Like Mind (6 page)

“You’ll take the couch. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I staggered back to the computer and sat down heavily. I’d never been around a woman like Anka before and I wasn’t sure, at all, how to deal with it. She had confidence, power, style and beauty. She was smart, witty and accomplished. I was…well, I was living the Portland dream of doing just enough to not have to do very much. For all her attributes, I might as well have been the opposite: hesitant, weak, dorky and failing at life. She eclipsed me in nearly every way.

Then why would she smile like that? Why would she give that proud, feminine strut for me to watch? Then it hit me, she smiled when I wasn’t that hesitant, weak dork. She smiled when I did something well, whether trying to shield her from the explosion or successfully defending myself from her attacks.

She’s different from every other woman in one simple way: she expects something from me.

More Money

We woke up early. Rather, Anka got up early and woke me up. I was still sitting at the computer where I’d been looking at MMA videos. The mixture of getting beat up by a girl and sleeping in a chair made me feel like I had a hangover from drinking the devil’s urine mixed with Donald Trump’s toupee sweat.

“Ugggh,” I retorted.

“Just get up. Do you have anything for breakfast?”

“Burritos.”

“I hate that I have to ask this: Are they breakfast burritos?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I’m going to jump in the shower. You get some food ready for us,” she walked in to the bathroom still wearing the tee-shirt and bike shorts, “And make sure I don’t have an ice cube in the middle of my burrito. I hate that.”

Moving was pain, but I forced myself to unfold from the chair and stretch out. I hobbled over to the freezer and grabbed out two burritos and threw them in the microwave. Then I set some water on to boil so I could make coffee. The French press was dirty, so I had to wash it before I could grind the beans and start brewing. Sometimes I envy the people who have those auto-cup-robot coffee brewing things, but then I remember that they’re drinking terrible coffee. Despite my stumbling, I had a cup of coffee and a burrito ready in about ten minutes.

I sat down to eat just in time for Anka to come out of the bathroom. When I heard the door I found myself secretly hoping that she’d be dressed in a towel again, but instead she wore her sweater and khakis from before. They didn’t look too bad for having been through an explosion and a MAX ride. She caught me checking, I guess.

“Like what you see?”

“I…uh…I just noticed that you put your old clothes back on.” Smooth.

“I washed them yesterday.”

“Ah.” Awkward. “There’s a burrito over there and some coffee, if you want it.”

“Thanks.” She gathered her sustenance and joined me at the table. “So you microwave your burritos but French press your coffee?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

“Well, no, I just…no.”

“Well said,” she smirked at me. “Good coffee though.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure. Thanks for giving me a place to stay and feeding me. I don’t want to seem unappreciative. I just want to make sure we’re doing everything we can. I think I told you that this is my, or I guess was my first assignment. I went through selection and training and this was my chance to show the boss that I’m ready. I don’t know. I guess I’m still thinking that it’s some sort of test or something. Maybe if I do a good job it’ll still be okay. You know?”

“I have zero context with super-secret spy missions, but I do understand trying to impress a new boss. It’s stressful.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I had no idea if she was being sarcastic or if she was just depressed about her boss and actually thankful. Why do women have to be so difficult to understand?

“So, I was thinking, we need a way to get some money.” I looked across the table as she sipped at her World’s Best Soccer Mom mug.

“You’re right. We can’t use cards. They’ll be able to track us. We probably shouldn’t even stay here much longer. People might start to get suspicious. Do you have any cash here?”

“Nothing much. I have some change in a bowl. Maybe some random fives in my winter jacket or something. Pluss the fifty from Grosskopf.”

“Okay, so we need to figure out a way to make some cash.”

“Quickly too. I don’t want to go in to the lab without a smart phone I can use to get videos. If we get in trouble I want to be able to look up a skill or something.”

“That’s a good point. So we need to go and get a few hundred dollars. You turn tricks?”

“What?” I was both confused and then shocked when I finally processed what she meant.

She laughed a full, throaty laugh with her head back and eyes shut. Before long I joined in. It felt good to laugh after the car chases, explosions and fighting.

“I think I have an idea,” I said after we were done laughing.

“Oh, what’s that?”

“Well, since I can do anything I see, I figured we could make some money off of it. What if we go downtown and bet people I can do things. We can make some money pretty fast I think.”

“It actually has some possibilities,” I tried to not take offense at her surprised tone, “But we won’t be able to make as much money if you do it right all the time. We’ll have to run a scam. You can bet people and then lose some. Then they’ll be willing to bet more. Also I’ll take bets from the bystanders to drum up some more cash.

“We’ll have to be quick about it though. I don’t think we can keep it up for long without being picked up by the cops or making the people mad. So when I say it’s time to quit, we quit and walk away. Agreed?”

“Okay.”

After I drained off the last of the coffee we headed out and got down to Pioneer Courthouse Square on the MAX. Once we were there, Anka told me to hang back while she checked things out. I watched her make a slow circuit of the square watching the activity. It was a typical day in downtown. There were street people scattered around, some had signs, some were just enjoying the sun breaks between the clouds. There were the hacky sack guys, who never seem to leave. Plus all the tourists, workers on break, and people watching the channel eight news cast through the window.

When she got back she grabbed me and we walked over to the hacky sack crowd.

“Don’t say anything,” Anka whispered to me as we walked, “Just join the game after you’ve seen enough to be able to play. Keep copying the moves of the last person to touch the sack. And don’t say anything. I’ll take care of it.”

So I stood outside the circle watching them kick the small beanbag around. Some of them were proficient, but one guy was amazing. He had an almost supernatural mastery over the hemp sphere. He could stall it on his neck, ear, head, back, knee or anything else. Then he’d juggle the sack three, four or five times before launching it expertly at one of the other people in the circle. I noticed that other onlookers would gasp when he performed a particularly spectacular trick.

The super star was dirty, and I’m not the cleanest person in the world. He had visible smudges of dirt on his face and arms. His shirt was a mottled gray that may have been white at one time. His pants were tatters at the cuffs over his filthy bare feet. Hippies want to grow up to look like this guy. The rest were all attempting to be as dirty, smelly and disheveled as their leader.

Eventually I got the sense of how to time the approach so I stepped in when an errant kick brought the sack in my general direction. I copied the leader’s most recent juggle-stall-juggle maneuver. It just happened that the direction of the pass out of the combo sent the sack back to the Hippie King.

He took it well with a knee, kicked it and then flipped it up to his head with his toe. From the stall he rolled it down his neck, stalled it again on his back and then popped it up with his butt to kick, scorpion style, back to me. I copied him exactly. The crowd of hippie-watchers gasped loudly. I saw him get an angry look on his face as he went into an even more convoluted series of moves. I could almost hear “Dueling Banjos” start to play. He kicked the sack back to me and I copied him again.

I noticed Anka starting to circulate through the peanut gallery. She held out some cash in one hand and people were waving hands at her. Too late I noticed the sack coming back my way. Damn, I’d been watching Anka and not the sack routine. I went back in my memory to one of his previous tricks. It was less impressive, but it kept the game going. The crowd seemed disappointed and the Lord of the Hippies looked smug as the hacky sack traveled back to him.

The next set of moves was insane. He kicked the sack high into the air and simultaneously fell forward with stiff legs. Just before he hit the ground, he caught himself with his hands and it was just in time to stall the sack at the base of his neck. From there he pushed up with his arms and pulled his legs under like he was about to do a squat-thrust. He snapped his body into a standing position and the sack jumped off his neck. He spun around to kick the sack behind him and launched it in a high arc over his head. As he continued spinning his smell of body odor assaulted my nose. When he came around to face me again, the sack landed on his foot. He flipped it up again, pivoted and caught it on the other side. Then, with is back to me, he kicked the sack at me. Hard.

A little bit, I felt bad for him as I went into the routine I’d just seen. But when I went to start spinning after the faux-fall I found that my rubber-soled shoes didn’t move the same on the paving bricks. I made it around on the first spin, but the squeaking complaint of my Chuck Taylors made me think I wouldn’t get the next one. Quickly I groped for another way out. I thought of tricks that he’d done before that I could use. At the last second before the sack landed on my foot I remembered one of the MMA videos. Desperately I hoped it would work.

I kicked the sack into the air in front of me. I launched into the air and kneed even higher, as it went up I elbowed it, sending it rocketing into the air. When I landed I had to step back a pace to get ready, then, when it was almost to the ground I launched in to my Chuck Norris roundhouse and kicked the sack straight at the Hippie-saurus. It smacked into his chest loudly and just dropped to the ground. Everyone stared at me silently and we all just stood there for an awkward moment.

Behind the arch-hippie, Anka was quickly walking toward me. As she stepped past the Hippie Pope, she reached down, grabbed the hacky sack, handed it to him and said, “I think you dropped this.”

Without breaking stride she grabbed my arm and led me away from the crowd that had gathered around the hacky sack circle.

“I don’t know what you were doing at the end there, but that was perfect.”

“So we got enough money?”

“More than enough. That time you messed up was great, too. I had to pay out on some of those bets, so when I offered more, they were eager. It was beautiful.”

“How much did we make?”

“About a thousand.”

“Dollars?”

“Yeah, like I said, you did well. Let’s go. There’s a mall over here, we should be able to get some phones there.”

So we headed into the Pioneer Place mall while I considered a career in hacky sack.

Infiltration

Rarely have I had the means to walk into any store and just buy whatever I want. It’s a giddy feeling. We descended to the basement of the vertical mall downtown and found the kiosk hawking mobile devices. Anka walked up, circled the display case. Gave a dissatisfied sigh and started to walk away. I didn’t know if I should follow her so I turned, to go just in time for her to spin around suddenly and walk up to the salesperson. That made me stumble a bit as I halted and turned again to follow her. I was getting a little bit dizzy.

“Do you have fast data?” Anka asked.

“Um…yeah.” The polo-shirt-wearing twenty-something did not seem prepared for Anka’s intensity. He put down his sandwich and brushed the crumbs from the front of his Dockers as he stood up from the stool that was his only respite. Polo shirts rarely flatter, on this poor soul it only served to highlight his love handles and man-boobs.

“Good. Do you have prepaid phones?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Do you have smart phones that take video well?”

“Yeah, see right—”

“Fantastic. I would like two of your best smart phones, with unlimited data.”

“Okay…do you want—”

“Them now? Yes.”

“Um…”

“Now’s the part where you move. You could also tell me how much I owe you.”

“I…”

At this point I stepped in, “Excuse me, I speak nerd.”

Anka just stared at me with the same glare that polo-McMoobs had been enduring. I rolled my eyes and sighed in a mockery of her mannerism.

“Hey,” I leaned forward to read his name tag, “Daryl, we’re not trying to be difficult. We just need some phones that do video. We went on one of those jet-boat rides in the Willamette and both of our phones got soaked. We’re just finishing up our vacation here and we want to be able to take some video to send back home. My new wife over there is upset that we’re missing out on precious time that we could be using to do something else. You know how it is, they always want to do stuff, they’re never content to just relax. Am I right?”