Iris took out her cell phone and hit the note app with her thumb. It allowed her son time to munch into her half-eaten burger.
As Sammy chewed on the flame-grilled beef, he couldn’t help but acknowledge that his mother behaved strangely again, today. Lost in a typhoon of her own thoughts, she was less doting than usual.
“Mom?”
“Uh-huh?” she spat with undue attention.
“Mom.”
She looked up from her phone, acting as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. “Uh, yeah?”
“You’re weird.”
Iris burst out laughing, and covered her mouth when she realized she’d caught the neighboring booth’s attention.
“I’m weird?”
Sammy swallowed and grabbed his milkshake. “Yeah.”
“Well, they say it skips a generation,” she muttered with sarcasm. “I’m weird, huh?”
“Yeah. You haven’t told me off, or shouted at me.”
“No. You’re right. I haven’t,” she smiled. “Does that make me weird?”
“You sent me to my room for calling Dad an asshole last week.”
Iris snorted and stood her ground. “Yeah, that was a bit of an asshole thing to have done. You deserved that.”
“But I punch Daniel Kelly in the face and you take me here?”
Iris had no choice but to accept her son’s correct assessment of the situation. Sure, it was something of a controversial move, and completely at odds with how she’d normally react.
Busted, she nodded, and returned to her phone. “Uh-huh.”
“That is weird.”
“Would you rather I ground your little ass and take away your WiFi privileges instead, young man?
Iris felt her thinly-veiled threat might do the trick, and she was right. Sammy launched into a childlike protest that hinted at the lies to come when he grew older.
“No, no, no,” he snapped, wishing he could take back what he’d said. “No. I like this. I should punch more kids.”
That last statement was enough to tear Iris away from her phone. “Hey, Sammy. Don’t say that. I mean it.”
“Only kidding, mom.”
Iris lowered her phone and sighed. There he was, young Samuel Goddard, turning into an adolescent before her very eyes. It wasn’t that long ago he was in diapers and complaining about a lack of breast milk. Time moved so damn fast, these days.
“Mrs. Tan showed me the pictures you drew during art hour this morning.”
“So?”
Iris needed confirmation, and played up the friendly mom act as best she could. “Trucks and angels and stuff? You wanna tell me what they were about?”
Sammy munched on his burger and shook his head. “I dunno. It’s just what I felt like drawing. I don’t like Mrs. Tan, anyhow. She has weird, long sideways eyes.”
“Sammy—”
“—And a flat nose.”
“That’s what makes life interesting, sweetheart,” Iris said with a hint of sympathy. “We’re all different. Like your father and me. The world would be a boring place if we were all the same, wouldn’t it?”
The young boy heard what his mother had said, but his face suggested he didn’t agree.
“I guess.”
“And speaking of stupid white boys, what did Daniel Kelly do to deserve a punch in the face?”
Sammy gulped his food down, hard. He didn’t know Mrs. Tan had ratted on him, and wondered how bad the punishment would be.
“Sammy?”
“What?”
“Why did you punch the white kid?”
“He called me a returd.”
Iris frowned with confusion. “Huh? What’s a—”
“—and he called me a nigger.”
Iris pressed her index finger to her mouth in an instant, and blinked at the occupants in the next booth who, it seemed, had heard everything.
“Sammy,” she hushed. “We don’t say that word.”
“Sorry, mom.”
“I never wanna hear you say that word ever again. Do you understand?”
He nodded solemnly and looked at his empty milkshake container. “I’m sorry.”
She felt the need to change the subject with a knowing grin. “You hit that Kelly kid good, didn’t you?”
Sammy took his mother’s smile as permission to join in. Damn it, his mom was one cool customer. He couldn’t help but grin back at her.
“Yeah.”
“Good boy.”
“I punched him in his stupid, white face.”
Iris chuckled and rubbed his head. “My big, strong man. How did it feel?”
“Awesome.”
To the other customers within earshot of the conversation, the congratulatory spirit between mother and son sounded very strange indeed…
Chapter 7
Lost in a world of her own, Iris made her way through the night, and past the newly-opened nightclub.
The owners thought they were being clever when they elected to call it The Place With No Name. It opened three months ago, and quickly developed a reputation as one of the seedier magnets for playboys and those looking to score a variety of things; partners, narcotics, and probably nuclear weapons if they attended at the right time and had the right connections.
The place used to be called Panzer Tank, which had an even worse reputation, if that was even possible.
Iris knew the front of the place well, having driven past it every day when she took her son to school. Gray and lifeless during the day, The Place With No Name came alive when the sun fell.
Bright pink and purple neon strips lined the double doors, illuminating the shoulders of the burly bouncers standing beneath.
The line ropes kettled the excited partygoers a few feet from the women of the night. A half dozen of them offered their wares to the more discerning male clientele Chrome Valley attracted on a warm Saturday night.
Iris’s walking was such that she seemed to glide past the line of pent-up teenagers and twenty-somethings, ignoring their incessant catcalls.
“Hey, sexy,” was one such exclamation from a guy who surely wasn’t of age for such an establishment.
She ignored him and continued to walk.
Just then, as she drifted past a trio of teenage girls wearing next to nothing, a pair of headlamps appeared to flash in her face.
Blink. Blink.
It was the first time Iris closed her eyes, even for a moment. The lights from the car bounced across the window pane from a storefront.
It seemed to come from behind.
Before she could turn around to see the source of the light, the thumps of a repetitive beat shook the ground, accompanied by the roar of a venomous engine.
A neon pink light flooded the entire road.
The mighty car made no hesitation in introducing itself, catching everyone’s attention.
A jet-black, four-seater Bugatti Prism rolled at a snail’s pace, blaring its angry music.
Those in line turned their attention away from the bouncers and watched in astonishment as the vision of unfiltered wealth and craftsmanship drove past with its windows open.
Boom-boom-boom.
The beat from the music crashed against the ground so hard that most watching it felt their hearts palpitate.
The windows were tinted.
Nobody could see inside.
It was as if the Bugatti and its occupiers were scoping the nightclub venue, before satisfying itself that nothing was of interest.
“A four-seater Bugatti prism. Man, check that car out,” came a voice from the line, forcing Iris to look at who’d said it.
Too many ugly bastards to choose from.
Of more interest to Iris was the gray Ford car driving in the opposite direction.
The Bugatti blared its horn at the gray car as they drifted past one another, reaffirming just how much richer it was. The horn wasn’t your typical beep, though. Instead, it threw a chirpy, almost sarcastic rendition of the William Tell Overture, as
played on a piccolo.
The hookers at once praised the Bugatti, then aimed their disgust at the Ford.
None of them showed any interest as the tires scraped at the edge of the sidewalk. The driver’s window rolled down to a chorus of ignorant and uninterested women.
“No, babe,” one of them said. “Go someplace else.”
Iris had seen enough, but caught the light from the Ford’s headlamps bounce up her left arm.
Seconds later, it caught up to Iris just as she approached the main ramp to the freeway - far away from the commotion of Chrome Valley’s City Center.
Beep.
The application of pressure on the car horn was timid, at best - as if the driver who’d pressed it was very unsure of his actions.
Iris knew it was a “he”. Being a driver herself, she knew that a woman scorned behind the wheel wouldn’t have hesitated at a full-throttled attempt to allay her road rage.
Plus, this was the same driver who attempted to solicit the services of a streetwalker - and failed.
Bip-Beep.
A stronger, and more conscious attempt to catch Iris’s attention blared from the car.
That irrepressible sound from the car’s engine creeping behind her ever-so-slowly.
Eventually, the Ford rolled alongside her as she walked. A threatening voice whirled out from behind the door’s half-open window.
“Hey, you.”
Iris kept her face forward and continued to walk as if the intrusion hadn’t occurred.
BEEP.
“Hey,” the voice roared from within. “Don’t ignore me.”
His request fell on deaf ears; deaf, perfectly formed ears without earrings, unlike her sister’s.
“I’m talking to you. I know you can hear me.”
True, Iris could hear him but she pretended she didn’t, so focused was she on getting to her destination, nothing could stand in her way.
The male voice soured, “I said I’m talking to you.”
Her total ignorance angered the driver enough to make him roar the engine.
“Stop,” he said.
Much to his surprise, that one single word worked. Iris stopped dead in her tracks and exhaled. The Ford mimicked her speed alongside her.
“How much?”
Her entire body rotated forty-five degrees to the open window, just in time for her to see a sour, white face move from out of the darkened interior.
She blinked as she scanned the man’s face.
“You’re very pretty. Out here, all alone at night? You clocking off?”
Iris didn’t speak. Instead, she produced a light snoring sound from her throat as she slowed her breathing.
“Prizm?” the driver asked. “Shit, I’m not putting my dick inside a junkie.”
Iris held her arms out in front of her like a twisted Frankenstein and approached the window.
She gripped the door in both hands and relaxed her shoulders, offering the driver a view of her curvaceous body quite by accident. Her nightgown ran down her hips and fluttered under her thighs in the breeze.
“Mmm, maybe I can be persuaded to change my mind,” he said. “It’s been a while since I had dark meat.”
Iris could have smiled, or given a reaction, but it was beyond her.
The driver’s face suggested a sad, world-weariness; a lifetime of experience, and whose membership of the 18-30 circuit would have expired at least thirty years ago.
The butterfly tattoo on her left wrist caught his gaze.
“Huh. That’s a nice tattoo you got, there. Butterfly?”
It was almost as if she nodded. In the driver’s mind she had done as much, but in reality, her face took the form of a dead lump of rock.
“My name’s Lester,” he said as he wiped his lip. “What’s your name?”
Iris didn’t answer. She continued to snore, much to his surprise.
“Ah, you know what? It doesn’t matter,” he chirped. “My apartment is right around the corner. We’ll figure it out there.”
She wouldn’t budge, though. Lester eyed her face once again and felt the patience inside his gut seep out from his wrinkled skin.
“Goddamn it, get in the car.”
An instruction.
Lester, the fast-learner, gave the order again as she walked past the hood of the car. “I said get in the car.”
Clunk.
Iris opened the passenger side and climbed in. She pulled the door shut and relaxed every muscle in her body as the Ford pulled away, taking her off course from wherever she was headed.
***
Lester opened the door to his apartment and threw his keys on the side table.
“Come in.”
The simple instruction worked.
Iris walked in and blinked as she took in the view.
A one-room apartment with a built-in kitchen to the left, and what counted as a living room to the right.
The nightlife buzzed through the window, before she clocked the sight of an amazing mess all over the floor.
Piles of unwashed clothes.
The wallpaper appeared to have peeled apart in a soggy, oatmeal-esque mess from the collected damp.
The place stank of tuna and sixteen-year-old septic tank water. It might have been enough to make anyone choke if they were awake.
“It isn’t much, but it’s home,” Lester said as he made his way into his studio apartment. “You can take a seat on the couch. That’s where we’ll fuck. Do you want a drink?”
Iris moved into the apartment and stood perfectly still. The fabric on the yellow couch had softened. Perhaps a patch of liquid had faded the color. It was clear where Lester spent most of his time sitting, judging by the buttock-shaped crater buried in the right-hand cushion.
The antiquated television set hung in the corner directly opposite the couch.
“What? You wanna watch TV while I get undressed?”
Ignoring his offer, she stepped forward to the little oak table right by the couch.
A picture of a much younger Lester hugging a woman and a young girl at the beach.
Happier times?
The little girl’s smile above the neck of her green pullover had an infectious elegance to it. If Iris tilted her head, she could just about make out that the picture was alive.
The crashing of waves promised from behind the three individual’s heads.
It was all in her mind, though, and she knew it. Or, at least, she sort of knew it.
Noticing a strange crease on the right-hand side of the picture, she slipped it out of the frame. The photo had been folded.
When she opened it out, she realized why.
An attempt had been made to shut out a fourth person; a chubby black teenager.
Iris focused on the lad’s face. His double chin hung to his chest, and his large frame seemed at odds with what was surely the rest of his slender family.
She pinned the image of the boy back and pushed the photo back into the frame, hoping nobody had seen her blatant act of intrusion.
When she turned to Lester, she found that he’d gone. His whereabouts were confirmed when the sound of a flush came from behind the closed door of the room to the right.
The bathroom.
She didn’t dare go near it.
Stranded, ironically of her own will, she stood in the apartment like a statue and waited for the strange man to return.
The bathroom door opened. Lester walked out in his underwear. His hairy legs matched the ugliness of his bulging stomach.
He stopped to consider his next move when he caught Iris looking at the picture on the table.
“Oh. You like that, do you?”
Iris couldn’t tell if the picture of the woman and young girl had faded. The composition was somewhat off, as if it had been taken by a drunk. The quality, right down to the faded colors, suggested it had been taken years ago.
Lester strode past her and pressed the photo face down.
“Don’t worry about them. Come,
sit next to me.”
He planted his backside on the couch and patted the space next to him.
“Sit your ass down, Butterfly.”
Iris duly obliged him and took her seat, back straight, arms next to her hips, and sank into the battered springs next to him.
Creak.
Lester slapped the back of the couch and chuckled. “Yeah, this beauty needs replacing sometime soon. Seen a lot of action, this one.”
Iris kept her chin up and ignored him and he used the opportunity to slide his arm around her neck.
He moved his face to the side of hers and pressed his lips together, taking in her scent.
“Mmm. You smell like candy.”
Iris’s throat shuffled, indicating a light swallow of concern. Her right eyelid fluttered like a pair of wings as his fingers ran through her hair.
“I miss them, you know,” Lester whispered in her ear.
Buried deep inside Iris’s soul she knew what he’d meant, and what he wanted, but felt trapped inside her own body.
Lester grabbed her wrist and moved her fingers to his crotch.
“Touch me here.”
Her eyes swung to the right and saw her wrist move in his hand. The tip of his tongue extended and caught her earlobe.
“Uhm,” she whined, having nearly spoken for the first time.
“Yeah. Just like that.”
Iris looked dead ahead, unflinching, allowing the strange man to drop her hand to his crotch. Every gentle kiss felt like heaven to Lester, and sheer hell for Iris. His fingertips ran over the bright contours of the butterfly tattoo.
“Do you like me?” he whispered in her ear, couching his thumb in the palm of her hand.
No response.
“Hey, what’s that?”
Lester noticed a peculiar string of black text on her brown skin that read 706 T3.
“What is this?” he joked. “Are you some kinda cyborg?”
Iris shut her eyes and breathed in through her nose. The front of her gown inflated under her chest, and back down again.
Lester giggled as he reached for a little remote control device from the arm of the couch. “Takes all kinds of people, doesn’t it? Let’s lighten the mood a little bit.”
He aimed the device towards the TV.
Click.
A stereo speaker to the left of the television set sprang to life with a chirpy radio voice.
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