Natalia
“Natalia, what the hell do you think you are doing?”
My father’s voice was as angry as always. It ripped through the heat of the kitchen and pierced my ears with its shrill fury. He soon followed, bundling around the corner, his cheeks purpled with rage. The tendons of his neck stood out stark against his flesh.
I froze in place. The dolls on the tiled floor in front of me were worn and filthy. Their hair was a matted mess, limbs were missing, and every article of clothing was as threadbare and tattered as the ones I wore myself. It made sense—after all, they’d been fished out of the garbage—but it didn’t matter to me. I loved them anyway, even Eva, the one without a right eyeball. She had a sweet smile painted on.
I liked to pretend that my mother had a smile like that. I wouldn’t know, of course. She was gone long before my memories began. Daddy always told me she’d gotten sick of the Chicago winters and she went to California, where it was sunny and warm. But I didn’t believe him. I could always tell when he was lying.
I looked up at where he stood in the doorway. He was skinny, hardly any meat left on his bones, though a little potbelly sagged over his drawstring chef’s pants. He walked with a hunched back and a hitch in his step, cursing up a storm under his breath, always demanding to know why his body was betraying him in so many ways both little and big. His hands were scraped raw from years of plunging them into the hot water from the sink.
He’d owned this restaurant for as long as I’d been alive. He used to tell me he’d moved to Chicago and found a job working in the kitchen here under the previous owner. It was a rundown Italian joint. We served spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce, lasagna, and lots of other dishes like that. But there weren’t ever too many people who came to eat here. Daddy was always sitting in his office, shuffling through papers and cursing like he loved to do. He knew a lot of curse words.
I opened my mouth to talk, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he marched across the distance between us in two quick steps, scooped up my dolls, and threw them straight into a trashcan.
“No, Daddy!” I shrieked, clutching at his elbow.
He shook me off, then spun around and seized my upper arm between his skinny skeleton fingers. “I told you to wash the dirty dishes,” he hissed. His face was jammed up against mine. I hated looking into his eyes. They were so scary. “If you don’t listen to me, you don’t get your dolls.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I wailed. Tears were streaming down my face. His grip on my arm was so tight. It hurt. There would be bruises later. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.
“Now, go,” he barked, throwing me backwards. I stumbled, but stayed on my feet. He spun on his heel and stormed back out, ranting quietly to himself.
Everything was wrong. It was too hot in the kitchen, my arm hurt, my dolls were gone, and the stack of dishes teetering on the edge of the sink would take me years to scrub clean. Daddy always made sure they were extra clean. He’d pluck one up from the finished stack and hold it right up under his eyes. If there was even the tiniest speck of grime or crusted food on it, he’d make me start the whole pile over, no matter how clean all the others were.
I sagged in front of the sink. I didn’t want to stand up anymore. I just wanted to lie down somewhere quiet and cool and sleep for a long, long time. And when I woke up, I wanted Daddy to be nicer and smiling.
I twisted open the faucet. Water poured out, scalding hot. Steam rose in spirals from the flow. Reaching as high as I could while standing on my tiptoes, I pulled the first plate from the top of the stack, dunked it in the sudsy water, and started to scrub.
I pretended all the bad things were like old food on the plates. If I scrubbed hard enough and didn’t cry out when the hot water hit my hands, I’d be able to make it all go away. The plates were so pretty when they were clean. Maybe my life could be that pretty, too.
Hours passed as I scrubbed and scrubbed until my hands were swollen and pink. I could hardly bend my knuckles. The fingertips were like little fleshy raisins.
It had to be getting close to closing time. There were still a lot of chores I had to do after the customers stopped coming in, but at least Daddy wouldn’t be quite so nervous and mad. He usually calmed down a little bit once the restaurant was empty.
I eyed the pile. There were only a few dozen plates left. I figured I could afford to take a quick break. Stepping down from the stool, I tottered to the kitchen door. I pushed it open and stuck my head out.
There was a short hallway connecting the kitchen to the main dining room. The sign on the door was flipped to Closed and the few tables I could see were empty, but, for some reason, there were still unfamiliar voices booming throughout the building. Suddenly, I heard a big crash, like plates shattering.
I snuck down the hallway and peeked around the corner to see what was happening.
At the big booth in the corner, two men in suits were lounging back, cackling. Their suits were shiny and new-looking. I wanted to touch the fabric. It looked so soft and silky. They each had cigarettes burning between their lips, even though smoking wasn’t allowed in the restaurant. Daddy hated the smell.
Strewn across the table were dozens of dishes. That was good, at least. They’d ordered a lot of food, so maybe, if I were lucky, Daddy would be a little bit happier tonight. Maybe they’d even leave him a big tip. That would be best of all.
“This pasta tasted like shit, Antonio,” said one of the men. He had a thick, bristly mustache and chubby fingers with lots of gold rings. As I watched, he picked up the plate in question and dropped it on the floor at my father’s feet where he stood at the head of their table, right on top of the remains of another broken dish.
It hit the floor and broke into tiny shards. Pasta sauce flew up onto my father’s apron and torso. He flinched, bringing up his hands to protect his face. I couldn’t see his expression but I knew he would be furious. Daddy had such a temper, didn’t these men know that? I bet he was about to kick them out and curse at them until they cried, just like he did to me when I was bad.
But he didn’t do anything. He lowered his hands slowly. I barely recognized the voice that came out of his mouth just then. It didn’t sound anything like him. Where was the anger? Where were the curse words? The only thing he said was, “I’m s-sorry, Giovanni. It won’t happen again.” His tone was apologetic and sad. He looked down at his feet as soon as he’d finished talking.
I was confused. None of this made any sense. Daddy shouldn’t be acting so nice to these men. He was letting them smoke in the restaurant and break his plates and insult his food. That wasn’t very nice of them at all. If I’d broken a plate, Daddy would have shaken me by my arm and sent me straight to my room without supper.
“Fuck your sorry,” said the other man. This one was immensely fat, but he had a baby face, skin as smooth and clear as a pat of butter. When he spoke, his cheeks shook like Jell-O. I didn’t like him any more than I liked the man with the mustache. “And fuck your food,” he added. “Giovanni’s right. It does taste like shit.”
“Can I, uh, get you something else?” my father stuttered.
“You can get us the money you owe, Antonio,” the fat man said. His eyes were squinty and mean. He took a big drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke straight into Daddy’s face. Daddy coughed hard, doubling over as he wheezed. The men all chortled.
Daddy tried to talk, though his voice came out raspy. “I don’t have any money to give you right now. I can barely keep the lights on as it is. Nobody comes here!”
The man with the mustache cut in sharply, “The Esposito family doesn’t give a fuck about your excuses, Antonio. We don’t care how you get the money. But you better find a way to get it.”
My father started to babble. “There’s just no way, I mean, how can I? No customers, food goes bad, and then—” The sharp crack of flesh on flesh rang out, interrupting him. Daddy’s head snapped back. He fell silent, stunned.
The man with the mustache, the one who had just slapped him across the face, winced and rubbed his knuckles. “Christ, you’ve got a hard skull, Antonio,” he muttered. “I hate doing that, you know. Why do you make us do things like that?” He tugged on a pair of leather gloves as he stood up from the table.
The other man followed suit. As he stood, he swept an arm across the table, knocking off the dozens of half-eaten plates of food that had been sitting there. They slammed into the floor, crashing and smashing apart. Food went everywhere.
“No, wait, please,” my father begged, but the skinny man with the mustache ignored his pleas as he gripped Daddy’s neck and swung him on top of the table.
“Find the money. Now. We’ll be back soon if you don’t,” he said, pointing a gloved finger in his face.
“Okay,” he gasped through the pressure on his neck. “I’ll find it, I swear.”
“Good,” the man replied, releasing the grip on his neck and standing up straight. He brushed a spot of pasta sauce from the lapel of his jacket. His nose wrinkled in disgust.
“And clean this place up,” added the fat man. “You’ve got a lot of broken shit lying around on the ground. It’s a pigsty.” He smiled evilly. Both men laughed again.
I liked them even less than I had at first. They were not nice men. Daddy was mean sometimes, but even he didn’t deserve this. I felt scared. I hoped they wouldn’t come after me.
“Should we leave him something to remind him of us?” the fat man asked his friend.
The other rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. “I guess so,” he sighed.
Turning, the fat man plucked the cigarette from between his lips with one hand and grabbed my father’s wrist with the other. Daddy started to struggle, but the mustache man pinned him to the table top. He looked on in horror as the fat man flipped his hand over, exposing his palm, and pressed the lit tip of the cigarette down into his skin.
I ducked back around the corner and covered my ears as Daddy started to scream. I kept them covered for a long time.
When Daddy limped back around the corner a while later, I saw he held a corner of his apron pressed against his palm. He looked at me. His eyes were round and sad. For once, he didn’t look angry. He just looked so tired.
I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t say anything. He sighed and just kept walking.
I never did get my dolls back.
Nicholas
I didn’t know how long I was lying there. It was the opposite of my first memory. This time around, when I returned to the realm of the living, instead of being white, everything was dark.
It was nighttime. The lights overhead in the alleyway were dim and flickering. They only made the shadows deeper and more jagged. I felt something warm and wet dripping from my mouth. The tangy, metallic taste told me it was blood. My lips were dry and my whole body shivered from head to toe.
I tried to move. The second my muscles ignited, pain tore through me like I’d never felt before. The white hot epicenter of it burned in my chest, where a grinding crunch hinted that something must be broken.
The dealer had beat the shit out of me and left me for dead. I was close to it as far as I could tell. Nothing moved right. Everything hurt. I couldn’t even sit up. All I could do was blink. Even thoughts seemed like too much effort for my body to handle.
I kept fading in and out of consciousness. It went dark for a while, and when my eyes opened again, it was morning. I was so thirsty, my throat desperate for a sip of water. Something cold nuzzled against my face, a tiny pinprick of sensation. It was snow. Flakes began to fall from the sky lazily, drifting down between the power lines and the rooftops to settle in a thin patina along the wet concrete. I opened my mouth and caught a few snowflakes on my tongue.
Every time I tried to move, the same pain flared up, just as bad as the first attempt. I was going to die out here if I didn’t get some help. No food, no shelter. I’d be buried in a snow bank for weeks before they found my body. I almost wanted to laugh at the mental image of some garbage man unearthing me, finding a scrawny little corpse with his tongue stuck out.
The snow kept falling. I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t, try as I might. This was as far as Nico was going to get. I should’ve died in the car crash. It would’ve been quicker and less painful.
“Oh, shit!” came a wearied, nasally voice. “What’s this little man doing back here?”
I struggled to move my head in the direction of the sound. “Help,” I wheezed through my dry throat. My lips cracked and bled with the motion. “Help me.”
The man rounded into view. He was small and frail. Dirty clothes hung loose from his skinny body and a thick beard clung to his sunken cheeks. His fingers twitched and danced restlessly in the air in front of him. He looked like shit, but his eyes were brown and friendly. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed again. “You ain’t doin’ so well, my man.”
I raised a limp hand, but the effort exhausted me after a moment. It dropped back to the ground uselessly. “Please,” I muttered. The act of speaking tugged tenterhooks into my devastated rib cage. Each word was agony.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “Wait, no, no, don’t tell me. You don’t look like you can speak anyway.” He laughed, then cut himself off suddenly with a frown. He seemed crazy, pirouetting from emotion to emotion, his body never standing still. I groaned.
He pounced over and crouched in front of me. Reaching forward two dirt-covered fingers, he peeled back my eyelids. I looked up into his face. The beard was grungy and when he smiled, I could see the clotted gunk accumulated through years of street living. “What’s your name, amigo?” he chirped.
I drew in a slow breath, wincing, and said, “Nico,” as loudly as I could. It came out in a tinny whisper.
“You a young one to be out here alone, ain’t ya?” The man cackled. “Well, I’m Smalls. And I can’t very well leave ya out here like this, can I? No, certainly cannot. You’ll have to come with me.” He furrowed his brow and hunched closer to me. He smelled horrific. “But you can’t walk, can you?”
I shook my head gingerly.
“Didn’t think so,” he replied. “Hmm.” He stroked his beard and looked around. “Ah, I know, I know.” He rose to his feet and sprang out of my field of vision. I heard the sound of cardboard ripping. Smalls pranced back around, a gleeful smile splitting his face and a big sheet of cardboard held between his hands. He set it on the ground next to me and patted it. “Come on, now,” he said. “Roll on over on top of this guy right here. This’ll do the trick.”
I eyed the cardboard. Summoning all my strength, I threw my weight over to my side. It took a moment to rock back and forth to build the necessary momentum, but eventually I managed to roll myself onto the cardboard. By the time I was on it, sweat beaded across my forehead and short moans burst through my lips. My eyes were wired open, staring at the sky above as lava pain surged up and down me.
“That’s the ticket,” he said, snapping and standing back up. “Good on ya. Well, let’s go, yes?” Smalls didn’t wait for an answer. I tried to yelp for him to wait, but he didn’t hear me or didn’t care. Seizing one edge of the flattened box, he started to pull me down the alley.
I didn’t want to scream, but every bump and jolt made the pain blaze like shots of lightning. We made our way down the alley and went trundling down the sidewalk, headed for God knew where. It didn’t matter. I was alive, and that was all that counted.
But the pain was too much. I held out for as long as I could. Then I passed out.
# # #
Night had fallen. The fire crackling in front of me was warm. I stretched out my hands as far as I could towards it. The heat sank into my fingertips and slid up my whole body to calm my chattering teeth. Despite the blankets heaped on top of me, I was still shivering.
The flame threw funky shadows on Smalls’ face where he sat next to me. I twisted my neck to look up at him. He looked back down and gave a toothy grin. “Beats layin’ in that alley, don’t it?” He guffawed.
I didn’t have the energy to laugh with him. I turned back to the fire. In the hours since he’d dragged me away from the brink of death, the pain had begun to subside slightly, but I could still hardly twitch without it drawing a screaming protest from my whole body. It was going to be a long time before I would be up and moving on my own.
We were huddled at the foot of an overpass. A clothesline strung up around us held thick sleeping bags to block out the wind. The little fire next to me burned on balled up trash and aluminum cans. It was a shitty place to be, but still an improvement over being exposed to the snow in the alleyway. It wasn’t like I had a choice. Wherever Smalls wanted me to go, I would go. I couldn’t possibly fight back.
“So who are you?” I asked after a while. The wind whistled on the other side of the clothesline and cars thundered past us overhead. Every now and then the screech of a horn and raised voices would puncture the drone of traffic.
“Me?” asked Smalls. “I’m a supplier for the chop shop.”
I blinked in confusion. “A what?”
Smalls laughed. “I boost cars, little man. And then I sell ’em to whoever will pay for ’em.”
I scowled. “You’re a thief.”
He huffed like he was offended. “I’m Robin Hood, man! Steal from the rich and give to the poor. I just happen to be the poor in this here situation.” He grinned at me.
I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. How was I supposed to judge the man who’d saved my life? He did what he needed to do to get by. At least he had shelter, if that was what you could call this makeshift tent.
“As soon as I can, I’m getting out of here,” I informed him.
Smalls slapped a knee and laughed at the top of his lungs. “Oh, is that so, little man?”
“Yeah,” I shot back. “And stop calling me ‘little man.’ I’m not little.”
“You sure is little! How old is you, anyway?”
“Fifteen,” I lied.
“My ass,” Smalls snorted. “You’re fifteen like I’m a millionaire. You ain’t a day over eight, is that right?”
I hesitated, then nodded angrily.
His face sobered. “That’s awfully young to be out here,” he said.
“I’m a man.”
He eyed me, head tilted to the side. “The funny thing is, little man, I believe you just might be. Age don’t make a man now, does it? No, I don’t suppose it does.” The air was warm and silent as he looked at me. “What makes a man is fighting through pain. Taking what he wants even when he’s hurtin’. Seems to me like you’re doin’ an awful lot of that already.” He stood up and walked over to me. Hunching down, he tucked the blankets tight around my damaged body. “I guess what I’m sayin’ is, if you tell me you’re a man, I’ll take your word for it.”
I nodded again. “I’m a man,” I repeated.
“Okay, shorty,” Smalls said. “Okay.”
# # #
Five Years Later
“Yo, hurry up, man!”
“I’m hurrying. Calm the fuck down,” I shot back. I jimmied the thin steel bar between the window and the car exterior, slipping it down towards where the lock mechanism was sheltered. My teeth gritted as I concentrated on finding the right point of leverage.
“C’mon, c’mon…” Smalls muttered. His hands pawed at the air like they always did. His eyes darted nervously around the empty street, looking for anyone who might cause trouble.
I thought he’d have calmed down years ago, but calm was just not in Smalls’ nature. He was a twitchy, nonstop blur of motion and anxiety, always sniffing out the tiniest scent of danger. There—the bar caught and the lock unlatched. The door to the BMW swung open on silent hinges.
Tucking the bar into the loop of my belt, I quickly dropped to my knees and popped open the panel on the underside of the steering column. The wire guts of the car peered back at me, a mess of colorful, twisted cables and circuitry that would have looked intimidatingly complex if I hadn’t done this a million times already.
“Pliers,” I hissed over my shoulder. Smalls leaped forward and quickly plunked the tool down in my hand. I reached in, grabbed the cable I wanted, and gave it a neat snip. After doing the same with another, I picked up a severed end in each hand and touched the frayed tips together.
The engine sputtered to life.
A big grin split my face as I turned to look at Smalls. “Let’s go,” I told him. He scurried around the other side and yanked open the door before throwing himself inside. I slipped into the driver’s seat.
Wrapping my hands around the sun-warmed leather wheel, I paused for a moment and took in a deep breath. The interior of the car smelled rich and spicy, an intoxicating blend of clean and expensive that never seemed to get old. No matter how many cars we boosted, this was always the best part.
“Drive, motherfucker, drive!” Smalls yelped, slapping on the dashboard.
I laughed, jerked the gear stick into drive, and pressed my foot on the gas pedal. We shot forward down the street, the thrum of the engine settling deep into my bones. I piloted us onto the bridge. We crossed over into the other side of town.
Smalls had finally started to settle back into his seat. He let loose a big sigh as soon as it became clear that no one was following us. “You takin’ too damn long these days,” Smalls accused, half joking.
“You and I both know I’m the fastest guy in the whole damn city,” I retorted.
“Yeah, well, why you gotta be showin’ off, then? Who cares if you unlock every damn feature in the car? All we need is the engine, baby.” He patted the dashboard again to make his point.
“What’s the fun in driving a nice car if you don’t get to enjoy all the luxuries?” I asked. Leaning forward, I turned on the radio. Beautiful, crisp sound flowed out of the speakers around us. I hummed along to the song. “Satellite radio and everything. Now that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Smalls shook his head as I laughed and kept singing.
We drove fifteen minutes further, winding down darkened city streets. It was dusk, the last of the summer sun sneaking its way between the skyscrapers to reach the streets below. Pulling up in front of an abandoned-looking warehouse, I cut the engine. The inside of the car was silent. I looked at Smalls.
“Let me come in this time,” I said.
“No way.” He shook his head. “Not a chance in hell, shorty.”
“C’mon, Smalls,” I begged. “Just this once.”
He sighed and ran a hand through what little remained of his hair. I knew his resolve was weakening.
“Please?” I asked one more time.
“All right, fine,” he growled as he clambered out of the car. “But keep your damn mouth shut.” I barely heard him as I was too giddy with excitement. “And don’t look anyone in the eye.”
I ran around to the other side of the car and swooped him up in a big bear hug. I lifted him off the ground as he yelped, “Put me down, you son of a bitch!” It was hard to believe five years had passed since he’d found me broken and dying in that alley. I was big and strong now. My muscles bulged across my chest and at the sleeves of my shirt. Already, I towered over him.
I set him back on his feet and planted a big kiss on the top of his balding head. He muttered curses to himself as he turned and headed to the dirty, graffiti-tagged door set in the wall to the left of the building. I smiled.
Smalls was a good guy. He’d taken me under his wing, teaching me everything he knew about boosting cars. He was the best in the business, or so he proclaimed, and everything he did seemed to back up that boast. Those twitchy fingers of his could spring a car door open before I could blink. No lock was smart enough to keep him out. It hadn’t taken me long to pick up the tricks of the trade either. Before long, I was hot-wiring engines to life even faster than he could.
The best part, though, was driving. The moment before you pressed the pedal, when the whole road was wide and open, just waiting for you to push the vehicle to its limits. I had a knack for it. The wheel just made sense under my hands, like the second I touched it, I became part of the car. I read it and it read me, and together, there was no corner that I couldn’t drift around, no gap I couldn’t hit with just the right amount of horsepower and torque to leave cops and enemies alike in the dust.
Not that we ever got to hold onto the cars for too long. This was a business, after all, and there were buyers to satisfy. But that was one part of the gig Smalls did his damndest to keep me away from. “You’re too young for this shit,” he’d always tell me. “These aren’t guys you want to meet.” No matter how much I’d prodded and cajoled, he insisted I let him handle all the transactions.
Until today.
We walked up to the door and Smalls knocked twice. A slit at eye level was swung open, revealing a sliver of someone’s face. “Yeah?” the voice drawled.
“It’s Smalls,” he said. He sounded nervous, though, to be fair, he always sounded that way.
The miniature door closed again without the man saying another word. I heard the clank of multiple locks and chains rattling before the whole door swung inwards.
A man stood at the doorway. I looked him up and down, awed by what I was seeing. He was huge, or maybe he just seemed that way due to the piercings and tattoos that covered every inch of his skin. His muscles stretched tight against the leather jacket he wore. When he looked at me, I felt power rolling off him in waves. This was not a man to be fucked with.
He extended an arm towards the back of the building, inviting us inwards. Smalls nodded and gestured for me to follow him. We walked inside. The door shut behind us.
Indoors, I heard the clack of pool balls skimming across the green felt of the billiards table and deep voices rumbling. We emerged from the dark hallway into a low-lit bar. Men like the one at the door were scattered around the room. Some drank, others smoked and played pool. All were equally as huge, equally as intimidating. Every single one of them looked up at us as we entered. We froze in our tracks.
A man unfolded himself from the booth to my right and sauntered in our direction. He stubbed out his cigarette as he strolled over. When he stood in front of us, he folded his arms across his chest and cleared his throat.
“Hey, Fists,” Smalls stammered. His hands were wringing in front of him like he was trying to squeeze out the last few drops of water from a dishrag.
“Smalls,” replied the man, inclining his head.
“Got a, uh, we got a good one for you today, yep, uh-huh,” he babbled.
The man shifted his gaze from Smalls to me. His eyes were dark and stormy. They raked up and down, peeling me apart like an onion. “Who’s the runt?” he asked, jerking his chin at me.
“Oh, this? This is my, um…”
“I’m Nico,” I interjected. I folded my arms across my chest to match the man’s posture and drew myself up to my full height. I had more room to grow, but I could already tell I was going to be a big son of a bitch. This bastard didn’t scare me. Nothing scared me. I was Nico. A man of the streets. I stole cars and drove fast and did whatever the hell I wanted.
The man’s eyes glistened. “And what are you doing here, Nico?”
“I work with Smalls now.”
“Is that so?” the man said, turning back to Smalls.
Smalls nodded and kept wringing his hands. His gaze darted around the room, never resting for more than a beat on any one thing. The other men had gone back to their mugs of beer or their game of pool, but there was still a palpable air of violence in the room. Bad things had happened here, I could just tell. But I liked it. It had the same pent-up vibe as the silence of a stolen car right before the engine roared and the wheels caught and I went flying down the street away from anything and everything trying to stop me. It felt dangerous. It felt right.
“Yeah,” I said before Smalls could say anything else. “That is so. Who are you?”
“Now, Nico, let’s just…” Smalls started to caution, laying his hand gently on my arm. I shrugged him off and glared back at the man.
He stared back at me stonily. “I’m Fists,” he said. “I’m the president of The Punishers Motorcycle Club. This is my clubhouse you’re standing in.”
The Punishers. So this was them. Smalls was always careful not to reveal too much about who bought the cars we boosted. But he’d let that name slip a couple times before. His tone when he said it was identical every time without fail. He said it the way you’d say the name of the devil if you were worried that, if you said it without the proper respect, you might accidentally summon him. Respect and fear all rolled into a few syllables that clattered off the tongue with a nice, rugged edge. It reminded me of the first time I’d cursed, way back in my foster care days. Just like the word “fuck,” the name of The Punishers MC had a ring to it that nothing else could quite match.
And this man. He knew what that name sounded like spoken out loud. In fact, he was the physical embodiment of it. Tattoos ranging over his tanned skin, muscles that had no doubt been earned the hard way, scars earned even harder. He had a steel barb piercing each ear and a set of rings on his fingers that had points suggesting they were there for more than just show.
He should have scared me, intimidated me. And in part, he did. But there was another part of me that didn’t see him as a predator or a bully like Smalls did.
It saw him as a brother.
Smalls started babbling about the car, and Fists’ attention flipped back to my partner in crime. But I could feel a piece of his awareness stayed rooted on me. He was testing me. There was not a chance in hell I was going to let him sense any weakness. I kept my arms folded and my face scowled, like nothing here impressed me.
“It sure is a nice whip, lemme tell you that much,” Smalls was saying. “Brand new leather interior and a custom engine. Here, here, come, let me show ya.” He waved, gesturing for Fists to follow him out to the curb where the stolen car was parked. He turned and started walking.
Instead of following right away, I hesitated for just a moment. My eyes locked with Fists’. I wanted to tell him one more time, Pain doesn’t scare me. You don’t scare me. I’m Nico.
Then we went outside.
# # #
We sat on the sidewalk and counted the stack of cash for a few minutes after Fists had driven the car into the garage and disappeared. The bills were crisp and fresh. They had that beautiful smell that nothing else in the world could match. Nothing beat the scent of new money.
Smalls was giddy. He riffled through the stack half a dozen times. I kept the scowl planted on my face long after the door to The Punishers’ clubhouse had shut and locked behind us.
“Oh, we are lookin’ real nice now, ain’t we, partner?” Smalls cackled, shifting back and forth where he sat. “Dough for days, ain’t that right? Yes, it is! Yes, it is!”
I didn’t answer. I was still in the middle of processing the weird sense of belonging that had swept over me when we walked into the interior of the clubhouse. I had an unnerving intuition that those were my people.
Smalls was my people too, of course. He’d saved me. I owed him more than just gratitude; I owed him my life. And his lessons were what had allowed me to make a living on the streets. We made a hell of a team and, in our few years running around together, we’d grown close.
But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that inside that clubhouse was where I belonged.
“Smalls,” I began in a solemn voice.
He jerked his head up and looked at me with that funny sideways glance of his. “What’s up, youngin’?” he asked. “Something’s on your mind, ain’t it?”
I looked at my hands. They were stained with oil and grime from that day’s work, but beneath the muck, they were strong and capable. I flexed once, twice, savoring the feeling of power in my fingers. “What’s the deal with these guys, anyway?” I deflected, not sure yet how to ask the question I wanted to ask.
Smalls craned his head to look back at the clubhouse. It was completely nondescript, no sign that anything illegal or dangerous was on the other side of the walls. To a passerby, it would look just like any of the million chop houses and car garages that littered this part of town. But Smalls and I knew different. “These is dangerous men, kiddo,” Smalls said softly. “Hard men, you understand?”
I kept looking at my hands, flexing and unflexing, over and over.
Smalls continued, “The Punishers is guys that’s not to be messed with. They run half the damn city—well, they run everything that the Espositos don’t. Between them two groups, there ain’t a damn alleyway you could piss in without urinatin’ on someone’s turf.” He eyed me, searching for any reaction. For a guy who seemed as neurotic as he did all the time, he had a way of understanding right away what was going on in my head.
I wasn’t ready yet for him to confirm his suspicions. I didn’t look up.
“They seemed awful cool to ya, didn’t they, shorty?” Smalls asked.
I hesitated for a moment. When I looked up at Smalls and nodded, he could see right away in my eyes what I’d felt.
“I was afraid of that.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You know, I done found you more than five years ago? You was a mangled-lookin’ piece of shit, just a li’l kid all beat up in that back alley. I dragged your ass down to my tent and I wasn’t sure you would, but you pulled through. We done all right together, haven’t we?”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. He seemed so sad. I noticed his hands had stopped their incessant shaking.
He went on without waiting for me to answer. “Yes, we sure have. But, shorty, you are too young to do the kinds of things those men do. They fight some awful battles. You and me, we’re just little guys out on the edge. Those guys in there,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder behind us, “they wade through blood. They been fightin’ the Espositos for years, and it ain’t a pretty, nice little squabble. It’s war, son. You is way too little for any of that. I know you think you big, but you ain’t so big yet. Not yet.”
He stood up and offered me a hand. I looked up at him from where I sat on the curb. He was frail, quickly graying, the years spent scrambling for survival starting to catch up to him faster than he could run away. When I clasped his hand, mine felt so strong and hardy in comparison to his.
He was a father to me, in his own peculiar way. He looked after me. He did right by me.
Smalls’ words echoed in my head for a long time. But I couldn’t shake the thought that kept playing in the back of my mind over and over again. I belonged in there.