Page 14 of July Skies
“So obvious, isn’t it? I see everything in the library. Saw these two,” she pointed to Dahlia and Wayne, “going around asking everyone who looks a little bit different to come down here tonight. Then they asked me! You ask me, they got a big agenda. Even if you tell them all the white lesbians threaten you every time they see you, they’re gonna pick and choose answers to make it look worse or really not as bad. That’s what film people do. They did the same thing in Taiwan whenever the Chinese film crews came down to make us look like we love China so much. Everyone does propaganda. Learn to see it better.” She said all of this while standing up and wagging her finger at Salama and Anem. Frankie didn’t need her admonishments, apparently. “In Taipei, we laugh at these people. So let’s laugh at these ones now!”
While she didn’t directly laugh in Dahlia’s face on her way out the door, the effect was felt all the same. “Well…” Dahlia began. She looked to Frankie, waiting to see if the owner of the local deli would stick around.
She didn’t.
Soon, it was down to Salama and Anem. Salama was trapped there as long as the café was open. Anem looked like she wanted to still be interviewed, but she became more visibly uncomfortable as the seconds went by. “I should probably go home, too. My parents don’t like it when I stay out past dark.”
“It’s dark at 8:30,” Dahlia pointed out. “It’s seven now.”
“Still… takes a while to walk home from here…” Dahlia didn’t know why she thought that girl might stay. As soon as the fun was apparently over, Anem was gone.
“She lives two blocks behind here,” Heaven said from the counter. “I don’t live that much farther. You ready to go home, hon?” That was directed to Salama, who let her sigh of relief be heard as she ignored the crew and went back behind the camera. Whatever they muttered to one another in the kitchen could not be heard.
Wayne turned off the camera and wrapped his arms on top of the stand. “Good going. Scaring off the natives without much effort. Is this a new record for you?”
Dahlia was not perturbed. She may have an empty roundtable, but she always had a backup plan. “Maybe it’s a new record, maybe not. I admit, I was hoping they wouldn’t notice until at least a few more minutes in. Does throw a wrench into that angle of the documentary, but they all have our card. I’m sure one of them will step up for a private interview, even if it’s done anonymously.” In a small town like that, she didn’t blame a woman for wanting to go incognito when spilling the deets. Who knew what kind of backlash she might face? “You got all of that on camera, right? They signed their releases. I’m sure we’ve got something good in there.”
Wayne cocked the kind of smile that said his boss was up to her no-good tricks again. “Whatever you say. Because, yeah, the camera was running for all of that. You should’ve seen some of those walks out of here. We could sell stock footage like that.”
“We won’t have to, but we will still make a nice payday out of what we did get.” Payday might not come in the form of money, but it could come in awards. Recognition. A raw depiction of what it was like to be a different kind of minority in a minority-oriented town.Come on, somebody. Spill your guts and show me what Paradise Valley is really like.
All it took was one person to knock over the first few dominoes.
Chapter 9
KAREN
“You know I’m not as big of a rabble rouser as I could be in this town.” Frankie stirred the cream into the coffee she helped herself to in Mayor Rath’s office. “But if something smells, you know I’m not afraid to call it out.”
Karen steepled her fingers. Her phone buzzed with texts from her children, both of whom were bored enough to ask if they could take this old car apart or bake this recipe that required “two shots of bourbon.” Neither Xander nor Christina were legally old enough to purchase bourbon from the liquor store on the edge of town, but Karen personally knew Bob Rigsby, the owner and operator of Cascade Spirits & More. Couldn’t she… like…nudgehim to put the bourbon on her tab and conveniently leave it on his back stoop for Xander to pick up? He was only a few months shy of twenty-one! He waspracticallylegal!
Her children did not get her attention right now, however. When Karen saw Frankie step into city hall fifteen minutes ago, she knew something was up. As Frankie said, she wasn’t a rabble rouser. She wasn’t Cindy Smith, Abby Marcott, or Susie Pate. She mostly kept to herself, only raising her voice during chamber of commerce meetings. This was a woman who ran her deli on her own. She didn’t have time to lock up and come down to city hall over any little thing. When Frankie showed up to say her piece, people listened.
“I’m sure it must have been a misunderstanding.” Karen drummed her fingers on her desk. “I mean, it’s clear what Ms. Granger was doing by inviting our honorable members of the… ah…” While Frankie raised her eyebrows, Karen searched for the politically correct words to say. Unfortunately, those words were always changing. What was considered politically correct in urban bubbles like Portland and Seattle might be a little too ahead of the times in rural areas like Paradise Valley. Frankie was usually good at reminding the mayor what to say and what to avoid. Yet when talking to her directly? When she came in upset? Oh, boy.
“Members of minority communities?” Frankie offered. “Because I don’t know what other polite thing you can collectively call us when AnemSingeris thrown into the mix. That poor girl was so lost. I don’t think she’s used to having a spotlight shown on her Jewishness.”
“No, I suppose not.” The closest people came to being reminded that the supermarket checkout girl was Jewish was when Hanukkah rolled around and she wouldn’t stop singing that dreidel song.“Catchier than ‘Deck the Halls,’ now ain’t it?”Anem was once heard saying to a patron who pointed out she sung it all late autumn. “Ms. Granger is observant, but she doesn’t know about how this town gets along with each other. Or puts up with each other, in some cases.” That was especially true when Yi told off the wrong library patron for looking at porn on the computers. While everyone else in the library – yes, including young moms like Susie Pate – laughed the offender out of the room, he was likely to file a complaint against the no-nonsense librarian who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
Or complain, for that matter.
“Oh, good! You’re here, too!” There was Yi, in Karen’s doorway. It should probably be noted that the door had beencloseda few minutes ago. Yi had helped herself without so much as a knock. When she flung the door all the way open and marched in? Frankie rolled her eyes and took generous sips of her coffee. She would probably need it. “Hey, Mayor! I don’t got a lot of time to talk, ‘cause I’m on my lunch break from the library.” Yi slammed her hand on Frankie’s shoulder as if they were buddies. In reality, all Yi was good at doing was making Frankie spill a little coffee creamer onto her blue windbreaker. “Are we talking about that movie lady? Because she’s a real treat. Came into the library this morning to ask me if I wanted to follow up on what happened yesterday. Can you believe it? She invited that girl from the supermarket!”
Frankie guffawed. “I’ve already filled her in about that.”
“You shoulda seen that Meadow Hobfield,” Yi said with a grin. “Such a cool cookie, picking up her things and sauntering out like she had a model shoot to get to. In Mandarin we say she’szhengmei.Real pretty lady. I hope they put that shot in the documentary! Only worthy one they got before I left!”
“Yes, we were talking about Ms. Granger and what happened yesterday.” Karen slammed her hands together, fingers strangling one another as she resisted the urge to twiddle them. “It’s my understanding that Ms. Granger may have committed a faux pas by gathering every woman of a certain checkmark to talk about what it’sreallylike to live in Paradise Valley.” Whatever that meant. Karen was still reeling from the implications that there may be racial or religious tensions in her town… and she hadn’t heard about it. “I’m sorry to hear that this has happened. At no time did she mention to me that she intended to go for that angle.”
Both Frankie and Yi exchanged looks that implied Karen still didn’t get it. “You’re acting like she’s going to tell you everything, huh?” Frankie snorted. “Why in the world would she tell you aboutthat?Far as I know, the only thing a filmmaker has to do around here is get some permissions and permits. So, I didn’t give her permission to use me in her little movie.”
“You’re lucky you get to choose,” Yi interjected. “They keep showing up at the library to do ‘research.’ Pretty sure I’m in a hundred shots by now. I hope they got my good side!”
“We thought you should know what’s going on around town, Mayor.” Frankie placed her paper coffee cup on Karen’s desk. “Personally, I’m not too upset about it. People make weird inferences about me all the time, but it’s quite a different matter when it’s done on camera. I’d like to point out that the homeschool moms and the people down at the gay bar haven’t yet been singled out. We were one of the first groups she came to. She said something about it ‘still being a small town,’ as if we don’t know!” Frankie inhaled a deep breath. “Ah, Mayor, the only reason I’m here is because I believe you actually listen well enough.”
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Karen wrote down a note on a Post-It. “I’ll have a talk with Ms. Granger as soon as I can track her down. I’m sure you can sympathize that we’re still catching up post-Fourth of July and preparing for Paradise Pride later this month.”
“Oh, great!” Yi exclaimed. “They’ll love to film that!”
