Diesel
It’s damn weird saying goodbye to a woman and then returning to my apartment with nothing to do. I kiss Willa at the door, tell her I’m proud of her for getting her new job, and then I sit on the couch with no clue what to do. I have to figure out what’s next for me. There has to be something a man like me can do.
I lift weights for an hour or so, feeling the familiar tear in my muscles. I’m dangerously close to feeling useless so I leave the apartment and climb on my bike. Even with the patch of my leather jacket picked off, I can still ride. I ride around the city, enjoying the feeling of the engine beneath me, and then stop at a shopping mall. I walk around, idly looking in store windows, for the first time in my life without something pressing to do. Before I would always be running away from my dad, and then I’d be running for the club, and then I’d be surviving in the slammer, and finally I’d be burning for Grimace. But now I can just walk around, bored. It’s such a strange thing, to be allowed to be bored.
I feel the wad of cash in my pocket just to make sure it’s there. I really need to get a proper job, a pay-into-the-bank job. If I’m going to be with Willa, I need to reenter society. I don’t want to admit it, even to myself, but the thought scares the shit out of me. I’ve never done any of the stuff society expects you to do. I never finished school and the idea of college was a joke. I never had a mortgage, a bank account that I used more than once a month, anything. The fear that’s hounded me since Chino died and Grimace left returns to me now. What if Willa changes her mind? What if she decides she doesn’t want to be with me anymore?
As I walk around the mall, hands in my pocket, listening to the pop music playing dimly through the muffled speakers, I can’t shake the thought. I need to make our connection permanent. I need to show her how much I want this to last. Because if I’ve never been this free, I’ve also never been this scared of losing that freedom. All my hopes are pinned on Willa and the kid now. They’re everything to me.
I linger outside the jewelry stop for a long time, staring into the glass. I’ve never been in a fancy store like this. The door is made of pristine glass, shining in the yellow mall lights, and inside I spot a man in a business suit standing behind the counter. For a kid who’s lived on the streets, walking into this store should be unthinkable. The girls I rolled with before Willa didn’t expect stuff this fancy. But Willa deserves it, I tell myself. And if I really want to be with her for the rest of my life, I shouldn’t do any of this half-measures shit.
The man in the business suit emerges from the store, smiling at me warily. He’s smiling at me like he thinks I’m gonna smash the glass and steal the jewels. I think about toying with him a little, asking him when the store closes or how often they get deliveries, but that’s the sort of stuff old Diesel would’ve enjoyed. I have no taste for it. It’d just seem cruel. Instead, I offer him my best normal-person smile and ask, “Can you show me your collection of engagement rings, please?”
The man’s wary smile shifts to an accommodating one when I take out my wallet.
Twenty minutes later, I’m climbing on my bike, more nervous than I was when that cop and I were holed up in the bathroom. As I ride back to the apartment, I can’t tell if it’s the bike’s engine or my heartbeat which are making my chest tremble so badly. I return to the apartment, hiding the ring box under the pillow and pacing up and down, no clue what to do. This isn’t right. A man my age shouldn’t be hanging around at home with no plan for the day.
I slump on the couch and turn on the TV. That’s when I notice it, resting on the coffee table under the coaster (Willa bought the coasters, as well as arranging for the place to be repaired after my rampage). It’s a flyer advertising recruitment for the fire service, with three firefighters holding a hose and looking menacingly at the camera. Make a Difference! the caption reads. I pick it up, wondering if a man like me could really do this, tame fires instead of start them. Or maybe she was joking when she left it here. Maybe the idea is ridiculous and I’m completely misjudging the situation. Dammit, I wish I’d spent more time learning people and less time hurting them back in the day. Life’d be much simpler now.
I make myself a coffee, staring at the flyer all the while. There’s a number at the bottom. I drink one and a half mugs of coffee, trying to convince myself that I can call the number, that no harm will come from me calling the number. I keep expecting my dad or Grimace to pop up from behind the couch, laughing meanly. “You’re not serious,” they’d say. “A man like you? Do you really think you’ve changed?”
Today is a day of nerves, ’cause when I dial the number my goddamn hands are shaking. I feel like a little kid again, waiting at the stop of the stairs and wondering if my bedroom door is going to be strong enough to stop Dad from breaking through.
The lady who answers has a friendly, chirpy voice.
“So, would you like to come to an assessment day?” she asks after about two minutes of chitchat.
“Shit, really?” I curse myself in my head. It’s going to be hard to forget I’m not around bikers. “I mean, um, sure, sure. It’s just …” It’s just I’ve burned down several buildings and I feel strange about this, even though I really want it and it’d sure as hell beat pointlessly hanging around the apartment. And maybe it’d make up for all the bad I’ve done, eventually.
“Sir?” she prompts, when I don’t finish.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s nothing. Yes, I’d like to come to an assessment day.”
“Fantastic. Let me get your details.”
“Damon Holmes,” I tell her. The first thing I’ll do when Willa gets home is tell her I lied about legally changing my name to Diesel. I meant to sooner but it slipped my mind.
“How’s Sherlock?” the woman asks, giggling.
I make myself return the laugh. I guess I’ll have to get used to that joke.
She gives me the details and we hang up the phone. I check the clock. It’s only one o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve never been much of a biblical man, but idle hands and devils come to mind. I work out again, this time doing my legs and my back, and then take a shower. I watch TV, and then somehow end up at the local library, picking out three books which don’t look too difficult to read. I used to like reading as a very little kid, before I was too scared to lose myself in a book just in case someone snuck up on me. I lose myself now, though, and soon the front door is opening.
I get Willa a glass of juice and myself a beer, and we sit on the couch. When I tell her about my legal name not being Diesel, she leans across and slaps me playfully on the arm. “So all this time you were a dirty, filthy liar.” She pouts at me. “How are you going to make it up to me, then?”
“Hang on.” I go into the bedroom and take my matches from the pocket of my leather. I quit smoking without really thinking about it after Willa threw my cigarette to the curb all those months ago, but I still have the matches for some reason. Then I go into the kitchen and find the candles Willa bought a couple of days ago. I bring the lighted candle into the living room, laying it on the table. “I can honestly say I’ve never lit a candle for a lady before. You ought to consider yourself lucky.”
“Are you going to make me dinner, too?” She laughs.
There’s a challenge in that laugh, I reflect. She doesn’t think, in a million years, I’d make her dinner. “Yes!” I snap, making for the door.
“Where are you going?” she asks, following me.
“The store.”
She hurries after me. “Please let me come. I don’t want you returning with a pineapple and a can of tomatoes or something.”
We end up returning with a can of pasta sauce, some pasta, and some vegetables which will apparently go wonderfully with it. Willa does the cooking in the end, but I help by watching her do the cooking. We talk about everything and nothing, about football and how Willa has never really enjoyed it, about an idea for a novel she’s got about an arsonist cowboy and a nun.
“It’ll be a Western,” she says.
“And I’m the cowboy, but do you really reckon you’re a nun, Willa?”
I want to tell her about the assessment day, but once again the fear of being laughed at stops me. It stops me for the next fifteen minutes, until dinner is almost ready. But then, in the middle of the conversation, Willa remarks, “You know, when I was a girl I always thought it’d be awesome to married to a guy in uniform. I remember in school once this policeman came in and talked to the class. But I wasn’t interested in him. I was interested in his wife standing behind him. She looked so proud. I don’t know. Maybe it’s silly. It was after Mom and Dad died, you know, so maybe it has something to do with that.”
“I …”
She’s standing at the stove, pasta sauce bubbling. “Hmm?” She tilts her head at me.
“I …” Dammit, I’m not a kid. “I called the fire people, on that flyer you left.” I blurt out the rest, telling her that I’ll be attending an assessment day. “And then we’ll take it from there.”
She skips across the kitchen, throws her arms around me, kisses me on the cheek. It feels real. It feels like I’m a real man and here’s a real woman and this is a real life. That’s what it feels like and Grimace and Dad are nowhere to be seen. I feel like I’m floating as I walk to the bedroom, to the pillow. I put the ring box in my pocket and stand in the kitchen as Willa drains the pasta. Maybe doing it while she’s draining the pasta isn’t the most romantic setting. Maybe flowers and chariot rides and all that lovey dovey stuff’d be better. But this is real. Her braided hair has come a little loose; she looks a tiny bit flustered. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“I wish I had some speech,” I say. “I should’ve written a speech, maybe.”
She places the strainer down in the sink, watching me closely. She’s watching my hand, which is in my pocket, clutched around the ring. Her lips start to tremble. I think she knows what’s happening. Her brown-flecked blue eyes are already going wide.
“But by the looks of you, little lady,” I say, dropping onto one knee, “I don’t need a fancy speech.” I take the ring out of my pocket and open it, showing her the glittering diamond. “Willa Holloway, will you marry me?”
She whispers, “Yes,” in my ear, and then moans, “Yes,” in the bedroom. When we’re lying next to each other, naked, with the pasta bubbling loudly from the kitchen, the room smelling of sex, she leaps into my lap and kisses me over and over again on the nose. “Yes, yes, yes!” she cries.
As I watch her walk naked into the living room to turn off the stove, I think to myself: This is easily the happiest moment of my life. I know it’s not going to be easy. I know there are going to be obstacles along the way. But for the first time in all my days, I feel like I have a chance at something better. And that’s worth fighting for, I reckon.