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Two fry cooks who might one day be as famous as Andy Warhol saved me from a pair of well-dressed men with bad intentions.
I ate lunch five days a week at a place across the street from the magazine’s offices because I was a creature of habit, because the joint was clean and the food was good and it was cheap. The Beane family owned the operation. Hazel Beane was a fifty-year-old divorcée whose husband, an attorney, had run off with a client for whom he had won a ten-million-dollar judgment in the death of her husband, Darnell Ickens. The jury had unanimously agreed that a police officer had responded with excessive force when he shot Darnell six times after Darnell attacked him with a pneumatic nail gun and skewered him four times. Hazel would still accept a lawyer as a customer, but she would never greet one with a smile. Her children—Phil and Jill, twenty-six-year-old fraternal twins—were excellent fry cooks, working the griddle and grill with style, even though it was not their destiny. They were born to be artists. Phil dyed his spiky hair purple and shaved off his eyebrows, while Jill dyed her spiky hair green and at all times wore black pajamas with red shoes. They had not yet been able to sell a significant number of paintings because, as they explained, the art establishment valued the marketability of the artist’s image as much as or more than his or her paintings, so the big breakthrough depended on finding the right look. Lately, Phil and Jill had been giving a lot of thought to shaving their heads and having themselves dyed blue from top to bottom.
Anyway, I usually crossed the street to Beane’s Diner toward the end of the lunch rush, so I could sit at the counter without being crowded into a conversation with another customer who might want to talk about something as absurd as politics or something as evil as, well, politics. I was more interested in hearing about art and the art world, of which Phil and Jill had such extensive and enthralling knowledge. That Friday, the diner’s booths were still full of those upper-echelon employees who could linger at lunch without having their fingers smacked with a ruler by the boss, but most of the counter stools were unoccupied.
After Jill recounted a fascinating anecdote about the weird surreal images incorporated subliminally in the paintings of Andrew Wyeth, Phil served up a three-cheese hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. The French fries were extra crispy, as I like them. I was washing down the second bite of the hamburger with a cherry Coke when two men appeared on the stools flanking mine as if they had materialized at the summons of a sorcerer. I got an immediate bad vibe from both of them, and although I took a third bite of my sandwich, I had some difficulty swallowing it.
The new arrivals were dressed in black suits and white shirts and black ties. They wore sunglasses, which they took off and folded and inserted in their shirt pockets in a most impressive display of synchronization.
I looked to my left, and the guy there smiled at me. He was as handsome as any male model, with brown eyes that were almost gold, like those of a cat. Something about his smile said it came too easy to him, that he smiled all night while sleeping, that it didn’t mean he liked you or was in a good mood or even that he knew what a smile was meant to signify.
To my right, the other guy was a hulk with a hard, flat face and looked as if he had run at top speed into a wall more than once, just for the fun of it. He smiled, too, but in his case, I could see that such an expression required concentration.
The one with golden eyes said, “Kind of hot out there today.”
I said, “Well, it’s May in Phoenix.”
“You’ve lived in Phoenix all your life, have you?”
“Mostly, yeah.”
The hard case on my right said, “You like Phoenix better than where you came from?”
“Sure, I like it pretty much. I don’t remember anything about where I came from.”
Looking past me at Leftie, Rightie said, “This young man has amnesia.”
Leftie traded his easy smile for a look of faux sadness. “I’m sorry to hear that. Must be tough, no memory.”
“I don’t have amnesia,” I assured them. “I come from Peptoe, Arizona, but I only spent a few days there after I was born.”
I looked back and forth as the men engaged in synchronized, solemn nodding.
Hazel Beane appeared, slapped menus on the counter, and said, “Get you guys something to drink?”
“Give us a minute here, why don’t you?” the handsome one said.
She squinted at him, then at his partner, and said, “Are you attorneys?”
“No, but we’ve arrested a few.”