by Mike Faricy
“Damn it,” she said then tilted her head to the side so the smoke from her cigarette mostly avoided her eyes. She cracked the seal on another plastic bottle, unscrewed the top and proceeded to finish filling the glass.
“Here’s to our new found success,” she said and handed Carlos a glass. They clinked their glasses together in a toast and drank. Carlos took a large gulp, Frances pretty much downed her entire glass.
She licked her lips, looked at the glass and emptied what little remained, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth then looked at the girls and me and said, “And just what the hell is all this?”
“Just a little bit of baggage, but, nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about. They’ll be out of the way.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Frances smiled, ran her fingers through her greasy hair and tugged at her housedress apparently in an effort to make a more stunning impression.
“What I’d like to do, Frannie is maybe pull your car out front, put that wreck of my Mercedes in your garage, just for overnight, if that’s okay. I’m just a bit worried about leaving it on the street while we get reacquainted. Then if you can fit it in, maybe the two of us will have a little celebration and plan our trip. Sound good to you?”
“I’ve never really needed a reason to celebrate,” she said matter of factly. “But, a trip sounds wonderful, let me get you my car keys,” she said then staggered back into the dining room and poured herself a fresh drink before she wandered off sipping and in search of car her keys.
“Hey look, Carlos, just a thought. We could just walk out of here, the girls and I. You know, not get in the way. You and your friend, Frances can party up a storm to your hearts’ content and you won’t have to worry about us. We’re not going to tell a soul, I promise.”
Carlos shook his head and said, “Believe me, I ain’t worried. I got a plan that’ll work just fine.”
Frances staggered back into the dining room a few minutes later with an empty glass, poured herself a fresh drink and said, “I just can’t remember where I put those damned car keys.”
“Maybe try and think where you went last time you left the house.”
“Where I went?” she said and gulped from her glass. “Well, let’s see, I just drove to the liquor store, of course. I think that was yesterday, or was it last week?” A light suddenly seemed to go on in her head. “I know just the spot,” she said then took a couple more gulps almost draining her glass and pushed through the swinging door that led to her kitchen.
She was flying back through the swinging door a moment later with the car keys and an empty glass. She stopped to pour a refill in the dining room while talking to Carlos over her shoulder.
“As soon as you said that, I remembered. I’d just gone to stock up the other day. I found this place down on West Seventh that opens at eight in the morning. I always figure what the hell, I’m usually up anyway. Plus they don’t judge, you know? I know I’m a drunk, hell, I like it, beats the hell out of writing dissertations.”
She set the plastic bottle on the dining room table next to the pile of dirty laundry then proceeded to knock the bottle over, fortunately it was capped. She took a healthy sip just to fortify herself for the ten foot walk into the living room and then headed toward us.
“No wonder I couldn’t find the damned things,” she said handing the keys over to Carlos. “I hung them up on the key hook right next to the back door. God, I can’t even remember when that was,” she said and then looked like she was trying to think.
Carlos forced a laugh and said, “It really doesn’t matter, the important thing is you got them. Let me just escort our guests to your basement and then I’ll bring your car around.”
Frances poured down the rest of her drink and said, “Here, mix me another before you do that, will you, sweetie?”
Carlos hadn’t taken a sip since the initial toast and I’d lost count of Frances’s intake. She was slurring her words and she seemed to be oblivious to her housedress coming undone. She fired up another cigarette as Carlos marched off to the dining room to get her a refill. She blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, coughed a smoker’s hack and staggered a couple of steps before she looked down at Emma and said, “Now what’s your name, little honey?”
Emma looked at her, but didn’t say anything. Mercifully Carlos returned and Frances refocused her attention on the fresh drink.
“Come on, you guys can take it easy downstairs, right through the kitchen door,” Carlos said then waved the Sig Sauer. I carried Ava and sort of directed Emma ahead of me although she wasn’t about to let go of my hand.
We pushed through the swinging door past a sink overflowing with dirty dishes, four partially-filled pans that looked like they contained some sort of science experiments sat on the burners of the stove. A half dozen empty Lean Cuisine boxes were scattered on top of a pile of unopened mail, three more empty boxes lay on the floor.
There was an overflowing wastebasket in front of the kitchen sink and a couple of overflowing trash bags sat on the floor next to the wastebasket. A sort of built-in kitchen nook affair was littered with more dirty plates holding half-eaten food, dirty paper plates and another empty vodka bottle.
What had once been a box of vanilla ice cream sat on the corner of the kitchen counter. Based on the melted ice cream that had leaked out of the container, run down the cabinet doors and pooled onto the floor, the thing must have been ignored for the better part of a week
“It’s really stinky in here,” Emma said looking up at me. Then she took her free hand and plugged her nose.
“Yeah, you might say cooking and cleaning aren’t really her strongest attributes,” Carlos said then looked at me with a grin, winked, and said, “Fortunately she’s got some other skills.”
He directed us to the basement stairs and turned on the light as the girls and I made our way down the steps. “I’m gonna give this to Frances,” he said indicating the Sig Sauer. “So don’t do anything stupid, I’ll be back in about two minutes.”
Then he locked the door behind us. It sounded like he wedged something up against the door, probably a chair and a minute later I could hear him talking to Frances.
“Cool,” she said and then I heard some thumping against the basement door like she was leaning against it. “’Fore you go, sweetie, top up my little drinky-poo please,” she slurred.
I could follow his footsteps overhead into the dining room then a few moments later back out to the kitchen where Frances waited.
“I don’t want you going down to the basement, just wait right here until I come back. I’ll just be a minute.”
“No longer than that, or you’ll ruin the mood,” she giggled and then I heard the back door close.
There wasn’t much to see in the dim basement. Three piles of laundry, one larger than the next were mounded on the floor in front of the washer. A number of empty boxes and a half dozen more trash bags that looked like they’d been in the basement for quite a while were piled alongside the wooden steps. The remnants of an old bicycle missing a front tire that looked like it probably hadn’t been touched in a decade was crammed behind the washing machine. Along one wall, a number of cardboard boxes were stacked three or four high, the bottom boxes all looked like they’d been sitting in water and the entire stack seemed to lean precariously toward the floor.
Despite the fact that the basement was dank, dark, and smelled of mold it was still a marked improvement over that biohazard of a kitchen upstairs. I checked the basement windows, but they had all been locked and then screwed into place in their wooden frames. We sat down and leaned against the wall as far away from the dirty laundry and the trash bags as we could get. I pulled the girls in close to me and we all drifted off to sleep.
Occasionally I woke up from the two person party going on overhead, music, laughing, along with periods of intermittent rhythmic thumping on the floor. I could only hope it meant the two of them were dancing.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
I popped awake the moment I heard the lock snap open on the basement door. Carlos cautiously stepped halfway down the basement stairs and peered into the distant corner where we had settled. The girls were still sound asleep.
“Time for us to get going, come on sleeping beauty, rise and shine.”
“Here’s an idea, why don’t you just leave us and take off, lock the door again if you’re worried about us calling the cops. By the time we get out you can be long gone,” I said.
“You know, I’m getting more than a little tired of your great ideas. If you’ll recall, there’s a certain sense of insurance that those two bring to the party. No, I think it will work better for me if you all come along, so get off your ass, wake those two up and let’s get going. Come on, move.”
I shook Emma awake, Ava was having a tougher time of it and I carried her. She snuggled into my shoulder and seemed to fall back asleep. We climbed the basement stairs back up into the kitchen. Emma was behind me and still not fully awake. Once we stepped into the kitchen she plugged her nose and tried not to look at the mess, I couldn’t blame her. We rushed past the trash bags, the melted container of ice cream, the overflowing sink, the nook piled high with dirty dishes and used paper plates, and hurried into the dining room.
The coffee table lay scattered across the floor in a number of pieces, looking like some giant had smashed it with a stomp of his foot. Broken plates and dishes were scattered around, all of it covered with the ashes from the once overflowing ashtray. Bits of pizza and discarded food were ground into the already filthy carpet.
Frances was laid out on the floor, more or less spread eagle, in a rather unladylike pose. Her wretched housedress had been rolled up into a ball and discarded in a distant corner. She held an empty stemmed glass in her hand and was awfully still. I was afraid she might be dead.
Carlos stood across the room from her holding the suitcase. “She was dancing on top of the coffee table and it just all of a sudden sort of broke into little pieces. That kind of brought the party to a close. Too bad, I really liked the song too, the Ramones,” he said sounding more than a little disappointed.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
He picked up the discarded housedress from the corner and threw it across the room in Frances’s direction. It landed on her face and sort of half covered her shoulders. She snorted a few times, rolled over on her side and began snoring.
“That’s not good,” Emma said more to herself than anyone else. She made a disgusted face and we headed out the door.
“Just like before, I want the girls in back with me, you’ll drive. Put them in the backseat and then step out in front of the car,” Carlos said.
“You know if you’d just stop and think, you’d….”
“I got a much better idea,” Carlos said. “You just stop. Don’t think. I don’t want to hear another damned word.”
I was about to say something, but after the look he gave me I stopped. The words were on the tip of my tongue and if I stuck it out, he could have read them.
“Good idea, just shut your mouth and keep quiet. Load them into the backseat and I’ll drop the keys out the window once I’m in,” Carlos said.
I opened the rear door on a creamy colored Scion and Emma climbed in. I pushed newspapers, bags, another plastic vodka bottle, and some articles of clothing onto the floor of the backseat then set Ava, still asleep, in the seat next to Emma. I buckled both of them up and closed the door on their side.
The Scion looked like an industrial shipping container on wheels, basically just your average, ugly, rectangular box with no charm and four wheels. The side view mirror on the passenger side had been torn off, a jagged hole in the side of the door served as the only reminder of what was once there. A long, deep scrape tinged with red paint from someone else’s vehicle ran along the right front quarter panel. The front bumper and the headlight on the passenger side were completely missing, the jagged plastic edges looked like something had just bitten them off.
The rear tire on the passenger side of the car was obviously the spare and therefore only good for about fifty miles. Someone had sprayed graffiti in black paint along the rear of the car, but it was illegible.
“Nice set of wheels, Carlos, not. Where’d you ever meet this Frances woman, anyway?”
“I took a literature course from her. She’s a college professor, or well at least she was when I first met her, ‘course that was before she tanked. Hadn’t seen her for a few years and then we linked up in one of my rehab visits. Pretty good chance she won’t even remember we were here and sure as hell won’t recall what happened to her car. I guess it’s just another benefit to the idea of being sober only occasionally. Small world, ain’t it?”
“Amazingly small.”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and step out in front of this thing before I climb in back,” Carlos said.
I walked about five feet in front of the Scion and stood looking up and down the street at the nice houses. I could hear birds chirping and the flow of traffic from busy Fairview Ave. running just behind us. With the exception of Frances’s house the neighborhood was lovely and quaint. It was probably a pretty safe bet none of the neighbors dared consider the realities hidden just behind her closed door.
“All right,” Carlos said just before he tossed the car keys past me into the street. Then he opened the door and slid in next to Emma.
I picked up the keys and climbed in behind the wheel. Two half empty coffee cups rested in the console, they’d been sitting there long enough to have mold growing on the surface of both of them. The ashtray was overflowing and at no surprise, another empty plastic vodka bottle lay on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
“Hey, no offense, Carlos, but I’d say your pal Frances was hiding behind the door when they were passing out basic cleaning skills. It’s been quite a while since I’ve run into anyone who’s as big a slob as she is.”
Carlos laughed and said, “Yeah, but like I told you she has her own unique set of skills.”
I really didn’t care to contemplate Frances’s particular unique skill set. “So, where to?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Carlos gave me a trendy address. Actually, he didn’t give me an address, he just said, “The Peabody.”
The Peabody, as everyone knows, is a building housing very exclusive condos built along the bluff overlooking the juncture where the Minnesota River flows into the Mississippi. It’s a gated area, positioned at about a forty-five degree angle to the Mississippi and looking up river. The view from The Peabody extends for a mile across a state park to historic Fort Snelling sitting on a distant bluff. Everyone in The Peabody is extremely impressed with themselves.
“You know it?” Carlos asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been there a time or two. Who do you know there?”
He didn’t bother to respond, but just looked out the window as I drove around the corner and we fled Frances’s hovel. The most direct route would be to head toward the river and Shepard Road, the four lane that ran through town along the Mississippi.
“Do you even know where in the hell you’re going? You’re heading the wrong way,” Carlos said a few minutes later.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do know where I’m going. I’m heading this way because we’re going to the drive-thru at McDonald’s. We’re about a mile away.”
“McDonald’s?” Carlos asked.
“McDonald’s,” the girls screamed in unison.
“Hey, pal. These kids haven’t had a thing to eat since they were on that damned boat. They’re hungry, I’m starving, so we’re going to McDonald’s. A little something solid to soak up the liquid diet you’ve been on isn’t such a bad idea, either. And by the way, you’re buying.”
“I’m warning you, you try anything funny and it’ll be the last thing these two ever see. Do we understand each other?”
“Relax, I get it, has anyone caused you any problems? We’ve done exactly what you
want, but you have to feed them, come on. I’d say they more then put up with enough BS from you in the last twenty-four hours.”
“I want a happy meal,” Emma said.
“I want my mommy,” Ava said, but she didn’t cry.
“Okay, we’ll go to McDonald’s, the drive-thru. You two don’t say anything, got it? And you stay on the straight and narrow, Haskell.”
The girls nodded and actually looked happy for a brief moment. I pulled into the McDonald’s across from the old Schmidt Brewery. We hit a lull and I was able to drive right up to the speaker and place our order.
“Good morning, may I take your order please.”
I felt like saying get this idiot with the gun out of the backseat. “Two Happy Meals, two fish sandwiches, a large strawberry shake, what are you gonna have, Carlos?”
“A Big Mac, double cheeseburger and a large shake.”
“What flavor on the shake?” I asked.
“Chocolate.”
“You got that?” I asked into the speaker.
The woman repeated our order, then said, “Your total is twenty-six-fourteen, please pull ahead to the first window.”
“Jesus, that’s a lot of dough,” Carlos said as I pulled ahead.
“Hey, man, come on, you’re holding a suitcase full of cash, which by rights actually belongs to a lot of very unhappy people. I think, under the circumstances, you can afford to buy the kids a Happy Meal.”
I heard the suitcase unzip behind me and a moment later Carlos handed two twenties over my shoulder.
“Twenty-six-fourteen,” the girl with the headset said at the first window. She looked like a high school kid and she smiled. She was the first pleasant person I’d seen in almost two days. Then she just stared, taking in the purple bruises along the side of my face.
“Keep the change,” I said and began to coast toward the next window.
“What the, are you crazy? No one tips at McDonald’s. That was my money you just gave away,” Carlos said. He turned around and looked out the rear window. Just as I was about to reach back and grab him he turned back and smiled at me. He held the Sig Sauer in his hand with the barrel casually pointed directly at little Ava sitting next to him. His finger was on the trigger. He raised his eyebrows, smiled and said, “So, do you really want to try it?”
