commercial for toilet-cleaning products.
“Duuuuuuude, I’ve got pills,” Mitch taunted. “Talk to me,” he sang. “I’ll give you another piiiiiiiiiiiiill.”
Doug said nothing, but continued looking toward the TV, clearly stressed and focusing harder than ever on a foaming liquid which was making a toilet bowl so clean that it sparkled.
“Have you joined Kevin’s cult or something? Is there something going on between you two I don’t know about?”
“Nothing,” said Doug. Then he added, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ah-hah! So there is something. What don’t you want to talk about?”
“DUDE, IT’S NOTHING!” Doug yelled, and his voice was filled with such anxiety that Mitch was taken aback. Doug was so easygoing and relaxed and this outburst so uncharacteristic that Mitch instantly sensed joking about pills was not the right way to go about having this conversation. But he was also baffled. He knew both these guys pretty well and hadn’t really noticed anything unusual between them, other than Doug’s reverence. Kevin had been acting normal. For Kevin.
His head still hanging jauntily in Doug’s view of the TV screen, Mitch began to piece the situation together. Kevin had been acting normal and Doug hadn’t. Which meant that whatever it was, Kevin didn’t know about it. Doug had, therefore, done something to Kevin. What? Stolen something from him? Nah, Doug would never steal stuff. At least not by himself or from someone he knew and liked.
“Dude, did you do something to Kevin?”
Doug got up from the couch, not making eye contact. His voice was shaking slightly as he said, “We should put on suits.” Then he ran up the stairs, which was also uncharacteristic. For a tall, thin man, he was surprisingly slow moving and bursts of energy were usually signs that something was very wrong. The last time Mitch had seen Doug move very quickly was when his grandmother had suffered a heart attack.
“Hey man,” Mitch called after him. Doug was at the top of the stairs and when he turned, Mitch noticed his eyes were red rimmed as if he was going to cry. Shit, Mitch thought, something serious is going on. He decided he didn’t want to know. He reached into his pocket, pulled out all the pills, and showed the handful to Doug. “I’ll leave these here for you on the coffee table.”
Doug nodded and almost smiled in gratitude.
“Don’t overdose yourself, you pillhead.”
“I won’t.” This time he did smile. “Thanks.”
MITCH LOOKED GOOD in a suit. His suit fit well and had been expensive, over two hundred dollars, and he wore his hair in a short, military cut, as did many men who wore suits regularly. When he had looked at himself in the mirror before they left, he’d had the thought that, had he made different decisions with his life, this would be the way he looked every day. What decisions could he have made differently? Not smoking pot in the army would have been a start. He could have finished his six-year stint and gotten GI Bill funding to get into a real, four-year school. He could have graduated with a degree in finance and gotten a job on Wall Street or gone on to law school. He was certainly smart enough. The image of himself, crisp and professional, as he posed in front of the mirror on his way to steal a car, filled him with a sense of regret over his lost opportunities.
Doug, on the other hand, was never meant to wear a suit. His hair was long, his expression more artistic and dreamy than alert, and his “suit” was an ill-fitting sport jacket with nonmatching dress pants that he had bought at a thrift store for his grandmother’s funeral. His appearance was that of a small boy who had been dressed for church and would run off and play in mud if you didn’t keep your eyes on him. Mitch had to stop himself from wincing when he saw him.
“Dude, you need a new suit.”
“Fuck it. What’re you, like James Bond or something?”
“I’m more James Bond than you.”
“You look like…” Doug searched for a derisive comparison and found nothing.
“Good comeback,” Mitch said.
“Yeah, uh, eat me.”
“Good comeback again. You’re like Oscar Wilde with this shit.”
Before the conversation could deteriorate into abuse and cursing there was a knock on the door. It was Kevin. It was Ferrari time.
THE PLAN REQUIRED that Kevin park the pickup out of sight of the restaurant and, as soon as Doug and Mitch were in the Ferrari, pull out onto the gravel road and lead them to the drop-off point. Kevin couldn’t park his pickup in the parking lot because one of the valets might think it looked suspicious and take down his license number. So the pickup was parked about a hundred yards away, on a small gravel access road that led to a now defunct quarry. The minute a Ferrari pulled into the lot, Doug and Mitch were to call Kevin and he would drive back out to the road. Doug and Mitch were to stride over to the Ferrari and, bold and unobtrusive in their business suits, drive it out of the parking lot to the road, where Kevin would be waiting.
What the plan hadn’t taken into account was the fact that to get to their stakeout point from the pickup, Doug and Mitch had already had to walk through a forest in their business suits, meaning their dress shoes were caked with freezing mud. They had also neglected to consider that business suits were not very warm. So while Kevin, fully dressed for the weather in a heavy down jacket and blue jeans, was waiting in the truck for a cell phone call alerting him that a Ferrari was present, Doug and Mitch were standing behind a tree, freezing, with ice forming on their feet.
“Dude, this sucks,” said Doug.
Mitch had taken to the work. There was a lot to be said for working outdoors. He had been enjoying the adventure of it, the concealment, which gave the mission an air of great importance. Who concealed themselves if their work was unimportant? Then Doug had ruined the moment by complaining.
“It’s cold,” Mitch agreed. He had brought with him a cheap pair of opera glasses, which had been in the apartment when they had moved in. He put them up to his eyes and examined the parking lot, which was perfectly visible with the naked eye.
“Dude, do you really need those?”
“It’ll give us more time. To call Kevin. With these, I can see a Ferrari the minute it comes up the drive.”
“Whatever. I can’t feel my feet.”
“Why don’t you go wait in the truck with Kevin?”
Doug was quiet for a second. “No. Then you’ll talk shit about me, about how I didn’t help.”
“These things are cool,” said Mitch, ignoring him and holding up the opera glasses. “You can see the hostess through the window. She’s hot.”
“I don’t care,” said Doug.
“Dude, if you’re gonna be a bitch, seriously, why don’t you go wait in the truck?”
They froze and ducked as they heard the noise of an approaching car. Mitch put the opera glasses up to his face, but they had fogged over. He polished them with his wrist as a car came into the parking lot and pulled up beside the little valet hut. It was a BMW. Mitch looked at it through the glasses and said, “BMW.”
“Dude,” Doug said, shivering. “I can see that from here.” They watched as the valet parked it about three spaces from the door. Somebody was apparently paying a valet to walk eight feet. Even if it had been a Ferrari, it was parked so close to the valet booth that the valet would notice anyone who approached it, and he would be sure to notice two half-frozen, wet creatures with their feet caked in mud emerge from the woods and get into it.
“Dude, this ain’t gonna work,” said Doug.
Mitch was surveying the situation like an embattled paratroop commander, his breath frosting in the air as he swung the opera glasses back and forth across the parking lot. Doug asked idly what the fuck he was looking at. He had to admit, Doug had a point. “It’s not gonna work unless the parking lot is full,” he said.
“These business suits were a bad idea,” Doug said.
Yes, Mitch had to admit, they were. The deception of wearing business suits was all well and good but after you had been crouching in a wintry, outdoor environment for several hours, a business suit just made you look more conspicuous. All soiled and muddy and coming out of the woods in suits, they would look more like survivors of a plane crash than jaunty guests heading into the Eden Inn. And besides, they were freezing.
They knocked on the window of the pickup. The truck was idling and Kevin was sitting in the warm cab reading the paper, a steaming thermos of cocoa in his hand.
“You comfortable enough?” asked Mitch as Kevin rolled the window down. “Need, like, a foot rub or something?”
“What’s up, jerkoff?”
“We’re scrapping the plan,” said Mitch. “This business suit bullshit is ridiculous. If I’m waiting in a bush all night, I need to be dressed for the weather.”
“Y-Y-Yeah,” shivered Doug.
“We’re going for speed not deception,” said Mitch, his paratroop commander persona returning. “There’re two ways we can do this. One, deception, where we get in the door by looking like we belong there, or two, speed. Just spring out of the forest and take the goddamned Ferrari while the valets are busy. What’re they gonna do? Leap in front of it to save the car? Then we speed off.”
“We decided this,” said Doug.
“Besides, look at him,” said Mitch, pointing at Doug, who was shivering and wet, his soaked long hair clinging to his cheeks. “He looks even creepier than usual.”
Kevin looked at Doug. “All right,” he said with a nod. Doug’s appearance was enough to win the argument. These two were never going to pass for business people, or even people who had any business in the parking lot of the Eden Inn. He leaned over and opened the passenger door and they got in.
“We’re going commando,” said Mitch. “Comfortable, warm clothes we can move fast in.”
“Doesn’t that mean you’re not wearing underwear?” asked Doug.
“What?”
“Going commando.”
“No, it means quick and well prepared. And dressed for the damned weather.”
“I think it means no underwear,” said Kevin.
“Bullshit. I never heard that.”
