by Naomi West
“You’re fucking stalling!” I snarl. “See sense. What sense? Leave—there’s your sense. You shouldn’t be here. You should never be here. Arsen’s old lady. Goddamn. I can’t help you! Find someone else!” I swipe the air, fall, land heavily on my ass. “I mean it!” I roar, springing back up.
Then she does the only thing she can do in this situation, which it was just a matter of time before she’d try. She starts to weep, tears streaming down her cheeks, hands clutched pitifully to her face. It’s a joke. It’s a tactic. I point at the bedroom. “What’d you want from me, to kiss you, to fuck you again? Get out of here!”
“You’re drunk,” she whispers through her tears. “I’ve seen men drunk like this before, Xander. You’ll regret saying this.”
“Don’t tell me what I’ll regret!” I go to the armchair and kick the other arm off, and then smash in the base with my foot. Pieces of wood cling to my skin. A trail of blood follows me back to the kitchen. I drain my third bottle and slam it down. It’s time for a fourth. “You better be getting ready!” I call into the bedroom, twisting off the cap.
“Are you serious?” she says, still crying, still trying to tug at me, only she doesn’t know that the strings on my heart were cut away a long time ago. “We don’t have anywhere else to go. Are you seriously going to make us leave, Xander? Please, can’t we just agree to talk about this when you’re sober?”
“Sober, sober,” I repeat, shaking my head. “The fuck would I want to do that for? I don’t want anything to do with being sober. I just want to sit here in my apartment and have a drink without a fucking woman or baby going on at me. Doesn’t a man have that right?” I stand up. “Go, now.”
She flinches like I’ve hit her, but I’d never hit her. I just want her out of here. I don’t want to hurt her, or her kid. I don’t want to look at her, is all, because every time I look at her I remember flashes of flesh, moaning, my cock buried between her legs. And then I think of Arsen’s face when he saw me kissing Marie Keller. I can’t stand it.
“Go!” I snap.
I go to the couch and start on my fourth bottle, ignoring her and the baby as they cry, ignoring her when she tries to reason with me. I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to have to worry about women and children.
“I hope we can talk again,” she says, holding the kid to her chest with her bag slung over her shoulder. She leans slightly to one side under the weight of the bag. A pinprick of light opens up inside of me. I close it immediately. “Fine.” She shrugs. “I’ll see you around, then.”
I turn away from her and drink, just keep drinking. If I keep drinking she can’t do anything to me, can’t work her magic on me, can’t twist me into being the person she wants me to be.
If I just keep drinking.
Chapter Fifteen
Kayla
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper, kissing Cormac on the cheek, stopping every now and again to readjust my bag as I walk down the stairs. I took the keys to his car when he was on the couch. Maybe that’s theft and maybe it’s not fair, but I don’t think it’s fair to force me and Cormac outside in the middle of the night. I walk into the near-pitch-darkness, the yellow streetlamps weak against the all-consuming night. Then I press the unlock button on the keys and follow the beep noise, all while Cormac sobs against my chest. My tears have dried now, although my eyes still sting and I wonder if I won’t start crying again at any moment.
I go to my car and get the high seat from it, and then fix it in Xander’s car, all the while trying to keep myself calm. I’ve read statistics about some places being more dangerous in the day than the night, things like that, but they function just the same as airplane crash statistics: they might be true but they don’t have the same punch as the nightmares my mind can conjure. Cold numbers can’t do anything to convince me that I’m not in severe danger being out here, especially with Connor after us.
I climb into the driver’s seat and just sit here for a while, waiting for Cormac to stop crying. I give him his pacifier and he goes to sucking on that instead. Then I rest my head and stare out at the night, feeling utterly hopeless. I wonder if I should go back up there. The most frustrating part about all of this is that I know, just know, that if he were to sober up this wouldn’t be happening. Because right now he’s a different person. I saw it with my parents plenty of times, especially my dad. It’s like when men get drunk they forget that they’ve ever had any caring feeling in their life; they get cold, mean, distant. Nothing matters as much to them. If he was sober, we could get through this, I’m certain of it.
But he isn’t going to sober up anytime soon and I’m not a lapdog. I won’t wait out here for hours, crying, self-pitying. I won’t subject my son to more shouting and drama. He deserves peace and if I go back up there, all I’ll be doing is exposing him to more drama. And I can’t leave him down here for Connor to snatch up. I start the car, the rumbling of the engine vibrating my crotch, still achy from where we fucked. It’s difficult to believe that the man I just left and the man I fucked last night are the same person. But alcohol can do it, especially when he’s drunk three bottles. He’s blackout drunk, I’d guess, which is another reason this is so incredibly frustrating. He might not even remember telling me to leave.
I take out my phone and send him a text: If you’re wondering why I’m not there, it’s because you kicked me out.
I wait for a few minutes, hoping for some fairytale text in response: Get back here. I want to keep you safe. But nothing comes through, even after an hour of waiting. In the end I just start the car again and pull out of the parking space, making my way through the city toward my apartment building. I don’t want to return there after Connor sprang in on us, but there’s no other option. I have nowhere else to go. Except for Cormac, I’m alone.
“Everything will be okay,” I say, unsure if I’m talking to Cormac or myself. “We’ll get through this. We’ll soldier on. One day we’ll look back on this and laugh, because it’ll all be over.”
It’s strange to think that it’s only been a couple of days since I met Xander. Perhaps it’s the Arsen connection, but it feels much longer than that. It feels like I’ve known him for at least a few weeks. The sex, the sharing, the closeness … I assumed that all of it would keep going up, would rise and rise until we were on a path heading somewhere beautiful. I didn’t dream that it would collapse and burn like this. I wonder if he’ll call me when he sobers up, or if he really is done with me. I thought it was just about the alcohol, but then, I’m only going off my dad on that one. Perhaps Xander is a different kind of drinker. Maybe when he says a thing while drunk, he sticks to it.
I go up to my apartment, see that the money’s been taken from the counter—the landlord isn’t supposed to let himself in, but in this instance I’m glad—and then go to the couch and drop my bag. I sit in darkness, a tiny hint of rising sunlight shining through the curtains, bobbing Cormac up and down on my knee. The more I sit here, the angrier I grow. It’s probably true that when he sobers up he’ll feel sorry for the way he’s behaved, true that he’ll want to reconcile with me, but it’s also true that I can’t know how often he pulls stunts like this. What if he does it every other day? What if being with him means enduring a performance like this every time I think I can finally relax? What if … What-ifs are the bane of relationships, of affection. I know I shouldn’t feed into them but I can’t help it. These what-ifs are too convincing, because I saw the evidence of it with my own eyes.
I take Cormac to his crib and lie down in bed, curled into a ball, far colder here than I was at Xander’s place. I set an alarm for eight o’clock and close my eyes; a few seconds later my alarm blares at me, tugging me from a dream in which Xander’s tongue was pressed against several parts of my body at once. I stand up reluctantly, feed Cormac, and then get us both ready for the day. I haven’t gotten any texts or calls from Xander. He might be sleeping, he might still be drunk, or he might just not care. I wash and apply makeup and then go back down to Xande
r’s car, put Cormac in the back, and start my search for a new job. I can’t lay my hopes on Xander anymore. He’s disappointed me once and there’s no way to know if he’ll do it again. Even so, each time I stop, I check my phone, to no avail: silence.
“Come on, baby.” I’d rather leave Cormac out here as I go into the cafés and other businesses to give them my résumé, but the specter of Connor is too terrifying to ignore. I leave Cormac out here because I don’t want to reduce my chances of getting a job, and then Connor comes along and snatches him up and I don’t even care about getting a job anymore. It’s just not worth it.
I stop at around six places and each time I get the same skeptical look. There’s something contagious about failure; if it infects one part of a person’s life, it spreads much easier. The managers of these places don’t look at me and think here’s a woman who needs a leg-up. They look at me and see some abominable failure who should be avoided at all costs, or perhaps that’s just my pessimism and lack of sleep judging for me.
“I wouldn’t call that a resounding success, would you?” I smile at him in the mirror and he manages a toothy smile back.
I return to my apartment, stop outside, and grit my teeth so hard my jaw feels like it could shatter. Connor’s car, his big, arrogant pickup that is next to useless in the city, that he liked to drive around the neighborhood in, bullying the other cars. I know that it’s his for sure because he’s had the same bumper sticker for years: Careful! Badass inside! I doubt if he’d understand how ridiculous most people would find a man like him calling himself a badass, but then most people don’t know what he’s capable of. Arsen, it was Connor; it’s not just my verbally-abusive ex-boyfriend up there, it’s a murderer.
I call Xander what must be twenty-some times, waiting for his voicemail and then calling again. On the final time I leave a message: “Xander, it’s me. I think Connor’s in my apartment …
I go into my handbag and take out my pepper spray, and then I just sit and wait, unsure of what else to do. I can’t go up there; that’d be incredibly stupid, seeing as it’s what he wants me to do. No, I’ll just sit here, wait for him to leave. After around fifteen minutes, Connor walks out, wearing the weirdest-looking outfit I’ve seen in public outside of Halloween. The suit is rose-red with forest-green elbow patches, the belt buckle is shaped like a lightning bolt, and his shoes are white and shinier than sunlit marble. A black top hat covers his head, shadowing his eyes, and around his neck he has tied a polka dot kerchief.
Then, to my amazement, he starts to swing a cane. He gestures at me with the cane like we’re old pals and jogs over to the car. He lopes to the driver’s window and gestures for me to roll it down. I shake my head.
“Open up!” he yells, voice echoing through the glass.
“No!” I call back.
“I just want to talk!” He waves a hand over his outfit. “I came by to ask you on a date. Do you think I’m dressed like this for fun?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
He shrugs, shaking his head. “Fine, we’ll do this the hard way, then.” He brings the cane to the glass and taps it repeatedly, getting harder each time. “It’s only a matter of time before it breaks.”
When I start the car, he acts with the speed of an eight-legged predator who’s just realized that its fly might be getting away. He brings the cane down on the hood of the car so hard it leaves a large dent. “Last chance!” he calls, as I slowly back away. “Stop or I’ll redecorate your face with glass!”
If I was alone, I wouldn’t stop. I’d take the face of glass. But with Cormac sobbing in the back I know I have to be more careful. I don’t kill the engine, but I open the window, rolling it down around two inches.
“What?” I snap.
“See?” he says, smiling. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Roll it down all the way.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No.” He shakes his head seriously. “I would never say that about you. I just think you’ll do what I say because you know I can smash the back window as easily as the front. Maybe you don’t care about yourself. But surely you care about your sweet child?”
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I whisper, rolling down the window all the way.
He leans his elbow against the car door. “I just wanted to ask you on a date, beautiful. Is that really such a crime?”
“You know I don’t want to go on a date with you,” I tell him “You must know that.”
“You can’t blame a man for trying, can you?” He reaches into the car and tries to touch my face. I lean back, out of his range. He takes a step back, sighs, closes his eyes like he used to when he was trying to calm himself down, and then steps back up to the window. “I don’t like it when you make me feel like that. I didn’t like it when we were together and I don’t like it now. Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He turns his glare to Cormac, who is still sobbing. “Can’t you turn that thing off?”
“Go away if you don’t want to hear him. I’ve said no to your date offer, okay, so why don’t you just walk away now?”
“Yeah, I bet you’d love that. What happened to you, Kayla? That’s what I want to know. You used to be such a little princess, doing anything I wanted, and now you have this attitude that I just can’t stand. Where did it come from? More importantly, how do I get rid of it?”
“I always had this attitude. I just hid it from you because you were—are—a fucking psychopath—”
“Swearing in front of your child. You’re a good mother.”
“And what’s more,” I go on, ignoring him, “I know that it was you who killed Arsen. I know that it was you who burned down that bar! You killed Cormac’s father and you think I’ll go on a date with you?” I pull out the pepper spray, aiming it right at his face.
He just smiles at me. “If you know I’m a killer, do you really expect me to believe that you’ll—”
I spray him right in the eyes, turning his face an orange-brown color. He yells and leaps back, hopping up and down on the spot, and then stumbles across the street toward his car. “You better be gone by the time this shit wears off!” he roars, rooting around in his glove compartment. “Otherwise it’s going to be bang-bang for the little bastard!” He pulls out a pistol and sits on the passenger seat, waiting calmly like a man ready to go to war despite the tears and spray sliding down his face.
“Bitch!” he shouts. “Slut! Whore! You’ll be sorry. Just you wait!”
I put the car in reverse and back away.
Chapter Sixteen
Xander
How long have I been drinking? I try and work it out but everything is way more difficult than it ought to be right now. A long time, at any right, a damn long time. I know I’ve been drinking for a long time in the same way other fellas know they’ve been … I close my eyes, rub my face. Other fellas—somethin’ about other fellas. I stand up and goddamn if walking ain’t a pain in the ass. I walk through four, five, six whisky bottles, and I’m holding one, so maybe I’ve drunk somethin’ like seven bottles of whisky. That’s pretty good going, even if the floor is so sticky I know I must’ve spilt some.
I’ve got no damn clue where Kayla’s gone, or if Kayla was here yesterday or the day before or the day before that, or if I even met her. Maybe that was all just a drunken dream. Maybe when I wake up I’ll find out that that was all a lie. I don’t know how I’d feel about that, my mind lying to me in that way. Mind, mind a mind and it’ll mind you. My dad said that to me; no, he didn’t.
“Ah!” I twist my neck side to side, trying to lean down so I can splash some water in my face. I’ve never been this wasted, and that’s a fact. Or have I? I can’t remember what the question was.
I piss as best I can into the toilet bowl and then return to the living room, dropping onto the couch. I shot a man in chinos, just to watch him try … Somethin’ ain’t right about that.
My phone screen is blurrier than a pair of tits pushed up against rain-spattered glass, but I manage to focus
on it by squinting real hard. Kayla’s called me nineteen times and left me one voicemail. Nineteen goddamn times. What would make a woman call a man nineteen times? Surely it must be something serious. Maybe she’s in trouble. Maybe the kid is in trouble. That’s the thing, Arsen’s kid. That’s family right there. That’s blood. You got the club and then you got blood, and you’ve gotta protect blood just as much as you’d protect the patch. That’s what a man does. That’s how a man works. I listen to the voicemail. Shit, she is in trouble.
“All right,” I mutter. “Time to sober up. Time to get after her.”
I walk around the apartment for what feels like a long time, looking for my car keys. The problem is I keep forgetting where I’ve already looked, so I’ll search under the somewhere and then the someplace and then come back to the somewhere wondering if my keys might be there. The way I discover that this is happening is ’cause the couch dances across the room, ending up pressed right against the wall from how much I’ve lifted it up to look underneath it. In the end I come to terms with the fact that my car keys have just disappeared and I grab my bike keys instead, pull on my leather pants and my boots and my jacket—gotta be safe now, since I might still be a little drunk—and head for the door with my helmet under my arm.