Heavy Hogs MC

by Elias Taylor

  She downed her drink by the time Brent got his confusingly attractive-ass off the wall, handed their drinks back and led them on a search for more. More alcohol wasn’t hard to find. This was Sin City. Every drugstore on the Strip had cheap drinks.

  They explored further along the Strip, stopping for more drinks whenever they ran out. To all of their interest, they started seeing signs for a festival on another street not far from here, so they meandered along in the direction the signs pointed. Music swelled from every corner, and when Gideon stopped to answer a phone call, Natalie found herself getting low next to Brent, determined to out-dance him.

  “What the hell!” she exclaimed when he pulled out some actually-decent robot dance moves that put emphasis on all the right muscles and outshone her not-half-bad hip-shaking. There was no real heat behind her words, though—she was having fun.

  Fun with Brent. Who would have thought?

  “I used to dance,” he laughed, hitting her with a bit of hip-hop. A group of girls scattered to avoid his antics, the looks they gave him equally split between scathing and lip-biting.

  Natalie would never admit it, but she was on the lip-biting end. Who gives a shit what other people think? If you want to dance, fucking dance. She followed up her bold thoughts by including a park bench into her impromptu dance, doing a couple quick crosses of her legs and standing up with a little twist.

  “You’re not bad though,” Brent commented. Natalie thought that his eyes jumped from her face to the tight T-shirt stretched over her push-up bra, but she dismissed it as alcohol-induced imagination.

  “Dance like no one’s watching,” Natalie replied as she did the dip, which lifted the frayed edges of her jean shorts high enough to show the curves of her ass, but she didn’t care.

  “That was Bear,” Gideon told them, lowering his phone without blinking an eye at his sister’s antics. “The Road Warriors just checked into the hotel, and they’re about to go out gambling. Let’s go meet them.”

  Natalie straightened up with a pout on her face. “What about the festival? The signs look super cool—kind of like Mardi Gras, all costumes and flowers.”

  “Since when do you care about flowers more than you care about your friends?”

  “I care about most things more than gambling,” Natalie countered. “Look, I’ll go by myself. Go ahead and go back to the hotel.”

  “I’ll stay,” Brent offered when Gideon looked unsure about abandoning his sister. “I don’t care for gambling either.”

  “Great,” Gideon said with a clap of his hands. “See ya.” He vanished immediately.

  “And then there were two,” Natalie announced, secretly thrilled that Brent had chosen to hang out with her. What fun would exploring Vegas alone be?

  “And then there were two,” he agreed, raising his beer to clink against hers. “Let’s go find this festival.”

  They found it all right, and they found it easily. Natalie had been fairly accurate with her mental ‘Mardi Gras thing’ image. This shebang was like a big get-together of all the colors of the rainbow, complete with streamers, flowers of all kinds both fake and real—sidewalk chalk? Natalie needed to get her hands on some of that—more vendors with colourful awnings, colorful jewelry with strange designs everywhere and lots of foods that Natalie didn’t recognize.

  “This is awesome!” Natalie announced, singing ‘awesome’.

  “Way better than gambling,” Brent agreed.

  A delicious smell floated to Natalie’s nose and she perked up like a watchful dog. “I’m hungry,” she announced, shaking her empty beer while she stared with fascination at some sort of round fried balls of finger food a vendor was selling in rectangular paper containers. “And I need another drink,” she added, realizing that she was sending mixed signals here.

  Brent took the can from her and lobbed it neatly into a recycling bin. “I’ll grab us drinks, you grab us weird ball things?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Five minutes of standing in lines later, Natalie and Brent reunited with snacks and drinks. They wandered the avenues of color, taking in their surroundings with interest.

  “What dance is that?” Natalie asked, deferring to Brent’s superior knowledge—or skills, at least—and pointing at a group of dancers wearing thick robes that obscured their faces.

  “Not one I’ve learned.” Brent sent Natalie into a fit of laughter with his crude replication of the robed dancers.

  She decided to give it a try herself, but Brent shook his head. “Straighten your back, like this.”

  Her breath caught in her throat as the weight of his calloused hand fell on her back, nudging her to stand up straighter, and for a second she hoped that he would spin her around so that her hair spiraled like the robes of the dancers.

  Natalie played off her reaction to Brent’s touch by grabbing his hand and spinning herself around, then using their joined hands to pull herself close to him again. “Like that?”

  “Like that.” His breath stirred her hair. That spin had brought them so close, and Natalie could feel something she had never felt around Brent before rising inside her.

  Natalie gave Brent a playful push on the chest and ducked away, giggling at her antics in both a good and bad way. How drunk was she?

  He followed her, shaking his head with a smile but lacking one of his usual insults. He sure was making it easy to get along with him today. But then, alcohol was a social lubricant and Natalie had made sure to drench her gears.

  They were getting into the heart of the festival now. People wearing robes and strange costumes passed them in both directions, and a deep, throaty humming rose from somewhere ahead.

  Curious, Natalie and Brent followed the sound. It was chanting, not humming, and the group of people responsible was dancing a slow and solemn dance to match the even pitch of the chanting. They wore... blankets? Tapestries? Natalie didn’t know what to call them, but more intricate designs traced colourful patterns of threads across the cloths.

  It was all very ethnic and fascinating, and Natalie looked on with intense curiosity. “What are they doing?”

  An old woman with wrinkled skin, white hair and a colorful shawl answered. She spoke another language at first, but when she watched Natalie and Brent share looks of confusion, she switched to thickly-accented English. “Ceremony,” she told them, pointing into the mass of dancing forms.

  Natalie followed her pointing finger and spotted an old man with more designs painted on his face seated at the far end of the circle, his arms raised high. “Ceremony?” she asked, her body swaying to the chanting. She hadn’t been in the mood to dance this much in ages.

  The woman nodded vigorously. “Two,” she said, holding up that many fingers. “And paper, to say you did.”

  “Paper—oh, like a certificate?” Natalie asked.

  More nodding, and then the woman pointed at the colourful, beaded purse she wore.

  “It costs money?”

  More nodding.

  “I’m down if you are,” Brent told Natalie, laughing at her palpable excitement. “I’ll even pay.”

  A weird ethnic celebration thing in Vegas, more dancing and a certificate to commemorate the trip? Sign her up. Natalie had never been so down for something in her life.

  “Let’s do it,” Natalie decided.

  The woman smiled her approval, took each of their hands in hers and led the way toward the circle.

  Chapter Four: Brent

  Little Gnat.

  That was what Brent used to call Natalie. She had hated when Brent snuck up behind her to scare her when she was at her locker and call her that stupid little nickname. As they grew up Natalie started ignoring Brent entirely when he used the nickname and he abandoned it. He had other teasing ways to knock Gideon’s stuck-up little sister off her high horse.

  Weird that he would think of that now, when he was standing in the middle of a group of chanting, dancing people with Little Gnat herself. No one around them seemed to be able to
explain this ‘ceremony’ and he had a feeling that the ‘certificate’ they would receive at the end would probably be a Las Vegas postcard or a gift card for one of the Strip’s restaurants, but Brent didn’t care. Natalie wanted to do the ceremony and Brent was down.

  Natalie wants. Since when do I care what Natalie wants? Since when do I pay for what Natalie wants? Brent wasn’t drunk enough yet to admit that Natalie jumped from a ten to an eleven when that light of adventure snapped on in her eyes. Add one of her genuine, happy smiles and she jumped to a twelve. And damn, if the way she hugged the corners of the silky brown shawl they draped over her shoulders to her chest didn’t bump her off the hotness chart.

  Someone did the same to Brent. He caught a corner and looked at it, but it shimmered and shone and he couldn’t tell what color it was. All the colors were blurring together, the skyscrapers surrounding the Strip blocked the late afternoon sun and words Brent couldn’t understand slipped in one ear and out the other.

  The dancing continued, but it had structure now. The forms surrounding him and Natalie swayed back and forth with purpose, passing a bowl along the circumference of the circle without missing a beat. More robed figures hurried through the center of the circle, half-crouched, but Brent never saw where they came from or where they ended up.

  Brent felt hands against his back, pushing him toward Natalie. He took in her short dark brown hair, shorts of the perfect length for maximum appreciation by the male eye, impromptu baseball cap and obvious delight for everything going on.

  Natalie’s gaze switched from the chanting dancers to Brent and she immediately started laughing. Big-brother’s-best-friend teasing mode nearly took over, then he realized that she was looking at the tiny old lady pushing Brent’s 6’2” fitness-nut ass along.

  He chuckled too, but the woman made a shushing motion.

  Brent hushed. Natalie hushed. The entire mass of people hushed as well as the woman who shunted them toward the old man sitting cross-legged underneath a sort of arch. The woman stooped, unrolled what looked like something ancient civilizations would have used for a yoga mat and disappeared.

  “Kneel.”

  The old man’s voice startled Brent in the absence of the chanting. He looked at Natalie, who looked at him. Together, grabbing each other’s hands for balance, they knelt. Maybe it was the sudden solemnity of the moment or the memory of the old woman who told them ‘two’, but Brent didn’t let go of Natalie’s hand.

  The shaman—because that really was the only word Brent could think of that encapsulated the role the old man seemed to have here—raised both hands. He touched the tip of each index finger to his face, then dipped them in a tiny pot of gold paint. Brent couldn’t help but shoot Natalie a smirk when she muttered something about ‘my makeup’ when the shaman touched one finger to each of their faces, leaving a tiny gold fingerprint.

  The chanting began again. The circle drew closer as the ranks of those watching closed. No gaps remained, and even the sounds from the rest of the festival were muted by the wall of bodies.

  Brent leaned in close to Natalie, “Hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

  She chuckled, but they both shut up as the shaman began to sway. Right to left, then front to back, then repeat. He swayed in time to the chanting, and then he pointed to Brent, then Natalie and back at himself before tapping his hands on his shoulders.

  “Uh...”

  Natalie cut off Brent’s confusion by placing her hands on his shoulders and roughly directing him to sway in the same pattern of the shaman. He could feel the years of working on cars in her strong grip, and he betted that she could give a great massage. With her hands or with her—whoa, Brent! he cautioned himself, giving his imagination a good old one-two punch. Gideon. Sister. Gideon’s sister.

  The shaman was glaring at him. Brent grabbed Natalie’s shoulders and the glare relaxed. The shaman murmured a few indistinguishable words, reached into the same pot of gold paint and made two more little golden fingerprints on their faces. Finally, he said a single word in English, “Kiss.”

  Brent and Natalie stared at each other, their hands still resting on each other’s shoulders. “Did he say—”

  “Kiss,” the shaman commanded, and this time the word was unmistakable.

  Brent caught Natalie’s eyes. She looked surprised, but not hostile. Certainly not touch-me-and-I’ll-kill-you, and maybe even surprisingly kissable.

  Oh, what the hell.

  Natalie had just enough time to widen her eyes before Brent tugged her toward him and plunged them both into not just a peck, but a full-fledged, lip-locked and mouth-wide-open kiss. Her lip gloss coated his lips. Sweet, dark and smoky perfume tickled his lungs. The kiss burned with the tangible memory of their last beers.

  Semi-drunk Brent thought this was the most heavenly combination of sensations of all time and pressed closer, hunting for more. Logical Brent pounded his fists in the back of his mind, shouting about some guy named Gideon and something about someone’s sister.

  Cheers, hoots and hollers ended the moment. Brent blinked like a sleepy cat, suddenly noticing that the circle had opened again and plenty of Las Vegas vacationers had been watching the kiss and now felt it appropriate to put their hands together and cheer over a kiss.

  Any awkwardness Brent might have felt paled in comparison to the pink blush on Natalie’s cheeks. “You could have asked me first,” she accused him as he helped her to her feet at the shaman’s gesture.

  Brent shrugged, doing what he did best and played it off. “I mean, I did pay for this, so you owed me—”

  His joke turned into spluttering shock as a rush of cold water smacked him straight in the face and went up his nose. From the sounds Natalie was making beside him, she wasn’t faring much better. “What was that for?” he asked the shaman with a glare when he could breathe again, eyeing the two empty bowls in his hands.

  “For the Spirit,” he explained simply.

  “Oh, for the Spirit,” Brent muttered, actually wringing water out of his shirt. “Of course.”

  Natalie lost her disbelief to laughter at Brent’s disgruntled face. “For the Spirit,” she repeated like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Whatever. Look, they want us to go over there now.”

  ‘Over there’ was a space on the other side of the shaman’s archway. The people on this side didn’t chant. Instead, they held musical instruments—some that Brent recognized, and some he didn’t—and played fast-paced, happy, instrumental music.

  “Dance!” the shaman called after them before turning away.

  “Guess I have to do everything,” Brent sighed, grabbing Natalie and leading her into a lively dance that would hopefully dry their wet clothes.

  “This was my idea,” she argued, keeping pace with Brent but letting him lead.

  “That we’re doing with my money,” Brent pointed out.

  “I didn’t ask you to pay for me. Why did you?”

  “I felt bad for the poor lost girl whose brother abandoned her in the streets—”

  “Oh my God - whooooa - Brent!” Her chastisement turned into a squeak of surprise when Brent swung her into a spin. “Ass.”

  “I knew you could handle it.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “An observation,” he corrected.

  “I need another drink.”

  “Me too.”

  The song ended. Brent and Natalie stopped dancing, both laughing helplessly and thoroughly out of breath.

  “You come!” The very first old woman who had approached them and told them about the ceremony pointed to one of those plastic folding tables you could always find at event registrations. She hobbled straight through a mass of dancing people to reach it. Brent and Natalie followed, getting bumped every which way and sharing disbelieving looks as the woman passed through completely unaffected.

  “You write.” The woman pointed at a piece of paper.

  “Sign,” Natalie translated for Brent.

  “Oh.
”

  Natalie pulled her phone out of her pocket for the first time since the start of the mysterious ceremony. “Aw man, my phone’s wet. And Gideon called like four times.”

  “Did he?” Brent grabbed the pen the woman offered to him, found one of two blank lines on the sheet of paper and scrawled his signature before the water could creep down his arm and soak it, all while trying to lean close enough to Natalie to listen to Gideon’s voicemail.

  “Yep.” They started to walk away.

  “You write!” The woman’s hand snapped out and grabbed Natalie’s wrist.

  “Oh yeah, sorry, sorry!” Already holding the phone to her ear to call Gideon, she scribbled her signature on the last blank line.

  “You get...” the woman trailed off, searching for words. “Official document in two weeks in mail,” she said as though she were reciting carefully-memorized words.

  “Oh. Thanks,” Brent told her. She nodded and hobbled off.

  “Hey,” Natalie said, holding the phone away from her face. “Gideon says he and the rest were starving and drunk and decided not to wait on us. Do you want to find somewhere around here to eat?” She went to put her phone in the back pocket of her jean shorts, felt the wet patch there and stopped, looking disgusted.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel and change first,” he suggested, also uninterested in walking the Strip dripping wet. “My spirit wants dry clothes.”

  “My spirit agrees with your spirit.”

  “My spirit is wondering what the official certificate is going to look like.”

  “My spirit thinks talking like this is stupid.”

  Their laughter carried them away from the festival and back to the Strip. They really did intend to go back to the hotel, but things just didn’t happen that way. Natalie wanted to stop for a picture. Brent wanted to watch a street dancer. Natalie and Brent both wanted more drinks; then they wanted a picture together. It went on and on, especially stopping for more drinks, and by the time they finally reached the hotel, Brent couldn’t walk straight but was totally thinking up some of the greatest comeback lines of his life to combat Natalie’s teasing.