ZEKE’S BABY

by Evelyn Glass

  Becky keeps lookin’ at me which is makin’ me damn uncomfortable. It’s weird, ’cause up on the Wheel, and near the railing on Coney, and even once or twice back in the motel room, I reckon we was gettin’ somewhere when it came to bein’ close with each other. I reckon we was making some sort of progress. But now it’s like there’s this rift between us. It’s just too much too damn fast. One minute we’re rockin’ back and forward and havin’ the most intimate sex of my life—the only intimate sex of my life—and the next she’s droppin’ this bombshell on me.

  “What’re you thinking about?” she asks, once the waitress has brought our drinks.

  I sip on my Coke to buy myself some time. The Dickens is lit by old-timey lanterns, flickering all around the room, so that our shadows flicker with ’em. And Becky’s eyes seem darker’n ever as they stare at me, waitin’ for me to speak.

  “I…uh…just some trout I caught about half a year back,” I say, just sayin’ the first thing that comes into my head. “Huge bastard, it was, damn huge, biggest bastard I ever caught.”

  “Right.”

  Another silence, yawing between us like a damned abyss. I didn’t care about silences and awkwardness and how she felt before, did I, back in the warehouse? I wouldn’t stumble for words, or try’n figure out what was goin’ on with us? I wouldn’t care. So what the fuck’s happened to me? Have I gone soft? I look at the TV in the corner for a while, Becky staring down at the table. It’s playin’ the BBC news, a British lady in a suit talkin’ about Syria.

  I’m glad when the waitress brings our food, even if Becky’s bombshell has stolen some of my appetite. But at least it means I can just focus on eatin’ and not worry about what to say. I eat my food like I always eat it, gatherin’ energy for the next fight, makin’ sure I ain’t bloated just in case I need to start fightin’ or shooting. I glance up once and see that Becky has eaten a couple’a bites of chicken and half a Yorkshire pudding but now is just pushin’ a Brussel sprout around and around her gravy, watching it, lookin’ like she might yell or cry. I look back down to my food. I can’t fuckin’ think what to do. I’ve never practiced for this shit.

  When our food is done, we stare at each other, and it’s like we haven’t spent the last two months together, like we didn’t spend a DIY Christmas together, like we haven’t shared each other’s bodes countless times. It’s like we’re goddamn strangers.

  “We don’t have to talk about serious stuff,” Becky says, catching my eyes and smiling. “We can talk about anything, anything at all. We can put it aside for now, if you like. I don’t want things to be like this between us, Chance. So let’s just forget about it for the time being. Tell me about this trout. How big was it? How long were you fishing before you caught it? What kind was it, Rainbow? Did you go upstate?”

  I’m about to respond to this—if there’s one thing that don’t make me uncomfortable, it’s talkin’ about that massive trout I caught—but then I see somethin’ on the TV which makes me pause. I think it’s my eyes playin’ a trick on me at first, the same way they used to when I was a rookie on a job and every coat’d become a person waitin’ to clip me. But then I look closer, and I see it ain’t a trick. It’s my face, and Becky’s face, two pictures placed side by side.

  “Becky,” I say. “Look at the TV.”

  “What? Why?—”

  “Just look at the TV!”

  She flinches, and then sees I’m serious and turns around.

  The British lady, in her posh voice, is sayin’, “Now we have some overseas news. The BBC has learnt this morning that Chance Baylor, suspected hitter for the Giovanni Crime Family, may have kidnapped a nineteen-year-old aspiring artist. Becky Morris has not been seen in almost two months, the BBC has been informed, and the New York Police Department are now mobilizing in full force to search for her, as it is feared her life is at risk from Mr. Baylor.”

  Our photographs linger on the screen for a long time.

  Becky turns back to me, mouth in that O, but it ain’t cute now, not in this context.

  I reach across the table and take her hand. “We need to get the fuck outta here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Becky

  We pace across the parking lot, past the car, to the mall that sits opposite The Dickens. My belly is aching from the roast dinner, even if I didn’t eat a lot of it, or maybe it’s just this gap which has suddenly appeared between me and Chance. That moment in the Ferris Wheel, when we rocked together, when his eyes were locked on me and we shared pleasure which had as much to do with how we felt inside with how our bodies felt—that moment convinced me that when I told him, he would react well, he would take it in a positive way, he would support me. But even now, with him holding my hand, it’s like he’s half-holding my hand. Just tugging on my arm the same way an impatient minder would. There’s little affection in it.

  Even so, I giggle when I see him in the blonde long-haired hippie-type wig and the black fedora, with the hipster glasses. I giggle at myself in the mirror, too, when I see my bright red hair and my beanie hat. Once these disguises have been sorted out, we leave the mall and go back to the car. Chance sits behind the wheel, hands on the steering wheel. He must be sweating, because as he squeezes the steering wheel, it makes a squeak-squeak noise.

  “Chance,” I say. “I think I have an idea. What if I go to the police—on my own, without you—and just tell them that I haven’t been kidnapped? I’m not a criminal. They have no reason to mess with me. I could just tell them, ‘Look, this is all a big mistake. Chance never kidnapped me. He saved me and I decided to stay with him for a while.’” That isn’t strictly true, since he did stop me from calling my dad, but I forgave him for that weeks ago.

  “No,” Chance answers, voice unwavering. “No, I can’t let that happen. You’d walk in there and—and they might do anything. Might trump up some charges and lock you up. Might even fuckin’ kill you, for all I know. This is all new territory for me. Gomez and his merry band is one thing. Bein’ on news—foreign news—is another. I think it’s time I crashed Nate’s apartment.”

  “You know where he lives?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t wanna go there since it’d be the first place I’d get picked up. But now I don’t reckon we’ve got much of a choice. I need to know what the fuck’s goin’ on, and he’s the best man for that. But let me try him again, just to see.”

  He takes out his cell and dials Nate a few times, but he doesn’t answer.

  “Fuck’s sake. Let’s hope these disguises do some good, or let’s hope that whatever mob bastard was guardin’ Nate’s place has retreated now the cops’re onto me.”

  “Us,” I say, as he starts the engine. I place my hand on his arm, trying to comfort him, trying to calm him down. He seems like he might punch through the window any second, but at my touch, he calms a little. “They’re onto us, Chance.”

  “That’s worse,” Chance mutters.

  He drives us toward Hell’s Kitchen, glancing constantly in the rear-view mirror, in the side mirrors, looking left and right at every crossroads like he’s expecting some random gunman to come charging from the shadows. Once, a car backfires and he flinches and goes for his gun, before letting out a long breath which turns into a growl. “Fuckin’ cars.” All the way there, Chance is on edge, his blue-specked eyes like a predator’s, never resting. I find myself enjoying it in a warped, strange kind of way. I find myself thinking about how this man is the father of my child; this man would never let anything happen to us; God help anybody who tried to harm us with this man to protect us. But then I have to kill that idea, since it isn’t like Chance has jumped at the idea of being the father. Part of me even suspects he’s glad for this turn of events so he doesn’t have to talk about the baby.

  We stop outside an apartment building with graffiti framing the door and smashed-in windows winking at us as the streetlamps begin to turn on, evening already deepening.

  “Wait here,” Chance says, climbing from t
he car.

  I watch as the blonde-haired, hat-wearing, glasses-wearing man walks up and down the street, hands in his pocket, eyes flitting here and there. Once he’s searched the area for a few minutes, he returns to me. “I reckon if there was ever anyone guardin’ this place, they’re gone. Come on.”

  We walk across the road, the ground slushy with driven-over snow, and into the apartment building. The main door is busted, the lock caved in, so we can just walk right in. But the elevator is busted, too, which means we have to walk up ten flights of stairs, past apartments full of screaming babies and shouting kids and shouting parents and shouting spouses, before reaching the top floor. This door is different to the rest. Where the others are thin, cardboard-looking doors, some of them with their numbers gone or swinging on a single screw, this door is thick metal with a fancy keypad lock instead of a key.

  “Just like Nate,” Chance says. “Lives in a shithole just so he can hide what a fortress he lives in.”

  “What are you going to do?” I ask. “Hack the lock?”

  “Hack the lock?” He tilts his head at me. “You’ve been watchin’ too many movies.”

  He bunches his hand into a fist and bangs on the door, causing the metal to shake in its frame. Even after all this time, I’m still shocked by strong this man is.

  “Who’s that?” a man shouts. His voice is whiney, more like a boy’s than a man’s, but there’s a smoker’s gruffness which goes some way to reducing this effect. “You better not be fucking around with me. I mean it!”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Chance says casually. “It’s me. Open the damned door.”

  “Ch…Chance?”

  “Why’d you say that like the Bogeyman has just come callin’? Yeah, it’s Chance. Are you goin’ to open up or are we gonna see if all the years I’ve spent workin’ out are a match for this door?”

  On the other side of the door, I hear a beeping noise which must Nate pressing down on the keypad. When the beeping stops, the door cranks and begins swinging slowly open. Chance shoulders into the apartment and I follow him. The apartment is nothing like the rest of the building. It’s a futuristic-looking series of rooms, filled with computers, laptops, TVs, and portable hard drives stacked on metal shelves. When Chance and I turn to face Nate, I see that he’s a short, skinny black guy with bright blue eyes and freckles around his cheeks. His hair is natural and the tight curls are twisted up into a high bun, the sides faded. He wears a vest and shorts, both of them colorful; with his horn-rimmed glasses, he looks like such a classic hipster that I have to fight back a laugh.

  “Chance,” Nate says, eyes flitting away from him. “You’ve dyed your hair. You’ve dyed it so well it’s become a wig.” As he speaks, he closes the door, typing in the code. The cranking noise happens again, and the door clicks locked. When this is done, Nate paces across the room to the couch and chairs, which are covered in electronic debris. He moves aside some of this, carefully placing it on the coffee table. “I…You’re not here to hurt me, are you?”

  “Hurt you?” Chance says. His tone of voice is ambiguous, as though he could be here to hurt him, or could not, depending on the circumstances.

  “You have my address, Chance. My address. I was always very careful not to give any of you Family men my address, very, very careful. Once I was found by one of them—by you, I mean. Not them. Them makes you sound like you’re all very different from me!” As he talks, his eyes glance at the floor, the TV, the ceiling, the laptops, or at me. But never at Chance. “I moved after that, and fast.”

  “I thought there might be Family guys on this place, or cops,” Chance mutters.

  “On my place? Please.” Nate pauses, and then begins to whisper very quickly, “Listen, Chance, listen, if this is about me not answering my phone, you need to know that I’ve changed my phone since we last spoke. When I heard about what went down at the warehouse, I killed that number. Had to, had to. Better safe than sorry, I always say! And now you’re here and…God help me, I would rather have the Boss here than you. Anyone but you, Chance. I’ve seen the news. Is that it? Have you already killed the others? Ten, twenty, thirty? I guess it doesn’t make any difference to you. The Boss dead, Tony dead, the men dead? And now you’re ticking me off the list?” He shakes his head, but somehow, he doesn’t seem nervous, just…sad. “Just please remember all I’ve done for you over the years. Please, Chance. You had to kill them. That was about—about respect—or loyalty—or—or—I’m sure you had your reasons. But me? I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me again. You’ll never hear from me. You know I can do it.”

  Chance just grins at him. “Knock it off,” he says. “We ain’t here to hurt you. Goddamn, you’ll make the lady think I’m some kind of psycho with talk like that.”

  “I know you’re some kind of psycho,” I say, pinching his elbow.

  “Look,” Chance says. “You got a spare room? ’Cause we need somewhere to lie low for the night, while we make up our minds about what we’re gonna do, alright?”

  “Yes, yes,” Nate says, smiling ear-to-ear, like a man glad to just be alive.

  So Chance is the most feared man in the Family, by the sounds of it. I don’t know what to make of that. More feared than the Boss of Family? More feared than any of the other hitters? I’ve seen him deal with bloody men like it was no big thing. I’ve seen him kill men. And yet it’s difficult to connect the feared Family hitter with the man I’ve come to know, the man with a fleck of blue in his eye and a fleck of brightness in the darkness of his heart.

  Nate leads us through to a spare bedroom, which is covered in dust from disuse. I ask Nate if he has any cleaning stuff, and he takes me to the kitchen cupboard and hands me a rag and some spray. As I go around the room cleaning, a thought occurs to me, a thought which has so far been stifled by mine and Chance’s closeness. But now everything seems like it’s rushing ahead, which means that one day soon I might see Dad again. I stop as I’m dusting the dresser, rag dangling in my hand, shoulders shaking. I fight back the tears. Hormones, I tell myself.

  Then Chance is behind me, hands on my shoulders. “Somethin’ wrong?” he asks. He sounds awkward, but he’s asking and that’s what matters.

  “Just my dad,” I say, coughing away an incoming sob. “When he finds out where I’ve been, who I’ve been with…He’ll be furious.”

  “Will he hit you?” Chance says. “’Cause that ain’t happening—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “No, he’s never hit me. He’ll just…shout at me, say nasty things.”

  “You can manage that,” Chance says, removing his hands from my shoulders. “You’re stronger’n you think, Becky. Way fuckin’ stronger.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Becky

  “So you’re not going to kill me?” Nate asks, once Chance and I are set up in the spare room. We sit in the living room again, lamps from all corners lighting it up so that, with all the electronics, I feel like I’m in the inside of a massive machine.

  “No,” Chance says. “I ain’t gonna kill you. Come on, man.”

  The father of my child is a feared killer, I reflect. The father of my child makes the scary men scared. That confused mixture of fear, respect, lust, affection, and admiration which I felt so often back in the motel room comes to me now. I don’t know how to feel about it.

  “Right.” Nate steeples his fingers and presses them into his chin. He really does look like a little kid, all bright-eyed and freckled, which makes it all the stranger when he starts talking about Family stuff. I’m so used to associating that talk with Dad or the men Dad sometimes brings by the apartment. “If you weren’t already sitting down, Chance, my good friend, I would tell you to take a pew. Listen up, because this is going to rock you from dawn to dusk. And let me warn you, you might want to leap at me and hit me or something when I tell you this, on account of it being so world-shattering, but just know I never say something without being able to back it up. Would you agree with that?”

  In the tone of
someone humoring a child, Chance says, “Yeah, man, I agree.”

  “Okay.” Nate takes a deep breath. “Giovanni—the big Boss man, the head honcho—” He glances at me like he’s explaining for my benefit.

  “I know who he is,” I say, hoping to move us along.

  “Right, right, of course! Anyway, Giovanni is—did you know that if you take ten gigabytes of data and—”

  “Nate,” Chance says. “You’re stallin’. Spit it out.”

  “Okay.” He rubs his hand over his chin and jaw, rubbing at stubble that I can’t see. “Giovanni has come to believe that you are the man who killed the undercover cop at the warehouse that night, as well as killing everybody else. I know—at least, I have calculated—that the slaughter was, in fact, performed by the men who took this lovely lady hostage. And the cop? Must’ve been them, too. But somehow Giovanni has got it into his head that it was you, or, at least, it suits his purposes to claim that you did it all.”