April Fool's Day
I called my best friend Mike."Wrong number, you bastard," he said, picking up on the third ring.
"I talk to you two hundred times a year, but this call is always my favorite," I said.
"I hope you're wearing protective headgear," he said.
What we're talking about is my favorite April Fool's Day prank ever. Here's the column I wrote in 2004.
***
Mike is one of my best friends. I've known him for almost twenty years (I can't even believe that as I write it), and he is one of the most remarkable people I've ever met. The crazy thing about Mike is that he's never out of place. He would be equally comfortable conversing with the Queen or standing at a soccer match while hooligans are lobbing urine bags over his head. He just can't be rattled.
I'm comfortable in a very small space, approximately the size of my study. Actually, it is my study. This is to your benefit if you enjoy this column, because my ant-sized comfort zone means I don't spend my free time smiling winningly as I hold up a beer with my good-looking and confident circle of friends, or driving my new sports car with someone who is robot dancing in the passenger seat to the very hip music I'm playing.
I don't have the world wrapped around my finger. I can't even find my finger.
So Mike and I are an unlikely pair of friends, but he has a scathing sense of humor that I really appreciate, and I look at him as what I might be someday if I ever grow up and leave the crawlspace.
We have a highly efficient method of communication. Gloria will have a thirty-minute conversation with one of her friends, then minutes after she hangs up, Mike will call, usually when some sporting event is on.
"Hey," he says."Hey."
"Did you see that?"
"Horrible call," I say.
"See you," he says. Click.
That's another reason he's such a good friend. Sure, the conversation is ten words long, but I only have to say three.
This story, as you've guessed, is about Mike.
In 1993, the Texas Tech women's basketball team won the regional championships and qualified for the Final Four in Atlanta. Mike is a Texas Tech alum and a passionate sports fan, and although he normally doesn't follow women's basketball, the team had an exciting and transcendent player named Sheryl Swoopes, and we both enjoyed watching the games because of her remarkable talent.
Tech won the regional finals on Sunday. The national semifinal game was scheduled for the following Saturday. Tuesday morning, Mike called.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"We're going to Atlanta," he says.
"I'm in."
"Friday morning. I'll call you." Click.
It's March 30th. April Fool's Day is two days away.
The plan we hatch is as implausible as it is implausible. We decide to rent some hulking vehicle and drive non-stop from Austin to Atlanta. We book accommodations somewhere--in Georgia, I hope. We'll figure everything else out when we get there. It's almost a thousand mile drive, so we should be in Atlanta sometime late Friday.
We decide to rent the car Thursday night and leave at 4 a.m. Friday morning. Mike picks me up Thursday night and we head for the airport, Mecca of rental cars.
Here's another thing about Mike, and it's important. He's kind of a charming rogue with women. Just a pretend rogue nowadays, but a rogue nonetheless. So when the pretty young counter girl starts talking to us, Mike starts flirting. After she starts flirting back, he teases her about going to Atlanta with us. It's all good-natured and totally harmless.
On the way out, Mike turns to me and says "Listen, that girl would have gone with us."
"Right." I know what this drive will be like. A hostage wouldn't go with us.
"She'd go. Did you see her? I've still got it." That's not exactly what he said, because for some reason I can't remember the exact phrase he used, but it was nothing more than good natured bragging between guys. As he said this, though, I heard a clicking sound, then more clicking.
Gears. In my head. Turning.
The first thing I did when I got back to my apartment was call his wife Debbie. She wanted in. Then I called the car rental girl. After some persuasion, she was in, too.
At 9:30 p.m. on April Fool's day, the phone rings at Mike's house. He's already sound asleep. Debbie waits until he wakes up, then answers the phone. She listens for a few seconds, then says "I don't think so!" She gets the granite jaw and holds out the phone for Mike. "Some woman wants to talk to you."
Mike gets on the phone and the counter girl says "Hi Mike! I decided to go to Atlanta with you guys!"
"What?" Mike says. He's totally disoriented from just having woken up.
"I thought it over and I want to go to Atlanta. You're really cute," she says.
"What?" Mike can't even form a coherent sentence.
"I packed my stuff. When are you coming to pick me up?"
"I have to go," he says. He's stunned.
Debbie starts lecturing him and then says she's going to call me and cancel the trip. She calls, and when I pick up the phone, she says "Bill, I don't think Michael is going on any trip. I can't trust him."
In the background I hear Mike's nervous laugh and he says weakly "There's nothing going on."
"Some WOMAN called and says Mike asked her to go on the trip!" Debbie says. Then she says "HERE!" and hands Mike the phone.
Debbie's voice is absolutely epic. It's fantastic. I would have been scared to death.
"Can you believe this?" Mike says shakily. I hear it in his voice. He is totally and completely rattled. Debbie said later that his face was ashen.
"April Fools," I say. In the background, Debbie has cracked and is laughing hysterically.
"What?" He heard me the first time but I don't think he can cram this foot into that shoe. Debbie can't stop laughing.
"April Fools," I repeat.
"#*#% you," he says. Click.
At 3:55 the next morning, he pulls up in the rented great white shark--not a convertible, but a Hunter S. Thompson-worthy vehicle nonetheless. For an hour and a half, he says nothing. Not a single world. Somewhere deep in East Texas, around 5:30, he has to pee. We're in the middle of nowhere. No gas stations, no convenience stores--nothing. After another few minutes, he reaches the desperation point, and we pull over by a large concrete slab and some wreckage that looks to have been a gas station.
It's still almost pitch black, and Mike walks to the very back of the lot until he reaches the trees. I can't even see him, and then I hear sudden cursing. About thirty seconds later, he returns, and it's just light enough to see that from ankle to mid-thigh he's covered in some kind of skanky, runny, orange mud. He stepped into some kind of bog.
He doesn't say a word.
He wipes off as much as he can, then gets into the car. About the time we're back on the road, the smell hits me. It's unbelievable. It's so foul we have to roll down the windows immediately.
We keep driving along for another ten or fifteen seconds, and I start losing it. I'm trying as hard as I can not to laugh, but looking at him covered in mud, smelling like a toxic waste dump, is just too much.
"Shut up," he says, right before he bursts out laughing. "You son-of-a-bitch." Neither one of us can stop laughing, not for at least another twenty miles.
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