“You don’t know for sure?”
“I’d had a lot to drink. A real lot. And I tried a bunch of different places before I settled. And it was a long time ago.”
“Your wife’s only been gone for three months,” Diesel said.
“She was a party pooper,” Lenny said. “Did I already tell you that? Anyway, you can look around the cellar if you want, but I’m not going. It’s scary down there. And I might have booby-trapped it.”
Diesel opened the cellar door and went down the steep, narrow stairwell. He got to the bottom and looked back at me.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?”
“Are you coming down?”
“No.”
He was wearing jeans and a cream-colored cotton crew-neck sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His teeth were white against his beach bum tan. And he was looking very big in the small cellar.
“There are some things I’d like you to hold,” he said.
“I bet.”
“I meant potential charm things.”
“I knew that. Are you sure it’s safe down there?”
He did arms outstretched. “No bad guys or obvious booby traps.”
“What about spiders?”
“Haven’t seen any.”
I cautiously crept down the stairs, stood next to Diesel, and looked around. The cellar floor was crudely poured cement. The walls were mortar and stone. A bare 60-watt bulb lit the space. The air was cool and damp and smelled musty, like rotting wood and mildew. The ceiling was riddled with pipes, and wires running along support beams. The water heater and furnace were to one side. The rest of the cellar was cluttered with plastic bins and cardboard boxes.
“You don’t expect me to go through all these bins and boxes, do you?” I asked Diesel.
“Yeah.”
“It’ll take hours. And what about the hiding and the booby-trapping? This stuff’s just sitting here.”
“No stone unturned,” Diesel said. “No pun intended.”
Okay, let’s get this out in the open. First, I’m a big coward. I don’t like the idea of getting blown up, and I don’t like spiders. I know at first glance we don’t see any spiders, but they’re sneaky. They hide in places and then jump out at you. And second, what about my muffins and my cookbook? I don’t have time to save the world. I need cookbook money to fix my foundation, or my house is going to fall over. And third, this whole thing is weirding me out. It would make a good television show, but things like this aren’t supposed to happen in real life.
“If we go back to my house, you can eat more muffins,” I said to Diesel.
“If we stay here and go through these bins, I’ll get out of your bed.”
“Really?”
“Scout’s honor,” Diesel said, wrangling the lid off a plastic bin.
I looked inside the bin and found it was filled with sheet music for classical guitar. The second bin Diesel opened held CDs. Opera, guitar, symphonies. A lot of Haydn and Mozart and artists out of my scope of knowledge.
“Hey, Lenny!” I yelled up the stairs. “Do you play the guitar?”
“Used to,” he said. “Traded it for a fraternity paddle used in the movie Animal House. It’s a collector’s item.”