Gunnar In The Carrels

A Note to Readers:

Welcome to what I am calling Season 2 of Gunnar In The Carrels. Anyone who hasn't read Parts 1 through 10 (what I am now going to call Season 1), relax! You are officially absolved. But don't let that stop you if you feel inclined as it will certainly help your understanding of events.

What you are reading is the first draft of a potential novelette? novel? written on the fly. Events and timelines are going to shift around as they find their natural level. Go with it.

Most of all, thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

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Part 9

David Larsson thought, for only the third time that day, that he should have gone into acting instead. Hollywood appreciated a good looking man, but it could work against you in politics. His styling coach encouraged him to create minor visual imperfections like a crooked tie or slightly rumpled hair, so that his public wouldn’t be intimidated.

“You’re just too good looking,” Emmanuel had said.

David said it to himself now, silently, as he surveyed his image in the mirror over the bathroom sink. This was his ritual, the last thing he said to his reflection each time he left a mirror and it was meant to inflate his confidence and remind him of the necessary facts of his success until the next time he had the opportunity to use a mirror again and be reassured that all was in order.

Everything was in perfect order today.

His eyes lingered a moment longer. A handsome man. A little grey maybe, but this gave him an air of gravity that his younger image had needed. At a recent party, he’d been asked to choose the actor to depict him in a hypothetical movie of his life. One of the women there - Jaimie? Julie? - she’d had nice legs - had suggested Mads Mikkelsen and showed him a picture on her phone. David didn’t recognize him but she obviously had a thing for the actor so he’d played it up. He’d run into her again someday - Jessica? Justine? - and knew she’d be ready.

Later, he’d googled images of Mads Mikkelsen, comparing them to his own face reflected in the small hand mirror he kept in his desk. He thought maybe there was a resemblance to the photos of the Danish actor when he was younger but, in more recent photos, his skin looked more weathered than David’s own. David was careful with his skincare regime and had started to apply sunblock before his weekly round of golf. Admittedly, he sometimes touched up his complexion with a tiny bit of concealer or powder, but that was politics.

David steeled himself to open the door. He knew from the last four times he’d nailed Jenny that this was when she’d start in on the favours. Help her out with this project. Get on board this committee. Take her with him on the LA trip.

But he was in too good a mood for that today.

He opened the door quickly, swept his silver, tailored jacket from the back of the chair he’d carefully hung it on earlier, and, maintaining his purposeful stride toward the door, tossed the key with its ridiculous gold tassel onto the bed beside Jenny.

“Give that back to Christopoulus, will you, and I’ll meet you at the car.” And he was out the door into the late spring afternoon before she got a word out. He breathed in the scent of the coming evening and thought it was good to be alive today.

Today was a good day to be David Larsson.

He walked over to the variety store beside the diner and spent some time perusing the magazine section before purchasing two bottles of water, a box of hand wipes and a pack of gum. On second thought, he added some chocolate covered raisins.

“Women like chocolate, right?” he asked the kid behind the counter. What was this kid, like sixteen? Eighteen? God, look at that acne. Bet he doesn’t get any action.

The kid shrugged and continued to key in David’s purchases, breathing through his slack, open mouth in a way that set David’s teeth on edge. His dingy green polo shirt strained at the waist, trying to contain a roll of flesh that leaked out from beneath it.

David felt his upper lip begin to curl and forced himself to say jovially, “Hey, what’s your name? I’m Mayor David Larsson.” He extended his hand.

“I have a cold,” said the kid, slowly placing the bottles of water into a plastic bag. “Mayor of what?”

“What?” David was irritated to be forced to withdraw his hand. People needed to teach their kids some manners.

“Mayor of what?”

“What do you mean of what?”

The kid extended the bag across the counter to David. Then he placed his hands on the counter, leaned forward and enunciated loudly and slowly, "Of what entity are you the mayor?”

David found himself speechless, caught somewhere between surprise that he wasn’t recognized and blind fury at the insolence in this zit-faced little snot’s manner. He desperately wished this situation could have been rehearsed, that the speech writers could have taken a crack at what he could say to artfully but lethally put this little shit in his place.

As it was, he was on his own and, lacking a cutting but dignified exit line, he simply picked up the white plastic bag, nodded at the greasy brat and left the store. As the door chimed behind him, the cashier pressed a button on his phone and raised it to his ear.

“Yo Nelson man, you’ll never guess who I just totally flipped out. David Fuckin’ Larsson, man. The fuckin’ mayor of Anneville!”

Outside the store, David paused to take the gum out of the bag, open the cellophane, extract a piece and put it in his mouth. He didn’t want to move away from the store yet. He thought he still might come up with something he could say to the pimply little shit to put him in his place. The powerful fruity taste and fragrance of the gum revived his good spirits a bit and he inhaled deeply again to breathe in the clear, lovely evening.

Something smelled strongly of shit. And not a clean manure smell, either. This was a strong ammonia drenched stench that was quite possibly the worst thing he’d ever smelled.

Goddam farmers.

David Larsson had been raised to set other people at ease. He was schooled in social grace as befitted the son of a senator. David knew how to chat comfortably with fishermen, factory workers, and the homeless, not to mention the more graceful creatures that inhabited his own social circles. There was even a story circulated about how he’d once famously had a group of Japanese investors weeping with laughter even though neither spoke the other’s language.

The Japanese investors had actually been Jenny Kobayashi’s parents and three brothers. They had driven just two hours from their home to celebrate her engagement to Gunnar and they all spoke perfect English. Following a few assessing questions placed directly to David, they thereafter treated him like a much loved but naughty toy dog. How the other version of events joined the canon of ‘legend of David’ stories, he wasn’t sure.

The point was, he was good with people. Everybody liked him. People always liked him.

Except farmers.

David understood the need for farms and the food they produced. He even had a passing understanding of grain commodities. He just didn’t think it needed to be so messy anymore. Industrialized agriculture was the future and the best part of it was, it could all be done so much more cleanly. With chemicals and inputs or whatever. Or grown in greenhouses with hydroponics and it never even needs to touch dirt. And the cloned meat thing would mean they didn’t need animals either.

Which was great because animals meant shit. And shit stinks.

In his pocket, his mobile started to vibrate. He checked the screen. It was Al.

“Al,” he said jovially, “What’s up, my good man?” He liked to maintain a playful tone with all of his staff, but his friendship with Al was real. It had to be because the stuff Al knew about him could sink him like a ship.

Al’s voice was low. “You’re supposed to be at the sign off meeting for the Gala planning committee.”

“Oh darn. Did I forget to show up for Connie’s last melt down before the big day?”

“Your wife is asking where you are. What shall I tell her?” Al knew from experience what David was up to. He just wasn’t sure who and where.

“Tell her that if she doesn’t want to plan the damn party, she shouldn’t join the committee. Tell her I avoid these things for a reason. Tell her I never asked her to plan the gala. She was the one who forced herself onto the damn committee. She doesn’t even work in the mayor’s office and the planning fee she’s syphoning off to her bogus little planning company is outrageous and she’d better hope it doesn’t get printed in the papers. Tell her that!”

It felt good to give vent to the steam he’d built up over the kid in the store. He glanced back though the windows and, behind the counter, the cashier also had his phone pressed to his ear. While David watched, the kid raised his other hand and gave him the bird.

David moved away from the store and headed toward his car.

“David, where are you?”

“God dammit, Al, are you my mother? I gotta ask your permission before I go places?”

“David - “

“Jesus Christ, it smells awful here. It smells in the country, Al. That’s why nobody lives here. Whatever happened to those manure toxicity studies we started last spring?”

“Never got off the ground. Council nixed it.”

“Let’s try again. No one with capital is going to move here if the whole place smells of shit.”

“Where are you, David? David?”

David had stopped dead in his tracks and let his phone hand fall away from his ear. His mouth fell open as he struggled to understand what he was seeing.

He had parked the cadillac in the restaurant’s small secondary lot, hoping both to keep it cool in the shade of the building and to hide it slightly. He wasn’t too worried about anyone seeing it and asking what he had been doing in Karlstad, but it never hurt to be careful. Connie would turn a blind eye to his extracurricular activities only as long as she could preserve the illusion of ignorance.

Where his car had been parked, there was now some sort of construction occurring. A large yellow wagon was in the process of tipping a load of earth into the bed of a black pick up truck, was that right? But there was no way the load was going to fit into the truck bed and the angle was wrong anyway and the whole thing was going to end up on…

Where was his car? Was his car still there? Yes, he could just see a gleam of the metallic silver paint which, even as he caught it, winked out under the tide of dark brown - earth? Was that earth?

Then the waves of odour assaulted him across the parking lot and he understood what had just been dumped on his car.

Al’s voice buzzed like an insect from his phone. “David! David, where are you? What is going on? Tell me where you are and I’ll come…”

Slowly, in a calm voice that belied the red tide of fury battering his temples, David lifted the phone to his ear and told Al where he was. “Get here fast,” he ordered. “Just you. And Bob Stoddard, if you can reach him.”

“What do you need a lawyer for?”

“Just get here,” David growled into the phone. “Now.”