V - American Voices

Billy was late for work. He knew that no one would notice, that he could waltz right into the shipping department at any time of day without anyone caring a bit. This was Stuckey's. Laziness and malfeasance were expected, if not encouraged. What were you doing there anyway, if you had aspirations of something grander?

They all did, though. Life had dealt them a crappy hand, sure -- unplanned children, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, elderly relatives with even more elderly debts -- but at least they had this -- this job, this paycheck. There was also a sense amongst the Stuckey's crew that this was secretly where they belonged, that this was their social station, preordained at birth. It was a belief passed down from generation to generation, which made it hard to separate nature from nurture. Why was it so difficult to act on their desires, to pack it all up and get the hell out of Dover? Those happy people in the magazines -- isn't that what they did? Weren't there stories of everyday folks with humble beginnings like them who, through sheer determination, pulled themselves up to the top of the social ladder?

It was money. Money was the secret. There was never enough money, barely enough to pay the bills. Others were worse off, they were told. They were told to be happy with what they had because at any moment it could disappear. It was best to dream. Dream, purchase lotto tickets, bet on the Jets to win the Superbowl, but action... action was for the destitute, the homeless, the dying, and the well-off. It was the one thing the rich had in common with the extremely poor: the ability to do whatever the hell they wanted.

Billy dreamed of moving to Las Vegas, that Mecca of gay culture, where he would throw naked pool parties out on his oversized, desert patio. He would buy an all-glass house and furnish it with real wood furniture. He had seen an ad for a prefab model in a luxury magazine, a bi-level, temperature-controlled translucent trapezoid with neodymium lighting. The ad read: "Go ahead. Throw stones."

Billy was stuck in this daydream, folding boxes, when Radish Esposito, the store's telephone repairman, approached him with enthusiasm. Looking at Radish it was hard to discern exactly what he was doing at Stuckey's. He was a good looking guy, over six feet tall, with a full head of hair. He walked perfectly upright, had 20/20 vision, had a good grasp of the English language and seemed rather personable. He was a smiler, too -- it was a kind, inviting smile, which displayed his perfectly straight white teeth. Radish was even reasonably intelligent, able to juggle multiple tasks at once, witty in his own way, generally compassionate but stern when it was necessary. Radish's defect was not immediately apparent, but became clearer the more one spent time in his company. He was a motormouth. He went on and on and on and on about the most inane things, his sentences laden with extra articles, conjunctions and prepositions. No one knew it for a fact, but had they bothered to take a conclusive survey it would have been quite easily established that Radish was indeed the most irritating person in all of Dover, Delaware.

"Hey Billy. How ya doin'? Doin' good? Havin' a..a..good day to uh... a good one... havin' a good one?" And before Billy could answer: "Say uh, I was going to go walk down to get some, some of the red stuff. That stuff. That Tunisian Tea. I love it. Love it. The... the uh... can't get enough of it. Addicted. I think they put... I think they put crack... some sort of drugs in there. Not really. That's a joke. Anyway, if you want to go. You know. I'm gonna walk down over there. I'm gonna start walkin' to the ... the... gonna start uh... soon. Just start over there. If you want to come with."

Tunisian tea. The simple suggestion made Billy want nothing more. But Radish. God damn Radish. Was Tunisian tea worth the trouble of listening to him blab on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on....

"Sure" Billy said, regretting it the instant the word came out of his mouth. He was committed now. He put down his box, grabbed his wallet and headed out the door, Radish in tow.

Dover was blessed with what was widely considered the finest Tunisian tea outside of Africa: Hamed's. Bureaucrats would drive an hour and a half from Washington D.C. just to get a large cup of the stuff, so superior was Hamed's product to that of the thousands of franchised Tunisian Tea joints that had popped up around the country. Luckily for the employees of the Dover Stuckey's, Hamed's was located on the eastern side of the parking lot, a mere two miles away -- walking distance if you had a lot of time on your hands, which they did.

So they started walking, and Radish started talking. About the oil crisis, the ethanol crisis, his favorite brand of shampoo, his favorite kind of ice cream, his new power drill, the toilet paper in the mens bathrooms, the differences between American English and Australian English, the best way to cook a steak, professional fencing, sewing machines, string theory, his tomato garden, the different types of clouds -- on and on and on and on -- and all Billy ever had the chance to say was: "Interesting." It was a simple lie that satisfied Radish immensely. It was all easy enough to ignore, until Radish broke the monotony by doing the unthinkable: by asking Billy a question.

"So you're a gay, huh?"

Not that conversation. Not now. It was bad enough that Billy had to listen to Radish's eccentric ramblings for almost half an hour, but now, to have that conversation, with Radish, on an otherwise perfectly good afternoon? Ugh.

"Billy? You are a... a homosexual, right? I mean I heard... I mean... the... the... with the... you know..."

"I guess I am, yeah."

"Oh." Radish thought. He had the most intense look on his face, as if he was trying to scratch out a thought from the deepest, most unreachable part of his brain, but failing. Then he found it: "So what's it like to live in sin?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know. I was speaking to my pastor on it...about it. He said there are these demons. It's not a genetic thing, like they said in the uh... one of the... you know, those science journals. It's really a test. A test from Satan. He said that all gays hear voices. Nagging voices, like irritating relatives. Do you hear voices?"

"No. I just..."

"Interesting. Very interesting. Never heard a voice before?"

"I think that might be, you know, a metaphor."

"Not a metaphor. Definitely not... not a metaphor. He said he heard actual voices, like someone was talking to him. Just like I'm talking to you. He was tested, my pastor. But he passed the test. Thankfully." He paused, then: "Speaking of tests, did you ever take the SAT?"

Just then, they reached the line outside Hamed's. It was short given the time of day, but still almost fifty people deep. In front of them, two suits from Washington conversed.

"Ugh, look at these guys," Radish said. "Who do they think they are?"

"What do you mean?" Billy asked.

"You know. Just... just... in the... but... just who do they think they are?"

What Radish didn't know was that the two men in front of him would have thought they had every right to feel superior to he and Billy. They were Dougie, the Secretary of State, and K-Rock, the Secretary of the Treasury. They had driven over two and a half hours from Dougie's place in Alexandria, Virginia to be there.

"This is the place. He could never get enough of it." Dougie said.

"He would come all the way out here just to get Tunisian tea? Look at this place. Look at this whole area. It's disgusting. Where are the trees?" wondered K-Rock.

"You've been spending too much time up in the Cape. This is what the rest of the country is like these days. One giant mini mall."

"Execrable. Really, truly execrable. Why are we even here? For nostalgia's sake?"

"One sip of that tea and you'll understand everything" Dougie said.

A cry came from further up the line. "Mr. Secretary!" One of the servers had recognized Dougie from his occasional appearances on the television news. "Mr. Secretary, please, right this way. No need to wait in line" he said.

"No special treatment please, my good man. I'll wait in line like the others" Dougie said, which seemed to please the server, and everyone else in line as well. Even Radish was satisfied that this man in front of him, this suited man whom he still had not identified as the Secretary of State, refused the special treatment that Radish assumed he would expect simply because he wore a blazer.

"You're a real rap star" K-Rock said, elbowing Dougie in the stomach.

"Yeah, well... I like to think I worked hard for that little bit of recognition" Dougie said, adjusting his lapel. He paused. "You know, it's nice to be on a little trip like this, just the two of us... really get a chance to know each other. Even if we don't find him, I'm glad we drove out here. If it really does come down... you know... the whole APAC thing, at least..." he started to choke up "at least we'll know where was a time when we could do something like this. Just go and get some Tunisian tea. It's nice, is all."

"Agreed" K-Rock responded. "Agreed."

It was a rare moment of sincerity for the two men, which made them both slightly uncomfortable. And it didn't last long.