by A. J. Downey
Did they even know I was in here? Had I just disappeared? God, did I even still have a job?
I didn’t know. I also didn’t know why I suddenly thought of those things now… I mean, we were basically on a week’s leave, but the end of that leave was coming up fast.
“Are you even listening right now? God, Claire!”
I opened my eyes. My brother was sitting there in his business casual attire, his arms crossed, a look of utter disgust on his face, and I broke cleanly in two.
You did this, you total waste of space. You fail at everything.
“I’m listening,” I lied, and hoped that it sounded believable enough. My brother shook his head.
“I’ll bring your things, but when you get out of here, you have to figure things out on your own this time.”
“Carter, I don’t know that’s the best thing for Claire, right now. She needs your support dur– “
He cut her off.
“No, she had my support. Right now, my family, my wife, my daughter, they need me. Claire, you chose to throw your life away. I can’t help you anymore. I’m not going to risk a second time around. Gracie doesn’t deserve it. Mallory doesn’t deserve it, and I don’t want to walk in and find you dead next time.”
“There won’t be a next time!” I tried, but he shook his head.
“I’ll bring your stuff tomorrow,” he said, getting up.
“Carter…” the therapist beseeched him and I shook my head. I couldn’t look at him but then again, he couldn’t look at me, either.
“I love you,” he said.
“If you love me, you wouldn’t walk out on me,” I said softly.
“You walked out first,” he shot at me and he leaned down to hug me. I jerked back and he dropped his chin to his chest.
“Fine.”
He walked out. The therapist was even caught off-guard, staring after him, her mouth agape. I shot her an apologetic look and said, “Guess you know why I ran off and joined the circus.”
She shook her head in disbelief and I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for myself, too, but I think I was so used to this kind of treatment from my family that it wasn’t quite so keen after all this time.
“Let’s talk about that,” she said gently, and I took a deep breath and nodded.
There was a lot to talk about. Carter was a year older than me. My father walked out on our mom when I was four. I barely remembered him. My mom relied on Carter for a lot of things where I was concerned. She worked long hours, day in and day out, and still collected welfare for our entire childhoods. I mean, there was only so much she could do with a high school diploma and no prior work experience. She ended up a clerk at a grocery store and worked her way to management, but it wasn’t easy and the pay was very little.
Still, she managed to keep me in both dance and gymnastics. I didn’t find out until after she died that it was by selling her jewelry, little by little, when the need called for it. Carter had gone to college on a basketball scholarship. He had been this close to going pro, before he’d blown out one of his knees.
We were both athletically inclined and gifted in our own right, his injury hadn’t affected his scholarship money and he’d worked hard to fill the gaps with grant money, earning his degree. He had gone into teaching, but he felt cheated. Had felt robbed of his opportunity to go professional and he hated the fact that I’d given up the chance at another shot at Olympic gold for gymnastics to join the Night Circus. Had thought I was wasting my talent, but I loved my art so much and the world of professional sports had always been his dream, not mine.
I felt exhausted by the time we finished talking and the therapist looked genuinely sympathetic. She seemed disappointed that I couldn’t think of anyone to call. She didn’t feel comfortable releasing me without a contact person in the outside world that could help me get over the hump. I felt like a prisoner and just wanted out, but until I could come up with someone, the chances of her extending my stay looked like a real possibility.
I went back to my room and picked up the book on my end table. I opened it, not that I was reading it, but to the note that Angel had had smuggled in to me. I read it and reread it, taking comfort in it, and on my last wing and a prayer went back out onto the ward and to the therapist’s office door.
I knocked gently on the doorjamb and she looked up from behind her computer screen, her glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“Yes, Claire?”
I chewed my bottom lip hesitantly and said, “Actually, there’s one person I could try to call…”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Could I try please?”
5
Angel…
I couldn’t believe the things she told me. Her own brother… fuck me. I got it, to some extent, but at the same time, I didn’t. I couldn’t. Still, at the same time, it was as if God had a plan for me and for her, and was throwing us back together again. I couldn’t say I felt bad about that in the slightest, even though I had the vague, nagging worry that this could be a bad idea and do more harm than good.
I mean, what if we just weren’t compatible? What if I hadn’t saved her, but just delayed the inevitable? What if I fucked this up?
I swallowed hard and got out of the back of the taxi at the curb in front of the main entrance to the hospital. I’d called off sick so I could be here, and I wanted to get Claire and get her home. I didn’t want one of the city’s finest all up in my business. It’s why I’d chosen the plain black bomber jacket over my more-recognizable leather jacket and cut.
That, and I didn’t know how Claire felt about MC’s, even legit above-board clubs. They had a rough rep when it came to the average citizen. They saw the leather and patches and automatically went to some of the worst of the worst, like the Sacred Hearts.
There wasn’t anything ‘Sacred’ or full of heart about those assholes.
Their original charter had thought it would be a good idea to use the Catholic faith to generate their name, in order to skate under the radar for the first couple of years they were in business. It’d worked to some extent, and by the time any cops had decided to look at them, it’d been too late. They’d already had a strong foothold in criminal enterprise. Their penchant for being slippery hadn’t ended there, though. Aside from a member or chapter here or there getting busted the rest of the club managed to squeak out from under any charges. In fact, they were slicker than fucking owl shit when it came to avoiding RICO.
Then, some years back, something went down and they’d sort of flamed out and gone quiet. No one in law enforcement believed it was going to stay that way, but I think all of them hoped for it. My brother and the rest of the guys were sure they had been responsible for a fair bit of the drug trade coming up through south of the border, just damned if it could be proven. Of course, the Marianas cartel had all but dried up overnight, precipitating the last several years of calm out of them. Theory was, there may have been some sort of trouble in paradise and that the Sacred Hearts had took the Marianas cartel the fuck out.
If that were the case, they weren’t dudes you wanted to fuck with. Like at all. A year or two back, our president had a run in with one of them at the 10-13. Some guy coming up through his basement with some chick. He’d let them go, and I didn’t blame him. Sometimes, out here on the street, you had to pick your battles. Even as a cop. As a retired cop? Even more so.
The taxi driver popped his horn and I turned around, scowling and waved him down. When I turned back to the hospital doors, she was there, like magic, two suitcases, one full-sized and one carry-on, a gym bag slung across her chest, along with her purse.
I shook my head in disbelief. Her brother had seriously just up and abandoned her in her time of need. Brought her things, dropped them off, and that was it. It was unconscionable, but then again, I didn’t know everything. I was going to find out, though. I needed to know everything there was about her.
“You look good,” I said breaking the spell of silence. She smiled a
nd it was almost shy. She fell back a slight step, and then the girl I knew, the girl from three years ago in my tired little live-aboard stepped forward, dragging her suitcases with her and abandoned the handles to wind her arms around me. She buried her face in the front of my chest and breathed deeply, cuddling into me like she was coming home.
I put my arms around her and held her tight, kissing the top of her head and it felt so natural to have her back in my arms, like no time at all had passed. We might as well be back on that boat on a cold winter’s morning, not on the sidewalk in front of Trinity Gen in the moderate temperature of the sunny afternoon of three years and some change later.
“I missed you,” she murmured and I smiled, I couldn’t help it. I’d missed her, too.
The cabbie, impatient as fuck, beeped his horn. Claire jumped and I turned back to him, annoyed and scowling.
“Pop the trunk!” I called out and he obliged. I opened the car door for Claire and she got in, sliding across the seat to make room for me. I loaded her bags in the trunk and got into the back of the cab, telling the obnoxious cabbie, “Take us back to where you picked me up.”
Claire threaded her fingers between mine before he could even switch on his signal indicating he wanted back into the flow of traffic. I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder.
“We’ll get you home, you can have a hot shower, and I’ll cook us dinner. How does that sound?”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“Sleeping arrangements are a bit tight. If you wanted your own room, I can crash on the floor or –“
“Don’t be stupid,” she murmured and raised her head to capture my lips with hers.
That kiss was as sweet as the first we had ever shared. Deep and full of meaning, though with a lot less tongue, for modesty’s sake. The cabbie was staring at us a little too hard in his rearview mirror and I said, “Hey, eyes forward, buddy. I’m not paying you to land either of us back at the hospital.”
He grumbled and griped in whatever his native language was. Some sort of eastern European. Maybe Polish, or Czechoslovakian. I wasn’t familiar with them. Claire’s eyes flashed and she responded in broken whatever-it-was and the driver kept his eyes on the road after that, a deep blush painting the back of his neck red. I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“What did you say?” I asked when we were safely deposited at the marina my houseboat was moored at. Her bags were out of the car and the driver had been paid and was on his way.
“Asked him if he kissed his mother with that mouth,” she replied.
“What language was that?”
“Russian.”
“You speak Russian?”
“A little. We spent a few months there performing and recruiting performers before making our way back through the rest of Europe and a circuit through the States.”
I took her big suitcase and shouldered her gym bag. She kept her purse and her little carry-on and followed me.
“You moved,” she said, carefully, and I nodded.
“Around the end of last summer. It’s still pretty new. I’ve always wanted one of these houseboats, and when I finally finished working on my live-aboard, restoring it? I sold it. I’d saved the down payment for one of these and selling the boat I had when we first met pushed me the rest of the way. I just need to pay for moorage and upkeep.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I, um, well, I hope you like it,” I said, suddenly nervous. I collapsed the handle on her suitcase and stepped off the dock onto what was essentially my back porch. It was closer than what served as the front door. The narrow French doors back here opened up onto my galley kitchen and four-person dining room. It was a little quirky in layout, because the bathroom was also down here. To the right, just as you entered through the back door, was a doorway that led into the bathroom, which had open spaces to two sides, one leading into the kitchen along the long side of the whirlpool tub, and one at the end of the tub leading into the living room, taking advantage of the view off the bow of the boat.
That view was everything, though. It went straight out the three-panel bay window over the few sailboats docked in the marina and out over the Chesapeake. It was a million-dollar view that I was paying around a thousand bucks a month moorage fees for. It was worth every penny, too.
The blinds in the bathroom out to those two open spaces were up, for right now. One of my favorite things to do after a long shift was to draw a hot bath and lean back with a beer and just stare out over the water through my windows. I had the sudden urge to strip down, draw a bath, and hold Claire and show her how meditative and peaceful that could be. She came in behind me as I set her things down on the twin bench seat across from my wood stove. The bench seat was made up with a set of Spiderman bedding right now. It doubled as Manolo’s bed when he was here.
Claire hadn’t seen it yet, she was fixated, with a longing look on the tub. I smiled and said, “Yeah, there’s no showering in the traditional sense of the word here. It was either the tub or a shower. Couldn’t do both. When it came to the building phase, I went with the tub but had a removable faucet put in. You want a shower, you kind of have to kneel there and use the faucet. Not ideal, but once you lay back in that thing with a glass of wine at night with the jets going, you’ll see it was worth the sacrifice.”
“Oh, no, with a view like that it’s totally worth the sacrifice. I want to get naked so bad right now.”
I laughed and said, “Don’t let me stop you, mi alma. I am going to get some dinner going. You’re probably starving. Any special dietary needs or requests?”
She let me take her carry-on and her purse and followed me through the kitchen asking, “What, like allergies?”
“Yeah, or, you know, vegetarian, gluten-free, any of that.”
She shook her head, some of her bangs getting into her eyes. She brushed them away and said, “No, I don’t like red meat all that much, but I’ll eat it occasionally.”
“Okay, good to know.”
“You, um, have a son?” she asked softly, looking at the Spiderman bedding her stuff was on.
I shook my head. “Nephew. My sister’s son. She’s, um, in prison serving a sentence for drug trafficking. Manolo lives with my brother, Rodrigo and his girlfriend Lys. I have him every Saturday night to Sunday morning so I can take him to Mass with me.”
“Catholic?” she asked and I nodded.
“You?” I asked.
“Spiritual but not religious. Still, there’s a certain melancholy beauty to the Catholic services.”
“You maybe want to go with us?” I asked.
“Sure,” she nodded. “I won’t partake in the sacrament, though. I mean, don’t you or shouldn’t you go to confession first?”
I smiled. “That’s right. For not being Catholic, you sure know a lot about it.”
“The Italians in the circus are pretty devout. They find a church and go to Mass as often as they can, even while we’re out on the road. They’re kind of inspirational in their devotion to it.”
She stepped closer to me and I opened my arms to her. She sank against my chest gratefully and I held her, falling silent as things suddenly became serious and intimate, the air heavy with a crackling tension, some of it sexual, some of it something undefinable. I waited her out and she finally asked softly.
“Show me the rest?”
“Sure,” I whispered and she looked up at me. I couldn’t help myself. I closed the distance between our mouths, carefully kissing her with a feather-light touch that accepted rejection if that’s what she wanted or needed. She didn’t. Instead, her hands found my jawline and the side of my neck, and held me to her as she deepened that kiss into something bottomless, with the depth of emotion in it.
She moaned against my mouth and wilted against me and I held her tightly, swearing to myself that I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever let her go again. I didn’t even know her, I couldn’t explain it to you, but she was my match. She was my soul, which is precisely what
I called her. ‘Mi alma.’ ‘My soul’.
“Why does it feel like this with you and no one else?” she breathed and I smiled slightly and shook my head, smoothing some of her silk dark hair out of her eyes.
“I don’t know. It’s the same for me, though.”
“Good to know,” she whispered, and laid her ear over my heart.
We stood like that, gently twisting, rocking in each other’s embrace for a little while, before I reluctantly asked, “You still want to see the rest?”
“Mm-hm.”
I led her up the open staircase and she eyed the fan-work of beams above our heads. It was open, the second floor, loft-like with a high ceiling above the living room area. The stairs led directly to the bedroom with a king-sized bed and little else. I had bookshelves built into the low, waist-high wall with its open-air view over the living room below. The wide open space made the little houseboat seem bigger which was nice, and allowed the heat from the little stove to get up here in the winter.
At the foot of the bed, across an expanse of carpet allowing a walkway, was a television mounted to the wall between the windows, and a little entertainment stand below it to allow for the cable box and such. I didn’t much like the idea of having a TV downstairs in my little living room. I liked to lounge and watch TV; downstairs was really only enough room for the bench seat Manolo crashed on, the two wing-back chairs I had facing the four-person dining table, and the little oval coffee table I had to hold whatever book I was reading and to prop my feet on.
This houseboat, while huge and spacious as compared to the little live-aboard I had come from, was still the epitome of tiny-house living by the rest of America’s standards. I just didn’t need that much space for myself. I certainly didn’t need as much house as my brother had bought with his brownstone. Dios mio, that place was way more than he and Lys needed, even with Manolo.