Quills and Daggers - A Second Chance at Love Romance: The Collective - Season 1, Episode 5

by Chris Genovese

  Chapter 5 - Nikki

  Only Kevin was at the Motor Quill when I arrived for my first appointment with Jane. She’d be arriving in thirty minutes and I needed to get set up. My old friend seemed happy to see me. He stopped watching his TV show, whatever it was, and stood to hug me.

  “N...N…Nikki,” he said. “H…How are you?”

  “I’m great,” I said. “It’s so good to see you again.”

  At the back of my mind, the strange phone call the night before bothered me. The caller had stuttered a little bit and he’d whistled like Kevin. He hadn’t sounded like Kevin though. His voice was creepy, fake sounding, like someone putting on the character of a deranged killer.

  As we separated from our hug, Kevin’s fedora was pushed far away from his face so I could see his eyes. They were full of life and his smile was genuine. He could never mean me harm. I forced a smile at him and turned to my station.

  My booth was nice and tidy but it wasn’t set up the way I like to work so I took a few minutes to rearrange my equipment before I sat down to go through some of the sketches I’d drawn up. I wanted Jane to have a few options. She’d given me some ideas that night in the diner but until she actually saw my work, she’d have no idea what she might have permanently taking the place of her nipple and breast.

  My back was to Kevin when he started whistling.

  Ring around the Rosy…a pocket full of posies…ashes…ashes…we all fall down.

  Chills ran from the crown of my skull down the back of my head and through my neck and spine. He was behind me, whistling the tune, the same tune I’d heard on the phone. For a moment I was afraid to look behind me. I could imagine Kevin sitting there, watching me as he whistled, and enjoying the way I’d frozen in place. He probably wondered what I was thinking. It had to be him. I whipped my head around and glared at Kevin.

  “Kevin,” I said. “Why are you whistling that tune?”

  “Wha…what?” he said.

  “You were whistling ring around the rosy,” I said. “Why?”

  “B…b…because Mrs. Rebecca t…t…taught me that,” he said. “I always wha…wha…whistle that.”

  The look on his face was like that of a concerned child, like he’d done something wrong and was trying to explain himself before he got in trouble. If James were here, yes, I refused to think of him as Ivory, he probably wouldn’t be so aggravated but I wasn’t James and I didn’t have the same calming effect. I’d seen Kevin’s angry, aggressive side and wondered if he’d ever flip out on me the way I’d seen him snap on people in the past.

  “T…t…to c…calm my st…st…stutter,” he said. “It wa…works. Ra…remember?”

  His stuttering seemed to worsen the longer he spoke and I was worried that I might push him too far. Still, I needed answers. James could soothe him later when he arrived.

  “Kevin,” I said. “Did you call me last night at work?”

  He stared at me with his head cocked to one side, a look of confusion on his face.

  “W…well I don’t know where you wa…work,” he said. “Y…you work h…h…here, right, Na…Nikki?”

  The force at which he had to push out the word “work” made me feel bad. I was making him talk more than he liked to. He’d always been quiet and here I was causing him discomfort with my questions, but I needed to know if he’d called me. It was too much of a coincidence. The first night I came into the Motor Quill, when James had asked if I wanted to work here full time, I mentioned that I already had a job. Did I say where I worked? I couldn’t remember. If I had, then Kevin could have easily heard me.

  My heart raced in my chest as I looked at him with his hat high on his head, the way he wore it only when friends were around. With strangers, he always kept it pulled down over his eyes, as if to shield himself from any judgement. With me, it was up high. He trusted me. He was comfortable around me. I wished I felt the same way around him.

  As I studied his face and saw his utter lack of recognition, it was clear that it had to be nothing more than a coincidence. Kevin hadn’t called me. No way. Not even the best actor could pull off the expressions he’d given me. He had no fucking clue what I was talking about. The caller had never said my name. If it had been Kevin, surely he would have used my name. Probably, the call had come from some looney who’d wanted to call someone he knew would be awake and answering the phone at four o’clock in the morning.

  “Where’s James?” I asked.

  “I…Ivory? He…he…he’s not feeling well,” Kevin replied. “He…c…called me and said t…t…to tell you. B…b…but I forgot.”

  “Oh,” I said aloud, not even realizing I was speaking. “I kind of wanted to see him.”

  “B…but you can s…s…see me,” Kevin said.

  His grin stretched from ear to ear and for the first time since coming back into the guys’ life, I stopped to study Kevin. He was a good looking guy. His head was bald but I suspected that was mostly by choice. He always wore his fedora, but beneath the rim of the hat, his face was strong and his jaw was square. When he smiled, his mouth creased at both corners, and dimples formed at his cheeks. His eyes were slate grey and he was always clean shaven. It seemed he didn’t like hair. Cleanliness was his thing, quite evident by the tidy appearance of his work station. I decided I was happy to see Kevin. I stood and hugged him again.

  “I missed you,” I said.

  “M…m…me too, N…Nikki,” he said.

  Kevin would be great company and once Jane arrived I wouldn’t have to force the poor guy to talk so much. She would keep me company and keep me busy at the same time. Before my customer arrived, one of Kevin’s did, a young guy in dress pants and a t-shirt. He carried a suit jacket, a dress shirt, and a tie all on one hanger. He was a nice, good looking guy and I found it interesting that nowadays, even people trying to climb the corporate ladder appreciated tattoos. Not long ago it was considered taboo.

  It didn’t take long for Kevin to get to work and as I watched him set his mind to the art in front of him, I became fascinated by the amount of concentration he put into his work. The customer was getting some sort of 3D, steampunk-like clockwork that appeared to be ripping out of his upper arm. Kevin’s tongue stuck out of his mouth slightly and his teeth held it in place, the look of focus you might find in an elementary school child working hard to correctly complete a math problem. Again, I felt bad for asking him about the call. He was practically a ten year old in a grown man’s body. Growing up, he reacted to violence with violence but he never initiated it. He wasn’t malicious. He was magnificent. He was one of God’s special creations, unable to handle life’s daily chores but extremely equipped with artistic talent. He was perfectly content to sketch, paint, and tattoo his way through life.

  My sudden moment of deep thought was interrupted by the metallic jingle of the bell above the door. Jane had arrived and she was looking so much better than she had the night we’d met. Kevin lifted his gaze and watched her enter, momentarily stunned by her presence. Aside from his artwork, I’d never seen him so captivated by something. I was tempted to walk over and wave my hand in front of his face. Even his customer lifted his head to see what had caused Kevin to stop working. His machine buzzed in place while his hand didn’t move.

  “Jane,” I said. “Hey! Come over here.”

  Jane met me at my booth where I had her sit at a small table and look through a sketch pad with me. I did my best to ignore Kevin’s constant glances in our direction. It was adorable. He was smitten with her. She looked his way a few times too and I wondered if she’d gotten back together with her husband or if she’d been wise enough to leave the bastard. Maybe I could play matchmaker and finally see Kevin with a woman.

  Jane flipped through my book and finally tapped her finger against one page.

  “This one,” she said.

  “The cherry blossoms,” I replied.

  She’d stopped at a picture I’d drawn of a cherry blossom tree, its petals scattered all around, perfect
for wrapping around the spot where her breast had once been.

  “Can you have my kids sitting at the base of the tree, one on each side?” she asked.

  “What if we have their silhouettes, so it’s just their dark forms sitting there, back to back against the tree trunk? What do you think of that?”

  Her smile gave me the answer. She was thrilled with the idea. Jane lay back in the seat and looked over at Kevin, then back at me.

  “Do I just…like do I have to take off my shirt and be here in front of everyone?”

  “Oh…no…hold on,” I said as I stood and grabbed the curtain from the wall and pulled it around my booth.

  I’d been out of practice too long and was rusty. If she hadn’t mentioned it, I might’ve let her strip right there in front of the guys.

  Horrible customer service, Nikki. Think. Take care of your client.

  “Well there goes that dream,” Kevin’s customer announced.

  “Creep,” I replied.

  It didn’t take long for me to get started and then it was all wincing and whining from Jane. It was to be expected. A piece as large and as detailed as this one wouldn’t feel good, but one of the things about tattoos is once you get past the initial pain, it all becomes only mild discomfort on the way downhill.

  I’ve always loved getting inked. Something about the pain is a turn on to me. I’d never let James tattoo me before and I knew if I did, I’d be in his bed before the night was over. His bed. I used to lie in bed at night and wonder what he was doing in his room. As much as I never was able to act on it, my mind always raced with sexual thoughts. Did he touch himself the way Lori down the street told me she caught her older brother touching himself? She claimed that was what all teenage boys did.

  It turned me on back then imagining James touching himself and it still turned me on thinking of him doing it now. My pussy ached as I considered it, milled it over, and imagined him on his mattress with the sheet kicked off at the foot of the bed and his fist wrapped tightly around his cock, pumping himself to thoughts of…me.

  “Fuck,” I heard myself say out loud.

  “What?” Jane said, obviously worried I’d made a mistake.

  The thought made me laugh and I squeezed my legs together to give my pussy a pinch.

  God, that feels good.

  “What happened?” Jane asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was thinking about some work I forgot to do. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Are you sure? Can you let me see it?”

  Through a small handheld mirror, I showed her the work.

  “It looks…” she said, trying to think of a word that would explain the swollen lines over reddened skin.

  “It looks great,” I promised. “Now’s not the time to be judging it. Trust me. It’ll look awesome when I’m done.”

  I wiped at the blood forming around one of the cherry blossoms and went back to work. I was only halfway finished with the job when Jane complained about the pain and begged me to stop for now and resume again some other time. I would have tried to convince her to let me finish if it hadn’t been for James walking in the front door.

  “You guys got any available appointments?” he asked.

  At the sound of his voice, I passed Jane her shirt and ripped the curtain open far enough to see him approaching. Kevin’s customer was gone, and all his attention was on the battered brother standing before him. James looked like shit. His side was bandaged and his face was beaten and bruised. I looked at Kevin and saw he was just as concerned.

  “What the f…f…fuck h…happened to to to you?” he said.

  “James,” I said.

  “Ivory,” he reminded me. “And I’m fine. I started talking to that pretty girl that was in here the other night and…”

  “The gangbanger one?” I asked, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. “The hoochie mama?”

  “She’s a nice girl,” he replied.

  The verbal slap was almost enough to make my head spin.

  “She’s a whore,” I said under my breath.

  “Well, her ex and his buddies don’t seem to like me a whole lot. I was on the receiving end of a very vicious beat down,” he said. “It was kind of like I tripped and fell in the middle of a mosh pit. But like if it were a Nazi mosh pit with crazy motherfuckers wearing steal toed boots. And if they hated me specifically.”

  “We get what you’re saying,” I replied with a very obvious roll of my eyes. “But you know what they say…if you date a whore, you get treated like one.”

  “The fuck does that mean?” James asked, looking at his brother for clarification.

  Kevin only shrugged.

  “It means you get pimp slapped,” I said and suddenly we all broke out in laughter.

  James didn’t last long before he clutched his side and complained about the pain. I’d seen enough mosh pits while following one of my favorite bands around, Shadow & Flame, and knew he meant he’d gotten stomped half to death. He didn’t deserve that, even if he was dating a hoe bag, a tramp who evidently didn’t stick up for her man.

  “And what did she do about it?” I asked, standing, ready to storm out of the studio and go searching for the little cunt when James walked over and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “She took care of me,” he said. “She helped me get to my apartment.”

  “I bet she did,” I said.

  “Are you jealous?” he asked.

  I was jealous. I hadn’t yet put a label on it but that’s exactly what I was. We might have spent a lifetime trying to carve our names with a heart into a tree trunk but it was still our tree trunk and I didn’t need some gangbanger bitch in there trying to dig out my name and replace it with hers.

  “I’m worried about you,” I said.

  “Wh…wh…where are th…the guys?” Kevin asked.

  His teeth were clenched and he breathed heavily through their gaps, making a hissing-like sound. Kevin was an angry pit bull when provoked and fucking with his younger brother was like poking him with a stick. James noticed his aggravation and rushed over to wrap him up in a hug. He doubled up in pain as he tried to close his arms around Kevin.

  “You’re h…h…hurt,” Kevin said.

  “I’m fine,” he promised. “You should see the other guys.”

  “Should I call you to reschedule?” Jane asked.

  Kevin’s demeanor changed. He relaxed a bit and smiled at Jane.

  “S…s…stay,” he said. “Let’s all go g…g…get something to eat.”

  I wasn’t ready to end the day either. Having Jane around might break up the awkwardness of being with two brothers, all three of us unwilling to dive too deep into the past. Besides, I liked the way Kevin beamed when she was near. It was adorable. Thinking back, I’d never seen him act that way around a girl. With Jane there he sometimes grinned the way he did back when we lived with Mrs. Rebecca and she’d let us help her make pumpkin pie. I think that time spent in the kitchen with our hands dusted with flour and each of us arguing over who got a turn at the mixing bowl might be a memory we were all content with keeping. That was a good one.

  “Do you like pie?” I asked, remembering the diner where I’d first met Jane.

  “Pumpkin pie?” James asked.

  Hearing the words from his mouth made me feel all the more in tune with him. Even with all the bad of our past, he remembered the good sometimes too. That was important.

  “I luh…luh…love p…pumpkin pie,” Kevin said.

  “Well I know the perfect place to get some,” I said.

  Working together, we cleaned up the shop quickly and were on our way.

  ***

  At Del Mar’s Diner, Kevin led the way through the door, excited to show us his frequent pie pit stop. He waved at the first waitress he saw and one of the cooks peeking out from behind the grill. Both returned an awkward smile and a half wave. Something told me they weren’t as excited to see him as he was to see them.

  “Wow, Kevin, y
ou’re friends with everyone here,” I said.

  “I c…c…come here a lot,” he said proudly.

  At the table, I quickly slid into a booth next to Jane in an effort to avoid the awkwardness of sitting next to Kevin and to hide my desire to sit next to James. Sitting beside him could quite possibly turn into not-so-accidentally brushing his leg beneath the table. Yes, sitting next to her was my best bet. When the waitress arrived, Kevin beamed and passed her a friendly wave which again came unanswered. I looked at Jane and over at James and I believe I may have been the only person to notice Kevin’s odd behavior.

  “D…do you have p…p…pumpkin p…pie?” Kevin forced out, each word struggling to pass through his lips.

  Having never stuttered before in my life, I couldn’t help wondering what it felt like. Was it nothing more than an annoyance or did his vocal chords strain with each wrestled syllable?

  The waitress tapped her shoe on the floor and folded her arms in front of her chest. She looked over her shoulder at another waitress pouring drinks behind the counter and as they locked eyes, the one pouring drinks lowered her head and snickered. Our waitress kept her face hidden far too long and I knew she too was stifling laughter. We were the butt of some kind of joke.

  “Yes, sugar, we do have pumpkin pie,” the waitress said. “You eat it here all the time.”

  “Well I’d love some,” James said.

  The waitress bit her lip, still trying to keep from laughing.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “And me,” Jane agreed.

  It was settled. We’d all have pumpkin pie.

  As we waited for our food to arrive, talk inevitably turned to our shared upbringing. I’d hoped it wouldn’t, but Jane started it when she asked about the pumpkin pie.