by Paula Cox
But when Marjorie comes and stands over me in the breakroom, I see that there’s no malice in her smile. She makes a whistling noise between her teeth, and then pulls up a chair and sits opposite me. She glances around briefly as though surveying the surroundings—the bulletin board with various charitable and work events, the posters of famous book covers, the sink and the fridge—and finally leans close to me.
“Uh, hey, Marjorie,” I say. Marjorie and I aren’t enemies, but by no means are we friends. I place my book on the chair beside me and wait.
Finally, Marjorie says, “Heard you got yourself a new boyfriend.”
“What?” I snap, way too quickly, way too sharply. But I can’t help it. It never occurred to me that anyone at work would know about Rust taking me out for a drink. Detroit is big, after all, and it’s not like I’m someone important. No paparazzi following me around.
“Woah, calm down,” Marjorie says, squinting at me as though confused. “Cassandra just told me. Tom, your 11 o’clock? He came in earlier when you were on outreach and gave Cassandra this.” Marjorie reaches into her pants pocket and brings out one of those toy plastic rings you find in gumball machines.
“Oh,” I say, taking it, and smiling. Yes, her comment threw me off, but Tom’s a sweet guy who’s really trying to get his life together after a bout of serious depression and a suicide attempt. It was nice of him to leave something for me.
Marjorie tilts her head at me. “Hmm,” she mutters, before getting up and leaving.
After that, it’s incredibly clear that I’ve got a problem. I know I’m thinking about Rust too much. I know that there is something dangerously wrong with the way my mind keeps turning to him no matter what I am doing. Dangerous, because if I allowed my mind to do totally as it liked, I would never think about anything else. I am furious with myself, completely enraged that I can’t just put this man out of my mind. Although I suppose I should be familiar with the problem; god knows no one ever got together in a romcom because they considered the other person so forgettable. But I’m a real person in a real life, and I’m supposed to be able to focus.
Over the next few days, I decide to do the only thing which seems like it will have any results. I decide to turn myself against Rust, instead of toward him. Like a form of strange meditation, every time my mind turns to him, I force my mind to turn to a different aspect of him. My mind tries to turn to his muscles, his clean-shaven, strong-featured face; I force myself to think about what a Neanderthal he is, a violent enforcer, someone completely unsuited for a woman like me. I wake up moaning his name—and I start to think about all the horrible things he must have to do on a day to day basis, the blood, the pain. He was attractive to me back in the alleyway, fine, but in the long-term, or even the mid-term, he would swiftly become unattractive, more of an animal than a man. What sort of relationship, real relationship, could a woman like me have with a man like that? And even if I gave into what a part of me clearly wants, what after? How will I feel about myself?
No, I tell myself, over and over, until it becomes a reflex every time my mind turns to him: I will not give into my animal desires with a man who is completely unsuited to me. It is cruel, but one night when I wake up in a hot sweat with the bed sheets sticking to me like pathetic imitations of his warm hands, I begin listing his negative attributes: uncaring, distant, arrogant, selfish, emotionally stunted, most likely just using me for sex. I have no evidence for some of these, and yet I am sure he is uncaring. I picture the way he just left me, hands in his pockets, whistling. An emotional man, a man who gave a shit, would not have done that.
When a week has passed since I saw him, I’m sure I’ve succeeded in changing my mind.
I stand in front of the bathroom mirror early one morning, hands on the edge of the sink, the enamel cold on my palm, and stare at myself wide-eyed, blood-eyed, and I mutter: “I do not want Rust, I do not want Rust, I do not want Rust.”
I envision him approaching me from behind, appearing in my bathroom doorway, filling it with his massive shoulders—and then I envision myself spinning on him and screaming: “You’re a cold, unfeeling, uncaring Neanderthal and I want nothing to do with you!”
Then I go into the kitchen and make myself some cereal, muttering under my breath as I pour the milk: “If a social worker can’t master self-denial, who can?”
Chapter Seven
Rust
I remember when I was a little kid, before Dad died and before Mom sent me on my way, sitting on the grass with one of my friends and talking about soul-mates. It’s odd to think about it now, but back then I really believed in that shit. I really believed that there were these things called souls inside of you and that your soul was meant to be connected to somebody else’s soul. I really believed that there was a special person for everybody. Fuckin’ ridiculous, but I was a kid. I stopped believing in it pretty damn quick when I learnt about Mom cheating on Dad all those years, when I learnt that it was Mom who gave Dad that heart attack.
Which is why it’s so strange that during the week I keep thinking about Allison, as though there really is something in this soul bullshit—though I know there’s not, that it’s absurd. If I keep thinking about her, it’s ’cause she is damn hot and nothing more. That’s what I have to remind myself every day. But still, she’s persistent in my mind. I’ll be out with Zeke, either tailing some unpatched or questioning one of their members, and she’ll be there, lurking at the peripheries of my mind, sometimes seeming to lurk at the peripheries of my vision. A couple of times, I feel like a real crazy person as I turn to glance and see that it’s just the way the sun is reflecting off the handlebars of my bike or a streetlamp or something like that. Not Allison, ’cause of course it’s not.
I know nothing about her; I only met her once. Sure, she is hot, and her body felt amazing pressed up against mine, but that’s it. There are plenty of women I’ve been with who I could say the same about: hot, sweet-feeling, their bodies offering pleasure for the taking. But for some reason it’s this specific woman who keeps coming back to me, day after day, night after night. Once, we’re having a party at the club and one of the club girls comes onto me. Hot enough, willing enough, the sort of girl I’d normally fuck for a night and then forget about. But tonight, I make some bullshit excuse about needing to go outside to make a business call and then I just lean against my bike smoking a cigarette.
I watch the smoke curl into the summer evening air and then dissipate and I think about Allison, try and pinpoint exactly what it is about her that keeps her lingering in my mind. Her looks are the obvious answer, but the girl in there has looks. So what else? We only spoke for a couple of hours, if that, so I struggle to believe we could’ve made any sort of connection, even if making a connection was something a man like me could do. But then …I search and search, and come up with nothing. Souls? I laugh harshly at the thought. No, not that. Maybe it’s that ‘spark’ people are always talking about; maybe we had ‘chemistry’. But I don’t think I was doing much else than being my usual self.
I have never loved a woman. I know that much. I’ve seen men who were in love—Zeke thinks he’s in love with every other new girlfriend—and I know I’ve never felt that. They get all soft, start saying unrealistic shit like this girl is the most beautiful girl in the world, that they can never imagine being with anybody else. They turn into bitches half the time. I’ve never got far enough with a woman where I could even get close to feeling that. And I am definitely not in love with Allison. But—no, it’s stupid, way past the point of stupidity. But what if this is what the start of that love stuff feels like? Thinking about them all the time? Wondering what they’re doing? Missing them even though you know nothing about them.
“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter, flicking my cigarette to the concrete. “Don’t be a fuckin’ idiot.”
I go back into the party, but I find myself heading for the corner with Zeke and a bottle of whisky, and ignoring the club girls for the rest of the night, probabl
y the first time I’ve done that in damn-near a decade.
Toward the end of the week, Zeke and I are scouting out one of the unpatched at a train station in a rundown part of town. The station’s floor is more chewing gum that tiling, squashed faded pink and blue and white circles under our feet, and the walls are all chipped wallpaper and exposed metal and brick. A few homeless people crouch in the doorways, and poor working folk walk to and fro, heads down, as though wanting to blot out their surroundings on their way to work.
We’re watching the crowd for Trent, though this lead is weak, leaning up against the wall and just watching for an hour or more.
At some point, Zeke mutters: “So, that was pretty strange the other night, man.”
“Huh?” I grunt, not wanting to get drawn into it. I know he’s talking about the party, and I have no interest in talking about the party.
“The party,” he says, and by the way the bastard smiles I know he’s enjoying it.
“Don’t know what you mean,” I murmur.
“Yeah.” Zeke’s bastard grins gets wider. “Of course you don’t. So—you meet this girl once and now you’re going steady, that it?”
“I haven’t even talked to her since, you asshole.”
“But she’s playing on you, eh, up there?” He taps the side of his head.
“Nope,” I say.
“Come on, man. I know you—”
“Then you know I have no problem with knocking teeth from mouths that talk too much.”
Zeke shakes his head. “Alright, man.”
And that’s that as far as Zeke is concerned. We both know I’d never really go for him, but he must know how much I don’t want to be bothered about this ’cause he actually backs off, something I didn’t expect him to do.
We don’t find Trent at the rail station, and so we head back to the club.
The first thing I hear when I get in is some kid shouting, and the first thing I see is this same kid pacing up and down in the bar waving his arms. Shackle is standing opposite him, a bat in one hand, watching the kid carefully. A few of Shackle’ lieutenants are standing behind him. Shackle is as hard as his attitude to the club: a short, squat, hard-faced man with thick arms and thick legs, an ugly gash running jagged from the top of his forehead down to his chin.
“You want to kill me!” the kid screams. He’s about seventeen or eighteen, I’d guess, skinny as a beanpole with thin bone-like arms and long bony fingers, wearing a tattered stained T-shirt and baggy jeans, with sneakers that were once white and are now crusted brown. A street kid, then.
I nod to Zeke, who nods back, and we creep silently into the bar up to where the kid is pacing. I wonder why Shackle and the others haven’t taken him down yet, and then I see: he’s holding a small switchblade in his right hand, which he swipes through the air as he rants. Zeke and I approach carefully, having done this countless times before even if it was under different circumstances.
“You want to kill me, I know you do! I know you do!” the kid rants.
“We’re trying to help you,” Shackle says calmly. Always calm, is Shackle, never laughing or panicking or getting angry. A businessman. “We explained all this to you, kid,” he goes on. “You’re a meth-head; we’re getting you off it, thinking about patching you. You said it was what you wanted, and now you’re ranting and raving with a knife.” Shackle keeps talking, distracting the kid.
Zeke and I get close enough that I can smell him: the stale beer and the lingering cigarette smoke, something deeper which might be the scent of whatever crack house this kid was in before Shackle brought him here. The kid goes on, accusing Shackle and the others of trying to kill him, and then on a silent count of three—something we’ve perfected over a number of years—Zeke and I jump on the kid, Zeke going for the weapon as he always does and me wrapping my arms around him, holding him back. He flops around in my grip, but he’s all skin and bones, not a challenge to hold back. Zeke tucks the knife away into the waistband of his jeans, and Shackle steps forward.
“Calm down,” Shackle says, looking plainly at the kid.
But the kid keeps squirming. I whisper in his ear: “Listen, kid, you’ve got two roads in front of you right now. And you should listen ’cause I’ve been pretty much where you are. You’ve got two roads. One will lead you back to whatever shithole crack house you came from. The other will lead you to be a patched member of The Damned. You need to see past this anger and ask yourself: who do you want to be? Do you want to be one of those toothless fuckin’ junkies who can barely stand up, or do you want to be a patched biker? Come on, kid, be smart. I don’t want to see you slip back into that shit.”
Shackle and the others look surprised as these words come out of me, and I can’t blame them ’cause I am, too. Maybe it’s because I really do see something of myself in this kid. The angry-at-the-world teenager I was when Mom kicked me out all those years ago.
Slowly, the kid quietens down, stops thrashing. We all wait patiently. We wouldn’t do that if this was just some knife-wielding teenager, but if we’re going to patch him, he gets more leeway than others might.
“I’m okay,” he mutters, after a few minutes. “I’m okay. It’s just—coming off this shit is hard. I’m okay.”
I let him go, take a step back. He turns to me. He has a young face, but his addiction has aged it in places: the lines around his eyes, the deep dark bags under his eyes, and the cracking of lips. His freckles and his bob of ginger hair give him a look of youth despite all this, though.
Shackle gestures to me to come over to him. I leave the kid with Zeke and go to Shackle in the corner.
“I want you to deal with this kid’s detox,” he says. “I didn’t know you had that in you. That was good, Rust. Real good. I want you to get him clean, so that we can see what he’s really made of. You have no clue what a man—a boy—is really made of when he’s still thinking caught up in the drug haze.”
I would normally be pissed off at being tasked with something like this, but the kid clearly needs help—and there’s that thought again, that he’s not so different to the kid I once was.
“Alright,” I say. “What should I do?”
Shackle shrugs. “That’s up to you.”
I’m about to say I have no clue, but then I remember a certain lady, and a certain pamphlet.
I nod. “I’ve got an idea.”
Chapter Eight
Allison
I’m sitting in my office, leaning back in my chair, staring at my computer screen. A word document stares at me from the screen, telling me to fill it out. A weekly report, something I have to do, funnily enough, every week, and yet something I dread as though it comes around only once a year. I lean forward and start typing, hating how boring this report is. It’s for management, to justify my existent here at the library, and it reduces all the complex cases which come into my office down to simple cold facts and figures. When the report is done, I shoot it off in an email and look around my office. I’ve been thinking about rearranging if for a while. The office is windowless, the desk resting against one wall, the couch for my patients sitting against the opposite wall. There are canvas pictures of meadows, creeks, and waterfalls on three of the walls, and on the fourth is a window which overlooks the car park: not the best view, but I often close the blinds and allow the sun to glow orange through them. Near the couch is a small armchair.
I stand up, go to the couch, realizing that I’m purposefully turning my mind away from Rust. I’ve been doing that a lot lately: thinking about mundane things to distract myself from him, as though Rust is an anxiety disorder, and I am trying some thought redirection to get rid of him.
I still think about him all the time, though, despite my efforts; I cannot distract myself in the shower, or while I’m sleeping. My only solace is that I know we would never suit each other. The unfeeling Neanderthal biker and the girl whose job is helping people? No, no, no, that would never work.
Knock, knock.
I rise to
my feet, going to the door. “Hello,” I say, smiling and opening the door.
The smile drops from my face like a leaden weight. For a second I wonder if I am hallucinating, the image is so strange. Rust, standing in the doorway like some oversized giant, shoulders brushing the doorframe, with a ginger-haired teenager standing behind him. I stare at him blankly for a few moments, waiting for him or me to speak, but neither of us do. We just stand there. Though he’s the one who knocked on my office door, he looks just as surprised as me.
Then Rust says, “I need your help, Allison. I remember the pamphlets you were holding that day when …Anyway, this is Joseph. I need you to help him.”
