Overkill

they’d been nothing but a polite rejoinder, her way of agreeing that trying a shoplifting case, say, or an auto theft, would likely prove a more pleasant experience than going up against each other in a murder trial.

But, being Jaywalker, at the time she’d said it, he hadn’t taken it that way at all. No, he’d heard the words Maybe some other time as a direct response to his comment about having fun together. And immediately invited his imagination to take over from there. Thus emboldened, he proceeded to do exactly what his upper brain, the one located between his ears, had managed to keep him from doing not half an hour earlier.

“Have you ever tried wearing contacts?” he distinctly heard his lower brain say.

“Why would I?” Suspiciously.

“Oh, you know. They don’t break or fog up. Less glare. Much easier on your ears and the bridge of your nose. Then there’s all that pocket space they free up. Lots of reasons.” All, of course, except the real one. But he couldn’t very well come out and say, “Because your glasses hide that pretty face of yours.” People got fired, even went to jail, these days for saying stuff like that, didn’t they?

“It wouldn’t make much sense,” she said.

Now he’d done it. Here comes the part about cancer of the cornea, he decided, or retinitis fatalis.

“They’re nothing but plain glass,” she told him. “My eyes are fine. I wear these to look older, and so people will take me more seriously. Here.” And with that she removed them and simultaneously shook her head so that her hair came free of whatever had been holding it back.

All the usually glib Jaywalker could do was gulp. And not silently, or even softly. No, this was a full-throated gulp, one that would have done a bullfrog in mating season proud.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Jaywalker, pretending to be absorbed in looking through the glasses. She was right; they were definitely nothing but plain glass.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Just releasing a bit of excess testosterone into the atmosphere. I belong to a cap-and-trade program, actually.”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” said Katherine Darcy, standing up. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Well, he’d certainly managed to screw that up, hadn’t he? He was reminded of an airline commercial he’d seen on TV not too long ago. This guy’s at a big office meeting, and he nods off. He starts dreaming about his dog, petting him and calling him “good boy” over and over again. He wakes up to realize he’s been saying that out loud and stroking the hair of the woman sitting next to him, while everyone else in the room is staring at him like he’s totally lost it.

“Wanna get away?” the announcer asks.

9

FRANKIE THE BARBER

Jaywalker wasn’t exactly a white-knuckle flyer. The fact was, the prospect of dying didn’t bother him all that much. It was something he knew he’d get around to sooner or later, so he didn’t spend much time worrying about it. That said, traveling by plane didn’t come easily to him. Days before his scheduled departure, he’d begin making exhaustive lists of everything he’d need to bring and do. The night before, he’d lay everything out on the floor and then pack obsessively in the smallest bag that could possibly hold his things. If that bag were to prove insufficient, he would move up a size, and he’d been known to go through three or four in the process. The next morning-he booked only early flights, because the equipment was always there, rather than being expected momentarily from Boston or Philadelphia-he’d set out for the airport neurotically early. He liked to allow enough time to get lost on the way, suffer not one but two blowouts, have trouble finding an empty spot in the long-term parking lot, discover that the shuttle bus wasn’t running, encounter record-breaking lines at the security checkpoint, and be pulled out, grilled and strip-searched as a suspected terrorist.

The result, of course, was that he invariably ended up sitting for long hours at the gate as earlier flights arrived, unloaded, refueled, reloaded and departed. But that, too, Jaywalker had planned for, having brought along the morning’s New York Times, the latest unread issue of the New Yorker, the most recent Sunday Magazine section crossword puzzle, and- should all those diversions prove insufficient-a paperback book or two for good measure.

Today, finally, he settled into his window seat, arranged his reading material and belted himself in. Outside, a thin freezing rain was falling, a mid-December harbinger of the coming winter. He smiled at his good fortune in having picked a good day to be leaving. Just then the loudspeaker system crackled, and he looked up, afraid he might miss some safety equipment demonstration or announcement of great importance. Like he was on the wrong plane, for example, or he’d left his headlights on in the parking lot.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome aboard Southwest Airlines flight 562, nonstop from Newark to sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico.”

Wanna get away?

Most arriving visitors to the island make their first stop whatever hotel they’re staying at. A few melanomaphiles head directly to the beach. Still, others make a detour into Old San Juan for a picturesque lunch or dinner, depending on the time of day, or a bit of shopping.

Jaywalker, unsurprisingly enough, did none of those things. Instead, he took a cab downtown to the large white government building that housed the Commonwealth’s division of the United States Department of Education, which he knew from his Internet search had jurisdiction over the licensing of barbers and cosmeticians. According to Jeremy’s best estimate, Frankie the Barber was in his fifties. And having once been given a ride home by Frankie, Jeremy distinctly remembered the vehicle, a beat-up old minivan. Even allowing for a significant margin of error in the age-guessing game, those two pieces of information suggested to Jaywalker that Francisco Zapata was too young to retire and spend the rest of his days sitting by the pool. And if he had to keep working to support himself and perhaps a family, as well, what better place was there for him to have started than the one where they issued barbers’ licenses?

So Jaywalker started there, too.

And immediately hit pay dirt.

An hour later he had the name of a shop opened just two months earlier, a street address, the number of a provisional license, and a high level of confidence that he was hot on the trail of the very same Francisco Zapata he’d come looking for. The name of the shop? Frankie y Amigos.

By seven-thirty that evening, he’d found Frankie, interviewed him, handed him a subpoena of dubious legitimacy and extracted from him a solemn promise to honor it. From there Jaywalker took a cab to his hotel, checked in and made it down to the beach. To be sure, it was getting seriously dark by that time, and all of the turistas had long since departed for happy hour, dinner, dancing or other activities. The only remaining signs of life were the seagulls, the sand crabs, a toothless old man drinking cerveza out of a bottle and from time to time casting a line into the surf, and a couple of giggling teenagers making out furiously under a blanket.

Perfect.

10

MIRANDA