“Wanted to—gave them the chance to sign the best point guard in the state of Minnesota, but they blew it.”
She smiled, blushing a little.
Jimmy again found it endearing.
“What brings you to Corpus?” she said, warming to him it seemed.
“Work related.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I used to be in the gaming industry, but I’m currently between gigs. Came down here to look for work and do some soul searching. I’m contemplating a change in scenery and thought maybe Corpus Christi would be a good place to start over.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
“Thank you.”
The girl nodded and went back to the front page of the paper, staying quiet. Then the starched waitress was sliding the Dieter’s Special in front of her and Jimmy was letting his eyes slide down to Gopher Girl’s lovely tan legs, sneaking a peek before turning back to the newsprint in front of him. He was scanning the Local News page when his eyes locked onto a headline in the bottom left corner: Abandoned van found on Gamble Gulch Road. Pulse rising, Jimmy read the blurb, found no mention of cash hidden behind the paneling or fleeing drivers, only that a computer check had turned up St. Paul, Minnesota owners the Highway Patrol was attempting to locate, adding that the van was not on any list of stolen vehicles.
Strange.
Could the article be an elaborate ruse to entice someone into claiming the van? Could be, but why sweat it? Jimmy was out of that part of it now. But he still lacked a coherent plan or direction and nothing was bubbling up from the recesses of his brain except a growing interest in Gopher Girl, currently munching daintily on a slice of lightly toasted bread. Eats like a bird, Jimmy’s dad would have said: delicate fingers holding the toast… taking tiny bites….
Jimmy removed the page with the Gamble Gulch article, folded it three times and stuffed it in the pocket of his wrinkled slacks. And turning to look out the front window saw a wrecker pulling in across the street. Soon the pickup truck would be at police impound and his fingerprints would be rushing along the database and making a run through the National Crime Information Computer.
They’d find nothing. But the shit was still troubling. Pretty girl sitting next to him made him feel better though. He wanted to linger a little longer next to Gopher Girl, maybe find out her name, but the damn chick was taking forever to knock off her diet breakfast and his own food was rumbling inside him like a simmering volcano, aided handily by the excess coffee he’d consumed while stalling.
Aware of his lack of a home base and totally unaware of the availability of public facilities in the area, Jimmy anxiously scanned the interior of the Sand Dollar Café, finally spotting a sign on the back wall with an arrow and the word Restrooms. Rising, feeling stiff, Jimmy glanced down to see if Gopher Girl was watching. She wasn’t. He went to the rear of the building in a hurry, his disappointment at leaving the pretty one’s side overcome by the immediate demands of nature.
Coming out of the men’s room Jimmy saw only the empty stool, the sweetie gone from her place. Then he caught a glimpse of her through the café window, pretty blond crossing the street toward the motel, nice wiggle on her tushy. The Ford truck was gone from the parking lot now but the cops were still lingering over there; some of them checking out Gopher Girl’s cute rear as she jiggled through the motel door.
So much for that, Jimmy thought, feeling let down and anxious. Breakfast would cut his dwindling cash reserves by ten bucks, tip included. Jimmy was always a generous tipper, believing those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder needed all the help they could get, not considering that he was currently languishing somewhere below the bottom rung.
Jimmy picked up his check from the counter, saw the waitress watching him, arms folded across her chest, dude at the register also eyeballing him. Suspicious bastards. Jimmy flashed his best “Minnesota Nice” smile, left three ones next to his plate on a six forty-nine bill, and went up front feeling light and airy. Which seemed odd.
Stepping out into the sunshine Jimmy felt the heat on his chest, caffeine in his bloodstream churning out perspiration and reminding him he hadn’t bathed in a long time. With all the water around here, shouldn’t be a problem, eh? Get a bar of soap at a convenience store and hit the Gulf. Jimmy didn’t know how well soap worked in saltwater, but screw the small stuff. It was only a few years ago he was down here with his junior college basketball team and he remembered seeing outdoor showers at the beachfront condo complexes. Tar balls in the sand—that’s what they got on the beaches down here—and condo owners didn’t want the gunk tracked into the buildings, thus the showers. Manager dudes wouldn’t begrudge him the cleaning off of a little sodium, would they?
Besides the soap he needed some suntan oil to keep from frying like cheap bacon in the South Texas sun. Ain’t it funny how something you’ve been dreaming about for a half a year can turn on you so fast. Jimmy was one of the fools on his juco hoops team that laid out too long on his first day down here and his skin turned the color of a lobster, made him sick with burn. But after working on it with the tanning butter for a few days he got to looking like a local, Mexican even. Same look he was going for now. Get the deep tan and keep quiet and get lost in the crowd, not stand out like a light-skinned northerner on the run from other light-skinned northerners, Sam Arndt being the exception with his olive-toned pelt.
Jimmy watched the last two cop cruisers pull out of the Bayside and roll away, Jimmy thinking they were on the way to the doughnut shop after a hard morning of guarding an empty truck. Jimmy carried a sizable disrespect for authority, going all the way back to eighth grade and the time the principal ordered him to the front of the auditorium, made him stand up there like a douchebag while the former-paratrooper-turned-school-administrator harangued the student body about lunchroom vandalism and rowdiness, even showering the auditorium floor with a box full of bent and broken cafeteria silverware. Real dramatic gesture—bogus, but dramatic—and it put the whole school on edge.
But Jimmy hadn’t bent any forks or done anything like that. Nothing deserving of being put on display in front of the whole school, anyway. He was only guilty of reflecting the auditorium’s ceiling lights off the flat surface of his imitation-silver ring, the glare hitting the principal’s wild eyes as the man stood down there, ranting. Old Miller Ferris blew a gasket, the man raving and spitting, just because the reflection from Jimmy’s ring was flashing in his eyes. Hardly anything for Christ sake. And then the four-eyed prick ordered Jimmy down to the front of the auditorium to stand as an example of what happened when you messed with authority in this school.
Walking out of the auditorium that day pissed off and embarrassed, a rebel was born. From that moment on Jimmy became a pesky irritant toting baggage filled with resentment, bordering on hatred, with a desire to make life more difficult for those who engaged in intimidation and bullyboy behavior. He seldom missed an opportunity to slag off the powers that be.
Smiling to himself Jimmy flashed back to a time umpiring a city-league softball game when a local police officer got in his face disputing a call. Jimmy wasted no time giving the cop the heave-ho and may have smirked a tad as he did it. But, after a summer of numerous parking tickets and several squad-car follows, Jimmy concluded that stealth was the way to go, having seen too many instances of police violence on helpless drunks and those who stood up for their rights in the wrong places. Yeah, a wise mouth can easily lead to a bruised head. And sometimes you just have to walk away and keep the trap shut, hard as it may be.
Jimmy took one last glance at the motel entrance, hoping to see Gopher Girl striding over to invite him for a day at the beach. But the sweat trickling down his ribcage seemed to signal the remoteness of this happening and sent him plodding down the block in the direction of a sign with a giant seahorse on it: Discount Beachware and Accessories.
Going in the store Jimmy was thinking maybe he should call Sam again.
8
Rachel