by John T Biggs
bourbon
John smiled at the security camera while the ATM
kicked out fifteen twenty-dollar bills. Photographs put ten pounds on you, but
he’d lost thirty so he’d look pretty good in the video.
He fiddled with his wedding band. Looser now that he
was thin. It slipped off his finger easily. That had to mean something didn’t
it? Something deep and important about marriage and losing thirty pounds. When a
man got skinnier, his fingers got skinnier too, but his wedding band stayed
exactly the same size. John had a lot of deep philosophical thoughts these days,
especially when his calorie count ran low. He put the ring into his pocket.
Stephanie would never forgive him if he lost it.
Now for another transaction. He needed $600 for a
pair of diamond earrings, a terrific fourteenth anniversary present for
Stephanie, and the Seven Eleven’s ATM would only give him $300 at a time.
He reached into his front pocket, where he carried
his wallet since he’d lost weight. Too much pressure on the sciatic nerve if he
put it in a back one. John smiled at the security camera one more time and
concentrated so hard at looking good that he almost didn’t hear his wedding band
bounce on the cement floor.
While the ATM spit out fifteen more twenties, John
bent over to retrieve his ring. His butt brushed against something soft. He
could tell right away what that something was. A man never forgets what a pretty
woman feels like.
“Lose something?” Pretty girl’s voice—it sounded like
laughter, and music, and the promise of things John hadn’t thought of since
fourteen years ago this coming Saturday.
He hadn’t seen her yet, but he knew what she looked
like. She’d be the perfect height. Long hair or short; color negotiable. Well
dressed, in clothing that accentuated her ideal figure. Pretty girl face, pretty
girl eyes, pretty girl smile—file footage from his youth. Stephanie still looked
like that in the dark, but after fourteen years, sometimes it had to be very
dark.
Her shoes were the first things John saw. Black mat
finish with straps over the instep, three inch stiletto heels. Probably Italian.
A man can tell a lot from a pair of shoes.
Her smile was the second thing John saw. Lips the
color of a ripe red apple. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.
John stuttered a little when he told her: “Thirty
pounds at weigh-in this morning.” But too much time had passed since she’d
asked if he lost something.
She looked confused—good look for a pretty girl. Her
features reconciled themselves with John’s fantasy. Five feet nine, way too tall
for him. Blond shoulder length hair, way too soft for him to touch. She wore a
white top and a gray pleated skirt—halfway between a cheerleader’s outfit and a
Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform. Way too young for him.
Confusion could be good. Maybe she wouldn’t figure
all the way-too’s out. Not until it was way too late.
“Dropped some change.” He gave her a nervous laugh,
in case she’d seen the ring. He stuffed it into his pocket, rolled it between
his fingers. It felt like a meaningless piece of gold, hot and awkward, just
like him. Maybe she saw it and didn’t care.
John turned to leave before he did something he might
regret—not morality so much as the lack of a workable plan.
“Don’t forget what you came for.” She pointed to the
tray of twenties he’d been about to abandon.
“How nice. Guess I owe you one.” He figured she was
about nineteen years old and well aware of the effect she had on men. He sucked
his belly in and tried to look a little more fit, even though he didn’t have to
do that any more. No telling how long his new, improved look would last.
“Better make the most of it,” John said out loud
without meaning to. The girl looked confused again, but not repelled.
“What?” The look on her face told him everything he
needed to know. He was an older man, with six hundred dollars in his pocket.
She’d believe him, no matter what he said.
“Perfect in so many ways.” Out loud again, damn it.
He took a deep breath and looked for judgment in her
eyes. When he couldn’t find it he told her, “You look exactly like a girl I’ve
seen before.” The line was stale enough to grow penicillin mold, but maybe she
hadn’t heard it.
“Where did you see her? Maybe it was me.”
“In my dreams,” John told her. “Maybe it was you.”
He got ready to dodge a slap, but she gave him
another smile instead.
“I’m waiting for a cab,” she said. “If you’re not
doing anything, you could take me where I’m going and tell me all about your
dream girl.”
“Okay?” He said as if it was a question.
“Los Hermanos Motel,” she told him. “Do you know the
place?”
“What a coincidence. My favorite motel.”
John talked while he drove. He filled the air with
words so the girl wouldn’t have a chance to tell him he was old and, out of
shape, and ought to be ashamed.
She didn’t say any of those things. She told him her
name was Lantana.
“Like the flower?”
She laughed. He wasn’t sure Lantana was a flower name
but it was too late to take it back.
“That’s my favorite kind of flower,” he told her.
Then it was time for John to come up with a name.
“My name is Charley G. Littlejohn.” There was a
little truth in that. He wondered if there was a God somewhere writing all this
down. He’d been thinking things like that ever since he started going to Weight
Watchers.
“What’s the ‘G’ stand for?”
“Glad I met you,” John told her, just like that.
Her laughter sounded like a wind chime. It struck
notes he hadn’t heard for years, but he recognized the melody. He knew what was
supposed to happen next, and for a few seconds he was pretty sure he’d find a
reason to back out.
He started to tell Lantana about his wife, Stephanie,
and how they were celebrating their Ivory anniversary—the big number fourteen.
But Stephanie wasn’t into killing elephants, so Ivory was out.
He started to tell Lantana about his son, Phillip,
and his daughter Angela. He started to tell her that his parents were watching
the kids this weekend so he and Stephanie could break out of their parental
roles.
Instead, John said, “This is Los Hermanos,” as he
turned into the motel parking lot. He put the car in park, and walked around to
open Lantana’s door for her, like he almost never did for Stephanie anymore. He
watched Lantana stand up, filing away every detail so he could feel
self-righteous later on when he remembered how he didn’t sleep with her.
But then she said,” My room number is 96. Would you
like to come in for a while?”
“Ninety Six.” The year he and Stephanie got married.
That had to be a sign.
“Sure,” John said, ignoring a clear and concise
message from the creator of the universe. “Why not?” A man was entitled to a
meaningless affair, just once in his life—and he was pretty sure it would only
be this once.
He put his hand on Lantana’s back, just above her
pleated skirt, and nudged her in the direction of room 96. John resisted the
temptation to slide that hand a little lower. That might come later. The
important thing was to keep her moving. Nineteen-year-old girls in motion stayed
in motion. Even John knew that much physics.
Lantana tapped on the door of number 96, “So we don’t
scare the maid.” But there was no maid inside the room, just a queen size bed
with rumpled covers.
“I need to freshen up.” She walked to the bathroom
door.
John noticed the bathroom door was closed, like
someone might be in there already. But he lost that train of thought when
Lantana told him, “Take off your clothes. I want to see you naked when I come
out.”
He almost forgot how to work buttons and zippers, but
not quite. He folded his pants and shirt over the back of a chair. He put his
socks and underpants on top of his shoes. He looked at himself in the
full-length mirror on the bathroom door, trying to figure out which was his best
side.
He couldn’t wait to match the girl up to his fantasy.
He hoped for a smooth, evenly tanned, well-toned body without scars, birthmarks
or tattoos, but right then he would settle for anything. Well . . . as long as
things didn’t work out like The Crying Game, or one of those other
nineties she-male dramas. And that couldn’t happen, because Lantana’s hands were
too small and she had no Adam’s apple.
He’d have to shower after they were through, leave no
physical signs for Stephanie. Maybe Lantana would shower with him. John had just
fleshed out that image in his mind when a man walked out the bathroom door. A
large black man in jeans and a muscle-shirt and a Tazer in his hand.
“Don’t taze me bro,” slipped passed John’s lips while
he was deciding whether to hold up his hands or cover his genitals. He never
thought of them as genitals unless he was feeling especially vulnerable in that
department.
He didn’t know which was worse, the Tazer in the
black man’s hand or the look in Lantana’s eyes. She stood behind her armed
companion with her right hand on her hip. “Guess you realize, your dreams aren’t
gonna come true.”
John was too naked to think of an adequate response,
so he fixed his eyes on the man with the Tazer and hoped for the best.
“Sir . . .” That was the best word John could come up
with at the moment.
The man with the Tazer smiled—handsome, like Denzel
Washington’s psychotic younger brother. His biceps looked like they’d been
carved out of a block of frozen prime rib. People probably called him sir all
the time. The weapon was a professional courtesy, so John wouldn’t feel obliged
to get the crap beaten out of him.
Lantana went through John’s pockets. She took his
wallet and his keys. Her partner held out his free arm, and she draped John’s
pants and shirt over it.
“You can keep your underwear and shoes, Charley.”
After she slid the watch off John’s left wrist she pressed something round and
solid into his palm.
“Keep the wedding band too.” The ring still held her
body heat. Almost too hot to touch. It was bigger than he remembered. Shinier
too.
No clothes. No money. “What am I supposed to do
now?”
“Sorry, Charley.” Lantana held the door open for her
muscular companion. She gave John a finger wave, then shut it.
John slipped the wedding band back on. He practiced
telling Stephanie that, “Nothing really happened in room 96. Except a robbery,
of course.”
“Still faithful after fourteen years,” he told
himself. “That’s the most important thing. Isn’t it?”
He wondered if local calls were free.
About the author
Don’t bother trying to classify John
T. Biggs’ stories. They are a genre stew of speculative fiction, anthropology,
mystery, and humor written in a mainstream literary style. Native Americans play
a significant role in most of John’s narratives. He reworks traditional Indian
legends and sets them in modern times, the way oral historians always
intended.
Sixty of John’s short
stories have been published in magazines and anthologies that vary from literary
to young adult speculative fiction and everything in between. Some of these
stories have won regional and national awards including Grand Prize in the
Writers Digest 80th annual competition, third prize in the Lorian
Hemingway short story contest, and a Storyteller Magazine’s Peoples
Choice Award.
John has published four
novels: Owl Dreams, Popsicle Styx (Oklahoma Book Award Finalist)
Cherokee Ice (Oklahoma Book Award Finalist & OWFI Best Published
Fiction Book of 2015), and Shiners as well as a linked short story
collection, Sacred Alarm Clock, which includes the OWFI Crème de la Crème
winning story, “Twenty Percent Off”. His series post-apocalyptic novellas,
Clementine a song to end the world will be released by Oghma Creative
Media in mid 2018.
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