Fink

 

“What do you think this is for?” Snake says, holding up his cellphone. “Fuckin’ decoration? Do I wear it around my goddamn neck on a chain? Do I wear it on my wrist? It’s a phone, Fink. You need to answer it when the Old Man calls you. You’re in deep shit with the boss now.”

 

“Are you the boss, Snake?” I step close to him, staring into his eyes and waiting for violence to erupt. The way I’m feeling right now, with Nancy haunting my every moment, waking or sleeping, I need to let out some tension. He shrinks away from me, but I just keep staring. “Well?” I bark. “Are you the fuckin’ boss now?”

 

“Fink!” the Old Man calls. “Leave the rat alone. I need to speak with you.”

 

“I know.” I sigh, stepping back and massaging the bridge of my eyebrows. “I should have answered. I know.”

 

“You know?” The Old Man waddles over to me, poking his forefinger at my chest. He’s a cunning bastard; he knows I won’t hit him or square up to him, ’cause he’s older than relics. “What do you know?” He pokes me again. “Do you know that your club needed you, and you made the decision to just say fuck it? Fuck it, Fink. Fuck it. When one of your brothers could’ve died.”

 

“What was the job?” I mutter.

 

“A protection job,” he says. “Four men, one truck. But since you decided to tell us to go fuck ourselves, it was three men, one truck.”

 

“And . . .” I wait. If one of the men has died because of me, I’m done for. I’ll hate myself even more than I already do, and maybe the boss will take my patch, or maybe he’ll go one step further and take my life. “Well, is everyone okay?”

 

The Old Man smiles at me, taking a step back. “You can’t have it both ways,” he says. “Either you care or you don’t care. Either you think ignoring us was the right thing to do, which means you don’t give a damn. Or you’re sorry for not picking up and Snake here is right.”

 

“Fuck’s sake.” I take a bottle of whisky from a nearby table and swig. “I should’ve answered, all right? Goddamn. Just tell me our brothers are safe.”

 

“They’re safe,” the Old Man says, nodding and smiling, more snake-like than Snake. “You don’t have to worry your big stupid head about it. Oh, and the boss doesn’t want to talk to you himself. He’s too busy. But he does have a job for you. A way for you to make it up to the club.”

 

Snake sniggers behind me and I know it’s not going to be good.

 

“Oh, yeah. What’s that?”

 

“There’s a car in the garage,” the Old Man says. “It’s seen better days. Covered in muck and shit and oil and who knows what else. The boss needs it to shine by tomorrow morning. You can handle that, can’t you, Fink?” The Old Man moves lightning-fast, darting forward and puffing himself up. “And you’re lucky that nothing bad happened. Because if it did, your punishment would be a hell of a lot worse.”

 

I ignore Snake’s jeers and go into the garage next to the clubhouse, take off my shirt and get to work. The car has been made as dirty as possible on purpose just for my punishment. Either that or someone’s driven it through a car wash that uses shit instead of water. The smell makes me gag at first, but I’ve smelled worse and after a while, I get used to it. I fill five buckets of water, each bucket turning brown and gunky and the car’s not even one-fifth clean.

 

It takes me the better part of an hour and a half to get the car clean. All I do during this time is think of Nancy, think about our time together and wonder why in the hell I’d pick a dirty car over her, wonder why the hell I’d run out on her when she’s warm and soft and willing and lovely and beautiful. It’s only been three days, but I’m already going crazy thinking about her. Three days and I’m aching for her, hungry for her. Three days and I wish I’d never found that pregnancy test. I imagine a scenario where she tells me, and because she has her hands on mine and she’s kissing me and hugging me, I can’t just walk out. So I stay there, and we work it out. We grow closer. We grow stronger. Instead, I ran and ruined everything.

 

I emerge from the garage covered head to toe in grime and dirt. Snake leans on his bike off to the side with a few of the men behind him, all of them laughing.

 

“Laugh it up, fellas,” I say, heading for the hose. “One day I’ll get you all back for this. That’s a damn promise.”

 

“Get us back for what?” Snake laughs. “This is us getting you back, Fink. We’re square now.”

 

I hose myself down, getting as much of the dirt off me as possible, and then go into the clubhouse and get a change of clothes from the dormitory wing. I shrug on my jacket and sit in the bar for a while, playing poker and drinking whisky, but unable to get Nancy out of my head. She’s always right there, no matter what I do, lurking, watching, waiting. She’s always there with her gorgeous eyes and her gorgeous smile, her gorgeous way of making me feel like a real person. And I left her.

 

“You’ve been odd lately,” Snake says. “You’re normally a violent bastard but fuck, Fink, I can’t count the number of times you’ve threatened to take me out.”

 

I cough out a laugh after a slug of whisky. “Sometimes life gets complicated. You know I wouldn’t do anything serious with you, Snake. We’re both Sons of Wolves.”

 

“Yeah, I know, man.” Snake nods. “But what’s got into you?”

 

I look around, making sure our conversation is ours and ours alone. “You ever been with a girl you love?”

 

“Yeah, I’ve been with a girl I love. I’m still with the girl I love, only now she’s my wife.”

 

I sit up. “Wait a second. You’re telling me you’re married?”

 

Snake grins. “It’s crazy, ain’t it, how we can all see each other damn-near every day and not know a thing like that? I’m married.”

 

“And how is it?” I ask.

 

“How do you mean?”

 

“How is being married? This must be why you’re always so shy with the club girls.”

 

“Tryin’ to be loyal. How is it? Let me see . . . It’s like having a best friend around all the time, I guess, if the best friend had a twat and some tits.” He laughs raucously and necks his whisky. “It’s fine, man. It’s damn fine.”

 

“Aren’t you scared?”

 

“Scared of what?”

 

“Of getting her hurt. Of infecting her with . . . with this.” I wave a hand at the clubhouse. “With twisting her or hurting her or dammit, anything.”

 

“I was at the start. But what was I gonna do? Pass up on the woman I love ’cause I was scared? I’m not a fuckin’ pussy.”

 

“I’ve never thought of it like that,” I say honestly.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

I pace away from him, ignoring his question, and climb into my bike and kick it to life, growling away from the clubhouse and toward Salem proper. I need to see her. It isn’t a question of just missing her anymore, or just feeling like it’d be good to feel her touch again or any of that. I need to see her, and there’s nothing in this world that’s going to stop me. As I ride, I see myself how I must’ve looked when I left: a coward, fleeing, a coward who’s got even less grit in him than Snake, a coward with a cowardly way of looking at the world. I thought I was doing the right thing by walking out but maybe all I was doing was protecting myself.

 

And yet, that moment of clarity doesn’t last long. I stop a few streets down from her apartment building, sitting in a mild autumn drizzle, kneading my knuckles and wondering why I’m really going to Nancy’s. I need to ask myself this question because for all I know, I’ll fuck her and then leave again. Maybe that’s the sort of man I am without even trying to be: the type to swoop in, take what he wants, and then swoop away. Maybe that’s the type of man I’ve always been and I’ll always be. I pace up and down near my bike, thinking. I’ve never been much of the introspection type but I think it’s necessary now. I need to know exactly what I’m doing to that girl before I do it.

 

I ask myself some fundamental questions: what do I want from Nancy? What do I think I can offer her? Where do I see this ending? I’ve never asked myself this bluntly about a woman before. I guess I’ve never thought it mattered since all the girls I normally go with don’t want anything from me except for some fun. I sit on the curb, not caring when the rain gets heavier and clings to my hair. What do I want from her? Sex, obviously. I want sex from her because she’s smoking hot and I’m a man. But what else? I want to spend time with her like we did at The Mermaid, drink shots and learn about each other, get closer to each other. I want to see her smile at me because it makes me feel like less of a piece of shit. But what can I offer her? That’s a tougher question. I can tool guys up for her, if it comes to that, and I have some cash stowed but she doesn’t seem like she’s struggling for money.

 

“What can I offer her?”

 

Goddamn, is my self-esteem really this fucked up? Did my ranting mother and phantom father really do this much damage to me, or is it just me, something deep inside of me, unchangeable, something poisoning me bone-deep?

 

I move on from the question. If I’m honest, it scares me.

 

“Okay, where does this end?”

 

I see two scenes: in one, Nancy is on her face, hair matted and bloody, a pool of blood spreading around her; in the other, she is holding a baby and cooing and radiant, sunlight framing her.

 

In the end when I climb back onto my bike I don’t know which fantasy I believe in. I don’t even know if I’m going to Nancy’s to end it once and for all or to beg her to give me another chance or just to hear her voice. I wish I could be more certain about this, but it turns out relationships and women are more complicated than shoot-ups and outlawing. I never would’ve guessed that.

 

I press down on her apartment buzzer to no answer. I press it a couple more times and then check the time. It’s half past five. Maybe she’s got a new job; maybe she’s got a date. I should probably just leave and come back later, but I’m amped up now. I press down on the buzzer of the elderly woman who answered the last time I came here.

 

“Uh, hello?”

 

“Hello, ma’am,” I say. “I’m looking for Nancy O’Neill. I’m a friend of the family and she isn’t answering when I press the buzzer. It’s urgent that I find her.”

 

“Oh, is everything okay?”

 

“We hope so,” I say, leaving it at that. She’ll fill in the rest for herself.

 

“Oh, my. Well I haven’t seen Nancy for a few days, actually. I’ve noticed because I often hear her in the mornings, singing to herself. She has a lovely voice.”

 

“She’s gone?” I ask, heart pounding so hard I have to focus to hear past it. “Where?”

 

“I don’t know. I have no idea.”

 

“Okay, thank you.”

 

I step back, unable to stop my mind from spinning into the deadly and the macabre. That Michaels creep has found her and abducted her. He’s torturing her right now, playing out his sick fantasies.

 

I kick open the door and run up the stairs without thinking. I’m in outlaw mode now. I’m in red fuckin’ alert mode. I need to know if she’s safe. She can hate me and want nothing to do with me, as long as she’s safe.

 

I barge through her apartment door with my shoulder, ignoring the neighbors who poke their heads out of their doors, and then walk around, studying everything. There’s no sign of a struggle, but the wardrobes are empty and a few of the photographs are gone.

 

She’s run, then. She’s run away from me.

 

I sit on her couch, head in my hands. Maybe I ought to respect her decision. Maybe I ought to just let her run away, if that’s what she wants. But I can’t do that. I need to see her much more hungrily than I thought. I ache for her. It’s like there’s a creature inside of me, a creature who’s never lived there before and who I never imagined could live there. It’s inside of me, and it’s causing havoc.

 

“I have to see her,” I whisper in wonder: wonder at the strength of the desire.

 

I stand up.