Coin-Operated Machines (5 page)

It was already mid-afternoon.  He
still had to pack his clothing, but at seven o'clock, he had a date with his most favorite blue hairs in the universe. 

BAD ROAD TRIP

Present Day

Private investigator Mike Kinsley drove on the back roads of Madison, Virginia, seeking Hampton Hills.  It was a small town along the foothills of the Appalachian Valley.  His trek had turned into an aimless one, being lost, though he swore he had the directions right.  He stayed on the back road surrounded by dense deciduous forest seemingly driving in circles.  Everything looked the same.  There were no breaks in the woods, road signs, or any indication he was going the right way.  After battling to decide if he should check his GPS again, a road sign appeared with the words "Hampton Hills" painted crudely in yellow paint. 

No fancy road signs
in this place.

Mike
sipped his morning coffee in victory, awaiting the jolt he needed to get his day going.  That was the problem all along, he thought.  The coffee wasn't working its magic yet. 

Driving along the bumpy terrain, reassured he was finally on the right track, his thoughts drifted to his mission.  He flipped open the top of the file sitting on the passenger seat and viewed the picture of a woman named Peggy Albright.  She was thirty-one.  Single.  Friends said she was visiting Hampton Hills to
hook up with an old flame.  She didn't come back.  The bills were stacking up.  Friends and family were concerned.  They called the police.  The police's case was ice cold.  Then Mike had been hired to investigate Peggy's disappearance by her family. 

Rumors
Mike was hearing involved other people going missing in the general area, though the investigation was slow-in-the-coming because the people missing weren't just from this area.  They were located across the United States in random pockets of the nation without an obvious pattern.  That wasn't his problem.  His problem was Peggy Albright. 

"Whoa, something stinks." 
Mike pinched his nose.  "Did I run over a dead carcass?"

The tires didn't bump over anything in the road.  He checked the rearview mirror, and the road was clear. 

"Seriously, what was that?"

The vents kicked out more fetid air.
  So strong, it was visible.  The color was a dark tint of yellow.  The tendrils curled from the trees around the road too, wrapping around their trunks, bending, and twisting, and spreading to obscure the distance.  He turned, and Peggy Albright's file was suddenly blank and dripping with ink.  No, not ink, he thought, but a strange black oil.  It was growing soggy until it started to smolder and smoke the strange color of earthy brown until it vanished into thin air. 

Mike
reached out to his police frequency radio when the receiver itself softened, the plastic melting into his hand, threading through his fingers, latching on, and burning through his skin.  He slammed the gas, trying to escape whatever was surrounding him.  He was speeding ahead and gaining distance until the terrain turned rough.  The tires popped, and once the car swerved, skidded, spun out, and then stopped, the dirt had changed into a lake of tar black oil stinking of death.  Human bones floated on the surface belonging to hundreds of bodies.  Absorbing the macabre scene, Mike's car was sinking fast.  Steam obscured the windshield.  Everything was so hot so fast, the glass burst, the pieces slicing him up mercilessly. 

Picking glass shards out of his eyes with his free hand, the steaming, boiling, popping oil filled up the car, sloshing in from all the windows.  He was scorched alive, the skin melting fro
m his bones instantaneously.

The last thing
Mike processed was the sound of many voices talking or shouting over one another.  As they were speaking, he too became one of the voices among the dead. 

NEW PLANS MADE

Carlos Miloh was blowing grass clippings across the parking lot when Brock crossed paths with him.  The super was wearing a white shirt underneath a checkered yellow and black flannel shirt that clung to his sweaty body.  Carlos took a break, turning off the blower, and intercepted Brock before he could make it to the staircase. 

“Busy m
an, eh?  Too busy to enjoy your vacation?"

Brock shrugged his sh
oulders.  “I’m visiting my sister in Virginia.  I haven’t seen her in two years.”

“I have sisters in Mexico, down
the Tijuana way, but they have no green card.  They speak English as good as they can work a chainsaw.  Being a Mexican, you have to be able to work every tool in the shed, or else it's the unemployment line for you."

Carlos had known him for two years, and the man had the uncanny ability to read people.  He
surveyed Brock's face and withdrew the truth from him.  “This isn’t a fun visit, I take it."  He pressed his fingers at each end of his lips.  "You're not smiling.”

“I’ll say one thing, and I’ll leave it at that.”

“Sure, señor."

“I don’t think
my sister's curbed her drug habit.  She's looking to big brother for help.  I’m ready to do what it takes to save her from herself.  It's a big challenge.  I'm not stepping out of her life ever again.  I want her to be healthy."

“You mean that, don’t
you?”  Carlos leaned down to turn on the blower again, but first said, “I’ll keep an eye on your place.  Good luck, friend.  Family is all you got."

Brock's favorite support group didn’t meet for bingo until six-thirty, so that left Brock some time to himself.  He packed light for the trip.  Brock had no timeframe for how long he’d be staying.  He hoped the place Angel was lodging had a washer and dryer he could use if the stay dragged out. 

He sipped his iced tea while he stood on his
apartment veranda.  Brock thought about Angel.  The letter was a rouse to get him to visit her, bring money, and then she would run off again.  She would probably find another guy who enjoyed her enough between the sheets to put up with her, and then when it got old, he'd kick her the hell to the curb.  Or there could be that one guy out there who dusted her off, gave her a sense of home and normalcy, but then she’d ruin that good thing by stealing one too many twenty dollar bills from the guy’s wallet or hawking the wrong watch or keepsake, and on and on she’d go in the same spiraling cycle of self-ruining.

At least she’s not in prison or dead.  You’re taking her back home with you, and that’s final.  I
’ll sleep on the fold-out bed.  I’m not letting her go back to a shitty life, not after everything I’ve seen her go through.

Brock
felt determined again.  When he marched back inside the apartment to attempt another written entry in his memoir for an audience of one, his cell phone rang.  He quickly answered.  It was Hannah.

“If it isn’t M
rs. Hollywood herself.  Do you have time to remember your roots?  Did you speed dial on me on accident?  If so, I’ll let you off easy this time and hang up now.”

“Stop i
t, Brock.  You’re being silly.  Look, I've accomplished all of my contract shit.  Next Thursday, I'm off to New Mexico."

"So I'm
going on a trip by myself?”
“I don't understand.  Did "America’s Got Flair" call you up early?”

“No, Angel wrote me a l
etter.  She says she in a small town in Virginia.  I’m going to see what’s up.  I think she’s either wanting to talk to me about how shit went down between us, or it’s the drugs.”

There was a painfully
drawn out silence between them before Hannah filled it in.  “I just hope she’s okay.”  Then after another lengthy moment, “I want you to be careful, Brock.  Don’t get hurt.  I love you.  I don't want to see you get wrapped up in her problems.  You can only do so much, no matter how responsible you feel about her situation."

Brock
imagined the variety of things that could happen.  Angel slitting his throat and stealing his car and wallet and meeting up with her dealer.  Or he would be sleeping in a room, the door would be kicked open, and then Angel’s significant other would blast him one in the back of the head and take all of his money.  No matter how many scenarios he created, it would end with him somehow mugged, jumped, or killed. 

“I hear you on being careful. 
But I owe it to her to give her a chance.”  He lowered his voice, knowing she didn't completely approve. “If she’s still on drugs, I’m taking her home with me and forcing her to kick the habit.”

“You can’t force her. 
You’re not equipped to cure a person of addiction.  We’re survivors barely scraping by, but Angel, she has to overcame it her way, not yours.”

“I just want my sister back.
  The way things used to be.”

“It’s not your fault what happened.”

“I’m the older brother, the more responsible one, and I’m the one who has to step up now and see her healthy."

“If she gets violent or tries to drag you down with her—”

Brock was clutching the phone hard.  His palms were greasy, and he was blinking sweat out of his eyes.  He stopped talking a moment, staring out at the streets, the sun, and the Spanish woman carrying her groceries in one hand and her infant in the other. 

Hannah grew
impatient.  “I know men, and I know when they clam up, they’re pissed.”

He lied, though in lying,
he'd tricked himself into a better mood.  “No, I’m imagining you in your panties wearing your boots ‘n spurs pointing your six shooters at me.”

“You’re full of
crap.”

“I’m nervous
about the trip.  That's all, honey.” 

"When are you going?"

"Tomorrow morning.  It'll be a quick road trip."

Hannah hummed under her breath
.  "How about I go with you?  I have eight days before my flight.  I don't even have to be there when you talk to Angel.  Angel might like talking to me too."

Brock
perked at the idea of her coming along. He still had to say this, "I guess I feel guilty.  I felt like you and Angel are both victims of my bullshit."

"My decisions were my own, and Angel needs to understand that too.  We have influences, but we also make
choices ourselves."

Brock decided it was a good idea they go together.  "
Hey, come by tonight, and we'll plan the trip."

"I do have one question
for you, Brock."

"Yeah."

"Can I wear my boots during the trip?"

Maybe nobody can understand this memoir because I don't have a straight stream of consciousness.  Well, here goes another try.

It was
about a year into Angel and I taking over Dad's mansion that I remember this.  We’d long since quit our jobs.  Angel’s job before she signed off was casting for films and being a part-time film agent, and me, I produced movies.  Without that work to keep us busy, we got bored.  You couldn’t throw a party every day, so we had down time.  Sometimes we’d spend that time repairing the walls, the floors, the ceilings, replacing shattered windows, mowing the lawn—and that lawn was huge—or wading in the pool and relaxing, but in the process of cleaning up, we discovered a secret room in the mansion.  I thought secret rooms were for crazy rich mad scientists, but my father had a room incorporated into the wall of his bedroom.  I discovered it when one of our party guests was found with his head shoved through the wall.  I never found out why his head was shoved through it, but it happened nonetheless.   

The secret
room was full of high-powered rifles.  Dad was an aspiring hunter, though he was the type to buy things without enjoying the hobby.  The act of collecting was the thrill.  Now we’re talking 30—06's, .22 calibers, .223 Winchesters, Remington 700s, a ridiculous elephant gun, and one of those rifles you crack the double-barrels, I can’t remember the style.  Going through the guns, Angel and I just start blasting everything to shit in the house.  While we were doing this, Angel shoots through walls and enters rooms through these holes instead of using the actual doors.  “This table’s broken,” she said one time with that evil smile of hers and shot the table's legs off.  She’d send the refrigerator off the ground with one blast with the double-barreled shotgun.  Angel would say, “Welp, the fridge is on the fritz again.”  When she shot the front off a running dish water, it was a water works show. 

Don’t get me wrong, I had a
good time too.  I was firing at the ceiling, and I laughed so hard when the plaster rained down on me, and Angel said I was the ghost of Christmas past.   I used a 12 gauge to explode Mom’s old water bed.  Then I’d start stacking up the romance paperbacks Mom left behind when she moved out.  The collection was in the hundreds. We'd place the novels on random furniture and shoot them to pulpy pieces.  Angel would ceremoniously read from the paperback tomes after she’d changed into a bed sheet, tying it into a toga.  She’d read a paragraph out loud, the paragraph being a colorful description of a woman’s sexual organs.  She’d prop the novel against something and let me take aim.  “Oh profanity,” she kept saying like a Victorian housewife.  “Oh posh, don’t talk about vaginas in this household.  It’s rubbish.  Pure foppery!”  Then
blammo
from the shotgun.

I probably forgot to mention we were blitzed out of our minds
on cocaine the whole time.  Angel had a thing about what surface she snorted from.  It couldn’t be a mirror, it had to be off of somebody’s skin.  That was her favorite way, off a lover’s back.  And she had many lovers—and I had them too, a new one every night, it seemed.  I’d wake up to a new pile under the sheets who’d collect their shit the next morning and leave as if none of it had happened. 

What haunts me the most is when I’d catch Angel being treated badly, and I
wouldn't do anything about it.  Back then, I didn’t give a shit about anything except being high.  I had my supply, I knew where to get more, and I had money, connections, and Angel’s habits and the consequences were her own problem. 

I caught her once in the bathroom naked.  The mansion was empty after another one of our infamous parties.  She was sprawled out, using the shower curtain as a blanket, but she was naked.  She’d shit herself, and she had a bloo
dy nose.  Who knows what event happened first, the shit or the bloody nose.  The saddest part, I laughed at her.  A grown man looking at his sister and laughing.  I thought it was funny.  A normal person would’ve cleaned her up, checked if she was alive—but not me.  I cooked breakfast for myself like nothing had happened.  I owe Angel a thousand apologies.  I only want her to be safe, happy, and to be somebody in my life.

Brock's
wrist was cramping, so he forced himself to take a break.  He was confused about how he was supposed to feel about cataloguing the misgiving of his life.  He lowered into the couch he was resting on and closed his eyes.  He had some time to take a nap before bingo night.