by Tia Lewis
I had never talked like this, and I had never had anyone listen as carefully as Tess listened to me now. She rested her chin on her fist, her elbow on her knees, and watched me like I was the only man in the world. I expected it to make me uncomfortable, but somehow it made the talking easier—or, rather, less painful.
“So, one night Kevin and I wake up in the middle of the evening to our father banging on the door. The first thing that I did was jump out of bed and run to the door and stand there, so that if he started hitting, he would hit me and not Kevin. Kevin was a tiny kid. He was too small for our father’s fists. So, I stood there, the door opened, and he came rushing in with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and his car keys in another. My first thought was that he’s gonna smash that whiskey bottle over my head and key my face.”
Tess gasped, opening her fist and covering her mouth.
I shook my head wearily. “Don’t be so shocked, Tess. I would have survived.”
“It must’ve been horrifying!” she cried.
“You got used to it after a while,” I replied. “Kids can get used to anything. As long as they don’t know anything else.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Tess muttered. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“Shit happens,” I shrugged, not knowing how to respond to that. It wasn’t Tess fault. “But my father didn’t hit me with the bottle.”. He just looked down at me and laughed. He was plump and muscular all the way through. He wore a white T-shirt that I’d never seen him change. It was stained with food and whiskey, and he reeked of smoke and booze, like a pub. He wore jeans that he never took off, and his feet were bare. And his toenails... Jesus-fucking-Christ. His toenails were gnarled and reeked. There must’ve been rats living under them. So, he looks down, and he says, ‘It’s time you boys learn how to be a man. Come with me.’”
“What happened?”
“What else were we supposed to do? We listened. We followed our father like little blind mice. I took Kevin’s hand, and told him, ‘It’ll be alright, it’ll be alright.’ I had no clue if that was true. For all I knew, it wasn’t gonna be alright. But I had to tell him that, didn’t I?”
Tess nodded. “Of course. You were just comforting your little brother. You did the right thing.”
“Not the right thing, Tess. Just the least wrong thing.”
I realized that my hands were shaking, as though the memories were reverberating inside of me, pressing out of my body. I clenched my fists, and my forearms became rock-solid, venous.
I continued. “He leads us to his car, an old four-seat pickup truck. I hated that car. If he reeked, it was nothing compared to the stench of that car. It was like all of the cigarettes in the world had been left to fucking rot in there. He started the car, and he drove, and I’m in the back with my arm around Kevin saying, ‘It’ll be alright, it’ll be alright.’
“He drives us, Tess, and you won’t believe this… he stops right outside the motel we stayed in before. It wasn’t called the Sleepy Inn, then, though. I can’t remember the name. But he stops us there, and he goes to the back of the pickup, lifts up a tarp, and pulls out the biggest goddamn shotgun I ever saw. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Kevin starts crying, so I put my hand on his face to make him quiet because I knew that our father would give him hell if he heard him crying.
“He walks around to the front of the truck and tells us to get out. We get out because we’re kids, and he’s our dad and to be honest, Tess, we’re fucking terrified. I never really knew fear before that night. Then he starts walking, and I know that we could’ve run away then but to our minds being lost in the city would’ve been worse than trailing after him. So we all ran and ran into the alley that we went through the other night until we came to Gunner’s street.
“My father stops us across the street and points to Gunner’s house. ‘Do you see that house?’ he says, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog. ‘The man who lives there owes me five thousand dollars. He thinks because I’m not getting as many jobs from the Bianchi family that he can make a fool of me. He must not know who the fuck I am. I’ll show him who the fool really is. Come with me. And wipe your goddamn tears, Kevin.’
“He walked across the street—it was dark, darker than any night I remember but maybe that’s my memory playing tricks on me—and up the steps to Gunner’s house. He knocks with the grip of the shotgun and then turns and winks at me. ‘Watch this, son,’ he said. And for a second, Tess, he sounded fatherly, like he actually cared about me. So I stopped being scared, and I started being excited. My dad was finally paying attention to me, never mind that he was mad, never mind that he was evil, never mind that he’d beaten me bloody more times than I could count. He was finally paying attention to me.”
I clenched my fists so hard that my knuckles cracked, making a popping noise, and my legs started to tremble. I pressed my fists down on my knees, trying to stop them from shaking, but they only trembled more and more.
“Go on,” Tess whispered.
“I was so happy,” I growled, remembering how pleased and ecstatic that I was at the time. Maybe my father will be a nice man now, and he won’t beat my brother or me anymore, I had thought, like a stupid idiot. Maybe he’ll be a father now. “I smiled up at him, and then the door opened, and he leveled the shotgun in Gunner’s dad’s face. ‘Thought you could cheat me!’ my father roars. Gunner’s dad starts blabbing, pissing himself, praying and begging. Then my father lets out a crazed laugh, and pulls the trigger.”
Tess gasped.
“I never dreamed that a weapon could cause so much damage to a human being.” I shook my head. “Gunner’s dad’s head exploded like a watermelon. That’s what I kept thinking of afterward, a watermelon blowing up. There was nothing else in my head that I could compare it to. One second he was a man, the next, he was a mound of blood and thick chunks of goo. The smell, too… that’s one thing the movies will never get right. That was the first time I smelt the scent of death. It hits you like poison, goes down your throat and sits in your stomach.
“Of course, Kevin started crying, so I wrapped my arms around him and held him to my chest and just kept repeating that fucking lie. ‘It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.’
“How casual the whole thing was shocked me, too. After it was done, my father just trotted down the steps and into the alley. We followed along as he hopped into the truck and drove home. He was whistling as he drove, and he looked in the rear view mirror. He didn’t wink, smile or anything. He just had that same fucking hateful look on his face, and I knew that tomorrow he would beat the shit out of me.”
Tess moved her feet from under the chair and stood up. She slowly walked across the room and stood over me, looking down at me with tears in her eyes. “You were just a little kid,” she said.
“Don’t feel sorry for me. You weren’t much older when your mother died.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “But I had some good times with my mother, at least. And I didn’t actually see my father killing her, not like that, not so violently. How did your father get away with it? I’m sure that the neighbors heard the gunshot.”
“Gunner’s dad owed him money. If you owe a man money and you don’t pay, you’re not getting any help. You might be wondering why Gunner didn’t try and kill me, but that’s enough for today. The past can be let alone for tonight.”
Tess nodded thoughtfully, and I looked up into her caring, understanding face, and for a moment I thought I might shed a tear. I closed my eyes tight, forced the emotion down, and when I opened my eyes again, they were dry.
“You’re not a slut, Tess,” I said, forcing myself to say the words because she had to know how I felt.
“Is that an apology?” She bit her lip, and her eyes became watery again.
“It’s my version of one,” I shrugged. “I don’t think that I can do any better.”
A smile spread across her face, a smile that was both sad and happy. “Then I accept it even though you’
re still an arse/hole.”
She fell to her knees and looked up into my eyes. “You know,” she said, “we haven’t truly kissed, yet.”
I swallowed, suddenly nervous. I fucked women, licked them, used my fingers and my teeth, but I never actually kissed them. With Tess, I remembered kissing her in the heat of passion, but it just happened; it wasn’t like the situation that we were in now. This kiss would be slow, passionate, thoughtful and real. A kiss that had true meaning. I swallowed again, feeling my Adam’s apple shift, and stared into her eyes. I could’ve spent a whole day connecting the brown dots in her blue irises.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. said. “Am I not kissable enough for you right now?” She smiled wider, flashing her white teeth, and I thought she had never looked so beautiful. Not fuckable, drillable or hot-as-hell, but damned beautiful.
“Of course you are, Tess,” I said. “I wouldn’t have saved a gorgeous, spunky English woman from the Russian mob who wasn’t kissable, would I? It’s just…”
Before I could reach the end of his sentence, Tess threw herself into my arms.
Without thinking, I opened my arms and caught her, wrapping my arms around her, holding her close. She planted her lips on mine. I fought for a second, moving my lips awkwardly, but then I felt her lips part, and I did the same. Her tongue snaked into my mouth, and we opened and closed our mouths as our tongues danced, nerves sizzling from my tongue down to the back of my throat, and then down my neck. I held her closer than I had ever thought that I would hold a woman; her tits pressed through her red hoodie into my shirt and her body exuded heat into mine.
“Hmm,” she breathed, as we kissed. This was a real kiss.
After a few minutes, the kiss broke off, and I found myself holding my woman like I was a real man, a real human being, and not a hitman.
ADD SEX SCENE
But I was a hitman, and I couldn’t forget it.
“Tomorrow there will be blood,” I said.
Tess and I laid side by side in the motel bed. I had my arm around her, but I wasn’t hugging her exactly. My hand rested on her shoulder, and my bicep was pressed against the back of her head like a muscular pillow. The night had turned pitch-dark now, and we lay motionless listening to each other breathing.
“Tomorrow there will be blood,” Tess repeated quietly.
Outside, the traffic had stopped. The only sounds were the wild dogs which barked and yelled intermittently, the occasional raised voice from the adjacent rooms and the soft whistle of the wind against the glass. Tess’ head was turned away, into my arm, and when she spoke her breath was warm against my skin.
“Doesn’t it scare you? Not knowing what happens next? Or that you can die at any minute? Hell, being next to someone who slaughters the bastards that come after you?” I asked. “In my experience, women are damned terrified of killing and dying.”
“Of course, it scares me,” she said. “But if killing means we get to go to England, if killing means that I get to keep you, then go ahead—kill.” Her voice hardened as she went on, as though her mother’s death, her father’s wickedness, and Zharkov’s perversion had turned into a solid casing that guarded her heart. “I’m not going to shrink away from it and lecture you about how murder is wrong, about the sanctity of life, or any of that rubbish. Maybe the girl I was before my mother died would have done that, or the woman I was before Dmitri tricked me and Zharkov kidnapped me and—and everything else he did. But now? To be honest, it doesn’t bother me as much as it should. I know I should wail, cry and try and convince you to stop killing. But I also know that violence is the only way to deal with these people. I know that now. I learned it the hard way. You can’t reason with them any more than you could reason with an injured animal.”
“Good,” I responded. I didn’t like the idea of her being scared all of the time.
“But…” She paused, and it was like I could hear her thoughts running around inside of her head. “But I am scared about one thing.”
“What’s that, sweet thing?”
“I’m scared that you’ll die, Liam. You’re going in there on your own. On your own. What are the odds that you’ll make it out alive?”
“I think that the odds are in my favor,” I replied. “For one thing, Boss or the Russians don’t know that I’m coming. For another, I’m faster, stronger, and more determined than they are. But you’re right. I could die.” I shrugged. “But I could die every time that I go on a job. You can’t dwell on what could happen, only on what you can do, right now, to make something happen. So many people waste their lives in thinking about what might happen tomorrow that they don’t even stop to think about what's going on right now. I see it all the time, especially in the men I take out. Their mind is not entirely there. Sometimes it’s drugs or alcohol, but sometimes it’s just who they are. They’ve never stopped, actually focused, or actually done something. They just drift around and let things happen to them.”
“These are the men who won’t send food back even if it’s not what they ordered,” Tess said after a pause.
“That wasn’t exactly where I was going with it, Tess, but alright.”
“Hear me out. There are two types of men in this world: men who’ll take send back a chicken wrap if they ordered a cheeseburger; and men who will eat the chicken wrap because they dread the idea of disturbing the status quo. The men who eat the chicken wrap are like the men you described. They’re not actually living, acting, making decisions, so what do they care if they eat a chicken wrap instead of what they really wanted. They don’t think they’re important enough to demand a cheeseburger? But the man who’ll march up there and say to the waitress that they ordered a cheeseburger, who won’t even think twice about it, that’s a man who acts instead of drifts.”
I couldn’t help but laugh even though it was a bit too abstract for me. Her innocence was a turn on. “I guess,” I said.
We were silent for some time, I was looking up at our shadows and Tess snuggled into my arm. Her breathing became soft, and I thought that she was asleep, but then she said: “The men you were hired to kill… were they bad men?”
“Some of them,” I said slowly. “Some of them were killers, rapists, and pedophiles. Others were men who had taken a loan from the wrong man and couldn’t pay it back. There were more who thought that they could cheat Boss and the Bianchi family, and he’d send me to fix the problem. I don’t know though because I never really thought about it. I just focused on killing them without stopping to think about who they are or might be or whatever. I just got it done. It’s been like that since…”
“Since you were a child,” Tess interrupted.
“Yeah.”
“The very few friends—associates rather—at Oxford University would think I was insane for being in bed with you. But they’ve never had to deal with anything really awful. They’ve had their problems, sure—everyone does—and to them, they seem like the worst problems in the world because all problems seem like that to the person that they’re happening to. But they’ve never had anything truly dreadful happen. Nothing that shaped them into the sort of woman who could lie in bed with a hitman. Of course, there are people with atrocious problems, like people who were abused by their parents or who grew up without enough food to eat. Then you have people who were raised with a silver spoon with problems, like, ‘Oh, I threw a party, and everybody didn't have a one-hundred percent fabulous time, so now I’ll throw a hissy fit.’ That’s not the sort of problem that pushes someone into a killer’s arms.”
I thought about that for a moment, trying to work out if she was insulting me, but then gave it up. Sleep was heavy in her voice, and I think that she hardly knew or cared what she was saying. I was getting used to her rambling, and I didn’t mind it after a while.
“Then you’re the lucky one,” I joked. “You got me.”
She giggled, which was music to my ears. “Yeah,” she laughed. “I’m the lucky one.”
“I admire the fact that you
can always remain in a cheerful mood, Tess.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s better to laugh, look on the bright side of things and have fun.”
“My life was never much fun before I met you. I’ll tell you that.”
“Then we’re both the lucky ones, aren’t we?”
I nodded. “I guess so. Go to sleep, Tess. Dream of England, your mom, your grandmom… Dream about being a librarian...”
“You won’t leave me in the night, will you? Or if you have to go, promise you’ll wake me up first.”
“I’ll never let anything happen to you. I can promise you that.”
That seemed to satisfy her. She snuggled into the gap between my armpit and my arm and rested her head on my bicep. I shifted, so one arm was wedged beneath her.
I wasn’t the second-guessing sort, but even so I found himself wondering what the hell that I was doing. What had started as a sexual arrangement, as lust and nothing else was now this… whatever this was.
She began to snore, sweet, high-pitched snores that made me smile.
Normally, I would’ve been in my apartment right now, watching TV, staring at the ceiling, or working out. Or I would’ve been on the job. Or maybe I would be at the Drunk Harpy, playing cards with the fellas, and getting shitfaced just for the sake of it. Or perhaps I’d be analyzing the new shipment of weapons and testing them out. Maybe I would have a brawl with someone and crack their nose. All the boys would chant: “Get ‘em Animal!”
And I would give it all up, all of it, for this woman sleeping beside me.
The crazy part of it all was, I didn’t even regret it.
3
When I woke, my arms were fully wrapped around Tess, my legs draped over her legs, her face buried in my chest. I slowly slid my arms away, moved my legs from atop hers, and sat up. My breath came in quick gasps, and I hardly knew what was happening to me, only that I had woken next to a woman in a way I never had before. This was starting to become a normal behavior, and if I was honest, it was freaking me just a bit. Should I question this? Should I question this instant love or whatever this is?
