The Retirement Plan

Chapter 10

Steering with his knees, Chris dipped a coin into the baggy nestled between his thighs. His focus on the coin as he lifted it to his nose and sniffed. In the passenger seat, Ricky watched this gyroscopically narcissistic display with rising anger. He imagined what his old man would make of this. Fly into an apoplectic rage, that vein in his temple throbbing. Ricky's father, hands at 2 and 10, eyes forward, back straight type of guy.

Though, now that he thought of it, Chris' blatant disregard for road safety was not the issue. His flagrant use of coke was getting up Ricky's nose. Ricky, not enjoying the reminder of what he was missing out on. Being around people drinking didn't bother him. He'd had a love/hate relationship with alcohol anyway. But seeing that tempting chang made his nostrils quiver.

Chris glanced his way. "Sorry mate, I wasn't thinking. Fancy a toot?" Dangling that baggie between his thumb and forefinger like a forbidden fruit.

"I'm good," Ricky said, turning his face to the open window. Catching a brief scent of orange blossom as they blew past a citrus grove.

"You know what I miss about Ireland?"

Chris sniffed. "The constant rain?"

"Funny. The smell of fresh cut grass."

Chris sniffed again. "I don't smell nothing. My hooters blocked-up worse than Elvis' shitter."

Ricky stared at him with incredulity. "Course you can't smell it. We're in a semi-desert, ain't no grass need cutting. That's why I said I miss it."

"Alright mate, no need to get the hump about it."

"When you were young, you get that fresh green scent of a just-mowed lawn, you knew summer was on the way."

"What're ya worried about? This is Spain. It's Summer eight months of the year." Chris missing the point, as usual. Ricky was about to tell him as much when he sneezed. His allergies playing up. "Sure you don't want a toot? Sort those sinuses right out."

"Jesus tap-dancing christ, how's coke gonna sort my hay-fever out?"

Chris looking at him, now, with a smarmy half-grin. "What's with that daft American accent?"

"I don't got an accent," Ricky said. Defensive.

"You sound like a Paddy what's been raised on a diet of Pam Grier movies."

"I lived in Boston for a while. You spend enough time in a place, you pick up linguistic hitch-hikers."

"You've been here nigh on fourteen years and I don't hear you speaking like Enrique Iglesias, eh Ricardo?"

"If you focused on the road as much as you do on my verbal mannerisms, I wouldn't be getting palpitations over here."

"Sunshine, I've been driving since I could barely see over the wheel. I'm Lewis Hamilton on steroids."

Ricky sighed. "You've been playing with your ding-a-ling since you were ten. Don't make you Casanova."

Chris' incessant coke-jabbering died off when they passed under the stone-arch entrance to Quesada village. He muttered something about knowing a few faces 'round this neck of the woods before clamming up.

He didn't speak again until they passed La Marquesa golf course, asking where it was exactly they were going. Ricky, watching a middle-aged man in pleated shorts and a sweat-soaked collared shirt plastered to his gut tee up a shot, tossed out a street name.

They pulled up behind the black SUV parked outside the whitewashed, semi-detached house. Chris adjusted the bill of his red baseball cap. "You need me, or—"