Kick

  “Dan wants to know if you’ve spoken to Sandra lately. Who’s Sandra, anyway?”

  Closing his book without putting in a bookmark, Peter pointed his bony professor finger at me and said, “I don’t know who you are or what this is about, but you better tell me right now. That was years ago for chrissakes. Are you a reporter or something? Doing a story? Some jackal from the Post?”

  “Nope, I’m the real McCoy, and I can prove it. Let me see…”

  I let my eyes roll back, feigning a dip into the astral plane from the comfort of my chair, and then ruining it by taking a sip from my coffee.

  “Sandra was…Dan’s girlfriend…and you…you were always trying to steal her from him. But…but…hmmm…it’s getting fuzzy…but Dan is telling me that you’re such an insufferable twat—his word, not mine—that you never managed it. She just wanted to be friends, is that right?”

  Peter’s mouth fell open, which wasn’t a normal look for him.

  “Listen,” he said, shaking his head from side to side in slow-motion rejection of the situation, “I don’t know whom you’ve been talking to and I no longer care. Just stay the hell away from me or I’m going to call the police. Do you understand?”

  “Anything you say…Pecker Colon.”

  Pecker Colon wasn’t very witty when I invented it back in college. But it had gotten to him in a way that none of my other jibes had. He never had the good sense to ignore me so I’d plagued him with it, mercilessly. Back then, this tired moniker usually inspired a snide comment in return, or a superior snort of disdain. But its effect this time was nothing short of devastating.

  He scrambled to his feet, hands trembling, and made a brisk escape toward the door—with me right behind him, shouting, “You’re nothing but a loser, Dan! You don’t deserve her—I deserve her! I’m the one who’s there for her when she comes crying to me after one of your fights! I’m more a boyfriend to her than you’ll ever be!”

  Confronted with the echoes of his own words from college, Peter dropped his book with a thud reminiscent of a telephone book delivery. Then, in a move that was very un-Peter Collins, he ran out of there, banging the glass door open hard enough to rattle the pane in its wooden frame. Adding more speed, he shot into the parking lot.

  I followed him, easily, shouting all the way, “She doesn’t want to see you anymore! We all know what you did to her tires and it’s completely unforgivable! What did you think was going to happen? I called the police myself!”

  Peter owned one of the hybrid electrics that were all the rage. He didn’t mind turning the rain forests into coffee farms but he’d be damned if he added slightly more CO2 to the atmosphere than if he bought a normal car.

  As he pulled the door open, he leveled a cautioning finger toward me and screamed, “Stay the fuck away from me!”

  Oh, the look on his face was absolutely priceless, and I couldn’t stop smiling as I kept both of my eyeball-cameras rolling. I must have looked like a maniac. This day would easily help flesh out the endless nothingness of the Great Wherever and I didn’t want to miss a moment of it.

  Peter jumped in the car and started it up.

  Leaning down to the driver’s window for a parting salvo, I shouted, “Are you still an atheist Pecker Colon? After today? Does this give you some new hope or does it terrify you that you’ll keep on living forever in the company of your own miserable self? Dan Jenkins wants to know!”

  I leapt away at the last second to keep my foot from getting squashed by his back tire.

  That last expression I saw on Peter’s face managed to make me feel a wee bit guilty, and that was the break in the bizarre encounter that finally snapped me out of my mania. His face had been like watching someone sitting in an airplane seat at the exact moment the engines conked out and the nose began to dip. And the feeling inside me as Peter sped away felt worse, because I’d been responsible for the disaster in the first place.

  Walking back to the coffee shop to retrieve my more reasonably sized book, I lamented that I hadn’t matured in the slightest. My years in the Great Wherever may have made me more informed about myself, but I was still acting like an emotionally damaged teenager. Poor Peter. He was a twat and all, but he didn’t deserve what I’d just done.

  With a suspicious peek skyward, I wondered at the chances of running into Peter after all these years. Over time, I’ve learned nothing happens that doesn’t have a reason. I failed a test today. I usually failed these tests, and wondered how many more I’d get before flunking.

  ***

  I spent the next few days following the latest adventures of Harry Potter and his magical friends. Having millions of dollars didn’t mean a whole lot if you couldn’t buy what you wanted and take it with you, so it made more sense to just enjoy the little things. Rather than renting a private jet and flying to Hong Kong to buy diamonds at an exclusive auction, perhaps in the company of celebrities like Dionne Warwick or Leonard Nimoy, I ate at the Sweetwater Tavern every night and McDonald’s every morning. I read my book, watched movies and took naps whenever I felt tired. This might seem mundane to some, but to me these ordinary experiences have an unlimited shelf life.

  Erika called me every night, possibly to make sure I stayed at home since she always called the home phone number. Only once had I not picked up.

  I’d caught a late movie with good reviews about a lonely man and a breathtakingly beautiful young woman. Because he was headstrong and she was independent and quirky, they hated each other when they first met, fell in love somewhere in the middle, nearly lost each other through a series of wild and improbable misunderstandings, but still wound up deliriously happy in the end.

  When I got home, I had two messages on the home phone—Erika, wondering where I was—and three on the cell, which I’d turned off for the movie. Using the carrier’s automated method, I reset the password and played them back. The first one was sweet and filled with love, the second cautiously subdued, and the last exasperated and upset. Kind of like that movie I just watched, played in reverse.

  Wondering what was wrong, I called her back.

  Chapter 25

  “I’ve been trying to call you all night,” Erika said as soon as she picked up.

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “Does something have to be wrong for me to call my fiancé?”

  “I was at the movies—all the other fiancés get to go to movies, especially when their fiancées are gallivanting all over Chicago with strange men.”

  No snorty laugh. Usually she fell for the ol’ Jenkins charm.

  Finally, she said, “I’m pregnant and I’m about to get married, ok? I worry about things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Erika, if something’s wrong it’s ok to tell me.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “You’re right, you should go to the movies if you want to, I’m being stupid.”

  “Next time I go to the movies I promise to feel guilty about it, ok?”

  That got me that strange laugh of hers. Again, it didn’t sound nearly as cute as the in-person experience.

  When I asked how everything was back at her family’s house, she let slip how envious they were. She didn’t know why they couldn’t just be happy for her. I thought Erika might be indulging in a little pre-wedding melodrama but kept that to myself. Families and their intrigues exist at the edge of maps, beyond which read, “Here there be dragons.”

  Erika’s problems, real or mythological, were Nate’s to deal with, and the sooner I got off the phone the better.

  But she didn’t stop there. She continued on her family for the most informative hour I had ever spent with her. For my part, I made frequent sounds of reassurance, tut-tutted at the appropriate times, agreed her sisters were all hags, that her dad drank too much, gasped when she told me her mother was abusive and unfaithful and stood firmly with her as sympathetic witness to all the horrible things they’d done to her over the years. Secretly, I found
it hard to believe her dad used to break her toys (and only hers). Or that her brother poisoned her parakeet, or her sister tried to push her off a cliff on a camping trip, or that her mother would purposely lose her at department stores when she was little. If any of it were true then, yeah, her family was a real piece of work. But it takes one to know one, and as a former master of self-deception it seemed like parts of her story were a little salted to taste.

  “Well, I guess I better head to bed,” I said at one point.

  “Oh gosh,” Erika said. “I’m sorry, it’s like one here and I’m just going on and on.”

  “Hush—it’s not like I have lots to do tomorrow.”

  In a small, lost voice, she said, “I love you, Hun Bun. You’re my hope.”

  “You’re my hope too,” I said. “Love you, snookity pookins.”

  We hung up. It was now official: we were each other’s hopes.

  Erika’s boxes numbered about fifteen, including a medium-sized pink trunk with a padlock on it. I figured she kept her jewelry or other valuables there, so I left it alone for now and focused strictly on the cardboard boxes. Most of them had been taped over several times. I figured I could re-tape them in the morning without it looking too obvious.

  Just as I set about digging into her private life, Nate’s phone went off.

  “Hey! What’s up?” I said, trying to sound as if I weren’t doing anything wrong.

  “Oh honey I’m so sorry,” Erika said. “I don’t know why I told you all those things. Now I feel foolish.”

  “It’s ok honey, families can be rough.”

  “Yeah, you’d know I guess,” she said, a bit mysteriously.

  Before I could segue into a fishing expedition about Nate’s family, Erika started crying. There’s nothing you can do when someone’s crying, I swear. Everything you say just sounds fake, and “there there” makes no sense at all over the phone.

  “Hey, don’t cry, it’s ok—I love you. You just do what you’re doing out there then come on back and marry me, ok?”

  “Thanks, Hun Bun. I’m sorry,” she said, pulling herself together, and again I said there was nothing to be sorry about.

  After hanging up, I raced back to the boxes and began cutting into them, determined to find out just what was going on inside my nutty little honey’s head. Nothing she said sounded right to me. To be honest, she sounded a little like me during the Sandra years.

  Clothes, books, CD’s, candles and ornaments, some fairly new-looking hiking gear, a few small, stuffed animals, a curler kit, a big metal makeup box, maybe ten pairs of shoes—everything you’d expect to find in a healthy woman’s moving boxes. Well, except for pictures. I couldn’t find any pictures of her or her family. No old boyfriends or work pictures, and no vacation pictures.

  I picked up the pink trunk and shook it: tinkling sounds of metal on metal and small thuds. There could be grenades or jewelry in there. I shook it again (more carefully).

  “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” I said, scolding myself.

  Erika had a screwed up family, fine. If she got a little screwed up herself then that was understandable, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t a crime.

  Testing the padlock by jerking it quickly against the latch, hoping to pop it open, I eventually gave up and put everything back the way I found it. I’d get some tape the next day, fix it up and hope her problems didn’t extend to paranoid fears of people snooping through her stuff.

  After all, that would be crazy.

  ***

  Friday morning, the big day. Saturday would be bigger, but mainly for Erika. For me, it would be a misery of playacting, guilty kisses with another man’s wife and deflected questions I couldn’t possibly answer. Not to mention the Electric Slide, the Bunny Hop, and worst of all, the Chicken Dance. I’m no dancer, but for all I knew Nate was. Worse, he might actually be good at it, causing Erika and the guests to interpret my bad dancing as a mockery of the wedding.

  I hoped my night out with Rob and Tom would reveal my purpose here, but failing some sinister discovery I felt resolved to let Nate walk away free. How Erika reacted when Nate came back from La La Land and didn’t remember his own wedding or the days surrounding it couldn’t be helped, but it was better than making her a widow.

  Since the bachelor party wasn’t until later that night, I decided to do some shopping. The new morning cast Erika’s behavior in a better light. Her accusations were a bit wild, sure, but looked at from a child’s worldview did they really sound so crazy? She probably never analyzed any of it before and kept her original perspective well into adulthood. I remember thinking the Earth was hollow and we were all held to the ground because it spun, like a bucket of water. That little delusion came unraveled when discussing what NASA meant by “launch window” shortly before seeing my first Space Shuttle launch, in sixth grade. If not for the hell everyone gave me as I explained how the astronauts opened a giant, steel window in the Earth and then pushed the shuttle out, who knows how long I would have held that belief?

  Feeling guilty, I decided to make it up to her. Girls love jewelry, and I love spending money, so the decision came easy.

  After breakfast, I hopped in the Ferrari and went back to the same mall where Erika had committed a certain class six felony in Virginia (I’d Googled it).

  “How much is this little turtle?” I said to the sad-eyed, older lady at Earthereal Wonders, a neat shop specializing in jewelry made from turquoise, jade, quartz and other Earth-evoking minerals, as well as natural wonders like fossils and uncut gems. Much like the platinum and rose-quartz turtle with the garnets for eyes I asked about, many of the pieces were exquisite and therefore carried a hefty price tag. Which is why the place had been plagued by a steady stream of just looking for the hour or so I watched from the bench out front.

  “Well, let’s just see,” Candace said. With a certain degree of going-through-the-motions, she reached into the case and turned it over. “Oh, this little fella’s $300.”

  She didn’t even bother to see if I wanted to buy it. Instead, she closed the glass case and returned to the register to finish her shift. It seemed to me her shoulders were hunched down a little bit more than when I first walked in.

  Since arriving at the mall, I’d cased about five different jewelry stores looking for the saddest, most hopeless salespersons—people who looked like they needed a break from the cruel hand of fate in a down-trending economy. Earthereal Wonders’ merchandise was so singular and expensive that if they sold more than a handful of things a day it would surprise me. Poor Candace seemed hopeless enough for all the jewelry stores in the mall, combined.

  “I’m wondering,” I said. “Would it be possible to buy something and not take it with me? You know, have it delivered?”

  Perking up a little, and then deflating again, Candace said, “When did you have in mind? Our sale ends tomorrow.”

  She must have thought I wanted to extricate myself from the store by pretending I’d buy something next time.

  Shaking my head, I said, “I wanted to get something today, but I can’t take anything with me. I have more shopping to do and don’t want to carry a lot of bags.”

  Candace blinked at me and then a second later her mouth fell open.

  “Oh, w-well certainly we can ship anything you purchase—that’s no problem at all.” Then she leapt out of her seat like she was only fifty-something, fresh on the track of an actual sale. “Did you want to buy that adorable little turtle?”

  “Possibly, but before I do I have an important question for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you have a shopping cart?”

  For the next hour, Candace and I went through every shelf in the shop, making sure to pick out only the finest pieces. I hardly glanced at the price tags as we went before placing them on the counter. Soon, we ran out of room and had to resort to moving the cheaper merchandise to one shelf and the stuff I wanted to another. I spent a lot of time picking through the jewelry for Erika. I th
ought for sure she’d love the opalized ammonite cluster drop necklace, but if she didn’t then maybe she’d like the 14k white gold pave diamond swirl ring. And if that diamond ring didn’t shine, there was a hefty assortment of necklaces, earrings, bracelets and pendants I picked out, each unique in its own way.

  I couldn’t help getting Nate a few toys—like the $18,000 Mesosaurus fossil, gathering dust at the bottom of one of the cases dedicated to wonders from the Jurassic Park era. They also had a number of meteorites, each going for several thousand dollars apiece, and I added those with some much cheaper, yet beautiful, titanium quartz crystals. My biggest purchase was a fossilized Hadrosaurus egg nest. That baby went for $25,000. And based on my experience with Hadrosaurus eggs, it was easily worth every penny.

  Occasionally, I threw a glance at Candace to see how she was doing. I started growing concerned because that defeated look had returned—somewhere between the rainbow obsidian buddha pendant and the Selenopeltis Trilobite fossil. It made sense, I reasoned. From her perspective, things probably looked like too much of a good thing and she decided I was either a friendly crackpot or a jerk who got off on wasting people’s time.

  Not wanting to torment the poor lady any further, I decided to wrap it up.

  “Ok, I think that should do it,” I said. “How’s the tally coming along?”

  Despite her misgivings, Candace had dutifully copied everything down to a clipboard. There must have been forty things, all told, written out in that neat penmanship perfected in ancient times when people called cell phones walkie-talkies and children played outside.

  “I still have to add it all up,” she said. “Are you sure that…”

  I helped her out.

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll put it on my card and then get you that address. You’ve been really helpful, I appreciate it.”

  I gave her a winning smile, and with Nate’s teeth—easily as pretty as anything in the room—that wasn’t hard at all.

  As Candace entered the last item into the register, she turned to me and said, “What kind of card is it?”