The Deadly Kiss-Off

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Follow me,” said Sandralene with vast authority, and we did.

  To my amazement, the normally voluble and in-command Stan had yet to say a word.

  We marched through the house, where the other furnishings conveyed the same worn and beaten-down air, and out the back door and into the yard. On a long clothesline hung four or five time-abused rugs.

  “Get all the dust out of those, Stan. It isn’t good for Mama’s condition.”

  Stan gave one of the rugs a tentative one-handed swat with the broom, but evidently without meeting Sandralene’s standards.

  “Come on! Show me some of those muscles you’re always bragging about!”

  Stan gripped the broom with both hands and walloped the rug. A cloud of dust and dirt big as a tumbleweed sprouted.

  “Good! That’s it! Keep at it!”

  Grinning, Stan seemed actually happy to be venting his emotions in a useful physical way, and he laid into the innocent carpets as if they were the guys from Lake Superior Bijoux who had lost him all his investments.

  I looked to Sandralene. “Uh, should I beat some rugs, too?”

  “No! You come with me and help me get lunch ready.”

  “But, Sandy, Stan and I just ate.”

  “So? Mama and I haven’t had lunch yet, and Stan’ll be hungry again when he’s done, and if you’re not, you can just watch us all eat.”

  I meekly followed Sandy back into the house. This new decisiveness and air of command had left me cowed even more than her mere proximity usually did.

  We did not proceed immediately to the kitchen, however, but went into a back room that must once have served as a kind of manly den. A table held fly-tying gear, all plainly untouched in years. Ranked on the room’s shelves were what appeared, judging by the few titles I could immediately glimpse, to be a complete run of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books from about 1980 until they had petered out in 1997 with some offerings by Grisham and Crichton. A modern digital TV exuded the anachronistic air of an invader from the future.

  A fully extended Barcalounger, whose gray fabric exhibited a variety of daubed but ineradicable stains, held Sandralene’s mother in a drab housedress.

  I had expected some ancestral similarity to Sandralene’s stature, but her mother was of only modest size, her frame perhaps shrunken by age and illness. I estimated her to be about sixty-five. Vestiges of her former good looks indicated that if she had not endowed Sandralene with height and bust and hips, she must still have been a fetching gal in her youth. But now wispy white hair and a pallor diminished her former attractiveness. She wore nose clips leading to a portable oxygen unit. Big tanks stood beside the chair.

  “Sandy, honey, could you hook me up to the tanks, please? This little gizmo just ain’t got no oomph.”

  “Of course, Mama.”

  Sandy made the switch and then introduced me.

  “Mama, this is my good friend Glen McClinton. You know how I’ve talked about him so much. Glen, this is Lura.”

  “Very happy to meet you, Lura.”

  Her smile still held some traces of youthful zest. “Likewise, Glen. Are you down here for any special reason?”

  “Just to see Sandy.”

  “Good, good. She’s been plenty lonesome these past few months. If it weren’t for Caleb’s visits, it’d be just her and me sitting here like two warts on a frog.”

  “Mama, I’m going to make lunch now. Do you feel up to joining us, or would you like to eat here?”

  “Here, if you don’t mind, dear.”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  We left Lura fiddling with the television remote.

  On the way to the kitchen, Sandralene said, “It’s not cancer, just COPD. But that’s plenty.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  In the kitchen, while Sandy was at the fridge, I took stock of the old-fashioned sink and ancient stove and worn linoleum. Everything was spick-and-span.

  Sandy carried prepacks of cold cuts and plastic tubs of coleslaw and potato salad over to the counter. She set them down, and then she burst out sobbing.

  “Oh, Glen, what am I going to do!”

  She threw herself at me, and I felt as if I had caught someone jumping from the fourth floor of a burning building. The undeniable carnality of her pillowy embrace instantly recalled to me the one time we had sex. Her tears activated my innate sense of protectiveness and aroused me at the same time.

  And then, of course, Stan walked in.

  14

  I released Sandralene and jumped back as quickly as if she had suddenly said, “Flame on!” and revealed herself to be the Human Torch.

  “Stan, let me explai—”

  Stan regarded his woman and me with a lack of emotion scarier than any jealous anger. “First things first. Who does a guy have to murder around here to get a goddamn cold drink? That carpet-beating gig is frigging hot work!”

  Sandrelene sniffed and dragged the back of one hand under her nose, then used the back of the other to swab the tears from her cheeks. “Just hold on one lousy minute, you big greedy ape.”

  She poured almost a quart of Country Time Lemonade into a repurposed GoMart cup. Stan glugged it down and gave a sigh of appreciation.

  “All right, now. What do I have to know, who is going to tell me, and how pissed will I be?”

  I had regained my composure easily enough, in light of my innocence. Also, my incipient woody had disappeared, lending my words credence, or at least not directly contradicting them.

  “To take your questions in reverse order: Not pissed at all. It’s me, your true-blue buddy Glen, telling you. And what you need to hear is that Sandy just wanted a friendly familiar shoulder to cry on, since she faces overwhelming stresses, demands, anxiety, worries, and the necessity to make sandwiches not only for her visibly sick mother and herself but also for two uncouth, unmannerly louts who dropped in without warning.”

  “Okay. This is the kind of no-bullshit explanation I enjoy hearing. Thank you, Mr. Glen.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And just for the record, I got friendly familiar shoulders, too.”

  “Oh, Stan!”

  Sandralene flung herself into the embrace of her long-absent paramour, and the freshets of tears resumed as if she had been saving them just for him. Stan ran his big hands soothingly up and down her back. But soon they began to stray south of her waist, to the rondures of her shapely bum, and Sandralene’s sobs began to acquire a certain lascivious moaning quality. She lifted her wet face from his shoulder and they began to kiss.

  “Uh, guys, are you sure this is the place …?”

  Neither of them paid me the slightest heed. I might as well have been Jiminy Cricket trying to dissuade Pinocchio from running away to Pleasure Island. The kissing continued to progress into something more.

  I left the kitchen and returned to the den, where Lura Parmalee was absorbed in watching The View. Mercifully, the decibel level approximated that of the squadron of Harryhausen harpies who attacked Jason and the Argonauts.

  “Lura. Lura!”

  “Yes, Glen?”

  “I think lunch is going to be delayed!”

  “That’s fine. My appetite’s not so good these days, anyhow.”

  Despite the racket emanating from the TV, I could still hear unnerving sounds of copulation-engendered destruction emanating from the back of the house—dishes breaking, wood splintering, chairs overturned, and the like. So I went out to the car to wait. With the mild breezes of West Virginia wafting through the windows, I almost fell asleep.

  Forty-five minutes later, Sandralene appeared in the backyard of her house, at the fence that separated the property from the church’s parking lot. The radiance of her resting-Buddha face said all there was to say.

  “Lunch is ready!” she called, then trotted merrily off
.

  I discovered a dilapidated gate in the fence and reentered the house by that route.

  The kitchen had been restored to some approximation of its original state, and its small square metal-topped table was set for three: paper napkins, paper plates, plastic cups; chemical-based drinks poured, overstuffed sandwiches sliced diagonally, and uncapped salad containers sporting serving spoons. I assumed that Lura had already had her lunch delivered to her.

  Stan was already seated. His broad grin matched Sandralene’s, and his face showed a recent scrubbing.

  “Damn, I am hungry enough to eat week-old road kill!”

  “You consumed an entire three-meat-special sixteen-inch pizza barely over an hour ago,” I pointed out.

  “A mere appetizer, son. And don’t forget how hard I been working.”

  I sat down and scooped myself some potato salad. The first bite of my sandwich revealed bologna with mayo on white bread. I don’t believe I had had such a concoction since I was ten years old.

  Stan and Sandralene did not seem inclined toward conversation. I didn’t mind. They alternated eating with making goo-goo eyes at each other. I still didn’t mind. But when they started feeding each other bits of broken-off sandwich, I had had enough.

  “Sandy, your shirt is inside out. And, Stan, that hickey on your neck looks like a lamprey got you.”

  Stan sneered. “Jealous much?”

  “Just tell me you did it on the counter and not on this table.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Sandralene had the dignity to blush—not in an especially repentant fashion, but rather as if nostalgic for what had occurred not so many minutes earlier.

  “Boys, please!”

  Before Stan and I could continue our repartee, there came a loud knocking at the front door.

  Sandrelene shot to her feet.

  “Oh. I forgot Caleb was coming today!”

  15

  The four of us—Sandy, Stan, newcomer Caleb Stinchcombe, and I—stood clustered around Lura Parmalee’s recliner like diplomats paying their respects to a recumbent head of state. The TV had been muted, thank God. Sandy had rushed us all into the room directly upon greeting Caleb at the door, as if Lura’s presence was the only thing she could rely on to enforce good behavior between Stan and Caleb. Penelope never handled the return of Odysseus among her suitors more deftly. So far, Stan and Caleb had not had a free second in which they could bump chests, bare their canines, or engage in any other simian territorial gestures.

  I took the opportunity to size up Sandralene’s childhood pal.

  Caleb Stinchcombe could not properly be termed a redneck, although he walked the narrow edge of falling into that category. Above his Red Wing boots, he was dressed completely in faded blue Dickies work clothes. His shirt had long since been rendered raggedly armless. Perhaps this modification had been for warm-weather comfort or ease of physical action, but it had the additional effect of highlighting very large biceps and massive forearms. Indeed, he was built generally along the same impressively burly lines as Stan, and they could glare at each other with eyes on the same level. But his blond buzz cut and aquamarine eyes contrasted with Stan’s darker looks, and his face also featured a kind of apple-cheeked artlessness that, along with a certain air of humility and signs of a moderate intelligence, counterbalanced his shit-kicker indices.

  Sandralene turned her attentions, I was glad to see, to Stan first.

  “Mama, I want you to meet Stanley Hasso, my boyfriend, about whom I have said so many wonderful words across these many years.”

  Lura perked up at confirmation of Stan’s special status as potential son-in-law. “Mr. Hasso, you’ve been very good to my little girl, from what she tells me.”

  I suppressed a snort at the “little girl” characterization as applied to Sandralene, who could have hoisted Sheena of the Jungle over her shoulder and swung one-armed from a vine. Nor did I mention Stan’s recent bankruptcy and his attempts to regain solvency through the interstate transportation of counterfeit goods.

  “It is surely no effort, Lura. She is a woman who brings out the best in a man, and she deserves everything good. And I plan to keep on treating her special for just as long as she lets me.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that … Stan.”

  Lura’s moderate initial affection for Stan seemed genuine and unforced. But when she turned to Caleb—who had been examining Stan intently during his presentation—she practically glowed. She reached out with both hands, and Caleb took them gently.

  “And, Caleb, dear, it’s so wonderful to see you!”

  Caleb’s voice was well modulated but with a certain restrained brusqueness, as if he were used to having to yell at featherbedding underlings who weren’t living up to his standards. “Always a treat, ma’am. I hope you’re doing well?”

  “As well as these old creaky lungs allow. What brings you here today?”

  “You must’ve forgot, ma’am. Today’s the day I was gonna look at your roof and see how much work it’s gonna take to fix it.”

  Lura’s face grew solemn. “You know we can’t pay you, Caleb.”

  “That’s funny, Miz Parmalee, I don’t recall ever speaking about money here.”

  Sandralene laid a hand on Caleb’s bare arm, and Stan’s eyes narrowed as if he were a warthog contemplating a rival.

  “Caleb, someday, someday you’ll get repaid. I promise.”

  “Aw, Sandra, just forget it, all right? I owe your family more than I can ever make up.”

  “How’s that?” Stan asked with a mix of interest and belligerence.

  Caleb fixed him with a straightforward and unabashedly solemn look. “Sandra’s daddy saved my life.”

  Stan looked disbelieving.

  “It’s the simple truth,” Sandralene confirmed.

  “Sandra and I were ten years old. Her daddy—Danny—was a fisherman. Just wild for the sport. One Saturday in August, he took us up to the Potomac, near Little Georgetown. Sandra and I went swimming while he fished. Boy, could he cast a right smooth line.”

  Sandralene took over the story as if part of a well-rehearsed stage duo. “Caleb dove under the water, kinda showing off wild-like. And then he didn’t come up. I started screaming.”

  Caleb scratched his blond fuzz with embarrassment. “Hit my fool head on a rock and then got tangled in a snag somehow. Next thing I know, I’m on the bank of the river and Mr. Parmalee’s doing CPR on me.”

  “Daddy knew CPR from being a volunteer fireman.”

  “Didn’t have no cell phones back then. Even if we had, it woulda taken the nearest ambulance company way too long getting there to do me any good. No, like Sandra says, it’s just the simple truth that Danny Parmalee saved my life. You never can work off that kinda debt.”

  Lura was sniffling. I looked away out of politeness, and my gaze fell on the fly-tying setup across the room. Suddenly, that far-off day seemed vividly present. I could almost smell the river and feel the August heat.

  Even Stan seemed quietly impressed. “Sandy, your daddy sounds like a real hero.”

  Caleb, Lura, and Sandralene exchanged looks of chagrin but kept strangely silent. Finally, Sandralene spoke.

  “There was a lot to admire about my father. But he had a dark side, too.”

  Lura chimed in. “My Danny, he liked to drink too much. He turned mean when he had a skinful.”

  I asked, “Is that why you separated from him, Lura?”

  Sandralene replied for her mother. “Mama never divorced Daddy. He died in prison. A brain aneurysm.”

  “Mr. Parmalee got in a bar fight,” said Caleb. “One punch was all it took. The fella hit his head on the curb and died two days later. Involuntary manslaughter. He only got a sixteen-month sentence, what with having a family to support and never being in any real trouble before. But then th
e brain thing took him while he was still behind bars. Only upside to the whole mess was that he died in seconds. Sandra was just fifteen.”

  Lura began to weep, and Sandralene bent to comfort her.

  “Mama, Mama, don’t cry! That was all a long time ago. Daddy’s been at rest forever. All anybody remembers now is the good he did. That’s what brings Caleb here today.”

  We three men stood helplessly by. Eventually, Lura ceased weeping, and Sandralene got her TV show going again. We left Lura watching as Rachael Ray laughed and broke eggs into a mixing bowl.

  Back in the front hall, Caleb said, “Let’s take a look at the inside first. You can show me where it’s leaking.”

  “I know something about construction,” Stan said. “I’ll help.”

  I refrained from saying that so far as I was aware, Stan’s expertise with buildings had less to do with repair than with how best to burn them down.

  We climbed the creaky stairs and found ourselves in a second-floor hall. The narrower set of stairs at the left end obviously led to the third floor. Sandralene led the way, and I came last.

  The others were ascending when a partially open door caught my interest. I poked my head inside.

  This was Sandralene’s childhood bedroom, and the unmade bed with its frilly white coverlet showed she was still sleeping here. The walls were painted pink. A poster of the Backstreet Boys circa 1997 loomed over a collection of stuffed animals. A small shelf of books chronicling the adventures of the Babysitters Club also hosted an array of souvenirs from nearby attractions: a cream pitcher labeled seneca caverns, an embroidered patch from the Monongahela National Forest.

  I picked up a framed photo of an adolescent Sandralene standing next to her father. Both were smiling broadly with an arm around each other.

  Danny Parmalee was revealed as the source of Sandralene’s monumental physique. He looked like a bluff, devil-may-care good-time Charlie—fun to be around until he got ticked off.