William Rabkin - The Call of the Mild

“Now kick them over here,” the mime commanded, and Gus did. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blur of movement that must have been Shawn also following the order. The mime scooped up all the clothes with his free arm, then gestured with the gun. “Into the stall.”

“Could we go into separate stalls?” Shawn said. “Because they’re really only meant for one person, and I don’t think we should be doing a lot of touching in our present condition.”

The mime didn’t answer. He lowered the gun to where Shawn had strategically placed his hands.

“You know, one stall sounds fine,” Shawn said. “It’ll be much warmer that way.”

Shawn and Gus scurried into the middle stall and slammed the door shut behind them. Gus turned the latch firmly, locking them in.

“Oh, yeah, that will do a lot of good,” Shawn said. “No one’s ever gotten through one of these before.”

“You want me to leave it open?”

Shawn didn’t. Each stood pressed against a stall wall, trying to pretend the cold metal wasn’t lowering their body temperatures with every passing second.

“Are you almost done with our clothes out there?” Shawn finally called out.

There was no answer.

“Maybe you could finish up with our underwear first?” Shawn suggested hopefully.

Still no answer came.

“What do you think he’s doing out there?” Gus whispered.

Shawn pressed his eye to the crack at the edge of the door and tried to peer out.

“One of two things,” Shawn said. “Either he’s taken our clothes and woven them into a cloak of invisibility, or he’s gone.”

Shawn pulled open the stall door and stuck his head out. The mime was gone. And so were their clothes. Shawn checked every stall and tore through all the trash cans, but the mime hadn’t left them so much as a sock.

“What do we do now?” Gus said.

“We’re taking him down.” Shawn bolted to the door.

“You can’t go out there,” Gus said as Shawn reached for the door handle.

“Watch me.”

“It’s not me who’s going to be watching,” Gus said. “It’s all the moms out there with their little kids.”

“So what do you suggest? That we just stay in here until everyone has gone home and we can slip out without anyone seeing us?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Gus said. “But my car keys were in my pants pocket. So even if we do get out of here, we’ve got to walk through one of the San Gabriel Valley’s least progressive suburbs stark naked. How long do you think we’ll last out on those mean streets without any clothes?”

“I’m still waiting for a suggestion.”

“There are a lot of people out there,” Gus said. “Sooner or later, most of them are going to need to use the bathroom. And when they come in, we can beg them for a piece of clothing. It may take some time, but we can piece together enough clothes to walk out of here.”

“Because most people who come to a public garden wear an extra pair of pants just in case.”

Gus fumed. Of course Shawn was right, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant to have his only idea shot down.

“Maybe if we wish really hard, the magical elves will hear us and weave us a new set of clothes,” Gus said.

Shawn beamed as if Gus had said something brilliant. “That’s it,” he said.

“Elves are it?”

“Not elves,” Shawn said. “We’ll make our own clothes.”

When Gus was four years old, his mother dressed him up as Cupid for a Valentine’s Day party. He wore a fluffy cotton diaper, a pair of wings, and a halo. And nothing else. She paraded him through a houseful of adults, all of whom cooed over the adorable little cherub.

For the rest of his life, Gus treasured that memory. Not because he enjoyed the evening; it was as miserable an experience as anything he’d ever suffered. But from that night on, no matter what happened to him, no matter how great the humiliation, he could always think back and tell himself, “At least it wasn’t as bad as being Cupid in a diaper.”

That thought never failed to make him feel better. When he was in first grade and spilled water down his pants, giving the entire school the impression that he’d wet himself, he took solace in the knowledge that this moment was less embarrassing than parading around in a diaper and wings. When he mistimed a kiss aimed at Santa Barbara High School’s third-string cheerleader Missy Summerland at a victory rally and ended up locking lips with a wide receiver, he knew that this was not as bad as being naked Cupid. Even the time that he and Shawn gave a lengthy and thorough reveal to a baffling case only to be informed that a different suspect had confessed hours before, Gus comforted himself with the thought that at least he wasn’t wearing a diaper and wings while presenting the conclusion.

But that memory could do him no more good. Because he’d finally experienced something more humiliating than that Valentine’s Day appearance. And it involved diapers, too.

These weren’t the fluffy, opaque, completely secure diapers his mother had dressed him in. No. These were made out of flimsy paper toilet seat covers. Flimsy, near-translucent paper toilet seat covers.

Shawn had emptied the dispensers from all the stalls and both men had done their best to wrap the covers around their midsections in such a manner that they’d stay up on their own. But without tape or pins, there was no way to keep them together, and Shawn and Gus had to walk out of the men’s room clutching wads of paper to their fronts and backs. If there was a single person in the Gardens who didn’t stare at them until they were out of sight Gus never noticed him.

The humiliation might have been terminal for Gus. Fortunately, the burning sun had heated the asphalt path almost to the melting point, and he could use the agony he felt every time he set down one bare foot to take his mind off the embarrassment.

Beyond the mortification of both soul and flesh, there was one other major problem Gus was wrestling with: What were they going to do once they reached his car? He supposed they could use a brick to smash one of the windows, if there happened to be any bricks lying around the parking lot, but smashing wouldn’t get the car started. That was, if the mime hadn’t used Gus’ keys and driven off in the Echo.

He hadn’t, which was the first good thing that had happened to Gus all day. But when they got to the parking lot, Shawn didn’t go to the Echo. Instead he started looking in the trash barrels that stood outside the park’s wrought-iron fence. The first two were empty aside from trash. The third, however, held their clothes.

“How did you know they’d be here?” Gus said as he pulled his underpants on under his tissue paper diaper.

“I sort of figured that not even a mime would risk life in prison to steal some clothes he could buy at Goodwill for under a buck,” Shawn said, slipping on his jeans before he stepped into his shoes.

“Then what was that all about?”

Shawn dug in his pockets. “Not my wallet,” he said, fishing it out and flipping through it. “Or any of the four dollars left inside it.” He checked Gus’ pants before tossing them to him. “Or your wallet, or your car keys.”

“This doesn’t make any sense at all,” Gus said. “Could it all have been some bizarre mime initiation ritual?”

Shawn dug in his pants again, and his face turned grim. “The necklace is gone,” he said. “We’ve been set up.”

The freeways on the drive back to Santa Barbara were nearly empty, the sky was a vivid blue, and dolphins were dancing in the waters off the Pacific Coast Highway. But Gus didn’t notice any of that. His foot was jammed down on the accelerator and his eyes locked on the road ahead.