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sometimes people can get very creative, particularly with anatomical improbabilities and commands of incestuous actions and some such and so forth. But, like I say, that’s not the usual.”
    â€œWhat’s the usual?” I asked.
    â€œOh, you know. Nigger lover, spic lover, faggot lover, badabadonk, badabadink.” His do-rag had a Finding Nemo motif. Charlie’s daughter was a pediatric nurse in Iowa City and every week she drove out to Edna to sponge down his countertops and bring him a box of old scrubs he could scavenge for kerchiefs. She was a blond, jolly girl, strong round arms; she friended me after we met and filled her page with pictures of her and her girlfriends hoisting martinis and affecting gang signs.
    â€œStill?” I asked.
    â€œEvery day.”
    â€œEvery da y ?”
    A boy of twelve appeared from the kitchen with a broom and long-handled dustpan. He started sweeping in brisk strokes, as if he were raking leaves.
    â€œI’d say about every day. You would be amazed what people can say from the veil of anonymity. You would be amazed.”
    Guillermo Esquivel, the owner, a man with a comically alarmed mien, brought a plate of flautas we hadn’t ordered.
    â€œNow look at that,” Charlie Burt said. “How much do I owe you, Guillermo?”
    Guillermo wagged a finger at him.
    â€œYou are too good to us,” the mayor said. “Now this right here is the upside to being mayor.”
    Charlie’s daughter told me when the Mexicans began to appear—first by carload, to be housed in trailers off State Road 24, then by van and bus—Charlie did more than welcome them. “He totally went native.” She had a raucous laugh; she seemed to inherit all of Charlie’s equanimity and was uncursed by his powers of reflection. “That’s the reason my mom left,” she said. “Two years of a lockout? Hey, no problem. Black union janitors from Chicago sleeping on the living room floor? That’s cool. But once he jacked the pickup on hydraulics she hauled outta there.”
    I said to Charlie, “That’s what fucked up Jean Seberg. Anonymity. The rumors about her getting pregnant by a Black Panther. She got so upset, her baby died a few hours after birth.”
    â€œOh, well, sure. But that was the FBI.” Charlie threw one arm across the back of the banquette and rubbed his belly with the other hand. “That was a sophisticated operation.” One thing I liked about Charlie was that I never had to explain to him about Jean Seberg. He knew all about her, as he knew about all the famous people from this part of Iowa—an astronaut, an opera singer, a gay novelist from the fifties. A mass murderer, too.
    â€œThe net result is the same, isn’t it,” I said darkly.
    â€œNeutralizing? Well, only if you allow it to be. Of course I don’t attract the interest of the FBI. Not anymore. No, I just attract a bunch of cowards with too much time on their hands. Now that poor girl there, she never had a chance.”
    The sweeping boy came to our booth and gestured impatiently at my feet. I lifted them and he swept beneath me, knocking my soles with his broom handle. The front window admitted the milky haze of the Iowa afternoon. The streets were damp and empty; hard to believe we once crowded them, shoulder to shoulder, meatpackers with their wives and kids, hollering for an end to the lockout.
    â€œI wonder what happened to all those strikers,” I said.
    Charlie stared where I was staring. “Oh, they’re still around. They just all went indoors.”
    A FTER I HAD Googled Barack Obama a couple times I started getting pop-up ads for chocolate singles. Every morning at the same time I craved a macchiato, went to the supermarket Starbucks, and ran into Megan McKibbee, who was now concerned that the Iowa Supreme Court had legalized same-sex marriage. “I’m concerned ,” she said, photographing