by Paula Cox
I cycle through these thoughts most mornings, as I serve leery and smiley and friendly and begrudging men, and then, sometimes, my thoughts get cut short by Chester’s imposing presence. Even his name is a goddamn joke. Chester. Who, in real life, is called Chester? What sort of person names their kid Chester? Chester is the only customer I would say I one-hundred percent, without the shadow of the shadow of a doubt, hate. He always leers, and it’s with a sort of glimmer in his eyes which suggests ownership. His eyes seem to say: “Since you are here, this early, dressed like this, all alone, I have every right to stare at you like this. Since you are here, looking all slutty and whorish, maybe one of these days I’ll reach through that window and take you by the throat and just keep squeezing until no more squeezing’s necessary. Got it?”
He drives one of those huge trucks with massive monster treaded tires, a car as arrogant and space-filling as its driver. He’s always wearing one of those white tank tops called a wife beater, and I wonder if it’s true for him. His shirt is always stained, there’s always food around his mouth, he’s just sloppy. Like a little kid no one ever taught how to eat. He’s fat and speaks in harsh, barking words. He’s never said anything mean to me, not outright, but there’s a sea of something behind his eyes. Something bad—I don’t want to think about what. His imagination, stirring, waiting.
Today, he greets me with a quick: “Lana Thompson.”
This is another of his favorites: reminding me that he knows my full name. Once, a few weeks ago, David was discussing his latest divorce in the booth with me, after seeing to an early-morning delivery. As if god or the devil or whoever it is who sees to making the lives of bikini baristas more difficult had orchestrated the event, Chester pulled up just as David was bemoaning the latest turn of events. “She’s taking the dog . . .” And then, seeing the customer, for some reason David felt the need to turn to him and say, “But don’t worry. Lana Thompson is always here to see me through!”
Idiot.
“Hello, Chester,” I say, speaking with as much dignity as you can when you’re standing bikini-clad in a window booth. “How can I help you today?”
“You know how you can help me,” he says, voice low, but building like waves crashing against rocks which will one day collapse. That is Chester, I reflect: just a matter of time before something in him comes crashing down and brings his sanity with it. Or maybe that’s just the creative writer in me, telling a story that isn’t there.
“The usual?”
“Maybe I’m tired of the usual.”
“How about a cool OJ?”
“Don’t wanna be cool.”
Always skirting around, never outright aggressive, just very, very weird.
His beady eyes roam over me, but I can’t get too offended by that. It’s part of the job, after all. What worries me more is the way he opens and closes his hand around the steering wheel, causing his knuckles to press bone-white against his skin. Open, close, open, close, like a man gearing himself up for something. No—the storyteller in me (or the wannabe storyteller) is getting overexcited. That is all.
But then he grins and mutters: “Don’t play games with me, missy.”
He glances behind him—nothing but road. Then in front of him—nothing but road. And then back at me.
“Uh.” I suck in a breath, momentarily off-guard. “Uh—I’m not playing games with you.”
He has a tattoo on his fingers: D-E-A-D. A letter per finger. The first time I saw it, I giggled to myself. It seemed silly, a fat, weird-looking, food-smeared man like that trying to be tough with a tough tattoo. Now, as he stares at me like I’m a fresh meal on his plate, it doesn’t seem silly.
D. E. A. D. He’s looking at me like that’s what he wants to make me.
“You are. You always are.” Open, close. Open, close. “I know your sort. Look a man in the eye and give him all the signals, make him get to thinking.”
For once, I pray for a group of Seattle-bound banker commuters, a car of five, as rowdy and leery as they like. As long as they get Chester out of my face.
But the road is mist-covered, spring be damned, and silent as the grave. Maybe this will be my grave. Overdramatic, but it doesn’t seem overdramatic with Chester’s sweating palm squeaking against his steering wheel as he clenches and unclenches his fist.
“Chester,” I say, and my voice is as calm as ever. Professional. Absurdly, I feel a surge of pride. “I don’t want to have to call David.”
“Why would you?” He coughs out a blunt laugh. “Oh, are you giving him the eye as well?”
“I have not given you the eye.” Well—maybe I have. But a girl’s got to earn tips, especially a girl keen to get her ass out of Bremerton and into Seattle, a girl with college on her mind. “But even if I had, this is not way to treat me—”
“Screw this.”
Chester throws his car door open and steps out.
“Chester, what are you—”
He looms into the window, far bigger than he seemed sat in his car.
“Screw this,” he repeats, flashing a grin marked by yellow teeth.
Far down the road, Bremerton side, a motorbike grumbles.
Chapter Two
Lana
“Screw this.”
Far back in my mind, it occurs to me that I should be doing something. Slapping him, or reaching under the counter and praying that David is one of those men who keep guns lying around, or slamming the window closed, or backing away. Far back in my mind, I am a superhero, fighting off Chester and His Mustard Face without a problem. Far back in my mind, I reach through the window and slap him across the face and the problem of Chester is solved. But life does not exist far back in my mind, and when Chester reaches through the glass and paws at my bare leg, I am stunned, feeling as though I am rooted to the spot; a ghostly hand is pushing me firmly into the ground.
“Chester,” I say.
The growling of the bike gets louder, until it is all around us, and yet Chester keeps pawing.
“Feels good,” he says, voice slurred, still drunk from last night. “Don’t it?”
“No. Chester.”
Do something. Do something. Do something. The siren song of the subconscious. And yet I just stand there. I am scared. That’s the truth. My fear moves up and down my limbs in coils which wrap themselves around me and tighten, holding me securely. If I move, he might get violent instead of creepy. If I move, he might reach for my neck instead of my leg. If I move, he might go into his truck and take out a gun and blow my head off. I hear my breathing instead of feel it. Quick pants. Desperate pants. I hate that this pawing man can make me desperate.
Then the motorbike thrumming is so loud Coco, the resident pigeon which sits on top of Twin Peaks waiting for scraps of discarded rolls and muffins, ascends into the sky with a startled barrgh. Chester looks around, but he doesn’t let me go.
I should take this chance to step back, but my fear and the ghostly hand and the coils make it impossible. I am a coward, I chastise myself. I am a coward and there is something wrong with me and I am just as bad as Mom, lying about her headaches and claiming disability and taking the easy route through life. I wanted to be somebody different but here I am acting the Bremerton girl, letting this pervert grope me. Cruel thoughts go around and around in my head, compounding the fear.
“What the hell?” Chester says.
“Could ask you the same thing, pal.”
The mist still hangs over this isolate double-lane road, a road which leads to the ferry and then to Seattle and then to office terminals where men tell their colleagues about the cute little piece at the Twin Peaks. The road which, each day, brings me one step closer to college and Seattle and leaving this piss-hole forever.
And the road down which the biker walks, emerging from the mist, eyes wide and alert, but somehow calm at the same time. And blue. They are the deepest, brightest blue I have ever seen in a person. Ocean-blue, but really ocean-blue, not just ocean-blue like Professor Eagleton told us in Similes
101. He is tall, around six three, and wide, wind-tanned and with sharp, chiseled, manly features, the sort of features neither women nor men can ignore. The sort of strong, in-control features which makes Chester let go of my leg.
As soon as he lets go, I take a step back, wondering why the hell I didn’t do that thirty seconds ago.
“What’re you doing?” the man says. He takes another step forward, looking like an outlaw in his scuffed blue jeans, black workman’s boots, and leather jacket with a picture of a bright blue wave on the front, the words Tidal Knights inscribed beneath it. Another step, and another, until he is standing at the rear of the truck with Chester at the top of it. I watch, rapt, unable to look away.
It’s weird the things your mind throws at you in times like this, but right now, as I watch these men stand off, I keep thinking about how blue the biker’s eyes are and how I’ve always wanted bright blue eyes. When I was a girl, I would take stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, holding my eyes as wide open as I could without blinking and I would will the gold to change to blue, pray for it, sometimes chant for it. Maybe because skies are blue and so often as a kid all I wanted was to fly into an azure sky and just keep on flying. Fly away from Dad and Mom and this town and all of it, just away. Strange, to think about this as the biker closes the distance between him and Chester, arms at his sides, striking summer-sky eyes staring.
“I’m just—”
“Just what?” the biker says, so close to Chester now that I find it difficult to believe I ever thought Chester looked big. The biker is a giant; Chester is a mouse. The fat man looks up with watery eyes at the wind-tanned biker. “Just groping a woman who’s trying to do her job? Look, man. I don’t know what kind of asshole you are, but you’ve got exactly five fuckin’ seconds to get in your car and drive out of here. Say a goddamn thing or go for a weapon or even fuckin’ squeak and I’ll tie you to the back of the car and drive you away myself.”
The man speaks with the absolute calm of somebody who means every word they say.
Chester licks his lips, seems about to say something, and then looks into the man’s eyes and thinks better of it. It almost makes me laugh to watch Chester waddle into his car, fumble with the clutch and the gearstick, and then reverse awkwardly out of the lane. Almost, but the phantom of his fat D.E.A.D hand still lingers on my thigh. The car screeches down the lane, into the mist, the biker watching calmly, arms hanging at his sides like a man ready to leap into action at any moment.
He watches until the car is out of sight, and only then turns to me. Every single man who comes through here—every single one, without exception—at least glances at my bikini-clad body. This man just looks calmly into my face, as though he’s so used to seeing undressed women he doesn’t even bother looking. The men who come through here, they seem either grateful or angry to be looking at me dressed like this; this man just looks matter-of-fact.
“Uh, thanks,” I say, when he just stares.
“No need to thank me.”
He just watches.
“I think there is,” I counter. “Chester, he’s always been weird. But, well, I didn’t expect him to get that weird. I didn’t expect him to do that. I never dreamed he would—”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I’m sayin’ there’s no need to thank now me ’cause you’re going to thank me later.”
His voice has the lilt of a commander, somebody used to being obeyed. It’s an alluring lilt, an undertone which makes me want to obey even though I just met the guy. This man’s the sort of guy who could walk into a roomful of strangers and tell them all to lie down low and every single one of them would do it just because they’d just assume he was in charge. He has that aura about him.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“What time do you get off?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Why are you being so cagey?”
I half-laugh, half-gasp. “Because a man just grabbed my leg without my permission and now you’re asking when I get off. Isn’t that enough of a reason?”
“I want to take you out,” he says, as though I haven’t spoken.
“Out where?”
“Out-out. You have clothes, don’t you?”
“Of course I have clothes.”
He walks up to the window and places his hands on the frame.
“What’s your name?”
“Lana Thompson. Lana. Yours?”
“Kade Cross.”
Chester, Kade, it seems everybody has weird names this morning.
“You reckon it’s a weird name?”
“I said that out loud?”
Kade grins at me, just a tiny grin, more of a quirk of the lips. But enough to make me trust him. At least trust him enough not to run to the other side of the booth, anyway.
“Yeah, you did. You make a habit of not knowing if you say things out loud?”
“I’m a creative writing student,” I say. “At least, I was. And now I’m working to pay it . . . Listen, Kade—” Despite how unusual his name is, it feels good on my lips. “—I don’t know you. Thanks for warning Chester off and all, but I don’t know if—”
He smirks, cocky as hell, but there’s a quiet confidence underlying the cockiness. It’s not just bluster; he’s really sure of himself. I can’t help but be attracted to it. In a world where so many people, including myself, feel lost, a man who knows exactly where he is magnetic, the sort of man a woman can’t ignore. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want me to take you out.” He rests his elbows on the window frame, leaning into the booth, staring at me. Staring with those blue eyes, bright alive eyes, wolf-like eyes, Viking eyes, Mediterranean eyes, eyes which take me to a thousand places and none of them here, boring old Bremerton, full-of-memories-and-few-of-them-good Bremerton.
I do want it. Of course I want it. I want to be anywhere but here, somewhere else, somebody else. I want to be a writer who writes about how one day she went on an adventure with a mysterious biker and how his eyes made her think of far off lands and distant pleasures. Yes, I decide. I do want it. I see him register this; his smirk twitches.
“I thought so,” he says. “So what time do you finish, Lana?”
“Four o’clock,” I say. “I get off at four. I guess you can—”
“I’ll come by and pick you up then.”
He turns and paces to his bike, too quick for me to respond. Before I can truly register everything—Chester, Kade, the medley of emotion stirring in my belly—his bike is kicking up gravel and growling into the mist.
I bring my hands to my temples, massaging, and then turn and look at the sun, just cresting the horizon. Soon, the nighttime mist will dissipate and the sun will burn down and then—and then I’ll be with Kade, mysterious biker, the man who just saved me from fat, perverted Chester. Fear still infuses me, but it is getting weaker and weaker each moment until, by the time Kade’s bike is far away, silent, I am no longer afraid.
No, instead I am excited. A date. A date.
It’s been a while and, let’s face it, I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to go on a date with the man with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. If only for the chance to look into them one more time.
Chapter Three
Kade
All day, dealing with business, Lana’s on my mind. Short, blonde, curvy, the sort of woman to make a man go a little crazy in the course of a day, make no mistake. The sort of woman to make even a man like me lose his concentration. Sorting through the Seattle accounts, visiting with business contacts, all the shit a leader has to do to make sure a club keeps running, and always, right there at the back of my mind, that woman in that fuckin’ bikini. Goddamn, the way those breasts squashed up in that bikini top, all fleshy and making me wish it was my hands holding her up and not the fabric.
As I drive through the sunlit spring afternoon on way my way back to the Twin Peaks to collect her, I wonder if maybe I was a bit of a prick for thinking about those perfect tits
a few seconds after what happened with the fat man. But I’ve never been one to care much about stuff like that, and I let it drop quickly. I’m more pissed the business with the fat man made me forget about my black coffee. One hell of a morning without it.
I bring my Harley to a stop by the side of the road. Both booths of the Twin Peaks are filled now, two girls in bikinis, youthful and fresh and all the jazz, all the stuff that drives men wild. But looking at them, I can’t get as excited as when I looked at Lana. It’s weird, ’cause she’s just another woman, one I talked to for just couple of minutes. Maybe it’s because I saved her. Maybe I’m a knight in shining armor. I chuckle to myself, thinking what Duster would say: “Yeah, the trailer rat turned biker turned leader turned fucking knight. Course.” I hear him laugh along with me.