CENTRAL CASTING

“Central Casting,” Sheila thought. “Where, exactly, does one go in New York to get deliberately cheap-looking suits like that, 48 Long, maybe? Do they make shirts with 19-inch collars? Why are they wearing exactly the same color suit? What’s their deal?” The math teacher tried to remember the old joke. Was her memory degrading less than gracefully? Was she getting longer in the tooth than in her toes, especially today? Finally, it clicked. “Michael Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzmichael, Ben Doon and Phil McCavity.” The sun poked through the cloudy sky and Sheila saw a glint off thug one’s sunglass hinge. “Cheater mirrors? Are they front-following me? Why today, of all days?” Sheila had seen every episode of “The Americans” and “Get Smart” and knew what to look for in case, for some reason, she was ever shadowed.

Sheila undocked a CitiBike, used the bungee cord to secure her package, unfolded the bike helmet she kept in whatever bag she had with her on any particular day, then took off her left shoe, the one with the shoe phone, and hit the buttons that would cut the SIM card out of the circuit. She opted for the First Avenue uptown bike lane since it passed by the United Nations complex. Before the 39^th Street cross-over, she made sure her U.N. passport, a hold-over from her roving math lab days in rural Uganda, was still in her bag. At 42^nd Street, she did a Z-turn, getting off the bike lane and onto the U.N. sidewalk. Between 43^rd and 46^th, she would be only seconds away from safe harbor. Sheila paused to salute St. George slaying his nuclear dragon in the sculpture garden. She was sad that she couldn’t visit the Chagall windows while she was so busy today and likely being followed by nefarious agents.

“You have some imagination, old girl. Are spooks out to steal your syllabus notes on differentiation by parts and tensor analysis? Your dissertation on getting trigonometry somewhat relatable to kids raised in a Kraal? Silly. All they have to do is access it from Xerox PARC. Get you butt back on that bike, cowgirl. You have miles to go before you sleep. ‘Remember, Sheila, you have miles to go before you sleep,’ You really loved that stupid Charles Bronson movie, didn’t you?”

Fully restored to a reality in which thug-like people didn’t tail math teachers, she wound back the z-turn and resumed heading uptown. She made it to 48^th Street where Thug One and Thug Two, riding those blue Revel motor scooters, cut across her path and blocked her progress.

“Come with us. You know what you did,” Thug One, the one with a Constantine’s cross tattoo on his neck, ordered her.

“Put that package in the trunk, Dock my bike first before we go anywhere. I’m on the hook for $1,200 if it gets lost. There’s a dock right around the corner. Just roll it in until it clicks and beeps and the green light goes on. The IN HOC SIGNO VINCES thug turned to his partner, who nodded his head slightly.

“It would be suspicious if we abandoned it here, Thumper. And I understand they all have built-in GPS trackers.”

 When he returned, Thug One took her by the left arm, Thug Two the right, and they frog-marched her across the street “against the light!” to an idling Hummer H-2, where her one thought was “Don’t go to the second location.” Her weapons were math, sarcasm, twenty years of discipline in tantric yoga, and being raised in The Bronx. Using her toes, she put the SIM card back online, locked it in silent mode, turned “find my phone tracking” on, and had it text Ross with their private dire emergency code. 

“What is it I’m supposed to know what I did, anyway, Thumper? And if you’re Thumper, is your lover there Bambi? Dumbo?” 

“Good discipline on these guys. A sociopath kidnapper would have smacked me for that. Professionals. But not in Philip and Elizabeth’s profession. Or Maxwell Smart’s, either.”

“It’s classified, Ma’am,” Thumper lied. “Do you have a security clearance? And I’m certain you know what it is you did.” He turned to the other guy in the grey non-flannel suit. “Pack her up, Bugs.”

Sheila submitted to being patted down and handcuffed, now that she knew it was at least a 62% shot that she was dealing with Bozos. She opted for weapon number three. Her discipline allowed her to piggy-back her autonomous nervous system. The prisoner counted to ten and then reverse-peristalsised and projectile vomited her Huevos Rancheros breakfast, followed by her cuttlefish and asparagus dinner from previous night, hitting both suits as well as fouling and acid etching the driver’s seat, steering wheel, and dashboard. She sensed tension in the Rabbit Squad. Bugs clearly wanted to slit her, knave to chops. Thumper reminded him that they weren’t allowed to damage the package before delivery. Discussing something like that in the presence of “the package” moved the 62% Bozo ratio up to 71%. Maybe Phillip, Elizabeth, and Agent 86 could get her out of this. Bugs got a bottle of windshield wiper fluid and a shammy rag from the back of the truck and managed to at least partially de-disgustophy the car, if not the formerly grey suits. Bugs had some difficulty getting the green—definitely not environmentally green— monster out of its parking space.

“Listen, fellas, I don’t have all day, I have to be somewhere. Back all the way up, cut the wheel hard right as far as it goes. Thumper, or whatever your name is, keep your eye on the dashboard compass. It’s at 43 degrees now, when it hits 57, have your buddy there bring the wheels fully straight ahead, back up until you tap the bumper of the car behind you, then hard right again.  You’ll have a slot with more room than a 45-year-old hooker.”

“71 percent is not 100 percent. These idiots could be ignorant of sophomore geometry but still be dangerous. And then there’s the second location to watch out for. Something’s wrong with this picture. No tough guy, maybe no guy at all, would take parking advice from a woman seated inside a car.”

Oddly enough, Bugs took the right turn on First Avenue, heading north, the direction she was originally going before her meditation on grey suits. But there was a thousand miles of north above where they were, and three thousand miles to the west.

“What’s the point of having a shoe phone and all the other stuff if I never get a chance to use it? I never needed it in Kampala or the deepest jungle. I got picked for the Math Lab project because I had Junior ROTC on my C.V. What a bummer if I die before ever being able to say ‘Missed it by THIS much.’ Sheila, old girl, you had one festivity scheduled for today, hopefully, now you can have two.”

Sheila broke off the long fingernail tip for her index finger, the one that hid a universal handcuff key. She unlocked herself and discreetly set up her earing garrote. While Bugs pulled away at the next green light, Sheila had Thumper’s neck cinched against the headrest—funny, real Hummers didn’t have headrests. Both men exploded with gushers of expletives, but that was pretty much all they had to explode.

“Park and 82^nd, numbskulls. Drive carefully, the garrote is garnet encrusted. I wasn’t planning on killing anyone today and I’d rather not have to, at least until I find out what’s going on.”

 Luckily for everyone involved, Ross was standing on the corner well before NYPD showed up. Before anyone said anything, the former captive fished a Lyft decal out of her bag and put it on the rented Hummer’s windshield.

“Don’t kiss me, Ross. I smell like vomit. I think we all need a couple of good, stiff ones.”

 The four of them settled in at a back booth of the Penrose, along the exposed brick wall, cross-talk erasing any meaningful information exchange, but what got through was enough.

“Ross, did you actually hire people to fake-kidnap me on our anniversary? Where did you find these clowns?"

“Sorry, Sheila, I thought it would be a great prank. Remember when I had the contract for some VFX software at Silvercup Studios in Queens? I used to have lunch at the same place as the people who hung around waiting for work as extras. I thought these guys would be perfect. But why, exactly, is it that you carry a garrote with you?” 

“You know how I love spy movies? That I bought all of Get Smart on DVD? Taped every episode of The Americans? Well, two years ago I walked by something called ‘The Spy Store.’ I picked up a few things. More for fantasy than for actual use. A guilty little pleasure…”

They heard the approaching siren and Ross and Sheila went outside to apologize to the responding officers, Ross explaining that his wife hit the emergency code instead of the “Pizza Tonight” code. The shorter officer said it was great to have an emergency code, that 911 was always the best emergency call, and that they should have a good evening.

Back in the Penrose, they finished their drinks, and Ross invited Stan and Isaac upstairs. Ross opened the door to shouts of “Surprise” and banners declaring “YOU DID IT!!!” 

Underneath the banners were the marriage-lengths of Ross’s and Sheila’s parents; nine years for Ross’s parents and thirteen for Sheila’s. This was their 14^th anniversary. They did it. Their marriages lasted longer than both of their parents had, a bone of contention before they were engaged, why get married only to get divorced? Stan, or possibly Isaac, handed Sheila her package, which she gave to her husband: bench-tested I9 CPU whose provenance was slightly askew. Ross handed her a gift of his own; tears welled up in Sheila's eyes when she tore the paper off her gift: an 11-scale ivory slide rule, the ivory making its provenance at least as sketchy as the alpha-version CPU.

Before the party could start, however, the crowd demanded a first-class anniversary kiss, happily provided by the we-did-it couple.