by Dan Taylor
“Oh, sorry.”
“And you can quit with the apologies. Repetition in a tight spot like this is a man’s worst enemy. But I happen to have a solution stashed away.” Dmitry lifts up the foot of the mattress on the top bunk, pulls out a bottle of vodka. “You can turn back now. I would like to offer you a toast.”
The American turns back, says, “Oh, no. Thanks. Maybe tonight.”
Dmitry grins. “We’re in Antarctica in June, American. There is only night, for the time being.”
“Maybe just one. And a small one.”
An hour later Dmitry and Troy are singing an old Russian drinking song Dmitry taught the American. They clink glasses as they sing jovially. A gale blows outside. After the second chorus, they laugh and Troy goes to high-five Dmitry.
Dmitry says, “Oh what the hell, as long as no one finds out about this. Especially Boris Kovalenko of Dubovka. He hates Americans, and he ties anyone up by the balls who acts in any way like them. He waits outside—how do you say?—the Golden Arches in Dubovka most Friday nights, beats anyone up who comes out carrying a Happy Meal.”
They high-five.
The American asks, “Aren’t those things for kids?”
“Exactly. He’s a mean son of a bitch.”
They laugh and then sing the last line of the Russian drinking song, then laugh again.
When they’ve calmed down, pensive looks develop on their faces as they listen to the sound of the wind outside, and the soft glare of low artificial lighting creates shadows on their faces. Troy realizes how drunk he is. “Shit, I’m drunk.”
Dmitry leans in close, with a dumb grin on his face, and says, “Do not worry, American. That is what vodka is supposed to do.”
“And I need to go two real bad. I’ve been holding off since I got in the helicopter, hadn’t dared since you said we do it outside. I don’t suppose I can use the bathroom, just on this one occasion? Until I get settled in.”
“Nyet. Never.”
“Oh, okay then.”
Troy gets up, goes to the bathroom. Takes a roll of toilet paper. Goes and sits by Dmitry again. He says, “I suppose I can put it off for another thirty minutes or so.”
“Here, have another one.” Dmitry pours two more generous glasses of vodka.
“I really shouldn’t.”
Twenty-five minutes later they’re singing the old Russian drinking song again, and even Dmitry’s forgetting the lyrics this time. “We just sang that the pig shits in the refrigerator this time. Instead of the well.” He laughs.
Troy looks confused, vacant. “Is that what we were singing?”
“I like our version better. It’s poignant, do you not think, with what you’re about to do for the first time.”
“Amen.” Troy burps then looks at the observation console, where there are unlit LEDs, tens of knobs that go up to varying numbers and in varying integers, and LCD screens displaying numbers. It looked confusing before the six ounces of vodka he drank, but now it may as well be the center console of the Starship Enterprise. “What does all this do, Dmitry?”
“Hell if I know.”
“What do we do, you know, during the day?”
“We wait.”
“For what?”
Dmitry points up at the top of the console, where there is a red dome light bulb. “We wait for that to flash and make a noise. Then we phone the number we were given.”
“What noise?”
“I don’t know. I never heard it. Why do think I’m still here, drinking vodka with you?” He pauses to drink. Some of the vodka spills down his chin, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “I hope you’re good at waiting, American. Because waiting always lasts long.”
Dmitry watches the American think, the cogs in his mind all gummed up.
Then the American says, “I once waited for two hours before phoning about the delivery pizza that had obviously been forgotten.”
Dmitry whistles a diminuendo whistle. “Impressive, American, or cowardly.”
“I hadn’t eaten since lunch, either.”
“Then it seems you’re well suited to this job. As long as you can wait for that pizza for six months, all the while knowing that it probably won’t come at all.”
The American belches. “I disagree with the metaphor. I think getting away from this place is the pizza.” He points at the red dome light bulb. “That thing going off is having it delivered by a hot delivery girl.”
Dmitry puts his hand on the American’s shoulder. “No, my friend, that thing going off is the pizza coming early. We find what they’re looking for, we go home, our wallets still as fat as if we had done the whole stint.”
Now it’s the American’s turn to whistle.
Dmitry continues, “Now you see the torture of this place. A man can go crazy looking at that light all day, waiting for it to go off.”
“Like the last guy, the German?
Dmitry ignores him, changes subjects. “Who have you got waiting back in America for you?”
“Dmitry, I have a confession to make.” The American pauses, takes a sip of vodka. “I’m not American, at all, but Canadian.”
They both laugh.
Troy says, “I was meaning to tell you, but the longer it went, the more awkward it became.”
“Do not worry, American, I too have a confession to make.”
“What is it, Dmitry, you going to tell me that the German is lying out in some snowdrift somewhere, and that you put him there?” Troy laughs but Dmitry doesn’t.
“He’ll be in some snowdrift, but I didn’t put him there. No, my confession is a typical joke that one American might tell to another.”
“I get it. You’re setting me up. Go ahead, Dmitry, what’s your confession?”
Dmitry pauses for effect, baring his stained teeth in a playful grin. “I had sex with your grandma last night and she liked it.”
Dmitry slaps his knee and howls with laughter, rocking back on his seat’s solid backrest as Troy looks nonplussed.
When he notices that Troy isn’t laughing and that he has a look on his face like his doctor was a bit too thorough when he did his prostate exam, Dmitry stops. “Is this not a typical topic for a joke your people would say to each other? Having sex with each other’s mothers and whatnot?”
“Mothers, maybe. Grandmothers, probably not. And it’s mostly college kids that say that stuff.”
“Then I apologize, my friend.”
“No need.” Troy gets up, leans to one side as he loses his balance. “I think I’ll go and brave that dump, now.”
“Enjoy, my friend. I have some advice before you go out there.”
Troy, who’s made it to the observation station door and put on his polar jacket, turns back. “What’s that?”
“Wipe quickly after squeezing out each biscuit; don’t wait until you’re finished, or the shit will freeze to your ass. And go easy on the toilet roll; they only come every three weeks to deliver food and supplies.”
Troy salutes him, despite the fact that if it weren’t for Dmitry, he’d be taking his dump in the bathroom, and would have no need for the first part of the advice.
Dmitry says, “And bring the shovel by the door with you. You’ll need to cover it up after.”
Troy salutes him again, then stumbles out the door, small shovel in hand. At some point during the drinking session, the wind calmed down. It’s a crisp evening or morning or whatever it is. In the distance he can see a wandering penguin. A lone one.
He feels a profound sense of sadness, of homesickness. Thinks about his wife, not back in Canada, like he told Dmitry, but in L.A. And of his kids.
Then he shakes his head, concentrates on the mission. Takes out a small but powerful torch from his polar jacket pocket.
He wanted to stay on Dmitry’s good side, so he didn’t tell him to go fuck himself while he’d been spouting all his shit through his nicotine-stained teeth, though he’d wanted to. But he can go fuck himself if he thinks he’s goin
g to make him take a dump on the snow.
So he stumbles around, looks for the septic tank.
He finds it on the other side of the observation station. The manhole cover’s a bitch, with it frozen on, and all, but he eventually gets it off. He wipes his fingernails on his coat, pulls down his pants, then goes to squat over the septic tank.
But he catches a glimpse of something just before he turns around, the beam from the torch lighting something up.
He gets on his knees, his johnson ice-cold already, squints as he shines the torch inside it, looking for the thing he saw. Or at least thought he saw.
He gets up, wrinkling his nose from the stench, and starts turning again…and there it is!
He steps back, retches, not just from the smell, though it certainly didn’t help. But from…
He falls to his knees, spews Dmitry’s cheap Russian vodka all over the powdery snow.
After he’s gotten hold of his convulsing stomach, he whispers, “I’m in a tight spot,” as he looks at what must be the bones of the German in the septic tank.
1.
I’M JAKE HANCOCK, former private investigator to the stars. Six months ago I worked for an elite private investigation organization called the Agency. I earned the big bucks, bedded young impressionable women at the rate you Whac-A-Mole, and worked my genius to solve bizarre and exciting cases. But I’m done with that now, for good. Real good.
After being unemployed awhile I chose a new career, which I decided on after walking past a gymnasium and seeing a score of Lycra-clad twenty-somethings bouncing around an aerobics studio.
Those of you who know me are aware that I don’t play any sports, and certainly not to a professional standard, so I contacted Scottie McDougray, a world-class computer hacker and researcher, and got him to falsify a modest career as a squash player by hacking into the U.S. Squash records. Nothing major. Nothing that they’ll notice.
Using my new resume, I got a job as a squash pro at a club in Beverly Hills.
Which brings us to now. This is my second day on the job.
“Let the racket do the work, candy pants,” I say.
I regret it as soon as this morning’s squash pupil, a Ms. Stephanie Lockyear, a Bel Air heiress, drops her racket, her mouth agape.
I ask, to her and myself, “Did I just say ‘candy pants’?”
She doesn’t respond, just raises an eyebrow.
“I meant to say trendy pants. You know, as in you look good. Dressed well, I mean.”
She looks down at her Lycra pants, then back up at me. “Keep digging that hole.”
Which reminds me, I’ve lost my way with women, and I’m going through a dry patch.
We’re ten minutes into the lesson, and she’s already onto me, which I hoped would have a different context.
I say, “Keep yourself loose. You’ve got a pretty good forearm, but your backhand needs some work.”
As she picks up the ball, making sure that I don’t get a view of her ass, she mutters under her breath, “I bet you’ve got a pretty good forearm, too.”
“Thanks.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.” Still muttering.
“I heard that.”
She goes to serve, but stops herself. “Aren’t we supposed to play together? When I had lessons with Kevin, the last pro, we hit the ball around together.”
I whisper, “Lucky bastard.”
“What?”
“I said that’s not really my style in the beginning. I like to watch women…my pupils play before I get involved. To assess what needs working on. Keep on hitting the ball.”
She goes to serve, but stops herself again. “And he used to smash the ball against the wall several times to get it warmed up, so that it would bounce properly. Aren’t you going to do that?”
I had no idea this was the done thing, so I look at her like she might be the dumb one. She looks self-conscious: one-zero to Hancock.
As she serves, I say, “I might have to when I’m fifty, but give me a break.”
The ball bounces off the wall, then falls at her feet.
She turns to me, hands on her hips. I just noticed she’s wearing bright red lipstick. I have no idea what shade is considered as complying with squash court etiquette—God knows they’re pedantic about what shoes you wear—but I think Ms. Lockyear was expecting a little more than a few games of squash today. She says, “What did you say? And why are you looking at my lips with that creepy look on your face?”
I snap out of it. “I said that I warmed the ball up before you came.”
“I do hope we’re just talking about squash. What did you say your name was, again?”
“Jake Hancock.”
She pouts. “If you weren’t so damn cute, I’d have stormed out of this ‘lesson’ ten minutes ago.”
She’s right. I am cute. And not in the way that SpongeBob SquarePants is.
“Thanks. Now remember, in the beginning, it’s best to just concentrate on the angle of your racket head. Don’t try and power through the ball, because you’ll miss.”
She tosses the ball up, and even I can see that she’s swung the racket too early, making it hit the frame.
Here’s the moment I was waiting for. I go up to her, say, “Here, stand like this,” and position her in the serving box, me behind her. And we do a couple of practice swings. “See, just like this.”
“I think I got it now. Thanks.”
I go back to the opposite side of the court. She’s gone all flushed. She picks up the ball, stands as I showed her, and I’m sure she just wiggled her ass at me. When she serves she makes a good connection with it this time, having swung the racket in a slow and controlled arc. When it bounces off the wall and comes to me, I catch it.
I say, “See, that was way better. Make sure you stand like that each time you serve.”
She raises her eyebrow again, but for entirely different reasons than last time. “Thanks, I will…Jake.”
She’s a real quick learner, this Stephanie Lockyear.
We practice like this for twenty-five minutes, and I manage to avoid hitting the ball and exposing myself as the fraud I am. Then I say, “Good work today, Stephanie.”
As we walk out of the court, into the corridor which leads to the changing rooms, she asks, “Do you ever hit it…the ball, I mean?”
“Only with certain women. You looked like you didn’t need it.”
“Oh.”
“That was a compliment.”
“Thanks. Say, you don’t have a ten o’clock, do you? I mean, are you free?”
“I get it. Unfortunately I do. And socializing with clients is strictly against club rules.”
“Oh.”
“But if you were to coincidentally go to Bar Coco at eight tonight and catch me drinking by myself, there are no rules against that.”
Looks like my dry patch might be over.
But then again, I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. She says, “What did you mean by that?”
“By what?”
“That Bar Coco stuff. Did you just invite me out for a drink?”
“No. Definitely not. I just made small talk about what I’m doing tonight.”
She thinks a second. “Wait…that showing-me-how-to-swing-the-racket stuff, were you flirting?”
“That? No!”
“You were, mister.”
In the space of thirty seconds I’ve gone from being cute Jake, said with pouting lips over-made-up with blowjob-red lipstick, to “mister.”
I start stretching, touching my toes. “Great job today, Stephanie.”
She storms off, and I stand up, watching her ass as she goes, shaking my head.
So, I read that wrong.
As I prepare myself for my ten o’clock, which consists of pretending to know how to put the strings back in place on my unused racket as I sit on the bench outside the court, I think about this dry patch. I’ve gone three weeks without sex. It’s not a total disaster. But the longer this t
hing goes on, the worse it’s going to get.
I sigh and then drink some water. I hear a ball getting hit around in court two, the court my ten o’clock will be in.
I walk down the corridor to the court, look in, and can’t believe the ass that I see.
2.
“GERRY?”
“How did you know it was me?” She rises up from the position she was stretching in: facing away from me, bending at the waist, touching her toes, long legs straight. Then she turns her head slightly to the side without fully turning to face me, and looks at me with peripheral vision, which is excellent.
“I recognized your perfume.”
Gerry Smoulderwell was my immediate boss when I worked at the Agency. I reported to her, but it was Andre who I truly worked for: the enigmatic spearhead of the organization, who I’ve never seen or talked to.
Still in the same position, she says, “I’ve changed it.”
“Then it was your hair. There’s not a head of hair in L.A. that can match up to yours.”
“I had it dyed and cut not too long back.”
I take a couple steps into the court. She picks up her racket. I say, “Then it must’ve been your legs. Don’t tell me you’ve changed them since we last met.”
Now she turns, fixes me with an ice-cold stare, before a little smile develops on her face. “You never were a good liar.”
Theatrically, I hold up my hands. “You got me. I looked in the sign-in book upstairs before our session.”
Her smile develops further. “I signed in as Hayley Toothridge. Paid as a guest. You never could keep your eyes off my ass.”
I toss the squash ball up in the air, bounce it off the back of my hand, then snatch it out of the air. “How long’s it been?”
“Not long enough.”
“Long enough so that you couldn’t keep away.”
“Long enough so that we bumped into each other.”
“Which is always too long.”
She looks confused, then shakes her head dismissively. I have no idea why. She says, “How have you been, Jake?”
“Sensible. How’s the Agency?”
She looks around at the top of the court, checking to see if it appears soundproof, then answers. “It’s been running like clockwork. I hardly noticed you were gone.”
