1Up

Down

A novel by Briane F. Pagel, jr.

September 1.

Sarah waited as patiently as she could..She tapped her foot against her leg, legs crossed right over the left, herskirt businesslike and not very attractive or sexy in any way. She picked up the

People

magazine from the second week of June and looked at the cover. Shelooked at her watch. She tapped her foot some more.She stood and examined each of the pictures on the wall. There were five.They each showed the alderman, of course. She thought about the word,“alderman,” and about how feminists tried to change the word to “alder” and shethought about how she disliked things like that, how people should just use thename for the position and not read so much into it.She had said largely the same thing, excepting only the feminist parts, onthe one sports conversation she’d ever had, with Dylan, the conversation beingabout teams that were named after Native Americans. Dylan had said that hedidn’t see why teams just didn’t change the name, instead of alienating people. When Sarah had said she didn’t think that they should change Dylan had actedsurprised, saying that he’d thought she “of all people” would have agreed withhim. At that, Sarah had been required to make a brief speech about stupid thingslike names not being the way to change things and that people who got all up inarms about that kind of thing were useless.To which Dylan had responded by asking, “Then why do you call meDylan?”She made a circuit of the pictures, looking at each of the five twice in all,each time examining the pictures for a short time, looking for details, trying tokill time and keep her mind off of what she had to talk to the alderman about.

She knew she sounded crazy. It did not help her that there were at least afew people who did not think she was crazy, because she was not sure she wantedthe approval of those people. In her own way, she knew, she was crazy. But notinthe way people thought. They thought she was unbalanced because they thoughtshe believed what she told them. She didn’t believe it, maybe, not really. She wasn’t sure anymore if she did or not.She then tried to tell herself, looking at the third picture on the wall, thatshe was doing this

for Peyton

. She always had to mentally add that. But it wasn’ttrue. She knew it wasn’t true because Peyton wasn’t doing anything anymore, letalone making her go on with this.It was while she was looking at the community center/school picture thesecond time that the receptionist said pleasantly but flatly “Mr. Johnson will see you now.” The young woman stood up and took a few steps to the office door,and while she did not smile she also did not look disapproving, Sarah thought,either. Sarah walked through the door that the receptionist pushed slightly openfor her but not open enough. She had to move the door, push it more widely open, to get through it. It was solid and old-fashioned. When a politician meets someone, he gets up and shakes that person’shand, looking them in the eye. With men, he will put his hand on their shoulderor elbow, pull them in a little, hold the handshake just the right amount of time.(A politician without an innate sense of just how long to hold a handshake doesnot last very long.) With a woman, the politician will hold her hand a slightly shorter time, and will put both of his hands on her one hand: warm, enveloping, but comforting rather than aggressive or sensual. Sarah did not know that. Mr.Johnson, the alder, was the first politician she had met in person.