Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) (2 page)

   Hector bashed me against the tree yet again. I was getting a little sick of that, but didn't know the guy well enough to ask him to quit.

   Then Biff punched me in the face, knocking me to the ground. This was substantially less comfortable than being bashed against
thetree
,
and my ability to think up amusing comments temporarily disappeared.

   I winced as Winslow swung the camera a couple more times, then let it hit the tree. Fragments of plastic, glass, and videotape sprayed everywhere.

   "
Ow
, crap! A piece got my eye!" Winslow yelped, staggering away with his hands against his face.

   "That was my wife's camera!" I shouted.

   Biff slapped Winslow hard on the side of the
head."You
idiot! We could've sold that thing! What's the matter with you?" He slapped him again, knocking him to his knees.

   Hector yanked me to my feet. "We don't want to see your sorry butt around here ever again. You leave Jake alone. He's got enough problems dealing with that frigid wife of his. If we catch you again, we'll twist your legs off with a spoon. Got it?"

   While I couldn't envision the actual process of twisting one's legs off with a spoon, I nodded anyway. He punched me in the face once more just to show that he could, and then informed me that I was permitted to leave.

   I walked back to my car, lacking a spring in my step or a song in my heart. I'd really needed the money from this job, and not just because of my little uninsured car accident. We weren't going to end up on the streets or anything...Helen was a registered nurse, and her salary took care of most of the bills. But while she was semi-supportive of my decision to quit doing clerical temp work and try to earn money without getting a Real Job, her semi-support wasn't going to last much longer if I continued bringing home little or nothing in the way of actual income.

   I returned to Roger's place and rang the
doorbell."Daddy
! What happened?" asked Theresa as she opened the door.

   "Nothing,
sweetheart.Daddy
just fell out of a tree."

   "Are you okay? Do you need to go see Mommy at the hospital?"

   "No, no, I don't think that's a very good idea. All Daddy needs right now is a kiss."

   I received kisses from both of my children, as well as a painful hug from Theresa, though I was manly enough not to shriek.

   "I'll be out in a second," called Roger from the library, which also functioned as the bathroom.

   "No rush, we've got to get going," I said. "I'll hook up with you later." Preferably after my face healed, so he wouldn't be able to give me any grief about coming in fourth in the fight.

   "Where's the movie camera?" asked Kyle, after we got back in the car.

   "It's all over the place. Don't worry about it. Now who wants ice cream?"

        HELEN CAME in around ten o'clock, while I was sitting in our bedroom reading a horror
novelcalledWhose
Heart is in
MyPopcorn
?
Characterization was a bit thin, but boy could that woman write dismemberments.

   "Hi," I said. "How was work?"

   "Work was fine," said Helen, remaining in the doorway. She's a small woman, barely five-two, with straight brown hair and a plethora of freckles. With her thick glasses, she has
abookwormish
,
almost owlish look that in no way reveals the "screwing with me would be a bad, bad idea" attitude that rockets through her soul.

   "That's good. My day was fine, too."

   "I'm happy to hear
it.Any
special reason for that huge bruise on your face?"

   I closed the book. "Oh, did that leave a mark?"

   Helen folded her arms over her chest. Damn. Not a good sign. I was going to have to work quickly if I was going to get out of this without seeing The Gaze.

   "Sweetheart, normally upon coming home and seeing my loving husband with a huge, ugly bruise on his face, the first thing I would do is rush forward, give you a hug, and ask what I could do to make it better." Helen shifted a bit, and I knew I was going to get The Gaze. I just knew it. "However, I could tell from the second I saw you that you're feeling really guilty about something, and you darn well know you've got a hideous bruise. So what happened?"

   "It was nothing, really," I said, then cringed inwardly. Error! Error! A statement like that was a guarantee of receiving The Gaze. I was doomed!

   Helen frowned and, yes, fixed me with The Gaze. It was a horrible look, a look that simultaneously said "I know perfectly well that you're lying, Andrew R. Mayhem," and "You're not going to have any degree of sex until you tell me the truth."

   "Andrew, what happened?"

   "It was just a punch," I said, standing up. "Well, two of
them.Nothing
to get upset about."

   "And what exactly did you do to cause yourself to get punched?"

   "Someone got annoyed because I was doing a little videotaping. No big deal. These things happen. And expensive cameras sometimes get broken,
too.Can't
be helped."

   Helen finally left her spot in the doorway and sat down on the bed next to me. "What were you videotaping?"

   
"Something for a
friend.An
athletic event."

   "Andrew..."

   I really wished I could lie to her. Make that, I really wished I could lie to her without getting caught. "I was videotaping a guy cheating on his wife. No big deal."

   "Cheating on your wife isn't a big deal?"

   Ouch, major point deduction there. "No, no, of course it's a big deal, but my taping it wasn't."

   "It was a big deal if you got beat up because of it. What if the guy you were videotaping had chased after you with a shotgun? What then?"

   "Believe me, if I'd thought there was any chance of me being chased by a lunatic with a shotgun, or any other large firearm, or even a chainsaw, I wouldn't have done it."

   "Don't make jokes," said Helen.

   "I wasn't making a joke."

   "The chainsaw part was supposed to be a joke. Don't do that. This is serious."

   "I'm sleeping on the couch tonight, aren't I?"

   Helen sighed. "Andrew, you know I'm trying to be supportive of you while you figure out what you want to do with your life. If you want to form a rock band, or become an actor, or
aHollywood
stunt man, or a cartoonist, or an archeologist, or a professional baseball player, or any of the other things you've dumped after two weeks, I'm standing by you. But I don't want you getting involved in stuff like taking illegal videos of people cheating on their spouses! I just don't!"

   "Got
it.I'm
sorry." I looked at the floor and felt suitably ashamed. If I'd gotten inside
thetreehouse
earlier, the guys probably wouldn't have seen me, and none of this would have happened. This was all that stupid babysitter's fault for canceling on me. The next time we
hiredher
the little brat was going to find her unlimited access to Popsicles cut off.

   "Good. And now that we've put that behind us, let me make you all better."

Chapter 2

    ABOUT A week later, Wednesday night, I was sitting in The Blizzard Room with Roger. We sat in the back corner of the coffee shop, discussing such weighty topics as why we bothered to keep coming to the Blizzard Room.

   "The coffee isn't all that great," I said, using my fingers to mark the number of negative points being made. "The service is slow and surly. There's a disturbing non-coffee smell in the air. There's not a table in the entire place that doesn't rock when you touch it." I touched the table, causing it to rock. "Why do we come here instead of someplace masculine, like a bar?"

   
"Because we're both deeply lame human
beings."
Roger
took a sip of his double mocha latte. I've known him since seventh grade, when we regularly sat next to each other in detention. In the years since then we'd alternated between me getting him in trouble and him getting me in trouble. We even roomed together in college, where he majored in psychology and I at various times majored in theatre, art history, creative writing, popular culture, and (on a dare) women's studies.

   While I'm tall and of average build, Roger is short and slightly
pudgy.His
hair
startedsayingadios
,
sucker!around
the time he turned twenty-two, and his nose takes up much more than its share of facial surface area. Despite that, he's never had any problems attracting women, not with those sapphire blue, soulful, "
awwwww
,he'sso
adorable" eyes. I've always been jealous of his eyes. My eyes are kind of a dingy brownish color. It's really not fair.

   In fact, it looked like Roger's eyes were getting him attention once again. A gorgeous blonde was doing a terrible job pretending that she wasn't staring at us. Roger noticed this and waved to her. She smiled, picked up her coffee, and walked over to our table.

   "Mind if I join you?" she asked.

   "Not at all," said Roger.

   As the woman sat down, Roger stuck out his hand. "
RogerTanglen
.
This is my friend Andrew Mayhem. He's extremely married."

   I shot him a "shut the hell up" look, even though I'm far too married to even consider trying anything. It still would have been nice to see if she'd hit on me, even if I couldn't accept her advances. I hope that doesn't sound too pathetic.

   "Pleased to meet you, Roger and
Andrew.I'm
Jennifer Ashcraft. Mind if I smoke?"

   "Of course
not.Here
, I'll join you," offered Roger, whipping out a pack of cigarettes and offering her one. She took it and let him light it for her with his very cool koala bear lighter. (It's a lighter in the shape of a koala bear, not a lighter used for igniting koala
bears.Just
wanted to make that clear.)

   Jennifer looked to be in her early thirties, with long wavy hair and a face that neither had nor required any makeup. She wore jeans and a black blouse
thatfitvery
tightly and seemed designed to send the message "Hey, everyone, we've got nudity under here!"

   "You two look like nice, strong men," she said, glancing around to see if anyone was listening. "Would you say you consider yourselves open to new experiences?"

   "Yes," said Roger, too quickly.

   She stared me right in the eye. "And you?"

   I made a play of scratching my forehead so that my wedding ring was blatantly visible, in case she'd missed Roger's "extremely married"
comment."
Uh
, yeah, sometimes."

   "Good." She opened her pocketbook and removed an envelope. "Inside this envelope is five hundred dollars. What I'm going to ask is very unusual, and you may not want to do it. If you decide not to accept, the five hundred dollars is for you to forget all about
me.Deal
?"

   "Sounds great," I said. "I'll just pretend you were my algebra lessons in high school."

   Roger glared at me as if my sparkling wit might scare her off. "What do you want us to do?"

   She leaned forward confidentially. "I want you to dig up my husband's grave."

   Roger and I simultaneously leaned forward. "I beg your pardon?" I asked.

   "My husband was buried last night, and I want you to dig up the coffin."

   It was clear from Roger's expression that he considered this task quite a bit less appealing than wild kinky sex. "You're kidding, right?"

   She shook her head. "I'm completely serious."

   "Is this the kind of thing you usually ask people in coffee shops?" I inquired. "Are you sure you didn't walk in here by mistake thinking it was Maude
andVinny's
DiscountGraverobbing
Emporium?"

   "I told you it was unusual."

   "And you were damn right."

   "Is this a no?"