“Have any more guitars?”
“Not as far as I know...”
“Tell you what,” Loren said. “I’ll give you a receipt, and I’ll have Terry clean it up. It’ll take a while... I’ll call you in two weeks.”
“What’s your cut?” Andi asked.
Loren shrugged. “I’ve got to make a living too, honey, and I have the techs who can restore it. I even got a guy who I think will buy it, like right now. I’ll take thirty percent, and I’ll tell you what, Andi, you won’t do any better anywhere else. If this had been used by some famous rocker, then it’d be more, but... you say you don’t know about that.”
“Take it,” Andi said. “And Loren... let’s keep this under our hats, okay?”
“Absolutely.”
Ten days later she got a text: “I got a buyer for $130,000. Your end will be $85,800. Yes or no?”
Yes.
Okay, so the late-model Porsche Cayenne was a basic version and used, but not very — thirty thousand miles. The Porsche dude said it would be good for two hundred thousand if she took care of it. He was mildly perplexed when she told him about the trade-in, but he walked out to take a look at the Cube. “Tranny’s real good,” Andi said.
And on a cool, bright day in December she drove over to the Getty and parked the Cayenne in the underground ramp. A curator and her assistant carefully unfolded the drawings on a library table, and the assistant said, “Oh, my God. You got them at a flea market?”
“I did,” Andi said.
“If these are real... we’ll want to look at them for a while, but that looks like Benton’s signature on this one and his initials on that,” the curator said. “Thomas Hart Benton had a very distinctive way of... you know, this might be one of his finest... a flea market? Really?”
“Sure. And I want to do the right thing,” Andi said. “You can look at them as long as you want. If you could give me a receipt?”
“Of course, and we’ll take some photos,” the curator said. “If you’d consider selling them, I’d hope that you’d let us bid.”
“Yes. I’d like to keep them in Los Angeles,” Andi said. “I read about the painting, so they must’ve been here for eighty years. Los Angeles is their real home. I’d hate to see them go to someplace like...”
“Back to Missouri?”
“I was thinking, not even San Diego,” Andi said.
That night, out in the backyard, lying in a lounge chair, with the L.A. glow overhead, Andi sparked up a fatboy and looked to where the stars should be.
“Thank you, babe. Miss you bad.”
And she cried a little, but not too much.
David B. Schlosser
Pretzel Logic
from Die Behind the Wheel
The guys who come back the first time, they always say the biggest difference outside is the silence at night. They can’t sleep because it’s too quiet.
The guys who come back a second time, they generally ain’t too self-aware. They say the biggest difference outside is the sensations. The food, it tastes so much better. The girls, they so much juicier. The air, it don’t smell like week-old socks all the time.
Only one guy came back a third time when he was inside. That guy just scored himself a third strike with whatever he could pull off quick and easy that was barely a felony. That guy said the biggest difference is that everyone thinks there’s a big difference between being inside and being outside. But there ain’t.
I ain’t never going back.
The red-blue strobe in his rearview mirror pulled his insides down. Adrenaline roiled him, and he tasted it at the back of his mouth. In his throat, electric and sour. He hit the blinker, searched for a polite excuse for whatever he might be told was the reason for the stop. DWB, dressed up like a burned-out bulb. Yes, sir. No, sir. An expired tag. Thank you, sir, may I have another.
He put the Kia in park. Rolled down his window. Spun the volume on WJAZ to zero. Put his wallet and phone on the dashboard. Put his hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, fingers flung wide. Waited.
“Driver.” A woman’s voice through the speaker. “Step out of the car and place your hands on the hood.”
His head sagged. He took a deep, slow breath. He complied.
The cop was young. If not a rookie, close. She’d be scared.
“Spread your legs,” the cop said as she approached. Her hand rested on her pistol. “And don’t move.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He couldn’t read her name tag.
The cop started a frisk. “Plates say this car is registered to a Randall Baxter. That’s you?”
“People call me Bax.” Her frisk wasn’t very thorough. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Randall Baxter.”
“You prove that?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Bax nodded toward his wallet. “My license is there. On the dashboard.”
The cop reached through the open window. “Don’t move,” she repeated. She pulled the license and held it up to compare the photo to Bax’s face. Replaced the license in the wallet, the wallet on the dashboard. “You know why I pulled you over, Mr. Baxter?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’m going to search your pockets. You got anything sharp in there?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Nothing that’s going to stick me?” The cop groped his back pockets, then started to crowd him, almost embracing him as she reached into his front pockets.
“Ma’am—”
“Shut up.” The cop got up close and personal. “You hear me, Mr. Baxter?” Raised her voice to a shout. “I said shut. The fuck. Up.” Spun him, backed him up against the side of the little SUV. Reached inside his jacket to search his inside pockets, then dropped something small and hard in the chest pocket of his shirt.
“Ma’am, I—”
The cop silenced him by grabbing bunches of his jacket in her fists, pulling him close. “Your code is Brooklyn,” she whispered into his face before she shouted, “I told you to shut up.”
“But I din’t do nothin’,” he shouted back. Then he whispered, “Brooklyn.”
Bax’s day had started like most days: coffee, eggs with bacon, and strawberry jelly with sourdough toast at the counter of the diner on the dividing line between the suburbs and his city. Flirting over the newspaper with Venetta, the morning shift manager. Who’d let him take her out a couple of times. Who’d refused a dinner date at his pal Napoleon’s locally famous supper club until he started going to Sunday services with her, her daughter Margaret, and her mom. Who’d squinted up half her face when he’d offered the vaguest possible interpretation of his work.
He recognized the flash off his kid brother’s blinged-out shoes in the parking lot. Recognized his boss’s Lexus SUV.
“Ima take that booth over there,” he told Venetta. “Don’t you come wait on me.”
Venetta started to speak but stopped when he shook his head once.
Bax slid into the booth before his boss’s enforcer, Owsley, opened the passenger door for Reamer Kline. Bax’s balls unshriveled a tiny bit when Owsley, so big that the SUV listed toward the side he sat on, didn’t follow Mr. Kline toward the diner door. Bax knew Owsley’s kind from his bit. Knew Owsley enjoyed the beat-down he put on Russell to persuade Bax to fix for Mr. Kline.
Mr. Kline waited at the diner’s door until Russell figured out it was his job to open the door.
Bax saw some sullen fear in his brother’s eyes and wondered what it was about this time.
Mr. Kline motioned for Russell to slide into the booth first, opposite Bax, so Mr. Kline could contain Russell. “Your idiot brother said I’d find you here.” Keep the kid from rabbiting.