Trash Daddy

20. How Many Ex-Wives?

“Will you please come help me with this?” I snap.

Irritation flares in my chest as Carmella blows a pink bubble and pops it with her mouth before continuing to chomp and ignore me. She’s been salty all day and never did bring me any coffee.

Dressed in a solid teal spaghetti strap tank top and light blue jeans, she leans against the large furniture van with her Converse sneakers peeking out from the bottom hem and her hair pulled back in a perky ponytail. Her gaze is fixed on the red-brick wall that forms the back of an apartment complex. We’re parked at the entrance of an alleyway close enough to the ocean that the seagulls have invaded the open dumpster next to the metal futon bed frame I spotted from the road.

Seagulls scream at me and each other as they pick apart the open trash bag for crumbs. Normally, they don’t bother me, but today the fucking winged rats are everywhere.

The matching mattress sits in a puddle next to the futon frame. I thought about grabbing it but didn’t want to spend the time shampooing it out. Plus, it smells like the worst kind of dog piss and is covered by white circles of seagull shit.

I drop the frame and stare at her. “Remind me why I’m paying you to stand there?”

Her teeth gnash into her gum as she turns on her heel and stomps back to the cab of the delivery van. Yanking open the door, she steps up and in, slamming it behind her. The noise sends the fucking seagulls shooting up all around me. Their shrill calls and squawks make me want to punch them as they launch into the sky.

Beads of sweat trickle down my neck, and I take a deep, calming breath and immediately regret it as I suck in lungfuls worth of ammonia and rotten vegetable stench. Scanning for the SUV for what feels like the fiftieth time today, I walk to her side of the vehicle, plastering a practiced smile on my face. The door opens with a metallic groan. “What’s wrong, sugar? Not having fun with the seagulls?” My tone is sharper than I’d intended.

Her head does an imitation of that chick from The Exorcist as she swivels to spear me with her cold blue eyes. “You’re just like every other guy, you fucking know that? I’m good enough to fuck, but immediately after, you all turn into raging dicks and I end up hiding in the bathroom. Fine, if that’s how it’s gotta be, then fucking pay me and I’ll go help you with your fucking futon. Hey, why don’t you pay me some more for this morning? You and Tommy should have an asshole party together.” The venom in her voice is scathing and, for a minute, I’m shocked into silence. The handle wrenches out of my palm and the door snaps shut in my face.

Blinking, I stare at the fuming blonde. Trying to get a hold of my temper in this heat is like trying to hold on to sand in a windstorm. It’s not my first rodeo with a hostile woman. Arguably, I’m an old pro, both at pissing off the ladies and getting back out of trouble. That being said, Carmella has a nasty way of not letting things go.

I grab the handle, popping the door open again, and she grabs it from the inside, holding it in place; the door hovers between us. “Let go, hun,” I say through gritted teeth.

Carmella pulls hard, nearly closing the door, and her hand scrambles to hit the lock. As I yank it back, her body lunges forward with the force and she glares at me with renewed hostility. Here we fucking go.

“Let go of my fucking door, Luke!” She throws her body back, pulling my arm with it.

“You’re being fucking ridiculous, Carmella. Stop!”

“You’re fucking ridiculous! Leave me alone!” she hisses.

We end up in a childish battle of wills in the shape of tug-of-war with my delivery van door. It creaks and groans in protest as it swings between us, witnessing our meltdown.

“Women, your language gets worse every day. Now open the door.”

“YOU’RE NOT MY DAD!” Carmella yells.

“I’m the closest thing you’ve had to a daddy since you were seven. Now let go of the goddamn door before I spank you!”

She sucks in a breath like I’ve slapped her. “Maybe a fucking trash daddy!”

“WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!” I yell back, more confused than ever about how we got here and what I’m supposed to do now. Pulling the door, I watch her slide across the seat. The woman must have super-glued herself to the door latch. That thought pisses me off even more. If she could just relent for one fucking minute.

“LET GO OF THE FUCKING DOOR AND STOP. FUCKING. YELLING!” I roar, ripping the door open, determined to take her with it if that’s the cost for this bullshit to be done.

And she lets go. It’s just unfortunate that I had most of my weight pulling against it. As it swings loose, the lack of tension sends me backward to the ground, ass-first into a puddle of piss-warm alley water full of seagull shit.

“Fucking hell!” I yell, attempting to scramble up, which results in me splashing about as my hands land in more water. “Ahh, shit fuck!” It’s too late to salvage my outfit. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of blonde hair as Carmella flies down from her seat and runs past me.

I’m off the ground and bearing down on her as wet fabric clings to my ass cheeks and drips down my legs. My face is flushed with rage and embarrassment. Never in my life . . .

When I snatch the back of her hair, she howls like a banshee and lashes out, scratching my face. The marks burn like hellfire. Scooping her up, I toss her over my shoulder. She kicks and screams, cursing at me. Banding my arm across the back of her thighs, I reach up and slap her ass hard enough to sting my hand. At the back of the tall vehicle, I dump her unceremoniously onto its metal floor. I was fucking right about that crazy/hot ratio.

She crab walks back before standing up and pacing the van floor like a caged tiger. “You will not treat me like shit, Luke!”

“How have I treated you like shit?” I snap, waving my arms.

“You were nice this morning, and then when I got up—because I wanted to find you—you interrogated, intimated, choked me, and offered no explanation or apology once you calmed down from whatever the fuck was wrong with you, and then those men came and I had to hide in the bathroom, but now you want to pretend like everything is okey dokey. Guess what? It’s not.”

I put up a hand. “I feel like you might still be a little upset about Tommy.”

She glares daggers at me. “Maybe so, but you’re the one I’m most upset with right now. Also, fuck Tommy. Fuck you.”

A pain starts between my eyebrows. Between the heat, Carmella, the water dribbling into my shoes, everything that happened this morning, and the screeching seagulls, I can feel a headache brewing. I’m caught between wanting to rub my temples and laughing hysterically. Boy, she can really be a handful.

She’s right though. I’ve been an ass, but she’s far too emotional to have a logical conversation about the threat that hangs over our heads. Right now, I worry she will flip out and run off once she learns about the SUV. Clearly, we are already on edge.

Infusing my smile with tranquility and levelheadedness, I try to defuse the situation by grinning at her. I open my mouth to tell her…

“What’s your last name?”

I falter. “What?”

“What is your last name?” she asks again through gritted teeth.

Completely caught off guard, I answer, “Reeves.”

“Don’t you fucking smile at me, Luke Reeves! I’m onto your bullshit,” Carmella snarls at me, arms folded as she paces the small space.

Okay. Well, fuck me. Never mind.Usually, we are further along in the relationship before they use my full name. I hold up my hands in surrender.

Pulling out a crushed box of cigarettes from my pocket, I pick through the remains and find one that is only slightly bent. Lighting up, I take a moment to have a long drag and breathe it out.

Carmella huffs while staring down at me. “Why were you mad this morning, Luke? I could tell. One minute, you were like, ‘Oh, sexy time,’ and the next, you were strangling me and looking all pissed off.”

I sigh. My mind flicks through how I can spin this without offending her or freaking her out. The smell of my cigarette tinges the air around me. There is no good spin. Just suck it up, Luke. She is going to flip.

Pulling my wet pants out of my ass crack, I pick through my words carefully while studying her face. “There’s an SUV watching the store. I thought maybe you knew who they were after everything we talked about last night.”

Carmella stops pacing. All the color drains from her face as she bites her lip. “Who do you think they are?”

Isn’t that the question of the hour?

She continues, “Why did that make you mad at me? Who are the men that came to the store? Why were some of them still there when we left? Be honest, Luke.”

Be honest. Hell of a thing to ask from a used furniture salesman, mob employee, and con man. I made my way into the world being a professional liar. I take a longer drag from my cig.

My shoulders slump a bit. “I really don’t know who is in the SUV, Carmella. I’ve spent the entire morning trying to piece it together.” She bites her lower lip, worrying it as she stares down the alley. Lines crease her face, making her appear older. The last thing I want is Carmella freaking out, taking off, and making a mistake that lands her in jail.

“Look, I’m sorry about this morning. I’m a dick. I was reeling from the shock of finding someone watching us, and I didn’t take it well. That’s not your fault, nor is it a reason to mistreat you. I’m sorry and I want you to know that whoever they are, I’m not going to let them hurt you.”

Her face softens, and she sits down, dangling her legs off the back of the van. “Do you think it could be a detective looking for me?”

“If it’s a detective, I imagine the police would have already come.” Flicking what’s left of my ciggy into a puddle, I watch it snuff out.

“Shouldn’t we be back at the store?” Carmella tugs at her pale ashen ponytail, the baby-hair curls coiling and uncoiling.

“I’ve got the cameras on and, as you noticed, there are men watching the place now. I doubt anyone is coming through the door in the middle of the day with malicious intent.” Especially since they’ve stuck to only watching you so far.

She fidgets with her ponytail harder. “Who are the men watching the store?”

I stare down at the pavement and shake my head. I can’t keep Carmella from noticing things, but I can sure as fuck spare her from knowing too much. “I’m not telling you that, and it’s better if you don’t ask.”

That gets her back up. “What, you don’t trust me? I told you everything about my shit.”

“Goddammit, Carmella. Maybe I’m trying to help keep you safe. You ever think of that? Maybe it’s better if you don’t know certain things because once you do, you can’t… unknow. And knowing can make you a target in something you didn’t sign up for. Did you ever think that maybe concealing things from you is my way of helping protect you from more trouble? That if I didn’t care about your well-being, I would toss you in the deep end and see if you drowned or not?”

She rocks back at my outburst and takes a deep breath. “Concealing things like why you have a shit ton of tires but don’t sell them, or the extra phone in your room and the shipment that arrives like clockwork, or the scary-looking men that are parked outside Luke’s currently?”

“Yes, Carmella. Things like that.”

She stares past me, into the distance. “I don’t consider lying to be a kindness. Are the men parked outside because of the SUV?”

“You don’t have to worry about that. They shouldn’t bother you, and if they do, tell me.”

I feel a space open up between us and it fills with the things I’m not willing to tell her. The feds, rival criminal organizations, cops, all of it goes into the hole. None of them provide reassuring answers and all options lead to Carmella asking questions she is safer not asking. I settle on a less disturbing possibility to offer her. “The SUV could be one of my ex-wives.”

“Wives? As in plural?” Her eyebrows arch into a question.

I flinch. “Yeah. Well. Actually, only one in particular I’d be concerned about.”

She stares at me before shaking her head.

“How many wives?” she asks.

Pondering how much trouble it will create if I tell her it isn’t any of her business, I motion to the metal bed frame.

“Help me get this loaded, and I’ll tell you.”

She narrows her eyes at me but hops down from the van and walks over to the frame, helping pull off the bags of trash as I wiggle the futon loose. “You know, when you said it was shop restock day, I pictured something more businesslike, not dumpster diving and garage sale shopping,” Carmella says. The frame scrapes free from the pile of trash and I drag it toward the truck bed, checking it out as I go.

“I told you I get my inventory cheap.”

“True. I guess now I understand why the used section of the store really is all profit. But this seems like a lot of legwork.”

I nod, approving her assessment. We heft the frame into the back of the van. “It wasn’t always like this, you know. I used to have a shit ton of employees and several thriving businesses. People called me successful. It looks like it’s missing a few bolts and a rail is bent. Easy fix if I have the part.” We shove the frame next to the dresser, table, and bed frame set we picked up at a liquidation sale. My mind races ahead to what I’ll need to do to get these pieces showfloor ready. The wood needs to be refinished and oiled, maybe new hardware for the set.

Curiosity flashes across Carmella’s face. “What happened to your other businesses?”

I wave her to follow me out of the back and help her down. The rolling door clamors as it slides closed, making a ruckus. “Get in and we will talk out of this fucking heat,” I say, wiping my brow with the back of my hand.

Carmella nods and walks around to the front of the vehicle. Getting in on my side, I turn the engine on and crank up the air. “So…?” She draws out the O, nudging me into talking.

“The wives and the businesses kind of go hand in hand.”

She looks at me with raised eyebrows. “So, how many?”

“Four,” I say, staring out over the flow of traffic from our vantage point in the alleyway.

“Four ex-wives?” Her voice is incredulous.

I nod.

“You’re thirty-four with four ex-wives?” she says louder.

I frown and shrug at her. “You asked, and it’s not like I’ve kept it a secret that I’m into women.”

She leans on the gray middle console that separates us and observes me. I scowl. Carmella blows another pink bubble and it pops loudly in the silence. When I reach to turn the radio on, she grabs my wrist and pulls it away.

“What happened to them?”

I sigh and sit back in my chair. “Is this really what you want to talk about?”

She agrees, her ponytail bouncing. “Since you won’t talk about other things, the least you can do is tell me this. I told you my shady history. You can tell me some of yours,” Carmella argues.

Letting the cold air wash over my face, I brace myself to bring up all this old shit again. “The first time, I was eighteen, and she was sixteen. Her name was Pearl. I thought I was in love and her parents agreed to let her marry me because they were dirt poor and wanted someone else to be responsible for feeding her. We got a small apartment. She worked in the evenings after high school and I worked…” I pause. Technically, by then, I had been working for Sasha and doing whatever odd job I could do to make money as a high school dropout with a rage problem.

I continue, “I worked full time. It didn’t take long before things went south, as they often do with young couples. We were kids, and we both ended up fucking other people. She got pregnant with another man’s baby. We got divorced two years later.”

“Shit, Luke, I’m sorry. Did you raise the baby?” Carmella offers.

“Don’t be. I was cheating too. Hell, I know for a fact I slept around first, and no. We separated when she got pregnant. It just took us two more years to finally get the divorce,” I admit. She nods.

Carmella touches my wrist, her fingers trailing up my forearm. I look down at where our skin connects. That sweet, brief touch nearly makes me haul her into the back of the van so I can give her another round of leg-shaking orgasms.

I continue, “After the divorce, some buddies and I took off to Vegas. Picked up some girls and spent the whole week smashed and high.”

A chuckle drags from my mouth over the hazy memories of rolling through the maze of casinos and bars. “I apparently got so drunk, I married one of those girls on a dare from my friends. But knowing my luck, I ended up marrying the craziest one I could find. Come the next morning, that girl fully thought that she was moving across the country and into my place with me and we were really going to be husband and wife. She even called her parents to tell them.”

Carmella listens intently. I put the van in drive and slowly navigate through traffic. The ocean rises to my left and I stare at the sparking blue waters and gray, tan sand, lost in thought and pain from a long time ago.

“It was a fucking nightmare. On the weekend I was supposed to be celebrating my divorce, I fucking married another woman. Thankfully, the license wasn’t filed, and I burned all the papers in the sink at my hotel. That woman was so pissed off at me when I told her our marriage was a sham, she threw a plant through my windshield.”

Carmella blinks and her eyes widen. “Wait, a plant? Like a green one? How did you end up having a plant tossed into your windshield?”

“Yeah, like a big fucking terracotta potted plant. She was spitting mad and followed me into the parking lot after I broke it off. The hotel was doing landscaping and she just hefts this big motherfucking plant and throws it at me. But I’m sitting in the front seat of the rental car. So now I got this fucking tropical greenery growing out of the windshield, dirt all over me, roots dangling down across my steering wheel, and she is screaming like a hellcat, trying to yank the handle off the door. I won’t lie. It scared me. She was going to kill me. Security came and then the cops. I flew back home the next day.”

Carmella burst out laughing, making my lips quirk up on one side. It is pretty funny when you think about it. She gasps. “You were scared?!”

“Fuck yeah, this woman just chucked a hundred-pound projectile at me with a crazy level of strength and was threatening to tear the door off my car. She probably would have snapped my neck if she’d gotten in. Just because women are physically smaller than men doesn’t make them less dangerous.”

Carmella howls with laughter in the front seat. I shake my head, but it’s good to see her laugh again after the tension of this morning. All thoughts of the shady SUV are gone for a moment. Her laughter is infectious and gets me chuckling along with her. She calms after a while, with sporadic bouts of giggles.

She grins at me. “The third wife. What about her?”

“Well, it took a long time to convince me to get married again after that.”

“Naturally,” Carmella agrees with a conspiratorial grin.

My tone changes with my third wife. It always does when I talk about her. “My next marriage was wasteful of me. We were the same age, twenty-six, and we got it right that time. I married a good woman. She was a wonderful, loving wife. Beautiful too. A wife any man should be proud to have. Her name was Jocelyn.”

“Did she die?” Carmella’s soft voice carries into the space between us.

I scan the road, refusing to look at her. “No. The problem was, she’s a good person, and I wasn’t.”

At that time in my life, Sasha’s business ideas and mob life absorbed every bit of me. I developed a coke habit and party lifestyle that Jocelyn could never be a part of, mainly because she wouldn’t have approved of the hookers we partied with or the violence.

“You’ve been kind to me. Mostly,” Carmella says.

I smirk. “Let’s just say life has dropped me down a peg… or five. At some point, a man has to ask himself, ‘Am I the problem?’ and if the answer is yes, there’s a defining moment where you have to decide if you’re always going to be a shithead or not. I didn’t want to be a shithead for the rest of my life. I’m not the best at it, but I… try.”

Carmella gives me a tentative smile and nods. “So what happened with Jocelyn?”

“It became increasingly clear over our three-year marriage that I was the asshole who couldn’t keep it in his pants or keep his nose out of the coke. I robbed our marriage of all trust and peace. Robbed her, as well, of many things, and stole away whatever affection or kindness she held for me. I lied to her. She’d catch me, and I’d pick a big fight.” I shift my shoulder as the weight of the memories comes back. I have a lot of regrets over Jocelyn. I accepted what I lost a long time ago and moved on, but taking this box off the shelf, dusting it off, and sharing it with Carmella is harder than I thought it would be. It doesn’t paint me in a flattering light.

“Anyway, I made her bitter and angry, and then I would push her away for not being the loving wife I first met. I called her a shrill bitch. Made her out to be this bait-and-switch villain that lied to me in order to get me to marry her. Accepting my own faults while using coke was impossible. It was easier to blame her, and I did. It’s hard to love when you don’t know what it looks or feels like. Harder to be a decent person when every day you are running around with a bunch of other dysfunctional assholes. Unimaginable to be a better version of yourself when drugs and women provide such a delightful distraction from your own pain. It took me years to own up to the fact that I ruined the marriage and broke her along the way.”

It”s dead silent at my confession, and the need to fill it urges me to take a lighter tone. “But you know, she went on and remarried a real stable guy; he makes good money. He gave her a couple of kids, which she always wanted, and she seems happy. I see her now and then around town with her family. We don’t talk and that’s fair. I’m the bad guy. But her kids are cute, and they look like her. She got a better ending.” I blink back the tears that attempt to form in the corners of my eyes.

Carmella says nothing. Her hand pulls away from my arm, and the emptiness of her touch hurts me. I shift in my seat. “Sorry. I am not always the better man. I’m definitely no hero, which I think you already kind of knew or suspected.”

I take an off-ramp to the highway and head back to the store, my desire to keep looking for furniture plummeting. The bay opens up alongside the road as more seagulls fly overhead. “If it makes you feel any better, Jocelyn was the last woman I ever cheated on. I made that choice, but the universe, or powers that be, decided that one right choice wasn’t enough to undo all the bad, so they sent Tracey.”

I glance at her. She stares out the window. “Tracey is the fourth wife?” she asks.

“Yup. The fourth ex-wife, and the one I worry might be behind the SUV. You can only put so much nasty shit into the world before, eventually, it returns to you. And Tracey is a fantastic example of that.”

Carmella looks at me curiously. “What did she do to you?”

I snort, unable to keep the anger from my voice. “What didn’t she do? Why do you think we live in the back of the store? Bitch took me for everything I owned. My house, the bank accounts, my business, and our retirement—she got it all.”

I chuckle humorlessly and shake my head at my stupidity. “When I met Tracey, I knew she wasn’t a good woman in the same way that I wasn’t a good man. But we worked well together, made a shit-ton of money, and the sex was amazing.” Carmella tosses me a glare I catch out of the corner of my eye and it almost makes me laugh.

“I thought it was a partnership where neither of us had to pretend to be anything else. Being with her felt like a relief. Like I was off some moral or ethical hook. I no longer had to pay the price of acting like everyone else just to exist in this world because I was loved and accepted for who I was and what I did. And call me a sucker, but I fell for that. Blindly. And I was her long con.”

We pull up to a red light. “Tracey was running around on me the entire time.” Carmella opens her mouth, but I cut her off. “Before you say anything, I already know it’s karma. I willingly married my worst traits personified. I’m sure there is some egotistical, narcissistic psychology in there somewhere about why I found a woman that was a more cutthroat version of me super attractive and I should have seen the writing on the wall, but I didn’t.”

Carmella winces and closes her mouth before settling back into her chair. The light turns green, and I follow along with the flow of traffic. “Anyway, Tracey and her lover came up with a plan, so she gathered as much blackmail on me as she could. Not that I made that job hard for her. I was excited to be with her. It was new and refreshing and I told her everything about the cons, money, and my big wins. She was my business partner and my wife and was on all the paperwork. She knew everything, and that still makes me feel like an idiot. So when I got into some legal trouble, I signed everything over to her, thinking it was the best way to protect everything.”

“She fucked you over bad, huh?” Carmella whispers as my fist clenches the steering wheel. I bark out a laugh.

“I get served the divorce papers out of the clear blue and when I get home, all her stuff was gone. Some of my stuff too. So, there I am, in the house I built for the woman I’m madly in love with, sobbing because, once again, I got it wrong and wondering what the point is, when I get hit over the head. I come to, tied up at my kitchen table, where Tracey and I’d had breakfast that morning, and she introduces me to her fucking lover like its teatime. Then, they laid it all out nice and simple. I could either sign over my portion of our estate and cooperate with the divorce proceedings and she would hand back over my businesses after it was all done or her lover was going to shoot me in the head. I agreed.”

“Did you go to the police?” Carmella asks.

“Couldn’t. She had blackmail: tax evasion, under reporting, and larceny and assault on a few people. Plus some other stuff.” Murder, transporting money, laundering, working for a criminal enterprise. Forgery. The list goes on.

“I cooperate, she gets everything, and on the day she is supposed to sign my businesses back over to me, she”s gone.” Technically, Sasha tried to find her, but aside from our day at court, Tracey vanished into the wind. My chest burns with rage but extinguishes quickly as I remind myself I had it coming. “I had that lawyer friend liquidate everything she didn’t know about, which wasn’t much. Tracey didn’t want the furniture business, so it was the only thing I kept. The liquidated funds went to the IRS to keep my ass out of prison and to pay off my lawyer”s fees.”

“I’m sorry, Luke.”

We pull into the store parking lot. “Don’t be. You didn’t do it. These things are all on me. You were right. It’s fair that you know some things if you’re going to keep fucking around with me.”

She nods and gives me a small, sad smile. “Thanks for telling me.” She hops out of the van and walks around to open the shop’s sliding door so we can unload.

Two of Sasha’s men get out of the black Escalade parked at the front of the store and make to help Carmella and me unload the furniture van. I wave them off, watching them retake their positions. The less they mingle with her, the better off things are.