by M. O'Keefe
With a very dangerous man.
The underwater lights were on in the pool and it glowed blue, illuminating Max’s hard face in eerie light.
He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long drink. He set the beer down in the grass beside his chair and cut into his steak with gusto. Relishing every bite like he’d never had something so delicious. He wore a pair of loose pajama bottoms and no shoes. His feet were crossed and every once in a while, his toes would curl, like the pleasure of a steak and a beer was just too much.
Watching him eat was like watching a commercial for beef. Or beer. Or masculinity.
Yeah, that was it. He was a commercial for how a man should enjoy the simple things: a good steak, a cold beer, a warm night.
“You don’t like it?” he asked.
“No, it’s great. It is.” I took another bite. Tiny. Like I had to ration out the meat, the pleasure. Too much at once and I’d choke.
I couldn’t stop staring at his toes.
I was a commercial for self-denial. I always had been.
“I feel like a caveman,” I said. There was nothing but meat on our plates. “We could have at least gotten the potatoes.”
“Waste of plate.” He took another bite and leaned back, chewing and very nearly smiling.
“You’re beginning to freak me out,” I said.
“That’s because you clearly don’t know how to vacation.”
“Honeymoon.”
He snorted. “I don’t think either of us knows how to do that. Unless…” He looked at me. “Have you been married before?”
“Well, I was the fifth bride of a fucked-up cult leader. Does that count?”
He nearly spit out his mouthful of beer. A classic movie spit-take. I swallowed down my own laugh with a sip from my bottle.
“No,” he said definitively. “It doesn’t count.”
“What about you?”
“Hell no.”
“Were you ever close?”
He blinked like the question was a weird one and then he shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. High school girlfriend. She was…real good to me. Good to my brother. I would have married her for sure.”
“What happened?”
“She was a good girl. Smart enough to dump my ass once I got heavy into the club.”
“You’re breaking my heart. I was close once, too. I mean to marriage. A real one.”
“The bad boyfriend with the fake badges.”
“No, Bad Boyfriend #2 came after Hector. I was with Hector for two years. Two really good years.”
“What happened?”
“What always happens. I got scared. Fucked it up.”
“Here’s to fucking it up,” he said and held out his bottle. I laughed and tapped mine to his.
He took a sip of beer and watched me over the bottle. The bruises on his face and his ribs were black in the shadows. The combination of the tattoos, the very real whiff of danger that rolled off him, and the weird smiling condition he was currently suffering from made him look like a recently released inmate.
Possibly of a mental ward.
“You don’t look like a man on a honeymoon,” I said.
“What?” He pretended to be offended.
I pointed to my own eye.
“Right. Maybe my bachelor party got out of control.”
“Maybe you like me to beat the shit out of you?”
He chuckled. “Not likely, honey.”
He cut through more of his steak, demolishing the thing in record time. I drank more beer, trying to squelch this strange fire in my belly.
“So, tell me about your aunt.”
I scowled at him. “I thought we were on vacation.”
“We are. I am making vacation conversation.”
I laughed, without much humor. “I may be new at this, but Aunt Fern is not vacation conversation.”
“I should know something, right, since we’re family now.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You guys close?”
Not at all. I didn’t have to say it.
“What happened?”
“She’s was woman who didn’t understand kids. I was a teenager bent on destruction. The usual.”
“Nothing—absolutely nothing about you is usual.”
Was that respect? I didn’t look over to make sure.
“She took me and my sister in when my dad died. I was sixteen. I was angry. She didn’t know what to do with us. We…we didn’t stand a chance.”
“Where was your mom?”
“She died when Jennifer was a baby. Heart attack.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“Why don’t you tell Fern about your sister and Lagan? Maybe she could help.”
“Help? No. She won’t help.”
“She’ll blame you?” His words were a sharp jab so I said nothing. I sucked in my breath.
“I deserve to be blamed,” I said. “It’s my fault. What happened to Jennifer, it’s all my fault.”
“Somehow I doubt it.”
The underwater lights made the pool glow blue at the bottom but black at the top. Like it was covered in a thin layer of solid dark Wisconsin lake ice.
I turned away fast so I couldn’t see the pool, not even from the corner of my eye and somehow with the movement, I just started talking. It was like the words I had denied and held back and swallowed over and over again, had been waiting, for just such a shift, so they could make their escape.
“Bad Boyfriend #2, with the badges, he took all my money. I had to drop out of nursing school and Jennifer and I had to work a bunch of crappy jobs just to get back on our feet. It was…it was a really awful time. And then I lost my job at this shithole restaurant along the highway outside of Raleigh,” I said, not looking at him. Not looking at anything, really. Certainly not that pool.
“And I wanted…God, I wanted to just give up. Just crawl into a hole and sleep. But there was this woman that came into the truck stop all the time. Nice lady. Older than me. She found out I got fired and she offered to let Jen and me come stay with her out at her farm. Jen didn’t want to go. She had a job at a mall, piercing little kids’ ears. She loved it. And I was sort of pissed at her because she was like genius smart and she’d dropped out of college and all she wanted to do was work in this stupid mall with these stupid kids. We couldn’t live off what she made and we didn’t have money for rent. So there wasn’t any choice. Again. Having no choice is kind of a theme in my life, in case you’re wondering.”
“I’m familiar with the situation.”
“Anyway, I practically dragged her out to this farm. We met Lagan. We met the other women who lived out there and I was so…” I blinked, realizing the burn in my eyes were tears. “I was so ready to stop moving. So ready to stop being desperate, I didn’t even question why there were almost no men. When Lagan gave me attention I ate it up. With a spoon, I ate it up.”
“He said…in the club…that he hurt you.” He wasn’t eating anymore. He’d put his plate down in the harsh Florida grass, the blood from his steak draining into the ground.
I blew out a ragged, low breath. “He didn’t hurt me,” I said, like I was trying to convince him I couldn’t be hurt. I could be bruised. But I couldn’t be hurt. Maybe this was a lie I told myself so many times I believed it. But whatever—it was true when it came to Lagan. “But the sex was…mean in a way. But I ate that up, too.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nod. Maybe he did know. If anyone in my life would understand my need to punish myself, he would.
“Did he make you wear a bonnet?” he asked, being callous, but trying to be funny at the same time. I appreciated that.
“No. No bonnets. No weird dresses.”
“What made you leave?”
“I found out about the drugs. He had most of us working at normal shit. Jennifer was taking care of all the little kids. I cooked—”
He scoffed.
“I baked bread, as
shole,” I said with a smile. “Like for real. You should be so lucky as to have some of my bread.” I had forgotten that. Those brief weeks in the hot kitchen with the oven and my hands buried in dough. Gwen—the woman who brought me into the camp—she told me I had a knack for it. And I’d eaten that up with a spoon, too.
“For a few weeks at that camp, before the sex and before I found out about the drugs, I’d been really happy. Maybe for the only time in my life.”
“But then you found the drugs?”
“Yeah, some of the women and all the men worked in these other buildings. We didn’t go near them. We definitely got the vibe we shouldn’t go near them. But one day, after we’d been there for about three months, Gwen told me I was done baking and I had to report to Lagan in one of those buildings.”
“I know where this is going—”
“They were cooking meth. Lots of it. And it was like someone just ripped the blinders off. I stood in this shack, surrounded by high school science equipment and I realized what I’d gotten us into.”
“So, you bailed?”
“Not at first. I went back and told Jennifer we had to leave, and she was so pissed I wanted to leave. We’d been bouncing around what seemed like our entire lives, and she just wanted to stay put. So I had this big plan that I would leave, and I would get the cops and I’d rescue my sister and the rest of these women who’d been brainwashed.
“So, I told Lagan I wanted to leave. I made up some story about going back to nursing school, I don’t even remember now. I was so scared, I was sweating so hard I could feel it in my shoes. I was sure he was going to beat the crap out of me or…something. I was totally surprised when Lagan told me I was free to go. But that the camp would move after I left. And that I would never be welcomed back. That I would never see Jennifer again—and I didn’t really believe him, you know. I was so sure I could get to the cops and I’d save Jennifer and Gwen and everyone else. And it was like he knew what I was thinking. And he probably did; he always seemed to see into my brain better than anyone else. So, for his grand finale, while I watched, he asked all the women to take out those pills he gave them if the cops came.”
“Jesus.”
“He told Jennifer to put one in her mouth and I was freaking out and screaming at her not to do it. But she did it. She didn’t swallow it. She just held it in her teeth like she was a dog he’d trained. That…that was just the power he had over us. And he said he was doing this to make me understand that when I walked away, I had to walk away forever.”
“Or he’d kill your sister.”
I nodded.
“Bastard.”
“Yeah. But I knew he had to sell those drugs so I followed him. And I followed Gwen and finally they all led me to the Velvet Touch.” I tipped my bottle to my lips but it was empty. “But then he had the camp moved and I couldn’t find them again. Hand me another beer would you?”
He grabbed a beer from the bucket on the other side of his chair, popped the top, and handed it to me. But he didn’t let go when I grabbed it.
“I’m real sorry,” he said.
I was a little too raw and his apology was like salt in a wound. I nearly hissed at the strange pain.
“Fuck you, Max.” I said without any heat and jerked the bottle out of his hand.
“Only if I get to put the handcuffs on you this time.” Ah, this was familiar ground. Good, solid ground.
“In your dreams, dick.”
“Ah ah.” He pointed his own bottle at the dark windows of the condos surrounding us. “Is that anyway to talk to your husband?”
“In your dreams, sweetheart,” I said with a smile full of teeth.
“Your aunt—”
“No. I’m done talking about my shit. You want to talk about your brother? How about your dad? You know I lived next to him for five beautiful months.”
“All right. No talking about family.” He reached down to grab another beer for himself. His back had that wide, beautiful muscle that fanned out from his shoulder down to his spine. I eyed him shamelessly.
“What’s the tattoo?” I asked, trying to see the large tattoo that was on the inside of his arm.
“Which one?”
“Under your arm?”
He lifted his arm up and I turned my head and was able to make it out. It was a tree in full bloom, but its roots were tangled around a bunch of grimacing and laughing—or possibly screaming—human skulls.
“Jeez, Max,” I said.
“You don’t like it?” He turned his arm toward his face and smiled down at the gruesome tattoo. “I always thought it was kind of pretty.”
The word pretty coming out of his mouth was hilarious. Or maybe it was the beer on an empty stomach.
“So, no talking about family,” he said. “What will we talk about?”
“Why you won’t help me get my sister.”
He groaned. “You are lousy on vacation. Let’s talk about you and your girlfriends.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Okay, how about you tell me about Annie.”
That made me pause.
“Annie? Dylan’s girlfriend?”
“Yeah. What’s she like?”
“Well, why don’t you go visit your brother and find out?”
“You know her, right?” he asked, watching me out of the corner of his eyes, ignoring my little dig about visiting his brother.
“I know her. Not a lot. She’s good, you know. Solid.”
“You make her sound like a table,” Max laughed.
“She’s the kind of girl any guy would want to have as a girlfriend.”
“Sucks a mean dick?”
“Stop.”
“Loves anal in the morning?”
“Max!”
“What makes her so special? I mean, Dylan didn’t come down off that mountain for nothing. And suddenly she’s in the picture and everything changes.”
“She’s sweet,” I said. “But she’s tough. Loyal. Kind of fierce that way. She’ll surprise you. She surprised the heck out of me. I think she’s probably real good for your brother.”
He nodded and stared into the darkness, all that crude joking gone. “That’s good,” he said softly and took another drink of his beer. “He deserves to be happy.”
“And you don’t?” I don’t know why I asked that question; I knew what he was going to say. It was like me taking the blame for Jennifer. Some things just were.
“I don’t think like that Joan. I don’t…happy doesn’t matter, you know. Not in a life like mine.”
“I think you deserve to be happy.”
“Because you are?” he asked.
“Because I want to be. Don’t you?”
His…ache was bleeding out into the air around us, and I felt that compulsion to make it better. To ease it. Ease him. To take on his pain. Bullshit ruinous nonsense.
So I kept my mouth shut and the two of us drank our beers in silence, my steak growing cold on my plate.
“You going to eat that?” he asked, pointing at my steak with his knife.
“No. I’m full.”
“Why are you lying?”
Surprised, my head snapped up.
“You’re hungry, Joan.”
Oh God. That voice. Those eyes. That crazy tattoo under his arm like a secret.
Like a secret I understood all too well.
Completely and all at once, I was done talking.
“What if I’m not hungry for steak?” I asked, cutting through the bullshit, “getting to know you” small talk that didn’t mean shit to people like us.
His lips twitched. “You want to have sex with me, Joan?”
“I want to have sex. You’re here.”
He laughed, tilting his head back and just filled the pool area with the sound of his laughter.
“Such a sweet talker. I can see why I married you.”
That made me laugh. For real.
“I don’t think you want to have sex with me,” he
said.
“Why?” I laughed. “Because I’m bi? If you’re unfamiliar with the definition—”
“Not because you’re bi. Because you’re scared.” We weren’t laughing anymore. Our chests rose and fell in time, like we were on some kind of synced clock. Both of us forgot the beer and the steak. The pool in front of us, glowing like a bad memory.
“I’m not scared of you,” I whispered.
“You’re scared of something,” he said. “So am I. It’s why we haven’t touched. It’s why we stayed away from each other for months at the club.”
He was impossibly right. More right than I wanted to think about. Or look too hard at.
“It’s like the thing with the neighbors,” he said. “Someone calls the cops and both of us get yanked in. Mutual assured destruction. You and I have sex, get involved in that way…both of us burn. Both of us. We’ll tear each other apart until there’s nothing left to walk away from.”
I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. It was like every bit of moisture in my body was pooling between my legs.
“And you got a self-destruct button a mile wide, Joan.”
Oh, it was my drama that was too much. Hilarious.
“Yours isn’t? You’re the president of a motorcycle club. If that’s not a death wish waiting to happen I don’t know what is.”
I drained the rest of my beer and swung my legs over the edge of the lawn chair, ready to get up. Ready to give him a little speech about how he would be sleeping on the love seat tonight.
“I went to Arizona,” he said, and I stopped. Half-braced to leave—I froze. “That’s where I was when I was gone a while ago. I went to Arizona, because my mother is buried there and I realized I’d never seen her grave. And that I should. Because I was probably going to die. Either the assholes I called brothers were going to kill me, or I was going to get killed for them. And then I got out there and I got away from them, from the fucking back stabbing and the drama and the danger and…I decided not to go back. It was a fucked-up call, you know. Because the club was all I had ever known. It was all I’d ever wanted. Or thought I could have. But I had watched my Dad get fucked over by his “brothers.” I had watched them sell my mother drugs behind his back. I had watched them fuck her and then lie to Pops’s face. I got the president patch and I thought I could make it different. I could force us, this like random group of sociopaths to be brothers. To love each other. To look out for each other…that was the dream. It’s why guys paid dues and suffered through prospect shit. It’s why they strapped on guns and did terrible things in the name of the club. It’s why I did it. Because we were supposed to trust each other. We were supposed to be more family than our own flesh and blood. But in the end—there was no loyalty. No trust. Just a long line of men ready to put a bullet in my head for their own fucked-up reasons.”