(This tale is rather silly, and the dialogue is puerile. I make no apologies.)
*
The passenger door slammed shut, and I jumped. I'd dozed off in the weak sunlight trickling in through the windshield. "Got in safely, then?"
"I called you twice, you asshole." Pamela tossed her dark hair back and checked her makeup in the mirror. She looked good. She always looked good, and she always knew it. "Maybe if you weren't so boring that you didn't fall asleep every ten minutes, you'd know that."
"Glad you didn't get held up leaving Chicago," I continued, ignoring her completely. "Nasty storms blowing through there this past week." Turning the key, I glanced out the window and pulled into the flow of airport traffic. "How's Mom?"
"Fuck you, Carl, and the fucking horse you rode in on."
"You get used to it. Believe me, being cut out of the family is liberating. No more reunions, for one thing..."
She snorted. "Yeah. Liberating. This coming from the kid who hasn't left this shitheap of a town in five years. You know what that bitch said to me right before she slammed the door in my face? 'We never wanted you,' she said. 'We wanted a little princess, not a manipulative psychopath slut.' She fucking called me a slut."
"You really shouldn't hold in your feelings like that," I said, straight-faced, my eyes still on the road. "It's unhealthy."
There was a sharp pain on the back of my head, and I lurched forward, bumping the wheel. "Fucker!" I swerved wildly to avoid running into a lamppost, overcorrected in the opposite direction, and managed to straighten out and miss sideswiping a cab by a split second. Once we weren't in immediate danger of death by car crash, I glared over at Pam. "Look," I said through gritted teeth. "You're pissed. Fine. But don't hit the driver unless you want to get both of us killed. You may be suicidal, but I'm definitely not. Clear?"
"Crystal." She sounded, and looked, sullen, but didn't seem inclined to lash out again, so I turned back to the road. "Sorry. Not for hitting you, but for doing it when you're driving."
"Apology not accepted, you conniving bitch."
"Self-centered ass.
"Unscrupulous drug mule."
"Imbecilic worthless goat-fucker."
"Scrotum-sucking Babylonic whore."
That did it. She kept her poker face for another second, then cracked a brief smile. "Babylonic? Where did that come from? And isn't it 'Babylonian'?"
"Dunno. You know I never paid attention in Sunday school." I flicked on the radio, turned it off again a moment later. "Anyway, it's good to see you again. Missed having your nagging harpy voice lurking at the edge of my hearing."
"Missed you too, bro." Pam sighed, looking out at the skyline. "Hate this place, though. Always have."
"I don't blame you. Can't stand it either."
"Then why the fuck are you still here?"
I shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Whatever."
We drove in silence for a few minutes, and I took the opportunity to shoot a few sidelong looks at Pam. For someone who had just been tossed out of the family, she looked pretty damn composed, apart from the periodic twitch in her forehead. It looked a bit like she was having an aneurism. Several aneurisms, really. She was also wearing a peasant skirt/low-cut blouse combination that was totally unsuited for a Massachusetts fall, but it was definitely doing its intended job—she was getting a lot of double takes from other drivers. And from me, but that wasn't relevant.
"Fucking bitch," Pam blurted out after a while. "Can't believe she did that to me."
"Yes, well, little things like 'making sense' and 'responding rationally' never were Mom's strong points." I switched lanes, turned off of the highway, threw a middle finger at the sports car that tried to cut me off. "What'd you do to make her flip, anyway? I tried calling you after I heard your drunken rant on my voicemail..."
"Okay, get this." She took a deep breath. "You remember Angelo, right?"
"Was he the one who was into watersports, or was he the one who turned out to be gay?"
"Ha ha, asshole. So anyway, he came with me to Mom's for Thanksgiving. And Mom put him in the guest bedroom."
I sighed. "If this is going where I think it's going, I don't want to hear it."
"Shut up and let me talk," she said through gritted teeth. "So it's Wednesday night, and I'm in the guest bedroom with Angelo's cock halfway down my throat-"
"Spare me the details, please." I had a brief mental image of Pam in the act of deepthroating and felt an instant stirring in my pants. "So, what, Mom walked in?"
"No. Aunt Kelly walked in. And she fainted. And she broke her hip when she fell."
"Ah." I drove in silence, trying to sum up some sympathy for Aunt Kelly as a way of distracting myself. I couldn't, so I continued: "And that's when Mom walked in and read you the riot act."
Pam snorted again. "Sure, if you wanna call it that. She basically told me that I was going to burn in hell, and then she called me a slut, and... well, I snapped back, and she kicked me out. End of story."
I pulled into my driveway and shut off the engine. "Well, welcome to the other side of the family. Me, you, Uncle Harry, Cousin Sal, all of us chucked out on our asses and written out of the will. At least you're in good company."
"Harry's a convicted pedophile probably getting anally destroyed in prison, and Sal's probably still running drugs."
"Sure, we all have our little problems, but it's the thought that counts, right?" I popped the trunk, climbed out of the car, and headed for the front door. "Don't forget to grab your bags."
"Prick."
"Don't remind me," I said under my breath, trying to ignore the swelling down below my belt.
***
Pam locked herself into the spare bedroom for three days, spent most of that time screaming obscenities and breaking things, and then that was it. She came out for breakfast on the fourth day, started looking for jobs, and nailed some sort of temp work by the end of the week. I didn't ask for any more info; she didn't offer any. It didn't matter in the slightest to me how she made money as long as she spent some of it on the rent.
Life went on. I started getting used to sharing the house again. It was hard, at first, what with there only being one shower and my sister being a selfish bitch, but selfishness and various forms of bitchery and dickery tend to run in the family, so I couldn't complain all that much. I think it was a lot harder on her than it was on me, really; I hadn't just lost everything I cared about and had to move in with my loser-ass brother who somehow managed to live off of ad revenue from a dozen shitty websites.
So we settled into a routine. I worked whenever I was awake, as usual; she held down an actual job with actual hours. I "cooked" (by which I mean I put frozen food in the oven and usually didn't burn it) when I felt like it, and she did the same. I gave her shelter and what comfort I could, and she pretended not to notice that the first thing my eyes always went to was her chest. I swear those things had their own gravitational field.
Was it healthy? Of fucking course not. But, hey, why the hell not enjoy it? I told myself I'd stop—or at least try to hide it a bit better—when she told me to, and until then it was awesome (because holy shit, she's hot) and horrible (because holy shit, she's my sister) in almost equal portions.
And I thought about Mom. Mom the alpha cunt. Mom the high-and-mighty. And it took eight weeks, eight long, painful, masturbation-filled weeks, before I had a good idea. Triggered, by all things, by daytime television.
***
She came back from work, pissy as usual, which was a good sign. When Pam wasn't pissy, things were really bad.
"So I had an idea," I said as she walked in.
She snorted. "Hello to you, too, asshole. And you? Thinking? There's a first."
I ignored her. We did that a lot. "It's been almost two months, and I'd bet you all the money I have that Mom doesn't give a fuck how you're doing."
"No shit." She breezed past me on her way to the kitchen; I stole a glance at her ass as she went by and didn't feel the slightest bit bad about it.
"And I don't think it should be that way. I mean, she's done awful things to the family, and she keeps not feeling anything after it, and... well, it's just not right."
"And?" The clinking of glass against glass accompanied the words, which was a sure sign she planned on being drunk by the end of the hour. "You're gonna pull off a miracle and make her feel sorry for me? Or sorry at all for anything ever?"
"Course not. She'd die before that happened. I want to humiliate her. To show her that we're not exactly going to roll over and die because she cut us off, y'know?"
Pam stood in the doorway, a glass of something clear that was most definitely not water in her hand. She seemed genuinely interested, now, as I'd hoped she'd eventually be. "How?"
I gestured to the TV. "We lie. We lie and it gets broadcast internationally, and everyone buys into it, and we blame it on her. And we do it in the sleaziest way imaginable."
It took a second for it to sink in. Her eyes went to the television, hovered there for a moment, flicked down to read the episode title, shot back to me in an incredulous sort of way, went back to the screen. "You're fucking kidding me."
"Do I look like I'm kidding?"
"We go on there and tell the world that we..."
"Yeah, that's what we do."
"Carl, she doesn't watch the show."
"No," I said. "But what's-her-name, Sandra or Sandy or something, the woman across the street from Mom's place? The one who yelled to all of Chicago when she thought Billy down the block was gay? She does. And even if she doesn't see it, the media will. The Internet will. It'll spread. It'll get out there. She can't avoid it."
