by John J. Lamb
“That isn’t success. They’re just a miserable couple who took a sweet concept like an angel teddy bear and distorted it for a little money. And the really pathetic part is that the cash will all be spent before the year is done—probably most of it on visits to Hardee’s from the look of Tony.”
“You’re right, of course. So, why does everybody seem to like them so much?”
“The overwhelming majority of teddy bear artisans are nice people, and unfortunately, nice people always assume the best about other folks.”
The trio of judges arrived shortly after 2:30 and, no, I didn’t give them my Clint Eastwood impression because it’s just like my left shin—pretty feeble. Besides, one of the unwritten rules of conduct is that you aren’t supposed to chat with the judges during their inspection. The evaluation team consisted of two women—one in her sixties and the other in her forties—and a balding guy, all with clipboards, pens, and the stern facial expressions usually seen on department of motor vehicle driving test examiners. The man took a long look at Hilda Honey Crisp and made some muttering sounds of approval while the older woman picked up the Siberian snow tiger and experimentally moved its limbs. Meanwhile, the other lady bent over to read the information card and then picked up Dirty Beary. She opened the bear’s sports coat and blinked in surprise at the shoulder holster and replica revolver.
She shot me a sly glance and in a solemn yet droll voice said, “My, that’s a big one.”
It was my turn to be astonished. I nodded and gave her a tight-lipped smile. The reason for my shock was that the lady had just quoted the line from Dirty Harry, when the bad guy sees the detective’s large .44-magnum revolver. I wasn’t certain precisely what the comment signified, but suddenly I felt lucky. What were the odds that a female teddy bear judge would also be enough of a fan of Clint Eastwood’s cop films to be able to cite some dialogue? She put Beary back on the pedestal and made several notes on the sheet in her clipboard.
As soon as the judges were gone, Ash showed me a pair of seriously raised eyebrows. “Do you mind telling me just what the heck that was all about?”
“It sounded pretty clear to me.”
“Me, too, and she’d better have been referring to Dirty Beary, otherwise I’m going to go have a little chat with her.”
“Why, whatever else do you think she could have meant?” I asked in an artificially earnest and puzzled tone.
“Brad.”
“Relax, honey. What she said was a line from Dirty Harry, so it’s possible it’s a really good sign.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then—”
“But we’ll know for certain tonight at the reception, if Beary doesn’t get nominated but she does start flirting with me.”
“You are incorrigible.”
“And insanely in love with you, so stop fretting.” I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. “They really seemed to like Hilda and the tiger. Hey, what’s wrong?”
Ash suddenly looked a little downcast. “It’s just that both Hilda and Beary are costumed and over fourteen inches tall.”
“And?”
“Don’t you see what that means? They’re in competition with each other because they’re in the same judging category. What if they nominate Hilda over Beary?”
“I’ll be overjoyed and besides, how likely is that to happen? This is a major national show.” I gestured with my hand toward the crowded exhibition hall. “There are more than a hundred artisans here—some of them TOBY and Golden Teddy winners—and every one of them has bears in the running. How many nominees are allowed for each award?”
“Just five.”
I shrugged. “You can do the math. What are the odds of either of us being selected?”
“I see what you mean.” However, Ash didn’t sound convinced. “But Beary deserves to be nominated.”
“I appreciate that, darling, but you’re voting with your heart instead of your head. And you’ve completely overlooked the possibility that your tiger will be nominated in the soft-sculpture plush category.” I was referring to a judging classification that was for stuffed animals other than bears.
“Not likely with artisans like Marsha Friesen and Cindy Malchoff here. Cindy’s birds are amazing.”
“I still think you have a chance and there’s no point in worrying about it. So, now that the judges have finished with us, is there anything else we have to do here?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“It’s almost three. Then why don’t we take a quick drive up to the bookshop so you can get that new mystery novel and then we can go back to our room?”
Ash grabbed her purse. “Okay, and that will leave us plenty of time to get ready. The reception doesn’t begin until six-thirty.”
“Yeah, we’ll be back by four, you can get into the shower at five—”
“And what are we going to be doing between four and five?” Ash dimpled, reading my thoughts.
“Hey, I checked into a hotel with a beautiful woman who’s so hot I need oven mitts. What do you think we’re going to be doing?”
Outside, the sky was cloudy but the rain had stopped for the moment. We drove up to Fleet Street and found a parking spot near the store, but took the umbrella with us because it looked as if another downpour could start at any moment. The bookshop had copies of the new Pam and Pom in hardcover, including autographed copies, one of which we bought. I behaved in an exemplary manner. When we returned to the hotel, Ash showed me how much she appreciated my good conduct, so my forbearance was richly rewarded.
Later, as Ash was blow-drying her hair, I sat in a chair near the window and leafed through the event program. There was a long list of all the participants and I found our business name listed. There were also paragraph-long bios on some of the more prominent artisans in the front section of the magazine and I looked up the entry for Cheery Cherub Bears. Atop the profile was a small black-and-white photo of Jennifer, Tony, and Todd standing in staggered profile as if it were a group mug shot. The text said that all three were from Basingstoke Township, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and—get this—that Tony and Jennifer spent “countless joyful hours” working together making the bears. Finally, almost as an afterthought, it mentioned that Todd Litten wrote and illustrated the books that accompanied the angel bears and also worked as an EMT with a local fire department.
Ash turned off the blow-drier and came out to get dressed. I sat for a moment to admire her golden hair and voluptuous figure and again reflected on just how lucky I was to be married to her. She’d been my pillar of strength during the awful days after I was shot and, having come so close to death, I was never going to take her for granted.
Finally, I went into the bathroom and showered and shaved. When I came out I paused to stare in awe. “You are absolutely beautiful.”
“It’s just my basic little black dress.”
“Your little black seductive dress. It’s been so long since we’ve been out, I’d forgotten how great it looks on you.”
Made from silk, the dress was cut just above the knee, and had a V neckline that showed off the tiniest bit of cleavage. Her jewelry elegantly accented the outfit: gold pendant earrings with glittering quarter-carat diamonds, a gold San Marco-style bracelet on her right wrist, and her gold wedding band with dual ramps of pave diamonds flanking a brilliant-cut carat diamond. Ash doesn’t have loads of jewelry, but the pieces she owns are timelessly stylish and of top quality—like her.
“Can you help me with this?” Ash held up the star-shaped diamond pendant on a gold chain that I’d given her on our fifteenth wedding anniversary.
“Happy to. Turn around.” As I stepped closer and smelled her perfume, it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to unzip her dress while I was behind her fiddling with that tiny lobster claw clasp.
Then I got dressed in tan slacks, a sage-colored turtleneck that Ash said went well with my eyes, and a sports coat. The jacket was new because all my old ones were hors de combat. Unless you
’ve worn a shoulder holster everyday you have no idea of just how badly and quickly a pistol can tear up a coat lining. When I finished dressing, Ash inspected me, smoothed a couple of rogue hairs in my left eyebrow, and pronounced me the handsomest man in the hotel. The best part about the compliment is that I knew she really meant it. She handed me my cane and we headed down the hall to the elevator.
The reception was being held in a ballroom adjoining the exhibit hall and there were already seventy or so people present. Up at the front of the room was a wooden podium where the show’s award nominees would be announced a little later in the evening. Not too much later, I hoped. I can only stand for so long before my leg begins to ache and I’d noticed that there were only a couple of tables and perhaps a dozen chairs set out for the guests.
While Ash stopped to chat with an artisan she’d met earlier in the day, I excused myself and went over to the bar to get us some drinks. A man in a suit who’d just been served by the bartender turned around and gave me a startled once-over. It was Todd; he held a glass of white wine in one hand and some sort of mixed drink made with cola in the other.
We locked gazes as if we were scenery-chewing actors in a bad Kung Fu film and at last I said, “Yeah, I’m the evil guy with the cane.”
“I know and whatever you did this morning, thank you.” Todd’s voice was quiet and grave.
“Jennifer didn’t tell you?”
“No, but I know Tony.” Todd took a few steps as if to leave and then stopped. “I heard him say you used to be a cop, so you must have seen stuff like that a thousand times. Tell me something. Why do they stay when there might be someone who could give them a much happier life?”
Knowing he was referring to battered women in general and Jennifer in particular, I sighed and said, “I’m no psychologist, but I suspect it’s because they’ve been beaten down so thoroughly that they no longer have a capacity to even imagine a life that doesn’t involve routine assault, much less a genuine loving relationship.”
Todd nodded glumly and moved on.
I ordered a gin and tonic on the rocks for Ash and Glenfiddich neat for me, even though the bartender seemed very confused and disturbed when I insisted that I didn’t want any ice cubes with my whiskey. Ice completely ruins the intense flavor of fine single-malt Scotch, although Ash says that regardless of the temperature it’s served, the stuff I drink tastes exactly the way she imagines kerosene would.
Tucking my cane beneath my arm and carrying drinks in both hands, I toddled back to Ash and handed her the G and T. I toasted her and then, sipping our drinks, we wandered aimlessly through the room, watching people and enjoying the convivial atmosphere. That is, up until we encountered Tony and Jennifer holding court for a small group of folks. Ash and I stopped to gape.
This being a dress-up event, Tony was, of course, attired in a tightly fitting triple-XL Hawaiian shirt from hell. It was the same obnoxious yellow as a school bus and there were five-by-seven-inch color photos of the Cheery Cherub Bears imprinted on the fabric and scattered all over the shirt. I’d heard about the photo-onto-cloth process, but I never thought I’d encounter it in the form of a wearable billboard for teddy bears. Jennifer, on the other hand, had gone with the Mother Superior look: a black pantsuit with a stark white blouse and a prim look of disapproval with the world in general. She held a glass of white wine and I wondered if it was one of the drinks I’d seen Todd carrying. I looked for Todd, but didn’t see him; however, that could have been because of the blinding glare from Tony’s shirt.
“Why can’t you find shirts like that for me?” I murmured.
“Because I love you too much to allow you to be seen in public like that. Lord, that’s so tacky.”
I paid a little closer look at the people chatting with the Swifts. Two of them were men wearing charcoal gray woolen business suits that screamed money and I wondered if they were execs from Wintle Toys here to close the rumored merchandising deal. I considered marching up and telling the businessmen that they were about to buy angel teddy bears from a wife-beater, but decided that bit of news probably wouldn’t horrify people who were in the industry of mesmerizing a generation of children into buying crap.
As usual, Ash could read my thoughts and she gently tugged on my wrist to lead me away before I did something bullheaded.
Then, as we turned to do some more wandering I saw Todd again. He was in the back of the room—maybe sixty feet away—huddled in deep conversation with a thin woman wearing black slacks and a long black duster. Unless Todd was in the process of being jilted, I could tell the woman wasn’t his wife or girlfriend because their postures showed no evidence of intimacy. The one thing I knew for sure was that the topic of conversation wasn’t pleasant because Todd’s shoulders were drooping and his chin was on his chest.
Ash and I mingled some more, chatted with several artisans, and a few minutes later I noticed that the woman I’d seen in conversation with Todd had joined the group surrounding the Swifts. Slightly curious, I scanned the room for Todd, but I was UTL, which is California cop speak for Unable To Locate.
We’d nearly finished our drinks and were waiting for the nomination announcements to begin so that we could go to dinner, when we found Donna Jordan sitting alone in a chair at a table in the far corner of the room. She was attired in a somber midnight blue dress and held a glass that looked about a third full of a blush Chardonnay. At first she didn’t recognize us and then she smiled, but it looked as if it took a lot of effort to do it.
“Hi. Ashleigh and Brad, right?” Her speech bore the slightest trace of a slur and I wondered how many drinks she’d already had tonight.
“Hello, Donna. Are you okay?” Ash asked.
“Fine. Absolutely fine. You see them over there?” Donna took a swallow of wine and inclined her head slightly in the direction of the Swifts. “You don’t like them, do you?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“That’s only because you don’t know them.”
“Really?”
“Really. Because if you knew them you’d hate both their goddamn guts. She’s a shameless thief and he is as rotten a son of a bitch as they come.” The words were delivered with quiet malice, yet a nanosecond after they’d been uttered she looked up at us, wearing an expression of shock and profound mortification. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. It must have been the wine.”
In vino veritas, I thought, while Ash soothingly touched Donna’s shoulder and said, “It’s all right.”
“No, no, I’m so very sorry. Please excuse me.” Donna put the wineglass on the table and scurried for the door.
As we watched her leave, Ash said, “What do you think she meant when she called Jennifer a thief?”
“I don’t know, but her description of Tony was right on the mark.”
However, we couldn’t give the matter any further consideration for the moment because we heard a woman’s throat being cleared over the public address system. The judge who’d examined Ash’s Siberian snow tiger earlier today was at the podium and she announced that the award nominees were about to be revealed. We put our glasses on the table and joined the half-crescent crowd of people facing the front of the room. I tried to convince myself that my hands were damp as a consequence of the ballroom being warm and not because I was the least bit nervous.
It was a long process, as there were seven different award categories and after each name was read there was a smattering of polite applause. That is, up until Jennifer Swift was nominated for an award in the “Dressed / Accessorized, Over Five Inches and Under Fourteen Inches” group because Tony bellowed out that moronic sea-lion-like “ooh, ooh, ooh” sound so popular among the old Jerry Springer Show audiences and other gatherings of the Brain Trust. At last the judge came to the “Dressed / Accessorized, Fourteen Inches and Over” bracket and began reading the list of nominees. I was so absorbed in listening for Ash and Hilda’s names that at first it didn’t really register when I heard the
woman say, “Dirty Beary made by Bradley Lyon of Lyon’s Tigers and Bears.”
Ash threw her arms around my neck and gave me a moist kiss. “Congratulations! Honey, I’m so proud of you!”
“Thanks, but Hilda wasn’t nominated.”
“That’s not important.”
“Wrong. You were robbed. Are those people blind? Hilda is better than Beary.”
“Brad, sweetheart, it’s all right. Truly. I couldn’t be happier.” Ash’s eyes were glistening.
Meanwhile, the judge began announcing the nominees for the final category, “Soft-Sculpture, Plush Animals.” A moment later, it was my turn to hug and kiss Ash when we heard that her Siberian snow tiger was a finalist. At the conclusion of the event, the judge asked the chosen artisans to go into the exhibit hall, retrieve the nominated stuffed animals, and personally hand them to one of the selection team. We did so and were told that the prizes would be awarded the following afternoon.
After the reception, we hooked up with Karen Rundlett and some other artisans and went out to dinner at a seafood restaurant. The food was wonderful and the company even better but we didn’t stay out late. We knew that tomorrow was going to be a very exciting day.
Five
We woke up early, got ready, and just after 7 A.M. returned to the ballroom to attend a special breakfast banquet for the artisans. The room was now full of large round tables, each covered with crisp white tablecloths and glittering with glassware, china, and silverware. I noticed a thus far empty VIP table near the podium where all the place settings were marked with folded cardboard placards that read RESERVED in the same bold script used for the signs warning people away from high voltage electric lines.
Up along the front wall, the finalist bears selected the previous evening were on display on a series of tables. We’d brought the digital camera along and took photos of each other standing next to our creations. Then I saw a couple of large coffee urns in the corner and made a beeline for them. The coffee wasn’t bad—a little weak perhaps—but then again I still have a taste for the brown sludge I used to drink back in the SFPD homicide bureau.