Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  Swell, I thought. J. H. Wheeler (or Son) lives in his truck. And he’s got some pretty serious sinus issues.

  “Well, you did mention that it was an awfully nice truck,” Elinor Ann said. “I’m sure there are worse places to live in New York City. Besides, that doesn’t necessarily mean the guy is homeless. He could just be taking a nap, right?”

  “It’s possible,” I conceded. “But listen to this.” I rose from the stoop where I’d sat to make the call and went to hold the phone up by the truck’s rear doors.

  “Oh, that’s nothing. You should hear the way Cal shakes the rafters after a big dinner.”

  “I’ve spent the last dozen Thanksgivings at your house, remember? Not once has your husband’s snoring been audible in the guest room. Tell you what—hang up the phone, go in there right now, and open a window. This guy’s snoring will be audible in your guest room.”

  “Honestly, Dana. No wonder you’re single. You’re the only woman I know who could fall in and out of love with a guy before she even lays eyes on him.”

  I had to acknowledge there was some uncomfortable truth to my friend’s assertion. Maybe I was more like Vivian than I cared to admit, discarding potential partners at the speed of light. Maybe it was time to think for myself and shift my focus from a man’s flaws to his attributes.

  Just as long as he didn’t snore like J. H. Wheeler (or Son). Or have joint custody of children under the age of, say, thirty. Or, most important of all, display any interest whatsoever in the crossword. I was never going to find happiness solving in tandem, calling out from the couch, “Honey, what’s a five-letter word for neckwear?” The puzzle was my domain. And of course the word would be “ascot.”

  Okay, I thought. That covers the flaws. But what words would appear on my list of attributes?

  Funny. Kind. Devoted. Smart, but not necessarily book smart. Impressive upper-body definition would be a plus, but not a requirement.

  It wasn’t all that long a list. So why was I still looking, twenty-one years into my search?

  I pushed through the swinging doors of Fred and Ethyl’s on Avenue A, my usual destination when dining solo. Run by a couple of former anarchists, the place was just a bit larger than a typical handicapped bathroom stall and dominated by a single communal table piled high with tabloid magazines. I took a seat at its corner, grabbed the National Enquirer’s annual Stars Without Makeup issue, and waited for Ethyl to come tell me what I’d be having for lunch. There was no menu, and the size of the kitchen severely limited the number of entrées—usually to one.

  “Fred’s doing a stew with garbanzo beans and chorizo today. Or we’ve still got some of yesterday’s community garden pasta salad.… Wait a sec. I remember you. You’re the one who picked all the onions out of your lasagna last week. Thought Fred was gonna come out here with a meat cleaver when I brought that plate back to the kitchen. You’re gettin’ garbanzos, girlie.”

  I nodded my acquiescence, then checked out my tablemates. At four thirty in the afternoon, the restaurant was practically empty. To my right, a doting Latina mother fed her toddler bites of lemon meringue pie. Directly across from me, an elderly woman in a Grateful Dead T-shirt was engrossed in the November issue of the AARP Bulletin.

  Something about the back cover caught my eye. I squinted at it for a moment before I realized what I was looking at:

  Undeniable evidence that God has an exceedingly warped sense of humor.

  “Uh, do you mind if I take a quick glance at your magazine? I’ll only be a second,” I said.

  “Help yourself. But you look a little young to be in the AARP, dear,” she replied, sliding it across the table.

  It was an ad for an investment firm, divided into three separate photographs. “Healthy,” read the type over the first panel, which showed a distance shot of a sandy-haired man, becomingly gray at the temples, jogging lakeside with a chocolate Labrador retriever. “Wealthy,” read the second one, which showed a tighter shot of the man pausing on the steps of an ivy-covered brick mansion to remove his mail from the shiny brass box attached to the front door. “Wise,” it concluded, with a close-up shot of—who else?—Ray Devine, reading over a financial statement with a satisfied smile. “Why Not Ask Your Adviser About the Leading-Edge Retirement Portfolio Today?” suggested the tagline at the bottom of the page.

  This guy was going to haunt me for the rest of my days.

  All of a sudden I didn’t feel nearly as bad about puking into Renée Devine’s boots as I had that morning. Doing so at the communal table might have resulted in a permanent ban from my favorite restaurant. I wasn’t sure whether my blood pressure had plummeted or skyrocketed, but either way, it was causing little black spots to hover before my eyes. I blinked hard a couple of times before turning to the third panel for a closer inspection.

  He still looked good enough to call into question the long-standing doctors’ advice about limiting one’s intake of hard liquor and cutting out tobacco. Even in the unlikely event he’d quit both vices the day after our final encounter, there was no evidence that either substance had done any damage. In fact, if Ray’s picture were to appear on the cover of a book entitled Binge-Drink and Chain-Smoke Your Way to a Sizzling Dotage, some publisher would have a zillion-selling title on his hands. The wrinkles were a little deeper, but they were laugh lines, not frown lines. The pale blue eyes were just as clear and the teeth just as perfect and pearly as they’d been two decades earlier.

  In that instant, everything became obvious to me.

  Nobody was ever going to eclipse his legacy.

  No wonder I was still single.

  But what was it about this guy that made him so hard to forget, anyway?

  I thought back to my conversation with Lark. As much as it killed me to admit it, Ray’s behavior back then hadn’t been markedly different from Sandro’s now, with the declarations of undying love and the giddy joy he instilled in me whenever he managed to get away for a few extra hours. And now Lark was dutifully following in her mentor’s footsteps, living out the same plebeian cliché.

  I don’t know how long I was staring at the picture, but eventually I looked up and met the expectant gaze of the elderly woman across from me and found my voice—although it sounded nothing like the voice I’d left my apartment with. “Thanks,” I squeaked, pushing the magazine toward her, feeling so light-headed that the colors in her tie-dyed shirt were oozing like the goo inside a lava lamp.

  “Don’t mention it.” She lowered her glasses and peered at me. “You know, miss, you don’t look so good. Are you all right?”

  Of course I wasn’t all right. I’d spent half a lifetime glorifying the memory of nothing more than a plebeian cliché. And it had to stop now, before it went on for another two decades.

  After choking down enough garbanzo-and-chorizo stew to avert the wrath of Fred, I settled up with Ethyl and headed home. Home, I thought: the place where I was destined to live out my days, alone and unloved—until I died and was eaten by my cat—with nothing to comfort me but tattered memories of a man I hadn’t spoken to since Mike Tyson was the reigning heavyweight champion of the world.

  “Oh, get over yourself,” I muttered under my breath as I rounded the corner of Seventh Street. “If there was ever a time to put your Twenty-Men-in-New-York theory to the test, this is it.”

  I’d long maintained that in a city of eight million, it was only logical to assume there must be twenty men I was capable of falling in love with. Obviously, there was no way of knowing if I’d meet fifteen of them or three of them, but all I had to do was meet one of them.

  Which I’d done, of course, but since Ray had been married to Rhea long before my arrival in town, there’d been nothing to say over the ensuing years but, “One down, nineteen to go.”

  Maybe a drastic change of lifestyle was in order. Maybe rather than merely producing paintings as the reclusive artist Hannah, I should escape to the hinterlands and actually become her—communing with nature, finding peace in so
litude, and painting rhinestone brooches to my heart’s content, with nothing but the gentle woodland creatures to keep me company.

  Whom I would then be forced to slaughter and make into a stew with root vegetables if I didn’t want to starve to death.

  The vintage panel truck was still at the curb as I neared First Avenue. I’d intended to pass it by without a glance, but I couldn’t resist taking one last look.

  There was a man standing behind it with his back to me, fiddling with the lock on the cargo doors.

  Hmm, I thought. One down, nineteen to go.

  But how to open a dialogue?

  I recalled one of my father’s favorite aphorisms: Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I was wondering what year—”

  The man swung around to face me, and in that instant both my hope and my Twenty-Men-in-New-York theory officially breathed their last. He was a behemoth, with greasy hair slicked back from a low forehead and a snaggle tooth that poked out from below his scraggly mustache. He grinned. The snaggle tooth, as it turned out, was one of the few remaining he could call his own.

  “Can I help you, lady?”

  “Uh—that’s okay. It’s just—I was wondering what year your truck was.”

  “Huh. I dunno. It’s pretty old, though.”

  What a strange response, I thought. How could the owner of such a magnificent vehicle not know what year—

  There was a nail file in his hand, rather than a set of keys.

  “This isn’t your truck, is it?” I said, feeling all the hopelessness and frustration of the day coalesce into a ball of fury.

  “No, no—it ain’t like that at all, lady. I was just—”

  “Get the hell out of here!” I shouted, not even thinking about the nail file and how easily it could wind up embedded in one of my ventricles. “I’m calling 911 right now!”

  Snaggle-tooth took off toward Avenue A, colliding midblock with a man laden down with shopping bags and heading my way. Apples scattered in all directions as the bags were shaken from his grasp, but instead of retrieving them, the man dashed down the street in hot pursuit.

  About five minutes later, after I’d gathered up all but the most damaged fruit, the stranger returned, still panting from the chase.

  “Most of these are pretty bruised,” I said, fervently hoping I was addressing J. H. Wheeler (or Son), because then he would be indebted to me and have to—well, at least buy me a beer. Because J. H. Wheeler (or Son) was very, very attractive. And tall. And lanky, with aqua blue eyes and lots of thick, dark wavy hair. God, I prayed as I handed over the salvaged apples, please make this guy hate crossword puzzles.

  “No problem,” he said. “I owe you one. Actually”—he looked down the street toward Avenue A—“I owe you two.”

  “Guess he got away, huh?”

  “Third time in as many weeks.” He inspected the lock on the back of the truck. “Least he didn’t do any damage this time around.”

  “Don’t you think we should call the cops anyway?”

  “Uh…” His eyes darted back to the truck. “That wouldn’t be such a hot idea.”

  Swell, I thought. Whatever’s in that cargo space, it’s a pretty safe bet it isn’t tools or electrical supplies. It’s probably contraband of some kind. Bootleg designer jeans. Or bricks of heroin. Or illegal aliens, which would at least account for the snoring I’d heard earlier on my way to lunch.

  But before I could flee, he smiled at me, causing me to conclude there was probably nothing more illegal in the back of the truck than an overdue library book.

  “Forgot to introduce myself,” he said, extending his hand. “Hank Wheeler.”

  “Dana Mayo.”

  “Listen, Dana—I know I already owe you, but do you think you could do me just one more favor?”

  I didn’t want to seem overly eager, so I said yes only once.

  He looked up and down the street. “Well, the thing is… I need somebody to act as a lookout.”

  Swell, I thought. The recently defected Cuban national soccer team is in that truck, and they’re cooking up a nice big batch of methamphetamine.

  Then again, Hank Wheeler was tall enough for me to wear the highest heels I owned with no fear of towering over him, and he did an awfully nice job of filling out his T-shirt. I’d committed the number of my brother’s defense attorney friend to memory all those years ago in the Tombs. What was the use in retaining valuable information if one never got a chance to use it? “Sure.”

  He dashed up the steps of the brownstone and quickly removed the padlock. “It’ll only take a second.” He returned to the rear of the truck and flung open its double doors.

  The light was so dim back there, all I could make out were two shiny black dots. I didn’t realize they were eyes until they blinked at me. I stifled a scream, then waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  Once they had, I gasped. “Oh my god,” I said. “That’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  The dog said “Oink,” forcing me to stifle another scream.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A DAY OF RECKONING

  “That’s Dinner,” Hank said.

  Swell, I thought. I have so completely misjudged this guy.

  “I mean—that’s his name,” he clarified. I let out a silent sigh of relief. I’d never been one to turn down a rack of pork ribs, but had I been on a first-name basis with the entrée… well, I guess I’d fill up on side dishes.

  Hank glanced up and down Seventh Street, which was deserted except for a couple making out on a stoop down by Avenue A. “I’ve been waiting for the tranquilizers to wear off before I try to get him inside the house.”

  “The tranquilizers?” Maybe I hadn’t misjudged Hank Wheeler after all. Maybe he wasn’t about to eat Dinner for dinner, but what would possess a man to administer downers to a pig? Come to think of it, what nefarious activity must this guy have resorted to in order to get his hands on such a large quantity of them? Dinner looked as though he tipped the scales at around two hundred pounds.

  “It was the only way to get him into the truck,” Hank explained. “Without being seen, that is.”

  “Without being seen? I would think even the most jaded New Yorker would take note of a pig under the influence.”

  “I reckon they would have—if they’d seen him.”

  As curious as I was to find out how Hank had managed to render a pig invisible, I was momentarily struck dumb by his use of the word “reckon.” Who did this guy think he was—Brer Rabbit? The men I dated didn’t reckon, they theorized. Or they hazarded guesses.

  On the other hand, the men I’d been dating of late weren’t nearly as attractive as Hank Wheeler. I thought back to my list of attributes. I was looking for smart, but not necessarily book smart. So far, so good.

  “After he conked out, I rolled him up in an Oriental rug,” he continued. “Got a buddy to help carry him.”

  Once again alarm bells clanged inside my head. Was I about to get apprehended for aiding and abetting in a pignapping?

  “Don’t you think a leash would have been easier on your lower lumbar?”

  “A whole heck of a lot easier. Problem is, there’s a city ordinance against folks keeping pigs—or any other barnyard animals. ‘No pets with hooves,’ is how they put it.”

  I hadn’t been aware of the law, but it explained the absence of ovines in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow.

  By now Dinner had caught a whiff of the apples and was clambering to his feet. “Let’s get this boy inside,” Hank said, handing me a bruised McIntosh. “Tease him with this here apple, but don’t let him eat it—and hang on real tight. He’s sneaky. After I get the front door open, check to make sure nobody’s coming down the street. Then toss it up to me.”

  I could just picture the headline in tomorrow’s New York Post: POLICE POP PERPS IN PLOT TO PILFER PORKY. Hank ran up the brownstone’s stoop, yanked open the door, and miraculous
ly, I managed to side-arm the apple into his outstretched hand. Dinner scampered up the stoop in hot pursuit. Not bad for the most nonathletic girl at Camp Arcadia, I thought. Elinor Ann would have been astonished.

  But not nearly as astonished as she became upon hearing I’d ventured into a deserted building with a complete stranger. A complete stranger who was involved in potentially illicit activity with livestock, no less—livestock the rightful ownership of which had yet to be established.

  “What were you thinking?” she gasped when I called during the walk home to Ninth Street. “The guy could have been a serial killer!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Serial killers drive beat-up old Pontiacs, not artfully restored vintage panel trucks.”

  “Well, that’s a load off my mind. Tell me—when did you become such an expert on sociopathic behavior?”

  “Oh, stop. You sound like somebody’s mother.” Not my mother, of course, but somebody’s. My mother would have said, “Goodness gracious! A pet pig! That doesn’t sound much like a man with a real job, dear.”

  “I still think you should consider yourself lucky, Dana. For all you knew, he could have been luring you into a house of horrors.”

  “Welcome to my house of horrors,” Hank said once Dinner was happily gnawing on his apple in the foyer and the door had been pulled shut. His comment failed to alarm me because the house was indeed horrible. The walls—what was left of them—had been stripped down to their lathing, and the remains of the plaster that had once coated them now blanketed every surface. The central staircase was missing half the risers from its banister, as well as the occasional tread, and wires poked out from assorted holes in the baseboard.

  But oh, what a house it must have been, and would be again someday. The floorboards were mahogany, and the ceilings were easily eighteen feet high.

  “What happened to this place?” I asked, which seemed a more polite question than the one I wanted to pose, which was, “Do you own this entire building and, if so, how much did you pay for it?”