Author: Alexa Land
Category: LGBT
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/alexa-land/page,11,529414-all_in.html
I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, and Austin chuckled and whispered, “Told you she’d be a badass.”
I called out, “No, ma’am. It’s Charlie Connolly.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake Charlie, come in! Why are you standing out in the hallway?”
“God help me,” I whispered. I adjusted the fleece jacket that was draped over the manacles, and pushed the door open.
Mrs. Stana Dombruso was a tiny woman of about 80, propped up in a non-hospital-issue queen-size bed, surrounded by a sea of honey colored linens. She wore a dark red velvet robe and matching velvet…well, turban, I guess. Mrs. Dombruso had put on lipstick in the same color, but hadn’t been all that precise in her application, so her mouth now looked like it was on the diagonal. She grabbed a pair of enormous glasses from the nightstand and held them in front of her face, assessing us as we came into the room.
“Which one of you is Charlie?” she wanted to know.
“That’s me, ma’am,” I said. “And this is my friend Austin. I hope it’s ok that I brought him.”
“Of course it’s ok. I get damn few visitors as it is. Like I’d say no to one more! Well, are you boys going to stand there? Or are you going to pull up a chair and sit the hell down?”
Austin and I awkwardly took up positions in the two chairs at her bedside, while Mrs. Dombruso continued to study me like a bug under a microscope. Finally she set the glasses down and said, “You’re a handsome boy, Charlie. I can see why my gay homosexual grandson is so smitten with you.”
“I…I’m sorry?” I stammered. Austin made a little choking sound and coughed into his fist as he struggled to repress a laugh.
“You’re the first boy he’s ever talked about, Charlie. He thinks I have a problem that he’s a gay homosexual. He used to bring these women home to meet me, pretty Sicilian girls with long hair and big boobs. I know he was doing that because he thought it was what I wanted. But that’s not what I want, Charlie. You know what I do want?”
“No ma’am.”
“I want that boy to be happy. The things he’s endured in his life, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! It’s been so much. He deserves some happiness now. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The first time I ever heard him say your name, I knew,” she said. “I knew he’d finally found what he’d been searching for all those years. You’re the one that can make him happy, Charlie.” I smiled at that, and then she snapped, “So why the fuck did he break up with you?”
“How did you know he broke up with me?”
“Because when he came and saw me this morning, he was in a funk. At first, he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, but I finally got that much out of him. He wouldn’t go into details though. So what happened? Did you two have a fight? A lover’s quarrel? Whatever it is, you can get past it. This is important, Charlie. Dante needs this. He needs you. You have to make him take you back.”
“I’m trying, ma’am.”
“Really?”
“Oh he is, Mrs. Dombruso,” Austin chimed in. “Charlie went to see him earlier this afternoon and told him he refuses to let Dante break up with him.”
Mrs. Dombruso was delighted with this, and clapped her thin, veined hands together. “That’s what I want to hear! So you’re already doing what I was going to tell you to do. You’re a good boy, Charlie. And you’ll be good for my gay homosexual grandson, just as soon as you can convince him to stop being an idiot and get back together with you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I like almost everything about you, Charlie. You’re such a handsome boy, and with good manners. The only thing I don’t like is the fact that you’re holding hands with this little blonde cupcake right in front of me! Do you think I don’t know what’s going on under that coat? Was I born yesterday? Are you two-timing my grandson, Charlie?” she crunched up her face into a hard glare.
“Oh no, ma’am,” Austin piped up. Just the faintest southern accent had crept into his speech. He yanked the jacket away, revealing our chained wrists, and said, “We’re not holding hands. See?”
“So what is that? Some kinky sex thing?” Mrs. Dombruso demanded.
“No, ma’am,” Austin told her. “Your grandson chained me to Charlie before he left for the airport. He wants Charlie to think he’s a terrible person.”
Mrs. Dombruso knit her brows at that. And then she said, “My grandson is an idiot. He’s a good boy. But he’s an idiot! Trying to make the only person he’s ever fallen for think he’s bad! Bah! I’d cuff his ear if he was here right now.”
I glanced at my companion. He was fighting to keep a straight face, his big blue eyes sparkling with delight.
“Ok, so where’s your car, Charlie?” she asked.
“Around back in the parking lot. Why?”
“Because now that we’ve had our little talk, you’re getting me the hell out of here.” She threw back the covers, and revealed that she was wearing a pair of black pants and low heeled black pumps under her robe.
“Wait, what?” I stammered, jumping up from the chair and inadvertently dragging Austin up with me.
“You heard me. The doctors want to keep me in here another week, but no fucking way am I staying here that long! And none of my family will listen to me. So you’re getting me out of here, Charlie. You and Cupcake.”
“But Mrs. Dombruso, you had a heart attack!” I exclaimed.
“It was a mild heart attack, and it was days ago. I’m fine! And I’m getting out of here with or without your help,” she said, swinging out of bed and coming to stand directly in front of me, glaring up at me with her hands on her hips. Mrs. Dombruso was barely five feet tall (though the big velvet turban thing added some height) but she obviously thought she was pretty intimidating. “So what are you going to do? You gonna let a little old lady wander the streets of San Francisco all alone? Would you really do that to me, Charlie?”
I tried to dissuade her by saying, “Mrs. Dombruso, if I help you break out of the hospital, your grandson will never forgive me! And you want us back together, right? So I probably shouldn’t go and do something that’s guaranteed to piss him off.”
She considered this for a long moment as she turned from me and fished an enormous black handbag out from under the bed. “Well,” she said, “you do have a point there.” I visibly sagged with relief. But then she added, “But if I force you to help me escape, Dante can’t possibly hold that against you.”
“He’d never believe it! I’m twice as big as you,” I pointed out. She was digging through her purse as I said this. “I mean, how would he ever possibly believe that you forced me to – oh.” I stopped talking then. The sight of the silver revolver in her hand had shut me right up.
“Don’t worry Charlie, I’m not going to shoot you. But now you can honestly tell my grandson that I forced you to help me at gunpoint. You had no choice but to agree. How on earth could he fault you for that?” She looked extremely pleased with herself.
“Mrs. Dombruso, can you please not point that thing at me?” I said, my throat going dry.
“I have to point it at you. Otherwise you won’t have a truthful excuse as to why you busted me out of here!” To Austin she said, “Here Cupcake, hold this so it doesn’t look like I’m making a break for it.” And she shoved her big purse at him. He grinned and put it over his shoulder, then tossed the fleece jacket back over our linked hands.
“Stop helping,” I whispered to him.
She shoved her huge glasses in place, which magnified her watery brown eyes and made her look like a cartoon owl. And then she climbed into a wheelchair that was sitting in a corner of her room. Austin quickly draped a little blanket over her legs and she concealed the gun beneath it, but still held it pointed at me. “Let’s roll,” she said.
Austin pushed the chair and I walked beside it. “Slow and steady, boys,” she told us. “Don’t want to attract any attention here. Just an old lady going for a walk with her grandsons.�
� She smiled pleasantly at every nurse we passed, most of which gave her odd looks. What had Dante said about her terrorizing the entire nursing staff?
A little giggle slipped from Austin, and I gave him a dirty look. “What?” he said. “This is fun.”
“That’s because the gun’s not pointed at you,” I hissed.
“I cased the joint earlier,” Mrs. Dombruso informed us. “There’s a service entrance just past the cafeteria. We make it that far and we’re golden.” She waved happily to another nurse, with the hand that wasn’t holding a firearm.
We somehow made it through the service entrance unnoticed. Damn it! I was hoping someone would stop us and question us, and then Mrs. Dombruso would have had to hand the gun over and return to her room.
Then again, maybe the woman was totally unhinged, and maybe if anyone had tried to stop us, it would have resulted in bloodshed. In which case it was a good thing we made it to my truck without attracting any attention.
“Give me the keys, Charlie. I’m driving,” she informed me as she hopped out of the wheelchair and swung open the driver’s side door.
“Why wouldn’t I be the one to drive?” I wanted to know.
“Because you’ve got a boy chained to your wrist!” she exclaimed.
“Do you even know how to drive a stick shift?”
“What, you think old people can’t drive stick? That’s just ageist. Give me the keys and get in the truck, Charlie, before we get caught,” she said.
I handed over the keys with a deep sense of foreboding. Then I hurried around and got in the passenger side with Austin and slammed the door a couple times to get it to stay shut. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in the cab, so he climbed on my lap. “Cozy,” he said with a wink.
Mrs. Dombruso turned the key in the ignition, then shot out of the parking lot, grinding gears the whole way. She was holding the gun and trying to shift with the same hand, and finally she gave up and tossed the gun in Austin’s lap. “Hold that for me, boys,” she said.
I gasped in alarm at the thought of a loaded firearm being thrown around. But when I picked it up, I realized it wasn’t a real gun at all. It was a plastic toy, painted to look like metal. And there was a picture of Woody from Toy Story on the handle.
“Oh my God! It’s fake!” I exclaimed, and Austin roared with laughter.
“Of course it’s fake! What, you think they’d let me bring a real gun into a hospital?”
“Why do you have a fake gun?” I wanted to know.
“Because my great grandson, Mikey Junior, left it behind when he and his family visited me yesterday. Who knew it would come in so handy?”
A few minutes later, after a fairly death-defying drive through town, we pulled up to the very grand, very historic Mark Hopkins Hotel. Mrs. Dombruso apparently didn’t believe in turn signals. Or slowing down to less than fifty, ever, not even on crowded city streets.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“I’m checking in. Not like I can go home,” Dante’s grandmother said. “My family would find me there and drag me right back to that goddamn hospital.”
Austin turned to me with wide eyes. “Can we have a drink at the Top of the Mark while we’re here? Pretty please?”
“Are you even old enough to drink?”
“I’m old enough for a bottled water with a panoramic view of San Francisco.”
“How old are you, anyway?” I asked as we climbed out of the cab and Mrs. Dombruso handed over the keys to a valet.
“Twenty.”
“Really?”
“Want to card me?” he asked with a grin.
Mrs. Dombruso plucked off her glasses and shucked her robe, draping it over her arm along with her purse. She was wearing a sparkly black suit underneath. She kept the velvet headpiece on though, and held her head high as she strolled regally into the Mark Hopkins.
Austin slipped his hand into mine beneath the draped jacket as we waited for Mrs. Dombruso to check in. He’d become subdued since entering the lobby and stood close to me, his head down. “You ok?” I asked.
“Any minute someone’s gonna walk up to us and ask us what we’re doing here,” he said quietly, darting looks around the lobby from under his thick, dark lashes.
“If they do, I’ll tell them we’re here with the Queen of Sheba,” I said, tilting my head toward Mrs. Dombruso with a little grin.
He smiled at that and looked up at me. “This place intimidates the hell out of me. I still want to see the Top of the Mark, though. I’ve always wanted to see it.”
“Ok, we’ll do that.”
Mrs. Dombruso had procured a huge, lovely suite with stunning views of the city and the bay beyond. Once she was settled, I told her, “Ok, so we’ll just go ahead and get out of your way. I wanted to make sure you got in safely, and now you have. So, call me if you need anything.” I fully intended to rat her out to her family the moment I got out of here.
“Oh no,” she said. “You’re not running away so quickly. We’re going to have drinks and dinner together at the Top of the Mark. I heard the little pretty one saying he wanted to see it. And I want to get to know the handsome boy that has my Dante smitten.”
Oh man.
Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her purse and looked at the screen, then rolled her eyes and put it on the writing desk. It stopped ringing after a moment. And then mine started.
I pulled it out of my pocket. There was an unfamiliar number on the screen, but I could guess who it was. I hit speaker and answered with, “Hi Dante. Where are you?”
“On a plane bound for Sicily. Charlie, did you bust my grandmother out of the hospital?” The connection wasn’t so great. He sounded a bit tinny, and there was a constant hum in the background. But I could still hear the exasperation in his voice.
“I….”
“Did you?”
“No. Not…technically.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, technically, I was a hostage.”
“What?”
“She had me at gunpoint,” I explained.
“Where did my grandmother get a gun?” Dante demanded.
“It turned out to be a toy gun,” Austin chimed in. “Mikey Junior’s, apparently. How’s your flight so far, Mr. Dombruso? Are you calling from one of those phones in the back of the seats?”
“It looked real,” I said in my defense.
“Mikey Junior’s? Do you mean his Toy Story cowboy gun?”
“Yeah, that one,” I confirmed.
“Are you serious?”
Mrs. Dombruso grabbed the phone from me and said, “Aw, quit busting the boy’s balls, Dante. He didn’t have a choice. He tried to talk me out of leaving the hospital. But I was a desperate woman. So I did the only thing I could do. I took him hostage.” She sat down in a big upholstered chair and put her feet up, grinning smugly.
“With a plastic gun,” Dante said.
“What, you would prefer that I pointed a real gun at your love muffin?”
“And he didn’t know the difference?” Dante asked incredulously.
“Charlie’s a nice boy. So he doesn’t know a real gun from a fake one. So sue him.”
Dante changed the subject and said, “You need to go back to the hospital, Nana.”
“Ain’t happening.”
“You had a heart attack. You need to go back.”
“I’m fine.”
“Where are you now? Are you at home?” he asked her.
“No. I’m at a secret location.”
“Are you at the Mark Hopkins again?”
She threw up her hands. But then she said levelly, “Of course not. That’d be the first place you’d look.”
“This isn’t safe, Nana. You need to be under a doctor’s care.”
“I know. And that’s why Doctor Jensen is coming to check up on me here at my secret location daily, beginning tomorrow. And so are a team of home healthcare nurses. I got it all arranged. I’m not stupid,” she to
ld him.
“It’s still not as good as a hospital.”
“Tough shit,” she said.
Dante sighed dramatically. And after a pause he asked, “What was Charlie doing at the hospital?”
“I called him and told him to come see me.”
“How did you call him? I didn’t give you his number.”
“I got it from your call log when I told you I wanted to borrow your phone to send a text,” she explained. “I mean seriously, who the hell am I going to be texting? Maury Baumgartner? Gloria Mazetti? My friends are older than dirt, Dante. They don’t text. You’re so gullible.”
“Christ,” Dante muttered.
“Also,” she continued, “what kind of idiot chains the boy he’s smitten with to a blonde hottie? I mean, who does that? What do you want, for these two to fall in love while they’re forced to spend all this time together, and then leave you out in the cold? What were you thinking?”
Dante sighed again, then said, “Look Nana, I gotta go. Do you swear the doctor and some nurses are going to be coming and checking on you?”
“I swear it on your grandfather’s grave.”
“Grandpa isn’t dead, Nana. He’s living in Florida with a thirty six year old waitress named Prudence.”
She spit on the floor and yelled, “He’s dead to me!”
“I’m calling Doctor Jensen’s office as soon as we hang up. I’m verifying that he’s really coming to check on you.”
“You’re so suspicious.”
“I love you, Nana. Please take care of yourself,” he said.
“I love you too, Sugar. Be safe.”
“I will,” Dante said, and he disconnected the call.
“Mrs. Dombruso,” I asked, “why is Dante on his way to Sicily?”
“Because he got a good lead as to the whereabouts of that bastard Sal Natori,” she told me. “And maybe, just maybe, he’ll finally have a chance to kill that son of a bitch.”