Tempted: The Numb MC

by Olivia Stephens

  I point at his pipe. “Want that lit?” I ask.

  “Yes, please. Legs ache so bad these days . . .”

  “Yeah, old man, I get it.”

  I take a box of matches from my pocket, walk to the booth, strike one, and hold the flame to the pipe’s bowl. The tobacco flickers, the embers glow, and the old man smiles at me, his face shining orange.

  “Take a seat,” he says, his voice gravelly.

  I sigh and slump down next to him. Can’t ignore the old man. He’s been through a damned lot. Respect your elders and all that . . .

  “What’s on your mind, then?” he says.

  “You know I can’t say.”

  “Oh, no, I know, I know.” He waves a hand. “You’re the boss, Ethan. Can’t be easy. Lots of things to worry about.”

  “I get by alright.”

  “Until Todd.” Chester says it casually, but he raises his eyebrows at me knowingly. “Oh, I see more than folk round here think. What you have to remember is, years seem like ages when you’re young. But when you get to be my age, they don’t seem so long. Yesterday becomes last year. To me, Todd hasn’t been gone that long. And now here he is, more volatile, more unstable, more—”

  “Careful,” I say. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

  Chester nods, sucking on his pipe. “Oh, I won’t. We’re just talking, aren’t we?”

  You were willing to share how you felt about Todd with Emerald, who you’ve known for a night, but you won’t share it with the old man, who you’ve known since Dad died? I push the thought away, as I push so many thoughts away. Emerald is different. No idea why that should be the case, but it is.

  But maybe that’s a lie. Maybe I do know. Maybe it’s because she’s smart and sexy and funny. Maybe it’s because she’s not like the countless string of women who came before her. Maybe it’s because she was not only the bright spot tonight, but that she’s the bright spot in my history of women, too. A realization hits me which almost makes me gasp aloud. I want to see her again. I’ve just left her, and already I want to see her again. That isn’t me. That isn’t who I am.

  “My point is,” Chester continues, “that it must be hard for the boss when it’s his big brother who’s causing trouble. I don’t want to offend you, but that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? I heard about the incident at the rich man’s mansion. Socked him one, didn’t you?”

  “Just a scuffle,” I grunt. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me who told you that?”

  Chester smiles, his wrinkled skin deepening, wrinkles begetting wrinkles. “Of course not,” he says.

  I bring the heels of my hands to my eyes, rub at the tiredness. “This isn’t for you to figure out,” I say. “You’re lucky to still be alive, in our line of work. Ninety-five? Ninety-eight?”

  “Ninety-nine,” Chest says proudly. “One year from a hundred.”

  “So play checkers, watch TV, eat burgers. Do whatever it is old men do. Let me do the thinking.”

  “Hmm.” His shoulders sag, making me feel absurdly guilty. Dad always told me to be kind to old men and women. Maybe it’s stuck with me.

  “I’m sorry, Chester. I’m tired. Look, why’re you sitting here in the dark anyway? Is it your knee?”

  “Damned knee,” Chester huffs. “Came out here for my pipe. Left it out here. Then I sit down and now . . .” He throws his hands up. Orange embers from his pipe flutter into the air and settle on the table. “It’s the knee,” he murmurs.

  “Alright. Let me help you, then.”

  “I don’t need help!” the old man cries, his voice indignant.

  “I’m not going to wipe your ass. I’m just going to help you to your goddamn bed in the back.”

  Chester looks into the darkness, maybe making sure we’re alone, and then nods quickly. “You’re a good kid, Ethan. Always were.”

  “Thanks, old man, but I don’t know about that.”

  I stand up and heave Chester to his feet. He wobbles, but I take his hand and lay it on my arm. “You’ll be in bed before you know it, old man.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Chester sighs. “But I won’t sleep for two or three hours. It’s hard to sleep when you’ve got so much weighing on your mind, when you’ve done so many . . . so many things folk might say is bad, you know?”

  I shake my head. “No matter what I’ve done, I sleep like a goddamned baby.”

  I peel the sheets off the bed and lie on the bare mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

  My mind is like a shootout, making it hard to think. On one side of the shootout, Todd and his recklessness fires and fires; on the other side, Emerald and her perfect body and her sweet face and her personality fire back.

  Todd is a big problem. A massive problem. There may come a point where I’ll have to take serious action. I don’t want to, but being the leader of a club like The Numb doesn’t allow for being weak. It definitely does not allow for letting your brother run wild over operations. Men don’t get paid, they get mad. Men get mad, they leave. Men leave, the club falls apart. A club is nothing without its members. The job at the house wasn’t so bad, but what about the next job or the one after that? What about when Todd decides to do something serious?

  I roll over, my bicep cradling my head, and stare at the night-black wall. My cellphone rests on the edge of the mattress, plugged into the socket in the wall.

  I try to stay focused on Todd, try to really reason this thing out, but the other side of the shootout is firing faster, harder. Emerald’s face comes to mind every time I try and come up with a serious solution. Emerald, her sweet blushing face staring at me, her body writhing atop mine. I can still taste her. I can still feel her. I want to do more to her. I want to take her to places she has never been. I want to taste all of her. She’s too damn sexy, too hot, too smart, too different for me to easily banish her from my thoughts.

  Focus, I think.

  Todd’s always been an impulsive guy, that’s for sure. He’s the type of guy who’ll punch out a car’s window for the sake of it, for no reason at all other than he thinks it’s funny. Once, when we were leaving a club, he picked up a bottle and hurled it at the wall, laughed, and pulled out his piece when the bouncer shouted. But his impulsive behavior used to be reserved for non-work time. He never let it carry over. I respected him for that.

  And I’m the same, too. I gave Emerald that money without even stopping to think about it. But on a job? When the club is at stake? That’s a whole other issue.

  But even as my thoughts follow this line, they are blindsided by Emerald. I find myself wishing that she was here, that her body was beside mine, that I could turn over and press my crotch into her ass, that I could take her again.

  I’ve never thought about settling down, never thought about a life like that with a woman, but now . . . No, it’s not gone that far.

  I groan and pick up the cellphone. I need sleep, and I won’t be able to sleep until I do it.

  I type in her number—one of the skills you need when you’re the boss is to remember addresses, phone numbers, quantities—and then go to the text message screen.

  I’m not a poet. I know women’s bodies, not their minds. So I just keep it simple: When am I seeing you again?

  Then I turn over and close my eyes. I want to stay awake for a few minutes just in case she replies, but I’m exhausted. It’s been a long, long day.

  Sleep drapes over me like a blanket.

  The amusement park smells of candy and barbeque smoke as I walk through it. I know it must be a dream because when I turn around from the park to the entrance, there’s no dusty mud land, no long thin road. The ground around the amusement park drops away into an abyss. The park is the only place left in the world.

  I walk past a man hawking hotdogs, the same hotdogs I once begged Dad to buy me. They are the meatiest hotdogs I’ve ever tasted. I approach him, a smile on my face. The kind of smile I used to have on my face, before Dad’s death and before the club, before I grew up.

  “O
ne, please,” I say.

  I look down into his tray, and see that he only has one. One hotdog, already covered in onions and mustard and ketchup, just how I like it. He grins at me. “This is your place, mister,” he says. “You get everything you want here.”

  A woman wearing a billowing pink dress, frills upon frills, skips out from the cotton candy stall. She dances toward me, and then produces a piece of paper from inside one of the dress’s folds. Munching on the hotdog, I take it.

  “Don’t miss it!” she warns. Her face is made up like a fifties housewife. She wouldn’t look out of place in black and white advertisement for a toaster. “It’s the only thing worth seeing in this place, trust me!”

  I look down at the ticket. It’s a small business card, printed with the following words: Head to the carousel and lay eyes upon your heart’s desire!

  All around me, families laugh and jostle and play at the stalls. One young girl sits on her father’s shoulders, a beanbag in her hand, aiming at the skittles. “Don’t throw hard,” I say as I pass them. “Be gentle and you’ll get it.”

  She underarm throws it, just like Dad showed me, and in one magic throw she knocks down all the skittles behind the stall.

  I’m grinning like a fool now, walking through my past. I have demolished the hotdog and somehow—in the way of a dream—a massive cloud of cotton candy has appeared in my hand. I set to work on it as I walk, the taste of the syrupy fluff making me seven years old again.

  Lay eyes upon your heart’s desire!

  “That’s good,” I mutter, weaving through the crowd, “because I’ve never really known what that is.”

  I step aside to let two clowns pass, each of them juggling multicolored plastic balls, their painted faces set into rictus smiles.

  And then I’m at the carousel. I know it should’ve taken me longer to get here, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I look around me. Suddenly, the park is clear. The machines are still on—they sing and rattle and jangle—and behind me, somewhere, voices are raised. But I am the only person standing at the carousel.

  I watch it for a few moments. It’s unmoving. The horses and hogs and ponies sit lifeless. I start wondering if I should maybe find that fifties woman, ask her what the deal is, when the music I’ve heard a thousand times in my dreams plays from the base of the carousel, where the speakers are.

  It starts to turn, the animals bobbing up and down, and then I see her.

  She wears a polka-dotted dress, her legs and feet bare.

  Emerald giggles as she rides the horse. A wind blows and her polka-dotted dress billows around her perfect legs.

  I watch her in awe. I have never been so truly awed by a person.

  “Heart’s desire!” I call to her, but she doesn’t hear me.

  She stretches her legs, points her toes so that the muscles in her thighs and calves become defined.

  I want to kiss her and fuck her all at once.

  Chapter Seven

  Emerald

  When I wake up, I have a huge smile on my face. The only other time I can remember having a smile this wide on my face is when I was a kid on Christmas morning, smiling because I knew it was going to be a magical day. Now I'm smiling because last night was a magical night. The memories of the night come back to me vividly, scenes replaying in my mind. Most of all, I remember how intense his face was when he was inside of me, how in charge.

  I roll out of bed, stand up, and stretch. I’m exhausted, but I think a little exhaustion is worth last night. In the light of morning—the sun slanting through my bedroom's blinds, a steady yellow glow—the events of last night hardly seem real. Did I really have sex with Ethan Fox? But of course I did; I'm still aching from him.

  I'm about to casually stroll into the living room, and then into the bathroom for a shower, when my gaze rests on my bedside clock. It’s Saturday morning and my shift starts at ten o'clock. It's half past eleven. Half past eleven!

  I go into Super Quick Get Ready mode, the mode every late person goes into, haphazardly throwing on panties and tights and pulling up my skirt. As I button up a clean shirt, I misjudge it and end up buttoning two slots out of line, turning me from a waitress to a tardy schoolkid. I yank the buttons loose and redo it correctly. Then I force my feet into my heels and run into the living room.

  Despite my anxiety, I have to smile. Amy is curled up in the armchair, the blanket pulled up around her neck, snoring softly. Amy has light brown hair, almost red, and her cheeks are specked with freckles. She’s thinner than me, with a boyish build. Her hair is long and tangled and messy, and I know that if she were to open her mouth now—perhaps in a sleepy grin—yellow, drug-abused teeth would flash between her lips. Her hands are bony, bumpy. But right now she does not look like a recovering addict, as many Jacksons before her have been recovering addicts.

  Right now she just looks like my little sister.

  Then I have to haul it.

  I pace to the door, pull it open, and all but sprint into the hallway.

  When I get to the restaurant, I am greeted by the sight of Violet balancing about seven thousand trays on in her hands, on her arms, her face twisted into a terrified grimace. The restaurant is busy as it always is on Saturday mornings. Families sit around tables, the fathers looking at Violet impatiently, the tables piled high with dirty plates. The children scream and bang the table and act as unruly children do. Lone men sit at the bar, cradling coffee.

  “I'm so sorry, Violet,” I say, rushing to her and taking two of her trays. “Where to?”

  “Table four,” Violet replies thankfully. “Sure I would've dropped them.”

  I take the trays to table four, mutter all the pleasantries, and then go to the back room to take off my jacket and store my handbag. When I turn to leave, get out onto the floor and help Violet with the workload, the door suddenly swings open to reveal Geno, his face bright red, his belly jiggling with rage.

  “Emerald!” he barks. His head looks particularly shiny today. “What the fuck?”

  “I'm sorry, Mr.—”

  He holds up a sausage-fingered hand. “No,” he says. “My office.”

  He marches away, fat shoulders shifting from side to side. I bet he thinks he's the coolest man who's ever lived. I bet he thinks he's a real bad ass. I wish Ethan was here. I imagine Ethan swaggering into the restaurant and putting this fat perverted man in his place. But he won't, of course. He's probably busy. I can't even call him. I left my cell at the apartment.

  I have the feeling of a reprimanded high school student as I slink past the tables—the customers staring in shock as I pass them—and into the kitchen. I get a brief taste of the kitchen, Jeff the cook frying rashers of bacon, before I reach Geno's office.

  His office is small, but his desk is huge. It fills up the room, pressing into the walls, a giant statement: I am the boss. It is the desk of an incredibly insecure man, I think. His chair is as subtle as a throne, a high-backed, red-cushioned monstrosity.

  He taps his fingers on the table, his nails making clk-clk-clk sounds.

  With his free hand, he gestures at the seat opposite, a tiny stool, meant to make the employees feel inferior.

  With a sigh, I sink down onto the stool. Despite the $2,000, I need this gig. I need the money. I have a sister to think about, and it's not like my parents are around to help.

  He leans forward, clasping his hands together. I would know he's sweating even if his combed-over scalp wasn't shining. When he puts his hands together, the sweat makes a squelch noise.

  His face is beetroot-red, his jowls quivering, a man ready to burst.

  I brace myself for a shout fest.

  “What the hell do you think you're doing!” he screams. “What sort of place do you think this is! What sort of man do you think I am! What the hell is wrong with you!” He stops, draws in a breath, drawing in strength for another round. I wait patiently. You can't talk to Geno when he's shouting. He's a child who will keep shouting until his voice is heard.

 
“I am a businessman! A businessman! This is not a charity! I do not employ you so that you can stroll in whenever you like!” He slaps his hand down. A mug which reads 'World's Best Boss' sits on the desk, a mug I'm convinced he bought himself. When he slaps his hand down, it leaps up and falls down on its side.

  Then he pauses, panting.

  I jump into the fray.

  “I overslept,” I say. “I understand that oversleeping is not a valid excuse, in general. In general. But you have to understand that I was up very late closing up with Billy. Billy who is, by the way, sixteen years old and was left here in the dead of night alone.”

  He shakes his head as though I've just spoken Latin, a phrase meaningless and alien to him. “That has nothing to do with anything,” he states flatly.