The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 19: The Seduction Redux (Part One)
Fingers had just attained a triple word score with the word ‘lettuce’ when Angel walked back in from her night of work. I guess you could say we were her pimps now. But that didn’t really mean we did anything differently or she did anything differently. I’m not sure what pimps do exactly but whatever it is they do I don’t think we were doing it. (At least not well.)
The 3 of us were living in Angel’s apartment now. I was still staying there for obvious reasons since I was on the lam and should be far away from my own apartment (or as far as next door), and once Fingers joined our team he decided to move in as well, even though he had a perfectly fine one bedroom apartment in Studio City, because he said we needed to go to the mattresses, which meant in truth he had gone to the couch and I was forced to purchase (or have Angel purchase on my behalf) a military style cot that was even more uncomfortable than my deflating air mattress.
In the best of circumstances these living arrangements would be trying, and it wasn’t the best of circumstances since I was out of a job and Fingers no longer had an assignment, so Angel was now the sole breadwinner. This might have exacerbated the tension on her part and she was in increasingly bad moods every morning when she returned home to find Fingers and myself playing one kind of board game or another. (Fingers had brought several of his board games from his Studio City apartment under the guise of figuring out strategy.)
After the third day of our new arrangement not even Good Day L.A. would lift Angel’s spirits (which I made sure to have on every morning when she came home and while Fingers and I were playing board games). On this particular morning, Angel’s levels of tolerance were especially low as she walked in, rapidly kicking off her stilettos, swearing louder than usual while finally giving her feet slippered relief and then heading into the bathroom without a proper greeting for Fingers or myself, which was all the more unfortunate because in order to address our increasingly tenuous situation I had come up with a new plan and needed Angel’s cooperation to carry it out.
Angel popped back out of the bathroom, still in her work clothes, to grab a couple of sheets of paper towel from the kitchen. “You 2 are working hard.”
“We’re thinking.”
“Yeah, right. You’re at home ‘thinking’ while I’m out there working. Typical.”
“What do you mean ‘typical’?”
“Nothing.” She went back into the bathroom closing the door. For a big guy, Fingers shrunk into the couch rather effectively.
“I guess I shouldn’t tell her about the assignment,” I said to the smaller version of Fingers.
“What assignment?” Angel shouted from the bathroom. I guess she hadn’t fully closed the leaden bathroom door completely. She came back out once again, more annoyed than she was the first time she came back out from the bathroom, now holding a nearly empty tube of toothpaste (that had been squeezed from the middle instead of rolled appropriately from the end), eyes ablaze. Although I suppose a case could be made that her eyes were red not from anger but from staying up all night in smoky surroundings.
“We are out of toothpaste, handsoap and have half a roll of toilet paper left. Has it not occurred to either one of you as you sit around all day ‘thinking’ and playing childish board games, to go out and restock any of these supplies?”
The honest answer would have been ‘no,’ but it wasn’t the right time for honest answers. “You’re right. While you get some rest we’ll go out and pick up some things at Bakers. Just make a list and…”
“You…” she cut me off, dramatically pointing the toothpaste tube at me. “You can’t go anywhere. And you…” the toothpaste was now directed at the shell of Fingers’ formerly large self, “while I’m grateful for whatever you did to my shitty pimp, that doesn’t mean you get a free ride forever. Both of you need to come up with a solution fast because this…this is unsustainable.”
“That kind of brings me to the assignment.”
“Jesus Christ! I’m the one working. You 2 are sitting around all day. How come I get the fucking assignment.”
“Because it’s kind of an assignment only you can do.”
The weaponized nearly empty tube of Crest was lowered to her side. “Does it mean things are going to start changing?”
“Yes.” Like I said earlier it wasn’t the right time for honesty. (The honest answer would have been maybe.)
“So you want me to talk to some girls again?”
“No. This plan is slightly different.”