Houston, Thursday Night

The storm raged as high winds blew throughout the city, causing blackouts, fear and loads of torrential downpour.  Lula sat in the Fitzsimons’s kitchen holding her bible in one hand and giving Wilke the evil eye as she held her teacup in the other. Wilke sat as if she wasn’t at the table, working on the last of the battery power on his tablet.

Michael had placed sandbags around the house to help stave off the flooding, but he wasn’t certain it would work. The generator had kicked on, and power to the kitchen was all he could afford to run initially.  He could not take the chance of having all the food in the refrigerator spoil.  His spirit already soured from the interaction with Pip’s hanging up on him which placed him in a foul mood.  A mood which had no tolerance for Grandma Lula’s shenanigans.

She, on the other hand, was in the mood to test him.

“I don’t know why he is here,” Lula said through tight lips.

“He’s here for the same reason you are, Grandma. He is family,” Michael replied.

“He ain’t no family of mine and he ain’t no kin to you either,” she hissed, holding her Bible tighter to her chest.  “Speaking of family, how are things with that trashy little redhead?  I bet her family won’t be accepting of you.  They are going to believe that no matter how poor they are, they are still better than you.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited advice and Wilke is family,” he told her.

“He is an adulterer!  He is the cause of your mother’s downfall into sin,” Lula spat at Wilke.

Michael, tense, worried about the generator and a hurricane barreling down on the city, reached his boiling point and had enough of Lula’s bible thumping self-righteousness.  He’d had enough of righteous indignation by people grasping at false ideas which were truly not their own, but moreover, he’d had enough of the lies and bullshit. Never one to speak out of line to his grandmother, today was not the day for her holy rolling.

“The cause of my mother’s downfall was you,” he said calmly. “You spent her entire life filling her head with sin this and burn in hell that, which is what my father used to control her.  Do you know what he called having sex with her?  Punishment for her sins.  He treated her like shit and she felt she deserved it because of her sins.  Had you raised her with a basic sense of right and wrong, she would have enjoyed a happy life with Wilke.  She wouldn’t have married a sadistic man who was waiting for his stepdaughter to blossom so he could extend his punishment technique to her.”

Lula’s mouth hung wide open as Wilke looked up in shock at Michael’s words.

“Your sanctimonious holiness, a ruse to cover your own tracks of turning tricks to pay the mortgage after Granddaddy left you, gets on my damned nerves.  Put that Bible down and shut your mouth,” Michael said, in a voice so calm it gave Wilke shivers.

“Michael, you will not talk that way to me!” Grandma Lula said, popping out of the chair to her feet like the seat was heated incrementally.

“Sit, your crazy old ass down!” Michael said, raising his voice. “You have no control here.  This is my house. The man at this table is my father, maybe not by blood but he raised me to be a good man. He is the reason I sit at your table each Sunday eating indigestible meals, and he is a respectable man.  Zelda is lucky to have him as her father and I do give God the honor and the glory for making his heart big enough to accept me and treat me as his own.”

“I’m going to bed,” Lula said in a huff.

“Well, a hurricane is coming, so be careful that no one drops a house on you,” Michael said to her.

Wilke's hands were gripped in a fist.

“You never told me any of that stuff about your Daddy,” Wilke said.

“He was my father.  You are my Daddy,” Michael said, laying his head on his folded arms on the table.  “I never told you because you would have killed him, then Zelda and I would have been at Grandma’s mercy.  I was strong.  I have always been strong. I stood between him and my sister. He never touched Zelda.”

Wilke placed his hand on Michael’s head.  Heat radiated through his low haircut, and the boy looked tired.  So many years he bore the weight of so much pain and pressure to do the right thing. He always did the right thing.

“I taught you right from wrong,” Wilke said.

“Right now, everything feels wrong.”

“Talk to me,” Wilke said softly.

Michael didn’t raise his head. His words almost muffled by his arm.  Where do I start?

“I am supposed to meet Pip’s mother, who sounds like a nightmare of a woman who has been milking her daughter for all she is worth,” Michael said.  “Wilke, Pip lived in a trailer park with her mother who got them kicked out.  The house she lives in now, Scott helped her buy. It is going to be an uphill battle to not only get her moved to Texas but dealing with her mother.”

Wilke’s voice was calming, “So tell me, was your first inclination to save the girl or to run when she told you about her mother?”

“I wanted to save the girl.”

“And now?  Do you still want to run or save the girl?”

“I want to save the girl,” Michael said softly.

“Then might I suggest that once this storm is over and the flood waters subside, you start looking for a senior’s home for your Grandmother, save the girl, and get on about making me some grandchildren,” Wilke said.

“Yeah right.”

“Michael, we allow ourselves to hide in our heads to keep from dealing with an ugly reality. Your ugly reality is that you have always had to stand as if you were alone. The truth is that you have never been alone or fought by yourself. You love that girl.  When you were with her, there was a light in your eyes. The same light I see when Zelda looks at that funny looking guy of hers,” he said.

“Yeah, they are going to have some ugly ass children with bucked teeth and mustaches at the age of two,” Michael said, chuckling.

It was out of the norm for Wilke to use profanity, but his thought came out as it was formed in his head.

“Shit, your children are going to look like circus clowns with funky colored hair.  The thought of all of them kids running around with their hands stuck up some wooden dolls ass trying to throw their voices is really fucking creeping me out,” he said, laughing.

The idea of a houseful of weird little children made Michael laugh as well.  Loud laughter rang through the house as the winds picked up, howling into the night.  The windows rattled, the trees bent, and branches could be heard cracking as Wilke and Michael sat at the table, formulating a strategy to rid Pip of her money-grubbing mother and to move Lula into a safer community. Her current home was in the direct line of Hurricane Harvey and more than likely would be washed away with the rest of the bad dreams that circled his head like hungry buzzards seeking a last meal.

“You deserve some happiness,” Wilke told him. “Don’t run from it.”

“I won’t,” Michael said quietly. “Thank you. I didn’t know if I ever told you how valuable you have been to us, to me. I appreciate you.”

“Thank you for trusting me,” Wilke said.

The wind picked up to a thunderous roar as Lula ran from the back room, pink rollers in her hair, eyes wide, and her Bible clutched to her breast. “It’s the end of the world!” she screamed.

“Come on, Grandma, let’s get to the center of the house so we can be safe during the storm,” he said.

“Wilke,” he said, pausing, “I love you, man.”

“I love you too, kiddo,” Wilke replied, swallowing down the emotions as fear snuck up on them while the wind picked up, rattling the windows behind the closed shutters. Michael had storm-proofed the house, but Wilke wasn’t so sure about the damage after the storm.

A different storm was brewing in Las Vegas as Zelda sat patiently waiting for Scott to return from the bathroom after his shower.

****

THURSDAY NIGHT LAS Vegas

“I want the happily ever after,” Zelda said to Scott as he entered the sitting room in the hotel suite.

“And you shall have it,” he said, taking a seat, his hair still damp, curling and clinging to his forehead.

“That’s not possible with the secrets you are hiding of having tawdry affairs with old women,” she said, looking at him out the corner of her eye.

“I was 13, Zelda, a lifetime ago.”

“True.  You were also 13 all over again when you saw her today, so you haven’t truly healed,” she said.

“You are one to talk,” he said.

Zelda opened the diary and read a passage to him from the blue journal with the delicate flowers. He listened in disgust as she read the words aloud to him. Each time she said the word punishment, he cringed.

“Your father was a sick man,” he said.

“At the age of 13, the idea of sex terrified me because I was taught it was punishment for when you do something bad.  At that age, the sense of right and wrong is determined by the adults around you,” she told him.  “You can’t fully understand how wrong what she did to you was, considering she was your tether, the teacher, and a person your parents hired to care for you.  Scott, she abused you.”

Scott burst into laughter.

“This is no laughing matter.  Scott, you were sexually abused by that woman!” Zelda said with more emphasis.

“I’m laughing because if you had any idea some of the things I did to ‘that woman’, you would feel sorry for her,” he said, chuckling. “Zelda, trust me, I had years of counseling over Samantha. I’m a grown man. I can handle an encounter with my past.  The question is, can you?”

“No, I am not certain how I feel about an encounter with your past,” she said facetiously.

“Okay, okay, let me put this in perspective for you,” Scott, taking her hand into his. “I was thirteen, a multi-millionaire, nearly six feet tall, all of 140 pounds and ugly. Being on the road for seven years straight, I had no real connection to my family, whom I mainly saw on holidays.  True, I was 13 in age, but I’ve never been a child.  Samantha didn’t seduce some wide-eyed kid. I seduced her.”

“You seduced her?”

“Yep. I knew she was as lonely as I was and nature had gifted me a keen understanding of people and a ridiculously large penis that made an equally large impression in any pair of pants I wore,” he said, rubbing his brow.

“Scott, trying to romanticize this doesn’t change the fact you were only 13,” she said.

“Zelda, stop trying to make me out to be some wide-eyed innocent. I lost my virginity backstage at the age of 11 to a showgirl, I kid you not, named Lola.  When I was 12, I knew how to make a woman orgasm in less than five strokes and I didn’t want to be at home with my square, stiff parents. On the road I had freedom. Each night I had choices of women of all races and nationalities. Girls my age didn’t interest me. Older women were my thing because there was no stupid chatter, just me, a major boner, and the energy of a 13-year-old after a hit of cocaine,” he said.

“Chandler...the depression, the weird ass table you made with the hands coming out of the head, Scott, what was all that about?”

“Baby, I was thirteen and getting laid every night with a woman who got down like a porn star.  Anything I wanted to eat I could order from room service, a car to take me to any see any famous sight or landmark I wanted, and I had to leave all of that to come home to my mother’s Wednesday night meatloaf.  Shit, you’d be depressed, too!”

“This Samantha woman, did you love her?”

“I loved what we had. Looking back on it, her need to be with me was as twisted as my need to be with her. She had an insatiable appetite for sex and me, constantly at the ready was a match made in heaven,” he said.

“What ended your little love fest?” Zelda wanted to know.

“My mother.  She decided to surprise me one night in Los Angeles and walked in on us,” he said. “Now, that nearly scarred me for life.”

“Well, aren’t we the pair?”

“You are perfect for me, Zelda, and more than anything, I want a life with you.  I will give you your happily ever after, honey,” he said, pulling her close.  “But first you need to shower.  You smell like sex and a dirty nightclub.”

Zelda threw her diary at him after bounding to her feet to head to the shower. Scott held the journal, flipping through the pages, reading some of the words, seeing them, understanding, yet not wanting to know the ugliness. They were words, chronicling the actions and pain of child wanting to be loved.  His life was different.  He was no one’s victim.

Ugly, awkward, and not even remotely shy, girls and women often approached him, taking pity with the belief that their actions would build his self-esteem.  Chandler likened Scott to a colorful spider waiting in an intricately designed web, sitting, allowing the flies to come to him to pet the monster. Often, their tentative kisses were met by a young man with skills beyond their comprehension.  He never forced any woman, but a few of the right moves with his hands and fingers, and they were tearing at his clothing. By the time he reached college, he was bored by it all.

As an adult, the Vent Conference often brought more of the same, which is why he chose to never participate in any dalliances with the conference goers.  Zelda was different.  From the moment he spotted her in that bar, he knew.  She was meant to be his.  And she would be, but everything had to be right.

Currently, it was all wrong.  However, he had a plan to change it.  He picked up his cell phone and made a call.  Tomorrow morning would bring a new edge to their relationship.