Orchard Grove (14 page)

He noticed me noticing it, so he lifted up his arm, more to show me his bulging bicep than the tattoo. Or so it seemed.

“I got drunk one night, came home with my heart on my sleeve. The usual story.” He belly laughed.

“Looks like Lana’s,” I observed, but immediately wondered if I should have said it.

“Good of you to notice, Hollywood,” he said. “What else have you noticed about my wife?”

Lana stepped forward as if to intervene, or at least change the subject. She was holding a bottle of wine in each hand. She turned to Susan.

“Red and bloody,” she said, handing my wife the bottles. “Just like you ordered.”

The funny thing was how Susan and Lana were dressed alike, almost like they’d consulted with one another before getting together at the appointed seven o’clock hour. And maybe they had. Both were wearing V-neck T-shirts and short skirts. They were also wearing similar brown leather sandals. Maybe the color of their clothing differed (Lana wore all red and black, while Susan’s skirt was plain yellow, her T-shirt white), but they seemed to complement one another. Both took the time to pick out some nice jewelry for the evening. Susan’s choice for a necklace was a silver broach shaped like an angel over her neck. Lana wore a simple string of pearls, which I guessed were real and very old. Both sported an eclectic assortment of silver bracelets around their wrists.

A smiling, if not beaming Susan began carrying the wine across the living room floor to the dining room and then down the two stairs to the already open slider.

“Who’s having wine?” she asked.

“We all are,” I said, following her with my crutches.

“Let’s get loaded,” John said walking beside me. Then, taking hold of my arm with what felt like a vice grip so that I nearly went over onto my face. “Let’s get the girls drunk,” he said into my ear. “I’m already there. You got any beer, Hollywood? Or don’t screenwriters drink beer? You probably drink something all stuffy and shit, like brandy from out of snifter.”

Somehow I managed to work up a fake laugh. “Plenty of beer on ice out back.”

I pulled my arm away from him, rebalanced myself on my crutches. I knew in my heart that I already hated his guts. But I had to get through the night without showing it. I’d worked in Hollywood for a lot of years. I knew how to play the game. How to suck up to people I hated. People whose egos surrounded them like a thick, plastic, translucent bubble.

He took pulled his hand back, slapped me on the shoulder. Just a little too hard.

“You be a good man, Hollywood,” he said. “Crack me one of those beers and maybe I’ll let you hold my gun.”

W
e ate the usual summertime fare. Burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob. For desert, Susan put out a bowl of ripe apples and a red Jell-O mold, neither of which anyone touched. Mostly, we drank. We drank a lot, as if seeking our own separate escapes. When the two bottles of red that Lana brought over were finished, she went back to her house to retrieve two more. When those were gone, the girls started in on gin and tonics. Meanwhile, I drank beer. One for every two that John was chugging. When he pulled out a plastic baggy of weed, I thought I might be seeing things.

“You know what they say?” he said, while proceeding to roll a big fat bomber of a joint. “Cops always have the best dope.” He refocused his eyes so they were aimed at the fence at the far end of the perimeter. “That shit you’re growing down there is for teeny boppers, Hollywood.”

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, a cold chill shooting up and down my spine at the thought of him snooping around my property.

When he smiled, the edges of his thin mouth went vertical, making his presence even more sinister. The scruff that surrounded his mouth made him look like a pipe cleaner with big arms, big legs, and a big gun. I could not understand for the life of me what a hot woman like Lana was doing with him. Why she would have agreed to marry him and follow him all the way across the country to the very place she left decades ago, vowing never to return. He lit the joint with a Bic lighter he kept in his pocket, took a big toke off of it, and handed it to me.

I took a drag, but not too deep. I was trying to pace myself, stay in control. Only reason I took a hit off it at all was to keep him from giving me a tongue-lashing. Handing him back the joint, he then passed it on to Susan who, at this point, was sitting so close to Lana she was practically on top of her. They were obviously hitting it off, and in some ways, they were enjoying their own private party. It was as if they’d known one another not just a matter of hours, but weeks, or months, and not just as acquaintances who shared the same P90X class.

At one point, I decided I’d been holding in way too much beer for too long, so I grabbed my crutches and limped my way into the bathroom to relieve myself. By the time I got out, Lana was barking at John, calling him a “dickless wonder.” She was so stoned, she laughed when she said it. Even Susan started to laugh, although I could tell she was doing her absolute best to hold back the chuckles. But then, she too was stoned out of her gourd. Susan was no stranger to my pot patch out back (she’d already shredded and bagged the pot I left out on the counter to dry the previous day), but she was not a regular pot smoker, preferring the buzz of alcohol and the occasional pharmaceutical instead.

Lana was relentless.

She kept jabbing her husband, calling him “dickless.” And as I hobbled back onto the deck and sat down hard in the chair, I could see his round, hairy face begin to turn red, even in the candlelight. I could see a purple vein popping out on his forehead. The vein throbbed. I could see his hands opening and closing into tight fists, and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. As Lana handed me what was left of the joint, I thanked her, and went to pass it right on to John without my taking another hit.

But he ignored me and did something entirely different.

Instead of taking hold of the joint, he pulled out his gun.

H
e aimed the piece at both girls. By that, I mean he planted the metallic green laser site on Susan’s forehead, then shifted it the few inches to Lana’s and back again.

“Hey John,” I said, my heart jumping into my throat, “take it easy, man. They’re just joking around.”

Any semblance of a buzz running through my veins quickly disappeared with the rush of adrenalin.

“You shut the fuck up, Hollywood,” he said, his voice low, gravely, mean. “This doesn’t concern you.” Then, bursting out with laughter. “Well, okay, it’s your wife, so yeah, it concerns you.”

Lana paused for a moment while she bit down on her bottom lip. But then, just as quickly, her face lit up again. Suddenly it was her turn to bust out laughing.

“See what happens when you’re dickless like Dick Tracy here?” she said. “You carry around a spare dick.”

Susan didn’t think a gun being pointed at her face was any too funny. She wasn’t laughing anymore, nor was she about to resume laughing. Her face turned pale white in the candlelight.

That black automatic in his hand, the barrel moving from one woman to the other, John grabbed hold of his beer with his free hand, downed what remained.

“Let’s play a different game,” he said, slapping down the empty can.

“What kind of game, dickless?” Lana said. She was unrelenting, gun or no gun.

He turned to me, shooting me a quick look with his glazed eyes and disturbing pipe cleaner face. “How about we play your wife kisses my wife? Whaddaya say, Hollywood. You game?”

I shot Susan a look. She caught my glance and didn’t have to say a word for me to know what she was thinking. Her eyes said,
Let’s just play this stupid game and get him the hell out of our house.

“Sure thing, John,” I said, pulse banging like tympani in my temples. “But maybe you should put the gun down.”

“Nonsense,” he laughed, thumbing back the hammer. “Lana likes to play with my guns. Isn’t that right, Lana?” Then, waving the barrel at the women with the laser sight no longer engaged. “Come on girls, what’ll it be? On my count. Five, four, three…”

When he got to one, Lana closed her eyes, lifted her left hand and gently took hold of Susan’s lower jaw, aiming her mouth for her hers. When she kissed my wife, she did so as passionately and as truly as she had when she first kissed me the morning before. At first I could only assume that she was as much into girls as she was boys. But then I began to sense this wasn’t the first time she’d played a dangerous game with her husband and she knew better than not to be believable in her performance.

He watched them, that evil grin painted on his face, thin lips growing tighter and tighter. When he rubbed his now hard self through his pants with his free hand, I thought I might be sick.

“Now Susan,” he whispered from somewhere down deep in his throat, “this is where the fun begins.”

Lana pulled away from my wife, locked eyes on her husband.

“We kissed already, John,” she said. “Now leave it alone. These are good people.”

“We’re just getting started, sweetheart,” he said. Standing, he aimed the automatic at my wife’s chest. If he pulled the trigger at that close range, he’d blow out the entirety of her respiratory system. “Come on Suzy Q, pull off your shirt.”

Again, she looked at me. My heart now in my mouth, I was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe I could stab him in the hand with a plastic knife or fork, but even that would take some strength and agility on my part. Strength and agility were something I simply did not have with my mangled foot. Susan knew it too, because without an argument, she stood up, pulled off her top. She did it, not with a look of excitement or lust on her face, but one of defiance, while she glared at John’s eyes. Into them, and through them, like white-hot lasers.

She stood there, in her black bra, not at all sure about what was coming next, but waiting to hear it from the mouth of the devil.

“The bra,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat, waving the pistol in the air as if saying,
And be quick about it.

Without a word, her brown eyes never veering from his, she reached around her back with both hands, unclasped the bra, set it onto the chair.

Maybe it was the pot or the drinking, or a combination of the two. But sitting at the table, unable to do anything about the creep who was holding a gun on both my wife and his, I felt as though trapped in a dream. This wasn’t happening for real. It was happening inside my head, like a vivid nightmare. At the very least, the whole thing was like something I might write for one of my film noir treatments. Things like this just didn’t happen in real life. Only in the movies, or in pulp fiction.

“I gotta hand it to you, Hollywood,” John said out the corner of his mouth while leaning into me, “you sure know how to pick ‘em. Your woman is a primo piece of ass.” Then, straightening back up. “Now beautiful, I want you to take my wife’s shirt off.”

For the first time, Susan seemed rattled, like the game hadn’t already gone far enough.

“Do it,” he demanded, waving the gun yet again, his shooting finger sliding from the trigger guard to the trigger.

Silently, my wife turned to Lana, began the process of pulling off her shirt. When she was down to only her white bra, Susan unclasped it, and allowed it to fall away.

John exhaled a sour, rancid breath.

“Sit down, Lana,” he said.

Doing as she was told, Lana sat down in the chair immediately beside Susan.

“Now,” he said, running his tongue over dry lips, “spread your legs.”

Slowly, Lana spread her legs and cocked her hips forward, and slightly upward. While under the circumstances, I should not have been turned on in the least, I found myself aroused and hating myself for it. Maybe the reason behind my excitement had little to do with Lana spreading her legs, but had everything to do with the way she did it. From where I was sitting, she didn’t open her thighs because a gun was pointed at her. She did it because she wanted too. Because this was a crucial part of the game. This was how it was played.

This also was how the game was played: Detective John Cattivo pressed the barrel of his service weapon against the back my wife’s head.