✔️The Greaser and the Skirtchaser [18+]

39. A Terrible Kidnapping Job

Zietta had comforted him for twenty minutes more, tried to get him to come to her home, so she could give him something to eat, but he said he couldn't. He thanked Zietta about a million times for the lily, but she smacked him on the arm every time he did.

When he told her that he had to go, she said she had to go see her husband. Zietta added on that she was making him jealous by talking to such a handsome young man. She burst out laughing at her own joke as they parted ways. Blake had to come back to his old man's house by that point.

The house was clean when he walked in. The smell, the bottles, the trash—gone. The furniture had been cleaned, too, but some were missing like the couch and his old man's bed. Blake did a onceover of everything and found everything unbelievably pristine except for a thin layer of dust on everything. He didn't know who was supposed to clean this—whether the state hired a cleaning service or what—but they really scrubbed the place.

The last room he inspected was his own. Blake opened his door which seemed to have been replaced, and he noticed that the roll of film wasn't on top of the window before he noticed that all of his furniture was missing. He hadn't reacted to anything in the house until he saw that the stupid green case wasn't there anymore.

Blake didn't know why he left it here. He wasn't planning to come back. He wasn't planning to throw away the picture. But he knew he shouldn't take it with him.

So, he left it in this hellhole for some reason. What, did he think that it would stay there forever, untouched? If he wanted to save it, then he should've hidden it somewhere better. That was stupid of him. Real stupid of him. Now, the one thing he wanted from this place was gone.

Why would he want the picture anyway? He grimaced. He shouldn't cling to things like that.

Blake set his suitcase in his bedroom because he didn't want to put it in his old man's room. He sat down on it wondering what to do since he couldn't do anything but wait for word back from the state. Wait for whatever guy to show up. Assume whatever debts his old man had. Sell the house at the lowest price. Chuck the money at some orphanage. Get out of here.

Blake didn't want to run into someone he knew because God knew he couldn't take an encounter like that. It was a damn miracle that Blake had only run into a very nice woman at the cemetery, but people had seen him. God, people were probably gonna come to visit, so they could talk about it with each other after Sunday service or some crap. This was probably the most interesting thing to happen to Northfield in a million years. Blake Coleman was back, and he was run-down as hell. Everyone, come look.

He got up and went to call Jenny. He knew he should do that. He went to the landline, but he realized that it was dead. Yeah, of course. No one was paying the bills.

Blake left and routed toward the nearest phone booth on Main. No, the one on Cullen; there wouldn't be a lot of people there. But it was a phone booth, so there would probably be people looking to use it. Blake would... probably have an uncomfortable conversation over there. He sighed. He still had to call Jenny.

He left his house in his work clothes but with the top button undone and the bowtie left out—the same that he wore to the cemetery. He felt silly wearing his work clothes out, but he didn't have anything but dress shirts and trousers since he hadn't had a chance to go to a laundromat or anything. He also no longer had water or electricity to run his washing machine. Northfield didn't have a laundromat, so Blake would have to wait until he came to Resthaven to clean his damn clothes.

He was just more and more annoyed by the time he got to the damn phone booth, and he reached into his pocket to get a nickel, and damn it, he only had quarters and dimes. He shoved the receiver back on the hook and started to look in his other pocket for a goddamn nickel when he heard a shout.