Chapter 2

I figured this would be a cake walk. I mean, how hard could it be to talk an old woman out of a pair of roller skates that she didn't use, which were gathering dust in some closet somewhere, or maybe that garage Ronnie had talked about in her soliloquy. Mom had no use for them—her daughter wanted them. Parents want their kids to be happy, right? And, I'm an intimidating looking fellow, I'm told, so if just asking didn't work, I'd intimidate the old bat a bit. That's why I didn't plan on charging my latest customer anything more than the cost of the gas it would take me to drive over to Ohio, retrieve the skates, and come back.

During that drive, I let my mind wander. I looked over at the passenger seat and imagined the skates, sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be delivered to their owner. I imagined them to be excited, eager to go back on the feet that had ridden in them over those countless miles of smooth pavement while the little girl in them became a young woman.

Then I imagined the skates becoming Veronica Powers, sitting beside me, unimaginably thankful that I had recovered one of the totems of her journey to adulthood. Well ... not unimaginably thankful ... not exactly. I could think of a way she was welcome to thank me. It involved a lot of heavy breathing and her naked skin moving all over my naked skin, while I showed her how lucky she was to BE a woman, all grown up and fully involved with mature things.

I almost ran into the back of an eighteen wheeler carrying a load of cattle. I let off the accelerator just as a cow let loose out of one of the holes in the side of the trailer and a brown hazy cloud appeared, only to be whipped toward me in the wind. My windshield was suddenly opaque and I cursed, slowing more.

Let me tell you something. Windshield wipers aren't designed to deal with cow excrement, moistened with piss and atomized by a seventy mile an hour wind. Not even when you use the washers.

I didn't see that as an omen of how my trip to get Ronnie's skates was going to go.

But I should have.

Ronnie had given me the rundown on her mother, one Madeline Wilkenson, formerly Madeline Powers. It hadn't been easy getting the information. You might get some idea of that from her initial response to: "So, tell me about your mother."

The level to which their relationship had sunk was revealed clearly. Her answer had been succinct, if not quite a term that would be approved by the literary guild.

"She's a giant buttface," she muttered.

She'd added an adjective, but I needed a little more than that, and by continued probing I learned more. There had been a divorce when Ronnie was very young, a step-father after that, and a string of "uncles" after the second marriage ended in divorce as well. I knew the type. Some women can't figure out what they want, or how lucky they are to have a decent man in the first place. Such women think mostly of themselves and their own wants. Which, since they don't know what they want, makes for a pretty dismal kind of playing at being an adult.

That, combined with the fact that her mother and father were bona fide hippies, and probably did way too many drugs during the "free love" years, made it almost a miracle that Ronnie seemed to have grown up with a relatively stable personality. Kids pick up a lot from their parents, and I'm not talking about what the parents are TRYING to teach them. There are a lot of Gen-Xers out there who are messed up because their parents weren't very good role models.

I had pretty good data about when Maddie, as I now thought of her, had been a young mother. But Ronnie had left home at seventeen, and there was a dearth of information about what I was heading into now. Ronnie tried very hard not to spend any time with her mother. The term "quality time" just wasn't in Ronnie's vocabulary, as it pertained to the woman who had given her life.

Then again, I didn't think I'd need to know all that much, really. I knew how to find her house, and that she worked as a teacher with learning disabled kids in Columbus, but that was about it. If a woman with a face like a derriere came to the door I might blow it by laughing, but I didn't really think that was going to happen. I figured I was savvy enough to finesse just about any woman, if I put my mind to it.

I had no trouble finding the house. I got there about seven in the evening, which was great, as far as I was concerned. It wasn't too late, but probably wouldn't allow for an invitation to sit and chat about how Ronnie was doing, once I got the skates. I planned a quick in and out visit, and, with the help of some NoDoz, I could be handing Ronnie her skates the next morning.

That's not to say I abandoned my usual vigilance. Being observant is a primary requirement of being in the business. So I noticed the big red and white sign on the gate that said "BEWARE OF DOG". I hadn't thought to ask Ronnie about dogs. I made some noise so the dog, if it was out, could rush out and do his duty. I actually hoped it would, in one sense, since that would make Maddie owe me when she came out to see what the barking was all about.

The only problem was that no dog came barking. That can mean two things, usually. One is that the dog is inside, which is fine. The other, though, is that the dog might be the sly type that lies quietly in wait for the borders of its kingdom to be breached, whereupon it rushes out and bites the shit out of the intruder.

I lifted the latch on the gate and stepped into the yard, holding the gate open so I could dart back out if anything rushed out of the shadows at me.

Nothing did.

I wasn't packing heat, because I'm not licensed in Ohio. As I got to the halfway point between the gate and the porch I wished I'd thought to bring my telescoping baton, which would quickly deal with a tardy guard dog. When I made it to the porch I felt better, especially when my foot on a loose board brought barking from within the house. I rang the bell and the barking doubled.

"Shut the fuck up, Muttley!" came a dim voice from within.

The porch light came on, even though it wasn't dark out yet. There were curtains covering the window in the door and I saw them nudged aside as I was inspected. The door opened wide and I saw an Australian cattle dog dancing around, still barking. A foot wearing a house shoe snapped out and kicked the dog in the side. It yelped, whined and backed up. The unmistakable odor of marijuana came wafting out the door.

"You don't look like a solicitor," said an alto voice that wasn't all that unpleasant.

The woman attached to that voice was looking down her nose at me. I realized it was because she was wearing those glasses with more lines in them than an eye doctor's chart. I guess I was close enough that examining me required one of the lower sections of the glasses.

"I'm not," I said in my suave voice.

"That's good," she went on, "because if you were a solicitor, I'd have to let Muttley loose on you. He bites children, so he should flat out try to eat a solicitor."

"As I said, I'm not a solicitor," I said. "I'm a friend of Ronnie's."