by Paula Cox
I almost gasp when I realize that I’m not just furious with myself. I’m furious with her, too. I’ve never felt furious at any woman except Mom, back when she looked me directly in the face and told me to get out of her house because she was starting a new family. After that, I’ve made sure to be indifferent toward women. But Allison…under the table, I clench my fist. She did the same thing to me; she reeled me in and then told me to go fuck myself. She completely rejected me. She might as well have slapped me in the face. I wish I could go back and scream at her, and then I’m ashamed by the wish; all it would accomplish is showing her the effect she’s having on me.
I’m glad when the doctor walks into the bar, his worn scrubs flecked here and there with blood, wiping his hands on a towel.
All the men turn to him, and Shackle stubs his cigarette out on the bar and approaches him. The two men talk quietly for a few moments before the doctor turns around and walks back into the dormitory section.
“He’ll live,” Shackle says, and I see Zeke breathe a sigh of relief. “But it was closer than it ever should’ve been.” Shackle begins pacing up and down before us like a general pacing before his assembled men, hands behind his back. “It’s time we found out where Trent is and put an end to him. These unpatched men want to assemble around Trent. They think Trent is their savior. They think Trent is going to make them something. Let’s show them how wrong they are. I want all of you out there—lieutenants, tell your men—in groups of two, looking for Trent, or the unpatched men who might know where he is.” He nods shortly. “Dismissed.”
Zeke turns to me. “The bartender at the Englishman has been having some trouble with unpatched,” Zeke says. “I told him to keep an eye out. Let’s go stake the place out. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
I shrug, stranding. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Zeke tilts his head at me, looking closely. “Are you okay, man?”
Fine,” I reply gruffly…unless you count the social worker constantly bouncing into my mind. “Fine,” I repeat, as much to convince myself as him.
Chapter Fifteen
Rust
We take the pickup truck, ’cause nobody wants to sit on a bike for hours on end for a stakeout. Zeke drives, and I sit in the passenger seat, window open, hand out the window. I open my fingers and let the wind move through them, letting it caresses the calluses and the old scars and the new cuts. I watch the passing scenery, the tight-packed buildings, the graffiti-covered walls, moving swiftly by. I see men and women hunched over in doorways, passing around brown paper bags; and all through this I cannot help but think of Allison, wondering if today she’s helping men and women like these. I grind my teeth, feeling an ache in my jaw, wishing the ache would travel into my skull and blot out my thoughts. I feel that anger resurfacing: anger aimed directly at Allison. I don’t want to be angry at her; I don’t want to be anything at her.
Zeke stops the car in an alleyway opposite and down the street from the Englishman, where we can watch the entrance, see who’s coming in and out. Zeke drums his tribal-tattooed fingers along the steering wheel, humming to himself, and I just sit here, trying to ignore the way he looks at me out of the corner of his eyes. All this past month, Zeke has been sensing that something’s the matter with me. His chameleon’s face changes from concerned to impatient and back again, all whilst we watch each other out of the corners of our eyes. I find myself wishing I was with one of the other men, one of the less concerned men.
I light a cigarette and dangle my hand out of the window, watching the smoke, thinking about how it dissipates into the air just as easily as my relationship with Allison dissipated into nothing. Relationship…I can’t help but smile at that. We never had a relationship; goddamn, I need to get a hold of myself.
I’ve half-smoked the cigarette when Zeke says, “What’s going on with you, man?”
I don’t reply at first, hoping he’ll just let it drop, but I feel his eyes staring into me. “The fuck you mean?” I respond.
“The fuck I mean?” He laughs, but there’s little humor in it. “All this past month, you’ve been gazing starry-eyed into the distance, as though you’re someplace else, doing something else. It’s that girl, isn’t it? Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’ve been at parties, turning away all the clubs girls; with you it’s easy to notice when you consider what you’re normally like. A goddamn pussy hound.”
“A pussy hound? That sounds strange coming from you, Mr. In Love All the Time.”
I laugh, but Zeke doesn’t laugh with me.
“If the unpatched show up today, we need to be focused.”
“I haven’t let anything slip this past month,” I say, with a hint of defensiveness in my voice.
“I know that,” Zeke says. “But you haven’t been completely focused, either.”
“How would you know? You’re not a mind reader. I really wish you’d stop with this heart-to-heart shit. It’s tiring.”
I smoke my cigarette down to the filter, throw it to the ground, and then light another one.
I feel myself grinding my teeth, anger moving through me. First Allison rejecting me, and now Zeke nagging me like he’s a woman and not a six-foot-tall enforcer. People are so damn complicated, it seems to me. They never just do what you expect them to—what you’d like them to.
I watch the bar, watching the entrance as day drinkers walk in and out, a few old men with caps and suits which looks like remnants of the past, caps pulled low over their ears and shoes shiny, and a couple of groups of women, arms linked, cackling loudly into the afternoon sunshine. I wait for an unpatched to walk in, or out. The question of how to spot an unpatched was a difficult one at first…after all, they’re unpatched. But when you’ve worked as an enforcer for long enough, you learn to notice patterns. And one of the patterns is the arrogance of the unpatched, the way they swagger, the way they talk, and also their habit of unnecessary violence…. all of which would result in a volatile, dangerous club, if they were allowed to form one.
“Rust,” Zeke says, as though he’s been repeating it for a while.
“What?” I reply.
“I get if you don’t want to talk about it, but could you at least goddamn listen? I’m saying that if you can’t have her, you need to forget her, otherwise she’s going to be haunting you for years.”
“Haunting me? A woman, haunting me? I barely fuckin’ know her, Zeke. Leave off with this horseshit.”
Zeke sighs, shrugs, and then turns to the bar. Good, I reflect, ’cause I was getting angry there. He’s hitting way too close to home: way, way too close. He’s hitting right on the sore spot where Allison lingers, still lingers like some kind of parasite. He’s right; she is haunting me. But I can’t admit it. Again, I feel that anger, anger aimed like an arrow at Allison. I feel my fist clench, my teeth grinding, a pulsing in my temple. I put myself out there like a fool. I hear my voice, pathetic, like a teenager: “Ooh, do you want my number? Ooh, please take my number.” I want to jump back in time and take that too-eager man by the throat and smash his head into the desk. I want to punch the wall. I want to take a sawn-off shotgun and blow a hole in something. I want to take a Desert Eagle handgun and blow several holes in something. I just want to forget. Why can’t I just forget about the green-eyed social worker? Why can’t I just forget about the woman who pushed me away?
“Rust,” Zeke says.
I feel myself about to snap at him, but then I see what he’s gesturing at: two men, swaggering into the Englishman, wearing leather jackets without patches on them. They could be just two men swaggering into a bar, but there’s something about them, something about the way one of them shoves the door open with his shoulder and the other casually flicks his cigarette stub not onto the ground outside the bar, but onto the floor inside the bar.
I nod. “Let’s go.”
We climb out of the car and walk toward the bar. As we walk, I feel myself letting go of this bullshit, letting go of the anger, letting go of all this stuff go
ing around and around my mind. This is my business; this is the work I can lose myself in. It feels good to have Zeke at my shoulder. It feels good to be on a job. It feels good to be focused. Zeke and I stop for a moment outside the door, and then we nod at each other; Zeke pushes the door open and we walk in.
The two men sit at the bar. One is tall, lean, with a mop of grey-brown hair which hangs lankly down to his shoulders, wearing big cowboy boots which look completely ridiculous. His face is tired-looking, his eyes a dim shade of brown. I’d say he was about fifty, maybe older. The other is around my age, short and fat, with a podgy cherub-like face. But both of them are packing; I can see the outlines of their weapons beneath their leathers. That’s new for the unpatched. Before, they were a rabble of gunless men walking blindly around the city. Now, they are becoming a cohesive unit…with Trent at their head. If we can find Trent, end him, I’m sure the rest will disband. Or, at least, they’ll be so disoriented they’ll be easier to take out.
“I said I wanted ice, old man,” the lank-haired one snaps at the bartender, who is about ten years older than him. The bartender’s fear is plain in his lined face, and in the way he hurriedly takes Lank Hair’s drink and goes to the ice bucket. “How hard is it to get some ice?” Lank Hair says, grinning and turning to Cloon. As he turns, he sees me and Zeke, and his smiles dies. “Oh,” he mutters.
“Oh,” I echo, pacing across the bar and standing over the two men. Behind me, I hear Zeke locking the door. I glance to the bartender, and then nod toward the back. “Go take a break.” He quickly scurries out of the bar.
When Zeke returns, the two of us just stand over the men for a few moments, watching as they realize the situation they’re in. They don’t go for their weapons; they know who we are, and they know that would only turn this situation to violence damn quickly.
After a long pause, a pause we let stretch out so they know just how much shit they’re in, I say: “We want to know where Trent is. Where he lives, where he eats, where he sleeps, where he pisses, who he fucks. We want to know where that fuck is, alright?”
“Why?” Cloon mutters, his voice quivering. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”
“He shot one of our pledges,” Zeke says, voice quivering too, but for a different reason and with a darker quality. “Could have killed a boy who hasn’t even crossed him. Your boss is a fucking psychopath. And he’s dealing heroine. Dealing heroin in Damned territory. You don’t think that’s doing something to us? You don’t think that makes us want to have a conversation with the man?”
Zeke and I take off our leathers and lay them over the backs of chairs at the bar, all while the two men look wide-eyed at us.
“We’re going to have a talk,” I say, “and then you’re going to tell us what you know.”
“We don’t know where he lives,” Cloon says. “Really, we don’t.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Lank Hair mumbles. “We don’t know that much about him. He isn’t seen that much. He really isn’t. He’s like a ghost, man. He’s like a ghost.”
“Stand up,” I say, taking a step back. “I won’t fight a man when he’s sitting.”
Lank Hair watches me to see if I’m serious. When he realize I am, he stands up, taking off his own leather.
“At least you’re doing it fair,” he mutters, holding his hands up.
When we’re all facing each other, the scent of violence in the air, we start fightin’.
Chapter Sixteen
Allison
I feel my body betraying me as I approach the Englishman: my heart pounding way too fast, my palms sweating way too much, my head aching as though it’s going to crack open. Luckily, the sickness does not feel like it’s going to return. Yet, anyway. I tell myself there’s no reason to feel this nervous, not yet. It’s not like Rust is going to be in there. I’m only here to find out where Rust might be: his apartment, maybe his cell number. I find myself laying my hand on my belly, stroking it with my fingers, thinking about how much bigger it will get over the coming months if…if…but I will tell Rust first, and go from there. I don’t want to think about the other option.
I am at the front door of the Englishman when it creaks open. I step aside to let the person pass: a big man, wearing a leather jacket, with his dusty blonde hair tied in a ponytail. I turn my head as he passes, looking at the back of his jacket. The Damned! I will myself to stop the man, to ask him for Rust’s cell number. I will myself to step forward. But I just stand to the side of the door, watching, and then I know it’s too late. I turn, meaning to head into the bar, when my eyes come to rest chest-height on another leather-wearing man. This man is taller and more muscular: his leather stretched over his massive muscles, close to bursting at the seams. I swallow, a ball of nerves inching down my throat.
Rust: Rust, here. Rust, thrust quickly and without warning back into my life. I look down his body, at his scuffed jeans, at his scuffed boots, and then back up. His knuckles are grazed, as they often are, and there are flecks of blood on his hands, and spattered here and there on his leather. I look up into his face. His black eyes startle me at first sight. It’s not that I’ve forgotten how intense they are; it’s just that their intensity is so much stronger in reality than in my mind. He’s let his beard grow, but only a little: a five o’clock shadow. His face has the same hardness, and his cheek is cut and grazed. His mouth falls open, but he quickly shuts it, and then, to my disbelief, he ducks his head and walks right by me.
“Rust,” I mutter, but he just keeps walking.
He puts his hands in his pocket and paces away. I feel a stabbing in my chest, a sharp, almost physical pain as I watch the father to my child swagger away from me as though he doesn’t have a care in the world. I know I shouldn’t chase him. I know it is something that will make me look desperate. But I can’t just let him walk away like that, as if I don’t exist: as if I am a shadow and he has zero interest in seeing what is casting the shadow. I bite down, and then pace after him, taking long steps across the street. His partner is sitting behind the wheel of a pickup truck. Rust is almost there when I catch up with him and place my hand on his elbow.
“Rust,” I say. “Wait a second.”
He shrugs my hand off. “Go home, Allison,” he says. “This isn’t the place for you.”
“I just want to talk to you for a second!” I snap.
He flinches at the harshness of my voice, and then wheels on me. “Get the fuck out of here, you silly girl!” he growls. “Get the fuck out of here and get the fuck out of my face!” His chest is heaving, his bloody hands hanging at his sides, and his black eyes darker and more intense than ever. He seems surprised by his own words and looks for a moment like he might apologize, but then his face hardens and he paces toward the pickup.
I’m stunned for the first few steps he takes, but then my own rage explodes out of me. I scream at him across the street: “If I’m a silly girl, I’m a silly girl who’s pregnant with your child, Rust! Maybe you should come and see me at the library if you want to know more about it!”
With that, I spin on my heels and pace back down the street, toward where my car is parked. I feel my anger bubbling beneath the surface, even more acidic than my vomit, even more turbulent than the emotion I felt when I found out I was pregnant. The anger courses through me, pushing me to my car. I want to get out of here. I want to hit something. I want…
I hear Rust call to his partner: “Get out of here, man. I’ll find my own way back.”
And then I hear his footsteps following me, pounding on the concrete, as he jogs after me. I walk quicker, almost at my car now, which is parked around the corner in a small side street in between the back of a takeout place and the back of a closed-down and boarded-up electronics store. I turn down the side street and pace to my car, reach for my keys in the front pocket of my dress, everything vibrating with rage: my body aching with rage. How dare he …
And then he jogs past me, standing between me and the car. His face is no long
er as hard, and his eyes, somehow, seem less grimly dark than a few minutes ago. I feel my chest heaving just as his chest heaved. It’s like the anger which caused him to roar at me has been transferred to my chest. He approaches me. I take a step back, hitting my car, and gaze up at him.
“Don’t touch me,” I say, voice low.
“Is that true?” Rust mutters. “You’re pregnant? Are you really pregnant?”
Something about the way he asks this question triggers another outburst of anger. He asks it, and he looks at me, like he truly believes I would make this up. He asks it in a tone of voice which tells me everything I need to know about how his opinion of me has changed. I have become something else in his eyes: something disgusting. Before, we had fun; we joked. And now he stands here ready to believe that I would lie about something this serious. The anger bursts out from deep in my belly, rising vomit-like up my throat, and then explodes from my mouth.