Full ashtray with lit cigarette?
Well, you can’t win em all. That lit cigarette means the storm’s rolling in. Brace yourself.
Now, if you think that’s bad, just wait till you find a full ashtray with more than one lit cigarette. That is the last thing you want to see. If there’s more than one lit cigarette in that ashtray, you might as well tippy-toe back down the hall, pull the covers over your head, huddle and wait out the storm. More than three lit cigarettes in that ashtray and you best evacuate. More than three cigarettes means it’s gonna be a doozey. Hold on tight. Category 5.
Look here, it’s bad enough if you get one lit cigarette. That means the night before got piggy-backed over into this morning and the drinks are still going strong. They could be out there carousing with drink number eight to thirteen, for God’s sake. Who’s even counting anymore anyways? Might as well just drink out the bottle.
But if you get more than three lit cigarettes in that thing, that means Dad corralled some barflies over in a fit of generosity, probably somewhere near the third chorus of “That’s Life.” Hey, folks, let’s go to my place, we’re all amigos here.
They’ll be sitting there, round the kitchen table, unwitting, smoke coming up off their fingers, dazzled by my dad. Sitting ducks. He’ll be telling them all about that day he got stuck in the mud down by Wahoo and then this happened and then that happened and can you believe he got out, no one thought he could. They’ll be in love with him just like I am, just like Tammy used to be. They’ll be thinking this guy is the greatest guy since sliced bread, that’s for sure. If there’s a lady in the crowd, she’ll be thinking bout how she can sidle up to him on the way to the bathroom, maybe. she’ll be checking her lipstick and hiking up her bra every time he looks away. she’s got plans for him. Big plans.
They’ll never see it coming. No sir. I almost feel sorry for them, smiling dumb round that ashtray. They don’t know that drink number eight or nine are gonna be dropping by soon, looking for a brawl. They don’t know they’ve got a date with drink number ten that involves a lot of hollering, throwing bottles and knocking that front door off its hinges. They got no idea. That front door has been slammed off its hinges so many times we haven’t even bothered to put it back since June.
Maybe tomorrow.
But this morning I am breathing a sigh of relief because that ashtray is empty, thank God. Bout time we had a little peace and quiet around here.
There is one little thing wrong with the kitchen, though, at present, which is that there happens to be a man in a gray suit sitting smack-dab in the middle of it. that’s a new one.
It’s not that a beaten-up farmhouse ten minutes outside of Palmyra, Nebraska, is an especially dangerous place to be, but it has happened. Twenty minutes east of here, in Alliance, there was a whole family got shot in cold blood about five years back. Two guys from Dodge sashayed into town, walked in, lined all four of them up on the floor and fired, but not until each of them had taken a turn with their fourteen-year-old daughter who happened to be runner-up Modern Miss Teenage Nebraska.
She was wearing a light-blue nightgown when it happened and in the pictures of the aftermath it looked like it had a flower pattern on it from all the blood, dark-brown and red flowers, abstract and huge. The blood down the inside of her legs was crackled and dried up into little pieces. Her eyes were wide open and she looked like a shattered doll.
Not me.
I slink back to my room and get something girls aren’t supposed to have but I do. Uncle Nipper gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday, along with a T-shirt that says, “Take Me Drunk I’m Home.” it’s a cockroach colored .45 and just looking at it makes you feel mean. It looks bad and looks like it’ll bring bad with it.
It’s my pride and joy.
I got some hot moves I picked up from Clint Eastwood and here’s my chance. I must have practiced this scene ten times since my birthday. Watch me sidle down the hall, hugging the wall, eyes froze. Make him turn around first. that’s what Clint would do. You gotta wait till they see you and make yourself big. You gotta show them your soul got left back, long ago, before handing them their walking papers from this shiny life to the next.
He’s sitting at the head of the table like he owns the place. His back is towards me and his neck is just waiting there like a baked potato for me to take aim. His head shimmers, bald and stubbly, with a few moles here and there like towns spread out in Oklahoma. He’s got a briefcase on his lap, proper-like. There’s something in the way he’s holding his chin up or maybe it’s the slope of his nose that tells me he’s got money and that this place, my place, might as well be the outhouse outside a cathouse.
I prop myself up in the doorway, leaning slight to the side, making sure to hold the .45 real casual. I turn myself mean inside out, freeze my skin and say, “That’s my dad’s chair.”
His knee knocks up the table and he turns round, flustered and blustery. I could jump for joy, I really could, he looks like such an idiot, but instead I choose to concentrate on my intimidating tactics. Clint wouldn’t jump for joy.
“Well, my oh my, you sure gave me a scare.”
He pretends not to see my .45, reflecting around the room, whirling slowly in little bright circles that can only spell his doom. He nervous smiles but I don’t smile back. I just stare at him and raise my chin a little.
“Is your mother home?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Nope.”
“Do you always carry a gun like that?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a very, um, nice gun.”
“What gun?”
“That gun. it’s . . . interesting.”
“My gun is interesting?”
“Well, I mean, it seems to be very well crafted.”
“it’s not a gun. it’s a .45.”
“Um.”
“Smith and Wesson.”
“Maybe I could give you my card and you could tell her I dropped by . . .”
“Card?”
“Yes. Um. Here.”
He smiles and takes his card out. He reaches his arm towards me and dangles it out for me to grab. I don’t move.
“Who are you, Mister?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. How rude of me. My name’s Lux. Lux Feld. I’m in investments.”
“Investments?”
“You know, land, property, stuff like that.”
He laughs light and shrugs, making nice. I nod and laugh light back, shuffling my feet against the linoleum floor and slapping my thigh like I’m the inbred retard he takes me for.
He stops laughing and puts his card back in his jacket.
“You always break into people’s houses at . . . what time is it?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“At 8 o’clock in the morning?”
“Well, actually, the door was open, er, there was no door, I mean a screen door but . . . you know, well, I’m sorry, I didn’t see a buzzer so I just thought I’d—”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Excuse