by Nicole Fox
“Circles and circles,” I mutter, washing my mug. “My thoughts are the World Serpent, biting their own tail, going around and around. I need to distract myself. And I need to stop talking to myself.”
I wonder, not for the first time, if my neighbors think I’m a madwoman because I talk to myself so often.
I leave for work with the feeling that I made a mistake with Logan, and yet with the feeling that I did exactly the right thing. It’s an odd mixture and I don’t know quite how to handle it. As I start my car and the engine thrums, I think about the thrum of a motorbike, and then my mind does somersaults and all at once I’m sitting on top of him and his body is a powerful engine, his metal cock thrumming inside of me, driving me to crazier and crazier heights of pleasure. I think about scratching fingernails down a sheet-rock chest, watching blood bead and then licking it up between solid pectorals. I think about—I kill the thoughts as best I can, because even if part of me regrets sending him away, it’s done now and in the end it’ll be the right decision. I have to remember who—what—I am. I am an ex-rich girl, a self-exile, a friendless wanderer whose songs sometimes make men want to fuck them. That is all.
I get to work and say my friendliest hello to Mr. Jones, the dentist who I assist for most of my shifts. He’s a redhaired man with a thick red moustache and coils of red hair on his forearms, just about covering his freckles, though they poke through here and there. He wears a silver wedding band so I know he’s married, but that doesn’t stop his eyes from sometimes straying to my chest. I wear a high-cut shirt, and I haven’t got bazookas down there anyhow, but he still finds something to look at. It’s one of those petty things I put up with because I need this job; I’m aware they could easily replace me at any moment.
I clean the equipment and pass it to him and smile and fake-laugh at the bad jokes of the nervous patients, and then it’s lunchtime and I retreat to the breakroom. I want to take off the scarf around my throat. The AC is on but it seems intent on blasting warm hair half the time, to test our patience. I tug at the scarf but I don’t dare remove it, especially when Cecilia comes strutting in. She’s the look-at-me-type, red high heels, low-cut shirt flashing a red bra, tights with a ladder up one side which must be purposeful since it’s always there, and always with a new loud hairdo. She pouts at me with her bright red lipstick and marches over.
“Hey, doll,” she says.
“What’s up, Cecilia?” I reply.
“What’s up.” She drops next to me and takes out her fat-free sugar-free all-natural yogurt, unwraps her pink novelty spoon with pictures of flowers on, and starts eating in tiny mouthfuls. “You sound like a man when you say that.”
“I know. Do you know how I know? Because every time I say it you tell me. How’s reception today?”
“Answering calls, making calls, booking appointments. Reception’s reception. Did I tell you?”
I’ll never understand why Cecilia latched onto me when I first started working here. The only thing I can figure out is that we’re around the same age, but apart from that we couldn’t be more different. I barely talk to her; she always catches me in the breakroom. Maybe if I didn’t have that rule about friendships, something would blossom between us.
“Tell me what?”
She leans in and whispers, “I’m getting a boob job!” Then she just stares at me for a long time. “Well?”
Oh, right.
“Congratulations!” I squeal.
She places her hand on her chest and soaks it up. “Thank you, thank you. What about you? What’s on your mind?”
What’s on my mind? All morning I’ve been thinking about Logan, and when I haven’t been thinking about Logan I’ve been thinking about how I have to find another gig to replace the one at The Devil, and then I started wondering if I need to move to LA where there are more opportunities for singers, where maybe I could get spotted by someone and scooped up out of obscurity. And then I began to think about what that really meant, becoming a rock star, and I had one of my customary panicked moments when I don’t even know if that’s what I want anymore. I don’t know if I can be bothered to deal with this shit, these petty tyrannies of married men staring at my chest even when I give them no reason to. And then I felt guilty, because I shouldn’t be allowed to forgo the petty tyrannies of my life just because my dad was rich. But then I reasoned that I didn’t choose to be born to a rich family, no more than poor people choose to be born to theirs. And then—
“Hun,” Cecilia says. “Are you okay? You look a little funny. What’s gotten into you? You’re all red.”
“It’s just so hot in here,” I mutter.
“Isn’t it?” she squeaks, as if it’s a revelation. “I came in this morning and I thought—yeah, it’s just—I thought: why is it so hot?”
I’m spared further explanation when Ryan walks in. He’s a classic twenty-something skater type, with those ten-inch stretching earrings and tattoos all up his arm. He looks like a teenager to me, but he’s the boss’s dad so he’s allowed to stick around. He swaggers over to Cecilia, completely ignoring me, and talks at her breasts. “Wanna come to dinner with me?”
Cecilia reacts as though these are the words of her finally-found Romeo, flutters her eyelashes, and replies, “Yeah, sure.”
He walks away, and that’s that.
For the rest of the day I can’t get that exchange out of my head. Can it really be that simple? Can you really just talk to each other like that, and then have it be fine? It’s never been like that for me. Ever since I was a girl and I had my first awkward conversation with a boy, it’s never been like that. I never dreamed it could be. For me it’s always been forcing words out, trying to navigate the swamp of social humiliation. For me it’s always been a tightrope-walking act, with an abyss of caring too much on one side and an abyss of not caring too much on the other, the result being that I end up not doing much of anything, and the relationship—if it ever is a relationship—fizzles out like a faulty fuse.
“Except with Logan,” I whisper on the way home. “With Logan … oh, shit … with Logan, it was different. I was comfortable. I don’t even know him. I don’t even have his number. I have to be strong now. Come on, Cora Ash. What is Cora Ash? Why did you make her? Because she’s strong. Cora Ash is strong!”
I stop screaming at myself in the rearview mirror when I spot a couple of kids in the backseat of a car the next lane over, giggling and pointing at the crazy lady.
Chapter Nine
Logan
Weeks pass and the asshole summer starts to give way to autumn, which is still hot but doesn’t make a man want to ride to Antarctica. I spend my time with the club, taking over my dad’s role since he can’t do anything no more. I kill two men and put about three others in the hospital. They’re members of the mafia who’ve been moving in on this town for a little while, starting a couple of years after the Demon Riders moved here. They’re messing with our gun shipments and trying to sling heroin to the kids around here, which is a bad move since the cops only ignore us ’cause we steer clear of the hard shit.
I try not to think about Cora Ash. Every so often she’ll pop into my head and I’ll turn away from her, burying her under a mound of other thoughts, hoping and praying that one day soon she’ll leave forever. It can get damn tiring, having a woman in my head all the time, whispering in my sleep. I even find jerking off difficult. I can’t watch porn, and I can’t even think about any other woman. Whenever I start, my mind turns to her, to that water-snake twitching, her punk hair falling around her snake tattoo as she bounces up and down on my prick. So I mostly leave off it for a while. I don’t touch any club girls, either. Hell, I’d be a priest if it wasn’t for the murder and the whisky.
I get shitfaced more than is healthy, but then I guess getting shitfaced is never healthy. I don’t smoke too much, because of Dad’s dribbling. If cancer is going to get me, let it be liver cancer. I’m not going out like my father, with a rattling chest. Mostly the weeks are a wait
ing game: waiting for Dad to croak, which he’s going to do any day now. The doctor just says it’s a matter of time. The old man isn’t on drugs anymore except for pain meds. They’re just making him as comfortable as possible. That’s how the doc put it, but then, can a person ever be comfortable if they’re facing down eternal nothingness?
I’m in the clubhouse; I slug a whisky. My thoughts are turning dark and there isn’t much I can do about it. Dad’s dying and I sit here, middle of the day, getting tipsy and then drunk and then sobering up again while my men are out sorting my business. I look at the photographs on the walls: all the men, and Dad in the middle of many of them. I just can’t believe that that giant bear of a man is the same husk in the hospital bed. It doesn’t make sense. I didn’t know folks could just waste away like that, not folks like Pa, not folks who seem to be made of something other than flesh.
I’m not surprised when I get the call. I’m not even surprised by the deadened pain in Mom’s voice.
“Can you come by the hospital?” she says, sounding oddly calm. I wonder if she’s taken a sedative. “It’s nearly time. He’s lucid, Logan. He wants to speak with you.”
“All right.”
I don’t expect much as I climb onto my bike. He’s said he wanted to speak to me dozens of times over the past few weeks, and every time he can barely form a sentence. It’s pathetic, in a way, that big strong bastard sitting there, hardly able to talk. I often wonder what the old Dad’d make of it. I know what he’d do; he’d take a twelve-gauge and blow the husk’s head off. He was a tough piece of work. He’d never have let himself turn into this, but cancer doesn’t give a man much say. I feel guilty for these thoughts. I shouldn’t think of my father like this. But it’s hard not to when I remember a man made of metal with his hand on my throat, telling me to stop fooling around and be a man. That was when I was a kid and I started smoking dope, and the man gave me the push I needed to finally be able to look at myself in the mirror and see someone worth respecting, or at least someone worth fearing.
I climb up the stairs with a weight in my chest. I want to turn away, sprint back down the stairs and just go somewhere, anywhere else. Maybe to the beach, just sit on the sand a while and stare at the ocean and lose myself in the rolling of the waves, pretend that, in a white-walled room, my dad isn’t dying.
But I don’t do that. I open the door and nod at Dad and Mom, and then join them at the bed.
“My son,” Dad says, lifting his hand. The skin is drawn too tightly over his flesh. His bones poke through the paper-thin skin. Old-man spots mark his arm and all in all, I find it difficult to look at him. Guilt crushes me and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get over this feeling of disgust. It’s selfish and I want to shake it, but I can’t.
“Dad.” I take the hand and we clasp forearms like we used to before a job. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m as healthy as a horse.” He smiles. “Listen, I didn’t call you here to …” He hacks and coughs and dribbles and Mom mops up after him. When he’s regained some composure, he goes on. “I called you here because you need to know somethin’, Logan. But first I wanna say that you’re a good man, a damn fine outlaw, and you can lead this club better than I ever did if you really put your mind to it. You’re a soldier, it’s true, but you’re a smart kid, too. Your mother was right to keep you in school.”
Dad and Mom share a moment, Dad pawing at her face and Mom clutching at his wrist. Whatever sedatives she’s taken aren’t strong enough to protect her from his touch. She breaks down and weeps violently all over his hand, kissing his knuckles one by one and then pressing her wet cheek firmly against his palm. I watch with a calm exterior, but my insides twist and ache. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, Mom with smeared makeup looking more terrified than I’ve ever seen her, looking like she could shatter into a million pieces.
Dad turns back to me. “You know everything I’m gonna tell you, I reckon. Be smart; don’t try’n be too tough if you don’t need to be. Never give an order you’re not sure beforehand is going to be followed. That’s important, ’cause once men see you as weak—” More coughs, some of them with blood in them.
“It’s coming,” he says. “I can feel it. Let me get down to business, son. Listen to me. Lean closer, will you? My throat is a bit of a traitor these days.”
I lean closer and listen to his rasping voice. For a split-second I hear a different rasping voice, singing of Viking warriors and gods and dancing across the stage, and another selfish thought strikes me: I wish I was there instead of here. I try my best to be a good son and focus.
“I had a friend once. His name was Crash Collins. This was a long time ago, when I could lift my own goddamn head.” Some of the old fierceness comes into his voice. “We were good friends and he was my VP. He came from money but not a lot, under a million, but he made ten times that running with us. He was a smart man, Crash was. He could turn a dollar into ten with the snap of his fingers. But the thing is, half of that money was mine, ’cause we went in on a business deal together and split the profits. He put all the money upfront, but half the money from the profits was mine, do you get it? But he was good with banks and locked it up tight. He knew I couldn’t do shit since I was outside the law. And then do you know what the bastard did? He got together a few stupid men and tried to take over my club! He started calling himself the gentleman and claiming that his money went back generations, when really his dad made it in oil from nothing. But he still wore a leather! The prick wanted it both ways!” Dad spits and then waves Mom away when she tries to clean him. “He died when he tried to take over our club, but he left a daughter behind. Her name’s Melissa Collins and she’s the only one who can access our money, but I got word a few weeks ago that the mafia knows about the cash and thinks it’s theirs for some damn reason. Maybe ’cause we had a meeting with them way back, saying we might do some business with them. We never did, but now they think they’ve got a claim. You know the fella: Moretti.”
“The one who burned down our clubhouse in ’09.”
“That’s the one. Listen to me. I need you to find this girl and get our money. Did I tell you her name? Yes, I did. Well, there’s something else. I happen to know for a fact that she has a tattoo of a microphone with a bolt through the middle. It’s a tramp stamp, as far as I know.”
My head feels groggy and heavy and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was more to Cora Ash than met the eye. Or if it’s just a strange coincidence. I’m sure many women have that tattoo … maybe two friends who got the same one together. The names don’t match—a changed name? I keep my face composed as Dad falls back, wheezing, eyelids flickering.
“Do you know where to find this girl?” I ask.
“Find—”
Thorne Birch closes his eyes, and he never opens them again. I stand in the corner of the room with my hand on Mom’s shoulder as she weeps and screams, as the doctors go about the business of pulling the blanket over his head and calling us into the hallway to tell us how sorry he is. And then I give Mom a ride home and sit on her armchair—Dad’s old chair—as she takes two sleeping pills and falls asleep on the couch.
“Melissa Collins,” I whisper, convinced that Dad is still alive somewhere, maybe on a ride, and any second now he’ll bust through the door with a bottle of whisky in his hand.
Chapter Ten
Cora
I try and go about my normal routine: get up, shower, cover my tattoos and get to work. But for the third day in a row as soon as I sit up my belly twists and I have to run through my apartment to the bathroom, sprinting at full speed so that my vomit hits the bowl and not the floor, or the wall, which happened the first time this horrible sickness struck. I hate calling into work, because my contract sucks and I know that sooner or later they’ll just replace me, but more than anything I hate being sick because I can’t sing. I try to, but then my belly punishes me for it with another round of sickness.
A large part of it comes from fear: fear o
f not knowing what’s happening to me, fear created by checking the Internet for symptoms. At first I thought it was a twenty-four-hour bug, but the Internet informed me that I could very well have a rare form of brain tumor with symptoms only showing up in my belly. After I call work—apologizing, groveling—I call the doctor and arrange an appointment. Luckily, I get health insurance with the dentist job.
I drive to the doctor with a brown paper bag on the passenger seat, ready for round two—or three, or four, or five. I pull to a stop and take a deep breath, telling myself I’m not going to be sick. I won’t let that happen. No way. I take several deep breaths, repeating this mantra to myself. And then I’m sick in the paper bag and I get out of the car, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
Sitting in the doctor’s office is hell, with the little kid in front of me whining at his mom to give him her credit card information for some cellphone game, an old lady sitting next to me who seems intent on winning the Fart of the Week competition, and a teenage boy who reeks of weed opposite me, who keeps glancing up and smiling as though in invitation. I close my eyes and think of Loki strutting into Asgard to insult all of the gods, accusing them of all sorts of things, like saying Freya sleeps around too much, before Thor comes in to stop the nonsense. That calms me a little. By the time the doctor calls me in, I’m thirty percent certain I’m not going to puke again.