by Paula Cox
I follow Grizzly, still reeling from the revelation that Bri has a daughter. It gets me thinking. How old? When did she become pregnant? Who’s the fuckin’ father? Of course, I reflect as I walk past the framed photographs, the bar area, the pool table, the kid could be mine. It’s possible. But if that’s the case, somebody would have told me. Grizzly, when he sent word down to Seattle like he did every so often, would’ve sent word about a kid, surely? Or Bri would’ve told me just now? Maybe she was nervous ’cause there’s a dad in the picture; maybe Grizzly was disapproving ’cause he knows the dad and doesn’t want to see him offended. Because, the way I see it, if I’m the kid’s father, what problem could Grizzly have with me kissing her mother?
I push all these concerns aside as I step into Grizzly’s office. It’s a large room, dominated by a wooden desk in the middle, the type you see in a CEO’s office, huge and wide. On the walls, the old club members in black and white stare down from their place in history. An old-style varmint rifle is secured to the wall above the desk. And Clint leans against the wall, just under the rifle. Clint, my father’s successor, and the man who currently has the job I want for myself. Clint is tall, thin, and gentleman-like, which is to say he dresses prissy. He wears a button-up shirt, creased trousers, and shiny shoes. His face is birdlike, all pointy, and his eyes are beady and a brown so light they’re almost yellow. He looks like a math teacher, but I know he’s tougher than he looks, much tougher.
Grizzly takes his seat: a large throne which is meant to intimidate anyone sitting opposite, I guess. I sit in the small guest’s seat, and Clint remains leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching with his beady eyes.
“So,” Grizzly says, “what the fuck happened in Seattle?”
“Don’t you know?” I reply. I thought one of the Skulls would’ve told him.
“I know they took you hostage. That’s it.”
“We want to know how and why they deemed it necessary to take you hostage,” Clint says, in his scholarly voice. “And what precise reason they had for keeping you as long as you did.”
“It’s pretty fuckin’ simple,” I say, not liking the way Clint looks down his nose at me one bit. “They took me hostage ’cause those guns you sent me up there with were useless. They were replicas that couldn’t fire a single goddamn shot.”
“Liar,” Clint mutters.
“Liar? Fuckin’ liar?” Rage boils in me. “I’ve been beaten and caged and starved for two fuckin’ years and when I come home you call me a damn liar?” I slam my hand on the desk.
“Easy,” Grizzly says, looking at Clint. “Let the man finish his story before you jump down his throat, eh?”
“Fair enough,” Clint says. “I’ll let him finish his story.”
It doesn’t take a genius to work out what that emphasis means, but I let it slide and lean back.
“So my story goes like this,” I say, flashing Clint a smirk. He wriggles like a worm on a hook when I smile at him, flinching away. He must’ve heard some of the stories, even if he doesn’t know all the details. He must know that fucking with a man like me—a man who has been kept caged like a lion these past two years—is a damn bad idea. “I offer them the weapons, they test ’em—they had this range out there—and none of the bastards work. So they start coming in on me—the leader, Russ, the crazy bastard with the pink Mohawk and ten studs in each eyebrow—puts me on my knees and puts a katana to my neck.”
“A katana,” Clint mutters.
“Why the fuck would I make that up?” I say.
“Just let him finish.” Grizzly says, glancing angrily at Clint and then back to me.
“So I punch this bastard in the fruits, and make for my bike. They don’t shoot at me ’cause Russ wanted me alive for questioning, so I managed to get to my bike. And then, when I go to start her, the clutch turns to jelly and I can’t put her into gear, so I’m stranded there revving like an ass, going nowhere. That’s when they catch me, and put me in their fuckin’ cage, and start with that torture shit.”
“Torture.” Grizzly nods. “What kind of torture, Slick?”
“The usual kind. The asshole kind.”
“That’s not very specific,” Clint says, pushing away from the wall and standing at Grizzly’s shoulder. It’s a presumption, standing at the Boss’s shoulder like that, like a fuckin’ guardian angel, and even though Grizzly doesn’t look too happy about it, he doesn’t shrug him away. I guess it would make them look like they’re not all roses and cooperation: a unified force, that’s what they’re presenting.
“Do you really need to know the specifics of the torture?” I ask.
My voice doesn’t shake, but I’m pretty sure it would if I wasn’t being vigilante. I’m no coward, but when you’ve been beaten and forced to fight and kill and you’ve lived two years in the heart of the inferno like some patched Dante you’re bound to have an wash of fear when you remember it all. I keep my face calm, placid, like a pool of water without a ripple.
“Yes,” Clint says, a hungry glimmer in his eye.
I swallow, push my fear far back, and explain about the torture. I tell them about the concept of the Masked Man, how I would never know which member of the Skulls was wearing the mask. I tell them about the times one version of the Masked Man would go crazy and grab a whip, a pistol, a blade, once even a fifty-pound metal dumbbell. I tell them about the fights I was forced to participate in with other prisoners, and how I was forced to dig their graves. I tell them all of this and more in a low, calm tone, showing no sign of the pain it causes me to drag it all up.
“Alright,” Grizzly says. “That’s enough.” He turns to Clint. “Satisfied?”
“Hmm.”
“What do you mean, hmm?” Grizzly asks.
“Wait a sec,” I say. “Did I just recount my two years of torture to satisfy this bastard?” I speak to Grizzly, but I wave a hand at Clint.
“This bastard has a few suspicions concerning your time with the Skulls, if that is what you are so eloquently trying to say.”
“Don’t talk to me about eloquence,” I say. “I read two books a week in that fuckin’ hellhole. It was the only thing they let us do. I just don’t pretty up my talk to try and pretend I’m smarter than I am, pretentious fuck.”
Clint brings his hand to his chest in mock offence, rolling his eyes. Then he lays his hand on the table, leaning over. The more he leans, the more I think about how easy it would be to jump forward and grab his throat and tear it out, tongue and all, and then throw it into the trash where it belongs. But I want his job, and a VP has to stay calm under pressure. A VP has to be a business man, a man who knows how to navigate bloodshed and conversation in equal measure.
“Listen,” Clint says. “Everyone must have their theories about how you, a simple courier—” I swallow dozens of retorts when he refers to me like this. “—was able to survive two years in one of the most infamously deranged and depraved and sadistic clubs in America. The Flaming Skulls are known throughout the country as barbarians who live to torture and abuse. So you will forgive me—and some of your fellow club members, though I will not name them—for entertaining the possibility that you might’ve turned traitor while you were over there.” Before I can respond, he lifts his hands in defense. “Now, now, nobody would blame you for colluding with your captors if your survival was at stake, but your survival is no longer at stake, so if you were forced into any unsavory alliance, now would be the time to disclose it.”
The three of us are quiet as we let Clint’s accusation hang in the air. Then, slowly, I rise to my feet.
“You think I was at a fuckin’ holiday camp?” I say, shrugging off my jacket. “You think I was over there doing a dance and playing checkers and having the time of my life?” I begin unbuttoning my shirt.
“There is no reason to get naked,” Clint says, a laugh in his voice, a laugh I’d love to silence with a bullet.
“Wait,” Grizzly says, watching.
When my shirt is unbutton
ed, I let it drop to the floor with my jacket. “If I was at a holiday camp, these were my only souvenirs.”
I lift my arms, displaying the layered scars, old and new, which cover my torso. My tattoos, which spread from my back all over my arms, are obscured here and there with white scar tissue. Some of the scars are small, hard to see, but if you look close enough you can see the marks of my time in the Skulls’ cell. The worst of them are on my back: a nasty gouge from a meat cleaver buried into my shoulder blade which took five months to heal; a series of whip marks which look like somebody tried to scrawl out part of my tattoo with a knife; and a bullet-hole just to the right of my spine, which would’ve paralyzed me had it hit its mark.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Grizzly mutters, as I spin around, displaying all my scars. “Alright, kid. Alright. Goddamn.”
I pull on my shirt, shrug on my jacket, and return to my seat.
Then I stare at Clint, waiting for him to admit that maybe, just maybe, I’m a true Road Rager.
But he just strokes his chin, and then mutters: “I am not saying that this is the case, but is it not possible that these are willfully inflicted wounds, in order to trick us?”
I’ve contained my rage for long enough. When he says this, it explodes from me. Vision a blur, movements automated, somehow I’m around the desk with Clint’s neck in my hand. Face close to his face, growling, staring into his beady eyes and seeing the abject fear there. “I was fuckin’ left there to rot. Left to rot like a dog, left to be starved and beaten and fuckin’ toyed with and you wanna tell me it was all make-believe for you?” I growl the last word, and squeeze his throat even tighter.
Then Grizzly has his hand on my shoulder. “Let him go,” he says.
There’s something about Grizzly’s voice, a note of control, that makes men do as he says. I’m the same, usually, but right now my rage is too powerful. I want nothing more than to crush this man’s throat to bone-blood dust.
Then Grizzly says, “Think of Bri. You were always friends, growing up. Think how upset she’d be to learn you’d shot yourself in the foot the day you get back.”
That gets through to me. Brat, snatched away from me when after two years I have a chance to be with her again.
I let go of Clint’s throat. “Sorry, buddy,” I say, with a light chuckle that Clint doesn’t reciprocate. I turn to Grizzly. “It’s been a long ride. I’m tired. You got a spare room in that fancy new dormitory wing?”
Grizzly nods.
I leave, but not before Clint, his voice hoarse, calls to my back: “Better lock the door, Slick.”
I clench my fist, but I think of Brat, of my desire to be VP, and bow my head and leave the office. Sometimes, fighting is the answer. But sometimes, even for men like me, thinking is the right choice.
It’s time I did a little more of that, I reckon.
Chapter Four
Bri
After a week of Slick being back, I’ve rarely seen him. I’ve passed him in the club and I’ve serviced his bike, but we’ve never gotten as close as when he first returned, when we almost kissed. I don’t know if it has something to do with Charlotte, or if he is just busy with club stuff, but either way it annoys me. Perhaps unfairly—it’s not like I throw myself at him or anything—but it still annoys me. We were close, once, closer than I’ve ever been with anybody. Now it’s like something’s changed in him, like his time in Seattle has left an indelible mark on who he is as a person. I am beginning to think that the Slick who left and the Slick who returned might not be exactly the same man.
“What are you doing in there?” Heather says, banging on the bathroom door. “This babysitter needs to piss!”
Perhaps sitting on the toilet isn’t the best place to reflect on all this, though. I finish up, wash my hands, and then join Charlotte in the living room. She’s obsessed with her picture book, and keeps telling me about pandas. Cute as hell, don’t get me wrong, but I’m also long overdue for a night out. The last time I went out was around four months ago, for Christmas. Now it’s springtime and I think it’s time I flowered, but just a little. When Heather returns—navigating the discarded toys and books on the floor—she sits on the couch and makes a cooing noise at Charlotte.
“So, are you excited about tonight?” she asks.
“I’m just going to the bar with some of the club people,” I say. “It’s no big deal.”
“Maybe you’ll meet a man,” Heather says. “A non-club man. Maybe a banker, or a baker; I’m not particular, to be honest, but I would love to see you with a man who doesn’t earn his living in oil and blood.”
I sigh, and just let her continue.
“I never approved of your mother getting involved with Grizzly, and I don’t approve of you getting involved with those leather-wearing bandits.”
“They’re not as bad as you think, Heather . . . especially Dad.”
Heather blushes, and turns away. She made the mistake of telling me one night when she was drunk that she thinks Dad is handsome, for a leather-wearing bandit, that is. “Why don’t you do some online dating,” Heather continues, plowing ahead. Outside, the street is silent, inside, the apartments around us are silent, Charlotte is unusually silent as she watches Heather, captivated, so Heather’s tirade, for the moment, is the only noise in existence. What a tortuous existence. “Do some online dating and find a nice, kind, normal man. Find a man who knows how to behave in a civilized way. You are not a Jane; you don’t need a Tarzan. The days when a man had to sweat and swear and spit and fight to be a man are long, long gone, kiddo. When you’re an old bitch like me, you’ll understand what really matters, and you’ll wish you listened.”
“Are you done?” I ask, when she stops.
She rolls her eyes. “For now,” she says. “Anyway, shouldn’t you be going? Your den of bandits will be expecting you, won’t they?”
“Ha-ha, you’re hilarious, Heather.”
She tosses her dyed red hair, some of the roots flashing grey at the top of her head. “Don’t tell me things I already know,” she mutters.
After kissing Charlotte goodbye, I leave the apartment and take a cab to the bar. It’s called the Standing Irishman, with a picture of a leprechaun so drunk he can’t stand. His little cartoon ass is propped between two kegs of beer. Inside, it’s about as standard and dive-bar-like as they come, with a long sticky bar, a jukebox blaring old rock tunes, a pool table that’s seen better days, and groups of bikers and truckers and short-skirt-wearing girls falling over and dancing and laughing and drinking. I’m dressed conservatively, with a knee-length skirt and a shirt showing no cleavage, but even so as I approach the pool table where the Rage guys and girls are, I get a few looks. Mostly from Zack, Bryan, and Pascal. Zack is black-haired and black-bearded, a huge bear of a man who looks like a younger version of Dad, which is an immediate no-no. Bryan has a cool-looking scar down the side of his face, all the way to his lip, and wears his leather like a soldier wears his jacket. He has the same way of standing as a soldier, too; he received the scar in Afghanistan, before joining the club. Pascal is a new member, recently patched, a tanned, tall, blonde-haired man with murky blue eyes and a five o’clock shadow.
I ignore them for the first part of the night, instead talking with the girls in the corner, but then Zack swaggers over and says, in his deep bear’s voice, “What do you think, Bri? Reckon you can take me?” He hefts the pool cue.
I’m a little tipsy, it’s true, but that’s what tonight is all about, isn’t it? I stand up and snatch the pool cue from him. Pascal and Bryan stand off to one side, watching. I feel their eyes on me, especially when I lean over to break . . . their eyes lingering on my ass, my legs. I would be lying if I said I didn’t like the attention, that a little harmless flirting is a whole lot of fun when you’ve been cloistered up for months, but there’s no way I’m taking any of these men home. None of them are good enough for Charlotte, that’s for sure. But a tumble in the dark . . . I let my mind turn to the possibility. It’s not li
ke Slick has shown any interest, anyway.
I beat Zack—I think the bearded giant let me win—and then I play Pascal. He is the most handsome of the three, without a doubt. He looks like the sort of man you expect to see in a well-tailored suit, walking up and down Wall Street. He has a calm, self-assured smile as he sets up the balls. Then somebody puts the newest Beyoncé on the jukebox and all at once the place is alive with eagerly dancing women and reluctantly dancing bikers. Pascal comes around the side of the table, that self-assured smile on his lips, and says, “You look beautiful this evening, Brianna.”
“Thank you, Pascal,” I say, realizing that he’s standing very close to me, his leather almost touching my dress. I take a step back. Before Slick returned, Pascal and I were going to have sex, I’m sure of it. There was some tension there, some attraction. But Slick . . . I need to stop comparing every man I meet with Slick, I decide. Nobody is ever going to measure up, so what’s the point? He’s shown zero interest; he gets zero consideration. Anyway, it’s not like I’m going to marry this man. I take a step forward, just a little one, so that my dress and his jacket touch. “I’m proud of you,” I tell him. “For getting patched, I mean.”