Man of the People| a Novel

University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2000 Man of the People| A novel Giano Cromley The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Cromley, Giano, "Man of the People| A novel" (2000). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 2912. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/2912 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University of Montana Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. **Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not lion Author's Signatur^- nnte: 'oklkl Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's exphcit consent. MSThes<s\Man8fleld Library Permission Man of the People a novel by Griano Cromley B A Dartmouth College, 1995 presented in partial fiilfilbnent of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine 7\rts The University of Montana May 2000 Approved by; Chairperson iJean, Graduate School Afot/ 'SIO, Jjool Date I UMI Number: EP34914 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT — • 1^ 1if• • — MinanBiOfi ruQHBnng UMI EP34914 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Chapter One I am the chief of staff for a member of the United States House of Representatives. That is my day job. The one that provides a pay check. The one for which I have business cards in my wallet. The one to which I wear a suit and tie almost every day. And I'm good at it. But I've never considered that my true calling. Never seen it as my life's work. It's more like my front, my alter ego, my Clark Kent. No, my real job is fighting chaos. Combating it whenever it arises in my life, which, given my day job, is actually quite frequent. In a strict Manichean world-view, one.that consists of only good and evil, you have on one side me, Ethan Pascal, and on the other side, you have the nefarious forces of chaos. We are locked in mortal combat. Chaos goes by many names: Anarchy, Entropy, Confusion, Disorder. And it comes in many forms and guises. Sometimes, when I'm in a particularly literal mood, I imagine it as a black cloud, a poisonous gas, that seeps in through the weather stripping, steams through the keyhole, drifts in over the transom. Its serpentine tendrils wend their way along the floorboards, searching me out, hell-bent on wreaking havoc in my life. When I open my eyes, though, and look around me, I realize I've been caught in another one of my hyperbolic, metaphoric, mental joyrides. A daydream. I see that I'm actually sitting in the coach section of an unmoving 757. Window seat, aisle number high enough that I'm catching a mean scent coming off the crapper at the back of the plane. After a few more minutes of thought, I remember we're waiting on the tarmac in Miimeapolis St. Paul. And if my clouded memory serves me correctly, we've been waiting a long time. Like over an hour. The air conditioner vent overhead blows a stream of hot, dry, b.o.-laden air across my face. I'm not sure if the b.o. is coming from the airplane itself or if it's coming from this tired suit I'm wearing. We are late. All the passengers are seated, the door is closed, and the gate has periscoped back into the terminal; the plane, for all intents and purposes, is ready to take off. But we continue to wait. A quick glance at my watch tells me it's almost certain we will not arrive in DC in time to hit the 11:30 window wherein planes can land at National Airport. Because National is so close to the city, late night flights get diverted out to Dulles, thirty miles 1 outside the District. All of which means I need to figure out a ride to my apartment in Arlington. I'd like to use the Airfone embedded in the seat back in front of me. But two female flight attendants are standing in the aisle directly to my right engaged in a terse conversation that feels like it's about to spill over into flat-out argument. The typewriter clack of their voices trumps any possibility of having a decent conversation on the phone right now. So I pivot in my chair to take advantage of this front row seat to the catfight. Both flight attendants have competent, though generous makeup, tightly wound hair, decent-looking figures that are mostly obscured by the sack-like dresses that pass for their uniforms, and both of them exhibit an overall demeanor that seems to be a mixture of professional indifference and downright antipathy toward their fellow human beings. The only visible difference between the two is that one has short blonde hair and the other has slightly longer blonde hair. They look like they might be before and after versions of the same person, though I couldn't tell you who exactly is before and who is after. "I really resent this whole attitude you've been giving off today," the long blonde- hedred one says. "What attitude is that? I don't know about any attitude." "Don't know about any attitude?" Long-blonde says incredulously. "What about your snapping? You really snapped at me on that last flight." "I'm sorry I snapped at you back there. It's just that I have this zone." Short- blonde draws an imaginary circle aroimd her waist about the size of a hula-hoop. "And whenever someone comes into that zone, you know, gets too into it, I just kind of lose it." She cocks her hip toward my head and I can hear the satiny sound of one panty-hosed thigh rubbing against another. "I'm sorry," Long-blonde says. "I guess I just didn't know I was getting into your zone." She bites at the pink frosting of her lipstick. "No, there's no way you could have known. I'm not blaming you for that." "I already told you, I'm totally sorry for whatever it is." For some reason. Short-blonde is xinready to accept Long-blonde's apology, and it is then that I realize this argument is not vastly different from the kind of arguments Lily and I have been having lately. Circular, chronic, relatively lacking in focus or meaning. 2 painfully public. I wonder if this is why I'm so enthralled by the fight unfolding in front of me: it's an opportunity to see how Lily and I look to everyone else around us. "See, the problem is you're all telling me what to do," Short-blonde says. "You're all like, 'Did you order the wheelchair for the terminal in Duluth?' 'Did you stow the bev cart for landing?' 'Did you do seat back and belt check yet?' And I'm all, more laid back." She pauses here as if she's thinking of a pithy way to summarize what she's just said. "I guess what I'm trying to say. is, it's your analness that gets into my zone." Those last words ricochet off the walls of our pressurized cabin until the seatbelt light illuminates and a resomding DING! fills the space after her words, as if they finally hit an imaginary tin can somewhere. The two attendants look around with wide, blinking eyes. "Maybe we should talk about this later," Short-blonde says in a low voice. Instantly, they Eire smiling and going about their pre-flight routine with the icy cheerfulness we all expect from our flight attendants. Once the plane reaches altitude, the captain's voice comes on over the intercom and tells us that due to "mechanical issues" in Minneapolis, we won't be arriving in DC until 11:45 and that, due to "city ordinances" our landing will be diverted to Dulles. A collective groan rises up from my fellow coach class refugees. I feel like jumping up and shouting: You morons! Why are you acting like this is a surprise? I could have told you this would happen over an hour ago. But I manage to restrain myself. Which isn't easy. Sometimes it's hard being right all the time. I pull the Airfdne off the seat back in front of me. Of all the varioiis kinds of phones in the world, these rank up there in my top two or three worst types to use.

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