I Kill Rich People: New Edition Released 11/27/14

by Mike Bogin

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Callie went through her mental checklist while Owen loaded the Tahoe. Boys. Toys. Cooler. Clothes. Epi-Pen, just in case. Water wings. Bikes last…right next to the carrier. Liam and Casey were still in pajamas. Let ’em sleep or they’ll be cranky later on. Perfect morning. No humidity, seventy degrees. On the road at 6:30, Owen behind the wheel feeling light, excited to be taking his family on vacation.

  “Stop at Starbucks. I need my coffee,” Callie insisted.

  Owen glanced at the time. By 7 the traffic would double, even on Saturday. But he headed west toward the closest Starbucks.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Starbucks.”

  “Which?”

  “37th…”

  “Go to Sunnyside. They never have enough people working at 37th.”

  “I’m taking the Expressway south. Not going to Sunnyside.”

  “Go down Junction then, and we’ll go to the one in the mall.”

  Owen drove west to Sunnyside, deciding as he was driving whether to backtrack to Brooklyn-Queens or take Queens Midtown then go south along the river. Crapshoot. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Just get across lower Manhattan before the cabs shift over. Saturday or not.

  Callie went into her purse, retrieving three different plastic Starbucks cards and looking them over to remember how much was on them while Owen looked on. “What? They’re gifts.”

  “Who’s giving you gifts?”

  “What do you mean, who’s giving me gifts? I get gifts.”

  Owen reached quickly and snatched one of the cards. “Who gave you this one?”

  “Mr. Bianchi. He’s a seventy-year-old man. I give him some nitrous.” Callie pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek then winked. “He gives me a Starbucks card.” Owen looked in the rearview mirror to make sure the boys were sleeping in their car seats, and then rolled his eyes.

  “Just kidding you.” Callie paused. “He’s really seventeen,” she whispered. “Cums in four seconds. His mother gives me the gift cards, says he loves going to the dentist.” She reached over and gave Owen a quick squeeze through his pants. “Think about it.”

  Every parking spot outside Starbucks was already filled. Owen double-parked while Callie got out. “Biggest drip they got?” she asked, automatically ordering for Owen.

  “No. Get me an iced caramel macchiato, extra whipped cream.” Callie looked at him like she was wondering if he was for real, then nodded. She was smiling wide as an old man opened the door to let her inside, raising up his cane and wishing her a good morning. Iced caramel macchiato and not one word about The Job. Perfect start. Like a real vacation.

  After she was back in the car, Owen looked at the clear plastic cup, eyed the dome and the whipped cream, checked out the green straw, and then put the drink into the cup holder. Callie watched over her paper cup without saying a word, sipping the hot double tall nonfat vanilla latte. Owen waited until they were on 495 facing the city, moving so easily that he decided to go across town on 34th, risking traffic around Penn Station. Then he tasted the drink tentatively. More like dessert than morning coffee.

  Callie watched him taste it and knew right away that he didn’t know what to expect. When he put it back into the cup holder, she knew that he was missing his real coffee. She shouldn’t have listened, should have ordered the drip. Just then he made the decision to go with dessert and took a real draw on the straw.

  When they were inside the Lincoln Tunnel passing the Welcome to New Jersey sign, Callie perked up. Once they were beyond Newark and heading west past Orange, the city gave way to open farmland and getting away seemed real. Callie reached back and tugged gently on each boy’s knees, not enough to wake them up, just to encourage it. Casey might not even remember ever having left the city.

  At Delaware Water Gap, Owen pulled off Highway 80. Callie expected that he was getting gas, but then he passed the station and turned left, south onto a two-lane road. She looked straight at him and saw the dimple. Whenever he was fooling, his dimples showed up. He had something up his sleeve.

  They pulled into the parking lot at the Water Gap Diner and Owen announced, “Breakfast!” his voice booming. Liam was out from his seat ahead of Casey, who struggled in the race to unbuckle first only to get hung up in his triple harness. Liam’s booster seat had only the one belt.

  Inside the outer doors were quarter machines with clear plastic eggshells containing plastic spiders, miniature picture books, and a dozen other prizes, plus ten-cent machines offering peanuts and M&Ms and tiny pretzel bows. Casey stopped at each machine, looking up hoping, rising onto his tippy toes. Liam’s eyes moved straight to the taller fifty-cent machine, widening big as his hands gripped the control levers that allowed him to move the big claw side to side and down only a teasing two inches, still a foot above the plastic cars and stuffed animal toys that filled the glass enclosure. Casey jumped up and down to see what was going on and raised his arms, wanting to be lifted up. Callie opened the inner door where smells of hot pancakes and syrup wafted outward, making it easier to herd the boys inside.

  Liam ordered first, asking for sausages and hash browns that he wanted well-done, with onions. The waitress smiled at that. Callie mouthed “child’s portion,” which the waitress acknowledged with a subtle nod. Owen ordered three eggs easy, crispy bacon, and hash browns done the same way. Casey studied the menu, not quite able to read the choices but settling straight on the picture of the giant waffle covered with sliced bright red strawberries and whipped cream. Callie looked at the price, debated objecting, and chose not to, then closed her menu.

  “I’ll just have a small orange juice and share.” Casey gave her his “not mine” look and determined that he was going to eat everything up himself, no matter what. And he did. Owen laughed as Callie ate up all the toast on the table and teased Casey with sneak attacks from her fork.

  They picked up an extra bag of ice and two sixers at the little lake store before heading on to the cabin. Liam and Casey each picked his own large bag of teriyaki beef jerky, with Callie warning them that it had to last all weekend. Callie chose a liter of Diet Coke and hid a bottle of Bacardi behind her back until the boys weren’t looking.

  Mike and Shelley stood up from their dock when the tires crunched on the gravel. Owen emptied the Tahoe while the boys bombed into Mike, hooting all the way. Owen handed Mike a six-pack and shook his hand while the girls hugged and shouted, “Yay!” Both boys continued down to the dock before Callie could stop them.

  “Don’t you dare go near that water!” she called anyway.

  Owen checked his phone for bars. None. He saw that Callie had seen him do it and hastily put it back into his pocket.

  Two steps led up to the little cabin. Dark red siding, green metal roof, the wrap-around deck running along the side, leading to a wide, sprawling deck above the lake. Inside the screen door, the dark space contrasted with the bright day outside, visible through the plate-glass windows in the big room at the end of the hall. Immediately to the right was the one bathroom. Callie made a mental note to lay down the law: nothing except poop and toilet paper went into the toilet. No toys, no paper towels, nothing. The ancient septic system was finicky, to say the least.

  On the left was the “bunkhouse,” where the boys could choose between four double bunk beds so there would be no fighting over top or bottom. Next was the main bedroom, Mike and Shelley’s room. The kitchen was a clean, simple space with a stackable washer/dryer inside one closet and both pantry and crockery shelves inside the other closet. Ancient linoleum in elaborate patterns of dark reds, deep greens, and rich blues added to the charm, as did the rounded refrigerator from the fifties which still worked fine and opened with a horizontal steel handle, huge, that made a firm and satisfying deep click as it closed and locked. The sink was a giant, deep porcelain basin that had seen f
ive generations of fishermen cleaning trout and crappie in it.

  The big room walls were knotty pine, yellowed to a rich amber hue. The sloping ceiling was the same. A pull-out sofa alongside the stone fireplace was where she and Owen would be sleeping, with the view right onto the lake. Owen and Mike were down with the boys, the big boys already into beers at eleven in the morning, looking over Mike’s fishing boat while the little guys were seated on the edge of the dock dangling their bare feet into the water. Knowing Casey, he would want to be swimming in minutes and not want to get out until it was bedtime. Callie took it all in, smiled, and asked Shelley what she could do to help.

  Mike kept the boys out of the lake for a little while by taking them out in the boat to go fishing. Owen didn’t have a license. Mike told him not to worry about it, but Owen refused. He would be fine helping the boys and sipping his beer: no licenses needed for kids their age. Owen didn’t care if they gave him grief for being a Boy Scout. He was a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout, and he wasn’t going to fish without a license. Period.

  Out into the middle of the lake, Mike stopped the boat and opened his tackle box, keeping Casey’s hands out while he calmly instructed them about sharp hooks and barbs and lures: treble hooks and plastic grasshoppers, rubber night crawlers, a bright green frog.

  Mike had a spin-casting reel that Liam mastered within four casts. He searched through the expanding decks inside his tackle box like he was after buried treasure until he came up with a little jar filled with a scented goop that he let each of the boys smell. Casey pinched his nose. “The fish love this smell.”

  “And we’ll hook them!” Casey shouted.

  Mike answered in a whisper. “And we’ll hook ’em. But they have ears, too, remember that.”

  Ten minutes later, Casey brought a nice twelve-inch rainbow into the boat then cried as he watched his fish gasp for breath. “Put it back,” he insisted. “Hurry!”

  Owen lifted the fish back into the lake. In one quick motion, the fish snapped its body and dove fast beneath the green water.

  Dinner was sirloins, not trout, with hot dogs for the boys. Shelley and Callie made a big green salad, and Callie’s Diet Coke and Bacardi bottles were far from full. Another round of drinks with dinner outside on the deck, then more inside after the mosquitoes turned out in numbers. Mike wobbled as he carried the TV set into the bunkhouse. He and Owen had figured out how to get it working with the DVD player and put on How to Train Your Dragon. After a day of fishing and swimming in the sun, both boys were out, sound asleep during the theme song.

  Callie and Shelley were seated at the round table between the kitchen and the sitting area with the pull-out sofa. They had open a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle and were having trouble turning all the pieces onto the color side and couldn’t stop laughing at the idea that either one of them was in shape to put it all together. After they settled down, Mike decided to announce that there was something he and Shelley had to tell Owen and Callie.

  Shelley slammed her palm onto the tabletop, “No!”

  Mike clammed up instantly. Owen hadn’t had so much to drink that he failed to catch on that something was up. Callie just thought the whole thing was hysterical, began giggling, and quickly she was snorting with laughter that returned in spasms.

  “So, Big O,” Mike teased. “Let’s say I wanted to kill a billionaire.”

  Owen reddened with embarrassment. Did anybody not know Callie’s pet name for him?

  “Yeah, right,” Shelley interjected, her voice slurred. “You’re not killing anybody.”

  “No shop talk!” Callie yelled insistently.

  Mike went ahead anyway. “I’m not gonna shoot a billionaire, OK? Seriously. But it’s not like I see billionaires out running around every day, you know what I mean. If you were going to shoot a billionaire, where would you even find one?”

  “You find out where they live, where they go,” Owen offered.

  Callie thought about the question, drifting off into an alcoholic lull, where it repeated in her head looking for a place to latch on.

  “They all seem to have charities,” Owen explained. “Find the charity events. But you wouldn’t want to pull a gun at any charity event, not now. In about one second you’d have two, three, maybe six red laser dots zeroed in.”

  “Fuck NYPD. No shop talk,” Callie shouted. “We’re on vacation. Whoo whoo!”

  Owen looked at her half-empty glass and thought about taking it away. Drunk or not, it wasn’t right, what she said.

  After Mike and Shelley were done with the bathroom and had their light off in the middle bedroom, Owen opened the living room pull-out bed himself and put on the sheets while Callie watched from a chair. She decided to get herself naked because Owen was taking too long. Mike came into the kitchen to get a glass of water and stared at Callie’s naked rear end long enough for a good glance before rushing back into the bedroom without the water.

  Callie was on him before Owen had his pants fully off and then cursed loudly when her knees banged on the sofa bed’s crossbar. Owen stepped back, knowing that he wasn’t being fun. He wasn’t acting like he was on vacation the way Callie wanted him to loosen up. But what she said wasn’t right. Fuck the Department? NYPD put the bread on their table.

  “Put this on,” he told her, tossing her NY Giants jersey at her face. The shirt hung there, draped over her head.

  He wasn’t a partier. Never would be.

  While Owen got under the covers, Callie lay back on top of the bed with her eyes shut, breathing heavily. Five minutes later, she had the covers pulled back and had reached her hand into Owen’s underpants, pumping her fingertips and admonishing him to “have some fun.” Small clipped quarter-thoughts ran through his head, considering having it out with her about her remark and knowing that she had long forgotten saying it, wondering why he wasn’t looser, why he couldn’t get out on a dance floor or ever be the life of a party.

  She climbed on top and put him inside of her. Owen stopped thinking and let his body enjoy the warmth and pressure of her body rocking back and forth, her long hair draping across his face and then sweeping upward as she arched her back and crunched her pelvis, isolating her movement along a certain spot.

  After a few minutes, Callie spun herself to face away from him and reached back to place Owen’s big hands onto her butt cheeks. “Squeeze!”

  She was just finding her new rhythm when Casey’s voice sounded alongside the bed. Callie and Owen both stopped instantly. Casey was alongside the sofa bed with his eyes closed. His knees were climbing onto the bed, his hands grabbing to pull back the covers.

  “Mommy and Daddy are talking,” Callie told him calmly.

  Casey had found the covers and pulled at them. “I want to come in.”

  “Go back to bed, sweetheart. Back to bed and I’ll come in with warm chocolate milk for you.”

  “OK,” Casey muttered, still asleep. “Come now.”

  “You get into bed and I’ll be right there.”

  How could she do that, Owen wondered, drunken wild fucking and then sober, smooth mommy in a split second? He was prepared for disappointment, trying not to be upset, but then Callie’s groin tightened around him and she began holding him tightly within her and pulling upward before twisting her way down again. He was finished and she was off within a second more, headed into the kitchen stove.

  Owen covered himself with the top sheet. “He’ll wet the bed,” he cautioned.

  “Two sips and he’ll be back to sleep,” Callie countered.

  Owen turned over and fell asleep before the pot of water went onto the stove.

  * * * * *

  Sunday was lazy. The boys ate cereal for breakfast as the grownups slept until past ten. Owen was the first adult to awaken. He toasted himself a hot peanut butter sandwich, chasing it around the crusts to lick off th
e oozing peanut butter before it leaked out. Callie awakened pressing her palms against her temples. Without a word, she stood up and walked past the kitchen and into the bunkhouse, shut the door and crawled into Liam’s bed.

  Liam and Casey had him make another one for them, with mixed results. They had the lake to wash off in and all three of them were leaping off the dock into the cool water. Owen thought about asking Mike to take the boat out so he could check for messages on his phone, but let it go. Hard to do.

  Liam was starting to dive head first from the dock and loving it. Before they left the lakefront, he insisted on showing Owen for the third time.

  Owen scrubbed Casey down in the outside shower, wrestled him through shampoo, and did the same with Liam, although Liam insisted on staying in his swimsuit and watched in case any boats came past the cabin. They returned to the lake after lunch and spent the entire day in and out of the water.

  Spaghetti with homemade veal and pork meatballs, Shelley’s cabin specialty, were on for dinner. Casey insisted that his not be cut up. He was going to twirl it and eat the whole noodles off a fork, just like the grownups. Did pretty well, too, except that his bites were the size of a baseball. The grownups drank red wine with dinner. No more Bacardi. Afterward, everyone played Crazy Eights around the table until the boys were fading and Callie put them to bed with another DVD, Finding Nemo. Her glass was refilled when she came back to the table.

  Shelley gulped her glass and refilled halfway until the bottle was drained in the time it took Callie to cross the twenty-five feet from the bunkhouse to the table. Mike stared down into his lap, not knowing how to tell their news, while his wife could not wait a minute longer.