Finding Nadia

The lake really did me in.  I was, as they say, outta commish for a couple of days.  It was probably the fact that, despite my earlier doubts, the four of us had finished the two cases of Rolling Rock—me, Kelley, Suds, and, once she’d calmed down, Ava.  Chet, if you’re wondering, turned out fine, by the way.  Not long after abandoning ship, the idiot was plucked from the water by state wildlife resources agency officers who were out patrolling the channel for holiday ne-er-do-wells.  Said that he posed a danger to passing boaters, that he’d been called in by a couple fishermen and even a barge making its way towards the dam.  You can’t help but laugh at the irony in that.  Dude was probably the only sober cat out on the water, yet he’s the one who got picked up by the cops?  And look, I’m not making light of boating while intoxicated.  No, certainly not.  But like I said before, our little bald jockey had abandoned his aquatic steed, someone had to take the reins, and that someone was me.  Not to brag or anything.  Afterwards, Kelley had said it was sexy how I’d done it, which nearly sent me to the moon, and it was upon her suggestion that I’d piloted us back towards the marina, where we anchored in a nearby cove and spent the remainder of the day sinking the rest of the Rolling Rocks.  Figuratively, not literally, of course.

Anyway, I found myself on the couch, pushing through the last bit of the cobwebs, powering through the vestiges of the Fourth of July hangover (which have been lasting longer and longer these days…), when an awful knocking erupted from my front door.  Jesus Christ, I was popular these days, but the last thing I wanted was having my day interrupted by one of my fucking oddball neighbors.  But when I opened the door, I wasn’t greeted by a resident of Morning Wood, but rather by two small, bearded brown men.

“Hello again!” they both shouted at me in unison.  Again?  I tried to place the two of them, but as I racked my brain, each one reached forward and took a turn grasping my hand in his own, hairy and plump, and pumped it vigorously, which disrupted, rather than jogged, my memory.  That is, until both of them addressed me as “Mr. McDonald.”  Ah, yes, it was Omar and Meelod, the mall kiosk duo, entrepreneurs extraordinaire! 

The last time I’d seen Omar, he was fixing to deceive his blind and travel-bug-bitten sister, Nadia, into believing that they were taking a trip to Italy, which was really just a week-long stint at the Olive Garden down the road.  He’d had it all planned out, but one thing Omar hadn’t planned for—but perhaps should’ve seen as a possibility—was that a raucous brood of middle-aged women in leather cowboy boots and pink cowboy hats would enter the restaurant, loud and drunk and singing Toby Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” a particularly non-Italian oddity that couldn’t be explained, and thus crumbled Omar’s carefully crafted deception.  And, as it crumbled, so, too, did the foundation of Nadia’s life—or what she’d believed was her life—together with her relationship with her brother.  Omar looked up, bleakly.

“My dear Nadia has run away,” he said, “and she is nowhere to be found.”

For a moment I wondered if Nadia had run away, like literally.  I seriously doubted it.  I mean, she was blind after all.  Not to mention, as business-minded and entrepreneurial as he was, Omar would’ve already capitalized on this uncanny ability of sister’s, this blind sprinter, and devised some sort of exploitative scheme, probably involving the Paralympics if I had to guess. 

Still, I speculated as to how Nadia could’ve high-tailed it out of there, how Omar could’ve missed it.  I pictured her stumbling through the Olive Garden, her bumping into the vinyl booths and tables and crashing into the servers balancing above their shoulders platters of hot pasta, the explosions of glass plates, silverware clattering, the blooms of marinara sauce on their black button downs, like giant gunshot wounds.  I imagined the general commotion of it all as the other diners cupped their hands over their mouths, smothering their Oh dears, while Omar sat in the corner on his tablet, scrolling the dark web and comparing the shipping costs for his next bulk order of fake sunglasses, completely unaware of his sister’s mad dash for liberation.  No, I thought, she had to have had some help.  An inside job perhaps? 

I glanced over at Meelod.  He was already glaring at me, and I don’t know if he could sense my budding suspicion of him or what, but he looked incensed, so much so, in fact, that I began to worry he suspected I had something to do with Nadia’s disappearance.  Meelod and I hadn’t left on the best terms, considering he fired me over the phone halfway through my first day at the kiosk, and looking at him now, it seemed like no love had been lost between us.  Meelod’s face was so violently twisted up, his lips pursed together and twitching, it looked like he was chewing his mouth from the inside out, and then, in a guttural and phlegmy crescendo, he spat on the ground between us, and by the ground, let me remind you that I mean the front porch, which, for all intents and purposes, is basically the inside of the house.  Omar quickly and decisively slapped the back of his head, called him an animal.  Meelod turtled, hunching his shoulders and withdrawing his head, anticipating another scolding blow from his cousin, as he awkwardly shuffled his foot forward and scuffed at the glob of saliva with the toe of his boot.

“I apologize for my cousin,” Omar said.  “The disappearance of my dear Nadia has hit him…hard.” 

Meelod wiped his mouth with his arm.  “Yes, yes, sorry, Mr. McDenton.”

“You see, we have exhausted all other options.  We need your help finding her.  You are our last hope.” 

Me? I asked.  Well, I don’t think I actually got the words out, I was so dumbfounded by the request, but my face probably said everything that my mouth couldn’t.  I’d never met the poor woman in my life, how was I their last hope, how could I be of any help?  Plus, how were we even to begin looking for her?  It wasn’t like she was some stray dog roaming the streets, able to be found with a lot of canvassing and a little bit of luck.  No, she was probably inside, holed up somewhere, probably the YWCA or some abused women’s shelter, because despite being born out of love, Omar’s deceptions were nevertheless tantamount to psychological abuse. 

“Desdemona said you have a special set of skills,” Meelod said.  “At finding people, tracking them down.”  Then, after a moment, he added: “And she told us you were broke.”

Of course she did.  It was just like her to be slandering my good name, getting herself all tangled and tied up in my business.  Though, regrettably, she wasn’t that far off regarding her estimation of my financial status.  The reserves were running low.  Ironically enough, my last day of employment had been at the kiosk with Meelod, which was over three months ago, and, as I said earlier, that ended rather abruptly.  Still, what the fuck was Des doing going around and broadcasting this information to the likes of Omar and Meelod?  I felt myself getting angrier, but then Omar announced: “We’ll pay.” 

And, without hesitation, I said how much.

Meelod smiled, and Omar said, “One thousand.”

Well, hellfire boys, why didn’t you say so?  I stuck out my hand and let Omar pump it with his bearlike paw.  When he finished, I pretended to spit into my hand and held it out to Meelod.  Oh boy, he got a kick out of that.  He laughed, spit into his own—actually—and, before I could withdraw mine, he’d grasped it and was shaking it.  “Spit brothers!” he shouted.

“Wonderful!” Omar roared.  “Let us go then!  We must hurry!”

I’d been too busy salivating over the promise of a thousand dollars that I hadn’t registered the possibility that they’d want to leave immediately.  Like, right now.  They ushered me off the front porch and onto the sidewalk, where, at the foot of the cul-de-sac, I saw a white van.  As we got closer, I noticed something strapped or otherwise attached to the roof, like some sad, alien roadkill.  As we got even closer, I realized it was a giant ice cream cone, saw on the sides of the van the faded advertisements for various ice cream treats.  Then, as Meelod hopped up into the driver seat, I realized that this was our ride.