The Damned

by L. A. Banks

  Jose’s smile widened. “Yeah, and a sister got her cultural ways, too. She woulda hollered in my window by now, if I had my own spot—talking about, ‘Yo, Jose, wanna go kick some sounds? I got this song in my head! Wake up!’ ”

  “Oh, now, see—you wrong, Jose!”

  They both laughed as she ran toward him and gave him a big hug.

  “I miss you already,” she said, laughing harder as he hugged her tighter. His faded blue plaid shirt and rumpled jeans were a sight for sore eyes.

  “You my boo, girl. We should be down at the beach, eating some tacos, Rollerblading, hanging.”

  “Clubbing!”

  He held her away from him with a wide grin. “D, don’t tease me like that. This town has one bar with sawdust on the floors, one movie theater, one good diner, one freakin’ grocery store, but five ammo shops!”

  “And you’ve gotta drive fifty miles to hit a Wal-Mart to buy some drawers,” they said in unison and laughed.

  “Brother, I ain’t trying to look a gift horse in the mouth or talk about your people’s land, but—”

  “D, it’s a one-horse town. You ain’t gotta tell me.”

  Again they laughed, and she slung her arm over his shoulder like old times.

  “Remind me why we came here again?” Damali said, giving Jose a wink.

  “Something about some vampire friends of yours,” he said, laughing as they made their way back into the house.

  “Oh, so now it’s on me?” Damali stopped in the kitchen and folded her arms.

  “Yep, fearless leader. See, me, I woulda risked the hotel circuit till we could build in Malibu or Beverly Hills or some-freakin’-where other than here.”

  “Stop lying, Jose,” she said, laughing harder. “How were we gonna keep all the kids in the house, straight and safe?”

  “Yes, Mommy dearest,” he said, bowing his head slightly, then looking up with a mischievous smirk. “But in a minute, they’re gonna get one helluva education all cramped in that rickety house of Pop’s.”

  Damali cocked her head to the side. Jose laughed and ran his palm over his hair.

  “Your girl made Big Mike some ribs the other night before they announced another Houston trip, and uh—”

  “Noooo …” Damali covered her mouth.

  “Shabazz been in there doing Kung Fu on tables and shit,” Jose said, laughing. “Anything wood is fair game for a brother’s tension. Lost sections of the dining room in the backyard. So when Mike split, him and Mar was out a few nights ago. Marlene and Shabazz left this morning, too. You been missing a lot of drama while being over here checking on contractors, fixing stuff up, and then when you finally pulled out of the minicompound all hell broke loose.” He laughed harder. “I don’t know where they are now, truthfully. After you ran it all down and left, we started losing household. Guess everybody needed somewhere to go chill.”

  She covered her face and laughed out loud. “Oh, my God!”

  “Berkfield ain’t no punk, either. Rolled right after Shabazz and Marlene got ghost.”

  “Marjorie and Richard split and left their kids? You have got to be lying!” Damali walked in a circle, the blankets swishing behind her like a royal robe. “Everybody’s all right, though? Nobody’s seen anything weird and been touched by anybody outside of the house, right? For real, Jose.” Her laughter had gone, her expression was tight.

  “Naw,” he said, giving her a hug. “They cool. Just blowing off steam like we always do before going into another big battle.” He chuckled low. “You know that gladiator-type shit … good meal, good woman, good night’s sleep, then get strapped and go to war.”

  She immediately relaxed and put her head on his shoulder. Jose’s warmth felt so good, just like his hands against her back did. “All right. I’ll stop being mother hen.”

  “Good,” he murmured, rubbing her spine. “You’re too tense, though I can understand why.”

  “You always make me feel better when crazy shit is going down,” she said, sighing from the knots he was unfurling in her back. “Damn, that feels good.”

  He breathed out a contented sigh, and the warmth of it rippled through her hair. “It’s all good, D. You ain’t hear this from me, but earlier this week, Rider put a rifle on his lap while we was all playing cards and gave J.L. the eye. Gave him the don’t-try-it-while-her-pop-is-out big-brother thing, feel me? That old equipment shed behind the house got stories we’ll all take to our graves, but if J.L. had lost his mind and taken a walk in the moonlight with Miss Kris, and Rider had been roasted enough to try to stop a martial artist on a mission—hey, he mighta whupped Rider’s ass. The house is a powder keg, D. I think the only thing that kept J.L. chill was the girl’s brother ain’t warmed up to the concept yet, and Dan has Bobby’s back—so.”

  “Lawd have mercy.” Damali shook her head and left Jose’s loose embrace to go turn on the kettle again. “See, that’s why a sistah had to be out.”

  “I can dig it,” Jose said with a smirk. “Don’t worry about your boy, Carlos, either. Rider had his back. That’s why I came by, so you wouldn’t worry. Brother is still fell out on the porch swing and sleeping it off, so like I said, it’s all good.”

  The mirth peeled away from her once more. Oh, no, not yet. They had been back, the old them, now the moment had evaporated like steam.

  While she appreciated Jose’s update on Carlos’s whereabouts, she really wasn’t ready to interject that into the happiness he’d brought through her door. Mention of Carlos meant that she had to think about the thing she was trying not to think about. In a roundabout way, Jose had given her a full account of where everybody had been, except he and Juanita … Not that that was her business. And then she’d have to think about all sorts of other things, which returned her to the concept of sharing, which she’d successfully banished for five minutes of free thought. So she did what Marlene always did when the subject matter got thick, made tea.

  “I’ve got green, mint, uh, strawberry, echinacea, uh, golden seal, and—”

  “Mint’s cool, but you got any Joe in the house?”

  “Coffee, oh, yeah, sure. I forgot that you and Rider don’t do herbals first thing, uh, not sure where it is, umm …” She sounded like a mad hatter, and knew it, but couldn’t stop herself as she banged open cabinets and shut them, moving in jerky, confused, starts and stops.

  “It’s cool, D,” Jose said, his voice mellow and amused as he neared her. “It really is cool.”

  His hands on her shoulders stopped her desperate search for coffee grounds. It stilled her body, but made her mind fly out of her ears and her heart nearly pound out of her chest. A simple nod without turning to face him was all that she could manage, and she understood what he meant by it all being cool—problem was, it wasn’t.

  “I’m glad you liked the blanket,” he said quietly, his body close enough to hers to allow her to feel the heat of it adding to the blanket in its own distinct layer. “I kept it on my bed for years … and, uh, wanted to give you something that always comforted me when I was alone.”

  Oh, shit, she was gonna have a heart attack. No words formed in her mind or her mouth. Her vocal chords were frozen. She could only wrap the blanket closer to her body to both stave off the shiver his statement had produced and to acknowledge how sensual an act giving her the blanket had been. It was a profound gift, something to be cherished, and it had been offered with enough measure of respect, without totally crossing the invisible line. But the gesture was also beginning to print a license for him to do that. All those nights when he’d wanted her … wrapped in this … Didn’t he understand that she was also a tactical sensor! His hands on her shoulders and touching the threads, was making the fabric practically come alive around her like a caress. Plus, hombre had a little vamp in him, too…. Oh, Lord … Everything she was feeling the night before while standing in front of the refrigerator was waking up inside her.

  “D, I have a confession to make,” he said quietly, “and I hope you won’t be
mad at me.”

  She swallowed hard and was barely breathing. His hands trailed down her arms, but he might as well have run them down her back.

  “I wouldn’t have stopped by if I thought Carlos was here … I mean, unannounced like this.”

  She closed her eyes. “I know,” she whispered.

  He leaned his chin on her shoulder, his warm breaths coating her neck, making small tingles run down her spine and setting a slow smolder to her throat. He smelled clean, masculine clean, with an Ivory Soap foundation that she’d just begun to notice. She stood there, immobile, separating the scents of him in delicate layers. Mint mouthwash, Ivory Soap, shampoo, male chemical pheromone … Until this moment, she hadn’t really understood just how sensual a creature Jose was … at least not the way he was making her understand it now.

  “I don’t know how to say it,” he murmured and then sighed.

  She kept her back straight and her body extremely still, not sure whether she should melt into the invitation and close the sliver of space between them. She struggled with a response. She couldn’t say that honesty had always been theirs, because they’d been lying about this very thing to each other, as well as to themselves, for years. The word trust came to mind, and she seized upon it.

  “We’ve always been able to trust each other,” she finally whispered, “even when we weren’t sure of anything else.”

  He nodded and laid his cheek on her shoulder to replace his chin, and wrapped his arms around her to gather her hands where she clutched the blanket. His fingers twined with hers and he let his breath out hard again. “I love you, D …”

  Her response was a thick swallow. Oh, shit …

  “Like in a way I can’t explain … it’s that trust thing you said. I want us to stay friends, like the way we were just laughing outside. Do you know what I mean?”

  She opened her eyes wide, glad he couldn’t see the shocked expression on her face. Friends. Friends? Yeah, cool, right, exactly. Friends were a good thing, this was a friend-loving-closeness-hug, not a man-soon-to-be-a-lover-in-about-two-seconds-hug … Oh, my God, she would have been too embarrassed. The portals needed to be vacuum sealed, not just closed, if the mess had her acting like this!

  “See, I know, from time to time, things between us would kinda get thick, and that was my fault,” he said quietly on a soft expulsion of air. “D, I’m sorry I took you there and made you uncomfortable in the house, ya know?”

  She nodded quickly. “No, it’s cool, Jose, we—”

  “No, girl,” he said gently. “Let me finish and get this out, once and for all.”

  Damali pressed her lips closed and stared wide-eyed at the cabinets.

  “I just have so much fun with you, we click so good together, when we make music, compose, do the stage it’s like … like I can’t even talk about it. And we know each other so well … like we can finish each other’s sentences, and, God knows, you’re beautiful…. But I had to get over it. You didn’t feel that way toward me. Carlos was the only brother that made you feel that, and I had to respect that. Had to suck it up. That was my own head-trip, and I was about to lose somebody real important in my life because I couldn’t accept the way things were. In fact, he’s cool people, too. I was about to create some drama in the house, and half of me was wondering if I was what made you move so you didn’t have to deal with that. I’m sorry, if I put you in a position. That’s what I truthfully came by to tell you, since you were all alone in here and we could really be real.”

  He lifted his head and turned her around slowly to face him. Her eyes sought the floor, but he put a finger under her chin to lift her head.

  “D, if I was the reason you moved out, come home once the compound is built and there’s real living space. If not, cool. But if I had anything to do with it, I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head no, too rattled to immediately say a word. “No, Jose, it wasn’t your fault, and there’s never been a reason for you to apologize to me about anything. I moved out because it was just time, ya know? I’ve never been on my own and wanted to see what that felt like.”

  He smiled and kissed her forehead. “Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s lonely as shit. Like everything else, it ain’t perfect.”

  She gave him a platonic hug and shooed away the heat that he still produced in her body. The daggone blanket was cursed. She smiled inwardly. Nah, it was blessed. It was her crazy brain that was twisted.

  Jose awkwardly pulled away and turned off the burner on the stove. “Kettle’s been singing now for about five minutes.”

  Damali glanced at it, feeling warmth creep to her cheeks. “My bad?”

  “I know,” he said with a wry smile. “I didn’t hear it, either.”

  They looked at each other, a silent understanding passing between them.

  “It’s time to turn the flame down before the kettle burns.”

  She nodded and slipped around him to find two clean mugs. Oh, shit. She nodded as she walked. “Good idea. Oh, yeah, you wanted coffee. Ummm … where did Marj put—”

  “You got a pop or some iced tea?”

  She stopped, looked at him, and went to the fridge. “I drank out of this,” she said quickly and shoved the iced tea back onto the shelf. “But—”

  “That’s fine,” Jose said, leaning against the sink. “I’ll share your spit while you share my blanket.”

  She held the iced tea midair. “You want a glass?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “No.”

  He stopped smiling for a second, took the pitcher from her, and turned it up to his mouth. After a long swig, he shoved it back into the refrigerator and wiped his mouth on the back of his shirtsleeve. “We do it like this in the house behind Marlene’s back any ole way.” Then he burst out laughing.

  She was so shocked that it took her a second to laugh with him. It wasn’t the tea confession that had paralyzed her; it was all the double meanings and the sheer sensuality of the way he’d done it, like a quiet striptease. His vamp roots were showing; all that was missing was a little hint of fang. She couldn’t tell if he was just messing with her or serious, but the whole thing jacked with her mind. Laughter was a good cover and a good release, just as it had always been between them. She made herself laugh very, very hard.

  “I’d better go,” Jose said, still chuckling. He kissed her cheek and began walking through the house.

  “Tell everybody I said hi.”

  “Yep,” he said, and gave her a wink. “Maybe if I go back to bed, I won’t be put in the doghouse.”

  Damali straightened, every hair on her neck bristled. “Oh, puhlease,” she said as upbeat as possible. “Who’s gonna put you in the doghouse?”

  “ ’Nita. Just promise me you won’t floss that blanket around her, okay? I know y’all have beef, but do that for me to keep the peace, boo? She’s still a little salty about the fact that I insisted you have it, since it came off my bed…. Women can be so superstitious and territorial, but, uh, it’s cool. However, there’s a limit to what y’all will and will not tolerate, and a brother being AWOL first light, is one of ’em.” He kissed her quick and winked at her again. “I’m out.”

  She waved, smiled, even laughed a little, and then leaned on the doorframe and watched him jog down the path, but he picked up the pace to a flat-out haul-ass once he hit the road. That annoyed her to no end. He was running for Juanita so the heifer wouldn’t be pissed. Damali briefly closed her eyes.

  She had to let it go. But at this insane moment she didn’t want to share him, at least not his laughter, or whatever. Then, she had to get real.

  He’d braved being cut off and returned to monk status; he’d brought her his blanket, dashed to her house at dawn to deliver a message … five miles down the road, no car to wake up the house.

  This was private, between them, another gift to be tucked away in her mental cedar chest, black box. This same man had let fate cut out his heart, but still
was a soldier. This same man had ridden like a bat out of Hell on a bike to save her from said same. This man had handed her a pile of ashes when it really mattered most, an act that he knew would probably change his world—but he did it anyway. He’d allowed her team to build a life on his land … had provided always when it counted most … didn’t come home drunk. He’d sipped her iced tea, shared spit and shared a blanket, said he loved her, added the caveat about being her friend to keep it smooth, and then walked. Went home to where he was supposed to be, and didn’t make a false move. Damn … what a man. Juanita had better recognize. That shit Jose just pulled had wet her drawers. If that girl ever broke his heart … Oh, no, Juanita had better be clear; Jose was a gift from God.

  With an exhausted sigh, Damali hugged the blanket closer and simply allowed herself to feel just a little bit sad.

  She went into the house, glanced around at the open, bright space, and still felt like she was imprisoned. She couldn’t run far or fast enough from the feelings that had shaken her. As long as there was evil on the planet, she would never find peace. Peace was a hard commodity to come by, just like privacy and a chance to explore new things like a normal human being was … and the right to make a few mistakes along the way.

  In this very moment, she hated sharing her entire life with the planet. Jose had made her wonder what it might be like to do something truly selfish, just for a little while.

  Damali quickly banished the thought, but it crept back slowly, regardless. Maybe it was the effect of everyone living in close quarters for months? The house down the road had been a real nightmare of too many people under one roof. That had to be part of it. Everything had been so crazy it was laughable. Almost. She walked through her small house, picked up her mug, added fresh hot water to it, and went out onto the back deck to stare at the surrounding mountains. Her head felt like it was about to explode.

  Marlene and Shabazz had one bedroom; Mr. and Mrs. Berkfield had the other. The team had quickly constructed two triple-level bunk beds and wedged a cot into one room for the guys. Necessity was the mother, or father, of invention and was all that was available for the formally unpaired men in the house, so that Carlos, J.L., and Jose could be on one side of the room in a bunk, Big Mike, Dan, and Bobby Berkfield could be on the other, with Rider’s cot wedged against a wall in the submarine-size enclave. Ridiculous.