by Naomi West
It’s only when he says that that I realize I’ve been biting my hand. I let it go. The teeth marks are deep and red. “Yeah. I’m here.”
“You hearing me?”
“Yeah, I hear you. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“At the club.”
“Fine. At the club. See you later.”
“Throw away that whisky, Xander.”
“All right.”
I hang up the phone and go to the mirror, staring at myself. It’s like I’m looking at a different man. It’s the eyes that do it, red, bloodshot, the eyes of a drinker. I’ve never seen my eyes like that before. I won’t drink. I won’t give in like that. The old man is right. All I’m trying to do with this reasoning shit is reason myself back into a bottle. Kayla is waiting for me when I open the door, her hands folded over her knee. Her mouth is a strange shape, almost a curvy line: somewhere between concern and anger.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asks.
I make for the kitchen, but her expression is too urgent. I go to the couch instead; I can get the bottles after we talk. “It’s nothing,” I lie. “Just can’t sleep, is all.”
“Can’t sleep? Is that what you call jumping out of bed at midnight?”
“Yeah, that’s one way to describe it.”
“This is about the drinking, isn’t it?”
I roll my head in my shoulders. “I don’t want to talk about this, Kayla.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.” She shrugs. “I just thought you might want to. I thought it might help.”
“What, we sit around telling each other how hard our lives are and then sing some kumbaya? Next we’ll be braiding each other’s hair and doing each other’s nails.”
She folds her arms. “You don’t have to be such a jerk all the time.”
“There are quite a few folks who’d disagree with you there. But fair enough. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I really can be an incredibly polite gentleman. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder in the future.”
“Wow.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s like you’re intentionally trying to push my buttons.”
I hold my hands up. “Never. I’m a better man than that.”
“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. I just think … it helps, doesn’t it, sometimes?”
I close my eyes and let my head fall back. “I’m sure it does,” I say into the personal darkness. “Let me tell you somethin’, then, since you really want to know. The day we found Arsen was the worst day of my life. I reckon you didn’t see him until we gave him to the morgue, which is why there was a delay, if you were ever wondering. But I spent some time with him. I sat with him, with what was left of my brother, just a blackened crisp. You ever got a bad potato chip, all crispy and burnt around the edges? That was my little brother. Nothing, not even human, burnt so badly I can’t even remember what he actually looked like sometimes.”
“Xander …” She puts her hand on my leg, only there ain’t anything sexual in it this time.
“So I went and did what any sane man’d do in that situation. I went to the nearest bar and I just started drinking. I’ll get shitfaced, I thought, and everything’ll seem better for a little while. And what everyone wants me to say—you, the men at the club—is that it didn’t help, is that really it makes me miserable. Maybe there’s some truth to that, but mostly it really did help. It helped me forget. It helped me laugh. It helped me not to care. When I’m shitfaced and I close my eyes, I see my little brother. When I’m sober, I see a burnt potato chip.
“So I just kept drinking, ’cause seeing my brother like that ain’t something I ever prepared for. I’m the outlawin’ one. I’m the one who deserves to be found burnt, dead and burnt. I don’t deserve to live while he’s dead. So maybe my drinking problem has got out of control. Maybe I drink too much. But the fucked-up part is that I don’t even wanna stop, ’cause when I stop I see him as he was then, and the reality is—the reality is real, and I know how stupid that sounds. I want a drink right now. This time tomorrow I reckon I’ll be climbing up these goddamn walls.”
I open my eyes to find Kayla crying, silent tears sliding down her cheeks. She tries to wipe them away before I see but she’s too slow. I touch her cheek, wiping them away for her. “What is it?” I ask. “Arsen?”
“No,” she whispers.
“What, then?” I wish my voice could be kinder, but with all this withdrawal shit coursing through my system, kindness is hard to find. Instead I just sit here, watching her, waiting. Her hair hangs in curls around her eyes; her fingers worry at the couch cushions.
“I’ve never told anybody about this before,” she says. “I didn’t tell Arsen. I didn’t tell Connor. I didn’t tell anybody.”
“Okay …”
She takes a deep breath and then talks very quickly, blurting it all out, talking so fast that words spill upon words. “When I was a little girl I never knew that it was strange that my parents were always acting so weird, always sneaking around in the day and being loud and annoying, never letting me get any sleep because all they did was have parties every single night, sometimes with other people but mostly just the two of them. They were alcoholics.” She lets out another breath, this one steadier. “They were alcoholics,” she repeats, eyes glassy. “I didn’t know the word for that, then. But that’s what they were. They couldn’t go a few days without drinking. Hell, they couldn’t even go a few hours. When I understood what they were, and what other girls’ parents were, I hated them. I really hated them. They made me sick. It wasn’t fair, you know, for them to be drunk all the time, for them to not even notice me.
“Why have me? That’s what always confused me. Why have me if you’re not going to care about me, or even notice me, or even acknowledge I exist? Why have me if all you want to do is get drunk and party every day? Anyway, this went on pretty much the same until I was a teenager. And then—” She stops, fighting back sobs. “And then my dad decided to drive drunk one night and swerved off the road right into a tree, killing them both. They died instantly, or that’s what the doctors told me. I went to live with my grandma after that and things were a little better, but then she died, too.” She shrugs. “I don’t mean to drop all of this on you. I just … I don’t want you to end up like them, Xander.”
Her words thud into me. I touch her hand, give it what I hope is a comforting squeeze. “I won’t,” I tell her. I smile sideways. “I’m a great drunk driver, anyway.”
She snatches her hand away. “That’s not funny!” she hisses, jumping to her feet. She stamps into the bedroom.
I go to the sink, meaning to empty the whisky bottles, but instead I just kneel there and look at them. It’s good whisky. Just because I’m not drinking, it doesn’t mean I should waste perfectly fine whisky. I’ll give it to the club. They can leave it behind the bar. Some of the other fellas’ll get some use out of it.
I leave it as it is and join Kayla in the bedroom, lying down next to her and wrapping my arms around her. She tries to stay mad for a little while, but then she starts to snore. I kiss her on the back of the head, wishing sleep would come so easily to me.
Chapter Fourteen
Xander
I’m sitting next to the ocean. I can’t quite remember what ocean it is, but that don’t matter none. It’s a bright blue ocean, the water so clear a man can stand at the edge and see almost a mile down. There are a hundred thousand fish just in my small section alone. Next to me, Kayla and Cormac play, but they are too quiet for me to hear over the leaping fish and the whales spurting giant towers of water into the air. I lean back, smiling. Life is good. I never knew that when Kayla and I first met. I never guessed that life could be this good, this perfect, even. I look back on those times now, grinning to myself, and then turning and grinning at Kayla. Those early days were hard-going. The detox, the arguments, but we’re a family now and that’s all that matters.
The house is made of bright green wood, blending into the surro
unding forest. The beach is white sand and the sea is tropical, but the trees are the old pines from the campsite Arsen and I stayed at once when we were kids, our one and only holiday, when I climbed so high that Arsen started to sob because he thought he’d lost me. I go into the house and get myself a glass of water. No alcohol for me, not anymore. Those days ended when Kayla and I got serious. I won’t be a drunk. I like water. Water and the sun go together. There’s no need to add alcohol to the equation.
“Liar,” he says, stepping from behind the door.
He’s just like the last time I saw him, his body as black as burnt bacon, smelling just like that, too. I don’t know how he speaks when he hasn’t got much of a mouth, or how he walks around when he doesn’t have any muscles left. Sometimes the ash shifts, flashing a glimpse of bone, but mostly he’s just a charred husk. I can tell he’s smiling but I don’t know how; I don’t see it.
“Liar,” he repeats, walking a circle around me. “You live to be a drunk. Don’t bullshit me. That’s all you care about. We both know it. You’re a drunk and you’ll always be a drunk. It’s simple stuff. Don’t lie to me, big brother. Fucking liar. Fucking drunk. Fucking loser. Where were you?” He places his ashy hand on my shoulder. “Tell me that. When Connor’s men were barring the door and I was burning to death, where were you? Fucking Marie Keller, I bet. You were never around. You never gave a shit about me. I bet you paid Connor to do it. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
I take a step back. I need to get back outside but there’s no outside left. There’s just a yawning abyss where outside once was. I try to go upstairs but there are no doors left, only this room, Arsen, and me. I drop to the floor and bring my knees to my chest, feeling weak and powerful, feeling pathetic. I won’t cry. An outlawing man doesn’t cry. And yet I am crying.
“Let’s be honest about this.” He kneels down so that he would be looking me in the face if he had eyes. “Part of you always wanted me to die. Tell the truth. Part of you always wanted me out of the way. You never cared about me, not really. I was just a burden. I was in the way. I wasn’t your little brother. I was just a pain in the ass. Remember when we were kids and you shouted at me that you wished I was dead? Well, big brother, you got your wish.”
“Stop it!” I yell, sobbing like a coward, sobbing like a girl. “Stop this right now!”
He wraps his arms around me, singeing my skin. “Never,” he says. “I’ll never stop, you evil bastard. You’re the worst brother a man could ever ask for. I hate you. I hate you.”
I sit up in total darkness, mouth dry, heart pounding like it did the first time I ever killed a man. That’s the only other time I’ve ever felt like this, like my whole world has shifted in some fundamental way. I try’n tell myself that it was just a nightmare, but I’m already in the kitchen, bottle of whisky on the counter, staring down at it and trying to fight the unbeatable urge to crack it open. Part of me knows that going into the bedroom and waking up Kayla would be better, or going to the kid and letting him grab onto my finger to remind me that there’s some good in the world. But that part of me is far away; that part of me is a different man.
I don’t want to think about that day when we were kids and I roared at him, in front of some of my friends, that it’d be better if he was dead. I thought I was a real funny guy, a real badass, bullying my little brother like that. And now I’ve gone and fucked his old lady, twice. He’s right. What sort of big brother am I? What sort of man am I? I open the bottle; I’ll just open it. I don’t have to commit to anything.
I open it, smell it. I shouted at him in front of everybody and now he’s dead. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m not a good man. I’ve always known that. But tonight it’s like I’m finally realizing just what a terrible man I really am. Maybe Christopher is right; maybe Kayla is right. Maybe everybody apart from me is right. But I know who’s more right than all of them: Arsen. They scratch at the truth but he digs it up. I’m a bad brother, which means I’m a shitty person seeing as being a brother was the only thing I should’ve been worrying about.
I bring the whisky bottle to my lips. Already I’m smiling, because I know that soon this feeling is going to be gone. Maybe I’ll just have a few swigs, just enough to file down this edge a little. I take a sip, a longer sip than I intended, and the whisky burns a passage down my throat and into my belly, a potent heat that blooms throughout my body like a flower with petals made of fire. This is the thing; this is the only thing. I take another sip, another, urging on the warmth. People will tell me anything they can to try’n keep me chained down, to try’n tell me how to live my life. But that’s horseshit.
I stand in the kitchen for a long time, drinking. At some point I finish the bottle and get another one—might as well—and at some point later on, I pick up my third bottle. The world is a different place now. Everything wobbles from side to side. Nothing is the same. I can’t even remember why I started to drink in the first place. I can’t even remember why I ever wanted to stop drinking, either. Everything is a fog in the background. All I know is that I have to keep drinking, because if I stop I might sober up and that can’t happen under any circumstances. No, I have to keep drinking, just keep on, and try not to think too much. That’s my problem. I let myself think and overthink too much, think myself into a goddamn hole, and then act surprised when I can’t climb out of it.
I sit on the kitchen floor—the tiles are nice and cool—and rest my head against a cupboard. Is Arsen’s old lady in the next room? Did I fuck Arsen’s old lady? It’s important that I remember that, ’cause if that’s true there’s something really wrong here. I wouldn’t fuck Arsen’s old lady, would I? Surely I’m not that much of a fucking asshole. It was bad enough what I did with Marie Keller in front of him, but fucking his old lady? I refuse to believe that. It just doesn’t make sense that I’d do that, not after—
“Xander?” But there she is, Arsen’s old lady standing over me, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“You’re Arsen’s mother’s kid. No—you’re his kid’s mother. Ain’t you?” I stand up, which is harder than it ought to be. It’d be a damn sight easier if she gave me some space, but she’s standing close, like she wants to go for round three. I ain’t doing that. I already betrayed him and I’m not doing it again. “Aren’t you?”
“Xander, you’re wasted. Did you drink both of those? Oh my God, Xander.”
“Tell me the truth!” I snap, spilling too much whisky on the floor. That’s so much less fuel; I’ll have to get another bottle now, thanks to her. “I know it anyway, so you don’t have to tell me.” I push past her into the living room and drop onto the couch. “You and Arsen fucked and you had his kid and now you wanna bounce up and down on my prick, too. How’s that fair? What about Marie Keller?”
“If you want to talk about this,” she says, using that reasonable voice women have, that let-me-just-get-through-to-him voice, “we can talk about it in the morning. But for now, I think you should try and get some sleep.”
“I don’t need a babysitter!” I roar, kicking the armchair into the wall. One of the arms snaps off and the chair falls onto its side. From the other room, the kid starts to cry, high-pitched wails that sound out of place in this apartment. This apartment is for men and club girls, not children. “And get him out of here, too!” I snap, pacing up and down, feeling like I want to go out and find some bastards who’ve said some shit about my club, tool them up, teach them a lesson. I’d never hit a lady or a kid but that don’t mean I want them here. “I mean it! Fucking judge me! Fucking look down on me like I’m a piece of shit!”
“I wasn’t judging you.” She makes to step toward me, but I wave my hand, keeping her away. I can’t let her touch me. She’ll use her magic on me. She’ll slide her hand down to my cock. That’s what they do, how they work. She’ll use her tricks to tie me down and then keep me there, at her mercy. “I’m just trying to make you see sense.”
“You’re fucking stalling!” I snarl
. “See sense. What sense? Leave—there’s your sense. You shouldn’t be here. You should never be here. Arsen’s old lady. Goddamn. I can’t help you! Find someone else!” I swipe the air, fall, land heavily on my ass. “I mean it!” I roar, springing back up.