Chapter 13. Monday Morning in Conway Corners

On Monday morning people woke up to see the top headline on the Capital Communicator screaming, “Your clothes or your job: N-Day minus 3.” The following article mentioned some of the things which had been discussed by Jane and Donald on Saturday night and at the Mays family meeting the night before. The primary source for the story seemed to be Juanita Allen, a law professor from a law school in the largest city. A couple of legislators were also cited.

Gordon Mays first saw the headline online as he was having breakfast coffee. He called out to his stepmother and suggested that she take a look.

“For such a hyped headline, you’d think they’d get a better source than her,” was Jane’s first comment. She went on, “But you’ve got to admit that they’ve hit the whole thing in a weak spot.”

“You’ve been a little cool on the whole thing, anyway. Think this will start enough movement to change N-Day?” Gordon wondered.

“You know that they really need to get a political thing figured out here and they’ve only quoted two legislators whose attitudes are already known and who never seemed able to work anything out. Somehow, I still don’t think that they want to get something worked out before Thursday. They’re relishing the chance for a lot of ‘I told you so’ and the reaction that might bring.”

Gordon’s cell phone rang. He looked at it and saw it was Edna. He really was not fond of talking to his sister, especially so early, but he answered anyway, as if duty mandated it.

“You been looking at the headlines?” Edna wanted to know.

“Just got a look at it. Looks like a lot of hype. Mom and I were just starting to discuss it.

Edna never liked it when Gordon called Jane “Mom,” a label she would never use for their father's widow. She knew that her brother had been a young child when their father had married Jane, but somehow felt that such a label should be reserved for the woman who had borne them. Gordon always reverentially referred to their birth mother as “Mother,” the same term that Edna used, but Edna could never call Jane anything other than by her name. Jane understood and accepted this.

“What was Jane saying?”

Gordon seriously wondered whether Edna really cared what their stepmother thought, but noted that she had been wondering why the story did not have some better sources to cite.

“Juanita Allen works superficially and likes to be quoted,” he noted. “Her surface analysis is good, but it’s only surface. There had to be better lawyers to find, even at her school. She doesn‘t even teach employment law. She’s in general torts. And there had to be better pols to find.”

“From what I know of Ms. Allen, I suspect that you are right. But what is the public going to think? You going to be available for an early afternoon meeting? Say one o’clock? I know Donald wants to have one to prepare for tonight.”

“I guess so,” Gordon told his sister. “Let me guess. The place is still undetermined.”

“That’s right. But we’ll get back to you.”

“All right.”

He hung up and resumed talking with his stepmother, recounting the meeting of the previous night, noting the input of both Maria and Anna.

Jane asked whether Anna had ever said anything at a family meeting before.

“No, it was nice to hear her. It’s good to know that the next generation is getting involved in family matters. And she’s really kind of upbeat, not so righteous as Maria and not as jaded as Christina. And she really isn’t fat. She’s a little heavy, chunky maybe, but she is Connor’s daughter and genes do tell. For a few years after Susan died she wouldn’t talk at all hardly, so it is good to hear her now.”

“Susan was doomed from the start. Just a few years ago, a preemie like her wouldn’t even have made it out of the womb. Nothing was Anna’s fault. She was a ten-year old big sister who never got to be a big sister. I still don’t know why Connor and Barbara wouldn’t let her and her brother hug the baby at the end, but I’ve read conflicting opinions from the experts on the matter. And we’ve discussed this several times before.”

“And having a big sister is not an unqualified plus,” Gordon noted dryly.

“Well, your sisters are different, especially one of them. But deep down they still have good hearts.”

Gordon wondered. His relations with Emily were good considering the difference in ages, but he didn’t think that Edna had ever had a decent thing to say about him except when one was needed for business purposes.



Over at Java Juba Lee, Laura Lyon had taken the pile of newspapers inside when opening but had been working too hard at setting up and serving the first customers that she really had not noticed the day’s sensational headline. She detected that Twyla was tense about something but did not know the reason.

It was not until about eight thirty that business had slowed down a bit so that Twyla could talk about the story.

“You meant what you said about not using nudity to market this place?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

“Have you read this?” She handed her boss a newspaper.

Laura looked the article over quickly and pulled Twyla into the back room with her.

While Laura kept her voice low, her face indicated to Twyla that she was disappointed and shouting. “Do you really think that I’d do any of this stuff even if I thought I could? I am a little disappointed that you even asked.”

She paused a second and went on, “But I guess I can understand that you need to know that your ass is covered, in more than a metaphorical sense. Emphatically, No! I will not expect you to work nude or even topless. I want people to come here for the coffee and the food. Nudity is not part of my marketing plan and even if it were it would be just plain wrong to even suggest it to staff, especially since I’m not of a mind to do it myself.”

She put her arm around Twyla’s shoulder and spoke softer. “Besides, you are going to do a lot better for yourself than work here. I would be terribly disappointed if you didn’t tell me to fuck off if I ever asked you to work less than fully dressed as some kind of business ploy.”

“Thank you,” Twyla replied.

“I really like you and I hope you are here for quite a while longer. And Lontrell will just have to be disappointed.”

The younger woman changed the subject.

“How about the guests? You going to allow them naked?”

“I’m still not sure, but probably. That bother you?”

“Well, a bit maybe, but it seems like something we all have to get used to everyplace and as long as it’s them and voluntary, I guess it’ll be OK. But I’m not sure I’ll be up to a naked Clyde on Saturday morning.”

Laura agreed that a naked Clyde would be a loathsome proposition and suggested that they get back to work.



Karen Cahill arrived at Yankee Joe’s Water Park as usual Monday morning. Most days she was the first person there in the morning and the last to leave at night, but she had learned that she could not do so every day so she had made sure that there were others who could handle the chores associated with opening and closing who would work some days. She usually took Sunday afternoon off and came in at about ten o’clock on Monday mornings. As was her habit, she stopped at the newspaper boxes in front of her workplace and picked up her usual two newspapers and walked in. Since she had put the Capital Communicator on the bottom she did not immediately notice the headline which had already caused Gordon, Jane, Edna, and Twyla so much concern.

She exchanged greetings with Crystal White who was working the cashier booth and went back to the office. Walking past the time clocks she noticed that Carver had posted the signs announcing Tuesday’s meeting. She wondered what extra help she might need to hire after Labor Day after school resumed. Cutting morning hours did not look like a workable solution this year.if they wanted to market themselves the way they were planning to do after N-Day.

She checked her phone messages and did not find anything which her cell phone had not already called to her attention. She always changed into her uniform swimsuit at work, so she opened up the locker in her office and started to slip her street clothes off. She had just stripped as far as her panties when her cell phone rang again. She stopped to answer it. It was Donald Mays.

“Am I interrupting anything that can’t wait a few minutes?” he asked her.

“Well, I’m just my getting my clothes off. I’m down to a pair of pretty yellow panties.” She knew Donald’s weaknesses in conversation. The panties were plain white, but she knew that Donald would prefer to think of them as yellow.

“Well, if you’re getting a head start on Thursday, don’t let me stop you,” he answered.

“You wish, you old perv. Well, when it does come you’re going to get to see this Irish dyke in all of her glory, I suspect. But I’m just getting into uniform.”

“So have you seen the lead article in the CapComm?”

“No, give me a moment to take a look.”

“Give yourself a couple of minutes to read it, why don’t you? and then can you call me back? And get yourself dressed while you’re at it.”

“OK. I’ll get back to you.”

Karen slipped the white panties off and slipped on her uniform yellow and green one-piece swimsuit. She grabbed her newspapers and sat back in her office chair. As soon as she saw the headline she muttered to herself, “Oh, shit. What are they trying to tell us now?”

She read the article. She also was unimpressed with the research. She did not know the source for the lawyer quotes like Gordon Mays and Jane Alpek did, but she did wonder about how authoritative a source Juanita Allen was. She also read a shorter and less sensationalistic article in the other paper and called Donald back.

“It’s a lot of hot air and it may make us have to do more PR stuff, but it doesn’t seem like it really addresses what we’re trying to do,” she told him. “We certainly weren’t going to make any staff undress. I didn’t think we would even allow it. Except for maybe me.”

“You’d like to be the star of the show, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, not really, Mr. Amateur Shrink. I’m not body-timid, but I’m not really an exhibitionist, either. But I think having somebody here naked will make the guests more welcome and I really can’t ask anybody else to do it. It’s not just law. It’s also that most of them are just too young to ask them to do it, even if they are of age. And most would just tell me to fuck off, anyway, and we cannot afford to lose good employees over something like this. And Harrison forms or other bull shit won’t keep some people from thinking that another’s nudity is job security or a leg up on a promotion.”

“But you’re an employee too. Or did you forget that?”

“Oh, I know that. But I am the manager and a stockholder. The board determines my security and there isn’t much place to be promoted to. I guess I could aspire to a raise, but the books will be the primary factor for that. And it is just too early to tell what might happen to my résumé should I wish to go elsewhere. Remember, you all let me buy in when I came here. I would think that that would make a difference. And I’ve already sewn my uniform.”

“Uniform? to be naked?”

“Well, guests have to be able to distinguish staff from other guests. Anyway, I have a thighband and an armband in our colors. And I made three sets in case I need backups. It really didn’t use a lot of fabric and didn’t take long.

“I know that you were looking forward to strutting your stuff. But Gordon called me a few minutes ago and he’s a bit concerned now about even you doing it. He’s looking into it further and asking lawyers who are more into that kind of stuff, but he is a bit concerned. Of course, lawyers are always concerned, at least the good ones are.”

“Well, you guys figure it out. But unless I hear something which would really deter me, I will probably join in the spirit of the new era.”

“You coming to the barbecue tonight, right?”

“Figure that I better just to keep up on what you folks have learned and to have a better idea of how many folks are going along. Besides, I can’t skinnydip here – at least not yet. You know, I got to do that once up there, right after I got here. I think that Emily was trying to line me up with Gordon. But that’s OK. She didn’t know better then. After all, you didn’t put out a press release announcing that you had just hired a lesbian to be the park manager.”

“Yeah. Gordon’s told me about that. Look, this is important, this whole thing. If a water park can’t work right under the new rules, there is no chance for things to succeed any place. But we have discussed this before and there’s no need to repeat. You bringing anybody else?”

‘Well, not Taylor. I know you said we could bring our SOs, but she’s not available. But I am bringing Carver with me. He’s too important here to not have him up on everything.”

Donald was impressed with Karen’s willingness to bring in her subordinate. He liked Carver Randolph but saw a lot of ambition in him. He had nothing against ambition. Ambition was what made society advance, he felt, but he suspected that Carver’s ambition was the kind that carried few scruples with it. Donald had been in many situations where superiors, sensing that they had inferiors like Carver, had kept them out of the loop in an attempt to preserve their own asses so he noted Karen’s confidence to himself.

“That’ll be good,” he told her. “We’ll talk later.”

“Fine,” Karen said and the both hung up.

Karen wondered if Donald spent as much time looking at the details of all of his other concerns as much as he did with Yankee Joe’s. It did not seem to her that he would have time since the Mays family was involved in so many things. But considering how little of Yankee Joe’s he owned, he did seem to spend a disproportionate on that one concern. His cousin Gordon who owned a bigger piece seldom stopped or called, settling for the normal reports. She wondered whether Donald had been so meddlesome before his wife died. Successful businesspeople need to be vigilant, she knew, but the really successful did not allow themselves to be tied up so much in details.

She walked out into the public areas and started on her usual morning rounds. There were few people there this morning. Summer swim classes were over for the season as were almost all of the day camps which brought groups to the park. There were perhaps a dozen parents with small children in the kiddy areas and four high school guys and one girl doing laps in the serious swimmer area, looking forward to the return of school.

She exchanged greetings with the lifeguards and other staff on the premises and went back to her office to examine the weekend’s paperwork.



Phil Eaton was restacking some shelves at Downtown Books. There were no customers present when Marlys Ziemann walked in. She was an occasional customer who stopped in maybe once every month or two for a book or magazine or two.

Knowing the woman’s fondness for detective stories he greeted her, “Good morning, Mrs. Ziemann. Can I help you this morning? I’ve got that new Larry Millett Sherlock Holmes book.”

“I’m not really here to buy today,” she snapped. “I just want to know if you’re going to let those disgusting, perverted naked people into your store.”

It would not have required a mind reader to know what answer Marlys wanted, but Phil was not fond of dissemblance in business, especially for so casual a customer, so he answered.

“Well, it is likely. I really don’t know, yet. I have heard different things, some of which I haven’t seen in the paper or television. There’s a chance I may not be able to stop them. I think I can but a lawyer our trade group contacted said that it may not be clear for some time. And I’m a capitalist. I know that I look like a 60s reject, but I’m still a capitalist and I have my life’s capital invested in this place, so I know that I need to keep that in mind. And I don’t know what others around town are doing. I hope I know a lot more in three days. I take it that you wouldn’t like to see naked people here?”

“Certainly not. It’s disgusting and immoral. And we’re not supposed to see that much of each other. It’s not natural. You’re going to lose customers if you make this place a place of perversion.”

“Well, shacking up isn’t moral, at least not the way we were raised, but if I could find a way to keep all of those doing that out of here, I would be out of business.”

“But they don’t shack up here in the store in front of you and your customers.”

She turned to the door.

“I have to go now,” she said. “Have a good morning.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. Ziemann.”

She left. Phil felt that his store was just one stop on the old woman’s itinerary. He had been wondering about the net loss or gain in business whatever policy he took on the new arrangements would bring about. Susan Bowman’s visit just made him think about it again. He also wondered where she would make her purchases when all the bookstores, hardware stores, restaurants, pharmacies, supermarkets, or other places had naked customers circulating the aisles in their premises.



Jacob Scullworth was having a hard time getting his work done. Despite his attempts to concentrate on the things in front of him, the Conway Corners city administrator was being sidetracked to discussions of what the city was planning for N-Day and beyond. Just when he thought that he had instructions to staff to deflect his messages by noting that the Bear ruling specifically was preventing cities from doing anything to stop nakedness, Cassandra Nix came to his office. City managers can sometimes delay answering calls from the public and often avoid them altogether, but it is with exceptional risk that they ignore mayors.

Before he could ask her how her trip went, the mayor asked in a tone suggesting a demand, “What are you doing about this N-Day stuff?”

“There’s not much we can do, actually. The law says we can’t stop them and a lot of people here, including the folks at the Compound, want to market it. Mostly I have been working with the various departments to make sure that we’re covered for what might happen and answering a lot of questions with answers that don’t help anybody a lot. We have postponed all police leaves and vacations except for one vacation which has already started and we have instructed all departments on what will be allowed and what won’t based on what our legal department and the Municipal League’s lawyers tell us, but that is changing so much daily that we may be confusing people more then helping. But unless legal tells me otherwise, I’m going to put out a memo by tomorrow afternoon stating that we expect all city employees on duty to remain clothed. But I guess that we can’t expect to impose such a rule on citizens visiting municipal buildings or offices.”

“Well, Edna’s made it very plain to me that the Compound is pushing all this. But no police leave? We expecting trouble?”

“I really don’t think so, but it’s a suggestion from state Homeland Security. They haven’t made it public yet, though, although I know that some of the blogs had picked up on it by last night so I imagine that it will be on the radio and television soon.”

“That’ll be just asking for trouble. It will give people ideas.”

“Well, what’s new? That’s always the whole problem with Homeland Security, both here and in Washington. They can’t balance providing information with piquing information. It probably cannot be done and they sure aren’t doing it.”

“Well, we’re going to make sure that there are no disruptors at the Central Park thing. That is the kind of thing the Homeland Security folks are afraid will happen, that somebody who may not even really care about a cause will use the chance to cause some kind of havoc. Also, there is a general feeling that if nakedness is no longer illegal per se, that we need to demonstrate quickly that while we will accept it, that we won’t be allowing perverts to abuse the freedom. We know that five- and six-year-old children are going to see a lot of adult private parts and I guess we couldn’t stop that if we wanted to, but we don’t have to stand for and won’t having some old pervert shaking his dick and telling a little kid to look and see what he has. Folks from the state are sending us what they can to educate our people on some of the more likely troublemakers and we will pass that on as much as we can, but this is really a lot to do in so short a time period.”

“Can I see some of what they are sending?” the mayor asked.

“Well, Doug has more, but these are some emails,” he answered, handing her a stack of printouts. “He suggested that Jean might want to take the kids and go see her sister in Ohio this week, but she hasn’t gone, I don’t think.”

Douglas Palmquist was the chief of police, a sixty-something, long ago divorced grandfather who had been with the Conway Corners force since he was in his mid-twenties. Jean was his daughter.

Cassandra looked over the stack.

“I suppose I might want to look some of these over. I’ll have Millie copy these and look at them in my office.”

“Never mind bothering Millie. Just take them. I can print them out again if I need them.”

The mayor expressed her thanks and went to her office.



Mary Clark was sitting in her office of the Conway Area Public Library. Although she did not have direct view of the public areas, the security camera angles were available to her if she hit the right links on her computer.

She had been perusing the weekly transactions printout, but was having trouble keeping her attention on her business. All of her attempts to contact the chairperson and vice-chairperson of the library board had only yielded a series of unreturned voice mails and emails. She seriously wanted input on what the library should do if naked patrons came by Thursday afternoon. Some of her earlier reluctance was beginning to disappear as the realization that there might be many naked people everyplace in town and a few nude clients at the library might not be the disruption she had feared. But her growing personal ambivalence did not mean that she wanted to make the library’s choice without input. She had suggested to them in her messages that they might want to attend the barbecue that Edna was hosting, but the lack of response gave her no idea whether either was interested.

She was personally ambivalent on the matter of social nudity. It was nothing that she would want to be generally done, but she felt that people should not be considered criminals for casual nakedness, either. She actually found the idea strangely intriguing but not enough that she would wish to do it, at least not any place where anybody might know her.

Her indifferent attention to business was broken when her intercom told her that she had a call from Doug Palmquist. She knew the police chief but mainly from business.

“Mary, I’m having few things faxed over and I have some more that I’m going email you. Most of it is from the state and deals with this N-Day stuff. What is the library going to do? I guess the city is going to make staff stay clothed and Scully -- Mr. Scullworth – thinks they can’t make the public stay dressed, at least not in most cases.”

“I really don’t know and it’s starting to drive me crazy. My Board needs to give me more input. I guess I would like to go slow until we learn more about how things work out. Children and families come here. Many of the children come without their families and I guess that bothers me. I guess that I would like to require pants on everybody, at least.”

“I agree with you. But I’m not sure you can do it. And I’m no lawyer, of course, but I really doubt whether you would want to do it without an action of your board making it official policy. Anyhow, most of what I have sent you is about how to deal with a problem I know must be worrying you. With all those children there without their parents it will be just a matter of time before every pervert in several states finds our libraries.”

“Yeah, I haven’t been happy about that either. I have a little budget flexibility to provide for some extra security for a little while, but my board really needs to look at getting me some more.”

“And I’ve got bad news too. If you are looking for an off-duty officer for the security, there may not be any available. And if you look for an officer from Elmerton or Blacksburg, I suspect that they have the same problems. I know that both departments have canceled all vacations and comp time for a while.”

“This seem like that big a thing for police?”

“Well, we need to be careful. I have other calls to make, but feel free to get back to me after you’ve had a chance to look over what I’m sending. I do want to make sure that the library stays safe and may even have to find some on-duty help for you.”

“Thank you, Chief.”