I introduced Glen to Reba the other day. It was like the time Billy Fishbeiner and I threw a watermelon off the Kirkland Avenue Bridge, onto railroad tracks. Knowing what would happen didn’t make it any less spectacular.
Glen is a business owner and Trump supporter. Reba is so far left they banned her from the local Socialist club. The two met at Glen’s sign shop.
Reba and I marched up to the order counter. I rang a desk bell, using the palm of my hand. It’s that kind of company.
“We need a banner,” I said, as Glen emerged through shop doors. “Do you object to profanity?”
Glen is used to my antics. He turned his attention to Reba. She is an attractive forty-two year old who neither dyes her hair nor wears makeup. As a result she looks ten years younger.
“I assume,” Glen said. “You are the adult here.”
“You assume correctly.” Reba studied the price chart behind the counter. She bit her lower lip. “You wouldn’t give me a deal,” she asked. “On a banner? If it was for a good cause?”
Glen drummed the counter. “I might consider it.” This surprised me. Glen is a hard-as-nails businessperson. You need to buy dozens of anything for a price break. “What the cause?” he asked.
“We’re protesting police violence. And the capitalist takeover of society.”
I smiled in anticipation. Here it comes.
“What size banner are you considering?”
Reba pointed. Rather shyly, I thought.
“Fill out this order form,” Glen said. “I’ll check with the shop, and call you later. We’ll see what we can do.”
I drove Reba home.
I thought you said he was a jerk, she said to me. I did not, I answered; I told you he supports Trump. Same thing, she said.
Reba rolled down the window. Her salt-and-pepper hair blew in the summer wind. I am unsure of Reba’s romantic status. She lives alone. She occupies an artist’s loft. She distrusts men, in general. She calls her girlfriends Darling or Sweetheart.
“He has a sad face,” said Reba.
“He is a Republican,” I said. “That can’t be fun. And he works all the time. Maybe he’s just unlucky.”
“In love?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“He’s single?”
“To my knowledge.”
“Ah.”
The next time I met Reba she carried a large roll of vinyl, setting it down with a thud. What’s that? I said. We sat at The Rotisserie in a booth and drank iced tea. The big windows gave us a splendid view of Hennepin Avenue, in Downtown Minneapolis. Streets were nearly abandoned. Love in the Time of Cholera, I thought, recalling the novel by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The story is a little hard to take — the protagonist seduces hundreds of women while waiting for his one true love. Pretty good title, though.
Reba was headed to a gathering on the steps of St. James Church. It will be peaceful, she told me. I imagined so. “This,” she said, patting the roll. “Is Glen’s banner.”
“Did he give you a good deal?”
“Pretty good. It was free.”
“Free?”
“He made a bunch of them for Citywide Urgent Care clinics, and had one left over. He asked if I wanted it. Then took me out to dinner.”
This was too much. I wasn’t thinking oil and water. More like dynamite and fire. “But what about his politics?” I asked.
“He’s wonderful!” Reba objected. “I don’t know how he votes, and I don’t care. Glen thinks blue collar people shouldn’t pay taxes. At all. Did you know that? And he’s completely against American forces anywhere in the world. He says health care should be free. There should be quotas everywhere, he told me, in hiring, college, housing — based on income, not race. You get diversity, and it can’t be challenged in court. Pretty clever, huh? He says the well-off should buy every third house in Edina and hand it over to a working family. The guy’s practically an anarchist.”
“And you’re going to see him again?”
“Tonight, actually. After the rally. Glen has to stay in his shop and work, or he’d be there.” Reba wrinkled her nose at me. “He works too hard. I’m going to fix that.”
“Wait a minute!” I called as we headed out the door. “What does your banner say?” Together we unrolled it, four feet by ten feet, white on red. We lifted it up in the sun.
SUPPORT LOVE.
A few bystanders applauded. Holding the banner, Reba and I took a bow.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com