by Finian Blake
“How could I not be thrilled,” Tamar beamed. “I love the Samovar and the tea glasses, but the sewing room and all of the equipment, my god that is unbelievable. I could easily set up a shop with what is there. And Rhonda you said earlier that it is all mine, even the antique machine in the sitting room?”
“Yes, Cherry collects sewing machines and she thought that you might like it.”
“Boris said that you were leaving everything and we wanted to make up for your loss.”
“I didn’t have that much to leave behind.”
Cherry stroked Rhonda’s hand, “Rhonda we need another round of drinks would you help me?” She put a hand on Boris’s shoulder when he moved to stand. “Boris I am sure you would like to talk to your mother, Rhonda and I will get the drinks.” Rhonda and Cherry stood putting an arm around each other’s waist walking off with an exaggerated sway.
Tamar gave Boris a concerned look. “Boris I hate to tell you this, but I think that they…” Tamar held her palms together and rubbed them vigorously.
“Oh yes and much more,” Boris smiled absently as Rhonda and Cherry walked through the door being completely lost in the view.
“Boris they will hurt you!”
“Yes, but then they kiss and make it better.” Boris was lost in another world.
“Boris…!” Tamar hit him on the shoulder. Boris looked at the door way to see Rhonda and Cherry heading back to the table.
“Mama, I can’t decide do they look better from the front or back.”
“Boris, Rhonda looks better from the back, but I believe Cherry’s breasts must be fake.”
“Mama they are not only real they are functional.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember how you always scolded me when I didn’t drink my milk?” Boris smiled broadly. “Well now I love to drink my milk every day.” Cherry could see what they were both staring at with Tamar’s mouth slightly open. She handed Tamar her Martini and Boris his Kentucky whiskey.
“Boris you will have to wait until later for your milk.” Cherry looked at Tamar straight in the eye. “Yessss they are real. Boris has inspected them thoroughly and will attest to the fact.” Nadia saw what was going on and had the staff start the appetizers. When everyone was seated the rest of the evening was a success.
Maalik fell in to bed after setting the alarm and was just nodding off when the doorbell rang. He was shocked to find a policeman standing at the door.
“Is that your truck in the drive way?”
“Yes…”
“You cannot park a truck overnight with hazardous materials in a residential neighborhood.”
“There are no hazardous materials in the truck Officer. I just bought it and I have all of the paperwork. Please come in and I will get it for you.” The officer read the paperwork after which he called for instructions.
“Alright I am going to issue a warning ticket and come back in two days. If the vehicle is still here, you will be sited and your vehicle impounded.” The officer went out to his car and started the paper work. After twenty minutes he was back to the door.
“I should have issued a warning but if the vehicle is moved in two days it will not matter. We just don’t want the neighborhood to blow up.” Maalik was pissed off but since it was only a verbal warning he decided to be polite.
“Thank you officer, I will be sure and find a proper parking place tomorrow without fail.”
Maalik dialed Nabil’s phone cursing and kicking the wall when there was no answer. He next called Rajiya and Safiyyah answered.
“Maalik what can I do for you?”
“I need to find a garage that I can park a truck in for a few weeks.”
“Yes, Nabil said that you would need one. We found one near the docks it’s very large but it was the cheapest thing we could find. And the landlord said we could rent one stall but we would have to share space with whoever rented the rest of the building and I knew that would be unacceptable. You insist on handling all the money so we wasted the day calling you because we need first and last month’s rent. I swore that we would have it there by noon tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t Rajiya call me?”
“She did call you. Have you checked your voice mail?”
“My phone never rang.” Maalik suddenly remembered the long traffic jam. He snuck a quick look at the phone. There were seven missed calls two from Nabil, Four from Rajiya and one from Safiyyah. “I see the calls. Tomorrow I will meet you for coffee after I finish work. I will give you cash and you must pick up the truck, but do not let the landlord see the truck. It is marked for hazardous materials and he may change his mind if he sees it.”
Maalik change tracts. “Do you know what Nabil wanted?”
“He left a message with Rajiya. He said that Sera called and wanted to know if you were going to take her to dinner. Rajiya was pissed off until Nabil explained that your boss had asked you to show her around. Nabil asked her to meet them at the restaurant because it would be wrong for him to be alone with a Muslim woman. She has no family here so Rajiya would have to do.”
“She sounds like a woman of good breeding. I am sure that Rajiya will make a good chaperone. We will meet for coffee tomorrow.” Maalik broke the connection and made his way back to his bedroom he was just reaching for the door knob when his alarm rang. He let out a cry of rage throwing his cell phone at the pillow on the bed missing the pillow and striking the head board with a loud crack. Maalik let out another cry of rage. Khalid came running down the hall with a pistol in hand.
“Are we being attacked?”
Maalik took two deep breaths to compose himself. “No my friend I am tired and my aim is off. I have destroyed my phone. Get dressed and we will go to work. Through the night as Maalik started to doze off, he would picture Nabil running his hands over Sera’s perfect skin making him so mad that he would stay awake for another hour.
It was one o’clock in the morning and the apartment that Nadia and Ted were using was completely still. Cher slipped out of bed, getting dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black tee shirt. She walked into the living room and seeing Nadia’s purse she looked inside finding a large stack of bills. Cher pulled five bills off the top of the stack not looking at the denominations jamming them in her pocket. Cher walked the short block to the main drag and walked in the direction of the bus stop that she’d seen earlier. She walked just a block when she reached the stop. Cher ran her finger to the bottom of the schedule noting that the last bus ran at eleven PM and the first one was not until a quarter of six. She was committed now so she started to walk down the road. She had walked two miles when a car pulled up next to her. A man that was obviously drunk leaned his head out the window.
“Get in baby, my buddy and I will give you a real ride.”
“No thanks mister I was just walking.” Cher wanted nothing to do with these two drunks.
“Get in the car bitch. You can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Just then, a car raced up with its bright lights flashing and the other car sped off. Cher heard a woman’s voice that she instantly recognized as Nadia.
“Cher I think that you will be safer in the car.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Cher hung her head with her arms at her sides.
“Get what over with?”
“The beating…”
Cher heard Ted’s voice coming from the car. “We came to protect you. We have had you in sight for the last twenty minutes. If we wanted to catch you, we would have done it long ago. We wouldn’t have interfered had it not been for those creeps.” Nadia opened the back door and Cher climbed in. Nadia circled the trunk and climbed in the back seat. Ted remained silent throwing the car in gear.
“If you needed to do something all you had to do is tell us.”
“Would you take me to see my mother, if I asked you?”
“Yes but there is a better time.” Nadia protested.
“No there’s not,” Cher mumbled. “She is a crack whor
e and mom will just be getting home. The men have to be pretty drunk to take her.” Cher started to cry.
“I went out six weeks ago to steal some money so that she could have a fix and just kept going. Mom taught me how to pick pockets. That was six weeks ago. Last week Jimmy and his crew snatched me off of the street with my girlfriend. I just need to let her know that I am not coming back and give her some money that I boosted from your purse.” Cher reached in her pocket and handed the bills to Nadia. She was shocked to see that everyone was a hundred-dollar bill.
“I didn’t mean to take so much…”
Cher watched while Nadia straightened each bill finally folding all five bills neatly in half. Nadia extended her hand offering the money to Cher.
“Now you haven’t boosted a thing from me. I will give you the money. Tell Ted where to go and we will take you there. What you do will be your decision for the reasons that are yours.” Cher started giving Ted the directions and as they drove to the neighborhood, each block was more run down than the next. With the last turn the street looked almost like a war zone to Nadia and Ted. Most of the apartments had bars on the lower windows, there were stripped cars on the street and most of the doorways had been spray-painted with graffiti.
Ted finally pulled in front of a five story apartment building that looked like it should be scheduled for demolition.
“I have been in war zones that have looked better than this and the body count was probably lower there too.” Ted complained as Cher pointed out a five story apartment building that looked twice as good as any of the condemned buildings on the block. Nadia looked around and made the call.
“Ted you stay with the car and I will take Cher up to her apartment.”
“I don’t like the idea of you going in there alone with just Cher,” Ted sounded very unhappy.
“I want to be sure that we have a way out of here when I’m finished with her business,” Nadia said calmly, as she slipped the gun out of her purse. “Besides that, I think that you have the tougher job.” Cher led the way into the apartment building, moving to the stairs instead of the elevator.
“You don’t want to take the elevator even if it works. They can disable it at will and then you are really in trouble. Walt lives on the fourth floor with my mom and he has a really bad temper so don’t piss him off. He beats the shit out of mom all the time and he beats me regular too. Hang on to your purse because he snatches mom’s purse and my purse taking our money as soon as we get in the door. If we don’t have enough money, he beats us. Cher tried her key, but when the door opened it was stopped almost immediately with the security chain.
“Mom it’s me open up.” It took five minutes but eventually a man’s face with three days’ beard growth appeared in the crack of the door. When the door opened a hand reached out grabbing Cher by her T-shirt dragging her into the apartment.
“Where the hell have you been you little slut?” Walt lifted his right hand to strike her finding his arm being restrained. He saw Nadia over his shoulder.
“Let go or it will get ugly,” Walt growled, just before Nadia gave his arm a short twist landing him in a heap on a broken down couch. Before he could move Nadia placed her knee in his back pinning him to the couch.
“Blossom wants her mother.”
“The bitch went crazy when Blossom disappeared and ‘O.D.ed’ because she ran away. That little bitch killed her mother.” Nadia didn’t like that answer and pushed her knee further into Walt’s back.
“What really happened?”
“She had a bad load from her pusher, after two tokes she was fried, so I helped her take a few more to help her over the finish line. The coroner will hold her one more week and pop her in a pauper’s grave.” Nadia released Walt, moving to hold and comfort Cher. Walt jumped up off the couch pulling a six-foot length of extension cord out from between the cushions catching Nadia across the left thigh.
“Fucking stretched out bitch I am going to make you look like a Zebra.” Nadia caught his hand and with a slight twist landed Walt on the floor with the heel of her shoe on the back of his neck turning to Cher.
“Honey is there anything that you want from here?” Cher went to the bedroom, returning with a small stuffed pink rabbit. When Cher went to retrieve the rabbit Nadia tied the extension cord around Walt’s ankle.
“It was the last thing that mom gave me.”
“That’s nice dear,” Nadia kept her voice calm and soft. “Why don’t you go downstairs and I will meet you in the lobby.” Cher moved quickly out the door. Nadia opened her purse showing Walt an inch-thick stack of hundred dollar bills.
“Walt there is a thousand dollars in that stack, if you can take it from me, you can keep it all.”
When Ted saw the body flying out the fourth floor window he knew it was time to leave. He stopped the car in the middle of the street in front of the lobby doors so that he had a clear view of the building. He watched Cher as she walked into the lobby, stopping at the front door. About one minute later Nadia was standing behind her. She picked up Cher instructing her to close your eyes as she carried her down to the car stepping carefully around Walt’s body. Walt had made a one-point landing on his head, creating a frightful mess splattering blood all over the place. As Nadia had thrown Walt out the window she held onto the extension cord that was around his ankle causing him to point head down. She carefully placed Cherry in the back returning to Walt untying the extension cord from around his ankle after which she immediately jumped in the back with Cher.
“Drive Ted, I believe we over stayed our welcome.”
“What’s with the jumper?”
“He bet me that he could fly.”
“And…?”
“He couldn’t. The super is going to have a hell of a mess to clean up in the morning.” When they were three blocks away, Nadia disposed of the cord by throwing it out the window, knowing that it would never be found in the garbage heap that she was leaving.
They were half way home before Nadia spoke. “Cherry I will make arrangements for your mother. She will have a proper burial, in a proper grave, with a proper marker and you can do the right thing for her. She was your mother and you will be glad that you did it right.”
“Walt was right she was a crack whore.”
“Cherry whether she was right or wrong you need to do the right thing. I am proud of you. Ted and I are proud to have you as a daughter. My father was a general that sold me to three other generals who used me as a whore. Those three generals came to Chicago where one of them bought Cherry for some heroin. We rescued Cherry and ten others who were adopted by my parents and today they are very well off. Leave your past behind you and you will be surprised what can happen.”
“After what I did you still want me as a daughter?”
“Ted and I love you of course we want you as a daughter. You made one mistake and you will make more. We were hoping that you could accept us.” Cher was only thirteen, but she had a good idea of what happened in the apartment after she left, and the thought that stuck in her head was that Nadia had stood to protect her. She knew that Ted would do the same.
“Of course I will. I love you both.”
Felix had lost all sense of time because of the powerful drugs that the psychiatrist had prescribed. He had talked to no one and a vague notion persisted that he had to do something about his children. Felix felt a strong urge to go home. The nurse came in the room with a hypodermic needle and was about to finish the shot when her pager rang. Another patient was having a seizure and they needed help. She placed the needle on the tray and sprinted down the hall. He took the needle and injected the medicine into the mattress replacing it on the tray. The nurse returned twenty minutes later to find the syringe empty, she assumed that she had administered the shot. She checked Felix finding him flat on his back with his eyes closed, so she picked up the tray returning to her work station to finish her paperwork.
Felix opened his eyes and staggered to the closet finding that his clot
hes were there. He dressed quickly not finding his wallet and keys in his pants. After a second check of the room he found a locked drawer next to the bed. It took a while in his foggy state but he found a key pinned to his shirt pocket. He tried the key finding that it worked, locating both his wallet and keys in the drawer. Felix looked carefully down the hall spotting the nurse. The halls were bright with day light so he figured that it was day time. The nurse stood up and walked down the hall turning into another patient’s room. He stepped out of the room walking down the hall. He was almost past the room when the nurse hustled out of the room causing them both to jump back in surprise.
“I am leaving and there is nothing that you can do to stop me!”
“That’s right Mister Owens. You voluntarily checked yourself in. All you have to do is sign yourself out, but you need to wait until that shot wears off.”
“What…!”
“We explained all of that to you, when you checked in to the ward. If you were committed by the court it would be a different story. If you will just return to your room I will have the papers filled out. The shot should wear off in a few hours. You will be free to go once we clear the paperwork.” The Nurse turned into a room marked ‘medical staff only’ not bothering to escort Felix back to his room.
Felix suspecting that she was calling security staggered out of the ward following the signs to admissions. When he got to the admissions area, Felix found the lobby in only a minute. He waited until a cab pulled up to drop off a passenger and hopped in the back before the passenger could close the door.
“Take me to an ATM machine.”
“I ain’t moving unless you have some cash on you.” Felix took out his wallet and was relieved to see he had two twenty dollar bills in it. He held the money up to the driver.
“Let’s get going, see if you can find one near a metro stop.”
“Hey mister I’m sorry but I’ve been stiffed with that line before.”
“Just get me to a bank near a metro and all is forgiven.” The cabbie drove two blocks turning on to Wisconsin Avenue. Driving down a mile and a half he stopped in front of an ATM on the side of a bank.