His next passenger, a young woman, seemed to be leaving her boyfriend. Midway during the trip her phone had rung, and a screeching match followed. The lady in the back seat, who was crying so hard that rivers of mascara ran down her cheeks, began detailing every sin her boyfriend had committed throughout their relationship. But the guy must have been a sweet talker, because by the time she’d reached her destination, she’d decided she loved him anyway and demanded to be taken back home.
He got the impression it was a frequently played out scenario.
His final fare had been three 80-something-year-old women who were off to “the bingo” and had argued all the way to the church hall about who had dibs on “that hot young Hector”, who, Dustin discovered, was only 75, and therefore quite a catch.
Some days were like that, he supposed. He was exhausted.
“Dustin? That you?” Kim’s voice floated down the hallway at him as he kicked off his shoes and tossed his car keys into the little ashtray on the side table. His stepmother met him halfway, rolling up in her wheelchair, tilting her head towards him. Her skin was the color of Hershey’s milk chocolate, her face narrow, with a pointed chin, and lips that were always smiling. He noticed she’s had her Bantu twists redone. Kim’s hairdresser came to the house frequently to attend to her, saving her the inconvenience of heading downtown. The new ‘do seemed to have lifted her spirits, and she was practically bubbling over.
“Hey,” she said in welcome.
“Hey,” he said, and pressed a kiss on the crown of her head. He was terribly fond of her; she was an awfully nice person, and even though the whole ‘hating your stepmother’ thing was a huge cliché, Dustin enjoyed her company. He didn’t even feel awkward knowing that she was only about five years older than he was. His father had loved her right up to the day he died, and that was enough for him.
He walked inside, and she wheeled along behind him.
“You hungry?” she asked hopefully. Kim had a thing about feeding people. She was a great cook, and had gotten even better since her accident a few years ago. She was on disability from her former job as an office manager. She picked up a few hours of work as a telemarketer, but the job was brutal, and she dealt with rude people every day, in exchange for a small commission that never seemed to be enough.
Daily, she visited the hospital, where her 19-year-old daughter, Dustin’s half-sister Arabella, languished, waiting for a match for a new kidney. She spent a few hours trying to keep the teenager’s spirits up, watching movies or playing games. She was a meanCall of Dutyplayer.
Apart from that, Kim filled her few remaining free hours watching cooking shows, trying to replicate what she saw, and then force-feeding the result to anyone within range. Dustin liked to tease her that in her last life she’d probably been a Greek grandmother. But he understood that her obsession with cooking helped fill the aching gap in her heart left by his father, who’d been killed in the same crash that had crushed her vertebrae and destroyed one of Arabella’s kidneys, leaving the other permanently damaged.
He felt almost embarrassed to answer. “Uh… I had a burger earlier.” He hated not coming home hungry, because it meant that Kim’s labors in the kitchen would be wasted, but between the drunken threesome and the runaway bride he’d been starving. Hence the burger.
“Aw, man!” Kim threw up her hands in exasperation.
“Never mind, Mom. I’ll take the leftovers to the tattoo parlor tomorrow. Might even share them with Squeak.”
She grabbed one of the pillows from behind her back and tossed it at him, but he adroitly sidestepped it. “Don’t call me that!”
“Mama?”
“No.”
“Mumsie?”
“Augh! Nope!” She looked around for something else to throw.
His seventeen-year-old half-brother Aaron, who was much paler in complexion from Kim, appeared in the doorway to the living room, leaning on the door jamb. Aaron, too, had benefited from the hairdresser’s visit. His loosely curly brown hair was in an intricate cornrow pattern. Aaron liked to swagger about with big brand logos braided into his hair. Today, it was Nike.
“Dustin, will you please stop torturing my mother?”
He grinned. “But it’s so much fun!”
He followed Aaron into the living room and sat down. The TV was on, set to one of those trapped-in-a-mansion slasher movies where only one person got out alive by morning. He pointed at the screen. “Body count?”
“Too many to number.”
“Cool.” He put his feet up and began to watch.
Kim came wheeling in, balancing three plates. “You might not be hungry enough for dinner, Dustin Spencer, but I spent hours on this key lime pie, so you better eat it all up and count your blessings.”
He took his plate without arguing. “Gracias, Mamacita.”
Kim turned to her son. “Aaron, can you hit him for me? I’m never fast en—”
Before she could finish speaking, Aaron’s fist had shot out and caught him good on the bicep. “Ow!”
“Sorry,”