The Desert Standoff

by Nadia Siddiqui

  “You’re not a private investigator either ... that’s far too clunky. FBI agents always have this sort of smell to them.” Larange motioned as if he was wafting something toward his face and then found it repugnant. “So then, none of the main players. Perhaps you’re a heartbroken boyfriend? A slighted ex-client?” Larange continued, tapping his chin in thought as if this were a puzzle that he couldn’t wait to unravel. “Perhaps not. I would know your face. I would remember a face such as that one.” Larange smiled and it was easy to see why he is so efficient at what he does. He’s devastatingly handsome in a classic way. The sort of disarming smile that makes him instantly familiar. The sort of comfortable, safe air that he gives off as if he should be worthy of your trust simply by existing. Such rare qualities found in a human man. Even less rare in sane men. Yet, nobody seems to bother remembering that. “Pity to have to dispose of you. I’ve had so much fun observing you over the past few weeks. I wonder if you’ve had as much fun attempting to chase me down. I could leave and we could pretend that your little setup wasn’t such a total and complete failure.”

  Arrogant because he thought that he was winning.

  Nathan’s hand dipped into his back pocket and he slipped the small blade from his wallet and hurled it at the man with a lethal accuracy. Perhaps if the blade were bigger in any way, it might have done damage. Instead, Larange looked down at the handle now protruding from his abdomen with fury. Whether it was because Nathan had effectively ruined his clothes or some other reason he doesn’t feel like asking.

  “You talk too much,” Nathan taunted.

  Larange came at him, charging like an enraged bull and didn’t so much as bother attempting to remove or stabilize the blade sticking from him. Nathan dropped low and aimed a punch straight for the handle of that knife in his abdomen, and Larange hissed in pain. He tripped over the top of Nathan’s body and toppled toward the bed, further embedding that small knife further than it should have ever gone. Something that would take a surgeon to remove from him.

  Almost as if Larange was incapable of feeling pain, he rose from the bed again. No doubt he’s used to having to fight dirty. His prey are not willing, off-guard creatures. Certainly they might be weakened by some substance or another but any creature in pain wild or domestic will lash out for their life. In his experience, nothing gives up their life easily unless taken fully by surprise and even then that’s not a guarantee. Larange is used to women using tooth and nail and anything around them that they can find to fight for their freedom and he is also used to fighting with them until he wins. A little pain is unlikely to stop him for very long.

  He sprang off the bed like nothing happened and the two men, both experienced in hand-to-hand combat, attempted to kill one another. It seemed like a mostly evenly matched fight, right up until Larange threw civility out of the window and pulled the wall sconce lamp right from the wall and used it to bash Nathan over the head.

  Nathan can remember waking up and remembering the lack of memory of the night before. Apparently it was just waiting for the right moment to allow itself to be triggered. Now Nathan can remember his face where he couldn’t before. While it would be very irregular for somebody like Spade to simply be admitted into a waiting room such as this one, Nathan might get lucky. He still doesn’t know exactly why Spade left him alive, but he knows that one of them will not be walking out of their next encounter. He cannot allow Spade to live.

  Nathan pushes another chip into the pile from the small collection of colored bits of plastic that sit in front of him lazily. For all intents and purposes he looks thoroughly bored and unfazed by the things happening at the table in front of him. He has already memorized the faces of the other men around him.

  A door opens to the side of them and a large man in a well-fitted suit enters. There are only two doors to this room, and they both appear to be one way. The one they came in through and the one they are going to exit through. Nathan has already had to bluff his way into this high-paying “suite”. Sure enough, one man collects his chips and heads to the door where the guard is waiting. The man leaving certainly doesn’t want to stay in this dingy room for another second longer than he has to. Nathan doesn't bother watching him leave, neither does he look up whenever a new person comes in. That wouldn’t suit the image that he’s going for. He just needs to take the chips of two more players and then he will move on. He’s almost to the inner level where the live bidding is, he can’t stop before he gets there.

  5

  Suzi - High School, Junior Year

  “E w, I would hate to be her.” Bethany isn’t the sort of girl Suzi considers to be her friend. She doesn’t think that Bethany really has too many friends. Perhaps that’s why Suzi keeps hanging out with her. She doesn’t want to say that it's a pity so much as she doesn’t feel that anybody should be left alone if somebody can help it. Suzi doesn’t agree or disagree with the girl leaning against the lockers in front of her, her designer bag clutched to her chest with her pile of textbooks. When Suzi first met her, she thought that perhaps nobody else could relate to Bethany simply because she is so wealthy, but having gotten to know her better over the last handful of months Suzi now knows the truth.

  “Don’t be mean, B, she’s probably not too thrilled to be here anyway.”

  In truth, the whole school has been talking about her as of late. That’s probably the way it goes in any school whenever you transfer this late in the high school system. It must be hell to up and leave everything you’ve ever known so close to senior year. Suzi doesn’t consider herself to be overly close with too many of the other kids in her school but she doesn’t dislike them. She just finds most of the things they do to be childish. Even with that being true, she couldn’t imagine doing her senior year anywhere else. She wouldn’t want to go to prom without the same people she has spent her whole life around. Suzi has known almost all of these people since she was a child. Some even longer. Half of their parents were friends with her parents and everybody knows everybody and that’s just how she likes it. She wants to keep it that way. This new girl is fully out of her element. She’s not told anybody where she’s from and according to the rumor mill she really hasn’t said much of anything to anybody really. She seems like she just wants to keep to herself.

  “I don’t even mean like not thrilled, I mean look at her clothes. She just looks like she smells ... or like her mother has three dozen cats and never washes anything. Seriously, it’s disgusting. Does she even own soap?”

  Suzi shoots Bethany a look so angry that it could curdle blood and she reaches out and pinches her right on her elbow. Bethany shrieks and drops all of the things in her arms. “Ow! What was that for! You pick this up right now!” Bethany stomps her foot as if that’s going to make Suzi drop to her knees and pick up her fallen things or she will somehow decide to apologize when it’s very clear by Suzi’s expression that she’s going to be doing nothing of the sort.

  “No. You deserved that. What a horrible thing to say.”

  Suzi steps over the pile on the ground and jogs over to the new girl with the brightest smile she can muster, even if it looks like the girl might very well hiss at her for her efforts. “Hi!” Suzi says, and the new girl says nothing. Her long dark hair is lackluster and her high cheekbones seem almost sunken in, like she hasn’t been fed properly. Not wanting to appear as if she’s feeling bad for the new girl Suzi doesn’t remark on it. “I’m Suzi! I know you don’t know me and this place doesn’t exactly have a welcome wagon, but I wanted to introduce myself!”

  The girl nods, her hair falling like a curtain wanting to block her from Suzi’s view.

  “Anyway, I think you’re in my calculus class; if you need to catch up on some notes I have tons! They are all color coded... I think that might be why I can never remember anything from those classes. Something about making the notes look pretty as well as that dull voice droning on in the background, it’s just not conducive for my learning style.” Suzi pushes her own hair back
over her ear. The girl doesn't really seem like she’s in the mood to talk to her. “Okay, well, I won’t push you. Just know that if you ever need somewhere to eat lunch I’m totally always free. And I don’t mean that in the ‘Oh, hey, new kid, come sit with me so I can poke you’ way but in like the ‘Hey, I wanna know you and olive branches because I’m not a total dick’ way... Okay?” Suzi skips in front of the new girl and stands still.

  After a long moment, she nods, and Suzi feels a little more successful. “Okay great!” Suzi steps aside so that the girl can be on her way.

  *****

  The very last place that Suzi is expecting to see a new face is the drama club. Mostly because … well, they sort of suck. Suzi loves it more than any of her other clubs or activities, but she knows that they aren’t a very talented group. She figures that it doesn’t really matter since none of them have any plans to make the club into a lifelong obsession or anything and so the fact that they are just having fun and nearly everything turns into an improv session anyway is just fine. At least no two performances will ever be the same, that’s got to be saying something at the very least.

  So when the new girl shows up one day, Suzi can’t help the fact that she gets in her face just a little bit too much. Her overly enthusiastic self probably isn’t properly appreciated by the seemingly sullen girl. She doesn’t say much. She doesn’t really participate, but she seems to like watching. Perhaps she just doesn’t have anywhere else to be or just doesn’t want to go home. However, one day, she offers to sew the costumes for their collection of skits that they are going to be performing to raise money for some function or another. Not likely that they will make much, but Suzi wants to do it for the experience and she knows for a fact that her parents will throw money at almost anything she does. They weren’t crazy about her fire hula hooping phase, but they still supported her then and they will do now.

  The night of their cold opening and costume rehearsal, Suzi is being sewn into her gown and conversing with some of her other castmates. After weeks of attempting to make friends with the girl who has finally introduced herself as Natalie, she is resigned to the notion that perhaps she just doesn’t like to talk or that this might be all that she’s emotionally available to say on any given day. Suzi never presses, but she does go out of her way to make sure that whatever is happening, Natalie is included. Even if she doesn’t want to speak. Suzi firmly believes that nobody should judge another person because you never know what might be happening in their private, personal life regardless of what they might look or act like on the outside.

  Tonight, Suzi is speaking a little too loudly, living on her sugar rush a little too much, when Natalie finally grabs her by the thigh and anchors her into one place. “If you don’t stop moving I will stab you with this needle!”

  The whole room falls silent. The uncomfortable glances from cast member to cast member create a very thick, tension-filled air in the room. With all of the rumors that are surrounding the girl, it’s unlikely to be a surprise to anybody if that’s something she might actually want to do. Kids are cruel and Natalie is different, which to most teenagers means that there is something wrong with her, clearly.

  Not Suzi. After a stunned moment, Suzi dissolves into laughter like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life. “Stab me! With that tiny little needle?” Suzi clutches her side, so overjoyed that Natalie has finally said something to her that expresses emotion that she can’t handle it. “Oh, I’m so scared!” Suzi gasps. “Not the hemming needle! Oh, that’s rich. We should totally put that into the show!”

  The tension in the room breaks, and everybody seems to be able to catch their breath.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll hold still.” Suzi finally submits and Natalie is allowed to finish correcting the fit to the gown.

  After the show, Suzi waits for Natalie just outside of the stage door and jumps at her loudly. “Stop moving! Stop or I stab you!” She growls in a very comically inclined monster voice. She pokes at the air as if making a very bad imitation of Natalie and her anger. It takes a long moment, but Natalie finally smiles. Just a little. Suzi pesters her a lot more often after that, frequently poking at her with her neelde-like fingers and making stabbing jokes until Natalie finally starts to trust her, just a little bit.

  6

  Natalie & Suzi - Summer after Graduation

  “I t’s going to be amazing!”

  “It’s hot.”

  “So what? That just means we need to have really cute crop tops packed in there. Listen, I know you don’t really like your stomach or whatever, but it just doesn’t matter, okay? We will wear them and we will look cute and Arizona is going to be fun!”

  “I completely disagree. A hundred percent I do not want to go to Arizona!”

  “Okay. But think of all the hiking and the cute boys in horrible shorts and the red dust that is going to get everywhere!” Suzi is holding a shiny gold thumbtack in her hand, hovering just slightly over a map of the United States that is taped to the wall above her headboard. It's practically framed by the pastel yellow drapes of her four poster princess bed. It is just one in a collection of many gold pins that serve to mark all of the different stops on the map of places they have decided they are going after they graduate college.

  “Right. But I already know that I don’t want to live there so there’s just no point in even putting it on dream road trip map now is there?”

  “Yes, of course there is a point! I was to see cute boys!” Suzi protests and then settles down when she sees the disdain for the state on Natalie’s features. “Okay, fine. Deny me. Just know that I will make this face for the next three states around it.” Suzi screws up her features into a twisted, almost grotesque mask. In as much as she is ever going to be capable of being grotesque, which is only very little. Natalie scoffs and picks up one of the lemon-shaped accent pillows and smacks her friend in the back of the knees, crippling her and stopping her from making that really terrible face for a moment longer.

  “You make that ugly face again and it will get stuck like that!”

  “It’s not ugly! Nothing I do is ugly!” Suzi laughs and then makes the face again, but this time it comes as a procession of a series of theatre mask faces, each one more insane than the last. Natalie hits her with the lemon pillow again.

  “Well then, you’re getting really damned close, aren’t you?”

  “Take it back!” Suzi howls in a mock war cry and bounces on her large bed like it’s a trampoline and she only desires to crush her best friend Natalie. The good mood is infectious. Natalie has finally put in the two weeks’ notice at her job. They have both put in their acceptance letters to their college and in two weeks’ time, they will be taking off to see their new dorm for the first time. Nobody has told Natalie’s mother any of this. For the last six months leading up to graduation, they have been collecting a stash of goodies inside of Natalie’s room. In fact, it’s so crowded with all of the items that the two girls are planning to take to college that it looks more like a disaster zone than a real bedroom. Suzi’s parents have offered to pay for whatever the two girls cannot afford, but Natalie wants to buy most of it herself. She’s been working for the last year to put away as much money as possible to go toward her tuition and housing. Suzi’s parents have already been kind enough to forge her mother's name on her student loan documents as if Natalie was one of their own children. Soon, Natalie will never have to live with that wretched hypochondriac ever again. No more will she wake up to bleach being poured on her sleeping body for being “unclean”. No more will she have to pretend to eat the burned or poisoned food that her mother has concocted. No more will she have to sleep on the floor in front of her door so that her mother doesn’t try to sneak into her room at night with a knife. She is free. She has finished high school and she is on her path to freedom. To a normal life.

  Suzi and Natalie have it all planned out. They have spent the entirety of their friendship planning this out and all of the places th
at they want to go. Suzi has a car and after college they are going to go on a cross country road trip until they find the perfect place to live. It doesn’t even matter which state, or what town, they just want to go and drive until they find a place that speaks to their souls. They are going to go and never look back. They are going to find a new home, to start a new life, and nobody but Suzi’s parents are going to know a single thing about it. Those two marvelous humans have been kinder to Natalie than just about anybody else that she could ever think of. She doesn’t know what she would have done with her life if she hadn’t become such good friends with Suzi. She owes everything to her and her family.

  Presently, the girls are attempting to figure out which of the locations they want to visit first. The way that they see it, each summer of college they have to come home for a short period of time to spend with Suzi’s parents. They have already said that if they could officially adopt a legal adult named Natalie then they would, but that she is always welcome in their home. Natalie knows they mean it. Then their goal is to knock out as many of the states and towns and locations as they can for the last month and a half or so of summer before they need to head back to campus for the following year. They know it’s next to impossible to see everything they want to, but they also figure that as long as they can get a feel for the states and how hot their summers are, they will be in for a good start if nothing else.

  The laughter finally dies down and the two are lying on their backs, half hanging off of the bed. “There really are a ton of boxes. I told you my mom was going to buy the mattresses, you didn’t have to get your own. Really, it’s no trouble.”

  “I know it’s not, but it’s mine you know? I know it’s sort of a weird thing to say and all, but I just feel like the bed needs to be mine ... and nobody else has touched it. Like I earned it,” Natalie admits softly, hoping her friend doesn’t find it silly.