Wet Works | 16 July 2021

The line for the bathroom wasn’t long, but it was desperate.  Folks shifting left to right in a dance I knew too well.  I didn’t actually have to piss, but I had orders – get there between 8-9pm, and look for the key in the hiding spot of the ADA stall.

BNR Response

Hiding spot, indeed.  That was a cute touch to tack onto this latest clue.  I really had to move though, and I knew the chance of Bobo or Bruiser beating me to the end of this hunt was growing with the minute.  In my urgency, I started eyeing the three people in line ahead of me for the unisex bathroom for hints about how I might manipulate my way up in the queue.  After telling the girl, clad in plaid and leaning against the brick wall plastered with curling posters of previous acts, that the restroom across the room didn’t have a line I was able to move up and take her spot.  I convinced the next person ahead that I had simply left my phone in the stall, pointing to the conspicuous hole in the front pocket of my jeans, and was in the disabled cabin at last. 

Hiding spot, what a sick joke.  As if I’m in a movie and every toilet has that consistent hidden compartment for Godfather pistols and Scarface cocaine mirrors.  Where the fuck was I going to find this key?  Before I know it, I’ve burned through ten minutes and I can already hear those stupid brothers chest pounding and drinking out of the Cup in celebration.  Think, Sy, think.  I’m staring, eyes unfocused, at the water tank of the commode and it hits me: Jesus Christ on a crutch…they wouldn’t, would they?  I’d already been put through the ringer this weekend trying to track down the other keys to solve this scavenger hunt: starting at a beachfront property party that made Eyes Wide Shut look like a day at a nunnery, the gritty manhole in the alley behind the IOOF hall, and, most recently, the groundkeeper’s shed at the cemetery.  Fuck it.  I lift up the lid to the tank and peer inside, and there it is: brass and very small, like the kind I had to unlock my bike chain in middle school.  Fuck fuck fuck.  After a sharp inhalation, I flush the toilet and the ball-cock descends, I reach in, elbow-deep, and extract the key and the attached letter packaged in plastic.  I can’t avoid washing my hands and find myself side-by-side with the guy who had taken pity on my, “it’s just my phone” excuse and, in an effort to avoid his gaze, I focus on scrubbing the trichinosis-laden water off of my skin.  I put the small key in my front jean pocket and discard the letter’s plastic casing.

The clue in my hand has to be second or third to last, surely.  How many days were we meant to be on this quest?  More than two days wasn’t worth $10K in my book, I was getting to goddamned old for this.  Thankfully, this clue was an easy one, and I immediately knew to head down to the boat slip off Airport Road.  At the end of a short ride I threw ten bucks at the cabbie and ran the block to the dock before slowing to walk the more delicate ramps between the boats.  I was looking for a craft with a racy name, and passed one that sounded too bleu, Mermaid’s Clam, and opted for the less on-the-nose choice of, Butterfield-8.  I think this is the kind of yacht they describe as, “yar”, she was a beaut.  She seemed to be a KrisKraft from the 60s or 70s, sleek, modest, and with the splendor of varnished Thuja wood everywhere.  The moon glinted off of the deck, and I then noticed the bobbing of the boat was driven by some action going on in the interior.  Not wanting to disturb the boat’s occupants, I quickly climbed aboard, thankful for my white-soled sneakers, and located the key I sought on the dash by the steering wheel.  The gyrations of the vessel were now met with escalating groans from the small cabin…time to disembark.  Initially concerned that there wasn’t an envelope of some sort to accompany the large square silver key, I was relieved, once again on dry land, to see that the key tag held all the information I needed to get to my next destination.  I put the key, which was on a boat mechanic’s vanity keychain, to my personal key ring to ensure I didn’t lose it.

The hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant, aptly named, “Off the Hook”, was just walking distance away.  I began to relax a bit as I realized that perhaps the long treks during the first day of the hunt were now dissolving into shorter and shorter jaunts between clues.  I walked along the edge of the land, where the grass growing in dirt gives way to ice grass growing in sand.  About five minutes later, I was almost there.  There was an increasingly steady stream of wavering pedestrians looking for their cars and taxis, and I couldn’t help but see their wobbly movements as a sort of dance to the music drifting on the air.  “Captain Jack” by Billy Joel, how ironic.  The key tag had said, “Windy is Off the Hook”, and I just happened to know that a Windy hostessed around the harbor and owned the best set of dimples in any of the cheeks in town.  As I walked in, the smell of stale beer and fry batter was striking but the vibe was blissfully mellow and unpretentious.  The music swelled and I saw Windy round the corner, holding a stack of menus.  I’d been waiting for a chance to strike up conversation with this woman, and I was able to confidently tell her about my clue and ask if she had a key for me.  She smiled and was genuinely interested in the uniqueness of my extracurriculars.  There were those dimples.  Hot damn.  I was just about to transition into small talk and was feeling all kinds of right about this moment when an incredibly embarrassing lyric from Captain Jack punched through the pause in our conversation, “Your sister’s gone out, she’s on a date, and you just stay at home and massssssturbate.”  I manage to laugh it off, but it has definitely killed my game, so I make a promise to come back after I conclude the scavenger hunt and buy Windy a drink across the street at the fishermen’s bar.  Proud of my recovery, I look down at the heavy envelope she’s given to me for the first time.  I open it up and it has no less than four keys in it and a handwritten note beckoning me to the beach.  I fold the envelope in half and put it in my back pocket.

This last clue (it must be!) indicates that it will soon be time to try my keys to see if I have, indeed, been able to locate the one necessary to access my prize money.  I scramble down the dodgy retaining rocks that appear to quite literally be holding the cliffside up and make it down to the sand.  I remove my shoes and feel the sand is cold on my warm bare feet, all the heat is long dissipated and has had time to catch a chill, having been in the shadow of the cliff overhang for hours.  I look to the right and see the fog coming in, no discernable light or life.  I look to the left at a long stretch ahead of me, with what seems to be a bonfire about a hundred or so yards away.  The smell of the smoke in my nostrils burns and the sound of laughter and garbled tunes from an old radio suggest that I am on the right path.  As I near the group of revelers, I am hit with nostalgia so heady that I grow dizzy.  Couples are snuggling under faded sarapes, beer cans are scattered about, and the fragrance of burning oak.  I stop for a moment to close my eyes and take it all in.  My eyes are still closed, and I am swaying gently as I am greeted with a questioning, “Uh, what’s up, man?” and I am instantly snapped from my daydream.  I must look like a madman: having staggered eerily down the rocks, seemingly appearing from the ether, and now wandering, zombie-like, a little too close to their intimate gathering.  I excuse myself and explain my quest.  They nod with relief and their laughs break the momentary tension.  A young blonde kid wearing a shirt that reads, “Back off, Warchild” points a few hundred yards further down the beach to what appears to be an old storage shack. 

The shanty leans against the cliffside where the grade of the land starts to arc upwards once again and a number of narrow trees have created a kind of curtain of darkness.  Is this the real destination or is it a decoy?  I’ve been frequenting this beach for years and have never seen this structure.  It seems to have spontaneously generated like the Zoltar fortune teller in Big.  I sidle up to the one-door structure and realize that its more like a Disneyland feature than an authentic artifact, and I know this is the place: it had been strategically planted here as the final stop of the hunt and I was the only one here.  There are two padlocks on the door, both owners to different keys.  I systematically go through the nine keys I’ve gathered over the last two days.  Orgy party key: no dice.  Odd Fellows key: not immediately working.  Groundskeeper’s key: success!  It opens the top padlock.  Boat key on my keyring: nothing, but the key tag reminds me momentarily of Windy’s breezy, “toodle-oo” and I can’t wait to win this thing so I can regale her with my tale over drinks at the bad bar.  I exhale deeply.  Focus, Sy.  Now I reach for the envelope of four keys from Windy, recalling how her fingers had glided across my hand as she passed it to me…mmm.  Envelope keys: no joy.  I retry the Odd Fellows key and can safely rule it out now.  Oh shit, wait a second, what about the dive bar toilet key?  Yessssss.  I reach into my front right pocket and my lungs drop into my pelvis as I realize my pocket is empty, and my hand can know reach fully through that fucking hole to the outside of my pants.  I look down at my hand, which seems to be mockingly looking up at me from the exposed inside/outside of my denim.  Fucckkkkkk.

I hear the Bowzer brothers lumbering past the bonfire in their signature indelicate fashion, and I sink to my knees in the cold sand.  When they catch up with me I’m trying to ready myself to concede defeat.  Bobo dangles the tiny toilet key in front of me with a smug grin on his face.  Apparently, I dropped it while making a pass at Windy, and it was the only key they had managed to secure.  Before they put the key in the second padlock, I swallow my pride and manage to choke out, “Split it, boys?”