Dead River, page 13
“Hey, Dom!”
Footsteps paraded toward the front of the house.
A tall heavyset man sauntered out from the kitchen and wiped his hands on a white, blue-striped dishtowel. He had a large pale face and a thin canopy of thinning brown hair combed down toward the crown of his large prominent forehead. He had a pale bullet-shaped head with a narrow blue eyes, a large piggish nose and a pink pencil-thin mouth.
He wore a white tee-shirt under an unbuttoned blue shirt, brown slacks, fuzzy brown house slippers and a cheap-looking class ring on the third finger on his left hand. He stopped inside the mouth of the hallway, leaned against the doorway with both hands and greeted her with a cold and sullen gaze. He had a gossipy-neighbor vibe about him that Colin found a little uncomfortable but he was the last person to tell someone how to live their life..
He stopped in his tracks and flashed the new visitors an annoyed look. He tossed the towel back onto his right shoulder and sneered at Quintero. Colin had to have been blind not to have seen that, even though they’d just stepped through the door, they’d already overstayed their welcome.
“I caught these two trying to hotwire the cruiser.” She said. “We’ve got some new visitors for tonight so add two more cans to the pot, please.”
He scoffed, jerked the towel off of his left shoulder and spun back around toward the kitchen.
“Thank you, Dominic.”
Colin and Jason glanced at each other. He caught movement in the corner of his left eye and glanced down the living room hallway.
A slender flat-chested woman appeared, a giant pair of Bluetooth headphones plastered to her head. She looked somewhere between her mid-to-late thirties. She had a wide angular face that tapered off into a V-shaped chin, wide-set blue eyes and boyish-cut pink hair on a bean-shaped head. She wore a bright blue sports bra with the NIKE Swoosh logo printed across her left breast, white Converse sneakers, and a pair of gray cotton sweat pants.
She extended her hand and said, “I’m Pixie.”
After he shook her hand, Jason said, “Where’s Dixie and Jinx?”
She cast a vague look at him for a few seconds before realization set in. She snatched a quick breath and sighed, her mouth shaped into a round pink O.
“I love that cartoon.”
“I used to watch it every day after school until my dad got home from work.”
“We’re having homemade vegetable soup. I hope you’re not a picky eater.”
“I’m famished.” Jason said.
Pixie shifted back and forth on the balls of her feet, bright-red blemishes spreading across her cheeks and scanned Colin from head to toe. Teresa placed the shotgun in the same place she’d retrieved the door jamb and placed her hands on her hips.
“Where were you coming from?”
“From the river.” Colin said. “It’s the safest place to be right now.”
She slipped the ball cap from her head and tossed it onto the couch. A long curtain of shimmering black hair spilled out across her shoulders and draped the back of her neck. When Colin glanced at her, his heart nor did his stomach gave a playful twitch.
“Well at least you made it.” Pixie said. “We’ve got a couple of extra rooms if you want to stay.”
Teresa approached Jason. “What’s her name?”
“You should stay for a while.”
“Can we stay?” Jason said.
It had been a while since either one of them had eaten anything. They would’ve had to hunker down somewhere for the night so why not here.
Colin nodded. “Sure. We’ll try to be out of your way as soon as possible.”
He scanned the house from side to side and stacked his arms across his chest.
“How are you able to—”
Teresa said. “We’re rocking four generators but we only run them during the day because gas is so scarce we can’t keep them running all of the time.”
“I apologize for intruding on you.”
“No need to apologize.” She said. “You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“That’s nice of you,” Colin said. “but we’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”
Teresa cast a narrow glance at him.
“Where do you have to be that’s so important?”
“It’s a long story.”
Teresa shrugged her shoulders and decided not to press him any further. Colin had to admit—only to himself though—that it’d felt good to be someplace safe for once.
A tinny ringing sound tinkled. Everyone stopped and glanced into the dining room. Dom stood on the opposite end of the table, the dingy-white dishtowel still draped over the same shoulder. He flashed a friendly nod at the new visitors, set a tall metal pot into the middle of the table and wiped his face with the dish towel.
“Dinner’s ready.” He said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE first ten minutes were nothing but the sounds of lips smacking, followed by the occasional scrape of a spoon sliding against the edges of a bowl and a chorus of deep satisfying sighs. It was the first for some and the first for a few but it was good for once. They’d not only broke bread but shared plenty of compliments (greeted with an eye-roll from Dominic), flirtatious smiles (mostly from Pixie to Colin) and even more eye-rolls (from Dominic once again).
Pixie and Jason sat on the left side of the table while Teresa and Dominic sat at both ends of the table. Colin sat on the right side of the table even although Pixie had offered to sit beside of him. He refused her offer out of respect; it wasn’t that he didn’t trust any of them but once you put your guard down it was all over after that.
For all he knew, she might’ve had a boot knife tucked up under her bra, ready to spring it free from its sling. Dominic might try to pull a gun out from under the table and hold them hostage. It wasn’t until after his second bowl that he realized his paranoid thoughts were due to lack of hunger and fatigue.
Once he was finished with his second bowl, he’d felt a lot better about the company. Besides, if they were going to kill him, they would’ve done it by now. He helped himself to the last bite of soup clinging to the inside of the bowl, licked his lips, set the spoon inside of the bowl and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
Every few seconds, they stared up from their bowls to watch Jason feed himself, then take another spoonful to feed his sister. Before they dug in, Dominic cooked up a can of peas, cooled them down and smashed them with a spoon. Before Jason had taken over the reins of feeding his little sister, Rosie tried to grab the spoon a few times to do it herself but it’d fell from her hands and clattered across the tabletop.
Although the food was great, Colin couldn’t bring himself to enjoy it as much as he wanted to. It’d been a welcome change from canned soup warmed over a hot plate and even colder chunks of chicken breasts. He’d been accustomed to his own thoughts therefore and felt out of place, as if he were in some other part of the world he knew nothing about.
He couldn’t wait to get back to the ALICIA and get this little fiasco over with.
Over the past five months, his boat had become his home, a floating sanctuary in a dead world.
Teresa tapped his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“Would you like some more?” Dominic said.
“I’m good.” He said. “The soup was good, thanks.”
Dom and Jason helped themselves to a second bowl. The wind thrummed against the windows and stirred the treetops. Teresa passed a tight-lipped smile across the table at Colin; he returned it.
A smile spreading across her face, she said, “This stuff brings back a lot of memories.”
Colin nodded.
“I used to come into Dom’s café every other Wednesday and order—”
“The double bee-ell-tee with an extra tomato and a bowl of chili with extra hot sauce.”
Holding his spoon over the bowl, Colin said, “I could never stomach all of that hot stuff.”
“Some people can and some people can’t.” Dominic said. “If you can’t take the heat young man, then stay out of the kitchen.”
There was a sharp derisive tone to his voice that nearly drew the breath from the very house itself. His words fell on deaf ears.
“I accidentally ate one of my grandma’s chili peppers,” Jason said. “and my mouth burned for like two hours.”
Teresa said. “You’re either born with an iron stomach or you’re not.”
“Before the zombies came,” Jason said. “I couldn’t look at a bowl of chili without thinking someone else ate it before I did.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the room when Jason mentioned the “Z” word. Rosie broke the silence by reaching over for her spoon. Teresa set her spoon inside of her bowl, dabbed her mouth with a paper towel, spun around in her seat and held her arms out to Jason.
“Do you mind if I feed her while you eat?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.” He said. “My arm could use a break.”
She slid the bowl of peas to her side of the table, perched Rosie onto her right thigh and kept her upright by pressing her hand in the middle of her back. They traded baby lingo for a few seconds, dug her spoon into the bowl and scooped out a generous amount of peas. Jason snatched two more slices of bread from the small wicker basket sitting in the middle of the table and dug in.
“I never ate the chili until I was thirteen when I was spending the night at my aunt’s house.” Colin said. “I loved chicken noddle and tomato but I was a picky eater for a long time.”
“What made you finally eat it?”
“My aunt gave me the old-fashioned ‘eat it or starve’ ultimatum.”
Dom shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth, rolled his eyes and stood up from the table. He picked up everyone’s bowls—cutting Jason off in mid spoon-to-mouth motion—and dropped them angrily into the pot; the bowls landed inside of the pot with a sucking sound like a boot being pulled from the muck. Colin felt something splash across his left cheek and waited for Dom to go into the kitchen before wiping it off.
Jason continued to eat, ignoring the anger blooming across Dom’s face. A second ripple of silence filled the house save for the low tick of the wall clock hung above the batwing door. They glanced around the room, scanning the photos on the walls that’d held no importance to them; each one had been a tiny reminder of a time when Life had meant something to everyone.
“It’s kind of funny when you think about it.” Teresa glanced around the table. “How the same rules your elders taught you when you were kid still manage to stick around when you become an adult.”
“No one knew how to slap a child better than my grandmother.” Pixie said. “We used to call her Octopus because she’d stretch her arm across the room like a tentacle and hit you hard enough to knock your eyes out.”
Teresa set the spoon down beside Rosie’s bowl, drew a crucifix with her fingers across her chest and retrieved the spoon. Colin thought he saw a tear protruding from the corner of Pixie’s eye but wasn’t sure. Alicia had the same romantic glint in her eyes when he first met her nine years ago and then again on their wedding day.
“Nothing in life goes the way you want it to.” She said. “That’s the part they don’t tell you about because when you’re a kid it all looks so easy.”
“I think that was why I ran away when I was seventeen.” Pixie said. “My parents wanted me get a job after high school but I waited until I was a lot older before I did it. I was ready to be on my own and earn every dollar I wanted and needed but no one prepares you for how violent the real world can be.”
Dominic hurried back into the room to retrieve Jason’s bowl.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“It was very good, thanks.”
Dominic gave Jason’s head a gentle pat, wiped the tiny puddle of broth from the table and walked silently back into the kitchen. The same uncomfortable silence that entered the room along with him stayed with them long after he left the room.
He burst back into the room, carrying a small silver tray with a sterling silver carafe and four white-ceramic coffee cups. He peered across the table at Colin, his face locked in a tight-lipped mask of anger; a large wet stain spread across the bottom of his tee-shirt. He filled the nearest cup, dropped three cubes of sugar inside and stirred it with a thin plastic stir stick.
Raising the cup to his lips, he said to Colin, “I bet your life story is better than everyone else’s, huh?”
“I killed my wife.”
A third blanket of silence enveloped the room. Dominic lowered the cup from his mouth and sauntered across the living room toward the bottom of the staircase. Rosie swung her arms out from her waist, knocked the spoon off the table and onto the floor with a sharp tinkle. Teresa bent down to retrieve the spoon, sat up in her chair and cast a cold angry glance at them. She wasn’t about to sit there and listen to them bicker any longer. She’d hear enough of that for one day.
It was apparent to Colin that they were about as welcome as a pulled muscle. The earlier they’d woke up, the sooner they could leave. Although he hated to pull Jason away from here, he still had a promise to fulfill if not to Jason and Rosie but to Stacey as well.
Pixie made an act out of drinking the last drop of punch to hide the awkward stare on her face and set the empty cup back on the table. Jason glanced up at the big chandelier still hovering above the table and then swept his eyes over the sleek white crown molding above the windows. Jason stared down at the floor and kicked his legs back and forth to the rhythm of the song he’d been singing under his breath.
Colin slid away from the table, pushed his chair back under and finished his drink in one tiny gulp. He carried his red plastic cup into the kitchen, dropped it into the knee-high wastebasket next to the end of the countertop and padded across the small, connected foyer at the rear of the kitchen.
He stepped through a flimsy screen door, ignored the creaky hinges and onto a large screened-in porch. A round glass patio table with metal cushioned chairs sat to his left; a spent candle lay like a pile of creamy wax spread across the surface, jabbing a crooked black wick at the air. A pair of cheap-looking lounge chairs sat off to the far-left side, their sleek white frames streaked by jagged fingers of rust. He felt the cool summer breeze whistling through a large notch on the lower right corner of the screen and caressed his clothes.
Outside, moonlight sifted through the tree branches and outlined the discarded vehicles still sitting cock-eyed along the street; odd shadows bled across the curbs and sidewalks like sporadic ink blots. Crickets sang from inside the pockets of darkness tucked between the necklace of other houses sitting back from the curbs.
He leaned against the middle porch pillar and gazed out across the moonlit grass. He scanned the houses sitting off in the distance and saw tendrils of smoke drifting toward the moonlit sky like the nostrils of a snoring dragon. He leaned away from the porch pillar, felt a less than tolerable breeze grazing the back of his neck and hitched his pullover tighter around him when shuffled across the porch behind him.
At first, he thought it was Dominic coming out here to retaliate against him. Teresa stood behind him, holding two cups of steaming black coffee in each hand.
“I thought you might like some.”
“Sure.” He said. “Where are the kids?”
Handing him a steaming cup of coffee, she said, “Pixie is showing him where they’ll be sleeping. She promised to make a little bed out of a cardboard box so that he wouldn’t suffocate her in the middle of the night.”
They leaned against the screen and gazed out over the hillside. He took a sip from the steaming mug, closed his eyes and sighed.
“This stuff tastes like my first kiss.” He said.
“I’ll bet.” She said.
She took a sip, lowered the cup and drew a cloud of air into her lungs.
“I don’t remember the last time I’ve ever drank so much coffee even before everything went to shit.”
“I couldn’t get through the morning without it.” He said. “My wife Alicia always had a cup waiting for me as soon as I got dressed for work.”
Silence hung in the air for as long as the crickets would allow. They took a sip at the same time and sighed.
Her brows furrowed, she said, “Were you telling the truth?”
“About what?”
“About your wife?” She said. “Did you really kill her?”
He gazed down at the film of dust coating the porch railing and then up at the bright moonlit sky. The wind picked up and slammed the screen against the railing.
“She was dead long before this.” He said.
He flicked his gaze from Teresa, gazed at the gray green grass and took another sip.
PART TWO
My boat, my rules
“Hey, baby.”
The sweet silky voice that didn’t belong to his beautiful wife was proof.
Danielle was five-feet-four with a pale heavyset frame, thick thighs and drooping white breasts. Her pasty-white hair was cut close to the nape of her neck and her narrow blue eyes glowed under a thick ring of dark mascara. She had the look of a promiscuous girl who hovered around illegal street-races, attracting men left and right with false promises of sex.
He’d first met her three weeks after she’d been busted for a DUI and child endangerment. With her two children in the backseat of her father’s blue Chevy Sonic, she was caught weaving across the center lane three times by a sheriff’s deputy. Upon further inspection, her blood-alcohol level was four times over the legal limit. She spent three days in jail, paid (or her father did) a five-hundred dollar fine and agreed to attend court appointed rehab in order to regain custody of her children.
Their tryst began the day after Alicia’s third and final miscarriage. She’d come into his office wearing a tight denim skirt, red pumps and a low-cut pink shirt with three jagged holes cut across the chest area, exposing the tops of her supple milky breasts.
