Chapter 9
Norm snored away on the recliner. Wheezed. Tiff told Sipe there was nothing to worry about. Post-massage appointment he slept the sleep of the dead. Not even Pluto barking at sound of three fresh entries into the house had disrupted Norm.
Crowded into Tiffany’s bedroom she showed Sipe just what a Beeper was as prelude to explaining her need for his services.
Hope Logan, heiress to the presumptive Beepers fortune, had gone radio silent. Ordinarily, a text, even a phone call would come Tiffany’s way and still the mounting worry. A few weeks ago all communication had ceased.
Three of the little figurines rested on Tiffany’s desk. All ugly faced. A fisherman, a cop, and then some little kid, all looking like they’d been quashed down, their faces not moon-shaped like they were afflicted with Down’s Syndrome, more a genetic thing, in-breeding, and if not for long hair and a preponderance of bosom, female Beepers indistinguishable from the male.
Hope’s parents, Rita and Owen, could no longer stand the sight of one another, not even the sound of the other’s voice. Things had been fine when they simply ran the café and gift shop next to the gas station in Orley, smaller than Little Creek if you could believe it. Hope the only kid that lived in Orley so she rode the bus to Little Creek, travelling with the kids that lived on farms or in the countryside houses.
Disputed, the cancer on the marriage, the tear in Hope’s universe, trying to pinpoint the true source of all things Beeper. Some Canadian investor had thrown money at the Logans, convinced Beepers were a brand waiting to burst upon consumers. They leapt over having a store on Etsy to selling direct from Beepers.com. The Canadian filling the Logan’s heads with fanciful thought of a cartoon show, a movie even. He’d contacts throughout his native land, and internationally, Sweden and Germany.
Throughout the marriage, Owen screwed around. Rita screwed around. They were artists. They understood appetites. The nourishing of the artistic temperament. It was never really an issue, but tens of thousands dollars hadn’t been laying around waiting for claim. Now tens could turn to hundreds. Rita drew. So did Owen. Owen worked clay. So did Rita. If they split, if they dissolved the marriage, they could crack everything down the center 50/50 and sidestep nastiness. Hope said neither of her parents could even recall who’d crossed the line first, making unfeasible the notion that nastiness should be avoided. Rita wanted it all. Owen wanted it all. Neither seemed to care that all their focus blinded them to their only child’s free fall. Hope’s transformation from troubled to slut to prostitute just one more issue to bring up in the lawsuits, another failing on part of the other party.
Last time anyone took account, Rita looked in the lead for claiming title to progenitor of the would-be-fortune. Owen misplaced notebooks, threw them out. Rita saved everything including an aged, dated customer receipt, the backside featuring the first scrawled images of what any reasonable person would admit looked a Beeper, fresh from Rita’s creative primordial stew.
Owen claimed Rita must’ve burned his sketchbooks. Potentially buried them out in the woods or had one of her siblings – all male, all lowlife - hustle them away, never to be seen again. An auxiliary ran the gift shop for the Logan’s, filled on-line orders. The café closed. No time for the spotty coffee and breakfast trade, not anymore. While Owen kept to a sublet apartment in Pendleton, Rita ranged closer to the continuing concern, bouncing back and forth from a friend’s alpaca ranch and the Orley home.
Not surprisingly, given her parents’ war, Hope missed a lot of school. On days Norm worked Pleshette’s, she’d crash out on Tiffany’s bed. Not a complete idiot, Norm would ask Tiff if Hope was coming over, and if she was, could she at least make sure to turn the stove burners all the way off after heating up her oatmeal. Bored, Hope might wander town, stop in at Pleshette’s, buy some strawberry-banana Nestle Quik, a bag of sour cream and onion chips. Norm didn’t mind the company, unless Hope had been drinking. A minor soused and so obviously not wearing a bra or underpants something he didn’t need to contend with.
More often than not she’d bale on the Pleshette’s and end up staying with other people. Hope doing her best to keep Tiffany innocent, also to keep Tiff from bothering people running the other way stations Hope had turned dependent upon.
All kinds of stories, legend, fable, whipped up about Hope and her insatiable appetites.
Sipe had the cop Beeper in hand while Tiff told him about Henry’s supposed encounter with Hope, out at the railcars. Henry mowing the Dobbs’ yard, Byron practicing moves like Lebron on his own personal half-court when a drunk or drugged up Hope wandered through the yard, and pulled Byron, all of 11, and Henry into her vortex.
The railcars were full of debris. Toilets, couches, TVs, fridge doors, shattered plates, rusted silverware, the unofficial garbage dump. There were also scattered about somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 used condoms, dehydrated, stemless dandelions littering the earth and then the decrepit railcar floorboards. Legend had it there wasn’t a single surface inside any of the railcars that hadn’t soaked into it piss from some source, two- or four-legged.
Byron got a blowjob or a handy or just stood in awe as Hope popped one elegant titty after another out from the halter top and nested his erection between the deep cleavage. Unfortunately for Henry, the second Byron popped off, nausea overcame Hope. Ironically, some corn dog from the Auntie’s snack rack disagreeing with her guts right as the son of Auntie’s owners was experiencing his first public ejaculation.
Henry still modeled the stricken look perfected in his driveway while Tiffany lied to Gwen. The boy felt Sipe looking at him. He looked at Sipe, then back to the void, the safe space immediately in front of him. Safe enough he dared to speak up, interrupt Tiffany, tell them both, “That’s not what happened. She didn’t. Byron didn’t. I mean, she was drunk or something, I don’t know, but nothing…Nothing happened. Nothing sex...Sexy. I mean she just kind of laid down and talked about how sick she felt. How stupid her parents were. How stupid this town is. She fell asleep and Byron and I just kind of left her there. Let her rest.”
“Henry, I know,” said Tiffany. “I’m just trying to tell him how everyone just makes things up about her at this point.”
Henry shrugged. “Whatever.”
Sipe’s phone wasn’t out on top of Tiffany’s dresser. She’d made that up. Or moved it. Hidden somewhere. Maybe it was in with all the comic books. Or Uncle Norm had it. The Sutton guy had it, and would look at it if Tiffany didn’t check in by a certain time. Something a little too sweet about Tiffany, the hair the color of baby chick feathers, it diluted the possibility she’d taken those dirty photos.
“She’s supposed to be out at the whorehouse,” said Tiffany. “We have a whorehouse. Courtesy of the wind towers we have a whorehouse, but now that all the wind towers are built and all, it’s probably going to shutdown. Some guys have gotten used to it, locals I mean, but not enough, I would think, to keep it going.
“I don’t know if Hope is actually working there or not. It’s out at Butcher’s Camp. She was out there, but she might’ve just been crashing. Then like screwing with me because she was bored. Making me think she’s a hooker or whatever you call them. I’ve never been inside it. I know where it is. Butcher’s Camp Massage. But I’ve never gone inside. I don’t want to go inside unless Hope actually is in there in which case I’d probably have to drag her out. She’s lazy and if she isn’t she’s scared and if she isn’t scared she’s angry and just wants to self-immolate or something. She wants to burn up and thinks she can set the whole world on fire from just her embers. She’s selfish like that. It’s really, really frustrating.”
“She’s a kid?” asked Sipe.
“Yeah. My age,” said Tiffany. “A little younger. Barely.”
“Why not call the cops?”
She laughed. Said, “Oh that,” and told him a
bout the text Hope had sent her, ‘the law cum’, that old gag.
“Why do you think I can do anything for her?”
“I don’t know,” said Tiffany. “I just do. I mean…You’ve got your gun. The way you look. That picture of you with the little girl. Look. I’ve been out there. Butcher’s Camp? I knocked on the door, and they wouldn’t let me in. Told me no Hope Logan was there, had ever been there.
“I’ve even asked Bug to help. You don’t know Bug. You know where you woke up at, where we found you today? That’s Bug’s property. Kind of. No one’s really sure. Might as well be Bug’s, I mean since he’s out there more or less everyday. He’s probably out there right now. Was he?” She looked at Henry.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s eccentric or nuts or whatever. But it doesn’t matter. At this point, I’ll take whatever I can get. If I could do it-“ she swacked her collarbone, “-do what Aquaman does, and command the seven seas, I’d have whales or whatever look for her, free her, bring her back to me. But what I’ve got are options like Bug. And I asked him. Interrupted his search for whatever it is he looks for out at the railcars, you know, coins or gold or whatever, but I interrupted him and he looked at me like I was nuts. But that’s…Her parents don’t care. Boys at our school who’ve been with her don’t care. Nobody cares. But. You know. She’s my friend. I don’t know if she knows she has any friends anymore.”
Sipe wasn’t worried about the man with the oxygen tank. The uncle. Unless there was a gun for home protection stashed some convenient place. One punch to Henry’s nuts would knock him out of contention. Then it was just a matter of how close to breaking Tiffany’s arm he had to get before she gave up his gun and his wallet and keys to the decrepit truck out front. The dog would bark, but it posed as much immediate threat as a throw pillow. Sipe knew guys that wouldn’t think twice about shooting a dog or having some fun with a female even one this young even after she’d done what they’d asked, given something up. There was always more to give up.
The Beeper cop had a face like something that’d been perched on a barstool for all eternity, like after being denied entry at the golden gates it’d fared at least well enough to stumble across the bar at the end of time, pickle its guts, pick a self-replenishing amount of peanuts from a bowl. Sipe could imagine perching on a stool in that bar, taking account, knowing what was already known to the scorekeepers, that there weren’t enough potential good deeds out there to amount to one bright pinprick against Sipe’s accumulated inner dark.
“You like them?” asked Tiffany. “Beepers?”
“Ugly.” Sipe set the doll down beside its brethren. He turned it so it faced out at the same angle as the fisherman and the little kid.
“What does your friend look like? Hope.”
“Oh. Oh, right. Right, right, right, right.”
Tiffany looked around the room. She laughed. She pointed at Sipe, waggled the finger like she got it, he’d tested her to see if she’d volunteer where that phone might be hidden. She walked over to the bookshelf. The shelves not tall enough for all the books. She slid a school yearbook out. It’d been tipped on its side, slid on the shelf. Tiffany flipped through the slender book, found her target, handed the book over to Sipe.
The entire Sophomore class: 9 kids. Five boys, four girls.
“She doesn’t really look like that right now,” said Tiffany. “She dyed her hair. It’s black and blue or purple and blue. I forget. And she wears a lot more makeup. She says the yearbook pic is her ‘pre-slut’ look.” Tiffany sighed. “She said I ought to try that look. ‘Tiffany Tits’. That’s what she’d call me if I lathered it all on. Hope. She…She really doesn’t filter things before she says them.”
“This the only picture?”
“I think. Wait. Give it back. Let me see.”
Tongue poking out the side of her mouth, she discovered a couple more random shots. Hope using peers as obstacles, doing her best to hide.
“All right.” Sipe handed the yearbook back.
“All right?”
“You want to go, we go.”
“Really?”
It was the first hug he’d received in years. He hardly noticed the school yearbook smacking him in the side when she hugged him. Pluto hopped up and down on the bed, barking.
The uncle glared from half-lidded eyes, but didn’t move from the recliner as they trooped out, at the door Tiff projecting some bullshit about going swimming. Halfway to the truck, Tiffany swore and spun and ran back inside. When she came back out, Pluto kept hopping, trying to nail the invisible yo-yo egging him on at about her hip height.
Tiffany got behind the truck steering wheel, shifting into drive even before Sipe was seat belted. They left Henry and Pluto in the yard, forlorn, the dog snuffling earth, and the kid giving Sipe a cold unforgiving look like he suspected at least half an erection had blossomed in the old man’s pants at having girl flesh, especially those big boobs, mashed up against him.
The Lipless Gods Page 10
