First, Last, and in Between

by Jamie Bennett

  “Get down!”

  There was an explosion of noise, then a heavy weight slammed into my back, and I slammed into the pavement.

  I didn’t understand what had happened. “Rory?” I asked, my voice shaking, but it was all muffled by the arm over my face.

  Rory’s arm. He rolled, dragging me with him until I was lying on my back. “Are you all right? Did I hurt you?” And when I didn’t answer right away, his arms tightened. “Isobel!” His face hovered over mine, white and strained. “I thought they were shooting at us. Isobel?”

  My heart was pounding. “I’m ok,” I managed to say. He had flung his body on top of mine, but somehow, he had been underneath when we collided with the sidewalk, curved around and protecting me. I hadn’t hit the ground and he hadn’t flattened me under his weight, but I still couldn’t catch my breath.

  Rory stood and picked me up with him, setting me on my feet but standing close. “God damn it,” he growled. “I thought—Isobel? What’s the matter?”

  I was already slumping, with the sides of my vision dark and clouded. “I’m ok,” I said, but it sounded like I was drunk. “I’m fainting,” I wanted to tell him, and then I thought that I did pass out, because everything was gone, including Rory.

  Chapter 7

  Rory

  “Isobel!” I shouted again.

  She stirred a little. “Yeah?” she said. It was slurred and strange, but it was a word, so she was finally waking up. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

  “Isobel, wake up.”

  She tried to roll to her side but the seatbelt across her chest held her in. “What?” she asked, getting agitated and clawing at the strap.

  I put my hand over hers. “That’s the seatbelt, leave it on. We’re in the car and I’m taking you to the hospital. That’s the second time I’ve seen you faint. Something’s wrong,” I told her, but she started shaking her head.

  “No. No,” she said, her voice getting stronger. She pulled herself to sit, rubbing her fingers into her eyes and blinking. “There’s nothing wrong. I have a…thing, it makes me get dizzy. I’m ok.”

  “What thing makes you dizzy? What’s wrong?”

  Isobel shook her head, as if she was clearing it. “It’s nothing. What happened? Why did you tackle me on the sidewalk?”

  Because all I had thought of was protecting her. “I heard a car accelerating and backfiring and I thought someone was coming after me,” I explained. “I was trying to get you out of the way. Did I hurt you?”

  She moved her arm and winced a little, but then she started peering at my stomach. “Did your wound open up? Is it bleeding again?”

  “No, I’m fine.” And we weren’t done with the first issue. “What ‘thing’ do you have that makes you faint?”

  “Who would be shooting at you?” Isobel countered. “Why would anyone be shooting at you?”

  Neither of us wanted to answer, apparently, so there was silence in the car.

  She shook her head impatiently. “Can you drive me to the garage?” she asked me. “I need to get my car. Rory?” she said, when I didn’t respond.

  I yanked the wheel with one hand and the car shot across two lanes and squealed around a corner. “Sure. Sure, I’ll take you to the garage.”

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked softly. “You don’t have to drive me there, then. You can pull over wherever and I’ll get a car.”

  “Jesus fuck, Isobel!” I exploded, and I almost crushed her fingers in mine. “You just turned so pale you were bloodless and collapsed in my arms. You won’t tell me what’s wrong, you just want me to drop you off on some corner so you can go to the mechanic like there’s no problem except with your alternator?”

  “You were the one who just threw yourself on the sidewalk because you were expecting a drive-by,” she retorted. “You think someone is trying to kill you!”

  “It was a reflex, that was all. I probably overreacted.” I had reacted that way because she had been standing next to me. “I’ve been in that situation before and it was instincts. It’s my line of work now, remember?”

  “I like the woodshop better for you,” she mumbled.

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, me too,” I answered.

  We drove for another block, still holding hands. She was griping my fingers as tightly as I had hers.

  “I have a heart problem,” she said as I turned, more sedately this time, on Woodward Avenue. “It’s called arrythmia, like my heart doesn’t beat right all the time. It makes me faint. I can feel it coming, and I tried to tell you.”

  “Arrythmia,” I repeated, trying to think of what I knew about that, and trying to stay calm. She had a heart problem? “What do you do for that?”

  “I take medicine. It’s ok,” she said dismissively. “I deal with it.”

  “By fainting?” I asked. “That’s how you deal with it? How often does that happen? I haven’t been back in town for that long and I’ve seen it twice.”

  She shrugged. “It’s really nothing.”

  It wasn’t nothing. “What about when you drive? Has it happened when you drive?”

  “Uh, once. But luckily the police didn’t find out the cause of the accident, because they could have taken my license away.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” I exploded again. “You had a car accident?”

  “Years ago!” she defended herself. “I haven’t in a long time. A while.”

  “So this medicine you take isn’t really working. Not well enough. When was the last time you went to the doctor for it?”

  She shrugged again, looking out the window. “I don’t know, a couple of months? The medicine is good and I’m fine.”

  We drove for another few minutes with me stewing, simmering. She had a heart problem and her medicine obviously didn’t work for shit. And I…God damn it! I slammed my fist on the steering wheel. “And I’ve been smoking around you! Smoking when you have a bad heart.”

  “I don’t! I don’t, either. I’m great,” she repeated heatedly.

  “Shit. I wish you said something to me,” I lamented.

  “I haven’t even told Rella, so please don’t say anything about this to her.”

  “Even she doesn’t know?”

  Isobel shook her head. “She knows that I faint sometimes, but I told her I’d been checked out and it was no big deal. Because it isn’t a big deal, and I don’t want her to worry about me more than she already does.”

  “What does she worry about?”

  “Everything,” she said, but suddenly she broke out in a smile. “It’s nice, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t want her to be upset, but I like how much she loves me.”

  “Yeah, I like that too,” I said. I liked knowing that someone else was watching out for her. “Know what else I like?”

  She turned to look at me.

  “You didn’t shrink away from me, when I got mad. You know that I’m not going to hurt you.” I never, never would.

  She nodded like she agreed.

  “Also, you’re letting me hold your hand.” I moved my fingers so that they were interlinked with hers. I liked that, a lot.

  Isobel looked out the window, but she nodded again. And she held onto me even tighter.

  ∞

  I wiped off my forehead with my hand, the same one that had gripped Isobel’s. “Don’t make me do this again,” I told the man at my feet. “Do you hear me?”

  The driver nodded. At least, I thought he did, but he may have just been shaking in pain.

  “I didn’t want to do this, Ronnie,” I said, and sighed as I looked at his crumpled body. “I’m sorry,” I shocked myself by admitting to him, and this time I did see his head move in affirmation. Leopold had caught him looking at his girlfriend in a certain way and maybe our boss was dumb, but he wasn’t blind. He’d gotten Jourdan to spill some of what she and Ronnie had been doing on the side—not everything, but she’d said enough. Ronnie was a good driver, so instead of firing him, Leopold had asked me to intervene. I had dragged this po
or sucker out to the old stables in their compound that the family didn’t use for horses anymore. They were used for things like this.

  “You have to leave her alone. Leave Jourdan alone,” I repeated. He didn’t move to acknowledge me this time.

  I stood over Ronnie for a moment longer to make sure he was breathing ok, then I went outside and took off my gloves, turning them inside out and putting them in my back pocket. I checked my knuckles and they were red but not cut, thanks to the shield of the leather. His face, not having had the same protection, didn’t look as good. Damn it, I should have said no when Leopold told me what he wanted me to do, but it would have meant losing the job.

  “Really?” I’d wanted to ask when he’d told me to go find Ronnie and punish him with my fists. “For that woman? Do you know what she offered to do for me? To me?” But I’d kept my mouth shut, because the money I was making was good, and because working for Leopold at least gave me some kind of protection, as low-rent as he was. I was part of his crew now, and that was something. This was better than being a lone wolf, as much as the thought of ditching Leopold entirely appealed to me right now.

  What I’d just done to Ronnie was no good and the way I’d felt when I was doing it…I stared at my knuckles. It took me right back to the guy I’d been before I got arrested, and I didn’t want to be that guy, not anymore.

  I was working even harder to get myself back on track after what had happened with Isobel, when I’d smashed her into the pavement the week before. I was getting closer to finding my buddy Memphis, to get what he owed me when he’d emptied out the safety deposit box, and that would go a long way in cleaning things up. Isobel didn’t need some other jackass in her life, not when she had that idiot Kash and her mother to deal with. I’d done some reading about arrythmia and about cat bites and neither was a goddamn joke. I’d dropped off some medicine with a note saying, “For cat scratches,” but that had backfired on me.

  “Were you in my apartment?” she’d texted me. “Did you leave prescription ointment on my table? How did you get in here? Why did you do that?”

  And when I’d said, yes, that was me, and not to worry, and that she could use it for the cat damage, she hadn’t answered. She still hadn’t four days later, so I knew that I’d screwed things up. The thing was, locks had never presented much of an issue to me and my brother. We’d been breaking in and out of places for most of our lives, and I never considered a door an obstacle to me entering somewhere if I wanted to.

  So I’d wanted to help Isobel, and now she wouldn’t talk to me. I was starting to understand how my brother felt, because he had been sending messages to me since I got out, and my own communication back to him had been sporadic at best. When I went home that night to sit in my apartment and not smoke, I gave in to the urge and called him back.

  He was overjoyed to hear from me, but since it was Jory, it would have been hard for anybody but me to tell. “Hey,” he answered. “Long time.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been busy,” I said.

  “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t mention what had happened today in the stables. Instead, I talked to him about the woodshop, about the project I was working on and how Cal was teaching me how to turn legs. “If it goes well, maybe I’ll make a set.”

  “Send me pictures. I don’t know what’s happening with you and I want to know.” There was a silence. “You should talk to Mom and Dad, too. They want to see you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want to see you,” my brother told me. “I miss you.” And damned if I didn’t get emotional about it.

  It took me a minute before I could answer. “I miss you, too,” I admitted, but then immediately followed with, “I can’t come home right now.”

  “Yeah,” he said, probably in exactly the same tone that I’d said that word to him. I knew my brother well enough to guess what he would do next.

  “Don’t drive down here,” I warned him. “Stay away from me.”

  There was a sudden burst of barking and Jory swore. “Mirabelle,” he called to his fiancée. “Looks like El Matador is eating the dirty laundry again. Damn dogs,” he said to me, sounding in no way like he meant it.

  “Jory, I have to go. Talk to you later.”

  “Later,” he agreed, but before he hung up, I heard his fiancée’s voice. I heard them laugh together and I held the phone, eavesdropping until my brother cut off the call. And then I sat, still holding it in my hand, thinking. I wanted to see him, yes, but I couldn’t mess that up for him. I couldn’t put my problems in the picture when he was so happy like that.

  I also couldn’t sit around in my apartment anymore, so I returned to what I had been doing pretty consistently since Isobel and I had discovered the money missing from the safety deposit box: I went looking for the guy who took it, Memphis. A smart move for him would have been to run as fast as he could have, to get out of town eight years before when the police swept most of us up. If our former associates had thought that he had turned on us to the police, his life wouldn’t have been worth shit.

  But Memphis hadn’t left when I’d gone away, and I had a feeling that he hadn’t run now, either. He was here, somewhere, in the city—or at least he had been until a few weeks ago, which seemed to be the last anyone had heard from him or seen him. Maybe his name was some place in Tennessee, but he himself had never gone much beyond the river, Eight Mile Road, and other boundaries of Detroit. Everything he knew and was familiar with was here.

  Memphis was probably like Isobel, and had assumed that enough time had passed that he was relatively safe, that old grudges were going to be forgotten. Maybe he had gone under, hiding now because he’d heard that I was out, but soon enough, he’d have to come up for air. He’d want to go to one of the clubs he liked, he’d want to see whatever girlfriends he had. I was working on finding them, too, because Memphis had always liked the ladies and he wasn’t going to be able to stay away.

  He’d probably spent all the money he’d taken from the bank within a week of getting his hands it, and I bet that he’d used or sold all the product that had fallen into his lap when the rest of us got picked up just about as fast. Memphis wasn’t someone to invest wisely or save for a rainy day, and with me looking for him, his business opportunities were severely limited. He’d have to show himself, and when he did, I’d be waiting there.

  Instead of focusing on Memphis, though, I thought about Isobel as I drove. I found myself directing my car over towards her building, and that was one of the few places in Detroit where I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t find my old business associate. Her car wasn’t there, but I saw Rella Ross walking in the twilight as I drove slowly by, so I stopped and parked.

  “Hello,” I said. I reached down, way down, to take the bag she was carrying from her hand. “Can I help you?”

  “You may,” she agreed. I gave her my arm, too, and her tiny hand gripped around it. “I just saw something in a shop window that I thought Izzie might like, some lotion that smells just delightful. Did you know that her birthday is approaching?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I admitted.

  “I need to rest now, but perhaps you should come for tea soon. There are a few things besides her birthday that I’d like to discuss.” She gave me a look that said “no” was not going to be an acceptable response out of me.

  “Tea. Sounds great,” I said, and she told me we had a date.

  ∞

  Isobel

  I let go of the canvas straps, again. I tried to be happy that I was starting this day at Ameyo’s pretty house, where she was nice and she and her husband never left gross messes, but I was having a hard time this morning. Everything seemed grey to me, and it had ever since Rory had dropped me off at my apartment the weekend before. Ever since he had held my hand and then gone and broken in and left weird medicine like a crazy person. What was I supposed to do with that? How was I supposed to trust him?

  “Izzie? Is that you?” Ameyo called, but I was allow
ed to be in here. She had given me a key, after all, which was a lot more than I could say for Rory coming into my place.

  “I’m in the kitchen,” I answered.

  She walked into the room while sliding some bangles onto her arm and her dress flowed out around her. Happiness was spread across her face. “Good morning! Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

  I shrugged. Sure, I guessed it was.

  “I’ve been meaning to mention something to you,” she went on. “I’m not sure if you can tell with this dress, but I’m pregnant.” She beamed. “I guess you’d find out soon enough!”

  I pretended surprise. “Wow, that’s wonderful!”

  “We wanted a baby for so long,” she told me. “My mom says that things don’t always work out just the way you want them to, but they do work out in the end.”

  “Things don’t always work out the way you want them to,” I echoed, but then made myself smile at her. “I’m sure glad they worked out for you.”

  She hugged me, full of happiness, and I had to remind myself not to pull away. I patted her shoulder.

  “I have all new cleaning supplies that I’d like you to use, because I’m suddenly really sensitive to smells, and I don’t want there to be anything at all toxic in the house that might hurt the baby.”

  “That’s so nice.”

  “What is?” she asked me, puzzled.

  “I mean, like, you’re already taking care of it. The baby.” I thought of my mom’s fun story about how she had snuck out to smoke while in labor with me at the hospital. I tended to think that was true, because I couldn’t imagine that scene being in a movie or TV show. “I just think it’s nice.”

  Ameyo looked at me curiously. “Well, I’m trying to be a good mom,” she explained, and I nodded, because I knew what that was, from Rella. “If you have time today,” she started, and gave me a list of things she wanted me to focus on, beginning with a deep clean of what would become the nursery. “We’re going to paint this weekend. Patrick is going to paint,” she corrected herself, laughing. “He doesn’t want me to do anything now, which is kind of fun but also boring.”