“I’m sure we can figure it out. Why don’t you show me the wall,” Gary said.
“Sure, come on. You stay here, Dev. I don’t want you to see my bedroom,” she giggled.
I shook my head but remained in the kitchen. Gary followed Kiki like a little child. I hope he knew what he was in for. I could hear the tone of their conversation coming from her bedroom, but I couldn’t make out what, exactly, was being said. Eventually they returned to the kitchen.
“So I got a drop cloth, tray, roller, roller covers, rag to wipe up drips, masking tape, brush, your choice of paint. You’re good to go. You want a drink or anything?”
“A drink?” Gary asked.
“Yeah, I got a couple different beers in the fridge, a white wine, red wine over in the cabinet there. A full bar in the dining room, if you’re into the hard stuff, you know.”
“No, probably shouldn’t,” Gary said.
“Suit yourself, I’d be drinking all the time if I had to hang around with this character,” she said pointing at me.
“I know what you mean,” Gary said.
“Look, Gary, I’m going to talk Dev into going with me to the store so I can get a few things. You got everything you need?” she asked.
“Yeah, you kids get the hell out of here,” Gary shooed us out the back door with his hands.
“Why do I have to take you to the store?”
“Because,” she smiled.
Chapter Eighteen
We went to the hardware store, and the dry cleaners, the grocery store, picked up some sort of make up cream at the hairdressers, got some fish oil tablets at a health food store. With all the driving around I had to refill my gas tank. We’d been gone the better part of three hours when I pulled into the alley behind Kiki’s house. I noticed a broken gin bottle in the alley, but didn’t pay much attention to it.
“I hope Gary was all right, I didn’t think we’d be gone this long,” she said.
I gathered up a handful of shopping bags from my back seat, grabbed the twelve pack of diet Coke she couldn’t live without. Kiki held a cardboard flat filled with little pink flowers in plastic trays.
“He’ll be fine, with any luck he’s finished, I have to check him back in early this afternoon.”
“Check him back in?” she asked, we were climbing the steps to her kitchen door. She’d just set the cardboard flat on the bottom step.
“Oh, he’s in some post treatment joint, they just keep close tabs on the guy is all, don’t want him out drinking, running with the wrong crowd, you know.”
“You knew this and you left him alone in my house? Jesus, Dev, I offered him a drink, told him where the beer and wine and all my liquor was,” she was hurrying now, quickly pushing into the kitchen. I dropped all the shopping bags next to the kitchen counter.
“Gary, Gary we’re back. Gary?” she called, walking quickly down the hall.
“Will you relax, he’s fine, Jesus, how much trouble…”
I heard her scream from the bedroom and ran down the hall. She stood in the doorway with a hand to her mouth, a shocked look on her face. I stared over her shoulder. It looked like Gary had taken one of the gallon cans of paint and just flung the contents. The paint was splashed across wall, over the woodwork, and puddled onto the hardwood floor. Long drip marks ran down the wall.
“Christ, it’s not even the right color,” I said.
“Oh my God, what in the hell… Jesus, my clothes,” she screamed.
Bras and thongs were scattered across the floor on the far side of her bed.
“You didn’t leave them there?”
“Me? No you idiot, of course I didn’t leave them there. Oh my god, he’s ruined my bedroom. He’s ruined it. Your pervert friend has ruined my bedroom, Dev.”
“Look, Kiki, I don’t know what to say, I didn’t think…”
“Stop right there. Oh my god, you complete and utter idiot,” she screamed and picked up an empty bottle of lubricant off the floor next to her scattered thongs.
“Maybe now’s not the best time for that,” I said, then ducked as she threw the bottle at me.
“Get out of my house,” she screamed.
“Look, maybe I could help clean…”
“Get out of my god damned house you asshole, get out, get out, get out!”
I decided not to wait until the knife came out. I dashed through the kitchen and out the back door.
“Call you later,” I yelled as I jumped off the porch, ran to my car and drove off.
I had no idea where to start looking for Gary so I went to The Spot. I stuck my head in the door and asked Jimmy.
“Hey, has Gary Hobson been in here today?”
“He quit drinking, Dev. Went to some high price treatment facility.”
“Call me if you see him, okay.”
“Yeah, but he won’t be in here, like I said, he quit.”
I crossed the street to my office, phoned a couple of hospitals, the Detox unit, the police. Nothing. About forty-five minutes later I began getting phone calls from Serenity Center. The calls continued every fifteen minutes. I really didn’t want to talk with them so I let the calls drop into my message center.
Chapter Nineteen
Kiki phoned sometime after seven that night. I was in the process of stuffing the last of a BBQ cheeseburger from McDonald’s into my mouth and washing it down with a Summit beer. I really didn’t want to talk to her, either, but I answered anyway.
“Kiki?”
“He’s here,” she whispered.
“Who? Gary, he came back?”
“Apparently he never left. I was doing all my laundry, again,” she paused for emphasis. “I found him passed out in the guest bedroom down in the basement. You better get over here, right away, before he wakes up or I’m calling the cops.”
I didn’t have to be told twice.
Gary was on the floor and out cold. He must have rolled off the bed. He lay wedged between the bed and the basement wall. His face looked like it had gone about three rounds with the concrete floor when he fell. He had dried blood below his nose, a split bottom lip and a gash on his cheekbone.
“Did you do that to him?” I asked Kiki.
“If I’d done it he’d look a lot worse, believe me,” she sneered.
I believed her.
“Gary, hey Gary,” I was shaking his foot, attempting to wake him up.
“Just get him the hell out of my house, now,” she demanded.
“Look. I’m trying to, but he’s out cold.”
“I want him out of here before he throws up all over the place. God, you and your friends,” she said, like this was an everyday occurrence instead of just the fourth time I’d ever been in her house.
“Can you help me carry him?”
“Me?”
“If you can just help me get him up the basement steps, then I can drag him out the door.” I explained.
“I just don’t want him to throw up,” she shuddered.
“He won’t, look, he’s dead to the world,” I shook Gary’s foot again and got no reaction.
“Oh, that’s great,” she said, then crossed her arms, cocked a hip and thrust her bottom lip out.
“Just grab his feet, okay?”
“Ugh,” but she did it.
I held Gary beneath his arms and wrestled him up Kiki’s ancient basement stairs. Talk about dead weight, but eventually we got him up into the kitchen.
“Can you get the back door for me?”
She let go of his ankles and they dropped with a thunk as she hurried to the back door and opened it. I dragged Gary out the door and across the porch.
“You better get your ass back here tomorrow and fix the fucking mess he left here.”
“Me?”
“God,” she screamed, then slammed the kitchen door and turned off the porch light. I dragged Gary down the steps and out to my car in the dark. I stuffed him in the back seat, checked for a pulse once I got him in, then headed off in the direction of Serenity Center.
Chapter Twenty