ZEKE’S BABY

by Evelyn Glass

  “Mom.” I sigh. “What’s gotten into you lately? First, you were calling to check in on me after Chance brought me back—no, I won’t call it a kidnapping—and now you’re calling at least three times a day to—to what? I know. To keep tabs on Dad.”

  She lets out her chipmunk sigh. I have a clear image in my head of a chipmunk with puffed-up cheeks letting them deflate. “I recently found our old photo album. You know I’m working as a teacher’s aide now, right? Well, I was looking through the photos because the kids wanted to a see a picture of you, and then I came across the one of me and Michael before you were born, when he had that dreadful haircut, and when he was happy, and hopeful, and not deep in the Family life. I remember him telling me that we’d open a little tearoom somewhere in Maine or Texas or—you know, somewhere that isn’t New York.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Dad, opening a tearoom?”

  “I know. It’s silly. But I was looking over the pictures of us, so young and happy, and then over the pictures of the three of us, a perfect family. I think we could’ve been a perfect family. But then with his drinking and his gambling and—and, oh, Rebecca, I just wish I didn’t let him push me away! I know it makes no sense. Logically, logically, yes, it makes no sense. I understand that. I’m an educated woman, I’ve been to college, I was proposed to by a doctor once upon a time, and yet I felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Do you know, since your father, I’ve only even been with one other man and even then I’d had too much wine—”

  “Woah! That’s enough information, Mom!”

  “I’m sorry. I know. It’s just…Do you think I should call your dad? I have his number, for emergencies, but maybe I could call him and we could talk and see where it goes?”

  “I’m not going to play matchmaker for the two of you,” I say. “It makes me cringe so hard I might be sick.”

  “Oh, Rebecca, that isn’t very nice, is it?” I roll my eyes, and she snaps, “I heard that. You just rolled your eyes.”

  We giggle together for a few moments, and then I start thinking about me and Chance, which I’m always doing even if it’s in the background. Chance is never far from my mind. I start thinking about Chance and how I’ve let him push me away, how, since he left me alone at Nate’s, I’ve made no effort to find him. He thought he wasn’t good enough for me and by retreating to my regular life, with my regular problems, I’ve agreed with him. Just like Mom did all those years ago, I’ve let him drift away from me. Could I become Mom? Could a decade go by with me raising our child alone with me dreaming of Chance every single day, with me wishing I had done everything differently?

  “If you want to call Dad,” I say, “I think you should call him. I think it’s a great idea.”

  “Oh, I knew it was!” Mom screeches, making me hold the phone a couple of inches away from my ear. “I will, I definitely will. I think it will be awkward, but, but…Well, people are still the same, deep, deep down, aren’t they? Good people are good people and bad people are bad people. And your father has always been a good person, where it matters.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Sure, Mom.”

  We say our goodbyes and I return to the easel, to Chance, this time covered in blood brandishing his gun, shooting down the men who tried to rape me.

  Touching the still-wet paint, I whisper, “I want to be with you, baby. I want to be with you again.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chance

  I ought’a leave New York. I ought’a take what cash I’ve got stowed away and get the fuck outta here. That was the plan when I left Becky at Nate’s. I crept out of bed and I told Nate that he’d better make sure she gets home alright, that he better make sure she don’t get any stupid ideas like goin’ to Giovanni or anythin’ like that. But I just couldn’t leave the city. I tried to, stole a car and even got as far as I-87, but then I pulled up on the side of the highway and got outta the car and fell to my damned knees in the snow and tried to get a hold of myself. Sittin’ here today in my shithole apartment in this shithole buildin’ in Hell’s Kitchen, just down the way from Nate’s place, I still don’t know what happened to me. At the start of winter I was colder’n snow and nothin’ could get to me. Near the end of it I was kneelin’ in snow wishin’ with everything I had that all I had to do in this life was be with Becky, hold her and all that shit.

  I came to this apartment so that Nate could warn me if anyone was tryin’ to sneak up on me. He’s set up hidden cameras all around the place, and I keep three cells on me at all times, so that whatever happens he’ll be able to contact me. At first, I spent the time watchin’ the TV news, gettin’ updates about the kidnapping. What was weird about it was that there weren’t any interviews with Becky, just shots of her walkin’ in and outta the police station. I reckon that’s ’cause her loyalty got the better of her and she didn’t wanna say I took her by force. Part of me was happy about that, but part of me was pissed, too. It means she ain’t distanced from me like she should be. But then all of it dies down, the police get their bullshit headline, life goes on. I get Nate to do some of his hackin’ shit on the Family and he tells me that Giovanni is startin’ to talk about me less and less, which is a good sign. He knows how good I am. Maybe he’s decided that I’ve run away and considers that good enough.

  So why am I still here?

  The apartment ain’t really an apartment, more of a basement full of dust without workin’ heatin’ and a refrigerator that only works half the time. The only thing that doesn’t mess me around are the free weights. I work out like crazy, mornin’ and night, enjoying the way my muscles burn. Despite livin’ on a diet of meat pies, microwave meals, and the occasional piece of fruit or chocolate bar, I gain eight pounds of pure muscle. I get Nate to arrange for a punching bag to be installed while I make myself scarce, and work on it every night, sweatin’ into the dust. And every day, I tell myself, is the day I’m gonna leave. Every day is the day I’m gonna decide that I’m done here and the risk ain’t worth it, even with Nate lookin’ out for me.

  But I can’t get her outta my head. I just can’t. I work out, and she’s there, her dark eyes watchin’ me, her lithe body ready for me, her smile curled for me. I punch the bag and she’s just beyond it, arms folded, pouting sexily. I sleep and she’s next to me, body curved into mine like it was carved for the purpose. Sometimes I even wake up with my hand on my prick thinkin’ it’s her cute mouth, and even when I jerk over her, it ain’t good enough. I need her hand, her mouth, her cunt. Not this imagination shit.

  I tell myself she’s better off without me, which is true. She’ll have the baby and raise it and live a good life and become an artist and go on to meet some other artist type, a fuckin’ writer or somethin’, someone who can talk to her all fancy-like about fancy things at cocktail parties in a suit jacket. Not a blood-bathed man, not a killer, not someone who’s only ever painted in carmine.

  I know all of this is true. I know that Becky’s life will blossom without me. And with me, it’ll only turn dead and corrupt like my fuckin’ heart. And yet as I stow myself away in this place, I can’t help but obsess about her. She’s the only person I’ve met in my entire goddamn life who showed me any kind of affection, the only person I ever let myself be comfortable around, even if it was only a little bit. That don’t mean that I’m about to crash into her life and ruin it when I’ve already done the right thing by gettin’ out, but it does mean that I wanna say goodbye, even if it is a weak, warped, pointless goodbye. And then I’ll leave New York, and let myself fade into nothin’ but a vague memory in her head.

  I call Nate.

  “Who owns the motel where Becky and me stayed? Is it still the mob?”

  “Let me check. I’ll call you back.”

  After five minutes of me just starin’ at my cell, it rings. When I answer it, Nate tells me: “After the police raid, the mob abandoned it. It’s not owned by anyone at the moment. It’s abandoned. It’s going up for auction in the summer, once the red tape has been snipped
through.”

  “Alright.”

  I hang up, get dressed in a hoodie and jeans, pull the hood up, and leave the basement. I’ve got my guns tucked in my holsters under my hoodie, but since it’s the middle of a spring day and the sun is shinin’ and it’s Hell’s Kitchen so there are people fuckin’ everywhere, I don’t wear ’em on the outside, even if that means they’ll be harder to get at. I catch the bus to Brooklyn. On the way, I stare out the window, spottin’ a couple’a places which hold memories for me, like a tree I once pissed against after gettin’ drunk for the first and last time in my life, the spot near a Chinese takeout where I used to go after a job just to calm down, back when I needed calmin’ down. I watch the city, watch the memories, and then catch another bus closer to the motel.

  When I get to The Resin, I’m met with an empty, ghost-town place, the gate locked. I hop over the gate and walk past the emptied pool, condoms and literal shit stuck to the bottom, toward mine and Becky’s room. This is gonna be a poor goodbye, I reckon, a pathetic goodbye. But if I find Becky and try’n say goodbye to her face, I’ll end up not bein’ able to say it at all. I’ll try’n stay with her instead, and all that’ll do is make her life worse, her baby’s life worse. So I’ll go into the first room we ever fucked in, the room with the ruined bed, the room where I drilled into this scared shiverin’ thing without knowin’ she was a virgin and without knowin’ how much she’d change me.

  The door is unlocked, swingin’ on its hinges. Looters’ve been in by the looks of it. The TV is gone, the ruined bed overturned, the shower ripped from its setting. I walk around the room, which seems damn small to spend a month and a half in now I look at it, and try’n feel somethin’ of Becky, try’n imagine that she’s here and if I say goodbye now, that’s good enough. But I feel nothin’, nothin’ but the urge to be with her properly, which I know would be a damned mistake.

  “Becky,” I say, feelin’ like a fool. “Becky, I’m sorry I can’t be with you, alright? But it’s better this way. I’ve never been good enough for you and I never will be.”

  I stare down at the bed, sighing, knowin’ what I said ain’t a match for how I feel about her, but knowin’ I ain’t gonna come up with anythin’ better, neither. So I turn around and make for the door.

  That’s when he walks in, two goons at his shoulders, wearin’ a big fuck-off three-piece suit and smokin’ a cigar.

  “Chance,” Giovanni says, suckin’ on his cigar. “I never took you for a sentimental one, but I’m glad I spent the men. I’m glad we pretended to be done with you, too. That hacker really is a pain in the ass, ain’t he?”

  The two goons are holdin’ shotguns, aimed right at my face.

  I ain’t got any choice but to do what Giovanni says.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Becky

  After staring at the painting for some time, my fingertips covered in dried paint, I hear Dad stir from the next room. His cell is playing some eighties rock ringtone, a song I don’t recognize, and after about half a minute of drunken groaning and cursing, he answers it. He never answers his cell in the apartment. He always goes into the hallway, or to his bedroom and onto the mini-balcony, where he’ll stand with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other, out of my earshot. But now, he just slumps back down on the chair and begins talking.

  Morbid curiosity sends me across the room to the door, where I crouch down and place my ear against the wood, listening carefully.

  “The Boss wants me?” he’s saying, voice throaty with alcohol and tobacco. “They have him there, now, and the Boss wants me…I don’t get it. Why me? Maybe you could tell him to handle it himself or—No, no, you don’t need to tell him I said that. No! I said you don’t need to fuckin’ tell him! Yeah, I’ll be there! I’ll be at the compound! I just said that, didn’t I!”

  He slams the phone onto the coffee table, where it sounds like it breaks.

  My heart is thumping like crazy now. They have him there, now. That could be Chance. They could have Chance at the compound. They could be doing anything to him. And why would they want Dad to go there? Maybe because they want Dad to be the one to…I can’t even think about that. Dad stomps from the apartment. I leave my bedroom, throw on some sneakers, and leave soon after him.

  Climbing behind the wheel of my beat-up old car, the once-green paint now chipped grey, I watch as Dad walks down the street, moving slowly. Maybe he’s walking because he doesn’t want to get there, I reflect. Maybe he knows there’s something bad waiting for him at the end of that long walk. Or maybe he knows he’s too drunk to drive. I watch him as he moves toward the bus stop, pats his pockets down, throws his hands up, and then debates whether or not to come back to the apartment. So he doesn’t have any money. In the end—with a few of the people at the bus stop inching away from him since he looks like a crazy homeless guy—he shrugs his shoulders and keeps walking.

  Knowing that he’ll take a while to get there, I get an idea. I could be walking into anything at the compound. And even if I know that Dad and Chance would never kill a woman, I don’t know the same of Giovanni or any of the other guys who hang out there. Maybe it’d be better if I had some information backing me up when I went in there. And anyway, what’s my plan at the moment, just storm in there, pregnant, and somehow get Chance out?

  I start the car and drive as quickly as I can toward Hell’s Kitchen, toward Nate’s place.

  I ignore the looks of the men hanging around outside the door to the apartment building, leaning against it, smoking, and run up the stairs, past the graffiti and the condoms and the filth, to the thick metal door. When I bang on it, my fist hurts. I think back to when Chance banged on it, how it must’ve hurt him but he didn’t even realize. A small thing, and yet one that makes me wish those strong hands were holding mine now. Ignoring the pain, I keep going.

  “Yes? Yes?” It’s Nate’s childlike voice. “What is it? Yes? Hello? Who’s there? No cold callers, please, thank you. Thank you!”

  “It’s me,” I say. “Becky. We met when—”

  “What do you want?” he says, suddenly suspicious. “Are you alone? Who’s out there with you? This is some kind of plan, isn’t it? What’s the angle? Tell me that, huh? What’s this angle you’re going for? What’s going on? I think you’ve got some scheme you’re hatching and you’re out there like the—what’d’ya call it—the honeypot trying to tempt me but I’m not—”

  “Nate! Stop, please. Listen.”

  “Why should I listen?” he asks. “I’m done and dusted with all this. I don’t want any part in it anymore. Maybe I’ll go to the Maldives. I saw that place in a screensaver once, you know, and I thought it looked pretty cool, pretty magical, somewhere you could just disappear.”

  I sigh. My temples are pulsing, my head aching. Rubbing them, I say, “Let me in, Nate. I need to talk to you. It’s about Chance. Chance might be in danger. I’m going to the compound, Giovanni’s compound, but I don’t want to go there with nothing. I need you to talk to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nate says, raising his voice. “I don’t know anybody by that name, and I certainly don’t know you. I’m afraid you might have the wrong apartment. Maybe the floor below?”

  “Nate!” I hiss, banging on the door so hard my knuckles feel like they might pop out of place. I wince, but this is important. “Chance might be dying, right now. Do you understand? He might be tortured or killed and you won’t even talk to me! I’m pregnant with his child, Nate. Chance is the father of my baby and in six months I’m going to give birth and what do you want me to tell our child, huh? What do you expect me to say? You might be scared of the Family, but let me tell you something. If you don’t open this door and talk to me, I’ll give you reason to be scared of me. Don’t underestimate me, Nate. People have been doing that their entire lives and I won’t take it anymore.”

  By the end of the speech, I’m talking in a low, threatening tone which sounds nothing like my own. I’m shocked by it, but I don’t stop. I need to g
et this door open; Nate’s intel might be the difference between life and death.

  “I promise you, Nate, that if you don’t open this door and something happens to Chance, I’ll never forget it. Never!”

  There’s a pause. I listen closely and hear Nate muttering to himself, but it’s too quiet for me to make out any words.

  Then, the beep-beep of the keypad sounds and the door begins to crank open.

  “Chance is really in danger?” Nate asks.

  “I think so,” I say. “I’m not sure, but—”

  Nate interrupts to tell me that Chance went to our motel room. “Maybe they got him there,” Nate says. “Maybe they were playing me, knew I was listening…I’m screwed either way, then, so that’s great!”

  “Chance could help you,” I say. “But first you need to tell me everything you know.”

  Nate tugs at his yellow striped polo-shirt as he walks into the living room, where there’s a laptop open showing security footage of a nondescript street.

  “I never should’ve gotten involved with the Family,” Nate says, dropping onto the couch. “It was a big, big mistake. I thought, I’ll earn some extra cash. But I was earning enough cash hacking bank accounts, so maybe I just thought it would be fun, tasting a little danger! But danger is the opposite of fun, lemme tell you. Danger is—”