With two people, and the cooperation of the wind, getting the satellite dish back to its original position and pointed in the right direction was quickly accomplished. Nelson made sure the lag bolts were actually inserted in the holes this time and then tightened down. They were finished and back inside the resort before it began to rain and blow again.
“Wow, that’s a huge TV!”
“It’s thirty-two inches from corner to corner. Herbert, the owner, had to get the biggest one he could find,” said Nelson. He sounded a little envious. Not of the television, perhaps, but of the ability to just go out and buy this whole setup.
The TV took up space in the room like an important piece of the furniture. At the moment, though, it was no more than an awkward coffee table.
“So the guy who owns this place just dumped all this here for you to sort out?” Gilly asked, sounding incredulous. It did seem a bit haphazard.
“I wish it was even that organized,” said Nelson. “If he had just left it for me, at least I would know where we were. He and his buddies left here thinking they had actually set up a satellite TV system. I have no idea what they did—or what they didn’t do.”
“Wishful thinkers?”
“Just so you know who we’re dealing with, see that, um, trophy over there on the shelf?”
Nelson pointed to an odd pile of airplane parts—a broken piston, a piece of throttle control, and a couple of cracked spark plugs—spray-painted gold and mounted on a black wooden base.
“Herbert has two brothers. They all own float planes and spend quite a bit of time flying from here to Seattle and up into the inlets. At the end of each summer that trophy gets awarded to the brother who had the most extreme screw-up while in the air. That throttle control is the one that fell off into Herbert’s hand while he was coming in for a landing out in front of the resort.”
Nelson tried to turn on the television but the screen remained dark.
“Looks like we may have to try and realign the dish toward the satellite or something. There’s no signal coming in.”
Nelson felt peevish about the whole situation. He was talking to himself more than anyone else. Gillian walked around the TV console the way she might view an important sculpture in an art gallery.
“It looks like it’s all teak on the cabinets.” She paused for a moment, looking down at the jumble of wires. The lights on the two metal boxes blinked on and off implacably.
“Um, I’m no expert, you know, but shouldn’t this box be plugged into the other box beside it? This cord is just coiled up here.”
She held up the end of the cord in question. It had a complicated connector that looked like it would match an equally complicated receptacle. Nelson stared at it, open-mouthed. He took the cord from her hand and plugged it in. He tried turning the TV on again. There was an encouraging noise and some lines appeared on the screen. After a flicker, an image suddenly appeared. The sound of an excited announcer’s voice filled the room.
The two of them looked down at what they had accomplished.
It was a fashion show. The host gushed about the brilliance of the designer and how wonderful it was to be there in Milan witnessing such genius. The models had short, mannish haircuts and wore slacks and blazers under big overcoats with even bigger shoulders. The tall, thin women filled the huge screen, flouncing down the walkway as if they were doing the most important yet boring thing in the world. Nelson and Gilly stood motionless in rapt attention. Their sodden clothing dripped water on the floor.
Television had arrived at Stuart Island, and Nelson and Gilly were suddenly dropped into the front row, actually in the audience. Nothing they were wearing would be appearing on the runways of Europe anytime soon. Gilly unconsciously plucked away a small leaf stuck to her cheek by the wind and rain. The wind had picked up again and rain ran in rivulets down the windows. These distant images that had magically appeared in the storm-darkened room had their audience mesmerized.