Cindy was asleep and I was alone on her balcony, drinking.
It was coming on midnight and I’d had a few hours to think about my rendezvous with Bert Tomlinson tomorrow at the east end of Irvine Lake.
It was a set-up, certainly. I knew that. And he knew that I knew that. Hell, Ginger and Junior knew that.
So, why would I go?
Good question.
I was drinking an old-school Michelob, which is what my poor Mexican neighbors drank in Inglewood. Whenever I saw a bottle of Michelob, with its tinfoil top, I thought of old Mexican men sitting around on plastic chairs outside their houses, drinking and laughing and having a damn good time. They didn’t act poor. They acted…content. Happy. Not to mention that they always seemed to have strong familial bonds that I never understood. I would play catch with myself, tossing a football or baseball or golf ball, and sometimes watch the Mexican men drinking in a circle, laughing or talking seriously, and I could feel their bond from across the street.
The only bond I had ever had like that was with my mother. My father didn’t know how to bond. He knew how to intimidate and kill, but not bond.
I had been starved for such connections…and then I met Cindy. With Cindy, I finally felt at ease. I finally felt at home. I never told her that, granted. You can’t tell someone something like that. It puts too much pressure on them. But I knew it in my heart. She was my rock. She was my family.
She and Sanchez. And maybe even Jack. And now Junior.
I’m weird, I thought, and drank again, deeply, from the old-school bottle of Michelob.
So why should I go and put my life on the line when I knew damn well it was a set-up? The answer was easy. At least, easy for me.
This was my chance to get answers. This was my chance to finally put this forever to rest. Something was going to go down tomorrow. One way or another, answers would be given. Lives would move on…or lives would end.
Tomorrow would be closure.
Blessed closure.
The bottle was empty now, but I still occasionally tilted it back and drank the hidden drops. Only one bottle tonight. No hangovers. I needed a clear head. Clear mind. Fast reflexes.
Tomorrow.
These past two months had been hard. And hard on my relationship with Cindy, too. And hard on the little things. Like relaxing. Like thinking about something other than my slain mother. My painting and reading had gone out the window. Yes, I paint. Not very good, granted. But it was a release for me. I saw the world the way I see the world. I painted with colors that suited me, that were alive to me.
For the past two months, color was gone from my life. I had been consumed by this, even in quiet moments with Cindy, with Sanchez, or with anyone.
This was unfinished business.
Tomorrow, it would be finished.
I thought about all of this and more as I crossed my ankles over the balcony railing and half-closed my eyes. Half-closed, because when I closed them all the way, there she was. Pale and dead and drained of blood, her hand reaching under her bed, to a box of my childhood things.
Why had she been reaching for the box?
I would never know, but I knew I had been her last thought in this world. She had thought of me while an animal stole her life and hurt her so bad.
And so I sat like that, with my eyes half-closed, waiting.
Waiting for tomorrow.