The day I met Gentry, LaReigne didn’t show up after my appointment. Every time I texted her, she’d said, I’m sorry, I’ll be there in a little bit. After I’d been sitting in the clinic lobby for three hours, I got the text I’d known was coming. I’m sorry, Z. Loudon took the car and I don’t know where he is. Can you get an Uber or something?
I didn’t have money for a cab, so I’d looked up bus routes on my phone, but the closest the bus could get me was two miles from the condo. Two miles on crutches. I went out to the parking lot, and there was a guy standing next to his truck. I’d seen him in the waiting room a bunch of times. In the beginning, he’d had his arm in a sling, but at this point he just had athletic tape on his arm and shoulder. He was a nondescript white guy. Cargo shorts, tank top, stocky, medium height, dark hair. I never would have recognized him, except he had the worst haircut I’d ever seen on another human being. Not like he’d cut it himself, but like he’d let a toddler cut it with a pair of garden shears, repeatedly.
As I came down the sidewalk, he stepped away from his truck and bowed to me. I will never forget what he said: “My lady. Thy servant.”
I stopped, because there was nobody else he could be talking to, but I had no idea what he meant. He straightened up, but kept his eyes down.
“My lady. If thou wilt allow me to help thee,” he said. When I didn’t answer, he got down on one knee, like he meant to propose to me. “’Tis my honor to carry thee whither thou desirest.”
I was staring at him, but he never looked up. He stayed there with his bare knee on the asphalt, one hand over his heart and the other offered to me palm up. Was I supposed to take it?
He looked off to his left and nodded.
“Yea. I see, man. I am not blind,” he said. Then he went back to looking at my legs. “Thou art wounded, my lady, and I would thee serve.”
I almost kept walking, because the level of crazy there was so high, but then I’d remembered my fantasy about falling down the stairs. If this guy was a serial killer, it would save me the trouble of breaking my own neck.
“Is this your truck?” I said, because I didn’t speak whither thou desirest.
“My lady, ’tis.” He stood up and opened the passenger door for me. Even though he offered his hand for me to get up in the cab, he looked shocked when I put my hand on his shoulder for leverage. Once I was in the cab, he tucked my crutches behind the seat and closed the door.
When he went around and got into the driver’s seat, I snuck a picture of him and sent it to LaReigne. If I get murdered, this is the guy who gave me a ride.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“I am called Gentry Frank.” He glanced over at me for about half a second.
“I’m Zhorzha. Rhymes with Borgia,” I said, like always. “You can call me Zee.”
“Lady Zhorzha, whither goest thou?”
“Okay, you’re cracking me up with that. I need to go past Twenty-ninth and Rock, if that’s not too far.”
I guessed it wasn’t because he took me all the way home. I would have had him drop me off at the front gate of the complex, but I was so tired I didn’t care. I told him the gate code and had him drive me up to the building. He pulled in and parked next to LaReigne’s car. Either she’d lied to me about Loudon taking the car or the dickhead had just come home.
While I was trying to get myself out of the truck, Gentry came around and got my crutches out. He held out his arm for me to take, but I used the doorframe instead, because he’d seemed so freaked out about me touching him.
“My lady, shall I help thee?”
“No, my good sir,” I said, trying to get into it, to be nice. “Thank you, though. I appreciate it.”
“If thou needest aught.” He’d bowed and held something out to me: an appointment card from the PT clinic with his phone number written on the back. I turned it over and looked at his appointment time. Half an hour before mine. So he’d waited all that time for me to walk out of the clinic. Waiting to give me that card? The corners were damp and worn down like he’d been worrying it in his hand.
“Um, thank you,” I said, but I’d put the card in my back pocket, thinking like hell was I ever going to call him.
In the condo, LaReigne and Loudon were having a shouting match while Marcus hid in the bedroom. As soon as I walked in, the fight turned into Your fucking sister here all the time and she doesn’t even pay rent! Which was pretty goddamn rich coming from Loudon, who didn’t pay rent, either. His parents paid for everything.
“Don’t you talk that way about my sister!” LaReigne always said, and I’d end up offering to leave, even though there was no place for me to go. Sometimes I’d spend a night at my cousin Emma’s, and sometimes with my high school buddy Shelton, but he was homeless about half the time, too. I always ended up back with LaReigne and Loudon.
The next week, I’d seen Gentry at PT again. Waiting for me. I didn’t waste any energy pretending I didn’t need a ride. After all, that’s why he was hanging around, and it saved me the trouble of getting LaReigne to pick me up. The week after that, Gentry had started taking me to my appointments, waiting while I did PT, and then taking me home. By then he wasn’t even doing PT anymore, and I felt like a mooch. Not that I wasn’t used to feeling like a mooch, but I was always trying to start over being a better person. So I offered to buy him lunch before he took me home. I thought he’d relax, and I’d feel better about the whole situation. Except we didn’t talk much and he ended up paying for lunch.
Next week, same thing. Him sitting in the waiting room with his head down over a book, then lunch again. I forced myself to make small talk.
“Are you in school?”
“Nay, my lady.”
“Where do you work?”
“I am a vassal of the Duke of Bombardier,” he said.
“Wait. Bombardier?” I got the giggles, and even though it was probably wrong, I said, “Verily, thou doth build flying machines?”
Some little light went on in him. He smiled and looked at me. Just for a second.
“Yea, my lady. ’Tis my duty to rivet wings upon Learjets.”
“So how did you hurt your shoulder?”
“I was wounded in a joust,” he said.
“Really? Well, obviously, really.” He said so little, and I only understood part of it, so right then I’d decided to take whatever he said at face value.
* * *
—
THE DAY I was officially crutch free and brace free, I did a happy dance in the PT clinic parking lot. Gentry stood next to his truck, smiling, watching my little celebration. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I was so happy to be walking again that I kissed him. Well, I tried to kiss him. He was so surprised that he pulled back from me like I’d tried to bite him. Maybe surprised was the wrong word. Horrified? I got into the truck cab and slammed the door, feeling totally embarrassed. For half a minute he stood there, with a blank look on his face, and then he walked around to the back of the truck.
I watched him in the side-view mirror having a whole conversation with himself. Talking, nodding, shaking his head, gesturing with his left hand, while he rested the right one on top of his head. After a few minutes of that, he came around and got in the truck. He cleared his throat, started the truck, cleared his throat again.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry about that. Just a misunderstanding. No big deal.”
“Nay, my lady. Thy kiss offendeth me not.”
I’d only tried to kiss him because it seemed like the next step to whatever was going on. I never understood romance, but I knew what it looked like from the outside well enough to fake it when I needed to. I’d faked almost my whole relationship with Nicholas, because I couldn’t get ahead by myself on minimum wage.
Gentry, though, he was . . . I guess the word is chivalrous, but he wasn’t romantic. That whole my lady,
thy servant wasn’t going to turn into my lady, thy boyfriend.
We drove to the condo without talking, and, when we got there, I figured that was the end of things. He came around to open the door for me, even though I didn’t need help with my crutches anymore.
“When cometh again thy physic?” he said. My next appointment, he meant.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to keep taking me. It’s only a few more weeks, and I can walk to the bus now.”
“Nay. ’Tis my honor—”
“I know. It’s your honor to help me. But for how long? One of these days I’ll be all healed up.” I hoped that was true. I was counting on being able to get a job and get the hell out of Loudon’s house.
“For always, my lady,” Gentry said. When I didn’t respond to that, he asked me again about my next appointment, so I told him.
I didn’t try to kiss him again, and I didn’t suggest lunch anymore. He took me to PT; he took me home. We made polite small talk. How farest thee? Good, how was your day? I guess so we could feel friendly, even though we weren’t really friends.
Things got worse with Loudon and, at what turned out to be my last PT session, LaReigne texted me to say, Do you have somewhere else you can stay tonight? I didn’t.
Sitting in the truck, waiting for Gentry to go around to the driver’s side, I started to cry. My hip still hurt, and probably it always would, and I couldn’t afford the prescription for my pain meds, and I was homeless again.
“My lady,” Gentry said when he got in the truck. “Thou art unwell?”
“I just can’t go home right now. I guess you can take me . . .” To my mother’s house or my cousin Emma’s, because I didn’t have money for a motel. I texted Emma first, but she didn’t answer.
“If thou art willing, couldst come to my mother’s keep,” Gentry said.
That was how I’d ended up meeting his family.
Ranked in order of evilness and stupidity:
Vicky, his youngest sister. Hot Topic’s Number-One Customer. Typical teenager. Bad attitude about everything and under the impression that makeup is the great equalizer. Hint: it’s not.
Miranda, his mother. An overgrown teenager. She hadn’t looked old enough to be Gentry’s mother, and when I tried to shake her hand, she giggled and just looked at me. I wasn’t surprised her other kids had such terrible manners. It was more surprising that Gentry didn’t.
Marla, his middle sister. Mean. Bone mean. Even at our shittiest petty teenage worst, LaReigne and I never talked to each other the way Marla talked to Vicky.
Brand, his younger brother. Two prison tattoos short of a hate crime, and about to be too old to be charged as a juvenile. He wore a Confederate flag T-shirt, which was such bullshit because Kansas was a free state.
“Oh, holy shit,” Brand said when Gentry introduced me. “Dude got himself a real live girl.”
“Plot twist,” Vicky said. “Lady Zhorzha turns out to be a real person. I did not see that coming.”
“I thought she’d look like a princess,” Marla said. “And not a—”
“Are you going to get dinner?” Miranda said.
“If it thee liketh, my lady.”
Gentry went on being polite, and they went on being assholes. It’s not like I’m Miss Manners or anything, but I never ordered anybody around the way Gentry’s family ordered him around. To take out the trash, while the rest of them sat on their asses watching TV. To go get them dinner, from fucking Taco Bell. To get up and refill Miranda’s wineglass. To get Marla a different kind of hot sauce from the fridge.
While we ate, Marla and Vicky were texting on their phones, and then Marla looked up and said, “Can I go meet Lilah at the mall?”
Miranda shrugged and said, “I’m not driving you.”
“Gentry will take me.” They pronounced it Gent-ree. He pronounced it Gen-tree.
“I wanna go,” Vicky said.
“You’re not going.”
“Mom!”
“Take your sister,” Miranda said.
“I fucking hate you, zit face,” Marla said to Vicky. Then she turned to Gentry, who still hadn’t finished eating in between all his other errands, and said, “Take me to the mall.”
“There’s this word you maybe haven’t heard of,” I said. “Please.”
“Fuck you, Lady Thunderthighs.”
“Oh, ow. My feelings.”
“Spew not thy venom on Lady Zhorzha,” Gentry said.
“Spew not thy venom,” Marla said in that shitty teenage voice.
“We should start buying lottery tickets, Marla,” I said. “If we win, I can get lipo on my thighs and you can get a plastic surgeon to fix your ugly nose.”
“Fuck you!” Marla started crying, but I didn’t feel even a little bit bad.
“You think you’re so much better than us,” Miranda said. “Just like Gentry. You’ve been looking down at us since you walked in here.”
I was a guest in her house, and on another day, I would’ve kept my mouth shut and made nice. My whole existence since I left home at sixteen was built on being polite to strangers, but I’d reached the end of the line that day. I stood up and put my backpack on.
“I don’t think I’m better than you. I am better than you,” I said. Then I felt bad. “I’m really sorry, Gentry.”
“Well, fuck you,” Brand said. “You’re nobody special, you bitch.”
“Nay, I may not,” Gentry had said to the person he sometimes talked to on his left. He clenched his hand into a fist. “Truly they aren queds, but they aren my kin.”
“Oh my god, Little Lord Fauntleroy and his invisible friend,” Miranda said.
His own mother said that, and the rest of them laughed.
When I walked out, Gentry followed me. We stood in the street, him scratching the back of his neck with both hands. I didn’t know him that well, but I knew that meant he was upset.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about me. I can get the bus home.” Anywhere was better than there. Even a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t have been the first time I stayed in one.
“Nay, my lady.”
He walked over and opened the passenger door on his truck for me. I don’t even remember discussing it, just that Gentry drove us to a motel. I wasn’t sure what it would mean for us to get a motel room together, because that stupid kiss was still hanging over me. Whatever happened, I decided, that was up to him. Once we were in the room, he knelt in front of me where I sat on the edge of the bed.
He took my hand—the first time he’d ever touched me—and he didn’t seem too sure about how to hold it. I expected his hand to be sweaty. Nervous. But it was dry and steady.
“Lady Zhorzha, canst thou forgive me? I am shamed that my family was uncourteous to thee.”
“It’s okay. You don’t get to choose your family.” I squeezed his hand, to let him know I didn’t take it personally, and maybe as an invitation to something else. He squeezed back for a second, and then he let go and stood up.
“I must leave thee,” he said. “For I serve the Duke of Bombardier this night. I shall see thee in the morn.”
He went and I stayed. Somewhere around one A.M., LaReigne called me, not to tell me I could come home, but to tell me Loudon had kicked her out and what should she do?
In the morning, when Gentry had come back, there I was with Marcus and LaReigne, camped out in a motel room he’d paid for. Even while I was trying to let Gentry off the hook, I was dragging him in deeper. Like I was quicksand, too.
It scared me, because of how awful his family was, and how he put up with it. My lady, thy servant started to look like an invitation to use him, and I was afraid I wasn’t good enough to resist that temptation. I knew I had to walk away after I borrowed a thousand bucks from him to pay the deposit on an apartment for LaReigne, Marcus, and me.
I had mooched off so many people over the years, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it to him.
That was why I agreed to do the Trinidad run for Asher the first time. Money from waiting tables got spent as fast as I could make it, but I walked away from that first run with two thousand in cash. After Toby dropped me off, I sat out on the apartment building’s steps, waiting for Gentry to show up, like he did most mornings. I hadn’t talked to him since I borrowed the money, and I figured that would be the last time. I walked over to his truck and, when he rolled down the window, handed him the thousand dollars. I thanked him and said goodbye. Then I went inside.
Two minutes later, he knocked on the apartment door, and handed me the cash back.
“’Twas a present, my lady,” he said.
I never tried to give him the money again. I used it to buy the piece-of-shit car that was still getting me from one lousy waitressing job to another.
After that, I thought he would go his way, and I’d go mine. We’d never had a relationship or anything, but apparently we had something, because he kept coming around. He never tried to talk to me, but he kept driving by the apartment and the restaurants where I worked. For a while, I worked at this Cantonese place, and Gentry started coming in and ordering food to go. Sometimes for a bunch of people—his shitty family, I guessed—but usually just for himself. After I left that job and went to work at a Mediterranean place, he started getting food from there. No matter where I went, he eventually showed up and got takeout.
If I’d been afraid of him, I would have felt differently about the whole thing, but he’d never said or done anything that seemed threatening. He’d only touched me that one time, and he’d never given me so much as a hard look. After a while, I got used to it. He became a fixture in my life. LaReigne started calling him your stalker, which stuck, even though I hated it. As in, “My car wouldn’t start this morning, but your stalker jumped my battery.”
The Reckless Oath We Made Page 3