Larry Boots, Exterminator

by John Inman

  Also, before that first week was up, I had spent over four hundred dollars buying my mother a new collection of garden gnomes, which she haughtily accepted as her due, all the while complaining they didn’t have the personality of the old ones, which Kenny found extremely amusing. I had also finally convinced her it wasn’t Kenny who slaughtered her old garden gnomes, and while she still glanced at him suspiciously now and then, she seemed to accept it as truth.

  And speaking of Kenny, he was now in permanent residence under my roof and in my bed. My new reality was sleeping every night with two standard poodles, bed hogs both, and a blind man, also a bed hog. I barely had six inches of the mattress to call my own. I had never been happier.

  After the rains, which the news media dubbed San Diego’s Storm of the Decade, life settled into a comfortable pattern. I fretted for a while, fearing John Allan Davis would come back to haunt us somehow, but he never did. He truly had been washed away in the flood.

  On an evening approaching the end of our first week of cohabitation, Kenny said at dinner, “I’m going back to work tomorrow. I’ve been gone long enough.”

  I smiled at him. Once again, he had a splash of food at the corner of his mouth. I leaned across the table and kissed it away. “I’m sure they’ve missed you.”

  His foot touched mine under the table. We were naked again. It seemed we were always naked. “What are you going to do while I’m gone?” he asked. “Please tell me you’re not going to kill anybody.”

  I chortled. Butchly. “No. I’m not going to kill anybody. In fact, I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “About changing careers?” he asked, sitting up straighter and looking perkier, like the very idea pumped him full of enthusiasm like a rubber raft.

  “Yes, if you must know. About changing careers.”

  “Thank God.”

  And nothing more was said on the subject.

  The next morning, after driving Kenny to work, I returned to the house and pondered my future. I dusted, vacuumed, tried again to scrape the indelible fucking price tags off the new windowpanes that replaced the ones Davis had kicked out by the front door, then walked François and Chuck around the neighborhood, cringing every time they pooped in somebody’s yard. That ordeal over, I returned home.

  The house, and Kenny too, were both finally back in tip-top shape after Davis’s attack. All wounds healed, all property damage repaired. So with little else to do to kill the time, and to prove how desperate I was to show Kenny off, I packed him up after dinner, and while the sun still shone, we went toddling off to visit my mother. We found her in the side yard, fussing with her new collection of garden gnomes, trying to position them properly. It didn’t help that she was doing it under the influence of the biggest, fattest doobie I’ve ever seen in my life.

  Kenny and I sat in lawn chairs. He had his eyes closed, listening to the surf out behind the house, and I spent the time watching Mom crawl around in the grass, a trail of marijuana smoke drifting up into her eyes and making her squint. “You should give up the pot,” I said. “You’re seventy years old. Party time is over.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder, unamused. “It’s medicinal. For my arthritis.”

  “You don’t have arthritis.”

  “High blood pressure, then. Leave me alone.”

  I studied a hummingbird buzzing around a bottlebrush tree at the side of her house. I noticed my mother was watching it too. The flesh on her face went suddenly slack. Her eyes saddened. It was almost as if the whine of the hummingbird had brought memories flooding back.

  “I miss Jack,” she said. “I miss your brother.” And as if a decision had that moment been made, she added, “But I think it’s time to let him go.”

  I thought of all the proxy murders I had committed in his name. Even I knew that’s what they were in the end, all the jobs I had taken. Substitute acts of revenge for my twin brother’s death. Still, the thought of simply relegating him to the past seemed cruel. I wasn’t ready yet.

  “Soon,” I answered doubtfully. “Soon.”

  Kenny must have heard the sadness in my voice. His hand came out and rested on my arm. He dug his fingers through the hair at my wrist. Comforting. Always comforting. Silence descended between the three of us, but only for a moment.

  Kenny’s action was not lost on my mother. “You should marry him, you know,” she commented out of the blue, shaking her own sadness away and surreptitiously tilting her head in Kenny’s direction, like I couldn’t figure out who she was talking about by listening to her. She had also lowered her voice, as if being blind somehow diminished Kenny’s hearing as well.

  “My brother?” I asked, feeling stubborn. “I should marry my brother?”

  “No, stupid. Kenny. You should marry Kenny.”

  “Oh.”

  I glanced Kenny’s way, and he had a grin splitting his face wide-open. He looked like a watermelon that had fallen out of a truck. My mother always amused him no end, but then, he hadn’t known her that long.

  Somehow her statement didn’t surprise me. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  Kenny stiffened at that. His fingers dug a little deeper into my arm. “What makes you think I’d say yes?” he whispered, but his eyes were bright when he said it.

  I brought his hand to my mouth and kissed each finger in turn, ending with the thumb, which I slathered with kisses from the nail all the way down to his forearm. By the time I had finished, his hand was sopping wet and I had all but dragged him out of his chair. “Hope,” I whispered back, planting one final kiss on his mouth.

  “Jesus God,” my mother grumbled after watching the whole procedure. “I’m getting a sugar rush.”

  Kenny and I both ignored her.

  She stood up and stretched her back. Her garden gnomes were all facing in the same direction, like they were congregating for a march on city hall to demand equal rights for oppressed ceramic yard decorations everywhere.

  She turned a beady eye on me. She lowered her voice, again apparently under the impression that Kenny’s ears were like dog ears and only heard sounds at a certain decibel level. “So what’s stopping you?”

  I glanced Kenny’s way, and he was smiling again. “I haven’t asked him yet. We’ve still only known each other around two months.”

  “Seems longer,” Kenny mumbled.

  “Don’t interrupt,” I snapped.

  “Sorry.” He closed his eyes and acted like he wasn’t listening anymore.

  “Don’t be silly,” my mother pshawed, ignoring the entire exchange between Kenny and me. “Your father and I only knew each other for three weeks when—”

  “Yes, Mom. I know. And the marriage only lasted two. You told me.”

  She broke into a grin and came to sit beside us on the cast-iron glider parked next to our two cast-iron lawn chairs. They were a matching set, my mother’s lawn furniture, all of which were like sitting on car fenders. In hot weather, more like sitting on molten steel. She rocked back and forth, the glider squeaking horrendously beneath her like a cat being run through a meat grinder tail first.

  “We need an oil can,” Kenny groused, but no one paid him any attention.

  My mother reached a hand out to grab my own.

  “You really love him, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m right here, you know,” Kenny softly said.

  Before I could respond, my mother looked down and frowned at what was left of the joint in her hand. It had gone out. It was so short now, if she tried to relight it, she would set fire to her nose. She tossed it in the grass and dug around in her apron pocket for another one. Gladys Bootchinski meets June Cleaver meets Deborah Harry.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked me suddenly.

  I opened my mouth to say, “Because Kenny won’t let me kill anybody,” but I decided against it.

  “What work are you referring to, Mother?”

  She huffed. “Software development. What else?”

  Kenny al
most choked to death on a chuckle. I had to get up and pound him on the back to make him stop.

  “Oh,” I said innocently, flapping a hand through the air. “I’ve been thinking of giving that up.”

  “After all your schooling?”

  I hadn’t spent a day in school since I graduated from San Diego High twelve years earlier. My mother really needed to cut back on the pot or stop believing everything I told her.

  I glanced at my watch. “Oops,” I said. “Gotta run. Kenny and I have a date for hot man sex in twenty minutes.”

  That got Kenny’s attention. “We do?”

  “Fuck yeah,” I growled, grinning down at him.

  My mother rolled her eyes so far up into her head I could see the ganglia dangling down. “Just as well,” she said. “I’ve got a date later myself.”

  Kenny and I both stared at her, but neither of us had the nerve to delve further. We simply gathered ourselves together and, still shaking our heads, headed for the car.

  In the driveway, my mother yelled loud enough for the whale watchers out at sea to hear, “Don’t forget to use protection!”

  “You too!” I screamed back. From the corner of my eye, I caught the flutter of a neighbor’s curtain. My mother must have seen it too. She sent them a little finger waggle of greeting, unabashed as always. Then she lit her second joint.

  It was later that night, with Kenny sleeping beside me, the taste of his juices still stirring sweet memories on my tongue, that I crept out of bed. I silently scraped my clothing off a chair and tiptoed down the stairs. Shushing the dogs and leaving them locked inside, I slipped through the front door and headed for the car.

  The nights were clear again. The earth still smelled fresh from the storm. Not only had it rinsed the city clean, but it had all but washed away all evidence of my last illegal act. The episode would have had a completely different ending if that storm had not blown in off the sea, and if that flash flood had not risen up so fortuitously to sweep Davis’s body away. Without it, I had no doubt that Kenny and I would not be together. I would probably be in prison right now, where Kenny always feared I’d end up.

  I turned the key and drove slowly down the driveway, keeping the engine noise to a minimum, still trying not to wake Kenny in the bed upstairs. Out on the street, I gunned it a little, and as I drove through the city, my mind traveled different streets. Sadder boulevards. I remembered a young girl abducted while waiting outside her front gate for a school bus. I thought of a hairdresser’s fourteen-year-old son, raped and murdered by a neighbor. I recalled a nine-year-old boy slaughtered on his way home from a baseball game only blocks away from his house, then cast into a gutter to die. I remembered other people I had brought to justice for their crimes. And the sad-eyed living I had avenged.

  I drove, and as I drove I thought of Kenny’s hands on my body. His scent on my pillow. The gentle words he sometimes whispered in my ear when I least expected it. I thought of his laughter, which filled the house like music and always brought my own laughter bubbling up in accompaniment. It still astonished me that I never needed to question whether Kenny cared for me or not. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did. I had never had that degree of certainty in my life before in matters of love. And I didn’t want to lose it now.

  A tiny splash of colored lights caught my eye. It was the Tiffany lamp shimmering in the darkness in the picture window of the Craftsman home I had visited twice before. It was late, and I saw no movement in the rooms beyond the light. The lamp was indeed being used as a night-light. Just as I’d always suspected.

  I parked in the nearby alley, still puddled from the storm, and as I stepped from the car, I pulled the ski mask over my face. Like always. Moving like a shadow, I flitted across the street and ducked under the carport, where I noticed for the first time that the little decal of the stick figure boy on the back window of the SUV had been carefully peeled away. Only the stick figure mother, father, and infant child clutching a teddy bear remained.

  At first, sadness welled through me at the sight. Then slowly a smile began to twist my lips. Yes, I thought. This is how it should be. Moving on is what it’s all about. Leave the tears and heartaches behind. Let the dead sleep in peace. Look ahead to the future of the living, to the happiness yet to come.

  I tore my eyes from the three little stick figures and focused on the house instead, climbing the porch steps on stealthy feet.

  The back door was unlocked, as I knew it would be. This was, after all, the seventh night since my last visit. I stepped through the door and trod quietly into the now-familiar kitchen, my sneakers squeaking slightly on the spotless linoleum floor. Moving deeper into the house, I spotted a package on the dining room table, right where I had imagined it. It was illuminated by a faint beam of light slanting in from a streetlamp outside. The package was a wrinkled brown grocery bag folded neatly into a brick-sized block. Atop the package lay a note with two words printed on it in pencil. Thank You.

  I reached out to take the money, but at the last moment, I pulled my hand back.

  A voice behind me said softly, “Take it, sir. You did what we asked.”

  It was the husband. I turned. He was standing in the kitchen doorway in pajamas, his hair tousled from sleep. I stared at him, wondering why I had never noticed before how handsome he was. There was peace in his eyes I had never before seen there. He looked at me with kindness now, not with desperation. It was the kindness that had transformed him.

  A moment later, the mother appeared as well. She stepped into the dusky light and slipped her shoulder under her husband’s arm, as if she knew exactly where she belonged. She didn’t speak, but on her face I read a calmness I had never expected to see.

  “It’s all there,” she said, making a vague gesture to the package.

  I nodded and said, “I know.”

  My mother is right, I thought. It’s time to let my brother go. It’s time to end all this.

  And with nothing further to say and no reason to linger, I left the package where it lay and stepped past the young couple toward the door. With a spring in my step I hadn’t noticed for a while, I slipped away into the night as quietly as I had come. Without a word between them, little Tommy’s parents watched me go.

  More from John Inman

  Wyeth Becker is a quiet man. Staid, serious, calm. A librarian. When he meets preschool teacher Deeze Long, he discovers joy for the first time in his life. With joy comes laughter, excitement, and a new way to look at the world through the eyes of the kindest, most loving man he has ever met.

  When tragedy strikes and Deeze loses his joy, it is Wyeth who helps him find it again. It is Wyeth, the man who never truly understood happiness, who pays that gift back. Giving all he can of himself to the man who changed his life. Restoring in Deeze what he now so desperately needs.

  But the road of their relationship doesn’t end there. The joys and sorrows of life are never-ending. As they set out to weather the highs and lows together, Wyeth and Deeze hang on to the one thing that makes all the tears and laughter worthwhile.

  Love.

  For only through love can life be truly savored at all.

  Joe Chase and Ned Bowden are damaged men. They each bear scars from surviving the world they were born in. Deep scars, both physical and emotional.

  When fate offers its first kind act by bringing the two together, suddenly their scars don’t seem so bad, and their lives don’t feel so empty.

  Yet that kindness comes at a price.

  Just as Joe and Ned begin to experience true happiness for the very first time, the world turns on them again.

  But this time it turns on everyone.

  When Jamie Roma and Derek Lee find their blossoming love affair interrupted by dual invitations to a house party from a mysterious unnamed host, they think, Sounds like fun. The next thing they know they are caught up in a game of cat and mouse that quickly starts racking up a lot of dead mice. Yikes, they think. Not so fun.

  Trapped in
side a spooky old house in the middle of nowhere, with the body count rising among their fellow guests, they begin to wonder if they’ll escape with their lives. As a cataclysmic storm swoops in to batter the survivors, the horror mounts.

  Oddly enough, even in the midst of murder and mayhem, Jamie and Derek’s love continues to thrive.

  While the guest list thins, so does the list of suspects. Soon it’s only them and the killer.

  And then the battle really begins.

  Forty-six-year-old Eddie Hightower has a problem. He’s all alone. The only thing that saves him from facing that stark reality is the fact that he isn’t really alone at all. He has a house full of pets and a refuge full of stray unwanted animals he spends every waking hour trying to place in homes. While he loves what he does with all the joy in his heart, that same poor aging heart is still missing something. And Eddie knows exactly what it is. Romance.

  But wait. Cue the music. Suddenly, beyond all hope, it happens. In the small desert town of Spangle, California, where Eddie lives, comes a sad young stranger with piercing gray eyes. They are the palest, most stunningly beautiful eyes Eddie has ever seen. Poor Eddie Hightower is swallowed up in their silver depths and disappears without a gurgle. The stranger’s name is Gray Grissom. Gray, like his eyes. Without hesitation Eddie opens his doors—and his heart—to the lost young man. After all, that’s what Eddie does. He finds homes for strays. But this is one stray Eddie intends to keep for himself.