Nine Minutes

by Beth Flynn

  She shook her head “no.”

  “No? What do you mean no? You have to come. You can’t leave me to face Jan all by myself.”

  She just shrugged her shoulders and mouthed “sorry.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not coming. You owe me big time for this,” I teased.

  She smiled at me and followed me to the door. I told her I would bring her a plate of food and she gave me a thumbs-up.

  I found Grunt in his car. I explained that Moe wasn’t going and I didn’t know why.

  “No biggie,” he said. “You never know with her. Looks like it’s just you and me. Ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  We headed over to Pembroke Pines and I realized I had not been alone with Grunt since the day Grizz and I got married. It wasn’t awkward at all, and I found myself falling into easy conversation with him. He told me about his college courses and I told him where I was with my high school correspondence course. I never asked about Sarah Jo, and he never offered up any information about her, either.

  We were greeted at the door by Timmy and Kevin jumping up and down and yelling, “Uncle Grunt, Uncle Grunt, pick me up, pick me up!” They remembered me, too, and were soon latching on to me for hugs and kisses.

  Just like Grizz told me, Jan was more than accommodating and nice. She fussed over me like I was a long-lost sister. I let myself enjoy the camaraderie, but made sure I didn’t get too close. I still had reservations about her sincerity. I even let myself have a couple sips of wine at dinner and felt myself loosening up a little. I’d never drunk alcohol before and was feeling comfortably buzzed. Jan and I were in the kitchen cleaning up.

  “Kit, I’ve been waiting for so long to tell you how sorry I am about the last time you were here.”

  “It’s okay, Jan. Don’t worry about it,” I said as I scraped leftover food into the garbage.

  “No. It’s not okay. I know you must’ve heard why I sometimes do the things I do. When you were here I thought I might be pregnant, so I’d stopped taking my meds. You got the brunt of it. I’m really sorry. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, please just say it. I’d really like to be friends.”

  Hmm. I thought about it a minute. “Yeah, actually, there is something you can do,” I said.

  “Anything. Name it.”

  “Tell me about Moe.”

  ___________

  Moe was raised in Davie. Her stepfather, who married Moe’s mother when Moe was about ten years old, was wealthy and eager to spoil his new stepdaughter. That explained the exorbitant reward money. Moe’s mother worked for some big airline at the time, and although she made a nice living, she was able to quit her job and be a stay-at-home-mom to Moe. She went on to have three more children with Moe’s stepfather. All girls.

  Moe had been the recipient of all the attention for about four years before her first half-sister was born. She was fourteen then and completely rebelled. She started running with a fast crowd, using drugs and sleeping around. She lost interest in her beloved horses. She was given a brand-new car for her sixteenth birthday, and it ended up in a lake. Two months after her sixteenth birthday, she dropped out of high school. She was eventually picked up by the police for shoplifting.

  Her parents couldn’t understand where this was coming from. Why did she need to steal when they gave her everything?

  Jan couldn’t comment on why Moe’s life spiraled out of control. It was just one of those things. She was technically still living at home when she was twenty, although by most counts she was never around. She slept on friends’ couches and only showed up at home to borrow money. When her parents finally cut her off, she resorted to breaking into her own home and stealing. I was still curious as to how she came into contact with the gang.

  According to Jan, Moe was picked up by one of the members. Jan thinks his name was Chip. He wasn’t around anymore. She’d been hanging at one of the gang’s local bars, performing sexual favors in exchange for drugs. Chip brought her to the motel and shared her with the guys. I looked at Jan. She knew what I was thinking.

  “Yeah, I’m sure Grizz and Blue were both with her,” she said.

  Jan went on to explain that Moe was pretty much the motel whore. There were other women who came and went, but Moe was a permanent fixture.

  I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. “Why did Grizz cut her tongue out?” I had to know.

  “Apparently, Moe had a real mouth on her,” Jan said quietly. “She never got over being the spoiled princess and was constantly bragging about how she didn’t have to live at the motel like a whore. Her family was rich and she could go home anytime she wanted. There was only one problem with this. She couldn’t be trusted. She’d been at the motel and heard too many secrets exchanged. Witnessed too much. No one really took her seriously, but it was still too risky.”

  Jan said Moe was steadily mocked and abused by some of the regulars. And how does someone cope with abuse? In this case, Moe turned her frustration on the only other person she perceived to be weaker than herself: Grunt. He was only ten or eleven then.

  Blue had just met Jan and wasn’t at the motel a lot, so Grizz had taken Grunt under his wing. It wasn’t exactly clear, but Jan was pretty sure that while Moe had never physically hurt Grunt, she was mean to him. Where the others fondly teased him about his size, she was cruel and started to order him around. She treated him like a slave, getting him to wait on her and do her chores. She was very careful not to do it when Blue or Grizz were around.

  But what Moe didn’t count on was that Grizz knew everything going on. It was only a couple of weeks after Moe started picking on Grunt that it happened.

  Grizz later told Blue he called Moe into his room for sex. She was always willing to accommodate Grizz. Jan thinks she was secretly in love with him. When they got in the room Grizz unzipped his jeans and told her to kneel. She was offended that he didn’t want intercourse with her. He just wanted a blow job. She made an off-the-cuff comment about “blow jobs being the runt’s work.” She probably thought she was being cute and funny, but Grizz snapped.

  I was shocked. I couldn’t equate the meek and unassuming Moe with the snotty, mouthy, nasty girl Jan was telling me about. I could see why Grizz would be mad at the comment, but to cut out her tongue?

  “Wouldn’t that just make her more hateful and resentful of Grunt?”

  “You would think so,” Jan replied. “But things don’t always turn out the way you think they might.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Grizz left her in the room, bleeding and crying hysterically. No one really cared that she was hurt. That she was maimed. Well, except for one person.”

  “Who?” But I knew before she told me.

  “Grunt. He nursed her back to health all by himself. He was just a little guy, and he never left her side. Even after she had been so mean to him.”

  I could see Grunt nursing Moe back to health. I’d seen him more than once at the motel stitching up someone who’d been in a fight. I knew Grizz had a doctor on his payroll, and that the physician noticed Grunt taking an interest when he occasionally came to the motel to provide medical care. He’d showed Grunt how to deal with some basic injuries and left medical supplies for him to use. Grunt was smart. He most certainly could’ve gone to medical school.

  I knew instantly the reasoning behind Grizz’s insistence that Grunt be the one to take my virginity that night. He saw in Grunt a nurturing, caring person who’d do his best not to hurt me. I still wondered, though—Grunt was the same person who nailed a man to a fence.

  I snapped back to the present and my conversation with Jan. I’d felt there was a special bond between Grunt and Moe, but I didn’t know what it was. If I was going to be honest, I thought it might’ve been sexual, but I was wrong. It was so strange to think her comment about Grunt is what caused her mutilation. She could’ve justified an even more intense hatred of him after that. Yet the simple act of loving concern fro
m a child changed it all.

  I was touched.

  I was thinking about this and watching Grunt as he drove us home. I had a paper plate full of food wrapped in tinfoil for Moe on my lap. I was feeling a slight high from the wine and had my head leaned back against the seat, but facing Grunt.

  We stopped at a stop sign and he looked over at me. I lifted my hand and caressed his cheek. “You are such a good person, Grunt. I’m glad it was you.”

  He looked at me like he was confused and then realized that I was talking about the night he drugged me in his room. He took my hand and kissed it.

  “I’m glad it was me too, Kit.”

  We were lost in the moment, and the reality of what was happening sunk in. I pulled my hand back and sat up.

  “I hope it hasn’t caused a problem with you and Sarah Jo,” I said quietly. “I mean, I’m assuming she doesn’t know, and I don’t know if you feel guilty about cheating on her like that. You know? I’m sorry if you do.”

  He didn’t say anything right away, but looked straight ahead and started to drive. “Sarah Jo’s not my girlfriend, Kit.”

  This got my attention and I looked over at him. “What? What do you mean she’s not your girlfriend? I’ve seen you two together. You sure look like a couple to me.”

  “Well, we’re not. We’ve been best friends for a long time. Fess didn’t like to bring her around, but he liked me and would take me home with him once in awhile. She has two younger brothers, too. They’d lost their mother a year or two before. Breast cancer.”

  I was stunned. “Stop. Pull over here, Grunt. I want to talk to you, and I want your attention.”

  He did as I asked and made a right on Griffin Road. There was nothing but orange groves out there in the seventies, and he easily pulled into one of the rows.

  He cut the engine and turned to face me. “She’s not my girlfriend, but she is very special to me.”

  “Do you always act that lovey-dovey with someone who’s not your girlfriend?” On the few occasions I had seen them, they were either holding hands or had their arms around each other, but now that I thought about it, I’d never seen them kiss.

  “Jo and I are affectionate with each other, but there’s nothing to it. She’s had the same boyfriend from high school for two years. Stephen somebody.”

  “You do know I thought you were a couple, right? Grunt. Answer me. You wanted me to think you were a couple, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything, just looked at his lap.

  “It’s better this way, don’t you think?” he whispered.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing? Did Grunt have feelings for me and was trying to hide them? Did he know I had feelings for him back in the summer and purposely derailed them by bringing Sarah Jo to the motel?

  I touched his face then and turned it toward me. We were staring at each other. I wanted so badly to kiss him, but I couldn’t betray Grizz. I didn’t know what to do. My mind was reeling. I remembered how much I had tried to hang around Grunt after that dream. That’s when Sarah Jo showed up. Had he done that on purpose to dissuade me?

  “What is this, Grunt?” Tears pricked my eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter.” His voice was hollow. “It can never be and we both know it.”

  I couldn’t let it drop. “If it could be, would you want it? Would you want me?”

  “Kit, I’ve wanted you since the first night I saw you. You sat there that night in the pit, so brave and so beautiful in those jeans and that flowery shirt. I was going to take care of you. I didn’t know what Monster was gonna do with you, but I would have gone up against him for you. That was before I knew he brought you there for Grizz.”

  I remembered that night vividly. I remembered the feeling of being watched. I instantly remembered the morning after I lost my virginity. How I went to Grunt’s room to ask him to take me out. He’d asked me what I was wearing that first night so I didn’t wear it while I was out with him. I might’ve been recognized. Now I knew it was an act. He knew exactly what I’d been wearing the first night at the motel.

  My mind was in turmoil. I didn’t know what to say.

  I didn’t have to say anything. The spell was broken when he started the car. The loud engine snapped me back to reality, and we wordlessly drove back to the motel.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  That evening was never discussed again. We fell back into our normal routines like it never happened—no covert glances or stolen looks. We both must have committed to ourselves the same thought: It never happened. It couldn’t happen. And it was erased from memory.

  There was one positive thing that came from that talk, though—Sarah Jo. Knowing she wasn’t romantically involved with Grunt opened up an avenue I wanted to explore: friendship. I was growing to love Moe, but honestly, communication was difficult. Grizz and Grunt were men. The thing with Jan was a disaster. I wanted a girlfriend.

  I asked Grunt for her phone number. Grunt and I had gone back to being comfortable around each other like we were on the drive over to Blue’s that Thanksgiving. I made first contact with Sarah Jo, and it was instant chemistry.

  It didn’t start out easy, though. Her father resisted our friendship at first. I think Fess was uncomfortable with her being friends with the underage wife of a notorious gang leader. And who could blame him?

  Her father wasn’t the hardened criminal one expected to find in a motorcycle gang. He actually fell into it by accident. Fess’s nickname was short for Professor. He taught at a local college. Back then, he was juggling his teaching career, three small children and a dying wife. It was all too much for him.

  Three months after his wife died, he was approached by the parent of one of his students. The student was failing his class, which would have prevented him from graduating.

  Fess didn’t have to be bribed. He already felt like he’d let his students down by not being there for them during his wife’s illness and ultimate death. He told the parent to not worry; his son would pass.

  That parent happened to be a narcotics detective. He told Fess he would make it up to him no matter what. Whenever Fess needed a favor, no matter what it was, he would be his man. Fess got the distinct impression that when he said it didn’t matter what it was, he meant it.

  Less than a month later, Fess was drowning his sorrows at a bar and met a young, up-and-coming motorcycle gang leader. Grizz.

  Fess was not only missing his wife, trying to raise three small children and hold down a job, but he was terribly in debt. His wife’s illness was long, and even though he had insurance through his job, it wasn’t enough for all the care she required. He needed money. He was going to lose his house.

  That’s how it started. Grizz’s network of inside informants. Fess called in that favor and the parent was only too happy to oblige. Grizz paid well. That’s what Fess did. He kept a ledger for Grizz of informants and other people who worked for him in other capacities. Fess kept records of who did what and how much they were paid. He never passed money. He never made contact. He never used his real name. There was never anything to tie him to Grizz.

  He eventually bought himself a Harley and would occasionally come out to the motel, but he never wore the jacket. The only reason Sarah Jo was friends with Grunt was because Fess felt sorry for the little boy at the motel. He later became extremely fond of Grunt. Grunt had potential, and Fess saw that.

  Sarah Jo confided in me that Fess regularly visited Moe in her room when he was there. Jo knew how much he missed her mother, and he was only human. She thought her father might have feelings for Moe. But if they cared about each other, they hid it well from the rest of us. Sarah Jo told me she did recognize me when she first met me. But, of course, she knew better than to say anything. She attended my rival school, Fort Lauderdale High School. My school, Stranahan, and her school had been archenemies as long as I could remember. But she had enough friends at Stranahan to know about me: the honor student who’d gone missing. It was assumed I’d run awa
y.

  She told me all about her boyfriend, Stephen. She’d been with him for two years and was currently torn between her love for him and the interest a new boy was showing her.

  Our friendship was difficult for us in the beginning because of my limitations on where I could go, and neither one of us had a driver’s license. We had to rely on Grunt, Moe, Grizz, Fess or whoever was available to drop us at an occasional movie, the beach or an out of the way mall.

  Still, in spite of the obstacles, the friendship flourished. She was my maid of honor when I married my husband. I was hers when she married her husband. She was there when I gave birth to my two children. I was there when she had her three children. She was waiting for me outside the execution viewing room the day Grizz died.

  She was, and is to this day, one of my very best friends.

  ____________

  Thanksgiving had come and gone. It was now only a couple of weeks before Christmas. I’d managed to shop a couple of times with Sarah Jo. I had a nice Christmas gift planned for Grizz, but it was going to take some time. I told him it would be late. I think he assumed it was something I was making for him since I had no money of my own and wasn’t going to touch his money to buy him a gift. He was more concerned about a gift for me.

  One night, I was sitting cross-legged on the bed doing homework. Grizz, who had just come out of the shower and was drying himself, had been pestering me about what I wanted for Christmas. I kept telling him I didn’t need anything; I had everything I could need or want.

  “There must be something, Kit. Anything you want,” he said, a white towel wrapped around his waist as he crossed the room and sat down on the bed next to me, his body still damp. “You name it. It’s yours. I don’t care how much it costs. I don’t care if it’s something you think is hard to find. Anything, baby. Anything.”

  I closed my book, touching his arm lightly. “Really Grizz. I’m serious. There isn’t anything.”