In a minute it'll be three twenty-five in the a.m., and we're still up.  Her little guy's safely tucked back in his bed which looks like it's one big building block, with matching Batman sheets, pillowcases and blanket.  We share a similar interest, and not only in bedding.  He's got several nifty Transformers to boot.  But there's something I can't help noticing he lacks.  Though he's nearly three, he could use a computer.  It's never too early for initiating little fries into a much bigger world.  A world that will no doubt be greatly more sophisticated, and perfected, technologically speaking, when he's my age.  I hold to that view staunchly, and I'm sticking to it, defying anybody to shoot it down.  Now, or thirty years from now.  I am geek, hear me roar!

Man, time flies when you're into serious rapping, catching up on too many years the way we've been these past hours.  Too many of those passages not the best of times for Cin, it pains me to dwell on, as we sit at her kitchen nook table, sipping flavorful cups of Maxwell House...(yeah, I know, but if it's made right, and doctored to my liking, which it is; it's majorly milky, what with all the half-and-half I drenched it with, and Cin questioned my imprudent use of so much sugar.  I'm lapping it up, no problem).

You know that old hackneyed expression?  'Stay in school, get a better job?'  I'm not one who goes in for the trite, as a rule, but in Cin's case, the notion works like using Latex gloves to perform autopsies.  Posing for those campus prints had started off innocently enough.  Frat house idiocy, and the like; a lot of fun and much-needed bucks as the perk.  No more having to write home, asking for bread.  Bread her mom couldn't afford to send, what with being laid off from damn two-bit jobs of every description faster than spending the funds from final paychecks.  Even when Cin was asked to pose semi-nude, by the stage she'd entered, she thought nothing of it.  Wish I would have been around then...  If I had been, maybe all this shit she's in would have never happened.

By the time she realized where she was headed, it was no big deal with her.  She was making serious money to defray her expenses tied in with what not, and she liked that.  She was hooked, and it just got more and more seductive...  She, bolder and bolder, until she'd reached her private sticking point of 'I can make way more bread this way, and a whole lot quicker.  Screw the college degree.'  She'd decided to trade solely on her looks.

I couldn't help but wonder after she'd said this, what had happened to all that money she'd made?  And then it came to me.  She'd let me hold the clingy package she had invested in a little while ago who had managed to wet my pants a little, and whose top of his fleece-haired head I kissed.

"You could go back to school, right?"  I drain my cup and look off in the direction of the brewmaster machine.  "Okay, sure.  The scholarship's history, but there're tons of funding you can connect with nowadays, even finishing your education via the Web."

"Want more coffee," she asks attentively, already getting up.

"Thanks..."

She goes for it, and as she's pouring says, "Richie, you know, and I know it's much too late for that."

"Bullshit," I bark, which causes her to start, messing up her aim, and some coffee drips to the table.  "Look, first things first.  First you've gotta get outta this place, if it's the last thing you ever do," I ad lib from favorite lyrics.  "Girl, there's a better life for...you."

She pours herself more too, and after setting the decanter down replies, "I won't live in constant dread of having my son taken from me, one day."

Dumping in what I dumped into my cup before, then stirring I target the intensity gleaming from my eyes on her.  "I can fix it so you won't have to worry about that.  You won't.  Just trust me."

She touchs the side of her cheek, fingering it, looking thought-provoked.  Without realizing it, I guess, she's upping the pressure so that a red mark gradually appears.  Sounding as though she's hoping when she knows full well to do so is pointless, she says, "Fix it?  Fix it how?"

I keep it simple because though she's a smart girl, technobabble turns off most people; except people like me who live, breathe and inwardly digest the realm.

"You could really do that?  Make it appear as though we've disappeared into thin air?"  She's looking abrupt, as though I've told her I can fly minus benefit of Rolls Royce turbos, and aerodynamically designed wings.

"Square biz.  Piece of cake.  Hey, like you got any?"

"Cake?"

"Yeah."

She nods, and no sooner do I finish wondering what kind she's got, she sets a cake carrier down on the table, which she removed from atop the fridge, accompanied by knife, fork and a plate scrawled over with tulips.  My mouth waters.  "Baked this myself," she says proudly while removing the carrier's lid.

"Cool," I award, eyeing the four layer chocolatety draw longingly.  "Sorta hungry.  I get hungry fast, a lot."

"Like I've said, 'ad cloysum' some things never change.  Remember how you polished off most of the dinner that time we had you over?"

"Hey, that was a totally tiny turkey.  And your mom said I had a healthy appetite; a growing boy thing goin' on."  There was my other appetite, which nourished the torrid fantasies I'd have about Cin, I kept well hidden from her mom.  If she had had a clue, she would have kept her daughter under lock and key.  I never needed skin mags...my dreams, day or night did it for me.  I kept my true feelings pretty much well hidden from Cin too.  Afraid I'd scare her if she knew how raging my libido was where she was concerned.  I was one screwed up swill of latent hormones.  Was?  What's so different about what I am now?  A boyish man who still lives too much inside of himself.

"She was being kind," Cin cajoles, winking my way, and triggering a torrent of 'those were the days' to flow.

"How's your mom doing these days?"

"So-so.  She uses a walker now.  Her left knee's very bad."

"Hey that's rough.  She still livin' in the same house?"

"Yep.  Our old one that's bleeding what little savings she has dry."

"Your brother still lives at home?"

Looking wistful, Cin replies, "No, he got married last year.  Lives in Atlanta now; sells some kind of insurance.  Car, I think."  She's just about to cut the cake, but holds up before making a mark.  "Why don't I make you some breakfast, instead?  It's certainly getting to be that time."

"Negatory on that.  Don't put yourself out. The cake'll be fine," and I scoot it over closer to me.  "Got milk?"

"No," Cin says defiantly.

"No sweat, I'll use up the coffee."

"No," she repeats obstinately.  "Eating cake at this hour isn't good for you."

"Hey, I'll be the judge of that, mama.  Most of the stuff I do's not good for me," I defend, pouting, helping myself to a slice of pig-out proportions, but she butts the knife out of my hand.  I make with a hurt face, but Cin looks lethal; she's acquainted with my sad tactics of trying to get sympathy.  Then, ultimately, my own way.  "All right, you win.  I'll let you save me from this early morning sugar rush, ya big bully."  When she says, 'no' you don't argue.  Least I never did.  I liked keeping her mellow and nectarly laid back, which cost me her, in the end.

I was the putty; guess I still am.

"Eggs, bacon, a few fried potatoes, toast, juice?  How's that sound?"

"Like I can't wait to dig in," I banter.

I watch her appreciatively go through with my breakfast preparation; on second thought, real food would be better, and I'm very glad I gave in without a fuss.

"Did you ever make good on your threat about learning how to cook?" she asks, throwing me for a total loop.  "You did okay in Home Ec, I think I remember..."

Some subjects are better left 'ungone' over, and I pick up where we left off.

"So like I was sayin', yeah...no problem cookin' up a 'cloaking' device, in a manner of speaking, so you can slip away, and stay slipped," I brag, cerebrally thumbing through all the obligatory times we've indulged Scully and her 'make it look as though' whoever they needed to protect, 'fell off the face of the planet,' partner drafted me and mine to perform the electronic safe house service behind the scenes.  "Jag-wrap ya, and you're good to go."

"I'll take that convolution as a 'no,'" she ribs.  Her face spikes with a knowledgeable tick.  "You hack, in not so many words."  A look of 'who told you?' zip-locks my facial muscles as my mouth drops open like it got changed into some kind of drawbridge.  "Why that look?" she questions steadily.  "Aside from your just telling me what brings you to town, quizzing you for computer lab became my way of life.  How could you forget?"

"Nah, nah," I balk, "it's just that you made it sound like it sucks."

She's quick to coffer, "No, no," but I'd swear she's enjoying me getting all defensive.  "Did I?"  I pull on my scruffy chin, she cracks another egg.  "Well, if that's how it sounded, then I didn't mean for it to."

"I got the power," I can't resist spouting, and she thrusts her lower lip out at me before using her upper lip to pin it down, "but I only use it for good.  Never evil."

"Why do you sound like a melodrama?"

"Do I?"

I see she has that base covered, and am about to probe a bit further, but she says, "I believe you, Richie.  I could never picture you doing anything that would hurt someone, no matter how much you liked to joke about bringing the Swiss Bank to its knees."

"Oh, you remember that?" I leak.  How much hurt are we talking here with the crowd who banks at that 'piggy bank?'

"But you were a kid, only kidding."

"Kidding," I say hollowly, wondering if she hears the how many times I've been tempted in my voice.  One day, just for fun, I got real close; I could almost hear the systemic tumblers succumbing to my pugnacious Kung Fu, but I pulled out before, I discovered to my horror, the rabbit trace was in, and getting burned was a real possibility, as a direct result of my raging curiosity and a full head of steam, was nanoseconds off.

Janis Joplin in a micro miniskirt and a tank top, hitchin' to Frisco for a love-in...that was the closest I'd ever come to getting buried in the graveyard due to my _own_ tunnel vision.  Those were my crazier days, man.  Way before I enlisted for the 'cause,' trying to make a difference.

"How many strips of bacon?"

"Wha'?"  I blink myself back into this reality instead of the one I scrounged in going on over a decade ago.  Had I been gone long?

"How many strips..."

"Of what?"

Cin smirks, doing a very respectable imitation of me.  "Where were you, cutie-petutti?"

Oh, man, I'm like so home.  She used the favorite, the bombest 'nicky' on me.  "A place I never wanna be again."  I frown.  "What was the question?"

"How much bacon do you want?"

"Much as you're having."  Then as an afterthought, I say, "Please?"

"Oh, I'm skipping the bacon today.  When you're over thirty, it gets harder to keep the pounds off.  I need to lose a few."

"Where?  You look spiffy to me."  And I even catch myself leering, and I get flustered.  Her body's already knocked my socks off.  Little did those two jerks I had the desperation of mind to dine with realize I was on the joy trip at the table, with every enticing step she took on that runway, making my throat run dry, and my breath hitch so hard, I had a breathing problem to the tune of, 'oxygen--stat!  And hose him down, while you're at it.'

"You're prejudiced."

"I'm honest," I lace.  "Who told you to lose weight?  Monty Python who wants to eat his young?"

"In so many words, transmitted via one of his grapevine worms, or Jeffy goes bye-bye, bye-bye.  Nobody wants to lay out heavy wadage for a fat pro."

I bite my tongue for that one.  Not that I've ever come even close, laying it out for a 'ho' of whatever description, even those times when I'd been desperate enough to do anything, tryin' to forget her.  So lonely, man, but too paranoid, and not in the mood for background checking.  So...I'd chicken out, and go home to my virtual diversions, after 'counter measures,' that is.

"The scumbag gets off on holding the kid over your head, don't he?"  Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a fighter, I'm nobody's lover either.  (Leese is a sweet girl.  She never told me how much I suck in the Don Juan department, which I so do, when I made it clear I couldn't sleep with her.  At least not then and there like that, on the trip.  Way too scared, and I would have freaked right in front of her; gotten physically ill, not to the point of puking, but near enough.  Trust me.  It's what happens. I've got freaky issues with intimacy.)

All I know, is that if this prick was here with us now, I'd mess him up so bad, his new permanant residence would be a hospital.  Preferably one with quacks for personnel.

Cin nods quickly, then looks away, and I know what her eyes want to run and hide to do.  I've done it again, dammit.  "Cin, I wanna bake this frog's cakes so bad, I can taste the legs."

She can't answer, only sniffle in reply.  That settles it, I'm gonna take him apart by any worm-means possible; bust him up cyberspatially.  I get up and go over to the stove where she's buckled.  I turn off the flame under the sizzling frying pan before she self-immolates.  "Easy, baby, easy.  It's gonna be all right.  Swear it is."

"You must really think I'm some new strain of gutless wonder.  You know I was never like this.  I'm so jacked up, and degraded...  I so suck."  She slumps against me, her hand covers her face into which she sobs, and my arms are her saving grace.

I coo blandishments I never knew I had in me.  "After I'm finished with him, Cinny, _he_ will.  So much so that they'll be able to put him in the box with the other flexible ones." She burrows her forehead into my chest, and I rest my chin on the back of her head.  "We'll eat first, then sort it all out.  You sit, I'll take over."

She eases off of, and stares at me dead to rights, in disbelief.  I've seen more confidence bounced my way after one of Frohike's tired lectures on the merits of temperance, in all aspects.  You'd think he'd realize, after all these years, his counsel goes in one, and out the other.  Unless of course, on those few and far between occasions he's got a point.

I chuckle just enough to get her to smile again.  "Well, I never said I'm a virgin in the kitchen."  Just everywhere else, in the Biblical sense.

"Or the bathroom, the bedroom, the shower," she says, deciding to dribble the ball I've forward passed to her for the easy lay-up.

"Score," I say, as we walk back to the table and I tell her to sit so she can watch me perform the culinary acrobatics.  "See, I've got this grisly old friend who's been my food guru for a while now.  Total rough going at first, because I wanted to do everything my own way.  The way I used to fly by the seat of my pants in Home Ec."

"Did you say you have a grizzly for a friend?" Cin says, an Atlantic and a Pacific more upbeat, "or did you mean grizzled?"

"Both," I mutter, as I search for the knife to finish chopping up the potatoes and onions.  "And bald, on top, in a handbasket.  He, his name's Frohike..."

"Frohike?" Cin says, steepling her fingers, looking intrigued, "that's a weird name."

"Goes along with a real weird dude I've been tight with going on over ten years now.  He even looks like a grizzly sometimes.  A short, stocky one who's a real bear in the morning.  Mel's not only a friend, he's one of my associates.  He, and the other dude, who's a roommie too; John Byers."  The 'starchies' are all chopped and frying away in their own pan now, I face around to her, wanting to fish some more in the meantime.  "Since you had Python's kid, I'm figuring you and he were tighter than size twelves pinched and blistering in tens."

"Once," she echoes in endorsement, looking morose again, and I curse the creep inwardly.  The bastard.  "Tell me some of the other things you know about him..."  I gaze thoughtfully into her pretty, commanding eyes, rimmed somewhat by a sadness I can't seem to work around easily.  "I wanna toast him.  Make it hurt hard.  Really 'megmo' his dumb ass."

"'Megmo?'  What's that?" she bas reliefs, mystification entangled in her voice.

"Fix him with the 'fixes' over the top."  Way over when I'm banging away full blast at a righteous...yeah this one'll be a crack.  Blood racin' full throttle...ooooh.  "When you're in the zone, and it's all happenin', a righteous crack is better than sex."  Not that I'm any expert in the sexual arena; the furthest from.  She really gives me the eye then, like I'm tellin' her something better told to a shrink.  Although, she is a...  I refuse to think about what she is; so not her fault.

"You've really made the computer thing your life, haven't you?"

"Yeah.  We, me and the 'flotilla' fit hand and glove."  Getting into a lengthy discussion about why I've chosen to use my talents the way I do would serve no purpose in this context.  Laymen and women have a hard time wrapping their minds around the concept of enlisting for the 'cov-seekers, blow the lid off and run with it' detail.  "If nothing else, when it comes to technology, I'm always at home."  With the tech aspect, yeah; with the danger sometimes inherent in what we do, uh...that's the part I can live without.  I've grown real used to breathe in, breathe out, repeat the process several thousands of times in the course of a day.  Eating, sleeping, razzin' Fro' and 'narcky' too, coming off the victor in my stockpile of vid. games; all part of the being alive deal, to which I've grown accustomed.  Very accustomed.

Cin thinks for a minute.  I think she can see I've zoned out, a little, uh huh.  But not that zoned out, though.  Least I notice she stopped looking so brain damaged for a moment or two.  She tweaks, "How would you hurt--"

"Scumbag."  I'm tickled; that's the perfect nym for the friggin' turkey I'm all hot to pluck raw.

"Give me a 'for instance.'"

"I'm thinking more along the lines of, well, businessy."  She's still thinking when I'm struck by lightning.  "Nothing for child support, I bet, huh."

She looks at me as though I've shot an arrow through her heart, cleaving it as her flesh melts away from bone.  "Not a penny.  He's a scumbag.  Henceforth, he shall be known as." I smile, she does too, but her tone is wooden.  "Scumbag has no son, until he makes noises like he's going to seize him so I walk the straight and narrow."  It hardens even more, like it'll crack.  "I'm probably looking at, what?  If my boobs don't sag, and my tush stays firm..."  I gawk at her, those tempting anatomical sites messing up my ability to think straight.  "Anywhere from five, maybe six years tops before he turns me out.  Past prosty-prime.  He merchandises youth."

I let those comments pass uncommented on.  The feather of an idea is tickling my thought patterns.  "This is only if ya know, but would you know where he does his banking?"

There's a light burning brightly in my eyes, trained on her, (trust me, there is) and she supplies, "Several banks here in town, and the one he favors with the serious money, in San Fran."

The bacon's popping off at me and I pop several fat bubbles on the strips while turning them over.  "Not the one of Swiss fame?"

She yodels a little, and I can't help but crack up after cracking the last of the four eggs I've used.  (Told you I'm hungry.)  "That I wouldn't know.  There were some things that didn't make it to the pillow."

I stand watching the eggs' sunnyside yokes harden, locked in a synthesis of thought.  "Bring plates," I say after I judge the food's gonna be our meal soon.

"What are you cooking up in that microwave brain of yours?" she asks, handing me a plate, gently elbowing my ribs.

"That depends..."  I spatula-out the far cry from 'huevos rancheros' onto both plates, followed up by the bacon just for me, none for her.  She has no weight problem, but soon that point will be moot once she shakes Vegas' dust off her high heels, and books from here with all due haste.  I'm about to fill her plate with my rarified version of home fries.  I believe my 'taters' taste better the lighter they are, like this, though Frohike disagrees.  He likes his spuds leathery brown, tough.  Too crunchy, like him.  Disgusting.  I can see Cin doesn't want the fries either, but I ignore what her eyes are telling me, and divvy up the pepper-sprinkled tubers, and she doesn't squawk.

"On what?" she replies huskily, in kind.  Ooh, that's enough, thank you," she stipulates, covering her plate over with her left hand.  "I'll have to lose twelve pounds, and it'll be all your fault."

I dump a few more 'Idahos' on her plate, but she deftly shifts them to mine.  I let them stay where they are.  I don't want this to escalate into a food fight, and if memory serves, and it does, the second best thing we liked to do was get into wack physical skirmishes with each other, which nine times out of ten climaxed with heavy lip action as the aftermath.  Our lives were fun and not all that centered on what tomorrow would bring.  Damn, I miss those days...

We're all grown up now, dealing with the shit that goes with it.  Fun is something that needs scheduling.  "Ever actually do his banking?" I conjecture aloud, for the hell of it, and if she says she's played courier, or even got a good look at some numbers belonging to one or two accounts, we could have a match.

I see a glimmer in her eyes, and I know what that means all too well.  She might have gotten into flinging a little of our pre-dawn repast if I hadn't sobered the subject.

"Do one-arm bandits have slots?"

"The ones I've played so far were one big drain.  Shoulda had a bottle of Mister Plumber for professional clogs on me to loosen some of 'em up."

"There's another thing I've so missed about you."  She's standing very close to me, and looking so young, so 'long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away' mine again.  What a time for my malcontent of a stomach to start grumbling.

"What's that?" I say haltingly, for some reason I can't explain, feeling strange.  Like deja vu on the high seas.

"Your one of a kind sense of humor..."

"Just me bein' me."  The reason for deja vu's clear.  Leese told me something similar, the last night of the cruise.  The best night of the voyage.  We stood for hours, holding each other at the rail, gazing at the moon.  If I'd been any other guy, who wasn't feeling so at odds with himself, I guess it would have been real romantic, even though she told me she admired me for wanting to take things slow.  Not like other guys who had made no bones about their impatience.  I clear my throat a second time.  "So, uh...like.  Where were we?"

"Well, I was about to tell you what a fool Marcus was for me once upon a time.  Anything  I wanted, whimmed, demanded, it was prestoed.  Then I got pregnant, and wound up as scrap for the heap.  It wasn't love, it was his private, demented world of acquisition."  Her sigh sounds as if it's scraping against her chest wall.  "Thing was, he had no desire to acquire a son.  Jeffy's a pawn to him."

"Got any old receipts of deposits, or withdrawls?  Like I hinted at before.  Ever write down any old account numbers?"

Her smile is flaccid, but broadening as we return to the table to first polish off my cooking, and then, what I'm hoping for, plotting.  If I can make good on what he owes Cin for putting her through hell, I'll be more than satisfied.  Ball's in her court at the moment.

She's about to answer, when I smell something burning.  "Ooops--lemme get the toast before it's nothing but ash," I erupt while Cin pours the Minute Maid.

Once I reseat, and before she starts in on my greasy 'cookworks,' she says in a voice soaked in feeling, "Thank you, Richie.  I don't rate any--"

"Save it," I say while buttering the singed, but salvageable toast.  "I haven't done anything, but I wanna."

"A lot you know," she rebuts, aimlessly fiddling with her eggs.  "I've forgotten what it feels like to be with a man who wants nothing more than just talk."

The way she sounds makes smiling difficult, for both of us.  "C'mon, eat up already. Can't hold me responsible for stone cold rubbery eggs you wouldn't feed to a dog." Through rapid chews, I continue, "So, are you remembering?  About any old accounts, is what I mean."  I think that's what I mean.  Don't know if I'm all too sure.  Seeing her again, most of all seeing her like this is doing all kinds of tricky things to my head.

"Don't have to."  She lays the fork down upon her eggs, then looks up, and instead of looking vague, which I figured I'd see, a smile teases both her lips and me.  "This is wild."

"How wild?"

"I've got several old passbooks he asked me to hold onto, and has never asked for them back.  He must've forgotten I have them."

Bingo, baby...  We're in totally serious business.  "Yeah, maybe, but guaranteed.  He'll wish he remembered once I get to him through them."

"What do you mean?"

"You already know..."

"Richie...  I don't think--"

"Sure ya do."

"What if...  What if his account numbers have changed?"

I do a double-think which lasts a few seconds.  "But I'll know that in short order."  Her face blanks and it's not hard to understand why. I've seen that expression on many a naive mug.  Old numbers.  New.  Access denied; 'base-to-'base upgraded protection.  What does it matter?  I look at her for a long while, my entire face a lopsided smile.

Sure; I know nothing about how to, let's say for argument's sake, hold my fork the 'right way.'  Fold my napkin the way Byers does after he finishes wiping his mouth off.  Like that stuff really matters.  My mind sprints over what does, leaving Cin behind for a minute.

Right now, I'm having a very Hoover moment, and the funky dam's got nothing to do with it.  That goes for the Crayola box building crammed with Fibbies in D.C. too.  All I can taste is my cleaning Scumbag out, and how good it will, once I do.
 

End Part 4

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