Chapter 3 #2
I followed her up one flight, turned at the landing, and climbed another before we stopped in front of a large metal door. We’d only been standing there a second when the door swung open and Dante’s daughter stuck her hand out. “That’ll be $43.68.”
“For jalapenos?” I asked in mock outrage.
“You got extra cheese too.”
“That’s highway robbery!”
Resa made a gun with her thumb and pointer finger. “No, this is robbery. Give me all your cash!”
“Do I really have to pay you to get by?” I asked.
“Yes. Your total is $84.23.”
“What? How many jalapenos did you give me?”
“And the cheese,” Resa reminded me.
“Resa Pardo! Stop trying to shake down every adult you come across!” Jolie Pardo, Dante’s wife, pulled her daughter back into the hallway and held the door for me.
“I’m sorry about that. We try to keep the extortion to a minimum, but some of my brothers pass out money like they’re trying to bribe a judge, so the kids think they can get away with it. ”
“What’s a kid that age gonna do with eighty bucks?” I asked.
“Spend it,” Raylee scoffed as she walked past Jolie. She smiled at her and said, “He’s so old he forgot that toy stores exist.”
“I didn’t forget. I’m just trying to block the memories before they give me hives.”
Jolie laughed as she led me down the hall toward the apartment she shared with Dante and their children. She looked over at Raylee. “The girls are all upstairs. We’re going to have pizza later. Any toppings you don’t like?”
“Olives and pineapple.”
“That’s my girl,” I said proudly. “Neither of those belongs on pizza.”
“Olives don’t belong anywhere,” Raylee said with a shudder. “Gross.”
“I agree.” Jolie explained which door belonged to Lara’s apartment, then said, “I’ve got Raylee, and I’ll have her send you a text if we go anywhere. Oh! We make breakfast on Saturday mornings. You’re welcome to come if you’d like. If not, either Colbie or I will drive her home when she’s ready.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. I looked down at my daughter and smiled before reaching out to touch her cheek. “Call me if you need me, Biscuit.”
She nodded. “To the moon.”
I smiled. “And all the way back.”
I watched her follow Jolie inside and was surprised when she didn’t even shut the door. That might’ve had something to do with the little girl peeking around the couch, hand still held out, waiting for the money I owed her for my nonexistent burger.
I shook my head and reached for my wallet. By the time I pulled out a twenty, she was standing in front of me with a cheesy grin. I held the bill out toward her, and she said, “I thank you, and my Yeeps thank you.”
“Your Yeeps?”
“Yep. I’m gonna buy a dragon!”
“Don’t let it burn the house down,” I warned as I walked away.
“You’re the best, Mr. Duvall. The very, very, very best!”
I tried not to look into the other open doors because I knew it would be a window into other people’s private spaces.
Still, I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized the setup reminded me a little of prison, at least during the day.
I’d been lucky enough to serve time in places that allowed inmates to keep their cell doors open during free periods so they could choose to socialize or be alone.
Not all prisons were that way, but since I’d been a stellar inmate, the state placed me in a minimum-security location that had more lax rules than most.
When I got to the only closed door in the hallway, I knocked gently and then took a step back. Lara’s gym attire caught me off guard when she answered.
“Hi.”
“Hello. Are you ready to go?”
She looked down at her outfit and shrugged. “Not really, but I can go with you if you want me to.”
I was still trying to process that, wondering if she hadn’t realized I was serious when I asked her out, when a carbon copy stepped around the door and stood beside her. “Can I come too?”
I felt my brain doing a hard reset as I studied the women to find their differences in the hopes that someday I’d be able to tell them apart, but I couldn’t find anything.
Their facial features were exactly the same.
Their hair was the same shade of blonde, although they wore it in different styles.
The only difference I could find was that one of the women, who were most obviously identical twins, looked like she spent more time outside because her skin was a few shades darker than the other’s.
“Well, can I go?” the second one asked.
“Awesome! Let me go tell my husband he’s got the kids for the night,” the one in athletic wear said eagerly as she walked past me and turned down the hall.
The one with sun-kissed bronze skin said, “I better do the same thing. He hates it when I just disappear without warning.”
“But I . . . well . . .”
“Obviously, neither of us will kiss you when the date’s over, but I’m down for a nice, quiet conversation, so I might kiss your cheek when you drop us off.”
“You’re married?” I looked down the hall at the door the other woman had gone through and saw Jolie peeking around the doorframe of her apartment with a grin. “You’re not Lara.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Neither is the other one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Jolie said this is Lara’s apartment, but you both walked out to go to different ones, so that means that . . . holy shit! There are three of you?”
“We get that a lot.”
“What the fuck? How many of you are in there?” I asked when I turned around to find a third copy standing in the doorway.
While she was laughing at me, I noticed that she sported more of a “biker” look than the other two.
I looked from the sister in the doorway to the one standing in the hall and then beyond to the other one who was leaning against the doorframe down the way.
“I feel like I’ve walked into another dimension, and it’s terrifying. ”
“Because there are three of us?” the one standing next to me asked, grinning.
“Yes! What if I sweep that one off her feet,” I said as I motioned to the one still inside the apartment, “and we fall in love, but then one day I walk up behind her and dip her for a hot-as-hell kiss, only to get the shit slapped out of me because I touched the wrong one?”
“That’s a risk you’re gonna have to take, buddy,” the one from down the hall said cheerfully. “There are three of us, so it makes sense to keep baseball rules. Three strikes and you’re out.”
“I’ve got this,” I boasted.
The woman next to me chuckled. “You think so, huh?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna put a hickey on the right one’s neck and keep it there for the next fifty years or so and never run the risk of getting a strike in the first place.”
“You will not give me a hickey!” the woman in the apartment growled, telling me for sure that she was the one I was here for.
“It’s either a hickey or all three of you start wearing name tags, because I’m not gonna take the risk and assault some poor woman and then get the shit kicked out of me by her old man.”
“Maybe if you give her a hickey, we’ll just talk to our husbands and have them give us matching ones to fuck with you,” the woman next to me said. She glanced over her shoulder and grinned at the other one before she asked, “Think Clay will be down for that?”
“Of course.”
“Mark won’t have a problem with it,” she said confidently. She reached out and patted my shoulder, then started walking away. “You kids have fun tonight and don’t get into any trouble.”
I turned to face the woman in the apartment. “Are there any more in there I should worry about?”
“Just me.”
“Did the copy machine break down after the third?”
Lara smiled. “That’s one story, but our oldest brother likes to say the priest was able to close the portal from hell we escaped through and kept the rest of the copies where they belong.”
“Do you fuck with him like this often?”
“We’ve done it once or twice.”
“Then I understand where he’s coming from.” I tilted my head toward the others before asking, “What are their names? Not that I’ll be able to tell them apart anyway.”
“The one in workout gear is Lana. She’s married to Clay, who is the high school football coach. The other one . . .”
“The tan one?” I interrupted.
Lara nodded slowly. “That’s Lake. She’s the landscaper for our family’s construction company.”
“Makes sense. I think that as long as the light’s good wherever we are, I’ll be able to separate her from the three. Now I just have to figure out how to tell you and the other one apart.”
“Without giving me a hickey.”
“I’m not the kind of guy who makes promises he knows he’s not gonna keep.”