Mr. Reeves' eyes drifted off her, and he said, 'He's perfect.'
He walked toward his office but abruptly turned back.
'Call Darrell. Tell him to have the car out front in ten minutes.'
Doris Sullivan picked up the phone but thought, Perfect for what?
FIVE
Andy was in no hurry to get back to the office. He never had appointments; his clients just dropped in (usually right after having been ticketed) or left their tickets and $100 bills with Ramon. And Britney's $200 was burning a hole in his pocket. So he had decided to eat lunch at Whole Foods, check out the bikes at REI, and then pay a visit to his mother.
He turned the Huffy west on Sixth Street at the Texas Lottery Headquarters-gambling was illegal in Texas unless the profits went to the state-and gave a wide berth to a mentally ill man wandering aimlessly and obviously talking to God because no one else was listening. A block down, he waved at a pretty young woman in a blue dress pedaling a bike. The breeze blew her dress up to her thighs; she had nice thighs.
Live-music clubs, shot bars, pubs, and lounges lined both sides of Sixth Street from the interstate to Congress Avenue-places like Bourbon Rocks, Blind Pig, Agave, Pure, and Peckerheads-and had earned Austin top ranking as the hardest drinking city in America. The street sat silent and seedy-looking that morning, but nights had become notoriously raucous with punks, panhandlers, and binge-drinking college kids puking on the sidewalks. God, those were the days. Sixth Street had seemed sane back when Andy was one of those UT students; at twenty-nine, it seemed insane. At his age, he just wanted to drink Coronas at Guero's.
He was getting old.
He rode past the five-star Driskill Hotel and stood on the pedals across Congress Avenue, hoping not to get nailed by a speeder running a red light. Once on the other side, Andy breathed a sigh of relief. Sixth Street sloped down from there, so he coasted through the intersections at Colorado, Lavaca, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Nueces, and Rio Grande-more Texas rivers. Beads of sweat were rolling down his body by the time he turned into the parking lot at the Whole Foods eighty-thousand-square-foot flagship store and corporate headquarters, which occupied an entire city block at Lamar Boulevard.
Whole Foods gave the slackers of Austin hope: If a twenty-five-year-old college dropout and his twenty-one- year-old girlfriend could open a small organic grocery store in 1978 and build it into an international organic food conglomerate with three hundred stores and $7 billion in revenues in thirty years, couldn't Andy Prescott be successful enough one day to rent a decent place in SoCo and own a top-of-the-line trail bike? Okay, just the bike then.
Was that asking too much from life?
Andy parked the Huffy at the Bicycle Pit-Stop, stuffed his coat and tie into the backpack, and hung the pack on the handlebars. He walked past the outdoor patio that featured a man-made stream coursing through the slate surface and entered the food court through sliding glass doors. He proceeded directly to the breakfast taco counter and ordered his usual from Team Member Brad (a fifteen-year member sporting a white chef's coat, a green Whole Foods cap, clear sterile gloves, and a $500,000 net worth from his company stock options): scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese, and refried beans on wheat tortillas with enough salsa to clear out his sinuses.
' Dos.'
'You need one for Max?'
'He's lunching at Guero's today.'
And by now napping on Guero's front porch. Andy took the tacos from Team Member Brad, stepped past the Gelato counter to the day2day juice bar, and ordered a Jumping Grasshopper smoothie from Team Member Charlene: wheat grass, lemon, lime, apple juice, pineapple, banana, and fat-free plain yogurt, his personal added ingredient. Breakfast tacos and a smoothie: his version of a power lunch for under $10. He returned to the Gelato bar and sat on a stool with his back to the counter.
Whole Foods had been created as an alternative to the corporate grocery stores of America; the original name was 'Safer Way' and back then the little store had catered to the hippies of Austin, like Andy's mother, who wanted whole, organic, non-corporate food. Fast forward thirty years and Whole Foods was now much more than an alternative grocery store for hippies. It was an alternative lifestyle. A way of life.
And its customers lived the life.
They were young and fit, hip and organic, green and liberal, educated and employed. But mostly fit. Men and women, but Andy didn't come for the men. He came for the women. Young, incredibly fit women. Lean and toned, muscular and tanned, the hard female bodies of Austin worked out at Gold's Gym and hung out at Whole Foods, their awesome anatomies tightly encased in segmented polyurethane, a magnificent long-chain synthetic polymer fiber known as Spandex. Tube tops, tank tops, short-shorts, leggings- God, the Spandex. These girls did not put personal ads in the Chronicle. They came to Whole Foods.
Whole Foods girls were the finest and fittest females in Austin, Texas.
Looking at the girls now, Andy Prescott was again moved to offer a silent thanks to Joseph C. Shivers, the DuPont scientist who had invented Spandex in 1959. He had dedicated an entire decade of his life for the betterment of mankind. Or at least man.
Andy finished off one taco, sucked down half the smoothie, and then dove into the second taco. He loved to sit right there in the food court and girl watch, but there was one distinct downside: spotting a law school classmate who had done better. Which is to say, any law school classmate. Like Richard Olson. Rich. Which he was. Pale-skinned and soft-bodied, he looked like the tax lawyer he was. Rich was talking to two girls, who were hanging on his every word and sidling close like cats rubbing against his leg- two Whole Foods girls flirting with Rich Olson, the bastard. Andy shook his head.
What does he have that I don't?
But Andy knew the answer to his own question: a steady income. Rich had graduated at the top of their class. Four years with the biggest firm in Austin and the guy's making $250,000, driving a Porsche, living in a downtown loft, and dating beautiful girls.
Andy sucked hard on the smoothie straw and felt the heat of jealousy building inside him when a lovely vision passed a few feet in front of him. She was blonde, lean, and fit. She was wearing Spandex, but not much. She was twenty-five years old. She was Suzie.
'Hi, Suzie.'
She stopped, spun around, and assumed a perfect pose… until she saw it was just him. The pose evaporated like spit on the hot sidewalk.
'Oh. Hi, Andy.'
Suzie was the kind of girl whose engine was always idling, just waiting to be shifted into gear by a stud. Which is to say, not by Andy. He had never come close to touching her gearbox, but he never quit reaching for the stick shift. He said, 'I'm free tonight.'
'I'm not. Free. I'm a very expensive date.'
'Jeez, Suzie, you sound like a Dallas girl.'
'Andy, Austin girls are no less superficial than Dallas girls. We're just in better shape.'
Suzie was in extremely good shape. She was awesome. She looked like an airbrushed model in a magazine, but without the flaws. She was a top-of-the-line Whole Foods girl. She was digging in her waist pack. She was pulling out a familiar-looking piece of paper. She was holding it out to Andy.
'Andy, I got a speeding ticket. Fourth one this year. Can you take care of this for me?'
'Sure… for a hundred bucks. I'm not free either.'
Suzie snatched the ticket out of his hand and stormed off.
He still had his pride. Well, sort of.
Andy rode the Huffy north across Sixth Street to a large L-shaped building on the corner that housed Anthropologie, a women's clothing store, BookPeople, an independent bookstore that had achieved cult status in Austin, and Recreational Equipment Inc. He wasn't there for the blouses or the books; he was there for the bikes. He parked and went inside REI.
