“And that’s why you’re making him sleep in the parking lot. But why is he here at all?”
“He showed up last week. That night I sang in the club?”
“Yeah. You were good.”
She smiled, and her cheeks pinked up with shy pleasure. “Thanks.” She shook her blush off and got serious again. “Somebody took video of it and put it on YouTube. The lead singer of the band that night, The Ladyslippers, is—was, until then—a friend. We also dated for a while, in college. Cain had been in touch with her, looking for me, and she sent him a link to that video. I used to sing with him sometimes. Gigs in the summer, stuff like that. I hadn’t seen him since about five years ago, when I told him we were through until he was clean. He says he’s about six weeks sober. Anyway, he found me because my ex has been on me to sing again, and she thought she’d ‘help’ me by siccing my loser father on me. That’s why he’s here, and that’s why he’s sleeping in the parking lot.”
“Why not just kick him away?”
“He’s almost sixty years old, and to my knowledge, this is the first time in my lifetime he’s been clean. Six weeks. He’s going to fall off, I’m sure, but when he does, I don’t want to be the one to push him. You want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks.” She stood, and he handed her his empty mug. “Is he trouble for you?”
“I don’t know. When he’s using, he’s a mess.”
“How?”
“The usual. Stirring up shit with his band—he’s been through more than ten different bands that I know of, because they get sick of his shit and kick him. Getting into bar fights. Just being a sloppy mess.”
He sounded violent. Tony would be happy for an excuse to deal with him. “Does he hurt you?”
She set the mugs down on the tray with a clatter and turned to face him. “Other than being a terrible influence and generally a massive disappointment as a father and a human being, no. Like I said, nobody in my family has ever made a scar on me, on my back or anywhere else. Except, maybe, my psyche. If we’re doing family background interviews, you’re gonna have to pony up, too, pal.”
He’d pissed her off a little, and seeing it sent a hit of power into his bloodstream. He could feel the scales between them shift toward his favor. But they’d tip again if he told her the story she was asking to hear. “You want to know about my back.”
“Since you mention it.”
Knowing he should refuse, keep tight hold of this part of himself, Tony found himself giving it up anyway. “My old man’s a piece of shit. He used to use an electric cord on me when he thought I needed discipline. He told me how many strikes I’d get, and then he’d count them out. Sometimes it was only five. Sometimes it was twenty or thirty. It depended more on his mood than on what I’d done.”
“My god. He drew blood. He left scars. People had to know. Your mother—”
Tony put a hand up and stopped her before she said something he couldn’t abide. “Don’t talk about my mother.”
Billy’s mouth snapped closed, and they stared at each other, surrounded by a silence that grew heavier with every breath.
Tony didn’t know how to turn this around. Their conversation had gone speeding into deep water, open ocean, he’d fucking driven it there, and he couldn’t see his way back to the shore. The mere mention of his mother had opened something inside him, and it was spilling out toxic waste until it swamped the good of this morning.
He’d known better than to tell her so much about his scars. He’d known exactly what would happen, and he’d been right. She was sitting there, judging his mother. Maybe judging him, too. Seeing him as a victim. The only thing he could think to do was get out.
He stood. “I need to get going.” Maybe this had been a mistake from the start.
She didn’t protest. “Okay,” she said. She picked his shirt up from her desk chair and brought it to him.
As if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other if he stayed or went.
~ 12 ~
Their conversation had died a sudden death, and the easy chemistry between them had gone with it. Tony dressed, and Billy took him downstairs. He left with little more than a look and a nod. They’d barely managed to exchange the paltry syllable bye. No word from either of them about when they might see each other again, or if they even wanted to.
For her part, Billy wanted to see him again. Until everything had gone stolid and cold between them, she’d entertained the pleasant thought of lounging naked in bed with him, coiled around that wonderful body, whiling away the daylight hours of her Sunday, until she had to get ready to open the club. He’d seemed inclined in the same direction.
And then he’d gotten her to talk about Cain—how had he done that, exactly? Why had she been so forthcoming? However he’d managed it, she’d told him quite a lot, until she’d felt unfairly vulnerable. When she’d tried to gain some ground and pushed back, poked at the cause of his scars, he’d seemed almost as free with his story. Until she’d mentioned his mother.
So no mystery why things had gone bad so fast. He had a sore spot about his parents, and Billy had poked him right there.
His back was quite badly scarred. Maybe a couple dozen different marks, crosshatched from his shoulders to his waist, of obviously different ages and from obviously different intensities of harm. Some were simply fine, pale lines. Others were thicker, raised ridges. Some were short, a couple inches long or so. Others crossed most of the span of his back.
Whipped with an electrical cord. Many different times. By his father.
There was absolutely no way Tony’s mother wasn’t fully aware of those scars and the beatings that made them. Most likely, she’d treated the wounds herself. Tony called his father a ‘bastard’ and a ‘piece of shit’, but wouldn’t hear his mother criticized. Billy didn’t know what to make of that.
In the light of this new context, Cain didn’t seem like such a bad guy, and Allie was a fairly okay mom.
Her father was sitting at the staff table, writing in a battered spiral notebook. He’d made a point not to be seen paying attention to Tony and Billy as they’d said their stilted goodbye. Now, as she closed the door, Billy turned to him.
She wouldn’t let him up to her apartment, where the only full bathroom in the building was, so he’d been washing up in the staff bathroom. It was beginning to show. His usually carefully constructed hairstyle—engineered to make it look like it wasn’t thinning—was lackluster and lopsided, and his clothes were badly rumpled. Still, he’d made some kind of effort. Cain was a deeply vain man.
Billy leaned on the back of a chair. “I’m going to make French toast. You want some? There’s still brioche from Amir’s dessert special last night.”
That request was the first gesture toward a détente she’d made since Cain had shown up.
He looked up and studied her for a blink or two before he answered. “Sure. Thanks.”
As she pulled the ingredients from the fridge, Cain went back to his writing. Billy had had enough of awkward silences for the day, and she wanted to stop fretting over that ending with Tony—whether it was a real ending, or just an awkward pause—so she set aside her usual misgivings and offered an opener to her father.
“What are you working on?”
He leapt at the chance. “Just an idea for a new song. I’ve been writing a lot since I’ve been clean. It’s different than it was before.”
“Different how?”
“Harder, for one thing. I used to scratch out pages and pages of lines without a break, when I was high.”
She remembered. Most of it was incomprehensible, like speaking in tongues on paper. Even the stuff he shaped into songs was usually impenetrably dense and obnoxiously self-important metaphorical tripe. Like Led Zeppelin with twice the drugs and half the talent.
“And now?”
He got up from the table and came to rest on the worktop near the big industrial range, crossing his arms and resting them on his paunch, watching her cook. “N
ow, it all comes slow. Like, one little piece at a time, and I don’t know what I’ve got until all the pieces are together. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s better.” He smiled and leaned companionably close. “You want to read some, maybe sing ‘em out with me?”
That was too close. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. Let me know. I’d be glad to hear what you think.” He watched her cook the French toast on the griddle for a minute or two before he asked, “That guy, Tony—it’s a new thing, huh?”
His tone was gentle as a nudge; Cain was well aware how little interest she had in letting him into her life. But just now, at this particular moment, while Billy’s brain fretted at questions about Tony, she needed to talk it out. And her father was right there, not two feet away.
“Very new, yeah.”
“Doesn’t seem your type.”
Well, it had taken him no time at all to be annoying about this. “You have no idea what my type is.”
“I thought Carly was your type.”
Everybody was looking to label her today. “I’m into guys, too. I thought you knew that.”
“It’s not what I meant. People like Carly is what I meant. Free spirits. Friendly. Kind.”
“Carly is also nosy, manipulative, and condescending, if we’re listing her personality traits.” A nagging wee screech of a thought piped up to ask if that were really true, or if maybe Billy was just being angry and resentful at the moment. She stomped on it and shut it up. Carly had brought Cain back into her life without asking or even bothering to warn her after the fact. Nosy, manipulative, and condescending. QED.
“Okay,” Cain conceded. “I don’t know her too well.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m just sayin’ ... I got a vibe from that Tony guy. I know guys like him.”
This was not the way she needed to talk about Tony, and now Billy regretted engaging the topic at all. Why the hell had she thought, even for a nanosecond, that Cain would be a fitting audience for her worries and doubts? She really needed to find more friends.
She flipped the slices of brioche and turned to Cain, holding the spatula like a weapon. “He’s an enforcer for the Pagano Brothers. I pay them a protection fee every month, and Tony is the security guy in charge of their interest in the club. Or however they’d explain it. That’s how we met. Is that what you mean?”
His eyes opened wide, and his mouth did the same. ”Jesus, Bill. I definitely know guys like that. I’ve tangled with a couple and always got my ass handed to me in pieces. They are dangerous. Every one of them. What are you doin’?”
“I’m trying to build a life, Cain. That’s what I’m doing. My own life. The way I want it.”
“And you want somebody like that in it? That’s what you want?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, it’s new. And not your business. There’s powdered sugar in that cabinet, and maple syrup, too. Whichever you want. I want syrup.”
Wisely, Cain nodded and dropped the subject of Tony. He went and collected the toppings for the French toast Billy no longer had an appetite for. He also got juice and glasses and flatware and napkins, and poured coffee from the pot. He’d settled right in during his time in her parking lot, and knew where everything was in her kitchen.
She plated their breakfast and carried the plates to the table. Cain had laid out two nice settings.
“Looks real good, Billy,” he said and dug in. Tasting it, he smiled and nodded. “Nice. Always were a good cook.”
“It’s the brioche that makes it, and that’s Amir. I just coated it in egg and made it hot.”
“You put together a good place here. I’m proud of you.”
Billy nodded and focused on her breakfast. Making Cain Jones proud wasn’t much of an accomplishment.
They ate in silence for a few bites before he tried again. “I got a question for you. Don’t feel bad to say no, but I gotta ask.”
Billy stopped chewing. She swallowed her bite down a throat that had gone stiff with wariness. “What?”
“How’d it be if I played here?” He let the question linger for half a second, long enough for Billy to hear it and open her mouth to refuse him, then jumped in before she could. “Just a night or two, while I’m here, figurin’ my next move. I’m havin’ a devil of a time findin’ my next band.”
“Because you’ve burned every bridge from Maine to Florida and halfway to the Mississippi.”
“That’s no lie. I know.” He sighed and leaned away from the table. “This is hard, baby girl. This livin’ straight. Now I see it clear, all the shit I did wrong, all the shit I don’t have, that I fucked up and lost. I feel it. I see how you hate me. When I’m wasted, I don’t care. It’s easier.”
“I don’t hate you. But this is what you do, Cain. You pop back in my life so I can bail you out of some trouble, you fuck me over, and then you disappear again.”
His head sagged until his chin rested on his chest. “That’s no lie, either.” He looked up. “But that’s why I went lookin’ for you. Why I’m here. I owe a lot of people a lot of apologies, but nobody like I owe you. Baby, you’re the only thing in my whole sorry life I’m proud of. I’m a shit dad, a shit friend, I was a shit husband. But you’re good, and something of me’s in you. The only good I have. I can’t undo the shit I did, but I don’t know ... I feel like if I can’t get right with you somehow, then what’s the fuckin’ point?”
“Don’t dare put that on me. I’m not the thing between you and your next fix. Fuck you.”
“No! That’s not ... goddammit. I can’t even apologize right.”
Billy pushed her plate away. Her stomach was a macramé snarl. The worst, scariest thing—she could feel herself giving in. Letting Cain have yet another chance to hurt her. He’d never laid an angry hand on her, but she had scars nonetheless.
“Try.”
Her father looked up, anguish twisting his face. “I am.”
“I was thirteen when you got me drunk on Cold Duck. Fourteen for my first joint. Fifteen when you showed me how to snort coke. Sixteen when you gave me acid. Sixteen for molly, too. Adderall, Ambien, Ativan—I could list the shit you gave me both alphabetically and chronologically, if you want. It’s a fucking miracle I didn’t wind up like you.”
“I know. Shit, Billy, I know. I’m so damn sorry.”
“Try harder.”
“What do you want me to do? I will do it. Just say what you need.”
What did she need? Another man to have been her father.
As that thought gained shape and weight, Billy reexamined it. Cain Jones was a shit father. But, excepting all his goings from her life, not once had he ever been unkind to her. Not once had he ever even raised his voice to her. When he was in her life, he treated her lovingly. Even getting her wasted had been his deranged way of making her happy, sharing his life with her.
He was a disaster, and he’d caused her plenty of pain and shame and struggle. But he loved her. And she believed he was trying to straighten himself out. The attempt had come late, but maybe not too late. Maybe.
The odds were not in his favor. But maybe.
Billy discovered that she still had enough hope in him, enough love for him, to try. “I need you to stay straight. Like an arrow.”
He nodded. “That’s what I want, too.”
“And no running off. No more abandoning.”
“No. Never again.” He leaned close and set his hand on the table, palm up. Not forcing her to feel him, but asking. “I love you, baby girl. You’re the only love I’ve ever had, my whole life. I want to be worthy of you. If it’s not too late.”
Billy stared at his hand. His left—the fingertips were gouged and hard, the calluses gone yellow from a lifetime of playing guitar. A scar ran across the palm—from a broken bottle in a bar fight. That injury had almost ended his ramshackle career. She’d been there when it happened. Nine years old, sitting at the bar, stabbing peanuts with a plastic garnish sword, while her father played his set. A drunk had
stumbled into her and knocked her off the stool. Her memory still rang with the amplified sound of her father’s roar as he flew off the stage.
He loved her. He wasn’t good at it, but it was true nonetheless.
She brushed her fingertips over that twenty-year-old mark. Then she set her hand in his.
~oOo~
After breakfast, they cleaned up together. Then her father went off to an NA meeting—the first he’d ever attended—and Billy went back upstairs to take a real shower and reclaim her remaining few free hours of the day.
She had a lot to think about.
Tony’s towel sat in a wad on the bathroom counter; Billy picked it up and, without thinking, put it to her face. It smelled like her, not him—her shampoo, her soap, her fabric softener—but still she huffed deeply and let images of his body flare to life in her imagination. He was just gorgeous. Slim hips, tight ass, strong legs, powerful arms. Chest and belly carved from a slab of granite.
He had three tattoos: a gun—not an old-fashioned revolver, but something like a 9mm—on his right hip, the barrel drawn along his inguinal crease, the muzzle at his groin, smoke wafting from it as if it had just been fired; two lines of text on his left side—something Italian, but she’d been too distracted to know if she could use her French to sort its meaning; and, on the inside of his right wrist, below the heel of his thumb, a small, five-pointed star, just an outline of red ink.
Even his back was beautiful. Under those scars, he was perfectly, powerfully contoured, with broad shoulders tapering to those tight hips. And the scars ... well, they were the first thing that gave her a way to understand this enigma of a man, and the mystery of her attraction to him. She was right. He was more than just a bully, a guy who got off on being in control, lording his power over the weak.
He had a story. There was a reason. He knew what it was to be powerless, and the fight to find power had made him as he was.
Accidental Evils Page 14