Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales Read Online Free PDF

cocktail. Prompted by Chick’s questions, she began to imagine she saw Cliff in the shadowy corners of the hall, in soldier’s fatigues at the bar with the Secret Service men, behind a pillar or the ziggurat silhouette of the wedding cake. She shivered, feeling that chastised, funky sensation one gets from going too quickly from dazzling sunlight on the beach into a dank, dim changing booth. Van, like the sun, was scrupulous but untouchable. Cliff was the periodically vanishing moon, erotic and preceptor to danger. Her head swam, and not very well.
    She faltered from the heat at the crowded reception, but she was brought back to reality, such as it was, by the sudden spectacle of Julienne arriving on the arm of Culvert Booney. Julienne had returned to traditional values, or at least to her childhood address, and set her sights, if not lower, then backwards. She had married Culvert earlier that day. The uselessness of such outdated triumph let Carlotta hope the gesture had nothing to do with her, until Julienne announced she had changed her name once again, this time to Carlotta. Somehow, perhaps numerologically, she hoped to tail Carlotta to the mansion of happiness, to get on some electrified u-dodge-em track to fulfillment. On a night already as fraught with doubt as her wedding was, Carlotta could only faintly murmur congratulations to the couple. She letthe mystery of all lives but hers pass around her, and her stepsister receded from her into the unavailing celebrants, glistening into the dark like a desperately polished nickel.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
 
THE DAWN OF NIGHT
    Van won the election, the youngest president in history, with the youngest wife. He chose not only to walk to his inauguration, like a simple man, but to show his trust in the people’s voice, he opted to wear a blindfold. The idea was that ordinary citizens would line the streets of Washington that morning and call out directions to him as he advanced, so, through their guidance, he wouldn’t run into the curb or take a wrong turn. The gesture was awkward, and for the first time, people noticed his limp, but Carlotta walked by his side throughout, though without touching him, since that would be cheating.
    His honeymoon with her, and with the nation, was brief. He did indeed try to make sure everything was right, and in his first hundred days in office mandated sweeping and expensive examinations of military equipment, commercial airlines, hospitals, infant plush toys, traffic-light suspension, escalator speeds, postal sweepstake paper cuts, and all the tangle of conveniences that add up to modern life. The result was safety, but stasis, since air flights, operations, paychecks, and even home delivery of groceries weredelayed for days in the Hamlet-slow process of systems analysis. The people, dazed by too much recklessness, now chafed under too much caution. As always, they abhorred lawlessness but decried restriction, and millions wriggled like children confined with allergies they don’t believe they have.
    Synchronized swimming was added to the roster of Olympic events, with Carlotta as honorary timekeeper, guilty memories of wounding Van assuring her enthusiasm. She declined the many movie offers that poured in, but she did do a series of public service announcements urging Americans not to panic.
    Inflation, impatience, and global unrest mounted, and Van’s youth now came to be seen as a kind of weakness. He tried to meet with anyone who wanted to, but his schedule became decimated by crackpot retirees, star-struck checkout girls, and bored first graders fulfilling requirements. He came to bed drained but insomniac, and tried to absorb statistical abstracts to make the most of the night. Carlotta had skyrocketed into a sexless marriage.
    Eventually, Julienne came to see Carlotta, and seemed contrite and friendly. She even identified herself as Julienne. She was now the honored sister of the First Lady in Vertigo Park, which was still depressed but