The Reckoning (11 page)

“Well, as a matter of fact, he does,” Mrs. McCulloch said awkwardly, smiling not-so-tenderly at her better half.

Monica nailed him with her blues. “I trust he doesn’t get rough with his hands, like some men do. Sometimes men don’t know their own strength, can leave bruises, or worse.”

Royce just wanted to die, then and there.

The feasting began. Royce offered a toast to world peace. “And to fame, wealth—and great sex!” Monica interjected. “Here, here,” Cliff echoed.

They clinked their wine glasses (Craig sullenly raising his glass of milk only after chiding from Leslie). Graciously, Les offered the turkey platter to Monica and Cliff first. The two speared the bird with their forks, acting as though they hadn’t eaten in days. Monica did remind Cliff to “save plenty of breast meat for Royce.”

Out of the corner of his eye Royce noticed Craig staring at the rings in Cliff’s nostrils and eyebrows.

“You think that’s something,” Monica blurted at Craig. “Look at this!” She opened her mouth, flickered her pierced tongue. Through the tongue was a silver post and stud. Royce saw his wife’s jaw drop.

“Guys really dig it,” Monica added.

Royce did his best to steer the conversation towards benign topics like the weather, the Ravens, the dead fish at the National Aquarium, but Cliff always managed to bring it back to some sensitive area.

“Say, Royce,” he droned nasally, gesturing with a greasy, tooth-gnarled drumstick. “What do you hear from your old boss? He still doing the community service gig? Filling pot holes?”

Royce shuddered. “Boss?”

“Milken. King M. Who else? The man you used to worship.”

Leslie turned to her husband and said, “I didn’t know you worked for Milken.”

He shrugged it away, saying, “Yes, my one foray into the wild and crazy world of junk bonds.”

She scowled at him. “Is that all everything is with you? A foray?”

“Super dressing,” Monica snarfed, gravy dribbling down her chin. “You’ll have to give me your recipe.”

“Super Jell-O,” Les sniped back. “You simply must give me
your
recipe.”

Royce jolted. A foot was making its way up his right pant leg, making for his groin. Immediately he fired a questioning glance at Monica. The woman leaned forward, glanced surreptitiously at his wife and whispered hotly, “Nipples still sore?”

Royce’s throat started to close off. He downed half his wine; the liquor went off in his brain. He held onto the table to keep it from spinning. The toes tickled his groin. Oh my god, he was getting hard.

“Royce, you’re sweating like a pig,” he heard his wife comment, his ears buzzing now.

Cliff wiped his slimy mouth with the back of his hand and said, “Leslie, did Royce ever tell you about the time he got me into one of Michael’s Predator Balls?”

Leslie’s eyes twinkled with saccharine. “I missed hearing about that little shindig, Cliffie. Why don’t you fill me in?”

Cliff was only too happy to.

He said, “Like at all Michael’s parties, there was plenty of young pussy for the Big Swinging Dicks he wanted to impress.”

“There are children present!” Monica interjected.

“Sure, sorry, kid,” Cliff apologized to Craig and continued. “Anyway, lots of good lookin’ girls, many of ‘em porno starlets hired to inject some life into the party. Funny thing is, though, what got the most attention was this robot thing, a mechanical butler some Jap company brought to the bash so Michael could see it and maybe invest in it. This robot, in this butler’s suit, served drinks, said hello and that kind of shit—spent most of its time bumping into walls. Anyway, for a joke, somebody—I think one of the bimbos—strapped a dildo onto the thing.”
Guffaw-snarfle-snort-guffaw
.

Cliff laughed so hard he choked up a scud of poultry that fell wetly near Leslie’s plate. Repulsed, she flinched back.

“So one of the prosties mounts it and fucks it!”

“Robots!” Leslie blurted. “How utterly fascinating.” To Royce she looked dazed, beyond shock now.

Cliff said, “I bet Craig is into robots. I know I was when I was a kid.” He winked slyly at the boy. “I built me a girl robot once, out of oatmeal boxes, one of my mother’s blonde wigs and my sister’s underwear. Put some titties on her and everything. Called her Marilyn. Ever think about doing that, tiger?”

“No,” Craig said, mopey.

“Well then, what
are
you into?” Cliff pressed.

Craig ran the tines of his fork through his yams. He had elected to shred everything—turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes, Jell-O—on his plate instead of eating it. Royce hoped his stepson did not mention hiding out in closets as one of his after-school activities.

“Well, I don’t know where his interests lie now,” Monica said. “But in a few years I bet girls will have something to do with it. Craig, you’re such a handsome young man.”

“Nintendo,” the boy finally replied, his eyes meeting Monica’s with a half smile.

“Hell, I’ve always wanted to try that,” Cliff said. “After chow, maybe your folks will let us square off and play a game.”

The child perked up. “You’d play with me?”

Cliff grinned, showing his yellow-stained teeth. “Sure, dude.”

“Isn’t that dear,” Monica chirped. “I always thought Cliffie would make a great father. He has so much of the little boy in him still.”

“Yes,” Leslie agreed. “He certainly does. Eat up folks, so I won’t have to feed it to the hogs. Royce and Craig simply loathe leftovers.”

Royce knew that was a jab at him. He loved hot turkey sandwiches.

The orphans took Mrs. McCulloch at her word, devouring the turkey carcass between them—competitively, as if they were lions fighting over a fallen gazelle.

“Just love this bird,” Cliff mumbled a compliment at Leslie, his mouth meat-stuffed.

“It’s a good change for him, from what he usually eats,” Monica said, freckled nose crinkling cutely. “Where men are men,” she teased Cliff, “and—hey, buster!” She slapped his hand for snaring a particularly tempting chunk of dark meat.

Jeez, feeding time at the zoo, Royce thought, watching the process. Cliff and Monica made short work of the cleanup job, with much bone-snapping and tissue-tearing. At one point Cliff managed to rip off a large flap of fatty skin, only to have Monica snatch it from his hands and quickly force it into her mouth, her neck ballooning as the glob inched down her esophagus. The woman’s eyes glazed over, and Royce feared he might be called upon to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her.

“Well now,” Leslie said with an impish lilt. “Shall we retire to the living room and have our pumpkin pie and coffee later?”

During the course of the dinner Royce’s hands seemed to have doubled in size and lost all their dexterity. Doing dishes was a task he always shared with Leslie (“perfect” post-modern husband that he was), but this afternoon, following his breaking of two plates and his insistence on putting the leftover yams away where the sugar and flour were kept, his wife said his efforts weren’t required.

“Monica and I will get these,” she said sharply.

Monica discreetly patted his fanny, saying, “Looks like Royce has a little buzz off the wine.”

So he left them alone in the kitchen, alone with their feminine wiles unbridled by his sensible male presence. At this point, he really didn’t give a flying fuck if they gossiped about him. If Monica wanted to reveal their little tryst last Friday at Naughty’s, fine with him. The bitch could just do it.

He rubbed his throbbing temples as he strode down the hall towards the aggravating, junky-electronic sounds of a Nintendo game in progress coming from his stepson’s room. Craig and Cliff, like a couple of after-school buds, were sprawled stomach down in front of the tube, manipulating joy sticks and intensely watching fast-moving puzzle chips drop down into what looked like the Kremlin.

“Hey, you guys hold it down in there,” he joked.

Craig looked over his shoulder at Royce and said, “Uncle Cliff is a stud at Tetris. He’s already playin’ level seven—with nine-thousand points!”

Royce was taken back. He’d seldom—maybe never—heard such enthusiasm in the boy’s voice.

“That’s great, Craig. Didn’t know your Uncle Cliff had it in him.”

“Hey, what did I tell you, old buddy?” Cliff said, his eyes still riveted to the screen. “I’m a new man. Look at this!”

Cliff, grunting, performed one-armed push-ups while working the joystick with his other hand.

“Cool!” Craig said.

Royce scowled. “Cool.” Yeah, sure. A new man. Wasn’t that special. He left the two to their game, a little miffed that Cliff, the nastiest cokehead he’d ever met (and he’d encountered a legion of them in LA) was now “Uncle Cliff” to his stepson. In the living room he turned the football game back on. Hell, if he’d known all it took to get through to the boy was playing Nintendo with him, he’d have done it long ago. He would have played with the little shit day and night.

It was clear. He was in a foul mood for a foul day. No day of thanks for Royce McCulloch, that was for sure. Cliff Wells a new man? What a crock of shit. Maybe he had a new body, but he was still so crooked he had to screw his socks on in the morning—a total scumbag. Besides, the dude had taken a powder, big time. Hadn’t he?

And what about that woman doing dishes with his wife? He looked at her now, the way she moved to accentuate her tits (she knew he was watching), the way she twittered so domestically, as if she really gave a shit about recipes for three-bean salad or how to cook gravy without scalding it. Royce had some ideas about her, too, about where she was coming from. But god, she was built.

Here these two assholes were, rocking his boat, giving him grief on a holiday. Blowing his cover.

Royce McCulloch cradled his aching head in his hands, firmly clamped his jaw tight as a first-line defense against barfing. Jesus, Leslie was going to tear him a new one.

Pumpkin pie and coffee went better than he expected, though Monica’s invitation for Leslie to drop by Naughty’s went over like a lead fart, especially when Ms. Pleshette added she had a fine selection of underwired bras designed to flatter women “with boyish figures.”

“Why,” Monica prattled on, “I can even fit you with a breast prosthesis. We sell a lot of them to women who have had mastectomies.”

“Super,” Les snarled. Now she was perspiring as well. The fire log had elevated the living room’s temperature past eighty. With the humidity, it felt like a tropical jungle.

Cliff was giving Royce rafts of shit for standing him up for lunch that day.

“Now I’m serious about this deal I’m cooking on,” Cliff said, stabbing a split, dirty fingernail in Royce’s chest. “It will put us on easy street. But I need your special expertise.”

“Sure,” Royce said dully.

“Now you know me, man,” Cliff revved. “I take no shit from no one—even you. You’re either in or you’re out. But you’re a dumb fuck if you’re not in.”

“Okay, Cliff. We’ll talk.” He was herding Cliff and Monica towards the front door.

“Lunch?” Cliff whined.

“Yeah, lunch.”

“Next week?”

Royce sputtered, “Yes, next week. I’ll call you.”

“I’ll call
you
. I’m not easy to get a hold of.”

Monica giggled. “Yes, Cliffie is always busy, scurrying around, doing his little deals.” She then walked right up to Royce, face to face, hit him with scolding eyes. “As for you, young man, don’t forget my business plan.”

He blinked. “Certainly.”

She gave him a quick peck. “Till then,
Mr. R
.”

Royce gave his wife a nonchalant look, as though he were on kissing terms with all his clients.

Craig seemed to be the only household member sincerely sad to see the “orphans” go.

“Bye, Uncle Cliff. Bye, Monica,” he said woefully.

They fawned over him, Cliff messing his hair, Monica stenciling the boy’s face with red smooch marks. Craig ate it up.

“Just call me your Aunt Monica,” Ms. Pleshette urged him.

Finally the two were out the door. Royce hoped Craig would hover a bit, protecting him from his wife’s onslaught. But the boy immediately reverted to his typical downcast face and retreated to his room.

Leslie leveled her big browns on him and fumed, “Well, Mr. R, it looks as though we need to talk.”

They retired to the living room, Leslie sitting stiffly on the couch and he taking a seat across the coffee table from her. He noticed the hunger in her eyes, coveting the ashtray full of Cliff’s cigarette butts.

“Now, now,” he said singsongy, a peevish grin on his face. “Don’t even think about it.”

His wife scowled. “Abort the evasion tactic, buster. I need you to fill me in, bring me up to speed.”

“Fill you in?” he said innocently. Man, she was pissed. He’d never seen her this way. So spunky.

“Yeah, I reckon about seven or eight year’s worth. Your little stint in LA, where I thought you were a junior bank officer. Now I find out you were a wheeler-dealer for Michael Milken, the Junk Bond King! For all I know, you’re under indictment for something. Or maybe Craig and I are just part of your cover under the Witness Protection Program. How long did you work for him?”

“Not for long. And no, I’m not under indictment for anything.”

“How long is not for long?”

He shrugged. “Four, five years, maybe.”

“Maybe?” she shrilled. “Sounds like you and your buddy Cliff had a great time of wine, women and song—especially the women part. Sounds like you were a couple of real whoremongers.”

Royce winced, not noticeably, he hoped. Fuck, this was getting bad.

Her scolding continued. “And who is this Monica Pleshette? You really working for her?”

“Look, she was referred to me by Gary Ames. You can ask Brenda, if you like. Gary is on vacation in Africa, so I can’t dump her until he gets back, out of courtesy.”

“Oh, you mean I should consult Brenda as to why my—our, if you really give a shit—marriage is falling apart?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

“You fuckin’ that woman, Royce?”

Whoa! He couldn’t believe she said that.

“No,” he said indignantly, voice quaking.

“And another thing,” she said, pressing her right hand to her chest. “If the fact that my tits are flatter than cold flapjacks bothers you, I wish to fuck I’d known that before you married me!”

His wife started crying, and it went downhill from there.

Royce was distraught enough to become reckless and make a serious tactical mistake, choosing a course of action that was, in a sense, hitting Leslie below the garter belt when she was down.

He said, “You know I love you, Les, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that it’s been strained between us lately.” He paused, letting this grand revelation sink in.

“Why didn’t you come to me earlier?” she sobbed.

Royce dropped his voice an octave or two. “You’ve been so busy lately, with your banking school project and…”

His wife trembled. “And what?”

“Well, and this Craig thing. I know it has you worried, as it should. But sometimes, and I feel real guilty for saying this…sometimes I think I’ve got to really compete with Craig for your love.”

That did it.

“You shit,” she hissed.

He finally blew. “Oh, don’t be such a cu…” Royce stopped short, nearly swallowing his tongue.

“The C word. You finally used it!” Leslie exploded, and stormed out of the room.