Rock in my Shoe

Black, polished shoes slapped against the sidewalk. One pair was a size thirteen, long and wide with a confident stride. The other pair only a ten, steps shorter, more of a shuffle.

"This it?" the white one asked, biting his fingernails.

"Yep," the black one answered," four ten Reservoir Way."

The stairs up to the second level of the poorly cloned condos were red, like faded brick.  The white one grabbed a hold of the railing only to have it shake, causing him to stumble.  Confounded thing was loose.

"Vinnie," the black one asked, pulling a toothpick from inside the breast pocket," why do they call you Z-grip?"

"Why you askin?" Vinnie retorted, now one step behind as they came to the top of the stairs," why they call you Mo Mo?"

The sun was sitting over the only cloud in the sky.  Vinnie glanced up, sucking air in through a gap where he’d lost an incisor.  Lonely feller.

"My first name is Montel and my last name is Maurice."

Vinnie nodded and looked around. The doors all looked the same. Only the weather worn numbers were different. Some of them even hung upside down in disrepair. The courtyard was a dump.  He hated the smell of rotten food.

"Why they call you Z-grip?"

He shrugged, pulling a large pistol from the holster under his armpit. There was a large "Z" scratched into the grip, as if someone had done it with a pocket knife.  Vinnie stepped over a plastic bag with what looked to be a cloth diaper in it. It was cheaper to wash and reuse. Mama had used cloth diapers on him. Never had no choice.

421

They stood in front of the door. A baby cried somewhere on the other side of the courtyard. Vinnie sniffed, running a thin fingered hand over light brown stubble.  A baby’s cry was like dragging your teeth across a popsicle.

"You ready?” Mo Mo asked, standing tall, a few inches above Vinnie.

"Why do you let people call you Mo Mo?"

"Don't know," the toothpick rolled around in his mouth as he chewed on it," figure I don't much care. Why?"

"I just was wonderin. Cause you got your given name, the name your mama gives you. Ain't that doing the job what's needed? Why you have to let them change what you get called?"

The baby was crying again.

"Maybe people just do it out of a need for a sense of familiarity. You usually don't hear strangers, or newly made acquaintances calling each other by a nickname. Get enough people together in one place and you’re bound to have some nicknames come up once they get better acquainted. People just want to accept others, whether they know it or not."

Vinnie looked down at his shoes.  He could almost see his reflection.

"Maybe they accept people because they think if they do then others will accept them. Kinda like trying to serve yourself by serving others. Is that a reason to do anything?"

Mo Mo frowned. Vinnie sniffed, hawkish nose scrunching up.

"Is it really the time for this?"

"I was just thinking about it, just thinking."

"Stop," Mo Mo held each of his pointer fingers up and off to the sides, bringing them slowly together in front of Vinnie's beak of a nose," focus. Focus. Get yourself into character Zee."

Vinnie nodded slowly for a moment.  Watching as Mo Mo shook his arms, rolling his neck around, face stained with a grimace and then blessed with a smile as a few hollow pops and cracks greeted his efforts.  Drawing his long fingers over his face as pulling a mask on, Mo Mo relaxed his face until there was no evidence of any emotion.  Feeling a bit strange, Vinnie did a few neck rolls and took some deep breaths.  Closing his eyes he whispered under his breath.  He heard the familiar click of a handgun.  Vinnie frowned.  Opening his eyes he drew his own gun.

"Wait, why did you call me Zee?"

Mo Mo had been about to knock, his large brown hand held in a fist just above the numbers on the door. Pausing, he turned his head to the side for a moment.

"Guess I just want to be accepted."

Mo Mo laughed, shaking his head. Vinnie grinned. The knock on the door was heavy and quick. A pause. Mo Mo knocked again.  With a wink and nod the taller, darker man tested the rusted brass knob. Throwing the door open, Mo Mo raised his weapon and scanned the-

With a metallic click and a wet thud, Vinnie watched Mo Mo drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

"Come in."

Vinnie still had his gun aimed at the floor. He'd frozen. He should be dead.

"I said come in, and close the door if you don't mind."

Vinnie nodded absently, closing the door. It wouldn't close. Mo Mo's head was in the way. Vinnie stared down at his partner. The tiny hole in that dark, broad forehead looked so harmless, so innocent.

"I said close the door friend."

Vinnie dropped his gun and pulled Mo Mo into the room, closing the door. His heart was racing. He should be just as dead as Mo Mo.  The walls were some kind of dust color.  Ugly and cheap.  The TV had two antenna sticking out in crooked directions.

"Do you know who Gonzo is?"

"W-What?"

"Gonzo, the fellow with the nose that curves like so," the voice was coming from the back of the room.

With the lights out it was hard to see. The smell of cheap cigarettes wafted past him. What he wouldn't give for a square.

"I assume you've seen the Muppets before?" there was a pause that ended when Vinnie nodded hesitantly, eyeing his pistol on the floor," Gonzo, a purple freak.  A loner amongst those who know where they're from. A homeless dreamer. But he didn't understand. Do you know what I'm talking about...what is your name?"

Vinnie sniffed and glanced back down at Mo Mo.

"Zee," Vinnie said, looking back to the barely defined shadow sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed," call me Zee."

The man laughed, a cold, dry sound, a chuckle.

"Well, anyway, the show wouldn't have had a place for a freak like Gonzo if none of the others on the show were puppets."

Vinnie frowned.  Feller had to be a cold one to talk so casually just after gunning a man down.

"Gonzo fit in, was at home with the others because they were all freaks."

Vinnie's palms were sweaty. He didn't want to die. With a sigh the man in the shadows rose, stepping around the corner of the bed. The light from the windows played shadows across the middle of the room, light reflecting weakly off the TV.

"Willy likes your calm kid. You not afraid to die?"

"Real afraid.”

"Don't be confused, sometimes Willy likes to speak in the third person when on business."

Vinnie's confused look didn't change. Willy must have understood.

"I am Willy, William being my given name. It was my birthday last week."

Blinking his eyes a few times and staring past the floor, Vinnie felt his palms itch.  Mo Mo’s blood was starting to spread out further into the ratty beige carpet.

"So Zee," Willy said, coming into the light," you ready to go?"

Vinnie stared at the man, trying to rid himself of the ridiculous image of a stork dressed in a dark coat and baggy pants. The beard was the worst part, sticking out in any and every direction. The hair hung down past his narrow shoulders. Willy unscrewed the silencer from his slender weapon and slid it smoothly into the depths of his coat.

"Willy asked you if you were ready to go."

Vinnie looked to his gun and then back at Willy.  Cigarette smoke curled up and around Willy's odd eyes, hazel, like a kaleidoscope. They stared at each other.  A cockroach dropped from a hole in ceiling, landing on Mo Mo and bouncing into the growing pool of blood.  Willy broke the stare, glancing down with an amused grin as the stout insect toiled through the blood to leave a slug-like trail across the carpet.

"We're all freaks, pick up your gun and let’s get out of here. The cleaning lady will be up in a moment."

Vinnie nodded numbly, leaning over to pick up his weapon. Running his thumb over the "Z" carved into the grip, he considered shooting the man.  Willy dropped his cigarette, grinding it with a booted toe into the carpet.  Willy's gun was out and pointed right at Vinnie's face.  He hadn’t even looked up from the carpet.

"Don't. Willy doesn't like to kill for no reason."

Vinnie holstered his weapon and put his hands up.  With a chuckle Willy walked out of the room, stepping over the body with a chilling nonchalance. Vinnie followed, pausing for a moment to look down at Mo Mo.

"He's right Montel, we're all freaks," he sighed, the scratching sound of a lighter rasping from outside the door, "see you someday Mo Mo."

Willy dropped the lighter back into his coat, taking a deep pull on the cigarette held in his claw-like hands. 


Chapter 3: Smiling Daisies

Lilia frowned.  Cordalilia Rossana Gordon.  Sniffing a flower, she twirled the stem between her thumb and forefinger.  What had mother been thinking?  To marry an Italian was one thing.  Sometimes she wondered what her mother had been taking when she named her daughter.  Codeine.  Vicadin.  The door to the little shop had long ago been removed.  Summers in Solana Beach never asked her to have a door.  She frowned, daisies made her think of…grunting she turned to look out the door.  Daisies were just too plain, too simple.  Boring.  Glancing out the door she looked across the little road that ran between the flower shop and the dilapidated, two story office building of an Albanian dentist.  A bus stop kiosk sat on the corner, advertisements covered over with graffiti.

“Good day to you Ms. Gordon!” a familiar voice called from across the street.

Lilia smiled and waved back, strands of sun bleached blonde hair trailing across her face.  The dentist’s only child, a boy no more than a few years younger than she was, smiled brightly at her wave and ducked in through the cracked glass window, little bells ringing clear and pure.  Summer afternoon traffic in Solana Beach, California was light.  She pursed her lips absently and glanced at the sky, pausing long enough to count the four fluffy clouds that were drifting about overheard in the great big blue.

“Miss…”

Lilia’s heart skipped a beat and her breath caught in her throat.  She hadn’t even known someone was there.

A quiet, tired voice almost whispered from her left,” miss would you happen to have a light?”

Taking a half step back in the door she brushed her hair away from her eyes.  He was dressed in what looked to have been a very nice suit at one time.  The rickety old bench outside her shop wasn’t a place that people usually sat.  His nose was big.  She frowned at herself, but it was true.

“Miss?  A light, do you have one?”

“No…” she smiled nervously, leaning back against the doorway, the homogeny of flower fragrances flowing past her and out into the nearly deserted street.

The man sighed and put the box of cigarettes he’d been holding back into the inside pocket of his rumpled black suit.  His head looked to have been recently shaved, stubble only just long enough to be seen.

“What’s your name?” she asked impulsively.

“V…” he stopped, smiling a good, clean, pure smile,” Zee.  My name is Zee.”
She looked at him for a long moment, studying the way he simply stared straight ahead.  His eyes were dark, his forehead smudged with dirt and marred with a few scratches.  His cheeks were gaunt, but not overly so.  Usually men who looked like this man were hard, ambitious and driven, as if the fire in their soul had boiled away all the extra flesh on the body.  She smiled and looked down, this man, Zee, he was calm and easy spoken in a way that reminded her of Jimmy Stewart.  She laughed, covering her mouth with one hand absently.  Zee looked up, a quiet curiosity wondering in his dark eyes.

“Y’mind if I ask you what you’re laughing about?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t well know,” he shrugged and smiled, “I jus’ figure I’ve had a pretty hard day and could use a laugh.”

Lilia chewed on her lip for a moment.

“I was thinking that you remind me of Jimmy Stewart.”

The man, Zee, turned his eyes from her back to the road.  He sighed and looked down, his shoulder heaving a little noiselessly.  At first she thought he was crying.  Before she could ask him if he was alright he leaned back against the battered back support of the chipped up old bench, laughing to himself softly.  She shook her head and glanced back over at Ebrahim’s office building.  She should set up an appointment with him for next week.

“Miss…”

“Lilia,” she said without taking her eyes from the front door of the old office building.

“Miss Lilia, could I get a few daisies?”

She frowned and turned to look at Zee, the man holding up a crumpled twenty in his hand.

“I used to pick daisies for my mother, she loved daisies.”

Lilia looked at the twenty dollar bill for a moment before carefully taking it and walking back into the shop.  The ringing of the register opening seemed to get swallowed up in the floral dreams floating through the warm air of the flower shop.  Getting his change she picked up a few daisies and took one step towards the door.  Stopping she smiled and went back behind the register.  Fishing around under the counter, she pulled out an old packet of matches.  With a triumphant grin she moved with a pleased grace back towards the door, old yellow cloth skirt skipping at her ankles as she wove her way through the small throng of stands and tables adorned with flowers.

“Good news,” she laughed as she stepped out the door, flowers, money and matches in hand, “I found some…”

The man’s head was slumped down on his chest, asleep.

“Um…hello?  Zee?”

Her forehead tainted with worry, she set the flowers, money and matches on the bench next to him as she gently put her hands on his shoulder.  She gasped as Zee fell away from her hesitant touch, rolling off the bench onto the ground.  His coat fell open, revealing a once very white shirt now stained a malevolent red.  Her hand came to her mouth and she had a moment of confusion before she screamed.