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There’s a sheet of paper taped to the closed doors.
“OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE STAIRS.”
I inhale deeply, keeping my face neutral even though I want to scream. There are people all around me, people I believe are staring at me. Probably because they saw my picture in that newspaper article that ran a little while ago. Judgy people. The Southeastern United States may be beautiful and friendly, too, but people here are judgier than Saint Peter.
Shit. I’m late and now I have to take the stairs.
My mood plummets further when I see how freaking packed the stairwell is. Some guy huffs and puffs behind me, and I swear I feel his greedy eyes on my ass. Kind of makes me want to turn around and snarile at him.
As I’m nearing the door that opens onto the third floor, a white-haired woman lunges out in front of me to get the door.
“Thank you.” I smile slightly before stepping through.
“Anything for you, dear. You know, my mother’s mother worked in a traveling circus. Dancing bears.”
It’s a good thing the last few years have trained me not to smile—that would be snarile: the one-of-a-kind smile + snarl my paralyzed mouth makes when I try to smile—spontaneously because the way she lifts her brows with circus bear pride makes me want to laugh. Some people are just too clueless.
“Oh?” I say.
Before she can answer, we’re crossing a hall and entering a set of open doors, moving into a room that may actually qualify as hell. Hell is other people. This many of them is probably the central zone in the Ninth Circle of Hell, which as you may know happens to be a freezing place. Shudder. (I have a special hatred of cold places).
At the far end of the awful, sweat-scented, sardine can known as the county commission meeting room, a short, black-haired girl catches my eye and waves. It’s Jenny Lin from the Gatlinburg TV news station. I stretch my mouth open a little—my substitute smile—and hold my hand up in what I hope is a friendly wave.
Jenny is nice. She’s on a short list of semi-strangers that, under normal conditions, I’d give my snarile to willingly; unfortunately, this room is just too crowded for such a display.
Besides, I need to save the snarile for effect.
My stomach rolls.
I stand against the whitewashed, cement-block wall at the back of the room as the county commissioners seated at two long desks work their way through the minutes, until at last they start to talk about the zoning subcommittee’s recommendation to re-zone Mr. Frank Haywood’s property on Blue Moon Road.
My heart jackhammers as the commissioners start thumbing through their notes on this subject. One of them, Nancy Stein, the bitchy owner of a luxury car dealership, gives the crowd a recap.
“Mr. Haywood wants his residential property re-zoned so he can sell it to a developer who would make the home—quite a large home, I believe it is—into a bed and breakfast. That developer, as it happens, is here tonight,” the councilwoman says in her crisp, schoolteacher voice. “Her name is Ms. Carolina Burns. From Nashville.”
A tall woman with gray-blonde hair rises halfway in her plastic chair near the front of the room, giving a little wave. Bitch.
“The property is eighty acres and a large home,” Ms. Stein continues. “It’s been for sale since March of this year, following the death of Mrs. Haywood. Mr. Haywood has been unsuccessful in finding a residential buyer. Since he voluntarily re-zoned several years back as a favor to the bear sanctuary next door, he wants the zoning back the way it was before that time.”
She clears her throat, as if her high-pitched voice is tired already. “The controversy here—if we may call it that—is that re-zoning the property could put the bear sanctuary in jeopardy. Animal sanctuaries in the state of Tennessee cannot share a property line with commercially zoned properties, even low-traffic ones such as the bed and breakfast would be. The sanctuary’s owner—” her eyes flicker to me, cuing the rest of the room to look as well— “would have to make an appeal to the state environmental board, asking that board to make an exception on this requirement. And she—Miss White—has written our commission two letters stating she doesn’t think they would agree to let her keep her sanctuary open. Did we research this, Bert?”
The councilwoman shifts her gaze to Bert Hayes, a short, pot-bellied councilman with a shiny head and wire-rimmed glasses, sitting two chairs to her left.
He nods from behind his little microphone. “It is true that Ms. White, the sanctuary owner, could run into trouble. But what we have to consider her,” Mr. Hayes says, “is that both Mr. Haywood, the property owner, and Ms. Burns, the potential buyer, have offered to help Miss White with the appeal. Ms. Burns, who owns several Mountain Valley Retreats around the state, has even offered to purchase some land from her would-be neighbor, Gwenna White, the owner of the Bear Hugs Sanctuary.”
My stomach drops down to my knees. She what?
Mr. Hayes, head of the rezoning subcommittee, gives me an earnest nod.
I want to shriek. My land isn’t for sale! Not unless I have to shut my doors…
Another woman on the commission who sits beside Mr. Hayes at the long table, a blonde whose name I can’t recall, holds her hand up. “What are the particulars of the enviro board situation with the sanctuary? So what I’m asking is, what did they say? Can we read the sanctuary owner’s letters corresponding with that board?”
I inhale slowly, deeply, then project my voice. “I’d like to address the commission myself—if that’s alright.”
Mr. Hayes’ face scrunches as his cohort, the nameless blonde—my new bestie—nods enthusiastically. “If we’re going to potentially shut down an animal sanctuary, Bert, we need to do it knowingly. And with good reason,” she says.
Luvah.
