The Texas Twist

by John Vorhaus

  “That’s a weak jest.”

  “It’s not a jest. It stakes a claim. It tells the competition to back off.”

  “Competition?”

  “Other scalawags. People like me, according to you. I’m not saying I’m people like me, but if I am, then this Wellinov is, too.”

  “And you get all that on the strength of a name. Amazing. But I don’t think you’re right, Radar. He’s been vetted.”

  “By whom?”

  “People.”

  “Oh, well, people do a good job at vetting. Vetting is what people do best.” As was common in conversation with Ames, Radar felt himself split between the need to stay on his own script and the burning desire to laugh at the moment’s absurdity.

  “They—”

  “Your people?”

  “Yes, my people. They think he’s a lonely older guy who nurtures nonexistent health problems for, as much as anything else, the pleasure of simple human contact. I’ve met many such lonely sufferers in my time. When they find that they can channel their loneliness into something productive, well, they’re grateful.”

  “Ah, they get a VPM.”

  “VPM?”

  “Verbal prostate massage.”

  Adam shook his head. “Radar, the things you say.” He pointed at the card. “Speak to this man. Get him to think less about his own problems and more about the greater good. Maybe he’s what you think he is. Maybe he’s something else. Either way, his money could make the difference, and we don’t have much time.”

  “Is that right?” said Radar.

  “Yes. It’s already March. The academic year ends in May. That’s when my friend at Saligny leaves his position. He’s termed out, Radar.”

  “Termed out of an allocation board?”

  Ames raised his hands in overstated despair. “I don’t make the rules in Texas. I just know that this fellow Wellinov is the first legitimate prospective donor we’ve seen. I’m not saying you’ve been slack, but I do notice that I’m bringing him to you when it should be the other way around.” Ames waged a visible war with impatience and allowed himself to win. “In any case, Mirplo’s party is timely. I’m hoping to announce full matching grants that night. I have to, or else I lose my window of opportunity and the Wilson endowment goes begging.

  “Meet the man, Radar. Give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Funny,” said Radar, “that’s what Sarah asked me to do with you.”

  “And see how well that’s worked out?” Adam amped up his enthusiasm to the highest wattage, and this was when Radar loathed him most. “We’re a good team, brother. We’ve both been working hard. And when the funds are in place.… Look, Radar, I know I come from an altruistic space that you don’t share, but don’t worry: You’ll be rewarded for your efforts. Even for your overactive imagination.” Ames shook his head again. “I honestly don’t know what to make of that. I suppose it’s the downside of your gift. You see things so keenly that you sometimes see things that aren’t there.”

  “Well, you know what they say,” said Radar, “the invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike.”

  “That’s clever,” said Ames. “Did you make that up?” He keyed the office intercom. “Kadyn, can you come here for a second, please?”

  Her disembodied voice responded promptly, “Be right there, boss.”

  “Bright girl,” said Ames. “Turns out she has a real knack for research. Watch this.” Kadyn stepped in and Ames asked, “The name Wellinov, how common is it?”

  Kadyn dropped her head over her Serengeti Smartphone, a mini-tablet that packed the punch of devices ten times its size. In seconds she had the answer. “Plenty common,” she said, “in Belarus.”

  “There you go,” Ames told Radar. “He’s an immigrant. An immigrant with money. He could be our guardian angel, the matching grant that opens the university’s trove. So see what you can rustle up, pard.”

  “Pard,” said Radar, “I’ll do my best.”

  In truth, he knew that his best would not be necessary.

  After all, how hard can it be to schmooze your own old man?

  That Saturday, Radar and Allie drove down to visit the Cathedral of Junk, a stunning three-story tower of welded jetsam rising from the backyard of an otherwise unassuming house in suburban South Austin. Through years of obsessive diligence, its owner had created a honeycomb of rooms, chambers, grottos, stairwells, catwalks, and dens, all assembled from accretions of abandoned shopping carts and scaffolds, rusty lawn mowers and bed frames, rebar, teakettles, empty propane tanks, anything you can think of. The Cathedral of Junk was rather a touristy trip to take, but the couple was in a touristy mood, for they’d spent the morning buying baby items, and now a little recreational eccentricity was just the thing to put thoughts of impending parenthood at bay for the day. And the Cathedral of Junk certainly qualified as recreational eccentricity or, if you cared to glorify it thus, art. Behind high sturdy walls, it was its own little world of enshrined ephemera: hanging dangles of CDs and DVDs; pillars of paperback books; playpens filled with old Smurf dolls and skateboard decks; landline telephones; CRT TVs; calendars from 1996. In all, it was a reliquary, a walk-through reminder that everything’s junk at the end of its day. But if you wanted a place away from prying eyes—apart from the goggle eyes of photo-snapping Japanese sightseers—you could do worse than this shrine to the notion that all things must pass.

  Radar and Allie found Woody bent over a large flowerpot filled with upended food blenders. He had gained a little weight since Radar saw him last, and the fullness of his face gave him an elfin quality. He tentatively flicked the chopper blades that rose like the propellers of tiny Titanics and smiled with satisfaction as they whirled.

  “Mr. Wellinov, I presume?”

  Woody lifted his head and broke into a broad grin. He gave them both big hugs and topped Allie’s with an avuncular kiss. Though he hadn’t seen his son in six months, it had been his pleasure to drop everything at Radar’s request, invent Henry Wellinov, and bring the circus of him to town. Woody liked acting rashly like this. It kept him light on his feet—deft, even into the depths of late middle age. And he loved Radar’s play here, first allaying Adam’s suspicions by introducing Wellinov through Ames’s own channels, and then raising them again with the red-flag ridiculousness of Wellinov’s name. That could get a man leaning two ways at once. A good thing, if you wanted him on the wobble.

  After Woody released Allie, he stepped back and pointed at her belly. “Start with that,” he said. “Don’t start with anything else.”

  “You could tell I was…?” asked Allie.

  “In the family way? From a mile away.”

  “That seems like a safe distance,” said Allie. “Soon I’ll be so big you won’t even recognize me.”

  “Trust me, my dear,” said Woody, “I would recognize you if you gained a hundred pounds.”

  Whatever reaction Woody thought his comment would elicit, he didn’t get it, for Allie suddenly stared at him, eyes wide. “Would you really?” she asked.

  “Of course. Allie, you’re distinctive. And beautiful. You could be the size of a shipping container and you would still be beautiful. And distinctive.” Allie looked thoughtful and, it seemed to Woody, distressed. “That was supposed to be a compliment,” he said.

  “Oh, I know,” said Allie. “It’s just.…”

  “Just what?”

  “Just,” said Radar, “if you’re right that she’s that recognizable, even in a changed state, then we have to rethink some things.”

  “No we don’t, Radar,” said Allie with unexpected fervor. “I stand by my stand. Ames doesn’t know me. We worked the same turf, that’s all. Besides, like I told you, I wasn’t me back then. I certainly didn’t glow.” She turned to Woody. “Do I really?”

  “Like a radon refrigerator, hon.” He turned to Radar. “So, when do I meet Ames? I don’t suppose I should look too eager.”

  “No, actually, in this case that would be okay.�
��

  “Won’t it seem like rushing the mark?”

  “It will. But according to his script, I’m a clever scumbag and rushing the mark is what clever scumbags are expected to do.”

  “Then let’s do it Monday.”

  “I’ll set it up.” Radar pulled out his device and fired off a quick text to the effect that his meeting with Mr. Wellinov had gone swimmingly, and the quirky gentleman was now ready to get with Ames to discuss the particulars.

  Vic arrived just then, barking his head on a low-hanging bower of laundry baskets filled with ancient encyclopedias. “Woody, hey!” he said brightly. “Great to see you, man!” He gave the old man a hug and an enthusiastic smooch on the cheek, then turned to Radar and said, “Hey, are we sure Ames doesn’t know Allie from before?”

  “Man, Vic, stop doing that,” said Radar, stunned again, yet not surprised, by Mirplo’s uncanny jumps to relevant conclusions. “What makes you ask?”

  “Actually it’s something I found,” said Kadyn, who did a better job than Mirplo of navigating the laundry baskets. She went to Vic’s side and laced a fingerless-gloved hand in his.

  “Tell me about that in a minute,” said Radar. “First, Vic, are we comfortable with her here? Wouldn’t we have been more comfortable discussing it first?”

  “We might have,” Vic agreed somberly. He put his arm around her. “But I’m comfortable now. Plus…” he tapped her noggin with his fingertip, “she smart like whip. Kadyn, tell ’em what you did.”

  Kadyn said with dark defensiveness, “Ames left his tablet unattended. It’s not my fault.”

  “Fault? What fault? Who fault?” said Vic. “It was great.” He turned to the others. “Guys, this gal’s a natural.”

  “I just did a search.”

  “Which is what a natural does. Tell ’em the rest.”

  “I searched for images of you three in all of Adam’s apps and files.”

  “Face-recognition hacks,” said Vic. “TSA shit. She won’t even tell me where she gets it.”

  Kadyn asked Radar, “Were you Olivier de Havilland, some kind of scientist?” Radar nodded. “He has pictures of that.” She turned to Allie, “And did you wine and dine some guy at a steak joint in Tulsa?”

  “As Fabrice Traynor, yeah.”

  “He has pictures of that, too.”

  Said Radar, “I can’t believe he’d leave pictures like that just lying around on his device.”

  “They weren’t just lying around,” said Kadyn. “They were password protected.” She gave a schoolgirl smile. “But passwords are easy to guess.”

  “Told you,” said Vic. “A natural.” She pinched him in protest and Vic jumped, but not too high.

  “Anything else?” asked Allie.

  Kadyn replied with a question. “What’s Green Girl Solutions?”

  “Nothing now. It’s defunct. It used to be a multilevel marketing scam. Around 2003 or so.”

  “Were you in it?”

  “I had a cup of coffee with them.”

  “They have a uniform?”

  “Oh, God, I forgot about the uniform.”

  “Ames didn’t. He has pictures of you in it. At some kind of trade show in some kind of booth.”

  “A franchise expo, yeah, that could easily be.”

  Asked Radar, “Any pictures of Vic?”

  “Not just pictures,” Kadyn laughed. “Video.”

  “Karaoke,” explained Vic.

  She teased him in the manner of the newly encrushed, “Apparently he wants to fly like an eagle to the sea.”

  He nuzzled her nose. “Well, that’s only because time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.” He turned to the others. “So what do you think? Can she play for our team?”

  “I really want to,” said Kadyn. “Ames is a dick. He’s gropey.”

  “Really?” asked Radar. “I wouldn’t have thought that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, would you. He’s one of these guys who make it look like they don’t know what they’re doing. But he knows.”

  Radar gave Kadyn a long, searching look. To the unschooled eye, she looked exactly as she represented herself to be: a young girl pushing through post-adolescence with insolent insecurity, heavy mascara, and perhaps a fantasy con scenario nurtured by too many viewings of The Sting and Ocean’s Eleven. Could she know what the con life really entailed? Could anyone at that age? But she met his gaze frankly and openly, communicating this much: that she knew enough about herself and enough about them to make an informed choice. “We’ll let you know, Kadyn. In the meantime, stay under Vic’s wing. He seems to have room for you there.”

  “Indeed I do,” said Vic.

  “Okay, then,” Allie suddenly said with a sigh. She patted her belly. “Baby tired, we go now.”

  They drifted to their various parts of Austin: Allie and Radar back to the Doke, Vic and Kadyn to her place in SoCo, and Woody to a Home Sweet Suites near the airport. Radar felt a pang as he parted company from his dad. On the one hand, Woody was back in his life, so yay. On the other hand, the old jackalope was in deep mufti as usual. And wasn’t that their coconspiracy? To stay within roles with each other? Wasn’t time inside these roles a lost opportunity to be with each other for real? And what about little Fundament? Didn’t she deserve a genuine grandpa, not someone so permanently on script? Masks were no good for the sort of daughter Radar wanted to raise. He wanted her loved ones to be real. Real with her, real with each other. Real, like he was real with Allie.

  Real enough for him to say to her as they drove home, “I have to take a shot at Sarah.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Engage her. See if I can flip her. I haven’t tried it yet. I think it needs to be tried.”

  “I don’t disagree,” said Allie, “but how far are you willing to go?” She turned to face him. “I really don’t want you sleeping with her.”

  “I don’t want me sleeping with her, either. I want me hearing how Ames plans to play us.”

  “It could backfire.”

  “Put him on a jealousy tip?”

  “Or a turf one. That’s you horning in. On his gal or his business, either way it’s still horning in. It might piss him off.”

  “Well, good. He could use some pissing off. The time to pussyfoot has passed.”

  “‘The time to pussyfoot?’” She mocked a swoon, “Oh, Mr. Hoverlander, you do turn a phrase. Maybe you should write a book, too.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Radar. “Only kids’ stories for me.” He playfully patted her belly, but as he did so he thought about Ames and those pictures, and a shiver ran through him. That was some kind of stalker shit at minimum. Up till now, Radar had thought this was a straight money touch. But if so, what was with the pictures? How long had Ames been on their trail? No wait, wait, Radar, don’t assume. Just because he has pictures doesn’t mean he took pictures. Maybe he’s collected them since we all crossed paths. That sounded plausible to Radar—but he couldn’t make himself believe it. It seemed clear to him that Ames had intended all along for their paths to cross.

  They rolled through the back of the Doke and approached their building from behind. I thought this was a redoubt, thought Radar. Now it seems like a trap. What kind of mess have I made?

  “Radar, where are you?”

  “Blaming myself for the world.”

  “Really? Me too.”

  “You? Why?”

  “Over Ames. Over what I just remembered or just let myself remember.” Radar didn’t say anything. He waited for her to continue. “We fought for a seat on a bus once. I belittled him pretty good. It was just one of those moments where you’re a harasshole because you can be. Because even though I was a swollen, sullen, man-hating self-loather, I knew I was still hotter than anything a smelly hippie could hope to have. So I put him down. Maybe I pissed him off, I don’t know. I wasn’t even sure it was him until Kadyn mentioned Green Girl, because—” Allie stopped short. “Radar! I met him again. At that expo. He wanted to b
uy me a drink.”

  “You shot him down?”

  “No doubt in flames. Back then I chased everyone away.”

  “I’m glad you got over that.” He patted her belly again, and this time through his unborn child he felt his own strength. At the same time, this new information caused him to recalibrate his take on Ames. He now saw Adam’s true-believer gloss not as a temporary veneer applied for this snuke or any snuke, but rather a permanent condition, and one that precisely defined the distance Ames kept from himself. Kadyn’s comment about his wandering hands certified him as the kind of creep who doesn’t know he’s being one. The pictures, though, the pictures changed everything. They made the situation more dangerous. But how dangerous? Run away dangerous—the ol’ shade ’n’ fade if it’s not too late? No. Ames found them once, he could find them again. So what about the opposite tack? Just confront him, lay out everything they know with a great, thumping, “See, dude? We’re onto you.”

  And then what? Call the cops? Swing a baseball bat? How do any of those moves do anything but bounce off Adam’s bland do-gooder docket? And with that, Radar realized that the pictures didn’t really change anything after all. I still have to get to the bottom of him. I still have to make him show his hand. Until I hear who Ames thinks Ames is, I’m nowhere.

  And nowhere is no place for a father-to-be to be.

  A Captain Kirk Kiss

  On Monday morning, Radar and Allie had a fight about, of all things, baby names.

  From out of nowhere (from a particularly irrational place, thought Radar) Allie had thrown a moratorium on the game that he, and he thought she, had been enjoying so much. She had decided that it was bad luck to inflict names, even highly speculative or colorful or imaginative or ridiculous ones, especially ridiculous ones, on the unborn. “I don’t want to jinx him,” she’d said, and Radar had joked, “How about Jinx, Jinx Hoverlander?” Well, the trouble with too far is you never know you’re going till you’ve gone, and Allie’s stormy cold shoulder informed him that he had. Considering what was coming up with Sarah, he wondered if she had picked the fight just to put herself in a verisimilitude mood. He hoped so. Otherwise it was just her being mad at him and that was never big fun.