Grundish & Askew (17 page)

“Hello, Darlin’,” says a low, gravely voice behind her. “Nice to see you. It’s been a long time.”

She turns around to discover Stubs standing behind her, leaning on a pool stick with one paw, holding a frothy mug of ale in the other. “Stubs,” she says, happy to see him. “Why, I must be dreaming again, I must. Give me one of your fags, please.” Stubs reaches into his shirt pocket and shakes a cigarette halfway out of the pack and holds it out toward Turleen. She takes the cigarette, rips the filter off of the end, and puts it to her mouth, waiting for one of the crowd to offer a light. Stubs, the Spitz, and the Great Dane all scramble for their lighters. Stubs wins the honor of giving the lady a light. “Where’s your friend? The hound dog.”

“I don’t know.” Stubs looks around the room. “He was just here.”

Turleen feels a cold wet sensation on her foot. “All right, Mr. Galoot. I can feel you down there, I can. And you promised to never lick my feet again.”

Idjit Galoot pops up from under the table and flashes a sheepish grin. “I wasn’t licking them, Ma’am. Just getting a nice little sniff. Sorry if my nose is a bit cold.” Turleen stares at him with one eyebrow cocked. “I assure you,” says Idjit, “it won’t happen again.”

Turleen looks down and sees that she’s wearing the red dress, but her cleavage is full and firm and wrinkle-free. She tugs this way and that at the shoulders of her dress to re-adjust the way her breasts hang. The room about her is a seedy dive of a bar. “Kind of a rough crowd here,” she says to Stubs. “I like it.”

Stubs nods in agreement. “It feels like home, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. But it sure looks like an interesting time, it does.” She nods toward the front door where a beagle drags his ass on the welcome mat.

“Yes, well, ah-hum,” Stubs clears his throat. “We’re here to show you something. Take a look past the billiards table. Toward the other side of the room.”

Turleen looks and the area on the other side of the pool table is a swirling gray and brown mass, like a vortex to another realm. “I cain’t see nothing but a gray cloudy mess. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Just focus your eyes on one point,” say Idjit. “Don’t blink. Don’t look away. It’ll come to you.”

“What’ll I see? Because it all looks like a big shit cloud to me, it does.”

“Just keep staring, please.”

Just when she’s about to blink, when her eyeballs go dry and scratchy, just when she’s ready to give up and look for a newspaper to roll up and start swatting dogs with, it comes to her. The haze clears. In front of them, on the pool table, the bulldog sinks the eight-ball and smiles. The Finnish spitz throws a fifty-dollar bill on the table in disgust and walks away. Turleen doesn’t notice. Instead, she looks just past the action with the dogs and it is as if she is gazing through a two-way mirror into the Buttwynn’s billiards room. But the room looks different. On the wall is a red splatter that, to Turleen, looks like a giant human heart. Not the romantic Valentine’s Day heart symbol, but like a throbbing human heart. In front of the splotch on the wall is an oversized wild boar, slit open down the middle with its entrails spilling out onto the floor. Hanging on one wall is a three-by-five painted portrait of Mrs. Buttwynn. Her face is smeared with heavy make up, her mouth twisted into a malignant grin as she looks down at the boar. Standing over the bore are Grundish and Askew, in their robes and sock garters, with blood smeared on their faces and arms. They smoke and talk, but Turleen cannot hear what they say. Turleen’s peripheral vision catches movement in the corner of the room. She directs her attention toward the movement, toward the battered blond angel hovering in the corner. The angel’s arms are bruised, her hair tangled. She wears a poncho. A real poncho. A Mexican one. Not a Sears poncho.

“Those boys mucked things up again, they did,” says Turleen.

“A-yup,” agrees Stubs.

“What’s all that light and fog forming around their heads?”

All around the heads and shoulders of Grundish and Askew is a fog. Grundish is enveloped by a glowing apple-green mist. Askew’s head throws off coils of black with reddish streaks.

“I don’t know, Turleen. I’m just a dog
^[30]
,” answers Stubs. “But if I were to guess, I’d say those are probably their auras. The big bearded fellow there looks healthy. But, uh, that funny looking little guy seems almost like he’s polluted or something.”

“It does look that way, it does. Why are you showing me this?”

“Because one of those boys needs your help.”

“How am I supposed to help him?”

“That’s for you to figure out,” says Stubs. “I think they need you now, though.”

The vision on the other side of the pool table returns to a swirling vortex. The image of the Buttwynn billiards room fades.

“Well, I better get going then, I better.” Turleen starts for the front door of the bar and stops again. “How about one more cigarette before I go, and an extra for the road, Mr. Stubs?”

Stubs shakes two more smokes free from his pack and hands them to Turleen. He lights one for her and she tucks the other behind her ear. “Thanks, Boy,” says Turleen as she scratches him on the back, just between the shoulder blades.

“You’re quite welcome, Turleen. Anytime.” Stubs thumps his foot on the floor in response to the back scratching. “Hopefully, we’ll meet again soon.”

Turleen turns away from the pack of beer-swilling, pool-playing dogs and walks out the front door of the bar. Once out of the bar she turns and looks at the building. A blinking green neon sign hangs above the front door, announcing the simple but powerful sounding name of the bar,
THE HUB
.

•  •  •

“Where the hell is Turleen anyway?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” answers Askew as he crushes his cigarette butt out on Buttwynn’s head.

“I’m right here, I am.” Turleen walks through the doorway, a cigarette tucked behind her ear. “And you’re right, Grundish. We need to get out of here now, we do.”

“Well, we have to figure out where to go.” Grundish scratches at the thick pelt of hair on his head, trying to stimulate his brain into coming up with an idea.

“I’ve got that figured out, I do. It’s all taken care of. You just figure out the best time for us to leave, how we’re going to travel, all of that crap, and I’ll take care of the rest, I will. I have the perfect place for us all to lay low and for however long we need to.”

“All right, Turleen, tell me what you’ve got planned for us.” Grundish grabs another of Askew’s Blue Llamas and torches it up. Turleen inches closer to Grundish.

“Well, the way I see it, we need to put some distance between us and this mess, we do. And I’ve got just the place.” Turleen inhales as deeply as her one lung allows, relishing the second-hand smoke. “So I set up what they call a safehouse for us a little ways away from here, over in Polk County. It will, at least, buy you boys a little time to figure things out, it will.”

“Well, who’s gonna be willing to put us up?”

“An old flame of mine. He’s crazy about me. The old boy’ll do anything I ask, he will. I mean, talk about being dizzy with a dame.”

“Well, I don’t see that we’ve got much choice ‘cause I ain’t got no friends other than Askew, and he ain’t got no one but me. But now we’ve got this young lady that we can’t really let go. And we’ve got a kid duct taped to a chair upstairs. The smart thing to do would be to knock the kid off so he can’t identify us.”

Askew abruptly rotates 180-degrees on his heels and starts out of the room.

“Askew, get back here.”

Askew stops and turns. “I’m just going to get me a sodee pop. I wasn’t going to do anything to the kid.” But, just under the tattered flesh of Askew’s face, Grundish recognizes a hint of disappointment.

“I ain’t got it in me to take that kid’s life. And neither does Askew. So I guess we’re gonna have to leave the kid upstairs, maybe just give him some food and water before we go. Buttwynn’s family will find him and let him loose. And, yeah, he can identify us. But we’ll be long gone by then. And I don’t see no other way around it ‘lessen we want to kill the boy. And we don’t wanna do that. Right, Askew?”

“Yeah,” grumbles Askew, his tone flat and unenthusiastic.

Turleen pulls an unlit cigarette from behind her ear and rolls it around in her hand. It’s not a Blue Llama. It’s not a Red Apple. It’s a brand called Sordes Pilosus.
^[31]
Hmmm
, Turleen thinks to herself,
that doggie gave me some fancy French fags.
Next time I see Stubs, I’ll have to do something nice for him, I will.
Turleen decides that now when she goes to sleep, she’ll always make sure to keep a baggy of chopped meat with her for her canine dream-friends. The urge to light the cigarette almost overwhelms her, but Turleen maintains control, merely relishing the feel of the Sordes Pilosus between her fingers. She breathes in another whiff of Grundish’s second-hand smoke and secretly wishes to be stricken with a terminal illness so that she can justify taking up smoking again. “Well,” Turleen says, “I’m gonna take this young lady into the kitchen and give her a nice meal, I am. Then I’m gonna freeze all the leftovers for this here dead fellow’s family because they’re probably not going to feel up to cooking when they get home. Now, come on along with me, honey,” she says to Dora.

Cautiously rising from the chair, Dora stands and allows herself to be led to the kitchen by Turleen. She looks to Grundish to see if he’ll allow her to exit the room. Grundish waves her away with his hand, confident that Turleen will be able to handle the fragile-looking girl if she tries to make a break.

“You boys do whatever it is that you need to in order to wrap up your business here,” says Turleen. “This young ’un and I’ll be ready to go when you are, we will.”

•  •  •

“There ain’t much use in cleaning this mess up,” says Grundish to Askew. “We ain’t got the time. Why don’t you go take a plate of food to that kid upstairs? Give him some water. Don’t let him up, though. He can shit and piss himself until somebody comes along and releases him. Speaking of which, I gotta go take a dump, myself.”

•  •  •

“God damn! God damn! God damn!” Grundish can’t believe the torpedo in the commode. Turleen has been stuffing him with mounds of meat the past couple of days, so it only makes sense. Grundish still cannot fathom that the monstrosity in the toilet bowl came from his body. The colossal ass-baby spans the widest part of the bowl and dares somebody to try to flush it.
Come on
, it says.
Don’t be a pussy. Go ahead and try to get rid of me. What? Are you afraid of a talking turd? You disgust me. Yeah. How does that make you feel? You make a turd feel queasy.

“Well,” Grundish says to himself (and the turd), “we’re already wanted for murder, and they’re bound to realize that we were involved here. I’m going away for good if they catch us. Why not leave my mark?” He walks away from the porcelain throne. He walks away from a blue-ribbon, first-prize-winning log of solid waste. The Turd Burglar strikes again.

•  •  •

“Did you feed the boy?”

“Yep.”

“Water him?”

“Yep.”

“And he’s still alive?”

“I told you I wouldn’t kill him,” Askew takes umbrage at the question. He pulls his robe around his pot belly, barely managing to tie the belt to keep the robe in place. Fumbling with his pack of Blue Llamas, he finally manages to shake one out and light it. “You gotta cut me some slack, Grundish. I already told you that I know I fucked up with some of the shit I done. But you gotta recognize that some of that stuff happened in the
mist
of some chaotic shit.”

“Give me that thing,” says Grundish, snagging Askew’s freshly-lit smoke. “You just keep smoking these fucking things in front of me so that I will, too.” He takes a hit off of the cigarette and hands it back to Askew. “I know you’ve been a little confused here. So, I am trying to cut you some slack. Just try...please just try not to kill anybody else.”

“Hey. I’m not a cold-blooded killer,
per se
, you know.” He looks to Grundish for confirmation. “Bumpy D, for example. He was literally asking me to kill him for what he did. And Buttwynn. He charged me. What could I do?”

“What about that kid’s ear?”

“That was excessive and uncalled for,
granite
. But I recognize that now, and it won’t happen again. I’m making a
three-hundred-and-sixty-degree
turnabout. Heck, I even apologized to the kid the last time I was up there.”

Grundish thinks about going to check on the kid and then decides to take his friend’s word for it. Askew seems sincere, and Grundish gives him the benefit of the doubt. “Let’s go check on Turleen and the girl.”

•  •  •

In the kitchen, Turleen sips at an oversized glass of Chianti. She and Dora pick at a plate of fava beans and an unidentifiable cut of meat. Dora sips at her own glass of wine and looks as comfortable as if she were dining with her grandmother.

“Everything going all right, Turleen?” Grundish asks.

“It’s hunky dory, it is,” Turleen smiles at the girl. “This young lady here has nowhere to go and no problem with coming along with us. Ain’t that right, Dura?”

“Yep,” says Dora. She forks several more fava beans into her mouth and nods.

“Her name’s
Dora
, Turleen,” corrects Askew. “It ain’t Dura. You’re
mispronounciating
it. Her name is Dora.”

“That’s what I said, it is,” answers Turleen. “
Dura
.”

“Okay, whatever,” interrupts Grundish. “We can call her Dora, Dura, Darla or Dharma. Shit, you can call me Ray, you can call me Jay. It don’t matter right now. What matters is that we get out of here before Buttwynn’s family shows up. Right?”

Everybody, including Dora, nods their heads in agreement.

“All right then. What do you need to do before we go, Turleen?”

“I just need to bag up and freeze the rest of my food and I’m ready to scram, I am.”

“Good,” says Grundish. “When we’re all ready to go, I’m gonna have you go out in the driveway and bring Buttwynn’s car into the garage. Can you do that for me, Turleen?”