Authors: Ray Garton
“Hank, get the door!” Muriel shouted. She was washing dishes. There stood on one side of the sink several piles of filthy dishes which had accumulated there over the last couple weeks. Muriel let all the dishes pile up awhile before she washed them. She didn’t wash them until they ran out of clean ones. That way she didn’t have to do it as often.
“Dammit to hell,” she said as she threw the sponge into the sink and dropped a plate with a clattering splash. She rinsed the suds off her hands, dried them on a hand towel, tossed the towel onto the counter, picked up her drink, and left the kitchen.
In the hall, cats scattered before Muriel.
As she passed the living room to the right, she looked in and saw her husband Hank slumped in his recliner, big belly sticking up out of the chair, a big, round, snowy mountain in a white sleeveless undershirt. A nature program played on TV.
“Useless,” she shuffled in her slippers to the front door. “Hi.”
“Hello, there, Mrs. Snodgrass.”
“Who’re you?”
“You don’t remember me? I’m Steven Regent, your newest tenant.” He turned and pointed. “Over there, in unit five.”
“Oh, yeah. Step back a bit.” When he did, she pushed the screen door open and invited him inside.
When he came in, Muriel gave him a good once over. He was good-looking, this one. Not too tall, but handsome and strong-looking.
“What can I do you for, Steve?” she said.
“I’d like to pay my rent for three months in advance.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Oh, no. But I’m curious, Steve, whatcha payin’ rent in advance for? Or is that none of my business?”
“Not at all. It’s just that I like to get it out of the way so I don’t have to worry about it every month for a while.”
“Oh. Sure. Okay. You wanna pay your rent in advance, that’s just fine by me.”
He reached fingers into the breast pocket of the unbuttoned short-sleeve blue chambray shirt he was wearing. He wore nothing underneath it. From the pocket, he removed a check.
“That should be the right amount,” he said as he handed the check to Muriel.
She took it, tilted her head back, and looked through her bifocals. “Yep, right on the money.”
“Could I get a receipt for that?” Regent said.
“A receipt?”
“Yes, please.” He was still smiling.
He was a looker, all right, in his mid-thirties. A genial fellow. But there was something else. There was something about that constant smile. Muriel did not trust people who smiled all the time. It wasn’t natural – and usually, it was downright fake. If Mr. Regent didn’t lose that smile pretty quick, Muriel was going to get rid of him pretty quick.
“C’mon in here,” she said, leading him down the hall to the kitchen. Once again, cats scattered before her. The house smelled of them.
“How many cats do you have?” Regent said.
“Eleven.” She put her drink on the counter, then went to a desk against the kitchen wall on the right. The desk was cluttered with papers and big envelopes and books and magazines and even a shoe box. Muriel shuffled things around until she found her receipt pad. It didn’t take her long to find it – the desk was a mess, but she knew where everything was.
Muriel put the pad on a stack of books, then felt around for a pen. She filled the receipt out, referring to the check for the right total. She tore his copy of the receipt from the book and handed it to Regent.
“Howzat?” she said.
He looked at it. “Perfect. Thank you.”
“You all settled in now?” Muriel said.
“Yes, I am. Everything’s unpacked and in its place. I didn’t procrastinate at all this time, I got all the unpacking done the first day.”
“Well-well, good for you. What kinda work you do, Steve?”
“I’ve got a few very successful – what am I saying,
wildly
successful websites.”
“Websites, huh? Pornography?”
“I prefer adult entertainment.”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re callin’ it these days, huh?” Muriel went over to the kitchen counter where a half-full whiskey bottle stood next to two glasses, Muriel’s almost full. By her glass was a pack of cigarettes, a red Bic lighter, and an ashtray full of butts. “Can I get you a drink?” she said as she shook out a cigarette, then lit up.
His smile fell away then. “Nothing for me, thank you.”
“I been spikin’ my ice tea this afternoon,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “So you got websites with lotsa neckid women on ‘em?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“You’n my husband Frank’ll get along just fine. He looks at them titty sights all the time. He don’t know how lucky he is to have a wife don’t mind him lookin’ at them titty sites. You ain’t gonna have a big parade of neckid women comin’ in and out of your trailer, are ya?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that at all. We do most of our work at my partner’s house, anyway. We’re very discreet, I promise.”
“Okay. That’s good. This is a family park. I can’t have no pornography goin’ on all over the place for the kids to see.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t even know I’m there.”
“Sounds good to me,” Muriel said. “A quiet park is a happy park.”
She walked him back to the front door, said goodbye, then stepped outside and watched him walk to his trailer from the porch, smoking her cigarette. She looked at his trailer a long time, and the back end of his SUV – a very expensive SUV, she knew, because it was a Porsche.
Muriel went back into the house and turned into the living room, went to Frank’s recliner. “Wake up, Frank.”
He did not move. He was snoring quietly. For a change. When he snored in bed he sounded like an ill zoo animal. He snored in his recliner and he sounded like a purring cat.
“
Frank
!” she shouted.
Frank jerked in his chair. “Huh?”
“Wake up.”
“Dammit,” he said as he shuffled around in the recliner. He reached down and clutched a wooden lever on the side of the chair, pulled it, and straightened it up into a sitting position. “What the hell’s a matter now?” he said. Frank Snodgrass had a long, hound dog face, bald on top with a U of greying brown hair from ear to ear. He slowly stood as he said, “What’s so damned important that I couldn’t sleep a little while longer, huh?”
“There’s something wrong about him,” Muriel said.
“Wrong about who?”
“That man who was just here.”
“Who the hell you talking about? I was asleep, ‘member?”
“The man who just – Steven Regent, who just moved into unit five.”
“What about him?” Frank shuffled out of the living room and into the kitchen.
Muriel followed him, talking the whole way.
“What’s he doin’
here
, in
this
trailer park?”
“What kinda question is that?” Frank said. He went to the refrigerator and opened the door below the top freezer. He bent down and looked in at what was on the metal shelves.
“Well,
think
about it,” Muriel said. She went to the counter and snubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “He’s got that beautiful trailer – that thing looks new, and it didn’t come cheap. And how about that Porsche SUV, huh? How much you think he paid for
that
? And he just now paid three months in rent. Three months.”
“So what?”
“Well, if he’s – what the hell are you
looking
for?”
“Nothin’.” He stood and closed the refrigerator door. He did that all the time, and it drove Muriel crazy.
“The
so-what
is that he’s here in this
dump
,” Muriel said.
“Maybe he just likes trailer park living, ever thought a
that
?”
“Then why
this
trailer park? This place is an old dump. Why would he come here? He’s got a lotta money, and he smiles a lot. Too much. Says he runs a few titty sites on the Internet.” She went back to washing dishes.
Frank was pouring some whiskey into the empty glass, and he stopped and turned to her. “Really? Titty sites?”
She turned to him. “Yeah, I
thought
you’d like that. You an’ your titty sites. I got a bad feelin’ about him.”
“Maybe the guy just wants to live in some outta the way dumpy trailer park, who the hell knows anything about anybody? You’re always tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on in other people’s heads.” He took a couple big gulps of whiskey, put the glass down, then came up behind Muriel and wrapped his arms around her from behind. He rubbed his hands over her belly, then slid them up and cupped her sagging breasts. “You gotta stop tryin’ to get into other people’s heads, my melon princess.” He kissed her neck.
Muriel laughed and put her hands over his. “I can’t help it. I see things other people don’t. And I’m seein’ somethin’ in that young man. There’s somethin’ wrong about him.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s prob’ly innocent as pie. Hell, he runs titty sites, he can’t be all bad.”
“You know how lucky you are you gotta wife lets you look at them titty sites on the Internet?”
“Oh, yeah, I know how lucky I am. And you know the only titties I
really
want are yours.”
Twelve
Kendra held Dexter in her arms and danced around in circles with him as a music video played on TV. When she finally stopped, she was a little dizzy, and she laughed.
“You like that, Dexter?” she said. She hoped she hadn’t made the little dog dizzy – she hadn’t meant to do that. She put him down and he immediately rose up on his hind legs and began pawing at her shins. “Hey, I got an idea,” Kendra said.
She left the living room and went to her bedroom and to the closet. She had a box of balls on the floor of her closet. In it was the multicolored ball she’d been bouncing earlier that day. There were also smaller balls, and
much
smaller balls. She found one small enough for Dexter to be able to pick it up with his little mouth, then left her bedroom.
“Oh,
no
, Dexter!” Kendra shouted when she found the little dog urinating on the kitchen floor.
He stopped and scurried away, whining.
She went to him and shouted, “No! No, bad boy, Dexter,
bad
boy!” as she wagged a finger at him.
Dexter quivered and whined and lowered his head and tucked his skinny little tail between his legs.
Kendra went back and cleaned up the little puddle with paper towels. She hoped she was doing this right – she had no idea how to house train a dog. She was simply doing what made sense to her.
She went back to the living room, where Dexter was still huddling at the foot of the recliner.
“I’m sorry, Dexter,” Kendra said as she sat down beside him, “but you gotta learn that’s a no-no. You wanna play fetch?” She showed him the ball and he took some interest. She threw the ball into the kitchen and Dexter darted away after it, little toenails clicketing on the kitchen floor. He went to the ball and playfully knocked it around on the kitchen floor. But he didn’t bring it back, no matter how much Kendra called him.
She got up, went to the kitchen, snatched up the ball, then returned to the recliner. Dexter never took his eyes from the ball and followed her all the way. She threw the ball and Dexter shot off after it. Again, he did not bring it back, even though she called him.
Kendra occupied herself with this activity for about half an hour before suddenly, out of nowhere, Dexter picked up the ball and brought it back to her, dropped it in her lap, as if he’d known how to do it all along, but hadn’t wanted to.
“You little poop!” she said. “You been playin’ with me all along, huh?”
For another fifteen minutes, Kendra tossed the ball and Dexter brought it back. She was endlessly entertained by the way he ran, by the way he trotted back with the ball in his mouth, head held high. By the way his whole back-end waggled as he eagerly waited for her to throw the ball.
She threw it too hard and a little too far to the left. The ball bounced around in the kitchen sink. Dexter ran into the kitchen and stopped, body rigid, and looked around for the ball. It was nowhere to be seen, so he lowered his head and began to sniff around for it.
Kendra got up and took the ball from the sink, and dropped it. Dexter snapped at it as it bounced in the air a few times before coming lower, and lower, and lower, until Dexter finally caught it in his little mouth. Head high again, he trotted away.
Kendra leaned her hips back on the edge of the kitchen counter and thought about how lucky she was. Because she was real happy. She was starting to get some independence in her life. She’d been alone in the trailer for about ninety minutes – for the first time in her life. And she had a little doggy all her own, for the first time in her life. It was a day of first times.
But so far, Kendra had done nothing naughty, nothing to make her feel good, to somehow scratch her naughty itch. There had to be something she could do without getting caught – but with just enough risk of getting caught to make it exciting.