Blown Away

by Deforest Day

  “How come there’s different names on these?” Duane had the license and registration on a clipboard, and a puzzled look on his face.

  “It’s my daughter’s car. She’s in Washington, and I borrowed it.”

  Duane raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Magnolia Poitrine? How come her name ain’t McClintock?”

  “She’s my stepdaughter.” He glanced at Duane's name tag. “Look, Officer Milt, I’m here to inspect the coal breaker over there. Governor Heftshank and I are working up a proposal to put before the Federal Opportunity Council. Tear it down, replace it with a new high-tech manufacturing facility. A hundred million dollar project, hundreds of new jobs. I’m here for an initial survey of the work needed.”

  Duane recalled seeing a new roadside marker in Marge Defarge's 911 Call Center. It said the coal breaker was some kind of historical monument, and he wondered why the governor wanted to tear it down before they even put the sign up. “Uh huh. Well, you sit right there, and survey away, mister. I gotta go run you on the computer.”

  Mac watched the cop walk back to his patrol vehicle. Well, that didn’t work. Should have tried folding a hundred dollar bill around the license.

  Duane’s eyes widened as the computer came back with the information on the BMW. He reached across and unbuckled his partner. “I may need some backup here, Buge.” He approached the BMW, eased his Glock from his holster, hand signaled his partner to the right side of the convertible.

  “Step out of the vehicle, sir,” he said. Bugle Boy draped his head over the passenger door, put his sad, saggy eyes on Mac.

  Mac saw the pistol, and keeping his hands in sight, did as he was told. “What’s the problem?”

  Duane seized Mac’s left hand, pulled it behind his back, then grabbed the right, and cuffed him. “The problem, mister, is this here ve-hicle’s been reported stolen.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Honey sped out the farm lane. Fifteen minutes later she crossed the Susquehanna on the Market Street bridge, and headed to First Union. Spider had said if he was her, he wouldn't drive to New York on that emergency tire. Well, he wasn't her, and she wasn't going to New York. Not when she had a mysterious safe deposit key to investigate, and a husband calling her a trophy wife.

  Walking into the bank, she offered up a silent Hallelujah! The doddering old fool who ran First Union wasn’t around to peer over his glasses and down her dress.

  The planetary alignments were favorable for new endeavors, not that she believed that nonsense. She only read hers to get some idea what lay ahead that day. Honey headed toward the cute young man in a pinch-waisted suit that screamed Savile Row.

  A discrete brass name tag on his lapel said he was Emyr Iorwyrth, Llewylln Group, Ltd. Evidently it was costly to buy a vowel wherever he came from. She offered her hand. “Honey Poitrine, of Poitrine and Associates? We didn’t have a chance to talk this morning.”

  Emyr blushed, grinned, took her hand in a limp, sweaty grip. “Humina humina humina,” he said, or so it sounded to Honey. This twerp will be a cinch, she thought, and asked, “Can we chat in the privacy your office?”

  That’s where she once again stepped into a man's space, and stole his ability to think. Her version of Dylan's robbing a man with a fountain pen. “Good Lord,” she breathed, “your accent is making me wet.”

  Before he finished stammering his reply Honey handed him the key and cooed, “I want to get into this.” Emyr staggered from his office, and led her to the vault, using the key number to find the signature card.

  Dismay and confusion tinged his voice as he said, “But this box is assigned to Mr. McClintock and Magnolia Poitrine.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and touched his brow. “You said you were—”

  “Honey? Oh, please. Honey’s my celebrity name, from when I was in television. My legal name is Magnolia.” She slipped the card from his fingers, and signed her daughter’s scrawl as though it was her own. “Now go fetch the box, like a good boy.”

  He led her to a private cubicle. “According to the signature card you and Mr. McClintock were here just a couple of hou—”

  “Of course we were, dear boy, don’t you remember?” She leaned a bit closer to his breast, displaying a bit more of her own. “Emyr Iorwyrth. So unusual. What does it mean?”

  “It’s Welsh; um, ah, Emyr means ‘king’ and Iorwyrth means ‘handsome lord’. Or so my mother tells me.”

  She touched his tie with slender, scarlet-tipped nails in need of a manicure. “Handsome Lord. A mother’s knows her child.” She raised her gaze to his eyes and kissed him with hers, and she feared he was going to faint.

  “I, uhh, the rules say I have to leave you; umm, I mean, for privacy.”

  “If you must,” she replied, nevertheless ushering him out the door, and flipping the little privacy latch behind him.

  The damn box was big, four times the size of the one she and Mac shared, holding the marriage license, divorce decrees, car titles, other necessities of life, like birth certificates and wills.

  Hmm. Wills. She’d never read hers or Mac’s; he insisted they both have a lawyer write one, to protect Mags. In case we go down with the ship, he joked.

  That was way back when the bloom was still on the rose, and she'd just assumed each would leave everything to the other, with something called a guardian, to see that Magnolia didn’t get screwed by the lawyers.

  Speaking of screwing, I wonder if he’s changed his will since then; left everything. . . No, don’t even go there. But then suspicion slithered in, and she broke out in a cold sweat.

  Get into the other box, the joint one, and see exactly what his will says. Who gets What, if God Forbid. But first, what the hell are the two of them up to, with this orange crate?

  She lifted the lid, and gasped. Money, money, money. Nothing but, and lots of it. Hundreds of hundreds. She could empty them out and stack them up, do the math. But why bother? It wasn’t the amount, it was the fact that it was here, and accessible by Mac and by Mags. And not by Honey Poitrine.

  And the cheapskate won’t give her a few dollars for the Haring prints. The son of a biscuit! She dropped the lid and touched the bell for the clerk. Or, she hoped, the Handsome Lord with the odd accent.

  Your wish is my command, m’lady, Emyr silently said, as he appeared at the door. Aloud, Honey commanded, “You may return this to the vault, dear boy, and then I want to spend some time in conference with you.”

  She watched the video play in his mind’s eye; the older woman, panting and disheveled, draped across the desk, as the junior assistant to the president, tie and trousers askew, mounts her like a stallion . . .

  God, but she endured those videos ad the infinitum, with her first husband treating them as training films in their crummy off-campus apartment. She had to be careful of his injured knee as they struggled into the positions, while they watched porn stars progress from No.1, Pos.A to No.3, Pos.B. The one with the camera beneath the glass-topped coffee table.

  Seated on opposite sides of a desk much smaller than President Collander's, and covered with enough banking paraphernalia to obviate any hanky panky, Honey said, “Mr. McClintock wants me to take a more active role in the daily operation of the company. We’ll start by bringing my balancing sheets up on your computer.”

  A demand, not a request. She was keeping, “my financial advisor mentioned moving the account to Goldman Sachs,” as the derringer in the garter, to be used as a last resort. She'd learned that suggestive innuendo worked better than idle threats that cannot be carried out.

  She discovered, after a great deal of hemming and hawing, and I’m not sure I’m authorized, the president of the bank is really the one to, that H.Poitrine & Assoc. was a holding company with few assets, but had a cash flow in the millions.

  And over the last five years the millions had flowed from the state and federal government into H.P. & Associates for contracts completed, only to go out the other door to the Associates that actually performed the work. M&M trucki
ng. Big Mac Blasting Supplies. ABC Equipment Leasing. XYZ Financial. All of them associates that were password protected.

  S of a B. And she wasn't even drawing a salary, as president of her own multi-million dollar company. It had never occurred to her she should have one.

  She'd been paid scale for her infomercials, and sold the Magic Ladders on commission. Forming H.P. & Assoc. had been Mac’s idea, a way to take advantage of some law, and she’d signed a bunch of papers, not really paying attention to the details.

  Details were Mac’s responsibility; the credit cards always worked, and anytime she needed extra money for anything, Mac gave it to her, no questions asked. Until lately. She fantasized reaching under her skirt for that derringer, and using it to terminate the Poitrine and McClintock partnership.

  Choking back tears, she said to the Welsh squirt, “Thank you so much for this, I hope we can have further conferences down the road.” Pause. “Maybe in a less formal setting. During my time in Hollywood some of my most enduring relationships began over a simple cup of coffee.” She gave his hand a tender touch, and rose. “But right now, I’d like to get in my other safe deposit box, the one Mac and I have under the Honey Poitrine signature card.”

  She needed to look at the date on Mac’s last will and testament, be sure it really was the last. Her emotions were in turmoil; a mixture of anger, surprise, and remorse. Her own daughter as the snake in her Eden!

  —o—

  Spider watched Honey fly down the farm lane, scattering gravel and raising dust in her wake. His advice on the spare tire had gone in one ear and out the other. No skin off my butt, if yours winds up in a crack. Same with Mr. Mac; paying off them hustlers, instead of just letting Spider to deal with them. You can't let their kind get a toe in the door. Give an inch, and they take a mile.

  Maybe he'll tell Honey how he done it. How they about shit themselves, trying to get out of their Caddy, and down off the forklift, before he dumped them in the river.

  The woman may be a trophy, but she appeared to be about as useful as his Purple Heart, after the smiles and handshakes and photographs got done. He gave his first one, along with a twenty dollar bill, to a bar girl in Manila, after she’d eased a discomfort that had nothing to do with his war wound.

  He figured he had a couple of hours before she got back from her trip, and decided to hike up the hill, see just how much ANFO he needed to clear the trees. And maybe stir Honey's hive. Women squeal when things go kaboom; more than once he followed a detonation with a little bang-bang action of his own.

  Those National Guard gals, new to Iraq, and the dangers of IED’s, got all squirmy when he made the earth move beneath their feet.

  “Step back, darlin’, we don’t want you to get hurt when the shrapnel starts to fly.”

  “Better snuggle down with me behind this burnt-out truck.”

  “Cover your ears for the concussion, while I cover your body with mine.”

  “Just in case a stray chunk of concrete comes raining down.”

  “You got a boyfriend back home? Ain’t married, are you?”

  “No to both. No boyfriend, no spouse.” Spider turned with a start; once again he's been talking to himself out loud. The voice came from a fresh pile of gnarled apple prunings.

  A naked man materialized, holding a coffee can of kerosene in one hand, and a butane lighter in the other. He said, “I’m currently celibate, although not by choice. Been there, done that, as my students say, when I was studying the rituals of the Catholic priesthood. After a week of enforced abstinence I saw the temptations an altar boy can offer.

  “At present, the opportunity to cavort in carnality is limited to our wizened Spanish chef, and the lady of the house. A curvaceous temptation to be sure, but one burdened with the myth of Original Sin. I assume you follow some variety of Christianity?”

  Spider translated the fella's remarks. It was hard to concentrate, when a bunch of college professor words tumbled from the mouth of a butt-naked man. “I believe in the Almighty. After that, I ain’t paid too much attention.”

  Spider got a cigarette going, wondered what this son of a bitch was up to. Way Honey told it, the man’s job was to prune, not preach. Maybe he's boning Honey, and smells competition.

  He examined the apple wood. Bone dry, and hard as iron; his grandaddy would love to get his hands on it, smoke some meat. His memory tasted the old man’s sugar-cured hickory hams. “You some kind of preacher man?”

  “Just a pilgrim searching for the ultimate truth, and exchanging what I have learned along the way for spiritual and physical sustenance. I sense you are attracted to our host’s wife.”

  “Hells bells, I ain’t blind. Woman sends signals she interested, man’d be a fool to walk away. Even if Mr. Mac is the boss.”

  “But I don’t owe him nothing, except a day’s work for a day’s pay.”

  “Comes down to it, he owes me, saving his ass in the desert.”

  “Man’s some kind of a wimp, paying off those thugs.”

  “It took a real man to pitch them in the river.”

  “I bet Ms. P. saw that in me, is why she’s hinting at the horizontal mambo.”

  Spider explained, “Damn, I’m doin’ it again. I got this head injury, has me sayin’ things out loud what I oughta keep under my hat.”

  He offered his hand to the coppery man wearing nothing but sun glasses, and some kind of contraption, looked like a snake swallowing his dong. An image that shriveled his own equipment quick as a plunge in a cold lake. “Spider Tarantella, demolition expert.”

  “Doctor Quetzalcoatl, but just call me Dr. Q. Saves wear and tear on the tongue.” He removed his dark glasses, returned the handshake. “Your injury has taken your mind back to the innocence of childhood, before one learns that some things shouldn’t be voiced. ‘Mommy, look at the fat lady.’ ‘What is the lump on that man’s back?’

  “In my senior seminar I devote a block of time to the primitive cultures of the Pacific Islands. Cargo Cults, Cannibals, and Captain Cook. The Trobriand Islands, where the women rape the men during the Yam Festival, is a class favorite among the distaff side.”

  The Doctor gave the blue sky a wistful look. “There are generally a few nubile maidens absolutely enthralled by my exotic origins, and eager to compare their mating rituals with mine, after class, and off campus.”

  Spider thought nubile maidens was fancy words for hot chicks, and he asked, “How 'bout the daughter? She puttin' out?”

  “Ah, Miss Magnolia. A complicated child, searching for her place in the universe. Without divulging any revelations of the confessional, she's conflicted as to her orientation.”

  “Girl looks pretty ripe.”

  “Oh, certainly, on a physical plane. I was speaking of a spiritual union. Sex is just the old in and out, hide the salami. Temporal love means nothing without its spiritual counterpart.”

  “Hey, the old in and out works for me. Traveling from war to war, I ain’t had time for no long-term relationships.”

  “Yes, and you are destined to continue on that path, until you align yourself with the River of Life.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like them TV preachers.”

  “Please. Insults are but water on a duck's back. I’m merely telling you the great gyroscope that keeps the universe in balance is too powerful for you to fight. You must learn to, as the hippies said, ‘go with the flow’.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Honey was back in the cubicle, this time with a much smaller box. Moments ago she felt physically ill, listening to the Welshman explain just where she stood. High noon, naked, and in the middle of Times Square. Living on a 10K a month debit card.

  Eyes brimming with bitter tears, she pawed through the contents of the small box, hunting for Mac’s will, but became distracted by markers of her life since Beau. The divorce decree, the name changes. And beneath them, the Vegas DVDs.

  Vegas. Where her rebirth began. During her escape to Los Angeles that ended in Las Veg
as. Sitting in the dreary bank cubicle, Honey couldn't deal with the awful revelation she was nothing but a figurehead; a, a Legally Blonde, for Pete's sake! So she shuffled the discs, and ducked down memory lane.

  Her brand-new car was losing power and a funny smell was coming out it’s heinie. The service manager at Vegas Toyota nodded his head in comprehension as she described the first symptom, gave her a strange look at the second.

  He asked her to start it up, and checked her heinie. Saw the blue smoke. “You’re burning oil. You didn't notice the red light on the instrument panel?”

  Honey’s knowledge of automobiles consisted of ‘this dohickey makes it go forward and backward, these pedals make it go and make it stop’. She was pretty good with the radio.

  “But it’s a brand new car. And I have this coupon booklet!”

  Ten minutes later a mechanic showed the manager her dipstick. “Feel that,” he said to Honey, and handed her a rag to wipe her fingers.

  “It feels like toothpaste.”

  “Silicon carbide. Valve grinding compound. Somebody sabotaged your crankcase.” He checked the odometer. “You done put 200,000 miles on this engine in less than 2000.”

  That no good rotten dog of a man Beaufort. Or maybe Beau's daddy, payback for when his daughter-in-law wouldn’t come across, while Beau was laid up with his knee. “It’s under warranty, right?”

  “Not for something like this.”

  “Can it be fixed? How much will it cost?”

  “Have to replace every engine part that is touched by oil. Pistons, crankshaft, valves, camshaft, oil pump. Ball park, you’re looking at five, six grand.”

  “What! I don’t have that kind of money.” Shoot, she thought, I don’t have any money. Not if I want to make it to Hollywood.

  Pretty girls get preferential treatment and men are pigs. Honey learned that lesson early on, and accepted them both as gospel. “Maybe I could work it off,” she offered, looking around the dealership. “I majored in Communications,” she added.