“Not if I poison you first,” Raphael called back, waving a middle finger at the man. His eyes went back to the kids. He started down the back stairs and Willow stopped the descent with her hand.
“Raphael, it is only two and a half blocks,” Willow said, coming up beside him and rubbing his back.
“I know, but maybe we should...you know...walk down and make sure they made it,” he offered, staring into the yard.
“If we do that, Dusty will think you don’t trust her judgement and therefore don’t trust her. That’s not what you want, is it?”
“Hell, it’s not her I don’t trust. I don’t trust a 14-year-old boy with a working dick, that’s what I don’t trust,” Raphael said, looking back to see Karli on the couch, her head immersed with Harry’s search for the sorcerer’s stone. The idea of her reading the book and then seeing Fluffy, the three headed dog, on the big screen television made him smile.
“Relax a bit,” she told him. “I’ve taught them well how to handle themselves in the presence of grown men. Dusty can handle a 14-year-old boy; besides, you’ve taken both girls on a date, but I haven’t had a date with you yet. When do I get my one on one time with you?”
“Now is pretty good, and I was thinking of maybe cooking dinner for you tonight. Put some veggies on the grill, hell I don’t know,” he said, crinkling his nose. Jeb was making his way across the back yard wanting to chat. He didn’t desire a chat with Jeb. They weren’t friends; never had been and weren’t going to be now.
Raphael slid the patio door closed and shut the blinds. He peered out the side window to see Jeb stop in his tracks, turn, and head back home. Raphael chuckled momentarily until he spotted movement on the side of Jeb’s house. A body, hiding in the brush. Quickly he opened the blinds and sliding door and stepped out onto the patio.
“Hey, you plaque picking platypus, were you heading this way?” he asked Jeb, watching the bushes. Raphael’s head was down as he opened an app on his phone, activating the motion recorders in the security system. His thumb slid across the screen to angle the camera at the bushes.
“Why are you always calling me that?” Jeb asked. “You know it’s nice, Hoyt-O, that all these years later, our kids ended up together. At one point, I had hoped for the same with me and your sister.”
“My sister disliked you as much as I do, Jeb, but I’m not going to hold that against the kids,” he replied, still focusing on the shrubbery. The slender body in the bushes began to crawl away, vanishing into the darkness of the side street. Jeb wasn’t the least bit aware that anyone was in the shrubbery, or at least he didn’t seem as if he noticed.
“I don’t know why you’ve never liked me. I’ve never done anything to you, Hoyt-O,” Jeb said, holding a tepid beer in a sweating can in his hand.
“Yes, you have and frequently do each time you address me. It is not Hoyt-O, just Hoyt. If you’re making a reference to my Hispanic heritage by adding an O to the end of my name like macho, or taco, or bambino, that would make you a racist. My daughter doesn’t need to date the son of a racist,” he said, watching the street for signs of lights from cars.
“I’m not a racist!”
“The why the fuck do you keep calling me Hoyt-O? It’s Hoyt, you steaming pile of bad decisions,” Raphael responded.
“I’m sorry. It was just a name from when we were kids,” Jeb said, appearing to be genuinely shocked that his attempt to remind his world traveling neighbor of their childhood bond had failed.
“It was a racist taunt, you calculus crumbling Caucasian. We aren’t kids anymore, you balding beer bellied bootleg buffoon,” Raphael replied.
“You’re mean!” Jeb said, looking forlorn. “And very alliterative.”
“Good. Stay the hell away from me,” he added, shooting another wave with a bird and stepping back inside. He had bigger fish to fry than Jeb Malone. There was a body in the bushes that had arrived to watch them and find Willow and the girls. He was quickly learning that the intuition of not only the woman being on point, but Karli had it as well. If Willow had felt the weight of something coming all week, then it had arrived.
He didn’t run.
He wasn’t going to run.
He would look at the tape, see what he could find out on the busy bush baby, and go from there.
Raphael looked up to see Willow standing in the doorway staring at him. She had questions, but the fear in her gut was back. Something was wrong. She could feel the wrongness.
“Yes, Willow?” he asked.
She smiled, trying to tamp down the fear. Utilizing his tactic, she too changed the subject to other matters. “So, you’re Hispanic. Are you bilingual as well?”
Chapter Nineteen – Forgery
RAPHAEL’S EYES WERE on the phone screen when the security lights on the back porch came on. The clock read 10:50 P.M. Dusty had made it home with 10 minutes to spare, and the sound of her hushed voice on the back porch concerned him. Although it wasn’t in his nature to be a snoop, he wanted to know what was happening on the back porch with that walking penis Skylar and his Punkin Puss.
“Daddy, I bet he’s going to try and kiss Dusty,” Karli said, coming to sit next to him. “Even if he does, she’s not going to like it.”
“And why do you say that, Pooh Bear?”
“Because, I think Dusty likes Jamal,” she said as a matter of fact. “I like him too. He has what I heard Marcella says is swagger. He’s swaggalicious for a 13-year-old.”
Raphael’s lips were pursed as he looked over at Karli, afraid to know what she was going to utter next, but in some ways, happy she was there to relieve the tension. The look she gave her father made him want to send her to bed before she opened her adorable little mouth. But he was all in and ready.
“Daddy, I’d bet you three cookies he tries to kiss her using his tongue,” Karli said.
“What do you know about kissing someone with your tongue and wait, why are you betting me with cookies?”
“Because I don’t have any money. I gave Mommy that 20 to put with my allowance to get me a tablet. All I have is the three cookies I’ve been holding onto since the Father Daughter dance. That cookie and sugar stuff is like a drug,” she said, giving him the side eye. Suddenly she bounded from the couch going to the sliding door. She peered through the blinds, spying on her big sister. Raphael watched the two on the porch from his phone.
“See...look at him, trying to be all touchy and stuff. She should knee him in his ding-ding,” Karli said, looking back at her father. “Can you go out there and shoot him?”
“He’s done nothing wrong, Karli,” he tried to say in a calm voice, but he was thinking what she was thinking, and he didn’t like thinking the same thoughts as a 10-year-old.
“Yes, he has. That shirt is all wrong, the color does not suit him, and he’s trying to kiss her with his mouth all wide open like he’s trying to feed baby birds. It’s gross and so is he. He’s not smooth like Jamal,” she said, looking over her shoulder again with that factual look. “Jamal is going to be my man as soon as I grow some boobies.”