Chapter 18: Peaches
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I knew something wasn’t right when the devil started licking my face. When you’re in Hell, you expect screaming, pain, the salty sweet stench of your own roasted flesh filling your nostrils. But when eternal torment consisted of the Big Man himself frenching your entire face, something in the state of
I pushed the devil’s slobbery tongue away. Hellfire burned bright behind him. His wild hair and horns were nothing but jagged shadows surrounding his teeth like knives. Then I caught the smell of day old milk and ashtrays. The stench brought me fully awake and I completely opened my eyes to see Cerberus standing over me, the sun shining through the window behind him.
“What the hell is it that you eat, dog?” He just licked me again.
I sat up and became acutely aware of the stiffness in my face. I reached up and felt for the hole in my head but found only bandages. I had quite a headache, but nothing like before. Judging by the color of light coming through the window, it was mid-morning.
I was on a paisley couch, shirtless underneath a white sheet. The room was small and sparsely decorated with lithographs and potted plants. A bookshelf on the far wall was overflowing with college textbooks and bad fiction. A pile of my clothes was clean and neatly folded at one end of the couch.
And I smelled bacon.
There was movement from around the corner. I tried to stand but my head tried to twist itself from my body and I plopped back down onto the couch. A young woman walked into the room carrying a breakfast tray. She was cute, curvy with short blonde hair, and wearing gray sweatpants and a blue ISU sweatshirt. “Oh good, you’re awake,” she said.
Cerberus bolted over and tried to get at the food on the tray. The girl pulled the tray aside and scowled at the dog. “What do you think you’re doing? You’ve been fed already, now go away.” I didn’t know what was scarier, the fact that she didn’t run screaming the second Cerberus came for the food or that the dog actually walked away.
She put the tray on the couch next to me and said, “You may want to hurry up and eat that before your friend gets any bolder. I’ll go get you some coffee to go with your juice. You like coffee don’t you, because you look like the coffee liking type.” The girl smirked at my slack-jawed amazement and said, “I’ll get you some coffee.” And then she disappeared down the hallway.
So far, better than waking up in the trunk of a car.
It took me a few seconds to stand myself up without falling over, but once I was up and my head stopped spinning, I was able to put my shirt on while keeping Cerberus away from my breakfast.
I took a quick scan of the room: where the doors were, how many panes of glass in the windows I’d have to break through if I needed to exit in a hurry, lamp stands that could be used as cudgels, desk drawers I’d most likely find letter openers to brandish as weapons, that sort of thing. By the time the girl came back into the room, I had an inventory of a tiny makeshift arsenal going through my head.
She set the coffee down on the end table next to me. “How is it?”
I nodded, always keeping her in my periphery. “It’s good. Kind of hard to fuck up toast, though.”
“Oh, I can do it. Want me to show you?” She held out her hand and gave me a half smile.
Usually it took me at least three sentences before coming off like an ass to someone I had just met. But she was being a good sport about it. Which made me feel worse. “Sorry,” I said.
She gave me a wave of dismissal then sat down on the couch next to me and slapped her legs, calling Cerberus over. “What’s his name?”
“Cerberus.”
“Cerberus? That’s original.” The dog bent over slightly so she could reach up and scratch his ears as she talked like she was playing with an infant. “You’re such a good puppy, aren’t you, Cerberus? Yes you are. Yes you are.”
I’ve had the damn thing a little over a week and already it would take me two hands to count the number of times that dog made me want to piss myself. And yet this wisp of a girl played with him like he was nothing but a puppy fresh from the pound. I checked my head again just to make sure my brain hadn’t fallen out.
She looked up. “Is the bandage coming off? I can fix that if—”
“No, no. Just checking to see, um…who are you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She gave Cerberus a tweak on the ear and then held out her hand to me. “I’m Heather. I live next door to Dwayne and Steve. They dragged you over here after you passed out last night.”
“Oh yeah.” The box, the auction, the destroyed bedroom. Why couldn’t my brain have fallen out? Maybe the hole just wasn’t big enough. I started to play with the bandages.
“Leave that alone. You don’t want to pull out any of the stitches. Just relax. Here, let me take a look.” Heather reached over and gently pulled the bandaging away.
As she inspected me, my eyes traced the smooth line of her neck down to the round curve of her collarbone. Her warm breath brushed across my face in time with the swelling of her chest as her fingers moved over my wound. I forgot about the pain I was in and became lost in her smell. It wasn’t her perfume or her shampoo or the rank of someone who hasn’t bathed in days, but her. Just the sweet, subtle scent of a woman’s skin.
“Looks pretty good if I do say so myself,” she said.
As she pulled away, her body heat disappeared with her, leaving a vacuum of cool, empty air around me. I had to concentrate on keeping my teeth from chattering. “You stitched me up?”
“Well, only because the stapler was empty.” I pulled away and gave her a frown. She just laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I’m a nurse.” She set the bandage back in place.
“They let nurses stitch people in this state?”
Heather grabbed Cerberus around his massive neck and hugged him, holding him tight to her. She was in danger of getting lost in his fur. “Normally no, but I grew up on a farm with seven brothers who loved to roughhouse, so you’re not the first boy I’ve had to sew back together.”
I hadn’t been called ‘boy’ in a long time. Of course I figured that to Heather, every male other than her own father was a ‘boy.’ Which was sweet. It was nice to see that kind of innocence. I didn’t get a chance to see it every day. Then again, that’s probably because on the rare occasions that I did, I usually took that innocence, threw it down in the mud and stepped on its throat. I mean, let’s face it. You only really start to notice how dirty you are when standing next to something that clean. And it was always easier to spread the filth around than take a bath.
“I take it you had dogs on this farm?”
“Mmm hmmm.” She stopped stroking Cerberus’ mane, but the dog shoved her with his forehead until she started again. “We had a couple of German Shepherds, some Irish Wolfhounds, even had a dachshund once. But never anything like him. What is he, a mix between a
“I don’t know. I don’t know of any breed that grows that big. I’ve seen some Great Danes that you could plough fields with, but nothing like this guy.”
“Good thing he has such a sweet personality.”
Sweet? I was having a hard time attaching the word ‘sweet’ to the animal that dropped a couple of Vegas heavies after they took a crowbar to the back of his head. It seemed to me that Cerberus didn’t want to knock Heather down into the mud either. But it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later she was going to brush up against one of us. And our kind of dirt didn’t wash off.
“Well, thanks for putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, Heather. But I should probably get out of your hair.”
“Don’t go. I really like your dog.” Heather kissed Cerberus on his nose. The dog sneezed and then pushed his head forward for another scratch. “He could definitely use a bath, but,” she turned to me and smiled. “I like having him around. Besides, I think you should stay another night. I would say go to a hospital, but Dwayne and Steve told me about your situation. So, since you can’t let a doctor look at you, settle for a nurse. Make sure that wound doesn’t get infected.”
If it wasn’t for the gaping hole in my head and the nauseating sense of my impending doom, I would have liked to stick around and play naughty nurse with her. Although I doubted that’s what she had planned. It’s not easy getting a girl randy for you when you’re oozing pus and blood from a gash in the noggin. It can be done, it’s just not easy.
“I’m sure it will be fine. I’ve had to stitch myself up enough times to know… wait a minute. Exactly what situation did Dwayne and Steve tell you about?” My voice came out harsher than what I intended and I would have cringed had it not been for the fact that my face was as stiff as cardboard.
Heather sat up straight and gave a quick glance to the pencil on the desk across the room. Apparently she had a little mental arsenal of her own. But growing up with seven rough and tumble brothers on a farm meant she could no doubt handle herself. I just wish I hadn’t made her feel as if she was going to have to.
“Just some stoner tale about mobsters throwing you in the river after beating the crap out of you and that if you show up in a hospital they’ll find you and,” she raised her hands and did finger quotes in the air, “clip you.”
“Clip me?”
“They watch a lot of bad television.”
I nodded and gave her my best disarming smile. But instead of it relaxing her, Heather’s eyes just kind of drew together in an empathetic grimace. “Actually, that’s mostly true,” I said. “But they’re mobsters with a little ‘m,’ not a big ‘M.’”
“What’s the difference?”
“Big “M” mobsters are your Capones, your Gottis. Small ‘m’ mobsters, like the prick bastards who did this to me, are of the less organized variety. Usually just heavies and rent-a-thugs.”
Heather pulled her legs up onto the couch and sat cross legged, her hands in her lap like a yogi. “So a couple of small ‘m’ mobsters beat you up and threw you into the river.”
“Well, they threw me in the trunk of their car first, but yeah. I eventually made it to the river.”
“And what exactly did you do to make them do that?”
I could tell that the way she was holding her feet underneath her that she would be able to lean back and give me a face full of heel if I did anything threatening. I couldn’t blame her, though. I’d be skittish too if a couple of stoners dropped a bloody and broken mark in my living room in the middle of the night.
“They stole something of mine and I tried to get it back.”
She nodded. Every trace of kindness and hospitality that she had when she first came into the room was now replaced with the stoic detachment of a doctor listening to a terminally ill patient accuse her of misdiagnosis. “What did they steal?” she asked.
“A family heirloom.”
“What, like a brooch?”
“Brooch? No. No, a box my dad made when I was a kid. Hand carved, lot of sentimental value.”
“And a bunch of small ‘m’ mobsters are willing to kill you for it?” Her face crinkled. “Wait a minute. If they threw you in the river, wouldn’t they think you’re already dead?” I nodded. “Then they wouldn’t be looking in the hospitals for you.”
I shook my head. I could feel the mass of abused nerve tissue rattle inside my skull. “No, they wouldn’t, but there are other people who would. So it’s best I stay out of the hospital.”
“Let me guess. Big ‘M’ mobsters?”
“Only in the sense that they’re organized. They’re mostly businessmen and politicians. Normal guys for the most part, they just don’t like me very much.” It was a sobering thought, the number of people who wouldn’t mind seeing my body washed up on the banks of the
“What’d you do to make a bunch of politicians angry? Vote Green or something?” Heather seemed more relaxed now. She had one arm around Cerberus and rested her chin on the wrist of the other, watching me like I was telling ghost stories around a campfire.
“Something like that,” I said. “I gave some testimony that put some of them in a…not so favorable light.”
“This was at your brother Michael’s trial, right?”
“Ah, so my reputation precedes me. I can only assume that means that the eggs were poisoned?” Hopefully it was dosed up enough that it would kill me quickly. Or slowly. At this point, I didn’t much care any more.
“Not the eggs, the toast. Told you I could fuck it up.” After I did a double take, she twisted her mouth into a mischievous smile and said, “Dwayne and Steve told me. Kept going on about you being related to someone in P-Dot too and getting them backstage passes or something for helping you out.”
“Oh. And you thought you could get a piece of that action, too?” It figured. No one was this nice without expecting a payback. Damn. The pretty ones always had to have an angle.
“Me? Nah. I was never a big fan of theirs. Sorry.”
Faith in humanity was restored. “Believe me, that’s a plus as far as I’m concerned.”
Heather sat back and kicked her feet up on top of Cerberus like he was an oversized coffee table. The dog didn’t seem to mind. “So why do they call you ‘Dingo’?”
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “A turn signal would have been nice.”
She laughed. “Sorry, it’s just kind of a strange nickname, that’s all. So where’d you get it? What’s it mean?”
I just nodded and took a sip of coffee. I waited for her to say something, to fill the silence, but she didn’t. Heather just sat with her feet on Cerberus’ back, waiting for me to talk. “My mother gave it to me.”
She leaned forward like I just told her that leprechauns were real. “Really? Your mother?” Her drawl seemed thicker now. “No offense, but it doesn’t sound very flattering coming from your mother.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I could tell Heather was struggling with the concept because her left brow kept sliding closer to the center of her head in a confused and lopsided scowl.
“Why would your mother give you a nickname like that?” she asked.
“You sure do ask a lot of questions.”
“Well, I don’t usually have bodies freshly dredged from the river dumped on my doorstep, so I think it’s okay to ask a question or two. And I’m curious.” Heather leaned forward, her head turned to the side as she squinted at me. “I’ll tell you how I got the nickname ‘Peaches.’”
“That isn’t some pet name your boyfriend gave you, is it? Cause if it is, you need to get out more.” Up until then, it had never crossed my mind that she might be involved. I had to admit that I didn’t like the idea.
She gave me a playful scowl and said, “My dad gave it to me. I was chubby when I was a kid and he used to say that my cheeks looked like peaches.”
“Talk about unflattering.”
“Well, he meant it in a sweet way. When I got older and thinned out he still called me peaches, but he said it was because my kisses were so sweet.”
“Okay, that’s just creepy.”
She hit me with a bit of her farm girl oomph. “Don’t be gross. It’s actually more creepy that you think it’s creepy.” I couldn’t tell if her smile was one of sincere disgust or playful frustration. “Now since I showed you mine, you show me yours. Why’d your mom call you Dingo?”
I tried to smile but my mouth wouldn’t work. “Heather, I really don’t want to talk about it, okay.”
“Oh, come on.” She pointed to her puffed out cheeks. “Peaches. I think sharing the fact that I used to be fat deserves a little reciprocity.”
“Seriously, Heather. I’m not really in the mood to—”
“Why not? Come on, tell me. Why’d your mom call you Dingo?” Heather launched into a pretty authentic Australian accent and said, “Did you eat her baby or something?”
I shot her a glance that made her blanche and said, “Enough. I told you, I don’t want to talk about it. My mom and I never really got along, so please, Heather, just let it go.”
Heather’s face twisted and her lips pulled back against her teeth. “Sorry. Didn’t realize it was that sensitive a topic.” She got off the couch and grabbed my mug. As she lifted it off the tray, I flinched, raising my shoulder and hand up to protect my face. When the blow didn’t come I looked up and saw her staring at me with a soft look on her face. “I’ll get you some more coffee.”
Cerberus walked over and put his head in my lap. I scratched him between the ears and rested my head on the back of the couch. I didn’t understand it. From the minute I opened my mouth I was an asshole to this woman who took me in, fed me, and stitched me. She had every reason to clock me with that coffee cup. Hell, every other woman I’d dated or married would have launched it straight at me ten minutes ago. But not Heather. She just wanted to fill it with more coffee.
What shaped a person like that? Honestly, I wanted to know.
© 2005 by Michael Nelson
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