by Rowan Massey
She hopped off the cart and paced away from us, but stopped before she was far. Her back to us, she crossed her arms. I knew how she felt. Spitz had started out hunched over, but he was sitting up straight like Nando now. Why would he want to be like Nando? I loved my warrior, but Spitz had no reason to want to be a Dread Red stereotype.
“Don’t do this,” I begged him. “What am I going to do without you? You’re killing Fiona with this bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit,” he said calmly, his hands on his knees. “I’m doing it for her. For you. For the field even. Ten Block is attacking us. It’s going to happen again. We can’t let them burn Emporium down.”
“I’m proud of you, man,” Nando told him. “You’re really stepping up.”
Spitz gave him a nod, like he was being all humble, noble. Fuck that.
I got up and went to Fiona, walking to her and brushing my hand on her arm before walking past her. She followed me. When we were far enough away they couldn’t hear us, Fiona started talking.
“Would he really do this to us?” she said, more worry than anger in her eyes. “I don’t get it. Do you get it?”
“No, I don’t. But look, Doc won’t take it any further for two weeks. We have time to talk him out of it.”
“But he could just buy from the dealers and start getting sadder again right away.” Her hands flung out in front of her like she wanted to slap somebody, probably Spitz. “We feel so much better! After how bad he felt after the fight, how could he even think it’s a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m completely fucking lost. I don’t know. Maybe the Dread guys just got to him. You know, telling him the gang is a family and stuff. Talking about defending Emporium like heroes. Nando talks like that sometimes.”
“I hate that fucking job he got,” she said, and turned around to look back at our two boyfriends. They were sitting there talking. Nando was probably encouraging him. I wondered if we should try to keep them apart.
“He’s going to be late,” she said through her teeth, crossing her arms again. I had to hurry to keep up with her as she stomped her boots against the asphalt.
“Let’s go,” she barked at Spitz, and he went to the front of the cart to do the pedaling, which Fiona usually did before he had work, but she definitely wasn’t in the mood to make his job easier for him.
I stood next to Nando, not looking at him, watching them ride away.
“Why did you have to back him up?” I said, frustrated.
He reached his arms out for me to come to him and let him hold me, but I didn’t budge. He sighed and took out another cigarette, lighting it before saying anything.
“Skippy, babe, he’s right. He’s trying to do the right thing. Poor guy said he wants to be a man and do right by his girl. She might be mad, but guys like him might save her life. If enough guys join up, we have a chance against Ten Block, and it can’t be a bunch of guys who need a fix or else they go insane or die in the middle of battle.”
“He could take fielders with him in a fight,” I said, grasping for answers.
“And dance himself out into the line of fire? Get himself shot? No.” He took a drag and blew it out slowly. “Come here and let me make you feel better, little rat.”
I stared into space, remembering better times and wanting my old life back, no matter how cold, hungry, and dirty it had been. Snapping out of it, I went to Nando and let him hug me tight. He took my hand and kissed it because he couldn’t kiss my bloody face. We sat and hugged until he was done smoking, then headed in. I went right to the bathroom, took my shirt off, and washed my face, neck, and scalp in a sink. With my arms leaning onto it, my head dripping pink water down my nose and chin, I pulled myself back towards that ten. It wasn’t hard. No matter what, I would choose fielders. I would be able to get over everything, even Spitz changing who he was. I would be fine.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Going back to Doc’s lab the next day, I’d cooled off all my anger but still felt awkward about our deal and working for him to help him cure the fielders. Knowing what he was doing had been sort of a joke to me before. He’d just been the silly man who thought he could accomplish the impossible. But now he was close to doing it, and my best friend was planning on taking the cure. I didn’t want to think many others would want the cure, but I was starting to realize anything could happen.
And then there was the pay. I would be foolish to not do the work until I knew how things were going to turn out in two weeks. If I didn’t do it, somebody would. Quitting wouldn’t help anybody. Maybe I would take a stand by quitting later. I wasn’t sure yet.
I still had the keys to the house and lab, and had them out to open the front door myself when Doc opened it to let me in like he always did. His security always told him I was coming. I went up the stoop steps and gave him the ring of keys.
“Thanks,” he said, taking them. “How are you? I wasn’t sure if you would show.”
Same as I had the night before, I shrugged and said, “It’s my job.”
He smiled and stepped out of the way to let me in. I was surprised to hear voices at the other end of the house. There were people in the clinic.
“A lot of Dread Red men are still stopping in to see if I can care for their injuries,” he told me, elbowing past me to hurry back to them. I followed out of curiosity. “Barkley is paying for basic medical care after this recent battle. I’m saving most of them just with the antibiotics alone. He needs to keep as many men as possible because things have been getting worse with Ten Block.”
There were two guys sitting on the metal table. One had gray hair and the other was my age. From what I could tell, they were probably father and son. The son had a big bandage on his hand and was wearing Dread colors. He looked miserable.
“What about the pain? He can’t sleep,” the father said, worry making creases in his eyes. He looked at his son like he was cringing from the pain he knew he was having.
“Do you have money to buy P?” Doc asked. “It’s a relatively safe drug. Much cheaper than any opioid.”
“He’s already addicted…to something else,” the father said, looking down at his son, who was gritting his teeth and gripping his wrist. “We’ll find some extra money.”
“No, I have some,” Doc said. He turned to me and gave me a teasing smile. “I believe you’re now familiar with the relevant cabinet downstairs, Wally. Could you grab it for him and then take care of the mice for me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I hurried down to the lab, read the bottles in the cabinet until I found the capital P Pain Pills, then went back upstairs and gave it to Doc. I hung around instead of going straight back to the mice.
Doc counted out seven pills and put them in a little baggie for him.
“Come back for more if you still need them in a week. I won’t give you more before then, so don’t lose them and don’t sell them.” He was stern, giving them both warning looks. But they nodded and thanked him over and over like he was a saint.
“Thank you so much. We don’t know what we would have done or what would have…just thank you. Thank you.”
They went on thanking him all the way out the back door until Doc shut it behind them.
“Why don’t you always do that?” I asked. “Why does Barkley have to pay for it? You have tons of money.”
“Because I’m trying to live a quiet life here. I don’t want people constantly pestering me for handouts. The entire world is living in poverty, and I can’t save them all. I have opened or funded hospitals in every state, and then some. All the Sardanas do charitable medical work.” He started cleaning up the things he’d used to bandage the son, shaking his head as he talked. “I have a building here I use for some of the worst cases, but I try to keep word of it as quiet as possible by limiting the services. That’s where Jace works. Did he tell you?”
“No. He’s a nurse or something? He’s only my age.”
“He’s eighteen now, and very r
esponsible, just like you. He runs the place, more or less, but that will change soon…”
He was done cleaning up, and we headed down to the lab together.
“Change how?” I asked, just curious. I hadn’t known he was into doing a lot of charity stuff. It was nice to know he and Avi weren’t selfish with their money and tried to do good things with it.
“After I announce that I’m trying to wean the fielders off the drug, I’ll use the building Jace works in as a dispensary. They’ll come directly to me and Jace for treatment. I’ll need to be keeping patient files and making sure they’re in the right stages of weaning before I take each of them through the last step, which I expect to be tricky, but I won’t have to take chances anymore.”
Down in the lab, I went to the trash bags and scooper so I could clean up the bins before feeding the mice.
“What chances?” I asked.
Instead of going to his computer, he came and stood near me, hands in the pockets of his lab coat.
“You already know I’ve taken chances in the past,” he said quietly. “Each batch is a gamble, but trying to control the results sometimes creates more unpredictable odds for survival…”
I understood what he was saying and stood still, looking up at him, scoop in my hand.
“How long have you been gambling like that?” I asked.
“Too long, Wally. But now it’s over.” His heavy hand landed on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “It’s over because of you and the research we’ve done…some of it forced on you. I’ll never have to gamble again, but I’ll still have to live with the guilt.”
His hand slid off my shoulder, and he walked away. It was sad and everything, but those fielders had died dancing on the field, so that gambling was easy to forgive.
“I don’t think you need to feel guilty,” I said, going to the first bin and sliding the top open. “They died the way they wanted to. And even with this cure stuff, they can go back on it if they need to.”
Where we each were in the lab, we couldn’t see each other. I wondered what he was thinking while it took him a minute to answer.
“You’re the most forgiving person I’ve ever met, do you know that?” he said.
I laughed. “Yeah, it’s a gift and a curse.”
I heard him chuckle and say, “Hey, why don’t you sing something for me?”
After thinking for a second, I started singing “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. Simon and Garfunkel were lame, but I liked some of their songs and didn’t care if Doc knew I was into it. My voice worked better for slow songs anyway. If I’d been a famous singer, I’d probably be singing lame, slow songs with a piano or guitar.
After the mice were taken care of, Doc said we needed to start doing tests on them. He had a little glass bottle with a water dropper in the lid. They each would get one drop, and then they would be fielders like me.
He took a bin to the nearest table and took one of the little guys out, he showed me that they would want it because it had sugar in it. It wasn’t hard to do, so I did the next one. Doc gave me a second bottle, and I went around doing one shelf of mice while he took care of the other.
I couldn’t help pausing now and then to watch their little white bodies spaz around because of the crawls and then start running around wild, almost hopping, bumping into the walls of their bin, and looking up at me the whole time. Mice could dance.
“I didn’t know what mice would do on fielders when we first did this in Manhattan years ago,” Doc said, seeing me watching. “It’s a good sign that their bodies react the same way ours do. Most alphabet drugs don’t work the same with animals. Fielders are very different, did you know that?”
“I know we’re special,” I said, then felt embarrassed. That sounded stuck up. “You know what I mean,” I added.
“True,” he said. “It’s very true.”
Days went by quickly, our routines taking us all through time without resistance. I wasn’t working long hours at the lab because Doc wasn’t doing a lot of the things he used to do, so there was a little less work. My main job was with the mice. He had trusted me to practically take over the experiment. I spent about an hour with them twice a day, doing every little thing extremely carefully and writing down any action I took, then entering all of into the computer. That last part was hard to learn. Playing games was one thing. Forms were complicated.
He had batches of fielders for the mice lined up and organized so that I’d be weaning them and checking all their symptoms every day. I was like a mouse doctor, checking their pulse and temperature, squinting at their mouths, noses, and asses for anything weird.
Nando was doing alright at work as far as I could tell. He mostly came home happy and horny or cranky and horny, one or the other. In any case, we were having a lot of sex, and I loved it. I liked being the one to make him less cranky by bouncing on his dick with his fingers digging into my thighs, or sucking on his cock and fingering him, edging him, until he was exhausted and went right to sleep after. We tried a bunch of things we hadn’t done before, and my heart would beat faster every time I heard him coming down the hall, back from work and about to fuck me again.
Spitz and Fiona weren’t doing well though. Fiona couldn’t stop being upset over Spitz’s choice, and we hadn’t been able to talk him out of it. The more we argued, the more confident he got about it. He’d started target shooting every day with a new Dread Red friend, and he went around standing up straight as a soldier, trying to be intimidating. He liked wearing black and red all the time and carrying a loaded gun. Me and Fiona just couldn’t understand him. Fielders were chill and happy. He was going around with a mean, serious look, especially when he thought people other than us were watching.
“It’s like he joined a cult and got brainwashed,” I complained to Nando one night after sex. He was sleepy and probably not listening very well, but I needed to talk. We were laying naked under the blankets. It was a cold night and the sex had warmed us up.
“Why not just be supportive?” he said, eyes closed and voice groggy.
“Because he’s not happy,” I said, stating the obvious.
“There’s more to happiness than smiling all the time. For some people, doing things that are hard but are for a good cause feels better than what drugs can do.”
I rolled my head to look at him. He’d been saying that sort of thing, and it always shut me up, but I still just couldn’t see Spitz as that person. I decided to change the subject.
“Do you still think you’ll eventually get to work in one of the drug factories over there?” I asked, thinking I could get him talking about his favorite thing instead of sleeping.
His eyes opened and his brows came down to give me a mean look.
“Fucking useless,” he mumbled, and turned over.
“What? What’s useless?”
He didn’t answer, so I spooned him and asked again more softly. After a minute, he spoke up.
“I thought you would help me,” he said in a quiet but angry voice. “You haven’t helped me become a chemist at all. Why haven’t you asked Doc to find me a way in?”
Nando flipped over so fast he was half on top of me, and I had to pull myself out from under him.
“I got to talk to a chemist today,” he went on, “and I told him what books I had. You know what he said? He laughed and said they were old and wouldn’t teach me anything. He said to give it up.”
“Well, he sounds like a dick,” I said, and put a hand on his chest to comfort him, but he pushed me away and sat up. I sat up too.
“He’s not a dick, Wally. He’s a real drug chemist. Are you even listening?” He was waving his hands in my face, and I backed up into the wall to keep from getting hit. “All these fucking books are useless. I’ve been wasting my time!”
He threw the blanket back and bent over to get all his books off the floor where he’d left them. They were all so worn out he’d had to tape them together with duct tape, and they were full of notes, but he picked up h
is most precious possessions like they were trash. I heard a page tear.
Not wanting him to do something he would regret, I jumped up and held my arms out. He was trying to go out the door with them, butt naked.
“What are you doing? Stop, will you?” I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off.
He got his keys, unlocked the door, and went out to the hall window. He forced it open with one arm after dropping a few books to the floor. I picked them up while he tossed the others out near the dumpster.
“Nando!” I couldn’t believe he would do that. We were naked in the hall. I looked down at the closed doors. Nobody was around, thankfully.
“Give me those stupid fucking things,” he snapped, trying to take the books away from me, but I wouldn’t let go.
“What’s the big problem?” I asked. “All this because of what one guy said? Slow down a second!”
He dropped his arms and stared down at me, huffing.
“The job on the river won’t do shit for me as a chemist. I’ve never been in a lab. I never graduated high school. It’s a fucking idiotic, childish pipe dream, and I’m done embarrassing myself. I’m not doing it anymore. Time to grow up. My future is with Dread Red, not chemistry.”
His eyes fell the the ground, and his shoulders slouched.
“Nando…” I said softly, and reached out for his hand, but he slapped my arm away.
“For some fucking reason, you have a chance with it, and you don’t even care about it. I thought you could help me get places in life, but you won’t. You’re useless!”
I blinked at him, still holding onto the book. Why was he being so mean? Didn’t he know I would do anything for him? I couldn’t help that Doc didn’t like him.
He knocked into my shoulder going back into the bedroom, leaving me naked with his books. I closed the window and went back to him. Leaving his two books in the corner and locking the door, I carefully got back into bed with him. He was on my side of the bed by the wall, scrunched up close to it with his face under his arm. I wanted to make him feel better, but I would probably just make him more mad. Nando and his moods were getting familiar and easier to deal with, but this one was rough.
