Xander

 

It starts with a drink, just one drink, and then before I know it I’ve been drinking for damn-near twenty hours and I don’t feel like stopping. I don’t have any club business today, nothing to worry about. Usually I’d go round the garage or the gym and try and do something vaguely productive, but today I just feel like sitting in my apartment and drinking whisky. I have plenty of bottles, at least ten of them in the cupboard under the sink, as though by keeping them there I can pretend that I’m not steadily working my way through them. I sit on the couch, football highlights playing on the TV, sipping the whisky straight from the bottle.

 

After a while I stand up and pace up and down in front of the TV, trying to get that day out of my head, the day Arsen took a beating from the old man for me. I was getting it pretty bad on account of stealing the old man’s car and taking it for a spin around the street, but then Arsen walked into my bedroom with his fists at his sides. “Leave’m’alone!” he hissed, his voice high-pitched. There was no man in that voice; Arsen always had a squeaky voice.

 

“Do you want it instead, you little fucker?” Dad roared, turning on the kid.

 

That was just one time the kid took one for me. He was a good little brother, the best little brother anyone could ask for. I should’ve been better to him. I should have—

 

The apartment buzzer jolts me from my memories. I walk across the room to the intercom, wondering if it’s Christopher or Ranger, or maybe even Maxwell. Sometimes they’ll swing by and try and talk me out of drinking myself silly.

 

“Yeah?” I say over the intercom.

 

“Uh, hello.” It’s a woman’s voice. She sounds shaky, on edge. “My name is Kayla Caraway.”

 

“Okay.” I take a sip of whisky.

 

“Can I please come up? I have something to explain to you, and I don’t want to do it from here.”

 

“I’m not in the habit of letting strangers just waltz up here,” I tell her. “Why should I?”

 

“Please!” Her voice breaks, and goddamn if it don’t remind me of the way my little brother’s voice broke. Suddenly I see myself as a bully, a wicked bastard, and no matter how much I tried to make it up to him as we grew older, I would always be that asshole who kissed Marie Keller in front of him.

 

“Come up,” I say, pressing the button.

 

I wait near the door, leaning against the wall and sipping from my bottle. My head is heavy, my body buzzing. Everything feels like it’s slightly sideways, tipping more and more each moment. But then I stand up straight, righting myself. I wonder what this broad wants to say to me. Maybe she’s one of the club girls and she wants cash. That ain’t unheard of, desperate club girls hitting guys up for cash. Maybe she wants to fall to her knees and blow me for some weed money. Well, I ain’t in the mood for a club girl.

 

Her knock is dainty, almost too quiet to hear. I open the door. At first I just notice her, because she’s so beautiful everything else fades to nothing. She’s young, early twenties, with dark piercing eyes and pale soft-looking skin. Her mouth is small, cute; her nose is a button. Her hair is long and dark down to her shoulders, curls and knots and wild. And her body is tight-looking, legs sleek in her black skinny jeans, her hoodie hugging her small breasts. Then I notice the baby, and my mood goes from thinking I might fuck this chick to wanting her out of my face right away.

 

“No way,” I tell her, shaking my head. “I used a rubber with every single one of you. I’m careful about that. What’d’you think I am, some sort of moron? I ain’t gonna swear, seeing as there’s a kid here, but there’s a lot I’d like to say right about now. Do you seriously think I’m gonna fall for this … this? Come on, now. Why’nt you turn around and go on your way? I don’t have any kids. I was careful. What sort of performance is this?” I misstep, almost fall against the wall. Maybe the whisky is finally getting to me. It’s about time; it’s been weak as shit so far. “You just swagger up here with this little kid expecting a handout—what do you want?”

 

“He’s Arsen’s baby,” she whispers, eyes flitting over me like she expected something else.

 

I take a step back, mouth falling open. I just about manage to put the whisky bottle on the floor before I drop it. “Bullshit,” I mutter. “That’s bullshit. You really think I’m going to believe that? Arsen, my little brother? Are we talking about the same man here?”

 

She nods, her hair moving across her forehead. She looks sexy as hell like that. I can’t deny it. But I also can’t deny that there’s a little baby in her arms, that the baby is cooing and pawing at the air and all that baby shit. “Arsen was my boyfriend. We were—we were not super close but he cared about me. He didn’t want me involved with the other parts of his life, the … the outlaw stuff. But he did tell me about you, once, when he was drunk.”

 

“I don’t know what sort of game this is, lady, but I reckon it’s a damn mean trick to show up on my doorstep and tell these sorts of lies. My brother didn’t have a girlfriend and he didn’t have a kid. I would’ve known about that.”

 

“He didn’t even know,” she says. “He died before I got a chance to tell him.”

 

I massage my head. Could it be true? Or could this be some elaborate scam? My baby brother, the man who’s been haunting my dreams for ten months … “Come in. I wanna sit down.”

 

I pick up the whisky bottle and then go to the armchair and drop into it, letting the lady sit on the couch. She adjusts herself and the kid, and then just stares at me. It’s like she’s expecting something.

 

“I need to know that you’re not lying,” I say. “I can’t just have some lady coming in here and pulling one over on me. Even if she is a pretty lady.” The last part just comes out. I can’t help it. She stretches her legs out as she sits there, points her shoes, highlighting her calf muscles. I wonder what it’d be like to grab those calves, to bite down on those tight thighs. Then I blot the thought. It’s not appropriate … is it? “Tell me some shit about Arsen, some shit you’d know if you were really his old lady.”

 

She fidgets, stroking her kid’s head. “Um, let me think …” She looks into her kid’s face and smiles with recognition. Maybe it’s the whisky, I don’t know, but when she smiles it’s like the first bright moment in ten months. “My son’s name is Cormac, named after your uncle. We didn’t talk much, me and Arsen, not about serious stuff anyway. But he told me once that his—your—father used to hit you both. But you had an uncle called Cormac who would come over and play with him and make him laugh and joke around with him.”

 

I clear my throat. There’s something at the back of it, something shaped like a ball, something which is dangerously close to a sob. I swallow it and slug some whisky to force it down. “There was never an uncle. That was a character I did for him when he was a little kid. Uncle Cormac. I’d do it after the old man went on one of his sprees, to cheer him up. I’d forgotten about that until now.”

 

I rack my mind for a way she could know this without having talked with Arsen. I never mentioned Cormac to anyone since I forgot about him some point between having my first drink and fucking my first girl. Maybe Arsen mentioned it to someone and she somehow learned about it, but why?

 

“You’re still suspicious,” she says. “I can see it in your face.”

 

“What are you, my therapist?” I snort out a laugh, and then it’s like I hear myself. Who’s this asshole snorting out a laugh? He sounds like a drunk. I push the thought down and sit up straight, putting the bottle on the table and placing my hands on my knees. “I don’t know about this, Kayla. I just don’t see why Arsen wouldn’t’ve mentioned a girlfriend. I get it if he wanted to be private but …”

 

“He told me he wanted to keep those parts of his life separate from me,” she says. “He said he didn’t want anybody to know what he did. He was—I’m sorry, but I think he was ashamed of it.”

 

“Yeah.” I nod. “That’s true enough. And I can’t blame the kid. He was good. He was really, really good. He was nothing like me. He never once killed a man. He never hurt a fly, as far as I can tell.” I pick up the bottle; no point letting it sit there. “I can’t work out a way you’d know about that Cormac stuff without knowing Arsen.” And even looking at the kid, I see Arsen, the same eyes, the same cheeks, the same look of innocence. “So, yeah, I believe you, all right? That’s Arsen’s kid you’re holding. That’s my nephew.” I take one slug, two, three, enough so that my belly burns in protest. I smile at her. “Now what?”

 

“Now what,” she repeats, eyes flitting over me in that curious, anxious way again, like the eyes of prey who’s just realized she’s in a predator’s den.