“Two years after. Two years of hell and hurt and betrayal. Yes, I married him. Because he loves me and I love him. We belong together and always have. And even a train wreck like you can't stop that.”
I swallowed. “I'm glad. I really am. You deserve to be happy.”
“I am happy.” The twitch in her jaw and murder in her eyes didn't exactly support that, but I wasn't going to be the one to point that out. “I forgave Scott and we moved on, stronger and more in love than ever. He's completely devoted to me. He would kill for me. I forgave him. But I'll never forgive you. So you can go back to your AA group and tell them this is one wrong that isn't going to be made right.”
She turned to go, but then turned back one more time. “And another thing. This getting your life together crap. I don't believe it for a second. People like you don't change. You can go to all the AA meetings you want. But you're always going to be trouble. This morning just proves it.”
“This morning?” Good Lord. What had I done this morning?
“This morning Tony Solis was arrested for the murder of Lucinda Cruz.”
I collapsed into the seat of my car and closed the door. I knew it was going to be bad. But…man! This level of bad didn't even have a name. This was a level where mere depression and low self-esteem would be a giant step up.
And to top it off, Tony had been arrested for murder. Tony. My mind flashed to Tony, whirling with questions as to how he could possibly be involved.
Stump crawled into my lap and licked my arm, her little feet digging into my leg. I wrapped my arms around her and rested my forehead on her big square skull, her body warm against mine and her heart beating steady beneath my hand.
I was a sorry screw-up who ruined everything and everyone around me. I was a mistake. The very substance I was made from was tainted.
In the entire time I'd been sober, I had never wanted a drink so bad. To feel that first warm gush down my throat, feel the heat spread down into my arms, into my legs, spread out till I didn't care anymore.
I needed to not care for a while. I needed a break. Trisha was right. People like me didn't change. What was I fighting for? It was a losing battle. I was an idiot to even try.
It took everything I had to turn the key in the ignition, but I already knew where I was going. I wasn't supposed to go into a bar, but so what? Was someone going to stop me? Of course not. No one cared. I was the only one who thought this was a battle that needed to be won.
I drove with Stump on my lap, her head out the window, her tongue the size of a Saint Bernard's hanging out of her mouth. What the heck. I'd take her with me. I knew a little bar over on the north side of town where they wouldn't care if I brought her inside. Someone would probably give her a beer.
I couldn't get Scott and Trisha's voices out of my head. Two people in agony. Two people whose lives had taken a horrible, painful hit. A hit from me.
I barely noticed the rest of traffic as Stump and I made our way down surface streets. I couldn’t see how fast I was driving because Stump was blocking the dash with her big head. And I didn't care. Let a cop pull me over. Let me have an accident.
Go ahead, God. Punish me. I asked for your help on this and what do I get? This is your idea of help? What the actual heck? Why do I have to be dragged down like this? When am I going to get a break? Never, that's when. I get it now. You created me so I could be miserable and try to claw my way up and get knocked back down again. Thank you. Thank you very freaking much, you mean jerk.
I actually thought that. I actually thought the words “You mean jerk,” to God. I didn't care. So much for trying to straighten my life out. God was a jerk who'd made me so he could get his grins dragging me through hell. He was a jerk and I was tired of playing this game. I was done. He could either kill me or get out of my way, but I wasn't going to jump through hoops for him anymore.
I waited for a lightning bolt to strike me. It didn't. Instead smoke billowed up from under the hood of my car and it lurched to a stop in the middle of the street, coughing and jerking like it was having some kind of fit.
That’s when I noticed the temperature gauge, solidly into the red. For a second I considered sitting there until someone rammed into the back of the car and sent us all up in flames. But then a big dually pickup almost did rear end me, honking, tires screeching, driver leaning out to shout cuss words at me, and I screamed and shoved Stump into the passenger seat, put the car in neutral and jerked open the door so I could push the car to the side of the road.
I guess I wasn't quite as ready to die as I thought.
“I take it back,” I huffed as I pushed. “I don't really want you to kill me.” Although I didn't know what I could possibly have to live for. Still, I'd kind of had something less painful in mind than being flattened by a dually.
I got the car to the side of the road and the flashers on, pushing with my shoulder so hard I was practically knees to the ground. Good thing I had a small car. Stump jumped back into the driver's seat, her front paws on the wheel, and licked my arm. It got on my nerves but I didn't have the initiative to tell her to stop. I just pushed as hard as I could and thought about how great that first drink was going to taste.
I heard The Entertainer and looked over my shoulder to see an ice cream truck behind me.
Les. I stood up straight, breathing hard. I'll be damned. My knight in shining armor. At least the truck was white.
He parked behind me and got out. “Car trouble?”
I thought I should at least nod. But I just stood there, feeling like I had been run over by a car. God sent Les. I called Him a jerk and decided to get drunk so he sent Les. And now Les was going to go on and on about how good God was, and he sure as heck wasn't going to let me get a drink.
I felt like a rat in one of those lab mazes that can never be solved. I'd finally figured out that I had no real shot of ever beating the maze, so I escaped. Except here came the lab technician, picking up my fat white rat body and scratching the back of my tiny little rat head before putting me back in the maze with an indulgent smile. I had no chance at all.
“Isn't God amazing?” Les said with that huge goofy grin. “I knew there was a reason the routes got switched around today. So I could be here when you needed me. It's a miracle.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A freaking miracle.”
“Bad day?”
“The worst. Do you have a lighter? I'm going to set the car on fire.”
“I have a tow chain in the back. We'll hook you up and tow you home.”
He lifted the hood and poked around with a smile on his face, like he was rummaging through a box of possible treasures at a flea market. “There's your problem. Busted block.” He pointed under the car, then back toward the middle of the street where I’d just stopped. A line of water – I assumed it was water – left a wide trail. It looked like my car had some pretty serious bladder control issues.
“Are blocks expensive?” I thought with a vague sense of hope of the little wooden blocks with letters on them.
“Oh yes,” he said cheerfully. “Very.” He slammed the hood and dusted off his hands. “Let's hook up the chain.”
He pulled in front of me, hooked the chain to his rear bumper and my front bumper. Then the ice cream man towed me and Stump home, playing The Entertainer the entire way.
Les unhooked the chain from my car. “You're going to be stuck here for a while. Do you need anything? I have time to take you to the grocery store before I head back to the shop.”
I shook my head. A trip to a bar was out of the question with Les, and a trip anywhere else held absolutely no appeal.
“You have anyone to look at your car?”
I shrugged. “There's a guy who lives out here, he works on cars. I can see if he'll come over this evening.”
Les nodded. “Won't do you any good, it's busted beyond repair. But it's good to get a second opinion. I'm just an ice cream salesman.”
“I don't have any money for a new car.”
“Yeah, I asked the Lord for the money to fix this one and he didn't provide that.”
“He obviously has something else in mind for you.”
“I hope He sends it before I have to be at work in the morning.”
“He will.”
“How come you're so sure?” I asked, hot and tired and irritated.
Les shrugged. “Just am.”
“How come you were over on that side of town this afternoon?”
“Lord sent me.”
“How? How did He send you?”
“Actually the girl who does that route had a sick kid today, so I took her route after I finished mine.”
“But how did you know that was God, Les? That it wasn’t just chance?” I wanted to believe that God was good, I really did, but the evidence was just not pointing that way for me. “What did it sound like?”
“It didn't sound like anything, Salem.” He took a deep breath. “He doesn't talk to me with an audible voice. He just puts thoughts in my head, and I know it's Him.”
“I thought he might have been talking to me this morning when I was doing my quiet time.”
“I'm sure He was, then. That's what quiet time is for.”
“He told me to do something I already planned on doing, though.” He hadn’t exactly come through in a big way with that peace and courage request.
“That's good. He was probably confirming that you were on the right track.”
“Maybe. Feels like I'm on the track of a runaway train.”
“Want to talk about it?” He reached into the freezer and drew out a Push-Up for him and a Drumstick for me.
I remembered standing in front of the mirror that morning and wishing I could lose a quick forty pounds. A Drumstick was not going to help me.
On the other hand, I also wanted to feel better. And even though it wouldn't do the job a Jack and Coke would do, a Drumstick would make me feel better than no Drumstick.
I pulled the top off and peeled the wrapper back. Did I want to talk about it? I talked to Les a lot, mostly about how much my life sucked and all the things I wished could have been different; that I could have had a normal family and my dad was really my dad, and my mom was nice, and that I was one of those people who liked to clean when they got nervous, instead of the type who liked to get drunk and start trouble.
I didn't so much like to talk about the things that were my own fault. But Les is fond of pointing out that I can't change what I don't acknowledge and keeping it bottled up doesn't mean I'm controlling it, it means it's controlling me. I think Les watches too much Dr. Phil.
“I might as well,” I said. Stump was about to give herself a stroke, trying to get to my ice cream, so I tore off a little bit of the cone and let her have it. “I took your advice and talked to my friend at Channel 11.”
“Pray before you go?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I prayed – a couple of times.” I didn't want to admit it hadn't worked. Les was so convinced God would do whatever you asked, and I didn't want to be the one to break it to him that it wasn't always so. “I found out what I did to make her so mad, and why she hates me so much. The night before her wedding I –” Man. This was hard. Saying it out loud. Les was used to ministering to people in jail and he'd probably heard a lot worse. But not from me. “The night before her wedding I slept with her husband. Fiancé.”
“That's heavy.” Les licked sherbet and leaned against the truck. “Did you know he was her fiancé?”
“I don't remember. I knew she and Scott dated in high school and back then she was crazy about him. He was totally in love with her. They dated all through our last two years of school.” I had been so jealous. Trisha and I had been joined at the hip since 6th grade, and suddenly she was in love with Scott and too good to be seen with the likes of me. I supposed that's probably why I did it. “I don't remember much about that night except flashes. Scott, drunk and laughing, while these two guys tugged him across the floor toward a bedroom. He was saying, “No, no, seriously, no way.” But he was way out of it. I remember some guy whispering in my ear that it was just a joke, just one of those practical jokes buddies play on each other when they get married. Hey, that was Ricky Barlow. I just remembered that. I didn't say this to Les, but I'd also had sex with Ricky Barlow, too, a couple of times.
“And that's when she came in?”
“No, this all happened during the nighttime. I remember because I was standing out on the balcony watching it all through the open patio door. Trisha came in the morning; late morning, I guess, because it was already hot. I remember her chasing me outside and my feet were hot on the sidewalk.”
“You haven't spoken to her since?”
“I don't think so. Not until today.”
“Did you ask her forgiveness?”
“Of course.” I bit through the thin cone and dropped another piece for Stump.
“Were you truly sorry?”
“How could I not be?”
“Then there's not much more you can do. Keep your heart open for opportunities to show her how truly sorry you are, but other than that you have to just let it go. She has to come to terms with things on her own time. But you can't undo it, Salem. You can't turn back time, and crawling into a bottle now won't help as much as you think it will.”
“We're going to have to agree to disagree on that for the time being. Right now a Jack and Coke seems like just the thing.”
“It's the wrong thing.”
“So is this Drumstick.”
“But you're not out of control with a Drumstick.”
I held my arms out wide. “Hello? I'm as big as a house.” Right now that seemed like a minor worry in light of the fact that I'd ruined so many lives.
Tony.
Man. What was going on with Tony? Was that my fault too?
“Do you have a Drumstick and pass out? Do you have a Drumstick and sleep with your friends' boyfriends?”
“I don't know.” I stuck the bottom of the cone in my mouth and bit down. It was the best part because it had that chocolate plug that keeps the ice cream from dripping out. “I guess we're about to find out.”
Frank rounded the corner of my trailer. He looked at the tow rope between my car and the ice cream truck. “Car trouble?”
I wanted to say something smart but I just nodded. “It was low on oil, and I forgot to put any in because I was preoccupied with all the people asking about my arrest for murder.” I glared at Frank like it was all his fault.
Frank, as was his custom, nodded obliviously. “Bummer.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at Les. “You got any Nestle Crunches?”
Les licked his sherbet and reached through the window to hand Frank a Nestle Crunch.
“I saw on the news that they arrested the guy who killed that dead body you found.”
I had a quick and unpleasant vision of Tony Solis killing a dead body. Bizarre, the way Frank worded things sometimes.
“He didn't do it.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. Tony wouldn't kill anyone.”
“So, you know the guy?” Les crumpled up his Push-Up cardboard and tucked it into the little bag hanging on his glove compartment. He pulled a package of wet wipes and handed one to me.
“Yeah, I know him.” I wiped the sticky off my hands and tossed the wipe in the bag. “He's my ex-husband.”
I had set my sights on Tony Solis in early Fall of our senior year in high school. Tony was, or at least had been, the strong silent type, dark and brooding and really good looking. He had dark brown eyes and black hair, and I could feel him watching me sometimes. I would turn around and those dark eyes would be intense on me, and it always unnerved me. I could never tell what he was thinking. I thought maybe he was into me, but I also knew he was probably just quietly horrified by me. I was a little obnoxious back then. Okay, I was a lot obnoxious back then. I'd started the year before partying a lot, drinking every weekend,
then several times during the week, and by our senior year I usually had a nip at lunch, too. I was the typical rebel without a clue. I wore tight jeans and a sullen, badass attitude and thought it was all beneath me, but I liked Tony.
He didn't talk much, but when he did he always treated me with respect. Didn't make suggestive comments or dirty jokes when I came around, and that was nice. He held the door open for me. He held doors open for all women, in fact. His mom had raised him that way.
His mom, on the other hand, hated me. She'd stare at me with those same dark eyes, but I knew exactly what she was thinking – white trash slut just like her mother, exactly the kind of girl her son would not be caught associating with. Tony was smart. Tony had a future. Tony was going places. Someday Tony would come back to Idalou in a Mercedes with his beautiful wife – who would also have graduate degrees – and their two perfect kids, and he'd build a big house there and they'd take Tony's mother on Alaskan cruises with them.
The combination of Tony's unreadable stares, his mother's very readable glares, and my own penchant for complete self-destruction – and fueled by my admiration for Tony's deep brown eyes and wide shoulders – all mixed together to make me see Tony as a challenge.
Even though we were raised in the same small town, mine and Tony’s lives could not have been more different. My mom was – and still is – an embarrassing, hurtful, out-of-control train wreck of a person. I love her, but just because I don’t know how to not love her. She’s my mom. Les keeps insisting that God loves her, and that makes me feel better, somehow.
She sent me to school with half a jar of green olives and two stale canned biscuits for lunch one day when I was in fifth grade, and that was when I stomped my foot and insisted she find something for me to eat. In seventh grade, she offered the principal a sexual favor in exchange for six months’ worth of unpaid school lunches. (The school secretary overheard her and passed this tidbit on to Maureen at the beauty shop, which was the equivalent of taking out an ad in the New York Times. My mom denied it, then later clarified that she'd actually offered a completely innocent massage, because, you know, everyone believed that.) She also showed up drunk and loud to high school football games.
The Middle Finger of Fate (A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 5