Legally Wasted

by Tommy Strelka

She stopped and turned. If tears had been welling, they had turned to steam. Flames blazed within the depths of her brown eyes. “How dare you say that? I am not running away.” She looked away. “Maybe it’s been you the whole time. Maybe it’s your fault we could not have a child.”

  “I meant,” said Larkin as he placed Rusty back to the sidewalk, “please stop running away from me right now.” He tried to make his voice sound as soothing as possible. “He’s damn heavy.”

  It was Madeline’s turn to point as she stuck her index finger directly in his face. “That’s because you’re overfeeding him and not taking care of his needs!”

  Larkin closed his eyes and sighed. He listened to the clip clop of her shoes as she retreated. When the sound had diminished somewhat, he led Rusty down the sidewalk. He cursed and spat on the ground. Man and cat made their way back to the house. He picked up his blowtorch before opening the side door and entering the kitchen. Madeline took her time. She walked slowly, her face a mess of worry.

  Rusty seemed pleased as punch to be finally released from his leash. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the tile kitchen floor and became an indiscernible blob of orange fur. Larkin waited a moment for the kitchen door to swing open. His fingers nervously fidgeted with the blowtorch nozzle.

  “I’ll sign the papers,” he said without looking her in the eye. “I’ll get them to you. I have a bit of a mess on my hand right now, but I’ll get them to you.” He paused. Madeline said nothing. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said. Without even thinking to find a proper place for the blowtorch, he waited for another awkward moment to pass before turning and heading down the hallway and up the stairs to his bedroom.

  He rushed to turn on the faucet. With the water roaring, he would never hear the door slam. He placed the blowtorch on the back of the toilet and twisted the bathtub faucet knob. He made sure the water was blazing hot before stepping in. Steam rose around him as he began scrubbing his body. But no matter how hard he worked his bar of soap, the small and powerfully painful moments of the morning would not fall away and sink into the drain.

  Suddenly, the shower curtain was pulled aside. Larkin gasped and covered himself. Madeline held onto the edge of the curtain. Before Larkin could even register that she was fully disrobed, she was standing in the shower with him. With a flick of her wrist, the shower curtain slid along its rail and closed them off from the rest of the world. Steam swirled and collected inside the shower. Larkin instinctively wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. Hot water dripped over them.

  As the water slid over Madeline’s small and fit body, so did his fingers. With a very slight gasp from Madeline, they were making love. She turned in the shower, and allowed him to take her. Her fingers curled around the towel bar and Larkin closed his eyes. The hot water nearly burned his skin, but he paid no mind. Madeline groaned. Larkin squeezed her hips. Words of affection waited impatiently upon the tip of his tongue but he said nothing.

  After they had finished in the shower, they dried and silently moved to his bedroom. They passionately made love a second time on Larkin’s tousled bed. Afterward, they lay atop wrinkled sheets, his hand upon hers. Her cinnamon skin intoxicated him. He twisted in bed and delicately caressed her cheek. She closed her eyes.

  Suddenly, both of them shifted as they heard the kitchen door open and close downstairs. Larkin sat upright.

  “Larkin,” whispered Madeline. Her bright eyes widened. Larkin pressed his finger to her lips. He quietly turned and placed his feet on the floor. The sound of footsteps on kitchen tile was easily audible.

  “Larkin!” she said in her loudest whisper. “Someone’s in your house.”

  His stomach flipped. Perhaps it was a bit of pot residue from the night before, but his paranoia crescendoed. He imagined corporate hitmen stalking through his home planting just enough evidence to nail him for the law clerk’s murder before double-tapping the trigger of a silenced nine millimeter Glock pointed at his forehead. He must have broadcasted these thoughts fairly clearly because Madeline gasped.

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice a hissed whisper. “You know something,” she said. “What is it? What’s going on? Should I call the police?”

  Larkin shook his head too emphatically.

  “You’re in trouble, aren’t you? What did you do?” Her voice rose. He lifted his hand in a gentle halting motion, but one head shake too many had jumpstarted her anger. “What did you do, Larkin?”

  “Madeline,” snapped Larkin in a hoarse whisper. “Just stay here for a minute. I’m going to check this out.”

  He threw on some clothes and silently stood in the hallway. He wished his only gun was not sitting uselessly in his law office. Thinking quickly, he snatched the blowtorch from the back of the toilet. He opened the medicine cabinet and found a pack of matches used for lighting the scented candle behind the toilet. His heart was doing its hardest to beat right out of his chest and scuttle away like something from a horror movie.

  His fingers shook as he turned the valve and fumbled with the matches. As one of the matches finally hissed to life and lit the blowtorch, he exhaled.

  He had no plan. His mind raced but reached no conclusions. The blowtorch emitted a persistent low growl as the bluish flame pointed from the nozzle like an arrowhead. How long had it been since he had replaced the gas tank? Fearful that his weapon of choice might fizzle at any moment, Larkin sucked in a breath, counted to three, and entered the hallway. It was now or never.

  He bounded down the stairs and leaped into the hallway connected to the kitchen. “I got you!” he roared as he lifted the blow torch.

  A tall slender black woman in a glittery gold dress screamed. A small plate bearing two muffins fell from her hand to the floor where it promptly shattered. She clutched at her heaving augmented breasts and stared at the small flame pointed in her direction.

  “Melody?” asked Larkin. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Melody said nothing. Her painted eyes stared at the blue flame.

  “Sorry,” said Larkin. He turned the valve and the flame sputtered before disappearing.

  Melody shook her head. “Heavens, Larkin!” Her husky voice hinted at her secret. She looked down at the plate fragments and muffins. “I had just warmed them in the microwave.” She returned her gaze to the blowtorch. “Did you think I was a crème brulée?”

  “No, I . . .,” he placed the blowtorch on the kitchen table. As he regarded it, he realized that the tiny torch would have been nearly useless in a fight. He should have grabbed the spade. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

  “Well I was trying to be sweet and warm you up some muffins, but I am not eating anything off the floor.” She reached down and with the same dramatically feminized flare that she used for nearly every action, she picked up the muffins. “Banana nut,” she said. “One of the new girls made them. I think she’s trying to carb me up so I get even more junk in my trunk.” She placed the muffins on the kitchen counter. As she turned back to Larkin, she leaned forward and peeked over his left shoulder. “My word. Is that your cat? Speaking of junk in the trunk.”

  Madeline stood in the doorway. She held Rusty tightly to her chest. “The cops are on their way,” she said. She had hastily dressed. Her hair was a wet tangled mess. “Larkin, what’s going on? Who is this person?”

  “Melody Saint Vincent,” said Melody Saint Vincent as if her name was more than a name, but a brand.

  “Melody,” repeated Madeline to herself. “That voice . . .”

  “Everything’s fine, Madeline. I know her.” He faced Melody. “I don’t know what the hell she’s doing in my home, but I know her.”

  Melody put her hand on her hip. “I was making us up some fine muffins when he came all up in here with a flamethrower. You know how much product is in here, Larkin?” She ran her fingers through the lower strands of her blonde highlighted dark hair. “I would have lit up like the Fourth of July.” She looked back at Madeline. “Gave a girl a heart attack i
s what he did.”

  “I know that voice,” said Madeline. She crossed her arms and glared. “Larkin, is that Melvin? Melvin what’s his name?”

  “Oh, please, sister,” said Melody. “Ain’t no one been calling me that for years now.”

  Larkin nodded at Madeline. Melody Saint Vincent had left Melvin Hughes, sometime auto mechanic and fulltime pot dealer in the past. Looking at her now, if she had not dressed like a post-operative transsexual superstar, you would never have guessed that she was a post-operative transsexual. Clearly she was a superstar.

  “You told me you didn’t buy drugs anymore, Larkin,” said Madeline. Her voice was saturated with spite. She had reopened herself to Larkin just moments ago. It had been quite a reach for her, a sign of trust and understanding. That understanding was over. There was no hope of going back, especially with a six-foot transsexual pot dealer breaking dishes in the kitchen. “You told me that before and I believed you. Get this person out of my house.”

  Larkin raised an eyebrow but it was Melody who spoke the exact words that glowed like hot embers in his mind. “Your house?” Melody’s other hand found her hip and she adopted her best “bitch, please” stance.

  Madeline gasped. “The police are on their way. I bet that they’d just love to see what illegal substances you have with you.”

  “If a fine man in uniform wants to search my body, I’ll be happy to oblige him,” said Melody.

  “I’m leaving, Larkin. Rusty is coming with me. We’ll sort out the details in court.”

  Larkin held up his hand. “Madeline, wait” he said, “I did not invite her over here. Tell her, Melody.”

  Melody crossed her arms. Madeline turned and stomped down the stairs with Rusty struggling to keep pace. He turned to glance back at Melody as Madeline hurried across the yard and disappeared from sight.

  “Christ, Melody! What are you trying to do to me?” Melody waved her arms over the broken plate as if it was all the explanation she needed. “Don’t give me that shit. What are you doing in my house?”

  Melody sighed and fanned herself with her right hand. “This is too much damn hostility.” She took a few deep breaths. Her breasts threatened to burst through her dress. “You weren’t at your office,” she said. “I even called the courthouse and Theresa said you weren’t on the schedule or docket or whatever they call it today.”

  “Give me a break. You need a lawyer so you come bursting in here without a warning? I have a phone, you know.”

  “I don’t burst through anywhere, Larkin.” Her chest indicated otherwise. “And calm yourself a bit. Your tone is so bothersome. You want to see a tranny cry on your counter?”

  Larkin sighed. “Look, whatever it is, whatever you need done, I can’t do it right now. I’m in way over my head right now. Why don’t I just give you the name and number of a good attorney I know and we can talk later, okay?”

  Melody’s brow furrowed and a sheen of tears washed over her eyes. “But I don’t need another lawyer, Larkin. I need to speak with you. I knew you wouldn’t want to see me at your house, so I thought a little treat might cheer you a bit. Oh, it’s so important, Larkin.”

  Larkin ran his fingers over his scalp. “How many women am I going to make cry in my kitchen today?” He closed the front door and pulled a chair out from under the table. He sat down and crossed his arms. “You have one minute.”

  “I knew that girl, Larkin. The one on the news.”

  Larkin sat up straight in his chair.

  “She had been reading my blog.”

  “You have a blog?”

  “I run a full-service transitioning support site. I supply information to those who need it. It ain’t easy getting this going when you don’t know the first step. About two months ago, that lawyer started to post things up on the message boards. Really intelligent. You could tell the girl was a writer or did something smart for a living. The girl could write.”

  “That was bold of her,” said Larkin. “What with her job.”

  “She had a screen name, dodo,” said Melody. “No one knew who she was. After I read a couple of her comments, Ms. St. Vincent just had to reach out and touch someone. I set up some private chats and we became very familiar. You could just tell so much about her. Arrogant and smart as hell, but sad too. She had transitioned in college on the West Coast. When she moved out here, she just lived as herself. Didn’t have too many close friends or relationships. It’s like she was testing the waters. She was living her new life, but all on the down-low.” Melody stared at the window. “Poor thing just wanted to step out and be honest about who she was.”

  Larkin nodded. “She wanted to let others know.”

  Melody nodded. “Yes. But she didn’t know how or when the right time would be. Who knew what the high-fallooting legal people would have made of a young transgender attorney amongst them?”

  “Working for one of the most conservative, Republican-backed judges in the state surely did not help. How did she find you on the internet?”

  “She said she saw my ad at a club. I’m dancing again.”

  “I see. But she doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would be seen at any club that would have a picture of you. No offense.”

  “None taken,” she honestly said. “But you’d be surprised where some birds will fly in order to find a flock.”

  “So did you ever meet in real life?”

  “Never,” she said.

  “Well then how did you know - -”

  “We were just about to,” she said with all the drama she could muster. Even after knowing her for the better part of five years, he still could never tell when Melody was exaggerating for dramatic effect or genuinely bothered. “She sent me her picture the night before we were going to meet. I waited for her and she never came. A few days later, I saw the news footage.”

  “Holy shit, Melody. You realize that this probably makes you a suspect?”

  “Does it?” she said clutching her hands tightly to her chest. “Oh, I just thought it might. You got to help me, Larkin. I don’t know what I should do. I didn’t know whether to tell the cops anything or what. Some of the stuff she said . . .”

  “What did she say?”

  “She was upset. She said she was going to confront somebody with something that she had discovered at her job. Something she wasn’t supposed to know, but had just found out. She said someone else’s whole life was in her hands.”

  “Did she ever confront that person? Did she ever talk about it again?”

  “I don’t know. Most of that was all in her last message to me. We were going to meet at a coffee shop and talk all about it the next day. It was going to be nice, just us two girls in the bumfuck mountain city.”

  “She never showed,” said Larkin.

  “She never showed.”

  Larkin rubbed his eyes. His mind rocketed through modified conspiracy theories. Most of them led to the same conclusion. The judge looked more and more like a chief suspect. A sudden high whine in the distance caught his ear.

  “Jesus,” said Larkin. “Didn’t Madeline say she was going to call the cops?”

  Melody bit her lip. “That was too quick.”

  Within twenty-five seconds, four police cars had come to screeching halts in front of his house. “Well, you’re not the only one who likes the dramatic,” said Larkin as he peered through the window. Detective Kincaid stepped out of one of the cruisers and walked steadily toward the front door. Two uniformed cops hurriedly took their place behind him. Their hands firmly clasped the holsters at their hips.

  “Christ,” said Larkin as he ran to the living room. He opened the front door just as Kincaid’s fist had swung down to give his best threatening knock.

  “Mr. Monroe,” said Kincaid, “I have a warrant for the arrest of Melvin Hughes, also known as Melody St. Vincent.” Two of the officers brushed by him and stood in the foyer, scanning the room for any sign of a six-foot goddess.

  “She’s in the kitchen,” said Lar
kin. “Melody,” Larkin called, “the cops are coming to arrest you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I appreciate that, Larkin,” said Kincaid. “You’ve got some taste in women,” he said as the officers led Melody silently through the foyer. Her hands were cuffed and secured behind her back. She looked briefly at Larkin and then stared at the floor. “You know,” said Kincaid, “while I’m here, I think I’ll just go ahead and arrest you too.”

  “Lovely,” said Larkin. “Do I need to be cuffed?” He raised his wrists.

  “Just follow me.”

  Great, thought Larkin. To them, Melody was more of a threat. He followed Kincaid toward the backdoor of the detective’s car. “Aren’t you going to . . .”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” said Kincaid. “You have the right to an attorney.”

  As Kincaid continued listing his rights, Larkin gave him a big thumbs up for acing criminal procedure. Kincaid finished and pointed toward the backseat. “You got any weapons?”

  “Just my wit,” said Larkin.

  “Get in.” Just as Kincaid started the car, Larkin caught a glimpse of an older man with gray hair and eyes like a hawk. He gazed at Larkin from behind the windshield of a long dark Cadillac. Larkin only saw the man’s face for a second before, Kincaid put the car in gear. He had easily recognized the face.

  “Justice Byrd is taking a peculiar interest in this case, isn’t he?” asked Larkin.

  Kincaid smiled. “As are you, apparently.”

  Larkin reached into his unsearched left pocket. He had downed the entire airplane bottle of rum before Kincaid could stop the car and perform a slow and thorough search of his prisoner.

  70 Proof

  “Directly in front of the board, Mr. Monroe,” said the cop with the small digital camera. The cop’s right hand buried the tiny camera like a golf ball in a catcher’s mitt. Larkin risked a smile. He had fought it for over a minute. He had even faked a yawn to mask his somehow unstoppable lower cheek muscles from ascending. But it was simple physics. The camera’s size and the fact that it was lavender created a potent force. The urge to laugh was simply an equivalent mathematical reaction. The camera should have been handled by a Penelope or Princess Patricia, not Deputy Stuckey.