But I Can't Wait For You To Change, No, I Can't Wait Another Day, Everything You Do Makes Me Crazy For You, Baby, I Can't Wait

--"I Can't Wait", Maggie Gyllenhaal

I've always had a theory about a people. I've always thought that the shortest distance between any two people is an angle. Even when someone says he doesn't want anything, he wants something. He might not know it, he might not believe it, but nobody gets involved in anyone else's business without expecting some kind of payoff.

Sometimes that payoff is in mutual respect.

Sometimes it's in something murkier.

I walked into Maclay's, this local Irish pub that I'd been frequenting since it seemed birth. I was supposed to meet The Duchess, sometime friend, but most of the time pain in my side. She had left a message on the machine saying she had finally done it, she had finally had gotten the big score she had always been after. I knew better than to believe her. She had burned me before. I had every intention of staying home tonight and letting her spin her wheels with somebody else. I didn't want to get involved. Not again. Not ever again.

But the thing about The Duchess was she had my angle. She knew my weakness and she had been using that weakness to keep our friendship alive for many years now.

Tonight was no different.

I had probably played that message five times. The first time I had been steadfast in my refusal. No way in hell I told myself. No way in hell. The second time I repeated that I wasn't about to let this happen again. She had used up all of her good grace and then some the last time she had told me to meet her. The third time I actually shut the door to my bedroom and forced myself to get ready for bed. The fourth time is when the doubt started to creep in. What if she really could pay me back? What then? Where was the harm in meeting her? If I didn't like what she had to say I would just leave. The fifth time I played the message I had already started to get dressed.

You've got to take a look at what I scored, Hokes. You ain't going to believe. I did it. I really did it. Meet me at Maclay's tonight at eleven. You just have to see.

I took a stool at the counter. I turned my back away from the bartender. There was no reason to get myself any more deeply involved than I had to. I'd give her ten minutes at the most and then I'd be out of here. I surveyed the bar. Not many regulars had made it out for a Wednesday night, but there were a few familiar faces. Happy Jack had his usual table in the corner. Mary and her sister, Margaret, from down the block had also popped in. I scanned for The Duchess, but came up empty.

This was just like her, I thought. The thing about her was you couldn't trust much of anything you said. If she told you the sky was blue, you could be sure it was gray. If she told you water was wet, you could be sure that it was dry. And if she ever told you she could pay you back the ten thousand she had sworn she was good for, then more likely than not she was not. The other thing you had to know about her was that she had herself convinced so much about her lies that she could always convince you too.

She wasn't a bad person. She simply wasn't very good at much is all. People helped her out because, if they didn't, there was little chance she would get by. That was the God's honest truth about her situation.

Yet it wasn't my sympathy for her that was my weakness. It wasn't because I felt sorry for her that made me constantly put myself in harm's way to help her out. I mean--I liked the gal and all, but I had never put myself out for people I had trusted half as much as her. My weakness was the weakness of all men. I had a secret. The Duchess knew that secret and, as long as she did, I was hers. I would do whatever it was I could to stay on her good side. Yeah, she knew my weakness.

In fact, she knew my weakness very well.

They were cousins.

I felt the tapping on my shoulder before I even realized the bartender was standing right behind me. I turned around slowly as not to look directly at her.

"Hello, weakness," I said to Matty, giving her my best smile.

I had known Matryoshka Kapelovich for all my life. She was from around the neighborhood--Matty from the block, if you will. We had gone to the same schools, attended the same church, hung out at the same vacant lots we weren't supposed to, and, apparently, had become great friends over the years. Imagine my surprise. She was a beauty to be sure--dark reddish-brown hair, baby blue eyes, and the rosiest cheeks you could imagine. She was also a pistol. She had it in for me from day one. It seemed her mission in life was to forever put me in my place and never let me escape it. If I told her I had just ran all the way from home to see her, she would tell me to go ahead run all the way back. If I told her she looked pretty that day, she would tell me that I still looked like crap. Every inch I gained with her was hard-fought and always frought with hurt feelings somewhere. Like I said, the fact we had become close friends over the years continues to mystify me to this day.

What you also need to realize is that when I was a boy I didn't like her at all. Nope, I lost my heart to her best friend, Rachel Staite, a long time before I lost it to Matty. It was always the three of us palling around. Sometimes she would invite her cousin, The Duchess, to join us, but those times were few and far between. I don't know if I loved Rachel exactly, but Matty and I both agree that it was probably the closest I've ever come to that feeling. I was probably too young to be in love. In fact, I'm sure of it. But those were some good times I had with Rachel. And they were some good times I had with Matty as well.

I have a picture of Matty taken while the three of us had gone up with her grandparents to their lake house. I took the picture while Rachel had called to her from off to the right. It's one of the rare times that I captured her smiling. I don't tell her this but I keep a copy of it on my shelf in my den behind a picture of Rachel and I. I keep it there because it's the last time I can recall her ever being that happy.



Before Rachel died.

Before I killed Rachel.

"Fucking Hokes, to what do I owe the pleasure?" she asked me, returning her hand to polishing the glass in front of her.

"Besides the gracious company?" I teased. "I'm just waiting for The Duchess."

"And what have you got my cousin involved into this time?"

"Hey, Matty, you've got it backwards. She's the one calling the shots this time."

"A likely story," she said before she was called away by another patron.

After we laid Rachel to rest, I didn't want to be around Matty for obvious reasons. The boundaries of my perversity stopped short of comforting the cousin of the girl I had allowed to die. Besides, I had my own problems to deal with. My family hadn't exactly been pleased with the turn of events. I had lived up to my reputation and failed them too.

I was supposed to have taken care of Rachel, simple and clean. She had seen something she wasn't supposed to see and it had been my job to make sure didn't talk. It was my job to basically insure she never talked again. I thought I could do it. Cruelty ran in my family so I assumed, when the time came, I could call it up like I could so much else.

The time came.

And I chickened out. I couldn't kill Rachel. She was too pure. Too innocent. Too young.

I told her to run. Forget her parents. Just start running and never come back. I thought that would make her safe.

It hadn't.

They had found her. They had found me. And I had to watch as they literally ripped her to pieces. She died never understanding why she had to die. Or how I had felt about her.

She had died and I had killed her. I couldn't save her and she had died because of it. It was my fault.

My family kicked me out. They had allowed me to live, but never again would I be a part of them. I had been exiled forever. My life from that point on consisted of learning how to live on my own and only for myself. I didn't exactly have the luxury of being picky how I made my money, where I lived, or who I chose to trust. My family kicked me out and from that point on I considered myself my own boss.

A few minutes later, after the action in the bar had died a bit, she came to check on me again.

"Staying out of trouble, Hokes?"

"Trouble knows better and stays out of my way, Matty."

"And yet you always seem to end up neck-deep in it, don't you?"

"It's a talent."

"Too bad it's not a talent you can get paid for or else you'd be a rich man."

"I'm too good for money."

"Hmmm. Too good for your own money, maybe. But you don't seem to have any problems with everybody else's."

"Speaking of which..."

I heard Matty laugh in that spiteful, sarcastic she has of doing it. Then she walked away from me once more.

It had been a full fifteen minutes and still no Duchess. I told myself to cut bait and walk away. Due dilligence had been given and I didn't believe enough in her to really believe she would pay me back. It was a fool's errand to have even come, I thought.

I was just about to get up when I noticed Matty glance at me out of the side of her eyes. They didn't exactly plead me to stay, but it was enough to get me to do it anyway.

After my family disowned me, I had nowhere to go. I had started to live in the same vacant lots that I had played in only a few years prior. I made due with hiding away in a tent beyond the neighbor's fence and begging for food during the day. Then came the stealing when people weren't home. Finally, I got so desperate I started taking to full-blown robbery.

That's when Matty stepped in. By that point, she was already halfway through college and making decent money at her uncle's bar, the one The Duchess was always too scatter-brained to manage properly. She had taken over the books and then had become a full-time manager.

It wasn't much and it was more than I could have expected from her, but she gave me a place to stay during my days and a hot meal or two when I really needed it. She even let me stay in the bar when the weather had been bad.

What followed after that were a few late nights while she totalling up at the end of the night where she and I just talked about things. We talked about what my next move was. We talked about her plans for the future. But mostly we talked about Rachel. How she was better than all of us by leaps and bounds.

I never saw it happen. I never realized it could happen but I found myself caring about her more than I should have.

Her regular bartender finally shoved his way through the front door. After taking him in the back for a few minutes, he took his place behind the bar, and she came around to sit beside me.

"I don't know what's going on with her."

"Worried?"

"Always."

"Well, don't. She seems to have stumbled into something great."

"Great for her could mean a stolen car or worse."

"I always keep on eye on her, don't I?"

"Like the blind watching the blind."

"I've kept her alive this long, haven't I?"

"True."

"I promise you, she'll be fine, Matty. Scout's honor."

"You weren't no scout."

"Well, I could've been."

"Girl Scout maybe."

I don't know if it's because she was always been nice to me or that I've always found her beautiful, but it became apparent that there would be no way I could continue to be around her and not want to be with her all the time. She was like raw meat. I couldn't be around her and not want to devour her.

There came a point where I told her the truth. I told her what I was and what I was capable of. I told her all about my family. Explaining the arcane rules, the bodies we had digging into our conscience, the restless nights worrying about when we would be discovered took almost half of that night and well into the next morning. I told her about the literal monster I was and the monster that she needed to avoid.

She didn't flinch. Not one bit.

She took it all in as if I were explaining I had dyslexia. She merely got up poured us both cups of coffee and sat down again.

"Is that all?"

I had nodded and expected her to start yelling. Instead, she grabbed my hand, started stroking it, and looked deep into my eyes with something I had never seen before.

She kissed me sweetly and longingly, with an aching that apparently had been building for a couple of years yet. I returned the kiss with the passion I felt for her. We sat inside the bar for a few minutes, the heat between us finally allowed an outlet. It didn't take long before I felt awkward, almost guilty somehow. I broke off my lips from hers. I watched her open her eyes and stare back at me. And that's when I saw the look in her eyes again.

Pity. Utter pity. She looked at me as if she felt sorry for me and that I was a cause to be championed. Well, I didn't want her pity and I didn't want her charity so I walked out right then and there. I could have let her help me. I could have allowed the feelings to develop to their natural conclusion.

But why mess up your life with paltry thing like happiness, I always say.

I moved out on my own, found a real job in the repossesion business, and stopped accepting her charity. It's been a few years. A lot has changed. Some things haven't, I guess. Maybe something like real love for her and I is in the cards, but I think otherwise.

"Tell your cousin I came and went. If she still wants to see me she can find me at home," I said, getting up.

"I wish I could say it was nice seeing you."

"If only you could."

"But I know better than to wish anything about you, now don't I?"

"Guess so."

I stopped myself as I was about to push through the door. Matty had just gotten up from her stool and was making her way back behind the bar when I stopped her.

"So when are you going to leave that husband of yours and marry me, Matty?" I said, smiling devilishly at her.

"When you actually mean it, Hokes. When you actually mean it."

Like I said, everyone's always got an angle and she knew mine.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers