Drawing Dead (9 page)
Authors: JJ DeCeglie
I thought a second. Daisy just nodded, she looked like she was thinking about something but for all I knew she could have been about to need to make caca.
Do they know we went home together the other night?
No.
Good. Don’t ever tell them so either.
She was looking at me funny. With her mouth open and her face sitting slightly to the side. I finished up that beer with a gulp and had a mind to grab another one.
What are you looking at Daisy? You alright?
Yeah I’m fine.
So what’re looking at?
You. You’re very handsome. You know that.
You probably think I’m making this shit up but I ain’t. It may have been the money. She was figuring on getting some more outta me. Or she may have been planning to turn me over. That was just as likely. Didn’t matter, I let her go on with it. I liked watching her perform.
You need a place to stay Jack? You could lay low here awhile.
You mean it Daisy. I don’t know.
Yeah baby. You know how much I like you.
She was smiling real saccharine at me by then. Like a sweetheart drinking wine with you at a springtime picnic. I had no intention of staying there. Not for the long haul or the short. Sure Daisy was as succulent as an overripe plum, but you gotta be careful when you bite into them in that state, you’re liable to get that sweetness all over your damn self.
I’m thinking it might be best if I don’t stay Daisy. I just…
I shook my head to myself and stood up. I was roaring inside and my skin was suddenly tingling and flush.
I know you like me baby, and you know I like you too. You saw how much I liked you the other night right? Did you like that? Have you thought about me doing it all over to you again?
Yeah I have Jack. You know I have.
They all do you see. Least when I’m done with’em they do. It’s because I mean it, I mean it more than anything else, the same way the sun means to keep you warm, or how the ocean means to keep you wet, that’s how I meant it, and you couldn’t mean anything more than that.
I can’t stay baby. I just can’t. I don’t trust you. But we’re gonna play a bit ok?
I’d decided now that we had to make this thing look real. She was gonna be either too stupid or too greedy for it to play out any other way. I was standing over her then and I took that fine-china chin in my hand and ran my fingers along her slender teenage cheek. It really wasn’t a great idea coming here in the first place. Much too much hazard involved. They coulda known we’d been together. They coulda told her to play it cool and lead me on. Maybe I’d just been down by the river looking at the girls too long and as was always needing some respite. Daisy looked up at me like a dog that had pissed in the house and knew you were gonna belt the stuffing out of it. I moved my hand to her pretty neck and squeezed just enough to not hurt her at all. She didn’t struggle.
You ready baby?
Do it.
You want it? We gotta make it look real, you know that Daisy.
Yeah, I know.
They know we went home together?
No.
I don’t believe you.
I slapped her so hard that her head snapped sidewards with the impact. I pulled it back into position and then did it all over again.
Now Daisy you understand that if you don’t take them that money that I’ll come back here and I’ll kill you. You understand that?
Yes.
You do?
Yes Jack.
I slapped her again. Harder this time. Hard enough to knock her off the chair.
Take that fucking robe off Daisy.
She stood up and out of it and flamed an inferno at me with her unassailable beauty. She was breathing hard and I wasn’t sorry for anything. She had legs that could outlast time itself. Breasts that should have been outlawed.
You still like me Daisy?
Yeah baby, yeah baby I do.
The sunshine made the blonde hair on her pussy glow like clear fire. She was scared and thrilled and crying all at once. When I told her to bend her ass right there over the table she did it and the damage I’d left just recently was plain as fucking day. Yeah she was black and blue and ready for action. There was nothing left for me to do but grab a fist full of hair and go to town on her again. Heck she arched and screeched with more damn glee than she did the first go around. I almost pulled her hair right out her goddamned scalp and all she could do was yelp for more and more and more. Some girls are like that though. Just can’t get enough. I kissed her goodbye about lunchtime. Told her once more I’d kill her if she stole the money. She still wanted me to hide there.
Stay she said, Jack, oh, Jack, please stay. You’d have thought I’d cooked her dinner and brought champagne and then asked the dame to marry me.
I almost knocked her teeth in. I had my fist clenched and ready to pop but no Jacky boy, no, it’d be too much, if you punch her she’ll probably want to elope to Vegas with you.
How fucking dizzy can one broad get?
After all that hard work I was hungry. I drove over to an out of the way diner on the highway that led east to the hills and had a burger, fries and a milkshake. When done I still had about an hour to kill so I bought a sixer of cold Thai beer and parked the car in the shade near a bus station. My mind was trying to get me to think about the problem I had with women but I just turned the radio up and drank three beers in a flowing succession. I had more urgent matters to attend to anyhow. Like picking up some cigars to smoke.
I drove over to the same nearest liquor store cursing my forgetful ass for misremembering to get these suckers the first time I was there. I was smoking one really nicely before I sat back down to wheel outta there and as I started the engine up I thought ah fuck it and drove over to where I knew there was a payphone. I called Chenko. He picked up on the first ring. Gave me the good news. The merchandise would be ready for him to pick-up at about five. Which meant I could have it at about six. I thanked him and called him a swell sombitch and it was true, there were few who came through as consistently as he. I asked him to pick me up a little something else too, five hundred extra for him, and he groaned and I laughed but I’ll tell you more about that prize later.
When I hung up I fished Evie’s number out my wallet, though not before I’d taken a long, loving look at that photo in there too mind you. Nothing had changed, she was still a ten outta ten dish, in fact if anything she looked even better. Like she’d somehow blossomed further overnight. Fermented along some line of out of this world gorgeousness and then settled into it for the duration. Yeah now it was like that smile was beaming just for me. Always had been. It seemed as such and I liked it that way.
Who wouldn’t?
I slipped the photo back in my opposite pocket, on its own this time and let it rest against my balls. I liked it that way too. I called her then and she picked up so quick one could only assume she was sitting by the phone waiting. At least she had listened to me and stayed put till she was told to do otherwise. It was a brief chitchat. A couple of pleasantries and no asides. I told her to meet me at a certain train-stop on the way to the city. To take public transport the whole ride and to be there by three. She agreed to it and before she could ask any stupid questions I hung up. I didn’t wanna spoil the present illusion. No, for now I just wanted her smiling sweet and pressing gently against my genitals. I took a deep, yawning breath and for some reason punched the phone with a sharp, cracking jab that rocked the entire booth. Not sure why I did that. But I did it enough for it to be a worry, if not a booth than a face. I didn’t dwell upon it, nah, no point, instead I went back to car, strolling in the sun sop for a short but pleasant time and went immediately to work polishing off those beers.
When it was time I drove to a stop that was about five before the one I’d told Evie to meet me at. I found a park easy enough and paid for a ticket for the parking spot but not for the train. These robbing motherfuckers want money for every goddamned thing under the sun. They’ll be asking for currency to breath soon, you just wait and see. I arrived at the meet twenty minutes early and she was about ten minutes late. I bitched her out about it straight up but really I didn’t care 'cause she’d smiled when she first said hello. She had on jeans and a tight pink t-shirt. Everything hugged her like she knew it should. She could have been wearing a garbage bag and she still would’ve been the best looking girl in the city by a street. I noticed how short she was this time round, maybe a clear foot on me, but hell was she big on sexy.
She seemed to take heed when I said that we couldn’t be doing what we liked with time when we went for it tonight.
Tonight?
Yeah, we’re set. Is that ok?
Too bad if it wasn’t.
Yeah Jack whatever you say. If you think tonight, then it's tonight.
Fucking right.
We had walked across the street and were ambling through the cemetery. I liked the places. Made a man remember he only had so much time and that he’d better get his ass moving in the direction it was supposedly going. It was a place of certainty. A place of ends. Yeah, you were certainly gonna end up in one.
Of course, Lexy wasn’t rotting in this one. If she were I just may have gone to heaving pieces. Evie was in a good mood. She smiled much and it set me off into orbit. She was like the chilled white wine you drank on that first shining summer’s day. Unadulterated improvement of existence. You shoulda seen her there amidst the pine trees and headstones and the shadows extending their darkened afternoon limbs.
Did you work on the guy at the desk?
I did just like you told me to.
Was he young?
Not more than thirty.
And he’ll remember you?
Only for the rest of his life.
She played it out for me all smiling bright, it went something like this:
Hi there.
(Evie twirling a finger in her lustrous hair wearing a mini-skirt, heels and a size too small singlet)
Hello. How can I help you?
There are lotsa ways you can help me…a room would be a start.
(Smoldering red-hot at this candyass)
Uh sure, would you like a single, or a double?
Well I’m single. But I’d love a double honey.
(His jaw hits the waiting cement)
Ok, ok, queen or king-size bed.
What would you recommend?
(She fronts up and puts both elbows on the counter squeezing the showpieces together)
Well you look like a princess, so…
(You believe this son of a bitch)
Princesses need a prince don’t they?
Yeah they do.
Well then I’ll take the king.
(She winked that one past)
I’ll give you room number five, it’s near the pool and close to here if you happen to need anything.
(MOT-HER-FUCK-ER!)
Thank you, I may you know, need something, that is. You never know do you. Oh by the way, I’m Evie.
(Good girl – Though I may have to bind and torture this shithead)
I’m John.
(I’m Jack)
I’m gonna call you Johnny if you don’t mind.
(You could call him the man Adolf Hitler, he’d still do anything you ask him…I would)
That’s fine.
Well Johnny, baby, I’m so tired, so, so tired I just have to get out of these clothes and have you lead me to bed.
(She musta been doing this kinda thing ever since she realised every boy she met wanted to fuck her senseless)
There are some forms you need to fill in and some other…
Here’s the money Johnny, and take my driver’s license too, be a doll and do it all for me and I’ll pick the license back up in morning. Ok?
Well…
Please baby, just lead me to bed will you?
(Johnny up and does as he’s been told, carries Evie’s bag over too, she pinches the keys from his hand mid-trip and opens the door herself and now takes the bag too. She stands in the doorway a second, glitters a grin at Johnny-boy and then closes the door gently on him, leaving him standing with his dick in his hand and making a face like he’d just made diarrhea in his underpants.)
If I was only half in love with her before that little rendition I’d moved through to about three quarts full by the time she was done. It was grade school again and I liked her the best. She gave me one of those grins that told me she knew that I dug her in a full-size way and that let me know she felt something the same. It was one that came with eyes that looked at you knowing and then away and back into yours from space with that added serious burn. Had to hone myself sharp and remember this wasn’t a first date but a fucking business meeting. I mentioned that expenses had so far added up to eleven large. I thought that would heavy the mood some. Evie just nodded with those big brown sincere eyes sitting there a foot below me. I said she could add it to the twenty-five she still owed me. No recoil. Not even a batted eyelash. Then I furthered it by telling her of my concrete plans to torch her car. Just a rerun of the initial. Girl was stone cold strategy.
You had to wonder how much money she had and where in hell she’d got it. Also where she got her balls so big. It wasn’t for now though. Maybe when I had her in bed.
We kept to the graveyard as the sun got vaguely dejected. Wandering through the maze of marble. Trampling with fleshy feet upon the covered decaying corpses. Amazed me how good you can feel when surrounded by death. There weren’t many people around. I laid it on Evie to the letter, spilled direct on what had to go down. I said the whole spiel three times over and answered any questions she had to the best of my damn ability. It was a speech I’d prepared in the car and the train and I was pretty certain I’d covered all the angles and any she could of think too. Like I said we traced it over three times. It went like this:
You need to do precisely what I tell you Evie. Unerringly and to the goddamn letter. Most people get caught because they're stupid. There's nothing more to it than that. You understand what I’m saying. We ain’t stupid. And we aren’t about to start being stupid either. You go straight back to the hotel and you dress up real nice. Knock their fucking socks off type stuff, drop dead gorgeous. Won’t be too hard for you. You go out then, go about the rest of your day, shop a little, buy some things, eat someplace, get noticed. Call some people, not people you wouldn't normally call, regular like, nothing out of the ordinary. But call them and make like usual. Now early evening you go to an address I give you. It's a poker joint. A legal one with cash tables running alongside a friendly pub game. I'm guessing you know how to play. Even better if you don’t. Get the assholes gawking at you to help. You're gonna get the maximum amount of chips, probably around five hundred, but take about three times as much and if you bust out buy back in. Now you're gonna lay it on thick Evie. Spread it so that it drips off the bread. You're gonna flirt and drink and dance around, you're gonna make sure everybody remembers you, that the men love you and the women can't stand you. Make sure you order at least five drinks, and make sure you act like they're making you dizzy even if they ain’t. Play erratically, get attention, at eleven you get up no matter what, chip out, finish your drink in a gulp and get in your car. Hopefully they’re chasing you out the door. You drive to a back street car park where I’ll be waiting about a kilometre from your hotel. You're gonna pick me up. Then I'll drive us back to the hotel in your car, when we walk past the reception make sure your boyfriend sees you walk in with me, make sure he sees you’re acting loaded. We want the cops talking to this guy first, and we want that guy looking at your ass so hard that he can hardly see straight. Don't talk about your future plans with anyone, not even about some bullshit you're planning on doing tomorrow. It's an amateur play, ok, it'll stink of set-up, cops aren’t as dumb as they look, they'll be wise to it in about three seconds.
Like I said I went through the thing three times and answered the few questions she had. I kidded her some to ease any nervousness she mighta been carrying but that coolness in her demeanor never let up. I told a few lame jokes you know, she laughed, which was nice, and I wish she’d done the same to me 'cause I was starting to feel edgy myself, craving those beers back in the car, instead she did something even better and kissed my cheek when she left. Said she didn’t know how to thank me and I was good guy and all that rubbish and I was thinking I can think of a two ways honey, pay me and then fuck me, and then I scolded myself because I remembered I was in love with the girl.
