I ordered another carafe of sake and turned the conversation to Lon Hackney and our impending collision with him at the Emerald Bell, which stirred me with a kind of open-dammed bloodlust. Ondrea wanted to know what our plan would be when we confronted him, and I patted my backpack, on the chair between us, and told her not to worry, I had the whole thing figured out.
“What do you have in there, a gun?” she asked.
I laughed cryptically. “Lon will not forget what happens tonight,” I promised her. “It will haunt him. As long as he keeps it up with all the contest bullshit, this night will haunt him.”
“Cheers to that,” she said. She lifted her sake, and we clinked glasses and downed our drinks. I filled our cups again, and again we downed them. “Might as well finish this stuff off,” she said, with the cutest of shrugs. She poured the rest into our cups and we knocked them back, like a couple of college freshmen on spring break, shooting tequila on Bourbon Street. Ondrea giggled. “I have to pee,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay. I’ll get the check.”
We headed for the Emerald Bell, walking crosstown. I took her hand, and she pulled away to adjust her purse, then reached for my hand again. My heart felt buoyant, hyperoxygenated. It was the most exquisite of gentle June nights in Manhattan. Taxis flared past; the smell of kabobs and sugary roasted almonds wafted from street vendors’ carts; snatches of conversations fluttered through the air from other passersby in Greek, Mandarin, and Jamaican patois. There’s no city on Earth I’d rather walk through filled with drink and holding a girl’s hand. Even my bad ankle, for the first time in a year, felt brand-new.
Outside the Emerald Bell, Ondrea said, “Okay, seriously, what’s our plan gonna be?”
“We’re gonna ambush him,” I said.
“With weapons?”
“Kind of, yes. I brought one for you, too.” I pulled my backpack off, then thought twice before reaching inside, wondering if my urine bottles were too much to reveal on a first date.
Ondrea saw me hemming and hawing. “What’s going on?” she said, laughing. “What’s in the bag?”
I thought about how humiliated Ondrea told me she’d been in Golden Gate Park the day she’d set up her booth, about her anger at a guy who would take advantage of struggling writers, folks who had the least money to burn. It was what made a pee-bottle attack so appropriate—we’d be fighting fire with fire, lashing him back with the shame he’d splashed remorselessly on so many others.
I pulled out the Aquafina bottles and shook them up, green brew bubbling like a magic elixir. “This is gonna be the night I’ve been waiting for for a long-ass time,” I told her. “We’re gonna give Lon an extremely memorable shower in front of everybody. In the middle of the awards ceremony.” I passed her one of the bottles. “Are you down or what?”
“What’s in these?” she asked.
“Well. It’s pee.”
“Pee?”
“Like, urine.”
“Your pee?”
“Yeah, I filled these,” I said, with drunken pride.
“Tonight?”
“In Michigan.”
She stared at me. “Oh my God,” she said. She seemed to recognize my plan’s sinister brilliance.
“We’ll dump these on his head,” I went on, light-headed, filled with glee. “You first, me first, at the same time, it doesn’t matter. We’ll let him know what we think of his scams. We’ll let everyone know. Then—and this is just my suggestion—we should walk up to Central Park and climb in one of those horse-and-buggies, and kiss each other for like an hour and forty-five minutes. I really can’t wait to kiss you.”
Ondrea peered at me, her face frozen into the most curious expression. Over the course of the next couple of seconds, I swear I saw each tiny muscle fiber in her face—from her eyelids to her nostrils to her jaw—drop, one by one, like coins in the Plinko game on The Price Is Right, until she’d reached a look of confused, horrified revulsion. A dagger of instant regret gutted my insides, and I felt all the hopefulness and joy gush out of me, like a gooey knot of intestines.
“No,” she said. “No! I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.” She looked at the pee bottle she was clutching with trembling, fearful disgust, like an accident victim coming off morphine, discovering a hook where her hand used to be. “You don’t even know me!” she cried. “I’m seeing someone right now. I’ve been seeing someone. Did you think this was—oh my God, take this from me!” She thrust the bottle back into my hand.
“I was kidding?” I said, feeling a great sadness rush in. “This is just lemonade. But Lon, he’ll think it’s pee!”
“It looks like pee,” she said.
“That’s the genius of it!”
“It’s pee. Am I right? It’s pee!”
“Okay, it’s pee—but doesn’t he deserve pee? A lot of pee? We’re letting him off easy here!”
Two young West African bellhops, in their trussed-up, tasseled attire, heard our commotion and came trotting near. “Everything okay here?” one of them asked.
“It’s fine, thanks,” I said. “Except she’s breaking up with me.”
He looked at Ondrea. “Everything okay, miss?”
She nodded, but retained her look of distress.
“You two guests of the hotel?” asked the bellhop. His cohort headed away to unload luggage from the trunk of a town car.
I shook my head. “Just here for the Future Is Now conference.”
“Oh, cool, man. You guys authors?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of stuff? Biographies?”
“Well, this is Ondrea Wales, she writes teen novels. They’re really good—I mean, I think older readers get something out of them, too. Girl of the Century, check that one out, it’s awesome.”
Ondrea’s withering gaze softened. “You read Girl of the Century?” she peeped.
“I read all your books.”
She smiled despite herself, and looked away.
The bellhop edged between us. “Well, if you know anyone who writes biographies, if they want a crazy life story, I know someone they should write about.”
“Who’s that?”
“Me!” For the next several minutes, while Ondrea stood with her arms crossed, sighing and scowling, the guy outlined the strange, unexpected turns that his life and career path had taken, from a nickel mine east of Dakar to a falafel shop in Hamburg to the bellhop stand at the Emerald Bell Hotel near Times Square. His partner kept shouting for him, urging him to get back to work, to which he’d holler back in French, “Deux minutes! Deux minutes!” I tried to gauge Ondrea’s mood—on the one hand, she seemed to think I was a fucking psycho, on the other hand, she hadn’t left yet. Finally, me and the bellhop traded cell-phone numbers and shook hands, and he hurried off. I realized I was still holding the pee bottles, and quickly stuffed them deep into my backpack.
I reached for Ondrea’s shoulder and she shied away. “What do you think?” I said hopefully. “Come on. Time to get Lon?”
She looked at me for a couple of seconds, her clear, green eyes widening. It still felt like anything could happen. At last, she took a sharp breath and said, “I don’t think so. I’m late somewhere. I should go.” She took a step back. “It was great meeting you, though. Good luck in there.”
The air whooshed out of me. “I’ll text you how it goes.”
“Do that,” she said.
“I’m here all weekend,” I said. “I mean, if you want to hang out another night.”
“Okay. Text me.” She turned and headed off down Forty-fourth Street, without a handshake, a hug, or even a high five. Then, a half block down, she glanced back at me over her shoulder and flashed a warm, genuine smile, the kind of knowing, intimate smile that, an hour before, I’d imagined she might have had on her face after a long lovemaking session at our castle outside Bratislava.
“I’m gonna get Lon for you!” I shouted, but already she’d flagged a cab and was hopping in. The li
ght at Fifth Avenue slipped from red to green and the cab shot away and Ondrea was gone.
*
“Oh. Yeah. The Future Is Now,” said a guy at the hotel’s front desk. “They’re in the Legacy Ballroom. Fourth floor. You can take the elevator or you can take the stairs.”
I took the stairs, grand and winding, floating up them three at a time, around and around the lobby’s enormous atrium, gazing at the magnificent, six-story crystal chandelier in the center, sparkling like a frozen waterfall. The steps were layered with thick, luxurious carpet and my shoes made no sound. I felt an assassin’s sense of raw fury mingled with quiet, pulsing determination. It was eight thirty, and the Noble Pen awards ceremony had been slated to begin at eight. Outside the giant oak doors to the conference room, I slid my backpack around and rocked it front-pack style, tugging the zipper open; the tips of my Aquafina pee bottles quivered in the heavy, massive silence. I hauled on the doors and slipped in.
The Legacy Ballroom, for all its lofty name, turned out to be a drab and gloomy low-ceilinged hallway in the shape of three batting cages strung together end to end. About thirty-five men and women in their early fifties to mid-seventies, clothed in rumpled suits and faded dresses bearing Hello, My Name Is name tags, sipped wine from Dixie cups and milled aimlessly along a row of tables, where red plastic plates of carrots, celery, grape tomatoes, and cubes of cheese had been laid out, along with bowls of Chex Mix, a few boxes of Ritz crackers, and loose packets of ranch dressing. It was like a Super Bowl party for homeless academics.
“Excuse me,” said a perturbed-looking woman with long strands of gray hair, grasping my arm. “Are you Lon?”
“No,” I said. “I’m here to look for Lon.”
She called to an older man a few feet away. “Come here, honey,” she said, waggling a finger toward me, “I think I found Lon.”
The man creaked near and offered his hand. “Lon? Pleased to meet ya. When’s the ceremony start?”
I shook his hand. “Thanks. Not Lon, though. Thanks.”
“What say?”
“I’m not Lon!” I quickly apologized, feeling bad for lashing out at the very people I was there to defend. I’d just rarely been so amped up.
“Well, who’s in charge here?” said the man. He turned to his wife. “He says he’s not Lon.”
She looked at me. “You sure you’re not Lon?”
“Fucking positive.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “Well, ain’t this a fine mess.”
It only took a few minutes of poking around, talking to people, to piece things together. The “awards ceremony” was hardly a ceremony at all. According to an old woman in a wheelchair who said she’d been stationed there since six o’clock, a giant, hairy, lumpy guy had shown up around six fifteen, carted in a stack of chairs, set up some tables, and spread out the food and drinks, along with the blank name tags, a couple of markers, Future Is Now pins, and certificates for each of the prize winners. He talked to almost no one and was out of there before seven. The old woman had assumed he was a hotel employee, but when I suggested it might have been Lon, the director of the festival, she said yes, that sounded right, she’d heard someone use that name with him.
Fucking Lon. He was an apparition, a wisp of smoke—Sasquatch and Keyser Söze rolled into one. I’d been to both coasts to track him down and still he kept eluding me. I roamed the hall, chatting up one kind soul after another, trying to get a line on our mystery man, but they were all as mystified as I was. For the most part, everyone’s spirits were up—this was a celebration, after all, and whoever they spoke to, mutual congratulations were in order (they’d all been named prize winners)—but beneath their joviality, a creeping sense that all was not right had begun to seep into the room like a rank smell. And this was just the beginning, I knew. The next day, in Tompkins Square Park, the full extent of Lon’s con would slowly become clear.
Another woman stopped me to ask if I was Lon. “I want to switch booth locations for tomorrow,” she said. “I’m in the Self-Help tent, but I asked for Romance.”
I couldn’t bear another second of this. I’d fucked things up with Ondrea, I’d fucked things up with Sarah, and Lon Hackney, I figured, was off counting his riches somewhere, laughing at me and his legion of Noble Pen suckers.
“Well, if you’re not Lon,” said the woman, “you must be an author. What kind of books do you write?”
“Biographies of bellhops.” I was fuming, and trying to sort out my next move.
“Neat.” She reached into her shoulder bag. “Hey, would you like a copy of my novel? I’d like to give you one. I can sign it for you.”
My dad, I knew, if he was in the room, would have been reduced to the same—traveling to New York with hopes of making some publishing contacts, landing an agent, and finding the right home for his book, and before long, feeling lucky just to find a stranger generous enough to accept a free copy.
The woman’s book was called Aiden’s Quest; it was spiral bound, with a sheet of cellophane over the cover, and had been printed at a Kinko’s near her home in Bemidji, Minnesota, she told me. She described it as a ninth-century romantic thriller about a faerie held captive on a Scottish isle and the young monk who fights to free her. “What’s your name?” she asked, peeling to the title page to write an inscription.
“You know,” I said, “would you mind signing it to Sarah?”
“Who’s Sarah?”
“My wife.”
She gave a little squeal, and said, “I’d be happy to. Sarah with an ‘h’?”
“Sarah with an ‘h.’”
She signed her book carefully and handed it over, and I thanked her sincerely. Another author approached, offering me a copy of his book, and within a few minutes I’d collected a half dozen freebies before I beat it for the door. I felt my emotions crashing and burning—things with Ondrea were ruined, Lon had blue-balled my pee-bottle siege, and all that was left to do was find a bar and get smashed.
*
Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far. A half-level below the Emerald Bell’s lobby was a hotel bar called Maroon. I sat on a stool and ordered a Booker’s on the rocks and watched the NBA Finals with two middle-aged Orlando Magic fans who said they were Nextel salesmen from Kissimmee. The guy next to me, chugging rum, was the smaller but rowdier of the two—he was rocking a Hedo Turkoglu jersey and waved his arms in the air when the Lakers shot free throws, going nuts if they missed, as though he’d caused them to brick it, while his bulky friend on the far side brooded and nursed a Heineken. “What’s wrong, Big Fella?” I asked.
“Aw, he don’t like sports,” said Turkoglu. “He just wants to smoke weed.”
“I’ve got weed,” I told him.
At halftime, we went up to Big Fella’s room on the twenty-second floor and I passed him a little baggie of homegrown to roll into doobies, while me and Turkoglu found the game on TV and raided the minifridge for airplane shots of Crown Royal and Jack. Soon we were all pretty fucked up. The game was a battle—Hedo and Kobe going toe-to-toe, and before long I was waving my arms along with Turkoglu when the Lakers shot free throws, and eventually we goaded Big Fella into waving his arms, too, as we all laughed and shouted.
During an ad break halfway through the fourth quarter with the score tied, I stumbled into the bathroom to take a leak, and somehow set my glass on the counter and knocked it off in the same motion, and it shattered to pieces at my feet. A second later, I slid backwards on my own puddle of ice and went crashing down—wham—to the floor. Something bit the side of my right hand, it felt like, and when I held my hand up, I saw dark-red blood bubbling from a long wound that ran from my wrist to my pinky—I’d sliced myself good on a broken piece of glass. I winced, but had enough drink in me, it didn’t hurt too much, I just didn’t want to have to get stitches. Lying on the floor of Big Fella’s bathroom, I reached for a washcloth and wrapped it tightly around my cut-up hand, then began picking up all the broken bits of glass. Something caught my atten
tion on the floor next to the little waste bucket under the sink—it was one of those long, glossy luggage tags stamped with your final destination that they slap on your bag at the airport before tossing it into the plane’s belly, which you tear off and toss out once you get where you’re going. But there was a name on this one, and it took me several dumbfounded seconds to process it cleanly—L. HACKNEY.
What the fucking fuck? I scrambled to my feet and charged out of the bathroom. Turkoglu turned his head from the game to look at me. “What the hell,” he said. “Holy shit, you’re all bloody, dude.”
I looked past him, at Big Fella, and held the luggage tag high above my head, shrieking wildly, “What the fuck is this shit?”
“Whoa, man,” said Turkoglu, rising to his feet. “I think you got overserved.”
“Is this true?” I howled, waving the tag, shaking drops of blood onto my neck and chin.
“Yeah,” said Big Fella. “I flew into JFK. So what.”
“For what?”
“What?” His eyes were glazed and red.
“You flew in for what? Why are you here?”
“For the Future Is Now conference, man.”
Three hours before, when I’d first walked into the Emerald Bell, the righteousness of my mission had sharpened my focus to a fine, deadly point, but now, caught off guard, drunk and stoned, I felt confused and frantic, like a man swarmed by bats. “I thought you said you sold cell phones!” I cried.
“Phil sells cell phones,” said Big Fella. “I run a literary agency. What’s it to you?”
“I don’t ‘sell cell phones,’” Turkoglu piped up. “I get retail stores to carry Nextel products. You make it sound like I’m hawking ’em out of my trunk.” He turned back to the TV and cranked up the volume.
My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays Page 10