All Downhill From Here

Chapter Two
Owen

It really didn’t feel like New Year’s Eve, yet somehow, inexplicably, it was. I remained unchanged, neither nostalgic for the year ending nor excited for the new year ahead. It was just another day. No fireworks, no bustling crowds, and no parties. Instead, the Golden Sunset retirement community was as quiet as a graveyard this evening as Ivy and I sat side by side in her room—Okay, sorry, that was a terrible metaphor for the elderly home.

She sat in her overstuffed recliner, and I tested the strength of this collapsable plastic chair. We were reverse Goldilocks. Outside the hallway, two other residents fought over the last glass of champagne, but inside Ivy’s room, things were as calm as we liked it, even if my ass went numb twenty minutes ago.

There were no big plans. No big hopes for the future. Just the quiet monotony of living day-to-day as the supposed town brute.

The TV played a soothing British game show starring comedians set to do different, seemingly simple tasks but then manage to boggle them terribly. It struggled to hold my attention as my brain was too busy calculating how many extra jobs I’d have to take on to make my own rent and Ivy’s next month. Tomorrow was the first, and I only had a few days’ leeway. It was tight before, but lately …

“All the instructions are on the card!” Ivy jabbed her arthritic finger at the contestant running in circles on the screen. “Watching these bozos fail is rotting our brains, but God, I love it. Makes me feel superior.”

I chuckled. “No worries there. Not much left to rot on this end.” 

She clicked her tongue and slapped me upside the head, which took some effort because I towered a solid four GPs—that was two feet, for non-locals—over her hunched form. “Owen Campbell, you know I hate when you talk like that.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” I apologized to my former teacher like I was back in school.

“I hated it back then, and I hate it now.” She crossed her arms and lifted her chin defiantly.

“Yes, I know.”

Ivy’s silver-blue hair was shorn short and thin enough to see her scalp from this angle. As always, a blanket was laid across her lap and another around her shoulders despite it being a sweltering seventy-five in her room. I was tempted to stick my head out the window and into an old snowdrift to hear the steam come sizzling out.

Her watery eyes held mine, the pale gray searching me. “You better. You aren’t some dumb, violent beast.”

A familiar tug of gratitude had me smiling at her. Sometimes I wonder how I would have turned out if I didn’t have at least one person believe that I was more than a thug. I envisioned the path I would have taken, but it always ended poorly.

A teenage intern who couldn’t be out of high school knocked on the doorjamb. “Hi, Miss Flores, just wanted to check to see if you needed anything before I left for the—” He spotted me when he stepped fully into the room, causing his voice to hitch and crack. His eyes widened momentarily as they flicked over me. Poor new kid probably heard all the rumors about me. “For-for the night,” he stammered. With legs spread wide and arms crossed, my massive chest and biceps were even more exaggerated.

“I’m fine, doll. Happy New Year,” Ivy said.

The teen mumbled a salutation in return before hightailing it.

I gave Ivy a pointed look.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re big and scary looking. But only to those who don’t know you.” She rolled her eyes and snatched the remote from me. “And there’s a reason you don’t let anybody get to know you.”

“You know me.” I flashed her a smile.

“Dirty flirt.”

And so she began another round of flipping through the only five channels this ancient TV set got through its antenna. I wished I could afford a few streaming services for her. The next channel showed crowds of drunk people huddled together in Times Square as an artist I hadn’t heard of performed for the viewers at home. I couldn’t imagine being in a crowd like that—the dirty looks I’d get for blocking people’s views, the subtle pulling away of children, like I was a sewer troll sent up to disrupt their good time. But more likely than not, if I was in a crowd like that, I’d be hired as security anyway.

That was why I chose to spend the evening here. Most people wouldn’t assume a thirty-year-old single man would choose to spend his last night of the year hanging out with his octogenarian best friend instead of hitting the town. (Not that my small town of Slippery Slopes had a swinging nightlife, but there were two bars, and both would be in high gear until after midnight.)

But those people could get over it.

I didn’t want to be out in the cold, especially not with that winter storm front moving in.

In no version of this evening would Ivy make it until midnight, however, so I would have to head out eventually. After a few more rounds of Change the Channel, I’d be booted out so the evening staff could start the nighttime routine.

Usually, visitors weren’t allowed to stay this late, but Head Nurse Laura tended to look the other way for me. More than once, I’d helped move some large furniture or shoved a broom into a spider’s web in the ceiling corner. Plus, most people in this place didn’t have many visitors. They weren’t about to kick out one of the few regulars.

“Is it New Year’s Eve?” Ivy asked.

“It is.”

She had already asked me that. Half the time, I couldn’t tell if she just did it to piss me off or mess with me. Her memory was fine, but she just loved playing up her age and being doted on. Mostly, she liked to give me shit whenever there was an opportunity.

“Why are you here hanging around an old lady?” she asked.

“I want to be.”

“You are too young to be this old,” she said.

We played this game a lot too. She told me I needed to get out. I pretended to consider it. In the hall, the on-duty nurse shot me a “time to head out” nod as he passed the doorway.

“I should leave before this snow gets any worse.” I stood to stretch when my phone vibrated with a call. Tension immediately clenched my jaw, grinding my back teeth.

Please, not tonight.

The name on my screen showed Benny Gauner Jr. He was my boss, most of the town’s boss, really, because he owned half of it. And while most people around Slippery Slopes were welcoming and quirky, Benny had fully taken on the Mr. Potter qualities that came with the ownership of a town when his father, Ben Gauner Sr., passed. He was a grumpy little shit who took pleasure in bossing people around. Not only was he the man who paid me for security around his properties, but he also hired me for miscellaneous odd jobs. I was always flush with work, so no matter how much I disliked the slimy guy, I needed to keep my temper in check if I wanted to make money.

“You been drinking, Soupman?” Benny said by way of greeting. I winced at the horrible nickname he managed to get most of the town calling me.

“No,” I said, looking left and right. I assumed he didn’t mean the cup of tea sitting next to Ivy’s.

“That’s right, you aren’t a drinker. Not like you can afford to lose any more brain cells,” he said.

“Happy New Year to you.” My back teeth were close to shattering.

“Not yet, it ain’t.” The background noise of his call made it hard to hear him until the sound of a door shutting muffled the crowd. “You wanna take a job?”

“Tonight? It’s a holiday.”

“Since when does that matter?”

I thought of my nice, warm bed and maybe picking up some chimichangas from The Quickie on the way home. The last thing I wanted was anything involving my boss, especially if it involved going out in this weather. Big guys get cold just like the rest of the world. Plus, slipping and falling on ice was a lot scarier from this height.

“What is it?” I said dryly, still not fully committing. I couldn’t be the only person for this job, but Slippery Slopes was a small town, and I was the resident muscle for hire.

“The security camera is offline up at the shop, and I need somebody to go make sure there wasn’t a break-in.”

I closed my eyes. I had a feeling I knew which shop based on the context, but of all the properties in town Benny owned, that was my least favorite to visit. My stomach roiled at the thought of being that high up off the ground.

“Which one?”

“Peaked Interests, you goon. Use your brain for once, would you?”

Ivy had her head turned listening to the conversation, nostrils flared.

“You really want to send somebody up there?” I asked, ignoring his insults. It wasn’t any different from most of what I heard every day.

“Yeah, and every second you waste asking asinine questions is another minute wasted.”

“Aren’t you able to go?”

Peaked Interests was a gift shop located at the exit of the tram. Tourists stepped off the aerial tram into an explosion of overpriced goodies stamped with “Slippery Slopes.” The alarm was probably set off by one of the wild guinea pigs. They’d managed to make their way up the mountain in their search for dominance. There were so many details about Slippery Slopes that nobody outside this town would believe. But despite all our quirks, I doubted anybody would break into a kitschy thirty-year-old tourist trap on New Year’s Eve.

Benny snorted. “Can’t. Been drinking. Some of us celebrate holidays. Also, the road up is closed, so you gotta take the tram. Faster anyway, but just letting you know you can’t drive up.”

“I didn’t say I would do it.” I was absolutely not doing it now. Fuck that mountain, and screw that tram. No, thank you. I was too big for the tiny metal box the employees called The Can. I hated that my body weight made it groan and swing. I got motion sickness just thinking about the twenty-minute trip up The Slope.

“Oh yeah? Hot date with the old teacher?” He mumbled something else I couldn’t hear.

I wouldn’t expect Benny Jr. to understand the concept of found family.

“I can’t,” I said.

There was a beat of silence, followed by an exacerbated sigh.

“I’ll pay you twice your going rate. Just go up there. It’s probably some punk kids. Bring ’em down so I can beat their asses. Then you collect your money, and Happy Freaking New Year.”

I scratched at my eyebrow. Ivy shook her head emphatically. Ivy’s room was in desperate need of wall art or flowers, anything to give it more life, but the fees alone took every one of my extra jobs. She spent her life helping generations of Slippery Slopes students and deserved more than this.

I sighed, avoiding her gaze.

“Triple. Holiday pay,” I said.

After yet another long beat accompanied by an even more dramatic sigh, he said, “Fine. But only because I feel festive. But you better bring down whoever is up there. I’ll make them pay for ruining my holiday. They’ll find out who they’re messing with. They wouldn’t pull this shit with my dad—”

“I’ll call you when I find out what it is.”

I ended the call before he could dive into the injustices of his inherited properties. Poor, poor rich guy.

I pulled on my heavy winter coat and hat.

“I know you aren’t still working for that bonehead,” Ivy said. “At least his daddy ran these shops honestly. That man only cares about get-rich-quick schemes and taking advantage of tourists.”

She wasn’t wrong. But Benny Jr. was my boss, and my résumé wasn’t fit for anything else.

“It’s that or sell my body, Ivy,” I said as I wound the scarf she knit me around my neck. The dread of going out in the cold already made me cranky.

“Like you wouldn’t make a killing,” she said.

“Now, who’s the dirty flirt? You shouldn’t objectify your students.”

“Former student. I think that statute was lifted with my retirement party two decades ago.”

“Dirty old woman.”

“You should be so lucky,” she said.

We both broke our glares. I bent to kiss her forehead. “Happy New Year.”

She held my gaze a beat too long, and I felt her gearing up to ask me something personal. “You need to take a finance management class,” she said.

I frowned at her with narrow eyes.

“You have to be making good money with all these side hustles you do. Where does it all go? You have a secret gambling addiction?” she asked with a teasing tone, but I could see the worry that laced her words.

I forced a casual half grin. “I told you just a few more hands of online poker, and I’m really gonna turn my luck around and hit it big.”

She rolled her eyes but patted my cheek, not yet letting me pull away. “I have money, doll. You’re welcome to it. You know that.”

My knees went watery as they did any time she mentioned her money. My stomach tightened worse than the thought of the death trap that was the tram. Ivy didn’t have a penny to her name. Her asshole son made sure of that when he took off with what was in her accounts and stopped paying her bills last year. Until I was able to square things up, there was no use in letting her know how her only family royally screwed her over.

“One day, I’ll take you up on that. You can take me on a cruise around the world,” I said.

“Pfft. Like either one of us would like that shit. Nah, we’ll go out in style. Buy a bunch of fireworks and make them blow up that damn tram.”

“Now you’re talking. Don’t stay up too late. I’m going to go freeze my balls off.”

“There’s no better way to ring in the new year!” she called after me as I closed the door on my way out.

I still wasn’t convinced it was more than bad weather that had knocked out the camera, but life-threatening storms aside, it would be easy money. Nobody was ridiculous enough to go up the mountain in the middle of the night.

𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘! 

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