Love Under Glasse

by Kristina Meister

  “I’ve been here all night.”

  The man beside her shifted on the bench. “Bullshit.”

  She graced him with an eye roll.

  “Doesn’t matter who gets where first,” the leader said with a tiny shrug. “The point is who gets the girl.”

  From the corner of her eye, Riley could see Chelsea clutching the telephone and whispering furiously. She would have to speed it up.

  “Honey . . .” Standing, Riley executed a lithe stretch, careful to show off every leather-clad curve. “I always get the girl. Never send a straight man to do a lesbian’s job.”

  They exchanged looks. The eager one slid closer to her along the empty bench. “Who do you work for?”

  “I didn’t come here to chat about business. I just wanted to say hello, be gentlemanly. Spirit of the hunt.” She gestured with the toast. “All that shit. Thought I’d thank you for the entertainment, because it’s been fucking funny as hell watching you struggle.”

  If there was one thing at which Riley excelled, it was shit-talking. She’d attended Tio Tito’s School of Billiards, Betting, and Bullshit, and had watched him run quite a few games just by picking away at the confidence of grown-ass men. She’d learned that at their core, most adults were still children and playground psychology never went out of fashion.

  “Struggle? We’re doing just fine. We—”

  The leader silenced his cohort by picking up his coffee. The guy was robotic in his movements, his face indecipherable. “Happy to entertain you. See you at the finish line.”

  He was calling her out. Riley either had to leave, or she had to have a better reason to stay. It would take the cops a few minutes to arrive if Chelsea sounded terrified enough. Riley needed to keep them focused on her for as long as possible.

  Lifting the leader’s fork, Riley chewed his eggs thoughtfully and waved the utensil as if conducting.

  “Okay . . . you got me. I am actually really surprised to see you here. I mean, I have a foolproof system, so when I see you pull up, I’m thinking to myself, how the fuck did those asshats get all the way from Alderson to Ohio? I mean, I know they probably went to Beckley, right? But then how do they get from there all the way to a shitty café in Cincinnati? I am just dying to know. It’s the friend, right?”

  Her vague hook caught big fish, as the antsy member of the group squirmed in his seat. Riley strung a few facts onto the line of reasoning and wove a bit more colorful bait.

  “The one she’s been calling, right? I’ve been wondering if there was a way to get to her on that end, but I don’t know who it is. Like seriously . . . How are you doing it? She’s using a burner!”

  “Yeah, but he isn’t,” spat the newb.

  So it was a “he.” And he was talking to El from his own phone. They had to have a phone number on him. There was no other way.

  “Goddamn! She called him from her house?” One glance corrected her as their body language spelled out the truth in a series of tells. Her mind hopscotched through possibilities. “The cell? No! Oh, wow! The sister!"

  The leader sat his coffee down with a clack. The conversation was clearly over. He turned a dismissive smile on her and silently warned her to walk away.

  For spite, Riley cracked her neck. “See you at the finish line, boys. It’s been hilarious.”

  With as much swagger as possible, Riley made for the front door, shooting Chelsea a conspiratorial look. Once outside, she dashed to Aella, and bailed, pausing just long enough to convince Bash to climb on. The sirens rolling up to the restaurant may not result in anything but a brief delay for the other hunters, but it was long enough to escape.

  El stared at the message, her mind blank from the numbing horror of it. Thoughts met that fear and were poisoned until all logic withered.

  They know who your friend is. Do NOT go to him. Find another place.

  El leaned back against the bus window. Her legs were stretched across the seats like pale sticks from her khaki shorts, her rainbow-colored knee so swollen she couldn’t bend it. Pressure was building in her chest, but the characters on the bus with her were each intimidating in their right, and she couldn’t risk breaking down in front of them. The two tattooed men seated a few rows behind her had already tried to talk to her more than once, the larger of the two tracking her with his eyes every time she hobbled to the bathroom. If she let the mask slip and became the lost little girl, the wolves would circle.

  She took a shaky breath, tears welling in her eyes.

  It didn’t matter how they knew about Oscar. She was sure they had ways. They’d found her on the train even though she’d bought the ticket in cash and changed her hair. The more important question was . . . who was @hellonaunicycle and how did this person know what was happening?

  Even that was pointless to think about, because the truth was, her escape was cut off. She had nowhere to run and now it was even possible that her friend, the one who’d been beside her the whole time, would get into trouble. El wasn’t sure, but it seemed possible that helping a minor run away from home was some kind of crime.

  She’d made him an accomplice to her delinquency.

  The bus pulled into a truck stop for the dinner break. El gathered her wallet and phone and hopped off, staying beside the door until all the other passengers had gone inside the store. The two large men smiled at her yet again, but El kept her eyes down at her feet. When she was certain the driver had locked the bus, she limped after him.

  In one of the unisex bathrooms, she dialed Oscar and sat sobbing on the toilet. He shushed her, the constant voice of calm in her ear, even though she told him about the mysterious message and what it meant to her.

  “It’s okay. It’s fine. Look . . .” He let out a sigh and a few noises as if his mind still hadn’t thought things through yet. “Fuck this place. I don’t like my roommates enough to stay here, anyway.”

  “They’re your best friends, you liar.”

  “Yeah but . . . look, I can’t leave you hanging. Let’s run away together! My boyfriend and I can get an apartment somewhere and—”

  “Oscar! You have school! Don’t.” El scoured her face with the scratchy paper towels. “I just need to find another way. I don’t know . . . I have no idea what to do.”

  When he sniffled, she realized he was crying too. “I’m sorry, Snow. This is all my fault.”

  “No . . . no. It was my half-assed plan. I should have done more research, woken up sooner, planned a bit longer. I should have figured it all out. I’m sorry. I have to go. I can’t call you anymore for now. I don’t know how safe that is for you, but I’ll be on my site. Message me through that, okay?”

  He tried to object. She hung up and sobbed, her entire body heaving with the effort. Shaking, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She looked a unique shade of green, and knew that she was still recovering from the shock of the attack. She’d lost blood and that had to have some kind of physical effect.

  In the shop, she stocked up on foods that seemed healthy—nuts, meat, fruit juice. She bought more pain medication and an ace bandage. In the restaurant, she ordered a steak sandwich and carried it outside to the picnic tables.

  The men from the bus were sitting at one. El chose the table farthest from theirs and watched them from the corner of her eye. The larger man was talking softly in his deep voice, his dark skin glowing in the pink sunset when he shook his head in dismay. His companion, whose bare arms were covered in graphic tattoos, seemed to be in a terrible state, sneezing every few words. He refused the hot sauce bottle that was set before him.

  “Man, fuck that! I already have a runny nose, Doc.” He dabbed at his watering eyes and nose with a disintegrating napkin. “I don’t need that shit!”

  “I’m telling you, it’ll help.”

  “That’s some hoodoo shit.”

  “My granny may have been a wrinkled swamp hag, but she knew her remedies! How the hell you think I ain’t die in that stupid desert?”

  “Hexes.”

>   “Cayenne pepper, motherfucker, and garlic, and sugar.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll stick with my antibiotics and nasal spray, not hit the sauce like your bug-eyed granny. Lookin’ like a shriveled-up bat . . .”

  Someone tapped her shoulder. El couldn’t help but flinch, her head swiveling so fast, it made her dizzy. A man stood grinning at her. He looked to be a trucker, with button-up shirt over a tank top and a cap seated on his balding head. He smelled like cigarettes and cheap aftershave and the look on his face put El’s teeth on edge.

  “How much?” he asked with a wink.

  El frowned. Was he talking about the sandwich? She looked around. The two men had halted their conversation and were watching her again. Her eyes darted over the parking lot, but no one else was nearby.

  The trucker tucked himself into the bench across from her and leaned over her food. He had a twisted grin and a glimmer in his eye that was eerily familiar. “How much, baby? I got about fifteen minutes.”

  El’s emotions, still raw and bloody, were dragged to the ground by her stomach. Her mouth fell open as she realized fully what he was asking her. Her fingers lost the ability to clench and the sandwich fell onto the plate. The man watched the dawning humiliation with a patient smile.

  “Come on, girl. It’s cheap, right?” He reached out and tried to touch her hair. El recoiled as if burned, but he didn’t seem to mind. “You ain’t pretty enough for even a hundred, I think.”

  El looked back at the restaurant. The driver was inside at a table. Her pulse skipped as it tried to amp back up into the cadence that was quickly becoming the norm. This was just how it was going to be from now on. She was going to have to deal with this kind of person constantly.

  And all because she was a lonely female.

  Why did they think they had this right? She didn’t need to ask it, because she knew. All the sermons she’d heard about a woman’s place and all the lectures her mother had used to torment her. She was a girl, she would always be a girl. She would always be someone’s property, someone’s responsibility, someone’s maid or plaything. She was doomed to always be an extension of someone else and she’d have to suffer whatever shame they chose to give her, because that was their right. That was what the world was telling her.

  El picked up her fountain drink.

  The world could fuck off.

  As he priced all the hanky-panky they could get up to in the cab of his truck, El’s ears went deaf. She popped the lid from the cup and got shakily to her feet. He grinned in triumph, until she dumped the entire sweet tea over his smug face.

  “Cool down, fuckwits.”

  He sprang up from the table, spitting venom, until a shadow fell across the puddle and a low voice apparently disabled every one of his nerves.

  “Take a walk. Better yet, go jerk off in that cab of yours for free, instead of gifting women your moist pocket change, slime ball. Look like you could use the money, anyway.”

  The trucker looked as if he wanted to start a fight, but at her back, El heard a sneeze. It was two against one and both of these men were bigger, stronger, and far rougher looking.

  “The lady—” the tattooed man sneezed again “—said no. Do you need me to say it in another language, because—” He punctuated it with another sneeze. “—I know three more ways I can call you a perverted asshole.”

  “I don’t know,” said his friend, suppressing a smile. “I’m pretty sure the lady did fine on her own.”

  The trucker spat on the ground. “Fuck you. And fuck this slut.”

  Of a sudden, the larger man took hold of the damp flannel collar. Lifting the trucker in the air, he hurled him about ten feet. “Kiss your mother with that mouth? She give it up to every man who threw a twenty at her? You know your daddy, son?”

  The trucker’s features were beet red and deformed with rage, but he backed away, retreating around the building muttering impotent curses. In the silence that followed, El’s body had no opportunity to recover. These two men may have rescued her from one threat, but that didn’t make them saints.

  As if he could read it on her face, the larger man shook his head. “It’s okay. We aren’t gonna bite. Promise.”

  The sneezing man went back to his food and this time, he dumped half the bottle of hot sauce onto it before he took a bite.

  His friend watched this with a growing smirk. “Oh, now you listen to me. Dumbass.”

  “Can’t be tough when my nose is running. What’s this shit supposed to do?”

  El’s fragile nerves and emotional state collapsed, sending her back to the bench. She just couldn’t fight anymore, with everything coming down around her ears. She was too tired. She needed to rest.

  To her relief, the large man went back to his seat and stared down at his friend with a long-suffering grin. “Flushes out all the allergens, then stuffs you back up. No more sneezing. If you were smart, you’d buy some of that allergy medicine in the shop.”

  “Knocks me out.”

  “Good! Then I don’t have to listen to your ass! Jesus, all you do is complain!”

  El sat staring at her food, her appetite gone. She wanted to curl up in a ball on the matted bus seat and close her eyes. She didn’t want to think about disgusting men, her mysterious protector, what she was going to do once she got to California. She wanted to be unconscious for however long it took to just . . . wake up someone else. In a new life.

  “Miss?”

  El looked at him blankly. His expression was honest, forehead wrinkles and drawn mouth speaking to his concern.

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you okay? He didn’t bother you too much—”

  “I’m fine.”

  He ran a huge hand over his shaved head as if debating what to say next. His friend glanced over from his hot sauce with a side of beef, his face covered in slime and pink as a sunburn.

  “Look, I know it’s fucked up that women need to be protected, but I don’t mind if you sit with us. I have a daughter about your age, I think. I’d be worried sick if I thought she was traveling alone.”

  El sniffed and tried to sit up straighter. Her back was too sore from carrying the pack and she immediately winced. “I’m fine alone. I’ll be okay.”

  “Your leg is pretty bad,” he remarked into his chili. “I used to be a medic. Let me at least take a look at it.”

  She weighed the risks. This was a public place. She didn’t have any first aid knowledge but what she read on the internet. If she let the man look at her knee, it was probably fine as long as she didn’t go anywhere with him. But where was he going to take her? They were getting on the same bus.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  He got up from his bench and she stretched the technicolor horror out for him. He prodded and poked, frowning over it with a precise gaze. Every time he adjusted his thick but gentle fingers, he found a new spot El didn’t realize was sore.

  “It needs to be cleaned out better. You’re working on an infection. Looks like there’s some gravel or something under the skin.”

  “Does it . . . Do I have to get stitches?”

  He smiled. “No. It’s not bleeding anymore. It will leave a nice scar, but otherwise it’s fine. Doesn’t look like you damaged the patella or the tendon. Just sliced the shit out of it.”

  Despite her anxiety, El felt better. He excused himself and ran inside the shop. The sneezing man sat smiling at her, sweat dripping off his face as he white-knuckled his way through the spices.

  “Do you have allergies?” El asked finally, to make small talk.

  “Happens every time we do this. Midwest is mostly stuff I’m allergic to, I guess.”

  “You do this a lot?”

  “Yeah. It’s our summer job. We drive cars out to people who move or order through small dealerships, you know, then we bus around to the next gig, and then drive another car. Lets us see the country, test out different cars. It’s kind of like being on a long road trip.”

  “So . . .” El couldn’t help bu
t smile at his features, so contorted in agony that it gave him a comical aspect. “You guys are friends?”

  “Practically brothers. We were in the Army together.” He licked the sauce from his fingers and used a few wet wipes to clean his hands. “Sorry if we freaked you out. Doc kind of keeps an eye out for runaways. I guess because he ran away from home as a kid, it’s like something he has to do.”

  El tucked her gaze to her lap, wondering if it was that obvious to everyone.

  “Not that you’re a runaway! It’s just . . . well. With the leg and the backpack. And also, you do look a bit young. Sorry.”

  “Why’d he run away?” El whispered.

  “My dad was an alcoholic,” said the deep voice. El looked up and found Doc standing there with his arms full of hand sanitizer and wipes and all sorts of repurposed medical supplies. He dumped it all on the table and crouched back down, tending to her knee without a word about it. “He used to beat the shit out of me. I ran away. Got into some trouble. Got out of it. Got a GED. Went into the Army. So here I am.”

  El watched him work. Somehow the tiny hope that these men were safe and a resource was more painful than the idea of reliving her attack one more time. If she trusted them and they hurt her, there would be nothing she could do, since the numbers weren’t in her favor. If she trusted them and they betrayed her, that was worse than anything she could imagine at that moment. Then again, she wasn’t a naive girl anymore, and they were just sitting on a bus together.

  “What’s a GED?”

  He smiled. “It’s a high school equivalency. You just take a test and they give you basically what counts as a diploma. You can get into college with that. Doesn’t matter what age you are either. You just pay for the test and take it.”

  Shocked, El blinked at the amber streetlights, slowly clicking on, finally roused by the hiss and squeal of truck hydraulics. “That’s a thing? Like . . . that is a real thing that anyone can do?”

  He seemed to find her surprise amusing. “Of course! Lots of people quit high school and they can’t go back because they’re too old, you know. I got my GED at nineteen! But you can get it early too.”