by Naomi West
Our eyes have a conversation our ears aren’t privy to. He knows something, I can tell. Maybe he recognizes me from high school, the weird girl who sometimes broke down in class and had to spend a lesson sitting on the toilet seat, weeping.
“I think you do,” he says. “In fact, I know you do. All right, maybe it’s time I stopped this horseshit. I’m a friend of Greg’s, Marilee. He’s just down the street. He sent me down here to see if his little stepdaughter really was playing the whore. He wants me to let him know. So here’s my position. I can either go down the street and let him know what his stepdaughter is up to, in which case he’d come down here and cause a horrible scene, or I can decide not to do that, in which case you can go about your business.” He darts his hand out, catching my wrist. I shiver; worms wriggle over me. “But there’s a condition. I need you to completely give yourself to me. I want you to do whatever I say, when I say it, no questions asked.”
“You’re lying,” I whisper. “Greg isn’t here. I don’t know how you know my name. Maybe you really do know Greg. But if he was here, he wouldn’t be waiting down the street. No way. Now please, let go of my hand.”
He grins, licks his lips, and then withdraws his hand with a shrug. “Whatever you say, Marilee. I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
He walks away without taking his coffee, hands in his pockets, whistling. I watch him go with a feeling of profound dread in my belly, the same feeling I used to get when I was a young teenager and Greg would come stomping up the stairs. He was bluffing, obviously. What I said is true. If Greg was here, there’s no way he would wait up the street and send his friend to come and check on me. Probably what happened is that this guy decided he wants to fuck me, so he came here with his blackmailing plan. Greg isn’t on his way. That just simply cannot happen.
I carry on with my business for the next thirty or so minutes, trying my hardest to focus and be friendly. I fail badly, making only a few bucks on top of the cost of the coffees. Men come here to forget that women have feelings, but all they see when they look at me is evidence of it.
It makes no sense, I know it makes no sense, and yet the feeling of dread in my belly grows and grows. It isn’t fair that in less than an hour after I find out that I’m pregnant—pregnant and poor and technically homeless—this psychopath decides to roll up and hit me with this. Every car which passes is Greg’s, every horn which sounds, every tire which screeches. The whole world has become him; everybody is out to get me. Even if I know that that isn’t true, it doesn’t change the way I feel. I flinch, feeling silly. But even feeling silly about it doesn’t stop me from flinching. I need to get a hold on myself. I need to find my center again. I feel like I’ve been knocked off balance. I only have a couple of hours left. If I can just get through this, soon I’ll be in my motel room, watching bad TV and forgetting that any of this exists—
The car pulls up and Greg looks up at me, a sneer on his face. I blink, rub my eyes, but he’s still there, staring. His mouth moves, but no words come out. All I hear is ringing, white noise. I stumble backward, clawing at the wall for purchase. Then Greg gets out of the car and paces toward the booth. It takes me a second to realize what he’s doing. Then it hits me. I dive for the door—too late—Greg barges through and grabs me by the shoulders, lifting me off my feet. His words filter to me as he drags me out of the booth. “. . . sort of fucking whore are you? What the hell is wrong with you? Is this how you earn your money? Is this your career?”
“Get off me!” I protest, finally returning to reality. I wrench myself away from him, stumbling; heels aren’t made for gravel. I stand up straight and stare at him across the tuft of dirt, dust settling between us. “This isn’t anything to do with you, Greg. This is my job. My life. I’m not a minor, and I can do what I want.”
“I knew there was something wrong with you,” he says, almost to himself as much as to me. “But this? Jesus Christ, Marilee. What a disgrace.” He stands there calling me a disgrace when he’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt which show how fat he is, both of which are stained with food. He points a finger at me. “You need to get in my car and come with me right now, before you really piss me off. I just can’t . . . You look like you don’t care about yourself, Marilee. You look like you want to be raped.”
“Only a sick pervert like you would think that!” I snap. I run for the booth. I can get in there, lock the door, call the police or find a way to call Dusty. I’m not this man’s plaything anymore. Dusty’s lighter presses cold, giving me strength.
But even if Greg is fat, he’s a predator.
He leaps on me, grabbing my shoulders and wrenching me violently toward the car. “It’s time you did what you’re told,” he growls as he drags me across the dirt. He shoves me into the car and locks the door.
I claw at the lock with my fingernails, but it’s no use. My heart pounds in my ears, my chest rattling, my bones trembling with the closeness of violence. My skin pricks with the anticipation of a strike. Everything is tense with the presence of pain. “I’m not going with you,” I say, when he drops into the seat next to me. “I’ll crash the car. I don’t care. I’ll scratch out your fucking eyes and crash this fucking car!”
“Crash my car.” He turns to me slowly. His lips peel back over his teeth and his eyes go hard, harder than I have ever seen them. It’s not just violence in them anymore; it’s something else, the other thing I’ve always feared I would see there. “Let me give you a choice, since you’re oh-so-powerful now, girl. Here’s your choice—and you can’t get angry with me, because I’m telling you straight—we can either go home and you can stop this nonsense and finally be a good daughter. Or,” and he leans forward, staring right at my chest, “I can punch you so hard you black out, and take you to a warehouse I happen to know is abandoned. Once we’re there, Mari-fucking-lee, I’ll do any damn thing I want to with you, all the things you’ve always denied me but given to the rest of the world. Do you get it, you worthless cunt?”
I want to rake my fingernails down his face and try the lock again, but the knowledge of what will happen to me if I fail is too much. He’s serious. I never truly believed he’d cross that line before. I feared it, but there was always a reservation in me to believe that he’d really go that far. But looking at him now, I know it’s true. I settle back into the chair. “Fine,” I say. “Whatever.”
He starts the car. I sit there, thinking. The lighter still presses against my breasts; that’s something he can’t take away from me. Then I start thinking about fate, about how Dusty came upon me that day outside the booth. I wonder if fate will help me again, or if it’s done with me. I turn away and palm the lighter secretly, and then stare out of the window, waiting for a chance to give myself to fate again. That’s all I can do now: hope that fate will give me Dusty, and that Dusty still cares enough about me to stop whatever horror awaits me at home.
“See? Being quiet isn’t so hard, is it?”
“No,” I mutter. “I guess not.”
That’s when I see it, rising at the end of the road like a lighthouse in a storm. My chance, fate’s gift. I bring one hand to the window button and get ready to throw the lighter. I’ll only have a couple of seconds. A few girls smoke outside. I just have to hope that they know Dusty.
Chapter Fourteen
Dusty
I ride aimlessly on my bike, going nowhere in particular, just going. Riding used to bring me peace, but now the whining of the tires in the rain and the growling of the engine means very little to me. It’s as though I am a different man, a man who hasn’t ridden everywhere his whole life. This is my life: riding, outlawing, living absolutely in the moment because thinking about the past is too fucked up and thinking about the future isn’t an option.
But now I ride the highways and I feel like a pretender. I never really was that man, I sense. I never really was that riding, mindless devil, despite how much I wanted to be. I close my eyes and I see Mom’s shattered skull; I close my eyes and I see Marilee�
�s twitching body; I close my eyes and I see her kid brother messing with the lighter. These high, strong walls I’ve built around myself mean jack shit when I let my mind go.
I stop at a diner and get a black coffee. The waitress is in her mid-twenties or so and hot as any woman I’ve ever seen. She has her hair in a ponytail with only the tail section dyed pink, the rest of it natural blonde. She gives me the eye. I know the eye pretty damn well by now, because men like me seem to attract it from women like her. Women’ll rarely come over and start hitting on a fella, unless they’re drunk, but they’ll stare and smile and basically do their form of screaming at you: brush by your arm.
This waitress does it all, leaning over as she takes the order and holding my gaze way longer than she needs to. She’s waiting for my opening line, a joke, a quip. All I can give her is a bland stare. I’m in no mood for this shit.
I nurse my black coffee and stare into the endless dark. I see my life on repeat in that darkness. I see Mom sitting in her armchair with her chin on her knees, watching Oprah and giggling at one of the guests. I see her waving me over and then mock-scowling when I tell her that it’s a silly show. Sometimes she’d leap up from the chair and sit me down on her lap, forcing me to watch it with her. After a half-minute of wriggling, I’d settle down and we’d watch the TV together. I was always filled with a childish happiness when those times came, the sort of happiness which made me feel like I could float away from my chair. A thousand tiny pieces, a thousand bone-white pieces . . .
“You look like you’re ruminatin’ on somethin’, fella.”
I glance up. The man is older than old, his face the wrinkled kind which folds in upon itself when he looks pensive and unfolds when he smiles. His eyes are the only young thing about him: brilliant blue. He limps over to me on a walking stick and nods at the seat opposite. Only an old fella’d be so forward with an outlaw like me, I reckon. I nod yes and he takes his sweet time falling into the seat, adjusting and readjusting and laying his walking stick across his knees.
“Thank you kindly.”
“Don’t know if I’ll be much good for a conversation, Grandpa.”
“Grandpa!” The man cackles, clapping his wizened hands together. “Now there’s a word I ain’t heard in a good long time. My grandkids call me . . . No, they don’t call! Ha!” He cackles at his own joke. “I bet you’re wondering why I just came and sat over here, eh?”
“I thought you were just a lonely old man.”
“Well—yes. There is that. But I also recognize that there jacket. The Filthy Fools . . . you know, I was a rider once. The name’s Charles Johnson.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of you, I’m afraid to say.”
“No, you’re a young man. What are you, 15?”
“Most folks think I’m older on account of how serious I look. I’m 27.”
“To old men everyone’s a child.”
“Sure.” I sip my coffee. “So you were an outlaw?”
He grins from ear to ear, flashing a mouth which is all gums. “Once upon a time,” he says. “I left that life behind a long time ago. That’s why I came over, actually, ’cause there was once a man a few years older’n you sitting exactly in that there chair you sit in now. It’s the damndest thing. I sat there and I wondered if it was all worth it, all the bloodshed and the pain, and I decided no, no, it ain’t, and I left.”
“You just left?” I raise an eyebrow. “I’m starting to think you’re taking me on a ride, Grandpa.”
He folds his hands. When he does that, it’s difficult to see where one starts and the other ends. It’s just a big lump of wrinkles. “Maybe I knew a fella, or maybe I was the fella. What difference does it make? The point is this: life is a damn hard ride. Even for folks who have the easiest ride of all, it’s hard. A certain amount of hurt comes along with just being alive and if you let that hurt cripple you, well, then, you’re screwed forever. You’ll never be happy. You’ll just be waiting to be sad.”
“Sure.” I drain my coffee. “But what about when the pain is too much?” I lower my voice. “What happens when you remember how it felt you have your mother blown to bits in front of you? Surely then you know that all of it ends in blood.”
“Goddamn, boy!” the old man snaps, causing half the diner to turn to him. “Life is a hard, bloody road, sure, but you have it easier than most people! Cancer took my first wife. My second wife was hit by a train. My third wife died two weeks ago. One of my sons died overseas and every friend I had when I was your age is dead. I’m alone except for a daughter who sends me a postcard every now and then and grandkids who come and see me when they need a place to stay near Austin. You think life is easy for anyone? Is that your game? You one of those self-pitying types?”
I wave down the waitress and get a refill of my black coffee, the silence stretching between me and the old-timer.
“Well?” he demands.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” I tell him. “You’re right. There’s no doubt about that. If you take a bird’s eye view of the whole thing, then of course, you’re right. But people don’t live in the bird’s eye. Let me ask you a question. How’d you deal with all that shit without turning to drugs or women or booze or something?”
“How?” He scratches his cheek. “How . . . I’m not sure. I just do.”
I drink down half the coffee and then stand up. “Thanks for the talk, old man. Maybe I’ll see you around before one us is dead.”
“If not,” the old man says, smiling, “might be we’ll see each other after.”
I shake his hand and then go out into the rain. The engine feels better under me now, more like it used to, and I find I like cutting a line through the rain, weaving here and there, darting by the cars. I don’t know if talking with the old fella is going to change me so that I don’t recognize myself, or if it’s going to change me at all. I’m not sure a person can be changed just like that. But I know for a fact that it’s done one thing: it’s made me want to see Marilee again. ’Cause he’s right about that.
I’m letting self-pitying shit get in the way of what I actually feel, and what I actually feel is that she is a damn fine girl and I need to see her, see her right away, put all this shit behind me. And I race ahead quickly, because I know that this feeling might pass. Maybe tomorrow I’ll forget how this felt and I’ll go back to seeing those shards of bone, shattering outward . . .
I know something’s wrong when I stop outside the clubhouse. Alice and her gang—most of them copies of her, with their dyed hair and fishnets—are waving their hands and shouting and generally looking like a gaggle of drunk women. This is nothing new except that now Alice has my lighter in her hand, the lighter I gave to Marilee when I caught sight of her on the porch. I climb from my bike and approach them.
“What’s going on here?”
“Dusty!” Alice cries, spinning on me. “Something really, really strange has happened. There was a car and it rushed past and there was a woman in there and I knew you’d found a woman. I just knew it.”
“Wait. Slow down. Who was in the car? Describe them to me.”
She does as I ask, describing Marilee and what must be her psychopathic stepdad.
“And which way were they heading?”
She points down the road. I do a quick mental road-mapping and figure that it must be back to her place, not the motel.
“She screamed as she threw it, ‘Dusty, Dusty!’ That’s what she screamed, and at first I was angry, because I was like, who’s this little bitch screaming Dusty’s name like that? But then I saw that the fat man had his hands all over her, grabbing her with one hand and driving with the other. I’m glad you found someone.” She throws herself forward drunkenly, gripping my hands. “You know what I mean? I’m glad about it even if I am a little jealous. You deserve it.”
I disentangle my hands and turn back to my bike. “Fuck,” I whisper, breaking into a jog. “Fuck, fuck.”
I climb onto the bike and try and kick her to
life, but it seems that God or whatever mean bastard lives in the sky is against me today. The bike coughs and then croaks. The engine cuts out, dying immediately. I jump from the bike and kick it over, letting out a growl, and then sprint into the clubhouse.
“Clint!” I roar.
The big man stands up. “Yeah?”
“I need your bike. No questions asked. Right now.”
“Yeah.”
He tosses me the keys and I go outside to his giant Harley. I wonder if fate, the funny prick, will cut out Clint’s bike as well, and for a second I think it might—it coughs, it shudders—but then it grumbles to life. I guide the bike out of the parking lot and onto the road, heart pounding in my ears, in my hands, in my everything. I haven’t felt fear like this since I crouched in that closet, watching Rick chase Mom around the bedroom. What if I’m too late? What if that sick bastard has already done something terrible to her?
I push the bike to its limits, but it’s like I’m riding in place. No matter how fast I go, no matter how much distance I make, it always seems like her house is impossibly far away. Anything could be happening to her. Twisted images fill my head, bloody and bony, screams and cackles and growls, pain and bullets and bone-white shards, cascading like hailstones, pattering against the closet door.