Homemade Sin (8 page)

Two and a half hours later, Cutter deposited Hussey in front of the admissions building of the University of South Florida, College of Medicine in St. Petersburg.

“Don't get into any trouble.” Hussey said, as she exited the car. “Remember, you have to deposit the check my dad gave me for tuition. You still have to find us a nice hotel for a week and then see if you can find us an apartment near campus for when school starts.”

“Got it covered babe,” said Cutter, winking and cocking his finger at her like a pistol.

Hussey shook her head as she started walking to the admissions building. “I know he'll fuck it up somehow. Mama's right, he is almost retarded.”

Roland opened his eyes and faced Dee Dee staring back at him from the other side of his pillow. “Good morning boss,” she cooed. “I need a shower, does that door lead to a bathroom?”

Roland nodded.

Dee Dee slid out of bed and Roland saw she had one of his T-shirts on and nothing else. The T-shirt came down to the small of her back and she wiggled her butt as she crossed the bedroom into the bathroom.

Roland shut his eyes tightly against the sunlight streaming through the window, groaned and rolled over. When he heard the shower running he opened one eye experimentally and saw Stinky staring back at him from the other pillow. “I gotta stop picking up strays. I have to start remembering what my mother told me when I was a kid, ‘don't pick that up, you don't know where it's been.'”

Roland swung his feet out of bed, rubbed his eyes, and tried to clear the cobwebs out of his head. He remembered having dinner at the Hog's Breath Saloon. He remembered picking up wine and cream and a bottle of brandy at the corner store on Duval Street and heading for the beach with Dee Dee. He remembered sitting on Smathers beach and watching the moonlight bounce off the gently lapping waves of the Gulf. The next thing he remembered was waking up.

“Good morning friend.” Stinky's voice echoed in his head. “It's about time you woke up. We have lots to do today before we head up to St. Pete, so you better get up.”

“What do you mean ‘we'?” Roland snarled at Stinky, and flopped back on the bed. “I don't remember inviting you.” Roland shut his eyes and pulled the covers over his head.

“Are we going to start that again?” Stinky said. “OK, one more time, and listen this time. I have decided you and I are to be friends. I go where you go, get it? Now get your bald butt out of the bed and hit the shower. There is somewhere we need to go.”

“Bald butt?” Roland said from under the covers.

“Yeah, you humans look bald without fur; makes you all look the same. You all look like a possum's tail, all pink and raw. And watching the two of you mating was disturbing. Your naked hairless bodies are revolting.”

“Mating?” Roland said through the covers. Before Stinky could answer Roland felt Dee Dee's presence in the room. He sensed her before he saw her and felt the heat radiating from her showered body. He looked up to see a naked Dee Dee approaching the bed. She slid in beside him and buried her damp head into the crook of his neck.

“Were you talking to that Stinky again?” She slid her hand across Roland's bare chest. “I mean people do talk to animals, but not the way you do, it sounds like I'm hearing half of an actual conversation. Forget about that cat for a minute and focus on me.”

Roland turned his attention to Dee Dee.

She nibbled his neck. “I've only been an employee for a few hours and I'm already sleeping with the boss.”

“What do you mean boss?” said Roland.

“You don't remember hiring me last night?” Dee Dee pretended to be hurt by his failed memory. “You offered me the job as the chef in your restaurant.”

“And you accepted?”

“Well, not at first,” said Dee Dee.

“You had to think about it, huh?”

“No, actually my mouth was full at the time.”

“Oh.” Roland smiled, his memory kicking in. “How much am I paying you?”

“You started me out at ten dollars an hour but you gave me a raise for outstanding performance about an hour later,” Dee Dee said. “I think it's our destiny to work together and destiny has a way of catching up with you.”

Destiny, Roland thought, shaking his head. Now I have a floundering restaurant, a crazy chef I'm sleeping with, and a lying, telepathic tomcat. Destiny is treating me like I ran over its dog.

A half hour later, after Roland had taken a post-coital shower, he returned to the bedroom to find Dee Dee dressed and ready to leave.

“There is something weird about that pussy,” Dee Dee said as Roland opened a drawer and removed some clothes. “He kept tossing my clothes at me until I got dressed. You better get dressed or he's going to start tossing clothes at you.”

“Where are we going this time Stinky?” Roland said.

“You talk to that cat like he can understand you; like you expect him to answer you,” said Dee Dee.

“You still don't trust me,” said Stinky in Roland's head.

“I should trust you?” Roland said.

“You got laid didn't you? And besides, you now have a chef. Things are going very well, just follow me and do try to keep up.”

The trio stopped by the motel's breakfast buffet for coffee and pastries. Afterward, Stinky led the couple down Duval Street to Luisa Street, then on to Catherine and up Royal. When Stinky stopped in front of a storefront on Tropical Street he turned to face Roland and Dee Dee and mewed loudly. The sign above the door said ‘Metaphysical Books and Novelties'; a smaller sign, taped to the glass door below the sign, read ‘Going Out of Business Sale' Dee Dee and Roland looked at each other while Stinky pawed at the door. Roland opened the door and Stinky strode inside, then turned back and shot a glance at Roland that said ‘Are you coming?'

Shrugging, Roland led Dee Dee through the door behind the cat. Stinky crossed the room in three bounds and leapt upon the counter nose to nose with a tall and painfully thin man with a blond crew cut standing by the cash register. The man was dressed in a hemp shirt, baggy shorts and sandals. Roland thought the man looked vaguely familiar but he couldn't place him.

The man smiled at Stinky. “I see you caught up with the guy you were chasing the other night.” He began humming the tune of ‘I Got You Babe.'

Then Roland remembered where he had seen the man before. He had been wearing a silky black, sequined cocktail dress and a long black wig. “You're Cher,” he said.

“Only at night,” said the man, “during the day I run this place.”

“This is Jeffie,” Stinky told Roland as he wandered over to gaze nostalgically at a statue of Bast, the ancient cat god of Egypt, sitting regally on a pedestal in the corner. “He sells fake voodoo supplies.” Then to Jeffie, Stinky said, “That green powder crap I got from you didn't work!” Stinky's voice sounded loud and angry in Jeffie's head. “I just ended up with a dead, wet pussy. You're a charlatan, a fraud!”

“You don't mean that nice lady's cat that drowned in the hotel pool?” Roland said.

“It was an accident,” Stinky said. “I was just trying to make a zombie.”

“Think of it this way Stinky,” the man said, “at least now you know one more way not to make a zombie.”

“You can hear that animal in your head too?” Roland said to Jeffie.

“Oh, sure.” Jeffie looked Roland and Dee Dee up and down. “Stinky comes in here all the time. He's a good customer.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dee Dee, “are you telling me Stinky talks to you? Like real words?”

“He talks to me all the time,” said Jeffie, “we have long metaphysical conversations.”

“Me too,” Roland said. “All those one-sided conversations you heard? I was actually hearing Stinky's side of the conversation.”

“How come he doesn't talk to me?” Dee Dee said.

“Because I haven't had anything to say to her.” Roland and Jeffie heard Stinky's voice simultaneously. They didn't hear him say to himself that the crazy fish cutter was necessary to his plan.

Both Jeffie and Roland shrugged.

“I think you're both crazy.” Dee Dee said. She shook her head dismissively and scanned the shelves inside the store. To her right was a display case containing crystals in assorted sizes and colors, to her left were bookcases filled with colorful volumes displaying titles such as Charm School, Creating Fun Charms and Amulets, and You Too Can Do Voodoo. On a table by the counter was a display of statuary, Indian gods and goddesses, Aztec deities, mermaids and angels. At the center of the display was a bronze statue of a vulture, a small brass plaque at its base read ‘Destiny.' At the far end of the store a beaded curtain was drawn over a door. Above the door was a sign reading simply ‘Voodoo Emporium.' Dee Dee parted the beads and stepped through.

Inside, she beheld rows and rows of bottles of assorted sizes and colors sporting labels like ‘Eye of Newt', ‘Bat's Blood', and ‘Charming Powder.' A line of shrunken heads, Juju, bags and voodoo dolls hung on one wall. On the other wall hung a portrait of a light skinned, black woman with a blue scarf on her head. She noticed the picture was a little creepy; the eyes seemed to follow you around the room. The room had a few small tables cluttered with candles of assorted colors, statues of voodoo gods, goddesses and Catholic saints.

Dee Dee studied the ‘Going Out of Business' sign on the door and motioned Roland over. “You're looking for a gimmick for your restaurant,” Dee Dee whispered to Roland. “How about voodoo? You could turn it into a kind of Cajun voodoo fish place and I could make sushi.”

Roland cast a skeptical eye around the small room. “I don't know. Most of my snowbird customers are old folks. This stuff might scare them to death, literally.”

“I'll make you a deal on the lot,” said Jeffie, who appeared beside Roland. “Five hundred bucks and you can cart out whatever you want. The creditors will get it anyway. I can't afford the rent, taxes and insurance anymore.”

“The price is right,” Dee Dee said. “What have you got to lose? If it doesn't work, you're only out a few hundred bucks. But I have a feeling it will catch on.”

“It's a deal then?” said Jeffie. “Everything in the room for five hundred dollars and I'll throw in something priceless for free.”

“Priceless?” Roland wondered what he could possibly mean.

Jeffie motioned Roland to follow him back over to the counter, out of earshot of Dee Dee. When Roland was belly to wood with the counter, Jeffie leaned close and whispered in his ear. “This advice is priceless: Be careful of that pussy, he ain't no ordinary cat. He's a monster and he's scary-crazy. Do you know what I mean by scary-crazy?”

“Is there any other kind?” said Roland.

Jeffie bent closer and whispered again in Roland's ear, “And that woman you're with, same goes for her, she ain't no pussycat either. She's a short-handled shovel of a girl, she'll steal your soul and in the end you won't have squat to show for it. She's not to be trusted. Get as far away from her as possible as soon as possible. I know both girl and cat. A small town like this, locals can't help but know each other. Both of them are bad news and you got yourself right between them. You are the dead meat in the middle of an evil sandwich.”

Roland thought about how he woke up that morning, with Dee Dee on the right and Stinky on the left; all at once he felt like a thick slab of bologna between two hungry dogs.

“Thanks,” said Roland, “I'll have to go to the bank to get some money, and rent a trailer, I'll be back later.”

“Don't turn your back on either one of them.” Jeffie winked.

As they left the store Roland could hear Jeffie softly singing in the background, ‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.'

Stinky wore a Cheshire cat smile: My plan is in motion, the buzzards of destiny have taken wing, he thought.

A few hours later Roland was at the wheel of his SUV cruising northeast across A1A with a U-Haul trailer attached. Inside the trailer was everything they could fit from the voodoo store. As Roland drove north-east, crossing the stretch of bridge on the Overseas Highway past Big Coppit Key, he saw a small flock of large birds circling over Sugarloaf Sound.

“Those are the biggest seagulls I've ever seen,” he said to Dee Dee who had snuggled down into the passenger seat and was dozing.

Dee Dee partially opened one eye and squinted out the window. “They're buzzards. Buzzards of Destiny.”

“The way they're circling, it looks like destiny must have caught up with something,” Roland said.