souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 94: you're all i've got tonight

"i don't care if you hurt me some more,
i don't care if you even the score.
you can knock me and i don't care,
and you can mock me and i don't care,
and you can rock me just about anywhere,
it's alright."
-"you're all i've got tonight", the cars

Bill wasn't necessarily cruel to her, albeit not from how Sam saw her parents and the way in which they communicated with one another during the mornings when she was growing up, and given she hardly saw him during the week except in the mornings and in the evening; however he seemed on the verge of cruel to Matilda and Cassandra. The first morning Sam spent the night there at the house, following Marla's departure and her realization that she was alone there in Lake Elsinore, she sauntered into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a bite of breakfast prior to their leaving for school and Bill about to head off somewhere outside of the house—and he never said where he was headed either—no sooner had she sat down in the chair when Mattie stopped her.
"We eat in the dining room," she told her in a flat tone of voice.
"Really? When I was growing up here in Elsinore and then up in Reno, my parents and I always had breakfast in the kitchen before school." Mattie shook her head at that. Sam frowned but she figured it was for the best regardless of what she dealt with as a kid. She picked up her coffee and her bowl of cereal and took her spot there near the end of the table in the next room over.
"I sit there," Mattie told her, still in a flat voice. She moved over one. "Cassie sits there."
Careful not to let her see her rolling her eyes, Sam took her spot right across the table from her. Soon Cassie came in the room, already completely dressed for the day. Indeed, Mattie was fully dressed herself. They merely sat there as well with their hands in their laps, while Sam had one hand on her spoon and another hand on her cup of coffee, still in her pajamas and with her hair unbrushed. They sat there and watched her.
Within time, Bill stepped in the room with two bowls of what Sam initially believed to be cereal and he set them down before them. She looked over at the tops of their bowls, at the plain oatmeal inside. It wasn't even oatmeal, just porridge.
The times in which she had oatmeal at her parents' house, Ruben always sprinkled some brown sugar or fresh blueberries on the top. But that was plain porridge as far as she could tell. Moreover, all three of them moved in robotic fashion, especially those two girls. They moved like clockwork to the dining room table there downstairs and they even ate their porridge in unison, to the point it made Sam squirm in her seat.
Even with her parents' marriage about to crumble apart four hundred miles away, all of her memories of the mornings before school consisted of having breakfast and watching cartoons, especially when she was their age. They were tiny adults as far as she could tell, but even as an adult herself, she knew they were lodged in a whole other world different from her. She drank down the rest of her soy milk.
"Don't you want to like—put some sugar on those oats, or something?" Sam wondered aloud.
"Why?" he asked.
"Plain oats in a bowl of water can't be very appetizing. When I was a kid, and on the mornings I had oatmeal, my dad always jazzed it up with brown sugar or fruit because he knew that there's no way it can be good for a kid."
"But they are. These oats are inexpensive, but sugar is—forget it with brown sugar. I had to bust out a whole five dollars for a bag of that stuff just to satisfy your request for a cup of coffee. Same with the soy milk. I always look out for good deals, even with indulgences such as that. No way I'm wasting fruit on that, either. Cutting it up into pieces and then disposing of the rinds and the cores like that when they could be put to good use? Forget it." She frowned at that. It seemed so strange to her; she remembered that Joey was rather thrifty himself, but he always managed to find a way to make things enjoyable with her. They had a strong bond to boot as well.
"How's the coffee?" Bill curtly asked her.
"Delicious. Nice and warm." But then again, it missed something. The kiss of cream was perfect for her, but it lacked something within. She took another sip to wash down the soy milk and the rest of the cereal, and she stopped right in her tracks when Mattie and Cassie took another bite of porridge in unison. It made her shudder right in her seat, and she picked up her cup so she could go into the other room.
"Where are you going?" Bill asked her, still in a brusque tone of voice.
"I'm just—I'm just—" She could hardly speak.
"No, you sit at the table and finish your coffee. First off, it was expensive, as was that bottle of cream in there. The bag of coffee was five bucks, and the cream was two." Sam almost burst out laughing at that; there was her answer to that. "Second, there's that nice carpet in the living room—you're not spilling coffee on that."
"I won't?" she said with a raise of her eyebrow. He folded his arms across his chest at that and she stayed still there. All the times she had stood up for herself, and when Lars told her to do so that one time given the nature of her very name. She climbed off of the chair and she walked towards the kitchen doorway, when he stepped right before her, still with his arms folded across his chest.
"You're a rebellious little thing, aren't you?"
"Bill, this isn't school," she scoffed as she adjusted one of the straps of her camisole. He shook his head at that.
"Not in front of the girls, please," he told her without moving a muscle.
"They're just tiny adults!" she pointed out with a gesture back to the two little girls at the table, both of whom still moved in robotic fashion. "Look at them!"
"They're children," he insisted and he never raised his voice for a second.
"They don't act like children," she argued.
"Sit down," he commanded, and he never flinched for a moment when he said that.
"Why?"
"Sit down."
"No."
"Sit down or I take your coffee."
"Take it then," she scoffed and she handed him the cup, and she stormed past him into the kitchen. She needn't drink down that cheap coffee, anyways. She needed to get away from those creepy children.
"You splurge on those type of crackers again, I'm locking you in your room," he called after her, to which she whirled around and gaped at him.
"What?" She couldn't resist chuckling at that.
"Yes. I am locking in your room if you splurge on cheese crackers like that again."
"I got those for them!" she insisted, "and what do you—" She laughed at that. "What the hell do you even mean by 'splurge'? They were like a buck fifty! Not even that! They were like seventy five cents each." And he shook his head.
"By the way, you owe me a new glass."
"By the way, how 'bout you buy your own damn glass," she retorted, and he lunged for her right then. He never grabbed her but he did stop her right in her tracks by his mere presence.
"Don't you dare curse at me again, young lady, or I'm really locking you in your room. You're never leaving this house if you curse at me again."
"Like you would," she persisted. "Like you would do such a thing to your precious star student."
"I would," he persisted himself, and with a cold look on his face. She trembled a bit, much like when she scolded at Aurora back on New Year's Eve. The sole exception was that she didn't have the safety net of the telephone and a restaurant in Ithaca around her.
"I most certainly would," he repeated her. She sighed through her nose, and then she realized where she had moved to: they may as well have been in arm's reach.
"By the way, I should tell you that I have friends nearby who might to want to come over at some point," she said in a single breath.
"In fact I might as well just do it now," he replied to that.
"Why?" she demanded, but he never replied to her. "Why, Bill? Why?"
Instead, he almost bumped her with his chest from his standing so close right before her. She staggered back. He kept on moving closer to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted all manner of recyclables stashed away in the corner of the laundry room. The man did not throw anything away.
"Why!" she yelped.
"Get upstairs now. Or I'm tying you up while I'm at it." Sam fixed her straps once more.
"Do you want to see your precious friends again? Get upstairs." He downed the rest of her coffee right then and there. He held the cup right before his chest even though Sam could clearly see on his face that he hated it. Fuming, she stalked back upstairs to the loft.
"Fucking sack of shit," she said aloud as she closed the door right behind her; the joke would be on him, anyways, because the door opened into the room. She returned to the dresser on the other side of the room, right next to her bed, and she picked up her hair brush. The way in which her hair moved through the bristles made her think of Rapunzel.
If her hair grew long enough, to well past her waist, she could in fact hone her in at any given moment in the future. She need not dye her hair blonde, however, but she could in fact behave like Rapunzel. She pictured Testament outside, down on the lawn, and with Joey right before them as well, complete with the guitar before his body. He sang to her to let down her hair: given the very nature of his voice, she knew she could hear him from afar, from thirty feet off of the ground.
She stood there before the dresser when the warm summer breeze blew in through the window next to her.
The very start of August, almost time for the Santa Ana winds, or the Diablo winds as they were referred to up in the northern half of the state, when things were dry as a set of bones and easily set on fire despite the cold piercing feeling of it all. She returned to the thought of Joey, her prince who had come to save her from the tower, from the house upon the windy moors.
She turned her head again and she wondered if Bill would in fact seal her door shut at any given moment. It felt beyond reason, especially given he fretted about buying a bag of crackers for one of his own children: there was no way he would do such a thing, not with her being his supposed star student, unless he was genuinely cruel at heart.
She brushed her hair once more before she turned to the door once again and propped it open.
No way he could do it now: she was alone up there anyway. She left it open as she took her spot at the desk and began on a brand new drawing for herself.
That very thought of Joey down on the grass, with Testament right behind him. Or rather, she figured she would draw Joey solo.
She was near the Los Angeles area again. Somehow, she had to make her way there, and it wasn't until she and Chuck ran into each other at the supermarket when she made a mental note to ask him and Tiffany to take her to an art shop when they swung by the house in the next week. She also made a note to call up Marla again when things became quiet again at the house.
But things remained rather quiet downstairs all the while, such that she had no clue as to whether the girls left for school already and Bill had left the house as well. She waited until the winds picked up some more before she headed on back downstairs to the kitchen for some more cheap coffee.
Regardless of it being cheap, she brewed herself a new cup with a little kiss of cream. She yearned to have coffee with Joey again, and she yearned to have coffee with Alex at some point. So much more to that boy than she had originally assumed before, and she was about to see more of him when the time came. Something behind that cool demeanor and she wished to see it as she stood at the kitchen sink and she sipped on her cup.
Every day since Sam saw Chuck at the supermarket, and given school had already started despite the very heart of summer, for the whole five days a week, she always took to the desk in her room. Whenever she opened her drawer for one of her pencils, she always saw that piece of rice paper at the very bottom. Every so often, and careful not to damage the delicate nature of the paper, she slipped it out of the bottom for a better look at Alex's signature and his handwriting.
Almost three years she had had this piece of paper with her and it felt like a whole eternity ago back to the time Cliff was alive.
When she could make her way up to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit that field again, just to get a sense of his presence, to feel the mere memory of it all again even with his body incinerated and cast about that grass, was a whole other question. Metallica themselves were still up there, as far as she knew anyway. Meanwhile, she had no real means of driving up there, and she held out the hope that something would crop up and serve as her ticket out of there.
At one point, on Friday afternoon, she had considered calling up Marla again to find out if she had landed something at the school. But then again, if she did, then Bill would have said something to her about money. But then again, he kept the whole thing to himself. In the meantime, she wondered what she could wear that night when they came to pick her up the next week. Indeed, she wondered how they would even come to the house as well, given Bill dismissed the whole thing on that first morning.
She hoped to see Chuck again at some point between that day and the next Friday as she made her way down the block to the supermarket again for another sandwich and some better coffee. She had her own money to herself but she could see how Bill fretted about that sort of thing.
Every time she broke even with a dollar, she pocketed the change. There had to be something more to the house, however: if there were all manner of old books there, there had to be something more, like an empty jar given how much he worried about money and ridding of things. Or so she figured if that first morning was anything to go by.
When she returned to the house and she made her way back upstairs, she thought about that night in the following week. She recalled that Bill never replied to her suggestion that friends could come over when they so felt like it, and thus she could only assume that he disallowed it.
Or perhaps he did allow it, however he never said anything, much like how he never said anything about what carried importance such as money. She set down her things and then doubled back down the stairs for the cordless phone, and she returned once more up the stairs for Chuck's number. She sat down at her desk and she dialed it; at the same time, she had no idea if he was even home back up in the Bay Area.
And yet, it didn't even ring once.
"Hello, hello?"
"Hey, Chuck, it's Sam."
"Oh, hey! I was just thinking 'bout you, um—hang on a second—"
"Sure, sure."
He disappeared and in his wake, a hissing noise emerged on his end, such that it made her move the phone back from her ear.
"Yeah, just like that," he said in the background, and someone behind him chuckled. He returned to the phone right then. "Sorry—I'm making chorizo for Alex, Greg, and Louie right now. Complete with homemade tortillas, too."
"Oh, my god, that sounds so delicious."
Someone behind him said something.
"It's Miss Samantha," he told them.
"Hi, Sam!" Greg shouted in the background.
"Hey, Sam!" Louie chimed in.
"Hi, Samantha!" Alex followed suit in that big voice.
"They all say 'hi'."
"Hi, fellas!" she said, and she couldn't resist the smile on her face.
"Hi, fellas," he echoed her, and they both laughed out loud. There was a metallic clink and then he returned to her again. "Anyways, how's it going?"
"Um—listen about the Death Angel show next week—you guys might hell of a time getting here."
"Why's that?"
"Um—are they right behind you?"
"Yeah."
"Can you guys keep a secret?"
"I can." He turned his attention to the three of them again. "Can you guys keep a secret between all of you?"
"I can," said Alex.
"Yeah, I can, too." The sound of Louie's voice made her think of what he told her about Zelda in the hotel room. The secret was out of the bag as well, and she wondered if Louie even could keep a secret as dire as that from someone, anyone, especially if that someone was Joey.
"I'll try to," Greg confessed.
"D'you get all that?" Chuck asked her.
"Yeah."
"Wish we had like a speaker or something to hook the phone up to," she heard Greg say, and Louie laughed out loud at that.
"Okay, so. It's not complicated, but my counselor—whom I came out here with for my senior project—apparently—kinda—sorta—married me."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. When Marla and I came out here earlier this week, he made me sign some things, and they were like concealed so I couldn't see what they were, and apparently they were nuptial papers."
"Oh, my god—is he even allowed to do that?"
"What is it?" Greg inquired from the background.
"When she and Marla came out here the other day, her counselor made her sign some papers and they were apparently for marriage. Like he duped her into it."
"Is that even legal?" she heard Alex ask him.
"I dunno," Chuck confessed, "doesn't sound legal." And then he returned to her. "So what does have to do with the show?"
"He is so—cheap and controlling."
"The dude's a control freak," he told them.
"Total control freak," she corrected him.
"Total control freak," he echoed her.
"He actually threatened to bar me in my room!" she exclaimed.
"He actually threatened—wait, what?"
"Yeah! He threatened to seal me in my room if I spend money on certain things."
"The guy actually threatened to lock her in her room if she even so much as spends money," he relayed back to them.
"What the actual fuck," Louie blurted out.
"Yeah, I don't get it, either," she confessed. "I tried to stand up to him—"
"She tried to stand up to him," he relayed it back to them.
"—and he like bullied me into submission. Like—literally backed me into a corner."
"Just totally backed her into a corner."
"God," one of them muttered in the background.
"I kind of worry about you guys coming over here, to be perfectly honest." She sighed through her nose and bowed her head a little bit. It was the truth: she didn't know if they could in fact break through to him, that is if they could. There was another metallic clink, followed by another loud hiss of the chorizo in the frying pan, and then it went away.
"Off the heat, boys," Chuck told them, and then he returned to the phone again. "You said he's cheap, too?"
"Like, really cheap," she replied. "I spent a dollar fifty on a couple of little bags of crackers for his two daughters and he yelled at me for that."
Silence on their end.
"Chuck?" she asked him. "Are you there?"
"Sam, I will swim in that lake and burrow under the house if I have to," he vowed.
"No, don't do that," she told him. "Don't, Chuck. Please don't."
"No, he's gonna be dealing with a guy who rides big bikes in his spare time," he continued.
"Most badass—" Alex cleared his throat and then he leaned in closer to the phone. "Chuck is the most badass Native American since Sitting Bull. Mark my words, Samantha."
"Uh, yeah, what he said," Chuck quipped. "That sick bastard's not going to want to mess with me. I'm sure he wouldn't mess with Joey, either. Mr. Hockey Player. Hockey player who knows how to fight dirty."
The mention of Joey's name made her close her eyes. She had only been away from New York for less than a week and yet she missed him so much, as if he had slipped through her fingers like grains of sand.
"Sam?" he asked her.
"I'm still here."
"By the way, why does she wanna swear us to secrecy?" Greg called from the background.
"Yeah, why are we sworn to secrecy about it?" Chuck asked her.
"I don't want Joey to worry about it," she told him.
"She doesn't want Joey to worry about her."
"He should probably know about that sort of thing, though," Louie pointed out from behind him. "You know, her being his girl and everything."
"I don't know, to be honest," Sam confessed, and she had to stop herself from laughing at that sentiment. "I'd rather he'd just miss me."
"D'you hear that absolute statement, Lou?" Chuck asked with a bit of a snicker.
"I did, yeah." Sam thought about Louie, and she knew that she had to call up Zelda at some point as well. Marla did advise her to call either of them in any instance whatsoever.
"Besides, Joey has enough to worry about, I would think," she pointed out.
"Oh, yeah, he definitely does," Chuck answered to that, "Anthrax are in the studio right now. Or—no. They went on tour—just yesterday, actually. Brand new tour, too! But—it would make sense, though. But—you want us to keep it all under wraps, though. So we gotta honor that wish."
"Yeah, I won't tell a soul," Alex promised from the background, and she remembered that he didn't really have anyone to talk to about that sort of thing anyway.
"I still want to come along to the show, though," she insisted. "You know, I wanna see Death Angel, and I wanna see you guys, though."
"She still wants to come along with me and Tiff to the show," Chuck echoed her. "By the way, you coming with us, Alex?"
"Yeah, I might as well. Don't really have anything better to do at the moment except sit on my butt and read."
"Don't blame her," Greg said, "I don't blame her one bit. I'm coming along, too."
"I don't, either!" Chuck proclaimed. "She wants to get away from that mother fucker and out of that damn house." He then returned to her. "We'll figure out how to get you out of there," he promised her.
"I can always do a Rapunzel sort of thing," she suggested, "like let down a rope of sorts and climb out the window."
He laughed out loud at that. A big hearty laugh that made her smile in response.
"I dunno if push will come to shove in that instance, but we'll figure something out, though."
"Enjoy that chorizo, by the way!" she declared; ever so faintly, she heard the front door open.
"Oh, they are," Chuck assured her, "especially Alex. A little too well, might I add."
"This is damn good, though," Alex insisted in a muffled voice.
"Before I go," Sam started again, "you mentioned Anthrax are doing a brand new tour and a new album soon?"
"Yeah! Uh—State of Euphoria, I think it's called."
"I like that," she told him, and she smiled again, that time out of a time gone by her. "When's it coming out?"
"September, I think? I'll have to ask Charlie the next time I see him."
"Anyways, I gotta go," she told him.
"Okay—we'll come and get you Friday night. Don't know how but we're gonna do it, though."
"Gonna get you away from that pig," Alex called from the background.
"What he said!" Chuck said again. "You be careful until then, little Sammich."
"Yeah, you guys have a good weekend."
They hung up at the same time, and it was right then, she had no clue what was about to go down that weekend. She sighed through her nose as the silence fell over the bottom floor. The door propped open and she couldn't hear anything what was going on down there. She stood to her feet but she lingered there by the chair. She listened closely to the silence from downstairs.
It was tempting. It was tempting to walk out of her room and listen to what was being said down there, in the softest of voices.
And she bought into the temptation to an extent.
She stood within the doorway and she turned her head to the side to better hear them. All the shows she had gone to in the past never damaged her ears as much as the silence from downstairs, silence penetrated only by the intermittent soft voices of two small girls. The noise never damaged her ears, anyway, given she always wore ear plugs.
Careful not to make any more noise, she crept over to the top of the stairs and she stood there with her back to the wall. Mattie and Cassie's voices echoed up the first stairwell from downstairs. She wished to see what they were doing there at the very bottom floor. But she had no idea as to how to do such a thing without jarring them for even one second.
She closed her eyes and she pictured Chuck, Alex, Greg, and Louie in a small warm kitchen up in the Bay Area somewhere, all congregated around a small table and with plates of fresh spicy chorizo and homemade flour tortillas rested upon their laps. So simple, and yet she wondered how those little girls down below would react to it.
She thought about Alex and his cold stone face, the way he was so mature despite his youthful age and the gray streak on his head only added to it. She was able to crack through to him a bit, but these two girls felt like a challenge, especially with Bill never too far away from there as well.
Sam thought about her first weekend there, given they had started school so early.
Then she heard one of the two girls mutter, "Amen."
She opened her eyes at the sound of that. They had come home and whispered a lengthy prayer. She never saw a cross anywhere in that house.
Alex's parents may have been non traditional Jewish but he wore a yarmulke and a Star of David once in a while: they probably celebrated Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah to boot, too. But to hear that word only brought up more questions about this little family here before her.
The front door opened again.
"Hello, father," one of them said in a flat voice. If it was Sam and Ruben, she would've been overjoyed to see him at the front door.
"Hello, girls," Bill greeted them; his voice floated up such that if Sam moved a little closer to the railing down below, he probably would have seen her. But she moved forward a little bit, and she made out the sight of his blond hair near the front door. "Did you say your prayers?"
"Yes."
"Did you read your scripture?"
There was that one instance during Anthrax's tour of New York City the year before, that morning where those women who walked by her and Zelda and they called their music Satanic as they kept on walking. Indeed, come the next Friday, she was about to see a band called Death Angel with three guys from a band called Testament; the only thing to make it even more potent was to have Exodus there with them as well. She squirmed in her spot there on the stairs and her stomach turned at that thought.
"Have you done your homework yet?"
Sam frowned at that.
"They're elementary school age," she muttered. "Why would they have homework?"
One of the girls said something that she couldn't hear.
"Well, remember, the Lord is always on your side, especially on the bus rides to the school."
And then it dawned on her. They started school so early because they went to a religious private one rather than a public, and ultimately free, one. No wonder he was so stingy with money!
She began to wonder if Marla had said anything to the people at the school about his still being on the payroll. If she did, then he would be removed from it.
And then he would lose his money and his sole income as far as she knew. Therein lay his reason for why he was so cheap. It worried him so that he was willing to become cruel to Sam herself. The whole thought made her heart hammer inside of her chest, and yet she couldn't speak to him about that sort of thing. He forbade her from speaking about it.
Instead, she ducked back into her room and she clasped her hands to her head. She didn't know what to say right then, either, and Chuck, Alex, Greg, and Louie already had it out for the guy, too, after his threat to seal her away in her room. Add to this, she knew that there was no way she could feel okay with his being cruel to her, either.
All she could do was wait out the weekend and maintain an appearance to herself. If something happened at the school, surely it would remain a secret as well.
"Miss Shelley?" he called from the second floor, such that it jarred her, and she dropped the cordless phone. She scooped it up and she stuck it under her mattress.
"Are you home?"
"Yes!" she called back.
"Okay, good. I need you to make dinner tonight."
She surfaced from the room right then, and he stood there at the landing beneath her.
"What would you like?" she asked him.
"I found some really good deals on pasta—there's a couple of boxes awaiting you in the kitchen. And then just some sauce."
"Okay! Sounds easy enough."
He nodded but he never smiled at her.
The whole entire time she made dinner, she thought of Chuck in that kitchen up north. She considered tossing in a little bit of spices into the vodka sauce to liven it up a bit, but the one spice she found in the cupboard above the stove was cinnamon. Indeed, as she made up that pan of sauce, she took the jar down from the rack and she unscrewed the lid.
Not true ground cinnamon, but the very aroma of it reminded her of Cliff. How she yearned to have a cup of Mexican hot chocolate again, and how she wished to see him again.
Soon, dinner was ready and she served the plates to Mattie and Cassie, both of whom awaited her with their hands in their laps. After her realization, she felt a little more sympathetic towards them as she set the plates before them both.
They never thanked her but they picked up their forks and ate in unison once she and Bill took their seats in silence. He glanced up at her with a thoughtful look on his face.
"This is quite good," he told her with his hand up by his mouth. "Excellent, actually. It needs a little salt, but it's good, though."
Neither of the girls said anything but they did help her clear the table afterwards. Later, she turned in for the night with a new perspective on it all.
But at the same time, she needed to get away from that house. Away from the tightness of it all, especially since they were probably of the crowd that saw Testament and Anthrax as the music of Lucifer herself.
On Sunday morning, the three of them left for church, and even though Bill offered her to attend along with them, she turned it down given she didn't believe in the same things they did, either. Instead, she took her seat there at her desk with the cordless in hand and she dialed Marla's number.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Marla."
"Oh, hey, Sam! How's it going?"
"Alright, I guess. I ran into Chuck the other day—he, Tiff, Alex, and Greg are all gonna take me to see Death Angel down in L.A. this Friday."
"Cool! Um, listen—I wasn't able to get a job at the school, as of yet. I got put on a waiting list for something, though, and Bel got me an interview at the glass studio she works at. Commutes to Albany are tough but I think I can do it, though. But I was able to tell Mrs. Robinson, mine and Bel's old counselor, about Bill still being listed on the payroll. She told me that's going to be rectified at the end of the month, like they have to send out the final check in two weeks and then he gets a notice on the fourth week."
"Listen, about that—"
"Oh?"
"Apparently Bill's daughters go to a private religious school. He literally doesn't say shit about this sort of thing with me, but my guess is it's a bit pricey. Those payroll checks were the only way he's able to send them off there."
"Oh, shit," Marla blurted out.
"Yeah."
"Well, he's gonna have to do something else, though. After the way he treated you and me both, and after he legitimately threatened to lock you in your room!"
"How'd you find out about—" Sam stopped. And she closed her eyes. "Louie," she muttered with her head tilted back away from the phone, and she returned it to her ear.
"Sam, you can't let him get under your skin like that!"
"I feel kinda bad about it, though."
"He'll figure something out, though. If he was able to maintain a spot on payroll this whole entire time after he got fired, he can figure something out for him and his girls."
"They're creepy, by the way," Sam confessed.
"They are? How so?"
"First off, they don't behave like little girls. They sit quietly at the dining room table before breakfast and dinner, like they don't even talk to each other. And they eat simultaneously, too, like completely in sync with each other. It's really weird, like unsettling, I want to say. Everything is really strict here—like really strict. Alex grew up in a bit of a sheltered household, but I doubt it was anything like this. It's all because of the whole faith thing and also because of the whole money issue, too. I imagine that getting worse when he gets kicked off of the payroll for good, too."
"Ew." Marla shuddered on her end. "Besides, how're the boys even gonna come and get you on Friday night? Because I remember how that place is laid out. There's no way around it."
"I have no clue. Chuck even told me he has no idea. But—you know." Sam rolled her eyes at what she was about to tell her. "I have faith in those guys, though."
Marla giggled at that.
"Yeah, I have faith that they're gonna have faith in themselves."
Marla laughed some more at that. It was good to hear her laugh again, even if it was for a few moments.
Over the course of that week, Sam made more art for herself, until Friday night came about. She had set aside her nice black blouse, the same top she wore when she saw Testament and Stormtroopers of Death both the first time around, and her black jeans, which had gotten rather low slung with the passage of time so they accentuated the curvature of her hips and ultimately her body. Testament themselves were going to be all that she had that night as well: the best she could do was sneak out of the house and meet up with Chuck and Tiffany at the property past the house.
The sun began to hang low over the tree line and the haze from the Los Angeles area not too far away from there.
Bill and the girls were downstairs doing some kind of study with their Bibles, which meant she had to use the back door to get out of there. But even if she used the back door, she still had to go past the living room and within their line of sight. No makeup on her face lest he question her for a second, but she had to time it right.
She reached the second landing of the stairs and Bill said something to the girls. A rustling noise and she knew that he had stood up.
"Shit," she muttered. They were waiting for her outside—she didn't even have to look out the window in order to know that they awaited her—and yet she had no way out of there without a bit of inquiry. Sam returned to the loft on the third floor so as to gather her bearings and rethink things.
The front door then opened. Bill said something.
"Is Sam here?"
Greg!
Sam gasped and she hurried down the first flight of stairs at that moment.
"I'm—here to see her?" he replied; she reached that top landing where she spotted Bill before the doorway with his hands pressed to his hips. Greg looked so funny there in the doorway with him, that long beautiful dark hair down over his chest and the little stubble of a mustache over his upper lip, and his slender body wrapped in a black T shirt and low slung black jeans.
Like a dark version of Jesus himself.
"Well, she has a lot of work to do, son," Bill sneered at him.
"No, no, it's okay, Bill!" Sam called out to him from the landing. He turned his attention to her with a finger pointed up to her.
"You have a lot of work to do, young lady—get back up there." Greg widened his eyes at that.
"Well, I can take a break, can't I?" Sam pointed out. Bill shut the door right on Greg's face, to which followed a loud "ow! That was right on my nose!"
"Get back in your room," he ordered.
"Don't slam the door on his face!" she yelled as she stormed back upstairs to the loft. She shook her head as she made her way to the window. Out there, on the block right behind the house as it ran along the lake's edge, she spotted Greg as he walked on back to the low two door hatch back royal blue car over there. Chuck awaited him on the outside of the car. From a distance, she watched Greg shake his head.
"Damn," he declared as he rubbed his nose. "Got me good, too!"
"Well, fuck," Chuck said.
"Well, we've got to get her out of there somehow," she heard Alex tell them from the back seat; even from upstairs and a distance, she could hear his big loud voice. "Show's about to start in like an hour."
"What!" Chuck was stunned at that.
"Yeah, dude! It's seven fifteen!"
"Shit!"
"Hey, there she is!" Tiffany called from the passenger seat. Chuck and Greg turned to the window and Sam waved both arms at them.
"Gotta get her out of there," she heard Chuck tell them. There was a pause as she looked on at him, just like Rapunzel. If only there was a way in which she could tell him that the way out was through the back door, and she was close to it as well. Greg said something, which was then followed by another pause.
"Hang on, I got an idea," she heard Chuck tell them. "Greg, come with me—this is gonna get us killed but it's gonna get her out of there, though." He got off of the side of the car and the two of them walked along the road, along the lake's edge. Sam knitted her eyebrows together as she watched Chuck and Greg all the way to the back of the house.
"Wait here," Chuck said to Greg, and he turned his attention to her. "Meet him here at the back door."
She nodded her head at that, and she doubled back to the door with her purse over her shoulder.
Another knock on the front door.
"Who is that now?" Bill grumbled as Sam reached the second stairwell again. When his back was turned to her, she hurried down the next flight of stairs to the very bottom. He opened the door only to see Chuck right there, dressed in heavy black leather and with a red and white feather attached to one side of his head.
"Peek a boo!" Chuck lunged for him.
"JEEZ!"
Sam made a run for it right there to the back door. Right in her line of sight. Greg awaited her out there.
She jiggled the door handle. Locked!
"Son of a bitch," she muttered, but then she turned her attention back to the front door right as Bill shut it. She ducked into the kitchen and the window there over there sink. Greg nodded at her from outside. She opened the window and, with one foot on the sink basin and her other foot right out the window, she climbed through. She poked her head out, followed by her arm.
"Greg!" she called out to him and he hurried over to help her out.
"You got me?" she asked him as he took her hand and set a hand on her knee.
"Yeah. You got it?"
"I think so—" It was a struggle given she almost slipped on the sink basin but she managed to take her other foot through the window. She climbed out through the kitchen window and she landed onto Greg's slender little body. They fell on the grass in unison, and he groaned at the feeling.
"You okay?" she asked him as she lifted herself up into a push up position.
"Yeah." He gasped for air and he gazed up at her with a goofy grin on his face.
"Hey, Sam hill," he greeted her, and that brought a laugh out of her.
"Sam hill, is that what you called her?" Chuck laughed along from the side of the house.
"What in the sam hill is going on 'round here?" she laughed as well. She helped Greg to his feet and then she led him out of the back yard and into the street. The three of them ran back to the car right as the setting sun touched the tree line on the far side of the lake.
"Let's get you the hell out of here," Chuck advised her as he took the keys out of his pocket. Sam reached the passenger door behind Tiffany and she poked her head into the back window where Alex awaited them.
"Alex?" He leaned forward and greeted her with a big toothy grin.
"Hey—" He froze right in his tracks with those deep eyes wide with fear despite the sun.
"What's the matter?"
"What's wrong, Alex?" Tiffany wondered aloud.
He pursed his lips together and held still, and then he bowed his head a bit.
"Very slowly—look—over—there," he said through gritted teeth and without moving a muscle. Sam turned her attention to across the edge of the lake to the back door of the house, where Bill stood there with his hands pressed to his hips.
"Get in the car!" Greg shouted. "Get in! Get in!"
Alex scooted over and Tiffany leaned the seat forward for Sam and Greg.
"We gotta go," Chuck declared as he climbed into the driver's seat, "—we gotta go—we gotta go—we gotta go!"
He fired up the car and they lunged forward down the street, only to find it was a cul de sac.
"What the hell!" Alex declared, but they were quick to make the turn around in there, all past the small houses there at the end.
"Hang on, everyone—" Chuck called back as Alex, Sam, and Greg leaned to the side with the turning. But then they doubled back down the street as fast as they could to the next block over. They kept on going until they past the supermarket. Out of breath, Sam leaned back in her seat.
"We out of sight?" Tiffany asked him.
"I think so," Chuck assured her as they proceeded on to the heart of town. "Didn't look like he can get very far, either."
"No, there's no way he's getting very far," Sam added from the safety of the back seat and from in between Alex and Greg.
"That was intense," Greg admitted.
"Very much so," Sam added. "I wanna thank you guys, though. I couldn't be happier to be here right now. You guys are all I've got right now tonight."
"Yeah, we get to hang out for real now!" Alex said with a twinkle in his eye.
"Oh, yes, it's all fun and games now from here on out!" Chuck declared as he reached for something in the center console. "Little pre show ritual, ladies—and gentlemen. Some Motorhead to set the mood!"
She pictured Marla running down the street in Manhattan to those fast drums on that first song "Overkill". They drove along fast to it, especially once they reached the freeway and began towards the heart of Los Angeles against the sunset. She nestled down in between Alex and Greg all the while: add to this, not only did her parents not know about it, but Joey didn't, either. And it was right at that moment, as the wind fluttered through their hair and Lemmy's growl sliced through the noise of the road underneath them, that she realized she had become a true bad girl.