by Paula Cox
She slips the helmet on and climbs onto the bike.
“You ridden before?” I ask.
“No,” she says, voice muffled in the helmet. “What do I do?”
“Hold on,” I say, and kick the Harley to life.
I ride us out to a bar on the waterfront. A sort of dive place, but a place which makes the best burgers on the waterfront, and a place where the owner owes the Tidal Knights and never charges me a dime. When I park the bike, I think a couple of men are staring at me. Dive-bar types, scraggly hair, covered in poorly-painted tattoos, sneering begging-to-be-punched faces. But then I follow the trail of their gaze and see that they’re staring at Lana instead.
“They know you?” I say.
Lana’s cheeks get redder. She mumbles: “Might’ve come through the Twin Peaks.”
She looks awkward, embarrassed, and that annoys me because she’s been made to feel like shit once already today and I don’t figure she’s due a second go. The men are standing under the eaves of the bar, smoking cigarettes right at the door, puffing clouds into the faces of every passing person. Making it impossible for us to walk in without passing them. Fine, fuck it.
I step close to Lana and wrap my arm smoothly around her shoulders. Half to show these dive-bar fucks that they can’t stare down a woman I’ve brought by the bar, and half because I can’t resist the urge to feel this woman in my arms. Small, and vulnerable, and protected. Yeah, protected.
“You don’t have to,” she says.
I gaze calmly at the dive-bar bastards. “I want to.”
I lead her into the bar, right past the men. I’m waiting for them to say something, almost wanting them to. Truth is, you don’t go from living in a trailer park with an alcoholic for a father and then leading the biggest biker gang in Seattle without developing a taste for violence. But maybe these men know that about me, too, because when I lead Lana past, they don’t say a word.
The bar is full of tattooed men, bearded men, fat tank-top-wearing men, and easy women, women with short skirts and low-cut tops walking unsteadily on heels, women pounding shots at the bar, women screaming at each other. Over the bar, a sign reads: We Serve Until You Drop. A jukebox plays some modern dancing tune, a song I don’t know. Me, I’m more of a Johnny Cash man.
Arm still around her, I lead Lana to a corner booth and wave at the barman. He comes right over, recognizing me. His name is Francis and he’s a short teenage kid with one leg shorter than the other, meaning he has to wear a block shoe.
“Francis, Lana. Lana, Francis.” I wave a hand between them. A man has to have manners, even a man like me. “Lana, what’s your poison?”
“Vodka and coke, please.”
“I’ll take a beer. Thanks, Francis.”
Francis limps off. Lana watches me closely, watches for a long time, watches until Francis brings the drinks, and then just keeps on watching.
I take a sip from my beer and then ask: “Looking for something, little lady?”
She flinches, as though just realizing what she’s been doing. “Uh, no.” She giggles, and then sips her vodka and coke through a straw. “I just—your eyes are very blue. I know that’s a really strange thing to say and I wouldn’t usually but . . . They are really blue.”
She’s right; when I was a kid everyone in the trailer park called me Blue Eyes, called me it right up until the day me and Duster busted out of that shithole.
I wink at her, casual-like. “Ah,” I say. “My eyes have already done all the work. Well, fuck—I guess there’s nothing to do but go back to your place.”
“I’m not that kind of girl,” Lana says, but her voice is playful, like maybe she could be that kind of girl for a certain kind of man. And, dammit, looking at her sitting there with her flushed cheeks and her lips pursed around that straw, I’d do a damn lot to be the right kind of man.
“I never said you were.” I smile at her. Or maybe it’s more of a smirk. I can’t help it. Smirking at women is second-nature to me, the same way bowing before them is second nature to other men. Back in the trailer park, when me and Duster were nothing more than wild animals running around, getting into fights and picking up girls, I did as much smirking as I did fighting. Usually, when I smirk at a woman, she blushes and flutters her eyelashes and throws herself at me and then it’s game over, job done, and I lose interest pretty damn soon after that. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but fuck it, I never claimed to be anything else.
But when I smirk at Lana, she just smiles shyly.
“You implied it,” she says. “I think what I’m going to do is finish this drink and then leave respectfully and never talk to you again. Yep, that sounds like a plan.”
She’s funny, biting, she’s got a goddamn personality.
I ask: “Why’re you working at the Twin Peaks?”
“You mean: ‘What’s a girl like you doing working in a place like this?’”
I laugh, can’t help but laugh. It isn’t often I meet a woman who can make me laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“I worked in a normal café for a while. You know, the sort where you get to wear clothes and the most you ever have to deal with is some creep looking down your T-shirt when you’re leaning over to pick up a tray. But the money wasn’t good enough. Well, do you really want to hear this?’
“I do,” I say, shocked at myself. “Yeah, I really do.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to school for Creative Writing, and I’ve finished two years, but I didn’t have money for the third; I saved all through high school, started working as soon as anyone would hire me. I thought I’d be able to save enough for the third while I was studying, but—nope. So I took a year off, started applying for grants and whatever, and then one of the girls mentioned the Twin Peaks and how those girls get paid more hourly. And I thought to myself, screw it. I’ll strip off and make some more money. My plan is to move to Seattle and finish my studies there.”
“And then what?”
“And then, Kade, I become a world-renowned writer and you’ll be lucky to get five minutes of my time.” She waves a hand over the bar, over the country, over the world. “And everybody will know my name, and when you’re old you’ll tell your pals: ‘I once met Lana Thompson.’ And none of them will believe you.” She laughs, shaking her head, sipping her vodka. “No, I don’t know. Maybe a bit of freelance. Maybe get a job as an editor. Maybe get a desk job. Anything’ll beat standing there with my breasts out for perverts like Chester, though it’s not all bad.”
“How’s that?” I ask.
I finish my beer and hold up two fingers to Francis, who starts making our second round of drinks.
“Well, all girls like to be appreciated, I guess.” She blushes. “I don’t get off on it or anything,” she adds quickly.
“You’re a little dirty, aren’t you, Lana?”
She swallows, pouts again, eyes flashing golden and playful. Goddamn, those eyes, they make me think what it’d be like to see them go wide with me deep inside of her, make me think what it’d be like to see them go wide with shock as my cock opens her up and she’s there wondering if she can take it all. Make me think what it’d be like if I was drilling her from behind and she’s twisting her head around and looking at me wide-eyed and full of pleasure.
“Maybe,” she says, and then leans back as Francis places the drinks down. “I really shouldn’t.”
But then she picks it up and takes a sip.
“How old are you, Lana?” I ask.
“Twenty-two. You?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“You’re an old man,” she jokes.
“You’re a kid,” I retort.
Our eyes meet. We laugh. I sip my beer.
“So are you living at home with your parents?”
“My mom, yeah, though it’s like she isn’t really there. She drinks all day and claims disability for headaches. My dad is in jail for petty theft, his third—no, fourth time now.” She stops, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to lay all
that on you. This vodka’s going to my head.”
“It’s alright,” I say, realizing it is, it really is, I am really okay with it. What is happening to me right now? Usually, a woman starts chirping on about her life and her parents and all that shit, I’m done. I zone out. I get out of the situation as fast as I can. But with Lana I don’t mind hearing about it too much. Maybe it’s the beer, I tell myself, the beer and those eyes and those lips and those huge breasts squashed into that too-tight bikini top.
She’s about to say something else when the dive-bar fucks from outside stumble into the bar, shoving each other and shouting and talking too loudly and generally being assholes ruining everybody else’s good time. Their leader is a tall, wide man, a vending-machine man with a shaved head and a swastika tattooed under his left eye, a teardrop tattooed under his right, wearing a tank top to show off his vending-machine bulk. He wasn’t with the dive-bar fucks outside. He must be the cavalry.
One of his minions, a skinny mini-me of the vending-machine man with a tank top and Swastika of his own, taps him on the shoulder and points at us. Lana, who has turned to watch them enter, sees this and swivels quickly to me.
“We should go,” she mutters. “This doesn’t look good.”
“It’s fine,” I say, voice flat. I feel that deep stirring, distant and faraway, that always comes before violence. A stirring which followed me through my childhood in the trailer park. A stirring which moved through my body every time my drunk father sat me down and downed glass after glass of whisky, waving his revolver around and screaming at me that one of these days he was going to use it, eyes red, cheeks redder. “Don’t move.”
The leader swaggers over, all bluster, and stands over the table.
“Listen, pal,” he says, “you disrespected my friend here and I don’t take too fuckin’ kindly to it. Apologize or I’m goin’ to smash your fuckin’ teeth in—”
I move with a fighter’s speed and instinct, speed and instinct honed in junkyards and playgrounds and alleyways, fighting off kids twice my age and twice my size, speed and instinct honed by countless hours of bloody violence.
I jump up from my seat, grab his arm, twist it, and slam his head into the table, holding him still. By the time he knows what I’m doing, his face is already smashed against the table.
“You and your friends are going to leave,” I say, “or there really will be trouble.”
There is anger in me, and pain, and hatred, as if all the years of my past in the trailer park are resurfacing now, swirling in my chest. But the anger does not show itself on the outside. Outside, I am calm. I am the leader of the Tidal Knights. And no bastard marches up to the leader of the Tidal Knights when he’s on a date and tells him shit.
I give the man’s arm a twist. “Understand?”
His minions watch, waiting to see which way it’ll go. If there boss stands tall, they’ll fight. If not, they’ll flee.
The boss does not stand tall. He whimpers. “Yes, okay. I get it. Damn.”
“Alright, then.”
I let go of his arm and take a step back, ready to do violence if it comes to it. But the leader just rotates his arm, wincing, and then turns and paces from the bar, barging a couple of his own men out of the way. A few people in the bar stare at me. I stare back, and they all look away, and then, once all the fuss is over, I return to my seat.
I realize Lana is watching me, biting her lip, a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before. When I look at her, she quickly glances down at the table and releases her lip.
“Wow,” she says, then finishes her vodka in a quick sip. “Wow.”
“Another drink?” I ask.
“Yes. Sure.”
I drain my beer and hold up my fingers to signal for more drinks.
“Do I sense that you got some thrill from that, Lana?” I say, as Francis brings the drinks over.
“No,” she shoots back, a little too sternly, overcompensating. “Absolutely not. I am a classy lady, Kade, the classiest lady you’ve ever met.”
I nod. “That’s probably true, actually.”
“Really?” she says. “The classiest lady you’ve ever met works as a bikini barista?”
“Well, fuck it.” I shrug. “You’re not hurting anyone, except maybe yourself.”
“Myself?”
“That guy earlier. He didn’t seem so friendly.”
“He’s an exception. Mostly the guys just like to look at you. A couple say crude things. That’s all.”
“And you kind of like it, sometimes,” I say.
She nods, only showing slight embarrassment. “It isn’t as black and white as that. Nothing ever is, in my experience. Take you, for example.”
“Me?” I sip my beer. I’m starting to feel a little tipsy. Not even close to drunk, but a little farther from sober than I was when we got in here. Lana is tipsier; her face is crimson and flushed and her eyes have that hazy gloss to them, but she’s not drunk either. “What about me?”
“You’re a violent biker,” she says. “A man I should be afraid of. The Tidal Knights. That’s a biker gang, right? So you’re a member of a—”
“Gotta stop you there, little lady. I’m the founder and leader of the Tidal Knights, not just a member.”
She looks at me anew, with fresh eyes, and that same glinting. Excitement and lust. I know enough about women to recognize it when I see it. She wants something tonight and I’ve got a mind to give it to her.
“Okay, you’re the leader of a biker gang and a violent man. I should be afraid of you. And yet I am still here. And yet I am afraid of you, a little. So you see how people are a little more complicated than is often assumed.”
“I guess so,” I say. “I never really give it much thought, truth be told.”
“I suppose I have a lot of time to think when I’m standing there between customers.”
We finish our drinks and then I lean back and just watch her for a little while. I could get used to watching her, watching her all day and night, with those flushed cheeks and that way of looking at me like she can’t quite decide how far to go, even though I can tell she wants something from me, something real.
“I’m staying at a motel,” I tell her.
“Okay . . .”
“I think we should take a cab back there.”
“What about your bike?”
“Francis won’t let anything happen to it. He knows the Tidal Knights.”
“Why would I go back to your motel with you, anyway?” she says, but her eyes betray her, the way she struggles not to bite her lip betrays her.
“We both know why,” I say, holding her gaze.
“I’m not that kind of girl,” she says, and then she reaches across the table and lays her hand on mine. “Usually. Don’t judge me in the morning, Kade.”
“I’ll never judge you,” I say. “I promise that. I’d never dream of it.”
I stand up and walk around the table, reach down and lift her to her feet, and then lean down and kiss her hard on the lips.
She moans, and so do I.
Chapter Four
Lana
When he kisses me, I forget about everything for a second.
All my life, there have been certain emotions swirling around inside of me, even if they often become background noise. I will be walking from the bus stop to the Twin Peaks or serving a customer or just watching TV and my mind will be replaying Dad’s ranting and drug-taking and Mom’s absolute submission to defeat, her groans and her occasional sighs as she sips from her hipflask, or I will be thinking about how I am a failure and don’t even have enough money yet to move to Seattle. All these depressing, anxious feelings.
But when Kade kisses me, I forget.
He presses his lips firmly into mine, so firmly I feel the solid touch of our teeth through the flesh of our lips, passion making the pain quiet, easy to ignore. I fall into him, laying my body against his jacket, feeling my breasts press against the mass of his muscular body. Then I break t
he kiss off and look up at him, in his embrace.
“Let’s go,” I say.
He nods, takes my hand, and we leave the bar.
I meant it when I told him I’m not that kind of girl. I have never been that kind of girl. I’ve had partners, of course, but I’ve never thrown myself around. I’ve never felt like I owed men anything, and so I have never given them more than I wanted to. But now, with Kade, my lust overrides everything; this has never happened to me before. It’s like my lust is a separate entity inside of me, driving me forward. I want it. I want it bad. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted it before. Kade hails a cab and tells the driver the address of the motel. We don’t touch in the car, but lust rises like a scent between us, animals waiting for the pesky eyes of the cab driver to be gone so we can fall upon each other.