The Summer Job

by Cesare, Adam

  “I tried. I tried. I put my hands around her throat, had the knife right above her, but I just couldn’t,” Daisy had said. It was almost impossible to tell what she was saying through the sobs and the begging. She was covered in spots of blood, having smashed the girl’s front teeth in before hefting her down two flights of stairs and out into the woods. “Don’t tell Ms. Brant! Please.”

  She caught him while he was preparing breakfast, already in his chef’s whites. He promised that he wouldn’t tell on her. Why, he didn’t know.

  “Thank you! I’ll do anything you want.” He got the idea that she would blow him if he asked. The idea wasn’t particularly compelling, but he’d have that card tucked away for a rainy day.

  By the time Roy had reached her, the sun was up and she’d already come to her senses.

  She ran faster than he’d imagined she would, and the rest was history.

  Roy picked at a long string of cotton gauze that had come loose from his dressings. He didn’t dare pull it out though, unsure if the entire pad would come with it. He’d have to wait until he got to a pair of scissors.

  Underneath the bandages his finger itched. Dwyer had been able to sew a flap of skin back over the knuckle, shortening his heal time, but it made the wound especially sensitive to movement.

  He was leaning against the Elantra and pushed off the car with his left hand, wincing as he reminded himself of the deep cut in his thumb. Sucking on it, he got a mouthful of the grit and dust that he’d coated the car with.

  When he looked up from spitting into the dirt, Tobin was there. The boy stood ten yards away, his shoulder against a tree.

  Roy felt a rush of fury and surprise so powerful that his vision swam. Before he could think, his right hand was in his pocket, hand around the shaft of the baton. The flesh around his knuckle strained against the sutures as he made a fist.

  “Now before you do anything,” Tobin said, “please just hear me out and know that I’m awfully sorry about the finger. That’s sorry in retrospect, because I know that I was smiling at the time.”

  “Gonna fucking kill you,” Roy said and started to rush for Tobin, flicking out the end of the baton with a satisfying click.

  Tobin didn’t say anything, just pointed behind Roy in the direction of the Elantra.

  Jeb stood behind the trunk of the car. He let his grip on the ax handle loosen and the blade of the ax scraped against the Elantra’s bumper with a metal on fiberglass tink that sounded louder than it should have.

  “Jeb is the only person in Mission bigger and hairier than you,” Tobin said. “So why don’t we all just chill out?”

  Tobin was right. Not only that, but Jeb was half Roy’s age. He had all his fingers, too.

  No sense of style though. He looked like an Appalachian hillbilly with those overalls and his wild beard. He’d clearly patterned the beard on his messiah, Davey, but the burley youth didn’t wear it half as well.

  “Say what you’ve got to say,” Roy said, lowering the baton but not collapsing it. He would never collapse it when these fuckers were in swinging distance.

  “Well, it’s not an apology. I meant what I said about your finger, but that’s not why we’re here right now.” Tobin said. Roy had a hard time focusing on him with Jeb so close behind him. He looked back and the bigger boy had taken a few steps away from the Elantra, coming around Roy from the side so the three of them were no longer standing in a line.

  “I am sad about what I’m about to say, but I’m not sorry for it. It’s got to be said.”

  “Just fucking spit it out,” Roy said, raising the baton again, taking a step towards Tobin.

  “That’s far enough,” Jeb said. The boy’s voice sounded like some kind of prehistoric reptile, thick with smoke and fire and deep as a well.

  “Well, you’ve got to know that you’re the most dangerous player on the other side. You do know that, right? And I completely mean that as a compliment,” Tobin said. “And don’t go saying that someone else in your camp is more ‘powerful’ than you. I don’t mean that fucking medieval wizard Dungeons and Dragons bullshit power that you all think you have. I mean physically dangerous. You’re a goddamn beast.”

  Jeb chuckled at this, the laugh unbelievably childlike when compared with the rest of him.

  “The point is?” Roy asked. He felt the sweat of his hands stinging his wounds. It shamed him to be sweating this much. It made him look weak and scared.

  “The point is that this is it. This is the start of the war. No more shots across the bow. It’s all going to be full-on direct hits from here on out. Got to be that way,” Tobin said. He was speaking in clichés, possibly too afraid to say exactly what he meant, but Roy understood him just fine.

  It was an understanding that made Roy’s balls shrink up into his chest, a tiny animal spray of piss dripping out of him before he could clench it back.

  “Stay away!” Roy raised the baton in front of him, pointing the tip at Jeb and giving a few fake swings.

  The motions didn’t make Jeb budge a centimeter. He stood completely still except for the rise and fall of his hairy chest against his overalls. The ax in his hands looked small in comparison to the rest of him, like a hatchet would look on a normal-sized teenager.

  Jesus, Jeb was still a teenager. He was probably still growing.

  “Stop that now,” Tobin said. “The reason we’re talking to you is that we want you to understand, not to make it worse for you, but to make it better. If that’s even possible.

  “I could have popped you from the woods while you were jerking off over your cars,” Tobin continued, “but I didn’t. I wanted you to know what was going on.”

  “Try it then.”

  “There’s not going to be much trying to it, surely you can see that, Roy,” Tobin said, reaching his hand behind the tree and coming back with the Winchester, the one that’d taken Roy’s finger. “This is a congratulations of sorts.”

  Jeb scoffed. Most of the boy’s interactions all seemed to be variations on menacing breathing.

  “Us being here, paying you a visit before anyone else, it means that he thinks you pose a real threat,” Tobin said.

  “It don’t mean that he’s afraid of you,” Jeb said. It was the most words Roy had ever heard the kid say.

  “No, of course it doesn’t mean that,” Tobin agreed. “It just means that you are tactically significant.”

  “‘He’? You’re so far up Davey’s ass that you don’t even say his name? You kids are pathetic,” Roy said. Getting them riled could be part of a plan if he could think straight enough to make one. All he could think about was biting into Tobin’s medium-rare heart.

  “Watch what you say.” Tobin leveled the rifle. “And what you think.”

  “Like you can read my thoughts? I look like I’m going to fall for that? Fucking pathetic,” Roy said, but he wasn’t so sure.

  “You’ve made me angry. You’ve made me regret my decision to be so upfront with you.”

  They were reaching the end of whatever this was. Roy’s arm was getting weak from holding the baton aloft. His finger ached so badly that he wouldn’t have been surprised if the stitches had come undone.

  At least in a combat sense, the boys were smart. Jeb was closer to Roy, a few of his long strides would put him within axing distance. Tobin was much farther away, Roy was faster and could reach the smaller boy before Jeb could cut him down, but not while Tobin had a gun on him.

  “You’re weighing the options, but there’s only one possible outcome here and you’re not going to like it. You need to understand that we’re taking care of you first. Any idea what an honor that is?”

  Roy spat. Not strictly as an insult, but because if he swallowed the extra saliva in his mouth, then he was going to vomit. Tobin kept talking, ignoring the spit.

  “I mean, I don’t even think Davey knows Jeb’s name and he sees him every day.” Tobin laughed and looked to the big boy to let him know he was joking, but Jeb himself was unreadable.
He turned his eyes back to Roy. “You’re on his radar, such a bright dot that you get a special place in the lineup.”

  Roy took a slow step toward Tobin, thinking that if he did it slow enough it would go unnoticed. It hadn’t. Tobin put a second hand on the gun, steadying the barrel.

  “Wait,” Roy said, not having to try to make his voice sound frantic. “Don’t shoot yet. There’s one thing I always wanted to know.”

  “Yeah? Ask away,” Tobin said. He placed his cheek lightly against the stock and looked down the sights.

  “You ever get to touch any of those girls that Davey hangs around with, or does he make all you boys blow each other?”

  Roy saw it happening better in his mind.

  He dove to his right, towards Jeb. The idea was to get close enough to Jeb fast enough that Tobin wouldn’t risk taking the shot. At least then he would have some kind of chance, not much, but some if he could get Jeb in the right spots with the baton.

  As he ducked and rolled he heard the shot, the bullet punching him in the chest, right above his heart. The bullet might have blown a fist-sized exit wound out the back of his shoulder or got stuck in one of the bones, but it was impossible to tell. Everything was numb.

  Jeb hadn’t moved to meet him, wasn’t stupid enough for that.

  Roy tried to balance a few more steps forward after feeling the bite of the bullet, but his legs were falling out from under him. He swung with the baton, knowing he wasn’t going to connect but having to try.

  The metal bulb on the end of the baton whiffed through the air, twisting Roy onto his back with the momentum.

  Only once his back was flat against the ground did Jeb take a step towards him.

  The afternoon sun was still intense enough to highlight the dust moats that swam in the corner of Roy’s vision, kicked up by his fall and settling onto his staggering failure.

  Jeb let the ax fall. Roy heard the blade whizz by his ear, felt the wind rush by as it dug into the ground. Above him, Jeb’s furry face cracked a smile.

  The fucker’s sadistic face was what he needed to see. Roy lashed out with the baton, catching Jeb in the ankle.

  Jeb jumped back, holding his foot by the toes and hopping up and down on one leg. It was the least funny Three Stooges bit of all time.

  Winding up for the swing had pushed a stream of blood out of the gunshot. Roy felt moisture on the small of his back, unsure whether it was sweat or blood. If it was blood, the exit wound was there and he didn’t have much longer to live.

  There was a ruffling of leaves apart from Jeb’s semi-comical hops as Tobin ran up to the scene.

  “This is why I gave you the talk, Roy. You’re proving me right,” Tobin said. “Such a damn shame you picked the wrong side.”

  “Fuck you,” Roy said, choking. He could taste blood. The vision in his left eye was completely white, and his right was fuzzy. He thrashed out in the direction of Tobin’s shadow and didn’t hit anything.

  There was a sharp slap across his jaw that felt like it came from a gunstock. He couldn’t feel anything with his tongue, but he’d definitely lost a tooth.

  “Stop being a fucking baby and get that thing from him,” he heard Tobin’s voice say.

  There was a pressure on his right forearm and he tightened his grip on the baton. He tried bucking against the hold, but it was no use. The hand was like concrete.

  The next sound he heard was a snap, one of the bones in his arm or wrist popping under the pressure of Jeb’s giant hands.

  Roy was burning up, rivulets of sweat poured from his forehead. The only thing he could hear beyond the smaller snaps of his fingers was the blood pound of his own heartbeat against his ears.

  Cold fingers gripped his scalp but offered no relief from the fever. They were too big to belong to anyone else besides Jeb. Roy felt himself lifted up by his scalp, the sensation a puppy must feel as it’s picked up by the scruff.

  “You went out a fighter, Roy,” Tobin said. Roy was unsure if he could really be hearing him with his ears. “Nobody but us is going to know that, at least for a little while, but the truth remains. You should be proud.”

  Softer, more distant and earthly, he heard Tobin’s voice again, “Do it.”

  There was the gentle noise of shifting soil as the ax was pried from the ground somewhere near him.

  Roy put two fingers on each hand out in front of him and felt the ground. He must have been on his knees then, the earth spread out there before him.

  For one short moment, Roy felt like he could see again. What he saw was the forest bathed in afternoon sun. The trees wobbled and then were still again. Then his head fell end over end and his vision went with it, spinning around as his head rolled away from his body.

  This was all in his mind, of course. For the last moment of his life, all Roy could see was darkness as the ax bit into his neck.

  Not even the comforting fires of hell were visible.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Christine closed the door, Jane finally asleep after a Benadryl and two glasses of red wine.

  Even though they’d barely had time to enjoy it, the honeymoon suite was nice. Christine had never encountered a Jacuzzi tub that didn’t smell like mildew, but this one was pristine.

  After they came back to the hotel and moved their bags in, they tried out the tub and made love after Bert had gone to sleep on his dog bed in the corner of the room. After that, they’d gone to sleep.

  Christine woke up before Jane. No matter how comfortable they were, she’d always had a hard time sleeping in new beds. She’d woken herself up several times during the night, stuck in the same dream she always seemed to have in hotel rooms. Each time she woke was a semiconscious moment of sleep paralysis in which she was convinced that someone else is in the room before lapsing back into the blackness of R.E.M sleep.

  Careful not to wake up Jane, she grabbed her duffel bag from the counter, changed in the bathroom, and snuck out into the hotel hallway.

  The workout room wasn’t terrible, but it couldn’t be called a proper gym. There were two treadmills and an elliptical, along with a tower of free weights and a Bowflex for strength training. Christine ran while she watched the local news, the captions almost impossible to read on the snowy TV that hung in front of the treadmills.

  Christine returned before Jane was awake to find that the door to their room had been left open. Christine didn’t remember doing it, but it was possible that the door hadn’t closed behind her. She took a seat on the edge of the bed and flicked on the TV.

  The television set was large and bright. She dialed down the volume and channel surfed. The electric hum of the set and the click of the remote was enough to wake Jane out of her slumber.

  “Good morning,” Jane said, tossing the covers aside and standing.

  She was taller than Christine by half a foot, every part of her more slender and inviting. Even after all these years, gravity seemed to work differently on Jane.

  “Where’s Bert?” Jane said.

  She was so enamored with Jane’s nudity that Christine had to rethink the question before she could form an answer.

  “Is he sleeping in the bathroom?”

  Jane pushed her head into the bathroom. “No.”

  She clapped her hands and called his name, checking the small walled-off foyer that allowed the room to be called a suite.

  What followed was an hour of crying and walking around the hotel trying to locate Bert. Jane jostled the box of Snausages, took one into her hand and crushed it.

  “What are you doing?” Christine asked.

  “He’ll be able to smell them better if I crush them up. Dogs can smell food from miles away.”

  They’d covered most of the ground in the hotel before reaching the front desk.

  “Excuse me,” Jane said, the older woman behind the desk looked up. Behind the woman’s bifocals, her eyes looked red and puffy.

  “Can I help you?” the woman said. She didn’t wear the uniform that they’d see
n Daisy in earlier, but an old-timey floral-pattern dress that was tasteful and fitting.

  “My dog somehow got out of our room. Have you seen him or heard anything?”

  That wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Jane was acutely aware that Bert was her dog, not their dog.

  “What room was that, again?” the woman asked. “I’m sorry to be so preoccupied. Our chef has not shown up for work yet and I’m having a Dickens of a time locating someone to fill in.”

  “He’s a little miniature pinscher. Is there any way that a maid might have come by our room this morning and let him get by without noticing?”

  “What room?” The woman behind the desk asked again. Jane’s question seemed to have thrown a switch. The old woman’s tone of voice changed in those two words.

  “Twenty-seven, the honeymoon suite,” Christine answered for Jane. Of their roles in their relationship, hers was never public relations unless it seemed like force was going to be necessary.

  Something about this broad’s aura told Christine that she was bigger and badder than Jane could handle. She’d scoffed slightly after Christine had mentioned the honeymoon suite. No doubt Daisy had been gossiping about the two lezzies fouling up the sheets.

  “I’ve got one of our guest liaisons, our maids, in the kitchen right now making omelets, so I doubt she’s been up to your room. Nobody would be entering your room before ten thirty, and even then they would knock and announce themselves to you. Are you sure that you didn’t leave the door open yourselves? Did you check under the bed?”

  “Can I speak to the manager please?” Christine said, tired of this woman. If calling a hotel maid a maid was considered crossing the line, she didn’t want to live in this country anymore.

  “I should have introduced myself before. My name is Victoria Brant.” The woman seemed to straighten up as she said her own name. The hints of weakness and emotion that Christine had spotted when they’d first arrived at the front desk had been crushed, shored up behind the wall that was Victoria Brant. “I’m not only the manager, but the owner of the hotel. Please direct all questions to me.”