Wanted: Single Rose

by Skye, Mav

  The kid’s mouth dropped in an “OH.” He slid his drink off the counter and wandered out. A trucker slammed a coffee on the counter. “And a pack of Virginia slims.”

  I turned to get them, too distracted to be amused, and checked my phone again. May texted:

  silver key. i saw him w/it by safe. Phone dying. Luv U.

  I typed back, Luv u 2.

  * * *

  The second night, I waited in the bushes at Fat Bastard’s gate. At four AM, a dark Lexus pulled out of the driveway and paused. The gate moaned open. I recognized Leroy as the driver. By the pale light held to his ear, I deduced he was talking on the phone.

  The car purred away. I slipped between the metal before it clicked shut. Easy shmeesy. The trimmed lawn rose and fell in gentle waves away from the small mansion. A cluster of tall pines hovered by the fence. I spotted a camera.

  I knew a thing or two about surveillance cameras. You had to when you flipped tricks on the streets where May and I worked.

  I crawled through the yard and looked for the camera’s cable at the base of the tree. It was cut straight through. I inspected the damp dirt at the base of the maple and saw a fresh shoe print, much bigger than my own—a man’s. So, the cable had been clipped recently, as recently as tonight. Tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Someone else was out to get Fat Bastard. I wondered if they knew about his cash stash, too? Didn’t matter, our business would be done and over with tonight.

  I slipped like a shadow down the long driveway. The windows of the Bastard Mansion were covered; the lights off. I crawled into a thick maze of azaleas, rhodies and African daisies planted like a fortress. I wormed along the foundation to the back of the house until I found a bay window. Bingo—no blinds.

  Peeking in, the baby grand sat next to a potted tree, flanked by a high end table and a white leather couch. The window was floor to ceiling, I could watch from beneath the baby grand, relatively concealed. My view was perfectly centered on the fireplace and the desk with the wall of bookshelves behind it.

  As the sun climbed its invisible path, I watched and waited. The house was silent. Nothing happened. Fat Bastard and May must have been sleeping late. I wished I had an ipod… or a doughnut.

  I wiggled out of my sweatshirt, rolled it under my head, and stretched out. Finches flitted in and out of boxwood hedges. Lavender surrounded me. Its strong scent calmed my nerves. Clouds moved in droves across a lazy blue sky, almost hypnotic. I found myself thinking back years ago, May and me, stretched out on a blanket of grass by our trailer court…

  May points at a dead maple towering beside us. “Those ugly crows are secretly fan tailed doves, exiled from their mother’s kingdom in the sky.” And then she says, “It’s hot. I want ice cream. Where does ice cream come from, you think?”

  I wipe sweat off my forehead. “Ice cream drips off clouds, fluffy clouds, just like these, but only at night.”

  May turns on an elbow to face me. “Why not during the day?”

  “Because then,” I say, ”All the rich kids and poor kids would get ice cream. It would be fair. Nothing is ever fair.”

  She nods. “How does it get to the stores?”

  I watch a cloud shaped like a mushroom float by. “It falls on trees like snow, and every morning the elves come from underneath the mushrooms and collect it in buckets and bring it to stores. Only the rich people can buy some whenever they want. Poor people, like us, have get up early, even before the sun wakes up, and steal it before the elves get it.”

  “Really?”

  I nod my head.

  “I wish it was night,” says May.

  A crow flies overhead. For a single instant, its shadow wraps his bird wings about us.

  “Night is coming,” I tell May.

  A bird shrieked and my eyes startled open. The sun had swept to the West and was shedding her pink glory across sky.

  “Shit!”

  I flipped back to my belly and slowly rose myself up to the window. I heard voices inside. A male figure appeared from a hallway to the left, he glided across the wooden floor glancing around the room. The voices were coming from elsewhere. He wasn’t talking.

  He stepped closer to the window and I could tell, from May’s previous description, it was Leroy. He was all done up macho style in a Giorgio Armani black tee shirt and slacks. When had he arrived? I hadn’t heard a car. Must have been while I was snoozing.

  Leroy moved to the bookcase, drew out a book, looked inside it, and pushed it back in. He strode out the same hallway he entered.

  I wondered what was he looking for. Or hiding.

  A minute later, I heard Leroy leave. I knew it was Leroy who left because Fat Bastard paced into the living room, talking on a cell. Gawd, he was fat-- and dripping wet. His hair, what was left of it anyway, slicked back to the nape of his neck, and the wrinkles on his jowls sunk to the ever after. Fold after folds of skin gobbled and wobbled about each other over his nearly nude body. He wore a bright white Speedo so tight his pubic hair poked through.

  Ewww.

  Must have an indoor hot tub.

  He clapped the cell shut and tossed it on the couch. He searched through his bookcase, found a book (I wondered if it was the same one Leroy popped out), opened it and withdrew a key. A silver key. He turned (I ducked lower) and practically leapt at the cherry wood desk. He opened a drawer slid in the key and slammed it shut. “Just a minute!” he yelled. He must have been talking to May. Fat Bastard replaced the book, and hurriedly exited the room.

  I stared at the cherry wood desk. Bingo. I texted May my plan, hoping her phone still worked.

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