Bron 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. Bron 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, Bron 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 Christina 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 Bron 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 Bron 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,” Bron 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 Christina rejecting me, and now Bron 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.
“Red,” Bron 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, Bron. Leave off with this horseshit.”
Bron 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 Christina 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 Christina. 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?
“Red,” Bron 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 going around and around my mind. This is my business; this is the work I can lose myself in. It feels good to have Bron at my shoulder. It feels good to be on a job. It feels good to be focused. Bron and I stop for a moment outside the door, and then we nod at each other; Bron 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 Jordy at their head. If we can find Jordy, 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 Cherub. As he turns, he sees me and Bron, and his smiles dies. “Oh,” he mutters.
“Oh,” I echo, pacing across the bar and standing over the two men. Behind me, I hear Bron 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 Bron 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 Jordy 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?” Cherub mutters, his voice quivering. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”
“He shot one of our pledges,” Bron 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 Faithless 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?”
Bron 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,” Cherub says. “Really, we don’t.”
&n
bsp; “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
Christina
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 Red is going to be in there. I’m only here to find out where Red 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 Red 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 Faithless! I will myself to stop the man, to ask him for Red’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.
Red: Red, here. Red, 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.
“Red,” 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. Red is almost there when I catch up with him and place my hand on his elbow.
“Red,” I say. “Wait a second.”
He shrugs my hand off. “Go home, Christina,” 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, Red! 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 Red 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 longer 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?” Red 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.
I launch myself at him without thinking, punching him in the chest. “Do you really think I would fucking lie about this?” I snap, hitting him over and over in the chest. “Do you really think I’d come here just to make this up, you fucking asshole? Do you really think I’d be here telling you this if it wasn’t true? What sort of person do you take me for? Do you really see me as that sort of girl, Red? Really?” With each word, I punch him in the chest. Even in my anger, I’m aware that he doesn’t move an inch under the force of my blows. He just stands there, taking them with ease. This makes me even angrier…I’m unloading my rage and he doesn’t even have the decency to flinch under my blows!
“Prick!” I hiss. “Asshole! Jerk!”
And then he begins to laugh, deep, throaty laughs, and this drives me ever crazier.
“Fucking prick! Fucking asshole!”
I make to punch him again in the chest, but he catches my wrists, darting his hand out viper-like and catching them with ease. I stare up into his face; he is gazing down at me, his old cocky smile on his face. “Let go of me,” I say, breathing heavily. “You’re a prick.”
He shrugs, and then steps forward, pushing me firmly into my car. “Maybe I am,” he says. “Yeah, maybe so. But I gotta admit, seein’ you so full of rage was definitely worth pissing you off.”
I try and take my hands away from him, but I can’t. He’s too strong…and there’s something about how strong he is, about how easily he can hold me back, that sets my body going. I tell my body to stop it; I tell myself to retain my rage; I remind myself of the way he snapped at me. But I can’t. My heart is still beating fast, my palms still sweating, but now it’s for different reasons. He presses his body against me and I feel his cock, rock-hard.
“Let go of me,” I say. No—not say. Moan. I moan it. “Let go of me,” I repeat, trying to make my voice firm, but I can’t.
At the end of the side street, it is daytime, not a busy street, but not
a completely dead one, either. Anybody could walk by. Anybody could see us.
“If you really want me to let go of you,” Red says, that infuriating, hot-as-hell smirk on his lips, “just ask me one more time. But I warn you, I’ll do it this time.”
God, I hate that expression on his face. He hasn’t said sorry for shouting at me, I note. I shouldn’t put up with that. I shouldn’t let him shout at me and then give myself over to lust. But my lust is so strong, overpowering me, my pussy already aching desperately for his touch. No, I try and tell myself. No, look to the end of the side street. Anybody could walk past. Somebody might see. No, stop it.
Devil's Property: The Faithless MC Page 9