It was the most confused I’d ever seen Jessa’s face. Her lips drew into a tight line and her perfectly shaped eyebrows almost touched with a firm wrinkle between them.
The little do-gooder in the back of my head leapt up and screamed I needed to tell her, I needed someone to talk to. People could actually explode by keeping stuff like this inside. Spontaneous combustion is real.
The buzz of the lawnmower stopped, creating a sudden chilly silence in the room between us. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud.
“Did you get hurt?”
I stood. I needed to be on my feet for this, for what I felt brewing in the air around us. “It was nothing.”
“A nothing like the nothing in the bar?”
“No. We got mugged.”
“We?” her voice was high and tight as she clamped down harder on the white cotton.
“I had a date last night.” I thought I’d had a date last night. Jury was still out on that one.
“With who?” Jessa asked. “Was it Brian? Did he ask you out?”
My answer was meant to come out casual. It was meant to be just a small little answer that might prompt her to leave but it came out harsh. “No one you know.”
“Where was the heads up?” She dropped one of the corners of her shirt and her hand went to her hip. “Come on. It’s the first date I’ve heard of since you moved here,” Jessa said with a faint smile.
“Wasn’t that big of a deal.” Another lie. I was two for two now.
“We could have gone shopping.”
I frowned. “I don’t need you to pick out my clothes.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jessa tried to backpedal. “I just meant that we could have done your hair, or something.”
And there she was, toting the Let’s change Violet banner again. This is wasn’t what I wanted to hear right now. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like there was anything that needed changing. And I thought I looked good last night, pre-panther, that is.
My face was beginning to ache with the frown now etched upon it. “I managed.”
Jessa crossed her arms, keeping the white shirt clutched in her fist. “Why didn’t you tell me, Violet?” There was a hard edge to her voice, a seriousness in her looks I had never seen in Jessa.
“You didn’t ask.” That bit of truth flew in from left field. It actually felt kind of good to say, like running endorphins but better. Felt much better than lying. So I continued. “Come to think of it, lately it’s been all about Jessa.”
“So tell me now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking.”
“Doesn’t work like that Jessa. Can’t just pick and choose the scandalous parts of my life to suddenly be interested in.” I felt better, getting some things off my chest, and the frown had slowly melted away.
Her jaw was clenched tight and I could have sworn her skin glowed. “But nothing happens to you. You locked yourself up in your tower, barely interacting with the world. I’m surprised you have anything to write about at all for your . . . movies.”
“Missing an adjective there, Jess?” I snapped with a raised eyebrow. I didn’t know where she was trying to go with this little visit. Except to insult me, and frankly, only I got to do that.
Jessa struggled for words. The word was there; she just didn’t want to release it.
“Stupid? Maybe. Lame,” I offered.
“Well, yeah.”
My blood began to boil. “They are not stupid movies,” I growled.
“White Snake Ridge, Shadow Stalker, oh and my personal favorite Goblin Rock. Yeah, not exactly winning Oscars there, Vi.”
I felt the skin prickle between my shoulders, couldn’t help my head from sinking down as my weight shifted uneasily between both feet. “We all can’t be rich, princess. Some of us have to work. So don’t you judge what I do. Mommy didn’t buy me a penthouse downtown.”
“I work hard too,” she demanded, pointing her tiny finger into her no doubt designer blouse, perfectly tailored to fit her small frame.
“Lunching your way across the Metroplex, one wealthy Y-chromosome at a time.’
Jessa gasped and then glared. Her arms went straight down at her side and her little hands were clenched into tight little fists.
The hanger on the decorative mirror next to us snapped. The mirror slid down the wall and crashed onto the table below it. Half my turtle collection was pulverized and the other half launched towards us like shelled artillery.
My hand flew to my face to block the glass. Little cuts grazed my forearms and neck. After the shards fell around us, my eyes snapped from the decapitated tortoise heads, beady eyes staring up at me, at Jessa. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t even flinched as the glass flew around the two of us.
“I came here to invite you to a party, to get you out of whatever’s been up with you lately. But you obviously don’t need me with your perfect little life here,” she huffed as she threw the white shirt at me and turned towards the door. “Maybe my family was right about you.”
“That’s right, just leave. You’ll never have to lower yourself to middle class again.”
“Thank God.”
When Jessa slammed the front door, the mirror above the foyer table flew off the wall and shattered into a million pieces. Great, another mess.
I stood there fuming. Jessa better inherit that fourteen years of bad luck.
When Chaz came in the front door, I hadn’t moved. Not really. I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the silver rain of glass, headless turtles lined up in front of me. And the Godiva espresso beans were half gone.
“Violet, what the hell happened?” he asked as he carefully stepped around the first disaster area with long stride and made his way over to me.
I offered up the bag of chocolate. “Want one?”
“No. Are you okay?”
I gulped. “Jessa’s never going to speak to me again.”
My face heated and the anger, fear, and newly forming anguish all came rushing back. Groaning, I put my head in my empty hand, not relinquishing the bag of chocolate.
“Get up, Violet.”
I offered a hand but didn’t look up at him. I’d been crying and I was sure my eyes were a lovely shade of salmon.
With one strong pull, he lifted me up off the floor. My head fell forward against his shoulder. His heartbeat calmed my racing thoughts. He rubbed my back as I sucked in a stuttered breath of his sweaty, earthy smell.
“It’s not the end of the world,” he whispered.
“You got a heads up on that, do ya?”
He chuckled and pushed me away from him. He wiped the few tears that had fallen already. “What happened?”
“She asked me about your bloody shirt. And I called her selfish and she stormed out.”
Chaz looked as confused as I was. We just stayed there for a few moments, silent and awkward, not quite knowing what to say next. Not that I expected much verbal consolation from Chaz.
I sniffed and wiped my eyes.
“I’d offer coffee but after those,” he said, his eyes glancing down at the bag in my hand. “You’re not going to sleep for a week. So how about some lunch?”
He took a thirty-five minute shower in my shower. I think it was a record, but I did have the best shower head in the world. I sat in the kitchen waiting for the dryer to finish. It still had twenty minutes. I’d actually done his laundry. Willingly. I’d offered somewhere in the verbal confession in the kitchen after he’d fixed ham and cheese sandwiches for the both of us. He’d listened like a true professional and I was reminded that he was the professional at this; chasing and violence was a normal workday for him.
Something was brewing in the ether, dancing along my skin as my leg bounced with anxiety. Yet, I felt numb, battered senseless. Like none of it had really settled in yet. These were things that happened to people in my head not to me, not to little Violet Jordan who really had locked herself in a tower.
Chaz tr
omped down the stairs and finally ended up in the kitchen, dragging me painfully from my pity party. “What’s going on up there?” he asked as he flopped in the chair across from me.
“What?”
“You’re bouncing like a rubber ball,” he said pointing to my leg.
“Jessa, on top of this thing last night,” I finally said.
“Took you long enough,” he grumbled.
“Well forgive me,” I snapped. “Been a while since I’ve had to deal with traumatic aftermaths.”
I took in a deep breath. Now was not the time to be snippy or mad, or weak. Look where it had just gotten me, what it might have just cost me. I exhaled slowly and he looked up at me. I needed someone in my corner right now.
He moved around the place like he owned it, as he opening cabinets and drawers to find the making for a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. He looked good in my kitchen as he moved around, already knowing where everything was from his Julia Child routine this morning. He sat back down across from me and began to shove huge spoonfuls into his mouth.
“Do you always get hungry when you’re talking about mortal danger?”
“No, I get hungry after I’m used for slave labor.”
I tried to fight a smile. “You seriously could have said no.”
He just shrugged. “I wanted to be here.”
I watched him eat for a moment. Did he have any idea what he was saying in between the shovels of sugar? “So what do we do?”
He shrugged as he rose to rinse out the bowl and put it in the sink.
I had nothing. I looked at the bare wall where my mirror had been and then out at the clear sky of the November day. The clouds moved carelessly across the sky, free, and, at least to my knowledge, without the threat of mortal danger looming over them.
“Come on, I’ve got an idea.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Tell me why we are here again?” I whispered as I felt the stare from the line of men behind the glass gun counter. I gulped; all of them were openly carrying guns. Welcome to Texas.
I held my coffee tightly and looked around. The writer in me thought this was great material: the guns, the accents, all wonderful little accoutrements for a future scripts. The animal in me didn’t like being around so much ammunition. And really didn’t like the mounted animals head above the row of shotguns on the far wall.
I also had the creepy feeling I was the only female who had visited these premise in a very long time. There was a hungry look to the men’s eyes as they watched me cross the room. I stayed just behind Chaz’s shoulder as we walked through the aisles of ammunition and practice targets. There was a distinctly grimy feel to the beige-stained colored walls and the smell of spent gunpowder was everywhere.
“I come here when I’m having a rough day,” Chaz said simply as he slapped his gun range pass down on the counter next to the register. “And you need to learn to protect yourself.”
The white-haired man in a flannel shirt with a rocket launcher strapped to his thigh took it and began hitting the keys on an antique cash machine, running the station fees, looking up intermittently at Chaz and then at me.
“I thought the dojo was enough,” I whispered to him.
“Last night, it was. But you have to be prepared for every possible scenario.”
I glanced at him. I suppose thanks to his fancy shotgun, I wasn’t dinner. “Fine.”
“I need your driver’s license.”
I dug through my huge purse groping for my wallet. Found a book, a notepad, my cell phone. Finally, I found it and pulled it out for him.
With a slightly bemused look, he took the license and handed it to the man. As he was signing the receipt, I took a moment to peruse the merchandise.
The guns were intense. Different brands, different sizes. I knew a little from the research I had to do. Frankly, I was more a proponent of the Louisville slugger kind of self-defense than a Colt 45.
“Can I show you somethin’, miss?” the salesmen asked.
“Can I see this one?” I pointed to a shiny silver revolver. Very classic, very old time detective.
The man smiled and pulled his keys out from a pocket on his holster and unlocked the cabinet.
He opened the chamber before he handed it to me.
“It’s heavier than I thought.”
My finger curled around the pearl handle and I spun the chamber. Something about the solidity of the silver in my hand felt good.
“Your girl’s got a good eye,” the man said.
Chaz pulled up alongside me. “Yeah, she’s a quick learner.”
I laughed at the comment and flipped the chamber into the gun. Even after I handed the gun back to the man, I felt the residual weight of it in my hand.
The men began to discuss calibers and ammunition and my attention drifted over the man’s shoulder to see their “Perfect Score” board, as announced by the black Sharpie letters scrawled on a white piece of spiral-bound paper. It was blue poster with Polaroids stapled to it. More proof there was not a female touch around this place. The pictures displayed men proudly holding up their targets. My eyes glanced from face to face but one jumped out of the flannelled crowd.
It was a young Chaz with a taller man’s arm slung across his shoulders. The man had sandy brown hair and golden green eyes, just like Chaz. Both were smiling, dressed almost identical, both holding up bull’s-eyes.
I leaned across the glass counter as far as I could to get a better look at his father. The scribble in the white space of the photo was dated March 1995.
Chaz leaned over to see what I was looking at.
I straightened up quickly, coming practically nose to nose with him. “You and your dad used to come here.”
Chaz’s eyes dropped when he saw the picture. He took a small step away. “Yeah.”
“So you’re really good at this?”
“Kinda,” Chaz mumbled, as he put his credit card back in his wallet and the wallet in the pocket.
The man behind the counter hacked out a laugh as he slid two boxes across the counter. “Don’t be shy, Charles. This ’en won the state sharpshooter championship at fourteen.”
I looked back at him. He looked young as he fiddled with the zipper on his tote.
“His dad was a helluva shot too,” the man continued. “God rest ’im.”
“Thanks for the ammo, Buck,” he said, his eyes locked on the two boxes.
The man nodded and walked over to another customer.
Chaz stepped around me and gestured to the back of the shop towards the inside ranges. As we cleared the earshot of the other men, he stopped and turned towards me. He couldn’t look at me as he spoke. “Dad wanted to make sure I was good; that I could protect those who needed protecting. We came out here a couple times a month to practice.”
Brushing past me, he headed for the back of the building. I took one last look at the board and slowly headed towards the brown signs that read “Lanes 1–7.”
Chaz hoisted the olive drab duffle from the back of his car onto the ledge behind the shooting alley. I just watched him. I’d never seen him this focused. As he began to set the guns and boxes of bullets on the wooden ledge, he didn’t have the furrow he usually had.
Three different handguns and a shotgun. I was pretty sure I had seen a “no shotgun” sign in the front room. But this was Chaz, he probably got special privileges.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of headphones. They were huge and orange.
“Got an eight track to go with those?”
He handed them over. “They’re monkey ears. They’ll block the noise.”
“Monkey ears?” I looked at the awkward, heavy things. My pride prevented me from putting them on. I wasn’t much for the Princess Leia look, but hey, maybe he was.
“Just put them on,” he griped with a small smile curling at the corner of this mouth as he readied a pistol.
I put my coffee down on the ledge and pried the headphones open and put them around my neck. Th
ey weighed heavy on my clavicle. “There. On.”
Chaz shook his head. Picking up the nearest gun and clip, he strode to the lane, jammed the loaded magazine into the gun and fired off four shots.
The boom of the rounds not only startled me but the smell of gunpowder assaulted my nose as the crack ripped through my eardrums.
“Crap,” I yelled, covering my ears.
“I warned you.” Chaz said innocently as he left the gun on the ledge of the lane and walked back to where I was still holding my ringing ears.
“Super sensitive hearing, you jerk!” I dropped my hands from my ears and punched him in the arm.
He shrugged as he lined up the weapons for the day’s lesson.
The headset was heavy and it took a while for me to get them on comfortably. But with it came a newfound respect for Carrie Fisher and a little bone to pick with him later, maybe when there wasn’t live ammunition around.
He motioned for me to join him at the lane. Through the headset, it sounded like he was yelling at me underwater, but I got the gist of his speech.
“Here’s the trigger, the slide, the clip releases and the shell will fly out here,” he pointed in quick succession. “There’s two triggers so you’ll need to pull them both back evenly.”
He put the warm gun in my inexperienced hand.
“That’s it?”
He nodded and backed away.
“So I point and shoot?”
He nodded again. “That way,” he pointed down the range.
I turned towards the paper silhouette about ten feet away. He really didn’t expect much.
“Are you going to hate me if I’m some sort of prodigy?” I called back over my shoulder
“I’d probably marry you.”
My cheeks flushed and my hands went slick with sweat. He just had to say that now.
I took in a deep breath. I had seen guns fired tens of thousands of times on TV. It couldn’t be that hard. Of course, all the actors on TV were shooting blanks and hadn’t just been proposed to by a supermodel.
Okay. Hold my arms straight out before me. Line up the sights, I thought. Relax. Exhale to focus; this was beginning to sound like shifting.
Diaries of an Urban Panther Page 16