RECKLESS — Bad Boy Criminal Romance (8 page)

My mother tried to discourage this behavior with no success.  She couldn’t figure out where this mentality of mine came from, and honestly I don’t remember myself.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – I stand in the parking lot of Ocean Breeze West, a seven-story beachside condominium, and smoke a cigarette.  It is early evening.  Families with young children return from the beach and take the elevator up to their rooms.  A mix of elderly and middle-aged folks trickles out of the elevator and into the lot, dressed up and ready to go out.  Both sides of the street are lined with souvenir shops, restaurants, and bars.

Walking around the corner into the lot is a young man in his late teens.  He’s clean cut, has dark hair, and wears a red Polo shirt, khaki shorts, and taupe leather Wallabee shoes.  He drags a slender teenage girl, at least a few years younger than him, by the arm.  Her hair is dyed blond and she wears a strapless blue paisley dress.   She stares at her feet, stumbles frequently, and giggles to herself.

              The young man shakes his head.  “Why do you do this?”

              “Because,” she says.  “I’m bored.”

              He catches her before she face-plants into the concrete parking lot.  “You smell awful,” he says.  “Your hair reeks of smoke.”

              “Just shut up,” she mutters.

              “Sit here.”  He directs her toward bench about fifteen feet away from where I’m standing.  “Mom and Dad want us to meet here so we can go out to dinner.  Luckily I found you so they didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t ask you to come get me.”

              “Well, you can pay me back by getting your shit together before they come down.”  The young man parts the girl’s hair out of her face and smoothes it.  “I’m going up to the condo real quick.  Just stay here and be ready when Mom and Dad get down.”  He walks into the elevator and disappears.

              I finish my cigarette and toss it.  I take another one from the pack in my back pocket.

              “Can I have one?” the girl asks, looking at me.

              Still bitter after the Maya situation I nod slowly and say, “Yeah, sure, you can have one … You can have one if you bark like a dog.”

              “You’re an asshole,” she responds.

              I shrug.

              “Fine,” she says.  “Woof.”

              “That was pathetic.”

              She turns away and shakes her head.  A few moments pass and she turns back toward me and actually barks.

              I smile.  “That was real good.”  I walk over and hand her a cigarette and light it for her.  “Well done.”

              “Yeah,” she says.  “Go fuck yourself.”

              The young man walks out of the elevator with the parents, a couple in their mid to late fifties, in tow.  The young man is several steps ahead of them.  He sees his sister smoking.  “Where’d you get that?”  He swipes the cigarette from her lip and flicks it to the ground.

              “You ready, Angela?” the Dad jovially asks the girl.  He’s a heavy-set man with curly grey hair.  He wears a Hawaiian shirt with a print of coconuts and schooners.

              “Yeah,” Angela affirms, almost inaudibly.

              The young man lifts her by the arm and she almost falls forward.

              “What’s wrong?” the Dad asks.

              Angela sits back on the bench and stares at her feet.  “Nothing.”

              The Mom and Dad look at each other.

              “Why don’t the two of you go out and eat?” the Mom suggests to the Dad and young man.  “I’ll stay with her and you can bring us back something.”

              The young man sighs.  He and the Dad get in a Chevy Suburban and drive out of the lot.

              The Mom takes Angela by the arm and helps her stand.  Carefully she guides her into the elevator and up to their room.

              My cigarette perched on my lip, I walk down the street.

The next morning at ten-thirty I walk down the beach and up the boardwalk of Ocean Breeze West.  Alongside the building is a fenced-in swimming pool for condo residents.  I’m wearing board shorts, a black T-shirt and Wayfarers.  I recline on a long white beach chair and light a cigarette.

At the pool is a family consisting of a thirty-something father and mother, their five year-old son, and the boy’s sixty-something grandmother.  The grandmother and the boy swim and play together in the shallow end.  The father and mother sit nearby in beach chairs, fully-dressed.

Away from them by the deep end is the teenage girl Angela from the previous night.  She is sprawled back on a beach chair wearing sunglasses with large round white frames, a blue bikini, and blue sandals with a print of red lollipops on them.  Her head is cocked downward toward her chest.

“We’re going down the street to a few stores,” the mother of the young boy says to the grandmother.  “I’ll leave you the key.”  She drops their condo key into a large cloth handle bag beside a chair by the shallow end where the grandmother’s purse also sits.

The grandmother and boy play some more.  Almost finished with my cigarette I contemplate leaving.  Angela is motionless except for the rhythmic up and down of her chest.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” the boy tells the grandmother.  They both step out of the pool.  The grandmother pulls a towel out of the handle bag and dries herself and the boy off.  She drops the towel on top of the bag.  She picks up her purse and escorts the boy to a restroom inside a small lobby.

I toss my cigarette and walk over to the handle bag.  I shuffle through a couple towels, several bottles of sun tan lotion, and a pair of goggles.  At the bottom is a key with the number 302 carved into it.  I take the key, return the rest of the items, and walk to the elevator.  I push the ‘up’ button and wait.

Suddenly someone grabs me by the arm.

I flip around.

“What are you doing?” Angela asks.

I take a breath.  “You’re not with them, are you?”

“No.”

I stare at her.

“I want to go with you.”

“Fine,” I concede.

              In condo 302 we quickly search all the rooms.  We sort through the suitcases, the dresser drawers, in the closets, under the beds, and anyplace where we think something of value could be hidden.  Afterward we close the front door and relock it and I drop the key into a trash can by the elevator.

              “What condo are you in?” Angela asks.

              “None.  I’m staying down the street.”

              Together we walk to the Sand Dunes Motel.  We set everything on my bed: cash, a box of jewelry, and one of the mother’s belts.

              “I love this,” Angela says and picks up the belt.  “It’s so cute.”

              “You can have it,” I say.  “You should probably go ahead and leave now.”

              “This stuff isn’t yours,” she exclaims.

              “Well, I took it and made it mine.”

              “No,” she says.  “I mean, I want more for myself than just this belt.”

              “Like what?”

              She opens the jewelry box.  “Like this and this.”  She removes a cheap gold bracelet that I don’t mind losing.  However, she also takes a two carat diamond engagement ring which I begrudgingly surrender.

              “Just go back to your condo and hide those somewhere,” I tell her.  “Bye.”

“See ya.”  Angela exits my room.

That afternoon I have my suitcase on my bed.  I fold my clothes into it, readying to leave Pensacola.

              Someone knocks at the door.

              I look through the eyehole.  It’s Angela.  I open the door.  “Hey.”

              “Hey, I need your help,” she says.  “Can I come in a second?”  Before I can answer she brushes past me into the room.  She’s changed from her bathing suit and is wearing low-rise jeans and a white T-shirt.

              “What is it?”  I close the door.

              Angela paces around the room.  “My mom saw the ring and started screaming at me.”

              “How’d she find it?”

“I had it on.”

“Why?”

“Because I was just sitting in my room looking at it when she came in.”

“Just tell her you found it or something.”

She sits on the edge of the bed.  “Her and my dad are really upset.  She started saying she was going to call the police unless I told her where I got it.”

              I chuckle.  “It’s none of my business.  I’m leaving.”

              “You are?  To where?”

              “I don’t want to say.”

              “Why not?”

              “Because I’d rather no one know where I am.”  I zip up my suitcase and lift it off the bed.  “I’m checking out.  I’ll see you.”  I open the door.

              “Hey, wait.”  She stands up.  “Can I come with you?”

I look at her.  “No.”

              “Why not?”

              “Why would you?  You’re going to run away?”

              “Well, what are you doing?”

              “Look, I know you’re afraid your parents are going to yell and ground you.  And maybe you’d like to miss going back to high school so you can skip your homework.  But wake up.  You don’t want to run away.”

              “I just don’t want to be bored,” she states, matter of fact.

              I shake my head.

              “Aren’t you lonely being by yourself?”

              I stare at her.

“I wouldn’t be any trouble.  And I’ll do whatever you say.  Wouldn’t you like to have me with you?”

I consider it.  In the motel parking lot I place my suitcase in the trunk of my Toyota.

              “How about
my
stuff?” Angela asks.  “Can we stop by my condo before we go?”

              “Forget it,” I tell her.  “Do you have a cell phone?”

              “Yeah.”

              “Let me borrow it real quick.”

              She takes a cell phone out of her pocket and hands it to me.

              I walk to edge of the parking lot and throw the phone as far as I can into a vast, undeveloped area of beach land.

Angela watches her cell phone sail away.  “Shit.”

MOBILE, Ala. – Angela in the passenger seat, I drive my car into a Shell gas station.  I park on the side of the building near a phone booth.  Pigeons in the parking lot peck and fight hungrily over the remains of a discarded hot dog.  I leave Angela and walk around to the front of the building and go inside.  The clerk, a scruffy man in his thirties wearing a faded blue uniform and an Alabama Crimson Tide baseball cap, lazily browses the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.  I walk down a short hallway and enter the restroom.  Inside my right pocket I have a faux pearl necklace I bought in a beach shop in Pensacola.  After a couple minutes I walk out of the restroom and toward the clerk at the front desk.

              “Hey,” I say to him, while holding the necklace.  “I found this on the floor outside the women’s restroom.  It looks pretty valuable.  You have any idea who lost it?”

              He looks up from his magazine.  “Uh, no, not really.  A whole bunch of people have been in today.  I’d have no idea.”

“Damn.  I wonder if someone will come back to claim it.”

              The clerk shrugs.  The phone rings behind the front desk.  He answers it.  He doesn’t say much, mostly listening to a frantic woman’s voice.

              I know exactly what he’s hearing because I know Angela is the person on the line using the phone booth on the side of the building.  “Hi, I was at your gas station earlier and lost the necklace I was wearing,” she says.  “I pumped some gas and then came inside and went to the restroom.  Has anyone found it anywhere?”

“Yeah, lucky for you,” the clerk says.  “A customer in here just did.”

The clerk hangs up the phone.  “Well, that was the lady who lost it.  She’ll be right over.  She said to have you stay so she could give you two-hundred bucks for finding it.”

“Really?” I act surprised.  “Shit, I can’t wait here.  I have a job interview in less than twenty minutes.”  I stand there a moment, pretending to be conflicted on what I should do.  “I have to leave.  But damn, I could really use that money … Hey wait, you know what?”

The clerk looks at me.

“How about I just give you the necklace and you give it to her.  Give me a hundred bucks now and you can take the two-hundred when she arrives.  We’ll split it since I really have to go.”

              The clerk smiles and says, “Works for me.”  Not having the hundred dollars in his wallet, he opens the Shell station cash register and extracts the money.  I hand him the necklace and he hands me the cash.