Killian
I stop outside of Hope’s apartment building. It’s one of the semi-commercial buildings which have started popping up in small towns all over the States, and began rising here in the Cove about a decade ago. She climbs from the bike and lays the helmet on the back. I stay mounted, but twist and face her.
“I had fun,” she says, standing with her handbag clasped near her crotch, perhaps to hide any wetness.
I can’t help but smile.
“What’re you grinning at?”
I nod at the bag. “Making it pretty obvious, aren’t you?”
A light is fixed above the main door to her apartment building. It shines out onto the street, so that when she blushes, her cheeks are lit rosy red. “You’re a cruel, cruel man.”
“That’s true, pretty lady. But I don’t remember you saying that half an hour ago.”
“You’re a cruel, despicable human being!” she giggles.
Then she turns on her heels and heads for the door.
“Wait,” I say.
She stops just outside of the door, her hand in her bag, searching for her keys.
“Yes?” she says, without turning.
“Your cell number. Give it to me.”
“That’s not a way to ask a lady.”
“Just give it to me.”
The way she’s standing at the door, her ass looks amazing. Round and well-formed, something to be grabbed. Bitten . . . Damn, I wish I’d bitten it.
“I’ll give it to you,” she says. “But you have to promise not to play games. I hate men who play little games.”
Games? Are there men who even know how to play women’s games?
“I wouldn’t even know where to start. I don’t usually get to the taking-number stage.”
“Charming,” she mutters, but I must be getting pretty good at reading her, because I can hear the smile in her voice.
Then she reads out the ten digits of her number.
“Have you written it down?”
“No need,” I say, and kick away the stand on my bike. I rev the engine. “I’ll remember it.”
Then I speed away from her apartment, the bike growling into the dead night, toward the Satan’s Martrys’ clubhouse.
When I get into the clubhouse, it’s past four o’clock. I leave my bike out front with two others, Gunny’ and the old man’s, Declan. I walk into the bar and grab myself a small whiskey. The lights are off, but I don’t have to be able to see to know the clubhouse, to know that the walls are wood paneling covered in framed photographs of the Satan’s Martrys’ members. I know, too, that on the wall next to the pool table, there’s a photograph of Patrick’s first steps out of prison, a goofy grin on his face. My big brother, grinning like a fool.
I drain the whiskey and make my way toward the back office, past the tables and chairs, past the pool table and mounted bear’s head, to the doors which lead to the meeting and storage rooms.
I’m at the door when the old man grunts, “O’Connor.”
He’s sitting in the corner booth, his pipe cradled in his boney hands. He leans back in the seat, half slumped in it. His leather hangs from his body as from a corpse. His neck is saggy. In the dark, the skin looks like a beard, but I know that Declan is bald except for the hair which sprouts from his ears and nose.
“Old man,” I reply. “I’m tired.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“You know I won’t tell you that.”
Declan’s accent is Irish-American. He was born in Ireland, I know, but he’s lived in the Cove since before I was born.
“No, I guess not.” He speaks slowly, each word a struggle. He’s ninety if he’s a day.
“Something’s been troubling you this past week,” he goes on.
I point at his pipe. “Want that lit?” I ask.
“Yes, please. Legs ache so bad these days . . .”
“Yeah, old man, I get it.”
I take a box of matches from my pocket, walk to the booth, strike one, and hold the flame to the pipe’s bowl. The tobacco flickers, the embers glow, and the old man smiles at me, his face shining orange.
“Take a seat,” he says, his voice gravelly.
I sigh and slump down next to him. Can’t ignore the old man. He’s been through a damned lot. Respect your elders and all that . . .
“What’s on your mind, then?” he says.
“You know I can’t say.”
“Oh, no, I know, I know.” He waves a hand. “You’re the boss, Killian. Can’t be easy. Lots of things to worry about.”
“I get by alright.”
“Until Patrick.” Declan says it casually, but he raises his eyebrows at me knowingly. “Oh, I see more than folk round here think. What you have to remember is, years seem like ages when you’re young. But when you get to be my age, they don’t seem so long. Yesterday becomes last year. To me, Patrick hasn’t been gone that long. And now here he is, more volatile, more unstable, more—”
“Careful,” I say. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”
Declan nods, sucking on his pipe. “Oh, I won’t. We’re just talking, aren’t we?”
You were willing to share how you felt about Patrick with Hope, who you’ve known for a night, but you won’t share it with the old man, who you’ve known since Dad died? I push the thought away, as I push so many thoughts away. Hope is different. No idea why that should be the case, but it is.
But maybe that’s a lie. Maybe I do know. Maybe it’s because she’s smart and sexy and funny. Maybe it’s because she’s not like the countless string of women who came before her. Maybe it’s because she was not only the bright spot tonight, but that she’s the bright spot in my history of women, too. A realization hits me which almost makes me gasp aloud. I want to see her again. I’ve just left her, and already I want to see her again. That isn’t me. That isn’t who I am.
“My point is,” Declan continues, “that it must be hard for the boss when it’s his big brother who’s causing trouble. I don’t want to offend you, but that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? I heard about the incident at the rich man’s mansion. Socked him one, didn’t you?”
“Just a scuffle,” I grunt. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me who told you that?”
Declan smiles, his wrinkled skin deepening, wrinkles begetting wrinkles. “Of course not,” he says.
I bring the heels of my hands to my eyes, rub at the tiredness. “This isn’t for you to figure out,” I say. “You’re lucky to still be alive, in our line of work. Ninety-five? Ninety-eight?”
“Ninety-nine,” Chest says proudly. “One year from a hundred.”
“So play checkers, watch TV, eat burgers. Do whatever it is old men do. Let me do the thinking.”
“Hmm.” His shoulders sag, making me feel absurdly guilty. Dad always told me to be kind to old men and women. Maybe it’s stuck with me.
“I’m sorry, Declan. I’m tired. Look, why’re you sitting here in the dark anyway? Is it your knee?”
“Damned knee,” Declan huffs. “Came out here for my pipe. Left it out here. Then I sit down and now . . .” He throws his hands up. Orange embers from his pipe flutter into the air and settle on the table. “It’s the knee,” he murmurs.
“Alright. Let me help you, then.”
“I don’t need help!” the old man cries, his voice indignant.
“I’m not going to wipe your ass. I’m just going to help you to your goddamn bed in the back.”
Declan looks into the darkness, maybe making sure we’re alone, and then nods quickly. “You’re a good kid, Killian. Always were.”
“Thanks, old man, but I don’t know about that.”
I stand up and heave Declan to his feet. He wobbles, but I take his hand and lay it on my arm. “You’ll be in bed before you know it, old man.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Declan sighs. “But I won’t sleep for two or three hours. It’s hard to sleep when you’ve got so much weighing on your mind, when you’ve done so many . . . so many things folk might say is bad, you know?”
I shake my head. “No matter what I’ve done, I sleep like a goddamned baby.”
I peel the sheets off the bed and lie on the bare mattress, staring up at the ceiling.
My mind is like a shootout, making it hard to think. On one side of the shootout, Patrick and his recklessness fires and fires; on the other side, Hope and her perfect body and her sweet face and her personality fire back.
Patrick is a big problem. A massive problem. There may come a point where I’ll have to take serious action. I don’t want to, but being the leader of a club like the Satan’s Martyrs doesn’t allow for being weak. It definitely does not allow for letting your brother run wild over operations. Men don’t get paid, they get mad. Men get mad, they leave. Men leave, the club falls apart. A club is nothing without its members. The job at the house wasn’t so bad, but what about the next job or the one after that? What about when Patrick decides to do something serious?
I roll over, my bicep cradling my head, and stare at the night-black wall. My cellphone rests on the edge of the mattress, plugged into the socket in the wall.
I try to stay focused on Patrick, try to really reason this thing out, but the other side of the shootout is firing faster, harder. Hope’s face comes to mind every time I try and come up with a serious solution. Hope, her sweet blushing face staring at me, her body writhing atop mine. I can still taste her. I can still feel her. I want to do more to her. I want to take her to places she has never been. I want to taste all of her. She’s too damn sexy, too hot, too smart, too different for me to easily banish her from my thoughts.
Focus, I think.
Patrick’s always been an impulsive guy, that’s for sure. He’s the type of guy who’ll punch out a car’s window for the sake of it, for no reason at all other than he thinks it’s funny. Once, when we were leaving a club, he picked up a bottle and hurled it at the wall, laughed, and pulled out his piece when the bouncer shouted. But his impulsive behavior used to be reserved for non-work time. He never let it carry over. I respected him for that.
And I’m the same, too. I gave Hope that money without even stopping to think about it. But on a job? When the club is at stake? That’s a whole other issue.
But even as my thoughts follow this line, they are blindsided by Hope. I find myself wishing that she was here, that her body was beside mine, that I could turn over and press my crotch into her ass, that I could take her again.
I’ve never thought about settling down, never thought about a life like that with a woman, but now . . . No, it’s not gone that far.
I groan and pick up the cellphone. I need sleep, and I won’t be able to sleep until I do it.
I type in her number—one of the skills you need when you’re the boss is to remember addresses, phone numbers, quantities—and then go to the text message screen.
I’m not a poet. I know women’s bodies, not their minds. So I just keep it simple: When am I seeing you again?
Then I turn over and close my eyes. I want to stay awake for a few minutes just in case she replies, but I’m exhausted. It’s been a long, long day.
Sleep drapes over me like a blanket.
The amusement park smells of candy and barbeque smoke as I walk through it. I know it must be a dream because when I turn around from the park to the entrance, there’s no dusty mud land, no long thin road. The ground around the amusement park drops away into an abyss. The park is the only place left in the world.
I walk past a man hawking hotdogs, the same hotdogs I once begged Dad to buy me. They are the meatiest hotdogs I’ve ever tasted. I approach him, a smile on my face. The kind of smile I used to have on my face, before Dad’s death and before the club, before I grew up.
“One, please,” I say.
I look down into his tray, and see that he only has one. One hotdog, already covered in onions and mustard and ketchup, just how I like it. He grins at me. “This is your place, mister,” he says. “You get everything you want here.”
A woman wearing a billowing pink dress, frills upon frills, skips out from the cotton candy stall. She dances toward me, and then produces a piece of paper from inside one of the dress’s folds. Munching on the hotdog, I take it.
“Don’t miss it!” she warns. Her face is made up like a fifties housewife. She wouldn’t look out of place in black and white advertisement for a toaster. “It’s the only thing worth seeing in this place, trust me!”
I look down at the ticket. It’s a small business card, printed with the following words: Head to the carousel and lay eyes upon your heart’s desire!
All around me, families laugh and jostle and play at the stalls. One young girl sits on her father’s shoulders, a beanbag in her hand, aiming at the skittles. “Don’t throw hard,” I say as I pass them. “Be gentle and you’ll get it.”
She underarm throws it, just like Dad showed me, and in one magic throw she knocks down all the skittles behind the stall.
I’m grinning like a fool now, walking through my past. I have demolished the hotdog and somehow—in the way of a dream—a massive cloud of cotton candy has appeared in my hand. I set to work on it as I walk, the taste of the syrupy fluff making me seven years old again.
Lay eyes upon your heart’s desire!
“That’s good,” I mutter, weaving through the crowd, “because I’ve never really known what that is.”
I step aside to let two clowns pass, each of them juggling multicolored plastic balls, their painted faces set into rictus smiles.
And then I’m at the carousel. I know it should’ve taken me longer to get here, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I look around me. Suddenly, the park is clear. The machines are still on—they sing and rattle and jangle—and behind me, somewhere, voices are raised. But I am the only person standing at the carousel.
I watch it for a few moments. It’s unmoving. The horses and hogs and ponies sit lifeless. I start wondering if I should maybe find that fifties woman, ask her what the deal is, when the music I’ve heard a thousand times in my dreams plays from the base of the carousel, where the speakers are.
It starts to turn, the animals bobbing up and down, and then I see her.
She wears a polka-dotted dress, her legs and feet bare.
Hope giggles as she rides the horse. A wind blows and her polka-dotted dress billows around her perfect legs.
I watch her in awe. I have never been so truly awed by a person.
“Heart’s desire!” I call to her, but she doesn’t hear me.
She stretches her legs, points her toes so that the muscles in her thighs and calves become defined.
I want to kiss her and fuck her all at once.