The car park is full of old junk cars, the kinds which dock workers drive, beat-up old things which do the job, get you from A to B, but don’t do anything flashy. As the bikes stop, I see a man in overalls leaning against one of the cars, smoking a cigarette. He waves a hand to the group of bikers and then flicks away the butt. It turns over and over, and I find myself strangely caught up in the way it seems to glint in the sunlight. The referee? Do street fights have referees?
The bikes come to a full stop, and I climb off, take off the helmet, and hand it to Maddox. He looks at me strangely, his forehead creased, watching me like I’m a puzzle he has to figure out.
“You have a question,” he says, as his men move in a wave toward the man in the overalls. The bald man – Maddox’s lieutenant, maybe – walks right up to the man and they talk in a quick exchange.
“Yes,” I say.
He waves his hands over the car park. “You want to know why I’ve taken a lady as lovely as yourself to a place like this?”
“Yes,” I say. “Is it…” I gulp. Am I in too deep? If I guess it right, will he turn on me? Remember, this man is a stranger I met in a coffee shop less than an hour ago! “… is it some kind of street fight?”
Maddox looks at me for a long moment. I envision scenarios in which his face suddenly contorts, and he turns violent, gripping my wrist and bringing his handsome face close to mine, “You made a mistake coming here!” And then he’d hit me across the face and laugh, and his men would laugh, and then…
He chuckles lightly, shaking his head. “This isn’t a street fight,” he says, smiling at me. An almost-kind smile. Not an outlaw’s smile at all. He reaches toward me, hovering his hand inches from me. “Trust me, Red. Come and see what the outlaw’s life is all about?”
I look down at his hand, marked with a tattooist’s ink, callused from riding, large and tough. Then look back into his face. “Can I trust you, though?” I ask.
“As strange as it seems, yeah, you can. Now, take my hand.”
His tone is commanding, the kind of tone a feminist should not accept. I should now be triggered, start lecturing him about how it is not acceptable for a man to talk to a woman in that tone of voice, give him a real dressing down, feminist-style.
But I like the commanding tone, I realize. More than like it.
My hand is shaking when I reach forward and place it in his. It looks tiny in his palm, and then he folds his fingers over, and my hand disappears almost entirely. His grip is warm, strong; if he wanted to, he could drag me anywhere he desired.
My hand in his, he turns toward his men. “Markus,” he calls.
The big bald man turns. “Boss?” His eyes flit to my hand—my hand enclosed within his boss’s. And then he looks back to Maddox. It’s quick movement, but I can guess what he is thinking: Boss is holding hands with a woman?
“Everything sorted?” Maddox asks.
Markus nods. “Yeah, Boss.”
Maddox waves a hand toward the dock. “Good, get to it, then.”
Markus turns to the men. “You heard the Boss!”
The men begin filing away from the car park.
Maddox grins at me. “Ready to see what the outlaw life is all about?”
I give his hand a squeeze. He squeezes mine in return. “Yes,” I whisper.
***
Once the men have moved from the car park and toward the dock, Maddox and I follow. We hold hands, but it isn’t like holding hands. It’s more like he’s gripping my hand to stop me from running away; it’s more like he’s taking possession of me, pulling me along at his side. It’s more like something a feminist gender theory grad student should find very offensive. But I don’t, and that confuses me, adds fuel to the fire, which burns continuously in my mind: the fire of wanting to be eye candy and a valued mind at the same time.
We walk between two large, gray warehouses, which look out of place on a too-bright day like this, the sun glaring down from a clear, azure sky.
“Are you excited to get a glimpse at the outlaw’s life?” Maddox asks, his hand getting tighter around mine.
“Excited?” I mutter. “I don’t know if that’s the word for it.”
“Terrified, then?”
I shrug. “I don’t know if that’s the word for it, either.”
“You know, Eden, you’re a strange woman.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Strange, how?”
“The sort of woman who would get onto the back of a stranger’s bike and ride out into nowhere with him isn’t usually a respectable, smart woman. She’s usually the sort of woman you see walking in short leather skirts from motel room to motel room.”
“Prostitutes?” I offer.
Maddox nods. “Drug-addicted prostitutes, women who don’t care about what happens to them. But you… why are you here?”
I shake my head. There’s no way I can describe it all to him in a way he’ll understand, mostly because I don’t fully understand it. “Maybe I’m crazier than I look,” I say, my voice oddly grim.
“Maybe you are,” Maddox says.
He lets go out my hand when we reach the edge of the docks, a wall that overlooks the boats, the gangways, the planks, and the innumerable men, which move like insects over the boats. I’m reminded of ants scurrying over an apple at a picnic.
“Look,” Maddox says, pointing.
I follow his finger down to a boat that lulls in the water, a gangway connecting it to the dock. The Miseryed are carrying crates from the boat and placing them in an orderly pile a few yards from the dock. One of The Miseryed gets into a forklift and begins moving the crates to a truck.
Maddox grins. “See? The outlaw life in all its glory.”