The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,24

control and took them to the Outback at Hunt Valley or the California Pizza Kitchen. Where would Rick want to go for his last cooked meal before October 1? Probably Andy Nelson’s to suck down some barbecue.

On my way out the door, I rip a page from Rick’s pad, write a note, and peg it with a fridge magnet: GONE TO MEET THE RENT-A-MOB.

Let him chew on that.

chapter 5

Rent-a-Mob

Given the job description on his business card, I was expecting Chas Worthing’s address a few blocks from the Towson University campus to be some kind of multi-unit slum dwelling. How much money can an activist-poet be pulling down, after all? To my surprise, the hilly, tree-lined lane is home to a series of largish bungalows with peaceful, shrub-cloistered yards. I drive past a line of Subarus, Priuses, and old Volvo 240s, park at the tail end, and walk up the slope toward Chas’s house.

The hedge hides my approach. On the other side, I hear Johnny Cash playing on the radio and smell meat on the grill. There are people talking, laughing. I catch a whiff of aromatic smoke too—charred vanilla? I stop in my tracks.

Confession: I’m a chicken in social situations. My palms sweat and I get self-conscious about my body, my clothes, my hair. I can’t think of what to say, afraid that anything I do say will make me seem idiotic and uninteresting. I want desperately to be interesting. Don’t we all?

“Are you looking for Chas’s?”

I turn to find a young woman at my elbow, a fine-boned, pale-skinned girl with light freckles and a prominent nose ring, her hair a tuft of dirty-blond dreads and complicated braids. She can’t be much older than Jed. My first thought, quickly suppressed, is what a shame it is to hide such a pretty face under all those piercings and dreadlocks. How suburban of me. How soccer mom.

“Oh,” I say, struggling for words.

“I’m Marlene. You’re . . . new?”

“Yes,” I say. “Beth. I’m Beth.”

“Good to meet you.” She ushers me toward the gap in the hedge, her touch light on my elbow. “Chas told me you might be coming.”

“Oh,” I say again. “Are you his . . . are you dating?”

She gives a crooked, charming smile. “Um, no. Chas must be, like, thirty.” She says thirty like it’s the same as a hundred, and I laugh nervously at my own stupidity. “No, he told me because I’m kind of the organizer. I help with the planning.”

Through the hedge and into the front yard. Chas stands at the grill on the front porch, dressed in a striped apron. He waves at us with a shiny spatula. On the lawn, there’s a ring of folding chairs, half of them empty. The other half are occupied by some of the older ladies I saw on the median. A pile of cardboard sheets, paint buckets, and brushes anchors one side of the ring, but no one has gotten started on the signs. Instead, they’re chatting in groups of twos and threes.

“This is Barber,” Marlene says, leading me up to the nearest man.

Barber takes a briar pipe from his lips to say hello. The charred vanilla I smelled through the hedge is from his smoldering tobacco. Though he’s not much older than Marlene, in addition to the grandfatherly pipe, Barber sports a waxed Victorian mustache that curves up at the corners. All he needs now is the monocle.

“You’re the lady with the Jesus fish,” he says. “Chas told us all about you.”

I wilt a little. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“The Quaker thing, I’m down with that. If I had a religion, pacifism would be it. But I like the pipe weed and the microbrews too much to give them up.”

“Quakers can drink,” I say. “And smoke.”

“That’s cool.”

“Come on,” Marlene says. “Let me introduce you around.”

Too many names in too short a time. I can’t keep track of them all. There are several younger people like Barber and Marlene, most of them in the tribal dress of whichever social faction they hail from. There’s a guy in bike shorts and a green-and-white jersey. A girl in tight black jeans and a black tank top, her arms a pair of tattooed totem poles. A pudgy woman with a crew cut, the sleeves of her white T-shirt rolled all the way up. Then there’s a missing demographic—people my age. The parents of the younger set, the children of the older. Where are they? The fiftysomethings make a strong showing, though, with a few