The promise of a future.
SIX
~JACE~
To say I was riding on cloud nine would have been an understatement to end all understatements. I was alive—no small wonder given what I’d gone through—and, save for what would likely pass as a few really bad sunburns before the month ran up, looking none the worse for wear. I was flush with cash, and for the first time in my life that fact actually seemed to bring me some sense of happiness. This, no doubt, had everything to do with the next point that, admittedly, had me riding higher than any of the others: I had the love of a good woman. No, scratch that, a great woman. We’d gone to hell and back—Almost literally! I thought, recalling my recurring dream from the hospital—wound up saving each other’s lives in the process, and come out of it an absolute powerhouse couple (if I did say so, myself). That we’d dealt a crippling blow to our mutual enemies with the Carrion Crew by wiping out both their drug and sex businesses in laying waste to an absolute shit-stain of a parasitic fuck honestly felt like frosting on the cake of life. I still couldn’t figure out which felt better, finally raining hot, furious death on T-Built or knowing that the cycling war between the Crows and the Carrion Crew was beginning to lean in our favor. Revenge felt good, I couldn’t bring myself to deny that much, and I loved knowing that the man who’d made Mia’s life a living hell for so long was finally worm food, but, though the Carrion Crew was far from dead, we’d made things undeniably better for the city and everyone in it by taking hard drugs and violent sex trade out of the equation. Furthermore, the sheer volume of lost revenue was likely hitting the Carrions like a leg being swept out from under an Olympic runner. Were they still in the race? Sure, and one would still be taking a risk in placing any bets just yet. But it would be a struggle, and a tolling one at that, for them to bring themselves neck-and-neck with the Crows. I grinned at my own metaphor, deciding that, so long as we—the proverbial runner with their feet still under them in this case—used this edge to put as much ground behind us as possible, the likelihood that they’d ever catch up was—
A horn blared as I rocketed through a light that had only just gone red. I cursed inwardly, chastising myself for risking the yellow—or, as my old man would’ve called it, “A solid orange!”—and swerved to avoid becoming a gored hood ornament on a neon green convertible. The car was, admittedly, vintage, shiny, and looking like the owner had put a good deal of time and money into making it look so good. It would’ve been a shame to ding up a beauty like that. Only thing that remotely compared to such an awful turn of events would’ve been me getting shredded under such a gorgeous ride and getting myself dead so soon after celebrating just how good life could be. Then, remembering Mia from the night before, I caught myself smirking even in the midst of the mayhem.
Least I could die happy, I thought, nearly tipping the chopper underneath me.
Through raw sill and sheer luck I managed to pull the roaring machine back into place beneath me. My right knee felt the hiss of passing pavement, and I figured if I hadn’t just lost a few scraps of denim from the pantleg of my jeans it was only just barely. The blap of a classic car horn crowed on, punctuated by a few other, newer horns singing behind it as well as a few startled shouts from people watching from the sidewalks. I caught sight of a few onlookers following my crazy stunt with the empty, vacant eyes of their cell phones. Confident that I’d survived the truly tolling portion of the event, I made a face at one cluster of amateur filmmakers—trying for something goofy and playful but, accompanied by the strain of still wrestling to keep the bike on the road, likely looking more like I was in the middle of a rectal-destroying fart—and worked the throttle like a lover.
“Come on, baby,” I whispered to the chopper, actually reaching out as I passed and grazing the classic beauty’s passenger-side headlamp with my fingertips as I cleared it with inches to spare, “don’t dump me in front of all these people.”
The full implication of the words only came to me after I spoke them, and as I slipped out of the warzone of an intersection and back into traffic I began to cackle. Imagining what I must have looked like at that moment—a roaring V8 chopper with smoldering flame decals against a navy blue body like something out of a B-movie demon flick, a death-defying traffic violation, and a laughing rider without a helmet casually fondling a would-be collision as he passed—and my laughter only doubled over.
I could almost see the YouTube headline on that footage when it found itself online:
“SUICIDAL BIKER LOSES HIS DAMN MIND!”
Coming out of it all with a smile on my face and a casual wave of apology to the driver behind me, it occurred to me again just how different my outlook on life was.
Cloud nine? Hell, you could go so far as to say I was riding on clouds one-through-nine and aiming for the rest ‘til I reached a hundred.
I was all clouds, sunshine, and, while I was at it, the whole damn sky!
It was almost enough to make me forget why I was out there in the first place. Okay, so I had, on more than one occasion since leaving my condo, actually gone so far as to forget why I was out and about.
I paused at that realization, actually glancing to one side to catch my reflection in the sun-warped window of a storefront as I passed. The view was skewed and too brief to offer any sort of insightful observation, but I had good reason to assume that there was nothing revealing on the surface to see. I could’ve stood in front of my own bathroom mirror for an entire day and likely seen nothing telling for even a second of that time. But if I had an opportunity to peel back a few layers, carve away some bone, and maybe take a gander at the gray matter thrumming beneath my skull…
Maybe.
Just maybe.
But, sweet fucking hell, why?
Because my girlfriend offered up her asshole? Could that truly be it? Part of me felt like it wasn’t such a farfetched reason, but most of me was more than a little confused by this. It wasn’t like the previous night had been my first time taking the back-door option with a girl. It was a rarer event, sure, and while I wouldn’t be crass and say something cliché like “it only happened on special occasions”—a few of my own past experiences with prostitutes and some of the kinkier one-night stands knocked that tired line out of play—it was definitely infrequent enough that I’d come to stop considering it for the most part. And, on any of those other occasions, I hadn’t come out of it the next day a beaming like an idiot or throwing myself into oncoming traffic or using old phrases that my grandfather might have tossed around like “on cloud nine.” Anal was just… well, anal—no more euphoric than the normally tried-and-true; different, sure, and certainly carrying a sizably different tone for the overall experience. But I never would have thought that it would have turned me into this. The love factor occurred to me then, reminding me that past hookers and bar skanks were hardly a sound comparison—and what was the scientific method invented for if not this very sort of dilemma?—and, yes, this felt like a reasonable hypothesis. I’d never felt anything for the other girls who’d been up for a little “exit polin,’” as Danny often called it when detailing his own exploits, so it was only reasonable that this occasion would resound as something different.
Except that Mia wasn’t an exception in this case.
In life, Anne had been something of a “good girl” in everyone’s eyes, my own included. It wasn’t entirely true—my experience had taught me that it rarely was—but there was an undeniable purity to her. When the mood for the kinkier stuff was upon her, Anne was always more suggestive than anything else. She’d make subtle gestures, hardly ever asking for something and never outright demanding it, that, when all was said and done, could have just as easily been dismissed. She’d start to lean a certain way so that her posture alone insisted a desired position. She’d roll her hips a certain way when I was reaching to touch her so that my hand landed somewhere that it might not have otherwise. She’d moan a little louder than usual if I dared to stray a bit farther than usual. And if I
dared to mention that I’d caught on to her little tricks afterwards, she was likely to give me a confused look and confess that she had no idea what I was talking about; that I’d simply taken control, steered things in a dirtier direction, and she was only guilty of going along for the ride. Even then, unlike with prostitutes or random get-togethers, love had a way of still influencing the process. Where I wouldn’t worry so much about the unemotional hookups—certain that, if I went too fast or too hard, they’d tell me so—I was, like I had been the night before with Mia, very careful from start-to-finish. And while Anne was never one to complain on those occasions, a part of me was always nervous. I’d see her body tense or hear her breath catch from time-to-time and feel my own body tense and my own breath catch until I was certain I hadn’t hurt her. With Anne, anal sex was always like getting a chance to play with some precious, fragile toy: an exciting and exhilarating event that was hindered by the unnerving certainty that to truly enjoy it was to risk damaging something of great value. I’d approached Mia the night before with the same care and caution, but she’d proven to be far from fragile. If nothing else, I was certain that I’d come out of the act looking breakable and nervous.
Up until last night, anal sex with somebody I cared about was not unlike handling glass. With Mia, however, I’d felt like a potter handling a supple and eager bit of clay, a firm and responsive subject that was quick to take shape around my touch.
The way she’d thrust herself against me as I…
I hit the brakes and came to a screeching stop in time to avoid running another (orange) red light.
I rolled my eyes at myself and thought, Fucking shit, Jason, get a grip!
Speaking of grip! another part of my mind instantly replied.
I rolled my eyes at myself again. Then, remembering that I’d once again lost track of why I was out in the first place, I committed the gesture a third time.
My eyes were going to roll right out of their sockets at this rate.
I was a mess. One could go so far as to say I was a hot mess. Funny enough, this was not an unusual description that anyone who knew me might have used on any other day. Any member of the Crows, new or old, would probably utter some version of that line or another if asked to describe me (provided, of course, I wasn’t around to hear them say it). Now, however, I was a mess, hot or not, for a completely different reason. Before Mia, I’d been so laser-focused on a routine that something as insubstantial as a busted stereo was cause enough for an all-out meltdown. Sex, anal or otherwise, had felt like a punishment then; Danny had often “prescribed” an evening with a hooker as though it were medicine, and, like a whiny child, I’d carried on and protested as though it were medicine. The Crow’s business was a self-inflicted punishment that I carried on like a raging dictator solely for the purpose of reminding myself that I’d never be able to do it as well as my father or my brother. It was difficult to admit that I was suicidal, because every waking moment that I spent romanticizing my own death was equally spent romanticizing T-Built’s death; one couldn’t accuse me of being suicidal without just as directly accusing me of being homicidal. To be fair, though, while one couldn’t accuse me of one without accusing me of the other, one wouldn’t be wrong to accuse me of either. Yes, I had been a terrible mess before Mia and now I was a goofy, giggling mess that was practically farting rainbows and skipping gayly through the middle of the highway, throwing flower petals and blowing kisses along the way. I’d gone from being a hot, stinking pile of garbage heaped atop a time bomb that was set to go off at any moment to being an oven full of melting Valentine’s Day chocolates and scorched Hallmark cards. Two polar-opposite forms of “hot mess,” both just as much at risk of burning themselves up as the other.
There was a word for that, wasn’t there?
A car horn blared behind me, drawing my attention to the now-green light in front of me, and I waved a half-apologetic, half-thankful hand over my shoulder as I started forward. Riding on, trying to both remember what I’d been thinking a moment earlier as well as simultaneously trying to herd my thoughts as far from that crazed cycle of self-serving, psycho-analytical bullshit as I could. The irony that I couldn’t achieve one of those feats without immediately failing miserably at the other had me once again laughing like a lunatic. Once more considering how I must have appeared to any onlooker, I found myself thankful that Mia wasn’t there to see me like this. Though I doubted that the scene would be enough to convince her to up-and-leave me in that instant—though, to be fair to her, she’d have every right to—I couldn’t help but feel that I owed her a better version of myself than the crazy bastard a bunch of cruel years had twisted me into.
I was, after all, quite broken in the grand scheme of things.
Then, like a whisper from a nearly dead source of wisdom long-since buried in the rocky depths of my mind, a part of me thought, You’re not the only one…
And that was nearly enough to have me slamming on the brakes once more, this time without the benefit of a street light to justify the action.
It finally occurred to me then, coming to me in the instant when I’d all-but given up on finding a reason. Seeming so obvious in that moment, I wondered why it had ever seemed a mystery to me at all.
Why should I feel this way? Why should anal sex with Mia turn me into this when anal sex with any other girl, Anne included, never had? Why was I acting so strangely in the wake of everything that had happened?
Elementary, my dear dipshit… I thought.
(Suddenly seeing the two of us, mutually broken and near death, leaning against one another, supporting one another, and working our way free of the burning building so that we could save ourselves and alert the EMTs that Danny was still inside, saving him, as well.)
Because for the first time in my life, I was with a person whom I connected with so perfectly with that I no longer felt inclined to worry about where we might not connect. Like the well-oiled workings in my chopper, Mia and I meshed so well that neither of us had to worry about grinding the other’s gears.
And while a part of me felt like I was doing Anne’s memory a disservice through this thought process, I couldn’t help but think that her death was part of the reason things had turned out this way. A perfect gear had no trouble meshing with another perfect gear, after all; in most instances a perfect gear might even be able to pick up some of the slack brought on by a busted gear that it was partnered with. But what about when two broken gears were brought together? It was incredibly unlikely that two broken gears, perhaps jammed together by a cruel and sadistic cosmic mechanic, might manage to function even remotely. And a broken gear, knowing what it was, would forever feel like a burden if it found itself paired with a perfect gear, whether or not the pairing stood a chance of functioning. But what if two such busted gears, lonely and certain of their own uselessness, happened upon one another? What if they discovered that, by some divine miracle, their raging imperfections actually managed to fill in the gaps for the other? That they, busted and tormented as they were, might actually function better than even the newest and best of gears as a unit?
Well, in an event such as that, nobody—not a single goddam soul!—could blame one of those gears for feeling the way I felt; no one would dare question why someone like me should be riding on cloud nine, ten, and onward.
With this in mind (and my purpose once more, for the moment, forgotten), I caught myself in a fresh smile, wore it with pride, and turned at the next intersection.
And who-the-fuck-cared if it was orange or not?
****
Contracts!
There were contracts to be signed and collected regarding a few new business ventures the Crow Gang was undergoing. Among other things, this included a few of the first steps to securing the means to start what would eventually become a self-contained and independent prostitution ring run by none other than Mia’s previous mentor and ongoing best friend, Nancy.
Nancy had abandoned and then just as quickly reclaimed t
he title of “Candy: Whore Wonder” shortly after she and Mia had liberated themselves from the Carrion Crew and the street corner they’d been condemned to. Since then, Candy—she’d gone so far as to start claiming that Nancy was her “slave name” and none had been bold enough to ask her if she was serious—had taken to her new job with all the ferocity I’d known she would when I first offered it to her. While much of the paperwork I was handling could have just as easily waited another week-or-two, I was certain that Candy’s patience wouldn’t last that long. Through her work for the Carrion Crew, she’d developed something of a working relationship with many of the prostitutes; working relationships that ran too deep and were too personal to simply be filed away as friendships. When news of T-Built’s death spread—and to say that news of his death spread like wildfire was giving wildfires too much credit—many of them had scattered, taking advantage of the opportunity to slip the almost literal bonds of slavery.
But this had left many of them in almost as bad a situation as they’d started in. Though their work with the Carrion Crew paid practically nothing and exposed them to conditions on par with outright torture, they at least had homes and protection. With little other choice than to continue selling their bodies to survive, they were now susceptible to even greater cruelties while having no home or sense of safety to show for it.
Years earlier, back when my dad was in charge of the Crow Gang and the Carrion Crew wasn’t even a concept, he’d worked hand-in-hand with a small group of prostitutes who’d worked to unionize themselves. Back then, my father, seeing the benefits such a thing presented to the city, worked with those ladies to create jobs and circulate revenue that helped to strengthen not only the still-young Crows, but also the entire city. Without forcing them to work for the Crows—going to great lengths, in fact, to prevent it—he offered housing, protection, and healthcare for the prostitution rings in exchange for discounted services for their members and affiliates as well as their help in raising funds for “less than legal” needs to maintain the underground system that all-but kept the city running. Rumors of this “bordello” had been enough to bring in outside money, which quickly cycled through the city and created new jobs and revenue for everyone, crime affiliated or straight. Without naming names, my dad had boasted that a few of the city’s most influential politicians had gained enough leverage to do right by the city with the revenue generated by that work.
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