Maple Syrup Overdrive, Part One

All crime is true.

Freddy and me were cash poor so we rolled some drunks for pancake money. We’d done it before. We just staked out the dark edge of the good side of town, that seam between probably okay and maybe not. Baseball dads and soccer moms or college kids seeking a whiff of danger with their cheap drinks and titty bar eats. For their money, they got the smell of autumn leaves burning without seeing the dog catch fire, without smelling scorched hair and flesh. Detachment. Disconnect. It’s how we sport fuck and cheer for war.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, Skippy. It’s de rigeur.

It was getting close to midnight, the time when people trickled out ahead of the true degenerates who hung in til closing time. These early escapists were the rabbits. They prided themselves on being seedy but just little bit. Their problem was that they weren’t seedy at all, just bored: “Sure, I drink, and I might grab the occasional lap dance, but I don’t close the place down. I’m not that!”

But where there’s cash, there’s danger, and Freddy and me were landlubber pirates out here filling our boots. We were the tyranny of evil men like that black guy said in that movie. Freddy would rough em up a little while I stood watch. We had over a thousand bucks by one o’clock and were ready to hit Lucky’s for breakfast. Then, out of nowhere and just as we were about to leave, one last drunk staggered right into us, so Freddy threw a punch as much out of surprise as anything deliberate. It was his nature, like a speech pattern or facial tick. He’d always had two speeds, bad and worse, and I was spending more and more of my time keeping him out of the red zone. I’d been avoiding him because of it. More time alone reading books where violence was just an abstraction. But this? I needed him because I didn’t have the stomach for it, but I also didn’t want to work a square job, so I winced at the sickening thud of his pork shoulder fist on our final victim’s cheekbone. It only got worse when this latest victim cried out in a soft, high-pitched voice, a feminine voice. A familiar one.

Freddy laughed. “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s a bitch.” He didn’t sound right. He sounded conflicted or surprised which wasn’t like him. He’d never been soft when it came to hitting women before. I checked the street then walked over.

The woman was curled up on the ground. She was either out cold or dead. I stepped around Freddy to make sure she was alive but went sick when I saw the swollen cheek, the familiar hairdo.

“You shithead,” I said. “That’s my mom!”

“The fuck’s your mom doing here?”

“She drinks.” I told him. “A lot. Just go on. Get the fuck out of here. I’ll catch you at Lucky’s.”

“Shit!” He froze, actually shut down for a moment. That was new.

“Fucking go!” I said and tossed the keys.

I rolled up my jacket and placed it under Mom’s head as Freddy headed up the street, whistling. The fucker was whistling. I put my hand on the cheek that wasn’t swelling and began speaking to her to wake her up. She began to stir, then opened her eyes and whimpered.

“Don’t hurt me,” was the first thing she said. Her forearms went to protect her face. “I’ll do whatever.”

Jesus.

“It’s me, Mom,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Sweetie? You hi-hit me?”

“I found you. The guy ran off when I came around the corner.”

“I guess I should be glad my kid lives at the titty bars.” That was Mom. Laugh at the degeneracy, not at the pain.

“You’re just mad cause you aged off the pole.”

She smiled weakly and started laughing but it quickly turned to crying. I stroked her cheek and told her everything would be alright, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t because when had it ever been?

***

Mugging your mom, accident or not, must have consequences, right? That’s one of those things that just isn’t supposed to happen in life. Her “friend,” Dr. Milo, checked her out and gave her pills, made her get an x-ray. The injury itself turned out to be no big deal, relatively speaking, but her life was already skidding down that proverbial hill they talk about, and I was just as skeptical about my own prospects. Real change was needed by both of us. Had been for a long time. I could hear that goon’s voice from late night infomercials in my head. I was making bad choices, but they didn’t have to define “The Me to Be.” I once stole a banged-up set of his discs from a used bookstore and listened to all of them. Now, they’re coasters some girlfriend made for me with sheet cork and super glue. I’ve known for a long time that changes were called for, but what? Get some shit job? Positive visualization? Finally put that five-year plan together?

***

I caught up with Freddy at Lucky’s, one of his favorite diners, where he was laughing and chewing. Flecks of syrup and pancake hit the sleeve of my jacket. I was beginning to zone-in on the first necessary steps of my five year plan. I grabbed some napkins and wiped my sleeve.

“Close your fucking mouth,” I said.

“It’s just funny cause it’s your mom,” he said. “The fuckin odds. Let’s go to AC for the weekend,” he said.

“With barely a grand between us?”

“More like ten,” he said.

“Ten?”

“Maybe twenty. That last dope, the one before your mom? Had almost three grand on him,” he said. “Plus a Rolex.” Freddy inched his jacket sleeve back up his arm and flashed some gold. “Between the cash and what I can get for this from the back room boys, we’ll have ten grand at least.”

I listened. He had always been smart like a predator. Zero reflection with maximum reflexes. He shoved another multi-layered wedge of cooked batter into his mouth. I watched a few drops of syrup fall to the table before speaking.

“You can’t sell the watch,” I finally said. “You can’t even tell anyone about it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Moms and dads don’t wear Rolexes to go slumming for kicks. We might’ve hit someone with juice. Wait, did you take cash off my mom?”

“Yeah. About three hundred. Why?”

“Why!”

“She can afford it. Plus, she’s got that pill doctor fuck buddy.”

“He’s not a pill doctor. He just gives them to friends.”

“Yeah,” Freddy said. “And chicks he’s boning. Besides, that Rolex probably came off some baseball dad fronting for pussy.” He took a sip of water then yelled at the counter. “Hey, I’ll take some apple juice over here!”

“You should be taking this more seriously,” I told him. He just winked and grinned and stabbed another gob of pancake.

***

I went home for a few hours’ sleep then checked on Mom. She was on the chaise in her sunroom with a plastic bag of pre-packaged frozen margarita on her face and still more frozen margarita in her glass. Even with a swollen cheek she still looked good. She looked like a drinker and a smoker but her hair was still blonde, not gray yet. She was thin which made her look even more like a party girl at fifty-four. Lung cancer? Maybe. Liver failure? Likely. Not much chance of diabetes at this point. At least there was that.

Her life had been the dark side of the proverbial fairy tale. Raised by an evil stepmother and pussy-whipped, compliant father, she met a doctor while stripping at a private party and married him. Within a year she had me and somehow discovered that he’d had another family for years who lived just over the state line. Upon receiving ultimatums and legal papers from both of his wives, he went on a bender in AC and overdosed on pills. The resulting legal rodeo went on for months but ended with both wives receiving generous portions of his estate. Flush after months of probate, Mom upgraded her wardrobe and hairdresser, and dated shadowy Wall Street men and invested well. One or two went to prison for insider trading but kept her out of it. Our life dragged on. She hooked up with dudes who drove nice cars and had indoor swimming pools. I went to college right after high school but got thrown out temporarily for running a poker game, then thrown out again when they took me back and I sold ecstasy to the dean’s twin daughters. I did a little state time for that one which is where I met Freddy.

There had been a time when Mom and I drank our supper together every week or so and played a sort of instinctive, made-up drinking game of Go Fish with dark confessions instead of the typical card penalties, but that got old and pointless real fast. Now, I usually only see her when she asks me to drive her somewhere, but even that’s slowed down since Uber. She’s somewhat settled with Dr. Milo but is already making little blue pill jokes. Whether it’s true love or a transactional arrangement driven by pills and declining looks, I wouldn’t know. I was happy enough to see her living a slower life, half-stoned or not, until we accidentally mugged her in the wrong part of town.

“Margaritas in the pitcher,” she said when I came in. “In the icebox. Help yourself.”

“A tad early for me,” I said. “It not yet being noon and all.”

“Mother Superior is gracing us this fine Sunday, I see,” she said and swilled more drink. There’s always California, I thought. San Diego, somewhere festive with boats. Vegas, maybe? The five-year-plan was coming more into focus every time I spoke with friends and family.

“I’m going to AC,” I told her. “You want that taffy you like?”

“God no!” she said. “I’ll be diabetic or something just as horrible any day now as it is.”

“Your BMI is somewhere between Vogue and Poland in the nineteen forties,” I said. “I think you’re safe from diabetes.”

“That’s sweet. Ok, maybe you can get me some,” she said. “Lemon. After the mugging, I can’t shake this feeling like my number’s been called. It’s too late for me. I can feel it.” She choked on her slushy booze and commenced coughing. I felt the pity or whatever it was she was going for rising, but I caught it quickly and focused on encapsulating it in layers of cynicism and doom, like a pearl. An existential pearl. Maybe she loved me. Maybe she didn’t. But she stopped being “Mom” years ago.

“I’ll have a hard time recovering from this financially,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought all they got was three hundred bucks.”

“How’d you know that?”

Busted. Shit. “You mumbled it when you were coming out of being knocked out,” I said.

“Three hundred. I wish. They got Milo’s watch. It’s a Rolex, an old one. I was supposed to take it in for a cleaning.”

Motherfucking Freddy. He’d lifted Dr. Milo’s Rolex off my mom after he hit her. I definitely needed a five-year plan. Let’s make that a two-year plan. This was getting out of hand. I’ll blow some steam in AC and think more seriously about this in the aftermath, tell Freddy I need a few days alone to sort things out with Mom vis a vis the future.

I heard commotion upstairs. Milo must have been there. He had a habit of waking up wasted and not knowing where he was but trying to navigate the bathroom, the kitchen, etcetera as though he were at his house.

“Tell Dr. Feelgood I said hi. I’ll come see you after AC.”

“Go easy on him, would you?” she said. “He’s getting divorced again.”

***

We were halfway to AC when we stopped for pancakes at a truck stop off the Garden State. Freddy seemed to have calmed down since Mom was clueless about where her beating had come from. He emptied the mini pitcher of syrup on his stack and asked for more.

“That’s a lot of fucking syrup,” I said.

The waitress set down two of the small pitchers. “He’s in here every other day,” she said. “He puts it in his coffee.”

“Gotta die of something,” he said. “Besides, it improves the taste of certain bodily fluids. Don’t it, Honey?”

“I’m sure the boys in the truck stop showers send their love,” she said.

“C’mon, finish up,” I said. “I want to hit the tables and drink all night. I need to drink all night. At least get me to AC before you go into a diabetic coma.”

He slid a racing form across the table. It bulged.

“Your half. Don’t spend it all on one whore,” he said.

“How much?” I asked.

“A little over ten.”

“Holy shit. Thousand?”

“Yeah. That wasn’t an average Rolex.”

Shit. Mom.

“What’s it go for retail?”

Freddy shrugged. “Around a hundred.”

“And you sold it for twenty?”

“I sold it to Mick for twenty with a guarantee it doesn’t come back on us.”

“Us? You told him I was involved?”

“No, but he just assumed.”

This meant that Mom was into Dr. Milo for a hundred thousand dollars. We got twenty out of it. Mom gets nothing except a swollen face and, most likely, degrading sexual servitude to Dr. Milo for the rest of her life.

I rolled the racing paper tightly around the cash and put it in my jacket pocket. I hit the head while Freddy paid and went to meet him at the van when I was done except I never made it to the van. The second I stepped into the parking lot, I was jumped. I fought back until I heard “police” and then I went limp, was thrown to the ground, and cuffed.

They checked the ID in my wallet to make sure they had the right guy after scraping me up and knocking me around a bit in order to cuff me while I was struggling. I didn’t think I’d heard them right the first time, so they repeated the charge a second time after reading me my rights. I’d definitely heard them right but still didn’t believe it.

“Murder,” a detective said. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Mylon Grubjlesic.”

“Dr. Milo?” I said as they stuffed me into the back seat of the unmarked car. “But I just saw him at my mom’s.”

“Yeah, we know.” They laughed. “Use your right to remain silent, kid. You’re gonna need it.”

My mind spun. So did my stomach. As we rolled across the parking lot, I could see the cops talking to Freddy. He was leaning up against a police cruiser, his hands cuffed behind him. He looked up as I passed him on my way to jail.

###

Part Two: