Authors: Pat Connid
“What about
your uncle.”
“He’s
dead.”
I blinked.
“He’s not still in there, right?”
“Better not
be,” Allejo said with a broad smile. “When he passed, he left it to me.
If he’s in there now, he owes me rent.”
"Perfectly
reasonable."
“I’ve got a
place farther in town. I have to get the data sheets to Polly, my
supervisor. Then, I’m going to crash at my place. My girlfriend
can’t fall asleep if I’m not there.”
“Wow,” I
said.
“Yeah, it’s
kinda nice,” he said and he seemed to mean it. I admit, that hadn’t been
my first thought.
As I got
out, he reached into the glove compartment and tossed me a key. I walked around
the front of the jeep and came to his door.
“I’ve got
to make some calls.”
“Phone
works fine. I keep up the bills.”
“Yeah,” I
said. “But they’re kinda long distance.” He nodded at this. “I’ll
reimburse you, I promise.”
Allejo
shook his head. “Nah, you don’t look like the kinda guy who gets real
chatty on the phone. Don’t worry about it. I've got Internet phone
anyhow. VOIP. Real cheap.”
I nodded
and, for reason not immediately apparent, and for the first time in a very long
time, there was an unfamiliar emotion filling my chest, and I didn’t know what
to do with it.
Allejo
turned his massive head my direction and stared at me with his deep, brown
eyes.
“Take whatever
time you need, just don’t take it all. And clean up after yourself for
the next person."
"Oh?
Okay. When are they coming?"
He
shrugged.
"I
don't know yet." He put the jeep in gear, smiled and pulled away. I
watched him as he drove away, slowly bouncing down the road.
THE FIRST
CALL I'D made was to Pavan but his sister said that he was working. Duh.
Should’ve known that.
I would
need some cash if I was going to make it more than a day in Hawaii. It
sort of hit me then—I was in
Hawaii
.
How the
hell had that happened?
My late
night Golden Bear—I had to come up with a name for the guy—had tagged me with
the golf club but, obviously, I’d been sedated long enough to get all the way
out to the Aloha state, however long that took.
And what
did I know about Hawaii? The sole knowledge I had of it came from a
two-part episode of the Brady Bunch. So, the only thing in my
intellectual arsenal? Don’t pick up any wooden tikis off the beach.
I wanted to
call Laura but couldn’t remember the number because it was written down next to
the bar phone in
Wicked Lester's
. Never bothered to remember it.
Still had
to talk to Pavan, so I tried the theater.
After
sitting on hold, listening to the show times, Pavan finally came on the line.
“Dude,
where the hell have you been?”
“If I gave
you forty-nine guesses, you’d get every one of them wrong.”
“Man… you
just up and left.”
Allejo’s
uncle had this ancient Barcalounger and, the moment my backside had been
introduced to it, I’d decided that I wanted to be buried in this chair.
Not anytime soon, mind you, but eventually.
“That’s
what you think? That I just… left?”
He said his
voice dropped low: “
No
. Got the feeling you-know-who paid another
visit.”
“Yep.
How long have I been gone?”
“What?
Um, two days,” he said and lowered his voice more. “Do I want to
know what happened?”
Two
days?
I said,
“Not without a cold beer in your hand.”
“Just
finished one,” Pavan said. “You gotta talk to somebody about this guy.
I've got a cousin who knows some guys, you know?"
"Maybe.
Yeah, maybe."
"What’s
he after, did he say?”
“Same as
before. He gives me some random-sounding bits of information and, bam,
I’m out and wake up and those bits are relevant to me not dying somehow.”
“Fuck,
that's the craziest shit I ever heard, Dexter. Did he say why?”
“Nah,” I
said, fading toward sleep. “But each time he says ‘lesson begins’ like
it’s some sort of—”
“Like he’s
some sort of creepy teacher or something. I had a guy like that."
"I
don't think you did."
"No,
this dude I had, he was a history teacher and a gym teacher, but he'd always
wear his gym stuff to class."
"Pavan…"
"He
had these little, tiny shorts and you could see--"
"Pavan,
okay, enough!" I said, took a deep breath and let it out again. "He’s
a strong dude. Like military or ex-military maybe. Maybe he's trying to get
me in shape, straighten me out. Or dead.”
"If
Chuck Norris was one of those
Big Brother Big Sisters
people, he would
be this guy. Like some crazy motherfucking mentor dude, then.”
“I have no
idea.”
Pavan spoke
away from the phone for a minute, he had to go. “Your mentor guy is going
to get you dead if you don’t watch out, man.”
I said,
“I’ll have some time to work it out on the way back. Long road ahead of
me.”
“
Back
?
Where the hell are you?”
I pulled in
another deep breath and my head spun a little. Pushing it back out through my
teeth, I said, “Man, I’m in Hawaii.”
There was
silence for a moment or two. Then:
“Dude, no
way.”
“Yep.”
“That’s
awesome
.”
“Not so
much.”
“You coming
home?”
“Soon as I
can. I need your help getting some funds outta by bank. I don’t
have a lot in the account, but I hope I got enough to get back.”
“Okay, but
before you leave man, I seen this on the Discovery Channel, you’ve
got
to go see the volcanoes.”
In the
dark, starving but too tired to even look in the man’s fridge, I hung the phone
up on Pavan and fell asleep in the most comfortable chair on the entire planet.
Chapter
Seven
When I woke
up, my neck and back felt like they were locked in a rock, paper, scissors
battle to see which would get to complain loudest that I’d slept semi-upright
in the chair.
Nearby, the
sun whipped up small convection currents that twisted up fat ropes of dust and
air, which slithered in and out of the living room window’s Venetian blinds
Everything
hurt. Body-wide muscle aches to first degree burns on my thighs to red
raw hands that were stinging because I hadn't washed the dirt and blood off the
night before.
I moved
only my head, craning my neck as far as it would go in each direction. It
was a guess and not meant to be disparaging, but my surroundings looked like
they came straight out of the seventies. Burnt orange shag carpet, cherry
wood furniture. The lamp next to my Barcoheaven chair was a bulb surrounded by
a shade made up of individual strings of amber-colored crystals. Jane
Fonda wore a skirt like that in a movie one time, maybe.
Not wanting
to take on the full force of the sun just yet, I clicked the lamp and the
colored glass made the room glow warm and soft.
No TV-- just
like home. For some reason that did not surprise me.
When I was
a kid my mother had a friend, Carol, who’d either never married or divorced
young. I remember her being sorta hip: short hair with bangs, like a
blond Pat Benatar.
In her den,
she’d had a decades-old stereo stack: radio receiver, amp, record player, dual
cassette, 8-track player.
I remember
digging through her music and, at the time, I would have been maybe six.
There was a group, two men and two women, and the word ABBA was written
in sparkly diamonds. Every time we went over, she and my mother would
drink cold white wine from a box they’d put on the table between them, and I’d
go in the den and listen to Abba.
Ten years
later, when Carol decided to pick up and move to the west coast to open an art
supplies store, she called and said I could have her stereo if I were willing
to haul it away.
I was
nearly seventeen and electronics, even old stuff, were cool (“vintage, not old”
I would tell my friends) and jumped at the chance to pick up the rack. I
would have paid her fifty bucks for the gear, but she told me to keep my money.
Then she slept with me, my first time. Well, my first, second and
third time. All in about seventy-five minutes.
I still
love Abba.
Allejo’s
dead uncle had a similar system to the one I’d happily traded my virginity for,
and it looked like it had stood the test of time. As the radio receiver
came alight it suddenly seemed intrusive to change the station, so I left it.
The station's selection of music casually wandered from fifties to
seventies to sixties and was surprisingly pleasant.
Wandering
the house like a five-year-old drunk, the muscles in my legs and arms began to
loosen slightly. There wasn’t a spot on my body that wasn’t registering
some sort of complaint, so an Aspirin breakfast was in my immediate future.
I was going
to try to make it around without the lights but, with most of the shades down
and curtains drawn, the whole house was pretty dark. Flipping the switch in
the kitchen, there was a note taped to the lamp.
“Picked you
up some milk for breakfast because the fridge is pretty bare,” it read.
“There’s cereal in the cupboard but that’s it. My guests don’t
usually stay beyond breakfast.”
I guessed
that at one time Allejo had used this place as a bit of a love nest, taking
girls back here after dinner, maybe. Even though I was sure he’d let me
stay as long as I needed, I couldn’t help but feel
my guest’s don’t usually
stay beyond breakfast
was a bit of a hint. It probably wasn’t, but this
guest wasn’t going to stick around much longer than that either.
It struck
me that the big man had been able to get into this house and out again without
me waking up.
Maybe I
sleep a little too deep for my own good. Reflecting upon the events of the
past week, it seemed like a good idea to investigate how someone goes about
sleeping with one eye open. Or invest in better locks.
It'd been two
days since I’d left Atlanta.
Two
.
Had it all
been transport time, or did my psycho "mentor" (as Pavan had dubbed
him) take me somewhere else, too? Two days seems too long for just a flight to
the Big Island.
In the
bathroom, I stripped naked and looked in the mirror hanging on the back of the
door.
Blisters
pocked my calves and the redness spread halfway up my thighs, but it certainly
could have been a lot worse. It felt a lot worse at that moment.
Years ago,
I played sports like most of my friends. More recently, my sole athletic
challenge was climbing the stairs to my apartment.
I gripped
my hairy stomach with both hands.
“Spongy,” I
said to my man in the mirror, and he frowned, disapproving. Then I put a hand
on either side of my belly button, squeezed together, and made a hairy baby
butt out of it. Laura never finds it funny— actually she says it makes
her a bit nauseous. Pavan thinks it’s a scream. At the moment,
feeling pretty low, I’m siding with Laura.
My
reflection said, “When’d you get fat, man?”
Looking at
myself in the mirror was depressing, so I popped open the shower door and
stepped inside. The water took far too long to warm up, and I could hear
my teeth chattering by the time it did.
All the
shampoo was Pert, which I hate because I have naturally greasy hair and when I
use a shampoo/conditioner combo it's oily again in a couple hours. I
decided instead to use the bar of Irish Spring soap for my hair, and it did the
trick. And, bonus, my head was deodorized with not one but two,
two
deodorants
.
Toweling
off, I grabbed a bowl of Raisin Bran in the kitchen and headed back to the
chair.
Balancing
the phone's receiver on the side of my head as I laid back, I called Pavan
again.
“Not great
news, but you probably knew that,” he said when I finally got him on the line.
“Give it to
me.”
“You got
just over four hundred in your checking.”
“How about
airfare? More than four bills, huh?”
“Yep,” he
said. “I called my cousin, who’s dating a travel agent. On short
notice, you’re not getting home for less than seven.” There was silence
for a moment. “You know, Dex… you’ve got some dough in savings.”
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah…”
“You could
get a first class ticket with that, man. Hell, you could buy your own
plane.”
“No.”
Pavan had
never challenged me on the money before. He would bring it up every now
and then but he never pushed it. This time he did, and I wasn’t ready for
it.
“You think
your baby sister would be happier knowing you were stranded on some
stupid
island?”
“Jesus, man,
bad timing. Seriously.”
“No, she’d
want you flying home within the hour with a cocktail in both hands and free movies
at your seat, that’s what.”
I could see
a glimmer coming from the corner of my vision.
Shit
. I hadn’t had
a real killer of a headache in a while… and this one was coming hard.
“Shit,”
I said out loud, pressing my thumbs into the corner of my eyes. “No,
I’ll—”
“You’ll
what? Pick oranges or some shit to get money together. You’ve got a
fortune in there—”
I snapped
at him: “Ruthie didn’t die so I can fly first-fucking-class, man!”
“No,” he
said, but for the first time I could ever remember he wasn’t backing off.
“That dough is because the hospital started carving pieces out because
they thought you were dead. But you weren’t dead…”
“Pavan,
leave it alon—”
“And you’re
not dead now. Stop acting like it.”
The room
blazed with thick, threads of white light as the migraine took hold. Still,
I was surprised by my own tears. Crying. I couldn’t remember the
last time I cried.
“I can’t. I
killed her.”
“Nah, you
didn’t.”
I said. “I
did. You don’t know.”
The spires
of light split into prisms through my tears. “I killed her.
Shouldn’t be on my goddamn phone in weather like that. Like that,
you go both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road. Not me, I--"
“Cops
didn't blame you, family didn’t blame you. Only you blame you,” he said,
slurring a little. Ah. He’d been drinking. Liquid courage. “Sometimes
I think maybe you like hurting inside.”
“Shut up,
man.”
“Fine,” he
said. “Fine. It’s your dough.”
I looked at
the stereo and the warm yellow glow of its tiny lights. Something old-time jazzy
with a hypnotic bass line tumbled softly from the speakers, and I took a deep
breath, drawing it in, hoping the sound waves would loosen and break away some
of the calcification built up along the inner walls of my skull.
“Can you get
me a ticket to L.A.?”
Pavan
sniffed. “What’s in L.A.?”
“Well, it’s
the closest non-island city to where I’m at right now. Hopefully I get
there, and I’ve got a couple bucks left over.”
Then, out
of the blue: “Dammit!”
I jerked
the phone away from my ear, looked at it, then returned it to the side of my
head and said, “Man, I’ve got a screaming headache—what’d you do that for?”
“Uncle Rolo
was over last night, and he assed the phone!”
“What?
What are you talking about?”
Pavan’s
voice was hollow, distant. I could envision him holding the phone at
arm’s length.
“Rolo got
in a fight with my dad because dad borrowed his lawn mower and lost it in the
yard… and before the
pendejo
left he must’ve slipped the handset down
the back of his shorts and assed it.”
I closed my
eyes. “What the hell is wrong with your family?”
“Dude, I
gotta hang up. Gonna be sick.”
“Get me a
ticket for this afternoon from Honolulu to L.A., and I’ll call you when I get
in.”
Pavan
gagged. “Don’t bother. I’m not picking up this phone ‘till I get some
bleach, man.”
“Pavan!” I
screamed into the phone. “You’ll be at the theater. I’ll call you
there.”
“K.
Hanging up.”
Click.
I put my
head back and nearly fell asleep again in the most comfortable chair on the
planet. But, my mind was racing.
It occurred
to me that I should call back Pavan and book a flight for the next day. My new
mentor
might
have picked this place for a reason. Maybe I could ask
around.
Maybe
he
was still around.
If I took
some time to talk to the locals… someone may have seen him or recognize his
description.
It was the
second time he nearly killed me. This wasn’t the neighbor’s dog barking
too loud at four in the morning. This was some crazy bastard—who has
access to spare cargo vans and, very likely, a private jet and more sedatives
than Michael Jackson’s former personal physician—this prick wanted something
from me, or wanted to teach me some lesson, or wanted me to lose a couple
pounds,
what?
He wanted
something
.
Maybe
everything.
“What is
this all about?” I said to the lamp, which offered little insight. “What
the hell does he want from me?”
Some nerve
endings were waking from their brief comas, and the blisters on my calves began
to sting more. I started to get up to find some aspirin but stopped.
I
wanted it to hurt. I didn’t want to forget what I was up against. I
didn't want to forget what he was
doing
to me.
A few
minutes later, once the pain had increased exponentially, I felt quite certain
there’d be no forgetting whatever it was I didn’t want to forget and jumped up
to guzzle three or four aspirin.
In the
kitchen, I stood and washed down the pills' grit with a second glass of water.
At that point, the plan was simply to get back home. But then what?
It would
only be a matter of time until I’d wake up again to find him sitting there on
my dresser like my personal gargoyle, spouting off details about surviving in
the vacuum of space while a rocket idled on my roof, blowing plumes of steam
onto my balcony.
The Mentor
made me feel weak and stupid, and there were old, now-alien feelings bubbling back
up, and emotions sneaking in that I'd long ago fortified myself against.
And twice
he nearly killed me yet
never said why
.
“Lesson
begins,” I spat the words. "What the hell is that even supposed to
mean?"