Damn Near Perfect

Chapter One

He met Rebecca over champagne cocktails and smoked salmon canapés at his sister’s wedding reception. The held it at the Gilmore Country Club, must’ve been forty years ago, and after they both consumed more liquor than each could handle, he banged her that very night in the butler’s pantry. Her fingers smelled like fish, which was okay with Roy because he’d smoked the Chinook salmon he’d caught himself for the hors d’oeuvres, and her aromatic digits brought back fond memories tending his old refrigerator smoker, while they created new memories on the granite countertop in the pantry..

She’d said she hated her husband, Brad Morgan, and her daddy had put up a half a million dollar trousseau so he could marry off his eldest, not so pretty daughter, to a handsome man with a degree in business and a deficit in common sense. Shit, Roy told her, I would have married you for half that amount if the old man had tossed in a new fishing boat. Roy possessed a surplus of common sense. Rebecca said she hated Brad because he had halitosis. Brad played around on her with Jennifer Dawson, and Rebecca hated Jennifer because she fucked Brad in spite of his breath.

Roy Broz heard from Rebecca every time she immersed herself in a abysmal, unforgiving crisis, and Roy didn’t mind servicing her a few times in between her therapy sessions, to bring her out of her funk, but they didn’t stay in touch like fuck-buddies usually do. Roy recalled they only had dinner together a couple of times in all those years, and the last time they made love to each other happened a week after her husband died of colon cancer. ‘A fitting demise for a total asshole’, she had said.

Thomas Bender, Roy’s workout buddy, showed up at the gym last month with a clipping from the Times that reported Rebecca died suddenly of a stroke. Roy recalled the day well because he’d walked into the locker room and saw a guy trying to erase his love handles with the heels of his hands while staring into a full-length mirror. It didn’t work though, Roy had tried it once. After hearing the news from Bender, Roy had a six second stab of remorse at not having gotten to know Rebecca better, then he jumped back on the lat machine for a set of twelve, and would have forgotten about it altogether until the phone call two days ago.

Mr. Dalton Brewster the third, esquire, the clipped British-accent woman’s voice said, would appreciate the presence of your person at his offices on Thursday, four o-clock.

I don’t need a lawyer, Roy said, and if I did it wouldn’t be someone with that kind of a name. Got a lawyer there by the name of Buck Smith, or Mack Jones, I can handle that.

Mr. Brewster represents the estate of Rebecca Morgan.

You mean Becky? Roy said. She died, right. Why the hell would she leave me anything.

Please arrive early for the appointment, the Brit said, gave him the address and hung up.

Roy didn’t have much to do on Thursday anyway. Since he retired from commercial fishing his busy schedule ran consistently from the gym early in the morning, to the afternoon thumbing through the old record albums at the Goodwill, and beers and darts at McDougal’s in the evening before a walk home. A guy didn’t dare drive after a few beers anymore. Hell, the cops treated drunk drivers worse than sex offenders.

Visions of millions of dollars swam through his thoughts for two days prior to the appointment. Ferraris and women in furs. He talked it over with the guys at the gym.

Bet she left you property, Bender said while he pumped out a set on the quad extension. Rich people always have more property than they can remember, and it’s a casual gesture to give some away. Like us buying each other a beer. Maybe she left you some of that high rent commercial shit downtown her daddy bequeathed her.

You could be collecting rent from Macy’s, Lenny Graham said, and traded places with Bender. And where do you come off using a big word like bequeathed? Sure as hell not from your cop days.

Why, couldn’t you hear me saying, 'I bequeath you this speeding ticket my dear'.

I’d rather have the cash, Roy said. That would make things damn near perfect.

By Thursday he couldn’t keep still, and he took the Sounder train to Seattle in case he had too much to drink after cashing in the inheritance. Roy taxied over to the lawyers office located in the Morgan Plaza, named after Becky’s daddy for Christ’s sake. He built it thirty years ago and now it was worth more than the gross national product of some small countries. If Roy inherited it he would change the name to Broz Center. After the ride to the thirty-fourth floor, and a cup of fresh ground coffee in the reception area, a cute little redhead in a skirt tight enough to qualify as sports equipment led him to a corner office overlooking the city and the waterfront.

Brewster stood five-four in his stocking feet, had skin that blue-white color of icebergs, and a handshake that begged to be over quickly. He got right to the point. At a thousand dollars billable an hour, he didn’t want to dally around talking about the weather during this little pro bono exercise, and two minutes later Roy left the office with the car keys in his hand.

* * * *

On the way down to the B-Level garage, Roy checked out the keys, all two of them. They were the same cut. The first key an older, original GM key, that square sort of hexagon shape. The second, a well-worn re-cut of the same key, and both on a ring attached to a big green fuzzy dice. The keys would work the ignition, trunk, glove box, and served well to scrape the residue out of a weed pipe so you could get one more hit. He always liked the one key deal. No remote control to show how important you might be, and an alarm system that wouldn't go off when someone punched in your window and stole something off your seat, but would scream sirens when the neighbor’s cat jumped on the trunk at three o-clock in the morning. Cars were metal during the single key days, and you could hide a spare key in a magnetic box in the fender well, which was also steel and not plastic.

Brewster Third Esquire said he had to locate space 6B for his inherited treasure. The elevator doors opened, he glanced to the right and saw the bright yellow stenciled characters on the pre-cast concrete wall: 6B, but he had to turn around completely one time, and do a double take at what lurked in the parking space. A spit-shined red, with white upholstery, nineteen sixty, Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible for Christ’s sake. It sat all hunkered down like she’d had a few inches taken out of the overall suspension height, but it could still clear speed bumps without scraping the guts out of her. The tires, with raised white letters that said, 'Wild Country', looked to be off a truck, and the rims had to be nineteen or twenty inches, with American mags, the brushed gray, five-spoked jobbers. Roy couldn’t wait to peek under the hood.

If he’d known Becky had this feral animal streak in her, maybe he’d have stopped by a little more often for therapeutic depression-sex. Might have even gotten creative. Whips and studded dog collars. Hip boots and fish scales. He walked over and poked the key into the door lock, turned it and watched the chrome, golf-tee shaped, lock button rise up, removed the key and opened the door. When Roy slid his ass into the seat it smelled like a new car inside, so she’d had the upholstery, dark brown deep-pile carpet, and fawn-colored top installed a short time ago. This was a big car for a big man, and it fit Roy like a glove. He stretched both arms out comfortably, swung the bank-vault-sized door closed with a thunk, put the key into the ignition and twisted the engine to life with a roar of slightly muffled twin exhaust. That was no Cadillac engine. He revved it a few times and shut it down. Had to be a Chevy.

Roy noted a four speed automatic shifter on the column, climbed out and walked to the front of the car, reached inside the thousand pounds of chrome grill and located the hood latch, pulled it, lifted the hood a few inches and searched for the safety catch. He found it, moved it, and the hood raised on the original springs. An orange and chrome 454 Chevy V-8 engine gleamed at him, but the boxes and tubes on top looked out of place. The carburetor had been replaced with a modern fuel injection system. He couldn’t resist checking all the fluids just to spend a little extra time commingling with the power plant, finally got his fingers greasy, his jollies recharged, closed the hood and returned to the driver’s seat. At the price of gas he hoped he had enough reserve in the bank to drive this tank once a week.

Roy had no curiosity about the trunk. It would hold a spare tire and enough space to do a mob hit like the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, with room for all the bodies inside, and a few bags of concrete for cement shoes. ‘Take em out and toss em off a bridge’, Frank Nitti would say. ‘Sleep with the fishes’.

The glove box was another kettle of fish. People always tucked away one or two personal items in the box, so Roy popped the button and let the door swing down on the commodious glove compartment. It appeared mostly empty except for a bottle of champagne with a French name Roy couldn’t pronounce, but the date on the label, ten years after he’d been born, looked impressive, and someone took the time to chill it well because it still felt cold and moist. There were two flutes that hummed when he wet his finger and ran it around the rim. His mom always said that was how you could tell fine crystal. Inside one of the flutes lay a piece of linen stationary, rolled up tight and secured with a red silk ribbon tied in a fancy bow with many loops. He reached into his shirt pocket for his glasses, slid the ribbon off and unrolled the paper.

‘Roy-boy, before you read the rest of this, please pour us two glasses of champagne, drink the first two to the bottom, then pour two more to sip while you read’.

He peeled off the foil, opened the car door and held the bottle outside while he worked the cork back and forth to loosen it enough to pop it loose with his thumbs on either side of the wide cap. The cork popped and flew across the garage, Roy turned back inside and closed the door, placed the flutes in the cup indents on the glove box lid, and poured them full. He put the bottle on the floor, picked up one glass and chugged it. The bubbles irritated his throat and he coughed after he finished, then he picked up the second and downed it. Roy coughed some more, refilled the glasses and unrolled the paper. He wished she’d left him some good bourbon instead.

‘Good shit isn’t it? Nothing like that cheap wine your sister had bubbling in that silly fountain for her wedding reception. I still remember the feel of the granite counter in the butler’s pantry caressing my ass while we christened our relationship. Now we’re in our sixties, not spring chickens anymore, and I don’t know about you, but shopping interests me more than fucking nowadays’.

‘The doctor told me I had a couple of TIA’s, you know what those are don’t you? Those are like min-strokes, or as he said, possibly the preliminary to the big one. He wanted to go inside my head and do something to prevent the inevitable, but I decided to write you a last note while I was capable, without drooling on the paper. Now I’ll toddle off to my house on Orcas Island to die when and how I want. I felt the desire to give you a little gift so you can have some fun before you hit the wall’.

‘So the lawyer gave you the keys and we’re sharing a last drink without a lot of blubbering about my imminent death. We never had to fall in love and pretend to maintain it after the initial polish wore off the relationship. We liked each other, and that was enough. Toast me once more, and I’ll toast you, then take the glasses (they’re Waterford by the way) and smash them on the concrete wall. Leave the bottle in the alley outside the garage for some street person to finish, and goodbye’.

Rebecca could write words that brought tears up to Roy’s eyes, she’d proved it once after sex. Here she signed her name at the end. Her signature always looked like two boobs and a bra strap.

In a funk, operating on remote, he took off his glasses and wiped a couple of tears with his shirt sleeve, finished the wine in the flutes, exited the car and tossed both glasses at once at the wall where they shattered into debris expensive enough it might feed a family of four for a week.. He fired up the Cad and drove to the gate that opened automatically when he got close. He rolled out in the alley and put the Cad into park, leaned out the door and placed the bottle on the road, closed the door and drove up on First Avenue. When he reached the stop sign he noticed he hadn’t closed the glove box, and as he reached over and placed his hand on the lid he saw a gleam of white paper inside. He put the car into park and brought out the dollar bill sized paper, turned it over and read the figure on the check. Roy took out his glasses and read the figure again. He knew he wouldn’t even know how to write something like that, longhand, onto a check, and he’d written a few big ones after fishing seasons to pay off his crew. An old lady in a Honda honked at him from behind. His hand shook as he slid the check into his shirt pocket along with his glasses, and he touched it again three times to make sure it was still there before he got to the bank and made a deposit that earned him another good cup of coffee and a chat with the bank manager about possible future investments. The hundred dollar bills now in his pocket made an embarrassing lump.

* * * *

Chapter Two

Roy’s stomach growled and he realized he hadn’t eaten since a late breakfast, and champagne didn’t count as food, even though it tucked away plenty of calories that would mean extra crunches at the gym. He rolled out Aurora Avenue to the bridge and pulled into Canlis, tipped the valet fifty to park the Cad, and got a table even though he didn’t have a reservation and wasn’t a Microsoft executive. He’d come with his best friend, Benjamin Franklin. Amazing what can happen when you spread around a couple of hundred dollar bills and swear loudly but without threat. Roy was big, but not huge in an imposing way. Once you got too big it became uncomfortable to negotiate your way around fifty-eight foot fishing boats, so the big guys in the business stood around six feet, but Roy’d seen guys five-five intimidate much bigger men. Lucky he put on a white shirt and tie to go to the lawyer’s, or no matter how much he loomed and swore they’d have tossed him out.

After a fine steak, baby red potatoes, and a torte swimming in almond paste and butter, Roy moseyed back to the parking lot and sat in the back seat of the Cad, leaned to the right and soon snored off a twenty minute nap. He woke when a valet with more pimples than face tapped on the window and asked if he was okay. Roy came up fast out of a dream about little men in black pajamas carrying AK-47s with flames coming out the ends. Even though there was a quarter inch of glass between them, the valet jumped back three feet and put up his hands in defense.

Sorry kid, Roy said, bogeymen and wet dreams, that about sums up life. He pulled himself from the rear of the Cad and handed the valet a fifty. Use that for some therapy or martial art lessons. You need to get over your fears.

Roy fired up the car and headed down the hill away from Aurora onto Dexter Avenue and putted south and west through town out towards Alki Beach. It had been a warmer than usual winter, and this spring night the temperature still hovered around sixty, so he pulled over at the beginning of the beach drive and put the top down. At nine o-clock there were a few European and Asian hot rods cruising the area revving up to about ten thousand in first gear, the exhaust pipes like coffee cans howled from whining turbochargers. Roy putted along all the way into the posh residential area at the far end, then turned around and came back through the commercial district. He pulled over again before leaving the beach and put the top back up, but kept the driver’s window down.

So Becky went out to the island to die. At least she chose a damn near perfect place to languish. The house perched on a bluff facing north, not a lot of sunshine burst into the location, but the view of the other islands all the way to British Columbia made up for it. The time he’d gone there to meet her he’d walked on the boat in Anacortes and she picked him up at the ferry dock. Becky kept a mustard yellow ‘61’ bathtub Porsche on the island, and as they purred along the back roads to her home, she demonstrated some of the moves with transmission and engine speed that gave credit to the race-car lessons her husband gave her for her fortieth birthday. They spent the day in and out of the hot tub on the deck that loomed out over rock and forest, and they made love like teenagers on a thick mattress pad that smelled faintly of jasmine oil. He couldn’t imagine Becky sitting around waiting for death, so he figured she’d put herself out of the potential future misery of sitting in a bed with tubes and shit to keep her alive without any ability to express herself. Roy knew she went to the island for privacy so she could finish the job on her own terms, no matter what the Times article said. Money purchased all the print media propaganda you wanted.

Roy lingered in memory lane, unconscious of the passing of time as he drove with the window down, his elbow perched on the sill, one hand on the wheel. He cruised all the way out to the airport, along back roads from there down to Lake Washington, and back up the hill through the Madrona district. Curt Cobain’s house was down there someplace, and people came to stand at a little park on the hill and look down where the man blew out his life with a shotgun. Becky would never do such a thing. She couldn’t stand the thought of leaving a mess for someone else to clean up.

Roy continued over the hill, had no business being in the part of town where he drove slowly at just past midnight, and might avoid it any other time, but his mind stayed glued on better times with Becky. The car became an extension of her final existence on the earth, and he wanted to hold on to her memories as long as he could right now. If he’d known then how serious he felt about her, he might have offered to marry her ten years ago. He idled the car to a stop light, stared at the red light against the dark sky, and didn’t notice the skinny man sidle up to the car from behind.

Get out of the car motherfucker, the man said, his arm extended into the car and the automatic pistol barrel stopped an inch from Roy’s nose.

Roy didn’t hesitate, put his knee onto the steering wheel to keep it steady, grabbed the man’s wrist with his right hand, twisted it at an upward angle away from his face, and hit the window button with his left. He couldn’t keep the man from firing the pistol, and he did twice, putting two neat holes in the new cloth top, then the window pinned his arm and he screamed at the same time the light turned green. Roy grabbed the wheel, stomped on the gas pedal and didn’t let up until the speedometer moved past eighty, then he pushed the down button on the window and the man disappeared so fast Roy didn’t hear his second scream. Son of a bitch, he thought as he slowed to the speed limit, now I have to get a new top. Good thing he had some duct tape at home to keep out the rain the weatherman forecast for tomorrow.

* * * *

Chapter Three

He woke up from a dream of someone watching him while he walked down a narrow jungle path, rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his fists, glanced over the covers and saw the big Tabby cat sitting at the foot of the bed. Her gaze never wavered as she bored a hole through his brain. The same message came through over and over: 'Feed me'. The cat’s posture said regal, her attitude read gutter-snipe. She had a name two years ago when he rescued her from the village idiot who also worked out at the same gym as Roy. The Cat was three years old then and lived with the man in the spare bedroom of a section eight apartment in the north end of town. The idiot now lived in his car and showered at the gym. Roy never renamed the cat. He tried, 'Lurid piece of shit', or 'Gimme', but none of those really worked. Gimme came from a song he’d heard, a blues thing, and it went, 'A mouth full of gimme and a hand full of much obliged'. Now the cat ate here, slept here, and wandered the neighborhood looking for trouble.

The phone rang and the cat fled. Why hadn't Roy thought of that. Call himself and let the phone ring so the cat would stay away from him.

What? he said into the receiver.

That’s some hell of a way to answer a phone, Bender said. Here we are your two best trusted gym rat buddies loyally waiting for you, even though we finished our workouts an hour ago.

Go do some pushups, Roy said. I heard they’re using exercise in the nuthouse to treat schizophrenics, and you are definitely a crazy man.

Roy hung up the phone, rolled out of bed because he couldn’t just sit up and jump out of bed anymore. Age and hard work wore a man out before his time. He needed a real vacation. Life had always been commercial fishing and getting ready for the next fishing season. While he pissed the phone began to ring again, and it continued while he examined his face in the mirror. Three days of scruffy gray whiskers that would do well through day four. His new cut-back savings plan included reducing his dependence on shaving cream and haircuts. The phone stopped while he brushed his teeth, combed his long curly hair and put on his gym shorts, a tank top, and low cuts with steel toes in case he dropped a dumbbell on them. He picked up the portable in the kitchen and called Bender back.

So if you’re a workout king, Roy said, what are you doing carrying a cell phone with you like some fat secretary who’s so busy she talks on the phone and does texts while sitting on the stationary bike pedaling her ass to nowhere.

You’re just jealous cause I can do two things at once, Bender said.

Listen close and you’ll hear me fart and nuke coffee at the same time, Roy said.

Forget the coffee, Bender said. Grab a snack, a banana if you can stomach the homo-erotic implication in that fruit. We’re heading over to Starbuck’s, meet us there and we’ll even buy you a scone. I know you should buy because you inherited millions, but what the hell, we’ll spend the last of our social security checks on you.

Have Graham mop up your tears before you leave so somebody doesn’t slip and sue the gym, Roy said. I’ll skip the coffee and see you at Starbuck’s in ten minutes. Oh hey, which Starbuck’s. There’s three in a couple of blocks of the gym. If you walked a mile in this town, and stopped at every Starbuck’s for a coffee, you’d be so cranked by the end they’d load you up in a van, you’d be wearing a backwards jacket, and they’d take you to the county hospital for fourteen days observation and a bladder restoration.

Sounds like you know the routine, Bender said.

Don’t tempt me to tell you, it’s a sordid tale with an unhappy ending, Roy said, and I know how much you enjoy those. Fucking the charge nurse in the broom closet was not the worst of it.

Graham say’s we’re going to the one across the street, Bender said.

See ya, Roy said and hung up.

The cat bumped Roy’s hand with her head, a joyous example of affection, except Roy was in the process of pouring milk into her dish. He spilled some on the oak floor, kicked at the cat, but she knew how to avoid that routine and jumped away before he completed the thought of the action. Roy cleaned up the mess, dumped dry food into her bowl, and fed the four goldfish that banged their heads against the glass of the aquarium to get his attention.

Roy’s stomach growled, he grabbed a banana, his gym bag, and headed for the garage.

The Cad sat in the space next to his 91, almost black except for rust, Ford Ranger, and the memories of