Rampage

by Naomi West

“Uh . . .” I trail off. Nobody has asked me that yet. “What can I get for you, sir?”

  “Sir?” The man lets out a quiet laugh. “Is that what they tell you, to keep it formal?”

  “Sorry!” I brighten up. “What can I get for you, baby doll?”

  Baby doll. That might be worse than sailor.

  “A white coffee, please. And . . .” He takes a roll of cash out of his pocket. There must be five hundred dollars there. “I drove by this morning and just couldn’t get you out of my head. You need money? I’ll give you all of this and more if you come with me for an hour, just an hour.”

  “I’m not . . .” Anger flares in me. I want to grab that roll of cash and stuff it down his throat. Anger flares because it’s insulting, yes, but also because some part of me knows that one day Greg might make it so I accept a proposition like this. The lesser of two evils . . . But not today. “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t offer that service here. I’m sure there are several brothels in the area that could service your needs. Would you like sugar with your coffee?”

  “Coffee.” He folds his arms and stares at me as though I’m a piece of meat dangling in a butcher’s shop. “Is that really what you think I’m here for? Hang on a second . . . do you think that’s what anyone’s here for? The coffee at these places is trash. I’m here for you.”

  “And I’m here to serve coffee and wear a bikini. Not to abandon my workplace and get fired.”

  “So you’re telling me you’ll meet up after work?”

  I sigh. When he realizes he’s not going to get anywhere, he stalks away. I massage my temples and reach underneath the counter for my cigarettes. I take one out of the packet and bring it to my lips, knowing I shouldn’t light it. Kim said smoking is fine on my breaks, as long as the customers don’t see me—they don’t like women smoking, apparently—but under no circumstances am I to smoke in the booth. I fiddle with the Zippo lighter, trying to do some of the tricks Dusty did yesterday. I flip it from my palm to the back of my hand, fumble it, and end up tossing the lighter onto the pavement outside.

  I curse under my breath and make for the door. I should leave it out there until the end of my shift, but for some reason I just can’t. I go outside and bend down. I’m fully bent over when the bikes thrum from behind me. I hop upright and turn around, unable to contain my excitement. I’m sure it’s Dusty, and maybe I’ll sneak a quick break and we’ll flirt some more, and this time I’ll get his number. But three men step away from the bikes, and none of them are Dusty.

  They wear scuffed leather jackets and jeans with tears here and there, thick army-style boots. Their leader is a redhaired man with a bushy red beard. The other two look young, around my age, and are clean shaven. They’re brothers, by the looks of it: both of them with shaved heads, both of them with eerie dark brown eyes, both of them with their hands in their jacket pockets. Anything could be in those pockets . . .

  “Howdy, darling.” Red-hair nods at me, grinning. “How do you do this fine afternoon?”

  I tuck the lighter into my bikini top. “Fine, gentlemen. Let me get back in the booth and I’ll serve y’all some coffee.”

  The booth—with the lock on the door—is an island in a sea of fire. If I can just get back to it, maybe I won’t get burnt. I know the signs of impending violence more than most. It’s like a smell, or an atmosphere, something that hangs in the air and grows larger and larger the more it’s allowed to fester.

  “I don’t think there’ll be any need for that.” Red-hair steps forward; the brothers back him up. “You’re fine just where you are.”

  Chapter Five

  Dusty

  I ride the town, thinking and trying not to think. Today has been one weird fuckin’ day, that’s for sure. I had a job earlier which had some violence in it, the sort of job that I usually get messed up after. But when Lex and Dagger and Clint went to the clubhouse to get messed up, I told them to go on without me.

  I can’t get that damn girl out of my head, so I keep riding, listening to my engine and the other cars and the rubber on the concrete, the smell of gasoline and the feeling of control that bikes always give me. I remember when I first ever rode a bike. I was thirteen years old and one of my friends had a little dirt junker. I rode that thing all afternoon, up and down small dirt ramps, and bought it from him the next week with money made from thieving. I called that bike “Princess” on account of how temperamental it was, but I loved it all the same.

  I try and push her from my mind as I ride down the highway for the second time today, heading nowhere in particular. I tell myself it’s stupid, which it is, and that I should be able to just forget her, which I should. It isn’t like I saw the girl naked or anything, or that we did anything especially hot, or anything like that. It’s the look in her eyes which constantly haunts me, following me wherever I go, whatever I do. She’s always there, watching, her cigarette falling from her mouth. I’ve heard about this love at first sight stuff that some folks go on about, but I never really believed it was true. And I don’t now, ’cause I don’t love Marilee, but I’d be telling a lie if I said I didn’t want to see her again.

  I think about going by her place, but then I think about where that way leads. It leads to a relationship, maybe a family, all that stuff, and there lies ruin: the pain of loss, a bullet breaking a skull into a thousand tiny pieces, bone shrapnel flying all across the room, and a little kid pissing his pants in the closet. I grit my teeth, slowing my bike when I spot them. Three bikers and a woman who looks naked from here.

  Maybe this will help me forget about her. I’ll play the hero and she’ll reward me with a quick fuck. Maybe that’ll get Marilee out of my system. I don’t recognize the bikers. Maybe they’re un-patched and unaffiliated. Their leader, the man with the red beard, has his hand on the woman. She’s wearing a pink bikini, which is why I thought she was naked; it’s almost the same color as her skin. And then I see her, really see her, and I wonder if there ain’t a trickster in the sky after all.

  Marilee, uneven hair tousled around her shoulders, wearing fire-red heels, is backing away from the bikers who are advancing on her like hungry wolves.

  All of them look up when I come growling in. The look on Marilee’s face could make me die a happy man. It’s a look I’ve never seen on a lady’s face before, and never dreamt of seeing: complete relief at seeing me, as though I mean something. But then darkness flitters across it. Something changes in her. She looks from me to the redhaired biker and back again, as though we might be friends. Perhaps she thinks I’m here to bother her just like these men are. The change in expression is almost too much to handle. I climb from my bike, hands tucked in my pocket where my knuckle-duster is, and walk over to the four of them.

  “Afternoon, fellas. Ma’am.”

  “You’re with the Filthy Fools,” the redhaired man says.

  “I’m with the Filthy Fools,” I confirm. “And you’re with nobody. Looks to me like you’ve made it your business to harass this lady.” I nod secretly to Marilee, now that the bikers aren’t watching her. She slides out of the scene, creeping toward the coffee booth. I resist the urge to catch a glimpse of her ass as she turns; this is hardly the time. “I reckon you fellas ought to get going now.”

  “I always thought the Filthy Fools was a fucking stupid name. What’d you make of it, boys?”

  “Stupid,” one of the bald brothers says.

  “Stupid,” the other echoes.

  “Maybe it is stupid. I don’t know. It isn’t my job to name things, or to judge how well a name fits. My job is much simpler than that. My job is to make men corpses and make sure they’re never found, no matter how long folks look.”

  “Is that meant to scare me?” Red-hair goes for his hip, where I’m guessing he has a gun.

  I leap forward, taking the knuckle-duster from my pocket at the same time. I smash my metal-covered fist into his hand before he can draw his gun, cracking the bone, crushing his knuckles, and then backhand one of the brothers a
cross the face and head-butt the other. Red-hair is about to recover when I hit his hand again, causing him to drop the gun. I knee him in the balls and punch him three times. One of the brothers gets a couple of gut-punches in on me, but they’re relatively harmless. I knock them all back with a flurry of strikes, and then scoop up Red-hair’s gun.

  “You gonna be a pussy about it?” Red-hair growls, baring bloody teeth.

  “If I’m not mistaken, you were the one who went for the pistol to begin with.” I gesture to their bikes. “It’s time to leave, fellas, unless you really want to finish this.”

  “Filthy Fools.” Red-hair pouts like a little boy. “You think you can go around doing any damn thing you want.”

  “You were trying to rape a woman,” I point out.

  “Rape!” Red-hair shakes his head. “Woo, more like.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Get on your fuckin’ bike.” I study the gun for a moment. “Goddamn. Did you know the safety’s on, tough guy?”

  They leave, grumbling and cursing, and I go to the booth where Marilee stands. She’s wearing some clothes now, a shirt and trousers. Maybe I ought not to be thinking stuff like this so soon after she was in trouble, but she looks damn sexy even in that business-style getup. Her trousers are tight and her shirt is tighter, highlighting her breasts and her legs. I study her legs, and then look up into her face.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Okay?” She giggles nervously. It’s the sweetest sound, that giggling, the sort of sound which can make a man like me forget that I’m a piece of shit, that I’ve spent most of my life riding and outlawing and shooting and hurting and killing. “I don’t know if that’s the right word for it, Dusty. But I’m not dead, and those creeps aren’t trying to touch me anymore, so I guess that counts as okay.”

  I have to remember the promise I made to myself, but at the same time, surely this means something. What’re the chances of me cruising by at the exact right time to save her? “What’re you doing now?”

  Something changes in her desolate gray eyes. It’s like a dam has opened up somewhere deep within her, water rushing against her eyes. I sense that she’s upset, or maybe it’s more than upset. She’s not shaking, I realize, or panicking. Most women who emerge from situations like this are shaking and sobbing and tense. But Marilee looks almost complacent. The bruise on her neck is covered, but some of the makeup has smudged. Yellow flashes through. She sees me looking and covers it instinctively, but then drops her hand.

  “If you’re ever in trouble,” I say, “then you can find a biker, any biker, with this patch.” I point to the sigil on my chest pocket: a caricatured biker with horns on his helmet, howling into a fading moon as smoke kicks up around his bike. “Tell them you’re Dusty’s girl and they’ll help you.”

  “But I’m not your girl,” she says quietly.

  “I know that.” Although maybe you should be, I think but don’t say. I can’t say that. That’ll give her false expectations. That’ll make her believe that I’m going to be a man I have no chance of being. “But they’ll help you if you say you are.”

  I should leave now, but I just keep staring at her. Even as I will myself to walk away, I continue staring. She gazes back, and I’m sure there’s something here, something I’ve never felt with any of those club girls.

  “I . . .” She closes her mouth, shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You can trust me,” I say. I mean it, too. She can trust me, even if it makes no sense. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “Have you been following me?” she asks.

  I grin, shaking my head. “I can see why you’d say that, but no, I haven’t been following you. I don’t make a habit of stalking.”

  “This is so weird,” she mutters. “I just . . . Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re here. But isn’t this strange?”

  “Strange,” I repeat. “Well, that’s an understatement, if you ask me, but I agree with the sentiment.”

  “You talk like an old-time cowboy.” Her smile lights up her face. Her eyes turn a brighter shade of blue. A trick of the light, but a trick I’m happy to ignore. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “No, ma’am. No, they have not.”

  There’s pain in her laugh, somehow, the kind of pain which a person spends their entire life attempting to conceal. I know pain like that because I feel pain like that, every damn day of my life. It’s easy to recognize it in another person. “Talk to me, Marilee.”

  “I don’t want to burden you. I . . .” She takes a deep breath. “I’m in trouble, Dusty. I’ve been in trouble for a very long time.” Her eyes speak more than she does. In her eyes I see the years of abuse, bruises just like the one on her neck marking, healing, disappearing, and then marking again. Fear and shame mark her just as clearly as the bruises, but so do bravery and fierceness.

  “I understand,” I say. “Come on. Get out of that booth.”

  “Okay.” She’s takes a step toward the door, smiles shyly, and then turns back to the booth window. “Catch.” She reaches a hand into her bra and takes out a small gold coin, tossing it at me. I catch it. Not a coin. My lighter.

  “You keep it in your cleavage? I guess that’s the best place for it. But this is yours. I don’t want it back.”

  She steps from the booth, locking the door, and then goes about pulling down the protective metal shield. I help her. Once everything’s sorted out with the booth, I press the lighter into her hand. I love the feeling of her skin, warm as though there’s fire under the surface, as though she’s burning for me. She closes her hand around the lighter, which means her fingers brush against my palm.

  “You ready to ride, Marilee?”

  I take off my jacket.

  “What are you doing?”

  I drop the jacket around her shoulders. “Zip it up. I want you to be safe.”

  Chapter Six

  Marilee

  A light rain falls as we walk to Dusty’s bike. It patters against his leather jacket, which I have wrapped tightly around me, or at least as tight as it’ll go. It’s baggy, like wearing a grownup’s jacket when you’re a kid. I fold the sleeves to my wrists and then take the helmet he offers me. He doesn’t wear one, just climbs onto the bike and turns to face me, waiting.

  This is a crossroads, I know, a crossroads that could radically change my life. I’m not the sort of girl who climbs onto strangers’ bikes on a whim. There were girls like that in high school, girls who would walk the halls with fanciful stories about how they spent the night with a soldier, an outlaw, a man.

  “Are you coming?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I reply, allowing my voice to decide for me. “Can you help me with this?”

  I sit on the bike and he helps me with the helmet, securing the straps. The helmet closes out my world, shutting off my peripheral vision and turning my front-facing vision hazy with rain. I just sit there at first, waiting, and then I realize that I have to hold onto something. I lean forward and wrap my arms around Dusty nervously, even more nervous than I was today during my shift. I feel as naked now as I did then, emotionally laid bare even if we aren’t talking. As sad as it is, this is the most intimate I’ve been with a man. Oh, I’ve had sex in high school and once during the summer, but there was nothing intimate about it.

  “Are you ready?” His voice is muffled by the rain and the helmet.

  “I’m ready,” I say, not sure if that’s even true. I hear myself echoing around my head almost like another person. That girl sounds nervous, but she also sounds exhilarated.

  Dusty starts the motorbike. A volcano rumbles beneath me, choking and coughing and vibrating, most of all vibrating. It presses against my crotch, the seat warm and hard against my clit. I close my eyes, taking a deep breath, trying to remain calm. But there’s no denying the fact that Dusty’s motorbike is making me horny. He pulls away from the booth, heading for the highway, and the quicker he goes, the more the motorbike vibrates. I squeeze down on his belly, feeling bare skin through hi
s shirt, holding on tightly as he weaves between traffic. He’s a skillful rider; that’s obvious even to me, and I’ve never ridden a motorbike in my life.

  Is this freedom? It feels like freedom, with my pussy tingling, my belly full of light, airy butterflies. It feels like freedom, with my hands on his muscled abs, feeling the heat of him, almost as hot as the motorbike. It feels like freedom . . . I wonder where we’re going, or if Mom and Travis are okay, but then I blot those thoughts from my mind. Freedom means the freedom to forget, something I haven’t let myself do since Greg steamrolled into our lives. I can go home and be grabbed and hit and spit on and leered at, or I can ride into the unknown with a man called Dusty. I know what I prefer. Dusty’s a real man, not someone who beats women because it makes him feel tough, not someone who leers at his stepdaughter, not someone who treats me like I’m here just to serve a purpose.

  I want to ride like this forever. I’ve never tasted freedom like this: the road yawning ahead of us, the past and its problems growing smaller behind us, everything warping and bending so that I’m not scared little Marilee anymore, so that I’m not the girl who creeps to the toilet so that her psychotic stepdad won’t emerge with his fat belly hanging out and make some lewd comment. That girl seems like an alien now. She can’t be me, the wild thing on the back of the motorbike. They don’t mesh at all. One is a mouse; the other is a wolf. I roam the plains with my man and nothing can harm us. We are invincible. I don’t even have to look at where we’re going. I have the freedom to simply glide across the world, my life in Dusty’s hands.