“Are you not listening to me? By the end of this weekend, I’ll have enough money to buy us both a one-way ticket out of Hell. Besides, how hard can it be to find someone to buy my ticket? It’s the Sun Desert MusicFestival.”
As it turned out,finding a new wingman proved more difficult than I’d imagined. Not one of my buddies could commit to a last-minute weekend concert. The majority of my friends had responsibilities greater than themselves and were now married… some even with children on the way. They couldn’t be acting like an aimless bachelor anymore. I envied them. Where they were was the place I’d expected to be by now too. Thanks, Alexis! The swift kick to my gut reminded me of her heartlessdeception.
Maybe it was best to just cancel the whole damn weekend. I could try hawking the tickets on Hollywood Boulevard, the place where Richie had bought them from a scalper a few weeks before. But I needed this mini-vacation more than I wanted to admit. What with the breakup, my brother’s most recent imprisonment, and all the damn injuries, I needed a little fun in my life, and the jacked up energy of a music festival would be the perfect antidote. Music, alcohol, and women… that should bring my optimism levels back up tobrimming.
Certainly it would have been easier to find a trip buddy if I were to expand my search criteria to include females, but would defeat the purpose of the trip. Richie and I had planned to spend the weekend drinking and trolling for women, and although, it wouldn’t be as fun without him, I decided to hold firm to that approach even if it meant going italone.
* * *
“We watchedMy Bloody Bacheloragain last night. I’ll never understand why you went into the pool house in the first place. I mean, you clearly saw the headless body floating in the water,” Shelby said, disappointment clear in her judgmental voice. “Haven’t I taught youanything?”
I could argue with my mother and explain to her for the thousandth time that it was my character, not me, who’d made the reckless decision to go into the pool house, but she wouldn’t listen. As far as my mother was concerned, every onscreen death I’d suffered was my own damnfault.
“What do you want, Shelby?” This conversation was going nowhere, and I only had a few minutes before the pain meds kicked in. Once that happened, I’d be like one of those sticky hands you flung against a wall and then watched as it grotesquely disengaged and oozed to thefloor.
“What Iwantis to see you in a movie where you don’t get brutally murdered. Is that so muchtoask?”
Yes. Yes, it is.Gliding my fingers over the end button, I apprehensively awaited the reason for the interruption. I only ever heard from her when she wanted something, and I understood that this conversation would be nodifferent.
“Did you call for something specific?” I asked. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. Whatever she wanted was going to cost me. I just needed the dollar amount so I could gotobed.
“Can I borrow your car thisweekend?”
“My car?” I blurted out. No, not that, anything but that. “You want to borrow my Charger? I… no… I don’tthinkso.”
One might think my reluctance to loan her my vehicle stemmed from her decision to throw me away as a baby, but Shelby’s earliest mistakes had long been forgiven, if not for any other reason than the fact that all her later mistakes made my toilet birthseemtame.
“Come on. I need it for a work trip. Mine is still in the shop. Please, Indy. You can take your brother’s pickuptruck.”
“Okay, first of all, I’ve been going by Finn for eight years now. Why is it so hard for you to get my name straight? And secondly, I can’t loan you my car because I’m going to a concert this weekend and will probably be using it as myhotelroom.”
“All the more reason to take the truck. It runs great. It’s actually way better for you because you can bring a mattress and sleep on the flatbed. Besides, you don’t want me breaking down on a freeway in the middle of Los Angeles,doyou?”
“Hold on. I thought you said the pickup worked fine – but now you’re basically saying it’s going to break down on me. Which oneisit?”
Even though I planned to put up a fight, I already knew my mother would manipulate me into submission. She always did, because, like it or not, denying Shelby came with its own set of problems… ones I’d always been ill-equipped to deal with. See, the thing about my mother was that every decision she made or any transaction she brokered was always done entirely for her own benefit. I figured this out in early infancy when I’d been tossed out with the trash, yet it never ceased to amaze me how I still routinely fell for her self-servingtricks.
“It drives like a charm, no worries. I just meant that it’s not used tofreeways.”
My head spun on its axis as the pain in my bones began to dull. A warm, Zen-like sensation was quickly frosting over my brain.Focus. Did she just say it was “not used to freeways?” I shook my head clear. It was a motor vehicle. My Shelby-bullshit radar was now spinning and flashing red warning lights. I knew when she was about to screw me over and clearly this was one of those times. “I’ll be driving on afreeway!”
“Yes, but you’re a man. If you break down – not that I’m saying you will – but if you did, at least you wouldn’t have to worry about a creep having his way with you. How would you feel if some psycho dumped my body in a wooded area off the 5freeway?”
“Honestly, Shelby, I think I’d berelieved.”
Perhaps the drugs were making me too candid, but Shelby took no offense. In fact, she acted as if it was the funniest thing I’d said all year. I laughed along with her.Yes, it was just a joke. Funny me.But with the laughter came a fading resolve. Dammit, she had her claws in me now. It was only a matter of time before I was on the losing end of this deal. Chalk another one up for Shelby, the puppetmaster.
Maybe it was already blatantly obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: Shelby and I were mother and son on paper alone. For all other purposes, we were more like a pair of dysfunctional siblings… or, more pointedly, a prison guard and death row inmate. It was Shelby’s mother and grandmother who had done most of the raising, if you could call it that. Mostly I’d just run wild with all the other kids who came and went. Parenting was somewhat optional in my extended family and done only when the adult had no other choice but to getinvolved.
Growing up, I’d been on a first name basis with each and every Child Protective Services worker in the area. By all standards, I’d had an unconventional upbringing. As a mother, Shelby sucked. She couldn’t take care of herself, much less the baby she’d nearly flushed down the toilet. But custody hadn’t been handed over to her after my unorthodox birth anyway. It was Misty, my grandmother, only thirty-three at the time, who got that honor. She was only fifteen herself when Shelby was born, and her own mother, Gigi, had raised the baby. In a way, it was a time-honored tradition in our family for the mothers of the teen moms to raise the baby of the following generation. That was just how it was done. Not to say Misty was some great caretaker, as she was more interested in her revolving door of boyfriends and husbands than me, but clearly she was a better choice than Shelby, who more than once had forgotten where she’d left me while out on shoppingtrips.
“And besides,” I said, “I don’t think there are any wooded areas off the 5 freeway in LosAngeles.”
“It was just an example,” she huffed. “My body could be dumped anywhere atanytime.”
That was Shelby, always overly dramatic. No wonder I was drawn to acting, with the role model I’d hadgrowingup.
“I have a bad feeling about this.” I wasn’t sure why I was stalling. It wasn’t like it would make adifference.
