by Paula Cox
“Him and three of his pals. Yeah, I remember.”
“And they started in on us, and did you we stand tall, Cross? Did we stand fuckin’ tall?”
“Boss,” Scud mutters.
Scud is the third in command, a lean, taut man who I don’t know too much about except that he gets the job done without question.
We turn and watch as the Italians drive to the waterfront in black tinted-windowed cars, four in total. The cars come to a stop and the Italians step out, dressed as usual in sleek suits with slicked-back hair and not a tattoo in sight, wearing big gold rings and chains, some of them with their shirts open and their chests on display to better show off the chains. Their leader, Manuel, is a wide man who’s always sweating, a bald shiny red head, and thick fingers which constantly worry at each other like ten wriggling worms.
He looks at me, nods, I nod back, and then he waves a hand.
We form a circle, the Tidal Knights one half, the Italians the other. Three Italians carry a crate between them into the middle of the circle.
“Thanks for coming,” Duster says, a little too loudly. He looks Manuel directly in the face. “We’ve been waiting a while, you know?”
I tap Duster on the arm. “They’re here now.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“We are here now. Listen to your boss.” Manuel squints at Duster.
“Sorry, amico, but he’s not my boss.”
“Enough shit,” I say. “Let’s get a look at the merchandise.”
“I will show you,” Manuel says.
He waddles to the crate, waits as one of his men cracks it open with a crowbar, and shoos them away and kneels down next to it. This is an effort for him, involving huffing and clutching at his knees with one hand and holding his other arm at the side for balance. But eventually he’s down near the guns: assault rifles, both SWAT-grade and Middle Eastern; submachine guns; handguns; grenades and flash-bangs and tear-gas; bulletproof vests. An all-you-can-eat buffet for gun nuts.
“Christmas has come early, Cross. Let’s see old Mr. Matthews give us detention now, eh?”
I grin despite myself. He’s right. Christmas really has come early.
Then Manuel starts handling the guns in a way that reminds me of my father, of the way my father would carelessly dance around the trailer with the revolver, waving it here and there, until eventually he waved it at the wrong angle and tripped and pulled the trigger and the top half of his head fell away like a section of rock dislodging from a cliff and tumbling to the land below.
“Maybe you shouldn’t—”
Manuel is as crazy as they say. He looks down the barrel of an AK-47 and his hand strays to the trigger.
I don’t think I’ll ever know if he wanted to do it or if it was an accident. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why his men, who clearly saw how it happened, assumed it was some kind of trick. I don’t think I’ll ever understand any of this shit.
He looks down the barrel of the AK-47 and he pulls the trigger. The bullet enters through his eye and exits through the back of his head. The fat man falls aside like all the bones and tendons and all the shit that holds him together has just been snatched from his body. “Uh,” he mumbles, as blood pours from the bloody eye socket. “Uh, uh, uh.”
And then the Italians are firing on us before anybody can talk any goddamn sense.
And then the Tidal Knights are firing back.
I wrench my pistol from my waistband and open up on them, hitting three men with ten bullets, and then kneeling down in the gravel to reload. Viper’s teeth bite into my side. Or that’s what it feels like. Two snake’s teeth biting down on my side.
“Fucking bastards!” I roar, snapping a clip into the pistol and opening up again, blood seeping through my shirt and into my leather. “Fucking idiots! The goddamn fool shot himself!”
Around two-hundred birds flutter from the eaves of the abandoned warehouse and fill the sky as bullets ricochet off gravel and slap into the water.
The Tidal Knights fire bullet after bullet into the Italians, peppering their cars, until there are more Tidal Knights left than Italians. The remaining Italians climb into their cars and roar away, one of the cars making a thunk-thunk noise as its burst tired grinds against the concrete. I grit my teeth, watching them go, the smell of gun smoke and blood and shit all around me, my ears ringing from the repeated gunfire, my eyes hazy from sweat, stinging.
“Boss,” one of the men mutters.
Someone snaps: “What the fuck was that?”
“Fuckin’ killed himself.”
“What the fuck?”
“Oh, fuck—Duster. What the fuck? Boss. Boss.”
When I see Duster laid out on the floor with bullet holes in his chest, I forget about my own wound. I walk on my knees across blood and spent cartridges and lean over him. He stares up at me blankly. Duster has always had an open face, the sort of face people like. He was always the popular one at school, the one girls giggled over, the one the bullies would leave alone because he could make them laugh. He was always the emotional one, the one who said if he thought something wasn’t fair. He was always the one who wasn’t scared to talk about the past, even though the past held bad shit for both of us.
He grins at me; blood seeps between his teeth, staining his gums, and drips down his cheeks.
“Sorry—Cross.” He sucks in a ragged breath. “I guess—I ain’t so—handy—after all.” He laughs, a nasty ragged sound.
I look around at the men, willing somebody to do something, but then I see it in their faces. They know death. We all know death. And Duster’s dying.
We gather round, looking down at him as he breathes his last.
When it’s over, I stand up, gritting my teeth at the tugging pain in my side, and limp to where Manuel’s fat dead body rests.
“Fuckin’ bastard,” I hiss, kicking the corpse. “Fuckin’ idiot.” I kick him again and again until the blood turns my leather crimson.
“We have to go, Boss,” Scud says. “We need to get to a safehouse. Rest up.”
“I know,” I say. “Pick Duster up. We’re not leavin’ him here.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Scud lays Duster over the back of his bike. I climb onto the back of Mountain’s bike, riding secondary because of this damned wound, head feeling like it’s about to just slide clean from my shoulders, and the Tidal Knights ride out.
Chapter Ten
Kade
For the next few days, I lie in bed as a Wave-hired doctor sorts out my bullet wound. I have Duster cremated, something he mentioned to me back in the day, and his ashes are stowed in an urn which sits on the TV stand of this nowhere motel room. A motel room like any other, but we’ve hired the whole damn place out as a Tidal Knights hideout, every room occupied with Tidal Knights soldiers and the elder lot and then the women, here to care for their men, or else here to care for whatever men need them.
That’s what I need, I reckon. A woman. A woman to make me forget. I think of Lana just as much as I think of Duster, maybe even more. It’s strange, ’cause I knew her for less than a day, but Lana is probably the person I’ve felt closest to, barring Duster. I knew Duster all my life, and yet Lana comes damn close. How the fuck does that work? Yeah, I need a woman, something to make me forget about the way the blood turned Duster’s smiling teeth red.
I pick up my cell from the bedside table and shoot a text to one of the guys: Bring me a club girl. Short, petite, blonde, big breasts. Lana, basically. Bring me Lana. A text comes back straightaway telling me it’ll be done. That’s one of the benefits of being the boss. Hell, one of the benefits of being a club member. Women on demand. I lean back and place my arms behind my head and watch the door, finding myself wishing that Lana would walk in wearing her overcoat and then pull at the belt holding it together. Then I’d watch it slide to the floor and she’d step forward in that sexy fuckin’ bikini, a bikini which even now, bullet wound tugging at my raw skin, gets me rock-hard.
There’s a dainty knock at the door, I shout, “Come in,” and the woman enters. She’s wearing a skimpy dress and her breasts are big and she is blonde but her eyes are a dull green instead of Lana’s brown-golden. And as she walks across the room, eyeing me with practiced lust, I realize that this is a mistake. I don’t want this; I don’t want an imitation.
“My mistake,” I say, when she’s almost at the bed.
She stops, tilting her head at me. “Huh?”
“My mistake. You can leave now.”
“I thought—”
“You can leave now.”
“Have I done something wrong?” she asks, voice pitched a little high.
“No,” I assure her. “I was wrong to ask for you. I’ll make sure you don’t get any hassle for leavin’ early. You have my word.”
She shrugs, and then leaves.
I shoot off a text: Changed my mind. Nothing to do with the girl.
Then I sit back and close my eyes, replaying over and over again that night of passion with Lana, the hottest night of my life. Even with my best friend’s death fresh of my mind, I can picture her, on her back, breasts barely contained by that bikini top bouncing up and down, moaning into my ear, the taste of her neck on my lips.
Fuck, I need her. Goddamn it. I need her bad.
Chapter Eleven
Lana
The coffee-making process is simple here at Twin Peaks. You spin around on the stool, take a paper cup, place it in the machine, press the appropriate button, and wait. This is an in-and-out coffee joint, a drive-by-and-look-at-some-breasts coffee joint, so nothing more intricate is required. There is no mixing espresso shots with steamed milk by hand or crafting patterns in the froth with chocolate sprinkles or expertly swirling towers of cream on top of hot chocolates. We don’t even have to bother folding napkins; there’s a bin of them right by the window if anyone wants one. All of which means that the actual contact with coffee grinds or whatever is kept to a minimum, only becoming necessary when the machine needs to be refilled. Literally anyone could do this job. Nothing like working as a real, black-pants white-T barista at all.
But I’ve always loved the smell of coffee, and even in this push-a-button-pass-a-cup variation, I’ve enjoyed the smells and sounds. So why the hell can’t I stand the smell of coffee all of a sudden? I sit on my stool as usual, breasts mushed into my bikini top as usual, legs on display as usual, waiting for a chance to chat with Kelly and thinking of Kade far back in my mind as usual, and yet every time I pass a customer a cup of coffee and the smell rises up into my nostrils I feel a sharp, intense wave of nausea. I keep pressing the back of my hand against my mouth and swallowing hard, but the smell I used to love is now making me want to spew up everything I had for dinner last night and the night before that and every night since I was born.
When there is a break in the flow of customers, I almost run to the foldout table, sitting right in the middle of the booth where the scent of recently-made coffee is weakest. Saliva fills my mouth, and even the sensation of that is sickening. I can imagine what the customers would make of that: “Yeah, I went to the Twin Peaks and it was pretty good, except there was this dribbling weirdo serving me.”
Terry joins me, pulling her chair around to my side of the table and sitting next to me. She places her large hand on my back and rubs softly as I hunch over and try to steady my breathing, three seconds in, hold, three seconds out. More than anything, I don’t want to be sick. I despise being sick. The idea of being sick makes me feel sick in itself.
“You haven’t been eating rotted bacon and washing it down with expired milk, have you?” she asks, with a playful grin.
“Very—funny.” I bite down when nausea hits me, churning my stomach. “Ha, ha,” I add, as sweat slides down my almost-naked body.
“It’s been a month and a half since the night with Kade,” Terry says softly, eyes trained on my face, watching for my reaction.
A month a half.
Goddamn.
I’ve been thinking about my new friendship with Terry, and Dad in prison, and Mom sinking ever deeper into the couch, and moving to Seattle, and my studies and Kade, Kade most of all, thinking and overthinking so much that it completely slipped my mind.
My period completely slipped my mind.
“Oh,” I mutter. “Oh shit.”
Terry is about to reply when a customer appears on her side of the booth. With a sigh, she stands up and goes over to the window. “Hey, beautiful. What can I get for you today?”
I reach across the table and pull the notepad toward me, take the pencil from the ring binding. Every movement provokes a pang of pain and sickness somewhere in my body, mainly deep in my stomach but sometimes strange places like my temples and the back of my head, the top of my neck. I’ve been feeling this way for about a week now and if I know Terry, and I think I do, she would’ve documented it if she’s spotted it. I open the notepad—I’ve been too sick to participate much in it lately—and there, sure enough, is a cartoon version of me with a belly five times the size of a normal pregnant person’s belly.
She returns from serving the customer and winces when she sees it. “I just doodled that,” she says. “I didn’t mean any offence, hon.”
“No, it’s fine.” I try and smile, but even smiling is difficult when you feel this ill. Slowly, with a shaky, sweaty hand, I write the caption: I feel like my belly is full of Kade. “What do you think?” I ask, sliding it to her.
She winces again. “Look at you. You can barely even sit up straight.” She watches me for a few moments, glances around the booth, and then mutters, “Fuck it.” She paces to me and hooks an arm underneath my armpit.
“Woah, what’re you doing?”
She hauls me up and marches me to the lockers, takes out my overcoat, and wraps it around my shoulders. “Put your arms in,” she commands, the voice of a mother who isn’t in the mood for any nonsense, the growl of a lioness somewhere in her voice.
I do as she says, mostly because I feel too ill to do anything else. Terry slips on a T-shirt and some shorts and tells me do get my comfortable shoes on. I do it, and then she hauls me up toward the big oval entrance, past the Twin Peaks Man, and toward the side of the road where her car is parked. She stops for a second to lock the door to the Twin Peaks, and then marches across the road with me.
“You know we shouldn’t be doing this,” I point out. “If David finds out—”
But then the sickness hits me again and I can’t tell about what will happen if David finds out, but judging by the way she looks at me, she knows already. She’s risking her job for me. Risking my job for me, too. But hell, I can’t sit in that booth for another eight hours and pretend that everything’s okay. Sooner or later I’m going to be sick. I’m going to be sick and maybe I’ll be sick right out the booth window onto a customer’s car. That wouldn’t be good for business, would it? So in a way we have to leave and get this seen to. I reflect to myself, as I sit in the passenger-side seat in Kelly’s car, that all I am doing is justifying.
Kelly screeches down the lane. On the way, we pass a couple of cars, most likely on their way to the Twin Peaks.
But Kelly pays them no mind. As I lay my head against the glass, thankful for its relative coolness, Kelly presses the pedal down and drives us straight to the nearest convenience store, a block of public bathrooms sitting next to it.
“Go and wait in the ladies’ bathroom,” she tells me. “I’ll go and get—get it.”
“It’s not Voldemort,” I say. “You can say pregnancy test.”
She laughs gruffly. “Yeah, I know. It’s just . . . damn. Go and wait for me.”
She climbs out the car and paces across the lot to the store. I climb out and walk to the bathrooms, each step feeling like a struggle now. Kade is in me. The cartoon wasn’t a joke. Kade may very well be inside of me. I tell myself to calm down; we don’t know anything yet. But we didn’t use a condom and now that I’m counting, I’m at least two weeks late. I haven’t s
lept with anybody else, so I think we know a hell of a lot even before Terry returns with the test.
The toilet is surprisingly clean for a public toilet, with minimal graffiti and only a couple of waterlogged bowls. I go to the cleanest one, close the seat, and sit down hunched over with my chest to my knees, dragging in breaths now rather than simply breathing, every moment picturing what it’d be like if I just vomited all over the floor. Don’t vomit, I tell myself. Don’t you dare. “Don’t you dare,” I mutter. My voice is shaky, weak. In a way, I hope I’m pregnant. It’s either that or I’ve somehow contracted malaria.
I jump up from the seat when Terry enters. Enters being a flattering word for the way she barges into the toilet holding a box of pregnancy tests—why the hell do they come in two packs?—in one of her hands, a liter bottle of water in the other.