The Prodigal Girl

by Evan Ronan

  I’ve watched Shannon for a handful of days. That’s an incredibly small sample size, if you think about it. If I followed a mass-murderer serial killer around for a week, I might not witness any suspicious activity whatsoever.

  “I’m sorry,” Tarika says suddenly, her whole body softening. “I shouldn’t be taking this out on you. All you’ve done is help.”

  “I’m worried about you,” I say. “I’m glad Shannon told you about the baby and Marcus, but I think there’s a lot more to the story, Tarika.”

  “I’m sure there is.” She smiles sadly. “All we ever get with our children is the tip of the iceberg.”

  That’s the damned truth.

  “And that’s more than we get with anybody else,” Tarika says. Then she forces a smile. “I’ve got my Shannon back. Now I know why she was acting strangely. She wanted to come home but felt like she couldn’t tell me everything.”

  “But you still don’t know why she came home.”

  Tarika nods. “They wanted a better life for Aisha.”

  This is all kinds of wrong. But I can’t put my finger on why.

  “You’ll send me a bill,” she says. “I want to compensate you for your time and expenses.”

  “Forget it,” I say. I don’t want a single dollar from this woman. She just found out she’s got a granddaughter coming into her life. Shannon doesn’t have a high school diploma and has zero job prospects. They need the money more than me. “Spend it on Aisha.”

  “Greg.”

  “I mean it,” I say, getting up. “I’ll show you out.”

  Out in the hall, we’ve got a couple tables running. Bernie looks up from the ever-present laptop and smiles at Tarika as we walk by the counter. Then his eyes shift to me for explanation, but I ignore him.

  I hold the door for Tarika, and we step onto the storefront walk in the summer heat. It’s humid and hazy and bright. She turns to face me, and there’s a sense of finality to her attitude.

  “Thank you, Greg.” She smiles. “For everything.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You did more than you realize.”

  She leans in and I hug her. PIs are probably not supposed to hug their clients like this, but I don’t care. I’m not really a PI.

  Not really.

  I feel her hands on my back and we hang onto each other far too long for this to just be a friendly embrace. I sense her need and longing and am not surprised to find it matches my own. I want to ask her out, but it seems inappropriate on so many different levels.

  Tarika tilts her head up and kisses me on the cheek.

  Then she’s gone.

  I watch her walk to her car. I wave when she drives off.

  Back in the hall, Bernie is waiting for me.

  “Well?” he asks.

  “Well what?” I say.

  “Whoa!” He holds out a palm, like I’m the rude one. “I was just asking.”

  “Yeah, you were just asking about a private matter,” I say. I’m about to lose my shit on Bernie but am able to put the pin back in the grenade. “Ah, just forget it, Bernie. You want the rest of the day off?”

  His eyes light up. “You serious?”

  “Yeah, get out of here. I’ll cover.”

  “Great! I just got an idea for a new book.”

  “What happened to the last one and the screenplay?”

  He waves it off. “Stupid idea. I should have realized that already.”

  Try years ago.

  “Go get ‘em, tiger,” I say.

  Bernie is gone in sixty seconds. I make sure the customers are relatively happy, then get back to practicing. Fifteen minutes on my cuts, fifteen minutes on position, then break. Fifteen minutes on my cuts, fifteen minutes on position …

  Carl finally returns my call. Checking the phone before I answer, I realize I’ve been practicing for two hours. My back feels fine right now, but tomorrow it’ll pay me back, plus interest.

  “Hey, Carl,” I say.

  “Greg. Dude. I’m sorry to just be getting back to you, but I, uh, had a lady over last night.”

  It’s now almost three o’clock in the afternoon. “She just leave?”

  “What?” His voice grows softer, like he’s talking to somebody else in the background. “Yeah, just give me a minute.”

  “Carl?”

  “Sorry, Greg.” His voice comes back to full volume. “I’m at the dealership right, trying to get something sorted out.”

  “Dealership?” No idea what he’s talking about.

  “Yeah, my car, it’s been nothing but trouble, man. You wouldn’t fucking believe it. I leased it three months ago, it’s brand fucking new, and they’re giving me hell about the … ah, you know how it is. So what’s up?”

  “Friend of a friend reached out to me,” I say, glossing over the fact that it’s actually a friend of my ex-wife. “She bought one of our shirts. She’s pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, deals in vintage clothing, and she thinks it’s a reproduction.”

  “What?” Carl says. “What shirt? What did she say?”

  “I don’t know which shirt,” I lie. “Then I went online last night and saw somebody dropped a comment complaining about the same thing.”

  “You fucking kidding … damn, people are bastards, aren’t they?”

  “These shirts are all vintage, right?” I say.

  “Greg.” His voice changes. “Are you really fucking asking me that?”

  “Two people have claimed otherwise, both customers,” I say.

  “Greg. You think I would do that?”

  Carl did once work in a t-shirt shop. That’s partly the reason why we started this side hustle. He understood the business but needed a bit of start-up capital and internet know-how.

  And so far, he hasn’t outright denied the allegations. He’s only turned it right back around on me.

  “Greg. Your friend of a friend and the person who left the comment are probably one and the same. You said he’s into vintage clothes himself, right? He’s probably trying to torpedo us to improve his own sales. We should fucking sue the asshole. That’s libel, or slander, or both. I don’t know.”

  “It’s two different people,” I say. “One’s a woman, the other is a man. The woman doesn’t deal in t-shirts. She deals in other vintage clothes. She has no horse in this race. And she hasn’t asked for her money back, she just wanted to voice her concern, which she did privately. That’s something I have to take seriously.”

  “Fucking internet trolls,” Carl says, like he hasn’t heard a word I said. He must take the phone away from his ear, because his voice gets soft again. “I’ve been waiting for three hours now, when is it going to be ready?”

  I wait impatiently. I don’t like the vibe I’m getting from Carl. If Lorelei’s friend and the dude commenting on the internet are wrong, I want to know how and why.

  “Carl?”

  He doesn’t answer right away. “Sorry, Greg, but they’re—hey, can I get you back later?”

  “This afternoon,” I say. “I want to solve this right away. It’s our reputation on the line.”

  “It’s the internet,” Carl says. “People just lie, left, right, and sideways, and there’s no repercussions.”

  “I’ll talk to you later this afternoon,” I say.

  “Alright, Greg.”

  We hang up and I don’t feel any better.

  Nineteen

  “It’s been three weeks,” Bernie says.

  “I know, Bernie,” I say.

  “Don’t you think we should call?”

  “You mean, don’t you think I should call?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  I gaze out over the pool hall. Friday night and we are busy. Every table running but one. I haven’t seen this many customers at the same time in a while. I wonder why it isn’t like this three or four times a week. Nearly seventy percent of my business these days comes from tournament nights.

  What am I missing?

  Is the answer as
simple as just running more tournaments? Say, three a week? Or would that lead to tournament fatigue?

  “I’m worried about him,” Bernie says.

  “Me too,” I admit.

  We haven’t seen Roy in three weeks, not since Wally bade us farewell before migrating south for presumably the rest of his life.

  Bernie nods. “I think we should call.”

  “You think I should call,” I point out.

  “Well, yeah. Roy doesn’t even like me,” Bernie says.

  Bernie does drive Roy nuts. But then again, Bernie drives everybody nuts.

  I go, “He likes you, Bern. Trust me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve known Roy my whole life,” I say. “I’ve seen him interact with guys he doesn’t like. Believe me, you’re not one of them.”

  “That sounds like a story,” Bernie says.

  I smile, remembering a couple nights in particular. Back in the day, a lot of money used to change hands here after hours. Business was really good back then. Pop used to keep the place open for the real players. They came from all over the state because they knew the games were honest and Pop wouldn’t put up with any shit. Normally Pop didn’t let me hang around that late at the hall, since I was only a kid, but I remember the first time he permitted it. I was fourteen years old and just dying to be made part of the Adult World.

  “Roy played a sandbagger,” I say, recalling the night with such detail.

  “What’s a sandbagger?” Bernie asks.

  “An asshole who pretends he isn’t any good to get a better handicap.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know how we even up the odds for our nine ball tournament?” I ask. “The better players spot the lesser ones a ball or two?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A sandbagger comes in and plays like shit on purpose a few times. That way he gets a more favorable handicap in the next tourney, or the one after that. Pop was usually good at sniffing these guys out, but this dope played a real long game with him. He waited till the purse was up over a thousand bucks. Anyway, he landed Roy in an early round and Roy figured it out right quick.”

  “How?”

  “The guy missed chip shots but made difficult ones. Whenever he missed, he always left the other guy in a bad spot. Roy saw right through it.”

  “How did your Pop miss it when handicapping?”

  “Back in those days, we’d have dozens of guys, sometimes over a hundred, lined up to play in the tourney. Pop couldn’t watch them all and had to rely on other guys he trusted for feedback on handicapping sometimes. This jerkoff slipped through the cracks. Anyway, Roy had enough of it and took him outside.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Oh yeah.” I nod. I’d been in a few scrapes in the schoolyard and I’d watched Tyson on pay-per-view when I was a wee lad, but I’d never seen a real, honest-to-God, fistfight in person between two adults in their prime. It’s very, very different than seeing two guys clobber each other on TV, or watching two tweens swing wildly and never land a blow on the playground.

  “Roy kicked the guy’s ass then broke his cue. He wanted to break the guy’s thumbs for good measure, but Pop managed to pull him off the dope.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Roy didn’t put up with anything.” I smile at all the other memories too. After the fight, Pop made me swear not to tell Mom what had happened, otherwise she wouldn’t let me near the hall ever again. I kept that secret, of course. “Roy was a little wild when he was younger. He was in a few other brawls I know about. But to young Greg Owen, he was the coolest guy in the hall. If somebody was being an asshole, he called them out on it and was ready to roll at a moment’s notice. He didn’t take shit from anybody, nor did he let anybody get shit from an idiot.”

  “He’s mellowed in his old age,” Bernie says.

  “Guy is almost seventy. It’s about time.”

  “So are you going to call him?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I step outside. Seven-thirty on a Friday night. I wonder what a guy like Roy is up to at seventy years of age. I scroll through my contacts, find a phone number I must have gotten from him at least five years ago, and try it.

  It rings through to voicemail.

  “Hey, it’s Roy. Don’t leave me a message or call again if you’re trying to sell me anything.”

  Nice.

  “Hey, Roy. It’s Greg. Just wondering where you’ve been. We’ve got a tournament next week, I’d love to see you come out here. No entry fee for you. And I need help with my game. That nine-ball tournament is only a couple weeks away. Alright. Hope all is well. Stop in or give me a call.”

  Late summer, the sun is still out. I look down the row at Lee’s old place. The contractors have finally brought around the signage for the new CrossFit gym they’re building inside. Everything changes.

  I check in with Bernie before heading out to dinner.

  ***

  “Wow, you look beautiful,” I say.

  Ashlynn flashes me a bright smile as she takes my hand in the parking lot. “Thanks, Greg. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

  She’s wearing a summer dress that shows off the tan. Her brown hair is down tonight, reaching her shoulders. We walk hand-in-hand toward the restaurant.

  “I hear their calamari is excellent,” I say.

  “Ohhh, that sounds good.”

  It’s been a while since I went out to a nice meal. Dinner for me usually comes out of the microwave. I can’t believe how quickly things have moved in the last month with Ashlynn. We went from first date, to, ahem, first you know what, to second date, to third date, to this point, where we’re both expecting to see each other on the weekends.

  “Did you close the deal?” I ask.

  “Almost.” She squeezes my hand. “It’ll close, no later than Monday.”

  “Remind me to never sit on the other side of the conference table from you,” I say. “Again.”

  She laughs. “You know, Greg, this false modesty is so charming.”

  “It’s not false.” I wink. “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”

  “And what are yours?”

  We reach the restaurant. There are people lined up outside and crowded in the waiting area inside. Thank God I had the foresight for a change to book a reservation.

  “I’ve got a soft spot for blue-eyed brunettes,” I say. “They make my knees weak.”

  She laughs again and squeezes my hand. “And I like older men.”

  Ouch. “I’m not old, honey.”

  “You’re older than me.” She smiles devilishly. “That’s what I meant.”

  “Oh sure.” I let go of her hand and put my arm around her waist as we enter the restaurant. The lighting is soft and moody, the music a touch too loud for my tastes, but there’s a real nice ambience to the place.

  “Owen, party of two,” I say.

  The hostess checks her list. “It’ll just be a few minutes.”

  “Thanks.” I motion to the bar. “Get a drink?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  We weave through the crowd and I find us a spot at the bar. Ashlynn takes the lone empty stool. I have to stand almost on top of her so we can have a conversation. Not that I mind at all, because it’s a helluva view.

  I try to get the bartender’s attention, but Ashlynn is, admittedly, the more attractive and eye-catching of us, so she motions and the lad comes hopping over.

  “The lady will have a pinot noir,” I say. “And I’ll take a stout.”

  The bartender goes to make the drinks.

  “You are so old-fashioned,” she says. “I love it. The lady will have …”

  “I wasn’t sure how that would be received,” I say. “These days, I don’t know what offends.”

  She laughs at this. “It’s okay to order my drink.” She puts on a mock serious face. “But don’t you dare order my dinner!”

  I rub her shoulder, feeling the soft skin. Ashlynn works out regular
ly, but I wouldn’t call her a fitness nut. It’s the best of both worlds, because she makes me want to exercise more but doesn’t bother me about not doing it.

  The bartender comes back with the drinks. I tip him. Ashlynn sips her wine and nods her approval. The stout is dark and has the taste of roasted almonds.

  Perfect.

  “So,” she says, “what happened with Carl?”

  Carl. Carl. Carl.

  “Ah.” I shake my head. “I called that company he used to work for. I wasn’t expecting them to dish on an ex-employee, but he didn’t leave under the best of terms. Apparently, he bought some of their old equipment they were looking to get rid of off one of the warehouse guys he was still friends with. Carl was making the shirts himself and then creating the distressed look himself. None of the shirts were vintage. I showed them to somebody with a little knowledge and she sniffed it out right away.”

  “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry.” She smiles. “It’s good you figured it out early.”

  “Yeah.” I nod. “We were just starting off slow, building up a mailing list, you know. We hadn’t gotten far. Thank God.”

  “Now what?”

  I shrug. As always, I’ve got a million ideas but don’t know which one is any good. I have an acute case of entrepreneurial remorse going, full of regret that I wasted my time with Carl when I could have gotten in with Miles on one of his many things. Or in MBA terms: opportunity cost.

  Funny how Carl, an otherwise trustworthy guy, turned out to be the unreliable one. While Miles, who was just charged with running moonshine again, would have made a better business partner in some respects.

  I mean, there is the whole going-to-prison thing.

  But still. All he was doing was selling moonshine.

  Moonshine.

  The hostess calls my name and leads us to our table in the corner. Back here it’s much quieter and we have a lot of privacy. As we sip our drinks and gaze longingly into each other’s eyes, I realize this is the start of something serious.

  I reach for her hand. “I like you.”

  “Yeah?” She bats her eyelashes playfully. “I like you too.”