The Standard Grand

by Jay Baron Nicorvo

  “We’ll go blizzard fishing.”

  “Twenty-four hundred hours is midnight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Midnight blizzard fishing on the Ashokan. Can I know what this is about?”

  “My replacement made contact with the target.”

  Another pause filled by keyboard clacking. Probably dashing off an email to some hydrofracking higher-up. “You’re sure.”

  “She’s a sexy Mexican midget in a kayak.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “If it is,” Ray says, “it’s on you. This is where I get off. Tour’s up. Be sure to come with my final installment. You’re supplying the gear and the bait. Twenty-four hundred hours, at your boat, three days from now, Thursday, guest pass or no.”

  Ray hangs up. He watches the firehouse, not yet ready to make the hike uphill. Uphill is harder on his leg.

  When the burly fireman stomps from the firehouse holding a yellow hatchet and a whetstone, Ray, wanting to work out some frustration, decides to let himself go berserk.

  He walks to the Neversink Citgo and buys two cans of Coke. Then strolls over to the firemen, approaching slowly, casually, a Coke in each hand. He grins and nods.

  Their fists whiten, on the scrub brush, on the hand ax.

  Ray offers a slight shake of his head, to set them mistakenly at ease, and says, “Make you boys a wager.”

  * * *

  Near dark, Smith shivered at the assigned rendezvous point. A frigid wind blew through the chasm of East 110th at the northeast corner of Central Park.

  A kidnapper van pulled up, exhaust huffing from the tailpipe. From out of the van’s driver-side window blared a whistle like an incoming TOW missile. The van drove around the traffic circle and slowed to a stop in front of her. The passenger door opened. Behind the wheel, Milt hissed in his scratchy rasp, “Come on in out of the cold. Supposed to start snowing again any second.” He looked alone.

  She listened to the van’s engine: a steady, uncongested gurr-urr-urr as it idled. It sounded a lot like the voice of its owner. The body of the Econoline looked bad—polka-dotted with splotches of sanded, unpainted Bondo—but there wasn’t a spot of rust and the old die-cast heart that made it run was rumble fit.

  On the side of the van, she could make out the words The Standard Grande in faded rainbow pastels and a groovy font with fancy caps overtop an airbrushed scene. A gray castle perched on a washed-out green mountain. Under it, a slogan: Where rest sets you free.

  She regarded gaunt Milt in his trim white goatee. He looked good, considering, like a senior marathoner. She climbed in. She made a show of faith—in his decency, in her decision-making—by dropping her field pack between them where he could reach it.

  He pressed his thumb against his temple. “Want to drive?”

  “I’m done driving.”

  “My wife never learned. Spent her whole life being driven. Died driving.” He seemed to wither as he said this.

  “Hope for my sake you weren’t the one behind the wheel.”

  Again, thumb to temple. “Her lawyer—” He winced.

  “Her lawyer? That sucks.” She reached to touch him but didn’t. “You okay?”

  The pained silence caused her to call everything into question. Then he asked if she was hungry.

  She was starved. “I could use to eat.”

  He shifted the van into drive but kept his foot on the brake. Her door was open.

  She stared into the back of the van—windowless, tidy, and empty. “Half expected to see me a bed back there outfitted with leather restraints.”

  “Been on my fair share of prisoner snatches. Couple of them successful. But here in my civvy dotage, I’m no longer the abducting type. Don’t worry.”

  A gray old-timer’s hat rested on the center console. “Makes you think I’m worried?”

  “Old Negro picking up a white gal? Take into the woods? Call it nigger’s intuition.”

  More out of spite than desire, she pulled shut the passenger door. Her closed window had a crank and she gave it a turn to let in some air.

  He cut the ignition; the engine coughed and went quiet. He swiveled to face her. His gaze felt like a hard frisking. “You know something, Specialist Smith, since our first encounter, I’ve been waffling. Because bringing a woman up to the Standard might be a horrible idea. My vets can be a volatile bunch. But they’re mostly harmless to others. It’s themselves I worry about. But I figure they came up in a co-ed military. If I can keep the company of a lady vet, so can they.”

  “You tell them I’m coming?”

  “They know someone’s coming.”

  “They know this someone’s a female?”

  “Not all of them, no. Was set to tell them, at morning brief. Something came up.”

  She reached and grabbed her field pack. She didn’t bolt, not yet, in part because Milt was taking his time, allowing her to weigh options.

  He must’ve sensed her softening, opening, because he reached and, tenderly, pressed her hand gripping her field pack.

  She fought not to flinch. Almost lost it—here was the first sympathetic touch she’d received in months, the first touch not a grope or an assault since she fled Leonard Wood, longer even, cause Travis’d been rough with her ever since she got back from Afghanistan and confessed her infidelities.

  Her eyes got swimmy and hot under Milt’s attention. She wanted him to hold her. This made her furious. “You make any advances, Pops, I’ll take it as an act of aggression. I’ll introduce you to my sidekick. You got me?”

  “Not sure if I should be offended or flattered you think I want to bed you.”

  “Be whatever,” she said. “Flattered or fended don’t make no never mind. Just wanted to get that—and this—out in the open.” She let go of her field pack and reached in the small of her back with her off hand. The pepperbox was in his face, at the end of her cocked arm. She was steady. For the first time in the van, she felt at ease and in control.

  Milt stared up the quad barrels. “Might have to start calling you Bang Bang, liable as you are to go off over next to nothing. You did see that clause in the contract you signed that specified no firearms, right?”

  “Didn’t read the fine print.” She lowered the gun.

  “Litigious as everybody is these days,” he told her, “clause’s there mostly so I don’t go getting sued. Far be it from me to want to limit your Second Amendment rights, but I’ve found that guns don’t mix well with my crowd. Seeing as how you’ll be the only female, I’m gonna make an exception. Do keep in mind”—he reached and opened the glove box—“you won’t be the only one packing.” The door dropped down, and inside was tucked an old-school M1911, a holstered .45 caliber automatic. He slapped the door shut, picked up her field pack and held it out to her. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Could leave you here. You could go back to that tree of yours. Must say, something awful comely about a wild white girl living in a tree in Central Park.”

  “My tree’s got all of two leaves left. I’m an easy target for every schoolgirl in Manhattan.” She fingered the scab in her eyebrow, glanced in the sideview, bag under her eye a fading yellow—she looked terrible. Haggard at twenty-five. She holstered her pistol.

  He produced and unwrapped a Ricola. “Could take you to Port Authority. Buy you bus ticket back to Ar-Kansas.”

  “Missoura. And what, face a firing squad?”

  “They don’t shoot deserters.”

  “Court-martial then. Spend the rest of my service in the brig. Yeah, no.”

  “It aint like that.”

  “How do you know how it aint?”

  “I’ve made some calls on your behalf.”

  “My behalf?”

  “They hardly prosecute deserters anymore,” he told her. “Couple years back, there was a crackdown. Prosecution rate tripled, to something like six percent. Most deserters—if not on deployment orders—get dishonorably disc
harged without being prosecuted. Different if you high-tailed it in a combat zone.”

  She plucked his fedora off the center console and donned it at a rakish angle. “Probably part of their ploy. Turn myself in expecting a slap on wrist and wind up getting a bullet in the back of the head.”

  “Yeah, you’re gonna fit right in.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He pulled the hat off her head and dropped it back on the console. “Bus ticket would set me back, but not really, cause I’d just charge it.”

  She buckled her seatbelt. “Come on, Gramps. Show me your Rust Belt resort.”

  “Alright then.” He cranked the ignition. “Not rust. Borscht, something you’re gonna develop a taste for might quick. Got a recipe passed down through the generations, on my wife’s side. Winter sets in, we eat a lot of rodents, rabbit, and root vegetables.”

  She rested her head and tried to doze, and then they were stopping at one of the members-only, big-box wholesale retail warehouse clubs for obese Americans on supersize condiment diets. Milt, putting on the gray fedora and cocking it, said he needed some things they couldn’t produce themselves.

  She caught some shallow sleep, and when she felt a lurch, she woke gasping.

  “You’re safe.” Milt’s grumble, coming from the driver seat.

  Cardboard boxes brimming with sacks—of rice and ground coffee, pasta, something called quinoa—were bungee-corded to one wall of the van. She’d gotten the most restful, secure sleep she’d had in months, despite the bad dream, the particulars of which were already vanishing. Snow coming down hard.

  Dropping her guard, she stared at the fine profile of this old man she was coming to trust. Handsome, he was weathered in a way that expressed a wildness settled by wisdom. Something becoming about Milton Wright, his trim goatee, small silver hoop in his ear.

  He shot her an unamused, uncomfortable look. To break the spell he plucked something off the center console and held it out to her—a sardine tin. “Will be your survival kit. Every vet gets issued one, just in case. Might get you through a long lost weekend on your own. You pack it yourself, seal it with duct tape. That’ll be the first duty you pull. Keep it on you at all times.” He sniffed in various directions like a dog with cataracts in a changing wind. “Smell that? Burning rubber?” Then he strained his face and winced hard. “Got to pull over.” He made his way to the shoulder, where they rumbled to a stop. “Been having dizzy spells.” He threw the gearshift into park but didn’t cut the engine. He reclined his chair and closed his eyes.

  “Ah, excuse me?”

  “Give me a minute.” The color spilled from his face, from rich brown to deep yellow, his lips fading till they blended with his gray goatee.

  “We need to get you to a hospital?”

  Without opening his eyes, he said, “Trade seats. I’ll point the way.”

  “To the hospital?”

  “To the Standard. It’ll pass. Trade seats.”

  “I don’t think so.” Her breath shortened and her gut soured, burbling acid up into her chest. “I told you.” She shook her head and hard. “Done driving. Specially not in snow.”

  Eyes closed, he pushed himself standing, hunched over in the cab, unsteady. “I’m not taking no.” He fumbled for and grabbed a fistful of her sleeve and yanked her up.

  They did a slumped waltz, stepping on each other’s Army-issue boots and, then, there she sat, behind the wheel for the first time since she’d abandoned her Dodge Hemi along the highway all those months ago.

  “What you waiting for?” His eyes were still closed.

  She cranked the ignition—grrrt—and jumped at the grinding of the already started engine. “Shit. Out of practice.”

  “Don’t go breaking the gear teeth now. Your daddy just bought this vehicle.”

  “My daddy would vote before he bought an automatic.”

  He pressed his thumb into his temple, not massaging it, more like testing a soft spot on a melon. He tapped his forehead and said, “Tokhes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your daddy, when he said something clever, touched his head and said, Tokhes.”

  “You don’t know my daddy,” she said, “and my daddy don’t know no tokhes.” She adjusted the seat. “Thought I was gonna be on the receiving end of some hospitality. Here I am, hospice.” The highway was wet, snow not sticking. Her breathing was short but she wasn’t hyperventilating, not yet.

  She loved being on the road, when that road wasn’t going to explode beneath her. She gave it more gas. Milt leaned back as the van accelerated—slowly, surely—and reached the speed limit, 55. There she coasted. She was driving like an old lady. What state’s motto was Live free or die? Freedom was like war that way: if it didn’t make you nervous, you weren’t truly engaged in it. Driving, she felt anxious, she felt alive.

  * * *

  Evangelína sat parked in her roving office of a rental car, engine idling, heat blasting, deliberating a run. If nothing else, it would warm and calm her.

  The B&B, Bed by the Creek, was cosmic punishment for traveling by private jet. The online reviews warned it was filthy, smoky, and cold—Don’t stay here, stay away!!! You’ll leave feeling like one of local Lenny Bee’s smoked trout packed in dirty dry ice!!!!!!!—but the bad reviews made no mention of the biohazard.

  Evangelína had been seduced by the sunny images on the website and, once in the driveway, despite the shady look of the place, got sucked inside by fatigue, the pride of a proprietor willing to fly the rainbow flag out front, and her limited cash. She didn’t want her billing on the company card—they’d know right where she was—didn’t even want it on her debit card. It’d be cake for an IRJ techie to hack into her bank account. Changing lodgings at this point was one too many tasks to manage.

  She diddled with her phone—five voicemails; seventeen emails; the photo she’d taken of the alpaca was bug-eyed and blurred; the extended forecast showed highs in the low 30s and 20s lows with snow for five straight days; in Houston, the temperature was an enviable 77 degrees. Her laptop charged in the passenger seat. A tablet computer and a portable laser printer lay on the backseat next to a box of SW&B stationery and literature.

  She listened to her voicemails. A fertility appointment she would need to reschedule. Messages from Marisol, each more urgent than the last, imploring her to call, to meet with Ellis Baum, to contact Bizzy. And one concerned message from Mamí. Bizzy had telephoned to invite her, Mamí, to lunch and asked if she’d heard from Evy.

  Her mamí’s worry was warranted—Evangelína hadn’t gone twenty-four hours without talking to her since Papí died—but the company concern wasn’t.

  She’d done what made her different from other landmen: she went straight to her boss. The way she saw it, out in the field, the landowner was boss. She thought if she closed a quick deal, her stock would rise with Bizzy. She’d be back home and warm with her mamí in Houston before the Catskill snow set in.

  But here she’d been in New York for not yet one full day, made contact and got nowhere. She’d already played her navigable-in-fact card. Now she would introduce herself to this Ellis Baum late and without a handshake agreement. Maybe she was trying to get herself fired. And on top of it all, she was sure she was being followed.

  She had one consolation: Mr. Wright showed a tell. His rough rasp was on repeat in her head—I’m just not ready to sell yet. She needed room to do her job. She needed some distance, some perspective, to figure out how to help Mr. Wright get ready.

  The company reaction to her being incommunicado heightened her paranoia, made her think she was in danger, which compelled her to hole up, not reach out. And Bizzy calling Mamí to invite her to lunch? As far as Evangelína knew, they hadn’t talked in years.

  Sitting in the car lit by the glacial glow of her phone, she felt drained. Couldn’t shake the dread that weakened her at the airport. Felt unhealthy engaging in corporate espionage. Golf? A racket worthy of the Golfos was more like it, and s
he was neck deep. Expendable, she’d been dispatched on the chance that Mr. Wright was desperate enough to sell for golf money, saving the company tens of millions of dollars at least.

  IRJ sought to capitalize on the infirmities of an arthritic war vet who so happened to be a person of color. And Bizzy, with his excruciating pep talk while distracted by that bank of TV screens showing what must’ve been IRJ security contractors—her boss was in command of a private army, in control of privatized natural resources. IRJ, with its right to free speech, its federally mandated license to influence elections, stood firm on the platform of corporate personhood. The more involved Evangelína got with the IRJ executives, the more it seemed like playing God.

  She told herself she was being melodramatic. It was the cold. She needed to acclimate. Hadn’t gotten in a run since she arrived. But it was more than that. This assignment felt like a long, hard slog while lugging a great burden. She could hear her colleagues gossiping around the microwaves: Remember when she won Landman of the Year? Seems like ages ago. I never liked her anyway. And those four-inch heels? Who’s she trying to kid? What’d you expect? Send in the midget when you want to fall short.

  She stared out the windshield into the dark woods, so alien to her. The trees looked dead. That was all she could think at the Standard, while portaging. Everything’s dying. It wasn’t the first time a landowner had waved a gun at her—regular physical threats were part of the job description, especially in Texas, which was why most of her peers carried concealed weapons—but afterward, she’d been traumatized, couldn’t stop shaking.

  She needed to make a choice. The thought felt like asphyxiation. Fatigue, lightheadedness—was exhaust seeping into the cab? She turned off the heat and cracked her window. It’d been a long time since she’d known these sensations—endless wavering, paranoia, the tight chest, tense internalized talks, constipation and sleeplessness, the magical thinking. Right after Papí died, when she came out to her mamí, who’d tsked and said, Oh, Evangelína, we’ve known since you were four years old, and Papí didn’t care, hija. He said you were hok’ol beh, on another road, just like my sister, Tia Crescencia, whom he loved.