by Paula Cox
He nods again.
“Good. So I’m gonna need you to wait here for around five minutes, and then you can go out into the bar and tell ’em I overpowered you. I know what you’re thinkin’. What’s to stop you from running in there as soon as I leave? But just remember, I’m the man the Skulls called the Beast ’cause I slaughtered twenty men in one night, and I’m the fuckin’ man who blew up those Skulls all by my goddamn self. You don’t wanna give me a reason to come after you.”
“I—” When I let go of the back of his head, he whispers fiercely, “I get it, man. I really get it. Come on, man. I get it. I get it!”
I stand up slowly, watching him for any sign of movement, and then creep out into the hallway. I mean it, I’ll come back for him, and he knows I mean it. Sometimes it’s good being the Beast. I creep through the hallway, listening to the sounds of the men in the bar, and then, when I’m in the lobby area, I walk out of the club and hug the wall, making my way around the side of the building to where Trevor usually sits, day and night, the most loyal, stupid man under Clint’s orders. When I reach him, sitting in the setting sunlight and listening to his radio, more like a man at the end of a hard honest day of laboring than a club man, I crouch behind him and bring the shank around to his throat.
“No,” I say, when he goes for his gun on instinct. I take the gun with my free hand, and press the gun into his head instead of the shank.
“I could shout and have every fucker in there out here in a second,” he says.
“Maybe,” I reply, “but I could pull the trigger and have every piece of your brain out here in a second, too.”
He nods at that, a killer accepting he’s been bested by another killer. “Fair enough,” he says. “What’d’you want?”
“I need to know where Bri is—Grizzly’s daughter. I know you’ve heard somethin’ about it, maybe in passing. So I need you to tell me in the next ten seconds or I’m sorry, Trevor, but you’re a dead man.”
“You’d really kill me out here?” he asks. Not scared, just curious.
“Yeah,” I say. “I really would. Don’t want to, truth be told, but I will.”
“Escaping is one thing, but killing on your way out is another, right?”
“Exactly. But enough talking. Tell me what I want to know. You’ve got five seconds left.”
He sighs, and then says, “In the city, at an apartment owned by a woman called Heather.”
“Her mom’s friend? Alright. Now what’re we goin’ to do about you callin’ those men the second I remove this gun?”
“I don’t think there’s much you can do—”
I slam him across the back of the head with the barrel of the gun. It ain’t like in the movies, where they just collapse and that’s that. He wobbles, tries to stand, so I slam him twice more. Four times total, and then he’s passed out, crumpled on the floor, his radio off to one side and his headphones in a question-mark pattern.
I don’t waste any time, just sprint across the lot, take the first bike I see, hotwire it, and then cruise it out as quietly as I can. Only when I’m a good half-mile from the clubhouse, I rev the engine and speed toward the city, knowing that I’ve done something I can’t take back, but unwilling to sit in that damned room one day longer with my daughter and Brat out here, alone, without me. I tried to do it the proper way. I tried to wait it out. I tried to stand by and let Clint fuck up my life. But I won’t stand for it, not anymore.
I spent two long years as a prisoner. I’m not spending two more.
Chapter Seventeen
Bri
At first, I think it’s just the rain pattering against my window. I roll over and bury my head in the pillow, ignoring the constant pat-pat-pat. But after around ten minutes, it stops, and then after around another ten minutes, it starts again. I don’t dare to hope, as I rise from bed and creep across the room, wincing every time the floor makes a creaking noise. I can’t hope. I can’t let myself believe. It’s not possible. Slick would never risk his life in the club like that, not for me. He’ll do what Dad tells him. He’ll serve his time.
Going to the window, I look down on the street. It’s dark, difficult to see anything, but there’s a shadowy form down there. The form steps forward into a streetlamp and Slick, in his leather and just how he was the last time I saw him except that his hair is longer and he hasn’t shaved in a few days, smirks up at me.
I glance back at my bedroom, at the baby monitor on the nightstand. She’s getting so loud now that I probably don’t need to use one, but if mothers aren’t allowed a little paranoia, who is? I take the baby monitor and creep through the apartment on my tiptoes. For such an expensive apartment, the floors in here seem to creek with each light step, as if wanting me to fail. I open Heather’s bedroom door, lean in, and place the monitor on one of her shelfs. She mutters something in her sleep and rolls over, but does not wake. After that, I return to my bedroom and throw on some jeans and a sweatshirt, before creeping out of the apartment. It’s only when I’m downstairs, walking into the cooling night air, that I let myself breathe a sigh of relief.
I look around the street for Slick, but he’s nowhere to be seen. For a moment I wonder if perhaps I dreamt the whole thing, or hallucinated it. It would be possible, considering just how much I’ve been thinking about him these past two months. I walk toward the end of the street, under the streetlamps, and then almost jump into the road when Slick says, “Hey,” from the darkness of an alleyway.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I hiss, hand on my chest.
He smirks, and immediately any panic or anger drops away. First, I waited two long years to see that smirk. Now, I’ve waited two long months.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he says, approaching.
“No, of course I am. You’re the most welcome sight a woman could see at night, alone, in an alleyway—”
He presses against me, and then kisses me on the lips. I kiss him back, my body instantly alight at the roughness of his lips, of his prickly beard. When he breaks off the kiss, I’m gasping even more than I was when he startled me. “Is our daughter safe?” he asks quietly, hands wrapped around my waist. That this would be his first question makes me want to kiss him again, but harder, with more meaning behind it. But I’m too aware of Heather’s apartment building, a watching sentinel from which Heather could emerge at any moment, wagging her finger and talking about leather-wearing bandits.
“She’s safe.”
I tell him about the baby monitor, and how Heather has taken care of her countless times.
“Then let’s ride,” Slick says.
“Ride, where?”
He shrugs. “Anywhere. Away from the city. To the Rockies. I need to get away from bricks and steel and all that civilized shit for a while. I’ve been locked in the goddamn clubhouse for two goddamn months.”
When we find his bike, I see that it’s not his bike but somebody else’s. I vaguely recognize it from the shop. “I’m pretty sure this belongs to one of Clint’s men,” I mutter.
“Clint’s men,” he echoes. “This amazes me. Everyone talks about Clint’s men like it’s natural, like there should even be such a thing as Clint’s men. That’s what he’s done. He’s played the long game, made everyone think it’s all normal.”
“He’s been with us since before I was born,” I point out. “Why would he wait so long?”
“Either he’s a fuckin’ coward, or he’s a fuckin’ genius.” Slick takes off his leather and hands it to me. “Put this on. Don’t won’t you gettin’ hurt. And this.” He reaches under the bike and takes a helmet from the storage compartment.
“What about you?” I ask, taking the leather.
He just looks at me. Even in the darkness, his sky-blue eyes are full of life. I put on the jacket and the helmet, and then climb onto the bike behind Slick. He is wearing a thin-fabric long-sleeve shirt. I can feel his abs through it, well-defined. I squeeze onto them, so glad to feel them that I don’t care if I’m being too for
ward, don’t care if Heather and Grizzly and the whole world thinks this is wrong. How can riding with the father of my child be wrong? How can any of this be wrong when it feels so natural, so true, so right?
Slick rides us out of the city, toward the mountains, framed by starlight, some of the jutting areas looking like forefingers, crooked, beckoning. It feels good to ride, even if I’m not the one riding. I haven’t ridden much since staying with Heather. I’ve had Charlotte with me; I don’t think it’s good practice to chuck a helmet on a toddler and throw her on the back of a bike, and I can’t afford a sidecar. I lay the helmet against Slick’s back, hugging into him, enjoying the thrum of the engine beneath me and the wind whipping at my legs. After a while, I see where Slick is taking us. I laugh to myself. We wind down passageways, between valleys, down secret hidden places which Slick has to slow down to navigate.
“You’re taking us to our old dirt bike course,” I call to him, once he’s slowed down enough to be able to hear me.
“You’re a smart lady,” he calls back.
When he was sixteen and I was nine, he used to bring me down here on his dirt bike. Somehow, he’d found a kid’s dirt bike which he kept in a makeshift hut he’d built himself out of old sheets of metal. He would bring me up here, and then, after making sure I was in all the safety gear, let me ride up and down the muddy ramps, around the course. I always looked forward to coming here more than I looked forward to anything else. These were in the days before I realized how much I wanted Slick. These were the days when he was just my older friend, my protector. When I became older, I often fantasized, when we came here, that one of these days he would tackle me into the rutted area of the ramps, the deep crevices, and ravage me, kiss me, take me. But he never did; he never would. That wasn’t Slick.
He brings the bike to a stop and we both climb off. Taking the helmet and the jacket off, I breathe in the fresh night air. When I make to hand the jacket back to Slick, he shakes his head. “Don’t know if I have the right to wear that anymore, Brat,” he says. “Don’t know if Grizzly’n all would take too kindly to it now.”
“What happened?” I ask.
He tells me about breaking out, about threatening the men, about stealing the bike.
He’s right; it’s a terrible situation.
Dropping the jacket, I jump across to him. “Let’s not think about that now!” I exclaim, putting my hands on his shoulders. “Tonight is about reunion. Tonight is about saying, ‘Screw the world. We want what we want, and they can go to hell. Right?’”
He grins, and takes my hand. “Right. Follow me, then.”
Gripping his hand in mine tightly, afraid that if I don’t this will really all turn out to be a dream after all, I walk with him around the edge of the track. Back when we were kids, Slick used to maintain the track with a shovel, shaping it, making sure it didn’t build up packs of dirt or crumble in the wrong places. Now, the track is half-wrecked, some of the muddy ramps still in place, others crumbled to dust. When I see it, still standing, I let go of his hand and run toward it. Behind me, Slick chuckles.
“What the hell?” I approach the hut, as rickety-looking as ever, catching the starlight on its metallic surface. I turn to Slick. “Seriously, what the hell? How is this still here?”
“A courier has to be a Jack of all trades,” he says.
“You came by here recently and rebuilt it, didn’t you?”
He grins, and then shakes his head. “No faith, Brat, no faith. Come inside. I wanna show you something.”
When we’re inside, I don’t see anything at first. It takes my eyes a while to adjust to the darkness, even if starlight seeps through gaps in the metal. Then the dim outline of a dirt bike reveals itself, and then the dirt bike in its entirety. I remember it being green, but now it just looks grey. I run over to it, squealing with excitement. A rush of memories hit me when I see it. This was the first proper bike I ever rode. Back then, I thought I was a real dirt biker, a proper Ricky Carmichael. I remember the first time I fell off, how Slick quickly cleaned and patched me up. I remember when some boys around Slick’s age found the spot and started teasing me, calling me, a “widdle girl,” and laughing. I also remember how Slick bloodied their noses and sent them running.
“Brat, there’s something else.”
I turn to see Slick standing with a small metal box in his hand.
“That’s not what I think it is, is it?” I ask, fidgeting with excitement. I can’t believe he’s done this. He must’ve done it soon after he came back, and left it like this, waiting for the time he could bring me here. And then life got in the way. Or maybe it really has stayed standing all this time, a permanent emblem of our shared childhood.
“Come outside and see.”
We go back outside. Slick places the box on the floor and returns to the bike, calling back, “Don’t peep until I come back, Brat, or there’ll be hell to pay.” I laugh, and wait. Soon, he returns with a flashlight in his hand. We sit down on a grassy patch of dirt, before Slick clicks his fingers and jumps to his feet.
“Are we ever going to take a look?” I ask, pretending I’m furious with him for taking so long.
“Just wait a sec, damn.” He goes to the bike, and then returns with an old oily blanket. “I don’t reckon you mind a bit of grease, Brat?”
“You know me so well,” I reply, my cheeks warm with the moment, the night, with seeing him again.
He lays the blanket on the dirt and we both sit on it with the box between us.
When he puts his arm around me, pulling me into him, I feel like I’m home. Time drifts away and we’re back where we started, Brat and Sky, and all the horrible shit that’s happened to Slick no longer exists. The escape, the ramifications, Dad’s misguided anger and Clint’s scheming . . . all of it is burnt away by the starlight and drifts into nothingness. Slick and I, me and Slick; that’s all.
“You can open it now,” he says.
I tear the box open, and then let out a gleeful scream when I see them there, just how we left them. Slick tips them onto the blanket and shines the flashlight on them. In total, there are around fifty Polaroids, taken over the span of a couple of years. The first one I pick up shows me, thinking I’m super cool and super grownup sitting on the dirt bike with a serious, pensive expression, glaring at the camera.
“You thought you were the shit, Brat,” Slick says, smiling warmly. “You thought you were a real—”
“—Ricky Carmichael.”
“So you remember?”
He used to call me that all the time.
“Of course I remember,” I say.
The next photograph shows Slick, younger, skinnier, with long hair down to his chin and without any tattoos. He’s on his knees working on his bike.
“Look at your hair!” I slap him on the arm, giggling.
He smiles ruefully. “Forgot that one was in there, truth be told. Do you prefer it how it was then, or how it is now?”
“Now, definitely,” I say. “You look like a wannabe rock star.”
“Yeah, well—what about you in this one?” He picks up one of me with my bike on its side, my foot planted proudly on the bike, arms raised in the air like it’s a boxing match and I’ve just toppled my opponent. I’m wearing an oil-stained jumpsuit and my hair is cut so close to my head that if it were not for my feminine face, I would look like a boy. “I went out of my way to get you a dirt bike you could ride, and how do you repay me, eh? By nagging me all damn day to take a picture of you with the thing toppled, all damn day, on and on. Sky, Sky, please take this picture. Please, please.”
I nudge him, and then snuggle closer into him. With his arm around me, he coils a long strand of my hair around his finger. “Look where my hand is,” he says, “all the way down here, near your shoulder, and still I get a handful of hair. You would’ve died back then if you could see it now.”
“That’s because I wanted to be like you,” I whisper.
“I had rock star wannabe hair, d
idn’t I?”
“A grownup, a rider, a junk head, a grease monkey.”
He laughs. “Well, you were all that. Just look at you.”
We go through all of them, coming across only one or two with both of us in shot together. One is too blurry to be able to make anything out, but the other is of me on his shoulders, Slick holding the camera at arm’s length. It’s framed poorly and we can’t see much, but we can see our smiles, both us grinning like fools.
“Damn timer button was broken, remember?”
“I remember,” I say. “Look how happy we were.”
A powerful wave of nostalgia hits me. I wish I could lie face down in the dirt, and then when I stand up, be in that past, just for the night. Just for one night, ride up and down those ramps again like all that exists is this little pocket of mud in the middle of the Rockies. Everything, all oppressive grownup concerns, melting away as my world hones down to the next jump, the next lap.