Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  “Rumor is it was a—uh, house of ill repute—for the past couple of decades,” he said. “Sure makes sense to me. The upstairs is chopped up into about twenty little bitty rooms. The property wound up getting seized by the city, and they finally got round to auctioning it off a few months back.”

  “Please don’t tell me you managed to pick it up for a dollar.”

  He laughed. Nice teeth, I thought to myself. “Not hardly. Even in this sorry condition it went for—I don’t know. Millions, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Oh, it ain’t mine.”

  Briefly I wondered how many years the additional charge of breaking and entering would add to my sentence for pignapping, but then I recalled the words painted on the side of Hank’s truck.

  His eyes traveled up and down the staircase. “Yeah, this here house here sure is one big project.”

  Briefly I wondered whether a word nerd could ever hope to find lasting happiness with a man who uttered phrases like “this here house here.”

  “The owner’s some kind of world-famous chef,” he explained. “He’s based over in Spain, but he’s got a deal to open a restaurant on Central Park South next year.” He shrugged. “Must be nice. Me, I’m just the contractor.”

  I was actually relieved to hear him confirm it. The idea that an attractive man—of greater-than-average height who wore no wedding band, flossed regularly, and drove an enviable vehicle—would also turn out to be landed gentry… Well, next thing I knew, Dinner would sprout wings and fly around the vestibule. Or my alarm clock would jangle me into disappointed consciousness. “Just the contractor” was perfectly fine. And I was sure that, in time, I would come to find his colloquialisms charming. Especially if he fell in love with me.

  “Are you also the pig sitter?”

  “Nope, he’s all mine. Had the perfect setup for him, too—a first-floor apartment up there on East Twenty-ninth Street. It came with its own little private courtyard.” Hank inclined his head toward Dinner. “I put one of them pet flaps in the back door so he could go in and out to his heart’s content. I’ll tell you, that was one happy pig.” The loving expression on his face made me think that Hank Wheeler might well be a modern-day Saint Francis of Assisi—only better, since contractors aren’t obliged to take vows of chastity and poverty the way I believe saints are.

  “So what caused you two to relocate?”

  He grimaced. “Last weekend the landlord went and moved his daughter into the unit right over mine. She looked out the window and—well, here we are. For now, anyways. What with all the work I got to do to get this place livable, that chef won’t be leaving Spain anytime soon.”

  I glanced around the decrepit front hallway, taking in the assorted hazards that could maim or prove fatal to humans, let alone pigs. “Don’t you think this environment’s a little dangerous for him?”

  “Not all of it.” He grabbed my hand, causing all the molecules in my body to perform the macarena, then led me to a doorway covered with heavy canvas. “Come see our living quarters.” He pulled back the cloth to expose a long corridor, dimly illuminated by a single anemic lightbulb. This is it, I thought, rewriting the headline in tomorrow’s Post to read: ARTIST FED TO PIG IN GRUESOME THRILL KILL.

  Then again, I thought, eyeing the bag of apples in Hank’s other hand, Dinner seems to be a vegetarian. I allowed myself to be ushered down the corridor and into a room that would not have looked out of place on the cover of a decorating magazine showcasing the most over-the-top kitchens in the Northern Hemisphere. I was nearly blinded by the expanse of stainless steel countertops. Hand-painted porcelain tiles and futuristic appliances competed for my attention.

  He pointed to a door adjacent to the glass-fronted refrigerator. “The butler’s pantry is plenty big enough for my bed and his pallet. The two of us’ll be fine in here until I get round to finding us someplace permanent.”

  What an understatement, I thought. The entire von Trapp family would be fine in here. Hank pushed a button, and a massive bamboo panel magically disappeared into the ceiling, revealing a lush, if unkempt, backyard. “I’ll bury apples out there for him to dig up after dark, when nobody can see him.”

  “Bury them? How come?”

  “To keep him busy for longer than ten seconds. Watch this.” He reached for a felt ball that I surmised had been marketed as a dog toy, pulled an apple from the bag, and inserted it into a hollow pocket in the middle of the ball. He tossed it on the floor. Dinner expertly batted it with his snout until the pocket faced upward, then pounced on it with his front hooves. Out popped the apple.

  “Impressive,” I said. “You know, I think that was only five seconds.”

  “I reckon you’re right. Pigs are real smart.”

  And so am I, I thought to myself, for coming up with a concept as brilliant as my Twenty-Men-in-New-York theory. Hank Wheeler was living proof of its efficacy. And he smelled great. It wasn’t cologne—a man wearing scent had always been a deal breaker for me—but some sort of personal pheromone that made me want to rest my head against his shirt and inhale deeply.

  “So tell me, Dana Mayo,” he said. “You got a husband I should know about?”

  “That depends. You got a wife I should know about?”

  “Sure don’t. Just my young son here.”

  “Does that mean Dinner’s the ‘Son’ in ‘Hank Wheeler and Son’?”

  “Sure does.”

  What a relief. A pig was the kind of offspring I could handle.

  Hank left his position against the countertop and began to approach me. “I’ll tell you what, Dana. I sure am glad you happened by today. If you hadn’t stopped that guy from breaking into my truck, I don’t guess I’d have no tools right about now.”

  That was quick, I thought to myself. His colloquialisms are already starting to grow on me. “Where are you from, anyway?” I asked.

  “Las Vegas.”

  “Las Vegas?!” Elinor Ann said as I ascended my building’s front steps. “I thought you just told me he was a reckoner.” She paused. “Dana, I don’t think people reckon in Las Vegas. Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, but—I think this Hank Wheeler might be some sort of con man.”

  “That’s what I thought! But it turns out he’s from just outside Las Vegas. He grew up on a farm. His family trained animal acts for the casinos.”

  “Okay, now I’m sure he’s a con man. I’m going to log on to America’s Most Wanted as soon as I hang up.”

  Despite my brain’s best efforts to create a mental image of a young Hank Wheeler frolicking in the Nevada dust with assorted camels and elephants, I, too, had been overcome with skepticism at the time. Didn’t ex-convicts invent revisionist stories about their childhoods while paying their debt to society, to be trotted out to gullible females shortly after parole was granted?

  By now he was standing so close, I would have been able to count his eyelashes if I’d felt like it. But I had better things to do. I put those party-pooping, suspicious thoughts right out of my head and asked him if he’d ever met Siegfried and Roy.

  “Just Siegfried.”

  Obviously any form of derisive outburst on my part would have completely ruined the moment, so I bit my lower lip and met his gaze. Dinner stirred from his post near the sink and trotted over. He nosed in between us and planted his hoof on my foot, pinning me to the spot.

  Hank leaned in even closer, and I treated myself to another big whiff of pheromones. Man, this guy smelled better than God’s breakfast. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” he said.

  I suppose he could be telling me the truth about his upbringing, I thought to myself. Elephants need room to roam. “Uh… nothing… I reckon.”

  There. I’d said it. I’d reckoned. It wasn’t such a bad word once one got used to it.

  He grinned. I grinned back, which isn’t easy to do with two hundred pounds’ worth of pig crushing one’s instep, coupled with the nagging suspicion that one’s potential life partner is selling
one a bill of goods. “Then how about you and me go out on a date?”

  “I’d like that,” I replied, all the while wondering whether I would be able to walk out of there without dragging my mangled foot behind me when the time came to make my grand exit.

  “One more thing.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “May we kiss?”

  “Are you kidding me?!” Eleanor Ann sputtered. “Who does this guy think he is? Please tell me you turned him down.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I replied, tossing my keys on the kitchen counter. “Hank Wheeler is irresistible. You would have kissed him, too.” I covered the phone to muffle the outburst I knew would follow.

  “Calm down,” I said. “All we did was get that awkward first-kiss-good-night out of the way early, before tomorrow’s date.”

  “Where’s he taking you?”

  “No idea.”

  “So he hasn’t decided yet. Tell me—what does he do with that pig while he’s out on the town?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that Tuesday morning.”

  “Tuesday morning?”

  “Relax. I’m not planning on sleeping with the guy. But if you feel like sitting by the phone until midnight or so, I’ll call you the minute I get home.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Any other questions?”

  “Only one. What does Siegfried’s buddy plan on doing with that pig when the Spanish chef turns up and asks for the keys to his house?”

  “I was just thinking about that. You know that horse paddock behind your barn? It’s been years since you’ve—”

  “Oh, no you don’t! If you think you’re going to turn my property into the Kutztown pig sanctuary—well, then, you are uninvited to Thanksgiving dinner this year.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  VIVA LAS VEGAS

  Three weeks later I was staggering down the rancid corridor connecting the Times Square subway and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, balancing my duffel bag and two dozen Everything bagels and doing my very best not to inhale the urine-scented air. Small billboards lined either side of the passageway, roughly thirty percent of them advertising the investment group behind the Leading-Edge Retirement Portfolio. Images of a Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise Ray Devine greeted me at regular twenty-foot intervals as I made my way to the Bieber bus, bound for Pennsylvania and Thanksgiving dinner at Elinor Ann’s. “Don’t worry,” his expression seemed to convey. “I’m still looking out for you.”

  I greeted him back with a silent Ha! It might have taken two decades, but at last I was free!

  Just that morning I’d been awakened by another hang-up call, which had come as no surprise. All the major holidays tended to trigger Ray’s solicitousness. You can stop keeping tabs on me now, I thought to myself when I passed the next billboard. My new boyfriend is working out just great.

  And Hank Wheeler was my boyfriend—we’d been on seven dates by then.

  “So, what’s wrong with him?” Elinor Ann had asked after each one. “And don’t tell me, ‘Nothing.’ ”

  “Well… I did notice he left the top off a felt-tipped pen,” I answered the first time. “That dries out the nib. Terribly wasteful.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say—he flirted with the waitress and got into a road rage incident on the drive back to Ninth Street? I can’t help it if he’s perfect.”

  And Hank Wheeler was perfect—always calling well in advance of when I expected to hear from him, chauffeuring me anywhere my heart desired in his spectacular truck, and performing astonishing feats of virility from the fourth date on. Under the circumstances, I could live with the occasional dried-out nib.

  “I still think you should slow down, Dana. Just because I couldn’t find him on America’s Most Wanted’s Web site doesn’t mean he’s not on someone’s.”

  “He is—the New York Times’s. A few years ago the House and Home section ran a spread about a row house he’d restored. The owner referred to him as the Brownstone Whisperer!”

  Elinor Ann sighed. “I know. I saw it online. Just… be careful, would you?”

  Pushing through the throngs of Thanksgiving Day travelers, I finally reached the gate and took my place at the end of the line. I carefully counted the people ahead of me and noted with relief that there were only thirty-seven of them. This was indeed cause for thanksgiving. I would make it aboard the first Kutztown-bound bus.

  In fact, there was more to give thanks for than ease of transit and the perfect boyfriend. The previous afternoon, Vivian had banged on my ceiling with her broom until I went downstairs, where she’d presented me with a check.

  “Hannah’s got a patron,” she announced.

  I inspected the piece of paper in my hands. “Uh, I think you put too many zeros on this. I’m positive there were only two paintings left.”

  “There were. I doubled the prices—should’ve tripled them, but I’m too damn nice for my own good. Do you remember that fat chick in the Comme des Garçons getup who came in a while back?”

  “How could I forget? She was my first customer.”

  “Well, she’s on her way to becoming your only customer. She asked me to call her immediately whenever my picker got back from Maine with more Hannahs. And then she gave me this.” Vivian waved a business card long enough for me to make out the words GALERIE NAIFS.

  “She’s a dealer?” I said.

  “ ‘Representing the Finest Examples of American Intuitive and Self-Taught Artists Since 1994,’ ” she read from the card.

  It seemed I had finally arrived—at the outermost fringes of the art world.

  And the outermost fringes were exactly where Vivian expected me to stay, judging by the way her fingernails obliterated the dealer’s name.

  “We’ll stick with the fifty-fifty split,” she said. “This could be big for us!”

  Gee. Thanks a lot, I thought.

  Then again, what if Elinor Ann’s allegation turned out to be correct? If peddling outsider art of dubious provenance indeed constituted fraud, wouldn’t Vivian be the one perpetrating it?

  “Gee! Thanks a lot!” I said.

  The couple waiting in front of me had been engaged in an argument ever since I’d joined them in the bus line. It had grown so heated, I was beginning to wonder if they were staging some sort of guerrilla performance piece.

  “Drop it,” he growled.

  “Not until I find out who that call came from,” she hissed. “Let me see your phone.”

  “I mean it. Drop it.”

  “It was your ex, wasn’t it?”

  After a while all that growling and hissing started to make my temples throb. I leaned forward to peer through the grimy pane in the door leading to the boarding area, but all I could make out were clouds of exhaust.

  The gargantuan man who was first in line decided to make himself comfortable on the floor, landing with a loud grunt and setting off a chain reaction. One by one, all but the most germophobic passengers behind him followed suit. I joined them, balancing the bag from Ess-a-Bagel squarely on top of my duffel in order to ensure the greatest possible distance between the food and the dingy linoleum.

  It was at that moment Hissing Woman managed to wrest Growling Man’s cell phone from his grasp, yanking so hard that her arm ricocheted into my pile of luggage. I lunged for the food bag, but not in time to salvage the topmost bagel. It rolled an impressive fifteen feet or so, finally coming to rest in front of a pair of Converse All Stars worn by an impossibly cute guy at the tail end of the line.

  He grinned, picked up the bagel, and pantomimed taking a big bite.

  I grinned back, felt myself flush, then quickly lowered my eyes.

  That didn’t last long. I couldn’t resist sneaking in a few more glances.

  He had shaggy, dirty-blond hair that looked as if he’d cut it himself, exquisite full lips, and the razor-straight jawline common to underwear models and Olympic gymnasts. I decided he couldn’t be much older th
an his mid-twenties, because he was dressed in the scruffy, post-collegiate uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt under a T-shirt under a hoodie under a vest under a jacket.

  There was just one problem. Every time I allowed myself another furtive peek at Scruffy, he was looking back at me, still grinning and twirling the bagel on his index finger.

  This wouldn’t do. I was already taken. By the Brownstone Whisperer.

  Besides, I was old enough to be—well, maybe just his aunt, but that was bad enough. What the hell was wrong with this guy?

  More to the point, what the hell was wrong with me? Now that I’d finally hit the boyfriend jackpot, there was no justifiable reason in the world to be flirting with someone nearly two decades my junior, even if he did have beautiful gray-green eyes and impressively large feet.

  But was I really flirting? Or simply reacting, in an amused manner, to an incident involving a wayward bagel?

  Scruffy mouthed, Watch this, turned toward the young mother in line behind him, and managed to deposit the bagel into her baby’s diaper bag without either of them noticing. I giggled and gave him a thumbs-up.

  Now I was flirting.

  I needed a distraction, one that would neatly fill the twenty-or-so minutes between the present and the bus’s departure time. Reaching into my bag, I pulled out the Times and opened it to the crossword puzzle.

  But Scruffy was undeterred. He produced his own copy of the Arts section, flipped over its front page to reveal the grid, took out a pen, and mouthed, Race you.

  You’re on, I mouthed back.

  It was one of the easiest puzzles to appear on a Thursday in quite some time, once I’d figured out the theme. In honor of Thanksgiving, the solver was supposed to draw little turkeys in some of the boxes, completing phrases like “Turkey in the Straw” and “Jive Turkey.” In well under ten minutes, I laid down my pen and directed my gaze toward the back of the line.

  Scruffy’s head was still bent over the paper, but he must have felt my eyes on him. He looked up a few seconds later.