Simple Grifts

by Max Cossack

  He’d made the right choice: stick with his original plan and keep his eye on his main chance. Work with Abarca and become a main player in Abarca’s organization. That was his best bet to get where he wanted to go.

  The Prius was a miracle. Fifty-four miles per gallon the entire thirteen hundred miles to Philadelphia.

  45 Mazal Tov

  When Gus knocked on Soren Pafko’s open office door, he was delighted to see someone other than Pafko loading books onto a book case from a cardboard box. The posters had disappeared from the walls and the placards from the floor. The single decoration was a photo of a young woman on the desk.

  The young man looked up. “May I help you?”

  Gus asked, “I’m Gus Dropo. LG’s dad.”

  The man grinned and stepped forward to shake hands. “Sure. You look just like him. I’m Mason Offenbach.”

  They shook hands.

  Offenbach asked, “Since Professor Pafko disappeared, I’m taking over some of his classes. How can I help you?”

  Gus said, “I just dropped by to ask whether you’ve reconsidered LG’s ‘F’ grade in that Diversity and Inclusion course.”

  “Oh yeah, that.” Offenbach grinned again. “So much has been going on around here. I haven’t even turned in those grades yet.”

  “So there’s still time to change it?”

  “Haven’t thought about it. But if I recall correctly, it was Professor Pafko who insisted on the ‘F’.”

  Gus said. “But you’re in charge now.”

  Offenbach nodded again. “Very true.”

  “You’ve got his office and everything.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll take another look.”

  “That would be very nice.”

  Offenbach grinned yet again. “You caught me at the right time. I’m feeling very generous. I’m getting married.” He glanced at the photo.

  “Congratulations,” Gus said.

  “It’ll be a Jewish wedding. A Chuppah and everything. The whole megillah.”

  “Mazal tov,” Gus said.

  “Well, she’s Jewish and I’m Jewish so I guess it’s natural to have a Jewish wedding. Though it’s the opposite of anything I ever thought about two months ago.”

  Gus’s standard response to total strangers sharing private details was to nod and smile. He did that now.

  “Strange, huh?” Mason asked.

  “Life does that,” Gus said, and left.

  A few minutes after Gus, Gloria came in. She saw Offenbach sitting at his desk with his hands folded on his lap, smiling in complacency at his photo of Deirdre Katzenberger.

  “I’m Gloria Fiorenzi,” she said.

  As if waking up, he looked at her. He said, “Yes, you are. I mean, I recognize you.”

  “How do you like Soren’s old office?” she said.

  “I like it fine. A little big for me, And my own private bathroom. But I’ll take it.”

  She glanced at the photo. “I’ve seen her around campus.”

  “Deirdre,” he said. “We’re getting married.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gloria had tried to figure out an indirect approach, but she had come up blank. She decided to be direct. “Do you recall a student named LG Dropo?”

  “Sure. I taught him. In my Diversity and Inclusion class for high schoolers. His dad was just here a few minutes ago.”

  “Gus Dropo?”

  “Sure. You know him?”

  “Why was he here?”

  “He asked me about his son’s grade. I told him I’d look into it.”

  Gloria said, “With Pafko gone, I guess it is your decision.”

  “I suppose it is, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mason gave her a look of comprehension. “And ten minutes after Mr. Dropo, you’re asking the same question he asked.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You can tell him from me, I promise I’ll give it a good hard look.”

  “Thanks,” Gloria said.

  As if stepping directly from her photo, Deirdre Katzenberger came in through the open door. She stopped and smiled at Gloria and said, “Professor Fiorenzi, I presume.”

  Gloria said, “Yes. A pleasure to meet you.” They shook hands.

  Mason said, “Professor Fiorenzi was just asking me about a student of mine.”

  Deirdre said, “Really. What’s the story there?”

  Gloria said, “I’ll let him explain,” and left.

  As Gloria walked down the stairs to her own office, she was smiling to herself.

  46 Local Math Genius Prevails In Court

  Ojibwa City Savage

  Dateline: Ojibwa City, Minnesota

  By staff writer Norton Shandling

  A former professor at Ojibwa College of Minnesota has prevailed in the lawsuit filed against him by his ex-wife Shelly Bauman-Rivelle.

  Ms. Bauman-Rivelle had sued for a share of the five-million-dollar prize awarded Claude Rivelle for his proof of the Grundl hypothesis. Until this past fall, Mr. Rivelle was a Professor of Engineering at Ojibwa College of Minnesota.

  The Grundl Hypothesis is a proposition concerning prime numbers which mathematicians have sought to demonstrate for centuries. It is named after Martin Grundl, the seventeenth century Swiss mathematician who first postulated the theorem. After decades of failed effort to develop a proof, Grundl dove headfirst off the top of Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls, leaving behind a trunk full of incomprehensible scribbles and a cryptic suicide note that said only: “Despairing, I leave the proof of this obvious truth to more advanced mathematicians of future generations.”

  In court documents, Ms. Bauman asserted that Rivelle developed his mathematical proof during the time of their marriage; that the proof was an asset Rivelle hid both from her attorney and from the Divorce Court; and that she was entitled to half the proceeds from the prize, or $2,500,000.00.

  Judge Olson held that there was no triable issue of fact. In the written opinion that accompanied his grant of Summary Judgment to Rivelle, the judge contrasted Ms. Bauman’s mere uncorroborated assertion that she “knew that geek must have been up to something holed up all that time in his office” with the abundance of evidence Rivelle submitted to show that he came up with the proof after their divorce.

  Following the advice of his attorney Sam Lapidos, Professor Rivelle was meticulous in documenting his step-by-step development of the proof through diaries and ongoing notes and satellite-dated files. He corroborated this documentary evidence with witness testimony, most notably that of the respected University of Chicago mathematician Professor Charles Boogaard, who exchanged insights and encouragement with Rivelle along the way, but claimed no share of the prize for himself, saying “It was Claude who shaped the theory, I just helped rough-hew it.”

  Rivelle also provided dozens of affidavits from many Barbados eyewitnesses who witnessed him doing his work in the FlyAway Hotel lobby, including his then paramour and current bride, the celebrated Soca Reggae singer and international spokesmodel Zita Maynard.

  A few striking mysterious circumstances continue to surround the case. Last autumn, the heretofore obscure Professor of Engineering Claude Rivelle disappeared from Ojibwa City and his job teaching mathematics. Months later, he returned to Minnesota from seclusion in Barbados and announced he had proven the Grundl Hypothesis. After a rigorous examination of his proof, the Grundl Hypothesis Evaluation Committee awarded him the five-million-dollar prize.

  In Court, Rivelle claimed that a mysterious woman calling herself “Smith” financed his trip and gave him the spurious documents he used to enter Barbados under a false name. He was unable to provide any evidence the woman exists, but Judge Olson dismissed Bauman’s allegations about the woman’s existence or nonexistence as an “irrelevant non-issue to this specific dispute.”

  In a brief news conference outside the Court building, Ms. Maynard laughed and recalled that when she first saw Rivelle she thought him
“a bazoody ecky-becky goathead”—apparently Bajan slang signifying something negative—but now she realizes he’s her one and only “dearheart.”

  The happy couple mugged and kissed for paparazzi and drove off waving to the mingled crowd of math and reggae fans from the windows of the couple’s chauffeured black Mercedes limousine.

  At the same news conference, Mr. Rivelle announced his plan to immigrate to Barbados “after I straighten out a few legal technicalities having to do with me being there in the first place.” Mr. Rivelle’s attorney Sam Lapidos interrupted him and then refused to comment on the specifics.

  When contacted by this reporter, a Barbados government spokesperson foresaw no problem with Rivelle’s making Barbados his new home, even though Rivelle entered the country originally on forged documents. “He has honored our nation with his marvelous contributions to the world of mathematics, which he made on our sacred Barbados soil. He has shown his love for our country and our people. He is now one of us. Maybe a small fine.”

  47 Soren Hides Out

  When Soren reached Philadelphia, he messaged Abarca through a website Abarca had identified. Abarca messaged back, “Don’t contact me again. We’ll reach out to you. In the meantime, whatever else you do, just hang on to the painting. And don’t attract attention. When it’s safe to come in from the cold, we’ll let you know.”

  Abarca directed Soren to an old motel on the edge of downtown that took cash. It was a pit. A toxic odor saturated the air, as if someone had soaked the furniture in noxious cleaning chemicals. The originally pea green curtains had faded to a sickly spotted yellow. Black cigarette burns flecked the ratty gray carpet. The shower spat out only intermittent drizzles of lukecool water. To dry himself, Soren had to use three of the scraggly white towels the motel provided. The door looked flimsy and felt flimsier and Soren took to leaning his single wooden chair against it, even by day.

  By night, frequent blasts from gunshots punctuated the endless traffic noise. Twice Soren sat up in his bed to the sounds of fights just outside his door, awakened by the thuds of hard punches slamming against flesh and shouts of rage and pain.

  Soren waited for a month in this hole before he got a call from a woman who called herself “Smith.” She directed him to a location in Minnesota. Soren motored his Prius back across the country to find a new hideout even more wretched—an isolated winter cabin in the northernmost Minnesota woods a few miles from the Canadian border.

  His only neighbors were the deer that came by from time to time to nibble on the sparse winter foliage. His only food came from several fifty-pound bags of brown rice someone had stocked in the cabin. He boiled his bland dreary meals in melted snow water on a cast iron wood stove.

  Two weeks in, he caught a bad case of what he was thought at first was the flu. Or maybe it was too much fiber from the brown rice.

  By then his diet taken off the excess weight he had packed on in Minnesota. Indeed, he began to waste too far to the skinny side. His once muscular arms felt flabby and thin. When he inspected himself in the reflection from the bottom of his fry pan, his neck was wrinkled and wattled.

  One day he noticed a bull’s-eye rash above his right elbow. Every Minnesotan knew that meant Lyme Disease. A deer tick must have bitten him. Of course, he didn’t remember the bite; no one ever did.

  In the isolated cabin, with nothing to do except take short walks during the short days and to sleep in fits through long monotonous nights, Soren began to have trouble distinguishing imaginary symptoms from real ones. Was his exhaustion borne only of boredom? Were those real headaches? Chills? Body aches and joint pains? He didn’t know.

  He had no internet access, but he recalled some Lyme Disease symptoms. He began to check himself regularly for sensitivity to light, memory loss, mood changes—which would almost be a nice change of pace—and additional rashes. He took to twisting his neck to make sure it hadn’t stiffened on him. Twice he sat bolt up in the darkness to clutch his face and relieve his terror: no, his cheeks weren’t paralyzed.

  The goddam deer were everywhere. Soren loathed them. If he had known how, he would have shot them, but he was gunless anyway, so he entertained his hatred with fantasies of his Wall. The notion of lining Bambi and his mother up against an American Wall tickled him. Every time he pictured this he laughed. He caught himself doing this over and over and then added one more worry to his list—his sanity.

  Soren checked his phone twice a day for messages but received none.

  Soren began to wonder. Soren was a good neo-Marxist-Leninist. Aside from his own notions about himself and his own personal future as leader, he had never succumbed to any great man theory of history. He understood that impersonal forces governed events. Dialectical materialism determined not just history but the entire universe. Biological evolution happened not because of any so-called intelligent design, but through the workings of random mutation and survival of the fittest. Soren certainly did not believe in any god or devil.

  Then why in his own case did Soren begin to suspect there might be some unseen person or presence interfering with his life? It was as if some malevolent intelligence had been guiding and shaping events beyond Soren’s ability to keep up. Had some invisible hand moved people and events here and there and ultimately stuck him like a hermit in this wilderness cabin?

  Soren Pafko was not one to let metaphysical deliberations get in his way for long. One day he removed L’Amination from its box and set it on the floor and leaned against one wall. From then on, he stared at it for hours nearly every day, imagining the wonderful future it could bring him.

  But time crept by. The imagining parts of his days grew shorter and the wondering parts grew longer. Where was Abarca?

  Two months into his exile, Soren could take it no longer. He had to see. He found a tiny white plastic serrated knife in a drawer in the cabin’s kitchenette. He began ever so gingerly to scrape the top layer of the paint off the farthest edge of the uppermost right corner, where he least risked doing harm to any underlying Ilianius. No luck. Nothing different under there: no other paint at all.

  Then he scraped on the other side. Still no luck. Then at the bottom. Then in the middle.

  48 Sunday in the Yard With Gus

  Late one Sunday afternoon in the early spring, Gloria sat next to Gus on his back stoop, savoring an expensive new cigar and an ice cold Chumpster fresh from Gus’s cooler. Before she lit up, Gloria had paused a moment to wonder if the aroma might tempt Gus into lighting up his own Lucky Strike, but then dismissed that as totally his problem.

  She looked out over the jack pine woods to the big western sky above and beyond. Some kind of storm headed their way. Winter wasn’t over after all. As her friends had warned her.

  She asked Gus, “Have you seen a weather report?”

  “Don’t like them,” he said. “They’re usually wrong anyway. I prefer to take what comes as it comes. That way I’m ready for anything.”

  “Or nothing,” she said.

  Hack and Mattie wandered from their walk in the woods into Gus’s dirt yard. Mattie sniffed at Gloria’s cigar smoke and asked Gus for a Lucky and then Hack asked for one for himself, and after Gus ponied up two for his friends, he caved and lit a third for himself.

  Hack got two more beers from the cooler and opened them and handed one to Mattie. Mattie sat down onto the ground cross-legged. Hack followed her. They leaned together like two mutual supports in a Roman arch, but without any space between them.

  All four sat comfortably silent for a while, smoking and savoring their Chumpsters.

  Hack said to Gus, “Heard from Cali or Humberto?”

  Gus said, “I never heard anything from Humberto even when he was around.”

  Mattie asked, “And Cali?”

  Gus said, “Went on about his business. With his share of the money.”

  “Which reminds me,” Mattie said. “What are doing with your ten thousand?”

  “What are you doing with yours?” Gus asked back
.

  “Keeping it,” she said. “I need it. So does Hack, no matter what he claims.”

  Hack said, “There are organizations that donate money to victims of communism. I’ll check them out and find one to give my share.”

  Mattie sighed. She asked Gus, “And you?”

  Gus said, “LG can use it for tuition to some college somewhere. Looks like it won’t be the U.” He turned to Gloria. “You?”

  Gloria blew out a W-shaped smoke ring. “Wounded Warriors,” she said.

  “Isn’t that an unusual choice for a lesbian feminist?” Gus said.

  Mattie said, “You think there are no wounded lesbian feminist warriors?” She smiled at Gloria, who smiled back.

  Gus said, “Now that you mention.” He asked Gloria, “Where’s Elinor?”

  Gloria said, “She’ll be along in an hour or so.”

  Mattie asked, “Does anyone know where the painting went?”

  Gus said, “Soren Pafko has it safe in his cabin.”

  “I meant the other one. The copy.”

  “Hangs in a place of honor in my office,” Gloria said. “I had Gus install a little lamp under it to shine upwards. Like a shrine.”

  Hack asked, “What if Pafko comes back and sees it and wants it?”

  “Simple,” Gloria said. “I erased Gus’s fake Ilianius signature on the back. It’s back to the way it was when I first brought it, before anyone else here saw it the first time. I can prove it’s not the same painting.”

  Gus asked, “Won’t that mean you’ll have to lie?”

  “No,” Gloria said. “I’ll still be telling the truth. Think about it.”

  Everybody thought about it a moment.

  Gloria said, “I’ve been wanting to ask everyone here. Would it be okay if I wrote about this experience? With the names changed, of course.”

  Hack said, “You mean, a sociological study? Or maybe anthropological? You know, life among the simple rural natives?