Feint of Art: (19 page)

Reaching into my jeans pocket, I pulled out the two quarters I hadn’t needed for the phone. I plunked them into the slot; a flat plastic hockey puck popped out and the rectangular table started to hum as the air jets kicked in.

We grasped our paddles and the game was on.

I began by slamming the puck directly at Michael, who stood at his end with his drink in one hand. The puck smashed into the goal and dropped down the slot.

Score!

“Too much for ya, big guy?”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before you’re too much for me to handle, lassie,” he replied, setting down his drink and preparing to serve.

I hunched over, ready to rumble. The puck shot toward me, I parried and banked it off the side at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. The puck slammed into Michael’s goal and rattled down the slot. Score! 2-0.

I yawned. “Boy, am I bushed. Had enough?”

Michael ordered another round of drinks.

A handful of the bar patrons had started to gather, watching in delight as the air between Michael and me crackled with tension. I inspected my nails. “Care to make it interesting?” I asked him. “Because, frankly, so far there hasn’t been much action.”

“How interesting?”

“Loser drinks straight vodka shots.”

“Go,
dude
! Show her what you can do!” The good ol’ boys rallied around, urging Michael to defend the honor of Cowbuds everywhere, while a group of Lil’ Fillies, led by a buxom redhead, gathered around me and shouted a riposte.

The air hockey battle of the sexes was on.

Michael tossed another puck on the table. I parried. He challenged. I feinted. He made his move. The puck rocketed toward me, but I blocked the shot and quickly returned it, slamming the puck into his goal. Score!

The good ol’ boys groaned while the good ol’ girls roared. Money changed hands as the dudes were forced to make good on their bets. The redhead asked my name and started chanting, “Annie! Annie! Annie!” and the other women picked it up. Encouraged, she got more creative, chanting “Two, four, six, eight. Annie’s hot. She’s just great!”

As poetry went it kind of sucked, but I liked it.

“Loser pays!” the women shouted, forming an
L
with their fingers and holding it to their foreheads to signal just what they thought of Michael’s gamesmanship. Michael bowed, ordered a round of vodka shots for the crowd, chugged his, and slammed the empty glass down on the table.

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and smiled, but his green eyes were furious as he stared at me across the expanse of the tournament-sized table. As if in slow motion, I watched him drop more quarters in the slot, toss another puck on the table, and send it hurtling in my direction. It was nowhere near the goal, and with a flick of my wrist I sent it spinning, hitting a three-point shot off the sides before zipping back to me. As soon as it crossed the centerline, I tried to hammer it into the goal, but he beat me to it, scoring on me fair and square.

I drank my obligatory shot of vodka, and after that, the rest of the evening was a bit of a blur.

I remembered the bartender mixing up a commemorative drink that I christened the Anti-Whachahoochi. I remembered leading the house in a dance of the same name, set to the tune of “The Hokey Pokey.” I remembered green eyes throughout.

What I did not remember was how I ended up at the motel. The bad news was that I awoke in a strange bed. The good news was that I was wearing the jeans and T-shirt I had put on yesterday afternoon. At least I presumed it was yesterday, because a grayish light came in through the window curtains, and I was pretty sure it had been dark when we were at the bar. I was feeling fuzzy on the details, but it seemed to me that traditionally meant that it was now the next morning. I registered the throbbing headache, the dry mouth, and the general listlessness that indicated I’d had
way
too much fun the night before. Bleary eyes took in the green glow of digital numbers on the bedside clock. 10:23 A.M.

I lifted my head carefully and looked around: a standard-issue king-sized motel bed, a dresser, a desk and a chair. I was alone not only in the bed but also in the room.

I buried my nose in the rumpled pillow beside me. He had been here. I could smell the man.

“Michael?” I croaked.

Silence.

I tried again, a little louder. “Hello?”

No answer. No manly sounds of showering or shaving. I sat up, took a minute to adjust to my spinning head, and noticed there were no clothes strewn anywhere.

I got up on shaky legs and stumbled over to the bathroom. No manly naked man, no manly toothbrush. I splashed water on my face, rinsed my mouth, drank a lot of water, and used the toilet. Feeling more human now, I started to think. I crossed the room and peeked through vinyl-backed, brown plaid curtains. There was no red Jeep in the parking lot.

Maybe he had gone out for coffee and bagels. Maybe it was time to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He had been pretty helpful with the Hulk, after all. And darned if I could remember, but it seemed to me we might have shared a little kissing and snuggling last night.

Or not.

But still. He wouldn’t abandon me here, not after all we had been through.

Would he?

I didn’t even know where my truck was.

The important thing was not to panic. First things first. Item Number One: a shower. I stripped off my rumpled clothes and stood under the hot water for a half an hour, using the diminutive bottle of shampoo and minuscule sliver of soap provided by the motel. Refreshed, I dried myself with the baby towels that were neatly folded on top of a metal contraption screwed to the wall. As I brewed really bad coffee in the wee, tiny Mr. Coffee machine I wondered if there was any chance that the owners of budget motels thought they catered exclusively to Lilliputians.

I was forced to dress in the same jeans and shirt, but at least I felt more like a real person now. I emerged from the steamy bathroom nurturing a tiny flame of hope that Michael would be sitting at the desk, cups of Peet’s coffee and plates of Noah’s bagels spread out before him.

As I took in the empty room, the flame fizzled, and I started to get really, really pissed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I began to assess the situation. My purse was in my truck. My truck was somewhere in Yountville, several miles south of here. My credit cards and bank card were in my purse, along with my identification. All I had with me were my keys, a dead cell phone, and two dollar bills in my jeans pocket. I had no friends within two hours’ drive of here.

So all I had to do was find a taxi driver to take me to Yountville and cart me around town until I found my truck, all the while avoiding the cops who would no doubt be swarming around Joanne’s shop. How hard could that be?

The room’s phone had no dial tone, so I went to the motel office to use the pay phone. As soon as I walked in, the desk clerk informed me that the motel room had not been paid for and would I kindly take care of it.

“Well, you see, here’s the thing—”

I got no further. Apparently the desk clerk had a pretty good idea what the thing was and called in the manager, an extremely polite, middle-aged Pakistani named Rafi who patently did not believe a word of my story. I flashed on a visual of days spent scrubbing motel toilets and nights spent listening to drunks at the local pokey, and almost lost it.

Maybe it was the genuinely stricken look on my face that convinced Rafi I was telling the truth. Or maybe he calculated that indulging me was his best shot at getting his money. Or maybe he was simply a kind man. Whatever the reason, he ushered me into his office, asked me to sit down, fixed a cup of the most delicious tea I had ever had, and made a phone call that, he said, would take care of things for me.

We spent the next twenty minutes chatting companion-ably. Rafi showed me pictures of his family and regaled me with stories of his uncle Farhad in Karachi, who was a great fan of Humphrey Bogart and ran an illegal but highly lucrative nightclub called the Casablanca. I countered with the tale of how my uncle Alfred got drunk one night, decided to castrate his Brahma bull Sweetmeat with a twist tie, and nearly lost an ear in the process.

Ah, memories. By the time Rafi’s teenaged nephew Suresh pulled up in a beat-up silver Toyota Corolla, Rafi and I were chums.

Suresh drove me around Yountville for nearly an hour searching for my beloved truck, which I finally spied tucked behind a closed service station. I got in, retrieved my wallet, and rode with Suresh to an ATM, where I withdrew enough cash to pay for the motel room, the drive to Yountville, the time it took to find the truck, the tip I felt I owed Rafi for his understanding, and the jar of curry and package of naan that Rafi said was the best I would ever taste. Back at my truck, Suresh drove off with a wave.

I settled into the driver’s seat, but when I turned the key in the ignition I heard a whining, straining sound that was nothing like its usual rumble. The CHECK ENGINE light came on, so I climbed out of the cab, lifted the hood, and checked the engine. I was going to need a whole lot more instruction from the truck if this was going to work.

I slammed my fist on the fender. That did not help.

Looking around, I realized that Yountville was a forlornly sleepy little town on a wintry Sunday. The brilliant sunshine and puffy white clouds of yesterday had given way to dismal overcast skies and rapidly cooling air.

My dead cell phone being of no use, I hiked, resigned, toward the highway, where I found Ernie of Ernie’s Gas Station open for business and delighted to charge me seventy-five dollars to tow my truck less than half a mile. At the garage, Ernie popped the hood, inspected the engine, and presented me with a laundry list of problems that might or might not be the cause of my current misfortune. It would be at least an hour before he would be able to get to it, though I saw no evidence that ol’ Ern was doing anything else.

I kept these thoughts to myself. The last thing I needed at the moment was to offend the one person who could remove the final obstacle between me and the road home.

After spending a few minutes flipping through the tattered magazines in Ernie’s unheated and grimy waiting room, I trudged over to a coffee shop a few blocks away, only to find they did not accept credit cards. I spent my remaining two dollars on a watery cup of coffee, and glumly nursed my persistent headache. Last night’s meal of buffalo wings, cheeseburger, fries, vodka martinis, and Anti-Whachahoochis was not sitting well. I must have looked as miserable as I felt, because a sympathetic waitress slipped me some dry wheat toast when I explained that I had no more money.

An hour later I trudged back to the service station, where Ernie, grinning dementedly, said he had been able to fix my problem for the low, low cost of two hundred forty dollars. Plus, he fixed my broken window for only another hundred fifty. Unlike the coffee shop, Ernie was more than happy to run my credit card up to its spending limit.

As for the X-man, he was dead meat. I would hunt him down to my dying day and when I found him I would kill him with my bare hands.

Or with the evil elf—now
that
would be an appropriate use of creepy garden statuary.

—Georges LeFleur, “Tools of the Trade,” unfinished manuscript,
Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger

 

Around five that evening, I limped into Oakland. It had been a very slow trip home. Halfway there, the gray skies that followed me from Yountville turned into a drizzle, always a dangerous thing in these parts since, although many Bay Area drivers hailed from less temperate climes, most were now incapable of driving in any conditions other than bright, arid sunshine. I fought my way through the snarled traffic, parked behind my building, and plodded up the stairs to my apartment, bone-tired. All I wanted in life at this moment was a long, hot soak in the bathtub, something bland to eat, and an early bedtime. It had been quite a weekend.

The phone started ringing as I was fiddling with the dead-bolt lock, so I wrenched the door open, dumped my things on a chair, and snatched up the receiver. As I fielded a call about which candidate I should elect to the school board, I noticed something was amiss.

I was not known for my spic-and-span housekeeping. I liked a clean living space as much as the next person, but tidying up was not high on my list of priorities. And even if it had been, after a long day in the studio or on a job site, the last thing I was in the mood for was vacuuming. As a result, my apartment often gave the impression of having been ransacked on a daily basis. Some people, my mother most famously, would have been astonished that I could tell that anybody had been here. But I knew immediately that my apartment, although not torn apart like the Dusty Attic, had been gone through carefully.

I said something to get rid of the campaign worker—something subtle like “Comrade, I only vote for the Communist Party”—and hung up.

I looked around my living room, unsure of how to proceed. Was the intruder still here? I snuck into the kitchen and peered around. No one there. That left two rooms. I grabbed a cast-iron skillet from the top of the stove and tiptoed grimly down the short hall to my bedroom.

One might think that my recent encounter with the Hulk would have encouraged me to be more circumspect than to blunder about armed only with a skillet. But the truth was, I was exhausted, hungry, hungover, out a whole lot of cash, and not in the mood to be reasonable.

I approached the partly closed bedroom door and threw it open. It made a satisfying crashing noise as it bounced against the wall before swinging back and slamming shut in my face.