd lost a tenant who, while a little odd, paid rent on time. Even though he would give all her clothes away, and sell her furniture and stereo, he would keep the notepads, read them, and eventually show them to a university professor. You might think you're pretty safe in doing something like this, that such educators hold themselves to higher ethical standards. In reality, it's a crap shoot. Fortunately, this professor came up an eleven, compiled, edited and published the works in a series of fascinating articles called "Missing Inks". One day, the cleaning lady come coiffure-er was layering a client's gorgeous blonde hair, truly a river of fine gold that could hold any perm or style, when the client at the next table quoted one of the articles. Our multi-talented heroine of the moment got full details, called the professor, and was pleasantly (as you will be) surprised to learn that all money from the articles, except what covered expenses, was in a separate account in hopes the author would come forward. Today, the professor and the author share a house and travel on frequent book tours together.
Cromwell hated tipping, hated the whole concept. She hated commissions of any kind, including--perhaps especially--in sales. She believed it lead to a less-than-team spirit and, while she was not a team player herself, she recognized that other people needed that comfortable sense of togetherness to make them feel good about whoring themselves out to multi-billion dollar corporations that had no more concerns for their customers than a giraffe has for treetop leaves.
It turned out this was fairly forward-thinking on Melinda's part. During her lifetime (which, we shall eventually see, is unusually long) most businesses would stop paying commissions, and most restaurants would pay their servers a straight--and fair--salary. The equitable wage would come about because of a social movement whose real name was never remembered and so was generally called "be-nice-ism". Despite this idea being part of other philosophies and religions, it had never occured to anyone to let it stand on its own until a butcher from Long Island started saying "thank you" loudly and persistently to every person he met. You wouldn't think this would become an international sensation, but then who would have predicted pet rocks?
She left ten percent, on the theory that she had to wait in line and thus had, to a large degree, served herself.
The wind had picked it up for a moment, tossed it back up a few feet, but now it's falling again, twisting, a little like a delicate cyclone.
Boone asked, "Will you have dinner with me?" He asked it in the same way he would ask for the self-sticking paper strips that are used to wrap stacks of fifty dollar bills.
To say that Cromwell was speechless would be a complete lie. She told Boone what she thought of men like him, who obviously had so little intenstinal fortitude that they might as well get sucked up into a Boeing jet engine. She said many things that, in candor, I can't repeat. People stared. This was abnormal coffe shop verbosity.
When Melinda stopped, Boone waited an extra few seconds, just to be sure she was really finished, then asked politely. "Well, will you?"
You may not believe she said yes. I wouldn't, if I had heard about her behavior to this point. But the fact is, she did say yes, said it as if she were trying to talk around a hard pretzel that had become stuck in her throat. Everyone in the vicinity was surprised. (So was Reginald, but the reasons for that will have to wait for another time.)
The affirmation given, they paused. If I haven't mentioned they were sitting outside, I should do so now. It's important. If not for this fact, it wouldn't have been Cromwell and Boone who had the blue feather plop onto their table. It wouldn't have been Cromwell who said, "What the fuck?" And--critically--it wouldn't have been Boone who said, "Struthio camelus."
Cromwell asked the question that all of us are asking (all of us, that is, who don't know the answer). Boone picked up the feather and stared at it.
"Ostrich."
The adventure had begun.