Getting Up: Finding My Way Back in a Flash, 2011-2014

Vacations

Her leather bag crashed to the floor and spilled. Antoinette, brunette, leggy, and green-eyed, shook in her seat. She bent over, winced at the knife-like pinches around her ribs, and replaced everything. Every muscle, every tendon, and every inch to the roots of her hair hurt. Her aviator shades nearly covered the purplish-blue bruises ringing her eyes.
Jack, her semi-comatose, second-rate, golf pro boyfriend, pitched out of the men's room door and flopped onto the cloth-covered chair beside her. He jerked Antoinette from her elbow close to him, whispering more pain if she didn't stay cool. Tears sprung and leaked, but Antoinette scrunched her eyes tight to keep them from draining down her face. Jack propped his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him and surveyed the snow falling outside of the airport windows.
Mikey, collecting on a debt in Chicago, eased his 350 pounds away from the bar. His stuffed his hands into his suit pockets and measured his steps to the boarding gate. He slid one hand out and traced his fingertips along the concourse wall. Antoinette had his heart since they were kids.
Antoinette profiled her head a fraction of an instant away as he walked up, Jack winked at a stewardess who hurried for the exit, and Mikey eyeballed the outer edge of a bruise trying to hide.
He changed course and circuited the row behind them. His huge forearm covered in $1000 Armani shut down around Jack's trachea, and Mikey slammed him backwards over the chair into the thinly carpeted floor. Screams, telephones humming for security, passengers crowding inward, Mikey pounded Jack's head twenty times and inflicted ten bone-crushing jabs, before a crew of five guys from airport security wrestled him off of Jack and zipped up his wrists behind him.
Antoinette gaped and Mikey lightbulbed a smile. "Meet me at Gina's for pizza when we get home, ya know you're always my girl." Antoinette grinned. Jack, limp and lacerated, rode a stretcher in the opposite direction. Mikey laughed all the way to the back room of the airport.
O'Hare snowed in and ice on the runways; the prospect of a flight to New York was out of the question for the next few days.

***

Roselle Avenue

Eddie edged his cigarette out in the grass. The sun glazed hot and the air stuck to the underarms of his white T-shirt. His mother deposited him on a Greyhound for the summer so he could hang with his father. He hated the thought of leaving her, stickball, and hawking little pocket radios he had pinched from a box behind an old electronics store.
Dark-headed, half Puerto Rican, half Italian, swarthy and short like a cute little pirate, his 17-year-old body moved from foot to foot, nervous, and anxious. His Dad lived in a moderate-sized southern suburb with street names straight out of Jersey. They had butted heads earlier, and he thumped the screen door backwards and stalked off, his Dad bellowing threats at his back.
He wandered up and down the straight asphalt streets with cement-white curbs. Some yards were junked with cars, overgrown bushes, and trees, others were maintained with cheap, plastic lawn ornaments. He didn't want to stay but something happened a couple of weeks ago that changed him inside, bridging the gap between boy and man. Tomorrow he was going back to the streets he missed, but his heart would be stuck here forever.
His little internal compass pointed him toward the front of the neighborhood. When he got to Elmora, he started smiling. He almost jogged past Aldene. The grin his mother said would take him places found itself on Roselle Avenue. Six houses to the left at #26 stood a tiny, A-frame with three bushes choking the brick. A long rectangular window stretched from one end to the other. The carport housed a boat.
The girl with the stick body, green eyes covered up with owl-sized glasses, powder-white skin, and the craziest head of all natural, salt and pepper curls he had ever seen lived inside. He fished another cigarette out of a crumpled pack in his front jeans pocket. She was 17, and he wanted her to be his wife.
His head popped up at the sound of a motorcycle, and he saw a sport bike nudge around the edge of the corner. He scowled and pounded his Nikes in the opposite direction but not before he said to himself, "I'll be back next summer."
That was 26 years ago.
***

Rickey G's Money

He tore the ticket up. The air-conditioned Coach hummed outside and dripped water underneath the front bumper. Richie "Lunchbox" Costello never won anything. He just shredded his ride to Miami Beach. Something didn't add up. A bus ticket? Why not a plane? He turned it over, GPS'd it, and said "Cops." He shuffled to the men's room, unscrewed the cold tap, and washed his hands. He bumped through the stall door, slid the latch, and peeled the PVC-laminated money belt away from his sweaty belly. It held $100,000, individually wrapped like sandwiches. He mused that Atlantic City was closer and a better idea for his investment. Nobody outsmarted the Lunchbox.
The glass door to the bus station whisked open. Sal G strolled across the room. He wore denim jeans, his olive green shirt from the garage, and dingy stained sneakers. A silver cross hung behind his top button. Dark hair curled below the back of his neck. He shoved through the bathroom door. He cracked the bones in his hands and eyed the frayed loafers moving about inside the last toilet. His uncle Rickey sent him because of a withdrawal, and the crook's name didn't end in no G. His brother, Michael, concocted the whole sweepstakes thing to flush this jerk out.
Sal sneaked up and whispered between the hinge and the door. "Give it back fat man, ya like livin' don't ya?
Richie jumped and smacked into the tiles. He tried to fix the belt back fast underneath his shirt. A bill trickled to the floor before he could scoop it up.
Sal's eyes went hard, and he thought about his place in the world.
Richie got mad and swallowed...I'm the Lunchbox, I'll settle this punk down. He thumbed the latch backwards and let the door swing. Before he could reach, Sal pumped a silenced .38 bullet into Richie's epigastrium and blew his stomach apart. The Lunchbox fell backwards into a seated position and his head fell towards. Sal undid the belt, stuffed it and his gun under his work shirt, and walked back through the bus station crowd to his car.