Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales Read Online Free PDF Page A

slogan was He’ll Make Sure It’s Right. It was to prove catastrophically true. Win engineered the campaign with virulent resolve, which made Van feel uneasily like a voodoo doll rather than a fair-haired boy. Also, the campaign coincided with America’s Bicentennial, and another Walker son was killed, this time by a depth charge that misfired during a waterfront rendition of the
1812 Overture
by the Pompey Pops.
    Win recognized the death as a good promotional opportunity, since mourning implies rectitude, so an armada of press trailed after Van when he returned to Vertigo Park for the funeral. They were indecently delighted, though, when Charlotte Haven showed up to pay her respects, too. She had grown tired of the shiny endearments that tinkled like a line of credit from the makeshift Hollywood suitors she’d tolerated since Cliff had vanished. Reading about Van hadrenewed her pride in him and her own stung idealism, and she wanted to offer her respect to a man she knew respected her. Despite his grief, Van was flourishing and self-confident, since August Dodd Woodhead’s was a lame duck candidacy, and people now thronged to Van’s blandness as to milk of magnesia after President Torque’s chili peppers of deceit. The publicity firm of Scud, Scurry, and Edgewise had convinced even Van of his worthiness, and when he saw Carlotta, he was at his most radiant. Unlike Cliff, he was grateful, lovable, and able to love in return. Win, pragmatic even about his thwarted love, arranged to have Van inspect local blackout emergency supplies by candlelight, and invited Carlotta along. She was entranced by the shrewdly romantic photo opportunity, and Van saw in her, if not his unknown mother, then his childhood, and attributed to her the tantalizing value of everything precious irretrievably lost. Their weaknesses met, orphan to orphan, and he proposed. She accepted, swept on as much by duty to drama as a conviction that this was honorable love.
CHAPTER TEN
 
WEDDING IN SHADOW
    An engaged candidate was a sanguine novelty for the media, especially since the couple was barely thirty and the late president had been long-married as well as grotesque. This would settle any restlessspeculation about Van’s wet-eyed sensitivity, and not only was Carlotta famous, her scar could prove her seriousness even to ambassadors who spoke no English. As Win observed to an aide, she gave good headlines.
    The ballyhoo of the election bolstered Carlotta, and she mistook its mood for hers. She reminded herself that she was doing the greatest good she could by joining this good man in his work, but sexual doubt crept in like mice gnawing at the bedboards, and as she lay in a succession of chastely single hotel rooms along the campaign trail, hearing the even, unending inhale of the air conditioner, she wondered if she was making a mistake.
    The wedding was scheduled for the weekend before the election. It was pointedly simple, taxpayers take note, held in the basement of Pompey’s VFW hall, and instead of gifts the couple requested donations to charity. Carlotta wore a turquoise dress borrowed from the garment workers’ union—something new, borrowed, and blue—and for something old, she clutched a bouquet of dead, dried flowers. August Dodd Woodhead’s camp tried to compete by having him adopt a Vietnamese baby, but since Win, his real son, was estranged—in fact, he was Van’s best man—the heartwarming aspect was overshadowed by the gothic.
    As the hired combo played the love theme from
Woman in Jeopardy
, Van’s stepfather, Big Bill Walker, approached Carlotta, his red face redder with nuptial wine. “Raise many, many children,” he told her, “so no single one will matter too much.” Then ChickBurns, uncomfortable in a borrowed suit, approached and asked Carlotta if she knew where his son was. She honestly didn’t, but seeing Cliff’s father made a low bell toll in her carillon, and a cold vermouth breathed darkly in her happiness