Trailer Trash

Joe rose from the table, and went over to the counter to speak to Hector, who was even grumpier than usual. Joe was ready for a fight. If this son of a bitch fired her because she had sat at his table for less than 10 minutes, he was prepared to give this man the beating of his life.



Sure she had been gone yesterday, it was her normal day off. Every Thursday. Joe knew her schedule by heart, but she was supposed to be here Fridays by 10:30 to start the lunch rush, and it was 11:47. In his head he thought she may have taken his advice and got her man, but in his heart, he knew that something was wrong.



"Hey, Hector, where is our girl Monica?"



Hector looked at him with daggers in his eyes, "Little bitch is late. In about ten minutes she\'s fired."



Although Joe wanted to punch him in the face for calling his daughter a bitch, instead he left in a rush, not even paying his tab as Hector watched and tried to call after him.



Joe drove his Blazer to the trailer park, and screeched to a halt in front of lot 29. He ran to the door, not even thinking of what he would say his reason for being there was if she was home and happened to answer.



He knew in his guts that she wouldn\'t answer.



He pounded on the door, whipped around the entire trailer trying to look into windows, but it was deserted. He drove to the office at the entrance to the park and slammed the screen door open. A dirty man was sitting behind the counter with a small television playing a rerun of Happy Days, a large glass coffee mug that was so dark with coffee stains that Joe could not tell if the cup was empty or full in his pudgy hand, "You the manager?"



The overweight man rose as much as he could, and squinted his bad eyes to get a better look at the stranger who had just burst in the door, "You could call me that, mister. What can I do-"



"Have you seen or spoken to Monica Lewis in the last two days?"



"Miss Lewis? No. Haven\'t seen or talked to her. Haven\'t talked to her since she called about her shower being broke."



Joe stopped, his heart pounding hard in his chest, "When was that?"



"Oh, about a week ago, maybe less. I told her Connor had quit. Gone on to bigger and better things, you know, and told her to ask that new guy in the mobile next to hers. He\'s some kind of plumber or sumfin."



Joe left without saying another word and went back to Monica\'s, parked and went to the trailer next to hers. He began to pound on the door, but on the first strike it flew open. "Hello?" he yelled, but didn\'t wait for answer. He went in to the trailer and looked around. He didn\'t like it, there was something wrong here. Something very wrong with this place.



He went into the bedroom, and looked around, but there was nothing there but a bed and broken dresser. He was just about to turn and leave, when he noticed a stain on the mattress. As he got closer, he saw that it was blood. A small spot of blood. He touched the spot. It was dry, but the blood on this mattress was the same blood that ran through his veins. He didn\'t know how he knew this, but he was more certain about it than anything else in his life.





He should have known that the cops weren\'t going to do anything. These two kept throwing glances at each other showing that they planned on working on this about as long as it took them to get to the Burrito Barn for lunch.



"So you don\'t even know how long she\'s been gone?"



Joe clenched his fists, and between gnashing teeth said, "I\'ve told you, no. I know she had the day off of work yesterday, and didn\'t show up today."



"Her last phone call to you?"



Joe looked up at the fat officer with the 70\'s porn star mustache and didn\'t understand at first, then it hit him. He had told them that he was Monica\'s father. To them it would have been normal for his little girl to call her dad at least once a week to check in. "Well, we\'ve never actually spoken outside of the diner where she works."



The questions that followed had more to do with his and Monica\'s relationship, or lack thereof, than Monica\'s "supposed" disappearance.



"I didn\'t know Ilene was even pregnant. About two years ago, I was passing through on my way to Santa Fe, and stopped at the Pay and Go for some coffee. A woman there recognized me from years ago. Her name is Peggy, Ilene\'s best girlfriend back when we were dating. She didn\'t care for Ilene anymore, said she was a rotten drunk now, and using everyone to keep drunk, and using her daughter to take care of her. Poor girl, barely 21 and had no life except to take care of her worthless drunk mother. I asked Peggy when Ilene had gotten married, and Peggy laughed. She had never got married, just slutted her ass to anyone that could pay the bills for a few months before booting her out. Too bad that she had lied about the abortion so that I could have taken that kid with me."



"I didn\'t know what she was talking about, and she had told me that when I left Ilene was three months pregnant. Ilene had told her that I left because she had had an abortion. Ilene still loved me enough to make me out a hero to her friends and family, making up a story that she had lied to me and said she had gotten an abortion, and that\'s why I had left. That just about killed me."



"Peggy told me where Monica worked and I went there, and just sat outside, looking at her. She looked a lot like my mother, god rest her. I sat and watched her for hours, then kept on my way to Santa Fe.



Feeling drained, Joe watched the cars leave with the words "We\'ll look into it." ringing in his ears. He knew he would get no help from them. He knew he was seen as just some dad that regretted leaving his kid, and wants to make up for it by causing a fuss about her to prove that he really did care.



Maybe that\'s what he was. Maybe Monica took off for a few days with this guy that she had mentioned, and they were somewhere having a great time. Maybe he was grasping.



He didn\'t care, though. If he was grasping, then so be it. He would fuckin grasp, and grasp some more until he saw his daughter, safe and sound.



He went to his Blazer and got in, deciding at the last minute to stop in to the office to leave his number, just in case Monica came back.





In the sun, the breeze blowing over him, a drink in his hand, Nick stared out into the waves. He sat in his wicker chair in an overpriced tavern, the same seat he had sat in every afternoon for the last week, drinking until the darkness came, then drinking some more, going back to his bungalo, and drinking until the sun came back up or he passed out, whatever came first. He threw another 50 at the waitress and she would give the signal to a girl at the bar, who would then come over to the table fluttering those thick Mexican eyelashes at him.



These girls were all the same. See some gringo throw around a couple of bucks, and her big brown eyes would see dollars signs and a free pass across the border.



"Ah-dee-os" he said in as little slur as he could muster. He was not up for it. The second night here he had tried. He took a pretty little chichita back to place and had her naked within two minutes, her lying on the bed blowing kisses at him while she posed with her breasts stuck out a foot. He looked at her, and his stomach turned and he ran to the bathroom and lost his 47 dollar steak and prawns into the sewers of Cabo San Lucas.



Since then, it had been tequila and his wicker chair. If he never saw another woman again as long as he lived, he would be fine with it.



He kept thinking about Calvin, and the fuckers watching him. Hope they were getting an eye full the last few days. Boring ass job, haha. Let em watch, at least Monica was safe.



Monica.



Monica.



Monica.........how he had tried to forget that name and that person. Fuck, for all he knew she had already moved on and seduced the next shmuck that moved into the shitty green trailer he had vacated. Maybe they were getting busy on that cheap bed with the springs sticking up. Maybe she was changing HIS life from a scum sucking piece of shit with no conscience to something he had never even witnessed, let alone tried to be.



Maybe he had been as wrong about her as she had been about him. Shit, it wasn\'t the first bitch to ever put on a sad face and act like an angel just to try to get over on a guy. Some bitch like his mom who would spit out a couple of kids from her worthless snatch and raise them to be just like her. Raise a meth buddy and a kicking boy. Some fucking skank that would share her daughter with her lovers, and make the boy watch so he could "learn" what a good fuck looked like.



Monica could be like that, but wasn\'t. Instead of falling into the trap that so many did, she rose over it and made up her mind to be better than everything she had been raised to believe.



Maybe he admired her. Yeah, never had admired anyone before. He sure as hell didn\'t do it. He couldn\'t rise above his own fucking feet. He dove head long into worse shit than even his fucking whore of a mother could have done.



Why the hell, then, did he feel differently with her. Monica made him feel like he could rise above it all too, and step over all the crap of his life and be, well, normal. Just a guy going to work and coming home to fucking meatloaf and a snotty faced kid running up and calling him Daddy.



Daddy! That was a good one. He laughed out loud with that one. Him being a husband and daddy. What would he tell the kid he did for a living? Daddy is a tire salesman now, but before you were born he would grab girls from there homes and rape them, and.....



Yeah, fuck, that would be one helluva bedtime story for the little fucker. How your daddy made all his money! Yeehaw, kid, come with daddy and we can start scoping out the hotties in your grade and pick which ones to snatch and grab later!



He made himself sick.





The tenth day he woke at 3pm with yet another hangover. As his hand reached for the bottle, he stopped. No more. The best thing he could do right now was head back to Calvin\'s and get back in the swing.





The flight was delayed, but he didn\'t give a fuck. He downed three more aspirins with some Mexican soda that was supposed to taste like mangoes, but tasted like a dirty fucking sombrero while sitting next to an old woman who\'s face looked like a topographical map it was so wrinkled. She kept looking at him. She had these sick fucking eyes, deep and dark and full of every step out of decency he had ever taken. Looking into those eyes,it was like she knew every sin he had ever commited.



He was grateful when they called out his plane.



Ah, fuck it was good to be getting back to the life. Getting back to business. Get his mind back on right. He wasn\'t cut out for the nine to five, the coming home to the little woman and mowing the lawns on the weekend, or whatever those fucks did. He was good at his job, and it was his job he was going back to.



Not Monica.





So why, after retrieving his car from the parking lot of the airport in Colorado Springs, did he keep driving south instead of taking the exit that would eventually lead to Calvin\'s?



Why did he keep driving without seeing the signs pointing out the miles farther south, farther away from what was familiar to him, and close to this strange thing he never knew he had wanted, but wanted now.....desperately?





He was in his personal car, now, so no one should recognize him as he drove through the trailer park. He drove extremely slow, still fighting with himself over whether or not he should be here, even thinking about what it was he was about to do.



Fuck it. He would get Monica and stash her away somewhere, drive straight to the big man\'s and talk to him. Tell him the fucking truth, that he wanted out. Out of the life, and it wasn\'t like he cold turn them in. He was the one doing the snatching after all?? He\'d go down just as hard as any of them.



He parked across the street from lot 29, and looked around. There was a Chevy Blazer in Monica\'s space. Her car was gone. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and reached for the keys.



From the trunk, he retrieved his 38, and stashed another clip in the inside pocket of his leather coat. Silently he crept to the front door. Without knocking, he kicked in the door easily and held his gun out in front of him, pointing at a man who was pointing one right back at him.