In that moment I considered my options. I couldn't run away. Any slight movement could result in the blade moving across my face or even my neck. There was no way I could move quick enough to avoid it if Boomer decided to cut me and I wasn't adding running away to being disfigured. Boomer wore a basic black eye-patch like a drugged-up Long John Silver. Surely there were other options? Sunglasses. People might even think that I was blind. Bono wore sunglasses all the time. A lot of people didn't like him. But I did. I think he has glaucoma or something….
Suddenly the blade retracted, and Boomer turned heel and ran away along with the rest of his crew. I heard footsteps pounding on the concrete behind me. An overweight cop slammed into my back and knocked me on the ground before disappearing around the corner to chase after Boomer and co. I began to laugh at my absurd luck as I lay on the ground dusting pieces of gravel off my jacket. Another cop stopped beside me who had also been running. She crouched over, put her hands on her knees and spat on the ground.
" Jesus Christ. Little fuckers!" She took several deep breaths before turning her attention to me. " Are you ok!?"
" Yeah fine. Why?" I stood up and began walking towards the door to get the damned grape soda.
" Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold on there! Where do you think you're going!? She stared at me like I had ten heads.
" What?" I asked not really wanting an answer and continued walking towards the automatic doors.
" Stop right there!" She grabbed my shoulders and spun me around to face her. " Now! I got a call about a kid with a knife being held to his face by a gang of other kids! I Got a broken-down police cruiser and me and my partner ran all the way here to save what I assume is your ass, so you better start talking!" She looked at me directly in the eyes. Appealing for some sort of pay-off for the effort she made.
" I'm not sure what you're talking about officer." I replied in a very bored way.
" Oh! You don't do you?"
" No, it was a prank. Those guys are my friends." I lied. I didn't want any attention from cops or to be seen associating with them. People talked and I didn't need it going around town that I was some kind of rat.
" Oh, really!? So, it was a prank was it? Well tell me Mr. Smart Guy, if it was all just a prank then why did your friends run off when hey saw us and how come you didn't move a muscle? You seemed pretty happy to get rid of them." She put her hands on her hips and stared me down. She was clearly frustrated at my lack of cooperation or gratitude.
" I don't know, you gotta ask them. They went that way." I said pointing past the store. It was clear that just wanted to get rid of her and wasn't going to give a statement or help her out in any kind of way. She scowled and spat on the ground again.
" Look. You would wanna stop the whole cocky streetwise motherfucker attitude and start talking. You ain't half as smart as you think you are. Doug." I was genuinely surprised that she knew my name and didn't know how to respond.
" That's right! I know you! I know a lot more than you think I know and you know what else? I know that this has something to do with the Clotz kid. It has his name written all over it. If you see that little green motherfucker you tell him that I wanna talk to him and if he knows what's good for him he'll come see me." Again, I was speechless. Did she know about the grow room in Studebaker's? Shit. I turned yet again to walk into the store. " Oh! And another thing. You don't want my help, fair enough. But I got enough kids walking around here with one eye so do me favour and stay out of trouble." She kicked me hard in the shin discreetly and I went down. It hurt like hell.
" Ahhh! Fuck! What the hell?" I asked her clutching my leg on the gravel.
" It was just a prank." She walked off to go search for her partner and see if the tubby bastard needed an ambulance.
" She's here!" Exclaimed my mother while looking out the window of the front room as the car pulled into the driveway. My parents and I walked into the hallway and opened the front door to greet them. Judy emerged from the taxi first. She had graduated from beatnik throwback teenager to fully fledged college hipster. She had shaved an undercut into one side of her head and had several tattoos of confused cultural origin: Celtic, Hebrew, Maori ect…. She had also ditched the sunglasses and beret. If I ran into Boomer again maybe I could borrow them. She ran over and immediately hugged my parents. I smiled on and watched. Judy's visits home from college were some of the rare times in which things felt like they used to. I also got entertainment out of the fact that Judy always brought a different guy home each year. They were all different people but ultimately more or less the same guy. They all had something that made them outsiders but in the most conventional way possible. The poet, the musician, the hippy who worked in Starbucks, numerous foreign guys and guys from different ethnicities. If you got them all in the same room, you would have an army of weed smoking, dreadlocked middleclass dudes who would probably spend a few years not sure about what to do after college until they got a decent haircut and worked in middle-management. It seemed she was very passionate about them in the beginning of the relationship and got bored of them very easily. Luckily for her, there was always someone else slightly more mildly exotic around the corner. Her latest conquest was still in the taxi haggling with the driver over the fare to the house from the airport. I couldn't make him out too well because the windows were slightly tinted but it seems like she had gone with a mohawk this time around. That was interesting. I hadn't seen her with any mohawk guys since high-school.
" Oh Judy! It's so good to see you! You look… your hair! Emm how was your flight!?" My Mom tried her best not to be critical and Judy didn't seem to notice.
" The flight was awful mother. We paid for priority seating for nothing. There were only like two people in economy. Never again and before you even start Dad. You told me so." She said smiling and pointing at him as he stood with arm wrapped around my mother. A self-assured smile came across his face.
" You said it, Jude. Not me." He said clearly delighted with himself. My mother leaned in towards Judy and touched her on the arm.
" So! I know you said that you wanted it to be a surprise but you gotta tell me something about your mystery man before he steps out of that car. It's only fair, I've been so patient." My mother was the type of woman who loved men. If a vaguely attractive man was mentioned in passing during a conversation she made a point of saying something along the lines of " Oh. Now, there's a fine a looking man." I dreaded to think what she would be like if she were single and not married to the most vanilla man in existence. My mother and father were like a singular being. I couldn't imagine one of them without the other or how they would function apart from each other. Judy seemed hesitant and bit her bottom lip.
" Well…Mom…"
" Oh, Come on quick! He's coming what's his name!"
" Daniele." And just then a gorgeous blue woman emerged from the taxi. A slim, petite woman with a pink mohawk. She had feather earrings, lots of tattoos and piercings. She had big beautiful round dark eyes and gorgeous thick lips. She wore a baggy loud yellow t-shirt which did its best job at hiding that she had an awesome figure.
" Daniele?" My mother echoed. " Is he French?"
" No Mom. She's Brazilian." Judy replied as Daniele came into view and gave Judy a peck on the cheek.
" Oi Amor." She said before turning to greet the family with a big smile on her face. " You must be Doug!" span style="mso-spacerun: yes;" /spanShe gave me a big hug. " … and this must be father and mother." My mother instinctively stuck out her hand to shake it because she had no idea what else to do. She usually greeted any woman she knew and hadn't seen for a long time with a hug or one of Judy's new boyfriends with a hug. But a gay woman who actively dating her only daughter was entirely new one for her. It was too late however, because Daniele had already gone in for the kill. She hugged both of them at the same time. Daniele was shorter than Judy or my mother. So her face was bet into my mother's cleavage that she had put somewhat on display with the thinking that Judy would have some tall handsome Italian/French man walking around the house for the best part of two weeks. My mother remained as stiff as a corpse during the hug. My father stared ahead blankly as if all of this was happening to someone else in a movie he was watching or something. I was thoroughly amused by all of this but didn't show it and smiled politely. After what must have felt like an eternity for my mother the hug ended and she suggested that we all go inside. I took Judy and Daniele's bags and carried them into the hallway. My mother was the last one to enter the house after taking a minute to look around on the street to see if any neighbours were watching.
My dad's internal hard-drive seemed to have rebooted itself and adapted to the situation and began asking the general questions he would usually ask any of Judy's partner.
" So, um Daniele. Where in Brazil are you from?"
" Well, I originally I'm from the capital but I moved to São Paulo when I had three years. So I consider myself Paulistana."
" Oh So, you used to live in Rio de Janeiro? The capital right?"
" Actually that's a common misconception, Rio is not the capital. The capital is Brasilia but it's not as famous than Rio or São Paulo. Don't worry though I get that all the time."
" Oh Well, I never knew that and I consider myself quite the geography buff. That's one question I won't get wrong at the next table quiz! Thank you!" My dad seemed pleasantly surprised. It sure made a difference talking to someone who was polite rather than the usual type of self-absorbed angsty teenage-boy-manchild that Judy usually brought home. They usually just assumed that my dad was a total square (which is was, but it was impolite to point out.) and talked down him about things like philosophy and diminished seventh guitar chords.
" That's great ! I love the geography too! If It's my third love in life. If I hadn't studied photography I would have studied geography!"
" Wow! I'm a photographer!"
" Yes! Judy told me you'll have to show me some of your work!"
" Of course!" Daniele already had my dad on the hook and was reeling him in. My mom on the other hand was a different story as she stood in between the two of them with her best fake smile. My dad was intrigued and engaged her again. " So, Daniele! If your second love is photography and third love is geography. What's your first?"
" Well . I think you already know and she's in this room!" Daniele put her arm around Judy's shoulder who laughed and blushed.
" Stop being so damn cute it's annoying." Judy said slapping Daniele weakly on the forearm.
" Forever a charmer!" My dad laughed. That was it. She was a part of the family now. He was sold and it happened right in front of mother and she could do nothing about it. Daniele never stopped smiling when she was speaking. She had this strange disposition as if she seemed delighted just to be alive. It was highly loveable and seemed to have won everyone over apart from my mother. I had never known Judy to go off with other women but this was a serious improvement over the endless stream of arty weirdos she had brought home before. They always seemed to view us with some sort of contempt because on the face of it we were the average, American, nuclear family. Even tough they almost always came from the same background or above but never below. I recall one particular poor sap who wore black turtleneck jumpers and fancied himself as the next Karl Marx. He called himself Vlad even though that wasn't really his name. He spent the week complaining about everything and berating Judy because they'd chosen to come to my parent's house instead of sneaking into Cuba. He drank a shitload of wine one night at dinner, called my dad the enemy of proletariat and announced that the television would not be televised before running off into the night and was never seen again. According to Judy he turned up in Silicon Valley years later working for a massive tech company and thus contributing more than any of us to giant burning furnace of capitalism. Daniele was certainly a welcome improvement.
My mother eventually attempted to put an end to the love-in.
" Well, dinner will be soon. Doug! Can you take Judy and Daniele's bags up to their rooms?" My mother had just strategically instructed me to put the bags in separate rooms despite the fact since she had been in college Judy had always slept in the same room as any boyfriend she had brought home. This didn't go unnoticed by Judy who raised an eyebrow and was about to challenge my mother before my father stepped in.
" Oh Theda, the box room is hardly suitable at this time of year. Far too cold. They can stay in Judy's room. You go help get the table ready Doug I'll take these bags. Come on Dani! I got some great shots of the Grand Canyon hanging up in the hallway!"
" Fantastic Phil! Let's go!"
The girls followed my dad upstairs leaving me standing beside my internally bewildered mother who watched them go up hand in hand like a child watching a helium balloon disappear forever into the sky.
" Dani…..Phil?" My mother repeated to herself. They were already on first name/nickname basis.
" She seems nice." I offered. My mother's upper lip raised slightly like she had just smelled something awful. briefly gave me a look and walked into the kitchen. At times, my mother gave looks that inferred things she would never say aloud.
" Go fuck yourself Doug."