Silenced by the Yams - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,17

pool for a man in a red baseball cap. The reflecting pool is a rectangular, man-made pond that stretches expansively between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. It's long and shallow, just like most political speeches. It’s lined on both sides by walking paths dotted with benches for weary tourists in need of rest and/or a possible hip replacement. Currently, a brown-haired woman reading a book occupied one bench and a young couple with a cranky toddler in a stroller sat at another, but there was no man in a red baseball cap. I looked across the pool at the benches closest to the Memorial. Not a baseball cap could be seen, red or otherwise. I checked my watch—five minutes after twelve, so I wasn’t especially late. Feeling as cranky as the screaming baby, I meandered to an empty bench and sat, wondering if the mysterious Clarence was watching me from hiding.

A male jogger passed by, dripping sweat and looking like he might keel over with his next step. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine that running in this kind of heat and humidity was going to help prolong anyone’s life. I felt certain that my own laid-back form of exercise (i.e. walking to the mailbox once a day) was far healthier in the long run—pun intended.

Another jogger appeared. He had longish blond hair and a small goatee. He wasn’t drenched in sweat and even more unusual, he wasn’t really dressed for jogging—he wore cargo shorts and a white t-shirt with a picture of Alfred Hitchcock on the front. As he ran past—far too slowly for a real jogger—he whistled some sort of sinister tune.

The couple with the cranky toddler got up and left. Hitchcock Jogger was giving me the heebie-jeebies, so I switched benches. A minute later he was back, running in the other direction and he was whistling the same tune, only louder now. As he approached, he slowed down until he was nearly jogging in place right in front of me.

I tried to ignore him by twisting around and watching a couple of ducks in the reflecting pool, but the harder I ignored, the louder his whistling grew. I was plotting a quick dash to the nearby Park Police kiosk when he stopped whistling and whispered, “Say it.”

I turned back around. Truthfully, besides the fact that he was behaving stranger than Anthony Perkins in Psycho, he actually looked fairly harmless. His face was soft and young and his eyes warm and familiar.

Against what would be considered better judgment, I responded. “Are you talking to me?”

“Say it,” he whispered again.

“Say what?”

“The code word.”

Light bulb.

“Are you Clarence?” I asked.

“Depends,” he whispered, still jogging in place, but looking around, as if he were being very clandestine. “Do you know the code word?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I sighed. “Casablanca. The code word is Casablanca. By the way, you’re not wearing a red baseball cap and what’s that ridiculous tune you’re whistling?”

He grabbed at his head in surprise. “Oh!” He reached into one of the pockets in his shorts, pulled out a red cap and waved it in front of me. “Sorry. Forgot the hat.” He plopped down on the bench next to me. “Man it’s hot out here. You could swim in this air.” He positioned the cap on his head, gave a suspicious Inspector Clouseau inspection survey of the area, then whispered, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Despite his over-the-top secretive behavior, there was something about this young guy I kind of liked. I suspected he needed a friend or two if he acted like this all of the time. “Well,” I said, “I’m not going to stick around if you continue to whisper and I am going to have to demand that you look at me while we talk. I’m pretty sure that by now, anyone following us knows that we’re having a conversation.”

He shot me a sly smile. “‘As Time Goes By.’”

“Is that another code word?”

“Come on, Miss Chick at the Flix dot com—‘As Time Goes By’—that’s the song I was whistling.”

Another light bulb.

I had to suppress a giggle. “From Casablanca, of course.” Poor Clarence was in sore need of whistling lessons. His “As Time Goes By” sounded more like a bad blues version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

“Casablanca—one of my favorite movies,” I said.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Your website.”

Right. I kept forgetting how much people could learn about me from my website. An uncomfortable side effect of putting yourself out there on the internet. “Listen, you seem like a nice