The State of Wyoming: Episode 1 -- Laramie Read online



  THE STATE OF WYOMING

  A Serial Novel

  by

  Gillian Will

  Season 1

  Episode 1: LARAMIE

  OUR MAN ELLIOT VANCE vaults from the passenger-side door of the 1954 Mercedes gullwing. He looks like he rowed crew for Yale, except for the Washington Nationals jersey and the ballcap on backwards. And the green canvas high-tops.

  We might also say he looks like he captained a sailing yacht around the world, which in point of fact he also did. He’s received offers to model, but he’s never accepted.

  The silver gullwing was a gift and thus technically belongs to Elliot, but we did take pains to specify the passenger side door, and there’s a reason for that. He’s not allowed to drive it, not yet. Not until he proposes.

  The car idles in front of the Old Executive Office Building, with its French Second Empire steep mansard roofs and paired colonnades a painted grand dame looking down her nose at the neighbors and cutting no slack even for the White House. From here the walk to the West Wing is only thirty seconds, a walk Elliot has yet to take and from the looks of things may never.

  He circles round to the driver’s side, where the window rolls down, revealing his girlfriend Regina, whose complexion, muscle-tone, make-up, jewelry, nails, and brunette hair are as exquisite as the personal employee in charge of each can manage. She’s in her middish twenties, a few years younger than Elliot, and a Wilshire, one of the Wilshires, of Beverly Hills and Dallas.

  “I do wish,” she says, “you wouldn’t wear that ratty old baseball shirt every day.”

  “And may you have a sparkling day too,” he says. The cherry blossoms are peaking, so it’s a day to sparkle if ever there was one. He leans through the open window to kiss her.

  She presents her cheek. Maybe she doesn’t want her lipstick mussed.

  Elliot negotiates the OEOB entry checkpoint, winds through corridors with the famous black limestone and white marble diagonally-checkered floors, and arrives at a maze of cubicles, facing which is a secretary’s desk guarding a closed door next to a sign. The sign says ‘HALL OF THE FIFTY STATES, Chris Appelthwaite, Director.’

  At the secretary’s desk sits a woman old enough to be Elliot’s mother. The woman is so short and so squat that she mustn’t stand still in parks or dogs will whiz on her. She gestures avidly.

  “Hey, Vivian,” Elliot says. “How’s our gorgeous Secretary of the States today?”

  His voice de-emphasizes the ‘the’ and the plural, so it sounds almost like ‘Secretary of State.’ Not so easy to do--he must have practiced.

  Vivian Romano holds out both hands. The backs face Elliot, and the finger- and thumb-tips on each hand are pinched together, and she jounces them in concert. “That mouth,” she says, “is gonna get you into big trouble someday, smart-ass boy.”

  Elliot, however, is already disappearing down a corridor through the middle of the cubes. He waves and calls over his shoulder. “But not today.”

  Like all of them, Elliot’s little patch of federal holding is open from the high ceiling to the upper edge of the strike zone and features an entryway with no door. He takes his seat, facing away from the entrance, and leans back with hands clasped behind head and high-tops up on desk.

  Over the desk is a large map of the state of Wyoming, held up with pushpins. It has been used as a dartboard.

  # # #

  A BLONDE WOMAN, about Elliot’s age, in a dress both conservative and also red, enters the building, walking quickly and purposefully in three-inch heels. In her wake the turning of male heads resembles a testosterone stadium wave.

  Meanwhile, another young man, this one on the scrawny side with black-framed glasses, walks past Elliot’s cubicle and hails the occupant. “Hey, Wyoming, what’s up?”

  Elliot glances round. “Hey, Delaware. Big news, big news.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve just come into some season tickets. Wanna go to the home opener tonight? Could be the Nats’ year.”

  Delaware rolls his eyes. “We had the only year we are ever gonna get back in 1924.”

  Elliot smiles wanly.

  “You know what they say,” Delaware says. “ ‘First in war, first in peace--’ ”

  “ ‘--and last in the National League East.’ You know that’s not true anymore.”

  “We’ll see. But, yeah, of course.”

  Elliot’s cell phone rings. The ringtone is the first line of the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing,’ apparently an unremarkable occurrence for both young men. Elliot looks at the caller ID, purses his lips, and glances back up at Delaware. “Gotta take this. Meet you around four.”

  Delaware nods and raises an open palm to shoulder height in the Vulcan split-fingered salute before disappearing.

  The blonde in the red dress has followed the same corridors Elliot passed through earlier and now hangs a right at Vivian’s desk. Up closer the dress isn’t as conservative as it seemed. A hint of cleavage shows, and there’s a fair share of cleavage to hint at. If the hem were a window shade the knees would have trouble reaching it.

  While Elliot listens on the phone, a head pops up over the cubicle’s top edge. The head is large, but the neck it’s attached to is even larger.

  “Psst, Wyoming. Incoming.”

  Elliot half turns. “Not now, Nebraska.”

  The 21-inch neck settles back down out of sight. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Feet still on desk, back still to the entrance, Elliot resumes speaking into the phone. “Yes, I heard you the first time. It’s a pristine copy of the September 1949 issue of Incredible Adventure, containing F. Bob Goddard’s ‘The Master of Dreams,’ said to be signed by the author. Allegedly the only such copy in existence.”

  The woman in the red dress arrives at the cubicle. The moment is announced by the sudden stopping of the clicking of her heels, but Elliot doesn’t seem to notice.

  “No, you didn’t actually say ‘allegedly,’ ” he says, “but Goddard is not known to have signed pulp magazine copies, and without the provenance it’s going to come down to whose handwriting expert you believe. I can’t go over $5000.”

  The woman in the red dress clears her throat. Elliot’s head swivels none too quickly to look over his shoulder, and the corner of his mouth turns up in apparent annoyance. He says into the phone, “I’ll have to get back to you.”

  “So this is why you don’t return my calls,” the woman says.

  Elliot hangs up, removes his feet from the desk, and swings toward her. “And you are ...?”

  “Someone who wants to know why you’re goldbricking on the government nickel.”

  Realization and what looks like horror emerge on Elliot’s face. “You can’t be Chris Appelthwaite.”

  The woman in the red dress smiles, with what might be a touch of malice. “I see you’re not on the very best of terms with your boss.”

  “Never met her either. Or him,” Elliot says. “Hope I never do.” Whatever our man’s faults, not recovering quickly is not among them.

  The blonde woman’s eyelids shut briefly and then blink a few times. “Whatever. I’m Tara Travis, aide to Bull Wheeler.”

  Elliot’s furrowed brow of non-recognition may be feigned. “Bull Wheeler ...?”

  “The Congressman from Wyoming.”

  “The Congressman?”

  “Yes,” Tara says, as if she must explain to yet another dithering dolt. “His district is the entire state. Wyoming has but a single Congressman.”

  “From what I hear he doesn’t stay single for long.”

  Tara blushes and has been struck momentarily speechless. Then she rushes to busine
ss. “I need you to come to Laramie with me right now.”

  We hear a stifled choking. Behind the cubicle wall, Nebraska suppresses a laugh by clapping his hand over his mouth. Delaware, standing out in the corridor gaping openly at Tara, bites his lip to the same end.

  Elliot smiles as if speaking to a naïf. “Not going to happen. Why would I even consider that.”

  “Let’s see, maybe because you’re supposed to be the liaison between the State of Wyoming and the Executive Branch?”

  “But I am,” Elliot says. “I have a system.”

  Tara arches an eyebrow. “A system,” she says.

  “Incoming calls go to voicemail. My voicemail says to email me. Any incoming email about Wyoming is automatically forwarded to Director Appelthwaite. Any incoming email from the Executive Branch is automatically forwarded to my Wyoming listserv.”

  Delaware and Nebraska smile in open admiration. Tara, though, shakes her head. “Leaving you free to spend full time on, what, F. Bob Goddard?”

  Elliot seems immune to the sarcasm dripping from Tara’s voice. His chest swells, and his face beams. “Worked out the system my first day on the job. Most of the rest of the States use it now too.”

  Tara looks like she’s been served excrement on a bun. “This is why I get emails wanting to know why you missed meetings.”

  Elliot finally notices her disgust. “And I suppose you have some higher moral calling, cleaning up after Representative Big-Him-Who-Cannot-Keep-His-Fly-Zipped?”

  Tara stares, and then she takes a fortifying inhalation. “You’ve got to believe in something.”

  Elliot makes a little ‘tsk’ of derision between his tongue and teeth. “That would be another area where we differ.”

  “Either you come with me right now”--Tara has squared her shoulders, visibly righting herself--“or I’m marching over to Appelthwaite and ratting out your precious little ‘system’ scam.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  She strides off, head high, righteous purpose in every millimeter. From ten feet away she calls out behind her, “And pull in those eyeballs, Pencil Neck.”

  Her direction was apparently directed to Delaware.

  Elliot looks helpless and then rises to follow. Nebraska leans out of his cubicle, catches Elliot’s eye, and makes a throat-cutting gesture. Delaware grins and pumps his fist at a right angle near his waist.

  # # #

  ELLIOT AND TARA are seated next to each other on a flight from DC to Denver. Tara’s in the same red dress in an aisle seat, but Elliot in the middle wears a suit and tie. He has cleaned up nicely.

  Eyeing him, Tara says, “That emergency suit of Bull’s fits you pretty well.”

  Elliot receives the compliment with a grimace but inclines his head toward her. “Would you really have complained to my supervisor?”

  She shrugs. “If I had to.”

  Both of them stare straight ahead for several seconds. We’d think they weren’t even breathing, if it were compatible with maintaining an upright posture, until Elliot asks, “Are you going to explain why you want me in Laramie?”

  Tara emits a soft groan as if she doesn’t like remembering. “It’s horrible, a horrible thing. A young woman, a student at the University of Wyoming, was raped. Gang raped, beaten, dumped and left for dead.”

  “But she didn’t die?”

  “If she’d died they’d be sending someone with more juice than us. By the time the perps were done it was close to dawn, and someone saw the buzzards.”

  Elliot’s mouth purses to the left, and he snorts inward through a flared left nostril. His eyes stare into the distance, and then he visibly relaxes. “That’s horrible for sure, but what does it have to do with me?”

  “Laramie is where the Matthew Shephard incident occurred.”

  “Matthew Shephard, the gay guy who was tied to a fence and bludgeoned to death a few years back? Case got a lot of national attention?”

  Tara nods.

  “And the young woman, was she …?”

  Tara nods again. “Lesbian. The theory is someone took offense that she wouldn’t have sex with him.”

  Elliot’s bottom lip curls up, and he bites at it for a few moments and then sighs. “So I ask again, you want me here because?”

  “Whatever you think of Bull, he’s not stupid.”

  Elliot looks incredulous, and Tara rolls her eyes at him. “He could face a primary challenge on the right this fall, and over 50% of voters are women. He needs their support.”

  “There’s someone to the right of Bull Wheeler?”

  Tara pulls a face.

  Elliot’s next question is delivered slowly. “So I’m supposed to make it look like Bull cares about women?”

  Tara apparently sees no irony in it. “That’s the idea. And someone from the Administration needs to do it instead of Bull himself so as not to piss off the men.”

  Elliot’s eyes glance quickly toward her and back, and then he twists his head away from her.

  “Getting you here also shows that Bull carries clout in Washington.”

  He starts slightly back in his seat and stares directly at her. “I guess you would be a Republican, then?”

  Amusement plays across her features. “I grew up in Wyoming, which I’m proud to say is the reddest state in the Union. Of course I’m a Republican.”

  “And your hero would be who? Ann Coulter?”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  He nods with his eyebrows up. “Ye-ess.” The two of them are glaring at each other now.

  “As if there was something wrong with advocating a little personal responsibility,” Tara says. “And I suppose you would be a lily-livered, tax-and-spend, bleeding-heart, activist-judge liberal Democrat.”

  “And proud of it. Especially the bleeding-heart part.”

  Both of them face forward again and shake their heads in disbelief.

  “Is that how you landed the job?” Tara wonders. “Bleeding-heart fervor?”

  Elliot considers. “The States jobs in the Executive Branch all came about after the administration embarrassed itself by mistaking Colorado for Wyoming on a public itinerary map. But I got one of them because of my father. He’s a big Dem donor.”

  “Why didn’t the Administration pick someone who grew up in Wyoming?”

  “They tried. No one wanted to do it.”

  “Really.”

  “All of them said they’d rather see the President get embarrassed again.”

  Tara nods back and forth in a tick tock fashion as if this were not an unreasonable response. Then she cocks her head as if something has just occurred to her.

  “Vance, Vance. You wouldn’t be related to Cyrus Vance, the former Secretary of State?”

  “My grandfather’s brother.”

  “Your grandfather’s brother.” Tara visibly struggles not to appear impressed. “So have you been involved in politics for a while?”

  “No, not so much. This was the only job my father could get me after I was expelled from my PhD program. In English lit, at GW.”

  Tara no longer needs to struggle. “And they kicked you out because?”

  “They didn’t want me to do my dissertation on F. Bob Goddard.”

  Closing her eyes, Tara rubs the bridge of her nose. A headache must be coming on. “And so this will be your first time actually to set foot in Wyoming?

  “A-yep.”

  “I told Bull this was a mistake.”

  # # #

  THE PROP JOB from Denver only held eight passengers, and Elliot and Tara had to sit separately. We suspect each preferred to interact with their devices anyway.

  At Laramie Regional Airport the High Plains stretch in every direction--bleak rolling prairie with sparse, low, grayish vegetation. It’s still winter here, and the distant peaks are snow-covered, and there’s a light dusting on the ground. Elliot and Tara descend a folding stairway and cross the tarmac to the tiny terminal.
br />   In town a low platform has been erected outside City Hall, and the street is barricaded off. About 100 people huddle in the cold, listening to the Mayor’s speech. Elliot, Tara, and the chief of police stand behind the Mayor. The police chief wears a Stetson and cowboy boots with his uniform, and the Mayor the same with his business suit.

  The Mayor’s western twang is pronounced. “... and so I introduce to you, here by the express invitation of our congressman Bull Wheeler, Wyoming’s own man in the White House, Mr. Elliot Vance.”

  The crowd gives it up in desultory fashion as Elliot moves to the microphone. He glances over his shoulder at the Mayor, who has moved back to stand next to Tara.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor, but I’ve never actually been in the White House.”

  Tara looks down and shakes her head.

  Elliot takes a breath, lifts his chin, and faces the audience.

  “The people of Laramie, and the people of this great State, are good people. I know each and every one of your hearts goes out to Zelda Duncan and to her family.”

  Everyone in the crowd looks stone-faced.

  “Zelda was born and raised right here in Wyoming. Her father and her mother were both born and raised here in Wyoming, and there were Duncans in Wyoming when it was still a Territory.”

  No one in the crowd looks too impressed with this either.

  Elliot starts to raise his voice, a little more with each successive line, and he leaves a five-second pause between them. “Wyoming is the Equality State.”

  Tara rolls her eyes.

  “Wyoming elected the first woman Governor in the country.”

  A few of the women in the audience shift their weight.

  “The first woman in the world ever to serve on a jury, the first woman in the world, did so right here in Laramie.”

  Several women nod in agreement.

  “The first women in the world ever to exercise the right to vote, the first women in the world, did so right ... here ... in ... Laramie.”

  One woman dabs at tears.

  “The good people of Wyoming value the rights of the individual.”

  Some of the men nod too.

  “The good people of Wyoming cherish the right of the individual to choose his or her own path in life.” Elliot’s voice rings out now.

  One man purses his lips and grits his teeth.