by Paisley Ray
“She’s loves Buster.”
“If she keeps rewinding that cassette, the tape will stretch.”
“Rachael, you wouldn’t.”
“If she’d let me destroy that cassette. I’d pay extra rent”
“Sheila has a thing for sleazy types with big hair and big smiles,” I said, before I remembered she’d dated Clay and Hugh.
Sprawled in the center section of the U-shaped sofa, Sheila thumbed the pages of the lifestyle section of the morning newspaper. A blue tin of Planters Cheez Balls rested between her bare thighs. She wore an oversized silk button-down shirt and sang with Dexter, “Zat you Santa Claus?”
Katie Lee plopped down on an empty cushion.
Feigning deafness, I placed my hand on my ear, and pointed to the stereo before cranking the volume counterclockwise.
“Hey, I can’t hear it.”
“I thought we could enjoy the sound of the freezing rain against the siding.”
“Maybe it’ll turn to snow.” Katie Lee said.
“Uhhhh,” I huffed.
“What’s got your tinsel in a knot?” Sheila asked.
“It’s Friday. Rach is in a funk every Friday when she gets home.”
“I am not,” I said slumping on an available sofa cushion.
Sheila popped a Cheez ball. I noticed her orange-stained fingertips, especially the one she pointed at me. “You need to get laid.”
“Been awhile? Hasn’t it?” Katie Lee remarked.
“Use it or lose it,” Sheila said.
“You two just keep track of your own exploits, and I’ll keep track of mine.”
“You have nothing to keep track of,” Sheila giggled.
“Maybe you should reconsider going on that cruise to the Caribbean with your Dad.”
“Cruise? I thought your dad’s business was in the toilet. I mean, that’s why you were so obsessed with getting the scholarship and all.”
“Sheila!” Katie Lee spouted. “Where’s your sense of propriety?”
We both knew she’d missed that gene.
“Your dad must’ve fixed gobs of junk to afford a cruise.”
“They leave in less than a week, and it’s highly unlikely that I’d find anyone while I’m under the watchful eye of Dad and Trudy. My only escape would be playing marathon shuffleboard and smoking a pipe with Aunt Gert.”
“You can come on home with me,” Sheila said.
Katie Lee butted in. “I already invited her to my grandma’s in Virginia.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m gonna stay here. Sleep in, relax, catch up on some leisure reading, and rent a bunch of movies I’ve been meaning to see: Fatal Attraction, Throw Mama from the Train.”
My roommates made eyes at one another.
“Rach, you don’t have a car. How are you going to get groceries?” Katie Lee asked.
“I’ve stocked up on cans of tuna and noodles. And it’s not like I can’t walk. There’s a corner store not two miles from here.”
Katie Lee’s scrunched her nose. “Rachael, your holiday sounds awful.”
Like a rabbit trapped in a hole, I needed an exit. Getting off the sofa, I moved into the kitchen. “I’m looking forward to some down time.”
“This is a ruse,” Sheila said, her head popping up above the sofa back. “You want us all out of the house so you can have your FBI muffin over.”
“Busted,” I said. “As soon as you’re gone, it’s just his handcuffs and the smoking gun in his pants.”
Sheila wouldn’t let go. “All right, if it’s not the FBI, then it must be Bubba or Stone.”
“Bubba was a mistake. He’s not even a blip on my screen.”
Again, my roommates made eyes at one another, and a sharp pain twanged beneath my ribs. Katie Lee and Sheila had become civil toward one another, almost friendly. When had that happened?
Readjusting herself onto the sofa, Sheila put the lid on the Cheez Balls and said, “That’s not what Dr. Brown told Katie Lee.”
“Sheila!”
“It’s no secret that Dr. Brown caught the two on your porch in the wee hours.”
“Not anymore,” Katie Lee grumbled. “That’s the last time I tell you anything.”
“You didn’t tell me. I overheard you telling Francine.”
I didn’t know Katie Lee knew about Bubba. How much had Dr. Brown overheard? Reaching inside the refrigerator, I poured a glass of sweet tea and slammed the door harder than I meant.
“Rachael, ignore Sheila’s blundering commentary. We’re just concerned.”
The front door swung open and a gust of cold swept through the house. Francine stomped down the hall in her calf-length leather boots.
“If it ain’t the Green Giant.” Sheila said.
Francine joined me in the kitchen and began digging in the refrigerator. She pulled out a foil covered Corelle plate and put it on low in the oven. Not addressing anyone in particular she concentrated on a dishrag she used to wipe some crumbs. “Jesus don’t like stupid.”
Jet tapped on the family room slider and Katie Lee let her in. She wasn’t the only one coming inside. “Nash!” Katie Lee said.
Sheila sat upright. “If it ain’t Santa Claus.”
Holding a rag and some greasy metal piston, Jet landed on the breakfast bar stool.
“What are you doin’ in town?” Katie Lee asked.
He carried an armful of red foil-wrapped presents. “Ladies,” he said, acknowledging Francine and me in the kitchen, then set the gifts on the black lacquer coffee table. He leaned in to kiss Katie Lee’s cheek. Obligingly, she hugged him like you would a relative, and he held on a second longer than was right.
“I was in the area with a delivery and thought I’d bring some Christmas cheer before I head on back to The Bern.”
Clearly expecting the first embrace from Nash, Sheila busied herself dusting the crumbs off her blouse. As Nash turned, Sheila opened her arms for a hug. I turned my back to the scene and told Francine, “I can’t watch.”
Francine moved to my right and rested her elbows on the counter. “Are you kidding? Things are just getting interesting.”
Jet used a dish towel to rub off some of the grease from her hands. I could see Francine working up a comment about machinery near her kitchen, when Jet used her commentator voice to give the play by play. “Sheila’s patting the sofa next to her, and tugging his hand.”
“What is this? High school?” I asked.
“Better.” Francine said. “It’s like bad TV, except it’s real.”
Sheila rattled one of the presents, “And who are these for?”
“I can’t watch this train wreck.” Moving out of the kitchen, I trotted up the stairs.
“Why don’t you just get glad in the same pants you got mad in?” I could hear Francine shout, even though I pretended not to.
Fifteen hours and they’d all be gone.
A CHILL BLEW IN from a cracked slider door that led to the bedroom balcony. I always locked doors but the concept was foreign to everyone else. I flew into my dark room and dropped to my knees by the dresser in the corner. For emergency purposes, I’d taped a fresh pack of Benson and Hedges slim cigarettes underneath the dresser. My fingers grasped the cellophane package, and like a kid with a birthday present, I ravaged the red tab and the wrapper it secured. Lifting the box to my nose and inhaled. I needed a lighter. I knew I had one in my book bag downstairs. Like hell was I back down there. By now, Sheila had probably opened her presents and was dragging Nash by his jacket collar to her bedroom. This could be the night that Katie Lee connected the dots.
I dug under the clothes inside each dresser drawer, knowing there had to be a Bic stashed somewhere. I didn’t find anything. Then I remembered Francine’s trinket box. She had a pack of matches that she used to light her candles. On tiptoes, I trod to her side of the room, careful not to put footprints in her neatly aligned vacuum tracks. After turning on a small desk lamp, I slid a bottom wood drawer open. Jackpot. There was a pack of matches alo
ng with dried sage, a pouch of Zatarain’s crawfish boil spices, some white and brown vials labeled in French, and a handful of Polaroid photos. I hesitated, wondering if these were personal photos of Francine and Roger.
With a delicateness that you’d use to peel cling wrap off a hot microwave dish, I removed the rubber band. Bracing myself, I peeked. “Eew,” I squealed before hucking them into the air like a game of fifty-seven pickup. Francine had a lot of photos of Sheila? The light was dim, but I could see enough of the ones that landed Sheila side up. It was bad enough that she let her bits hang loose, but seeing a frozen shot of half her bare ass hanging from beneath a t-shirt on the back deck rail grossed me out. I’d gotten a splinter on my hand out there. Frozen in time was Sheila’s D-plus, stripper-worthy, boobs that screamed, let us out, from the too-tight tee.
A thwack noise outside snapped me out of my headspace. If Francine caught me with these, I’d have to confront her. And the photos would take second stage as to why I was in her things on her side of the room. With haste, I gathered the photos, rubber banded them together, and stuffed them back into the box.
I so deserved a cigarette.
Flicking the desk light off, I moved across the room toward our balcony, but stopped. Beyond the curtains an agile shadow leapt over the rail. “Nash,” I spat and grabbed a can of Francine’s Aqua Net. The girls must have sent him up the balcony to coerce my holiday cheer.
My index finger lay heavy on the white nozzle. After counting to three, I yanked the curtain and held the aerosol can at eye height. “You shit, what are you doing up here?” Before I’d adequately choked him, I felt a vice grip on my wrist and I dropped the can. “Rachael, it’s Storm,” the voice coughed.
I shook loose from his hand and rubbed my wrist. “What are you doing?” Don’t FBI types know it’s still common practice to call or knock on a front door?”
“You have a house full of people.”
The frigid air wrapped around my bare feet. I turned on my heel and went into the room I shared with Francine to fetch the cigarettes and matches I’d left on the dresser near her trinket box. At this point I stopped trying to be careful about footprints. Agent Cauldwell’s shadow watched me from the balcony. Moving back outside, I closed the slider behind me, and removed a well-deserved cigarette.
“Are you mad?”
“No. I’m fascinated.”
“Fascinated?”
“At the explanation an FBI agent has for trespassing without a warrant.”
“I knocked. No one answered. I heard music blasting and loud voices and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“So you climbed up my balcony?”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Sweet nicotine filled my chest and I released it into the frosty air. The sleet that pinged the house earlier had let up and now a fine mist hovered around in the glow of the reflection of the streetlight. Parked two houses down, I spotted Agent Cauldwell’s MG.
“What brings you to the neighborhood?”
He leaned his backside against the rail, his stature commanding the space that wasn’t wide enough for a chair.
We both listened to the hum of a car engine on a nearby street. “Those are gonna do you in,” he said.
My lips lingered on another drag. I wasn’t going to let FBI, or anyone for that matter, ruin my fix.
“Been well?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Haven’t seen your car around.”
I picked a flake of tobacco off my tongue. “I don’t own a vehicle anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
Agent Cauldwell had been snooping. I knew damn well that he knew about the gas station demise.
“Vintage doesn’t suit me.”
He shook his head. “So you’re not going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That your car blew up along with a gas station?”
“I didn’t want to bother you with my troubles.”
“That wasn’t like a jaywalking citation. Rachael, you could have been killed.”
I wasn’t enjoying my cigarette.
“Is that why you came over, to give me a lecture?”
“Rachael, the Gas N’Biscuit had an expired license for food handling and safety. They’d dumped the grease waste onto the property. That and some spilled fuel led to the explosion.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have friends in other divisions.”
“And my name along with the Gas N’Biscuit just happened to be mentioned?”
He looked off into the night.
“You’re keeping tabs on me, aren’t you?”
“Rachael.”
“Isn’t that an infringement of my privacy?”
“I just like to make sure you’re safe.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re likeable.” He reached in his pocket and handed me a small gift box. Inside was a chunky chain link bracelet with one charm attached. It was a compass. I didn’t know what to say.
A gift tag was taped on the underside of the box cover. I splayed it open. In narrow, chicken scratch, printed letters a note read, May you never lose your way. Merry Christmas. Storm.
Lose my way? No one besides my dad and Travis knew I was directionally challenged. I’d gotten lost in New Orleans on spring break and hid it from my roommates. Chalked it up to a naughty Leprechaun that lured and left me on a St. Patrick’s Day parade float. Then there was the time at Shucks, Jet’s family business in Bluffton, South Carolina. I ended up in the swampy woods across the street. In my defense, I was running from Billy Ray, who had a gun. I hadn’t told anyone about either of those two incidents, until last summer when I confided in Travis.
“A unique gift. What makes you think I need a compass? I don’t even own a car.”
Agent Cauldwell scanned the night. “Rachael O’Brien, you’re not like other girls. You have a habit of getting yourself into situations.”
“Situations?” I asked, and searched for the answer in his eyes, but it was dark. “Is there something you’ve been meaning to tell me?”
Downstairs, a boom and shrieks rattled the house. In a snap, Agent Cauldwell drew his handgun from under his armpit. “Stay here,” he said and darted through my bedroom. I waited a beat then followed.
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Francine gasped.
“You missed by a mile,” Jet said.
“I don’t see it y’all,” Katie Lee said.
I crept up behind Agent Cauldwell in the hallway that led to the family room. My roommates were huddled behind Nash and stuffing from the sofa drifted through the air like snow. They hadn’t spotted us. The pack of them was too busy watching the floor. Personally, I couldn’t take my eye off the big hole in the center of the sofa and the worn, sawed off pistol grip shotgun in Nash’s hand. “What the hell?” I asked.
Sheila spun around first. “Well, well, well. And here we were feeling sorry for you.”
“You remember Agent Cauldwell?”
Francine loosened the clutch she had on Nash’s shoulder. “Um-hmm.”
Glancing back for a moment, Katie Lee covered her palm over a gold Claddagh necklace. I’d only ever seen her wear silver. “Don’t take your eye off it. Damn thing blends in with the sofa?”
“What thing?” Agent Cauldwell asked.
“Snake. Black. Long as a broomstick,” Nash said.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“At close range, Nash managed to miss,” Jet said. “Slithered behind Sheila’s neck as she opened the velvet box with pearl colored eggs. My guess, the thing was looking for a snack.”
On the coffee table, nestled in ripped wrapping paper was a Jade Buddha, tins of French oysters, a fancy glass bottle of perfume, and one package unopened.
I’d never seen Francine so intimate with Nash and Sheila. She interlocked an arm with them both. “I told y’all I been seeing that serpent for nearly a month. We’re infested.”
; “God Damn,” Nash said. “I don’t mean to frighten y’all, but I swear I saw a tail hanging out of its mouth.”
We all screamed. Agent Cauldwell moved to the phone and began pressing buttons.
“Who you calling?” Francine asked.
“I don’t hunt snakes. I’m calling back up.”
MY OPTIONS FOR PEST-FREE holiday accommodations quickly became limited. The moment Nash saw the yellow FBI lettering on the back of Agent Storm Cauldwell’s navy blue jacket, he slid the stubby shotgun he’d fired into his jacket and tipped the lid of his baseball cap.
Storm glared.
“I got a permit, just not on me.”
“You’re not worth the paperwork,” Storm said.
“Look at the time. Ladies, the feds will have this sorted out in no time.” Pecking Katie Lee on the cheek he was unable to exit without returning the hug Sheila wrapped around him.
“I’m a big fan of powerful chambers that go bang when you pull the trigger. I love what you’re packing,” she purred.
Once Agent Cauldwell hung up with animal control services, Sheila dialed her father and then an exterminator company. Regardless of what animal control discovered, she erred on the cautious side and scheduled a critter infestation removal for the following day.
Nash’s backside made a beeline to the front door, while he mumbled some lame story about an early morning delivery.
Before Agent Cauldwell’s contact from animal protection even arrived, Francine had called the airlines and transferred her ticket to a flight that left that same night. Katie Lee’s car had been partially packed before the whole snake sighting, and she offered Francine a ride to the airport before she headed to her grandmother’s in Virginia. Both offered holiday hospitality and each said they’d love to have me as a guest, but I declined.
The traditionalist in me clung to old-school rituals where holidays are an intimate time meant to be spent with loved ones. Most people I knew had an image of Christmas: white snow, fresh tree, singing carols while sipping a toddy, giddy-laughter catching up with all the relatives—The image was cowpucky. Winter holidays are fueled by crisscrossing family dynamics that often result in emotional blowouts of some sort. The older, wiser me didn’t want to trap my car-less self in somebody else’s awkward family scenarios.