No Place Like Home

by April Hill

  The fish thing had scales, and after maybe sixty seconds over Hank’s knee, so did I—like a mermaid, sort of, with perfect little scalloped impressions everywhere on my butt and thighs where the fish and I made intimate contact. In between yowls, I made a silent vow to myself to make a thorough, room-to room search for any other art objects capable of serving a dual purpose.

  The fish spanking hurt, but it was nothing compared to the injury to my pride. Let’s face it. I had been arrested for practicing the lowest of professions, in the very lowest place imaginable, which proved one thing to me— I needed to do something about my wardrobe.

  Evidently, Hank’s heart wasn’t really in spanking me, because he released me fairly quickly, and then sat on the couch looking disheartened.

  Hoping the fish episode was over, and trying to sound conciliatory, I tried for humor. "Gosh, Hank, you look beat. Ha, ha! Little joke, there. Do you want some iced tea? Before you tell me what happened at Joey’s?"

  "I’ll tell you what happened at Joey’s," he growled. "Your goddamned mouth happened, that’s what, and no, I don’t want any iced tea.”

  I raised an eyebrow. "And what’s so wrong with my mouth, pray tell?"

  "It’s always open, for one thing," he said, peeling off his damp tie. (Spanking me is evidently hot work.) "If you’d just shut up and listen once in a while. You almost blew a pretty good lead with that moron you picked up, and it wasn’t easy to get the jerk to open up again. By the way, the jerk thinks you’re nuts."

  I was only slightly abashed. I am often told that people thinks I’m nuts. It’s part of my persona.

  "And what about you? What do you think?" I demanded

  Hank sighed. "I don’t have to think. I know you’re nuts."

  I batted my eyelashes, or tried to. "But I’m cute, so you’re going to forgive me, right?"

  "You’re not that cute. But if you promise to keep your trap closed, and listen politely, I’ll tell you something I learned while I was there." He pulled a small notebook from his jacket.

  "Okay," I said, serious now. "I promise. What is it?"

  "While you were busy getting yourself booked for prostitution and lewd conduct, I talked to the guy you solicited—your ‘John’."

  "Stop saying that!” I shrieked. “I didn’t solicit him. It was all a stupid mistake."

  "Well, your new friend, Dooley Fred Potter didn’t think so."

  "I solicited someone named Dooley Fred Potter?"

  "From Arkansas. But, now, Dooley Fred dances at a club in Redondo Beach—a place called ‘Mr. Meat’."

  I sighed. "I don’t want to know."

  Hank grinned. "Interesting place, actually. When he's working, Dooley Fred goes by ‘Sonny, the Sicilian Salami,’ but I don’t think he’s really Italian."

  "You think?"

  "You’ve probably already guessed that Dooley Fred’s biggest talent isn’t his dancing. Evidently Joey’s is his daytime hangout. Sort of a sideline, where he meets— and services— what he calls 'unsatisfied' ladies."

  "And he thought I was...."

  "Needy. Well, ‘hard up’ was the expression he used." Hank smiled. "Something about your outfit, he said."

  "The hick son of a bitch!"

  "Anyway," Hank continued, obviously enjoying my misery, "This Potter character used to have a good drinking buddy, named Eddie Fuchs, but…”

  “Eddie Fuchs?”

  “Dooley Fred wasn’t sure how Eddie spelled it, so I wrote, F-U-C-H-S, to make the report less entertaining to everyone down at the precinct. Anyway, one day about a year ago, Eddie just quit showing up—like Esteban, and maybe like your pal Larry."

  He flipped the pages of the notebook. "Nobody’s heard from the guy since—not Dooley Fred, and none of the guy’s barfly friends, of whom he had many. Not even Eddie’s girlfriend, who’s still pissed because he took off with her car, her credit cards, and eight hundred bucks worth of high quality coke—in a Gerber’s baby food jar."

  I pondered this new information. "So, maybe this Eddie guy had enough of L.A. and the girlfriend, and just took off somewhere, with the goods."

  Hank shook his head. "Nope. They found the car a week later, parked at an abandoned gas station about a mile from your house. The stash of coke, the lady friend’s credit cards, and some cash were in the car, too, but there was no trace of Eddie. You don’t rip off those kinds of goods and then walk away without them. But the most interesting part of Potter’s story is the connection with the house. Your house."

  My eyes went wide, and somewhere in the bottom of my stomach, I could feel a knot of fear forming that almost took my mind off the fish sting. Almost.

  "What kind of connection?"

  "The puzzling kind. Maybe important, maybe not. The day Dooley’s pal went missing, he was seen riding around with a guy who’d walked into Joey’s the same afternoon— to ask if anyone wanted work—helping to fix a garage roof. ""A garage roof?"

  "Yeah, and Dooley’s pal, Eddie, took the offer—to help fix the roof. They were last seen together driving off in the girlfriend’s car. After that, Eddie just dropped off the face of the earth."

  "Okay, but how do you know it was my house they were talking about?"

  "I don’t, or at least I can’t prove it. But Dooley says the guy who needed his garage roof fixed mentioned the house was ‘up at the Ranchos."

  That’s it?"

  "That’s it. Not much, maybe, but how many houses are up there? Dooley Fred also said this garage guy was peculiar. Dooley described him as a ‘weirdo’."

  "And someone called the Sicilian Salami would know weird, right? Please remember that your Mr. Potter thought I was a...Well, lets just say he’s not exactly the best judge of people."

  "Maybe, but Dooley also said the garage guy smelled ‘funny’."

  "Gosh!” I hooted. “Someone with poor hygiene at Fat Joey’s! Who would have thought it? So what do we do, now?"

  Hank sighed. "I’m not sure, but what I’d like to do is bulldoze that fucking house of yours."

  I rolled my eyes. "Tell Mom that, and watch the blood spurt," I remarked.

  "You know what?" Hank said suddenly. "Go ahead and her. And get the rental records for the house. Let’s see if we can find some trace of this ‘weirdo.’"

  The rental records, of course, were incomplete. For all of Mom’s business acumen, she’s a disaster at record-keeping. Mom had apparently rented to a whole collection of other weirdos, before renting to me.

  "I hate to tell you this," I explained dolefully, as Hank rummaged through the jumbled shoebox that represented years of tenancies, "but sloppy bookkeeping is a family tradition. Besides, I’m sure they’re not complete for other reasons. She’s probably been lying to the IRS about her rental income for years. The only thing Mom hates more than paying bills is paying them to the government."

  "But she’s a businesswoman," Hank fumed. "How does she manage to stay out of jail? Or court, at least?"

  "She does business with a handshake, or by flirting— at least when the client’s a man. Half the guys she rents to have been Mom’s current sex-toys. There was enough after-shave in the bathroom to float a Carnival cruise ship, to say nothing of all the condoms under the sink."

  "Your Mom must be some woman," he said, laughing.

  I smiled sweetly. "A trait that also runs in the family."

  Hank thought for a moment. "You lived in that house for a while, didn’t you? Years ago, I mean?"

  "For a while. While my father was still around, and during Husbands Two and Three, I think."

  "How many were there, in all? Husbands, I mean?"

  "Six, including Leo. Mom swears he's the last one, but only time will tell."

  "Did you think of any of them as a father?"

  "Not really." I thought for a moment. "Well, Anson, maybe."

  "Anson? Where was he on the list?"

  "Husband two, a couple of years after my real father disappeared. Anson finally went bonkers, though, like all the rest
of them. All of Mother’s men seem to go crazy, eventually."

  "Do we think that’s a family tradition, as well?" Hank ventured.

  "Search me. You’ll just have to stick around and find out. Not all the nutcases were Mom’s fault, though. Anson just walked out into the Pacific one night during a storm and drowned himself. It was weeks before they found him—part of him, anyway. Sharks, presumably. Mom collected on the insurance when they couldn’t prove it was a suicide, but we all knew it was. Mom had broken it off with him, and he took it really bad. But, I guess you could say that Anson was the closest thing I had to a father—until he flipped out, anyway. He’d been a friend of my father’s, actually, and he helped us out when Dad took off. Helped finish all the projects in the house that my father had left hanging. Anson was a really big man, string, and kind of heavy set. He used to let me walk around in his hard hat and hand him things, like his hammer, and all."

  "So Anson was a good guy?"

  "Okay, I guess, most of the time. He worshipped Mom, and always told me how much he’d wanted a kid of his own. He used to read to me at night—fairy tales, you know? Hans Christian Andersen, especially. I can still quote most of ‘Thumbelina.’ He could have a mean temper, though, and I think he was determined to undo Mom’s permissive attitudes about child rearing. Back then, Mom thought everything I did was adorable and precocious, and by the time Anson moved in, she’d turned me into a flaming little hellion. Once, on my birthday, he gave me this pair of those fancy ‘rhumba’ pants little girls love so much, with all the ruffles and lace on the seat? But when I started dancing around like the budding little trollop I was, lifting my skirt to show off to everybody in sight, he took me in the bathroom and whaled the bejesus out of me. He said I needed to learn that it wasn’t ladylike to show your underpants."

  Hank grinned. "Well, that’s one lesson that obviously didn’t take."

  I laughed. "I just couldn’t understand why he’d buy me something so pretty and not want everyone else to see it. We never did have a meeting of the minds on the subject. I decided to just give up fancy underwear as too confusing— a decision that saved me a fortune over the years, by the way."

  "Do you mind if I ask a really personal question?"

  "Well, you already know about my stylish underwear, so ask ahead."

  "None of these guys abused you, right? Physically? Sexually?"

  "God, no! Mom would have killed them. She didn’t even like it when Anson swatted me, occasionally. I don’t remember husband number three very well. His name was Bruno, and he sort of got sucked into the vacuum created by Anson’s untimely departure, then disappeared down the rabbit hole with all Mom’s other hubbies. He left without leaving a forwarding address. He had money, so we always figured he was just trying to avoid alimony by running off. Not that Mom would have asked. She may be a ditz and a fading femme fatale, but she’s never been a gold digger. Besides, she could have bought and sold most of the dimwits she married. She’s probably got the first dime she ever earned, minus what she blows on eye shadow and stiletto heels. I have no idea where I get my own compulsion to poverty. Certainly not from her.

  "Anyway, none of the husbands stuck around long. I think Mom just exhausted them. I used to imagine them lined up on a shelf like a bunch of broken toys, with their paint chipping and covered in dust, exchanging fond anecdotes about Mom. God only knows what happened to them after they’d served their time. Most of them simply vanished. I guess Mom’s a tough act to follow. Okay, where were we? Number four didn't even make it much past the honeymoon. I think his name was George, but don’t hold me to it. Husband five was Billy, the cook. He did spank me once— for hiding his car keys. A really good one, too. He had a lot in common with you, now that I think of it. No nonsense, just three or four good swats with a wooden spoon, and the keys miraculously reappeared. I gather Billy finally got a job cooking in someone else's kitchen, so to speak."

  "What do you remember about your father?"

  "Not much, and I'm not even sure how much of that is memory and how much is what Mom has told me, over the years. I know he was an artist— a pretty good one, too. Mom still keeps a couple of his paintings hanging in her living room. She told me he liked building things, too, but he wasn’t much good at it. I do remember that he was tall, and had beautiful hands. That's about it."

  “How did he die?"

  "He was living in Hawaii, and there was this awful fire. Mom doesn't like to talk about it, but I gather he burned to death, along with all his paintings. "

  “Were they still married, then?”

  “No. But it wasn’t long after the divorce. You’d have to ask Mom the exact date.”

  "And what do you know about the White Rancho? Its history?"

  I shrugged. "Again, not a lot, except that it's my ancestral home, believe it or not. Generations of Thatchers have lived in those hallowed halls. Well, two generations, anyway. Mom and Dad bought it as a fixer-upper, right after they got married. She won’t admit it, but I know that’s why she keeps the house in a time warp the way she does. Anyway, soon after we moved in, Dad just disappeared one day, like Gaugin—only dear old Dad ran off to Hawaii, not Tahiti. He just packed up, cleaned out the joint bank account, and took off for greener pastures. We got a few postcards from here and there over the next few years, whining about how he needed ‘space’ for his work, artistic freedom, blah-blah-blah! How he just couldn’t deal with the pressure of a family and all that crap. It was rough on Mom, though, because she really loved him.

  “One day, when I was about thirteen and up to my ears in women’s lib, we were out shopping and I made the mistake of calling my father a worthless piece of shit. He had been dead for around five years years, by then, and she’s already gone through a couple of husbands, so I guess I didn’t think she’d be as upset as she was. She turned around and slapped me so hard I fell into a planter full of fake shrubbery. Then she started to cry and moan and apologize to me, all at once. Someone called mall security, and the whole thing turned into a big hairy mess.

  “Anyway, she waited a couple of years for Dad to change his mind and come back, before she took up with Anson. He was always hanging around, fixing the stuff in the house that Dad had left unfinished, and it wasn’t long before he and Mom got involved. I always wondered if it was because she needed a handyman. I don’t think Mom ever loved him, but they'd both been abandoned by Dad, and I guess that was another kind of bond. Anyway, after we heard about Dad’s death, Mom finally agreed to marry Anson.

  "So, she was still in love with your father," Hank puzzled, "but still married all those guys?"

  I sighed. "Mom always kept things in perspective. Undying love is one thing, but a stud between the sheets and food on the table are something else entirely. And she was always good at taking care of us, I’ll give her that."

  "She’s still a very good looking woman, for her age," Hank said.

  "Another family trait," I explained. "We Thatcher women have a devastating effect on men, you know. We ruin them for anyone else."

  Hank nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I can see that."

  I yawned. "Which reminds me, isn’t it getting to be bedtime? I’m willing to forget the recent unpleasantness with the wooden fish, you know, if you make it worth my time."

  "You go ahead," he said, waving his hand. "I’m going to try to make some sense out of all these receipts. I’ll be in pretty soon."

  I groaned. "Spanked with a fish, spurned by the Sicilian Salami, and now losing out to a box of faded paperwork! Am I really that unattractive?"

  Hank smiled. "We’ll talk about how attractive you are in a few minutes. Go on to bed, but just try not to doze off right away, okay?"

  I found a book called "Forensic Pathology" on his bedside table, and was still immersed in its gory contents when Hank finally came to bed. He leaned down to kiss me.

  "Sorry that took so long," he murmured in my ear. He slipped his fingers beneath my gown and did a couple of very nice things to get my at
tention away from the book. "I’ll do my best to make it up to you, and for the fish incident, too." He raised the edge of my nightgown to check the fading fish scales on my rear end, tracing the tiny lines very slowly with one fingertip and letting his fingers roam here and there.