Norman Partridge - The Ten-Ounce Siesta

“Could be.” Lorelei popped the clip and reloaded, then jammed it back in the Steyr AUG. “Well, let me give it another try. If I miss this time, you can call me Swarovski.”

A series of sharp blasts erupted behind Lorelei, and the remaining three cans of pineapple juice were blasted airborne. A second later they descended pissing sweet yellow streams.

Tura laughed, blowing on the barrel of a 9-mm full-auto TMP machine pistol. “That’s how it’s done, sis.”

“You bitch.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“And I know this one.”

“You think you do. I got plenty of tricks up my sleeves you know nada about.”

“You got tricks, all right. And their names are Felix and Raoul and Pablo. . and then there’s your favorite, that doctor who outlived Methuselah.” Lorelei wrinkled her brow, a coy little pause. “Now what’s his name?”

“You know as well as I do. Just the way you know they all used to come to me. You remember that right. Girl, you’re lucky we didn’t stay in Vegas. If you had to make your living as a lap dancer, you would have starved-”

“You girls stop your chitchat and get back to work!”

Simultaneously, Tura and Lorelei turned toward a little rise to the east. Mama had her old Ford pickup parked up there. Her lounge chair was planted in the bed, which was lined with tinfoil that reflected the morning sunlight on the back of her legs.

Mama slathered cocoa butter on the brown belly that had once been home to Lorelei and Tura and their younger sister Eden. That belly was pretty firm for a sixty-two-year-old woman, but then again there weren’t too many women like Mama. Today she was sunbathing in a black leather bikini accessorized with a shoulder holster and a Heckler amp; Koch USP40. Usually she didn’t wear the shoulder holster because it gave her tan lines something fierce. The only reason she made an exception this morning was because of the kidnapped Chihuahua and all.

“You girls answer your mama when she talks to you!”

“Yes, Mama.” The words came out of their mouths in one voice, because Tura and Lorelei had spoken them many times before.

“Now get back to work!”

The twins sidled up alongside one another, nearly putting their heads together. Lorelei whispered, “The old bitch doesn’t miss a trick.”

“No she don’t. Look at her, sittin’ up there like the mistress of all she surveys. One eye on us, and the other eye on the house.”

“Probably got a TV hooked up so she can keep her eye on Daddy, too.”

“She wouldn’t dare. Not with Daddy.”

“Yeah. He keeps her in line.”

“I can hear every word, girls,” Mama yelled. “Get back to work! Get them cans set up!”

Tura fed the 9 mm’s clip and slammed it home. “Think she really hears us?”

“If she does, she ain’t gonna anymore.” Lorelei slipped a CD into her battered boom box and pumped up the volume. Joan Jett screamed “Bad Reputation.”

Lorelei said, “That’ll show the bitch.”

“Yeah.”

Tura and Lorelei set down their guns and set up the cans. Mama sure knew how to get them riled. She’d never let things be. Everything had to go her way, right down to the color of their skin.

Eden had it easy. She couldn’t tan. All she did was bum. It was hard to believe that Eden was really their sister, because everyone else in the family tanned as brown as nuts.

Tura and Lorelei weren’t so lucky. Mama insisted that Eden’s older sisters be the same shade-the far side of bronze, not quite as dark as she was. Mama’s skin was the measuring stick. She was forever holding her arm against those of her daughters. Her dry saddlebag skin chafed like fine sandpaper. Then she’d tell them more sun or less sun. They were never just right.

Nope. Just right wasn’t part of Mama’s vocabulary. There was no pleasing the woman.

By the time the sisters returned to the firing line, Joan Jett had finished up “Bad Reputation.” “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” kicked in as Lorelei took aim.

The gun felt wrong against her shoulder. The damn leather bikini strap was sawing at her skin like a knife. She checked her weapon and adjusted the strap.

“Black leather bikinis and black leather panties. Black leather Wonderbras. Black leather miniskirts and long black leather gloves. I’m so fucking sick of wearing black leather anything.”

Tura nodded. “Me too. We get that half a million and they’ll be no more hijacking trucks off the highway. No more living off whatever we can steal. No more drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon because we got a hundred cases stored down in Daddy’s bomb shelter. No more eating tuna sandwiches and tuna burgers and tuna surprise because we hijacked an ocean of canned tuna. No more wiping our asses with pages from the May 1997 issue of Cosmopolitan because we’ve got three hundred of those and toilet paper costs money. And no more wearing black leather just because we knocked over a truckload of S amp; M gear headed for some kink shop in Vegas.”

“Yeah,” Lorelei said. “If this deal works out. I’m done with hijacking. I’m sick of playing lot lizard so I can climb up into some trucker’s cab. I’m sick of the way the goobers laugh, even when I pull out my gun. And I’m sure as hell sick of cleaning up the mess when we get done with them. It’s too damn hard to get goober bloodstains off of black leather.”

“Don’t worry about it, sis. A half a million, and all those worries are dust in the fucking wind.”

“You really think it’s going to work out? I can’t believe someone would pay half a million dollars for a dog.”

“Go figure rich folks. They never have to eat tuna sandwiches or wipe their asses with Cosmopolitan magazine. The whole problem with rich folks is that they’ve lost touch with reality.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“And you gotta admit it’s been easy so far. That boxer. Shit. Light-heavyweight champion of the world, my ass. Even little ol’ Eden could handle him.”

Lorelei laughed. “That was something to see. The way she slammed him between the eyes with the butt of her AUG, I mean. Maybe Mama will grow our baby sister a backbone after all.”

“Backbone, hell. Wrist bones are what that girl needs.” Both sisters laughed now. So hard that their red manes danced, blazing hair brushing their bronze shoulders like wildfire.

“Tura! Lorelei! You girls stop horsing around!”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You girls get back to work!”

“Yes, Mama.”

They took aim and opened fire.

Yes, Mama.

Eden closed lead shutters over the pillbox window in her bedroom.

She hated waking to the sound of gunfire, but waking to Mama’s voice was even worse. At least she didn’t have to listen to Mama bark instructions on the shooting range anymore. Mama had excused her from target practice because of her wrists. That was the only good thing about having carpal tunnel syndrome.

Eden stood naked before her closet, looking for her white silk robe. She couldn’t find it, and that pissed her off. It meant that one of her sisters had probably “borrowed” it. If she saw it again in this lifetime she’d be lucky.

Eden had many faults, but modesty was not one of them. If her sisters had stolen her robe, why then she’d just do without. The house was empty, anyway. Harold had taken the dog outside. He said the sunshine would probably do it some good.

Naked, Eden padded to the kitchen on bare feet. The room stunk of dog food. A bowl of the stuff waited on the floor. She stepped over the bowl, took a bottle from the fridge, and poured herself a cold glass of pineapple juice. Then she headed for the bathroom, taking small sips as she walked, thankful to be free of the rank, meaty odor.