by David Pierce
"Jeez, I dunno," he said. "I ain't no magician."
"He is," Sara said. "When it comes to getting out of picking up the tab." All right, she was upset about something, was that any reason to lash out at me with her petulant slanders?
"Let me ask you another question," I said calmly. "When Fats comes looking for you again, as he well might do whatever I tell him, maybe in a year or two, how will he go about it?"
Will thought for a minute, then shrugged.
"He's not going to post men at every train station, airport, and bus station in the western world, is he. How could he, where would he get the manpower from. The cops just might be able to, but even if he could get them to look, you're not going to look like you anymore, are you, you're going to have contact lenses, maybe a sportly little mustache, and your hair another color. What Fats'll do is think like this: sooner or later you'll show up back in the States, if you aren't still there, because your money won't last forever and you'll get tired of Rio or wherever you are and want to go home. So he'll hire some bright kid in a year or two and pay him a couple of grand and that kid will plug his computer into every credit card system, every air-line booking system, maybe every bank, looking for traces of one William Something Gince, which isn't that common a name, by the way."
"William V. Gince," Will said. "V for Vincent."
"Perfect," I said. "So that's why you need a new name, mon ami. And a new name starts with a new birth certificate. A name alone's no good, you can't get a driver's license, open a bank account, sign up for Blue Cross, get Social Security, fly abroad, and a million others, without ID. I happen to know this guy, a friend of a friend, who could provide you with all the ID you'd ever want or need, including a valid passport. The whole package, including credit cards and army discharge papers, would set you back something like two or three grand, depending. My way costs you five Canadian bucks."
"Settled," said Will, giving my hand a fervent shake.
"Go up to the Gazette office," I said. "They got a back issues room that's open to the public, I checked. Go through the recent obituaries. And the 'In Memoriam' announcements—the problem with those is they don't usually give you a place of birth, which is what you're going to need, along with the names of both parents, to apply for a new certificate. Find someone roughly your own age who died recently. You might even be lucky enough to find someone with the same first or middle name as yours, to make it easier for you and close friends like Fran. You write the funeral home that's mentioned in the obit. You say you think the deceased might be an old army buddy or school pal of yours and would like to send the family your condolences, but as you don't want to impose by making a mistake, would the funeral home please send you in the enclosed stamped envelope the date and place of the deceased's birth. Once you have that, you drop a line to the address I gave you earlier, enclosing the necessary pittance, and there you are, in business, with your very own, legitimate birth certificate. Canadian, but legitimate."
"I like it," Will said, leaning forward eagerly.
"I don't," the twerp, who had been listening carefully, said.
"Me neither," I said. "Why don't you?"
"So he tried to get a credit card in his new name," she said, "and they see he's already got one with a big D for dead under where it says 'withdrawn for what reason?' How does he apply for a driver's license if he doesn't know whether or not he's already got one? Likewise a passport? Likewise God knows what else?"
"Good girl!" I said warmly, patting her curls. She scowled at me. Willing Boy grinned, took out his foot-long comb, and began running it lovingly through his blond locks. In the following half-minute or so I told Will how to obtain a birth certificate without the build-in defects of the other. What you do is apply in the name of some child who unfortunately died before the age of five, say, the theory here being that although the old obituary will not mention, or may not mention, where the child was born, just when, it is surely odds on that, at such a young age, the birth occurred in the same county where the child died. Anyway, Will now had a choice—he could nip south of the border and deal with the appropriate county or state officialdom, after having perused back issues of a local rag there, or he could go fast, Canadian, cheap, and no traveling required, but end up with a limited product. I love choices, as long as it's others who have to make them.
"Either way," I said. "Don't wait too long. I'll try to put Fats off for a while but for all I know he's got someone else on your trail right now, we could even have been followed here. We weren't," I said quickly, before Will started panicking. "While these two were taking in the sights I was keeping my eyes wide open on our backs the whole time, except for when the pastrami came."
"And when you were buying ladies drinks they probably had too many of already," said Guess Who, and it wasn't me, Marlon, Will, the voice of Christmas past, or the waiter, who chanced by then to see if we wanted more of anything. Just the bill, please, I told him. And if the above quiz proved too difficult for you, try figuring out who he presented the bill to when he returned; I was afraid to look at the back of it in case he'd scribbled his phone number down for me. The damn thing was useless for expense purposes as it had both the name and the address of the donut joint on it, unlike the one from Ben's; I'd gone to considerable pains to hide from any potential prying eyes the fact that we three had made a side trip out of New York and I wasn't about to blow Will's whereabouts that stupidly. Besides, I had a drawerful of old restaurant bills at home I could have a look through for a suitable replacement.
After I'd settled up, we all hoped le métro back to Mrs. Leduc's. Will wanted us to meet her, for one thing, and I had a little business left to finish up with Will. The snowman was still there, but someone had knocked his head off. The entryway to Mrs. Leduc's was littered with boots, overshoes, rubber boots, shoes, even a snow shovel, for the path, I guessed; we all added our footware to the clutter before Will led us into the front room. On the way he shouted out back, "Fran! I'm home!"
After a minute Fran, in plaid trousers, a hand-knitted-looking heavy red sweater, and woolly slippers fashioned to look like pink bunny rabbits, came in to join us. Despite her name, her ancestry was Scottish and Irish, she informed us as she bustled around making us comfortable. Ignoring my protests that we could only stay a minute, she insisted we all take our coats off, which we did, then she whisked them off to the coatrack by the front door, then went out to the kitchen to heat up the pea soup, I guessed. The kids parked themselves in a huge old sofa, me beside them in an old, high-backed armchair with an antimacassar even. Then Will said, "Back in a minute," and he took himself off, leaving us to twiddle our thumbs and feast on the visuals, of which I will only mention six porcelain cats in descending sizes sitting in the fireplace, a draft excluder in the form of a snake stretched along the bottom of the front bay window, and a great deal of contemporary jig-saw puzzles that had been glued on to a backing and then framed, the other half paint-by-number landscapes of Canada in autumn. The kids started giggling and pointing out various high spots of decor to each other; I told them to can it.
Will came back then, beckoned me into the hall, looked nervously over his shoulder, and handed me a well-stuffed envelope. I tucked it in a back pocket without looking inside.
"For you, pal," he whispered. "Least I can do."
"Merci beaucoup," I whispered back, giving him a pat on the head as he led the way into the living room again. The kids were still giggling.
"What's so funny?" Will wanted to know.
"Aw, just something he said," the twerp lied. "What were you two doin', helping Fran bake a cake?"
"Will had a little surprise for me, more a souvenir, really," I lied. "A program from the game last night, I forgot to get one." If the envelope did turn out to contain a folded up Les Canadiens program from the game last night, or any night, I thought, Nome, Alaska, would not be far enough for Will; Mars would not be far enough.
Mrs. Leduc, flushed and a little excited to have unexpect
ed guests, I suppose, returned then, carefully pushing a well-laden serving cart in front of her. Will immediately offered to help but was waved off. She poured us all tea in fluted blue teacups with gilt handles, then insisted we all try a slice of her Cinderella cake, whatever that was. Then she handed us all dainty embroidered napkins for us to dab our lips with. The kids looked at each other again.
"It is a pleasure, Mrs. Leduc, to be offered tea that is not only served correctly, but in such a lovely old service," I said. "Out in the jungle where we come from, if someone dropped in without warning, like we did, they'd be lucky to get warm instant coffee in a used paper cup."
Fran accepted the pretty compliment gracefully, checking with one hand the back of her recently permed coiffure. If the younger generation felt suitably abashed, they hid it well. I remembered that I needed to know if Will had a passport; I asked him casually and he said he did. I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to know that might be useful in the future, so I then asked him if, from his side of it, there were any details we hadn't covered. Again, I did so in a casual fashion as Mrs. Leduc was supposed to be ignorant of her sweetheart's latest escapade, and we three had been introduced to her as acquaintances from out west who had amazingly run into each other at the game. If she had any suspicions, she kept them to herself.
Will thought we'd pretty much covered everything. In that case, I said, could Sara kindly use their phone to make us airline reservations as unfortunately business was calling and we would have to tear ourselves away from the joys of Canada in April and their hospitality almost immediately.
"Help yourself," said Will. "It's in the hall."
"I'll do it," Marlon said quickly, untangling his long legs and getting to his feet. "As soon as possible, right?"
"Right," I said. He left. I wondered vaguely why Willing Boy had volunteered as I had noticed he was deeply inclined to let girls do the chores for him, and did they ever. Whether this is a character trait of the very handsome, or the actor, or both, I am not in a position to state from personal experience.
We made small talk until he returned—about Canada, about Canadian weather, about California, about Californian weather. Mrs. Leduc said she'd met Will (who she called William, by the way) in Cleveland when she was in her final year of nursing college, it was so many years ago she shuddered to think about it. William was an ambulance driver then, she said, and the cutest little thing you ever saw in that cap he had that was too big for him. The whereabouts of a Mr. Leduc was not mentioned.
"Aw, Jeez, Fran," Will said happily.
Marlon returned just after Fran told us about winning the ham. Really! we said. Imagine that!
"It's all set," he reported. "The flight leaves at two-fifteen, plenty of time to go back to the hotel and make it to Dorval. With the time change in our favor, that means L.A. by eight-thirty this very night." He made a small bow.
Soon after, we made our reluctant good-byes, offered our profuse thanks, got invited back anytime, then began donning our snow gear again in the front hall. Will wrapped his Canadiens scarf around my neck as a farewell present. I still have it, I ran across it the other day on the top shelf of the clothes' cupboard, wrapped around a shoe box hidden from Mom in which I keep my junior G-man disguise kit, such as it was. I know she wasn't living with me anymore but so what, you don't stop hiding things from people just because they aren't around any longer. They both waved us good-bye from the porch. I detoured into the next yard, jammed the head back on the snowman, sneakily made a snowball, and let it fly at the back of Sara's toque, missing it by a whisker. By the time she had whirled around I was looking innocently up into the clouds, whistling aimlessly.
The fight began in le metro, continued in the lobby of the hotel, in the elevator and down the hall to our rooms, and was still going on twenty minutes later when we met up again downstairs, luggage all packed and ready to go. Now, as in the envelope given me by Will there resided the tidy sum of $2,500 in used U.S. hundreds, and I was not about to inform the kids of this, some may think the fight just referred to was one between me and my ever-watchful conscience. This was not the case. Some others might surmise that the spat in question was the one that occurred while checking out, between me and le desk clerk over a "trifling error" in the bill, a thousand regrets, monsieur. This was not the case, either, this was but a sideshow, a minor engagement, while the real battle raged on between George and Sara.
George started it all by putting on his most boyish and guileless look and then saying how sorry he was he couldn't take the same plane as us but he'd promised his mom he'd visit her while he was in Canada.
"Why can't Mom see both of us at the same time?" Sara responded. "She losing her vision all of a sudden?"
"Aw, come on, Sara," Marlon said. "Don't be like that. I told you she wasn't well."
"Did you?" she said. "You could have fooled me. When was that, anyway, last night when you spent so much time dancing with Tits McGurk, whatever her name was?"
"Who knows what her name was," he said. "So I danced with her once, look, I'll never see her again, will I?"
"You sure saw enough of her last night," the poor twerp said out of the side of her mouth. "All the way down to her curlies. I'm surprised your eyeballs didn't fall in. 'Oooh, I just love your hair!' " she mimicked. "I've seen better-looking hair in my soup."
And so it went. Of course I felt sorry for Sara but what was I supposed to say—"It was bound to happen sooner or later anyway, kid," or "Suffering is the food and drink of the poetic soul"? I did lower the temperature slightly by telling them they each had five hundred bucks bonus coming as soon as we got back to L.A., but otherwise I shut up and kept shut up. She simmered down enough to let him peck her cheek in the lobby before we headed out the back way to the car and he out the front supposedly to catch a train to Quebec City. But I did not have the gayest of companions during the drive back to Dorval, in fact she uttered nary one word to me the whole time although she did swear a lot under her breath when she wasn't grinding and gnashing her molars in ire. Occasionally she scribbled fiercely in a notebook or diary or whatever it was.
Even without a copilot to navigate and translate, I managed to find the airport in plenty of time. I returned the car to Avis, paid the bill in used. American hundred-dollar bills, which did not particularly please Avis, for some reason, then got us seat reservations at the check-in counter. As the guy at Canadian customs was waving us through, he asked in a friendly fashion, "Enjoy your stay, folks?"
"It was the pits," the twerp mumbled, but luckily not loud enough for anyone but me to hear. I pushed her on ahead.
"Very much so, eh, Inspector," I said, and I wasn't only thinking of capital gains. "The people were great, Montreal was great, your beer was great, the smoked pastrami meat unbelievable, and Les Habitants won the night I was there. I've made my last moose joke, I can tell you that."
He laughed. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck and hurried after the unhappy little nerd. I meant what I said about Canada, too, but I did have my fingers crossed behind my back when I made that promise about le moose.
12
"Take away the moose," I declaimed theatrically, "and what is left?"
Sara opened one eye, glared at me out of it, then shut it again. We were in an airplane somewhere over Kentucky. High over Kentucky. I went back to what I was doing and had been doing for the last two hours and when Sara found out what it was, she'd spring a gusset. I, V. (for Victor) Daniel, was writing a poem for a change, in the hope it might cheer her up a bit. I'd already tried losing to her on purpose at cards, not an easy task for this competitive big fella, and that hadn't worked, but at least she'd said something occasionally, even if it was only "Gin, dummy," or "Read 'em and weep, stoopid." The rest was pretty much silence, except for the time she suddenly blurted out, "I saw that conniving bowlegged moose-faced dog flirting with him. I may be dumb but I ain't blind yet."
For a moment my heart stopped.
"What dog was th
at, dear?" I asked cautiously.
"The dog at the dance, where else," she muttered. "And I saw his flirting right back with knobs on it."
"Oh, that dog," I said with relief. "Miss McGurk, I believe you said her name was. Hell, she was probably only giving him the name of some new herbal shampoo. Anyway, actors flirt all the time just to keep in practice, they don't mean anything by it. So do girls, come on."
"Oh yeah?" she said. "Well, this girl doesn't. And how would you know, anyway?"
"How would I know? I know more about girls than you ever will, that's how."
She gave a little smirk.
I smirked back. "All right, Miss Clever Boots," I said, "who's dated more girls, me or you? Who's danced with more girls, necked with more girls, been stood up by more girls, dreamed about more girls? Not you, I bet." She sighed deeply and turned her back pointedly on me. Poor old twerp. Poor old Marlon, too; what a fate, having women throwing themselves at you every time you go out of the house; no, thank you.
That had been well over an hour ago and since then, out of her—zilch. Hence my new line of approach to attempt to rouse her even briefly from her bed of woe. How hard could it be to write a poem, anyway? Noodlehead did it all the time. Now let's see . . . what rhymes with moose?
We were somewhere over Nevada when I handed her the finished product. Perhaps it could have used a touch more polish, maybe the meter was slightly flawed here and there, mayhap there was the occasional loose rhyme and a couple of words still to be filled in, but it was still better than her junk, and it had only taken me five-and-a-half hours to write.
"What's this shit?" she wanted to know when I handed it over.
"Naught but a little poetical pick-me-up," I said carelessly. "But please do not think I am trying to butt in to your professional territory, I'm strictly an amateur."
"You can say that again," she said. Actually, I had composed one other poem in my life, for a Valentine's card, when I was about ten. I can't remember all of it but I remember rhyming pink with stink. Here follows my second (and last) endeavor in verse form. Please note the use of capital letters and proper punctuation:
