The skies were still light at 6:35 on a balmy spring evening. Dougie and Tawny took turns as they maintained vigil.
“I’m hungry,” Christine said. “Let’s do an early dinner. That way, if I’m gonna do anything, especially where that cursed house is concerned, I want to do it on a full stomach.”
“What do you feel like having?” Tawny asked.
Christine pondered, deep in thought for a few moments.
“Four little Indians,” she said, contemplative.
“What?” Tawny asked.
“I was just musing,” Christine said. “There are four of ’em: the beefy blond guy, the chauffeur, that nervous mousy assistant, and the old freak-tard herself. Take ’em out one by one until there is none.”
“Well, we’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
“No, Tawny. You don’t understand. I’ve been agonizing over this for weeks. Now, I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do, and I’m going to get what is rightfully mine, absolutely no exceptions whatsoever.”
“And what is rightfully yours?”
“Funny you should ask. My sister asked me the same thing not too long ago, just after I told her I had come out to LA to get what was rightfully mine. When she asked what was rightfully mine, I clammed up right then and there.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “I honestly could not think of an answer. What would’ve been the best way to tell her that the house itself was—and still is—rightfully mine? I say it’s rightfully mine because I didn’t get to live in it, didn’t get to grow up in it. All my birthdays and Christmases were spent with brother Blaine in New Jersey. Well, now that I’m here, I have that chance and since that decrepit fart of a dinosaur is alive and well after all this time, I’m going to have fun with her. Lots and lots of fun.”
“Whatever’s good for you is good enough for me. Anyway, ya want Mexican, Chinese, Italian, or what?”
“I’m in the mood for some tacos. Let’s just make a beeline to the nearest taco place instead of ordering from room service tonight and come right back here. I wouldn’t want to miss a beat.”
“You sure have a way with words, my friend,” Tawny said with a chuckle. “Well, I’m all for it.”
Christine jotted down orders from Tawny, Dougie, and Jimmy. She folded the slip of paper and put it in her handbag.
“Okay,” Christine said. “Ready?”
Tawny nodded.
“Now, boys,” Christine said as she shook her finger like an indignant parent would to an unruly child. “No faggin’ around whilst we’re gone for the time being. You’d best behave yourselves or else.”
The girls laughed boisterously as they went to the door.
“And don’t forget when you go to confession on Sunday,” Christine said, “be sure to tell the priest every lurid, sordid detail. They like to hear such crude stories of sin every once in a while, you know. It does their hearts good.”
“Yes, mother,” Dougie said and saluted Christine in jest.
Christine whirled around on her heel. Her eyes pulsated with cold fury, her nostrils flared, and her face reddened.
“Don’t ever call me that,” Christine said with such iciness that Dougie, Tawny, and Jimmy froze. This was the moment when they suspected that Christine could be bipolar. “Never, ever call me that, you understand?”
Christine forcefully nudged Tawny out the door and slammed it.
Dougie maintained vigil on the house and Jimmy watched the svelte, dark-haired, brown-eyed weather girl on TV. She stood before a large projection screen as she prattled on and pointed to animated icons of jovial suns with glittering rays, roving thunderstorm clouds with lightning bolts, swirling tornadoes, swaying palm trees, and hot and cold fronts that languorously moved throughout the digital map of the continental United States.
“Now, as you can see here,” the weather girl said as she pointed to an area of the Atlantic Ocean, “there’s a tropical depression approximately 960 miles southeast from Barbados. This weak low-pressure system gives cause to the air above the Atlantic waters as being unstable, and winds have been clocked at thirty-five miles per—”
Jimmy flipped the channel via remote and watched a classic 1960s sitcom about a mortal man married to a blond witch.
Christine and Tawny walked in with bags of tacos and beverages.
“We’re baaaack,” Christine said with a grin. “Eat up, everyone.”