Dead Giveaway

Flash Fiction by William Kitcher

As soon as she sat beside me at the bar, I was skeptical. Too calculatedly down-market. I definitely liked the look of her: unusually beautiful face, very high cheekbones, a slight overbite that caused her smile to be intriguing and confusing, a vague scar that meandered from the side of her nose to her left eye that was a sparkling blue. Her right eye was green. Neither of them looked like they were colored contact lenses, the way blue ones often look purple. Her hair didn’t look real, but what do I know about hair? It was what some people might describe as dirty blond, which isn’t even a color. I’d describe it as “I don’t know what color that is.” It touched her collar, full and thick with no hint of spray of any kind. It looked like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of days; that was a nice touch. Her only flaw was a small pimple on her forehead.

Her jeans were slightly grubby and her running shoes were old beaten-up Converses, the way they’re selling them these days. A faded gray Pearl Jam t-shirt lurked behind an imitation leather biker jacket. Definitely sort of shady.

So, I liked the look of her, but I didn’t like the look of her. There was nothing ridiculously phony about her, but she didn’t look quite right, not like the last time I’d seen her. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

She ordered a vodka and tonic. What’s that about? What is “tonic” anyway? Tonic for what?

Benny was sitting strategically to my right. He was pretending to read a novel, which was a dead giveaway if you know Benny. And, even if you don’t, Benny doesn’t look like someone who’s ever read anything since he was forced to read “Julius Caesar” in his second attempt at tenth-grade English. At least the book was a well-thumbed copy of Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row”, which gave Benny some fake credibility.

“I’m Jane,” the dirty blond said. “Terry, right?”

“Yes,” I said. Neither of those names were true.

She seemed a little nervous, and I didn’t blame her. I waited for the pitch for what seemed hours. It was like checking your phone repeatedly on a Thursday night to see if the woman you’d asked out for Saturday night had texted back.

Finally the sledgehammer smacked the thumbtack. She said, “I have a rare baseball card. Real cheap.”

“I know. What is it? How cheap?”

“Willie Mays. 1954.”

I said, “May I see it?”

She brightened. “You said, ‘may I see it’, not ‘can I see it’. You’re obviously an educated person.”

I laughed. Funny girl.

Her gorgeous smiling overbite smacked me below my belt.

“So,” I said, “may I? Can I? Will I? Should I?”

She reached into her inside jacket pocket, pulled out a plastic-wrapped baseball card, and passed it to me.

It was definitely a Mays card. 1954 Bowman. Worth up to ten grand. I looked at it more carefully, front and back. “May I take it out of the package? I mean, the card. I will hold it by the edges. No finger sweat, I promise.”

“OK,” she said.

It actually looked legitimate. “How much do you want for it?”

She said, “Three grand.”

I looked at her and the expression on my face must have made hers drop into her jacket.

“Am I underselling?” she asked.

I glanced surreptitiously to my right. Benny’s eyebrows had ascended beyond his hairline. He went back to his Steinbeck and laughed. Perhaps it was the Steinbeck; probably not.

Benny and I knew if she’d wanted to sell a card legally, she could’ve gone on the intertubes and found some sucker who’d buy it and hoped he’d find another sucker who’d pay even more. The business of selling useless stuff to useless people is the foundation of our economy.

“Not at all,” I said. We shook hands. Whether or not that has ever meant anything is still up for debate in a capitalist world.

I pulled a roll out of my coat pocket, peeled off three grand in hundreds, and put it in her rough hands. She looked down at the roll and may have drooled on it. She got up and left quickly, obviously deciding I was paying for her drink.

Benny dropped the book on the bar. It disintegrated into six shorter sections. He turned to me and said, “Gimme the card.”

“Gimme what we agreed on,” I said. “And don’t forget you said that anything under five, I’d get sixty per cent of that.”

Benny calculated in his head, and that clearly didn’t work. He took out his phone, took a while to find his calculator, and still couldn’t figure it out. I gave him a pen and paper and, when he hesitated, I did the math for him. He checked it over a couple of times, then gave me the three I’d given Jane plus my portion.

We shook hands, I bought us a couple of shots, and then I dangled.

I saw her hanging out in the alley between the bagel place run by the mafia and the pizza place run by the Yakuza. She’d washed her face, removing her nose-to-eye scar and her pimple, and had taken off her dirty blond wig. I looked carefully at her eyes but they were still blue and green.

She said, “I have only three Mays cards left. What do we do after that?”

“There’s always Mickey Mantle,” I said. “As long as printer technology continues to advance, and we have AI for the gullible, we’ll always have Paris.”

“Who’s Mickey Mantle?” she said. “Is he an AI bot? Is he French? Whatever are you talking about, in the name of Thor?”

Jane – real name Annie – makes me laugh all the time. I suspect she’ll dump me when she doesn’t surprise me anymore. So I will pretend to be surprised even when I’m not.

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Bio: Bill’s stories, plays and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in over a dozen countries. His novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, was published in October 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.

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