Objectify Me: A Fireworks Novella (The Fireworks Novellas)

by Rizer, Bibi

  A locker? But they’re all locked except number seventeen, and the one where we found Valentina. And those would be the first place the goons upstairs would go during a raid. I switch on my engineering brain, trying to see the layout of the building.

  “Downstairs,” I say. “Under the last stairway. No one will go down there, because they know it’s bolted, and no one ever looks under stairs.”

  “Good idea.”

  I tug Valentina back down to the end of the aisle with Levi following close behind. I notice he’s carrying the fire extinguisher. I imagine it might come in handy again tonight. Tonight? I look at my watch. It’s after six AM. At least that improves the odds somewhat that the cops will actually check this out.

  We reach the T junction and turn back to the exit. But before we even get there, the door opens and the giant bouncer from the top of the stairs appears. He bends down and picks up my shoe, just as Levi pulls us back the way we came. We run back down the second aisle. When Valentina stumbles, Levi drops the fire extinguisher and just picks her up, slinging her over his shoulder like a sack.

  I can hear the bouncer running after us, shouting in Russian. We get to the end of the aisle and turn right, around the corner and back up the first aisle. Levi suddenly skids to a stop, drags me back into locker seventeen. He slams the door behind us and pushes me down onto the floor by the wall, letting Valentina slide down into my lap. Tipping over the basket of sex toys, he finds a few pairs of handcuffs.

  The Russian yelling gets closer. Levi stares at the door latch and the handcuffs in his hand.

  “Engineering help?” he says.

  I jump up and grab the handcuffs. By hooking one end over the handle and locking the other side around the light-switch cable, I manage a pretty weak security system. It will buy us a minute or two. To do what, I don’t know. We’re rats in a cage.

  Levi drags me back down to the floor by the door. He kneels down and puts his hand on my cheek.

  “I really like you, Charlotte,” he says.

  Boom!

  The Russian guy kicks the door. The handcuffs rattle and stretch as the door strains to open.

  “I really like you too, Levi.” Why we’re saying these things now is too complicated to even think about. It feels right. Maybe that’s all that matters.

  We both look at Valentina, who is starting to seem like some kind of magical child Levi and I birthed and raised and lost and rescued all in the twelve hours that we’ve known each other. I put my arms around her and hold her close. Levi touches her cheek and smiles.

  “Ne boysya, Kosmonashka,” he says

  Valentina clings to me.

  Boom!

  Levi leaps up just as the door flies open. The first thing I see is a hand with a gun in it. Levi grabs the Russian guy by the wrist and yanks him forward. Then it all seems to happen so fast. And it’s strangely quiet – not at all like the fights on TV and movies with all their added sound effects. The Russian’s free fist flies through the air. I don’t see what it hits. Still holding the Russian’s other wrist, Levi steps back and kicks him in the groin. When the Russian lunges forward from that, Levi hits him twice, hard, in the back of the skull. Then as though it’s not enough that the big dude is crumpling to the floor like a human avalanche, Levi twists around and slams the guy’s wrist against the wall until he’s able to pull the pistol out of his hand.

  There’s no need, though, because when the Russian hits the floor, he does not get up. Levi takes two steps back and raises the gun, holding it on the unconscious Russian with both hands. I let a few seconds go past, watching Levi’s chest rising and falling.

  “Holy crap,” I finally say. “Was that Jiu Jitsu?”

  He shakes his head, blinking. He’s so pale, I’d be surprised to find any blood in his head at all. “Krav Maga,” he says. “Israeli martial arts.”

  He lets one hand fall away from the gun and rests it on his ribs, wincing.

  “Did he hit you?”

  “I’m fine,” Levi says. I can see he’s trembling. “I’ve never held a real gun before.”

  I give Valentina a reassuring look and stand up. “Better give it to me then,” I say. “I’ve got one just like that at home.” I take the gun from him slowly, aiming it away as he uncurls his fingers. Then I engage the safety and check the clip, like a good licensed firearm owner should. Full clip. Locked and loaded. I tuck it into the back of my jeans. “Now what?”

  Levi looks a lot better since I relieved him of the gun. “Well, we’re armed now,” he says, awkwardly handcuffing the Russian to the lighting cable. He winces again as he does it. The big guy must have landed at least one good hit. Maybe in the ribs. Levi seems pretty stoic about it. He feels the Russian’s neck before he gets up. “We should still hide, though. As soon as the police arrive, those thugs are going to come down here.”

  “Do you think there are other girls here?” I ask. I know there must be. What I’m really asking is what we should do about it.

  Levi sighs heavily. “I imagine there is. Let’s wait for the police though. They have a much better chance that way.”

  He’s probably right. We need a helluva backup. So we’ll hide and hope none of the bad guys comes looking for us. I have a gun. Levi needs a weapon. I dig into my tote bag until I find what I’m looking for. “Mace,” I say, handing him the small pink can.

  He looks at it distastefully. “And now I feel completely emasculated.”

  “Emasculated? Baby, you just disarmed and knocked out a guy twice your size with your bare hands. You could be wearing my bra and panties and you’d still be more of a man than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Valentina puts her hands over her mouth, laughing.

  Levi smiles at her as he pockets the mace. “You understand more than you let on, don’t you, Astro-girl?”

  “Da,” she says. “Panties.”

  I think she must be about thirteen. I catch Levi’s eyes and see him blink away tears.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says, his voice gruff.

  Levi won’t let me lead, even though I have the gun. We tiptoe along the lockers until we reach a row leading to the exit. Levi pokes his head around and gives the all-clear. I turn to hustle Valentina along and find she’s holding my shoe, the one the Russian guy picked up. She hands it to me with a smile.

  “Thanks,” I say, tucking it into my tote bag. Later, if she wants them, I’ll give her those shoes.

  There’s no one in the stairwell, thank God.

  “Maybe we could shoot the bolts off the door,” I say as we head down to the first level.

  “That doesn’t work. I saw it on Mythbusters.”

  Damn, I want to marry this boy one day. If we get out of this alive, I might just propose.

  As I expected, the space under the last stairway is dark, damp and full of crud. Levi finds a piece of cardboard and sets it into the darkest corner for me and Valentina to sit on. I take the gun out of my jeans and hold it on my knees. Levi crouches in front of us, digging the mace out of his pocket. And we wait in a silence that seems to stretch out like a shadow.

  After an eternity, there are noises upstairs, yelling. Valentina clings to me as heavy footsteps thump down the stairs above us. Levi tenses, and seconds later, a big guy in a suit comes barreling past us. He jangles a handful of keys by the bolted door, muttering to himself, presumably in Russian. So taken with trying to find the right key, he doesn’t look behind him, and therefore, doesn’t see us. But his search isn’t going well. He tries three or four keys without any luck. Upstairs, there’s more yelling and doors slamming open.

  The guy struggles with his keys, growing frantic. At any moment, he’s going to turn and see us, and then we’re fucked. Because what could this scumbag use more right now than a trio of hostages? Levi turns and gives me a look. I shake my head, carefully pulling the safety back on the pistol. I’ve never fired a gun in the direction of anything but a paper target or a tin can before. I don’t even like those targets with
people on them – they’re way too morbid for me. But this guy is certainly armed. It’s him or us. Do I just shoot him in the back? Can I do that?

  Heavy feet thump on the stairs.

  “Get down! Police! Get down!”

  The guy turns from the door, pulling a pistol out of the front of his pants.

  And Levi leaps.

  They crash down in a heap. There’s a revolting cracking noise as the guy’s gun arm breaks against the concrete floor. The pistol flies out of his hand as he screams and lashes out with his other fist. Levi jerks back, but a millisecond later, he is on his feet. And bizarrely, since he’s obviously some kind of street-fighting superhero, Levi decides to hit this dude with the girl-mace instead. A full spray in his face and he’s screaming like he’s been castrated, scraping his eyes frantically.

  I dive out from under the stairs and grab the other pistol, holding it as Levi untangles himself, his eyes watering.

  “Police! Drop your weapons!”

  I throw the guns down and turn, raising my hands as four uniformed cops bear down on us.

  “Get down on your knees!”

  Valentina looks terrified under the stairs.

  “Ne boysya, ne boysya,” Levi says. I glance over at him. He’s kneeling sort of lopsided with his hands on his head. For a West Coast boy, he sure knows how to behave around the police. Thank goodness. Cops around here can get pretty trigger happy.

  “I’m Levi Borovski,” he says. “I called it in.”

  “ID?”

  “Back pocket,” Levi says. “There’s a little girl under the stairs. You’re scaring her.”

  Two of the cops relax a bit. One of them reaches for Valentina, but she refuses to budge.

  “I can get her,” I say, as I hand over my ID.

  Valentina cowers there until the other two cops are done dragging the big Russian away. Then they frisk us and confirm Levi’s ID. I finally tug Valentina out and put my arms around her.

  “I’m going to have to book you for prostitution, ma’am,” one of the cops says. I appreciate that he doesn’t sound happy about it and everything, but jeez.

  “She’s not a prostitute!” Levi says. “She’s my friend. We came here together looking for two other friends. They might have been upstairs.”

  “Everyone upstairs is being arrested.”

  Levi slumps. “Fuck,” he says. “The women, too? You’re not going to arrest this little girl, are you?”

  The cops look at Valentina. “Is she a prostitute? How old is she? How old are you?”

  Valentina just stares at him.

  “Skol'ko tebe let?” Levi says.

  “Chetyrnadtsat.”

  Levi hangs his head with a sigh. “She says she’s fourteen.”

  I’ve never seen a cop look so forlorn. He turns to his partner. “Get child protection down here.”

  Valentina starts to cry again.

  Levi pats her on the shoulder. “Ne boysya, Kosmonashka,” he says.

  Chapter Eleven – Levi

  Shame is a strange thing. Unlike almost every other thing you might carry, it doesn’t diminish depending on how many people you share it with. So I’m sharing shame with the entire male half of our pitiful species right now, and it weighs on me like a neutron star.

  They dragged a Russian interpreter out of bed, and now it’s her job to translate Valentina’s mumbled details about what was happening in that place. I heard enough, though. Enough to never forget. I cried like a girl in the back of the police car. Thankfully they got a lady cop to drive Charlotte back to the station in her own car. Valentina got checked over in an ambulance first; she arrived a few minutes after me. So I only had a big Cajun detective to share my tears with.

  “Hey now, podna,” he said, looking back at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t fret. It ain’t your fault.”

  But somehow, the way I looked at Charlotte at the club and the things that happened to those girls in the warehouse got mixed up in my head. I’m trying to untangle them, like a big messed up ball of yarn that a cat got into. But my brain doesn’t seem to be working right. The checkered floor of the police station hallway blurs in front of me.

  Charlotte’s beautiful round breasts. Valentina’s bony ribcage. Charlotte’s soft lips. Valentina’s haunted eyes. Charlotte’s warm, inviting pussy…

  How many men raped Valentina before we found her?

  I pressed my hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. These people are busy. No one needs to deal with a grown man losing his shit in a cop-shop waiting room.

  “Hey, Leev. I brought you a coffee.”

  Omar holds the cup out, tentatively, the way you might offer food to a wild animal. I try to quell the shaking hand as I take the cup and sip the lukewarm coffee gratefully. Across from me, Buck has nodded off, his head resting on his balled-up hoodie.

  He and Omar left the party before we even got there, stumbling along the highway until local troopers picked them up. It turns out the cops were already on the way when we called them. As I predicted, Omar got raked over the coals a bit, but in the end, no one got charged. Buck and Omar swore up and down they never touched the girls apart from to take that damn selfie that started all this. I believe them. There’s no reason to think they’d be any less grossed out by the whole thing than I was, once they saw what was really happening.

  Three spoiled, upper middle class, West Coast boys walk away scott free again. Big surprise there.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “Charlotte. The girl. The other girl I was with.”

  Omar shrugs. “I don’t think I met her.”

  Last I saw Charlotte, she was holding Valentina’s hand and helping her open up to the interpreter as someone tugged me away. To do something. Sign some forms, maybe? I wonder what I signed.

  “I called your mom,” Omar says. “She freaked.”

  Sounds about right. I turn my free hand to look at my watch and dimly register searing pain shooting up my arm and across my ribs. Not sure what that means. Probably should get it checked out. But I get distracted by my watch. It’s nearly eleven in the morning. We’ve been here for four hours. Maybe Charlotte went home.

  “Bro, you don’t look so good,” Omar says.

  “I’m just tired. When are they going to let us go?”

  “I think they’re double-checking with some of the girls that we weren’t, you know, customers.”

  And here I thought they trusted our honest faces. I lean down and try to rest my head on my hands, but I’m shaking so much, all that does is rattle my brain even more. So I sit back and take another sip of coffee, but it tastes like armpit and smells even worse. It takes me three tries to set the cup down on the side table without spilling it.

  “Where’s Charlotte?”

  “Dude. You asked that already.”

  I press my lips together. Better to not speak if speaking is going to reveal to the world how much I’m obviously falling apart.

  Charlotte’s beautiful neck. Valentina’s pitiful, hoarse weeping.

  I shake my head, making my shoulder spasm and my vision blur even more. I’d close my eyes, but that makes the room spin. I’m starting to feel like I’m missing a key piece of the puzzle. That sense of having forgotten something washes over me again. Maybe it’s just that I’m tired. Or hungry. Or thirsty. I can’t even tell.

  It’s as though I’m not in my body anymore.

  Maybe I just need to piss.

  Next thing I know, I’m standing, swaying a little, but staying upright. Omar looks at me, alarmed.

  “Gotta piss,” I say.

  I focus on the restroom sign to keep from falling over on the way there. When I get inside the door, I duck into a stall straightaway, lowering the toilet lid and sitting down. On top of the million things that are making me feel terrible right now is the possibility that Charlotte has gone home without saying goodbye. I wouldn’t blame her. I want to put this night behind me, too, but…

 
I’m a complete failure as a man. I didn’t get her number, her Facebook, her Instagram, nothing. I don’t even know her last name. And I was so dazed when we went to her house to get her car that there’s no way I could ever find it again. And even if I could, what am I supposed to do? Just turn up at her door? Isn’t that a little weird?

  I try to get up, because I really do need to piss, but when I lean forward, a bolt of pain shoots through my ribcage so bad that I feel like I might vomit. I look down at my body and realize I’ve been hugging my left side since we left the party. Slowly, I edge my hand out of the folds of my t-shirt. It looks wrong, not like a hand should look. I try to move it, and that makes me nearly puke again. Two of my fingers are pointing in the wrong direction, and the whole hand is swollen and blue.

  “Fuck…”

  That’s not good.

  With my other hand, I hoist myself off the toilet and head out of the stall. Standing in front of the mirror, I lift my t-shirt up. One side of my ribcage is bloated and eggplant colored. The minute I see it, the pain actually processes. And that’s when what’s left of my late night snack comes up and splatters all over the floor. The heaving multiplies the pain in my ribs by about a million.

  “God…” I manage to squeak out, easing myself down onto my knees so I don’t fall over. “Help…”

  The worst part about thinking I’m going to die kneeling in a puddle of my own vomit is that I know somehow I deserve it. That something I did once caused a chain reaction that lead to Valentina chained up in that place. I watched seriously questionable porn when I was younger. In high school I had sex with a girl at a party who turned out to only be fifteen. And a hundred other things. A bachelor party here. A website there. Any one of those stupid, self-indulgent acts might have been the butterfly wing that created the tornado Valentina got caught up in. And how many others are there like her? Maybe I’m no better than the men who chained her up.

  “Oh God…” My vision starts to go black at the edges, and I shiver even though I feel like I’m burning up. “Someone help me…” I’m not even hoping for someone to help with the pain, with whatever injuries I have. I think I’m looking for someone to save my soul.