"Archie, for the love of Pete, would you please turn down that damn music so I can hear Nadeen," Nancy screamed at the boy, while covering the cell phone receiver with the palm of her hand. She was sitting in the middle of a king-sized bed with a couple of pillows behind her back. A loose housecoat gaped open revealing most of her bosom and belly. Her bare legs were crossed on top of the covers, and she was moving her bare foot impatiently, like she was tapping something.
Archie was outside, sitting in a chair on the narrow balcony and was reading. On the decking beside him a CD player was blaring out "Viva Las Vegas," loudly enough that the empty glasses in the bathroom were dancing on the countertop. Nancy grimaced as though the noise was painful and jabbed the cell phone antennae toward the offending source.
"Thank you," she nodded toward the boy as he lowered the volume a notch, and she returned the phone to her cheek.
"Were in the hell have you been, girl? I been worried sick about you," she snapped peevishly into the phone. The genuineness of her concern was obvious.
She listened to the response, frowning steadily, and her face began to darken.
"Where are you?" she asked, shouting into the phone as though the connection was poor.
"St Louis? Have you got her?" she queried expectantly.
"No! Why not, dammit?" she yelled, and her face reddened.
There was a pause as she listened to the explanation. She ran her fingers through her hair and massaged the back of her neck as though she was trying to think while she listened. She turned her face away from the phone briefly and took a sip of scotch, and then, returned the glass to the nightstand beside the bed.
"They sound like a couple of cops to me," she said, and her face clouded with concern.
"What? The hell you say; in my house?" she screamed incredulously as though the information terrified her, and she covered the receiver with her hand again and called to Archie.
"Archie, Archie, get in here," she yelled at the boy. "Somebody's helping that little bitch, and they broke into our house last night."
"Huh?" he mumbled in reply, but he stood and ambled toward the bed.
"When did you find out about that, Nadeen?" Nancy asked, returning to the phone.
Archie sat on the foot of the bed and watched with faint interest as his mother interrogated the caller.
"You're sure there was only the one?" she asked into the phone.
"How'd you know he was there?"
Archie could tell his mother was becoming agitated. Her voice was becoming shrill and sharp, and she was screaming at Nadeen like he had never heard before, not even that time that kid spooked and knocked Nadeen upside the head with the lamp. Her tone drew his interest, and he dropped his reading material on the floor.
"You did what?" she shrieked into to the phone, and her mouth fell open.
"Archie," she whispered to the boy. "Pour me another scotch quick; these idiots killed the school janitor last night and left his body in the pool. Your daddy's gonna be soooooooo pissed."
"Yeah, right mom." Archie agreed, walking to the dresser and retrieving the bottle. "The old fucker's probably too big to go through the skimmer; somebody'll have to get in there and pull him out."
"Archie," his mother snapped, and she shot him a "why bother" look that would have withered anybody else. "He happens to be your father's favorite nigger in all the world. I don't know why he thinks so much of him, but he does, and he didn't fool me a minute pretendin' to fire him at the pallet factory."
Archie's attention was bent on pouring the scotch into his mother's glass without mishap, so Nancy was speaking largely to herself. She returned to the receiver and began peppering Nadeen with questions.
"He was inside the house when you got there?"
"Un-huh. Did you hit him?"
"How did you follow him?"
"Uh-huh. A homing device? You found his car before you went up to the house. That's good, Nadeen, real good, but you say you lost him in Jefferson City?"
Nancy took another sip of scotch, while she listened, and then she put the phone on her shoulder and tried to explain events to Archie.
"Some guy broke into the house and was looking at our videos. Cletus and Nadeen caught him, and they shot at him, but he got away. They followed him down to the Holiday Inn in Jefferson City, but they couldn't find him or the girl, so they went back to Sedalia to watch her car at that lawyer's U-haul office."
"Oh," Archie responded noncommittally because the plot had thickened beyond his ability to follow.
"Nadeen?" Nancy queried into the phone in a moment of inspired recollection. "Isn't the Holiday Inn pretty close to the Acock?"
"That's what I thought," she nodded, and she smiled triumphantly at her confused son.
Archie was losing interest in the telephone conversation, especially since he was only hearing half of it, and his eyes wandered to his mother's legs. His reading material, a trashy novel named "Daddy Crosses the Rubicon," that he had downloaded from Literotica.com, was getting him pretty worked up just as Nadeen had promised in her e-mail telling him about it. The story was about a real foxy girl who seduced her father while the two of them were staying together on a houseboat on a remote lake. Archie began reading as soon as he downloaded it. He felt a vague connection with the heroine, since he found himself at that moment alone with his mom in a place that was special to them both. He reached out and traced the arch of Nancy's foot with his fingers.
"What did you say, Nadeen?" Nancy screamed incredulously. "You mean you drove by the Acock and didn't check it out just because the marquee said 'closed for repairs?' You Goddam idiot, what in the Hell were you thinking? You've been to the Acock with me, what, thirty, forty times, girl? You know damn well they don't repair anything there, never have, never will. There wasn't any repairing going on in there; that's where that bitch and her friends were holed up, I'd bet your life on it."
Archie ran his hand up Nancy's leg to the knee, letting his fingers caress the smoothly shaved skin of her calf on the way and inched toward her on the bed while she blessed out poor old Nadeen.
"That feels good, honey," she whispered to Archie, interrupting her tirade long enough to encourage him.
"OK, so you didn't catch them at the Acock, but you're still following her car, right?"
"Oh! Who got it?" Her voice sounded disappointed, and she took another sip of scotch to calm her nerves.
"Are you sure Cletus recognized him?" she questioned, firing another sharp interrogatory into the phone, and she motioned for Archie to scoot closer.
"Where are they now? All you got to do is keep following them, and they'll lead you right to her."
She uncrossed her legs and moved her feet apart a little. Her wrapper fell open, exposing the low slope of her belly and her mons with its little, vertical stripe of hair. She lifted Archie's hand from her knee and placed it on her thigh, smiling approvingly at him when he began stroking the soft flesh inside her leg.