One and Only

Chapter 9 - #AuntFlow

However, he did have a few visitors throughout the week who were able to shed some light on his story. He had worked, for a time, in computers, but after a series of bad breakups, one of which had lost him custody of his son, he had started drinking pretty heavily and gambling regularly. His luck turned from bad to worse and he lost his job as a developer and then had a period of homelessness where he lived in his car. During this time, he had fallen in with a booky out of Vegas named Vince who occasionally allowed him to pay off his debts in the form of some computer work, mostly setting up a high end security program on the Vince's home computer.

It was during one of these trips down to Vegas to work for Vince, that he had had a miraculously profitable night at his favorite casino playing blackjack, when he had run afoul of a local gangster type who felt that John had somehow disrespected him or his girl or something. A warning had been given to John to stay away from his favorite "off Strip" dive casino, but he had not heeded it. Either to send a message or to simply punish him for his insolence, the gangster's goons had abducted him in Vegas, drove him all the way back to Salt Lake and then had bathed him in mud made from cow and turkey manure, that was decidedly molecularly closer to being shit then it was to being dirt. The cause of his kidney failure was multifactorial but mostly due to dehydration in the setting of alcohol withdrawal and also shock from urosepsis, a severe infection of his bladder.

There were conflicting theories about how the $20 bills had become paper machéed all over his body: some thought in his delirium he had thrown the cash up into the air and it had landed on the still wet and goopy manure body mask, others supposed that the bills had been applied by the gangster's goons as part of the message. Regardless, although not out of the woods yet, he was clearly nearing the edge of the forest and was likely to make a full recovery, in so far as his kidneys and withdrawal symptoms were concerned.

I thought about John and the ordeal he had been a through as I left the hospital after my last night shift on Friday morning, bleary-eyed and vitamin D deficient. I filed this case away with all of the other crazy shit that happens in the hospital and walked to my car, heading over to Zack's house.

***
"Woman! Hold still, I'm almost done." Zack mumbled as he looked up at me with a mouth full of needles. I was standing somewhat precariously on a stool in his living room, as he hemmed the long plaid skirt I was wearing. I pulled on the three quarter length sleeves of my dark blue bodice, admiring the subtle adjustments Zack had made to the top to make it fit my ample bosom more appropriately.
"There! All finished. What do you think?" he said, standing up and moving the floor length mirror we had pulled from his closet closer to me.
I stepped down from the stool and looked carefully at the costume. I was no Caitriona Balfe, but shit, I'd fuck me.
"Oh Zack, it's perfect!" I exclaimed. "I love what you did with the bodice."
"It seems a waste to let all of my skills just wither away to nothing, someone might as well benefit from them."

Zack had spent several years as a model in Europe, but while there, he had actually learned how to sew because he had dated a guy named Fabian who was one of the "petits mains" who worked in one of the Dolce & Gabbana haute couture ateliers. In between epic sessions of fucking and partying, Fabian had taught Zack how to sew and tailor. He hadn't used it on much besides costumes for himself - and now me - but he always used these skills to great effect and made quite an entrance at any Halloween party we attended.

"Zack, can I ask you a question, but you have to promise not to get mad."

"You can ask me anything and I make absolutely no promises," he said, putting his sewing supplies back in his box.