by J. C. Allen
There was no gunshot. There was no bloody cry from a knife. There was none of that.
She’d probably just had her neck snapped.
Dead.
I had no idea who she was. I didn’t recognize the voice. I didn’t recognize most of the voices. Why the hell would I when I could barely recognize myself?
I wanted to care for her. I wanted to reach out to her family—if she had any—and apologize, saying she’d fallen into the wrong crowd that I myself had gotten into. I wanted to say that I was sorry…
But I couldn’t.
I had to make sure I didn’t join her.
And that meant acting around Rock and his cronies full time as if I did not care a single iota for any human life.
Even if, in just about any other life, that girl could have been my best friend.
“This won’t come as any surprise to you, Eve,” Crystal said, her voice hushed and quivering as she emerged from the bathroom. Only then did I realize my single, tattered bed blanket was covered in tears, and I’d been weeping into them for perhaps a full half hour.
I literally had to shake my head to snap my thoughts out of the train they’d gotten on, the train of death, Chuck, and the intersection of those two topics—and how those two topics might hopefully intersect a little more.
“Sorry, what?” I said, blushing.
“But we are not living the good life here,” she said, ignoring my words. It didn’t much matter, though, given that the intensity with which she spoke ensured I listened to every word as if they came from Rock himself. “We are not working a cushy job and nobody’s about to confuse this place as the Ritz anytime soon. Hell, nobody’s gonna confuse this shithole for a Red Roof Inn, and I’m pretty sure your educated ass would’ve never stopped at one before.”
I would have if needed. But… yeah.
Now? That would be fucking paradise.
“This is, pardon my bluntness, a bad life. We are living a bad life. You heard what just happened! And while we can do what we can to keep our spirits up despite that, it is foolish to think that there won’t be more bad things—bad ongoings—taking place around us in the future.”
The subtlety was dropped. The laughing Crystal from the streets, the compassionate Crystal from the bus stop, the quiet Crystal from the middle of the night had vanished.
This was the real Crystal. This was the angry Crystal. The one who held back nothing, not so much in crassness in public but in honesty in private.
And why should she be anything but a raging bull? We’d just heard someone get killed—probably for an offense as small as saying the wrong thing to Rock, something as innocent as “but, why?”
“ You see something bad, hear something bad, or, yes, even smell something bad, and you’d do well to pretend you didn’t see, hear, or smell a goddam thing, got it? You got it? ‘Cause, bad as this life is, bad as things are, they can get a whole lot badder if you go peeking, listening, or even sniffing around where you got no place peeking, listening, or sniffing.”
As if to make a point, she raised her arms to the side, went and tagged one side of the apartment, and then tagged all four walls. She couldn’t have taken more than six steps, so small was our place that it sometimes felt like we were meant to be lovers, not separate employees.
“This? This is our home,” she said matter-of-factly, stomping her heels on the floor beneath her. “This! This apartment and nothing else! Outside that door, we are not home, and anything that happens out there is somebody else’s business—and by somebody else’s, I damn well mean Rock’s business—and the way that we stay alive is to keep our eyes, ears, and noses out of other peoples’ business, especially Rock’s. You got me?”
Do I got you?
How can I not get you? I know I did something stupid. I know I was a fucking moron. But I think you spoke loud and clear, Crystal.
I heard that girl die.
I heard her screams.
I heard everything. I know the truth.
I have no freedom.
I have no ability to think for myself.
I am a slave and—
Crystal slapped me. Hard.
“I said ‘you got me?’, Eve!” she hissed, demanding an answer.
“Y-yes. Yes, Crystal, I got you. I…”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. My thoughts had answered it all, and now I feared just speaking my mind, even if “my mind” was nothing more than full agreement with what Crystal said.
I just nodded. My face stung and felt hot. I forced myself not to touch my cheek, but I couldn’t keep my eyes from watering. Feeling as though the stink that occupied the mystery apartment and crawled about the outside hall had ears, I stifled the second wave of sobs that struck me at that moment.
If this was going to happen regularly…
“Oh, girl…” Crystal’s voice broke and she threw her arms around me. “I’m so sorry. I’m… I’m sorry.”
I wanted to tell myself she was apologizing for hitting me, but I was regrettably too smart to believe that. I knew too much.
“It’s OK,” I lied to Crystal, knowing that nothing about this was OK.
What the fuck was supposed to be OK about this?!? Why the fuck had this happened?!? What the fuck kind of world had I fallen into in which Chuck, my own brother, could have… could have…
“It’s OK,” I whimpered.
I went to my bed, my tears still fresh in my eyes. I knew that the concept of sleep was not going to happen. Well, if it did, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
Because why would it? Why would life give me an out when it had already fucked me over so much?
I knew how the rest of my “night” would go. If I got lucky, I wouldn’t dream much of anything. I wouldn’t get deep sleep, but at least then I wouldn’t wake up screaming at the top of my lungs, the prostitutes one door down banging on my wall to shut the fuck up.
If I did fall into a deep sleep?
I would have the kind of night terrors that would have made me beg for my mother just ten years before. I would see Rock. I would see Chuck. I would see them laughing together. I would see myself, naked, helpless, unable to do a goddamn thing. I would see a world that was somehow worse than the one I lived in, if only because my dreams didn’t follow the “rules” that my normal world did.
Maybe someday, maybe someday soon… if I got really lucky, and I mean really lucky—the kind of lucky that would allow someone to survive five heart attacks and then com back and run a marathon—then maybe someone like that biker today would get me. Maybe I would escape the clutches of this hell hole and never return. Maybe I would get the police to grow some balls, arrest Rock, and then move on.
Maybe…
But more likely than not, I was trapped.
Damn you, Chuck.
God. Fucking. Damn you.
7
Derek
I was still a fucking drunk and hungover mess.
Shockingly, Stephanie leaving my place, leaving me sober in the self realization that was now accompanying my day, had not suddenly evaporated the alcohol out of my bloodstream. The only thing it had done was reduce the time it took for me to go from sloppy drunk to miserable drunk.
At least now, I knew, when the sobriety came, it would be marked less by a depressing change in temperament and more by greater physical control. My attitude already sucked—how could it get any worse?
In a strange, weird way, it was almost liberating. I could actually look forward to something in the day.
This realization… I’m not going to say it made me feel better. I’m not going to say life was great all of a sudden, or that even my day was great.
But, hey, it was something. And when you were in my spot, you would take something.
At some point, I finally got the dignity to at least put on some gym shorts, although I couldn’t even be bothered to put underwear on. Too many clothes on my skin would leave me feeling sick—fucked up, right? How drunk I was to have that f
eeling?
At one point, I went out onto the porch to see if the sun had let up at all. Had Mother Earth graced us with a day that didn’t feel like the oven on “Self-Clean” setting?
No. Not even close.
The heat wave was carrying on, and it didn’t seem to have any intention of letting up. Between it and the scorching metal that would soon be between my thighs, I couldn’t help but wonder if I truly was in hell.
A sort of ironic dread came across me. It would be like something out of the Bible, a punishment like this, with the all-too-obvious telltale symbol constantly with me like that.
“This isn’t hell,” I grumbled to nobody in particular. Wasn’t like I knew what my neighbors looked like, let alone if they could hear me. Unlike me, they probably had their shit together enough to have day jobs, or at least not be in the life of clubs, violence, and death.
“The devil’s not that wicked.”
And if he is, then he’s here on Earth right now. And he goes by the name of Rock.
I snorted, headed inside, and instinctively headed for my stereo. I didn’t even think about the fact that it was dead yesterday, dead this morning, and not likely to have resurrected on the third attempt.
It was only after I was about five seconds into a vaguely familiar Aerosmith tune that I even began to realize the significance of what had happened.
Huh.
Maybe things are getting a little bit better.
Maybe…
The previous night’s episode with the honestly-not-so-bad Stephanie had—though I had every intention of underselling this fact to Matty, God forbid he get to lord this fact over me for the rest of our lives—done something for me. It wasn’t the cure-all that Matty had all-but prescribed it as—pussy was nothing to scoff at, but even at its best it wasn’t putting Zoloft out of business—but I couldn’t say that getting laid hadn’t done something to tweak my attitude.
Granted, having the old wife kick back up a bit helped, and the fact that I actually had sobriety later in the day to look forward to also helped, but why should I complain about the breakdown of my good days? I’d just take ‘em however I could get ‘em. They were a luxury.
Then again, as Matty might put it, “an oil change won’t mean diddly-cock if what’cha need’s a new engine.”
But would it still be me if I needed a brand new engine? Is it really the same Derek Knight if I need a brand new engine?
I think not.
“He’ll just have to deal with the fact that I got my fluids topped off,” I muttered, and then immediately wondered what it meant that I’d been speaking aloud to nobody.
Maybe I’m still…
No, there’s no maybe. I am.
I’ll just say I’m drunk.
But as I always said, I could bullshit others, but I couldn’t bullshit myself.
I was still crazy.
And for what had actually gotten me off last night…
And given that, even before that, I had found myself oddly attracted to a prostitute…
For at least a few more hours while I could say I was too drunk to be walking, let alone on a bike, though, it was a nice, blissful sort of crazy.
I had to get to the shop eventually, so even though part of me wanted to “celebrate” with another glass of gin, I knew better. I poured myself some water into the same cup I would have used for gin and toasted myself.
“To Derek Knight,” I said. If this were too egotistical to be believed, then I was simply going to blame the whole ridiculousness on the alcohol. And who drank the alcohol? “The last Knight standing in the darkness. The last bastion for the Savage Saviors. The last man who can stand up to the devil on Earth.”
I pounded my fist gently against the glass of water and chugged it. It didn’t sober me up, but it gave me a strange rush. Funny how drinking what was nutritionally sound for me made me feel better.
I grabbed another glass.
“To my father,” I said, imagining the man just on the other side of the couch to me. “To showing me what it meant to be a man.”
And that, I decided after the last glass of water, was where I was going to stop with the congratulatory cheers.
To cheer anyone else and to celebrate anyone else would destroy the positive feelings I’d created. Only my father had died at a good age.
For the rest, it was a harsh reminder that only the good died young.
A few hours later, finally, a little earlier than usual, maybe about 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon, I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to get my fill of the store. Yeah, they’d be doing real work, but it’s not like our real operations had standard hours. We worked as we needed to, and I knew with the recent supply of cargo we had some overtime we needed to be pulling in.
I threw on a half-respectable shirt, a plain gray shirt that I knew had a fifty percent chance of needing to go into the trash can with all the sweat that was coming on my ride over. I threw on my leathers, wishing like hell that bikes had a way to allow for shorts without risking burning the shit outta my calves—because with this current setup, I’d sweat so much I’d make an entire swamp out of my ass.
I grabbed my sunglasses and headed downstairs, riding the elevator in silence… even, in fact, humming an Aerosmith tune. Damn, it really was a fucking good day.
The doors opened, I saw my gal with her flame decals roaring before me, and found myself smiling. I felt so good, in fact, that I even threw on my helmet. I knew that Matty would have something to say about that—“I told yer sorry ass to do it, damn good thing ya learnin’ now!”—and that made my smile even wider.
What is going on?
Am I actually sober? Maybe I should back off. Shop will be open for longer.
Business, though, waited on no man, most especially the head of the operation. I keyed the ignition, listened to the loud cough and the constant kick that came, and backed my way out to face the road. I made sure my helmet was snugly on, lifted my feet, and revved.
It was time to move out.
It took about one block to remind myself why I didn’t have good days, even when I got on the bike.
I caught a glimpse of something in the distance at the end of the road. It could have been a heat mirage, sure.
Or it could have been a smiling woman holding a pregnant belly and offering me a wave, one appearing in the street because I’d been dumb enough to stop at an intersection instead of just offing myself.
Not now, Maggie. Please. Today’s going so good…
I pleaded inwardly, impressed with myself to know not to try saying that aloud. But it wasn’t doing much good, and the damage was already done.
Without thinking, the better to escape the darkness in my mind, I revved the engine and rocketed around a Taurus, actually getting the chopper up on its back tire in a sloppy wheelie as the acceleration proved too much for the front wheel to handle. The tight-ass in the Taurus shot me a look, and I shot him the bird. He was late to return the gesture, and I started laughing as I swerved to get in front of him.
OK, now this is more like it! I thought as I found my zone, my zen.
Screeching brakes and a car horn sang behind me and, an instant later, I was swerving in front of oncoming traffic from the other lane to pull into Matty’s shop. It happened so quickly that, mercifully, I’d seen avoiding her again.
I also hadn’t seen that gal from the street corner, but then again, I had come early. It was broad daylight, and it made no sense for her to show up quite yet.
I was about to steer the bike around back when I heard a second chorus of angry honking and, turning my head, I saw the Taurus pull into the parking lot—the driver’s face pulled into a look of fury and determination. Is this asshole for real?
“Well this should be good,” I said.
It almost certainly wasn’t one of Rock’s men—they wouldn’t have been so stupid as to go to our base without backup or protection. That would have been a move beyond stupid or insane, in fact. I almost thought we might
show some weird sort of pity by thinking the crony was too fucked up to be attacked.
Instead, no, it was almost certainly some middle-aged man who thought that he was going to teach someone some manners. It was probably some old lady who just needed some stern looks to go on her way. Or it was a punkass teenager who needed a lesson in what real toughness looked like.
Either way, the entertainment value promised to be decently high.
In front of me, the doors to the shop chimed as a few Saviors stepped out. I didn’t need to look to know there was more than one. There were always a few boys stationed at the front of the shop to keep an eye out and to maintain a semblance of the business that the shop presented itself as. Should somebody come in wanting a tune-up or hoping to score a new bike, they wouldn’t be left waiting for service and wondering if all the people they saw coming and going were, perhaps, up to something other than acting as a mechanic and motorcycle shop.
It was rare that anybody actually come through there looking to do any sort of legitimate business, but it did happen. Moreover, it helped to have records of employees and jobs to prove that so-and-so couldn’t have been doing such-and-such on when-and-when, because they were here doing this-and-that.
Then again, what good was paying off the police commissioner if it didn’t give us a bit of breathing room when the law was involved.
Especially when, in the long run, our activities were, though certainly not wholeheartedly legal and wholesome, certainly geared towards maintaining the city rather than throwing it into a nosedive like the Black Falcons seemed hellbent on doing.
We let people indulge in vices that didn’t harm others, at least not to the extent that lives were at risk. The Black Falcons?
The less that was said and the more that was done with those assholes, the better.
I kept my eyes on the Taurus, craning my neck to do so. The man’s face only shifted marginally at the sight of the others as my comrades stepped out to greet us. So, not an older lady, not a punkass teenager. Probably someone I would have seen at my old job. Overstressed, underpaid, never appreciated, and he needs a thrill in life.