Hardball by CD Reiss

Author:CD Reiss [Reiss, CD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flip City Media Inc.
Published: 2016-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

twenty-three

Vivian

I’d been babbling to Dash, but I hadn’t been lying. The gutters were a mess. One of the five deciduous trees in Los Angeles grew in our side yard, and every year it exploded in red and orange then shed like a hound dog. The neighbors hated us, and in the months between the shedding of the leaves and the rains, I hated us too.

I stood on the roof and surveyed the work. I was about two-thirds done. Dad stood in the driveway with a rake, wearing a puffy winter coat he’d bought to ski in when Mom was alive. Mrs. Klein stood in her bedroom window, undoubtedly wondering why we didn’t do the normal thing and hire a guy to clean the gutters.

“I’m schvitzing in this jacket.”

Schvitzing meant he was hot. “Take it off.”

“I’m bundled. How’s it going up there?”

“Okay?” I went girl-style and, as a lead-in to unpleasant news, asked the answer instead of stating it. “I don’t have too much time. He’s coming at three, and I haven’t showered.”

I wondered if my position on the roof meant the whole neighborhood knew that I smelled and a guy was coming.

“That was quite a nap you took.” He leaned on his rake. “Musta been up late.”

What happened with his eye? Did my father just wink at me, thinking I got laid? Who did that?

“Easy there, Dad. You’re not marrying me off so quick.”

“I know. If you left, who would do the gutters?”

I crouched by a gutter full of leaves, arms outstretched, and caught a mess of them between my palms, then I threw them on my father, who let out a Yiddish cry and waved his rake at me.

“I can’t believe you think I’d stop doing your damn gutters!” I got another armful and threw them on him.

“Elder abuse!” he cried, swatting the flying, wet leaves with his rake. “Help! Police!”

“I’m still coming here for dinner! You’ll never get rid of me.” I went to the other side of the house and got more leaves, walked across the roof, and threw them on him as he laughed and coughed between hysterical complaints of abuse.

I stopped looking. I rained wet brown leaves on him from all corners, listing all the ways he wasn’t getting rid of me and stomping on the shingles in my cowboy boots. When I grabbed the last handful, I looked down.

Two faces looked up at me. Dad’s, of course, and Dash’s.

“It’s three already?” I called down.

“I’m early. I couldn’t wait.”

“I like this guy,” Dad said, jerking his thumb to the guy with the filthy mouth and huge dick. “He said he’d help you finish up.”

“He’s wearing a jacket and dress shoes, Dad.”

“He said he won’t throw leaves at me. What more do I need?”

I took a few steps away and threw the leaves in the orange bucket on the roof.

“Oh,” Dad cried as Dash started up the ladder, “now she’s putting them where they go instead of pelting me with them.” He shook his fist at an unjust God—or me or the gutters or Mrs.

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