Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Eddie

Eddie woke, drenched in sweat, to full day, the heat above ninety in the car. He crawled out and was immediately cooler. The front door of the house was locked and he knocked a long time before Johni came.

He peered into her eyes as she hung on the door frame. “For goodness sake, Johni, did you get down after I left?” he said.

“What’s it to you?”

“What if the kid came back and wanted to turn himself in?”

“I would have woke up and let him in,” she said. “I was stoned, not dead.”

“Well you didn’t turn the light off in the kitchen and you didn’t hear my car in the drive!” He was getting angrier by the second. While he’d been scouring the roads she’d been out of her gourd on Heroin. He hated drugs but Heroin gave him the willies. She looked like a zombie with her ice blue eyes when the pupils were constricted. And the scratching and vomiting and mumbling…

Johni rubbed her nose. “I left the light on so the boy would know where to come and I did hear your car. If you wanted to talk to me I assumed you’d come in.” The altercation seemed to wash the last of the junk from her system. Now she was alert and angry. “You’re the one who fucked up, my friend.”

What a treat the woman was. Eddie could not abide profanity, especially from ladies, but Johni could hardly be classed as such.

“Well, come in and have some coffee,” she said. “I assume you didn’t find the kid. Let’s have breakfast. We’ll see about finding the boy after everyone’s fed.”

Breakfast was delicious. Johni knew how to cook all the artery-clogging food beloved of cowboys, bacon and eggs and homemade biscuits and gravy. The heavy meal made Eddie want to fall back asleep while his anger and frustration retreated under a satiated daze.

“Listen,” Johni said, “you’re beat. Go get some sleep, I don’t need your help right now.”

Eddie nodded blearily and went to her guest room and fell, fully clothed, onto the bed.