by Julia Kent
“You out for a run?” Her eyes raked over me. So that’s how it was. I gave her my best flirt face and tried not to freak out on the inside as seventeen different pieces of me all screamed in the jail of my ribcage.
Just let the calm, cool, flirty dude take charge and it’ll be all right.
“I am. You work out, too, I see,” I said. She glowed.
I picked the right words for once.
“How can I help you?” she asked in a low, suggestive voice.
“I need to take out some money from my account.” I grabbed a withdrawal slip and scribbled the number from memory. I wrote three hundred fifty dollars. Needed to leave some or she’d ask too many questions.
Stay in the range of safe. Too many standard deviations from the mean and you draw attention.
As I slid the slip under the glass counter her fingers touched mine. Lingered. “Nice ink,” she said. “Who did the flowers?”
I looked down. Flowers. That’s right.
“Oh, you know.” Deflect. “You got any tats?” I made myself give her an obvious once-over. Any other situation and I’d find her fuckable, but right now my cock hung in my pants like a loose seatbelt.
She leaned in, giving me two eyefuls of creamy cleavage. “I do, but...I can’t show it here.”
“Really?”
Linda pulled back and looked at my withdrawal slip. She opened her cash drawer as her eyes went to her computer screen.
Please let this work. Please let this work. Pleezeletdiswork. The words became a chant in my head, all meshed into one ball of sound. Like static.
She keyed in some numbers, then a machine clicked. Shuffling sounds. A stack of bills appeared in the drawer. She grabbed my hand, hard, and pulled it under the glass barrier. A ballpoint pen pressed into my flesh.
She bit her lower lip as she wrote her number on the pad of my hand.
“I get off at three,” she whispered, “if you want to get off, too. I’ll show you my tat and you can show me...everything you got.”
I swallowed. The money was right there. Just had to keep up the act for thirty more seconds. C’mon Tyler. You got this. You got this.
She had to see how fake I was from the look in my eyes, right? Didn’t she? How could I feel so deeply inside me and have people not sense it? Not see it. Not even know it was there?
I looked at her and smiled, focusing on a spot between her eyes. If I looked directly at her I was fucking freaked she’d figure me out.
“Sounds good.” She slid the money to me, still holding my hand. I picked up the bills like they were a beating heart and tucked them in my pocket. Linda let go of me. It took everything not to exhale loudly.
“I’ll see you?” she asked, eyebrows up, questioning. Flushed cheeks and a sly, almost-evil grin rounded out her look.
“Sure.”
“Have a nice day,” she said in a neutral voice as another teller walked behind her.
“You too,” I called back as I walked out, face frozen in a smile.
I made it outside and around the corner before I puked again. Some poor insurance agent’s building got the remains of my stomach in their cluster of pansies. Sorry, dude.
I straightened up and took a deep breath. Looked around. No one saw me.
And I had three hundred and fifty bucks to get me through this. Thank fucking God.
I wasn’t quite so empty anymore.
Maggie
The knock at the door wasn’t that unusual. Mom was gone, Lena was at the office working again, and in our little subdivision kids were constantly selling stuff in school fundraisers.
Except kids don’t stand at nearly six feet and have tattoos the color of candy all over them. And they don’t start conversations with, “You got a car and a guitar I can borrow?”
“Excuse me?”
“Darla call you yet?’
“Excuse me? Tyler, what the hell are you doing at my house here in St. Louis?” My hinky meter went from zero to Oh Holy Fuck. I’d never had a stalker before, but I’d worked with plenty of women on campus who had, plus after my rape I’d been followed by news camera crews and frat boys who thought—
“Chill. It’s cool.” He kept his voice low. Too low. “I live here.”
“You do not live here.”
“I mean I live in St. Louis.”
“Get out!”
“Did Darla call you?”
“No.”
“Your phone off?”
“What? What? What are you talking about? Why are you asking me questions about my phone and Darla and Tyler Gilvrey what in the fucking hell are you doing outside my mom and dad’s house?”
I pulled back, imagining myself at a distance from this. My therapists had recommended that when I faced massive fear. Imagine you’re at a distance, giving advice. I could feel the plume of terror threatening to overtake me, and if he made one move toward me, I’d—
And then he did. One simple step toward me was all it took. Instinct flooded my veins and I pulled one foot up, twisted my hip and kicked him with my leg at a perfect right angle, my flat, bare sole hitting him square on in the nuts.
I didn’t know a guy could scream like that.
Mrs. Wilmer from next door shrieked as Tyler folded in half and fell backward off the two-step front stoop. Her little Labradoodle, a mocha-colored puffball with pink and purple ribbons above its ears, began barking furiously and shot across the yard.
“Margaret! Margaret! Is this man hurting you?” Mrs Wilmer called out. She had been watering her flower bed with a hose and a watering sprayer and came over, still holding it. If she was four-foot-eight I’d be surprised, and she probably weighed less than most backpacks at my college. Her bangs were cut straight across and about a half-inch from her hairline. She wore giant glasses that looked like something from a 1980s sitcom, and she normally walked with a walker.
That woman fairly sprinted to my aid.
I felt like one of those spin art canvases, my inner world twirling and splattering into patterns that would later be beautiful and enchanting but right now were just smears and chaos.
Her dog...what was its name?...jumped right on Tyler’s leg and sank its fangs into his calf.
Who knew Tyler could hit notes that high?
“Help! God, ow, help!” he shouted, hitting three octaves at once, rolling on the ground.
Mrs. Wilmer turned purple with rage. “You can’t hurt Margaret! How dare you!”
Tyler answered by shaking the leg the dog was biting.
“And now you want to hurt my little Attila! Sic ‘em, Attila! That’s right. Protect Mommy and Margaret!”
Tyler rolled on the ground like he was on fire, then shifted one leg under his hips, starting to stand.
Mrs. Wilmer shot him in the face with the hose sprayer.
And he went down. Boom.
“Ah, fuck, Maggie, help me,” he moaned.
“He said the ‘f’ word! How obscene!” Mrs. Wilmer said to me, enraged. Her eyes bulged and her browned teeth were bared at Tyler in an odd symmetry with her little dog. “Margaret, go get one of those portable telephones and call the fuzz!”
“The...what?”
“We need to get the fuzz out here to arrest this mugger!”
“No police!” Tyler groaned.
“See! He’s going to stand up and kidnap us and do unspeakable things!”
I looked down at the ground. Mrs. Wilmer still had the hose focused on Tyler, and Attila wasn’t letting go of his leg. My crotch kick left the guy folded in half. With the colorful arm tattoos he looked like something out of a Garden Club display.
“Call Darla! Call Charlotte,” he groaned. “They’ll tell you why I’m here.”
“Who are Darla and Charlotte, young man?” Mrs. Wilmer bent down and sprayed him in the eyes. “You can’t pull one over on us!”
Attila released Tyler and shimmied up his body, licking his face.
Pure adrenaline raced through me, but I took a few steps backward. Phon
e. Where was the phone?
Mrs. Wilmer mistook my uncertainty for fear. “I’ve got him, Margaret. Don’t worry. Between me and my little honey bunny Attila, we’ll keep you safe.”
Tyler let out a sound of outraged pain.
It wasn’t my safety I was worried about any more.
I sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed my phone and turned it back on. It had run out of power, and I’d been charging it all morning, and—
Seventeen messages?
Oh, shit.
I ran back to the front yard before Mrs. Wilmer went and got her six cats and made them try to eat Tyler, too.
“You’re calling 911?” she asked, eyebrows raised. I could only imagine how many replays this story would get for the next year at her bridge club. And at the local church she attended. And everywhere in town but social media.
“No, Mrs. Wilmer. Just checking to see if Tyler’s telling the truth.”
“You know this criminal?”
All I could do was nod.
“Quit waterboarding me, you old bat!” Tyler sputtered, the water choking him.
“You apologize for that remark, young man! I am not an old bat. What a nasty thing to say!”
“And making your dog bite me while you torture me with a hose isn’t nasty?”
“I’m a good Christian woman!” she protested. “I am never nasty!”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tyler said.
“You cannot take the name of the Lord in vain like that!” She pointed the hose at him. “Apologize to God or I’ll...”
“What?” he shrieked. I had one eye on my row of messages and one on him. It was a treat to see him so...emotional. So fired up. So—anything other than droll and dry and contained.
Tyler was one big bundle of muscled schadenfreude right now.
Messages. A ton of them. Most from Darla. Something about Tyler needing help getting to L.A. by Monday night. Then a stream of them from Charlotte.
“Does he have a partner hiding in your house? Are you being kidnapped, Margaret?” hollered Mrs. Wilmer. “Please shout if you are!” followed by growling sounds, then Tyler whimpering.
Oh, boy.
By the time I got back to the front stoop with the phone, Tyler was standing. He was crumpled a bit from my kick, and rubbing his bitten calf. He was soaking wet and while I should have felt pity or empathy or anger or something any decent human being would feel, all I noticed was how his wet t-shirt molded to what appeared to be an eight pack of abs.
Oh, my.
Mrs. Wilmer adjusted her glasses, then switched the hose into her left hand as Attila seamlessly leaped into her right arm and nestled in, panting at me like she expected a treat.
“Good dog,” I muttered.
Tyler mumbled a single-word obscenity.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Wilmer,” I explained.
“Glad someone is,” Tyler interrupted.
“Shut up, Frown.”
He did.
My phone buzzed. A call. I slid the phone open and caught Charlotte.
“Hey, what’s up?” she asked.
I surveyed the scene. “Do you really want to know?”
“Is Frown there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Did he...what’s going on?”
“She kicked me in the crotch and her neighbor’s little yappyass dog bit my leg and I got waterboarded!” Tyler screamed, his face red with rage and body taut with fury. “Tell Darla I never signed up for this shit!”
Charlotte went silent. I said, “That’s about right.”
“What?” Charlotte gasped.
“Why are you and Darla calling me and texting me?”
“Because Tyler needs help getting to L.A. for a Tuesday concert, and you’re his only hope.”
“What the hell is he doing here? Is he stalking me?”
“In your fucking dreams,” he said under his breath. “I don’t stalk chicks who try to remove my balls with their toenails.”
Charlotte sighed. “He’s from St. Louis. You didn’t know that?”
“No. What part?”
“What part what? Isn’t he there? Ask him.”
I turned to him. “What part of St. Louis are you from?”
“Why the fuck does that matter?” he snapped.
I just cocked an eyebrow and played his silence game. I waited. And waited.
He muttered the name of a neighborhood that was constantly in the news for crime.
Mrs. Wilmer pointed at him. “I knew it! No good comes from that neighborhood.”
My turn to step in. “Thank you for your kind assistance, Mrs. Wilmer.”
“Kind,” Tyler snorted.
“But I’m fine now. Really. Tyler is a friend of mine from Massachusetts,” I said to her. “Where I work.”
The poor old woman’s shocked face made me feel awful suddenly. “He’s your friend? Why didn’t you say so, Margaret! I would never have treated a friend of yours so poorly, even if he is,”—sniff—“from that part of the city.”
Tyler turned a new shade of purple.
“Come on in,” I said to him as Charlotte chattered on the phone. “Let’s sort this mess out.”
Tyler
I stood in the foyer of her really nice house in shock, dripping all over white tile. The house smelled like cinnamon and lavender and freshly-baked cookies. While Charlotte explained whatever Maggie needed to hear, I was a fucking wreck. Between getting a kick in the nuts that made any female MMA fighter look like a wimp, having fucking Cujo the poodle bite me like I was a chew toy, and some old lady who thought her watering hose was an AK-47, I was done with this day.
Done fucking done.
L.A. wasn’t worth it.
Nothing was worth it, least of all multi-colored muppet head over there, with her feet of steel. Holy fuck. Those were some powerful quads behind that kick.
So why did my mind flit over to thinking about other ways those thighs could...oh, fuck.
She murmured and gasped on the phone with Charlotte. Protested and argued. I knew she was going to hate everything Charlotte and Darla said. Who wouldn’t be pissed to have a person they despised show up at their door needing a favor?
Unannounced, too. At least I wasn’t penniless. Thank God for small favors and savings accounts you can’t drain with a debit card.
But three hundred and fifty bucks was probably what they paid for a month of gardening services here. To these people, I was dog shit. The old bat next door made that clear. Guy from my part of town?
Bad news.
I was bad news, and from the sounds of the argument Maggie was having on the phone with Charlotte, she agreed with Cujo next door.
Bite me.
Maggie got off the phone and moved slowly, reaching for a cookie on a plate. Then she put the cookie in her mouth, picked up the plate, and walked from the open kitchen to the foyer.
She held the plate out toward me.
“Want one?”
I gaped in disbelief. “Antibiotic cream and dry clothes are what I need. Not something out of a Pillsbury commercial.”
She made a face of mock horror. “They’re made from scratch!”
I just glared.
“And you need a ride to L.A.” She chewed, never taking her eyes off me.
“Not sure about that now.”
She frowned. “You don’t need a ride to L.A.?”
I snagged a cookie and shoved it in my mouth, chewing like I was eating straw. Rage, fury, embarrassment, and shock all coursed through me. My blood was a soup of those shit emotions we all work so hard to push down. It pumped and pumped through me in a loop, like all that crap would never leave my body.
Maybe that was true. Maybe it was always there and I was fooling myself thinking I could escape it.
But making a stupid, impulsive decision not to go to L.A. wouldn’t help, either.
“No. I do.”
“You do need a ride? Can�
�t you take a flight?”
“No ID.”
She nodded slowly. Those glowing eyes looked at me like something out of a Pixar movie. “And you can’t take a train, either?”
“Too slow, plus—they sometimes check ID.”
“What happened to your stuff? Your wallet?”
“Got rolled.”
“Mugged?”
I nodded.
“Damn. That sucks.”
“I also got crotch kicked by a chick who looks like something from a Pokemon episode. It’s been a shit day. You giving me a ride or not?”
Her face morphed into a WTF? expression. “Say ‘pretty please.’”
“What?”
“Ask me nicely.”
No. I just stared at her. That should work. Most people couldn’t stand being stared at for long periods of time. They always cracked. My calf throbbed where the dog bit me and goosebumps started to form on my arms from being wet and cold, but I locked eyes with her and didn’t move.
Pretty soon I could barely breathe. Layer after layer of time and space peeled back as I saw Maggie. Watched her glowing blue eyes twitch, saw how the muscles of her mouth stored some words she wasn’t saying. Our breath became the only sound in the room. It filled my ears, like the tide coming in.
“Don’t you need to go home and pack?” she finally asked.
That’s a normal question, right? Except nothing about this fucked up mess was normal. Nothing about my fucked up home was normal. Nothing about my family was normal. I didn’t really have it in me to answer the question. I stayed silent.
“Well? Tyler? Frown? Hello? When someone asks you a question, the decent human thing to do is give an answer.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have an answer?”
“I don’t have a home.”
“You’re homeless?”
I thought back on what the apartment looked like after Johnny tossed it. I could answer her question in lots of ways. They all spun around in my head like confetti in a blender. None of them paused long enough for me to see the words.
It was easier to say what she assumed.
“Something like that.”
Alarm filled her eyes. Fuck. That was the wrong answer.
“I have an apartment. Live there with my dad,” I said quickly. Let’s leave Johnny out of this. Too complicated.
The fear receded. You tell people what they want to hear and they mostly leave you alone. Except I couldn’t have Maggie leave me alone right now.
