“Here, put this on so the sun doesn’t burn you alive.”
She handed me a wide-brimmed straw hat, torn and battered but still serviceable. I clapped it on my head.
She smiled at me. “You look like Vincent Van Gogh.”
“I guess that’s a compliment.”
“Oh it is, it is. Your intensity. It’s the same as Van Gogh’s.”
“Wasn’t he insane?”
“What great artist isn’t?”
“Robin, he painted masterpieces. I’m painting a house.”
She refilled my lemonade glass and passed it back to me. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes mindless tasks inspire creativity.”
“They do?”
“Certainly. I’ll bet you’re writing songs without even knowing it.”
“I am?”
“Subconsciously, sure. Just let your thoughts flow, Mickey. It’ll come.”
I gulped the lemonade. I didn’t like the way this was going. Suddenly there were expectations of me beyond a freshly painted house.
The next day, while bringing me lemonade, Robin brought up the songwriting thing again. This time I couldn’t just let it go.
“Robin, it’s been a long time since I wrote a song, or even thought about writing a song,” I said gently. “Those days are gone.”
“Yes, but new days are beginning, Mickey.” She ventured a conspiratorial smile. “A second flowering, so to speak. Ever hear of that? It’s the rarest thing in the plant world. Once in a while, for reasons no one can explain, a flower that’s supposed to bloom once a year gives a second bloom.”
“Too bad I’m not a plant.”
“It works on spiritual levels as well. A second flowering. That’s what I see for you, Mickey.”
She looked left and right. “For us,” she added. She winked at me, went to her battered red VW bug and drove off to teach a yoga class.
Slightly crazy people are far more dangerous than the totally insane. You don’t see them coming and by the time you do, they’re already in your life.
I didn’t like being compared to an insane artist, and I didn’t like being part of an “us” I knew nothing about. Did Robin want to write the tunes to go with my lyrics, or the lyrics to go with my tunes? What other “us” could she have been referring to?
That’s how far out of it I was. That’s how badly I wanted to believe that Billy and Robin O’Brien were my surrogate parents, who only wanted the best for me.
I told myself that Robin was only trying to push me so I’d be as good as I once was, dipped my roller in the paint pan and resumed the job.
On the third day of the job, I had to stop kidding myself when Robin crept up behind me, reached between my legs and gave my balls a gentle squeeze. I leapt away from her.
“Jesus, Robin!”
She put a finger to her lips. “Quiet!” she hissed. “You’ll wake Billy!”
“Robin. What the hell are you doing?”
She was scarlet with what appeared to be shame and confusion. She shook her head and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Mickey. I was really just kidding around. I had no right.”
“That’s right! You didn’t!”
“It won’t happen again. I just…look, I have to teach a yoga class. We’ll talk about it later.”
She ran to her car and took off. I was shaking so much I had to sit in the shade for twenty minutes to calm down. Under normal circumstances I’d have been out of there like a shot, but I had a paint job to complete, and I didn’t want to run off and just leave it. It would have been hard for Robin to explain my disappearance to Billy, and I didn’t want to mess up what had appeared to me to be a good marriage.
That was the toughest part of all. They were an affectionate couple, the real deal, or so it seemed to me. They held hands, they kissed, they nuzzled.
Why would she grab my nuts like that? Could she have been just kidding around, like she said?
It almost didn’t matter. Either way, I had to get out of there, and the only way to do that was to finish the paint job. I got to my feet and went back to work, but I was rushing, so of course I fucked up. I knocked over half a can of paint and lost an hour cleaning it from the front path. As night fell I still hadn’t done the window frames. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a day’s work, so I had one more night as the guest of a dedicated cop and his erotic, flaky wife.
Billy came outside with Robin to take a look, all yawny from his daylong sleep. He rubbed his eyes, looked at the house and smiled.
“Oh, man! Great job, Mickey.” He slipped his arm around his wife’s waist. “What do you think, Rob?”
“Yeah, it’s looking good.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, I want to get it finished by tomorrow.”
Robin’s face darkened. “Tomorrow?” she asked. “What’s the rush?”
I hesitated, made up the wildest story I could think of. “I’m going to see my parents back in New York.”
Robin’s eyes widened in shock but Billy was grinning with what appeared to be genuine happiness for me.
“Yeah,” I continued, making it up as I went along, “been a long time since I’ve seen them. Being here with you guys makes me realize how much I miss the whole family thing, you know?”
“Buddy,” Billy asked gently, “how you gonna pay for the plane ticket?”
I swallowed. “I have an emergency fund with about a grand in it. My last money in the world, you know?”
This was a lie. I had nothing. But Billy believed me, socking me on the arm. “You sneaky son of a bitch! Listen, let me pay you something for this amazing paint job.”
“No, man, we are square.”
“How long you stayin’ in New York?”
“I’m not sure yet. Gonna play it by ear.”
“Well, when you come back you got your old room waiting, if you want it.”
“Thanks, Billy.”
Robin stood staring at me, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She was not happy. Billy turned to her and she forced a smile, just in time.
“Dinner ready yet, or what?”
Billy managed to put away three portions of Robin’s vegetarian lasagne. I struggled to finish one portion and Robin barely touched hers, choosing instead to smoke an herbal cigarette that smelled a lot like a reefer as she stared at me through half-lidded eyes.
Billy did all the talking. He was excited because this was the night they were going to pull a raid on a drug den in South Central. He was starting his shift early, which meant he’d be leaving the house at around eight o’clock.
“Be careful out there, man,” I said, and it occurred to me that his wife should have been saying this. He laughed, patted my shoulder, kissed Robin on the cheek and was out the door, and suddenly it was just Robin and me in all that excruciating silence.
She stubbed her cigarette out. “He takes such a childish pleasure in his work.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Can I talk to you about what happened today, Mickey? I mean, now that you’re leaving us and everything?”
“We don’t have to talk about it, Robin. I probably over-reacted.”
She drew a deep breath. “I had no right to touch you as I did. It was wrong. I’m truly sorry.”
“Let’s just forget it.”
“Do you mean that? Can we wipe the slate clean?”
I knew that once I left this house, I’d never be back. Wiping the slate clean would be easy.
“Yeah, we can wipe it clean.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Mickey. I don’t want you to think ill of me. Let’s have some wine.”
Before I could object she poured two big glasses of California red. We clinked glasses and sipped.
“I’m leaving Billy,” she said abruptly.
The wine went sour in my mouth. I set my glass down and saw that my hand was trembling.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Robin said. “It’s been building for a very long time.”
She stared at me, seeking a respon
se from my eyes. Finally I spoke.
“I’m stunned. You two seem good together.”
“You think so?”
“You seem very…affectionate.”
“Oh, I like Billy. He did the same thing for me that he did for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Robin chuckled in a sinister way. “I was pretty much homeless when he found me living on the beach. He took me in. It’s what he does. It’s his pattern. Notice his pets?”
She gestured toward the parakeets and the turtles. “He’d never have a dog, or a cat. Nothing that could run free. He likes bowls and cages. Trapping things, in the name of love. Birds. Turtles. Me.” She sucked air through clenched teeth. “I’ve been in a cage for twenty years. I think that’s long enough, don’t you, Mickey?”
She lit another herbal cigarette, took a long drag and held the smoke for so long that her exhalation was nearly clear, and brimming with words that shocked me.
“Every time he goes to work, I pray that he won’t come back.”
“Jesus, Robin!”
“It’s true. I know it’s terrible, but it’s true. Like tonight, with this drug raid. Maybe he’ll finally catch a bullet, and I’ll be free.”
What the hell could I say to that? I had to say something. “He’s a good man, Robin.”
“You think so?” She leaned closer to me. “If he’s such a good man, what’s he doing taking payoffs?”
I was stunned. “Payoffs?”
“Oh, yeah. He doesn’t even know that I know. Care to see?”
She rose from the table, went to the kitchen cupboard and took a Maxwell House coffee can from the back of the top shelf. She removed the lid and held it under my nose, as if she wanted me to sniff it.
It wasn’t coffee. It was cash—wads of it, rubber-banded into tight rolls.
“Jesus Christ.”
“There’s almost six thousand dollars in here. Tonight he’ll come back with more. How good a man do you think he is now?”
I was exhausted. More than anything in the world I wanted to take a shower, collapse in bed, and conk out. But Robin wanted an answer.
“He probably wants good things for you, so he bends a few rules.”
“Bends a few rules, eh? That sounds lovely.”
“Robin, he cut me a break and he helped me out. I can’t diss the guy.”
“Loyal to the end, huh?”
“Something like that.” I got to my feet. I was dizzy and wobbly. “I don’t feel so good.”
Robin’s expression turned from miserable wife to concerned mother. She put the lid on the coffee can and put it back in the cupboard.
“You might be dehydrated, Mickey. All those hours in the sun.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Take a nice cool shower and go right to bed. Drink some water before you fall asleep, or you’ll have a terrible headache tomorrow.”
“I will.”
She got up and hugged me, a friend embracing a friend. “Mickey, I’m sorry I unloaded all my baggage on you. Truth is, I’m a little isolated here. Don’t get to speak with many people.”
“I understand.”
She waved a loose hand in the air, an erasing gesture. “Don’t listen to what I said. It’s the wine…. Billy and I, we’re all right. Just have to work some things out, that’s all.”
“Well, I think that’d be for the best.”
“I’m going to zone out and watch TV for a while. You shower and flop.” She gave my cheek a chaste kiss. “Good night, Mickey.”
“Good night, Robin.”
I was proud of the way I’d worked a truly tricky situation. I’d stuck up for the man who’d rescued me and expressed sympathy for his troubled wife.
I went to the bathroom, stripped down and stepped into the shower. The cool spray on my face was a wonderful relief, like a fire being extinguished on my forehead. I began to feel optimistic. I’d regained my strength, here at the O’Brien house. If I ever got back on my feet and had a place of my own, maybe I could invite them over for dinner, and we’d laugh over the funky way our lives had intersected, a cop rousting a skel from an abandoned tool shed.
Robin and I could keep that testicle grab to ourselves. She was confused, desperate, isolated. She hadn’t meant anything by it. We could both bury it, forget it, never mention it again. It’d be as if it never happened.
Sure.
Naked except for her many rings, Robin stepped into the shower as if she had an appointment to be there.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Just relax, Mickey.” She grinned at me, showing teeth I was noticing were crooked for the first time. No orthodonture for this woman, and that made sense, because what homeless person ever had good dental work?
The water flattened her hair against her skull, and the true length of all those wavy locks was startling, touching halfway down her back. Her breasts were small but beautifully rounded, with large nipples the color of red wine. She smoothed back her hair, put her hands on my shoulders, and there was no place to hide my hard-on.
“I knew it,” she said. “You couldn’t fool me.”
“Robin—”
“Nothing’s going to happen tonight, Mickey,” she said, with the eerie calmness of the truly insane. “We’ll just shower together, get acquainted.”
I was quaking. My teeth were chattering. “Please get out.”
She put a hand to my cheek, with the eerie calmness of the truly insane. “Mickey. Stop panicking. Stop fighting it.” She shut her eyes, the better to dream. “This was meant to be. This is the rarest of all things, a second flowering for both of us.”
She reached for my cock. I twisted away from her, my back to the tiled wall. The only way out was to push past her, and I didn’t want to touch her.
I was breathing hard, scared and panicked and, believe it or not, lonely. There wasn’t a person in the world I could reach out to for help, and I was at the mercy of a crazy lady. I actually started to cry.
“Billy is my friend!” I all but wailed.
She laughed out loud, opened her eyes wide. “Really? Well, he’s my husband, but I’m not sure he’s my friend.”
“We can’t do this!”
She slapped my face. “Stop making it complicated.” She shut her eyes again and turned her face to the shower spray, like a farmer giving thanks for the rain. “Look at me!” she shouted to whatever god she believed in. “I’m taking a shower with Mickey DeFalco!”
She turned and hugged me with a strength that was almost shocking. Her mouth sought mine, but I twisted away, and that’s when I heard the front door open, then footsteps, then a pounding on the bathroom door.
“Robin! Hey, Rob, you in there?”
Robin and I froze in place, gripping each other by the elbows. Billy barged into the bathroom, and I could hear him breathing hard on the other side of the shower curtain. The man was actually chuckling.
“You believe this, Rob? I go on a raid to the shittiest part of town, and I forget my friggin’ vest! Got time for a kiss?”
He ripped aside the shower curtain. At the sight of us a shudder went through his body, but then suddenly he was as still as Mount Rushmore, regarding the two of us from a face turned to stone.
I looked in Billy’s eyes and saw his entire life collapse. Everything he thought he knew, everything he believed in, everything that mattered to him had just been brought down like the Twin Towers.
Robin turned and faced Billy, her bony back to me. Billy was breathing hard now. He looked as if he might pass out but some cop instinct kept him on his feet, alert, on the job.
“Billy,” Robin said in a matter-of-fact voice, “nothing’s happening here. We’re just showering.”
It was the typical flaky hippie-dippy sort of thing she’d been saying all her marriage, and getting away with, but not this time. Billy’s eyes widened in pure heartache.
“Oh, that’s great,” he breathed. “Just showering, huh?”
“T
hat’s right.”
His eyes brimmed with tears and his lower lip quivered like a little boy’s. “Jesus Christ, Robin. The meter man was one thing. But Mickey? Mickey DeFalco? You hadda go and fuck Mickey DeFalco?”
Robin sighed. She seemed almost bored. “Oh, we haven’t fucked. Yet.”
I think it was that last word that cost Robin O’Brien her life. With an almost weary look on his face Billy lifted his gun and shot his wife twice in the chest.
I caught her in my arms and nearly went down myself, but somehow I managed to stay on my feet. Blood gushed from between her breasts and flooded down her flat belly, mixing with the running water and swirling down the drain like an endless red ribbon. That crazy old hippie girl was dead.
I set her down in a sitting position. She toppled sideways, her cheek on the shower drain. Sensibly, Billy nudged her head off the drain with his foot so the shower wouldn’t overflow. It was the same foot he’d used to roust me from the tool shed.
I stood before him, not bothering to figleaf my hands over my now limp cock. He was whimpering as he breathed, a sound that was louder than the water streaming from the shower head.
“Mickey,” Billy moaned. “Aw, Mickey. You?”
I spread my hands. “Billy. It wasn’t my idea. She just came in here.”
He nodded. He seemed calmer. “I know, Mickey. I shoulda seen it comin.’ I know what she does.”
“You know?”
“Shit, I’ve always known….”
I had minutes to live, and what went through my mind was not the end of my life, but how rough the headlines would be on my poor parents. JEALOUS COP SHOOTS WIFE, ONE HIT WONDER IN SHOWER…. SOUR ENDING FOR “SWEET DAYS” SINGER…
My God, the story had so many good angles! Lust, faded fame, homelessness, vengeance, wasted promise, nudity, adultery—I could see the TV crew from E! True Hollywood Story showing up at my parents’ house, pounding on the door, begging for sound bites…. What a finish, what a fitting fucking finish for a blue-collar boy from Queens who’d hit it big and then lost his way….
Billy knelt down, the bulletproof vest he’d come home to get jutting up to his chin. If only he’d remembered to take that vest in the first place! How the fuck can a cop forget his bulletproof vest?
Or did he forget it? Had he left it behind on purpose, obeying some blind cop instinct that told him his wife was up to no good?
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