Convent

by Sam Clemens

  The smells of pizza wafted in from the kitchen, and it was time for fellowship. As usual, Retha and Roy emerged from the swinging doors carrying piping hot ‘za, but this time, the peculiar shape of the pies caught Laird’s eye.

  “Roy,” he said, beckoning the deputy/pizza cook, “could I see that?”

  With hesitation, Roy approached Laird and held out the pizza.

  Laird looked at Roy’s face, then back at the abomination on the tray. The markings were unmistakable: thick crust two inches high, toppings and cheese pooled in the middle. Deep dish.

  “Roy?” Laird said again. “May I ask what the fuck this is?”

  Roy fidgeted. He tried to choose the right words. “Sir, I thought maybe this week we would…you know, try something different.”

  Laird raised his brow. “You did.”

  “I’ve been experimenting, and I think if we expanded the menu—”

  “With casserole?” Laird said.

  A sizable chunk of the congregation caught wind of what was happening. Conversations died down.

  “Well, sir, I’m originally from Chicago—”

  “I don’t see how your hometown factors into this,” Laird said, folding his arms.

  Roy said nothing. From the other side of the room, Cosmo took notice.

  “Roy,” Laird said, “you know how I feel about this.”

  Roy nodded.

  Laird continued: “It’s an abomination and an insult to the industry.

  “Of course, sir.”

  Cosmo appeared beside them and chose an unassuming tone. “What’s going on, guys?”

  Laird pointed to the pizza.

  “Oh man,” Cosmo said. He put a hand on Laird’s shoulder. “Come on. I don’t like deep dish, either, but it’s just pizza.”

  “It is not pizza,” Laird said.

  Cosmo smiled. “Laird, buddy, why don’t we—”

  “IT’S NOT FUCKING PIZZA!” Laird screamed and flipped the pan, sending the hefty pizza arcing to the ground with a grandiose splat. Sauce sprayed in all directions. Many shoes were affected.

  “Shit,” Cosmo said, and turned around to face the group. “All is well, friends. Just a misunderstanding.” He looked at Retha, who stood petrified, holding a large deep dish in each hand. “Retha,” Cosmo said, “serve those.”

  Retha stared at him, unable to move. “Sir—” she began.

  “Serve them!” Cosmo said forcefully, and she moved to distribute the pizzas.

  Cosmo grabbed his smaller friend by both arms and drug him to the kitchen. Slowly, conversation resumed behind them.

  They went through the swinging doors and were alone. “Dude,” Cosmo said, squaring in front of Laird, “what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Laird shook his head. Gradually the redness was leaving his face. “I can’t believe you’re letting them serve that slop.”

  “Dude,” Cosmo repeated, and gripped his shoulders again. “Who cares? This place is a front. None of it matters.”

  “Maybe to you, Cosmo. Maybe to you.” Laird looked to his right. At least a dozen more deep dish pizzas sat on the stainless steel table, ready to be served.

  “I’ve never seen you do that,” Cosmo said. “I agree deep dish sucks, but come on.”

  “It needs to be eradicated.”

  “Laird, what is going on?” Cosmo backed off a step and looked him in the eye. “You’re really puckered up lately.”

  Laird looked at the floor. He exhaled, shook his head, and then resumed breathing normally. When he looked at Cosmo, his face had returned to normal. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess. Fuck.”

  “Do you need a break, maybe?”

  “No, no,” Laird shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just—everything keeps escalating. I don’t know.”

  “I get it.”

  “And I told them no deep dish,” Laird said, shaking his head. “They know the rules. That’s blatant insubordination.”

  Cosmo Hendricks spoke sweetly. “I’ll talk to Roy, okay? It won’t happen again. You’re right, we can’t have people disobeying your orders.”

  Laird gave a tepid nod.

  “In the meantime, why don’t you get out of here?” Cosmo said. “Head home for the night. Have a beer and chill out. I’ll stick around and smooth things over.”

  The lieutenant continued nodding. His face was different, now—regretful. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably a good idea.”

  After Laird left, the fellowship returned to normal. Cosmo emerged from the kitchen with a wide, gentle smile, and made a point to dig into a slice of deep dish. The crowd knew then that everything would be all right.

  The night passed and some community members went home, but a robust contingent remained for a second round of sodas. Cosmo saw Taylor and Jordan having fellowship with Roy, and knew that it was good. They were fully ingratiated into the group.

  On this night a small group of women gathered around the emancipator, who was seated in a corner booth. It was a talented congregation, female-wise, and over the weeks Cosmo had held playful banter with many of them. Now they stood by his side and listened to his stories and laughed at his jokes while the leader generally held court. On the periphery of the group, Sadie stood and played with her pigtails, and waited to drive Cosmo home.

  In the midst of a bout of laughter from the group of women, Cosmo leaned to his left and beckoned Brianna, the server from the Horse. She leaned in, and her raven hair obscured the leader’s face.

  “Do me a favor,” he said, “and cheer up our friend Laird tonight. He’s been having a shitty week.”

  Brianna nodded and asked what specifically, she should do, to which Cosmo slipped her a scrap piece of paper with Laird’s address.

  Thirty-Two

  Cosmo Hendricks’ lieutenant got laid, and this—at least temporarily—solved many of his problems, as it does. Suddenly Laird was not frustrated, and he felt a greatly reduced amount of pressure, both psychologically and physically.

  He’d returned to his apartment in a self-conscious huff, partially wound up by lingering, ambiguous anger and partially feeling embarrassed for his outburst. Sure, Roy had been insubordinate, but his motives were pure. Maybe it had been an overreaction. Laird walked to the fridge, opened a longneck, and decided he’d apologize. He sat on the couch and watched the Flavorwave Oven informercial and determined he needed one. Then he fell asleep.

  A polite knock at the door woke Laird. Cautiously, he got up off the couch and opened the door a sliver. And to his bewilderment, there stood the server from the Horse.

  “Hi,” Laird said, unsure of what was happening.

  “Hi,” Brianna replied. “Can I come in?”

  He agreed, of course, and forced a few lines of small talk before she led him to the bedroom and laid him down on his mismatched teal linens. The woman, it seemed, was on a mission. She took Laird on a sensual ride that culminated in the most rewarding forty-seven seconds (plus foreplay!) in his recent memory. Immediately a weight was lifted.

  When Brianna left, Laird lay back down and attempted to figure out what had just happened, but the endorphins prevented it, so he simply allowed himself to be content. His thoughts drifted to the future, and the land, and then he fell asleep.

  Thirty-Three

  Laird prepared diligently for the land auction. He balanced the books, earmarked donations and liquidated funds to be sure they were ready with the down-payment. Laird finally registered a company with the state—Cosmography Unlimited, LLC—that he would use as the official buyer, and met with a banker to pre-approve for a loan. With the success of the pizza business, they were easily approved.

  In the midst of his preparations, Laird got a call from Alejandro, their man on the city council.

  “Sir,” Alejandro said, his voice frantic. “They’ve moved up the auction.”

  Laird was leaning over financial documents, a hot cup of coffee to his side. “Pardon?” he said.

  “They do this all the time.” Alejandro br
eathed heavily into the phone. “They move the auction up so people don’t have time to adjust. Then they make a small announcement in the paper so they can say they did.”

  Laird stood up. He transferred the phone to his other ear. “Alejandro, what’s this about?”

  “It’s a trick,” he said. His words came quickly, ramrodding an explanation through the phone. “If they move it earlier, no one shows up. The auction goes off without any bids, and then they can send the property into escrow.”

  Escrow. It was a word Laird had never totally grasped, and he found that when it was used, the subject matter was usually over his head. “Escrow,” he said regretfully, with a shake of his head.

  “Exactly,” Alejandro said, and—thankfully—proceeded to elaborate. “They’re required to offer it for auction, legally. Once nobody shows up—oh, darn it, we tried!—then they can quietly backchannel a sale to a developer for a shitload of dough. Some huge corporation that would pay way more than they’d get in an auction.”

  Laird inquired as to why the huge corporation wouldn’t just bid on the land and save money.

  “Because they don’t want their name on it. With the auction, everything’s public. Even through a shell corp, people’ll find out, and there’ll be hell to pay once the news of development leaks. You know how these hippies are around here; signs, marches, people tying themselves to trees.”

  Laird nodded. “Excellent work, Alejandro. I’m surprised the County of Boulder would be okay with a developer taking the land.”

  Alejandro’s speech leveled out. He was calming. “They’re tree-humpers for sure, sir, but if you think cash isn’t the most important thing to these folks—”

  “Of course,” Laird said. “I understand. Government’s government, even in Boulder.”

  “That’s right.”

  The auction was in three days. Laird thanked Alejandro again and went back to his preparations.

  The day before the auction, Cosmo and Laird met for final preparations. The lieutenant, of course, had done the majority of the work, but it would be both of them at the auction. Cosmo wanted to be up to speed on everything.

  The earlier date was no big deal in the scheme of things; by the time Alejandro had called to alert Laird, most of the prep work was already done. The only threat would’ve been if the new date had caused them to miss the auction altogether—which, by the sound of it, was what the county had in mind—but their man on the inside had seen to it they were well informed.

  Cosmo and Laird went over the numbers. Donations since the announcement had been bonkers; they agreed they could comfortably bid up to $3.5 million. The men were ready. Cosmo asked how many other bidders they could expect.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure,” Laird said. “The way Alejandro sounded, it could be sparse. I’m cautiously optimistic.”

  Cosmo looked at him. “You’re glowing,” he said. “Did you get laid?”

  It caught Laird off guard. Involuntarily he smirked, then he caught himself and shook his head. “Coz,” he said.

  “Last time I saw you, you were flipping over deep dishes. Now you’re all chipper and focused. You got laid, didn’t you?”

  Laird looked at him. “Why yes, actually.”

  Cosmo nodded.

  “That girl at the Horse? Brianna?” Laird said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. She came over one night.”

  “Well done,” Cosmo said. “It’s done wonders, I can tell.”

  “It was weird,” Laird said, looking into the distance. “She just showed up at my place. I don’t know how she knew where I lived.”

  Cosmo said nothing.

  “But,” Laird said, placing his hands behind his head, “I’ve stopped trying to explain the good things that happen to me. I’ve learned to just accept them.”

  “Perfect,” Cosmo said. “I’m right there with you. And things will only get better once we get this land.”

  Thirty-Four

  The land auction was a drab affair in a windowless auditorium-style conference room in Boulder City Hall. There was seating for 100 people, but Cosmo and Laird were the first ones to show up.

  At the head of the room was a long table, which sat three county officials. They looked up quizzically when the men walked in.

  “Good morning,” said a woman in a blazer and glasses. Her hair was from 1997. “Can I help you?”

  “Hope so,” Laird said causally. “We’re here for the auction.”

  Cosmo and Laird sat down in the front row.

  As time ticked away toward the top of the hour, and no one else showed, it became clear what it was on the faces of the city officials: disappointment, and confusion that anyone had caught wind. They’d expected their tactics to yield a total no-show. When the clock struck 11 a.m., the doors to the room closed, and a squirrelly man at the head table called the meeting to order.

  “The first parcel for bid is Zone 1,” he said with hesitation. “We’ll start the bidding at five hundred thousand.”

  Cosmo and Laird looked at each other. It was an impossibly low number—would every plot start so low? They looked around the room to confirm they were indeed alone.

  “Pass,” Laird said, and the man at the front gently hit a gavel.

  Zone 1 was a shit parcel; mostly rocky with no existing structures. Laird had no interest in it or anything in the first ten zones. Really, the only thing he’d seriously considered was Zone 16, though he’d done some preliminary research on the surrounding areas in case they were outbid for the prized plot. Now, with the room empty of other bidders, he flipped through his notes furiously to call up the information on the other pieces of land. Perhaps there was a greater opportunity here.

  “The next zone for bid is Zone 2,” the county zombie said. “Bidding starts at five hundred thousand.”

  “Pass,” Laird said firmly, followed by another gavel tap.

  So it went through the first dozen zones. The county officials making ornery faces as that dead-eyed suit read off the opening bids, and Laird quickly consulting his notes before saying, “pass.” Cosmo got in on the action, too, voicing the duo’s desire to pass on Zones 13 and 14. The officials scowled, but Laird didn’t understand why; the vast majority of these parcels would go to escrow, so there would be plenty of inventory to sell to Lockheed Martin, or whomever. Why be angry? Perhaps it was the simple fact that someone had beaten their little misdirection play. When Laird thought about it, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they were the only ones there—how many potential bidders could have an inside source on the city council?

  “Zone 15,” said the suit. “Five hundred thousand.”

  Laird glanced at the documents. It was the zone adjacent to 16, to the west. Nearly seventy acres of good land. “Five hundred thousand,” he said, raising his right hand to bid.

  The room was still. The man stared at him, and gave a deep inhale. “Going once,” he said. “Twice.”

  Cosmo looked around, half-expecting someone to pop out from behind a potted plant and beat their bid, but the room stayed quiet.

  The county zombie hit the gavel. “Sold.” He raised his hand toward the bidders. “To…”

  “Cosmography Unlimited, LLC,” Laird said. “The clerk has our documents.”

  The man gave a loathsome nod. “Moving on,” he said. “Zone 16.”

  “Five hundred thousand,” Laird said, and raised his hand proudly.

  Tap. “Sold.”

  The process repeated for Zones 17 and 18. By the end of it, Cosmography Unlimited, LLC owned four adjoining parcels—just over 200 acres—for an even two million dollars.

  The men packed up their things to leave. “That’ll be all,” Cosmo said. “Thank you for your time.” They rushed out of the room and heard the suited man going through the motions for Zone 19. When the doors closed, Cosmo and Laird power-walked down the hall.

  “That’s two hundred acres,” Laird said quietly.

  Cosmo walked quickly. “My dear God. Did th
at just happen?”

  “We need horses,” Laird said, and reached over to tousle his friend’s long dark hair. “Lots of fucking horses.”

  The celebration lasted through the day, with the two men going directly to the Horse and ordering burgers, fries, wings, jalapeño poppers, and three pitchers of beer. They ate, drank, and laughed the laughs of incredulity. They had spent a million less than they’d planned and ended up with five times as much land.

  “What are we gonna do with all of it?” Cosmo asked with a mouth full of fried jalapeño. “I mean, what can you do?”

  “Anything you want,” Laird said. “Horses, my man.”

  Cosmo laughed. He put his arms out in joyous exclamation. “What do we need horses for?”

  “What do we need any of this for?”

  Brianna came by. She refilled their drinks and smiled at Laird and touched his shoulder. Everything was coming up aces.

  They ate and drank until the evening. Eventually, some women from the congregation joined, squeezing into the booth and ordering more drinks. Laird wasn’t sure where they came from, though oddly it seemed like a handpicked group of the hottest members of Cosmography. His drunkenness continued to build, and his leg was grazed often by various different hands. From the corner of the booth, Cosmo held court. Sadie was not present.

  Cosmo Hendricks awoke in the morning next to two women whose names he struggled to recall through the hangover. His mouth was extremely dry and there was a pounding at the door.