Messy brain strikes again

One of the things I need to nail down sooner or later (its turning into later) is how Francis ended up with Roustabout as his driver.  I've written into the chapters that Francis discovered him dead while deployed and raised him from the dead.  But... that I fiddled with the idea for a while and it wouldn't gel.  I'd been doing the scenes from Francis' POV, so I decided to go from Roustabout and that got worse.  This is an attempt where Francis had Roustabout as a driver prior to him being killed and raised from the dead -- but this feels like a false start too.  I MIGHT have posted it before.  I no longer remember.  Sorry if I did.

#

Percival Galahad Roustabout needed a job.  Plain and simple.  Fresh out of jail.  Twenty-eight dollars and fifty-two cents to his name.  Everything he owned in one backpack.  He knew it wasn’t going to be simple.  He was too tall, too brawny, too brown, too shaggy, too tattooed, too scary looking, and too stupid.  He got a GED in prison but only barely.  He and reading got along fine, but anything with numbers was a struggle.

Every place he tried, the people said no with fear in their eyes.

He ended up back where all his troubles started, the Full Moon gentleman’s club.  It belong to Enrique Navarro, who was also known as the Prince of Miami, who was also known as the most dangerous man to cross in Florida.

Roustabout had never met the man, being hired as a bouncer by the club’s manager, Rocko Navarro, grand-nephew to the crime lord.  The Navarro family was large and sprawling, although secretive to the point of being off most people’s radar.  Roustabout had worked at the Full Moon for a year before the fight that landed him in jail.

The club was a dark cave after the bright Florida afternoon sunlight.  The main stage was lit up but none of the girls were dancing yet as they weren’t officially open yet.  Nothing had changed.  A few new faces.  All the old faces reacted with surprise and gave him a wide berth.

Rocko was at the bar, filling up a drink order.  He was a wiry Hispanic man, a decade older and a foot shorter than Roustabout.  Except for the fact that he often smelled like he slept in a dog house, there wasn’t anything physically remarkable to him.  Rocko was, though, one of the few people who never seemed aware of how tall and strong Roustabout was.

“Roustabout, my man!”  Rocko leaned across the bar to bump fists with him.  “You’re out!”

“Early release for good behavior.”  He said.

Rocko took down a pint glass, filled it with draft beer and pushed it across to him.  “Good job.  That was a bum rap all around.  I would have weighed in more but my name in the pool would have only made things worse.  For some reason, I am not known to be a ‘respectable’ businessman.”

Roustabout nodded.  He was never sure if the Navarro reputation was based on anything more than pure fear; Rocko had a way of smiling that seem more like a rabid dog baring its teeth.  It was unsettling as all git out.  The man didn’t back down to no one.  Nor was Rocko’s fearlessness all swagger; he’d seen Rocko shrug off a brass knuckle hit to the head and then lay his attacker out with one punch.  Rocko was confident enough in his own strength that he didn’t seem to own a gun or a knife or even a baseball bat.  He drove the tiniest car Roustabout had ever seen and wore pink despite being very straight.  Roustabout had never met a man so fully confident of his masculinity.

The entire year Roustabout worked at the Full Moon, he’d never caught wind of anything illegal.  There was something hinky about the family; they played their cards too close to their chest to be totally innocent.  He suspected whatever their reputation – like his own – was blown out of proportion.

“I’m looking for a job,” Roustabout said.  “Something on the up and up.  I don’t want to go back to prison.  I was hoping I could get my old job back.”

Rocko sighed as he poured good bourbon into high ball glasses.  “I hired on some of my younger cousins.  I’m kind of overstaffed as… wait.”  He paused, working his jaw as he thought hard on something.  He said slowly as if unsure of the wisdom of what he was saying,  “I might have something.  Come up to the boardroom.”

He picked up the tray of drinks and headed upstairs.

It occurred to Roustabout that he’d never seen Rocko fill a drink order himself, no matter how slammed they were.

The boardroom was a private party room that took up the upstairs of the club.  It was a classy place with leather sofas and crystal chandeliers and fancy gold framed mirrors.

The Prince radiated menace.

Terrified but stands his ground.

“I’ve been asked to do someone a favor,” the Prince said.  “They want me to provide them a driver…”

“I don’t do that.  I’m not a getaway driver.”

“It’s not that kind of a job.  I could grab any scum off the street for something like that.  This needs someone that can be polite, say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and keep their hands off the goods.”

“What kind of goods will I be transporting?  Drugs?”

The Prince laughed.  “It’s not that kind of job but it’s good that you’re cautious.  An idiot would think this is a milk run.  An idiot would end up dead.  It’s a dangerous job which is why I don’t want one of my people involved, but it’s on the up and up.  Be polite, drive to wherever Francis wants to go – any place, any time -- and most importantly, never, ever touch Francis.  Do you think you can handle that?”

There was a catch in it somehow, else the Prince wouldn’t be afraid to risk one of his own people.

“What exactly is Francis?  A woman?”

“Doesn’t matter: no touching.  Don’t even stand close to Francis if you can avoid it.  It would be best if you think of Francis as radioactive material; prolonged exposure is dangerous to your health.”

He nodded to show that he understood.

“If you fuck this up somehow -- and Francis doesn’t kill you on the spot – I will hunt you down and tear you into pieces.”

The Prince waved his hand to Rocko.  “Take him around to Francis’ place.  Don’t go in with him, though.  I don’t want Francis to kill you.”

#

“Who is this Francis person?”  he asked in the car.

Rocko blew out his breath, a figure in darkness lit only by the dashboard.  “I’m not sure how to explain.  It’s like telling someone who never heard of Jesus or the Catholic church who the pope is.”

“The pope is the head of the largest church on the planet,” he said.

Rocko laughed.  “I suppose that works.  The thing is Francis still needs to sign off on you working for him.  He might not take a liking to you.  Until he says yes, there’s no need for you to know anything.”

Okay, at least now Roustabout knew that they were talking about a man and not a woman.  He was starting to think this might be a high paid call girl.

“How do I get him to say yes?” Roustabout said.

“God if I know.  I’ve never met him.  We’ve never had any one like him in our territory before.  We just got a call from New York, saying that a deal was struck and Francis would be in Miami for the time being.  We’re to make nice, give Francis room to work, and stay out of his way.”

“Work?  Doing what?”

“Pope-like stuff.”

“What does that mean?  He’s part of the Catholic church?”

“Maybe.  I don’t know.  I’m not sure how all that works.  Francis has that whole ‘god on Earth’ package that the Catholics say that the pope has.  I don’t know about the pope; I’ve never heard of him doing shit but maybe the Catholics are just good at covering it all up.  The world is full of deep secrets.  You’ve got to ask Francis.”

Roustabout sat in silence the rest of the trip.  He was trying to figure out why someone who was “like the pope” would need a mob boss to arrange a driver.

They drove to a large house on La Gorce island.  There was wooden gates into a red brick courtyard to a big white stucco house.  Rocko parked on the street.

“You go on ahead,” Rocko said.  “I’ll catch up.  Ring the doorbell.  Tell him that the Prince sent you.”

He had weird flashes back to when he was a kid, out on Halloween night, walking up to strange houses to get candy while his older brother and friends egged him on from the shadows – planning to prank the family after he got the goods.

He rang the doorbell and waited.  After a few minutes, he rang it again, listening closely to confirm it worked.  The “dingdong” echoed through empty halls.

Maybe Francis wasn’t home.

He was considering ringing the doorbell a third time when the door opened.  Someone in a full rabbit mascot fur suit stood in the doorway.

The person cocked their head in confusion.  They didn’t say anything.

“Hi!” He said nervously.  “I’m looking for Francis.  I’m his new driver.”

The person continued to look at him.  They cocked their head the other way.

“Francis!”  Rocko’s voice came from near the gate.  “The Prince said he’d find you a driver.  This is the guy!”

The rabbit lifted a hand to acknowledge the shout and stepped back, waving him into the house.

This was Francis?  Did this mean he had the job?  Or was there going to be an another interview?

He glanced back to the gate.  There was a huge gray dog by the gate watching him.  There was no sign of Rocko.  Had the man fled already?

He followed the rabbit went into the dimly-lit house.  It was first time in his life that he was in a million dollar mansion but he could recognize all the signs from the movies.  The entrance had stained hardwood floors and hand painted tiles and a big crystal chandelier.  There was a maze of hallways and doors branching off the foyer.  It wasn’t until the second big, empty, unlit room that he realized that the mansion was unfurnished.  There was no furniture, no pictures on the walls, or curtains on the windows.  The rooms were all painted stark white, lending to the sterile feeling.  He wasn’t sure what all the rooms were for.  Dining room?  Livingroom?  What was beyond that?  How many rooms did you need?

The kitchen was unexpectedly narrow, though still large enough that there could have been a table.  The only light came from the range hood over an industrial-size stainless steel unit.  Beyond it was a room with windows looking out onto a big inground swimming pool and the dark waters of the canal beyond.  A big sectional had been crammed into the room, facing a massive flat screen TV.  The only light in the room came from the TV showing big white smiling face of Thomas the Tank Engine.

The rabbit sat down on one end of the sectional, picked up the remote, and hit play.

Thomas the Tank Engine chugged merrily through a British countryside while bright happy music played.  The light from the television threw weird shadows on the white walls, the glass of the windows, and the water of the swimming pool.

What was he supposed to do?  Why was Francis in a rabbit suit?  Why was he sitting in a nearly empty house watching a children’s show?  The episode play, telling a story about Thomas rescuing another engine named James using a breakdown train.

He stood in the doorway, unsure what to do.  The Prince had told him to stay as far as possible from Francis.  He had no place to go – all his worldly belongs were in his backpack.  He hadn’t seen anything remotely looking a chair in the house beyond the sectional.

The rabbit noticed that he was still standing.  It turned its head to stare at him.

“I – I don’t really understand what’s going on,” he admitted.  “The Prince didn’t tell me…anything.”

The rabbit indicated that he was to sit on the couch.

He sat down as far away from the rabbit as he could get on the big sectional.

They watched two more episodes, each only a few minutes.  He’d watched some of the episodes on television when he was younger.  There had been humans that interacted with a tiny conductor inserting morals above and beyond what the stories told.  The humans, though, had been left out.  There were only trains.

At the end of the third episode, the screen went dark and silent.

-- TAKE OUT THIS SECTION

In that moment of quiet, the rabbit asked, “Do you think it’s a good thing to be useful?”

It was odd.  The rabbit’s voice was hushed, nearly a whisper, but Roustabout felt the words strike him.  It was like the rabbit had whispered into a microphone while Roustabout stood beside a ten foot tall speaker.

The moral of the stories seemed to be, over and over again, that the train engines should seek to be useful.  That being useful was the greatest personality trait to have.

Was this an interview question?  Certainly if they were sitting at a desk in some paper-strewn office, there be no ambiguity.  It was like “where do you see yourself in five years” or “what is your greatest weakness?”

But Francis was sitting in an empty mansion, wearing a rabbit suit, watching a children’s show.

If that wasn’t a sign that someone was struggling, then nothing was.

“There’s being useful and then there’s being used,” he said.

-- END OF TAKE OUT SECTION

How old was Francis?  Rocky made him sound like a gray-haired old priest, but the rabbit suit wasn’t huge.  The person inside was at least a foot shorter than him.  Was it because Francis was a kid?  It would explain why the Prince stressed over and over that he wasn’t to touch Francis?

The rabbit’s stomach growled loudly.

Was anyone feeding the kid?

“Are you hungry?”  he asked and then remembered to add “sir?”

The rabbit nodded.

“Do you want me to cook you something?”  he asked.

The rabbit put its hands to its face.

Did that mean that there was nothing to make?

Roustabout got up and checked the walk-in pantry, the upper cabinets and refrigerator.  Everything was empty.  Was this more evidence that he was a child?  Or was the rabbit suit and the train video symptoms of someone that really didn’t cope well with the real world?  Someone who needed something more than just a driver?

“Oh geez.  If I’m your driver, then you have a car, right?  I could go out food shopping if you give me a list.”

The rabbit nodded.  It stood up, went into the kitchen, opened a drawer and took out a set of keys, a wad of cash, and a folded piece of paper.  “Shopping list” was written in green crayon on the paper.

A shopping trip had been planned but not taken.

He picked them up.  “I’ll be back.”  He promised.

#

The car was parked inside the four bay garage.  It was a massive yellow Cadillac Escalade.  It was like powering up a space shuttle, all bells and whistles gleaming to life.  He stared at the odometer.  It showed that the vehicle had traveled twenty miles total.  It was brand new, driven straight from the dealer’s lot to the garage.  It wasn’t probably even given a test drive.

Combined with the house, it was a stunning show of wealth.

The Cadillac had night vision along with GPS navigation.  He found a nearby twenty-four hour supermarket and drove to it, wondering what he’d gotten into.  The house and the car and big wad of cash all indicated that Francis had money to burn, but why not an staff of people like the Prince had sprawling around him?

He parked the car under a lamp, away from any car that might scratch its paint, but close to the entrance.

Once inside, with a cart, he unfolded the shopping list.  It read “Food.  Soap of all kinds.  Things to make food with.  Things to eat food with.  Everything.”

The “everything” was underlined multiple times.

How much money had Francis hand him?

The top bill was a twenty.  There was a fifty under that.  The rest were hundreds.  Roustabout was holding close to three thousand dollars.

“Okay.  Everything.”  He tried thinking like a parent but also mindful if this was a babysitting job, he was going to probably be eating some of the food too.  Because he hadn’t gotten fresh fruit in prison, he started with bananas, apples, peaches, oranges, and strawberries.  He also grabbed some lettuce, tomato, and onion.  He hit the pre-made meal section and loaded up on potato salad and pasta salads and sushi.  He got hoagie buns and loaded up on lunch meats.  He grabbed all the condiments.  He grabbed one package each of chicken, ground hamburger, steaks and pork chops.  He hit the bakery section for glazed donuts, oatmeal cookies and little tarts.  Soaps were body soap, shampoo, dish soap, laundry soap.  Were there other soaps?  He hit the dental section and got a toothbrush and toothpastes.  Milk.  Cereal.  Eggs. Sliced cheese.  Plastic forks and spoons.  A chef knife.  A cheap set of steak knives.  Paper plates and bowls.  A cookie sheet, a skillet, a non-stick saucepot, and a set of potholders.  He made sure he stopped at the spices and picked up salt, pepper, garlic powder, sugar, and cinnamon.  Lastly he grabbed a set of beach towels.

Everything took nearly four hundred dollars.

As he made sure he got the receipt and correct change, he realized that he’d gotten the job.

#

He hadn’t thought through carrying the groceries into the house until he was setting the first bag on the kitchen counter.  He’d just walked into the house like he owned it.  He shouldn’t have done it but he’d been focused on bags that were threatening to burst.  He paused, worried, and then realized that he could hear water running.  Francis was taking a shower and couldn’t have answered the door.  He went for more bags, hoping to be unloaded before Francis got done.

He had the most of the food that they weren’t going to eat put away before Francis appeared.

Roustabout had a sudden awareness of being watched and turned.

Francis was a boy.

A very beautiful boy.  His lush dark hair had been short but growing toward shaggy.  His eyes were a stunning blue that didn’t seem real and yet – considering everything – probably were.  He paused in the doorway, radiating shyness.

At least the “do not touch” made sense now.  Francis was a little old to be watching children shows.  He looked at least fifteen or sixteen.

“Hey!”  Roustabout tried for natural.  “I wasn’t sure what you liked so I got a little of everything.”

Francis drifted in the room, focus on the food.  “I’m starved.  I haven’t had anything since yesterday.”

Good!  He talked!  He spoke softly, nearly whispering, but at least it wasn’t giant rabbit mime.

“I’m Roustabout,” he introduced himself as at the supermarket he realized that they hadn’t covered the basics.  Frankly something about the gleaming normalcy of the supermarket jogged him back to reality.  “I asked the Prince for a job and he sent me here and I’m assuming that I have the job – but I’m very unclear exactly who I’m reporting to and how I’m getting paid and all that.  To start with: you are Francis?”

“God is in the details,” Francis said.  “Central must have thought that one of the Prince’s people would be more durable than someone in my family.  We are stretched thin.  If you’re here with me by that odd chain of events then you’re meant to be here.  God wants you here.  And yes, I’m Francis.  Francis Grigori.”

“And you’re a church leader?”

Francis cocked his head in confusion.  “What?”

“Rocko said that you were like the pope.”

The head tilt changed to the other side.  “I don’t think I am – but I’ve never actually dealt much with Catholics.  What we have to say about God greatly disturbs them.  We’re not Christians; we split off from Jews about the time of Noah.

“You live alone here at this house?”

“For now.  Clarice arranged it.  She works at Central.  She’ll be the one deploying me.”

“Deploying?”