Simple Grifts Read online

  There were a lot of fossils in Engineering who didn’t get it. Even that doofus Claude Rivelle, despite the fact Rivelle himself was a provisional member of the DCA.

  Soren’s run-in with Dropo did bring one plus. Soren grabbed his emotions where he could find them, and Dropo had given Soren a minor emotional jolt, something akin to what Soren supposed fear might be like. The yokel was huge and dangerous looking and didn’t respond to Soren’s charm the way most people did. He seemed as emotionless on the outside as Soren almost always felt on the inside.

  Soren took his primary cell phone out of his shirt pocket. Sylvia had left a message. For several minutes, he listened to Sylvia droning on about the upcoming Monday night DCA mixer at their house. She wanted him to call back.

  He clicked it off before she could get to the inevitable part where she wanted him to pick stuff up. He picked up his secondary auxiliary cell phone and punched the speed dial for Flo Thorpe.

  3 Gloria Fiorenzi

  “What I can’t figure out is why Soren would do that to me of all people,” Gloria said.

  Elinor said. “Some beings can’t help themselves—assuming they want to. They enjoy manipulating us humans. Watching us wriggle like worms on a hook.”

  “But why piss me off? I can help him.”

  Elinor said, “You do wriggle great, though, don’t you?”

  Gloria said, “I can get him published. Get his name out. Help his career.”

  “Depends what his career is.”

  It was late Saturday afternoon. Gloria and Elinor were sitting at a table in Max’s Madhouse, enjoying quiet beers before the coming evening’s big noise. Elinor had promised Gloria she would adore the Madhouse, where the rock music was deafening, just the way Gloria liked it.

  And Gloria did like the Madhouse more than any other bar she’d hit in her first two months in Ojibwa City. It seemed a very satisfactory dump.

  Gloria liked dumps, but she loved dives. She enjoyed the feeling of being a brazen gay woman surrounded by tough straight men.

  Even though the Madhouse was only a dump and not a full-fledged dive, it did boast a decent dump ambience she could settle for. A dive was probably too much to hope for on the edge of the jackpine wilderness far from any decent city.

  The Madhouse owner Max—assuming he existed—had painted his ceiling black, probably to disguise the cracks and crumbles and stains. He’d painted the floor brown, likely to hide the spilled booze and blood. He kept the lights dim to obscure anything else that might dismay a customer or agitate law enforcement.

  Yes, a dump, but not a dive. The distinction was that all the men she’d seen so far seemed harmless. But who knows? Maybe Gloria would upgrade (or was the right word “downgrade”?) the Madhouse to dive status if she met someone not harmless. That’d be fun.

  Elinor was fun. Since Gloria had arrived at Ojibwa College to begin her single year as Visiting Scholar in Residence, Elinor was the most fun woman Gloria had met. Elinor was jolly and plump and round in that special way Gloria found very attractive. She was also a very competent Administrative Assistant, one of those women who keep institutions running on behalf of the better-paid braindead bureaucratic beings bossing things from the upper echelons.

  Gloria made a mental note: nice alliteration in that phrase—maybe she should use it in her next piece?

  Hold it. This big bearded fellow lugging his amplifier past them towards the nearby band risers might be fun. And dangerous. For one thing, he’s huge. The amp looks to weigh fifty pounds, and he lifts it one handed and sets it on the riser as gently as if he were setting a beer bottle on a bar. In fact, in the giant’s other hand, he holds an actual beer bottle, which he pauses to swig with the enthusiasm for beer Gloria shares and admires in others.

  She picks her own bottle of Chumpster off the table and takes her own swig. Maybe by accident, the behemoth notices and lifts his own bottle in greeting. She tilts hers and they both chug in concert, then grin at each other. The man turns and goes about plugging in his amp and doing other rock-and-roll things.

  Elinor had followed Gloria’s exchange of glances with the man. “You are gay, right?”

  Gloria said, “I am. But I appreciate masculinity. I thought you read my books.”

  “Some.”

  Gloria suspected Elinor hadn’t read any. But that was okay. You didn’t have to read Gloria’s books to be Gloria’s friend, or even her lover.

  But maybe Elinor had. She said, “I don’t remember anything in them about picking up men like that.”

  “Men like what?”

  “Like him.”

  “What about him?” Gloria asked.

  “No one knows for sure. Only stories.”

  Even better. “You know him?”

  Elinor sort-of shrugged.

  Gloria spotted a clue. “You know him biblically?”

  Elinor said, “No. Too rough trade for me. He’s what we call a ‘jackpine savage.’ He lives in a shack out in the woods. People say he’s a poacher.”

  “There’s still poaching? Like in Robin Hood? Does he kill the King’s deer? Is the Sheriff after him?”

  Elinor said, “Make fun if you like. Let’s just say Gus Dropo is a walking talking archetype of toxic masculinity.”

  “My favorite kind,” Gloria said.

  “Sort of the anti-Pafko.”

  “More than one way to be toxic,” Gloria said.

  Elinor nodded. “I wish I’d known you before you came. I would have warned you about Pafko.”

  “How much does he owe you?” Gloria asked.

  “He borrows in dribs and drabs. A vegan mocha here and an avocado sandwich there. Amounts to only a couple hundred dollars. But it’s still irritating.”

  “Think he’ll ever pay you back?”

  Elinor said, “Think he’ll buy your painting like he promised?”

  The man Elinor called Gus Dropo walked over and stood by their table and grinned down at them and Gloria braced for the come-on.

  “It was just a friendly greeting between bar pals,” Gloria told him. “You and I both like beer. No reason to make more of it than that.”

  “What?” Gus’s voice was deep. The knuckles of the hand he wrapped around his bottle bulged hairy, huge and broken.

  “You know, our little mutual beer greeting just now,” Gloria said.

  “Oh, that.” Gus lifted his eyebrows, which like the rest of him were unusually shaggy. “No. I was listening in, and I thought I overheard you say the name ‘Soren Pafko’.”

  Elinor said, “You heard right. You know him, Gus?”

  Gus said, “We’ve met, Elinor. And the way you said his name sounded like you don’t like him very much.”

  Elinor tilted her head towards Gloria. “Gloria here doesn’t, that’s for sure.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gloria.” He stuck his right mitt out and Gloria extended her hand. His hand dwarfed and enclosed hers, but her hand felt safe, the way a pheasant might feel nestled in the soft jaws of a retriever that could crush it with ease but took care not to.

  So maybe he was dangerous. Too early to say if he was fun. Gloria said, “Nice to meet you too, Gus.”

  “It happens Soren Pafko’s someone I take an interest in,” Gus said.

  Gloria said, “What’d he do to you?”

  Gus said, “What makes you think he did something to me?”

  Gloria smiled.

  Gus smiled back. “He gave my son an F. What’s your beef with him?”

  “LG flunked something?” Elinor shook her head. “Wow.”

  Gloria asked, “You know his son?”

  “Go ahead, Gloria” Elinor said.” Tell the man your beef with Soren Pafko.”

  “I need another beer.” Gloria lifted three fingers of her empty hand to signal the waitress for three more. She pointed to the empty chair at their table and said, “Care to sit?”

  Gus pulled out the chair and lowered his bulk into it with ease. The waitress brought three cold fresh Chumpsters a
nd took everyone’s empties away and Gloria told Gus her Soren Pafko story.

  Ojibwa City College had scheduled Gloria’s Visiting Fellowship for the entire year. Since Gloria couldn’t afford two rents, she decided to vacate her Boston apartment.

  Gloria had accumulated a lot of art, most of it erotic. The art included more than a dozen paintings. She decided to reduce clutter by selling one of her few non-erotic paintings, which also happened to be one she didn’t think much of.

  Gloria told Gus, “The painting’s called “L’Amination. It’s a shiny landscape done in kind of a pop-art style. Like a clumsy copy of a Disney animation cell, with a little red brick house on a green meadow under a bright cerulean sky and white fluffy clouds. And it’s shiny. Very. A long time ago I paid two hundred bucks to help my friend Alfonso Jones get his start as an artist, At the time, two hundred was a lot. Still is, I guess.”

  “Cerulean?” Gus asked.

  Gloria answered, “Azure. Blue.”

  Gus nodded. On the surface he seemed relaxed, but she noticed that as he followed her story, from under the shelf of his dark brows his blue eyes tracked with intense focus her every little movement and gesture.

  Gloria said, “And I got into this long email conversation with Soren Pafko, who had a lot to do with hiring me here.”

  Elinor said, “Soren’s very influential at the College. Maybe runs the place.”

  Gloria said, “Soren came off like a great new friend. He goes on about the same novels and rock bands and loves the same old time Hollywood actors and actresses. If I mention Clark Gable, he comes back with Carole Lombard. And so on. I mentioned in an email I wanted to sell L’Amination, and he replied he might buy it himself. We agreed on a price—”

  Gus interrupted. “How much?”

  “He offered a thousand dollars,” Gloria said. “And I’m thinking I should make nice with a future colleague and agree to sell it to him for that. It turns out Alfonso Jones, he’s gotten to be a big name since his surgery, and now he’s the ‘the Alfonso’, so after the fact, I wound up turning down offers for way more than that.”

  Gus asked again, “Like what?”

  Gloria ticked them off on her fingers. “Three, five and even ten thousand.”

  “You turned down ten thousand dollars to sell for one thousand?”

  “You might not think it from my writing—have you read any?”

  Gus shook his head.

  No shock there. "Well in a lot of ways, I’m very old-fashioned. A deal’s a deal. That’s how my parents lived and my grandparents too, and that’s how I live. Plus, I wanted to cultivate a relationship. Like Elinor said, he has a lot of influence. And that way, I can sell the painting to someone who’ll appreciate it, even if it’s not a masterpiece.”

  Gus said, “Plus you’re short of cash, right?”

  Gloria answered. “That’s really none of your business.”

  Gus said, “I never said it was.”

  “Anyway, I offered to ship the painting professionally, but at the last moment he insisted I bring it in person, or the deal was off. He didn’t want to take any chances. Spun me this epic tale about his nightmare experience when someone shipped him a painting and it arrived all slashed and broken. It was like a Norse saga of struggle and destruction.”

  “And you’d already turned down the other better offers.”

  “Right.”

  “Why not put it back on the market?”

  “I was committed. I’d made a promise to a future colleague and I was stuck. Boxed up, it’s five feet long and it doesn’t fit in my little VW trunk. I stowed it in my back seat and drove fifteen hundred miles all the way across the country like that. Whenever I stopped to eat, I had to haul the thing inside with me so no thief would catch sight of it and decide to smash the window to steal it. I ate a lot of salads at a lot of Cracker Barrels with this big wooden box staring at me from across the table.”

  Gus said, “And you brought the box to Professor Soren Pafko.”

  “Right.”

  “And he had changed his mind.”

  “Good guess.”

  Gus lifted his bottle and took a swig and set it down. “Not a guess.”

  Gloria said, “He couldn’t really afford it after all. His financial situation had changed. Just that moment he was strapped for cash.”

  “Did he apologize?”

  Gloria said, “Not at all. It was nothing. So I’m standing there on his front porch with this big clunky box propped against me and he smiles ever so sweet and amiable like he does—you’ve met him, you said?—and closes the door in my face. I have to lug it back to my car on my own.”

  “Didn’t offer to help you with that either, right?”

  “Right.”

  Gus said, “So where’s the painting now?”

  Gloria said, “Still in its box leaning against the wall in my office. I’ve got no room for it in that studio apartment they gave me over Meriwether’s hardware store.”

  Gus said, “Not very fancy digs for a Visiting Scholar in Residence at a renowned liberal arts college.”

  “I think it’s shameful,” Elinor said. “I happen to know the College arranged a great deal for Soren on that three-story house of his.”

  Gus asked, “How do you know that?”

  Elinor said, “I see everything. I fill out the forms. I print the documents. Then I file them. Pafko gets special treatment, but there’s no deal for Gloria, who’s way more accomplished than he’ll ever be.” She patted Gloria’s hand.

  “That’s worth knowing,” Gus said.

  “Why?” Gloria asked.

  Gus said, “So now what?”

  Gloria said, “What do you mean?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Elinor asked, “What can she do?” and almost simultaneously Gloria asked, “What can I do?”

  Gus smiled at each woman in turn. It was a big lazy grin which reminded Gloria of some old-time Hollywood actor in some old cowboy movie, but she couldn’t just this moment pinpoint which cowboy or which movie. He just looked competent and confident.

  Gloria asked, “You’ve got something in mind?”

  “Always,” Gus Dropo said.

  4 Flo Thorpe

  Flo answered Soren’s call on the first ring. “Soren. What a wonderful surprise on a humdrum Saturday morning.”

  “You free?”

  “For you, of course.”

  “Give me three hours.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Soren grabbed an hour to sneak in a fifteen-mile bike ride and a shower in his office. As he drove his Prius down the highway towards Wayzata, he munched a gluten-free chia bar.

  He felt a nice tingle of anticipation. He had met Flo Thorpe at some rally, he didn’t remember what against or for. She’d been shrieking about something; he didn’t remember that either.

  He did remember that she wore no bra, and that her chest was heaving in intersectionalist indignation through a white “This is a Feminist” tee shirt.

  Flo was a little older—substantially older, actually—than the students he normally hooked up with, but older women often brought their own advantages, so, when she offered him a ride in her Mercedes after the rally, he accepted.

  It wasn’t till she drove them off the forested main road up the hundred-yard driveway to the quintuple garage of her Wayzata lake house that he realized how rich she was.

  Ten minutes later, they sprawled in zero gravity lawn chairs in her two-acre back yard, gazing out on Lake Minnetonka. She poured each of them a goblet from a decanter of her current favorite—a chilled 2012 Jadot Louis Le Montrachet Grand Cru—and shared her story.

  Some women expect you to have paid attention, so Soren made an effort to keep track.

  Her husband had been Emerson Thorpe, an eminent plastic surgeon who specialized in lifts, both face and full body, at fifteen thousand per lift and a whole lot of lifts per week. The man had been a lift machine.

  On the back veranda,
she tossed down her second glass, grieving that dear Emerson had crapped out from a heart attack at only 52, leaving her this extravagant residence—here she waved her arm in self-revulsion—and no children and all this cash she didn’t know what to do with.

  In her kitchen, her third glass lubricated more remembrance of things past, as she sighed the lack of many a thing she sought—she had given up her own career to support that ungrateful Emerson in all his self-absorbed endeavors—and expounded on her mixed pride and regret in the hard choices life had forced her to make.

  As she sipped her fourth glass from her bedroom end table, she bragged that communism had always fascinated her. She was eager to finally learn all about it. She had always been a daring nonconformist and genuine rebel, eager to explore novel ideas and fascinating people.

  She recalled with pleasure the great times she had spent in New York in the company of the transformative artist Ilianius—surely Soren knew his work—and his protégé Alfonso, as well as the great “rackets” Ilianius used to throw and the madcap degenerate things so many brilliant talented people did at them.

  She explained that “racket” was New York slang for a party. In case Soren didn’t know. Which of course he didn’t.

  Soren’s nimble ears perked up when she explained she felt herself finally maturing to a greater seriousness in her life. She understood how wrong Percy Bysshe Shelley had been: political activists and not poets were the true unacknowledged legislators of the world.

  Soren had to pay token respect to this Shelley guy as poet transgressive for his time, but what she said made no sense. It was obvious political activists were very much acknowledged as legislators, since new laws were almost all they talked about.

  But Soren’s standard practice in dealing with women—especially rich women—was to let details slide. Soren had learned from at least a dozen rewarding experiences the hypnotic attraction he held for rich women who longed to rebel.