Chapter Fifteen - Tyler
I’m so pissed. I want to drive fast. I want to open this motherfucker up and just rip through the desert night headed nowhere. But I can’t. Because it’s Vegas on Halloween and everybody and their saggy-panty granny is out on the fucking road.
“This is BULLSHIT!” I declare to absolutely no one.
It is though. If I was really the Dark Knight I wouldn’t have to stand for it. I’d have the Batmobile and like rocket boosters or whatever. Crap. I shoulda asked if they could outfit this thing with rocket boosters. You know they can. I saw some crazy shit in the military. They can do all kinds of things.
FUCK!
I need to get out of this nonsense. I need to leave. Leave Vegas and all this behind. I don’t know what I was thinking coming back. I thought somehow it would make things feel better. Familiar. But maybe that’s the problem. That’s what Dr. Eldridge said. I seek the chaos because it feels familiar. And the problem with that is there’s no shortage of chaos to be found in this world. So how’s somebody supposed to not to seek it out?
COCKSUCKER!
I need to fight or fuck. Like right now. I can actually feel the temperature inside my body changing. The fire inside me is burning out of control.
Scotty.
SON-OF-A-BITCH!
I maneuver my way off this gridlocked bullshit of a main road by driving up onto the sidewalk (maybe the cops’ll come after me and we can get into a high-speed chase, that’d be something). I look left. I look right. No cops. Damn.
I snake around some more cars and onto a side street that’s a little more open. But now, suddenly, I hear car horns blaring. Not the “woohoo, it’s party time!” kind, but more the “hey, get the fuck out of the way!” kind. And now, squinting up ahead, I see that some asshole is standing in the middle of the road.
Jesus. CHRIST! FUCKING PEOPLE! Everybody in this world is an asshole. And I’m not excluding myself from that indictment. Hell, I’m the biggest asshole of them all. But fuck everyone else, because… they’re not me.
As I get closer I can see it’s not a guy asshole. It’s a girl asshole. Who are the worst kind of assholes. Because you can’t punch a girl for being an asshole. Well… I suppose you maybe could, but it’s really, really uncool and the kind of thing I tend to frown on. In fact, one of my favorite things to do is punch assholes who’ve laid their hands on women in a less than civil way. Even if the woman was being an asshole. Yeah. Fuck those assholes. Fuck those women-hurting assholes right in their assholes. Fucking assholes.
As I’m having this elevated discourse with myself…
The woman asshole who’s standing in the middle of the road comes into clearer view.
Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?
She’s not an asshole. She’s Scarlett. She’s my angel. In the middle of the road. Like an asshole. Cars weaving around her, people yelling. What the hell is she doing?
More importantly, what is she doing HERE? And suddenly it occurs to me that I’ve never seen her away from the strip club. But here she is now. In full angel regalia.
In the middle of the road.
And I start to think… is she a real angel? Maybe she is. Maybe we think of angels as chaste and pure and shit because that’s what all the myths tell us, but maybe they’re just crazy little fuck machines. And that’s what makes them angelic. Holy shit! I’ve just discovered a secret about Heaven! Angels exist to fuck good into the world!
OK. So that last car just almost hit her. This is not cool. She’s not even moving. I guess that it’s OK because… she’s got divine protection? Or something? But I don’t like the way this thing looks like it’s playing out. So. I do something that makes complete sense and is one hundred percent the right thing to do.
I spin my car hard left, fishtailing it right, and block the oncoming traffic from possibly running my paragon of sexiness over. I jump out and shout to her over the roof.
“Scarlett?”
“Ford?”
Some asshole is now laying on his horn at me.
“Hey! Asshole! What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck outta the road!” the asshole shouts.
“Me? I’m the asshole? Fuck YOU, asshole!” I can’t believe this dickhead. (Who I just decided is not an asshole, but a dickhead. Fuckin’ dickhead.)
Dickhead now decides it’s a smooth move to get out of his Camaro and step to me. He’s big. And he’s dressed like a Viking. Great. Now I gotta fight a fucking Viking. But then I find myself very excited at the possibility that I might get to fight AND fuck tonight! My angel! She’s like a good-luck charm.
“Ford?” Scarlett says again as she gets closer. “What are you—Look out!”
And at that, I turn just in time to see Dickhead’s fist the moment before it makes contact with my jaw and rings my bell. Pretty damn hard.
So… two things about me:
One—This guy is most definitely a dickhead because I would never, ever, in a million years take a sucker shot at someone. No way. There’s nothing worse in my book than rolling up on someone unaware. You look a man in the eye before you try to tune him up.
And two—I can take a fuckin’ punch.
I twist my neck to crack it after the unexpected shock to the system it just took, and then I turn my head back to look at Dickhead in his dickhead eyes.
“Um… Get back in your car now, please,” I say in as polite a tone as I can muster.
Dickhead stares me down like he thinks he’s gonna try again. There’s a moment where I consider grabbing the gun that’s still in my glove box and really giving the old boy a Halloween scare, but that feels too easy. Plus, and I have to be honest about this, I want Scarlett to think I’m cool. I mean I AM super fuckin’ cool. Everybody says so. But I want her to THINK I am.
“Pretty please,” I say. “Or you and I can decide to learn a lot about each other real fuckin’ fast here in the middle of this goddamn road. Your call, chief.” (I assume it annoys other people as much as it annoys me, so I decide to drop it on him.)
Dickhead looks at me. Then he looks over my shoulder at Scarlett. I hazard a glance back at her. She’s got a smug look on her face that I’m choosing to interpret as pride because she knows she’s rolling in the company of awesomeness.
Then Dickhead backs up, points his finger at me (ugh, so fuckin’ cheesy), gets in his bitchin’ Camaro, bumping his Viking horns on the door frame as he tries to sit down (classic), and throws it in reverse. He’s sort of boxed in, but, eh, fuck him.
“Hey,” Scarlett says.
I turn to her. She’s standing by the hood on the passenger side.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“Me? I’m just driving down the fuckin’ street. What are you doing here?”
“Standing in the fuckin’ street.”
“Yeah. I caught that. Why?”
“I dunno. Because. Because I’m having a real bad night.”
Her eyes go soft and sad. I wonder why she’s having a bad night. I wonder if it’s as bad as the bad night I’m having. I wonder if I can help. So I ask.
“Is there anything I can do?”
She shakes her head a little. Then she pauses and says, “I dunno. Maybe?”
“OK. I mean, yeah. Name it.”
She takes a breath and I could be wrong, it could just be the way the evening lights are hitting her, but she looks a little like she wants to start crying. Then she asks...
“Will you fuck me?”
There are times in your life when you forget how to breathe. This is one.
I nod. “Fuck, yeah, I will.”
I hit the button to unlock her door and she slides into the passenger seat. Her white dress has some dirt on it and her crooked halo and tattered wings make her look like she was kicked out of eternity and got lost in the muck trying to find her way home.
I slide into the driver’s seat and close the door. I reach over and touch her chin. Turn her head to face me. “Um,” I begin. “Are you OK?”
She smiles the tiniest of smiles. “No. I’m not.”
I nod a bit. “Yeah. Me either.”
And now my tongue is in her mouth. I’ve got my hands behind her head and her hands are reaching for my cock. We are urgent, angry, and needy. She is a fallen angel and I am sin itself.
I rip myself away and ask, “Is your place close?”
“Not really,” she says.
“Cool. Mine is.”
I slam on the accelerator, straighten the car out, and start hooking back around to the Strip as fast as I can without killing us both in the process.
Fuck! I shoulda got the rocket boosters.