“Damn,” Deuce said. “What happened to your mustache? Your face looks like a dolphin’s vagina.”
“I have to say,” Douglas told him, “you have an impressive amount of animal genitalia similes.”
“Whatever that means,” Deuce said, “I thank you.”
“So,” Douglas asked. “What brings you to campus?”
“Bicentennial fever,” Deuce said. “I’ve only got two days left to get all these headshots done and these damn kids don’t show up to appointments. I’ve tried everything I could think of and then some. I figured I’d just track them down here.”
The bicentennial. Of course. Everything in town, it seemed to Douglas, was about the damned bicentennial. That very weekend Deerfield was to hold what they considered to be a huge celebration. It was something the mayor and the city council imagined would be a statewide news item, maybe inject a little energy into the place, pump some tourism dollars into the local economy, although Douglas felt this to be a bit delusional. Still, the party had become a sort of homework assignment for the whole town that past year. The school band was learning new songs, banners were being printed up by the dozens, Cherilyn was making birdhouses like crazy. Even the courthouse building had been pressure-washed and repainted. Bruce Newman’s role in this occasion had become prominent by his own design. He’d promised their mayor, Hank Richieu, a sort of monumental mosaic, one of those hidden-picture computer-type deals about ten feet high and five across, to be made up of a small photo of everyone in Deerfield’s face. There was also to be a talent show, a parade, a gumbo cook-off, and even a fireworks display, but Deuce’s mosaic of the nearly twelve thousand people in Deerfield was said to be the centerpiece. The whole thing was even kicking off tomorrow night, Douglas remembered, in the school gym. He had no plan to attend. All he wanted this Friday night, he knew, was a normal dinner with his wife.
“Actually,” Bruce told him, “I still need a photo of you, don’t I? How about you hop up there on your desk and give me an action shot? We’ll call it ‘The Teacher in Deep Thought.’”
“You know,” Douglas said. “This really isn’t a good time.”
Deuce took one of the cameras in his hand and began fiddling with the lens. “Come on,” he said. “Pucker those lips and give me a trademark Hubbard whistle. I’ll get you in the middle of ‘What a Wonderful World’ by that fat guy.”
Douglas reached down to his desk and grabbed his beret, picked up his mug of coffee that was already getting cold. “You mean Louis Armstrong?” Douglas said. “American genius?”
“That would be a good caption,” Bruce said. “Stand over there by the window. I’ll get you in your artsy-fartsy hat and everything. We’ll call it ‘Douglas Hubbard: The Professor in Repose.’”
Douglas knew he was trapped. So, rather than fight it, he walked to the window and stood thoughtfully enough, he felt, with his coffee and beret. “I’m not actually a professor,” he said, and just like that, here was another thing that reminded Douglas of what he had never accomplished. No Ph.D. No stellar career. No dynamo in the sack. And this thought led him back to Cherilyn.
“Bruce,” Douglas said. “I was wondering. Have you heard about that new machine at the grocery?”
“Indeed,” Bruce said. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“What,” Douglas said. “You believe in that thing?”
“No,” Bruce said. “I meant it’s amazing the shit people will buy if you shovel it.”
“I’m guessing you haven’t tried it, then.”
“No need,” Bruce said. “Why mess with perfection, am I right? It’s like you. Why would you try something like that? You know who you are. It’s the same person you’ve always been. The luckiest man in the world.”
“I don’t know,” Douglas said. “I imagine I could be a lot of different things.”
“Whatever you say,” Deuce said, and angled his camera. “Now give me a smile, Mr. President. Give me a big cheesy grin for the ages.”
Douglas rested his hip against the windowsill and willed himself to smile. Before Deuce could get a shot off, however, a baseball crashed through the glass. It hit Douglas in the hand, cracked his mug, and splashed coffee all over his blazer.
“Perfect,” Douglas said.
A boy named Tim Nevers quickly ran up to the window, nearly out of breath, and surveyed the damage. He looked through the hole and into the room. “Damn!” he said. “How fast you think that was going?”
Deuce picked the ball off the floor, tossed it in his hand a couple times. “Upper eighties, easy,” he told him. “Nice little slurve to it, too.”
Douglas mopped at the coffee with the sleeve of his blazer. “Go see the principal, Mr. Nevers,” he told him. “Tell her to call maintenance.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hubbard,” Tim said. “I just found out yesterday that I’m going to be a pitcher. A Major Leaguer! Can you believe it? I didn’t even know I liked baseball.”
Deuce turned the ball in his hand. “A pitcher, eh?” he said. “That’s what DNAMIX told you?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
Deuce tossed the ball back to him. “Not bad,” he said.
“You may want to work on your command,” Douglas told him. “And start thinking of a way to pay for this window.”
“Won’t be a problem,” Tim said. “I’m going to be a millionaire!” And then he ran along.
When Douglas looked back up at Deuce, he saw that he was already clicking away, grinning and aiming his camera, catching shot after shot of Douglas looking grumpy and stained and miserable.
“Douglas Hubbard, everybody,” Deuce said. “The Luckiest Man in the World.”
4
Cherilyn
England. Luxembourg. Liechtenstein. Monaco. Morocco. Qatar!
So much royalty googled and it was not even noon.
So many stories.
Did you know, for instance, that the Kingdom of Bhutan has a Dragon King named Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and he married a non-royal woman named Jetsun Pema and made her a queen? Just like that. Boom! She was royal. At their wedding they wore multicolored scarves and pink kimonos and he had a ponytail and she got a crown. This was something Cherilyn did not know yesterday.
It was nice to be reminded, she thought, that the Internet was useful. Although she spent a good amount of time on it, checking Facebook, looking at the things her friends either birthed or ingested on Instagram, getting craft ideas from Pinterest, she did this all from the small cloister of her smartphone. Maybe she would venture over to her news feed every once in a while to read the gossip headlines about which celebrities were mad at other celebrities about what rumored affairs they’d had at which beach house in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard or some such place, but Cherilyn didn’t think this counted as being “online.” She was not one of those “Internet people.” The opposite, actually.