“I just bet you do, because I love you back,” Zelda said, clicking off the call.
Before she had a chance to get overly excited, her boss Nathan Ridgeway called. He started by yelling in the phone about the Hurricane, then he yelled about his bursitis, and by the time he made it the third thing, he’d forgotten why he called.
“Mr. Ridgeway, you called to tell me something important,” she encouraged him through gentle persuasion.
“It’s not important, but that Berger guy is guest speaker tomorrow night at some event in Las Vegas. I think it would be a swell idea to hook up with him again and do like a follow-up piece about how vast the ventriloquism field is to purists of the art or something equally as hokey,” Nathan told her.
“Maybe I will find him tonight and hook up with him,” she said, smiling at herself in the oversized mirror. If there was one thing Nathan Ridgeway hit on the head, it was that Zelda was truly looking forward to hooking up with Scott Berger again.
ZELDA ARRIVED AT HOOLIHAN’S in a black miniskirt with a flowing design. It was actually a knee length skirt that she rolled the waistband over several times to make the skirt shorter. After all the catcalls and wolf whistles walking along the Boulevard, she entered the dark, smelly tavern, looking for her big handsome man. It wasn’t very crowded for a Thursday night. The regulars sat on stools permanently indented with the impressions of their butts, saturating the room with dark thoughts and deep regrets. Scott sat at the end of the bar, nursing a drink just as he had the night they first met. Instead of sitting beside him, she took a seat a few stools away, giving them same distance as their first encounter.
A soft voice was heard in her ear. “You know you want some company tonight,” the voice said.
Zelda looked up at Scott, whose eyes were down in his drink. She looked over her shoulder at the other sad faces in the bar, earning a smile from a man who resembled Droopy Dog.
“He didn’t say it. I did. Put that drink down and let’s get the real party started in my room,” the voice, now slightly muffled, suggested.
Zelda’s intense brown eyes return to Scott, her focused remained on the man, her man, with his eyes still in his cup, which he lifted, taking a sip of the dark brown liquid. In her estimation, it was the oldest trick in the ventriloquist handbook. Taking a drink while throwing your voice.
“I’m still not amused,” Zelda told Scott.
One of Scott’s hands was under the bar, fiddling with what she assumed was Danny his vent doll. On his other hand, he fingered the glass while his eyes held her stare. One eyebrow arched as if he were challenging her to join in on his game. She twisted her lips in the trademark sister girl annoyance, just as she had before.
From under the counter rose the tiny hat attached to Danny’s tiny ceramic smiling face. “Would you be amused if I told you I was rocking three inches of solid oaken wood for your pleasure?” the little dummy asked.
“No, I would be interested if you told me you wanted me to ride the nine iron you so deftly like to swing,” Zelda threw back at him. “If you ask nicely, I will let your little friend watch.”
Scott started to laugh, almost breaking the character he was trying to portray. “See that booth in the corner? Go slide in it and take your drink. We will meet you there in a second,” he said, using his head to point at Danny.
Zelda, stood, leaning over to flash him some cleavage as she walked unsteadily in the ridiculous high heeled shoes. Her pinky toe hurt and she really believed he was going to have to carry her across the street to their hotel room if she stayed in the shoes for even five more minutes. She slid into the booth as he ordered another round of drinks, then joined her in the dark corner. Danny sat in between them as Scott stared into her eyes. A warm hand touched her thigh.
She thought he would stop, but it slid all the way up until his fingers made contact with her, “Oooh,” she whispered.
He made smalls circles across her clit with his index finger, applying pressure. Her legs opened slightly to give him more access while he expertly moved the soft cotton to the side, slipping his fingers inside of her. The moisture on his fingertips aroused him as thick fingers entered Zelda with a thrust.
“Oh, my,” she said, clinging to his arm.
In and out his fingers worked, as Zelda ground her pelvis against his hand. His eyes never left hers as her eyelids fluttered from the sheer pleasure. His free hand grabbed hers, placing it on his lap, feeling the erection in his pants, she rubbed him, slowly. His breathing uneven as one finger shifted into two, going deeper, faster and harder probing inside of her. Zelda’s head dropped to her chest as her hand squeezed and stroked him. Scott’s eyes never left her face as he plunged his fingers in deeper, waiting for that sound which drove him insane. He added pressure from his thumb to her clit forcing a squeal from her as her legs clamped together. A gush of wetness filled his palm as he watched her face encouraging her to get him there. She didn’t disappoint him. She rubbed him faster through the fabric, squeezing massaging, allowing her finger to run across the perfect mushroom head until he twitched. Danny fell face first into the table as Scott leaned back, his mouth open, a ridiculous wet stain on his pants leg.
He grabbed her hand.
“I need round two,” he said, pulling her arm and standing up with Danny covering the wet spot in his trousers.
Zelda stood as well, but Scott stood immobile as if he had seen a ghost. She peered around him, trying to see what had stopped him mid-stride. An older woman, in her mid-sixties, dressed totally inappropriate for a lady her age smiled a knowing smile at him.
“I thought that was you, Scottie,” the woman said.
“Samantha,” he replied, almost choking on his words. “This is my fiancé, Zelda Fitzsimmons.”
She extended a hand with fingers covered with long red acrylic nails, mumbling a snide greeting to Zelda but keeping her eyes fixed on Scott. “I always wondered what you would look like all grown up,” she said, reaching out to touch him, but Zelda slapped her hands.
“Back up, old lady,” Zelda said. The look on Scott’s face said it all. This woman was a threat. “I’m not going to lie and say it was nice to meet you because it wasn’t. Scott, are we ready?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Good seeing you, Samantha.”
“You too, big guy,” she said winking.
Zelda led Scott out of the bar into the Vegas night, full of car horns, flashing lights, and happy people off to drink themselves into bad decision-making. Her main thoughts were to get out the shoes, get Scott to the hotel room, and find out who the woman was. She didn’t want to ask, but his reaction said almost all she needed to know. It didn’t jibe. She was old. At least by nearly twenty-five years.
They arrived at the hotel, his luggage already in the room. He plopped down on the couch in his love-stained pants, holding Danny like a security blanket. The woman brought back a bad memory that took Zelda’s big hairy man down a rabbit hole to a dark place.
“Scott, who was she?” Zelda asked, taking Danny from his arms and placing the doll in the chair.
“Remember when I told there were three women who broke my heart, Andromeda, Demetria, and you didn’t want to know about the third one,” he said.
“You are not going to sit here and tell me that hoochified old woman was number three, Scott!” she said almost yelling.
“Well, when I was 13 she didn’t look like that. At thirteen, I found her sophisticated and charming, and she could do things I only saw in porn movies,” he said softly. “I was in lust, and she loved me.”
“You were a child!”
“A child with a man’s appetite and a man’s body parts,” he said, shaking his head. “I spent almost every day either with a raging boner or raging hormones. I was miserable, missing my family, couldn’t get a gig and did I mention horny all the damned time?”
“That was no excuse for her to violate a child’s trust,” Zelda said.
“Stop it,” he snapped. “I didn’t fuck
her like a child. She treated me like a man and I treated her like a woman.”
“She’s the reason you had the breakdown...Chandler...the weird ass coffee table, all of the darkness, Scott, was because of her,” Zelda said softly.
“Zelda, don’t try and talk to me about my demons while you are still wrestling with your own. When you are ready to read those diaries and deal with your childhood like an adult, then you can try to play psychiatrist, but until you do, stay out of it,” he said, bounding to his feet. “I’m taking a shower.”
He stormed away, leaving her on the couch feeling like an idiot for not dealing with her issues and trying to tackle his. He’d been so supportive of her and she wanted, no, she needed to find a way to do the same with him. She would start by opening one of the dairies.
Her fingers shook as she bent down to open the carry-on bag she’d left on the coffee table. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I have to do this for me and Scott.
Danny sat in the chair, staring at her. “Oh, shut up! Nobody asked you a damned thing,” she said to the doll.
Dear Diary,
Tomorrow I will be 13.
Daddy says I am growing into a woman. He even said I was getting a woman’s body.
The front of his pants started to stick out as he looked at me.
Mike told me never to be alone in the house with Daddy. He said something bad could happen to me. I believe him.
I think Daddy is an evil, horrible man who gives me nightmares. Three times he has come into the bathroom on me when I am about to take a shower. I know I locked the door, but he still came in any way. When I told him I would tell Mr. Bautista, he stopped doing it.
I wished Mr. Bautista was my daddy instead of him. The things he does and says are not what a father is supposed to say to his little girl. The things he does are definitely on the list of things a man doesn’t want his daughter to see, like having sex with Mom. (Ewww!!!!) Daddy likes to do it with Mom so I can see him. One day I came home early from school and caught them on the couch. He held his finger up to his lips, telling me to be quiet while Momma bounced up and down in his lap, making loud noises sounding like she was in horrible pain. She cried afterward. I didn’t understand what I was looking at.
Later in the kitchen, Daddy told me he likes to punish Momma for being a bad girl. She makes those noises when she has been really bad he told me. He promised me that after my birthday, he was going to start teaching me how to be a good girl. When I did bad things, he would punish me like he did Momma.
I don’t want to be punished.
I’m scared of him.
I think he knows it.
He likes that I am scared of him.
I am going to run away.
Zelda Marie Fitzsimmons, Age 12
Chapter 4 – Riding through the Storm
Houston, Thursday Night
The storm raged as high winds blew throughout the city, causing blackouts, fear and loads of torrential downpour. Lula sat in the Fitzsimons’s kitchen holding her bible in one hand and giving Wilke the evil eye as she held her teacup in the other. Wilke sat as if she wasn’t at the table, working on the last of the battery power on his tablet.
Michael had placed sandbags around the house to help stave off the flooding, but he wasn’t certain it would work. The generator had kicked on, and power to the kitchen was all he could afford to run initially. He could not take the chance of having all the food in the refrigerator spoil. His spirit already soured from the interaction with Pip’s hanging up on him which placed him in a foul mood. A mood which had no tolerance for Grandma Lula’s shenanigans.
She, on the other hand, was in the mood to test him.
“I don’t know why he is here,” Lula said through tight lips.
“He’s here for the same reason you are, Grandma. He is family,” Michael replied.
“He ain’t no family of mine and he ain’t no kin to you either,” she hissed, holding her Bible tighter to her chest. “Speaking of family, how are things with that trashy little redhead? I bet her family won’t be accepting of you. They are going to believe that no matter how poor they are, they are still better than you.”
“Thanks for the unsolicited advice and Wilke is family,” he told her.
“He is an adulterer! He is the cause of your mother’s downfall into sin,” Lula spat at Wilke.
Michael, tense, worried about the generator and a hurricane barreling down on the city, reached his boiling point and had enough of Lula’s bible thumping self-righteousness. He’d had enough of righteous indignation by people grasping at false ideas which were truly not their own, but moreover, he’d had enough of the lies and bullshit. Never one to speak out of line to his grandmother, today was not the day for her holy rolling.
“The cause of my mother’s downfall was you,” he said calmly. “You spent her entire life filling her head with sin this and burn in hell that, which is what my father used to control her. Do you know what he called having sex with her? Punishment for her sins. He treated her like shit and she felt she deserved it because of her sins. Had you raised her with a basic sense of right and wrong, she would have enjoyed a happy life with Wilke. She wouldn’t have married a sadistic man who was waiting for his stepdaughter to blossom so he could extend his punishment technique to her.”
Lula’s mouth hung wide open as Wilke looked up in shock at Michael’s words.
“Your sanctimonious holiness, a ruse to cover your own tracks of turning tricks to pay the mortgage after Granddaddy left you, gets on my damned nerves. Put that Bible down and shut your mouth,” Michael said, in a voice so calm it gave Wilke shivers.
“Michael, you will not talk that way to me!” Grandma Lula said, popping out of the chair to her feet like the seat was heated incrementally.
“Sit, your crazy old ass down!” Michael said, raising his voice. “You have no control here. This is my house. The man at this table is my father, maybe not by blood but he raised me to be a good man. He is the reason I sit at your table each Sunday eating indigestible meals, and he is a respectable man. Zelda is lucky to have him as her father and I do give God the honor and the glory for making his heart big enough to accept me and treat me as his own.”
“I’m going to bed,” Lula said in a huff.
“Well, a hurricane is coming, so be careful that no one drops a house on you,” Michael said to her.
Wilke's hands were gripped in a fist.
“You never told me any of that stuff about your Daddy,” Wilke said.
“He was my father. You are my Daddy,” Michael said, laying his head on his folded arms on the table. “I never told you because you would have killed him, then Zelda and I would have been at Grandma’s mercy. I was strong. I have always been strong. I stood between him and my sister. He never touched Zelda.”
Wilke placed his hand on Michael’s head. Heat radiated through his low haircut, and the boy looked tired. So many years he bore the weight of so much pain and pressure to do the right thing. He always did the right thing.
“I taught you right from wrong,” Wilke said.
“Right now, everything feels wrong.”
“Talk to me,” Wilke said softly.
Michael didn’t raise his head. His words almost muffled by his arm. Where do I start?
“I am supposed to meet Pip’s mother, who sounds like a nightmare of a woman who has been milking her daughter for all she is worth,” Michael said. “Wilke, Pip lived in a trailer park with her mother who got them kicked out. The house she lives in now, Scott helped her buy. It is going to be an uphill battle to not only get her moved to Texas but dealing with her mother.”
Wilke’s voice was calming, “So tell me, was your first inclination to save the girl or to run when she told you about her mother?”
“I wanted to save the girl.”
“And now? Do you still want to run or save the girl?”
“I want to save the girl,” Michael said softly.
“T
hen might I suggest that once this storm is over and the flood waters subside, you start looking for a senior’s home for your Grandmother, save the girl, and get on about making me some grandchildren,” Wilke said.
“Yeah right.”
“Michael, we allow ourselves to hide in our heads to keep from dealing with an ugly reality. Your ugly reality is that you have always had to stand as if you were alone. The truth is that you have never been alone or fought by yourself. You love that girl. When you were with her, there was a light in your eyes. The same light I see when Zelda looks at that funny looking guy of hers,” he said.
“Yeah, they are going to have some ugly ass children with bucked teeth and mustaches at the age of two,” Michael said, chuckling.
It was out of the norm for Wilke to use profanity, but his thought came out as it was formed in his head.
“Shit, your children are going to look like circus clowns with funky colored hair. The thought of all of them kids running around with their hands stuck up some wooden dolls ass trying to throw their voices is really fucking creeping me out,” he said, laughing.
The idea of a houseful of weird little children made Michael laugh as well. Loud laughter rang through the house as the winds picked up, howling into the night. The windows rattled, the trees bent, and branches could be heard cracking as Wilke and Michael sat at the table, formulating a strategy to rid Pip of her money-grubbing mother and to move Lula into a safer community. Her current home was in the direct line of Hurricane Harvey and more than likely would be washed away with the rest of the bad dreams that circled his head like hungry buzzards seeking a last meal.
“You deserve some happiness,” Wilke told him. “Don’t run from it.”
“I won’t,” Michael said quietly. “Thank you. I didn’t know if I ever told you how valuable you have been to us, to me. I appreciate you.”
“Thank you for trusting me,” Wilke said.
The wind picked up to a thunderous roar as Lula ran from the back room, pink rollers in her hair, eyes wide, and her Bible clutched to her breast. “It’s the end of the world!” she screamed.
My Thursday Throwback Page 3