RECKLESS — Bad Boy Criminal Romance (13 page)

“Hey,” he called to me.

I turned around, surprised he wanted to talk to me.

“You must be like the only white person in this neighborhood.”

I looked at him, not sure if the conversation was going to be cordial or confrontational.  “Well, my mom’s black.  So what?  Do you have some type of problem?

He chuckled.  “Calm down, kid.  I think I know who you are.  Your last name’s Gillis, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I thought I heard about you.  You just got kicked off the football team going out in a blaze of glory, right?”

I cracked a smile.  “It was something like that.”

“I loved hearing about that shit.”  He laughed.  “It sounds like you know how to handle yourself.”

“When I need to.”

He smiled.  “I gotcha.  So, now you’re not playing football anymore, what are you doing?”

“School, I guess.  That’s all I have right now.”

“Fuck it.  Getting kicked off the team is the best thing you ever could have done.  You’ll see.  It eats up all your time, living and breathing that shit all for the glory of the team.  What do you end up with?  With football, if you’re talented enough and work hard enough and get lucky enough, maybe someday you could make it pro.  You make some money but by the time you’re done your body is so beat to hell and you’ve had so many concussions that you can’t remember how to spend it anyway.”

I chuckled and we walked together to the checkout counter. 

“Hey, give me that,” he said and took the carton of milk from me.  “It’s on me for what I heard you said to Coach Dumbfuck.”  He bought my milk, his beer, and a cigar from behind the counter that he stuck in his mouth as we walked outside.

I thanked him.

“No problem.”  He pulled his coat tightly around himself.  “Cold weather is like my own personal hell.  I’m going home.  I like your attitude though.  Since you got some free time on your hands now, do you want to make some money?”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“You know where I live?  Come by this Sunday.  I’m working the night before, so I’ll want to sleep in.  Come around noon and we’ll talk about it.”

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – “I need to tell you something.”

              “What?” Angela asks.

              In the Toyota I pull off I-540 and drive into town.  Using the GPS I follow 15
th
Street.

              “My real name is Brandon Gillis.”

              She looks at me, nods, and says, “Okay.”

              “Since we trust each other I thought I’d tell you my real name.  Plus I knew you’d probably wonder why my mom calls me Brandon, so I thought I’d clear that up before we even get there.”

              Angela giggles.  “Okay, Brandon.  I like that name … My name really is Angela by the way.”

              “Yeah, I figured.  Especially after hearing it on TV all those times.”

              “Right.  So what are we going to be doing here?”

              “Seeing as though your face was on TV for a couple days, I thought we’d take a little time to take it easy, lay low.  I know you changed your look and everything, but just to be safe.”

              “For how long?”

“Let’s start with a month.  We’ll go from there.”

“That’s a long time not getting out of the house.  It sounds boring.”

              “Take the time to let the public forget your face while I teach you some things and we get on the same page.  It would be lot more boring sitting in a jail cell because we fucked up being reckless.”

              “Do you think we’ll have any chances to make money while we’re here?”

“This seems like kind of a relaxed college town.  We can’t do anything to bring attention to ourselves.  We’ll just keep our eyes open.”  I drive a ways down Mission Boulevard and turn right into my mother’s neighborhood.  It’s a newly developed area, each house well-kept on large, grassy plots of land.

My mother’s home is a moderately-sized, red-brick house.  The front lawn is freshly mowed.  In the back is a screened-in porch with a pair of rocking chairs.  About twenty feet from the porch, on the side of the yard, a large maple tree stands alone.

“It seems nice,” Angela remarks.

              I look it over.  “Yeah, it is.”

We park in the driveway which sits before the closed garage on the left side of the house.  From the driveway we walk on a stone walkway to the front door.

              A few moments after I knock my mother opens the door.  She wraps her arms around me and says, “I’ve missed you.”

              “I’m happy to see you too, Mom.”

I step aside and say, “Mom, this is Angela.”

“Hi,” Angela says with a smile.

“Nice to meet you.”  My mother looks at me.  “Is this your girlfriend?”

“No.  Just a close friend.”

They shake hands and Angela says, “You have a beautiful house.”

“Thanks.  Let’s go in.  I’ll show you the inside.”

The front door leads into the kitchen which has a bar countertop with a few wooden stools.  A door on the left of the kitchen leads into the garage.  The kitchen, to the right after a small step down, opens into the living room which contains a cushioned brown chair, a sofa, and an old thirty-inch television.  The floor is carpeted and in the middle of the wall is a white brick fireplace.

              Down the hallway from the kitchen and living room areas is the master bedroom on the right.  On the left are a bathroom and a guest bedroom.  At the end of the hallway is a door that leads out onto the back porch.

              “You have the guest room and the sofa in the living room,” my mother says.  “However y’all want to do the sleeping arrangements, you can decide.  Can I get either of you anything?”

              “I’ll take something to drink,” Angela says.

              I look at her and say, “Why don’t we bring our stuff in?”

              “Oh, sure.”

              “I was about to make some tea,” my mother says.  “I can boil the water and draw it while you unpack.  Is that alright?”

“Tea would be great,” Angela says.

I let Angela take the guest room.  She starts to unpack her clothes.  I return to the kitchen.

“How long are you staying?”  My mother pours the boiled water into a few tea cups.

              “I’m not sure.  For a while, maybe.  Is that okay?”

              “You can stay as long as you want.  I’m glad you’re here.” 

The tea draws.

I look at her and say, “I thought you might be upset with me.”

              “I’m not.  I’m relieved you’re doing okay.”

              “Sorry I didn’t try to contact you before.”

              “I’ve thought about you.  Wondering where you are and hoping you’re safe.  Sometimes I’d suddenly feel that something bad happened to you.  But I also thought how nice it’d be if someday you just showed up.  When I moved I pretty much gave up on that idea, but here you are.”

              “I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

              “It’s okay.  Just be with me now.”

              “Is the tea ready?” Angela asks, walking into the kitchen.

“I think so,” my mother says.  “Do you take milk or sugar?”

I showed up at Terrell’s house at twelve o’clock sharp.  Terrell answered the door wearing a white wifebeater, fuzzy black sweat pants, and red slippers.  He rushed me through the living room in which little antique ornaments sat on the shelves.  On a plastic-covered couch sat his grandmother, wearing a blue knit sweater.  She watched PBS with the volume cranked all the way up and didn’t even notice as Terrell whisked me behind her.

Terrell’s bedroom was at the back of the house.  It was dark.  The walls were wood-paneled and the flooring was green shag carpet.  Under the window was a wooden desk on which a joint was perched on an ashtray.  Smoke rose from it and escaped through the ajar window. The room was small.  Near the foot of his bed, only a couple feet away, was a big-screen television, the only luxury in the room.  Everything was cramped.

He took the joint and sat against the headboard of his bed.

I took the seat at the desk.

“I just got up.  It was a late night,” he said.  “Do you know the strip club Platinum Pleasures?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“I bounce there.”  He snorted marijuana smoke from his nostrils.  “My girlfriend drives me crazy about it though.  She’s always accusing me of sleeping with girls from the club.”

“She’s paranoid?”

“Well, I have slept with some of the strippers but she doesn’t know that.”

“Oh.”

“There was one last night – this nineteen year-old who has only been working a few weeks.  When the club closed, we walked out together.  Little did I know my girl was waiting to ‘surprise me’ outside in the parking lot.  When we she us walk out together, she went out of her mind screaming at me.  She wouldn’t stop until the girl got in her car and left.  That way she knew we weren’t going home together.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I know.  And this was at, like, two-thirty in the morning.  I was freezing my ass off and my girl still wanted to argue about it even after the stripper left.”

“So you ended up alone last night?”

“No, I had the nineteen year-old girl’s cell number.  So I got home and called her over.”

I smiled.  “You bring girls over with your grandmother here?”

“Yeah, no disrespect to her.  I love my grandma to death, but she’s deaf as hell.  I could bang a chick for hours without her waking up.  And I make sure to kick the girl out before morning.  I don’t want my grandma having to deal with some bitch expecting breakfast.”

“That works.”

“By living here I can save my money and help my grandma.  She doesn’t get around that great and she’s got memory issues and what not.”

I nodded.

“Let me talk to you about why you came over.”  He puffed from his joint, then dabbed it on the edge of the ashtray.  “You said you’d like to make some money.  From hearing about you and meeting you, I got a good impression.  You kind of remind me of myself.”

I listened to him.

“I want certain things in life.  And if stepping on someone’s throat gets me there faster, I’ll stomp on their throat.”

I looked at him, unshaken.

“Even with that cutthroat mentality, loyalty is the most important thing to me.  You have to have at least a few people in this world who can count on.  A few people, when push comes to shove, you know will be there.  There are two types of friends in this world – there are friends and there are friends who’ll help you bury a body.  And I can’t stress to you enough how serious the difference is between the two.”

I nodded.

              “I think you and me could be friends,” he said.  “I just need you to tell me what kind of friends we’re going to be.”  Keeping his eyes locked on me, he took another drag off his joint.

              Without knowing what I was getting myself into I said, “The second.”

Terrell smiled and set his joint in the ashtray.  He scooted toward the end of the bed to sit near me.  “When we met, I felt like we were on the same page.  Put your trust in me, I’ll put my trust in you.  But let me give you fair warning:  You take advantage of that trust and then we’re not friends like you promised.  And in that case I’d have no problem killing you.  And I’d do it with a smile on my face.”  Terrell said this plainly.  “You good with that?”  He extended his hand.

I shook it.

“Come over later this week.  There are a couple guys you need to meet.  They’re both people who have my trust, so you need to get to know them.  We’ll talk about making some money.”

At home my sister Ariel wasn’t content.  And the problem didn’t seem to be anything in particular.  Her mind was restless, bouncing from one subject to another.

Out of the blue one day she asked me, “Where do you think our dad is?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  What cares?”

“I wish we could meet him.”

“If he doesn’t have any interest in us, I’d rather not think about him.”

Ariel thought about it a few moments and shrugged.  “I just would like to know who he is and be able to talk to him at least once as an adult.  Even if he is a fucked-up person.”

At dinner Ariel asked our mother about him.

Our mother glared into space.  “Other than having the two of you, there’s not much good I think of when I think of him.  I don’t feel like getting into all that and upsetting myself.”

Ariel pestered her to say more, but every time she tried our mother flat-out refused.

Another day Ariel said she wanted a dog.

“Girl, you have enough to do just keeping yourself out of trouble,” our mother said.  There’s no way you can be taking care of a pet when you can barely take care of yourself.”