- Polite Fictions

But Charlie new better than to do anything other than wait when it came to what her mother's next move might be. Long ago she'd learned that spending even a minute anticipating anything when it came to Claudette was akin to throwing herself from a cliff with some utterly misguided belief that the way she held one of her arms on the way down would cause her to be able to land on her feet and walk away unharmed. She knew better, especially in light of the fact that Claudette had just wiped the bloody knife across her shawl and Charlie had already envisioned her washing it, wearing it again, and casually explaining the stain away as an old accidental coffee spill.

But even if Charlie did believe she could anticipate Claudette's next move, Claudette was leaving nothing for her to go on. Claudette had walked slowly over to her, wrapped her hand around Charlie's elbow, leaned into her face and, just when Charlie thought she was going to be told what to do, Claudette's eyes clouded over and she mentally disappeared...

...no piss stained, shot up man was laying half-conscious at her feet. No duct taped joker was sweating bullets where he lay backwards on the floor moaning and struggling in feeble desperation against the chair he was taped to. No ape-like bastard was laying out front with a knife wound in his neck. No daughter of hers was standing stock still and staring at her with a knot in her gut that was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.

Claudette was gone. She was slogging her way through the thick sand of a sun stained beach in the Caribbean. The brim of her giant sun hat bounced in the light wind, Jackie-O sunglasses covered her face from hairline to cheek bones, and a carefully tied swimsuit cover hid the backs of legs she'd kept from public view since back 30 years ago when she'd taken her last trip across the stage and let the wild things in the audience have one last look.

"Claudette! Claudette! Over here..."

her old pal Madge was saying, her voice tripping along the wind, and the skin at the back of her waving arm taking on a life of its own. Madge, already blushed red from the sun, had set up camp on the beach underneath a huge and brightly colored umbrella. She was sitting comfortably on a canvas beach chair surrounded by an over-sized beach bag, two or three paper back books, and a small cooler.

Claudette made her way to the shade of Madge's umbrella, let her own over-sized beach bag fall to the sand, and looked down to take in the bright red lips that Madge had formed into an,

"Oooooohhhh...you look pissed!"

Claudette took a seat in the canvas beach chair next to Madge, caught her breath and said,

"I'll just never know if I did the right thing."

"Lemme get you a beer," Madge offered, hefting forward over her own girth to reach for the cooler at her feet...

"Mom! Mom! ForfucksakeCLAUDETTE!" Charlie yelled until Claudette came back into the moment in which she immediately leaned closer into Charlie's face, further tightened her grip on Charlie's elbow, and raised the knife she still held to Charlie's neck.

"Do exactly what I tell you or I'm going to the Caribbean alone," seeped through Claudette's teeth and slid to the corner's of her mouth.

"The Caribbean? What are you..."

As Claudette pushed the blade of the knife even harder to Charlie's neck, Charlie quickly reached her free arm around her mother as if to embrace her in a hug, and found the pistol where it always was at the small of her back in the waistband of her pants.