Page 8 of Absinthe Dreams
My dad was a biker. Part of a small, tight-knit club up at the top of the boot that was Louisiana.
He’d been into drugs and the lifestyle and had gotten arrested on drug and illegal weapons charges. He’d gone to prison when I was young, and River was just a baby.
He was away for sixteen years, but here was the thing… in all of that time, my brothers and I wanted for nothing.
His club took care of us and my mom as best they could. Mom was short on rent? Here was a brother with enough cash to make the difference.
Needed school clothes for me and my brother, or diapers for Reigel when he came along? They were there.
Food was always on our table, things were always fixed around the house, and on the odd occasion my mom needed, ah, servicing? Well, one of them took one for the proverbial team on that front, too.
It’d made me mad that Mom had cheated on my dad, but he didn’t seem angry about it one bit. When he’d come home, he treated Reigel like he was his own and wouldn’t hear a word about it from me or River.
What was probably totally bizarre for everyone else was normal for us. I would bet you’re thinking that if my dad and his buddies were so connected or whatever, why didn’t I call them about the whole being stalked thing?
The answer to that was a fairly simple one… they were all either old or infirm.
I meant that too.
My dad was a heavy smoker his entire life and had emphysema. There were only three other brothers left alive in his club. Rowdy wasn’t so very rowdy anymore after losing both his feet to unchecked and rampant diabetes. Dork was just as bad, being legally blind to the point he couldn’t ride anymore, let alone drive. Then there was Jerky, who was on his fifth or sixth surgery for skin cancer. He’d gotten his road name from the leathery appearance of his tanned hide and how wrinkled he’d been at nineteen. Now he was in his late sixties, maybe early seventies, and just a mess. I was kind of amazed he kept going after so many lesion removals and skin grafts.
So, no, calling on my dad or his old club was out of the question.
I let myself into the back door of my tiny and overpriced row house, and dropped my tote by the back door, kicking off my sneakers onto the rack for them, butonlyafter ensuring my door was shut and locked tight against the outside world and my alarm system was reengaged on theat-homesetting.
I sighed and popped my neck, pulling my lunch containers from my bag and taking them into my little kitchen to put in the dishwasher after a quick rinse at the sink.
I poured myself a glass of wine from the fridge. A nice, sweet, white I’d found at the grocery. I shamelessly admit that I’d bought it based on the pretty label.
I was hungry and tired. I stood for a minute, debating whether to order in, but decided against it. I opened the refrigerator back up to see what I had on hand that would be quick.
“Ooo!” I quietly declared, pulling a box of Boursin cheese out of the cheese drawer. “That’d be quick,” I muttered.
I set about putting the cheese, a drizzle of olive oil, a handful of cherry tomatoes, another handful of raw spinach, and a few cloves of peeled garlic in a dish. At the last moment, I threw in some capers from the jar of them that I kept in my fridge for a little extra something.
While the oven was preheating, I set a pot of water onto the stovetop to boil and tried to decide if I wanted any protein to go with my meal or if the slightly vegetarian option was good enough.
I caved and took an individually wrapped piece of frozen salmon out of the freezer.
I ran it under some hot water to somewhat defrost it and peeled it out of its plastic vacuum-sealed prison.
“Charlie!” I called out. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” He didn’t come, which wasn’t unusual. I went to the front door of the house and used the panel there to suspend the alarm.
I opened up and called out again, “Charlie! Kitty, kitty, kiiii-ty!” and was met with the familiar jangle of his collar’s bell and tags. He leaped over the flowerpot on one side of the porch and trotted into the house. I shut the door, locked up, and keyed the alarm back to life again.
“Bro, you almost missed out on a salmon treat with your dinner,” I told him. He meowed at me like I was a fucking liar, which, okay, fair.
“Point to you, Mr. Kitty – you spoiled thing.” I went back to the kitchen, tripping over the tabby and white cat the whole way because he insisted on getting in front of me and twining around my legs.
He knew what time it was, even if it wasn’t all that consistent with my wildly varying schedule.
“Yeah, yeah, I got you,” I told him and set my electric kettle on to boil while I served him up his stinky wet food.
He’d get his salmon treat after it was done cooking.
The water I’d put on to boil for the pasta on the stove had barely started to collect the teeny tiny bubbles at the bottom of it, so it was nowhere near ready to go.
I put the still semi-frozen piece of fish face down, skin side up, on a plate at the bottom of my sink. When the kettle clicked off, I poured the boiling water over the skin, and it peeled right off the fish while also defrosting it pretty much the rest of the way, and yeah, sorta started to cook it around the edges.
