Read Count Geiger's Blues for Free Online Page A

the huge termite cones of the cooling towers), but still a dream.
    After all, Consolidated Tri-State wasn’t playing cover-up; they had released all the facts at their disposal. Now, the President would visit the plant to reassure the nation that nuclear power was still the safest, most economical, most practical sort of energy generation available to the American people.
    This visit duly took place. Plant VanMeter remained open, and Reactor No. 4, which achieved cold shutdown as predicted and stayed off line for 167 days for decontamination procedures and repairs, was brought back to full operational capacity at the end of December. Radiation studies authorized by the NRC and INPO found that only five curiesof radiation had escaped into the atmosphere—only slightly more than the figure acknowledged by Con-Tri. The accident wasn’t a “disaster.” A real disaster would have been to shut down the facility, depriving three progressive Southern states of a safe, cost-effective source of electrical power.
    Xavier agreed with these conclusions. By September’s end, he had ceased to think about his . . . dream.

    It was opera season. Salonika’s young but accomplished company had scheduled works by Bizet, Handel, Verdi, and Wagner. Because Ivie Nakai had spent her summer covering hoary farces and musicals, Xavier told her that she and Donel could divide the opera openings between them. This was his way of apologizing for shutting her out of the Shaw festival.
    “Hot damn!” Ivie cried, banging her fist on the desktop. “ Hot damn! ”

5
Bari Carlisle
    That same September, Xavier met Bari Carlisle. He met her on one of the polished hardwood ramps curving about the skylighted atrium of the Upshaw Museum. Today, this ramp was housing a traveling exhibit of African masks, statuary, and carvings, and Bari stood there on it with two photographers and three long-legged models. The models resembled Giacomettian parodies of human females. None of these women, to Xavier’s eye, was as beautiful as their boss, Bari Carlisle, a young fashion designer whose line had won acclaim not merely in the U.S., but also in London, Milan, Tokyo, and Paris.
    Bari’s of Salonika was her logo, and Xavier approved on practical as well as aesthetic grounds almost every garment bearing this eponym. The women modeling Bari’s creations might resemble shaved giraffes, but the clothes were bright, functional, even elegant. Her cleanly made sportswear would not have been out of place at a formal dinner or a chic society soirée, for she knew how to make sailcloth look like acetate and denim like satin—or, at least, to drape a woman’s body so strikingly that even “common” fabrics acquired a classy sheen.
    In the Upshaw, Bari recognized Xavier because his photo ran in the Urbanite beside his column, “Thus Saith Xavier Thaxton,” and Xavier recognized Bari not only because she was such a high-profile figure in Salonika but because he’d once attended a fashion show in her atelier, a remodeled textile mill on the Chattahoochee. Today, she was directing her models and photographers, working to assemble a catalogue of her fall-winter line for a Dallas retail house. Xavier, meanwhile, was studying the Senegambian artifacts for his next column.
    “You can’t be here now,” Bari told him as he ambled by.
    “Pardon?”
    “I was told I’d have sole access to this exhibit from four o’clock until closing.”
    “I was told, a month ago, I’d have sole access on the afternoon of,” consulting his watch, “yes, fourteen September.”
    “That’s today. Clearly a scheduling error. Why don’t you go downstairs and have them make you another appointment, Mr. Thaxton?”
    “Sorry, Ms. Carlisle, but I have a deadline.”
    “And I’ve got models and photogs to pay. Even here in the gracious old state of Oconee, they don’t come cheap.”
    Xavier knew that Bari’s investment in the matter was indeed greater than his own. “All right. I’ll