Every year, my brother Bruce hosts a lobster feed at his lovely house in
Maine. He invites only men. After eating and drinking, everyone gathers ‘round
the campfire and there’s a set question for everyone to answer. One of the best
questions, as legend has it, was to describe your first kiss. No, it’s not a
question, but you get the idea. Around the fire, everyone’s guard is down, and
people speak freely and candidly.
This summer, was my first year at the event, and I knew only Bruce and his
good friend Schultz, so I felt uneasy. There were five questions this time, sent via
email to Bruce ahead of time by his friend Eric. The idea was that each person would choose one question.
I’ll try to recreate them, though I don’t have the originals:
1) Describe a particularly difficult repair job
on an engine, when something went wrong. What did you do? 2) Does your name fit
you? What does it say about you? 3) How would your oldest friend say you’ve
changed over the years? 4) What do you feel when you wake up in the morning?
Fear? Curiosity? Guilt? and lastly, 5) Why do you think you made good money?
Was it hard work? Lucky timing? Just dumb luck? Did the gods play a role?
When I read the questions I felt more uneasy
still. They seemed to be largely related to business, or at real mechanically oriented people, or aimed at people, like
my brother, who have made their professional marks in life. At least that’s how
it seemed to me; not so now as I recall them. In any event--just call it my own insecurity--I felt my answers wouldn’t
measure up. So, I decided I would just lie. That is, make up a story that
answered not one but all of the questions, in order. I told Bruce what I was up
to and he suggested I go last, out of deference to the others who—and here’s
the irony—might feel intimidated. That wasn’t my intention, but I can see how it
would seem I was showing off. And perhaps I was, but it definitely didn’t start
out that way. There’s a life lesson somewhere in there, I’m sure. In any case,
I had fun writing this, and bear in mind, it is not a PC story. This was
addressed to a bunch of half drunk guys sitting around a campfire on a
beautiful night in Maine.
1) It was 1974 or 1981. I was staying with my friend, Nick, who had a place
around the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Nick and I had worked together
many times over the years, and he was the type of friend who could disappear
for a few years at a time, but every time we saw each other, it was like he’d
never left. I suppose he was my best friend.
Nick’s girlfriend Donna was there, and after a night of drinking and talking
over old times I went to bed, and had almost drifted off to sleep when I heard
the creaking of floorboards. My door opened and Donna slipped between the
sheets with me.
She wasn’t there because she was cold. And no, I shouldn’t have, but I did,
and when we were finished Donna said, “Take me to Mexico.”
I didn’t have any other plans. So early that morning I hotwired Nick’s 1962
Ford Town & Country station wagon, figuring he wouldn’t miss it, and soon
Donna and I were headed south across the desert. We’d driven for an hour or so
when the car started wheezing and chugging, then stalled. We were dead on the
side of the road, a hundred miles from nowhere. Donna popped a stick of gum in
her mouth. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“Wait here,” I said. Where was she gonna go?
I popped the hood, and a family of rats flew out from the air filter and
headed for their new home in the saguaro. The air filter was caked with rat
shit, so I spun off the wingnut and popped off the housing, then banged it on
the fender to get it cleared out. As I started to put it back on, I dropped the
wing nut right down the throat of the carburetor.
I stuck my finger down the hole, but the nut was just out of reach. I opened
the back of the car, hoping to find a tool kit, but all I found was Donna’s hot
pink travel case, and a bunch of junk: a flimsy tire iron, an old vacuum cleaner,
and a hedge clipper. I cried. I cursed. Nick would wake up soon, and it
wouldn’t take him long to catch up with us.
I took a look at Donna, fanning her face and loosening another button on her
blouse, a little sweat glistening off of her tawny skin. She said, “Do you have
any diet coke?”
God I loved her. I took another look at all the shit in the back of the car
and gave the matter some thought. Then I had an idea. I clipped off the cord
from the vacuum cleaner and stripped out the wires, then I wrapped them around
the tire iron. Going to the engine, I hooked the wires to the battery. Now the
tire iron was an electro magnet. I poked the shaft down into the throat of the
carburetor—God, Donna and I were going to have a wonderful time once we got out
of this heat—and snapped up the wingnut.
2) Soon we were underway. Donna sidled up to me and twirled my hair around
her finger. “You know, Chris, your name really fits you.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, etymologically, Chris is derived from Christ, isn’t it?”
I told her it was.
Her lips brushed my ear as she spoke. “Christ the savior,” she said, then
ran her hand up my leg. “You’re my savior,” she sighed.
3) I put my arm around her, but I was already starting to have doubts. Did I
want to be this girl’s savior? How much saving did she need? I hardly knew her,
and began to regret leaving with her at all. The truth is, if she hadn’t been
Nick’s girlfriend I wouldn’t have. But Nick is my oldest friend, and our
relationship is complicated. Back in our days as roustabouts in the Gulf of
Mexico, maybe Nick would have thought of me as a savior, too, just like Donna.
I pulled him off barroom floors to earn the name. But one night, he stole Sue
from me, which really pissed me off. So I stole Jenny from him. He made off
with Ruth, and I took Della. Then it was Sybil and Elaine and Meredith—I loved
Meredith—and Joan, Leslie, Jessica, Bernadette. Amelia, another Betty, three
Jennifers, two Tracys, a Monica, and on and on. Nick and I stole so many
girlfriends from one another that I lost count. So, I suppose Nick would have
seen me as more of a Judas by the time Donna and I drove off that night.
4) With Donna resting her head on my shoulder, I woke up the next morning in
a cheap Nogales motel. I looked around and didn’t recognize the place and my
heart pounded with fear. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, fear gave way
to curiosity. Why was there a cheesy black velvet portrait of Jesus on the
wall? Who the fuck drained a fifth of Jack Daniels? Who hung their panties on
the mirror?
I looked over at Donna a wave of guilt washed over me. She opened her big
blue eyes and smiled. I ran my hands up and down her naked body, then between
her legs, and soon, guilt had given way to passion.
5) The sun was blazing when Donna and I emerged from the room and climbed
into the Town & Country. We hadn’t gone a half-mile before I heard the
throaty roar of motorcycle catching up to us. I’d know the sound of that Harley
Panhead anywhere, and looking in the rear view mirror I saw Nick, wearing leather
pants, cowboy boots, and a white tank top, roaring up behind us, his long blond
hair flowing in the wind.
He caught my eye in the rear view mirror and
flipped me off. I stomped on the accelerator and wheeled the town & country
onto a narrow dirt road, headed toward Mexico.
Of course, I didn’t get far. As we charged across an arroyo, the car got
high centered and in seconds Nick was at the drivers door. I rolled down the
window.
“You stupid shit,” he said.
I was about to respond—it wasn’t like we hadn’t had this conversation
before—when I heard Donna’s voice. “Give me that motorcycle or I shoot,” she
said.
I turned to see she was pointing a Walther 9mm at my head. And her grip was
steady.
“Donna… what the fuck?”
“Her name’s not Donna,” Nick said. “She’s Natasha Mechenko—or at least
that’s what one of her passports says—if you’d bothered to look into her travel
case you’d know all her names. I’ve been tracking her for four years.”
Donna got out of the car, her pink travel case in one hand, the Walther in
the other.
Donna climbed into the saddle. The Mexican border wasn’t more than a mile.
She gunned the engine once or twice, then clicked the bike into
first. Then, in a cloud of dust, she headed down the road, her miniskirt
fluttering up around her waist. I never understood why women wear thongs, but
I’m glad they do.
She hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards before she lost control of the
bike. No one should ever to drive a Harley wearing high heels, but more
importantly they should always put the kickstand up.
Nick had drawn his weapon by that time and as we walked up to her—there was
no rush; she was pinned under a six hundred pounds of iron—he explained that
his long absences were times when he was on assignment: Cairo, Moscow,
Helsinki, Beijing. “I thought you were a surveyor,” I said.
Nick shrugged. “It’s a good cover.”
The reward for Donna’s capture was a half-million dollars cash—good money.
Other than filling out the papers and all the questions, I wouldn’t say it was
hard work, JUST a lot of dumb luck and lucky timing. Maybe the gods—or at least
Jesus--played a little role, too.
