Old Habits

by ChristopherWaltz

The sun was just rising over the eastern edge of the lake as I stood against the ropes of the pier, waiting for Riley to arrive. I was nervous, terrified even, and the fact I’d just spent the past six hours escaping and evading two men who meant to kill me only added to my paranoia.

  But I had to warn her.

  She approached from the south, looking none too impressed to see me. After all, the last time we had spoken, she vowed I’d never see her again, and if I did, she’d made it abundantly clear she would turn me in to the police.

  It was early, but she looked as beautiful as ever, her hair pulled into bun on top of her head, a bandana covering her forehead. She was jogging towards me, earbuds in her ears, oblivious to the world around her.

  At first, I thought she would run right past me, but she slowed to a stop, breathing heavy and pulling the earbuds from her ears. I could hear the faint hum of classical music coming from them as they dangled from the top of her jacket.

  “I don’t know how I feel about this,” she said. Her facial expression said this (and more) for her, but I hoped it was due in part to being worn out from her jog.

  “You listen to classical while you run?” I asked, avoiding her statement. I knew she felt uneasy about meeting with me. I felt uneasy about meeting with her. What if we were being watched?

  She stared at me blankly for a moment. “It helps me concentrate. I run longer and harder when I listen to Bach or Beethoven. What’s this about?”

  She wasn’t up for small talk, and understandably so. My phone call to her had been short and urgent:

  “We need to talk. I’m in trouble,” I had said to her only two hours before.

  Her voice was groggy; she’d been asleep. I hadn’t even thought about the time of night, as I’d been awake for hours, traveling to Shelby and beating the hell out of Geet and Scarface. “What? Who is this? What time is it?”

  I grimaced, thinking she hadn’t left my number programed into her phone. She had no idea who she was talking to.

  “It’s Jamie,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t hang up immediately. She didn’t.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I can’t talk about it over the phone. I’m using the phone they gave me. If they’re listening… If they know I called you. I just don’t know what could happen. Can you meet me?”

  I probably sounded like a paranoid schizophrenic, but I didn’t care. I was in the back of a cab, somewhere between Shelby and downtown Chicago. I knew I couldn’t go back to the apartment yet, but I had no idea where I could go.

  She hesitated, but eventually said, “I can meet you. Just this once.” I couldn’t tell for sure, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up; I wanted this call to be as short as possible, but her voice sounded softer, sweeter. Then she added, “Are you okay?”

  “Currently, yes,” I said. “But that’s why we need to meet. I’ll text you the place and time.”

  She had barely said, “Okay,” before I hung up, sent her where to meet me, and tossed the phone out the cab window, hoping it would smash into a thousand pieces as it slammed against the freeway. I caught a glimpse of the cab driver eyeing me in the rearview mirror, but ignored it. I had cash to pay him with, and he didn’t know the first thing about me, so I didn’t have to worry too much about him.

  Unless he was somehow working for Harrison. It seemed ridiculous, but at this point, I had no idea who I could trust, so I chose to trust no one.

  The cabbie dropped me off on the near north side, and I walked the two and a half miles from Seward Park to the pier, even though it was one of the coldest nights of the year so far.

  When I arrived just before 5:00, I decided to wait for Riley, though she wasn’t due to meet me for another hour.

  I stared at her as she waited for me to respond to her question. She was already impatient, but I wasn’t sure how to explain to her what had happened without scaring the shit out of her.

  “Something’s happened,” I whispered.

  “Obviously,” she responded. “Is this some kind of scheme to get me to meet with you again? Because I told you it wasn’t going to happen. I meant it. The only reason I came was because…”

  “You’re in danger,” I blurted, instantly regretting it.

  Riley’s jaw dropped, but she managed to regain her composure fairly quickly. After everything that had happened in Hastings, I was surprised she didn’t burst into tears. When one of your friends is murdered and your boyfriend goes on the run for over a year, you take things like “you’re in danger” pretty seriously, or so I imagined.

  She didn’t speak, so I continued. “The man I’m working for, the reason I’m in Chicago, he made a threat. He said people I loved were going to die.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, sounding more furious than I had expected. I thought she might be scared, or angry, or upset, but not completely pissed off. “I appreciate the gesture, but let’s be completely honest here; you don’t love me. I don’t love you. We dated during a really weird time of your life, and I’ve moved on with mine. I know it sounds harsh, but… there’s never going to be anything between us. I’m not a part of this.”

  I suddenly couldn’t think of words. My mouth went dry and the world seemed to float away around me.

  “Jamie, talk to me!” Riley shouted, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to hear her. We were alone; none of the shops at the pier had opened yet.

  “It’s a very long story,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t make me explain the whole thing while also trying to push aside the comment she had just made about there being nothing between us. “Gabe—Gabe and I—stole some money from our boss. He’s basically been holding us against our will here, and we thought it would be a good way to have the money to make an escape.” I left out the part about Gabe’s grand plan to kill Harrison in the process.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for me to continue.

  “He found out, and when Gabe wouldn’t give the money back, he said people I loved were going to die. Soon. And believe it or not, Riley, despite the short amount of time we shared, I do love you, yes.”

  Riley nodded, seemingly keeping her emotions in check. Her eyes told another story, but she didn’t yell at me. “And you called me because you’re worried about me? Not because you need help?”

  “Yeah,” I barely said.

  Her shoulders slumped, showing she had let her guard down, at least a little. “Maybe he’s bluffing. Maybe he just said all that to get the money back.”

  I shook my head, trying to hold back tears.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I called home, just to give them a heads up. I didn’t care if they found out where I was and called the police on me; I had to warn them, but I was too late,” I sobbed. Tears were running freely down my face now, stinging in the cold October morning air and wind from the lake.

  Riley put her hand on my shoulder. “Are they…”

  “No,” I said. “At least I don’t think so, but they have Kip.”

  Riley choked back tears of her own, and I knew she was genuinely worried, not for me, but for my brother. One of the biggest facts I had gotten from Kip’s letters was he and Riley had become somewhat close during her breaks from school, when she returned to Hastings to visit friends and family.

  “We’ll do something. We can help him,” she said.

  “How?”

  She shook her head, not sure what to say to comfort me, or maybe not sure I deserved to be comforted.

  “I’m so sorry.” I was losing control of my own emotions. I knew it wouldn’t solve anything, but being with Riley at one of my most vulnerable moments in recent memory made me not care as much. I knew she would never love me again, (and maybe she never had) but she was here, and that was all I could ask for.

  A black car pulled up to the curb at the end of the pier, only about fifty yards from us. I eyed it suspiciously, and my suspicion caused Rile
y to raise an eyebrow as well.

  “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “How many random black cars are there in this city anyway?”

  I took her by both shoulders and stared her directly in the eyes, trying to keep my own tears at bay long enough to tell her what I needed to say.

  “You have to get out of here for a while. Lay low, go home for the weekend. Do whatever you have to do to stay safe.”

  She didn’t break my gaze, but a sense of uncertainty seemed to wash over her. “Jamie, I have classes…”

  “You have to forget about all that. Your classes won’t mean anything if they kill you. It’s harsh, I know, but you need to not be in Chicago for a few days. This will all be over soon, I promise. I’m working on a way to make everything okay, but I need to know you’re safe before I go through with it.”

  “Jamie…” she began, but I cut her off.

  “You won’t see me again. I won’t contact you. I won’t ask you to meet me. Nothing. Just promise me you’ll get out of town.”

  “I promise,” she said quietly. She knew I cared for her, and she also knew I would never do anything to purposefully put her in danger, but when someone you care about is put in danger, the circumstances leading up to it don’t really matter all that much. Purpose had nothing to do with it.

  I turned to walk away from her, wanting to leave our exchange with the promise she would get as far away from Chicago (and me) as she could, but she stopped me one last time.

  “Don’t do anything that’ll get anyone killed,” she said.

  I swallowed hard, letting the tears spill over my eyes again, and only nodded to her before turning in the opposite direction and running away at full speed.

  I pushed my way through the early morning pedestrian traffic on Grand Avenue until I got to State Street. It wasn’t the route I would normally take, and I hardly paid attention to street signs, but somehow managed to make my way back, using the towering apartment building in the distance as my guide. As long as I ran towards that building, it didn’t matter how I got there. In fact, it was probably better if I took an alternate route, just in case I was being watched.

  It only took me fifteen minutes to make it all the way back to the apartment building, but as I was just walking through the door, a hooded figure grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me away from the door and around the corner of the building.

  I panicked, thinking one of Harrison’s men had been waiting for me, but as I grabbed the figure and pushed it against the brick wall of the building, it let out a small ‘oof’ that told me it was definitely not someone sent to do me harm.

  “Fuchsia?” I gasped, catching my breath from the quick defensive move I had done, trying to keep her from dragging me into the alley and killing me.

  “Yeah, you jackass,” she said, pushing me away from her and taking a few steps away from the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were here to kill me. And I wasn’t expecting to see you again, to be honest.”

  She removed her hood, and I immediately saw how weathered and worn out she looked. Her hair was a mess, and makeup ran down her cheeks as if she had been crying. She didn’t seem injured, but I couldn’t tell for sure, because the coat she was wearing was so baggy. She hugged me.

  “They’re following me, Jamie. I don’t know what happened, but they’re following me. Everywhere I go in town, I see their cars. No one ever gets out, but I know it’s them…” Her voice was frantic, shaky.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “It’s not your imagination?”

  “No!” she shouted at me, then looked around as if someone hearing her would cause flanks of Harrison’s men to appear out of nowhere and carry her away.

  I tried to calm her down, pulling her into a brief hug. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to make a move on her, especially after having just seen Riley… not that seeing her for a few brief moments meant anything at all.

  “It’s alright. You’re safe now,” I said.

  “I know I left you; I know I said some terrible things to you, but I need your help.”

  Part of me was still angry with Fuchsia for the things she had said, but I remembered how scared she had been, how scared she still was, and I knew I had to do whatever I could to help her. She continued looking in every directions as she waited for me to respond.

  “Alright,” I said, not sure what to do. Fuchsia was depending on me to have all the answers, but in honesty, I hadn’t had any answers for a very long time. “Go up to my apartment. Gabe should be there, but he may be tied up. He may be unconscious. When he wakes up, tell him what’s going on, and he should let you stay.”

  She looked at me, terrified, but I ignored it. If she wanted help, she had to do as I said and not ask too many questions.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  I paused, not wanting to explain everything to her. “I have some things to do,” I said. “I’ll come back when I’m done, I promise.”

  She nodded and turned to enter the apartment building, but I called after her. She stared at me questioningly, making me feel even sorrier for her. She hadn’t asked for any of this, yet here she was. Even after she had tried to make an escape, she wasn’t safe from the fallout of my life.

  “When you get to the apartment, don’t talk to anyone but Gabe. Don’t call anyone. Don’t answer your phone. Don’t answer the door unless it’s me,” I instructed.

  “I won’t,” she said, nodding almost frantically.

  With a small, final hug, she entered her code into the pad at the doors and walked through them, ready to flash her I.D. card to Mr. Stone. It was impossible to see her through the tinted glass or to know if Mr. Stone, an employee of Harrison, would even allow her access to the apartments. From this moment on, I just had to hope she would be okay.

  For the next few hours, all I could really do for any of us was hope. Hope we would make it through this day. Hope I could come up with some kind of plan to keep Harrison and the others at bay long enough to escape this situation with our lives, if nothing else.

  Just hope.

  (Emmett O)’Kelly)