The Orange Salamander describes a small-town mystery, but ‘small-town mystery’ is as conventional as the story’s description gets. If you mixed a hard-boiled crime story with a cyberpunk novel, and asked a non-writer to write it, The Orange Salamander is what you might get.
The sound of waves crashing against the beach repeats every 42 seconds. Less than a minute and a seagull squawks again.
I could measure time easily if the pattern repeated every 60 seconds. Instead: 42, 84, 126. Two minutes gone. Forever.
I reach up, turn off the machine. Without ocean sounds, I can’t sleep. Is my conscience heavy? No, I’m just masking the sounds of town.
No ocean nearby. No seagulls. Just students, dogs, drunks. I like the first two, tolerate the third. It’s my sensitive side.
Millhaven: rural college town, miles from the big city. Locals, immigrants, newcomers, students. Four towns: unshaken, unstirred.
I live downtown, above the Agneau Grille, a Tunisian restaurant. Tasty lamb requires no passport.
Restaurants, bars, small shops behind aging facades. Banners welcoming returning students, faded flyers in windows.
Outside, cool autumn air. Cigarette butts on sidewalk – tokens of indifference, rebellion. I smile, lighting a Lucky Strike.
A fat man walks by, eyeing a bakery’s cherry pie. The bakers are brothers, nicknamed the Pie Men. They do everything together.
A scone and a cup of kona to go. Real kona, but Hawaiian means something else to the Pie Men, Ronnie and Donnie. They seem almost sober.
ow are you, Ronnie asks. We saw Sophie. Ex-wife number two, back on campus after sabbatical. His way of warning me. Thanks.
The mayor walks in. Our first mayor, first term. Gray hair, gray suit, blue tie, blue blood of Millhaven’s hue. Pale blue, watercolor.
The mayor glances dismissively my way. He opposed the office, ran when we adopted it, will rely on apathy to hold it. Not a bad bet.
Part-time mayor, full-time defender of convention, tradition, propriety. Private club manners, if the club’s small, decaying, dull.
We’re a town without left or right – incumbency is the only political party. Get office, justify conduct, keep office. Our way, since forever.
eople drift to work, starting early to end early. Local notables pass outside, the mayor leaves, to make Millhaven more orderly
Lyons, the university president for a decade, passes – a smug and subtle cheerleader Does what town fathers ask Considers student silence golden
Phil Bartram, city planning consultant, here a year, seems longer Thinks a half-Windsor’s a short arisocrat Crush on Felicia the MBA
Felicia the MBA, of the college-city-business task force We’ve a task force for every issue incumbents won’t tackle Say, 8 or 9, minimum
City workers hang a banner across Main Street with Millhaven’s logo and a new slogan: We’ll Make Our Way Your Way – Just You Wait!