Done Dirt Cheap

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  Her chest was held in an invisible vise, choking the air slowly out of her body. Maybe she needed to rest or something.

  Plopping on the mattress, she stretched out and stared at the ceiling, at the porch light casting shadows into the trees outside. The fan swept back and forth. Back and forth. She closed her eyes, and the sounds of normally breathing people drifted away.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jason said, sounding like someone who’d just walked into the house to discover his dog had shat over everything.

  Virginia didn’t move. “I just can’t catch my breath. It’s so hot I can’t breathe.”

  “Go not breathe somewhere else.” He pointed with the bottle in his hand. “Get out.”

  She ignored him. “Do you sleep on the floor?”

  Silence.

  “That’s kind of weird,” she said.

  “Get out,” he repeated sullenly.

  “No, thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a request.”

  She stared at the ceiling. Her throat thickened. “I just need . . . I just need a minute, okay?”

  “Definitely not here. Now.” Jason swung his whole body in the movement this time. “Out.”

  “I know.” She paused and dragged a deep breath in, vision swimming. “I know. But where? Where do I go . . . ?” She had to breathe, suddenly realizing she sounded frantic. “To just get a goddamn minute to breathe?” She tried to breathe more deeply, but there wasn’t enough air.

  Jason was quiet, jaw tight.

  She shook her head and closed her eyes, sucking down deep breaths. Why hadn’t she just done it Hazard’s way? Smiled and faked it. Silken treachery and untouched heart. Grown into what she’d been heading for—a hard girl come into a cold woman. What gave her the right to want anything else?

  Jason cleared his throat. “Hazard?”

  She froze. “You knew,” she stated flatly. He wasn’t an asshole at all. He had only been protecting his people, his family. And rightfully so. Virginia’s throat tightened and she gripped the sheet, expecting him to snap. Finally. It would be a relief.

  The fan clicked and swept across the room.

  Jason did not drop his gaze. “You’ll pass out, and in the dark you’ll start breathing again,” Jason said. “That’s what happens.”

  “Are you sure?” she croaked.

  “I’m standing here, aren’t I?” And he was standing there. Shoulders dropped. Limbs loose. Eyes darkened in the dim room and the long day.

  It was quiet for a long time, except for the whirr of the fan sweeping back and forth. Finally, he sighed and closed the door.

  Her breath caught in her throat, but in a good way. Most of the misery drowned in a sudden plunge of anticipation she hadn’t known she was capable of.

  He didn’t say a word, but put his beer on the dresser and sat down on the other side of the mattress, turning to stretch out beside her. Feet crossed at the ankles. Boots on. He folded his hands over his stomach.

  The fan swept over them. Back and forth.

  “How did you know?” she whispered to the ceiling.

  “It’s my job to know.”

  “I’m out of time. I don’t know where to go. Where should I go?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “To hell. And I’d take whoever pursued me.” He laughed, an undercurrent of strange bitterness mixed into the softness. It was not the same laugh he’d had with Aubrey, and she was glad.

  Virginia closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his body pulling in the mattress. “Why do you sleep on the floor?”

  “It feels safer.”

  “Why do you have a mattress?”

  “So I don’t look like a serial killer when I bring a woman back.”

  “Pretty sure serial killers have mattresses,” she said.

  “But if they didn’t, you’d definitely think serial killer.”

  “Mm . . . maybe.”

  Jason sighed. “Where can you go that lets you leave the anger behind? That’s where you should go.”

  She frowned at the ceiling. “I’m not angry.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “The kind you have . . .” He reached over, slowly, tapping his finger into the soft part of her upper chest. “Deep in there. The kind that is keeping you in the same places, with all the same people, doing all the same things. The kind that’s poisoning every other feeling.”

  She wasn’t angry. All she needed to do was recover some control. The fan clicked, paused, and went back the other way. The air touched her face, and she breathed deeper. “How did you get the scars?”

  “IED.”

  “Do they hurt?”

  “No. But sometimes they make it hard to breathe,” he said.

  “Breathing is hard.”

  “It’s easy to hate yourself for breathing. Not as easy to stop as you’d hope.”

  Virginia turned her head, letting her gaze trace the outline of his profile in the lamplight. “Are you afraid you might just stop? Like one day it will be too heavy and hard and you’ll open your mouth and just not find the will to do it even one more time?”

  He watched the ceiling. “No. I long for that.”

  She felt then—for the first time—the difference in their ages. In their lives.

  “You can’t run from that feeling. Or your anger, really. No matter where you go. That’s what will kill you, long after your enemy is dead. That’s the hardest to escape.”

  She tried to breathe deeply, right where she was.

  Jason stayed very still. Quiet. As if he didn’t even notice she was there.

  “I did this to myself,” she said. “This is what I deserve. I’m just afraid of it. I’m being a pussy.”

  “Hey now, don’t knock pussy.”

  She snorted.

  Something like a smile pulled at his mouth. “This is your life.” He nodded. “And you can’t tell what you deserve or don’t deserve, because you’re too busy being angry it happened.”

  What the hell? “I’m really not angry,” she said, half laughing and half feeling as if she might cry.

  He chuckled.

  “I don’t have any feelings,” she insisted. “Except . . . resignation. That’s a feeling, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You mean, except the cold, dead grip of anger. Just that one.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Is this because I tried to slap you that one time?”

  “First, you were clawing, not slapping.” He picked up her fingers and ran a thumb over her nails. “And no. That’s not why.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you.”

  “I know. You were scared. You felt cornered.”

  She stared at him, dangerously close to throwing up, or crying, or something. She didn’t want to ever move from this bed. She wanted to bring herself to his chest and smell the leather and smoke and beer on his skin. She wanted to drag her hair over his stomach. To taste his fingers and his mouth and his neck. She wanted to trace the lines of his body. Every line. Even the ones stapled into place. She wanted to breathe his breath and have his weight crushing the air out of her so she would keep dragging more in.

  He saw it. She didn’t realize he could read her mind, until he blinked, and she understood he could see exactly what she was thinking.

  She couldn’t read his mind. Or his eyes. But he hadn’t left.

  “I remember you from a long time ago,” he said softly.

  Did he remember her at Wal-Mart? “When?”

  “Your old man’s name was Ray.”

  Virginia didn’t move. She did not like to talk about her old man, especially now that he was gone. It felt as if talking about him would resurrect his ghost, and she remained afraid of even that.

  “You’re eighteen,” Jason whispered. “A baby.”

  “I wish I was eighteen.” She wished she were a normal eighteen-year-old girl. She wished—deeply wished—she were blushing Tourmalin
e, talking about college and her dorm. But Virginia watched “normal” through a window. And she lay there, screwed up enough to hold her breath at the idea he hadn’t left, and normal enough to know it was kinda fucked up that he was still lying there. But he was tragic and beautiful, and he moved at her elbow like a fox at dawn. He was all she could have ever hoped to have.

  He hadn’t moved. “You’re like a ghost,” he said softly, eyes searching her face for something she didn’t understand. “And I don’t know what to do about that.”

  She pushed off the bed, slinging past him to lock the door.

  That moved him. He bolted upright, shaking his head and rubbing his face. But no words came out of his mouth, and before he had more time to protest, she wrapped her hands around his waist and rolled her body slowly into his.

  The stiffness in his back softened. She could feel his heartbeat through his ribs against her chest.

  His hand came to her chin and grasped it firmly, tipping her to meet his eyes. “You’re not going to do this.” His breath came short. “We’re not.”

  But she wanted to. She didn’t feel like there was a single bone in her body that could be girlish until her chin was in Jason’s hand. And now that he was holding her, she felt the way Tourmaline looked when Cash brushed her elbow. Giddy and girlish and full of potential for good things. Things that smacked of feelings and that wouldn’t be there if she was truly a dead woman walking.

  Smiling, Virginia closed her eyes and slid her hands under his T-shirt. Not a tremble in her hands as she skimmed her fingers around his waist and up his back. The ridges and wrinkles of the scars slipped under her skin the same as the rest of him.

  He still grasped her chin, holding her there. Heartbeat hitting hers.

  The fan swept back and forth.

  She opened her eyes.

  His eyes were darkened. Dipping his head, he softly kissed her. Once. Twice. Three times. The third time he lingered.

  Letting go, he got up walked away, and left the door wide open in his wake.

  When it got quiet. When all the men who had been Tourmaline’s family when her family had fractured went down to the fire—their forms looming as distorted onyx shadows against the trees. When the woman with the tinkling earrings showed up and Dad held court with her by his side. When Cash gave up texting her because she wasn’t texting back. When he stopped shooting her confused glances. When he stopped looking at all. When it was only her, with her legs pulled up, gently swinging on Jason’s porch in the dark.

  There the blossom started falling apart in her hands, a flower long picked and the petals wilting in pieces.

  There was more noise. There was more drinking. There were more women she didn’t know. Women arrived who were not far from her age. Ray stayed a secret the Wardens all shared that held power she did not have. And it suddenly occurred to her that a flock of starlings would eventually be pinned to Cash’s as-yet-undecorated vest. The starlings, which all the men had in some manner, stood for—as the state’s attorney had put it—“sexual feats and conquests.”

  Desperately, she tried to tack the petals back on—to remember these nights as they had been. To bring back the feeling of life and power and magic. She’d fall asleep on her mother’s lap with bits of marshmallow still stuck to her fingers. Her father would carry her to bed smelling of wood smoke and gunpowder. The hollow but not vacant eyes of the horned skull on his jacket would be the last thing she saw before he turned out the light and her eyes weighed shut.

  But it was too late.

  The dogwoods had fallen. Crushed beneath heavy boots.

  Virginia came out of the house and plopped down beside her on the swing, startling Tourmaline away from watching the men in the dark.

  “How is . . . you know . . . going?” Virginia asked.

  “It’s complicated,” Tourmaline muttered.

  “Oh.” Virginia took a deep breath and withered into the hard-backed swing. “Well, that makes two of us.” She leaned into Tourmaline’s shoulder and said nothing else.

  The swing creaked, back and forth. The air mixed with honeysuckle and wood smoke.

  Tourmaline whispered, “All this time, I thought I had the life I’d intended to have. Until someone told me it was just a toy they’d made me to keep me quiet.”

  “I envy your toys,” Virginia muttered.

  “There’s no place for a grown girl here.”

  Virginia snorted. “You’re right. No girls. Only women.”

  Tourmaline’s throat choked tight. Mom had done all this. Mom, who’d picked up a strange man eight years older than she was. Mom, who wore a damn thong on the back of a Harley in a huge crowd. Mom, who kept the books in Dad’s office detailing the club’s history. Mom, who had taken her crown on her own, before putting it down for the black tar highway.

  And again, there was an empty space where Tourmaline had hoped for the gentle, older hands of a wise woman.

  A burst of laughter erupted from the woods.

  Both girls looked out over the railing.

  Someone—Jason?—was dancing with a girl . . . or rather the girl was dancing on him . . . one of those who had drifted in since the families had gone home.

  Tourmaline had the distinct impression it was past her bedtime.

  “Aubrey,” Virginia spat. “I’d recognize that stupid hands-on-her-knees move anywhere. It’s her signature.” She stretched out a long leg out and pushed off the railing.

  The swing groaned and whined as it swung back.

  Tourmaline kept watching Aubrey, transfixed. How had Mom done this? If Tourmaline wanted Cash, she’d have to do the same. Somehow. Her way. There wasn’t anything wrong or right in that. If she didn’t want to stand and take her place, she didn’t have to. But if she wanted him, this was the world she’d have to master. “You once said the worst thing you ever did was be naive.” Someone turned up the music, but Tourmaline didn’t look. “We have that in common.”

  “It’s the worst.”

  “The worst,” Tourmaline echoed, but her words felt lost inside the pulsating beat.

  Our fate cannot be taken.

  The night breeze caressed her face. She’d never appropriated those words for herself—they were always her parents’. The Wardens’. But now she wondered. What was her fate?

  “There you are, girls.” Her father’s voice boomed in the dark.

  Tourmaline jumped. Virginia sat upright.

  Tourmaline’s father came up the steps, stepping into the light with a smile. “Time for you girls to get going. I’m staying out here tonight. Make sure you lock the doors when you get home, okay?”

  Tourmaline swallowed. “Can we stay?”

  “Here?” Her father blinked, mouth open, looking outright horrified.

  Tourmaline blushed. “Yeah. I mean. Until we’re tired.” And, because neither she nor he actually wanted her to stay in the least, she smiled sweetly. “Why not?”

  “No, honey. It’s not . . .” He shook his head and looked away. “You don’t want to hang out here. With a bunch of old men. Go home, and you and Virginia have fun. Watch movies or something. The fireworks are over.” He patted her cheek and went inside.

  “Wow, you really showed him,” Virginia said dryly.

  “Your commentary is so helpful.”

  “I try.” Virginia stood like a rousing panther, bringing all her power back into her limbs.

  Dad came back out onto the porch with a bag of chips, giving them a strange look as he passed, boots thumping quickly down the steps. “Get on home, girls,” he yelled back when he hit the yard.

  “Don’t you want to say good-bye?” Virginia asked, giving her a meaningful look.

  Yes. She wanted to say hello, too. And answer Cash’s texts. And go over to where he was putting ice in a cooler, wrap her arm around his waist, and stand alongside him. But Jason’s warning was fresh in her mind. “It’s complicated.”

  “Well, then.” Virginia pulled her keys out. “If there’s no trouble for u
s here, let’s go find trouble elsewhere.”

  They drove out the long dirt road and turned onto the highway, switch-backing up the mountain with the radio cranked and the windows rolled down. They took deep breaths of the mountain air, gathering energy for another round.

  The truck began to drift toward the edge of the road, but just when Tourmaline looked over to Virginia, expecting her to correct course, Virginia slumped over the wheel.

  A massive upheaval stole Tourmaline’s scream.

  The truck bucked wildly. The road fell away into brush. A tree appeared, and just as fast, the truck folded around it with a terrible crumpling sound.

  All went still.

  She lifted her head, dazed. What had happened? She blinked, trying to make sense of it.

  Virginia was draped forward on the steering wheel, head lolling.

  “Oh, shit.” Tourmaline smashed at the seat belt release, but it didn’t budge. She strained to Virginia’s neck, fingers trembling as she felt for a pulse.

  “What?” Virginia murmured from underneath her tangled hair.

  Relief flooded through her. “Are you o—”

  Virginia’s door was wrenched open. A man ducked inside.

  “Oh, thank God,” Tourmaline said, trying to catch her breath. “I don’t know what happened—”

  But the man just pushed Virginia out of the way—carelessly, roughly, as if she were a bag of groceries tumbled in the back.

  Tourmaline froze, heart pounding as she tried to make sense of what was happening.

  Virginia’s head twisted and thumped against the side of the truck. Her eyes opened halfway, glazed and lost, meeting Tourmaline’s in the dark.

  “V? Are you all right?” Tourmaline struggled against the seat belt, trying to slip out. “What are you doing?” she yelled at the man.

  He ignored her, unbuckling Virginia’s seat belt and yanking her out.

  “Stop. Wait.” Tourmaline stretched and grabbed at Virginia’s wrist. This was all wrong. Why wasn’t Virginia fighting?

  With a grunt, he wrenched Virginia away, dragging her out of the truck.

  “Let her go!” Tourmaline screamed.

  The man threw Virginia over his shoulder, a dark hulking shadow in the night. He started up the hill, Virginia’s head bobbing behind.