"Yeah," Terence nodded. "Gotta be."
"Okay, well, he probably shouldn’t see you," Rick murmured, "although he won’t know the rest of us. Hang back, but tell us what we need to know."
"Okay," Terence grunted. "I guess the first thing is that Pa don’t do nine to five. He’s in construction; usually, he gets to the job site at, like, seven-thirty, and they wait for the materials to arrive, then they work until they run out. Theoretically, shit arrives just in time, but lots of times it doesn’t, so they go home early. Sometimes, Pa goes from one site to another, and can work maybe twelve hours a day — but lately, things have been slow, so this is all he’s got. I think it’s the outfit he’s workin' for, not the amount of jobs…"
"So he could pop out at noon?" Rick asked.
"Or deliveries could be behind and he’d not even get to start," Terence nodded. "If shit gets behind, he might have to do the weekend; it ain’t strange for him to do seven days a week when shit gets behind schedule."
Lon nodded. "Let’s hope things break before the summer is over."
"They probably will," Terence admitted. "Chicks come by in summer wearin' not a lot; he talks about that. Winter, he’s outdoors, and folk with sense are in." He sighed. "Pa had a thing going with the secretary at the office, I’m pretty sure, for a while — he kept finding excuses to go over there. He ain’t said nothin' about her for a while, so I figure it’s over…"
Teela picked that moment to pass the word, "I, uh, might not be able to be more than, uh, eye-candy…" She flicked a glance at Rick.
Everybody got it. Lon scowled, and Sally looked pensive. Terence nodded, just as happy that she wouldn’t be in on any entrapment.
They kept an eye on things for twenty minutes or so before workers started exiting the building. "That’s Pa," Terence grunted, pointing out a muscular black man in a muscle shirt, striding toward the pickup.
"Guess we’d better follow," Lon observed. "You guys can go, I guess, now that you know what we’re looking for…" Rick nodded, and he and Teela headed for Teela’s, while Lon pulled out some distance behind Fred’s battered pickup.
They didn’t go far; there was a bar about six blocks away, and Fred pulled into the parking lot and got out, throwing on a long-sleeve shirt over his sweaty muscle shirt and rolling up the sleeves.
"Well, we can’t follow him in there," Lon grunted.
"Yeah, no shit," Terence agreed.
"What if he’s meeting someone in there?" Sally asked.
"He won’t be fucking here," Terence answered.
"True, but if he makes a date, we won’t know it," Lon pointed out. "I’ll call Mama," he added, picking up his cell phone.
"He’s in a bar, Mama," Lon related after Candace picked up. "We won’t know what’s up, obviously."
"Strip bar, regular drinking place — what is it?" Candace asked.
"Regular place, I think," Lon replied. "Rico’s, on seventeenth."
"I’ve been in there," Candace agreed. "It can be a pick-up place, but not at this time of day. If he stays until we get done shopping, we’ll send someone in; if not, it won’t be a problem."
"Okay," Lon hung up and relayed to the others, "If he hangs out for a long time, they’ll send somebody in to see if he’s hitting on anyone — but until then, it’s up to us…" He hauled Sally over next to him and started nuzzling her neck; as for Terence, well, he could get his own…
Inside, Fred was trying hard to rise above temptation. Yesterday had been more than mildly successful, and nothing reinforces a behavior like success … It was a lot later already, though, and while he might arrive at the adult video store in prime-time, he’d be late getting home; besides, he made it a rule to rotate his targets, and the other two were even more distant, not to mention not as certain to be entertaining. No, better to have a few beers and go home to that dumb cunt he’d married, then ended up raising somebody else’s kid by…
Forty-five minutes later, he came wandering out the door and got into his truck, ending a miserable time for Terence as Lon and Sally had to stop making out to follow him. Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up in front of Terence’s house, and the surveillance was over for the evening; Terence got out and circled around back to talk to his mother in the kitchen. "Jus' drinking, probably," he related grumpily.
"What’s the matter, Boy?" Louise asked.
"Lon and Sally was making out while we waited. That sucked."
Damian chuckled. "Guess we’ll have to try to bring our own entertainment…"
"You boys go out together, you won’t need any," Louise pointed out.
"Yeah, well, shit gets pretty boring…" Terence observed.
"Guess you’ll have to come up with something, then," Louise murmured, and left it at that. She was pretty sure that recent events had killed the boys' little experiment, but you never knew…
Terence knew, though. He wasn’t planning to get caught messing around with Damian any time soon; he’d wait and get some pussy — or beat off. Fuck it.
"Drag him in here!" Poppa Pendergast yelled out the front door.
"Oh, fuck!" Teela wailed. This couldn’t be good…
But Poppa got a look at Rick and didn’t go off on him or anything… "So, Boy, how you holdin' up?" he asked.
"Sir?"
"She’s a handful ain’t she? Her momma was." Frank’s eyes twinkled.
"Yes, she is, Sir," Rick agreed.
"Siddown, we probably oughta talk." Frank waved at the couch. Rick did so, gingerly. Frank sucked his teeth. "Do I ask if it’s serious?"
"I think so!" Rick replied.
"Poppa!" Teela ranted.
"Lookit, I HAD ta ask!" Frank grinned. "I hear you handle her shit pretty well," he added.
"Well…" Rick didn’t know what to say, exactly.
"It’s all right — I know how she is. Spicy, more than anything else."
Rick nodded cautiously; he had no idea where all this was going.
Frank turned to Teela. "Why don’t you go start some supper? We need ta do man talk, here."
"Poppa…"
"Relax. I ain’t running him off … Go on, git!" Frank waved her off. Teela shrugged helplessly and left Rick in her father’s clutches.
Frank watched her leave, then, "Okay, ya can call a spade a spade, now. She says you got this magic touch an' can keep her from bouncin' off the walls. Is it that easy, or is there more to it than that?"
Rick looked perplexed. "Well, it isn’t THAT easy…"
"If you’re dribblin' her and keepin' her from bouncin' off the walls like a superball, you’re probably doin' okay," Frank observed. "Is it tough? Too tough?"
"Well, no — why?"
"I just wanna know in case I hafta pick up the pieces. She tends to run to quick and noisy, but that don’t mean she can handle it."
"Oh." If he meant what Rick THOUGHT he meant, he was worried that Rick was going to dump Teela in the near future… "I think we’re doing okay."
"Good," Frank nodded. "Sex been okay? If you need a place, use her room; I’d rather that than to have ta pick you two up at the police station."
Rick rocked again. "Okay. I think we’re fine…"
Frank nodded. "Once her mama got goin' she was hard to keep up with — you know? A man can only shoot so much juice…"
"Oh." Rick looked stricken.
"That a problem?" Frank cocked his head.
"No, I’ve got plenty — but I’m not superman."
"Nobody is, Stud," Frank chuckled. "Any woman can outlast any man on any given day."
"She said her mother was … loose…" Rick said carefully.
"There’s loose and there’s loose," Frank allowed. "I might have overstated it here a while back. But, yeah, I wasn’t always her only supplier. On the other hand, I always knew what was goin' on and she was always there for me." His eyes grew distant. "Teela might not take after her mother; her wings is kinda clipped. But then, her mama was … moody."