“Watch it,” my mother said.
“Sorry. ‘That bitch’ Dottie Kubacki.”
“He could be a ‘chubby chaser.’” she replied. “I saw about them on The View.”
We exited the Expressway and drove the five local blocks to our street. But instead of pul ing up to our home, my mother turned off the engine and let the car quietly drift down the street until it stopped right in front of Dottie Kubacki’s house.
“I learned that from reading detective novels,” she said.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now, you go out and peek in her windows.”
“What?”
“Just go up to the house and look in windows and see what they’re up to.” She reached into her handbag and brought out one of those cardboard disposable cameras you buy at the drugstore. “Take this. I want evidence.”
“Listen, you’re on your own here, Jessica Fletcher.
There is no way I’m going out there to spy on my own father.”
My mother looked at me cool y. “Do you know what an episiotomy is? When you were born, the doctors had to give me five stitches because you tore up my…”
“OK!” I said, “I’l go.”
“It’l be fun,” my mother said. “Haven’t you ever wanted to play detective?”
If you only knew, I thought.
Just as I started to open my door, we saw a light come on in one of Dottie’s second-floor windows.
“Her bedroom,” my mother hissed. “Get up there.”
“What?”
“There’s a tree right over there. Climb up and get the picture. Do I have to think of everything?”
When my mother gets like this, you can either argue or give in. In either case, you’re going to lose. I was in no mood to fight.
I got out of the car, put the camera in my back pocket, and approached the tree. I grabbed hold of the lowest branch and pul ed myself up.
Years of gymnastics made the climbing part easy.
I ascended from limb to limb until I got near Dottie’s window. I had already decided that no matter what happened, even in the inconceivable event that my father was in there, I’d tel my mother that al I saw was Dottie, sorry, “that bitch” Dottie, getting ready for bed.
The tree got me high enough that I was looking directly into Dottie’s bedroom. Which, luckily, was empty. I couldn’t hear anything through the quarter-open window, either.
I looked down and saw my mother, expectant and angry, standing at the bottom of the tree. “Wel?” she stage-whispered.
I put my hands together in prayer position and rested my head on them in the universal sign for sleep.
“Hmmm!” my mother observed.
I was just about to climb back down when a change in the light made me look up. There, at the window, stood Dottie Kubacki.
Nude.
I had always known that Dottie Kubacki was overweight, but to see her in the al — too-real flesh was to know the true awesomeness of nature. The Himalayas would be humbled.
She was Jabba the Hutt with pubic hair.
In fact, so impressive was the sight that I gasped.
Loudly.
Dottie raised the window ful y open. “Who’s out there?” she asked.
Shit, I thought. The tree was thick with branches and leaves. Maybe if I stood very stil, she wouldn’t see me.
Dottie leaned out the window, her pendulous breasts reaching almost to the ground. Wel, not real y, but you get the picture. I tried to make myself invisible.
“Huh,” she said, turning away.
If the front view of a naked Dottie Kubacki was indelible, you can only imagine how her backside seared itself into my consciousness. Her ass could have had its own zip code.
I looked down at my mother and motioned wildly for her to go back to the car. I was just beginning to climb down when Dottie’s presence back at the window made me look up.
The only worse thing than seeing Dottie Kubacki standing naked at the window, I learned, was seeing Dottie Kubacki standing naked with a handgun at the window.
“I said, ‘who’s out there!’” she demanded, pointing the gun about a foot to my left.
“Gah!” I said. I put my foot down where I expected a branch but found nothing but air. “Shit!”
I fel about a foot down the tree until I managed to grab hold with my right hand.
“Is there someone in that tree?” Dottie demanded.
No, I thought, it’s a squirrel that says “shit.”
“If you’re that Ferrara kid, I’m cal ing your parents right now,” Dottie yel ed. “I don’t care how late it is.”
She had that right-the Ferrara kids were brats.
I got halfway down the tree when the branch I was standing on cracked off.
“Shit!” I said again, as I fel, this time al the way to the ground. I landed on my ass, cracking the cheap camera my mother gave me and sending shards of plastic into my butt. “Ow!”
My impact or the noise must have set off an alarm, because al of a sudden the lights in Dottie’s yard came on and a loud siren blared.
“Murderer!” Dottie screamed. “Rapist! Someone cal the police!”
Lights in al the neighboring houses switched on, including ours, which pretty much ruled out the possibility that my father was at Dottie’s.
My mother reached over from the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door. “Would you get in here!” she yel ed at me.
The thought had occurred to me.
I scampered as quickly as I could across Dottie’s lawn and jumped into the car. My mother took off before my feet were al the way in.
“Gah!” I cried again. “Are you trying to kil me?”
“Kil you?” she said. “Can you imagine how embarrassed I would have been to be discovered snooping in that bitch Dottie Kubacki’s yard?”
“I think your camera went into my tush,” I told her, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
“Wel, that would be a new one,” she observed dryly. “What made you cry out like that?”
I told her about seeing Dottie Kubacki naked.
“You poor thing,” she admitted. “Wel, at least you can’t say she’s turned you off to women.”
“No, but it confirms my theory that daddy isn’t sleeping with her,” I said.
“How’s that?” my mother asked.
“He couldn’t,” I explained. “It wouldn’t reach.”
CHAPTER 14
The next morning I woke up with a long scratch along my right side and a sore ass. My mother was stil asleep, snoring loudly. She was probably exhausted after a long night of almost-getting-her-son kil ed. I looked at the clock: 6:30.
I made a protein drink and sat down with my iPhone. My new to-do list looked like this.
1. Talk to Marc about gay suicides
2. Try to find out more about Paul Harrington 3. Fuck Tony
I debated deleting the third item, but I decided to let it stay. For now.
My plan for finding out more about the supposed
“rash” of gay suicides that Tony had mentioned was to ask my client Marc Wilgus to see what he could turn up. Marc was probably one of the world’s greatest Masters of the Web, and I doubted there was any information he couldn’t get.
I sat at my computer and wrote him an e-mail asking if I could come by today and discuss something with him. I sent it and started surfing the Web. A few minutes later, my instant messenger beeped. Marc was online.
“Hey,” he wrote, “what’s up?”
“Something I need 2 talk 2 you about in person.”
“U quitting the biz?”
“No, not that.”
“U need 2 tel me that you have herpes or something?”
“No, nothing bad. Just need ur help.”
“Come now if you want.”
Of course, since Marc never left his apartment, any time was as good as any other. I had to be at The Stuff of Life at 11:00 to volunteer for the lunch shift, and then had a client at 3:00.
“Let me grab a shower,” I wrote back. “C u in 30.”
“Cool.”
I showered, shaved al the relevant body parts, threw on frayed dungaree shorts, an Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt, and sneakers, and headed out the door. Just as I was leaving, my mother emerged from the bedroom.