Kristen Ashley - Rock Chick

I pulled out my trump card.

“He took a bullet for me.”

That did it.

“Lee owes me big time for this,” Hank muttered as he walked to his SUV.

My cell rang as we pulled away from the curb.

The display said, “Lee calling.”

“Hey, I was just gonna call you,” I said.

“The office phoned, you’re all over the police-band.”

Oopsie.

“I kind of led Hank to a house full of pot plants and he went all cop on me.”

Silence.

“Lee?”

“Why aren’t you at the condo?”

“Duke called, he opened the store. There was a Mini-We-Want-Rosie Riot. We settled that and then The Kevster called and told us someone was at his house, scaring him. I thought it was my kidnapper, Pepper Rick and it was. That’s why I was gonna call you because he was at Kevin’s early this morning banging on the door. I thought you’d want to know.”

Silence again.

“Lee?”

“Where’s Hank?”

“He’s driving, we’re on our way to get Tex and take him home. The hospital released him.”

“Let me talk to him.”

I looked at Hank. Hank looked unhappy.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“I think he’s kinda mad at you.”

“Let me get this straight, he’s supposed to be lookin’ after you and he takes you to a house where your kidnapper was, just hours ago, and he’s mad at me?”

Yikes.

“I guess the feeling’s mutual.”

More silence.

“I kinda talked him into it.”

“Yeah, I suspect you’re good at that.”

“If it makes you feel better, he’s already threatened to kill me.”

I heard the sigh before, “Be safe, for Christ’s sake.”

Then he hung up.

When Hank swung in the SUV, Tex was at the Emergency Room entrance, sitting in a wheelchair, his arm in a tight sling, a stocky guy in scrubs and clogs standing behind him.

Tex pushed himself out of the chair as we walked up to him and he shot a filthy look at the guy in scrubs.

“Fuckin’ wheelchairs. Fuckin’ orderlies,” Tex groused.

“I’m not an orderly, I’m a nursing assistant,” Clog Guy said and from the look of him, there was no way I’d disagree. He could be anything he wanted.

“Whatever,” Tex muttered and his eyes settled on me. “What’d I miss?”

I ran it down for him with a little more detail than what I did for Lee, the riot, Kumar’s prehistoric mother-in-law, the Kevster call, kidnapper sighting, pot plants, police and two news vans.

“Fuckin’ A, darlin’,” he said to me.

“Fuckin’ A,” I replied, “now what?”

Tex lumbered to the SUV. “Now, we feed the cats.”

We went to Tex’s house, he changed clothes and we fed his gazillion cats and cleaned out five litter trays. It wasn’t the most pleasant job I’d ever done in my life but the kitties were appreciative. Tex made us stay long enough to give them cuddles, dangle feathers and jiggle laser lights because, according to Tex, it was important to keep their minds and bodies active.

Luckily, there were no stockpiles of firearms and explosives on display.

When we started to leave, Tex followed.

Hank stopped and turned.

“Where are you goin’?” he asked Tex.

“With you,” Tex answered.

“I don’t think so,” Hank replied.

“You think you can protect Little Miss Calamity here all by yourself?” Tex scoffed, jerking a thumb at me.

Er, excuse me? Little Miss Calamity?

“You have your arm in a sling,” Hank returned.

“Listen man, I been on this block for twenty years without leavin’ except to go to the fuckin’ dentist when I had a toothache in 1998. I got off it last night and for the first time in years, I feel free.”

Hank considered this.

Hank was a tough guy but he’d always been somewhat of a soft touch. The only fights he ever got into where when people were teasing the unpopular kids at school or saying shit about girls that he knew wasn’t true (these girls were usually Ally and me). When he was a kid, he used to bring home the lame dogs and damaged birds. I always thought that Hank got into the cop business far less to serve than to protect.

“Lee owes me big time for this,” he repeated, giving in.

We walked down to Kumar’s and stocked up on junk food and got the makings for a late lunch. Then we went to the station and gave our statements about the happenings on to The Kevster’s pot farm. Then we went to my house.

Stevie and Tod were in the front yard mowing, weeding and pruning. Kitty Sue was taking in the sun on my front porch in my old, weathered butterfly chair that once had a bright-turquoise canvass seat that was now a bluish-gray. Marianne Meyer was sitting on my front step playing with a baby and Andrea was chasing after a toddler who was streaking across my side of the lawn while two more of her kids were rolling around in the grass looking like they were trying to kill each other.

Hank parked across the street from my duplex and we all walked up to the house. Everyone stared at Tex, for, even without the night vision goggles, he was a sight to see.

Then Marianne’s attention focused on me.

“Well?” Marianne asked.

“Well, what?” I retorted.

Marianne threw up her hands. “Does Lee have the bow off your panties?”

Grr.

Tod and Stevie came up, saving me from having to answer.

“Kitty Sue told us you were kidnapped last night,” Stevie noted with concern.

“Again,” Tod put in.

Before I could say anything, Kitty Sue called from her chair, “Why didn’t you tell me Tod was performing tonight? You know I like to see Burgundy do her thang.”

“What’s this about panties?” Tex broke in.

“Do you think we could turn the hose on the kids? It’s so hot and they’d love it,” Andrea shouted from across the lawn, struggling to get a pair of shorts on the streaker.

“Oh, by the way,” Kitty Sue said, getting up from the butterfly chair, “we’ve decided to go out for pizza before Tod’s show, all of us. Won’t that be fun?”

Everyone was staring at me and I was at a momentary loss. Okay, it wasn’t as if I’d lived an uneventful life. My life was pretty active and kind of exciting but all of it had been controlled. This was out of hand.

Ally, as she had many a time, saved my bacon.

“Marianne, it’s none of your business so quit asking and go get yourself laid, for God’s sake. Hank, get the hose and turn it on those monsters before they tear up the yard. Tex, go upstairs and lay down for awhile. Mom, help me make everyone a sandwich.” Then she shoved forward, taking our shopping bags, opened my house with her key and went in.

“I love your sister,” I said to Hank.

He threw his arm around my shoulders, pulled me into his body and gave me a sideways hug.

Tod and Stevie had gone back to yard work and I felt the guilt pull. Their side of the lawn was lush, green and manicured, the edges that butted our brick walkways were cut precisely. Colorful flowers grew healthy along the front, black wrought iron fence, down the wooden fence at the side and in the beds in front of their porch. They had a basket on the porch overhang that happily dripped fuchsias and terracotta pots on each step of the stoop trailing ivy and bursting with flowers.

My side of the lawn was also mowed and had clean and cut borders but only because Stevie did it. I’d planted flowers in my flower beds but they were being choked by weeds, had not been watered in days, looked dry and close to death. The fuchsia basket that Tod bought me to balance the look of the duplex was bedraggled and only in slightly better shape than the flower beds because it didn’t have weeds attacking it.

Their side looked like Martha Stewart. My side looked like Sanford and Son.

I needed to help with the yard work. It was my neighborly duty.

I went into the house and up to my bedroom. I was running out of clothes at Lee’s place so I dumped the contents of my ever-ready, rarely-used workout bag and shoved items in just in case my stay there lasted longer. I took off my clothes, slathered myself with factor 8, put on a pair of cutoff jeans shorts and a kelly green camisole with a shelf bra. I gathered my hair in a messy knot on top of my head, grabbed my phone and called Lee.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“How’s it going?”

“Not good.”

He didn’t sound happy.

Yikes.

“If you get finished in time, we’re going out for pizza before Tod’s show tonight.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Your Mom says ‘all of us’ so I’m guessing that means Marianne Meyer, Andrea Moran and her kids, probably Ally and Hank, likely Dad and Malcolm and select players from the Colorado Rockies,” I paused, “oh, and Tex.”

“Marianne Meyer and Andrea Moran?”

“They’re on a Lee and Indy Sex Watch.”

“Come again?”

“They want to know when we’ve done it.”

Silence.

I went on. “If we don’t do it soon, they might force us to at gunpoint.”

“Christ.”

“I know. No pressure though. I told them we’re taking it slow.”

“You have to report in?”

“I kind of feel obliged.”

“How’s that?”

I didn’t want to tell him I’d recruited them both for Lee Maneuvers in the past, so I said, “Never mind.”

“If something doesn’t happen soon, it’s gonna be bad. I can’t keep focused, all I can think of is what’s on your Victoria’s Secret credit statement.”

“You need to keep focused,” I told him, “bad guys are after me.”