Just as he never took a case with too many screwy twists, he never took on a woman with too many screwy twists, either. He was quite comfortable doing the casual dating thing, and frankly, not since his college days had he engaged in a relationship that wasn’t based primarily on fucking, to put it bluntly. Rebecca wasn’t like that, and she’d made it perfectly clear that she definitely was not his type. So why, then, had he given in to the senseless urge to call her? He might as well paint a big giant red F on his chest for FOOL. It was that four-year thing, he decided. He just couldn’t forget it. There was something very alluring about it, on many, dusty and precarious Matt levels . . . not to mention the silk panties he’d found that were still on his dresser.
So it was with a great deal of uncertainty and reservation that he said good night to Harold and told him he’d be out at the Lakeway gig. Harold (whose fingers were flying across the computer keyboard at a perfect 120 words a minute) said, “Tell Miss Lear hi for me,” without so much as a pause in his maniacal typing.
When Matt walked into the Elks’ Lodge an hour later, the room was packed with what looked like so many plain sno-cones. Row upon row of white heads (interspersed with the occasional jet black or reddish purple) were bent over big white sheets, marking with fat, bright neon markers. Some of them were manning more than one sheet, and some of them had surrounded their sheets with a variety of stuffed animals.
In a smaller room to his right, another dozen or more sno-cones were seated around tables gnawing on some sort of meat amid a littering of pink TaB cans.
Cautiously, Matt stepped deeper into the lodge and noticed two elderly women, wearing identical green vests, seated behind a stack of big white sheets and colored markers. One of them eagerly waved him over, but Matt was too stunned to move, because the bizarre scene hadn’t quite registered. He had expected some sort of meeting, a solemn, serious event, but this looked like . . . except that it couldn’t be, could it? Nah . . . it would be next to impossible to pull this off.
“N-45! We all remember ‘45! N-45!”
“Bin-go!” A woman shouted, and popped up like a jack-in-the-box, her paper skin swinging loosely under her arms as she woo-hooed to everyone’s applause.
“We have a winner!” The announcer was sitting with one extra-large hip half cocked onto a bar stool, looking like some senior citizen lounge lizard. Next to him, a machine popped white bingo balls like a giant snow globe. “Come on up here, honey, and let’s make sure you won that twenty-five-dollar pot!”
“I’m definitely in the wrong place,” Matt muttered to himself, and pivoted around, only to be stopped cold by a huge banner sagging across the door:
Welcome to the Masters Bingo Bash for Charity!
Thank you Senator Masters!
“What the hell?” he breathed as the winner did a little cha-cha through the tables on her way to the dais to claim her prize.
“Matt, right?” a male voice asked, causing him to jump a good foot in the air as the announcer asked for the winner’s sheet to double-check the numbers. It was Gunter, dressed in all black again.
“Gunter,” Matt said with a sigh of relief, extending his hand.
“That’s a bingo, all right,” the announcer said. “Okay, doll, what charity are you going to donate to?”
“I’m going to donate it to the Arthritis Foundation.”
“That’s a good one! I could use a little of their help myself. Okay, folks, line ‘em up, we got us a forty-dollar pot coming up!”
“They’re really into bingo here,” Gunter said stoically.
No shit. “Where’s Tom?” Matt asked.
“Are you ready? Got your cards lined up? Ready to play a little B-I-N-G-OOOH?” the announcer sang.
“Hasn’t shown up yet. But there goes Rebecca,” Gunter said, and nodded at a figure darting through the crowd toward the dais.
That was Rebecca, all right, but it was little wonder Matt hadn’t noticed her before now—her hair was coming out of its braid, a towel or something was hanging like a handkerchief from her pocket, and she was carrying what looked like a giant eraser. She raced up the three steps to the dais platform and a big white erase board there, which she frantically rubbed as the announcer pulled a ball from the popping bingo machine.
“The first number in game four is B-11. That’s Beeee-eleven. Which reminds me—and I don’t think I can say this often enough—Joe Hampton has warned that we all stay away from the beeeeeans. Says they’re delicious but lethal.” The crowd laughed as Rebecca wrote, in perfectly straight and giant letters, B-11 on the white erase board.
“You’re kidding me,” Matt said flatly.
“I’m not kidding,” Gunter said as he crossed his arms over his concave chest.
“What happened to a meeting?”
“Hey, I’m just here for the pics, dude.”
Well, he was here for a meeting, and Matt was instantly striding for the dais. When he reached it, he stood off to one side, by the stairs, just below Rebecca. “Rebecca!” he hissed as the old guy called I-20.
She hardly even spared him a glance as she erased the board and wrote I-20. “Where’s Tom?” she hissed back at him. “He promised he’d be on time!”
“I-20, where I almost met my maker once, pulling a fifth-wheel trailer.” Appreciative moans went up from the audience as everyone carefully marked their I-20’s.
“Perhaps Tom was confused,” Matt loudly whispered back. “Perhaps he expected a real meeting and not a bingo game!”
“Bash.”
“Excuse me?”