by John Oakes
"Tagg," Ricky explained simply.
"The buff guy with the teeth?" Jason's head and arms dropped in frustration. "What did he do this time?"
"Suggested something about ice flows and putting useless Eskimo people on them and pushing them out to sea," Cody said.
"Apart from the fact that it makes no goddam sense, why is he harassing you at your granddaddy's funeral?"
"He wasn't talking about Grampa, Jase. He wants to put me on an ice floe."
Jason jerked a thumb over one shoulder. "I can't for the life of me understand why you listen to that clown."
Cody's eyes were lost on the ground again. "It wouldn't be so bad if he were totally wrong. But he ain't totally wrong." Cody took a deep breath. "He ain't."
A befuddled quiet settled over them for a minute. Jason, as usual, was the first to break the silence. "Listen Cody, I'll admit I may have been a bit of a bully now and again in my younger years, but to still be after you at our age? What gives?"
"He's just jealous, always has been," TR offered.
"Then why does he get on you too, TR?" Jason asked. "You're a diesel mechanic who lives with his mother. He's got no reason to be jealous of you."
"I was Cody's only friend at rich kid school." By that, TR meant Patriot Academy, a ritzy private school in San Antonio for the children of Texas elites.
"So, it was guilt by association?" Jason asked.
"Sort of," Cody said. "I think he always wanted to be me." Cody held up a hand at Jason's look of disbelief. "I mean I think he wanted to be the richest kid in school, to replace me in some weird way. Maybe it all goes back to him being one of the poorer kids in the school. You gotta remember how shitty rich kids are. They're just as shitty as rich adults, except they got no filter. So, early days, he tried to be my friend. Tagg came to my birthday parties. Came to the house to play all he could. He started being kind of a mean friend around nine or ten, but still a friend."
"So, then he just went to hating you for no reason?"
"Well, he may have always been a bastard in the making, but TR coming to Patriot Academy might have been the last straw."
"How so?" Jason asked. TR looked a little puzzled too.
"I think when my dad enrolled TR at my school, Tagg took it as some personal slight. Like TR had been picked to be a Latour and not him."
"Boy was that fine education wasted on the two of you," Jason said. "How'd you end up there again, TR? I have a hell of a time trying to imagine you in a swanky private school. School at all for that matter."
"My daddy was Leroy's mechanic. But they hanged out all the time working on cars."
"Turned out he was Leroy's best friend," Cody added. "Leroy doesn't have many friends. So that was saying something, in hindsight."
"So when daddy died summer before seventh grade, Leroy wanted to watch out for me, and sending me to fancy school was his way. Weren't his fault it didn't take."
"And so this Tagg fella's still sucking up to Leroy?" Jason asked.
"Oh, it's beyond sucking up," Cody said. "He went to the same college as my dad, Cornell, same frat, same major. He's obsessed. But to my dad, I'm sure he just seems like the son he never had. So of course Tagg came back from school and signed on at Latour Mining and Oil. Been climbing that corporate ladder ever since."
"That is some creepy stuff. Does he have daddy issues too?"
"His dad's a dentist," TR said.
"An orthodontist," Cody corrected. "A successful one. Owns three offices. My parents sent me to him for braces actually. And funny enough, he's the nicest guy you ever met, loves his family tons. I always imagine Tagg hated that."
"So he grew up in a nice, well-off family, went to the best schools, got his dream job and still is that big of a douche?" Jason asked.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, man?" Ricky intoned.
"Don't ask me to explain it, Jason. I dunno." Cody shook his head. "He had a perfect life but just can't stand that he didn't have mine."
Cody looked over to where Tagg stood chatting with some woman at the bar. Tagg saw him looking and raised his glass to Cody with a mocking smile.
"You gotta understand Jase. All success is relative."
Chapter Six
Monica
Cody played video games all the next morning and into the afternoon. Losing himself in other worlds, he felt the weight of anger and frustration slough away, until he almost felt like his chilled out self again. He eventually grew restless and went out to get food. His appetite failed him, though, and he pulled into his driveway with a half-eaten sandwich sitting in the passenger seat.
Home for Cody was not the mansion nestled in the expansive Latour estate, but the pool house that sat behind it, off to one side of the property. He parked at the circular end of the white gravel driveway that snaked around the main house. Cody found Monica sunning herself on the patio between the pool house and the blue chlorinated water, glittering in the fading sunlight. She had her hair up in a loose bun and wasn't wearing sunglasses, probably for fear of tan lines. She was sipping something pink through a curvy straw out of a tall glass. "Well, hey there stranger. Do you make a habit of sneaking up on half-naked women?"
He wanted to shoo her away with his sandwich like she was a raccoon.
"Good afternoon, Monica. What can I help you with?"
"The words are polite, but the face says something different. Is something bothering my little sweet pea? Come tell your old Maw Maw all about it. Lay your weary head upon my bosom, so I may comfort you."
Most women would hate to refer to themselves as a grandmother, but to Monica, still young and beautiful, it was all a joke. Just another game. She put down her glass and folded her hands just beneath her breasts, pressing them up ever so slightly. Her swimsuit was skimpily cut, plainly displaying evidence of thrice-weekly sessions with a personal trainer, that and the careful eating of a woman who banked on her looks for her survival.
Would she let herself go now since Grampa left her with plenty of scratch? It seemed like a waste of a beautiful figure, but Monica retiring from the seduction game might be a greater service to humanity.
"I'm fine, Monica. Why are you here?"
"Why don't you ever turn on your grandfather's charm? He would have responded with some witty quip that put me in my place. It's so boring with you sometimes, like hitting a tennis ball at a brick wall."
"I'm truly sorry, Monica. But with my Grampa gone, I don't see that I'll have much opportunity to disappoint you anymore."
"Now that's better," she purred like some Southern diva in a soap opera. "But how could I ever leave you, my little boo? Bruce's death doesn't make you any less my grandson." She plucked a maraschino cherry from the top of her drink and pursed her painted lips around it, sucking off the moisture. Then she parted her lips. Her tongue came to greet the cherry and guide it into her mouth. Her eyes met his as she pulled it from the stem.
The scene would have turned Mother Theresa on a little, and Cody was no saint. But his stirring only reminded him of how much he disliked being made sport of. He could barely read women's signals when they did not overtly seem to be trying to manipulate him. So with Monica, it was all completely Greek. Maybe that confusion was exactly what she wanted. The fact that she could get it, and so easily, was what pissed him off the most.
Monica's straw slurped. She shook the ice in her glass, indicating that she was in need of refreshment.
"I doubt I have anything so fruity pink in the pool house. TR cleaned me out. But I could call up to the main house and have something brought down."
"Oh don't trouble yourself. Just go see whatever you can rustle up in this hovel of yours."
Hovel? That was a big word for a girl that grew up in a trailer park in Tulsa.
Cody took her glass and walked inside his 1500 square foot hovel, across the Travertine marble in the living room and up the two short steps into his small but state-of-the-art kitchen. Cody thought about putting some sort of laxa
tive in her drink. The thought of Monica shitting herself violently on the patio made him laugh out loud. The thought cheered him enough to charitably dispense with the idea. Cody looked around his cupboards for something Monica might like. But nope, no Amaretto, no fruity vodkas, no watermelon schnapps. It was going to have to be bourbon.
Cody had questioned Grampa, kindly but firmly, why after so many years of bachelorhood, he'd decided to get married. Grampa just said that he wanted to give it one last go. Three times was the charm, right? Cody was not convinced. Grampa had always warned Cody about the gold-diggers. No matter how beautiful or charming they were, they would only bring him pain. But Monica seemed to be the poster child for mining rich old men. She had already been married to an investment banker in her early twenties, and had met Grampa in a bikini straddling a Harley because she'd already blown through her first husband's money. It went against everything Grampa said he believed.
Cody found some limes rolling around the back of his fridge. He grabbed one and closed the door. He turned back to his counter and pulled out a cutting board and a sharp knife. He sliced the limes up, threw them in a fresh glass with a little ice and muddled them with a short wooden bar tool. Then he sprinkled in a little sugar, poured a good dram of Bourbon, added more ice, and then filled the glass the rest of the way with soda water. He took the plastic bendy straw out of her glass and used it to stir the contents. He went to take it to her, but then remembered his own anesthesia. He'd prefer the dentist to a visit with Monica.
Cody pulled out another tall glass and filled it with ice and another healthy dose of whiskey. He capped the bottle, and a thought shook loose inside of him. He could understand why his grampa didn't tell anyone else he was sick, if he had known. But Cody still could not understand why Grampa hadn't told him. Though it pained him to ask, Monica might have answers.
"All I had was bourbon. But I think you'll like it."
Monica accepted the drink with a smile. Cody stepped past her to sit at the edge of the pool. It was quite hot for the end of October, but that was Texas for you. He kicked off his sandals and dangled both legs in the water, looking away from Monica across the pool and the hundred yards of immaculate lawn and shrubbery leading up to the house.
"Mmm. That is good. You do know your way around a drink. Just like Bruce."
Cody took his left leg out of the pool and set a dripping foot on the deck. He reached for his own drink and let it begin the hard work of numbing him for what was to come.
"I'm glad you like it," he said between sips.
"What do you call it?"
"A bourbon rickey."
Monica made a face. "Like after that weird, greasy, little friend of yours? Trucker hat? Cop mustache? Smokes like a chimney?"
"No," Cody said making an effort to hide his defensive anger. People were always writing Ricky off, either for his look or his profession. If you pinned him down, Ricky would call himself an experimental pharmacist. To everyone else he was just a bum, a burnout or a drug dealer. But apart from Cody's deceased mother, Ricky was the wisest and kindest person Cody'd ever met.
"That's just what it's called. You can make it with rum, vodka, whatever. Just means mixing liquor with soda, sugar and some sorta citrus."
"Well, that's good." Monica went to take another sip, but tipped her glass too much when trying to reach her lips to the straw. Some of the drink splashed on her pleasantly-tanned bosom, rolled past the tiny front strap of her bikini top, and down her toned stomach.
"Oh my! How clumsy of me," she purred in that affected Southern Belle shtick of hers.
She slowly and deliberately moved her fingers to swirl the spill around her torso, reaching as low as the top of her swimsuit bottom a few times. She ran a finger lazily up to her breasts where she wiped away, or rather smeared, the moisture around.
"Sure I can't get you a napkin, or a small towel, perhaps?"
Monica just smiled her perfect white smile. "I'm so hot. It's nice to cool down a bit." She rested her head back on the deck chair and closed her eyes.
"Was there any particular reason for this visit?" Cody asked after a moment.
"Why? Can't I simply pop in to see my one and only grandson?" Even Monica saw that joke was wearing a little thin. She picked her head up, smiled and took another drink. "Perhaps I just need comfort in this time of grief."
"You don't strike me as a woman who lacks for comfort."
"You wound me."
"Fine, you came for comfort." Cody leaned forward and reached out with a long arm. He patted her hand twice. "So sorry for your loss, Monica."
"You know, Mr. Cody. You act as if I've ever done anything to hurt you."
"You only married my Grampa for his money."
There. It was out. He'd never just said it before. He felt his bluntness like a punch in his own gut.
"Oh is that all?" Monica waved a gently dismissing hand. "And why," she leaned her head toward Cody, "why, pray tell, did your grandfather marry me?"
Cody felt himself instantly jump to react or defend, yet had no words in answer.
Monica just nodded her head. "We both know it wasn't for my sparkling intellect or my philanthropic and giving heart."
Cody saw her point. He took a long drink.
"I do not recall drugging Bruce or hypnotizing him, or putting any sort of voodoo curse on him."
Cody actually nodded.
"Nor was I the first beautiful woman to ever hang on Bruce's arm." She drank again. "So Mr. Cody. What on earth do you have to judge me for?"
"I...I'm not judging you."
He sure as hell was.
"But you didn't love my grampa. And you didn't treat him well. You didn't even live with him in the end."
Monica tilted her head toward him. What was that look? Pity? Superior wisdom?
She took a deep breath and let it out.
"Now that is a lot to respond to. If you care to rephrase any of those accusations as questions, I might feel compelled to respond."
Shit, Monica was good at this talking stuff. It was like being in the ring with Tyson.
They both drank. Cody realized he was nearing the bottom of his glass already.
"You didn't love my grampa...did you?"
"I did, Cody. Perhaps not in a way you would understand as a man. But I loved him. I even admired the bastard after a fashion. Respected him. He was spontaneous and uncontrollable, like a summer storm. That has a way of getting under a woman's skin. But he wasn't perfect. He wasn't a good husband. For a time I thought we might actually be like...like a real married couple. But my notions were put to rest soon after we were wed. He could be so distant, and..."
Monica stopped speaking and looked off at the back of the main house.
"Now. You've asked a personal question. So let me ask one of my own."
Cody nodded reluctantly.
"What did Bruce leave you in his will?"
The forwardness of the question caught Cody off guard. Monica usually came at you sideways and diagonal if she wanted something. Was this simply the result of an air of openness in their conversation? Something he'd never once experienced with Monica in the three years he'd known her? Unsure, Cody's instincts firmly checked him from answering in complete honesty.
"He gave me the ranch, all the equipment there. All his vehicles, tools, guns, stuff like that. There is some long list the lawyer has."
"Ha. That lawyer. A damn bra-burning teenager! Last person I'd have thought Bruce would entrust his dealings to," she said with honest curiosity.
"Wasn't just me, then. At least you didn't say it to her face."
Monica laughed and choked on the dregs of her drink. She held a hand to her mouth as she finished swallowing.
"You do have such a way with words," she chuckled.
She drew on her straw again. Cody heard a slurping sound followed by a tinkling of ice.
Cody made two more drinks, same as before, tossing a couple lime slices in his this time. He changed into his swim
trunks, returned to perch at the edge of the pool and then rolled into it headfirst. He came up and wiped the water from his face, then rested his elbows on the deck and took a sip of his drink.
Sweet, sweet sustenance.
Monica began again where she'd left off.
"You'd think if Bruce was gonna go for a lady lawyer, he'd get some grizzled old lesbian."
Cody had to agree. "Someone people would fear. Like a watch dog."
"Unless this miniature poodle has more bite than we know." Monica's eyes were narrow and distant.
"So the ranch...Is that all?" she ventured.
She seemed tentative, like she knew she was on unsure ground. He figured he could get away with a straight lie, even if just for now.
"That's about the size of it," Cody said with a shrug.
"I guess I am a little shocked at that is all," Monica said. "You, his only grandson, out of all his wealth, he leaves you only that dusty old ranch? And some beat up trucks?" Monica gave a wry smile. "That doesn't seem at all odd to you?"
"Grampa liked to live simple. He let my dad run the company these last twenty years or more. Didn't give two shits about it for a long time."
Monica just smiled again, like TR looking through a bakery case window.
"Cody. Dear Cody. I may not exactly look like a mathematician, but don't treat me like an idiot either. It's bad manners." Monica sat up in the chaise and turned towards Cody, putting her high heels on the patio and her arms on her knees. "Your grandfather is famous amongst oil men for reopening dried up wells or some such thing. I don't know much about those years, but I do know that mining companies are still today using the drills he invented, all over the world. And as you said, he lived simply. Sure, maybe some of his assets still belong to the company, but the greatest portion of his wealth..." She made a flowering motion with her elegant hands, and her eyebrows shot up to ask, where did it all go?
Monica had clearly received somewhat less than she expected in the will. Something had gone to Irene and Leroy, but probably rather small considering. His Dad and Grampa had always been at odds, save for a few good years when his mother had been able to broker a cordial peace.