Karla was a good person. She had always known that she was. Sure, she needed some help now and again with getting through her days. That had been easier than it was now, and it looked as though it was going to get a lot more difficult quickly. She knew she was in it pretty deep now. Karla would have thought that one cop car would have been enough for the likes of her, though.
Karla was a thirty-eight year old blond with a nice little body. If she did say so herself, Karla’s body had held up pretty well over the years. Karla knew that one of her breasts was larger than the other, but you couldn’t tell even if she was naked. The only reason she knew it was because she had to wear a bra for her job. The rest of the time, she didn’t hardly even think about it.
Karla Vicks, which wasn’t her name at birth, stood five foot two inches tall and weighed in at 95 pounds soaking wet. Her scraggly blond hair would be attractive and sexy even if it weren’t for her face. Karla knew this, but also knew that her body had made up for the sins of her face. She thought about her fate from birth as she watched another pig pull into the hotel parking lot. Jesus, she hated the position that the damned cop had put her in.
It wasn’t exactly like Karla was a dangerous criminal or anything. The cop didn’t have to put the zip ties on her wrists and put her in the back of the car like he did. What was she going to do to him? Kick his ass? That would be a laugh.
Every man that Karla had ever known had kicked the living dust out of her. At least, every man that she had known biblically had. It felt like that anyway. No, she had known a lot of men who hadn’t done a number on her. Only the ones that Karla had fallen in love with had trampled her in one way or another.
The cops sure seemed to be spending a lot of time around her hotel room. Christ, it was only "crack" and not much of it at that. What the hell could be so interesting? Were the pigs inside the room huddling around her glass pipe? That was a funny picture. A bunch of blues, huddling around Karla’s pipe for a hit on that raunchy crap that Vito had got for her. Funny. Real funny. God damned Vito. She had even bought Vito a gift that afternoon- before everything had gotten so messed up.
Vito thought he was her man. Most of the time he was. But, sometimes Karla would feel froggy. Another guy would show up at the bar and Karla would know. Usually, it was someone that Karla had bought from or had seen buying some rock. Once in a while, someone new would turn up and make a donation, so Karla could get a couple of rocks and take the dude to a hotel room. A couple of times, they even brought a girl friend with them. Cool. Very cool.
How did Karla ever even get on this ride? She wasn’t into this stuff three years ago when she’d had her trouble with Jason. She didn’t even think about drugs then. She smoked her pot- some would say a lot of weed- and used her prescriptions as the doctor told her she should. It seemed like a million years ago now. Once in a while she could think of Jason and smile, instead of cringe with fear.
That was a sure sign of how screwed up Karla was sitting in a police car with her hands bound behind her and smiling about that good for nothing Jason. She was somebody when she had met Jason. She ran a nice apartment complex in her hometown of Tarpon Springs, Florida then. Karla had made good money then too. Enough to be paying for the house that she and her fourth husband had purchased with hubby’s Momma’s money. Karla was raising a sixteen-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter in those days too. She needed to have that nice house. Her husband even signed it over when she divorced him. He had tried to come back to her after her deal with Jason had gone bad. Better not to waste time on old rubbish though. Jason had showed Karla that her ex- husband would never make her happy again. Karla still tingled when she remembered the sex with Jason. Ooh, baby.
Then Karla remembered where she was sitting. The damned cops were still milling around the hotel room door. Karla wondered if they had found her gift for Vito, yet. Not that the gift would get her in trouble. Hell, the crack had all ready done that. Worst comes to worst; she might have to serve a few months for possession. She had tried to give more time to Jason than that.
Jason had never hit Karla. Karla had made him angry enough to do that some times- especially at the end- but he had never hit her. Karla’s first husband had been the champion at that. You could see the damage he had left still today. A fracture bump on her skull, a torn iris in her right eye, the crook of multiple nose breaks. Jones, her first husband, had hospitalized Karla six times before she was seventeen. Her first child had been his, though he was as forgotten as the adoption process that had taken him away.
Jones had just disappeared one day, never to be seen again. His leaving almost talked her into going back to watch her father beat up her mother again. Fat chance. Instead Karla latched on to the biker dude that had fathered her second son. Decent pot and they had some pretty decent drunks together, but as a husband he was a loser. That was how she had given birth to Tina, the child that had a chance.
That’s right. Now Karla could remember what she had bought for Vito. It was like one of those white marble ashtrays. Only it wasn’t an ashtray. It was made like one, but what was it? Oh, great. Now the cops had brought an ambulance. What the hell was that about? Karla felt fine. High as all get out- but fine. She didn’t need no damned ambulance. Dumb asses.
The hotel and the cops began to spin. Karla pressed her eyes shut tight and watched the colored dots. Damn, it was getting awful hot for so early in the morning. Imagine that. A hot morning in Florida in June. She smiled again as the world settled back into focus.
Tina. Yeah, Tina. What a beautiful child her daughter had been. She lived with her daddy now in Ohio. Since that pecker-headed Jason had ruined her life. All that bastard had to do was to leave her alone and none of this would have happened.
Three and a half years ago, Karla had it pretty well made. She was making tons of money, smoking her weed, and keeping up with her psychiatrist’s orders. Pretty much, anyway. The doctor didn’t know about her three joints a day, but who was to tell him. Not Karla, for sure. Then she had met Jason.
My goodness, could that man make love. He was terrible in what he could do to Karla. She got rid of her fourth husband in thirty days flat. Then, she moved Jason into her home within the next sixty. She wasn’t about to let that piece of ass roam the streets alone. Especially when those streets included the nightclub that Jason was a bar tender at. No way. He was coming home to Karla. Jason knew some good dealers for weed too.
Of course, Jason was always trying to get Karla to smoke less dope, because of her medications. Jason didn’t smoke at all and he was concerned about Karla’s Prozac and Klonapin prescriptions. Karla was taking two others at the time but couldn’t even remember them any more. They made her world a little smoother.
Well, a girl could only stand so much lecturing from a man. Even if he was paying half of the bills for her and the two kids. Plus, Karla knew that she had missed out on being single for any amount of time. She needed to spread her wings a little.
Wings were beginning to hurt a little right now. Her shoulders were getting sore from the position that the restraints had put her in. The cops needed to get their act in gear. Were they going to gawk over the gift that she had bought for Vito all morning? She noticed that the ambulance guys were doing something with a gurney in the doorway of the hotel room. So what? Let’s go fellas. This shouldn’t be taking all day.
Before Karla decided to spread her wings and threw Jason out of her house- that was a little cruel- things had been pretty great. Everybody in Tarpon Springs and Palm Harbor knew Jason, it seemed. They all treated Karla like a princess after he moved in with her, and like she had said- the sex was unbelievable.
She was having trouble with her sixteen year old son- boys will be boys- and her daughter was spending some time with Daddy in Ohio for the summer when she had gotten bored with Jason. She didn’t expect that Jason would leave her over it. She thought he had loved her so much.
All she did was throw him out. Sure, she did it so that she could get with that cute security guard she had met at the hospital. He was so young and muscular. He had really cared about her son after he had wrecked Jason’s Bronco and had to have all of that glass taken out of his arm. But. Jason never found out about that.
On the night that Karla had called the cops on Jason, they were supposed to be trying to get back together. That’s what Jason had said anyway. When Jason told her that he knew she had been sleeping with his friends- Vito in particular- what was Karla supposed to do? Admit it? Not on your life.
So, when Jason walked her out to her car and told her to go f--- herself- what else could she do? Karla knew that she had over reacted by calling the cops and swearing out the complaint, but get over it. She sure wasn’t going to admit in court that the battery had never happened, was she? Vito understood though.
Everybody else seemed to hate her guts from that night forward. It was if they had all been standing outside watching. Like they knew that Jason would never have even considered placing his hands on Karla that way. No big deal. One day she would get over Jason. Until then there would be Vito.
Now that she had mentioned it, what the hell was Vito doing in that hotel room still? Was he having a stand off with the Tarpon Police Department? Maybe he was fighting them off to keep them from taking away the really cool gift that Karla had brought him. Yeah. Sure.
Vito had turned Karla back on to the cocaine. They had done a bunch of nose candy. She had even watched Vito do some needle with the stuff. Karla would never do the needle dance. Addicts did the needle dance. Karla would never be an addict.
Coke was pretty expensive stuff though. Vito showed Karla the glass pipe and how to smoke crack. Better high. Better duration. Cheaper. Still couldn’t get enough of the stuff, but she could afford it better. She and Vito had smoked a few rocks before banging their brains out last night. Karla had been showering when the pigs had busted in the door and dragged her ass out side. Karla still couldn’t remember why she still had her clothes on in the shower.
She noticed the tall black officer with the brown suit coming from the hotel room towards her. Karla always could tell a cop. They all walked funny. He was carrying something. It was the gift, she had bought that afternoon- yesterday afternoon- for Vito. He opened the car door and crouched down with the marble piece in his hands. He looked at the piece thoughtfully. Karla thought that the marble looked kind of pink in this light. Maybe she was just that high still. He looked up at her sadly.
"Miss Vicks, my name is Lieutenant Dan Wright. I work for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office. Can we talk about this now?" He said.
Talk about what? The marble thingy? It’s just a gift.
"Sure." She said. What did she have to lose? Maybe the damned idiots thought the paperweight was made of crack. She smiled a little as she tried to hold up her head.
A cop behind the lieutenant mentioned something about her still being too stoned to be any good to them. Piss on him. Karla thought.
"Miss Vicks, did Vito Manetta attack you in that hotel room?" Lieutenant Wright asked.
What? Vito wouldn’t hurt a flea. Karla just looked at the pig like he was nuts. How do you answer such a ridiculous question? She looked at the paperweight and saw what had been routed in the smooth finish of the paperweight’s marble. The cop was holding it at an angle that Karla just couldn’t read yet. What was the cop’s name? Wright? Mr. Right. Karla had thought that Jason could have been Mr. Right, if he hadn’t been so damned serious. Another man that turned out not to be good enough for her.
Vito had always held up his end of the bargain until last night. What about last night? Karla thought. Oh, yeah. He was holding back on the crack rock last night from her. But she had gotten the rest of it from him. Smoked it all up too. Vito would be pissed off when he woke up.
The black cop was talking to the uniform dude again. Karla tried to listen as the uniform pointed her way with a thumb.
"I don’t know, Lieutenant. Every year or so, I get called to a scene like this. They just seem to go off and explode all of a sudden. Then they get so high that they can’t even remember what they did." The uniform said.
Wright looked down at the marble piece in his hand. Karla could almost see what it said on it. "H- O-…" It looked like there were two more letters.
"She must have hit him thirty times with this thing to make his head look like that. Must have stood in that shower for a half an hour to wash all of that blood off herself." Wright said.
Karla was too interested in the white marble paperweight to make any sense out of what Wright was yammering about. She had been able to finally figure out the last two letters. She smiled as she said the word out loud from the back of the police cruiser with the zip tie cutting into her wrists.
"HOPE…. It says. I remember now. HOPE."
