CHAPTER FIVE
GEE Whiz
Joshua Fflowers felt as old as time as he smiled and scrabbled with another hand. Some unconscious, but meticulous, portion of his brain recorded it as the one hundred forty-first hand-shake. Despite the pain in his finger joints, Fflowers squeezed firmly and dryly. He held back a sigh, smiled and reached out to the next well-wisher while pushing back his own wish just to be done with the circus in which he was starring.
Fflowers had been excited when he first had the idea of giving Bissell a new science center, but, now, almost four years later, he was far beyond the point of regret. He didn’t begrudge the money he had spent on building and equipping a facility that put Andover and Exeter, Eton and Harrow, even Toin, to shame. The money was nothing, not even one tenth of one percent of his worth. If his commitment had been no more than the transfer of funds, things would have been fine. But, of course, it could not be that simple. Nothing ever was, except in physics. He had to be toadied to, fawned over, and feted by the school’s administration and trustees. He had to be consulted with on the architecture and artwork—not that anyone particularly listened. He had to be commended and thanked…by everyone from Headmaster Binny Dowdahl to the Board of Trustees to the alumni association to the parents’ committee and student council to the little fellow who folded towels in the field house. He had to be lauded and applauded at the just finished dedication ceremonies where he had given a speech that was more coughs and growls than subjects and verbs.
And, now… now, he was in a receiving line that snaked to infinity, acquiring a zoo of germs from squeezing the greedy hands of envious wishers and obsequious well-wishers leaning over his wheel chair, coveting his wealth, pitying his health, all while whispering, bellowing platitudes, gratitude and good cheer.
The benign benefactor in Fflowers fought the rebel’s urge to power up the wheelchair and plow through the crowd to safety. Away from the parade of stifling people with their mid-body noises and smells as they hulked and hovered over him. Away from the stream of sycophancy slowly wending its way past him. Away to the roto. To relief. In three hours he could be through the Institute’s doors and beginning the rejuve he should have had so long ago.
Joshua Fflowers ruefully thought of how he might have delayed too long, irrevocably ruined his health, for the sheer joy of what he was doing at the moment. The old man toyed with the wheelchair toggle. He turned his head to stare at the sleek stomach, an abdomen looking almost as stiff as its starched shirt covering, of Binny Dowdahl. Well-met hale fellow headmaster. Spinner of dreams. Pocket picker of the rich. Fflowers considered whether he should request, or demand of Dowdahl, that his duties be over, but Binny was regaling an Oriental couple looking de la mode Chinois in their long flame-hued phoenix wings.
As Fflowers waited for the ineffably charming Dowdahl to finish his story, he recalled how even Ives Cheredon, his beloved headmaster from ninety years before, despite being as brilliant a raconteur as he was essayist and poet, occasionally had self-loved his words and thoughts to where a tale well told, with more fillips and flourishes than a Souza march, had made an assembly seem to last an eternity.
Feeling his hand move, the old man turned away from the past to look up, past a short fat body, into a large eager face, hacked in half by a bad-toothed smile. Except for the monstrous teeth, the man looked and smelled like a boiled egg. While he pawed Fflowers hand, the little man sputtered, “Thank you. Thank you. Yes, as always, I believe our future, our nation’s future, is now walking, now, this very day, in the hallowed halls of Bissell. Those hands deserve the best, and you have certainly given them that. I thank you. Bissell thanks you. Noramica thanks you. Yes. Yes.”
“Yes.”
As Fflowers sent the man on his way, he wondered when the little enthusiast last had sent a eurollar to the school. His gaze drifted back to Dowdahl’s starched stomach. The excursus continued.
Another hand took Fflowers. He shook and smiled and shifted his thoughts to something much more pleasant…Smarkzy. Being back with his oldest friend had been the high point of the day. He and Vartan had come to Bissell the same year, 2001. Smarkzy, the sophisticated only son of a New York investment banker—a banker famous for taking outrageous risks on untried technologies and earning even more outrageous rewards— had befriended the poor scholarship student escaping from the skeletal remains of a Massachusetts mill-town. They met in a Latin class and, despite their differences in background, found they had much in common. Both hated sports, abhorred the sweating, swearing camaraderie. Both loved science—tearing back the veil to reveal Nature’s close-kept secrets. Both thought the Greeks and Romans, their art, literature, and history to be far more engaging than the current product. Vartan was smart, well-bred, well-read, quick with a quip, slow with a judgment. Smarkzy was…suddenly, the ruminations stopped. At the edge of Fflowers’ peripheral vision, but no more than a dozen handshakes away, was his grandson, Jack.
A small hand, a small distraction.
“Thank you for your kind act.”
“Thank you for your kind words.”
As the next well-wisher approached, Fflowers looked at Jack, but thought about Jack’s father and his uncle. Joshua Fflowers despised both his sons, the younger one, Illiya, for being an indecisive moralist, the older one, Adaman, one for being immoral. He cared little for his grandson, Illiya’s son, Joe, but Fflowers truly enjoyed his time with his grandson Jack. Jack reminded the centenarian of how he was when he was young. Brash, devious, charming, bright, but not afraid of those who were brighter.
The next few guests, whatever they might have given or pledged to the school, got their money’s worth from Joshua Fflowers—a firm though twisted grip, funny words, a twinkle in the eye. Fflowers charmed like he had eighty years before when, penniless, he had sought to loosen any number of purse-strings to pursue his mad idea.