Flutter (14 page)

“I didn’t know it was that important to you.”

“It’s not that the club is that important. It’s about keeping the books in the black.”

“You don’t even know anything about the books.”

“I’m an accountant. I do know.” Larry took a drink. “You think because your little girlfriend came in here and put some receipts into a program that you know more than I do about how we are doing?”

Frankie was getting upset. “So this is about Abigail? What has she done to you?”

“What has she done to me? What has she done to you, Frankie? You’ve been acting like the world revolves around her needs. You close that club, and you will be making a slim profit. You’ll barely be able to pay yourself after all the bills are paid. And with all the free drinks you give away at the bar, you can kiss it goodbye.”

“I know, Larry. I won’t be making a killing with this place. But I didn’t start the bar to be rich. I truly like what I do. And you’re right. Abigail has changed me. She reminds me of what’s important in life, not to mention that I’m getting too old for this shit.” Frankie scratched his head and took a few sips of the beer before he said another word. “My gut tells me our time is up with the club. It’s not just Abigail. She’s a part of it, but Sydney telling me to chill out only confirms how I’ve been feeling. I know you love the club. I do, too, so if you want to keep it open…”

“No,” Larry interrupts. “No, Frankie. This is the first time we’ve ever sat down and talked about this. I see the sincerity in you. You want to end it, fine. I’m with you. I just don’t want you making this decision because of Abigail. You don’t know her. You’re not her father.”

“I sure wish I was.”

For the first time Frankie was honest with Larry about how he was feeling about the bar, the club and Abigail. They talked for another hour before Larry left with a smile on his face. They both were satisfied with the honest conversation which had been long overdue. Larry was glad that Frankie was open about his feelings; but in the back of his mind, his skepticism for Abigail increased. Larry needed to know more about her, what she was up to and where she had come from. He was determined to find out.

Brown and Finch made love in Brown’s bed. Meghan Finch was on top of him. She sat up straight, exposing a large scar on her back from an incident that had happened long ago. When they were done, they laid together naked, barely covered with his gray sheet. He held her tightly. He kissed her on the forehead. She smiled as a tear came to her eye. He wiped it away and kissed her again.

Abigail was still hanging out with Roger at his house. It was a relief to get out of the 10 x 8 foot room where she was accustomed to spending her nights. At first, she and Roger were in his garage. He welded something Abigail couldn’t identify. She paced back and forth and rubbed the back of her neck thinking about the tattoos she had recently discovered. Roger pulled up the mask he was wearing. He realized she wasn’t interested in what he was doing and figured it was time to wrap up this project.

Roger asked, “Wanna call it a night?”

Abigail answered, “Sure.”

They put away the materials and went into the kitchen.

Roger and Abigail sat for a while at the kitchen table not saying much of anything to one another. Roger sketched a drawing of another idea that had popped into his mind. Abigail’s head tried to piece together her thoughts after the last nightmare, which was more vivid than the last. She made a circle with her finger on the table as she pondered the images Roger took of the tattoos on her spine. Roger stole a few glances but realized she wasn’t paying him much attention to him. Ms. Atkins was in the living room watching an Elvis documentary she had recorded days earlier. She never missed a report on her hero. Roger gazed into the room.

“That woman is obsessed.” He shook his head and walked over to a cabinet which held a 750 ml bottle of Jack Daniels. He grabbed two glasses, ice and poured a decent amount into the glasses. He handed one to Abigail. She gladly accepted the offer. “We work in a bar and I haven’t had a good stiff drink in a long time.” He tried to break the cold silence that permeated the room, but Abigail’s mind was drifting off into a place of puzzling thoughts and endless confusion. 

Abigail swirled her drink around, watching the ice melt away in the warm liquor. Little bubbles formed on the side of the glass. “Tell me about yourself, Roger. Where are you from? What did you do? Your family… shit like that.” This is the first time she had made eye contact with him in about five minutes.

Roger was just about to stand up but sat back down and took a short sip of his drink. Clearly it was a little strong for him. “Man, no one has ever asked me that. I’m not sure what you wanna know, but: Hi. My name is Roger, and life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” He said with a southern voice. It was the only line he remembered from the Langston Hughes poem “Mother to Son” that his 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Mackie, read during Black History Month.

They laughed. The liquor slowly seeped into their blood stream, and the quiet moment in the kitchen was once again warm and fuzzy.

Roger said, “I’m kidding. I was born in this city called Agawam, Massachusetts, on the west side of the state. My dad was a teacher in Springfield, but when I was three years old, he died in a car accident on I91 heading south to our exit. He was almost off the exit when two trucks collided. One of the trucks twisted, and the trailer fell on my dad’s car. I’m not sure if this is what you wanna hear.”

Abigail was excited, “No. No. If you’re okay to talk about it, please tell me. I want to know more about you. Tell me about your mom.”

Roger had her attention and loved it, “My mother worked at a subsidiary for this company called Global 
Tech–Gin in northern Connecticut. My mom was one of their lead engineers. They worked on government funded projects, mostly classified. One day she was inspecting a project that she continuously said was unsafe. The company had invested millions into the machine and didn’t want to drop the project. They figured it was her team doing something wrong and insisted that she ‘make it work!’ During an experiment, the damn thing blew up and a huge chunk of it fell on her foot and crushed it to pieces. We moved out here so she could recover at her sister’s house, and we never left. She bought this place with the settlement money, and here I am.”

Abigail was stunned, “Wow. That’s crazy. That’s an incredible story. I never knew your mom had gone through something so devastating.” She turned the sympathy off in an instant. “So, who are your friends?”

Roger confidently said, “Just you, Elvis. My aunt never had kids. I barely know anyone on my dad’s side. High school was a drag. I was ‘gifted’ so they say. Nerds don’t have friends.”

Abigail giggled at the fact that he was ever considered to be a nerd.

Roger continued, “A few kids picked on me. People didn’t have sympathy for the bullied back in those days. My gym teacher used to yell, ‘Chin up! Chest out! Be a man and sock ’em!’ Well, Mom put me in Tae Kwon Do for a few months. And I did sock ‘em back one day. I cracked John Waterford’s skull with a mop stick. That ended that. It was the perfect excuse to remove me from the school. I was rushed out of school and put into a pre–college program at MIT for students who were advanced in math and science. I did well there so they gave me a full scholarship, but I quit. I couldn’t deal. I needed a job. Walked into Frankie’s and here we are.” 

Abigail seemed unsatisfied. She was more interested in the mother’s story.

Roger said, “Not very interesting huh?”

Abigail shrugged.

“Don’t expect a dramatic story when you get your memory back, Elvis. Sometimes people would rather not remember. Maybe subconsciously your mind purposely jumbled things up to keep you out of trouble or something. I think it will come back one day.”

“I don’t think it’s ever going to coming back.”

“It will.”

They both take a shot.

“If you could know anything about yourself, what would you want to know?”

Abigail thought for a moment. She looked away from Roger and focused on the drink. “I don’t think I could narrow it down, but I would like to know about my family and where I’m from. Things like that.”

“Shit. I would want to know who shot me and why? Elvis, people out here don’t get shot just because. You were shot and you were hiding. You ran from something. Maybe that something or someone is still looking for you.” 

Abigail agreed, “Yes I have been thinking about that, too. My license says I’m from Utica, NY. Maybe I should go there and dig around. Maybe the library has articles I could search online. Maybe my name will come up.”

“There’s an idea, but you could be walking right back into the mess you were running from.”

Just then, Roger’s mother entered the kitchen. She walked in and stared at Roger and Abigail from the lower lenses of her bifocals. “Want something to eat?”

“No thank you, Mom. I’m actually going to take her home in a few.”

“Good. I was going to say. One more night, Elvis and I’m collecting rent.” Ms. Atkins smiled and turned away.

Abigail smirked and shook her head. Roger giggled as he took another sip.

Frankie was in his apartment above the bar doing bicep curls with 40 pound weights. When his arms were fatigued, he switched to squats and lunges. When he was done with those, he did a few pushups and then he took a shower. The shower was warm and comforting to his aching muscles. He turned on the TV, picked up his computer and entered a few receipts into a Quick Books file named . He had a large pile of receipts that were clipped together by date and stuffed into a manila envelope. He had slacked off a little on keeping up with his finances, but since Abigail had been there, things had been a lot better in the finances department. She kept things in order that he had never considered. She was good at organizing his paperwork and made sure bills were paid on time.

After about an hour, Frankie was done inputting receipts into the program. He saved the file, closed the program and put the computer on a side desk. He pulled his shades close and bent down. Under the desk was a large vent. Frankie opened the vent and pulled out a chest. The chest was a maple 14 x 24 x 10 inch trunk with two gold Master pad locks on the two gold hinges. He threw the chest on the bed and grabbed the keys from a jar on a shelf. He unlocked each lock and opened the chest.

Frankie pulled out four small lock boxes and opened them. One contained a .38 Taurus revolver, the other a colt .45. The last two held Smith and Wesson nine millimeter guns. He gave each one a quick look and put them back in the lock boxes. In another box, he had about $100,000 in cash. He took $3,000 from the stack and placed it on his desk. He closed that box and put it aside.

In a small leather sack Frankie opened, there were three passports of Frankie with a younger face. He looked at one with the name Jonah Thomas. “This one is expired.” He tossed it aside. Frankie then pulled another box from the very bottom, which lay under many boxes of ammunition.

The box was thin and made of a cardboard, with a white coating on the exterior. Frankie opened the box and took out a group of photos. These were pictures of him and Amy Chan, the woman from the launderette who had stolen his heart many years before, at a time when Frankie was living a life of corruption. He thought to himself how he hid the truth about what happened to her. Midnight passed and today was the anniversary of her death, which meant he would anonymously send money to her family. He still harbored a guilty conscience concerning the events of her death.

He received a text from Abigail. “SORRY SO LATE. HEADING HOME NOW. DON’T WAIT UP.” 

Abigail and Roger entered the turnstile for the Orange Line Metro to get back into town. Roger decided to take the train ride with Abigail back to Frankie’s and crash on the couch in the common area upstairs. As they waited on the platform Roger and Abigail inspected the Metro map hanging on the wall. Roger pulled his hood over his head mocking Abigail since she always covered her head with her hood.

“I was thinking about getting a tattoo,” Roger made one of his famously random statements. “I was thinking of a few robotic gears as a sleeve over here so my arm would look like I was a robot underneath. I had this idea…” he noticed Abigail was ignoring him. He felt bad. “Sorry, Elvis. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”

She didn’t look at him fully. She nodded and said, “It’s cool. I know you don’t mean to insult me. Guess I’m just hypersensitive right now. My head is killing me, I’m confused… I’m hungry…”

“Ah, I have some snacks. What are you willing to do for them?”

“I’d rather starve to death.”

They laughed as the train pulled into the stop. They waited until it came to a complete stop. The doors opened, and they walked in.

Larry was in his apartment, sitting on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, his laptop balanced on his thighs while he ran another Google search: “UTICA NEW YORK MURDER SUSPECTS AND VICTIMS.” He saw hundreds of articles. He scanned through them quickly, but none triggered a connection with Abigail; and there were too many to read entirely through. He huffed. He tried again: “UPSTATE NEW YORK MISSING WOMEN AND RUNAWAYS.” Up popped an open database of no less than 500 names— some coupled with photos; some with baby pictures of women ranging in age from nine to 72 years old who had been missing for many years.

He downloaded the list as an excel file and placed it into a folder he named .

The folder was full of files that Larry had secretly kept on Abigail, starting with pictures of her he had downloaded off the security cameras at the pub. He had pictures of her from all angles. Unbeknownst to Frankie, Larry’s curiosity had gotten the best of him. He even had photos of the items in her purse, including a scan of her license.

05101990

“May 10th 1990. This age may not be accurate, but I’ll start here.” He assumed Abigail was in her early to middle 20’s so he narrowed his search to begin with women born in 1987 to 1992 just in case.