by April Hill
I yawned. "I'm positively wasted, actually. I slept like a log, after I finally got in. God, what a night! I suppose I shouldn’t drink. It just wipes me out me the next day. You know how it is."
"Yeah." His voice sounded tired, and I felt the beginnings of a small twinge of guilt. "Well, then, you should probably get some rest," he said. "You’ve got my card. Just give me a ring at the office if…"
Something told me I was about to blow it. "You’re done?" I cried. "With what you need, here at the house, I mean?"
His voice had turned cool and professional now.
"We’ve pretty much wrapped it up, unless something else out of line should happen. You can always call us, if…."
"Hank!" I said urgently. "I’m really sorry, about being so..."
"No problem," he replied affably. "Take care, now, and give me a ring if…"
"You want me to grovel, is that it?" I wailed.
There was just the slightest, soft chuckle on the other end of the line, which both relieved and infuriated me.
"I’ll swing by Canter’s on the way up," he said. "What do you want on your bagel?"
I dashed back to the bedroom, rummaged through my dresser, and came up with something sexy to wear—a pair of what might be called "hostess pajamas" by someone with absolutely no taste or money and a very warped fashion sense. Mom had bought them for me last year, at Disneyworld. (No, of course not Mickey Mouse!)
The Little Mermaid, actually.
By the time Hank arrived, I had showered, washed last night’s cigarette smoke from my hair, and made a pass at looking like I wanted to for him. In a pitiful attempt at sex appeal, I undid the top buttons of the demented Little Mermaid outfit, then worked on my make-up. I had known this guy for less than three days, and here I was, leaning over a sink at 8:45 in the morning with my head pulsating, dressed in a fucking Halloween costume, applying lip gloss and tweezering my eyebrows. Could I be any more pathetic?
Hank didn’t seem surprised by my outfit, which probably said more than I wanted to know about myself, this early in our relationship. He kissed me, and we sat out on the patio, ate our bagels and drank fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee, talking about nothing, really. The rise in blood sugar encouraged me to try again to get a rise out of him.
"I’m sorry if I was short, on the phone, earlier, but I was upset about yesterday," I began. "Your little lecture, and—well, that other thing that happened. I was a little annoyed."
Hank studied his fingernails. "Yeah, I got that, from the string of expletives."
I grimaced. "Sorry about that. I have this problem—with my mouth."
He nodded. "Well, I probably should apologize, too. I overreacted a little. More than a little, I guess. Anyway, you had a great evening after I left last night, huh?"
I sighed and threw in the towel. "Okay, I confess. It wasn’t all that great. Just average, I suppose."
Hank finished his orange juice and said nothing for a minute, just looked out over the freeway and tapped his fingers on the table.
"I have a confession of my own. I had a car watching the house last night."
"You had what?" I sputtered, immediately furious again. I had been exposed and humiliated! "Why would you…?"
"I was a little nervous," Hank explained. "I had a car drive by a few times to see that everything was quiet. I wasn’t checking up on you, exactly."
"What would you call it, then?"
"Just being careful. Routine, really. Anyway, they noticed a car pull in the driveway at about 1:30 and when they came by again at 1:49, it was gone."
I jumped up from the table and completely lost it. "So, you already knew when you got here that my big date was a flop!" I shrieked. "Why play games about it? He took off, if you must know!"
Hank was watching me carefully. "What do you mean, took off?"
"What I mean," I snapped, "Is that he wasn’t all that interested in pursuing his options, vis-à-vis me. I went to the bedroom for a minute, and when I came out, the sonuvabitch had simply left. Disappeared into the night! Are you happy, now?"
Hank said nothing for a moment. "So, do you mind my asking something? Are you and this guy, like a regular thing, or…? I know it’s none of my business, but…"
I calmed down, and backtracked. " I…don’t know him, really. Not well, I mean."
"Oh," Hank was smiling. "Like a first date?"
Something in me just knew he was toying with me.
"Oh, all right," I groaned. "I met him in a bar." (A bit of advice, here. Confession may be good for the soul, but it’s hell on your self-esteem, and I was about to find out that it can be pretty hard on your rear end, too.)
Hank shook his head. "Nice."
"It was a very nice bar," I lied. "On Ventura Boulevard." (Another lie, going for three.) "Nothing sleazy. Don’t worry about it, Detective Everett. He didn’t look like a big-time career criminal."
Hank was obviously angry, now, and threw the remainder of his bagel across the patio and onto the gravel. "You have a lot of experience with career criminals, do you?"
I stood my ground. "Not a lot, but I do happen to be an excellent judge of character. This guy was definitely not a bad guy."
"Yeah? Well, he might just be a damned good thief, or didn’t that occur to you? Did you check to see if anything was missing?"
I sighed, beaten down by logic. "No. Just my pride, I suppose."
Hank wasn’t sympathetic. "That, you deserve. What about your keys? He could be planning on returning for seconds"
"I don’t know why," I said glumly. "He didn’t stick around long enough for firsts."
Hank shook his head wearily. "You sound disappointed."
"Not really, but it is kind of insulting, you know. Not even a note or anything. I’ve had some bad dates in my time, but most of them didn’t bolt like scared rabbits."
He smiled. "Maybe this guy figured you were too much woman for him."
I nodded wisely. "That must be it."
"Still," Hank said. "I’ll feel better if I check him out. My guys didn’t get close enough to make the license plate. What’s this dreamboat’s name?" He took a small notebook out of his hip pocket.
"Larry."
Hank scribbled the name, and waited. "Okay. Larry what? Where does he live?"
I cringed. "I don’t know."
Hank looked up at me. "You don’t know which? His last name, or where he lives?"
"Neither one." I said, waiting for the explosion. It took only a second.
"Shit, Karen!" he shouted. "You brought home a total stranger?”
"We were just getting acquainted, actually," I answered coyly.
"You’re an idiot, you know that?" he yelled. "He could have robbed you, raped you. Even killed you, for God’s sake!"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Well, he didn’t do any of those things, so why are you getting so bent out of shape? Come to think of it, it’s not very flattering to know that I wasn’t even interesting enough to rob or rape."
"That’s not funny, damn it!"
"Then again," I mused. "Maybe he just got a load of my bank balance."
"Knock it off," Hank ordered.
"I should probably warn you, " I said, heaving a large, theatrical sigh. "I hate men who lose their sense of humor in a crisis. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe you’re not wound just a little tight, Detective."
"You know what I'm wondering?" he asked coldly. "I'm wondering how many times you need to have your butt blistered before you get the message about being careful."
"Gee, I scoffed, “It’s not something I’ve given much thought.” This turned out to be a rather poor choice of words. More like an invitation, as it turned out.
I didn’t have very long to wonder about it, because Hank answered the question by simply pulling me up from my chair and dumping me face-down over the patio table. A moment later, he whipped his belt off, doubled it, and without further comment, jerked the Little Mermaid pants down to my knees. He then proceeded to
—as promised—"blister" the holy hell out of my totally bare and wriggling butt. I was already learning something about Hank. Hank never did (or does) anything halfway. That morning, he simply laid into me with everything he had, delivering not only a lot of very achy red stripes, but a stern lecture about dating safety— without missing a beat, so to speak.
Yes, in addition to his other admirable police qualities, Detective Everett had proven himself to be extremely thorough, and way too methodical. Having never had a belt spanking before (this had been a week of firsts for me) I wasn't altogether sure how it was supposed to be done, but I do know that Hank managed to leave every square inch of my behind and a lot of stuff south of there that same fiery-red color that you see in one of our smoggy LA sunsets. From mid-ass down to my knees, I was sore, throbbing, and stinging like crazy. For the first time in my life, I was actually glad for the freeway noise, because seconds after he started, I began howling bloody murder, threatening to not only have him arrested, but to have him castrated. This last threat could have been in better taste, considering what happened in the next few minutes.
One interesting thing, though. After the first few swats, I found myself absolutely convinced never to set foot again in Fat Joey’s.
When he let me up, I couldn’t look him in the face, so I stood with my back to him and pulled my charming pajama bottoms back up with as much dignity as I could muster. Very business-like, Hank slipped his belt back through the loops and buckled it, then walked calmly back inside to pick up the phone and call his office. When he wasn’t looking, I surreptitiously rubbed my throbbing rear end, wondering dismally where this relationship was going after such a peculiar beginning. Since it didn’t look like Hank was on the verge of dropping to his knees and apologizing to me, I shuffled around the patio, sniffling and feeling sorry for myself as I gathered up the paper plates from breakfast.
As always, the gravel in the back yard was strewn with bits of freeway trash that blew up from the littered freeway embankment. Mom had a fit if I don’t pick it up every day or so, along with the drug dealer's newspapers, which he routinely allowed to blow around the neighborhood. I’d never complained about it because Mr. Frankie's lack of interest in keeping up with the news saved me the expense of buying my own Sunday Times. Of course, reading it meant first reassembling it, but it passed the day, like doing a puzzle, sort of.
Today, several sheets of cartoons had flattened themselves against the chain link, so I walked over to peel them off the fence, leaned down and collected a Taco-Bell carton, and crushed them together with the rest of the litter, then walked back toward the house. Hank would probably be off the phone now, and ready to yell at me again—or worse.
I noticed a crumpled Dunkin’ Donuts box at the far edge of the patio. No wonder the damned rats liked this place. It was the Disneyworld of garbage. I swept the doughnut box up with the rest of the crap, and could tell from the weight that some yummy rotting doughnuts were probably still inside. Yuck!
As I stood up, the box fell open, and in that one moment, I saw what was inside.
Horror is an overused word. I use it all the time, of course, joking around. You know, like "my horrible day," "horrible luck," etc. But, most of us, in our real lives, have never really known genuine horror. What we feel most often, and refer to as horror is actually fear or apprehension, shock, revulsion, or perhaps dread. Horror is different. Horror is something that lives in our nightmares, and in our understanding that somewhere out there are dark and terrible things that we’ve only read about. We know logically that such things exist, but we can’t quite get our minds around the concept of horror until it happens to us, personally, suddenly.
Like in a crushed Dunkin’ Donuts box.
I didn’t scream, or maybe I did, but I wasn’t aware of it, and nobody else could have heard it over the roar of the traffic. Not even Hank, just a few feet away from me in the living room. I could see him, writing something on a pad of paper, and I wanted to yell to him, to tell him to come outside, but I couldn’t form the words, or maybe I did, and just wasn’t aware of that, either. I held the box very carefully, with the paper lid open, so what was inside would remain intact, and went into the house—into the living room. Hank looked up, and I could tell that he was still mad.
"They have the tentative make of the car, the color, and a partial number, but still no name or address on your new friend," he said. "If you’re lucky, maybe..."
I heard my own voice speaking, but it didn’t sound like me. It sounded to me like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel. I was hoarse and barely audible, but I gave Hank the information he wanted.
"Wojack," I croaked. "Lawrence Peter Wojack. 20040 Sunset Crest Drive, Woodland Hills."
"Where did you find that out?" Hank inquired irritably.
I held out the Dunkin’ Donuts box to him. Inside, resting on top of a small sheet of wax paper, lay Larry’s California driver’s license, and under the stained license, partially wrapped in a blood- encrusted handkerchief nestled another object that had once belonged to Larry—presumably.
"What’s the matter?" Hank asked, standing up and reaching for me. "You look…."
At that moment, he glanced at the box, and into the box, and his face went— just like they say in the books—white.
"Shit!" Hank shouted. "What the…!" I dropped the box on the coffee table. Mom's spotless, polished coffee table, which I would now have to throw in the trash. I dropped to the couch and tried to stop trembling. Even terrified, though, I was unbelievably curious. I pointed to the object in the box, unwilling to believe what I was seeing without official verification. "Is that…?" The question just sort of hung in the air, unfinished.
"Yeah." Hank whistled. "It’s a penis." He looked at me. "Is it Wojack’s?"
The sheer, wild stupidity of the question somehow brought me back to my senses. "How the hell should I know?" I shrieked. "I only saw it once, for God's sake! For a second or two, and it certainly didn’t look like that! Oh, God! What’s going on, Hank? " Suddenly, I knew that I was going to throw up. And then, I did throw up. And for my big finish, I fainted. Hank grabbed me before I actually hit the floor, and set me down on the couch. "I’m sorry," I said miserably. "I've never fainted before."
Hank was already on the phone. "You earned this one. Get some things together. You’re getting out of here."
Five minutes later, three police cars came screaming up the hill. Professional courtesy, I guessed, almost annoyed at how promptly they'd arrived.
As the first officer stepped from his vehicle, he kicked an empty McDonald’s coffee cup that was lying in the exact center of the cul-de-sac. Crammed inside the stained cup, along with two plastic coffee stirrers, was a severed right hand. Male Caucasian, we heard later.
* * *
Hank followed me from to room to room as I stumbled around, gathering up a few clothes and necessities for my sleep-over at his place. It’s funny, because here I'd been plotting this moment for days, and now I was so jittery I didn’t even remember to pack my sexy nightgown. Okay, so it’s not exactly sexy. More like tiny pink rosebuds, long sleeves, and ecru lace around a high collar. Think Jane Austen, or "Little House on the Prairie." It turned out fine, though, because I looked positively fetching in one of Hank’s old dress shirts, and he didn’t seem to mind my borrowing it, at all.
After I got my stuff together, we still had to go to the police station and do the witness thing. Hank tried to get them to let me go home with him and come back later, but he was overruled. I spent four hours being relentlessly questioned about Larry and the Dunkin’ Donuts box, and every single peculiar thing that had happened since I moved into the house. While we were there, I saw the same idiot cop who came to the house the day the dead cat showed up. I hoped he was choking on all this.
When I was finished with the questions, Hank whisked me off to his place, and on the way home, I started blubbering like a baby. I don’t know why. All I could think of was how pissed Mom was going to be wh
en she found out what happened, and somehow, all of it was going to be my fault. I don’t think Hank was accustomed to dealing with the insane, because all he could think to do was to feed me, and this part was very interesting. It’s maybe the only time in my adult life that I was unable to eat. I've snacked my way through failed love affairs, lost jobs, and dead pets, and never missed a meal. Now I know what it takes, but I'm not sure I'm all that interested in losing those extra few pounds, thanks.
I couldn’t stop crying, so Hank poured a couple of drinks down my throat and genteelly removed my clothes, then dumped me into a bathtub of hot sudsy water and turned on some Mozart. Within minutes, I was happy as a clam, humming along with the Magic Flute while my head slipped quietly beneath the surface. Hank pulled me out just short of drowning, put me to bed, and when I woke up, it was a sunny, gorgeous late-morning and Larry was like a bad dream.