Nine, the Tale of Kevin Clearwater

by T. M. Frazier

  I smile. “Okay, deal. You start.”

  “Why do you think I’m your brother?” He asks.

  I take out my wallet and hand him the folded picture I’d been carrying in my wallet for over two years. “A year ago, my social worker gave me this and told me about you. I came to find you, but you were dead.”

  He nods and inspects the picture. “Your turn.”

  “Why did everyone think you were dead?” I ask.

  Preppy takes a deep breath and fires his answer off in one breath. “I took a bullet and then got kidnapped from the hospital. The person who kidnapped me made sure that everyone thought I was dead. Was actually trapped in an underground cavern being tortured by a psychopath biker. He had some mixed-up notion about torturing me being some kind of revenge for his son hating him, or wanting to be biker royalty like his old man or some shit. Anywhose it, he was killed by what would be his now daughter in law. Many moons later, they found me, and here we are, hot-tubbing it in a stranger’s back yard with my wife and a kid who claims to be my brother.”

  “Holy shit,” I say.

  “Holy shit, indeed,” Preppy agrees.

  I stand and reach into the cooler. I grab two beers and toss one to Preppy. My brother.

  “I…I just can’t fucking believe that you’re alive. And that you’re here.” I can see the skepticism in my brother’s eyes, and I don’t even fucking care. Of course, he’s skeptical. He’s been through a ton of shit. I would be if I were him. But now that he’s alive, we’ve got time for him to trust me. And even though I just met him, I trust the motherfucker.

  Shit, I trusted him before I ever met him.

  “You and me both, kid.” Preppy opens his beer bottle using the edge of the table and takes a sip. “Speaking of people who are alive and shouldn’t be, any clue where dear old mama is? Crack den? Whorehouse? On tour with the Backstreet Boys?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t fucking care.”

  Preppy clinks his bottle to mine. “I’ll cheers to that, brother.”

  Preppy stands. “I’m gonna take my wife home and service her,” he says. “Shall we continue this another time?”

  “Yeah, man. I’d like that. Let me get your number,” I say pulling out my phone.

  Before the screen is even up, Preppy is spewing his number. Five. Five. Five. Seven. Three. Nine. Seven. Seven. Three. Seven.

  “Wait, hold on. I didn’t get it,” I say, finally pulling up the screen. “You said Five. Five. Five. Seven. Three. Nine. Seven. Seven. Three. Seven. Right?” I enter in the numbers in, and I realize something about the them or rather, what they spell. I look up to Preppy. “Wait, your number is 555-SEX-PREP?”

  Preppy’s jaw drops. “No fucking way! You got that? No one EVER gets that, and it’s totally no fun when I have to point it out to people.” He opens the sliding glass door.

  “Now, that’s a number I can remember.”

  “They always do.” He winks. “They always motherfucking do.”

  Chapter Four

  LENNY

  THREE YEARS LATER…

  Jared never tells me I drink too much even though it’s the truth.

  There’s never a disapproving glance at my seven-a.m. screwdriver (sans orange juice). He doesn’t say no when I ask him to stop and pick up yet another bottle of vodka from the liquor store, and he’s the first one to refill my drink at a party.

  I’m drowning. Not in vodka, but in a vast ocean of indifference.

  Jared doesn’t say anything about your drinking because he doesn’t care.

  My anxiety has a voice of its own, and it’s almost as much of an asshole as I am these days. The problem with having the voice of said anxiety chirping in your brain twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week is that it’s tough to differentiate between a real problem and one of my mind’s own making.

  Is Jared really indifferent, or am I just creating this issue out of nothing? I mean, the man gives me what I ask for and doesn’t give me shit about it.

  Well, not when it comes to drinking. My anxiety disorder is another animal entirely. He gives me plenty of shit about that.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t talk to someone about all this,” Jared huffs with frustration as he steps out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, hands on his hips. Steam billows behind him through the open door. He motions with a wave of his hand to me and my current situation. I make a mental note that he doesn’t mention that I should talk to him about this, but someone else. But why would he? I’ve tried to explain anxiety to him before, and he only gets angry and frustrated because he doesn’t understand.

  I don’t blame him. Some days, I don’t understand myself.

  Maybe, he doesn’t give me crap about my drinking because it’s the lesser of two evils.

  Before I answer Jared, I dig in. Literally. I push my nails into my palms and reopen the crescent-shaped scabs and scars until I bleed. It’s a little Morticia Adams, but I’ve established that coping isn’t my strong suit.

  “What shit?” I groan as if I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  The current shit is that I’m lying in our bed, cocooned between three thick comforters at eight o’clock in the morning when it’s already eighty degrees outside. Jared knows I haven’t just woken up; there’s an empty glass with ice still intact on my nightstand with barely a sweat around it.

  “Lenny, you know what I’m saying. You need to see a professional about this crazy stuff. Or get on some meds.”

  He’s not saying that because he cares. He’s saying it because your antics annoy him.

  And when it comes to therapy? Been there. Done that. If they sold t-shirts at Dr. Farley’s office, there’s no doubt that I’d own one that would read “I WENT TO THERAPY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.” Oh yeah, and a shit-ton of bills.

  But I don’t say any of that because Jared doesn’t understand.

  He doesn’t try to.

  “You know I can’t. My insurance was through work, so it got canceled when the company folded. And you know that the meds zombie me out, and I don’t want to live my life that way.”

  “And what you’re doing right now is somehow better?”

  “Yes, and it’s temporary. I’ll be up and about soon. I just need a minute.”

  “What you need is new insurance and new meds,” he says, stepping out from his closet, wearing navy blue slacks and a white dress shirt. He straightens his tie and plops down in one of the sitting area chairs to tie on his shiny brown shoes.

  “I can’t afford new insurance,” I argue. I’ve spent every last dollar I had trying to bring back to life a company that couldn’t be saved. As of one week ago, Leary Real Estate was no more.

  “It can’t be that much,” he says.

  “I didn’t think so either, but it’s a lot. It’s even more when you don’t have any money coming in,” I answer, rolling myself tighter in the blankets. I have savings, but only enough to last me for about a year more, although I hope to find another job before then. Twelve hundred dollars a month for health insurance isn’t exactly in my budget. “Apparently, being a woman of breeding age makes the powers that be at the insurance company think that you’re going to shoot expensive to birth babies out of your vagina like a t-shirt gun during halftime at a basketball game.”

  He doesn’t laugh at my joke, but he does cringe at the mention of babies, which is no surprise. He’s not a fan of them, never has been. He stands and grabs his jacket off the back of the chair, draping it over his arm. He heads to the door then pauses. “That’s what I don’t get, Lenny. If you are so…crazy, then how can you still make jokes and be funny?”

  I cringe at his use of the word crazy. “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity,” I mutter to myself. It’s one of my favorite EAP quotes.

  “What was that?” Jared asks.

  “I was just saying that I’m not crazy. And apparently, I’m not funny either, because you didn’t even laugh. Besides, I’m not dead. I’m jus
t not functioning at a hundred percent right now. Go to work. I’ll be fine by the time you get home. Better than fine. I promise.”

  He glances to the comforters, which are now halfway up my cheeks as if to argue his point.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but what I have going on here isn’t crazy,” I explain. “This is called coping. I read something about gravity blankets, but they cost a ton, so this is plan B. Plus, anxiety doesn’t strip me of all my funny, it just makes me feel all the things, and this cocoon is supposed to keep all the things at bay. It’s a barrier. A warm comfy wall of fluff.”

  Jared sighs and shifts his jacket from one arm to the other. “Only you can crack jokes while having a meltdown.”

  “I can be more and do more than one thing at a time.” I lower my voice and mutter, “Don’t put Baby in a corner.”

  Jared rolls his eyes. “You just need help.”

  And you need a sense of humor.

  I roll over to face him once more. “Fine, if you think I need to go back to therapy, then put me on your company policy, and I promise I’ll go see another headshrinker.”

  “We’ve talked about it. You know I can’t do that.” Jared looks down to his crocodile or alligator or pterodactyl skin shoes.

  I push part of the blanket down that’s covering my lips. “You own the company, Jared. You can do whatever you want. In fact, you’re the one who tells me that all the time.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Lenny.” He says as if his hands are tied on the matter.

  Actually, it does work that way, Jared.

  Jared seems to forget that before my family’s real estate company came crashing to the ground, and I became painfully unemployed, that I was the CEO and in charge of over a hundred employees. I’m familiar with how health insurance works. I’m the one who decided on our company’s policy but only after interviewing and grilling dozens of agents in various companies. But my relationship with Jared has always been a separation of church and state. No business with personal lives. And I get it.

  Sometimes.

  “When I can afford it, or when I get a new job, I’ll get new insurance,” I offer, “I promise.”

  Or he can offer to pay for your insurance, or therapy, since he owns an investment firm, and makes millions of dollars a year. Meanwhile, you’re broke, slightly intoxicated, and wrapped up in three hundred fucking blankets, trying to cope with crippling anxiety while cracking jokes to lighten the mood all to make HIM feel better about your problems.

  Not that I’d accept his help. I’m too independent for that. Half of the reason I can’t afford insurance is that Jared insisted on this mansion we live in, and I insist on paying half of all the bills.

  But an offer would be nice.

  “Good,” he says with a curt nod. “I gotta go. I’ve got a meeting.” There is no emotion in his voice — no kiss good-bye. “I’ll be back around six, and then I’ll spend the rest of the week up in Orlando. I’m meeting with the German investors Sheff has on the line.”

  “Okay, good luck,” I say, trying to sound cheery. Jared is away more than he is home these days. With the market the way it is, he needs every investor he can get to make his projects come to fruition, and he’s been working around the clock to make that happen. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

  “I hope you don’t mean that,” he calls over his shoulder. It’s not Jared’s fault he doesn’t get it. It’s like trying to explain the wind to someone who can’t feel it on their skin or in their hair. I gave up on trying to make him understand it a long time ago.

  “Not here here! You know what I meant!” I shout after him.

  A few seconds later, I hear the roar of his super expensive new sports car that I’ve haven’t bothered to learn the name of the make or model yet. I call it the ninja turtle car because of it reminds me of Michael Angelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Bright orange, shaped like a weird, pointed turtle shell, and completely lacking any sign of a penis.

  I roll back to face the window. The sun pushes through like a stampede of unwanted light. A reminder that outside everything is okay while inside, it’s anything but. I have things to do today. Important things. And I will do them.

  In a little while.

  I close my eyes and shut out the light. I think about the boy from the bridge that night. The one who made me realize I wanted to live even though I’m not really living. The one whose kiss made my stomach flip for the first time. I wonder what he’s doing with his life or even if he’s still alive. I imagine he’s in grad school and spends his weekends with friends going to football games. Maybe, he has a girlfriend or even a wife? I wrinkle my nose. No, none of that seems right for some reason.

  It’s a miracle, if you believe in that sort of thing, that I survived the fall. Waking up on the shore was like rising from the dead.

  I chuckle to myself.

  I almost died. I sort of rose up from the dead.

  And all I have to show for it is a bottle-a-day vodka problem and crippling anxiety.

  Your parents died, but you didn’t. You’re still alive.

  This time that old bitch Anxiety might actually be right about something.

  I tear off my blanket cocoon and sit up.

  I begin to count to ten, but stop and get out of bed at nine, like always.

  I am alive.

  Today, I’ll even attempt to act like it.

  Chapter Five

  KEVIN AKA NINE

  “Shit, I haven’t seen you in a month, and you’ve got almost as many tattoos as Preppy and are starting to look as big as King,” Pike says, getting in the passenger seat of the van.

  I shrug. “Been working out. Been getting some ink.” I haven’t seen Pike that much since he bought the pawn shop and moved into the back room there. I moved out of his place a while back and in with Preppy and his family. More recently I moved into an RV to be closer to the family business, our medical marijuana field. Or as Preppy calls it, “The field of glory.”

  “Been feeding off the blood of newborns or something? Because it sure looks that way.”

  My phone buzzes with a text. “I gotta go to court Tuesday,” I tell Pike. I pull up the calendar and set an alert, so I don’t forget, then tuck it back into my back pocket.

  “You catch another case?” Pike asks with a smirk.

  “Not recently,” I reply. Putting the truck in drive and reversing out of Pike’s driveway.

  “You mean to tell me that they let you walk into court, all muscles and tattoos, without slapping the cuffs on you right away? ‘Cause no offense, but you look like you’ve broken some laws.”

  “None that they know about, anyway.”

  Pike doesn’t exactly look innocent either. Blond hair a little too long to be stylish, matching goatee, and tattoos from a mixture of prison and juvie on his neck and knuckles. Not to mention the broken set of handcuffs he wears like bracelets on each wrist.

  Everything has changed since that night on the bridge, and I do mean everything, including the way I look. Gone is the skinny kid with a target on his back. I’m bigger and stronger, in both mind and body. The only targets in my life now are the one I put on those who fuck with me and mine.

  Pike’s dark eyes light up as we cross over the causeway bridge. “Hey, remember that time when I came to get you at the Sheriff’s station? When they detained you because they thought you pushed that girl from the causeway?”

  Yes, I remember. Every damn day, I remember.

  I give Pike a hard stare.

  He raises his hands in surrender. “Sorry, but it’s been years, man. Didn’t realize you were still all sensitive about it.”

  “Yeah, it has been years.” Years since she died. Years that I could’ve gotten to know her.

  “So, are you gonna tell me why you’re dragging me to the uppity side of the causeway today when I could be cock deep in the three bitches I left sleeping in my bed this morning?” Pike asks.

  My blood boils just
thinking about the reason we’re crossing the causeway. I grip the steering wheel tightly and gnash my teeth together.

  “Today, you’re additional muscle,” I tell Pike. “Gonna need you to stay sharp while I try and not strangle this motherfucker the second I see him.”

  “Is this because of the investment guy?” He asks, lighting a cigarette.

  I nod and clench my fists. It took me a long time to convince Bear, King, and Preppy that they needed to take some of their stored cash and invest some of it in a legit way so they could start growing something for their kids that they won’t be questioned about when it came time. I researched the shit out of investment brokers and went with the owner of Cox Funds because he was also in charge of the money laundering and accounts for the Ricci family. Ripping off Bear, King, or Preppy means certain death. Ripping off Tico Ricci means certain and painful death to you but not before you witness the limb by limb dismemberment of your entire family in front of your eyes. Using that logic, I figured our cash was safe.

  I was wrong. So fucking wrong.

  Not only did our account have a zero balance, but I hacked into Cox Funds servers and discovered that as of this morning, the Ricci families accounts were also empty.

  “The plan is to get him to talk and to find the money before Tico Ricci does and decides he wants it all for himself.”

  “And to get it back before the troublesome trio knows it’s gone?” Pike asks.

  “They know,” I say. I’ve spent years trying to prove myself to the three people who run this town. I was doing a good fucking job of it, too, until this motherfucker ruined everything I’ve worked so hard for.

  “Duly noted. You don’t kill him. I don’t kill him, at least until you tell me to. Gotcha. Gun is loaded. Ready for battle.”

  There’s a motorcycle approaching from behind us. I recognize the bike and the rider and immediately pull to the side of the road.

  Pike and I get out as Bear pulls in behind us. We wait at the back of my truck as he gets off his bike. He’s shirtless, like always, wearing only his leather Lawless MC cut. The patch that says PRESIDENT on the front is the one that gives him the most respect. Both in the MC and in Logan’s Beach.