I met Jayant Patil by accident in the South Carolina Lowcountry a couple of years ago. I moved down there from the upper midwest, fleeing a broken job in a broken school and a broken heart that I wasn’t quite ready to admit was totally my own fault and not hers really at all. I was desperate for distraction, so I took up with a mayoral campaign a thousand miles away.
I had been on the campaign three weeks, mostly doing event prep and coordinating volunteers, when I first heard from Mr. Patil. He was, I was told, a friend of Mr. Halsey, who would be hosting the next campaign cocktail party, where folks would come and drink and meet the candidate and maybe hear him play the piano, if there was physical space in the home for that.
I went down to Mr. Halsey’s house to do some advance work and understand the space. He claimed he would produce a guest list filled with folks ready to give the thousand-dollar maximum to the campaign, that we wouldn’t have to do any real work on the issue, and that his friends would all vote in November too.
Those folks, I had learned in the short time I’d spent working for the campaign, were the ones most likely to have exactly five friends at their parties, all of whom were very casual about their voting status, and some of whom lived on the resort sea islands instead of in the incorporated city.
The breeze was blowing through the palmettos as I pulled up to Mr. Halsey’s colossal interpretation of a Charleston Single two blocks from the High Battery. The humidity condensed into something resembling a drizzle as I found refuge on his open porch. The first lightning bolt of the day’s thunderstorm came down as I stepped into his parlor following a butler. The second one gilded the silver on the mantelpiece with its reflection, and I decided shortly thereafter that it was time to get out of Dodge. The weather agreed with the foreboding in my heart.
I was driving away from the house, thinking about how I would explain the night’s low attendance to the Candidate the next morning. My phone rang through my speakers and I answered it. The novelty of answering my phone with a button on my steering wheel will never wear off. “Dexter!” The voice on the other end was full of excitement.
“This is he,” I said skeptically. The number wasn’t one I had recognized.
“Tonight is gonna be great!” His voice ran with a touch of an accent, but it wasn’t of the Lowcountry. “Jimmy said over a hundred people told him he was coming. Blessed. I’m getting ready for the weekend, so I’m going to miss it, but my friends are coming, so if you see B. J. Pandya or Johnny Singh, tell them Jayant says hello!”
“Sounds like a plan, Jayant.”
“I’m going to be coming by the office later, too. Can you have about twenty lawn signs? I need to put a few at all of my hotels, so that people see them. They’re great locations, you know, lots of voters drive past them, they’ll see who the next mayor is going to be.”
“I look forward to meeting you there, sir,” I said. “Have a lovely one!”
Two hours later, I was sitting in the office doing data entry on a campaign finance report. The door blew open, and the woman at the front desk jumped up “Jayant!”
“Yes it is!” he said, and the most ambiguously-aged man I’ve ever seen in my entire life, of average height and average build and otherwise average appearance (except for his undeniably superior hair, he was handsome but in an undeniably non-challenging way) flashed a smile the width of the Ashley river that didn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes.
After greeting her and Ms. Gloria, who was making calls to a list of senior citizens, I introduced myself. Like everyone else in the state of South Carolina, apparently, he decided that the most important thing about me is where I was from, so he asked me. My stock answer is that I grew up on the West Coast, spent time in Chicago and Detroit, and ended up in the Lowcountry by accident, and that’s what I told him too.
“Chicago! My daughter is in Chicago!” He whipped out his phone and opened up Instagram. The picture he showed me was him hugging a girl of perhaps middle school age as they both stood on the High Battery. He had captioned it “Blessed. #Blessed #Charleston #DaddyDaughter” and as he showed it to me, he asked me what my favorite Indian restaurant in Chicago was. I told him I had gone to a vegetarian place with my dad that served something halfway between Indian and Chinese food that was astonishingly good, and did he know it, and he said of course he did and we got to talking about Chicago food for a while and it was wonderful.
He had, it transpired, before he moved to Charleston, gone to Barbara Ann’s Motel and Barbecue, the best Barbecue place in Chicago by a wide margin, though he said he wasn’t big on rib tips. The link-and-tip combo for $9.95 was one of my most beloved indulgences in college, and getting to talk to someone who had experienced even part of the joy it brought to me when winter or school was crushing my soul brought back the memories in a way I was fundamentally unprepared for, but very happy with.
He spun around and walked out, sweeping twenty lawn signs under his arm in a fluid motion.
---
I was right about Mr. Halsey’s party. It ended up being five people, two of whom were German citizens and thus unable to vote. Because we had struck out so badly that night in that neighborhood, I decided to adjust our canvassing plans, and set out with a group of volunteers to hit the homes in that neighborhood two weeks later.
My uniform in the field was a shirt for the candidate and my West Indies Cricket Team outfield hat. Nothing can protect against the oppressive heat and humidity of South Carolina which are absolutely soul-destroying, worse than the winters in the Midwest because the outdoors is as oppressive but more tempting during the six-month summer. My West Indies hat (and in particular its reinforced two-and-a-half inch brim all the way around) did a pretty good job against the sun itself, at least.
I was walking past a historic home, chuckling at the misspelling of the famous traitor P.G.T. Beauregard’s name on the historic plaque out front, when someone yelled at me. “Dexter! Is that a West Indies hat?”
I spun around, looking for the voice I knew I recognized. “Jayant!” I shouted, spotting him in his convertible. “Of course it’s a West Indies hat!”
“You like West Indies Cricket team?” He was more incredulous than anyone I’ve ever seen in this emotionally-repressed state.
“Of course! Keiron Pollard is my favorite cricketer, but that old PE Teacher Samuel Badree is up there too!”
“What about Chris Gayle?”
“I mean, I like him too, but I think the uncertainty of those other two guys is more fun.”
“You don’t like Tendulkar?”
“Of course I like him, but the Windies are so fun!” (It didn’t hurt that they were on a tremendous winning run in T20 cricket at the time, but I didn’t want to rub that in.)
“I got to get you out of that hat,” Jayant said. “My team is a good team, you can wear our hat.”
“Your team? India?”
“No, no, my personal team, America Lions, we are the US Champions, two years in a row, down in Tampa.”
“Do you bowl?” He looked like a crafty spin bowler to me.
“No, no, I’m the owner of the team.”
“Ah, ya! Well, of course I’d love one of the hats. US Champions, y’all must be pretty good.”
“I think so, but consistency is the key. See you soon!”
---
I didn’t hear from him again for three months, (except when he whirled past me and gave me a high five at our election night victory party) when he texted me a picture of a brochure inviting me to a holiday chili cookout and oyster roast at his house. I texted him back that I couldn’t make it, that I would be out of town.
After the party, while I was still away, I saw at least hundred pictures on his facebook page of happy folks at the party. He was in five or six of them, always smiling, always with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.
I had been on the campaign three weeks, mostly doing event prep and coordinating volunteers, when I first heard from Mr. Patil. He was, I was told, a friend of Mr. Halsey, who would be hosting the next campaign cocktail party, where folks would come and drink and meet the candidate and maybe hear him play the piano, if there was physical space in the home for that.
I went down to Mr. Halsey’s house to do some advance work and understand the space. He claimed he would produce a guest list filled with folks ready to give the thousand-dollar maximum to the campaign, that we wouldn’t have to do any real work on the issue, and that his friends would all vote in November too.
Those folks, I had learned in the short time I’d spent working for the campaign, were the ones most likely to have exactly five friends at their parties, all of whom were very casual about their voting status, and some of whom lived on the resort sea islands instead of in the incorporated city.
The breeze was blowing through the palmettos as I pulled up to Mr. Halsey’s colossal interpretation of a Charleston Single two blocks from the High Battery. The humidity condensed into something resembling a drizzle as I found refuge on his open porch. The first lightning bolt of the day’s thunderstorm came down as I stepped into his parlor following a butler. The second one gilded the silver on the mantelpiece with its reflection, and I decided shortly thereafter that it was time to get out of Dodge. The weather agreed with the foreboding in my heart.
I was driving away from the house, thinking about how I would explain the night’s low attendance to the Candidate the next morning. My phone rang through my speakers and I answered it. The novelty of answering my phone with a button on my steering wheel will never wear off. “Dexter!” The voice on the other end was full of excitement.
“This is he,” I said skeptically. The number wasn’t one I had recognized.
“Tonight is gonna be great!” His voice ran with a touch of an accent, but it wasn’t of the Lowcountry. “Jimmy said over a hundred people told him he was coming. Blessed. I’m getting ready for the weekend, so I’m going to miss it, but my friends are coming, so if you see B. J. Pandya or Johnny Singh, tell them Jayant says hello!”
“Sounds like a plan, Jayant.”
“I’m going to be coming by the office later, too. Can you have about twenty lawn signs? I need to put a few at all of my hotels, so that people see them. They’re great locations, you know, lots of voters drive past them, they’ll see who the next mayor is going to be.”
“I look forward to meeting you there, sir,” I said. “Have a lovely one!”
Two hours later, I was sitting in the office doing data entry on a campaign finance report. The door blew open, and the woman at the front desk jumped up “Jayant!”
“Yes it is!” he said, and the most ambiguously-aged man I’ve ever seen in my entire life, of average height and average build and otherwise average appearance (except for his undeniably superior hair, he was handsome but in an undeniably non-challenging way) flashed a smile the width of the Ashley river that didn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes.
After greeting her and Ms. Gloria, who was making calls to a list of senior citizens, I introduced myself. Like everyone else in the state of South Carolina, apparently, he decided that the most important thing about me is where I was from, so he asked me. My stock answer is that I grew up on the West Coast, spent time in Chicago and Detroit, and ended up in the Lowcountry by accident, and that’s what I told him too.
“Chicago! My daughter is in Chicago!” He whipped out his phone and opened up Instagram. The picture he showed me was him hugging a girl of perhaps middle school age as they both stood on the High Battery. He had captioned it “Blessed. #Blessed #Charleston #DaddyDaughter” and as he showed it to me, he asked me what my favorite Indian restaurant in Chicago was. I told him I had gone to a vegetarian place with my dad that served something halfway between Indian and Chinese food that was astonishingly good, and did he know it, and he said of course he did and we got to talking about Chicago food for a while and it was wonderful.
He had, it transpired, before he moved to Charleston, gone to Barbara Ann’s Motel and Barbecue, the best Barbecue place in Chicago by a wide margin, though he said he wasn’t big on rib tips. The link-and-tip combo for $9.95 was one of my most beloved indulgences in college, and getting to talk to someone who had experienced even part of the joy it brought to me when winter or school was crushing my soul brought back the memories in a way I was fundamentally unprepared for, but very happy with.
He spun around and walked out, sweeping twenty lawn signs under his arm in a fluid motion.
---
I was right about Mr. Halsey’s party. It ended up being five people, two of whom were German citizens and thus unable to vote. Because we had struck out so badly that night in that neighborhood, I decided to adjust our canvassing plans, and set out with a group of volunteers to hit the homes in that neighborhood two weeks later.
My uniform in the field was a shirt for the candidate and my West Indies Cricket Team outfield hat. Nothing can protect against the oppressive heat and humidity of South Carolina which are absolutely soul-destroying, worse than the winters in the Midwest because the outdoors is as oppressive but more tempting during the six-month summer. My West Indies hat (and in particular its reinforced two-and-a-half inch brim all the way around) did a pretty good job against the sun itself, at least.
I was walking past a historic home, chuckling at the misspelling of the famous traitor P.G.T. Beauregard’s name on the historic plaque out front, when someone yelled at me. “Dexter! Is that a West Indies hat?”
I spun around, looking for the voice I knew I recognized. “Jayant!” I shouted, spotting him in his convertible. “Of course it’s a West Indies hat!”
“You like West Indies Cricket team?” He was more incredulous than anyone I’ve ever seen in this emotionally-repressed state.
“Of course! Keiron Pollard is my favorite cricketer, but that old PE Teacher Samuel Badree is up there too!”
“What about Chris Gayle?”
“I mean, I like him too, but I think the uncertainty of those other two guys is more fun.”
“You don’t like Tendulkar?”
“Of course I like him, but the Windies are so fun!” (It didn’t hurt that they were on a tremendous winning run in T20 cricket at the time, but I didn’t want to rub that in.)
“I got to get you out of that hat,” Jayant said. “My team is a good team, you can wear our hat.”
“Your team? India?”
“No, no, my personal team, America Lions, we are the US Champions, two years in a row, down in Tampa.”
“Do you bowl?” He looked like a crafty spin bowler to me.
“No, no, I’m the owner of the team.”
“Ah, ya! Well, of course I’d love one of the hats. US Champions, y’all must be pretty good.”
“I think so, but consistency is the key. See you soon!”
---
I didn’t hear from him again for three months, (except when he whirled past me and gave me a high five at our election night victory party) when he texted me a picture of a brochure inviting me to a holiday chili cookout and oyster roast at his house. I texted him back that I couldn’t make it, that I would be out of town.
After the party, while I was still away, I saw at least hundred pictures on his facebook page of happy folks at the party. He was in five or six of them, always smiling, always with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.
