The reporter doesn’t answer. He asks, “Didn’t that create insecurity for the senior people?”

“Are you kidding? Equality is a great thing. It gives everyone the same opportunity.”

When the reporter hears “equality” and “opportunity” his eyes shine.

Mr. Mellows continues. “Everybody wins. I coordinated the show, like a…a….manager of a baseball team. Yes, that’s it. All the baseball players in the major leagues are great athletes. So why does one team do better than another? The manager, of course. He decides who does what, when, why. He’s the person who deserves the credit. That’s why managers are always getting fired if their team doesn’t win. The owners know that a different manager may make them winners. What an inspiration, a great manager! You can write that down in your notes. ‘Management is art’. Yes sir,” beams Mr. Mellows.

The reporter writes on his pad ‘management is art’.  He also adds some comments to himself in messy handwriting with a disapproving expression on his face.

Mr. Mellows walks to the print and closes the fingers of his left hand around an imaginary udder. The reporter watches.

“It would be an inspiration to…younger people…to hear how you began such a successful career,” says the reporter.

Mr. Mellows gazes at the floor.

“My path to success? I never did or said anything that the majority didn’t agree with. Then I implemented it. No need to be a ‘lab hermit’ doing stuff that no one cares about. I never believed in originality by obscurity. It’s reverse snobbism. Listen to the voices out there. It’s like my garbage company.”

“Garbage company, Mr. Mellows?”

“Yes! It was a hoot.”

“A hoot? Garbage?”

Mr. Mellows ambles back to the print, rubs his index finger along the top of the frame and winks at the farm girl.

The reporter looks annoyed.

“Oh, it’s kind of silly, really. I was just out of college. That was just over forty years ago. The local government wanted to put a county dump – a landfill – in a large field in a posh neighborhood. They said everyone needed to pay their dues. Land filled with crap and germs and ugliness is what they meant. I hate euphemisms, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, when I read about the landfill in the news, when newspapers were still in hardcopies, I convinced several families in the neighborhood to start a garbage business, to take advantage of the situation rather than whine about it. I told them they could make money living next to a landfill by picking up trash and dumping it across the street. It would be a local convenience. One fellow had a wooded lot that was just…there…doing nothing but looking pretty…so I convinced him to make it a parking lot for our garbage trucks, which would be camouflaged by trees. I got some investors to go along with the idea and arranged the zoning by calling my business ‘Estate Purification Assistance’.”

Mr. Mellows winks at the reporter, then says in a low voice implying complicity, “The local government interpreted ‘purified estates’ as more valuable than ‘unpurified estates’, know what I mean? ‘Purified estates’ translated to higher taxes, so they had no problem giving us the proper zoning. I guess I don’t hate euphemisms after all.” He pauses. “I disbanded the business after a couple of years although it made money.”

He rubs his right thumb and index finger together indicating it made a lot of money.

“Some people may knock the green stuff, aspire to higher ideals, like poetry or how bugs walk on the ceiling, whatever. Without money…well, nothing’s done and people starve. You might want to write that down too. Money counts.”

“I guess,” says the reporter. He writes ‘money counts’ and follows it with two question marks. He looks at the flickering fluorescent light as if it bothers him.

“Well, young man, it isn’t easy, is it? The idea of interviewing me was more appealing than actually doing it. Right? Am I correct?”

The reporter focuses on the tabletop like a little boy being reprimanded. “No, sir, it’s not so easy. You’re not helping. I mean. Your life is…interesting.”

“Sure is.”

“Amazing is more like it. You make things work, you twist and turn, and there you are at the finish line, smiling and alone. But…who are you, really?”

A siren screams in the street. Mr. Mellows walks to the window and looks below. He sees

mid-day traffic, a few pedestrians, some trash on the sidewalk, a leashed dog pissing against the lamppost, while its owner, a middle-aged Chinese woman, looks the other way. Mr. Mellow turns to the reporter, straightens with resolve, ignores the radiating nerve pain down his right leg due to spinal stenosis, returns briskly to the table and sits down.

“Let’s go on. I promised you an interview and an interview is what you will get. Who am I? I told you. I am Mr. Mellows, a self-made man with a self-made name. I carved my way  through life, like a sculptor. Do you understand? Each time a chess piece moves, the game has a new structure, the opportunities are not the same. I am the chessboard. The pieces are my life. I am the substrate for the game. The game cannot be played without me. Without the chessboard,  without me, the pieces would have no place to move. Without land, architects couldn’t build houses, without air, pilots couldn’t fly planes, without nature, scientists couldn’t discover anything. The medium is everything. Do you understand that?”

“No, sir, not really.”

Mr. Mellow looks at the fluffy clouds above the aspens in the print.

The reporter writes ‘chessboard, medium is everything’.

“After the garbage, I mean ‘Estate Purification Assistance’ business, I was asked to be an advisor for the state government on urban planning. I thought it strange since I had no credentials in that area, but they told me the concept of merging sanitary engineering, as they called my garbage business, with the suburbs was brilliant. Before I knew it, I was on the zoning commission, planning changes in traffic patterns, designing recreational facilities at the junctions between urban and suburban areas, joining different lifestyles as it were, and so on and so forth. I was given a green medal when I decided to leave after a couple of years.”

“Why green? Do you mean for energy conservation?”

“Maybe. The bronze part dangled from green cloth.”

“What did you do then?”