No Turning Back (The Traveler) (3 page)

Downtown 4th Street in Louisville, Gary boogied up the aisle of his
Psychedelic Records
store. Surround sound speakers pumped the thick bass line and the snapping percussion of a Canadian reggae song.

“This song is hot, man. It sounds like something I would have come up with,” Gary told an early morning customer. The tall, young blonde grinned and fingered through the rack of country music CDs in front of her.

“Umm, where can I buy one of those shirts?” she asked Gary of his tie-dyed tee.

Gary stopped and asked her, “What, you want to work here? These shirts are for employees only, but …” He paused and thought about it. “How much would you pay for it?”

She studied his colorful T-shirt and shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess twenty bucks.”

Gary looked down at her perky breasts in a tight orange top. “Make it twenty-five, and I’ll give you a small that fits you just the way you like it.”

The young woman grinned wider as she considered it. She reached for the straw summer bag that hung over her right shoulder. “All right.”

Gary stood absentmindedly for a second before he realized what he had negotiated. He didn’t know if he had any shirts left, let alone a tight-fitting small.

“Wow, you’re serious,” he responded.

The young blonde nodded. “Yeah, I like it. It’s different.”

A tall, curvaceous African-American woman standing in the next aisle overheard Gary’s banter with the blonde and shook her head with a grin. She was in her early thirties and an eyeful herself in black-and-white workout sweats from Nike. In fact, Taylor had been watching her
from behind the register at the front of the store since the moment she had walked in. She had him captivated with her confident gait.

Wow, she’s a knockout! I wonder if she dates younger guys,
Taylor mused.

She was aware of Taylor’s gaze, but her mind was focused on Gary at the moment.

“Yeah, I told my friend that,” Gary said to the blonde. He was excited to hear her glowing opinions. “Do you like the curved Scooby Doo font for my company name too?”

She laughed. “Yeah, I like everything about it.”

That made Gary consider her breasts again. “I like your shirt too. Maybe I’ll use more orange next time.”

The African-American woman laughed out loud.
He’s a real piece of work,
she thought of the young store owner.

Taylor shook his head from behind the register. “Unbelievable,” he mumbled of his friend’s flirtations.

The tall beauty reached the counter with a Mary J. Blige CD in hand. “Is he like that all the time with the ladies?” she asked Taylor curiously.

He laughed. “I’m afraid so.” Then he noticed her. Her smooth auburn face looked very familiar. “Haven’t I seen you before at Louisville. In the weight room, right?”

She smiled and nodded, displaying a deep dimple on her right cheek.

“Yeah, I’ve worked out there a few times.”

Taylor nodded back and rang up her purchase. He then checked out her biceps in her form-fitting shirt as he received her cash.

Man, she’s ripped,
he told himself.
She must have played ball at some point.

“What did you major in?” he asked her.

“Sports management.”

She collected her change and CD and didn’t say much else.

Gary arrived to join them at the register with the young blonde hot on his heels.

“Hey, I know you,” he announced to the shapely sports manager on her way out. He even held up his palm to high-five her. The woman smiled, slapped his hand and moved on without another word.

“She’s ripped,” Taylor commented in her absence. “Did she play any ball?”

Gary shrugged. “I don’t really know. She doesn’t talk much. I just know her from the weight room.” Then he turned to face the busty customer. “I’ll be right back out.”

He eyed Taylor and smirked as he walked by him toward the storage room in the back. “She wants one of our shirts,” he gloated.

As soon as Gary disappeared in the back, Taylor asked the customer, “He didn’t pay you to do this, did he?”

She laughed and denied it. “No.”

Taylor grinned and was skeptical of everything. He watched the young blonde when she walked in too, and he doubted she was buying the colorful T-shirt without any extra benefits in mind. She was outright flirting with Gary.

Yeah, T-shirt my ass!
he told himself.

Inside the back storage room, Gary dug through his box of company-designed T-shirts and was overjoyed to find a couple of smalls at the bottom.

“Thank God,” he gasped.

When he returned to the register out front, Taylor was answering the store’s telephone.

“Yeah, he’s right here,” he spoke over the line. He then slid the phone to Gary.

Gary looked at him and frowned, denying the hand off.

“I’m taking care of a customer right now. I’ll call them back.”

As he handed the blonde her
Psychedelic Records
T-shirt, Taylor informed him, “It’s your mom.”

Gary was stumped. He wouldn’t deny his mother’s phone call for anyone. So despite her miserable timing, he took the call.

“Hey, Mom,” he answered cheerfully. Once he heard her out, his smile evaporated. She blasted her son with an unexpected and unprovoked rant about responsibility.

“Whoa, whoa, Mom, what’s this all about? What’d I do?” he asked her, confused.

She said, “It’s not about what you did, Gary. It’s more about what you need to do. You need to learn how to be more accountable. You need to grow up, Son.”

His mother was so passionate in her words that Taylor and the young blonde were both able to hear her over the line.

Gary was slightly embarrassed by it. “What brought this on?” he asked her.

She said, “I’ve just been thinking about it, Gary, and I’m very disturbed right now.”

Gary frowned and said, “Well, I’ll have to call you back on this. I’m right in the middle of my day.”

“There you go again, putting me off,” she told him. “You’re constantly running away from things. I just stopped in the middle of my day too. I walked out in the middle of an address from the state’s health department.”

While listening to his mother’s heartfelt rant, Gary watched the busty blonde pull her hair back and try on the tied-dyed T-shirt right in front of them. She removed her tight orange top and pulled the record store shirt over her bra.

Oh my God! What is she doing?
he asked himself as he watched, surprised by her boldness. Taylor and two of Gary’s record store employees watched as the young woman dazzled them all in front the register. She was making an obvious spectacle of herself in the middle of the phone call from his mother.

Once she pulled the shirt on, she twisted the lower back of the tee into a knot and flattened out the front for a flat stomach with scintillating curves.

Damn!
Gary thought to himself, enchanted by her. Suddenly, his mother’s words blurred into meaningless chatter. He looked over at Taylor, who remained speechless. Taylor had already assumed the young blonde was there to hook the boss, and she had succeeded. Gary’s nose was wide open for her.

“Gary, are you listening to me?” his mother persisted over the phone. A lack of a response always meant a loss of attention for Gary. His mother knew him like any mother would know her child at twenty-six.

Gary stammered, “Ahh, yeah, Mom, you know. I mean … You just caught me in the middle of my work.” With music still playing in the background, Gary had a point. Unless he took her phone call in the storage room, it was the wrong place and time to lock in and listen to a stern lecture.

His mother got the point and quickly aborted her mission. “I’ll call you back later. And answer your cell phone.”

When Gary hung up, the provocative blonde placed her twenty-five dollars on the empty counter in front of him.

She said, “You need to order cotton mixed with spandex for your next order, and have it tapered on the sides for a better fit. Then I’ll come back and buy another one.” She hadn’t even bought any music.

Before she walked out, Gary asked her, “Well, what’s your name? I may need to talk to you about helping me to sell my shirts with modeling. Do you do party promotions or anything?”

He grabbed a business card from the counter and a pen from behind the register. “Come on, let me walk you out.”

Taylor knew better than to believe his friend’s fake business talk.
Business my ass!
he thought.
Gary doesn’t know the first thing about business. This is just a big pussy shop.

Gary’s two staff members were skeptical as well. The busty customer had been practically begging for Gary’s attention from the moment she walked into the store.

He escorted her out and changed his tone from business to playboy as soon as they arrived outside.

“My name is Valerie,” she told him.

Gary wrote his cell phone number on the back of his business card.

“Well, Valerie, if you’re ever downtown and you want to hang out or whatever, just give me a call. I actually have a loft apartment down here on Main Street.”

She smiled. “I’m only interested in your T-shirts,” she said. “I have a boyfriend, and I don’t think he would appreciate me hanging out downtown with you.”

Gary was baffled. Was this a come-on or was she just a cock teaser?

Gary quickly recuperated. “I didn’t mean it like
that
, or anything. I have parties all the time and plenty of people over at my loft. So you can bring your boyfriend with you. He wouldn’t happen to be an interior decorator, would he? I could use some help with some cool-guy ideas for my place.”

She laughed out loud at the idea. “No, he’s not an interior decorator. But I’ll hold on to your card for any new T-shirts when you have them.”

Gary nodded. “Yeah, you do that. And I’ll order those new shirts right away. Cotton mixed with spandex, right?”

She gave him a final smile. “Yeah, cotton and spandex.”

When Gary returned to his record shop and headed to the register with Taylor, his friend asked him, “So, what did she say about business?”

Gary waved off the slight. “Forget about it. She’s a major cock tease. She says she has a boyfriend. But I’ll tell you what, if she ever calls me, I’ll work my magic on her anyway.”

Taylor laughed and quipped, “I know you will.”

After a brief and ineffective phone conversation with her son, Gabrielle slid her cell phone back into her purse and reentered the Civic Center conference room in Frankfort. She was now fervent about cutting the emotional and financial umbilical cord to her son. Gary had just convinced her that he had taken her generosity for granted.

That boy couldn’t give me five stinky minutes!
she piped.
Who did he think he was talking to? I helped him to pay for that damn record store.

She planned to give her son the shock of his life by informing him, face-to-face, that it was time for him to carry his own weight and provide for his own living expenses. If he was unable to do so, he would suffer the consequences with a loss of his loft on Main Street, and the closure of his record store.

As Gabrielle continued to digest her decision, she could no longer concentrate on the busy day ahead of her in Frankfort.

He just blew me off as if I were one of his flunkies,
she thought, incensed.
I do not deserve that, nor do I appreciate it.

She then made up her mind to return home. Her events in Frankfort were not mandatory, and she already knew how to reach most of the professionals there for updates or networking. A frank and overdo discussion with her flippant son had become more urgent.

Gabrielle excused herself and rose to her feet in the middle of another address. She bolted for the Civic Center exit doors and quickly found her dark-green Volvo outside in the parking lot.

After working a decade in local and state politics, she was well aware of the stereotype about women having overwrought emotions. But at the moment, her emotions had gotten the best of her. So she asked herself if she had failed as a mother?

“Oh, so what?” she snapped.
There’s a time in life for everything.
She refused to feel guilty about leaving.

Twenty miles west of Frankfort, a dirty dark-blue Saturn with West Virginia tags headed toward Louisville on Interstate 64. The car exited the freeway near Shelbyville, about halfway from Frankfort. Two men eyed each other inside, wearing cheap, dirty baseball caps with summer T-shirts and worn jeans. They looked like a pair of hard-edged construction workers after a long day of labor, with their white faces sunburned and unshaven.

“What we gon’ do now?” the passenger asked the driver. “We ain’t got enough money left for gas to make it all the way to Indiana.”

Their destination was hours away. The driver had a couple of friends there who would help them hide out until they could plan their next move.

With the car tank on E, the driver answered, “We take another car near the light at the gas station. We’ll wait for somebody to fill up and then get ’em when they stop at the light. Then we take them hostage for a few miles and take their cell phone so they can’t call nobody when we kick ’em out.”

The driver, in his late twenties, was as self-assured as a desperate criminal could be. However, his younger partner was not.

The younger man in his early twenties searched the driver’s stoic face and blurted, “We just gonna jack another car, right out in the open?” He thought the idea was insane. But how sane had they been already to commit a murder and steal a car to avoid their capture?

The driver said, “We got no choice, unless you wanna walk or hitchhike the rest of the way.” He understood the situation they were in as soon as their botched robbery tuned into murder in West Virginia.

His young partner countered, “We’d be better off if we just stole a parked car instead of carjackin’ somebody.”

“And what if that parked car ain’t got enough gas in it?” the driver questioned. “We gonna keep stealin’ different cars until we get where we’re goin’? Now like I said, we ain’t got no choice,’’ the older man snapped. “And if we jack a car with a driver in it, we can get some more money out of it.”