“Me too,” I admitted.
She sighed and sat back against the seat. “So you need to get Max out of the system. How exactly can I help with that?”
I picked the file up from my center console and set it on her lap. I leaned over to her with my chin resting just above her shoulder. I wet my thumb on my tongue when a few of the pages wanted to be assholes and stick together. When I got them separated I plucked the paper I needed out of the file and held it up, only to find Dre staring at my mouth when I handed it to her. “What?”
She put her hands on the seat and shifted like she couldn’t get comfortable. “Nothing,” she said, pointing down to the file again. “What is all this?”
“I’m going to need your talents if I’m going to make any of this work.”
“Talents?” she asked, looking confused. “Did Mirna tell you I had some sort of talent? Because I think you might of caught her during one of her bad times. The only talent I have is sabotaging my own life.” She tapped her index finger a few times against the seam of her lips. “Oh!” she exclaimed with a snap of her fingers. Leaning closer, she placed a hand on the side of her lips as if she were warding off lip readers. “When I was in kindergarten I ALWAYS colored inside the lines. Although, I’m sad to say I never pursued it professionally.” She sighed deeply. “One of my many many regrets in life.”
I found myself smiling back at Dre, and it sure as shit wasn’t as a result of her joke, because it wasn’t nearly as funny as she seemed to think it was. But if smiles were infectious then Dre’s was the plague of smiles.
Extremely contagious.
“Listen, Doc, I have no doubt that you were a coloring badass at one time. A Crayola savant, if you will. Unfortunately, that skill isn’t really going to work in this particular situation,” I said, nodding to the papers on her lap. “I need to create a paper trail so I look like an exceptional citizen in every way.” I leaned back against the door. “Like Martha Stewart.”
Dre lifted her head and scrunched up her nose. “Martha Stewart did time for insider trading.”
I sat back up. “Then John Stewart, or Tony Stewart, or whichever Stewart looks like someone the state would want to give a kid to. Fuck, even Kristen Stewart would do,” I said. “Although, I hear she’s a lesbian now, which is awesome by the way, but if she lived here they might not give her a kid ’cause Florida’s southern and very conservative,” I said, repeating Grace’s words.
“Well, we are in Florida, it doesn’t get much southern then that,” Dre said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’re so southern that we’re below the bible belt. We’re like…the cock of the south.” Dre laughed.
“Did you know that gay marriage isn’t a thing here yet?” I asked.
“I actually did know that,” Dre said, tilting her head to the side while she went over the papers. “Well, I knew that. I can’t exactly say I’m up to date on current events just yet.”
Normally, when I went off on a tangent, especially to someone who didn’t know me very well, most people liked to call me out when I’ve veered off track and would try to and rein me back in. I was beginning to notice that Dre didn’t do that. In fact, every time my brain steered me off course, she’d let me go with it until I found my way back around on my own.
It was…different.
“Long story short is that I need to be a model citizen, and the list in that file tells us what we are going to need to make that happen. Since I can’t exactly prove a lot of that shit the legit way, I need your skills to create them.” I got out of the car and she followed, file in hand. I leaned against the hood and lit a joint, inhaling the smoke along with the salty air. Dre’s head was still in the papers as I continued, her bottom lip between her teeth. “At first, before Mirna told me what a diabolical genius you were with the forgery, I was going to get you a job at the clerks office and see what you could do to move things along. You know emails, files, signature stamps. Whatever might help,” I explained. “But when she told me you created the check itself, watermark and all…I figured we could use that talent to make a big dent in that list a lot faster.”
She didn’t answer, instead her face twisted like she was in pain. She shifted sideways pulling up one of her knees and unknowingly exposing a strip of white panties between her legs before rearranging her dress. The memory of her smell, the taste of her on my tongue, flooded my senses and had me momentarily forgetting why I was there, because Dre’s stunning-as-fuck pussy had shoved aside the red velvet rope and stolen the first spot in line at a club I desperately wanted to shove my cock inside.
If it was beautiful when it was battered, I couldn’t imagine how perfect it looked pink, puffy, and wet with excitement.
“Okay, but how the hell does it fix this shit with Mirna?” she asked. I offered her the joint and she rolled her eyes.
“Tell me, Doc. What are your plans when the assisted living place has an opening and Mirna moves to Sarasota?” I asked, blowing smoke rings out into the night.
She shrugged. “I hadn’t thought too much about it. I can’t go back to my dad.”
Actually, you could.
“Okay, let me be more direct. Where do you plan on living? Mirna’s?”
“Maybe. If it’s okay with her. I wouldn’t make any assumptions, though. I’d have to ask her.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. You can’t stay at Mirna’s when she moves.”
She pushed off the hood and stood in front of me. Any closer and I could pull her between my legs. “I think we should leave that up to Mirna to decide.”
“But it’s not up to her.”
She threw up her hands in frustration. “Then who is it up to?”
I grabbed the file and pulled out the warranty deed Mirna had given me earlier. “The big-dicked, well dressed motherfucker who owns the house, of course.”
* * *
DRE
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, not believing what I was holding in my hand.
“Doc, I’m hurt. You know how very serious of a person I am,” Preppy said with his hands over his heart.
“So you’re saying if I do this, forge the documents you need, then what, you’ll let me stay there when Mirna goes to Sarasota? That’s blackmail.”
“I know you’re upset but there’s no need to be racist.”
“Seriously!” I said. “What, you want me to rent it from you?” I asked, shocked by what I was holding. I didn’t give a damn about Mirna’s possessions or her house, and I could understand why I wouldn’t be the best choice to handle her affairs, but that didn’t mean it still didn’t sting.
“No, not like rent it from me.” Preppy shook his head. “If this works and we get Max back, then the house is yours, free and clear. I’ll sign it over to you and you’ll never have to worry about not having anywhere to stay ever again. And before you jump to any conclusions, I didn’t weasel the house from Mirna in some scam where I forced her to marry me or anything. I didn’t even know she was transferring the title. She just sprung this on me today.”
I was quiet for a moment. Glancing down at the paper, then out at the water again and again, without a single clear thought about what had just happened registering.
“If it helps any, your forgery skills are top notch. Where did you learn all that shit?”
“Wowed?” I asked at his strange compliment.
“Yeah and I’ve never really been WOWED before. Okay, maybe once, but it was during American Ninja Warrior, and that guy who won was an amputee and god damned war hero. You’d have to be made of fucking stone to speak during the commentators touching tribute while the camera zoomed in on his prosthetic leg and the star spangled banner played in the background.”
Her face contorted like she was about to be sick. “It’s not a wow at all. It’s not something I’m proud of, one of many things.”
I scoffed. “We’ve all done shit we’re not proud of, but for most people that involve
s getting drunk and doing something fun that someone else disapproves of. Most people’s ‘shit their not proud of file’ doesn’t involve forging complicated documents, though. I mean, is forgery the new thing all the kids are doing? Maybe not, because if it were a new thing then there would for sure be a porn parody about it already and since I haven’t come across anything titled Teenaged Asian Forgers Take it Real Deep, I don’t think the forgery trend is going to be all the rage anytime soon.”
“It was mostly Conner. He was always trying to literally print money. I just picked up a few things along the way,” I admitted. “I’m going to pay her back every last cent, plus interest, you know,” I said. “I know that’s THE lie a lot of users tell themselves and others in order to follow through with whatever bad idea they had in mind, but I really am going to pay her back.”
Preppy pushed off the hood. “I believe you,” he said, with actual sincerity in his voice. “Think of how much faster you’ll be able to do that when you don’t gotta worry about a roof over your