It started one night, in mid-June, around eleven. I was sitting beside my friend Wheaty in a booth in Sambo’s, the chain pancake house across from the DeKalb Holiday Inn. Both of us were, each in his own way, trying to reason with Peter “The Shaker” Saltz, a massive guy who was All-Conference tackle and to whom we owed a total of $78 in poker losses, $48 of it mine, $30 of it Wheaty’s.
Neither of us had summer jobs, as we were busy enough just going to school making up courses we’d flunked. Neither of us had anybody around to borrow money from, as most of our friends were as poor as we were, and anyway were mostly not around, having either graduated or split for the summer. Neither of us had rich parents. Neither of us had $48, or $30, or any part of the $78.
“Awk,” Wheaty said.
Wheaty is a six-foot-four, gangly guy who looks like an oversize, friendly, slightly goofy rabbit. His hair is wheat-color and won’t lay down. Shaker had just told Wheat he was going to do bad things to us if we didn’t pay up. He was not specific, but Wheat has a good imagination. So do I.
“I tell you what,” the Shaker was saying, beady little black eyes glowing under Neanderthal forehead, fringe of prematurely thinning black hair emphasizing the slope. “Since I don’t want you guys feelin’ like I’m stickin’ it to you, I’m gonna be fair. Give me Wheat’s car and we’ll call it even.”
“My car!” Wheat gleeped. His big hands started moving in the air, and it was like he was trying to bat mosquitoes, tread water and wave goodbye all at the same time. “Shaker, anything but the car, Shaker, that’s my mom’s car, it’s not even mine, she’s just letting me use it, I can’t give it to you, Shaker, my mom would kill me.”
“Maybe,” I said, striving for a reasonable, calm tone, “maybe we could find some other way to pay you back. Some way besides money or Wheat’s mom’s car, I mean. Work the debt off, somehow.”
Shaker shrugged. “I said I was gonna be fair, Kitchenette. What you got in mind?” (“Kitchenette,” by the way, is indicative of Shaker’s sense of humor: my name is Fred Kitchen.)
“Oh, well,” I said, “there’s all sorts of ways we could work it off for you.”
“Name one.”
“Uh...”
“Well?”
“There’s, uh, so many ways I can’t narrow it down to just one.”
“Keep tryin’, Kitchenette, and when you do come up with a way, make sure it’s something you can do for me before I climb on that bus tomorrow morning.”
Shaker, you see, didn’t need the $78 we owed him. He was leaving tomorrow, going to Toronto, having been signed to a Canadian pro football team who’d given him a healthy cash bonus. So the $78 was just something he could use as an excuse to gloat.
The past several years, we had taken Shaker’s money in small stakes poker games, and Shaker, having been coached over the years that “It’s not how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose,” resented that. He felt we had continually humiliated him. But recently, he’d had a winning streak, and we now owed him. It was his turn, in other words, to humiliate us.
And then, Selma had a suggestion. Did I mention Shaker’s girl friend, Selma? Blond hair, blue eyes, bosomy, cheerleader Selma?
Selma suggested, “How about a streak?”
Everybody looked at Selma and said, “Huh?” or the equivalent, and Selma batted her thick, fake lashes and said, “They’re having a wedding reception across the street. At the Holiday Inn. See? The guests are all standing around in the lobby and stuff.”
She pointed out the window, and we looked over, and yes, we could indeed see guests milling around in the Holiday Inn lobby, dressed to the teeth.
“Wouldn’t it be just gross if Wheaty and Kitch streaked all those wedding guests and everybody?” And Selma, having made her suggestion, began to giggle. Apparently the thought of anything gross tickled her. She and the Shaker were engaged.
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” Wheaty said, with characteristic restraint. “Anything’s better than paying thirty bucks, especially when you don’t have it, YES I’ll do it, OF COURSE I’ll do it.”
Everyone in the place was looking at us now, and we waited till they stopped before resuming our talk. Shaker was eating a couple dozen pancakes, and Selma was eating a hot fudge sundae. Wheat and I were having water.
The Shaker still wasn’t convinced seeing Wheaty and me nude would be worth $78. But Selma was, and so Shaker said, “Both of you or no deal.”
Wheaty turned to me. “Kitch? Come on. You undress all the time. There’s nothing to it. Come on. Think of my mom.”
I resisted that thought and said, slowly, with deliberation, “I will not take off my clothes in front of people.”
Wheat was crestfallen. He already had his short-sleeve sweatshirt pulled half-way off and couldn’t believe my refusal. “You won’t have to take your clothes off in front of people, Kitch! Your clothes’ll already be off when we run in there!”
“What’s the matter, Kitchenette?” Shaker asked, with overacted mock innocence. “Got somethin’ to hide?”
Selma said, “Oh Shaker, you’re so gross,” and snuggled into his behind of a shoulder.
Meanwhile, I was blushing. I admit it.
“Come on, Kitch,” Wheat said. “Let’s show the Shaker what we’re made of.”
“Shaker and everybody else, you mean,” I said.
“Hell,” Shaker said. “I’d rather have the seventy-eight bucks.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Chapter 2
Don’t ever try to undress in a Volkswagen.
A guy Wheaty’s size has trouble getting inside a Volkswagen, let alone stripping in one. And it goes without saying anybody Wheaty’s size has no business driving a Volkswagen, if for no other reason that his knees would block his path of vision.
Wheaty drove a Volkswagen. A copper-color bug that was (as Wheat had told Shaker) still in his mom’s name, even though Wheat had been driving it since high school. Riding in Wheat’s bug is always an adventure in itself and perhaps all the times I’d come close to death in that rider’s seat made it possible for me to withstand the dangers of streaking and bank robbery.
First, streaking.
Wheat got his elbows in my eyes and got himself caught in his fly and there was some discreet screaming from both of us, but somehow, don’t ask me exactly how, we were both naked. Inside Wheat’s Volkswagen. In the parking lot of the DeKalb Holiday Inn.
The parking lot wasn’t lit, fortunately, but the few wedding guests wandering around the lot were, which was equally fortunate: the booze-happy couples, strolling arm-in-arm (for support as much as affection) did not even begin to notice the two naked people in the Volkswagen, which was slowly pulling around by the lobby entrance. I had Wheat do a U-turn so the car would be facing the exit when we got back. We (meaning Wheat and me: Selma and Shaker were safely across the street, in Sambo’s, watching) were to run through the lobby and out across the Holiday Inn court and into the pool for a quick skinny dip, then cut directly across to the parking lot (which connected with the court) where the Volks would be waiting, engine running, our clothes on the seat. And we’d be gone. The essence of streaking is speed, and the getaway should of course be as fast or faster than the streak itself.
We climbed cautiously out of the Volks. Wheat’s skin was pale in the moonlight, and if that sounds romantic to you, guess again. Wheat was skinny in a bony way and while he didn’t exactly look undernourished, he didn’t look healthy either. He was also pretty much without body hair, and looked like a big overgrown baby, except for one thing.