signatures

The cat and I hesitate at the open door of the sedan, wherein the same attractive woman I thought I just left at the drop zone is looking out the window at me.  I look behind me to check.  And, sure enough, there Svetlana is, in her skydiving suit, about fifty yards away, arms still crossed, eyes still glaring.  I look again in front of me, and there she is in the car, beckoning me.

“How are you doing this?” I ask.  “What…did you make a copy of yourself.”

“No,” she says patiently and smiles.  “Our mother did.”

Sisters.

“I am possibly going your way?” she says.

My date with sister number one took a bit of a nose-dive.  But sister number two has presented me with an unique opportunity to wipe the date-slate clean and take what I have learned with the first sister and try it again.  She has also presented me with a possible way home.   

Toby hops in.  I unzip my skydiving suit and slide in next to him. 

“You take off clothes and you are still wearing clothes?” she asks me.

“Yeah, but I can only do that so many times in a row.”

“My name is Davina,” she takes my hand and squeezes it gently.  “My sister Svetlana…her heart is in the right place.  Her brain, not so much.”

I laugh.  “She wanted me to hand over a vial with a virus that would change a person’s political identity.”

Davina laughs with me as she puts the car in gear.  Then she asks, “Did you?”

“Did I…?”

“Did you give her the vial?”  She pulls from the curb and takes us out of the parking area.

Toby elbows me and gives me a look that suggests, like her sister, Davina’s grasp of reality might be just-so-much. 

“There is no vial,” I tell her.  “I thought we were dropping into a coffee shop, to talk, to get to know each other.”

“You are not scientist?”

“I don’t even own a vial.”

She narrows her eyes at me, eyes that really should be watching the road. 

“This is more perfect,” she says.  “You are nobody.”

My self-defenses rally to sit up straighter and puff out my chest.  “Well, I don’t think it necessarily takes a vial to make somebody a somebody.”

“Nobody knows you.  Nobody suspect you.  I don’t know you,” she offers as evidence.

“Maybe we could do something about that,” I tell her, imaging her lips parted over a smoking coffee cup.  “What do you do for a living?  What’s your favorite color?”

She laughs.  “I live to make difference.  Your country doesn’t understand what a beautiful thing Democracy is.  And so fragile.”

“I think some of us know.  The last year kind of hammered-home that point.”

Davina scowls.  “It continues.  Twenty-twenty…twenty-twenty-one.  It is all the same.  So dangerous.”

“And you are trying to make a difference?”

“Like Svetlana, I am a political activist.  But I was first.  She is always copying what I do.”

“You don’t deal in vials, do you?”

“Davina deals in legitimacy.  She believes in power of numbers.  Votes or endorsements.  Numbers have weight.”

Speaking of herself in the third person seems to increase her personal number by one. 

“At the present, I am trying to undo insanity to limit voting opportunities.  We the People? she says.  Democracy?  Voting is where rubber meets the American road.”

“So what are you doing about it?”

Davina tells me she has a friend who has promised to get her four or five signatures on a letter condemning the recent voting-curtailing efforts.  The friend is attending an event today at which a number of political heavyweights will be present.  “The problem is I am not unknown.”

“Are you sure?  I don’t really know you.  Not yet.”

“I will be recognized.  Actually, I will be identified as my sister, and that will cast doubt on my intention.”

“I guess the two of you do look alike.”

“Like same person.  But you,” she says.  “Nobody will know you.  Nobody will suspect.”  I wait to hear where this is going.  “Perhaps, if you take this letter to my friend, afterwards….we have coffee?”

“That’s it?  I just hand a letter to your friend and…”

“We get to know each other.”  She reaches into the backseat and hands me a briefcase.  “Open it.”

I put the slim black case on my lap and open it.  Papers leap and slide.

“Be careful,” she admonishes me.  “The letter is on top.”

“What’s all this other paperwork?”

She shrugs.  “I print everything that come with DIY template suite for activists.  Just in case.”

Toby and I exchange looks.  We still need that way home.

“Sure.  I can give a friend a letter.  Where is your friend?”

It appears that my back-to-back dates with identical sisters coincides with the wedding of a political somebody’s niece, and that particular somebody is friendly with representatives on both sides of the aisle.  It will happen at a church, not in the church, but behind the church in a big tent.

Davina parks in a lot across the street from a large church and dons dark glasses and a mask.  “In case someone see me.”

“Ready Toby?”  The two us pull up our own masks.  “Wait.  How will your friend know me?”

Davina is already pointing her phone.  She takes a picture. 

“Wait…I wasn’t smiling.”

“You are wearing mask.”

“Right.”

“My friend will find you.  You just have to get inside.”

“Got it.”

Davina thinks carrying a piece of paper by itself will look suspicious.  She asks me to take the whole brief case.  Nothing suspicious about a briefcase at an outdoor wedding. 

“Remember,” she reminds me.  “You are nobody.”

Toby hops on my shoulder and we cross the parking lot and the street.  A number of reporters are pooled outside the main entrance to the church.  All the reporters seem to know each other.  “Who are you?” they ask me. 

“Nobody,” I answer with a wave.  I turn to see two reporters approaching from one side of the building, shaking their heads.

“We couldn’t get past security,” one of them says.

Toby’s points to the church door which none of the reporters are able to get past.

So, I walk around the side of the church where we encounter two guys in black suits.  As we get closer, they grow taller and more menacing.

“Hey guys, I’m looking for a cat.”

They look at each other.  “There’s a cat on your shoulder,” one says.

“Not that cat.  The one who rides on my other shoulder.  Don’t you see how unbalanced this makes me.  I know I saw him run around the church this way.  Have you seen him?”

The two men seem to shrink back to normal size.  “I didn’t see a cat.  Did you see a cat?”  They shake their heads.

“Do you mind if I take a quick look?” I ask.

“You’re not a reporter, are you?
I pshaw.  “I’m nobody.” 

Like alakazam or open sesame, the self-effacing identifier parts the way for me to continue.

“Okay, Toby.  We’re looking for a friend.  A friend we won’t know.”

I see the tent Davina said the event would be held under.  And a short distance from the tent is another pool of people, members of the press, I learn, who were able to circumvent guards without anything on their shoulder.

But this, we discover, is as close as anyone is getting.

“Twenty-five senators, ten house members,” one woman says, “all under the same tent, and we’re stuck out here.”  My heart is ready to go out to these members of the press when I see someone I recognize.  Not someone I know, exactly.  But someone my heart goes out to before it would a disgruntled wedding crasher.

The recognized person catches our eyes and claps either side of her face as she hurries toward us.  “What a darling cat!”

“Elizabeth Warren,” I say, testing this new and unexpected reality.  “You’re Elizabeth Warren.”

“I am,” she says, just like a normal person. 

“I saw you on Stephen Colbert.  You were in Charleston, before the election.  He was asking some silly questions that really tested your human side.   You were awesome!”

She smiles to be recognized for more than her plans for everything.   “And who is your little friend?”

“Toby, this is Elizabeth.  Elizabeth…Toby.”

The senator is simply beside herself.  “My friend just loves cats,” she says and takes my free hand.  “Let’s pop inside real quick so she can meet you.”

I leave the pool of reporters even more disgruntled than when I found them.

“Amy!” Elizabeth calls.  “AMY.”

A woman turns.  And she is none other than Amy Klobuchar.

“Come here, I want you to meet someone.”

The senator from Minnesota hurries over with a smile too grand to be disguised by a mere face mask.  “Oh my!” she says, nearly giddy.  “And who do we have here?”

While Toby is introducing us, I look around and see face after face I recognize from news snippets, Twitter mugshots and late-night shows.  I am positively star-struck.  I know these are not Hollywood celebrities or Iron Chefs.  But these are the powers that be, who we the people put in place to run the big show called America. 

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt Toby and Amy.  “But….” I look from her to Senator Warren.  “Can I get your autographs?”

I crack open the brief case before they can answer.  I reach into the middle of the stack—leaving the top-letter be—and remove a piece of paper.  I take a pen from my shirt pocket and hold it up, too excited to get my words out. 

“Of course,” Senator Klobuchar says and signs her name.  Senator Warren accepts the paper and pen and signs right below.

“What do we have here?” a man says.

“Cory Booker!” I sing like a groupie.

“Uh…yeah.”  He grins, looking from senator to senator.  “First time around a lot of politicians?”

All I can do is nod.

He accepts the letter from Elizabeth Warren, signs his name, grins at me and passes it off to one of his co-senators.

I try to follow the letter, but Amy and Elizabeth will not let Toby go. 

“He has the most beautiful green eyes.”

“And his coat is so soft.”

“I just love his little mask!”

I stand on my toes, trying to track my sheet of autographs.  I’ll probably never get another chance like this. 

A man with white hair leans in to our little pow-wow and says the wedding will be starting shortly.  “They’re seating people.”

“Oh-my-God!”  My outburst makes all of us jump.  “You have mittens just like Burnie Sanders!”

He recovers with a smile.  “I think this belongs to you.  I hope you don’t mind that I put my Burnie Sanders on it.”

No sooner do the three senators excuse themselves than another man appears and looks around before asking me, “Looking for a friend?”

“It’s you!”

“You’re not very good at discretion.”

I fumble with the briefcase, get the letter on top and hand it to him.  He nods.  “Tell Davina I already have three signatures in the bag.”

Toby and I leave the party, make our way through the disgruntled reporters, around the building to the two security guys.

“Did you find your cat?”

“Still looking,” I call behind me.

We bypass the reporters in front of the church and cross the street directly, making our way through the parked cars to the one in back with Davina. 

“Did you find him?” she asks. 

“He found us.  And he said he has at least three signatures in the bag.”

“Perfect.”

I buckle up and look over my collection of autographs.  They are on the front and back of a form letter, a letter not of condemnation, but an endorsement of voting practices that would make it easier for a working person to vote.  I read out loud, “Mail-in ballots.  Drive-thru ballet boxes.  A mobile voting bus that will go to voters who can’t make it to polling centers.”

Davina laughs at the language.  “That is one of the fantasy letters that comes with the activist suite.  We are a long way from being able to use a letter like that.  Why are you reading it to me?”

“This was the first paper I could get out of the case to get a few autographs.”

We are not even rolling yet when Davina brakes hard.  

“A few autographs?”

My finger runs down the list.  “Nineteen is Nancy P., there’s a Mitch here, and then Burnie Sanders makes twenty-one.”  I look up at her.  “Twenty-one.”

“What?”  She takes the signed letter from me.  “Who are you that you get so many people to sign a letter like this?”

“Nobody.”  I have to grin.  “But I do have a cat.”

Toby puffs out his chest and rubs his nails on his coat.

When we are finally seated in a cozy coffee shop called Some Like It Hot, Davina tells me, “You must let me have that letter with twenty-one signatures.  It…it could save Democracy.”  She is beside herself.  I’m directly opposite her.

Toby stops slurping his milk to hear my answer.

“If my collection of autographs can do all that, I can part with it.  It’s the least I can do.”   

At this point, Toby and Davina are both purring.

So. 

“Now that we have that out of the way,” I say as I stir my coffee.  “Let’s talk about your favorite color.”

Embarrassed for his politically star-struck human.