Chapter One - OLIVER
From my top-floor office in the old bank building in downtown Fort Collins I can see my whole world. For real. My whole world is on display down below.
My father’s shop, Shrike Bikes, sits kitty-corner to my building, about half a block up on the opposite side of College Avenue. The Fort Collins Theater, which my cousin Sparrow is running right now, since her mom and dad are in the Bahamas, is across Jefferson Street. So close I can see the plants hanging in her office window on the third floor. And Sick Boyz, Inc., my mother’s family’s tattoo shop, is down College Avenue the opposite way.
Right now I can see ten family members as I look out my office window. My mom, my sister Jasmine, my Uncle Vic, my Uncle Vinn, and my Uncle Vonn are all standing out in front of Sick Boyz, looking up at the sign like it’s the Virgin Mary crying or something.
My mom is saying she wants it painted before this weekend. I know this like I know my own heart. She’s been talking about painting that sign for weeks.
My uncles are saying, Who the fuck cares about the sign? Not them. This whole sign-painting thing has been a regular fight since I was a kid.
Usually when my Uncle Vic is involved in some kind of argument, I put my money on him. But if he’s in an argument with my mother…
Down the road she turns away from her brothers and my sister, smiling.
She wins. The sign will be painted.
On the other side of my building, my father is standing in the parking lot of Shrike Bikes yelling. His face is red and his arms are waving around like he’s a madman.
Ford Aston, who is an uncle in his own way, is ignoring him. In fact, he’s looking at me, looking at him.
I wave.
He waves back.
My father turns, arms still flailing around like he’s about to lose his shit, sees me watching, then—even though he’s not really close enough for me to see—rolls his eyes. I can tell by the way his head moves. Which means he’s rolling his eyes at Ford.
Who knows what they’re arguing about. Probably something to do with the Zombie Run this weekend. That’s why my mom wants the sign painted.
The Zombie Run happens every year on Halloween weekend. Between three and five thousand bikers will ride through downtown on Friday as they make their way up to Poudre Park for ZombieFest, and every year about a hundred of them stop for a tattoo over the weekend.
Shrike Bikes will have a little swap meet to take advantage. My dad will sell merchandise, a few dozen leather jackets, and if he’s lucky he’ll get three or four custom bike orders. That’s no small thing since his bikes still go for more than a hundred grand each these days.
My sister Belle has a clipboard in her hand as she walks around the bikes on display in the parking lot. She’s the serious one. A real numbers girl. She and Ford get along well.
And across Jefferson, Sparrow is outside on the side of the building facing me, tacking up the ZombieFest Halloween Week Haunted House schedule—sponsored by ZombieDust beer—in the glass-encased bulletin board which overlays the new ZombieDust mural covering the old brick facade
I guess that’s only nine family members down there. But then there’s Ariel, standing behind me, yelling, as she tends to do, and generally throwing a fit about the perverts who are trying to take over Hook-Me-Up, our co-owned dating site.
“I said,” I say, sighing, “I’d take care of it.”
“Yeah, but you said that two weeks ago. We have about two hundred more on the list for review.”
“Yeah,” I mimic, “because two weeks ago I was killing people in the secret tunnel underneath Nolan Delaney’s five-star resort in Borrego Springs.” I turn around to face her. Take her in. She looks a lot like my mom, except her hair is more strawberry than blonde. But she acts like my dad. Loud, tough, funny but dead-ass serious at the same time. “And I spent two days in jail while all that shit was sorted out.”
“I know that, baby brother. I was there.”
I roll my eyes.
“But everything is cleared up now. So we need to clean this shit up.” She throws a folder down on my desk. It’s large and heavy, so it makes a thump sound. “I have so many other things to do, Oliver. I don’t have—”
“I said I’d take care of it.” I give her the sneer. Narrow eyes, one corner of my top lip slightly lifted, like I’m baring my teeth.
“Stop it,” she snaps. “You look like Billy Idol when you do that. I can’t take you seriously.”
“‘In the midnight hour,’” I sing, walking over to her, my boots thudding on the vintage hardwood floors.
“Don’t,” she says, trying not to smile.
I grab both her hips by the belt loops and start swaying, like we’re gonna dance. “‘She cried more, more, more.’”
She places her palm on my chest, right in the middle of the Shrike Bikes logo of my long-sleeved white thermal, and pushes me away.
“‘With a rebel yell,’” I sing, taking a step back.
“Cut it out! I’m serious. We can’t have this shit on the main site. It will draw attention, Oliver.” And then she narrows her eyes at me, gives me the sneer right back, complete with lip lift. “We cannot afford more attention.”
I stop my silliness and get serious. “I know. I said I’d take care of it. I’ll do it today, OK?”
“Make sure you do.” She stares at me for another second, then turns on her heel and walks out. There’s no door to slam to punctuate her point because the whole top floor belongs to me, and my ‘door’ is the open stairwell that leads down to her office on the third floor. She’s never quite gotten over that little arrangement. But we flipped for it and I won. I got the top-floor office because the coin toss is sacred.
I turn back to the window and walk over to it, but the people who ground me to this world are all gone.
My mom has disappeared somewhere. Jasmine and all my tattooed uncles have gone back to work. Sparrow’s task outside is complete, and Ford, Belle, and my dad are out of my line of sight or back inside.
Ariel is downstairs.
So it’s just me.
Alone.
As usual.
I walk back over to my desk and slump into the old wooden chair. It came with the building. So did the desk. They both have to be a hundred years old. But they’re solid. This desk is made out of some oak tree that stood out on the prairie for two hundred years before it was turned into this once-fine piece of furniture. It’s probably got a helluva story to tell. The rickety chair with the spindle back that threatens to tip over every time I kick my boots up on the desk is just as old. They have no luster or shine to them. Just wisdom that comes from age.
I reach out and pick up the stamper, then turn the dials on the mechanism until it reads today’s date. It’s old-fashioned, like the desk, and the chair, and building. And me. But I like the satisfaction I get from pushing down on the handle over the offending member’s account printout. I like the way the stamp pad mechanically flips around and makes its mark.
It says D-E-L-E-T-E-D. With the date.
And then I stack all the papers in a box and Belle eventually comes and takes them away to be filed in the record-keeping room down in the basement.
I do it online too. I check all the appropriate boxes in their profiles and click the Ban User button. But it’s not nearly as satisfying as this stamper.
Ariel is right. I open the file and find hundreds of papers. You really have to keep on top of the perverts. They are probably the same hundred people, over and over again. Just using different IP addresses and emails. But you gotta keep on top of them or other members stumble onto the dick pics in their profiles—or the masturbation videos, or the strippers who use the site to advertise their ‘private chat rooms’—and complain.
They might just complain to us, but they might not. They might complain to the FCC, or the FBI, or some sexual predator organization. We’re not regulated by the FCC, the FBI or anyone else, but no one needs that shit coming back to haunt them.
Especially us.
Especially when there is so much more going on here than anyone knows.
So I dutifully and diligently start wading through the flagged users and one after another I go into their on-site profiles, check their pics, and videos, and autobiographies. And one by one I ban them, stamp them, and let their piece of paper float down into the box with Belle’s name on it.
This is my life on most days. Sitting up here in my office listening to the sound of business on the floors below as it drifts upwards through the stairwell. Occasionally I have an out-of-town meeting to get big clients. Believe it or not, there are a bunch of new tech start-ups that think online dating is a perk their employees need. We have seven of those accounts, including the new one I just procured a few weeks ago out of New York.
Whatever.
If getting laid on a regular basis is good for their business, it’s even better for mine.
And I don’t want to think about New York. That shit is stressing me out. So I just put my head down and get busy banning perverts.
I’m about halfway through the stack when I stop breathing. Stop hearing. Stop everything when I see the image on the page.
My heart beats fast—then faster—as I stare down at the profile on the page.
I pick it up and focus on the girl.
I can’t see her face in the offending image and isn’t that so typical. But I can see other things. I can see the only things that matter.
Her tattoos.
Katya.
In her main profile pic she’s wearing a black sweater with a white blouse underneath, so the rounded collar peeks out from around her neck. She’s sitting demurely, leaning forward like she’s listening to someone talk. This picture cuts off her head but I can see her neck. The collar is high and her golden-blonde hair is covering some of it. But I search for the identifying mark anyway.
If I squint, I can just make it out.
This picture is not why her profile was flagged. It’s the stuff she’s got inside the profile that has her in my ban folder today. Three videos of herself, naked from waist to neck. Her breasts are large and so are her nipples. Perfect, tightly bunched, nipples.
Just the way I remember them.
I click play on the first video before I can stop myself.
She comes to life, one hand reaching over to pick up a paintbrush.
Jesus Christ. She’s gonna perform for me.
The paintbrush leaves the frame, then returns, covered in black ink. She draws in a breath and lets it out. And even though there is no sound, I think I can hear her.
She touches the brush to her body and begins to write.
“Sit still, darlin’,” I say, the tattoo machine hovering over her shoulder. “Don’t make me fuck up.”
Her eyes dance with excitement and that sexy tongue darts out of her mouth, caressing her upper lip.
I know there’s no more time for sexy stuff though. She is leaving tonight. Would be gone already if I hadn’t talked her into coming over to Sick Boyz with me at two in the morning.
I touch the needle to her scarred skin, expecting her to wince, or tremble, or maybe even jerk away.
But not my girl. She doesn’t even grit her teeth.
I draw the letters. Just seven of them. Just two words.
I do it again on her ribs, just a few inches below her armpit. A very tender spot for a tattoo. Then again over her hip. The scar tissue here is thick and I have to drag that needle through it to get those final seven letters.
The rest she has to lie down for. I write it deep down on her lower abdomen. There is no scar tissue to cover, it’s just a simple claim of what I consider to be mine.
You express me better than I express myself.
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I return to the present and sigh. Why is she back? I wonder. Why her? Why now? Why me?
It wasn’t a relationship. Not at all. But it was several months of regular dates. I was… what? Twenty-four? The Mister shit was well behind me, the dating site was just picking up steam, and for the first time in my adult life I had plenty of money that I didn’t feel obligated to spend wisely because it hadn’t come from my parents.
Katya.
God, I liked her. She was so…
Young.
I actually laugh out loud as the word pops into my head.
She was seventeen. For a while I thought she was lying about her age because she did not look seventeen.
I didn’t care anyway. Even after all that Mister bullshit, I didn’t care.
I took one look at her and fell pretty hard.
I didn’t understand how a girl so small, and so young, and so smart could be wrapped up in that kind of life. I wanted to take her away the first time I laid eyes on her. I wanted to fuck that guy up and whisk her away. To Tahiti, or Grand Cayman, or Monaco. Some luxury five-star palace. Drive her around in an Aston Martin with the wind in her hair, laughing. I wanted to drink champagne with her until we were sick, and gamble all our money away at the roulette table, then collapse on top of her naked body, kissing her up and down, promising to get more money so we could do it again.
Even though Katya Kalashova was soft on the outside, she was all edges. Everything about her was hard angles and sleek lines. Like she was engineered and perpetually on the cusp of something… fame, and fortune, and a long, fascinatingly charmed life.
But then she said… Harvard. She had plans, and dreams, and a wild imagination that was both conventional and exotic at the same time.
Why did I ever let her get away?
How did I ever get involved with her in the first place?
I check the other videos, but they are all similar versions of the first one. Her, Katya, sitting with only her torso and shoulders visible in the frame. Her full tits taunting me as she paints her body with words.
How many people have seen this, for fuck’s sake? Is she trying to get me jealous? Piss me off? Make me… but then I see a little red icon in the lower left corner of her stats.
Private.
I glance down at her print-out and read the pink sticky note in Ariel’s handwriting. No one has complained. Yet. But she’s bad news. Ban her before she makes her profile public.
She’s bad news. Just an off-the-cuff comment from my sister, but so fucking true.
Katya Kalashova is some of the worst news I’ve ever had the pleasure of fucking. This girl is dragging a lot of baggage around behind her.
My hand is on my dick before I can think. I’m tugging on the button, then the zipper. One hand lifts up my shirt to bare my stomach while the other hand presses play on the video. I push record on the webcam as she resumes her erotic art. Her paintbrush is spelling out commands I already want to follow. Kiss me here, it spells. And here, it spells. And here.
My cock lengthens, hardens. I fist it, leaning back in the chair, closing my eyes so I can pretend she’s not onscreen, but right here in the room with me. I start breathing harder as I imagine her the way she was the last night we spent together. We were fucking at my place for most of it. I took her from behind, her face pushed up against the wall. Her tits bouncing, my balls smacking her with each thrust. That erotic sound of skin on skin that echoed up into the high ceilings of my construction-zone of a house.
I jerk myself a little faster, my hand slamming down to the base of my shaft, then rising again until my thumb peaks over the tip of my cock. Again, and again as I picture her that last night. Standing naked in the moonlight as I tried to convince myself. That my part in her life was over. That I would not miss her.
It was a lie. And that’s why she ended up with those tattoos.
I fucked her at Sick Boyz that night too. It was late—or early, depends how you think of the night. I had her in the chair. She was wearing a skirt and she was topless. I fucked her mouth, I fucked her pussy, I fucked her ass.
I fucked her like I would never fuck her again.
She left for the East Coast the next morning, Harvard, she said, and I felt sick about it. I felt sick about letting her go. I felt sick about the time we spent together. And I felt sick about how we met.
Why we met.
“Katya…” I moan, just before my release. “Why did you come back? I know it’s you,” I say. “Katya Kalashova. I really never thought I’d see you again.”
I laugh. Not because it’s funny. But because it’s so damn ironic. “Well, I can’t see you yet, can I? But you’re here for a reason.” I pause. “I will see you and if you try to leave town again, sneak away like a fucking coward…”
I stop talking and just concentrate on the image of her in my mind. On how I wish it was her hand jerking me off instead of mine. Hot, sticky semen spurts out of my cock and becomes a pool of thick, white come on my stomach.
“Uh…” a voice says from the stairwell. “Knock, knock, you fucking pervert. And who the hell is Katya? Don’t tell me, you finally got a girlfriend?”
I open my eyes, stare at the asshole who just interrupted the best fantasy jerk-off I’d had in years, and reach for one of the promotional Zombie Run t-shirts on my desk. I wipe myself off as he comes further into my office
“Well, well, well,” I say, tossing the shirt aside and putting my dick away. “Look who it is. What the fuck are you doing in my town, Mr. Corporate?”