Mindbenders Read Online Free Page B

find something else that appealed to him: MAYOR RESIGNS AFTER BIZARRE VIDEO SURFACES was the headline. “Read that,” he said.
    “Greta Kobel, Mayor of Copenhagen for twenty-four years, resigned today after a bizarre video surfaced on the Internet. The clip, which documented what her spokesperson called ‘a momentary breakdown,’ shows Mayor Kobel barking, clawing at the podium and spouting gibberish and racial slurs to an audience of Japanese businessmen at a reception yesterday. Among her statements was one characterizing Hindus as ‘the dogs of the world,’ which sparked riots in several countries last night. A statement from the Mayor’s office said she apologized for her behavior and called it ‘inexplicable, as the views expressed are not true to my own feelings or views. I take responsibility for my actions without, frankly, understanding them.” The Mayor announced that she was resigning, effective Friday, to seek counseling and medical treatment. Longtime friends and critics alike characterized the incident as out-of-character. Mayor Kobel has won numerous prizes throughout her stewardship for open government and human rights.”
    “Tear that out too,” he said. “If there are pictures, keep them.”
    “What’s in common?” I asked, tearing. “The Mayor of Copenhagen and a nuclear plant in Tennessee?”
    “There’s our turnoff,” he said and I saw the sign to merge onto 95. He pulled into the right lane and we waited in traffic for the exit.
     
    ~~~~
     
    Savannah was hot, hot like they’d set the whole place on fire. The trees sagged under the weight of their own perspiration. Do trees sweat? I don’t care; these seemed to. Sweating trees, steaming brick houses from before the Civil War, swans and geese battling for position on a pond in the park as we drove by in slow traffic. Mr. Dulles wasn’t much at city driving either, from what I could tell—we would circle the same area several times before lighting out in a different direction.
    “You lost?”
    “No.”
    “Why’re you circling?”
    “Do you have an address? Or just ‘Mark Tauber, Savannah Georgia’?”
    “That’s all I’ve got.”
    “Then have a little patience.”
    Each new direction led to  dingier and dingier neighborhoods. In heat like this, most everything looked washed-out but I couldn’t miss the missing shingles on the roofs, the cars with missing fenders and the bars over the street-level windows. After about twenty minutes of this, we hit an area where the streets were flat-out empty, scary empty.
    And then I looked over and he was driving with his eyes closed.
    I grabbed for the wheel but he threw his hand out to block me. “I’m okay,” he said.
    “Your eyes are closed.”
    “I know. It’s okay.”
    “No it’s not. I’m driving with somebody who thinks they can drive with their eyes closed. That’s not okay.”
    He actually laughed at that but didn’t open his eyes. “We have three houses between us and the corner,” he said and that was true. “There’s a blue pickup parked at the corner but we’ve got plenty of space to miss it.” I checked to see if his eyes were slitted open, if he was peeking. He wasn’t. “We’ll make the left turn at the corner coming up. I’ll wait to see if the red Ford let’s us go first.” I could see the corner coming up—there was no Ford there. Then, as I watched, it pulled up and waited for us. “There’s a silver Nissan SUV parked around the corner with a flat tire on the rear passenger side. There are two garbage cans—black and brown, in that order—lined up on the sidewalk a bit beyond it.” He started to hum to himself some odd off-key trance kind of a tune.
    We turned past the Ford and onto the street, passing the silver Nissan with the flat on the passenger side and the garbage cans, black and brown in order. And then he swerved around the garbage can lid that blew into the street—still without opening his eyes—and I gave up trying to