Storymania - The Skeptic by Jason P Neubauer

The Skeptic (2)
Jason P Neubauer

“But a chair and some painting?”
He looked at his uncle.
Yeah, you go on and smile you fucking lush.
“Do you have a way of getting there Taffy?” he asked.
“No, I take the bus.”
“Let me give you ride. I can help you move the chair if you want.”
Taffy nodded while continuing to curse at his uncle in his mind. He really had no right to anything more and knew it, but his uncle knew Taffy was living in squalor and could have offered him a small share of the inheritance. Instead he offered him a ride.
Aunt Maggie’s house was in the rich bedroom community of Ladue, a small city that sat on the western border of St Louis. The house was expensive and well appointed with antiques, and it served as a cocoon for her while she went senile in her last five years.
The chair itself was an ugly recliner with a few stains on the cushion and arms, and a ripped seam. The painting was behind it on the wall. It was clear to Taffy that they didn’t belong in the house with the rest of the furniture. They were eyesores and begged to be removed from their elegant surroundings. The chair was lumpy and felt as though it was stuffed with bricks, but it was his nevertheless and he carted it out to his uncle’s van. The painting turned out to be a print. There was a copyright date on the bottom and it was 1977. Taffy’s small heart sank.
Ha fuckin’ ha, you old bitch. Some joke. Some fucking joke.
The ride back on the highway was awkward at best. There was little to speak of between the two men. They were both greedy and neither of them liked the other but out of respect for the dead Uncle Stan was polite. Taffy just wanted to get the hell away from him as soon as he could and so kept as quiet as possible to keep Uncle Stan from inviting himself into the apartment.
“Taffy, I want to help you out, I mean I know things are tough for you right now and I’m going to help you.”
Uncle Stan pulled his wallet out with his right hand while driving with his left. After extracting a hundred dollar bill he handed it to Taffy.
Fuck you.
“Thank you.”
Taffy took the bill and put it in his pocket. That was all that was said for the rest of the ride and when they got to the apartment in Soulard and unloaded the chair, Uncle Stan shook Taffy’s hand and turned to go.
“Don’t be a stranger now, Taft. Us Murphys gotta stick together.”
Yeah right, cause it’s such a rare namesake and there are so few of us left you drunken retard.
He drove off and Taffy thought to himself that he would probably never see his uncle again and felt fine about it. He hadn’t stayed to help him carry the chair inside and Taffy guessed correctly that he went off to find a bar to celebrate.
After lugging the eyesore into the living room and propping the print up next to it Taffy made himself a sandwich and sat down on his inheritance to read. He waited for Rebecca and although he wasn’t emotionally attached to her, he dreaded her arrival and having to tell her the outcome of the day. The breaking of bad news was never his strongest talent. It was almost comical to see him firing someone at work:
“How is your health?”
“Oh, not bad.”
“Well, that’s good, that’s good.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh no reason. You’re fired.”
As he read his mind was reeling.
Jesus Jumped-Up Christ, what the hell am I going to do now? I’m stuck again, stuck with this damn woman and I can’t get out. A roof over my head, shit, a coffin in my grave. That old crazy could have given me something useful.
Rebecca came home from the campus an hour later and he put the hundred dollar bill in his book to mark his place when he heard the creak of the storm door. As she poured a glass of juice for herself he waited for her to ask.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Well,” he started, “not as good as I had hoped.”
“Well tell me. What did we get?”
“We? Hmmm. We got a very nice chair. Oh and a reproduction of a 1900 painting done 77 years later in tasteful cardboard. I think she thought it was real.”
“And? Is that all?”
“Well from Aunt Maggie that’s all.” If there were more would I tell you?
“What do you mean?”
“Well my uncle was there also and he gave me this very expensive bookmark,” Taffy replied while holding up his book with the bill sticking out of the top.
“Jesus Christ, it’s never going to get better with you is it?”
“Huh?”
“I said it’s never going to get any better. I can’t believe this.”
Taffy didn’t know what he had been expecting but he knew it wasn’t this. He hadn’t seen her angry before.
“Taffy, when are you going to grow up and learn that a man with an engineering degree and intelligence just doesn’t work at Kinko’s? When are you going to start getting your shit together? You sit around here all day when you aren’t working and barely ever talk to me anymore.”
“Well you know,” he said, “there are far worse things a man could do in this day and age.”
“What the hell does that even mean, Taffy?”
He was stunned.
He had expected her to be upset but not at him. She had put up with him for so long she had grown used to his abuse and something had finally snapped inside her making it impossible for her to bare it any longer. She wasn’t an attractive woman and she knew it but she didn’t think she was especially unattractive either and she considered herself intelligent, so she believed that she deserved better. Taffy’s life seemed to be going nowhere and he lacked the motivation that would change that, and on top of the constant insults he was a fucking slob. Simply put, she was fed up.
“Look, Taffy. I think it’s time we reevaluated ourselves here. I can’t let you drag me down.”
Drag you down? That’s rich.
“Well jeez, I know it’s torn but it’s really not that bad of a chair.”
“Taffy I’m serious. I’m tired of living with a loser.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Becca I’m sorry if you were expecting more. I’m sorry if I can’t provide more for you,” I mean if I can’t split just yet, “but it’s not all my fault. I lost my fucking job.”
“Oh spare me, Taffy! You can’t go through your life blaming everyone else for your misfortunes. I know you were laid off. People get laid off everyday, but you know what? They get out and make themselves successful again.”
Taffy knew she was right and hated her for it.
“Becca, what do you want from me? It’s not like we’re going to get married or anything. It’s not like either of us is expecting to spend the rest of our lives together.”
Take that.
This was a stab at her and she knew it. They had had conversations before in which she had confided in Taffy that she sometimes felt she was living a lie and that the relationship was pointless because she knew that he wasn’t looking to stay around. It also contradicted her Catholic upbringing to live with a man who wasn’t married to her. It was her way of telling him that she wanted something more permanent, if not with him then with another man. She had been too used to having him around to get rid of him though and didn’t want to turn away from all the time invested in him. Not until then.
“Taffy, get out! Take your fucking ugly chair and your picture and get out!”
He didn’t want to fight and he wasn’t keen on staying in the apartment with her but had nowhere to go at that particular moment.
“Where am I supposed to go, Becca?”
“I don’t give a damn where you go. I want you out.”
He recognized the lost cause and knew there was no way for him to win. He put his clothes and a few books in a duffel bag and started on the arduous task of dragging the chair back out the front door, the print on top of it.
“I’m keeping the chair. It’s my fucking chair.”
“I don’t want the damn thing, I told you to take it.”
He stood and smiled strangely at her. She was afraid of him now and he knew it. As he left out the door he began to think of where he could go for the night. With his hundred dollar bill he would get a hotel room and a pizza and figure out what he was going to do the next night. His last paycheck was already spent on bills and it was a few days until his next one. After pushing the chair a few blocks much to the delight of the jeering motorists passing by he realized he had no place to put it and that he looked totally ridiculous. In a side alley he found a dumpster and pushed the chair next to it while picking up the print.
Inspecting it more closely, he discovered that the frame was cheap wood and it still had a price tag on the back. $4.99 wasn’t very impressive even in 1977. Hurling it into the dumpster and cursing at the same time, he sat down for a rest on the chair.
It really was lumpy. The stains on the arms looked like coffee or tea and the springs were beginning to wear through the back. He couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position and made up his mind that he would rest there for a few more minutes and leave it for the trash men.
No wonder she went nuts, this thing is really uncomfortable. I bet she died in it. I bet she fucking died right here on this chair and knew I’d be sitting here thinking about it. Fucking lunatic.

The seam that was coming apart on the side of the cushion began to give a little more and Taffy reached down to feel the fringes of the material. It began to rain so he lifted the cushion out of the chair and held it over his head to shelter himself. Slinging his duffel over his shoulder, he left the alley and headed toward a hotel about a mile down the street that had a bus stop nearby.
As he walked he whistled a song that didn’t exist and just forgot everything about the day. The one thing he had expected that had actually happened was that he was free of her, albeit under worse circumstances than he had planned on. Tony at work would probably let him stay at his apartment for a little while until he could manage a small place for himself.
Twenty minutes later he walked into the lobby at some roach motel with a buzzing vacancy sign in front. Taffy hated germs. He didn’t want to touch the door handle and he could feel the floor had a flypaper consistency. He felt like he would catch something if he inhaled too deeply.
The clerk took one look at Taffy and said, “Cash up front.”
Taffy pulled out his hundred and slid it face down across the counter.
“Thirty for the room, you got anyone with you?”
“No.”
“If I finds anyone up there with you it’s another ten.”
And why in the fuck would I want to be seen here by anyone I know?
He got his sweaty wad of seventy dollars in change and wiped his hand on his shirt after putting it in his pocket. The elevator was out of service and the stairs to his third story room protested under his weight with creaks that moaned into the humid air.
The room was only a room in the academic sense. It had a bathroom and something that resembled a bed, but smelled of piss and sweat. The sheets looked clean but he was taking nothing for granted.
Thank God I have some clothes I can lay down on. People have fucked on this bed. Today I sat in a chair that killed a woman and now I am going to sleep on a bed that gave someone VD.
He took a hot shower and before settling down spread some of his clothes over the suspect mattress. It wasn’t the most auspicious way for him to rest but his exhaustion took over his mind and wouldn’t allow him to remain on his feet.
The old fashioned rotary phone by the bed had a list of pizzerias next to it that apparently delivered to the hotel. It was hand written and next to it was a list of call girl services that apparently also delivered. After calling in an order (for pizza) he unpacked his duffel and tried to decide what to do with the old seat cushion he had just carried like an idiot for a mile in the rain. Had it been more comfortable he would have considered using it in place of the pillows that were thrown haphazardly on the “bed”. At least he knew where it had been for the past few hours and that there had been no prostitution taking place on it.
About twenty minutes later he was still staring stupidly at it when there was a knock. Expecting his dinner, he opened the door to find a mid-twenties woman in a short black dress with too much makeup on her face.
“Hi baby.”
“Hi.”
She put her hand on his crotch and began to move it slowly up and down.
“Excuse me. Maybe I should ask you something.”
“What’s that honey?”
“Who in the fuck are you?”
“Cassandra. Cassie for short. Didn’t you call for me?”
No but damn if I didn’t wish I had now.
“Sorry, no.”
The harlot frowned and told him to fuck off. Later that night he would hear her affecting her best Hollywood orgasm in the room directly below him.
Some guys have all the luck.
The pizza did arrive about five minutes later and the hot food felt good in his stomach. He sat on the cushion and watched something in Spanish on the 13 inch TV. As he played with the ripped seam on the edge of the cushion, it began to split wider and he absentmindedly stuck his hand in. It came loose and suddenly it was clear to him why the cushion had been so lumpy.
There, stuffed inside, were dollars. Thousands and thousands of dollars.

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