No Relation (39 page)

“Good luck,” I said to Mario as a clipboard-bearing examiner
approached. “Try to stay calm and don’t forget to check your mirrors.”

Mario nodded. He had his game face on.

I sat in the waiting room and resisted the temptation to watch out the window as Mario and the examiner pulled out of the parking lot and onto a very busy street. I waited for the sounds of squealing tires or crunching metal, but I heard nothing. I texted Hat to make sure all was ready. He confirmed it was.

I thought about Marie while I waited. She’d picked me up at the airport when I’d returned from Chicago. We talked like we’d been best friends for years. She wanted all the gory details on the Henderson Watt flame-out. She was even more interested in Sarah’s great success. They’d become quite good friends. I still wasn’t writing but I was feeling better about it, well, about everything, than I had in ages.

Twenty-five minutes after Mario and clipboard guy departed, they drove back into the parking lot. Mario was still driving. That was a good sign. My eyes scoured the car’s exterior and it still looked unblemished. That was also a good sign. Finally, the examiner was conscious and did not look as if he’d just finished a ride on Space Mountain at Disneyland. In fact, he looked quite calm. I suppose he might have popped a Quaalude halfway into the test to make it through, but I didn’t think so. Mario parked the car in the same spot we’d pulled into before and stopped. I watched through the window and could see the examiner bobbing his head as he went through the assessment.
Mario was nodding his head in return. Neither looked agitated, although I certainly was. Come on, let’s go. The suspense was killing me. Finally, after what seemed like about half an hour, but was really only about ten minutes, they both got out and walked into the building. The examiner shook Mario’s hand, which I thought was kind of formal for a driver’s test, and then disappeared through the door that said “
DMV
Staff Only” stencilled on the glass.

As soon as the door closed, Mario started jumping up and down, and turning pirouettes in the air, in a good way. Then he bopped his way over to me and hugged me, singing a new song he seemed to have written for the occasion. I thought the lyrics were a tad repetitive.

“I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed. Spread the good news, I passed.”

I thought he might be singing it to the tune “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” but I couldn’t really be sure. I doubt Mario was sure.

“Wooooo-hooooo, Mario! This is great news. Congratulations!” I said.

“I can’t believe it. I passed,” Mario said. “Fifth time lucky!”

“See, I knew you’d pass,” I said.

Actually, I knew no such thing. Perhaps the examiner was so grateful to make it back to the
DMV
in one piece that he passed him so he’d never have to ride with Mario ever again.

“So now what?” I asked. “What’s the deal?”

“I have to wait in the next room until they call my name and
hand over my driver’s licence. It won’t take long,” Mario replied. “Thanks, Hem. I mean it. Without you and Hat, I never would have passed. I owe you big-time.”

“No worries. You were ready. And you passed,” I said. “You earned it.”

As soon as Mario disappeared into the other room, I texted Hat the phrase “Green Light.”

In time, Mario strutted back into the waiting room holding his driver’s licence out in front of him in both hands as if it were a gold bar. I got up to meet him. He showed me the licence. In the photo, Mario had an almost giddy look on his face.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

We walked back out to the drop-off zone adjacent to the parking lot. I put my hand on Mario’s shoulder.

“Hang on a second, Mario. Just bear with me, but we’re going to wait here for just a minute or two. Hat is on his way.”

Mario nodded and just kind of hung around the sliding glass door for a bit. Then, right on cue, a bright red, blindingly shiny, 1980
AMC
Pacer wheeled into the parking lot and pulled to a stop in front of us. Hat jumped out. Mario was paralyzed. His mouth was open.

“Mario, you did it! I’m just so thrilled that you finally passed,” Hat said.

Just then, the driver of the car behind the Pacer leaned on his horn, and not in a happy, celebratory way. He then lowered his window, all the better for us to hear him.

“Move that hunk of junk! You can’t park it there!”

Uh oh. This was not good. Hat detonated and moved toward the driver with a look that said “homicide,” or at least, “assault causing bodily harm.”

“You shut your mouth!” Hat shrieked. “You shut it right now. This car is a classic! You are just so rude!”

As Hat’s fiery face approached, the driver thought better of a physical confrontation with an obviously deranged, well-built East Indian fellow, and closed his window. That didn’t discourage Hat from leaning down, banging the window, and continuing his tirade so that pedestrians in all neighbouring boroughs could hear him. I darted over, wrapped Hat up in a bear hug, and walked him backward away from the troublemaker’s car.

“It’s okay, Hat. The guy’s an idiot, but we don’t want any trouble, do we?” I said, keeping my voice low. “Let’s just take a few deep breaths and calm down. This is Mario’s moment, remember?”

“Oh no. I’ve done it again, haven’t I? And I’ve been so good lately, too. I really have. I’m telling you, I’ve had very few outbursts lately. Very few.”

I felt him relax so I unclenched my hands, which were still locked around his midsection. He turned back to the terrorized driver.

“I’m so sorry, sir. You caught me off guard with your rather aggressive and, to be honest, unkind remarks,” Hat explained through the still-closed window. “Please, forgive me. I have a temper that still sometimes gets away from me. Someone kind
of like you once even called me the Brown Hulk, but I don’t think I would ever get violent. No, those days are behind me.”

Hat was smiling sweetly, so the driver lowered his window just a crack.

“No problem. Just back away from my car, so I can pull out and get the hell out of your way,” he said.

“Of course. I offer you a basket of apologies for my behaviour, and this butterscotch, which I’m quite sure you’re going to like.”

Before the driver could close his window again, Hat pushed the butterscotch candy through so it landed on the guy’s lap. I grabbed Hat’s arm and pulled him back over to where Mario was circling his new car. I heard tires squeal as the big-mouth driver pulled around the Pacer and out of the parking lot.

“How did you get the car and how did you get it to look so fantastic?” Mario asked, running his over the front fender.

“It was all Hat’s idea,” I explained. “We spoke to your parents and they agreed to let Hat pick up the car, have it washed, waxed, and detailed, and then bring it over here. We just made the assumption that you were going to pass.”

Hat put on a kind of “aw shucks” look but was clearly very pleased with his stratagem.

“You guys are the best,” Mario replied. “I mean it. You’re the best. Thanks, guys. This really means a lot. Driving home in this will be the perfect end to a perfect day.”

Unless he drives into the side of the building trying to get out of the parking lot, I thought to myself.

Hat and I watched with a mixture of parental pride and terrible foreboding as Mario jumped into his beloved car, buckled up, adjusted his seat and then his mirrors, and finally reached for the key dangling from the ignition.

“Okay, just to be sure, the engine is not running now, right?” Mario asked.

He started the car, gripped the steering wheel for a few seconds, slid the gearshift into Drive, and pulled slowly away. Hat and I waved as if Mario was embarking on a continent-crossing expedition rather than the eight-block drive to his parents’ home. He made it out onto the street without any issues, although he came awfully close to a parking meter. Then I drove Hat home.

On Thursday evening, a very big moment in the life of the NameFame baseball team arrived. It was unexpected. Based on our performance in, well, in every single one of our games thus far, actually winning a game seemed in the same probability zone as spinning gold from straw. But what do I know? Mario had passed his driver’s test, so perhaps anything was possible.

We were up against the Plumbers and Pipefitters union team that currently led the league. I was not optimistic. Okay, I was downright scared of them. The smallest woman on their team was bigger than Clark Kent, the biggest guy on our team. The ten-run mercy rule was invoked in each of the first three innings. We actually brought home a run in the second inning when Jesse Owens popped a solo shot. So the score at the end of three innings was 30–1.

Let me try to save some time here. By the fourth inning, with the Plumbers and Pipefitters still at the plate, the score was
39–1. A giant of a plumber stepped into the batter’s box and took a few warm-up cuts. At least I thought he was a plumber, based on the view every spectator had of his backside partly clad in low-riding shorts. He whacked a base hit right to me in centre field and then foolishly tried to stretch a single into a double. I fielded the hot one-bouncer and managed to throw a strike to Peter Parker at second base with plenty of time to spare. The plumber slid, hard. Peter tagged him, and the umpire, who had trotted halfway to the pitcher’s mound for a better view, called him out. It wasn’t even close. I don’t know how we did it, but it all came together and we actually threw him out at second. My mouth hung open in disbelief. Then the plumber’s mouth hung open as he wailed in pain.

He hadn’t judged his sliding distance very well, and his lead left outstretched foot slammed into the base, twisting his ankle in a direction it was not designed to go. My own eyes watered at the sight of his joint instantly swelling. I turned my head away. Unfortunately, I could not turn my ears away from his unsettling shrieking as he writhed on the base path. On a positive note, his slide moved his shorts back into the traditional position, improving the view of his now-concealed backside. Eventually, he made the transition to low moans, and finally after a minute or so, silence descended on the field. This ensured that everyone in the general vicinity heard Jackie Kennedy’s voice hollering from the stands.

“Come on, big boy, walk it off and play ball!”

It took twenty minutes for the two paramedics to secure the whimpering plumber’s ankle. Then with the help of two sturdy teammates, the four of them hoisted the patient onto the stretcher. Judging from their bulging eyes, vein-rippled forearms, and red faces, they could have used a fifth set of biceps. Jesse Owens started clapping respectfully as the stretcher bumped across the infield to the waiting ambulance parked just beyond the fence. The rest of our team and the Plumbers and Pipefitters joined in the applause. The injured player, still in full grimace, raised a limp hand to acknowledge the support of his fellow players.

After the ambulance pulled out, I noticed the umpire talking to the captain of the P&P team. He nodded once and waved me in from centre field.

“This is your lucky day,” the umpire said. “They no longer have the minimum number of players required to make this game official.”

“Okay, so what does that mean, exactly?” I asked.

“It means that they have been forced to forfeit the game. They have no other choice.”

“But they’re winning thirty-nine to one!” I said.

“Yeah, they are, and it would probably be fifty or sixty to one by the end. But rules are rules. NameFame wins the game.”

“Wait. We win the game?” I asked. “We get the ‘W’?”

“You win the game.”

In light of the hefty plumber’s unfortunate injury that effectively handed us our very first victory in a game we were losing
by thirty-eight runs with a couple of innings still left to play, I gathered our team together and asked them not to celebrate openly. I just thought it would be in bad taste to start high-fiving and whooping it up while a key member of the opposing team was on his way to hospital to have his ankle set. Everyone agreed. Unfortunately, Jackie Kennedy was still in the stands and never got the memo.

“Wooooo-hoooooo! We won! We won! Oh yeah, we won!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “A sweet, sweet win! Oh yeah, oh yeah!”

We all looked over to see Jackie still shouting the glad tidings while standing on her seat doing something with her body that only vaguely resembled a victory dance. To an untrained observer, it could also have passed for a seizure of some kind. James Moriarty made his way around the screen to quell Jackie’s enthusiasm.

When we got to the bar and saw that none of the Plumbers and Pipefitters players was there, well, then we did celebrate. We finally had one in the win column. We had a great time that night. There was lots of drinking, lots of carousing, some karaoke, and even some dancing. As for proudly recounting our glorious exploits on the field, well, there wasn’t much of that. But as a team, still we were pumped about our win. Years from now, no one will remember
how
we got our first victory, just
that
we got our first victory. Okay, I’ll probably remember what happened, but a win is a win.

That night, in Marie’s apartment above Let Them Eat Cake!, she took my arm and led me to the bathroom. We stood there in front of the mirror, still a little tipsy, and smiled at each other. Then she opened the top left-hand drawer of the small vanity. It was completely empty.

“If you want it, this can be yours.”

I don’t know if it was the cumulative impact of the events of the past few weeks or whether I was just feeling a bit emotionally overwhelmed, but for the second time that night, my eyes filled up. I turned and hugged her. After the first few nights I’d stayed with Marie, I’d started carrying a toothbrush in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and slipped it in the drawer to make it official.

“Thanks. I promise I’ll always put the seat down.”

She laughed.