The Negotiator

by Gadziala, Jessica

  Because I wanted Christopher to get to know everything about me.

  TEN

  Christopher

  We both played well.

  Which meant we each got the chance to win. And therefore ask the questions.

  It started out innocently enough.

  I won and asked what her favorite country to visit was.

  She mulled that as she shuffled the cards, admitting it was hard to pick when she had been to many different places. Eventually, she chose a mix of Italy and New Zealand. The former for the food, the latter for the beauty. Having been both places myself, I had to agree they were great choices.

  She shot the question back at me, I decided the States for the very varied landscape and people as well as Russia simply because it was so different from my homeland in climate and architecture.

  She won the next round, raising the stakes by asking me the story of how I lost my virginity.

  To the housekeeper when I was sixteen.

  "What?" I asked when she snorted and shook her head.

  "You wouldn't believe how many guys who grew up well-off who have told me it was a staff member. And that she seduced him."

  "My father had a large and rotating group of young women around. Most of them from poor upbringings. I would imagine the choice to sleep with me was in the hopes of trying to get something out of me."

  "I hate to say it's probably true, but it's probably true. Did that bother you?"

  "I was sixteen and stupid. She was twenty and beautiful. I didn't care about the why. I just wanted to join the ranks of my friends who had already been screwing around for a while."

  "Whatever happened to her?"

  To that, I let out a humorless laugh, wincing a bit at the memory. "I walked into my father's room a few weeks later to see her in bed with him. When I told him, he had her replaced. I never touched the staff again."

  "Realizing you were sharing someone with your father is pretty gross. Do you know that Fenway lost his v-card to an actual queen? Can you imagine?" she asked, shaking her head as she started to deal.

  This was unexpectedly nice.

  I'd spent time with women before. In cafes. In bars. We'd had very casual conversations.

  But it was nothing like this. Because there had always been the underlying understanding that the conversation was simply a prelude to sex. No strings attached sex.

  There was none of that with Melody.

  Sure, I wanted that with her. It was becoming harder each hour to keep control over myself about that situation. But this interaction was just fun and easy. Just two friends getting to know each other.

  It was nice.

  It was something I could get used to.

  It was something I wanted to get used to.

  "Oh, come on," she snapped twenty minutes later, slamming down her third glass of tequila with a splash of lemon-lime soda.

  "It's true," I insisted, feeling my lips curve up as she small-eyed me.

  "No one prefers pound cake over every other possible dessert," she insisted. "I mean have you even tried those donut ball things Cora makes?"

  "I like things that aren't that sweet."

  "You freak," she shot back, shaking her head. "Have you ever had a good cheesecake? You know with the cherry stuff on top? Or some caramel?"

  "My maternal grandmother was a baker. I think she overindulged me as a kid and turned me off of sweets for the most part since then."

  "I guess that makes sense. I worked at a fast food place for about five seconds. I still can't look at a chicken nugget without grimacing."

  It was in the fifth round that I did it. When I got really personal. When I asked her the question that had been on my mind since she'd made that comment about prior traumatic experiences.

  "What was your second-most traumatic experience?" I asked, figuring she was more likely to answer that one than the first-place spot one.

  She looked startled for a moment, her eyes wide, her lips parted.

  She recovered quickly, though, sitting back, reaching for her drink.

  "I was working a job in Russia with Kai. And neither party wanted to give in even an inch. It was a shit show. We were on our fourth day of negotiations. The client ended up fucking us over by lying to us, leaving us to deal with the other guy and his crew. They held me down on the chair and nearly beat Kai to death right in front of me.

  "I'd had my ass handed to me more times than I am willing to admit. And that was scary. But it all paled in comparison to seeing someone I care about being punched and kicked and slammed on the ground while I sat there screaming but couldn't do anything about it. I still can't get that image out of my head. Kai had long hair and the man had just picked him up by it, about to slam his head down on the ground for what was going to be the final time. In my nightmares, they do it."

  "In reality, what happened?" I asked, watching as she swallowed hard.

  "In reality, they demanded twice the ask. I promised they would get it. And then I blackmailed the client with evidence we had of him cheating on his very dominant wife who once shot him for looking at another woman."

  "You blackmail the clients?" I asked, lips quirking up.

  "When they nearly get one of my best friends killed? Fuck yes."

  Fuck yes.

  I liked that.

  "How'd that go over?"

  "He is so terrified of his wife that he threw in a bonus to cover Kai's medical bills. We heard from him again three years later when his mistress tried to tell his wife about their affair."

  "You've led an interesting life," I told her.

  "It has been memorable, that's for sure. Lots of stories to tell at a bar when I'm old."

  "Or to your grandchildren," I offered.

  "If I ever settle down long enough to have kids."

  "Do you need to work as hard as you do?"

  "No. I mean, yes, my work is demanding. I tend to be busier than a lot of the guys on the team. If I wanted to, I could slow down. But I don't really have a solid reason not to work. I don't have family to spend time with or anything."

  "But if you don't slow down, how can you build a family?"

  "That's the question, isn't it? It must be nice being a guy."

  "Why's that?"

  "You're what? Ten or so years older than me?"

  "Give or take," I agreed, nodding.

  "And no one says to you 'when are you going to settle down and have kids?'"

  "Have you met Cora?" I asked, smirking.

  "Alright, fine, but you don't have a ticking clock on it. That must be nice."

  "You're still young."

  "For now," she agreed, passing me the cards to shuffle. "You do realize that Alexander just snuck out, right?" she asked a few minutes later, not even looking up from her cards.

  "I do," I agreed, nodding.

  "You're not going to stop him?"

  "Laird will follow him."

  "So he gets the illusion of rebellion."

  "Something like that," I agreed. "Though, I managed to get into plenty of trouble with my father's men following me around at his age."

  "Oh, yeah? Like what? Drinking with your buddies on the beach?"

  My lips curved up at that, "Like starting a hustle of my own."

  "What kind of hustle?"

  "I worked as a lookout for a car-jacker. Made some good money that I didn't have to ask my father for."

  "Did he find out?"

  "Of course he did."

  "What did he do?"

  "Took a cut off my earnings."

  "He did not."

  "He did. He told me it was a lesson."

  "What was the lesson?"

  "That no one made money in Greece without him getting something. Not even his own son."

  "A little insight into the man you've become," she said, sounding pleased to know me better.

  Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

  Though why I was wishing for shit like that was beyond me.

  She was
a fascinating woman. But she was a transient one. Even if I was in the market for that wife I had always considered a part of my future, Melody wasn't an option.

  Maybe it was just the sexual frustration, the fact that I wanted her. I couldn't remember a single instance in the past where I wanted to go to bed with a woman and then didn't. When both of us clearly wanted it.

  The next two rounds went to her, making me seriously question my poker skills, and making her get louder and prouder of her victories. She asked more and more invasive questions, but mostly about my childhood, about my upbringing.

  No one ever asked me things like that. If they were going to ask me questions, they wanted to know about the man I was. Or, more accurately, about my profession, about how I got to be what I am.

  It was strange, in fact, to reflect on my upbringing on my own, let alone with another person and their input.

  I found I liked her interest, her lighthearted comments, the way she accepted the unusual childhood I had without much judgment. Being exposed to so many men from... alternative lifestyles made her immune to the strangeness of my early—and current—life.

  "Damn," she hissed when I laid my cards on the table, shaking her head.

  "Where are you going?" I asked when she got up, and walked away.

  "Getting another drink. I'm going to need it."

  "Why's that?" I asked, watching as she went to the tequila bottle, pouring three fingers, dropping a lime wedge in the glass, then grabbing the bottle of Scotch, and bringing it back toward me.

  "Because I know what you are about to ask me," she said, stopping at my side, pouring the bottle into my glass. "And I have a feeling you might want a drink too," she added, face guarded.

  It was the first time I saw her face completely closed down, utterly unreadable.

  It was then that I truly understood how she managed to do her job, how she managed to wheel and deal with men who didn't want to compromise, how she looked terrible people in the face, and never showed her true feelings.

  "How do you know I am going to ask you that?" I asked, raising my glass to take a sip.

  "Because it's been bugging you since I let it slip."

  "You could tell me to go fuck myself," I offered.

  "That wouldn't be fair, now, would it?" she asked, taking a long sip. "Alright," she said, putting the glass down on the table. "Ask me," she demanded, lifting her chin, keeping unnerving eye-contact, daring me to ask it, wanting me to do it.

  I finished my drink, leaned forward, and rested my arms on the table.

  "What happened to you, Melody?"

  ELEVEN

  Miller

  This was that one story.

  The one I never told anyone.

  The one I held close to my vest.

  At first, back then, because it was too unfathomable to share.

  Then, as I got older, because I worried others might use the information against me, would see it as a weakness of some sort.

  I didn't tell my crew.

  They knew that I ended up on the streets, hustling for money.

  They didn't know how that happened.

  They didn't know what would make a seventeen-year-old girl quite that desperate.

  To get away from her family.

  To live on the streets until she could afford to sleep indoors again. To go hungry for days at a time.

  They didn't know that part of my life.

  I didn't want them to.

  The crazy thing was, Christopher was right. I could have told him to go fuck himself. I could have refused to answer. I could have told him to ask something else.

  I didn't, though.

  I didn't want to.

  Because, and this made absolutely no sense at all, I wanted him to know.

  I wanted to give that part of my life to him.

  "I guess I have to go back to the beginning," I told him, taking a deep breath, but it still somehow got caught, strangled me.

  I had grown up without my mom.

  We'd established that. Everyone knew that.

  My father was a piece of shit.

  I alluded to that with my coworkers. Some of us had commiserated about that. The others, the ones with happy home lives who couldn't relate, they sympathized.

  They couldn't have known, though, not really.

  You couldn't make someone understand what it was like to have the only person in your life, the person you were wholly dependent on, be unreliable. Without experience, you couldn't truly understand an empty belly, uncertain living arrangements, the shame of having a parent who was a mess. When everyone knew it.

  I remembered my childhood kitchens all in perfect detail. The linoleum floors that were so worn that the patterns were hard to make out, the cabinets hanging off their hinges, the grime caked on the top of the stove.

  It didn't matter which apartment we were in, they all looked like variations of the same space.

  All hideous.

  All filthy.

  Anytime I wanted a snack—if one was available that day or week—I would make my way into the kitchen, and reach up into the cabinet, steeling myself. Because I knew what was going to happen. Roaches were going to fall out when I pulled open the door.

  I remembered once when I was six or seven, one of the cockroaches falling down into my shirt.

  I remembered shrieking and crying.

  I remembered my father cursing as he dragged himself off the couch full of cigarette burn holes.

  I remembered him coming toward me.

  I remembered thinking he would help me, get the bug out, kill it, tell me it was okay.

  Why I thought that was beyond me, because nothing about my father ever suggested he would offer me comforting words.

  But, I guess, kids were forgiving no matter how fucked up their parents were, how often they let them down.

  He didn't get the bug out.

  No.

  He backhanded me across the kitchen, screamed at me for yelling, telling me he had a splitting headache. My father always had a splitting headache. He was almost always angry. And he often hit me.

  Why this one memory stuck out more than the other times was beyond me. Maybe because of the bug. The double trauma of it all.

  My lip had split open, and I remembered tasting the copper penny taste as I shook the roach out of my shirt, stomped on it with my shoe, cleaned up the body, and went to cry silently in bed, belly empty, soul just as bare.

  It wasn't until I was about ten or eleven that I understood why my father spent so much of his time throwing up, rocking on the couch, drenched in sweat, moaning, cursing, screaming at me if I dared be anywhere near him.

  I saw the pattern first.

  Every Friday night, he never came home from work. I often didn't see him again until Sunday evening, bringing home something in a bag to throw at me to eat, maybe helping me with some homework, or even obsessively cleaning.

  But come Monday evening, it was all over.

  And came the downward spiral.

  I understood that on Friday, he had money. And all weekend, he was gone, spending it. On what, it took me an almost embarrassingly long time to figure out.

  That my father was an addict.

  That he spent that money on drugs.

  By the time I was thirteen, I understood it was heroin.

  And by then, he was in a really downward spiral. Barely keeping any jobs. Constantly getting us evicted. Losing weight.

  It all really came to a head when I was sixteen and he got pulled in on a possession charge, getting eight months. Which meant I got to do some time in the system.

  I'd heard all the horror stories about foster care growing up. Hell, my father used to threaten me with it, telling me how much worse it was than being with him.

  In reality, though, I was at least fed. The government checks made sure I knew there was a roof over my head. And I was hit a hell of a lot less.

  But then he was out.

  He was 'clean.'

  A
nd they were sending me back.

  I was jaded enough about life not to be surprised. Or overly disappointed.

  I was just biding my time until I could move out, until I could maybe hit the local community college, make a better life for myself. Get the hell away from my father.

  Everything seemed halfway better for a few weeks.

  He somehow conned his boss into giving him his old job back. He brought his paychecks home, filled the fridge, even got me some new clothes, and a school bag that wasn't held together with duct tape I'd 'borrowed' from the super.

  There was no easing into it, no slow descent. One day, things were looking up.

  The next, he was rolling in on the downside of a bender, eyes small, retching in the bathroom.

  I'd like to say that I was so used to it that my stomach didn't drop.

  But it dropped.

  Maybe a part of me saw that this was different, that things were getting worse.

  I was on eggshells.

  Something was coming.

  I didn't know what or when.

  I couldn't have anticipated the reality, though.

  As awful as my father had been, for the most part, he had been more destructive to himself than me. I got bumped and bruised and didn't exactly ever feel safe or stable, but I was sure he'd damaged himself more than he'd hurt me.

  It all changed that afternoon.

  It was a Wednesday after a Friday when he'd lost his job again. Which meant there would be no money. Which meant he would be deep in a detox hole.

  And desperate.

  "I couldn't have known how desperate, though," I told Christopher, taking another steadying breath. Because all that stuff I'd told him leading up, that had been preamble, build-up for the big event.

  I'd been late from school that day, getting held up at the locker by this guy I'd been eye-banging from across my biology class, talking about hanging out one day, maybe. Making my little teenaged heart skip at all the possibilities, the chance at something normal, something good, something happy in a life so devoid of it.

  When I walked in, I remembered I had been humming. Just some silly pop-rap hit about falling in love.

  I could never hear that song again without feeling sick.

  I stopped humming as I walked in the door to find my father in the living room. But, for once, he wasn't alone.