Wilder

by Andrew Simonet

  The tinted window glided halfway down. “What do you want?”

  Definitely not Anthony Holt. It was his lackey. I had hoped for an overweight driver, a guy who eats Oreos and does word-search puzzles. This guy was fit and wired. No candy wrappers, no magazines, fucking protein shake in the cup holder.

  “Gotta move my car.” I played the hard stare, stay still and don’t say much. You can scare city people with that. Problem was, this guy did it, too, maybe better.

  “You rode a motorcycle.” He nodded toward my bike.

  “Yeah, and now I gotta move my car, so back up.”

  I turned away, got a few steps.

  “That’s not your car,” he said.

  There are a few ways to play this moment. I figured he couldn’t afford a fight with some kid in the parking lot, so I escalated.

  “What did you fuckin say? What did you fuckin say to me?”

  Primitive, but effective. Makes the other person accept or decline the fight. It works in response to literally anything. Try it.

  Can you pass the ketchup?

  What did you fuckin say? What did you fuckin say to me?

  No response from him. Just a stare. The tinted window slid shut.

  I walked around to Manny’s trunk. My whole scene would look a lot weaker if I couldn’t unlock the car. I felt under the bumper.

  Come on, Manny, you said there was a spare key.

  There. Taped high in the corner. Found it.

  I unlocked the door, started the engine. A sleeper has an advantage here: it makes noise. I gunned it.

  Brog-og-og-og-og-og-graaaaaaaaaaaaang.

  Not your grandma’s Ford Tempo.

  Lackey didn’t move. I put it in reverse and jerked back a few inches.

  Finally, the SUV glided backward, smooth and noiseless as the tinted window.

  I spun the car around and parked next to my bike, away from the building so it couldn’t be blocked in.

  I hopped out, locked the door.

  Yeah, that’s right, Lackey, I’m not leaving. I’m just getting started.

  And then, right as I entered Stewart’s, his SUV door opened.

  Shit.

  Ding-dong. Come out fighting.

  I’ve replayed this scene so many times in my head and for other people. It’s become cinematic, with tiny moments highlighted, different camera angles. It’s all so etched now, so written and rewritten, it’s hard to remember that it was live, pulsing, and undecided.

  Meili sat at a two-person booth near the counter, facing me. She glanced over, then turned back to the mostly bald white man across from her.

  There were other tables eating, a mom with her kids, three working guys, a couple, an older man alone. (I don’t think I saw the old man, but he appeared later, so I’ve pasted him in there.) I didn’t want any of these people to get hurt.

  I rushed it, walking right to Meili’s table. Lackey would be in any second.

  “How you doin?” I asked, careful not to use either of her names.

  “You’re here,” she said, locking eyes with me. The table had piles of official-looking papers and one messy Meili notebook.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, matching her obviousness.

  She widened her eyes and tilted her head toward the guy. He wasn’t looking. She shook her head, like: “Not good.”

  “It’s nice to see you,” she said.

  I bet.

  I turned to him.

  He was big, with enormous hairy hands, wearing a button-down shirt over an undershirt. Something about the undershirt told me I did not want to get hit by this guy. He looked at me and decided I was a nuisance, not a threat. He took a sip from his soda.

  Ding-dong. Lackey. Goddamn. I needed more time.

  “I saw your car out there,” I said to Meili.

  “Yeah,” she said. She was wound up, waiting for me to do something, take control.

  “Somebody parked you in. Right up against your bumper.”

  “What?” Meili squinted at me. That scared her.

  Lackey arrived, stood between me and Big Hands. Two on two.

  I turned back to Big Hands. “It was your SUV blocking her in. That’s what your driver said.”

  Big Hands looked at me, and I got upgraded from nuisance to possible problem. “Did he?” he said. He knew Lackey wouldn’t say that, and he knew I knew it. His stare told me all that. But there was something comforting in his voice. It was soft. He was powerful, no doubt, but he wasn’t cut out for what was coming. He had the voice of someone who spent a lot of time in front of a computer. I’d rather fight someone like that. “And you are?” he said.

  “Friend.” I matched his low word count. I still didn’t want to get hit by those big hands. I said to Meili, “I’ll make sure he stays out of your way so you can get out.”

  Lackey looked to his boss for orders. Big Hands, rolling his eyes a little, nodded toward the door. What did that mean? “Move the car”? “Get this kid out of here”? “We’re leaving”?

  I looked at Lackey, like: “Can we go now?” I wanted him to walk out first. He didn’t like me, but he liked me better out in the parking lot, away from his boss.

  “I can move my car,” Meili said. She wanted to come with me, get the hell out right now. Can’t blame her. She started to stand.

  This was the one way things could have ended well, right? Meili says, “I’ll be right back,” we walk out together, take her car, gone.

  I could see it. Still can.

  But Big Hands stopped her. He put his hairy fucking hand on her. Meili’s arm wrinkled as she pulled against his fat fingers. He pushed her back into her seat.

  Uh-uh.

  That was it.

  Can you believe this fucking guy? Big Hands, your day just ended.

  But first, I followed Lackey out.

  This was my advantage. Don’t start the fight before you start the fight. And when you do, go fast, go hard.

  I lagged a couple steps behind. I grabbed the sugar pourer from an empty table, one of those heavy glass ones.

  I spun around and took two quick steps, rising like a volleyball player for a smash.

  My arm arced high and slammed the canister on the back of Big Hands’ fucking head. It shattered in my hand, and his face hit the table hard.

  Meili screamed, covered her face from the flying glass and sugar.

  I grabbed the back of his head and smashed his face on the table. His nose broke. I lost my grip on his head because there was so much blood, mine and his, mixed with sugar, bright red spreading into the white crystals.

  “Jeezus!” Meili yelled. His blood was sprayed on her shirt and her papers. “Shit, Jason! What are you doing?”

  People jumped up. Yelling. That heavy, brittle charge that passes through a room where someone is being harmed. Everyone off-balance.

  Except Lackey.

  This was the moment Lackey lived for. I pictured his long, useless days, driving around, waiting in the SUV, clearing the way for important people to walk into restaurants. He wasn’t cut out for that. Too much downtime, too much brain time. This was the shit he loved.

  And, sadly for us, this was the shit he was really good at.

  Let’s pause to admire his quick read of the situation: I am the Hostile, Meili is the Asset, Big Hands is down. His first move was so brilliant and thorough, I have to recount it precisely.

  Yes, I like this stuff. I like how people fight, the way some people like cars or college basketball. I believe in it. The things you want, the ideals you hold, the people you love, that’s all well and good. What you do when the shit goes down, that’s what decides your future. How you move through Stewart’s at 1:15 on a Thursday is what you have to offer, what separates you from the whiners and yammering grievance keepers. And, honestly? Most people are so disappointing. They’re weak or obvious or opportunistic. So many tough guys fear a fight till it’s obvious they can win. Then they pile on, gang up on people who are already down. You’d be surprised how many me
n love beating someone who’s on the ground. That’s all you need to know about them.

  Lackey was not like that. Sadly, he was glorious.

  Lackey shot a hand into his boss’s armpit, stopping him midfall. He wrapped my neck up with his other arm. The side of his face was wide open. I came up hard with my right fist and landed what I thought was a brutal punch on his chin. It didn’t do a lot, other than pushing some glass deeper into the meat of my thumb.

  He could have turned and fought me face-to-face and definitely beaten the snot out of me. But I was not the Asset; Meili was. Beating me down while Meili ran out would have been a disaster for him. Satisfying, but a failure.

  After my fierce but apparently inconsequential uppercut, Lackey looked at me for the quickest instant. Not angry, not even annoyed. He scanned me to measure how much attention I would require. What percentage of his violence was necessary to subdue this kid?

  Not a lot.

  Big Hands was steady now. Lackey released him, and his left arm yanked me toward his body as his right landed a blow on my torso like a brick shot out of a cannon. Ribs—in the plural—cracked. My breathing stopped for the near future. And he was already turning toward Meili.

  My seventh-grade rec basketball team thought we were hot shit. Then we went to a tournament and got destroyed in four straight games. Annihilated. That’s what fighting Lackey was like. I thought I was good at landing punches and taking punches. Turns out I was only rec-center good.

  Meili was trying to stand, clutching some papers. “Stop it! Just stop it! What are you doing?” she yelled. “Get out of here!”

  Lackey kicked my legs out from under me—I was already bent over from his punch—and I dropped to the floor, still not breathing. He braced a leg against Big Hands and pulled Meili out of her seat with his other arm.

  Impressive. In the three seconds since I jumped Big Hands, Lackey had put me out of commission, stabilized his boss, and secured Meili. He sailed undisturbed through the room, the universe bending itself around his objective.

  Not breathing feels like an emergency, but it isn’t. Unless your airway is blocked, your body will find a way to breathe again soon. As long as you don’t panic, you’re at least a couple minutes from passing out, a couple more from brain damage. I got to my knees and pushed away the fear. I was just underwater. I had plenty of air to last me for a while. My ribs hurt, but adrenaline was already taking care of that.

  Big Hands was awake but not in any rush to get up. Lackey deadlifted his boss to half standing.

  Meili was pulling her arm away from Lackey, saying, “Let me go. I have to go.” With her free arm, she frantically grabbed more scattered papers.

  The smart move now would have been to get a broom or one of those metal napkin holders, something that could do real damage. Lackey had so many things on his to-do list I could have landed a good head shot. But I saw his hand on Meili, saw her struggling to get away. I knew where Lackey was going: get the Asset and his boss into the SUV and get the hell out. So I went straight at him. I came up from below, launching myself at his head. I landed one nice punch on his cheek—he turned at the last second or it would have been his nose—and wrapped my other arm around his neck. I sent the whole tower off balance, and he stumbled to his left, all three of us half falling into another booth.

  My side (not the broken-rib side, happily) slammed into the Formica table. On a normal day, that injury would have been a big deal. Everyone around me would have stopped, ice would have been found, maybe a visit to the ER. There would be lots of, “Wow, that looked so painful” and “I can’t believe the table didn’t break.” But in the moment, I barely noticed it. Much later, I saw the imprint of the table edge in a long diagonal bruise.

  Big Hands, no longer propped up, slumped over. Lackey, bless him, tried to catch Big Hands, but then swiveled and drove an elbow into my gut. I let out a groan, a gurgling, involuntary yell. People in the room groaned with me, the way people watching a fight do when a blow seems particularly brutal or dirty.

  “Stop it!” Meili was yelling. “Get out of here!” Not that Lackey was listening.

  I got to my feet and tried to make space to land some hits. One-on-one with Lackey, I didn’t like my chances. But with him distracted by Meili, I thought I could do some damage. I led with my glass-free left hand, but he dodged it. He couldn’t dodge my right into his gut, though, and the force of my fist pushed him back into Meili. He grabbed at me with his free arm, but I ducked and came in hard, my right elbow cracking into his jaw, followed by a sloppy-but-on-target left to his temple.

  Someone came flying into my line of sight, and my first thought was: Big Hands? Up and at ’em that fast? Then somebody was on my back, tackling me.

  And this is where I say: god bless Unionville.

  It’s a messed-up town, and I didn’t love living there, didn’t love how I was treated. But people in Unionville are ready to fight. We don’t wait for the cops, sometimes we don’t even bother with the cops. We will happily interrupt our lunch break to put a hurting on somebody.

  Two guys pinned Lackey down, trying to get Meili out of his grasp. Two others held me. I pushed them away, saying, “I’m cool, I’m cool.” Probably helped that they knew me.

  Everyone was yelling.

  “Cut the shit, guys!”

  “You’re done, man, you’re fucking done!”

  And other obnoxious fight talk.

  Meili scrambled out, slipped, stood up, and grabbed her bag.

  Another thing about U-ville: people got guns. Ding-dong. I turned my head reflexively. Someone else I needed to fight? It was the old man holding a shotgun, a handgun tucked in his waistband. We hadn’t been fighting long. Gramps must have jogged out to his truck.

  “Alright, let’s settle this down, people,” Grandpa announced, not sure who was fighting who, walking carefully toward the mass of bodies.

  Meili had the same instinct I did: Get on the other side of Grandpa. Get the armed man between us and the bad guys.

  There was a lot of yelling now, ten different people in charge, telling everybody to “Hold on!” and “Settle down!”

  Meili grabbed the last of the papers from the floor and ran toward the door. Grandpa stopped her. Given the arsenal he was carrying, it was a bit menacing.

  I limped over to her.

  “Where are you going?” I said. “I can take you.” I had my breath back. When did that happen?

  Sirens. People gathered in the parking lot, looking in. That was a favorite Unionville pastime: stand near some crazy shit so later you can say, “I saw the whole thing, and, man, let me tell you…”

  “No, Jason, it’s not—” Meili started. “Oh my god, look at you.”

  I reached out with my left hand. My right was a bloody, sugary mess. She pushed my hand away, looked out at the arriving police car, and closed her eyes.

  “Shit…” She turned back to me. “This is not good. You’re out of control, Jason.”

  “It’s OK, we can…” I started, but I didn’t have any ideas. It was the adrenaline talking. It was not OK. We couldn’t.

  “Listen to me! You’re out of control.” Meili leaned in close. “I’m sorry, Bug. It’s for your own sake. Really. It’s better for both of us.”

  “What’s better?”

  “I’m sorry.” She pushed me away and said to Grandpa, “Sir, it’s not safe for me here. I need to get away from this man.”

  Grandpa misunderstood. When I took a step to follow her, he turned to me and raised his gun. Like I was the problem.

  And Meili slipped past.

  Jesus.

  “She’s not talking about me. I have to go with her,” I said. I had my hands up, reasonable and calm.

  People cleared the way for Meili as she hustled out.

  “Son, take it easy,” Grandpa said. “You’re staying right here. Police are gonna sort this out.”

  “No, I’m with her. She’s talking about that guy.” I gestured back toward Holt and Lack
ey. Either one. A glob of red sugar dribbled off my palm onto the floor.

  Ding-dong. Meili was out the door.

  “Wait!” I yelled, no longer calm.

  “Sit down, son. Nobody’s leaving till the police get here.” That was obviously false. The central person of the whole incident just walked out.

  Ding-dong. A cop opened the door and froze. Grandpa laid both guns on the floor, saying, “Officer, glad you’re here.” He put his hands up and stepped back, keeping his body between me and the guns. “I was securing the area till you arrived.”

  Strange situation for the police. They’re called because of a fight. An old man, strapped, claims he’s on their side. The cop was wary.

  Bad news for me: I knew this cop. Or, rather, he knew me.

  “Down,” the cop said. “I need both of you down on the floor.”

  “Yes, officer,” said Grandpa.

  “I’m with her,” I said, pointing outside. “I have to go with her.”

  “Lie down, hands behind your head.” He put a hand on his gun.

  “You don’t understand, I’m—”

  “Down, Jason!” he shouted, and the gun was out.

  Fine. I lay down on the smelly linoleum, my face right on the worn-down path. I arched my neck to see the back of Meili’s legs through the doors. She was wearing the red skirt she wore at the party a million years ago. Or was it a week ago? Less? Unbelievable.

  The cop picked up Grandpa’s guns, saying, “Relax, everybody, just relax.”

  Sunlight glinted off the police car windshield.

  A second cop came in and blocked my view.

  When he stepped away, the back of Meili’s legs and the back of Meili’s red skirt were gone.

  SEVENTEEN

  Thinking everything is about to get straightened out is exhausting.

  It’s the worst thought to have as you lay facedown in handcuffs for close to an hour, as you see the assholes you fought walk out of Stewart’s one at a time, as you get asked ridiculous questions, questions that can only be answered with: “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  That sounds like the guilty guy in the movie. So, instead, I said, “I want to talk to a lawyer.” Which also sounds like the guilty guy.