by A. J. Downey
“I wanna have a talk with your daddy,” Maverick said succinctly. “And you’re gonna tell me how I can find him.”
Fernando laughed in our faces and Maverick’s friendly smile cooled by several thousand degrees.
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way, Fernando. Our beef ain’t with you.”
“Yeah?” Fernando asked, reaching behind him for a sturdy wrench off the bench. “Fuck you.”
“Marisol,” Maverick said, and I stood frozen, like a deer in headlights out on the road. “Get the door for me.”
I swallowed hard, mouth dry and Fernando crossed his arms over his dirty, grease-smudged white tee. He had on a pair of light blue, equally dirty, striped coveralls, the top part rolled down and bunched at his waist, the sleeves knotted there to hold them up.
He was strong, broad chested and chiseled. All muscle from hard labor and there was a reason why all the girls like Lupe fell all over themselves to get with him. The problem was, he was a raging dick. Had something like four kids already at twenty-seven and didn’t see or keep up on his child support for any of them.
“Now,” Maverick said, and I jumped slightly. I took the two steps over to the box with the three-square buttons on the wall and hit the bottom one marked ‘down.’ The door rattled, the steel unfurling, as it slowly made its way down. The light diminished by a little, but it was late afternoon and was coming in the back door for the most part, now. There was no need to bring that door down, though. It just faced the back parking lot and a barren concrete wall. The houses perched high above on the artificial plateau of land created by said walls sat in such a way that the view from them would be of the roof of the ugly little shop, if they had a view down here at all.
“I’m not telling you shit,” Fernando said dispassionately, spitting on the cement floor at Maverick’s feet. “Now you can take that lying fucking puta out of here and never look back. You get me?”
Maverick looked completely unconcerned and unfazed by what came out of Fernando’s mouth, but I knew different by the slight tick of the muscle in Mav’s jaw.
“See, now what happens next is solely predicated on the decisions you’re about to make,” Maverick said calmly. So calmly, it rose the hair on the back of my neck.
“Fernando…” I said and his head whipped in my direction.
“Shut up!” he snarled.
“Fernando,” Maverick said firmly, and my cousin’s attention whipped back in Mav’s direction.
“I’m going to ask one more time, nicely… How do I find your daddy?”
“Man, fuck you, and fuck this.” Fernando advanced on Maverick with the wrench and I jumped but Maverick just stood his ground. Fernando swung at Mav and I yelped in fear, jumping, pressing my hands to my mouth but I needn’t have worried – at least not for Maverick.
He smoothly side-stepped my cousin who swung again, Mav leaning back, arching just out of the way. Fernando growled and Mav struck so lightning quickly, I almost didn’t see it.
He shoved Fernando and sent him sprawling, the wrench clattering and clanging against the stained concrete and skittering out of my cousin’s reach.
“Last chance,” Maverick declared in an almost singsong mocking voice. My cousin growled and got to his feet, raising his fists. He and Mav started circling and Maverick shook his head.
“Just remember,” he said, my cousin straightening slightly and frowning harder, “you chose this.”
Fernando roared like an angry bull and came for Mav, but Maverick was both smarter and faster. He let Fernando overbalance and swept my cousin past him. Mav’s hand knotted in the back of my cousin’s tee as he fetched him up hard, face first, into one of the legs of the auto lift.
My man pressed his body into my cousin’s back almost lover-like and intimate, bringing his face close in, pressing the barrel of the gun that appeared like magic in his other hand into my cousin’s cheek that wasn’t pressed into the lift.
Fernando’s eyes widened and he held up his hands in surrender.
“Now, I’m not asking nice anymore,” Maverick declared coldly. “Where’s your fucking daddy at?”
“Come on, man!” Fernando’s voice was high and tight with panic and I stared at the scene in front of me. I stared at my cousin’s wide and frightened eyes and wondered how many times he’d put that same look on my face. How many times he’d backed me into the side of one of the houses and put his nose practically to mine and threatened me into silence. How many times he’d told me if I didn’t shut the fuck up about his father, how he would make sure I was raped for real. Or how he would hurt me so bad I would wish I were dead.
A moment of clarity overtook me in that moment, staring at him like that. So, scared he was about to piss himself, all his power stripped away.
My eyes tracked to Maverick, my lover, my man, and his words came back to me… you just point, and I’ll unleash hell.
I’d pointed, and he was here, and if this wasn’t hell, I didn’t know what was but for once I wasn’t the one expected to suffer. What’s more? I hadn’t done anything wrong unlike Fernando.
I mean, I couldn’t say that Fernando had done anything wrong either; at least not initially. In one regard I did pity him… he had a child molester for a father and his only sin was that he didn’t want to believe that. I could understand that. I could… and so watching what was happening now made my gut do an uncomfortable twist.
“Fernando,” I pleaded. “Just tell him what he wants to know so we can go!”
Maverick pressed a little more insistently with the barrel of the gun and Fernando cried, “Okay, okay!” and babbled like a brook. Information flowed freely after that. The brook giving way to a torrent.
I breathed a silent sigh of relief and didn’t understand why Maverick didn’t back off when he’d gotten what he wanted.
“He ever lay a hand on you?” Maverick asked and it was only when Fernando yipped out, “What? No!” that I realized that he was talking to me.
“Not sexually, no,” I answered, because that time pinned against the side of my grandmother’s house, his fingers digging into my face as he grabbed my chin was all too fresh in my memory.
“Not sexually, but he’s hurt you?” Maverick demanded.
I nodded.
“Where you want him shot?” he asked me.
“I don’t want you to shoot him,” I said, and Mav bore into Fernando that much harder.
“You hear that, Junior? She doesn’t want you shot. She doesn’t want you hurt, but we don’t always get what we want, now do we?”
He clubbed my cousin in the head with his gun. Blood spurted from Fernando’s eyebrow and he planted on his ass on the cement beside the lift, a hand going to his head in a daze. Maverick leaned down and grabbed my cousin’s chin in an eerie echo of how he’d grabbed mine, forcing Fernando to look up at him. Fernando gripped Mav’s wrist and Maverick doubled down, forcing the barrel of the gun into Fernando’s mouth.
“Mav, stop!” I cried, alarmed.
“You listen here,” Maverick commanded, ignoring me. “That there had better leave a scar. I mean it. I want it to be a reminder, every time you look in the mirror, that that girl showed you mercy today. The mercy you never afforded her, you ignorant fucking fuck. Next time a woman tells you something, you better fuckin’ believe her and I swear to God, you call the cops? You tell anyone about this at all, I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna finish what I fucking started here. I’m all outta mercy. Now nod if you understand me.”
Fernando nodded emphatically and I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Marisol, get on the bike.”
I did what I was told, and Maverick let my cousin go. Straightening, he kneed him in the face, Fernando’s nose crunched, and his hands flew to cover it and to catch the blood spilling down it.
“Glad I could make myself clear,” Maverick said, tucking the gun into the back of his pants and coming over to me. I handed him his helmet and he got onto the front of his bi
ke, starting her up.
I clung to him, giving one last look down on my cousin who looked up at me in terror through the mask of blood on his face and tears glossing his eyes and I felt my own expression close down.
I felt nothing, then. No pity, and certainly no satisfaction.
I didn’t know what I felt, but the closest thing I could say was probably numb?
We pulled around the side of the building and up to the street.
“You hungry?” Maverick called over his shoulder as though he hadn’t just terrorized a member of my family and half bashed his face in. The question caught me off guard and I realized that yeah… yeah, I was hungry.
“Yeah!” I called back to him and he smiled as though pleased.
“That’s my girl!” he called out and turned us right out of the driveway and onto the street, back in the direction from which we came.
Chapter Twenty-One
Maverick…
I took us to the Salmon House on Northlake Way. She perked up a little when we passed Gasworks Park, and I made a mental note to ask her about it later.
I wasn’t interested in going into the fine dining part of the restaurant with the killer views of the city from across the lake. No, the cool thing about the Salmon House was the fact that they had a more down-to-earth counter out front with some picnic tables. A sort of food truck vibe out of the building front.
I pulled up to the curb and Marisol got down off the bike, her hands automatically going to her chinstrap to take her helmet off. I held out my hand for it after I shut off my ride and slipped the strap over one of the handlebars, letting it dangle. She put her sunglasses up on top of her head and her eyes were sullen, almost sad but not angry, her expression otherwise unreadable.
“You doin’ alright?” I asked her, and she looked me over, her eyes wandering over my face.
She frowned slightly, a small line appearing between her perfectly winged brows and she said, “I don’t know yet.”
“That’s fair,” I said with a nod and swung a leg over the bike, standing after hanging my helmet off the other handlebar, my mirrored sunglasses still in place. She held out her hand to me and I took it, giving it a couple of squeezes. “For what it’s worth, you did good back there.”
She shuddered slightly and sighed, saying, “I almost feel like we should be far away from here. I mean, I don’t think he will but we can’t be sure he won’t…” she gave a furtive glance around us, at anyone who may or may not be listening and finished with a quiet, “You know.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a nod. “There’ll be consequences if he does.”
She nodded and I sighed. I’d gone own fucking program today and I knew it, but she didn’t need to know. The guys would be pissed – I should have brought at least two of them with me, a typical wrecking crew. That, or I should have just sent Fen and D.T. to get the information – but in my own way, I’d needed to do this with her. Needed to know what she could handle and needed her to see firsthand that something was being done.
I put my trust in her today, and I was hoping to get a little of that back.
We went and got in line with the rest of the citizens and waited our turn.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and I linked my fingers with hers.
We got up to the counter after a bit, ordering our fried fish and chips, me the salmon, her the halibut. We waited in silence for our number to be called and took a seat at a rickety, two-seater and metal mesh table set with two hard plastic lawn chairs.
We ate in yet more silence, and it was a comfortable one – at least for me. She seemed troubled, but also, judging by the expression on her face, thoughtful. She was still processing, and I let her. If she had questions, she would ask them, I was sure of it – and if she didn’t, I would urge her to when we were alone or in a safe place to have that talk.
“Can we go to the park back there at the end of the lake?” she asked suddenly, and I looked up from my cardboard boat of fried food.
“Yeah,” I said. “Got something on your mind?”
“A lot, but nothing I want to talk about here,” she said, giving a furtive glance at a nearby table.
I nodded and we finished our meal.
We took a short ride back to Gasworks Park and I pulled up in a spot that wasn’t exactly a designated parking spot, but the bike fit, and it was kept out of the way so… yeah, it was now. She linked her fingers with mine and we strolled along one of the wide pathways. There were people, but it was a lot less crowded than it had been back at the restaurant. I waited on her to be comfortable enough to speak.
“My dad brought me here once,” she said abruptly. “A long time ago, before Mateo.”
“Ah, yeah?” I asked and smiled.
She nodded and her expression was somber.
“We sat up on the hill.”
“Want to go there now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, and we gently changed trajectory in that direction.
“What’s going to happen now?” she asked when we were free and clear of any potential eavesdropping.
“Not for you to worry about, babe,” I told her.
“But I do worry. Not about my cousin or my uncle… not anymore. I worry about you.”
“Me?” I asked and I had to confess, my grin was cocky. I liked hearing it. No, I loved hearing that from her. Her words suffused me with a tingling warmth.
“Yes, you,” she said, and her tone was an exasperated one. “You’re right,” her voice softly came this time, her hand tightening around mine. “They aren’t my family. I’ve been alone for a very long time – I just didn’t realize it.”
I tugged her into my side and put the arm that had been holding her hand around her, taking her under my wing, so to speak.
“You don’t have to be alone like that if you don’t want to. Not anymore,” I said, and she looked up at me, her face the most open I’d ever seen it. “I like having you around, Zaychik. I would love it if you thought about staying.”
“Staying?” she asked, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to her – and maybe it hadn’t. Shit, she was used to everyone not wanting her around, except for maybe her little brother. It was an oversight I committed to avoid making again. She had a lot of lost love and acceptance that needed making up for and I really aimed to be the man to make up for all of it.
“Yeah,” I said. “And not just to clean or act as some friggin’ sex doll. I fucked up in the beginning thinking that’s what you wanted. That you were just some kind of kinky, which I am all on board for, don’t get me wrong, but that was my mistake. I thought that was what you really wanted – not that it was desperation driving you. I was too distracted by my own shit. I feel like I screwed the pooch and I’m sorry.”
She shrugged her shoulders, lifting my arm that went across them slightly, but not shrugging me off. Without looking at me she said, “It’s not your fault. I would have said or done anything to get you to take me with you, to get away from there. I just latched on to whatever you wanted to believe just to make that happen.”
“You’re a clever girl, Zaychik. I’ll give you that,” I said and smiled to myself wondering if I’d let myself be played for a fool on that front as much as she had casually just said I’d been, or if deep down, I’d let my sixth sense about these kinds of things take the handlebars. Either way, I wasn’t upset. I’d known from the beginning something was odd, something was off about Abuela and the rest of that camp.
I came up in a crime family, myself. Lift a few rocks at the base of anybody’s family tree and you’d be surprised at the vermin that came out. I was no exception to that rule. Neither was Marisol, but it was about time the vermin in her family, bloated with their ichor, felt what it was like to starve a little.
The rest of the family that’d been starving, like Marisol, well, it was their time to feast at the tables that turned.
“What do you want in all of this, baby?” I asked her when we reached a certain point up the
big mound of grass off to one side of the old rusting coal gasification plant. That was how the park had gotten its name. The rusting hulk of machinery was fenced off and just interesting to look at, now. A lot of the locals used it as a backdrop for their steampunk pics for their cosplays. It was a cool old feature of Seattle’s rapidly diminishing history in the face of modern invention. I couldn’t tell you how many classical old buildings had fallen at the hands of whatever tech giant that’d demolished them for more office space.
It was a personal philosophy of mine that you needed to remember where the fuck you came from in order to avoid the mistakes of the past.
It was also a philosophy to ponder a different time as Marisol dipped out from under my arm to sit in the dry grass on the hillside. I joined her, planting my ass beside hers, the dry grass prickling me through the seat of my jeans left exposed by the added protection of my chaps.
She looked over at me and scooted closer and I smiled and pulled her in. She cuddled into my chest and I laid us back, staring up at the true-blue sky as she answered my question.
“I don’t know what I want. It’s like I am shattered into a million pieces and each part of me wants something different,” she said.
“Make a list,” I suggested.
“I want Mateo with me,” she said. “I don’t want Abuela to turn on him because I’m not there.”
“Okay, what else?”
“I don’t know what to do about Abuela,” she said, and she sounded so hopeless, so lost. “She is so confusing. She rules everyone with this surface kindness until you dare disagree with her and then suddenly, it’s like the snakes come out of her head and she turns into this big monster. Everyone is afraid of her and that’s why no one will cross her. Everyone is just too afraid to step a toe out of line…” She hugged herself to me closer and shuddered.
Sounded to me like she’d taken a real damn big risk coming with me. I mean, what if things had gone differently? What if she’d managed to keep her secret, or I hadn’t known or found out about things and I’d gone and handed her back in a week or two?
