Against the Wind

by J. F. Freedman

  I’m the buccaneer in the group; if they say they can it means they’ve already worked it out.

  “So what’re we talking about? Three months? Four?” I’m sweating freely now.

  “At least,” Andy answers, on sure ground again. “You need to cool out, Will. You’re burnt out.”

  There it is.

  “How do we work out the money?” I ask. “We can’t afford to pay me if I’m not bringing in business; not for that long.”

  They stare at me. Jesus, I’m slow this morning.

  “You fuckers.”

  “You just said it,” Fred answers in a tone that implies he’s the wounded party. “You take a big hit, bro. No way we could carry that. We’d want it the same way if it was one of us,” he adds unctuously.

  “We’ll find a month,” Andy says. “Maybe two.” At least he’s having a harder time than Fred. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever deep-down liked Fred. I don’t think so.

  “What if I flat-out say no?” My back is up, these miserable two-faced sons-of-bitches, what kind of bullshit is this, we’ve been partners, friends, out of the blue they’re putting a loaded gun to my head?

  “Don’t.” Andy’s tough now, his voice flat, emotionless.

  I sag; they see it, I can’t hide it, not in the condition I’m in this morning. It’s a palace coup, bloodless, over before it’s started.

  “How do we work it? I’m not going to take any public humiliation,” I tell them. “I’ll bring the firm down first,” I add, staring defiantly back at them.

  “You’ve asked for an extended leave,” Fred informs me. They’ve worked it all out, the pricks, they’ve probably got papers for me to sign. “You’ve been under intense emotional pressure with the divorce, you’ve been a lawyer almost your entire adult life, you need to step back and look at the big picture. We’re reluctant to do it but in the long-range interests of the firm, and for your own well-being, we’re going along with your desires. We wish you the best of luck, hope the trout are biting or whatever it is you’ll be doing, and eagerly await your return to the firm of which you were an original founder.”

  I breathe an audible sigh of relief; the door isn’t completely closed. Maybe they’re right, maybe I should take some time off. So what if it’s a rationalization; rationalizations have a kernel of truth.

  “How do we know when it’s time for me to come back?”

  “We’ll play it by ear,” Andy says. “No guarantees.”

  “So there’s a chance I’ll never come back.” Great, I think, forty years old and starting over in a town where there are no secrets. This whole sorry mess’ll be on the streets by tomorrow.

  “Let’s don’t think negatively, man,” Andy says, “we really don’t want this. We need you, Will, you’re our star, we’re going to lose half our trial business right off the top, some of it we’ll never get back.”

  “Then why the goddam draconian measures?”

  “You’ve forced them on us, Will. We don’t think the firm can survive otherwise.”

  Jesus, has it really come to that? I close my eyes, take a deep breath, exhale. Should I apologize? No; if I’m going out I’m going out in style, my style. Of course, if I were to apologize, they’d really feel like turds.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t see the gravity of it but I’ve obviously hurt everybody pretty badly.”

  Bull’s-eye. The grief on their faces is genuine. Fred puts an uncharacteristic hand on mine, an oddly inappropriate yet touching, old-fashioned gesture.

  “You’ll be back,” he soberly informs me.

  I nod equally soberly.

  “What about Susan?”

  “We’re taking care of her,” Andy says, quick on the draw. “We’ve already spoken to her …” his voice suddenly falters as he picks up on the fuckup, but he catches himself adroitly, presses on, no looking back now: “informally, of course, we mentioned you might want to take a leave, let it fly as if it was your own idea. She’ll be a rover, we’ll keep her busy. She agrees,” he adds. “She’s been concerned about you for some time.”

  That’s probably true. Susan’s the cliché secretary in all the best senses. Thank God I was never drunk enough during office hours to make a pass at her.

  “Who gets my office?” I’ve got the primo office, the corner with great views out of two sides.

  I thought I’d catch them but they don’t bite. I wonder if they rehearsed this.

  “No one,” Andy answers. “It’s yours until we all come to a final decision.”

  “Good,” I say. “I might want to use it from time to time … for personal business,” I add with a defiant twist.

  They glance at each other.

  “Sure.” Fred nods approbation. “Just don’t camp out okay?” He winks; it’s a big joke, a chummy conspiracy, we’re all in on it together. I just happen to be the butt.

  Andy doesn’t smile; he’s taking it harder, I knew he would. He steps forward, offers his hand.

  “Not too many hard feelings?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I answer. “Probably.”

  His hand drops. “If it’s any consolation this wasn’t easy … for either of us.”

  “You’re right. It’s no consolation.”

  “If you need money I want to be the first one to hear from you,” he offers. I know he’s sincere.

  Fuck them and their feelings. “If I do I sure as hell won’t come to either of you.”

  We look bleakly at one another. By one of those foreordained coincidences we’re standing on opposite sides of the conference table: the two of them solid on their side, me fighting to hold it together on mine.

  “I’ll clear my personal things out of the office by the end of the week.”

  “No hurry,” Fred says, magnanimous now; I didn’t throw an embarrassing tantrum. Civilization as we know it has been preserved. “Susan’ll take your messages.”

  “I guess that’s about it, then,” I tell them. “I’ll spend the rest of the week clearing my calendar.”

  “Keep in touch, Will,” Andy says. Without realizing it he’s already regarding me in the past tense. Fred’s preoccupied with the view outside.

  There’s nothing more to say; they leave the room. I slump into a chair. My head’s really killing me now and I can’t rationalize that it’s a hangover anymore.

  The bikers should be high, stoned, blown away. They’ve been doing tequila shooters since they came in three hours ago. Before that, before they rode down from Taos, they’d had a taste of crack, some Maui Wowwee mixed with hash, bootleg quaaludes somebody’d stashed years ago and brought out to impress them (and keep them on the good side), as well as a handful of designer drugs rumored to be 3,000 times the potency of morphine, stolen from a local anesthesiologist. Any normal human being would be wasted beyond oblivion; these four are still on their feet, sliding through the scene.

  The patrons in this low-rent bar are your basic kickers, lean mean bastards, but even the toughest of them gives the bikers a wide berth, ’cause everyone knows these dudes are crazy, Jack. So it’s a couple hours of drinking and eyeballing and listening to the house band recycle Bob Seger and Willie Nelson before it mellows out, before some of the boys mosey over and starting talking bikes (which means Harleys of course, none of this rice-burner shit), panheads and knuckles and suicide shifters and if you never rode an old Indian, man, you don’t know what it is to get your kidneys scrambled permanent, and then some of the ladies start hovering (all the world knows ladies love outlaws), rubbing their nipples through the tank-tops up against those outrageous tattoos, playful grab-assing, shit these guys’re just good ol’ boys, fucking aye, straight society can’t handle the truth they lay on the world so they’ve got to cut them down, categorize them, call them outlaws. Anyway so what if they are outlaws, that’s the American way, who would you rather fuck darlin’ (this is Lone Wolf, the leader of the bikers, talking), Jesse James or Dan Quayle? Short-dicked little faggot.

  It’s getting late now,
playing out the night. The girls are going home with their husbands and boy-friends, “No shit, darlin’,” this 38-D cup is overheard telling one of the outlaws, “I wish like hell I could ride out of here with you right now but tomorrow you’re a memory and he’s nasty-jealous.” It’s fun to shuck and jive with friends around for protection but taking off with these dudes? They’ve heard the stories about how bikers initiate mamas, real horror shows, they don’t need this ticket to ride.

  Last call, triple shooters of Commemorativa, lots of money floating around, money’s never the problem, what we’re talking is pussy and the lack of it.

  “Anybody need a ride?” Lone Wolf asks. Almost plaintive, soft, no threat.

  “Me. I do.” From the back of the room, behind the pool table where the light drops off.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rita. Gomez.”

  “Step out here where I can see you, girl,” Lone Wolf asks. By nature it’s a command performance. She walks into the center of the room, where the light’s better. Some of the other women instinctively back off; this girl is too dumb and too drunk.

  The bikers check her out. About twenty-one, twenty-two, dark, not bad once you get past the pockmarks, good firm little tits through her T-shirt, nice tight ass.

  “Where you going?” Her voice is deeper, huskier than it ought to be, askew with the rest of the package.

  “Any place your little heart desires.”

  “Old Adobe Motel. On the East Side?”

  “You visiting?”

  She shakes her head. She’s drunk; she stumbles, catches herself. “I’m not drunk.”

  “Didn’t say you were.”

  “I work there. They give me a room. It’s got a kitchenette and all.” She takes a deep breath. “I need fresh air.”

  They kick over their motorcycles, eardrum-splitting exhaust blasting the stillness. After two in the morning and it’s still blisteringly hot. She climbs on behind Lone Wolf, wrapping her arms around him, laying her head against his colors. He can feel her nipples through the denim; he hasn’t been laid in three days, it’s an instant hard-on, this is going to be all right.

  The motel’s on the right, a block ahead past the light. $24 a night. Adult cable. The neon sputters.

  “That’s it!” she yells into his hair over the blast coming from the wind, pointing. “Pull in behind the back, the manager don’t like bikers, especially ones like you. I got two quarts of Lone Star stashed in the refrig.”

  They roar through the intersection against the red, not even slowing as the motel flashes by.

  “Hey where you going? You just passed it.”

  “No shit.”

  She turns, looking back. The motel recedes behind her, its sputtering neon blending with the halogens spread out along the highway. For a moment she feels fingers of fear, making her want to pee; then they’re gone, swallowed up in the pool of whiskey that’s still sloshing around in her belly.

  By the bikers’ standards it’sa short train; there are only the four of them, and they only fuck her twice apiece. Lone Wolf does her first, of course. He’s the leader, he gets the prime cut, the good loving: french-kissing and full-in deep-throating. She doesn’t know what’s coming, that’s how drunk she is, by the time she figures out it wasn’t what she wanted it’s way too late, she’s along for the ride, floating above it all. Drunk or sober she knows the way you survive this is to let it happen and pretend it isn’t. They have a knife out for show, a mean pig-sticker, but they don’t have to even threaten to use it, except to pick their fingernails. She’s a good girl: compliant and tight where it counts.

  They’re up in the Sangre de Crista Mountains, almost to the top. Down below, the lights of Santa Fe shimmer in the heat. The bikers drop some uppers, red hearts, 30-milligram h-bombs. They can’t sleep, they’ve got a day’s ride yet ahead of them, they’ve got to stay alert.

  “Come here, girl.” Lone Wolf pulls Rita to him, his back against a boulder, looking down at the lights. She sulks at first, but she knows not to piss him off too bad so she comes over and cuddles, her back in his chest. Her pussy hurts like hell, she’s going to walk like a cowgirl for a week.

  He fires up a joint. They pass it back and forth.

  “That was nice. You’re a good lady. I could get to like you.”

  “Me too.” She’ll say whatever he wants to hear. She’s frightened, exhausted, hurting. She’s been getting over a yeast infection and didn’t have enough lubrication; they tore her up good.

  “Maybe I could check you out next time I’m coming through. Just me you know?”

  “Yeh that would be cool. I’d like that. By yourself I mean.” Tell him what he wants to hear.

  “Yeh that’s what I mean.” He takes her chin in his hand, turns her face to his. “Nothing happened tonight. Did it?”

  The obvious answer dies in her throat. “No,” she replies. “Nothing.” You didn’t fuck me, she says to herself, your friends didn’t fuck me, my pussy doesn’t feel like you blew up a cherry bomb in it. “You just dropped me off at my motel and I never saw you again.”

  “Yeh.” His voice is soft, barely a whisper. “That’s how I remember it, too.”

  He stands, pulls her to her feet. They all mount up, ride back into town. Rita clings to Lone Wolf’s back. They drop her at her motel, fuck her one more time apiece. She’s beyond resisting; she lies there and takes it.

  It all becomes a blur; she remembers a banging on the wall, somebody shouting ‘Shut the fuck up in there,’ a guy she had gone out with was staying in that room, he had met some other guy earlier on at the Dew Drop who had claimed to be a dope dealer or something, one of the bikers had shouted back ‘fuck you.’ Finally, she passes out. She doesn’t know how much time has passed when, moaning in a bad-dream half-sleep, she finally hears their choppers roar off.

  She wakes with a start, her armpits soaking. Outside it’sfull sun, a cloudless sky, so hot already the tarantulas are looking for shade. She walks through the dingy courtyard. She’s going to have to hose this down, it’s filthy, shit there’s condoms and everything. Right now though all she wants is to go back inside and lie down. God, her pussy aches.

  Her friend Ellen, the other maid, is coming on shift. “Where you been?” Ellen asks.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “You look like shit.” She squints against the sun. “What happened to your eye? Damn girl, the left side of your face’s all stove in. Your eye’s practically swoll’ shut.”

  “I’m okay.” Weary, so goddam tired. Got to be evasive, though. They find out she ran her mouth they’ll come back and retaliate. “I was out with some guys. We went up in the mountains.” She runs her tongue around in her mouth that feels like it’s packed in cotton, licks her dry lips. “Too much booze. I got to cut that shit out.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  They go into Rita’s room. She pops a tall boy, takes a swig to get the dryness out of her mouth, strips to her panties.

  “Jesus Christ Rita!”

  The front of her panties is stained with blood. She turns away, scared. She doesn’t want Ellen to know.

  “Must be my period.”

  “Your period bullshit. Nobody bleeds like that. You look like somebody knifed you or something.”

  She comes closer, trying to get a better look. Rita spins away, pulls on a terry-cloth robe she copped from the Ramada from when she used to work there before they caught her stealing and canned her ass.

  “Let me get a look at that.”

  Rita’s too tired to argue. She stands passively while Ellen gently opens the robe and pulls down the soaked panties. They lie in a forlorn heap on the floor.

  “Damn!”

  “I’m all right. It looks worse than it is.”

  “You got to go to a hospital.”

  Rita jerks away, tightening the robe against her clammy body. God, she feels like shit. She’s got to get to sleep right now.

  “No fucking way.”

 
Ellen backs off, looking at Rita suspiciously. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  Rita sits on the bed, taking a long pull from the Lone Star. “No big deal. I fucked a guy with a big dick.”

  “Must’ve been Johnny Holmes from the looks of you. Seriously Rita you should get looked at.”

  Rita shakes her head. “I been up all night, I got to conk out. If I’m still bleeding when I wake up, then I’ll go. Grab me a couple towels, would you?”

  Ellen goes into the bathroom, comes out with two thin towels, the motel limit. Rita bunches them up, folds her legs around them. She lies down on her side, her face to the wall. “Cover for me a couple hours huh?”

  “Sure. I’ll look in on you.”

  “Thanks.” Rita smiles at her, rolls over into a ball. She pulls the covers up over her; it’s hot out, even this early, it’s going to be brutal, but she feels a chill coming on. She shivers involuntarily, feeling the wetness oozing out of her. Fuck the bikers, fuck Lone Wolf, she ain’t going to be here when they come back, no way Jose.

  At least she can’t be pregnant.

  Ellen takes a long pull from the Lone Star tall boy, sets it on top of the TV. As she closes the door behind her she sees Rita lying on the bed, already asleep, curled up into a tight ball like one of the homeless dogs you see down by the plaza.

  PATRICIA OPENS THE DOOR. She must’ve just come back from running; she’s still wearing a sweat-stained Santa Fe High School T-shirt, red with a blue devil on the front, Cornell-red sweat-pants with a white stripe on the leg, and off-white Nike running shoes with a red crescent on the sides, the kind with a see-through window in the heel that shows air bubbles. She’s a healthy woman, she runs four miles a day, works up a good sweat. Her breasts, underarms, thighs are soaked through her gear, there’s light ribbons of moisture on her upper lip and forehead under her sweatband. It’s appealing; she’s always had a good, athletic figure. We probably shouldn’t have gotten divorced. But we did, it was so long ago that it’s all amorphous now, shadow memory.

  “Claudia’s at Paulette’s,” she informs me. “They’re making marionettes. It’ll be a few minutes yet. Come on in.”

  It’s the same house we bought the year we got married; she could do better, but she stays, she likes the neighbors, it’s the best elementary school district in town, close to her office and Claudia’s after-school care.