Ride, Cowboy, Ride!

by Baxter Black

  He could hear Tickle explaining to the crowd, “It’s Cooney Bedlam, Peter. I know, don’t say it. We were just having a good time.” Cooney moved his head to see the faces of those bent over him. It was as if the Angel of Bad Timing was following him around; Pica D’TroiT, his long-distance obsession, was staring down at him.

  Tickle stepped in front of Pica, blocking his view. “Cooney,” she said, “this is my ex, Peter . . . Peter D’TroiT.”

  Cooney’s mind dredged up the everlasting debate concerning creationism versus evolution.

  Surely, he thought, this isn’t just bad luck. It couldn’t be the result of random collisions between hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen atoms, haphazard coincidence, or an indiscriminate roll of the dice. Surely this is part of a master plan. How else could he continue to leave such a lasting bad impression on the girl he was trying to impress?

  In spite of a splitting headache and a suffocating heart, he laughed and sagged against the hard ground. God has a grand sense of humor.

  Cooney woke at noon with a thick tongue, a stuffy nose, and a deep, pounding headache. It was just as well, he reasoned at some primitive level. If he felt worse on the outside than the inside, it might help dull the broken heart receptors.

  Myra and Tyra had laid him out on the floor in Straight’s room when they had come in about 2:30 a.m. They might have undressed him, too. He didn’t care to know. He was in his shorts and socks. His jeans were neatly folded over the back of a chair, and his shirt hung on a hanger behind the closet door. Even his boots were standing soldierly against the wall.

  He let his mind drift back to last night, Lick Davis, Tickle . . . what was her last name? Oh, yeah, oh, no! The gauzy face of Pica floated through his brain like a black and white newsreel of Marilyn Monroe loving the camera, then the film disintegrated like it was melting.

  He had sporadic memories of beating off the paramedics, who called him ungrateful in Canadian profanity, which resembles American profanity except the queen is involved.

  The Line sisters had left him in the back seat of their car, and he must have slept all the way home because he didn’t remember riding in the car or arriving here . . . where he was, staggering around their empty house looking for a headache remedy.

  At one time alternative science advanced a money-making scheme that involved what they called biorhythms. Every human, they postulated, is subject to three recurring internal tempos that rise and fall like sound waves. They are your emotional state, your physical state, and your mental state.

  How you are feeling depends on the position of each state: strong, average, or weak. These waves can line up simultaneously or overlap. They rise and fall independently of each other.

  In Cooney’s case, he seemed to be mired in a tail-dragging emotional ditch and a mental fog with less than two days’ visibility, but his physical biorhythm—his strength, balance, timing, and reflexes—was banging on all eight cylinders!

  Which helps explain why he took second money in the saddle bronc and won the bull riding that night at the Taber, Alberta, pro rodeo, which added $1,100 to his world standings in both events.

  ACT II

  CHAPTER 17

  May 31, Tuesday, Day after Memorial Day

  Oui Oui’s Interview with Turk and Company, Denver Tech Center

  Oui Oui Reese didn’t just walk into a room; she sucked the air out of it. When she arrived in the conference room, it was as if a door had blown off a 757 at 35,000 feet, and everyone took their last breath in unison. If God had wanted to sculpt a prototype for Sophia Loren, Raquel Welch, Lynda Carter, Salma Hayek, or the Amazon version of Christina Aguilera, he would have chosen Oui Oui.

  For her interview with Turk this fine morning she was wearing a sleeveless, low-cut, tight-waisted, calf-length sheath dress with a slit up the front that ascended to the timberline, high-heeled shoes, an amber ring on her right hand, and matching dangling earrings. No necklace marred her vast expanse of tanned skin.

  She had auburn locks that fell past her shoulders, long lashes, brown eyes, and perfect teeth. A curl fell on a naked shoulder. She had the poise of an executioner, the heart of a black widow, and the confidence of the biggest crocodile in the pool.

  So how, one might ask, did she get hooked up with someone like File Blitzer? Because, dear reader, inside this flawless beauty beats a heart as deep as a bottle cap.

  Many women know the secrets of seduction and practice them, even unintentionally. Many women also know how to drive a car. But when you are a woman who has a current driver’s license and the anatomical equivalent of Corvette Sting Ray in the garage, you have a definite advantage picking up prospects.

  The concept of mutual love and respect was one Oui Oui did not understand. It never crossed her corrupt little mind. Men were to be used. They were always a means to an end and never the end in itself.

  Oui Oui did have other traits, such as envy, deviousness, jealousy, duplicity, ambition, narcissism, and a finely tuned radar for the obvious or unspoken lust of Hominus hairyleggedus.

  “This is Oui Oui Reese, that I’ve been telling you about,” introduced File as proud as punch.

  Turk’s first reaction was, “Wow.”

  “It is such an honor to meet you, sir,” Oui Oui cooed. “I have enjoyed following your career with the Denver Nuggets, and I’m so happy for your success as a fashion designer, esthetic fashions, I’m referring to.

  “I have used your Pit Stop deodorant for years when I’m skiing, hiking, playing tennis, golf, dancing, water polo, so many times. It has saved me embarrassment because I’m so athletic, I guess, I need strong protection. I even wear it when I anticipate having strenuous . . . relations where perspiration might inhibit my free spirit, if you know what I mean.”

  She looked up into his eyes. She stood at 5 foot 91⁄2 inches tall not counting the three-inch stiletto heels on her shoes. Turk was not looking at her eyes; he was watching her breathe. She noticed. It was going exactly as planned.

  “Well, let me offer you a seat, and we can have a nice visit,” he pointed toward the conference table.

  “Why not over there?” she suggested, pointing at a cozy corner with two arm chairs and a sofa. “It looks so much more comfortable.”

  “Sure, why not?” agreed Turk, ushering her to one of the arm chairs.

  She and Turk sat in the arm chairs facing each other. Nova scooted a chair over from the conference table.

  Oui Oui Reese obviously was the perfect woman to represent OVER THE TOP ATHLETIC COSMETICS. She knew how to modulate her voice, was photogenic, knew how to dress, had studied modeling and elocution, had done acting, TV broadcasting, was single, and easily could have been a chorus girl in Las Vegas, a model for Vogue, a movie star, a centerfold for Snap-on Tools, or a magazine cover girl for Low Rider!

  The interview went smoothly, if a bit formal on Turk’s part.

  As she took his hand to say goodbye and give him a kiss on the cheek, she slipped him a small card with her cell phone number. “Call anytime” she had penciled on it.

  Oui Oui left the room, taking the oxygen with her. File followed in her wake.

  “My goodness gracious, great balls of fire, Jerry Lee Lay-It-Down Lewis, is there a hurricane named after her yet?” Turk shook his head.

  “She is . . . too perfect, too well spoken, too . . .” Turk said.

  “Too plastic,” interjected Nova. “She is like a windup Barbie Doll.”

  “But how in the whole wide world can I turn her down?” Turk asked her.

  “Well, if I may say, she has too much of everything. Not even human, but a graphic arts depiction from Roger Rabbit! I could see her as our representative if we were selling beer, but . . .” Nova paused, trying to convey her reservations without offending her boss. “What I thought we were looking for was authenticity, the real thing.”
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br />   “You must admit she makes a smashing first impression,” said Turk with a sideways grin.

  “That she does,” agreed Nova. “But how long will it last?”

  Turk looked at her, puzzled.

  “She wore me out already,” said Nova. “I believe she would be pretty high-maintenance.”

  As File opened the cab door for Oui Oui in front of the building, she trilled: “Oh, Filly, Filly! What do you think? How did I do? Did I seem too nervous, too pushy? He has been around, but I could see he was impressed. I tried to think like I was business woman, just a normal business woman applying for a job as a bank vice president, or maybe as an ambassador to, you know, some foreign country like Sweden or Saskatchewan . . .”

  “Get in the cab, Baby,” said File. “You did fine, fine. Listen, I’ve got to get back in there to close the sale, so to speak. But I’ll call you as soon as I can. You just go on back to your apartment. Maybe we could cook in tonight?”

  She looked up at him from the cab with provocative pupils and purred, “If I get this job, Fee Fie Foe, I’ll be so hot you’ll be able to cook your brauts on my front range.”

  File could smell the smoke.

  File had been after Oui Oui’s holy grail since he’d discovered her hostessing in a bar at the Atlanta International Airport last spring on his way to a baseball game in Florida. She had dangled it, dragged it across his trail, left tracks through the wilderness with it, and yet it had remained just out of his reach. Her affection, that is. She was not prepared to give it lightly. Unless, of course, it was business.

  Turk, Nova, and File had a spirited discussion that lasted for three hours. They reviewed the photographs, they read Oui Oui’s bio and press kit, they looked at video of Pica riding broncs, they hashed over the pros and cons of each and compared.

  “The decision is mine to make, ladies and gentlemen,” said Turk finally. He lifted one of the photos of Pica’s enormous smile.

  “Our cowgirl gets a chance. Let’s get to work. Nova, call her. Let’s get her down here for some . . . lessons! She has six months to make her bones.”

  At 6:30 p.m. File was comforting a distraught Oui Oui in her apartment.

  “I don’t know what he could have seen in her,” Oui Oui was venting. “If she’s as bad as you say, how could she possibly have done a better job than me? Answer me that, File! How could you have let them do it? She’s an amateur, a horse bucking rider, for the sake of . . .” She threw a plate of M&Ms across the room. It hit File on the arm. He didn’t think it was deliberate, but he was thankful nonetheless that it was a paper plate.

  “Look at this!” she stood up, striking a hands-on-hips seductive pose. She strode like a model to the door, spun on her heels, and marched back. “Look at these!” She shimmied and shook. File actually placed his hand over his heart, feeling it fibrillate.

  “Can she do this?!” Oui Oui screamed, then did six consecutive cartwheels in a row circling the small living room, a 360-degree backflip followed by a leaping split. “Can she? Can she? No! And yet you let them give her the job!

  “They are talking national television, File Fink! Print ads! Live appearances!”

  “Oui, Honey . . .” File tried.

  “It’s ‘Oui Oui’! Not ‘Oui’!”

  “Oui Oui, listen . . .”

  “Why should I listen? Huh? You won’t even fight for me, for my chance at the big time.”

  “Six months is not that long,” said File.

  “Sure, it’s not that long, to you! To me it’s a lifetime, a missed opportunity, a ship in the night, a . . .”

  “Wait. Hear me out,” he said and waited for her to settle down.

  “A lot can happen in 180 days,” he explained. “I will be helping set up her schedule, doing her PR, often going with her and with Straight, her male counterpart. I will be in a position to control her activities. Her interviews . . . so, you see, if she doesn’t perform well, screws up, misses dates, makes flubs, eventually, meaning after the finals, they will be dying to dump her, and you, my sweet little kitten with a whip, will be waiting in the wings, ready to step in and save the day,” File explained.

  “You mean,” she studied him, “something could happen along the way to poor little Pica, what a stupid name, poor little Pica, a pothole, a brick wall, a booby trap . . . that would . . .” she paused, “I think I see.”

  CHAPTER 18

  May 30, Monday, 11:00 a.m.

  On the Road

  Straight was at the wheel of the big Dodge pickup. Cooney was slouching on the passenger side, dog tired but unable to doze off. Neither had said much since they had bid goodbye to the Straight family and hit the road. They were 40 kilometers north of the U.S. border, headed south on Alberta Highway 41.

  Straight’s mind was clearing family cobwebs from his short-term memory and beginning to think about his new responsibility as spokesman for OVER THE TOP ATHLETIC COSMETICS. He was deliberately submerging any thoughts about his mini-riding slump. Even thinking about it, he imagined, would make it worse.

  Cooney was bobbing up and down through his mental and emotional strata from comatose to jittery, but no matter where he stopped, Pica was there haunting the layer.

  Myra and Tyra had not known about Cooney’s obsession with Pica when they helped salvage him Saturday night and packed him home. They knew only that he had gotten mixed up with Pica’s ex-sister-in-law, Tickle, and made a mess of himself. It was only when on Sunday morning Straight had made mention to his sisters that Cooney had a crush on Pica that they realized how badly Cooney had pooped in the buckwheat.

  “I screwed the goose again Saturday night,” said Cooney above the singing of the tires on the asphalt.

  “My and Ty told me,” said Straight.

  “I can’t seem to do nothin’ right around her,” moped Cooney.

  “What I don’t quite understand is how you got so deep, so infatuated, or whatever you call it, ’cause you’ve never even had a date with her . . . or have you?” asked Straight.

  “No,” answered Cooney.

  “So how did you get so . . . I mean has she ever said anything to you or written? Have you two been exchanging e-mails or late-night phone calls?”

  “No.”

  “Well, how do you know how she feels?” asked Straight.

  “I don’t.”

  “Wouldn’t it help to know if she liked you? Seems like that would a natural thing to find out. ’Cause, if she thinks you’re a . . . if you’re not her type, you could just forget her and quit kickin’ yourself around,” offered Straight.

  “It’s not that simple,” said Cooney.

  “Looks pretty simple to me,” said Straight. “If she thinks you’re lower than the bottom of a posthole, you’re wasting your time, worrying about nothing.”

  “You don’t understand . . .” said Cooney.

  “It’s not that hard to understand,” said Straight. “Just open your eyes!”

  “You don’t know nothin’ about it!” said Cooney.

  “I know that when the beer can’s empty, suckin’ on it won’t quench your thirst.”

  “What does that mean?” demanded Cooney.

  “Just that there ain’t no peaches on that tree, least none for you,” said Straight.

  “You are sure getting poetic for someone who’s never read a book.”

  “Ya know, I don’t care what you do. If you want to make a fool of yourself over some girl who can ride broncs, have at it. But you better look in the mirror and keep your mind on business,” said Straight.

  “Yeah, well, I guess you can sure teach me a thing or two . . . Let’s see, how much did you win this weekend?” mocked Cooney.

  That arrow went right to the heart. Straight blanched. The air went out of him.

  “You shot low and got m
e,” said Straight.

  Neither spoke. Our heroes knew each other well enough to know how to make the jabs hurt.

  “Listen,” said Cooney, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’m just so tied up about her . . . Pica. I can’t describe what’s going on inside me. I think about her all the time. And you’re right: I got no reason to. She’s never given me one bit of encouragement; I wouldn’t have a clue what she thinks about me. I feel like dog meat.

  “It would be wonderful to just put her out of my mind and have a normal day, but she won’t let me. She haunts me. Have you ever been in . . . in love?” he asked.

  “I think I’m too practical,” said Straight thoughtfully. “There’s plenty of girls that I find attractive. I’ve dated a lot, in school, anyway, but none of them ever stole my heart, as you would say. So the answer is ‘No,’ I guess. I don’t even know what love is.”

  Summer loomed ahead for our two heroes. It was always a good time for full-time rodeo hands. They had their schedule planned out and were entering up as they went. But both of them had developed serious distractions. I guess rodeoin’ can be just like real life.

  CHAPTER 19

  June 27–July 4, A Particular Thursday,

  June 30

  Greeley, Colorado

  It had been a month since Nova Skosha had called Pica to inform her that OTT had picked her to be their female spokesperson. They had offered her $25,000 plus all expenses for a trial period to extend through the National Finals Rodeo in December. In other words, Pica had six months to become the image for LIP LASTER. Pica vowed to take it seriously. They had flown her back to Denver for five days of makeover, lessons, and propaganda. Her first appearance had been as a part of the OTT booth for the final three days of the Reno Rodeo. Straight was there only one day, so the rest of the time she was the main attraction.