Run For the Money (10 page)

Bo stood in his childhood home amid furniture older than he was. The school portrait of him still hung over the fireplace. A bright faced high school freshman in a red argyle sweater and a pained smile. The kind of photo that either showed the potential of the man he would become or the cracks in the surface about to burst.

Either way it was a long time ago.

The house still smelled like cats even though the last of them died off years ago. The carpet held on to their memory, so strong no amount of scented candles could remove it.

The grandfather clock rang ten. Silence fell on the room again. Wanda’s coffee sat by her favorite chair, a bookmarked novel sat on the end table next to it.
Mom’s been reading that teenage girl fiction again
, thought Bo.
That woman is losing it
.

Dad’s empty chair still sat next to Wanda’s, waiting for him to come home. A worn green Lay-z-boy reserved for a ghost.

“It’s good to see you, Mom.”

“Yes, yes, it’s . . .”

She stood, dumbfounded, unable to comprehend what her son would be doing in her living room. Four years since he left home. Four years she’d been hearing stories, getting phone calls from the police. Four years she invited him back and he always refused. A year since Sawyer died and Bo didn’t attend the funeral. Since she found the dozen roses on the front porch, dropped off in the dead of night with the card, handwriting uneven and childlike: Sorry, Mom. Bo.

“Did you escape prison? Tell me the truth.”

“No, Mom. I didn’t.” Strictly speaking, it was true.

“I read in the papers—”

“Don’t believe everything you read, Mom.”

“No, no. I suppose not.” She thought about where she left off in her book. Just started this one. Number six in the series. English school girls who were attracted to dangerous vampire boys and the lusty adventures they got in to while flirting with darkness. It was always a little odd to think about a three hundred-year-old vampire making love to a teenage girl. But then the vampires were in the bodies of teenage boys so . . . dammit.
Concentrate woman
.
Your son
.

“Are you here to stay or . . .?”

“I don’t think so, Mom.”

“Oh.” Wanda looked down at the carpet. She wanted a cat to curl around her ankles. Maybe it was time to go back to the shelter again. Bo had his addictions and she had hers. Once he was out of the house she didn’t need her feline companions as much, but seeing him again, all Wanda wanted was something small and helpless to care for. Something that wanted to curl up with her and sit quietly. Something that needed her. Indoor cats, nothing that would run away. Like Cinnamon. He was one of the good ones. Loved nothing more than to sit on her lap while she read. He purred along with the good parts. Never much cared for Sawyer and the feeling was mutual. Not like Jasper, the Siamese. He loved Sawyer almost as much as she did. There was the time . . .
damn your feeble mind! Focus on the boy
. “You want a coffee?”

“Sure.”

She went to the kitchen for a mug.

Bo felt a sadness standing in his home. It felt like a stranger’s house. Something he’d seen in photographs, but never lived in. It was a different boy who grew up here.

He went to the stairs and climbed. He remembered sneaking down late at night to watch TV through the wooden spindles of the staircase railing. He saw his parents sit, Dad’s arm around Mom, watching Johnny Carson, chuckling along with the crowd to jokes Bo didn’t get.

The short hallway, bathroom on the left, master bedroom on the right, Bo’s room at the end on the left.

She hadn’t changed a thing. Like Dad’s chair, Bo’s room sat as an open invitation. Like his dad, the boy she waited for would never come home. He was dead and gone.

Bo crossed the threshold. The room had started to change before he left. The Grateful Dead poster hadn’t been there growing up. His Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bed sheets were long gone.

It felt small. Too small for such monumental episodes in his life. He first felt up Sarah Perry on that tiny twin bed. Small tits, but she was so eager. Her tongue did acrobatics in his mouth and he let her put his fingers in on two separate occasions.

Got his first blow job from Allison Heath too. She was lousy, but he didn’t know it at the time. He thought there was supposed to be all the teeth and tugging and the next morning what amounted to a hickey on the end of dick. End result was the same though, even though she panicked and spit it out on his t-shirt that was balled up on the floor next to them. He threw that shirt away.

Bo went to the closet. His childhood things were piled on the floor. Stacks of comic books in uneven piles, his D&D manuals, Battleship and Risk all sat like bodies in a mass grave.

His desk still had sharpened pencils on it, waiting to write another goodbye note. His parting words to the parents who raised him, an only child and the object of all their devotion. He wrote it quickly, four years ago. The notebook still sat in place, a loose fray poking out of the spirals where he tore the page out. A crime scene where his youth met a violent, tearing end.

His dad told him he had to go but he’d said things like that before. Threats to get his act together. Speeches restating the house rules and how he’d violated them. When Dad invited him to go again, Bo finally took him up on the offer. He labored for hours over that note, wanting it to sound right for the big kiss off. It ending up a rambling mess co-authored by crystal meth and lack of sleep.

He picked up the notebook, turned it to the light to see if the imprint of his note was left on the page below. Nothing. No trace. Bo was gone from this room, this house. Everything was nothing but set dressing.

Bo slid open the center drawer to the desk. A jumble of paperclips, rubber bands, broken pens, Bic lighters, rolling papers. He reached to the back of the drawer, turned his hand to feel up under the desktop and was surprised to find it. He peeled off the years-old tape and brought out a baggie of olive green leaves. His pot stash, aged to a fine vintage. Smiling he stuffed it in his front pocket.

He came back down stairs and Wanda jumped in her chair. She was seated reading her book.

“My God, it is you.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“I thought I imagined you. I wasn’t sure.”

“You alright?”

“I’ve been . . . forgetful lately. Things . . . don’t come as easily to me.”

He spotted the coffee mug she poured for him on the table in front of the couch. He sat and lifted it, thinking it was the first time in his life he ever used a coffee table for drinking coffee. He’d snorted a mountain of trucker speed off several around town, but this was a first.

“So, Mom.” He sipped the coffee. It was bitter. “I need to borrow the car.”

She jerked her fingers back from the book, snapped her thoughts back to reality and away from the pages of lusty vampires. “What’s that, dear?”

“I need the car for a while.”

“Oh, Bo, I don’t think so. I’m not even sure I know where the keys are.”

“You don’t drive it anymore?”

“Well, since your father died . . .” She drifted. Memories came in pieces, lit up by flash bulbs and fading as quickly.

“Mom?” Jesus, this woman was out to lunch, Bo thought. No sense asking for the car, just find the keys and take it. She’d forget all about it five minutes after he left.

“Sorry, dear. What?”

“I need the car. Can I borrow it?”

“I don’t see why I should.”

“Because I need it.”

“Ask your father.”

Bo paused. He had no response. Was she busting his balls, still blaming him? Or did she really think Dad was still around? How bat-shit crazy was this old lady?

“Mom, Dad’s dead.”

“Well, so will you be if he catches you stealing the car. We’ve had about enough of this tomfoolery from you. It’s got to stop!” Wanda was getting upset, her hands jumped nervously in her lap. She threw glances to the empty chair next to her, expecting backup. Sawyer always was the disciplinarian. He talked of doing something about their son right up until the end. Kept threatening to take matters into his own hands.

“He’s my only child and I’m not letting him go without a fight,” he would say. He sounded honorable, majestic. Like Elliot Ness. There was a time when a woman cut Wanda off in the grocery line. Sawyer stood up for her and gave that woman what for. He really had a way with words, Sawyer did. Wanda thought,
Now what was Bo asking about again?

Bo stood, knee banging the coffee table as he did and it spilled the bitter, lukewarm coffee across a People magazine.

“Mom, I need the car. Where are your keys?”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“Mom! Snap out of it. Do you have, like, pills you should be taking or something?”

“Pills. That’s all you ever think about is pills.”

Bo rolled his eyes. It was like talking to one of those damn cats. “Mom, here’s the deal. I’m taking the car for a little bit. All I need to know is where the keys are, okay? Can you tell me?”

“You’re not taking anything young man. Not until you talk to your father about this. And he will not be pleased, I can tell you that. No sir.”

Bo sighed. He hooked a hand under her arm. It was thinner than he remembered, more frail. He pushed her along into the hallway between the living room and kitchen.

“Where’s your purse, Mom?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mom!” His tone was pure teenager. The house was used to it, the combative tone, the impasse between mother and son.

He spotted her purse on the kitchen table. He set her down in a chair at the round table with the peeling yellow flowers. He dumped her purse out like an SS officer in a black and white movie. She gasped, feeling violated.

He sifted through the pile of old Kleenex, expired coupons, used up lipstick tubes and loose change, but found no keys.

He turned his head to the hook by the back door. Empty.

“Mom, seriously, where are your keys?”

“I don’t know.” Her defiance turned to light panic as she realized she truly didn’t know. The lost look came over her face again. Bo began to recognize it. He knew if he’d been around more he would have seen this change in her coming. To find it all of a sudden was a shock. More reason to get his money and get the hell out of town before he ended up living back at home spooning applesauce into her mouth all day. Without his meth habit back, he could not handle that.

A good rail of powder or a hit off the pipe would feel good right about now. He felt the aging bag of pot in his pocket and wondered if he shouldn’t stop for a bowl before he got all crazy.

Wanda stood. She crossed to the lemon yellow wall phone with the extra-long cord. “Call the police, that’s what I’ll do. Tell them I’m being harassed in my own home.”

Bo cut her off and stood between the phone and the tiny woman. A woman he used to fear.

“Mom, tell me where your car keys are and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“No sir. You wait until your father gets home. He’ll know what to do with you.”

Bo’s arm shot out and he grabbed her by the shoulder a little too hard. His Mother cried in pain. He relaxed his grip, but held on. For her own safety and his own sanity he had no choice.

He led her out of the kitchen, halfway down the hall and opened the closet door. He pushed aside winter coats, most of which belonged to his dad, and shoved her inside. He shut the door, twisted the lock and went back to searching for the keys.

––––––––

S
lick got there two footsteps too late. He didn’t want to run the parking lot or else the driver might have panicked and locked the doors and floored it. He stepped up to the driver’s window as the engine turned over.

Slick tapped on the glass with his gun. “Get out.”

The driver, a Latino of about twenty-one, startled at the sight of a gun. He scrambled around the interior of his car for something. Slick didn’t wait to find out what. He opened the door, reached in with his free hand and hauled the kid out. Loud hip hop music came with him. The kid still held on to the bottle of rum he bought inside.

“I told you to get out. You speak English?”

“Yo, yo, I’m out. I’m out.”

Slick jostled the kid, not letting him get a good foothold on the curb. From afar it looked like they were dancing to the music. “And I’ll take that . . .” the bottle slid out of the kid’s hand and smashed in the gutter. Too much jerking around. The kid had those staring-at-a-cop eyes; wide and jittery. Daddy with a belt eyes. She just told me she was sixteen eyes.

Slick tossed him aside. “I’m borrowing your ride, son.”

“Fuck, man. Please don’t. There’s lots of other cars, man. I’ll help you get one. We’ll find something better.”

“Well, shit, if this one is so dear to you it must be pretty good. I think I’ll see what all the fuss is about.”

Slick dropped behind the wheel. The kid stepped off the curb and put himself in front of the car, his hands on the hood.

“Seriously, man. Please don’t.” Slick barely heard him over the thumping bass and mediocre rhymes, but he knew by the kid’s pleading face what he meant.

Slick aimed the gun through the window. “Hey, I know you put some money into this piece of shit, but you really think it’s worth dying over?”

The kid contemplated. His pained expression showed his worry, as if Slick was about to shoot his puppy in the head and he had to choose between it and his own mother. A real Sophie’s Choice, this.

He lifted his palms off the hood, felt the heat radiate back out into the cool night until his hands were cold again. The last lingering touch of his beloved vehicle.

“Go back inside and buy yourself another bottle. It’ll feel all better at the bottom.”

Slick revved the engine, the sickening sounds of your girlfriend fucking another man. With the gun still in his hand Slick threw it in gear and roared away from the curb. The kid stood in the neon glow of the liquor store and cried.

Slick laughed out loud, working the clutch and shifting like a pro. “What some people will do for their cars.”