"When you say you saw her, I assume you mean
in the literal sense?" I asked
Fenny half hoping he had, in fact, seen her and half hoping it was the figment
of an overactive imagination. Ever since
we found our way out of the quagmire that started so many years ago Fenny had
been known for letting his fears override his grip on reality. He would often swear we were being
followed. Stalked.
Fenny answered "As sure as I am sitting
here. She saw me too. I know it, I just know it. What are we going to do? Christ! She saw me.. she did...". I interrupted here and spoke to Fenny in a
quiet yet firm tone, "Ok. If she
did, let's say she did see you.
What? Did you she follow you? Is
she outside the window? No? Of course she isn't. She isn't that dumb." I think I was trying to calm us both
down.
Storms follow some people. Some people create the storms. But Elle was the storm. And she didn't care who got caught in her
destruction.
__________________________________________________________________________________
At about 11, Fenny and I found our way to the
Sippy Freeze. The town was small and it
didn't take a lot of time or effort to find this establishment. The sad part was I was starving. The tragedy is that Sippy Freeze was known
for their nachos. Fenny was starting to
fade. Between being starved to death and
the stress of swindling a meal he was exhausted. Fenny wasn't built for the life on the run.
As we were waiting Fenny looked over at me with
bloodshot eyes and started to ask me something.
For as long as I had known Fenny he couldn't handle stress. Not school stress, not life stress. Not even the stress of picking out his
outfit. This was killing him. He was hungry and tired. We had been in jail. We were meeting a purple headed control
freak. A woman who was going to help us
get some cash. A woman we didn't
know. The hoarseness in his voice told
me all I needed to know about the dark clouds in his mind. Fenny sort of grunted "Did you get her
name? The girl from the counter. The one we are meeting." I snorted, "Shit...I didn't. It happened so fast I didn't even ask."
Fenny actually laughed. It was nice to hear his laugh. I really did feel horrible for getting us
into this situation. Not so much for me
but for Fenny. I could handle it or at
least get over anything that would happen to us. Fenny, though...Fenny. He had it hard as it was. I think I was his only real friend and, trust
me, that is not a great thing. Sure,
people liked Fenny but he didn't have a lot of close relationships. I did care about him though. I wasn't completely dead inside. His laugh
made me feel a little less like a creep.
He looked at me and asked me if I had any thoughts
on what her name was. I thought about
it for a while and couldn't really imagine a name for her. He just stared at me as I was thinking. Finally, I blurted our
"Glibby?". Fenny just kept staring
at me and then started laughing a little gruff laugh. "That's kind of funny. Maybe her name is Portia?" Fenny said this with a slight accent to
denote snootiness. I didn't really
understand where he was going with that but rolled with it. Fenny wasn't great at jokes.
We sat there for a little while longer making up
names. Barney came up. I had to, even if it was a cheap shot. Fenny tried his hands at a few more but they
are so damn embarrassing that I don’t even want to mention them. Right about
the time we were debating the difference between Kelly and Kelli, she rounded
the corner, stopped and stood there blankly looking us up and down. She pulled a slightly crumbled pack of
cigarettes from her jacket pocket and put a slightly crumbled cigarette between
her lips. It was almost poetic. As she fished her lighter from the same
crumbled pack she said “My name isn’t Barney or Kelly or Tonya or Glibby…” as she said Glibby she flicked a flame from
her lighter and took a drag from her cigarette.
Holding my gaze as she did it.
Then she coughed and sorta ruined the moment.
I was chuckling.
She obviously didn’t smoke much, if ever. But I had to give it to her, she was
trying. She looked at me and said, “My
name is Elle.”. I stopped laughing. She didn’t seem phased by the fact that I
wasn’t phased by her weird attempt at cigarette aggression. Which then kind of phased me. But I was even
more intrigued at this point. What did
she have going on?
She struggled through her cigarette as I started
to ask her the important question on everyone’s mind. “How did you get your hair purple? Or at least purpleish? Purplelike? Was it Kool Aid? It was Kool Aid. I heard you could try that with Kool Aid but
I never knew anyone who actually did that.
My cousin, he tried to dye his hair with real bleach. Holy moly was tha…” She flicked her cigarette
at me.
“I’m not really sure why I am doing this, but I
do need a few extra hands and you two were the options that seemed most viable
at the time. So please, PLEASE just shut
up.” Her tone was that of a bored school
teacher who was also a bored parent. She
let the silence hang for a few seconds, almost a few seconds too long. “Ok, here is the deal. We are going to rob the high school and we
are going to do it two nights from now. You are going to help me and in return
you can stay in my garage. I’ll feed
you. I’ll give you a roof. I won’t do
anything else. When we are done you can
leave with some of the cash, but I will tally what you owe me and take that
from each of your cuts.”
We have never really talked about it in depth,
but I am fairly certain I know why Fenny started running the other direction
half way through her telling us of the plan.
It wasn’t because he was vehemently opposed to the proposition but more
because he had to take a massive fear dump. Elle, for her part, just stared at
me waiting for the answer or acknowledgement.
More acknowledgement. I mean she
basically just told us what to do.
She just kept staring. Fenny was off pooping.
Finally, she smirked and said “Alright
asshole. You can talk now.” I grinned and then started kicking a few
rocks at my feet. I started moving my mouth as the plan I was really hatching
was forming in my brain. “I am guessing you have planned this out. But you couldn’t have planned on us. Even with all the time afforded your
obviously overactive imagination during the working hours at the old-fashioned
hamburger joint. There is just no
way. Something has happened to your plan
and fate, well fate, brought us together.
You need us as much as we need you.
Maybe you need us more. I’ll be
fair and we will take your deal with one exception. When the job is done, we split it more evenly
without the tally.”
I could tell she was thinking. She started to play with her ear, and I could
tell she was either uncomfortable or too comfortable. It was like she was stalling. But I couldn’t quite tell if the stall was
because she was trying to figure out her next move or if she was trying to trick
me into thinking she was thinking about her next move. It struck me that maybe I had been smoking
too much pot lately.
As Fenny was walking back, I noticed she noticed,
and I could feel the urgency in her voice as she responded. “Deal. Meet me at
my house in a few hours so my parents are guaranteed to already be asleep. Don’t bring a ton of crap and leave your car
far enough away that no one sees you leave it but close enough we can get to it
in the morning. Oh… and get your friend
some pampers.” This struck me as
curious. Why was she avoiding
Fenny? I’m sure he wiped.
I turned around to see his progress back to us
and started to say “Great, now how do we get to your hou…” She was gone when I turned back. I really need to get better at getting pertinent
information. Once Fenny noticed she was
gone he said “That was intense. Not the poop I just took but that plan. I mean the poop was too but the plan was
worse. That was intense.” As he was finishing up telling me how intense
the situation was a young woman about our age came back around the corner with
a bag. She handed me the bag and said
“The nachos you wanted are inside. Enjoy!”
She started to walk away and turned back and said “and….uh…you can’t
hang out back here any longer. Sorry.”
We
started walking back to the car and I just had to ask Fenny something that had
been on my mind. “Fenny…why didn’t you
take a shit in the bathroom at the restaurant? I understand having to, because
I know you. But come on…it was right
there.” He just looked at me with shame
in his eyes. I started to dig into the
bag and found a note. It was from
Elle. It was an address with a crudely
drawn map. The note below the map said
“I won’t call it fate until we are done. Don’t be late.”
Comments
Post a Comment