By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Chapter Thirty-Five
August 14
I was standing in the kitchen thinking about making some toast when Kerran walked in with an arm full of mail. He dumped it on the counter so that it spread everywhere, some envelopes falling onto the floor. I didn’t have to be close to it to see that most of it was junk mail.
Out of the stack, he pulled a postcard and held it out to me. I swear that he was a little purple in the face while he did so.
On the front side of the card was an old-fashioned drawing of a carousel. On the back a note in largish magic marker size script that I didn’t recognize and a signature that I did: Tiny.
I started reading:
Nate and Gang, Everything here good. Protest had me grounded for a month, but so worth it. Have boyfriend named Ernie and plan to move to Seattle in fall. Love, Tiny.
P.S. My arm healed great. Big bad ass scar. XXX
Good for Tiny. Things are gonna happen for that little bruiser.
So, we’ve now been here, in this house, ONLY 3 months. In that time, we’ve accrued the following stats:
Kerran and Samantha have broken up 4 times. Brenna has had 3.5 boyfriends. (She’s broken up with 1.75 of them.) Kerran has brought home an unknown number of women who aren’t Sam. Nell participated and/or organized more than a dozen protests...She’s also gone on about a dozen benders. Kerran and Brenna have both been arrested twice (though only charged once). I’ve been arrested and charged once. All our possessions have been confiscated The District Police have seized the house. Several news reports have erroneously declared us dangerous anarchists. I’ve now had eight photos in the City Press. Bleed Monkey has played 12 shows. We’ve dominated the neighborhood security newsletter. Had two parties, one of them large. Gotten at least 3 complaints of couples being seen copulating on Brenna’s car in the carport. I’ve been over an hour late to work on more than 20 occasions. Nell has helped register voters in 3 Peruvian villages. (According to her latest letter, she’s also been drunk for most of 3 weeks straight. Apparently, it’s very cold where she is. Southern hemisphere...winter. According to her letter, it takes a lot of alcohol to keep her warm.)
Almost all of us come from the suburbs, from (at least) fairly stable homes. And I have to wonder if all this is a put-on, if this is the urban poverty, politics and dissolution version of ecotourism? And, of course, suburban comfort is just a phone call away...
August 16Dani is pissed. More than normal. She can’t believe that I participated in Teddy’s stupid “rescue” of the drug running kids and she can’t believe that I wouldn’t tell her before I did.
“You have no regard for me. No respect for me. It’s like I don’t count,” she said over the phone. “Everyone and everything but me are a priority. You do something stupid and dangerous and you don’t even call to tell me? To ask me how I feel about you doing that?”
I didn’t know what to say to her so I said nothing. When she heard the silence, she got even more pissed. “You asshole. I just don’t count to you. I’m like nothing to you. You asshole,” she screamed and then hung up on me.
Part of me is glad she’s off the phone, relieved. But, I also want to call back and make up immediately.
August 17
Haven’t talked to Dani since Monday.
So, yesterday, the bodies of Robert and DeShaun Taylor, Jonas’ father and brother, were found in a dumpster behind a Stop-n-Shop on 16th street.
I guess that’s what Big A meant when he said that he’d done all the killing that he was going to do. He killed DeShaun, who it turns out had, through a teacher, gone to the police and told them about his work as a drug runner. And he killed his father to show the kids that it wasn’t just them that were in danger.
The funeral is on the Saturday following this coming Saturday. Teddy is going to go and asked me if I wanted to go. I don’t, but I will.
Teddy is still under suspicion. He keeps being called back in for questioning and his parents have had to hire him a good lawyer. The police, as they piece together the case against Big A, have so much stuff on Teddy that they, probably with good reason, can’t believe he’s not involved.
He’s on surveillance cameras leaving the housing project where Big A had his headquarters, there are tons of photos of many of the kids who’d been working for Big A entering and leaving Ted’s house, there are calls to Big A’s from Ted’s phone. It’s all circumstantial, but should keep Ted involved in the case until it’s over.
August 18th
John Slater’s arrest made the metro section. It’s just a dinky little article and gets the murky facts of the matter mostly right. It doesn’t implicate him as a buyer or a seller, but only says that he appeared to be “involved in an effort to get some of the kids out of drug dealing.”
According to Brenna, John Slater’s father, also named John Slater Alcott, called him into his office yesterday and gave him a thorough reaming out. He even told him to drop his “drug whore girlfriend” because he was going to ruin both of them.
I have never seen a photo of John Slater’s father, but I imagined him to be like many Senators; a puffed up, blue-suited, icy-eyed, white-haired peacock, able to say cruel, unfair things like “drug whore girlfriend” while wetting his lips with his tongue.
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2005 Me Three
