Merlot (8 page)

“All done.”

She swung her body around, skirt hiked up
onto her midsection exposing a silky blue thong as she struggled to
sit upright.

“Hey Tony, I need to pee,” she said,
attempting to brush the hair from her face.

He came from behind the desk to give her a
hand.

“Here, you can use my private bathroom, right
here around the corner,” he pulled her chair back, then pulled and
lifted in an effort to get her up.

“Whoa,” she gulped, then worked to focus her
eyes, took a deep breath and staggered to the bathroom door.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Be right back, no peeking. Less you want
to,” she giggled. Then stepped inside the bathroom and locked the
door behind her.

He cautiously opened her purse and pawed
through all sorts of keys and small containers to find her wallet.
He wrote down the address from her driver’s license, returned the
wallet, tossed the purse back on the couch, and quickly retreated
to his chair.

He need not have hurried.

In the small white-tiled bathroom Cindy sat
on the toilet and rested her head against the side of the cool
porcelain sink. She was thinking if she could just stay here for a
little minute more, she would be all right. Just a moment or two to
let some of the alcohol run through her system, and she would be
fine.

The sink felt so nice and cool against her
face. She could feel the floor slowly begin to move from under her
and she closed her eyes thinking, this is kind of fun before
quickly concluding things were moving a little too fast for her. If
she could just slow down the wall behind her, the rest would be
pretty easy.

He waited patiently at his desk. It wouldn’t
be the first time he had deliberately over-served a woman but there
seemed to be something different here. God help me if I’m
developing a conscience, he worried.

* * *

“A Sonny Bono impersonator, that’s what you
came up with?” Osborne yelled into his phone, incredulous. “I’m
returning from dinner now. I’ll have Milton dispatch him if he is
still onstage when we arrive. I would advise you to encourage his
hasty departure.” He glanced over at Serpentina sitting opposite
him in the rear seat.

“I’ve got what’s her name, Snakey here,
she’ll work. No, no the one with the tattoo, yes, Serpentina. And
remove that Sonny Bono character before I arrive, good God!” he
exclaimed snapping the small phone shut.

Milton glanced in the rearview mirror as
Osborne wrestled to maintain control. He had seen it a few times
before, when the irrational greed for a dollar overcame his common
sense. He noticed Osborne’s slight twitching, the rapid blinking of
the eyelids, and he gripped the steering wheel with his throbbing
right hand, focused on the road ahead and hoped the moment would
pass.

“It seems the best they could do on short
notice was a transvestite Sonny Bono look-alike who would only
strip down to a thong. What few customers there were have departed.
For God’s sake, am I the only sane person remaining? Milton,”
Osborne leaned forward as Milton drove, “when we arrive you will go
immediately to the stage and unceremoniously remove this individual
if he has not yet departed. At least that wench Sassie and her
unemployed camp followers left. We’ll see how dancing in the
breadline suits their fancy.”

He sat back and inclined his head to
Serpentina,

“My dear, I’m going to need your talents
onstage tonight. It seems we have a bit of a booking snafu.”

“Tonight, but for how long?”

“Just the remainder of the night?”

“The remainder of the… but, it’s barely
11:00.”

“Excellent, you’ve learned to read a digital
clock. Surely you don’t expect Milton or myself to venture onstage.
Obviously I can’t entice new talent at this hour of the night.
Come, come, come it’s time we put all that surgically enhanced
talent of yours to work, my dear. Now, relax,” he said, touching
her hand for the briefest of seconds before quickly pulling a
moist, sterile towelette from the packet resting between them, and
aggressively cleaning his fingers.

“Your shift will conclude at four and I
shan’t need your services until much later in the morning. There,
perfect, problem solved.”

Otto slept in his recliner, in front of the TV. It
was tuned to the weather channel and between squeaks and beeps
repeated the forecast in a computerized monotone every twelve
minutes. He didn’t hear any of it. He was out cold, wearing a
bathrobe, his feet crusted with dried residue from the Epsom
salts.

His feet didn’t hurt, but Otto had soaked them anyway
to ensure they remained pain free. A barely touched scotch and
water sat on an end table and next to the drink, his forty-five. He
had set the alarm on his watch for 5:00 am, he usually woke a
minute or two before it went off.

He was snoring loudly and in his reoccurring
dream he was back in Saigon, getting ripped off by pretty bar girls
and not caring. Only this time he had his briefcase with him, and
he didn’t want anyone to touch it. There was a car, a battered
two-toned Fleetwood, dark blue with white spray paint along the
lower portion of the body. The car was parked in front of the bar,
three rough-looking bearded guys all hanging out the driver’s
window.

They were staring at his briefcase, and he
wondered how they knew it contained money. He stayed in the bar
with all the pretty girls ripping him off, knowing he didn’t have
to worry about the three thugs in the car, yet.

* * *

Billy Truesdale got up and walked down the
hallway to the bathroom. It was almost four on Sunday morning, and
he last checked his blood-sugar level at midnight. It wasn’t a big
deal, checking it, better that than going blind or ending up in
some sort of diabetic coma. He read the monitor and returned to
bed.

“You all right, Billy?” his wife Martha
asked, like she did every morning around 4:00 when he came back to
bed.

“Not to worry, honey, go back to sleep,” he
said knowing she already had.

He planned to lay low all day and catch the
final Vikings preseason game. He had a busy week ahead of him,
hauling those damn bags of currency out of the bank in a grocery
cart and into his armored car. What a pain. All that cash from the
fair, that he and his team had to cart back to Central all day
long. Drop off one load, only to turn back around for another. They
were vulnerable. He’d warned the bank every year for the past
twelve, nobody listened. Maybe they knew something he didn’t.

* * *

It was just after four when Merlot jerked
awake at his desk. He’d fallen asleep in his chair, a mound of
melted wax rose beneath each candle.

It took him a moment to get his bearings,
knew something was amiss when he spied Cindy’s purse on the couch.
Was she still in the bathroom?

In response to his question he heard a roar
from behind the bathroom door, followed by a sputtering female
cough that echoed from inside the tiny tiled room.

“Oh god, no.” Nothing echo’s quite like a
forlorn voice begging for mercy from deep inside a porcelain
bowl.

It was relatively quiet for a moment. He
silently crept to the door, heard her cough, then spit, followed by
the toilet flushing. The water refilling the tank had always been
loud and it masked all sound from inside the bathroom. He took a
step back in the event she opened the door, not wanting it to look
like he had been spying on her.

“Oh, oh, araugh!” she roared again, but with
not quite as much authority.

He was tired, and all he wanted to do was go
home to bed. Maybe just give her a little more time, he thought,
tiptoeing back to his chair, snuggling down and closing his
eyes.

Cindy was gasping in little tiny breaths,
hoping that might help keep her stomach calm. She was sure it was
empty. She’d filled the toilet with a lovely shade of pink three or
four times now. At the moment not really caring what Tony thought.
The way she felt, she’d be dead before sunrise anyway.

“Oh God, araugh,” she groaned, nothing of
substance came up. Stick with the little short breaths, she told
herself, kneeling in front of the toilet, holding her hair back,
wishing she could just be home to sleep in her own bed. She vowed
to never, ever drink again as she lay her head back down on the
toilet seat.

* * *

Otto woke up, stretched, and turned off his
watch alarm before it sounded. Fortunately sometime during the
middle of the night he had removed his feet from the Epsom salt
bath, they were marvelously dry and ready to face another
twenty-mile day.

He pulled on a clean Vikings jersey, number
thirty-five, got a pot of coffee perking before frying up some
bacon, eggs, and hash browns, the weather station squawked in the
background.

* * *

Some time later Merlot gently knocked on the
bathroom door.

“Just a minute, be right out,” came a soft
voice as if it had only been three or four minutes instead of four
or five hours. The toilet flushed, and the sink tap ran.

“Shit,” Cindy said whispering louder than she
wanted to. Eventually the door opened up. Merlot moved a few steps
back to give her plenty of room.

“Oh good, you’re still here, how perfect,”
she said, not sounding at all sincere. Her hair dropped limply to
her shoulders. Her complexion had a pale, pasty pallor, made more
frightening by her bloodshot eyes rimmed with smeared mascara. Her
dress was askew, wine stained and wrinkled

“Oh relax, you look fine. We’ve all done it,”
he lied.

“Fallen asleep? More like passed out on the
toilet seat in a bar. Then wake up at sunrise after puking my guts
out in a guy’s office on our first date? No, Tony, we haven’t all
done that. I’m unique in that vein, trust me,” she said,
side-stepping him. She cautiously picked up her purse, took a deep
breath before she turned to face him.

Even hung over and an absolute mess he found
her attractive.

“Well, shall I just say it’s been an
experience,” he smiled and bent to kiss her.

“Oh please, I’m just gross, don’t,” she said
backing away.

He kissed her anyway, on the cheek.

“I don’t think you’re dreadful” he said, then
walked back to his desk.

“Oh you poor, poor, deranged man. Tony, I’m
so sorry, you let me intrude on your work, I wanted this to be so
nice. You had this romantic dinner all planned and I, I just ruined
everything by getting falling-down drunk and throwing up all over
your bathroom. If you never want to see me again, I’ll understand.
Look, I should go, I’m just making this worse.”

“Wait, before you go, Cindy, have one more
drink.”

She glared for half a moment before realizing
he had a glass of water and some aspirin.

“Take these. They’ll go to work and by the
time you get home you can crawl into bed and wake up feeling a hell
of a lot better,” he laughed.

She took the aspirin out of his hand, popped
them into her mouth, then chased them down with just enough water
and no more. She felt the water make a cold, hollow splash
somewhere deep in her empty stomach, and waited a moment to make
sure she didn’t erupt again.

“Okay, thanks. I’m really sorry, Tony. You’re
so sweet but I’d better go,” she said.

He caught up with her partway through the
darkened bar and walked her to the door. He felt sorry for her. The
wrinkled dress, messed hair, mascara rimmed eyes, no lipstick. She
could use a shower. God, she was a mess.

“Let me unlock the door for you, here,” he
said as she cautiously stepped out into the bright morning and
quickly covered her eyes.

“Ugh shit, God it’s bright. Thanks,” she said
waving briefly over her shoulder, too embarrassed to turn and look
at him. Her car sat alone in a far corner of the empty parking
lot.

She was being let out of a bar at close to
six on a Sunday morning, the last drunk, swept out with the trash.
It was already warm and humid, the day had all the makings of being
beastly, just the thing for a hangover. Thankful that no one saw
her at this hour looking like death warmed over, she gingerly made
her way to her car.

* * *

Otto was waiting at a stoplight, on his way
to pick up his first truckload of bacon and batter. Other than a
city bus there wasn’t another vehicle around. For a brief moment he
toyed with the idea of running the light, but decided that with a
loaded forty-five in the front seat that wasn’t the best idea.

It was about that time he spotted a woman
stumbling out of DiMento’s. He thought he recognized her, but
couldn’t place her. She looked like she’d had a hell of night.
Pasty skin, hair messed, clothes disheveled, he was reminded again
of those Saigon bar girls. He was thinking maybe she had stopped by
one of his stands and that got him thinking in terms of the fair,
which got him thinking cash deposits and that’s when he put it
together. The bank.

She was a teller from the bank. The one he
always tried to talk with. The one who always seemed to turn the
other way or was busy whenever he stopped in. Hell, she’s just a
regular old party girl from the looks of things.

* * *

Things couldn’t have worked out better,
Merlot thought. He got the information he wanted, and Cindy was too
embarrassed to ever see him again. Which left only one problem. He
wanted to see her.

She’s an adult, he reasoned driving home, if
she makes a habit of getting drunk all the time, well, who needs
that in their life? Still he had to take 49 percent of the blame.
It’s tough to count your drinks when someone is working to make
sure your glass is never empty. He might call her later, but right
now he had to get showered and cleaned up for his Sunday brunch
crowd.

* * *

Cindy dropped her purse, missed the
dining-room table by a good six inches. She was too tired to look
or care. She slipped off her shoes, tossed her ruined dress in the
general direction of a closet. Pulled the shades and was asleep as
soon as her head hit the pillow.