So I stood up with my own official looking piece of paper and announced that this document signed by the State Attorney General declared that I, personally, was exempt from minimum wage exemptions, to the tune of tripling the national minimum wage for me, personally.

I could see Weatherly, my boss at the General, eyeballing me, the gears in his head working, and I produced another document which I told them was a letter from the IRS insuring that any legitimate business or establishment that terminated my employment would have to pay all of my unemployment fees until such a time as I found work at or above my previous wages.

At this point the Deputy Mayor, who had been my closest friend when were in junior high, stood up with another document, which he insisted had come to him directly from the Senior Whip of the State Senate, which said that within our township and a three mile perimeter beyond, any employer who passed the exemption-exemption criteria for wage disbursement to long term employees—those who had been working for more than three years—could opt to pay part or all of those wages in goods or services, including per diems in the form of bus passes, which according the recent re-zoning statutes put rides to and from my particular location at the corner of Bethesda and Albright at almost five times what everyone has had to pay for bus fare.

He then explained that owing to Weatherly’s status as our town’s oldest living business owner, the mayor’s office was obligated to subsidize those bus passes. It was at this point that I recalled how the deputy mayor was trying to date Weatherly’s granddaughter, which made me narrow my eyes.

Then they popped open again when that self-same granddaughter stood up and held aloft an official looking document printed on very old onion skin which she insisted was the birth certificate of Madame Bozinart, the old lady who taught ballet once a month up on Deacon Hill, for which she received payment in the form of jellied fruits and the occasional flatbread, the which certificate clearly established Madame Bozinart as three years older than Weatherly. I could see Weatherly’s gears working again, since the two of them were sweethearts in high school, and she had always seemed tall for her age, he told me once.

Dr. Leafing, the mayor’s sister-in-law, who part-timed it as our town’s Surveyor and sometimes took over for the Tax Revenue Secretary when he went fishing with his cousins from Odina, then stood up and referenced a ledger which she said showed how Madame Bozinart was in arrears for four years of missed tax payments, and that her business was therefore void of its license and she was no longer the oldest business owner.

But Weatherly’s granddaughter must have seen that coming, because she held up receipts from several years which she claimed showed Dr. Leafing’s own daughter receiving ballet lessons from Madame Bozinart at the rate of three ounces of minced starfruit per plié, which was easily one third what the other girls paid, and since the mayor’s niece was driven to the ballet lessons in the same car as the mayor used for official city business, this payment discrepancy more than sufficed for city taxes on Madame Bozinart’s business, according, she said, to statue 3, paragraph 16 of the city tax code, which, coincidentally, Weatherly himself had written when he briefly acted as Council Ombudsman after the Great Fire of ‘54 wiped out half the city’s official offices and Weatherly’s own livery.

Then Scott Mayfry stood up and held up a napkin that he said it was a coupon for two dollars off a regularly priced blue plate at the Green Field diner, and everybody just glared at him until he sat down again.

After that it got complicated. Sherriff Matheson stood up with a thick manila folder stuffed with scraps of paper and faded mimeographs, and said that as the Great Fire of ‘54 was still under investigation as a possible act of arson, all business derived from new statues written as a result of that fire were subject to State Supreme Court arbitration, and from the folder he produced dry cleaning tickets which showed Weatherly to be a frequent customer, since everyone knows arsonists wet the bed. Kath O’Malley, who works with me at the General, but secretly wants to start her own store, stood up and said that the statutes that dictate new business be subject to State Supreme Court rule were written after the Great Fire of ‘54, so invoking the rule put the rule itself in jeopardy. Kath’s husband, unemployed and a mild alcoholic, reminded everyone that half of the new statutes had been grandfathered to avoid this paradox, and Kath’s teenage kid, who, I’m told, is embarrassed to go on dates because she doesn’t want her father to meet the boys at the door when they come calling, further reminded everyone that city council minutes show that the grandfathering process was never completed because the last vote in favor was drowned out by McGillicutty’s truck backfiring non-stop as he drove past the town council meeting hall on his way to set up his hybrid corn booth at the county fair.

Everyone paused for a minute. The mayor kept looking at the deputy mayor, waggling his eyebrows, since he wasn’t allowed to talk to him in secret after last month’s meeting when Sherriff Matheson had produced a pamphlet from Homeland Security which explained that secret asides in town meetings was sufficient suspicion for terrorist activity. Weatherly’s granddaughter winked at me slyly and Dr. Leafing rifled through her ledger while the gears in Weatherly’s head were working so loud I was pretty sure he was about to pop a gasket. Madame Bozinart, rail thin, dressed in her stiff black dress with the collar that went almost to her chin, and her mountain of hair piled way up high on her head, idly picked bits of flatbread crumbs off her dress. Kath O’Malley stared at the back of Weatherly’ neck hard enough to punch holes in it; Kath’s husband tried to secretly pass a flask back to Madame Bozinart, and Kath’s kid gazed off into space while idly fingering her Junior Citizen ID card, which allowed her to attend town council meetings, a card that the deputy mayor had issued her a few months before so she could witness for him in an arbitration meeting between his cousin over from Buford and McGillicutty, concerning hybrid corn planting rights. McGillicutty himself looked like he was falling asleep.

Everything was dead quite for about 30 seconds, and then the mayor suddenly banged his gavel and shouted for order. McGillicutty woke up with a start, and hollered something in Welsh. Then he came fully awake, blanched, and stood up and ran out of the meeting. Sherriff Matheson pulled out his Homeland Security pamphlet, flipped through the pages, read a quick sentence, then took off after McGillicutty. Dr. Leafing pointed at the Deputy Mayor, shouted at him in Welsh too, at which point the Deputy Mayor also blanched, and ran out the door, opposite the direction of the Sherriff. The Mayor started to bang his gavel again, at which point Dr. Leafing ran up to him and whispered something in his ear. The Mayor’s face turned bright red, steam almost literally coming out of his ears, and he ran out the door in the direction of the deputy Mayor, with Dr. Leafing right behind him. Weatherly stood up, looked at me, looked at his granddaughter, sort of shrugged, and walked out too. Kath O’Malley’s kid tackled Scott Mayfry who looked like he was trying to steal the Mayor’s documents and Dr. Leafing’s ledger, while Kath O’Malley herself grabbed the flask that Madame Bozinart was passing back to Kath’s husband and drained it, finishing with a satisfied belch.

Folks started to leave the Town Council meeting, some of them patting me on the back, some of them shaking my hand, some of them giving me the hairy eyeball. Eventually it was just me and Weatherly’s granddaughter, which was fine as it was our turn to put away the chairs.

Once that was done I met her over by the light switch by the door, and before I turned it off, I showed her some schematics I dug up showing our town’s sewer system renovations from about ten years back, and a few documents I had gotten in the mail from the President of the United States. She smiled in approval, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and told me she’d see me at the next Town Council meeting.