Alice Gets Ready

Alice Bradley hated the airport almost as much as she hated her husband, so dropping him off in front of the terminal entrance and pulling away from the curb without so much as a bon voyage seemed entirely natural to her.

Good riddance, she thought. Don't get hijacked.

The respite would be brief. Her husband, Bradley Bradley Jr., would soon be calling her to explain exactly how much it would cost to retrieve their teenage son from the Utah jail where he'd been held since the previous evening. He would probably have to spend the weekend in Salt Lake.

Most people- normal people, she sneered at herself- went to Park City to ski and to rubberneck at celebrities.

Their only child, Bradford Bradley, had gone to Utah to meet a girl he'd met on the internet. It hadn't worked out like he expected, but he'd decided to stay in Park City . He'd found work as a dishwasher at a ski resort , where he had had managed to break his ankle by falling on ice in the parking lot while ostensibly taking out the trash.

While her son was in the ER, his manager found a half-pound of marijuana in Brad's locker and called the police. Apparently, Brad had been exiting the rear seat of a pot dealer's car and somehow gotten his left foot tangled in the front passenger seatbelt. His right foot lost it's purchase on the icy pavement and presto twisto , his left ankle snapped. He managed to limp into the back door and stash his newly-acquired dope before the pain and shock kicked in.

Young Brad didn't have much tolerance for pain. He passed out on the kitchen floor and curled up on the greasy friction-tape in front of the dishwasher machine.
He lay there for several minutes before one of the busboys called the manager, who called an ambulance; then the police, who had been following the dealer on his route . Undercover agents had already taken him in.

The elder Bradleys learned about this via a collect call from their incarcerated son, who insisted that the manager had planted the dope in his locker so that the resort wouldn't have to pay Brad worker's compensation for his broken ankle.

Alice suspected Bradford's story was bullshit.

How could she have given birth to such a fuck-up?

At first, during her pregnancy, she had a private fear that Bradley wasn't Bradford's real father; perhaps Baby Bradford was the result of one of her anonymous pre-maritial flings...once she realized what a complete idiot she had married, that fear turned to hope, then flickered and died as young Bradford grew older and more like his father.

Her husband purchased a pellet rifle for Bradford on their son's fifth birthday.

Alice reminded him that his own father had given him a snub-nosed .38 revolver for his own fifth birthday, almost as if the senior Bradley wanted the accident to happen.
That's not true, her husband had protested- the accident didn't occur until after his seventh birthday- when he received an 88cc gas-powered chainsaw.
This is different, he continued. This is a pellet rifle, not a Saturday Night Special, and no way
was Bradford getting a chainsaw for his seventh birthday- an ax would be much safer.

He gave the child the gift.

The first thing young Bradford did was stare down the barrel of the cartridge gun.

Alarmed, Bradley snatched it away from him, then proceeded to peer into the weapon's barrel. Bradley pulled the trigger. It didn't budge.
See? It's not loaded.
He handed it back to Bradford, who flipped the safety and discharged a pellet into King, the family dog. In hindsight, poor King got more attention with an eye-patch than without.

Great conversation starter, that eye-patch, she mused.

After King's mishap, there was no doubt that Bradford Bradley was Bradley Bradley's son. To Alice, they were dangerous, oafish idiots who deserved each other. Only Bradley would have chosen 'Bradford' as their son's name- so people don't get him confused with me, Bradley had explained- and only a true son of Bradley Bradley would get arrested for felony drug possession by being clumsy and stupid.

Bradford doesn't even know how to ski, she told herself.

Her only son broke his ankle at a ski resort, got arrested, lost his job- and he doesn't even ski.

Jesus wept, thought Alice.

No matter.
Brad would deal with Brad when he got to Utah.
Privately, she felt no need to rescue her son. He was an adult, let him deal with his own mess. Bradley however, knew that Brad wouldn't survive long in jail and cared enough to intervene.
Alice didn't.

Alice had other things to do.

And she had one weekend to do them.