Stay At Home Dead

by Jeffrey Allen

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked, amused.

  I thought about lying, trying to bluff my way through the conversation. But she seemed too sharp for any of my tricks.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I can’t believe it and I’m sorry.”

  I let the pant leg fall down and stood back up.

  “Do you show your scar to everyone you meet?” she asked.

  “Just the ones who accuse me of being dopey looking.”

  “Hardly an accusation when you copped to it.”

  I laughed. Loudly. She was knockout gorgeous and funny and a wiseass. A sucker combination. How had I missed this girl in Rose Petal?

  “I take it you don’t like this place,” I said, nodding at the bar.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Any place you do like?”

  She thought for a moment; then her eyes lit up. “Dairy Queen.”

  “They don’t serve beer at DQ.”

  “No. But they make those big peanut butter parfaits that have an alcoholic effect on me.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Would you like to go to Dairy Queen and have a peanut butter parfait? On me?”

  She raise a pretty eyebrow. “There’s usually no groping at Dairy Queen. Can you live with that?”

  I pretended to think about it. “For one night, I guess I can.”

  She stuck out her hand. “I’m Julianne Willis.”

  I felt my jaw start to fall. “Willis? Tony Willis’s little sister?”

  “One and the same.”

  Tony was a year ahead of me in school, but we’d played football together since junior high. I vaguely remembered a little sister sitting on the sidelines. The last time I remembered seeing her, she was wearing glasses and had her nose in a book.

  I really was a dope.

  I shook her hand. Soft, warm, made my heart flutter. “Deuce.”

  “I already told you I knew that,” she said, squeezing my hand. “It’s a silly name, by the way.”

  “Not sillier than my real name,” I said. “Eldrick. Like my dad. I was the second. Hence, the deuce.”

  “Clever.”

  “I can’t believe I don’t remember you,” I said.

  “Well, Deuce. Play your cards right and I might not hold it against you. And maybe there will be a little groping in your future.”

  We’d been together ever since. It was clichéd and silly and cutesy and lame. But Julianne was my best friend, and I thought of our first real meeting every time I saw her standing in the distance.

  I pulled up to the curb, and she got in, still yammering on her phone.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not impressed, John. We’re planning on filing the motion, and I think you should plan on running for cover.” She listened intently, a thin smile spreading across her face. “Let me know then.” She shut the phone and dropped it in her purse and looked at me. “Hello.”

  “Hello. Having fun?”

  “Always. I’m suckering that guy so badly, he’s gonna wanna find a new job when I’m done with him,” she said gleefully. “I am so good at this lawyering stuff.”

  I checked the mirror and pulled away from the curb. “I never had a doubt.”

  “So. What’s up with you?”

  “I’m taking you out tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Really?” she asked, surprised. “Where? And, more importantly, why?”

  “How would you like to go to a witch hunt?”

  She clicked her teeth together, then blew air quietly between them. “Before you tell me about the rest of our date, can I get some food in my stomach?”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  “Right.”

  We found a table at a little BBQ joint a couple of blocks away, and she’d polished off half of her brisket sandwich before she could look me in the eye again. “So. This witch hunt. I’m assuming you’re the witch?”

  “I’m thinking I should wear a hat and bring a broom,” I said, wiping sauce from my chin. “Really make a statement.”

  “I think you should stop trying to be funny and just tell me what’s going on.”

  I told her about the meeting at school.

  To my surprise, she didn’t chastise me like she had the previous day for doing stupid things. She was actually more irritated than I was.

  “Let me get this right,” she said, picking up her sandwich, then dropping it back on the plate. “The WORMS think they can just remove you for no reason?”

  “Well, they think they have a reason.”

  She made a face like I’d fed her a spoonful of dirt. “Please. Even if you were under investigation—and to this point, as far as we know, you are not—and even with the restraining order on file, none of that has anything to do with you providing snacks to a roomful of three-year-olds on occasion.”

  “I tried to tell them that.”

  Julianne bit into her sandwich like she was biting off Sharon Ann’s head. “They have so picked the wrong man to fight with.”

  I puffed out my chest, grateful for my wife’s belief in me. “Well, thank you. I think so too. If they think they can just push me around ...”

  “Because they have no idea what they are going to have to deal with when I get in that room,” she said, stabbing the air with her fork.

  “You?” I asked. “When you get in that room?”

  She nodded and stared at the fork, thoughtfully. “I just might make them cry. Every single one of them.”

  I finished off my own sandwich. “You don’t think I can handle this myself ?”

  She threw her napkin on the table. “Of course I think you can handle this. But I think I might be able to help.” She shook her head, narrowing her eyes. “These broads are gonna be so sorry they picked on my husband.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure I was comfortable with her fighting my preschool battles. But after getting a load of the look in her eyes at that moment, I wasn’t prepared to do anything but agree with my awesome, awesome wife.

  23

  I dropped Julianne back at her office and went back to pick Carly up at school. I didn’t avoid the stares from Sharon Ann, Deborah, and the other WORMS, instead smiling happily at them. They immediately went into whispering mode, clearly unnerved by their inability to intimidate me. If that made them nervous, I almost felt sorry for them, knowing that Julianne was coming for them.

  Almost.

  Carly and I walked out of school, holding hands. I was carrying her backpack while she clutched onto the papers she was bringing home for the day. Nearly every afternoon she came home with a handful of construction paper, drawings, and announcements, representing all the work she did in class that day. She rarely gave them up before she reached the car, as if carrying them showed everyone that she had, indeed, completed one more day of school and no one was taking that away from her.

  She jumped into the backseat and shoved the stack of papers in my face. “These are for you, Daddy.”

  I buckled her into her seat. “Thank you sooo much.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I scanned the papers as I walked around to the driver’s side. A drawing of a person that was all head with a microscopic body. Next month’s calendar. And a flyer for swimming lessons.

  At Tough Tykes.

  Julianne and I had discussed that it was probably time to get her into swimming. Carly loved the water, and we spent nearly every day during the summer at one of the couple of community pools in our neighborhood. I had been able to teach her a little, and she could doggy-paddle her way to safety if she absolutely had to. But it was time for her to learn how to do it correctly.

  I climbed into the van, stuck the key in the ignition, and weighed my options. We hadn’t really discussed where she was going to take lessons, and I had yet to do any investigating. Going to Tough Tykes would most likely draw my wife’s ire, given the warning she’d already given me about steering clear of anything Benny related. But it wasn’t like I was going t
here for any other reason than to just check out the possibility of swimming lessons for our daughter, right?

  As I pointed the van in the direction of Tough Tykes, I knew I’d have to come up with something better than that before Julianne got home.

  Like not even telling her we went there. That would probably have been the smart thing to do.

  24

  Tough Tykes was in a newer area of Rose Petal. High-end shops were being built by the half dozen, and expansive homes were going up to make sure the shops had people shopping in them. The denizens of Rose Petal were divided on how they felt about this. Half wanted the town to remain a town, the small outpost of Dallas where everyone knew each other’s name. But the other half, those that weren’t Texas natives and had moved to the area for jobs in Dallas, was all for it. Rose Petal was the perfect bedroom community, and they saw no reason why they should have to leave the town to shop at Target, Wal-Mart, or Home Depot. Good schools, relatively safe—my minivan excepted—and less than half an hour to the big city.

  I was somewhere in the middle. I did like the small-town aspect of Rose Petal growing up. But I also knew that all those new homes, and businesses were good for the town, wouldn’t let it die off like some of those other Texas hideaways out to the west. We had in fact bought one of those new homes and I knew some folks felt like we’d gone over to the dark side. It didn’t bother me that much.

  Plus, I liked shopping at Target.

  But Tough Tykes was out in a field of new development, with signs promising more restaurants and shops to come. Tough Tykes itself looked more like an airplane hangar with giant windows than anything else. It was a long, rectangular building with its name emblazoned on all four sides in brilliant red and black letters. An American flag, a Texas flag, and a Tough Tykes flag waved in the wind atop the structure. A massive parking lot fronted the building, usually filled with SUVs and other modes of toting kids around town. There was actually a rack at the front of the building where you could lock up your baby jogger.

  So smart.

  “What is this, Daddy?” Carly asked as we turned in.

  “Remember how I told you about taking swimming lessons?”

  There was a pause, indicating she clearly didn’t remember. “Yes.”

  “Well, they teach swimming here, and I wanna go find out about classes.”

  “For me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you know how to swim, Daddy?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. ’Cause I wanna take lessons all by myself.”

  Wow. Only like fifteen more years of hearing things like that. Awesome.

  We parked the van, got out, and Carly was already jittery with excitement, pulling on my hand as we crossed the lot.

  The lobby itself was a showcase for the whole facility. It was designed to feel like you were entering a stadium or sports arena—turnstiles, pictures of smiling, active kids, a massive counter staffed with numerous fresh-faced-looking college-aged kids in red and black golf shirts, music blaring, and a thirty-foot-high ceiling that made the entire area feel twice as large as it actually was.

  We made our way over to the counter, where a young girl with long blond hair greeted us as if she’d been waiting her whole life for us to arrive.

  “Hello!” she said, looking first at me, then Carly. “Welcome to Tough Tykes. I’m Mandy. How can I help you?”

  Carly put her chin up on the counter. “I wanna swim.”

  Mandy smiled at her, a laser beam of enthusiasm emanating from her expression. “I’ll bet you’re a good swimmer.”

  “We’d actually like to get some information on swimming lessons,” I said.

  “Have you visited Tough Tykes before?”

  “We have not.”

  She gathered up several pieces of paper, came around the desk, and held her hand out to Carly. “Well, let’s go take a look around, shall we?”

  Carly beamed and grabbed her hand.

  Mandy was smooth. She had already ingratiated herself with Carly before I could say we had somewhere else to be or gently deflect her sales pitch and quickly get the information I wanted. Carly might have liked her, but I was wary.

  As Mandy led us around, I had to admit that the facility was quite impressive. There were two full-length gymnasiums dedicated solely to basketball. Boys and girls filled them both, running drills. Staffers about Mandy’s age put them through their paces. There were two massive multipurpose gymnasiums that were mainly used for gymnastics but could also host birthday parties. A large dojo housed martial arts classes. There was a strength training area, an indoor batting cage, and another room dedicated to cheerleading and dance. Mandy showed us the locker-room area before bringing us to the indoor pool.

  “And this is where Miss Carly will take her lessons,” Mandy said, still clutching Carly’s hand and smiling in my direction.

  She might have been young, but someone had schooled her well in sales techniques. Make friends with the kid, smile at the dad, and act as if we’re already signed up. Smooth.

  The pool was junior Olympic in length, with cutouts every few feet along the sides, where the classes could sit on steps. Four kids max to a class, and if all went well, they could hit the giant dinosaur slides at the far end before class was over. A small viewing area ran behind a wall of glass at the far end, so the kids could see Mom or Dad but couldn’t jump out of the pool and cling to them.

  The pool, like everything else, was impressive.

  “Daddy, I wanna swim! I wanna swim!” Carly clamored , jumping up and down, pulling on Mandy’s arm.

  Mandy handed me the paperwork. “All of the class information is listed, along with the prices. You’ll be looking at the Little Mermaid classes for Carly.”

  “I wanna be a mermaid!” Carly yelled.

  “And let me take you back up front,” Mandy said, squeezing Carly’s hand. “I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

  Carly nearly burst, she was so excited.

  Back at the desk, Mandy found a tiny toy mermaid and handed it to Carly like it was the lost Ark. “You take very special care of this mermaid, and you remember to bring her back with you when you come for your first lesson.”

  Carly nodded, holding the mermaid as if she’d just been presented with a diamond. Made of cotton candy.

  Smooth, that Mandy.

  Mandy smiled at me. “Any questions that I can answer?”

  I tried hard to think of something she didn’t cover on our tour, but failed. Mandy was good at her job.

  “I think you hit it all,” I said. “Thank you.”

  A good-looking guy materialized next to Mandy behind the counter. About six feet tall, athletic build, tan skin. Probably in his fifties, but had that “I’m totally in shape so I seem younger” look. Close-cropped dark hair. Crisp red and black golf shirt.

  If possible, Mandy seemed to brighten even more.

  “Howdy, folks,” he said. “Mandy tell you everything you need to know?” He smiled down at Carly. “You have a good time, sweetheart?”

  Carly nodded enthusiastically, still clutching the mermaid.

  He nodded, happy to see her response, then moved his eyes back to me. “And you, Mr. Winters? You like what you see?”

  He knew my name and that surprised me. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

  “No, sir, we haven’t, but I’d be a fool not knowing Deuce Winters if he walked into my place.” He held out his hand. “I’m Jimmy Landry.”

  25

  “My brother was a coach over at Bartonville your junior and senior years,” Jimmy Landry said. “Defensive coordinator. You made his life miserable.”

  We were sitting in his office, back behind the main desk area. Carly was sitting in my lap, playing with her new mermaid.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  He waved his hand in the air. “Please. You were a heckuva player.”

  “Did you coach?”

  “Nah, just a fan, like everyone else.” He grinned. �
��Too busy making plans for things like this place.”

  I nodded and took a quick look around the office. It was square and medium-sized, nothing terribly distinguished about it. There was nothing that said it was the owner’s office, other than the several plaques with Landry’s name on the walls, touting his community service. It was a room to work in, not a room to show off his ego.

  “So what’d you think of the place?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

  “Pretty amazing,” I said truthfully. “You’ve got just about everything a kid could want under one roof.”

  “We’re trying,” he said. “I’m always looking for things to add, things that people want for their kids.”

  “Seems like you’re pretty much the main game in Rose Petal,” I said.

  “So far,” he said, then shrugged. “Somebody’ll come along soon enough and try to copy us. Lot of families in this area. Competition’s good. Keeps us on our toes. Hopefully, though, we’ve got some loyalty with the folks who are using us now.”

  “I heard someone was already planning to do something similar.”

  He stared at me, his expression blank for a moment; then amused recognition washed over his face. “You mean that crazy Barnabas fella?”

  I nodded.

  Landry laughed. “Well, I guess. But I have to tell you, at the risk of sounding pretty pompous, I did not take that guy too seriously.”

  “Why not?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  I laughed. “Point taken.”

  Landry laughed, too. “Okay, maybe that’s a little unfair. I don’t know him, so I shouldn’t be calling him crazy. But he had no clue what he was talking about, and it was just impossible to think of him as competition.”

  “So he did come talk to you?”

  “He did,” Landry said, nodding. “Couple of months ago. Wanted to know if we bought the building and had it brought here from somewhere else or if we built it.” He chuckled at the memory. “Like I said, hard to take him seriously.”