by Amelia Wilde
Pop-pop-pops like firecrackers sounded out in the distance.
“They breached the room,” he said as we hurried across the parking lot to the van. “Get in the back.”
I jumped in and closed the door. He started up the van and drove. Slowly. Meanderingly, even. In this way, he made the van itself a disguise.
I marveled at the extreme discipline it would take to drive so listlessly instead of frantically racing across the lot. I mean, killers were after them. Thor and Odin, presumably, were waiting somewhere.
“…that doesn’t make you part of the group,” Zeus had said. His words stung, but they confirmed so much about these guys—that they had survived against dangerous enemies by a fierce, almost wolf pack-like loyalty, sacrificing outsiders and even their own safety for each other.
A wolf pack thing—or a god pack thing. And he’d made it painfully clear that I was the outsider.
I wished I was inside.
Zeus rounded the side of the hotel and slowed near a thicket of bushes that hugged the corner of the hotel. Thor and Odin burst out, piled in, and we were off.
“Denko,” Zeus said to Odin, who was riding up front as usual. “Had to be.”
Odin nodded. “Denko.”
Zeus pulled onto the main thoroughfare and drove at the speed limit.
Thor scooted over. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered. A lie. I was scared. Trembling.
He inspected my neck, palpating the skin around it. “What happened?”
Zeus said, “Down in the weight room one of the ops tried to hold Isis. But we convinced him she was nobody. Wouldn’t you say, Isis?”
“I think it was made clear, yes,” I said.
“He tried to hold you?” Thor said.
“So I threatened to shoot them both,” Zeus said, like it was nothing.
“Through my skull,” I added. “A two-for-one.” I felt proud of myself for speaking of it so casually. I felt Odin’s eyes on me.
“Mess with the bull, you get the horns,” Zeus growled.
Did he mean the guy he’d kicked in the face? Or did he mean me?
“Zeus, you need medical attention,” Thor said to him sternly.
“Let’s put down some distance first,” Zeus said.
Thor turned to me then, and he put out his hand, palm up. I rested my hand in his and he closed his fingers around mine, and just held my hand there in the back seat.
Such a simple gesture, but at that moment, it meant everything.
I knew I was an outsider—Zeus had made that clear, but Thor let me in a little, right then and there.
6
The guys drove through the night, taking turns, stopping once for burgers and once for medical supplies. We switched off seats after that. I was allowed to ride in front, and Thor got in back with Zeus. There was a lot of grunting and then Thor grumbled about a slug in there and I realized he was digging an actual bullet out of Zeus’s arm.
Right in the back seat!
I don’t know if I was more shocked Zeus had a bullet in his arm the whole time, or that Thor was digging it out.
“Odin!” I said, tipping my head at the back seat. You could see the weariness in Odin’s eyes; he was too tired to be driving.
“Don’t worry, Thor’s a doctor.”
“A doctor?” I said.
“That’s right,” Odin said. “What’s so weird about that?”
“You just don’t see that many bank robber-doctors,” I mumbled. Plus, he seemed to be the least responsible of the three of them. The others were all into keeping him in line, it seemed.
These guys didn’t add up. Thor a doctor. What was Odin? Zeus?
There was some gutter dog in Zeus, that’s for sure. I didn’t know if I’d ever get over the feeling of his gun at my forehead. Or the way he stalked that guy, then delivered that weirdly vicious kick. I would’ve just as easily killed you. I would’ve done it in a heartbeat—don’t you ever doubt it.
I’d heard darkness in Zeus’s words.
Zeus was a force, like a storm: frightening and magnificent, with a charged power churning inside. Maybe I should’ve been angry at him for being all, would’ve just as easily killed you, but you don’t get mad at a storm for blowing things over.
Or ripping up flowers.
I asked about the room service waiter and the man in the workout room. What if they recognized me and put them together with the bank job?
The guys thought that was funny. “These operatives don’t give a fuck about any bank. It’s under their radar. Banks are not their concern.”
“Then what is their concern?” I asked. “Who are they? Why are they after you?”
Zeus said, “One more question like that and you’re on the side of the road, deal or no deal.”
“We actually have two deals now, I believe,” I said.
“Two?”
“That’s right,” I said. Zeus was none too pleased to hear about the price I’d demanded for my messenger services. But I didn’t care. It made me feel more part of things.
At around two in the morning, we crashed in a roadside motel in Missouri, just outside Kansas City. Thor and I bunked in one room and Odin and Zeus in another, and sex was definitely not in the air—we were all dead on our feet. Thor didn’t even wash up. He just collapsed on our king-sized bed. I brushed my teeth using my finger and Thor’s toothpaste, and then I, too, collapsed, stretched out next to Thor under the cool, clean sheets.
I woke up in the early hours with Thor snuggled up to me, whispering something. Was he trying to wake me up?
“Thor?”
Thor whispered some more, a stream of nonsense. A bad dream, I realized. I couldn’t make out most of the words. I got a lot of nos and don’ts, and out-of-context phrases like don’t leave Venus. His sleeping face was a mask of pain.
Don’t leave Venus? Was he having a bad dream about interplanetary travel?
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “We’re safe. You’re on Earth.”
He squirmed and turned onto his back. I waited, but he said no more.
For all the guns and domination and violence, I had the sense, watching Thor sleep, that he had a little Peter Pan in him. All three of them did, really. They were running, these guys, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d been abandoned, too. Lost, bereft.
My badass Peter Pans.
I touched Thor’s hair. I liked the notion that maybe I’d calmed him in his nightmare. Like I’d helped.
These guys scared me a little, but I envied their love, their loyalty, their bravery.
Here I was in a shitty motel with a headache and no toothbrush, lying next to a doctor turned bank robber who was also a sex maniac who carried a gun, and a fugitive on some scary wanted list. And I was feeling slightly sore from fucking him and another guy, emotionally exhausted from almost being killed. And I was opting to stay. It seemed like something only a twisted person would do, but there it was. I wanted to stay.
I felt like I was home.
My mind floated back to my sisters. Would they have slept? I'd brought up the topic of contacting them on the road last night.
Later, Zeus had said.
Thor flopped back over onto his other side, but I still couldn’t sleep. I wandered into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My hair—now there was something to freak out about. I looked like an insane, redheaded Dutch boy. Maybe I was turning sociopathic.
Some time later I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to the scent of coffee and the sounds of Thor packing stuff up. He’d slicked down his curls and had put on a brown sports jacket and jeans and boots, a get-up that made him look more like a movie director than yesterday’s slick businessman. When I commented on his new look, he pulled out mirrored aviator glasses and put them on, which made him look shockingly hot.
“You have as many looks as a Ken doll,” I teased.
He came to the bed and put his hands on either side of me, and leaned down close still wearin
g the sunglasses. No more smiling. “But I believe I have one look a Ken doll never has,” he said.
I tried to think of what he meant. What look does a Ken doll never have? Then my face turned red.
He just grinned, looming over me, all dressed up and spiffy compared to my scantily clad self. I liked it.
Goose bumps rode up my skin as he touched my throat, drew a finger down the center of my chest. “Do you know what Odin said about you?”
“What?” Electricity skittered wherever his finger touched. He drew it down, down toward my belly.
“Odin says a frisson of vulnerability turns you on. I’m inclined to agree.”
“Oh, yeah? Is Odin a psychoanalyst from Vienna now?”
“Let’s just say Odin has your number. Odin has everybody’s number.” Thor stood. “Unfortunately, we have to go. We have a lot to do.”
So we were all business then. I got up and put on my shabby bank teller outfit.
We took a cab to downtown Kansas City. Luckily, our first stop was an upscale department store where I picked out a trio of lovely sundresses and some awesome tops and pants, the sorts of things Isis might wear. And then we went to a beauty salon on what Thor termed “the rock ’n’ roll side of town” for new hair.
I took the chair in front of a purple-haired stylist who curled her heavily pierced lip in horror as she inspected my knife-chopped locks. “It was definitely a hasty job,” I said “But I want a big change anyway. Can we make it short and pink?”
“Hold on,” Thor said. “Pink?” He shook his head.
“She should have the style she chooses,” the stylist snapped. “You want pink? Pink would be gorgeous on you.”
“But if she looks too radical or out of the ordinary,” Thor said, “she could lose the very important position she currently has. She might cease to be effective in her profession. Which has a public interaction component.”
“He’s right,” I said. “How about jet-black?”
Thor shook his head.
“Dark brown,” I said.
This, too, Thor vetoed.
“What?” I protested.
“Come here.”
“One minute,” I said to the stylist. I took off the plastic poncho she’d put on me and followed Thor out onto the sidewalk, glaring at his back the whole way.
“You can’t have your hair short and dark.”
“Why? It’ll look totally natural.”
He took off his sunglasses and eyed me straight on. “No go.”
“Why not? I can’t have it red. So that leaves blonde. It’s blonde or nothing? Is that the deal here?”
“Yeah. Trust me.” The gravity in his voice suggested a world of pain, of trouble.
Slowly things assembled themselves in the back of my mind…the hole, the rules. And the way I fit in, at least with Thor and Odin, almost like there was a place for me.
The sense of a ghost.
“Because that’s how she had it,” I whispered. “Short, dark hair.”
He cocked his head, as though confused, but I suspected he understood.
And then it came to me. Don’t leave Venus. Except he wasn’t talking about the planet.
“Venus,” I added.
He frowned, caging me against the wall, hand on either side of me. “None of us told you that,” he said accusingly.
“You told me! You said it in your sleep. Don’t leave, Venus, you said.”
His frown deepened.
“I can tell there was a girl before,” I said softly.
He sighed. “Congratulations. Now you know why you can’t make it brown.”
I felt bad, like I’d betrayed him by figuring out his sleep talk. “Sorry,” I said.
He put his hand around the back of his neck and stared up at the sky. I waited, noticing he had freckles across his nose, so light they were almost translucent.
What in the world had happened to Venus?
“Tell me,” I said.
He took his hand from his neck and looked at me then, lashes pale in the morning sun, contrasting with the rich blue of his eyes. I said nothing more. Thor was the sensitive one, the communicative one, the one who got out of line most easily. I felt like if I gave him space, he’d fill it with information.
And then he did.
“She’s the reason you can’t stay,” he said.
“But I want to stay.” I couldn’t believe I’d said it, but it was true.
He squinted into the sunlight; I suspected the squint was more to cover up happiness than to protect his eyes. “Your sisters—”
“I can help them from afar. People my age leave home all the time. I’ll figure it out.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what this is.”
“I know enough of it to know I love it. I love this whole thing.”
“You’ve been with us a day.”
“Sometimes, Thor, people just know things. Sometimes in life you make a big decision because you know. Haven’t you ever done that?”
The way he looked at me, I knew that he had. That he understood. “I want you to stay,” he said finally. “I want you to. I can tell that Odin does, too.”
My pulse raced. Could this actually happen? “Two against one,” I pointed out.
He smiled bitterly. “Aren’t you observant. But keeping you with us is not something for a vote. It’s something we all have to agree on. The thing is—” Here he paused. “I’m telling you this in confidence. I’m telling you because—I don’t know why I’m telling you.”
“Okay.”
Thor smoothed back his hair. “The thing with Venus is that it was only supposed to be a sex thing. We met her at a hotel bar and let her think we were traveling on business, and we made up those rules, you know, if she wanted to travel with us she’d obey these rules.” He paused as a couple passed. “They’re the rules we told you. She’d just been fired, we were flush, and so it was all fun and games. And then she helped us out in a pinch. Does that sound familiar to you?”
“Yes,” I said, recalling the rooftop glance between Odin and Thor.
“It was cool, it worked out. But then we relied on her to do another thing and she got some heat on her—just cops, but still, it tied her to a robbery, and suddenly she couldn’t go home again. Not ever. And she had family. She said she was fine, but she hadn’t chosen it. She was stuck with us. Sure, it was good for a while.”
He paused, watched a man unload boxes from the back of a truck and stack them outside the Vietnamese grocery across the street.
“She even drove for us sometimes. Then she fucked up, made a careless mistake that brought down a lot of heat on us. There’s a line you cross in this game where you want to be caught a little bit, just for the intensity to ease. Consciously you don’t, but subconsciously, you get tired. And I think she crossed it. We quit bringing her along anywhere having to do with the jobs, just brought her along to hotels, or kept her in the hideouts. That was the beginning of the end. Zeus thinks we broke her. I don’t know. We sure didn’t help her.”
“Right,” I said.
“I’m not talking against her. She was beautiful.” He looked at me hard, wanting me to get that. “She was a beautiful person. She held us together. She connected us. Changed us inside. Reconfigured us—even Zeus. Venus was a little wrong, but we loved her.”
“Sounds like,” I said, awed by how important it was to Thor that I understand that she had been beautiful and loved by them.
“So one day, after all the trouble, we find this lipstick message on the dash of the Camaro we’d been driving around—You’re better off without me. We looked for her. Especially Zeus.”
He paused. I held my breath. Waited.
“Some workers in a quarry pit found her body,” Thor said. “She’d gone and jumped off a cliff, basically. Zeus felt responsible. He’d been hard on her, and things were getting fucked up at the end. Twisted. Zeus can get very intense.”
I thought about the blunt violen
ce in Zeus’s kick. The surprise of it, like he knew every way to go at a man, including the unexpected ones.
“He’s had less go right, let’s just say. He asked her to do things he shouldn’t have asked.”
I waited, surprised Thor had told so much. A man in a white apron came out of the grocery across the street, stacking boxes.
“It’s not enough, that you want to stay with us. Or that Odin and I might want you to. Here’s the thing—it’s been a year almost, and…you just throwing in with us, it’s hard on Zeus. He feels responsible for what happened with Venus, grieved her the most. It wasn’t his fault—none of us understood her state of mind, but he takes it on himself. He gets fierce about people, and the way we live right now, a year is like a decade. Everything’s bigger. The danger, the rewards, the fear, the pleasure. And we pulled Venus in so fast and furious, and we got very symbiotic with her. When she died, it damaged us in a lot of ways you wouldn’t expect. Zeus especially.”
I thought about the flowers, of course. But I thought about what Thor wasn’t saying. Last night I’d heard the pain in his voice loud and clear. Don’t. No. Don’t leave, Venus.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s why we can’t keep you.”
“I’m not a stray puppy. I’m not Venus.”
A pause. “Then don’t get your hair brown.” His words were part command, part collaboration.
A sprig of hope. “Blonde it is,” I said.
I went in and told the stylist to cut my hair short, like a boy’s, and to color it platinum blonde. Thor went off to do some mysterious errands.
“You’re sure you don’t want dark? It’s your hair,” she said.
“Absolutely.”
She clearly didn’t approve. She thought I was being ruled by my man. Oppressed by my man. She couldn’t know that for the first time in my life I was truly, dizzyingly free, and that I wanted things to stay like this.
I mused on what Thor had said. The loss they couldn’t quite heal from. I felt bad for them. My badass Peter Pans. Alone in the world.