That very night he’d removed all the patio furniture off the front porch. It was 2 a.m. when he did it, pulling out the hardware where he’d bolted the wicker chairs to the porch’s wooden floor. Without porch furniture to plop down on, the Jehovah’s Witnesses would never get another piece of him.
He didn’t want anybody to see his activities, especially his crab of a neighbor. Gladys Kravitz he called her. From Bewitched. Always looking through the fence at him and everything he did since his mother passed away and left him the house. He got sick of her watching him, too. He was convinced she was in league with the Feds, so he welded sheet metal over all the windows on the side of the house that bordered Gladys Kravitz’s yard. Nosey crone.
He looked longingly back at the poster of Leather Stockton at the far end of the long hall running the length of the house. She was posted there at the end of the hall, at eye level so he could talk to her one-on-one whenever he felt like it. He’d just lit a vanilla-scented candle and placed it at her feet. She loved the vanilla-scented candles he bought at Yankee Candle Company. It made the others jealous, so sometimes he’d pick one up for a few of them, specifically his other girlfriend, the wholesome singing star Cassie Lake. Everybody knew Cassie had a jealous streak. He got lilac scent for her and lit it on Fridays. Like date night.
That was Friday. On Tuesdays, he communed with Prentiss Love. He had lots of posters of Love, but his favorite, and the one he had taped to the wall in his bedroom, was her as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. So alluring, but at the same time so wholesome in that little navy blue and silver skirt. Yes, she shot to stardom, but she still looked best in the little cheerleading outfit. His all-American girl.
Wednesdays were reserved for Fallon Malone. Of course, just like everybody else in the country, he’d seen her in her famous screen role where she washed a red Corvette sans underwear. But there was so much more to Fallon… a heart and soul that only somebody like him could understand. She hurt a lot, he could tell. Extremely sensitive, that one. All of her sexual flamboyance was to cover up her pain and self-doubt. If only he had the chance, he could turn her life completely around.
Then there were all the others, but this was Monday and right now, the Jehovahs were keeping him from Leather. She was getting pissed, he could tell. He looked at the poster, glowing goldish in the candlelight. She had that look in her eyes. She was angry he was keeping her waiting.
He hated it when Leather got this way.
Beside the candle, he’d very soon lay the pair of Leather’s underwear he swiped from the Shutters on the Beach Hotel out in Santa Monica. He read how she’d go there, and so he went there and hung out at the hotel pool for four weekends in a row, living out of his car the whole time. Well, technically, it was his mother’s car, but she was dead, anyway.
Finally, on his last day there, Leather came walking out of a cabana and strolled beside the pool heading for the main lobby. He wound his way through all the lounge chairs and drinks sitting there chilling on classy little tables beside the chairs and chaise lounges. He wanted to talk to her, maybe just touch her arm to see what Leather Stockton’s skin felt like.
Was that so wrong?
When he finally got close enough to talk to her, he called out her name.
“Leather… Hi! It’s me!”
The guy with her, whose hair, by the way, was obviously styled with hairspray or some related hair product, pushed him back hard in his chest.
He didn’t want to appear uncivilized to Leather, so he didn’t kick the guy in the crotch like he wanted to.
“Hey! Leather! It’s me! I sent you the roses for your birthday last month! The white roses… Your favorite! Right?”
She only slightly glanced backwards. The guy just grabbed her elbow from behind and pushed her forward a little forcefully, saying something into the back of her hair.
Francis tried to keep up, but in the process, knocked over one of the little white plastic poolside tables with four frosty little drinks sitting on it. The glasses slid to the cement, splintering into pieces as they made impact.
Idiots! You should never serve drinks in glass glasses poolside! Plastic, people! Plastic! Ever heard of plastic?
Now, two hotel staffers headed straight for him. One was short and chunky. The other one was tall and lean, his collar loose around his throat. Their black jackets matched each other.
He couldn’t give up this easily… He was finally in her presence. Screw the black jackets.
He called after her. “Leather… It’s me! You sent me the photo of you in the swimsuit… Remember? I love it! It’s up on my wall right beside the greatest poster of you I got at Spencer’s.”
“Sir! Sir! Can we be of some assistance?”
Closing in on him from behind, the Shutters security guards stepped up, one on each side of him, firmly placing their hands around each of his biceps.
He’d better cool it. He couldn’t afford another arrest. That last stunt back home with the makings for a pipe bomb in the garage nearly landed him in the Federal pen. It was all BS of course, he hadn’t even assembled it. What happened to freedom of speech? That’s what his public defender said.
But now, his mother wasn’t around anymore to bail him out. There could be no more arrests. That was one of the last little nuggets of wisdom she shot at him from her deathbed in the hospital.
Old bag.
Assistance? He managed to keep it together and answer almost normally. “Oh no, assistance will absolutely not be necessary. I’m fine. Just thought I recognized her.”
He saw them exchange glances. Two little snots. They apparently didn’t seem to think he was “fine.”
The short, stocky one piped up. “Sir, in which room are you registered?”
“Actually, I just got here, I hadn’t even stopped in the lobby to register yet.”
Who was he kidding? He’d been here poolside for days, trying to scope out Stockton.
“Sir, do you have any identification on you?”
“Well, not exactly on me, but I do have it in the car. I’ll just go out to the parking lot and get it.”
“Did you valet? We can get that for you…”
Hell no, he did not valet.
He wasn’t about to part with $25 to have some moron dent his car. His mother kept it in pristine condition for ten full years and he meant to keep it that way, although it was currently covered with a thick coat of dust. That was only because of the long drive out here. He planned to take it to the Minute Car Wash way before Leather got into the front seat with him.
“We’ll just escort you to your car, sir.”
“No need! I can find it.” They could drop the “sir” bull. He knew they were going to have his butt arrested.
“No problem at all.”
S.O.B.s. They literally walked him off the property and then tagged along the full seven blocks to where he parked the Saturn on the side of a street with no parking meter to worry about.
The “guards” stood by the side of the car as he got in and pretended to shuffle through some papers. Within sixty seconds, he switched on the ignition, floored it and scratched off.
The two must have seen it coming, because they jumped back pretty fast when he gunned the gas. Good thing, or else he might have taken one of their feet with him. Too bad.
Fine. They wouldn’t let him talk to Leather?
He got them good.
That night, after he’d sneaked back onto the property, he watched the cabana he’d seen her come out of earlier… It was damn miserable squatted down in a thatch of palmetto bushes. The plant was like a bushel of swords. And the automatic sprinklers had come on, too.
S.O.B.s.