Friday, November 20, 2009

The Big Wheel

The Big Wheel

She awoke to the sound of grunting and slicing. Gingerly, she touched her left temple. It was warm and sticky and wet. Her long hair felt dirty and damp. Her vision was blurred. She smelled it again. She'd know that smell anywhere. It was that fucking cheese.
***
She'd only had the job working for her brother for six days. He is her foster brother. She is an orphan, they both are. Without each other they are completely alone. In a system that constantly tears things apart; they have never been apart for more than a month at a time since they were six. They know they are the lucky ones. They aren't even really related, but the bond between them is unbreakable. They are inseparable, co-dependant, joined at the hip, symbiotic. They are the only constant in each other's lives. The only family they have is each other.
***
She saw him for the first time the day after Christmas. The mall was flooded with people shopping for the same old crap nobody needed or wanted two days before. But, it was on sale now. Now, everything was appealing. Well, except the cheese. Nobody was looking at the cheese. She had stood in the storefront, bored out of her mind for five hours straight without anyone coming in. Even free samples of baby Swiss couldn't detract from the sales everywhere. Who needs cheese when you can get pleather pants for 50% off? Gouda can't hold a candle to Santa sweaters when they are buy one get one free. Cheese, well, cheese is cheese. It doesn't really go on sale.

***
She was laying on her back, naked in the dark. The floor around her was smooth and cold. She was hurt. She could not remember how she got there. She recognized the scent, but couldn't put a name to it. Her head was throbbing. She could barely remember her own name. The odor was so strong; she twisted onto her left side and threw up. Oh, yeah, that helped.

***
She was behind the counter reading when he came in. She didn't even hear the door open. She was lost in the same James Ellroy novel, which she had read a hundred times before. When she looked up he was staring at her. She knew that stare. She had been in the system; you saw a lot of those stares in the system. Empty as a grave.

He asked for a wheel of Pecorino Romano. A large one. A local catering company had wiped them out the week before to cater a charity dinner for the mayor's office. They did one every year. $1000.00 a plate. The money was supposed to go into to a fund set up to send foster kids to college. She'd been in and out of foster care for 17 years and hadn't met a soul who it had benefited from that fund.

She told him the largest they could order was a 65 one and would cost him around $600.00. He paid cash up front and said he would be back in a two weeks for it. The entire encounter lasted less than ten minutes. She was glad he was gone. Because she knew that stare. She slid the display of knives on the counter a little closer.

***
When she was a kid, she always slept with a knife. She got her first one when she was about seven. She stole it from a foster mother's kitchen. She didn't find a use for it until she was ten. An older boy of sixteen had tried to slip into her bed. She stabbed him in the thigh. Femoral artery. He wasn't around to bother her after that. She was lucky. They just called it self-defense and they took her knife away. She had her knives taken away a lot over the years. She always managed to find another and every time they were taken away, she got better at hiding the next one.

***
It was a month before he came to pick up the cheese. It was the beginning of February and it was colder than she could ever remember it being in this part of the country. He came in and waited quietly while she was ringing up two elderly women. She hated old customers. They always had to sample everything three times, for free, and rarely bought a damn thing. The few that bought anything made you bust your ass for a five-dollar sale. And they almost always had to write you a fucking check. Her brother told her to be more patient with them because they were probably just old and lonely. He said she would be old someday and she would want someone to show her some kindness. She told her brother that when she was old she wouldn't be a cunt. He just shook his head. He was always the nice one. It was what she loved best about him. Despite their upbringing, he was compassionate.

***
She strained to sit up. Her head was throbbing and her nose had started to run. It was freezing in the room. She doubted that even clothing would have helped much. She could hear his breathing, but could barely see him. The windows appeared to be covered with a thick cheesecloth or muslin. The air was thick and heavy with the scent of the vomit and the cheese. It was making her queasy again. She tried to focus on her surroundings. Something was jutting out of the wall at her. It looked like an arm. As she looked closer she saw were multiple carvings on the walls. Human arms, legs, torsos and breasts were in various poses and contortions. They were all finely detailed, the work of a master craftsman. They appeared to be of marble or stone and they looked so smooth that she thought that they must have been lovingly polished for hours on end.

***
He wanted to wait for her, but she told him to go home without her. She had detention and with Sister Mary Theresa, she would probably be there twice as long as usual. She hated the nuns and they hated her. They even told her so. She didn't give a damn. It was worth all the detention they could throw at her just to see the look on Sister Mary Theresa's face when she called her a bitch. She would take a thousand detentions for that and not bat an eye. The old bat looked like someone had punched her in the balls. Yeah, she was one manly looking servant of God. She had more facial hair than Father Murphy. No amount of money in the world could convice her that the woman wasn't hiding a hairy nutsack under that habit.

As soon as the nuns let her out, she took off like a bat out of hell. She cut through the same path she always did, behind the school and through woods where the lumberyard used to be. Old man Baker lived by the abandoned yard and was always out front as they passed, with a waving to the kids. The older kids had warned to stay clear of him. That he liked kids. Her brother was too naïve to know what that meant, but she always made sure they ran past the house instead of walking. Racing by this time, she noticed that he wasn't out front. She stopped dead in her tracks. He was always out front. Always.

She knew something wasn't right so she stepped around to the side of the porch. It was later than she was usually out. Perhaps he was already inside for the evening. She crept up slowly and approached the side window to peek in. Her blood ran cold. She knew her brother's cry when she heard it. He was smaller than the other kids and an easy target. She was always in a fight with some dumb punk that had called him a fat ass or a fag or had stolen his homework. She approached the window with trepidation. He was lying face down on a dirty bedspread. Mr. Baker was standing by the bed, getting dressed. She reached into the back of her underpants. This was the second time she used a knife. There was no one around to take it from her this time.
***
He came back two weeks later and ordered another wheel. He paid cash, upfront again. $600.00. She had taken the day off. Her brother said he asked for her by name. Said he would be back in two weeks.

***
She scooted over to the wall to get a closer look at the marble foot. The craftsmanship was superb. It was perfectly formed, a woman's foot, just about the same size as her own. It was porcelain white, pure and smooth. She could hear the grunting and slicing sounds again, but could not see his face. She remained silent, did not so much as ask why she was there. She doubted he would have answered anyway. She went back to staring at the wall.
***
It was a month to the day when he returned for the wheel of Romano, the middle of March. He waited patiently as she opened the crate and pulled back the excelsior that padded the cheese. She stepped aside for him to inspect it and asked if everything was ok with it. As he stared into her eyes, she felt a chill. He said it was exactly what he was looking for.
***

When she was fifteen she did a breif stint in juvie for breaking a guy's leg with a pipe wrench. The guy had caught her brother making out with his boyfriend and had gotten a couple of his friends to help him beat the crap out of them. It wasn't that bad, really. She was tough enough to hold her own against the girls in there and the guards with the groping hands. The first week in, she did two weeks in solitary for breaking a guard's nose. That was before they caught him in the cell of another inmate, who was a twelve year old girl. After that, no one bothered her much. She was released after serving one month of a six month sentence, just to keep her quiet. She certainly knew how to keep quiet.
***
Her brother was off that day. He and business partner had planned a trip to the coast of Maine. They were celebrating the one year anniversary of having the store open. It had been her brother's dream as a little kid to have a swanky wine and cheese shop. That's probaly part of what contributed to so many of the ass beatings he got over the years from the other guys.

It was late and when she closed up shop. She detected a faint odor right behind her a hair before she felt the blow. One blow to the head and the lights went out around her.

***
The longer she was there the easier it became to see. Her eyes begin to focus on what she was seeing. Soft fuzzy shaped sharpened. Colors brightened as details began to reveal themselves. The grunting and the slicing had stopped. She pulled herself up to her feet and leaned against the wall. A new odor was wafting into the room. It was some kind of chemical, sharp and strong. She could taste it in the back of her throat. As she gagged and stumbled forward, her hand landed on the woman's foot and a piece broke off. A ragged red toenail poked through.

***
He watched as she recoiled in horror. He knew from experience that he had a very limited window of opportunity. She was in shock now, but before long her defense mechanisms would kick in making it harder for him to subdue her. He watched her hold her head in her hands and slip weakly back down to the floor.

***
She watched as he stirred the contents of the bucket. She glanced at the foot and saw that the polish was chipped. The clear lacquer that had encased the foot was now covered in cracks. The scent of decay clogged her nose, making it hard to breath. She was familiar with that smell, too.

She held her hands to her head and rubbed the area just above the base of her skull. Her head throbbed where he had struck he temple, but the back of her head felt just fine.She rocked as she tried to collect her thoughts

***
The Romano was ground into a fine powder, like pulverized marble or sand. The glaze was finally mixed and was clear as glass. It was ready to pour over the last piece. He just had one more slice to make.

***
She rubbed the back of head as she tried to gather her thoughts. She had to think fast and react faster. She would have felt much more at ease with a knife in her hand.

***
He picked up his blade and slowly stood up. She hadn't made a single move forward or back. She was still in shock. She was rocking as she held her head in her hands. She would be an easy one, too. Just like the last one. He slowly put one foot in front of the other.

***
She kept her head pointed up to the ceiling and she moved her hands across the base of her skull. Three steps, two steps, one step closer....

***

He thrust his knife at her about a half of a second after she lunged. The strap from beneath her long black hair fell to the floor. His eyes widened in shock as she plunged the two inch blade into his abdomen. Their eyes locked as the next thrust found its target. Directly into his jugular vein. His knife fell, clean as a whistle, onto the tile floor below.


She had always gotten better at hiding the next one.

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