Capitol Threat

29

Loving swallowed hard. “P-p-poem?”

“Yes, of course,” the moderator said. He was wearing a collarless cambric shirt, a beltless pair of khakis, and loafers without socks. “You’re next, aren’t you? Why else would you be backstage?”

In the rear, on the other side of the stage, Loving saw two burly men in tank tops take a tentative step forward. He made them for bouncers—poetry bouncers?—just from the way they swaggered while they stood still. He knew he could take them, but that wouldn’t get him any closer to Trudy. After he’d practically gotten himself killed getting here, he wasn’t going to give up so easily.

“So…the cover charge to get in is…I gotta recite a poem?”

The moderator looked only mildly puzzled; his brow line soon gave way to a smile. “This is part of your persona, isn’t it? The Accidental Poet. I get it. Not bad. I think you can make it work. You don’t really look much like a poet.”

Loving considered: he was wearing jeans with a hole in each knee, a sweat-soaked white T-shirt, and a buzz cut. Didn’t look like a poet? The moderator was a master of understatement.

“You’re in the Independent division, right?” the moderator continued.

“I…suppose?”

“Thought so. I would’ve recognized you if you’d come from one of the ’burb teams. And you definitely don’t seem like the Georgetown type.” Out in the auditorium, they both heard the roar of the crowd intensifying. “Look, I’ve got to get this show rolling again. What’s your name?”

“Uhh…Loving.”

The moderator grinned broadly. “Loving. Oh, that’s just so…so…perfect. How did you ever come up with it?” He placed his cheek against Loving’s and whispered, “I think the judges are going to go for you in a big way.”

Loving watched as the slight man walked back onstage to thunderous applause and foot stomping.

Judges?

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the moderator said. The microphone squeaked with reverb at the sudden increase in volume. Everyone squealed and covered their ears until the pain subsided. “I’m pleased to introduce the next entry in the D.C. division qualifier for the National Poetry Slam. In the division for independent nonoriginal poetry interp, I give you—Loving!”

He extended his arm, cuing Loving to enter.

Here goes nothing.

Loving shambled onto the stage. The lights were so bright he could barely see faces past the second row. After that, it was all shadows—but so many shadows! It was a large auditorium, packed to the brim. He wasn’t sure there’d been this many people in the audience the last time he saw John Prine in concert. And all these people came to hear poetry?

The moderator stepped away from the microphone and Loving took his place. His mouth went dry. All those eyes were staring at him, expecting him to say something. What? He didn’t know anything about poetry—he’d never even finished high school. Ben’s friend Mike was always spouting off little bits of poetry, which Loving found keenly annoying. He never understood a word of it.

Another amplified voice emerged from the gallery. “You must begin within thirty seconds or you will be disqualified.”

And booted out the back door? Far away from Trudy? He tried to speak, but no words came. Earlier he’d been facing two thugs and a sniper, but he’d managed to keep his head together. Now he was being taken apart by a bunch of poetry freaks.

“Ten seconds remaining.”

His jaw worked like rusty hinges on a graveyard gate. “I—I—I—”

“Please speak up!” the same voice commanded. “Five seconds remaining.”

Loving cleared his throat. “I—I never saw…a purple cow…”

He paused, catching his breath. He could see the heads in the audience turning, looking blankly from one to another.

“And…And I never hope to see one.”

In the front row, on the faces of the three people with pencils and clipboards who he now realized must be judges, he saw eyes narrowing. One of them smiled a little. From the rear of the theater, someone laughed out loud.

“But I can tell you anyhow…”

More laughter. The judges leaned back, one pondering, one scrutinizing, one drumming the eraser of her pencil.

Loving took a deep breath and finished. “I’d rather see than be one!”

The laughter intensified till it filled the auditorium. Loving wasn’t sure what they were laughing at—the poem wasn’t that funny—but the merriment only intensified. The female judge grinned, as if resigning to it against her will, then finally broke out in full-fledged laughter. The other two judges followed. Thunderous applause burst out. Loving bowed solemnly, and the room was filled with cheers.

Oookay, he thought—what do I do now? He started back the way he came, but the moderator raced onstage and took his arm, restraining him.

“Just a minute, Loving. This is a poetry slam, not a reading. Now we have to hear what the judges think of your performance. Terrence?”

The man sitting at the far left of the judges’ table, the youngest of the three, removed his reading glasses and laid them on the table. “Well, I must admit—he had me going at first. I mean the whole package—the trailer trash outfit, the redneck haircut, the feigned awkwardness. I knew he was shamming, but he did it so well, I just couldn’t be sure. And then he added the stuttered delivery of quite possibly the most trite bit of doggerel ever written—well, it was perfect. It exceeded the parameters of a poetry slam. It was more like performance art.”

The female judge on the other end concurred. “I thought it was brilliant, too, Terrence. But did you hear the way he recited the poem? The way he manipulated the presentation of the syllables? It reminded me of nothing so much as Borges—do you know the story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote?’ The fictional critic and autodiagenetic narrator considers an author who has copied Cervantes’s work, and because it comes from a new source, it takes on new meaning, new irony. I believe that’s what Loving was doing with Burgess’s ‘Purple Cow.’ ”

The man in the middle, an older gentleman in a herringbone jacket, jumped in. “Speaking as the only academic on the panel, I also wish to add my appreciation of Loving’s deceptively simple performance. What he has done is take an undistinguished bit of verse and give it a parodic deconstructionist modernist interpretation. It is exactly what the French theorist Barthes did in S/Z—taking a simple sentimental story by Balzac and by applying a reductionist reading showed that literary depth can be plumbed from all forms of literature. He has made ‘The Purple Cow’ not a readerly, but a writerly text.”

Another round of applause spread through the auditorium, and soon thereafter, Loving heard a throng of people screaming wildly and chanting, “Ten! Ten! Ten!” He had no idea what they were talking about, but then, he hadn’t really understood anything that had been said for the last several minutes. The moderator returned, took him by the arm, and escorted him offstage.

“Fantastic job, Loving. Just fantastic. I love your creative spirit. How long have you been in the arts?”

“Umm…prob’ly not as long as you might think.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I just have to ask.” He turned and laid his hand on Loving’s chest. “Would you be willing to play on my team?”

Loving picked up his hand with two fingers and removed it from his chest. “Look, pal, I—I don’t play for…for the other team. Or both teams. Or…anythin’ like that.”

“Are you sure? Middleton needs a fourth, now that Rufus has dropped out. Nationals is only a month away.”

“Nationals.” Loving’s head was beginning to throb. “Look—can I think about it awhile?”

“Sure. I’ll escort you to the waiting area. There are a few more contestants reciting before the judges make their decisions.”

“Uh—could you by any chance seat me next to…Trudy?”

“Trudy?” A huge smile spread across the moderator’s face. “So that’s what you meant when you said you didn’t play for my team?”

The most intelligent thing Loving could think of to say was, “Huh?”

“Please don’t think I’m criticizing. Different strokes, right? Live and let live.”

They stepped down a side staircase into the audience gallery. Up on the stage, a plump woman with spiky hedgehog hair was reciting: “Man did not give me language. Man cannot take it away from me. I have a voice and I will not be silenced…”

Loving took a vacant seat on the end of a row and wondered what to do next. While he contemplated his options, a woman in her midforties wearing a bridal gown scooted down two seats and sat beside him.

He nodded. “Evenin’, ma’am.”

She returned the nod. “Back to you. Everyone treating you right?”

“Well…”

“Thought not. These people are so obsessed about the Nationals, they’ve lost all perspective.”

There was that word again. “Nationals?”

“The National Poetry Slam. In D.C. next month. Biggest one ever. Teams from thirty-two states will be participating. Huge crowds are expected. Big prize money.”

“Big prize money?”

“Well, two thousand dollars. But in the poetry world, that’s Bill Gates money.”

“Bill Gates? He’s really—” Loving decided not to digress. “What exactly is a…poetry slam?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Still playing with me, or are you really that naïve?” She adjusted the bodice of her gown. “Think of it as the Olympics of poetry. The Vatican of Verse.”

“It’s a competition?”

“Correct. A panel of judges—sometimes pros, sometimes selected from the audience—pick the winners.”

“How can you decide whether one poem is better than another?”

“I know, it’s so subjective, but they do it every week. It’s crazy, but it’s a last-ditch effort to keep poetry from dying out altogether. The whole thing was invented by this guy in Chicago, Marc Smith—a former construction worker, of all things. Then it took off—all across the nation, people trying to revitalize the poetry world, bring it to new audiences, rescue it from the pit of obscurity where academia left it, all so remote and inelegant that no one wanted to read it anymore. Poetry slams are about poetry from the people, not the eggheads. Sure, we bring in an egghead every now and again, just to give the thing some legitimacy, but this is a populist movement. It’s not about professors. It’s about people like you.”

Loving glanced at her intricate white lace gown. “I like your outfit.”

“This is a costume. It’s meant to bring home what I’m going to say about the tyranny of the patriarchal system, the whole antiquated notion of marriage, which they call a sacrament but is really more like an extended date rape. It’s about women taking control of their own bodies. You know what I mean? I don’t care about being someone’s possession. His sex slave. Hausfrau. I want to find my social consciousness.”

“Where did you lose it?” Loving asked, blank-faced.

She stared at him for a second, then smiled. “You’re really good, you know it? For a moment, I almost took you seriously. Would you be interested in joining my team?”

Loving hadn’t been this popular since grade-school dodgeball. “Are you with Middleton?”

“God, no. Like Michael? I hate those queer banana Emily Dickinson knockoffs. I’m with Waverly. We’re more in the Walt Whitman school. We go head-to-head with Middleton next week. It’ll be an American poet smackdown. And then the week after that—Head-to-Head Haiku.”

“Haiku?”

“I got a surefire winner. Wanna hear it?” She closed her eyes before he made his apparently irrelevant response, then began: “But just because you/Put your tongue inside my ear/Don’t mean we’re betrothed.” She opened her eyes. “Pretty good, huh? Smacks you right in the groin.”

“It does. It really does.”

“Last time we competed with Middleton, we tied after the first round. Then I served up a little inner wisdom and Middleton’s leader, Michael, the moderator tonight, did his usual loss-of-childhood-innocence riff. So trite. After round two and my piece on my sister’s death—very spiritual—we pulled ahead by .03 points. But then Malcolm—their token black member—did this racism thing that sounded as if it were written in the beatnik era. They ended up winning by a paltry .01 points. I was so disgusted. I’m dying for a rematch. And I think you might be just what we need.”

“Well…let me give it some thought. By the way, I’ve been looking for someone who I think was planning to come here tonight—name of Trudy. You know her?”

The bride’s eyes widened. “You’re with Trudy?”

“Well, I’m not exactly—”

“I never would’ve guessed. I guess that tough-guy exterior really is a costume, isn’t it?”

“What is it about this woman? Every time I tell someone I’m lookin’ for her, they practically bust a gut. Do you dislike her?”

“No, I adore Trudy. Tried to get her on my team once, years back. I just didn’t think you were…you know. The type.” She giggled. “I’m sorry. That’s rude.”

Loving was long past trying to understand. “If you could just help me find her—”

“I’m afraid I have no idea.”

“If you could give me a detailed description, maybe? I saw her once, but not for long.”

“She’s gorgeous. Big wide eyes, blue as the ocean surrounding a Caribbean island. Strong. And long hair—you can’t miss that. Brunette hair almost to the waist.”

That filled out his earlier glance of her reflection nicely. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot. At least it gave him a chance. “ ’Preciate that.”

“Give some thought to my offer.”

“I will.”

“And good luck. You’re sure to qualify for the finals. What piece are you going to recite then?”

“You mean I have to know another poem?”

“Of course. You can’t milk the same performance piece all night long. You must’ve prepared something else, right? I don’t think you can get by with the ‘burly-redneck-who doesn’t understand-poetry’ thing again. I mean, it had a nice, sort of Andy Kaufman quality the first time around—like a nail-hard comic not afraid to take a joke too far. But to try it a second time—that really would be taking the joke too far.”

“Thanks for the tip. And if you see Trudy, please let me know.”

Loving glanced up at the stage, eyes wide, hands already beginning to tremble. There must be hundreds of people in this auditorium. And if he didn’t find Trudy fast, he was going to have to come up with a parodic deconstructionist modernist interpretation for “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

Loving searched the entire auditorium, gallery, backstage, balcony, even behind the concession stand; but he never managed to locate anyone who remotely matched Trudy’s description, or anyone who knew where Trudy was. He systematically inspected the entire building, all while trying not to disturb the shouting, crying, wailing, pontificating, and various other modes of performance emanating from the stage. Stealth was for other private eyes; Loving much preferred the in-your-face, tell-me-what-I-want-to-know approach. Perhaps it lacked subtlety, but it worked for him. At least, normally it did.

After about an hour of searching, he decided to call it quits. She just wasn’t there. He hated to abandon the search—he had no other leads—but this was getting him nowhere. He was wasting his time, and worse, if he hung around much longer, he would be forced to take the stage again. That was to be avoided at all costs.

He decided to leave the same way he had come, by the backstage exit. No one seemed to mind him being there; they probably thought he was preparing for another performance. He slipped out and soon found himself back on the street. He wasn’t greeted by another round of gunfire, either from behind or above, and that was a considerable relief. Apparently the bad guys had gone home, at least for now. He cut through a nearby alleyway and headed for his van.

The blow came so swiftly he barely saw it, had no time to duck. Something hard and metal smashed into the back of his skull. Loving fell to his knees, fighting unconsciousness. He held up his hands, trying to block the next blow. Damned if it wasn’t a brick.

He wrestled with the strong arm holding it, fighting to get free. In the dark shadows, he couldn’t make out the face of his assailant. Max? Pretty Boy? He didn’t think it was either, judging by the silhouette. Maybe the sniper had climbed down from his nest. No telling. At the moment, he had to focus on making sure that brick didn’t make contact again with his head.

A sudden swift kick to the groin took the fight out of him but fast. Where had that come from? he wondered, as he felt the strength ooze from his arms. The shoe felt…pointed. As his attacker moved in for the next blow, he spotted the shadowy trace of hair, very long hair, so long the bearer could almost sit on it. Loving tried to grab a handful of it, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. The brick came down again, this time making contact with the base of his skull.

He fell to the wet, slimy concrete pavement, his head swimming. The pain was immense. He tried to summon some strength somewhere in his body, preferably his feet, but it did not come. Before he could do anything to defend himself, the brick came barreling downward once again, the blackness enveloped him, and he was gone.