The Blues & Billie Armstrong 60
ROOM SERVICE
Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
The white hair Prius couple were tidy and organized. Before they checked out, the woman would probably clean the place, strip the bed, and pile all the dirty towels in an orderly mound on the bathroom floor.
On Thursday, I woke up to someone knocking on the door of my room. I thought, that better not be the maid again.
I’d already told her I didn’t give a damn about clean sheets and towels, and I’d made goddamn sure the do-not-disturb sign was hanging on the doorknob. Besides, I looked at the digital clock on the nightstand and the red numbers said 7:15. I frankly had no idea if it was morning or evening. Last I knew I was watching game four of the NLCS on this shit 22-inch flat screen. The Giants and Phils were tied up five-five after eight innings. Guess I passed out. But whatever—the maid should not be knocking on my door at 7:15, a.m. or p.m.
I hollered out, “No housekeeping. Do not disturb, comprende?”
“Open the door, Mr. King.” Definitely not the maid’s voice. I didn’t remember stripping down to my boxers, but oh well, I wrapped up my half naked body in a twisted clump of bedding and opened the door.
Valentine Jones pushed me back into the room and slammed the door behind her. She was clutching a piece of paper, waving it in my face. “This is a subpoena!” She was leaning forward, red-faced. “You are hereby ordered to appear in the U.S. District Court of San Francisco on Tuesday, October 26, 2010. In case you’ve lost track, that’s five days from now.”
“Well, at least I have time to get dressed.” I said, directing her eyes to my rumpled outfit.
She looked around and took in the room. Empty bottles, dirty clothes, damp wadded up towels, grease-soaked burger bag, half-open pizza box with a curled up slice of pepperoni and sausage sticking out one side. My mother’s old hatbox open in the middle of the undressed bed, its contents strewn about. A shameless tabloid news show on the television squawking about some baby-daddy’s oxy relapse.
“Jesus, Archer, what are you doing in here?”
“Hiding. Or so I thought, how the hell’d you find me?”
“Really? That’s your first question? You better be glad I found you, I’m probably the nicest person looking for you right now besides your Aunt Laurette.”
“You met Laurette?”
“Sorry to be the one to tell you, but your father passed away last night.”
“Not exactly unexpected,” I said, but I sat down on the bed.
“Is that why you disappeared?”
“I came up here to visit my mother,” I said, and I suddenly felt the spiritual weight of all the oil-slick food washed down with off-brand bourbon and the fetid nightmares induced by all-night TV. I handed Valentine the Polaroid photograph. “More like a memory of my mother.”
She did a little bit of a double take. “She was lovely,” she said.
“You gonna let me get dressed or what?”
She turned the back of her gray pinstripe pantsuit to me while I found a pair of jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt on the floor. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You ran away up here to drown old sorrows? Did you even stop to think about all the people you left hanging? Laurette, your editor, your boss, me and my mother. Don’t you check your messages?”
I flipped open the top of the pizza box with my foot. “Ah-hah!” I said. “I’ve been looking all over for that!” I rescued the TV remote from the box, wiped off some cheese and clicked off the gossipmongers. I stood up and tugged on yesterday’s jeans.
“This hasn’t been easy for me either,” I said.
She spun around to face me. “Funny,” she said. “From what I can see, running away and hiding in a bottle is the easiest thing in the world for you.”
I ran down the story about my trip to the graveyard, and the “visit” with my father. I told her I decided I’d rather be here with the memory of my mother than back in Lupoyoma City waiting on the porch for my father to die. For the son, the father is often the man you’re trying to live up to and live down at the same time, for your whole life. I told her about the J.R. Cole press release, and what it meant.
“Now the bastard’s dead,” I said. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Well, you could you spend five minutes of your life thinking about somebody else. I’m really sorry about your father, mother, the whole tragic thing, but while you’ve been hiding, my mother’s been in jail with a first degree murder charge hanging over her head—and you’re probably the only one who can help her.”
I sat back down on the bed with a limp sock in one hand, temporarily speechless, mesmerized by predicament and hangover. Simply getting dressed threatened a gauntlet of challenges to my diminished coordination and cognition.
“So yes, I get that you’re going through a difficult time. But look at yourself. You’re a drunken coward.”
That kinda blew my hair back, whiplashed me, and I let it hang in the air while I searched for a pithy defense. “Better than being a cowardly drunk,” I said. “No one likes a cowardly drunk.”
“Really? Another joke? What the hell is wrong with you? You think sarcasm is the answer to every problem?”
I gave her a nolo-contendere shrug. “Not really, but I think they come in the same bottle.”
She didn’t laugh. She frowned and took an edgy calming breath, she went to the window and yanked back the curtains, stabbing the room with bladed daylight, and she stood with her back to me, looking out the window.
“When I told her I was coming here to arrest you, her first instinct was to protect you. She said you were just a kid then and there was so much you didn’t know. She was ready to give in, take her chances without your help, but I’m not letting you off that easy.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Arrest me for what?”
“There’s a sheriff’s deputy waiting in the parking lot. I will have him take you into custody if I have to.” She shook the paper at me again. “I have the authority to detain you as a material witness to a criminal proceeding.”
“Look, I’m willing to sign an affidavit.”
“Not enough,” she said. “The feds smell PR honey all over this. They want an indictment and they’re not backing down over an affidavit. You’re going to have to testify.”
“In open court?”
“If it goes to trial, yes. But, if we’re lucky, maybe the grand jury drops the charges, or at least we plea bargain down to manslaughter and she gets a suspended sentence—no trial. That’s best case scenario.”
“Worst case scenario?”
“Worst case we go to trial, the jury believes Tim Bilderback, and my mother spends the rest of her life in prison.”
I sucked in a huge breath and exhaled slowly, trying to absorb the full weight of what I’d just heard and what I was about to say. “Okay. I’ll comply. No need for the cops. I’ve already spent enough time in jail for one week. But, really, how did you find me here?”
She shook her head with a bemused smile jostling the dark hair around her face. And she stood with a hand on one hip and said, “You really don’t know where you are, do you?”
I picked the last stale piece of pizza out of the box on the floor and tore loose a bite, chewed laboriously. Valentine winced.
“Put that down, it’s disgusting,” she said. “Finish getting dressed, I’m buying breakfast.”
The Blues & Billie Armstrong is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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