by A. J. Downey
“It was all done online as far as I know.”
“So a credit card?”
“Ah, no.” He laughs a bit as he tightens a bolt on the rack. “That was funny. It was an anonymous bank draft, hand delivered yesterday by UPS.”
So a hidden paper trail, no doubt. That’s good. Wolf is not being reckless. I like that. That could save his ass.
“Now you’re ready for a road trip,” Bryan quips as he fastens the last pannier.
“I am ready for it,” I say, hopping on to the bike and buckling my new helmet. “I’ve been working too hard.”
“Right on,” Bryan says.
With his benediction, I ride off.
When I get back to my place, packing is a breeze. Everything I own is black so everything matches. I strip out of my leathers and add two more insulating layers for the long ride ahead of me. When I’m all packed and dressed I attend to some life/work administration.
First, another text to Amy.
Decided to take two weeks off. Can you deal?
Her reply: What the fuck?
And then: Yes. I’ll farm out the Brazil trip to a VP, put Eduardo on notice for the London thing and just let Mekisha do the final picks for the summer line. We’ve got signed checks to last a good month and I can finish the quarterly report.
And finally: I hope he’s worth it.
Cheeky little minx. I need to give her a raise.
I reply: Move one of the warehouse kids into my house will you? Collect the mail and all that. I’m leaving the car keys on the table. They can use it.
Are you okay, Dee? is her reply to that. And: Where are you going?
Better than okay, I tell her. And I’m not going to a place so much as a feeling.
I literally feel her eyes rolling at me.
The mizzle has stopped by the time I get out to the bike to set on my quest. I don’t need to wonder why Wolf didn’t just come to my door if he wants me back. In spite of his violent past, he’s a gentleman. He would never want to put me on the spot like that, make me feel threatened by him or in any kind of danger because of his alliances. He sacrificed a lot to get me away from that.
I pause for a moment, feeling the weight of the Harley under me as I remember that time, that terrible time.
“They’ll come after you,” he said to me. We were sitting in the back room of a seedy Italian restaurant, owned by someone who owed Wolf a favor.
“So give me a gun,” I said, defiantly. I was faking it. I was terrified of the Fiends and even more terrified of the mysterious forces at work against them. And my love for Wolf was not the armor I thought it was.
“No amount of guns will stop them, angel,” he said. He touched my face, shaking his head.
I felt my eyes fill up with tears as I asked the obvious question. “What’s in the bag, Wolf?”
He slid the heavy bag across the floor under the table. “Your future. Driver’s License. Social. Passport. And a lot of money. You are going to disappear.”
“Will that stop them?”
“No. But we’re going to try to make it look like you’re dead. And I’m going to cop to Redbone’s screw up. The prosecutor just wants a body behind bars and—”
I interrupted him. “You can’t go to prison! You’ll get killed or—”
“I’ll get protective custody. It’ll be all right.”
“Solitary confinement you mean?” I shook my head, feeling nauseous. “That’s torture.”
He stared into my eyes; and I loved him just as much as I ever did. It was all encompassing, destructive, cataclysmic. Like a tornado.
“I’ve done terrible things,” he said.
“None of that matters. Not to me. And everyone you hurt had it coming.”
“Ahh, angel. You know that’s not true.”
“That was your club brothers. Not you.”
Over the din of the other diners, and the ancient speakers crackling out Frank Sinatra, I heard a siren approaching.
“There’s my ride,” Wolf said. “Bull-D called it in.”
“No,” I cried, clutching at his hair. I didn’t want it to end. Not like that. Not at all. I searched my mind for some alternative, some way I could get away from this horror and keep Wolf. But there was nothing there, no way but the highway.
“Go out the back, through the kitchen. There’s a taxi waiting. You can trust the driver.”
“No…”
“He’s gotten girls out before. He knows the drill. He’ll take you where you need to go and explain everything. You can’t contact anyone from your old life. You understand that? Not ever.”
I had no one in my old life. I grew up in foster homes and once I aged out those families dropped me like a hot stone. And all my work friends drifted away when I left the shoe store. I just stared into Wolf’s eyes, nodding. I couldn’t say any more. My voice was gone.
“I love you, fallen angel,” Wolf said. “Beautiful Daniella. Don’t cry.”
That was the last time anyone used that name. I released his hair with a defeated sigh, and let my hands fall to the handle of the bag under the table.
‘Tell me your real name,” I said, as I stood. “At least give me that.”
He laughed, as though this was all a game, and stood to take me in his arms. Over the beating of both our hearts I heard the sirens coming closer and closer.
“Michael,” he said, and kissed me until the sound of the front door slamming open startled us apart.
“Police! Nobody move!” a voice shouted.
Wolf shoved me through the door into the kitchen. Someone grabbed me, tearing me away from him. I watched the scene as though in a dream. Him disappearing in the distance, through the steam of the pasta cooking, through the cooks and waiters scurrying around, through a set of swinging doors. I could still glimpse his face through the grimy round window but as I was pulled across a storeroom and through a heavy door into a dark alley, I lost that too.
I lost him.
“Dee? Dee? Are you okay?”
I look up to see my neighbor, Mrs. Quincy, with her three wriggling little dachshunds on leashes standing at the end of my driveway.
How long have I been sitting here? I tuck my hair behind my ears, and turn the helmet in my hand, preparing to put it on. “I’m fine, Mrs. Q. Just heading out of town for a couple of weeks. Some of my colleagues will be coming by to watch the house.”
She looks dubious. Even her dogs look dubious. “New bike?” she says.
“Yeah. Gift from a friend.”
No one on my street knows how much money I have, so in this instance the truth works better than lying and telling her I bought it.
“Nice friend,” she says. “Have a good trip.” She tugs her dogs away a little abruptly. It occurs to me that Mrs. Q. might think I’m a call girl with a very generous patron. Eh, whatever. I think she’s a KGB sleeper agent who secretly attends furry conventions.
“Bye Mrs. Q!” I call after her. Sliding the helmet over my head, I shift my ass into a better position on the seat before starting the bike. It roars loud enough to startle those little dachshunds down at the end of the block. I wave as Mrs. Q. turns and glares at me. Then I shove the bike forward off the kickstand and crank the throttle as I slowly release the clutch.
I’m on my way, Wolf.
As I cruise out of the suburbs and onto the I5 freeway south, it’s as though my body remembers for me, remembers how to ride, remembers the feel of a bike under me. And I go into a kind of trance, hyper-aware and ready to react to anything, yet peaceful. Time seems to lose all its meaning and before I know it I’m stopping to refuel just north of Portland. The rush of excitement about Wolf’s letter has settled into a low hum of anticipation, with real life layered over it.
Am I really going to do this? I mean even though he knows where I live, if I turned back now and never sought him out he wouldn’t come for me. He meant what the letter said—that the bike was a gift because I deserve to feel the wind on my face. So this idea of a
future together is up to me.
But then, maybe it won’t be a future together. Maybe I’m just going for one last epic fuck. I stare out at the sunset to the west as I think of the last time we fucked, the day before the shit hit the fan. It wasn’t fast and frenzied. We had no idea what was about to happen. We stupidly thought we had all the time in the world. That’s what we did to each other—made everything seem happy and safe. Sure we had fast and frenzied fucks sometimes, but the last time we were together it was the opposite—slow, intense, our bodies merging so deeply that it was as though bits of our souls were dancing and twirling together.
“I love you,” Wolf whispered over my lips, slowly inching his cock in and out of me, his hand cradling my ass. “I love you so much I can barely think of anything else.”
It was like that for me too. Neither of us could think of the danger we were both in.
I cap the gas tank and I twist in my seat, unzipping one of the panniers and pulling out a black Lycra infinity scarf, which I loop three times around my neck to keep the cold night air from freezing my skin. Yep, I’m going to ride all night. I’m committed to this folly. I know where Wolf is. Like he said in his letter, we talked about it enough times.
Gualala, California. Wolf hitchhiked north from LA when he was seventeen and bailing on his abusive drunk of a father. And he just kept taking rides. He’d be dropped off somewhere, sleep in a park, wash up in a public library bathroom and then get back on the road. He told me once that he’d “know his destination when he saw it”. And he saw it in Gualala—a 1903 hotel that Wolf described as “just like out of a movie”. So he bid the beer trucker goodbye and spent his last dollars on a room for the night. The next day, he told me, he scammed his way into a few hours of work at the surf shop, enough to keep him fed.
He slept on the beach, surfed with borrowed surfboards, panhandled when he could get away with it, and invited himself to bonfire parties to get warm at night. And when he could afford it, he’d stay at the hotel again, or eat in their quaint little dining room, or even just sit on their porch, looking out at the sea. Wolf said it made him feel centered, grounded, as though the hotel had some secret message for him if he could just find it. He said he felt like his future resided there, somehow. That was the kind of thing he said all the time. He believed in magic despite all the shit the world dealt him. He just kept hanging out at the hotel and searching for that message.
Until the Fallen Fiends rolled in. The Fiends specialized in gathering society’s rejects and turning them into monsters who kill for money. And they weren’t as discerning as other clubs, so Wolf’s sweetness, his west coast idealism and dready hair were no deterrent. They invited him onto the back of one of the prospects’ bikes and took him away from that charmed hotel he loved so much. That’s how he lost his dream. And that’s where he’d go to get it back, what he meant in his letter. And that’s where I’m headed too.
I arrive in Gualala just after dawn, cold and stiff but wide-awake, my body tingling with anticipation. I see the hotel before I even need to stop and ask a local for directions. It’s unmistakable. An old two-story cream colored clapboard building with up-down windows and wrap around porches on the main and second floor. And the date marker on the peak of the roof reads 1903, just as Wolf described it. As I roll the bike into a parking space right out front I find myself taken in by the charm of it. I bet this hotel has seen some things.
I ease the bike onto the kickstand and jump off, stopping for a quick stretch to let the blood back into my legs. Tugging off my helmet, I grab my gear sack and panniers and stomp up the stairs to the hotel. A small sign greets me at the front door.
OUT OF BUSINESS.
My heart jumps up into my throat. I step back and take a proper look at the hotel. In my excitement about finding the hotel I failed to notice the boarded up windows, the lack of life.
And Wolf, of course, is nowhere to be seen. Have I gotten it wrong? Is this the wrong place? Suddenly light-headed, I step back to the stairs, grabbing the porch railing for support.
“Are you okay, honey?”
Would you believe it? Someone is walking their dachshunds. She’s like Mrs. Q’s twin too—grey-haired, plump, with a faint air of judgment about her.
“I’m fine. I just had a long ride.”
She presses her lips together disapprovingly. See? Judgment. She looks at her watch.
“The soup kitchen around the back opens in five minutes, if you need something to warm you up.” She tugs her dogs away without saying another word.
Soup kitchen? I could buy this whole town. But I decide to investigate. If wastrels are getting their breakfast what better place to find my own?
There’s a short line-up around the back of the hotel—the usual suspects, shabby looking young and older men, a couple of cronish women of indeterminate age. Addicts mostly from the looks of it, but there are a few who have that nomadic look about them, humping heavy backpacks and wearing sturdy hiking boots. It’s a friendly scene with lots of chatter and warmth. I almost don’t want to disturb them. But as I approach, one of them turns, gapes at me, then nudges his companion. As others turn a silence falls over the line-up, all the faces studying me with growing amusement.
None of them are Wolf. I’m frozen to the spot, caught between humiliation and despair, when a scraggly bearded old dude at the front of the line pounds on the back door of the hotel, shouting.
“Yo, Wolf! Your bird is here!”
There’s a crash from inside, as though a stack of pots has been knocked over. Then I watch in astonished fascination, as several in the line-up seem to be paying off bets in cigarettes and small amounts of cash.
“I told you it would be twenty-four hours at most,” one of them says.
“Yeah, yeah,” his friend replies begrudgingly, handing over a fiver.
The back door rattles as the lock clicks. It flies open, nearly braining the bearded dude.
And then Wolf is standing there, looking like a prince. A tired prince with a shorn head, unkempt beard and clothes that look like they came from the dumpster behind a 1980s funeral home.
But still as beautiful as the day we met. His grey eyes practically glow as they settle on me, and the smile his face breaks into seems to light up the whole alleyway.
“Angel…” he says. “You’re here.”
He hands a ladle to the bearded dude and jumps down the stairs.
“Crooksy, take her stuff,” he says and a young man steps forward and relieves me of my helmet, gear sack and panniers. Then Wolf lifts me up and carries me inside as the whole line-up erupts in applause.
The next thing I know I’m being carried through a warm kitchen as Wolf calls back, “Robbo, you can handle breakfast right?”
There’s a muffled reply as Wolf pushes through the swinging door into the long dining hall. He sets me down on a freshly scrubbed dining table, but I don’t let go, hanging my arms around his neck, breathing him in. Despite his scruffy appearance he smells phenomenal, clean, fresh and sexy. I slide my hands up over his beard and hair, feeling the roughness on my cold hands.
“Do you want to eat? It’s just oatmeal and sliced apples today, I’m afraid. Nothing fancy. I do pancakes on Sundays though.”
“Kiss me,” I say decisively.
He obliges, his mouth hot on mine. In seconds our tongues are intermingled, tasting every part of each other, his strained breath warming me to my core. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him close enough to feel his body responding even through my sturdy leather pants.
“Angel,” he says, panting. “The guys are going to come in here to eat soon.”
“Where can we go?” I ask, peeling off my gloves and shoving them into the pockets of my jacket. I slide one bare hand down into his pants, finding his hard cock and gripping it.
“Ay, your hand is cold!” he yelps. But his heat soon warms my skin as he moans softly under my touch.
“Oh, angel, I’ve missed you.” He lifts me again, tugging my h
and out of his pants and wrapping it around his neck. We cross the dining hall like that, lips locked together, bodies entwined. Through the dining hall doors is a wood paneled entrance hall, its wall adorned with antique photographs of wagons and steamships and ladies in bustles and corsets. Wolf turns and takes me up the stairs, the effort of carrying me nothing to him. I’m not a slight woman either; there’s meat on these bones, but he takes the stairs by two, dropping me into a faded settee on the second floor landing.
Our frenzy decelerates then to a slow burn as we kiss and shed items of clothing. Wolf peels my jacket off, taking a second to recognize it with a smile as the one he gave me all those years ago. I yank off his unraveling sweater and untuck the flannel shirt underneath, sliding my hands under to feel the smooth hard muscles of his abdomen and chest.
His hands are hot as they push up my two layers of Dhark t-shirts and deftly unhook my front closing bra. He cups my tits reverentially, bending to suck each nipple in turn, making me gasp with pleasure. As his sucking turns to gentle biting and the pleasure mixes with a sting of exquisite pain, his hands drop to the button fly of my leather pants, popping each button.
“These are sexy as fuck,” he murmurs, glancing down at my waist. He lets himself slide down, lips brushing over my skin as he begins to tug the pants off.
“Should I take my boots off?” I say. My reason is leaving me. I stare up at the ornate coved ceiling above the stairwell as Wolf roughly pulls my pants down to my knees.
“That won’t be necessary,” he says. His fingers slip into my black lace panties, sliding them easily over my hips, exposing my neatly trimmed bush. Wolf parts my lips with his thumbs and bends down to flick his tongue over my clit.
“Don’t you think—”
“Shhh,” he hisses over my hungry flower. He reaches down under my knees, hoisting them over his shoulder and bending them up to my chest, baring my ass and pussy to anyone who might come up the stairs.
But I don’t care, because Wolf dives back down with his mouth everywhere; his tongue opens me, searching inside; one long finger presses insistently over my ass until my body lets him in inch by inch. Two fingers of his other hand delve into my pussy, pumping in and out as a fire of pleasure begins to build all over me.