Excerpt: Built

Ishmael sat down at the bar, a garishly colored place. Behind the bartender and the row after row of bottles, the wall had been covered with frosted glass. Behind the glass glowed pastel auras, giving the room the feeling of being encased in an easter candy womb. Ishmael marveled at the hum of turquoise, aqua, pink, lavender, peach and, oh, what would we call that last color…? Ishmael caught the bartender’s attention.

“I’ll have a shot of crème de menthe.” When in Rome, he thought, and it was still the breakfast hour.

There were a few conference goers seated down the bar from him. He envied their badges for a bit. Stinking badges, turns out we do need them, even in the frontier towns of Arizona. As he picked up the trail of their conversation, he noticed they were talking about the confusion out in the hotel.
“Some guy causing havoc with the tracking system.”
“They say he’s with the conference.”
“Oh yeah, they got a name on him.”
“Something Jewish, I heard, Joshua, Emmanuel, Elijha.”
“They can track his movement by that badge.”
“Yep, know his every step.”
“Problem is, they know it about twenty minutes after he’s done steppin.”
“Computers can’t process the numbers fast enough.”
“I hear they’s fixin to bring in a new server.”
“The possee”
“The bloodhounds.”
“They’ll catch ‘em alright.”
“Sherrif Joe gonna put him in Tent City.”
“Take him down!”
And then the two of them start singing.

Oh Arpaio, Paio, oh, my man, oh ha,
Go ahead and chase me don't ya wait on me
oh, ha
Go ahead and chase me don't ya wait on me
Well now
Might not want ya when I go free
oh, ha
Might not want ya when I go free
Well now
Oh Arpaio, Paio, oh, ma man, well now

Raise em up higher let em drop on down
I'm in ol Maricopa, got ya, work on lead

When you marry don't-ya marry a drafting man
Every day a Monday pencil nub in your hand

When you marry, marry a building man
Every day a slice of green bologne in your hand

Sit on the cooler got my striped suit down
All she got on on is a pink morning gown

Le Corbusier worked for August Perret
Pour concrete like water, killed ol Jeanneret

The whole thing got a bit silly, but by the second verse, a fair amount of the bar had joined in, even the shy guy in the corner, the one with the blond afro and toy rocket ship. Bottles were slammed on the table in time. Glass cracked together. The bar rung out with tear-soaked sound of back-breaking labor at the drafting table, and hard-time in the county jail. More than most of them had done time in one tent city or another, caught drafting out on the back roads of Hamilton County, Jefferson County. Or in small storefronts in Omaha, windows blacked out with paint and butcher paper. You can only hide so long before what you draw’s got to be built. Ain’t no architect ever built a building on his drafting table. Ishmael’s sung this song before, back in Cincinnati, back in school. Thesis advisors, hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, patrolled the rows of tables: “What we have here is a failure to crenelate.” The dogs paced uneasily just outside the classroom door. He finally got out of there, and he sure as hell was not going back. He raised his crème de menthe high in the air, and then downed the rest in one heated green shot.