by Lena Pierce
“Bullshit?” I snarl, voice trembling. “That’s a good way to get someone to listen to you, isn’t it! Tell them they’re talking bullshit!”
“Okay! Fuck! I think somebody might be tryin’ to kill you!”
I know that my laugh sounds psychotic, but I can’t help myself. “This is too much!” I giggle madly. “Is this how low you’ve sunk, really, Jackson? This is your clever new plan? Lie to me and tell me I’m in danger when, really, the only thing I’m in danger of is you. I told you not to call me. I told you I didn’t want to talk. I’ve said all I had to say. Goodbye—”
“Just wait.”
It’s the way he says it, the graveness of his voice. He sounds exactly like Dad.
“Why?” I hiss.
“Because I don’t want you to die. Maybe we’ve had our differences, but there’s no reason to be a fuckin’ bitch about it!”
“Jackson!” I scream. “If you call me that again …”
“Fine.” His voice shakes. “Fine, but just listen to me. Don’t interrupt me again. It pisses me the hell off.”
“Get out your lie then,” I goad. “Go on. Get it over with.”
I sense that there are lots of things he’d like to say to that, but he represses the desire. “I’ve heard rumblings on the grapevine that someone’s gunnin’ for your store, Meghan. This came from a man I trust, not some two-bit gangster. I’m calling you ’cause I reckon you’re my sister and, even if we have our differences, it won’t do to have my sister killed.”
“It won’t do,” I repeat sourly. “It. Won’t. Do.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“So what you mean,” I go on, voice so bitter the back of my throat aches, “is that if I were killed by the Broken Sinners or some drug dealer or whoever, then it would reflect badly on you and your precious club because it would make it look like you couldn’t even protect your sister. Correct?”
“What I mean,” he says, “is what I fuckin’ said. Didn’t you hear me? Someone’s coming for your store.”
“Who? When? Why? How?”
“I don’t have all the details,” he says. “But I’ve got enough of them to know that if you stay there alone, something bad will happen.”
“Right. That’s really, really interesting, Jackson. It really is. What I find curious, though—and it’s just a little thing—is why you’re so concerned about me being on my own now. Because when I really needed you, when I was a terrified kid, you just sort of left me, didn’t you? I mean, you let me live with you, but you were never there, were you? I had to take care of myself from the age of eleven. And even when I cried myself to sleep and tore my hair out because I was afraid that whatever killed Dad would get you too, you didn’t care. You laughed at me once, do you remember?
“It was another late night. Or early morning. I’d try and—no, don’t interrupt me! I’d always try and stay awake for you. I had this fantasy that if I stayed awake long enough you’d come home and ruffle my hair and tell me how much you loved me. But that was never what happened. I’d fall asleep and then you’d wake me up a few hours later with your grunting and your stink of whisky and sweat. I must’ve just woken from a nightmare that night because I was weeping as I opened my eyes and my pillow was wet. You stumbled in. I can still see you, Jackson, the way you rested against the door like you thought you were a man. You came in, saw me, and then laughed. Just laughed and walked away.”
“This has nothing to do with why I called,” he says, his voice low and urgent, the same way somebody would talk to a crazy person who won’t listen to reason. But if I’m crazy when I talk to Jackson, it’s because he makes me that way. “I have good intel that the Broken Sinners are going to firebomb your fuckin’ store!”
“So you know who it is, then, and you know how.”
“I heard that it was an enemy of the Shattered Hearts, so who else? And firebombing’s just a figure of speech.”
“No, actually, it isn’t.”
“Fine, whatever. Are you gonna get out of there and go to a hotel?”
I lie down on bed, cross my ankles, and stare up at the ceiling. I make my voice innocent and naïve. “A hotel?” I ask, perplexed. “Why on earth would I go to a hotel?”
“Meghan …” He growls.
“No, really. Why would I do that? I have a perfectly good apartment situated conveniently above my place of work. It is an ideal situation. I know what you’re thinking. I work hard. I deserve room service and a well-made bed and all the creature comforts of a hotel, but please, big brother, you’re too kind. This is just fine for me.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he whispers. “Don’t let how you feel about me get in the way of—”
“How I feel about you? But I don’t feel a thing about you.”
“Sure,” he snorts. “Whatever you say. But don’t let it stop you from being safe. That’s just stupid.”
“We get threats all the time,” I say. “At least one a week. We live in a dangerous neighborhood and we’re nice to people some other people don’t like. I don’t really see the big deal, to be honest with you.”
“I’m sure you do, but this ain’t some half-baked threat coming from one of the losers that come by your store. This is the real thing.”
“How do you know? I don’t understand how you know enough to know it’s the real thing but not enough to stop it.”
“That’s ’cause you live comfy and isolated in your little world, and you don’t understand how the outlawing life works.”
“Jesus Christ, Jackson.” I laugh, trying to make it belittling. “Do you really think my world is comfy and isolated? I spend most of my day with people from the community! Do you know how many junkies come by this store?”
“Whatever. I didn’t ask for your biography. I just want you to be smart, and what you’re doing now ain’t smart. If you won’t go to a hotel, I’m going to send somebody to protect you.”
“Absolutely not,” I say. “I don’t need protection.”
“I’m not letting you stay there on your own!” he snarls. “I ain’t letting it be said that I left my sister for some Broken Sinner bastard to gun down without even sending one of my boys down there to protect her, no damn way.”
“I knew this was about perception,” I mutter. “I knew you didn’t really care about me.”
“Care about you … I don’t even know what the fuck that means. I’m trying to keep you safe and all you can think about is some chick-flick shit, some horseshit you saw on TV or read in a book. Was it some Lifetime movie that made you think I ought to be some lovin’ big brother?”
“If you really do send someone over here,” I say, blood pumping in my ears, “I’m going to break their fucking nose. Bye-bye!”
I hang up and bite down on my fist. I don’t mean to bite down on my fist. It just happens. It’s either that or shout, and I don’t want to shout. I look up after a few minutes to realize that my hand is throbbing from where my teeth have cut into my skin, and Sissy is standing at the foot of the bed.
“I have to go soon,” she says quietly. “But I heard—I’m sorry, I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything—I heard what you were talking about. Maybe you should take him seriously, Meghan. What if there really is a threat?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I jump to my feet and go into the living room. “What time are you leaving?”
“About half an hour.”
“Another glass of wine?” I’m almost shouting.
“I shouldn’t, but … okay, yes. Thank you.”
I go into the kitchen, almost break it opening it, and then return to the living room with the bottle of wine. I pour myself a glass until the blood-red liquid has almost spilled over the rim, getting a perverse pleasure by imagining that it’s Jackson’s blood.
“He thought he could just send someone to protect me!” I giggle. Half my wine: gone. When did that happen? “He’s such a fucking asshole!”
“Yeah,” Sissy says, but she only sips her wine. And her eyes
are dark. “But what if he’s right?”
Chapter Three
Dirk
“She’s so fucking ungrateful,” Jackson says, looking at me for support.
We’re sitting on our bikes down the block from the corner store. The boss is a smallish fella with jet-black lanky hair and a tired look to his face. I’ve always thought he looks weak, but that’s not something I’ll share with the brothers. A man doesn’t talk shit about his boss, no matter what he thinks; a soldier doesn’t question his officer. Or maybe that’s just the army in me, still hanging on.
“Is she?” I say, not really giving a damn. A job’s a job and pay’s pay.
He spits, shakes his head, and then lights a cigarette. “She sees me as some sort of goddamn devil because I don’t buy her presents and take her on picnics. I reckon she thinks I ought to have been her dad when Dad died; that’s it, yeah, some fucked-up psychological shit that, of course, she fuckin’ has. She don’t realize that I’m her brother, that Dad ain’t even coming back and all the crying in the world won’t change that.”
“Sure,” I say.
He laughs bitterly, sucking his cigarette down to about halfway. “You’re really easy to talk to, Dirk, you know that? A big fuckin’ help.”
“I’m here to work, sir.”
“Yeah, I get that. That’s you, Private Dirk, always here to work, eh? It’s weird to think of you working for intelligence, though, I’ve gotta tell you. It was so damn weird to me when you joined up that I had some fellas look into it. You weren’t always a grunt.”
“Maybe not,” I agree.
“So why the change? Who took your balls?”
I square my shoulders and look him directly in the face. “I’m sorry, sir, but if you say that again I’ll have to do somethin’ about it.”
“You’re threatening me?” He laughs.
“That’s just how it is.”
“Still—you didn’t answer the question. What changed you, Dirk? Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t care if you wanna be a mindless killer for the club. A drone. That works for me.” I wonder if that’s what I really am. “But something must have happened.”
“Maybe a man gets tired of making life-and-death decisions, sir. Maybe a man might prefer to turn his mind on autopilot once in a while.”
“You did some horrible shit over there, then, did you?” He sounds far too eager. His mouth is open. His eyes look wet. “I’ve heard stories about what some of you fellas did overseas, some real crazy shit. I heard this one story about this fella who went to this whorehouse and the girls there, man, the girls there make club girls look like angels, this fella told me.”
“I never found the whorehouses, sir,” I say. “But I’m sure it would’ve been a good time.”
He leans back, looking like I’ve insulted him. “Don’t try and act all holy with me, Dirk. I’ve seen you around the club. You’re a goddamn pussy hound.”
“Pussy beats being shot at,” I allow.
“Ain’t that the truth?” He tries for a smile. Looking at him, I get the sense that I always get with him: that he tries too hard, that there’s something else there, something that isn’t so good. But he pays well. And the money lets me live a life that’s pretty damn good. Partying and womanizing and drinking and not having to think. Goddamn, not having to think is good.
“Listen,” he goes on, stopping my train of thought. “You can’t let her push you away, Dirk. That’s what she’ll try’n do. She’ll try and make you leave the store, the apartment, try whatever it takes to get rid of you. She’s always been a real pain in the fucking ass, truth be told, ever since she was a little girl. She never just stopped. She was always getting in my way.”
“I’ve got my mission,” I say, hoping to cut off the conversation here. I’m not really in the mood for all this talk about family.
“And she wonders why I don’t do all that brother-sister shit with her! She’s the one who told me not to call her! But she conveniently forgets that. She told me this self-pitying bullshit earlier about how I laughed at her one night because she couldn’t fall asleep, or something like that. Who knows, really, what the fuck she’s talking about? Because I sure as hell don’t!”
“I don’t know, sir.”
He tilts his head at me, grinning in a way I don’t much like. Grinning in a way, in fact, that a fella grinned at me when I’d just returned from overseas. I was in a bar, in my military dress shirt, after some bullshit ceremony and this guy just kept grinning at me, like I was there to service him, like I existed solely for his pleasure. It was like he thought, because he was American, he could just stare and stare. Picking his teeth up off the floor sure did get rid of that notion.
“You’re a good man, Dirk,” he says. The messed-up thing is I have to let him stare and stare on account of how he pays me for the privilege. “A loyal man. I know you’d do whatever I tell you, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I say on instinct, but I don’t know if it’s true. Really, I know it’s not. I’m loyal to the club insomuch that I do shit for the club because the club pays me, but this ride-or-die stuff, this brothers-till-the-end stuff … I don’t know, maybe it reminds me too much of the army.
“You’re a lethal fucking weapon.” He claps me on the shoulder. I get the disturbing sense that he thinks that by slapping me on the arm he somehow has ownership over me. “A real specimen, eh?”
I click my neck from side to side. “What’s the pay like for this job, sir?”
“Top rate,” he says. “Keep her safe and this’ll be the most you’ve ever been paid.”
I swallow, liking the sound of that even if I don’t like the messenger. “All right then, sir, I reckon I should get to it.”
He clasps my arm. “All right, brother,” he says with sudden, and bizarre, intensity. “Just keep her safe, all right? Because if you don’t …” He glances around like somebody might be watching. I wonder if he’s coked up; he has been before. “If you don’t, I’ll be a fuckin’ joke. The Broken Sinners, that fucker Badger Burnes—what sort of fuckin’ name is Badger Burnes? He won’t have to kill me, Dirk. The men won’t stand for a leader who can’t protect his sister. Do this job, and do it well, and I’ll give you a bonus on top of the higher rate.”
I nod shortly. “I’ll protect her, sir.”
“Oh, and also, bring her back to the clubhouse when she closes up, all right? I don’t give a damn what she thinks about it. Bring her back.”
He unclasps my arm, looking slightly embarrassed, and then kicks his bike awake and growls down the street. I watch him go, asking myself if I can put up with his weirdness for the cash. The answer comes back to me quickly, without a doubt. Yes, absolutely yes. The army might’ve been better in terms of making my own decisions, in terms of career prospects, in terms of all the stuff they tell you is important when you’re a nineteen-year-old kid lookin’ for a life. But the army didn’t pay as well as Jackson. And for all his weirdness, he’s not a bad man—I think, anyway, or maybe my concept of good men and bad men has been ruined somewhat.
I push these philosophical considerations aside and climb from my bike. I think about leaving my leather behind, since the store is meant to be neutral ground, but then I think about starting off this job by letting the woman I’m supposed to be protecting tell me where I can and can’t wear my leather. I keep it on and walk down the street.
I stop outside the door of the shop for a moment. The lights are on inside—this place is open much of the night and early morning—but there’s nobody behind the counter. It’s a summer night, the sun just set, and this place won’t liven up until around midnight. Either early morning or the dead of night: that’s this place. I know that the bell above the door will bring her down, though, just as it does when I come by here with the brothers when they wanna buy cigarettes.
I push the door open. The bell rings. I wait.
After a few moments she comes down. Damn, God-fucking-damn. I normally wait outside, or stuff my ha
nds in my pockets and think of nothing. But there’s something about this private setting, the lights turned low, silence all around, that makes me study her. The first thing that gets me is that she looks smart. Maybe that’s ’cause that can’t be said for the girls who hang around the club. She looks intelligent with her long auburn hair piled atop her head in a twist. Her face is goddamn perfect, with high cheekbones and lips that look ready to smile. Her makeup is light, highlighting her soft, honey-brown eyes. She’s curvy in all the right places, and not too tall to boot. Her skin is tanned; beautifully fuckin’ tanned.