Chapter 17: Strike Night

"She's in a crate," I said. "In a warehouse. By order of a judge who golfs with my husband."

"Then get her out by April."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you'll have fourteen paintings and I'll have a very nice show nobody comes to."

"That's blackmail."

"That's business. Blackmail is what your husband does."

She handed me a card with only a phone number on it.

"Think about it," she said. "Don't think too long."

She went out past the lanes without looking at a single pin.

Hutch was waiting at the end of the back hall.

"What did she want?"

"Fourteen paintings and my naked body."

He blinked.

"In a show," I said. "In April. With my name on the window."

"Neve."

"I know."

He picked me up off the floor and spun me once, right there by the shoe rental, and the purple satin team booed us for blocking the hall.

Saturday was Strike Night.

I didn't name it. The mailmen did.

They'd been planning it for two weeks without telling Hutch.

Twenty dollars a game, all lanes, all night.

A raffle table with prizes donated by every bar and bakery on Milwaukee Avenue.

The Wednesday seniors baked forty dozen cookies and stood guard over them.

And a folding table at the end of lane sixteen with a hand-lettered sign Fran made in glitter pen.

PORTRAITS BY THE FAMOUS NEVE. $50. SHE'S FAST.

"I'm not famous," I said.

"You're famous for the wrong thing," Fran said. "Now be famous for the right thing. Sit."

I sat.

I drew all night.

Bowlers in their league shirts, holding their balls.

The notary, with his stamp.

A couple in their seventies who'd met on lane eleven in 1966 and wanted to be drawn holding hands.

A little boy from the Sunday youth league who made me draw his missing tooth.

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