by Oliver, Tess
She put the heels of her hands up on the edge of his checkout counter, effectively pushing her tits up and out so that the kid could get a nice view of them. “Are you trying to grow a moustache?” She put on that extra sultry accent. The kid dropped a toothbrush on the ground. Sugar winked at me as he leaned down to pick it up.
“That brush is for Julian,” I said.
The cashier straightened. His face was in a full blush, and looking as if he was going to need to breathe into a paper bag.
“I think you’d look really hot in a moustache,” Sugar said, returning to her earlier topic.
The grin nearly popped off his face. It took him ridiculously long to ring up the few items that she was actually paying for. I would lay odds on the kid starting a moustache tomorrow. I watched with the usual awe as she flirted her way past him, with a fifty pound backpack, a backpack she had not walked in with, swinging from her shoulder. He watched her walk out, but he was staring at her legs not the massive pack of stolen items. It took him a second to drag his attention away from her. The kid was going to be having wet dreams tonight that was for damn sure. He turned back to me with a dazed look.
“Don’t worry about it, bro, she has that effect on everyone.” I pulled out some money as Julian dropped four boxes of powdered donuts and a sports drink onto the conveyor belt.
I looked at him, silently questioning his meal choice.
“Hector Gordon and Everett Young, two world class mountain climbers, once had their tent and supplies blown away by a blizzard on the face of Mount Rainier. They survived for six days on powdered sugar donuts and Gatorade.”
“Probably won’t have to worry about a blizzard, Jules, but whatever. It’s your stomach.” I turned back to the cashier, who was probably just easing out of the hard on he got from talking to Sugar. “Is there a park around here?”
“Uh, yeah, it’s about a mile down the road and turn left. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.” I picked up my bag of food and handed Julian his bag of goodies.
“Is she your girlfriend?” the kid blurted as Julian and I walked away from his check stand.
I turned around and smiled. “Not my girlfriend, bro, but she’s the love of my life. Take care.”
We met our beautiful, seductive thief in the parking lot. She had bought a newspaper from the stand out in front of the store. She held it up. “Seems there’s been a multiple murder just a few hundred miles away, and the killer is still on the loose.”
I caught up to her and took hold of the paper. The headline read, ‘Jameson Enterprises Heir on Killing, Kidnapping Spree.’
“Fuck.”
“At least your picture isn’t on the front page,” Sugar said.
“I’m so screwed. Let’s get out of here. Your newest fan says there’s a park a mile away.” I took the backpack from her shoulder and put it on my own. It was heavy. “Reminds me of school. I’d drag all my books home, just to make it look good. But, funny thing is, I don’t think those damn things ever left my backpack.”
Julian walked along next to us. He’d already ripped into a package of donuts, and his mouth was covered in powdered sugar. For a person who rarely had a hair out of place or a speck of dirt on his clothes, it was different seeing him covered in sugar and donut crumbs. And he didn’t seem to care how much of the white stuff cascaded down his shirt.
“I guess those are your favorite, eh?” I asked him.
“This is the first time I’ve ever had one,” he spoke over a mouthful. “My mom never let me have processed foods. She theorized that food additives were part of my problem.” He laughed loudly and spit out some crumbs along with it. Julian’s uninhibited laughter was a sound that made both Sugar and me drop our mouths open in shock. We were looking at a new Julian, and as shades of the old one disappeared, I found that I wasn’t missing the drugged up version too much.
We walked along the street of neatly trimmed lawns and cozy houses with our stolen goods and a weird sense of independence that felt like standing in a tunnel of static electricity, as if we were more alive and charged with energy.
I lifted my shoulder with the backpack. “I think this princess backpack totally works for a homicidal maniac like me.”
Sugar laughed and held out her hand for one of Julian’s donuts, which he reluctantly parted with. She took a bite and then made a point of licking the powdered sugar off her bottom lip.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I said.
“Who me?” She blinked her long lashes and took another bite. Only Sugar could make eating a donut erotic.
I reached into my paper bag, pulled out a cigarette and lit it, wishing to hell it was a joint instead of a Camel. “Where’d you learn to shoplift like that? Wait. Let me guess. One of your mom’s boyfriends was a professional thief.”
“Nah, but she did date a guy who made his money selling counterfeit artwork for about three months. I learned to shoplift when I was out on my own for awhile.”
I looked over at her. “This wasn’t the first time my mom told me to get lost. When I was fifteen, she caught me—” She stopped and looked over at Julian, who was far more absorbed in his snack than the conversation. She shook her head. “That part doesn’t really matter. It was two days after my fifteenth birthday. She shoved some of my stuff in a duffle bag and wrapped my last piece of birthday cake, store bought, of course, in some foil and told me to get out. When you’re hungry, you learn the stealing shit pretty fast. I was on my own for a month before she finally told the cops I’d run away. Cops found me and took me home and my mom put on a good show of the eternally grateful mother having her beloved daughter returned to her.”
I gazed at her. There was no pity or anger in her expression. She was telling the story as plainly as if she was reciting a recipe. Sometimes she said stuff to shock me, but this wasn’t one of those times. And yet, I was shocked nonetheless.
***
For such a small town, they’d built an amazingly large park. It seemed that every house in the city could fit on the well-kept lawns of Wilderness Park. The restroom facilities were immaculate, a welcome site to three weary travelers who had no place else to wash and brush teeth. In just a few minutes at the store, Sugar had managed to fill her stolen backpack with everything from shampoo to clean underwear and t-shirts. Scrubbed and sporting fresh briefs, we were all feeling a little less homeless.
There was a group of picnic tables beneath a copse of shade trees. Once the sun had set and the dog walkers and kids had gone home for the night, we were alone in the park. We sat and shared food. Julian stuck mostly with his donuts and sports drink. With the way his hands were shaking, a good amount of sugar was probably what his body craved the most.
Sugar opened the newspaper. “Here’s your picture.” She held it up. It was the same photo they’d shown on television.
“No idea when that was taken. Do you think it’s a good likeness?”
She looked at it again. “Not really but when you read the description people have given about you, I don’t think it matters. You, according to this reporter, are described as—” She searched for the section and began reading. “Mr. Jameson is a tall, well-built and startlingly handsome twenty-five-year-old male with long black hair and penetrating green eyes. Many of the residents at the Green Willow facility, who knew him, described him as large and menacing. Jameson, as one female resident noted, always looked as if he was one lit fuse away from exploding. According to police, he is considered dangerous. He nearly beat a man to death with his fist. The man, police refer to, was a friend of the late Dr. Kirkendall. After a severe beating at the hands of Jameson, the victim is conscious now and cooperating with police. He has corroborated the story of the ward assistant who witnessed the murders.”
“No more, Sugar. Stop reading.” I yanked out the whiskey bottle I’d been cradl
ing like a fragile baby all day and opened it. I took three long swigs and held it out for Sugar. She shook her head. “Jules, you want a sip?” I asked. “Might take the edge off.”
“Can’t tolerate the taste of it.” He wrapped his arms around himself to stop the shivering. It was a warm summer night, but Julian looked as if he was sitting in the middle of the snow. “What are we going to do, Tommy?” It was the first logical thing he’d said all afternoon. It was hard not having his genius to turn to in a time like this, but as his body sweated off all the prescription drugs, he seemed to be having a hard time holding it together physically. Mentally he’d sort of shut down as if it was some instinctual form of self-preservation that pushed all his energy into surviving the torture of withdrawal. I knew, too well, that time was the only thing that eased the agony.
I gulped back more whiskey. It burned going down, and since I hadn’t had any booze for awhile, it went to my head fast. “I figure, no matter what, I’m doing jail time. As the paper said, I nearly killed a man with my fist. It’s the only part of the story that’s true, and even if he was the real murderer, I’ve got a record of assault. I’m going down with this one. But, I’m just not ready to turn myself in yet.” I looked over at Sugar and Julian. “Sugar, there’s no reason you have to stay. I’ll give you money, and you can get on the next bus—”
“To where?” she asked sharply. “Where the fuck would I go?” Then her voice softened. She looked at me with that face that made me want to pull her into my arms. “I’m staying with you, Tommy. I belong with you.”
Julian was sitting just a few feet away, but at that moment, it was just Sugar and me looking at each other across the picnic table. It was that silent communication we were so good at, where we knew exactly what the other person was thinking. And she knew I was thinking just how badly I needed her.
“I can’t go home either,” Julian spoke, dissolving our exchange of thoughts. “Something is not right. I knew something was not right. It’s never been right.”
My head was spinning with Sugar’s declaration and with the whiskey that was shooting through me. “Shit, Jules, your cryptic statements are too much for me tonight.” With whiskey and smokes in hand, I got up from the table and walked over to a small brick wall, built with the sole purpose of separating the eating area from the kiddie playground. I slid down to the ground and rested my back against the bricks. They still felt warm from the sun. I pulled out a cigarette and sucked down some more whiskey before lighting it.
“Shit, Tommy, you’ve finished half that bottle already,” Sugar said.
I lifted the whiskey and gave the amber liquid a shake. “I’m practicing for the dead man’s walk. You know, final wishes before they march me down that cold corridor to my execution, same corridor all the cold-blooded murderers before me walked. I’m not going to ask for a meal. I mean who the fuck can eat when you’re about to be zapped in front of a roomful of revenge hungry family members and reporters?” My words sounded stretched and slow, but there was no stutter. No fucking stutter. Put another check in the benefits of being off your ass drunk column. “I’m going to ask for a bottle of whiskey, the good shit, none of this eight dollar crap and a pack of cigarettes, and I’m going to make those pig faced prison guards and the executioner wait until I’ve smoked every damn cigarette and sipped every drop of whiskey.”
“It’s lethal injection,” Julian said.
I turned my head without lifting it from the wall. “Huh?”
“They got rid of electric chairs and gas chambers and replaced them with what they consider more humane, lethal injection.”
I laughed. It was my familiar, alcohol-soaked, slurred laugh. I hadn’t heard it for awhile. “More humane, except to the guy on the table.”
“I didn’t say I considered it more humane, I said, they, the people who decide things like that.”
“Tommy, would you stop talking like this,” Sugar said. I ignored her.
I was feeling sorry for myself, but for a change, it seemed I fucking deserved this self-pity moment. “Injection? They just keep taking the cool out of execution. I mean, whatever happened to the fucking firing squad and the gallows where you’d swing and the whole town could be there and you could tell everyone to fuck off just before they watched your eyes bulge out of your head? At least the electric chair had sort of a cool horror feel to it and the gas chamber, fucking scary to think about. But just getting an injection and keeling over? Fuck, now where’s the glory in that?”
“Tommy,” Sugar barked. “Just shut the hell up.” She got up on those long, smooth legs, which were sometimes wrapped around me in my dreams, and walked over to the playground. She leaned against the slide and crossed her arms around herself. Julian climbed up on one of the table tops, stretched out and shoved the princess backpack under his head. He shut his eyes, but it didn’t seem possible that he would get any sleep tonight in his agitated state.
I left behind my bottle and cigarette, pushed up onto unsteady feet and plodded over to Sugar. She looked away, not wanting to meet my drunken gaze. I stopped my feet directly in front of her. My lids were heavy, and sleep, even on a picnic table, sounded damn good.
I reached for Sugar’s hand. I was sure she’d yank it away, but she didn’t. Fragile and soft, it stayed tucked in my fingers. I’d been wanting to kiss this girl since the first second I’d met her. There was no one else in the world I wanted to kiss but her. I’d been a fucking saint. We weren’t in the ugly green walls of the recovery center anymore. I leaned forward.
Sugar’s hand came across my face. Even with my nerves numbed by whiskey, the slap hurt like hell, more because it came from Sugar than from the sting it left behind. My head was in a whiskey cloud, but I wasn’t imagining the tears in her eyes.
“You asshole, Tommy. All that time at Green Willow, I was waiting for you to kiss me. I was waiting for you to stop being a chicken shit and kiss me, and now, you finally find the balls to do it just because you’re shitfaced. Keep your damn kiss.” She slid past me and walked toward the restroom. I walked back to the wall where I’d left my whiskey and slid down, the feel of Sugar’s hand still on my face. I gulped back some more booze and relit my cigarette.
As if I was invisible, Sugar strode past me with a block of wet paper towels. She climbed up onto the table with Julian. She replaced the backpack under his head with her lap. He was stiff at first, uncomfortable with the personal attention. Softly, she whispered something to him that sounded silken with comfort, a sound to make him relax. She pressed the cold compress against his head. His fists and feet relaxed. She was like a goddamn angel, a perfect human in every way, and her mom had dropped her out onto a sidewalk at the age of fifteen as if she was a piece of garbage. Her mom was not worthy of a daughter like Sugar, and after my ill-timed attempt at a kiss, I wondered if I was worthy.
Chapter 17
Grass. I was smelling grass, and not the good kind. I opened my eyes and squinted up at the colorful object dangling above my head. It floated down toward my face, and I shot up out of the way. A piñata, I was looking at a giant paper donkey layered with every color in the damn rainbow.
“Sorry to wake you, but it was the only tree with a solid enough branch to hold it,” the man said. He was wearing a baseball cap and a t-shirt with a dragster on the front. “They put so much candy inside, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to break the darn thing open.” He tied off the piñata and leaned down. “I’m Ross. If you’re looking for Amber, she’s over there helping with the pancakes. We’re all so glad she made it here. We’ve heard so much about her from her great aunt, we were thrilled to see her this morning. She said you guys traveled all night and couldn’t find a place to stay. Shame you all had to sleep in the park.”
Apparently, I’d drunk myself into a coma, and this guy, for unknown reasons, had popped up in my unconscious visions. “Who?”
�
��Amber,” a familiar voice said from the opposite side of the tree trunk. Julian, still looking pale and shaky, was holding a plate of pancakes and bacon. “Our best friend, Amber, who we traveled with all night on a bus, so she could get to the reunion. But her great aunt is sick and couldn’t make it to the party. Isn’t that a shame?” Julian looked up from his food for the first time. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like shit. “But everyone was anxious to meet Amber because they’d never met her . . . until today.” Julian blinked at me.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked under my breath.
Julian motioned across the way.
My head felt like it was being slammed against a brick wall as I squinted across the sunlit park to the group of people standing around the tables. Rainbow colored streamers, that matched the piñata, fluttered in the morning breeze, and two of the park barbecues were clouded with bacon smoke. A large banner had been stretched across the brick wall of the restrooms that read, ‘Sutter Family Reunion’. Country music was rumbling from a pair of gritty sounding speakers, and people were sitting around the park, on the walls, on the slide and the swings balancing plates of food. And, standing at the food preparation table with a bright white smile and that sunshiney attitude, was the girl I loved.
Ross gave the rope with the piñata a strong tug. “Looks like that’ll work. If you’re ready for food, come on over and get a plate. Hannah’s pancakes are the best in the state. She’s won blue ribbons at the state fair.”
My stomach tightened at the smell of food, but I wasn’t hungry yet. “Yeah, thanks. I just need to get my morning appetite churning.” Ross walked away. I scooted closer to Julian, who looked to be having the same appetite problem as me. “What the hell is going on?”
“We woke up, and they were setting up a party. One of the women asked Sugar if she was that pretty, twice-removed niece that Aunt Shelly had been bragging about and then she said how sorry she was that Shelly wasn’t going to make it to the reunion. Then they started cooking pancakes, so Sugar just decided to go with it. We’re her two friends who traveled with her from Colorado to make sure she got here safely.”