The trip to Tijuana was a blur. The driver flew with me. His name was Jose, which was better than Jesus, but his presence reminded me of Gary too much to feel friendly toward him. Which was silly, since I barely knew Gary. I knew I was being childish and expected Inanna to show up and kick my ass again, but if she was around I never saw her. This left poor Jose to carry my luggage, which he probably packed himself, in silence and without any show of gratitude.
Fine, I was being a bitch.
Knowing I was being a bitch didn’t change my mood in the slightest. It just named it accurately.
The next day, I ordered lunch in the hotel restaurant, a garden salad. Perhaps I was hoping that reenacting the crime would show me a way out of this mess. It didn’t.
How many years ago was that day Kane walked in and found me torturing the single cherry tomato with my fork, making it bleed for my sins? Hell, it had to be years, right? I’ve been married twice and divorced twice — and from what I could tell, husband number three was late.
I rammed the fork into the little red vegetable, and twisted it’s innards out — and don’t tell me it’s a fruit. If you can’t make a Slurpee out of it, it’s not a fruit.
His shadow loomed.
I’d forgotten how big he was. No, that’s not the truth of things. I felt, at this moment, no one could remember how big he really was. He didn’t fit into that particular belief system.
No matter how many times I would see him, or how long I was around him, the next time he came into the room I would be taken back by how large he really was. I might get used to being shocked by his size, but that’s as close as I would likely get.
I looked up, and despite my promise, my only thought was, Here stands the Dragon of War.
His red hair was wild and yet it looked recently brushed. The leather jacket he wore might have taken a whole cow to make. I stood up and stepped to him. He held out his hand, and in the palm was…
“Is that a bent horseshoe nail?” I asked. It was polished and shiny, but it was still a ring made out of a horseshoe nail.
He looked at it, inspected it, and then said, “Yes?”
“Huh,” I said.
“Ore told me you were in the military, and have military training,” he said, segueing right past the point that he was offering me a horseshoe nail as a bride-to-be token.
“Navy,” I said, “two years.” I still did not taking my eyes off the iron circle. Didn’t reach for it either. It kind of looked like he might have bent it himself. It wasn’t quite a true circle.
“Navy? So, you learned what? How to swim?” he said, and the derision in his voice was clear enough.
Now, I need to get this clear — I’m not a Go Navy! gal, alright? Don’t get that twisted. My only reason for choosing the Navy was that I had never seen the ocean before, and I would be going to a coast for bootcamp, and training. That’s it. That’s all the Go Navy! I had in me, then or now. That said, I learned more in the Navy than how to swim. We have some pretty tough guys in the Navy. SEAL teams. Maybe you’ve heard of them.
I hit Raw hard in the liver.
Two things came to mind when I hit him. One: was he was built of brick? The fact that he was relaxed, and not expecting an attack, only made him feel like a pile of bricks, relaxing and not expecting to be attacked. Two: those SEALs weren’t just showing off for the blond women with long legs at the pool. They knew exactly what they were talking about.
In boxing, the liver shot, is called a Body Blow Knockout. It’s rare to see in the ring, so rare in fact that many boxing commentators don’t know one when they see one.
The reason it is rare, is because in a normal fighting stance, a right handed boxer naturally guards his liver area with his right elbow. Just look at a boxing poster and you’ll see what I mean. In order for it to be a devastating attack, you have to hit the liver straight on, and deep. I wasn’t sure I went deep enough with my punch, even though I gave it everything I had. Looking up into Raw’s eyes, I saw amusement there … briefly.
There is a major nerve cluster there, across the liver. Hit like I hit Raw, it gets all kinds of fucked up. When that happens, every signal going to the lungs, the guts and downward, is scrambled. The lungs are paralyzed, unable to exhale or inhale. The heart beats, but not regularly. Signals get crossed, and the legs tremble, and then crumple. Paralyzing lasts about thirty seconds, the SEALs told me, but then the pain starts. As soon as he takes a breath, his gut will feel like someone cut him open, poured rum inside, and lit him up like a cocktail.
“When you can get up, be more polite when you come to my room, and you better fucking have a diamond ring, because the Navy taught me more than this little trick,” I told him. “Oh, and yes. I can swim too.”
He took a breath. His eyes went wide.
I stepped over him, and walked to the elevators.
… of course you know, this means, war…
***
Jose had left me. I tried to believe that he was called away, or now that Raw was around his job was done, but I had the feeling that he heard about what I did down in the restaurant and he decided to run like hell. Which, if true, increased my estimation of his intelligence, greatly.
I wanted to run like hell too. What the fuck was I thinking? Gosh, I felt shitty.
Why don’t I find the most dangerous man on the planet and sucker punch him? That will make me feel better… Mother fucker! I had no brain. NONE.
It took two hours for the knock on my door to come. By that time, I had gone from terrified to horrified, to fearful, to anxious, to bored, to being pissed off again.
Like I said, I have no brain.
Opening the door, since no one else would do it for me, I found him there. I took a moment, to get over the shock of his size, and then saw he had his hand out. In his palm, was the same shiny, bent horseshoe nail. Only now, there was a diamond mashed into the head. It was big too. No doubt about that.
Wonder made me take it from his palm, and examine the token. “Did you mash that in there yourself?”
“Is it not big enough?” he asked.
“No, it’s fine,” I said, deciding that his answer also meant, yes. He pushed that diamond into the iron with — what? His thumb?
I’ve never had a guy do something like that for me before, and it was oddly cute. Could cute really define it? No, probably not. But I was short on words.
Trying the ring on, I found it fit perfectly, and because of the slightly oval shape, it didn’t spin around or flick back and forth like normal rings did.
With my right hand I flicked at the stone a couple times to see if it would pop out, but it was mashed in there good.
“Huh,” I said again, and then I looked up, gave him a smile, wrapped my arms around his neck, and said, “I’m already on my toes. This is as high as I go. You have to bend down now.”
He did, so I kissed him as lovingly as I have ever kissed anyone.
Taking three fingers of his hand, because that’s all I could hold on to with mine, I led husband three into my room. “What do you have planned, Raw?”
He followed, but didn’t answer.
Leading him to the couch, I sat down and he sat next to me. After the creaking stopped I said, “Hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“No.”
“Mad that I punched you?”
“Not really.”
Huh…
Raw, is War, backwards.
Not sure why I thought that now, and not earlier.
His focus was outside, through the large windows. He didn’t appear troubled or motivated or bashful. In fact, he appeared to be relaxed and at ease with the world.
After sitting for a long moment, I got up, made myself a rum on ice. When I returned, I sat down closer to him, leaning my back against him so I could look out the window too, and relaxed. He was still made of brick but oddly comfortable to lean against.
According to the little clock on the wall, an hour passed. I made another drink, not asking him — figuring he would either make it himself or ask on his own.
After returning to the same position, I wondered when I had ever just sat, and did nothing. I thought of a few bath times, and this sort of felt like the same thing, only Raw didn’t get cold or shrivel me up.
I’ve read that doing nothing was good for the soul or mental health, or something. After the last few weeks, it felt good, to sit and better that someone else was around, also just sitting.
“Ukiyo,” I said, which was a Japanese word, which literally meant, "the floating world," but had the usage meaning for living in the moment, detached from the bothers of life.
Raising my left hand, I examined my ring. “Why a horseshoe nail?”
“Cold iron,” he said, thus proving he wasn’t sleeping.
“Cold?”
“Not forged or shaped for war, or battle or violence,” he explained.
Cold. Not hot. Not rage or murder or battle. Not for heated moments. Not for blood. I studied it with this in mind. A horseshoe nail served a purpose. Horseshoes helped horses. I didn’t know much about horses, but I did know that they had many troubles with their hooves, and the shoes protected them from most of those troubles.
The term, however, caught my attention, tugging at old memories back in the recesses of my mind. Way back, and under stacks of other memories.
So, this ring was chosen. The choice was not haphazard or aimless. Intention and meaning, braided this choice. Therefore, it felt ungrateful to demand more thought and explanation.
Another thought crossed my mind- Slate talking to Raw and Ore inside the limo. “Are you talking with the others right now?”
“Right now? No,” he said.
“But you were.” “Yes,” he admitted.
I turned around to face him, “Do you do that all in your head? Talking to them?”
“Um, well that is… I don’t say much,” he said, looking a bit shy now.
Having a giant of a man, with dark red hair, and beard, and body hair, with blue eyes the color of deep ocean, look shy, was a surprise. I had to give him that. “Hmm.”
“What?”
I turned back around and leaned against him again. “Nothing.”
The vibration off him was better than the look in his eye down in the restaurant, when the liver did its work. I thought we were sharing a moment, and instead, I was having a moment while he was on the phone the whole time. Served him right.
As expected, he knew what every man knows — nothing, never meant, nothing. It always meant; something. Didn’t take five or ten thousand years — or however long they’ve been around — to figure that one out. Most mortal men knew it after their third date, while still in high school.
Maybe he didn’t talk much or maybe he didn’t like to talk much, but I figured he owed me a conversation. If it was going to take a fight to get the Dragon of War to open up, then let the games begin!
His hands encased my shoulders, and then with amazing skill, began to massage the muscles of my neck and back. I’m not talking about those prissy massages either — the ones men think are going to turn a woman’s sex engine on — and yes, sometimes they do — but I’m talking about a serious massage here. Bone deep muscle rubbing, that loosened everything and put everything back where it should have been. It was like spring cleaning for the soft tissue and spine. Fuck it felt good!
After ten minutes of this, my body was putty.
“I don’t want to fight,” Raw whispered, so low I almost missed it.
“Okay” I said, totally losing all of my ground — all but rolling over and exposing my soft belly; whimpering; and thumping my tail.
“Fighting sucks,” he said.
“Yeah, totally,” I groaned — thump thump thump.
My back popped five times, and he reset the vertebrae like precisely shuffled cards. Sweet mercy.
I don’t remember stretching out face down on the couch, but I didn’t move or call foul when I noticed either. His hands, those huge hands, worked me like a cello from hell. The result wasn’t the expected sleepiness either, but the opposite in fact.
Energy shot through me out of those hands. That’s what stress was, right? Restrained action? Forced passivity, when you really wanted to take up the keyboard, and let that fucker have it across his chin? All of that, years of that, poured into my blood stream, released from exile and imprisonment.
“Ore wants my help tonight,” he said.
“OK,” I said. “I’m coming with.”
“Are you?”
“Aren’t I? Can you think of some place safer than by your side or at your back?” “Um, yes?” he tried.
“On this continent?” I asked.
“Um, no.”
“Then I’m coming with,” I said. He was good, but he wasn’t good enough to turn me stupid.
Close though. So very, very close.