“Glad I could help,” Stranahan said, trying to think of something, anything, more romantic.
She said, “Anyone ever tell you that you’ve got Nick Nolte’s nose?”
“That’s all?” Stranahan said. Nick Nolte was a new one.
“Now the eyes,” Tina said, “your eyes are more like Sting’s. I met him one time at the Strand.”
“Thank you,” Stranahan said. He didn’t know who the hell she was talking about. Maybe one of the those pro wrestlers from cable television.
Holding her pose, Tina motioned him to join her on the old sofa. When he did, she took his hands, placed them on her staunch new breasts, and held them there. Stranahan assumed a compliment was in order.
“They’re perfect,” he said, squeezing politely.
Urgently Tina arched her back and rolled over, Stranahan hanging on like a rock climber.
“While we’re on the subject,” he said, “could I get the name of your surgeon?”
Even before the electrolysis accident, Chemo had led a difficult life. His parents had belonged to a religious sect that believed in bigamy, vegetarianism, UFOs, and not paying federal income taxes; his mother, father and three of their respective spouses were killed by the FBI during a bloody ten-day siege at a post office outside Grand Forks, North Dakota. Chemo, who was only six at the time, went to live with an aunt and uncle in the Amish country of western Pennsylvania. It was a rigorous and demanding period, especially since Chemo’s aunt and uncle were not actually Amish themselves, but fair-weather Presbyterians fleeing a mail-fraud indictment out of Bergen County, New Jersey.
Using their hard-won embezzlements, the couple had purchased a modest farm and somehow managed to infiltrate the hermetic social structure of an Amish township. At first it was just another scam, a temporary cover until the heat was off. As the years passed, though, Chemo’s aunt and uncle got authentically converted. They grew to love the simple pastoral ways and hearty fellowship of the farm folk; Chemo was devastated by their transformation. Growing up, he had come to resent the family’s ruse, and consequently the Amish in general. The plain baggy clothes and strict table manners were bad enough, but it was the facial hair that drove him to fury. Amish men do not shave their chins, and Chemo’s uncle insisted that, once attaining puberty, he adhere to custom. Since religious arguments held no sway with Chemo, it was the practical view that his uncle propounded: All fugitives need a disguise, and a good beard was hard to beat.
Chemo sullenly acceded, until the day of his twenty-first birthday when he got in his uncle’s pickup truck, drove down to the local branch of the Chemical Bank, threatened a teller with a pitchfork (the Amish own no pistols), and strolled off with seven thousand dollars and change. The first thing he bought was a Bic disposable safety razor.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that it was the only bank robbery by an Amish in the entire history of the commonwealth. Chemo himself was never arrested for the crime, but his aunt and uncle were unmasked, extradited back to New Jersey, tried and convicted of mail fraud, then shipped off to a country-club prison in north Florida. Their wheat farm was seized by the U.S. government and sold at auction.
Once Chemo was free of the Amish, the foremost challenge of adulthood was avoiding manual labor, to which he had a chronic aversion. Crime seemed to be the most efficient way of making money without working up a sweat, so Chemo gave it a try. Unfortunately, nature had dealt him a cruel disadvantage: While six foot nine was the perfect height for an NBA forward, for a burglar it was disastrous. Chemo got stuck in the very first window he ever jimmied; he could break, but he could not enter.
Four months in a county jail passes too slowly. He thought often of his aunt and uncle, and upbraided himself for not taking advantage of their vast expertise. They could have taught him many secrets about white-collar crime, yet in his rebellious insolence he had never bothered to ask. Now it was too late—their most recent postcard from the Eglin prison camp had concluded with a religious limerick and the drawing of a happy face. Chemo knew they were lost forever.