Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Read online

  More applause and even greater laughter.

  The pot sold for a hundred thousand dollars.

  54

  “I can’t believe you did that, Hubie.”

  “He caught me off guard. He asked me to take a bow, so I took one.”

  “I’m not talking about the bow. I’m talking about that Nixonesque wave to the crowd.”

  “Well,” I pointed out, “I’m short. If I just bowed, they wouldn’t see me.”

  “You looked like you were running for something.”

  “If it was for director of the commission on aging, I’d be a shoo-in after last night.”

  “I also can’t believe he called you a graduate. They ignored you for years, and now that Layton Kent makes you out to be some kind of a hero, the University is anxious to claim you. You’ll probably get a letter from the development office soliciting a donation.”

  “Oh, I get those every year. Just because they kick you out doesn’t mean they don’t want your money. And anyway, I am a graduate, remember? I have a business degree.”

  “Yeah, but remember what your father said about that when you went back to college the second time and ended up in archaeology.”

  I smiled at the memory of my father. He said I got a business degree and then went back to get an education.

  I had slept most of the day. I don’t know what exhausted me more, the dancing or the constant attention. I was rested enough to keep my standing five o’clock appointment at Dos Hermanas, and Susannah and I were drinking pisco sours.

  “These aren’t bad,” I said. “What are they made from?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Can you at least tell me what pisco is?”

  “It’s a distilled wine made in Chile from a special variety of grape.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I’m a waitress. We also take drink orders.”

  “Well, you may have missed your calling. Maybe you should go to bartending school.”

  “At least then I might have a chance to graduate.”

  “You’ll graduate from UNM eventually, but so what. Bartenders make more than most college graduates.”

  I waved to Angie for a second round of piscos.

  “Susannah, I want to thank you for saving me the other night. I really panicked when I tripped over Guvelly in my shop. But you were a rock.”

  “Thanks. You may have been panicky at first, but you certainly got your brain in gear when you figured out what happened.”

  “We make a great team.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” she said. “It’s funny, isn’t it? The pot that was auctioned off has made a round trip—from the Museum to you and back to the Museum.”

  “Seems like a lot of wasted effort.”

  “Not really. The University now has another two hundred thousand in the scholarship fund, and you got your legal bill erased.”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t have had a legal bill except for this whole episode. So you can’t count that as a gain.”

  “Did you get anything else for the pot?”

  “No money, but I did get Layton and Mariella’s goodwill.”

  “Why are you smiling like that?”

  “I also got my fake back.”

  “So both pots came full circle. What will you do with the fake? You can’t sell it after all the publicity surrounding you and the Valle del Rio Museum.”

  “Don’t be too certain about that. I’ve often sold fake pots to customers who thought they were genuine. This is a chance to sell a fake pot as a fake.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Thanks to all the publicity, the UNM Mogollon water jug is enjoying its fifteen minutes of fame. People buy prints and reproductions of originals all the time. So I’m thinking of putting an ad in the paper with a picture of the reproduction I made. Even though it’s a reproduction, it’s still one of a kind. I think it would bring a few thousand.”

  “So you’re moving from fakes to reproductions.”

  “The only difference between a fake and reproduction is in the mind of the buyer.”

  “And what about the other pot?”

  “The one from Bandelier?”

  “Yeah. What will you do with that one?”

  “Fletcher’s going to turn it in for the finder’s fee, which is five thousand.”

  “So you’ll get twenty-five hundred for your share of the finder’s fee and maybe the same amount for the fake. That’s a total of five thousand, only ten percent of what the two pots were worth when you had them both.”

  “Hardly worth worrying about, right?”

  “I know that sly look. What are you getting at?”

  “I’m not keeping the five thousand. After all, I had the sale of the Maria and that paid half of my tax bill. And I don’t want to spoil the IRS by paying everything on time. So I’m using all the Mogollon-related money to start a scholarship called the Guvelly award for the top student each year from Martin’s pueblo.”

  She smiled that big rancher-girl smile. “I think I’ll buy you a drink.”

  55

  In order to explain what happened the next evening at five, I need to describe Susannah. That’s more difficult than it sounds because when I look at her I see her personality, and that influences what I see.

  What I like best about Susannah Inchaustigui is her refreshing lack of guile. But that wouldn’t help a sketch artist. So how do I describe her? She’s a couple of inches taller than me and has that healthy rancher look, like she can ride, rope and wrestle steers. She’s not fat, she’s not even plump, but you wouldn’t call her thin either. She has curves in all the places girls should have curves and like she herself said, she looks great in an evening dress.

  But in her normal casual clothes at Dos Hermanas, she’s just the girl next door, her thick brown hair held back in a ponytail, and her honey-colored eyes taking in the world like she was born yesterday.

  But when I saw her the next night, her eyes were larger than normal and bright red. Her nose was glowing pink and running, and her hair was a tangle of clumps and strands. She gave me a brave smile as I approached the table and then broke into tears.

  “Shit! I said I wasn’t going to cry in front of you, and I couldn’t even control it for five seconds.”

  Then she really let loose.

  I scooted my chair over next to hers and she put her arms around me and cried on my shoulder. I had never seen her cry like that, but like everything else she does, she did it with gusto. After a minute or two my entire shoulder was wet.

  I wanted to say something but didn’t know what to say. Men are clueless in such situations, and I’m worse than most. So I just held her and let her cry. After what seemed a long time but was probably only three minutes, she lifted her head, took a paper napkin out of the dispenser and blew her nose.

  “God, that was gross,” she said.

  “Nothing like a good cry to clear the sinuses.”

  “I didn’t need my sinuses cleared. God, I must look awful.”

  I decided not to comment on that. “You want to tell me why you’re crying?”

  She threw her head down on the table and started again. After a moment, she muttered a few words.

  “Sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

  She lifted her head slightly and said, “He’s married.”

  Then she put her head back down, but she didn’t cry. She just stayed there with her arms crossed on the table and her head buried in her arms. Then she looked up and said, “Shit! I don’t need this. He’s not worth it. No man is worth it. You’re all a bunch of shits, you know that, Hubie?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Of course you are less of a shit than any other man I know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s get dru
nk.”

  She ordered margaritas. I guess every cloud does have a silver lining.

  Although she said we weren’t going to talk about Kauffmann, we did anyway. Actually, she talked and I listened. The initial stream of invective was bitter and loud, but she eventually ran out of steam. Or maybe the tequila took the steam out of her. When she was well past tipsy, she looked at me and said, “Do you think I’m attractive?”

  “I don’t think there’s a man alive who wouldn’t find you attractive.”

  “What about the gay ones?”

  “Well, you would have Marilyn for competition.”

  She started sobbing again. “You are full of tricky answers, Hubert.”

  “I didn’t mean to be tricky.”

  “I asked you if you thought I was attractive, and you didn’t answer me.”

  “You’re my friend, Susannah. I thought you were asking about your attractiveness to men in general.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying. Anyway, I don’t remember the question. What did you ask me?”

  “I didn’t ask you anything. You asked me something.”

  “What did I ask you?”

  “You asked me if you could go to sleep.”

  “Right,” she said, “that’s what I want to do, go to sleep.”

  I managed to half-walk and half-drag her across the plaza and down the block to my shop. I used the alley entrance to avoid locking and unlocking doors. I pushed her into the bathroom. When she staggered out, I walked her over to my bed, pulled off the covers and helped her lie down. While I was taking off her shoes, she said, “I can sleep on the floor. I can’t take your bed.”

  “Beds are not like other possessions. They belong to whoever is sleeping in them.”

  She didn’t hear that pearl of wisdom because she was already asleep.

  56

  I climbed out of my hammock the next morning with a stiff back, but it loosened up after a hot shower. Susannah didn’t need my coffee on top of a hangover, so I went to Flying Star and bought two large lattes, which did major damage to a ten dollar bill.

  When I got back, rain had started to drizzle. I scooted inside and transferred the coffees from the paper cups to mugs and placed them in a warm oven. Then I prepared huevos rancheros and waited for Susannah to wake up.

  I passed the time by reading another article from the Pythagoras anthology.

  Susannah awoke with a hangover. Aspirin, hot coffee, a hot shower and a hearty desayuno of huevos rancheros brought her back among the living.

  I planned to steer the conversation away from Kauffmann’s treachery, but the topic didn’t arise. Susannah saw the book on Pythagoras and asked me, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, what I had learned while reading it.

  “Pythagoras was introduced to philosophy by Thales.”

  “I remember Thales from my philosophy course,” she said, “but only that he was the first philosopher.”

  “That’s all there is to remember. Only one sentence of his writing remains: ‘Everything is water.’”

  “I guess he’d never been to New Mexico.”

  I was glad her sense of humor was intact. “We know a lot more about Pythagoras,” I volunteered. “He traveled to Egypt in search of knowledge, but the schools there wouldn’t admit him until he went through forty days of fasting and deep breathing to achieve the proper discipline. Pythagoras said to them, ‘I have come for knowledge, not for discipline.’”

  “Better than today’s students. Most of them don’t have discipline or knowledge.”

  “Pythagoras also traveled to India where it’s believed he met Gautama the Buddha. After accumulating wisdom in all these travels, he founded a school where he taught his own philosophy of life.”

  “Which was?”

  “Part of it was avoidance of beans.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not. In fact, his death is reputed to have come when he was fleeing from rebels and came to a bean field. Because he refused to cross, he was captured and killed. But here’s something about his school I really like. When a student was expelled, a tomb bearing the expelled student’s name was erected in the garden. Pythagoras taught that such a student was dead and would proclaim, ‘His body appears among men, but his soul is dead. Let us weep for it.’”

  “I was thinking about you being expelled. Now that the president of UNM has publicly praised you and described you as one of their graduates, I wonder if you should petition to have the record of your dismissal expunged.”

  “I don’t think so. It would be like acknowledging it was valid to begin with. On top of that, if I keep my dismissal status, the University might someday erect a tomb on campus with my name on it.”

  She laughed—it was good to hear—and took another sip of coffee. Then she looked pensive. I thought she was going to say something about Kauffmann, but instead she said, “Kaylee wants to get married.”

  “Does she have anyone in mind as a groom?”

  She nodded. “Arturo, the pot scrubber I told you about.”

  “How did that happen? Or do I want to know?”

  “After she agreed to take a job as a pot scrubber, the boss asked Arturo to show her the ropes because he’s the only one back there who speaks English.”

  “Did showing her the ropes get her pregnant?”

  “Just listen, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “As you suggested, I asked the boss if he had any idea where she could stay temporarily. He said Arturo’s parents were just scraping by and could use a little rent. He talked to them, and they agreed to rent her a spare room. The boss is paying them twenty-five dollars a week, and Kaylee is able to get back and forth to work with Arturo. So in the course of working together, living in the same house and commuting to work together, I guess they fell in love.”

  I had a cynical remark in mind but kept silent since I’d already been admonished.

  “It’s kind of romantic,” she said. “A confused runaway girl and a hard-working pot scrubber without much chance to attract a girlfriend find each other and fall in love.”

  Considering what had happened to Susannah, I didn’t think it was a good time for her to be talking about people falling in love, but I didn’t see any way to change the subject. I asked her to tell me about Arturo.

  “He’s a sweetheart. Works hard, always polite to everyone. He smiles a lot.”

  “They haven’t known each other very long.”

  “True love isn’t a matter of time.”

  “So when’s the date?”

  “They haven’t set it yet. There’s something they have to do first.”

  “Get a blood test?”

  She sighed. “You don’t need blood tests to get married these days, Hubert. Arturo has to ask for her hand in marriage.”

  “That’s very traditional of him, but who’s he going to ask?” I really didn’t see this coming, but I should have known from the sneaky smile on Susannah’s face.

  “You, Hubert. Kaylee asked him to ask you.”

  57

  It was time to make the trip I had prepared for but hoped to avoid.

  I set my alarm for the second time in a month and got up in time to make the 6:50 flight to LAX. The flight was packed with business people getting a jump on the competition. Owing to the miracle of the jet engine and the change of time zone, we arrived at the exact time we had departed.

  That set the surreal tone for my visit to Los Angeles.

  I spent more time on the shuttle bus to the car rental company than I had on the plane. There was a long line at the on-ramp to the freeway, and once you nudged your way into the traffic, it looked like a Hollywood chase sequence. I consulted the map the young lady at the rental counter had given me—she had taken several screen tests and was there only temporarily. I avoided the freeway by taking S
epulveda north. I was in no hurry. I wanted to arrive after everyone who was going out of the house would have already done so. I found a Carl’s Jr. and had a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. Carl or his Jr. had a payphone. I made a call and let it ring until a machine answered. Then I hung up.

  I turned east on Sunset and found the road, a steeply winding lane lined by attractively designed homes surrounded by eucalyptus, Lombardy poplars, palo verdes and some other trees I couldn’t name. Unlike what I expected in Southern California, the homes were neither large nor ostentatious. They looked like they had been designed by skilled architects, people who designed houses to live in rather than to show off. That boded well for me since it meant they would likely have sturdy doors, something true break-in artists avoid but which I was counting on.

  I had never done this before, but I had a plan.

  I came to the address and pulled in to a driveway that curved around the side of the house, so I couldn’t see if there was a garage. I parked in front and walked to the door. It was solid wood with dark stain and looked to have been custom made. The doorknob was bronze. I bent over and saw the brand name etched under the knob. I did a quick rendering of the device on a 3 x 5 card.

  It was a quiet enclave with only a hint of traffic noise in the distance. Birds chirped and leaves rustled in a gentle breeze. Despite the serene setting, I was nervous. I could feel the paperboy or milkman standing behind me, and I almost couldn’t resist the temptation to look over my shoulder. If I looked once, I would look again, and then I’d lose what little nerve I had mustered up for the occasion.

  Because of the elevation and heavy foliage, the only building I could see was part of the Getty Museum a couple of miles away on the other side of 405. I wished I were there staring at the art instead of on a stranger’s porch staring at his lock. But I stayed where I was.

  I rang the doorbell and waited.

  No one answered.

  Maybe the bell was out of order. I knocked loudly. When no one answered, I got back in my car and drove to an Ace Hardware I’d spotted on Sepulveda. I bought fifty dollars’ worth of supplies then returned to Carl’s Jr. and called the same number with the same result.