by David Berens
He didn’t start to worry again until the twilight began to settle over the beach. He’d filled himself up on the food and popped a couple Coronas waiting for her to return. But now that it was getting dark, he started to entertain the very real possibility that she’d changed her mind about staying here and had left. That didn’t bother him so much as the fact that she’d left without her car. Maybe she’d be back for it tomorrow. As he opened his fourth beer and walked out onto the deck, he thought he could hear a scream. He jogged back into the house and ran from room to room, not worrying about being quiet this time.
“Prosperity?” he yelled. “You here? Where ya at?”
He skidded to a stop in the middle of the upstairs hallway and strained to listen. Nothing. Nothing but the muffled sound of crashing waves and the occasional seagull.
“Dang imagination playin’ tricks on me,” he said to the empty hall.
Convinced that she wasn’t in the house after all, Troy made his way back out to watch the moon rise, and fell asleep in a wooden deck chair without a cushion.
Prosperity screamed again against the duct tape covering her mouth. It was muffled enough that she could barely hear herself. But against the odds, she had heard the distant, ever-so-faint sound of the front door opening and closing and then a few minutes later the back door. Troy was here. She yelled until she was hoarse and began to cough and hack. It was no use. Even if she didn’t have the tape covering her mouth, the man who had kidnapped her told her the room was soundproof. Somehow the sounds of the doors had vibrated into the cellar, but her voice would never make it past the cold, concrete walls. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks in the dark.
When he’d left, her kidnapper had turned the light off and now that the sun had gone down, it was pitch black in the hidden room. She had never been afraid of the dark before, but this might change her mind.
Troy woke to the feel of raindrops stinging his face and the sound of a rough surf crashing against the shore. He didn’t remember the forecast mentioning a storm, but then again, he didn’t remember watching the news, either. He padded barefoot into the dark house and clicked on a few lights.
“Prosperity?” His voice echoed into the dark halls.
He tilted his head up at an angle and listened. Nothing but the sound of the rain picking up and spattering against the massive windows on the back of the house. A stray lightning bolt arced down from menacing clouds out over the water. Troy walked into the kitchen to discover that he’d already eaten the last of the breakfast food and more importantly, he’d drunk the last beer.
He took out his phone to check the time and his stomach growled. He didn’t have her number, didn’t know who to call to get it, and wasn’t even sure if there was any reason for concern yet. And it was half past suppertime and there was nothing to eat in the fridge. He grabbed the car keys and headed to the door with a new plan: get some grub and some beer and then run by the police station. He figured maybe he’d ask them what their thoughts were on the subject. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d frame that conversation, but he thought he’d work it out on the way. One thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to put himself in the precarious “person-of-interest” spotlight just yet ... if there was anything foul going on.
As he closed the front door and chirped the lock on the bug, he could’ve sworn he heard a distant voice screaming. But he knew that was just his imagination again. There wasn’t anyone in the house. He knew that for sure.
He pulled the car out of the drive and headed into town, leaving the phantom sounds of distress behind.
7
Black Dog Tavern
“C’mon, woman. Git this thang into gear and let’s haul ass.” The woman with the platinum hair hanging in ringlets over her deeply tanned face reached out and slapped the nearly identical looking woman on the back of her head.
“Quit yer fussin’,” the second woman grunted. “This thang don’t hardly git outta second gear no more.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Cause you done let the oil run out and the engine’s almost burnt up.”
The first woman, who was sitting in the passenger’s seat of the pale blue 1971 Ford Maverick, scowled at the woman driving.
“Well, they oughta have a light or a buzzer or somethin’ that goes off when it needs oil.”
The woman driving pointed in the general direction of the speedometer. “You mean like that one?”
“You just shut up, Ellie Mae.” She harrumphed and crossed her arms.
“I’m just sayin’ it ain’t gonna go no faster, Daisy Mae.”
“Fine then, just get us there fast as you can.”
As soon as the words were out of her twin sister’s mouth, Ellie Mae Gallop slammed on the brakes and squealed to a stop at a green traffic light.
“Are you frickin’ kiddin’ me?” Daisy Mae Gallop had barely gotten her arms untangled enough to stop herself from flying forward into the dashboard. “What in the hell was that for?”
“You don’t tell me what to do. I done took it long enough. I ain’t takin’ it no—”
She was interrupted by the car behind them slamming into their back bumper. This time, Daisy Mae was caught in even more surprise and her forehead jerked forward and thunked onto the glove box. It flew open and promptly spilled out a generous portion of marijuana.
“Holy dayum hell, Ellie Mae.” Daisy Mae put her hand on her left eyebrow and found that it had split open slightly and blood was trickling out. “How in the world you expect me to make any money tonight with this knot on my head?”
“I didn’t do nothin’!” Ellie Mae yelled and held her hands out wide. “It was the jackass behind us. And besides that, you don’t make no money anyhow. I’m the one payin’ all the bills.”
Daisy Mae opened her mouth to answer, but at that exact moment, a frantic middle-aged man tapped on the driver’s side window. He held his hands to the sides of his eyes and peered inside.
“Are you okay?” His voice was muffled through the glass.
Ellie Mae cranked the window down four inches. It had never opened any farther than that.
“Whadda you want, you dumbass?” she asked through the narrow opening.
“Let me at him,” Daisy Mae said, nearly climbing across Ellie Mae’s lap. “Hey, you sumbitch. Look what you done to me.”
The man put the fingers of his hands on his bottom lip. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I ... look, I didn’t know you were going to slam on your brakes. I mean, the light was green.”
“Mister,” Ellie Mae reached through the window and grabbed the man by his wrist. “You have done put an end to my sister’s illustrious dancin’ career. How the hell’s she s’posed to feed her boy now?”
His look of shock deepened and he blinked his eyes much faster than Ellie Mae thought was humanly possible. “Oh, Jesus. Is it her neck? Her back?”
She had just opened her mouth to finish the line from the Khia song she had danced to more times than she could remember. But before she could belt out the refrain, Daisy Mae cried out, “It’s my neck and my back! And I can’t feel my legs.”
“What? Oh, God. Oh, God. We’ve got to get an ambulance out here.” The man pulled his cell phone out and started to dial.
“Ain’t nobody got time for that,” Daisy Mae moaned. “No, we gotta get to the hospital. But you better follow us. Yer gonna need to talk to the police and my lawyer once we get there.”
The man’s expression went from flushed to pale to green.
“I just hope she ain’t paralyzed for your sake, Mister,” Ellie Mae said.
The man burped once and then vomited all over the window that Ellie Mae was now suddenly thankful did not roll all the way down.
“What the hell is wrong with you, dude?” she demanded.
“I can’t do this,” he said wiping his mouth. “I have a family, a wife, two kids, a dog. Oh, God, my house. I’ll lose the house and all of my retirement.”
“Now just hol
d on a sec.” Daisy Mae rubbed the back of her neck furiously. “Maybe we can work something out, off the books.”
A glimmer of hope twinkled in the man’s eyes. “Off the books? Yes. I like that. Off the books. What does that mean?”
“How much money’s in yer wallet?” Ellie Mae asked him.
“Money? In my wallet?”
“Ooooh, the pain,” groaned Daisy Mae.
“Oh, I uh,” he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.
He opened it and several receipts fluttered out and fell to the ground. He bent down to pick them up and shoved them in crumpled balls back into his wallet. Behind them, Ellie Mae could see several one-hundred dollar bills peeking out. She reached her leg across the bench seat and kicked Daisy Mae in the leg.
“Ow, shit,” she cried. “What’d you do that—”
“Mister, you better hurry,” Ellie Mae blurted out over her sister. “I think she’s gettin’ worse. Give us what ya got and we’ll make do with it down at the hospital.”
He reached in and pulled out the bills and slid them through the window. Ellie Mae counted them out. Four hundred dollars. Dayum, she thought. That’s more than Daisy and I can make together on a good Friday night.
“Ain’t much,” she said tucking the bills away in her bra, “but I guess it’ll have to do. Now go on. Git outta here.”
The man nodded so that his hair flapped up and down over his eyebrows. He turned and ran back to his car, jumped inside, and screeched his tires as he jerked his car into reverse, pulled around their rusted Ford, and took off.
“Nice work, sis,” Ellie Mae said with a sly grin. “Whaddya say we make a pit stop at the Black Dog before work? We got some spendin’ money now.”
“Hot damn,” Daisy Mae said, dropping her hands from her neck. “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day.”
Ellie Mae put the car into gear and pushed the gas pedal. It jerked once and backfired as they started rolling. When she tried to pull it into second gear, it refused to go.
“Well, shit,” she looked at her sister. “We’re losing gears fast. We gotta work out some new wheels.”
As she said it, a bright red convertible Mazda Miata whooshed by them. Two younger blonde girls sat inside, hair whipping around in the wind. As they passed the blue Ford bucket of bolts, the driver of the red sports car raised two middle fingers to them. The passenger was crouching in her seat in a half-standing position. Before Daisy Mae could ask what the girl was doing, she jerked her pants down and mooned them.
“Screw you,” Daisy Mae yelled out the crack in the driver’s side window.
The smell of vomit wafted in and she cranked the window up as fast as she could.
“You remember when that was us?” Ellie Mae asked with a sigh.
“Sis, that wasn’t ever us.”
“Shut up and take me to the bar,” Ellie Mae said. “I need a drink.”
“Now that’s us.”
Troy Bodean knew the Black Dog Tavern was his kind of place as soon as he saw it. A blue-gray weathered sign simply declared the place, The Tavern. Above it on the beam holding the sign, stood an iron black dog. Beyond that, he could see the spindly spires of dozens of ridiculously expensive sailboats pointing into the sky. A chalkboard sign out front spelled out a few drink specials in multi-colored chalk. 2 for 1 Corona Lights, the first line said. Troy smiled, clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly, and then pulled open the heavy door.
The jangly sound of a nearly in-tune guitar pierced the dinnertime din. Waitresses scurried back and forth from the bar to scattered tables. They held baskets of sizzling seafood and fries and balanced full-to-the-rim pints of beer on round black trays. For the first time since he’d been on Martha’s Vineyard, Troy relaxed.
“Sit wherever you like, cowboy,” a waitress called to him as she bustled past.
Troy wasn’t sure why she’d called him that until he got a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He scooted a stool out and slid up on it. He pushed his hat back on his head and raised two fingers to the bartender.
“What’ll it be?”
The man could have easily been a body double for Archie Bunker, and his New York accent was the same as well.
“Two Corona Lights,” Troy said. “Like the two-for-one special.”
“You got it, Mista.” The bartender reached into the cooler behind the bar and sat a beer on a cardboard coaster in front of Troy. “You want I should keep the other one cold for ya?”
“That’d be real nice.”
The old man pulled a lime wedge from a tray and started to push it into the neck of the beer. Troy held up a hand to stop him.
“You got any orange slices?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I’ll have two of those.”
“They ain’t on special,” the old man said with a frown.
“Oh, well, in that case, just give me one.”
For a second, Troy didn’t think the man was even going to give him one orange slice, but then his expression melted into a smile and he bellowed out a laugh.
“I’m just kiddin’ with ya, fella,” he said, sliding a cup with several pieces in front of Troy. “You take all ya want.”
“Much obliged, mister,” Troy said as he tipped his cap to the bartender. “Say, you don’t know a girl named Prosperity do you?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say I do. Cute name though.”
“Cute girl,” Troy said and went back to sipping his beer.
“Aight, here’s what we’ll do,” Daisy Mae whispered as she exited the car. “You get us the closest table to the door. I’ll get the drinks.”
“I want a fuzzy nipple,” Ellie Mae chimed in.
“Ain’t no such drink,” Daisy Mae hissed. “It’s either a buttery nipple or a fuzzy navel.”
Ellie Mae looked confused but refused to accept defeat. “Well, I want ’em both, poured into one glass.”
“Are you serio—okay, never mind that.” Daisy Mae pointed at the front door of the Black Dog Tavern. “I can see a table right there ain’t got nobody sittin’ at it. Grab it and I’ll get yer damn drink.”
“Fuzzy nipple,” Ellie Mae said proudly.
With exasperation, Daisy Mae agreed. “Got it. Fuzzy nipple. Anyhow, what we’ll do is enjoy our cocktails, and when the place gets more crowded, we’ll find us a table of revelers to join. We’ll order from our table, but sit at theirs.”
“Ooh, I like revelers.”
“Shut up and listen. When we’ve had our fill, we’ll walk out with the people we meet at the new table.”
“Oh, are they gonna give us a ride?”
Daisy Mae took a long slow breath. “Are you really that stupid? I mean, do you not get what I’m sayin’?”
Ellie Mae’s eyes got wider and she looked down slightly. A puppy dog being scolded. “You take care of the finer details, okay? I’ll follow your lead. I’m just here for the drinks.”
“A fuzzy nipple.”
“Bingo,” she beamed.
The sisters walked into the bar and dropped themselves at the table by the door. When the waitress came over, Daisy Mae ordered a sex on the beach with no umbrella, and, to her surprise, a fuzzy nipple with no question from the server.
“We get asked to do that all the time,” she explained. “I’ll have those right out to you ladies. Start a tab?”
“Yes, please,” Ellie Mae chimed in. “But if you lose us, we’ll probably be at another tab—”
“Haha,” Daisy Mae blurted out and slapped the table to interrupt her twin sister. “Don’t you worry about that none, Ellie Mae. She won’t lose us in here.”
The waitress arched an eyebrow and Ellie Mae was sure the jig was up. To allay her fears, she reached into her pocket and produced the money they’d gotten from the man that had rear-ended them earlier. She shuffled it around, pretending to count it, even though it was only four hundred-dollar bills.
“Is anything on special?” She asked the waitr
ess.
“Fireball shots are two for one until midnight.”
“Add a couple of those, would ya?”
“Sure thing. I’ll be right back, ladies.”
Daisy Mae watched her walk away, and when she was satisfied the girl was out of earshot, she slapped Ellie Mae on the back of the head.
“You ain’t supposed to give away our new location, dimwit.”
Ellie Mae wasn’t listening though. She was staring in the direction of the bar. Daisy Mae followed her line of sight and saw a man sitting alone, drinking a beer.
“You see that guy in the hat, Daisy Mae?”
“Yup. Pretty good looking.”
“Uh huh,” she said, nodding. “Kinda reminds me of Troy.”
“Aw, hell,” Daisy Mae shook her head. “That ain’t Troy. That guy is much older and too skinny. Besides, Troy’s back in South Carolina. He ain’t falutin’ enough for the MV.”
“Yeah, I guess yer right. Too bad. I miss him sometimes.”
The door opened and a group of loud men bustled in wearing designer fishing shirts and sunburned raccoon eyes where their expensive sunglasses had likely been all day. They were arguing over who had caught the biggest fish earlier. They took a table a few feet away from the Gallop sisters.
“That’s them,” Daisy Mae said.
“That’s who?”
“That’s our new friends.”
“Ooh, the ones who are gonna take us home?”
Daisy Mae opened her mouth to try and explain that the men were just their cover to get out without paying, but she decided against it.
“If we play our cards right and you keep yer mouth shut … maybe so.”
The waitress returned with their drinks and put them on the cardboard coasters in front of them.
“Let me know if you need anything else.”
“We’ll probably be right over ther—”
Daisy Mae smacked her sister on the shoulder harder than before and said, “We’ll probably be here all night. So, keep ’em comin’.”
