Vodka Warrior Read online

  By the time the flick ended—a big bloody mess with tattooed cowboys, bleach-blonde dimwits, and way too much automatic weapon fire—I was tired of men and their penchant for violence and whores. But it was only ten thirty, and I didn’t want to go home. So I went to a sleaze bar on the west side of town.

  Dusky Beach is cleanly divided into the upper crusties in the east part of town nearest the lily-white beaches and the burnt crusts over on the west side. That was where the town hid all the homeless shelters, soup kitchens, meth labs and crack houses. No gal in her right mind dropped over to the scummy side of town after dark. Then again, I had my reasons.

  For one, I wasn’t dressed or financed well enough for an east Dusky taproom with their fifteen dollar apple martinis and fancy-ass patrons decked out in Dolce & Gabbana and Hugo Boss. For another, I didn’t need any DUI-style run-ins with Dusky’s finest. So I scooted over to the bad-ass joint closest to Golden Date Palms. That way, I could slip right on home after I slugged down a glass or two.

  The Kettle of Fish was quiet, dark, and sad, just the way I liked my bars. I didn’t want company, I didn’t want jukebox music, and I sure didn’t want happy hour drunks laughing loud in my ear. The cheap lamps overhead cast a soft yellow glaze over the ripped up booths and scarred wood tables. Most were empty. A couple of fat boozers and a frail lady in a trench coat dozed over their shot glasses.

  The bartender had his broad back to me. He was leaning against the bar, reading a book. Nice bod. Nothing like Vario’s, but I wouldn’t turn Mr. Barman down. Of course, I was in no position to be picky about such things. Still, I wasn’t fielding any offers.

  I plopped onto a wobbly stool at the long clean bar and cleared my throat. “Can I bother y’all for a glass of your best red wine?” I put on a pleasant face. Not sure why I bothered.

  The bartender tucked his book beneath the bar and flashed me a toothy grin. Tall, muscled, conventionally handsome, he looked like he’d been around the block a few times but survived the bumps and dumps along the way. He had a sexy darkness about him, making him the kind of guy silly young girls typically swooned over. Even my old heart fluttered a little bit, but that was just wishful thinking. A hunk like that would never go for a woman like me. My fake happy face slid off, replaced by my usual frown. It was easier not to smile, which made my lips feel stretched and uncomfortable.

  “Best wine, I don’t know about,” he said. “But we’ve got a semi-decent California Cab, if that’ll work for you.” Before I could nod in assent, he added, “Unless you’d like a whiskey sour? I’m famous for my whiskey sours.”

  I shook my head. “No thanks. I’m not much for the hard stuff. Only when I really want to pickle my brain. Can’t do that right yet. I still got to drive home.”

  He turned away and fetched me my five dollar glass of vino. When he set it on a cork coaster before me, I said, “What were you reading?”

  “Book on climate change. It’s depressing me. I may have to donate it to the dick.”

  Huh? “The dick?”

  “The D.I.C. Homeless shelter up the street. My wife used to work there, she calls it the dick.”

  His face lit up like that was the cutest thing he’d ever heard in his life. For some reason, his gushy happiness torpedoed my mood. Which was low-down low anyway.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be on tonight. Just doing a favor for a friend. Tomorrow’s our anniversary so I need to get a move on, plan something special for my wife.”

  I sipped the wine. Cherry cough syrup without the sugar. It pained me to hear what this besotted lovebird had to say, but to be polite I asked, “Wedding anniversary?”

  “Two years. It’s fantastic. You married?” he asked.

  “Divorced. Twice.” I gulped the wine. This conversation needed to be put out of its misery.

  “Third time’s the charm,” he said, his grin cute as hell. “We almost didn’t make it, though. Had a rough start. Sometimes you think you can’t possibly get along with a person—”

  I held up one hand. I didn’t want to hear it. In fact, I really might’ve had to slice my wrists with a broken beer bottle if I had to listen to any more of his sappy tributes to shelter girl. He got the message and walked down to the other end of the bar.

  I drank my wine pretty fast after that. I wasn’t in the mood for him to come back. I didn’t want to look at his pretty, unavailable face, and I sure didn’t want to hear about his beloved with the shit job. But I couldn’t help wondering what it must be like to have a gorgeous man call you his own. It had been so long for me, I didn’t even want to think about it.

  When I finished the nothing special wine, I pulled a ten out of my wallet and left the pussy-whipped bartender a nice fat tip. Now, he could buy his love a small bouquet of local flora, earn himself a five minute blowjob.

  Unfortunately, I was still terrifyingly sober. And I had a really bad case of the fuck-its. So I drove straight to the late-night liquor store to stock up before I went home.

  The blare of canned music greeted me as I rolled though the unguarded guard gate for Golden Date Palms. Electronic music, the kind that came mixed with blasting caps, pulsed from cheesy stereo speakers, the ones that make drums sound like tin pots. The noise emanated from my street, my corner of the street. Three cars were parked in the swale in front of my house. A heavily tinted silver Audi A5 coupe blocked the entrance to my driveway, so I had to pull onto my lawn to get around it to my parking spot. What the fuck?

  My hands were shaking when I climbed out of my beat-up hatchback. Stupid bitches, couldn’t they at least park in the right driveway? Their wild laughter poked through the front hedge and rankled me as I lugged my plastic bag of on-sale wine to the front door.

  Out back, Oscar’s yard glowed with what looked like candlelight. Somebody was splashing around like a seal on acid while Vario sang in a deep baritone about the moon in the sky. I could barely fit my key in the lock, my nerves were so spazzed out. High-pitched squeals of floozy laughter made me want to put my hands over my ears and run screaming into the house.

  Inside was not much better. These little Florida houses were all jerry-built back in the 1960s with walls made of stucco. Airy, porous stucco. And all these houses got stacked up by developers, squeezed in close together with little yard in between. My bedroom was on the side closest to Oscar’s house, so I sought refuge in the kitchen. Still, I had to listen to each and every white-boy wasted song and, beneath it, or maybe over it, the sound of sexual merriment.

  Let me just share here this sad fact. At the time, I hadn’t been laid in a good long while. Listening to the orgy next door did something crusty mean to my already damp blue mood.

  Sitting in the dark kitchen with only the glow of the digital clock on the stove for company, I tucked into the nine dollar wine, inhaling the stuff from an iced tea glass. Sucked it right on down, then drank three more like it. Used to be I’d call myself a regular drinker but not a fast drinker. All that alcohol in less than an hour was a new record for me, one I would be breaking over and over again in the days to come.

  Once I was sufficiently sloshed, I went hunting for the binoculars I’d bought for Jamie back when my daughter was into birding. Another one of my kid’s many short-lived phases. The bird watching thing only lasted until she discovered boys with cars. I found the like-new binocs in her closet, sitting alongside dusty copies of field guides to the birds of Florida and North America. I planned to go nature watching myself, studying the mating habits of hot tub seals.

  The best place to spy was out on my patio, but that spot was out of the question. What if Vario saw me skulking around and insisted I join them? I was not gonna take that chance. Humiliation has never been my strong suit, although that might seem hard to believe once you hear the rest of my story.

  I crept into my bedroom and knelt on the Berber carpet in front of the window overlooking Oscar’s back yard. When I peeked out through the baby blue linen curtains, I could see the tub under a sprinkle of Christmas ligh
ts. A sparkling string someone had hooked up to the roof overhang just above the deck. On the saggy wood, dozens of fat candles flickered in the mild breeze.

  Still, it was damn dark. What I needed was a pair of night-vision goggles, but if I squinted real hard I could see flashes of bare skin, pink and brown body parts, and the reflected flash of beer bottles. Solo cups in red and blue and green and yellow. Steam rising into the warm night air.

  That tub had to be set on way-high to be hotter than the seventy-five degree air temp outside. Maybe the near-boil could kill off any germs the partiers were busy sharing. Because, from what I could see, it sure seemed like Vario and his three guests were sharing everything quite freely. I pressed the binocs so hard against my face my cheekbones hurt. Unfortunately, the angle wasn’t quite right so I couldn’t tell who was doing what to whom. I was squinting so fierce my forehead started to cramp up.

  I couldn’t tell you exactly why I decided to go out in my back yard to get a better look. The urge to know what was happening almost on my own property felt as powerful as the drive to drink up. That was me back then, all met urges. But hey, that was how I rolled. I went with the flow.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said out loud when I stopped off in the kitchen to unscrew the metal top off another bottle of piss-poor wine. “Might’s well watch and learn, Theresa,” I told myself while I poured yet another glass of the world’s worst vintage. “Watch and fucking learn.”

  As I snuck out onto my patio, the back door slammed behind me. I froze and held my breath. They could’ve looked right over and seen me standing there. But they were too busy with their merriment-making. The techno-punk music blared on, and nobody yelled over to me from the hot tub party.

  After a tense, drawn out minute, I knew I’d gone unnoticed. I placed my empty wine glass on a plastic table and dropped down to the cement floor. Then I hung the binoculars around my neck and crawled on all fours to a corner of the patio. Aligned with Oscar’s deck now, I had a nice view of the big gray tub, but I couldn’t see inside it. I needed to be above the partiers for that. Like up in a tree.

  Up in a tree.

  At the time, it seemed like such a brilliant idea. Maybe the bad wine had something to do with my decision, I’m not sure. But I was instantly psyched. I crawled off the patio and across the lawn to my poinciana tree. Little pebbles stuck to my palms and a bunch of burrs attached themselves to my pants, poking through to stab at my skin. Whenever I moved too quickly, the binocs swung up and hit me in the face. Ow.

  When I was a kid growing up in woodsy north Florida, I spent a lot of time sitting in the branches of catalpa trees and loblolly pines. My muscular memory must’ve kicked in because I easily hoisted myself onto the lowest branch of the twenty-foot tree. I climbed until I was maybe six feet off the ground, which was just high enough. My hands were scraped raw, but I had a perfect bird’s eye view.

  Clinging to the bumpy trunk, I managed to take a good long look through the glasses. Three over-endowed women with bottle-blonde hair and Botoxed faces surrounded my new neighbor. He had a brazen ate-the-canary smile on his face. I don’t want to go into all the ugly details here, but did you know silicone breasts can look a lot like pink flotillas? I didn’t know that either. Watch and learn.

  I was watching and learning and, I will admit, having a bit of vicarious fun when Vario suddenly stood up, sloughing water and eliciting joyful shrieks from his guests. He yodeled like a wild man and twerked while turning himself around in a slow circle, his arms stretched out as if to hug everything around him. In my spyglassed eyes, the man was larger than life. Everything was larger. If you know what I mean.

  My head snapped back, and without meaning to, I let go of the tree. That’s when I popped right out of my perch and dropped like a sack of dog shit. I landed face down in the Bermuda grass. The binoculars smashed after me, bouncing off the back of my head. Ouch.

  They must’ve heard the crash, because one of the girls screamed. Vario yelled, “The hell’s going on over there?”

  I hopped up as quickly as I could and, crouching low, scuttled toward my back door. My skull hurt where the glasses had whopped me, but otherwise I was fine. Luckily, no broken bones. How would I have explained that to my neighbors?

  As I reached the patio and crawled across the cement toward the house, Vario spoke loudly to his guests. He wanted me to overhear, I was absolutely sure of it. “Just another nosy bitch neighbor,” he said. “Everywhere I go, it’s the same fucken story. They all belong to the secret society of ball-busters.”

  Yep, the guy hated me.

  Chapter Three

  From Bad to Worse

  Pride and all the rest a bit beat up, I huddled in my bedroom and licked my wounds. I was dinged up here and there, and my nose had a nasty bruise across the bridge. There was a sore-as-hell egg on the back of my head, too. I mounded up pillows on my unmade bed—no domestic goddess here—and tried to sleep. Eventually, I dozed off. In my dreams, Vario twerked and I fell on my face, over and over in a mean old loop.

  On Saturday morning, I had a bad dog hangover that required some serious detoxing. So I was out front letting the sun grill me while I weeded the rock garden when Vario sauntered outside and headed for his car.

  I ducked as low as I could without lying flat on the sparse lawn.

  He yanked opened the driver’s side door with a nasty squeal. He needed to oil those hinges, man. I had my back to him, hoping he wouldn’t see me behind the sea grapes, but my luck had run out. It had run out the day before when Vario Fumesti first appeared in the credits, and suddenly, the movie of my life went from a dull lousy to calamitous and embarrassing. I was headed for a tearjerker chapter in my sorry-ass life story, although I still didn’t know it.

  “Hey, Theresa.”

  I jumped a little and turned his way at the same time.

  “Whoa,” he said. “What happened to your nose? Fall outta a tree or somethin’?” He grinned. His amusement pissed me off, and I could feel my temperature drop, then begin to rise. “Maybe you oughta get your own tub, have your own parties. Ever think a that?” He raised his thick black brows, mocking me. “Or maybe you just need a good fucking.”

  My temperature spiked, and the hot blush scrambled up my neck to set my face on fire. My dignity had been dragged out, beaten to a pulp, and left for dead. I tried to revive it.

  “On weekday afternoons and weekends,” I informed him in a prissy voice I barely recognized, “I tutor schoolchildren. Right here, in my home.” I pointed toward my house and nodded solemnly. “So please refrain from entertaining during the day. If you don’t, I might have to ask for assistance in…well, in maintaining decorum.”

  Don’t ask me where the fancy-ass language came from. The words just rose up my throat like bile. But they sure swiped the shit-eater’s smile off his face. And that provided me with a deep, sensuous pleasure.

  He must’ve not liked my attitude because his pretty face sombered right up. “I’m paying the rent, it’s my fucken place. I do what I want in my own house. And yard.” His eyes were glinty, like there were tiny knives inside flashing out the sunshine, tossing it my way. Looking in his eyes almost hurt. “You better watch yourself, sweetheart. You’re just askin’ for it,” he growled in that sexy mean voice of his.

  Maybe I was. Asking for it. Maybe I figured he wasn’t going to give me what I wanted or needed. Maybe I knew early on that Vario Fumesti was going to torpedo my life. But now it’s too hard to recall what I was thinking when I said, “I have a student coming today at three. I hope there’ll be no reason for me to call the Golden Date Palms management company and complain about lewd and lascivious behavior.”

  He reached in his pocket, pulled out a pair of Ray-Bans, and whipped them into place on his scowl of a face. “Gee, that’s too bad, lady. I got a goddam house-load of strippers comin’ over at two.”

  Then he jumped in his car and peeled out of the driveway, spattering chunks of gravel into my yard.

  By no
on, it was no use pretending. I knew I needed a cold one. Bad. Just one beer to shave the edge off, to dull the pounding in my skull and soothe the jitterbug in my nerves. I sat out on the patio in a low-slung beach chair and enjoyed a shred of a breeze in the shade of the majestic poinciana. But when I pictured myself climbing up the tree to spy on Vario, my hands shook so hard I spilled beer down the front of my T-shirt. I had to set the frosted mug down on the table next to my chair.

  Two o’clock came and went without any parties starting up next door. Which was a huge relief. But when my student arrived, I’d already had more than one. And I guess it showed.

  Let me just say here that before I moved to South Florida I lived up in the panhandle and taught sixth grade math. I’m not as dumb as I might seem, in other words. See, I’m pretty good with numbers, have been all my life. But there was this problem up in Pensacola with the vice principal and he was married at the time, so that’s when I transferred down here to the Oxard County school system.

  A government job, a union job, is usually the way to go when you’re a single parent. Plus, you basically have to strangle a student in front of the rest of the class in order to get shit-canned. But the recession and the Republican governor took an axe to that money tree. And my dismal record didn’t win me any favors. Neither did the flask of vodka I carried around back then.

  I was lonely and feeling sorry for myself, so yeah, I nipped a little. Odorless, colorless, you can take it anywhere, vodka is the secret weapon of sneaky drinkers. But someone figured out why I got slurry every day by three o’clock, so my contract was not renewed. I ended up having to rely on unemployment and a cadre of private students to keep me in cold brewskies and discount wine. For years, I left the hard stuff on the liquor store shelf.

  Dooley Nudstein came by twice a week for tutoring, had done so for more than four years. The poor kid was rock stupid, and his head for math was like a whiffle ball, but I liked the little doofus. When he rang the bell at three, I hid my beer mug in a cupboard over the sink and jogged down the hall to answer the door. We were working on long division, so I had a stack of worksheets on the coffee table in the living room. It was scary to think how soon Dooley needed to start studying for the SATs. We were so far from being ready we’d need a frigging time machine to get us back to that future.