Burned

by Meg Watson

Our footsteps ring out on the floating wooden dock that goes in between dozens and dozens of miniature yachts. Maybe hundreds, I don't know. Every few minutes, a boat will trundle by, sending small waves that slap wetly against the bottom of the dock. Gus walks slower and slower, edging toward the water, entranced by the rolling courses of waves.

  Knuckles glances irritably over his shoulder. “Come on there, little man. We don't have a lot of time to waste. Let's go.”

  But when Gus looks up at me, I just shrug and raise my eyebrows. He doesn't have to listen to what Knuckles says, why should he? A tiny smile twists at the corner of his mouth as he understands and begins to walk even slower.

  When Knuckles sighs in frustration through his nose, both of us try to suppress evil little giggles of satisfaction. In a few seconds, the old man is thirty or forty feet ahead of us, his wide, flabby backside pumping inside those tan polyester slacks like a champ.

  I see Knuckles turn left and I make a mental note to follow him when we get there, but I'm not in any rush. This little act of insubordination is giving me just enough satisfaction that I hope I can stand being on an actual boat with him.

  A few seconds later, it all blows up. At first I don't know exactly what is happening. There is a light, a flash. Something bright that seems to go in all directions at once. And then a yellow bloom. A fireworks display.

  And then a crack, a crack like a punch to the chest that pushes Gus and I both so hard we land on our backs. Next thing I know we’re staring up at the sky, raked over by a wave of heat and sound that doesn't even seem like it could be real.

  Footsteps, running. Voices. My ears are ringing.

  I look over at Gus first, and he's blinking quickly, his fingers fumbling against mine. I hold his hand tightly and sit up, forcing myself to smile. But I'm not sure what's happening. My ears aren’t working right; the sound must have done something to them. I nod to Gus and pull him to standing, looking around in confusion.

  There. I gather my balance as footsteps reach us, a dozen men running, shouting, waving their arms over their heads. Someone's dragging a large fire extinguisher behind him, the metal bouncing along each board.

  And then it hits me, and I turn back in the other direction. A curling finger of black smoke is pushing its way into the sky. The light is shimmering and pulsing over what must be a huge fire.

  There was an explosion, I suddenly realize. Our explosion, and Knuckles is dead. I know it. I know it as certainly as I if had seen it myself.

  “We have to go!” I think I'm shouting, but I can’t hear myself.

  Gus blinks again, apparently understanding but not really understanding. I yank him hard by the hands, in the opposite direction of all the people who are running this way.

  “We have to go, Gussie. Now... we have to get out of here quick!”

  DAY 4 - TEK

  “Pull over here. Where are you going?”

  I do not want to answer Nico. He should consider himself lucky that we’re even here. I ignore him fidgeting in the passenger seat and roll the Mustang slowly around the back of the diner, throwing it in Park next to the dumpsters.

  “What are you doing? I do not want to be sitting next to the fucking dumpsters, Tek. What the fuck?”

  “Five minutes,” I mumble under my breath.

  “What did you say?” Nico twists in his seat. He stabs the air with his index finger and points at me. “Just go get her. Just do it. The faster we get it done, the faster it will be over.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not gonna happen."

  Flinching back, Nico sucks his teeth and shakes his head. “Just fucking do it, Tek.”

  I shrug one shoulder and start to open the door but feel his hand on my other arm. I want to hit him, and if he doesn’t stop fucking touching me, I will. I freeze in my seat, letting my eyes slide slowly down to his hand and raising my eyebrows at it. I hear him snort in disgust as he picks his hand back up.

  “Just get her, Tek,” he says softly.

  “You just sit here and stare at yourself in the mirror or something, okay? Just leave the rest of this to me.”

  I can already hear him silently reminding me that he's my Capo for the millionth time, like I need that. But I do not need his shit today. I'm going to get in there, find Charli, give her an address, and get the fuck out. That's it.

  “Just do it,” he says again as I leave the car and head for the back door.

  It’s still a mystery that he thinks he gets some kind of control over me. When the Family retired me, I figured the supposed rules were discretionary. I’ve taken way more shit than I should have to. I'm certainly not going to let my pompous brother boss me around like I'm some chump soldier. There's only so much a man can take, and I think I have taken way more than my share.

  The back door is open of course, and I just walk through the kitchen, ignoring the raised eyebrows I get from the line cooks and meaty, tired-looking waitresses. I realize I haven’t eaten yet today when the sight of a patty melt on the grill makes my stomach knot, but I just rush through the kitchen to the swinging door.

  Some part of me wonders if there's a girl here or two that I haven't considered yet, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody under sixty years old. Not that over sixty is a bad thing. I mean I guess it's possible. I mean, I guess one day I’ll be sixty and then I'll be…

  Oh, fuck me, I really need to get a grip.

  I push out into the dining room and stand there for a second, twisting against the tension in my shoulders. It’s like I’m ready to box or rumble, which doesn't make any sense. It's just a girl, I tell myself. It's just Charli, and she can't do shit to me again.

  But my mouth is dry. My skin is buzzing and filled with bees. My heartbeat is so loud at the back of my head that I barely hear the clink of dishes and shouts to the line cooks.

  But I don't see her. I swing my eyes over the sparse crowd again, just to make sure. She's not here, not in sunglasses or anything. Maybe she dyed her hair, but there doesn't seem to be anybody here between the ages of twenty and seventy, at least not of the female persuasion.

  Well, fuck. Doesn’t that just figure? She stood me up. Nice.

  I take a few steps out into the dining room, slow enough to not really draw attention to myself. A couple of truckers dart their eyes up to me, then resume their conversation. Squinting out into the parking lot, I don't see anybody.

  It's almost noon, but I guess she could still be asleep. She always did like to sleep late.

  Coming around the front counter I almost bump into some kid sitting on the final barstool, working at a toy over a mountain of pancakes. Some waitress’ grandkid or something, I figure.

  He doesn't look up at me as I slide into the seat next to him. From this point in the corner, I can see the whole dining room: every set of tables, the front door, the long bank of windows that look out over the dusty parking lot. It's as good a place as any to wait. To sneak up behind me she would have to come through the kitchen like I did. That doesn't seem likely.

  The kid shifts about a centimeter away from me, without looking up. I can feel him kind of sheltering himself against me, which is good. Good instincts on that kid.

  “I'll just be here for a second,” I explain to him in a quiet voice. “Just eat your pancakes.”

  He nods slightly as though this is what he expected or wanted me to say. But his tiny, quick fingers find the toy again, twisting the arms back and forth and folding it back into its original form. It's a Transformer, Series 2. I must have had the whole set when I was a kid. Love that shit.

  “You want something?” comes an exasperated sigh.

  I scowl at the grandma in an old-fashioned waitress uniform, her hand fisted on her hip, her dark red lips pursed to one side sarcastically.

  “Yeah, coffee,” I mumble. What else am I going to say?

  Her eyes narrow at the kid, and then at me, but apparently she doesn't think it's too weird and she just shuffles back toward the coffee pots. Is that his grandma
? Doubtful, but why should I care? This kid is not my problem anyway.

  My actual problem doesn't seem to be showing up. That totally figures. By now Nico is probably just about halfway through examining himself and his perfect fucking hair in my rearview mirror. I’m going to get back in the car and have all the mirrors fucked up, I just know it. That guy.

  The door to the bathroom swings open and I instinctively hold my breath. Some teenage punk lunges out, hiking his pants up over his hips. Not her. Still not her.

  The waitress ambles back over and slides the cup on a saucer toward me, splashing some dark, hot coffee over the side. She doesn’t seem to care, and she sweeps the coffee pot through the air over the kid to another cup right next to him.

  Another coffee cup. Probably his dad’s, or his mom’s.

  The kid snaps the toy open again, stretching the legs back out, rearranging it back from a car to the robot form. I would rather play with his toy for hours, just love it. He's got an authentic one too, even though about half what you find of these were knockoffs. I bet he doesn't even know. That's got to be worth a couple hundred bucks, and I can see from the sticker that he's never even figured out.

  “You want to see something cool?” I hear myself say automatically. I don't know why I said it. I guess I am just nervous.

  I hold out my hand, hoping he’s gonna drop the toy into it. He hesitates and I see him think about it for a second. Just hand his toy over to a stranger? I mean, it is a pretty weird thing I just said. I know it, and I hope he just does it before this gets any weirder.

  But he puts the toy into my palm and it feels strangely good. Something familiar. The plastic is still warm from his hands. I twist it over to one side and tap my finger on the white sticker by the logo.

  “You see this?”

  He nods cautiously.

  I push the toy back toward him slightly. “Take your figure and rub it. Right there, on the sticker.”

  His little hand pushes out, index finger pointing forward. He rubs it tentatively back and forth across the white sticker, then a little harder as soon as he sees the shadow. In a couple of seconds, the Decepticon logo magically appears, activated by the heat of his skin.

  “Whoooooa,” he sighs in surprise. Seeing his eyes go wider, I’m filled with a strange kind of goofy pride or something.

  “Yeah they put the stickers on here so people would know which was a real one, you know? Because there were fakes? I mean a lot of fakes? Back then?” I explain awkwardly. Great, now I'm babbling. “I’ll bet you never even saw that, right? You never even knew it was there?”

  He doesn't say anything as he shakes his head, but the smile on his face is all wonder and happiness. He has probably been playing with this toy for a year and never even knew was there. I couldn’t even tell you why that makes me so happy.

  “What are you doing?”

  I flinch back like she pushed me. Instinctively I stand up, arms out, ready for anything. Charli glares at me from under the brim of her baseball cap, and I notice she's edging between me and the boy.

  “I said, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" she snarls at me. I do not know what to tell her. But what was I doing? I don't know. What is she doing? I don't fucking know that either. Everything is fucked up. Everything.

  “Waiting for your ass, as usual,” I growl, the first thing I could think of to say.

  “Great, you found us. You want a medal or something for finding me right where I said I would be?”

  “No, I don't wanna — just get in the…” My voice trails off. I don't even want to fight with her.

  I haven’t seen this woman in seven years, and now we’re face to face like everything happened just yesterday. Her arms are out from her sides, her shoulders heaving as she breathes fast and hard. There’s a pink flush creeping up her neck from the open collar of her shirt and just the barest glimmer of moisture on her skin.

  Fuck off, fuck me. I'm not thinking about Charli.

  Something is wrong. The way her upper lip twitches she's practically snarling at me. And I start to kind of put it together.

  “So… Wait, no…”

  She raises her eyebrows at me in defiance, swiping a thick lock of blonde hair under the brim of her hat and out of her eyes.

  “Well, are you just gonna stand there?” she challenges me. “Just get this over with, Tek. Just get this show on the fucking road.”

  I shake my head, stand up straight. My hands go out in front of me like I'm pushing back the vision of her.

  “No, you don't need me. I'm just gonna give you a couple of pointers about relocating and then you can go on your merry way.”

  She scoff-laughs. “Seriously? Nico just talked me into this bullshit, where I let you boss me around like every other man in my life. And now, what? You’ve got other plans? In your busy fucking retirement?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I huff. Who does she think she is, talking to me like that in public? “Language…”

  Her eyes fly open, startling me with the intense, leafy green. I'd almost forgotten.

  “You think you’re gonna tell me how to talk? In front of my own kid? Who the fuck do you think —”

  I feel like she shot me. I want to double over. My gut clamps down like she kicked me.

  “Your own kid,” I hear myself muttering.

  She cocks her head a little toward her shoulder. Her eyes soften slightly but her lips press into a hard line. As she is standing there, she slides slightly to one side. I see the little guy rubbing his finger back and forth across the Decepticon logo. He’s concentrating like he didn't hear me, but I'm sure he heard every word.

  “Gus, turn around. This my old friend, Tek. Say hello.”

  Obediently, the kid swivels the chair slightly, but doesn't raise his eyes. He puts up one hand and waves it at me tentatively, while my hand twitches. I want to shake his hand or something, but I can't hear over the sound of the blood rushing in my ears.

  “He's four,” she says stubbornly, and the kid glances up at her and then turns back to his stack of untouched pancakes.

  “Four? Awful big for four,” I say automatically, I don't know why.

  She coughs and shakes her head. “What are you, some kind expert on child sizes? You been studying up or something?”

  “No, it's just that…” I shake my head, hard.

  I don't even know what to say to her. I haven't seen her in seven years, and here she is with a kid. Somehow in this time, she stayed frozen in my mind, while life just continued on for her. Of course it did. That's what people do, right?

  I mean, that's totally natural, that's totally fine. I just need a fucking minute to think about it, if she would just shut the hell up and let me do that.

  I just need to calm down. I just need to get a second to get my head straight. Of course this is fine. We’re not together anymore. Nico and I are not even really together anymore, in any sense. After we left Annapolis, everything fell apart, and now everything is different. So why am I having such a hard time with this?

  My eyes sweep across the room, looking for something, anything, to hold onto. A couple of truckers, a couple of married people who are way past retirement age. That group of three teenagers who must be ditching school or something in the corner.

  All normal stuff. I stare out into the bright, barren parking lot and count the cars. Two pickups, one big rig, and one beater hatchback with a broken headlight. Perfectly normal.

  “You know what, Charli, I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot here,” I start again.

  She pulls her arms across her chest, pinching at the sleeve of her shirt like she does. Same gesture, I've seen it a thousand times. There's that kick in the gut again.

  “You think so?” she says, but I hear a softness in her voice, or so I think. Probably just my imagination. “Is there a right foot that we were supposed to get off on?”

  I shrug, shaking my head helplessly. “I don't even know, Charli,” I admit. What's the point of
acting all tough now? “Listen, I just want to help you. I can get you to this little out-of-the-way airport, and then you can take care of the rest. Nico told me what happened… This must be hard for you.”

  “Yeah, just a little bit,” she grumbles sarcastically.

  Why is she making this so fucking hard? I just want to say what I need to say and get the hell out of here. The last thing I need is Charli Cappelli jerking me around like she always does. Something about this chick gets my heart on a leash. She’ll drag me wherever, if I let her. Both of us — Nico too. And I'm never gonna let her do that to us again.

  Taking a deep breath, I stare hard to the far end of the parking lot. If I can just organize what I want to say, I can probably get it out in one breath. That would be fantastic. Let's do that.

  As I'm marshaling my thoughts into order, some kind of a low rider swings into the parking lot. An El Camino with a Hummer right after. Out-of-towners.

  So what should I tell her? I guess she already knows where the train station is, but she doesn't know that there is a little airfield about twenty miles south of here. She could just take Knuckles’ caddy down there and tell them where she wants to go. She can go anywhere. Yeah, I'm supposed to escort her, but I don't see how that's going to work. Nothing ever works out between us.

  The El Camino and the Hummer park at the back of the lot, and four guys get out in sunglasses and hats. The tallest puts his hands on his hips and stares at the front of the diner. Seems a little weird that they didn't pull up closer. He gestures with one hand as two guys scurry to the back of the Hummer and come back with a lot of…

  What is that?

  “So? You have something that you need to tell me, right?” she says. I want to answer, but something is all fucked up right now.

  The tall guy saunters a few steps to the side as two other guys bring out a mortar. Yeah, a fucking mortar. A fucking Soviet-issued, goddamn rocket launcher.

  “Get down.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Get down!” I tell her, and I hope she's going to just fucking do it, because the next thing I know I've got the kid in my arms and I'm yanking him off the barstool. He barely puts up a fight, just tucks his head under my arms as we both slide to the ground.