Chapter 18 Scandinavia
Musical Theme; Come to My Window by Melissa Etheridge
The seven three set down at the Copenhagen airport. John Riggs congratulated Will on a nice landing. “The hardest part is setting them down, Will. Real nice. You’re already a seven three pilot, but we will wait a bit for your tests.”
Marcie and Chrissie came into the cockpit. John took instructions from the tower, and told Will where to put the bird. Will taxied over and parked her.
“Will, that was you who landed?”
John laughed. “It wasn’t me.”
They went down the stairs to the bus. John and his crew could sleep on the plane. Will, Chrissie and Marcie got on the bus, and into their bunks. It only took 10 minutes for the luggage to be loaded. The bus took them to a hotel, and they got out with the carry on kind of stuff, and a little more. Marcie put her stuff in her room and went to the bar. Will and Chrissie went to their room, and stayed there. Marcie came in late and she either had a man with her, or a draft horse.
In the morning, Will took a shower and got dressed. He found out Marcie had brought home something between a man and a draft horse. A Viking Dane shook his hand. “I am Karl Holburg.”
Karl was a little too big to be an NFL fullback. He might not have been big enough to throw a VW into a dump truck, but it wasn’t something you would want to bet on.
“Will Ames.”
“You are of American Marines, I think?”
“Yes.”
“I am of Danish Army, but we have nobody to fight, I leave.”
“It’s good not to have anyone to fight.”
“Is right, I think, someone invade Denmark, see me. You take the picture of Marcy.”
“I do.”
“Marcy think I go with her.”
Marcy said, “Will, Karl is footloose and fancy free. He needs some work. Can he come with us?”
“I have to check him out.”
He pulled out the palmtop, and Karl handed him a driver’s license and held the palmtop with his thumb on top. Will hit the record key. He went down to the bus, and got his little attaché case. He opened it, and plugged in the palmtop. He sent the data, then unplugged the palmtop and put it in his pocket, and coiled up the cable, putting it in the briefcase. He initiated a voice call.
“Kitty, I don’t know how you find them.”
“Might be a special talent, Sir.”
“Your friend Karl is M.I. Retired like you. Bigger than you, though. My, My, that is one big dude. Been kind of bumming around the country like you do. Twenty years ago, he was a First Lieutenant. I’d guess if he had planned his career a little better, he would be a light colonel by now. Maybe not even field grade any more.”
“Is he with anybody now?”
“Well, not anybody bad. He’s not carrying a badge or anything like that. He could be a volunteer, or he could be with someone like the Christians, but Denmark doesn’t do much of that sort of thing.”
“So your bet is, actually out?”
“Well, probably perfectly happy to help out if a kitten got in a tree.”
“Even Kitty will probably soon move to willing to help but not really wanting to.”
“Meow.”
“It’s always nice to have someone you know real well who has, you know, a house or a boat or something.”
“Especially if things get a little out of hand.”
“So true, Kitty. Well, is Kitty still willing to help?”
“Kitty will help.”
“Well, that gives me that warm feeling. If your Viking is available to big cat, there are lots of little things he could do.”
“I’ll make it vaguely obvious.”
“Love you, Kitty.”
“Feeling is mutual. Seeya.”
Will came back up to the hotel room. He gave a nod to Karl, and put his briefcase away.
Marcie asked, “Are you going to tell me what that all was?”
“Mostly not. I wanted to know if your friend was our friend, and now I know he is, so I’m kind of more calm, knowing you are safe.”
“This ‘our’ though is?”
“Well, like people who wouldn’t want something bad to happen to you. Now we find that Karl is friends of friends and he could even get friendlier if he wanted.”
Karl shook his head. “I am respecting, but this is not for me.”
Marcie left to take a phone call.
Will put three fingers on his shoulder for a moment. “He asked.”
“I will protect Marcie, but you try to protect the world. Too much for Karl, I think.”
“I know this won’t do any good, but I am going to say it anyway. Don’t fall in love with her. She will for sure break your heart. I don’t want to run an old friend down talking to her new one, but don’t be thinking love for ever, a nice wedding and having kids, or anything like that, because it’s not who she is.”
“You may be wrong about her.”
“I said I knew it wouldn’t do any good.”
“I might know more about women than you.”
“Sure. But I may know more about wolverines.”
Will went downstairs, got a coffee with Bushmills at the bar, and then went out to sit in the sun for a little while. He had no more than got his spot in the sun, and he was assaulted by girls in platoon strength. He picked them on looks, how nicely they were dressed, their smiles, and their poise. He reminded the ones he had not chosen that Marcie Della had only gotten about one job for every twenty she had auditioned for.
Will took his new covey upstairs to call parents and sign contracts. Poquita saw to the details. The covey hit the street in Aurora and Phillipa, and were assigned out to their supervisors. Will, Glenn, Karl, and a detective named Eppie took four girls each, and kept them in sight while they handed out catalogs. They blew through about 2,000 in around an hour, and got on the bus to go to the harbor. The water suggested swimwear, and they put it on. It was cold, and the water was very cold, but four of the girls went with Will to get in anyway. They splashed around a little, and then got into some terrycloth robes. They were photographed looking cold, and then the covey changed into sweaters and jeans, got in the bus, the heater was turned up, and they went on.
Ken Burns called. “Will, this is going to be the last push for a while. When you’ve done Scandinavia, I’m sending you back to Italy. I have the same problem Phillipa did, that you are exhausting our capacity to produce. I’m not going to let you hunt for producers like Phillipa did. We’re not going to let ourselves get bigger than our britches. Keep the stuff we need, give the coveys anything that needs cleaning unless you want it. Whatever fits your wife or your maids or whoever, take it all and get me that Morgan Dollar to finish my wife’s collection. Poquita knows which one it is.”
“Ken, I’m wanting to comment on the catalogs.”
“Please do.”
“I was looking at someone else’s catalog, and I was reminded of something that bugs me. They have pics for their jeans where they cut the model’s feet off, and chop her in half around the navel.”
“Your idea?”
“It’s vulgar, and disrespectful to the ladies. A lady should not be shown like some cut of meat, here is the butt steak, here are the legs, and so on. I realize I think of this as art, and you guys think of it as commerce, but.”
“I think of it as art, too, Will. Continue.”
“I would like to do it like this: We put a model in an outfit. Women put together outfits. If they think of themselves like cuts of meat, we should show them that, no, they are people who should be seen as people, not with their feet cut off or their heads, even. They appear with dignity in nice pix. If we sell jeans, then we put them with sweaters or tees that look nice with them. Phillipa will certainly work with you on the shoes. Why cut the girls up and sell jeans when you could just as well say ‘here are some jeans, here are some tops, here are some shoes’?”
“I think we could sometimes do that. But what are you going to do with the bra and panties pix?”
“Same thing. Get with those cute nylons I like so much. Start selling the patterned ones, and the iridescent ones. The ones with patterns like leaves and vines and flowers and all that stuff. Why do I use those, Ken?”
“Well, they’re sexy.”
“That’s just the beginning. Women like to be sexy, but even more so, they want to be glamorous, decorative, cute, admired, noticeable, appreciated. They also have an ongoing thing to impress other women. Sure, 17 year old girls want 50 year old men they would never be interested in to admire them. They also want other women to think they look good. I don’t pretend to know what goes on in their minds. You would probably have to take estrogen to get that. But we should present them respectfully, and understand they are the most precious thing on the planet.”
“All this will get talked about at the highest levels, Will. Now you do Sweden, and plan on some time off. Glenn is better every day, and I thank you for that.”
“More Marcie than me, likely.”
“And you taught Marcie. Would I be wrong to think photographers train models, and models train photographers?”
“No. But photographers need photographers too. Shooting Marcie has been a stunning learning experience for Glenn, but she only knows the world in front of the camera. She can create the perfect image, and she can do it really fast, but she can’t select it, frame it, light it, or anything like that. She isn’t dumb, but she has never been told anything about photography. It isn’t her job.”
“So I still need you.”
“Life could go on without me.”
“You’re not going to leave me, though.”
“No. Contract or not, I will never let you down. You know that.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Marcie and I are putting you in your market position. We want you to live life according to the virtues, but we can not insist on it. Teresa and Glenn will probably be able to take over for us, but if they can or not, I think you can hold your position. Sell nice stuff, treat your customers well, the usual. You can sell from factory outlets or on the net. Your reputation is everything, and we are going to build it while you have us.”
“How would I know if I am living life according to the virtues?”
“Look in the mirror, and see if you are looking at a man you admire and respect. Ken, you’re a good man, Don’t ever stop being that. Stand up to anybody or anything that wants you do evil, and tell them you will not. The virtuous man will probably always have business, because people like to do business with him, like I do with you. It may not pay. The virtuous man may even lose his life for doing the right thing, but his life will not have been wasted, as the life of the man of vice always is.”
“Well, we will soon be forgotten.”
“No. The lives we live will become a part of history. Those of us who choose to do right will leave trails for others to follow. We will set an example for people yet unborn. Our character and our honor matter.”
“I hope you turn out to be right, Will.”
“No turning out to be about it, I am right.”
“OK, Will, talk to you later.”
They hung up.
Chrissie and Poquita came in.
Poquita asked “What did Ken have to say?”
“Main thing of your interest is, we finish Scandinavia and go home to Italy. I mean, Chrissie, I think we can leave Hank with the house in Oregon.”
“Sure we can.”
“I want to order Chinese take out if we can, and then everyone can meet on this.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
He called the Chinese place and said he wanted a lot of food delivered. Well, they did not deliver. He could pay them well for doing so. No, it wasn’t an option. Father James took the phone, and of all things, he was speaking Chinese! There didn’t seem to be a problem any more. Father James put in a typical Will order, which is some of everything, lots of rice, tons of butterfly shrimp, and pot stickers, and if it was not too much trouble, some Tsingtao, like, say, a case, and a gallon of milk. Cash, certainly. And then, there was this one person who liked hot sauce. Cayenne, certainly. Very hot. No, hotter than that. Father James wanted something that had to be delivered in Pyrex and handled with three foot foundry tongs. A half hour would be nice. Thanks.
Father James summarized the conversation for the non Chinese speakers. It was probably just that people thought they were being asked to do something special without getting paid for it. By the way, did Will happen to have $200 in cash? That would take care of everything. Will did indeed have $200. Had he needed two hundred million dollars, he would have needed a very good reason, a phone call to General Barnes, and it would have been held up in the bureaucracy for maybe half an hour. Will had even been pestered by people who thought there was something funny about him running around with small sums like fifty thousand in cash, but those people had been informed that this was just fine, and don’t ask why he has it. It was much easier around military folk, who looked at the ONI badge, and then at Will, and thought this was something they didn’t want to know about.
The Chinese food came, and the $200 went, and there was no problem whatever! Marcie ate almost a whole pot sticker. Father James tried to explain to Karl that this was Will’s hot sauce, and, well, Karl found out for himself.
After they had eaten, they went down the street a bit to see what was up at a little video arcade. A couple of guys accosted Marcie, who was in the lead. When Karl caught up with her, they reconsidered, with that sudden change of plans a rabbit makes when he sees a lynx.
They tried the games, but nobody seemed to be able to figure out what they should be trying to do. Marcie was about ready to give up on the whole project when the owner came and used a special key, and she could play as long as she wanted, even though she had no idea how. Will took some pix. Karl went to the bus and got a bundle of catalogs for the video arcade owner. Poquita played a dozen games, and then blew away some vast number of evil aliens, and posted herself as the top scorer on the machine, ever. The owner offered to play her on a two player tank battle game. He wiped her out on the first game, barely won the second, and after that, it was General Patton against the Cub Scouts.
Had she explained her beginner’s luck, he would really have been bent out of shape. The first tank had too much elevation for the first 2.6 seconds, so she let him shoot, then during the 3.2 seconds it took to reload, she wasted him. The secret of the the game, according to the kids who played it, was to get to the top of the hill first. Poquita, had she been interested in the game for more than 10 minutes, would have shown them all that getting to the top of the hill first against Poquita didn’t work.
That getting stale, Poquita took a roll of coins and put them in what Will would have called a 5 x 10 array. Then she played it two ways. You could ask for a date, and she would turn over a coin with that date. Or you could pick a coin, and she would tell you the date and you could turn it over and see that she was right. “Let’s make it interesting,” she said, pushing the already used coins to the side, and rearranging the others in a new array. Then she pointed at the coins and announced the dates of a row. The owner turned them, and got a little shaky.
She picked up a phone book from the desk. “Pick a page.”
“876”
She looked at the page for two minutes and handed him the book. “Tell me a name or a number and I will tell you the other.”
He tried it a few times, but she got them all.
“Give me the last two numbers of a listing on that page.”
“21.”
“Got two of those. 321 or 721?”
“321.”
She told him the name of the listing backwards.
When they left the arcade, the owner knew there was a trick to it, but he couldn’t see what it was.
Poquita got on the net, and went to an on line seller she had bought coins from before. “Is Ken going to square this coin thing with the board?”
“Sure. They know about these little things, they don’t care.”
“Well, I found this little thing uncirculated from a reputable seller. The only thing about this little thing is that it costs eighteen thousand dollars.”
“Does the book support that price?”
“I believe it’s reasonably unreasonable. The book can’t really tell you about a coin that is one of maybe one of five in the world. I found a good deal on one out by Rigel, but the shipping was expensive.”
“Plus, the delivery time was a couple of million years longer than we want to wait.”
“There was that, too. We can do registered mail, and it is insurable. Or I can get it taken out there with a loach. Two thousand more for that.”
“Are they having her birthday party at their house?”
“You got it.”
“Can the chopper land on their back lawn?”
“Got a pasture there, Will, not a lawn. And the pilot is ex Coast Guard.”
“Oh, those guys, I don’t know. Probably have a hard time putting it down on an offshore supply vessel in a 20 foot sea. We maybe should get a real pilot.”
“This was all I could come up with.”
“Will they do it on the day, co-ordinate with Ken?”
“That’s all planned. Just need your approval.”
“Well, it’s only twenty thousand dollars. Go ahead.”
* * *
The Scandinavian tour done, they headed back to Italy. Ken called when they were in the air.
“The birthday party went great. I had her out on the patio with a cocktail and the helicopter orbited. Then it came down over the back lawn, and came in low, so it looked like he was going to hit the house. He set down near us, and then came out with the coin. She was really happy, Will.”
“Well, we did something nice.”
“I also want to talk about something else. The quail were great for business. They’re getting so much email most of them can’t type fast enough to answer it, and people are saying how nice we are to help them get started. The board believes that we can sell more juniors than adults, even. So we’re thinking, are there a lot of little cuties in Italy who want to be models?”
“We even have small fishes in the harbor.”
“Would you be willing to run a program like that?”
“Sure.”
“We would bring in a covey, and put them in the catalog. We would select our favorite quail for a second time around. You and Marcie would train them, and a few photographers. We have a videographer, Sassie, who would preserve your lessons.”
“Sassie?”
“Sarsaparilla Jaruzelski. She’s Polish, so of course she grew up in Lithuania and worked as a cameraman for a Spanish television station in Lebanon.”
“Oh, I would have guessed that.”
“Sure you would. Now this is the idea. We are trying out models and photographers. Good work comes back, we put them on long term contracts. You, Marcie and our coveys will produce more work than we can use, but we’ll suffer with that. You won the steaks and chops argument at the board meeting, so that’s a done deal. We photograph the whole girl and we don’t crop a hair off her head. Mrs. Lane took your respect for women line and put down some real heavy anchors, so that took care of that. She wants to know if you will liberally interpret the contract.”
“I will, and I think that goes for Marcie, too, but.”
“I’m most concerned about you.”
“You shouldn’t be careless about Marcie. I had no problem finding her, but that doesn’t mean I can find another.”
“I’m not careless about Marcie. You know what she is costing us. She’s a great model and a wonderful publicity hound. She is the model of the century. But time will pass, and I am running a ship that needs to be working in the next century.”
“Got it. We’ll do what you need. Speak with Marcie yourself.”
* * *
The board worked it out, with lots of calls to Poquita. Marcie’s attitude was basically ‘whatever Will wants to do, yes, that’s fine. I think it will be fun.’
Poquita looked for a new covey on the net. She showed thousands of pictures to Will, who chose a few to see. One of the worst portfolios came from Jennie in Honduras, who thought she could get a ride on a freighter to Solano. She sent two black and white photographs. Will said if she got to Solano, Aurora would buy her a bus ticket to Scanzano and make sure she got home safely. When she came to Scanzano, Marcie took her under her wing. Jennie arrived barefoot, broke and dressed in rags. Marcie very quickly took care of all that. Jennie was a very pretty girl with waist length black hair, who stood an awesome 5-2, never to be a fashion model. She helped around the house and worked with the garden crew.
Sassie blew in. She was a tall thin redhead who spoke in the language of your choice, but very rapidly. She was here to work, so what were they filming?
Marcie gave her a hard look. “Honey, you’re going to take orders, is what it’s about. I have one rookie model here, very promising. If Will wants us to film, we do it.”
Hurricane Marcie hits Tropical Storm Sassie.
“Marcie, if you want to work one on one with Jennie, we might make a good modeling lesson. We don’t need pix, so we might just be warming up Jennie and Sassie.”
“Let’s do it. I’ll get Jennie.”
Will and Sassie got their equipment. “What did I do wrong, Will?”
“Nothing much. She’s asserting herself. I’m the lion in this pride, Chrissie is the princess, Marcie is Chief Lioness, and everyone else is the cubs. Marcie is being a little rude, but if she says we’re taking the gazelle on the left, you cut that gazelle on the right and she comes in on the left and nails it. This is just how lions do things.”
“I’m with the program.”
“It won’t be hard to play. All you have to do is to remember who is in charge, and respect them a little, and nobody is going to hiss at you.”
Marcie had Jennie in jeans and a tee, with, surprise of all surprises, Phillipa boots. Marcie was in a white patent leather pantsuit and boots with a black scarf in silk with orchids on it. Reasonably priced at less than a Lincoln town car.
Sassie filmed as Marcie worked Jennie hard. “Pose here. Point your toes. Will will tell you. Turn to the side. Put your foot back, point your toe again.”
Will tried to explain what he was doing. “Turn a little left so you get in the light better. Now we do the halo effect, so get your head straight between me and the sun. Bend your knees, I can’t get that. Go change.”
“Sassie, watch the best model in the biz.”
Marcie strutted about, twirled, caught the sun, bent to pick up nothing from the ground, smiled at the camera, gave it a merciless femme fatale look, messed with her boot, shook her hair, fussed with her belt, adjusted the fit on her wonderful bosom, and fiddled with her hair. Will shot 100 pix in a few minutes.
Jennie came out and he shot her for a few minutes, and saw that she was wearing down. “Sassie, see how she looks a little worn down? She is new, and we have worked her hard. Modeling is stressful. For Marcie, not very. She can do a four hour shoot with a different outfit every few minutes. If I asked Jennie to do that, she would die in front of the camera. This is hard work. Making it look easy is the hardest part.”
They went to the close of the chapter, with Marcie and Chrissie sitting by Will, and Jennie on his lap. “You did real good, Jennie.”
“I could have done more.”
“You would have tried. When you get run down, you don’t look as good. I want you brisk and cute, not looking like you just stayed up too late at the disco and snorted a bunch of coke. Drugs are the wrecking yard of models, honey. You can make a lot of money on your looks and your ability to pose, if you ever have that. You saw Marcie do what almost nobody can do. That’s where you need to be. That is what you are here to learn.