Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred Eighty-Six
7th August 1963
Des Moines, Iowa
The fairgrounds were packed with the crush of humanity and Zella had taken entirely too much delight in recording Kiki’s introduction to the culinary atrocity called a corndog. The rest of State Fair was hot, dusty and extremely crowded. Kiki had ditched the clothes that she might have been expected to wear in favor of those that Zella was certain she had last worn in Korea. A white button-up shirt and a pare of pants that might have once been dyed a camouflage pattern but countless washes to get unappealing stains out of them had left them basically colorless. The broadbrimmed “Bucket” hat she was wearing nearly matched that except the sun had bleached the colors out of it. Kiki being Kiki, she had put zinc oxide crème on every bit of exposed skin and insisted that Zella do the same. Vicky had enough foresight to claim that she wasn’t feeling well and as much as she hated to leave Kiki and Zella in lurch, she stayed behind in the hotel with the air-conditioning and pool. Zella was mad that she had not thought of that first.
In many respects though, they were lucky in their timing. The Governor of New York was present today and compared to that, with this crowd, a visiting German Princess who didn’t look the part was small potatoes. The idea of this whole thing was so that Kiki could get a feel of the real America before they headed north into Wisconsin and Minnesota, both were somehow different from Iowa. For Zella it was a bit much. The video camera was heavy and if it wasn’t on loan, she seriously would have considered stashing it somewhere and being somewhat indifferent about whether it walked off in the meantime. Kiki had told her to leave it behind with her leather jacket in the hotel room, but she had been more interested in getting good recordings. Things like corndogs and the inevitable moment when someone thought that it would be funny to hand an ill-behaved animal off to Kiki could happen at any time. If Zella couldn’t get a recording, then she would be kicking herself afterwards. Kid Goats and lambs were favorites for that sort of thing. Anyone who thought they were gentle, or innocent had clearly not spent a great deal of time around them.
“Can we get out of the sun for a bit?” Zella asked, hating the way her voice sounded in her ears. It was a reminder of the last argument that she’d had with her mother. Zella had heard the usual things that her mother said. “There are millions of other people on the planet, so it didn’t revolve around her” Or “You are not a child anymore. Can’t you ever think of anyone other than yourself for a change?” This time, there had been a message waiting at Idlewild Airport when she got there. As Chief Editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, Zella’s mother had to fend off claims that she kept her daughter on out of nepotism and she was tired of it. This time, Zella had to either come up with something truly groundbreaking or else her pretensions of being a starving artist would no longer be pretensions. She should expect that there would be actual starvation in her future. That was the reason why she had talked Kiki into letting Bob Dylan as well as Andy Warhol and his people into her suite. They were considered to be the next big thing in their respective fields and there was obviously a story there. Unfortunately, Zella had been scooped. No one cared that the story was first going to run in the September Edition of Playboy Magazine. It was a serious article and the photographs of Kiki that they were planning on using were ones in which she was fully clothed. The Mirror back in Berlin had already secured the rights to republish it.
Zella still had the video footage from that day in the hotel. The performance of Dylan with Kiki and Vicky was good. Warhol arguing about the significance of his study of soup labels was a bit more niche. There was also Kiki’s reactions to the changing landscape as they passed through it. Zella needed more, a lot more if she didn’t want to get the boot when she returned to the BT. Suddenly, the video camera didn’t seem so heavy, it was what she needed if she had any hope of getting something that her mother might like as a story.
It took a few minutes, but Kiki spoke with one of the vendors. He gave her directions to where they might find a bit of shade and something cold to drink. When they got there, Zella saw the obvious problem. It was a large tent that was roped off and Country & Western music was coming out from the darkness. Over the entrance was a sign proclaiming that it was sponsored by the local American Legion Hall and that only persons over the age of twenty-one were welcome.
“The idea is to get to know Americans, correct?” Kiki asked.
“Yes” Zella replied, “But we might not be welcome in there.”
It wasn’t just Kiki, but her security detail was composed of men who might be seen as the enemy. Then Zella realized that they needed some time in the shade even more than Kiki and Zella did. Zella was reminded of all the times that her mother had pointedly reminded her that she needed to think of others.
Upon entering the tent, Zella noticed that they were being glared at by a dozen men who must had been their age or younger at the time of the Battle of Ussy-sur-Marne.
“Good afternoon” Kiki said amicably with a smile on her face. “We just wanted to get out of the sun for a little bit.”
