Cold Summer Nights Page 5

  Amy backed into the kitchen wall with a small window. The intruder stopped in the light slicing through the mini blinds. Amy found herself inches from the dark, pupiless eyes watching her every move, seeming to grow more satisfied with every wrinkle cutting through Amy’s face. She turned her head to the side, desperate to put more distance between them. The woman’s face inched closer. Her skin was cracked and streaked with soot. The black dress she wore was frayed and too short. Then she twitched.

  Amy screamed again, knocking the back of her head against the window.

  In an instant, a gray arm thrust out and grabbed Amy around the neck with an icy claw, driving her backwards. Amy heard the glass crack behind her. She gasped for breath as her manicured hands shot to the squishy limb around her throat. Frantically, she wrestled with it, choking and desperate for a gulp of the ripe oxygen resting just outside her cherry lips.

  The woman leaned in and rubbed her scaly cheek against Amy’s. Amy squirmed harder, which only made the need for air that much stronger. The woman pulled back and tilted her to the side, studying Amy with the wonder of a child. Amy gasped and struggled with both hands clawing at the bony fingers around her neck. Her painted toes left the floor. She thrashed wildly, kicking and hitting to no avail. The woman’s colorless lips pulled back into a wide crocodile smile, revealing chipped teeth. Amy’s eyes bulged as bloody veins wormed their way through the whites of her frenzied orbs. Her fingers clawed at the woman’s face, which peeled away like dried clay. The woman’s grin suddenly faded into an angry sneer. Her grip tightened and Amy kicked one last time before going limp as a sleeping cat.

  Rusty dashed across his apartment living room, tripped over a basketball and grabbed his cell phone off the ratty couch. The screen indicated unknown was calling but he hit the talk button anyway, thinking it could be a friendly booty-call from Stacey, or maybe even some other girl he wouldn’t be too picky about right now.

  “Hello?” he said, squinting in the silence that followed.

  He checked the screen to see if the call was still connected, and it was.

  "Hello?" he said louder, then taking a swig of Budweiser.

  Still no response. He was just about to hang up when someone started coughing. Or were they choking? He turned to the TV, staring at a Stone Sour video with unfocused eyes. “Who is this?”

  More gagging answered him.

  He considered the possibility it was Dallas or Nick trying to punk him, but didn’t think they could disguise their call as unknown without calling from a pay phone, which neither would be up for at this hour on a Sunday night.

  The wet hacking continued in his ear and then stopped.

  Rusty muted the TV and held his breath, the phone tightly pressed to his ear. His eyes roamed the room without seeing anything. “Hello?” he whispered.

  The silence that awaited him was suddenly broken by more coughing, louder and more rampant.

  Rusty frowned and pulled the phone from his ear. “Okay, good luck with the lung cancer, pops,” he shouted, hanging up and dropping the phone like it was poisonous onto the dark green couch. He stared at it for a moment, waiting for it to ring again. When it didn’t, he tipped the red and white can back and wiped his ear with his shirt sleeve.

  Chapter Six

  Nick spent Monday and Tuesday letting his thoughts shuffle from work stuff to the nursing home to Amy’s kiss to Summer and the dead remote, finally coming to the conclusion that the remote was defective. Just like his grandma and Amy.

  “Come on!” he yelled at the maroon Ford Taurus in front of him. “Green means go!” He drummed his fingers on the wheel and sighed, somehow managing to resist the urge to honk.

  The Taurus finally woke up and started moving. Nick tried not to tailgate but it was impossible. The only thing he could think about was Summer coming over tonight. They were going to order Chinese and he wanted to get home and grab a quick shower beforehand. It had been a long day at the office with the hours dripping by like cold molasses. Only two days had passed seen he’d last seen her but it seemed like two weeks.

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Man, they will give a license to anyone these days,” he muttered, whipping around the slow poke Taurus and getting into the gas.

  The old lady behind the wheel stuck her middle finger into the air without so much as a glance over as he sped past.

  “Hi,” Summer said, smiling warmly.

  “Hey you,” he said, feeling like she could smell Amy’s designer perfume all over him even though that was three nights ago and he had just taken another shower. Relief washed over him when he saw the overnight bag slung over her shoulder. He hadn’t been sure if she was going to spend the night or not.

  “Whew, it got cold out!” she said, filling the room with her strawberry scent.

  “That’s Spring for ya, huh? Supposed to hit seventy tomorrow.”

  “Really?” she said, setting the bag down.

  “Think I’ll lay out on my lunch break and catch some rays.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s not even April yet.”

  “Almost,” he said, going into the kitchen. “Chardonnay sound good?”

  “Sure,” she said, taking off her scarf and coat and draping them over the back of the leather armchair.

  “I put this in the freezer when I got home from work so I hope it’s cold enough,” he said, closing the freezer door and jumping when he found Summer standing on the other side.

  “Whoa!” he gasped, stammering backwards and nearly dropping the wine bottle.

  “I’m sorry,” she laughed.

  “Man,” he said, placing his hand over his chest. “You about gave me a heart attack.”

  She laughed even harder. “Why are you so jumpy?”

  “I don’t know but we gotta get you a bell or something,” he said, grabbing a wine glass from a cupboard and a wine opener from a top drawer.

  She took a deep breath and rubbed up against him like a friendly cat. “I just wanted to see if you needed any help…before you booty called me again.”

  He stopped screwing mid cork, embarrassment flushing his face. She was never going to let him forget that. “That’s funny.”

  “Oh, I bet you booty-called all the girls like that after Amy.”

  The cork popped when he pulled it out. He turned to her, his eyebrows pulling together. “Amy?”

  Her eyes thinned. “Yeah, after you two broke up.”

  “Oh,” he said, a little too relieved. “Actually, I was always more of a booty-texter,” he said, the golden liquid making a pulsating gurgle as he poured it into the wine glass

  “I bet you were,” she said, poking him in the ribs.

  A grin spread across his red face as he handed her the glass. “Bunch of grenades though compared to you.”

  She took the glass and slapped him on the arm. “You better say that.”

  “Oh, like you’ve never booty called anyone before.”

  She grinned and took a sip of the chilled wine. “Only real estate agents.”

  He laughed and swapped the wine bottle for a beer in the fridge. “You hungry?”

  “A little,” she said, with a slight shiver.

  He twisted the top off the beer and stared at her. “Are you cold?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  He nodded. “I’ll turn up the heat.”

  “Maybe some hot coffee would be good.”

  Nick stared at the empty beer bottles and Chinese cartons littering the coffee table and decided he was too tired to clean any of it up tonight. He was too tired to even brush his teeth. He grabbed the remote, hesitated, and pointed it at the TV where a handsome gray haired man on a mountain range was trying to convince Nick that he couldn’t go wrong with Cialis, whether he needed it or not. The flat screen shut off with one push of the button. He snorted and turned off the light. In the bedroom, he found Summer stretched out across the bed, buck naked and grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly, he caught his second wind.
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  After she left for work the next morning, Nick was just about to leave himself when he picked up the remote and hit the power button. The TV remained dark. He tried it again. Nothing. He shook his head and went out the front door with his laptop.

  That night, he was watching a rerun of The Office when his phone rang. He paused the TV and picked up the cell. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “This has gone far enough, Nick!” Rusty barked. “That’s what’s up!”

  Nick blinked. “Huh?”

  “I know it’s you, Nick!”

  Nick listened to the heavy breathing coming from the other end and chuckled. “You know what’s me?”

  “I know it’s you who keeps calling me and acting like you’re choking on a piece of steak!”

  Nick opened his mouth to speak but Rusty cut him off.

  “It was funny at first but it’s getting kind of old now, don’t ya think?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh come on, man! Don’t play dumb.”

  “Dude, I swear to God I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  Rusty’s breath came hard and fast. “You swear on your mother’s grave?”

  A thunderstruck silence shook the line as Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, now you’ve gone too far.”

  “Oh, I’m the one who’s gone too far? That’s a good one!”

  Nick got up and went into the kitchen. “Just tell me what is going on.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on, someone’s driving me fucking nuts is what’s going on!”

  “Someone’s been crank-calling you?”

  “You think?” he yelled, coughing into the phone.

  Nick winced and held the cell out. “It’s probably just Dallas,” he said, opening the fridge.

  “Trust me, it’s not. I practically tortured the kid to get the truth.”

  Nick snorted, staring into the refrigerator. “What’d ya do? Make him watch Glee?”

  “This isn’t funny, Nick!”

  “Alright, let’s just take a minute to figure this out,” he said calmly, grabbing a bottle of blue Gatorade.

  “A minute? I’ve been trying to figure this out for the last four days!”

  Nick’s brow folded. “Four days?” he muttered, shutting the fridge door with his foot.

  “Since Sunday night,” Rusty said, sounding winded.

  “Well, what are they saying?”

  “Nothing! That’s just it. They just sit there and cough every single time.”

  Nick took a drink and swallowed. “Cough?” he repeated, hitting play on The Office and rewinding it ten seconds and pausing it again so it wouldn’t burn the screen. He wasn’t sure if the urban legend about pausing stuff for too long on a flat screen was true or not, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Not with this forty-two inch sweetheart. It was bad enough the remote was on the fritz. “What’s your caller ID say?”

  “Unkown.”

  Nick frowned. “You don’t know what your caller ID says?”

  “It says ‘unknown’, moron!”

  Nick cleared his throat. “Oh, I gotcha. Well, I don’t know what to tell ya, chief, except that it’s not me.”

  The silence grew between them like weeds through a cracked driveway. Nick could almost hear the wheels turning inside Rusty’s head.

  "This is bullshit!" Rusty yelled, launching into another round of wet sounding coughs.

  Nick held the phone away from his ear again. “Maybe it’s Paul.”

  Rusty sighed. “It’s not Paul. Sophia doesn’t leave his side long enough for him to pull something off like this.”

  “Listen, I’m sure whoever it is - probably some chick you dragged back to your apartment one night and never called back - will get tired of it soon.”

  Rusty’s heavy breathing continued to storm the line.

  Nick squinted. “We still on for lunch tomorrow at one?”

  Rusty didn’t answer.

  “Hello?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he said dully.

  “Cool. We’ll hammer it out then.”

  Rusty let out a short laugh. “Oh I can do better than a hammer,” he said, hanging up without saying goodbye and setting the phone down next to a black nine millimeter lying on the chipped up coffee table. He leaned back into the couch, staring at the phone with glazed eyes, and started coughing again.

  Chapter Seven

  “Are you ready to order yet?” the waitress asked, her pen at the ready.

  Nick looked up from his BlackBerry. “Let’s give him a couple more minutes.”

  The chubby waitress feigned a weak smile and lowered her pad. “Okay,” she said politely, stuffing her order pad back into her Buffalo Wild Wings apron and walking away.

  Nick could feel her rolling her eyes as he watched her go. He didn’t blame her. She wasn’t here to serve Coke to people all day. He checked his watch again. 1:34. He looked back up to the swelling crowd and sighed. The place was packed and in a Friday afternoon kind of mood. The smell of spicy garlic chicken wings blended with explosive rounds of laughter and fevered conversations as The Golf Channel floated down from the recessed speakers above, making it difficult to think. He took in their smiling faces and pints of Killian’s, Newcastle, and Bud Light and shook his head. That should’ve been him. Like most Fridays, Nick’s boss had already left the office early for the day and would have no idea if Nick came back in or not.

  His eyes fell back to his phone. He looked up just in time to see his waitress disappear into the kitchen and decided to take the opportunity to slip a five on the table and ghost the place.

  Rusty didn’t hear the knocking at his front door even though he was sitting in the living room watching TV. After the second round of louder knocks, he casually slipped the gun underneath the couch and got up.

  Nick’s brow slumped when he saw the dark rings circling Rusty’s eyes. Heavy bags floated beneath them, reminding Nick of a boxer who had just lost a fight. “Wow,” he murmured, his gaze dropping from Rusty’s bristly cheeks to his frayed red robe and black slippers. Rusty turned, his face void of expression, and went and sat back down on the ratty couch. Nick stepped into the apartment and haltingly shut the door.

  “Man!” he said, wrinkling his nose, the smell of beer farts making his eyes water. “You should think about opening a window in here someday. And by the way, you look like shit.”

  “Well that would make sense because that’s how I feel,” Rusty said dully, coughing into his fist.

  Nick stepped around the couch and stared at the wadded up balls of tissue littering the coffee table and floor. “A phone call would’ve been nice. I waited for you forever.”

  Rusty stared glumly at the dusty standard-definition television without responding.

  “Why didn’t you...” Nick trailed off, noticing the cell phone lying in pieces on the stained carpet.

  Rusty turned to him and grinned. “Solved the crank call problem.”

  Nick’s jaw dropped. “Wow, really?”

  “Really, Nick!” he responded curtly, coughing even harder.

  “Man, that is some cough.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Foley.”

  Nick thought about sitting down but didn’t, afraid of germs latching onto his clothing. He already wanted to take a shower. He followed Rusty’s swollen eyes to the TV where an ancient episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was airing. “You must really be sick if you’re watching this crap.”

  Rusty didn’t take his eyes from the TV, where Carlton was busy complaining about someone getting his new tennis shoes dirty. Rusty began hacking again and Nick took a step back, bumping into a Megan Fox door poster on a skinny closet door.

  “Did you go see a doctor?”

  Rusty shook his head and took a drink of orange juice. “Your girlfriend coming over tonight?”

  Nick’s brow crumpled. “Tomorrow night. Why?”

  Rusty stared ahead without responding.

  Nick looked to the front d
oor, gravitating towards it like he was caught in a subliminal tractor beam. He could feel the sickness in the room already invading his mouth, eyes and nasal passages with every breath he took. “Well call me if you...” he stopped, seeing the phone again. “You should really get a new phone tomorrow. That’s not safe being without one.”

  Rusty’s bloodshot eyes turned to him. “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s not safe being with one.”

  Nick’s Adams apple bobbed up and down as he decided it was time to get back to work.

  Nick awoke in the middle of the night from a dream he couldn’t remember. All he knew was he had been desperately trying to accomplish some task before it was too late. He inhaled sharply when he saw the dark silhouette of someone standing at the foot of his bed. Fear gripped his innards with jagged claws and it took everything he had to scramble backwards against the headboard. The figure stepped into the light from the window and stopped. Nick’s eyes bulged when he saw his grandma. Her nursing home gown was frayed and stained with yellow blotches. He recognized her stringy white hair shooting out in all directions like malevolent snakes. Slowly, she raised a bony arm and pointed at him with a crooked finger, riddled with arthritis.

  Her large eyes pierced him with a truly haunted look. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Wake up!” he said, slapping himself in the face.

  When he opened his eyes, she was even closer.

  “Stay away from her,” she warned, her gravelly voice floating to him like a chilly morning fog. Without her dentures she looked in pain. His heart thumped so hard in his chest, he could barely breathe.