Incredibly and ironically, the very type of art that had caused the demise of A.J. and Angela’s marriage was now the source of A.J.’s success. Yes, the walls were covered with large framed photos of naked women with painted torsos. There was one on her side with her back to the viewer – she had the Chicago River flowing down through her ass. There was a version of the one PMA had described to me, with the fruit bowl on her stomach and her breasts as the apples – looked like McIntoshes. There was another model bent over, with the elephant mascot from the Republican Party on the right side of her ass and the donkey mascot of the Democrats on the left. And then there was the one cosmic cutie who had the Crab Nebula expanding out of her vagina.
I was surrounded by below-average art attached to above-average female bodies.
So far my favorite was the one featuring two female butts side-by-side illustrating the four stages of the butterfly’s life cycle, one stage per cheek. Now there was a pupa I could get into.
The kid and I exchanged a bewildered glance that was interrupted by angry shouting from the back corner of the gallery. A small brown-haired and immaculately groomed woman who could’ve passed for Helen Gurley Brown’s younger, thinner (yes, I said thinner) sister was loudly abusing a bald and spectacled forty-year-old man in black slacks and white shirt whose posture seemed to be trying to project authority.
“This is ART. Who the HELL are YOU to say it’s PORN?”
The posture wasn’t getting the job done.
“Do you KNOW how much MONEY I have? Do you KNOW how long I can keep you in COURT?” she continued as he backed up against the wall.
I turned to the kid. “I think your dad has a new girlfriend.” He nodded as if he had already figured that out.
The bald four-eyed man hurried past us on his way out the door, while the woman glared at us as if we were working for him.
“An artist MUST be ALLOWED to SHOW HIS WORK!”
“I’m not arguing,” I offered.
She approached me and softly put a hand on my arm. I looked at her face up close and tried not to shudder. Maybe I was wrong on that younger part - her face looked like an ancient chimpanzee’s with skin so overloaded with Botox that it resembled the kind of plastic they used to make Barbie’s skin.
“I am sorry. That gentleman is the landlord of this gallery. First he made us paper over the windows, now he is saying this sort of work doesn’t belong in an environment that’s devoted to serious art.” She wound her anger back up and let it fly. “And WHO is HE to determine what is SERIOUS art???”
That’s when the artist himself, A.J. Longetti, stepped in from the back room. He was small and squirrely, with a shaved head and olive-colored skin, wearing a NO FEAR t-shirt, cargo shorts and sandals.
Oh, and lest I forget to mention, weird facial hair. The kind I had seen in my nightmare. It wasn’t a good omen that it was on his face instead of Not-Quite Connors’.
“Wanda! Wanda, Wanda, Wanda! You are a WARRIOR PRINCESS!”
A.J. hurried over to the woman’s side, bent her back over and shoved his tongue down her mouth. She giggled as though she were seventeen and just got asked to the prom. He released her, then she straightened up and smoothed back her hair, which hadn’t been disturbed in the least due to the ten pounds of hair spray holding it in place. Then she turned to us.
“A.J., these two…”
A.J. cut her off. He was at least a good enough dad to recognize his son.
“Jeremy?”
He gave the boy a giant hug.
“The prodigal son has returned home! Hallelujah!”
From what I heard, the prodigal label should have been applied to the father, but who was I to judge? Absolutely no-fucking-body.
A.J. stepped back and did a little soul handshake move that Jeremy matched reluctantly and not very well. Meanwhile, the woman’s eyes widened with delight at PMA.
“A.J., is this your boy? Oh, he’s soooo handsome!”
“Hey, look who he’s got for a daddy, am I right?” he said, then he pointed to the woman. “Jeremy, this is Wanda…” And then he said her last name. It was the same last name of the second richest person in America, which meant she was either a sister or an ex. “She finally recognized my talent, son – and put her money where her mouth was. Maybe not her mouth…”
She gave him a lascivious smile - either that or her Botox was giving out. A.J. gave me a curious look, then turned to PMA.
“This your new stepdad or something? Doesn’t seem like Angela’s type. Isn’t he past his expiration date?” He turned back to me. “No offense.”
“Some taken,” I said, shaking his hand. “I’m Max Bowman, your boy’s just helping me out on something.” Then I thought I’d impress him. “He’s training with the CIA.”
“The CIA,” he said with distaste. “You gonna turn my son into a straight-up spook?”
“Well,” I answered, suddenly not giving a shit. “Strangers things have happened. Like this gallery.”
A.J. tried to stare me down, but then broke down laughing. Wanda started laughing along with him. That left us as the only two in the room who were still relatively stone-faced. After a little more small talk, Wanda invited us all out for a late lunch at one of Chicago’s finest restaurants so we could all get to know each other a little better. But the only other thing I really wanted to know about Wanda was who she voted for in 1932, Roosevelt or Hoover.
At the expensive eatery, A.J. talked about his art until the main course had come and gone. He told us about how the human body was the greatest canvas of all – except, apparently, the ones with penises, since he never painted on a man’s body, from what I saw – and how he was selling tons of prints of these things on the internet.
Yeah, I could see that. They were probably filling up the wall space in single guys’ apartment where the Nagel prints used to hang.
He told us he had asked Wanda to help him establish the gallery, so he could raise the profile of body-painting in the art community. I replied that Goldie Hawn had already done that in 1967 on Laugh-In. Too bad Howard wasn’t there to see them react blankly to my ancient reference.
Anyway, Wanda took it from there, angrily shouting about how the area’s bourgeois Babbits couldn’t deal with a nipple staring them in the face. That prompted A.J. to make out with her for a few minutes, right there at the restaurant table, causing me to consider whether the grilled salmon I had just ate would spring back to life, swim upstream and back out of my mouth. This was the second time in one week I had been embarrassed at an extremely classy restaurant.
Also the second time in eight years I had eaten at one.
Wanda, however, was not embarrassed. No, she was glowing with sexual energy.
“I did not even know what an orgasm was until A.J. went to work on me,” she asserted with authority.
“Man, ain’t that the truth,” said A.J. “Little dusty down there when I first took a look, know what I mean?”
“We do, we do,” I replied, signaling for him to stop because I feared for PMA’s mental health, as well as my own.
It was a good move, because it reminded A.J. that we existed. He ended the make out session and actually asked what we were up to. The kid, being smart, let me take the lead on that.
“I was hired by your former father-in-law…”
The kid looked surprised that I was going there. But it was the only way I would find out anything worthwhile at this lovely family reunion.
“The General?” laughed A.J. “Now, there was a fun dude. So happy to welcome me into the family.”
“Well, I could see where you two might not hit it off. Anyway, there are some questions about the death of his son, Robert…”
A.J. laughed even harder. “The Nazi? I knew that motherfucker was too mean to die…”
“Nazi?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, Robert was Hitler’s number one fan. He had a whole record album full of Hitler speeches and storm trooper songs, you believe that shit?”
“Yeah, Robbie swore your mom to secrecy about all the Nazi shit he had stashed away, he got it from some private collector when he was in his early teens. But what did the General expect, huh? The kid was sent to military school as soon as he got out of diapers. They went ahead and made that motherfucker into a killing machine.”
A.J. mimed shooting an automatic weapon to make sure we got the idea.
“So who was this Herman he used to hang out with?” I asked.
“Herman?” A bigger roar of laughter. Whatever diners were still enjoying a late lunch threw a few annoyed looks our way, but A.J. didn’t care and neither did Wanda. And I soon found out why. I was sitting too far back from the table and happened to notice that, underneath it, she was vigorously massaging A.J.’s groin. Inside my stomach, my salmon starting making noises again.
“Herman was Robbie’s ‘close companion,” A.J. said with a raised eyebrow. “Those two were tight.”
“Are you implying something?” I asked.
“Duh,” he replied.
“You know Herman’s last name?”
“I never asked, I just wanted to stay far away from that freak of the week.”
“So he was in the military too?”
A.J. slowly shook his head.
“No?”
“Well, he was. He and Robbie signed up together. But I guess Herman was a little too psycho even for the army. He got out and ended up with one of those private army companies, you know, the ones who make the real money out of our international blood sport.”
“Like Dark Sky?”
A.J. shrugged and I could tell he didn’t know and didn’t give a fuck. I was lucky he remembered that much. Anyway, he had already moved back onto his favorite subject, himself. He still hadn’t really asked PMA anything about his life. Wanda at least had the manners to do that, so, when A.J. stopped to breathe, she jumped in.
“Jeremy, are you still in high school?”
“Graduating next month.”
“Then off to college?”
“I got into George Washington.”
“From what I read, so did Jefferson,” chuckled A.J.
“Anyway, I don’t really want to go to school. I’d rather just start working.”
That prompted Wanda to go on for about a half-hour about how education was important, like a very special episode of Full House or something. The kid’s eyes glazed over.
“How tall was Herman?” I asked out of nowhere in the middle of the lecture.
A.J. didn’t hesitate. “Tall fucker.” He turned to PMA. “You met Herman that one Christmas? What, maybe six five?”
PMA looked at me and knew what I was thinking. “I don’t know, I was seven, everybody seemed tall.”
I was suddenly glad to be having this lunch, despite Wanda’s attempts to give A.J. dessert in his pants.
We went back to the gallery, where I was more than anxious to say my goodbyes. Then Wanda, again trying to promote normal familial relationships, came out with an unexpected invitation. We could stay the night at her condo. I begged off, saying I had to do some research that night, but Jeremy was welcome to go. PMA looked at me uncertainly, but then A.J. seemed to actually put some effort into getting him to accept and that made the kid say yes. I told them I would be holed up in a hotel for the night, but I would let them know where I was staying.
Then I walked back down to Halstead to my car, checking out a couple other small galleries along the way. Nobody else was painting real-life naked women, so A.J. seemed to have the market cornered on that particular niche. Maybe Wanda was just making a sound business investment? I had a hunch the partnership would probably sour after he took an ill-advised trip into the Crab Nebula and Wanda caught him with space-colored paint on his dick. Whatever. She was getting in one last thrill before it all ended - so what if A.J. was the Max Bialystock of the art world? Was anybody really getting hurt?
Well, one person might be about to.
I hoped the kid would still be in one emotional piece come the morning. Unfortunately, he had to learn. We all did.
I drove off in search of a quiet place to stay.
Sleepover
Sunday morning.
It was one a.m. and someone was banging the hell out of my door.
After I left the kid with A.J. and Wanda, I got depressed about spending the night in another random hotel room box. So I remembered that one thousand dollars Howard had sent me and went in search of a luxury W. Ritz Four Seasons Carlton Whatever suite with an amazing view of Lake Michigan. If I was going to be dead in a few days, I wanted more than my nice new silver watch from Banana Republic to show for it.
After a little wandering around, I found just the thing – an Experience Suite they called it, and I negotiated them down to a mere $899.99 for the night. I was probably the only guy that night who would experience the Experience Suite with only shopping bags for luggage, but the clerk was more concerned about the cash than my resemblance to a homeless person.
When I unlocked the door to the room and switched on the lights, I saw this was indeed an Experience. At nine hundred and fifty square feet, the suite was bigger than my apartment and infinitely more tricked out. The sitting area had a huge curved sectional couch with a fifty-two inch LCD television, a vintage record player with a selection of vinyl, and a wet bar stocked with booze. In the bedroom, the king bed had a mirrored headboard and goose down pillows – plus, of course, another fifty-two inch TV. They even threw in a Waffle Spa Bathrobe, whatever the hell that was, so I could lounge around in style.
After I called the number Wanda had given me and told her where I was staying (she approved), I took a bath in the whirlpool Jacuzzi tub, covered myself in waffles and poured myself some Jack. I went out to the sitting area to take in the view of the lake, which was magnificent. Lake Michigan was, of course, a Great Lake, but, to me, it looked like an ocean with no end in sight from my view on the eighteenth floor.
That’s when I slowly realized there was nothing more depressing than experiencing an Experience Suite by yourself. And also, that if I ever told Jules about that I did this without her, she would rip my intestines out of my stomach and strangle me with them.
I took a brief nap while watching the Mets lose to the Nationals, one to zip. Right now, those boys couldn’t hit their way out of a wet paper bag. What the hell. I woke up to a new Saturday Night Live and the musical guest was Wiz Khalifa, so I finally got to see what exactly what a Wiz Khalifa was. Turned out it was a guy with more tattoos than skin. I somehow made it to the end of the show and got up still covered in waffles. I planned to throw two more pain pills into my mouth and sleep the big sleep, as a great man once wrote…
…when someone started banging the hell out of my door.
In the words of Dorothy Parker, what fresh hell was this?
I assumed it wasn’t Not-Quite Connors or he would have already shot his way through the door. Maybe it was just a drunk who came back to the wrong room. Whoever it was, I didn’t really care. It had been a long day – a long week, for that matter – and I was ready to call the downstairs and sic security on whoever the fuck it was, but I decided I’d better take a peek through the peephole.
Huh.
I made sure my robe was tied all the way shut and opened the door.
And that’s when Angela Davidson started slapping the fuck out of my face.
“What the hell were you thinking? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?”
She could hit. Damn, was she watching those Andre Gibraltar videos?
I backed up from the door and held up my hands on either side of my face to block her spinning hands of death. My robe was flying every which way, so I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t getting an exclusive show, but I was too busy protecting my jaw from more damage to inspect whether my modesty was intact.
I heard the room door slam shut behind us as I kept retreating from her assault until I fell back over
the sectional couch and onto the handsome charcoal-grey area rug. Luckily, my head missed the glass coffee table by a few inches. I had gotten knocked to the floor more times this week than I had in the past fifty years – in other words, ever, since I outgrew the playground.
I looked up at her towering imperious figure. Goddamn if she didn’t look hot.
“It’s a little late for a visit, isn’t it?” I offered.
“What have you been doing with my son?” she demanded.
“Mostly trying to get rid of him,” I said as I self-consciously held my robe shut and awkwardly got to my feet. “What happened? Did A.J. drop a dime on my ass?”
“He called me and I appreciated it. He was very upset that you were indoctrinating him into the CIA.”
“He’s got a strong moral compass, that one.”
“Why would you take him along on your little adventures? Who does this with an eighteen-year-old kid?”
I smoothed back my hair, walked over to the wet bar and offered her a drink. She opted for Jack, same as me, so she couldn’t have been that mad. I told her to sit down and we’d talk this out. She sat on one end of the sectional couch and, after I handed her the drink, I sat down somewhere near the middle, which represented our positions pretty perfectly.
Then she just plain started crying. Oh Jesus, take me now. I mean, seriously.
“I’ve been so worried…I had no idea where he was. Thank God that creep called me. I jumped on the first plane out of D.C.,” she said between sobs.
“Your boy doesn’t take no for an answer. You should know that.”
“Could you maybe get me a damn Kleenex?” she asked as the tears streamed down her face. I had once again forgotten my gentlemanly manners. I got the box of tissues from the bathroom and handed it to her, then stood there looking like the useless idiot I was.
“I made him text you, but that’s all I could do. Believe me, things have been a little stressful out here in the field.”
“Well, he’s coming home with me.”
Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Page 13
