Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again?

by Nate Southard

As a nice wave of heat travels from his gut to the rest of his body, he twists the cap back into place and shoves the bottle back in the freezer. A few deep breaths, and he almost feels normal. Fuck it. Time to go to work.

  Rose giggled and clamped her hands around Jim’s throat. His face went red, but his smile was playful, even eager. Her laughter turned into a growl as she darted forward and mashed her lips to his. Their mouths opened, and she slid her dry tongue over his, the cocaine leaving their mouths electric and tingling. She loved the sandpaper kisses. Of the many coke effects she enjoyed, it was her favorite by far.

  Jim’s hand found her hair and tightened into a fist, pulling a pleased sigh from her. The pain ran through her in a hot rush, waking up every inch of her. Pulling away, she gave him a smile before cracking her hand across his face.

  Then she released him and stepped away.

  “Thanks, boss. That was fun.”

  Jim looked at her with a shocked expression, like she’d just told him she liked killing senior citizens or something.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m not done,” he said

  “Done?”

  “You know.”

  “Wait a sec,” Rose said. She could barely contain her laughter. “Who said you get to finish?”

  “So we’re not fucking?”

  “Yeah. I told you we weren’t. You thought a few lines were going to change that? Again? You learn things, right? You’re capable of it?”

  Jim’s mouth worked without sound for a second, and then he almost yelled, “But I wasn’t finished.”

  “I heard. That means I win, and to the victor goes the spoils.” She flashed him a grin. “In this case, the spoils are knowing you have to finish by hand.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “And for that, you don’t get to look at me while you do it. Sorry.”

  Casting an aggravated glance in her direction, Jim jumped off his desk and scurried into the private bathroom he’d had installed. The door slammed behind him, and Rose leaned against it, listening to him pant and work.

  “What do you think we should do, anyway?” she asked.

  “About?”

  “About the child you obviously just put in my belly? The skeleton with the goddamn fangs, moron. What do you think?”

  “I’m…kinda busy.”

  “Jesus.” Leaning against the door, she closed her eyes. Even with two lines in her system, she found coked up Jim annoying as hell. “Would it help if I talked dirty?”

  “It would help if you got in here and finished me off.”

  “Well, let’s say for the sake of argument that that isn’t going to happen. I am, however, willing to call you Papi and say all sorts of disgusting things to you.”

  A few grunts, more panting. “Okay. Go.”

  So she did, exaggerating her Spanish accent and breathing heavy, giving the performance her all. Jim’s grunts grew louder, and she could almost see his eyes clamped shut, his teeth bared as he struggled toward release. She faked her own orgasm as he cried out, and then she sauntered back to his desk and sat down, waiting for him.

  “Big spender,” she said as he left the bathroom. “Why do we do these horrible things to ourselves?”

  “Enough, okay?”

  “You bet, big daddy.”

  His smirk expressed his feelings rather well.

  “So, that skeleton.”

  “Right,” he said. “Fuck if I know what to do. Part of me wants to dig it out and display it by the entrance.”

  “You’ve got to have another idea that’s not terrible.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “Jesus….”

  Jim started cutting another pair of lines. He worked quickly and carefully, his credit card like a butcher knife as it chopped up the coke and drew it into place. “Well, I don’t think we’ll be doing anything with this stuff here. I guess I should probably hop online, look up protocol for this sort of thing. Gotta admit, this totally falls under the heading New Shit.”

  “Okay, but I don’t see how the answer’s going to be anything but call the police and let them take over. I don’t think salvage rights apply, here.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t try telling me dead bodies with stones jammed in their mouths don’t count as salvage.” Leaning forward, he placed the rolled dollar to his nostril and hit two more lines. He offered the bill to Rose, and she accepted it eagerly. As she bent and snorted her next rail, Jim fired up the computer.

  She straightened, wiped at her nose. “Let me know what you find, okay?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not sleeping anytime soon. Might as well get the prep started.”

  Thomas spent the entire walk across the street preparing, telling himself to be ready for anything, that the old man was wild and unpredictable. By the time he reached the diner and swung open the door, he expected to find a blood bath on the other side. Instead, the scene was so close to normal it left him feeling a little sick.

  He smelled bacon and heard it sizzling in the kitchen. When he looked through the order window, a pair of short order cooks worked like fine machinery. The clang of spatula against flat top griddle was almost musical. Coffee struck his nose next, a nice, thick aroma that told him he could use a cup. Sure enough, a man in work overalls sat at the counter, a mug in his hand, plate of eggs and ham in front of him like a king’s feast. Another pair of diners filled one of the closest booths, a couple that ate without saying much but gave each other pleasant smiles at every opportunity. At first glance, it was almost a Rockwell painting.

  But then there was the waitress. Thomas couldn’t tell how old she was, because he couldn’t see her face. As he walked across the diner to the booth where Jenkins sipped coffee and ate toast, all he saw of the waitress were her legs in stockings, her feet in white tennis shoes, and her rump hidden beneath the pink fabric over her uniform. She was turned away from him, her rear sticking up in the air, and the slurping sounds filled in the rest of the story before he reached the table and saw the saucer of milk.

  He stood at the head of the table and watched her for a moment. She was pretty, maybe early-twenties—easily too young to be stuck in a roadside bacon-and-egg destination. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. If she noticed him, she gave no sign. She just kept lapping at the saucer of milk, her face happy. Every now and then, she’d rock her rump back and forth, her uniform pulling tighter.

  Thomas sat down, and Jenkins looked at him.

  “Did you want to say something?”

  “I don’t know what I could possibly say,” Thomas answered.

  The old man gave him the tiniest of shrugs and then took a bite of his toast. He chewed as though he knew the world would wait for him. After he swallowed, washed down the bite with a little coffee, he said, “I make you uncomfortable.”

  “You do.” He saw no reason to lie.

  “You think I shouldn’t do some of the things I do?”

  Thomas tried to think of the right answer. In this case, maybe a lie was the right thing. Maybe there was something in the middle, not quite the truth but not a brazen falsehood. He hoped it wouldn’t anger Jenkins. Twice, he’d seen the old man lose his cool, and he still shivered when he thought about it.

  “You’ve got seniority. It’s not my place to say anything.”

  A dry chuckle. Jenkins watched him from over the rim of his coffee cup. Thomas saw a twinkle that was almost cruel in his eyes.

  “You’re still pretty new,” he said. “You give it time and see. This work, it changes you. The things you thought made you happy—even the things you thought kept you from being bored—they become useless. Compared to what’s out there, it’s nothing.”

  He rubbed his fingers together and let the dust scatter again. Then, he motioned to the waitress. A quick gesture, and she reached back with one hand to hike up the bottom of her uniform. Thomas didn’t want to look, but he glanced before he could stop himself. He saw white panties dot
ted with yellow flowers. If the woman knew what she’d done, she gave no notice, just kept working at the saucer.

  “Sooner or later, something like that is going to be as necessary as your morning OJ.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you’re not cut out for this.”

  Thomas felt the frown coming, and fought back before it reached his face. Instead, he kept his expression blank, calm. He watched the old man work at his toast and coffee as though he wasn’t even there, as though he had said his piece and then forgotten the rest of the world. Patiently, he waited until Jenkins finished his breakfast.

  “So, where do you want to start?” he asked while Jenkins patted his lips dry with a napkin.

  The old man leaned to the side and glanced at the waitress. An almost disappointed sigh eased out of him.

  “At the beginning, I suppose. Let’s go.”

  “So seriously, what was that?”

  “Huh?” Ben snaps back into reality as the water reaches the brim of his cup. He pulls it away from the cooler and turns to face Melissa, who has a smile on her face that looks more amused than annoyed.

  “The phone call, doof. What is it, three months now, and you’ve never called me in the middle of the night?”

  “I’m aware.”

  Her smile widens. “So?”

  “So, I’m sorry. Like I said, it was a bad dream.”

  “You did say that. Never told me what it was about, though.”

  Ben looks at her, takes in her dark, straight hair and the pale freckles on her face. She looks beautiful, and he wishes he could still tell her that. A part of him almost screams that he should tell her, but he slaps a muzzle on it. Instead, he tries to create a dream from nothing, something that would be horrible enough to warrant the call.

  “It was…there was a fire, and I could hear you and the pets….”

  Her face wrinkles. “That sucks.”

  “Like I said, it was vivid.”

  “But when you woke up, you had to know it was just a dream.”

  “Well, yeah.” His throat hitches, and he feels the words trying to get out. I was scared. I wanted to hear your voice. Every damn night, I want to hear your voice again. He swallows them like bitter pills, and then he shrugs in a way he hopes looks playful. “I was mostly asleep. Guess my brain hadn’t completely kicked in yet.”

  “Try waiting a few minutes next time.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Melissa’s smile widens, and for a moment he can only stare. She looks so beautiful, standing there in a hooded sweatshirt and T-shirt. Before he can stop the memory, he’s back in his old kitchen, talking to her as things fall apart. They’re discussing their issues and looking for some answer. Years of hidden bitterness and insecurity rush to the surface for both of them, and before he fully understands what’s happening, he’s saying they should split, that he should move out so they can concentrate on their friendship. He’s crying, and so is she, and when they hug it’s with the desperation of a drowning person clinging to anything that will keep them afloat. Later that night, he takes some blankets into the guest room—the room he’ll live in for the next month—and he cries himself to sleep, telling himself he’s a failure until he runs out of breath.

  He returns to the break room as Melissa finishes filling her cup. When he sees that smile, he wonders how he ever could have left, and he has to remind himself their problems were more than just minor, that they’d tried to work through them and failed.

  “So, yeah,” he says. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Won’t happen again.”

  “I hope not. Next time, just give it a few minutes. Grab some water or something and chill out.”

  “I’ll give that a try.”

  “You better. Do it again, and you’re in for a kick in the junk.”

  “Say no more!”

  They stand there for a second, smiling at each other like fools. It feels good, and Ben is thankful they can still have these moments, that after everything else, they’ve stayed friends.

  “I need to go mail a few things,” Melissa says. She pulls a pair of envelopes from her back pocket and waves them. “Talk at you in a bit.”

  “Sure thing.”

  She leaves the break room, and he stands there for a second. Everything’s quiet, and his thoughts almost rattle through his brain. At least she’s safe. And she’s smiling. The smile almost makes him forget about the paper sack, but then he remembers the teeth, and his good mood goes straight to hell.

  Her nerves jumped, and Rose thought she could almost feel her synapses firing with every movement, every touch, every sensation she experienced. Her face remained numb, and her mouth remained dry. Smiling, she scraped her tongue against her teeth. She thought about heading to Jim’s office again, grabbing a few more kisses. Just thinking about it sent sparks through her body. Or maybe that was still the coke.

  Deciding it didn’t matter, she went back to work on the prep. With almost stupefying speed and precision, she made short work of the vegetables that needed chopping, her knife falling into a practiced rhythm. In a few hours, Diane and Carlos would show up and wonder what they should do now that she’d handled their responsibilities, but she’d come up with something else for them. Kitchen work almost never stopped being busy, even if business had fallen from amazing to less-than-great.

  More than once, her thoughts drifted to the skeleton and the stone shoved in its mouth like a gag, the fangs that held it in place. Nothing about it made sense. A part of her wanted to believe it was some kind of joke. All the other options were too easy to dismiss as superstition. Or maybe it was some psycho who’d filed his teeth down and gotten his just desserts. Maybe that was it.

  She froze, the idea stuck in her brain like a thorn. The knife fell from her hand and clattered to the cutting board, and she wiped her hands on her work apron before turning and storming out of the kitchen.

  Jim’s office sat at the end of a short hall, branching off both the kitchen and the main floor. A bulletin board on the wall always featured the current schedule, any important news, and usually at least one photo of a drunken employee flipping off the camera. Rose blew past the board, her excitement about to erupt. Why hadn’t she thought of this back when Jim first fired up the computer?

  “Hey, Papi!” she said as she entered his office. “Hop on Google and see if anybody in the area ever filed down their—”

  Jim was frantic. He paced back and forth, and he ran his fingers through the tight curls of his hair again and again. At first, she thought maybe he’d had one line too many, but she dismissed the idea almost immediately. Over the years, she’d seen her boss at every level from bone sober to ripped to the tits, and this was still a level beyond.

  “Jim?”

  He stopped pacing and turned to look at her. His face had gone white, and his mouth hung open. Wide eyes blazed with fear, and Rose found her own heart double-timing as she looked at the man’s expression.

  “Did you find something?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “About the skeleton, Jim. Did you find anything out?”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I….”

  “Jim, what? What is it?”

  When he shrugged, it was almost a desperate gesture, a little kid who doesn’t know what else to do.

  “We have to get rid of it.”

  “You should try honey,” Jenkins said.

  “What?”

  “You keep blowing your nose. Allergies, right?”

  Thomas stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Yeah.”

  “Find locally made honey. It’ll boost your immunities to the pollen in the area.”

  He stared at the old man for a second. Was his superior really trying to be helpful? “Thanks.”

  “Little things. They get you through the day. You’re going to be here for a while, so you might as well do everything you can.”

  Thomas nodded, trying to balance the man who’d just had a young woman licking
milk from a saucer for his own amusement with the one who was now offering a potential allergy remedy. Maybe Jenkins was right. Years on the job might change a person. Back when he started, the old man might have been kind and caring.

  No. That couldn’t possibly be true.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t go check those names first?” Thomas asked.

  “We are. I don’t intend to leave that thing in the bathroom all day, though. Housekeeping.”

  “Right. I just thought it would be better to move after dark.”

  “Too much time. Years ago, I left something similar in a hotel room. Maid came to turn down the bed, and I had even more loose ends to tie up. Let’s get this one in the trunk. It’ll be fine there.”

  “Sure it’ll fit?”

  “We’ve got a Lincoln. It’ll fit just fine.”

  Thomas unlocked the door and stepped inside. Another groan, this one a little more urgent, greeted him.

  “Sounds a little feisty,” the old man said.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “That’s fine.” Jenkins reached into his coat and withdrew a pistol. A pearl handle glinted in the dim light, and Thomas thought the gun looked like the heaviest weapon he’d ever seen. It dwarfed the old man’s dry and wrinkled hand. Jenkins reached out and opened the bathroom door. The thing started struggling, thumping up and down as it tried to wrestle free of its binds. As casual as you please, the old man straddled the thing and placed the barrel of his pistol to its forehead.

  It stopped moving. If Jenkins was pleased, his expression didn’t show it. “I gather that means you know what’s pressed against your skull,” he said. “Good. So you can be reasoned with. My associate and I are in charge of dealing with the likes of you. You made a fun little mess, and we’ve also been charged with cleaning that mess. This annoys me greatly.

  “Now, we’re going to take you out of this room and put you in the trunk of our car. If you behave—if you remain quiet and still while we clean the mess you’ve made—we may decide to let you go. It’s not a promise, but it’s the best I can do. On the other hand, if you present a problem, we will not let you go. That is a promise, and I am not the type to break promises. If you understand, please nod.”