by Tess Oliver
“I’m not going to let you pay for—”
“Put on your shirt and shoes and get in the fucking car . . . now.”
I stomped to the bedroom and struggled into my shirt and shoes with one hand. “You know, you’re pretty fucking mean when you’re pissed off,” I called to him.
“You sound just like Rett.”
I came out of the room. “I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
He smiled. “Now you really sound like him.”
The emergency room was the usual clusterfuck of sick people who coughed and sneezed all over the chairs and the typical rush of bruises and sprains that came with a warm California weekend. Clutch and I settled in for what promised to be a long, irritating wait.
I looked up at the small sign that showed a cartoon face in various stages of pain. “I think my poor hand has experienced every one of those stages in the past two weeks. I wasn’t around a mirror but I’m pretty sure that scrunched up distorted face on ten was the one I was sporting when I yanked the training glove off my hand. Came damn close to puking.”
“The last time I saw that face was when Rett collapsed down on the ground after saving my neighbor from her burning house. His back was blistered badly.”
“Now I feel like a fucking heel. My injuries came from something far less heroic. No wonder everyone loves that guy so much. He just dives into a burning house as if it’s something anyone would have done.”
Clutch turned to me. “Don’t always say shit like that. . . a heel, right. You would have gone through that window just as fast as Rett. Remember when that douchebag Scottie was living with sent those thugs to Freefall. Those assholes are probably still having nightmares about their encounter with you.”
“Not the same thing.”
He shook his head. “Fuck, Dray, just stop. You know what? Things aren’t going to get better until you let them.”
“Boy, your brother was really running off at the mouth.” I slumped down, stretched my legs out and tried to find a comfortable position for my hand. There didn’t seem to be one. “Can’t figure out how to let that happen . . . especially now that Cassie is gone.”
“You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, you’ve got to stop throwing your fist into solid things.”
“That should be easy to remember.” We watched as they raced a gurney in through the emergency room doors. It was an older man who looked as if he might have had a heart attack. His wife and daughter followed, holding each other for support. I looked over at Clutch who had crossed his massive arms across his chest and closed his eyes to sleep. “Hey, Bro?”
“Huh?” he muttered without opening his eyes.”
“Thanks.”
“Yep.”
Chapter 14
Dray
I’d needed a small titanium bar to pull the bones back into place. The doctor’s diagnosis was exactly as I’d predicted, which meant that either I should have gone to medical school or I should stop getting hurt so much. The latter seemed more within reason. The metal plate would speed the healing process, but I would miss the fights and I’d be off work for two weeks growing even more broke. Clutch had waved off my promise to pay him back, but there was no way I was going to let him foot the bill for my surgery.
The pain pills had, as usual, been the one bonus of getting cut by a surgeon, and after three days in a cast, my hand felt a lot better. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to finish off the bottle of pills.
At the moment, the drug high was the highlight of my day. I sat alone in the cramped, damp quarters of the Zany Lucy and wondered what Cassie was up to. And, suddenly, I needed more than anything to hear her voice.
If it hadn’t been for the medication I would never have found the courage to pull my phone out and dial her number. It was seven o’clock in California so it would be ten in New York, but Cassie liked to stay up late reading her romance novels. She would put on her socks and her blue pajamas with the pink rabbits and prop up her pillows to get lost in one of her stories, and I would watch her get absorbed in the pages and tell myself that luck had finally found its way into my life.
Loud music thrummed through the phone and I heard a faint hello.
“Cassie?”
“Dray?” Loud laughter and glasses clinking nearly drowned out her voice. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” I fell silent for a second thrown off by the idea that she was out having a good time, maybe even on a date. I nearly hung up and then her sweet voice came through clearer as if she’d stepped into a hallway or bathroom.
“How are you?” she asked.
I took a deep breath and tried futilely to clear my head. The last thing I wanted was to sound like a pathetic, heartbroken sap. “I’m good, Cass. I guess I called you at a bad time.”
“Yeah, I mean, no. It’s just that I’m at a club with some friends and it’s really noisy.”
“So, I guess you’re making a lot of new friends,” I said lamely.
She paused. “Sure, sort of. It’s some people I work with. What have you been up to? Getting lots of work, I hope.”
I stared down at the blue fiberglass cast covering my hand. My thumb was still fat and swollen from the surgery. “Yeah,” I lied. “I’ll let you get back to your friends.” A silence fell between us, and the noise of the night club pounded through the phone. “I just wanted to hear your voice, Cass.”
“Dray, is everything all right?”
“Yeah, Cass, couldn’t be better.” I hung up before I said anything else. In the morning I would blame my drug addled head for collapsing into complete mush at the sound of her voice, but deep down I would know that it was bullshit. I missed her. I missed her so much there weren’t enough pain killers in the world to stop the hurt.
Chapter 15
Cassie
I stared at my phone wondering if I’d imagined the short, weird conversation or if it had actually happened. The walls of the narrow hallway vibrated with the sound of the band. The noise in the nightclub was deafening, but, even so, I was certain I hadn’t misheard Dray’s strange tone. It was a lost, dark sound that I’d never heard before. I contemplated calling him back but instead I scrolled to Nix’s number. Dray had the annoying habit of constructing a steel barrier around himself whenever he felt susceptible or defenseless.
Jolene’s long fingers tapped my shoulder. “There you are, Cassie. Who you talking to? The quiet, artsy hunk you left back in California?” Her drink was dangerously tilted to the side and bits of the liquid splashed out as she spoke. Her words were beginning to blur into one long sentence. Dash had melted into a drunken puddle just an hour after our arrival, and I had quickly deduced that I was probably along not so much as a rollicking third branch to their trio but as assurance that they made it home safely. Something that was difficult in this wild city.
“Yeah, I’ll be right there, Jo. I just need to make a quick call.”
She hugged me. “Hurry back. That cute guy with the black sweater was back at the table asking about you.”
“I told you he wasn’t my type. I’ll be there in a second, Jo. I promise.”
Jolene sashayed away spilling drops of her drink with each swing of her narrow hips.
I dialed Nix.
“Hey, Cass. Whoa, you’re out at a club, aren’t you? Look at you, you urban hipster.”
“Yeah, that’s me all right. I feel so out of place, it’s as if I landed here from another planet. Hey Nix, Dray called me, and he didn’t sound great.”
“I guess he didn’t tell you that he had to have surgery on his hand. He sparred with some guy down at the gym and then his hand hit the point of no return. He’s been on some pretty strong painkillers.”
“Why the hell didn’t he just tell me? I asked him if everything was all right. He said he was fine, but he sounded far from it.” For a brief moment I’d let myself imagine that his tone had been a result of him actually missing me. I was still a complete fool when it came to Dray. “That must be w
hy he sounded so off then. How’s everyone else? I really miss all of you.” My throat tightened as another wave of homesickness grabbed me.
“We’re good, Cassie, but we all miss you. How’s the new job? Lots of cool pictures?”
“I don’t know if I’d call them cool. The job is all right. Not as great as working at Freefall though,” I said it lightly, but I truly meant it.
He laughed. “Right.” The music grew louder, and I pressed a finger against my free ear. It did little to drown out the sound. “Hey, Cassie, don’t worry about Dray. We’re all keeping an eye on him. Things have kind of spiraled out of control for the guy, but we’ll make sure he’s all right.”
I shut my eyes to stop the tears. “I know you will. Take care, Nix, and say hi to everyone.”
***
My neighbor’s incessant television set buzzed through the wall of my room, and I tried to block out the noise with my pillow. It really was a city that never slept. It was well past midnight, yet the apartment building pulsed with life and the traffic outside had only died down to a dull roar.
My mood was as dark as my room. Not that I’d been having anything close to a rousing time at the club, but Dray’s call had left me feeling desolate and gloomy. I’d had to hold Jolene’s hair while she puked into the gutter, something I hadn’t done for a friend since high school and a particular favor that I hoped I would never have to do again. Drinking had made Dash a bit irritating and unlikeable, and I was happy to see him stumble out of the cab at his apartment. My own place was a dingy one room apartment that was just one step up from a bench in Central Park. It was a month to month sublet from some woman who was traveling the world. It was draining me financially, but I’d been told over and over again by my workmates that I’d been lucky to get it.
Jolene and Dash had been very cool about taking me into their friendship circle, but it seemed that when they were with me they always acted shallow and disaffected as if they were trying a bit too hard to fit into their urban professional personas. Occasionally, I caught them saying something cryptic, something that meant little to me but that was obviously a source of importance to them. They’d been friends a long time, and it was clear from those brief exchanges that they knew each other’s deepest secrets. The careless, whatever attitude seemed to only be a self-defense mechanism for both of them. I would always be their semi-casual work friend, and I was fine with that. I’d left my deep connections, my secret exchanges and emotional ties back home in California.
The noise and my thoughts were not going to let me sleep. I sat up and propped a pillow behind me. I opened up my laptop to go through some of the clandestine photos I’d been taking while out on shoots for the magazine. It seemed all the while that we focused our lenses on dull, predictable city events, an entire underworld ripe with gritty, unwholesome and intriguing subjects swirled around us. But after several days on the streets, I came to realize that the bizarre stuff was only interesting to me because I’d never seen anything like it before.
The first file was of a woman sitting on a park bench with pigeons sitting on her legs and shoulders, eating bread crumbs directly off her coat, a coat that was layered with bird crap. It was as if she’d sat there for the last five years without moving. She seemed to be having full on conversations with the birds and with a little imagination one could hear the birds talking back to her in their own pigeon code.
I’d found her fascinating, but Jolene and Dash had barely given her a second glance. They’d taken more than a cursory look at a man standing on six-foot stilts painting wings on an intricately painted alligator adorning the second story wall of a building. But their only interest there had been the tartan scarf the man wore wrapped around his neck. Dash had a thing for scarves.
I clicked to the next folder. The first picture was of a homeless man who was leaning against the side of a trash bin with his pet chicken sitting next to him. His expression was not one of anguish or torment but more of humor. He and his chicken were having a good day out on the streets, and he seemed genuinely content with his plight. I’d asked him if I could take a picture of him, and he’d immediately straightened and turned his pet hen so I could capture her ‘best side’. It was the last photo I’d snapped, and it was the one that had made me realize that the human interest stories were fun but not particularly memorable. I could just as easily have found as many odd and unique subjects in the streets of Los Angeles, and none of them would make a lasting impression.
I wanted to take pictures that stood the test of time. I’d left behind everything and everyone I knew for my dream job. And, while working at the magazine would give me experience with things like collaboration and deadlines, it wouldn’t do anything to help me find what I was really looking for. I’d left one bustling, slightly crazy city for another, only now I was alone. And I was thousands of miles away from the completely non-artsy, utterly not-quiet man I loved.
Chapter 16
Dray
I handed the dock boss my doctor’s release. He barely glanced at it before handing me my job assignment. I was going to spend the hot day below deck with the engine fumes, shoveling gravel onto a conveyor belt, and I couldn’t have been happier.
Hand surgery had left me with limited movement, a badass scar and a huge debt to Clutch, but I had two hands to use and I was back at work.
“They must be desperate if they let little weasels like you have a shift,” Bill shouted down from the window of the side-handler.
“Yeah, I heard they took you off the stacks because you’re a careless idiot,” I called back to him. “Now, we just have to hope you don’t run anyone down.”
He scowled down at me. “You’d better watch yourself, Grunt.”
I raised my hands and shook them to show the extreme fright he instilled in me with his marshmallow-assed threats. Greg, the other grunt who’d been assigned to the hold for shoveling caught up next to me.
“I heard that Blackbeard proposed and the wench turned him down,” Greg snorted. “Blackbeard, my ass, that pirate would be spinning in his grave if he knew who was using his nickname.”
I smiled. “So true. She turned him down? She was smarter than she looked then.”
Two shovels and pairs of extra heavy duty gloves were waiting for us outside the hold. Greg stared down at my slightly shriveled hand as I pulled one on. “That’s a nasty scar. I heard you broke your hand in a fight. Did you win?”
“It was just a practice session, but my hand was already broken when I stepped into the ring. I hurt it in an unrelated incident.” I shot an angry look back at the side-handler. Bill was still glaring at me. That asshole was obviously still embarrassed about the fact that I’d saved his fat ass from a certain death. Now he hated me more than ever.
A mountain high pile of gravel took up most of the space in the cargo hold, and it left a bitter, opaque cloud of dust in the air. The conveyor belt would take it up to the deck and deposit it into containers, which would then be loaded onto a chassis.
Shoveling gravel was a more intense workout than anything I could get at the gym and with the added bonus that I was getting paid for it. I’d missed fight night, and it seemed that my theory about Josh rigging some of the fights had rung true. From what I’d heard from a friend who spent a great deal of time at the gym, Tank was extremely unhappy when he found out what his stepson had been up to.
I gripped the handle of the shovel the best I could, but my fingers had lost a lot of strength after being trapped in a cast. I had to make up for the loss of grip with my other hand. The muscles in my arms twitched with sweet fatigue as I drove my shovel into the gravel, scooped it up and threw it back over my shoulder onto the conveyor belt. The temperature inside the hold was climbing fast, and every movement of our shovels sent another puff of gritty dust into the air. Eventually though, we fell into a rhythm, and the stifling heat and solid air became easier to ignore.
“What’d did you do to keep yourself occupied while your hand healed?” Greg ask
ed without breaking the tempo.
I stopped just long enough to wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my glove and then rammed the shovel into the pile again. The jarring sensation vibrated up my arms and across my shoulders. Shoveling required a back made of steel.
“Not much I could do. A friend of mine had me over to watch his brother’s movie and porn collection. But even that got pretty fucking boring after awhile.” Barrett was between construction jobs, and he’d talked me into spending time at Clutch’s house to waste away our free time together.
“I hear ya. They really need to put more plotline into those flicks. Although, I’m always up for watching some girl on girl action, no matter what the story.”
“Have you been getting a lot of shifts out here?” I asked.
Greg managed to pull off a semi-shrug in the midst of his shoveling. “Sort of. But it still seems like a fucking long haul to become a casual. It’ll all be worth it if we can ever make it to longshoreman status, but I just don’t know if I’m patient enough. And it really pisses me off watching these big, old softies getting handed cushy clerk jobs just because they have a card.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Did you hear what happened to Farfield?” Greg asked.
“That dude with the long red beard and handlebar mustache? No, what happened?”
“He was under the hook, and the dock boss called him. He spun around too fast and crowned himself on the side of a swinging container. I was on the stacks. The dude must have flown back ten feet before landing like a giant rubber doll on the dock.”
“Shit, that must have hurt. Is he all right? He was one of the few cool guys out here.”
“He’s alive, but I don’t know if he’ll be out here again or not. Can you imagine? Worked all those years, put in all those hours, and then bang, one wrong move and it’s all wiped away. Might never make sense when he talks again, but I guess he’ll get some good benefit money. Bill, that asshole, was actually laughing about the whole thing. Man, someone needs to give that jerk a good pounding.”