Unnatural Calamities

by Summer Devon

  “Zack’s her father,” Janey said, miserable. She clenched her teeth together to keep herself from shouting but I’m not her mother.

  Toph nodded. The smile disappeared as he stood up. It was a tight-lipped Mr. Dunham who checked his watch. “Actually I’m in a hurry, Janey. So maybe I’ll take a rain check on—”

  “Oh no, please, please, Mr. Dunham. Toph. Do stay,” she almost shouted.

  He must have taken pity on her desperate need not to be left with Zack. After a quick examination of her face, he settled back down again. He drummed his fingers on the worn green linoleum counter.

  “Making coffee?” Zack said. “I’ll take some.” He swaggered near Janey in his king-of-the-universe manner. Ah, but for once she didn’t back away nervously. Instead she turned her back on him and shoved down the lid to start the noisy coffee grinder.

  Despite the tension that was so thick it clogged the air and just about made breathing difficult, Janey hummed along with the grinder. She really wanted to do a little happy dance.

  Zack’s power had vanished. Gone, as if someone—Toph, of course—had snapped fingers and broken a spell. Poof. Now Zack was just an unwashed piece of scum, instead of an unwashed magnetic piece of scum. Her least favorite response to one of her least favorite men fell away, shriveled to nothing, the instant Toph stared Zack down. And zapped right along with it, her discomfort in his presence.

  Thank you, Toph Dunham. Janey fervently prayed the anti-Zack effect would last forever.

  The noisy coffee grinder made conversation impossible, but as the water hissed through the filter, they were left with no excuse for silence. Zack seemed determined not to leave the room, and Toph wasn’t exactly bubbling over with explanations about why he’d stopped by.

  So Janey filled the dead-air time. She babbled about one of her favorite subjects—Rachel and her activities.

  Toph seemed to relax, and even paid attention. “I didn’t know Rachel liked Gilbert and Sullivan.”

  “Please don’t tell Cynthia. Rach’s embarrassed about it. Not cool for a middle schooler, and she doesn’t want any of her friends to know. I had no idea how hard it is to stay in step with the popular kids.”

  Toph’s smile was wide. What a fine mouth the man had. “Don’t I know it. Cynthia expends hours of energy on being popular. If she spent half that time on her school work she’d be on the honor roll.”

  “I bet you were Mr. Popularity when you were a kid,” Janey blurted. She didn’t mean to bring the chitchat to another level, but she suddenly wondered who this guy was—and had been.

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember having to spend time proving I was cool.”

  “Just came naturally, huh?”

  He hesitated, as if he actually pondered her question. “I think I was actually oblivious to the whole horse race, the whole who-is-cool-and-who-isn’t nonsense.”

  Janey crowed. “Yup. That’s gotta mean you didn’t see any horses ahead of you cause you were in the lead.”

  Zack grunted something, probably obscene, under his breath. He wandered away, muttering, “Bring me my coffee in the bedroom.”

  “Nope. I don’t think so.” Janey still delighted in her new ability to ignore Zack. He snorted and slammed the bedroom door.

  Toph pointed to the large blob of dough oozing across the counter. “What’s that?”

  “Darn!” She scraped up the dough and shoved it into her huge oiled bowl. Everything about this morning was getting out of hand.

  She’d just thrown a damp cloth over the bowl, when there was another knock at the kitchen door. Darn it. Janey wished she’d gone to the temp agency this morning. Of course that meant Zack would have been the one to greet Toph, but she almost didn’t care.

  The gray-haired landlord, Bill Blair the lawyer, stood on the doorstep, his arms folded.

  “I saw the car and I wondered,” Mr. Blair said, tightly. “Is the jackass here?”

  “The jackass” must have been Zack, which made sense now that Janey knew the two of them were related. She studied Mr. Blair, but didn’t see a sign of Zack’s dark, handsome looks or his bratty sneer in Mr. Blair’s usually amiable face which was downright grim right now.

  The landlord caught sight of Toph and the bleak expression slid at once into a bright, surprised smile. Mr. Blair’s arm shot out and he pulled Toph into a politician’s enthusiastic two-handed grip and shake.

  “What the hell! Christopher Dunham! Glad to see you. How are you doin’?”

  “Fine, Bill. Jackass, hey? Were you looking for me?”

  Mr. Blair shifted from foot to foot and folded his arms. “Er, no. I am…I guess I can stop by later, Penny, I mean Janey. If you see him, please tell him I need to talk him. Right away.”

  Right on cue from down the hall came a bellow. “Janey! Is that coffee done?”

  Bill Blair’s eyes widened. “Jesus. The gall.”

  “What’s wrong?” Janey and Toph asked at the same time.

  The landlord shook his head. He strode down the hall and, without knocking, opened the door to Janey’s room. He slammed the door behind him.

  Janey and Toph stared speculatively at each other.

  She cleared her throat. “Zack told me that Mr. Blair is his uncle. Maybe there is some kind of family argument going on.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Toph dryly. “So Zack doesn’t live here?”

  “Good gosh, no!”

  A crooked grin spread across Toph’s face. He had the slightly scary intent look she’d seen on him that morning. His eyes got darker and even heavier lidded. “Glad to hear it.”

  In Janey’s bedroom, Bill Blair shouted something angry about a key. Toph and Janey turned their faces toward the room, not bothering to pretend they weren’t riveted by the muffled yelling.

  She put a cup of coffee in front of Toph. After her years of restaurant work, she instinctively paid attention to how people took their coffee, and added a splash of half and half to his.

  “Thanks. How’d you know I’d—”

  He stopped midsentence when something in Janey’s room crashed, followed by the tinkle of broken glass. Janey hoped it was Penny’s tacky heart-shaped mirror over the bureau and not the framed picture of Rachel as a toddler.

  At the sound of the smash, Janey and Toph instinctively stood up. The bedroom door slammed open.

  Zack and Mr. Blair were framed in the doorway. Mr. Blair had thrown both his hands in the air as if he were making a dramatic gesture of disgust and had just given up arguing with his nephew. Or… Or, oh my good gosh…

  As if someone had a gun pushed into his back.

  No doubt about it, Janey decided, as she slowly raised her hands too. The morning was getting completely out of hand.

  Chapter Five

  Zack aimed the revolver at Bill Blair. “Make it tighter,” he snapped at Janey.

  “Yikes, I’m sorry if this hurts,” she muttered to Zack’s uncle as she pulled on the rope. He was tied to the chair Zack had forced Toph to carry from the house.

  They stood, or in Mr. Blair’s case, sat, in the spot behind the garage, near the garbage cans. No one from the house, driveway or road would be able to see Bill.

  Zack leaned over to jerk at the knots Janey tied.

  The furious eyes over Bill’s duct-taped mouth glared at Zack.

  “I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that, Uncle Billy,” Zack complained. “If you’d minded your own goddamn business I wouldna had to do this.”

  Zack straightened up and turned to Toph. “That your BMW up the road?”

  Toph nodded.

  Zack grinned. “That’s the first good news I’ve had all day. We’re taking your car. You drive, and I’ll just sit in the back with Janey. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Rachel,” said Janey, suddenly frantic. “She’ll be so scared. I have to leave a note. And let me get a blanket for Mr. Blair. It’ll be chilly out here.”

  “Forget it. We’re outta here.” Zack gestured
with the gun.

  Janey and Toph walked to the car, Zack close behind them, whining under his breath.

  Toph showed no expression and she wondered what thoughts seethed behind the bland mask. Her own fear and dislike of Zack were probably written all over her face.

  The back of the car was surprisingly spacious, but Zack sat with his legs wide open, hogging the space, doing the king-of-his-domain act again.

  Now that she could see through him clearly, Janey wondered what on earth had made her breath go ragged when she’d been near Zack.

  He slanted sideways in the seat and pointed the muzzle of the gun at Janey. Right. Now there was a very good reason for her breath to go ragged.

  “Drive, dammit,” he said to Toph. “Or I’ll mess up your fine leather interior with her guts.”

  “Zack, don’t be a jerk,” Janey said, hating her quaking voice.

  “Shut up. I mean it, shut up. I haven’t slept in a couple of days, and then Uncle Billy comes nosing into my business. I’ve about had it. And you, jerk-off. Didn’t I tell you to drive?”

  The edge to his voice made Janey’s skin crawl. Toph, in the driver’s seat, met her eyes in the rearview mirror. For a long, steadying moment his dark eyes looked into Janey’s, his message clear. Everything will be fine, the soothing eyes told her. Almost at once her heartbeat slowed. As long as he could stay calm, she could too.

  He twisted around in his seat and his composed gaze rested on Zack. In a ridiculously reasonable voice Toph said, “Okay, I’ll go wherever you want. But I don’t know what you have in mind.”

  “Damn, damn… The woods. Janey, where the hell are the woods Penny and I went?”

  “You mean when she got pregnant?”

  “Yeah.”

  Janey sighed. She hated some of the old memories he dragged out. “That was our grandmother’s old farm, Zack. I sold that a couple of years ago to pay for Penny’s legal and rehab fees.”

  “Damn. Let’s go somewhere. I don’t like sitting here. Just drive. Got it?”

  Toph nodded.

  Janey studied his face as he pulled smoothly into traffic. He looked so contained, as if getting kidnapped at gunpoint was just one of those things. A pain in the neck that happened to one every now and then, like a batch of lost dry cleaning.

  “So. Who is Penny?” He spoke in a mild tone. They might have been sitting around the kitchen counter, having a friendly little chat.

  Janey glanced at Zack. She waited for him to answer, but he only frowned out the window.

  “Rachel’s mother,” she said at last. “My twin sister.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her in the rearview mirror

  “Oh?” He sounded seriously pissed off. Of all the things to be annoyed about, it seemed insane to pick that item from the list.

  “I made a promise to Rachel. She had, ah, lied to Cynthia and wanted to clear up the lie on her own. I was going to ask her to call you tonight. Remember?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said at last. “At breakfast.” About a thousand years ago, his voice now seemed to say. She knew what he meant.

  They slowed for a stoplight. Zack fidgeted and cursed under his breath.

  “Shall I keep going straight?” Toph asked as they waited.

  “Yeah. Just drive, dammit. I’ll tell you when to do something else. No. Wait.” He waved at a green highway sign. “Pull onto 84 here.”

  “Fine. We’ll need gas in about twenty miles.”

  Jeez. Twenty miles? It finally struck her. Where did Zack think they were going? What was he planning to do? If her old memories of Zack were accurate, planning was not his strong suit.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Traffic thinned as they left the city farther behind. Trees replaced subdivisions on the side of the highway.

  She drew in a breath. “Zack? Where are we going?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Oh. Good.” She hoped she sounded cheery.

  From the front seat, Toph spoke. “So you’ve never been to jail, Janey?”

  Why on earth was Toph on about this just now?

  “No. Except to visit Penny. She’s still there and probably will be a few years longer. She violated parole—and she was caught with marijuana.”

  “Poor Rachel,” he said softly.

  Yes, that was true enough. Though, at the moment, now that dumb ol’ Zack had managed to actually scare her, Janey felt more like poor Janey.

  “We’ll get gas up ahead,” Zack announced. “I gotta take a leak. You two’ll have to come into the john with me.”

  The gas station attendant didn’t even look up from his computer as the three of them took the ladies room key and pushed into the wretched little restroom the size of a small elevator but more aromatic.

  “Isn’t this cozy,” Toph said. Janey heard laughter in his voice. The man had a strange sense of humor.

  They took turns. Janey went last. She sat and the men turned their backs, though of course, Zack turned around as soon as he realized he was missing a chance to watch something someone didn’t want him to see.

  “Your thighs ain’t as fat as I thought they’d be,” he remarked as she struggled to pull up her jeans and not bump into them.

  As they left the filthy little bathroom, Zack put out a hand and rubbed her rear end.

  He leered at her. “Not bad at all.”

  Gross. “Zack, knock it off.”

  He had shoved the gun into a pocket and now twitched the hand that held it. “Do not forget I got this.”

  Janey put her hands on her hips. She opened her mouth, but then recalled some of their fights from the past. His temper sometimes went south pretty fast. She shouldn’t stir the moron up.

  Or maybe the best course to take was to soothe the giant ego. “Zack, so many women want you. Why mess with one who um…” She just let the sentence trail off.

  “Huh,” he grunted. “Get in the car.”

  She leaned over to climb in and at once felt Zack’s hand on her butt again. “Zack, dammit.”

  “All right,” he grumbled. “Just been a while since I had any.” He heaved a sigh and looked pitiful. Zack always was good at feeling sorry for himself.

  She crawled into the corner of the car. For distraction, she stared at the back of Toph’s head. An expensive haircut grown a bit long curled over onto the shirt collar that showed above the well-cut dark jacket. Good shoulders and straight back. Reliable and strong. Concentrate on something pleasant.

  Why had he come to her house that morning? Did he want to talk business? Of course. His gaze met hers in the mirror again. Okay, so she detected a zing strangely close to pleasure when those eyes looked into her face. That did not necessarily mean he experienced anything remotely like the response. The steady gaze was simply to reassure her. If she were ninety years old and trapped in the backseat with Zack, Toph would probably direct the same encouraging looks at her. And chances were a ninety-year-old Janey would probably feel the same squirming sensation shoot through her.

  Pitiful, sex-starved woman. Still it had to be something of a breakthrough for her because she didn’t just lust after him. She actually liked the man, maybe.

  Toph started the car and they drove again. God help him, he was almost enjoying himself.

  Bea always said he had an idiotic reckless streak and a sick sense of humor. Sure, he worried the fool with the gun might shoot him or Janey. Yes, he resented the idiot threatening him. But it was a change from routine, all right. And there was something exhilarating about trying to come up with a plan to get the gun in his hand. A challenge.

  It had been too long since he had a challenge that really made his heart pump. Of course the challenge had some drawbacks, such as the potential to bring his pumping heart to a sudden standstill. Or Janey’s—now that was a sobering thought.

  Toph checked the rear view mirror again. Janey looked pale, poor woman. He saw her eyes in the mirror, staring back at him. He studied the small strip he could see of her face, the bridg
e of her little nose, blue eyes, not grey, he mused. The kind of icy blue eyes that verged on grey. The dark rim around the iris gave them a startling prettiness.

  Too bad he had to keep turning his own eyes back to the road. Too bad about the fool next to her in the back.

  Toph glanced into the mirror and winked at her. Her eyes widened slightly with surprise, but then gleamed as she smiled briefly back.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Zack, who also seemed pale. Dark circles lay under his eyes.

  Zack yawned. He stared out the window. Then he yawned again. He appeared lost in gloomy thoughts. Toph got an idea.

  “So Janey, we might as well talk about your business. Tell me more about your idea of the perfect plan for your dream business.” He spoke in a soft monotone.

  “Excuse me?” She looked up to the mirror again. Her brows drew together. He smiled into her eyes.

  He drew out each nearly nonsensical phrase slowly. “Your dream business. How far ahead have you made your projections? I mean if it’s only one year, well, you know that won’t cut it for any business. Maybe a two-year projection. Or three years you’ll break even. Or even five years.

  “Someday, you should show me charts and some facts and figures that would make it a feasible business plan that I could show any accountant. Because you know how picky those accountants can be. They want every ‘I’ dotted and every ‘T’ crossed. You ought to sleep on any sheets before handing them in.”

  As he rambled on in a steady tone, he flicked his glance over in Zack’s direction once then shut his eyes for a second.

  Janey’s eyes widened. She got the idea.

  In a soft, lulling voice she picked up her part of an excruciatingly dull conversation. “Yes, I understand what you mean about the long-term planning. I have been concentrating on recipes. Lots of recipes. Breakfast menus and lunch menus and dinner menus. Now I have plenty of ideas for themes. For instance this would be a great menu for someone who wanted a vegetarian dinner…”

  A while later, still using the soothing voice of a late-night disc jockey, she said, “And then I thought we could serve chocolate ice cream on top of everyone’s head and the fact that I’ve been speaking nonsense for five minutes means that I think we’ve achieved our goal so you suppose I should do something now.”