ELEVATOR CHAPTER 12: CONFRONTATION IS CONFIRMATION
It’s almost funny how a home run by the Philadelphia Phillies’ batter had my Dad more concerned than his only daughter being followed by a suspicious vehicle all the way to the house, but I can’t even laugh now, I was really afraid for my life.
As he opens his can of beer I begin thinking to myself, even if he does not care about my safety as my father, I know my Dad all too well, that 6-pack of beer would not matter at all just because he heard somebody was threatening to ride a bike over his lawn, as a matter of fact the perpetrator would have the cans of beer smashed over their head and would be forced to mow the lawn for as long as my father dictates.
Something is definitely wrong, and I won’t be able to sleep with both eyes closed except I get to the bottom of this, I know for sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I away them serve when I swerved, I know they were trailing, who and why is what I do not know, but I’m about to find out. Charity begins at home they say, I’m about to do some interrogation to get some answers and this house is going to serve as my Scotland Yard for now.
There is nobody I know in my life who would want me dead, I spent all night making a list and narrowing down possible motives why someone would follow me or want to harm me, I could not come to a conclusion and then it hit me.
What if the person wasn’t following me but had me followed?
What if they weren’t after my life but just watching me and keeping me in close surveillance for deterrence or precautions sake?
The more pieces of the puzzles I filled it began to seem more and more clear that my father had a hand in this.
Oh my God this son of a bitch put one of his cronies on me, only God knows how long I have been under their watch before I got notice the black Ford Dodge yesterday.
“No work Madame?” Juanita our Hispanic househelp asks as she sees me clad in my silk nighty, sitting on the living room sofa, remote in hand and face decorated with a mean mug In the morning, “anything wrong Madame?” Juanita asks again after there first question did not get any answer. I was too busy thinking about how to get my own answers from my father, why the hell would he have me followed?
“Don’t worry about me Juanita, I’m totally fine I just want to have a word with Dad that’s all, I’ll be on my way to work once I’m done having the talk.” I say talk with so much emphasis, complete with air quotes as I bit the last consonant of the word on my tongue.
The old Devil comes down, fingers busy on his sleeves trying to link his cuffs on his wrist, walking in a almost lightening pace down the stairs to the Dining table. He downs the cup of coffee earlier placed on the table by Juanita and takes two slices of toast in his hands, one goes to his mouth but he doesn’t bite, just lets it hang there half in and half out, the other slice of toast is his hand as he walks towards the living room.
I just know his emxt move is to find the TV remote control, so he can tune to the weather channel and watch the forecast like he always does every morning. To his greatest surprise the remote is not on the table, a bigger surprise is that it is in my hands as I sit there mindlessly looking at Sportscenter USA on ESPN.
“Formula 1 right, just cars chasing each other huh?” The old man is startled at the sound of my voice, he looks to my direction, sighs as he is relieved to find that it’s just me not a burglar, that’s the level of security alertness that my father posseses and yet he could not even flinch at the news of a suspicious vehicle following all the way from the Boulevard to the house. This is how I know he is definitely guilty.
“Oh, Adrianne it’s just you.”
“Still mispronouncing my name are we?”
“It’s not my fault, blame your mother who just had to christen you a name nobody bears around here, giving us homework on learning to pronounce a foreign sounding name, what is that Spanish, Italian, Portuguese?”
“Adrianna is literally just three syllables and I damn well know you’re purposely mispronouncing my name to spite me and mom, all you have to do is replace a letter and you would be saying it right.”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong, but right now I really need to watch the weather so can you just pass the remote control real quick, I’m about to be late for work.”
“Not until you tell me why you had your little cronies in the black Ford Dodge to trail me on the Boulevard yesterday.” I ask him as calmly as I can muster.
“Oh my you are slow, sometimes I doubt I’d you are truly my blood because of how slow you can be at times, so you noticed yesterday?” He said with an air of sarcasm.
“What if I had gotten into an accident trying to lose them?”
“You must think I’m an idiot, child. You really think I would not get insurance on my collateral, one wrong move and your mom gets it, understood?”
I sneer at him, and it takes a great deal of restraint to stope from punching that toast into his mouth alongside half his dentition. He doesn’t mind sneers, he chuckles sarcastically and leaves the house while muttering, “I’m always ten steps ahead, that’s how I got where I am today, do not mess with my money.”
He bangs the door behind him and leaves me standing with my morning bad hair, remote in hand watching Formula 1 on ESPN and almost at the point of tears.