Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (19 page)

Not two minutes after hanging up with Rob, Erika called.

“Sweetie it’s me, listen, I’m going to be a little late tomorrow for the movers. Can you just make sure everything with the red stickers goes in the dining room? That’s my special stuff and I don’t want to have to go looking for it. Just stick the furniture where you think best and I’ll fix it later, ok?”

“I sure can, poopie snookums. Anything else?”

Snorty laughing on the other end.

“What’s got into you? You’re a retard. Anyway, I have to pick up my last check from work.”

“Gotcha,” I said, and wondered what sort of work she did, and if they minded such casual use of the word “retard.”

“Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry I haven’t moved in yet. What with all the trips to the hospital and the wedding preparations… it’s just easier for now. And it’s only one more week.”

So the living arrangements were Erika’s idea. I’d just assumed Nate had kept her out so he could hide his secret life.

“Hey,” I said, “I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, as a family. What’s one more week?”

I thought that went off rather smooth.

“I love you too,” she said, and the way she said it sounded so hopeless and lost it about broke my heart.

“When you move in it’ll be great,” I said. “Good things come to those who wait. You know who said that, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“Albert Einstein, that’s who, and he invented the telephone and spray paint and unicorns and a bunch of other great stuff.”

Snorty laughing.

“You’re so retarded,” she said again. “I’m happy you’re not upset anymore. I haven’t heard you tell any jokes in forever. Not since that night when you seduced me.”

Laughing, I said, “Oh, I seduced you, huh?”

Despite Erika being seriously hot, from what I suspected of my buddy Nate, I doubted he’d initiated anything—at least with a healthy adult female.

“Sure you did. Walking around all sexy like that, how could I resist?”

Erika reminisced about our special night in a tent on the club camping trip after hers had collapsed. She described it in embarrassing detail (I’ll refrain), practically cooing into the phone, and I have to admit, a very dangerous and irrational part of me (yeah, that part) began reconsidering my self-imposed rules on fraternizing.

Erika had me questioning all kinds of things. I mean, I could actually see myself falling for her, or a girl like her. It wasn’t just her beauty. It was the attitude in her smile, the tilt of her head, and the loving look in her eyes when she caught me sneaking a peek down her shirt. Most of all, I admired the brave face she presented to a world filled with hypocritical acrimony. For her, a fallen woman taken with child, bravely bearing society’s scarlet letter upon her heaving breasts.

We hung up together, flush with positive feelings of renewal, hope and the promise of a magical future overflowing with passion, puppies, Easter egg hunts, trips to the beach, Europe, hiking in Nepal (her suggestion), gorging on bread and cheese in Paris (my idea) and all the things I knew I could never have. Honestly, I hadn’t been carried away like that in years—not even with Sandra during the one or two good times.

My eyes started to sting. I began to worry about my new crying habit. I needed to stop feeling miserable and start spending Nate’s money. I’d never had this much money on a ride. I could literally afford to charter a private jet to anywhere in the world and do whatever I wanted. I had enough to hire a small army of mercenaries, for crying out loud. Actual, dangerous mercenaries with automatic weapons and grenades and glints in their steely eyes. There’d be time for crying later, in the body of my next junkie.

Feeling marginally better, I grabbed the keys, jumped in Nate’s black SUV and went to the movies.

***

By the next day, my mood had started to dampen again. After all, I had moving to do.

The movers didn’t arrive until after eleven. They were an odd pair. One a little too old, the other young and strong, and both Hispanic. We got the furniture placed properly through hand gestures and nods and one or two words. I’d taken exactly one day of Spanish, back in college, before dropping the class. I’d memorized a dictionary since then, so I knew a bunch of nouns and verbs, but I couldn’t get it to flow like natural language. Just like an accent, language skill lies beyond the reach of my memory.

The boss was a guy from Israel (I asked him) who spent most of his time on the phone while the other two worked. He’d told me the furniture had been liberated from a nearby U-Store complex.

I’m not a great judge of quality, but it all looked really expensive—as well as tacky. Orange and purple cape-things dangled off the backs of the dining chairs, each printed with leopard spots. There was an exquisite, solid walnut table shaped like two hands facing up, with each finger spread wide to hold a different drink. The best example was an eight-foot tall waterfall-thing with fake bonsai trees and miniature Japanese pagodas—the thing must have weighed a ton because even the Israeli guy had to help get it inside. It had a sticker on it marked, “bedroom.” In a surprising nod to convention, there were prints of famous paintings. But no—actually, they were prints of Erika standing thoughtfully in an artist’s smock, painting the works of the masters herself.

Something told me Nate was footing the bill for all this crap. As directed, I had them stack the boxes with the red stickers in the dining room—presumably, her personal stuff. I’d have to go snooping through them later.

It was one o’clock and still no sign of Erika. I didn’t need her, but I did worry our relationship was getting a little one-sided. It takes care and consideration to make a marriage work, dammit.

When she finally arrived, I was in the middle of helping unload an exquisite mahogany dining table edged with both Egyptian hieroglyphics and an enormous Yin and Yang symbol in the center. The older guy stood leaning against the truck, clearly pooped from trying to make sense of the clashing cultural symbolism. I didn’t mind. It felt good to use Nate’s muscles.

I caught her eye as I carried my half into the house—and with it a strong sense of disapproval, which she made clearer when I came back out to say, “Hi.”

“Is this what we’re paying these clowns for? So you can hurt yourself doing their job?”

I started to protest, but before I could Erika shot in with those machine gun kisses, and suddenly she was making a lot of sense. I glanced over and caught the Israeli guy watching us with a lascivious smirk plastered on his face.

Smarmy bastard, ain’t he?

“I’m sorry, Hun Bun,” Erika said. “Things ran late.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” I said. Then I lowered my voice and nodded back at the Israeli. “Hey, listen. I want to give these guys a good tip, but that guy hasn’t done anything—all he does is talk on his phone. Can you spot me a couple of twenties? I forgot my PIN.”

“What? How could you forget that?”

“Eh, I use my card like a VISA. Cash is so five minutes ago.”

Erika looked scandalized.

“Sweetie, that’s not very smart. What if you get stranded somewhere and they don’t accept checks or credit cards?”

“I could always pay with my body.”

No snorty laugh this time. But she did give me the cash—and a reproachful look that spoke volumes.

“You need to call them and get your PIN reset.”

Nodding, I said, “Already planned on it.”

“You better.”

When the Israeli took yet another call, I quietly pulled the two men aside and gave them each a twenty. Then I held my finger to my lips and went, “Shhhh.” Nodding their understanding, they pocketed the cash and went back to work. Too bad I couldn’t give them more.

And Bingo was his name-O!

I ran upstairs, grabbed Nate’s checkbook and returned. Then I pulled them both into the dining room and recited from memory, “Como se llama?”

Probably thinking I was just being friendly, the older man said, “Esteban.”

“Enrique Diaz,” the young one said, realizing what was happening and prompting the older man to give his full name.

“Esteban Morales,” the older man said, catching on.

Quickly, I wrote out and handed each man a check for $20,000. Then, pantomiming a phone call and pointing to the name of the bank on the check, I said, “Call me. Call me if
problema
at the
banco
. Ok?
Banco manana, manana
.”

Despite trying to do something good, I felt like an obnoxious tourist at a beach resort.

Both of them looked at their big checks with surprised expressions, then they each nodded their thanks, with Esteban throwing in a small bow. Watching them head back to work, I wondered if they’d actually try to cash them. Nate’s phone number was on them if the bank needed to validate anything.

“What took you so long?” Erika said, suspiciously.

Pretending not to notice, I said, “Are you hungry? It looks like they’re just about done and I’m starved.”

“You and food—all you do is eat, eat eat.”

“I
eat
, therefore I
ham
.”

I thought that was pretty funny, but when I looked up for immediate gratification I found she’d stopped paying attention.

When the movers were done, we left everything in place, then locked up and headed out. Erika said she had some shopping to do, so we drove to a mall I’d been to once before.

Shopping with a woman hadn’t changed much over the years. Still dull as ever, only faintly made up for by the get-out-of-creepy-free card for loitering near the lingerie mannequins. One other good thing: this was the longest Erika and I had interacted without one of us crying.

Erika said the closet at her apartment would barely fill a quarter of her new one at the McMansion, and she was on a mission to bring it to the same lopsided ratio of clothes-to-space she felt comfortable with.

“Oh honey, I feel so happy,” she said at one point, dancing around me and jostling the six bags I carried from four different stores, looped to my elbows.

“Me too,” I said, pirouetting around a little girl rushing toward me in a mad dash for freedom—possibly from some other Sherpa farther up.

“Should we get a cat?” she said.

“Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere, really. Just thinking.”

Erika stayed silent for a time. Probably just thinking again. I couldn’t think because one of the plastic straps from some French-sounding shoe store started ripping, forcing me to improvise by poking a hole lower down as a makeshift handle. The problem, I discovered, was that my hands kept warming the otherwise firm plastic, softening it just enough to make it easy to tear when overloaded. That load, apparently, maxed out at exactly one box of loafers, another box of black leather ankle boots and a third box of red and black T-strap sandals.

“God, my feet are killing me,” Erika said when we got back to the parking garage, three hours later. We’d acquired another three bags by then. When she turned her attention to the contents of her purse, I chucked the lot of them over the backseat and into the cargo compartment. Nothing broke, but it felt good anyway.

It was when both of us were in the SUV and ready to head back to the house—that’s when she attacked me.

Did you know the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body? Stu James—a guy in my ninth grade gym class—told me that, and everybody agreed that Stu was pretty sharp. I’m not sure how tongue strength is calculated, but if it had anything to do with wiggliness or the ability to reach anywhere in your mouth clear to the back of your skull, then Erika had the Arnold Schwarzenegger of tongues.

Breathing heavily, groping me shamelessly, she whispered, “You didn’t really think I was going to drag you all over the mall and not give you your reward, did you?”

Zzzzzzzip…

“Wait, Erika! Hey, no—”

“Shh, let me handle this.”

Panicked, I shouted, “That’s what I’m afraid of! There’s people—old people! Cub Scouts! Someone could—”

She didn’t reply. It wasn’t physically possible for her.

“
Erika!
”

Lifting her head, she looked at me just a little bit dangerously.

“Shut the fuck up Hun Bun.”

Chapter 23

My mind twisted in turmoil. Sweet, delicious, yet suitably guilty, turmoil.

Erika had left for the evening. I sat in the kitchen nursing a Coke, lost in my thoughts. Thankfully, the incident in the parking garage hadn’t extended past the threshold of the house. I mean, I was pretty sure I felt happy about that.

What was I going to do? Erika didn’t know me. She thought I was Nate Cantrell—her
Hun Bun
. And what about the real Nate? Look, Nate deserved a lot of things—probably—but he didn’t deserve a loser like me taking advantage of his fiancée. I felt like lice droppings—worse than lice droppings. All right, make that an insult to lice droppings.

But other than that… brother, I felt wonderful! I had to fight down an urge to dial up my good buddy Rob and talk about cars or football or guns. On an impulse, I ran downstairs, hopped on Nate’s Universal bench press and pumped out two sets of 250 lbs. Barely breaking a sweat, I rubbed my arms, squeezing as I moved from shoulder to biceps to triceps, fascinated by how they’d swollen and how cool they felt. Despite everything, I was overcome by the powerful certainty that it was good to be alive and in the world. I knew I’d survive my guilt (for the Erika thing) if I promised to never, absolutely ever allow anything like that to happen again.

Just that once, and never again,
I offered up quietly to the sky.

I’d made a mistake and fully admitted it—I even meant it. I could get past it if he could. Didn’t the Great Whomever have to forgive you if you meant it? And wasn’t he sort of responsible for putting me in this mess to begin with, when I’d been perfectly satisfied rotting in my prison, suffering for all my past mistakes? Looked at the right way, I was the real victim in all this.

Looked at the other way, he could go to Hell.

***

The next morning, after making myself a stack of pancakes to go with my bacon and chocolate milk, I heard Nate’s ringtone from the other room.