by Nicole Fox
“Yes.” My voice trembles a little. He can’t do that. If he does, I’m done. “But that seems like a waste of time to me, man. What if some Brass Skulls come riding through here and there you are, your bike in a thousand different pieces. What’ll you do then? It seems to me that wartime isn’t the time to mess around with your vehicle.”
“I’ve been thinking.” He strolls around the bike, catching my eye every so often and smiling in a way that makes me sure he must know. And yet it’s possible that he doesn’t, possible that this is how he grills every new recruit. “What the Brass Skulls have that we don’t is a couple of really solid fighters. I’m talking MMA-level motherfuckers who live for this shit. I’m a damn good fighter myself, and the good thing about being an outlaw is that when some prick comes at you with all that dancing shit, you can just knuckle-duster him in the face. But sometimes you lose your weapons and you’ve gotta fight. So what about you, Al Marshall-Brown? You a good fighter?”
I curl my upper lip. That’s how tough people look, right? “I don’t think it’s good for a man to say that about himself, but when it gets down to risky business I can take care of myself.”
“Risky business.” He lingers on the phrase, smiling that devilish smile, and then nods. Then he holds his hands up. “All right, then. Come on.”
“What … You want me to punch you?”
“Just a few jabs to keep your skills honed. That ain’t no big thing, is it?”
“I’ve got soap and water all over my hands, man. What happens when I punch you and the soap gets in your eye? I won’t be joining the club then, will I?”
“Wipe your hands on your trousers. Goddamn.”
I do as he says. I have no choice. It’s either this or admit that I can’t punch. Which is the truth. The last time I got into a fight was with a girl in second grade over a boy we both liked, but even that wasn’t much of a fight. I slapped her once and she slapped me once and then we both cried and hugged and made friends again. I hold my fists up like I’ve seen boxers do while flipping through the TV channels. His grin eggs me on. His blue eyes seem to say, “There’s no way you’re doing this.”
I throw my body into the punch, filled with strength. And then my fist hits his hand and it barely moves, if at all. The connection is weak. He squints at me.
“Come on, Al,” he says. “What’s the problem? You’re skinny but you ain’t that skinny. You never thrown a punch before?”
“I’m not a performing monkey!” I snap, and Allison comes out. I bite down and pick up my sponge, turning back to the bike.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re not a performing monkey. Let me tell you somethin’, Al Marshall-Brown. A few years back there was this pledge who was just like you. He was eager. Keen to be part of the life. He did what we asked him, hoping that he’d get a place in the club. At least that’s what we all thought. But then Mr. Ivarsson found out that this pledge had been selling secrets to a rival gang. The gang had killed three of our boys with that intel. The boss didn’t give this pledge any leeway ’cause he wasn’t patched, no damn way. When he found out, he buried that motherfucker up to his neck in the desert like they do in the movies, covered his face in pig’s blood and waited for the vultures to come flying over. I was there that day, and goddamn, what a vulture can do to a man when it’s given the right encouragement is really something.”
Me, buried up to my neck, blinking into the sun, a shadow of a vulture flying toward me; the image stabs me like a knife. “Good job I’m never going to do that, then,” I say, grinning and cocksure and confident. On the outside. “Sounds like that man made a real stupid mistake.”
“We all make mistakes, don’t we? We do somethin’ for what we reckon are good reasons and then we get down the line and we realize that it’s all horseshit, that we should’ve gotten out when we had the chance. Even the best of … people will make that mistake.” He raises his eyebrow when he says ‘people’. “But I know you won’t do somethin’ that stupid, Al Marshall-Brown. What’s with the double-barreled name? Was your mother Marshall or Brown?”
“Marshall. My dad was Brown. He was a biker too.”
“Part of a club?”
“Yes.”
What am I saying? The words just pour out.
Granite folds his arms. His biceps are tight in his T-shirt, pressing against his hands. “What club? What was its name?”
“I can’t remember,” I tell him. “I was very young when he left.” There: the first true thing I’ve said all day!
“Ain’t that a shame. Well, Al Marshall-Brown, I’m sure you’ll make a good member of the club. Just one more thing. What’s your fastest pump-valve time?”
I pause, wondering. That doesn’t sound real. But it could be real. Pump-valve time. Is that something that all bikers know about or just some bullshit he came up with to trick me? “Uh …” I trail off. He just watches me expectantly. I let out a puff of air between my teeth and laugh. “Don’t fuck me around, man. Pump-valve time. What kind of bullshit is that?”
“All right.” He nods. “You got me, Al. You really got me there. Let me tell you somethin’ else. I know you must like yourself some pussy. Who doesn’t, right? Well, I saw this real sweet piece at the gun shop a week ago. Real tight ass, real tight legs, a body like I’ve never seen before. She kept lookin’ at me and damn if I didn’t keep lookin’ at her. And ever since then I haven’t been able to get her out of my head.” He leans forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “In fact, Al, I even know where she lives.”
Chapter Nine
Granite
“She’s got some stones on her.” I lift up the table so that Ranger can mop underneath it. “I mean, goddamn.” I put the table down. “What sort of lady does a thing like that? I’ve known men who’ve shit their pants just walkin’ into Mr. Ivarsson’s office, but apparently she just strolled in there like it was no big thing. She was sweating like crazy washing those bikes all day, but she didn’t complain none.”
“What’s her deal, though? The hell is she doing?”
We move into the kitchen and scrub the sides as we talk. “I don’t know. If she’s a journalist, she’s got more stones than any journalist I’ve ever heard of, but if she’s a cop, why wouldn’t they just send a man in, and why wouldn’t the cops tell us?”
“Ah, police corruption.” His smile is a shadow under his hat.
“If she’s just a woman having a good time, I’m sure there are better ways to do it. I just don’t get it. A spy for the Brass Skulls, that could be it, but then it still don’t make sense why they’d send a lady and not a man. This strikes me as the sort of shit somebody does on their own. You should’ve seen her face, Ranger. I reckon she knew I knew, but she was too scared to say anything to try’n find that out for sure. She was playing the proper little pledge. It was fuckin’ hilarious.”
“I’m glad you’re amused, but you still have to decide what to do.” Together we take apart the dishwasher, cleaning each part and then resting it on top. “Think about it like this. What if somebody else finds out about her first? I still can’t believe that they’re falling for it. How stupid are they?”
“It ain’t about stupid or smarts. It’s just ’cause a person sees what they expect to see. So if you walk up to a streetlamp in the middle of the day and saw it down, folks’ll call the cops, but if you’re wearing a high-visibility jacket and a tool belt and you got a truck near you with more tools inside, folks’ll just go about their business ’cause that’s what they expect to see.”
“You read this in some psychology book?”
“No, I had to saw a streetlamp down for a job once.”
Ranger chuckles. “Give me grease,” he says. “Give me this shit. Oh, damn.” He goes to the sink and washes the gunk off his hands. “How can something that washes be so dirty? That makes no sense if you ask me. Here’s the thing, Granite, old pal. Here’s the real important part. When you were standing out there with her, shooting the shit, I bet you felt hap
pier than you have in weeks. I bet this funk you’ve been talking about went away. I bet you lost yourself a little bit.”
I turn away from him. “There’s no need to recite poetry at me or whatever the fuck you’re doing.
“I’m not reciting poetry. I’m just thinkin’ about when I met Maria, how she always made me forget whatever problems I had. When I was around her, the world was simple.”
“Maybe there was some of that,” I say uneasily. “But that don’t mean nothin’.”
“You’re in denial. That’s all.”
“I ain’t in shit.” I go into the diner and sit at the bar, resting my elbows on the counter and staring down at my hands. “I’ve never been in love or anythin’ like that, and I don’t reckon I ever will be. That ain’t for me. I’m a biker. We fuck club girls. We don’t let feelings get in the way. Let me tell you something about feelings, Ranger. They’ll fuck a man up if he lets them. I had some pretty strong feelings once about a person who I thought would never go away. I thought they’d be here at least until I was dead. They were younger than me, and better, so that was only fair. But that’s what feelings’ll get you: gut-punched every damn time.”
“You talking about your parents?” Ranger sits opposite me, head down. Maybe he knows that a man’s more likely to talk when he ain’t being looked at. “No—you said younger. Who, then?”
“I’m not gonna sit here trading stories with a man about my past. That’s just not somethin’ we do.”
“Let me tell you something.” Some fierceness comes into Ranger’s voice. He’s on his feet, hands at his sides. He almost does look like a cowboy except for how skinny he is. “You keep saying shit like that. We do. When are you gonna stop asking what your biker friends do and start asking what you want? You can’t just spend your life asking yourself what other people do just so you can do the same. If I did that, I’d still be in the club. I might have blood on my hands.”
“You’re so fuckin’ high and mighty, is that it?” I stand up.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I just know that I wanted somethin’ different. Me, Granite. Not the men at the club, or what someone told me. I asked myself honestly what I wanted and I came up with an answer.”
“What about loyalty? What about respect? What about commitment? Don’t they mean anything to you?”
“I am loyal to my wife, I respect my wife, and I am committed to my wife.”
“You were never patched, so you won’t understand. But when a man goes in to get his patch, he doesn’t walk out the same. He can’t be the same ever again, ’cause now he has a hundred brothers, and when I ask myself what I should do ’cause other men do it, it’s not so I can be like them. It’s so I can protect the club. Imagine if every brother went all Hollywood and followed his dreams. What’d you think would happen? The club’d fall apart and the Brass Skulls would roll in. You think you’ve got problems now with a few punks dealing weed outside on Friday nights? Just fuckin’ imagine what it’d be like without the Thunder Riders to move those punks along. Imagine what it’d be like having the Brass Skulls coming in here whenever they want, not paying, just using this place as a fuckin’ all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“I get all that,” Ranger says. “But just because that’s all true, it doesn’t mean you have to be so strict about it. I’m not telling you to leave the club. I’m not telling you to abandon your brothers. All I’m saying is that you ought to do something because you want to do it for a change. You’re not a mindless robot, Granite. You’re a fuckin’ man.”
“But what …” I shake my head.
“What?” Ranger urges.
“I’ve known you for a long time,” I say. “How many years now? Five? Six? In all that time, have you ever seen me like this? I don’t feel like myself. I keep going over it in my head, how I can see a lady in a gun shop and how that can change me. I tell myself it’s something else, that she has nothing to do with it, but she’s what I keep coming back to. I don’t know what to do about it. I just … life ain’t so simple, not anymore. Do you wanna know what I’m scared of? I’m scared that if I let myself talk to her, really talk to her without any of this pretending bullshit, I won’t be able to stop. And then the next thing I know, I’ll be a completely different man. That shit changes you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” He’s smiling. “But that’s not a bad thing. It’s supposed to change you. That’s what it’s for. Why don’t you do what I suggested the other day? Get a bunch of flowers, knock on her door, introduce yourself. That’ll be a start.”
Ranger must be some sort of a wizard because a few minutes later I’m riding toward a florist, picturing myself at her door with a bunch of flowers, picturing her face. I reckon it will light up. She might be able to hide behind that Al routine some of the time, but she can’t help but let herself slip through. The way she smiled at me under that beanie …
I go into the florist and approach the old man at the desk. He’s white-haired with brown spots all over his forehead, a drooping mustache, and a turkey neck. He sits on a stool with a magnifying glass, trimming a plant. The leaves and twigs fall onto the glass counter but sometimes flutter onto the floor.
“Hello, young man,” he says, smiling up at me. “How can I help you?”
“I need some flowers,” I tell him. “Somethin’ for a lady. I don’t know much about flowers, old man, so if you could just pick me some, I’d be grateful. Don’t worry about the cost.”
“Well, let me see.” He hobbles around the shop, peering at different flowers, making humming and ahhing sounds. Eventually he returns to the desk holding a big bunch of blood-red roses. “These should do nicely. Do you like them?”
“They’re fine. How much?”
“One hundred dollars.”
“Fine.”
I pay him and then go out to my bike. Now I have a problem, I realize, ’cause if I stuff these into the storage compartment they’ll just get ruined. I do a quick mental calculation of where I am. I’m only fifteen minutes’ walk from her neighborhood. I leave my bike where it is and walk down the street, feeling weird with the flowers in my hand. Every person I pass glances at me. It’s making me paranoid, even more so when I think about one of the fellas seeing me. I can’t be bothered to deal with the shit they’d give me.
I’m on the outskirts of her neighborhood, an American flag telling me I’ve reached the first house, when the bike engines growl from behind me. I turn at the sound. Five Brass Skulls ride past, a couple of them looking at me sideways, a couple of them maybe recognizing me. They don’t stop but that’s enough: enough to remind me that this is fuckin’ madness, enough to remind me that I’ve got to stop listening to Ranger. The Brass Skulls are real. They’re not a joke. And what am I doing when I think we’ve got a weakness in the club? Taking her flowers? It’s goddamn ridiculous.
I carry the flowers to the first house on my way and leave them on the porch, and then head toward her house. This is business now. I can’t mess around. I try’n make my heart hard, try’n not think about how tight that body is, how sexy those eyes are. That’s the thing she couldn’t hide, even if she did cut her hair. She couldn’t hide those eyes, womanly as hell.
Al’s motorcycle is in the driveway. I go up the porch steps and knock on the door, my hand behind my back where my gun is. I’m not gonna shoot her but it might not hurt to scare her some, let her know that she can’t just roll into a club and have nothing happen. She walks around just beyond the doorway. Her footsteps are quiet, but not quiet enough so I don’t hear them.
“Listen. You can hesitate in there all you damn well please. But you know why I’m here and you know I ain’t gonna leave until you let me in. And we both know you ain’t gonna call the cops.” Unless she is one. “So why’nt you just open up and stop messing me around?” I work on keeping my voice hard, ’cause really I want to just talk to the woman. “Come on now. Don’t make me huff and puff.”
The door rattles as she unlatches the locks and double-lock
s. She opens the door, wearing shorts and a tank top. For a second I let myself be drawn into her, those tanned legs, those wide eyes. She’s not wearing a hat anymore. Her hair is short and messy and sexy.
“Hello, Granite,” she says, her chest rising and falling quickly. “I’m Allison.”
“Allison.”
I take out my gun and walk into the house, dropping onto the couch.
Chapter Ten
Allison
“Do you want a beer? A coffee? An apple juice? I have some ice cream. Chocolate cones.”
I busy myself in the kitchen, heartbeat in my ears, in my fingertips. He just sits on the couch with his gun in his hand, staring straight ahead of him as though his head is locked in place. He doesn’t have his finger on the trigger but neither does he have it far away. I wonder if I’ve misjudged him. Did I mistake him as different from the other guys? Maybe he’s the type to shoot and kill me; I don’t know.