Up in the Air (9 page)

In science, an experiment is meaningless unless its outcome is repeatable. I feel the same way about restaurants and eating out. Unless a dish can be made to taste as good no matter where it’s prepared, LA or Little Rock, it doesn’t entice me. I like successful formulas. I like a meal that’s been tested and perfected, allowing me to order and relax, knowing the chef won’t use me as a guinea pig for his new fruit salsa or what have you. In fact, I prefer establishments that don’t need chefs because their training programs are so deft that anyone off the street can run the kitchen. That’s why I’m glad that Art chose All-Star Steaks. It’s one of the five or six chains that I depend on, whose systematic comforts always satisfy. Glass-cased sports memorabilia line the walls and the waitresses flounce around in shorts and jerseys as though they’ve just risen from bed with athlete boyfriends. They’ll have a lawsuit over that, eventually, but until that time,
I’m theirs.

We choose a booth of orange textured vinyl stamped with various major league insignias. My challenge is to find a way to ditch Art without endangering my MythTech reference. Three hours from now there’s a flight to Ontario, whose local Homestead is granting double miles due to a construction inconvenience. Two nights there will help me recapture some lost momentum.

We order two of All-Star’s signature cocktails: jumbo martinis garnished with cherry tomatoes. To slip away, I’ll need to get Art tipsy without going sloppy myself. I’m good at this. One technique is to fill my cheek with alcohol, pretend to swallow, then spit into a napkin during a mock sneeze. Also, if the drinks are clear, I can secretly dump them in my water glass, then carelessly knock it over once it’s full. I’m slightly ashamed that I’m not man enough to declare my limits as a drinker, but since no one has ever caught me at my tricks, it’s a private shame, easy to deny, like the way I sometimes leave pairs of soiled boxer shorts in hotel room trash cans for the maid.

Art gnaws a breadstick. He’s breaking my heart today. Men venture everything when they start a business, not just money. Take my father’s case. Before he went into propane, he fixed machinery, making field calls for a John Deere dealer. Sometimes, during the harvest, he’d work all night, driving with his tools from farm to farm, rescuing fouled combines and frozen balers. He took caffeine pills to stay awake and lived on chocolate milk. Then one morning he told us he’d had enough and went to bed for a week. My mother sobbed. What finally brought him downstairs was a phone call informing him of a business loan approval. He put on a tie for the first time since his wedding and walked downtown to sign the documents. When he got back, in a new GMC diesel whose doors and tailgate were stenciled with his name, he was a different person, more distinct. The effect lasted years. He walked in his own spotlight.

The steaks are taking longer than they should, considering that we both ordered them rare. While we wait, Art dissects my credit card difficulties, displaying a knowledge of fraud I’m not surprised by. What I’m up against, he theorizes, is not a lone criminal but a far-flung gang.

“The way they work, they steal your info and only have a day or two to use it, so they set up a rolling purchase schedule. Simultaneous charges in different towns would raise red flags, so they space their buys apart, which makes the computers think you’re on a trip. People spend more money when they’re traveling, so when the charges start to pile up, the software that’s supposed to catch the pattern doesn’t kick in right away.”

“You know all this . . . ?”

Art eats his cherry tomato, blocking his mouth with a napkin to catch the juice spurt. “There’s things you never knew about my restaurants. They had a cash side that wasn’t on the books. The standard shenanigans. Everybody does them.”

“I guess I’m sorry to hear that. Cash corrupts, though.”

“I wanted to make it honestly. I tried. I read all those books, the ones by guys like you.
Overcoming No. Get Real, Get Rich
.”

“Don’t judge the good stuff by the trash,” I say.

“Visualization. Time analysis. Quality Cubes. I tried all kinds of crap. That thing where you get all your workers in one room and sit completely quiet for eight hours, then write down your thoughts and put them in a box that you never open. All those tricks. And still I was losing money. Losing people. Getting certified letters from state commissions saying so-and-so filed a complaint because you fired her for being queer, when the truth was she had her fingers in the till. And all the inspections. Day and night inspections. Your handicapped toilet needs moving—a thousand bucks. That table’s blocking an exit, pay this fine. Health cops, fire cops, tax cops. Total hell. Everyone poking you with his little pitchfork.”

“In management we call them ‘psychic costs.’ ” I glare at the waitress to hurry her along.

“Ryan, you don’t know. I’m sorry, you just don’t. Why is our food late, you’re wondering? I’ll tell you. Because the lowlife overseeing the kitchen ducked out an hour ago to score some dope and got knifed in the arm behind the Stockman’s Club, forcing the owner to call in some old wino he fired last week for coughing up green phlegm into the coleslaw. Human Resources? Try human refuse.”

To calm Art, I confess to being a bystander who’s never actually run a business himself. It’s too late, though, Art’s off, and even the arrival of a plate-filling T-bone smothered in onion nuggets and floating in au jus can’t stem his bitterness. If this mood hangs on, I don’t dare leave—he’ll be on the line to MythTech first thing tomorrow, slandering me to the skies. My only hope is that he’ll collapse in the next half hour or so. The water trick, due to Art’s keen gaze, is out, though, and I’ve already used the napkin trick. I’ll pay the bartender to pour a bomb and make mine a tonic water.

“Full bladder,” I say.

“Me too.”

I’m startled—joint toilet trips just don’t happen with men. Art is even lonelier than I thought.

The side-by-side urinals are filled with ice cubes, a touch I’ve never had properly explained to me. Holding himself with one hand, Art tips his head back and shakes out his Samson locks. I clench. Can’t pee.

“Let’s hit the Mustang. It’s a rip-off joint, but they fly in their girls from the leading beach resorts. My steak’s a joke. It’s like chewing a catcher’s glove.”

“Mine’s fine. Let’s stay for another drink or two.”

“Can’t now. I’ve got a picture in my head.”

Art covers the meal with two fifties from his money clip. There are money-clip men and there are wallet men. Money-clip men overtip for even poor service, carry only the freshest currency, and they don’t end an evening until they’ve spent their roll. I’m stuck in Reno. The only way to make Ontario would be to fly to LAX and drive, but I don’t feel up to freeway traffic.

The lights of the Strip rake our faces with bars of color. A cowboy in the doorway of a pawnshop flicks a lit cigar butt at our feet that skips into the street beneath a limo with vanity license plates:
LTHL DOS
. I step on a wet wad of chewing gum, remove it, then promptly step on another one that’s stickier. A casino barker costumed as a leprechaun but far too stout for the outfit’s emerald tights hands us coupons good for two free spins on something called the Wheel O’ Dreams. We pass.

“An hour. That’s all I have left in me this evening.”

“That’s fine,” Art says. “I’ll probably end up in the VIP room, tied to a water pipe with a sequined thong.”

I venture a focus word I’ve had on file. Use them or lose them. “You old sybarite.”

The club is set up as a lounge, no stage, no spotlights, just a maze of tables and leather sofas packed in so tight that the dancers and cocktail girls have to step sideways, brushing hips and nipples, when they pass each other on their rounds. Art tunnels ahead of me through the blue smoke to a spot in the back screened off by potted trees with leaves the shape and size of human hands. We sit, and I feel like a hunter in a blind, hidden but with a full view of the field. The women are a cut above, Art’s right; they look cool-to-the-touch, both healthy and intelligent. I can see Art growing anxious as one approaches. He thumbs a couple of breath mints off a roll and chews them hard to release the active ingredients.

Me, I’m not tempted. As a younger man I made the mistake of talking to a stripper, in depth and at length, about her finances. Her income shocked me. It was double mine. She claimed to be saving for college, but when I pressed her I learned that she didn’t even have a bank account and supported not one but two delinquent boyfriends. I didn’t feel sorry for her, I felt insulted. There I was, the sort of clean achiever this beautiful girl should consider marrying, but instead she was shaking me down for twenties to lavish on my Darwinian inferiors.

The girl settles onto Art’s lap and starts her act, gripping the back of his chair to brace herself and arching her lovely, articulated spine. On her shoulder a tattooed daisy spreads its petals. I look away, but Art wants to keep on talking.

“I have an idea if I get out of restaurants. It’s like a record or book club, but with power tools. April, you get a cordless drill. May, a reciprocal saw. If you don’t want it, you have to ship it back. You know how that works. People can’t be bothered. The stuff piles up. It’s automatic billing, so they’re screwed.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m leaving ISM, Art. I might not be available to help you.”

“Just give me hope. —Not so hard there, hon. I’ll rupture.”

I’m duty-bound to restore Art’s optimism, to point him toward new horizons. I have a thought. At GoalQuest on Thursday I’m meeting Tony Marlowe, one of the industry’s highest-earning motivators, who I knew through some friends before he got so huge. He’d come up through the speed-reading racket in California, where he played all the planned retirement communities, but left to build team skills in greater Silicon Valley. The man’s pure nitro, a self-made high school dropout whose private sessions turn CEOs to jelly. A few hours with Marlowe, on me—that’s what I’ll offer.

“I’m writing something on a card here, Art. Don’t lose it. This is a onetime-only deal.”

I wedge the card under an ashtray, and then I spot him: the TV financial advisor from the flight being worked over by a skinny redhead not twenty feet from my table. His hair is different, blow-dried into waves, but I recognize the noble forehead. I swallow and there’s a crackling in my ears as the girl wraps one leg around his crooked old back and bends him at the waist into her chest. His head flops like a corpse’s. His mouth drops open. There’s a flash of gray tongue, of fillings. I shut my eyes. When I open them, its worse. The girl’s fingers are buried in his wiry sideburns and she’s kissing his glossy bald spot, licking it. One of his hands hangs limp behind her ass, stuffed with enough cash to last the night.

I watch the old man being jostled and wrung dry. The sensation is gyroscopic, with spinning modules. There’s shock and disappointment, but that’s the least of it. It’s my confidence in Airworld that’s been undermined, my faith in the ethical bargain between passengers. If I hadn’t come to the Mustang Club tonight, my memory of our moment on the plane would have endured unchallenged and ever-golden. His mild, pious eyes. His pinstriped probity as he entertained my humble plea and sermonized on investing with a conscience. What a sham, and how demoralizing. The way I’ve lived, the way I’ve moved around, I’ve not had the luxury of double-checking what I see and hear. I have to trust. If a man who says he’s a doctor hears me cough and tells me I should go on antibiotics, I go on antibiotics. Of course I do. In Airworld honesty carries no penalty and deception has no upside. Or so I thought.

Chase Manhattan, solid as Gibraltar. Lutheran bishops. Evil NBC. This from a man who pays teenage runaways to do the watusi on his wizened johnson.

I turn to Art’s partner, who’s leaving with her money. “That old guy across the way—is he a regular?”

“I’ve seen him a couple of times. You want a show?”

I shake my head and she jiggles off into the crowd.

“You like that bird’s girl?” Art says. His nose is running. He’s fiddling with his trousers under the table. “She’s taken, it looks like.”

“That man she’s with,” I say. “Famous Wall Street bigwig, Mr. Dow. He gave me a stock idea on the plane today. I phoned it in when I landed. Six thousand bucks.”

Art watches him for a moment. “He’s hard core. His girl there’s a twisted sister. Toilet Terry. She uses guys as fire hydrants.”

“Stop.”

“She keeps an apartment over by the Hilton. She gets top dollar. Vinyl sheets, the works. If they leave through the side exit, he’s going home with her. I’ll bet he drinks it. I know a dancer here who’d tell you everything. Pay her enough and she’ll get you Polaroids.”

Art thinks I crave information about this fellow, but his secret life bores me. I’m not the bloodhound type. That’s why detective novels are lost on me. Somebody did it—that’s all I need to know. The who, the how, and the why are just details. To my mind, there’s nothing drearier than a labyrinth. It’s just a structure whose center takes time to find, but if you make an effort, you’ll find it. So? The only mysteries that interest me are, Will I land on time? Will the pilots strike? There’s enough uncertainty just moving through space.

I glance back at Wall Street, who’s sideways in his lounge chair, his head thrown back over one arm as the girl rides him. Soon, he’ll be looking right at me, upside down.

“What style of donuts?” Art asks me.

“I haven’t tasted them.”

“You up for the VIP room?”

“I have to sleep. Come to GoalQuest and meet this Marlowe. You’ll thank me, Art. And give me a nice reference if that guy calls.”

“I made that one up to get you to come out here. I was going to off myself tonight.”

“Sheer fabrication?”

“I’ve been drunk for days. I think it was.”

There—Wall Street sees me now. He seems to frown; it’s hard to read his features in reverse, with his lips where his eyebrows ought to be. Our eyes mix it up for a moment. Does he fear blackmail? I could bribe Art’s connection for all the dirt, but why? A mystery stated can be more powerful than a mystery solved, and no matter what she might tell me about this fake, he’ll never again be this vividly corrupt to me. And Art lied, too. At least he had a need.