“Your boss must be pretty cool if he doesn’t like Charlie,” I said.
“Believe it or not, Charlie does have some redeeming qualities. And he helped me out when I was younger. I owe him a lot.”
“You only say that because you’re Catholic. If you were a Baptist you’d have dumped him like a bad habit.”
Frank smiled at me. “Maybe.”
“We’re gonna work on this guilt thing, Frank,” I said, kicking my shoes off and putting my feet up on the dash. “You’ll see. Soon you’ll be doing all sorts of things without feeling any remorse. You might even have sex with a minor.”
I glared at my newly sworn enemy the mirror, a stranger looking back at me. Frank had practically shaved my head after going through the trouble of dying it mousy brown, using his straight-edge razor blade to give me the manual equivalent of an electric buzz-cut. I had to admit that I was unrecognizable, though I didn’t know whether that was from the color or the style.
People always cry on makeover shows. Now I understood why. It was God-awful. I looked average. Worse than average. Completely unattractive.
How was I ever going to seduce Frank, make him fall in love with me, if I was brunet? It wasn’t like I could astound him with my intellect, or my ever-increasing skill of putting my foot in my mouth. Being pretty was all I had. I may as well have let Charlie buy my death. My life was over.
I touched my face, my skin no longer luminescent, my eyes grayer than usual and stormy. This was pure punishment, and not the good kind.
“You okay?” Frank asked, glancing up at me from the edge of the bed. He was plowing through Wuthering Heights, working on wearing it out as much as his other novel while I tried to adjust to my new look. It wasn’t me. I supposed that was the point, but it wasn’t V either. At least not the idea I had for him.
In my mind, V was like Frank. Cold. Detached. Tall. I knew that reducing my name to a mere letter wouldn’t affect my height. Nor should it change my personality. But it had, and it made me aware of something: V was the one who’d stabbed a person to death. Vincent would’ve died on the floor like a good boy.
“It’s only temporary,” I sighed, something he had been reminding me every few minutes since he made me steal the dye from a drugstore. He claimed that it would look suspicious to buy it, as if dying the child’s hair so he doesn’t look like the missing posters was part of Kidnapping 101. This was my first time out of Illinois, and I would forever associate it with a drab Tennessee motel room and an unpleasant makeover.
It didn’t help that the room had evidently been the stage for many changes of appearance over the years; there were multiple dye stains on the bathroom walls, reds and browns, even some green, though that could’ve been anything. Apparently, Tennessee was a good place to go when you were on the lam.
Frank set down his book and motioned for me to come over. The way he avoided speaking made me feel like I was in a church. Use your inside voice, Vincent. This is a sacred place. Remember your manners.
I sat beside him, carefully moving his book out of my way. This was as far out of his possession it had been since I gave it to him.
“I’m worried about you, V,” he said, and he stood up. I stood too. I’d already learned that if Frank did something, it was a good idea to replicate. The one time I hadn’t followed his subtle lead, I hit my head on a low-hanging sign that he’d wisely ducked. The slight pain had been worth it though. Not only had it gotten a good laugh out of him, I hadn’t felt short for once. “You look tired.”
“I look brunet,” I said contemptuously. I wasn’t planning on telling him just how much I hated what he’d done to me, but he’d sort of asked.
“You didn’t sleep in the car,” he said. He’d quickly gotten into the habit of ignoring comments that may be construed as lippy if he had something important to say to me.
I shrugged. Nothing got past Frank. “I wanted to see where we were going,” I said, slumping back onto the bed to put a little distance between us. I didn’t want to talk about how much Charlie had scared me. I was V now, and V wasn’t afraid of shit like that. He didn’t have nightmares over things that were in the past. He stayed up all night because Frank did.
“Vincent―”
“You’re not supposed to call me that anymore,” I said, trying to remain standoffish though I couldn’t help but smile and swoon a little over how he said my name.
“Have you ever been in a fight?” he asked, completely changing the subject.
“I’ve been beaten up before.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” I said.
He slapped me. I gasped and held my face. He’d surprised me, but it hadn’t hurt. Just a slight stinging where his fingers grazed my cheek, and the all-too-brief rush that faded before I opened my mouth. “What was that for?”
“I’m going to teach you how to fight.”
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head. “Um, thanks?”
He slapped me again, this time harder.
“Fuck, Frank! Knock it off!” I yelled, the adrenaline making my hands shake. I was all for playing rough, but tonight wasn’t the best night for it, and I drew the line at taking blows to the face. My face was my best feature. He’d already done enough damage to my appearance by butchering my hair.
“You need to be afraid of me.”
“But I’m not―”
He hit me on the other side with enough force to make my eyes water. I wouldn’t have a bruise, but my cheek would be pink for hours. “If you think I’m holding back you won’t fully defend yourself.”
If he wanted to show a lack of restraint, there were plenty of other ways to go about it. Horizontally, for one. I glared at him. Hadn’t I been through enough without getting smacked around?
“That’s better,” he said. Then he gestured for me to stand again, and he started moving the furniture.
We went at each other until it got late, when our sounds of exertion could’ve been misinterpreted as domestic violence, or, heaven forbid, sex. My limbs and back were sore, and I had a bruise forming on my wrist from the one and only time I blocked one of his strikes, but it didn’t hurt at all where he’d slapped me. Frank had known what he was doing. He’d hit me just hard enough to get me riled up, but not so hard as to leave marks. And he completely wore me out, so I slept through the night without even a second of a bad dream.
Since I was supposed to be dead, he had rented a standard single room. I certainly wasn’t going to complain about sharing his bed, though I hadn’t known what to expect. I’d never slept beside someone without getting to know them a little better first. But it felt completely natural. I woke by his side, curled up against him with my arm across his chest. Frank was laying flat on his back like a corpse, twenty pages into his book.
It had to be a much weirder experience for him than for me. I didn’t have to ask about his sexual preference to know he didn’t think about me that way. Though he didn’t seem to mind how far away from my side of the bed I’d moved in my sleep.
“Is this your second time through?” I asked, nodding toward his book.
He smiled. He’d probably known I was awake before I realized it myself. “Good morning.”
I rolled over and stretched, staring up at the ceiling. There was a constellation of cracks in the plaster that looked remarkably like Elvis. It matched the tacky velvet portrait on the wall. I hoped it was a coincidence.
“Did you sleep?” I asked. My head was freezing.
“No,” he said indifferently.
I’d been known to talk as much in my sleep as I did when I was awake, not to mention the amount of moving around I did while dreaming. It wasn’t exactly something I could control, but I’d still feel bad about keeping him up. He had enough trouble sleeping without my help. “Because of me?” I asked.
“You’re fine, V,” he said, sitting up. “If you were bothering me, you would’ve woken up on the floor.”
“Are we gonna fight again today?
” I asked, taking his slight threat as an invitation for further excitement.
“You liked that, did you?” he asked, lightly smacking me on the head. “No, we’re leaving.”
“Already?” I asked disappointedly. Part of me wanted to stay behind closed doors until I was pretty and blond again, but really I just wanted more physical activity with Frank. That was the most fun I’d ever had while learning. Not even Mark feeling me up after track practice could compare, though to be fair, I hadn’t exactly learned anything from his teaching that I didn’t already know.
Running fast was something I’d always been able to do; survival of the fittest in the most basic degree. If I’d been slower than the other small kids, I would’ve spent more time shoved in lockers and less time giving blowjobs behind the bleachers.
While I would have liked it to be, having Frank teach me to fight wasn’t sexual at all. It was difficult to think of how attractive I found him when I was dodging his hands, and during the time we’d spent sparring, he’d never paused long enough for me to enjoy getting sweaty with him. But for as good as I felt now, we may as well have made love all night. I hadn’t slept that peacefully in ages, and nothing short of war breaking out could possibly ruin my day. Even though my self defense skills were anything but skillful, I was already confident that the next time I was in danger, running for the hills wouldn’t be my only option.
“Charlie’s still in Chicago, so you can go out and get breakfast if you’d like,” he said, handing me another wad of cash. My pockets were still full from the first wad. “Bring me a cup of coffee.”
Obviously my desire to go out had nothing to do with it. “Yes, sir,” I said sarcastically. I may have enjoyed doing things for Frank, but giving him shit was too much fun to resist. I was even tempted to call him Warden, though I knew he wouldn’t find it amusing. “You want cream or sug―”
“No.”
“Of course. Black,” I said, taking the money and pulling on my shoes.
I sat in a booth while I waited for my to-go order, hating my hair in the reflection of a sticky fingerprinted silver napkin holder. And I wasn’t the only one watching me. The guy was in his early forties, the slightest trace of gray in his long sideburns. He had a guitar strapped to his back, and a packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He smiled at me, not revealing any missing teeth, which was more than could’ve been said for the waitress. Then he nodded toward the bathroom.
Take that, bad hair.
I set the napkin holder back against the wall, wiping off my fingerprints with my sleeve, and followed the guitar.
“How old are you?” he asked as he fiddled with my makeshift belt, the sleeve I’d ripped off my pink shirt. Once that was untied, there was nothing keeping those pants up.
“Old enough,” I said. Southern accents were sexy on TV. His just sounded like he had a speech impediment, and I shut him up without further ado. I closed my eyes as he sucked me off, trying not to think of all the things that kept coming to mind; Mark and Charlie and Charlie’s dead friend and the guy who stabbed me and then I thought of Frank and I was almost there when he pulled his mouth away and asked “Where’d you get that?” in his stupid accent.
I looked down, his fingers dancing over my scar like it was a guitar string. I didn’t want him touching my scar. I suddenly didn’t want him touching me at all. “I…had a kidney removed,” I said, going with the first thing that came to mind.
“I thought kidneys were in the back.”
“That’s why they removed it,” I snapped, pulling my pants back up. Blowjob officially ruined.
He stood up, lifting his guitar by the neck and slipping it back over his shoulder. “Hey, ain’t you gonna do me?”
It had been a long time since I’d sucked someone’s cock without necessity or the threat of physical violence, and it did occur to me that I could very well say no, that I had no intention of doing him. But intentions and actions were very different things, and I learned early in my sexual education that having some guy fuck you in the face until you choked wasn’t nearly as much fun as compliantly sucking his cock as you were told. Then again, I had spent the night learning to defend myself.
“Do you like my hair?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s nice I guess.”
“Wrong answer,” I said, feeling quite brave until I remembered that his guitar came pretty close to outweighing me. Then I ran. Old habits may have died hard, but that didn’t mean I had to.
The slight jolt of the trunk being shut woke me from a deep sleep. I opened the door and stepped out, rubbing my eyes and scratching my stubbly hair. Usually Frank would wake me before we stopped somewhere, even if he was just running inside to pay for a tank of gas. But as we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t hold it against him.
It was darker out than it had ever been in Chicago, the sky clear and filled with thousands of stars shining above us, illuminating the desolate landscape. The skies of Branford used to look that way, but only if you were standing on the nice side. I wondered whether we were in Florida yet. The air was definitely warmer. “Are we lost?” I asked, glancing uninterestedly at the small shovel in Frank’s hand.
“No,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“Should be around three. My watch is in the car.”
“Are you burying someone?” I asked. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have a body in the trunk this whole time, but short of a blue-balled guitar player Frank didn’t know about, I couldn’t imagine who it would be.
“Yes,” he said, “you.”
I rolled my eyes.
Frank smiled and leaned the shovel against his car, then pulled his coat out of the backseat and set it gently over my shoulders. “We’ll be here awhile. I’m going to dig a pit. Normally I don’t have this much to burn.”
I slipped my arms through the sleeves and followed him as he walked to the front of his car. Our trash from the last three hotel rooms was laid out on the hood, along with my clothes and his tattered copy of Jane Eyre.
“You’re burning this?” I asked, picking it up and shaking my head as more than half the pages stayed where they were on the car.
“It has my fingerprints all over it.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll buy you another copy as soon as we go somewhere with a bookstore.”
“I don’t need another copy, V. I have it memorized.”
“Is that why you read it so many times?” I asked, though I had to admit that I was thoroughly impressed. Not that I wasn’t impressed with most of the things he did.
“Of course. How else could I read in the dark?”
“Well, I know that’s the reason I don’t enjoy reading. Too much light…”
“Cheeky.”
“Weirdo.”
“I’ve always memorized them. It’s how I learned so many languages. I translate them in my head.”
“Really?” I asked, sitting on the hood beside my torn pink shirt, and making myself comfortable so he’d get the hint that it was story time. “You are incredible.”
Frank’s ears went red and he walked away, thrusting the shovel into the ground a couple of feet from the car to avoid having to talk about how incredible he was.
“Are you gonna take your shirt off?” I called out. Watching him get physical was just as good as listening to him tell me a story, even if he stayed dressed.
He glanced back over his shoulder and shot me a look. “Behave.”
“It was just a question,” I said innocently, flipping through his book to make sure there were enough consecutive pages left for me to test him. “Read me chapter four!”
“You haven’t read chapter one,” he scolded, and pushed the shovel deeper into the ground with his foot. Then he started reciting from the beginning.
I leaned forward excitedly, watching him wide-eyed as he dug. This was way better than television. He didn’t break stride while shoveling mounds of dirt out of the ever-deepening hole, and he even us
ed slightly different voices for each character. I wouldn’t have known the difference, but he really seemed to have memorized it word for word.
He finally stopped, standing up and wiping his arm across his forehead. “You can bring all that over here now.”
I slid off the hood and collected everything except for the book. I didn’t want it to go into the fire. I was enjoying it.
“All of it, V.”
“But―”
“I will finish the story.”
“Promise?” I asked skeptically, since I knew how much talking that would entail. I did what he said anyway, and brought it to him with the rest of it.
He lifted it off the top of the stack I was holding, bringing his silver lighter to the bottom corner and setting it ablaze. I watched him intently, the smoke framing his face as he tilted his wrist to keep the book from burning him, waiting until the very last second to say goodbye to it. The flames reflected in his eyes, making them glow.
I’d seen a lot of handsome men in my life, but Frank was absolutely beautiful. I could stare at him all day. I wanted to touch him, not just in the standard erogenous zones, but to move my fingers over every inch of his skin until I’d memorized his face and body the way he memorized his books.
Strangers had always turned me on, the idea of never having to see them again the biggest aphrodisiac I’d ever encountered. Until I met Frank. This was the first time I’d ever found a man even sexier after getting to know him. Everything he did enticed me, from the way he tried to conceal his accent by speaking certain words extra carefully, to how helpless he looked beyond the anger when he was really bothered by something. I was wholeheartedly in love, and it was only getting worse the better I got to know him.
Frank gently tossed the novel into the pit he’d dug once it was nearly engulfed in flames, then he took the first bag of trash and dropped that on top of it. Black smoke billowed from underneath the bag, the heat melting the plastic so it stuck like wadded chewing gum to the contents. He tossed the next couple of bags on the pile, followed by my pink shirt, which he gently draped into the fire.
Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder Page 10