Johnny had been hanging out at this pool hall all the local rich kids attended. Of course, no one there actually played pool. He had learned this the hard way. His first time there he picked up a stick, inserted some change in the table, and challenged some random patron to a game. The kid took one look at the skuzzy table and laughed.
The kid had said, “Please, do I look like I eat Ramen Noodles to you?”
And Johnny had lowered his head in shame. “But Ramen’s so delicious…”
Then the kid had placed his well-manicured hand on Johnny’s shoulder, saying, “You still have a lot to learn about being rich.”
“Apparently.” Johnny sighed.
“First thing’s first,” Johnny’s new mentor said, “you don’t play pool. Pool is for fools, you understand? Look, it even rhymes, so I doubt you’ll have an easy time forgetting it.”
“Rhymes are cool.”
“When you visit a place like this it is not to play silly little games. It is to socialize. To socialize with other wealthy kids like yourself. Only they will actually know how to act rich, which you obviously do not know how to do. Because we have lots of money, the bartender will serve us whatever the hell we want. It does not matter that we are only teenagers. We are better than everyone else. I am not trying to be cocky, I am just stating the facts. Remember that. We are better than everyone else. Now say it.”
“We are better than everyone else,” Johnny said, liking the sound of it.
Sure, rewind a couple months ago and he would have probably beaten the shit out of someone talking like this. But that was the past and this was the present. People change; futures are altered. If God wanted to throw him a fortune, why shouldn’t he play ball? It wasn’t like he was hurting anyone or anything. He was just some kid trying out a new lifestyle, warranty included. He promised himself the second things started going sour he’d rewrap and return it to the store, receipt in hand.
So why not have a little fun?
He remembered thinking at the time that his girlfriend, Candy Blossom, would get a kick out of the stories he would be able to tell her now that he was undercover in the deepest depths of Snob Town.
Oh, how’d they laugh!
“Another thing,” said his mentor. “Do not tell anyone else that you think Ramen Noodles are…delicious.” He grimaced. “That kind of shit will get you blacklisted. Seriously. You are lucky I am such a good friend.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“We sit together in Apple 101. You are the kid whose mother won the lottery, correct?”
He nodded. “That’s me.”
“Yes, we know more about you than you do. It is all good. This kind of lifestyle takes some getting used to. Just remember…no more noodles, okay?”
“Okay.”
The mentor grinned and slapped a boastful hand on Johnny’s back. “Attaboy! Now, let us go socialize.”
Johnny paused, a little embarrassed. “Uh, how do we do that?”
The kid gave him a look, seeing if his leg was being pulled or not. “What do you mean, how? We are going to go have a lot of strawberry daiquiris and discuss bitcoins, FOX News, and the Tea Party.”
“Who?”
He laughed. “Now I know you are messing with me. Come on, let us do this thing!”
So he led Johnny away from the wretched pool tables and into the bar area. Some very fruity tasting drinks were served with fancy umbrellas. Johnny didn’t particularly care for these, but after a few quick hits of Jericho in the bathroom everything tasted like the best thing in the world. Even the air was top-notch that night.
Despite the pool hall lacking a dance area, he clearly remembered dancing with a whole lot of people. It was very magical. He also remembered licking the counter, so there was that.
Then later on, around twenty minutes until closing, Johnny was sitting at the end of the bar with some kind of pink drink in his hands when this girl he had never seen before sat down next to him. He noticed her out of his peripheral vision but chose not to acknowledge her presence. Given the strange hallucinations he had already experienced (a cocktail infested by a million flies, for example), he wasn’t so sure she was even there.
Then he heard her voice, and knew she was no more a hallucination than he was.
“So, you gonna buy me a drink or what?”
He nodded and bought her a drink. He didn’t know what she ordered, or if she ordered anything at all. It didn’t really matter, he supposed.
“So, you’re the lottery boy,” the girl said. It was then that he looked up, although the next morning he could not exactly recall what she looked like. He wanted to say her hair was red, but it could just as well have been blonde.
“Who told you that?” he asked.
“No one told me, silly,” the girl giggled. “Practically everyone knows. It’s common knowledge.”
“That’s what my mentor was telling me earlier.”
“Your mentor?”
“Yeah, he told me to stop eating Ramen Noodles,” Johnny said, adding a little slur in his words. By then he was eighty percent booze and fifty percent Jericho. At that point, numbers no longer made sense and he was perfectly fine with that. Who needed accurate statistics when the ceiling was swimming?
He pointed behind them at a juke box/iPod machine where his new mentor was chilling. “That’s him. He is very wise.”
His mentor waved at them.
The girl looked over and started giggling. “Where? There’s no one there.”
“Right…there.” He realized he had been gesturing to a trash can. “Oh. Never mind.”
“All night you’ve just been sitting here talking to your drink. I think at one point you told it to quit buzzing. You’re pretty toasted, aren’t you?”
“Who the hell are you to judge me, huh?” Johnny snapped, and threw his glass against the wall. He watched as, instead of shattering, the glass absorbed itself into the wall as if it was a bubble and disappeared completely. He dropped his head and discovered the glass to have already returned in his hands, still full of whatever the hell kind of alcoholic fruit he was drinking. “Whoa.”
“What?” the girl asked.
“What do you want with me, woman?”
He felt her long fingernails scratching against the back of his neck. “Your family really win that much in the lotto?”
“I guess.”
She smiled and leaned forward, whispering in his ear, “Come with me.”
She took him by the hand and led him into a limo waiting out front. It took off and seemed to drive forever, all the while leaving Johnny and this new mysterious girl in the back by themselves. A long tinted window separated them from the driver.
“Tell me, lottery boy. You gotta girlfriend?”
Johnny nodded regretfully. “Sorry.”
“How much is she worth?”
“Uh, well,” Johnny began, and cracked up. “She lives in Loathing, you see…”
The girl smiled. “Ah, a rag gal.”
“I suppose.”
“Pretty far away, don’t you think?”
Johnny shrugged. “Not that far, maybe twenty minutes.”
“I don’t know.” The girl scooted closer against him. Her legs were folded under her ass, sitting sideways with one arm slung around his neck. “If I lived twenty minutes from my boyfriend—that is, if I had one, which I certainly do not, but that can easily be changed, if I met the right man, of course—and if I suddenly found myself in an, uh, how do I say this? a…feverish mood, and my guy lived so far away, and, say, I was a little tipsy, I dunno…seems to me I might end up doing something stupid. God knows I have before. Who doesn’t, right? Hey, does your girl drink?”
Johnny gulped. “Um, a little, yeah. Why?”
The girl threw her hand in the air, as if reaching for an answer that wasn’t there and never would be. “I dunno, was just wondering. To be honest with you, I don’t rightly believe a girl like that deserves such a masculine man of luxury like your
self. I mean, just look at those abs!” She gently rubbed her hand against his abdomen and cooed in awe. “Oh God, a man like yourself, you deserve to be on a magazine. Have you ever been on a magazine? Who am I kidding, of course you have, being all rich and famous like you are. That must be pretty cool, having all that money. I bet you like to buy stuff, huh? You buy your girlfriend lots of jewelry, don’t you? I don’t know why when she’s probably off twenty miles away doing God knows what. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment. Not at all. I mean, God, just look at that bulge. I bet you’re humongous.”
Johnny jumped back when she grabbed his cock, his voice cracking as he shouted, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Her cheeks flushed red. “I’m sorry. It’s just…I dunno, looks so…you know? I wanted to feel it, all right? I felt it get hard, too. You’re really gonna be faithful to some rag gal who’s off doing whoever she wants? Some poor white trash? Really? You’re Johnny Desperation! You are a king. You could do so much better. You could do me. I would take care of you, ya know. I would take care of that.” She reached over and gave his cock another tug. This time Johnny stayed put, watching her with wonder as she unzipped his tightening jeans.
“I don’t know about this,” he said, and gasped as she wrapped her fingers around his shaft. He dug his nails in the limo’s leather, telling himself this was wrong, this wasn’t who he was. He liked Candy Blossom.
But did he really?
He wondered if maybe this strange girl had a point. What had she actually ever done for him? He couldn’t think of a single thing.
“Stop…” He tried his best to keep a coherent train of thought, but failed miserably. “I am with…No, Candy…Oh, God…”
“Oh, don’t kid yourself,” the girl said. “You’re one of us now, lottery boy. And I am your girl…”
Then she leaned down with an open mouth and Johnny forgot everything else.
Chapter Sixteen
Father and Daughter Bonding
“I think they’re asleep,” Benny whispered.
“What?” Maddox said. He sat on the sofa, knees shaking.
His brother leaned forward in the recliner. “I haven’t heard anything in a while. I think maybe they finally fell asleep.”
“Probably.” Maddox didn’t showing the slightest hint of relaxing. A breath exhaled too loudly could wake the beast, he reckoned, and this was definitely something he did not want to ever do. Especially not after hearing all those screams from the bedroom.
As if reading his thoughts, Benny asked, “You think he’s still alive?”
“Of course he is. Don’t be stupid,” he said, although he wasn’t too sure of himself.
“What if she killed him, Mads? What if she kills all of us? She scares me, really scares me. She seemed okay at first, I’ll admit that. Even a little sexy. But…you don’t know the things she did to me last night. I’m still in pain, man, I’m still hurting. That whip practically destroyed me. I feel like I was starring in Roots, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well,” Maddox began, but was cut off when the phone started ringing. His eyes widened at the possibility of the lot lizard awakening, but Benny was leaping toward the coffee table and answering it before any real damage could be done.
He handed it to Maddox and said, softly, “It’s for you.”
“Me?” Maddox took the phone. “Hello?”
“Yes, is this Maddox Kane?”
“Who is this?” He didn’t recognize the voice. It was male, and a little too business sounding for his taste.
“This is your parole officer, Mr. Kane. My name is Lionel Turner. Pleased to meet you.”
Shit. He had completely forgotten the prison assigned him a PO. With all this hooker business, it had been a little hard to remember.
“What do you want? Now is not a good time.”
“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Kane?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Actually, I do. It’s kind of my job to want to know, as you can understand.”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes, please.”
Maddox sighed. “A lot lizard just raped my brother’s roommate. She isn’t going to leave until we pay her the money we owe, which we don’t have. Care to help out?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Now what do you want?”
“Um, well,” the PO stammered, “I called to make sure the residence and phone number you listed were correct. I also wanted to remind you that you will begin working at your new job come first thing Monday morning, eight o’clock sharp. You do remember where you are to go, yes?”
“Not at all.” The beat of his heart pounded harder and harder against the interior of his chest, making it feel like any second the organ would burst through his breastbone and go tumbling out on the carpet next to his feet. Bump, bump, it would go, bump, bump. And then finally die.
“You’ll be reporting at the Booth Bacon packing factory north of Megaton. You know where it is? It’s really hard to miss.”
“Yeah,” Maddox said, “I don’t think I’m going to do that,” and hung up.
“Who was that?” Benny asked, cautious but intrigued.
“Bacon Nazis.” Maddox found his boots and pulled them on.
“What? Where are you going?”
He leaned down. “I need to make a phone call.”
“But you just got off the phone!”
“Yeah, and I need to get back on.”
He left his brother sitting there in the recliner and slowly creaked the front door open, slipping through the crack. Standing out on the porch, chilly winds slapping against his cheeks, he dug into his jean pocket for the page he had torn from the phone book the day before. He unfolded it and dialed the circled number. It rung three times before a girl’s weak voice said,, “Hello?”
Maddox smiled. He couldn’t help it. “Hello, sweetheart.”
* * * * *
Maddox wasn’t sure why, of all places, he brought Addison to this truck stop, maybe because it was really about the only place he knew, anymore. Either way, it appeared less dangerous during the day than it had at night.
At first, neither of them said a word. Addison just sat there with her head slumped, black hair dangling in front of her face, trying to hide the injuries Maddox noticed right away. He didn’t know how to ask his daughter about the black eye, the swollen nose, without risking upsetting her. He didn’t want to do that, so he decided to let this one play out on its own. Who knew, maybe the girl would bring the subject up herself.
The awkward silence they were enduring was interrupted when a waitress approached them asking what they wanted to drink. Maddox opened his mouth to order his usual, but was cut off by the melodious whisper of an angel:
“Coffee.”
“All righty.” The waitress turned his way. “And you?”
“The same.”
“Very well.” The waitress left for a short period to fetch a pot. She returned moments later and filled their mugs. “And will either of you be ordering food today?”
“No, thank you,” Addison said, and Maddox let out a breath, relieved. He barely had enough money for coffee—anything else and they would have been slipping out the back door.
Maddox watched as his daughter added sugar and cream to her cup. He furiously tried to come up with something to say.
“So, how’s school?”
“School’s okay.”
“Good grades, I trust?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he nodded, “that’s good.” He sat there watching her drink her coffee, thinking how much he wanted to just ask if it was that asshole of a stepfather that had bruised her face up like that. Of course it was him. Who else could it have been? Maddox made a mental note to kill this guy before everything was set and done.
“I’m sorry I didn’t remember you at first,” she suddenly choked out. It was so unexpected that it took Maddox a second to realize what was happen
ing. He saw tears rolling down her cheeks, listening to her apologize for his own stupid mistakes.
He reached over and gently laid his hand on top of hers on the cold Formica. “Hey, don’t be crying for my wrongdoing. There’s no reason to feel bad, Addy. It’s my own fault you didn’t remember me—mine. So don’t you shed a single tear, okay?”
“Okay,” she whimpered back, wiping her eyes with the back of her free hand.
“I want you to know another thing, too.” Maddox squeezed her hand. “I’m a changed man. Yeah, I’ve made some mistakes, I admit that. But inside, sitting on my bunk all day and night, it gave me a long, long time to think. Mostly about you, Addy, and how badly I screwed things up. I want to make things better for us, sweetheart. I want to be the father you never had a chance to have. Can I do that for you?”
Addison wiped her face dry with her bare arm, nearing pulling off the wristbands she wore in the process, and smiled. “I would like that very much, Daddy.”
His heart leaped a mile as the word left her lips.
He squeezed her hand a little more and said, “I’m glad, sweetheart. I’m very glad.”
“I don’t wanna live with him no more, Daddy,” she sobbed quietly. “Neither of them.”
“He did that to you, didn’t he? To your face?” He couldn’t help it. He needed to know.
Addison turned away, looking at anything but the man sitting across from her. “Yes.”
Yeah, Maddox was thinking, next time we meet, you’re a dead man.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Addison said. “I just want out of that house. I want to live with you. Can I?”
“Yes. Of course you can live with me. It might take a little bit of time, since I don’t have full custody, but…”
“How long will it take?”
“Well, I doubt your mother is just going to hand you over, so I’ll have to get a lawyer.”
“When?” Her tears were now replaced by a gleam of excitement.
“I don’t know,” Maddox said, “but even then, I’m not so sure it would work. I was in prison, Addy. Courts tend to look down on that.”
Addison squeezed his hand in return. “What are we going to do, Daddy? What are we going to do?”
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