CHARLIE HEART

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: TOMMY, BRUCE, PITY, AND ME

TOMMY, BRUCE, PITY, AND ME

         As I’m standing outside waiting for Tommy to get processed I’m looking at my touch screen phone. It’s cracked from being smashed between myself and the concrete after flying off the porch. I can’t stop fingering the scratches.
         One part of me wants to call her. The other wants to get out of the country.
I find it amazing how you can think someone is perfect, beautiful, and likes you at breakfast, then realize she wants to kill you by dinner. But I guess that’s normal with any woman, in any healthy relationship.
         Maybe I was blowing things out of proportion. Maybe I imagined that red head with a bag of chips. Maybe the stove really did have something to do with an accidental explosion. Maybe Ginger really is falling in love with me and this is just me with the jitters.
         No, probably not. Denial is a happy safe house until the waves come though.
         I tell myself she wont answer her phone anyways because she’s working, selling more chemicals, I don’t know.
         There are so many pieces to this puzzle my head can’t hold it all.
         Then I get a text, and what perfect timing for a text.
         ‘I Hope the dentist went okay. I had fun with you, Charlie. I wont be able to see you tonight, I’ve got a commitment. I’ll call you soon.’
         XOXO ~ G.J.
         When I see her initials I have to laugh. I try laugh with my stomach, but those laughs have to be legitimate to work right.
         Tommy comes strutting out of the jail like he won the lottery. He wants to bear hug me but I’m not real big on hugs at the moment. First thing he wants to know is if I brought my voice controlled Cadillac, And if he can drive it. Call me racist, but Tommy was always a little to much for me behind the wheel.
         I say, no. just a flat, no. Then he says his Momma was the first black woman to be a professional street racer, driving’s in his blood.
         “How did she learn to race, running from the cops?”
         “That’s cold, Charlie, real cold.”
         I shrug, we look at each other, then we smile. He hits my shoulder the way baseball players comfort each other.
         “Man, thanks for bailing me out. I owe you one. “
         “Yes you do.”
         “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let any hot chick blow you up. I’d be broke without you.”
         I detect a hint of sarcasm, but over all he says this like he means it, so I don’t take it as a joke. I’m getting kind of sick of jokes anyway. Yes people want to kill me, yes I know you think that is funny. No, I don’t think it’s funny, thank you.
         I honestly don’t know why I bailed him out, but if a hot chick were to blow me up, I’d rather go down with Tommy, than alone.
         He says, “Remember the turtle neck sweater guy who was after you a while back?”
         I nod. “The guy with the knife who stalked my elevators?”
         “Ya, look what happen to him. He’s is long gone now, locked away for good.”
         He points proudly at himself.
         That was a funny story. Turtle neck sweater guys was someone who lost half a million to me because his mom liked me more before she died. He would wait for me to leave my house everyday and would follow me around, one day when he decided to go for the kill, Tommy comes flying out of nowhere, tackling him to the ground. Tommy always seems to squeeze him saving my life, on multiple occasions, into our conversations.
         I say, “but this is different, Tommy. This is very very different.”
         Tommy gets serious and puts his chin in his hands and doesn’t say a word. This is his thinking position. I love it when he does this because, for one, he shuts up. And two, after a good while of calculations, he transforms from the idiot sitting in my front seat, to the genius that is going to get me out of this one.
         It’s getting really dark and it’s starting to rain now. I pull into the garage under the building. Yellow lights change everything to a rotten moldy urine color, and it always smelt like wet dog down here.
         As we park and get out I notice Bruce is leaning against his cop car next to the elevators doors.
         Surprised I say, “Bruce?” I can smell the alcohol on him from feet away.
         “Awe man, I just got out of jail,” shouts Tommy.
         Confused, Bruce says, “You!” and points at Tommy.
         Tommy asks me, “what is this, Boss, some sort of sick joke?”
         Bruce is still pointing, “That’s the guy I was telling you about. The guy who we busted for... oh,” Bruce looks at me. He slurs, “Did you bail him out? ”
         Tommy asks me, “You know this fat cracker cop?”
         “Hey, watch your mouth!” says Bruce.
         Tommy makes an ugly face and throws his chest out at him as a gesture. “You want some of this?”
         Bruce says, “What are you doing with that loser, Charlie?”
         Tommy jumps back in, “We’re on our way to your Momma’s house to...”
         Bruce is on top of Tommy, arms flying everywhere. Tommy kicks him off and lands an elbow in his neck. Bruce tears him off and slams his head into a car’s back right tire rim and the alarm goes off.
         I’m standing here watching this. I should make them stop but I don’t. I guess it’s just nice to see someone else getting the trash kicked out of them besides me for a change. It feels like I’m sitting at the dinner table with my foster parents again.
         I slump into my own little world, all that’s in there is Ginger. Beautiful Ginger, violent, mysterious, lying Ginger. Terrible, wonderful, interesting Ginger.
         There is not much you can do when Bruce is drunk and Tommy is throwing punches anyways, so I sigh and think of her. I mean I would jump in the middle of them but it would be like a hamster trying to stop two trained pit bulls.
         Why does she want me dead? Why does Cassie want me dead?
         What looks like a tooth comes spitting at me and hits my shoe.
         I want her.
         Then, it stops. Now they look like me. Bruised and cut, like a real man should look. lying there on the asphalt exhausted. I decide that now might be a good time to tell them the whole story. Together.
         I walk over, sit down and start talking. Surprisingly, after a while of rolling around and moaning they are listening, really listening. I tell them everything, from beginning to now. I tell Bruce about Tommy and Tommy about Bruce. I tell them both about Ginger. Tommy laughs when I tell him I’ve been dating Cassie.
         “Man, she get around,” he says.
         There is a long awkward silence after I finish, then the next thing I know, the three of us are golfing on the roof. Bruce and Tommy are laughing their heads off because they found something in common to joke about... me.
         Even though I’m tired of the jokes, in a weird way I’m okay with it. The only thing I’m not okay with is deep down, I know they both pity me, and pity, for my life, is something I hate.
         My foster mother always told me that when it rained, it was because all the angels felt so bad for me and my sorry little existence. She said they got together and poured their tears all over me because they pitied me. Pity is a strange feeling. It’s not really happy and it’s not really sad, the closest thing to pity in my mind is numbness. I like to think of it as distant emotion obligation.
         I don’t have cancer, I just have death threats. But, I hate golfing alone, so I’m glad they are there. Bruce and Tommy are having such a good time they even let Johnny take a few swings.
         Later, after Bruce is passed out on my couch without his pants and Tommy is taking apart the components of my fifty inch flat screen because he has figured out how to get better resolution, I sit and stare at my phone.
         She said she had a commitment. What was it, another man? Someone else she wanted to kill? Was she on a roll?
         I drift away, what was it about her? Then I remembered the book. Of course, the book. Now was the perfect time. Maybe it would answer my questions.
         I had put it next to the record player, my Ginger collection.
         I grab it and sit down on the couch next to a snoring Bruce, and I make a mental note to buy Cindy a pair of earplugs.
          I look at the front cover, It’s solid blue, nothing else, no words just a light blue that is burnt up along the edges.
         Ginger said this was her life up to this point, an autobiography. That is really strange to me because, lets get real, who writes an autobiography at her age unless going to commit suicide or you’re Bristol Palin. I have a feeling that this isn’t just a book.
         I crack it open. I am surprised it’s still intact with what we both went through. I read the handwritten note again.
         To: Cassie, revenge is a beautiful thing, we will be made whole again. Please follow my instructions on the next page and good luck.
         With love ~ G.J.
         Again, I check the burnt out instruction page to see if I could manage anything, no hope.
         Chapter one:
         My father was a very successful business man. Stocks, trading, and the market was his life. My mother was an insurance agent. We were wealthy and I was very lonely. One day a very angry man came to our home. I remember the screams and things breaking. I remember hiding behind one of the many sofas in one of our many living rooms, a place I would hide often when my parents would fight. Bad sounds didn’t seem so loud back there.
         That night was the night my parents lives ended.
         The thing I remember most was the blood, how it seeped out of my parents faces and hearts and crawled toward me, how it wanted me. Trapped in a corner and too little to climb, I had nowhere to go to escape it. I still can’t get the stains out of my little dress.
         Knock knock!
         The book flies out of my hand and lands on Bruce’s face. He doesn't flinch.
         Who could that be?
         Tommy stops drilling and looks at me.
         “Bruce, wake up.” he doesn't move.
         Tommy runs up and looks out the spy hole.
         I force a whisper out at him. “Who is it, Tommy?”
         “It’s two women, I can’t really make them out. One of them is really old and the other one is kind of hot,” says Tommy.”
         I reach down and force Bruce’s gun out of the holster, stand up, walk over to the door and smash my face against the hole.
         I take a look. It’s Sheila Perkins! What is she doing here, and who is that other lady, she looks familiar.
         I open the door slowly with the chain on.
         “Hi, Miss Perkins, how are you?”
         “Oh, I am just fine, Charlie. I hope it’s not to late. I was just talking to my psychologist friend here about you and I wanted to bring her over. Her mother and I studied together before she died, she is a really nice girl. Better than that other one I met the other day.”
         I almost lost my jaw completely. It was Dr. Dippenhammer. She smiled her ugly rotten smile and I winced. When she notices me, her eyes burst wide open.