“Jumped the gun just a little,” she said.
“You can pick up a schedule at any one of the ticket stands here at the ‘Fest, or at any restaurant or shop in town, all of whom would appreciate your business.” He paused for a brief giggle, an effervescent sound like soda pop gurgling into a glass. A breeze picked up and blew several of his note cards away. People scrambled to retrieve them, but the mayor had already resumed, now a little less confidently. “And there are…uh…rides, thank you Vasily, and plenty to eat, and events here and in the fairgrounds all day long, and tomorrow. And be sure to cast your ballot at any ticket booth for Riverbank’s new name!” More cheers and boos. “And now, without further ado…” Francobolli stepped to the edge of the stage and tore at his clothes, baring his sunken chest with a manly, button-popping yank, and pushed down his pants to reveal a pair of bright Hawaiian swimming trunks. He was laughing as if tickled, and a few game members of the crowd laughed along with him. He had some trouble with the shoes and socks, and I wondered why he had worn socks at all, had he known he was going to do this.
“This is tremendous,” Susan said.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Once he had gotten the pants fully off, Francobolli held them high in the air, letting his belly laughs carry over us on the wind. He moved back to the mike. “To the river!” he called out, and this time a few people did respond with a weak “To the river!” “To the river!” he said again, and this time a resounding reply: the crowd had filled in behind us like Indy cars revving at the starting line. When Francobolli jumped — remarkably nimbly, I had to admit — to the ground, the crowd flowed around us like blown sand through a dune fence, and I began to feel the anxiety that comes from watching other people embarrass themselves.
“So what are we doing here?” Susan said. She had pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead, and her eyes gleamed with such delight that I thought she might begin tearing off her own clothes. For a second I figured she wanted to leave FunnyFest entirely. Then I realized that she was planning to follow the mayor to the bridge.
“Avoiding that?” I offered lamely.
“Don’t be a poop.”
The bridge was several hundred feet from the bandstand, to the south of the fairgrounds. The crowd surged: across the open field, between the food vendors, who proffered their stuff weakly in our direction as we passed, between the giant maples to Bridge Street. We were not allowed to join the mayor on the bridge, for fear of its collapse. The rent-a-cops created a theoretical barricade by blocking us with their bodies. The crowd feinted, retreated, then finally gave in.
“I sort of wanted to see it go down,” Susan said.
A rescue team had been assembled: there was an ambulance, its lights flashing ominously, parked in the grass, and down by the water, two medics with a stretcher and a couple of guys wearing swim fins, flapping the fins at each other and laughing. Meanwhile, the stripped-down mayor had reached the center of the bridge, where he peered over the edge at the rushing water, still high from spring rain, and at the concrete abutments that held the bridge up. He shuffled over a few feet. The men in suits were with him, and briefly I amused myself with the image of them joining in the leap, but they both stood far from the railing, where they stared at their shoes. One was holding a stepladder.
The mayor raised his hand in the air, casting a hush over us. “Ladies and gentlemen!” There was no microphone, and he was forced to scream. He motioned to the stepladder man, who unfolded the stepladder and positioned it against the railing. The mayor climbed it, and stood, tall for once in his life, on the steel railing of the bridge. I could see, at the far end in Pennsylvania, a few people hanging around, marginally interested in the peculiar spectacle of our town. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeated. “Let the Funnies begin!” And with that, buoyed by the infectious cheer of the massed burghers, he leapt, his baggy swim shorts billowing around his pus-white thighs, and plunged into the Delaware.
And this time, even I cheered. Why not? Already a few wiry, nervous types, mostly adolescents, were scrambling down the bank on the south side of the bridge to watch him surface. I felt the mob edging that way, even as their screams died away. We followed. Susan’s hand found my arm in the crowd. Her skin was warm, and it was difficult to tell where she left off and I began; I felt larger, as if now, attached as I was to my editor, I had new and joyful access to a strange and exciting world.
Then I noticed that the cheers had died away. I was standing on a riverbank with several hundred people, all silent. What was the problem?
The problem was that the mayor had not surfaced. The rescue guys calmed their flippers. The ambulance lights, which for some reason had never turned off, lent the scene a weird, done-deal air, as if the mayor’s body had already been dragged, bloated and ashen, from the muddy water.
We watched and waited. Someone somewhere began to cry. And then, at last, Mayor Francobolli burst from the water laughing. He laughed and laughed, sweeping downstream like a sodden log, and the cheers erupted again, mine along with them, and the divers dove in and ferried him to the shore. And still he laughed, staggering up the bank, his chest dark with wet hair and his flabby arms triumphantly cleaving the air.
It was easy to forget that this entire hullabaloo was about my father. Most people already had, I guess. For a moment I wished I could be a Fan of the Strip, so that I could have as good a time as everybody else.
sixteen
We were beginning to feel the logy halfheartedness that comes over weary people on hot days, so we found a tree near the entrance to the fairgrounds to take a breather. The next big event in the field wasn’t scheduled to take place until two, and the crowd made its way toward the rides. More people were arriving now, staggering past us through the gates, sweaty after the trek from their cars. A clot quickly formed at the ticket booths.
“I suppose we’ll need tickets,” I said.
Susan unzipped the butt pack cinched around her waist and produced a thick fistful of ride and game tickets.
“Where’d you get them?” I said, impressed.
“Custard’s Last Stand,” she said. “You know the place I’m talking about?”
“Know it? It’s the site of my unsupervised self-upbringing.”
“Cool,” she said. “I also voted for the new town name.”
“No kidding! You don’t even live here.”
She shrugged. “No one asked. I voted for Mixville.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Hmmph. Maybe it was a vote for your father.”
“He’s probably snorting in his grave.”
While Susan leaned, sighing and shut-eyed, against the tree, I took a moment to give her a long look. Her ankles were very close to me, not ten inches. They were heavy and dotted with razor stubble. She had funny knees, with an anatomically mysterious swirl to them, like the surface of a cinnamon bun. Her thighs were thick, her cutoffs cool- and comfortable-looking on her, and her arms, poking out of her T-shirt, were freckled and hazy with fine brown hairs. She was the kind of person somebody’s mother might call solid, who wore her glasses so close to her face that they seemed to have grown on it. I felt compelled to put my head in her lap, but didn’t.
“You’re looking at me.”
“What? No I’m not.”
She took off her sunglasses and squinted at me. “That’s okay. There’s nothing else under here to look at.”
“I wasn’t,” I protested, weakly.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought you lived with a girlfriend.”