“You still know how to charm, Thad,” Amy laughed as they hugged again.
It was interesting to drive over the Causeway again. It was interesting to see that rounded hill, like something out of a fairly tame roller coaster. I looked down as we reached the top of that concrete arch. The gulf below looked like a million blue peaks of meringue in constant motion. It looked like light bouncing around in a sapphire with many facets. It also looked pretty close. It was hard to believe that a parachute could even fully open before a “sky” diver leapt off of that arch into the wild blue yonders.
The networking event was indeed at a chain hotel in Fort Myers. But it was one of those new, hipper incarnations of that boring, old hotel chain that you thought you knew.
The event was in the bar and lobby area. The bar was glass and illuminated by a flame. I think that the glass was supposed to be “ice”. I think that the bar was supposed to be fire and ice. A weird Greek or Roman style faux sculpture of either Dionysus or Bacchus looked on with an expression that might have preceded a hearty toast, a passionate kiss, or a fist fight, the only three socially sanctioned drunken male expressions. The lobby was too white and clean. It was modern design or postmodern design or post postmodern design, conceived in some weird Danish institute where they only serve a single perfect, purple carrot on a flawless bone white ceramic plate for dinner and everyone wears a turtleneck sweater and glasses.
Thad and I made our way to the bar. I ordered a screwdriver. (I just can’t get enough of Florida orange juice.) Thad ordered a glass of wine.
I looked around for our quarry. He wasn’t there. Hardly anyone was there. Perhaps ten people were scattered around the bar and lobby. It wasn’t clear that all of them were there to network.
Thad had gone all out. He wore the button down shirt and tie that he also planned to wear for Farhad’s wedding. I was still in a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals.
“Well, what are we going to do while we wait?” I asked Thad.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to network,” Thad announced.
“Why?” I laughed.
“I hate my job,” Thad declared.
“Really?” I startled.
“Really,” Thad nodded. “Don’t you hate MNDOT?”
“There are things that I hate about MNDOT, but I’m a bridge inspector. I’ve got the only job that I ever wanted. And I have to work at MNDOT to do it,” I replied.
“Well, I don’t have the only job that I ever wanted,” Thad pressed his lips together until they turned pale.
“What is the job that you’ve always wanted?” I asked.
“Really? Are you serious? Don’t you know me at all, Angie? You really don’t know the job that I’ve always wanted?” Thad demanded.
“No,” I could feel my eyes dart.
“Doing Lady Gaga’s hair and makeup,” Thad stated.
“What do you know about hair and makeup?” I wondered.
“Not a damn thing,” Thad said.
“Seems like a literal dream job then,” I noted.
“Seriously, Angie, how do you not know that I want to be a nationally known standup comedian? I want comedy to be my job,” Thad shook his head.
“Oh yeah, duh,” I hit my forehead with my palm.
“You deserved that,” Thad observed. “Every day before I go into MNDOT I go through like the five stages of grieving that one goes through after the death of a loved one. Please God, just make me a comedian and I swear to You that I’ll tithe to the Catholic church or something. Why do I have to paint over graffiti for a living, God, you bastard? You know I’m funnier than half the comics out there. Then there’s acceptance, and I drive to work. Except that I don’t really totally accept it, and I spend my days feeling about twenty percent entitled to a career in comedy. Then I go home, and the whole process starts all over again. Some people say that they die a little every day. I say that I feel like someone or something important to me literally dies every day. At least every work day.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that you were so unhappy. Looking around though, I think most of the people here just showed up so that they could get out of their parents’ basement for a while. I don’t think that any of the people here can help you with your dream,” I said.
“It’s five. It just started. Only losers show up to things like this on time,” Thad nodded. “But there will almost certainly be people here from the island. They will be from every cold weather state. Don’t get me wrong, I love Acme, but I’d love to play something, anything other than the Acme Comedy Club. There will probably be people here from New York, from Boston, hell even Chicago, hell even Burlington, Vermont.
I’ve got my act down. I think that it resonates with the audience and doesn’t compromise my artistic integrity. Which was a really sticky wicket.”
“I loved your show when the girls and I went to it,” I said.
“You thought it was better than some nationally known comedians, didn’t you?” Thad leaned toward me.
“Yeah, but maybe it’s just because I know you. Plus, I don’t really go very deep on comics. And I don’t really do comedy. You’d be a better judge. Are there nationally known comedians that you, being as objective toward yourself as you can, think that you are better than?” I asked.
“Yes,” Thad nodded.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“I’m not naming names,” Thad shook his head.
“Give me some names, Thad,” I insisted.
“I said that I’m not naming names,” Thad repeated.
“Give me one name, Thad,” I demanded.
“The Blue Collar Comedy guys,” Thad sighed. “I’m blue collar too. We’re not that stupid. They’re not that stupid either. They’re just cynically pretending to be morons.”
“You know Vonnegut once wrote something like we are the people who we’re pretending to be. So we have to be very careful about the people who we’re pretending to be,” I observed.
“Exactly,” Thad said. “Enough of the chit chat though. I know that you don’t have comedy connections. So I’m going to go do the old meet and greet with these other freaks because hope springs eternal.”
“I’ll be at the bar ignoring everyone until our mystery man comes in,” I turned back toward the bar.
“Fair enough,” Thad decided.
I slugged down my screwdriver. Then I ordered just an orange juice and felt weird for ordering an orange juice at a bar. Some people tried to talk to me. I spoke to them in Chinese. They left.
It was getting pretty late in the game. The networking event finished at seven. And it was half past six. The lobby was pretty full of people. I occasionally saw Thad shaking hands as I scanned the sixty or seventy people over and over again looking for the man who had left a laptop bag full of twenty thousand dollars in cash behind for a mysterious BASE jumper.
I scanned the crowd again and again. And then he was there! He was just suddenly standing off to one side talking to an older woman.
Get away from him, grandma! He’s mine.
I walked toward him. Unlike the shell museum director who couldn’t behave badly at a place like this, I had no problem ignoring and even pushing past people as I wordlessly walked by others who had their hand out for a handshake. I walked right up to this mystery man.
I turned to the old woman he was talking with, and I said, “He and I have something important to discuss, and it doesn’t involve you.”
Her faded blue eyes took on a lot color. Her face twisted into a jealous scowl. But she shuffled off.
“That was incredibly rude,” the man snapped at me.
“What I said was true,” I insisted.
“We have something important to discuss?” he squinted.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Which is?” he was clearly irked.
“Why did you leave twenty thousand dollars in a laptop bag for the BASE jumper who distracted from the jewel theft that you’re involved in?” I asked.
He cast furtive glances in all directions before he said, “You haven’t gone to the cops.”
“Not yet,” I replied. “I want us to talk.”
He sighed and said, “Not here.”
“Then where?” I asked.
“My house in Sanibel. I know it’s safe. I can give you the address. We can meet there in like fifteen minutes,” he breathed in a loud whisper.
“You know what happens if you give me the wrong address, or if this is some kind of ruse,” I whispered.
“Of course,” he smiled a wry half grin. “I knew this whole situation was going to be a problem.”
I found Thad. He hadn’t found his big break, but he had found an attractive, but short young, gay man with bleach blonde hair, a nose ring, and bright green eyes who seemed to be romantically interested in Thad for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious to me.
I pulled Thad aside and told him what had happened. I told him the address of this mystery man.
“Great,” he nodded in that way. “That’s super close to Farhad’s. I’ll drop you off there and tell you how you can walk home from there.”
10
My mystery man had a name. It was Khiem, but everyone in America (besides his family) called him Key.
I felt an immediate connection to him. Angie isn’t short for Angela. It’s short for Anjali. I starting going by Angie when some kids started to make fun of me. I imagined Key being called Khiem in that painful initial roll call every new school year. I imagined kids chuckling until they found out that he went by Key.
It’s a pretty cool nickname, and I hope that Jim and Bob were jealous.
Key and I were sitting out on a screened in lanai looking out at a small swimming pool and a backyard mostly full of orange and key lime trees. But in the middle of the yard, surrounded by all that immature citrus that hung like little green testicles by those glossy leaves on wrinkled, twisted limbs the color of elephant hide, was the most unusual tree that I had ever seen. It looked like some kind of palm with the slight curve of an erection, but it was capped with the least sexy foliage imaginable. It looked like four fronds in the shape of a bushy, straw colored moustache under bushy, straw colored eyebrows. It looked like the bleach blonde palm tree version of Groucho Marx without the glasses. And for some reason it conjured an image of a walrus and Dr. Seuss’ Lorax in my mind. Behind the trees was the jungle primeval. An unruly mélange of plants in various shades of green and yellow spilled out toward a small river that probably would have only been called a creek back home in Minnesota. There was a narrow path down to the river that had obviously been cut into that thicket. Presumably, someone trimmed those plants too so that they didn’t get high enough to obstruct the view of the river. The river itself was brown and comically slow moving. Huck Finn would get farther swimming than he would by launching a raft into that weary current. Fish, pretty big fish, jumped out of the water periodically and landed with an impressive splash.
Key looked more handsome than ever. I hadn’t really noticed the first time just how fit he was. The black golf shirt and khaki pants that he wore showed off a frame that was slim but strong. The black color went well with those intriguing black eyes that showed such a depth but also a sensitivity and a nuance that I had never seen in the eyes of a man who I hoped was still on the prowl. As I studied his face, I thought that I didn’t know if I would’ve found him attractive as a young man. He might have been just too much pure testosterone. The jaw might have been just a bit too sharp. His eyes probably would’ve been just the normal roving, leering eyes of most young men. There would’ve been nothing distinct about him. He would have been of a piece with his college classmates, indistinguishable. No, I probably wouldn’t have liked him. But now, now, he looked like the hottest professor in law school. And that look was doing a lot for me. But I had to concentrate. I had to clear Farhad if I could.
He looked up at me with those powerful, expressive eyes again, and I almost melted. He took a sip off of his iced tea. He had done his best to make me an iced coffee. (Frankly, he’d done a poor job, but nobody’s perfect.) He said that he wasn’t able to process alcohol very well. So he usually didn’t keep any around.
Key spoke, “If it’s alright with you, I’m going to try to explain how I got involved in this, what I know, and some other things. This may be a long story. I think that I will have to tell you a lot about myself for context. Because I fear that if I cut to the chase you will have more questions than if I give you the whole story. That being said, if you have questions, please ask. I hope that we can be honest with each other, and I hope that we can both understand where we are coming from and come to some kind of agreement about where we go from here.”
“There’s nothing in the world that I would like more than that,” I had to try not to coo.
“So I was born in Vietnam. I only spent the first three years of my life there. My father was a diplomat. His first foreign post was in Iran. I grew up learning not just our language, but Farsi, and English. Farsi is the language that people speak in Iran. Iran is in the Middle East, obviously, but it’s not Arabic, it’s Persian.
I spent several years with my family in Iran. Then my father got moved to Egypt. I continued my studies in Farsi and English and I also learned Arabic. That helped me greatly in my career.”
“What is your career?” I asked.
“I don’t like talking about it,” Key observed.
“Then why do you go to networking events?” I asked.
“I love to listen to people. I love to listen to what people are passionate about, what drives them, or what they hope to achieve,” Key replied.
“What do you do when they ask about you?” I wondered.
“I find that few people ask about me when I show a lot of interest in them,” Key stated.
“You’re accidentally doing your own little social science experiment,” I observed.
“In a way,” Key agreed.
“But what is your career?” I asked.
“I’m a consultant now. Before that I worked for the State Department as a translator,” Key replied.
“Why did you leave the State Department?” I asked.
“Retired,” Key declared.
“I’m glad you encouraged me to ask questions if I had them. Because this is like twenty questions. Why did you retire from the State Department?” I demanded. “You’re still working.”
“Honestly?” Key turned to look at me.
“No, I want you to lie to me,” I said.
“Well, this is going to sound undiplomatic, but the reason that I left was because I felt that my own personal worldview or politics or whatever you want to call it was just too out of step with where we were going. To the point where I no longer thought that I could serve effectively in government,” Key declared.
“Meaning?” I leaned toward him.
“I quit over the Iraq war. The Middle East was my beat. I knew that the Iraq war was a colossal mistake. I’ve spent most of my life working in that region. I knew it would be a disaster, and I knew that what W and the rest of the administration were saying about Iraq was either false or distorted. I tried to raise a ruckus, but it’s not appropriate for a translator to be infringing on policy. So I kept my head down until I got my pension. Then I headed for the doors thinking that it could never get any worse than that.
Now we have Trump, and I can tell you that the general esprit de corps among the few veterans left in the State Department is a constant nagging feeling that it just might be time to bite into the cyanide capsule if you’re more than a couple of years away from being fully vested,” Key said.
“So I bet you’ve been in the room with a lot of world leaders and heard talk of all kinds of secret negotiations, espionage, and intrigue,” I smiled.
“After spending several years in Egypt,” Key continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “My dad was sent to the United States, and we lived in New York. The Vietnam War was going on at that time, and it was tou
ch and go about whether or not my dad still had a job.
Eventually, two things became clear. One, the Vietnamese government, supported by the Americans, was not going to be able to defeat the communists. Two, as a government official of the old regime, my dad became a war criminal in Vietnam after the new government seized power, and there was no way that we could ever safely return to the old country.
So we applied for and were granted asylum in the United States. That was great, but the other side of being a loser in war meant that all of the assets and wealth that my dad had in the old country that could be seized had been seized by the new government. We found ourselves in a foreign land with no job, little money, and pretty bad housing. We jammed eight kids, a grandmother, and my parents into a little three bedroom fifth floor walkup out in Queens.
No one would hire my dad to do anything other than wait tables. Which he did at two restaurants. He quickly saved enough money for a down payment and secured a small business loan so that my mom could open up a nail salon. All of us kids worked there. I know how to do a high end mani/pedi with polish.”
“Really,” I laughed.
“At the same time, I obtained my GED. My education before I had lived in America was all with private tutors. So to get into an American university, I had to get some kind of high school equivalency, and I had to take the SAT. Which I did.
That next fall, I was a sixteen year old freshman enrolled in an East Coast university…”
“You know, you guys sound more pompous when you do the whole fake modesty,” I did my best stuffed shirt impersonation, “’East Coast university.’ You went to an Ivy League school. Just own it. Just say it. Don’t you understand how snotty you sound when you pretend like you’re the Joe Six Pack of Harvard?”
“You have to understand that these Trumpers hate what they see as the elite. I don’t want to say that I went to Harvard to some MAGA meathead and end up getting beat up over my college choice,” Key rejoined.
At first I thought that he might have a point. Then I thought that, no, even Trumpers have to know that East Coast university is code for Ivy League. No one says that they went to an East Coast university when they went to Rutgers. Even the MAGA crowd had to know that.
A Persian Gem Page 11
