by Naomi West
Chapter Six
Diesel
I sit in the alleyway against my bike, chewing the wooden end of a matchstick and wondering what sort of bastard I’m going to be remembered as. Willa hit home, harder than she probably knows. Because she’s right. Of course she’s right. Just because I make sure I don’t end up a killer—at least by accident—that doesn’t mean what I’m doing doesn’t have consequences. I think about a kid again, as I have countless times before. My kid would be better than me, boy or girl. I’d make sure of it. My kid would never end up in the slammer. My kid would never end up an arsonist. The club is the club; the club is family. But does that mean I have to do this for the rest of my life?
I toss the matchstick to the concrete and think about lighting a cigarette. Then I remember how Willa threw the cigarette to the curb yesterday, and I decide against it. It’s the first time in my life I’ve gone without one for a woman. I’m sure that says something.
When she doesn’t show up right away, I’m surprised by how nervous I’m getting. I want to spend tonight with Willa. I want to go back to my apartment and close the door to the world and pretend that the club doesn’t exist. Grimace has been getting on my case about this Chino bastard, telling me that Chino is going to be a big problem soon, telling me that we need to deal with him. I know it’s a matter of time before he asks me to torch another building, and maybe next time I won’t be able to get everybody out. Maybe next time I’ll end up burning innocents alive. I spit on the floor and pace the alleyway.
“Chino is the lowest of the low,” Grimace told me last night, hunched over in his president’s chair, his grizzled gray beard reaching almost down to the desk. Grimace is almost as big as me and looked damned strange hunched over like that, but he always sits in that way when he’s angry. It’s the only way I can tell, since his face is always so calm. “Nothing worse than a slumlord, Diesel,” he went on, though I could think of a few worse things. “Doesn’t respect his tenants, doesn’t respect the law, doesn’t respect anything, not even respect itself. Uses his damn buildings as fronts for drug dealing and money launderer. Gets pregnant women hooked on crack. He’s a real piece of shit, Diesel, a real piece of work.”
I nodded, reminding myself how much I owed this man.
When six o’clock arrives and she still isn’t here, I wonder if I should just cut my losses and get going. There’s nothing tying me to this woman except my interest in her. I don’t owe anything to her and she doesn’t owe anything to me. Sure, her legs are fine, her ass is fine, her tits are fine, and her face is beautiful. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to become a whole new man just for her.
When quarter past six arrives, I climb onto my bike, telling myself to kick it and get the hell out of here. I’m making a fool of myself. I’ve been with plenty women in my life, before and after prison, and I’ve never waited around like this. They’re normally the ones that do the waiting. If I was waiting on some club girl and she took this long, I’d leave without a second thought. But it seems with Willa all I’ve got is second thoughts.
Even once I’m on my bike, I don’t leave. I prolong every action. I take three times as long to put on my jacket, five times as long to put on my helmet, adjusting it when it doesn’t need adjusting. Then I’m ready and I don’t have anymore excuses. It’s either leave or stay here waiting on a woman like a bitch.
The engine growls, the wheels kick up bits of gravel, and then the engines dies. Willa is walking toward me.
I take off my helmet. “You took your time,” I say.
“How unacceptable of me,” she says, mock pouting. “How unbelievably monstrous of me.”
“You like to give guys a hard time, don’t you?”
“No.” She stops just short of my bike. “I just don’t think it’s my job to give guys a good time.”
“Fair enough.” I shrug. “Let’s get going. I’ve waited long enough already.”
I take off my jacket and hand it to her. She hesitates a moment and then takes it. A moment later she’s standing with the jacket in one hand and the helmet in another.
“You realize this is crazy,” she says. “I don’t know you. I don’t know your name. I don’t know the first thing about you.”
“You know my name.” I sigh. Is it always going to come back to the name?
“Diesel … What if you’re a serial killer or a rapist or something?”
“I’ve been called many things in my life, little lady, but never a serial killer or a rapist. I’ve never harmed a woman, and I never will.”
“Sexist,” she mutters.
“How’s that?”
“Well, what if a woman came at you with a machete and she was going to cut your head off? Would you harm her then?” She’s stalling for time, I reckon. She hasn’t made a move to put the jacket or the helmet on.
“I’ve never had a woman charge at me with any kind of weapon except her fists and a couple of times, a hairbrush.”
“You have a skill for making us angry then.”
“Since when are you a feminist champion, Willa? Are you going to put those on or what?”
“I was late because I was sitting at my desk wondering what to do.”
“And then you came here.”
She takes a step back, and then a step forward. She looks to the mouth of the alleyway where cars pass in the road, and then back at me. She shrugs, and then sighs, and then takes another small step forward.
“Are you dancing for me?” I ask.
That gets a laugh out of her, a small giggle. “Tell me I’m not crazy,” she says.
“You might be crazy,” I say.
“Wow, thank you. That was really helpful.”
“Look, Willa.” I lean forward, staring at her. I see her eyes go to my arms. Folks’ eyes always go to my arms, and my chest and back when my shirt’s off. Dad’s marks will never fade completely and the ones from the slammer are ridged and fresh. I ignore it. “One of two things is going to happen here. Either you’re going to get on my bike or you’re not. So make your decision.”
“Do you expect to persuade me by talking to me like that?”
I groan, looking up at the sky. “If it ain’t your job to give me a good time, it ain’t my job to persuade you. I’m counting to five in my head. Then I’m gone. I’ve been here for nearly an hour.”
I don’t really count to five. I just sit there, staring at her. After a while she shrugs on the jacket and pulls the helmet over her head. And then soon her hands are clutching onto my belly and we’re riding toward my apartment building. It’s just the two of us in the elevator, standing close together. She smells like perfume and soap with a light scent of sweat mixed with deodorant. It’s the best smell in the goddamn world, especially for a man who’s been in prison.
“Nice place,” she says, as the two of us walk into the apartment.
I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic, but I wouldn’t blame her if she was. I haven’t really done much with the apartment, don’t know if I ever will. Sometimes when I get home I think about hanging up some pictures or whatever, but then I sit on the couch and put on the TV and I can’t see the reason why. There’s a living room and open-plan kitchen, two bedrooms. In one I have the bed and the other is full of boxes with motorcycle parts piled into them. There isn’t much in the way of personal touches, unless you count the bike parts and the one photograph I have on the wall: me and Grimace, the day I was released from prison, our arms around each other.
“Is this your dad?” she asks.
“No,” I say, smiling. “And yes.”
“You do realize how confusing that answer is, right?”
“No.” I smile wider. “And yes.”
She makes an exasperated sound. “Can I sit down?”
“Sure.” I go into the kitchen. “Drink?”
“What’ve you got?”
“Beer, and beer.”
“Beer, then.” She giggles. I really could get used to that sound.
; I sit on the chair and she sits on the couch, so we’re half facing each other and half facing the TV. I switch on the TV and leave it on mute, some infomercial playing in the background. Then I sip my beer and look at her, just look at her. She’s so hot, I can’t take my eyes off her. Today her hair isn’t braided like it was yesterday. It hangs down to her shoulders straight.
“We’re going to need to get you some clothes,” I say, when I’m halfway through the beer.
“I guess so. It’s just …” She takes a long sip of her beer, maybe so she doesn’t have to finished her sentence.
“It’s just?”
“The fire.” Her shoulders sag. “It’s just the fire.”
“The fire,” I repeat, wishing I could go back in time and make it so I wasn’t born to my father, wishing that Mom didn’t die before looking into my face, wishing that the road that led me here had been demolished.
A silence ensues. I unmute the TV and put on a music channel. Three beers later and I’m looking at her again, and she’s looking at me, even if she’s pretending not to. My eyes roam up her legs, to her breasts, her face. Her cheeks are flushed when she turns to me. The tension in the room is like something physical. It’s as if there’s an invisible person whispering, “Aren’t you going to kiss now? Aren’t you going to fuck now?”
At some point I move onto the couch, shifting aside so that our legs are touching. She turns to me, and I turn to her. I don’t know who leans in first, but I reckon it’s me. And then we’re kissing, hard, our teeth mashing through our lips, my hands smoothing up her leg. Her leg is warm, burning, as though the heat of her pussy is moving up and down her thigh. I slide all the way up to her pussy, wanting to press my hand down on it and hear her moan.
Then she breaks it off, jumping to her feet. “No,” she says. “I … no. I’m sorry.”
I follow her. She backs away. We end up in the bedroom, me pressing against her. She kisses me and then breaks it off, kisses me and then breaks it off. She’s panting. I can tell she wants it. Her hand moves to the front of my pants and then she snatches it away, like the fire is between us, too hot for her to take.
“No, Diesel,” she says. “People could’ve died in that fire.”
“But they didn’t.” I’m not angry at her. I’m angry at the life I lead which means we can’t do what we want. “In my line of work, people die every goddamn day.”
“That doesn’t make it all right!” she snaps, pushing me in the chest.
“You want a kid, don’t you?” I kiss her again, and she kisses me back. She kisses me and wraps her hands around my shoulders, her body trembling against mine. We make it to the bed before she breaks it off again.
“No,” she says. “Please.”
I roll aside. I’m not about to rape her. But I keep my hand on her leg, between her thighs, and every so often she wriggles so that my fingers brush up against her pussy, ripples of pleasure making her wriggle even more.
“I never said I wanted a kid, did I?”
“You did. And so do I. Let’s make one.”
“You’re drunk!” she exclaims. “You must be drunk.”
“From three beers? No, Willa.”
“We’re not going to have a kid together, Diesel. That’s insane.”
“Then let’s be insane!” I lean over her, looking down into her brown-flecked blue eyes. “Who the fuck wants to be normal?”
We kiss, we wrestle. She rubs the front of my pants until I feel like my balls are going to explode. Then she slides away and jumps to her feet, moving to the other end of the room. “Just stay over there a little while,” she says, struggling to get her breathing under control. “I can’t have you near me right now. I can’t trust myself.”
“Then why try?” I stand up and walk toward her, but she shoots her hand up.
“No!” she barks. “I’m serious.”
I take a step back. She wants me. I want her. But she won’t let it happen because of that damn fire.
“I’ll take the couch.”
I go onto the living room, get myself two more beers, and switch over to the movie channel. The Departed is playing. It’s about one-third in. I try and focus on the movie, try and ignore the sounds of Willa climbing into bed.
All I can think is that I should be in there with her.
Chapter Seven
Willa
Springs turns to summer and LA cooks as LA always does. People walk around in skimpy clothes and still complain about being hot. And I sit in Diesel’s apartment wondering what’s actually going on between us. The past few weeks have been crazy and yet routine at the same time—crazy in that I’m living with a man I’m almost certain is an arsonist, an outlaw, and routine in that the same thing happens every day. I go to work; I return to his apartment; I want us to fuck, and we don’t. We get pretty close several times, writhing on the bed, his hand between my legs, my hand pressed against the front of his pants, and then I remember the smoke kissing the sky, the flames devouring my apartment, and I can’t. I just can’t.
Some nights, we drink. Some nights, we drink hard.
As I sit at work, tapping copy into oblivion, AC blasting, I remember one night in particular.
It was about two weeks after I’d moved in when Diesel came home—home, as I’ve come to think of it, even if it doesn’t make sense—with two bottles of wine under his arm in a brown paper bag. The image will always stay in my mind because it was so contradictory. There he was, six-foot-four, looking like a muscleman with his leather jacket squeezed tightly around his biceps, with two fancy bottles of red under his arm. He placed the bottles on the counter without saying a word and then went for a shower.
It’s always difficult when he goes for a shower. He doesn’t lock the door, leaves it slightly ajar to let the steam out … or that’s what he tells me, anyway. The door is never open enough for me to get a look at him, but as I sat there, listening to the water, I couldn’t stop thinking about his naked body, the water dripping down it. Just go in there, I willed myself. Just go in there and do what you want to do. But there had been another fire in the news, a warehouse. Nobody was hurt, but I knew it was him; it had to be him. The news said the warehouse had belonged to a man named Chino, and a few nights before I’d heard Diesel on the phone talking about the same man. He’s an enemy of the club, I learned.
He emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. The first time I saw his scarred body, it was a shock. His body is toned and tight, his muscles well-defined, his chest hulking, and his abs a hard pack of muscle. And overlaying all this are the scars, dozens of them, most of them faded but some of them newish, white and pink, so many that from certain angles they all disappear into his skin. They aren’t ugly, at least not to me. They make him seem manlier. Maybe that’s a terrible thing to think, but it’s how I feel. He came out of the bedroom dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and then nodded at the wine bottles.
I’d been watching a Netflix drama about cowboys, but I paused it when he nodded.
“Aren’t you going to pour us some of that stuff, then?” he said.
I knew where wine could lead, but I poured it anyway. Part of me wanted—always wanted—to let myself go that extra step, to give myself to him, to stop playing the games. I poured two glasses and brought the bottle into the living room. When the drinking began, I didn’t stop myself. I drank too quickly. I drank eagerly. I drank like that because despite everything, even if I should feel the opposite, I felt safe with Diesel, safer than I’d ever felt with any man. We finished the bottle as the TV screen faded and then went black, and we were drinking twice, once on the couch and again in the reflection. My head started to get woozy, my body tingly. I looked at Diesel and wondered why I hadn’t just jumped on him yet.
“It came as a surprise to everyone.” It was my voice, but it was distant, as if it was coming from across the room. “Me and Mom couldn’t believe it. It was so random. That’s how it seemed to us, anyway.” I was leaning forward, one hand
on his shoulder, looking into his eyes. I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t know I was drunk. But I was close. “One day Dad was Dad, you know? He was a tall man, not as tall as you, but a giant to me. He worked as a builder, one of the foremen, and he was strong. Strong as an ox, as they say. And then one day he and Mom sat me down and explained to me that there was a tumor in his head and there was nothing the doctors could do except pump chemicals into his body and hope it got smaller. The chances were low, because it was so big, but Dad wanted to fight.”
“He wasn’t a quitter,” Diesel said, his voice softer than it normally was.
“No,” I replied. “No, he was never a quitter.”
He put his hand on my knee. Tingles moved up my leg, as they always do when he touches me like that. I wanted him to slide up to my pussy, but I knew if he did I’d just stop it in the middle of our passion. There was a roadblock in my head. I couldn’t stop seeing those flames.