Reed Coleman - They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

“Jane Courteau. What can I do for you, Mr. Klein?”

“I write books, detective novels.”

“I’ve never heard of you.”

“You’re in good company. Want to see my Authors Guild card?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “I’m supposed to be a talented artist and no one’s ever heard of me. And we don’t even get cards!”

“To tell you the truth, mine’s expired. Anyway, I have some say over what the cover design of my next book will be and someone suggested one of your students as a potential artist,” I lied. “I wanted to get your opinion first before I approached the student.”

“Which student?”

“Kira Wantanabe.”

Jane Courteau had trouble concealing her dismay. It wasn’t exactly horror I saw flashing across her face, but it was more than a frown.

I played coy. “No good, huh?”

“She’s not terrible.”

“I admire a woman who rejects faint praise as an option.”

“Look, Mr. Klein, what I mean to say is that Kira is competent. I’ve had her for three terms now and she’s improved immensely, but she doesn’t have her heart in it. I don’t mean to insult her.”

“It’s our secret. No one’s been hurt. Thank you,” I gushed, barely able to contain myself.

“I have several other students I might suggest.”

“That’s okay,” I assured her as I turned to leave. “If I go to anyone, it will be directly to you. I won’t forget you.”

Walking away, I realized I must’ve seemed quite the fool to Ms. Jane Courteau. I was a fool, a very happy and relieved fool. I stopped in the student lounge and called the lab from a pay phone. Although I couldn’t vouch for Kira’s activity before she met me, let’s just say that much of the suspense had been taken out of the call. In a thoroughly disinterested voice, the attendant confirmed I was HIV negative. You always tell yourself that you’ll deal with whatever happens, no matter how bad. But I’ll confess to feeling such a high at that moment I could have kissed the pepper-spray boy right on the lips, Rush Limbaugh and Joe McCarthy not with standing.

I bought two bottles of champagne at the liquor store. I intended to share the painted-flower bottle of Perrier-Jouet with Kira. I was undecided about the second, far less expensive bottle of Korbel. I was either going to send it to Jane Courteau without a note or use it as a fleet enema for the desk clerk at the Old Watermill Inn. I was thinking I’d been an idiot for listening to him. People get other people’s faces mixed up all the time. He had probably been drunk out of his mind when he was across the border at his buddy’s bachelor party. Then, like a kick in the groin I wasn’t expecting, it hit me; maybe the desk clerk hadn’t gotten it wrong at all. Maybe he was lying to me. I wondered about why he would do that. I’d have to have a chat with him on the subject when MacClough got back into town. I lacked John’s wherewithal when it came to interviews.

Walking up the street, I noticed the blue minivan parked across the way from the inn. I approached from the rear and rapped hard on the passenger side window. The campus security guy nearly coughed up his glazed doughnut.

“Just checking in,” I screamed through the rolled-up window. “Got back from downstate sooner than I thought.”

He tried, and failed, to look unfazed by my abrupt return. It’s tough to act cool with a chewed doughnut hanging out of your mouth. His partner in the driver’s seat was considerably less worried about my opinion of things and gave me the finger. I respected that. He and doughnut-boy had more than likely gotten reamed for losing me. As a gesture of goodwill, I showed them the bottle of Korbel and left it on the sidewalk.

Once inside the Old Watermill, I continued acting like a smug jerk. I found my pal at the front desk. He put down his spy novel and gave me a knowing smile. But what did he know, I wondered? There were no messages for me.

“Listen, buddy,” I whispered, “she’s coming over tonight. Do me a favor and send her right up when she gets here, okay?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Klein.”

“Anybody come in here today looking for me?”

“Nobody,” he said, giving the boy scout salute.

I handed him the champagne. “You think you can have this chilled for me and have it sent up when my date gets here?”

“No problem.”

I didn’t give him a tip. He’d made all the money off me he was going to make.

The room was different somehow. I can’t explain it. Hotel rooms aren’t like your own place. I couldn’t vouch for where I had put my dirty socks or what page the paper was turned to when I put it down before sleep. I didn’t know what bugs hung out in the corners of the ceiling. I didn’t know the smells or the sounds. And there was a cleaning service that came in every day to pick up after me, to make the bed, to fold the end of the toilet paper into a point. Even so, I could not shake the feeling that someone who did not belong had been in my room. But I also thought we’d have a colony on the moon by now.

As promised, he sent her right up. Even called me to let me know she was coming. I was glad to see Jeffrey’s five hundred dollars hadn’t gone totally to waste. Hey, for another hundred, maybe he would have escorted Kira to my room.

I was obviously grinning like an idiot when I opened the door.

“What?”

“You’re what,” I said, pulling her into my room by the wrist and kicking the door shut behind her.

I proceeded to kiss her until the air she breathed out was the air I breathed in, until I was drunk from it. Although I will likely remember that one kiss even after I’m dead, it wasn’t overtly sexual. It was a kiss of joy, of relief; a kiss that hinted at the absence of love in my life. And when we finally let our lips pull apart, Kira hung her head.

“What is it?” I nudged her chin up with my finger.

She was crying, silently. Glistening streams ran over her translucent skin into the edges of her mouth. The tip of her tongue moved from side to side licking at the tears. I did not need to ask what the tears were for. If I had had the courage, I would have been crying, too.

“I am falling in love with you, Uncle Dylan. And last night, I was afraid. I could feel a wall around you, built to keep me out.”

“There was a wall, but I didn’t build it.”

“I don’t understand.”

I told her everything. I had to. There was never a thought of holding back, though I realized she might’ve felt betrayed by my readiness to believe the worst of her. I explained that my disbelief in her said more about my life than hers. She did not flinch.

“Do you think he lied or just got it wrong?” Kira wanted to know.

“I’m not sure.”

Laughing, she said: “Professor Courteau must have fainted when you told her about wanting to use my drawings for your next book.”

“I had to call the paramedics.”

Kira slapped me playfully. I pulled her close again. We fell onto the bed. When we came up for air, she was smiling up at me with a glint of mischief in her black eyes.

“What now?” I asked.

“Would I have been worth the hundred and fifty dollars the desk clerk claimed they charged for me?”

“More.”

There was a knock on the door. It was room service with my chilled champagne. I shooed the waiter away with an overwhelming tip and a shove on the shoulder. I opened the champagne properly, holding the cork and twisting the bottle slowly. Kira had already helped herself to an empty flute which I filled with an inch of champagne and five inches of white foam. I didn’t bother with a glass myself and we clinked bottle to flute.