Home Free

by Sonnjea Blackwell

  “Danny. Where’s Kevin?”

  I smoothed my hair and walked down the hall to the living room. Danny was sitting on the couch, reading some book. He didn’t look at me.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  My dad looked from Danny to me and back to Danny. He finally turned to me. “What the hell’s going on? You know you’re not allowed to have boys in the house when no one is home.” He seemed kind of mad.

  “He’s not my friend, he came over looking for Kevin and I told him he could wait. I’ve been in my room doing homework.”

  “Alexis, you are not allowed to have boys over when no one is here. What about that don’t you understand?” Yep, definitely mad.

  “But Daddy, he came over at quarter to seven, and Kevin was supposed to be home by six-thirty, so if Kevin had been here when he should have, I wouldn’t have been alone when Danny got here and none of this would have happened. Kevin is always trying to get me into trouble,” I whined. I could see Danny on the other side of the living room, stifling his laughter behind the book.

  My dad paused, then nodded. He turned to Danny. “I don’t think Kevin is going to be able to go out tonight, Danny. You better go on home.”

  “No problem, Mr. Jordan. Sorry for the trouble.”

  “No trouble.”

  I heard Kevin’s motorcycle pull up just as Danny closed the front door. It took Kevin a couple minutes to get to the door, so I knew they had stopped to talk. I was sure Danny would never tell him what had happened, but I couldn’t imagine what he had said. My dad gave Kevin what for and grounded him for the weekend, and Kevin never even blinked. And he never said a word about the kissing booth.

  Suffice to say that Danny had known exactly what he was doing, and probably could have taught the people at Cosmo a thing or two. The good news was, I was sure I’d had an orgasm. Well, several, actually. The bad news was, I was seventeen years old and ruined for life. Two hours with Danny Salazar on the floor of my parents’ front hall, and I knew no other man would ever come close.

  It was nine o’clock and Brian had finally packed up his herd and left, but not before lecturing me on the importance of adequate insurance and the value of installing a security system, especially in a disadvantaged neighborhood such as mine. My dad was snoozing in his hammock and my mom was in the kitchen doing dishes. Kevin and I sat at the edge of the pool, dangling our feet in the cool water. We were quiet for awhile.

  “I didn’t know you still had a thing for Danny Salazar.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t. He just showed up out of the blue this afternoon and it kind of threw me. I wasn’t expecting to see him after all this time, since you never bothered to mention he was living here again.”

  “You’ve been married for five years, Alex. I didn’t mention it because I guess I figured you were over your high school crush.” He picked at some grease under his fingernails. “You know Junior’s back in town, too.”

  “Junior?”

  “Mikey. Goes by Junior now.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe in prison, a name like Mikey gets you the wrong kind of friends.”

  I wondered what kind of friends a name like Junior got him. “What’s he like?”

  “I don’t know. He got out around the beginning of the year and pretty much took over the gravel yard. The old man’s been wanting to retire, and I guess Junior was the only one of the kids who wanted it.” That made sense. Alejandro and Louie only had daughters, and I couldn’t see them messing up their hair and nails breaking peoples’ kneecaps and disposing of dead bodies, or whatever it was the Salazars did for the mob. And Danny had never been interested in taking over the family business. “I see him and Danny around town sometimes. Seems like they get along okay.”

  “Hunh.” Danny had never really talked about his brother, so I didn’t know what kind of relationship they’d had before. I knew he used to visit him in jail once a month or so, until he left for college, anyway.

  I saw a light go on in the adjoining back yard and looked at Kevin. He shrugged and made the beats me face. I tiptoed over to the fence and squatted down to peek through a knothole in time to see Danny pull a bench up to the picnic table in his parents’ backyard, open a bottle of beer and sit down. I froze for a second when he looked straight at me, then relaxed when I realized his super human powers didn’t include x-ray vision. Nobody else was there.

  I returned to the pool. Kevin was looking at me, waiting for a report.

  “It’s Danny, he’s having a beer,” I whispered. “He doesn’t live there, does he?”

  “No, I think he lives in that condo complex over on McKinley. Did you tell him you’d be here tonight?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not up for another round. You go over there and see what he wants.”

  “It’s not one of the mysteries of the fucking universe, Alex. He wants to have a beer.”

  “No, besides that.”

  “A million dollars? World peace?”

  “Very funny.”

  “He wants you, Alex, you’re all he’s ever wanted and now that you’re here, he’s simply overcome with emotion and can’t bring himself to profess his undying love because you might not feel the same way, and that would be the end of him, and he’d just wither away and die, his corpse sitting there on his parents’ picnic bench rotting and stinking up the neighborhood.”

  “Butt-head.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes.

  “Go over there and have a beer with him and see what he says about me.”

  “Jeez, what are you, twelve? Why don’t you get Pauline to pass him a note?”

  I kicked my foot up, splashing him, and started whining please. He groaned and I knew he would do it.

  We went inside to say our goodbyes to the folks. My mom insisted on giving me a casserole that she’d probably made when she thought I was dying. I hate casserole, but I wasn’t in a position to be turning down free food, so I thanked her and walked out front with Kevin. The night had cooled off considerably and was approaching tolerable. I gave my brother a hug, thanked him and got in the Element to go home. He hopped on the Deuce and roared around the block.

  I woke up with my chest tight and my heart pounding. It took a second before I remembered I was in my new house, and another second to realize I had been jarred out of a nice naked dream by the ringing telephone. I glanced at the clock. Good grief, two-fifteen. I snatched the phone up before it could ring again.

  “’Lo?”

  “Alex, it’s Kevin.” I hung up. A second later, the phone rang again. I didn’t need to know what Danny had said about me quite this urgently. Tomorrow - well, later today - would be soon enough. I picked up again.

  “Call me tomorrow.”

  “Wait, don’t hang up. I need to come over. I just got out of jail.”

  I sat straight up. “You what? What the hell happened?”

  “I’ll be over in ten minutes. I just didn’t want to scare you by showing up without calling first.”

  I got out of bed and went to wait for him in the living room. Then I squeaked back to the bedroom to put on some sweats because I didn’t think my brother needed to see what I looked like in my Victoria’s Secret string bikinis and baby tee. Probably nobody needed to see that. I went back to the living room just as I heard the bike pull into my driveway. I opened the door and let him in.

  “Thanks.”

  “If you were in jail, didn’t you need bail?” I cringed, thinking of him calling Brian for bail money. He’d never hear the end of it.

  “Didn’t get arrested, just taken in for questioning. We can’t leave town, though.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Danny Salazar.”

  It was two-thirty in the morning, and I was having a bitch of a time making sense of everything, and Kevin was giving me the story in little bitty pieces. I needed a drink. “Do you want a drink?”

  I set out two beers and made two peanut butter, jelly and potato chip sandwiches on white bread. We sat on
barstools at the kitchen counter and ate our sandwiches, washing them down with the cold beer. I kept taking peeks at Kevin while he wasn’t watching. He looked like hell, as pasty white as the bread and sort of shaky. Something very bad had happened tonight. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but somehow I felt responsible since I was the one who had sent him over to Danny’s in the first place.

  He finished his sandwich and looked at me. He took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s exactly what happened.”

  The gist of the story was that he’d gone, like I asked, over to the Salazars’ to have a beer with Danny. They were having a good time, reminiscing about baseball and high school.

  “Did he say anything about me?” I asked.

  Kevin glowered. “This is about me, remember?”

  I let him continue. A little before eleven, Danny’s cell phone had rung. He said a couple of words, then hung up. He told Kevin it was some guy named Tom Jenkins who wanted to talk to Danny in person about Junior, and that it would only take a few minutes.

  “Why did he have to talk to him right then? It’s the middle of the night on a weekend.” You don’t have to watch Law and Order to know something sounds off.

  “Danny said Junior was in negotiations with Jenkins, who owns the body shop next door to the gravel yard. Junior wants to expand. Anyway, apparently they’re supposed to close the deal first thing Monday morning, and Danny thought Jenkins might be getting cold feet. He wanted to help Junior out, so he said he’d meet the guy at the body shop.”

  They figured they’d go by the shop and then go on over to Blondie’s for one last beer before calling it a night. They took the bike, Kevin driving and Danny riding on the back. The body shop was dark when they arrived. Kevin stayed with the bike while Danny went up to the office. A few minutes later, he came back. He told Kevin that the door was unlocked, and he’d gone inside, but the lights weren’t working and he couldn’t see anything, and no one answered when he called out, so he left.

  They both had a bad feeling, and Danny pulled out his cell phone to call the police.

  That’s when the building exploded.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Okay, let me get this straight. You were with Danny for about two hours before this guy Jenkins called, right?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “And in all that time, he didn’t mention me once?”

  “For crissake, Alex, this is serious.”

  I sighed. It was serious all right. And the explosion thing was pretty bad, too.

  Kevin didn’t feel like going home and being without an alibi some more, so I gave him a pillow for the couch. The AC still wasn’t working, and it hadn’t dipped below eighty degrees inside, so a blanket wasn’t necessary. I went back to bed, only to lie there for hours, incapable of sleep, trying to figure out if I was more worried about the fire or the fact that Danny didn’t find me mentionable.

  When I got up at seven, tired and cranky, Kevin was already gone. I went outside for the paper and tripped over a giant black cat curled up on my doormat. It didn’t exactly cross my path, but still, stepping on a black cat probably didn’t qualify as good luck. It didn’t get up, just rolled its head back and looked at me through half closed eyes, and I got the distinct impression that it thought I was an idiot. I had news for it. The stupid thing was sleeping on the wrong front porch, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to put out a bowl of water or kibble for it. That was Debbie’s gig, not mine. I stepped over it and got the paper. I could have saved us both the trouble. There was no article about the fire. The Sun-Herald isn’t exactly the New York Times, or even the Los Angeles Times. Anything that occurs after about eleven p.m. won’t make it into the next day’s edition of the paper. Except, of course, local high school sports scores. The Friday night football game could last until three in the morning, and the editors would hold the paper to make sure the score made it to the front page.

  I went inside and started a pot of decaf and grabbed an energy bar, which I ate in the shower. It got a little soggy, but that didn’t seem to affect the flavor. It still tasted like gritty papier-mache. Don’t ask how I know that. I threw on a pair of paint-splattered shorts and a Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt. I hate the Steelers. I have no idea how I came to own a Steelers t-shirt, but when I became aware of it, I began using it for all the filthy jobs around the house. Once I learned to change the oil in my car, just so I could further deface the shirt. Unfortunately, the damn thing was indestructible and showed virtually no signs of wear.

  I grabbed my purse and a cup of coffee, stepped over the panther on the porch and locked the door. I slid myself into the Element, spilling a little coffee on the seat as I did. I swore mentally and creatively, then remembered the seats are made of some special space-age fabric that repels everything. Probably made in Pittsburgh.

  I found a spot in the Wal-Mart parking lot and went in search of shelf paper. My mother tricked me yesterday into admitting that I hadn’t put down shelf paper yet. She had looked aghast.

  “You’ve been here a week already? And you haven’t put down shelf paper -- what have you been doing?” The implication being that if I had neglected to call my family for over a week because I was busy with shelf paper, all might be forgiven. But since such was not the case, I better have a damn good excuse. I didn’t really want to tell her that I’d spent two days cleaning up the drug paraphernalia left behind by the previous occupants, and another two patching the holes in the walls where they’d tried to punch each other and missed, and then it took three days to hack down the overgrowth of weeds in the front and back yards so the fire department wouldn’t leave another warning. And I had actually unpacked a lot of stuff, just not the bathroom and kitchen stuff because I hadn’t wanted to deal with the goddamn shelf paper.

  So now I was on a quest. It was hard to choose, because all the designs were beyond hideous, but I finally selected a blue and white chicken pattern. I stuffed five rolls into my cart and went to wait in what I hoped would be a butt-crack-free line. It was, and since it was still early and most folks were either in bed or in church, there wasn’t a wait. The half-asleep cashier rang up my purchase and counted out my change as if the concept was still new to her.

  “One last thing,” I added, pocketing around thirty dimes. “Do you know what Alexis Jordan’s prognosis is?”

  “Oh, I heard it’s not good. Apparently she only has about three months to live, and you know the husband isn’t in the picture anymore, so I don’t know what’s to become of her little boys.” She shook her head in sympathy. I nodded solemnly and left.

  I drove home and poured myself into the housework with renewed vigor. Now that I knew Jack would take care of the hard stuff, I had no reason not to finish up the unpacking. I started in the master bathroom, measuring and cutting and peeling and laying shelf paper in the drawers and under the sink and in the shelves of the linen closet. I ruined one entire roll when I stuck it to my leg and then to itself and finally to the floor. But after awhile, I got into a routine and it went pretty well. I finished both bathrooms and half the kitchen by lunchtime. I needed a break. Sweat was running in little rivulets down my back and chest and pooling in my bra, my hair was plastered flat to my scalp and there were little bits of shelf paper stuck to my left leg. I opened the fridge and pulled a barstool up to sit in front of it and cool off, and that’s when I spied the casserole. I had forgotten all about it. I got out a spoon and dug in. I didn’t recognize it cold, but I think it may have been a tuna thing of some sort. I didn’t care. I was still sitting in the refrigerator, shoveling cold casserole into my face when I was startled by a movement to my right. I hesitated, afraid of what I was going to see when I turned my head, then went ahead and turned anyway. Jack was standing in the dining room doorway with a ladder over his shoulder, doubled over, shaking with laughter.

  “I rang the doorbell, but obviously it needs to be fixed, too. I added it to the list. Anyway, I guess I’d better get to work on that air conditioner.” He walke
d through the kitchen towards the back door and hesitated, turning to me.

  “If you’re trying to dispel the rumors of your impending death, you’re doing a damn poor job.” His grin was so wide, I could count his molars. “On the other hand, no one would believe I’m sleeping with you, in an orchard or otherwise.”

  “Fuck you, Murphy. Fix my damn air conditioner or this is as good as it’s gonna get.” He laughed and took his ladder outside.

  I finished the casserole.

  A while later, I ran out of shelf paper so I made another trip to Wal-Mart. I didn’t bother to disguise myself, since people thought I was dying anyway. I figured they’d be impressed that a dying woman would think to install shelf paper. I paid for five more rolls of chickens, detoured through the mall to get an ice cream from Baskin Robbins, and headed back home without having been spotted once. I walked in the door and was met by the coolest air I’d felt in days. There was a note on the hall table from Jack saying it wasn’t the compressor, it was some other doo-dad and that he’d gone home.

  I worked through the rest of the day and collapsed into bed at a little after midnight. The house was done. Shelves were papered, belongings were unpacked and put away, boxes were broken down out in the garage, towels were hanging in the bathrooms, and I had even done my laundry. I wasn’t sure where everything was exactly, and I still couldn’t fit my car in the two-car garage, but I felt like I was home. And I felt, for the first time since I filed for divorce, that maybe I wasn’t a complete failure and that maybe, just maybe, things were turning around. The house was livable, I’d dealt with my mother, I wasn’t actually dying and I’d even had a date. It wasn’t with the right guy, but at least he was straight.

  I read the paper while I waited for my toast to brown. I was relieved not to have seen the massive cat. I assumed it realized that the kibble factory was next door.

  According to the article, arson investigators immediately determined that the body shop fire had been deliberately set, with sophisticated accelerants used. The remains of a human body were found in the charred debris. Dental records would be needed to make a positive identification, but it was assumed to be the body of Lonnie Chambers, the night watchman. Lonnie also had a rather conspicuous bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Not a good night for Lonnie.