| Stohlquist |
Stohlquist’s telephone rang three times before he answered it. “Hello?”
“Alex?”
“Yes.”
“This is Jeff Dylski.”
He was an acquaintance of a business associate Stohlquist was introduced to a couple of months ago at a cavernous bar on the waterfront. A big, blustering guy, with a walrus red mustache, he was the accounts manager for a small repertory company that performed Shakespeare and Shaw at a converted firehouse in the east end of town four nights a week.
“How are you?”
“Fine,” Dylski said distractedly. “I just called to let you know they’ve been posted.”
“Already?”
“It doesn’t take long once we decided on which pictures we wanted to use.”
He chuckled. “How do we look?”
“Like any other herd of people roaming through town on a Saturday morning I guess.”
“I’ll have to check them out.”
“Do,” Dylski said. “I think you’ll get a kick out of them.”
*
That evening, after he got home from work, Stohlquist sat down at his computer and clicked on the website where the photographs were presented in what Dylski described as “an online album.” The first one he saw was of all fourteen people standing in front of a merry-go-round in icicle-white lab coats. He grinned, slowly sipping his whiskey. They looked like mad scientists, like butchers, like lost ambulance drivers. Most of them were members of the repertory company, a few worked in the office, a few others were just friends.
Initially members roamed through town together to promote their latest production, sometimes dressed in costumes, but in time they came to regard their Saturday morning outings as a kind of performance too. As if the street had become a theater, the people they passed their audience. They were particularly interested in the different responses they elicited as they wandered from one venue to another. Soon cameras were brought along to capture some of these responses as well as the antics of the members.
The other month, when Dylski invited him to come along with them some Saturday, Stohlquist was not only surprised but confused, not sure what he was to do, exactly.
“Just hang out,” Dylski laughed. “See what it’s like to be on a kind of stage.”
“I’m not an actor.”
“You don’t have to be,” he informed him. “Just be yourself.”
Stohlquist was reluctant, but not having anything better to do on the Saturday Dylski said they would be taking to the street, he accepted his invitation.
“Oh, you wouldn’t happen to have a white coat, would you?” he inquired. “You know, like a pharmacist would wear.”
“I sell vitamins, Jeff. I don’t dispense them.”
“No problem. If you don’t have one, I can probably get one for you.”
“What do I need one for?”
“We’re putting on ‘Macbeth’ next month and it’s going to be set in a convalescent home. And, you know, we’re never adverse to a little publicity.”
“Is that what this is all about? Promoting your next production?”
“No, not entirely, but it can’t hurt, either.”
*
Dylski obtained a jacket for him, and, as he looked at himself in the photograph in front of the merry-go-round, Stohlquist could not help but think of an ice cream vendor about to open his cart at a park on a sweltering July afternoon. His smile was so broad it seemed to drip from the corners of his mouth like a swirl of soft ice cream. He doubted if he could look any happier. His lickerish smile made him smile again, almost as broadly, as if he were looking at another person in the photograph. The starched white jacket was two sizes too small, the sleeves didn’t reach his wrists and he could button only one button, but he was delighted to have it. It made him feel he belonged with this group of almost perfect strangers. For a change, he was not by himself, he was part of something, however inane and preposterous it might be, and he was grateful. He was tired of always being on his own.
*
The next three photographs showed the herd marching through a streetcar, their arms raised as if under arrest, while the other passengers looked on in bewilderment. Stohlquist was not visible in any of them but he was sure he must have looked as confounded as anyone else aboard the car.
*
A face was pressed flat against a window, every feature blurred into a gigantic smudge mark, and for an instant he wondered if it was his face.
*
Nearly everyone, all hunched over like slumbering polar bears, circled the ice skating rink behind the aquarium. He was right smack in the middle of them though he had never laced on a pair of skates in his life.
He laughed, remembering how clumsy he was, laughed even harder when the next photograph showed him flat on his back with a woman bent over him pretending to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
*
In the next serious of shots the herd was inside Crossfield’s Department Store. The first couple were of them riding up the escalator, two to a step, sticking their tongues out at the shoppers passing by on the opposite escalator. Three more showed them riding down, still sticking out their tongues.
Again, he was drawn to himself, surprised how animated he appeared in the photographs. His tongue seemed longer than anyone’s and much more pointed, and his eyes were as luminous as agates.
*
A street cleaner chugged past Crossfield’s, its dome light on, and the herd, their arms stretched across each other’s shoulders, kicked their legs in unison like a chorus line. The heads of the pedestrians around them were tilted back in laughter, but the only person he noticed was himself. He was near the end of the line, struggling to lift his leg as high as the people on either side of him. He was not agile enough, though, so he tried to stand out by scrunching up his face as if he had just swallowed a tablespoon of vinegar. He looked ridiculous, like an imbecile, his garish smile full of teeth.
Sipping his whiskey, he turned away in embarrassment and looked up at the ceiling. He had not realized it at the time but he had behaved as if he were more concerned about impressing the people he was with than the people on the street. It was as though he were back in high school, seeking to ingratiate himself with those who were popular in his class. He hated the way he had grovelled then, thought he would never do anything that foolish again.
*
A few minutes later, he clicked on another photograph and saw himself walking on his hands down the aisle of a drugstore. Disgusted, he quickly clicked it off, clicked the entire website off, and slid back from the computer screen. He wished he didn’t recognize the person in the photographs, but he did all too well, though he had hoped he would not see him ever again.