Mr. Hooligan Read online

  She was a tight, muscular woman, thirty-six, pale skin, red hair, features untypical in Belize. She liked snug jeans and they never disappointed her, baseball caps sometimes. She ran four mornings a week, seven-thirtyish, and looked surprisingly softer, leaner, and girlish in running shorts.

  Clearly, Riley had a thing for her.

  He saw her glide past the window. Long T-shirt, bare legs. Was her hair damp? It looked damp. He listened to frogs bleating in the empty lot behind his house, crickets cheeping. A light came on in another room and he followed her, staying close to the fence, going into his backyard.

  There—another glimpse. She was folding clothes, stacking a high shelf in a bedroom closet … man, those legs. He had the perfect angle, perfect view with the lights on … and yeah, her hair was wet. Like she’d just stepped out of the shower. She turned around and he ducked, holding his breath, feeling stupid. No way she could’ve seen him, she in a lighted room and him down here in the dark.

  He felt self-conscious, and naughty. His other neighbor’s windows were closed, Bill Rivero was too far across the street to see him, and the house behind hers, well, if someone there looked out, they might see him, but it was dinnertime, plus who’d think anything wrong about a man standing in his own backyard?

  Riley was massively turned on right now, and he did mean massively as in uncomfortably tight jeans. He thought about it, then he put a hand on the post of the chain-link fence and launched himself over, dropping low into the grass on her side.

  He remained still. Heard her singing. Sounded like … something by Prince?

  “… don’t have to be rich to be my girl…”

  Riley passed a palm over his face and thought, Okay, let me reconsider this, and didn’t, stepping over to her back stairs, where he rested a hand on the railing, one foot on the bottom step, looking up. Light slanted onto her back porch through a screen door.

  He sat on a step, listening to her voice going off-key. “Women, not girls, rule my world, I said they rule my world,” the clank of a spoon against a pot. He imagined her, back and forth between the fridge and the stove, what she was wearing under that T-shirt, or not wearing. Jesus, he had to take a look.

  He stood up, counted one, two, three and bounded up the stairs, two at a time, and braked right beside the screen door, flattened his back against the wall. He looked over at his house, the weedy lot behind it, at the square of light from the other neighbor’s window. He was satisfied there was no one watching this. Inch by inch, he pushed his head around and peeked in.

  She was in the kitchen, shaking a bottle of spices into a small pot bubbling on the stove. Bopping her head, earbuds plugged in, wire leading to an iPod clipped to the hem of the T-shirt. She screwed the lid on, turned to put the bottle on the counter, and Riley pulled his head back.

  His heart was thudding. Wow—she was so damned good-looking. No makeup, wet stringy hair, baggy T-shirt, but this was what was so cool—the plainness made her prominent jaw and blue eyes and milky white skin more striking. He poked his head around for another moment of appreciation.

  She was dancing now, twirling in the middle of the tiled kitchen, pivoting on the ball of one foot, eyes closed, head thrown back. Clapping now, swinging her hips in that loose T-shirt that reached to the middle of tight runner’s legs.

  Goddamn, Riley was breathing hard. He felt like Harvey, like some slack-jawed ogler.

  She did a move where she struck a pose, hands on chest, then flung her hair and tossed her arms out into a series of serpentine gestures, hips rocking, toes pointed, and calves taut. Riley put a hand to his heart and thought, Oh, my, god.

  He drew back. Without a second’s doubt, he removed his shirt and dropped it there on the porch. His left hand roamed his chest, traveled down to his navel, unsnapped his jeans, unzipped. Reached in and … man, oh, man.…

  What the hell was he doing? Touching himself, thinking, I could get arrested for this. Thinking, I don’t give a shit, no one can see me.… He was rock hard, breaths coming shallow.

  Clapping—she was clapping again. When he pushed his head around, she was facing him, dancing into the kitchen, eyes directly on the door, and he froze.

  But it was like she couldn’t see him even though she had looked straight at him. He stepped back, knowing he’d just been caught and that she did not care, the woman was teasing him, pretending to be oblivious, as she enticed him further. Tantalized him.

  He pulled his Levi’s down and it sounded thock when it hit the floor, and he remembered the engagement ring in his pocket. But it was in a box, well protected. It would survive.

  He tugged off his briefs and flipped it onto the pile and stood there naked and stiff and pulsing. He felt wicked daring and crazy and jungle virile. The air licked at his backside, and he really liked that.

  She was singing a different song, or more like speaking, about rain on the barn roof and the horses wondering who you are and about thunder and lightning and how you feel like a movie star. He stood still as she launched into the chorus. “Raspberry beret…”

  Her voice moving away. The air thick with delicious cooking, his head reeling, he made up his mind to do it. He reached over and finger-hooked the door handle gently. The door opened with a creak of the springs.

  He stepped into the kitchen, the tile cool under his feet. She danced into the living room, her back to him, swaying those hips. There was a leather sofa on one side, a love seat on the other, and he wondered on which one he’d do it—or maybe right there on the rug she was dancing on.

  If you’re going to act crazy, might as well act crazy all the way. He wanted her to turn around, see him naked and solid under the kitchen light, before he made his move.

  Throwing her arms out, she twirled and stopped. A hand flew up to her mouth and she let out a scream. “Oh my god!”

  He charged, she put out her hands but he ducked under and tackled her around the waist and lifted her easy, slinging her over a shoulder, her body so soft and light. She squirmed and shrieked with laughter and started spanking his butt. “You’re crazy, Riley, you’re so”—spank, spank—“totally crazy,”—spank, spank, spank—kicking her legs and laughing hysterically.

  He said, “You like that? Didn’t expect that, did you?” He thought better of the sofa and moved toward her bedroom. She was pinching his butt and he couldn’t stop laughing, rushing and tottering with her to the room. He stumbled. “Oooh, my back, I think I hurt my back.”

  She said, “Don’t you dare drop me,” and whaled away at his ass, giggling.

  He heaved her onto the bed and pounded his chest like a gorilla and roared as she rolled around laughing uncontrollably, tears in her eyes. He raised his arms and executed a short dive onto the bed, landing on elbows and knees, straddling her. “You’re trapped now, baby, nowhere to go but to the land of extreme pleasure,” and he leaned in for a deep, long kiss full of giggling.

  * * *

  He lay on the damp sheets and languidly took in the room in the light leaking through the half-open bathroom door. Wood-framed photos decorated the walls—a kayaker bobbing on the blue-green near the barrier reef; the ruins of the Maya temple at Xunantunich at sunset; Riley and his five-year-old son standing on rocks, grinning in the mist of the Thousand Foot Falls at Mountain Pine Ridge—all of them photos Candice had taken. And one snapshot on the dresser of her fiancé, Albert, who had died in a car crash years ago. To honor him, she said. Riley respected that.

  She said from the tub, over the noise of the faucet, “Baby, can you put the mince on simmer for me?”

  Passing the bathroom door, he said, “Girly-girl, you wore me out proper, I can hardly walk.” In the kitchen, he turned the stove to simmer and sniffed the pot. Ground meat, onions, peppers, and carrots swimming in a curried stew. In a pan cooling off, thin-sliced potatoes, crisped in a light coating of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt. The sight made him happy and ready for the big question. He retrieved his clothes from the porch and padded back into the
bedroom with a quickening heart.

  She was toweling off in the bathroom, smiling at him occasionally in the mirror. He stepped out of view and pincered the little box out of his jeans, removed the ring and searched for the best place to put it.

  She came out and dropped the towel, a message that she just might be in the mood for more.

  He said, “Heavens, you’re too sexy for your own good.”

  “Oh yeah?” She teased him with a pose, hip jutting to the left.

  Her skin was flawless in that light. Down there, he was rising again. He said, huskily, “Walk across the room.”

  “Like this?” and she sashayed, snapped her chin in line with a shoulder, with attitude. Pivoted and swaggered back.

  He said, “I think you dropped something, over there. No … by the closet,” and admired her shapely apple cheeks, which she pointed his way.

  Legs together she bent forward from the waist perfectly and said, “Oh where but where could it be? I don’t see anything here,” in a girly voice. Playing with him. She straightened, dropped her arms on the dresser, stuck her rear out and said, “I believe I shall just have to look again,” and Riley laughed, leaping onto the bed.

  On his knees, he said, “Looking at you makes me want to growl.”

  She spun around, shoved her hips to the left—bam—took a couple of steps, shoved to the right—bam—and bent over again, offering a side view, the flat of her thighs, breasts, long damp red hair tousled over a shoulder. “Is it here, you think?”

  He was quiet, waiting.

  She straightened, a hand over her mouth. She stared at the ring she was holding. “Riley…?” She looked at him. “Riley?”

  For days he had planned what to say and now the moment had arrived, he was mute. So he grinned. “Uhmmm … well, yeah…”

  She came to him, and they hugged, then she stepped back and examined the diamond. She slipped it on her ring finger, daintily.

  He felt awkward and nervous and just couldn’t wait any longer, so he said, “I’m ready for loving,” but that wasn’t what he wanted to say, and when she smiled he played it up, posing with fists on hips, Superman now. “Riley James, the indefatigable lover.”

  She frowned. “No, say it with style. Say lovah.”

  “The indefatigable lovah.”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “Come to me, my fairy sweet.”

  She did, sneaking a peek at the ring. They embraced hard, and he wrestled her to the sheets, tasting her mouth, tartish wine, her nipples, salty with dried perspiration, her neck. Her legs parted for him, and he covered her with his body, their abdomens barely touching, until he moved in, hoping for the right answer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Riley awoke in his own bedroom with the sun in his eyes, nightstand lamp burning. His reading glasses were perched crookedly on his nose, his worn paperback of the Tao Te Ching open on his chest. He yawned, stretched, and reseated the glasses. Watched the haze of dust in the sunrays, trying to remember what time he’d left Candice’s house to go to the bar, then what time he’d left the bar. After a while, he took up the book and read half a page with half his attention and put the book down.

  He got out of bed, rolled his neck and bent backward, joints cracking and popping nicely. He sat on his kneeling meditation bench, and when he was ready, relaxed, he watched his breath rise and fall. After a few minutes, his attention slackened and he started scratching his arm, and he gave up on the sitting.

  Driving to Lindy’s, he called Patricia on his cell. Her machine picked up and he said, “Sister Pat, listen, sorry about yesterday evening. I had a … little situation, an accident, and I couldn’t meet up with you. I apologize, but this evening maybe I can get something, if you’re home? Call me, please.”

  Then he called his ex-wife’s house to chat with his son, but the phone rang and rang and no one answered.

  Arturo was already at the bar, picking up cups and bottles from the outside tables and off the deck, his old bicycle chained to the fence. The boy nodded at Riley. “Mistah James.”

  Riley nodded back. “Turo.” He took out his keys and opened the padlock to the corrugated shutter, slid it up. Turo followed him into the bar area. While Riley opened the wooden jalousies and fixed a pot of strong coffee, Turo got the deck broom and garbage bags from the storage closet in the back. They drank coffee, looking out at the road.

  Riley watched Turo pour more cream, spoon in two hills of sugar. Riley went into the kitchen and returned with a container of chicken fried rice and plastic utensils, put them on the bar. “If you get hungry, help yourself, hear?”

  Turo was embarrassed, so Riley said, “Look, I bought too much last night and I’m not gonna eat this. You don’t want it, no problem, just toss it,” and he moved away, opening the cooler and taking inventory, giving the boy room.

  Riley inventoried the soft drinks, the liquor, bottled beer and kegs, jotting numbers on a slip of paper. Turo sat eating at the bar. Riley told him he was leaving to pick up a few crates of Cokes, some rum, a couple kegs, they were running short ’cause of the holiday crowd. He should be back in an hour, the phone rings, just take a message, and please go ahead and clean the lines so they could switch out the low keg.

  Turo said, “Mistah Riley?”

  Riley paused at the stairs.

  “Think you could help me write a letter? My landlord wants to, like, you know, kick me out. Saying how I stole his wheelbarrow and sold it.”

  “Wheelbarrow?”

  “Yeah. And plus pilfered a few baubles.”

  Riley fought back a smile. “Pilfered a few baubles?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.”

  Riley said sure, he could do that, and didn’t chuckle to himself until he was in the truck.

  The first stop, Ramirez Brothers on New Road, should have prepared him for the problematic morning. But he was expecting nothing other than an ordinary transaction, and when the girl at the front, Sarita, told him they were out of Blue Parrot rum, and sorry but Cane River, too, he still didn’t think there was anything strange. It wasn’t until he walked to the far end of the counter and glimpsed the stack of Blue Parrot cases in the back room that he figured something was off. “What’s that there?”

  “Sold.”

  “Everything? That’s … five, six … seven. Seven cases.”

  “Sorry. Sold.”

  “So you’re telling me Ramirez Brothers, manufacturer of four kinds of rum, has no rum to sell customers?”

  Sarita wouldn’t look at him.

  “Did I square my account with you last month?”

  Sarita stapled a sheaf of pink and yellow invoices together and reached for another stack. A man walked in, exchanged nods with Riley.

  Riley said, “Sarita?”

  She straightened her glasses and sat forward, folding her hands on the desk. “I’m sorry, Mr. James. I’m just … That’s what Mr. Ramirez told me this morning, everything we have here today is sold.”

  The other man came down the counter. “You got Blue Parrot, miss? I’ll need like a case.”

  Riley looked at Sarita.

  She turned to the man. “Uhmm…”

  “They’re sold out,” Riley said.

  The man said, “What’s that?”

  Sarita raised a finger and said, “One moment,” and rose and clip-clopped in her heels down a narrow corridor to an office in the back.

  Riley asked the man, “I take it you haven’t paid for yours in advance?” The man said no, and Riley asked, “And you don’t have an account?”

  The man watched Riley. “Since when you need one?”

  Sarita returned. “Mr. Avila? Mr. Ramirez would like to see you in his office. Come around the counter over here, please.”

  Riley walked out of the store and stood by the front door. What the hell was that all about? He mulled it over, then strode back inside. “I want to talk to Mr. Ramirez.”

  Sarita sat back, blinking. The other man, Avila, was leaving the b
ack storeroom lugging a case of Blue Parrot. He came around the counter and shrugged at Riley, saying, “Hooked one. Good luck.”

  Riley stared at Sarita. She raised that finger again, said, “One moment,” and clip-clopped back down the corridor. A minute later she returned. She folded her hands down in front of her and said, “Mr. Ramirez is in a meeting at the present time but you can call him later if you’d like.”

  “What time?”

  “Well…” She raised her eyebrows. “Why not give him an hour.”

  “Today is Saturday, you close at noon on Saturdays. In forty-five minutes, you’ll be closed and you’re telling me call in an hour?”

  She glanced away.

  Riley took a deep breath, fighting to control his tongue. He wanted to stare at her long enough to provoke some response that might sound like a reasonable explanation for the game being played, but the phone rang and she reached for it. So he walked out, annoyed.

  He drove to Bowen and Bowen on King Street for soft drinks and beer. Fuming. He was perspiring, felt it under his arms, face flushed, but it wasn’t from the heat. All these years and it didn’t take much for his youthful temper to rear up again, needle him. Truthfully? He wanted to punch something. Telling himself no worries, you’ll talk to Ramirez soon.

  At Bowen and Bowen, he bought four crates of Coke cash and loaded them in the back of the truck. He thought, All right, at least I got one job done this morning. He trotted up the stairs to the office to buy his two kegs of Belikin, settle his account fast so he could surprise Ramirez with a visit and get to the bottom of—

  His cell chirped. He dug it out of his pocket, thinking this must be Ramirez now—yeah, right. He read the number on the screen: the bar’s. “Yes, Turo.”

  “Mistah James. Like sorry to bug you, but the health inspector didn’t want to talk but he asked me a whole pile a questions, you know, and by the time I catch a break to phone you? The man already left, and he dropped off some papers in your office so I—”