The Sirena Quest

by Michael A. Kahn

  RAY

  (as he scrapes a plate)

  I talked to the graycoat tonight. About front-end and back-end.

  LOU

  (putting silver in rack)

  Yeah?

  RAY

  Said he might let us try it on Buzz’s night off.

  LOU

  You really want to?

  RAY

  Bussing is grunt work, man. Front- and back-ends are the coolest job in the dining hall. Let’s unload.

  Lou wipes the table with a wet towel and they push the cart toward the front left side of the dining hall and through swinging doors into the tiny area between the dining hall and the dishwasher area. There’s a large square opening in the wall, which is where the busboys pass the garbage and dirty plates and silverware and glasses and trays into the dishwasher area to BUZZ, the front-end man.

  It’s NOISY in there: CLANGING of dishes and silverware, GRINDING of the garbage disposal, STEAM and SPRAY and ENGINE NOISES of the industrial dishwasher.

  RAY

  (poking his head

  through the opening)

  Hey, Buzz, how’s it hanging?

  INT. DISHWASHER ROOM

  BUZZ is bare-chested beneath his white cotton jacket, sleeves pushed back above his elbows. His haircut matches his name. Buzz looks like a cross between the Marlboro Man and a Hell’s Angel—and most definitely at home on his range, which consists of a deep metal sink area with a power sprayer the size of a handgun and the front end of an industrial Hobart dishwasher.

  Lou passes stuff through the opening while Ray watches Buzz put on a master demonstration of front-end man in action—stacking plates and trays and glasses into the plastic racks with the speed and dexterity of a Ninja warrior. As soon as a rack is filled, he slams it down onto the conveyor belt that moves the line of racks through the various chambers of the stainless steel dishwasher.

  At the back end, the racks emerge, one by one, pushing through the hanging canvas flaps in a cloud of steam. Waiting there is CHARLIE, the back-end man. Like Buzz, Charlie is bare-chested under his white jacket. With his long blond hair kept out of the way by a tie-dyed headband, he looks like a ski bum. Charlie wears rubber gloves. He yanks each rack out of the machine, slams it down on his work area, and rapidly removes and stacks the contents, his hands almost a blur. When the rack is empty, he whips it onto the return conveyor belt and spins toward the back end in time to grab the next rack as it emerges.

  Angle on Ray as he peers at the action, a smile of wonder on his face.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Well?” Ray asked.

  They were waiting for a down elevator in the lobby of Abbott & Windsor.

  “No match,” Lou said. “The firm wouldn’t give me a printout, but Gabe put Marshall’s client list up on his computer screen and let me browse through it. No sultans. In fact, no clients at all from the Middle East.”

  “Shit.”

  “It was a long shot.” Lou smiled at Ray and raised his eyebrows. “So?”

  Ray frowned. “So what?”

  “Was it nice to see her?”

  “I guess.” He shrugged. “It’s like running into a friend you haven’t seen since grade school. It didn’t take us long to realize that we don’t have much in common anymore—not that we ever did.”

  “She was more than a grade school friend.”

  “Barely. We were kids back then. Young and stupid and mismatched. Her dad’s a lawyer. A big mucky-muck in Cleveland. Brother’s a lawyer, too, and so are two uncles. We met during her four minutes of rebellion. I was about the furthest thing you could find from a lawyer,” He hesitated, pensive. “Man, I was an even bigger asshole back then.”

  “How so?”

  “Doing drugs, hanging out in bars, stumbling home at three in the morning. And good old reliable Elaine was getting up early everyday and going to classes and cooking our meals and studying hard in the library and working on the law review and putting on fancy clothes for interviews with the downtown firms and getting herself primed to join the Yuppie labor force.”

  He shook his head. “Poor gal totally freaked when she found out I was selling drugs out of our apartment.”

  The doors slid open and they stepped onto the empty elevator.

  Lou pressed the button for Lobby. “She seems nice.”

  Ray nodded as the doors closed. “She is. I’m a dick, but Elaine’s a good person. I’m glad her life worked out well.”

  “What’s her new husband do?”

  Ray gave him a smile. “Lawyer.” He paused, his eyes going distant. “Her kid’s cute.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Girl.”

  Lou observed his friend for a moment. “Any regrets?”

  Ray gave him a curious look. “About what?”

  “Her. You and her.”

  Ray shook his head. “As Satchel Paige said, ‘Don’t look back.’ I don’t.”

  “That’s bullshit, Ray.”

  “Actually, it’s the best advice out there. If you like where you are today, it’s ridiculous to have regrets about yesterday.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You are where you are today because of where you were before today. Like that Beatles song—it’s a long and winding road.” He paused. “Last year I got roped into speaking to a business class at UC San Diego. Some sort of marketing seminar. During the question-and-answer part, one of the students said that he wanted to become a shopping center developer, too. Just like me. ‘What was your career path?’ he asked me.” Ray chuckled. “My career path. Jesus.”

  Lou smiled.

  “But that’s my point,” Ray said, suddenly serious. “You can’t possibly duplicate someone else’s career path—or their life, for that matter. Why am I here today? Because I spent a couple of years in a commune in Telluride? Because I bought that box of bottle rockets freshman year and about scared the living shit out of poor Bronco when I fired them out his window? Because I married Elaine? Because I wrecked that marriage? Or any of a thousand other things I did? Or didn’t do?” He shrugged. “I have no fucking idea. All I know is that if you trace my, quote, career path—or yours, or anyone who’s ever done anything in life—it’s gonna look like one of those Rube Goldberg contraptions where the ball hits the boot that spooks the dog that pulls the leash that’s connected to the bowling pin that knocks over the candle that starts the cannon ball rolling down an incline toward the bucket of red paint and so on and so on and so on. And at the end of all that convoluted lunacy, there you are, still standing, and with a big shit-eating grin. Life happens.”

  Lou nodded, thinking of his own. “Maybe.”

  The elevator slowed as it reached the lobby level.

  “Just maybe?” Ray said. “No, definitely. This is reality, man, not some board game. You don’t get a do-over, which is probably just as well, ’cause if you really could go back, if there really were do-overs in this life, the odds are you’d fuck it up even worse the second time around.”

  They stepped off the elevator.

  Ray gestured toward the newsstand. “Hey, you want a candy bar?”

  “Sure.”

  Lou was amused by the way Ray shifted from the sublime to the mundane and back again. This, too, was the Ray Gorman he remembered from freshman year.

  Ray studied the choices at the candy counter. “What was your favorite when you were a kid?”

  “These,” Lou said as he reached for a Snickers. “How ’bout you?”

  “These.” Ray reached down for a Baby Ruth.

  Out on LaSalle Street, Lou said, “I read somewhere that Baby Ruth isn’t named after the ballplayer.”

  “Really?” Ray peeled the wrapper off the candy bar and took a bite. “Is it named after anyone?”

  “Some president’s daughter. Grover Clevela
nd, I think—or maybe William Taft. One of them had a baby named Ruth while he was in the White House.”

  “Well, that’s fine with me,” Ray said. “Never been a baseball fan. Any sport that predates “American Gladiators” is highly suspect.”

  Lou stopped.

  Ray turned to stare him. “What?”

  “Whoa,” Lou said.

  They were on a sidewalk on the east side of LaSalle Street. People hurried past them on either side.

  “Whoa what?” Ray asked.

  “Babe Ruth.”

  Ray glanced down at his half-eaten candy bar and back at Lou. “So?”

  “Ray, what did they used to call Babe Ruth?”

  “Lard Ass?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “The Yankee Clipper?”

  “You’re kidding me. The Yankee Clipper was Joe DiMaggio.”

  “Well, excuse me, Mr. Vin Scully. Babe Ruth.” He frowned. “The Manassa Mauler? I don’t know. What’s the answer?”

  “You’re going to love it.”

  “So tell me already. What was his goddamned nickname?”

  “The Sultan of Swat.”

  “Good for you, young man. You get a gold star.” But then Ray stopped, eyes widening. “You really think—?”

  Lou felt his heart racing. “Got to be.”

  Ray looked down at the half-eaten Baby Ruth and frowned. “Did he ever point at anything?”

  Lou smiled. “I can’t believe you don’t know this, Ray. Follow me.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Just follow me.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They were in a Barnes & Noble underneath the El tracks on Wabash Street. Lou headed back to the sports section, skimmed the titles quickly, and found a hardbound book on the history of the Chicago Cubs. He checked the index at the back and then flipped to page eighty-three.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Nineteen-thirty-two World Series. Yankees and Cubs. Game three. In Chicago. At Wrigley Field.”

  Lou scanned the text. “Game tied four-to-four in the fifth. Ruth comes to the plate. Charlie Root is pitching for the Cubs. First pitch, called strike. Next two are balls. Then another called strike. Two and two. The Chicago crowd is going wild.”

  Lou looked up with a smile.

  “Okay,” Ray said. “What happened?”

  Lou looked around to make sure no one was near or listening. He handed the open book to Ray and pointed at the text.

  “Read that,” he said. “To yourself.”

  The text quoted the wire story filed by a reporter covering the Series for the New York World-Telegram. Lou peered over his shoulder and read along silently:

  Ruth stepped out of the batter’s box. The stadium shook and rattled with the boos and jeers of the Chicago faithful. While forty thousand spectators hurled verbal assaults at him, the Sultan of Swat merely grinned, held his bat high, and pointed it toward the scoreboard in dead center field. This dramatic gesture only further infuriated the partisan throng.

  Ruth stepped back into the batter’s box and dug in, wagging his bat over his shoulder. Root threw a change-up curve, low and away. Ruth swung, and punched a screaming liner over the head of Johnny Moore in center field. Moore could only turn and watch as the leather spheroid caromed high off the scoreboard.

  Ray looked up. “The scoreboard? The one at Wrigley Field?”

  Lou nodded.

  Ray frowned. “You think?”

  Lou said, “He’s the only sultan we have. And the only one that pointed anywhere.”

  Ray looked down at the page and then back at Lou. “You’re a fucking genius, Solomon.”

  Lou took the book from Ray and turned to the next page. “It gets better. Look at the box score. Check the date.”

  Ray studied the page and looked up.

  “Holy shit.”

  Lou nodded. “October first, 1932.”

  When they were back out on the street, Ray said, “Let’s figure this out. If that’s where she is, if Marshall really stashed her there back in 1959, that’s, what, thirty-five years ago?”

  “A long time,” Lou said.

  “No shit.”

  “You think she could still be there?”

  Ray gave him a wink. “We’re gonna find out. Wait here a sec.”

  He walked over to the corner newsstand and came back with a copy of the Sun-Times.

  “Where’re we supposed to meet Gordie?” he asked Lou.

  “In front of that Nike store on Michigan Avenue.”

  He flipped to the sports section that began on the last page of the tabloid.

  “When?” he asked.

  Lou checked his watch. “In about a half-hour.”

  An El train rumbled by overhead.

  Ray was scanning the sports page. “And we’re supposed to be at the Bronco Billy’s for dinner at six, right?”

  “Right.”

  Ray closed the paper and tossed it into the trash can. “Perfect.”

  “Perfect?”

  Ray nodded. “Cubs are in town today. Game starts at one. Let’s get Gordie and head up to the ballpark. Time for a little recon.”

  SCENE 64: FRONT-END, PART III {Draft 3}:

  CUT TO:

  INT. BARRETT COLLEGE DINING HALL - THE NEXT NIGHT

  5:15 p.m. Dinner service starts in 15 minutes. The dining hall is empty except for the two dozen students working dinner shift as servers and busboys and runners. All wear white coats. They’re eating in groups of two or three scattered throughout the dining hall.

  ANGLE ON LOU AND RAY

  seated at a table finishing their meal. The graycoat comes over. He is the supervisor of the dinner shift—an officious upperclassman wearing a white shirt and tie under his gray cotton jacket.

  GRAYCOAT

  I’ll give you boys a tryout on back-end tonight.

  RAY

  (grinning)

  Cool.

  GRAYCOAT

  Buzz says he’ll train you. If you’re any good, he’ll teach you front-end, too. He’s pre-med, you know, and he’s got organic chemistry next semester. He’s quitting front-end before Christmas.

  RAY

  Which one of us?

  GRAYCOAT

  What?

  RAY

  Which one of us is going to work back-end tonight?

  GRAYCOAT

  Which one? Three of you would be lucky to keep up with Buzz.

  The graycoat departs.

  RAY

  This’ll be great!

  INT. DISHWASHER ROOM - LATER

  CLOSE ON BUZZ as he leans back against the counter, arms crossed, facing the back-end area, slowly shaking his head.

  ANGLE ON BACK-END

  Lou and Ray have long since lost the battle. Total chaos. One rack of plates after another emerges, steam billowing up. Filled racks of clean dishes and glasses are piled everywhere. A plate slips out of Lou’s hand and falls with a CRASH. Ray drops an entire silverware rack, the contents CLANGING to the ground as the knives and forks and spoons scatter all around.

  And still the racks keep coming. Relentless. One after another.

  [Note to director: This scene should be reminiscent of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” episode from the movie Fantasia. Same music should play as Ray and Lou struggle to stem the rising tide.]

  INT. BARRETT COLLEGE DINING HALL - LATER THAT NIGHT

  The dining hall is empty. Chairs are stacked on the table tops. Most of the lights are off. There are only two people in the room: Lou and Ray. They’re slumped forward on a pair of chairs—disheveled, soaked, exhausted. They stare numbly at each other, dazed.

  RAY

  Toward the end there I was starting to think
we were getting the hang of it.

  LOU

  Toward the end there I was starting to think about hanging you.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Lou scanned Wrigley Field, shading his eyes with his hand. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the outfield grass was bright green, and real ivy covered the red brick walls.

  “Is this heaven?” he said. They were in the center field bleachers.

  Gordie cracked a peanut shell in his hand and popped the nuts into his mouth. “Definitely.”

  Ray was up getting beer and doing some scoreboard reconnoitering.

  “When I was a kid,” Gordie said, “I used to come here two, three times a week in the summer. They were all day games back then. We’d ride down on the Skokie Swift—me and a couple buds. Always sat in the bleachers. Usually over there.” He pointed toward the left-field bleachers. “That’s where most of the homers landed, and that’s where we could cheer Billy Williams.”

  “Billy Williams.” Lou smiled. “What a ballplayer.”

  “Greatest line-drive hitter of all time. Used to bounce singles off the ivy.”

  Gordie leaned back on the bleacher bench. “Good times back then. We’d get a Coke and a hot dog and a bag of peanuts, watch the game, hop back on the El, and be home in time to play some ball before dinner.”

  He smiled at the memory. “No better place in the world to be a kid than Wrigley Field in 1964.”

  “Actually,” Lou said, “Busch Stadium wasn’t too shabby that year. We beat the Yankees in the World Series. My dad took me to the seventh game. Bob Gibson was the winning pitcher. Talk about a memory.”

  Ray returned with a cardboard tray holding three large cups of Old Style. “Got the brews.”

  He took the aisle seat. Gordie was to his left, and Lou to Gordie’s left. Ray handed them each a beer.

  Lou took a sip of his beer and leaned toward Ray. “So?”

  Ray glanced around and edged closer. “There’s a ladder. Leads up to a trap door. Door’s open now. Presumably ’cause they got guys inside operating it. Hanging from the door latch is what looks like an ordinary combination lock.”

  Lou and Gordie both turned to glance back.