Dancer in the Flames

by Stephen Solomita

  Though he might have shaved twenty minutes off the trip to Anita Parker’s home if he’d remained on the Staten Island Expressway, Boots opted for the scenic route, on Hylan Boulevard around the edge of the island. Boots was feeling, as he’d been for several weeks now, a simmering recklessness. He sensed this affliction as he might a subclinical disease. Sexually transmitted, no doubt, by Crazy Jill Kelly.

  Boots had no problem with calculated risk, but reckless was not his game. He scouted the Parker house three times before he parked his car and made his way to the unlocked window at the back of the house. Once inside, he went directly to the basement and yanked the two ends of the vent apart. When the plastic bag dropped to the floor, spilling money as it fell, he sighed.

  Boots had his argument in place, the one he would make to Father Gubetti in the confessional. The priest had instructed him to resist and he’d done just that. Resisted for weeks and weeks until … until the great Temptor overcame his resolve by insisting that the loot, like any other treasure, belonged to he who recovered it. Did the new homeowner have a greater claim than Boots? Or some workman hired to remove the vent?

  The cellphone in his pocket began to trill just as Boots knelt to gather the cash. He’d forgotten to shut it off. Now it would ring five or six times if he didn’t answer. He yanked the phone out, pushed the on-button, whispered, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Hey, Boots, whatta ya doin’?’

  Boots looked down at the pile of bills. Somehow, lying to Jill Kelly seemed the perfect way to kick off their post-Corcoran relationship.

  ‘Hangin’ out,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I have a question I want to ask you.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘I want to know whether you’ll still love me if I have to wear a hearing aid?’

  Boots shoved the cash into the plastic bag as he carefully considered his reply. Only when he had the words right did he finally speak.

  ‘Jill Kelly,’ he said, ‘I’d still love you if you wore two wooden legs and a badly fitted set of false teeth.’

  ‘What if I took the false teeth out?’

  And not even Psycho Boots Littlewood had an answer for that one.