Chapter 5
Ike
I should’ve known we wouldn’t get through this town meeting without Muffie Horowitz talking about her underwear, but the old gal can’t seem to help herself. My hand inches toward my gavel instinctively as she takes the mic.
When I took the job as town manager nine years ago—I was young, but there were no other applicants—I didn’t need the gavel.
We had a small select board of two people.
No one showed up to the meetings. Business was conducted efficiently, and I got home to my leftovers no later than nine o’clock. Those were happy times.
Then, like flies on an unattended bologna sandwich, the people of Cape Georgeana found me.
They discovered my love for this town and my willingness to be their underpaid muscle.
The select board grew to four people, and now our meetings often stretch late into the night.
Muffie Horowitz is a regular at the microphone, and her grievances range from carpenter ants to the smell of the ocean, with horrifyingly detailed stories sprinkled throughout.
“That’s what I’m saying, Hal. The power lines in our neighborhood are too low. There’s electricity in the air. I can feel it, and it’s making me swell. My underclothing is tight.” The jewelry on her wrinkled wrists clinks when she snaps the elastic waistband of her trousers to demonstrate.
Oh no. My pinky brushes the well-worn oak gavel.
My brother August gave it to me as a joke when the meetings started to go sideways.
It was hilarious—at first. Hal Morris, who was a lineman before he retired and joined the select board out of boredom, is shaking with repressed laughter in his seat beside me.
Muffie continues soberly, “My panties are wearing out too fast because they have become too snug.” She snaps her waistband again. More jewelry clinks as she readjusts her underpants through her overpants. “Can’t you reach out to someone about raising the power lines?”
“You got it, Muffie.” Hal takes one for the team. “Ike is on it.”
Wait, what?
I hold back a groan, and Muffie finds her seat, satisfied until next month. I scribble a reminder to call the power company, then loosen my tie. At least Muffie’s panties are our final item of business. We can wrap things up, and it’s only eight o’clock.
I straighten my papers. “Okay, everyone—”
Then the back door opens and in walks the last person I ever expect to see at a town meeting.
Diana York.
There’s a collective gasp. Maggie Betts wraps a protective arm around her three-year-old son. A few guys straighten in their seats. Muffie puts a precautionary hand over the necklace on her throat like it’s Diana’s primary target. Whispers run through the seated crowd.
Despite the fact that the woman who popped up in my dreams last night is approaching the microphone, I continue like it’s business as usual. “If no one has any more items to discuss, I move that we adjourn this meeting until next month.”
Meanwhile, Stevie Sullivan follows Diana through the door and takes a seat. Diana adjusts the mic to her height, clearing her throat. She looks to Stevie, who gives her two thumbs up while biting her lip. A hush falls over the room.
Diana clears her throat again and makes eye contact with Nellie, who is seated on the other side of Hal. She’s been on the board since I was in high school.
It's your funeral, Princess.
Nellie might look soft with her helmet of gray hair and embroidered sweater, but she’s a human gavel.
She takes no crap, and she’s constantly getting after me to use the word “no” more often.
She was a county prosecutor somewhere in New York before she retired on the Maine coast about ninety years ago.
Her shark-ish smile says she smells fresh meat on the stand ready to be cross-examined.
Nellie misses her glory days. She is terrifying.
Diana’s red lips curl serenely, chumming the water. She’s totally unaware of the danger she’s in. “I’m here to address the disrepair of the Cape Georgeana Lighthouse.”
“Good luck,” someone gripes from the back of the room.
Nellie folds her arms. “Go on.”
“I’m asking that the town of Cape Georgeana nominate the lighthouse for the National Register of Historic Places.” Diana runs her hands down her navy skirt, and I avert my eyes. “With that designation we could receive the funding required for renovation—”
“We,” a crotchety male voice cuts in from the back. “You don’t even live here.”
“The lighthouse could receive funding,” Diana corrects herself, then implores Nellie with her startling crystal blue eyes. If she’s looking for Girl Power, she’s come to the wrong place. Nellie will chew her up and spit her out.
“Miss York, the lighthouse was already rejected for the registry due to extensive renovation work that was done too recently.”
Delicate lines form between Diana's dark eyebrows. “How recently? It’s in shambles.” She runs her hands down her legs again, and I want to crack my gavel. She needs to stop that.
Nellie appears unaffected by Diana’s hands on her skirt. “The outbuildings were remodeled in the early 1970s by the last couple who kept the lighthouse before it was decommissioned—the O'Connors.”
“Okay, but the actual structure was built in 1876—”
“Be that as it may, it was rejected for the registry,” Nellie says with finality.
This is picking at a barely-healed wound. I worked so hard to get that lighthouse funded and never found a solution. It rankles that Diana waltzed into town, looked at the thing for five minutes, destroyed the staircase, and now she thinks she can solve this.
“There must be a way to fund it. A bond? A gift shop? Something,” she pleads. She almost seems to sincerely care about the thing. “You can’t let it crumble into the ocean.”
I’m tired of having this failure rubbed in my face. “We’ve tried, Diana. The money isn’t there.” My voice rings through the room, and I can’t stand how my frustration is leaking through. “We have other projects that are a higher priority.” I’ve already told her this.
She arches one perfect eyebrow in my direction, and my spine tingles. I don’t have time to manage a hex or a curse or whatever she’s attempting with that eyebrow. And I don’t care what she looks like in that skirt. She needs to let this go. She opens her mouth to speak, but someone talks over her.
“Maybe you oughta pay for it with all that money from your paper straw empire,” someone crows from the back of the room before Diana can respond. The comment is met with a few snickers, heads nods, and a staggered chorus of “yeah”s.
Diana blinks. She sounds exasperated when she says, “For the last time, I did not invent paper—”
“Have you ever used one of her straws?” Obie LeClaire grumbles from the front row to no one in particular. His backwoods Mainer accent is heavy when he’s grumping. “Falls right apart.”
“They aren’t my straws.” Diana clears her throat and makes eye contact with me. “Perhaps if I looked at the budget for you. This is what I do, actually. I’m quite—”
Obie cuts her off with a swat of his weathered paw. “Go back to New York and look at the budget for your paper straws—”
BANG BANG BANG!
Diana jumps when I hit the gavel.
I have to cut off Obie before he really gets going.
“We don’t kick people out of town meetings, Obie.
Pesky First Amendment rights and all.” I grin and Obie turns red.
There’s a look on Diana’s face that I don’t recognize.
She almost looks vulnerable, but I know better.
I have to ignore it. “If there’s no other business, I move that we adjourn until August.”
Diana shakes her head. “But—”
“There’s no money. Meeting adjourned.” I bang my gavel.
Diana doesn’t move away from the mic. She glares at me, her mouth in an appalled O-shape as the people of Cape Georgeana file out around her. She’s used to getting what she wants.
Well, I want this, too. I’ve tried. Sometimes we don’t get what we want.