Blind Fold Page 8

  As the years passed and the relationship came to an end, she never denied Kenji time with his son. He too often told her she talked too much and said nothing, but coming from Kenji, he said too much, often words she didn’t want to hear. Filling the empty spaces with unwanted chatter was a defense mechanism to stop the man for asking for sex, or to stop the man from taking it. She didn’t know what it felt like to be loved or cherished, she only knew one method of living, and that was survival. Perhaps, that is what One Way saw in her and needed to break her of the bad habit of just wanting to survive, but to have more.

  Jasir noticed the tears in his mother’s eyes, something he’d never seen before. She didn’t even cry when the police arrived that fateful morning to cart his father off to jail. He was happy the man was gone, and he cried. He knew Nichelle Jones thought her son was crying because his father was being taken away, when in reality, he was crying because his father was finally gone and could no longer hurt her. Jasir Watanabe swore on that day, he’d never allow another man to hurt his mother. He made it clear to One Way.

  He stood his ground and stated his peace.

  One Way respected him for doing so, but he too, noticed the man had been off when he returned from the overnight trip. He too concurred with his mother that the job should have been turned down, but he didn’t. He took it anyway.

  “I wish he hadn’t taken it either,” Cool Guy said.

  ****

  In the middle of night, One Way wished he’d listened to the whispering wind of the woman who told him to turn down the job. Everything went to shit in tornado and now he had the stink of death all over him. All that was required of him was to get into the hotel, find the mark and put a bullet dead center of his head.

  The room had been vacated and Cecil Presley was the last to leave. The briefcase, loaded with money in small bills sat beside him. He sold what he believed to be the nuclear codes to Las Cruces to a group of Russian investors. What he’d sold them were the Counter-Strike Dust 2 Map Codes to Fortnite. When his body was found, it would be believed the Russians had done so in retaliation for the fake codes.

  One bullet and the man was down. The brief case was in his hand he was on his way going out the same way he’d come in. What happened next left him no choice. A woman, in her early twenties entered a side door for staff spotting One Way. She opened her mouth to scream and instinct had him raise the weapon and fire.

  “Frick. Fruck, frack!” He mumbled, securing the case and leaving both bodies to be discovered. She was a casualty. “You shouldn’t have opened the case. If you hadn’t opened the case you would have been out of there.”

  He moved quietly down the back hall, easing out a side door. His face remained covered, and the woman wouldn’t have been able to identify him, but in his profession, you left nothing to chance. Her death hung around his neck like an albatross as he got clear of the hotel and the sound of sirens wailed in the distance. Next, he had to do what he didn’t want to do. He called the Archangel.

  “State your need,” the voice said.

  “There was a casualty,” he stated.

  “And the target?”

  “He’s down. So is she.”

  “She?”

  “Yes. I was ten seconds off my time,” he explained.

  “Unacceptable. You’re benched,” the Archangel said. “Get your house in order Uriel. Your mind is scattered and you need to make some decisions.”

  “You’re benching me...seriously...you’re benching me?”

  “I am.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll be in touch or you call me when you’re ready to make some decisions on what happens next,” the Archangel said.

  “Whatever, just make sure I get paid.”

  “You have the briefcase?”

  “Yes, and I’m keeping that shit too!”

  “Take out the cash, look for the trackers. They are imbedded in the stacks.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  The call ended. In the cab of his truck, surrounded by nothing but silence, in the faint cry of the night, he heard the ticking. One Way look at the case.

  “Oh shit!” He scrambled out of the truck, opening the case and grabbing four thick stacks. He tossed the case running to clear it. In one leap he was inside of the Tundra driving away when the case exploded. A dark alley came up on the right and he made a quick turn. Again, he scrambled out of the cab of the truck, flipping through the bills, locating a small device in the first stack, a blinking device in the second and the last two were nothing more than cut up newsprint.

  “You can’t even trust criminals no more. Not one ounce of decency or honesty,” he griped, pulling the twenties off the stacks of paper and leaving with two actual stacks of money, and a hundred dollars in twenties from the two paper stacks. He also left the trackers behind the dumpster.

  There was no need to get a hotel tonight. In less than three hours, One Way could be home. The weight of the day, the prior two days and being benched sat heavily on his chest. By the time he pulled into the garage, his well was dry. He’d never heard of a technician being benched before and maybe, Bleu Neary had called the Archangel. “He told me to get my house in order,” One Way said, as he parked the truck and lowered the garage doors.

  Yesterday, before going to work, he’d stopped at an arts and crafts store and picked up soap making supplies. He also stopped at a feed and seed to pick up starters for herbs and seasonings. He thought that possibly if the woman had an herb garden to fuss over, she wouldn’t make a point of fussing over him. If he were to be honest, this was the day he could use a bit of fussing.

  He entered the home which had given him a place to recharge, completely on empty and feeling lower that the bellies of the roaches on the New York City subway. Cool Guy greeted him at the door and without asking, provided a warm embrace. He pressed the side of his temple to One Way’s face, forcing affection from the man.

  “I’m glad you’ve made it home safely,” Cool Guy said.

  The woman, who had been waiting on the couch, held out her arms to him. The boy led him over, almost pushing him down on the sofa. One Way leaned into the softness of the embrace; her chest providing a pillow for his aching back.

  “Jasir, take off his boots,” she told her son.

  Cool Guy did as he was told, removing the boots and One Way didn’t argue. Her arms, warm, inviting, without judgment encircled him and the weight of his world didn’t feel as heavy. The load was buckling him, but in this instance, it didn’t feel as cumbersome to carry. His feet, now free of the boots, rested in the boy’s lap as he read a book. The woman said nothing, but merely held him.

  An hour passed before she addressed the tree which had come in the door, swayed by the wind.

  “If you start singing Wind Beneath My Wings, I will hurt you,” One Way said, with a soft chuckle.

  “I wasn’t,” she replied, patting him on the chest. “I am Nichelle. My son is Jasir.”

  To her surprise he responded, “I am Uriel.”

  “Uriel, how bad is it?”

  “It’s bad.”

  Another twenty minutes passed before she said another word to him. As he had done with Jasir before leaving, she now did to him. She planted a soft kiss on his temple. She whispered in his ear, “we can’t help, if we don’t know. Let us help you. Tell us what is wrong.”

  “I’ve been benched,” he said as if they knew what that meant. “I made a mistake, which cost a life and my boss is putting me on the bench for a while.”

  “That may not be a bad thing,” Nichelle told him, “after you returned on Monday, you were out of sorts. Tell me about your visit on Sunday.”

  He remained quiet, not wanting to let her in on his private hell. The pain of it all was wearing him down and he required a strength he no longer had. Tears stung at his eyes and he tried to wipe them away but he couldn’t.

  “She’s dying.”

  “What can I do to help you?”

&
nbsp; “Nothing really. She’s refusing anymore chemo, and has decided she’s going out on her own terms,” he said. “I guess benching me will give me a chance to be the son she needs.”

  “Are you prepared to care for your mother in the way she’s going to need in the next few months?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yes, let me help you. Maybe this is why I’m here, why we are here,” Nichelle told him. “My Aunt Lilly had cancer and I took care of her for the past two years. When she transitioned, I no longer wanted to be in that house, or even in the same state. I started driving with no plan, no money, no real course of action and ended up here with you. Let me help you care for her.”

  “No!” One Way said sitting up, “it’s bad enough that you burst in here and started washing my drawers, I don’t need you cleaning my mother and washing her underwear too.”

  “You can’t do it!”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “And take away the remaining dignity she has left, but taking her to the bathroom, giving her showers, or helping her out of the tub? Come on Man! Think. You’re always telling me to think, now you need to think as well,” she told him.

  “She is not going to go for it,” he said, slumping into his own melancholy.

  Nichelle moved her leg which had gone to sleep forty minutes prior. She massaged it as she thought quietly to herself. Then she asked the question.

  “What is the one thing she’s always asking you for?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, what is the one thing your mother is always hounding you about before she dies? I know, poor choice of words, but you know what I mean,” Nichelle told him.

  “A grandchild,” he said, looking over at Cool Guy. “I’m not going to lie to my mother. If I told that lady that Cool Guy was her grandchild, one she’d beat my ass for keeping him from her for 13 years. Next, she’d refused to die just to spite me and stay on this plane so she can bake him cookies and shit.”

  “Your Mom bakes cookies? I’ll be the best grandson in the world,” Jasir told him.

  “I just bet you would.”

  “Hey, family isn’t always tied together by blood. Family is comprised of those who surround you and care for you,” she told him. “Tomorrow, let’s go see her and make some decisions on what to do next.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Uriel, you said you were waiting for Him to order your steps and show you what’s next for not only you but for us as well,” she said. “You’ve been benched. She’s ill. I’m here and now she has a grandchild by proxy. The rest, we’ll figure out.”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly, “she’s going to want to stay in her own house. I need to be here.”

  “Then bring her here,” Nichelle said, “I can put her in the room I’m in.”

  “And where will you sleep?” He asked as Cool Guy leaned forward and looked at her as well.

  “On the couch, or we get a fold out bed,” she said looking at him with a twinkle in her eye. “See, you thought I was going to say that I would sleep with you.”

  “At this point, Nichelle, if you had offered, I highly doubt that I would have said no,” he told her, getting to his feet. “I’m in the mood for a burger. Let’s go get some burgers and some crinkle fries.”

  Chapter Eight - Bunch

  The longer he drove, the less inclined he was to take Nichelle and Jasir to meet his mother. They had no idea what was in store. A bunch in his britches, which felt more permanent than the dread of pulling up with a woman and child, was scarier than having to climb into a window at night and take out a man three times his size with an object no larger than a pellet gun. Common sense, being an uncommon factor in the decision-making process of most people, himself included in his miscalculation, had left him the moment he turned the Four Runner towards Knoxville. In less than thirty minutes he was going to walk through the door with a woman and a child that closely resembled himself, without any forewarning to his mother.

  Calling ahead to warn her, or to tell Yasmine Tamagotchi that he was bringing guests to her home, was a tricky situation. The time it would take to answer the litany of questions, was equal, if not greater than the time it would take to drive home. Home. He didn’t consider the house to be his home anymore, although he’d spent much of his life in the four-bedroom modern ranch style house.

  Nichelle noticed how tightly he gripped the steering wheel the longer he drove. She asked, “did you tell her we were coming?”

  “No, it’s better this way,” he said, wishing his words were true.

  “You still have time to call before we roll up on her. If it were me, I wouldn’t want Jasir to bring anyone home without giving me an opportunity to tidy up the house first,” she said hoping to give him something else to think about as he drove.

  “My mother’s home is never dirty,” he said. “Even in her current state, she finds a reason to get up each morning to piddle around the house, or her herb garden, or to make crochet atrocities.”

  Nichelle chuckled. “Okay, how many ugly Christmas sweaters has she made you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, exiting I-40 to James White Parkway, heading to the sleepy hamlet of Island Home. They drove past skate parks, parks with swings, parks with pools and parks with families. The sidewalks almost glistened in the sunlight as home after home with perfectly manicured lawns sat dress right dress as if they were preparing for military inspection. Nichelle sighed at the homes, well into the low six figure range, which more than likely, were filled with people who had careers with fancy job titles. Suddenly, she felt like the ugly step sister being allowed to go to the ball, but had to stand in the back because her dress was from three seasons prior. The car, slowing, pulled into a driveway. This was his mother’s house.

  The home, a pretty, sunny yellow, with a ruby red front door, large windows which seemed the touch the foundation of the home while welcoming any lost soul for a place of respite. One Way pulled the Four Runner towards the garage doors, catching the eye of a neighbor who waved asking for the window to be rolled down. He did so begrudgingly.

  The woman asked, moving her neck from side to side, trying to peer inside the vehicle. “Hey Uri, good to see ya. How’s the old girl doing?”

  “She’s well, thank you for asking,” he said, rolling the window back up and pressing the button for the garage to open. “She’s her fucking neighbor and live right beside her, why hadn’t she brought her nosey ass over to see for herself if she cared that flipping much!”

  Nichelle, shocked by his use of several curse words in a row, asked, “Whoa, are you planning to kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “That woman is so nosey, and all she wanted to see was who was in this vehicle. Busy-body old hag. I should go pay her a visit in the middle of the night and scare some Jesus into her,” he said, looking over at Nichelle’s shocked face. Cool Guy thought it was hilarious, but the woman didn’t.

  “You did say that out loud,” Nichelle cautioned.

  “Yeah, and I meant it out loud too,” he grumbled, rolling in softly, and closing the garage door behind him.

  “Last chance to issue any warnings or tell us things we should and shouldn’t do,” Nichelle stated.

  “Nope, there is no way to prepare you to meet Yasmine Tamagotchi. It is an experience, but I think you’ll be able to hold your own,” he said, looking in the back seat at Cool Guy. “You, play it by ear.”

  “Yessir,” Cool Guy chanted climbing out while looking at the items in the garage. It held a high-end mountain bike, a ten speed, two pairs of roller blades, a beach cruiser, tennis rackets, soccer balls, foot balls and a basketball. “Whoa! So much cool stuff in here. Is all of this yours?”

  “Most of it; some belongs to her,” One Way said.

  “You must have played a lot of sports,” Cool Guy said.

  “I played every sport,” he told him. The rest, he would leave for his mother to blurt out at improper moments. He opened the
back door of the house to a most horrific sound. The noise crawled down the wooden hallway, scraping the baseboards with sharp, ragged claws, mimicking the outcry of a moose that had gotten his knuckle caught in a door. “Mom! Mom!”

  He called out as he ran through the mud room into the master bedroom to find his mother on the floor of her bathroom. Her face was halfway in the toilet as she attempted to hurl the inside of her stomach lining into the porcelain bowl. She sat in a puddle and he didn’t know where to help first. Nichelle also arrived.

  “Uri, check the kitchen for ginger ale and crackers,” she told him, giving the man something to do. Her eyes went to his mother who sat on the floor, soaked from the vomiting making her bladder give way. “Hello. I’m Nichelle. I’m going to start the shower and help you get to your feet.”

  Watery eyes which appeared not to focus on anything in particular looked at her, nodding consent. Nichelle left the water closet to start the shower. She asked Yasmine if she preferred the water hot or tepid.

  “Warm. Too hot hurts my skin. My skin feels so thin,” she said weakly.

  “Okay. I’m going to put you in the shower in the gown. When you’re ready, remove it, and I will take everything and put it in the wash,” she told her. “On three, I’m going to help you to your feet and we’re going to go step by step to the shower. Ready?”

  “Ready as I can be,” Yasmine said, pushing herself up from the commode. It didn’t take long to get her into the shower.

  Under the sink, Nichelle located a pair of cleaning gloves that she used to bag up the rug, take the nightgown from the shower, and place the items in the washer. While Yasmine showered, she ran a damp mop over the floor with a bleach solution, scrubbed down the toilet and turned down the bed.

  “Are you almost done in there?”

  “I am,” Yasmine answered softly.