My thoughts had drifted far away from our conversation. I raked my fingers through my hair and looked around the room. “What do you mean?”
He flashed a side-eyed look at the ceiling and then shook his head. “Same fucking song keeps playing. Over and over. Normally it ain’t doing dumb shit like that.”
“Must be something wrong with it,” I said dismissively.
“It was a cool tune the first couple of times it played.” He turned toward the door. “Kinda sick of it now.”
I wasn’t sick of it at all. I went to the window and placed my hands against the cold stone of the ledge. “I’ll be down in a bit.”
“Who sings it?” he asked from across the room.
I peered down at Andy’s bike and grinned. “I don’t know.”
Then, as Cash pulled the door closed behind him, I allowed the sound of Amos Lee’s music to carry me away.
28
Andy
A knock at my door startled me, but not in the way a normal knock did. Holly beat on the door like she was seeking refuge from a mass murderer. Baker knocked in a unique manner: knock, knock…knock, every time.
This knock was different.
I tip-toed to the door and peered through the peephole. The guy from the phone commercials with the black horn-rimmed glasses stood on the other side, clutching a clipboard. Intrigued, I pulled the door open.
“Can you hear me now?” I asked.
He squinted. “Excuse me?”
“Can you hear me now?”
His face washed over with confusion. I must have been the first person to notice the resemblance. Either that, or he was tired of the jokes.
“You remind me of the phone guy,” I said. “The can you hear me now guy.”
He glanced at his clipboard. “Andy Winslow?”
I noticed there were two other guys standing behind him, both of which were grinning. After making note that they were all three wearing the same khaki pants outfits, I looked at the former Verizon rep. “Yes, I am. How can I help you?”
“Well.” He lowered his clipboard. “Michael’s and Jerome’s have partnered together in a Christmas Season Giveaway. They’ve picked two winners from credit card receipts of purchases prior to last Monday. You’re winner number two.”
I’d never won anything in my life. “Michael’s?” I asked excitedly. “Like Michael’s the craft store?”
He looked at the two men, and then at me. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I was picked as the winner?”
“One of two, yes.”
“Oh. Wow.”
I felt like inviting them in to celebrate, but knew it wasn’t a good idea. While the two boyish looking men behind him rocked back and forth on the balls of their feet, I asked the inevitable.
“What did I win?”
“Your choice.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a wad of credit cards. “Either twenty-five hundred dollars in gift certificates from Michael’s, or a truckload of furniture from Jerome’s.”
I felt faint. “Furniture?” I asked, my voice cracking from the emotion. “Like, home furnishings?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How big of a truckload?”
“A big truck, ma’am.”
I pushed my door open and gestured inside. “Look in there.”
He glanced over my shoulder and chuckled. “Moving out?”
“Pretty sad, huh?”
He chuckled. “So sad.”
“I know, right?” I couldn’t believe my luck. It would be so cool to go into Michael’s on a shopping spree, buy I needed furniture worse than I needed anything. “I’ll uhhm.” I swallowed hard. “I’ll take the furniture.”
“If you’d like to follow us down, you can have a look in the truck.”
I glanced at the other two men, and then at him. “You’re for real?”
He turned around. The back of his little brown jacket had a Jerome’s patch sewn to it. It looked pretty legit.
“If you guys try anything, there’s security cameras outside. They’ll have you arrested before you get on the freeway.”
“We’re just delivering furniture, ma’am.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go look.”
While they rode the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time, all the way to the first floor. Out of breath, and excited beyond comprehension, I shoved the front door open.
The three men were standing on the sidewalk. Along the curb, for nearly the entire length of the building, a Jerome’s truck was parked.
My eyes went wide. “That’s a big truck,” I exclaimed.
“Want to have a look?” he asked.
I rushed to the back of the truck and waited to see what type of seasonal offerings Jerome’s had in store for me.
Verizon man unlatched the door and shoved it upward.
Oh. My God.
I covered my mouth and tried not to scream. There was a dining table, end tables, a bedroom set, mattresses, several couches and chairs that were covered in plastic, and countless other furnishings.
I lowered my hands. “Holy crap.”
“Well?”
“I’d uhhm.” As much as I wanted furniture, I really needed a bed. I was sleeping on an old twin bed that was in my guest bedroom. It was cheap, hard, and impossible to sleep on. If the day ever came that Baker slept over, he wouldn’t even be able to fit in it.
“I’d like to have the bed, please.”
“Is that all?”
“Can I have more?”
He waved his arm toward the open truck. “Maybe you didn’t understand. This is all yours. Whatever you don’t take, we’ll delivering to the Goodwill.”
“Oh wow. Okay. Well. If I actually won it, you might as well deliver it up there.”
Two hours later, I followed the men downstairs and gave each of them a tip. “I’m sorry. I’m kind of strapped for cash right now, but I hope this helps,” I said, handing each of them a twenty-dollar bill.
Verizon folded it and put it in the pocket of his little brown pants. “Thank you.”
I waved as they drove away, and then turned toward the building. Above me, a glow from the second story of Baker’s building caught my attention. It struck me as odd, because that particular floor had always been dark.
In the window, Baker silhouette darkened the otherwise bright windows.
I waved.
His shadow waved in return.
Giddy to jump on my new bed, I waved one more time, and then rushed up the stairs to my newly furnished apartment.
When I opened the door and looked inside, my heart filled with gratitude. It was the first day since the bank had been robbed that I felt like my life was in order.
It was going to be twenty-four hours before Baker picked me up for our date. I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he found out I won the Christmas Season Giveaway.
29
Baker
I hadn’t been on a date since I was nineteen. A blowjob attempt from a girl who had more teeth than a Mako Shark made that night disastrous enough that I had yet to go on another.
Dinner and a movie was far too cliché for me. So, I took a risk.
A big risk.
I brought Andy to my home.
She glanced around the table. “I can’t believe you took the time to make all this stuff.”
“I had a little assistance,” I admitted.
“But still.” She leaned over the platter of coxinhas and inhaled a breath through her nose. She looked at me and smiled. “To think you took the time to research everything.”
I didn’t do any research. After my decision to have Andy over for dinner, Goose volunteered to prepare a traditional Brazilian meal. He’d no more than pulled his bike out of the parking garage when Andy and I returned.
“It’s kind of a backward date,” I said, sliding the large dish of Moqueca de Camarão in her direction as I spoke.
She ladled it into her bowl. “What do you mean?”
&
nbsp; “Start at home and go out afterward. Don’t most of them start out away, and end up in the guy’s home?”
She pushed the dish across the table. “I don’t know. I haven’t got a lot of traditional dating experience.”
“Me neither.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
I looked up from filling my bowl with the seafood stew. “I’ve been on one.”
“One?”
“One.”
“Oh. Wow. Why only one?”
I picked two of the coxinhas up and shrugged. “Superstitious, I guess.”
“You? Superstitious?”
“A little.”
I was more than a little superstitious, but didn’t want to be criticized for it. She dipped her bread in the stew, took a bite, and then cocked her head to the side. “What superstition keeps a guy from going on a date?”
“Shark teeth.”
She scrunched her face. “Sharks teeth? Like shark’s teeth, a newt’s brain, and the eye of a toad? Voodoo?”
I choked on the cheese dumpling. Hearing her say voodoo was too much. After a few drinks of water, I regained my composure. “The story is kind of gross, are you sure you want to hear it?”
She plucked a shrimp from her stew and held it over her plate. “I love gross stories.”
“My first actual date was with a girl I met at a record store. She was really pretty, but had really jacked up teeth. They went in every direction, like a shark’s teeth. I thought she was cool, so I asked her out.”
It was close to the truth. She was pretty, and had a disastrous set of teeth. Her incredible body, however, was what drew me to her.
“We went to a movie. About twenty minutes in, she offered to…” I gestured toward my lap. “You know.”
“I don’t know.”
“Blow me.”
“In the movie?” she whispered.
I nodded. “Mean Girls.”
“You took her to see Mean Girls?”
“I thought she’d enjoy it.”
She twirled her hand in a circle. “Continue.”
I didn’t think it would be appreciated if I told Andy all the details, so I condensed the story significantly, only hitting the highlights. “Let’s just say thirty seconds later that I had to make a trip to the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding. But, I couldn’t. I ended up in the emergency room.”
“Holy crap.” She stretched her lips thin, exposing her perfectly white teeth. After clacking them together a few times, she grinned. “From the teeth?”
“All three thousand of them.”
She draped her hair behind her ears and then gave me a funny look. “I guess I’m confused as to where the superstitious part comes in.”
“I’m a little more than a little superstitious.”
“I’m intrigued,” she said with a smile. “Tell me more.”
“I decided if that date went so poorly that I had to go to the emergency room, that dates weren’t meant for me, and that they were cursed. So. I haven’t been on one since.”
She stirred her soup with her spoon slowly, seemingly less interested in eating. After a moment, she looked up. “Interesting.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve never sent anyone to the hospital” she said flatly. “I try to use my lips and tongue, not my teeth.”
“Not that.” I let out a laugh. “Dating. How can you be single?”
She set her spoon on her plate, brushed her hands over the tops of her tits, and stood. “Look at me. A good long look. Then, ask yourself if you really need to ask that question.”
She was wearing a dress that complimented her figure completely. Her hair was down, but not completely straight. It was wavy, like she’d worn it several times in the past. Her high cheeks and narrow nose were easily overlooked, making her full lips a point of concentration for anyone who met her. When combined with her eyes, it was enough to make any man stop and stare.
“You’re beautiful.”
“I’m not,” she said. “But thank you.”
I admired her as she sat down and began to pick the shrimp from her soup. After dunking what was left of her bread into the coconut milk broth, she lifted it to her mouth and then paused. “Here’s the rest of the story.”
“What story?”
She poked the piece of bread into her mouth. After swallowing, she continued. “Nobody’s perfect. You know that, right?”
“All too well.”
“Well. I’m not even close.” She grabbed another bread ball, poked the entire thing into her mouth, and continued as she chewed. “I think I had self-esteem issues when I was young. So, I let anybody who wanted to bone have at it. I was the girl in school that was commonly referred to as a slut. It started after my parents were gone. I never blamed what happened between them for my deficiencies, but it played a part in me being who I was.”
“How old were you when they split up,” I asked.
“Thirteen.”
“There’s a reason hotels don’t have a thirteenth floor.”
“They don’t?”
“Nope. It’s bad luck.”
“I’ll agree with you on that one.” She bit into one of the fried cheese balls and rolled her eyes in pleasure. “So, anyway. I was a little tramp. Then, we moved to Syracuse when I was in eleventh grade. When we did, I decided to change. No more sex unless I was in a relationship. I met a guy. We got serious. Everything was perfect. At least it seemed like it.”
“What happened?”
“Everything.” She tossed the remaining piece of food onto her plate. “He lied to me. About everything. I thought he had a job, but he didn’t. He was a drug dealer. I thought he was faithful. But he wasn’t. He stuck his dick in half the city’s women. I thought he wasn’t abusive, but when I confronted him about lying, he beat me. Not a little bit, either. He tied me up and left me in our apartment.”
I felt sick, for more reasons than one. I wasn’t a mirror image of her former ass hat boyfriend, but I was close. I was a criminal and I wasn’t completely truthful.
I’d never beat a woman, and I’d beat any man who did, but that didn’t excuse me from my other faults.
“I’d say I’m sorry, but it’s not near enough,” I said.
“He said he’d kill me if I left him, but I came out here to go to school anyway. Holly came too.” She laughed and pushed her plate to the side. “Her and her husband. He fucked some skank at Hooters and they split up right when I was graduating college. I guess when you get right down to it, I’ve got a hard time trusting men.”
The last thing on earth I wanted to do was cause her harm. I couldn’t see any way to keep from it, though.
“I’m sorry you went through all that,” I said. “I really am.”
It was all I could think of, but it wasn’t enough, and I realized it. Knowing that she’d been through everything that she described – and somehow managed to graduate college and carry on with life – spoke volumes of her character, strength, and worth as a human being. I admired her from a whole different perspective because of it.
“It’s just life. I’m a big girl.” She picked up her butter knife and wagged it at me. “I can say this: there’ll never be another man that treats me like that. Not unless he wants his dick cut off.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll need a bigger knife than that.”
She laughed out loud. “That’s no shit. I’d need a chainsaw for that tree trunk of yours.”
I finished my bread and nodded toward her plate. “Are you done?”
“I’m stuffed.”
“Too full for dessert?”
“Right now? Yeah.”
Goose had prepared pave, a Brazilian layered cake. It wasn’t what I needed, and I doubted it would cure how she was feeling. There was only one thing I knew she wanted for sure, and it wasn’t something I’d ever been interested in providing anyone with in the past.
In fact, until that night, I viewed it as off-limits.
I pushed myself away from the table. I’d been dying to see her in a pair of jeans anyway.
“Do you have some jeans you can change into?”
“In my purse?”
“No. At home.”
“I mean. Yeah. Why?”
“Because,” I said. “We’re going for a motorcycle ride.”
“Seriously?” Her eyes shot wide and she leapt from her seat. “I thought it only held one person?”
“I’ve got another one downstairs that’s supposed to hold two.” I said. “I’ve just never tried it.”
“You’ve never given a girl a ride?”
“Nope.”
“Superstitious belief?”
“No. I’ve never met anyone worthy,” I said. “Until now.”
30
Andy
The weather in San Diego allowed people to enjoy riding motorcycles twelve months of the year. Proof of their popularity was apparent on the highways, which were peppered with them every day of the week. The truth surrounding their fascination remained a mystery to me.
Until I got on one.
A motorcycle wasn’t a means of transportation. It was an experience. Being on it gathered all of what had gone wrong in my life and cast it into the wind as it rushed past us. Baker made a huge mistake by giving me a ride. Getting me off it wasn’t going to be as easy as asking.
He was going to have to get a court order.
There were no walls. The world was my window. The road ahead an open door. For once in my life, I was truly free.
We spent most of the night riding to nowhere. Had we been in a car, it would have seemed mindless. On the motorcycle, I viewed it as one of life’s true blessings. Biker gangs who wore matching vests and rode in large groups along Southern California’s highways were no longer something I feared. Their fellowship made perfect sense to me now. In one sense, at least, I felt I had become one of them.
A person addicted to the freedom of riding.
Just past midnight, we pulled into the alley behind Baker’s building. As we approached the ramp that led to the parking garage, the door opened automatically. Once inside the concrete enclosure, I closed my eyes and allowed the sound the echoing exhaust to massage its way into my soul.
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