Nobody Bats a Thousand (7 page)

“I used to see him walking around campus shouting at the sky or the ground or at trees or bushes, and I just thought he was some homeless schizophrenic that got on the wrong bus,” Mary Jean said.

“Nope.
Just a tenured profe
ssor with two Masters and a PhD.
”
Maggie flashed another toothy grin for just a second. “The academic life suits him well. He is rather full of himself I suppose, but for the most part he means well which is more than I can say for most college teachers
.” S
he paused. “
Oh,
dearie
, the stories I could tell you about my college days, wh
ich were about a century ago.” S
he shook her head.
“I’ve never figured out if the academic life breeds insecure deviates or just attracts them
.” S
he smiled. “W
ell, universal conundrums aside, let’s get that key.”

MJ and Nadine followed Maggie back down the L-shaped hall and into the kitchen where Maggie stopped to stare at a rack on the wall that must have held two-dozen full key rings. “Most of these don’t fit anything anymore.” She took a set from the rack. “But all of them are so full of memories I just can’t bear the thought of throwing them out. Isn’t that silly?”

The three went out to the garage where Maggie unlocked and slid open the heavy door, then turned on the light to unveil a room packed wall-to-wall with furniture, strange accessories and cardboard boxes. Several eight-foot, white, Roman columns stood freely in the middle of the room.

“I think most of your stuff is in that corner over there,” Maggie said, pointing to MJ’s canopied bed in pieces stacked against a far wall.

Mary Jean negotiated a thin path through the clutter. On the way she noticed a
frail wooden
chair that forced her to stop. “Wow! Am I crazy, or is that a
real
Chippendale?”  

“You’ve got a good eye.”

“And didn’t I see another one in your living room and a
Steuban
vase on your mantel?”

“Correct again.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get all this stuff?”

“Oh,
me
and my late husband Carl were in the junk business for more years than I like to admit. Spent a lot of time in Mexico buying stuff we’d sell for unbelievable prices to gringos in L.A., and when the novelty of that wore off we ended up in San Francisco working estate sales for over ten years. Carl didn’t put much stock in all of this type of stuff, but he did develop a keen eye and was the second best haggler I’ve ever seen.”

“The first?”

“Well, myself
dearie
. Who
’d you expect?”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, this isn’t the best area to have a house full of antiques. I mean just across Broadway
it’s
junkie city.”

“Oh, the drug addicts know better than to bother me,
dearie
, and anyway this stuff is just furniture to them. They couldn’t care less. What they’re looking for is money, guns and jewelry. I’ve got all of that stuff hidden away so well I doubt
I
could find it all,” Maggie said from the doorway. She handed the padlock to Nadine. “Ladies, please don’t forget to turn off the light and lock up. I’ve got to start my phone calls. Friday is less than a week away. When it comes to civil disobedience there are never enough hours in the day.”

After Maggie left
Nadine crept a few steps into the garage to watch Mary Jean maneuver through the clutter. Nadine looked around the room. “Geez, look at all this stuff. When Eddie—I mean when
we
brought your stuff over here I guess I was too, uh, tired to notice what a tight fit it was.”

“U-huh.”
MJ was lifting some of her clothes from a cardboard box, sorting them out on her large oak coffee table.

“Uh, Mary Jean, would you mind if I help you later?
Judge Judy
is on in five minutes. I saw the
previews yesterday, and it really looked good.”

“No, go ahead, I really have to go through this stuff myself,” Mary Jean said, actually glad Nadine had found a reason to disappear.

She picked out an outfit to wear downtown to talk to Gene or whoever was managing the club that week, and some of the short skirts she wore as a uniform, just in case he wanted her to go back to work right away. Most of her clothes were either still folded and sitting in the drawers of her two dressers or still attached to the hangers stacked in a pile on the box spring of her queen-sized bed. She sorted through, pulling out socks, underwear and winter things. She found and set aside a large box crammed full of shoes
,
and a wooden apple crate holding her Elvis, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, and reggae albums. She then paused and shook her head while she thought of how pitiful it was that she was surveying most of her net worth sprawled on the cement floor of an old damp garage. She continued the inventory, happy she had had the foresight to store her jewelry box over at her sister’s, but as she looked here and there and picked through this and that, she began to worry that something important was missing.

After her first trip up the stairs, Mary Jean dumped the big box of shoes down right next to Nadine on the couch, trying but failing to snatch her out of her TV hypnosis.

She snapped her fingers twice in front of Nadine’s face.
“Earth to Nadine, earth to Nadine.
Come in Nadine.”

“What?”

“Have you seen my four-sided clock?”

“What?”

“M
y clock that’s shaped like this.
”
MJ pointed her forearms at forty-five degree angles with her fingertips touching, forming a steeple.

Nadine thought for a moment.
“That ugly thing?
It’s not in the garage?”

“I didn’t see it. It’s not up here?”

“No, I’d know if I brought it up here. It doesn’t even work, does it?”

Mary Jean didn’t take the time to respond. Instead she turned and rushed down the stairs and back into the garage where she began to get frantic, tearing through things, opening boxes and drawers, tossing things in random directions unmindful of the mess. She continued, fully focused and engulfed in chaos until she had gone through everything, whereupon she flopped her skinny little ass down on top of an old trunk.

“Fuck,” she said as she attempted to catch her breath, but her break was very brief. Within minutes she was back upstairs and right into Nadine’s face.

Nadine, annoyed to be missing some very meaningful moments of
The
Jerry
Springer
Show
, tried to get through the confrontation as swiftly as possible. “Why is this thing so important?”

“
Well, …ah
, it was a gift from my grandmother McElroy. It’s like an heirloom.  It’s probably not valuable to anyone else, but it’s very valuable to me.”

“I don’t even really remember what the thing looks like.”

“It’s tall and pointy at the top. It’s shaped like a narrow triangle, like a tall, skinny pyrami
d with a clock face o
n one side.
” Mary Jean opened the drawer of a small end table, pulled out a packet of pictures, and sorted through them until she came up with a picture of the living room of her recently vacated apartment. “
Here
.
There it is on the mantel.”

N
adine briefly studied the photo,
“Haven’t seen it.”

“Damn it, Nadine! Don’t be so
flip
. This is important to me.”

“Knock, knock.
” Maggie’s ample figure was positioned in the open doorway. “I thought you ladies might want to join me for lunch, I’ve got a pot of
stew

”

“I’m
too upset to eat.
” Mary Jean stomped across the room and flopped down in her large stuffed chair.

“About what
,
dearie
?”

“She’s missing her pyramid.”

“Well, menopause isn’t the end of the world, in
fact

”

“No, no, not period, her pyramid.”

“Well, it’s not gone yet,
dearie
, and they won’t take it from us if we
all

”

“Not
that
pyramid, I’m talking about a clock shaped like a pyramid, a family heirloom.
Here.
” Mary Jean handed the photo to Maggie. “See that thing on the mantel?”

Maggie held on a stem of her glasses as she positioned the picture nearer then farther away from her face until she could finally bring it into focus. “That thing is a clock?”

“Right.”

“Geez, that thing is ugly. What’s it made of some sort of plastic paneling?”

“
Nooo
.
”
MJ snatched back the photo. “But what it looks like isn’t the point. It was given to me by my...my great aunt for my seventeenth birthday. It holds great sentimental value.”

“I see.” Maggie slowly shook her head. “So where did we lose it?”

“Somehow it got misplaced between my apartment and here.”

“Well, that’s where we start then. Lunch can wait. Come on,
dearie
, I’ll drive.”

“Mary Jean grabbed her change purse and tucked the photograph inside. “You coming?” she said to Nadine still on the couch.

“You don’t need me to come do you?” Nadine seemed pained and worried. “
Cuz
All
My
Children
is on in ten minutes, and I can’t really afford to miss it after what they left hanging last week.”

Mary Jean shook her head but did not say a word. She walked down the stairs and found Maggie in the driveway already behind the wheel of a big, beat-up, 1960-something, GMC truck with its engine rumbling. MJ used both hands to pull open the heavy door before pulling herself up to a spot on the stiff bench seat.

“Man, this thing is built like a tank.”

“People do te
nd to get out of my way.
” Maggie smiled at Mary Jean. “I like that.”

With Mary Jean providing directions, they were at her former apartment banging on the door within a few minutes. Eddie answered the door, but didn’t invite them inside. Mary Jean
rattled off an explanation which
only seemed to annoy Eddie.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go to work, and I don’t have time for this. All I can tell you is that some of your stuff was sitting out in the alley for a day, maybe two. Anybody could have come by and taken your t
hing if it was out there, sorry.” H
e closed the door and locked the deadbolt for good measure.

“There’s something I don’t like about that boy,” Maggie said as she started her truck.

“The fact that he’s gay?”

“Oh,
dearie
, there couldn’t be anything further from the truth.” She pulled down hard on the steering wheel to guide her ponderous vehicle away from the curb. “Between here, Berkeley, and the City I’ve got enough gay friends to probably qualify me for the Fag Hag Hall of Fame. No, gay or straight, that boy is a little shit.”

With her chances of a happy ending melting away faster than an ice sculpture at a June wedding in Puerto Rico, the question of Eddie’s character failed to post even the faintest blip on Mary Jean’s mental radar screen. Feeling as depressed and gloomy as the co
ld gray sky above her
, she slumped against the door of Maggie’s truck.

“You know, very few people walk the alleys around here without a purpose, and most of the street people stake out and guard their turf like pit bulls guarding a bone. Just for the heck of it, let’s check with the Monk to see what’s what. He’s never too hard to find.”

“The monk?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,
dearie
. He’s a homeless guy who likens his plight to the monastic life. He considers his life on the street as a religious pursuit. Rationalization can be a useful tool, don’t you think?” Maggie grinned at Mary Jean then looked back at the road. “He usually hangs around Broadway and H Street, never strays too far, and always seems to keep up on what’s going on.”

They had driven just a few blocks when Maggie p
o
inted to her left. “There he is.” S
he made a left and drove into a parking lot. “Let me have that picture,
dear.
” Maggie took possession of the photo as she pulled up close to a scruffy-
looking guy sitting Indian fashion
on the pavement with his back against a building. 

“
Hola
, my friend,
que
paso
?”
Maggie killed the engine. The character in a dirty army jacket and dark blue knit cap slowly stood and walked towards Maggie’s pickup until he was within arm’s reach of the driver’s door. “How are you doing today, my friend?”