Final Destination 3, page 14
part #1 of Final Destination Series
"Or," Kevin replied, "this could all be a bunch of bullshit we're making up out of our heads because we're so freaked out about all the shit that's happened."
Wendy nodded, then suddenly swayed and stumbled. She steadied herself on Jason's headstone and shook her head.
Kevin stepped toward her, concerned. "Jeez," he said, "Are you alright?"
"I'm… I'm fine," Wendy replied, though she sounded anything but fine. "I'm just a little tired. That's all."
Kevin put a concerned hand on her arm. "When was the last time you had anything to eat?" he asked.
Wendy scowled at him. "You sound like my mom," she told him.
"I'm serious, Wendy," Kevin said.
"I…" Wendy looked away. "Uh, yesterday, maybe?"
"Yesterday maybe?" Kevin took her arm and turned her toward the parking lot. "Okay, come on. We can't have you dropping dead in a cemetery. That's just not right. Burgers on me, what do you say?"
She looked up at him, face tired and grateful, nodding like a child. It made Kevin feel good to finally be able to do something concrete to help Wendy, to take care of her like he'd promised Jay he would. For the first time since the accident, he almost felt like himself again.
12
Frank
Frank Cheek stood in the damp, musty confines of his bachelor's bathroom, staring at his brand new, bleached blond hair. Well, it had said blond on the box, but it was really more like a sort of loud, brassy orange. Less Dolph Lungren and more Bozo the Clown. He'd known that using his roommate's photo on that Internet dating website was going to get him into trouble.
Frank's roommate Sean never seemed to have any problem scoring. He was blond and sly with underwear model looks and a kind of bad boy charisma that chicks ate up with two forks. He seemed to have a different broad every night of the week. Frank mostly hung around Sean hoping to scoop up a few sloppy seconds, but since they'd moved in together last spring, Frank hadn't gotten lucky even once.
When Sean suggested that Frank try signing up for one of those online hook-up services, he was skeptical to say the least.
"Come on, dude," Frank said. "How am I gonna know the chick I'm writing to isn't some fat, ugly beast?"
"They post photos," Sean replied. "Come on, you've bought things online before, right? Take a chance, Frankie boy. Just think of it as pussy eBay."
Frank shrugged and said maybe he would give it a try.
It wasn't until a week later that he signed on to HotMatch dot com. After some creative truth stretching in his personal information, particularly in the "height" and "income" boxes, he went searching through his hard drive for a decent picture of himself. He rejected one after the other until he came to a shot of him and Sean together in front of Sean's brand new cherry red '05 Mustang GT convertible. He opened the picture in Photoshop and started selecting the area to crop Sean out of the shot, but then hesitated. He opened the pulsing rectangle around Sean instead, framing his friend so that the bottom of the picture ended just below the ostentatiously large bulge in the crotch of Sean's jeans. What would it hurt to use Sean's photo? By the time chicks found out Frank had used someone else's picture, they would already be there with him, and he was sure he could charm them into forgiving him. He made sure enough of the sporty ride was in the shot to let them think he drove a cool car. Chicks love fast cars. It would be no big deal to get Sean to let him borrow the Pony for his first couple of hot dates.
Frank checked in on HotMatch dot com regularly for several weeks and got no responses. Disheartened, he checked less and less often. Then the whole Red River thing happened and he forgot all about it. He had other stuff on his mind. Two days ago, out of the blue, he had received notification of a message from a girl calling herself "mandicat." He signed on and clicked on her name to check out her profile. To his surprise, she was a hot little spinner with a tight, rockin bod and cute, freckled face. He didn't even bother to read about how she loved cats, rollerblading and Gwen Stefani, and whatever other bullshit. He just scrolled down to her physical stats. Eighteen years old. Five foot one, one hundred and one pounds, 32-22-32. Nice. She claimed to be looking for "hot, sexy guys who want to party." Frank wanted to party all right. He opened her message.
i luv yr hot rod. yr car is nice 2 ;-) how bout a ride? xoxo mandi
He must have composed twenty replies, erasing one after the other before they could be sent. He paced and fretted, and whipped himself into near hysterics, until finally, he simply asked her where and when he could pick her up. Centuries seemed to go by while he waited for her response, but when it came, his jaw dropped.
6pm friday night the peppermint panda, 15th and cole, but only if we can ride with the top down! xoxo mandi
She had attached a slightly overexposed photo of herself with a big drunken grin, and the neckline of her shirt pulled down to expose sweet and perky little tits. Frank's kind of girl! Plus the Peppermint Panda was a titty bar. She must be a stripper, getting off the afternoon shift at six, obviously a total slut. Frank would be practically guaranteed to get some.
Even the news of Ashley and Ashlyn's horrible deaths could not get Frank down. In a way he felt bad about what had happened to them, and about missing their joint funeral, but after all, they had blown him off over and over. They thought they were too good for him and now that they were dead. Frank didn't see any point wasting time crying over spilled milk when he had his hot date to think of.
He didn't sleep a wink that night. He was far too wound up. When he finally gave up and got out of bed that morning, he spontaneously decided to bleach his hair, figuring that way it would be easy to claim that the picture of Sean was just an old picture of himself. Never mind that Sean was a good six inches taller and forty-five pounds heavier, or that he was muscular and handsome while Frank was scrawny and chicken chested. As the vicious chemical goo soaked into Frank's hair, filling the bathroom with a harsh, noxious stench like the stuff the school janitor used to clean the toilets, Frank schemed and plotted to figure out what he was going to tell Mandi. He decided he would say that he had been sick. That he'd had cancer and lost weight, but after a long, brave battle, he'd finally beaten it, and was trying to get back to his former shape. Girls loved that kind of Oprah tearjerker bullshit. Perfect.
As he rinsed the bleach out of his hair in the mildewed shower stall, he let his mind run wild imagining the things that Mandi would do to him. Maybe she would give him a smoker while he was driving. That would be so awesome, though if Sean found out he would have Frank's ass. Still, to get a blowjob from a hot stripper while going ninety miles per hour in a hot Mustang GT –that would be worth any kid of retribution. He could die happy after that.
But the bleach blond hair hadn't come out so good. He didn't look anything like Sean, who was a natural blond, and whose longish, tousled hair was a complex kaleidoscope of sun-bleached highlights and warm brandy undertones. The unvaried, single shade of brassy orange that Frank's hair had become made his sallow complexion look yellowy and jaundiced. Plus, the strong bleaching chemicals had brutalized Frank's thin, oily hair, frizzing it out into a ragged near-Afro of split ends and knots. He was supposed to meet Mandi in less than two hours. He had no choice but to tie a red bandanna around the worst of it and hope for the best.
Slinking back to his room, he threw on some black jeans and gave a few crumpled T-shirts the sniff test before selecting a relatively clean one. Then, at the last minute, he decided to wear the silver mudflap girl necklace he had won at Red River. He regarded himself in the smeary, full-length mirror inside his closet. Yeah, too fucking sharp. Absolutely. Watch out Mandi, Frankie's here to drive you around the block.
Frank wandered out into the living room. The television was on, showing some loud, gory horror movie, but the room was empty. Their ratty, second-hand sofa was covered with a scattering of filmy, feminine under things. A pair of Sean's jeans lay inside out under the beer can-cluttered coffee table. Beneath the terrified screams and power tool racket of the horror movie, Frank could make out the unmistakable sounds of Sean nailing some broad in his room, pounding her into the headboard while she hollered and wailed and begged for more. Same shit, different dame. Frank sighed. He had been hoping to talk Sean into letting him borrow the Pony, but Sean was clearly otherwise engaged.
Frank toed his roommate's crumpled jeans and a cascade of change spilled out of the pocket onto the spotty blue carpet, along with the key to the 'Stang.
Frank threw a surreptitious glance back at his roommate's closed door. He squatted down and snagged the key, closing it in his sweaty fist. Surely Sean wouldn't mind. He was busy anyway. He had practically promised that he would let Frank use his car. What was the point of interrupting him when he was in mid-bang? That would be bad manners. Better to just leave a note.
Frank shuffled through the piles of unpaid bills and takeout menus on the kitchen counter until he found an empty envelope and a giveaway pen from a gynecologist's office.
Sean, he wrote. You seemed busy so I didn't want to interrupt. Anyway, thanks for letting me have the Pony for my hot date. You're the best. Gory details when I return. Your pal, Frank.
That's good enough, Frank thought, folding the note and setting it on top of the television. He hoped the loud movie and Sean's own noisy endeavors would drown out the throaty rumble of the 'Stang powerful V8 engine as Frank slid her out of the driveway, just in case Sean changed his mind at the last minute. Frank gave himself one last once over in the hallway mirror, and headed out. As he left, he decided to grab his video camera. Mandi was a stripper after all, used to showing it off on a daily basis, so she probably wouldn't object to his capturing the event for posterity. Just so long as she didn't wig out about the whole business with Sean's photo…
Sitting in the driver's seat of Sean's convertible Mustang, Frank felt all his doubts and worries slip away. This car was better than a vibrator. There was no way a chick could sit in this car and not want to blow the guy driving it. He slid the key into the ignition and paused, waiting to see if Sean would come running, naked and sweaty and gunning for bear at the sound of his beloved ride taking off without him.
Nothing happened. Frank let out the breath he had been holding and put the car in gear, rolling slowly out into the street. He looked down at his watch. Shit. He was almost an hour early. What the hell was he supposed to do for a whole hour? Driving down the main drag and enjoying the appreciative glances of everyone he passed, Frank decided he should grab a quick bite or something. He needed to keep his strength up. Sean would have a fit if he knew Frank was eating a burger in his precious car, but to be honest, that was not the messiest thing he planned to do in the Mustang that night. What Sean didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Frank smiled and turned into the drive through of the Butchie Burger.
13
Hank’s Misfortune
Hank Trayne sat behind the wheel of the crummy, rented box truck, waiting at a red light. The truck was a shuddering, mismatched bucket of bolts that had clearly been bought at auction when it became too old and crotchety for a legit truck rental company. The familiar logo of the former company had been thinly painted over, and the ugly new blue and orange logo E-Z MOVE had been plastered, crookedly on top.
It had no air, no power steering, and nothing but a weak, staticky radio. The rearview mirror had a long, thin crack down the center, and the sun visor on the driver's side would not stay up. Still, it was the best that Hank could get, with no notice and no credit card, and even then he had to call in a major favor from an old drinking buddy who was the E-Z MOVE manager.
Hank had been driving in pointless circles for more than three hours and had absolutely no idea where he was going. He didn't want to admit it, but he was really hoping that Brenda would call and ask him to come back.
Brenda, that bitch. She hadn't even given Hank a chance. When he came home still bombed from this latest two-day bender –of which he remembered less than six hours worth of events, mostly at the beginning- he found all his things on the lawn and the lock changed. Brenda would not answer the door, no matter how hard he pounded, and eventually that nosy little fag next door had called the cops on Hank. A lady cop went inside to talk to Brenda and when that lady cop came back out she had a real serious look on her face. She shook her head at Hank and told him that Brenda never wanted to see him again. He had no choice. He had to leave. Of course, Brenda's name was on everything, since it had been her place to start with, and Hank couldn't pass a credit check to save his life since he owed about a billion dollars to pretty much everyone on earth. Every single month, he gave Brenda almost every cent he earned from his job at the Home Land warehouse, minus beer money, of course, to put towards the phone, the rent and the gas and all that, but apparently that didn't mean shit, just because her name was on all the checks.
Driving around aimlessly, Hank couldn't figure out where things had gone so wrong with Brenda. When they first met, she was a fun, outgoing woman who loved hitting the bars and painting the town red. She was so pretty, like one of them Victoria Secret girls, and she was six years younger than Hank. He couldn't believe it when she started flirting with him that night in the Roost. She was wearing pretty gold earrings and a classy outfit with nylons and heels. She drank Cosmopolitans, or Cosmos as she called them, and crossed her legs back and forth while occasionally dangling her shoe off her elegant narrow foot. It didn't seem possible to Hank that she didn't have a guy. A body like that sleeping alone at night was like some kind of crime or something.
Hank, on the other hand, didn't have all that much to offer. He was just another blue-collar knucklehead with a face like an old pit bull and ten bucks to his name. Still, she didn't seem to care. She walked right over with her clicking heels and long, nyloned legs whispering as they brushed together under her tight skirt, and asked if he wanted to play pool with her. She beat him three times in a row. As she bent down to sink the eight ball one more time, cleavage pale and glorious in the deep V of her silky blouse and dark eyes smoldering, she asked him if he wanted to try a different game. They never made it back to her place and wound up doing it in the passenger's seat of his battered black Rivera. She was so good it scared him.
His friends all joked about it, but she just couldn't seem to get enough of him. He bragged and tried to take all the credit, but in truth, he wasn't sure what she saw in him. He was terrified that she would wise up, realize that he was just a no account loser and move on to greener pastures.
Hank's life had not panned out the way he had hoped. He was still doing exactly the same thing he had been doing in high school, only somehow it was twenty-five years later. Still working a crummy job and making just enough for bills and beer, and still killing time in the same bars with the same bunch of losers. He had once harbored vague fantasies of learning some kind of skill and scoring a plum Union gig with full bennies and everything, but time just got away from him and all of a sudden he was forty-one. He had become an old dog, incapable of learning new tricks.
Brenda had made him feel like a kid again. He bought himself new clothes, not just the same old jeans and T-shirts from the Good Will, but sharp threads with class. If you looked up class in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of Brenda. She worked for a computer company and was real smart. She was a career woman. Hank wanted to make sure that he looked good next to her. He got his hair cut in a shorter, more trendy style that needed hair gel to make it stand up right. He bought decent shoes, stashing the old engineer boots in the back of the closet. Brenda liked nice restaurants and art galleries and things. She expanded his horizons and he felt he owed it to her to look as good as she made him feel.
He was spending so much time at her place that it seemed ridiculous for him to pay rent on a place he never used. He told his roommate Jim that he was moving in with Brenda and Jim wasn't even mad. He was happy for Hank. Jim said he wished them both the best. There was something kinda wistful in Jim's face when he said that, that might have made Hank feel bad if he wasn't so busy being head over heels in love.
Those first couple of months living with Brenda were like heaven. Her place was clean and airy and full of sunshine. It smelled like her. She was Italian and liked to cook for him, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmesan and lasagna, and then she would work all that good food off him in bed. She would massage his neck while they watched TV so he didn't even mind letting her pick the shows. On weekends they would go out bar hopping and she would always play Bon Jovi on the jukebox, dancing with her hair down and her shoes off. All the men would stare at his sexy display and Hank would just smile and nod, knowing they all wished they were him. Brenda was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Although he had tried and tried to figure out exactly when it had gone wrong, he still could not put his finger on an exact moment. Brenda had started to complain about his drinking, just a little at first –a warning look or a little wordless sound- but then she got more and more vocal about it. He was having some trouble in bed on the weekends and she took it real personal. He had even passed out on her while she was going down on him one night, and he woke up with her hitting him in the chest with her little fists and crying hysterically: as if he did it on purpose or because she wasn't any good. Christ, she was the best, no bones about it. It wasn't that; it was just that he drank a little bit too much that one time. It was nothing personal, but it took several days of flowers and promises to cut down to smooth that one over. Of course, he never did cut down and things went rapidly from bad to worse.
She didn't want to go out anymore on weekends. No more pool, no more Cosmos, no more dancing with her dark, shiny hair flying around her smiling face. She developed a constant, disapproving frown, bitchy and petulant. When she found out that he still planned to go out without her, she threw stuff at him and told him she hoped he crashed his car and died. What the hell was he supposed to do? Stay home and drink, like some kind of alcoholic?
Wendy nodded, then suddenly swayed and stumbled. She steadied herself on Jason's headstone and shook her head.
Kevin stepped toward her, concerned. "Jeez," he said, "Are you alright?"
"I'm… I'm fine," Wendy replied, though she sounded anything but fine. "I'm just a little tired. That's all."
Kevin put a concerned hand on her arm. "When was the last time you had anything to eat?" he asked.
Wendy scowled at him. "You sound like my mom," she told him.
"I'm serious, Wendy," Kevin said.
"I…" Wendy looked away. "Uh, yesterday, maybe?"
"Yesterday maybe?" Kevin took her arm and turned her toward the parking lot. "Okay, come on. We can't have you dropping dead in a cemetery. That's just not right. Burgers on me, what do you say?"
She looked up at him, face tired and grateful, nodding like a child. It made Kevin feel good to finally be able to do something concrete to help Wendy, to take care of her like he'd promised Jay he would. For the first time since the accident, he almost felt like himself again.
12
Frank
Frank Cheek stood in the damp, musty confines of his bachelor's bathroom, staring at his brand new, bleached blond hair. Well, it had said blond on the box, but it was really more like a sort of loud, brassy orange. Less Dolph Lungren and more Bozo the Clown. He'd known that using his roommate's photo on that Internet dating website was going to get him into trouble.
Frank's roommate Sean never seemed to have any problem scoring. He was blond and sly with underwear model looks and a kind of bad boy charisma that chicks ate up with two forks. He seemed to have a different broad every night of the week. Frank mostly hung around Sean hoping to scoop up a few sloppy seconds, but since they'd moved in together last spring, Frank hadn't gotten lucky even once.
When Sean suggested that Frank try signing up for one of those online hook-up services, he was skeptical to say the least.
"Come on, dude," Frank said. "How am I gonna know the chick I'm writing to isn't some fat, ugly beast?"
"They post photos," Sean replied. "Come on, you've bought things online before, right? Take a chance, Frankie boy. Just think of it as pussy eBay."
Frank shrugged and said maybe he would give it a try.
It wasn't until a week later that he signed on to HotMatch dot com. After some creative truth stretching in his personal information, particularly in the "height" and "income" boxes, he went searching through his hard drive for a decent picture of himself. He rejected one after the other until he came to a shot of him and Sean together in front of Sean's brand new cherry red '05 Mustang GT convertible. He opened the picture in Photoshop and started selecting the area to crop Sean out of the shot, but then hesitated. He opened the pulsing rectangle around Sean instead, framing his friend so that the bottom of the picture ended just below the ostentatiously large bulge in the crotch of Sean's jeans. What would it hurt to use Sean's photo? By the time chicks found out Frank had used someone else's picture, they would already be there with him, and he was sure he could charm them into forgiving him. He made sure enough of the sporty ride was in the shot to let them think he drove a cool car. Chicks love fast cars. It would be no big deal to get Sean to let him borrow the Pony for his first couple of hot dates.
Frank checked in on HotMatch dot com regularly for several weeks and got no responses. Disheartened, he checked less and less often. Then the whole Red River thing happened and he forgot all about it. He had other stuff on his mind. Two days ago, out of the blue, he had received notification of a message from a girl calling herself "mandicat." He signed on and clicked on her name to check out her profile. To his surprise, she was a hot little spinner with a tight, rockin bod and cute, freckled face. He didn't even bother to read about how she loved cats, rollerblading and Gwen Stefani, and whatever other bullshit. He just scrolled down to her physical stats. Eighteen years old. Five foot one, one hundred and one pounds, 32-22-32. Nice. She claimed to be looking for "hot, sexy guys who want to party." Frank wanted to party all right. He opened her message.
i luv yr hot rod. yr car is nice 2 ;-) how bout a ride? xoxo mandi
He must have composed twenty replies, erasing one after the other before they could be sent. He paced and fretted, and whipped himself into near hysterics, until finally, he simply asked her where and when he could pick her up. Centuries seemed to go by while he waited for her response, but when it came, his jaw dropped.
6pm friday night the peppermint panda, 15th and cole, but only if we can ride with the top down! xoxo mandi
She had attached a slightly overexposed photo of herself with a big drunken grin, and the neckline of her shirt pulled down to expose sweet and perky little tits. Frank's kind of girl! Plus the Peppermint Panda was a titty bar. She must be a stripper, getting off the afternoon shift at six, obviously a total slut. Frank would be practically guaranteed to get some.
Even the news of Ashley and Ashlyn's horrible deaths could not get Frank down. In a way he felt bad about what had happened to them, and about missing their joint funeral, but after all, they had blown him off over and over. They thought they were too good for him and now that they were dead. Frank didn't see any point wasting time crying over spilled milk when he had his hot date to think of.
He didn't sleep a wink that night. He was far too wound up. When he finally gave up and got out of bed that morning, he spontaneously decided to bleach his hair, figuring that way it would be easy to claim that the picture of Sean was just an old picture of himself. Never mind that Sean was a good six inches taller and forty-five pounds heavier, or that he was muscular and handsome while Frank was scrawny and chicken chested. As the vicious chemical goo soaked into Frank's hair, filling the bathroom with a harsh, noxious stench like the stuff the school janitor used to clean the toilets, Frank schemed and plotted to figure out what he was going to tell Mandi. He decided he would say that he had been sick. That he'd had cancer and lost weight, but after a long, brave battle, he'd finally beaten it, and was trying to get back to his former shape. Girls loved that kind of Oprah tearjerker bullshit. Perfect.
As he rinsed the bleach out of his hair in the mildewed shower stall, he let his mind run wild imagining the things that Mandi would do to him. Maybe she would give him a smoker while he was driving. That would be so awesome, though if Sean found out he would have Frank's ass. Still, to get a blowjob from a hot stripper while going ninety miles per hour in a hot Mustang GT –that would be worth any kid of retribution. He could die happy after that.
But the bleach blond hair hadn't come out so good. He didn't look anything like Sean, who was a natural blond, and whose longish, tousled hair was a complex kaleidoscope of sun-bleached highlights and warm brandy undertones. The unvaried, single shade of brassy orange that Frank's hair had become made his sallow complexion look yellowy and jaundiced. Plus, the strong bleaching chemicals had brutalized Frank's thin, oily hair, frizzing it out into a ragged near-Afro of split ends and knots. He was supposed to meet Mandi in less than two hours. He had no choice but to tie a red bandanna around the worst of it and hope for the best.
Slinking back to his room, he threw on some black jeans and gave a few crumpled T-shirts the sniff test before selecting a relatively clean one. Then, at the last minute, he decided to wear the silver mudflap girl necklace he had won at Red River. He regarded himself in the smeary, full-length mirror inside his closet. Yeah, too fucking sharp. Absolutely. Watch out Mandi, Frankie's here to drive you around the block.
Frank wandered out into the living room. The television was on, showing some loud, gory horror movie, but the room was empty. Their ratty, second-hand sofa was covered with a scattering of filmy, feminine under things. A pair of Sean's jeans lay inside out under the beer can-cluttered coffee table. Beneath the terrified screams and power tool racket of the horror movie, Frank could make out the unmistakable sounds of Sean nailing some broad in his room, pounding her into the headboard while she hollered and wailed and begged for more. Same shit, different dame. Frank sighed. He had been hoping to talk Sean into letting him borrow the Pony, but Sean was clearly otherwise engaged.
Frank toed his roommate's crumpled jeans and a cascade of change spilled out of the pocket onto the spotty blue carpet, along with the key to the 'Stang.
Frank threw a surreptitious glance back at his roommate's closed door. He squatted down and snagged the key, closing it in his sweaty fist. Surely Sean wouldn't mind. He was busy anyway. He had practically promised that he would let Frank use his car. What was the point of interrupting him when he was in mid-bang? That would be bad manners. Better to just leave a note.
Frank shuffled through the piles of unpaid bills and takeout menus on the kitchen counter until he found an empty envelope and a giveaway pen from a gynecologist's office.
Sean, he wrote. You seemed busy so I didn't want to interrupt. Anyway, thanks for letting me have the Pony for my hot date. You're the best. Gory details when I return. Your pal, Frank.
That's good enough, Frank thought, folding the note and setting it on top of the television. He hoped the loud movie and Sean's own noisy endeavors would drown out the throaty rumble of the 'Stang powerful V8 engine as Frank slid her out of the driveway, just in case Sean changed his mind at the last minute. Frank gave himself one last once over in the hallway mirror, and headed out. As he left, he decided to grab his video camera. Mandi was a stripper after all, used to showing it off on a daily basis, so she probably wouldn't object to his capturing the event for posterity. Just so long as she didn't wig out about the whole business with Sean's photo…
Sitting in the driver's seat of Sean's convertible Mustang, Frank felt all his doubts and worries slip away. This car was better than a vibrator. There was no way a chick could sit in this car and not want to blow the guy driving it. He slid the key into the ignition and paused, waiting to see if Sean would come running, naked and sweaty and gunning for bear at the sound of his beloved ride taking off without him.
Nothing happened. Frank let out the breath he had been holding and put the car in gear, rolling slowly out into the street. He looked down at his watch. Shit. He was almost an hour early. What the hell was he supposed to do for a whole hour? Driving down the main drag and enjoying the appreciative glances of everyone he passed, Frank decided he should grab a quick bite or something. He needed to keep his strength up. Sean would have a fit if he knew Frank was eating a burger in his precious car, but to be honest, that was not the messiest thing he planned to do in the Mustang that night. What Sean didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Frank smiled and turned into the drive through of the Butchie Burger.
13
Hank’s Misfortune
Hank Trayne sat behind the wheel of the crummy, rented box truck, waiting at a red light. The truck was a shuddering, mismatched bucket of bolts that had clearly been bought at auction when it became too old and crotchety for a legit truck rental company. The familiar logo of the former company had been thinly painted over, and the ugly new blue and orange logo E-Z MOVE had been plastered, crookedly on top.
It had no air, no power steering, and nothing but a weak, staticky radio. The rearview mirror had a long, thin crack down the center, and the sun visor on the driver's side would not stay up. Still, it was the best that Hank could get, with no notice and no credit card, and even then he had to call in a major favor from an old drinking buddy who was the E-Z MOVE manager.
Hank had been driving in pointless circles for more than three hours and had absolutely no idea where he was going. He didn't want to admit it, but he was really hoping that Brenda would call and ask him to come back.
Brenda, that bitch. She hadn't even given Hank a chance. When he came home still bombed from this latest two-day bender –of which he remembered less than six hours worth of events, mostly at the beginning- he found all his things on the lawn and the lock changed. Brenda would not answer the door, no matter how hard he pounded, and eventually that nosy little fag next door had called the cops on Hank. A lady cop went inside to talk to Brenda and when that lady cop came back out she had a real serious look on her face. She shook her head at Hank and told him that Brenda never wanted to see him again. He had no choice. He had to leave. Of course, Brenda's name was on everything, since it had been her place to start with, and Hank couldn't pass a credit check to save his life since he owed about a billion dollars to pretty much everyone on earth. Every single month, he gave Brenda almost every cent he earned from his job at the Home Land warehouse, minus beer money, of course, to put towards the phone, the rent and the gas and all that, but apparently that didn't mean shit, just because her name was on all the checks.
Driving around aimlessly, Hank couldn't figure out where things had gone so wrong with Brenda. When they first met, she was a fun, outgoing woman who loved hitting the bars and painting the town red. She was so pretty, like one of them Victoria Secret girls, and she was six years younger than Hank. He couldn't believe it when she started flirting with him that night in the Roost. She was wearing pretty gold earrings and a classy outfit with nylons and heels. She drank Cosmopolitans, or Cosmos as she called them, and crossed her legs back and forth while occasionally dangling her shoe off her elegant narrow foot. It didn't seem possible to Hank that she didn't have a guy. A body like that sleeping alone at night was like some kind of crime or something.
Hank, on the other hand, didn't have all that much to offer. He was just another blue-collar knucklehead with a face like an old pit bull and ten bucks to his name. Still, she didn't seem to care. She walked right over with her clicking heels and long, nyloned legs whispering as they brushed together under her tight skirt, and asked if he wanted to play pool with her. She beat him three times in a row. As she bent down to sink the eight ball one more time, cleavage pale and glorious in the deep V of her silky blouse and dark eyes smoldering, she asked him if he wanted to try a different game. They never made it back to her place and wound up doing it in the passenger's seat of his battered black Rivera. She was so good it scared him.
His friends all joked about it, but she just couldn't seem to get enough of him. He bragged and tried to take all the credit, but in truth, he wasn't sure what she saw in him. He was terrified that she would wise up, realize that he was just a no account loser and move on to greener pastures.
Hank's life had not panned out the way he had hoped. He was still doing exactly the same thing he had been doing in high school, only somehow it was twenty-five years later. Still working a crummy job and making just enough for bills and beer, and still killing time in the same bars with the same bunch of losers. He had once harbored vague fantasies of learning some kind of skill and scoring a plum Union gig with full bennies and everything, but time just got away from him and all of a sudden he was forty-one. He had become an old dog, incapable of learning new tricks.
Brenda had made him feel like a kid again. He bought himself new clothes, not just the same old jeans and T-shirts from the Good Will, but sharp threads with class. If you looked up class in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of Brenda. She worked for a computer company and was real smart. She was a career woman. Hank wanted to make sure that he looked good next to her. He got his hair cut in a shorter, more trendy style that needed hair gel to make it stand up right. He bought decent shoes, stashing the old engineer boots in the back of the closet. Brenda liked nice restaurants and art galleries and things. She expanded his horizons and he felt he owed it to her to look as good as she made him feel.
He was spending so much time at her place that it seemed ridiculous for him to pay rent on a place he never used. He told his roommate Jim that he was moving in with Brenda and Jim wasn't even mad. He was happy for Hank. Jim said he wished them both the best. There was something kinda wistful in Jim's face when he said that, that might have made Hank feel bad if he wasn't so busy being head over heels in love.
Those first couple of months living with Brenda were like heaven. Her place was clean and airy and full of sunshine. It smelled like her. She was Italian and liked to cook for him, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmesan and lasagna, and then she would work all that good food off him in bed. She would massage his neck while they watched TV so he didn't even mind letting her pick the shows. On weekends they would go out bar hopping and she would always play Bon Jovi on the jukebox, dancing with her hair down and her shoes off. All the men would stare at his sexy display and Hank would just smile and nod, knowing they all wished they were him. Brenda was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Although he had tried and tried to figure out exactly when it had gone wrong, he still could not put his finger on an exact moment. Brenda had started to complain about his drinking, just a little at first –a warning look or a little wordless sound- but then she got more and more vocal about it. He was having some trouble in bed on the weekends and she took it real personal. He had even passed out on her while she was going down on him one night, and he woke up with her hitting him in the chest with her little fists and crying hysterically: as if he did it on purpose or because she wasn't any good. Christ, she was the best, no bones about it. It wasn't that; it was just that he drank a little bit too much that one time. It was nothing personal, but it took several days of flowers and promises to cut down to smooth that one over. Of course, he never did cut down and things went rapidly from bad to worse.
She didn't want to go out anymore on weekends. No more pool, no more Cosmos, no more dancing with her dark, shiny hair flying around her smiling face. She developed a constant, disapproving frown, bitchy and petulant. When she found out that he still planned to go out without her, she threw stuff at him and told him she hoped he crashed his car and died. What the hell was he supposed to do? Stay home and drink, like some kind of alcoholic?
