Q: A Love Story. Evan Mandery
purple must be present,” says Joan Deveril.
“Purple is not the problem per se,” says Cheuk Soo.
“What about lisianthus? Could we use lisianthus?”
“Nooooo,” cries Mr. Soo, in obvious pain. “Bell-shaped flowers are so dipolar.”
Q’s mother solemnly nods her head in agreement. “Of course,” she says. “Dipolarity will not do.”
I am staring out the window, watching tourists wander around Stockbridge, daydreaming, as I do throughout most of these sessions, but this arouses me. “It’s not a word!” I scream silently. “Dipolarity is not a word!” I know better than to say this aloud. It will only lead to a disquisition on dipolarity, and I will be trapped in the conference room even longer than I otherwise would be. Instead, I resume staring at the pedestrians on Main Street.
“What about vanda?” says Mr. Soo, as if he has had an epiphany. “It is a rare orchid. It might be just the thing.” He shows them a picture.
“It is so elegant,” says Joan.
“It has a very strong qi,” Soo adds.
“You are a genius,” says Joan. “Now what to accent it with?”
Q asks, “How about irises?”
“Nooooooo,” cries Mr. Soo, his pain returned. “The bouquets will block and we will have sha qi for sure.”
“That will not do,” Joan Deveril says quietly. “Sha qi is very bad.”
So it goes. When Q tells me that we are returning to the Red Lion for yet another meeting, I am incredulous. It hardly seems possible after all this time that anything could be left to discuss. I put this to Q.
“We are reconsidering the centerpieces,” she says. As far as I can tell, Q, her mother, and Mr. Soo have debated the composition of the centerpieces with Jesuitical precision. When I ask what is at issue, Q says they are considering topiaries and all the implications of that.
“What’s a topiary?” I ask.
Q reacts as if I am a biology student who, during the review session for the final exam, asks, “What is a cell?” It is embarrassing, but the happy consequence is that I am excused from subsequent meetings with Mr. Soo. At no point has there even been the pretense that John Deveril could be placed in the same room with a floral engineer. So it comes to pass that John Deveril and I are left alone to share a drink in the basement bar of the Red Lion. I order a tomato juice. He orders a double Glenlivet. As the bartender pours, it occurs to me that this is the first time I have ever been alone with Q’s father. I have not even the faintest idea where to find common ground.
John takes a hearty sip of the scotch. I can’t drink scotch without wincing, but he downs it like a man, savors it, stares into the glass as he stirs the residual. He is a professional.
“Rough day?” I ask.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he says. It is the rare moment in which John Deveril lets down his guard with me. In fact it is the only moment in which he has ever let down his guard with me.
“Want to talk?”
John turns to me. The look on his face is in equal measure indignant and quizzical. He is put off by my question, of that there can be no doubt. He is not the sort of man who talks, and certainly not to me; it is effrontery for me to presume otherwise. But I think he searches his memory and sees that he has invited my advance. This is confusing to him. He is also not the sort of man to invite others into his life, and, for a moment, he appears paralyzed. He wonders why he has slipped in this way. Then, to his surprise and mine, he talks. Perhaps it is the scotch, perhaps it is the spirit of the wedding, perhaps it is the bond we have formed through our innumerable visits in support of the women we love to florists and tailors and caterers, with the associated stays on the well-appointed man couches.
Or maybe he just needs to talk. Whatever the reason, he does.
“I’m about to get started on the most important project of my career. It’s a huge, mixed-use building with high-end retail, residential, and office space. We have a Fortune 100 company signed on as an anchor tenant. The architectural plans are fantastic. Everything is in place. It’ll make me millions when it’s done. But we can’t get the fucking land.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The fucking communists, the fucking tree huggers, the fucking Democrats—that’s what’s the problem. They don’t give a shit about what I do. As far as they are concerned, the environmental surveys should take twenty years and cost ten million dollars. “Then, after the studies are done you should have to spend another ten million on lawyers so you can argue about the impact a new building will have on some snot-nosed beaver three hundred miles away. The environmentalists don’t give a shit whether people have a place to live—especially rich people. For all the pinkos care, the rich can live in boxes—just so long as they recycle the boxes when they die. And whatever you do, don’t try to give them money. Heaven forbid you suggest resolving a dispute by offering them compensation—the sanctimonious assholes look at you as if you’re the devil himself. No, no, no, it’s far fucking better to litigate the issue for a decade or two. This way the lawyers get rich and nobody gets what they want. That’s much fucking better.”
“Could you go to your city councilman or congressman?” I ask.
“The politicians?” He laughs. “Don’t get me fucking started about the fucking politicians. They are so paralyzed by the idea of offending even a single voter that they indulge every one of those wackos, every single fucking one of them. Because that’s what the left does—it coddles. That’s its MO. Instead of telling people that life is hard and that not everyone can have exactly what they want, instead of telling them that sometimes choices have to be made, they preach that everyone is equal and equally entitled. Everything is possible! That’s what they tell them. Everyone can go to college. Everyone can have a job. Everyone can have health care.”
He is staring at his drink throughout most of this. Now he turns to me again. “Then when people come against the real world, against the cruel, harsh reality of it all, and see that choices have to be made, that the government cannot do everything for everyone, do you know who they blame? The rich people. Not life, not God, and sure as heck not themselves. No, they blame the fucking rich people for standing between them and everything to which they have come to believe they are entitled. That’s the true fucking legacy of the Democratic-liberal establishment to America, and their personal gift to me.” John snorts and looks back to his glass.
Finally, he catches himself and remembers who I am. We have never discussed politics before, but just as I do not need him to verbalize his disapproval of me to know that it is true, I do not need him to tell me that he believes teachers are generally liberals and writers are communists, and I, of course, am both. He has simply forgotten himself once more. At least in this instance, his prejudice is well-founded. Even though I have never told John so, I am a liberal.
We return to sitting in silence.
He orders another Glenlivet, surveys it even more closely than the first, and we wait for the women to finish with Mr. Soo.
Finally he asks, “How is your work going?” He pauses briefly after “your” and places a subtle derisive emphasis on “work” to make it clear he does not think either my job as an assistant professor at City University or my gig writing novels satisfies the definition of the word.
I tell him anyway. “I am writing a short story for 9PM Magazine. It’s sort of a sequel to my novel. It begins after William Henry Harrison leaves office. He is minister to Gran Colombia and while there joins a backgammon club where he meets Simon Bolivar. They develop a friendship and over time engage in an erudite debate about democracy and the proper use of the doubling cube.”
“What’s 9PM Magazine?” asks John.
“Oh, it’s a mixed-media online journal.”
“Sounds