23. heaven and hell
“Stop!” She took off her sunglasses to get a better view of this
former convict with whom she had just struck up a conversation and
who was now massaging suntan lotion onto her legs.
“Yeah. Listen. While I’m in prison, there’s all this commotion goin’
on outside. You can hear it through the locked door, so it must’ve
been pretty loud. Roy, that’s the big guy’s name, picked up on it
first. He signaled for me to shut up “ ‘cause I was blabbin’ on with
that fundamentalist. We all started listenin’. Phones were ringin’,
doors are openin’ ’n closin’. Even Don Juan stopped crying for a
moment. You could hear all this conversation. People askin’ questions
and then everyone would yell Lieutenant Miles! Lieutenant Miles!
Pretty soon you didn’t hear anything else except sirens and cars
pullin’ up and leavin’.”
“Can you do the other one?” She stretched her left leg for Micky to
oil. Emanating from some condominium livingroom, they heard the sound
of a television talkshow being broadcast.
“Does that feel good?” Micky sat back and oiled the neglected appendage.
“Mmmm. Feels great.” She shook her left foot. “Go on. I’m still with
ya.’’
“Well, then suddenly, the bolted door to the outside was opened.
There was dead silence in the entire cellblock. Everyone was payin’
attention. When the door was opened, at first you couldn’t see a
thing. There was all this white light, it must’ve been from TV cameras.
“Two cops walk in first and open the door to the soul room, the room
that I was talkin’ about. Two other policemen guarded the main door.
People were shoutin’, pushin’ and asking questions like, ’Lieutenant
Miles, is it true that she was on the way to Mexico?’ and, ’Have
there been any more bodies found?’ Then, all of a sudden, in comes
this little old lady. She is white as a sheet with red rings under
her eyes and she’s wearing a dirty green housedress. She appears amid
all this commotion and jamboree, accompanied by two more police
officers, and goes into the ultimate birthing room.”
“Oh my God! You are not serious. You were there when they brought
Dorothy Puente in? Dorothy Puente, the mass murderer. The woman that
killed all those old men who were her tenants! I can’t believe it!”
She ripped off her fly-eye sunglasses.
“Yeah, and get this. I even worked for the bitch.”
“Not!”
“Yeah. No shit! But I’ll tell you that part of the story later.”
Micky knew he had her lock, stock and sinker. She could not wait to
hear the exciting prequel, and to think, the whole story was true.
“Now wait a minute. You’re in jail ’cause you want to be and like you
said, you worked for Dorothea Puente. I have a question.” She paused.
“Aren’t you like an accomplice or something? Aren’t you like aiding
and abetting? I think that’s what they call it.”
“That’s something to think about. I am a neo-errorist, so I guess
that fits.”
“What?” She put her sunglasses back on.
“Never mind. You wouldn’t understand anyway. Back to the story. So
like every five minutes, the big door would be unlocked and they
would let someone in or out. It went on like that for the whole night
and we couldn’t get any sleep ’cause of all the noise. Plus, no one
would say what was goin’ on and even I didn’t put it all together
until I got out and saw her picture in the Sacramento Bee.
“It’s funny when you think about it. Here I was, right next to the
scene of the action and I hadn’t a clue. Can you beat that? Besides,
with all the commotion, we were beginnin’ to wonder if they had
forgotten about us. I, myself, had even forgotten about gettin’ out.
Finally though, someone did remember and I was allowed to make my one
phone call, and I called my friend Denver.” He pointed over to Denver
again. “He came and got me real early in the mornin’ before any of
the downtown traffic starts and, let me tell ya’, it was the most
beautiful experience in my life, to be freed from jail and to walk
out into the glorious Sacramento sunshine with big blue skies and
singin’ birds all around.”
“Wow. That’s a pretty amazing story. So tell me, what did you do for
Dorothea Puente?
“Wait a minute. I’m not finished. I had to go to court a couple of
months later.” Micky slid his hands further into her crease,
continued recounting and occasionally caught a glimpse of himself
reflected in her sunglasses.
“So here I was once again tellin’ my story for the umpteenth time.
That’s when I figured out what hell must be like. Some kind of trial
or review where you have to keep on confessin’ the same story over
and over again. And your family and friends are watchin’ you and you
can see that they’re sad and are askin’ themselves where did they go
wrong.”
“So, did they sentence you to prison?”
“No, I just had to do some community work, dishin’ out food for the
homeless. Now isn’t that something? Roy goes to jail for feedin’ the
homeless and I get out in order to feed them,” he said, while
caressing the hairless wonders of Ms California’s inner thighs with
his thumbs. All of a sudden, an excruciating jolt of pain shot
through his right knee due to the pebbly concrete texture of the
surface under his knees. He lurched forward and toppled onto Ms
California. The lounge chaise collapsed and they both found
themselves in a slippery predicament.
The entire poolside, including children, grandmothers and retired
state workers, except Denver who was still fast asleep at the deep
end of the pool, turned in the direction of the ruckus. Micky pulled
himself up quickly but lost his balance. He stumbled backwards and
fell into the water, dragging in with him the obese pink sea slug
with hula ring standing nearby.
Mother slug, with legs to match, tore herself away from her nursing
newborn, and carefully tossed it in the bassinet. She ran over to the
pool and jumped into the water. The depth charge of her weight
practically washed Micky and her bobbing sea slug onto the pool’s
concrete beach. Micky lay stranded at the pool’s edge.
“OOPS!” he said spitting up water, and petted the child’s head before
the mother rescued him. “Is he all right?”
She was preoccupied trying to smother the wails of shock emanating
from the screaming unipod.
“Look, I’m sorry. It was an accident.” Micky helplessly slapped the
water with the palm of his left hand.
“Hey, like, are you all right?” Ms California valleyed to Micky. She
got up and came over to Micky. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? Like, what
happened?”
“I don’t know, man. Fuckin A! I got this sharp pain in my leg and it
shot through my body like a lighting bolt in hell.”
Micky pulled himself out of the pool and lay belly-up, fully-clothed,
on the cement. He closed his eyes and rested for a moment. Feeling a
shadow pass over him, he opened his eyes and saw the upside down
image of Ms California’s face.
They looked into each other’s eyes, first questioning, then
triumphantly.
She flirtatiously asked, “Do you like ah, have a bathing suit?”
“No,” he confessed and smiled.
“We can throw your clothes into the dryer at my place. C’mon. Are you
hungry?” she asked.
“No.” He pulled himself up to a sitting position. “Hey. Wait a
minute. I think my sunglasses are at the bottom of the pool.” He got
up to look into the suburban lagoon.
“No they’re not,” she said, “Here they are,” and handed Micky his
imitation eye wear. “The kid had them. They got caught on that
inflatable donut thang that he was wearing.”
“Thanks.” He took the glasses and repositioned them on his head.
“Say? Do you still want to learn how to make a bong out of an apple?”
He smiled, feeling the rush of victory pulse through his loins.
“What?” then she remembered, “Oh yeah. The thing you learned in
prison. What I really want to know is what you did for that Puente
woman.’’
Lusting, Micky thought, soon my pocondra and your pudenda will unite.
“Yahoo!” he howled out loud and turned in the direction of Denver who
was still asleep, probably burnt to a crisp.
“Yahoo what?” she asked, stuffing her poolside gear into her
Wellington bag. She picked up the Sutters Weekly and shook the
tabloid at him. “You mind if I keep this?” she asked and threw
her GAP towel at him.
Micky looked up from examining his knee and nodded affirmatively.
“Alien Space Shit? Pretty funny,” she drawled and faked a chuckle.
“Greed and profit.” He stood up, wrapped himself in the towel and
collected his belongings, but left his orange pool towel as a
reminder for Denver that he had not left the property.
“What?” She started walking.
“Gay and proud.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Girls are pretty. Your towel. Guys are pigs.”
“Oh. You’re pretty witty. Hey. I think I should warn you, I’ve got
this dog …” She turned to finish her sentence. “Hey! What’s that in
your hand?”
“A firecracker.” He tossed it her way.
“Oh my gawd!”
“No. Viva Las Vegas.”
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