by Jackson, Meg
“Will you? He said it was fine of course, but…”
I interrupted him swiftly, leaning in to cover his lips with mine, his tongue trapped between my teeth, my hands rushing to hold his stubbled cheeks.
“Where else would I go,” I said, pulling away. “You’re here. Where else could I ever possibly go?”
Some say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. But in that moment, on the side of the bed, holding Trigger’s face in my hands, safe and warm in his gaze, I thought of us, fast forwarding from moment to moment.
The first time I’d seen him, in that library. The minutes spent studying over an open textbook. His voice in the dim and dire room where he’d made a promise he’d kept for ten long years. New Hampshire nights and mornings, short and quick or long and lazy. On a bike, speeding away while patrol cars chased after him and my heart went with them all. Then seeing him again, in that trailer park, with Brock only feet away from us, and his strong, lean, figure in the ring, keeping that promise still…
I closed my eyes and leaned against him once more, my head resting in the crook of his neck, his arm falling around my shoulders. This is home, I thought. It doesn’t matter where we are…this is home.
End of Part 2.
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Epilogue
“Nah, sis,” Cass said, swaying softly with the baby on her hip. “I love it. Honestly, I mean, I never really cared about my job…being a housewife is nice. Get to keep things tidy and cook dinner and all that. Though, to be honest, with all these damn babies running around, it feels like I’m running a daycare sometimes.”
She shifted Endo and Naomi’s daughter to make herself more comfortable, the phone wedged between her chin and shoulder. She listened and laughed a bit.
“No, not yet,” she said. “I mean, someday but…I don’t know. I’m only 30, I got time. Besides, I’m not ready to give up my body quite yet.”
In the background, the two-year old laughed to Sesame Street, clapping her hands. Cass was waiting for the baby’s formula to warm up.
“Oh, he’s out on a ride in the Rockies today with Puck. Be home tonight.”
Puck’s romance with the redhead who’d caused all the trouble had fizzled out even before Trigger returned from Reno. The two men had been hesitant at their first meeting after Trigger’s recovery, but had since sparked up an intense friendship, with Trigger taking on the role of mentor for the troubled kid.
“And Mike? Mhm, that’s awesome. Two more stores?”
Now, she didn’t have to bite her tongue when speaking to her sister. Improbably, Jennie’s relationship was still going strong; better than strong, really. They were getting married the next month. Cass would be the maid of honor. Cass herself had asked Jennie for the same favor when she’d had her desert wedding to Trigger; a raucous affair with bikes, booze, and bouquets. She’d told Trigger she didn’t need anything fancy, but he’d insisted, saying that after all the shit Cass had been through in her life, no one deserved a more lavish wedding than she.
In contrast, Jennie was keeping her wedding a small affair: Cass, Jackie, and Gloria would attend for the bride, Mike’s parents and sister would be there for him. A small, intimate dinner after the ceremony before seeing the newlyweds off on a holiday to Majorca. It was funny, to Cass, how different she and Jennie’s lives had turned out, yet similar in the sense that they were, ultimately happy. Which, coming from where they did, said a lot.
“Oh, yeah, no, you go on ahead,” Cass said, hearing the timer go off behind her. “Baby’s gotta get fed, anyway. I love you too, sis. See you soon.”
As she sat down with the baby in her arms, in front of the TV where Elmo and Grover were discussing the deep subject of kindness, she released a happy sigh. Really, she didn’t mind taking care of the young ones while Naomi was off saving the world and Gabriella puzzled over life’s greater mysteries. The three women had grown exceptionally close, especially Gabriella, whose ex-husband bore certain remarkable similarities to Cass’ father as well as Brock.
Who, by the way, had tried – successfully – to track Cass down. He’d stood outside the bar, hollering his apologies, begging her to come back to him, to leave that “biker scum” in the dust and come home, where she belonged. He’d promised to be better, to do better, to love her right. But he’d hit the road quick when Endo, Reign, Trigger, Puck, and a gang of other men emerged with their arms crossed across their chest and murder in their eyes. Cass knew that, given the chance, Trigger would still bite the guy’s ear off, Tyson style. But in the end, Brock had always been a coward, and acted accordingly. She hadn’t heard from him since.
Of course, sometimes the nights did get lonely for Cass. Reign had stayed true to his word, giving Trigger late-night shifts cleaning at the bar, three-day trips hustling immigrants across the border, and at least one fight a month. Cass accompanied him when she could, but it wasn’t always feasible. But, unlike the cold and sterile nights she spent next to Brock, Cass’ fingers and fantasies no longer satisfied her desires. She preferred, instead, to wait for the real thing.
Because he was always going to come home to her.
Always.
THE END
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Part One
~ 1 ~
Oh great, a used condom.
Oh, wow, super, a bloodstain.
What is this even, yogurt?
Who does this to a pillow?
Was it very necessary, whoever you are, to completely cover the walls with shit?
What is this…oh please…don’t even…no…yup, it’s piss.
Jesus Christ, is it that hard to put your used needles in the damn trash can?
Oh…a dollar tip, how nice, considering they left an entire week’s worth of rotting fast food and half-empty beers all over the floor.
How did they manage to get cum on the ceiling?! That’s actually impressive, I can’t even be mad…
All in a day’s work for me. I pushed my cart from room to room, arms sore from scrubbing at mysterious stains, clothes splotched with bleach, mind numb to what wonders might await me behind the next door.
People are animals, I tell ya. No one knows that as much as a cleaning lady at a hotel. And, no, before you start dreaming up my identity for me, I’m not an “illegal alien”. I am half-Latina, but I’m a full-blooded American citizen, born and raised, and I speak perfect English, thank you very much.
What is it about staying at a hotel that can turn even a mild-mannered person into an untamed beast with no problem pissing all over the floor or dumping an ashtray onto their sheets before checking out? Is it because it’s not their home, so they don’t care what happens to it? Is it because they don’t realize someone like me has to come and clean it up? Or – and perhaps this is the scariest possibility – is it possible that they’re actually like that at home, too, and you just never see it?
Not everyone who came through the doors of the Gateway were like that, of course, but way too many were. We had our fair share of families, businesspeople, truckers. But for every guest who left the room in a decent state, there were two prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, alcoholics, or other such devils who took it upon themselves to make my job as hard as humanely possible.
And I never held anything against those people for what they did. If you’re a lady and you need money and you don’t mind letting someone give you the old in-out to get some, go on with your bad self. Got a drinking problem and can’t drive home? By all means
, keep everyone safe and stay at the hotel. Need to “figure stuff out” through a drug-fueled weekend? Not my place to judge.
But, goddam, a little decorum would be nice to see once in a while.
“Gabriella, Rosa is taking her break now, can you make sure 215 is ready? Early check-in,” my walkie-talkie crackled on my hip.
“Already checked it, boss, all good,” I said, pushing down the ‘talk’ button and hoping that my manager would actually hear me for once instead of badgering me about why I “didn’t respond”. The woman was a sweetheart, but she was deaf as hell and the flask of vodka she sipped on all day didn’t help her comprehension skills.
As I heaved my cart down the hall, legs already aching from all the bending over and crouching down my job demanded, I tried not to think about what would happen at the end of my shift. To be honest, as much as I hated playing nursemaid to the lost souls of the world, tidying up after them, wondering whether that puddle was vomit or melted ice cream, there wasn’t a whole lot to look forward to once I was done for the day, either.
It was late June, when it’s really only just beginning to warm up in the high Rockies.
Maybe it’s a good night for a barbeque, I thought idly, until I opened up the door to the next room and my list and remembered that it was raining lightly. No use stopping at the store on my way home for hamburgers and potato chips.
Maybe I’ll make lasagna, I thought. Lasagna is good for a rainy day. Jeremy loves my lasagna.
Lasagna was a safe bet. Anything that I already knew Jeremy loved was a safe bet. Anything I wasn’t sure about was a gamble. And if I made anything that he’d told me once, even if he’d said it years ago in a conversation that I had no reason to remember, I was treading on ice so thin it might as well be paper.
Yeah, lasagna, I thought, thankful that this room, at least, wasn’t as bad as some of the others I’d seen that day. As I pulled up the covers, balling them up with the sheets, ready to throw them in the hamper, I made a quick mental inventory of the room. I was looking for chargers, cell phones, socks, shoes, a ski goggle, anything that a rushed guest might have left behind on their way out the door.
You’d be surprised what people leave behind in hotel rooms. Usually it’s just crap, but sometimes you find interesting things: photographs, mysterious pills, strange powders in baggies, gold jewelry. Some of the girls I worked with, I knew, were prone to taking such finds home with them instead of bringing them to the front desk, like we were supposed to. I didn’t hold it against them, but I always brought anything I found straight to the clerks to hold onto or dispose of as they saw fit.
It wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught, for me. And besides, I didn’t do drugs, and I didn’t need jewelry. Jeremy, though he had many flaws, was an excellent provider. Or, I should say, the police force he worked for was an excellent provider. We didn’t want for money. The fact I had this job at all was due to one of his whims.
After we’d married, three years before the shit hit the fan, he didn’t like the idea of me “sitting around at home” all day. Unfortunately, he also didn’t like the idea of me getting a job that would be “too mentally taxing” or take up “too much time”. Really, he just wanted me to get a job where I’d come home too dog-tired to do anything but put up with his shit, and working for housekeeping at the hotel was the perfect mix of physical labor and mind-numbing repetition.
“But what did I get a degree for, if I can’t do anything with it?” I’d said, still so naïve.
“Well, I don’t know what you got a degree for, I sure as hell didn’t tell you to get it. I mean, what can you even do with a degree in philosophy? You’d have to go to grad school if you want to make anything of yourself, and we can’t afford that right now. Besides, if you went back to school, you’d have your nose in a book all the time again, no time for me. I waited two years to have you all to myself, I don’t want to wait another four,” he’d replied, appealing to that sappy part of me that loved him beyond reason.
“I guess you’re right,” I’d resigned, not wanting to have the same argument again for the third time that week. After our honeymoon, that had been our first major issue. The first of many, I’d like to add.
So I’d started looking for a job. With almost no work experience, it was tough. I could flip burgers, but that seemed beneath me, and with a degree I was way overqualified, anyway. I wanted to take a position as a secretary at a law firm, but Jeremy had thought that would be too stressful for me, with crazy hours and demanding lawyers to cater to. He was the only man I should be catering to, in his opinion.
So, I’d taken the gig as housekeeper at the Gateway. I’m pretty sure I was only hired because I looked like I could speak Spanish. Which I can’t, by the way. Well, I can, but only curse words. Plus, my name, Gabriella, is only one “l” away from the traditional Hispanic spelling of the same name, blurring the line even further. Being half Puerto Rican and half Italian, I’m what they call “ethnically ambiguous”, which is a nice way of saying “no one knows what the hell you are right from looking at you.”
With large, almond-shaped, dark chocolate eyes, a deep tan complexion, and crazy, kinky, black hair that does whatever it wants at all times, I’ve been mistaken for a Jew, a Mexican, a Filipino, and even, on one occasion, a Hawaiian. My body, though, is pure Latina. I blessedly missed out on the dark body hair and stick-thin frame of my Italian mother, and got my paternal grandmother’s luscious hips, large, C-cup breasts, and wide, womanly thighs.
Not that I always appreciated that, mind you. In fact, when I was with Jeremy all those years, I hated it. He was as Irish as they get, pale as the moon and thin as a rail. He always made me feel like I was fat.
He’d buy clothes for me, intentionally buying sizes too large, because he knew that it made me think I belonged in the “plus” size section. He’d make little backhanded compliments about my roly-poly tummy, which never seemed to shrink no matter how much I tried to diet or exercise.
Now, of course, when I look at myself in the mirror and see the slight pudge in my stomach, I know it’s just a necessary evil of being what they call “voluptuous.” But back then? I did all I could to hide my body, thinking that, since it didn’t look like a fashion model’s, it wasn’t any good.
But that was just par for the course when it came to Jeremy. I was never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough or funny enough. He never ceased to remind me, in little ways, never outright, how he’d “settled” for me because he loved my personality, not my mind or my body. And how much could he have loved my personality, anyway, considering how much he thought I screwed up on a daily basis?
As I went into the bathroom, gathering towels and making note of what toiletries needed to be restocked, I instinctively paused to check myself in the mirror.
I’ll need a touch-up soon, I thought, brow furrowed, hand gently touching the tender spot above my left eyebrow where my concealer was just starting to look splotchy. You could just barely, if you looked hard enough, make out the dark purple markings underneath my make-up. I flinched under my own touch, the spot still tender although it’d been three days.
Here’s something you should know about humans, if you are one.
None of us are of one mind.
Or, maybe I shouldn’t be so broad. But I’ve met a lot of people, and there’s always two sides to the coin. It’s not like some old, tired, trope, like good and evil or black and white. It’s just…there’s the “you” that you’ve always believed yourself to be, the one you want to be, and there’s the “you” that you’d like to ignore, that you don’t want to take ownership of.
I don’t tell many people about that time in my life, because in that time of my life the latter “you” was in charge of me. I thought of myself as feisty and smart, with a spitfire wit and a take-no-prisoners attitude. The way I’d been raised, in a household that was half no mames, guey! and half fangul!
But, of course, that wasn’t who I was. I was – a
nd this pains me to write – a “battered women”. Ugh. What a horrible phrase. It makes me think of cake, or cookies. When, in reality, there was nothing sweet about my marriage. Jeremy, love him though I did, was a gigantic asshole. A disgraziat. A so pendejo.
He didn’t always hit me. Maybe once, maybe twice a month. But I never deserved it – does any wife deserve it, really? I can maybe see if you walk in on her banging three dudes at once, or if she’s got a knife to your head. I wouldn’t put someone in jail for smacking their woman if she was about to go full-on Misery on the guy. But a good, hard, close-fisted slug because you spilled coffee on his shirt in the morning?
But, the thing is, he made me feel so low, emotionally, that I thought I deserved it. Even though, deep down in the back of my mind, I knew that it was all a lot of macho bullshit and that he was wrong about me, he was really, really good at making me feel like I’d have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. He made me feel like being his wife was really my only purpose on this earth. And lord, even if it was the most fucked-up love in the world, I did love him.