Perfect Collision

by Lina Andersson

  “I can’t even see what the name of the band is.”

  “Darkthrone,” he said and took it from her and put it on.

  Vi stared at the turntable when the song started. “You used to listen to this?”

  “Yup. Still do,” he answered. He could’ve added he listened to a lot of it when he was stoned, drunk, and nostalgic—but he skipped that part. “I’ll see if I can find something you actually like.”

  “I know Motörhead and Guns N’ Roses.”

  “I know you do, Katze. I spent quite a lot of time trying to get you hooked on them when you bought your first Ray Wylie Hubbard album.” He picked up King Diamond. He’d seen her look at it.

  She listened for a few minutes. “Is it actually a dude singing?”

  “Yes,” Bear sighed. “Let’s try progressive metal.”

  He decided Rush could work and put on ‘A passage to Bangkok,’ then he studied her. She didn’t seem to be listening at all. Instead, she held up a Celtic Frost album.

  “This is a Doré painting.”

  “Yeah,” he laughed.

  He knew she liked Doré‘s art. He’d bought her a copy of ‘The Divine Comedy’ with his artwork for Christmas a few years ago, and she’d studied every picture in detail. Maybe he should’ve focused on the cover art.

  “Some of these are quite nice and others are,” she held up ‘Thor’—another man with baby oil on his chest and fur covering his crotch, “just horrible.”

  “Hey! The guy used to bend steel on stage.”

  “Why?” She looked honestly confused.

  “He’s a real man.”

  “Yeah, sure he is.”

  “You’re a very levelheaded young girl.” He took a King Crimson album instead. “I think you’ll like this.”

  She put the albums aside and moved over to sit next to him.

  “You’re right,” she said a while later and leaned her head against his upper arm. “I like this.”

  They sat there until late at night, talking while listening to music, and he managed to find quite a few things she liked, but most of it made her laugh or shake her head. He was mostly surprised she liked Sepultura’s ‘Roots Bloody Roots.’ Apparently the drums were awesome. She listened to it twice, and while listening they kept talking.

  It was the most proper talk they’d had in months, and they covered pretty much everything. Even his love life, and she was a bit upset when he said it didn’t exist. He explained there wasn’t any need for her to be upset. He was happy with what he had at the moment.

  He looked at his eighteen-year-old daughter and couldn’t get over the fact the she really was a grownup. At least legally. No matter what she herself thought, she still had some childish streaks.

  She started to yawn while they were listening to Danzig. She’d picked it since the cover art was by H.R. Giger. It might not be metal per definition, but Danzig was something she should know about.

  “Dad.”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Could you please try to, you know, do some of what the doctor said?”

  He turned and looked at her, about to tell her to stop nagging, and realized she really was worried.

  “Honey, I’m fine.” He regretted like hell he’d even mentioned it to her. He’d just been so pissed when he came back from the visit and had thrown out his frustration in a long rant while they were having dinner. “Don’t worry. Won’t get rid of me that easy.”

  “I don’t want to get rid of you,” she mumbled. “That’s why I worry.”

  “I love you, but like I said, I’m too old to change, I don’t want to change, and I won’t do it. I’ll be fine.” He kissed her nose. “And I don’t need another wife, okay? Be my daughter, and let me do the worrying.”

  He knew she was worried, but there wasn’t any need. He wasn’t in bad shape, and despite closing in on sixty, he didn’t feel old, and that had to count for something. He looked at his daughter, who suddenly smiled.

  “Just keep getting that sweetbutt exercise.”

  He laughed. “If I can’t do that, I’ll consider a vegetarian day a week.”

  “I’ll hold you to that. I’m gonna tell the doc to not give you Viagra unless you eat vegetarian food,” she said and got up. “I’m gonna go give Mac a call.”

  He nodded and picked up a Led Zeppelin album. “Do that. I’m gonna revisit some old friends.”

  He turned it on and leaned back against the wall again. When the first notes of ‘Immigrant Song’ started, he kinda wished he’d had a joint. When Lisa turned fourteen, he’d stopped bringing it home and never started again. That was something that would change the second Vi moved out.

  -o0o—

  Mac spotted Vi standing next to Bear at the back of the crowd when he and Dawg came back.

  A few weeks earlier, one of the clubs in the smuggling pipeline had started grumbling about their cut not being big enough. His dad had sighed and said it was fucking typical. When it’d been calm for too long, they all started turning on each other instead. With no common enemy they began bickering like bitches.

  He’d gone to the mother club in Englewood with Dawg to discuss the problem with them. Greenville was one of the three clubs along the Mexican border who’d started the smuggling operation in the early 90s. It was mostly pot and diamonds. The goods were moved through the country, and the clubs in the pipeline followed to protect it. All clubs on protection duty received a cut of the payment or a part of the pot to sell. The pot was higher risk, but more money.

  Mac and Dawg’s visit in Englewood had been low profile, which was why they’d left the Prez and VP at home. Dawg had every reason to go up there, since that’s where he was from and his mom still lived there. No one did longer rides alone, so Mac had a reason to tag along. Also, he liked visiting the mother charter. He’d been there a lot when he was a prospect and liked the guys in that club.

  “Vi’s having dinner with us on Sunday!” Eliza yelled as she came running towards him.

  He gave her a hug. “Who told you that?”

  “Mom!” She was still yelling, and started running around him in circles as he walked towards Vi. The girl had energy like an entire football team. “She’s gonna do tattoos on me. She promised.”

  By then, they were in front of Vi, and he leaned down to give her a kiss.

  “Think Dad might have a problem with you giving his baby girl ink.”

  “Not real ones,” she said and gave him her shy smile. Her smile, in combination with having been away for five days, made him decide she was definitely staying at his place for the night. “She wants a forest with fairies on her back.”

  “Church!” his dad yelled behind him, and he quickly took another kiss from Vi. “Are you waiting here or at my place?”

  That should save him the discussion and it did, because she didn’t protest.

  “Your place,” she answered, just like always. She didn’t like waiting at the clubhouse, and he had a hunch he knew why when her eyes strayed to glance at the sweetbutts before meeting his again. “Hungry?”

  “Yeah.” He fished some money out of his pocket and gave them to her. “Anything is fine.”

  Church took quite some time. There were a lot of discussions about cuts, who deserved what, and how much it could be considered worth to have a couple of guys riding with a convoy for a few miles. They were, in general, pretty much in agreement.

  The takes, how much each guy and club received, had been set at a big meet years earlier. Some of the younger members didn’t think a decision made years ago, before they were members, was a good argument for not discussing it again, and Mac understood why. His dad quickly pointed out they had joined a fucking biker club with an existing set of rules and agreements, and not a democratic country with regular elections.

  Mac didn’t argue any further, but he’d heard the same discussions from the other point of view when he was in Kansas. It was easier to talk about those things with Brick in private, but he thought the border club
s should take it easy when it came to their attitude in these discussions. They often came off as bullies.

  They went through the financials and ended up with a long discussion about renovating the strip club and sex shop.

  When they were finally done, he didn’t want to stick around for the party and was about to leave when his dad stopped him by the door.

  “Dinner on Sunday.”

  “Eliza told me,” he said and reached for the doorknob.

  “And you’re bringing Vi.”

  “She told me that, too.” Brick had a weird look on his face and Mac wasn’t sure what it meant. “What?”

  “Six fucking months, and you haven’t introduced her?”

  “Introduced her? It’s Vi. You were like the third person on the planet holding her. You know her.”

  “Not what I meant, son, and you know it. Bring her!”

  “I will!” It was probably his dad obsessing about family, which made him realize something. “Is Bear coming, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  He’d find out exactly what the Vi comment was about sooner or later, and he wasn’t going to think about it at that moment. He was gonna go home to his girl.

  His place smelled great when he walked through the door, and Vi was on his couch watching a movie, wearing nothing but her tank top and panties. He halted and just stared at her. When his brain function was restored, he started to remove his clothes as he moved towards her.

  Forty minutes later, he was stroking her bare side. She was facing him, lying on his arm, and smiled when his fingers tickled her ribs.

  “I made risotto,” she mumbled and opened her eyes. “Probably cold now.”

  “I told you to get something on the way.”

  “I did,” she said and moved closer. “Then I cooked what I picked up on the way. You should have some. It’s with prosciutto.”

  He laughed. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Italian ham. Really good.”

  She glared at him, and when he didn’t move she got out of bed and walked to the kitchen area. He heard the micro, then his girl came back, still buck naked, with a plate in her hands.

  “It’s really good,” she said as she sat down on the bed and held out a fork with rice and some other stuff on it.

  He knew it’d be good. She could cook, and when the food hit his tongue, he closed eyes. It was so fucking great.

  “Oh my god!”

  Instead of answering, she handed him the plate and moved over to lean against the wall next to him.

  “Dad introduced me to metal the other day.”

  “What bands?” he said with his mouth full of food. It was fucking awesome, and once he’d started to eat he realized how hungry he’d been.

  “Manowar. It was horrible. So was King Diamond. I kind of liked Sepultura’s song ‘Roots.’ The drums were great. Some of the progressive stuff was okay, too. Rush was good until the guy started singing. I didn’t like his voice.”

  “I’ll give you progressive stuff with drums, baby. Meshuggah, Tool, and Mastodon.” He was already compiling a longer list of bands he’d play for her later. “Why did he do that?”

  “Because some guy wanted a logo tattooed, and I didn’t know who some dude named Dio was.”

  He stopped eating and turned around to stare at her. He couldn’t possibly have understood or heard that correctly.

  “Yeah, that’s the look people have been giving me,” she muttered and pulled the cover over her. “Just eat your food.”

  “Baby, he’s the one who started the whole Sign of the Horns hand gesture. You have to know who he is.”

  “Eat! Or I’ll take the plate and give you a different hand gesture.”

  He kept eating, but every time he looked at Vi she was glaring at him. She was definitely pissed. He finished the food, put the plate on the floor, and lay back down pulling Vi with him.

  “What’s with the frown?” he said and stroked the hair out of her face.

  “Is this another ‘you’re so young’ thing? That I don’t know who… whatever his name was, is.”

  “No.” The ‘you think I’m young and childish’ obsession was, ironically enough, her most childish side. “It’s a ‘you need to learn about music’ thing.”

  He moved his hand to cup her breast, stroking her nipple stud with his thumb. She grabbed his wrist, removed his hand from her, and turned around.

  “Vi,” he said in a sigh. “Come on!”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Babe, don’t try that bullshit with me.”

  He grabbed her and tried to move her around to face him, and she flew out of the bed.

  “Don’t fucking do that! Don’t fucking toss me around like I’m some fucking rag doll.”

  And then she screamed while throwing herself down on the couch, and for a few seconds he had no idea what the hell was going on. She was holding her foot, and he noticed blood seeping through her fingers.

  “Fuck!” He was on his way out of the bed when she screamed again.

  “Stop! There’s glass.”

  He looked down and realized she’d stepped on, and crushed, the plate he’d put on the floor. He went over to the kitchen, grabbed a towel, and went back to squat down in front of her.

  “Let me see, Katze.”

  “It hurts,” she whined and moved her already blood-soaked hands out of the way.

  “I know.” The cut was deep, and he wrapped the towel around her foot. “I’m gonna have to take you to the ER, baby. I think you’ll need stitches, and even if you don’t, I want them to make sure it’s clean.”

  “I have to call Dad and tell him to meet us there with the insurance info.”

  “Wash your hands and get dressed. I’ll call him.”

  He picked up his phone to call Bear. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind for the evening. Her, pissed and bleeding. Depending on how the call to Bear went, he could end up bleeding as well.

  -o0o—

  I sat in a hospital room along with Dad and Mac. I hadn’t said a single word to any one of them. We were all drinking Coke Mac had bought for us from a vending machine, and I peeked into the can when I heard Dad giggling. I looked up at him, and he was bright red—giggling!

  “Are you stoned?” I asked

  That made Mac laugh, and I couldn’t believe them. I couldn’t see a single thing in the current situation worth laughing about.

  “What?!” I yelled.

  “I’m just trying to figure out how you two fighting lead to a cut in the foot.”

  “We’re not fighting,” I protested, and Dad laugh harder. “We’re not!”

  “We kind of are, baby,” Mac said, and he was still laughing, too! I really hated both of them and turned to look into the Coke can again. “Vi, it’s not about age—at all! Shit, I’m pretty sure Eliza knows who Ronnie James Dio was.”

  “Is this about Ronnie?” Dad said and started laughing so hard he almost fell off the chair.

  If I ever met Ronnie James Dio, I’d tell him what I thought about him, the horn sign, and his shitty bands. I was sure he was really short. All those metal guys were midgets! They probably had some serious issues with their height and manliness and tried to compensate by bellowing like horny bulls or wailing in falsetto. All while covered in baby oil and fur.

  My mental rant about metal was interrupted when the doc came inside with a nurse next to her. She carried the stuff she needed to put a few stitches in my foot. The prospect of getting stitches hadn’t really perked me up, since it meant I’d be hobbling around on crutches for a while. When the doctor started, I leaned back and looked at the ceiling.

  “Do you know who Ronnie James Dio is?” I asked her.

  “Who he was, he’s dead, but sure,” she mumbled before starting to hum some song I assumed was by him. Pretty soon, the blonde, pretty nurse started to sing along with the doc, and I gave Dad and Mac my best evil glare. Basically daring them to start singing. They wisely shut up.

  I sighed and c
losed my eyes. I wished I could close my ears, so I didn’t have to hear Dad and Mac giggling. Right then and there, I wasn’t too fond of my dad or my boyfriend.

  It felt like the stitches took forever, and now and then I glared at Dad who was ogling the nurse’s ass. I sighed again. Trust my dad to find a lay while I had my foot stitched up.

  I realized the pills the nurse had given me about half an hour earlier, when Dad yelled about me being in pain, were starting to have an effect when the patterns in the ceiling began moving towards me. They were sort of… dancing. It looked pretty.

  “Whatever she had, I want it,” Dad said.

  “Sorry,” the nurse said. “Just for patients, but if you want I can wack you in the head with a bedpan and give you something to ease the pain.”

  “Tempting,” he mumbled.

  “Dad!” I said and turned my head to look at him. “Really?”

  “What?” he said with an innocent frown.

  “You know, this is part your fault.”

  “How the fuck is this my fault?”

  “Trying to be all ‘good parent’ and teach me about metal, and now Mac’s gonna show me some progressive metal, too. Can’t I just listen to the music I want?”

  “Not when it’s country.”

  “You like country?” the doctor asked and looked up from my foot.

  I sighed—again. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Dad interrupted us. “I’m fine with the country, sort of, but you can’t be a fucking tattoo artist and not know anything about metal.”

  “Of course I can!”

  “You’re planning on becoming a tattoo artist?” the nurse asked, and Dad gave her his best ‘all the things I could do to you’ smile.

  I was disturbingly familiar with that smile. He used it every chance he got with even remotely hot women. Like the school counselor when she tried to talk to him about my lack of friends. It had been very weird, but I think she understood a lot more about me after meeting him.

  “She is a tattoo artist,” he said and winked at the nurse.

  “Dad! Could you not do that while I’m bleeding?”

  “You’re not bleeding anymore,” Mac pointed out, and Dad started to laugh again, but he stopped ogling the nurse.

  “You might be bleeding soon if you don’t shut up,” I said to Mac.