I’m going to call her . . . see if she can get Helen into a program.”
“Oh.” A short hesitation. “I guess it’s worth a try. Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“What else can I do?” She hated the whiny sound in her voice. “I can’t let her go back to that trash can of a house. It’s full of bugs and cats, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were rats as well. I have to get it cleaned up before she can go back.”
“You sound a little overwhelmed.”
Mr. Tactful. “I am.”
“You’ve been up since oh dark thirty. Why don’t you take a nap and call me back later?”
Sleep. At the moment she couldn’t think of anything more appealing. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day. I’ll call you tonight. Love you.” She clicked off, then leaned back into the soft pillows of the bed. Fifteen minutes, then she’d be good to go.
Chapter Nine
Though it seemed like only moments, when Pat opened her eyes the neon lights of the Strip were flashing in all their audacious brilliance. “Helen?” Silence. The main room was empty and the door to the boys’ room was closed, but she could hear the sound of muted voices. She rapped lightly, then pushed it open. Sitting cross-legged on one of the queen-size beds, Marc toggled a video controller while action figures cavorted across the wide-screen television. “Where’s your brother and Helen?”
He shrugged, not taking his eyes from the frenzy of cartoon violence. “Out.”
“When did they leave?” The thought of Jordan squiring his crazy aunt up and down the Strip only intensified the daylong nightmare.
He shrugged.
“Did they say when they’d be back?” she asked, thinking this might be a good time to reassure Marc about his future.
He paused the game, giving her a look of exasperation. “They went to get her truck.” He toggled the game back into Play mode.
“What?” She glanced over her shoulder, making sure the car keys were still on the table. “How?”
“They took the bus.”
She realized her Technicolor nightmare wasn’t about to end anytime soon. “To where?”
“Her house.”
Damn, some guard dog she turned out to be. She grabbed her phone and quickly tried Jordan’s cell, but wasn’t surprised to get his familiar: User is unavailable.—Please leave a message. Mr. Ideal Adolescent had once again let his battery run down. “Come on, we’re going over there.”
“No way, no how.” Marc sat there stiff as a statue, like the Roman replicas that dotted the hotel’s courtyard. “That place sucks.”
“You don’t have to go inside. The drive will give us a chance to talk.”
“We don’t need to talk. We need to go home.” His game played on without input, a computer-generated ogre doing a victory dance on top of a muscle-bound warrior. “She’s forgotten all about us.”
The drive turned out to be an exercise in frustration: Pat trying to get the conversation going, Marc deflecting her efforts with an offhand, “I don’t want to talk about it.” By the time Pat pulled to the curb she was ready to scream.
Near the garage, illuminated beneath a single bare bulb, Helen and Jordan together with three shabby-looking men were loading boxes into the back of a battered Ford pickup. The truck looked vaguely familiar, then Pat realized it was the same one Bobby drove in college.
Helen smiled and waved as Pat and Marc started up the cracked asphalt drive. “Come meet my guys.” She motioned toward a redheaded man who could have been forty or seventy, his age hidden beneath a scraggly beard. “This is Ron, he’s my right-hand man.” She turned, touching the arm of another man whose Harley T-shirt coyly revealed a three-inch gap of hairy gut between his shirt and the top of his jeans. “This is Tiny.” He grunted and hoisted a box onto the truck, offering an unobstructed view of butt cleavage. Helen motioned toward the third man. “And this is Darnel. He goes by Dan.” A weathered man with ebony skin, he offered a bright and friendly smile. “Guys, this is my sister, Cleo, and . . . ” She came face to face with Marc and her voice trailed off, like she had come face to face with an alien creature.
The redhead stepped forward. “Hi, Cleo.” The pungent odor of cigarettes and alcohol and sweat wafted off his body. “Remember me? We were in school together.”
Pat studied the slate-blue eyes and freckled nose, the only parts of his face visible through the facial hair. “Ron Kelly,” she guessed, hoping she was right.
A beard-splitting grin showed what was left of his tobacco-stained teeth. “All right!” His voice boomed, creating an unnatural echo in the stifling heat.
Afraid he might hug her, Pat thrust out her hand. He took it and pulled her into his arms, his odor so strong it was all she could do not to gag.
“How you been, girl?”
And I thought Helen was bad. “I’m married now,” she offered weakly, not wanting to hurt his feelings but desperate to escape his embrace. She pivoted around, trying to gracefully detach herself. “This is Marc.”
Ron grabbed Marc’s hand and pumped energetically. “You should be proud, Cleo. Your boys seem like fine young men.” As he stepped back, Marc surreptitiously wiped his palm across the seat of his shorts.
“Thanks,” she answered. “I’m very proud of them.”
Jordan bounded over, his face glowing with enthusiasm. “Aunt Helen’s taking me to the swap meet tomorrow. I’m going to help set up.”
Pat realized he was already on board the Las Vegas express, and if she didn’t rein him in, she would never get him back to Arizona. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. I thought you wanted to check out the Strip.”
“Yeah, but it’s the Fourth of July weekend and holidays are the best for impulse buying,” he answered, suddenly a swap meet expert. “Aunt Helen could use my help.”
After the men finished tying down the load, Ron disappeared into the maze of battered boxes and plastic containers that filled Helen’s garage, returning with three empty cardboard boxes. “Go ahead, guys. You know the drill. Take whatever fits in the box, but don’t go over the top.”
Clearly familiar with Helen’s method of payment, Ron and the other two men moved with surprising swiftness through the piles of junk, selecting rusty tools and mystifying pieces of old electronics. Tiny finished first, throwing his box into an old car of indeterminate make and model. Dan strapped his box to a rusty moped, its paint color only a memory. Ron grunted as he tried to heave his “over the top” load into a shopping cart, but the box broke, sending his booty rolling into the street. The other men hooted and laughed as they helped gather the runaway loot.
Helen climbed into her pickup, reached beneath the dash, made a vigorous pumping motion, sat up, stomped several times on the gas, then turned the key. The engine coughed a couple of times, like an old man trying to wake up, then settled into a shuddering rhythm.
