Every night that it was warm enough to do so, he sat on his porch with Rusty, his beer and his cigarettes. His American flag swung proudly over the front steps, a New Hampshire staple. He wore his fishing hat because he loved it, even though he hardly went fishing anymore. And although he knew he’d never use it, he kept a shotgun well hidden on the porch. Why not? It was his Constitution-given right to do so. Why would this exercise of rights be considered any more paranoid than keeping a fire extinguisher in the house or locking doors and windows?
“Goddammit, Bob. Stop thinking so damn much,” he muttered to himself and looked down at Rusty. “Right, Rusty? I’m retired. These are the golden years. I shouldn’t be troubling myself with these foolish political arguments. Let all the angry young people worry about that.”
Rusty laid his head down on the porch and closed his eyes, possibly in protest, looking much like he couldn’t be bothered with the partisan-political arguments of America either.
But without these internal arguments there was only the silence of the night. Bob hated the silence. Deciding the quiet was a little too much, he reached over to his ancient radio-tape deck combo and scanned through the channels. The only station coming in clearly had some goddamn fool foaming from the mouth about gay marriage and how the world would crumble and fall right off its axis if such a thing should be universally recognized as legal.
“Transmissions from the other end of the idiot spectrum,” Bob laughed.
Admittedly, Bob felt slightly uncomfortable with the thought of two men in the throes of passion. But he was unable to figure out just why or how that meant two men shouldn’t love each other freely and share the same rights as he and his deceased wife once had. This minor step in the direction of progress set Bob far apart from his friends at the local Veterans Club. All the more reason he chose the company of Rusty, cheap beer and strong cigarettes.
Bob just sighed and shook his head. He had loved talk radio once, but now grew disgusted with everything he heard within seconds of tuning in. It seemed that nobody who had anything to say ever said anything that wasn’t extreme, controversial or way out on the fringe. It didn’t seem to matter what side of the fence people were on anymore. They were all maniacs, and they all thought the weight of their words would tip the world over if the likeminded didn’t spread out evenly on all hemispheres of the globe.
Grunting despondently, Bob turned the radio off and sat there for a moment, nonplussed.
“You hear that, Rusty?” he asked his somnolent little dog. “God’s gonna kill us all if the gays keep getting married.”
Rusty raised his head slightly, giving Bob a look that said “did you really fucking wake me up for that?”
Bob laughed and took a sip of his beer.
“I wish that Coast to Coast show were on right now,” he said to the dog. “At least I can laugh at those maniacs.”
At seventy-four years of age, Bob simply had too little precious time to waste listening to fools prattle on about their nonsensical opinions.
“Maybe it’s time we catch up with the rest of the world and get that satellite radio thing, Rusty.” The dog once again gazed up at him with a look of annoyance.
Bob was a lonely guy, now having been widowed for seventeen years since Loretta had fallen to lung cancer. Aside from Rusty, he needed things to fill that void. Rather than take his wife’s death as a lesson, Bob looked over at the table where the radio sat, and eyed the pack of smokes that was always there. The coughing had gotten worse and worse these last few months. Bob just didn’t care enough to go see a doctor. Doc Saperstein would only prolong the inevitable. Then it would just be longer until he’d see Loretta again.
Maybe smoking these things was a show of solidarity to his late wife, he sometimes thought.
He reached into the cooler and opened another bottle of beer. After taking a good long sip he put the bottle on the table and fished a fresh cigarette out of the pack.
“Here’s to ya, Loretta.”
The inhale was glorious. Something about the combination of beer and that first puff of a smoke never lost its luster. Even masturbation was a chore for the old man these days; he had to accept whatever small doses of joy he could get.
As Bob exhaled and eased back into his chair, a slow set of footsteps thumped out on the sidewalk, getting louder as the person came closer.
“That you, Tommy-boy?” Bob called out, opening up another bottle of beer for his soon to be guest. “Show yourself, you sexy, bald bastard.”
“Who else would it be, old man?” the voice answered from the darkness. “Santa Claus?”
“Well, I’d settle for an Asian whore. About five-foot-two, perky tits and a bush adorned with rhinestones. I enjoyed such splendor back in Korea, you know. But even Santa Claus would be a little better on the eyes than your sad mug. Get on up here and have a beer, will ya’?”
Tom walked up the three steps and gave Bob a good, firm handshake like always.
“A bush adorned with rhinestones?” asked Tom. “Sounds like you’ve been watching Sinbad porn again.”
“Come again, son?”
“Never mind, old man.”
Bob took a look at the younger man’s clothing and gave him a joking scoff.
“Dying Fetus?” he said, looking at Tom’s t-shirt. “I can’t imagine what kind of god-awful music they make. You know, you should really try some Dave Clark Five. Very underrated band of the sixties. They stayed true to their sound unlike those Beatles who got all long haired and freaky.”
“Do you ever have anything nice to say, you grumpy old fool?” Tom asked him.
“Not really,” Bob said between laughs. “Sit your ass down. I opened a beer for you.”
Tom and Bob had a rather unique friendship. Though they were forty years separated in age, they got along like two people who had grown up together. Bob was open minded enough to understand the dialogue of a man in his mid thirties ─most of the time─ and even picked up on most of the pop culture references. Tom was well versed enough in history to know what Bob was talking about most of the time too.
The most unique element of their friendship, though, was how it started. When Tom would be walking home from work at night, he always walked past the older man’s house. At first Tom was surprised that the old man sitting on his front porch always greeted him and asked him how he was doing. Just north of Boston where Tom grew up, nobody ever did that unless they knew you.
One evening, a pleasantly warm night just under a year ago, Tom was invited up onto the porch for a beer. He hesitated a moment but agreed, and much to his surprise ended up spending the next few hours getting completely shit-faced and having the most wonderful conversations with the old man. Now almost every night Tom stopped by on his way home from work and had at least one beer with Bob.
Tom lit a cigarette of his own and exhaled long and thorough. His face had an unreadable expression drawn upon it.
“You okay, Tommy?” Bob asked, always adding the extra syllable to his name in a fatherly way. “You look a little stressed out tonight.”
“I’m okay, Bob,” Tom answered, sounding exhausted. “Just thinking about doing something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.”
“If you’ve decided that you finally want to lose your virginity, I could get the phone numbers of a few girls some of my old veteran buddies hire from time to time.”
Tom’s spirits were low tonight, but Bob’s jibe couldn’t keep him from cracking a smile.
“Of course,” Bob added, “if girls aren’t your thing, I understand. With all that black clothing you wear I wouldn’t be surprised if you hit for the other team. But I promise, I’m perfectly accepting of that lifestyle.”
“You know, old man. You think you’re such a progressive. But you’re still very much stuck in whatever the hell decade it was that you grew up in. What decade was that? Between ninety and eighty BC?”
“Don’t you joke about mortality, young man. Every year goes faster t
han the one before it. Before you know it, you’ll be a sad old fool like me, sitting out on your front porch with nothing better to do than drink, smoke and have conversations with an animal. Right, Rusty?”
The dog once again lifted his head only to put it back down and try to rest it comfortably on the wooden porch.
“Now really, Tommy. What’s bothering you?”
“I guess you could call it girl issues.”
“Well I’m not a stranger to those kinds of issues. She not putting out for you? You know back in my day─”
“She’s out there,” Tom said, cutting Bob’s little joke off midstream in a tone that snapped the old man to silence. “In the shadows.”
Tom’s face had turned to stone. His eyes were ice, staring off into the darkness surrounding Bob’s porch.
Bob coughed out some smoke that didn’t quite go down his throat the way he had intended it to.
“What the hell does that mean? Are you getting poetic on me now all of a sudden? You’re scaring me, kid.”
Tom turned his gaze down to the porch, but then snapped out of his little trance and laughed.
“Didn’t mean to scare ya’, Bob. I’ve never really been the poetic type. It’s just been a really weird night, is all. Didn’t mean to creep you out.”
Bob looked deeply into his young friend, and got glassy eyed in concern.
“If you need help with something, son, you can ask me.”
His voice was comforting and fatherly. This was something Tom had never experienced, even with his own father.
“There’s not much anyone but me can do. It’s time.”
“Time for what, Tommy?”
“I gotta’ go.”
Tom finished his beer with one long gulp, snuffed out his cigarette and stood up.
“I don’t like this, Tommy. Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Nothing like that, Bob. I’ll see you.”
Tom turned down the steps.
“See ya’ tomorrow, I hope,” Bob said as Tom made his way off the porch. “If you need help with something you call me. Understand?”
“I promise,” Tom lied, and kept walking down the dark street.
***
Tom continued down the street, walking with silent purpose. He felt bad about leaving Bob so abruptly.
Bob was truly one of the sweetest souls Tom had ever met, and he cherished every moment that was spent drinking, smoking and shooting the shit with the old man. Never having had a real father figure in his life, Tom felt that meeting Bob was a breath of fresh air, possibly even meant to be.
But Tom carried quite a bit of baggage from his life prior to living here in Portsmouth. And it was that very baggage that caused his odd behavior tonight.
Cassie. The Halloween Girl.
Tom put his headphones on and cranked the volume high on his iPod. The lighting-fast blast beats of Deicide would take his mind off of things for a little while. At least until he got home to the solitude of his apartment and would begin preparing himself for what he knew he had to do.
Wandering on toward his apartment on the outskirts of downtown Portsmouth, Tom’s mind traveled back to his youth, a youth filled with torment and neglect at the hands of an abusive, alcoholic father and a dimwitted, homicidal mother. But those were not the particular ghosts of his past that had brought on such anxiety within him.
Cassie.
He thought of her jet-black hair that smelled of sweet fruit and her icy-blue eyes that shined like diamonds. Her pale skin that looked so soft and delicate. Her soothing songbird voice that gave him goosebumps when it sang a sweet hello to him.
Tom’s pleasant reminiscence was interrupted by a vibration from within the right pocket of his jeans. Retrieving the phone, he grimaced as he saw the name of the caller on the screen.
Sand
Tom sighed and put the phone away as deep in his pocket as he could shove it.
He never should have started dating Sand. While she was gorgeous on the outside, the weeks in which they had been dating revealed an interior far less desirable. The girl just had an annoying streak a mile wide. But mostly, it was her name.
Sandra.
Why couldn’t she just go by Sandy instead? It was too damn close to Cassandra.
Cassie: The very ghost of Tom’s past that was haunting him extra hard tonight.
The phone continued to vibrate in his pocket until finally he gave in and picked it up.
“Hi,” he muttered with a noncommittal grunt after pulling his headphones off.
“Hey, babe!” Sand yelped.
Tom hated her overenthusiastic greetings sometimes. At first it was cute. But over time it had become a clear symptom of her emotional instability and insecure possessiveness. It was no different than her inappropriately expensive birthday present: the five-thousand-dollar Fender Precision bass guitar she had gotten him after only a month of dating. Whatever she was doing, she was always trying to suck him in and keep him there.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I was just wondering if you were okay, sweetie.”
“Yeah, I guess. Why?”
“You’ve been kind of, I don’t know, distant the last couple days. Usually you call me on your breaks at work, and I didn’t hear from you at all today.”
“Just a busy day, Sand.”
Tom had to shorten her name to Sand. Anything to further separate her from Cassie. She hated being called Sandy, so Sand had served as what he claimed was a pet name for her. Luckily for Tom, she bought it.
“So are you coming over tonight?”
“I don’t know,” he lied. He knew damn well he wasn’t going to her place. There was something he had to do. Something he’d been putting off for too long now. Something that meant worlds more than another night of amazing, but meaningless sex with a girl he couldn’t stand most of the time.
The shadows. I have to go to the shadows.
“Why don’t you just be honest with me, Tom?”
Her voice was cold and scolding. This was her knee jerk response to not getting what she wanted. And Tom was sick of giving in to her.
“I’m being honest with you, Sand. I have some important things I really need to do.”
Tom knew his acting was subpar, and that Sand probably wasn’t buying a word of it.
“How important can these things be, Tom? It’s Friday night for Christ’s sake. Can’t you just spend some time with your girlfriend?”
Girlfriend?
Tom never agreed to those terms. But he never argued them, either.
As Tom considered questioning her use of the term, he was interrupted by a cacophony of barking from off in the distance behind him.
“Whose dog is that?” Sand asked.
“It sounds like old Bob’s dog. I just left his porch a minute ago.”
“Sounds like he’s freaking the fuck out.”
“No shit. He’s a little Pekingese, though. They tend to do that, I guess.”
“You think everything is okay back there, Tommy?”
“Yup.”
Tom cursed himself silently after saying that. Not only did he just blow an opportunity to get off the phone with her, but he had allowed her to sound caring and compassionate, distracting him from her selfishness, therefore making it harder for him to resist her.
Cold and calculated, every move.
“So anyways,” she said, “anything I can do to change your mind about tonight?”
Stand firm.
“Really, I can’t tonight, Sand. Maybe tomorrow or something. I just have to take care of something tonight.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Goodnight, Sand,” Tom said with finality.
“Goodnight, sweetie,” Sand giggled.
Tom didn’t like the way she laughed as she said her parting words. It meant that she wasn’t done with him yet. Something was up her sleeve. Or up her skirt. The girl was certainly not above using her most tempting assets to bend him to her will.
As he was about to put his headphones back on and crank up some more death metal as loud as possible, he became somewhat concerned about the frantic barking he was still hearing from all the way back at Bob’s house, which was now at least three blocks behind him.
Rusty was sure to have a conniption at the sight of a raccoon or possum, but this particular shit-fit had gone on a little long.
Whatever it was, Tom convinced himself it was nothing and kept on strolling toward home.
Now out of earshot of the barks, he reached behind his head to put his headphones back on when again a vibration from his pocket interrupted him.
The screen of his phone indicated he had a text message from Sand.
Of course.
Tom clicked on the screen to see what clever game she was playing to lure him over to her apartment to spend the evening. And Goddammit, she was good at this game, because she had already won.
Attached to a text message saying sure there isn’t anything I can do to change your mind? was a photo Sand had taken of herself from the waist up, sprawled out on her bed wearing nothing but a black ribbon around her neck. Something about the ribbon she sometimes wore drove Tom crazy with lust. While some men went wild over tits and asses, Tom just had a thing for necks. Sand’s was perfect, and that ribbon accentuated its flawless beauty.
Every man has his weakness. And tonight Tom was giving in.
Why does the sex have to be so perfect with her? And why the fuck does she have to be so shameless about it?
This wasn’t just a naked picture. She had propped the phone up on her window sill and set the timer so she could have free use of both hands. One hand caressed her naked breasts, while the other hand was out of camera shot, reaching down below. Tom knew exactly what she was doing with it.
Then his phone vibrated again and he received another picture message. This one was from her stomach to about halfway above her knees. The central focus of the photo was Sand’s crotch. Another of Tom’s weaknesses was a freshly shaven pussy, and Sand always made it just perfect, free of irritations and razor bumps. Written in lipstick below her navel were the words SHAVED IT JUST FOR YOU.
The Halloween Girl Page 2