Chance
The Wheel starts turnin’ again and I get to thinkin’ about how the wheel of time is turning, too, and how it’ll just keep on turning for nine months until a life comes outta Becky, a life half mine and half hers, and for a few seconds I reckon I’ll lean over the booth and start blowin’ chunks into the air just like she did. I feel her eyes on me, but I keep my eyes on the city, on the snow. I can’t look at her ’cause that’d mean talkin’ about it and I’ve got no clue what to say. I don’t wanna jump up and down with joy and tell her how happy I am, ’cause that’d be a damned lie. I ain’t happy. I’m terrified. A child. A fuckin’ child.
When our booth reaches the ground, the man smiles at us and says sorry and then says, “We’d like to offer you ten free tickets, to use on any attraction of your choice.” All smiles, customer-service smiles, please-don’t-get-me-fired smiles.
“It’s alright,” I tell him, shouldering past him without looking back.
Becky jogs after me, walking by my side, silent. I realize I haven’t said a thing for almost five minutes. I need to ask her important questions like if she’s sure, what she’s gonna do about it. Is she gonna keep it? But I find that every time I try’n speak, nothin’ comes out. I’ve trained my whole life to deal with shit, but this ain’t the shit I was trained for. I’d take four gunners holed up in a warehouse over this any day. My feet take me toward the car and I don’t fight ’em. The crowd was bad enough to begin with. Now, with this hangin’ over my head, I might end up head-butting someone just for gettin’ in my way. I climb in, and Becky climbs in after me.
After I’ve cranked the heating up and the frost on the windows has melted, Becky starts drumming her fingers on the dashboard. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asks, voice low.
Yeah, I wanna say. Yeah. You gonna keep it? You sure you’re pregnant? You’re sure it’s mine?
I swallow. “Let’s find a drugstore.”
She pauses, and then nods. “Okay. Yes, that would be for the best.”
I start the car and drive us, in silence, from Coney Island back toward Brooklyn, stopping at the first drugstore I see. I hand Becky a few bills and sit back, waiting.
“I’ll get two,” she says, leaving the car.
I lean back, watching her as she stuffs her hands in her pockets and makes for the automatic doors. She looks so damn beautiful, head bowed, sleek and lithe, moving with a confidence I don’t reckon she had before all this. Maybe it’s the sex. Or maybe it’s just that she doesn’t wanna play the victim anymore. Or maybe it’s my imagination and she’s movin’ exactly how she always has. I watch as she leaves the drugstore and makes for the public toilets across the way. My heart is poundin’ like crazy. I remember when I was a kid, couldn’t’ve been older’n ten or eleven, when I killed my first man. I took that pistol and I walked up behind him and shot him right in the back of the head. I didn’t expect all the blood, exploding like a water balloon full of red food coloring, spattering my face. My heart was pounding like crazy then, thumping so hard I thought it’d explode outta my chest. But since then, I’ve learnt to stay cold, no matter what. But not now, not as I sit here, knowing that Becky’ll come back and tell me she’s pregnant, I’ve gotta kid on the way.
When she returns, she’s got two tests in her hand. She opens the door and lays them on the dash. One’s a green line. One’s a smiley face.
“I’m guessin’ that means…”
“Both positive.” She nods. She’s smiling. I guess she’s less confused about this than me. “I’ve got a little boy or a little girl in here.” She rubs her belly lovingly.
Part of me wishes I was the sort’a man to reach across and place my hand on hers and look her in the eye and say somethin’ lovin’ like I’d always be there for her. Part of me wishes I could be a normal guy about this. But that part of me is a tiny mouse compared with the mammoth I’ve spent my whole killin’ life building up. That part of me ain’t shit compared with that.
Her smile falters when I don’t respond. I’m just thinkin’. First I revealed about how I never had a home, and now I’m exposed all over again with this baby thing. I wish there was such a thing as emotional Kevlar.
“I reckon we should go to dinner,” I say, speaking automatically.
That’s the right thing to do, ain’t it, when the woman you’re fuckin’ suddenly announces she’s pregnant? That’s gotta be the right thing to do. Yeah, take her to dinner, be a gentleman about it. Gomez and his merry band can go fuck themselves. We’ll go to a quiet place and use fake names and I’ll go to an ATM and get more cash out with my second backup card. And if Gomez charges in? I feel like laughin’. Maybe that’d be for the best. At least in the slammer—or the grave—I wouldn’t have to deal with this baby thing.
“Is that safe?” Becky asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “As long as we don’t act loud or anythin’. If Gomez had any kind of real power on this thing, he’d’ve caught us at Coney, I reckon. Enough people there, enough security. Say what you want about the boys in blue, but when they want you, it’s damn hard to stay away. I reckon we’ll be alright.”
I start the engine and take us to a restaurant I’ve never been to before, so that no mob guy or police guy—even a paid-off police guy—recognizes me. It’s an English pub-type place called The Dickens with a sign outside readin’, Best Roast in Brooklyn! and a picture of Charles Dickens on the stained glass windows. When we walk in, I hear David Bowie playin’ on the jukebox and English flags and the like strewn all over the place. The man who serves us has a British accent which sounds just a little too British, like he’s an acting student and this is a moonlight job.
We sit down and both order Cokes and a roast dinner.
“Don’t you want a drink, like a proper drink?” Becky asks.
“Nah,” I say.
I’ve never been a big drinker, mainly ’cause when you’re off your head you’re not aware of your surroundings. In the Family life, I’ve heard way too many stories about assholes who got blackout drunk and then blacked-out forever.
Becky keeps lookin’ at me which is makin’ me damn uncomfortable. It’s weird, ’cause up on the Wheel, and near the railing on Coney, and even once or twice back in the motel room, I reckon we was gettin’ somewhere when it came to bein’ close with each other. I reckon we was making some sort of progress. But now it’s like there’s this rift between us. It’s just too much too damn fast. One minute we’re rockin’ back and forward and havin’ the most intimate sex of my life—the only intimate sex of my life—and the next she’s droppin’ this bombshell on me.
“What’re you thinking about?” she asks, once the waitress has brought our drinks.
I sip on my Coke to buy myself some time. The Dickens is lit by old-timey lanterns, flickering all around the room, so that our shadows flicker with ’em. And Becky’s eyes seem darker’n ever as they stare at me, waitin’ for me to speak.
“I…uh…just some trout I caught about half a year back,” I say, just sayin’ the first thing that comes into my head. “Huge bastard, it was, damn huge, biggest bastard I ever caught.”
“Right.”
Another silence, yawing between us like a damned abyss. I didn’t care about silences and awkwardness and how she felt before, did I, back in the warehouse? I wouldn’t stumble for words, or try’n figure out what was goin’ on with us? I wouldn’t care. So what the fuck’s happened to me? Have I gone soft? I look at the TV in the corner for a while, Becky staring down at the table. It’s playin’ the BBC news, a British lady in a suit talkin’ about Syria.
I’m glad when the waitress brings our food, even if Becky’s bombshell has stolen some of my appetite. But at least it means I can just focus on eatin’ and not worry about what to say. I eat my food like I always eat it, gatherin’ energy for the next fight, makin’ sure I ain’t bloated just in case I need to start fightin’ or shooting. I glance up once and see that Becky has eaten a couple’a bites of chicken and half a Yorkshire pudding but now is just pushin’ a Brussel sprout around and around her gravy, watching it, lookin’ like she might yell or cry. I look back down to my food. I can’t fuckin’ think what to do. I’ve never practiced for this shit.
When our food is done, we stare at each other, and it’s like we haven’t spent the last two months together, like we didn’t spend a DIY Christmas together, like we haven’t shared each other’s bodes countless times. It’s like we’re goddamn strangers.
“We don’t have to talk about serious stuff,” Becky says, catching my eyes and smiling. “We can talk about anything, anything at all. We can put it aside for now, if you like. I don’t want things to be like this between us, Chance. So let’s just forget about it for the time being. Tell me about this trout. How big was it? How long were you fishing before you caught it? What kind was it, Rainbow? Did you go upstate?”
I’m about to respond to this—if there’s one thing that don’t make me uncomfortable, it’s talkin’ about that massive trout I caught—but then I see somethin’ on the TV which makes me pause. I think it’s my eyes playin’ a trick on me at first, the same way they used to when I was a rookie on a job and every coat’d become a person waitin’ to clip me. But then I look closer, and I see it ain’t a trick. It’s my face, and Becky’s face, two pictures placed side by side.
“Becky,” I say. “Look at the TV.”
“What? Why?—”
“Just look at the TV!”
She flinches, and then sees I’m serious and turns around.
The British lady, in her posh voice, is sayin’, “Now we have some overseas news. The BBC has learnt this morning that Chance Baylor, suspected hitter for the Giovanni Crime Family, may have kidnapped a nineteen-year-old aspiring artist. Becky Morris has not been seen in almost two months, the BBC has been informed, and the New York Police Department are now mobilizing in full force to search for her, as it is feared her life is at risk from Mr. Baylor.”
Our photographs linger on the screen for a long time.
Becky turns back to me, mouth in that O, but it ain’t cute now, not in this context.
I reach across the table and take her hand. “We need to get the fuck outta here.”