Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty-Five The ride back to 4 ½ A Michigan Ave. passed in complete silence. Lucky was still in a fugue state, vaguely relaxed after having unloaded. He watched the streets slide by the taxi windows in a disinterested blur, while in the front seat, Stacy seemed none the worse for wear for having been kidnapped. She made idle chat with the taxi driver, who it turned out had a cousin that Stacy used to work with. Boutin was a blank canvas, rigid in his seat with eyes pointed straight ahead. Other than the taxi driver’s brief talk with Stacy, no one spoke as the steel and concrete of downtown gave way to patchy lawns and shady elm trees. The driver was paid, they made their way inside and Boutin tore up the stairs, claiming ‘firsties’ on the bathroom (I’m not joking, he actually said ‘firsties’). Lucky rolled his eyes and started up the stairs when he felt Stacy’s hand grab his wrist. He turned to find her waiting in his doorway, the cool breeze drawing leaves up the sidewalk behind her. “Hey,” she said. The words simply halted Lucky. It was everything else in her that asked the questions, that reassured him. Her eyes had been crinkled at the edges like that when she’d found him at the bar the night he’d been fired. Her head had been cocked slightly like that when she’d found him on the couch staring at static at 4 a.m. the first night he’d been jumped. “Hey,” he replied. His eyebrows creased at the middle, as they had when he’d held Stacy’s hand when the doctor told them their child had been lost. A lifetime passed between them. The leaves continued their course up the street. They said nothing more, they just went upstairs. Lucky made his way into his bedroom, passing Boutin in the hallway and giving him some paltry excuse about changing shirts. Stacy had just finished changing into her new medium beige blouse when Boutin emerged from the bathroom. “So we were pretty awesome on that rescue, huh?” he asked. He wasn’t sure about Stacy, but he felt oddly comfortable around her. “Next time, try and rope in your sidekick,” Stacy returned. She’d heard enough through the front door of Andy’s apartment to know that Lucky must have worked him over pretty good. “He’s had a rough week, and that guy…” “I don’t want to know.” She said it with a smile that didn’t match her eyes. Boutin called off the explanation with a pair of raised hands and flopped down on the sofa. “So I was wondering if you could do us a favor,” Boutin asked. “I knew there was a catch. No one ever saves you from kidnappers out of the goodness of their hearts anymore,” Stacy smiled, taking a place on

the end chair opposite. She’d had reservations about the man who’d come to her rescue along with Lucky. She knew the world her ex had fallen into, and figured anyone hanging out with him these days was trouble. But Boutin was completely different from the thuggish character Stacy had been expecting. He almost seemed like he was only visiting the criminal underworld on his way to a movie. Boutin leaned in close, fixing Stacy with the smile generally reserved for people trying to sell you on a timeshare. “The car under that pile of parking tickets out front belong to you?”. * The wide expanse of land between Columbus and Cleveland, with the setting sun drawing wide swaths of gold across the fields, seems to stretch forever. Lucky spent the better part of it staring out the window, trying to ignore the stabbing pains in his back as he wedged his body into the back seat of Stacy’s Geo Prizm. Calling Lucky’s current confinement a back seat may be taking the term too liberally, come to think of it. It was in the back, it was vaguely seat shaped, but at no point in the design phase had it been meant for the seating of actual human-sized people. Its main purpose seemed to be a storage bin for old cans of Diet Coke and magazines from three years ago, a feature Stacy had readily taken advantage of. What made it worse, the more Lucky heard Boutin talk, the more of an idiot he felt for having been afraid of the guy. Boutin had sold Stacy on this line of bull that he was going to start his own one-man show once theatre space opened up downtown. He’d been laying it on her for about an hour. Briefly, Lucky entertained the possibility that the one-man show was the actual truth, and the whole history as a Green Beret might be the line of bull. The more time he spent with Boutin, the more reality seemed like a distant exit on the turnpike “Don’t feel bad for me,” Boutin play acted, “feel bad for the poor zombie who loses his lips. Can you imagine walking around acting fearsome and moaning out ‘drains, draaains’?” This elicited a giggle from Stacy, which Lucky thought would only encourage the hack to keep going. Boutin had developed a severe case of Robin Williams syndrome, and Lucky decided this had to be defused and now. “So Stacy, did Boutin tell you he’s a drag queen?” He interrupted, sounding every bit the jealous high schooler. “No, how interesting!” Stacy chuckled. “We’ll have to trade beauty secrets.” “Yes, it’s a sad, sordid little world your ex has fallen into,” Boutin cracked, looking back at Lucky with a wink. “Well, to be honest wih you, I’d known for a while. And while the

kidnapping didn’t really surprise me, you do,” Stacy grinned, sending the backhanded compliment Boutin’s way. Gee. Zus. Christ. Lucky didn’t like anything about this situation. He slunk back into the seat, raising up a rattle of aluminum cans, and thought about what to do. The gun he’d snuck out of his bedroom closet was digging into the small of his back, reminding him of the grim reality of the situation, despite the bizarre charade going on in the front seat. He was about to put his life in the hands of this nut job as they marched into the private home of a mafia don. Just go into the house, take the money, and be done. The parallels between tonight and his first attempt at stealing from thieves were not lost on Lucky Stevens. Then, in a dull flash of LED blue from Stacy’s purse came inspiration. It stung Lucky pretty deep, but he realized what had to be done if he was going to have a chance in hell of surviving the night. He leaned forward, casually digging down into the purse for her cell phone and hoping neither of the two in the front seat noticed. Fortunately, Boutin was showing off his finest recycled airline food jokes and Stacy was enthralled. “Hey, can we pull over at the next stop? I have to pee,” Lucky said, casually. Stacy shot him an annoyed look in the rearview. “Didn’t you go before we left?” she asked. “Yeah, but someone made me wait in a hotel bar this morning and drink seven cups of coffee,” Lucky lied. “Hey, no one twisted your arm. You could have switched to bourbon,” Boutin joked. It was one of those jokes that only works if you like the person telling it. Lucky just rolled his eyes. Laughing (despite her ex-husband’s silence), Stacy signaled and pulled off at the approaching off-ramp. As they crunched to a halt in front of a gleaming BP station, Lucky gingerly maneuvered out of the back seat. With Boutin hunched forward, Lucky pushed the seat up and carefully wriggled through the tiny doorway, keeping the small of his back out of sight. He made it through with a wrenching of his hip and quickly scuttled off to the bathroom. Once inside, he retrieved Stacy’s cell phone from his pocket and held back a wave of guilt as he dialed the number. It all came down to this one phone call. This plan either worked, or everything would fall apart. Either way, it felt good to know it ended tonight. All the shit that had collected in the corners of his life, from that fateful day when he took Dale Tomlinson’s drug money to now, would get brushed away. Or, you know, he would be brutally murdered. It all hinged on ten numbers and the send button. Two rings. A light click. A breath. “Who is this?” said the voice on the

other end. Lucky explained himself quickly. And what do you know, he actually did have to pee.