As a saint,
Mr. Debonari was able to endure anything with his equanimity intact. He imagined that the bank’s parking lot,
abutting the narrow, oak-lined patch of grass where the annual city festival
used to be held, was somehow equivalent to the area in his uncle’s barn where
the horses were fed. The conflation was
certainly mysterious, but hardly unendurable, especially given that Mr.
Debonari was rarely reminded of either place.
“When were
you last at that bank or that barn?” a reporter with WORF radio asked Mr.
Debonari during an Old Homestead rally.
“When were
you last at WKRP?” Mr. Debonari returned with typically cryptic sainthood.
The
reporter, smiling in confused appreciation of the riddle, was washed away by
the crowd pressing the saint on to the dais and left to solitary contemplation
by the corndog trailer. He smiled as he
thought about the real-life Dr. Johnny Fever, an amalgam of easy-going
seventies types devoted to the last vestiges of freeform radio. The corndog man stared at him for a long time
before asking if he wanted a corndog.
“Our
would-be WKRP had narrow hallways, wood paneling, posters worth a fortune on
today’s market, a large potted fern,” the reported concluded his thoughts with
a smile. He was transported to those
wood-paneled hallways; looking down, he saw the cheap, matted carpet; its color
was deadened gold.
“I had
forgotten the carpet,” he remarked aloud, looking up to see the saint himself
standing before him.
“This
station has no bathing facilities,” the latter noted.
.
