Simple Grifts

by Max Cossack

  And why so many sizes, like all the different sized wrenches and wrench extensions? And hammers, ranging from one seemingly too tiny to pound a tack to the huge sledge with the scarred wooden handle leaning against one wall.

  She pointed to a massive gray metal object almost up to her waist, dented and pitted, lurking in the dim light at the back. It must weigh a hundred pounds or more. “What’s that?”

  “You mean the anvil?”

  “What’s it used for?”

  “You hammer metal on it. Like horseshoes. It was my great-great grandfather’s. He was a blacksmith.”

  Gloria thought of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem she’d memorized in grade school:

  “The smith, a mighty man is he,

  With large and sinewy hands;

  And the muscles of his brawny arms

  Are strong as iron bands.”

  Gloria felt silly. What did that old poem have to do with the actual human being standing in front of her? But Gus did fit the bill for a blacksmith, didn’t he?

  Which Gus confirmed. “And I’ve done a bit of smithing in my time.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said.

  Gus picked up her box and laid it on the big gray top of his steel work bench.

  She asked, “Tell me again why you want to see the painting?”

  “Might as well get a good look at what Soren is buying.”

  “But I told you, Soren isn’t buying anything.”

  “Remains to be seen,” Gus said.

  Gloria said, “I paid a lot to have the painting boxed professionally. Are you sure if you can open it you’ll be able to seal it back again the right way?”

  Gus lifted one bushy eyebrow. “A risk you’ll have to take.”

  “I could save a lot of trouble and just put it on the market again,” she said.

  “And miss all the fun?”

  “What fun?”

  “The fun you’re going to have over the next few weeks.” Gus took a footlong black pry bar from where it lay across two hooks on the wall. He began prying big nails out of the joints of the box and the edges of boards. His giant hands were gentle, deft and quick. He turned the box around on the table repeatedly, prying out each nail only a fraction each time. He never seemed to apply more pressure than he needed. He kept rotating the box and tugging on nails until finally one nail came all the way out. He lifted it up to show her. The nail was straight as a laser beam.

  “We’ll put everything back exactly like it was,” he said.

  “Cool,” she said.

  He added, “With one or two exceptions.”

  When Gus had taken out all the nails, he lifted the big side board from the box and set it on the ground. He leaned it against the bench. Piece by piece, he removed the inner corrugated fiberboard and clear plastic bubble sheets and laid them to the side.

  When the painting came partly visible, Gus shook a few white Styrofoam peanuts loose from his fingers and then inserted his fingers on two sides and lifted the painting by its edges out of the box. He walked it to the back wall and propped it there. He flicked a switch on a light hung on a wire from the ceiling. He shone the light on the painting.

  “So that’s L’Amination,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “What a piece of crap,” he said.

  “Nice talk.”

  “Shiny, though. Is that were the title comes from?”

  “Not sure.”

  “The actual Disney—I mean Walt— would have fired your buddy Alfonso. Out the door in two seconds flat.”

  She said, “It isn’t that bad.”

  “Yet of all your art works, you chose this particular one to unload, right?”

  “Alfonso painted this when he was a kid. I bought it to help him get started. It was early in his development. He’s a lot better now.”

  “I hope so.”

  Gus looked at the painting a minute or two, then, “Some enhancement might boost its marketability.”

  “What does that mean?

  Gus turned the canvas around to face the wall. The stretcher held the back of the canvas taut. He opened a drawer in the work bench and removed a packet of small paint brushes. He unwrapped one and held its tip to his lips and pantomimed the artist contemplating his next few brilliant brushstrokes, the strokes intended to transform mere competence into genius.

  “What are you doing?” Gloria asked.

  “Thinking.”

  “Whatever you’re thinking, I want no part of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She said, “It’s illegal.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking is illegal?”

  “I can tell by the look on your face.”

  “Aren’t we the mind-reader.”

  She said, “It’s also cheating. It’s dishonest and crooked and low. I could go to jail.”

  He asked, “Even if you don’t know about it?”

  “We’re standing right here together, aren’t we?”

  “Hey Dad,” In the light of the doorway stood a beardless version of Gus, only slightly taller and much more gangly.

  Gus said, “LG, this is my new very good friend Gloria. Gloria, this is my son LG.”

  Something about LG made Gloria smile. Maybe his open friendly expression or the reflected Sunday morning light, dancing in his eyes. She said, “Hi, LG.”

  The teenager grinned back. “Nice to meet you, Gloria.” Then, “Dad, I came out to remind you. It’s almost game time.”

  “Oh yeah,” Gus said. “Sorry, Gloria, we’ll have to take a break from art appreciation for a few hours, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” she said. “Who’s playing?”

  The three trooped to the house, where Gloria, Gus, LG, an older neighbor couple named Jack and Diane, a local cop named Rolf and Rolf’s wife Debra lay around on in the living room on big sofas or sat on the floor and watched the New England Patriots clobber the Minnesota Vikings 36 to 7, much to the hoots and disappointment of everyone but the Bostonian Gloria, who danced and gloated at every Tom Brady touchdown pass.

  LG cooked up a giant bowl of delicious chili spicy enough to force Gloria to down three bottles of Chumpster, which she tried as judiciously as she could to spread out over the afternoon. After the game, she refused LG’s offer of a fourth.

  “That’s enough beer for one day,” Gloria said. “I had too many last night.”

  “That’s what Dad said,” LG told her.

  “How would he know.”

  “He saw you dancing.”

  After the game, Rolf and Debra and Jack and Diane hung around for the one hour that civility required and took off. It was back to the three of them.

  Gus said, “Come on, Gloria, let me show you the neighborhood.”

  Gloria followed Gus out through the kitchen. When the screen door banged behind her, she found herself facing an open dirt yard about thirty yards across. Beyond it began the jackpine forest. The cool sweet air carried limonene and pinene scents and memories of cabins north of Boston and the lovers and friends with whom she had spent good times.

  She stood and savored the moment. Gus strolled over to a dented waist-high cooler with big white cursive letters on its faded blue sides, reading “Miller High Life—the Champagne of Bottled Beers.”

  Gus flipped up the cooler’s silvery lid. Rows of bottles glistened with condensation in the late afternoon sunlight. They stood upright, their brown necks protruding through parallel metal bars. With practiced hand Gus slid a pair of bottles down to an opening where he could lift them up, through and out. He handed one to Gloria and said, “I love a free Chumpster.”

  “You did pay for those, didn’t you?”

  He said, “I’m not a thief.”

  They each used the bottle opener screwed to the side of the cooler. They settled on the back-porch steps side by side and took occasional belts while they gazed in silence towards the pines. Gus took a pack out of his coat pocket and started to light up a Lucky
and shook his head and stuck the cigarette back in the pack and the pack into his pocket.

  Gloria took the envelope out of her pocket. She removed the final remnant of her cigar and lit up. Gus watched her, then sighed and took out his pack again and lit up his own cigarette. They blew smoke rings that mingled in the cool fall air.

  Gus said, “You like LG, right?”

  “How could I not?

  “You know, this Pafko dude gave LG the shaft.”

  Gloria said, “I teach for a living. I’ve given ‘F’s.”

  “This is different.”

  “You know how many sob stories I’ve heard?”

  “LG has to pass this ‘Diversity and Inclusion’—“Gus spat out the phrase—"to make it into the University. He wants to be an Engineer. I checked you out. Elinor told me you’re no fan of all this political crap.”

  “You do know I’m a lesbian feminist, right?”

  “Crap is crap no matter who you are,” Gus said.

  “And fraud is fraud no matter who you are,” she said, wondering what Gus might be planning for L’Amination.

  “LG is the smartest kid in this town. Maybe the state.”

  “Spoken with the objectivity of a father.”

  Gus said, “Ask Elinor.”

  “You know how many times I’ve heard that particular story?”

  “LG can do anything in math. For fun he does cube roots in his head.”

  “How’s he do that?’

  Gus shrugged. “Something to do with logarithms. Maybe. It’s beyond me.”

  “Okay, he’s smart. You don’t have to convince me. I can tell. And a smart kid like him should have no problem mouthing a few platitudes to satisfy some bored bureaucrat.”

  “That doesn’t sound like what Elinor told me about you,” Gus said. “That sounds more like a ‘get-along-to-go-along’ kind of person.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘go-along-to-get-along’?”

  “I know what I mean. Why are you here in the first place?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gus looked at her. “Why are you here in this crap town at that crap college?”

  “Ojibwa is a highly regarded institution of higher learning. And I’m here because they offered me a prestigious one-year fellowship.”

  “Because they chased you out of Boston, you mean.”

  She blew a smoke ring in his face. “What makes you think you know so much?”

  “I know they chased you out. Why?”

  She shrugged. “According to some, I’m pro-rape.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Are you?”

  She made a sour face. “Of course not. I just said women should be careful when they get drunk and where they go and with whom.”

  “Everybody should.”

  “You see, now you’re bad as me.”

  “It’s not a crime to warn some fool about to do something dangerous there can be consequences.”

  She said, “That’s victim blaming.”

  “Not exactly ‘go-along-to-get-along’, are you?”

  There was no answer to that. Gloria stubbed her cigar in the hard black earth and inspected the butt to make sure it was out. She put the dead butt into the envelope and the envelope into her pocket.

  Gus said, “Seems like you could use the money, too.”

  “I’m tired of this conversation.” She stood.

  Even with her standing and him sitting, Gus’s face was almost eye level to hers. “I wasn’t trying to rub it in. I was just trying to make a point.”

  “You made it,” she said, and opened the screen door and went back in and left Gus to finish his smoke alone.

  She found LG in the living room, lying on his back on the couch, his long legs stretched out, reading a thin green paperback.

  Gloria dropped herself on an easy chair near him. “What’s that you’re reading?”

  “King Lear.”

  “For English class?”

  “Not for any class. For fun.”

  “You’re reading Shakespeare for fun?”

  He laid the book open and face down on his lap. “Why not?”

  “You read a lot?”

  “Not much else to do in the winter after I get home from football practice. Can’t stand reality shows. So I read.”

  She asked, “What kind of things?”

  “Pretty much anything.”

  “But why Shakespeare?”

  He said, “We had to read Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet in class and I liked them. I asked Mr. Johnson to name the hardest Shakespeare play to read. He said King Lear would be the toughest, but he also thought it’s the best one.”

  “What do you think so far?”

  He said, “I already finished it once. Now I’m going through it again trying to make more better sense of it.”

  “Because of the old language?”

  He nodded. “To get the jokes, I have to read footnotes.”

  “I remember doing that. Kind of slows down the joke, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  She said, “Your dad says you can do cube roots in your head. Is that true?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “For real?”

  “Yes. For real.”

  He sat up and laid his book on the coffee table. “Okay. Take any three-digit number and multiply it by itself twice.”

  She said, “You got a pencil and paper?”

  “Just use your phone. It has a calculator.”

  “Good point.” She took out her phone. She dialed in a three-digit number and multiplied it. Then she multiplied the result by the same original number. She said, “Okay, now what?”

  “Tell me the result.”

  She said, “It’s 625,026,375.”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. His lips moved in silence for about five seconds. Then, “Your original number was 855. That’s the cube root of the result you gave me.”

  “King Lear and cube roots,” she said. “You’re sixteen, right?”

  He grinned. “So now I can drive too.”

  Gloria realized Gus had come in quietly and was standing by the door watching and listening. She said to Gus, “You tried talking to Soren about that ‘F’?”

  Gus said, “He blamed his assistant Mason Offenbach.”

  Gloria said, “And what did Mason Offenbach say?”

  Gus said, “What makes you think I talked to Offenbach?”

  She said, “Oh, please.”

  Gus said, “He wouldn’t talk to me much. But he admitted he didn’t really want to give the ‘F’. Soren made him. Unless.”

  Gloria asked, “Unless what?”

  LG said, “Unless I apologize.”

  Gloria said, “Apologize for saying what you think?”

  LG and Gus said nothing.

  Gloria said, “Is this single grade in this single course really so important?”

  Gus said, “According to Soren Pafko, and I quote, ‘No apology, no University. No university, no degree. No degree, no engineer.”

  Gloria said to LG, “I sympathize, really I do, but I can’t butt into another teacher’s grades. It’s against every professional rule. Especially when I just moved here. I just can’t.”

  LG said, “I never asked you to do that, Gloria.”

  She said, “Your dad wants me to.”

  LG said, “He’s supposed to stay out of my business.”

  The three were silent a moment.

  Gloria broke the silence. She recalled something she wondered about. She asked LG, “That cube root thing you did. Is there a trick?”

  “Sure,” LG said. “But it’s real too. I still have to do a bunch of calculations in my head.”

  “So there is a trick,” she said.

  Gus said, “There’s always a trick.”

  9 We’re Going to a Party Party

  Monday morning, Soren dropped by Gloria’s office and poked his head through the open door and invited Gloria to the DCA mixer
at his house that night. He promised it would be a chance “to meet people who can do things for you.”

  At lunch in the Faculty Lounge, Gloria told Elinor about it.

  Gloria had bought a banana yogurt and a single banana and brought them back to their table. She used her little white plastic spoon to scoop the yogurt into a cardboard bowl, then to slice rounded chunks off the banana into the yogurt and mix them in.

  Elinor said, “That seems like a pretty monochromatic lunch. All the same color, I mean.”

  Elinor had a green salad and a plate-sized oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookie.

  Gloria said, “I like monochromatic food. I don’t like monochromatic social events, where everyone has tinted their thoughts to the same color. Look at your lunch. Green and black. Arugula and chocolate. I bet they’re delicious together.”

  “You can’t hole up in your office the whole year,” Gloria said. “You need to get out and meet people.”

  “I’ve met people,” Gloria said.

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  “That’s all you got?”

  “That’s all I need for now.”

  They smiled at each other.

  Gloria said, “Don’t forget Gus Dropo and his bunch.”

  “No disrespect to Gus, but he isn’t going to help your career.” Elinor spiked a plum tomato from her salad and forked it into her mouth.

  Gloria asked, “How can you talk with that thing in your mouth?”

  “Practice.” Elinor swallowed. “What about people in academia, valuable career connections, in case Boston doesn’t take you back?”

  Gloria said, “Do you know something about Boston I don’t know?”

  “No. I just see how it works on this campus. One wrong tweet and they toss you.”

  Gloria said, “Boston didn’t fire me. They just suggested a year off.”

  “Yeah—fifteen hundred miles off.”

  Gloria shrugged. “It’s giving me a chance to write.”

  Elinor asked, “Did they promise to take you back after that year?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have they been in touch with you since?”

  Gloria said nothing.