by Various
The other adult present, a man whose own physique was nothing to sneeze at even though it was a fraction of Alex’s size, stole a quick glance across the room. John Everest smirked and couldn’t help chuckling as laughter erupted from the kids near Alex.
John turned back to the teenager he spotted on the bench press. “Three. Four. You’re doing great, Damian.” He hovered behind the weight bench as the sixteen-year-old completed his repetitions. “Eight. Two more. You can do it. Don’t hold your breath.” Damian grunted, clenched his teeth, and pushed with all his might. John hooked his fingers under the bar and helped the kid finish his reps. “Nine. Ten. Good job.” He guided the bar to the rack and tossed the boy a towel. “That was 10 pounds more than last time.”
“No shit? I mean, no foolin’?” Damian swung his stocky legs over the side of the bench, looking at the weight plates attached to the bar. “Cool,” he said with a toothy grin, nodding his head in rhythm with the rap music as he headed to another station.
Glancing around to see who needed his help, John noticed Brian on a bench in the corner, separated from the rest of the group as usual. He was one of the newer members of the after-school program, having joined just before Christmas. So far, he had yet to open up to anyone. He’d apparently spent much of his life moving from one bad situation to another with his heroin-addicted mother and her string of scuzzy boyfriends.
Brian stretched a leg out in front of him and rubbed his hamstring. He glanced up as John approached, his green eyes flat and expressionless, as if he didn’t give a damn about life or anybody in it.
John recognized that look. He’d had it perfected by Brian’s age. The kid had the whole tough guy routine down pat, from his shaved head to the gold skull earring dangling from one earlobe. He wore baggy sweats hung low on narrow hips and his pale upper body was bare except for the tattoo of a woman’s well-endowed breasts painted over his left bicep. His build was lanky and lean, what some people would call scrappy. All the more reason for the bad attitude.
“Pulled your hamstring?” John asked. The boy reminded him of himself at that age — gawky and self-conscious, using a hard-ass attitude to hide his insecurities.
The fifteen-year-old shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Can you put any weight on it? Can you stand?”
Brian winced but was able to support his weight. “I’m fine.”
Sure you are, tough guy. John knew better than to make a big deal about it, but he needed to know how serious the injury was. “Try bending your leg, lifting your heel toward your butt.” The boy followed his directions. “Hurt?”
“Maybe.”
“Hmm. Probably just a minor pull. How much were you lifting?” He glanced at the bars on the machine then picked up Brian’s required exercise log from where it had been tossed onto the floor. “You increased your poundage by almost 50 percent since last week. No wonder you pulled something.”
Brian sat on the bench. “Thought I could do it.”
John bopped him over the head with the soft-covered journal. “No more than a ten-percent increase next time, okay, sport?”
Brian shrugged again, but the corners of his mouth tugged upward. Not quite a smile, but close.
John dropped the journal onto the bench. “I’ll get you some ice.”
He threaded his way through the weight equipment toward the first aid kit. He side-stepped Tanya, who danced in front of the stereo. One of the original members, she didn’t seem to take the program too seriously, never doing much in the way of participating. Once or twice, he’d caught her staring at Alex with a dreamy expression. With her reputation for banging bad boys, he figured the girl hadn’t had many positive male role models in her life — specifically black role models — and she was perhaps a bit star-struck.
He rooted through the gym bag and pulled a crystallized ice pack from the first aid kit. He headed back toward Brian.
“Here,” he said to the boy. “Lie on your stomach.” He twisted the ice pack, breaking the crystals. The bag chilled in his hands. He draped a towel across Brian’s skinny leg and placed the cold pack on the towel. “Keep it there until you can’t stand the cold any longer, okay? Then I’ll show you a couple of easy stretches you can do at home to loosen it.”
Across the room, Alex clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone. Cool down time.”
John turned the stereo down a few decibels, wresting a dirty look from Tanya, then joined the group as they gathered on the mats in front of the mirrors.
After the kids had gone, Alex asked, “Sherlock Holmes find anything yet?” He gathered the CDs and shoved them into a gym bag.
“He found her.”
“Serious? Where?”
“Here in Seattle.” John’s body tensed just thinking about it, about her. “He’s got pictures even. I’m meeting him on the waterfront tonight.” Grabbing a towel, he wiped down the benches.
“I still can’t believe you hired a private detective.”
John shrugged. “Sunday was the twenty year anniversary of that night. I’ve always wondered what happened to her.” Even after all this time, he wanted to know she was all right. He needed to know that.
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
A light sprinkling of rain dusted them as they left the building and headed toward their cars. The late afternoon sky darkened with clouds and night. A distant whistle echoed from the nearby gymnasium, and car stereos and teenage laughter flitted to them from the student parking lot.
“The kids all seem to be making progress,” Alex said, his breath fogging in front of his face.
“Mm. I’m worried about Brian though. He’s not warming to anyone.”
“He reminds me of someone I once knew — a skinny little runt with an attitude the size of Mount Everest — excuse the play on words.”
Alex was the only one who could get away with such a comment. John’s past wasn’t something he was proud of.
After the accident, the DA had been antsy to prosecute someone. Since John was the only survivor besides Sammy Jo, who was innocent of any wrong-doing, he’d been the target. He wound up in a boys’ home for three years — the same home as Alex. He’d been scared to death of Alex at first, a tough-looking black giant from one of the meanest gangs in South Seattle. Alex did his best to bully him those first few weeks, but John had become a master at not showing fear or intimidation, so Alex finally bored of him. Eventually, they’d become friends.
He glanced at Alex. They’d come a long way since then. Each had a lot to be proud of. Alex was a retired NFL lineman and now managed John’s downtown Seattle gym, and was part owner of several others.
Most rewarding though, for both of them, was their work with these kids.
They reached their cars and disarmed the alarms. The simultaneous beeps screamed through the cold air. Just then, a not-so-distant gunshot rang out, the eerie sound echoing over the rooftops of the surrounding neighborhood.
He glanced at his friend. “Is that what I think it was?”
Alex nodded from the driver’s side of his black Firebird. “Not quite music to your ears, eh?” They both frowned.
For a few moments, the area was silent except for the rain tinkering against their cars. Then, just as suddenly, it was back to normal: the echoing dribble of a basketball in the gymnasium, a radio blasting in a car from the other side of the parking lot, a wailing siren on unseen streets.
Brian Carsten ducked into the shadowy alley between the row houses on Pritchard Avenue. Squatting behind some dented garbage cans, he peered through them toward the street. And waited.
It wasn’t long before the maroon coupe cruised past, its dark windows obscuring the passengers. He knew who they were. Boyo and Razor had approached him the first week he’d moved here in November and had beat the shit out of him, giving him his second broken nose of the year, the first having been a gift from his mom’s last boyfriend. They’d told him this was their turf and he didn’t have their
permission to walk on it. Of course, if he was to become one of them, he’d have their protection. But if not, he’d have to watch his back until the day they shot him between his skinny-ass shoulder blades. Brian had no intention of becoming one of them. He might be a loser, but he wasn’t that big a loser.
He shifted his crouched stance, the back of his thigh throbbing from pulling it at the high school. His blood roared in his ears and his gut constricted as if he’d been kicked. Holding his breath, he kept perfectly still. They’d shot at him when he’d left the school grounds. He figured they were just trying to intimidate him, otherwise they’d have kept shooting until they’d hit him. Still, he wasn’t taking any chances.
He knew all the hiding places on the four-block trek to his house, every alley, every bush big enough to shield him from the road, every broken-down car to use as a buffer. The fear ate a constant hole in his gut, always wondering what was around the next corner, what would happen if he ever let down his guard.
Sometimes he felt like saying “fuck it” and just walking down the sidewalk like a normal guy in a normal neighborhood, like he’d been able to do when he was little, before his mom started doing meth and shacking up with jerk after jerk to support them because she couldn’t hold a job.
But a guy just didn’t stroll down the streets around here. A white guy would get himself killed or maimed. He was white, but he wasn’t stupid.
Besides his injured hamstring, his calves were starting to cramp. The car hadn’t been by in a while. He figured he was in the clear. For today. Tomorrow it would start all over again.
He had the overwhelming urge to run the remaining two blocks to his house despite his slight injury, but if anyone saw him they’d call him a pussy. The only thing worse than being shot was being called a pussy. So, with the hair on the back of his neck on end and every muscle in his body on alert, he limped home.
Glad to make it there in one piece, he pushed open the back door, letting out a long breath of relief as he entered the kitchen. A whiff of pot and beer and bad housekeeping assailed his nostrils, along with something else he couldn’t quite place.
“What the hell are you doing, boy?”
Brian cringed at the admonition of his mother’s latest keeper, but carefully kept his expression straight. Earl Borksaw was a big, hairy ape of a man with the intelligence of a Neanderthal and the temper of a rabid dog. He didn’t know what his mom saw in the man, especially since right now Earl’s baggy-at-the-butt jeans were bunched around his knees as his bare ass pumped a woman propped on the kitchen counter. A woman who wasn’t Brian’s mother.
It was Carla Perfilli from next door. Brian wondered where his mom was and if she knew, or cared, what Earl was up to. Or into, as the case may be. He realized what that other smell was and almost grimaced. It was sex. If you could call what Earl was doing to Carla “sex.” Brian took a fair amount of pleasure in seeing she looked bored to tears, even as her saggy breasts bounced and jumped with every unskilled thrust of Earl Borksaw’s wide hips.
He wasn’t surprised Earl was screwing Carla, or Carla was being screwed by Earl. She’d bang anyone with a dick. If you had some crack on you, hell, she’d give you head, too. She’d offered to do Brian more than once. If he wasn’t afraid of catching something from the skanky bitch, he might take her up on the offer.
“I asked what the hell you’re doing?” Earl yelled again over his shoulder, not breaking the rhythm of his grunting thrusts. “Can’t you see I’m busy here? Get the fuck out.”
“But I—” Brian started, peering out the grimy kitchen window toward the street, apprehension knotting his gut.
“I’m going to come over there and beat the shit out of you if you don’t get out of here now!”
“Is that Brian you’re talking to?” came a soft voice from the hall. His mom stumbled into the kitchen half-dressed, one thin breast hanging out of her tattered blue robe, her eyes glazed, her gait unsteady. “Brian, didn’t you hear what Earl said?” she asked in a raspy monotone. “He wants you to leave. Show him some respect.” She slunk over to the Formica table and pulled out a chair, then slumped into it and lit a cigarette.
Respect. Right. Tears stung the back of Brian’s eyes, but he held them in check. All crying would get him was an ass-kicking.
One of these days, he’d kick Earl’s ass.
John felt as if he’d stepped into one of those whodunits from the forties, complete with a Sam Spade lookalike. The P.I. he’d hired to find Sammy Jo pulled a manila envelope from his black overcoat, glancing along the dark waterfront as if someone might be watching.
Holding the envelope and the handle of his umbrella with the same hand, John slid several black and white 8x10s into his waiting fingers, studying them as best he could in the pier’s dim lighting. Sammy Jo. The first thing he noticed — with a huge breath of relief — was she wasn’t in a wheelchair. Her broken back from the accident had obviously healed as the pictures showed her in various upright states: walking into an office building, climbing into a VW Beetle, window shopping.
Although he probably wouldn’t have recognized her on the street, as twenty years tended to fade memory pictures, she hadn’t changed much. Same long dark hair, same killer body. A killer, disability-free body. Thank God. He didn’t know that his conscience could handle otherwise.
“She’s a reporter for the Seattle Statesman,” the P.I. said. “Sports, although she’s been writing more and more feature-type articles lately. Thirty-eight years old, divorced, lives alone in a condo near the Northgate Mall, no pets as far as I can tell, and no steady boyfriend.” The short, squatty guy looked out from beneath his fedora. “I can get you more if ya need it.”
John flipped through the photos again. “Nah. This is more than enough. Thanks a lot.”
“No problem. Just doin’ my job. If you want to see her up close and personal, she’ll be covering that Women’s Extravaganza thing down at the Convention Center on Saturday.”
After handing over an invoice, the P.I. turned away. John stopped him with, “Wait. What’s her full name?”
From the shadows, the P.I. said, “Samantha Josephine Rossi. Goes by ‘Sam.’”
Samantha Rossi leaned back on the overstuffed couch, holding her warm coffee mug between her hands. The firelight cast an amber glow across the eight female faces in the room. They were about as diverse as you could get, but she liked these women. Felt comfortable with them. They understood and supported this crazy, unconventional path she’d chosen.
The group was called Choosing Single Motherhood, for women who were single moms by choice, not circumstance such as divorce or abandonment. She had been attending the CSM meetings for several months, ever since she decided to become a single mom.
Right now the group was discussing Bertie’s daycare dilemma. Bertie was in her mid-forties and single — of course — and had recently adopted a child from South America. Her little girl was having problems adjusting to her daycare, and Bertie’s employer wasn’t being very understanding.
“If your supervisor is so inflexible about your situation, maybe you should go over his head. Is his boss a man or a woman?” Rita asked. She was the leader of the group and this was her house. She was also in her forties and an attorney. Somehow she managed to juggle a successful law practice and raise her two-year-old adopted son.
Bertie sighed. “A woman, but—”
Rita flicked her hand in a dismissive wave. “See, there you go. I guarantee she’ll be more understanding. Men just don’t get it.”
“Yeah, it’s not them who deal with the logistics of daycare. It’s never the father who stays home if the kids are sick,” Mona said. Sam wasn’t sure what Mona’s story was. She had two children, but Sam didn’t know if they were biological or adopted.
Rita nodded her agreement. “In all the two-parent households I know, it’s the mother who does everything. The father doesn’t take responsibility for anything other than to make sure the TV clicker has fresh batteries.” That
got a chuckle out of everyone. “I really don’t think my job would be any easier with a man around.”
“Amen to that,” said a few women in unison, raising their mugs in a toast.
Sam hid a grin behind her cup. The male gender always took a beating here. But as far as she could tell, it was nothing they didn’t deserve.
She sipped her coffee and waited for her turn. Typically, they went around the room one by one. The bi-monthly meetings allowed each member to share news and vent any frustrations or problems.
After listening to Bertie’s employer hassles, and hearing about Rosemary’s lack of sleep since the birth of her baby eight weeks ago, and a new member’s questions about the group, Rita shifted the focus to Sam. “Sam? Last meeting you were waiting to see if your insemination had worked. Can we assume the worst, since you’re not jumping for joy?”
Sam swallowed a mouthful of coffee and held up crossed fingers. “My period is due this weekend. Or not.” She grinned with anxious excitement.
A hopeful murmur circled the room. “Good luck, Sam.” “I know it’ll happen this time.” “You have a glow about you. I bet you’re pregnant.”
She’d better be. Her budget allowed for six attempts, and this was number six.
Rosemary spoke up from her place next to Sam. “You know, Gary — my baby’s donor father — said he’d be willing to help out anyone else in the group. I mean, if this attempt falls flat.” She looked at Sam as if expecting her to jump at the offer.
Sam almost choked on her coffee. She’d seen Rosemary’s baby. Not a pretty sight. Since Rosemary was fairly attractive, the father must be rather, ah, aesthetically challenged. “Uh, thanks, Rosemary, I’ll… keep that in mind.” Not. Apart from the looks factor, she really didn’t want to share a donor father with anyone. The whole process was bizarre enough without making an assembly line baby. But that’s why she liked this group so much. They made her decision seem normal.
Chapter 2