Oil of Roses Ch. 16

"Oh, preparing a little surprise for Tamara." He knelt down next to her. "I owe you a lot for putting the two of us together. I know Harry did the actual buying, but you had the idea. No matter what happens between any of us or all of us, even if Tamara and I part ways tomorrow, last night... was worth the world to me, and I won't ever forget it."

"Eddy, sweetie, as long as you're happy, then the debt's repaid a thousand times over. Now enough mushy stuff or I'll cry. Tell me about the surprise you've planned for Tamara."

"We're stayin' here a couple of days. I've rented us a new place, much nicer, much larger, much better part of town, gated with a real live guard from a company I trust at the gates 24/7 and I'm having what I want from my place moved in, won't be much and once that's done, she and I'll be decorating it."

Carol let out a squeal as she hugged and kissed him. "Eddy, she's gonna love that! We're going to go see Tatiana this evening about rings for Harry and Margo, do you want to come with?"

Eddy looked at her with a half smile. "You know, you're a real smart girl. Yeah, I'd love to. I've been thinking about something like that."

"Okay Eddy, while she'd love a ring, she'd be even happier with a collar of some kind, and Tatiana makes some that are beautiful and don't look like collars. They look like jewelry, but they're collars, just the same... thought I'd mention that."

"Uh huh... just thought you'd mention that, did you?"

"Yeah, just in case you were, you know, wondering."

"How do Harry and Margo survive you being so helpful?"

"I figure it's going to involve a lot of therapy at some point, probably some primal screaming as well."

* * * * *

While Eddy went in to wake up Tamara, Margo went to wake up Harry and Kelly. She paused a moment before she did so to stand by the bed and watch them sleep. In the reverse of what she expected to see, Kelly had an arm thrown protectively over Harry as he lay curled up, almost fetal, next to her. Harry's face looked troubled and by watching carefully she could see the flicker of movement beneath his eyelids. She wondered what was going on in his dreams. Indeed she wondered if any of them would ever be completely free of their personal demons. One thing she knew for sure though was that having each other made them so much easier to bear.

* * * * *

The six of them went to dinner together and weren't surprised at all when the maitre de showed them to a small room off the rear of the main restaurant. Eddy pulled Harry off to one side. "Okay Harry, listen the fuck up, this is how it's going to be. I'm covering some of the cost of the 'oddball twins' watching your place this week. Since they were retained as security, not house-sitters, they're charging you two hundred a day, for a total of fourteen hundred. I'm covering a thousand of that to pay you back what you spent to rescue Tamara."

"You don't have to..."

"I said this is how it's going to be, Harry. You wanna argue about it, I'll win, you'll be in pain and I'll have a lot of people pissed at me, but I'll still win. Can we avoid me having all them people pissed at me? If you want to throw in a bonus for the boys because of the unexpected delivery this morning, that's fine. I'm not going to charge you for the time or use of the portable x-ray scanners and fiber optic camera rigs I brought out to check the problem boxes."

"Damn Eddy, that's big of you, I mean about the bonus for the boys. You'll actually let me pay them one if I want to?"

"Don't be a comedian Harry. I need this to be straight between us. I'm thankful for what you and Carol done, but I need this to be something I don't feel I owe you nothin' but gratitude for."

"Okay big man, if that's what you need, that's what you get. So, we're square now? Everything's on the up and up?"

"Yeah Harry, everything's fine."

"Good, can we go eat because I'm fucking starved?"

The two old friends moved to the table and sat down. Their waiter took their drink orders. Harry called Carol to him, whispered in her ear, patted her on the butt and she went off.

"Where'd little Cute and Sexy go?" Eddy asked. "As opposed to big Cute and Sexy," he said, smiling at Margo.

"Oh, I had an errand I needed her to run," Harry replied. He went into a hurried consultation with his wife. She nodded vigorously.

After Carol returned she handed something in an envelope to Margo and sat down. The waiter returned with their drinks and everyone was more than ready to order supper.

After they were finished and the waiter had left, Harry went over and squatted by Eddy. "Have you told Tamara about the new apartment yet?" he whispered.

"No, I was waiting for a good time... seems like this could be it."

"I agree, we'll toast it after you make the announcement." Harry went back to his seat.

"Uh, can I have y'all's attention? Thanks," Eddy said. "Knowing how hard it is for little Cute and Sexy to keep a happy secret, I figure everyone here but the one who most deserves to know this already does." He turned, picked Tamara up and stood her on her chair. "Theresa, I couldn't take you to the shithole I lived in. No matter what you or anyone else says, I know you deserve better. So this afternoon I went and found us a new place. It's larger, in a much nicer neighborhood, great security, in a beautiful complex. You and I are staying here for the next few days while it's made ready and the few things I want from my old place are moved in. I figure we can run over there tomorrow whenever you want for you to take a look... and if you don't like it, we'll find someplace else, no problem."

"I'm sure I'll love it if you chose if for us, Edward."

"Okay, then when it's ready you and I will go buy furniture and such to decorate it and move in. I've got most of my last bonus check, plus another paycheck coming in next week, so money's no problem. We'll be able to get whatever you want, as long as you don't start goin' too high-class on me."

"I have simple tastes, Edward."

"You must," he said nervously, "you like me."

"Yes Edward, I like you. More importantly, I love you." She threw her arms around him and kissed him.

Harry stood up and raised his drink. "To Eddy, to Tamara and to their new apartment; long lives, full of love and many happy years in their new home!"

The toast was echoed and as Harry sat down, Margo stood up and went around to Eddy, handing him an envelope. "This is to help decorate the new place."

Eddy opened it to find fifteen hundred dollars. "I can't take this..."

"You can, Eddy, and you will," Margo replied. "I understand why you couldn't accept our first gift, I do. But this one you can and you will, or Carol, Kelly and I are going to kick your fucking ass and we know you'll just try to stop us, you won't hurt us. Even doing that might get one or two of us hurt and you don't want that, so just take the gift, shut up and let us show how much we love you."

"Yes ma'am."

"Good boy. Tamara, be extra special nice to him tonight... he's having a hard day." She smiled as she kissed him on the cheek and then went back to her seat.

As Eddy and Tamara sat down, Tamara looked over at him. "Edward, would you hold me in your lap?"

"Sure," he said, picking her up and moving her over. "You feel okay?"

She smiled at him. "Yes, I feel fine. I just want to be close to you right now." She kissed his neck and snuggled close. "Besides, I really like the way I fit into your lap and shoulder."

"So do I, Theresa," he murmured, kissing the top of her head and stroking her hair, "so do I."

* * * * *

"...so my cousin Nancy had slipped us the information she got from her boyfriend's gawddamn brother that the DEA was gonna hit this big patch of fields out in Polk county, when she wasn't slippin' Harry some tongue AND I NEVER WANT TO KNOW WHAT ELSE, HARRY! So we knew when they're gonna hit 'em and we figured to go in and do a little harvestin' of our own a couple of nights before they got there and burned all that beautiful dope. Two nights before the DEA were scheduled to make their raid me, Harry, Margie Delgado, Cathy Breeden and Freaky Frank Wells take a trip down there in Freaky's Jeep Wagoneer. We got this map from my cousin Nancy and like the sweet innocents we was we parked the jeep, took our garbage bags and went trundlin' across the surroundin' countryside on a late night stroll, lookin' for the dope fields. We found 'em..."

"Boy-goddamn-howdy, did we ever find them!" Harry exclaimed.

"Yep, there they were and some of the prettiest Mexican Sativa plants I've ever laid eyes on... thousands of 'em... there wasn't a soft nipple or limp dick in the group. We had died and gone to dope smoker's heaven. So we held our shit together, because the urge to grab some, eat it, get naked and run through those fields was mighty strong, and we started harvestin' buds. Pretty soon there was no room left in anybody's garbage bags, so we hiked back to the car and all of us were fuckin' scroungin' for anything else to store dope in because we'd hit the mother lode and walkin' away from it was killin' us. But there was nothin' else, so Harry here came up with a brilliant fuckin' plan."

"Yeah, I said we should pool our money, get a couple of cheap hotel rooms, hang out through the day, get some more bags, a LOT more bags, and go back the next night and get some more, before it got burned."

"And everybody thought that was a winner of a plan, so we drove to Livingston, the county seat, and holed up in this little shitbox of a motel. I lost the coin toss so Freaky's in the room with me and Margie, which meant I was laying pipe while that stoned motherfucker watched goddamn cartoons, smoke so thick in the room I could barely breath and I was a gawddamn stoner!"

"Meanwhile, in the other, Freaky-less room, Cathy and I enjoyed a little bit of quality time... we were asleep, which was a good damn thing as it turned out later," Harry added.

"Damn straight, buddy. So night finally fell and we grabbed some garbage bags from a U-tote-m and back out to the fields of the Promised Land we went. We parked in pretty much the same place, got out, went trudgin' cross hill and dale, got to the fields and started harvestin' again. Margie and me had got a little sleep, but we was still stumblin' around a lot, Freaky was still so stoned he could hardly find the ground, but anything we got that night was gonna be gravy anyway, everyone was in a good mood, it was such a wonderful gawddamn life that Jimmy-gawddamn-Stewart was smokin' my gawddamn pole.

"Until the automatic weapons fire started up.

"We were merrily pickin' along and we all heard these whinin' noises, real shrill, and the 'splat-splat' of somethin' punchin' through leaves and plants over to our left and then we heard the gunfire and everybody freaked the fuck out. We were runnin' around like chickens with bottle rockets up their asses. I saw Margie runnin' towards flashes of gunfire so I flyin'-tackled her ass, Cathy had grabbed Freaky just in time to keep him from wavin' his arms at a helicopter that was flyin' overhead and nobody knew where the fuck Harry was."

"I'd gotten lucky," Harry continued, "because I'd run exactly the wrong direction. I ended up coming out of the fields in view of this house and I swear to Sonny Jesus I thought every Federal agent in the nation was there and they'd all brought their bang-bangs. I knew I'd gone the wrong way so I headed back the way I'd come and tried to keep all the gunfire to my right. I was a low-crawling motherfucker when I basically crawled over Margie's head and Eddy grabbed my ass... he says it was what he could get a hand on, I say he was copping a feel, and I tell them that the direction I was coming from was the Wrong One and that means the way I was going was at least close to the Right One. So off we went."

"Yeah, we managed to find Cathy and Freaky along the way," Eddy said as he picked up the narrative once more, "she was havin' to slap the shit out of him to get him off her. He was convinced we were all gonna die and he was hollerin' he didn't wanna die no virgin, which was way more than we ever wanted to know about Freaky. I slapped Freaky so hard he was actually sober for like, a minute, and we're all crawlin' along, followin' Harry's skinny butt. He came out onto the road within' prolly a hundred yards of the gawddamn Wagoneer. We loaded our asses in it and very carefully drove away, makin' sure we obeyed every traffic law we could remember. We got back to the motel with no sign of anybody takin' an interest in us; we debated about leavin' the dope for maybe, oh, two hours, before super stoner Harry said..."

"Fuck you all, I'm taking this dope home if I have to carry it all on my back," quoted Harry.

"Which kinda settled the issue... we loaded up the Wagoneer, had to tie up and gag Freaky because he was abso-fuckin'-lutely convinced we was gonna get caught, and drove back. No problems on the way home, stashed the dope, had enough to keep us in smoke for a loooooooong time. We find out from Nancy three days later that we were the luckiest little motherfuckers on the planet. The owners of the field had noticed the signs of our harvestin' the day after our first trip and were layin' in wait for us in that field with their automatic rifles and our bodies was never gonna be found. But the agent-in-charge for the DEA had gotten reminded, apparently quite forcefully, by his wife of a bar mitzvah they were to attend the following night out of state, so he moved the raid up a night. The DEA comes creepin' in on the farmhouse to find nobody there because they're all out in the field, waitin' for us. So the DEA calls in air support and goes into the field, gunfire breaks out, a whole lotta lead gets expended, two agents get wounded, one grower gets dead, another wounded and we waltz outta there with the dope without a bullet hole among us. One of the goddamn scariest nights of my life..."

Margo looked at him across the table in amazement. "Eddy, if that's not the scariest night of your life, what was?"

Eddy looked into her eyes. "That, my dear, is a story for another night."

* * * * *

As soon as dinner was done they went back to the suite for after-dinner coffee and relaxed until it was time to head to Tatiana's.

A short drive later found them pulling up to a gate in a high wall surrounding a home in a very prestigious part of town. Most of the homes in the area had historical markers on them and the whole area positively reeked of moneyed gentility. An armed guard came to the gate and after they identified themselves, which included driver's licenses for everyone, with the exception of Tamara, they were waved through and toward an area where they could park.

The home itself, a monstrosity in the Romanesque Revival style, squatted on the grounds like a great, red-brick gargoyle. Its cylindrical tower with crenellated top served as its head while the great white stone arches over its door and windows almost resembled scales. Indeed it reminded Harry more of some small town county courthouse than a home.

A young man whose face seemed to be marred by a perpetual sneer met them as they got out of their cars.

"Madame Tatiana will see you in the workshop. It is around back to your right," he said in a not very convincing Russian accent.

Carol looked at him disdainfully. "If you are planning to put on airs like one of the last of the Romanovs, the least you could do is have an accent that is better than a high school drama student's," she said in an accent far better than his.

He blushed and stormed off towards the house. "Poseurs... no sense of humor," Carol chuckled.

They headed around the house to the right and saw the workshop, a converted carriage house, and followed the brick walkway to the door. A sign next to a bell said "Ring Before Entering" so they did so, opened the door and walked in.

The ground floor had been converted into a showroom of sorts, with cases displaying examples of Tatiana's work. There was everything from simple, elegant designs to intricate pieces with dozens of stones and exquisite inlays. On the walls were pictures of a tall, almost painfully thin woman with most of the movers and shakers in Texas over the past fifty years, and quite a few of the national movers and shakers as well. Harry was admiring one of her with J.F.K. and Jackie when she came down from upstairs.

The years had been as kind to Tatiana as her youth had, which was to say, not very. Plain with large, thick glasses, she might be considered horse-faced if her bearing weren't so regal and her inner dignity so unassailable. Since her bearing and dignity were as they were, she was aristocratic. The camouflage BDUs and the long sleeved t-shirt bore the signs of many small burns. Her gray hair was piled into a mass on the top of her head had strings hanging down everywhere, some of which looked a little charred, but she bore herself as if she was descending the Grand Staircase at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

"I am Tatiana, how may I help you?" she asked in a flawless Russian accent.

Carol stepped out from behind Margo. "Save the act for the rubes, Tattie. How you been?"

"CAROL!" she squealed in an accent far closer to Saint Paul, Texas than St. Petersburg, Russia. She opened her arms and Carol ran to her and gave her a hug.

"Tattie, this is my man, Harry Grimes and his wife, Margo, our dear friend Eddy Janak, his girl Tamara, and our friend Kelly Culberson. All of you, this is Tatiana Turov who will shamelessly drop hints right and left that 'Turov' was a name the family adopted to hide a much more noble one out of fear of Russian Communist assassins in the 40's and 50's. Don't buy the bullshit; she's no more nobility than I'm a pro football player. What she is, with no argument, is the finest crafter of jewelry I've ever seen."

"It's a pleasure to meet y'all. Any friends of Carol's are welcome here. Carol, where have you been, honey? I haven't seen you since before Tony's funeral. I was real sorry, it was obvious to everyone how you felt about him."

"Thanks Tattie. Tell you what, some night when you need to take a break, we'll have you over to the house and we can do some visiting."

"Yeah, we'll tell these folks some stories, like the time you, me and Tony got drunk at Sylvestre's and spent the evening raising hell in the Hotel Adolphus with my little wrist rocket and a pouch of bb's. Thank God they either never caught on it was us or they were so scared of Tony they didn't want to say anything."

"It's a date. But for now, Tattie, she needs an engagement ring, they need to start thinking about wedding rings, who knows what that big hairy bear over there might not want. I think I'm going to take Tamara and Kelly out for a stroll on your grounds, show them the pond."

"You do that, darling; I just had it re-stocked with koi. And if you see any goddamn cat anywhere on the premises, one of y'all come get me. I'll put a bb so far up its koi-eatin' ass it'll be constipated for a week."

* * * * *

Three hours later, after the girls had enjoyed a pleasant time by the pond refreshments served by a very unhappy young poseur, Harry, Margo and Eddy were ready to leave. The three of them were smiling evilly and Carol had to wonder what she might have missed by keeping Tamara out of the way.