Apex Hides the Hurt Read Free

one ever saw it because he rarely left his house these days. As he picked out a table, he told himself, no more mistakes. Just a few minutes ’til curtain.
    He tried to figure out what was going on in the framed cartoons along the walls, but the punch lines were over his head. Portly Englishmen with round, curved bellies huddled in taverns and drawing rooms referring to minor scandals of their day. He didn’t know what they were talking about: I HAD A MINOR WIGGLESWORTH . What the hell did that mean? The chair sighed beneath him. It was an intimate place, twelve leather chairs and three small glass tables. The deep carpet drank all stains. No neon Budweiser signs, no popcorn machines with greasy yellow glass. The salesmen in town for the convention would be perplexed and scurry to their rooms to call their wives.
    They were an odd couple, coming through the door, and surely his clients. The woman wore a light blue pantsuit and smart black shoes. She smiled to the bartender and approached in dignified business strides: Regina Goode, the mayor of the village. He reconsidered: maybe it wasn’t a business stride and power charge, but the walk of someone who had recently lost weight and was feeling the confidence of her new body. He had seen data from the focus groups of the then-unnamed StaySlim in the marketing phase and felt he knew what he was talking about. And that had to be her favorite perfume, he decided, the smell summoned gold script etched on small crystal, a spritz or two before she dashed out already late to her first pressing appointment of the day. Two syllables. Iambic, natch. He stood and shook her hand.
    The white guy was Lucky Aberdeen, founder and CEO of Aberdeen Software, and he came in his costume. The jeans and polo shirt were standard issue, but the vest was the thing, his trademark was a fringed leather vest spotted with turquoise sequins on one breast that described the Big Dipper. It was familiar from TV, from the cover of the guy’s book, which had been a best-seller a year ago. He learned later that people in town called it his Indian Vest, as in “There goes Lucky in his Indian Vest,” and “I said hello to Lucky in his Indian Vest.” Details from a magazine profile came back to him. Lucky had spent some time in the Southwest after he dropped out of a fancy northeast school, and there on his back in the desert, among the cacti and scorpions, squinting at the night sky, he had formulated his unique corporate philosophy. Lucky tipped two fingers, index and middle, in greeting to the bartender and took a seat. “Hello, friend,” he said.
    “Thanks for coming down here on such short notice,” Regina said. She laced her fingers and rested her elbows on the tiny surface of the table.
    “Sorry for the rain,” Lucky said, “although sometimes a little rain is nice.”
    He mumbled in response and nodded.
    “Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “I trust you’ve had a chance to review the material we sent.”
    “This is quite a unique situation you have down here,” he said. Understatements were a new hobby of his.
    Lucky said, “This is a unique town.” Lucky chuckled and Regina tightened her fingers. They were trying to stick to the script, he gathered.
    “I still don’t understand how you came to this point. Don’t think I’ve heard of a law like this before.”
    His clients glanced at each other. The mayor cleared her throat again. Lucky said, “The wording of the law itself is a bit Byzantine, but the idea is still, it’s still on the books. It may be from a different time and a bit complicated, but the spirit of the thing is timeless.”
    “Why not just have the town vote on it?” he asked. “Get it all done out in the open?”
    “There are a lot of complications on that point, but I can assure you that we’re not circumventing. You see it’s the town council that handles the routine matters of law here, and there’s three of us—me, Regina, and Winthrop. When we all