Nancy

 

“It’s madness,” Janine says, as we stand in the breakroom drinking coffee. Janine is one of those friends who isn’t really a friend, just a person I know from work and who I’m relatively close to. But if we didn’t work together, I’m sure we’d never interact. She’s cool, and trendy, a member of half a dozen clubs for half a dozen causes. “Have you been keeping up with the news?”

 

“A little,” I say.

 

“I just don’t understand why . . . Surely people realize it’s not in their best interests? Okay, listen to me, Nancy. I’m not saying I love the police or anything like that, because God knows the police have their problems. But smashing their car windows, slashing their tires? Where’s the sense in that?”

 

“I don’t know,” I say, my ears burning because I know where the sense is. At least, I know where the people who are committing the crimes think the sense is.

 

“What does your dad think about all this?” Janine asks, looking at me with her inquisitive eyes, eyes which bury deep within a person to try and get to the heart of the matter. The eyes of a champion of causes.

 

“He hasn’t mentioned it,” I say, regretting the tequila which, once upon a time at the Christmas party, led me to tell her that my dad was a sheriff.

 

I’m glad when Janine releases me, and even more glad when five o’clock comes and work is over. I leave the office with a spring in my step, not at all envying the eighty-hour-a-week folks still cloistered upstairs in the waning winter sun. I’ll go home and lie down and do some reading, and then order some takeout. A sad life to some—I have friends, but none who are really close—but a comfortable life to me. The only sour taste is that I know that my mind will inevitably turn to Fink as it has done every night for past few weeks, and soon I’ll be in the shower, showerhead blasting against my pussy as my mind is blasted with his oil-flecked body.

 

The spring from my step is stolen away when I hear Dad’s voice, calling to me across the parking lot. “Nancy? Nancy?”

 

I grit my teeth, try and calm myself, remind myself that he’s my father and he has every right to meet me after work. Or he would have every right if he wasn’t a drunken asshole who treats me like dirt. I want to turn away from him, ignore him, but there’s still that niggling commitment inside of me that won’t let him go. I find myself turning to him, forcing a smile onto my face.

 

“Dad,” I say.

 

“So you remember me, then?” He’s been drinking. He reeks of beer and he has that out-of-body look to his face, where his lips are moving but his eyes aren’t registering. “I thought you’d forgotten your poor father!” He cackles madly, clutching his sides. “I thought you were too busy with your fancy-pants life to give your poor old father any thought!”

 

“That’s not fair,” I mutter, hating the sound of my voice. A book, takeout, a shower, Fink … All of it seems petty now, a retreat from the world.

 

“You’ve hardly spoken to me all month!”

 

“Every time I speak to you,” I say, keeping my voice as level as I can, “you immediately start criticizing me. What do you expect?”

 

“For my daughter to show some respect! What is it? Have you been gallivanting with that Fink character? Because you know he’s the one who’s been vandalizing police cars, don’t you? I can’t remember if I told you that.”

 

“You did. You were just drunk. As usual. And for your information, I haven’t seen Fink for ages.” Though I want to, and the only reason I haven’t is because I keep hoping he’ll come see me first.

 

“I certainly hope not, and you’ll keep it that way if you know what’s good for you!” He leans forward, stinking and ugly in every single way. I feel like slapping him across the face, and then the familiar guilt grips me. Mom once told me that family is a confusing mess even for functional people, but for dysfunctional people it becomes a confusing mess with a bomb buried beneath it. Looking at Dad now, drunk and full of potential violence, I know what she meant.

 

“Because if you do,” he goes on, grinning ear-to-ear, “you’ll soon get your little heart broken. I have it on good authority that he’s going to end up a corpse. Do you want to love a corpse, Nancy?”

 

“Get away from me,” I say. “I’m getting in my car and driving away and if you follow me I’m going to call the . . .”

 

Dad barks out a laugh. “The police? Is that who you’ll call?”

 

“Just get away from me.”

 

I climb into my car and start the engine, hoping he won’t cause a scene. I can just imagine him standing behind the car with his arms folded, refusing to move as my colleagues spill into the parking lot to enjoy the show. Thankfully, he takes a step back, sneering at me but nothing more.

 

His words ring inside my head as I drive. A corpse. Fink, a corpse. Perhaps it shouldn’t hit me as hard as it does. I don’t truly know him, after all. I haven’t spent more than a few hours with him. But those few hours are greater and more powerful in my memory than days spent with ex-boyfriends. That brief heated encounter in the park eclipses sex with ex-boyfriends. One glimpse of his muscular, oil-flecked body dwarfs years of other men’s posturing. So the idea of him becoming a corpse strikes me with blade-sharp intensity, and without making a conscious decision, I drive toward The Mermaid instead of home.

 

I stop the car and touch up my makeup, something I haven’t done in weeks. I’ve never been much of a look-her-best-for-him kind of woman, but it’s different now. I’m not entirely sure why. Yes you do, a secret voice whispers. Fink, Fink, Fink.

 

I step from the car and approach The Mermaid, heart pounding heavily in my chest. What if he turns me away? What if he doesn’t want to see me? I can’t ignore the fact that he’s made no effort to try and make contact with me, that he hasn’t approached me or sent me a letter or anything. He has exorcised me from his life as though I am a demon, and here I am, the demon showing up at his doorstep. I think about turning away but push on. A corpse, I remind myself. I can’t let that happen.

 

“What is this?” The man steps in front of my path, a cruel leer on his face. Behind him, two men puff themselves up. I recognize him. Michaels, I think, the man who used to terrify me as a girl because of the nasty scar down one side of his face. “This isn’t little Nancy O’Neill, is it? This can’t be the same girl who used to crawl around on the floor when me and her dad were watching football, can it? No, because that girl would never doll herself up for some biker scum, and then walk into a biker hangout. No, she wouldn’t do that.”

 

He leans over me, trapping me against the wall. I want to thump him in the chest, slap him across the face, do anything I can to get him away from me. Not for the first time in my life, I hate how physically weak I am. All I can do is make sure my physical weakness doesn’t translate to emotional weakness, which I do by standing up straight and not letting my fear show on my face.

 

“Get away from me, please.”

 

He ignores me. His scar wrinkles when he squints. “What has happened to you?” he asks, and there’s genuine amazement in his voice. I find that absurd, since he knows Dad, and must know that if something has happened to me it would be the drunken bottle-smasher. “I really mean that, Nancy. Your father told me you might show up here one of these days, and to keep a lookout, but I didn’t believe him. You’re a lawyer, for Christ’s sake.”

 

“I’m not a lawyer,” I tell him, struggling to keep calm. “And you’re in my way.”

 

“So you and this Fink character are an item?” Michaels says, ignoring me. “Is that about the size of it? Have you completely lost all self-respect?”

 

“I don’t have to justify anything to you. I don’t even know you.”

 

“Know me? I’m the law, girl! Of course you know me!” His goons mumble in agreement. “I just don’t get this. You’re a . . . I don’t want to say it, but looking at you now with your face all painted up and your tights hiked up and your ass pushed out, I think you’re a whore. I don’t want to say it, but what else can I say? Look at you. You’re practically panting for that little shit’s cock.”

 

“Get. Out. Of. My. Way!” I slap him in the chest.

 

It accomplishes nothing but to hurt my hand. It’s like hitting wood. He just stands there, unharmed and unbothered, watching me calmly. “Wow,” he says. “You just assaulted a police officer. You just assaulted a police officer.” He grabs my wrist, squeezing too hard, crushing the bone. “How’re you going to make up for that, little whore?”

 

I take a step back, pressing myself so closely to the wall that my back and bum and legs hurt. The stone bites into me. Michaels leans over, aiming a trembling forefinger at my face. The way he looks right now, shaking, full of crazed energy, I believe he could do anything. He and his goons could grab me and shove me in a van and do something horrible and there’s nothing I could do.

 

But then, Fink and two men appear behind him. All three of them are wearing leathers. One man has a dragon tattooed on his neck. Without even realizing it, I’ve started hyperventilating, my breathing taking hold of me. All the horrible things these men might do to me spring alive in my twisted mind. When I see Fink, though, my breathing slows. Not a lot, but enough for me to think.

 

“Well?” Michaels barks.

 

I tilt my head up at him, smiling as sweetly as I can, looking like timid prey but thinking like a deadly predator. “I’ve always thought you were handsome.”

 

“What?” He glances at his goons, and then at me. Fink and his men advance slowly. “Really?”

 

“Sure,” I say, as Fink creeps closer, closer. “When you used to come by the house I thought that, all the time. I thought you were the biggest, handsomest man—”

 

Fink leaps, smashing Michaels over the head with the barrel of his handgun. Michaels’ eyes go wide for a moment. He stumbles, and then he slams into the wall and slides to the floor. Fink’s friends make short work of the other two, and then Fink turns to the dragon-tattooed man. “Dump these somewhere, Snake,” he says. “But don’t kill ’em. The last thing we need is three dead cops. I’ll kill the surveillance footage.”

 

“Why shouldn’t I just kill them?” the man named Snake asks.

 

Fink darts forward, grabbing his shirtfront. He moves even deadlier than he did just now. “Three dead cops,” he says. “If you do this without the boss’s permission, I’ll have no choice but to tell him. See how he reacts to it.”

 

Snake nods when Fink mentions the boss. “Fair enough. But sooner or later, he’ll give the order. You won’t be able to keep your peace then.”

 

A car pulls up and Snake and the other man drag the bodies into the trunk. Fink turns to me, looking down at me with a mixture of a smile and a scowl: a smile for me and a scowl for the situation. Just seeing his face after all these weeks would be enough to make me wobbly, but his face combined with the memory of Michaels, the thoughts of what that crazy man could’ve done, his cutting words . . .

 

I collapse forward into Fink’s arms. I’m shaking, I note in an oddly clinical way. Yes, I’m shaking. And now I’m hyperventilating again.

 

“He . . . was . . . going . . . to . . .”

 

“Hush,” Fink says, stroking my hair. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

 

I wonder what he means, but then I see: a spray of blood on my face and shirt from where Fink hit Michaels.

 

My breathing only gets worse.