What’s the Plan Then?

I was halfway through a cup of coffee and scrolling through CNN on my iPad when we heard a quick, scratching, metallic screech, followed by a dull thud.  Pup sat up, turned his head towards the neighbors’ house and growled, low and muffled from the base of his throat.

“I don’t know, Pup,” I said as I reached down to scratch him behind the ears. “Probably just Dale working on something.”  He looked back at me, his graying brows furrowed in deep rows to indicate he was not convinced. 

“Fine,” I said, “Let me check it out.”  I nuzzled the side of his ribs with my big toe. “You are turning into an old worry wart,” I teased.  He harrumphed and settled his muzzle between his front paws letting me know he’d wait right there for my report.

I stood and brushed the banana-bread crumbs off of my tee-shirt.  Not enough to catch Pup’s attention. I stepped over him and down the front steps. The dew on the shaggy grass cooled my bare feet. Another harrumph came from the porch when I lingered worrying over the browning hydrangeas. 

“Alright,” I said, “we should probably move them somewhere else is all.  I’m going, I’m going.”

I picked my way across the crumbling driveway careful to avoid sharper pavement pits and points and knocked on the end of the six-foot, weather-scraped, wooden stockade fence that separated the yards.  There was no gate.  It was a simple and silently aggressive barrier installed by a previous owner of our property to obscure any view of Dale’s.  Over the past twenty-five years, he watched our house change hands several times and couldn’t remember when the fence went up.

“Dale, you back there?”

No response. 

“Dale?”

“Down here!”

The shout came from the steps that led to his basement.  I walked gingerly through the grass and peered over the railing.  Dale was at the bottom of the stairwell wedged between the concrete wall and a tall, dust-caked, rust-covered water heater which he had somehow maneuvered by himself out the basement door.  His face was dirty and sweat beaded on the gray bristle of his closely shorn scalp.  He stood on his toes for a moment to flash a big smile up at me. His imperial nose with the bright gray-blue eyes and deeply creased, rectangular jaw would have provided a distinguished impression if not for the fading, orange khakis, droopy, white sweatshirt and humiliating circumstance. 

“I think I got myself in a bit of pickle,” he said, chuckling sheepishly.

“Dale,” I replied, laughing, “what the hell are you up to? You’re like a hundred fifty years old. You think maybe you could have arranged for some help?”

His face burned deep crimson and he looked away and down.  My stomach churned realizing I’d embarrassed him. 

“Seventy-seven, funny guy,” he replied, looking around like he was getting ready for his next move. “And, I’ll have you know, I’ve replaced this water heater three times on my own.”

I heard the screen door at the back of the house squeak open and slap closed.  Judy popped her head around the corner.  A giant pile of long gray locks was hastily pulled mostly into a scrunchy and sprouting from the top of her head like a patch of dune grass in the winter. She clutched the top of a fuzzy pink robe closed with one shaky hand and pointed down at Dale with the other, eyes wide behind lenses the size of tea saucers.  She shook her head and frowned. I gave her a wink and we exchanged a conspiratorial look. She mouthed a dramatic, stage-side “thank you.” 

“You can tell Judy I know she’s there,” he said, not looking up. Judy’s head disappeared right before the door squeaked again. “And, you should both know I called Henderson’s.  They are installing the new one tomorrow but they charge these days for taking the old one away.  Some crap about environmental disposal costs going up.”

I walked past the railing and sat down on the top step. 

“So, I’m guessing we are called now to risk life and limb to dodge this corporate injustice?” I said, unable to keep from smirking.

He looked around the water heater, one eye blinking away sweat, smiling like he knew he won an argument.  “It’s a voluntary mission, sailor.”  

I stood and gulped the rest of my coffee.  I stretched my back and tried to remember if I still had my chiropractor’s number handy.

“What’s the plan then?” I asked.

“Well, it is still evolving.” He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I’m open to any thoughts.”

“Gimme a minute,” I said. 

I jogged back to my place and fished my work boots out of the back of the hall closet.  I popped a treat into Pup’s mouth and headed over to the shed for a few old mooring lines I brought back from the boat last winter to keep them from mildewing.  Thirty minutes later, Dale and I had the water heater out of the basement stairs and rolled down the bottom of his driveway for the town to come pick up.  He sat on the grass and wiped the sweat from his scalp with one hand.

“Give me a place to stand and I will move the whole world,” Dale chuckled. “Or something like that, right?  Great idea those mooring lines.”  He smiled wide but his face was startlingly pale and his eyes dull.  He took a deep breath and flashed an involuntary grimace.

“Let’s get you something to drink,” I said, reaching out a hand to help him up.  He took it without looking at me. 

Judy brought us fresh-squeezed orange juice on their back porch. Pup sat between Dale’s feet enjoying scratches behind his ears. 

“Did you tell him its on for Monday?” she asked, dabbing at a fresh coffee stain on her robe. 

“He knows.” Dale said, picking at the flaking red lettering on his sweatshirt.  The “H” was almost entirely faded from the “Bar Harbor.”

“How many rounds are they planning?” I asked. 

He shrugged.  We had talked several times over the last month, at his prodding, about the upcoming chemotherapy. Initially, he insisted on hearing, from my experience a couple of years prior, “all the gruesome details,” as he put it. He’d catch me on the driveway or getting the mail or out walking Pup. He’d lean in and nod a lot and ask multi-part, follow-up questions, seeming to treat each discussion like a captain being briefed on the bridge by a junior officer. “Semper Paratus,” he’d say to signal he was satisfied for us to end any particular conversation, giving a nod to our shared Coast Guard histories. But, as the day of his first infusion grew closer, his appetite for information dried up.

“We saw the nurse practitioner yesterday,” Judy piped in. “She said three rounds and then they’ll scan again and decide how many more from there. What’s her name again, Dale? Glummer?”

“Gloomy,” Dale said, with a smirk and side glance at me. “Nurse Gloomy.”

“It is not,” Judy scolded.  “I think she is perfectly nice.  Helpful to me, anyway.  Answers all my questions. Very, very thorough.”

Dale sat quiet but simmered and scowled.

“I remember her. She can be very matter-of fact,” I said, in an effort to clear some middle ground and diffuse the tension.   

“That’s one way put it,” Dale grumbled and reached down further to scratch under Pup’s neck. 

We sat in silence for a few more minutes just listening to grackles squawk at each other in the dogwood at the corner of their yard. Judy stood up, sighed, leaned over and kissed Dale on the top of his head. 

“Going to the store, honey.  Text me if you think of anything special you want.”

Dale didn’t reply but he reached back and gave her hand a quick squeeze as she turned to go into the house. We sat for a few minutes more watching a pair of grackels take turns dive bombing a squirrel that was lurking around the arborvitae where they must have had a nest. 

“Little bastard is determined, gotta give him that,” Dale said and took a swallow of his juice.

“Hmm,” I replied, “but I think the good money is going with the grackels.”

He smiled and cleared his throat.  He looked over at me squinting like he was figuring out what he wanted to say.

“What?” I asked. 

It was unnerving to watch him choose his words carefully for me. No bullshitting each other was foundational to our friendship.  He’d interrupted me during one of our chemotherapy conversations weeks prior to thank me for not yet having offered him any platitudes. I told him I knew he didn’t want them or need them.   

“What is it?” I asked again. 

“You know what Nurse Gloomy said to me on my way out yesterday?” he asked, looking off into the yard.

Obviously, I had no idea but he paused for dramatic impact anyway. “She had that big patronizing smile on her face, you know the one I’m talking about.” He poked my arm as punctuation. “She said ‘there’s always reason to hope, Dale, there’s always reason to hope.’”

He shook his head and flung the remaining juice into the grass. He looked like he wanted to throw the glass too.  Pup’s ears perked up as he thought about going out after the ice cubes.

“Can you believe that?” Dale growled.

I shook my head also and waited to let him say more.  A few moments passed. 

“What’d you say?” I asked. 

 He jerked around in his chair. “I’ll tell you, and it’s a good thing Judy had gone to get the car, because I told that old Nurse Gloomy, I kid you not, quote unquote, I let her know that she can go ahead and fuck off.”

His glare challenged me to say something in defense of the well-meaning medical professional. I looked away and up into the sky. Several seconds passed before we both began to chuckle.  The chuckling grew into hearty laughter.  And then, the hearty laughter burst into deep, belly laughing.  The unrestrained kind of belly laughing that makes you close your eyes and rock back and forth, wheezing for air.  Pup had taken the opportunity to get to the ice cubes and sat in the grass crunching them.  We kept laughing and laughing and laughing until we had tears in our eyes.  After a little while, the laughing slowed and got quieter and stopped and then we just had tears in our eyes.

~ ~ ~

Sean Burke lives in Virginia with his husband and their grumpy little dog. When not writing, he works a day job to pay for a yard to grow raspberries and the slip fees on an old sailboat. Sean’s recent fiction has been published in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Backchannels Journal, Literally Stories, Fragmented Voices’ anthology, Heart/h, and is forthcoming in the Evening Street Review.

The Gospel Giant on Your AM Dial

I was twelve the year Daddy backslid into sin. In hindsight, he was depressed, self-medicating with bottles of Stoli he’d stashed in a tackle box with the trays and compartments removed. But nobody I knew ever used that word—depression. Certainly not the church members. We were Church of God, dyed in the wool Pentecostal holiness. Still so radical in the seventies, we considered Southern Baptists, Methodists, even the Assemblies of God, sellouts to modernity. Be in the world, we often heard from the pulpit, but not of the world.

Yet even as Daddy’s drinking, and eventually gambling, snowballed, I never heard Mama speak of leaving him. After he dropped the pretense of church attendance, she’d stand at Wednesday night prayer meeting and plead with the congregation to hold him up in prayer. Other nights, she only raised her hand and softly murmured, I have an unspoken. I sat a few pews back with two other boys my age. At the mention of Daddy’s name, I hung my head and examined my shoe, or opened my Bible and pretended to read until they’d moved on to another prayer request or testimony.

Things went on this way for months, until the Friday evening Mama accused him of pawning various items, including his guitar and amp, for gambling money. It was a black and white Gibson Les Paul that he played to accompany his special song offering—a rendition of Kris Kristofferson’s 1973 gospel hit, “Why Me Lord?,” but quieter, sparser, even more tortured than the original, inserting his own lyrics as the Spirit moved him.

For once, Daddy didn’t argue, or deny the charge. Only stood there on the kitchen linoleum in his work pants and boots from the shipyard, dried boat paint freckling his forearms and the backs of his hands. He closed his eyes and swayed, no doubt already buzzing. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger and stood that way a long moment. And then, without a word to either of us, he took the pickup keys from a cut glass candy bowl and walked out the door that led to the carport.

I’d planned to spend the night at my best friend, Scotty’s. His mom was taking us to Edgewater Mall to see the new movie everyone in sixth grade was talking about—Star Wars. Going to the movies was considered worldly, against church teachings, so I hadn’t mentioned that part to Mama. Instead, I’d secretly saved my lunch money to pay for the ticket.

But something had shifted. Maybe it was the way Daddy had eased, not slammed, the door shut on his way out. Or maybe his silence. There was a resignation in it, a bleak and awful I give up that made me the tiniest bit queasy. And then I wasn’t in the mood to go to Scotty’s, after all. Star Wars or no Star Wars, I could not bring myself to leave my mother. So when she went into their bedroom and closed the door behind her, I called Scotty and said I was sick and couldn’t make it. 

* * *

Half an hour later, she was making supper for the two of us as if nothing had happened. We sat down to eat as usual, each taking a Bible verse from the small, plastic, loaf-shaped container with the words “Bread of Life” printed on the side. I read mine first, a warning from Galatians about adultery, fornication, witchcraft, and so on. Hers was from Romans, the Apostle Paul’s assurance that nothing can separate us from God’s love. I said the blessing, and we ate, but Mama barely touched her food, only pushed string beans and potatoes around on her plate while the ice cubes softened in her tea.

We stayed up late that night watching Johnny Carson. But no popcorn was popped, no peanut brittle poured, cooled, and cracked with the back of a spoon. In the cruellest possible coincidence, Johnny’s first guest was Mark Hammill himself. Johnny said he’d just seen Star Wars the night before, and it was “really far out.” All the youngsters he knew were just raving about it. And Mark replied that he’d been to the White House the week before, and Amy Carter had seen it five times. As a reward, he’d given her a storm trooper helmet and made her promise to wear it every night at the dinner table. Johnny quipped that this was a good idea, because maybe she wouldn’t be able to see her Uncle Billy. Mark threw back his head and cackled, but neither of us laughed. We sat on the couch with Lucy between us, stroking her fur and thinking very different thoughts. We glanced up each time a car passed and headlights swept across the darkened living room paneling.

At some point, I went to bed and managed to drift off, then woke to the sound of groaning floorboards and water running in the tub. When I slept again, I dreamed I was trapped in Gayfer’s department store by revolving doors spinning the wrong way. Sometime before dawn, I thought I heard Daddy stumble in, but I was wrong. He never came home that night.

* * *

The next morning, I sat at the breakfast bar, snapping and unsnapping the clear plastic cap on a Tupperware salt shaker, just to have something to do with my hands. Mama stood at the sink with her back to me, looking out the window through curtains she’d made herself. They were white cotton with a cornflower blue print of Dutch boys and girls, tulips and windmills in the background.

“Mama,” I said. “It’s 10:30.”

“I know what time it is, Eli.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and stirred in a teaspoon of Cremora and a packet of Sweet’N Low Then she sat at the kitchen table and started calling around. First, it was the hospitals, then Micky, his shrimping buddy since Biloxi High. Next, she called his first cousin, Cal, and finally, my Uncle LeRoyal in Pascagoula. As she talked, she doodled his name, Larry, on the back of an envelope, going over and over it with pencil until the letters seemed to stare out of a deep cave, or a fat, black tornado.

But none of them had heard from Daddy for days. She hung up and stared into her coffee cup, and then, without looking up, told me to put my shoes on and use the bathroom. We were going to find my father.

* * *

So dive by raunchy little dive, we worked our way down Biloxi Beach, from Beauvoir to the Ocean Springs bridge. Nothing and no one could be as out of place as my holy roller mother marching into Kandy’s, the Hidey Hole, the Lucky Lounge, all five foot one of her in a blue jean skirt and flat, white tennis shoes. For once, her hair wasn’t piled high in its usual Pentecostal pouf, only tucked behind her ear. In her pocketbook, she carried the most recent picture of Daddy she could find—a framed 5x7 Sears family portrait. While I waited outside in the Pinto, she went in and showed the picture to bartenders, waitresses, even dancers. If the place was still closed, she banged the door with her fist or the flat of her hand until someone finally came. But time after time, she went in alone and came out alone with nothing to report, quick little humiliated steps back to the car with her head down.

At some point in the expedition, we called home on the pay phone between the old Rax Roast Beef and Krispy Kreme, on the off-chance he’d made it back. She let it ring many times, and when there was no answer, we went into Rax and sipped fountain drinks to cool off.

Since all the bars backed right up to the beach, we parked at the small craft harbor and slogged quite a ways through the hot sand. This was years before Mayor Blessey banned glass on the beach, and people were always slicing their feet open on broken bottles. So we kept our shoes on and walked until our calves burned. There were kids tossing beach balls and tourists bouncing along over the waves in rented Catamarans with striped sails. There was the van selling string bikinis and a dead dolphin swarming with flies. But there was no passed-out father in the sand.

And so we drove on, past the Eight Flags of Biloxi and the sign boasting of the longest man-made beach in the world. Just before the bridge, we made a sharp right turn into Jerry’s Jackpot.

It might have been the ugliest bar in the world. A squat, flat-roofed, cinder block building painted a hideous olive green, with a flashing red neon sign out front that read Fabulous Flo r Show. Black and white posters of puffy-haired women with large breasts and spray-painted nipples lined the front window.

“You can’t go in there,” I said.

But she did. And because I was tired of sitting, I got out and kicked a beer can around. There were eight or ten other cars in the lot, one of them an old Pontiac the red-orange color of mercurochrome, with a constellation of rust holes along the passenger side. The back window was rolled down halfway, and when I glanced over, I noticed a little girl lying in the back seat with her dress up around her waist and mosquito bites dotting her legs. Panting like a dog, she sat up and stared at me. Just then Mama came out of the Jackpot, and I called her over to the car.

“There’s a little girl in here.”

Mama talked to the child through the window, then reached in and unlocked the door. She told her to come on out and cool off, but the girl, whose name was Kim, only shook her head and frowned.

“Mama says if I get out, she’ll snatch me ball-headed.”

“Well then,” Mama said, and chewed her bottom lip a few seconds. “I reckon I’ll just have to go in and talk to your mama.”

She told me to wait with the girl. And in a minute or two, she was back out with a large tumbler of ice water. But not alone. A wild-eyed woman with a mop of peroxide blonde hair was on her heels. Bitch! Fuckin’ bitch! she screeched at Mama, who didn’t look back. Then the woman ran around and blocked her path. She snatched the tumbler from Mama’s hand and pitched the water onto the front of her blouse. The glass slipped from her hand and shattered, and a trickle of blood ran down Mama’s ankle and into her sock.

I had no idea what to do. “Hey! Hey!” I yelled, and charged at the woman, waving my arms over my head, the way people flag down help after a car crash.

“Eli, stop!” Mama said. “Get in the car.”

But there was no need. The woman looked suddenly alarmed. She glanced down at the glass, then up at me. Shit, she muttered, and ran a hand through her hair. Then she climbed into the Pontiac and took off, the tires slinging sand and loose gravel back at us. Through the back windshield, we could see Kim’s small and frightened face watching us. The muffler, held up with wire clothes hanger, hung low and swayed as they lurched through the potholes. Then they pulled out onto eastbound Beach Boulevard in a puff of exhaust, and Mama stepped carefully through the glittering shards. She took a Kleenex from her purse and dabbed at the cut. It was only a small knick, and she pulled out the glass and left a dime-sized piece of tissue stuck to the cut.

Until then, I’d felt no real anger at Daddy for what he was putting us through, but I was mad now.

“He’s a dickhead,” I heard myself say. “And I was supposed to see Star Wars.”

It was the first time I’d ever cursed in front of Mama. She didn’t reply at all, only made a drawn-out sound that was half-sigh and half-groan.

When we got into the Pinto, she gripped the steering wheel and squeezed, her knuckles knobby and white. And then, to my astonishment, she punched in the cigarette lighter. We never used the cigarette lighter. I don’t even know how I knew it was a cigarette lighter. She rummaged around in her purse and whipped out a pack of Marlboro Lights like it was nothing. When the lighter popped, she held the glowing orange ring to a cigarette and took a long, deep, squinting drag and blew the smoke expertly out the other side of her mouth. I knew she’d been a smoker, years and years ago, before she and Daddy joined the church, before I was even born. But smoking was strictly against Church of God teachings. I’d always been taught it was a sin. The shock of my mother lighting up made me forget all about the trashy woman and her little girl, even about Daddy. I could only sit in stunned silence, watching her smoke.

“You’re smoking,” I said.

“Yes, I am.”

“What now?” I asked, after a little while.

She took one last drag, then flung the still-smoking cigarette out the window and swiveled in her seat to face me.

“Eli, the Lord tells us in His Word, if we’ve got faith the size of a mustard seed, we can say to a mountain, Get up and move. She pinched her thumb and pointer finger together, as if they held the tiny seed. “Do you believe that, son? Are you ready to stand on the promises? Will you pray with me right now?”

Behind the bar was a vacant mud and shell lot, with broken glass and flapping, screaming gulls. And beyond it, the beach and the Mississippi Sound. The water was putty-colored, tipped with whitecaps that seemed to wink at me. Here one minute, gone the next. Out in the channel, the marker buoys rocked from side to side. Something in their motion seemed to mock us.

I was a closet skeptic, agnostic long before I learned the word. But I gripped her hand while she prayed for the Lord to hold Daddy in the palm of His hand and let no harm befall him. And let no harm befall the woman and her daughter.

And then we drove to the police station.

* * *

Officer Sabatini’s desk was topped with a thick layer of glass he kept tapping his pen on, blick blick blick. We’d have to wait until twenty-four hours had passed before we filed a missing persons report, he informed us right away. But he doubted it would even come to that. Daddy was probably just sleeping it off somewhere, or maybe even back home already, waiting with the biggest bunch of doghouse roses she’d ever seen in her life.

Not far from his desk, clustered around another desk, three officers were eating pink wafer sandwich cookies and laughing about some TV show. Mama shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, pressing hard, the way she did with a migraine.

“You’re not hearing me, sir. I’m afraid Larry’s got himself in some kind of gambling mess. Y’all know what goes on down there.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the beach.

To which the young officer replied that he’d been with Biloxi PD five years now and knew very well what went on down there. But we ought not to get ahead of ourselves. If we didn’t hear from Daddy by six on the dot, we were welcome to come on back. They’d do the paperwork and get the ball rolling.

Then he paused. His eyes darted to mine, then back to Mama.

“No disrespect or nothing, but could your husband be with a—.” He cleared his throat. “With a friend?”

Mama stared into her lap.

“No sir,” she said, in a small voice.

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

He nodded and glanced conspicuously at his watch and said he reckoned we were just about done here.

“But I know something’s wrong,” she suddenly flared up, her voice rising, desperate. “I wish you’d listen to me. Larry’s never done this before.”

He sighed and tapped his pen on the glass. Blick blick blick.

“Unfortunately, hon, there’s a first time for everything.”

At this grim truth, the three officers burst into laughter, much louder now. One of them was impersonating Fred Sanford in Sanford and Son, when the old man fakes a heart attack to avoid responsibility for some stupid thing he’s done. He lays one hand on his chest, staggers back, looks up towards heaven, and cries, Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to join you, honey! The female officer bent over and slapped her knee. It all felt disrespectful beyond words, considering our situation.

Mama stood up so fast she knocked over a Styrofoam cup of coffee with her elbow. It streamed all over the glass, and then Officer Sabatini was snatching up his paperwork, his stapler, his small framed photos. The female officer rushed over with a rag and began mopping up the spill, and he walked around the desk to face us. To my surprise, he didn’t seem angry, not even annoyed. He looked at Mama as if she were only a fussy toddler who’d missed her nap.

For the first time, he spoke directly to me. He clapped me hard on the shoulder and asked me to take care of my mother for him.

“Can you do that for me, big man?” he said, and winked.

I muttered something and turned away, ready to slink out obediently. But my mother had one more surprise in store for me. She did not turn away. Instead, she looked up at this man towering over her, shiny badge on his chest and fat revolver on his hip. Eyes flashing, she took a small step towards him. And in my memory, he took a small, improbable step back.

“Mister,” she said, “you don’t know your behind from a hole in the ground.”

And then we turned our backs and walked out, flung open the double doors and strode out of that station with our heads high. We did not look back.

But, as our luck would have it, the engine only made a tickticktickticktick when she turned the key in the ignition. The battery was dead.   

“Shoot,” she whispered, and closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. 

And so we had to humble ourselves and walk back in there and ask for a jump. We had to meet Officer Sabatini’s eyes and endure his tiny smirk.

 When the battery was fully charged and Officer Broussard unclamped the cables, we thanked him for his help and told him to have a nice day. And since there was nowhere else to look and nothing at all to do now but wait, we headed back home to D’Iberville.

* * *

We caught the drawbridge over Back Bay. The lights flashed, the bell clanged, and the red and white striped arm lowered in front of the bumper. The deep mechanical whirring began, and the center sections of the bridge rose until they pointed to the sky.

Mama switched on the radio to the only station it ever played. WOSM, “The Gospel Giant on Your AM Dial.” She took out a cigarette and lit it, then rested her arm out the window, tapping now and then with her pointer finger. The ash flurried out over the guard rail and the bay.

The DJ said this next song was a special request, and every time he heard it, he just wanted to get down on his prayer bones and thank the Lord for his tender, loving care. It was “Consider the Lilies,” a church song popular at the time. The lyrics were based on a passage from the book of Luke, when Jesus tells his disciples they don’t need to worry. Because the flowers don’t worry what to wear, do they? And the birds don’t worry about what to eat. And if our Heavenly Father cares for birds and insects, even grasses of the field, just imagine how much He cares for you and me. Therefore let your hearts be not burdened, and so on.

I wanted to tell her I thought she was brave. But somehow I knew I would never tell her, and then the moment was gone. The sailboat’s silver mast emerged on the south side of the bridge. The sections lowered and locked into place. The red and white arm rose, and then our tires were humming over the steel grid.

~ ~ ~

Amelia Franz was born and raised in Mississippi but now lives in the Baltimore area with her husband and three children. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Image Journal, Hippocampus, Eclectica, Peatsmoke Journal, Sledgehammer Lit, and other literary magazines. 

Win-Win

Roy misplaced his car phone charger on the LA sales trip, and, after several wrong turns, lost confidence in his ability to navigate the labyrinth of LA freeways he thought he knew by heart. He dashed into a Rite Aid in Pasadena to replace the charger before the navigation app sucked his phone battery dry. A young woman with confetti-colored hair at a register pointed him to the correct aisle. “Don’t waste your money on the store brand,” she said. “It’s a piece a crap.”

“Thanks for your honesty.” He twirled his keys, noting the luminance of her eyes.

“Always.” She smiled with jaguar canines.

Unconventionally attractive. A little dangerous, like Monica, wife two. Maybe half his age, but he craved the spark of human contact before doing battle with a tough client. Loneliness rode shotgun these days. He was sick of feeling like a post-asteroid dinosaur.

“I’m not used to this heat,” he said at checkout, anticipating she might register the implication that she was hot without crossing some sort of line established when flirting became a war crime.

“This isn’t the real heat.” She scanned the charger with a gun spitting red laser stripes. “That’s later.”

Did she mean August, or ‘later’ later? Ambiguous inflection left it open to interpretation.  He recalled the awkward HR conversation about “inappropriate humor,” everything taken out of context. When did things get so complicated? Better to play it safe. Insert credit card into pencil gray machine. Payment accepted. Remove card.

The receipt printer jammed. “I hate this fucking thing.” She assaulted the tape with a jumbo paperclip kept at the ready.

He didn’t need the receipt. Her spunk—was that word even okay anymore?—inspired reconsideration. He prided himself on the ability to finesse the mood with improvisational charm. Regaining her attention would be a good warmup for the sales call ahead, which needed to go well. You can’t win if you don’t play. He who hesitates is roadkill. Her name tag said “Verbal.” Quirky, but somehow familiar.

“Well, Verbal. I’m from Portland.” Because Portland was cool, though he didn’t live in the actual city with the randos, strip clubs and anarchists. “It rains there. Actual water falling from the sky, if you know what I mean?” Southern California was all about the drought, the tang of smoke from the fires smoldering behind blurred mountains to the north, like living inside a toaster oven.

“Hard to believe.” She extended the tattered receipt with another feral smile.

A token of exchange. An opportunity?

A top-hatted tattoo peeked over the puckered collars of her T-shirt and store vest and he wondered what the rest of it looked like—how could he not? He accepted the receipt, fidgeting his lucky keys into a position on the counter where she could see the BMW logo on the fob. Prosperity still mattered in matters of attraction, didn’t it? He turned on his most charming smile. “A little heat once in a while is a wonderful thing. Know what I mean?”

He heard the sour note as it left his mouth. Forced, bordering on desperate. Out of practice.

“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. Leveled her gaze over his shoulder to the old lady in line behind. “I know what you mean.”

He hesitated at the counter, resisting defeat. Didn’t he deserve another chance?

“Anything else, sir?” Slushy cold.

“No. But thanks for your help. Really.” Transaction complete, game over. Hit the road before the stink of self pity filled the space. “Watch out for those wildfires, Verbal.” Use the name because everyone loves the sound of their own name. A fig leaf to cover his retreat.

“Stay out of the rain and try not to rust, Portland.” Her eyes, set far apart, widened to show the whites above the irises, dialed to a voltage that locked his attention. “Know what I mean?”

Mocking him? Engaging after all? “You bet.” He nearly toppled the old lady on the way to the automatic doors, fishing for the rental car keys in his pocket.

He almost sliced a finger ripping the new charger out of the bubble pack. The neutral female voice of the navigation app guided him onto the wrong exit, then down an arterial with endless stoplights, making him late to the appointment. Distraction sapped his confidence during the presentation, wondering if Verbal was messing with him. The best he could extract from the client was a promise to honor their long relationship and consider the intangibles before making a final decision. Maybe placing an order on the website, which meant no commission. Another lost cause.

* * *

He spent the evening wallowing in dejection and bourbon at the bar in a second rate hotel in Anaheim. Emptying his pockets in the room, he realized his home keys—carried for luck instead of tucked inside his carryon—were missing. A rookie mistake. Where had he last seen them? On the counter at the Rite Aid way out in Pasadena. Dummy. Serves you right.

He called the next morning before the first appointment in a day that led south almost to San Diego and back to a late flight out of LAX. Verbal answered. “Sure, I remember. Portland wildfire dude. Give me your deets in case they turn up.”

She sounded upbeat. No hint of auditory eye roll. Glad to hear from him? He indulged a fantasy of the keys surfacing in a few days and her making a call. Grabbing a cheap flight out of PDX to retrieve them, demonstrating disposable income and gratitude with dinner at an impressive Malibu restaurant. And then? An age gap, sure, but he was Portland Wildfire Dude.

He gave her his “deets.” The next move belonged to fate, which rarely graced him with favor these days. The fantasy helped soothe the sting of a disastrous trip. He did not expect to see his keys, or Verbal, ever again.

* * *

Three days later, he awoke at 2:27 AM to the sound of rummaging inside the house. He grabbed his phone and crept downstairs, wondering why the security alarm hadn’t tripped. The front door stood open, BMW in the driveway, doors wide, trunk popped and full of stuff. His stuff. His big screen TV, stereo components and golf clubs lined the foyer.

He fumbled to unlock his phone to dial 911 in the dim light, fear erasing his PIN from memory. A figure exited the living room carrying his ridiculously expensive Scandinavian turntable with LPs stacked on top of the cover. The Hank Mobley first pressings slid in their protective sleeves, a slow-moving avalanche.  “Careful.” He extended his hands to catch them. “Those are collectables.”

The figure swerved before collision, the records accordioning back into a stable column. “Hey, Portland.” Verbal stood illuminated by the driveway spots through the door. “Or should I say Beaverton? Don’t make me use this.” The dead eyes of a Dia de los Muertos top-hatted skull peeked over the collar of her black T-shirt as she hunched sideways to display the stun gun pointed at him from beneath the turntable.

He was startled, but relieved, maybe because she was familiar and holding a weapon that might hurt, but not kill him—unless his doctor’s over-cautious arm waving suddenly caught up. Knowing what made people tick was his profession and she was too smart to resort to violence. He could talk his way out of this.

“So you’re a Hank Mobley fan?” He pointed to the records he’d overpaid for to impress a financially strapped collector that his babies were going to a good home. Roy didn’t enjoy listening to jazz that much, but appreciated the idea of mastery, especially if it involved investment upside.

“Is anybody a Hank Mobley fan? Never heard of the dude, but the collector’s site on my phone says he’s worth bank. You got a lot of expensive shit in this place. Lucky you.”

“Skill, not luck.” Some regarded sales as soul sucking, but it had its rewards. True that those who stumbled into tech sales at the right time were dumb lucky, retiring early to their McMansions, yachts and personal foundations. He considered himself comparatively undercompensated. “I work hard.”

“At being a bloodsucker,” she said. “I bet I work harder than you.”

Arguing was counterproductive. Positive dialog created headroom for negotiation. “You’re clearly smart.” Only two kinds of people susceptible to flattery: adults and children. “How did you get past the security system?”

“You mean the numbers Sharpied on the gym tag on your keyring?” 

“Well don’t I feel stupid?” He’d never claimed to be a rocket scientist, his field of expertise more art than science. Ceding the point made her more likely to give something in exchange. And to underestimate him. “But have you really thought this through? How many Verbals work at Rite Aid?”

“Zero. Never seen The Usual Suspects?”

She flashed the canines, maybe less of a smile than he assumed, and it hit him: Verbal was the wimpy guy who turned out to be the mastermind hiding in plain sight behind a smokescreen of stories. Roy had dubbed himself Keyser Söze a few times when he landed big  deals. Back in the days when he landed big deals. A common point of reference-built rapport. “Great movie. Kevin Spacey won Best Actor for that.”

“Supporting Actor, before he got caught molesting underage boys. Let’s just say that Rite Aid’s personnel records contain some fictional content to safeguard my privacy.”

“Impressive.” She reminded him of Monica, wife two, always super prepared. He didn’t know she’d discovered his dalliance with the buyer in Seattle until she left on a sales trip and the divorce papers arrived the same day. The next time he saw her was in court when she took half his stuff. The fling, in all fairness, couldn’t have been a surprise—he and Monica had been colleagues with benefits while they were both married to non-sales “civilians.” It was usually best to get expectations out on the table. “So what do you see happening from here?”

“I see you handing over your phone.” She cradled the turntable and records in one arm, the stun gun steady underneath, no doubt with skills acquired from stocking shelves at Rite Aid. As she extended her free hand, the puckered T-shirt revealed the sutured mouth of a top-hatted skull tucked under her clavicle.

He wanted to tell her that the ink spoiled her innocence, but didn’t see that going well. Might as well grab for the brass ring, throw her off balance, and who knew? “Look, I’ve got a better idea.” He handed the phone over in slow motion. “Move in here with me. Call it fate, but I think we’d be incredible together.” Like any good lie, this contained a hard kernel of truth. “I admire your moxie.”

“‘Moxie?” A derisive laugh. “Is that from the talkies? What are you, like sixty?”

“Ouch.” That stung, but he mirrored her laughter, projecting a comic version of wounded pride. “Forty-eight.” The age selected for his profiles in the hellscape of online dating. Actually fifty-three, but he’d been told he didn’t look his age—possibly by liars. “Haven’t you heard? Fifty is the new thirty.”

“Christ. My mom was your age.” She set down the turntable and records with a dancer’s grace, as if they’d become heavy. “She died cleaning a big house like this. Brain aneurysm they said, but it was those chemicals that did it. And working three jobs. That’s why I have to help my little sisters. Minimum wage sucks. You have no idea.”

“Actually, I do.” He cast sad puppy eyes to convey empathy. “My dad died young.” He left off that his mother made a good living in real estate, now a resident of Palm Springs where she golfed every day. He’d gotten his start in sales through her contacts. “I know what it’s like to work your way up from nothing. Maybe I can help?”

“You certainly can. Here are your donation options. One, I tie you up and make a call in a few hours so you don’t die of dehydration or a blood clot in the brain or something.”

“Does that come with a tote bag?” Disappointing, but negotiations were a dance he knew well, and opening offers were always crap. “I don’t like that option.”

“Okay. Option two. You go back upstairs and pretend we never had this conversation. Tomorrow you discover your stuff missing and phone it in. You get social justice karma by transferring a tiny bit of insurance company extortion money to the working poor, plus you get to shop for upgraded electronics and something better than Hank Mobley. It’s a win-win.”

How to explain that rarity determined the value of a collectible recording, not fame, and stuff wasn’t the point? He was a professional. Against a civilian, a win-win counted the same as a loss. “Here’s my counter. Leave my things and I won’t call the cops. You have no leverage.”

She wagged the stun gun. “And how do you figure?”

“I had a heart attack two years ago.” He tapped his chest to underscore the threat of sudden death. “I try to be good about exercise and booze and diet, but my profession requires entertaining and late nights that are not conducive to a healthy lifestyle.” A pat on the belly, which seemed particularly large in the shrunken T-shirt. Visual aids helped. He’d had “an event,” not an actual heart attack, but close enough. “You might say that I’m literally working myself to death. Like your mom.”

She chewed her lip. “Well that sucks.”

“Yeah.” He wanted to tell her that she had so much potential if she learned how to temper her natural charisma with some subtlety, fixed those teeth and wore some decent clothes that covered the ink. He could be a mentor, strictly platonic if necessary. He smiled to show what was possible with an investment in veneers. “The thing is, none of this stuff is worth a murder rap. Know what I mean?” He almost felt sorry for her.

“Yeah.” The stun gun dropped to her side. “This is messed up. It’s just that your whole deal reminds me so much of my—”

“Father?”

She sighed under the weight of the world.

Bingo. Game over. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

“He was a bullshitting horndog too. Do you have any idea how often dudes hit on me?”

“No.” At this point in the transaction he could afford to be honest. It seemed fair.

“Of course not. It never ends. Last week I was reaching over the counter to give this old goat with an ostomy bag hanging off his wheelchair his receipt. He actually backed up to make me lean farther so he could get a better view. I decided I’d had enough. Then you left your keys on the counter and I asked myself: what would Keyser Söze do?”

“I was just flirting,” he said, reassessing his position. “I was at a low point.”

“Fuck your low point. That shit about my mom? I made that up. And those options?” Her eyes flashed the whites above the irises. “I was just flirting.”

The electrical jolt convulsed his nervous system in definitive waves of pain. The slate floor in the foyer was so hard.

Verbal began packing the car, pausing before stepping over him with the big screen in her arms. “Gotta hand it to you, that’s an Oscar caliber performance.” 

A truckload of pain bore down on his chest, barely sustaining breath. Susan, wife one, found Monica’s panties in his carry-on upon his return from the “sales trip” in Napa and walked out the front door with only two suitcases. “How can I stay married to you if I can’t trust you?” she said. So naive he almost laughed. She didn’t argue over the property settlement because she didn’t want his stuff. Which was vaguely insulting.

The golf clubs stuck out of the back window, refusing to fit. Verbal dumped them on the driveway, a cosmic death rattle. “I know how attached you old farts are to golf. Call it a consolation prize.”

He struggled to not disappear below the surface of the slate floor, remembering dad, who died of a heart attack in his study listening to his beloved jazz LPs, a cigarette in his mouth and a sweaty glass of bourbon on the desk, even though the doctor had told him what to expect if he kept doing that.

“You’re really selling this dude.” Golf clap. “I mean, bravo.”

Each shallow breath became a whisk dragged lightly across a cymbal. He thought of his mother, moving to California without so much as consulting him. How she never had time for his calls and seemed to think that he hadn’t earned his success. Such as it was.

“Crap.” Verbal took his phone out of her pocket, held it to his face to unlock it, then dialed 9-1-1. “This guy’s having a heart attack,” she said in a husky low voice. “You better send an ambulance fast or he’s going to die and that’s on you.” She wiped off her fingerprints with a wet wipe, laid the phone on his chest and scooped up the turntable and records.

“Bye, Beaverton. Enjoy the rain.” She left the front door wide open and drove off in his car. 

* * *

The next day, someone in a blazer and slacks knocked on the jamb of his hospital room door. Short dark hair. Attractive. Badge. “Sir? Detective Swanson. Beaverton PD. Is now a good time?”

“Sure,” Roy said from the bed.

She pulled the guest chair across the floor and perched a tablet computer on her knees, hunching to type on the glass. Her scoop-front blouse puckered forward.

Roy fixed his gaze out the window at a crow making a ruckus in a tree on the street. 

“I have the initial report right here. Looks like they got some rare jazz LPs? We might catch them trying to unload them if we act fast. It says you ran into your assailant and they zapped you. Did you get a look?”

Eyes set wide, predatory canines, confetti-colored hair. A top-hatted death’s head tattoo with the mouth sewn shut, maybe still driving his car. A ton of potential, but if she was really that smart she would have driven away while she was ahead.

She’d left the clubs, balanced to a precision that made no difference in his game. Ridiculously expensive. Possibly more than he deserved. A win-win. He selected option two. “No, Detective Anderson,” he said with sad puppy eyes, careful not to look down. “It was too dark. My back was turned. He zapped me right away.”

~ ~ ~

Robert P. Kaye’s stories have appeared in New Letters, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, SmokeLong Quarterly, Gulf Stream, Penn Review and elsewhere, with details at www.RobertPKaye.com. He is an editor at Pacifica Literary Review.