Worthy Of This Great City Read online

  And there was Leticia Rowan already in town and seated comfortably in a corner behind a tortured centerpiece of bamboo and tiny orange orchids, casually chatting with a couple of intimates. So Ruth went up and offered another of those frank handshakes. “I’m truly awed.” Basically insinuating herself into the party, making it clear who was honoring whom.

  Then went prattling on in her practiced glib fashion about youthful idealism and her own fictitious activist past, seasoning it with ingenuous regret over her current disengaged state to smooth along the manipulation. Although this with a woman surely inured to dubious approaches? There’s something unconvincing about this I haven’t the time to investigate but the result must hinge on Ruth’s accumulating nervous tension, the months if not years behind the coming explosion. That kind of stress sets you performing impulsive actions, forcing unaccountable outcomes.

  In retrospect I think Ruth once again mistook a fortuitous encounter for the hand of destiny and just barged ahead. Either that, or else she fell victim to that common desire to cleave to what one professes to despise.

  I was dumbfounded. “Why?”

  “Oh, envy I guess. I wanted to be part of it.” Charmingly stated, her forehead furrowed in recollection. And what was I supposed to say to any of it?

  Behind us the cowboy mooed through a mild dirge, disrupting nothing; around us the field was nearly empty, abandoned to the insistent sun. And Ruth was standing before me explaining too much and nothing at all, once again too intense, setting off all sorts of warning bells.

  Crystal lifted a pastel spaghetti strap from a pink shoulder and raised her impudent big gray eyes, looking at Ruth with that innocent expression women use to express contempt. Her private opinion of Ruth: “Nobody has to be seen looking like that.”

  Crystal was another communications major and model manqué hoping to become, of all things, a personality. That ubiquitous blond hair, the pleasant features of no special distinction just slightly out of proportion: another responsibly raised, college-educated harpy bereft of individuality because nature abhors individuality. Instead she emanates sex, it’s in her bones and baby face, her short upper lip and outrageous ambition. Don’t expect her to evolve, because she’ll never be other than she is right now. Fortunately she’s immune to jealous criticism, not being that kind of stupid nor shy to succeed. She held some kind of entry-level management job at the Center City Holiday Inn Express, an occupation that never seemed to seriously impact her real life. Crystal is her birth name.

  “Thom here?” I asked.

  Ruth’s husband, a frequent guest on her program as either political insider or amiable comic foil, was a local celebrity in his own right, a Philadelphia familiar, a compendium of agreeable ugliness, frightening intelligence, crooked teeth in a moist marshmallow grin, Ivy League polish, loud patterned shirts, genuine charm, horrible posture, an unrepentant gift for outrageous flattery, and an impudent, cutting wit. Outsiders considered him the epitome of Main Line class.

  “He’s in Harrisburg.” Acknowledging my disquiet, looking amused for my benefit, but her eyes were shading into wariness. She pushed that uncontrollable hair from her damp forehead. “I’m running around loose today.”

  And she gave me a minor, tight smile, raised a few fingers in a little goodbye salute, and strode purposefully towards the gate.

  “Hunh!” Crystal said for both of us.

  Festival security is handled by costumed volunteers: polite, energetic young people impersonating funky pirates or medieval wizards or just nameless creatures of purely idiosyncratic design. This clean-cut constabulary was now shepherding we stragglers to the main gate with cordial efficiency, their intricate hats, adorned with oversized badges of authority, visibly bobbing over the heads of the crowd. The cowboy singer had vanished.

  I stood there in the empty afternoon glare, again hunting around for a rational line of thought but failing to find one. Finally, today, I have an insight: my being there that afternoon helped determine the event.

  I navigated us out of the grounds and smuggled us under the rope to a decent spot not too far back in the queue; none of the polite people already there objected. Crystal was perking up now she could catch the scent of approaching evening, her posture opening up to opportunity, her eyes brightly observant. I ducked back under the ropes to get a couple of Cokes from a vending machine and together we waited out the forced restorative lull, letting the afternoon settle down around us, watching the families in lawn chairs eating their dinners, relaxing in public. At length the loudspeakers sounded and we all pushed forward through the gates and launched into the usual painfully hilarious sprint. I got us fairly far up front on the center aisle and bent over gratefully, hands to knees, while from the corner of my blurred vision I saw Crystal plop herself down with her mildly victimized face.

  Faint applause, which had to be for the traditional bagpipe welcome; a moment later I could hear the piper myself, and then came Gene Shay with his terrible jokes. By twilight we were enduring a young bluegrass quartet of some nascent merit but an unfortunate air of artsy superiority. Then an enjoyable mambo interlude evoking romantic images out of fifties movies, and by full darkness the Jumbotron screens displayed a close-up of a frail, dedicated Canadian singer-songwriter, another of those admirable females. Insidious damp was seeping through my jeans and sweatshirt, chilling my ass. Disembodied light-sticks moved at random, children giggled, and the kindly scent of marijuana wafted by in sporadic gusts.

  Crystal and I outlasted the Canadian over strawberry smoothies doctored with vodka while around us the night coalesced into a blackness that seemed physical and bulky, something you could push aside like drapes. Then there was that huge yellowed moon illuminating the speeding brown clouds, making the entire universe feel unusually sentient.

  Gene Shay was back with even more of those horrendous jokes, to be replaced by a middle-aged dignitary in a blazer over jeans, quietly defiant.

  “We are the light of truth, the truth the capitalists and the banks and the conglomerates want forgotten. But we’re still here, still burning bright through the darkness.” He actually said that, sure of the personal politics of these many music lovers, all these people who could afford to share his opinion. Declaiming thus in an understated but confident bass, Main Line meets simple country boy to produce unfaltering self-respect. Positions shuffled onstage and there was Gene Shay back, leaning sideways into the standing mike to signal brevity.

  “And now let’s talk about one particular brilliant candle shining through the darkness, brighter than almost any other, one of the iconic voices of an era of civil renaissance: the inimitable Leticia Rowan.” Grinning back offstage as if to a good friend, as maybe she was. “And just to underline how special this really is, we have an additional guest, because Philly’s very own Ruth Askew is going to provide us a more personal introduction.”

  There was a kind of group shrug but nothing worrisome.

  A further positional dance, the screens displaying indistinct blobs and random emptiness, and finally there was Ruth behind the microphone. We observed her taking us in: waving lights skittering over dull shapes, anticipatory shifting and murmurs, a few people in motion pausing on their way somewhere to see if it was worth the wait. Magnified, she looked brutally plain, with noticeable lines around her mouth and those disproportionately large, disturbingly vulnerable blue eyes.

  And she just stood there, absolutely rigid, until we all paid complete attention. I think she was overwhelmed by pure contempt, that it confounded her ability to speak, so instead she spat at us

  When everyone instinctively recoiled, as you can imagine, but now she was past her initial paralysis. More, she was beyond pretense, out in the wild ether, and you could almost see the crazy. We instinctively coalesced into a tight defensive silence.

  “That’s for all you virtue thieves.” She’d struck this theatrical posture of aggressive confidence, all very square and speaking directly down to us. “But unfortunately for
you, we’ve reached the end of righteousness. Not in this electronic age. No more fleeing consequences and calling yourself good. Time itself is nothing but our continual separating away from the primordial dead nothingness of absolute truth and rightness.”

  It’s almost over, but I hope you see how excruciating it was. I’m sorry to have to assault your sensibilities with this shit but we were all squirming in unforgivable embarrassment and you should understand.

  And to be fair, is your religion less silly? Isn’t every great religion or even philosophy as impossibly childish? And here’s something else: she was handing us a diagram of her own psyche and circumstances, issuing a perfectly clear warning that went ignored simply because it was way too obvious. Because this is, after all, a story about stupidity where everything is fucking clear if you just pay attention.

  Ruth put a hand to the mike, still keeping that confident posture.

  “This is the next great evolutionary leap. We will claim the future responsibly, and we will become more like God.”

  Just at that moment, the words flown, the energy abating, I could sense her dawning comprehension of the enormity of her situation. She looked to her side – for something, someone? And then she sent a little nod out to us, to the compact, alert darkness.

  “Then to the elements be free, and fare thou well!”

  That’s Prospero, retiring his magic and releasing the slave-spirit Ariel at the end of The Tempest.

  But Ruth stayed out there, holding that same strong, taut pose until a calm Gene Shay was suddenly present and gently thanking her from the stage, sending us a tolerant nod while herding her aside. And there at last was the great Leticia Rowan herself, that vast, benign goddess in a golden caftan, smiling an unrestrained country smile, exuding inexhaustible strength and kindness. Clearly decent people, both of them.

  Ruth was barely visible now, but I saw her turn to take a final glance back at us, her face for one moment revealed to the giant screens, then as abruptly absent. Terrified of course, because terror is her resting state, and still insolent, and definitely smug.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I touched his shoulder in greeting, receiving something just short of a grin in reply along with that familiar, ironic lift of one eyebrow. Thom was reclining in his usual comfortable slump, his chair tilted back so far it almost hit the railing. I thought he looked marginally defensive but that wasn’t so unusual.

  “Good Morning. I note that the hour has come and that a quorum of this Council is present.” This recited in the reedy and entirely disinterested tones of Council President Harry Ciccarelli and as usual incorrect, in that it was ten-thirty Thursday morning and the appointed hour was ten. “Our invocation today, at the invitation of Councilwoman Margery Haskell, is going to be given by the Reverend Michael Harrow from the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. I ask that all members and visitors please rise.”

  We stood, our shoulders almost touching over the rail, but Thom turned in even closer and adopted the ludicrously secretive expression that always accompanied his patented pseudo-confidential whisper, a tone that perversely emphasized his already penetrating voice. “So here comes the Press, greedily rubbing its hands together.” Demonstrating this gesture discreetly but with happy gusto. He was wearing a yellow and green striped shirt that seemed to vibrate it was so painful to view, along with an unremarkable but clearly expensive gray suit and navy knit tie. Then he raised a fist to conceal that tangled marshmallow grin; way too often Thom behaved like Mrs. Askew’s miraculous mid-life baby, that brilliant only child.

  The Reverend Harrow, clearly a narrow, dry stick from childhood, was settling into his temporary prominence at the front of the chamber, frowning intently at the rich ceiling for inspiration during a very long moment of earnest meditation before loudly launching into his instructions to the Lord. “Jesus! Guide our hearts and minds this day so that we will not fail in our mission. Lead us along your path of mercy and understanding.”

  “Exactly right,” I said.

  “Allow us to partake of your compassionate judgment and understanding; let us reach out to one another in tolerance and a spirit of true cooperation for the benefit of this great city. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

  “We thank the Reverend for his invocation. Council will be at ease.”

  All sitting within the bosom of the local legislative process, where despite unhappy reality a genuine reverence for something or other mysteriously resides, lending a reluctant dignity to the excessive architectural details, the rusty elegance and intimate proportions. Some proper circumspect tension, an implicit gravity mirrored in the purposeful stance of the participants, outright demanding consideration: that particular self-conscious and proudly virtuous air, that rather stagy sense of drama common to churches and courtrooms and some elementary schools. Council was the city’s apex of the expression, the ultimate iteration, because here it was only about representing, about the joy and unfathomable power and grave responsibility of representing. An awareness somewhat mitigated by cheap posturing but truly any contamination was minimal. Representing! To symbolize, to speak for the multitudes, to carry public intention into the dimly twinkling, wonderfully malleable future.

  An attitude suited to the immediate venue but much less appropriate once outside Council doors, because this particular modest yet elegant room was secreted, pearl-like, within the stomach of a preposterous monster, a veritable sentient castle, an excretion of history, the gross but magnificent erection of a hungry, ambitious, rampantly dishonorable age.

  All cities favor particular tints, red brick or stylized primary colors, slick granite or Mediterranean pastels. Painting a portrait of Philadelphia requires a palette reflective of our refined and storied but equally crude past. Start with a grainy, muted charcoal outline, add a generous, nearly translucent wash of rust for our old brick rowhouses, then a thicker pink for the gentler blush of sandstone. You’ll need a moderate touch of rich cocoa for brownstone, and generous amounts of cream and golden ocher for marble stoops and fractured, columned facades. (I may be repeating myself here, or almost; I tend to do that but I bear repeating.) Coruscating silver-gray fieldstone, difficult to capture! Plus infinitely varied greens for ginkgoes and sycamores, lush milkweed in abandoned lots, and ivy spilling out of Society Hill flower boxes. Rich purple for paulownia trees like soft flower candelabras along the rail lines, bursts of bright pink for mimosa, and clear blue for the chicory breaking through along the sidewalks, all those inner-city blessings people are trained to disparage or at least ignore. Then finish it off with the common contemporary glaze of glass and steel and the requisite regimented greenery.

  But our sky, whether washed clean or hunkered beneath folds of trite cloud, remains essentially white, its pale glare outlining our rather pathetic but growing cluster of skyscrapers. Ultimately an empty canvas, a fearful purity in opaque, mysterious mother-of-pearl, a consistently lustrous, bleached, celestial white.

  Now visualize City Hall (meaning this 19th Century version of course, the Broad Street behemoth as opposed to that serene Colonial structure in the historic district) as a literal piece of that pale sky brought down to sidewalk level, consolidated by some unchecked hubris into an impossible pile of pale masonry, a stupendous fortress with its central courtyard the unavoidable crossroads of this city, a thoroughfare familiar to upstanding suburbanites with politely damning expressions, the disturbing urban poor, cubicle dwellers and retail workers rushing off to run a quick errand at lunch, tourists frowning up at the tower and snapping photographs in front of the flowerbeds, politicos, police, journalists - all that unremarkable flotsam going about their intensely self-important lives, an uninspiring stream flowing determinedly through this Second Empire monolith.

  The building is a bully determined to squat in everyone’s way no matter where they think they’re going. It lurks, I swear; you’re walking along and suddenly look up to find that tower tilting directly above you, Penn himself keeping his purpose
ful eye on you although never bothering to justify his interest or anything else. You turn a modern granite corner whole blocks away, thinking it a distant memory, and there it is again sprawling across a stretch of arty little side streets much nearer than it has any possible business being. A shimmering gray-white stone artifact of Philadelphia past, that once serious, even urgent city, the tallest masonry building in the world covering an entire square city block with its incredible mass, its supporting walls over twenty feet thick. Picture that: castle walls! Ornate to the point of obscenity, encompassing infinite examples of arcane sculpted symbols, veined marble cool to the touch, cantilevered stairways, unexpected entrances, sudden stops, and unrelieved damp. Bland linoleum squares sound at every footfall: you will be heard here, for better or worse. Water drips haphazardly onto piles of official documents stacked on the floors of half-empty offices. Hallways wander like something out of a horror movie mansion, endless corridors going off to nowhere. Elaborate mosaics and friezes occupy recessed spaces, deliberately situated so as be almost never viewed.

  Generous nestling chambers of unabashed self-indulgence wait prudently concealed behind heavy carved doors, all leather sofas on Oriental rugs; you glimpse oil paintings belonging to some judge or patronage appointee in an outer office before his regulation tight-skirted, officious administrative assistant shuts the door in your face. Endless dim hallways ripe with the ubiquitous stench of urine echo to immoderate voices and magnify the sporadic scurrying of tired city personnel. Impatient potential jurors wait on wooden chairs lining walls painted an institutional beige, sheriffs escort uninspiring defendants to and from courtrooms, and avid, underpaid ADAs pass and nod and occasionally confer with equally harried, slightly sleazy defense attorneys. Every now and then a city aristocrat, a councilperson or ranking member of the mayor’s administration comes whisking around a corner like a forgotten promise only to abruptly retreat and retrench behind the security posts and bailiffs and general intimidating paraphernalia of the elected elite.