Bri
Charlotte asleep in her bedroom, making happy little sounds every so often on the baby monitor. Heather and I sit in the living room with Sex and the City on the TV and Heather brandishing a selection of makeover weapons. Blusher, eyeliner, lipstick, concealer, foundation, hair bands, straighteners, curlers . . . all are laid out before her like a knight studying his weapons before battle. She sits on the armchair, hunched over the coffee table, and I sit on the couch half-watching the TV and half-watching Heather. It’s still strange to me to see all these things, these add-ons and accessories that women use to defy nature and genetics. A few years ago, I would never have touched myself with a single brush. Now I am getting ready for a makeover. “How times change,” I mutter, as Heather grins up at me gleefully.
Sex and the City ends and Heather switches over to The Real Housewives. “It’s a perfect background show,” she declares. “Now, stay still.”
I sit before her, moving as little as possible, as she begins her work. Heather is something of an amateur beautician. When I first told her I’d finally started wearing makeup, she insisted on painting me, and now it’s become something of a tradition; whenever I need advice, her payment is my face as a canvas.
“So,” she says, “you’re still down about dear little Slick.”
“Dear little Slick.” I scoff. “I don’t think you’d say that if you saw him now.”
“Oh, I’m sure he can’t have changed that much in two years.”
“Not outwardly—except for a few more scars—no. But something changed inside of him. I can see it, even if he won’t tell me what happened.”
“Oh, I see.” Heather rolled her eyes as she spread blush on my cheeks. I’m supposed to tell you to discover the deep well inside of him no matter what. Follow your heart no matter what. You want me to tell you that because Slick is Charlotte’s father, you have a duty to pursue him and try to tease out the wounded man inside of him and fall in love and happily ever after, amen.”
“Um, well . . .” I shift, but Heather holds me in place so that she can come at me with some bristly utensil. “Pretty much, yeah. I was hoping you would give me some advice on how to get him to talk. I know you don’t know him as well as I do, but—surely there’s some way, you know? Like how do you get through to a man who’s so closed off like that? I know something happened to him in Seattle. I just know it. But most of the time he avoids me, and when we do speak, he won’t tell me.”
“You really want my advice?” Heather asks, laying her tools aside. “All done,” she proclaims.
“Yes, I want your advice.”
Heather stares straight into my face with a stern auntie’s expression. It’s the sort of expression she would aim at me as a girl when I came to her covered in mud or oil. I remember how she would fuss over me then, playing the mother because I never knew mine, always wanting what was best for me.
“You should forget about him,” she says. Her words thud into my chest. She wants what’s best for me . . . and yet she is asking me to forget about the father of my child. “You should forget about the club life altogether. You are a talented mechanic, you can drive a motorcycle, a truck, a car. You could get a new job, I’m sure of it. You don’t need to work at the clubhouse. You could move cities, make a new life for yourself and Charlotte—”
“Why are you saying all this?” I snap.
“You asked for my advice,” she says, bringing her hand to her chest, as though bracing herself against my violent outburst. “I’m not about to just tell you what you want to hear, Brianna. You want my advice? Fine, I’ll give it.” Before I can reply, she presses on, talking loudly to override my interruptions. In the end, I just let her speak. “Listen, Brianna. I told your mother to stay away from men like that and she never listened to me. So I’ll tell you the same. You should find a new life, away from the club, away from the violence and the seediness of it all. Maybe the life is okay for men, but for women? What do you get out of that life except for overbearing fathers and sleazy bikers? If you really want my opinion, I think you should be glad that Slick hasn’t asked you about Charlotte yet. Keep it that way. Raise her someplace else, far away, where she won’t have to associate with all this ugliness.”
For a while, we just stare at each other, Heather with her teeth clenched. She looks surprised by her own anger, but not apologetic. When she unclenches her teeth, she begins collecting her makeup stuff and putting it in a cream zip-lock bag. “You’re all done,” she says. “You look magnificent.”
“He’s not what you think he is,” I say. “He’s a good man. He’s always been a good man.”
“Maybe,” Heather says, not looking at me. “But he’s still a biker, a leather-wearing bandit.”
I stand up, shaking with rage but not willing to aim it at Heather. I can’t. I love her too much. “I take it you’re still sitting tonight?”
“If you’re still going out.” Heather nods. “Are you?”
“Yes,” I say.
I go into the bedroom, change into a dress, heels, and then look at myself in the full-length mirror. If you were to take the short-haired oil-flecked tomboy from three years ago and place her next to me now, you wouldn’t guess they were the same person. I look like a woman, not a ragged girl.
I kiss Charlotte goodbye, say an awkward goodbye to Heather, and then leave. I take a cab to the Irishman, where I know Slick will be. Over these past couple of weeks, he’s been hanging around the Irishman more and more. I tried talking to Dad about it, but Dad never wants to tell me anything about business. From what I can figure out, Slick did a good job with some warehouses, and so Dad’s given him his own earning crew, just a few men, to try and make the club some more money. Since Clint hangs around the clubhouse, Slick has moved to the Irishman.
The place is quiet when I get there, a few old men in the corner, a few women sitting at the bar, the music low. Outside, it is still light, so it will be a while yet before the night-fiends come out to play, to turn the volume up and stamp up and down the dancefloor. I look around but Slick is nowhere in sight. I know he won’t be back at the clubhouse; he’s renting an apartment just round the corner from here, though I don’t know the exact address. Either he will be here, or I’m not seeing him tonight. I order a vodka-and-coke and take a seat by myself in the corner, drinking and listening to the music, watching as the group of women at the bar get drunker and drunker and eventually start dancing.
I’m still angry at Heather, at how she would talk about my entire life, how she would question the way I’m bringing Charlotte up. But I can’t be too angry with her, because I did ask for her advice. It’s just that she’s wrong. She’s just plain wrong about Slick. I finish my drink, order another, tell myself I’m going to sip this one slower and then all of a sudden I’m on my third drink and the doorway is turning from sun-bright to night-dark. A man across the bar, tall, lean, short-haired and passably attractive, with a tattoo of dark green fire spreading up his neck and various colorful tattoos on his arms, smiles over at me every so often. She’s wrong about Slick . . . she doesn’t even know him. She just thinks he’s an animal, like the rest of them. She doesn’t know how much more there is to him.
I’m stewing on this when the man comes over to my table. “How’re you, beautiful?” he says. His eyes are the same shade of green as his tattoo. He’s good-looking, not just passably handsome, I can see now he’s up close. Exactly the sort of man I would be interested in, but—“I’m waiting for someone,” I tell him.
“Oh, okay. Well . . .” He looks around. “Where is he? You’ve been here a while.”
“He’s on his way,” I say.
“Can’t we talk while we wait?”
“Talk about what?” I mutter, thinking of the way Heather just disregarded Slick and getting angry, thinking about how she wants me to just move—move away from everybody and everything—because she thinks he’s too dirty for me. She seems to forget that not too long ago I was just as dirty as him.
“Anything.” The man sits in the chair opposite. “Anything you want.”
“Excuse me,” I say. “I told you. I’m waiting for somebody.”
“Look,” the man says, resting his elbows on the table, “you’re a very beautiful, captivating, and clearly intelligent woman.”
“Is that so?” I say, smiling despite myself. This man is charming. If not for Slick . . . but I can never follow the if-not-for-Slick road, not with Charlotte, not with history.
“Yes,” he says. “And if you would—”
Slick and his men, around five of them, enter the bar. The bald-headed spike-tattooed one walks at his shoulder, talking, the other men trailing behind. A couple of them are old, friends of Slick’s father, and a couple are young, maybe the old men’s kids. They talk loudly, laughing and shouting, and dominate the bar when they sit there, shouting out their orders. Ignoring the man, I jump to my feet and make my way to the bar. Whether it’s anger at Heather’s words or just eagerness—or perhaps the alcohol—I walk fast, urgently. Remnants of anger still singe inside of me, and the alcohol makes everything fuzzy. I shouldn’t have had that third vodka, that’s for sure.
When I get close enough, I hear the bald-headed man shout out: “Here’s to Slick, the greatest leader we could fuckin’ ask for . . . if what you’re askin’ for is a fuckin’ useless fucker! Ah!” He yelps as Slick grabs him in a headlock and rubs his head with his knuckle.
“Little prick.” Slick laughs, and then necks a whisky. “From now on, fellas, I want you to give this bastard a punch across the face every time you fuckin’ see him. I want his face to look like a fat woman’s pussy when you’re done with him.”
Dirty, Heather said. Dirty, wild bandits. She wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Slick!” I call, too loud, too eagerly.
The men stop laughing, and then turn around and face me. When they see that it’s me, their boss’s daughter, they fall quiet.
“Slick, I need to talk to you!”
It’s only now that I realize where this urgency is coming from: I’m going to tell him. I am drunk enough, angry enough, and eager enough. I’m going to tell him about Charlotte, just to see how he reacts, just to prove that Heather is wrong about him. She has to be wrong about him.
He’s been back too long now for me to keep ignoring the situation. I can’t bury my head in the sand forever. So I’ll tell him, and then, maybe—but he doesn’t turn to face me, doesn’t give me any attention.
“Slick!” I repeat, voice sharper.
He shrugs, laughs, and then half-turns and snaps, “Why don’t you act like a woman should and leave us boys alone, eh?”
Then he turns back to his men, all of whom are clearly impressed with Slick’s display of manliness, but unwilling to show it with me here.
My mouth falls open, stunned by hearing him talk to me like that. Then I grit my teeth in rage and think about shouting at him again. But already he’s making some crass boys-will-be-boys comment to his men. I know that if I shout at him, he’ll just ignore me again. So I need to come up with another way to annoy him. Maybe this is petty. This sort of behavior should be beneath me. But fuck that. If he’s going to snap at me like a childish asshole, I’ll be a childish asshole right back.
I turn on my heels and march across the bar, going to the table where the green-fire-tattooed man is sitting. He glances up at me over the rim of his glass of whisky, eyes playful when he sees how angry I am. It seems that all guys are destined to be assholes today! I want to glance over my shoulder, see if Slick is watching, but I don’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing I give a damn.
“Can you walk me out?” I ask the guy.
“Walk you out?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Is that a euphemism or do you really want me to just walk you out?”
I sigh. “I really want you to just walk me out,” I say, wondering if I’m going too far. Maybe this really is too childish. Maybe I should stop. But I can’t get the way he just snapped at me out of my head; I can’t ignore their laughter, which even now dominates the bar, loud and raucous. But this is way, way too far, I reflect, shaking my head. Maybe the alcohol has gotten to me. “No, actually, don’t worry.”
“No—wait.” The man stands. “I’ll walk out with you. I’m leaving now, anyway.”
“Oh, okay.” I nod, trying to think of a way of backing out of it. But it’s too late. He’s on his feet, walking beside me, and soon we’re outside the Irishman standing opposite each other.
“Are you really not going to give me a kiss?” the man asks, grinning. There’s something unsettling about that grin, about the way it doesn’t reach his eyes, about the way he shifts from foot to foot like a boxer warming up.