Lucky me.
I pull a pair of leather gloves from my back pocket, and yank them on, then stare up at the place wondering if I can jump high enough to grab the lower rungs of the railing and pull myself up. I walk over, take a breath, and give it a try. I hit the concrete header with my forearms, barely managing to grab a bar with one hand, straining hard. Before I can get my other hand up there, I slip and fall, slamming onto the concrete drive.
“Eat a dick, gravity,” I hiss, feeling the wind knocked out of me. Red Dog leans over me, extending his hand to pull me to my feet.
“Want to try that again with a boost this time, moron?” he asks.
“Fuck off,” I gasp.
He chuckles, and laces his fingers together, bending for me to step into them. I put my boot in his hand, and he heaves me up to easily grab the bars and pull myself up and over.
Thirty seconds later, I’m opening the iron gate for the rest of my brothers to follow me up the stairwell.
Cole leads us to the correct door and we stand out of sight while he knocks. The door opens a crack with a chain bolted, and a woman peers out.
“Yeah?”
Cole boots the door, and it flies open.
She screams, stumbling back as we all shoulder in.
Dipshit is on the couch, toking on a bong, but drops it and crab-crawls backward over the side, trying to make his escape down a hall.
Crash darts after him, shoulder driving him into the drywall, and leaving a dent where the dude’s skull was.
He falls to the carpet, holding his head. “Oow. Fuck, what’d you do that for?”
Crash and Wolf beat on the moron for a minute, then haul him to his feet and pin him to the wall, while Cole gets in his face.
“Thought I warned you about just what turf you could sell your low-quality crap in.”
“But that leaves me, like, shit for area,” he whines through a broken nose, and spits out a mouthful of blood.
Shane holds the girl quiet, with an arm around her body, and his gloved hand over her mouth.
I scan the apartment. It’s a druggie shithole; used needles scattered on the table, and blood spots on the wall. The filthy place stinks of unwashed bodies.
Cole puts his gloved hand around the dude’s neck and squeezes. “Next time I have to come deliver this message, you won’t be breathing when I leave, understand?”
The guy manages to nod, his eyes bulging out of his face and his skin tone turning blue before Cole finally releases him. He slumps unconscious to the floor.
Cole approaches the girl, who is now bug-eyed and squirming in Shane’s tight hold. He gets right in her face. “Am I gonna regret letting you live when I walk out of here?”
Shane pulls his hand away so she can respond.
“N-no, sir.”
“Good answer,” Cole replies. He takes in the dump and the loser on the floor, before turning back to her. “You’re a pretty girl. Don’t waste your life on this shit-for-brains asshole.” Then he jerks his chin to Shane, who releases her.
Cole stalks out the door and we all follow. I catch Crash out of the corner of my eye. He grabs the dude’s wallet off the coffee table, yanks all the bills out, and slaps them to the chick’s chest. “Listen to the man. Take this and get on the first bus out of town. Understand?”
She nods vigorously, and whispers, “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, just help your fucking self.”
We move downstairs, mount up, and head back to our clubhouse in San Jose.
Rolling back onto the lot, we climb from our bikes and stretch. I rub my shoulder where I slammed into the concrete and Wolf chuckles.
“Bro, you’re losin’ your touch. Used to be you could skinny up a drainpipe like a damn monkey.”
I rub the spot. “Suck my dick.”
We walk in the clubhouse, my brothers laughing. I’m barely through the door when a prospect approaches me.
“Someone’s here to see you, Green,” he says, jerking his chin toward a woman moving from the bar toward me. Dressed in jeans and high-heeled stylish boots, a turtleneck sweater with a gold medallion belt around her hips, she doesn’t look her age. My mom is still rockin’ it even in her late fifties.
I hear Red Dog give her a wolf-whistle, and she glances over and winks at him, but when her gaze snaps back to mine, I realize I fucked up.
I close my eyes and curse, immediately remembering I was supposed to be somewhere this afternoon. Shit. I can’t believe I let something so important slide. I imagine if I pull out my phone and check it, I’ll find a bunch of missed calls and texts. That’s the downside of riding a loud-ass Harley, and sometimes the upside, depending how you look at it.
“You missed the reading of the will,” she says, stopping before me.
My brothers overhear that and immediately fade off.
I motion to a table and we sit. I lift my arm and snap my fingers and a prospect runs over with a couple of bottles of beer.
I rub the back of my neck. “Sorry, Ma, shit just got away from me today.”
“She left you the house and a portion of the insurance money, Tim.”
I stare down at my beer bottle, my thumbnail scraping the label, soggy with condensation. I finally meet her eyes. “Don’t you want it?”
“I have a home with Eugene now.”
I scoff at that and give her a smirk as I lift the bottle to my lips.
“Look, I know the special bond you and your grandmother had when you were younger. I think that property has special meaning for you. All the memories, and, well . . . doesn’t it?”
“Of course it does.” I look at her. “But if you need the money, you should sell it, Ma.” I’d hate to think financial reasons forced her to stay in any relationship.
“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I’m happy now.”
“Really—living in suburbia with a squirrelly looking tax accountant like Eugene?”
“Yes, really, and let’s leave him out of this. He’s a good man.” She reaches her hand across the table to cover mine, and suddenly I’m remembering all the times I held her hand and walked from Grandma’s down the street to Ryker’s for an ice cream cone. “Tim?”
I glance to the table where my brothers are playing pool, before finally meeting her eyes.
“Son, don’t you want it?”
“Come on, Ma, seriously, what would I do with it besides sell it?”
“Live there, rent it out for income, whatever you want.”
I huff out a laugh. “Me in a big Victorian house like that?”
“Why not?”
“It’s in Santa Cruz. The club is here.”
“It’s not that far and you know it.” When I don’t reply, she sighs. “Just think about it, okay? I think you’ll regret it if we sell it off.” She looks at her watch. “I’ve got to go.”
“So soon? You didn’t even drink your beer.”
“I know, but it’s getting late. I need to get home.” She stands and gives me a hug.
My arms tighten around her. “I miss her, Ma. I should have gone to see her more. I wish we’d had more time.”
“I know, baby.” She pats my back. “She loved you, and she knew you loved her too.”
I nod, too choked up for words. We pull apart, and she squeezes my bicep.
“You still have your key?”
“Yeah.”
“I cleaned out the fridge, but everything else is still there. I haven’t had the heart to get rid of any of it . . .” she stares off into space a moment, living in her memories, and then finally looks at me. “You should go look at the place, even if you don’t want it, you know, just to say goodbye, if nothing else.”
I nod, not sure that I will. I walk her outside into the cool night air and we stop beside her car.
“You really doin’ okay?” I ask.
She smiles. “Eugene’s a funny guy. He reminds me of your father that way.” She takes my chin in her hand and gives my head a little shake. “That
humor you inherited.”
“I wish I remembered him.”
“You were only three when he got sick. I wish you’d had more time with him. At least you had Grandpa. He tried hard to fill in before he passed.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call you in a few days.” She climbs in the car and pulls out.
My eyes follow the twin taillights until they disappear, then I stare at the sky. Only one star is visible this early, but I find it. My grandmother’s words echo in my childhood memory as she points up to the stars, holding my toddler body tight in her arms. Do you see that star, Timothy? Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight . . .
I clench my jaw as my eyes sting and dig in my hip pocket for my keys. I slide my thumb over them, fanning them out and find the old one, the one the color of a worn penny, the one I’ve carried with me since I was in middle school.
It’s a good night for a ride, so in a spur-of-the-moment decision, I climb back on my bike and head toward Santa Cruz. It’s a thirty-minute ride across the Santa Cruz Mountains to the big house on Chestnut Street.
2
Green
I pull in and park, climbing off the bike and stretching, the pings from the cooling big-twin engine are the only sound in the quiet neighborhood. I look up at my grandparents’ home. Granddad worked for the railroad and had a good pension and a bunch of valuable railroad stock. When they bought this big house, it was only a few hundred grand.
I’ve heard the story so many times in my youth, that I know it by heart. Grandma fell in love with the big, historic home that at the time was in bad shape. She loved the history of the place; she loved the fact that there were still trolley lines imbedded in the street out front, and that this neighborhood had once been where the city’s moneyed families had lived.
A railroad magnate built the house in the late 1800s. Through the years, as it passed from owner to owner, the place had fallen into disrepair. Grandpa loved the fact that it had a railroad history, so he gave in to his wife, and they bought it and fixed it up.
I stare up at the place. It’s got a lot of spindle work and fancy trim, a second-story, gabled porch over the front door, bay windows, and turrets. It was a grand dame for her time.
My eyes fall to the yard. It’s been let go, and a stab of guilt knifes through me. I should have come by to do the yard. After Mom and I moved out, Gram turned the place into a bed and breakfast, more to give her something to do and fight off loneliness, than any need for an income.
Five years ago, when she turned eighty, she closed the B&B, and her health began to go downhill. Seeing the state of the yard now, I know she’d hate the fact that her prized flowerbed and meticulously trimmed hedges are now overgrown with weeds.
I climb the steps and insert my key in the lock. The door creaks as I enter the large foyer. The place smells like it’s been shut up for months, which it has, but as I glance around, everything looks exactly the same as when I lived here with Ma.
The parquet floors, the antique brass light fixtures, the ornate, carved staircase with its double landings, ones I jumped down to on a regular basis, the boom echoing through the house and earning me a stern talking to on more than one occasion.
I smile and glance in the living room on the right with its huge carved fireplace and stained glass windows; it was a room they barely ever used.
I move to the left side of the foyer to the front parlor with its round bay turret, windows flooding the room with light, an equally impressive fireplace bookends this side of the house. This is the room I usually found Gram in, reading or doing needlework or knitting. My eyes drop from her floral upholstered chair to the knitting basket still there on the floor, needles jammed haphazardly as if she just stepped away to get a cup of tea.
I roll open the big wooden pocket doors that lead to the dining room. The table is still covered with the same lace tablecloth I remember as a child. The buffet against the wall holds her blue Dresden china.
I push open the swinging door, through the butler’s pantry and into the kitchen at the back of the house. It’s big with lots of windows and the original wood floors. No updates have been done in here since the nineties and it’s an odd mix of tile counters and white pre-fab cabinetry. There’s still a brick chimney on the far wall that once connected to a pot-bellied stove.
I open an upper cabinet, finding all the coffee mugs my gran collected. Front and center is still the one I gave her in first grade that says I love my Grandma with a big red heart.
But that’s not what I’m looking for. I know she always kept the wine stashed on the top shelf. I feel around and come up with a bottle. It’s a red from Sonoma Valley, a 2015 vintage. It’ll do.
I dig in a drawer for a corkscrew but skip the glass and take the bottle with me backtracking to the big staircase.
I trudge up the steps to the second floor. The bedroom my grandparents shared faces the front of the house and also has a turret with bay windows, an ornate fireplace, and a big carved four-poster bed.
I remember my grandpa kept little wrapped butterscotch candies in a jar on the mantel, and he’d sneak me one every day. I see the jar is still there, his pipe in a stand next to it, along with his gold pocket watch that the railroad gave him when he retired. I pick it up and pop it open, my eyes falling to the inscription.
To Joseph Reardon—
With thanks and gratitude for 40 years of faithful service.
—Southern Pacific Railroad
I smile, remembering the model train setup we built in the basement when I was ten. I click the watch closed, press it to my lips, and slip it in my pocket.
There’s one room in this place calling to me. I climb to the third floor and to my old room. It sits in the dormers, the ceiling sloping. It’s not a fancy room, but it has a skylight and a small window with a great view. My bed is still here—an antique twin sleigh bed—but the bedding is now a floral print, probably from when Gram used the place as a B&B.
I drop to the mattress and tilt the bottle up for a long pull. I lean back against the headboard, putting my feet up, and I stare out the skylight. A crescent moon glows, shining back at me.
I take another long drink, draining a good portion of the bottle, then set it on the nightstand, and stack my hands beneath my head.
I haven’t slept in this bed since I was eighteen. I drift off as memories flood through me.
Twenty years ago . . .
I sit on the steps outside Santa Cruz High School. Home is only a couple of blocks away, but since my grandfather died, it’s been a sad place, and I’m in no hurry to go there. It’s sunny but cool out. Most of the students have left, all but a few stragglers.
Ryan waves at me, but I barely lift a hand. We used to be good friends in junior high, before my grandfather died. After that I sort of drifted away from everyone. I dropped out of the track team and also wrestling. I just didn’t give a damn anymore. I guess it’s depression; that’s what Mom says. She wants me to see a therapist, but that’s the last thing I want to do. All I want is to be left alone.
So, that’s what I’ve become—the school loner—the one no one asks to be in their group in biology or invite to parties or ask to tag along to the football game. That’s okay with me. Lately, I’ve been losing myself in video games.
I stare at the concrete, supposing that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go home and play Tomb Raider or Medal of Honor, or maybe Tony Hawk’s new one.
A shadow falls across me as someone sits next to me on the steps, drawing my eyes. Holy shit, it’s the chick from the cafeteria today. I’d laughed when our geeky chemistry teacher walked by and I made some snarky comment. She’d snorted milk out of her nose, laughing at what I’d said, and I’d smiled at her. Probably the first time I’ve smiled in this school in fucking forever.
“Hey,” she says, smiling.
“Hey,” I reply.
“You’re a pretty funny guy.”
“Am I?”
“When you aren�
�t all depressed, anyway.”
“Guess that’s all the time.” I glance down at her notebooks and spot a colorful graphic book. I lift my chin to it. “What’s that?”
She pulls it out and shows it to me. “Legend of Lemnear. Do you like anime? I’ve been really getting into trying to draw it lately.”
I study the colorful comic style art. “You can draw this stuff?”
“Well, I’ve been trying.” She flips open one of her spiral notebooks to some pencil drawings she’s done, and I’m amazed at her talent.
“Wow. Those are really good.”
“Thanks. Sometimes when I get bored, I do them in class.”
“Better not get caught. Especially, in Mr. Cantor’s class.”
“Yeah, he’d send me to detention for sure.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Do you get detention a lot?”
“Some. Mostly for missing class.”
“Why do you miss class?”
I shrug.
“Hey, I was just going to see if the latest edition of this is out yet. Want to come along?”
When I hesitate, she pushes.
“It’s not far. We can walk.”
“I guess.” I stand and, for some reason, stick my hand out to pull her to her feet. She looks up at me for a moment, then smiles and slips her hand in mine. I tug her to stand and we stare at each other for a moment. I feel a strange crackle of something between us. It’s not really sexual, it’s more like a mental connection. Something inside me tells me this chick just gets me on some level I’m not even sure I understand. It’s almost like I already know her, like we’ve been friends forever. Which is crazy, because before a few hours ago, I’d never even noticed her.
“I’m Sara, by the way.”
“Tim,” I reply.
“Nice to meet you, Tim,” she says, then skips ahead, and turns, walking backward. “Come on, they close at six.”
Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition Page 14