Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Lesley arrives at the gym after having returned home to get her proper work-out clothes. Pulling off her motorcycle boots, she tells Veronica about the World War I party her friends had.
“Why?” asks Veronica.
“Because the host had a trench in his front yard from where he was building a new porch. It was great. He turned his gazebo into a Home Front Tent with an airtight stove, and the kitchen was a Parisian Café.”
“What kind of food was at the Parisian Café?” asks Veronica, from behind the desk at Curves.
“Oh, fancy cheeses and bread,” Lesley says. “I brought three kinds of pie.”
“What kinds of pie?” Veronica asks. “And why three?”
“I brought a fancy dessert pie for the Parisian Café: apple. A pot-roast pie for the Home Front Tent, but I told them it was squirrel,” she says, hanging up her leather jacket. “And I made root-vegetable pies for the Trenches. Boiled parsnips, potatoes and carrots inside hand-folded pastry. Individual pies.”
“They had individual root-vegetable pies in the trenches in World War I? Sounds pretty fancy.”
“Well, I don’t know,” says Lesley. “It seemed plausible. Someone else brought beans.”
“I’ll google it,” says Veronica, sliding over to the keyboard.
“Oh, you and your googling,” Lesley laughs.
“World War I and root-vegetable pie,” Veronica says as she types. “Nothing. It’s a non-googlable. No documents were found.”
“There was so much food.”
“What did people talk about?” Veronica asks.
“The war, influenza, village life, city life—what people might have faced at home, in the trenches and in Paris.”
“Like no kind of party I’ve ever been to,” Veronica says. “Or heard about.”
Lesley comes behind the desk. “Here,” she says. “Let me log onto Facebook, and I’ll show you the photos.” Veronica slides out of her way and Lesley finds the photo album. She tells Veronica the names of her friends; some of them are in costume. She’s looking for a photo of her partner, to show Veronica. “They had copies of newspapers from 1915 in the Home Front Tent, and Max made a film from footage around Vancouver in that era. They showed it on the wall of the tent.”
“Stop there for a sec,” Veronica says, on the photo of the film projected on the tent. “OK,” says Veronica. Lesley clicks on the photo and Veronica continues looking at smiling strangers in the Trench, lit-up by digital camera flashes in the rain. One guy is wearing a gasmask, another is drinking out of a tin cup with the yellow price tag still on the bottom. Veronica reads part of the funny caption beneath a man posing with the “squirrel” pie.
Lesley frequently tells Veronica how much she likes John, but she can’t find the photo of him. Veronica likes to hear about John, about how much Lesley likes him. “I wouldn’t trade him for anyone,” Lesley says, once they’re working out on the circuit. “But if I had a magic wand, there are five things I’d change about him right away.”
“Really?” Veronica says. “What’s number one on the list?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Lesley says.
“OK,” Veronica says. “What’s number five?”
“To read more,” Lesley says.
“What kind of things would you have him read?” Veronica asks.
“Smarty-pants books,” Lesley says. “So that when I’m with my friends talking about smarty-pants stuff he could join in, rather than sit there wishing we’d stop.”
